H'
THE WORKS OF TENNYSON
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS
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MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
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THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
THE
WORKS OF TENNYSON
WITH NOTES BY THE AUTHOR
EDITED WITH MEMOIR
BY
HALLAM, LORD TENNVSON
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1916
All rights reserved
REPLACING
Copyright, 1892, 1893,
By MACMILLAN & CO.
Copyright, 1897, 1907, 1908,
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Copyright, 1913,
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1913.
Reprinted October, 1916.
Norfajool) T&xn%
J. B. Cashing Co. — Berwick «fe Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
CONTENTS.
Life and Work
Tennyson
Alfred Lord
To THE Queen
Notes .
879
JUVENUJA . . . . . .
Claribel
Notes
Nothing will Die
Notes .
All Things will Die ....
Notes
Leonine Elegiacs
Notes
Supposed Confessions of a Second-rate
Sensitive Mind
Notes
The Kraken
Notes
Song
Lilian
Notes
Isabel
Notes
Mariana
Notes
To .....'.
Notes
Madeline
Notes
Song — The Owl
Notes
Second Song — To the Same .
Recollections of the Arabian Nights
Notes
Ode to Memory
Notes . . . . .
Song
Notes
A Character
Notes
The Poet
Notes
The Poet's Mind ..... 14
Notes
a79'
2
879
3
880
3
880
3
880
5
880
6
6
880
6
880
9
881
9
9
881
11
881
12
13
882
Juvenilia continued —
The Sea-Fairies 14
Notes 882
The Deserted House . . . .15
Notes 882
The Dying Swan 15
Notes
A Dirge
Notes
Love and Death
Notes
The Ballad of Oriana
Notes
Circumstance
Notes
The Merman
Notes
The Mermaid
Notes
Adeline ....
Notes ....
Margaret ....
Notes ....
Rosalind ....
Notes ....
Eleanore ....
Notes ....
'My life is full of weary days'
Notes ....
'When in the darkness over me'
Notes ....
Early Sonnets
1 . Sonnet to
Notes
2. Sonnet to J. M. K.
Notes
3-
Ivi55^&45
Mine be the strength of
spirit' ...
4. Alexander ...
Notes
5. Buonaparte .
Notes
6. Poland
Notes
7. ' Caress 'd or chidden'
Notes
882
16
883
17
883
17
883
18
883
18
883
19
883
20
883
20
883
21
883
22
883
23
884
24
884
24
24
884
24
884
24
24
884
25
884
25
884
25
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Juvenilia — Early Sonnets continued —
8. 'The form, the form alone is elo-
quent' 25
Notes 884
9. 'Wan sculptor, weepest thou' . 26
Notes 884
10. 'If I were loved, as I desire to be' 26
Notes 884
11. The Bridesmaid .... 26
Notes 884
The Lady of Shalott, and other Poems :
The Lady of Shalott . . . .27
Notes 88s
Mariana in the South . . . .29
Notes 88s
The Two Voices 30
Notes 88s
The Miller's Daughter .... 36
Notes 886
Fatima 38
Notes 887
Q^PQPe 391
Not^ 887I
The Sisters 43
Notes 888
To ...... 43
The Palace of Art . . . .43
Notes 888
Lady Clara Vere de Vere ... 48
Notes 891
The May Queen 49
Notes 891
New Year's Eve . . . . . 50
Notes 891
Conclusion 51
Notes 891
yhy Lotos-Eaters S3V
- Notes ~ 891I
Choric Song 53
Notes 891
A Dream of Fair Women . . .55
Notes 892
The Blackbird 60
Notes 894
The Death of the Old Year ... 60
Notes 894
To J. S 61
Notes 894
On a Mourner 62
Notes . . ... ^95
'You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease' 63
Notes 89s
'Of old sat Freedom on the heights' . 63
Notes 89s
'Love thou thy land' .... 63
Notes 895
PAGE
The Lady of Shalott, etc., continued —
England and America in 17S2 . . 6s
Notes 895
The Goose 65
Notes 89s
English Idyls and other Poems:
The Epic
Notes .
Morte d'Arthur
Notes
The Gardener's Daughter; or, the
tures
Notes
Dora
Notes
Audley Court
Notes
Walking to the Mail
Notes
Edwin Morris; or,
. Notes
St. Simeon Stylites
Notes
The Talking Oak
Notes
Love and Duty
Notes
The Golden Year
Notes
Ulvsses .
Notes
^ithonus
the Lake
Jotes
Locksley Hall
ISiOies
Godiva .
Notes
The Day-Dream
Notes
Prologue
The Sleeping Palace
The Sleeping Beauty
The Arrival
The Revival
Notes
The Departure
Notes
Moral
L'Envoi
Notes
Epilogue
Notes
Amphion
Notes
St. Agnes' Eve
Notes
Sir Galahad
Notes
CONTENTS.
PAGE
j:dward Gray io8
Notes 902
Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue . 108
Notes 902
Lady Clare m
Notes 903
The Captain 112
Notes .903
The Lord of Burleigh . . . .113
Notes 903
The Voyage 114
Notes 904
Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere . . iiS
Notes 904
A Farewell 116
Notes 904
The Beggar Maid 116
Notes 904
The Eagle 116
Notes 904
'Move eastward, happy earth, and leave' 116
^Notes 904
* Come not, when I am dead ' . . .119
Notes 904
The Letters 117
Notes 904
The Vision of Sin 117
Notes 904
To , after reading a Life and Letters 120
Notes 905
To E. L., on his Travels in Greece . .121
Notes ....... 905
'Break, break, break' . . . .121
Notes 90s
The Poet's Song 121
Notes 905
Enoch Arden, and other Poems:
Enoch Arden 122
Notes 90s
The Brook 136
Notes . 906
Aylmer's Field 139
Notes 906
Sea Dreams 1S2
Notes . . -. . . . 908
Lucretius 157
Notes 908
The Princess; a Medley . . .161
Notes 909
Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington 212
Notes 919
The Third of February, 1852 . . .216
Notes . 920
The Charge ol the Light Brigade . . 217
Notes 921
PAGE
Ode sung at the Opening of the Interna-
tional Exhibition 217
Notes 921
A Welcome to Alexandra . . . .218
Notes 921
A Welcome to Her Royal Highness Marie
Alexandrovna, Duchess of Edinburgh 219
Notes 921
The Grandmother . . . . .220
Notes . . . . . . .922
Northern Farmer. Old Style . . .223
Notes 922
Northern Farmer. New Style . .22s
Notes 922
The Daisy 227
Notes 922
To the Rev. F. D. Maurice . " . .229
Notes 922
WiU 229
Notes 922
In the Valley of Cauteretz . . .229
Notes 922
In the Garden at Swainston . . .230
Notes 922
The Flower 230
Notes 922
Requiescat 230
Notes . . - . . • .923
The Sailor Boy 230
Notes 923
The Islet 231
Notes 923
Child-Songs 231
Notes 923
I. The City Child . . . -231
Notes 923
3. Minnie and Winnie . . . -231
Notes 923
The Spiteful Letter 232
Notes 923
Literary Squabbles 232
Notes 923
The Victim 232
Notes 923
Wages 233
Notes 923
The Higher Pantheism . . • -234
Notes 923
The Voice and the Peak . . . .234
Notes 923
'Flower in the crannied wall' , . .23s
Notes 923
A Dedication 235
Notes 923
Experiments :
Boadicea . . . . • • 235
Notes . >,^ .. _ . • - • 923
Vlll
CONTENTS.
PAGR
Experiments conlinued —
In Quantity . . . ' . .237
Notes 924
Specimen of a Translation of the Iliad in
Blank \'erse 238
Notes 925
The Window; or, the Song of the
Wrens :
The Window 239
Notes 925
Pn the Hill 239
At the Window . . . . . 239
Gone 239
Winter 239
Spring 240
The Letter 240
No Answer 240
The Answer 240
Ay 241
When 241
Marriage Morning .... 241
In Memoriam A. H. H 241
Notes 92s
Maxjd : A Monodrama . . . .281
Notes 940
Idylls of the King. In Twelve Books :
Dedication 302
Notes 945
The Coming, of Arthur .... 303
Notes 946
The Round Table . . . .311
Notes 948
Gareth and Lynette . . . .311
Notes 948
The Marriage of Geraint . . .335
Notes 951
Geraint and Enid 347
Notes 953
Balin and Balan 362
Notes 954
Merlin and Vivien 373
Notes 9SS
Lancelot and Elaine . . 1 .388
Notes 956
The Holy Grail 410
Notes 957
Pelleas and Ettarre .... 425
Notes 961
The Last Tournament . . . .435
Notes 961
Guinevere 447
Notes ...... 963
The Passing of Arthur .' . . . 458
Notes . . . . . . . 964
To the Qu3en 466
Notes 965
PAGE
The Lover's Tale . . . .467
Notes 96s
To Alfred Tennyson, my Grandson . 490
Ballads and other Poems:
The First Quarrel 490
Notes 966
Rizpah 492
Notes . . . • . . . 966
The Northern Cobbler . . . .494
Notes 966
The Revenge : A Ballad of the Fleet . 497
Notes 966
The Sisters 499
Notes 967
. The Village Wife; or, the Entail . . 504
Notes 968
In the^Children's Hospital . . . 507
Notes 968
Dedicatory Poem to the Princess Alice . 508
Notes 968
The Defence of Lucknow . . . 509
Notes 968
Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham . 511
Notes 968
Columbus 514
Notes ....*. 969
The Voyage of Maeldune . . .518
Notes ...... 969
De Profundis :
The Two Greetings . . . .521
Notes 970
The Human Cry . . . .522
Notes 972
Sonnets :
Prefatory Sonnet to the 'Nineteenth
Century' , 522
Notes 972
To the Rev. W. H. Brookfield . .522
Notes 972
Montenegro 523
Notes 972
To Victor Hugo 523
Notes 973
Translations, etc. :
Battle of Brunanburh . . . .523
Notes 973
Achilles over the Trench . . .525
Notes ...... 973
To the Princess Frederica of Hanover on
her Marriage 526
Notes 973
Sir John Franklin 526
Notes 973
To Dante 526
Notes, 973
CONTENTS,
PAGE
TlRESIAS, AND OTHER POEMS :
Notes 973
To E. Fitzgerald 526
Notes 974
Tiresias 527
Notes 974
The Wreck 53©
Notes 974
Despair 533
Notes 975
The Ancient Sage .... 536
Notes 975
The Flight S40
Notes 976
To-morrow 543
Notes 976
The Spinster's Sweet-Arts . . . 545
Notes 976
Locksley Hall Sixty Years after . . 548
Notes 977
Prologue to General Hamley . .556
Notes 977
The Charge of the Heavy Brigade at
Balaclava 556
Notes 977
Epilogue 557
Notes 978
ToVirgU 558
Notes 978
The Dead Prophet . . . -559
Notes 978
Early Spring 560
Notes 979
Prefatory Poem to my Brother's Sonnets 560
Notes 979
Frater Ave atque Vale . . . .561
Notes 979
Helen's Tower 561
Notes 979
Epitaph on Lord Stratford de Redcliffe . 562
Notes 979
Epitaph on General Gordon . . .562
Notes ...... 079
Epitaph on Caxton .... 562
Notes ...... 979
To the Duke of Argyll .... 562
Notes 979
Hands all Round 562
Notes 980
Freedom 563
Notes 980
To H. R. H. Princess Beatrice . . 563
Notes 980
The Fleet 564
Notes 980
Opening of the Indian and Colonial Ex-
hibition by the Queen .... 564
Notes 088
PAGE
Tiresias, and other Poems, continued —
Poets and their Bibliographies . . 565
Notes 983
To W. C. Macready . . . .565
Queen Mary 569
Notes 981
Harold 636
Notes 984
Becket 676 •'
Notes 986
The Cup 730
Notes 990
The Falcon 746
Notes 991
The Promise of May . . . .756
Notes 991
Demeter, and other Poems:
To the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava . 781
Notes 993
On the Jubilee of Queen Victoria . • . 782
Notes 993
To Professor Jebb 783
Notes . . . . . . 993
Demeter and Persephone . . . 783
Notes 993
Owd Roa 785
Notes 994
Vastness 788
Notes 994
The Ring 790
Notes 994
Forlorn 797
Notes 994
Happy 798
Notes 994
To Ulysses 802
Notes 994
To Mary Boyle . . . . .803
Notes 995
The Progress of Spring .... 804
Notes 995
Merlin and The Gleam .... 806
Notes 995
Romney's Remorse .... 807
Notes ...... 996
Parnassus 810
Notes 996
By an Evolutionist . . . . 8io
Notes 996
Far — far — away .... 8n
Notes 997
Politics 8n
Notes . . . . . .997
CONTENTS.
Demeter, and other Poems, continued —
Beautiful City 8ii
Notes 997
The Roses on the Terrace . . .812
Notes 997
The Play 812
Notes 997
On One who affected an Effeminate
Manner 812
Notes . . . . . . 997
To One who ran down the English . 812
Notes . . . . . .997
The Snowdrop 812
Notes 997
The Throstle . . . . .812
Notes 997
The Oak 812
Notes 997
In Memoriam — William George Ward . 813
Notes 997
The Foresters 814
Notes 997
The Death of OEnone, and other Poems :
June Bracken and Heather . . .851
Notes 1000
To the Master of Balliol . . .851
The Death of (Enone . . . .851
Notes 1000
St. Telemachus 853
Notes looi
Akbar's Dream 854
Notes looi
The Bandit's Death . . . .859
Notes I002
The Church-warden and the Curate . 860
Notes 1002
Charity 862
Notes 1002
Kapiolani 863
Notes 1002
The Dawn 864
Notes 1003
The Making of Man . . . .865
Notes 1003
The Dreamer 865
Notes I003
The Death of (Enone, and other
Poems, continued —
Mechanophilus 865
Notes 1003
Riflemen form ! 866
Notes 1003
The Tourney 866
Notes 1003
The Bee and the Flower . . .867
The Wanderer 867
Poets and Critics . . . .867
Notes 1003
A Voice spake out of the Skies . . 867
Notes 1003
Doubt and Prayer .... 867
Notes ...... 1003
Faith 868
Notes 1003
The Silent Voices . . . .868
Notes . . ... . . 1003
God and the Universe . . . 868
Notes 1003
The Death of the Duke of Clarence and
Avondale 868
Notes 1003
Crossing the Bar
Notes
Additional Poems :
*I, Loving Freedom for Herself
' Life of the Life within my Blood '
To . .
The Hesperides
Song of the Three Sisters
The Statesman
The Little Maid
The Ante-Chamber
Three Poems omitted from
monam
The Grave
To A. H. H. .
The Victor Hours
Havelock
Jack Tar
Me-
869
1003
873
873
873
873
873
87s
875
876
876
876
877
877
877
877
Notes 879
Index to the First Lines loii
Index to 'In Memoriam' 10x5
Ind£x to Songs 1017
LIFE AND WORK
OF
ALFRED LORD TENNYSON.^
SOMERSBY.
My father was born on August 6, 1809, at the Rectory of Somersby
in Lincolnshire, the fourth son of a family of eight sons and four daughters.
The parish doctor said of him when a week old —
Here's a leg for a babe of a week ! and he would be bound
There was not his Uke that year in twenty parishes round.
The Tennysons trace their descent through a long hne of Yorkshire
and Lincolnshire squires and yeomen from John Tenison of Holderness
(1343), and according to Burke are the co-representatives with the Lords
Scarsdale of the ancient family of d'Eyncourt. My father's grandfather
and two of his uncles sat in Parhament. His father. Dr. Tennyson, Vicar
of Somersby, was a distinguished-looking man, cultivated, and fond of
languages and science. He was a competent scholar in Latin, Greek,
and Hebrew and Syriac, and something of a poet, a painter, and a
musician. By the right of primogeniture he ought to have inherited
a considerable fortune, but his father disinherited him in favour of his
younger son Charles Tennyson, and made him take Holy Orders, for
which he had no vocation, and this unfitness plunged him at times into
deep fits of melancholy. He was a man of the highest truth and honour,
and inspired his neighbours with a certain sense of fear, though he was a
genial and brilliant conversationaKst. His children were all by nature
poets, and Leigh Hunt aptly described them as "a nest of nightingales."
When Alfred was a boy, one of his earliest recollections was his grand-
mother reading to him '(The_Prisoner of ChiUony" She used to say, "All
Alfred's poetry comes from me." This brood of "nightingales" hved
1 [This_ preface to the poems is naturally an abridgment of my Memoir of my
father, with here and there some few facts added, illustrating his character or the
methods of hi"^ work. The commentaries ani notes are for the most part those which
he himself jotted down or bade me jot 40 wn for posthumous publication, — - T.J
xi
xii LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
remote from towns in the lonely heart of the country. It was a time
of storm and stress in Europe, but they only caught dim echoes of the
great storm, and "that w^orld-earthquake, Waterloo."
"According to the best of my recollection," writes my father, "when
HE was about eight years old, I covered two sides of a slate with
ijrhomsonian blank verse in praise of flowers Zor my brother Charles, who
was a year older than I was, Thomson therrbeing the only poet I knew.
Before I could read I was in the habit on a stormy day of spreading my
arms to the wind, and crying out^I hear a voice that's speaking in the
^\^nd ' and the words 'far, far away' had always a strange charm for
me. IVbout ten or eleven JPope's Homer's Iliad ^became a favourite of
mineTand I wrote hundreds and hundreds of Unes in the regular Popeian
metre, nay even could improvise them, so could my two elder brothers,
for my father was a poet and could write regular metre very skilfully."
The note continues — "My father once said to me, 'Don't write so
rhythmically, break your lines occasionally for the sake of variety.'
"'Artist first, then Poet,' some writer said of me. I should answer,
'Poeta tiascitur non fiV ; indeed, 'Poeta nascitur c^ j^/.' LL-Suppose L.was
nearer thirty than twenty before I was anything of an artist. At
about twelve and onwards I wrote an epic of about six thousand~iines
_d la Walter Scott, — full of battles, dealing too with sea and mountain
• scenery, — with Scott's regularity of octosyllables and his occasional
varieties. Though the performance was very likely worth nothing, I
never felt myself more truly inspired. I wrote as much as seventy lines
at one time, and used to go shouting them about the fields in the dark.
All these early efforts have been destroyed, only my brother-in-law,
Edmund Lushington, begged for a page or two of the Scott poem. Some-
what later (at fourteen) I wrote a Drama in blank verse, which I have
still, and other things. It seems to me I wrote them all in perfect metre."
These poems of uncommon promise made my grandfather say with
pardonable pride, "If Alfred die one of our great poets will have gone,"
and at another time, "I should not wonder if Alfred were to revive the
greatness of his relative, William Pitt."
When Alfred was seven he went to the grammar school at Louth,
the little to^ship on the banks of the river Ludd, but he hated the
constraint. H« left school in 1820 and returned to Somersby, where his
father taught him and his brother Charles until they went to Cambridge.
They read the great authors, — the ancient classics, and Chaucer,
Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Bacon, Hooker, Bunyan, Addison, Burke,
Goldsmith, The Arabian Nights, Malory's Morte D'ArthuA The earHest
letter from him that has survived was addressed to his Aunt Marianne
Fytche. It is an amusing piece of precocity for a boy of twelve
years old.
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON- xill
SOMERSBY.
My dear Aunt Marianne — When I was at Louth you used to tell me
that you should be obliged to me if I would write to you and give you my remarks
on works and authors. I shall now fulfil the promise which I made at that time.
Going into the library this morning, I picked up "Sampson Agonistes," on which (as
I think it is a play you hke) I shall send you my remarks. The first scene is- the
lamentation of Sampson, which possesses much pathos and sublimity. This passage,
Restless thoughts, that like a deadly swarm
Of hornets arm'd, no sooner found alone.
But rush upon me thronging, and present
Times past, what once I was, and what am now,
puts me in mind of that in Dante, which Lord Byron has prefixed to his "Corsair,"
"Nessun maggior dolore, Che ricordarsi del tempo felice, Nella miseria." His
complaint of his blindness is particularly beautiful,
O loss of sight, of thee I most complain !
Blind among enemies ! O worse than chains.
Dungeon or beggary, or decrepit age !
Light, the prime work of God," to me is extinct,
And all her various objects of delight
Annulled, which might in part my grief have eased
Inferior to the vilest now become
Of man or worm ; the vilest here excel me :
They creep, yet see ; I, dark in light, exposed
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong.
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half.
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse
Without all hope of day !
O first created beam, and thou great Word,
"Let there be light !" and light was over all. —
I think this is beautiful, particularly
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon.
After a long lamentation of Sampson the Chorus enters, saying these words :
This, this is he. Softly awhile ;
Let us not break in upon him :
O change beyond report, thought, or beUef !
See how he lies at random, carelessly di fused.
If you look into Bp. Newton's notes, you will find that he informs you that
"this beautiful application of the word 'diffused' is borrowed from the Latin."
It has the same meaning as temerc in one of the Odes of Horace, Book the second,
Sic temere, et rosa
Canos odorati capillos.
xiv LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
of which this is a free translation, "Why lie we not at random, under the shade of
the platain (sub platano) , having our hoary head perfumed with rose water ? " To an
English reader the metre of the Chorus may seem unusual, but the difficulty will
vanish, when I inform him that it is taken from the Greek. In line 1333 there is
this expression, "Chalybean tempered steel." The Chalybes were a nation among
the ancients very famous for the making of steel, hence the expression " Chalybean,"
or peculiar to the Chalybes: in line 147 "the Gates of Azzur"; this probably, as
Bp. Newton observes, was to avoid too great an alliteration which the " Gates of
Gaza" would have caused, though (in my opinion) it would have rendered it more
beautiful : and (tliough I do not affirm it as a fact) perhaps Milton gave it that
name for the sake of novelty, as all the world knows he was a great pedant. I
have not, at present, time to write any more ; perhaps I may continue my remarks
in another letter to you, but (as I am very volatile and fickle) you must not depend
upon me, for I think you do not know any one who is so fickle as — Your affectionate
nephew, A. Tennyson.
Byron, who is mentioned in this letter, was worshipped by my father in
his boyhood. He told me that when Byron died he felt stunned and "as
if the world had been darkened " for him ; and he could only rush out
into the wood and carve on the sandstone rock, "Byron is dead." In his
old age he ULed to say, "Byron is too much depreciated now, but he has
such force that he will come into his own again. '^ Through these early
years my father made many friends among the^incolnshire fa'rmers,
labourers, and j&sher folk. "Like Wordsworth on the mountains," said
FitzGerald, "Alfred too, when a lad abroad on the wold, sometimes of
a night with the shepherd, watched not only the flock on the greensward,
^ but also ' the fleecy star that bears Andromeda far off Atlantic seas.'
Two of his eariiest lines were
The rays of many a rolling central star
Are flashing earthward, have not reached us yet." \
The Lincolnsliire folk were apt in the early part of the nineteenth
century to be uncouth and mannerless. A type of rough independence
was my grandfather's coachman, who, blamed for not keeping the harness
clean, rushed into the drawing-room, flung the whole harness on the floor,
and roared out "Clean it yourself, then." Again, the Somersby cook was
a decided character, and "Master Awlfred" heard her in some rage
against her master and her mistress exclaim: "If you raked out Hell
with a small-tooth comb, you weant find their likes," a phrase which long
Ungered in my father's memory.
In the poem of "Isabel" he more or less described his mother,^ "a
remarkable and saintly woman." She devoted herself entirely to her
husband and children, and to the poor of the parish.
* Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. Stephen Fytche.
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xv
Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign
The summer calm of golden charit}'-,
The intuitive decision of a bright
And thorough-edged intellect to part
Error from crime.
She earnestly looked forward to the time when Alfred would become "not
only a great poet but a great and good man."
~ He inherited from her a spirit of reverence, humour, love of animals, and
extreme sensitiveness. This sensitiveness contrasted remarkably with his
great physical strength and his downright bluntness. ''.All the Tennysons
are black-blooded," he would say, for his father's melancholy preyed upon
them all more or less through life. As a child, in the middle of the black
night he would rush forth, fling himself on the graves in the little church-
yard — asking God to let him soon be beneath the sod. But his strongest
characteristic was his love of Nature, to which he always turned for
comfort. Everywhere in Nature he heard a voice — he saw everywhere
above Life and Nature "the gleam."
Over the mountain,
On human faces,
And all around me.
Moving to melody,
Floated the Gleam.
r Ti
The charm and beauty of the brook at Somersby haunted him. He
aelighted to recall the rare richness of the bowery lanes; the wooded
hollow of Holy Well; the cold springs flowing from the sandstone rocks,
the flowers, the mosses, and the ferris. He loved this land of quiet
villages, "ridged wolds," large fields, gray hill-sides, "tufted knolls,"
noble ash-trees. He had a passion for the "waste enormous marsh," the
"heaped lulls that bound the sea," the boundless shore at Mablethorpe,
and the thunderous breakers. FitzGerald writes: "I used to say Alfred
never should have left old Lincolnshire, where there were not only such
good seas, but also such fine lull and dale among 'the Wolds' which he
was brought up in, as people in general scarce thought on."~^ My Uncle
Charles told how, on the afternoon of the publication of fEe Poems by
Two Brothers in 1826, my father and he hired a carriage with some of the
money earned, and driving, along foiirteen miles over the wolds and
the marsh to Mablethorpe, "shared their triumph with the winds and
waves."
The following fragment, written on revisiting Mablethorpe, is a notable
sample of his descriptive style : —
xvi LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
Mablethorpe.
Here often when a child I lay reclined :
I took delight in this fair land and free ;
Here stood the infant Ilion of the mind,
And here the Grecian ships all seem'd to be.
And here again I come, and only find
The drain-cut level of the marshy lea,
Gray sand-banks, and pale sunsets, dreary wind,
Dim shores, dense rains, and heavy-clouded sea.
And this simile in The Last Tournament is also taken from what he
often saw there :
as the crest of some slow-arching wave,
Heard in dead night along that table-shore,
Drops flat, and after the great waters break
Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves.
Far over sands marbled with moon and cloud.
From less and less to nothing.
Cambridge and Arthur Hallam.
In 1827 Frederick Tennyson, the eldest brother, went to Trinity
College, and was joined there in the following year by Charles and Alfred.
My father felt the confinement of his life after the free country, and a
want of inspiration and sympathy in the teaching provided by the college
authorities. He writes :
I am sitting owl-like and solitary in my rooms (nothing between me and the
stars but a stratum of tiles). The hoof of the steed, the roll of the wheel, the
shouts of drunken Gown and drunken Town come up from below with a sea-like
murmur. I wish to Heaven I had Prince Hussain's fairy carpet to transport me
along the deeps of air to your coterie. Nay, I would even take up with his
brother Aboul-something's glass for the mere pleasure of a peep. What a pity it
is that the golden days of Faerie are over ! What a misery not to be able to con-
solidate our gossamer dreams into reality ! . . . When, my dearest Aunt, may I
hope to see you again ? I know not how it is, but I feel isolated here in the midst
of society. The country is so disgustingly level, the revelry of the place so
monotonous, the studies of the University so uninteresting, so much matter of fact.
None but dry-headed, calculating, angular little gentlemen can take much delight in
A + B, etc.
I have been seeking "Falkland" here for a long time without success. Those
beautiful extracts from it, which you showed me at Tealby, haunt me incessantly ;
but wishes, I think, like telescopes reversed, seem to get their objects at a greater
distance.
"I can tell you nothing of his college days," writes Edward Fitz-
Gerald to a friend, " for I did not know him till they were over, though I
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xvii
had seen him two or three times before : I remember him well, a sort of
Hyperion.'
With his poetic nature and warmth of heart, he soon made his way.
Fanny Kemble, who used to visit her brother John, said of him when at
college, "Alfred Tennyson was our hero, the great hero of our day."
Another friend describes him as "six feet high, broad-chested, strong-
limbed, his face Shakespearian, with deep eyehds, his forehead ample,
crowned with dark wavy hair, his head finely poised, his hand the admira-
tion of sculptors, long fingers with square tips, soft as a child's but of
great size and strength. What struck one most about him was the union
of strength with refinement."
In later years he confessed that he owed much to Cambridge. At
Somersby he had studied nature, there he was able to study his fellow-
men. His friends were many, scholars and poets, Arthur Hallam, Trench,
Brookfield, Milnes, Spring-Rice, Merivale, Lushington, Blakesley, Spedding,
Thompson, and others. When my father first came into the dining-hall at
Trinity, Thompson said at once, "That man must be a poet !" There was
in all these young fellows, keen intellectual energy, imaginative generosity,
and public spirit. They called aloud for liberty and toleration. VThe star
of Byron, which had shone brightly in m.y father's boyhood, had serf Keats,
Shelley, Coleridge, and Wordsworth were in the ascendant. "Byron
and Shelley," my father wrote, "however mistaken they were, did yet give
the world another heart and new pulses" by their fiery lyrical genius.
"If Keats had lived," he added, "he would have been the greatest of us."
Wordsworth he looked on "as the greatest poet on the whole since
Milton. Blank verse, indeed, is the finest possible vehicle for thought in
Shakespeare as well as in Milton, '7
Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel,
Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armouries,
Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean
Rings to the roar of an angel onset.
A society of young Cambridge men, to which my father and most of
his friends belonged, called "The Apostles," was then said to be "waxing
daily in religion and radicalism." They not only debated on politics but,
read Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Butler, Hume, Bentham, Descartes and \
Kant, and discussed such questions as the Origin of Evil, the Derivation of
Moral Sentiments, Prayer, and the Personality of God. Among the Cam-
bridge papers I find a remarkable sentence on "Prayer" by Hallam :
With respect to prayer, you ask how I am to distinguish the operations of God
in me from motions in my own heart ? Why should you distinguish them or how
do you know there is any distinction ? Is God less God because He acts by general
laws when He deals v/ith the common elements of nature ? . . . That fatal mistake
xviii LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
which has embarrassed the philosophy of mind with infinite confusion, the mistake
of setting value on a thing's origin rather than on its character, of assuming that
composite must be less excellent than simple, has not been slow to extend its
deleterious influence over the field of practical religion.
My father — after perhaps reading Cuvier, or Humboldt — seems " to
have propounded in some college discussion the theory that "the develop-
ment of the human body might possibly be traced from the radiated,
vermicular, molluscous and vertebrate organisms." The question of
surprise put to him on this proposition was, "Do you mean that the
hiunan brain is at first like a madrepore's, then like a worm's, etc. ? but
this cannot be, for they have no brain."
At this time, with one or two of his more literary friends, he took a
great interest in the work which Hallam had undertaken, a translation
from the Vita Nuova of Dante, with notes and prefaces. For this task
Hallam, who in 1827 had been in Italy with his parents, and had drunk
deep of the older Italian literature, says that he was perfecting himself in
German and Spanish, and was proposing to plunge into the Florentine
historians and the medieval Schoolmen. He wrote to my father: "I
expect to glean a good deal of knowledge from you concerning metres
which may be serviceable as well for my philosophy in the notes as for
my actual handiwork in the text. - I purpose to discuss considerably about
poetry in general, and about the ethical character of Dante's poetry."
My father said of his friend: "Arthur Hallam could take in the most
abstruse ideas with the utmost rapidity and insight, and had a marvellous
power of work and thought, and a wide range of knowledge. On one
occasion, I remember, he mastered a difficult book of Descartes at a
single sitting."
On June 6, 1829, the announcement was made that my father had\
won the Chancellor's prize medal for his poem in blank verse on
"Timbuctoo." Out of his "horror of publicity," as he said, he gave it
to his friend Merivale for declamation in the Senate House. To win the
prize in anything but rhymed heroics was an innovation. My grandfather
had desired him to compete, so unwillingly he patched up an old poem
on "The Battle of Armageddon," and came out prizeman over Milnes,
Hallam, and others.
His friends remarked that he had from the first a deep insight
into character, and would often turn upon them with a terse and some- \
times grim criticism when they thought him far away in the clouds, as
for instance: "There is a want of central dignity about him, he excuses
himself," or "That is the quick decision of a mind that sees half the
truth." They also pronounced him to be an unusually fine literary critic,
and a man of deep thought and infinite humour. His first volume of
Poems, chiefly Lyrical was published in 1830. Arthur Hallam criticised
\
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xix
it in the Englishman's Magazine, and his enthusiasm was worthy of
his true and unselfish friendship. Hallam was, according to my father,
"as near perfection as mortal man can be." "If ever man was born for
great things," Kemble wrote to his sister Fanny, "he was. Never
was a more powerful intellect joined to a purer and holier heart ; and the
whole illuminated with the richest imagination, with the most sparkling
yet the kindest wit." In this connection I may quote the following note
received by me (June 1913) from the present Master of Trinity :
It must have been earl}^ in 1886 that I was a guest at Trinity Lodge. After
breakfast, one Sunday, Dr. Thompson and I were talking about the Very distin-
guished group of his contemporaries, and in particular of the Arthur Hallam of
"In Memoriam." I remember saying to Dr. Thompson in substance — I cannot
recall my exact words — "Are you able to say, not from later evidence, but from
your recoUection of what j^ou thought at the time, which of the two friends had
the greater intellect, Hallam or Tennyson?" "Oh, Tennyson !" he said at once
with strong emphasis, as if the matter was not open to doubt.
Arthur Hallam was often at Somersby and became engaged to my
father's sister Emily. \Together my father and he visited the Pyrenees,
and held a secret meeting with the leaders of a conspiracy against the
tyrant. King Ferdinand of Spain. It was there in the Pyrenees that my
father wrote part of "CEnone."
Such descriptive hues as these are based upon the Pyrenean scenery : [
There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier
Than all the valleys of Ionian hills.
The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen,
Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine,
And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand
The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down
Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars
/ The long brook falling thro' the clov'n ravine
In cataract after cataract to the sea.
\ "Before I pass on from 'CEnone,'" Arthur Sidgwick writes, "I may
ad3 a word or two on Tennyson's classical poetry generally, and his debt
to the great ancient masterpieces. He was perhaps not exactly a scholar
in what I may call the narrow professional sense; but in the broadest
and truest sense he was a. great scholar. In all Tennyson's classic pieces,
'CEnone,' 'Ulysses,' 'Demeter,' 'Tithonus,' the legendary subjects, and
in the two historic subjects, 'Lucretius' and 'Boadicea' the classical
tradition is there with full detail, but by the poet's art it is transmuted. ^
'CEnone' is epic in form, the rest are brief monodramas : the material
is all ancient, and in many subtle ways the spirit ; the handling is modern
and original. In translations, too few, Tennyson can only be called
consummate.''^ — 7
XX LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
In February 183 1 Dr. Tennyson fell ill and summoned my father
home from Cambridge, and in March he was found leaning back in his
chair, having passed away suddenly and peacefully. The Tennysons,
however, did not leave Somersby Rectory until 1837. Hallam still
continued to visit them and read Dante, Tasso, and Petrarch with my
father and his sister Emily. My father managed all the affairs of the
family. His extraordinary common-sense was notable throughout
his life, and was frequently commented on by his Cambridge con-
temporaries. In 1832 Hallam and he went a tour up the Rhine, and my
father published his second volume, Poems by Alfred Tennyson. Some
critics saw that a new and true poet had come among them, and Emerson
praised the volume in America. Of "The Lady of Shalott," vhich is
"not far below the high-water mark of symbolic poetry," ^ Hallam wrote,
"The more I read it the more I like it."'y'Of the "Lotos-Eaters" Merivale
said to Thompson, "I have converted li^ my readings both my brother
and your friend Richardson to faith in the 'Lotos-Eaters.'" "Mariana
in the South," written in the South of France, especially delighted Hallam.
"The Palace of Art," my father notes, "is the embodiment of my own
behef that the godlike life is with man and for man, and that Beauty,
Good, and Knowledge are three sisters that never can be sundered
without tears.'^A
Among the'^ems often quoted by Trench and his other friends at
this time was "Anacaona," which, however, was not published by him in
his collected works.
Anacaona.
A dark Indian maiden,
Warbling in the bloom'd liana,
Stepping lightly flower-laden,
By the crimson-eyed anana,
Wantoning in orange groves
Naked, and dark-limb'd, and gay,
Bathing in the slumbrous coves,
In the cocoa-shadow'd coves.
Of sunbright Xaraguay,
Who was so happy as Anacaona,
The beauty of Espagnola,
The golden flower of Hayti ?
In the purple island,
Crown'd with garlands of cinchona,
Lady over wood and highland,
The Indian queen, Anacaona,
1 Sir Alfred Lyall.
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xxi
Dancing on the blossomy plain
To a woodland melody :
Playing with the scarlet crane,
The dragon-fly and scarlet crane,
Beneath the papao tree !
Happy, happy was Anacaona,
The beauty of Espagnola,
The golden flower of Hayti !
Naked, without fear, moving
To her Areyto's mellow ditty,
Waving a palm branch, wondering, loving,
Carolling "Happy, happy Hayti !"
She gave the white men welcome all,
With her damsels by the bay ;
For they were fair-faced and taU,
They were more fair-faced and tall,
Than the men of Xaraguay,
And they smiled on Anacaona,
The beauty of Espagnola,
The golden flower of Hayti !
Following her wild carol
She led them down the pleasant places.
For they were kingly in apparel,
Loftily stepping with fair faces.
But never more upon the shore
Dancing at the break of day,
In the deep wood no more, —
By the deep sea no more, —
No more in Xaraguay
Wander'd happy Anacaona,
The beauty of Espagnola,
The golden flower of Hayti !
Christopher North criticised the volume of 1832 sharply in Blackwood:
"Alfred is the greatest owl ..." The Quarterly ridiculed the poems
pitilessly. My father was depressed by these unfavourable reviews. As
Jowett notes: "Tennyson experienced a great deal of pain from the
attacks of his enemies. I never remember his receiving the least pleasure
from the commendation of his friends." Of flatterers he used to say,
"Flattery makes me sick." Friendly criticism of a sane critic hke
Spedding or Hallam was much more to him than the praise or dispraise
of the multitude. "I think it wisest," he writes to Henry van Dyke,
"for a man to do his work in the world as quietly and as well as he
can, without much heeding tl;ie praise or dispraise." Hallam urged
him to find amusement in those "hair-splitting critics who are the bane
xxii LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
of good art." "To raise the many," he continued, "to his own real
point of view, the artist must employ his energies and create energy in
others." The general estimation in which the Quarterly was then held
was echoed by an old Lincolnshire squire who assured my father
that "the Quarterly was the next book to God's Bible." His friends
felt that he had begun to base his poetry more on the broad and common
interests of the time and of universal humanity, but their commendation
did not much comfort him, and he thought of leaving England to live
in Jersey, Italy, or the South of France. Hallam urged him to pubHsh
"The Lover's Tale," ^ which had been written in 1828, but he thought it had
too many crude thoughts and lines. Of this poem and "Timbuctoo" my
father said, "Neither is imitative of any poet, and as far as I know nothing
of mine after 'Timbuctoo' was imitative. As for being original, nothing
can be said which has not been said before in some form or another."
/ I Then came a crushing grief, the death of Hallam at Vienna on September
I 15, 1833. "The Two Voices" or "Thoughts of a Suicide" was begun
under the cloud of this overwhelming sorrow. But such a great friendship
and such a loss helped to reveal him to himself. "Alfred," writes one
of his friends, "although much broken in spirits, is yet able to divert his
thoughts from gloomy brooding, and keep his hand in activity."
A still, small voice spake unto me,
"Thou art so full of misery,
Were it not better not to be ? "
Then to the still small voice I said,
"Let me not cast in endless shade
What is so wonderfully made."
//
c
My poem of 'Ulysses,'" so his own words teU us, "gives my thought
more simply than 'In Memoriam' of the need of going forward and brav-
ing the difhculties of life." His behef in God, his strong sense of duty,
and his own power made him devote himself to workT^ The following is a
list of the week's work which he drew up : Monday — History, German.
Tuesday — Chemistry, German. Wednesday — Botany, German. Thursday
— Electricity, German. Friday — Animal Physiology, German. Saturday —
Mechanics. Sunday — Theology. Next week — ItaHan in the afternoon.
Third week — Greek ; and in the evenings Poetry, Racine, MoHere, etc.
"Perpetual idleness," he would say, "must be one of the punishments
in Hell." Now and then, when he could save a little hoard, he went to
London to visit his friends in their homes. One of his troubles at this
time was that he was pestered by applications from the editors of magazines
and annuals for poems. For example, Milnes wrote to him in 1835 asking
1 This poem, founded on one of Boccaccio's tiiles (1827), was pirated in 1S79, and
so he published it with a sequel "The Golden Supper."
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xxiii
for a contribution to an annual edited by Lord Northampton. He sent the
f ollomng answer :
December 1836.
Dear Richard — As I live eight miles from my post-town and only correspond
there'ivith about once a week, you must not wonder if this reaches you somewhat
late. Your former brief I received, though some six days behind time, and stamped
with the post-marks of every httle market-town in the country, but I did not think
it demanded an immediate answer, hence my silence.
That you had promised the Marquis I would \vrite for him something exceeding
the average length of "Annual compositions" ; that you had promised him I would
write at all : I took this for one of those elegant fictions with which you amuse
your aunts of evenings, before you get into the small 'hours when dreams are
true. Three summers back, provoked by the incivihty of editors, I swore an oath
that I would never again have to do with their vapid books, and I brake it in the
sweet face of Heaven when I wrote for Lady AVhat's-her-name Wortley. But then
her sister wrote to Brookfield and said she (Lady W.) was beautiful, so I could not
help it. But whether the Marquis be beautiful or not, I don't much mind ; if he
be, let him give God thanks and make no boast. To \vrite for people with prefixes
to their names is to milk he-goats; there is neither honour nor profit. Up to this
moment I have not even seen The Keepsake: not that I care to see it, for the want
of civility decided me not to break mine oath again for man nor woman, and how
should such a modest man as I see my small name in collocation vath the great
ones of Southey, Wordsworth, R. M. M., etc., and not feel myself a barndoor fowl
among peacocks ? Good-bye. — Believe me always thine, A. T.
Milnes was angry at the refusal, and my father answered him banter-
ingly again :
Jan. 10, 1837.
Why what in the name of all the powers, my dear Richard, makes you run me
down in this fashion ? Now is my nose out of joint, now is my tail not only curled
so tight as to Hft me off my hind legs like Alfred Crowquill's poodle, but fairly
between them. Many sticks are broken about me. I am the ass in Homer. I
am blown. What has so jaundiced your good-natured eyes as to make them mistake
harmless banter for insolent iroiiy: harsh terms applicable only to who, big as
he is, sits to all posterity astride upon the nipple of hterary dandyism, and "takes
her milk for gall" ? "Insolent irony" and "piscatory vanity," as if you had been
writing to St. Anthony, who converted the soft souls of salmon ; but may St.
Anthony's fire consume all misapprehension, the spleen-bom mother of fivefold more
evil on our turnip-spheroid than is malice aforethought.
Had I been writing to a nervous, morbidly-irritable man, down in the world,
stark-spoiled with the staggers of a mismanaged imagination and quite opprest by
fortune and by the reviews, it is possible that I might have halted to find expressions
more suitable to his case ; but that you, who seem at least to take the world as it
comes, to doff it, and let it pass, that you, a man every way prosperous and talented,
should have taken pet at my unhappy badinage made me lay down my pipe and
stare at the fire for ten minutes, till the stranger fluttered up the chimney ! You
wish that I had never written that passage. So do I, since it seems to ^ve given
xxiv LIFE -AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
such offence. Perhaps you Hkewise found a stumbHng-block in the expression
"vapid books," as the angry inversion of four commas seems to intimate. But are
not Annuals vapid? Or could I possibly mean that what you or Trench or De
Vere chose to write therein must be vapid? I thought you knew me better than
even to insinuate these things. Had I spoken the same things to you laughingly
in my chair, and with my own emphasis, you would have seen what they really
meant, but coming to read them peradventure in a fit of indigestion, or with a
slight matutinal headache after your Apostolic symposium, you subject them to such
misinterpretation as, if I had not sworn to be true friend to you till my latest death-
ruckle, would have gone far to make me indignant. But least said soonest mended ;
which comes with peculiar grace from me after all this verbiage. You judge me
rightly in supposing that I would not be backward in doing a really charitable
deed. I will either bring or send you something for your Annual. It is very
problematical whether I shall be able to come and see you as I proposed, so do not
return earlier from your tour on my account ; and if I come, I should only be able
to stop a few days, for, as I and all my people are going to leave this place very
shortly never to return, I have much upon my hands. But whether I see you or
no — Believe me always thine affectionately, A. Tennyson.
I have spoken with Charles. He has promised to contribute to your Annual}
Frederick will, I daresay, follow his example. See now whether I am not doing
my best for you, and whether you had any occasion to threaten me with that black
"Anacaona" and her cocoa-shod coves of niggers. I cannot have her strolling
about the land in this way: It is neither gopd for her reputation nor mine. When
is Lord Northampton's book to be published, and how long may I wait before I
send anything by way of contribution ?
In the end "O that 'twere possible" (on which "Maud" was after-
wards founded) was sent to Lord Northampton. FitzGerald also notes
that in this year Alfred wrote a poem on the Queen's accession, "the
burden being 'Here's a health to the Queen of the Isles.'" One stanza I
have heard my father repeat :
That the voice of a satisfied people may keep
A sound in her ears hke the sound of the deep,
Like the sound of the deep when the winds are asleep ;
Here's a health to the Queen of the Isles.
London and Emily Sellwood.
Some time about 1835 he had written the following, hitherto unpub-
lished, fragment on "Semele," ^ which seems to me too fine to be lost :
1 The Tribute.
2 Semele was beloved by Zeus. Hera (Juno), being jealous of her, visited her in
the guise of her old nurse, and persuaded her to ask Zeus to appear to her in the same
majesty as he appeared to Hera. Zeus warned Semele of the danger of her request.
But she insisted on seeing him in the majesty of his godhead. He accordingly came to
her as the god of thunder, and she was burnt up by his lightnings. Zeus, however,
I
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON ' xxv
Semele.
I wish'd to see Him. Who may feel
His light and love ? He comes.
The blast of Godhead bursts the doors,
His mighty hands are twined
About the triple forks, and when He speaks
The crown of sunlight shudders round
Ambrosial temples, and aloft.
Fluttering thro' Elysian air,
His green and azure mantles float in wavy
Foldings, and melodious thimder
Wheels in circles.
But thou, my son, who shalt be born
When I am ashes, to delight the world —
Now with measured cymbal-clash
Moving on to victory ;
Now on music-rolling orbs,
A sliding throne, voluptuously
Panther-drawn,
To throbbings of the thunderous gong.
And melody o' the merrily-blowing flute ;
Now with troops of clamorous revellers,
Merrily, merrily,
Rapidly, giddily,
Rioting, triumphing
Bacchanalians,
Rushing in cadence,
All in order,
Plunging down the viney valleys —
In 1837 the Tennyson family left Somersby and established themselves
at High Beech in Epping Forest. A little later a life-like portrait is
drawn of my father by Carlyle, with whom he was particularly intimate,
and of whom he said once to Gladstone, "Carlyle is a poet, to whom Nature
has denied the faculty of verse" :
Alfred is one of the few British and foreign figures (a not increasing number, I
think) who are and remain beautiful to me, a true human soul, or some authentic
approximation thereto, to whom your own soul can say " Brother ! " However,
I doubt he will not come (to see me) ; he often skips me, in these brief visits to
town ; skips everybody, indeed ; being a man solitary and sad, as certain men are,
dwelling in an element of gloom, carr3-ing a bit of Chaos about him, in short,
which he is manufacturing into Cosmos. ... He had his breeding at Cambridge,
saved her child, Dionysus (Bacchus), with whom she ^was pregnant. After a while this
son of hers took her from the lower world up to Olympus, where she became immortal,
and was named Thyone.
xxvi • LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
as if for the Law or the Church ; being master of a small annuity on his father's
decease, he preferred clubbing with his mother and some sisters, to live unpromoted
and write poems. In this way he lives still, now here, now there; the family
always within reach of London, never in it ; he himself making rare and brief visits,
lodging in some old comrade's rooms. I think he must be under forty, not much
under it. One of the finest-looking men in the world. A great shock of rough,
dusky hair ; bright, laughing, hazel eyes ; massive aquiline face — most massive,
yet most delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-looking, clothes
cynically loose, free and easy, smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical,
metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between;
speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet in these late decades
such company over a pipe ! We shall see what he will grow to.
Among his friends were now numbered Rogers, Carlyle, Thackeray,
Dickens, Savage Landor, Maclise, Leigh Hunt, Tom Campbell, Forster,
W. E. Gladstone.
Of aU London he liked Fleet Street most. He delighted in "the central
roar." ''This is the place where I should like to live," he would say,
infinitely preferring it to the stuccoed houses of the West End. One day
in 1842 FitzGerald records a visit to St. Paul's with him, when he observed :
"Merely as an inclosed space in a huge city this is very fine," and when
they got out under the heavens into the midst of the "central roar," "This
is the Mind, that is a mood of it." While in London he often lodged
in 60 Lincoln's Inn Fields, or at 2 Mitre Court in the Temple, dining
out at the Cock Tavern. From High Beech the Tennysons migrated
to Tunbridge Wells, thence to Boxley, Maidstone, near his favourite sister
Cecilia, who married a year later the great Greek scholar, Edmund
Lushington. In 1838 he took a tour to Torquay, where he wrote "Audley
Court." In 1839 he visited Wales, Mablethorpe, Aberystwith, Bourne-
mouth— in 1 840 Warwick, and Coventry, where "Lady Godiva" was written.
In 1840 he also went to Mablethorpe and Yorkshire. Nature in her
different aspects in these and other different places gave him inspiration,
as shown again and again in the poems themselves. The years spent in
strenuous labour and self-cultivation, and his quasi-engagement to Emily
Sell wood, daughter of Henry Sell wood of Berkshire, and niece of Sir John
Franklin, had braced htm for the struggle of Hfe. He would arrange his
material which he had "in profusion, and give as perfect a volume as he
could to the world." "I felt certain of one point," he said; "if I meant
to make any mark at all it must be by shortness, for the men before me
had been so diffuse, and most of the big things except King Arthur had
been done." "One night," writes Aubrey de Vere, "after he had been
reading aloud several of his poems, all of them short, he passed one of
them to me and said, 'What is the matter with that poem?' I read
it and answered, 'I see nothing to complain of.' He laid his fingers
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xxvii
on two stanzas of it, the third and fifth, and said, 'Read it again.'
After doing so I said, 'It has now more completeness and totality about
it, but the two stanzas you cover are among the best.' 'No matter,'
he said, 'they make the poem too long-backed, and they must go at
any sacrifice. Every short poem,' he remarked, 'should have a definite
shape like a curve — sometimes a single, sometimes a double one — assumed
by a severed tress or the rind of an apple when flung on the floor.' "
The first time he had met Emily SeUwood was at Somersby in
1830, when he saw her suddenly in Holy Well Wood walking with
Arthur Hallam, and said to her, "Are you a Dryad or an Oread wandering
here?" But the "eternal lack of pence" prevented them marrying until
1850. Up to 1840, however, they corresponded, and subjoined are some
fragments of the beautiful letters which he wrote to her : —
"The light of this world is too full of refractions for men ever to see one
another in their true positions. The world is better than it is called, but wrong
and foolish. The whole framework seems wrong, which in the end shall be found
right."
"Bitterness of any sort becomes not the sons of Adam, still less pride, for they
are in that talk of theirs for the most part but as children babbling in the market-
place."
"The far future has been my world always."
"I shall never see the Eternal City, nor that dome, the wonder of the world; I
do not think I would live there if I could, and I have no money for touring."
" Mablethorpe. I am not so able as in old years to commune alone with Nature.
I am housed at Mr. Wildman's, an old friend of mine in these parts : he and his
wife are two perfectly honest Methodists. When I came I asked her after news,
and she replied: 'Why, Mr. Termyson, there's only one piece of news that I
know, that Christ died for all men.' And I said to her: 'That is old news, and
good and new news ' ; wherewith the good woman seemed satisfied. I was half-
yesterday reading anecdotes of Methodist ministers, and liking to read them too . . .
and of the teaching of Christ, that purest light of God."
"That made me count the less of the sorrows when I caught a glimpse of the
sorrowless Eternity."
"A good woman is a wondrous creature, cleaving to the right and the good in
all change ; lovely in her youthful comeliness, lovely all her life long in comeliness
of heart."
^^ London. There is no one here but John Kemble, with whom I dined twice;
he is full of burning indignation against the Russian policy and what he calls the
moral barbarism of France; likewise he is striving against what he calls the
'mechanic influence of the age, and its tendency to crush and overpower the
spiritual in man,' and indeed what matters it how much man knows and does if he
keep not a reverential looking upward ? He is only the subtlest beast in the field."
xxviii LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
"We must bear or we must die. It is easier perhaps to die, but infinitely less
noble. The immortality of man disdains and rejects the thought, the immortahty
of man to which the cycles and the aeons are as hours and as days."
Throughout his life he always held up this ideal of true love —
To love one maiden only, cleave to her,
And worship her by years of noble deeds,
Until they won her ; for indeed I know
Of no more subtle master under heaven
Than is the maiden passion for a maid,
Not only to keep down the base in man.
But teach high thought, and amiable words
And courtliness, and the desire of fame.
And love of truth, and all that makes a man.
The Two Volumes of 1842 and "The Princess"
The year 1842 saw the publication of two volumes of poems, some old
and re-touched, some new, among them several English Idylls which im-
mediately raised him to the front rank of poets. Among the new poems
were "The Gardener's Daughter," "Dora," "Locksley Hall," "The Morte
d' Arthur," "Love and Duty," "St. Agnes' Eve," "Sir Galahad,"
"Launcelot and Queen Guinevere," "The Vision of Sin," "Break,
Break." The handling of these later poems is much lighter and freer,
the interest more varied, deeper and purer; there is more humanity with
less imagery, a closer adherence to truth, a greater reliance for effect upon
the simplicity of Nature. The Quarterly Review passed from its mood of
hostility to one of admiration. Rogers sent his blessing. Of all the
criticisms that which pleased him most was a letter from Carlyle :
Cheyne Road, Chelsea,
December 7, 1842.
Dear Tennyson — Wherever this find you, may it find you well, may it come
as a friendly greeting to you. I have just been reading your Poems ; I have read
certain of them over again, and mean to read them over and over till they become
my poems : this fact, with the inferences that lie in it, is of such emphasis in me, I
cannot keep it to myself, but must needs acquaint you too with it. If you knew
what my relation has been to the thing called English "poetry" for many years
back, you would think such fact almost surprising ! Truly it is long since in any
English Book, Poetry, or Prose, I have felt the pulse of a real man's heart as I do
in this same. A right vahant, true fighting, victorious heart; strong as a lion's,
yet gentle, loving, and full of music : what I call a genuine singer's heart ! There
are tones as of the nightingale ; low murmurs as of wood-doves at summer noon ;
everywhere a noble sound as of the free winds and leafy woods. The sunniest glow
of life dwells in that soul, chequered duly with dark streaks from night and Hades :
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xxix
evei^-^'here one feels as if all were filled with yellow glowing sunlight, some
glorious golden Vapour, from which form after form bodies itseh ; naturally, golden
forms. In one word, there seems to be a note of "The Eternal ^Melodies " in this
man, for which Jet all other men be thankful and joyful ! Your " Dora " reminds me
of the Book of Ruth; in the "Two Voices," which, I am told, some re\aewer calls
"trivial moraUty," I think of passages in Job. For truth is quite as true in Job's
time and Ruth's as now. I know you cannot read German : the more interesting
is it to trace in your " Summer Oak " a beautiful kindred to something that is best
in Cjoethe; I mean his "Mullerin" (Miller's Daughter) chiefly, with whom the
very Mill-dam gets in love, though she proves a flirt after all, and the thing ends in
satirical lines ! Very strangely, too, in the "Vision of Sin" I am reminded of my
friend Jean Paul. This is not babble, it is speech ; true deposition of a volunteer
witness. And so I say let us all rejoice somewhat. And so let us aU smite
rhythmically, all in concert, "the sounding furrows," and sail forward with new
cheer "beyond the sunset," whither we are bound —
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down,
It may be we shall touch the happy Isles
And see the great Achilles whom we knew.
These lines do not make me weep, but there is in me what would fill whole
Lachr>Tnatories as I read. But do you, when you return to London, come down
to me and let us smoke a pipe together. With few words, with many, s>x with
none, it need not be an ineloquent pipe !
Farewell, dear Tennyson; may the gods be good to you. With very great
sincerity (and in great haste), I subscribe myself — Yours, T. Carlyle, -
During the period preceding the publication of these volumes he saw
many old and made many new friends — among them Charles Kingsley,
Frederick Robertson, Aubrey de Vere, Coventry Patmore, Robert Brown-
ing, Frederick Pollock. Aubrey de Vere gives an accoimt of a visit made
at that time to Wordsworth :
Alfred Tennyson's largeness of mind and of heart was touchingly illustrated by
his reverence for Wordsworth's poetry, notwithstanding that the immense merits
which he recognised in it were not, in his opinion, supplemented by a proportionate
amount of artistic skill. He was always glad to show reverence to the "old poet,"
not then within ten years of the age at which the younger one died. "Words-
worth," he said to me one day, "is stajnng at Hampstead in the house of his
friend Mr. Hoare ; I must go and see him ; and you must come with me. ^Mind
you do not tell Rogers, or he will be displeased at m^ being in London and not
going to see him." We drove up to Hampstead and knocked at the door, and the
next moment it was opened by the poet of the world, at whose side stood the poet
of the moimtains. Rogers' old face, which had encountered nearly ninety years,
seemed to double the numbers of its wrinkles as he said, not angrily, but very
drily: "Ah, you do not come up the hill to see me !" During the visit it was
with Tennj^son that the bard of Rydal held discourse, while the recluse of St.
James' Place, whom "that angle" especiaUy delighted, conversed with me. As
XXX LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
we walked back to London through grassy fields not then built over, Tennyson
complained of the old poet's coldness. He had endeavoured to stimulate some
latent ardours by telling him of a tropical island where the trees, when they first
came into leaf, were a vivid scarlet; — "Every one of them, I told him, one flush
all over the island, the colour of blood ! It would not do. I could not inflame his
imagination in the least ! " During the preceding year I had had the great honour
of passing several days at Rydal Mount with Wordsworth, walking on his
mountains, and listening to him at his fireside. I told him that a young poet had
lately risen up. Wordsworth answered that he feared from the little he had heard
that if Crabbe was the driest of poets, the young aspirant must have the opposite
fault. I replied that he should judge for himself, and without leave given,. recited
to him two poems by Tennyson, viz. "You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease," and
"Of old sat Freedom on the heights." Wordsworth listened with a gradually
deepening attention. After a pause he answered, "I must acknowledge that these
two poems are very solid and noble in thought. Their diction also seems
singularly stately."
The new publications, however, did not bring him wealth. In 1844 a
physician near Beech Hill, Dr. Allen, with whom the Tennyson family
had become acquainted, either conceived or adopted the idea of wood-
carving by machinery. He inspired the Tennysons with so great an
enthusiasm for it, that by degrees he persuaded my father to give him the
money' for which, wearied by a careless agent, he had sold his little estate
in Grasby, Lincolnshire, and even the £500 left him as a legacy by
Arthur HaUam's aunt. Not merely this, however, — since, but for my
father's intervention apparently, all the property of such of the family as
were at Beech HiU would have merged in tlijs philanthropic undertaking ;
so fascinating was the prospect of oak panels and oak furniture carved by
machinery, thus brought by its cheapness within the reach of the
multitude. The confidence my father had placed in the "earnest-frothy"
Dr. AUen proved to be misplaced. The entire project collapsed; my
father's worldly goods were all gone, and a portion of the property of his
brothers and sisters. Then followed a season of real hardship and self-
sacrifice and many trials for my father and mother, since marriage seemed
to be farther off than ever. So severe a hypochondria set in upon him
that his friends despaired of his life. "I have," he writes, "drunk one of
those most bitter draughts out of the cup of life, which go near to make
men hate the world they move in." My uncle, Edmund Lushington, in
1844 generously insured Dr. Allen's life for part of the debt due to my
father; the Doctor died in January 1845.
His friends procured my father a civil list pension, chiefly through the
intervention of Carlyle and Henry HaUam. He recovered his health and
set to work again, and in 1847 pubhshed "The Princess," the "herald
melody" of the higher education of women, although perhaps in this
progressive age the then progressive views expressed there may seem to
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xxxi
some now somewhat old-fashioned. Andrew Lang writes: "On reading
'The Princess' afresh one is impressed, despite old familiarity, ^\ith the
extraordinary influence of its beauty. Here are, indeed, the best words
best placed, and that curious felicity of style, which makes every Hne a
marvel, and an eternal possession. It is as if Tennyson had taken the
advice which Keats gave to SheUey, 'Load every rift \nth ore.'" As for
the various characters of the poem, they give all possible views of women's
higher education, and as for the Princess Ida, the poet who created her
considered her as one of the noblest of his creations. Woman must train
herself to do the large work that Ues before her even though she may
not be destined to be wife or mother, cultivating her understanding, not
her memory only. Her imagination in its highest phases, her inborn
spirituaHty and her sjnnpathy Ynih all that is pure, noble, and beautiful,
rather than mere social accompUshments ; then and then only will she
further the progress of humanity, then and then only will men continue
to hold her in reverence. For simple rhythm and word and vowel music
he considered his "Come down, O Maid," mostly written in Switzerland
(1846), as among his most successful blank verse :
Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height :
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang)
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills ?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
To gUde a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkhng spire ;
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou do'v\Ti ^ ^
And find him ; . . .
... let the torrent dance thee down
To find him in the valley ; let the wdld
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
That Hke a broken purpose waste in air :
So waste not thou ; but come ; for all the vales
Await thee ; azure pillars of the hearth
Arise to thee ; the children call, and I
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound.
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet ;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms.
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
Two versions of "Sweet and Low" were made and were sent to Emily
Sellwood to choose which should be pubHshed. The unpubhshed version
runs thus :
xxxii LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
Bright is the moon on the deep,
Bright are the cHffs in her beam,
^ . Sleep, my Httle one, sleep !
Look, he smiles, and opens his hands,
He sees his father in distant lands,
And kisses him there in a dream,
Sleep, sleep.
Father is over the deep.
Father will come to thee soon,
Sleep, my pretty one, sleep !
Father will come to his babe in the nest,
Silver sails all out of the West, *
Under the silver moon.
Sleep, sleep !
The letters which he received then show that these songs added in 1850
— ''As thro' the land at eve we went," "Sweet and low," "The splendour
falls," "Tears, idle tears," "Thy voice is heard thro' roUing drums,"
"Home they brought her warrior dead," "Ask me no more" — had
especially moved the great heart of the people. The following notes on
the poem were left by my father : —
In the Prologue the "Tale from mouth to mouth" was a game which I have
more than once played when I was at Trinity College, Cambridge, with my brother
undergraduates. Of course, if he "that inherited the tale" had not attended very
carefully to his predecessors, there were contradictions; and if the story were
historical, occasional anachronisms. In defence of what some have called the too
poetical passages, it should be recollected that the poet of the party was requested
to "dress the tale up poetically," and he was full of the "gallant and heroic
chronicle." Some of my remarks on passages in the "Princess" have been
published by Dawson of Canada, who copied them from a letter which I wrote to
him criticizing his study of the "Princess." The child is the link through the parts
as shown in the songs which are the best interpreters of the poem. Before the
first edition came out, I deliberated with myself whether I should put songs between
the separate divisions of the poem ; again I thought that the poem would explain
itself, but the pubhc did not see the drift. The first song I wrote was named
"The Losing of the Child." The child is sitting on the bank of the river and
playing with flowers ; a flood comes down ; a dam has been broken thro' — the
child is borne down by the flood; the whole village distracted; after a time the
flood has subsided ; the child is thrown safe and sound again upon the bank ; and
there is a chotus of jubilant women.
After the publication of "The Princess" he went for tours in Cornwall
and Ireland. He mixed with many classes of Irish, and often spoke of
them "as not only feudal but oriental, loving those in authority to have
the iron hand in the silken glove."
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON- xxxiii
Marriage, "In Memoriam," and Farringford.
/
/ The year 1850 was the golden year of my father's Kfe. He pubhshed
"In Memoriam," at which he had worked through seventeen years. He
had written the following section within two months of Arthur Hallam's
death: "Fair ship, that from the ItaHan shore." The poem appeared
w^hout his name. The critics blundered. One declared that "much
shallow art was spent on the tenderness shown to an Amaryllis of the
Chancery Bar." Another that "these touching Hnes evidently come
from the full heart of the widow of a military man." Throughout "In
Memoriam" my father muses on the problems of Life, Death, Knowledge,
and Rehgion, and expresses his firm faith in the love of God, in the]
"Christ that is to be," in Free-will, and in the life after death of the
human soul. On such high subjects as "the blessing of honest behef,
the blessing also of 'honest doubt,' the supreme majesty of veracity and
every form of truth, the grandeur of the Creator's hving energy in the
Universe, as part by part revealed by science, in whose multipHed and
advancing triumphs the poet personally exulted; again, in the sacredness
and the perfect beauty of human love, wedded and unwedded, brotherly
and sisterly, filial and parental, on such high themes — who, I ask, since
Dante, has written, I do not say with more piety or more tenderness, but
with more manhness and more power ? " ^ He once said to Tyndall, who
agreed .with liim. "No evolutionist is able to explain the mind of man, or
how any possible change of physiological tissue can produce conscious
thought." As to the different forms of Christianity, he observed with
Sara Coleridge that "the w^hole logical truth is not the possession of any
one party, that it exists in fragments among the several parties, and that
much of it is yet to be developed." "Forsitan uno itinere non protest
perveniri ad tam grande secretum." He expressed his conviction that
"Christianity with its divine Morality, without the central figure and life
of Christ, the Son of Man, would become cold"; that this passionate
"creed of creeds had done infinitely more for our poor common hiunanity
than any preceding rehgion or philosophy." According to Jowett "it w^as
in the spirit of an old saint or mystic, and not of a modern rationaUst, that
Tennyson habitually thought and felt about the nature of Christ. Never
did the sHghtest shadow of ridicule or profaneness mix itself up \vith the
apphcations which he made of Scripture, although he was quite aware that
there w'ere many points on which he differed widely from the so-called
Evangehcal, or High-Church world, and he always strove to keep rehgion
free from the taint of ridicule." "What 'In Memoriam' did for us,"
writes Professor Henry Sidgwick, "for me at least, was to impress on
1 The Master of Trinity (April 1913).
xxxiv LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
us the ineffaceable and ineradicable conviction that humanity will not
and cannot acquiesce in a godless world. If the possibility of a
godless world is excluded, the faith thus restored is for the poet un-
questionably a form of Christian faith : there seems to him, then, no reason
for doubting that ' the sinless years that breathed . beneath the Syrian
blue,' and the marvel of the life continued after the bodily death, were a
manifestation of the 'immortal love' which by faith we embrace as the
essence of the Divine Nature.'' "I do not know," Stopford Brooke says,
"in any of the earlier poems, not even in 'Maud,' anything on a higher
range of passionate imagination and breathing more of youthful ardour
weighted with dignity of thought than a song like this :
Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet,
Rings Eden thro' the budded quicks.
Or take this other where the loveliness of Nature is met and received with
joy by that receptive spirit of delight in a sensuous impression which a
young man feels; and where the depths of the feehng has wrought the
short poem into an intensity of unity : each verse linked like bell to bell in
a chime to the verse before it, and all swinging into a triumphant close :
sweUing as they go from thought to thought, and finally rising from the
landscape of the earth to the landscape of infinite space. Can anything
be more impassioned and yet more solemn ! It has the swiftness of youth,
and the nobleness of manhood's sacred joy :
Sweet after showers, ambrosial air.
That rollest from the gorgeous gloom
Of evening over brake and bloom
And meadow, slowly breathing bare
The round of space, and rapt below
Thro' all the dewy-tassell'd wood.
And shadowing down the horned flood
In ripples, fan my brows and blow
The fever from my cheek, and sigh
The full new life that feeds thy breath
Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death,
111 brethren, let the fancy fly
From belt to belt of crimson seas
On leagues of odour streaming far,
To where in yonder orient star
A hundred spirits whisper 'Peace.'
"Vision after vision of Nature, each of a greater beauty and sentiment
than its predecessor, succeed one another, and each of them is fitted to a
corresponding exaltation of the emotions of the soul. Take 'Calm and
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xxxv
stiJl night on yon great plain,' 'By night we h'nger'd on the lawn/ and
the storm (he loved tempestuous days) :
The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd,
The cattle huddled on the lea ;
And wdldly dash'd on tower and tree
The sunbeam strikes along the world."
"It must be remembered," my father notes, "that 'In Memoriam' is a|
poem, not an actual biography. It is founded on our friendship, on the
engagement of Arthur Hallam to my sister, on his sudden death at
Vienna, just before the time fixed for their marriage, and on his burial at
Clevedon Church. The poem concludes with the marriage of my youngest
sister Cecilia. It was meant to be a kind of Divina Commedia, ending
with happiness. The sections were written at many different places, and
as the phases of our intercourse came to my memory and suggested them.
I did not write them with any view of weaving them into a whole, or for
pubhcation, tmtil I found that I had written so many. The different
moods of sorrow as in a drama are dramatically given, and my conviction
that fear, doubts, and suffering will find answer and rehef only through
faith in a God of love. ' I ' is not always the author speaking of himself,
but the voice of the human race speaking through him. After the
death of A. H. H. the divisions of the poem are made by First Xmas
Eve (Section xxvtq.), Second Xmas (Lxxvm.), Third Xmas Eve
(civ. and cv., etc.). I myseK did not see Clevedon till years after
the burial of A. H. H, Jan. 3, 1834, and then in later editions of
'In Memoriam' I altered the word 'chancel,' which was the word used by
Mr. Hallam in his Memoir, to 'dark church.' As to the locaHties in
which the poems were written, some were written in Lincolnshire, some
in London, Essex, Gloucestershire, Wales, any^vhere where I happened to
be. ''And as for the metre of 'In Memoriam' I had no notion till 1880
that Lord Herbert of Cherbury had written his occasional verses in the
same metre. I beheved myself the originator of the metre, until after 'In
Memoriam' came out, when some one told me that Ben Jonson and Sir
PhiHp Sidney had used it."
With this year of 1850 came to him at once glory, fame, and competence,
and the joy and peace of marrying, at Shiplake on the Thames (June 13), the
wife for whom he had so long waited. "The peace of God came into my
hfe when I married her." And let me quote here from my Memoir about
her, although as a son I cannot allow myself full utterance. "It was she
who became my father's adviser in Hterary matters; 'I am proud of her
intellect,' he wrote. With her he always discussed what he was working
at ; she transcribed his poems ; to her and to no one else he referred for a
final criticism before pubKshing. She, \\ith her 'tender, spiritual nature,'
xxxvi LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
and instinctive nobility of thought, was always by his side, a ready,
cheerful, courageous, wise, and sympathetic counsellor. It was she who
shielded his sensitive spirit from the annoyances and trials of life,
answering (for example) the innumerable letters addressed to him from
all parts of the world. By her quiet sense of humour, by her selfless
devotion, by 'her faith as clear as the heights of the June-blue heaven,'
she helped him also to the utmost in the hours of his depression and of
his sorrow; and to her he wrote two of the most beautiful of his shorter
lyrics, 'Dear, near and true,' and the dedicatory Hues which prefaced his
last volume, 'The Death of CEnone.'"
Five months after his marriage my father was offered the poet-laureate-
ship by the Queen, for the Prince Consort had read "In Memoriam"
and dehghted in it. Curiously enough the night before the offer came he
dreamt that the Prince had kissed him on the cheek, and that he had
remarked, "Very kind, but very German." He took a day to consider the
offer, and at the last wrote two letters, one accepting and one refusing,
and determined to make up his mind after consulting with his friends.
He hated being thrust forward before the public. One evening at Bath
House Milnes had wished to introduce him to the Duke of Wellington.
"No," said he, "why should the great Duke be bothered by a poor poet
like me?" When he had been officially proclaimed poet-laureate he
complained that he was thenceforward inundated with letters, that he
could not possibly answer them all, but at any rate, in many an instance,
his correspondence bears witness to his open-hearted kindness and liberality.
Moxon asked him to pubHsh a fresh volume of poems. The seventh edition
of collected poems appeared in 185 1 with the dedication to the Queen :
Rever'd, beloved — O you that hold
A nobler office upon earth
Than arms or power of brains or birth
Could give the warrior Kings of old.
A little later were pubHshed National Songs, "Rise, Britons,!
Rise," "The Third of February," "Hands aU Round." One of the \
deepest desires of his life was to help the reaHsation of the ideal of
an Empire by the most intimate union of every part of our British
Empire. He beheved that every part so united would, with a heightening
of individuahty to each member, give such strength, greatness, and stabihty
to the whole as would make our Empire a faithful and fearless leader in
all that is good throughout the world. Dr. Warren writes :
English of the English, emphatically a national poet, he was at the same time
cosmopolitan in his sympathies,^ and no modern English poet is so well known
1 For example he felt deep sympathy with Poland and Montenegro. His sonnets
entitled "Poland" and "Montenegro "-have been translated over and over again in
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xxxvii
abroad, as the translations of Morel, of Freiligrath, Strodtmann, Feis and others, of
Saladino Saladini and D. Vicente De Arana, or the remarkable recent book of Dr.
Roman Dyboski on Tennyson's Language attd Style, may testify. At his centenary,
his work received, in such articles as those of M. Emile Faguet, M. Firmin Roz,
and M. Auguste Filon, a recognition in France yet more striking than that in
England. So, again, no Enghsh poet of recent times has met with so much
attention across the seas, notably from writers like Stedman, Genung and Van Dyke
in the United States, and Dr. S. Dawson and others in our own colonies.
Husband and wife set up housekeeping at Warninglid, Sussex, looking
on the South Downs ; next year they went to Chapel House, Twickenham,
where I was born. Their first child had been born dead. At the time
my father wrote :
It was Easter Sunday, and at his birth I heard the great roll of the organ, of the
uplifted psalm (in the chapel adjoining the house) . Dead as he was I felt proud of
him. To-day when I write this down the remembrance of it rather overcomes me :
but I am glad that I have seen him, dear little nameless one that hast hved tho'
thou hast never breathed, I, thy father, love thee and weep over thee, tho' thou
hast no place in the Universe, Who knows? It may be that thou hast. . . .
God's will be done.
My father and mother later took a tour in Italy, and the poem of the
"Daisy" was written to commemorate it. In 1852 he published his
great "Ode on the Death of the Duke of WeUington." He also attended
a levee at Court in the Court suit that Wordsworth wore, and first became
acquainted with his true friend of later years, the Duke of Argyll. "I am
so glad to know you," said the Duke. "You won't find much in me after
all," was the blunt rejoinder.
In 1853 they entered into the occupation of Farringford in the Isle of
Wight as their permanent home. When they had first "gazed from the
drawing-room window out through the distant wreath of trees towards a
sea of Mediterranean blue, with rosy capes beyond, the down on the left
rising above the foreground of undulating pai-k, golden-leaved elms and
chestnuts, and red-stemmed pines," they agreed that they must if possible
have that view to live with. On taking up their abode there they at
once settled to a country Kfe, looking after their farm and garden, and
tending the poor and sick of the village.
His Love of Children. "Maud."
The years spent at Farringford were the happiest of my father's life.
In March 1854 another son, Lionel, was born. Of babies he would say:
dififerent languages, and have been published and republished in these two countries;
and the Montenegrins have more than once placed wreaths on his grave in Westminster
Abbey. For a Polish appreciation see Mme. Modjeska's Memories and Impressions,
pp. 397-8.
xxxviii LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
"There is something gigantic about them. The wide-eyed wonder of a
babe has a majesty in it which as children they lose. They seem to be
prophets of a mightier race." To his own children he was devoted, took
part in their pastimes and amusements, and was their constant companion.
I remember his" emphatic recitation in those far-off years of
"Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre,
Mironton, mironton, mirontaine,"
of
"Si le roi m'avait donne
Paris sa grand' villa,"
of
"Ye Mariners of England,"
and of
"The Burial of Sir John Moore,"
and my father's words spoken long ago still dwell with me, "A truthful
man generally has all virtues."
He taught us to appreciate beauty in Nature and in Art. Drama,
simple music, painting, sculpture, and architecture, aU had their message
for him. The first Latin I learned from him was Horace's 0 fons
Bandusiae, and the first Greek the beginning of the Iliad} Before this
he liked to make us learn and repeat ballads, and simple poems about
Nature, but he would never teach us his own poems, or allow us to get
them by heart. In the summer as children we generally passed through
London to Lincolnshire, and he would take us for a treat to Westminster
Abbey, the Zoological Gardens, the Tower of London, the Elgin Marbles at
the British Museum, or the National Gallery. The last he much deHghted
in, and would point us out the various excellences of different masters ;
he always led the way first of all to the "Raising of Lazarus" by Sebastian
del Piombo, and to Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne." A favourite saying
of his was, "Make the fives of children as beautiful and happy as
possible."
He occasionally traveUed in the summer, visited his. friends or enter-
tained them in his own house. With FitzGerald he began to learn Persian
in order to read Hafiz in the original. F. D. Maurice among others came,
and my father welcomed him to his home in the weU-known poem :
Come, when no graver cares employ,
Grodfather, come and see your boy :
Your presence will be sun in winter,
Making the little one leap for joy.
1 See article by H. G. Dakyns in Tennyson and His Friends.
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xxxix
Should all our churchmen foam in spite ,
At you, so careful of the right,
Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome
(Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight :
Where, far from noise and smoke of town,
I watch the twihght falling brown
All round a careless-order'd garden
Close to the ridge of a noble down.
The first important poem which was written at Farringford was "The
Charge of the Light Brigade," then (1855) "Maud, or the Madness" —
called now the most passionate of love poems, although at first denounced
as too morbid and too melancholy to be tolerated.
"This poem is a little Hamlet, the history of a morbid poetic soul,
under the bhghting influence of a recklessly speculating age. He is the
heir of madness, an egotist -with the makings of a cynic, raised to sanity by
a pure and holy love which elevates his whole nature, passing from the
height of triumph to the lowest depths of misery, driven into madness by
the los3 of her whom he has loved, and, when he has at length passed
through the fiery furnace, and has recovered his reason, giving himself up
to work for the good of mankind through the unselfishness born of his
great passion." My father pointed out that even Nature at first presented
itself to the man in sad \dsions.
And the flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands drove thro' the air.
The "blood-red heath," too, is an exaggeration of colour, and his suspicion
that all the world is against him is as true to his nature as the mood when
he is "fantastically merry." "The peculiarity of this poem," my father
added, "is that different phases of passion in one person take the place of
different characters."
The writing of "Maud" was largely due to that friend of friends, Sir
John Simeon. Looking through a volume of manuscripts one day at
Farringford Sir John came upon the lyric :
O that 'twere p)ossible
After long grief and pain
To find the arms of my true love
Round me once again !
When I was wont to meet her
In the silent woody places
By the home that gave me birth.
We stood tranced in long embraces
Mixt with kisses sweeter sweeter
Than anything on earth.
xl LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
''Why do you keep those beautiful Hues unpublished?" he said. My
father told him that the poem had appeared years before in The Tribute,
but that it was really intended to be part of a dramatic poem. Sir John
gave him no peace until he had woven a story round these Hues, and so
"Maud" came into being. I shall never forget his last reading of it at
Aldworth on August 24, 1892. He was sitting in his high-backed chair,
fronting a southern window, which looks over the groves and yellow
corn-fields of Sussex toward the long fine of south downs that stretches
from Arundel to Hastings (his high-domed Rembrandt-like head outlined
against the sunset-clouds seen through the western window). His voice,
low and calm in every-day life, capable of delicate and manifold inflection,
but with "organ tones" of great power and range, thoroughly brought
out the drama of the poem.
From the proceeds of the sale of "Maud" he was enabled to com-
plete the purchase of . Farringf ord. In 1854 he visited Glastonbury and
Wells, in 1855 the New Forest and Oxford where he was made a D. C. L.,
in 1856 Wales, in 1858 Norway, in 1859 Portugal, in i860 Cornwall,
and in 1861 the Pyrenees, where he wrote "All along the Valley," in
memory of his sojourn in the VaUey of Cauteretz with Arthur Hallam more
than thirty years before.
"The Idylls of the King."
In 1859 he brought out his first four "Idylls of the King" — "Enid,"
"Vivien," "Elaine," and " Guinevere," — which aroused as much enthusiasm
as "Maud" had provoked resentment. Ten thousand copies were sold
in the week of pubUcation. Thackeray sends a letter to him :
Reading the lines ("Blow, bugle, blow") which only one man in the world could
have written, I thought about the horns of Elfland blowing in full strength, and
Arthur in gold armour and Guinevere in gold hair, and all those heroes and knights
and beauties and purple landscapes and misty gray lakes in which you have made me
live. They seem like facts to me, since about three weeks ago (three weeks or a
month was-it?) when I read the book. It is on the table yonder, and I don't like
somehow to disturb it, but the delight and gratitude !
Some of his friends, however, like Ruskin, complained that "so great
power ought not to be spent on visions of things past but on the Hving
present," and that they felt "the art and the finish a fit tie more than they
liked to feel it." Swinburne, himself "a reed through which all things blow
into music," although dissatisfied with the "scheme" of the "Idylls," admired
their "exquisite magnificence of style." And Edward FitzGerald wrote:
"I feel how pure, noble, and holy your work is, and whole phrases, lines,
and sentences will abide with me, and, I am sure, with men after me."
"I believe," my father said to me, "the existence of King Arthur
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xli
(500 A.D.) is more or less mythical." He is mentioned in the Welsh
Bards of the seventh century as "the leader." In the twelfth century
Geoffrey of Monmouth collected the legends about him as a European
conqueror in his History of the Britons, and translated them from
Celtic into Latin, Wace translated them into French, and added the
story of the Round Table. "My meaning in the 'Idylls of the King'
was spiritual. I took the legendary stories of the Round Table as
illustrations. Arthur was allegorical to me. I intended J;o represent him
as the Ideal of the Soul of Man coming in contact with the warring
elements of the flesh." He continued, "Poetry is Uke shot silk with many
glancing colours. Every reader must find his own interpretation accord-
ing to his abiUty, and according to his sympathy with the poet." He
notes, "The personal drift of the Idylls is clear enough. The whole is a
dream of man coming into practical fife and ruined by one sin (the guilty
love of Launcelot and of Guinevere). Birth is a mystery and Death is a
myster}'-, and in the midst hes the table-land of Hfe, and its struggles and
performances. It is not the history of one man or of one generation, but
of a whole cycle of generations. The vision of Arthur as I have drawn
him came upon me when while little more than a boy I first Hghted upon
Malory." He has made the old legends his own, restored the ideahsm,
and infused into them a spirit of modern thought and an ethical signifi-
cance, setting his characters in a rich and varied landscape; as indeed,
otherwise, these archaic stories would not have appealed to the modern
world at large. There is no more reason why he should follow Malory's
version than that Malory should be true to Walter Map. He felt himself
justified, in always having pictured Arthur in his parable as the ideal man,
by such passages as this from Joseph of Exeter: "The old world knows
not his peer, nor wiU the future show us his equal : he alone towers over
other kings, better than the past ones and greater than those that are
to be."
"Undoubtedly," Sir Alfred Lyall wTites, "the figure of Arthur — representing
a warrior-king endowed with the qualities of unselfishness, clemency, generosity,
and noble trustfulness, yet betrayed by his wife and his familiar friend, forgiving her
and going forth to die in a last fight against treacherous rebels — has a grandeur and
a pathos that might well affect a gravely emotional people. Moreover, the poem is
a splendidly illuminated Morahty."
The coming of Arthur is on the night of the New Year : when he is
wedded "the world is white with May": on a summer night the vision
of the Holy Grail appears: and the "Last Tournament is in the
following autumn-tide." Guinevere flies through the mists of autumn,
and Arthur's death takes place at midnight in midwinter. The form
of the "Coming of Arthur" and of the "Passing" is purposely more
xlii LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
archaic than that of the other Idylls. In 1832 had appeared the first of
the Arthurian poems in the form of a lyric, "The Lady of Shalott"
(another version of the story of Launcelot and Elaine), and this was followed
in 1842 by the other lyrics ''Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere," "Sir
Galahad." The 1842 volume also contained the "Morte d' Arthur,"
written about 1835. In 1869 my father published the "Coming of
Arthur," "The Holy GraQ," and "Pelleas and Ettarre," the volume
containing also the well-known poems, "Lucretius," "a masterly study
of the great Roman sceptic,"^ and the second "Northern Farmer"; in
1871 "The Last Tournament," in 1872 "Gareth and Lynette," and in
1885 "Balin and Balan." Thus he completed the "Idylls of the King"
in twelve books. The poem regarded as a whole gives his innermost
being more fully perhaps, though not more truly, than "In Memoriam."
In "Gareth" the "joy of life in steepness overcome". And victories of
ascent " Hves in the eternal youth of goodness. But in the later "Idylls " the
allowed sin not only poisons the spring of life in the sinner, but spreads its
poison through the whole community. In some natures, even among those
who would "rather die than doubt," it breeds suspicion and want of trust in
God and man. Some loyal souls are wrought to madness against the
world. Others, and some among the highest intellects, become the slaves
of the evil which is at first half-disdained. Tender natures sink under the
blight, that which is of the highest in them working their death. And in
some, as faith dechnes, religion turns from practical goodness and hoHness
to superstition :
This madness has come on us for our sin.
These seek rehef in selfish spiritual excitement, not remembering that
man's duty is to forget self in the service of others, and to let visions come
and go, and that so only will they see "The Holy Thing." In the Idyll
of "Pelleas and Ettarre," selfishness has turned to open crime; it is "the
breaking of the storm"; nevertheless Pelleas stUl honours his sacred vow
to the King and spares the wrong-doers. Whereas in "The Last Tourna-
ment" the wrong-doer "suffers his doom," and "is cloven thro' the
brain." We have here the deadly proof of the kinship of all wilful sin,
murder fotiowing adultery in closest relation of cause and consequence, — the
prelude of the final act of the tragedy which culminates in the temporary
triumph of evil, the confusion of the moral order, closing in the great
"Battle of the West." When my father wrote the dedication of "The
Idylls or Epylls of the ICing" to the Prince Consort after his death, the
Queen invited him to visit her. He was much affected by his interview.
He told how she stood pale and statue-like before him speaking jn a
1 Andrew Lang.
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xliii
quiet, unutterably sad voice. "There was a kind of stately innocence
about her." She said many kind things to him, such as: "Next to
the Bible 'In Memoriam' is my comfort." She talked of Hallam, and
of Macaulay, of Goethe, and of Schiller in connection with the Prince,
and observed that he was so hke * the picture of Arthur Hallam in
"In Memoriam," even to his blue eyes. My father suggested that he
thought that the Prince would have made a great King ; she answered,
"He always said that it did not signify whether he did the right thing
or did not, so long as the right thing was done."
As will be seen from the letters between my father and the Queen in
my Memoir of my father there was a very real friendship between them.
After another interview, November 1883, he wrote to her Majesty,
"During our conversation I felt the touch of that true friendship which
binds human beings together, whether they be Kings or cobblers."
"Enoch Arden," Aldworth, and the Plays.
My father now wrote more Enghsh Idylls, "The Idylls of the Hearth."
The story of Enoch Arden the fisherman, who after years of exile comes
home to find his wife married to another, was given him by the sculptor
Woolner. At one time of his life he lodged for many months with fisher-
men in their cottages by the sea. He loved the sea as much as any
sailor, and knew all its moods whether on the shore or in mid-ocean.
Hence some of his most successful poems were "Enoch Arden," "The
Revenge," "Break, Break," "The SaQor Boy," "The Voyage," "Sea
Dreams." "Enoch Arden" is the most popular of his poems on the
Continent. In the volume of 1864 were included "Aylmer's Field,"
"Tithonus," "The Northern Farmer," "The Flower," "The Grandmother."
Edward FitzGerald, after reading "The Northern Farmer," wrote :
I read on till the "Lincolnshire Farmer" drew tears to my eyes. I was got
back to the substantial rough-spun Nature I knew ; and the old brute, invested by
you with the solemn Humour of Humanity, Hke Shakespeare's Shallow, became a
more pathetic phenomenon than the knights who revisit the world in your other
verse.
It may be noted that this study of character set the fashion throughout
Great Britain and America of drawing character-sketches in rough-hewn
ballads.
During the summer of 1864 he visited Brittany. In 1865 he visited
Waterloo and Weimar and Dresden, in 1866 Marlborough, in 1867 Dorset-
shire and South Devon, in 1868 Tintern Abbey and South Wales. In
1869 he took a tour in Switzerland. In 187 1 he went to North Wales,
in 1872 to Paris and Grenoble, in 1873 to the Italian Lakes, and in 1874
xliv LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
to the Pyrenees, which he had last seen in 1861. These tours spurred
him on to work, as is shown by the numerous poems written during those
years. Meanwhile, he received numberless guests, Garibaldi, Owen,
TyndaU, Huxley, Tourgenieff the Russian novelist, Queen Emma of the
Sandwich Islands, Longfellow, Ge(3rge Eliot, Gladstone, Jenny Lind,
Bradley, Montagu Butler, Lady Franklin, Palgrave, Jowett, and the Duke
of Argyll. Of Garibaldi he spoke with enthusiasm: ''He is marvellously
simple, but in worldly matters he seems to have the divine stupidity
of a hero." He wrote his impressions of the man as follows to the Duke
of Argyll : —
Did you hear Garibaldi repeat any Italian poetry ? I did, for I had heard that he
himself had made songs and hymns ; and I asked him, " Are you a poet ? " "Yes,"
he said quite simply, whereupon I spouted to him a bit of Manzoni's great ode,
that which Gladstone translated. I don't know whether he relished it, but he
began immediately to speak of Ugo Foscolo, and quoted, with great fervour, a
fragment of his "I Sepolcri," beginning with "II navigante che veleggio," etc.
and ending with "Delle Parche il canto," which verses he afterwards wrote out
for me : and they certainly seem to be fine, whatever the rest of the poem may be.
I have not yet read it but mean to do so, for he sent me Foscolo's Poesie from
London; and in return I sent him the "Idylls of the King," which I do not
suppose he will care for. What a noble human being ! I expected to see a hero
and I was not disappointed. One cannot exactly say of him what Chaucer says of
the ideal knight, "As meke he was of port as is a maid"; he is more majestic
than meek, and his manners have a certain divine simplicity in them, such as I
have never witnessed in a native of these islands, among men at least, and they are
gentler than those of most young maidens whom I know. He came here and
smoked his cigar in my little room and we had a half hour's talk in English, tho' I
doubt whether he understood me perfectly, and his meaning was often obscure to
me. I ventured to give him a little advice: he denied that he came with any
political purpose to England, merely to thank the English for their kindness to him,
and the interest they had taken in himself and all Italian matters, and also to
consult Ferguson about his leg. Stretching this out he said, "There's a campaign
in me yet." When I asked if he returned thro' France, he said he would never set
foot on the soil of France again. I happened to make use of this expression,
"That fatal debt of gratitude owed by Italy to Napoleon." " Gratitude," he said ;
"hasn't he had his pay? his reward? If Napoleon were dead I should be glad,
and if I were dead he would be glad." These are slight chronicKngs, but I
thought you would like to have them. He seemed especially taken with my two
little boys.
He now began to study Hebrew with a view to making a metrical
version of "Job." One day he asked Jowett to give him a Uteral transla-
tion of one of the verses. "But I can't read Hebrew," said Jowett.
"What!" he exclaimed, "you the Priest of a great religion and can't
read your own sacred books." On April 23, 1868, Shakespeare's
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xlv
birthday, he and his friend, Sir John Simeon, laid the foundation of his
house, Aldworth, in Sussex, which he afterwards always inhabited in the
summer to avoid the stream of tourists who invaded him in the Isle of
Wight. We read in my mother's Journal his expression of a wish that,
if ever the shields on the mantelpiece in his study were emblazoned, they
should be emblazoned with arms or devices representing the great
modern poets, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, and Words-
worth, and if there had been another shield he would have added MoUere.
Aubrey de Vere wrote of the new home :
The second home was as well chosen as the first. It lifted England's great
poet to a height from which he could gaze on a large portion of that English land
which he loved so well, see it basking in its most affluent summer beauty, and
only bounded by the "inviolate sea." Year after year he trod its two stately
terraces with men the most noted of their time, statesmen, warriors, men of letters,
science and art, some of royal race, some famous in far lands, but none more
welcome to him than the friends of his youth. Nearly all of those were taken froni
him by degrees ; but many of them stand successively recorded in his verse. The
days which I passed there yearly with him and his were the happiest days of each
year. They will retain a happy place in my memory during whatever short period
my life may last ; and the sea murmurs of Freshwater will blend with the sighing
of the woods around Aldworth, for me, as for many more worthy, a music, if
mournful, yet full of consolation.
In 1872 some prominent poKticians were advocating the breaking of the
connection between Great Britain and Canada. My father was roused
to indignation, and wrote in his "Epilogue to the Idylls of the King":
And that true North, whereof we lately heard
A strain to shame us "keep you to yourselves;
So loyal is too costly ! friends — your love
Is but a burthen ; loose the bond, and go."
Is this the tone of empire ? here the faith
That made us rulers ? this, indeed, her voice
And meaning, whom the roar of Hougoumont
Left mightiest of all peoples under heaven ?
The following letter from Lord Dufferin (February 25, 1873) tells of
the happy effect these words had in Canada : —
The assertion that their connection with Great Britain weakens their self-
confidence or damps the ardour of Canadian Nationality is a pure invention.
Amongst no people hav^e I ever met more contentment with their general condition,
a more legitimate faith in all those characteristics which constitute their nationality,
or a firmer faith in the destinies in store for them. Your noble words have struck
responsive fire from every heart; they have been published in every newspaper,
and have been completely effectual to heal the wounds occasioned by the senseless
language of the Times.
xlvi LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
In 1874 he and Sir James Knowles founded the Metaphysical Club,
the object of the Society being that those who were ranged on the side of
Faith should meet and discuss with those ranged on the side of Unfaith.
During one of the prehminary meetings, a propos of some angry discussion,
my father said humorously, "Modern science at all events ought to have
taught men to separate hght from heat," and this was adopted as the
rule of the Society. At this time he was elected an Honorary FeUow of
Trinity College, Cambridge.
"Queen Mary," the first play of what he called his "historical trilogy"
("Harold," "Becket," and "Queen Mary"), was begun about 1873 and
pubhshed in 1875. "This trilogy of plays,'^ he noted, "portrays the making
of England." In "Harold" (1876), that "Tragedy of Doom," we have the
great conflict between Danes, Saxons, and Normans for supremacy, the
awakening of the Enghsh people and clergy from the slumber into which
they had for the most part fallen, and the forecast of the greatness of
our composite race. In "Becket" (printed 1879, published 1884) the
struggle is between the Crown and the Church for predominance, a struggle
which continued for many centuries. In "Mary" are described the final
downfall of Roman CathoHcism in England, and the dawning of a new
age ; for after the era of priestly domination comes the era of the freedom
of the individual. "In 'The Foresters'" (1892), he notes, "I have
sketched the state of the people in another great transition period of the
making of England, when the barons sided with the people and eventually
won for them the Magna Charta."
To begin pubHshing plays for the stage after he was sixty-five years
of age was thought to be a hazardous experiment. He had, however,
always taken the liveliest interest in the theatre; and he bestowed
infinite trouble on his dramas. He was quite alive to the fact that for him
to attempt dramatic work would be at first unpopular, since he was then
mainly regarded as an Idyllic, or as a Lyric, poet. But Spedding, a first-
rate Shakespearian scholar, George H. Lewes, George EHot, and Irving
admired his plays and encouraged him to persevere in spite of all dis-
couragement, especially praising the faithful and subtle dehneation of
character and the "great dramatic moments." He felt that he had the
power; and even at the age of fourteen he had written plays which were
extraordinary for a boy, full of vivid contrasts and striking scenic effects.
To meet the conditions of the modern theatre my father studied many
modern plays. He had also refreshed his mind with reading "Job" in
the Hebrew, for which he had the highest admiration, and the dramas of
Aeschylus and Sophocles, which were to him full of reality and moral
beauty. All his life he enjoyed discovering the causes of historical and
social movements, and had a strong desire to reverse unfair judgments,
and an eager dehght in the analysis of human motive. "Queen Mary,"
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xlvii
''The Cup," ''The Falcon," "Becket," and "The Foresters" were aU
more or less successful on the stage, and it seems to me that some oi
his finest work is to be found in them. "Becket" is, as my father
recognised, "loosely constructed," but Irving wrote that it was "a finer
play than ' King John,' " and said that it was a mistake to imagine that he
"had made" "Becket," for this drama, especially the closing act, was
"an inspiration." That and "The Cup" were two of Irving's four
great popular triumphs. For a while, indeed, original poetic drama was
restored by the poet and the actor to the English stage.
It was interesting to my father to learn the' impression made by
"Becket" upon Roman CathoUcs. He first asked the opinion of his
neighbour at Freshwater, W. G. Ward. He could not have asked a
more candid, truth-speaking critic than this "most generous of all Ultra-
montanes," who was deeply versed not only in the spirit and doctrine of
his own Church, but also in the modern French and English drama.
Ward Hstened patiently, though convinced "that the whole play would
be out of his fine." At the end of the play he broke out: "Dear me !
I did not expect to enjoy it at all. It is splendid ! How wonderfully
you have brought out the phases of his character as Chancellor and
Archbishop! Where did you get it all?" Struggle for power under one
guise or another has doubtless been among the most fruitful sources
of theme for tragedy. During many centuries, as we know, "spiritual
power," clothed in earthly panoply, seemed to most men to be the one
embodiment of the Divine Power. What struck those who saw the play
on the stage was the clear and impressive manner in which he had
brought out Becket's feehng that in accepting the Archbishopric he had
changed masters, that he was not simply advanced to a higher service of
the same liege lord, but that he had changed his former lord paramount,
whose fiery self-will made havoc of his fine intellect, for one of higher
degree ; and had become a power distinct from, and it might be antago-
nistic to, the king.
His Life in the Country.
At this period of his life my father would tramp over hill and dale, with
his crook-handled stick, accompanied by my brother, myself, or a friend, and
by a dog, not caring if the weather were fair or foul, every now and then
stopping in his rapid walk to give point to an argument or to an anecdote.
When alone with me he would often chant a poem that he was composing,
and add fresh fines. There was the same keen eye as of old for strange
birds or flowers, and, as of old, the same love of fair landscape. If
a tourist were seen coming towards him he would flee; for many would
recognise from a distance his broad-brimmed mde-awake (the kind of hat
that Carlyle, Sir Henry Taylor, and others of his contemporaries wore)
xlviii LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
and his short blue cape with velvet collar, and would deliberately make
for him in order to put some question. His hours were quite regular.
He breakfasted at eight, lunched at two, dined at seven. At dessert, if
alone, he would read to himself, or if friends were in the house he would
sit with them for an hour or so, and entertain them with varied talk.
He worked chiefly in the morning over his pipe, or in the evening
after his pint of port, also over his pipe. Rare books or books with
splendid bindings he never cared for; yet he treasured his first edition of
Spenser's Faerie Queene, and his second edition of Paradise Lost. He
would read over and over again his favourite authors, and his deHght was
genuine when he came across a new author who ''seemed to have some-
thing in him." He was fond of simple music — Beethoven's songs, and
EngHsh, Scotch, and Irish ballads. He was not unfrequently abstracted
in mood for days while he was composing, which made him appear brusque
to strangers, but alone with his family he was never so happy as when
engaged on a great subject. His very directness and simpUcity, moreover,
caused him sometimes to be misunderstood. With strangers, doubtless,
he was shy at first, owing mostly to his short-sight, though none could be
more genial when he thawed. No one could have beeM more tolerant of
or more* gracious to dull people ; and out of his imaginative large-hearted-
ness he usually invested every one with higher qualities than he or she
possessed. As Jowett observed, ''He would sit by a very commonplace
person, telling stories with the most high-bred courtesy, endless stories
not too high or too low for everyday conversation." Frederick Locker
thus describes the lighter side of his nature: "Balzac's remark that
' dans tout homme de genie il y a un enfant ' may find its illustration in
Tennyson. He is the only grown-up human being that I know of who
habitually thinks aloud. His humour is of the dryest, it is admirable. . . .
He tells a story excellently, and has a catching laugh. There are people
who laugh because they are shy or disconcerted, or for lack of ideas . . .
only a few because they are happy or amused, or perhaps triumphant.
Tennyson has an entirely natural, and a very kindly laugh." He had
the passion of a scientist for facts. His talk travelled over a vast range
of subjects, his dignity and repose of manner, his low musical voice, and
the power of his magnetic eye keeping the attention riveted. With the
country-folk he loved to converse ; especially seeking out the poor old men,
from whom he always tried to ascertain their thoughts upon death and
the future life.
His afternoons he generally spent on one of our smaller lawns, sur-
rounded by birch and different sorts of pine and fir and cypress, after the
fashion of separate green parlours. Here he would read the daily papers
or some book to my mother lying out in her sofa chair, or would receive
friends from the neighbourhood, or would talk to guests staying in the house.
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xlix
Friends, the Peerage, Lionel's Death.
My mother was seriously ill in 1875, and I was summoned home froi4
Cambridge. I became my father's secretary, and stayed with hinj
continuously until his death. In 1876 we visited Edward FitzGerald at
Woodbridge, and Gladstone at Hawarden, We found Edward FitzGerald
in his garden at Little Grange among his papers, and he and my father
talked of the old days. They reverted, of course, to their favourite
Crabbe, my father laying stress on his ''sledge-hammer hues," and Fitz-
Gerald teUing how he (Crabbe), when a chaplain in the country, felt an
irresistible longing to see the sea, mounted a horse suddenly, rode thirty
miles to the coast, saw it, and rode back comforted. They also referred to
Thackeray, whose work my father called "so dehcious, so mature"; while
Fitz said of him, "I hardly dare take down Thackeray's early books,
they are so great, it is like waking the thunder." At Hawarden the
conversation between my father and Gladstone ranged over Dante,
"Harold," Gladstone's late speech about remitting the income-tax,
modern morality, the force of public opinion, the evils of materiahsm, and
the new Biblical criticism. When we were in London, Ruskin, Browning,
and Renan visited us, and we paid a visit to Lord Russell at Pembroke
Lodge. "The craven fear of being great" my father felt was among the
besetting sins of certain EngHsh statesmen, and in reply to this Lord
Russell cried aloud that there must be no niggardUness with regard to
armaments. They were both convinced that "if our colonies could be
welded mth the United Kingdom into one Imperial whole, we should be able
to stand alone." General Gordon, to whom my father's poems were after-
wards a comfort and delight in those last days at Khartoum, came to lunch
with us. Having learnt that we had no guests he gHded spirit-Hke into the
dining-room where we were already seated. Going up straight to my father
he said in a solemn voice, "Mr. Tennyson, I want you to do something for
the young soldiers. You alone are the man who can do it. We want train-
ing-homes for them all over England." In consequence the Gordon Home
was initiated by my father after Gordon's death and in his memory. Two or
three times we met George EUot in town, and my father told her that the
flight of Hetty in Adam Bede and Thackeray's gradual breaking down of
Colonel Newcome were the two most pathetic things in modern prose
fiction. We often saw Carlyle. My father would observe, "Carlyle and
Mrs. Carlyle on the whole enjoyed Ufe together, else they would not have
chaffed one another so heartily." One day I remember Carlyle putting
his hands on Alfred, my brother Lionel's son, and saying solemnly "Fair
fall thee, Httle man, in this world and the next." During 1877 my brother
visited Victor Hugo in Paris, and my father addressed to him the sonnet
"Victor in Drama, Victor in Romance."^ To which Hugo repHed, "I
1 He admired Alfred de Mu35et as an artist more than Victor Hugo.
1 LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
believe in Divine Unity. I love all the peoples, and admire your noble
poetry." In 1878 my father renewed his acquaintance with Ireland,
going to Westport, Gal way, and Killarney. In 1879 my uncle, Charles
Tennyson Turner, died. The death of this favourite brother profoundly
affected my father; he began to hear ghostly mysterious voices all round
him. Dr. Andrew Clark ordered him abroad, so we journeyed in June
1880 to Venice, and the journey did in effect restore his health: while at
Sirmio, Catullus's "all-but-island," he wrote the touching lines "Frater
Ave atque Vale" At the close of 1880 he published Ballads and
Other Poems, which had a large sale, "Rizpah" and "The Revenge" and
"The Defence of Lucknow" being among the most popular of his poems.
Then came in 1881 and 1883 the deaths of his old friends Spedding and
FitzGerald.
Gone into the darkness, that full light
Of friendship ! Past in sleep away
By night into the deeper night !
The deeper night ? A clearer day
Than our poor twilight dawn on earth.
In 1 88 1 he strongly advocated the federation of Austraha, and wrote
to the Australian statesman. Sir Henry Parkes : "I always feel with the
Empire, and I read with great interest of these first steps in Federation."
He looked forward to Austrahan Federation as the prelude to some sort
of Imperial Federation. Previously he had written to Mr. Dudley Adams
of Sydney: "Perhaps some day one of the dreams of my life may be
realised, and England and her colonies be as truly one Empire as the
counties of England are one kingdom, the aims of the Empire still higher
than those of the kingdom. But this will not be in my own time, I fear.
The strife of party must have outworn itself, and the faith of the world
have shaped itself into one great simple creed before the Great Sequel."
In 1883 we cruised with Gladstone in the Pembroke Castle to Copen-
hagen — thousands of people lining the shore as we steamed off from Barrow,
and cheering for "Gladstone" and "Tennyson." The friends agreed not
to talk on poHtics, about which they disagreed, and the conversation often
fell on Dante, Goethe, Milton, Shakespeare, and the English poets and
prose writers. "No one," said Gladstone, "since ^Eschylus could have
written The Bride of Lammermoor." My father was incHned to think
Old Mortality Scott's greatest novel. Goethe's songs in Wilhelm
Meister he would recite with highest admiration. "Read the exquisite
songs of Burns," he would say, — "in shape each of them has the perfec-
tion of the berry, in light the radiance of the dewdrop." Of Gray he
said: "Gray in his limited sphere is great, and has a wonderful ear."
The following he held to be "among the most Hquid lines in any
language":
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TEX AY SON li
Though he inherit
Nor the pride, nor ample pinion
That the Theban eagle bear,
Sailing with supreme dominion
Through the azure deep of air.
During the voyage Gladstone urged upon him to accept a peerage, laying
stress on the nobility and insight of his political and historical poems,
and on the greatness of "Guinevere" and of "In Memoriam." He
was very unwilling to do so. In the end he consented for the sake of
literature. Moreover, he was grateful to the Queen, who desired that he
should belong to what he regarded as "the greatest Upper Chamber in
the world." He looked upon it as foremost in debating power, a stable,
wise, and moderating influence in these changeful democratic days. He
wrote: "By Gladstone's advice I have consented to take a peerage, but
for my own part I shall regret my simple name all my life." On March
II, 1884, he took his place on the cross-benches, for he said he "could
not pledge himself to Party, which is made too much of a god in these
days." He was in favour of reasonable innovation, and there was no reaUyj
Liberal movement in which he was not in the forefront. Like Burke, hq
had a strong belief in the common-sense and poHtical moderation of th^
British people, but he did not hesitate to express his opinion that "stagna-
tion is more dangerous than revolution." Mr. Arthur Sidgwick notes
about his political views :
It is easy to idealize freedom, revolution, or war ; and the ancients found it easy
to compose lyrics on kings, athletes, warriors, or other powerful persons. From
the days of Tyrtaeus and Pindar to Byron, Shelley, and Swinburne, one or other of
these themes has been the seed of song. But the praise of ordered liberty, of
settled government, of political moderation, is far harder to ideahze in poetry. ItV
has been the peculiar aim of Tennyson to be the constitutional, and in this sense the
national, poet : and it is his peculiar merit and good fortune to have succeeded in
giving eloquent and forcible expression to the ideas suggested by these aims.
Oh yet, if Nature's evil star
Drive men in manhood, as in youth,
To follow flying steps of Truth
Across the brazen bridge of war —
If New and Old, disastrous feud.
Must ever shock, like armed foes,
And this be true, till Time shall close,
That Principles are rain'd in blood ;
Not yet the wise of heart would cease
To hold his hope thro' shame and guilt.
But with his hand against the hilt
Would pace the troubled land, like Peace ;
Hi LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
Not less, tho' dogs of Faction bay,
Would serve his kind in deed and word,
Certain, if knowledge bring the sword.
That knowledge takes the sword away.
The last couplet seems to me — where all is powerful and imaginative — to be a
master stroke of terse and pointed expression. It would be hardly an exaggeration
to say that it sums up human history in regard to one point — namely, the disturb-
ing and even desolating effect of the new Political Idea, until its triumph comes,
bringing a higher and more stable adjustment, and a peace more righteous and
secure.
His first vote was given for the Extension of the Franchise. He
writes to Gladstone :
Aldworth, July 1884.
I did not write more fully knowing how overwhelmed you are with business
and anxiety, but you have found time to write to me notwithstanding, and I must
answer, and you must read my answer or not as you can and will. Here is some-
thing of my creed.
The nation is one and include* all ranks of people.
I take for granted that both Houses are equally anxious to do justice to all.
Certainly the House of Peers has the prior claim to confidence, being the older
of the two, and it would be a base abdication, if it forewent its right and. its duty to
reconsider an all-important question.
The Extension of Franchise I hold to be matter of justice ; the proper time for
bringing forward the question, matter of opinion.
Whether this was the proper time or not — Extension I now hold to be an
accomplished fact. But I think that at this time, and at all times, redistribution is
necessarily an integral part of a true Franchise Bill.
For instance, whether the towns are to dominate and absorb the country votes,
or the country votes to have their due weight, whether loyal North Ireland is to be
overridden by disloyal South, seem to me all-important facts in the true representa-
tion of the country.
(A Franchise Bill, I take it, is intended to facilitate the choice of those supposed
to be best fitted to understand the needs and the claims of the people, and to devise
means for satisfying them.)
If you solemnly pledge yourselves that the Extension Bill shall not become law
before redistribution has been satisfactorily settled, I am quite willing to vote with
you, and in proof I come up to- town notwithstanding gout. My wife is very
grateful for your letter, but will not of course trouble you with a reply. — Ever
yours, Tennyson.
I am oppressed with gout, and therefore beg you will excuse my employing my
daughter-in-law's hand.
On November 14 he forwarded the following lines to the. Prime
Minister : —
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON liii
Steersman, be not precipitate in thine act
Of steering, for the river here, my friend,
Parts in two channels, moving to one end —
This goes straight forward to the cataract :
That streams about the bend ;
But tho' the cataract seem the nearer way,
Whate'er the crowd on either bank may say,
Talie thou the "bend," 'twill save thee many a day.
Gladstone eventually acted in accordance with the hopes my father had
expressed, and the Franchise Bill was read a second time, without a
division.
He published his volume, Tiresias and Other Poems, at the end of
1885. Of his autobiographical poem, "The Ancient Sage," dealing, like
the "De Profundis," with the deeper problems of human life, he wrote:
"The whole poem is very personal. Those passages about 'Faith' and
the 'Passion of the Past' were more especially my own personal feelings."
The reception of his poem, "To Virgil," gratified him much, as he liked
it himself. The year 1886 brought on us a great grief in the death of
my brother Lionel on his voyage home from India. He said, "The
thought of Lionel's death tears me to pieces, he was so full of promise,
and so young." December of this year also saw the publication of "The
Promise of May," and of the second part of "Locksley Hall" (dated
1887). The following lines were written about my brother Lionel : —
Truth, for Truth is Truth, he worshipt, being true as he was brave ;
Good, for Good is Good, he follow'd, yet he look'd beyond the grave !
Truth for Truth, and Good for Good ! The Good, the True, the Pure, the Just —
Take the charm "For ever" from them, and they crumble into dust.
His MS. note on the poem is :
A dramatic poem, and the Dramatis Personae are imaginary. Since it is so
much the fashion in these days to regard each poem and story as a story of the
poet's life or part of it, may I not be allowed to remind my readers of the possi-
bility, that some event which comes to the poet's knowledge, some hint flashed from
another mind, some thought or feeling arising in his o\vn, or some mood coming —
he knows not whence or how — may strike a chord from which a poem evolves its
life, and that this to other eyes may bear small relation to the thought, or fact, or
feehng to which the poem owes its birth, whether the tenor be dramatic, or given as
a parable ?
Such lines as these, however, gave his own belief :
Plowmen, Shepherds, have I found, and more than once, and still could find,
Sons of God, and kings of men in utter nobleness of mind.
liv LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
In 1888 he had a serious attack of gout, from which he recovered
with difficulty. On his eightieth birthday (1889) he received numberless
congratulatory letters and telegrams. '*I don't know what I have done,"
he said, "to make people feel Hke that towards me, except that I have
kept my faith in Immortality." Speaking of Alexander Smith's line
"Fame, fame, thou art next to God," he would observe, "Next to God —
next to the Devil, say I. Fame might be worth having if it helped
us to do good to a single mortal, but what is it? merely the pleasure
of hearing oneself talked of up and down the street." During this year
he published his Demeter and Other Poems. The general tone of
criticism was to the effect that "Merlin and the Gleam," and "Demeter,"
and above all "Crossing the Bar," were wonderful productions for a man of
fourscore years, and rivalled some of the best of his older poems. "Who
is the Pilot in 'Crossing the Bar'?" my father was repeatedly asked.
"The Divine," he answered. "The Pilot has been on board all the
time, but in the dark I have not seen Him." He was incHned to think
that the seven of his own best lyrics wpre, "All along the Valley,"
"Courage, poor Heart of Stone," "Break, Break, Break," "The Bugle
Song," "Ask me no more," "Crossing the Bar," and the blank-verse
lyric, "Tears, idle Tears" ; and that his finest simile was —
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might.
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight.
"In his latest poems," writes Henry Butcher, "we may miss some-
thing of the early rapture of liis lyric songs, but he is still himself and
unmistakable, and had he written nothing but the lines 'To Virgil' and
Crossing the Bar,' he would have surely taken rank among the highest.
Towards the end of his hfe the moral and religious content of the poems
becomes fuUer with his deeper sense of the grandeur and pathos of man's
existence."
Death of Browning. My Father's Last Work and Days.
On the day of the publication of Demeter and Other Poems my
father heard of the death of Robert Browning : "so loving and appreciative
that one cannot but mourn his loss as a friend and as a poet, and one
feels that one has lost a mine of great thoughts and pure feeHngs, and
much else besides." My father said something of this sort about his poetry :
"He never greatly cares about the glory of words or beauty of form. He
seldom attempts the marriage of sense with sound, although he shows a
spontaneous fehcity in the adaptation of words to ideas and feeHngs."
My father loved Browning and was loved by him. They have now
emerged from the inevitable posthumous ecHpse. They were both
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON Iv
imaginative thinkers and creators, noble teachers, holding, in the estimation
of their contemporaries, high and honoured rank in the glorious company
of great English poets. I never heard talk so brilliant, so deep, so full of
imagery as when these two friends talked together. Each had a noble faith
in God, and in the purpose of Hfe ; and in each this faith finds a great utter-
ance. Their poetic methods, however, were widely different. For example,
"Tennyson," Sir Alfred Lyall says, "employed his wonderful image-making
power to illustrate some mental state of emotion, avaihng himself of the
mysterious relation between man and his environment, whereby the outer in-
animate world is felt to be the resemblance and reflection of human moods."
Browning, on the other hand, was constantly propounding moral and
intellectual riddles on these "human moods" and the human environ^
ment. As my father expressed it, "Browning has a great imagination.
He has a genius for an intricate sort of dramatic composition, and foj
analyzing the human mind in intricate situations." Unlike Browning my
father acted strictly on his rule that *'the artist is known by his self-
limitation." "Only the concise and perfect work," he thought, "would
last." He was sometimes in the habit of chronicling in four or five words
or more whatever might strike him as a picture, and weaving a poem
about this, carrying this poem in his head until it was perfect — or some^
times "the poem would come" — his words — in one breath of im.piration.
"Hundreds of hnes," as he said, " have been blown up the chimney with
my pipe smoke, or have been written down and thrown into the fire as
not being perfect enough." He dehghted in throwing off impromptu
verses in various metres. Sir Richard Jebb writes as follows about his
metrical power : —
As a metrist, he is the creator of a new blank verse, different both from the
Elizabethan and from the iMiltonic. He has known how to modulate it to every
theme, and to elicit a music appropriate to each ; attuning it in turn to a tender
and homely grace, as in "The Gardener's Daughter"; to the severe and ideal
majesty of the antique, as in "Tithonus"; to meditative thought, as in "The
Ancient Sage " or "Akbar's Dream"; to pathetic or tragic tales of contemporary
life, as in "Aylmer's Field" or "Enoch Arden"; or to sustained romantic
narrative, as in the "Idylls." No English poet has used blank verse with such
flexible variety, or drawn from it so large a compass of tones; nor has any
maintained it so equably on a high level of excellence. In lyric metres Tennyson
has invented much, and has also shown a rare power of adaptation. Many of his
lyric measures are wholly his own ; while others have been so treated by him as to
make them virtually new.
At the Tennyson centenary celebration by the British Academy (1909)
Lord Curzon said of him: "He (Tennyson) is at least these things — a
great artist, a great singer, a great prophet, a great patriot, and a great
Englishman." If I may venture to speak of his special influence upon the
Ivi LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
world, my conviction is that its main and enduring qualities are his
power of expression, his range of imagination, the perfection of his work-
manship, his strong common-sense, the high purport of his life and work,
his truthfulness, his humiHty, his humour, and his broad, open-hearted,
and helpful sympathy.
The death of the Irish poet AUingham took away from us yet another
friend. My father often repeated AUingham's last words: "I see such
things as you cannot dream of."
In 1890 the great portrait of my father which hangs in the hall of
Trinity College, Cambridge, was painted by G. F. Watts at Farringford ;
and in June of that year he worked at his Lincolnshire poem "The Church-
warden and the Curate," heartily laughing over the humorous passages.
Sir Norman Lockyer visited us, and he said of my father, "His mind is
saturated with astronomy ; since Dante there has never been so great a
scientific poet." In 1891 he was working at his "Akbar," and wrote his
majestic hymn to the Sun while cruising in a friend's yacht. The philo-
sophers of the East had a great fascination for him, and he felt that the
Western religions might learn much from them of spirituality. He took
much interest in preparing his "Foresters, or Robin Hood" for the stage.^
It proved to be a great success in America — an old-world woodland play,
"a pastoral without shepherds," and was published in April 1892.
In 1 89 1 and 1892 he still took long walks at Farringford and
Aldworth with the President of Magdalen, Jowett, the Bishop of Ripon,
Arthur Coleridge, Stanford, Dakyns, Henry Butcher, Jebb, and others,
talking to them vigorously on all sorts of topics, but I heard him quote
more than once, "The wan moon is setting behind the white wave, and
time is setting for me, oh !" On a day in June (1892), on one of his daily
walks at Farringford, he suddenly felt very tired, a thing unusual with him,
and sat down. It was one of the first signs of his failing strength, though
as he walked up the garden he cheered up again, and pointed out the
splendour of the flowers. On June 29 he partook of the Communion with
my mother and said :
It is but a communion, not a mass ;
No sacrifice, but a life-giving feast —
impressing upon the rector (Dr. Merriman) that he could not partake of
it except in that sense. He said: "My most passionate desire is to
have a clearer vision of God," and "It is impossible to imagine that the
Almighty will ask you, when you come before Him in the next life, what
your particular form of creed was : but the question will rather be, ' Have
you been true to yourself, and given in My Name a cup of cold water to
one of these Httle ones ? ' "
On June 30 we left Farringford for Aldworth. My father at first took
LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON Ivii
his regular walks of two or three miles over Blackdown, but the walks
dwindled gradually, and he sat more and more in his summer-house.
On his eighty- third birthday he quoted from Bacon, "It is Heaven upon
earth to have a man's mind move in Charity, rest in Providence, and turn
upon the poles of Truth." In September he looked over the proofs of his
last- volume The Death of (Enone and Other Poems, many of which had
been written during this last year, and which my wife had copied out for
the press. On the 28th he complained of great weakness. He read Job
and St. Matthew.
On Tuesday, October 4, he called out, "Where is my Shakespeare?
I must have my Shakespeare." Then he said, "I want the blinds up,
I want to see the sky and light." He repeated, "The sky and light !"
He asked me, "Have I not been walking with Gladstone in the garden,
and showing him my trees ? "
On the day before his death he talked to the doctor about death: "What a
shadow this life is, and how men cling to what is after all but a small part of the
great world's life." Then the doctor told him (for his interest was always keen
" in the lot of lowly men ") of an incident that had happened lately. "A villager,
ninety years old, was dying, and had so much pined to see his old bed-ridden wife
once more that they carried her to where he lay. He pressed his shrunken hand
upon her hand, and in a husky voice said to her, 'Come soon,' and soon after
passed away himself." My father murmured "True Faith"; and the tears were
in his voice. Suddenly he gathered himself together and spoke one word about
himself to the doctor, "Death?" The doctor bowed, and he said, "That's well."
Later he exclaimed, "I have opened it." I cannot tell whether he spoke
to my mother, referring to the Shakespeare opened by him at
Hang there like fruit, my soul,
Till the tree die,
which he always said were among the tenderest Unes in Shakespeare ; or
whether these hues from one of his own last poems of which he was fond
were running through his head —
Fear not thou the hidden purpose of that Power which alone is great,
Nor the myriad world. His shadow, nor the silent Opener of the Gate.
During the evening the full moon flooded the room and the great
landscape outside with Ught ; and we watched in solemn stillness. He
passed away at 1.35 a.m. on Thursday, October 6, his hand resting on
his Shakespeare, and I spoke over him his own prayer, "God accept him !
Christ receive him ! " because I knew that he would have wished it.
He was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey on October 12, next to
Robert Browning and in front of the Chaucer monument. The great
Iviii LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON^
crowd round the Abbey and the funeral service with its two anthems,
"Crossing the Bar" and "The Silent Voices," rising above the vast
congregation, will be long remembered. Every day for weeks after
multitudes thronged by the new-made grave in a never-ceasing proces-
sion. The tributes of sympathy which we received from many countries
and from all classes and creeds were not only remarkable for their
universahty, but for their depth of feehng. Against the pillar near his
grave has been placed the fine bust of him by Woolner.
His wife survived him four years, and is buried in the quiet church-
yard at Freshwater.
Dear, near and true, no truer Time himself
Can prove you, the' he make you evermore
Dearer and nearer.
TENNYSON.
(The best-known portraits of my father are by Laurence, Watts,
Herkomer, and Millais. The best photographs are a half-length by
Mayall, a profile by Mrs. Cameron, and two three-quarters by Barraud
done in his eightieth year.)
TO THE QUEEN.
Revered, beloved — O you that hold
A nobler offi.ce upon earth
Than arms, or potver of brain, or birth
Could give the warrior kings of old,
Victoria, — since your Royal grace
To one of less desert allows
This laurel greener from the brows
Of him that uttered nothing base ;
And should your greatness, and the care
That yokes zvith empire, yield you time
To make demand of modern rhyme
If aught of ancient worth be there ;
Then — while a sweeter music wakes.
And thro' wild March the throstle calls.
Where all about your palace-walls
The sun-lit almond-blossom shakes —
Take, Madam, this poor book of song;
For thd* the faults were thick as dust
In vacant chambers, I could trust
Your kindness. May you rule us long.
And leave us rulers of your blood
As noble till the latest day I
May children of otir children say,
* She wrought her people lasting good ;
' Her court tvas pure ; her life serene ;
God gave her peace ; her land repoied ,
A thousand claims to reverence closed
In her as Mother, Wife, and Queen ;
* And statesmen at her council met
Who knezv the seasons when to take
Occasion by the hand, and make
The bounds of freedom wider yet
* By shaping some august decree.
Which kept her throne unshaken still.
Broad-based upon her people's will, <
And compass* d by the inviolate sea.'
March, 1851.
6
JUVENILIA.
CLARIBEL.
A MELODY.
I.
Where Claribel low-lieth
The breezes pause and die,
Letting the rose-leaves fall :
But the solemn oak-tree sigheth,
' Thick-leaved, ambrosial.
With an ancient melody
Of an inward agony,
Where Claribel low-lieth.
II.
At eve the beetle boometh
Athwart the thicket lone :
At noon the wild bee hummeth
About the moss'd headstone :
At midnight the moon cometh,
And looketh down alone,
/Her song the lintvi^hite swelleth,
/ The clear-voiced mavis dwelleth,
The callow throstle lispeth,
The slumbrous wave outwelleth,
The babbling runnel crispeth,
The hollow grot replieth
Where Claribel low-lieth.
NOTHING WILL DIE.
When will the stream be aweary of
flowing
Under my eye?
When will the wind be aweary of blowing
Over the sky?
When will the clouds be aweary of
fleeting?
When will the heart be aweary of
beating?
And nature die?
Never, oh ! never, nothing will die;
The stream flows,
The wind blows,
The cloud fleets,
The heart beats,
Nothing will die.
Nothing will die ;
All things will change
Thro' eternity.
'Tis the world's winter;
Autumn and summer
Are gone long ago;
Earth is dry to the centre,
But spring, a new comer,
A spring rich and strange,
Shall make the winds blow
Round and round,
Thro' and thro',
Here and there,
Till the air
And the ground
Shall be fiU'd with life anew.
The world was never made;
It will change, but it will not fade.
So let the wind range;
For even and morn
Ever will be
Thro' eternity.
Nothing was born;
Nothing will die;
All things will change.
ALL THINGS WILL DIE — LEONINE ELEGIACS.
ALL THINGS WILL DIE.
Clearly the blue river chimes in its
flowing
Under my eye ;
Warmly and broadly the south winds are
blowing
Over the sky.
One after another the white clouds are
fleeting;
Every heart this May morning in joyance
is beating
Full merrily;
Yet all things must die.
The stream will cease to flow;
The wind will cease to blow;
The clouds will cease to fleet;
The heart will cease to beat;
For all things must die.
All things must die.
Spring will come never more.
Oh ! vanity !
Death waits at the door. .
See ! our friends are all forsaking
The wine and the merrymaking.
We are call'd — we must go.
Laid low, very low,
In the dark we must lie.
The merry glees are still;
The voice of the bird
Shall no more be heard,
Nor the wind on the hill.
Oh ! misery !
Hark ! death is calling
While I speak to ye,
The jaw is falling.
The red cheek paling,
The strong limbs failing;
Ice with the warm blood mixing;
The eyeballs fixing.
Nine times goes the passing bell :
Ye merry souls, farewell.
The old earth
Had a birth.
As all men know,
Long ago.
And the old earth must die. .
So let the warm winds range.
And the blue wave beat the shore;
For even and morn
Ye will never see
Thro' eternity.
All things were born.
Ye will come never more,
For all things must die.
LEONINE ELEGIACS.
Low-flowing breezes are roaming the
broad valley dimm'd in the gloaming :
Thro' the black-stemm'd pines only the
far river shines.
Creeping thro' blossomy rushes and bowers
of rose-blowing bushes,
Down by the poplar tall rivulets babble
and fall.
Barketh the shepherd-dog cheerly; the
grasshopper caroUeth clearly;
Deeply the wood-dove coos; shrilly the
owlet halloos;
Winds creep; dews fall chilly: in her
first sleep earth breathes stilly :
Over the pools in the burn water- gnats
murmur and mourn.
Sadly the far kine loweth : the glimmer-
ing water outflovveth :
Twin peaks shadow'd with pine slope to
the dark hyaline.
Low-throned Hesper is stayed between
the two peaks; but the Naiad
Throbbing in mild unrest holds him
beneath in her breast.
The ancient poetess singeth, that Hes-
perus all things bringeth.
Smoothing the wearied mind : bring me
my love, Rosalind.
Thou comest morning or even; she
Cometh not morning or even.
False-eyed Hesper, unkind, where is my
sweet Rosalind?
SUPPOSED CONFESSIONS
OF A SECOND-RATE SENSITIVE MIND.
0 God ! my God ! have mercy now.
1 faint, I fall. Men say that Thou
Didst die for me, for such as me,
Patient of ill, and death, and scorn,
And that my sin was as a thorn
Among the thorns that girt Thy brow.
Wounding Thy soul. — That even now,
In this extremest misery
CONFESSIONS OF A SENSITIVE MIND.
Of ignorance, I should require
A sign ! and if a bolt of fire
Would rive the slumbrous summer noon
While I do pray to Thee alone,
Think my belief would stronger grow !
Is not my human pride brought low?
The boastings of my spirit still?
The joy I had in my freewill
All cold, and dead, and corpse-like grown ?
And what is left to me, but Thou,
And faith in Thee? Men pass me by;
Christians with happy countenances —
And children all seem full of Thee !
And women smile with saint-like glances
Like Thine own mother's when she bow'd
Above Thee, on that happy morn
When angels spake to men aloud,
And Thou and peace to earth were born.
Goodwill to me as well as all —
I one of them : my brothers they :
Brothers in Christ — a world of peace
And confidence, day after day;
And trust and hope till things should cease,
And then one Heaven receive us all.
How sweet to have a common faith !
To hold a common scorn of death !
And at a burial to hear
The creaking cords which wound and eat
Into my human heart, whene'er
Earth goes to earth, with grief, not fear.
With hopeful grief, were passing sweet !
Thrice happy state again to be
The trustful infant on the knee !
Who lets his rosy fingers play
About his mother's neck, and knows
Nothing beyond his mother's eyes.
They comfort him by night and day;
They light his little life alway;
He hath no thought of coming woes;
He hath no care of life or death;
Scarce outward signs of joy arise,
Because the Spirit of happiness
And perfect rest so inward is;
And loveth so his innocent heart.
Her temple and her place of birth,
Where she would ever wish to dwell.
Life of the fountain there, beneath
Its salient springs, and far apart.
Hating to wander out on earth,
Or breathe into the hollow air,
Whose chillness would make visible
Her subtil, v/arm, and golden breath.
Which mixing with the infant's blood.
Fulfils him with beatitude.
Oh ! sure it is a special care
Of God, to fortify from doubt,
To arm in proof, and guard about
With triple-mailed trust, and clear
Delight, the infant's dawning year.
Would that my gloomed fancy were
As thine, my mother, when with browc
Propt on thy knees, my hands upheld
In thine, I listen'd to thy vows.
For me outpour'd in holiest prayer —
For me unworthy ! — and beheld
Thy mild deep eyes upraised, that knew
The beauty and repose of faith.
And the clear spirit shining thro'.
Oh ! wherefore do we grow awry
From roots which strike so deep? why
• dare
Paths in the desert? Could not I
Bow myself down, where thou hast knelt.
To the earth — until the ice would melt
Here, and I feel as thou hast felt?
What Devil had the heart to scathe
Flowers thou hadst rear'd — to brush the
de-.'
From thine own lily, when thy grave
Was deep, my mother, in the clay?
Myself? Is it thus? Myself? Had I
So little love for thee? But why
Prevail'd not thy pure prayers? Why
pray
To one who heeds not, who can save
But will not? Great in faith, and strong
Against the grief of circumstance
Wert thou, and yet unheard. What if
Thou pleadest still, and seest me drive
Thro' utter dark a full-sail'd skiff,
Unpiloted i' the echoing dance
Of reboant whirlwinds, stooping low
Unto the death, not sunk ! I know
At matins and at evensong.
That thou, if thou wert yet alive.
In deep and daily prayers would'st strive
To reconcile me with thy God.
Albeit, my hope is gray, and cold
At heart, thou wouldest murmur still —
' Bring this Iamb back into Thy fold,
My Lord, if so it be Thy will.'
Would'st kJA me I must brook the rod
And chastisement of human pride;
CONFESSIONS OF A SENSITIVE MIND— THE KRAKEN
That pride, the sin of devils, stood
Betwixt me and the light of God !
That hitherto I had defied
And had rejected God — that grace
Would drop from his o'er-brimming love,
As manna on my wilderness.
If 1 would pray — that God would move
And strike the hard, hard rock, and
thence,
Sweet in their utmost bitterness,
Would issue tears of penitence
Wliich would keep green hope's life.
Alas!
I think that pride hath now no place
Nor sojourn in me. I am void,
Dark, formless, utterly destroyed.
Why not believe then ? Why not yet
Anchor thy frailty there, where man
Hath moor'd and rested? Ask the sea
At midnight, when the crisp slope waves
After a tempest, rib and fret
The broad-imbased beach, why he
Slumbers not like a mountain tarn?
Wherefore his ridges are not curls
And ripples of an inland mere?
Wherefore he moaneth thus, nor can
Draw down into his vexed pools
All that blue heaven which hues and
paves
The other? I am too forlorn.
Too shaken : my own weakness fools
My judgment, and my spirit whirls,
Moved from beneath with doubt and fear.
' Yet,' said I, in my morn of youth,
The unsunn'd freshness of my strength,
When I went forth in quest of truth,
* It is man's privilege to doubt.
If so be that from doubt at length.
Truth may stand forth unmoved of
change.
An image with profulgent brows.
And perfect limbs, as from the storm
Of running fires and fluid range
Of lawless airs, at last stood out
This excellence £-nd solid form
Of constant beaut^'. For the Ox
Feeds in the herb, and sleeps, or fills
The horned valleys all about.
And hollows of the fringed hills
In summer heats, with placid lows
Unfearing, till his own blood flows
About his hoof. And in the flocks
The lamb rejoiceth in the year,
And raceth freely with his fere,
And answers to his mother's calls
From the flower'd furrow. In a time.
Of which he wots not, run short pains
Thro' his warm heart; and then, from
whence
He knows not, on his light there falls
A shadow; and his native slope,
Where he was wont to leap and climb.
Floats from his sick and filmed eyes.
And something in the darkness draws
His forehead earthward, and he dies.
Shall man live thus, in joy and hope
As a young lamb, who cannot dream.
Living, but that he shall Uve on?
Shall we not look into the laws
Of life and death, and things that seem.
And things that be, and analyse
Our double natuire, and compare
All creeds till we have found the one,
If one there be? ' Ay me ! I fear
All may not doubt, but everywhere
Some must clasp Idols. Yet, my God,
Whom call I Idol? Let Thy dove
Shadow me over, and my sins
Be unremember'd, and Thy love
Enlighten me. Oh teach me yet
Somewhat before the heavy clod
Weighs on me, and the busy fret
Of that sharp-headed worm begins
In the gross blackness underneath.
O weary life ! O weary death !
O spirit and heart made desolate !
O damned vacillating state !
THE KRAKEN.
Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth : faintest sunlights
flee
About his shadowy sides : above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and
height;
And far away into the sickly light.
From many a wondrous grot and secret
cell
Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
SONG— LILIAN— ISABEL.
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering
green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his
sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the sur-
face die.
SONG.
The winds, as at their hour of birth,
Leaning upon the ridged sea.
Breathed low around the rolling earth
With mellow preludes, * We are free.'
The streams through many a lilied row
Down-carolling to the crisped sea,
Low-tinkled with a bell-like flow
Atween the blossoms, ' We are free.'
LILIAN.
Airy, fairy Lilian,
Flitting, fairy LiHan,
When I ask her if she love me,
Claps her tiny hands above me,
Laughing all she can;
She'll not tell me if she love me.
Cruel little Lilian.
II.
When my passion seeks
Pleasance in love-sighs.
She, looking thro' and thro' me
Thoroughly to undo me.
Smiling, never speaks :
So innocent-arch, so cunning-simple,
FVom beneath her gathered wimple
Glancing with black-beaded eyes.
Till the lightning laughters dimple
The baby-roses in her cheeks;
Then away she flies.
III.
Prythee weep. May Lilian !
Gaiety without eclipse
Wearieth me. May Lilian:
Thro' my very heart it thrilleth
When from crimson-threaded lips
Silver-treble laughter trilleth :
Prythee weep. May Lilian.
Praying all I can.
If prayers will not hush thee,
Airy Lilian,
Like a rose-leaf I will crush thee,
Fairy Lilian.
ISABEL.
Eyes not down-dropt nor over-bright,
but fed
With the clear-pointed flame of chastity,
Clear, without heat, undying, tended by
Pure vestal thoughts in the trans-
lucent fane
Of her still spirit ; locks not wide-dispread.
Madonna-wise on either side her
head;
Sweet lips whereon perpetually did
reign
The summer calm of golden charity.
Were fixed shadows of thy fixed mood.
Revered Isabel, the crown and head.
The stately flower of female fortitude.
Of perfect wifehood and pure lowli
head.
II.
The intuitive decision of a bright
And thorough-edged intellect to part
Error from crime; a prudence to
withhold;
The laws of marriage character'd in
gold
Upon the blanched tablets of her heart;
A love still burning upward, giving light
To read those laws; an accent very low
In blandishment, but a most silver flow
Of subtle-paced counsel in distress,
Right to the -heart and brain, tho* unde-
scried,
Winning its way with extreme gentle-
ness
Thro' all the outworks of suspicious
pride;
ISABEL — MARIANA.
A courage to endure and to obey;
A hate of gossip parlance, and of sway,
Crown'd Isabel, thro' all her placid life,
The queen of marriage, a most perfect
wife.
The mellow'd reflex of a winter moon;
A clear stream flowing with a muddy one.
Till in its onward current it absorbs
With swifter movement and in purer
light
The vexed eddies of its wayward
brother:
A leaning and upbearing parasite,
Clothing the stem, which else had
fallen quite
With cluster'd flower-bells and am-
brosial orbs
Of rich fruit-buiiches leaning on
each other —
Shadow forth thee: — the world hath
not another
(Tho' all her fairest forms are types of
thee,
And thou of God in thy great charity)
Of such a finish'd chasten'd purity.
' Mariana in the moated grange.'
Measure for Measure.
With blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
(She only said, ' Mv life is dreary,
He Cometh not,' she said;
She said, ' I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead ! '
Her tears fell with the dews ^t even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
f She could not look on the sweet heaven.
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky.
She drew her casement curtain by.
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, ' Th^jjight is dreary,
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, ' I am aweary, aweary
I would that I were dead 1 '
Upon the middle of the night.
Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The cock sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her : without hope of change.
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn.
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, * Xitfi-da^is dreary,
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, ' I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead ! '
About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept.
And o'er it many, round and small.
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark:
P'or leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, ' My life is dreary.
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, ' I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead ! '
And ever when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up and away.
In the white curtain, to and fro.
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low.
And wild winds bound within their cell.
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said, * The night is dreary.
He cometh not,' she satd;
She said, * I am aweary, aweary,
I wrould that I were dead ! *
All day within the dreamy house.
The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot
shriek'd.
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors,
Old footsteps trod the upper floors.
Old voices called her from without.
MARIANA — MADELINE.
She only said, * My life is dreary,
He Cometh not,' she said;
She said, *J api avvpary. aweary,
I would that I were dead ! '
The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then, said she, * I am very dreary.
He will not come,' she said;
She wept, * I am aweary, aweary,
Oh God. \^^^ T wi^re dead!'
TO
Clear-headed friend, whose joyful scorn,
Edged with sharp laughter, cutsatwain
The knots that tangle human creeds,
The wounding cords that bind and
strain
The heart until it bleeds,
Ray-fringed eyelids of the morn
Roof not a glance so keen as thine :
If aught of prophecy be mine.
Thou wilt not live in vain.
II.
Low-cowering shall the Sophist sit;
Falsehood shall bare her plaited brow:
Fair-fronted Truth shall droop not now
With shrilling shafts of subtle wit.
Nor martyr-flames, nor trenchant swords.
Can do away that ancient lie;
A gentler death shall Falsehood die,
Shot thro' and thro* with cunning words.
Weak Truth a-leaning on her crutch,
Wan, wasted Truth in her utmost need.
Thy kingly intellect shall feed.
Until she be an athlete bold.
And weary with a finger's touch
Those writhed limbs of lightning speed;
Like that strange angel which of old,
Until the breaking of the light,
Wrestled with wandering Israel,
Past Yabbok broke the livelong night,
And heaven's mazed signs stood still
In the dim tract of Penuel.
MADELINE.
Thou art not steep'd in golden languors,
No tranced summer calm is thine.
Ever varying Madeline.
Thro' light and shadow thou dost
range.
Sudden glances, sweet and strange,
Delicious spites and darhng angers.
And airy forms of flitting change.
II.
Smiling, frowning, evermore.
Thou art perfect in love-lore.
Revealings deep and clear are thine
Of wealthy smiles : but who may know
Whether smile or frown be fleeter?
Whether smile or frown be sweeter,
Who may know?
Frowns perfect-sweet along the brow
Light-glooming over eyes divine,
Like little clouds sun-fringed, are thine,
Ever varying Madeline.
Thy smile and frown are not aloof
From one another,
Each to each is dearest brother;
Hues of the silken sheeny woof
Momently shot into each other.
All the mystery is thine;
Smiling, frowning, evermore,
Thou art perfect in love-lore,
Ever varying Madeline.
A subtle, sudden flame.
By veering passion fann'd.
About thee breaks and dances:
When I would kiss thy hand,
The flush of anger'd shame-
O'erflows thy calmer glances,
And o'er black brows drops down
A sudden-curved frown :
But when I turn away,
Thou, willing me to stay,
Wooest not, nor vainly wranglest;
SONG: THE OWL— THE ARABIAN NIGHTS.
But, looking fixedly the while,
All my bounden heart entanglest
In a golden-netted smile;
Then in madness and in bliss,
If my lips should dare to kiss
Thy taper fingers amorously.
Again thou blushest angerly;
And o'er black brows drops down
A sudden-curved frown.
SONG — THE OWL.
When cats run home and light is come,
And dew is cold upon the ground,
And the far-off stream is dumb.
And the whirring sail goes round.
And the whirring sail goes round;
Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.
II.
When merry milkmaids click the latch,
And rarely smells the new-mown hay.
And the cock hath sung beneath the
thatch
Twice or thrice his roundelay.
Twice or thrice his roundelay;
Alone and warming his five wits.
The white owl in the belfry sits.
SECOND SONG.
TO THE SAME.
Thy tuwhits are luU'd, I wot.
Thy tuwhoos of yesternight.
Which upon the dark afloat,
So toG.r echo with delight.
So took echo with delight,
That her voice untuneful grown.
Wears all day a fainter tone.
II.
I would mock thy chaunt anew;
But I cannot mimic it;
Not a whit of thy tuwhoo,
Thee to woo to thy tuwhit.
Thee to woo to thy tuwhit,
With a lengthen'd loud halloo,
Tuwhoo, tuwhit, tuwhit, tuwhoo-o-o.
RECOLLECTIONS OF THE
ARABIAN NIGHTS.
When the breeze of a joyful dawn blew
free -
In the silken sail of infancy,
The tide of time flow'd back with me.
The forward-flowing tide of time;
And many a sheeny summer-morn,
Adown the Tigris I was borne,
By Bagdat's shrines of fretted gold.
High-walled gardens green and old;
True Mussulman was I and sworn.
For it was in the golden prime
Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Anight my shallop, rustling thro'
The low and bloomed foliage, drove
The fragrant, glistening deeps, and clove
The citron-shadows in the blue :
By garden porches on the brim.
The costly doors flung open wide.
Gold glittering thro' lamplight dim,
And broider'd sofas on each side :
In sooth it was a goodly time.
For it was in the golden prime
Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Often, where clear-stemm'd platans
* guard
The outlet, did I turn away
The boat-head down a broad canal
From the main river sluiced, where all
The slopihg of the moon-lit sward
Was damask-work, and deep inlay
Of braided blooms unmown, which
crept
Adown to where the water slept
A goodly place, a goodly time.
For it was in the golden prime
Of good Haroun Alraschid.
A motion from the river won
Ridged the smooth level, bearing on
My shallop thro' the star-strown calm,
Until another night in night
I enter'd, from the clearer light,
Imbower'd vaults of pillar'd palm.
Imprisoning sweets, which, as they
clomb
Heavenward, were stay'd beneath the
dome
RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS.
Of hollow boughs. — A goodly time,
For it was in the golden prime
Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Still onward; and the clear canal
' Is rounded to as clear a lake..
From the green rivage many a fall
Of diamond rillets musical,
Thro' little crystal arches low
Down from the central fountain's flow
Fall'n silver-chiming, seemed to shake
The sparkling flints beneath the prow.
A goodly place, a goodly time,
For it was in the golden prime
Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Above thro' many a bowery turn
A walk with vary-colour'd shells
Wander'd engrain'd. On either side
All round about the fragrant marge
From fluted vase, and brazen urn
In order, eastern flowers large,
Some dropping low their crimson bells
Half-closed, and others studded wide
With disks and tiars, fed the time
With odour in the golden prime
Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Far off, and where the lemon grove
In closest coverture upsprung.
The living airs of middle night *
Died round the bulbul as he sung;
Not he : but something which possess'd
The darkness of the world, delight,
Life, anguish, death, immortal love.
Ceasing not, mingled, unrepress'd,
Apart from place, withholding time,
But flattering the golden prime
Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Black the garden-bowers and grots
Slumber'd : the solemn palms were
ranged
Above, unwoo'd of summer wind :
A sudden splendour from behind
Flush'd all the leaves with rich gold-
green.
And, flowing rapidly ' etween
Their interspaces, counterchanged
The level lake wit. diamond-plots
Of dark and bright. A lovely time,
For it was in the golden prime
Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Dark-blue the deep sphere overhead.
Distinct with vivid stars inlaid,
Grew darker from that under-flame :
So, leaping lightly from the boat.
With silver anchor left afloat.
In marvel whence that glory came
Upon me, as in sleep I sank
In cool soft turf upon the bank.
Entranced with that place and time.
So worthy of the golden prime
Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Thence thro' the garden I was drawn —
A realm of pleasance, many a mound.
And many a shadow-chequer'd lawn
Full of the city's stilly sound.
And deep myrrh-thickets blowing round
The stately cedar, tamarisks.
Thick rosaries of scented thorn.
Tall orient shrubs, and obelisks
Graven with emblems of the time,
In honour of the golden prime
Of good Haroun Alraschid.
With dazed vision unawares
From the long alley's latticed shade
Emerged, I came upon the great
Pavilion of the Caliphat.
Right to the carven cedarn doors,
Flung inward over spangled floors.
Broad-based flights of marble stairs
Ran up with golden balustrade.
After the fashion of the time,
And humour of the golden prime
Of good Haroun Alraschid.
The fourscore windows all alight
As with the quintessence of flame,
A million tapers flaring bright
From twisted silvers look'd to shame
The hollow-vaulted dark, and stream'd
Upon the mooned domes aloof
In inmost Bagdat, till there seem'd
Hundreds of crescents on the roof
Of night new-risen, that marvellous time
To celebrate the golden prime
Of good Hr.roun Alraschid.
Then stole I up, and trancedly
Gazed on the Persian girl alone,
Serene with argent-lidded eyes
Amorous, and lashes like to rays
Of darkness, and a brow of pearl
ODE TO MEMORY.
IZ
Tressed with redolent ebony,
In many a dark delicious curl,
Flowing beneath her rose-hued zone;
The sweetest lady of the time,
Well worthy of the golden prime
Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Six columns, three on either side.
Pure silver, underpropt a rich
Throne of the massive ore, from which
Down-droop'd, in many a floating fold,
Engarlanded and diaper'd
With inwrought flowers, a cloth of gold.
Thereon, his deep eye laughter-stirr'd
With merriment of kingly pride,
Sole star of all that place and time,
I saw him — in his golden prime,
The Good Haroun Alraschid.
ODE TO MEMORY.
ADDRESSED TO .
I.
Thou who stealest fire.
From the fountains of the past.
To glorify the present; oh, haste,
Visit ray low desire !
Strengthen me, enlighten me !
I faint in this obscurity.
Thou dewy dawn of memory.
II-
Come not as thou camest of late,
Flinging the gloom of yesternight
On the white day; but robed in so.ften'd
light
Of orient state.
Whilome thou camest with the morning
mist.
Even as a maid, whose stately brow
The dew-impearled winds of dawn have
kiss'd,
When she, as thou,
Stays on her floating locks the lovely
freight
Of overflowing blooms, and earliest shoots
Of orient green, giving safe pledge of fruits.
Which in wintertide shall star
The black earth with brilliance rare.
Whilome thou camest with the morning
mist.
And with the evening cloud,
Showering thy gleaned wealth into my
open breast
(Those peerless flowers which in the
rudest wind
Never grow sere,
When rooted in the garden of the mind,
Because they are the earliest of the
year).
Nor was the night thy shroud.
In sweet dreams softer than unbroken rest
Thou leddest by the hand thine infant
Hope.
The eddying of her garments caught from
thee
The light of thy great presence ; and the
cope
Of the half-attain'd futurity,
Tho' deep not fathomless.
Was cloven with the million stars which
tremble
O'er the deep mind of dauntless infancy.
Small thought was there of life's distress;
For sure she deem'd no mist of earth
could dull
Those spirit-thrilling eyes so keen and
beautiful :
Sure she was nigher to heaven's spheres.
Listening the lordly music flowing from
The illimitable years.
0 strengthen me, enlighten me !
1 faint in this obscurity.
Thou dewy dawn of memory.
IV.
Come forth, I charge thee, arise.
Thou of the many tongues, the myriad
eyes !
Thou comest not with shows of flaunting
vines
Unto mine inner eye,
Divinest Memory !
Thou wert not nursed by the waterfall
Which ever sounds and shines
A pillar of white light upon the wall
Of purple cliffs, aloof descried :
Come from the woods that belt the gray
hill-side,
12
ODE TO MEMORY— SONG.
The seven elms, the poplars four
That stand beside my father's door,
And chiefly from the brook that loves
To purl o'er matted cress and ribbed sand,
Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves,
Drawing into his narrow earthen urn,
In every elbow and turn.
The filter'd tribute of the rough woodland,
O ! hither lead thy feet !
Pour round mine ears the livelong bleat
Of the thick-fleeced sheep from wattled
folds.
Upon the ridged wolds,
"When the first matin-song hath waken'd
loud
Over the dark dewy earth forlorn.
What time the amber morn
Forth gushes from beneath a low-hung
cloud.
Large dowries doth the raptured eye
To the young spirit present
When first she is wed ;
And like a bride of old
In triumph led.
With music and sweet showers
Of festal flowers.
Unto the dwelling she must sway.
Well hast thou done, great artist Memory,
In setting round thy first experiment
With royal frame-work of wrought
gold;
Needs must thou dearly love thy first
essay.
And foremost in thy various gallery
Place it, where sweetest sunlight falls
Upon the storied walls;
For the discovery
And newness of thine art so pleased thee.
That all which thou hast drawn of fairest
Or boldest since, but lightly weighs
With thee unto the love thou bearest
The first-born of thy genius. Artist-like,
Ever retiring thou dost gaze
On the prime labour of thine early days :
No matter what the sketch might be;
Whether the high field on the bushless
Pike,
Or even a sand-built ridge
Of heaped hills that mound the sea,
Overblown with murmurs harsh.
Or even a lowly cottage whence we see
Stretch'd wide and wild the waste enor-
mous marsh.
Where from the frequent bridge.
Like emblems of infinity,
The trenched waters run from sky to sky;
/Or a garden bower'd close
With plaited alleys of the trailing rose.
Long alleys falling down to twilight grots.
Or opening upon level plots
Of crowned lilies, standing near
Purple-spiked lavender :
Whither in after life retii-ed
From brawling storms.
From weary wind.
With youthful fancy re-inspired,
We may hold converse with all forms
Of the many-sided mind.
And those whom passion hath not blinded,
Subtle-thoughted, myriad-minded.
My friend, with you to live alone.
Were how much better than to own
A crown, a sceptre, and a throne !
0 strengthen me, enlighten me !
1 faint in this obscurity,
Thou dewy dawn of memory.
SONG.
A SPIRIT haunts the year's last hours
Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers :
To himself he talks;
For at eventide, listening earnestly,
At his work you may hear him sob and
sigh
In the walks;
Earthward he boweth the heavy
stalks
Of the mouldering flowers :
Heavily hangs the broad sunflower
Over its grave i' the earth so
chilly;
Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.
The air is damp, and hush'd, and close.
As a sick man's room when he tr'-^*-
repose
A CHARACTER— THE POET.
13
An hour before death ;
My very heart faints and my whole soul
grieves
At the moist rich smell of the rotting
leaves,
And the breath
Of the fading edges of box be-
neath,
And the year's last rose.
Heavily hangs the broad sunflower
Over its grave i* the earth so
chilly;
Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.
A CHARACTER.
With a half-glance upon the sky
At night he said, * The wanderings
Of this most intricate Universe
Teach me the nothingness of things.'
Yet could not all creation pierce
Beyond the bottom of his eye.
He spake of beauty : that the dull
Saw no divinity in grass,
Life in dead stones, or spirit in air;
Then looking as 'twere in a glass,
He smooth'd his chin and sleek'd his
hair,
And said the earth was beautiful.
He spake of virtue : not the gods
More purely when they wish to charm
Pallas and Juno sitting by :
And with a sweeping of the arm,
And a lack-lustre dead-blue eye.
Devolved his rounded periods.
Most delicately hour by hour
He canvass'd human mysteries.
And trod on silk, as if the winds
Blew his own praises in his eyes,
And stood aloof from other minds
In impotence of fancied power.
With lips depress'd as he were meek.
Himself unto himself he sold :
Upon himself himseif did feed :
Quiet, dispassionate, and cold,
And other than his form of creed,
With chisell'd features clear and sleek.
THE POET.
The poet in a golden clime was born.
With golden stars above;
Dower'd with the hate of hate, the
scorn of scorn,
The love of love.
He saw thro' life and death, thro' good
and ill.
He saw thro' his, own soul.
The marvel of the everlasting will,
An gpen scroll.
Before him lay: with echoing feet he
threaded
The secretest walks of fame :
The viewless arrows of his thoughts
were headed
And wing'd with flame.
Like Indian reeds blown from his silver
tongue,
And of so fierce a flight,
From Calpe unto Caucasus they sung,
Filling with light
And vagrant melodies the winds which
bore
Them earthward till they lit;
Then, like the arrow-seeds of the field
flower,
The fruitful wit
Cleaving, took root, and springing forth •
anew
Where'er they fell, behold,
Like to the mother plant in semblance,
grew
A flower all gold,
And bravely furnish'd all abroad to fling
The winged shafts of truth.
To throng with stately blooms the breath-
ing spring
Of Hope and Youth.
So many minds did gird their orbs with
beams,
Tho' one did fling the fire.
Heaven flow'd upon the soul in many
dreams
Of high desire.
THE POET'S MIND — THE SEA-FAIRIES.
Thus truth was multiplied on truth, the
II.
world
Like one great garden show'd,
Dark-brow'd sophist, come not anear;
And thro' the wreaths of floating dark
All the place is holy ground;
upcurl'd,
Hollow smile and frozen sneer
Rare sunrise flow'd.
Come not here.
Holy water will I pour
And Freedom rear'd in that august sun-
Into every spicy flower
rise
Of the laurel-shrubs that hedge it around.
Her beautiful bold brow,
The flowers would faint at your cruel
When rites and forms before his burning
cheer.
eyes
In your eye there is death,
Melted like snow.
There is frost in your breath
•
Which would blight the plants.
There was no blood upon her maiden
Where you stand you cannot hear
robes
From the groves within
Sunn'd by those orient skies ;
The wild-bird's din.
But round about the circles of the
In the heart of the garden the merry bird
globes
chants.
Of her keen eyes
It would fall to the ground if you came
And in her raiment's hem was traced in
in.
In the middle leaps a fountain
flame
Like sheet lightning,
Wisdom, a name to shake
Ever brightening
All evil dreams of power — a sacred
With a low melodious thunder;
name.
All day and all night it is ever drawn
And when she spake.
From the brain of the purple moun-
Her words did gather thunder as they
tain
Which stands in the distance yonder :
ran,
It springs on a level of bowery lawn.
And as the lightning to the thunder
And the mountain draws it from Heaven
Which follows it, riving the spirit of man,
above,
Making earth wonder.
And it sings a song of undying love;
And yet, tho' its voice be so clear and
So was their meaning to her words. No
full,
sword
You never would hear it; your ears are
Of wrath her right arm whirl'd.
so dull;
But one poor poet's scroll, and with his
So keep where you are : you are foul with
word
sin;
She shook the world.
It would shrink to the earth if you came
in.
THE POEl'S MIND.
THE SEA-FAIRIES.
I.
Slow sail'd the weary mariners and
Vex not thou the poet's mind
saw.
With thy shallow wit :
Betwixt the green brink and the running
Vex not thou the poet's mind;
foam.
For thou canst not fathom it.
Sweet faces, rounded arms, and bosoms
Clear and bright it should be ever.
prest
Flowing like a crystal river;
To little harps of gold; and while they
Bright as light, and clear as wind.
mused
THE DESERTED HOUSE— THE DYING SWAN.
IS
Whispering to each other half in fear,
Shrill music reach'd them on the middle
sea.
Whither away, whither away, whither
away? fly no more.
Whither away from the high green field,
and the happy blossoming shore?
Day and night to the billow the fountain
calls :
Down shower the gambolling waterfalls
From wandering over the lea :
Out of the live-green heart of the dells
They freshen the silvery-crimson shells,
And thick with white bells the clover-hill
swells
High over the full-toned sea :
O hither, come hither and furl your
sails,
Come hither to me and to me :
Hither, come hither and frolic and play;
Here it is only the mew that wails;
We will sing to you all the day :
Mariner, mariner, furl your sails.
For here are the blissful downs and dales,
And merrily, merrily carol the gales.
And the spangle dances in bight and
bay.
And the rainbow forms and flies on che
land
Over the islands free;
And the rainbow lives in the curve of the
sand;
Hither, come hither and see;
And the rainbow hangs on the poising
wave.
And sweet is the colour of cove and
cave.
And sweet shall your welcome be :
O hither, come hither, and be our lords.
For merry brides are we :
We will kiss sweet kisses, and speak
sweet words :
O listen, listen, your eyes shall glisten
With pleasure and love and jubilee :
O listen, listen, your eyes shall glisten
When the sharp clear twang of the golden
chords
Runs up the ridged sea.
Who can light on as happy a shore
All tlie world o'er, all the world o'er?
Whither away? listen and stay : mariner,
mariner, fly no more.
THE DESERTED HOUSE.
I.
Life and Thought have gone away
Side by side,
Leaving door and windows wide ;
Careless tenants they !
All within is dark as night:
In the windows is no light;
And no murmur at the door.
So frequent on its hinge before.
Close the door, the shutters close,
Or thro' the windows we shall see
The nakedness and vacancy _
Of the dark deserted house.
IV.
Come away : no more of mirth
Is here or merry-making sound.
The house was builded of the earth.
And shall fall again to ground.
Come away : for Life and Thought
Here no longer dwell;
But in a city glorious —
A great and distant city — have bouglit
A mansion incorruptible.
Would they could have stayed with us !
THE DYING SWAN.
The plain was grassy, wild and bare,
Wide, wild, and open to the air.
Which had built up everywhere
An under-roof of doleful gray.
With an inner voice the river ran,
Adown it floated a dying swan,
And loudly did lament.
It was the middle of the day.
Ever the weary wind went on,
And took the reed-tops as it went.
Some blue peaks in the distance rose,
And white against the cold-white sky,
i6
THE DYING SWAN— A DIRGE.
Shone out their crowning snows.
One willow over the river wept,
And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;
Above in the wind was the swallow,
Chasing itself at its own wild will,
And far thro' the marish green and
still
The tangled water-courses slept,
Shot over with purple, and green, and
yellow.
III.
The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul
Of that waste place with joy
Hidden in sorrow : at first to the ear
The warble was low, and full and clear;
And floating about the under.-sky,
Prevailing in weakness, the coronach
stole
Sometimes afar, and sometimes anear
But anon her awful jubilant voice.
With a music strange and manifold,
Flow'd forth on a carol free and bold
As when a mighty people rejoice
With shawms, and with cymbals, and
harps of gold,
And the tumult of their acclaim is roU'd
Thro' the open gates of the city afar.
To the shepherd who watcheth the even-
ing star.
And the creeping mosses and clambering
weeds,
And the willow-branches hoar and dank,
And the wavy swell of the soughing
reeds.
And the wave-worn horns of the echoing
bank.
And the silvery . marish-flowers that
throng
The desolate creeks and pools among.
Were flooded over with eddying song.
A DIRGE.
I.
Now is done thy long day's work;
Fold thy palms across thy breast.
Fold thine arms, turn to thy rest.
Let them rave.
Shadows of the silver birk
Sweep the green that folds thy grave.
Let them rave.
Thee nor carketh care nor slander;
Nothing but the small cold worm
Fretteth thine enshrouded form.
Let them rave.
Light and shadow ever wander
O'er the green that folds thy grave.
Let them rave.
III.
Thou wilt not turn upon thy bed;
Chaunteth not the brooding bee
Sweeter tones than calumny?
Let them rave.
Thou wilt never raise thine head
From the green that folds thy grave.
Let them rave.
IV.
Crocodiles wept tears for thee ;
The woodbine and eglatere
Drip sweeter dews than traitor's tear.
Let them rave.
Rain makes music in the tree
O'er the green that folds thy grave.
Let them rave.
Round thee blow, self-pleached deep.
Bramble roses, faint and pale.
And long purples of the dale.
Let them rave.
These in every shower creep
Thro' the green that folds thy grave.
Let them rave.
The gold-eyed kingcups fine ;
The frail bluebell peereth over
Rare broidry of the purple clover.
Let them rave.
Kings have no such couch as thine^
As the green that folds thy grave.
Let them rave.
VII.
Wild words wander here and there s
God's great gift of speech abused
Makes thy memory confused :
But let them rave.
LOVE AND DEATH— THE BALLAD OF OKI ANA.
17
The balm-cricket carols clear
In the green that folds thy grave.
Let them rave.
LOVE AND DEATH.
What time the mighty moon was gather-
ing light
Love paced the thymy plots of Paradise,
And all about him roU'd his lustrous eyes;
When, turning round a cassia, full in view.
Death, walking all alone beneath a yew,
And talking to himself, first met his
sight :
* You must begone,' said Death, * these
walks are mine.'
Love wept and spread his sheeny vans
for flight;
Yet ere he parted said, 'This hour is
thine :
Thou art the shadow of life, and as the
tree
Stands in the sun and shadows all be-
neath,
So in the light of great eternity
Life eminent creates the shade of death;
The shadow passeth when the tree shall
fall.
But I shall reign for ever over all.'
THE BALLAD OF ORIANA.
My heart is wasted with my woe,
Oriana.
There is no rest for me below,
Oriana.
When the long dun wolds are ribb'd with
snow.
And loud the Norland whirlwinds blow,
Oriana,
Alone I wander, to and fro,
Oriana.
Ere the light on dark was growing,
Oriana,
At midnight the cock was crowing,
Oriana :
Winds were blowing, waters flowing.
We heard the steeds to battle going,
Oriana ;
Aloud the hollow bugle blowing,
Oriana.
In the yew-wood black as night,
Oriana,
Ere I rode into the fight,
Oriana,
While blissful tears blinded my sight
By star-shine and by moonlight,
Oriana,
I to thee my troth did plight,
Oriana.
She stood upon the castle wall,
Oriana :
She watch'd my crest among them all,
Oriana :
She saw me fight, she heard me call,
When forth there stept a foeman tall,
Oriana,
Atween me and the castle wall,
Oriana.
The bitter arrow went aside,
Oriana :
The false, false arrow went aside,
Oriana :
The damned arrow glanced aside,
And pierced thy heart, my love, my
bride,
Oriana !
Thy heart, my life, my love, my bride,
Oriana !
Oh ! narrow, narrow was the space,
Oriana.
Loud, loud rung out the bugle's brays,
Oriana.
Oh ! deathful stabs were dealt apace,
The battle deepen'd in ics place,
Oriana;
But I was down upon my face,
Oriana.
They should have stabb'd me where I lay,
Oriana !
How could I rise and come away,
Oriana?
How could I look upon the day?
They should have stabb'd me where I lay,
.Oriana —
They should have trod me into clay,
Oriana.
O breaking heart that will not break,
Oriana !
i8
CIRCUMSTANCE— THE MERMAN.
0 pale, pale face so sweet and meek,
Oriana !
Thou smilest, but thou dost not speak,
And then the tears run down my cheek,
Oriana :
What wantest thou? whom dost thou
seek,
Oriana?
1 cry aloud : none hear my cries,
Oriana.
Thou comest atween me and the skies,
Oriana.
I feel the tears of blood arise
Up from my heart unto my eyes,
Oriana.
Within thy heart my arrow lies,
Oriana.
O cursed hand ! O cursed blow !
Oriana !
0 happy thou that liest low,
Oriana !
All night the silence seems to flow
Beside me in my utter woe,
Oriana.
A weary, weary way I go,
Oriana. '
When Norland winds pipe down the sea,
Oriana,
1 walk, I dare not think of thee,
Oriana.
Thou liest beneath the greenwood tree,
I dare not die and come to thee,
Oriana.
I hear the roaring of the sea,
Oriana.
CIRCUMSTANCE.
Two children in two neighbour villages,
Playing mad pranks along the heathy leas;
Two strangers meeting at a festival;
Two lovers whispered by an orchard
wall;
Two lives bound fast in one with golden
ease;
Two graves grass-green beside a gray
church -tower,
Wash'd with still rains and daisy blos-
somed;
Two children in one hamlet born and
bred;
So runs the round of life from hour to
hour.
THE MERMAN.
Who would be
A merman bold,
Sitting alone.
Singing alone
Under the sea,
With a crown of gold,
On a throne ?
I would be a merman bold,
I would sit and sing the whole of the
day;
I would fill the sea-halls with a voice of
power;
But at night I would roam abroad and
play
With the mermaids in and out of the
rocks,
Dressing their hair with the white sea-
flower;
And holding them back by their flowing
locks
I would kiss them often under the sea,
And kiss them again till they kiss'd me
Laughingly, laughingly;
And then we would wander away, away
To the pale-green sea-groves straight
and high.
Chasing each other merrily.
III.
There would be neither moon nor star;
But the wave would make music above
us afar —
Low thunder and Hght in the magic
night —
Neither moon nor star.
We would call aloud in the dreamy
dells,
Call to each other and whoop and cry
All night, merrily, merrily;
They would pelt me with starry spangles
and shells,
THE MERMAID.
19
Laughing and clapping their hands be-
Would slowly trail himself sevenfold
tween,
Round the hall where I sate, and look in
All night, merrily, merrily:
at the gate
But I would throw to them back in mine
With his large calm eyes for the love of
Turkis and agate and almondine :
me.
Then leaping out upon them unseen
And all the mermen under the sea
I would kiss them often under the sea.
Would feel their immortality
And kiss them again till they kiss'd me
Die in their hearts for the love of me.
Laughingly, laughingly.
Oh ! what a happy life were mine
III.
Under the hollow-hung ocean green !
Soft are the moss-beds under the sea;
But at night I would wander away.
We would live merrily, merrily.
away,
I would fling on each side my low-
flowing locks,
THE MERMAID.
And lightly vault from the throne and
play
With the mermen in and out of the
I.
rocks;
Who would be
We would run to and fro, and hide and
A mermaid fair,
seek,
Singing alone,
On the broad sea-wolds in the crimson
Combing her hair
shells.
Under the sea,
Whose silvery spikes are nighest the
In a golden curl
sea.
With a comb of pearl,
But if any came near I would call, and
On a throne?
shriek,
And adown the steep like a wave I
II.
would leap
From the diamond-ledges that jut from
I would be a mermaid fair;
the dells;
I would sing to myself the whole of the
For I would not be kiss'd by all who
day;
would list,
With a comb of pearl I would comb my
Of the bold merry mermen under the
hair;
sea;
And still as I comb'd I would sing and
They would sue me, and woo me, and
say.
flatter me,
'Who is it loves me? who loves not
In the purple twilights under the sea;
me?'
But the king of them all would carry
I would comb my hair till my ringlets
me.
would fall
Woo me, and win me, and marry me,
Low adown, low adown.
In the branching jaspers under the
From under my starry sea-bud crown
sea;
Low adown and around,
Then all the dry pied things that be
And I should look like a fountain of
In the hueless mosses under the sea
gold
Would curl round my silver feet silently.
Springing alone
All looking up for the love of me.
With a shrill inner sound.
And if I should carol aloud, from aloft
Over the throne
All things that are forked, and horned,
In the midst of the hall;
and soft
Till that great sea-snake under the sea
Would lean out from the hollow sphere
From his coiled sleeps in the central
of the sea.
deeps
All looking down for the love of me.
20
ADELINE — MAR G ARE T.
ADELINE.
Mystery of mysteries,
Faintly smiling Adeline,
Scarce of earth nor all divine,
Nor unhappy, nor at rest,
But beyond expression fair
With thy floating flaxen hair;
Thy rose-lips and full blue eyes
Take the heart from out my breast.
Wherefore those dim looks of thine,
Shadowy, dreaming Adeline ?
Whence that aery bloom of thine,
Like a lily which the sun
Looks thro' in his sad decline,
And a rose-bush leans upon.
Thou that faintly smilest still.
As a Naiad in a well,
Looking at the set of day.
Or a phantom two hours old
Of a maiden past away.
Ere the placid lips be cold?
Wherefore those faint smiles of thine,
Spiritual Adeline ?
What hope or fear or joy is thine?
Who talketh with thee, Adeline?
For sure thou art not all alone.
Do beating hearts of salient springs
Keep measure with thine own?
Hast thou heard the butterflies
What they say betwixt their wings?
Or in stillest evenings
With what voice the violet woos
To his heart the silver dews?
Or when little airs arise.
How the merry bluebell rings
To the mosses underneath?
Hast thou look'd upon the breath
Of the lilies at sunrise?
Wherefore that faint smile of thine.
Shadowy, dreaming Adeline?
Some honey-converse feeds thy mind,
Some spirit of a crimson rose
In love with thee forgets to close
His curtains, wasting odorous sighs
All night long on darkness blind.
What aileth thee? whom waitest thou
With thy soften'd, shadow'd brow.
And those dew-lit eyes of thine,
Thou faint smiler, Adeline?
Lovest thou the doleful M'ind
When thou gazest at the skies?
Doth the low-tongued Orient
Wander from the side of the morn,
Dripping with Sabsean spice
On thy pillow, lowly bent
With melodious airs lovelorn,
Breathing Light against thy face.
While his locks a-drooping twined
Round thy neck in subtle ring
Make a carcanet of rays.
And ye talk together still.
In the language wherewith Spring
Letters cowslips on the hill?
Hence that look and smile of thine,
Spiritual Adeline.
MARGARET.
O SWEET pale Margaret,
O rare pale Margaret,
What lit your eyes with tearful power,
Like moonlight on a falling shower?
Who lent you, love, your mortal dower
Of pensive thought and aspect pale,
Your melancholy sweet and frail
As perfume of the cuckoo-flower?
From the westward-winding flood,
From the evening-lighted wood.
From all things outward you have
won
A tearful grace, as tho' you stood
Between the rainbow and the sun.
The very smile before you speak.
That dimples your transparent cheek,
Encircles all the heart, and feedeth
The senses with a still delight
Of dainty sorrow without sound,
Like the tender amber round,
Which the moon about her spreadeth,
Moving thro' a fleecy night.
MARGARET— ROSALIND.
21
You love, remaining peacefully,
To hear the murmur of the strife,
But enter not the toil of life.
Your spirit is the calmed sea.
Laid by the tumult of the fight.
You are the evening star, alway
Remaining betwixt dark and bright :
LuU'd echoes of laborious day
Come to you, gleams of mellow light
Float by you on the verge of night.
III.
What can it matter, Margaret,
What songs below the waning stars
The lion-heart, Plantagenet,
Sang looking thro' his prison bars?
Exquisite Margaret, who can tell
The last wild thought of Chatelet,
Just ere the falling axe did part
The burning brain from the true heart.
Even in her sight he loved so well ?
IV.
A fairy shield your Genius made
And gave you on your natal day.
Your sorrow, only sorrow's shade,
Keeps real sorrow far away.
You move not in such solitudes.
You are not less divine,
But more human in your moods,
Than your twin- sister, Adeline.
Your hair is darker, and your eyes
Touch'd with a somewhat darker hue,
And less aerially blue,
But ever trembling thro' the dew
Of dainty-woeful sympathies.
O sweet pale Margaret,
O rare pale Margaret,
Come down, come down, and hear me
speak :
Tie up the ringlets on your cheek :
The sun is just about to set.
The arching limes are tall and shady,
And faint rainy lights are seen.
Moving in the leavy beech.
Rise from the feast of sorrow, lady.
Where all day long you sit between
Joy and woe, and whisper each.
Or only look across the lawn,
Look out below your bower-eaves.
Look down, and let your blue eyes dawn
Upon me thro' the jasmine-leaves.
ROSALIND.
My Rosalind, my Rosalind,
My frolic falcon, with bright eyes.
Whose free delight, from any height of
rapid flight.
Stoops at all game that wing the skies,
My Rosalind, my Rosalind,
My bright-eyed, wild-eyed falcon, whither,
Careless both of wind and weather.
Whither fly ye, what game spy ye,
Up or down the. streaming wind?
II.
The quick lark's closest-caroll'd strains.
The shadow rushing up the sea.
The lightning flash atween the rains.
The sunlight dtiving down the lea,
The leaping stream, the very wind.
That will not stay, upon his way,
To stoop the cowslip to the plains,
Is not so clear and bold and free
As you, my falcon Rosalind.
You care not for another's pains.
Because you are the soul of joy,
Bright metal all without alloy.
Life shoots and glances thro' your veins,
And flashes off a' thousand ways,
Thro' lips and eyes in subtle rays.
Your hawk-eyes are keen and bright,
Keen with triumph, watching still
To pierce me thro' with pointed light;
But oftentimes they flash and glitter
Like sunshine on a dancing rill.
And your words are seeming-bitter.
Sharp and few, but seeming-bitter
From excess of swift delight.
Come down, come home, my Rosalindj
My gay young hawk, my Rosalind :
Too long you keep the upper skies;
Too long you roam and wheel at will;
But we must hood your random eyes,
That care not whom they kill.
ELEANORE.
And your cheek, whose brilliant hue
Is so sparkling-fresh to view,
Some red heath-flower in the dew,
Touch'd with sunrise. We must bind
And keep you fast, my Rosalind,
Fast, fast, my wild-eyed RosaUnd,
And clip your wings, and make you love :
When we have lured you from above,
And that delight of frolic flight, by day
or night.
From North to South,
We'll bind you fast in silken cords,
And kiss aw^y the bitter words
From off your rosy mouth.
ELEANORE.
Thy dark eyes open'd not,
Nor first reveal'd themselves to English
air,
For there is nothing here.
Which, from the outward to the inward
brought,
Moulded thy baby thought.
Far off from human neighbourhood,
Thou wert born on a summer morn,
A mile beneath the cedar-wood.
Thy bounteous forehead was not fann'd
With breezes from our oaken glades,
But thou wert nursed in some delicious
land
Of lavish lights, and floa^^ng shades :
And flattering thy childish thought
The oriental fairy brought,
At the moment of thy birth,
From old well-heads of haunted rills,
And the hearts of purple hills,
And shadow'd coves on a sunny shore,
The choicest wealth of all the
earth,
Jewel or shell, or starry ore,
To deck thy cradle, Eleanore.
Or the yellow-banded bees,
Thro' half-open lattices
Coming in the scented breeze,
Fed thee, a child, lying alone.
With whitest honey in fairy gar-
dens cuU'd —
A glorious child, dreaming alone,
In silk-soft folds, upon yielding down,
With the hum of swarming bees
Into dreamful slumber lull'd.
III.
Who may minister to thee-.
Summer herself should minister
To thee, with fruitage golden-rinded
On golden salvers, or it may be,
Youngest Autumn, in a bower
Grape- thicken'd from the light, and
blinded
With many a deep-hued bell-like
flower
Of fragrant trailers, when the air
Sleepeth over all the heaven.
And the crag that fronts the Even,
All along the shadowing shore,
Crimsons over an inland mere,
Eleanore !
IV.
How may full-sail'd verse express.
How may measured words adore
The full-flowing harmony
Of thy swan-like stateliness,
Eleanore?
The luxuriant symmetry
Of thy floating gracefulness,
Eleanore?
Every turn and glance of thine,
Every lineament divine,
Eleanore,
And the steady sunset glow.
That stays upon thee? For in thee
Is nothing sudden, nothing single;
Like two streams of incense free
From one censer in one shrine.
Thought and motion mingle,
Mingle ever. Motions flow
To one another, even as tho'
They were modulated so
To an unheard melody,
Which lives about thee, and a sweep
Of richest pauses, evermore
Drawn from each other mellow-deep;
Who may express thee, Elean^^e?
I stand before thee, Eleanore;
I see thy beauty gradually unfold,
ELEANORE.
23
Daily and hourly, more and more.
I muse, as in a trance, the while
Slowly, as from a cloud of gold,
Comes out thy deep ambrosial smile.
I muse, as in a trance, whene'er
The languors of thy love-deep eyes
Float on to me. I would I were
So tranced, so rapt in ecstasies.
To stand apart, and to adore,
Gazing on thee for evermore,
Serene, imperial Eleanore !
VI.
Sometimes, with most intensity
Gazing, I seem to see
Thought folded over thought, smiling
asleep,
Slowly awaken'd, grow so full and deep
In thy large eyes, that, overpower'd quite,
i cannot veil, or droop my sight.
But am as nothing in its light :
As tho' a star, in inmost heaven set,
Ev'n while we gaze on it, .
Should slowly round his orb, and slowly
grow
To a full face, there like a sun remain
Fix'd — then as slowly fade again,
And draw itself to what it was
before ;
So full, so deep, so slow.
Thought seems to come and go
In thy large eyes, imperial Eleanore.
As thunder-clouds that, hung on high,
Roofd the world with doubt and
fear,
Floating thro' an evening atmosphere,
Grow golden all about the sky;
In thee all passion becomes passionless,
Touch'd by thy spirit's mellowness.
Losing his fire and active might
In a silent meditation.
Falling into a still delight.
And luxury of contemplation
As waves that up a quiet cove
Rolling slide, and lying still
Shadow forth the banks at will:
Or sometimes they swell and move,
Pressing up against the land,
With motions of the outer sea :
And the self-same influence
ControUeth all the soul and sense
Of Passion gazing upon thee.
His bow-string slacken'd, languid Love,
Leaning his cheek upon his hand,
Droops both his wings, regarding thee,
And so would languish evermore.
Serene, imperial Eleanore.
VIII.
But when I see thee roam, with tresses
unconfined.
While the amorous, odorous wind
Breathes low between the sunset and
the moon;
Or, in a shadowy saloon.
On silken cushions half reclined;
I watch thy grace; and in its place
My heart a charmed slumber keeps.
While I muse upon thy face;
And a languid fire creeps
Thro' my veins to all my frame,
Dissolvingly and slowly : soon
From thy rose-red lips MY name
Floweth; and then, as in a swoon.
With dinning sound my ears are
rife.
My tremulous tongue faltereth,
I lose my colour, I lose my breath,
I drink the cup of a costly death,
Brimmed with delirious draughts of warm-
est life.
I die with my delight, before
I hear what I would hear from
thee;
Yet tell my name again to me,
I would be dying evermore.
So dying ever, Eleanore.
i.
My life is full of weary days.
But good things have not kept aloof.
Nor wander'd into other ways :
I have not lack'd thy mild reproof,
Nor golden largess of thy praise.
And now shake hands across the brink
Of that deep grave to which I go :
Shake hands once more : I cannot sink
So far — far down, but I shall know
Thy voice, and answer from below.
EARLY SONNETS.
When in the darkness over me
The four-handed mole shall scrape,
Plant thou no dusky cypress-tree,
Nor wreathe thy cap with doleful crape.
But pledge me in the flowing grape.
And when the sappy field and wood
Grow green beneath the showery gray.
And rugged barks begin to bud,
And thro' damp holts new-flush'd with
May,
Ring sudden scritches of the jay.
Then let wise Nature work her will,
And on my clay her darnel grow;
Come only, when the days are still.
And at my headstone whisper low.
And tell me if the woodbines blow.
EARLY SONNETS.
TO .
As when with downcast eyes we muse and
brood.
And ebb into a former life, or seem
To lapse far back in some confused dream
To states of mystical similitude;
If one but speaks or hems or stirs his chair,
Ever the wonder waxeth more and more.
So that we say, * All this hath been before,
All this hath been, I know not when or
where.'
So, friend, when first I look'd upon your
face.
Our thought gave answer each to each, so
true —
Opposed mirrors each reflecting each —
That tho' I knew not in what time or place,
Methought that I had often met with you,
And either lived in cither's heart and
speech.
TO J. M. K.
My hope and heart is with thee — thou
wilt be
A latter Luther, and a soldier-priest
To scare church-harpies from the master's
feast;
Our dusted velvets have much need of
thee :
Thou art no Sabbath-drawler of old saws,
Distill'd from some . worm-canker'd
homily ;
But spurr'd at heart with fieriest energy
To embattail and to wall about thy cause
With iron-worded proof, hating to hark
The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone
Half God's good sabbath, while the worn-
out clerk
Brow-beats his desk below. Thou from
a thron?
Mounted in heaven wilt shoot into the
dark
Arrows of lightnings. I will stand and
mark.
Mine be the strength of spirit, full and
free.
Like some broad river rushing down
alone.
With the selfsame impulse wherewith he
was thrown
From his loud fount upon the echoing
lea: —
Which with increasing might doth for-
ward flee
By town, and tower, and hill, and cape,
and isle,
And in the middle of the green salt sea
Keeps his blue waters fresh for many a
mile.
Mine be the power which ever to its sway
Will win the wise at once, and by degrees
May into uncongenial spirits flow;
Ev'n as the warm gulf-stream of Florida
Floats far away into the Northern seas
The lavish growths of southern Mexico,
IV.
ALEXANDER.
Warrior of God, whose strong right
arm debased
The throne of Persia, when her Satrap
bled
At Issus by the Syrian gates, or fled
Beyond the Memmian naphtha-pits, dis-
graced
EARLY SONNETS,
For ever — thee (thy pathway sand-
erased)
Gliding with equal crowns two serpents led
Joyful to that palm-planted fountain-fed
Ammonian Oasis in the waste.
There in a silent shade of laurel brown
Apart the Chamian Oracle divine
Shelter'd his unapproached mysteries :
High things were spoken there, unhanded
down;
Only they saw thee from the secret shrine
Returning with hot cheek and kindled
eyes.
V.
BUONAPARTE.
He thought to quell the stubborn hearts
of oak,
Madman ! — to chain with chains, and
bind with bands
That island queen who sways the floods
and lands
From Ind to Ind, but in fair daylight woke,
When from her wooden walls, — lit by
sure hands, —
With thunders, and with lightnings, and
with smoke, —
Peal after peal, the British battle broke.
Lulling the brine against the Coptic sands.
We taught him lowlier moods, when El-
sinore
Heard.the war moan along the distant sea.
Rocking with shatter'd spars, with sud-
den fires
Flamed over : at Trafalgar yet once more
We taught him : late he learned humility
Perforce, like those whom Gideon school'd
with briers.
VI.
POLAND.
How long, O God, shall men be ridden
down,
And trampled under by the last and least
Of men? The heart of Poland hath not
ceased
To quiver, tho' her sacred blood doth
drown
The fields, and out of every smouldering
town
Cries to Thee, lest brute Power be in-
creased.
Till that o'ergrown Barbarian in the East
Transgress his ample bound to some new
crown : —
Cries to Thee, ' Lord, how long shall
these things be ?
How long this icy-hearted Muscovite
Oppress the region?' Us, O Just and
Good,
Forgive, who smiled when she was torn
in three;
Us, who stand now, when we should aid
the right —
A matter to be wept with tears of blood !
VIL
Caress'd or chidden by the slender hand,
And singing airy trifles this or that.
Light Hope at Beauty's call would perch
and stand.
And run thro' every change of sharp and
flat;
And Fancy came and at her pillow sat.
When Sleep had bound her in his rosy
band.
And chased away the still-recurring gnat,
And woke her with a lay from fairy land.
But now they live with Beauty less and
less,
For Hope is other Hope and wanders far,
Nor cares to lisp in love's delicious creeds;
And Fancy watches in the wilderness,
Poor Fancy sadder than a single star.
That sets at twilight in a land of reeds.
VIII.
The form, the form alone is eloquent !
A nobler yearning never broke her rest
Than but to dance and sing, be gaily
drest.
And win all eyes with all accomplish-
ment:
Yet in the whirling dances as we went.
My fancy made me for a moment blest
To find my heart so near the beauteous
breast
That once had power to rob it of content.
A moment came the tenderness of tears.
The phantom of a wish that once could
move,
A ghost of passion that no smiles re-
store —
For ah ! the slight coquette^ she cannot
love.
26
EARLY SONNETS.
And if you kiss'd. her feet a thousand
years,
Siie still would take the praise, and care
no more.
IX.
Wan Sculptor, weepest thou to take the
cast
Of those dead lineaments that near thee
lie?
0 sorrovvest thou, pale Painter, for the
past,
In painting some dead friend from
memory?
Weep on : beyond his object Love can
last :
His object lives : more cause to weep
have I :
My tears, no tears of love, are flowing fast,
No tears of love, but tears that Love can
die.
1 pledge her not in any cheerful cup.
Nor care to sit beside her where she sits —
A.h pity — hint it not in human tones.
But breathe it into earth and close it up
With secret death for ever, in the pits
Which some green Christmas crams with
weary bones.
If I were loved, as I desire to be,
What is there in the great sphere of the
earth,
And range-of evilbetween death and birth.
That I should fear, — if I were loved by
thee?
All the inner, all the outer world of pain
Clear Love would pierce and cleave, if
thou wert mine,
As I have heard that, somewhere in the
main.
Fresh-water springs come up through
bitter brine.
'Twere joy, not fear, claspt hand-in-hand
with thee.
To wait for death — mute — careless of
all ills.
Apart upon a mountain, tho' the surge
Of some new deluge from a thousand hills
Flung leagues of roaring foam into the
gorge
Below us, as far on as eye could see.
XI.
THE BRIDESMAID.
0 BRIDESMAID, ere the happy knot was
tied,
Thine eyes so wept that they could hardly
see;
Thy sister smiled and said, ' No tears for
me !
A happy bridesmaid makes a happy
bride.'
And then, the couple standing side by
side.
Love lighted down between them full of
glee,
And over his left shoulder laugh'd at
thee,
'O happy bridesmaid, make a happy
bride.'
And all at once a pleasant truth I learn'd,
For while the tender service made thee
weep,
1 loved thee for the tear thou couldst not
hide.
And prest thy hand, and knew the press
return'd,
And thought, * My life is sick of single
sleep :
^ O happy bridesmaid; make a happy
bride ! '
THE LADY OF SHALOTT.
27
THE LADY OF SHALOTT
AND OTHER POEMS.
THE LADY OF SHALOTT.
PART I.
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro' the field the road runs by
To many-tovver'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Thro' the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.
By the margin, willow-veil'd
Slide the heavy barges trail'd
By slow horses; and unhail'd
The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd
Skimming down to Camelot :
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?
Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley.
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to tower'd Camelot :
And by the moon the reaper weary.
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers ' 'Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott.'
PART II.
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be>
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
And moving thro' a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot:
There the river eddy whirls,
And there- the surly village-churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls,
Pass onward from Shalott.
Sometimes a troop of damsels glad.
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad,
Goes by to tower'd Camelot :
And sometimes thro' the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two !
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often thro' the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and Hghts
And music, went to Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed;
* I am half sick of shadows,' said
The Lady of Shalott.
28
THE LADY OF SHALOTT.
PART III.
A BOW-SHOT from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot,
A red- cross knight for ever kneel'd
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.
The gemmy bridle glitter'd free.
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot :
And from his blazon'd baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung.
And as he rode his armour rung,
Beside remote Shalott.
All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn'd like one burning flame together.
As he rode down to Camelot.
As often thro' the purple night.
Below the starry clusters bright.
Some bearded meteor, trailing light.
Moves over still Shalott.
His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd
His coal-black curls as on he rode.
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flash'd into the crystal mirror,
* Tirra lirra,' by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.
She left the web, she left the loom.
She made three paces thro' the room.
She saw the water-lily bloom.
She saw the helmet and the plume.
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
'The curse is come upon me,' cried
The Lady of Shalott.
PART IV.
In the stormy east-wind straining.
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complainr
ing,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower'd Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat.
And round about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.
And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance —
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.
Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right —
The leaves upon her falling light —
Thro' the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot :
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among.
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.
Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly.
And her eyes were darken'd wholly,
Turn'd to tower'd Camelot.
For ere she reach'd upon the tide
The first house by the water-side.
Singing in her song she died.
The Lady of Shalott.
Under tower and balcony.
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by.
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name,
T'he Lady of Shalott.
MARIANA IN THE SOUTH.
29
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they cross'd themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot :
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, ' She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott.'
MARIANA IN THE SOUTH.
With one black shadow at its feet,
The house thro' all the level shines.
Close-latticed to the brooding heat.
And silent in its dusty vines :
A faint-blue ridge upon the right.
An empty river-bed before,
And shallows on a distant shore,
In glaring sand and inlets bright.
But ' Ave Mary,' made she moan.
And * Ave Mary,' night ^nd morn,
And ' Ah,' she sang, ' to be all alone.
To live forgotten, and love forlorn.'
She, as her carol sadder grew,
From brow and bosom slowly down
Thro' rosy taper fingers drew
Her streaming curls of deepest brown
To left and right, and made appear
Still-lighted in a secret shrine,
Her melancholy eyes divine.
The home of woe without a tear.
And 'Ave Mary,' was her moan,
* Madonna, sad is night and morn,'
And * Ah,' she sang, ' to be all alone.
To live forgotten, and love forlorn.'
Till all the crimson changed, and past
Into deep orange o'er the sea.
Low on her knees herself she cast,
Before Our Lady murmur' d she;
Complaining, ' Mother, give me grace
To help me of my weary load.'
And on the liquid mirror glow'd
The clear perfection of her face.
* Is this the form,' she made her
moan,
'That won his praises night and
morn? '
And 'Ah,' she said, 'but I wake
alone,
I sleep forgotten, I wake forlorn.'
Nor bird would sing, nor lamb would
bleat.
Nor any cloud would cross the vault,
But day increased from heat to heat.
On stony drought and steaming salt;
Till now at noon she slept again.
And seem'd knee-deep in mountain
grass,
And heard her native breezes pass.
And runlets babbling down the glen.
She breathed in sleep a lower moan.
And murmuring, as at night and
morn.
She thought, ' My spirit is here alone,
Walks forgotten, and is forlorn.'
Dreaming, she knew it was a dream :
She felt he was and was not there.
She woke : the babble of the stream
Fell, and, without, the steady glare
Shrank one sick willow sere and small.
The river-bed was dusty- white;
And all the furnace of the light
Struck up against the blinding wall.
She whisper'd, with a stifled moan
More inward than at night or morn,
' Sweet Mother, let me not here alone
Live forgotten and die forlorn.'
And, rising, from her bosom drew
Old letters, breathing of her worth,
For 'Love,' they said, *must needs be
true,
To what is loveliest upon earth.'
An image seem'd to pass the door,
To look at her with slight, and say
' But now thy beauty flows away,
So be alone for evermore.'
' O cruel heart,' she changed her tone,
' And cruel love, whose end is scorn,
Is this the end to be left alone,
To live forgotten, and die forlorn? '
But sometimes in the falling day
An image seem'd to pass the door,
To look into her eyes and say,
' But thou shalt be alone no more.'
And flaming downward over all
From heat to heat the day decreased,
And slowly rounded to the east
The one black shadow from the wall.
'The day to night,' she made het
moan.
30
THE TWO VOICES.
'The day to night, the night to
morn,
And day and night I am left alohe
To live forgotten, and love forlorn.'
At eve a dry cicala sung,
There came a sound as of the sea;
Backward the lattice-blind she flung.
And lean'd upon the balcony.
There all in spaces rosy-bright
Large Hesper glitter'd on her tears.
And deepening thro' the silent spheres
Heaven over Heaven rose the night.
And weeping then she made her moan,
'The night comes on that knows not
morn,
When I shall cease to be all alone.
To live forgotten, and love forlorn.'
THE TWO VOICES.
A STILL small voice spake unto me,
* Thou art so full of misery,
Were it not better not to be?'
Then to the still small voice I said:
' Let me not cast in endless shade
What is so wonderfully made.'
To which the voice did urge reply :
' To-day I saw the dragon-fly
Come from the wells where he did lie.
* An inner impulse rent the veil
Of his old husk : from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.
* He dried his wings : like gauze they
grew;
Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew
A living flash of Ught he flew.'
I said, ' When first the world began,
Young Nature thro' five cycles ran.
And in the sixth she moulded man.
' She gave him mind, the lordliest
Proportion, and, above the rest,
Dominion in the head and breast.'
Thereto the silent voice replied :
' Self-blinded are you by your pride :
Look up thro' night : the world is wide.
'This truth within thy mind rehearse,
That in a boundless universe
Is boundless better, boundless worse.
' Think you this mould of hopes and fear*
Could find no statelier than his peers
In yonder hundred million spheres?'
It spake, moreover, in my mind :
' Tho' thou wert scatter'd to the windj
Yet is there plenty of the kind.'
Then did my response clearer fall :
' No compound of this earthly ball
Is like another, all in all.'
To which he answer'd scofhngly :
' Good soul ! suppose I grant it thee,
Who'll weep for thy deficiency?
' Or will one beam be less intense,
When thy peculiar difference
Is cancell'd in the world of sense? '
I would have said, 'Thou canst not
know,'
But my full heart, that work'd below,
Rain'd thro' my sight its overflow.
Again the voice spake unto me :
'Thou art so steep'd in misery.
Surely 'twere better not to be.
' Thine anguish will not let thee sleep,
Nor any train of reason keep :
Thou canst not think, but thou wilt
weep.'
I said, ' The years with change adv^-^ce :
If I make dark my countenance,
I shut my life from happier chance.
' Some turn this sickness yet might take,
Ev'n yet.' But he : ' What drug can
make
A wither'd palsy cease to shake?'
I wept, ' Tho' I should die, I know
That all about the thorn will blow
In tufts of rosy-tinted snow;
THE TWO VOICES.
'And men, thro' novel spheres of thought
Still moving after truth long sought,
Will learn new things when I am not.'
*Yet,' said the secret voice, 'some time,
Sooner or later, will gray prime
Make thy grass hoar with early rime.
* Not less swift souls that yearn for light.
Rapt after heaven's starry flight,
Would sweep the tracts of day and night.
* Not less the bee* would range her cells.
The furzy prickle tire the dells,
The foxglove cluster dappled bells.'
I said that ' all the years invent;
Each month is various to present
The world with some development.
' Were this not well, to bide mine hour,
Tho' watching from a ruin'd tower
How grows the day of human power?'
'The highest-mounted mind,' he said,
* Still sees the sacred morning spread
The silent summit overhead.
* Will thirty seasons render plain
Those lonely lights that still remain,
Just breaking over land and main?
* Or make that morn, from his cold
crown
And crystal silence creeping down,
Flood with full daylight glebe and town ?
' Forerun thy peers, thy time, and let
Thy feet, millenniums hence, be set
In midst of knowledge, dream'd not yet.
'Thou hast not gain'd a real height,
Nor art thou nearer to the light.
Because the scale is infinite.
' 'Twere better not to breathe or speak.
Than cry for strength, remaining weak.
And seem to find, but still to seek.
* Moreover, but to seem to find
Asks what thou lackest, thought resign'd,
A healthy frame, a quiet mind.'
I said, ' When I am gone away,
" He dared not tarry," men will say,
Doing dishonour to my clay.'
' This is more vile,' he made reply,
'To breathe and loathe, to live and
sigh.
Than once from dread of pain to die.
' Sick art thou — a divided will
Still heaping on the fear of ill
The fear of men, a coward still.
' Do men love thee? Art thou so bound
To men, that how thy name may sound
Will vex thee lying underground?
* The memory of the wither'd leaf
In endless time is scarce more brief
Than of the garner'd Autumn-sheaf.
'Go, vexed Spirit, sleep in trust;
The right ear, that is fiU'd with dust, \
Hears little of the false or just.' '
' Hard task, to pluck resolve,' I cried,
' From emptiness and the waste wide
Of that abyss, or scornful pride !
'Nay — rather yet that I could raise
One hope that warm'd me in the days
While still I yearn'd for human praise.
' Wheri, wide in soul and bold of tongue,
Among the tents I paused and sung,
The distant battle flash'd and rung.
' I sung the joyful Psean clear.
And, sitting, burnish'd without fear
The brand, the buckler, and the spear —
' Waiting to strive a happy strife.
To war with falsehood to the knife,
And not to lose the good of life —
'Some hidden principle to move.
To put together, part and prove.
And mete the bounds of hate and love —
' As far as might be, to carve out
Free space for every human doubt,
That the whole mind might orb about —
J
32
THE TWO VOICES.
' To search thro' all I felt or saw,
The springs of life, the depths of awe,
And reach the law within the law :
' At least, not rotting like a weed,
But, having sown some generous seed,
Fruitful of further thought and deed,
* To pass, when Life her light withdraws.
Not void of righteous self-applause,
Nor merely in a selfish cause —
' In some good cause, not in mine own,
To perish, wept for, honour'd, known.
And like a warrior overthrown;
' Whose eyes are dim with glorious tears.
When soil'd with noble dust, he hears
His country's war-song thrill his ears :
* Then dying of a mortal stroke.
What time the foeman's line is broke.
And all the war is roU'd in smoke.
* Yea ! ' said the voice, ' thy dream was
good.
While thou abodest in the bud.
It was the stirring of the blood.
* If Nature put not forth her power
About the opening of the flower,
Who is it that could live an hour?
* Then comes the check, the change, the
. fall,
:! Pain rises up, old pleasures pall,
i There is one remedy for all.
' Yet hadst thou, thro' enduring pain,
Link'd month to month with such a chain
Of knitted purport, all were vain.
. * Thou hadst not between death and birth
' Dissolved the riddle of the earth.
\ So were thy labour little-worth.
' That men with knowledge merely play'd
I told thee — hardly nigher made,
Tho' scaling slow from grade to grade;
. * Much less this dreamer, deaf and blind,
' Named man, may hope some truth to find,
That bears relation to the mind.
* For every worm beneath the moon
Draws different threads, and late and
soon
Spins, toiling out his own cocoon.
* Cry, faint not : either Truth is born
Beyond the polar gleam forlorn,
Or in the gateways of the morn.
' Cry, faint not, climb: the summits slope
Beyond the furthest flights of hope.
Wrapt in dense cloud from base to cope.
* Sometimes a little corner shines.
As over rainy mist inclines
A gleaming crag with belts of pines.
* I will go forward, sayest thou,
I shall not fail to find her now.
Look up, the fold is on her brow.
* If straight thy track, or if oblique,
Thou know'st not. Shadows thou dost
strike,
Embracing cloud, Ixion-like; .
* And owning but a little more
Than beasts, abidest lame and poor,
Calling thyself a little lower
' Than angels. Cease to wail and brawl !
Why inch by inch to darkness crawl?
There is one remedy for all.'
* O dull, one-sided voice,' said I, '\
' Wilt thou make everything a lie, \
To flatter me that I may die ?
* I know that age to age succeeds.
Blowing a noise of tongues and deeds,
A dust of systems and of creeds.
* I cannot hide that some have striven.
Achieving calm, to whom was given
The joy that mixes man with Heaven :
* Who, rowing hard against the stream,
Saw distant gates of Eden gleam.
And did not dream it was a dream;
* But heard, by secret transport led,
Ev'n in the charnels of the dead,
The murmur of the fountain-head —
THE TWO VOICES.
33
' Which did accomplish their desire,
Bore and forebore, and did not tire,
Like Stephen, an unquenched fire.
* He heeded not reviling tones.
Nor sold his heart to idle moans,
Tho' cursed and scorn'd, and bruised
with stones :
' But looking upward, full of grace.
He pray'd, and from a happy place
God's glory smote him on the face.'
The sullen answer slid betwixt:^
* Not that the grounds of hope were fix'd.
The elements were kindlier mix'd.'
I said, * I toil beneath the curse.
But, knowing not the universe,
I fear to slide from bad to worse.
' And that, in seeking to undo
One riddle, and to find the true,
I knit a hundred others new :
* Or that this anguish fleeting hence,
Unmanacled from bonds of sense.
Be fix'd and froz'n to permanence :
* For I go, weak from suffering here :
Naked I go, and void of cheer :
What is it that I may not fear? '
* Consider well,' the voice replied,
* His face, that two hours since hath
died;
Wilt thou find passion, pain or pride ?
* Will he obey when one commands ?
Or answer should one press his hands
He answers not, nor understands.
* His palms are folded on his breast :
There is no other thing express'd
But long disquiet merged in rest.
' His lips are very mild and meek :
Tho' one should smite him on the cheek.
And on the mouth, he will not speak.
* His little daughter, whose sweet face
He kiss'd, taking his last embrace.
Becomes dishonour to her race —
* His sons grow up that bear his name,
Some grow to honour, some to shame, —
But he is chill to praise or blame.
* He will not hear the north-wind rave, \
Nor, moaning, household shelter crave I
From winter rains that beat his grave, j
' High up the vapours fold and swim :
About him broods the twilight dim :
The place he knew forgetteth him.'
' If all be dark, vague voice,' I said,
'These things are wrapt in doubt and
dread,
Nor canst thou show the dead are dead.
* The sap dries up ; the plant declines.
A deeper tale my heart divines.
Know I not Death? the outward signs?
* I found him when my years were few;
A shadow on the graves I knew,
And darkness in the village yew.
* From grave to grave the shadow crept :
In her still place the morning wept :
Touch'd by his feet the daisy slept.
* The simple senses crown'd his head :
" Omega ! thou art Lord," they said,
" We find no motion in the dead."
* Why, if man rot in dreamless ease.
Should that plain fact, as taught by
these.
Not make him sure that he shall cease?
* Who forged that other influence.
That heat of inward evidence.
By which he doubts against the sense?
' He owns the fatal gift of eyes,
That read his spirit blindly wise.
Not simple as a thing that dies.
* Here sits he shaping wings to fly :
His heart forebodes a mystery:
He names the name Eternity.
' That type of Perfect in his mind
In Nature can he nowhere find.
He sows himself on every wind.
34
THE TWO VOICES.
' He seems to hear a Heavenly Friend,
And thro' thick veils to apprehend
A labour working to an end.
'The end and the beginning vex
His reason : many things perplex,
With motions, checks, and counterchecks.
' He knows a bsiseness in his blood
At such strange war with something
good.
He may not do the thing he would.
* Heaven opens inward, chasms yawn.
Vast images in glimmering dawn,
Half shown, are broken and withdrawn.
' Ah ! sure' within him and without,
Could his dark wisdom find it out,
There must be answer to his doubt,
* But thou canst answer not again.
With thine own weapon art thou slain,
Or thou wilt answer but in vain.
' The doubt would rest, I dare not solve.
In the same circle we revolve.
Assurance only breeds resolve.'
As when a billow, blovi'n against.
Falls back, the voice with which I
fenced
A little ceased, but recommenced.
* Where wert thou when thy father play'd
In his free field, and pastime made,
A merry boy in sun and shade?
' A merry boy they call'd him then.
He sat upon the knees of men
In days that never come again.
' Before the little ducts began
To feed thy bones with lime, and ran
Their course, till thou wert also man :
* Who took a wife, who rear'd his race,
Whose wrinkles gather'd on his face.
Whose troubles number with his days :
j \ ' A life of nothings, nothing-worth,
; From that first nothing ere his birth
j/| To that last nothing under earth ! '
* These words,' I said, * are like the rest;
No certain clearness, but at best
A vague suspicion of the breast :
* But if I grant, thou mightst defend
The thesis which thy words intend —
That to begin implies to end;
' Yet how should I for certain hold,
Because my memory is so cold,
That I first was in human mould?
* I cannot make this matter plain.
But I would shoot, howe'er in vain,
A random arrow from the brain.
* It may be that no life is found,
Which only to one engine bound
Falls off, but cycles always round.
* As old mythologies relate.
Some draught of Ixthe might await
The slipping thro' from state to state.
* As here we find in trances, men
Forget the dream that happens then,
Until they fall in trance again,
' So might we, if our state were such
As one before, remember much.
For those two likes might meet and
touch.
* But, if I lapsed from nobler place,
Some legend of a fallen race
Alone might hint of my disgrace;
' Some vague emotion of delight
In gazing up an Alpine height.
Some yearning toward the lamps of
night;
* Or if thro' lower lives I came —
Tho' all experience past became
Consolidate in mind and frame —
* I might forget my weaker lot;
For is not our first year forgot?
The haunts of memory echo not.
* And men, whose reason long was blind,
From cells of madness unconfined.
Oft lose whole years of darker mind.
THE TWO VOICES.
35
' Much more, if tirst I floated free,
As naked essence, must I be
Incompetent of memory :
* For memory dealing but with time,
And he with matter, could she climb
Beyond her own material prime?
" Moreover, something is or seems,
That touches me with mystic gleams,
Like glimpses of forgotten dreams —
' Of something felt, like something here;
Of something done, I know not where;
Such as no language may declare.'
The still voice laugh'd. ' I talk,' said
he.
Not with thy dreams. Suffice it thee
Thy pain is a reality.'
1^
But thou,' said I, * hast missed thy
mark,
Who sought'st to wreck my mortal ark.
By making all the horizon dark,
* Why not set forth, if I should do
This rashness, that which might ensue
With this old soul in organs new?
* Whatever crazy sorrow saith.
No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever truly long'd for death.
* 'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant.
Oh life, not death, for which we pant;
More life, and fuller, that I want.'
I ceased, and sat as one forlorn.
Then said the voice, in quiet scorn,
' Behold, it is the Sabbath morn.'
And I arose, and I released
The casement, and the light increased
With freshness in the dawning east.
Like soften'd airs that blowing steal.
When meres begin to uncongeal,
The sweet church bells began to peal.
' On to God's house the people prest :
r- Passing the place where each must rest.
Each enter'd like a welcome guest.
One walk'd between his wife and child,
With measured footfall tirm and mild.
And now and then he gravely smiled.
The prudent partner of his blood
Lean'd on him, faithful, gentle, good,
Wearing the rose of womanhood.
And in their double love secure,
The little maiden walk'd demure.
Pacing with downward eyelids pure.
These three made unity so sweet.
My frozen heart began to beat,
Remembering its ancient heat.
I blest them, and they wander'd on :
I spoke, but answer came there none :
The dull and bitter voice was gone.
A second voice was at mine ear,
A little whisper silver-clear,
A murmur, ' Be of better cheer.'
As from some blissful neighbourhood,
A notice faintly understood,
' I see the end, and know the good.'
A little hint to solace woe,
A hint, a whisper breathing low,
* I may not speak of what I know.'
Like an yEolian harp that wakes
No certain air, but overtakes
Far thought with music that it makes :
Such seem'd the whisper at my side :
* What is it thou knowest, sweet voice?'
I cried.
* A hidden hope,' the voice replied :
So heavenly-toned, that in that hour
From out my sullen heart a power
Broke, like the rainbow from the
shower,
To feel, altho' no tongue can prove.
That every cloud, that spreads above
And veileth love, itself is love.
And forth into the fields I went,
And Nature's living motion lent
The pulse of hope to discontent.
THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER.
I wonder'd at the bounteous hours,
The slow result of winter showers :
You scarce could see the grass for
flowers.
I wonder'd, while I paced along :
The woods were fill'd so full with song,
There seem'd no room for sense of
wrong;
And all so variously wrought,
I marvell'd how the mind was brought
To anchor by one gloomy thought;
And wherefore rather I made choice
To .commune with that barren voice.
Than him that said, ' Rejoice ! Rejoice ! '
THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER.
I SEE the wealthy miller yet,
His double chin, his portly size.
And who that knew him could forget
The busy wrinkles round his eyes?
The slow wise smile that, round about
His dusty forehead drily curl'd,
Seem'd half-within and half-without,
And full of dealings with the world?
In yonder chair I see him sit,
Three fingers round the old silver cup —
I see his gray eyes twinkle yet
At his own jest — gray eyes lit up
With summer lightnings of a soul
So full of summer warmth, so glad.
So healthy," sound, and clear and whole,
His memory scarce can make me sad.
Yet fill my glass : give me one kiss :
My own sweet Alice, we must die.
There's somewhat in this world amiss
Shall be unriddled by and by.
There's somewhat flows to us in life,
But more is taken quite away.
Pray, Alice, pray, my darling wife.
That we may die the self-same day.
Have I not found a happy earth?
I least should breathe a thought of
pain.
Would God renew me from my birth
I'd almost live my life again.
So sweet it seems with thee to walk.
And once again to woo thee mine —
It seems in after-dinner talk
Across the walnuts and the wine —
To be the long and listless boy
Late-left an orphan of the squire,
Where this old mansion mounted high
Looks down upon the village spire :
For even here, where I and you
Have lived and loved alone so long.
Each morn my sleep was broken thro'
By some wild skylark's matin song.
And oft I heard the tender dove
In firry woodlands making moan;
But ere I saw your eyes, my love,
I had no motion of my own.
For scarce my life with fancy play'd
Before I dream'd that pleasant dream — -
Still hither thither idly sway'd
Like those long mosses in the stream.
Or from the bridge I lean'd to hear
The milldam rushing down with noise.
And see the minnows everywhere
In crystal eddies glance and poise,
The tall flag-flowers when they sprung
Below the range of stepping-stones.
Or those three chestnuts near, that
hung
In masses thick with milky cones.
But, Alice, what an hour was that.
When, after roving in the woods
('Twas April then), I came and sat
Below the chestnuts, when their buds
Were glistening to the breezy blue;
And on the slope, an absent fool,
I cast me down, nor thought of you,
But angled in the . igher pool.
A love-song I had somewhere read,
An echo from a measured strain.
Beat time to nothing in my head
From some odd corner of the brain.
It haunted me, the morning long.
With weary sameness in the rhymes.
The phantom of a silent song,
That went and came a thousand times.
Then leapt a trout. In lazy mood
I watch'"', the little circles die*
THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER.
37
They past into the level flood,
And there a vision caught my eye;
The reflex of a beauteous form,
A glowing arm, a gleaming neck,
As when a sunbeam wavers warm
Within the dark and dimpled beck
For you remember, you had set,
That morning, on the casement-edge
A long green box of mignonette.
And you were leaning from the ledge
And when I raised my eyes, above
They met with two so full and bright —
Such eyes ! I swear to you, my love.
That these have never lost their light.
I loved, and love dispell'd the fear
That I should die an early death :
For love possess'd the atmosphere,
And fili'd the breast with purer breath.
My mother thought, ' What ails the boy? '
For I was alter'd, and began
To move about the house with joy,
And with the certain step of man.
I loved the brimming wave that swam
Thro' quiet meadows round the mill,
The sleepy pool above the dam,
The pool beneath it never still,
The meal-sacks on the whiten'd floor.
The dark round of the dripping wheel.
The very air about the door
Made misty with the floating meal.
And oft in ramblings on the wold.
When April nights began to blow.
And April's crescent glimmer'd cold,
I saw the village lights below;
I knew your taper far away.
And full at heart of trembling hope
From off" the wold I came, and lay
Upon the freshly-flower'd slope.
The deep brook groan'd beneath the
mill;
And 'By that lamp,' I thought, 'she
sits ! '
The white chalk-quarry from the hill
Gleam'd to the flying moon by fits.
* O that I were beside her now !
O will she answer if I call?
O would she give me vow for vow,
Sweet Alice, if I told her all? '
Sometimes I saw you sit and spin;
And, in the pauses of the wind,
Sometimes I heard you sing within.
Sometimes your shadow cross'd the
blind.
At last you rose and moved the light,
And the long shadow of the chair
Flitted across into the night,
And all the casement darken'd there.
But when at last I dared to speak,
The lanes, you know, were white with
may,
Your ripe lips moved not, but your
cheek
Flush'd like the coming of the day;
And so it was — half-sly, half-shy.
You would, and would not, little one !
Although I pleaded tenderly.
And you and I were all alone.
And slowly was my mother brought
To yield consent to my desire :
She wish'd me happy, but she thought
I might have look'd a little higher;
And I was young — too young to wed :
* Yet must I love her for your sake;
Go fetch your Alice here,' she said :
Her eyelid quiver'd as she spake.
And down I went to fetch my bride :
But, Alice, you were ill at ease;
This dress and that by turns you tried.
Too fearful that you should not please.
I loved you better for your fears,
I knew you could not look but well;
And dews, that would have fall'n in
tears,
I kiss'd away before they fell.
I watch'd the little flutterings.
The doubt ray mother would not see;
She spoke at large of many things.
And at the last she spoke of me;
And turning look'd upon your face.
As near this door you sat apart.
And rose, and, with a silent grace
Approaching, press'd you heart to heart
Ah, well — but sing the foolish song
I gave you, Alice, on the day
When, arm in arm, we went along,
A pensive pair, and you were gay
38
THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER — FATIMA.
With bridal flowers — that I may seem,
As in the nights of old, to lie
Beside the mill-wheel in the stream,
While those full chestnuts whisper by.
It is the miller's daughter,
And she is grown so dear, so dear,
That I would be t4ie jewel
That trembles in her ear:
For hid in ringlets.day and night,
I'd touch her neck so warm and white.
And I would be the girdle
About her dainty dainty waist.
And her heart would beat against me,
In sorrow and in rest:
And I should know if it beat right,
I'd clasp it round so close and tight.
And I would be the necklace.
And all day long to fall and rise
Upon her balmy bosom,
With her laughter or her sighs,
And I would lie so light, so light,
I scarce should be unclasp'd at night.
A trifle, sweet ! which true love spells —
True love interprets — right alone.
His light upon the letter dwells,
For all the spirit is his own.
So, if I waste words now, in truth
You must blame Love. His early rage
Had force to make me rhyme in youth,
And makes me talk too much in age.
And now those vivid hours are gone,
Like mine own life to me thou art,
While Past and Present, w-ound in one,
Do make a garland for the heart :
>jo sing that other song I made,
Half-anger'd with my happy lot,
fhe day, when in the chestnut shade
I found the blue Forget-me-not.
Love that hath us in the net.
Can he pass, and we forget?
Many suns arise and set.
Many a chance the years beget.
Love the gift is Love the debt.
Even so.
Love is hurt with jar and fret.
Love is made a vague regret.
Eyes with idle tears are wet.
Idle habit links us yet.
What is love? for we forget:
Ah. no! no!
Look thro' mine eyes with thine. True
wife,
Round my true heart thine arms entwine
My other dearer life in life.
Look thro' my very soul with thine !
Untouch'd with any shade of years,
May those kind eyes for ever dwell!
They have" not shed a many tears.
Dear eyes, since first I knew them
well.
Yet tears they shed : they had their pan
Of sorrow : for when time was ripe,
The still affection ©f the heart
Became an outward breathing type,
That into stillness past again.
And left a want unknown before;
Although the loss had brought us pain.
That loss but made us love the more.
With farther lookings on. The kiss,
The woven arms, seem but to be
Weak symbols of the settled bliss.
The comfort, I have found in thee :
But that God bless thee, dear — • who
wrought
Two spirits to one equal mind —
With blessings beyond hope or thought.
With blessings which no words can find.
Arise, and let us wander forth,
To yon old mill across the wolds;
For look, the sunset, south and north,
Winds all the vale in rosy folds,
And fires your narrow casement glass,
Touching the sullen pool below:
On the chalk-hill the bearded grass
Is dry and dewless. Let us go.
FATIMA.
O Love, Love, Love ! O withering might !
O sun, that from thy noonday height
Shudderest when I strain my sight,
Throbbing thro' all thy heat and light,
Lo, falling from my constant mind,
Lo, parch'd and wither'd, deaf and
blind,
I whirl like leaves in roaring wind.
Last night I wasted hateful hours
Below the city's eastern towers :
FA TIM A — CE ATONE.
39
I thirsted for the brooks, the showers :
I roll'd among the tender flowers :
I crush'd them on my breast, my mouth;
I look'd athwart the burning drouth
Of that long desert to the south.
Last night, when some one spoke his
name,
From my swift blood that went arid came
A thousand little shafts of flame
Were shiver' d in my narrow frame.
0 Love, O fire ! once he drew
With one long kiss my whole soul thro'
My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.
Before he mounts the hill, I know
He Cometh quickly : from below
Sweet gales, as from deep gardens, blow
Before him, striking on my brow.
In my dry brain my spirit soon,
Down-deepening from swoon to swoon.
Faints like a dazzled morning moon.
The wind sounds like a silver wire.
And from beyond the noon a fire
Is pour'd upon the hills, and nigher
The skies stoop down in their desire;
And, isled in sudden seas of light,
My heart, pierced thro' with fierce
delight.
Bursts into blossom in his sight.
My whole soul v/aiting silently,
All naked in a sultry sky.
Droops blinded with hie shiaing eye :
I 7vif/ possess him or will die.
1 will grow round him in his place,
Grow, live, die looking on his face.
Die, dying clasp' d in his embrace.
CENONE.
There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier
Than all the valleys of Ionian hills.
The swimming vapour slopes athwart the
glen.
Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine
to pine.
And loiters, slowly drawn. On either
hand
The lawns and meadow-ledges midway
down
Hang rich in flowers, and far below them
roars
The long brook falling thro' the clov'n
ravine
In catararf after r.qff^tji,r,t t" ^n firj*. -
Behind the valley topmost Gargarus
Stands up and takes the morning : but in
front
The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal
Troas and Ilion's column'd citadel.
The crown of Troas.
Hither came at noon
Mournful (T'.nnnp, wandering forlorn
Of Paris, once her playmate on the hills.
Her cheek had lost the rose, and round
her neck
Floated her hair or seem'd to float in rest.
She, leaning on a fragment twined with
vine.
Sang to the stillness, till the mountain-
shade
Sloped downward to her seat from the
upper cliff".
* O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida,
Dear mother Ida, barken ere I die.
For now the noonday quiet holds the hill :
The grasshopper is silent in the grass:
The lizard, with his shadow on the stone,
Rests like a shadow, and the winds are
dead.
The purple flower droops: the golden
bee
_ Is lily-cradled : I alone awake.
My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love.
My heart is breaking, and my eyes are
dim, .,
And I am all aweary of my life.
' O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida,
r)et.r mothP^ THa, V>ai;ken ere T die.
Hear me, O Earth, hear me, O Hills, O
Caves
That house the cold crown'd snake ! O
mountain brooks,
I am the daughter of a River-God.
Heai; me. for I will speak, and'build up all
My sorrow -^v^th ipy song, as yonder walls
Rose slowly to a music slowly breathed,
A cloud that gather'd shape : for it may be
That, while I speak of it. a little while
Mj^ hpcrfr ]j.ay wanrlpr frnm its dee.pef
WS£.
40
CENONE.
*0 mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida,
Dear m^tWr t^]^. Y'^r^-'^'^ ere
I waited underneath the dawning hills.
Aloft the mountain lawn was dewy-dark,
And dewy-dark aloft the mountain pine :
Beautiful Paris, evil-hearted Paris,
Leading a jet-black goat white-horn'd,
white-hooved.
Came up from reedy Simois all alone.
*0 mnfhpr T/jp, hflr^^fn ere J die.
Far-off the torrent call'd me from the cleft :
Far up the solitary morning smote
The streaks of virgin snow. With down-
dropt eyes
I sat alone : white-breasted like a star
Fronting the dawn he moved; a leopard
skin
Droop'd from his shoulder, but his sunny
hair
Cluster'd about his temples like a God's :
And his cheek brighten'd as the foam-bow
brightens
When the wind blows the foam, and all
my heart
Went forth to embrace him coming ere
he came.
~"* Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die.
He smiled, and opening out his milk-
white palm
Disclosed a fruit of pure Hesperian gold,
That smelt ambrosially, and while I look'd
And listen'd, the full-flowing river of
speech
Came down upon my heart.
' " My own CEnone,
Beautiful-brow'd CEnone, my own soul,
Behold this fruit, whose gleaming rind
ingrav'n
'For the most fair.* would seem to
award it thine,
As lovelier than whatever Oread haunt
The knolls of Ida, loveliest in all grace
Of movement, and the charm of married
brows."
* Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die.
He prest the blossom of his lips to mine.
And added '* This was cast upon the
board.
When all the full-faced presence of the
Gods
Ranged in the halls of Peleus: where-
upon
Rose feud, with question unto whom
'twere due :
But Hght-foot Iris brought it yester-eve.
Delivering that to me, by common voice
Elected umpire, ii££e_comes to-day.
This r^^tj^ed of^ fairest. Thou, within the
cave
Behind yon whispering tuft of oldest pine,
Mayst well behold them unbeheld, un-
heard
TJfar q|1, and saf' fhy PanV jnrign of
Gads."
* Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die.
It was the deep midnoon : one silvery
cloud
Had lost his way between the piney sides
Of this long glen. Then to the bower
they came,
Naked they came to that smooth-swarded
bower.
And at their feet the crocus brake like
fire,
Violet, amaracus, and asphodel.
Lotos and lilies : and a wind arose,
And overhead the wandering ivy and
vine.
This way and that, in many a wild festoon
Ran riot, garlanding the gnarled boughs
With bunch and berry and flower thro'
and thro'.
* O mother Ida, harken ere I die.
On the tree-tops a crested peacock lit,
And o'er him flow'd a golden cloud, and
lean'd
Upon him, slowly dropping fragrant dew.
Then first I heard the voice of her, to
whom
Coming thro' Heaven, like a light that
grows
Larger and clearer, with one mind the
Gods
Rise up for reverence, .^hptr^ ^pjf<;^^r^(^
Proffer of roval power, ample rule
Unquestion'd, overflowing revenue
Wherewith to embellish state, " from
many a vale
And river-sunder'd champaign clothed
with corn,
CENONE.
41
Or labour'd mine undrainable of ore.
Honour," she said, '* and^omage, tax
and toll,
From many an inland town and haven
large,
Mast-throng'd beneath her shadowing
citadel
In glassy bays among her tallest towers,"
' O mother Ida, harken ere I die.
Still she spake on and still she spake of
power,
"Which ni all action ]<; tViP end of all;
PnTi-nr fiftrirl fn thf^ cpigop ; wjgrlnm.
bred
And throaed-oLaisdom — from all neigh-
bour crowns
Alliance and allegiance, till thy hand
Fail from the sceptre-stafF, Such boon
from me.
From me. Heaven's Queen, Paris, to
thee king-born,
A shepherd all thy life but yet king-born,
Should come most welcome, seeing men,
in power
Only, are likest gods, who have attain'd
Rest in a happy place and quiet seats
Above the thunder, with undying bliss
In knowledge of their own supremacy."
* Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die.
She ceased, and Paris held the costly
fruit
Out at arm's length, so much the thought
of power
Flatter'd his spirit; but Pallas where she
stood
Somewhat apart, her clear and bared
limbs
O'erthwarted with the brazen-headed
spear
Upon her pearly shoulder leaning cold,
'ihe while, above, her full and earnest
eye
Over her snow-cold breast and angry
cheek
Kept watch, waiting decision, made repl^.
* ** Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-
control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign
power.
Yet not for power (power of herself
Would come uncall'd for) but to live by
law,
Acting m^ law we live by without fear;
And because right is right, to follow
right
Were wisdom in the scorn of conse-
quence."
* Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die.
Again she said : " I woo thee not with
gifts.
Sequel of guerdon could not alter me
To fairer. Judge thou me by what I
am,
So shalt thou find me fairest.
Yet, indeed
If gazing on divinity disrobed
Thy mortal eyes are frail to judge of fair,
Unbias'd by self-profit, oh ! rest thee sure.
That I shall love thee well and cleave to
thee.
So that my vigour, wedded to thy blood,
Shall strike within thy pulses like a
God's,
To push thee forward thro' a life of
shocks,
Dangers, and deeds, until endurance grow
Sinew'd with action, and the full-grown
will.
Circled thro' all experiences, pure law,
Commeasure perfect freedom."
* Here she ceas'd.
And Paris ponder'd, and I cried, *' O
Paris,
Give it to Pallas ! " but he heard me not,
Or hearing would not hear me, woe is me !
* O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida,
Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die.
Tjaljin Aphr!?dit^ h^""^^*'"^
Fresh as the foam, new-bathed in Paphian
wells,
With rosy slender fingers backward drew
From her warm brows and bosom her
deep hair
Ambrosial, golden round her lucid throat
And shoulder : from the violets her light
foot
Shone rosy-white, and o'er her rounded
form
Between the shadows of the vine-bunches
Floated the glowing sunlights, as she
moved.
42
CENONE.
* Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die.
She with a subtle smile in her mild eyes,
The herald of her triumph, drawing
nigh
Half-whisper'd in his ear, " I^ promise
thee
The fairest and most loving wife in
QjXfii^e."
She spoke and laugh'd : I shut my sight
for fear:
But when I look'd, Paris had raised his
arm,
And I beheld great Here's angry eyes.
As she withdrew into the golden cloud,
And I was left alone within the bower ;
And from that time to this I am alone,
And I shall be alone until I die.
* Yet, mother Ida, harken ere I die.
Fairest — why fairest wife ? am I not fair?
My love hath told me so a thousand
times.
Methinks 1 must be fair, for yesterday.
When I past by, a wild and wanton pard.
Eyed like the evening star, with playful
tail
Crouch'd fawning in the weed. Most
loving is she?
Ah me, my mountain shepherd, that my
arms
Were wound about thee, and my hot lips
prest
Close, close to thine in that quick-falling
dew
Of fruitful kisses, thick as Autumn rains
Flash in the pools of whirling Simois.
* O mother, hear me yet before I die.
They came, they cut away my tallest
pines,
My tall dark pines, that plumed the
craggy ledge
High over the blue gorge, and all between
The snowy peak and snow-white cataract
Foster'd the callow eaglet — from beneath
Whose thick mysterious boughs in the
dark morn
The panther's roar canie muffled, while
I sat
Low in the valley. Never, never more
Shall lone CEnone see the morning mist
Sweep thro' them; never see them over-
laid
With narrow moon -lit slips of silver cloud,
Between the loud stream and the trem-
bling stars.
* O mother, hear me yet before I die.
I wish that somewhere in the ruin'd folds.
Among the fragments tumbled from the
glens.
Or the dry thickets, I could meet with
her
The Abominable, that uninvited came
Into the fair Peleian banquet-hall.
And cast the golden fruit upon the board,
And bred this change; that I might speak
my mind.
And tell her to her face how much I hate
Her presence, hated both of Gods and
men.
* O mother, hear me yet before I die.
Hath he not sworn his love a thousand
times,
In this green valley, under'this green hill,
Ev'n on this hand, and sitting on this
stone?
Seal'd it with kisses? water'd it with
tears?
O happy tears, and how unlike to these !
O happy Heaven, how canst thou see my
face ?
O happy earth, how canst thou bear my
weight ?
0 death, death, death, thou ever-floating
cloud,
There are enough unhappy on this earth;
Pass by the happy souls, that love to live : *
1 pray thee, pass before my light of hfe,
And shadow all my soul, that I may die.
Thou weighest heavy on the heart within,
Weigh heavy on my eyelids : let me die.
* O mother, hear me yet before I die.
I will not die alone, for fiery thoughts
Do shape themselves within me, more and
more.
Whereof I catch the issue, as I hear
Dead sounds at night come from the in-
most hills.
Like footsteps upon wool. I dimly see
My far-off doubtful purpose, as a mother
Conjectures of the features of her child
Ere it is born : her child ! — a shudder
THE SISTERS— THE PALACE OF ART.
43
Across me : never child be born of me,
Unblest, to vex me with his father's eyes !
' O mother, hear me yet before I die.
Hear me, O earth. I will not die alone,
Lest their shrill happy laughter come to
me
Walking the cold and starless road of
Death
Uncomforted, leaving my ancient love
With the Greek woman. I will rise and
go
Down into Troy, and ere the stats come
Talk with the wild ^flfii?'^^'' , for sne says
A fire dances before her, and a sound
Rings ever in her ears of armed men.
What this may be I know not, but I
know
That, wheresoe'er I am by night and day,
All earth and air seem only burning fire.*
THE SISTERS.
We were two daughters of one race :
She was the fairest in the face :
The wind is blowing in turret and tree.
They were together, and she fell;
Therefore revenge became me well.
O the Earl was fair to see !
She died : she went to burning flame :
She mix'd her ancient blood with shame.
The wind is howling in turret and tree.
Whole weeks and months, and early and
late.
To win his love I lay in wait :
O the Earl was fair to see !
I made a feast; I bade him come;
I won his love, I brought him home.
The wind is roaring in turret and tree.
And after supper, on a bed,
Upon my lap he laid his head :
O the Earl was fair to see !
I kissed his eyelids into rest :
His ruddy cheek upon my breast.
The wind is raging in turret and tree.
I hated him with the hate of hell,
But I loved his beauty passing well.
O the Earl was fair to see !
I rose up in the silent night :
I made my dagger sharp and bright.
The wind is raving in turret and tree.
As half-asleep his breath he drew,
Three times I stabb'd him thro' and thro*.
O the Earl was fair to see !
I curl'd and comb'd his comely head,
He look'd so grand when he was dead.
The wind is blowing in turret and
tree.
I wrapt his body in the sheet,
And laid him at his mother's feet.
O the Earl was fair to see !
TO .
WITH THE FOLLOWING POEM.
I SEND you here a sort of allegory,
(For you will understand it) of a soul,
A sinful soul possess'd of many gifts,
A spacious garden full of flowering weeds,
A glorious Devil, large in heart and brain,
That did love Beauty only (Beauty seen
In all varieties of mould and mind),
And Knowledge for its beauty; or if
Good,
Good only for its beauty, seeing not
That Beauty, Good, and Knowledge are
three sisters
That dote upon each other, friends to
man,
Living together under the same roof,
And never can be sunder'd without tears.
And he that shuts Love out, in turn shall
be
Shut out from Love, and on her threshold
lie.
Howling in outer darkness. Not for this
Was common clay ta'en from the common
earth
Moulded by God, and temper'd with the
tears
Of angels to the perfect shape of man.
THE PALACE OF ART.
I BUILT my soul a lordly pleasure-house,
Wherein at ease for aye to dwell.
I said, * O Soul, make merry and carouse,
Dear soul, for all is well.'
44
THE PALACE OF ART.
A huge crag-platform, smooth as burnish'd
brass
I chose. The ranged ramparts bright
From level meadow-bases of deep grass
Suddenly scaled the light.
Thereon I built it firm. Of ledge or
shelf
The rock rose clear, or winding stair.
My soul would live alone unto herself
In her high palace there.
And 'While the world runs round and
round,' I said,
* Reign thou apart, a quiet king.
Still as, while Saturn whirls, his stedfast
shade
Sleeps on his luminous ring.'
To which my soul made answer readily :
'Trust me, in bliss I shall abide
In this great mansion, that is built for me,
So royal-rich and wide.'
Four courts I made, East, West and South
and North,
In each a squared lawn, wherefrom
The golden gorge of dragons spouted
forth
A flood of fountain-foam.
And round the cool green courts there
ran a row
Of cloisters, branch'd like mighty
woods,
Echoing all night to that sonorous flow
Of spouted fountain-floods.
And round the roofs a gilded gallery
That lent broad verge to distant lands.
Far as the wild swan wings, to Avhere the
sky
Dipt down to sea and sands.
From those four jets four currents in one
swell
Across the mountain stream'd below
'In misty folds, that floating as they fell
Lit up a torrent-bow.
And high on every peak a statue seem'd
To hang on tiptoe, tossing up
A cloud of incense of all odour steam'd
P'rom out a golden cup.
So that she thought, * And who shall
gaze upon
My palace with unblinded eyes.
While this great bow will waver in the sun,
And that sweet incense rise?'
For that sweet incense rose and never
fail'd,
And, while day sank or mounted higher,
The light aerial gallery, golden-rjiil'd,
Burnt like a fringe of fire.
Likewise the deep-set windows, stain'd
and traced.
Would seem slow-flaming crimson fires
From shadow'd grots of arches interlaced,
And tipt with frost-like spires.
* * * *
* * * *
Full of long-sounding corridors it was,
That over-vaulted grateful gloom.
Thro' which the livelong day my soul
did pass,
Well-pleased, from room to room.
Full of great rooms and small the palace
stood.
All various, each a perfect whole
From living Nature, fit for every mood
And change of my still soul.
For some were hung with arras green
and blue.
Showing a gaudy summer-morn.
Where with puff 'd cheek the belted hunter
blew
His wreathed bugle-horn.
One seem'd all dark and red — a tract of
sand,
And some one pacing there alone,
Who paced for ever in a glimmering land,
Lit with a low large moon.
One show'd an iron coast and angry
waves.
You seem'd to hear them climb and fall
And roar rock-thwarted under bellowing
caves.
Beneath the windy wall.
THE PALACE OF ART.
45
And one, a full-fed river winding slow
By herds upon an endless plain,
The ragged rims of thunder brooding
low,
With shadow-streaks of rain.
And one, the reapers at their sultry toU.
In front they bound the sheaves. Be-
hind
Were realms of upland, prodigal in oil,
And hoary to the wind.
And one a foreground black with stones
and slags.
Beyond, a line of heights, and higher
All barr'd with long white cloud the
scornful crags.
And highest, snow and fire.
And one, an English home — gray twi-
light pour'd
On dewy pastures, dewy trees.
Softer than sleep — all things in order
stored,
A haunt of ancient Peace.
Nor these alone, but every landscape
fair,
As fit for every mood of mind.
Or gay, or grave, or sweet, or stern, was
there
Not less than truth design'd.
Or the maid-mother by a crucifix.
In tracts of pasture sunny-warm,
Beneath branch-work of costly sardonyx
Sat smiling, babe in arm..
Or in a clear-wall'd city on the sea,
Near gilded organ-pipes, her hair
Wound with white roses, slept St. Cecily;
An angel look'd at her.
Or thronging all one porch of Paradise
A group of Houris bow'd to see
The dying Islamite, with hands and eyes
That said, We wait for thee.
Or mythic Uther's deeply-wounded son
In some fair space of sloping greens
Lay, dozing in the vale of Avalon,
And watch'd by weeping queens.
Or hollowing one hand against his ear.
To list a foot-fall, ere he saw
The wood-nymph, stay'd the Ausonian
king to hear
Of wisdom and of law.
Or over hills with peaky tops engrail'd,
And many a tract of palm and rice.
The throne of Indian Cama slowly sail'd
A summer fann'd with spice.
Or sweet Europa's mantle blew unclasp'd.
From off her shoulder backward borne :
From one hand droop'd a crocus : one
hand grasp'd
The mild bull's golden horn.
Or else flush'd Ganymede, his rosy thigh
Half-buried in the Eagle's down.
Sole as a flying star shot thro' the sky
Above the pillar'd town.
Nor these alone : but every legend fail
Which the supreme Caucasian mind
Carved out of Nature for itself, was there,
Not less than life, design'd.
Then in the towers I placed great bells
that swung.
Moved of themselves, with silver sound;
And with choice paintings of wise men I
hung
The royal dais round.
For there was Milton like a seraph strong.
Beside him Shakespeare bland and mild ;
And there the world-worn Dante grasp'd
his song.
And somewhat grimly smiled.
And there the Ionian father of the rest;
A million wrinkles carved his skin;
A hundred winters snow'd upon his breast,
From cheek and throat and chin.
Above, the fair hall-ceiling stately-set
Many an arch high up did lift,
And angels rising and descending met
With interchange of gift.
Below was all mosaic choicely plann'd
With cycles of the human tale
46
THE PALACE OF ART.
Of this wide world, the times of every land
So wrought, they will not fail.
The people here, a beast of burden slow,
Toil'd onward, prick'd with goads and
stings;
Here play'd, a tiger, rolling to and fro
The heads and crowns of kings;
Here rose, an athlete, strong to break or
bind
All force in bonds that might endure,
And here once more like some sick man
declined,
And trusted any cure.
But over these she trod : and those great
bells
Began to chime. She took her throne :
She sat betwixt the shining Oriels,
To sing her songs alone.
And thro' the topmost Oriels' coloured
flame
Two godlike faces gazed below;
Plato the wise, and large-brow'd Verulam,
The first of those who know.
And all those names, that in their motion
were
Full-welling fountain-heads of change.
Betwixt the slender shafts were blazon'd
fair
In diverse raiment strange :
Thro' which the lights, rose, amber,
emerald, blue,
Flush'd in her temples and her eyes.
And from her lips, as morn from Memnon,
drew
Rivers of melodies.
No nightingale delighteth to prolong
Her low preamble all alone.
More than my soul to hear her echo'd song
Throb thro' the ribbed stone;
Singing and murmuring in her feastful
mirth.
Joying to feel herself alive,
Lord over Nature, Lord of the visible
earth,
Lord of the senses five;
Communing with herself: * All these are
mine.
And let the world have peace or wars,
'Tis one to me.' She — when young night
divine
Crown'd dying day with stars, ^
Making sweet close of his delicious toils —
Lit light in wreaths and anadems.
And pure quintessences of precious oils
In hollow'd moons of gems.
To mimie heaven; and clapt her hands
and cried,
* I marvel if luy still delight
In this great house so royal-rich, and wide,
Be flatter'd to the height.
'O all things fair to sate my various
eyec!
0 shapes and hues that please me
well!
0 silent faces of the Great and Wise,
My Gods, with whom I dwell !
' O God-like isolation which art mine,
1 can but count thee perfect gain.
What time I vi^atch the darkening droves
of swine
That range on yonder plain.
* In filthy sloughs they roll a prurient skin,
They graze and wallow, breed and
sleep;
And oft some brainless devil enters in,
And drives them to the deep.'
Then of the moral instinct would she prate
And of the rising from the dead.
As hers by right of full-accomplish'd Fate ;
And at the last she said :
* I take possession of man's mind and deed.
I care not what the sects may brawl.
1 sit as God holding no form of creed.
But contemplating all.'
* * * *
* * * *
Full oft the riddle of the painful earth
Flash'd thro' her as she sat alone.
Yet not the less held she her solemn
mirth,
And intellectual throne.
THE PALACE OF ART.
47
And so she throve and prosper'd : so
three years
She prosper'd : on the fourth she fell,
Like Herod, when the shout was in his
ears,
Struck thro' with pangs of hell.
Lest she should fail and perish utterly,
God, before whom ever lie bare
The abysmal deeps of Personality,
Plagued her with sore despair.
When she would think, where'er she
turn'd her sight
The airy hand confusion wrought.
Wrote, * Mene, mene,' and divided quite
The kingdom of her thought.
Deep dread and loathing of her solitude
Fell on her, from which mood was
born
Scorn of herself; again, from out that
mood
Laughter at her self-scorn.
♦ What ! is not this my place of strength,'
she said,
* My spacious mansion built for me,
Whereof the strong foundation-stones
were laid
Since my first memory?*
But in dark corners of her palace stood
Uncertain shapes; and unawares
On white-eyed phantasms weeping tears
of blood,
And horrible nightmares,
And hollow shades, enclosing hearts of
flame,
And, with dim fretted foreheads all.
On corpses three-months-old at noon she
came,
That stood against the wall.
A spot of dull stagnation, without light
Or power of movement, seem'd my soul,
'Mid onward-sloping motions infinite
Making for one sure goal.
A still salt pool, lock'd in with bars of
sand,
Left on the shore; that hears all night
The plunging seas draw backward from
the land
Their moon-led waters white.
A star that with the choral starry dance
Join'd not, but stood, and standing saw
The hollow orb of moving Circumstance
RoU'd round by one fix'd law.
Back on herself her serpent pride had
curl'd.
*No voice,' she shriek'd in that lone
hall,
'No voice breaks thro' the stillness of
this world :
One deep, deep silence all ! '
She, mouldering with the dull earth's
mouldering sod,
Inwrapt tenfold in slothful shame.
Lay there exiled from eternal God,
Lost to her place and name;
And death and life she hated equally,
And nothing saw, for her despair,
But dreadful time, dreadful eternity.
No comfort anywhere;
Remaining utterly confused with fears.
And ever worse with growing time.
And ever unrelieved by dismal tears.
And all alone in crime :
Shut up as in a crumbling tomb, girt round
With blackness as a solid wall,
Far off she seem'd to hear the dully sound
Of human footstens fall.
uii sue 3CC111 Li lu iicai lllC
Of human footsteps fall.
As in strange lands a traveller walking
slow.
In doubt and great perplexity,
A little before moon-rise hears the low
Moan of an unknown sea;
And knows not if it be thunder, or a sound
Of rocks thrown down, or one deep
cry
Of great wild beasts; then thinketh, *I
have found
A new land, but I die.'
She howl'd aloud, * I am on fire within.
There comes no murmur of reply.
48
LADY CLARA VERB BE VERE.
What is it that will take away my sin,
And save me lest I die ? '
So when four years were wholly finished,
She threw her royal robes away.
' Make me a cottage in the vale,' she said,
* Where 1 may mourn and pray.
' Yet pull not down my palace towers,
that are
So lightly, beautifully built :
Perchance I may return with others there
When I have purged my guilt.'
LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
Of me you shall not win renown :
You thought to break a country heart
For pastime, ere you went to town.
At me you smiled, but unbeguiled
I saw the snare, and I retired :-
The daughter of a hundred Earls,
You are not one to be desired.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
I know you proud to bear your name.
Your pride is yet no mate for mine.
Too proud to care from whence I came.
Nor would I break for your sweet sake
A heart that dotes on truer charms.
A simple maiden in her flower
Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
Some meeker pupil you must find,
For were you queen of all that is,
I could not stoop to such a mind.
You souf^ht to prove how I could love.
And my disdain is my reply.
The lion on your old stone gates
Is not more cold to you than I.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
You put strange memories in my head.
Not thrice your branching limes have
blown
Since I beheld young Laurence dead.
Oh your sweet eyes, your low replies :
A great enchantress you may be ;
But there was that across his thrOat
Which you had hardly cared to see.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
When thus he met his mother's view,
She had the passions of her kind,
She spake some certain truths of you.
Indeed I heard one bitter word
That scarce is fit for you to hear;
Her manners had not that repose
Which stamps the caste of Vere de
Vere.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
There stands a spectre in your hall :
The guilt of blood is at your door :
You changed a wholesome heart to
gall.
You held your course without r^ yiorse.
To make him trust his modest worth,
And, last, you fix'd a vacant stare.
And slew him with your noble birth.
Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere,
From yon blue heavens above us bent
The gardener Adam and his wife
Smile at the claims of long descent.
Howe'er it be, it seems to me,
'Tis only noble to be good.
Kind hearts are more than coronets.
And simple faith than Norman blood.
I know you, Clara Vere de Vere,
You pine among your halls and towers :
The languid light of your proud eyes
Is wearied of the rolling hours.
In glowing health, with boundless wealth.
But sickening of a vague disease,
You know so ill to deal with time,
You needs must play such pranks as
these.
Clara, Clara Vere de Vere,
If time be heavy on your hands,
Are there no beggars at your gate,
Nor any poor about your lands?
Oh ! teach the orphan-boy to read.
Or teach the orphan-girl to sew,
Pray heaven for a human heart,
And let the foolish yeoman go.
THE MAY QUEEN. 49
THE MAY QUEEN.
You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear;
To-morrow 'ill be the happiest time of all the glad New-year;
Of all the glad New-year, mother, the maddest merriest day;
For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May.
There's many a black black eye, they say, but none so bright as mine;
There's Margaret and Mary, there's Kate and Caroline :
But none so fair as little Alice in all the land they say,
So I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May.
I sleep so sound all night, mother, that I shall never wake,
If you do not call me loud when the day begins to break :
But I must gather knots of flowers, and buds and garlands gay,
For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May.
As I came up the valley whom think ye should I see,
But Robin leaning on the bridge beneath the hazel-tree?
He thought of that sharp look, mother, I gave him yesterday,
But I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May.
He thought I was a ghost, mother, for I was all in white,
And I ran by him without speaking, like a flash of light.
They call me cruel-hearted, but I care not what they say,
For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May.
They say he's dying all for love, but that can never be :
They say his heart is breaking, mother — what is that to me?
There's many a bolder lad 'ill woo me any summer day.
And I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May.
Little Effie shall go with me to-morrow to the green,
And you'll be there, too, mother, to see me made the Queen;
For the shepherd lads on every side 'ill come from far away,
And I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May.
The honeysuckle round the porch has wov'n its wavy bowers.
And by the meadow-trenches blow the faint sweet cuckoo-flowers;
And the wild marsh-marigold shines like fire in swamps and hollows gray,
And I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May.
The night-winds come and go, mother, upon the meadow-grass,
And the happy stars above them seem to brighten as they pass;
There will not be a drop of rain the whole of the livelong day.
And I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May.
All the valley, mother, 'ill be fresh and green and still.
And the cowslip and the crowfoot are over all the hill.
And the rivulet in the flowery dale 'ill merrily glance and play.
For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May,
£
50 THE MAY QUEEN.
So you must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear,
To-morrow ^ill be the happiest time of all the glad New-year :
To-morrow 'ill be of all the year the maddest merriest day,
For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May.
NEW-YEAR'S EVE.
If you're waking call me early, call me early, mother dear,
For I would see the sun rise upon the glad New-year.
It is the last New-year that I shall ever see,
Then you may lay me low i' the mould and think no more of me.
To-night I saw the sun set : he set and left behind
The good old year, the deai- old time, and all my peace of mind;
And the New-year's coming up, mother, but I shall never see
The blossom on the blackthorn, the leaf upon the tree.
Last May we made a crown of flowers: we had a merry day;
Beneath the hawthorn on the green they made me Queen of May;
And we danced about the may-pole and in the hazel copse,
Till Charles's Wain came out above the tall white chimney-tops.
There's not a flOwer on all the hills : the frost is on the pane :
I only wish to live till the snowdrops come again :
I wish the snow would melt and the sun come out on high :
I long to see a flower so before the day I die.
The building rook 'ill caw from the windy tall elm-tree,
And the tufted plover pipe along the fallow lea.
And the swallow 'ill come back again with summer o'er the wave.
But I shall lie alone, mother, within the mouldering grave.
Upon the chancel-casement, and upon that grave of mine,
In the early early morning the summer sun 'ill shine,
Before the red cock crows from the farm upon the hill.
When you are warm-asleep, mother, and all the world is still.
When the flowers come again, mother, beneath the waning light
You'll never see me more in the long gray fields at night;
When from the dry dark wold the summer airs blow cool
On the oat-grass and the sword-grass, and the bulrush In the pooL
You'll bury me, my mother, just beneath the hawthorn shade.
And you'll come sometimes and see me where I am lowly laid.
I shall not forget you, mother, I shall hear you when you pass,
With your feet above my head in the long and pleasant grass.
I have been wild and wayward, but you'll forgive me now;
You'll kiss me, my own mother, and forgive me ere I go;
Nay, nay, you must not weep, nor let your grief be wild.
You should not fret for me, mother, you have another child,
THE MAY QUEEN. 51
If I can I'll come again, mother, from out my resting-place;
Tho' you'll not see me, mother, I shall look upon your facej
Tho' I cannot speak a word, I shall harken what you say,
And be often, often with you when you think I'm far away.
Goodnight, goodnight, when I have said goodnight for evermore,
And you see me carried out from the threshold of the door;
Don't let Effie come to see me till my grave be growing green :
She'll be a better child to you than ever I have been.
She'll find my garden-tools upon the granary floor :
Let her take 'em: they are hers: I shall never garden more;
But tell her, when I'm gone, to train the rosebush that I set
About the parlour-window and the box of mignonette.
Goodnight, sweet mother : call me before the day is bom.
All night I lie awake, but I fall asleep at morn ;
But I would see the sun rise upon the glad New-year, .
So, if you're waking, call me, call me early, mother dear.
CONCLUSION.
I THOUGHT to pass away before, and yet alive I am ;
And in the fields all round I hear the bleating of the lamb.
How sadly, I remember, rose the morning of the year !
To die before the snowdrop came, and now the violet's here.
O sweet is the new violet, that comes beneath the skies.
And sweeter is the young lamb's voice to me that cannot rise.
And sweet is all the land about, and all the flowers that blow.
And sweeter far is death than life to me that long to go.
It seem'd so hard at first, mother, to leave the blessed sun,
And now it seems as hard to stay, and yet His will be done !
But still I think it can't be long before I find release ;
And that goad man, the clergyman, has told me words of peace.
O blessings on his kindly voice and on his silver hair !
And blessings on his whole life long, until he meet me there!
0 blessings on his kindly heart and on his silver head !
A thousand times I blest him, as he knelt beside my bed.
He taught me all the mercy, for he show'd me all the sin.
Now, tho' my lamp was lighted late, there's One will let me in :
Nor would I now be well, mother, again if that could be,
For my desire is but to pass to Him that died for me.
1 did not hear the dog howl, mother, or the death-watch beat.
There came a sweeter token Vhen the night and morning meets
But sit beside my bed, mother, and put your hand in mine,
And Effie on the other side, and I will tell the sign.
52 • THE MAY QUEEN.
All in the wild March-morning I heard the angels call;
It was when the moon was setting, and the dark was over all;
The trees began to whisper, and the wind began to roll,
And in the wild March-morning I heard them call my soul.
For lying broad awake I thought of you and Effie dear;
I saw you sitting in the house and I no longer here;
With all my strength I pray'd for both, and so I felt resigned,
And up the valley came a swell of music on the wind.
I thought that it was fancy, and I listen'd in my bed,
And then did something speak to me — I know not what was said;
For great delight and shuddering took hold of all my mind,
And up the valley came again the music on the wind.
But you were sleeping; and I said, * It's not for them : it's mine.*
And if it come three times, I thought, I take it for a sign.
And once again it came, and close beside the window-bars.
Then seem'd to go right up to Heaven and die among the stars.
So now I think my time is near. I trust it is. I know
The blessed music went that way my soul will have to go.
And for myself, indeed, I care not if I go to-day.
. But, Effie, you must comfort her when I am passed away.
And say to Robin a kind word, and tell him not to fret;
There's many a worthier than I, would make him happy yet.
If i had lived — I cannot tell — I might have been his wife;
But all these things have ceased to be, with my desire of life.
O look ! the sun begins to rise, the heavens are in a glow;
He shines upon a hundred fields, and all of them I know.
And there I move no longer now, and there his light may shine —
Wild flowers in the valley for other hands than mine.
O sweet and strange it seems to me, that ere this day is done
The voice, that now is speaking, may be beyond the sun —
For ever and for ever with those just souls and true —
And what is life, that we should moan? why make we such ado?
For ever and for ever, all in a blessed home —
And there to wait a little while till you and Effie come —
To lie within the light of God, as I lie upon your breast —
And the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest
THE LOTOS-EATERS,
53
* Courage ! ' he said, and pointed toward
the land,
*This mounting wave will roll us shore-
ward soon.'
j In the afternoon they came unto a land
' In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did
swoon.
Breathing like one that hath a weary
dream.
Full-faced above the valley stood the
moon;
And like a downward smoke, the slender
stream
Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall
did seem.
|A land of streams ! some, like a down-
ward smoke.
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did
go;
And some thro' wavering lights and
shadows broke.
Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
From the inner land : far off, three moun-
tain-tops,
Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,
Stood sunset-flush'd : and, dew'd with
showery drops,
Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the
woven copse.
The charmed sunset linger'd low adown
In the red West : thro' mountain clefts
the dale
Was seen far inland, and the yellow down
Border'd with palm, and many a winding
vale
And meadow, set with slender galingale ;
A land where all things always segm'd
±hp «;a]X[P \
And round about the keel with faces
pale.
Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
jriii liiilil-^yPf] mplar.rh'^fly I.OtOg-eat^T^
came. ^
Branches they bore of that enchanted
stem.
Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they
gave
To each, but whoso did receive of them,
And taste, to him the gushing of the wave
Far far away did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the
grave ;
And deep-asleep he seem'd, yet all awake,
JAnd music in his ears his beating heart
did make.
They sat them down upon the yellow
sand.
Between the sun and moon upon the
shore;
And ^weet it was to dream of Fatherland.
Qf rhjM. and wife, and slave; hnf pvpr.
more
Mngf wpary seem'd the sea, weary the
oar.
Weary the wandering fields of barren
foam.
Then some one said, * We will return no
rrinrp; '
And all at once they sang, * Our island
home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer
roam.'
CHORIC SONG.
There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between
walls
Of shadowy granite, in a glearfiing pass;
Music that gentiier on the spirit lies.
Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from
the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep.
And thro' the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers
weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy
hangs in sleep.
Why are we weigh'd upon with heavi-
ness,
And utterly consumed with sharp dis-
tress,
54
THE LOTOS-EATERS.
While all things else have rest from
weariness?
All things have rest : why should we
toil alone,
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown :
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings.
Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy
balm ;
Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
' There is no joy but calm ! '
Why should we only toil, the roof and
crown of things?
III.
Lo ! in the middle of the wood.
The folded leaf is woo'd from out the
bud
With winds upon the branch, and there
Grows green and broad, and takes no
care,
Sun-steep'd at noon, and in the moon
Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow
Falls, and floats adown the air.
Lo ! sweeten'd with the summer light.
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mel-
low.
Drops in a silent autumn night.
All its allotted length of days.
The flower ripens in its place,
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath
no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.
Hateful is the dark-blue sky.
Vaulted o'er the dark -blue sea.
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labour be?
Let us done. Time driveth onward fast.
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we
have
To war with evil ? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climliing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward
the grave
In silence; ripen, fall and cease :
Give us long rest or death, dark death,
or dreamful ease.
V.
How sweet it were, hearing the down-
ward stream.
With half-shut eyes ever to seem
Falling asleep in a half-dream !
To dream and dream, like yonder amber
light.
Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on
the height;
To hear each other's whisper'd speech;
Eating the Lotos day by day.
To watch the crisping ripples on thp
beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray;
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melan-
choly;
To muse and brood and live again in
memory.
With those old faces of our infancy
Heap'd over with a mound of grass.
Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an
urn of brass!
VI.
Dear is the memory of our wedded lives.
And dear the last embraces of our wives
And their warm tears : but all hath suf-
fer'd change:
For surely now our household hearths
are cold :
Our sons inherit us : our looks are
strange :
And we should come like ghosts to
trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold
Have eat our substance, and the min-
strel sings
Before them of the ten years' war in
Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten
things.
Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain.
The Gods are hard to reconcile :
'Tis hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labour unto aged breath,
THE LOTOS-EATERS— A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN.
55
Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars
And eyes grown dim with gazing on
the pilot-stars.
But, propt on beds of amaranth and
moly,
How sweet (while warm airs lull us,
blowing lowly)
With half-dropt eyelid still,
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
To watch the long bright river drawing
slowly
His waters from the purple hill —
To hear the dewy echoes calling
From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined
vine —
To watch the emerald-colour'd water
falling
Thro' many a wov'n acanthus-wreath
divine !
Only to hear and see the far-off spark-
ling brine,
Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out
beneath the pine.
The Lotos blooms below the barren peak :
The Lotos blows by every winding creek :
All day the wind breathes low with mel-
lower tone :
Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone
Round and round the spicy downs the
yellow Lotos-dust is blown.
We hmra.hTd fnV"g^ "f ariinn^ and of
motLou-w£,
RoU'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard,
when the surge was seething free,
Where the wallowing monster spouted
his foam-fountains in the sea.
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with
an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie
reclined
On the hills hke Gods together, careless
of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the
bolts are hurl'd
Far below them in the valleys, and the
clouds are lightly curl'd
Round their golden houses, girdled with
the gleaming world :
Where they smile in secret, looking over
wasted lands.
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake,
roaring deeps and fiery sands.
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and
sinking ships, and praying hands.
But they smile, they find a music centred
in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an an-
cient tale of wrong.
Like a tale of little meaning tho' the
words are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men
that cleave the soil.
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with
enduring toil.
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and
wine and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer — some,
'tis whisper'd — down in hell
Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian
valleys dwell, :
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of
asphodel.
Surely, surely, slumber is more SAveet
than toil, the shore
Than labour in the deep mid-ocean,
wind and wave and oar;
Oh r^st ye, brother mariners, we will
not wander more.
A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN.
I READ, before my eyelids dropt their
shade,
* The Legend of Good Women,^ long ago
Sung by the morning star of song, who
made
His music heard below;
Dan Chaucer, the first v/arbler, whose
sweet breath
Prelucied those melodious bursts that fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still.
x\nd, for a while, the knowledge of his art
Held me above the subject, as strong
gales
Hold swollen clouds from raining, tho'
my heart,
BrimfiU of those wild tales.
56
A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN.
Charged both mine eyes with tears. In
As when a great thought strikes along
every land
the brain,
I saw, wherever light illumineth,
And flushes all the cheek.
Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand
The downward slope to death.
And once my arm was lifted to hew down
A cavalier from off his saddle-bow.
1 hose far-renowned brides of ancient song
That bore a lady from a leaguer'd town;
Peopled the hollow dark, like burning
stars,
And I heard sounds of insult, shame, and
And then, I know not how.
- All those sharp fancies, by down-lapsing
wrong,
thought
And trumpets blown for wars;
Stream'd onward, lost their edges, and
did creep
And clattering flints batter'd with clang-
Roll'd on each other, rounded, smoothed,
ing hoofs;
and brought
And I saw crowds in column' d sanctu-
Into the gulfs of sleep.
aries ;
And forms that pass'd at windows and on
At last methought that I had wander'd far
roofs
In an old wood : fresh-wash 'd in coolest
Of marble palaces;
dew
The maiden splendours of the morning star
Corpses across the threshold; heroes tall
Shook in the stedfast blue.
Dislodging pinnacle and parapet
Upon the tortoise creeping to the wall;
Enormous elm-tree-boles did stoop and
Lances in ambush set;
lean
Upon the dusky brushwood underneath
And high shrine-doors burst thro' with
Their broad curved branches, fledged with
heated blasts
clearest green.
That run before the fluttering tongues
New from its silken sheath.
of fire ;
White surf wind-scatter'd over sails and
The dim red morn had died, her journey
masts.
done.
And ever climbing higher;
And with dead lips smiled at the twi-
light plain.
Squadrons and squares of men in brazen
Half-fall'n across the threshold of the sun,
plates,
Never to rise again.
Scaffolds, still sheets of water, divers
woes,
There was no motion in the dumb dead air,
Ranges of glimmering vaults with iron
Not any song of bird or sound of rill;
grates,
Gross darkness of the inner sepulchre
And hush'd seraglios.
Is not so deadly still
So shape chased shape as swift as, when
As that wide forest. Growths of jasmine
to land
turn'd
' Bluster the winds and tides the self-
Their humid arms festooning tree to
same way.
tree.
Crisp foam-flakes scud along the level
And at the root thro' lush green grasses
sand,
burn'd
Torn from the fringe of spray.
The red anemone.
I started once, or seem'd to start in pain.
I knew the flowers, I knew the leaves, I
Resolved on noble things, and strove
knew
to speak,
The tearful glimmer of the languid dawn
A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN.
57
On those long, rank, dark wood-walks
drench'd in dew,
Leading from lawn to lawn.
The smell of violets, hidden in the green,
Pour'd back into my empty soul and
frame
The times when I remember to have been
Joyful and free from blame.
And from within me a clear under-tone
Thrill'd thro' mine ears in that unbliss-
ful clime,
'Pass freely thro' : the wood is all thine own,
Until the end of time.'
At length I saw a lady within call.
Stiller than chisell'd marble, standing
there;
A daughter of the gods, divinely tall,
And most divinely fair.
Her loveliness with shame and with sur-
prise
Froze my swift speech : she turning on
my face
The star-like sorrows of immortal eyes,
Spoke slowly in her place.
* I had great beauty : ask thou not my
name :
No one can be more wise than destiny.
Many drew swords and died. Where'er
I came
I brought calamity.'
* No marvel, sovereign lady : in fair field
Myself for such a face had boldly died,'
I answer'd free; and turning I appeal'd
To one that stood beside.
But she, with sick and scornful looks averse,
To her full height her stately stature
draws;
* My youth,' she said, 'was blasted with
a curse :
This woman was the cause.
* I was cut off from hope in that sad place.
Which men call'd Aulis in those iron
years :
My father held his hand upon his face;
I, blinded with my tears,
* Still strove to speak : my voice was
thick with sighs
As in a dream. Dimly I could descry
The stern black-bearded kings with wolf-
ish eyes,
Waiting to see me die.
'The high masts flicker'd as they lay
afloat;
The crowds, the temples, waver'd, and
the shore;
The bright death quiver'd at the victim's
throat;
Touch'd; and I knew no more.'
Whereto the other with a downward
brow:
• I would the white cold heavy-plung-
ing foam,
Whirl'd by the wind, had roU'd me deep
below.
Then when I left my home.'
Her slow full words sank thro' the silence
drear,
As thunder-drops fall on a sleeping
sea :
Sudden I heard a voice that cried, * Come
here,
That I may look on thee.'
I turning saw, throned on a flowery rise,
One sitting on a crimson scarf unroll'd ;
A queen, with swarthy cheeks and bold
black eyes.
Brow-bound with burning gold.
She, flashing forth a haughty smile, began :
* I govern 'd men by change, and so I
sway'd
All moods. 'Tis long since I have seen
a man.
Once, like the moon, I made
•The ever-shifting currents of the blood
According to my humour ebb and flow.
I have no men to govern in this wood:
That makes my only woe.
* Nay — yet it chafes me that I could not
bend
One will; nor tame and tutor with
mine eye
58
A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN.
That dull cold-blooded Csesar. Prythee,
From tone to tone, and glided thro' all
friend,
change
Where is Mark Antony?
Of Uveliest utterance.
* The man, my lover, with whom I rode
When she made pause I knew not foi
sublime
delight;
On Fortune's neck: we sat as God by
Because with sudden motion from the
God:
ground
The Nilus would have risen before his
She raised her piercing orbs, and fiU'd
time
with light
And flooded at our nod.
The interval of sound.
* We drank the Libyan Sun to sleep, and
Still with their fires Love tipt his keenest
lit
darts;
Lamps which out-burn'd Canopus. 0
As once they drew into two burning
ray life
rings
In Egypt ! 0 the dalliance and the wit,
All beams of Love, melting the mighty
The flattery and the strife,
hearts
Of captains- and of kings.
* And the wild kiss, when fresh from war's
alarms,
Slowly my sense undazzled. Then I
My Hercules, my Roman Antony,
heard
My mailed Bacchus leapt into my arms,
A noise of some one coming thro' the
Contented there to die !
lawn.
And singing clearer than the crested
* And there he died : and when I heard
bird
my name
That claps his wings at dawn.
Sigh'd forth with, life I would not
brook my fear
*The torrent brooks of hallo w'd Israel
Of the other : with a worm I balk'd his
From craggy hollows pouring, late and
fame.
soon,
What else was left? look here ! '
Sound all night long, in falling thro' the
dell,
Far-heard beneath the moon.
(With that she tore her robe apart, and
half
The polish'd argent of her breast to
* The balmy moon of blessed Israel
sight
Floods all the deep-blue gloom with
Laid bare. Thereto she pointed with a
beams divine :
laugh,
All night the splinter'd crags that wall
Showing the aspick's bite.)
the dell
With spires of silver shine.'
*I died a Queen. The Roman soldier
found
As one that museth where broad sunshine
Me lying dead, my crown about my
laves
brows,
The lawn by some cathedral, thro' the
A name for ever! — lying robed and
door
crown'd.
Hearing the holy organ rolling waves
Worthy a Roman spouse.'
Of sound on roof and floor
Her warbling voice, a lyre of widest
Within, and anthem sung, is charm'd and
range
tied
Struck by all passion, did fall down
To where he stands, — so stood I,
and glance
when that flow
A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN.
5?
Of music left the lips of her that died
We saw the large white stars rise one by
To save her father's vow;
one.
Or, from the darken'd glen,
The daughter of the warrior Gileadite,
A maiden pure; as when she went
* Saw God divide the night with flying
along
flame.
From Mizpeh's tower'd gate with wel-
And thunder on the everlasting hills.
come light,
I heard Him, for He spake, and grief
With timbrel and with song.
became
A solemn scorn of ills.
My words leapt forth : * Heaven heads
the count of crimes
• When the next moon was roil'd into
With that wild oath.' She render'd
the sky,
answer high :
Strength came to me that equall'd my
'Not so, nor once alone; a thousand
desire.
times
How beautiful a thing it was to die
I would be born and die.
For God and for my sire !
'Single I grew, like some green plant,
* It comforts me in this one thought to
whose root
dwell,
Creeps to the garden water-pipes be-
That I subdued me to my father's
neath.
will;
Feeding the flower; but ere my flower to
Because the kiss he gave me, ere I fell.
fruit
Sweetens the spirit still.
Changed, I was ripe for death.
* Moreover it is written that my race
•My God, my land, my father — these
Hew'd Ammon, hip and thigh, from
did move
Aroer
Me from my bliss of life, that Nature
On Arnon unto Minneth.' Here her
gave,
face
Lower'd softly with a threefold cord of
Glow'd, as I look'd at her.
love
Down to a silent grave.
She lock'd her lips ; she left me where I
stood :
* And I went mourning, " No fair Hebrew
'Glory to God,' she sang, and past
boy
afar.
Shall smile away my maiden blame
Thridding the sombre boskage of the
among
wood.
The Hebrew mothers " — emptied of all
Toward the morning-star.
joy,
Leaving the dance and song.
Losing her carol I stood pensively.
As one that from a casement leans his
'- Leaving the olive-gardens far below.
head.
Leaving the promise of my bridal
When midnight bells cease ringing sud-
bower.
denly.
The valleys of grape-loaded vines that
And the old year is dead. .
glow
Beneath the battled tower.
* Alas ! alas ! ' a low voice, full of care.
Murmur'd beside me : ' Turn and look
*The light white cloud swam over us.
on me:
Anon
I am that Rosamond, whom men call
We heard the lion roaring from his
fair,
den;
If what I was I be.
6o
A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN—THE BLACKBIRD.
* Would I had been some maiden coarse
and poor !
O me, that I should ever see the light !
Those dragon eyes of anger'd Eleanor .
Do hunt me, day and night.'
She ceased in tears, fallen from hope and
trust :
To whom the Egyptian : * Oh, you
tamely died !
You should have clung to Fulvia's waist,
and thrust
• The dagger thro' her side.'
With that sharp sound the white dawn's
creeping beams,
Stol'n to my brain, dissolved the mystery
Of folded sleep. The captain of my
dreams
Ruled in the eastern sky.
Morn broaden'd on the borders of the dark,
Ere I saw her, who clasp'd in her last
trance
Her murder'd father's head, or Joan of
Arc,
A light of ancient France;
Or her who knew that Love can vanquish
Death,
Who kneeling, with one arm about
her king,
Drew forth the poison with her balmy
breath.
Sweet as new buds in Spring.
No memory labours longer from the deep
Gold-mines of thought to lift the
hidden ore
That glimpses, moving up, than I from
sleep
To gather and tell o'er
Each little sound and sight. With what
dull pain
Compass! d, how eagerly I sought to
strike
Into that wondrous track of dreams
again !
But no two dreams are like.
As when a soul laments, which hath been
blest,
Desiring what is mingled with past
years.
In yearnings that can never be exprest
By sighs or groans or tears;
Because all words, tho' cull'd with choicest
art,
'Failing to give the bitter of the sweet,
Wither beneath the palate, and the heart
Faints, faded by its heat.
THE BLACKBIRD.
O BLACKBIRD ! sing me something well :
While all the neighbours shoot thee
round,
I keep smooth plats of fruitful ground,
Where thoumay'st warble, eat and dwell.
The espaliers and the standards all
Are thine; the range of lawn and
park :
The unnetted black-hearts ripen dark,
All thine, against the garden wall.
Yet, tho' I spared thee all the spring,
Thy sole delight is, sitting still,
With that gold dagger of thy bill
To fret the summer jenneting.
A golden bill ! the silver tongue,
Cold February loved, is dry :
Plenty corrupts the melody
That made thee famous once, when
young :
And in the sultry garden-squares,
Now thy flute-notes are changed to
coarse,
I hear thee not at all, or hoarse
As when a hawker hawks his wares.
Take warning ! he that will not sing
While yon sun prospers in the blue,
Shall sing for want, ere leaves are new,
Caught in the frozen palms of Spring.
THE DEATH OF THE OLD
YEAR.
FuT>L knee-deep lies the winter snow.
And the winter winds are wearily sigh-
ing:
THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR— TO J. S.
6i
Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow
Step from the corpse, and let him in
And tread softly and speak low,
That standeth there alone,
For the old year lies a-dying.
And waiteth at the door.
Old year, you must not die;
There's a new foot on the floor, my
You came to us so readily.
friend,
You lived with us so steadily,
And a new face at the door, my
Old year, you shall not die.
friend,
A new face at the door.
He lieth»still : he doth not move :
He will not see the dawn of day.
He hath no other life above.
TO J. S.
He gave me a friend, and a true true-love.
And the New-year will take 'em away.
The wind, that beats the mountain, blows
Old year, you must not go;
More softly round the open wold.
So long as you have been with us,
And gently comes the world to those
Such joy as you have seen with us.
That are cast in gentle mould.
Old year, you shall not go.
And me this knowledge bolder made.
He froth'd his bumpers to the brim;
Or else I had not dared to flow
A jollier year we shall not see.
In these words toward you, and invade
But tho' his eyes are waxing dim.
Even with a verse your holy woe.
And tho' his foes speak ill of him,
He was a friend to me.
'Tis strange that those we lean on most,
Old year, you shall not die;
Those in whose laps our limbs are
We did so laugh and cry with you.
nursed,
I've half a mind to die with you,
Fall into shadow, soonest lost :
Old year, if you must die.
Those we love first are taken first
He was full of joke and jest.
God gives us love. Something to love
But all his merry quips are o'er.
He lends us ; but, when love is grown
To see him die, across the waste
To ripeness, that on which it throve
His son and heir doth ride post-haste.
Falls off, and love is left alone.
But he'll be dead before.
Every one for his own.
This is the curse of time. Alas !
The night is starry and cold, my
In grief I am not all unlearn'd;
friend.
Once thro' mine own doors Death'did pass;
And the New-year blithe and bold,
One went, who never hath return'd.
my friend,
Comes up to take his own.
He will not smile — not speak to me
Once more. Two years his chair is
How hard he breathes ! over the snow
seen
I heard just now the crowing cock.
Empty before us. That was he
The shadows flicker to and fro :
Without whose life I had not been.
The cricket chirps : the light burns low :
Tis nearly twelve o'clock.
Your loss is rarer; for this star
Shake hands, before you die.
Rose with you thro' a little arc
Old year, we'll dearly rue for you :
Of heaven, nor having wander'd far
What is it we can do for you?
Shot on the sudden into dark.
Speak out before you die.
I knew your brother : his mute dust
His face Is growing sharp and thin.
I honour and his living worth :
Alack ! our friend is gone.
A man more pure and bold and just ■
Close up his eyes : tie up his chin :
Was never born into the earth.
62
TO /. S.— ON A MOURNER.
I have not look'd upon you nigh,
Since that dear soul hath fall'n asleep.
Great Nature is more wise than I :
I will not tell you not to weep.
And tho' mine own eyes fill with dew,
Drawn from the spirit thro' the brain,
I will not even preach to you,
* Weep, weeping dulls the inward
pain.'
Let Grief be her own mistress still.
She loveth her own anguish deep
More than much pleasure. Let her will
Be done — to weep or not to weep.
I will not say, * God's ordinance
Of Death is blown in every wind; '
For that is not a common chance
That takes away a noble mind.
His memory long will live alone
In all our hearts, as mournful light
That broods above the fallen sun,
And dwells in heaven half the night.
Vain solace ! Memory standing near
Cast down her eyes, and in her
throat
Her voice seem'd distant, and a tear
Dropt on the letters as I wrote.
I wrote I know not what. In truth.
How should I soothe you anyway,
"Who miss the brother of your youth?
Yet something I did wish to say :
For he too was a friend to me :
Both are my friends, and my true
breast
Bleedeth for both ; yet it may be
That only silence suiteth best.
Words weaker than your grief would
make
Grief more. 'Twere better I should
cease
Although myself could almost take
The place of him that sleeps in
peace.
Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace :
Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul,
While the stars burn, the moons increase,
And the great ages onward roll.
Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet.
Nothing comes to thee new or strange.
Sleep full of rest from head to feet;
Lie still, dry dust, secure of change,
ON A MOURNER.'
Nature, so far as in her lies,
Imitates God, and turns her face
To every land beneath the skies.
Counts nothing that she meets with
base,
But lives and loves in every place;
Fills out the homely quickset-screens,
And makes the purple lilac ripe.
Steps from her airy hill, and greens
The swamp, where humm'd the drop-
ping snipe,
With moss and braided marish-pipej
III.
And on thy heart a finger lays.
Saying, * Beat quicker, for the time
Is pleasant, and the woods and ways
Are pleasant, and the beech and lime
Put forth and feel a gladder clime.'
And murmurs of a deeper voice,
Going before to some far shrine,
Teach that sick heart the stronger choice;
Till all thy life one way incline
With one wide Will that closes thine.
And when the zoning eve has died
Where yon dark valleys wind forlorn.
Come Hope and Memory, spouse and
bride.
From out the borders of the morn.
With that fair child betwixt them born.
VI.
And when no mortal motion jars
The blackness round the tombing sod,
LOVE THOU THY LAND.
63
Ihro' silence and the trembling stars
Comes Faith from tracts no feet have
trod,
And Virtue, like a household god
VII.
Promising empire; such as those
Once heard at dead of night to greet
Troy's wandering prince, so that he rose
With sacrifice, while all the fleet
Had rest by stony hills of Crete.
You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease.
Within this region I subsist,
Whose spirits falter in the mist,
And languish for the purple seas.
It is the land that freemen till.
That sober-suited Freedom chose,
The land, where girt with friends or
foes
A man may speak the thing he will;
A land of settled government,
A land of just and old renown,
Where Freedom slowly broadens
down
From precedent to precedent :
Where faction seldom gathers head.
But by degrees to fullness wrought,
The strength of some diftusive
thought
Hath time and space to work and spread.
Should banded unions persecute
Opinion, and induce a time
When single thought is civil crime,
And individual freedom mute;
Tho' Power should make from land to
land
The name of Britain trebly great —
Tho' every channel of the State
Should fill and choke with golden sand —
Yet waft me from the harbour-mouth,
Wild wind ! I seek a warmer sky,
And I will see before I die
The palms and temples of the South.
Of old sat Freedom on the heights,
The thunders breaking at her feet :
Above her shook the starry lights :
She heard the torrents meet.
There in her place she did rejoice,
Self-gather'd in her prophet-mind,
But fragments of her mighty voice
Came rolling on the wind.
Then stept she down thro' town and
field
To mingle with the human race.
And part by part to men reveal'd
The fullness of her face —
Grave mother of majestic works,
P>om her isle-altar gazing down,
Who, God-like, grasps the triple forks,
And, King-like, wears the crown :
Her open eyes desire the truth.
The wisdom of a thousand years
Is in them. May perpetual youth
Keep dry their light from tears;
That her fair form may stand and shine,
Make bright our days and light our
dreams.
Turning to scorn with lips divine
The falsehood of extremes !
Love thou thy land, with love far-brought
From out the storied Past, and used
Within the Present, but transfused
Thro' future time by power of thought.
True love turn'd round on fixed poles.
Love, that endures not sordid ends.
For English natures, freemen, friends,
Thy brothers and immortal souls.
But pamper not a hasty time.
Nor feed with crude imaginings
The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings
That every sophister can lime.
Deliver not the tasks of might
To weakness, neither hide the ray
From those, not blind, who wait
day,
Tho' sitting girt with doubtful light.
foi
LOVE THOU THY LAND.
Make knowledge circle with the winds;
But let her herald, Reverence, fly
Before her to whatever sky
Bear seed of men and growth of minds.
Watch what main-currents draw the
years :
Cut Prejudice against the grain:
But gentle words are always gain:
Regard the weakness of thy peers :
Nor toil for title, place, or touch
Of pension, neither count on praise :
It grows to guerdon after-days :
Nor deal in watch-words overmuch :
Not clinging to some ancient sawr;
Not master'd by some modern term;
Not swift nor slow to change, but
firm:
And in its season bring the law;
That from Discussion's lip may fall
With Life, that, working strongly,
binds —
Set in all lights by many minds,
To close the interests of all.
For Nature also, cold and warm,
And moist and dry, devising long,
Thro' many agents making strong,
Matures the individual form.
Meet is it changes should control
Our being, lest we rust in ease.
We all are changed by still degrees,
All but the basis of the soul.
So let the change which comes be free
To ingroove itself with that which
flies.
And work, a joint of state, that plies
Its office, moved with sympathy.
A saying, hard to shape in act;
For all the past of Time reveals
A bridal dawn of thunder-peals,
Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact.
Ev'n now we hear with inward strife
A motion toiling in the gloom —
The Spirit of the years to come
Yearning to mix himself with Life.
A slow-develop'd strength awaits
Completion in a painful school;
Phantoms of other forms of rule.
New Majesties of mighty States —
The warders of the growing hour.
But vague in vapour, hard to mark;
And round them sea and air are dark
With great contrivances of Power.
Of many changes, aptly join'd,
Is bodied forth the second whole.
Regard gradation, lest the soul
Of Discord race the rising wind;
A wind to puff your idol-fires.
And heap their ashes on the head;
To shame the boast so often made.
That we are wiser than our sires.
Oh yet, if Nature's evil star
Drive men in manhood, as in youth.
To follow flying steps of Truth
Across the brazen bridge of war —
If New and Old, disastrous feud.
Must ever shock, like armed foes.
And this be true, till Time shall close.
That Principles are rain'd in blood;
Not yet the vyise of heart would cease
To hold liis hope thro' shame and
guilt.
But with his hand against the hilt.
Would pace the troubled land, like
Peace;
Not less, tho' dogs of Faction bay,
Would serve his kind in deed and
word,
Certain, if knowledge bring the sword
That knowledge takes the sword away —
Would love the gleams of good that
broke
From either side, nor veil his eyes :
And if some dreadful need should rise
Would strike, and firmly, and one stroke :
To-morrow yet would reap to-day.
As we bear blossom of the dead :
Earn well the thrifty months, nor wed
Raw Haste, half-sister to Decay.
ENGLAND AND AMERICA IN 1782— THE GOOSE.
65
ENGLAND AND AMERICA
IN. 1 782.
O THOU, that sendest out the man
To rule by land and sea,
Strong mother of a Lion-line,
Be proud of those strong sons of thine
Who wrench'd their rights from thee !
What wonder, if in noble heat
Those men thine arms withstood,
Retaught the lesson thou hadst taught,
And in thy spirit with thee fought —
Who sprang from English blood !
But Thou rejoice with liberal joy,
Lift up thy rocky face.
And shatter, when the storms are black,
In many a streaming torrent back,
The seas that shock thy base !
Whatever harmonies of law
The growing world assume,
Thy work is thine — The single note
From that deep chord which Hampden
smote
Will vibrate to the doom.
THE GOOSE.
I KNEW an old wife lean and poor,
Her rags scarce held together;
There strode a stranger to the door.
And it was windy weather.
He held a goose upon his arm.
He utter'd rhyme and reason,
' Here, take the goose, and keep you
warm.
It is a stormy season.'
She caught the white goose by the leg,
A goose — 'twas no great matter.
The goose let fall a golden egg
With cackle and with clatter.
She dropt the goose, and. caught the
pelf,
And ran to tell her neighbours;
And bless'd herself, and cursed herself,
And rested from her labours.
And feeding high, and living soft.
Grew plump and able-bodied;
Until the grave churchwarden dofPd,
The parson smirk'd and nodded.
So sitting, served by man and maid.
She felt her heart grow prouder :
But ah ! the more the white goose laid
It clack'd and cackled louder.
It clutter'd here, it chuckled there;
It stirr'd the old wife's mettle :
She shifted in her elbow-chair,
And hurl'd the pan and kettle.
* A quinsy choke thy cursed note ! '
Then wax'd her anger stronger.
*Go, take the goose, and wring her
throat,
I will not bear it longer.'
Then yelp'd the cur, and yawl'd the
cat;
Ran Gaffer, stumbled Gammer.
The goose flew this way and flew that,
And fiU'd the house with clamour.
As head and heels upon the floor
They flounder'd all together,
There strode a stranger to the door,
And it was windy weather :
He took the goose upon his arm.
He utter'd words of scorning ;
* So keep you cold, or keep you warm,
It is a stormy morning,'
The wild wind rang from park and plain,
And round the attics rumbled.
Till all the tables danced again,
And half the chimneys tumbled.
The glass blew in, the fire blew out,
The blast was hard and harder.
Her cap blew off, her gown blew up,
And a whirlwind clear'd the larder :
And while on all sides breaking loose
Her household fled the danger.
Quoth she, * The Devil take the goose,
And God forget the stranger ! '
66
THE EPIC.
ENGLISH IDYLS
AND OTHER POEMS.
THE EPIC.
At Francis Allen's on the Christmas-
eve, —
The game of forfeits done — the girls all
kiss'd
Beneath the sacred bush and past away —
The parson Holmes, the poet Everard
Hall,
The host, and I sat round the wassail-
bowl.
Then half-way ebb'd : and there we held
a talk.
How all the old honour had from Christ-
mas gone,
Or gone, or dwindled down to some odd
games
In some odd nooks like this; till I, tired
out
With cutting eights that day upon the
pond.
Where, three times slipping from the
outer edge,
I bump'd the ice into three several stars,
Fell in a doze; and half-awake I heard
The parson taking wide and wider
sweeps.
Now harping on the church-commis-
sioners.
Now hawking at Geology and schism;
Until I woke, and found him settled down
Upon the general decay of faith
Right thro' the world, ' at home was little
left,
And none abroad : there was no anchor,
none,
To hold by.' Francis, laughing, clapt
his hand
On Everard's shoulder, with ' I hold by
him.'
' And I,' quoth Everard, ' by the wassail-
bowl.'
*Why yes,' I said, *we knew your gift
that way
At college : but another which you had,
I mean of verse (for so we held it then),
What came of that? ' * You know,' said
Frank, * he burnt
His epic, his King Arthur, some twelve
books ' —
And then to me demanding why? * Oh,
sir.
He thought that nothing new was said,
or else
Something so said 'twas nothing — that a
truth
Looks freshest in the fashion of the
day:
God knows : he has a mint of reasons :
ask.
It pleased 77ie well enough.' ' Nay, nay,'
said Hall,
' Why take the style of those heroic
times?
For nature brings not back the Masto-
don,
Nor we those times; and why should any
man
Remodel models? these twelve books of
mine
Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing-
worth.
Mere chaff and draff, much better burnt.'
' But I,'
Said Francis, * pick'd the eleventh from
this hearth
And have it ; keep a thing, its use will
come.
I hoard it as a sugar-plum for Holmes.'
He laugh'd, and I, tho' sleepy, like a
horse
That hears the corn-bin open, prick'd
my ears;
For I remember'd Everard's college fame
When we were Freshmen: then at my
request
He brought it; and the poet little
urged,
But with some. prelude of disparagement,
Reiid, mouthing out his hollow oes and
aes,
Deep-chested music, and to this result.
MORTE n ARTHUR.
MORTE D'ARTHUR.
So all day long the noise of battle roll'd
Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur's table, man by man,
Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their Lord,
King Arthur : then, because his wound
was deep.
The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him, ,
Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights.
And bore him to a chapel nigh the field,
A broken chancel with a broken cross,
That stood on a dark strait of barren land.
On one side lay the Ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was
full.
Then spake King Arthur to Sir
Bedivere :
' The sequel of to-day unsolders all
The goodliest fellowship of famous
knights
Whereof this world holds record. Such
a sleep
They sleep — the men I loved. I think
that we
Shall never more, at any future time,
Delight our souls with talk of knightly
deeds.
Walking about the gardens and the halls
Of famelot, as in the days that were.
I perish by this people which I made, —
Tho' Merlin sware that I should come
again
To rule once more — but let what will be,
be,
I am so deeply smitten thro' the helm
That without help I cannot last till morn.
Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur,
Which was my pride : for thou remem-
berest how
In tliose old days, one summer noon, an
arm
Rose up from out the bosom of the lake.
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonder-
ful,
Holding the sword — and how I rovv'd
across
And took it, and have w^orn it, like a
king :
And, wheresoever I am sung or told
In aftertime, this also shall be known :
But now delay not: take Excalibur,
And fling him far into the middle mere :
Watch what thou seest, and lightly bring
me word.'
To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere :
' It is not meet. Sir King, to leave thee
thus.
Aidless, alone, and smitten thro' the helm.
A little thing may harm a wounded man.
Yet I thy best will all perform at full,
Watch what 1 see, and lightly bring thee
word.'
So saying, from the ruin'd shrine he
stept
And in the moon athwart the place of
tombs.
Where lay the mighty bones of ancient
men,
Old knights, and over them the sea-wind
sang
Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He,
stepping down
By zig-zag paths, and juts of pointed
rock.
Came on the shining levels of the lake.
There drew he forth the brand
Excalibur,
And o'er him, drawing it, the winter
moon.
Brightening the skirts of a long cloud,
ran forth
And sparkled keen with frost against the
hilt:
For all the haft twinkled with diamond
sparks.
Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work
Of subtlest jewellery. He gazed so long
That both his eyes were dazzled, as he
stood,
This way and that dividing the swift
mind.
In act to throw : but at the last it seem'd
* Better to leave Excalibur conceal'd
There in the many-knotted waterflags.
That whistled stiff, and dry about the
marge.
So strode he back slow to the wounded
King.
Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedi-
vere:
' Hast thou perform'd my mission which
I gave?
What is it thou hast seen? or what hast
heard?'
68
MORTE D' ARTHUR.
And answer made the bold Sir Bedi-
vere:
• 1 heard the ripple washing in the reeds,
And the wild water lapping on the crag.'
To whom replied King Arthur, faint
and pale :
*Thou hast betray'd thy nature and thy
name.
Not rendering true answer, as beseem'd
Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight :
P^or surer sign had follow'd, either hand.
Or voice, or else a motion of the mere.
This v^ a shameful thing for men to lie.
Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again
As thou art lief and dear, and do the
thing
I bade thee, watch, and lightly bring me
word.'
Then went Sir Bedivere the second
time
Across the ridge, and paced beside the
mere,
Counting the dewy pebbles, fix'd in
thought;
But when he saw the wonder of the hilt,
How curiously and strangely chased, he
smote
His palms together, and he cried aloud,
* And if indeed I cast the brand away.
Surely a precious thing, one worthy note.
Should thus be lost for ever from the earth,
Which might have pleased the eyes of
many men.
What good should follow this, if this
were done?
What harm, undone? deep harm to dis-
obey.
Seeing obedience is the bond of rule.
Were it well to obey, then, if a king de-
mand
An act unprofitable, against himself ?
The K'-ig is sick, and knows not what he
. oes.
Wha*: record, or what relic of my lord
Should be to aftertinfe, but empty breath
And rumours of a doubt? but were this
kept.
Stored in some treasure-house of mighty
kings,
Some one might show it at a joust of arms.
Saying, " King Arthur's sword, Excalibur,
Wrought by the lonely maiden of the
Lake.
Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the
deeps
Upon the hidden bases of the hills."
So might some old man speak in the
aftertime
To all the people, winning reverence.
But now much honour and much fame
were lost.'
So spake he, clouded with his own
conceit,
Atid hid Excalibur the second time.
And so strode back slow to the wounded
King.
Then spoke King Arthur, breathing
heavily :
* What is it thou hast seen? or what hast
heard? '
And answer made the bold Sir Bedi-
vere:
* I heard the water lapping on the crag.
And the long ripple washing in the
reeds.'
To whom replied King Arthur, much
in wrath:
' Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue,
Unknightly, traitor-hearted ! Woe is me !
Authority forgets a dying king.
Laid widow'd of the power in his eye
That bow'd the will. I see thee- what
thou art,
For thou, the latest-left of all my knights.
In whom should meet the offices of all.
Thou wouldst betray me for the precious
hilt;
Either from lust of gold, or like a girl
Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes.
Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice,
And the third time may prosper, get thee
hence:
But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur,
I will arise and slay thee with my hands.'
Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and
ran.
And, leaping down the ridges lightly,
plunged
Among the bulrush-beds, and clutch'd
the sword.
Arid strongly wheel'd and threw it. The
great brand
Made lightnings in the splendour of the
moon,
And flashing round and round, and whirl'd
in an arch,
MORTE n ARTHUR.
69
Shot like a streamer of the northern mom,
Seen where the moving isies of winter
shock
By night, with noises of the northern sea.
So flash'd and fell the brand Excalibur:
But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonder-
ful,
And caught him by the hilt, and bran-
dish'd him
Three times, and drew him under in the
mere.
And lightly went the other to the King.
Then spoke King Arthur, drawing
thicker breath:
*Now see I by thine eyes that this is
done.
Speak out: what is it thou hast heard, or
seen?'
And answer made the bold Sir Bedi-
vere :
* Sir King, I closed mine eyelids, lest the
gems
Should blind my purpose, for I never saw,
Nor shall see, here or elsewhere, till I die.
Not tho' I live three lives of mortal men,
So great a miracle as yonder hilt.
Then with both hands I flung him, wheel-
ing him;
But when I look'd again, behold an arm,
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonder-
ful,
That caught him by the hilt, and bran-
dish'd him
Three times, and drew him under in the
mere.'
And answer made King Arthur, breath-
ing hard:
'^My end draws nigh; 'tis time that I
were gone.
Make broad thy shoulders to receive my
weight.
And bear me to the margin ; yet I fear
My wound hath taken cold, and I shall
die.'
So saying, from the pavement he half
rose.
Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm.
And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes
As in a picture. Him Sir Bevidere
Remorsefully regarded thro' his tears.
And would have spoken, but he, found
not words;
Then took with care, and kneeling on
one knee.
O'er both his shoulders drew the languid
hands,
And rising bore him thro' the place of
tombs.
But, as he walk'd. King Arthur panted
hard,
Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed
When all the house is mute. So sigh'd
the King,
Muttering and murmuring at his ear,
' Quick, quick !
I fear it is too late, and I shall die.'
But the other swiftly strode from ridge to
ridge,
Clothed with his breath, and looking, as
he walk'd.
Larger than human on the frozen hills.
He heard the deep behind him, and a cry
Before. His own thought drove him,
like a goad.
Dry clash'd his harness in the icy caves
And barren chasms, and all to left and-
right
The bare black cliff clang'd round him,
as he based
His feet on juts of slippery crag that
rang
Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed
heels —
And on a sudden, lo ! the level lake,
And the long glories of the winter moon.
Then saw they how there hove a dusky
barge,
Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern,
Beneath them ; and descending they were
ware
That all the decks were dense with stately
forms
Black -stoled, black-hooded, like a tlream
— by these
Three Queens with crowns of gold —
and from them rose
A cry that shiver'd to the tingling stars,
And, as it were one voice an agony
Of lamentation, like a wind, that shrills
All night in a waste land, where no one
comes.
Or hath come, since the making of the
world.
Then murmur'd Arthur, * Place me in
the barge,'
70
MORTE D' ARTHUR.
And to the barge they came. There
those three Queens
Put forth their hands, and took the King,
and wept.
But she, that rose the tallest of them all
And fairest, laid his head upon her lap.
And loosed the shatter'd casque, and
chafed his hands,
And call'd him by his name, complaining
loud, V
And dropping bitter tears against his brow
Striped with dark blood : for all his face
was white
And colourless, and like the wither'd
moon
Smote by the fresh beam of the springing
east ;
And all his greaves and cuisses dash'd
with drops
Of onset ; and the light and lustrous
curls —
That made his forehead like a rising sun
High from the dais- throne — were
parch'd with dust ;
Or, clotted into points and hanging loose,
Mix'd with the knightly growth that
fringed his lips.
So like a shatter'd column lay the King ;
Not like that Arthur M'ho, with lance in
rest,
From spur to plume a star of tournament,
Shot thro' the lists at Camelot, and charged
Before the eyes of ladies and of kings.
Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere,
* Ah ! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I
go?
Where shall I hide my forehead and my
eyes?
For now I see the true old times are
dead.
When* every morning brought a noble
chance,
And every chance brought out a noble
knight.
Such times have been not since the light
that led
The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh.
But now the whole round table is
dissolved
Which was an image of the mighty world ;
And I, the last, go forth companionless,
And the days darken round me, and the
years,
Among new men, strange faces, other
minds.'
And slowly answered Arthur from the
barge :
' The old order changeth, yielding place
to new.
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the
world.
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?
I have lived my life, and that which I
have done
May He within Himself make pure ! but
thou,
If thou shouldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. More things aiC
wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore,
let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and^
day.
For what are men better than sheep or
goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of
prayer
Both for themselves and those who call
them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of
God.
But now farewell. I am going a long way
With these thou seest — if indeed I go —
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)
To the island-valley of Avihon;
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snoWj
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-
lawns
And bowery hollows crown'd with sum-
mer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous
wound.'
So said he, and the barge with oar and
sail
Moved from the brink, like some full-
breasted swan
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death.
Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes
the flood
With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir
Bedivere
Revolving many memories, till the hull
MORTE D' ARTHUR— THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER.
71
Look'd one black dot against the verge
of dawn,
And on the mere the wailing died away.
Here ended Hall, and our last light,
that long
Had wink'd and threaten'd darkness,
flared and fell :
At which the Parson, sent to sleep with
sound.
And waked with silence, grunted * Good ! '
but we
Sat rapt : it was the tone with which he
read —
Perhaps some modern touches here and
there
Redeem'd it from the charge of nothing-
ness—
Or else we loved the man, and prized his
work ;
I know not : but we sitting, as I said,
The cock crew loud ; as at that time of
year
The lusty bird takes every hour for dawn :
Then Francis, muttering, like a man ill-
used,
* There now — that's nothing!' drew a
little back.
And drove his heel into the smoulder'd
log,
That sent a blast of sparkles up the flue :
And so to bed ; where yet in sleep 1 seem'd
To sail with Arthur under looming shores,
Point after point ; till on to dawn, when
dreams
Begin to feel the truth and stir of day,
To me, methought, who waited with a
crowd.
There came a bark that, blowing forward,
bore
King Arthur, like a modern gentleman
Of stateliest port ; and all the people
cried,
* Arthur is come again : he cannot die.'
Then those that stood upon the hills
behind
Repeated — * Come again, and thrice as
fair ; '
And, further inland, voices echo'd —
'Come
With all good things, and war shall be
no more.'
At this a hundred bells began to peal,
That with the sound I woke, and heard
indeed
The clear church-bells ring in the
Christmas-morn.
THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER;
OR, THE PICTURES.
This morning is the morning of the day,
When I and Eustace from the city went
To see the gardener's daughter; I and he,
Brothers in Art ; a friendship so complete
Portion'd in halves between us, that we
grew
The fable of the city where we dwelt.
My Eustace might have sat for Her-
cules;
So muscular he spread, so broad of breast.
He, by some law that holds in love, and
draws
The greater to the lesser, long desired
A certain miracle of symmetry,
A miniature of loveliness, all grace
Summ'd up and closed in little; — Juliet,
she
So light of foot, so light of spirit — oh, she
To me myself, for some three careless
moons.
The summer pilot of an empty heart
Unto the shoresof nothing! Knowyounot
Such touches are but embassies of love,
To tamper with the feelings, ere he found
Empire for life? but Eustace painted her,
And said to me, she sitting with us then,
• When will j£>M paint like this?' and I
replied,
(My words were half in earnest, half in
jest,)
* 'Tis not your work, but Love's. Love,
unperceived,
A more ideal Artist he than all,
Came, drew your pencil from you, made
those eyes
Darker than darkest pansies, and that hair
More black than ashbuds in the front of
March.'
And Juliet answer'd laughing, * Go and see
The gardener's daughter : trust me, after
that,
You scarce can fail to match his master*
piece.'
72
THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER;
And up we rose, and on the spur we went.
Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite
Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love.
News from the humming city comes to it
In sound of funeral or of marriage bells;
And, sitting muffled in dark leaves, you
hear
The windy clanging of the minster clock;
Although between it and the garden lies
A league of grass, wash'd by a slow broad
stream,
That, stirr'd with languid pulses of the oar.
Waves all its lazy lilies, and creeps on.
Barge-laden, to three arches of a bridge
Crown'd with the minster-towers.
The fields between
Are dew7-fresh, browsed by deep-udder'd
kine,
And all about the large lime feathers low,
The lime a summer home of murmurous
wings.
In that still place she, hoarded in herself.
Grew, seldom seen; not less among us
lived
Her fame from lip to lip. Who had not
heard
Of Rose, the gardener's daughter? Where
was he.
So blunt in memory, so old at heart.
At such a distance from his youth in grief,
That, having seen, forgot? The common
mouth,
So gross to express delight, in praise of
her
Grew oratory. Such a lord is Love,
And Beauty such a mistresc: of the world.
And if I said that Fancy, led by Love,
Would play with flying forms and images.
Yet this is also true, that, long before
I look'd upon her, when I heard her name
My heart was like a prophet to my heart.
And told me I should love. A crowd of
hopes,
That sought to sow themselves like
winged seeds.
Born out of everything I heard and saw,
Flutter'd about my senses and my soul;
And vague desires, like fitful blasts of
balm
To one that travels quickly, made the air
Of Life delicious, and all kinds of thought.
That verged upon them, sweeter than the
dream
Dream' d by a happy man, when the dark
East,
Unseen, is brightening to his bridal morn.
And sure this orbit of the memory folds
For ever in itself the day we went
To see her. All the land in flowery
squares.
Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind,
Smelt of the coming summer, as one
large cloud
Drew downward : but all else of heaven
was pure
Up to the Sun, and May from verge to
verge.
And May with me from head to heel.
And now,
As tho' 'twere yesterday, as tho' it were
The hour just flown, that morn with all
its sound,
(For those old Mays had thrice the life
of these,)
Rings in mine ears. The steer forgot to
graze.
And, where the hedge-row cuts the
pathway, stood.
Leaning his horns into the neighbour
field.
And lowing to his fellows. From the
woods
Came voices of the well-contented doves.
The lark could scarce get out his notes
for joy.
But shook his song together as he near'd
His happy home, the ground. To left
and right.
The cuckoo told his name to all the hills;
The mellow ouzel fluted in the elm;
The redcap whistled; and the nightingale
Sang loud, as tho' he were the bird of
day.
And Eustace turn'd, and smiling said
to me,
* Hear how the bushes echo ! by my life,
These birds have joyful thoughts. Think
you they sing
Like poets, from the vanity of song?
Or have they any sense of why they sing?
And would they praise the heavens for
what they have?'
And I made answer, ' Were there nothing
else
For which to praise the heavens but only
love.
OR, THE PICTURES.
73
That only love were cause enough for
praise.'
Lightly he laugh'd, as one that read
my thought,
And on we went; but ere an hour had
pass'd,
We reach'd a meadow slanting to the
North ;
Down which a well-worn pathway courted
us
To one green wicket in a privet hedge;
This, yielding, gave into a grassy walk
ThiO' crowded lilac-ambush triiply
pruned;
And one warm gust, full-fed with per-
fume, blew
Beyond us, as we enter'd in the cool.
The garden stretches southward. In the
midst
A cedar spread his dark-green layers of
shade.
The garden- glasses glanced, and mo-
mently
The twinkling laurel scatter'd silver lights.
* Eustace,' I said, ' this wonder keeps
the house.'
He nodded, but a moment afterwards
He cried, ' Look ! look ! ' Before he
ceased I turn'd,
And, ere a star can wink, beheld her there.
For up the porch there grew an Eastern
rose,
That, flowering high, the last night's gale
had caught.
And blown across the walk. One arm
aloft —
Gown'd in pure white, that fitted to the
shape —
Holding the bush, to fix it back, she stood,
A single stream of all her soft brown hair
Pour'd on one side : the shadow of the
flowers
Stole all the golden gloss, and, wavering
Lovingly lower, trembled on her waist —
Ah, happy shade — and still went w,aver-
iyg down,
But, ere it touch'd a foot, that might have
danced
The greensward into greener circles, dipt.
And mix'd with shadows of the common
ground !
But the full day dwelt on her brows, and
sunn'd
Her Violet eyes, and all her Hebe bloom.
And doubled his own warmth against her
lips.
And on the bounteous wave of such a
breast
As never pencil drew. Half light, half
shade,
She stood, a sight to make an old man
young.
So rapt, we near'd the house ; but
she, a Rose
In roses, mingled with her fragrant toil.
Nor heard us come, nor from her ten-
dance turn'd
Into the world without ; till close at hand.
And almost ere I knew mine own intent,
This murmur broke the stillness of that
air
Which brooded round about her :
' Ah, one rose,
One roae, but one, by those fair fingers
cull'd.
Were worth a hundred kisses press'd on
lips
Less exquisite than thine.'
She look'd : but all
Suffused with blushes — neither self-pos-
sess'd
Nor startled, but betwixt this mood and
that.
Divided in a graceful quiet — paused,
And dropt the branch she held, and turn-
ing, wound
Her looser hair in braid, and stirr'd her
lips
For some sweet answer, tho' no answer
came.
Nor yet refused the rose, but granted it,
And moved away, and left me, statue-like,
In act to render thanks.
I, that whole day,
Saw her no more, altho' I linger'd there
Till every daisy slept, and Love's white
star
Beam'd thro' the thicken'd cedar in the
dusk.
So home we went, and all the livelong
way
With solemn gibe did Eustace banter me.
'Now,' said he, 'will you climb the top
of Art.
You cannot fail but work in hues to dim
The Titianic Flora. Will you match
74
THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER.
My Juliet ? you, not you, — the Master,
Love,
A more ideal Artist he than all.'
So home I went, but could not sleep
for joy,
Reading her perfect features in the gloom,
Kissing the rose she gave me o'er and o'er.
And shaping faithful record of the glance
That graced the giving — such a noise of
life
Swarm'd in the golden present, such a
voice
Call'd to me from the years to come, and
such
A length of bright horizon rimm'd the
dark.
And all that night I heard the watchman
peal
The sliding season : all that night I heard
The heavy clocks knolling the drowsy
hours.
The drowsy hours, dispensers of all good.
O'er the mute city stole with folded wings.
Distilling odors on me as they went
To greet their fairer sisters of the East.
Love at first sight, first-born, and heir
to all.
Made this night thus. Henceforward
squall nor storm
Could keep me from that Eden where she
dwelt.
Light pretexts drew me; sometimes a
Dutch love
For tulips : then for roses, moss or musk,
To grace my city rooms; or fruits and
cream
Served in the weeping elm; and more
and more
A wo'-d could bring the colour to my
cheek;
A thought would fill my eyes with happy
dew;
Love trebled life within me, and with
each
The year increased.
The daughters of the year,
One after one, thro' that still garden
pass'd;
Each garlanded with her peculiar flower
Danced into light, and died into the
shade;
And each in passing touch'd with some
new grace
Or seem'd to touch her, so that day by
day.
Like one that never can be wholly known,
Her beauty grew; till Autumn brought
an hour
For Eustace, when I heard his deep * I
will,'
Breathed, like the covenant of a God, to
hold
From thence thro' all the worlds : but I
rose up
Full of his bliss, and following her dark
eyes
Felt earth as air beneath me, till I reach'd
The wicket-gate, and found her .standing
there.
There sat we down upon a garden
mound.
Two mutually enfolded; Love, the third,
Between us, in the circle of his arms
Enwound us both; and over many a range
Of waning lime the gray cathedral towers,
Across a hazy glimmer of the west,
Reveal'd their shining windows: from
them clash'd
The bells; we listen'd; with the time
we play'd,
We spoke of other things; we coursed
about
The subject most at heart, more near and
near.
Like doves about a dovecote, wheeling
round
The central wish, until we settled there.
Then, in that time and place, I spoke
to her.
Requiring, tho' I knew it was mine own,
Yet for the pleasure that I took to hear.
Requiring at her hand the greatest gift,
A woman's heart, the heart of her I loved ;
And in that time and place she answer'd
me,
And in the compass of three little words,
More musical than ever came in one.
The silver fragments of a broken voice.
Made me most happy, faltering^ * I am
thine.'
Shall I cease here ? Is this enough to
say
That my desire, like all strongest hopes,
By its own energy fulfill'd itself,
Merged in completion ? Would you learn
at full
THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER — DORA.
75
How passion rose thro' circumstantial
grades
Beyond all grades develop'd ? and indeed
I had not staid so long to tell you all,
But while I mused came Memory with
sad eyes.
Holding the folded annals of my youth ;
And while I mused, Love with knit brows
went by.
And with a flying finger swept my lips,
And spake, * Be wise : not easily forgiven
Are those who, setting wide the doors
that bar
The secret bridal chambers of the heart.
Let in the day,' Here, then, my words
have end.
Yet might I tell of meetings, of fare-
wells —
Of that which came between, more sweet
than each.
In whispers, like the whispers of the
leaves
That tremble round a nightingale — in
sighs
Which perfect Joy, perplex'd for utter-
ance.
Stole from her sister Sorrow. Might I
not tell
Of difference, reconcilement, pledges
given,
And vows, where there was never need
of vows.
And kisses, where the heart on one wild
leap
Hung tranced from all pulsation, as above
The heavens between their fairy fleeces
pale
Sow'd all their mystic gulfs with fleeting
stars;
Or while the balmy glooming, crescent-lit,
Spread the light haze along the river-
shores,
And in the hollows; or as once we met
Unheedful, tho' beneath a whispering
rain
Night slid down one long stream of sigh-
ing wind.
And in her bosom bor*^ the :aoy. Sleep.
But this whole hour your eyes have
been intent
On that veil'd pictui«- — veil'd, for what it
holds
May not be dwelt on by the common day.
This prelude has prepared thee. Raise
thy soul;
Make thine heart ready with thine eyes :
the time
Is come to raise the veil.
Behold her there,
As I beheld her ere she knew my heart.
My first, last love; the idol of my youth,
The darling of my manhood, and, alas !
Now the most blessed memory of mine
age.
DORA.
With farmer Allan at the farm abode
William and Dora. William was his son.
And she his niece. He often look'd at
them.
And often thought, * I'll make them man
and wife.'
Now Dora felt her uncle's will in all.
And yearn'd toward William; but the
youth, because
He had been always with her in the house,
Thought not of Dora.
Then there came a day
When Allan call'd his son, and said,
* My son :
I married late, but I would wish to see
My grandchild on my knees before I die :
And I have set my heart upon a match.
Now therefore look to Dora ; she is well
To look to; thrifty too beyond her age.
She is my brother's daughter : he and I
Had once hard words, and parted, and
he died
In foreign lands; but for his sake I bred
His daughter Dora : ' take her for your
wife ;
For I have wish'd this marriage, night
and day,
For many years.' But William ar.swer'd
short :
*I cannot marry Dora; by my life,
I will not marry Dora.' Then the old man
Was wroth, and doubled up his hands,
and said :
' You will not, boy ! you dare to answer
thus !
But in my time a father's word was law,
And so it shall be now for me. Look to it ;
Consider, William : take a month to
think.
76
DORA.
And let me have an answer to my wish;
Or, by the Lord that made me, you shall
pack,
And never more darken my doors again.'
But William answer'd madly; bit his
lips,
And broke away. The more he look'd
at her
The less he liked her; and his ways were
harsh ;
But Dora bore them meekly. Then
before
The month was out he left his father's
house,
And hired himself to work within the
fields;
And half in love, half spite, he woo'd and
wed
A labourer's daughter, Mary Morrison.
Then, when the bells were ringing,
Allan call'd
His niece and said : * My girl, I love you
well;
But if you speak with him that was my
son.
Or change a word with her he calls his
wife,
My home is none of yours. My will is
law.'
And Dora promised, being meek. She
thought,
* It cannot be : my uncle's mind will
change ! '
And days went on, and there was born
a boy
To Vv^illiam; then distresses came on
him;
And day by day he pass'd his father's
gate,
Heart-broken, and his father help'd him
not.
But Dora stored what little she could
save,
And sent it them by stealth, nor did they
know
Who sent it; till at last a fever seized
On William, and in harvest time he died.
Then Dora went to Mary. Mary sat
And look'd with tears upon her boy, and
thought
Hard things of Dora. Dora came and
said :
' I have obey'd my uncle until now,
And I have sinn'd, for it was all thro' me
This evil came on William at the first.
But, Mary, for the sake of him that's
gone.
And for your sake, the woman that he
chose,
And for this orphan, I am come to you :
You know there has not been for these
five years
So full a harvest : let me take the boy,
And I will set him in my uncle's eye
Among the wheat; that when his heart
is glad
Of the full harvest, he may see the boy,
And bless him for the sake of him that's
gone.'
And Dora took the child, and went
her way
Across the wheat, and sat upon a mound
That was unsown, where many poppies
grew.
Far off the farmer came into the field
And spied her not; for none of all his
men
Dare tell him Dora waited with the child;
And Dora would have risen and gone to
him,
But her heart fail'd her; and the reapers
reap'd,
And the sun fell, and all the land was
dark.
But when the morrow came, she rose
and took
The child once more, and sat upon the
mound;
And made a little wreath of all the flowers
That grew about, and tied it round his hat
To make him pleasing in her uncle's eye.
Then when the farmer pass'd into the field
He spied her, and he left his men at work,
And came and said: 'Where were you
yesterday?
Whose child is that? What are you doing
here?'
So Dora cast her eyes upon the ground,
And answer'd softly, 'This is William's
child ! '
* And did I not,' said Allan, ' did I not
Forbid you, Dora? ' Dora said again :
'Do with me as you will, but take the
child.
And bless him for the sake of him that's
gone ! '
DORA.
77
And Allan said, ' I see it is a trick
Got up betwixt you and the woman there.
I must be taught my duty, and by you !
You knew my word was law, and yet you
dared
To slight it. Well — for I will take the
boy;
But go you hence, and never see me more.'
So saying, he took the boy, that cried
aloud
And struggled hard. The wreath of
flowers fell
At Dora's feet. She bowed upon her
hands.
And the boy's cry came to her from the
field,
More and more distant. She bow'd
down her head.
Remembering the day when first she came,
And all the things that had been. She
bow'd down
And wept in secret; and the reapers
reap'd,
And the sun fell, and all the land was
dark.
Then Dora went to Mary's house, and
stood
Upon the threshold. Mary saw the boy
Was not with Dora. She broke out in
praise
To God, that help'd her in her widow-
hood.
And Dora said, * My uncle took the boy;
But, Mary, let me live and work \yith you :
He says that he will never see me more.'
Then answer'd Mary, ' This shall never be,
That thou shouldst take my trouble on
thyself:
And, now I think, he shall not have the
boy.
For he will teach him hardness, and to
slight
His mother; therefore thou and I will go,
And I will have my boy, and bring him
home;
And I will beg of him to take thee back :
But if he will not take thee back again,
Then thou and I will live within one
house,
And work for William's child, until he
grows
Of age to help us.'
So the women kiss'd
Each other, and set out, and reach'd the
farm.
The door was off the latch: they peep'd,
and saw
The boy set up betwixt his grandsire's
knees,
Who thrust him in the hollows of his arm,
And clapt him on the hands and on the
cheeks,
Like one that loved him: and the lad
stretch'd out
And babbled for the golden seal, that
hung
From Allan's watch, and sparkled by the
fire.
Then they came in : but when the boy
beheld
His mother, he cried out to come to her :
And Allan set him down, and Mary said:
'O Father! — if you let me call you
so —
I never came a-begging for myself.
Or William, or this child; but now I
come
For Dora : take her back; she loves you
well.
0 Sir, when William died, he died at
peace
With all men; for I ask'd him, and he
said
He could not ever rue his marrying me —
1 had been a patient wife : but. Sir, he
said
That he was wrong to cross his father
thus:
'* God bless him ! " he said, " and may he
never know
The troubles I have gone thro' ! " Then
he turn'd
His face and pass'd — unhappy that I am !
"But now. Sir, let me have my boy 'cr
you
Will make him hard, and he will learn
to slight
His father's memory; and take Dora
back.
And let all this be as it was before.'
So Mary said, and Dora hid her face
By Mary. There was silence in the room;
And all at once the old man burst in
sobs : —
' I have been to blame — to blame. I
have kill'd my son.
78
AUDLEY COURT.
I have kill'd him — but I loved him —
my dear son.
May God forgive me ! — I have been to
blame.
Kiss me, my children.'
Then they clung about
The old man's neck, and kiss'd him many
times.
And all the man was broken vv'ith re-
morse;
And all his love caire back a hundred-
fold;
And for three hours he sobb'd o'er Will-
iam's child
Thinking of William.
So those four abode
Within one house together; and as years
Went forward, Mary took another mate;
But Dora lived unmarried till her death.
AUDLEY COURT.
*The Bull, the Fleece are cramm'd, and
not a room
For love or money. Let us picnic there
At Audley Court.'
I spoke, while Audley feast
Humm'd like a hive all round the narrow
quay,
To Francis, with a basket on his arm.
To Francis just alighted from the boat,
And breathing of the sea. * With all my
heart,'
Said Francis. Then we shoulder'd thro'
the swarm.
And rounded by the stillness of the beach
To where the bay runs up its latest
horn.
We left the dying ebb that faintly lipp'd
The flat red granite; so by many a sweep
Of meadow smooth from aftermath we
reach'd
The griffin-guarded gates, and pass'd thro'
all
The pillar'd dusk of sounding sycamores,
And cross'd the garden to the gardener's
lodge.
With all its casements bedded, and its
walls
And chimneys muffled in the leafy vine.
There, on a slope of orchard. Francis
laid
A damask napkin wrought with horse
and hound,
Brought out a dusky loaf that smelt ot
home,
And, half-cut-down, a pasty costly-made.
Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret
lay.
Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks
Imbedded and injellied; last, with these,
A flask of cider from his father's vats,
Prime, which I knew; and so we sat and
eat
And talk'd old matters over; who was
dead.
Who married, who was like to be, and
how
The races went, and who would rent the
hall :
Then touch'd upon the game, how scarce
it was
This season; glancing thence, discuss'd
the farm.
The four-field system, and the price of
grain;
And struck upon the corn-laws, where
we split,
And came again together on the king
With heated faces; till he laugh'd aloud;
And, while the blackbird on the pippin
hung
To hear him, clapt his hand in mine and
sang —
' Oh ! who would fight and march and
countermarch.
Be shot for sixpence in a battle-field,
And shovell'd up into some bloody trench
Where no one knows? but let me live
my life.
* Oh ! who would cast and balance at
a desk,
Perch'd like a crow upon a three-legg'd
stool.
Till all his juice is dried, and all his joints
Are full of chalk? but let me live my
life.
* Who'd serve the state ? for if I carved
my name
Upon the clifTs that guard my native land,
I might as well have traced it in the sands ;
The sea wastes all : but let me live my life.
*0h! who would love? I woo'd a
woman once,
.But she was sharper than an eastern wind,
AUDLEY COURT— WALKING TO THE MAIL.
79
And all my heart turn'd from her, as a
thorn
Turns from the sea; but let me live mv
life.'
He sang his song, and I replied with
mine:
I found it in a volume, all of songs,
Knock'd down to me, when old Sir
Robert's pride,
His books — the more the pity, so I said —
Came to the hammer here in March —
and this —
I set the words, and added names I knew.
' Sleep, Ellsn Aubrey, sleep, and dream
of me :
Sleep, Ellen, folded in thy sister's arm.
And sleeping, haply dream her arm is
mine.
'Sleep, Ellen, folded in Emilia's arm;
Emilia, fairer than all else but thou,
For thou art fairer than all else that is.
* Sleep, breathing health and peace
upon her breast:
Sleep, breathing love and trust against
her lip:
I go to-night : I come to-morrow morn.
* I go, but I return : I would I were
The pilot of the darkness and the dream.
Sleep, Ellen Aubrey, love, and dream of
me.'
So sang we each to either, Francis
Hale,
The farmer's son, who lived across the bay,
My friend; and I, that having where-
withal,
And in the fallow leisure of my life
A rolling stone of here and everywhere.
Did what I would; but ere the night we
rose
And saunter'd home beneath a moon,
that, just
In crescent, dimly rain'd about the leaf
Twilights of airy silver, till we reach'd
The limit of the hills; and as we sank
From rock to rock upon the glooming
quay,
The town was hush'd beneath us : lower
down
The bay was oily calm; the harbour-
buoy.
Sole star of phosphorescence in the calm,
"With one green sparkle ever and anon
Dipt by itself, and we were glad at heart.
WALKING TO THE MAIL.
John. I'M glad I walk'd. How fresh
the meadows look
Above the river, and, but a month ago,
The whole hill-side was redder than a fox.
Is yon plantation where this byway joins
The turnpike?
James. Yes.
John. And when does this come by?
James. The mail? At one o'clock.
John. What is it now?
James. A quarter to.
John. Whose house is that I see?
No, not the County Member's with the
vane :
Up higher with the yew-tree by it, and
half
A score of gables.
James. That? Sir Edward Head's:
But he's abroad : the place is to be sold.
John. Oh, his. He was not broken.
James. No, sir, he,
Vex'd with a morbid devil in his blood
That veil'd the world with jaundice, hid
his face
From all men, and commercing with
himself.
He lost the sense that handles daily
life —
That keeps us all in order more or less —
And sick of home went overseas for
change,
. John. And whither?
James. Nay, who knows? He's here
and there.
But let him go; his devil goes with him,
As well as with his tenant, Jocky Dawes.
John. What's that?
James. You saw the man — on Mon-
day, was it ? —
There by the humpback'd willow; half
stands up
And bristles; half has fall'n and made a
bridge;
And there he caught the younker tickling
trout —
Caught in Jlagrante — what's the Latin
word ? —
Delicto : but his house, for so they say.
Was haunted with a jolly ghost, that
• shook
8o
WALKING TO THE MAIL.
The curtains, whined in lobbies, tapt at
doors,
And rummaged like a rat: no servant
stay'd :
The farmer vext packs up his beds and
chairs,
And all his household stuff; and with his
boy
Betwixt his knees, his wife upon the tilt.
Sets out, and meets a friend who hails
him, ' What !
You're flitting ! ' * Yes, we're flitting,'
says the ghost
(For they had pack'd the thing among
the beds).
* Oh well,' says he, ' you flitting with us
too —
Jack, turn the horses' heads and home
again.'
John. He left his wife behind; for so
I heard.
James. He left her, yes. I met my
lady once :
A woman like a butt, and harsh as crabs.
John. Oh yet but I remember, ten
years back —
'Tis now at least ten years — and then
she was —
You could not light upon a sweeter thing :
A body slight and round, and like a pear
In growing, modest eyes, a hand, a foot
Lessening in perfect cadence, and a skin
As clean and white as privet when it
flowers.
James. Ay, ay, the blossom fades, and
they that loved
At first like dove and dove were cat and
dog.
She was the daughter of a cottager,
Out of her sphere. What betwixt shame
and pride.
New things and old, himself and her, she
sour'd
To what she is : a nature never kind !
Like men, like manners : like breeds like,
they say :
Kind nature is the best : those manners
next
That fit us like a nature second-hand;
Which are indeed the manners of the
great.
John. But I had heard it was this bill
that past,
And fear of change at home, thac drove
him hence.
James. That was the last drop in the
cup of gall.
I once was near him, when his bailiff
brought
A Chartist pike. You should have seen
him wince
As from a venomous thing : he thought
himself
A mark for all, and shudder'd, lest ?, cry
Should break his sleep by night, and his
nice eyes
Should see the raw mechanic's bloody
thumbs
Sweat on his blazon'd chairs; bm, sir,
you know
That these two parties still divide the
world —
Of those that want, and those that have :
and still
The same old sore breaks out from age
to age
With much the same result. Now I
myself,
A Tory to the quick, was as a boy
Destructive, when I had not what I would.
I was at school — a college in the South :
There lived a flayflint near; we stole his
fruit.
His hens, his eggs; but there was law
for us ;
We paid in person. He had a sow, sir.
She,
With meditative grunts of much content.
Lay great with pig, wallowing in sun and
mud.
By night we dragg'd her to the '"'^Uege
tower
From her warm bed, and up the cork-
screw stair
With hand and rope we haled the groan-
ing sow.
And on the leads we kept hcj. iiU bfie
Pigg'd.
Large range of prospect had the mother
sow.
And but for daily loss of one she loved
As one by one we took them — but for
this —
As never sow was higher in this world —
Might have been happy : but what lot is
pure?
EDWIN MORRIS; OR, THE LAKE.
8i
We took them all, till she was left alone
Upon her tower, the N:obe of swine.
And so return'd unfarrow'd to her sty.
John. They found you out?
James. Not they.
John. Well — after all —
W^hat know we of the secret of a man?
His nerves were wrong. What ails us,
who are sound,
That we should mimic this raw fool the
world,
Which charts us all in its coarse blacks
or whites.
As ruthless as a baby with a worm,
As cruel as a schoolboy ere he grows
To Pity — more from ignorance than will.
But put your best foot forward, or I
fear
That we shall miss the mail : and here it
comes
With five at top : as quaint a four-in-hand
As you shall see — three pyqbalds and a
roan.
EDWIN MORRIS;
OR, THE LAKE.
O ME, my pleasant rambles by the lake,
My sweet, wild, fresh three quarters of* a
year.
My one Oasis in the dust and drouth
Of city life ! I was a sketcher then :
See here, my doing : curves of mountain,
bridge,
Boat, island, ruins of a castle, built
When men knew how to build, upon a
rock
With turrets lichen-gilded like a rock :
And here, new-comers in an ancient
hold.
New-comers from the Mersey, million-
aires.
Here lived the Hills — a Tudor-chimnied
bulk
Of mellow brickwork on an isle of bowers.
O me, my pleasant rambles by the lake
With Edwin Morris and with Edward
Bull
The curate; he was fatter than his cure.
But Edwin Morris, he that knew the
names,
G
Long learned names of agaric, moss and
fern.
Who forged a thousand theories of the
rocks,
Who taught me how to skate, to row, to
swim.
Who read me rhymes elaborately good.
His own — I call'd him Crichton, for he
seem'd
All-perfect, finish'd to the finger nail.
And once I ask'd him of his early life.
And his first passion; and he answer'd
me;
And well his words became him : was he
not
A full-cell'd honeycomb of eloquence
Stored from all flowers? Poet-like he
spoke.
/ * My love for Nature is as old as I ;
But thirty moons, one honeymoon to that,
And three rich sennights more, my love
for her.
My love for Nature and my love for her,
Of different ages, like twin-sisters grew,
Twin-sisters differently beautiful.
To some full music rose and san^ the sun,
And some full music seem'd to move and
change
With all the varied changes of the dark,
And either twilight and the day between;
For daily hope fulfill'd, to rise again
Revolving toward fulfilment, made it
sweet
To walk, to sit, to sleep, to wake, to
breathe.'
Or this or something like to this he
spoke.
Then said the fat-faced curate Edward
Bull,
*I take it, God made the woman for
the man.
And for the good and increase of the
world.
A pretty face is well, and this is well,
To have a dame indoors, that trims us up.
And keeps us tight ; but these unreal ways
Seem but the theme of writers, and in-
deed
Worn threadbare. Man is made of solid
stuff.
82
EDWIN MORRIS: OR, THE LAKE.
I say, God made the woman for the man,
And for the good and increase of the
world.'
* Parson,' said I, 'you pitch the pipe
too low :
But I have sudden touches, and can run
My faith beyond my practice into his:
Tho' if, in dancing after Letty Hill,
I do not hear the bells upon my cap,
I scarce have other music : yet say on.
What should one give to light on such a
dream? '
I ask'd him half-sardonically.
'Give?
Give all thou art,' he answer'd, and a
light ^
Of laughter dimpled in his swarthy cheek;
*I would have hid her needle in my
heart.
To save her little finger from a scratch
No deeper than the skin : my ears could
hear
Her lightest breath; her least remark
was worth
The experience of the wise. I went and
came;
Her voice fled always thro' the summer
land;
I spoke her name alone. Thrice-happy
days !
The flower of each, those moments when
we met,
The crown of all, we met to part no
more.'
Were not his words delicious, I a beast
To take them as I did? but something
jarr'd;
Whether he spoke too largely; that there
seem'd
A touch of something false, some self-
conceit.
Or over-smoothness : howsoe'er it was.
He scarcely hit my humour, and I said :
'Friend Edwin, do not think yourself
alone
Of all men happy. Shall not Love to
me,
As in the Latin song I learnt at school.
Sneeze out a full God-bless-you right and
left?
But you can talk : yours is a kindly vein :
I have, I think, — Heaven knows, — as
much within;
Have, or should have, but for a chought
or two.
That like a purple beech among the greens
Looks out of place : 'tis from no want in
her:
It is my shyness, or my self-distrust.
Or something of a wayward modern mind
Dissecting passion. Time wir set me
right.'
So spoke I knowing not the tljings
that were.
Then said the fat-faced curate, Edward
Bull:
'God made the woman for the use of
man.
And for the good and increase of the
world.'
And I and ^dwin laughed; and now we
paused
About the windings of the marge to hear
The soft wind blowing over meadowy
holms
And alders, garden-isles; and now we left
The clerk behind us, I and he, and ran
By ripply shallows of the lisping lake.
Delighted with the freshness and the
sound.
But, when the bracken rusted on their
crags.
My suit had wither'd, nipt to death by
him
That was a God, and is a lawyer's clerk,
The rentroll Cupid of our rainy isles.
'Tis true, we met; one hour I had, no
more :
She sent a note, the seal an Elle vous
suit.
The close, * Your Letty, only yours ; ' and
this
Thrice underscored. The friendly mist
of morn
Clung to the lake. I boated over, ran
My craft aground, and heard with beat«
ing heart
The Sweet-Gale rustle round the shelving
keel;
And out I stept, and up I crept: she
moved,
ST. SIMEON STYLITES.
83
Like Proserpine in Enna, gathering
flowers :
Then low and sweet I whistled thrice;
'and she,
She turn'd, we closed, we kiss'd, swore
faith, I breathed
In some new planet : a silent cousin stole
Upon us and departed : ' Leave,' she
cried,
•^ O leave nie ! ' * Never, dearest, never :
here
I brave the worst : ' and while we stood
like fools
Embracing, all at once a score of pugs
And poodles yell'd within, and out they
came
Trustees and Aunts and Uncles. * What,
with him !
Go ' (shrill'd the cotton-spinning chorus) ;
* him ! '
I choked. Again they shriek'd the
burthen — * Him ! '
Again with hands of wild rejection * Go ! —
Girl, get you in ! ' She went — and in
one month
They wedded her to sixty thousand pounds,
To lands in Kent and messuages in York,
And slight Sir Robert with his watery
smile
And educated whisker. But for me,
They set an ancient creditor to work :
It seems I broke a close with force and
arms:
There came a mystic token from the king
To greet the sheriff, needless courtesy !
I read, and fled by night, and flying
turn'd :
Her taper glimmer'd in the lake below :
I turn'd once more, close-button'd to the
storm ;
So left the place, left Edwin, nor have seen
Him since, nor heard of her, nor cared to
hear.
Nor cared to hear? perhaps: yet long
ago
I have pardon'd little Letty; not indeed,
It may be, for her own dear sake but this.
She seems apart of those fresh days to me;
For in the dust and drouth of London life
She moves among my visions of the lake.
While the prime swallow dips his wing,
or then
While the gold-lily blows, and overhead
The light cloud smoulders on the summer
crag.
ST. SIMEON STYLITES.
Altho' I be the basest of mankind,
From scalp to sole one slough and crust
of sin.
Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce
meet
For troops of devils, mad with blasphemy,
I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold
Of saintdom, and to clamour, mourn and
sob.
Battering the gates of heaven with storms
of prayer,
Have mercy. Lord, and take away my
sin.
Let this avail, just, dreadful, mighty
God,
This not be all in vain, that thrice ten
years.
Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs.
In hungers and in thirsts, fevers and cold.
In coughs, aches, stitches, ulcerous throes
and cramps,
A sign betwixt the meadow and the cloud.
Patient on this tall pillar I have borne
Rain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and
sleet, and snow;
And I had hoped that ere this period closed
Thou wouldst have caught me up into thy
rest.
Denying not these weather-beaten limbs
The meed of saints, the white robe and
the palm.
O take the meaning. Lord : I do not
breathe.
Not whisper, any murmur of complaint.
Pain heap'd ten-hundred-fold to this, were
still
Less burthen, by ten-hundred-fold, to bear,
Than were those lead-like tons of sin,
that crush'd
My spirit flat before thee.
O Lord, Lord,
Thou knowest I bore this better at the
first.
For I was strong and hale of body then;
And tho' my teeth, which now are dropt
away,
ST. SIMEON STYLITES.
Would chatter with the cold, and all my
beard
Was tagg'd with icy fringes in the moon,
I drown'd the whoopings of the owl with
sound
Of pious hymns and psalms, and some-
times saw
An angel stand and watch me, as I sang.
Now am I feeble grown; my end draws
nigh;
I hope my end draws nigh : half deaf I
am,
So that I scarce can hear the people hum
About the column's base, and almost blind,
And scarce can recognise the fields I
know;
And both my thighs are rotted with the
dew;
Yet cease I not to clamour and to cry.
While my stiff spine can hold my weary
head,
Till all my limbs drop piecemeal from the
stone,
Have mercy, mercy : take away my sin.
O Jesus, if thou wilt not save my soul,
Who may be saved? who is it may be
saved ?
Who may be made a saint, if I fail here?
Show me the man hath suffer'd more
than I.
For did not all thy martyrs die one death ?
For either they were stoned, or crucified.
Or burn'd in fire, or boil'd in oil, or sawn
In twain beneath the ribs; but I die here
To-day, and whole years long, a life of
death.
Bear witness, if I could have found a way
(And heedfuUy I sifted all my thought)
More slowly-painful to subdue this home
Of sin, my flesh, which I despise and hate,
I had not stinted practice, O my God.
For not alone this pillar-punishment.
Not this alone I bore : but while I lived
In the white convent down the valley there,
For many weeks about my loins I wore
The rope that haled the buckets from the
well,
Twisted as tight as I could knot the noose ;
And spake not of it to a single soul,
Until the ulcer, eating thro' my skin,
Betray'd my secret penance, so that all
My brethren marvell'd greatly. More
than this
I bore, whereof, O God, thou knowest all.
Three winters, that my soul might
grow to thee,
I lived up there on yonder mountain
side.
My right leg chain'd into the crag, I lay
Pent in a roofless close of ragged stones;
Inswathed sometimes in wandering mist,
and twice
Black'd with thy branding thunder, and
sometimes
Sucking the damps for drink, and eating
not.
Except the spare chance-gift of those
that came
To touch my body and be heal'd, and live :
And they say then that I work'd miracles,
Whereof my fame is loud amongst man-
kind,
Cured lameness, palsies, cancers. Thou,
OGod,
Knowest alone whether this was or no.
Have mercy, mercy ! cover all my sin.
Then, that I might be more alone
with thee.
Three years I lived upon a pillar, high
Six cubits, and three years on one of
twelve ;'
And twice three years I crouch'd on one
that rose
Twenty by measure; last of all, I grew
Twice ten long weary weary years to this,
That numbers forty cubits from the soil.
I think that I have borne as much as
. this —
Or else I dream — and for so long a time.
If I may rneasure time by yon slow light,
And this high dial, which my sorrow
crowns —
So much — even so.
And yet I know not well,
For that the evil ones come here, and say,
' Fall down, O Simeon : thou hast suffer'd
long
For ages and for ages ! ' then they prate
Of penances I cannot have gone thro'.
Perplexing me with lies; and oft I fall.
Maybe for months, in such blind lethargies
That Heaven, and Earth, and Time are
choked.
But yet
Bethink thee, Lord, while thou and all
the saints
ST. SIMEON STYLITES.
85
Enjoy themselves in heaven, and men on
earth
House in the shade of comfortable roofs,
Sit with their wives by fires, eat whole-
some food,
And wear warm clothes, and even beasts
have stalls,
I, 'tween the spring and downfall of the
light,
Bow down one thousand and two hundred
times,
To Christ, the Virgin Mother, and the
saints;
Or in the night, after a little sleep,
I wake : the chill stars sparkle; -I am wet
With drenching dews, or stiff with crack-
ling frost.
I wear an undress'd goatskin on my
back;
A grazing iron collar grinds my neck;
And in my weak, lean arras I lift the
cross.
And strive and wrestle with thee till i
die :
0 mercy, mercy ! wash away my sin.
O Lord, thou knowest what a man I
am;
A sinful man, conceived and born in sin :
'Tis their own doing; this is none of
mine;
Lay it not to me. Am I to blame for
this.
That here come those that worship me ?
Ha! ha!
They think that I am somewhat. What
am I?
The silly people take me for a saint,
And bring me offerings of fruit and
flowers :
And I, in truth (thou wilt bear witness
here)
Have all in all endured as much, and
more
Than many just and holy men, whose
names
Are register'd and calendar'd for saints.
Good people, you do ill to kneel to me.
What is it I can have done to merit this?
1 am a sinner viler than you all.
It may be I have wrought some miracles.
And cured some halt and maim'd; but
what of that?
It may be, no one, even among the saints.
May match his pains with mine; but
what of that?
Yet do not rise; for you may look on me,
And in your looking you may kneel to
God.
Speak ! is there any of you halt or maim'd?
I think you know I have some power
with Heaven
From my long penance : let him speak
his wish.
Yes, I can heal him. Power goes
forth from me.
They say that they are heal'd. Ah,
hark ! they shout
* St. Simeon Stylites.' Why, if so,
God reaps a harvest in me. O my soul,
God reaps a harvest in thee. If this be,
Can I work miracles and not be saved?
This is not told of any. They were saints.
It cannot be but that I shall be saved;
Yea, crown'd a saint. They shout,
* Behold a saint ! '
And lower voices saint me from above.
Courage, St. Simeon ! This dull chrysalis
Cracks into shining wings, and hope ere
death
Spreads more and more and more, that
God hath now
Sponged and made blank of crimeful
record all
My mortal archives.
O my sons, my sons,
I, Simeon of the pillar, by surname
Stylites, among men ; I, Simeon,
The watcher on the column till the end;
I, Simeon, whose brain the sunshine
bakes;
I, whose bald brows in silent hours
become
Unnaturally hoar with rime, do now
From my high nest of penance here pro-
claim
That Pontius and Iscariot by my side
Show'd like fair seraphs. On the coals
Hay,
A vessel full of sin : all hell beneath
Made me boil over. Devils pluck'd my
sleeve,
Abaddon and Asmodeus caught at me.
I smote them with the cross; they
swarm'd again.
In bed like monstrous apes they crush'd
my chest :
86
ST. SIMEON STYLITES— THE TALKING OAK.
They flapp'd my light out as I read : I
saw
Their faces grow between me and my
book;
With colt-like whinny and with hoggish
whine
They burst my prayer. Yet this way
was left,
And by this way I 'scaped them. Mortify
Your flesh, like me, with scourges and
with thorns;
Smite, shrink not, spare not. If it may
be, fast
Whole Lents, and pray. I hardly, with
slow steps,
With slow, faint steps, and much exceed- .
ing pain.
Have scrambled past those pits of fire,
that still
Sing in mine ears. But yield not me the
praise :
God only thro' his bounty hath thought fit.
Among the powers and princes of this
world,
To make me an example to mankind,
Which few can reach to. Yet I do not
say
But that a time may come — yea, even
now.
Now, now, his footsteps smite the thresh-
old stairs
'Of life — I say, that time is at the doors
When you may worship me without re-
proach ;
For I will leave my relics in your land.
And you may carve a shrine about my
dust,
And burn a fragrant lamp before my
bones.
When I am gather'd to the glorious
saints.
While I spake then, a sting of shrewd-
est pain
Ran shriveUing thro' me, and a cloudlike
change.
In passing, with a grosser film made thick
These heavy, horny eyes. The end ! the
end !
Surely the end ! What's here? a shape,
a shade,
A flash of light. Is that the angel there
That holds a crown? Come, blessed
brother, come.
I know thy glittering face. I waited
long;
My brows are ready. What ! deny it
now?
Nay, draw, draw, draw nigh. So I
clutch it. Christ !
'Tis gone: 'tis here again; the crown!
the crown !
So now 'tis fitted on and grows to me,
And from it melt the dews of Paradise,
Sweet ! sweet ! spikenard, and balm, and
frankincense.
Ah ! let me not be fool'd, sweet saints :
I trust
That I am whole, and clean, and meet
for Heaven.
Speak, if there be a priest, a man of
God,
Among you there, and let him presently
Approach, and lean a ladder on the
shaft.
And climbing up into my airy home,
Deliver me the blessed sacrament;
For by the warning of the Holy Ghost,
I prophesy that I shall die to-night,
A quarter before twelve.
But thou, O Lord,
Aid all this foolish people; let them take
Example, pattern : lead them to thy
light.
THE TALKING OAK.
Once more the gate behind me falls;
Once more before my face
I see the mould er'd Abbey-walls,
That stand within the chace.
Beyond the lodge the city lies.
Beneath its drift of smoke;
And ah ! with what delighted eyes
I turn to yonder oak.
For when my passion first began.
Ere that, which in me burn'd.
The love, that makes me thrice a man,
Could hope itself return'd;
To yonder oak wicnin the field
I spoke without restraint,
And with a larger faith appeal'd
Than Papist unto Saint.
THE TALKING OAK.
87
For oft I talk'd with him apart.
Strait-laced, but all-too-full in bud
And told him of my choice,
For puritanic stays :
Until he plagiarised a heart,
And answer'd with a voice.
• And I have shadow'd many a group
Of beauties, that were born
Tho' what he whisper'd under Heaven
In teacup-times of hood and hoop.
None else could understand;
Or while the patch was worn;
I found him garrulously given,
A babbler in the land.
* And, leg and arm with love-knots gay.
About me leap'd and laugh'd
But since I heard him make reply
The modish Cupid of the day,
Is many a weary hour;
And shrill'd his tinsel shaft.
'Twere well to question him, and try
If yet he keeps the power.
* I swear (and else may insects prick
Each leaf into a gall)
Hail, hidden to the knees in fern,
This girl, for whom your heart is sick.
Broad Oak of Sumner-chace,
Is three times worth them all;
Whose topmost branches can discern
The roofs of Sumner-place !
* For those and theirs, by Nature's law.
Have faded long ago;
Say thou, whereon I carved her name,
But in these latter springs I saw
If ever maid or spouse.
Your own Olivia blow.
As fair as my Olivia, came
To rest beneath thy boughs. —
•From when she gamboll'd on the
greens
* 0 Walter, I have shelter'd here
A baby-germ, to when
Whatever maiden grace
The maiden blossoms of her teens
The good old Summers, year by year
Could number five from ten.
Made ripe in Sumner-chace :
* I swear, by leaf, and wind, and rain.
' Old Summers, when the monk was fat,
(And hear me with thine ears,)
And, issuing shorn and sleek.
That, tho' I circle in the grain
Would twist his girdle tight, and pat
Five hundred rings of years —
The girls upon the cheek,
* Yet, since I first could cast a shade.
* Ere yet, in scorn of Peter's-pence,
Did never creature pass
And number'd bead, and shrift.
So slightly, musically made,
Bluff Harry broke into the spence
So light upon the grass :
And turn'd the cowls adrift :
' For as to fairies, that will flit
* And I have seen some score of those
To make the greensward fresh,
Fresh faces, that would thrive
I hold them exquisitely knit.
When his man-minded offset rose
But far too spare of flesh.'
To chase the deer at five;
0 hide thy knotted knees in fern,
*And all that from the town would
And overlook the chace;
stroll.
And from thy topmost branch discern
Till that wild wind made work
The roofs of Sumner-place.
In which the gloomy brewer's soul
Went by me, like a stork :
But thou, whereon I carved her name,
That oft hast heard my vows.
'The slight she-slips of loyal blood.
Declare when last Olivia came
And others, passing praise.
To sport beneath thy boughs.
88
THE TALKING OAK.
• 0 yesterday, you know, the fair
That round me, clasping each in each.
Was holden at the town;
She might have lock'd her hands.
Her father left his good arm-chair.
And rode his hunter down.
* Yet seem'd the pressure thrice as sweet
As woodbine's fragile hold,
' And with him Albert came on his.
Or when I feel about my feet
I look'd at him with joy :
The berried briony fold.'
As cowslip unto oxlip is,
So seems she to the boy.
O muffle round thy knees with fern,
And shadow Sumner-chace !
' An hour had past — and, sitting straight
Long may thy topmost branch discern
Within the low-wheel'd chaise.
The roofs of Sumner-place !
Her mother trundled to the gate
Behind the dappled grays.
But tell mCj did she read the name
I carved with many vows
• But as for her, she stay'd at home.
When last with throbbing heart I came
And on the roof she went.
To rest beneath thy boughs?
And down the way you use to come,
She look'd with discontent.
' O yes, she wander'd round and round
These knotted knees of mine,
* She left the novel half-uncut
And found, and kiss'd the name she
Upon the rosewood shelf ;
found,
She left the new piano shut :
And sweetly murmur'd thine.
She could not please herself.
* A teardrop trembled from its source.
* Then ran she, gamesome as the colt.
And down my surface crept.
And livelier than a lark
My sense of touch is something coarse.
She sent her voice thro' all the holt
But I believe she wept.
Before her, and the park.
* Then flush'd her cheek with rosy light,
* A light wind chased her on the wing,
She glanced across the plain;
And in the chase grew wild,
But not a creature was in sight:
As close as might be would he cling
She kiss'd me once again.
About the darling child :
* Her kisses were so close and kind,
* But light as any wind that blows
That, trust me on my word,
So fleetly did she stir,
Hard wood I am, and wrinkled rind,
The flower, she touch'd on, dipt and rose,
But yet my sap was stirr'd :
And turn'd to look at her.
* And even into my inmost ring
*And here she came, and round me
A pleasure I discern'd,
play'd,
Like those blind motions of the Spring,
And sang to me the whole
That show the year is turn'd.
Of those three stanzas that you made
About my " giant bole; "
* Thrice-happy he that may caress
The ringlet's waving balm —
* And in a fit of frolic mirth
The cushions of whose touch may press
She strove to span my waist :
The maiden's tender palm.
Alas, I was so broad of girth.
I could not be embraced.
* I, rooted here among the groves
But languidly adjust
' I wish'd myself the fair young beech
My vapid vegetable loves
That here beside me stands,
With anthers and with dust :
THE TALKING OAK.
89
For ah ! my friend, the days were brief
Whereof the poets talk,
When that, which breathes within the
leaf,
Could slip its bark and walk.
* But could I, as in times foregone,
From spray, and branch, and stem,
Have suck'd and gather'd into one
The life that spreads in them,
* She had not found me so remiss;
But lightly issuing thro',
I would have paid her kiss for kiss.
With usury thereto.'
O flourish high, with leafy towers.
And overlook the lea.
Pursue thy loves among the bowers
But leave thou mine to me.
O flourish, hidden deep in fern,
Old oak, I love thee well;
A thousand thanks for what I learn
And what remains to tell.
* 'Tis little more : the day was warm;
At last, tired out with play.
She sank her head upon her arm
And at my feet she \^y.
* Her eyelids dropp'd their silken eaves.
I breathed upon her eyes
Thro' all the summer of my leaves
A welcome mix'd with sighs.
* I took the swarming sound of life —
The music from the town —
The murmurs of the drum and fife
And lull'd them in my own.
* Sometimes I let a sunbeam slip.
To light her shaded eye;
A second flutter'd round her lip
Like a golden butterfly;
* A third would glimmer on her neck
To make the necklace shine;
Another slid, a sunny fleck,
From head .to ankle fine.
= Then close and dark my arms I spread.
And shadow'd all her rest —
Dropt dews upon her golden head,
An acorn in her breast.
* But in a pet she started up.
And pluck'd it out, and drew
My little oakling from the cup,
And flung him in the dew.
* And yet it was a graceful gift —
I felt a pang within
As when I see the woodman lift
His axe to slay my kin.
* I shook him down because be was
The finest on the tree.
He lies beside thee on the grass.
O kiss him once for me.
* O kiss him twice and thrice for me.
That have no lips to kiss.
For never yet was oak on lea
Shall grow so fair as this.'
Step deeper yet in herb and fern,
Look further thro' the chace.
Spread upward till thy boughs discerr
The front of Sumner-place,
This fru'.t of thine by Love is blest,
That but a moment lay
Where fairer fruit of Love may rest
Some happy future day.
I kiss it twice, I kiss it thrice.
The warmth it thence shall win
To riper life may magnetise
The baby-oak within.
But thou, while kingdoms overset,
Or lapse from hand to hand.
Thy leaf shall never fail, nor yet
Thine acorn in the land.
May never saw dismember thee,
Nor wielded axe disjoint.
Thou art the fairest-spoken tree
From here to Lizard-point.
O rock upon thy towery-top
All throats that gurgle sweet !
All starry culmination drop
Balm-dews to bathe thy feeti
90
THE TALKING OAK— LOVE AND DUTY.
All grass of silky feather grow —
And while he sinks or swells
The full south-breeze around thee blow
The sound -of minster bells.
The fat earth feed thy branchy root,
That under deeply strikes !
The northern morning o'er thee shoot,
High up, in silver spikes !
Nor ever lightning char thy grain,
But, rolling as in sleep.
Low thunders bring the mellow rain,
That makes thee broad and deep !
And hear me swear a solemn oath.
That only by thy side
Will I to Olive plight my troth.
And gain her for my bride.
And when my marriage morn may fall,
She, Dryad-like, shall wear
Alternate leaf and acorn-ball
In wreath about her hair.
And I will work in prose and rhyme,
And praise thee more in both
Than bard has honour'd beech or lime.
Or that Thessalian growth.
In which the swarthy ringdove sat.
And mystic sentence spoke;
And more than England honours that,
Thy famous brother-oak.
Wherein the younger Charles abode
Till all the paths were dim,
And far below the Roundhead rode.
And humm'd a surly hymn.
LOVE AND DUTY.
Of love that never found his earthly close.
What sequel ? Streaming eyes and
breaking hearts ?
Or all the same as if he had not been?
Not so. Shall Error in the round of
time
Still father Truth? O shall the braggart
shout
For some blind glimpse of freedom work
itself
Thro' madness, hated by the wise, to law.
System and empire ? Sin itself be found
-The cloudy porch oft opening on the
Sun?
And only he, this wonder, dead, become
Mere highway dust? or year by yeav
alone
Sit brooding in the ruins of a life,
Nightmare of youth, the spectre of him-
self?
If this were thus, if this, indeed, were
all.
Better the narrow brain, the stony heart,
The staring eye glazed o'er with sapless
days,
The long mechanic pacings to and fro.
The set gray life, and apathetic end.
But am I not the nobler thro' thy love?
O three times less unworthy ! likewise
thou
Art more thro' Love, and greater than
thy years,
The Sun will run his orbit, and the Moon
Her circle. Wait, and Love himself will
bring
The drooping flower of knowledge
changed to fruit
Of wisdom. Wait : my faith is large in
Time,
And that which shapes it to some perfect
end.
Will some one say. Then why not ill
for good?
Why took ye not your Pastime? To that
man
My work shall answer, since I knew the
right
And did it; for a man is not as God,
But then most Godlike being most a man.
— So let me think 'tis well for thee and
me —
Ill-fated that I am, what lot is mine
Whose foresight preaches peace, my heart
so slow
To feel it! For how hard it seem'd to
me,
•When eyes, love-languid thro' half tears
would dwell
One earnest, earnest moment upon mine.
Then not to dare to see ! when thy low
voice.
Faltering, would break its syllables, to
keep
LOVE AND DUTY— THE GOLDEN YEAR.
91
My own full-tuned, — hold passion in a
leash,
And not leap forth and fall about thy
neck.
And on thy bosom (deep desired relief!)
Rain out the heavy mist of tears, that
weigh'd
Upon my brain, my senses and my soul !
For Love himself took part against
himself
To warn us off, and Duty loved of Love —
O this world's curse — beloved but hated
— came
Like Death betwixt thy deav embrace and
mine,
And crying, ' Who is this? behold thy
bride,'
She push'd me from thee.
If the sense is hard
To alien ears, I did not speak to these —
No, not to thee, but to thyself in me :
Hard is my do^m and thine: thou
knowest it all.
Could Love part thus? was it not well
to speak.
To have spoken once? It could not but
be well.
The slow sweet hours that bring us all
things good,
The slow sad hours that bring us all
things ill,
And all good things from evil, brought
the night
In which we sat together and alone.
And to the want, that hoUow'd all the
heart.
Gave utterance by the yearning of an eye,
That burn'd upon its object thro' such
tears
As flow but once a life.
The trance gave way
To those caresses, when a hundred times
In that last kiss, which never was the last,
Farewell, like endless welcome, lived and
died.
Then follow'd counsel, comfort, and the
words
That make a man feel strong in speaking
truth;
Till now the dark was worn, and overhead
The lights of sunset and of sunrise mix'd
In that brief night; the summer night,
that paused
Among her stars to hear us; stars that
hung
Love-charm'd to listen : all the wheels of
Time
Spun round in station, but the end had
come.
O then like those, whp clench their
nerves to rush
Upon their dissolution, we two rose,
There — closing like an individual life —
In one blind cry of passion and of pain.
Like bitter accusation ev'n to death.
Caught up the whole of love and utter'd
it,
And bade adieu for ever.
Live — yet live —
Shall sharpest pathos blight us, knowing
all
Life needs for life is possible to will —
Live happy; tend thv flowers; be tended
- by
My blessing ! Should my Shadow cross
thy thoughts
Too sadly for their peace, remand it thou
For calmer hours to Memory's darkest
hold.
If not to be forgotten — not at once —
Not all forgotten. Should it cross thy
dreams,
O might it come like one that looks con-
tent,
With quiet eyes unfaithful to the truth.
And point thee forward to a distant light.
Or seem to lift a burthen from thy heart
And leave thee freer, till thou wake
refresh'd
Then when the first low matin-chirp hath
grown
Full quire, and morning driv'n her plow
of pearl
Far furrowing into light the mounded
rack,
Beyond the fair green field and eastern
THE GOLDEN YEAR.
Well, you shall have that song which
Leonard wrote :
It was last summer on a tour in Whales :
Old James was with me : we that day
had been
92
THE GOLDEN YEAR.
Up Snowdon; and I wish'd for Leonard
there,
And found him in Llanberis: then we
crost
Between the lakes, and clamber'd half
way up
The counter side; and that same song of
his
He told me; for I banter'd him, and
swore
They said he lived shut up within himself,
A tongue-tied Poet in the feverous days,
That, setting the how much before the
hozv,
Cry, like the daughters of the horseleech,
* Give,
Cram us with all,' but count not me the
herd!
To which 'They call me what they
will,' he said :
* But I was born too late : the fair new
forms.
That float about the threshold of an age,
Like truths of Science waiting to be
caught —
Catch me who can, and make the catcher
crown'd —
Are taken by the forelock. Let it be.
But if you care indeed to listen, hear
These measured words, my work of
yestermorn.
* We sleep and wake and sleep, but all
things move;
The Sun flies forward to his brother Sun;
The dark Earth follows wheel'd in her
ellipse;
And human things returning on them-
selves
Move onward, leading up the golden year.
*Ah, tho' the times, when some new
thought can bud,
Are but as poets' seasons when they
flower.
Yet oceans daily gaining on the land,
Have ebb and flow conditioning their
march.
And slow and sure comes up the golden
year.
'When wealth no more shall rest in
mounded heaps,
But smit with freer light shall slowly
melt
In many streams to fatten lower lands,
And light shall spread, and man be liker
man
Thro' all the season of the golden year.
'Shall eagles not be eagles? wrens be
wrens?
If all the world were falcons, what of
that?
The wonder of the eagle were the less,
But he not less the eagle. Happy days
Roll onward, leading up the golden year.
' Fly, happy happy sails, and bear the
Press ;
Fly happy with the mission of the Cross;
Knit land ta land, and blowing haven-
ward
With silks, and fruits, and spices, cleai
of toll,
Enrich the markets of the golden year.
' But we grow old. Ah ! when shall
all men's good
Be each man's rule, and universal Peace
Lie like a shaft of liglat across the land,
And like a lane of beams athwart the
sea.
Thro' all the circle of the golden year?'
Thus far he flbw'd, and ended; where-
upon
*Ah, folly!' in mimic cadence answer'd
James —
* Ah, folly ! for it lies so far away,
Not in our time, nor in our children's
time,
'Tis like the second world to us that
live;
'Twere all as one to fix our hopes on
Heaven
As on this vision of the golden year.'
With that he struck his staff against
the rocks
And broke it, — James, — you know him,
— old, but full
Of force and choler, and firm upon his
feet.
And like an oaken stock in winter woods,
O'erflourish'd with the hoary clematis :
Then added, all in heat :
' What stuff is this !
Old writers push'd the happy season
back, —
The more fools they, — we forward:
dreamers both :
You most, that in an age, when every
hour
UL YSSES.
93
Must sweat her sixty minutes to the
death,
Live on, God love us, as if the seedsman,
rapt
Upon the teeming harvest, should not
plunge
His hand into the bag : but well I know
That unto him who works, and feels he
works,
This same grand year is ever at the
doors.'
He spoke; and, high above; I heard
them blast
The steep slate-quarry, and the great
echo flap
And buffet round the hills, from bluff to
bluff. -^
ULYSSES.
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren
crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and
dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and
know not me.
y y.;^nnot re<i\ frnrn tr?"*"! • I will drink
T.ife-to-ihe ]eesj all times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with
those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and
when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
EQi:-ahvjiYS roaming wi^h a hnnp^rv hearf
Much have T seen and known r cities of
men,
And manners, climates, councils, govern-
ments,
Myself not least, but hp"^"''*'^^ of them
And drunk delight of battle with my
peers.
Far on the ringing plains of windy
Troy.
-J a^ a part of all that I have met:
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose
margin fades
Fr>r fvyr anH fof evpr when I move.
H«w dnll it i'7 tq.pause, to make an end.
To rust unburnish'd, n^*^ ^^ gVijiie in use !
As tho' to breathe were hfe. LiFe piled
on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains : but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something
more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it
were
For some three suns to store and hoard
myself.
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To fnlW knnwipfjge like a sinkinfr star.
BpyonH the UtlUPfl*^^ bnnnri of liiim>>n
thought.
This is rpy gonj mine own Telem^-chus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle-^
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make
mild
A rugged p<""plfj ?nd i-hro' soft d^''^'^'*
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the
sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods.
When I am gone. He works his work,
I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs
her sail :
There gloom the dark broad seas. My
mariners.
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and
thought with me —
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and
opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads — xou_and I
arp old:
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all : but something ere the
end,
Some work of noble note^ may yet be
done.
Not unbecoming men that strove with
Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the
rocks :
The long day wanes: the slow moon
climbs : the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come,
my friends,
94
TITHONUS.
'Tjs_nnt, t-QQ late \o s^ek g newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for mv purpose
holds
Tp sail beyond the sunset and the baths
nf nil frVio wn^tf^rn gtar«:^, ^ipHI T die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us
down:"
It maybe we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we
knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and
tho'
We are noJLJiow thfif g»'-'""ghVi wh^ph I'n
old days
Moved earth and heaven; i-fiat whiV.Vf wp
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
1V[prlp iirwnlr hy Hfne and fate, but strong
in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
The woods decay, the woods decay and
fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the
ground, *
lyfan rnmps and tills the field and lies
beneath.
And after many a summer dies the swan.
lyrp nT]ly cruel immojJLalitv
Con Slimes : I wither slowly in thine arms.
Here at the quiet limit of the world,
A white-hair'd shadow roaming like a
dream
The ever-silent spaces of the East,
Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of
morn.
Alas! for this gray shadow, once a
man —
So glorious in his beauty and thy choice,
Who madest him thy chosen, that he
seem'd
To his great heart none other than a
God!
T a<;L-!d fjiee. *Give ^p immf^|-)-cilitp '
Then didst thou grant mine asking with
a smile.
Like wealthy men who care not how they
give.
But thy strong Hours indignant work'd
their wills,
And beat me down and marr'd and
wasted me,
And tho' they could not end me. left me
To dwell in presence of imm^^-fal youth,
TmmnrtaVage be?jjdr i^yrr.'-"-'-^^ y^"<-V^
And all I was, in ashes. Can thy love,
Thy beauty, make amends, tho' even
now,
Close over us, the silver star, thy guide,
Shines in those tremulous eyes that fill
with tears
To hear me ? T.et me go : take back thv
*Why should a man desire in any way
To vary from the kindly race of men.
Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance
Where all should pause, as is most meet
for all ?
A soft air fans the cloud apart; there
comes
A glimpse of that dark world where I
was born.
Once more the old mysterious glimmer
steals
From thy pure brows, and from thy
shoulders pure.
And bosom beating with a heart renew'd.
Thy cheek begins to redden thro' the
gloom,
Thy sweet eyes brighten slowly close to
mine,
Ere yet they blind the stars, and the wild
team
Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke,
arise,
And shake the darkness from their
loosen'd manes,
And beat the twilight into flakes of fire.
Lo ! ever thus thou growest beautiful
In silence, then before thine answer
given
Departest, and thy tears are on my
cheek.
Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy
tears.
And make me tremble lest a saying
learnt,
TIT HON us — LO CKSLE Y HALL.
95
In days far-off, on that dark earth, be
true ?
•The Gods themselves cannot recall
their gifts.'
Ay me ! ay me ! with what another
heart
In days far-off, and with what other eyes
I used to watch — if Ibehethatwatch'd —
The lucid outline forming round thee;
saw
The dim curls kindle into sunny rings;
Changed with thy mystic change, and
felt my blood
Glow with the glow that slowly crimson'd
all
Thy presence and thy portals, while I
lay,
Mouth, forehead, eyelids, growing dewy-
warm
With kisses balmier than half-opening
buds
Of April, and could hear the lips that
kiss'd
Whispering I knew not what of wild and
sweet.
Like that strange song I heard Apollo
sing,
While Ilion like a mist rose into towers.
Yet hold me not for ever in thine East :
How can my nature longer mix with
thine ?
Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold
Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled
feet
Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when
the steam
Floats up from those dim fields about the
homes
I Of happy men that have the power to
die.
And grassy barrows of the happier
dead.
I Release me, and restore me to the
ground;
Thou seest all things, thou wilt see my
grave :
Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by
morn;
II earth in earth forget these empty courts,
•And thee returning on thy silver wheels.
LOCKSLEY HALL.
Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn :
Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn.
'Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call,
Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall;
Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts.
And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.
Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,
Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.
Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.
Here about the beach I wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;
When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed ;
When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed :
When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see;
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be. —
96 LOCKSLEY HALL.
In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;
In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;
In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young,
' And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung.
And I said, ' My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me,
Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee.'
On her pallid cheek and forehead came a color and a light.
As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.
And she turn'd — her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs —
All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes —
Saying, ' I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong ; '
Saying, ' Dost thou love me, cousin ? ' weeping, * I have loved thee long.-
Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his glowing hands;
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight.
Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring.
And her whisper throng'd my pulses with the fullness of the Spring.
Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships,
And our spirits rush'd together at the touching of the lips.
O my cousin, shallow-hearted ! O my Amy, mine no more !
O the dreary, dreary moorland ! O the barren, barren shore !
Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung,
Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue !
Is it well to wish thee happy? — having known me — to decline
On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine !
Yet it shall be : thou shalt lower to his level day by day.
What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathise with clay.
As the husband is, the wife is : thou art mated with a clown,
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.
He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.
What is this? his eyes are heavy : think not they are glazed with wine.
Go to him : it is thy duty : kiss him : take his hand in thine.
LOCKSLEY HALL. 97
It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought :
Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought.
He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand —
Better thou wert dead before me, tho' I slew thee with my hand !
Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart's disgrace,
RoU'd in one another's arms, and silent in a last embrace.
Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth!
Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth !
Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule !
Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of the fool !
Well — 'tis well that I should bluster ! — Hadst thou less unworthy proved —
Would to God — for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved.
Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit?
I will pluck it from my bosom, tho' my heart be at the root.
Never, tho' my mortal summers to such length of years should come
As the many-winter'd crow that leads the clanging rookery home.
Where is comfort? in division of the records of the mind?
Can I part her from herself, and love her, as I knew her, kind?
I remember one that perish'd : sweetly did she speak and move :
Such a one do I remember, whom to look at was to love.
Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore?
No — she never loved me truly: love is love for evermore.
Comfort? comfort scorn'd of devils! this is truth the poet sings,
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.
Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof,
In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.
Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall,
Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.
Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep, .
To thy widow'd marriage-pillows, to the tears that thou wilt weep.
Thou shalt hear the ' Never, never,' whisper'd by the phantom years,
And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears;
And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain.
Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow : get thee to thy rest again.
Nay, but Nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry.
'Tis a purer life than thine; a lip to drain thy trouble dry.
98 LOCKSLEY HALL.
Baby lips will laugh me down : my latest rival brings thee rest.
Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother's breast.
O, the child too clothes the father with a dearness not his due.
Half is thine and half is his : it will be worthy of the two.
O, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part,
With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart.
'They were dangerous guides the feelings — she herself was not exempt —
Truly, she herself had suffer'd ' — Perish in thy self-contempt !
Overlive it — lower yet — be happy! wherefore should I care?
I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.
What is that which I should turn to, Hghting upon days like these?
Every door is barr'd with gold, and opens but to golden keys.
Every gate is throng'd with suitors, all the markets overflow.
I have but an angry fancy: what is that which I should do?
I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground,
When the ranks are roU'd in vapour, and the winds are laid with sound.
But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honour feels,
And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other's heels.
Can 1 but relive in sadness? I will turn that earlier page.
Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous Mother-Age !
Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife,
When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life;
Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield,
Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field,
And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn,
Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn;
And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then,
Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men :
Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new :
That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do:
For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew
hrom the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;
LOCKS LEY HALL, 99
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder-storm;
Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe.
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.
So I triumph'd ere my passion sweeping thro' me left me dry,
Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with the jaundiced eye;
Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint:
Science moves, but slowly slowly, creeping on from' point to point:
Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion creeping nigher,
Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire.
Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns.
What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys,
Tho' the deep heart of existence beat for ever like a boy's?
Knowledge comeS, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore,
And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast.
Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest.
Hark, my merry comrades call me, sounding on the bugle-horn.
They to whom my foolish passion were a target for their scorn :
Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder'd string?
I am shamed thro' all my nature to have loved so slight a thing.
Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman's pleasure, woman's pain =
Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain :
Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match'd with mine.
Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine —
Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah, for some retreat
Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat;
Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father evil-starr'd; —
I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's ward.
Or to burst all links of habit — there to wander far away,
On from island unto island at the gateways of the day.
Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies.
Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.
100 LOCKSLEY HALL.
Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag,
Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag;
Droops the heavy-blossom'd bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree —
Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea.
There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind.
In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind.
There the passions cramp'd no longer shall have scope and breathing space;
I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.
Iron-jointed, supple-sinew'd, they shall dive, and they shall run,
Catch the wild goatby the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun;
Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks,
Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books —
Fool, again the dream, the fancy ! but I know my words are wild,
But I count the gray barbarian lo^yer than the Christian child.
I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains.
Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains !
Mated with a squalid savage — what to me were sun or clime?
I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time —
I that rather held it better men should perish one by one.
Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua's moon in Ajalon !
/
Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range,
Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.
Thro' the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day :
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.
Mother-Age (for mine I knew not) help me as when life begun :
Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the Sun,
O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set.
Ancient founts of inspiration well thro' all my fancy yet.
Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall !
Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree fall.
Comes a vapour from the margin, blackening over heath and holt.
Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt.
Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow;
For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go.
GODIVA.
lOI
GODIVA.
I tvaited fo7' the train at Coventry;
I hung zvith grooms and porters on the
bridge.
To watch the three tall spires; and there
I shaped
The city's ancient legend into this : —
Not only we, the latest seed of Time,
New men, that in the flying of a wheel
Cry down the past, not only we, that prate
Of rights and wrongs, have loved the
people well,
And loathed to see them overtax'd; but
she
Did more, and underwent, and overcame,
The woman of a thousand summers back,
Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled
In Coventry : for when he laid a tax
Upon his town, and all the mothers
brought
Their children, clamouring, ' If we pay,
we starve ! '
She sought her lord, and found him,
where he strode
About the hall, among his dogs, alone.
His beard a foot before him, and his hair
A yard behind. She told him of their
tears,
And pray'd him, * If they pay this tax,
they starve.'
Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed,
'You would not let your little finger ache
For such as these /" — ' But I would die,'
said she.
He laugh'd, and swore by Peter and by
Paul:
Then fillip'd at the diamond in her ear;
* Oh ay, ay, ay, you talk ! ' — * Alas ! ' she
said,
' But prove me what it is I would not do.'
And from a heart as rough as Esau's
hand,
He answer'd, ' Ride you naked thro' the
town.
And I repeal it; ' and nodding, as in
scorn.
He parted, with great strides among his
dogs.
So left alone, the passions of her mind.
As winds from all the compass shift and
blow,
Made war upon each other for an hour,
Till pity won. She sent a herald forth,
And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet,
all
The hard condition; but that she would
loose
The people : therefore, as they loved her
well.
From then till noon no foot should pace
the street,
No eye look down, she passing; but that
all
Should keep within, door shut, and win-
dow barr'd.
Then fled she to her inmost bower,
and there
Unclasp'd the wedded eagles of her belt.
The grim Earl's gift; but ever at a breath
She linger'd, looking like a summer
moon
Half-dipt in cloud ; anon she shook her
head,
And shower'd the rippled ringlets to her
knee;
Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair
Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam,
slid
From pillar unto pillar, until she reach'd
The gateway; there she found her pal-
frey trapt
In purple blazon'd with armorial gold.
Then she rode forth, clothed on with
chastity :
The deep air listen'd round her as she
rode.
And all the low wind hardly breathed for
fear.
The little wide-mouth'd heads upon the
spout
Had cunning eyes to see : the barking
cur
Made her cheek flame : her palfrev's foot-
fall shot
Light horrors thro' her pulses : the blind
walls
Were full of chinks and holes; and over-
head
Fantastic gables, crowding, stared : but
she
Not less thro' all bore up, till, last, she
saw
The white-flower'd elder-thicket from the
field '
I02
THE DAY-DREAM.
Gleam thro' the Gothic archway in the
wall.
Then she rode back, clothed on with
chastity :
And one low churl, compact of thankless
earth,
The fatal byword of all years to come,
Boring a little auger-hole in fear,
Peep'd — but his eyes, before they had
their will,
Were shrivell'd into darkness in his
head,
And dropt before him. So the Powers,
who wait
On noble deeds, cancell'd a sense mis-
used;
And she, that knew not, pass'd : and all
at once.
With twelve great shocks of sound, the
shameless noon
Was clash'd and hammer'd from a hun-
dred towers,
One after one : but even then she gain'd
Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and
crown'd,
To meet her lord, she took the tax
away
And built herself an everlasting name.
THE DAY-DREAM.
PROLOGUE.
O Lady Flora, let me speak :
A pleasant hour has pass'd away
While, dreaming on your damask cheek,
The dewy sister-eyelids lay.
As by the lattice you reclined,
I went thro' many wayward moods
To see you dreaming — and, behind,
A summer crisp with shining woods.
And I too dream'd, until at last
Across my fancy, brooding warm,
The reflex of a legend past,
And loosely settled into form.
And would you have the thought I had.
And see the vision that I saw.
Then take the broidery-frame, and add
A crimson to the quaint Macaw,
And I will tell it. Turn your face.
Nor look with that too-earnest eye —
The rhymes are dazzled from their place
And order'd words asunder fly.
THE SLEEPING PALACE.
The varying year with blade and sheaf
Clothes and reclothes the happy plains.
Here rests the sap within the leaf,
Here stays the blood along the veins.
Faint shadows, vapours lightly curl'd.
Faint murmurs from the meadows
come,
Like hints and echoes of the world
To spirits folded in the womb.
Soft lustre bathes the range of urns
On every slanting terrace-lawn.
The fountain to his place returns
Deep in the garden lake withdrawn.
Here droops the banner on the tower.
On the hall-hearths the festal fires,
The peacock in his laurel bower.
The parrot in his gilded wires.
III.
Roof-haunting martins warm their eggs:
In these, in those the life is stay'd.
The mantles from the golden pegs
Droop sleepily : no sound is made,
Not even of a gnat that sings.
More like a picture seemeth all
Than those old portraits of old kings.
That watch the sleepers from the wall.
IV.
Here sits the Butler with a flask
Between his knees, half-drain'd; and
there
The wrinkled steward at his task,
The maid-of-honour blooming fair;
The page has caught her hand in his:
Her lips are sever'd as to speak :
His own are pouted to a kiss :
The blush is fix'd upon her cheek.
V.
Till all the hundred summers pass,
The beams, that thro' the Oriel shine,
Make prisms in every carven glass,
And beaker brimm'd with noble wine
Each baron at the banquet sleeps.
Grave faces gather'd in a ring.
THE DAY-DREAM.
103
His state the king reposing keeps.
He must have been a jovial king.
All round a hedge upshoots, and shows
At distance like a little wood ;
Thorns, ivies, woodbine, mistletoes,
And grapes with bunches red as blood;
All creeping plants, a wall of green
Close-matted, bur and brake and briar,
And glimpsing over these, just seen.
High up, the topmost palace spire.
VII.
When will the hundred summers die.
And thought and time be born again,
And newer knowledge, drawing nigh,
Bring truth that sways the soul of men?
Here all things in their place remain,
As all were order'd, ages since.
Come, Care and Pleasure, Hope and Pain,
And bring the fated fairy Prince.
THE SLEEPING BEAUTY.
Year after year unto her feet.
She lying on her couch alone.
Across the purple coverlet,
The maiden's jet-black hair has grown,
On either side her tranced form
Forth streaming ff om a braid of pearl :
The slumbrous light is rich and warm,
And moves not on the rounded curl.
The silk star-broider'd coverlid
Unto her limbs itself doth mould
Languidly ever ; and, amid
Her full black ringlets downward
roU'd,
Glows forth each softly-shadow'd arm
With bracelets of the diamond bright :
Her constant beauty doth inform
Stillness with love, and day with light.
She sleeps : her breathings are not heard
In palace chambers far apart.
The fragrant tresses are not stirr'd
That lie upon her charmed heart.
She sleeps : on either hand upswells
The gold-fringed pillow lightly prest:
She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells
A perfect form in perfect rest.
THE ARRIVAL.
I.
All precious things, discover'd late.
To those that seek them issue forth;
For love in sequel works with fate,
And draws the veil from hidden worth.
He travels far from other skies —
His mantle ghtters on the rocks —
A fairy Prince, with joyful eyes,
And lighter-footed than the fox.
n.
The bodies and the bones of those
That strove in other dayi to pass.
Are wither'd in the thorny close.
Or scatter'd blanching on the grass.
He gazes on the silent dead :
'They perish'd in their daring deeds.'
This proverb flashes thro' his head,
' The many fail : the one succeeds.*
in.
He comes, scarce knowing what he
seeks :
He breaks the hedge: he enters
there :
The colour flies into his cheeks :
He trusts to light on something fair ;
For all his life the charm did talk
About his path, and hover near
With words of promise in his walk.
And whisper'd voices at his ear.
IV.
More close and close his footsteps
wind:
The Magic Music in his heart
Beats quick and quicker, till he find
The quiet chamber far apart.
His spirit flutters like a lark.
He stoops — to kiss her — on his
knee.
* Love, if thy tresses be so dark.
How dark those hidden eyes must
be!'
I04
THE DAY-DREAM.
THE REVIVAL.
A TOUCH, a kiss ! the charm was snapt.
There rose a noise of striking clocks,
And feet that ran, and doors that clapt,
And barking dogs, and crowing cocks;
A fuller light illumined all,
A breeze thro' all the garden swept,
A sudden hubbub shook the hall.
And sixty feet the fountain leapt.
II.
The hedge broke in, the banner blew,
The butler drank, the steward scrawl'd.
The fire shot up, the martin flew,
The parrot scream'd, the peacock
squall'd.
The maid and page renew'd their strife.
The palace bang'd, and buzz'd and
clackt.
And all the long-pent stream of life
Dash'd downward in a cataract.
III.
And last with these the king awoke,
And in his chair himself uprear'd,
And yawn'd, and rubb'd his face, and
spoke,
' By holy rood, a royal beard !
How say you? we have slept, my lords.
My beard has grown into my lap.'
The barons swore, with many words,
'Twas but an after-dinner's nap.
* Pardy,' return'd the king, * but still
My joints are somewhat stiff or so.
My lord, and shall we pass the bill
I mention'd half an hour ago?'
The chancellor, sedate and vain.
In courteous words return'd reply :
But dallied with his golden chain,
And, smiling, put the question by.
THE DEPARTURE.
And on her lover's arm she leant.
And round her waist she felt it fold.
And far across the hills they went
In that new world which is the old :
Across the hills, and far away
Beyond their utmost purple rim,
And deep into the dying day
The happy princess follow'd him.
II.
* I'd sleep another hundred years,
O love, for such another kiss; '
* O wake for ever, love,' she hears,
' O love, 'twas such as this and this.'
And o'er them many a sliding star,
And many a merry wind was borne,
And, stream'd thro' many a golden bar.
The twilight melted into morn.
III.
' O eyes long laid in happy sleep ! '
' O happy sleep, that lightly fled ! '
* O happy kiss, that woke thy sleep ! '
' O love, thy kiss would wake the dead ! '
And o'er them many a flowing range
Of vapour buoy'd the crescent-bark.
And, rapt thro' many a rosy change.
The twilight died into the dark.
' A hundred summers ! can it be?
And whither goest thou, tell mewhere? '
* O seek my father's court with me.
For there are greater wonders there.'
And o'er the hills, and far away
Beyond their utmost purple rim,
Beyond the night, across the day,
Thro' all the world she follow'd him.
MORAL.
I.
So, Lady Flora, take my lay.
And if you find no moral there.
Go, look in any glass and say,
What moral is in being fair.
Oh, to what uses shall we put
The wild weed-flower that simply blows ?
And is there any moral shut
Within the bosom of the rose?
II.
But any man that walks the mead.
In bud, or blade, or bloom, may find,
THE DAY-DREAM— AMPHION
105
According as his humours lead,
A meaning suited to his mind.
And liberal applications lie
In Art like Nature, dearest friend;
So 'twere to cramp its use, if I
Should hook it to some useful end.
L'ENVOI.
You shake your head. A random string
Your finer female sense offends.
Well — were it not a pleasant thing
To fall asleep with all one's friends;
To pass with all our social ties
To silence from the paths of men;
And every hundred years to rise
And learn the world, and sleep again;
To sleep thro' terms of mighty wars.
And wake on science grown to more,
On secrets of the brain, the stars.
As wild as aught of fairy lore ;
And all that else the years will show,
The Poet-forms of stronger hours.
The vast Republics that may grow.
The Federations and the Powers;
Titanic forces taking birth
In divers seasons, divers climes;
For we are Ancients of the earth,
And in the morning of the times.
So sleeping, so aroused from sleep
Thro' sunny decads new and strange.
Or gay quinquenniads would we reap
The flower and quintessence of change.
Ah, yet would I — and would I might !
So much your €yes my fancy take —
Be still the first to leap to light
That I might kiss those eyes awake !
For, am I right, or am I wrong,
To choose your own you did not care;
You'd have my moral from the song,
And I will take my pleasure there :
And, am I right or am I wrong,
My fancy, ranging thro' and thro',
To search a meaning for the song,
• Perforce will still revert to you;
Nor finds a closer truth than this
All-graceful head, so richly curl'd,
And evermore a costly kiss
The prelude to some brighter world.
For since the time when Adam first
Embraced his Eve in happy hour.
And every bird of Eden burst
In carol, every bud to flower,
"What eyes, like thine, have waken'd
hopes.
What lips, like thine, so sweetly
join'd?
Where on the double rosebud droops
The fullness of the pensive mind;
W^hich all too dearly self-involved.
Yet sleeps a dreamless sleep to me;
A sleep by kisses undissolved,
That lets thee neither hear nor see :
But break it. In the name of wife,
And in the rights that name may
give.
Are clasp'd the moral of thy life.
And that for which I care to live.
EPILOGUE.
So, Lady Flora, take my lay.
And, if you find a meaning there,
O whisper to your glass, and say,
* What wonder, if he thinks me fair?'
What wonder I was all unwise.
To shape the song for your delight
Like long-tail'd birds of Paradise
That float thro' Heaven, and cannot
light?
Or old-world trains, upheld at court
By Cupid-boys of blooming hue —
But take it — earnest wed with sport.
And either sacred unto you.
AMPHION.
My father left a park to me,
But it is wild and barren,
A garden too with scarce a tree,
And waster than a warren :
Yet say the neighbours when they call,
It is not bad but good land,
And in it is the germ of all
That grows within the woodland.
O had I lived when song was great
In days of old Amphion,
io6
AMPHION.
And ta'en my fiddle to the gate,
Nor cared for seed or scion !
And had I lived when song was great,
And legs of trees were limber,
And ta'en my fiddle to the gate,
And fiddled in the timber !
Tis said he had a tuneful tongue,
Such happy intonation.
Wherever he sat down and sung
He left a small plantation;
Wherever in a lonely grove
•He set up his forlorn pipes,
The gouty oak began to move,
And flounder into hornpipes.
The mountain stirr'd its bushy crown,
And, as tradition teaches.
Young ashes pirouetted down
Coquetting with young beeches;
And briony-vine and ivy-wreath
Ran forward tp his rhyming,
And from the valleys underneath
Came little copses climbing.
The linden broke her ranks and rent
The woodbine wreaths that bind her.
And down the middle, buzz ! she went
With all her bees behind her :
The poplars, in long order due,
With cypress promenaded.
The shock-head willows two and two
By rivers gallopaded.
Came wet-shod alder from the wave.
Came yews, a dismal coterie;
Each pluck'd his one foot from the
grave
Poussetting with a sloe-tree :
Old elms came breaking from the vine.
The vine stream'd out to follow.
And, sweating rosin, plump'd the pine
From many a cloudy hollow.
And wasn't it a sight to see.
When, ere his song was ended,
Like some great landslip, tree by tree,
The country-side descended;
And shepherds from the mountain-eaves
Look'd down, half-pleased, half-fright-
en'd.
As dash'd about the drunken leaves
The random sunshine lighten'd !
Oh, nature first was fresh to men,
And wanton without measure;
So youthful and so flexile then.
You moved her at your pleasure.
Twang out, my fiddle I shake the twigs!
And make her dance attendance;
Blow, flute, and stir the stiff-set sprigs,
And scirrhous roots and tendons.
'Tis vain ! in such a brassy age
I could not move a thistle;
The very sparrows in the hedge
Scarce answer to my whistle;
Or at the most, when three-parts-sick
With strumming and with scraping,
A jackass heehaws from the rick.
The passive oxen gaping.
But what is that I hear? a sound
Like sleepy counsel pleading;
O Lord ! — 'tis in my neighbour's ground,
The modern Muses reading.
They read Botanic Treatises,
And Works on Gardening thro' there,
And Methods of transplanting trees
To look as if they grew there.
The wither'd Misses ! how they prose
O'er books of travell'd seamen.
And show you slips of all that grows
From England to Van Diemen.
They read in arbours dipt and cut, ^
And alleys, faded places,
By squares of tropic summer shut
And warm'd in crystal cases.
But these, tho' fed with careful dirt,
Are neither green nor sappy;
Half-conscious of the garden-squirt.
The spindlings look unhappy.
Better to me the meanest weed
That blows upon its mountain,
The vilest herb that runs to seed
Beside its native fountain.
And I must work thro' months of toil,
And years of cultivation,
Upon my proper patch of soil
To grow my own plantation.
I'll take the showers as they fall,
I will not vex my bosom :
Enough if at the end of all
A little garden blossom.
ST. AGNES' EVE— SIR GALAHAD.
107
ST. AGNES' EVE.
Deep on the convent-roof the snows
Are sparkling to the moon :
My breath to heaven hke vapour goes :
May my soul follow soon !
The shadows of the convent-towers
Slant down the snowy sward,
Still creeping with the creeping hours
That lead me to my Lord :
Make Thou my spirit pure and clear
As are the frosty skies,
Or this first snowdrop of the year
That in my bosom lies.
As these white robes are soil'd and dark,
To yonder shining ground;
As this pale taper's earthly spark,
To yonder argent round;
So shows my soul before the Lamb,
My spirit before Thee;
So in mine earthly house I am,
To that I hope to be.
Break up the heavens, O Lord ! and far,
Thro' all yon starlight keen.
Draw me, thy bride, a glittering star,
In raiment white and clean.
He lifts me to the golden doors;
The flashes come and go;
All heaven bursts her starry floors,
And strows her lights below,
And deepens on and up ! the gates
Roll back, and far within
For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits,
To make me pure of sin.
The sabbaths of Eternity,
One sabbath deep and wide —
A light upon the shining sea —
The Bridegroom with his bride !
SIR GALAHAD.
My good blade carves the casques of men.
My tough lance thrusteth sure.
My strength is as the strength of ten.
Because my heart is pure.
The shattering trumpet shrilleth high.
The hard brands shiver on the steel.
The splinter'd spear-shafts crack and fly,
The horse and rider reel :
They reel, they roll in clanging lists,
And when the tide of combat stands,
Perfume and flowers fall in showers.
That lightly rain from ladies' hands.
How sweet are looks that ladies bend
On whom their favours fall !
For them I battle till the end.
To save from shame and thrall :
But all my heart is drawn above,
My knees are bow'd in crypt and
shrine :
I never felt the kiss of love,
Nor maiden's hand in mine.
More bounteous aspects on me beam.
Me mightier transports move and
thrill;
So keep I fair thro' faith and prayer
A virgin heart in work and will.
When down the stormy crescent goes,
A light before me swims,
Between dark stems the forest glows,
I hear a noise of hymns :
Then by some secret shrine I ride;
I hear a voice but none are there;
The stalls are void, the doors are wide.
The tapers burning fair.
Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth,
The silver vessels sparkle clean,
The shrill bell rings, the censer sw ings.
And solemn chaunts resound between.
Sometimes on lonely mountain-meres
I find a magic bark;
I leap on board : no helmsman steers :
I float till all is dark.
A gentle sound, an awful light !
Three angels bear the holy Grail :
With folded feet, in stoles of white.
On sleeping wings they sail.
Ah, blessed vision ! blood of God !
My spirit beats her mortal bars.
As down dark tides the glory slides,
And star-like mingles with the stars.
When on my goodly charger borne
Thro' dreaming towns I go.
The cock crows ere the Christmas morn.
The streets are dumb with snow.
The tempest crackles on the leads,
And, ringing, springs from brand and
mail;
io8
EDWARD GRAY.
But o'er the dark a glory spreads,
And gilds the driving hail.
I leave the plain, I climb the height;
No branchy thicket shelter yields;
But blessed forms in whistling storms
Fly o'er waste fens and windy fields.
A maiden knight — to me is given
Such hope, I know not fear;
I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven
That often meet me here.
I muse- on joy that will not cease,
Pure spaces clothed in living beams,
Pure lilies of eternal peace,
Whose odours haunt my dreams;
And, stricken by an angel's hand.
This mortal armour that I wear,
This weight and size, this heart and eyes,
Are touch'd, are turn'd to finest air.
The clouds are broken in the sky.
And thro' the mountain-walls
A rolling organ-harmony
Swells up, and shakes and falls.
Then move the trees, the copses nod,
Wings flutter, voices hover clear :
' O just and faithful knight of God !
Ride on ! the prize is near.'
So pass I hostel, hall, and grange;
By bridge and ford, by park and pale,
All-arm'd I ride, whate'er betide,
Until I find the holy Grail.
EDWARD GRAY.
Sweet Emma Moreland of yonder town
Met me walking on yonder way,
'And have you lost your heart?' she
said;
*And are you married yet, Edward
Gray?'
Sweet Emma Moreland spoke to me :
Bitterly weeping I turn'd away :
* Sweet Emma Moreland, love no more
Can touch the heart of Edward Gray.
* Ellen Adair she loved me well,
Against her father's and mother's
will:
To-day I sat for an hour and wept,
By Ellen's grave, on the windy hill.
' Shy she was, and I thought her cold ;
Thought her proud, and fled over the
sea;
Fill'd I was with folly and spite,
When Ellen Adair was dying for me.
' Cruel, cruel the words I said !
Cruelly came they back to-day :
"You're too slight and fickle," I said,
"To trouble the heart of Edward Gray,'^
•^ There I put my face in the grass —
Whisper'd, " Listen to my despair :
I repent me of all I did :
Speak a little, Ellen Adair ! "
' Then I took a pencil, and wrote
On the mossy stone, as I lay,
" Here lies the body of Ellen Adair;
And here the heart of Edward Gray ! "
* Love may come, and love may go.
And fly, like a bird, from tree to tree;
But I will love no more, no more,
Till Ellen Adair come back to me,
' Bitterly wept I over the stone :
Bitterly weeping I turn'd away :
There lies the body of Ellen Adair !
And there the heart of Edward Gray ! '
WILL WATERPROOF'S LYRICAL
MONOLOGUE.
MADE AT THE COCK.
O PLUMP head-waiter at The Cock,
To which I most resort.
How goes the time? 'Tis five o'clock.
Go fetch a pint of port :
But let it not be such as that
You set before chance-comers,
But such whose father-grape grew fat
On Lusitanian summers.
No vain libation to the Muse,
But may she still be kind.
And whisper lovely words, and use
Her influence on the mind.
To make me write my random rhymes.
Ere they be half-forgotten;
Nor add and alter, many times.
Till all be ripe and rotten.
IVILL WATERPROOF'S LYRICAL MONOLOGUE.
109
I pledge her, and she comes and dips
This earth is rich in man and maid;
Her laurel in the wine,
With fair horizons bound :
And lays it thrice upon my lips,
This whole wide earth of light and
These favour'd lips of mine;
shade
Until the charm have power to make
Comes out a perfect round.
New lifeblood warm the bosom,
High over roaring Temple-bar,
And barren commonplaces break
And set in Heaven's third story.
In full and kindly blossom.
1 look at all things as they are,
But thro' a kind of glory.
I pledge her silent at the board;
Her gradual fingers steal
And touch upon the master-chord
Head-waiter, honour'd by the guest
Of all I felt and feel.
Half-mused, or reeling ripe,
Old wishes, ghosts of broken plans,
The pint, you brought me, was the best
And phantom hopes assemble;
That ever came from pipe.
And that child's heart within the man's
But tho' the port surpasses praise,
Begins to move and tremble.
My nerves have dealt with stiffer.
Is there some magic in the place?
Thro' many an hour of summer suns,
Or do my peptics differ?
By many pleasant ways.
Against its fountain upward runs
For since I came to live and learn.
The current of my days :
No pint of white or red
I kiss the lips I once have kiss'd;
Had ever half the power to turn
The gas-light wavers dimmer;
This wheel within my head,
And softly, thro' a vinous mist,
Which bears a season'd brain about,
My college friendships glimmer.
Unsubject to confusion,
Tho' soak'd and saturate, out and out.
I grow in worth, and wit, and sense.
Thro' every convolution.
Unboding critic-pen.
Or that eternal want of pence.
For I am of a numerous house,
Which vexes public men.
With many kinsmen gay.
Who hold their hands to all, and cry
Where long and largely we carouse
For that which all deny them —
As who shall say me nay :
Who sweep the crossings, wet or dry,
Each month, a birth-day coming on,
And all the world go by them.
We drink defying trouble,
Or sometimes two would meet in one,
Ah yet, the' all the world forsake.
And then we drank it double;
Tho' fortune clip my wings.
I will not cramp my heart, nor take
Whether the vintage, yet unkept,
Half-views of men and things.
Had relish fiery-new,
Let Whig and Tory stir their blood;
Or elbow-deep in sawdust, slept.
There must be stormy weather;
As old as Waterloo;
But for some true result of good
Or stow'd, when classic Canning died,
All parties work together.
In musty bins and chambers.
Had cast upon its crusty side
Let there be thistles, there are grapes;
The gloom of ten Decembers.
If old things, there are new;
Ten thousand broken lights and shapes.
The Muse, the jolly Muse, it is !
Yet glimpses of the true.
She answer'd to my call,
Let raffs be rife in prose and rhyme,
She changes with that mood or this,
We lack not rhymes and reasons.
Is all-in-all to all :
As^n this whirligig of Time
She lit the spark within my throat.
We circle with the seasons.
To make my blood run quicker.
WILL WATERPROOF'S LYRICAL MONOLOGUE.
Used all her fiery will, and smote
Her life into the liquor.
And hence this halo lives about
The waiter's hands, that reach
To each his perfect pint of stout,
His proper chop to each.
He looks not like the common breed
That with the napkin dally;
I think he came like Ganymede,
From some delightful valley.
The Cock was of a larger egg
Than modern poultry drop,
Stept forward on a firmer leg.
And cramm'd a plumper crop;
Upon an ampler dunghill trod,
Crow'd lustier late and early,
Sipt wine from silver, praising God,
And raked in golden barley.
A private life was all his joy,
Till in a court he saw
A something-pottle-bodied boy
That knuckled at the taw :
He stoop'd and clutch'd him, fair and
good.
Flew over roof and casement :
His brothers of the Weather stood
Stock-still for sheer amazement.
But he, by farmstead, thorpe and spire.
And foUow'd with acclaims,
A sign to many a staring shire
Came crowing over Thames.
Right down by smoky Paul's they bore.
Till, where the street grows straiter,
One fix'd for ever at the door,
And one became head-waiter.
But whither would my fancy go?
How out of place she makes
The violet of a legend blow
Among the chops and steaks !
'Tis but a steward of the can,
One shade more plump than common;
As just and mere a serving-man
As any born of woman.
I ranged too high : what draws me
down
Into the common day ?
Is it the weight of that half-crown.
Which I shall have to
payi
For, something duller than at first,
Nor wholly comfortable,
I sit, my empty glass reversed.
And thrumming on the table :
Half fearful that, with self at strife,
I take myself to task ;
Lest of the fullness of my life
I leave an empty flask :
For I had hope, by something rare
To prove myself a poet :
But,, while I plan and plan, my hair
Is gray before I know it.
So fares it since the years began,
Till they be gather'd up;
The truth, that flies the flowing can.
Will haunt the vacant cup :
And others' follies teach us not.
Nor much their wisdom teaches;
And most, of sterling worth, is what
Our own experience preaches.
Ah, let the rusty theme alone !
We know not what we know.
But for my pleasant hour, 'tis gone;
'Tis gone, and let it go.
'Tis gone : a thousand such have slipt
Away from my embraces,
And fall'n into the dusty crypt
Of darken'd forms and faces.
Go, therefore, thou ! thy betters went
Long since, and came no more;
With peals of genial clamour sent
From many a tavern-door,
With twisted quirks and happy hits,
From misty men of letter^; '
The tavern-hours of mighty wits —
Thine elders and thy betters.
Hours, when the Poet's words and looks
Had yet their native glow :
Nor yet the fear of little books
Had made him talk for show;
But, all his vast heart sherris-warm'd,
He flash'd his random speeches.
Ere days, that deal in ana, swarm'd .
His literary leeches.
LADY CLARE.
So mix for ever with the past,
Like all good things on earth !
For should I prize thee, couldst thou
last,
At half thy real worth?
I hold it good, good things should pass:
With time I will not quarrel :
It is but yonder empty glass
That makes me maudlin-moral.
Head-waiter of the chop-house here,
To which I most resort,
I too must part : I hold thee dear
For this good pint of port.
For this, thou shalt from all things suck
Marrow of mirth and laughter;
And wheresoe'er thou move, good luck
Shall fling her old shoe after.
But thou wilt never move from hence,
The sphere thy fate allots:
Thy latter days increased with pence
Go down among the pots :
Thou battenest by the greasy gleam
In haunts of hungry sinners.
Old boxes, larded with the steam
Of thirty thousand dinners.
We fret, we fume, would shift our skins,
Would quarrel with our lot;
Thy care is, under polish'd tins,
To serve the hot-and-hot;
To come and go, and come again,
Returning like the pewit,
And watch'd by silent gentlemen,
That trifle with the cruet.
Live long, ere from thy topmost head
The thick-set hazel dies;
Long, ere the hateful crow shall tread
The corners of thine eyes :
Live long, nor feel in head or chest
Our changeful equinoxes.
Till mellow Death, like some late guest,
Shall call thee from the boxes.
But when he calls, and thou shalt cease
To pace the gritted floor,
And, laying down an unctuous lease
Of life, shalt earn no more;
No carved cross-bones, the types of Death,
Shall show thee past to Heaven :
But carved cross-pipes, and, underneath,
A pint-pot neatly graven.
LADY CLARE.
It was the time when lilies blow,
And clouds are highest up in air,
Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe
To give his cousin, Lady Clare.
I trow they did not part in scorn :
Lovers long-betroth'd were they:
They two will wed the morrow morn :
God's blessing on the day !
* He does not love me for my birth,
Nor for my lands so broad and fair;
He loves me for my own true worth,
And that is well,' said Lady Clare.
In there came old Alice the nurse.
Said, ' Who was this that went from
thee?'
* It was my cousin,' said Lady Clare,
* To-morrow he weds with me.'
* O God be thank'd ! ' said Alice the nurse,
'That all comes round so just and fair :
Lord Ronald is heir of all your lands,
And you are not the Lady Clare.'
* Are ye out of your mind, my nurse, my
nurse? '
Said Lady Clare, * that ye speak so
wild?'
* As God's above,' said Alice the nurse,
* I speak the truth : you are my child.
*The old Earl's daughter died at my
breast;
I speak the truth, as I live by bread !
I buried her like my own sweet child.
And put my child in her stead.'
' Falsely, falsely have ye done,
O mother,' she said, *if this be true,
To keep the best man under the sun
So many years from his due.'
*Nay now, my child,' said Alice the
nurse,
* But keep the secret* for your life.
LADY CLARE— THE CAPTALN.
And all you have will be Lord Ronald's,
When you are man and wife.'
* If I'm a beggar born,' she said,
* I will speak out, for I dare not lie.
Pull off, pull off, the brooch of gold.
And fling the diamond necklace by.'
*Nay now, my child,' said Alice the
nurse,
* But keep the secret all ye can.'
She said, * Not so : but I will know
If there be any faith in man.'
'Nay now, what faith?' said Ahce the
nurse,
* The man will cleave unto his right.'
' And he shall have it,' the lady replied,
* Tho' I should die to-night.'
' Yet give one kiss to your mother dear !
Alas, my child, I sinn'd for thee.'
' O mother, mother, mother,' she said,
* So strange it seems to me.
' Yet here's a kiss for my mother dear,
My mother dear, if this be so.
And lay your hand upon my head,
And bless me, mother, ere I go.'
She clad herself in a russet gown.
She was no longer Lady Clare :
She went by dale, and she went by down,
With a single rose in her hair.
The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had
brought
Leapt up from where she lay,
Dropt her head in the maiden's hand,
And follovv'd her all the way.
Down slept Lord Ronald from his tower :
* O Lady Clare, you shame your worth !
Why come you drest like a village maid.
That are the flower of the earth ? '
* If I come drest like a village maid,
I am but as my fortunes are :
I am a beggar born,' she said,
* And not the Lady Clare.'
* Play me no tricks,' said Lord Ronald,
* For I am yours in word and in deed.
Play me no tricks,' said Lord Ronald,
' Your riddle is hard to read.'
O and proudly stood she up !
Her heart within her did not fail :
She look'd into Lord Ronald's eyes.
And told him all her nurse's tale.
He laugh'd a laugh of merry scorn :
He turn'd and kiss'd her where she
stood :
* If you are not the heiress born,
And I,' said he, * the next in blood —
* If you are not the heiress born,
And I,' said he, ' the lawful heir,
We two will wed to-morrow morn,
And you shall still be Lady Clare.'
THE CAPTAIN.
A LEGEND OF THE NA\T.
He that only rules by terror
Doeth grievous wrong.
Deep as Hell I count his error.
Let him hear my song.
Brave the Captain was : the seamen
Made a gallant crew,
Gallant sons of English freemen,
Sailors bold and true.
But they hated his oppression.
Stern he was and rash ;
So for every light transgression
Doom'd them to the lash.
Day by day more harsh and cruel
Seem'd the Captain's mood.
Secret wrath like smother'd fuel
Burnt in each man's blood.
Yet he hoped to purchase glory.
Hoped to make the name
Of his vessel great in story,
Wheresoe'er he came.
So they past by capes and islands,
Many a harbour-mouth.
Sailing under palmy highlands
Far within the South.
On a day when they were going
O'er the lone expanse,
In the north, her canvas flowing.
Rose a ship of France.
Then the Captain's colour heighten'd-
Joyful came his speech ;
THE LORD OF BURLEIGH.
13
But a cloudy gladness lighten'd
She replies, in accents fainter,
In the eyes of each.
'There is none I love like thee.'
* Chase,' he said : the ship flew forward,
He is but a landscape-painter,
And the wind did blow;
And a village maiden she.
Stately, lightly, went she Norward,
He to lips, that fondly falter,
Till she near'd the foe.
Presses his without reproof:
Then they look'd at him they hated.
Leads her to the village altar.
Had what they desired :
And they leave her father's roof.
Mute with folded arms they waited —
' I can make no marriage present :
Not a gun was fired.
Little can I give my wife.
But they heard the foeman's thunder
Love will make our cottage pleasant,
Roaring out their doom;
And I love thee more than life.'
All the air was torn in sunder,
They by parks and lodges going
Crashing went the boom,
See the lordly castles stand :
Spars were splinter'd, decks were shat-
Summer woods, about them blowing,
ter'd,
Made a murmur in the land.
Bullets fell like rain;
From deep thought himself he rouses,
Over mast and deck were scatter'd.
Says to her that loves him well,
Blood and brains of men.
'Let us see these handsome houses
Spars were splinter'd; decks were
Where the wealthy nobles dwell.'
broken :
So she goes by him attended,
Every mother's son —
Hears him lovingly converse.
Down they dropt — no word was
Sees whatever fair and splendid
spoken —
Lay betwixt his home and hers;
Each beside his gun.
Parks with oak and chestnut shady.
On the decks as they were lying,
Parks and order'd gardens great,
Were their faces grim.
Ancient homes of lord and lady.
In their blood, as they lay dying.
Built for pleasure and for state.
Did they smile on him.
All he shows her makes him dearer :
Those, in whom he had reliance
Evermore she seems to gaze
For his noble name,
On that cottage growing nearer.
With one smile of still defiance
Where they twain will spend theii
Sold him unto shame.
days. ,
Shame and wrath his heart confounded,
0 but she will love him truly !
Pale he turn'd and red.
He shall have a cheerful home;
Till himself was deadly wounded
She will order all things duly,
Falling on the dead.
When beneath his roof they come.
Dismal error ! fearful slaughter !
Thus her heart rejoices greatly,
"Years have wander'd by.
Till a gateway she discerns
Side by side beneath the water
With armorial bearings stately,
Crpw and Captain lie;
And beneath the gate she turns;
There the sunlit ocean tosses
Sees a mansion more majestic
O'er them mouldering,
Than all those she saw before :
And the lonely seabird crosses
Many a gallant gay domestic
With one waft of the wing.
Bows before him at the door.
And they speak in gentle murmur,
When they answer to his call.
THE LORD OF BURLEIGH.
While he treads with footstep firmer.
Leading on from hall to hall.
In her ear he whispers gaily.
And, while now she wonders blindly,
' If my heart by signs can tell,
Nor the meaning can divine,
Maiden, I have watch'd thee daily.
Proudly turns he round and kindly.
And I think thou lov'st me well. '
* All of this is rnine and thine,'
114
THE VOYAGE.
Here he lives in state and bounty,
Lord of Burleigh, fair and free,
iVot a lord in all the county
Is so great a lord as he.
All at once the colour flushes
Her sweet face from brow to chin :
As it were with shame she blushes,
And her spirit changed within.
Then her countenance all over
Pale again as death did prove :
But he clasp'd her like a lover,
And he cheer'd her soul with love.
So she strove against her weakness,
Tho' at times her spirit sank:
Shaped her heart with woman's meekness
To all duties of her rank :
And a gentle consort made he.
And her gentle mind was such
That she grew a noble lady,
And the people loved her much.
But a trouble weigh'd upon her,
And perplex'd her, night and morn,
With the burthen of an honour
Unto which she was not born.
Faint she grew, and ever fainter.
And she murmur'd, ' Oh, that he
Were once more that landscape-painter.
Which did win my heart from me ! '
So she droop'd and droop'd before him,
Fading slowly froni his side :
Three fair children first she bore him,
Then before her time she died.
Weeping, weeping late and early.
Walking up and pacing down.
Deeply mourn'd the Lord of Burleigh,
Burleigh-house by Stamford-town.
And he came to look upon her.
And he look'd at her and said,
* Bring the dress and put it on her.
That she wore when she was wed.'
Then her people, softly treading,
Bore to earth her body, drest
In the dress that she was wed in,
That her spirit might have rest.
THE VOYAGE.
We left behind the painted buoy
That tosses at the harbour-mouth;
And madly danced our hearts with joy.
As fast we fleeted to the South :
How fresh was every sight and sound
On open main or winding shore !
We knew the merry world was round,
And we might sail for evermore.
Warm broke the breeze against the brow,
Dry sang the tackle, sang the sail :
The Lady's-head upon the prow
Caught the shrill salt, and sheer'd the
gale.
The broad seas swell'd to meet the keel,
And swept behind ; so quick the run,
We felt the good ship shake and reel,
We seem'd to sail into the Sun !
How oft we saw the Sun retire.
And burn the threshold of the night,
Fall from his Ocean-lane of fire.
And sleep beneath his pillar'd light !
How oft the purple-skirted robe
Of twilight slowly downward drawn,
As thro' the slumber of the globe
Again we dash'd into the dawn !
IV.
New stars all night above the brim
Of waters lighten'd into view;
They climb'd as quickly, for the rim
Changed every moment as we flew.
Far ran the naked moon across
The houseless ocean's heaving field.
Or flying shone, the silver boss
Of her own halo's dusky shield;
The peaky islet shifted shapes,
High towns on hills were dimly seen,
We past long lines of Northern capes
And dewy Northern meadows green.
We came to warmer waves, and deep
Across the boundless east we drove.
Where those long swells of breaker sweep
The nutmeg rocks and isles of clove.
VI.
By peaks that flamed, or, all in shade,
Gloom'd the low coast and quivering
brine
With ashy rains, that spreading made
Fantastic plume or sable pine;
SIR LAUNCELOT AND QUEEN GUINEVERE.
By sands and steaming flats, and floods
Of mighty mouth, we scudded fast,
And, hills and scarlet-mingled woods
Glow'd for a moment as we past.
VII.
O hundred shores of happy climes,
How swiftly stream'd ye by the bark !
At times the whole sea burn'd, at times
With wakes of fire we tore the dark;
At times a carven craft would shoot
From havens hid in fairy bowers,
With naked limbs and flowers and fruit,
But we nor paused for fruit nor flowers.
For one fair Vision ever fled
Down the waste waters day and night,
And still we follow'd where she led,
In hope to gain upon her flight.
Her face was evermore unseen.
And fixt upon the far sea-line;
But each man murmur'd, ' O my Queen,
I follow till I make thee mine.'
IX.
And now we lost her, now she gleam'd
Like Fancy made of golden air.
Now nearer to the prow she seem'd
Like Virtue firm, like Knowledge fair.
Now high on waves that idly burst
Like Heavenly Hope she crown' d the
sea,
And now, the bloodless point reversed,
She bore the blade of Liberty.
And only one among us — him
We pleased not — he was seldom
pleased :
He saw not far : his eyes were dim :
But ours he swore were all diseased.
* A ship of fools,' he shriek'd in spite,
*A ship of fools,' he sneer'd and
wept.
And overboard one stormy night
He cast his body, and on we swept.
XI.
And never sail of ours was furl'd.
Nor anchor dropt at eve or morn;
We lov'd the glories of the world.
But laws of nature were our scorn.
For blasts would rise and rave and cease,
But whence were those that drove the
sail
Across the whirlwind's heart of peace.
And to and thro' the counter gale?
XII.
Again to colder climes we came.
For still we follow'd where she led :
Now mate is blind and captain lame.
And half the crew are sick or dead;
But, blind or lame or sick or sound,
We follow that which flies before :
We know the merry world is round.
And we may sail for evermore.
SIR LAUNCELOT AND QUEEN
GUINEVERE.
A FRAGMENT.
Like souls that balance joy and pain.
With tears and smiles from heaven again
The maiden Spring upon the plain
Came in a sun-lit fall of rain.
In crystal vapour everywhere
Blue isles of heaven laugh'd between,
And far, in forest-deeps "unseen.
The topmost elm-tree gather'd green
From draughts of balmy air.
Sometimes the linnet piped his song :
Sometimes the throstle whistled strong :
Sometimes the sparhawk, wheel'd along,
Hush'd all the groves from fear of wrong :
By grassy capes with fuller sound
In curves the yellowing river ran.
And drooping chestnut-buds began
To spread into the perfect fan,
Above the teeming ground.
Then, in the boyhood of the year.
Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere
Rode thro' the coverts of the deer,
With blissful treble ringing clear.
She seem'd a part of joyous Spring
A gown of grass-green silk she wore.
Buckled with golden clasps before;
A light-green tuft of plumes she bore
Closed in a golden ring.
Ii6
A FAREWELL— THE BEGGAR MAID— THE EAGLE.
Now on some twisted ivy-net,
Now by some tinkling rivulet,
In mosses mixt with violet
Her cream-white mule his pastern set :
And fleeter now she skimm'd the
plains
Than she whose elfin prancer springs
By night to eery warblings.
When all the glimmering moorland rings
With jingling bridle-reins.
As fast she fled thro' sun and shade,
The happy winds upon her play'd,
Blowing the ringlet from the braid :
She look'd so lovely, as she sway'd
The rein with dainty finger-tips,
A man had given all other bliss.
And all his worldly worth for this,
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips.
A FAREWELL.
Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea.
Thy tribute wave deliver :
No more by thee my steps shall be.
For ever and for ever.
Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,
A rivulet, then a river :
No where by thee my steps shall be.
For ever and for ever.
But here will sigh thine alder tree.
And here thine aspen shiver;
And here by thee will hum the bee.
For ever and for ever.
A thousand suns will stream on thee,
A thousand moons will quiver;
But not by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.
THE BEGGAR MAID.
Her arms across her breast she laid;
She was more fair than words can say :
Bare-footed came the beggar maid
Before the king Cophetua.
In robe and crown the king stept down.
To meet and greet her on her way;
* It is no wonder,' said the lords,
* She is more beautiful than day.*
As shines the moon in clouded skies,
She in her poor attire was seen :
One praised her ankles, one her eyes.
One her dark hair and lovesome mien.
So sweet a face, such angel grace.
In all that land had never been :
Cophetua sware a royal oath :
' This beggar maid shall be my queen ! '
THE EAGLE.
FRAGMENT.
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
Move eastward, happy earth, and leave
Yon orange sunset waning slow :
From fringes of the faded eve,
O, happy planet, eastward go;
Till over thy dark shoulder glow
Thy silver sister-world, and rise
To glass herself in dewy eyes
That watch me from the glen below.
Ah, bear me with thee, smoothly borne.
Dip forward under starry light.
And move me to my marriage-morn,
And round again to happy night.
Come not, when I am dead.
To drop thy foolish tears upon my
grave.
To trample round my fallen head.
And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst
not save.
There let the wind sweep and the plover
cry;
But thou, go by.
Child, if it were thine error or thy
crime
I care no longer, being all unblest :
THE LETTERS— THE VISION OF SIN.
117
Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of
Time,
And I desire to rest.
Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where
Hie:
Go by, go by.
THE LETTERS.
Still on the tower stood the vane,
A black yew gloom'd the stagnant
air,
I peer'd athwart the chancel pane
And saw the altar cold and bare.
A clog of lead was round my feet,
A band of pain across my brow;
* Cold altar, Heaven and earth shall meet
Before you hear my marriage vow.'
I turn'd and humm'd a bitter song
That mock'd the wholesome human
heart.
And then we met in wrath and wrong.
We met, but only meant to part.
Full cold my greeting was and dry;
She faintly smiled, she hardly moved;
1 saw with half-unconscious eye
She wore the colours I approved.
She took the little ivory chest,
With half a sigh she turn'd the key.
Then raised her head with lips comprest,
And gave my letters back to me.
And gave the trinkets and the rings.
My gifts, when gifts of mine could
please ;
As looks a father on the things
Of his dead son, I look'd on these.
She told me all her friends had said;
I raged against the public liar;
She J:alk'd as if her love were dead.
But in my words were seeds of fire.
'No more of love; your sex is known
I never will be twice deceived.
Henceforth I trust the man alone.
The woman cannot be believed.
'Thro' slander, meanest spawn of Hell —
And women's slander is the worst,
And you, whom once I lov'd so well.
Thro' you, my life will be accurst.'
I spoke with heart, and heat and force,
I shook her breast with vague alarms —
Like torrents from a mountain source
We rush'd into each other's arms.
VI.
We parted : sweetly gleam'd the stars.
And sweet the vapour-braided blue.
Low breezes fann'd the belfry bars.
As homeward by the church I drew.
The very graves appear'd to smile.
So fresh they rose in shadow'd swells.
* Dark porch,' I said, ' and silent aisle.
There comes a sound of marriage bells.'
THE VISION OF SIN.
I HAD a vision when the night was late :
A youth came riding toward a palace-gate.
He rode a horse with wings, that would
have flown.
But that his heavy rider kept him down.
And from the palace came a child of sin,
And took him by the curls, and led him in.
Where sat a company with heated eyes,
Expecting when a fountain should arise :
A sleepy light upon their brows and lips —
As when the sun, a crescent of eclipse.
Dreams over lake and lawn, and isles and
capes —
Suffused them, sitting, lying, languid
shapes.
By heaps of gourds, and skins of wine,
and piles of grapes.
II.
Then methought I heard a mellow sound.
Gathering up from all the lower ground;
Narrowing in to where they sat assembled
Low voluptuous music winding trembled,
Wov'n in circles : they that heard it sigh'd,
Panted hand-in-hand with faces pale.
Swung themselves, and in low tones re-
plied;
ii8
THE VISION OF SIN.
Till the fountain spouted, showering wide
Sleet of diamond-drift and pearly hail;
Then the music touch'd the gates and
died;
Rose again from where it seem'd to fail,
Storm'd in orbs of song, a growing gale;
Till thronging in and in, to where they
waited,
As 'twere a hundred-throated nightingale,
The strong tempestuous treble throbb'd
and palpitated;
Ran into its giddiest whirl of sound,
Caught the sparkles, and in circles.
Purple gauzes, golden hazes, liquid mazes,
Flung the torrent rainbow round :
Then they started "from their places,
Moved with violence, changed in hue,
Caught each other with wild grimaces,
Half-invisible to the view,
Wheeling with precipitate paces
To the melody, till they flew,
Hair, and eyes, and limbs, and faces,
Twisted hard in fierce embraces,
Like to Furies, like to Graces,
Dash'd together in blinding dew :
Till, kill'd with some luxurious agony
The nerve-dissolving melody
Flutter'd headlong from the sky.
And then I look'd up toward a mountain-
tract,
That girt the region with high cliff and
lawn:
I saw that every morning, far withdrawn
Beyond the darkness and the cataract,
God made Himself an awful rose of
dawn,
Unheeded : and detaching, fold by fold,
From those still heights, and, slowly
drawing near,
A vapour heavy, hueless, formless, cold.
Came floating on for many a month and
year.
Unheeded : and I thought I would have
spoken,
And warn'd that madman ere it gfew too
late:
But, as in dreams, I could not. Mine
was broken,
When that cold vapour touch'd the pal-
ace gate.
And link'd again. I saw within my
head
A gray and gap-tooth'd man as lean as
death.
Who slowly rode across a wither'd heath.
And lighted at a ruin'd inn, and said :
IV.
' Wrinkled ostler, grim and thin !
Here is custom come your way;
Take my brute, and lead him in,
Stuff his ribs with mouldy hay.
* Bitter barmaid, waning fast !
See that sheets are on my bed;
What ! the flower of life is past :
It is long before you wed.
* Slip-shod waiter, lank and sour, ^
At the Dragon on the heath !
Let us have a quiet hour,
Let us hob-and-nob with Death.
* I am old, but let me drink ;
Bring me spices, bring me wine;
I remember, when I think,
That my youth was half divine.
* Wine is good for shrivell'd 'lips,
When a blanket wraps the day,
When the rotten woodland drips,
And the leaf is stamp'd in clay.
* Sit thee down, and have no shame.
Cheek by jowl, and knee by knee :
What care I for any name?
What for order or degree?
* Let me screw thee up a peg :
Let me loose thy tongue with wine :
Callest thou that thing a leg?
Which is thinnest? thine or mine?
'Thou shalt not be saved by works:
Thou hast been a sinner too :
Ruin'd trunks on wither'd forks,
Empty scarecrows, I and you ! ^
* Fill the cup, and fill the can :
Have a rouse before the morn :
Every moment dies a man.
Every moment one is born.
THE VISION OF SIN.
119
' We are men of ruin'd blood ;
Therefore comes it we are wise.
Fish are we that love the mud,
Rising to no fancy-flies.
* Name and fame ! to fly sublime
Thro' the courts, the camps, the
schools,
Is to be the ball of Time,
Bandied by the hands of fools.
* Friendship ! — to be two in one —
Let the canting liar pack !
Well I know, when I am gone.
How she mouths behind my back.
* Virtue ! — to be good and just —
Every heart, when sifted well,
Is a clot of warmer dust,
Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell.
' O ! we two as well can look
Whited thought and cleanly life
As the priest, above his book
Leering at his neighbour's wife.
'Fill the cup, and fill the can :
Have a rouse before the morn :
Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born.
* Drink, and let the parties rave :
They are fill'd with idle spleen;
Rising, falUng, like a wave,
For they know not what they mean.
' He that roars for liberty
Faster binds a tyrant's power;
And the tyrant's cruel glee
Forces on the freer hour.
' Fill the can, and fill the cup :
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up.
And is lightly laid again.
* Greet her with applausive breath,
Freedom, gaily doth she tread ;
In her right a civic wreath,
In her left a human head.
'No, I love not what is new;
She is of an ancient house :
And I think we know the hue
Of that cap Upon her brows.
' Let her go ! her thirst she slakes
Where the bloody conduit runs,
Then her sweetest meal she makes
On the first-born of her sons.
'Drink to lofty hopes that cool —
Visions of a perfect State :
Drink we, last, the pubHc fool.
Frantic love and frantic hate.
'Chant me now some wicked stave,
Till thy drooping courage rise,
And the glow-worm of the grave
Glimmer in thy rheumy eyes.
VFear not thou to loose thy tongue;
Set thy hoary fancies free;
What is loathsome to the young
Savours well to thee and me.
'Change, reverting to the years,
When thy nerves could understand
What there is in loving tears.
And the warmth of hand in hand.
* Tell me tales of thy first love —
April hopes, the fools of chance;
Till the graves begin to move,
And the dead begin to dance.
' Fill the can, and fill the cup :
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up.
And is lightly laid again.
' Trooping from their mouldy dens
The chap-fallen circle spreads:
Welcome, fellow-citizens.
Hollow hearts and empty heads !
* You are bones, and what of that ?
Every face, however full.
Padded round with flesh and fat,
Is but modell'd on a skull.
' Death is king, and Vivat Rex !
Tread a measure on the stones.
Madam — if I know your sex,
From the fashion of your bones.
THE VISION OF SIN.
' No, I cannot praise the fire
In your eye — nor yet your lip :
All the more do I admire
Joints of cunning workmanship.
' Lo ! God's likeness — the ground-plan —
Neither modell'd, glazed, nor framed
Buss me, thou rough sketch of man,
Far too naked to be shamed !
' Drink to Fortune, drink to Chance,
While we keep a little breath !
Drink to heavy Ignorance !
Hob-and-nob with brother Death !
'Thou art mazed, the night is long.
And the longer night is near :
What ! I am not all as wrong
As a bitter jest is dear.
* Youthful hopes, by scores, to all,
When the locks are crisp and curl'd;
Unto me my maudlin gall
And my mockeries of the world.
' Fill the cup, and fill the can :
Mingle madness, mingle scorn !
Dregs of life, and lees of man :
Yet we will not die folorn.'
The voice grew faint: there came a
further change :
Once more uprose the mystic mountain-
range :
Below were men and horses pierced with
worms.
And slowly quickening into lower forms;
By shards and scurf of salt, and scum of
dross.
Old plash of rains, and refuse patch'd
with moss.
Then some one spake : * Behold ! it was
a crime
Of sense avenged by sense that wore with
time.'
Another said: 'The crime of sense
became
The crime of malice, and is equal blame.'
And one : ' He had not wholly quench'd
• his power;
A little grain of conscience made him
sour.'
At last I heard a voice upon the slope
Cry to the summit, * Is there any hope ?'
To which an answer peal'd from that
high land.
But in a tongue no man could understand ;
And on the ghmm^ring limit far with-
drawn
God made Himself an awful rose of dawn.
TO ,
AFTER READING A LIFE AND LETTERS.
* Cursed be he that moves my bones.'
Shakespeare^ s Epitaph.
You might have won the Poet's imme,
If such be worth the winning now.
And gain'd a laurel for your brow
Of sounder leaf than I can claim ;
But you have made the wiser choice,
A life that moves to gracious ends
Thro' troops of unrecording friends,
A deedful life, a silent voice :
And you have miss'd the- irreverent doom
Of those that wear the Poet's crown '
Hereafter, neither knave nor clown
Shall hold their orgies at your tomb.
For now the Poet cannot die,
Nor leave his music as of old,
But round him ere he scarce be cc\*^
Begins the scandal and the cry:
' Proclaim the faults he would not show:
Break lock and seal : betray the trust :
Keep nothing sacred : 'tis but just
The many-headed beast should know,'
Ah shameless ! for he did but sing
A song that pleased us from its worth;
No public life was his on earth.
No blazon'd statesman he, nor king.
He gave the people of his best :
His worst he kept, his best he gave.
My Shakespeare's curse on clown and
knave
Who will not let his ashes rest !
Who make it seem more sweet to he
The little life of bank and brier.
TO E. L., ON HIS TRAVELS IN GREECE.
121
The bird that pipes his lone desire
And dies unheard within his tree,
Than he that warbles long and loud
And drops at Glory's temple-gates,
For whom the carrion vulture waits
To tear his heart before the crowd !
TO E. L., ON HIS TRAVELS
IN GREECE.
Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls
Of water, sheets of summer glass.
The long divine Peneian pass.
The vast Akrokeraunian walls,
Tomohrit, Athos, all things fair,
With such a pencil, such a pen.
You shadow forth to distant men,
I read and felt that I was there :
And trust me while I turn'd the page.
And track'd you still on classic ground,
I grew in gladness till 1 found
My spirits in the golden age.
For me the torrent ever pour'd
And glisten'd — here and there alone
The broad-limb'd Gods at random
thrown
By fountain-urns; — and Naiads oar'd
A glimmering shoulder under gloom
Of cavern pillars; on the swell
The. silver lily heaved and fell;
And many a slope was rich in bloom
From him that on the mountain lea
By dancing rivulets fed his flocks
To him who sat upon the rocks,
And fluted to the morning sea.
Break, break, break.
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea !
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O well for the fisherman's boy.
That he shouts with his sister at play !
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay !
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still I
Break, break, break.
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea !
But the tender grace of a day that is
dead
Will never come back to me.
THE POET'S SONG.
The rain had fallen, tTie Poet arose,
He pass'd by the town and out of the
street,
A light wind blew from the gates of the
sun.
And waves of shadow went over the
wheat.
And he sat him down in a lonely place.
And chanted a melody loud and sweet,
That made the wild-swan pause in her
cloud.
And the lark drop down at his feet.
The swallow stopt as he hunted the fly.
The snake slipt under a spray,
The wild hawk stood with the down on
his beak.
And stared, with his foot on the
prey,
And the nightingale thought, * I have
sung many songs.
But never a one so gay,
For he sings of what the world will be
When the years have died away.'
122
ENOCH ARDEN.
ENOCH ARDEN
AND OTHER POEMS.
ENOCH ARDEN.
Long lines of cliff breaking have left a
chasm ;
And in the chasm are foam and yellow
sands;
Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf
In cluster; then a moulder'd church;
and higher
A long street climbs to one tall-tower'd
mill;
And high in heaven behind it a gray down
With Danish barrows; and a hazelwood,
By autumn nutters haunted, flourishes
Green in a cuplike' hollow of the down.
Here on this beach a hundred years
ago,
Three children of three houses, Annie
Lee,
The prettiest little damsel in the port.
And Philip Ray the miller's only son.
And Enoch Arden, a rough sailor's lad
Made orphan by a winter shipwreck,
play'd
Among the waste and lumber of the shore.
Hard coils of cordage, swarthy fishing-
nets,
Anchors of rusty fluke, and boats up-
drawn ;
And built their castles of dissolving sand
To watch them overflow'd, or following up
And flying the white breaker, daily left
The little footprint daily wash'd away.
A narrow cave ran in beneath the cliff:
In this the children play'd at keeping
house.
Enoch was host one day, Philip the next,
While Annie still was mistress; but at
times
Enoch would hold possession for a week :
* This is my house and this my little wife.'
'Mine too,' said Philip, 'turn and turn
about:'
When, if they quarrell'd, Enoch stronger-
made
Was master : then would Philip, his blue
eyes
All flooded with the helpless wrath of
tears.
Shriek out, * I hate you, Enoch,' and at
this
The little wife would weep for company,
And pray them not to quarrel for her
sake.
And say she would be little wife to both.
But when the dawn of rosy childhood
past.
And the new warmth of life's ascending
sun
Was felt by either, either fixt his heart
On that one girl; and Enoch spoke his
love.
But Philip loved in silence; and the girl
Seem'd kinder unto Philip than to him;
But she loved Enoch; tho' she knew it
not,
And would if ask'd deny it. Enoch set
A purpose evermore before his eyes, ^
To hoard all savings to the uttermost.
To purchase his own boat, and make a
• home
For Annie : and so prosper'd that at last
A luckier or a bolder fisherman,
A carefuller in peril, did not breathe
For leagues along that breaker-beaten
coast
Than Enoch. Likewise had he served a,
year
On board a merchantman, and made
himself
Full sailor; and he thrice had pluck'd a
life
From the dread sweep of the down-
streaming seas :
And all men look'd upon him favour-
ably :
ENOCH ARDEN.
123
And ere he touch'd his one-and-twentieth
May
He purchased his own boat, and made a
home
For Annie, neat and nestlike, halfway up
The narrow street that clamber'd toward
the mill.
Then, on a golden autumn eventide,
The younger people making holiday.
With bag and sack and basket, great and
small.
Went nutting to the hazels. Phihp stay'd
(His father lying sick and needing him)
An hour behind; but as he climb'd the
hill,
Just where the prone edge of the wood
began
To feather toward the hollow, saw the
pair,
Enoch and Annie, sitting hand-in-hand,
His large gray eyes and weather-beaten
face
All-kindled by a still and sacred fire,
That burn'd as on an altar. Philip look'd,
And in their eyes and faces read his doom;
Then, as their faces drew together,
groan'd,
And slipt aside, and like a wounded life
Crept down into the hollows of the wood ;
There, while the rest were loud in merry-
making.
Had his dark hour unseen, and rose and
past
Bearing a lifelong hunger in his heart.
So these were wed, and merrily rang
the bells.
And merrily ran the years, seven happy
years,
Seven happy years of health and com-
petence.
And mutual love and honourable toil;
With children; first a daughter. In him
woke.
With his first babe's first cry, the noble
wish
To save all earnings to the uttermost.
And give his child a better bringing-up
Than his had been, or hers; a wish re-
new'd,
When two years after came a boy to be
The rosy idol of her solitudes,
While Enoch was abroad on wrathful seas.
Or often journeying landward ; for in truth
Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's ocean-
spoil
In ocean-smelling osier, and his face,
Rough-redden'd with a thousand winter
gales,
Not only to the market-cross were known,
But in the leafy lanes behind the down,
Far as the portal-warding lion-whelp,
And peacock-yewtree of the lonely Hall,
Whose Friday fare was Enoch's minister-
ing.
Then came a change, as all things
human change.
Ten miles to northward of the narrow port
Open'd a larger haven : thither used
Enoch at times to go by land or sea;
And once when there, and clambering on
a mast
In harbour, by mischance he slipt and
fell:
A limb was broken when they lifted him;
And while he lay recovering there, his wife
Bore him another son, a sickly one :
Another hand crept too across his trade
Taking her bread and theirs : and on him
fell,
Altho' a grave and staid God-fearing man,
Yet lying thus inactive, doubt and gloom.
He seem'd, as in a nightmare of the night,
To see his children leading evermore
Low miserable lives of hand-to-mouth.
And her, he loved, a beggar: then he
pray'd
* Save them from this, whatever comes to
me.'
And while he pray'd, the master of that
ship
Enoch had served in, hearing his mis-
chance,
Came, for he knew the man and valued
him.
Reporting of his vessel China-bound,
And wanting yet a boatswain. Would
he go?
There yet were many weeks before she
sail'd,
Sail'd from this port. Would Enoch
have the place?
And Enoch all at once assented to it.
Rejoicing at that answer to his prayer.
124
ENOCH ARDEN.
So now that shadow of mischance
appear'd
No graver than as when some little cloud
Cuts off the fiery highway of the sun,
And isles a light in the offing: yet the
wife —
When he was gone — the children —
what to do?
Then Enoch lay long-pondering on his
plans ;
To sell the boat — and yet he loved her
well —
How many a rough sea had he weather'd
in her !
He knew her, as a horseman knows his
horse —
And yet to sell her — then with what
she brought
Buy goods and stores — set Annie forth
in trade
With all that seamen needed or their
wives —
So might she keep the house while he
was gone.
Should he not trade himself out yonder?
go
This voyage more than once? yea twice
or thrice —
As oft as needed — last, returning rich.
Become the master of a larger craft.
With fuller profits lead an easier life.
Have all his pretty young ones educated,
And pass his days in peace among his
own.
Thus Enoch in his heart determined
all:
Then moving homeward came on Annie
pale,
Nursing the sickly babe, her latest-born.
Forward she started with a happy cry,
And laid the feeble infant in his arms;
Whom Enoch took, and handled all his
limbs.
Appraised his weight and fondled father-
like,
But had no heart to break his purposes
To Annie, till the morrow, when he
spoke.
Then first since Enoch's golden ring
had girt
Her finger, Annie fought against his will :
Yet not with brawling opposition she,
But manifold entreaties, many a tear,
Many a sad kiss by day by night renew'd
(Sure that all evil would come out of it)
Besought him, suppUcating, if he cared
For her or his dear children, not to go.
He not for his own self caring but her,
Her and her children, let her plead in
vain;
So grieving held his will, and bore it
thro'.
For Enoch parted with his old sea
friend,
Bought Annie goods and stores, and set
his hand
To fit their little streetward sitting-room
With shelf and corner for the goods and
stores.
So all day long till Enoch's last at home.
Shaking their pretty cabin, hammer and
axe,
Auger and saw, while Annie seem'd to
hear
Her own death-scaffold raising, shrill'd
and rang.
Till this was ended, and his careful
hand, —
The space was narrow, — having order'd
all
Almost as neat and close as Nature
packs
Her blossom or her seedling, paused;
and he,
Who needs would work for Annie to the
last.
Ascending tired, heavily slept till morn.
And Enoch faced this morning of fare-
well
Brightly and boldly. All his Annie's
fears.
Save, as his Annie's, were a laughter to
him.
Yet Enoch as a brave God-fearing man
Bow'd himself down, and in that mystery
Where God-in-man is one with man-in-
God,
Pray'd for a blessing on his wife and
babes
Whatever came to him : and then he
said :
* Annie, this voyage by the grace of God
ENOCH ARDEN.
125
Will bring fair weather yet to all of us.
Keep a clean hearth and a clear fire for
me,
For I'll be back, my girl, before you
know it.'
Then lightly rocking baby's cradle, * and
he,
This pretty, puny, weakly little one, —
Nay — for I love him all the better for
it-
God bless him, he shall sit upon my
knees
And I will tell him tales of foreign parts.
And make him merry, when I come home
again.
Come, Annie, come, cheer up before I go.'
Him running on thus hopefully she
heard,
And almost hoped herself; but when he
turn'd
The current of his talk to graver things
In sailor fashion roughly sermonizing
On providence and trust in Heaven, she
heard.
Heard and not heard him; as the village
girl,
Who sets her pitcher underneath the
spring,
Musing on him that used to fill it for her.
Hears and not hears, and lets it overflow.
At length she spoke: *0 Enoch, you
are wise;
And yet for all your wisdom well know I
That 1 shall look upon your face no
more.'
* Well then,' said Enoch, * I shall look
on yours.
Annie, the ship I sail in passes here
(He named the day); get you a seaman's
glass,
Spy out my face, and laugh at all your
. fears.'
But when the last of those last moments
came,
* Annie, my girl, cheer up, be comfoYted,
Look to the babes, and till I come again
Keep everything shipshape, for I must
go.
And fear no more for me; or if you fear
Cast all your cares on God ; that anchor
holds.
Is He not yonder in those uttermost
Parts of the morning? if 1 flee to these
Can I go from Him? and the sea is His,
The sea is His : He made it.'
Enoch rose.
Cast his strong arms about his drooping
wife,
And kiss'd his wonder-stricken little
ones;
But for the third, the sickly one, who
slept
After a night of feverous wakefulness.
When Annie would have raised him
Enoch said,
'Wake him not; let him sleep; how
should the chfld
Remember this? ' and kiss'd him in his
cot.
But Annie from her baby's forehead dipt
A tiny curl, and gave it : this he kept
Thro' all his future; but now hastily
caught
His bundle, waved his hand, and went
his way.
She, when the day, that Enoch men-
tion'd, came,
Borrow'd a glass, but all in vain : perhaps
She could not fix the glass to suit her eye;
Perhaps her eye was dim, hand tremulous;
She saw him not : and while he stood on
deck
Waving, the moment and the vessel past.
Ev^n to the last dip of the vanishing sail
She watch'd it, and departed weeping for
him;
Then, tho' she mourn'd his absence as
his grave,
Set her sad will no less to chime with his.
But throve not in her trade, not being
bred
To barter, nor compensating the want
By shrewdness, neither capable of lies,
Nor asking overmuch and taking less,
And still foreboding * what would Enoch
say? '
For more than once, in days of difficulty
And pressure, had she sold her wares for
less
126
ENOCH ARDEN.
Than what she gave in buying what she
sold:
She fail'd and sadden'd knowing it; and
thus,
Expectant of that news which never
came,
Gain'd for her own a scanty sustenance,
And lived a life of silent melancholy.
Now the third child was sickly-born
and grew
Yet sicklier, tho' the mother cared for it
With all a mother's care : nevertheless.
Whether her business often call'd her
from it,
Or thro' the want of what it needed most,
Or means to pay the voice who best
could tell
What most it needed — howsoe'er it was.
After a lingering, — ^ ere she was aware, —
Like the caged bird escaping suddenly.
The little innocent soul flitted away.
In that same week when Annie buried it,
Philip's true heart, which hunger'd for
her peace
(Since Enoch left he had not look'd upon
her).
Smote him, as having kept aloof so long.
* Surely,' said Philip, ' I may see her now.
May be some little comfort; ' therefore
went,
Past thro' the solitary room in front.
Paused for a moment at an inner door,
Then struck it thrice, and, no one opening,
Enter'd; but Annie, seated with her grief,
Fresh from the burial of her little one,
Cared not to look on any human face.
But turn'd her own toward the wall and
wept.
Then Philip standing up said falteringly,
* Annie, I came to ask a favour of you.'
He spoke; the passion in her moan'd
reply,
* Favour from one so sad and so forlorn
As I am ! ' half abash'd him; yet unask'd.
His bashfulness and tenderness at war,
He set himself beside her, saying to her :
* I came to speak to you of what he
wish'd,
Enoch, your husband : I have ever said
You chose the best among us — a strong
man:
For where he fixt his heart he set his
hand
To do the thing he will'd, and bore it
thro'.
And wherefore did he go this weary way,
And leave you lonely? not to see the
world —
For pleasure? — nay, but for the where-
withal
To give his babes a better bringing-up
Than his had been, or yours : that was
his wish.
And if he come again, vext will he be
To find the precious morning hours were
lost.
And it would vex him even in his grave.
If he could know his babes were running
wild
Like colts about the waste. So, Annie,
now —
Have we not known each other all our
lives?
I do beseech you by the love you bear
Him and his children not to say me nay —
For, if you will, when Enoch conies again
Why then he shall repay me — if you will,
Annie — for I am rich and well-to-do.
Now let me put the boy and girl to
school :
This is the favour that I came to ask.'
Then Annie with her brows against
the wall
Answer'd, * I cannot look you in the face;
I seem so foolish and so broken down.
When you came in my sorrow broke me
down;
And now I think your kindness breaks
me down;
But Enoch lives; that is borne in on me :
He will repay you : money can be repaid ;
Not kindness such as yours.'
And Philip ask'd
* Then you will let me, Annie?'
There she turn'd,
She rose, and fixt her swimming eyes
upon him.
And dwelt a moment on his kindly face,
Then calling down a blessing on his head
ENOCH ARDEN.
[27
Caught at his hand, and wrung it pas-
sionately,
And past into the little garth beyond.
So lifted up in spirit he moved away.
Then Philip put the boy and girl to
school,
And bought them needful books, and
every way,
Like one who does his duty by his own,
Made himself theirs; and tho' for Annie's
sake,
Fearing the lazy gossip of the port,
He oft denied his heart his dearest wish,
And seldom crost her threshold, yet he
sent
Gifts by the children, garden-herbs and
fruit.
The late and early roses from his wall,
Or conies from the down, and now and
then.
With some pretext of fineness in the
meal
To save the offence of charitable, flour
From his tall mill that whistled on the
waste.
But Philip did not fathom Annie's
mind :
Scarce could the woman when he came
upon her.
Out of full heart and boundless gratitude
Light on a broken word to thank him
with.
But Philip was her children's all-in-all;
From distant corners of the street they ran
To greet his hearty welcome heartily;
Lords of his house and of his mill were
they;
Worried his passive ear with petty wrongs
Or pleasures, hung upon him, play'd with
him
And call'd him Father Philip. Philip
gain'd
As Enoch lost; for Enoch seem'd to them
Uncertain as a vision or a dream,
Faint as a figure seen in early dawn
Down at the far end of an avenue,
Going we know not where: and so ten
years.
Since Enoch left his hearth and native
land.
Fled forward , and no news of Enoch came.
It chanced one evening Annie's chil-
dren long'd
To go with others, nutting to the wood,
And Annie would go with them; then
they begg'd
For Father Philip (as they call'd him)
too :
Him, like the working bee in blossom-
dust,
Blanch'd with his mill, they found; and
saying to him,
' Come with us, Father Philip,' he de-
nied;
But when the children pluck'd at him
to go.
He laugh'd, and yielded readily to their
wish,
For was not Annie with them? and they
went.
But after scaling half the weary down.
Just where the prone edge of the wood
began
To feather toward the hollow, all her
force
Fail'd her; and sighing, * Let me rest'
she said :
So Philip rested with her well-content;
While all the younger ones with jubilant
cries
Broke from their elders, and tumultuously
Down thro' the whitening hazels made a
plunge
To the bottom, and dispersed, and bent
or broke
The lithe reluctant boughs to tear away
Their tawny clusters, crying to each other
And calling, here and there, about the
wood.
But Philip sitting at her side forgot
Her presence, and remember'd one dark
hour
Here in this wood, when hke a wounded
life
He crept into the shadow: at last he
said.
Lifting his honest forehead, * Listen,
Annie,
How merry they are down yonder in the
.vood.
Tired, Annie ? ' for she did not speak a
word.
28
ENOCH ARDEN.
'Tired?' but her face had fall'n upon
her hands;
At which, as with a kind of anger in him,
* The ship was lost,' he said, ' the ship
was lost !
No more of that! why should you kill
yourself
And make them orphans quite?' And
Annie said,
' I thought not of it : but — I know not
why —
Their voices make me feel so solitary.'
Then Philip coming somewhat closer
spoke :
' Annie, there is a thing upon my mind.
And it has been upon my mind so long,
That tho' I know not when it first came
there,
I know that it will out at last. O Annie,
It is beyond all hope, against all chance,
That he who left you ten long years ago
Should still be living; well then — let
me speak :
I grieve to see you poor and wanting
help :
I cannot help you as I wish to do
Unless — they say that women are so
quick —
Perhaps you know what I would have
you know —
I wish you for my wife. I fain would
prove
A father to your children : I do think
They love me as a father : I am sure
That I love them as if they were mine
own;
And I believe, if you were fast my wife,
That after all these sad uncertain years.
We might be still as happy as God grants
To any of his creatures. Think upon it :
For I am well-to-do — no kin, no care.
No burthen, save my care for you and
yours :
And we have known each other all our
lives,
And I have loved you longer than you
know.'
Then answer'd Annie; tenderly she
spoke :
You have been as God's good angel in
our house.
God bless you for it, God reward you for
it,
Philip, with something happier than my-
self.
Can one love twice? can you be ever
loved
As Enoch was? what is it that you ask?'
' I am content,' he answer'd, ' to be loved ,
A httle after Enoch.' ' O,' she cried,
Scared as it were, ' dear Philip, wait a
while :
If Enoch comes — but Enoch will not
come —
Yet wait a year, a year is not so long :
Surely I shall be wiser in a year :
0 wait a little ! ' Philip sadly said,
'Annie, as I have waited all my life
1 well may wait a little.' ' Nay,' she
cried,
* I am bound : you have my promise —
in a year :
Will you not bide your year as I bide
mine?'
And Philip answer'd, ' I will bide my
year.'
Here both were mute, till Philip glan-
cing up
Beheld the dead flame of the fallen day
Pass from the Danish barrow overhead;
Then fearing night and chill for Annie,
rose
And sent his voice beneath him thro' the
wood.
Up came the children laden with their
spoil ;
Then all descended to the port, and there
At Annie's door he paused and gave his
hand,
Saying gently, ' Annie, when I spoke to
you.
That was your hour of weakness. I was
wrong,
I am always bound to you, but you are
free. '
Then Annie weeping answer'd, ' I am
bound.'
She spoke; and in one moment as it
were,
While yet she went about her household
ways,
Ev'n as she dwelt upon his latest words,
ENOCH ARDEN.
[29
That he had loved her longer than she
knew,
That autumn into autumn flash'd agani,
And there he stood once more before her
face,
Claiming her promise. * Is it a year .-* '
she ask'd.
' Yes, if the nuts,' he said, ' be ripe again :
Come out and see.' But she — she put
him off —
So much to look to "— such a change —
a month —
Give her a month — she knew that she
was bound —
A month — no more. Then Philip with
his eyes
Full of that lifelong hunger, and his
voice
Shaking a little like a drunkard's hand,
'Take your own time, Annie, take your
own time.'
And Annie could have wept for pity of
him;
And yet she held him on delayingly
With many a scarce-believable excuse,
Trying his truth and his long-sufferance,
Till half-another year had slipt away.
By this the lazy gossips of the port,
Abhorrent of a calculation crost.
Began to chafe as at a personal wrong.
Some thought that Philip did but trifle
with her;
Some that she but held off to draw him
on;
And others laugh'd at her and Philip
too.
As simple folk that knew not their own
minds.
And one, in whom all evil fancies clung
Like serpent eggs together, laughingly
Would hint at worse in either. Her own
son
Was silent, tho' he often look'd his
wish ;
But evermore the daughter prest upon
her
To wed the man so dear to all of them
And Uft the household out of poverty;
And Philip's rosy face contracting grew
Careworn and wan; and all these things
fell on her
Sharp as reproach.
At last one night it chanced
That Annie could not sleep, but ear-
nestly
Pray'd for a sign, ' my Enoch, is he gone ? '
Then compass'd round by the blind wall
of night
Brook'd not the expectant terror of her
heart,
Started from bed, and struck herseh a
light.
Then desperately seized the holy Book,
Suddenly set it wide to find a sign,
Suddenly put her finger on the text,
' Under the palm-tree.' That was noth-
ing to her :
No meaning there : she closed the Book
and slept :
When lo ! her Enoch sitting on a height,
Under a palm-tree, over him the Sun :
' He is gone,' she thought, ' he is happy,
he is singing
Hosanna in the highest : yonder shines
The Sun of Righteousness, and these be
palms
Whereof the happy. people strowing cried
" Hosanna in the highest ! " ' Here she
woke,
Resolved, sent for him and said wildly
to him,
' There is no reason why we should not
wed,'
* Then for God's sake,' he answer'd, ' both
our sakes,
So you will wed me, let it be at once.'
So these were wed and merrily rang
the bells.
Merrily rang the bells and they were
wed.
But never merrily beat Annie's heart.
A footstep seem'd to fall beside her path,
She knew not whence; a whisper on
her ear,
She knew not what; nor loved she to
be left
Alone at home, nor ventured out alone.
What ail'd her then, that ere she enter'd,
often
Her hand dwelt lingeringly on the latch,
Fearing to enter: Philip thought he
knew :
Such doubts and fears were common to
her state.
130
ENOCH ARDEN.
Being with child : but when her child
was born,
Then her new child was as herself re-
nevv'd,
Then the new mother came about her
heart,
Then her good Philip was her all-in-all,
And that mysterious instinct wholly died.
And where was Enoch? prosperously
sail'd
The ship ' Good Fortune,' tho' at setting
forth
The Biscay, roughly ridging eastward,
shook
And almost overwhelm'd her, yet unvext
She slipt across the summer of the world,
Then after a long tumble about the Cape
And frequent interchange of foul and fair,
She passing thro' the summer world again.
The breath of heaven came continually
And sent her sweetly by the golden isles.
Till silent in her oriental haven.
There Enoch traded for himself, and
bought
Quaint monsters for the market of those
times,
A gilded dragon, also, for the babes.
Less lucky her home-voyage: at first
indeed
Thro' many a fair sea-circle, day by day.
Scarce-rocking, her full-busted figure-
head
Stared o'er the ripple feathering from
her bows :
Then foUow'd calms, and then winds
variable.
Then baffling, a long course of them;
and last
Storm, such as drove her under moon-
less heavens
Till hard upon the cry of ' breakers '
came
The crash of ruin, and the loss of all
But Enoch and two others. Half the
night,
Buoy'd upon floating tackle and broken
spars,
These drifted, stranding on an isle at
morn
Rich, but the loneliest in a lonely sea.
No want was there of human suste-
nance,
Soft fruitage, mighty nuts, and nourish
ing roots;
Nor save for pity was it hard to take
The helpless life so wild that it was tame.
There in a seaward-gazing mountain-
gorge
They built, and thatch'd with leaves of
palm, a hut,
Half hut, half native cavern. So the
three.
Set in this Eden of all plenteousness,
Dwelt with eternal summer, ill-content.
For one, the youngest, hardly more
than boy,
Hurt in that night of sudden ruin and
wreck,
Lay lingering out a five-years' death-in-
life.
They could not leave him. After he
was gone.
The two remaining found a fallen stem;
And Enoch's comrade, careless of him-
self.
Fire-hollowing this in Indian fashion, fell
Sun-stricken, and that other lived alone.
In those two deaths he read God's warn-
ing * wait.'
The mountain wooded to the peak,
the lawns
And winding glades high up like ways
to heaven.
The slender coco's drooping crown of
plumes.
The lightning flash of insect and of
bird.
The lustre of the long convolvuluses
That coil'd around the stately stems, and
ran
Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows
And glories of the broad belt of the
world,
All these he saw; but what he fain had
seen
He could not see, the kindly human face,
Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard
The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-
fowl.
The league-long roller thundering on the
reef.
^ENOCH ARDEN,
The moving whisper of huge trees that
branch'd
And blossom'd in the zenith, or the
sweep
Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave,
As down the shore he ranged, or all
day long
Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge,
A shipwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail :
No sail from day to day, but every day
I'he sunrise broken into scarlet shafts
Among the palms and ferns and preci-
pices;
The blaze upon the waters to the east;
The blaze upon his island overhead;
The blaze upon the waters to the west;
Then the great stars that globed them-
selves in heaven,
The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again
The scarlet shafts of sunrise — but no
sail.
There often as he watch'd or seem'd
to watch,
So still, the golden lizard on him paused,
A phantom made of many phantoms
moved
Before him haunting him, or he himself
Moved haunting people, things and
places, known
Far in a darker isle beyond the line;
The babes, their babble, Annie, the small
house.
The climbing street, the mill, the leafy
lanes,
The peacock-yewtree and the lonely Hall,
The horse he drove, the boat he sold, the
chiU
November dawns and dewy-glooming
downs.
The gentle shower, the smell of dying
leaves.
And the low moan of leaden-colour'd
Once likewise, in the ringing of his
ears,
Tho' faintly, merrily — far and faraway —
He heard the pealing of his parish bells;
Then, tho' he knew not wherefore, started
up
Shuddering, and when the beauteous
hateful isle
Return'd upon him, had not his poor
heart
Spoken with That, which being every-
where
Lets none, who speaks with Him, seem
all alone,
Surely the man had died of solitude.
Thus over Enoch's early-rsilvering head
The sunny and rainy seasons came and
went
Year after year. His hopes to see his
own.
And pace the sacred old familiar fields,
Not yet had perish'd, when his lonely
doom
Came suddenly to an end. Another ship
(She wanted water) blown by baffling
winds.
Like the * Good Fortune,' from her des-
tined course,
Stay'd by this isle, not knowing where
she lay:
For since the mate had seen at early
dawn
Across a break on the mist-wreathen isle
The silent water slipping from the hills.
They sent a crew that landing burst away
In search of stream or fount, and fiU'd
the shores
With clamour. Downward from his
mountain gorge
Stept the long-hair'd long-bearded soli-
tary.
Brown, looking hardly human, strangely
clad.
Muttering and mumbling, idiotlike it
seem'd,
With inarticulate rage, and making signs
They knew not what: and yet he led
the way
To where the rivulets of sweet water
ran;
And ever as he mingled with the crew.
And heard them talking, his long-
bounden tongue
Was loosen'd, till he made them under-
stand';
Whom, when their casks were fiU'd they
took aboard :
And there the tale he utter'd brokenly,
Scarce-credited at first but more and
more.
E32
ENOCH ARDEN.
Amazed and melted all who listen'd to it :
And clothes they gave him and free pas-
sage home;
But oft he work'd among the rest and
shook
His isolation from him. None of these
Came from his country, or could answer
him,
If question'd, aught of what he cared to
know.
And dull the voyage was with long
delays.
The vessel scarce sea- worthy; but ever-
more
His fancy fled before the lazy wind
Returning, till beneath a clouded moon
He like a lover down thro' 'all his blood
Drew in the dewy meadowy morning-
breath
Of England, blown across her ghostly
wall :
And that same morning officers and
men
Levied a kindly tax upon themselves,
Pitying the lonely man, and gave him it :
Then moving up the coast they landed
him,
Ev'n in that harbour whence he sail'd
before.
There Enoch spoke no word to any
one,
But homeward — home — what home ?
had he a home?
His home, he walk'd. Bright was that
afternoon,
Sunny but chill; till drawn thro' either
chasm,
Where either haven open'd on the
deeps,
Roll'd a sea-haze and whelm'd the world
in gray;
Cut off the length of highway on before,
And left but narrow breadth to left and
right
Of wither'd holt or tilth or pasturage.
On the nigh-naked tree the robin piped
Disconsolate, and thro' the dripping
haze
The dead weight of the dead leaf bore it
down :
Thicker the drizzle grew, deeper the
gloom;
Last, as it seem'd, a great mist-blotted
light
Flared on him, and he came upon the
place.
Then down the long street having
slowly stolen.
His heart foreshadowing all calamity.
His eyes upon the stones, he reach'd the
home
Where Annie lived and loved him, and
his babes
In those far-off seven happy years were
born;
But finding neither light nor murmur
there
(A bill of sale gleam'd thro' the drizzle)
crept
Still downward thinking * dead or dead
to me ! '
Down to the pool and narrow wharf
he went,
Seeking a tavern which of old he knew,,
A front of timber-crost antiquity,
So propt, worm-eaten, ruinously old,
He thought it must have gone; but he
was gone
Who kept it; and his widow Miriam
Lane,
With daily-dwindling profits held the
house;
A haunt of brawling seamen once, but now
Stiller, with yet a bed for wandering
men.
There Enoch rested silent many days.
But Miriam Lane was good and garru-
lous.
Nor let him be, but often breaking in.
Told him, with other annals of the port,
Not knowing — Enoch was so brown, so
bow'd,
So broken — all the story of his house.
His baby's death, her growing poverty.
How Philip put her little ones to school.
And kept them in it, his long wooing
her,
Her slow consent, and marriage, and the
birth
Of Philip's child : and o'er his counte-
nance
No shadow past, nor motion : any one,
ENOCH ARDEN,
133
Regarding, well had deem'd he felt the
tale
Less than the teller : only when she
closed,
' Enoch, poor man, was cast away and
lost,'
He, shaking his gray head pathetically,
Repeated muttering * cast away and lost; '
Again in deeper inward whispers ' lost ! '
But Enoch yearn'd to see her face
again ;
' If I might look on her sweet face again
And know that she is happy.' So the
thought
Haunted and harass'd him, and drove
him forth.
At evening when the dull November day
Was growing duller twilight, to the hill.
There he sat down gazing on all below;
There did a thousand memories roll upon
him.
Unspeakable for sadness. By and by
The ruddy square of comfortable light.
Far-blazing from the rear of Philip's
house.
Allured him, as the beacon-blaze allures
The bird of passage, till he madly strikes
Against it, and beats out his weary life.
For Philip's dwelling fronted on the
street,
The latest house to landward; but be-
hind,
With one small gate that open'd on the
waste,
Flourish'd a little garden square and
wall'd :
And in it throve an ancient evergreen,
A yewtree, and all round it ran a walk
Of shingle, and a walk divided it :
But Enoch shunn'd the middle walk and
stole
Up by the wall, behind the yew; and
thence
That which he better might have shunn'd,
if griefs
Like his have worse or better, Enoch saw.
For cups and silver on the burnish'd
board
Sparkled and shone; so genial was the
hearth :
And on the right hand of the hearth he
saw
JPhilip, the slighted suitor of old times.
Stout, rosy, with his babe across his
knees;
And o'er her second father stoopt a
girl,
A later but a loftier Annie Lee,
Fair-hair'd and tall, and from her lifted
hand
Dangled a length of ribbon and a ring
To tempt the babe, who rear'd his creasy
arms.
Caught at and ever miss'd it, and they
laugh'd ;
And on the left hand of the hearth he
saw
The mother glancing often toward her
babe.
But turning now and then to speak with
him,
Her son, who stood beside her tall and
strong,
And saying that which pleased him, for
he smiled.
Now when the dead man come to life
beheld
His wife his wife no more, and saw the
babe
Hers, yet not his, upon the father's knee,
And all the warmth, the peace, the
happiness.
And his own children tall and beautiful,
And him, that other, reigning in his place,
Lord of his rights and of his children's
love, —
Then he, tho' Miriam Lane had told him
all,
Because things seen are mightier than
things heard,
Stagger'd and shook, holding the branch,
and fear'd
To send abroad a shrill and terrible cry.
Which in one moment, like the blast of
doom.
Would shatter all the happiness of the
hearth.
He therefore turning softly like a thief,
Lest the harsh shingle should grate under
foot.
And feeling all along the garden-wall.
134
ENOCH ARDEN.
Lest he should swoon and tumble and be
found,
Crept to the gate, and open'd it, and
closed,
As lightly as a sick man's chamber-door,
Behind him, and came out upon the
waste.
And there he would have knelt, but
that his knees
Were feeble, so that falling prone he dug
His fingers into the wet earth, and
pray'd.
' Too hard to bear ! why did they take
me thence?
O God Almighty, blessed Saviour, Thou
That didst uphold me on my lonely isle.
Uphold me, Father, in my loneliness
A little longer ! aid me, give me strength
Not to tell her, never to let her know.
Help me not to break in upon her peace.
My children too ! must I not speak to
these ?
They know me not. I should betray
myself.
Never: No father's kiss for me — the girl
So like her mother, and the boy, my
There speech and thought and nature
fail'd a little.
And he lay tranced; but when. he rose
and paced
Back toward his solitary home again.
All down the long and narrow street he
went
Beating it in upon his weary brain,
As tho' it were the burthen of a song,
' Not to tell her, never to let her know.'
He was not all unhappy. His resolve
Upbore him, and firm faith, and ever-
more
Prayer from a living source within the
will.
And beating up thro' all the bitter world.
Like fountains of sweet water in the sea.
Kept him a living soul. * This miller's
wife,'
He said to Miriam, * that you spoke about,
Has she no fear that her first husband
lives ? '
* Ay, ay, poor soul,' said Miriam, ' fear
enow !
If you could tell her you had seen him
dead,
Why, that would be her comfort; ' and
he thought
'After the Lord has call'd me she shall
know.
I wait His time,' and Enoch set himself,
Scorning an alms, to work whereby to live.
Almost to all things could he turn his
hand.
Cooper he was and carpenter, and wrought
To make the boatmen fishing-nets, or
help'd
At lading and unlading the tall barks,
That brought the stinted commerce of
those days;
Thus earn'd a scanty living for himself:
Yet since he did but labour for himself.
Work without hope, there was not life
in it
Whereby the man could live; and as the
year
RoU'd itself round again to meet the day
When Enoch had return'd, a languor
came
Upon him, gentle sickness, gradually
Weakening the man, till he could do no
more.
But kept the house, his chair, and last his
bed.
And Enoch bore his weakness cheerfully.
For sure no gladlier does the stranded
wreck
See thrb' the gray skirts of a lifting squall
The boat that bears the hope of life
approach
To save the life despair'd of, than he saw
Death dawning on him, and the close of
all.
For thro' that dawning gleam'd a kind-
lier hope
On Enoch thinking, * after I am gone.
Then may she learn I lov'd her to the
last.'
He call'd aloud for Miriam Lane and said,
' Woman, I have a secret — only swear,
Before I tell you — swear upon the book
Not to reveal it, till you see me dead.'
* Dead,' clamour'd the good woman, ' hear
him talk !
ENOCH ARDEN.
135
I warrant, man, that we shall bring you
round.'
* Swear,' added Enoch sternly, * on the
book.'
And on the book, half-frighted, Miriam
swore.
Then Enoch rolling his gray eyes upon her,
'Did you know Enoch Arden of this
town? '
'Know him?' she said, * I knew him far
away.
Ay, ay, I mind him coming down the
street;
Held his head high, and cared for no man,
he.'
Slowly and sadly Enoch answer'd her :
'His head is low, and no man cares for
him.
I think I have not three days more to live ;
I am the man.' At which the woman gave
A half-incredulous, half-hysterical cry.
* You Arden, you ! nay, — sure he was a
foot
Higher than you be.' Enoch said again,
* My God has bow'd me down to what I
am;
My grief and solitude have broken me;
Nevertheless, know you that I am he
Who married — but that name has twice
been changed —
I married her who married Philip Ray.
Sit, listen.' Then he told her of his
voyage,
His wreck, his lonely life, his coming back.
His gazing in on Annie, his resolve,
And how he kept it. As the woman
heard.
Fast flow'd the current of her easy tears.
While in her heart she yearn'd incessantly
To rush abroad all round the little haven,
Proclaiming Enoch Arden and his woes;
But awed and promise-bounden she for-
bore,
Saying only, ' See your bairns before you
go!
Eh, let me fetch 'em, Arden,' and arose
Eager to bring them down, for Enoch
hung
A moment on her words, but then replied :
'Woman, disturb me not now at the
last.
But let me hold my purpose till I die.
Sit down again ; mark me and understand.
While I have power to speak. I charge
you now.
When you shall see her, tell her that I died
Blessing her, praying for her, loving her;
Save for the bar between us, loving her
As when she laid her head beside my own.
And tell my daughter Annie, whom I saw
So like her mother, that my latest breath
Was spent in blessing her and praying for
her.
And tell my son that I died blessing him.
And say to Philip that I blest him too;
He never meaiit us any thing but good.
But if my children care to see me dead.
Who hardly knew me living, let them
come,
I am their father; but she must not come,
For my dead face would vex her after-life.
And now there is but one of all my blood
Who will embrace me in the world-to-be.
This hair is his : she cut it ofif and gave it.
And I have borne it with me all these
years.
And thought to bear it with me to my
grave;
But now my mind is changed, for I shall
see him.
My babe in bliss : wherefore when I am
gone.
Take, give her this, for it may comfort her :
It will moreover be a token to her,
That I am he.'
He ceased; and Miriam Lane
Made such a V()luV)le answer promising all.
That once again he roli'd his eyes upon
her
Repeating all he wish'd, and once again
She promised.
Then the third night after this,
While Enoch slumber'd motionless and
pale.
And Miriam watch'd and dozed at inter-
vals,
There came so loud a calling of the sea.
That all the houses in the haven rang.
He woke, he rose, he spread his arms
abroad
Crying with a loud voice ' A sail ! a sail 1
I am saved ; ' and so fell back and spoke
no more.
'36
THE BROOK.
So past the strong heroic soul away.
A.nd when they buried him the Httle
port
Had seldom seen a costlier funeral.
THE BROOK.
Here, by this brook, we parted; I to the
East
And he for Italy — too late — too late :
One whom the strong sons of the world
despise;
For lucky rhymes to him" were scrip and
share,
And mellow metres more than cent for
cent;
Nor could he understand how money
breeds,
Thought it a dead thing; yet himself
could make
The thing that is not as the thing that
is.
0 had he lived ! In our schoolbooks we
say.
Of those that held their heads above the
crowd,
They flourished then or then; but life in
him
Could scarce be said to flourish, only
touch'd
On such a time as goes before the leaf,
When all the wood stands in a mist of
green,
And nothing perfect : yet the brook he
loved,
For which, in branding summers of
Bengal,
Or ev'n the sweet half- English Neilgherry
air
1 panted, seems, as I re-listen to it,
Prattling the primrose fancies of the boy.
To me that loved him; for *0 brook,'
he says,
"■ O babbling brook,' says Edmund in his
rhyme,
• Whence come you? ' and the brook, why
not? replies.
I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.
By thirty hills I hurry down.
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.
Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go.
But I go on for ever.
* Poor lad, he died at Florence, quite
worn out.
Travelling to Naples. There is Darnley
bridge.
It has more ivy; there the river; and
there
Stands Philip's farm where brook and
river meet.
I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.
With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.
I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go.
But I go on for ever.
* But Philip chatter'd more than brook
or bird;
Old Philip ; all about the fields you
caught
His weary daylong chirping, like the "
dry
High-elbow'd grigs that leap in summer
grass.
I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing.
And here and there a lusty trout.
And here and there a grayling.
And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,
And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
THE BROOK.
137
* O darling Katie Willows, his one
child !
A. maiden of our century, yet m<3st meek;
A daughter of our meadows, yet not
coarse;
Straight, but as lissome as a hazel wand;
Her eyes a bashful azure, and her hair
In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the
shell
Divides threefold to show the fruit within.
' Sweet Katie, once I did her a good
turn,
Her and her far-off cousin and betrothed,
James Willows, of one name and heart
with her.
For here I came, twenty years back —
the week
Before I parted with poor Edmund; crost
By that old bridge which, half in ruins
then.
Still makes a hoary eyebrow for the gleam
Beyond it, where the waters marry — crost,
Whistling a random bar of Bonny Doon,
And push'd at Philip's garden-gate. The
gate.
Half-parted from a weak and scolding
hinge.
Stuck; and he clamour'd from a case-
ment, " Run "
To Katie somewhere in the walks below,
" Run, Katie ! " Katie never ran : she
moved
To meet me, winding under woodbine
bowers,
A little flutter'd, with her eyelids down,
Fresh apple-blossom, blushing for a boon.
'What was it? less of sentiment than
sense
Had Katie; not illiterate; nor of those
Who dabbling in the fount of Active tears.
And nursed by mealy-mouth'd philan-
thropies.
Divorce the Feeling from her mate the
" Deed.
* She told me. She and James had
quarrell'd. Why?
What cause of quarrel? None, she said,
no cause;
James had no cause : but when I prest
the cause,
I learnt that James had flickering jeal-
ousies
Which anger'd her. Who anger'd James?
I said.
But Katie snatch'd her eyes at once from
mine,
And sketching with her slender pointed
foot
Some figure like a wizard pentagram
On garden gravel, let my query pass
Unclaim'd, in flushing silence, till I ask'd
If James were coming. "Coming every
day,"
She answer'd, " ever longing to explain.
But evermore her father came across
With some long-winded tale, and broke
him short;
And James departed vext with him and
her."
How could I help her? "Would I — was
it wrong?"
(Claspt hands and that petitionary grace
Of sweet seventeen subdued me ere she
spoke)
*' O would I take her father for one hour.
For one half-hour, and let him talk to me! "
And even while she spoke, I saw where
James
Made toward us, like a wader in the surf,
Beyond the brook, waist-deep in meadow-
sweet.
• O Katie, what I suffer'd for your sake !
For in I went, and call'd old Philip out
To show the farm : full willingly he rose :
He led me thro' the short sweet-smelling
lanes
Of his wheat-suburb, babbling as he went.
He praised his land, his horses, his
machines;
He praised his ploughs, his cows, his
hogs, his dogs;
He praised his hens, his geese, his guinea-
hens;
His pigeons, who in session on their roofs
Approved him, bowing at their own
deserts:
Then from the plaintive mother's teat he
took
Her blind and shuddering puppies, nam-
ing each,
And naming those, his friends, for whom
they were :
38
THE BROOK.
Then crost the common into Darnley
chase
To show Sir Arthur's deer. In copse
and fern
Twinkled tlie innumerable ear and tail.
Then, seated on a serpent-rooted beech,
He pointed out a pasturing colt, and
said :
"That was the four-year-old I sold the
Squire."
And there he told a long long-winded tale
Of how the Squire had seen the colt at
grass.
And how it was the thing his daughter
wish'd,
And how he sent the bailiflf to the farm
To learn the price, and what the price he
ask'd.
And how the bailiff swore that he was
mad,
But he stood firm; and so the matter
hung;
He gave them line : and five days after
that
He met the bailiff at the Golden Fleece,
Who then and there had offer'd some-
thing more.
But he stood firm; and so the matter
hung;
He knew the man; the colt would fetch
its price ;
He gave them line : and how by chance
at last
(It might be May or April, he forgot.
The last of April or the first of May)
He found the bailiff riding by the farm,
And, talking from the point, he drew
him in,
And there he mellow'd all his heart with
ale.
Until they closed a bargain, hand in hand.
'Then, while I breathed in sight of
haven, he,
Poor fellow, could he help it? recom-
menced.
And ran thro' all the coltish chronicle,
Wild Will, Black Bess, Tantivy, Tallyho,
Reform, White Rose, Bellerophon, the
Jilt,
Arbaces, and Phenomenon, and the rest,
Till, not to die a listener, I arose.
And with me Philip, talking still; and so
We turn'd our foreheads from the falling
sun.
And following our own shadows thrice
as long
As when they follow'd us from Philip's
door,
Arrived, and found the sun of sweet con-
tent
Re-risen in Katie's eyes, and all things
well.
I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.
I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance.
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.
I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;
And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river.
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
Yes, men may come and go; and these
are gone.
All gone. My dearest brother, Edmund,
sleeps,
Not by the well-known stream and rustic
spire,
But unfamiliar Arno, and the dome
Of Brunelleschi; sleeps in peace : and he,
Poor Philip, of all his lavish waste of
words
Remains the lean P. W. on his tomb :
I scraped the lichen from it : Katie walks
By the long wash of Australasian seas
Far off, and holds her head to other
stars,
And breathes in April-autumns. All are
gone.'
So Lawrence Aylmer, seated on a stile
In the long hedge, and rolling in his
mind
Old waifs of rhyme, and bowing o'er the
brook
A tonsured head in middle age forlorn,
AYLMER'S FIELD.
139
Mused, and was mute. On a sudden a
low breath
Of tender air made tremble in the
hedge
The fragile bindweed-bells and briony
rings;
And he look'd up. There stood a maiden
near,
Waiting to pass. In much amaze he
stared
On eyes a bashful azure, and on hair
In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the
shell
Divides threefold to show the fruit within :
Then, wondering, ask'd her, 'Are you
from the farm ? '
* Yes,' answer'd she. ' Pray stay a little :
pardon me;
What Clo they call you?' 'Katie.' 'That
were strange.
What surname?' 'Willows.' 'No!'
* That is my name.'
'Indeed!' and here he look'd so self-
perplext,
That Katie laugh'd, and laughing blush'd,
till he
Laugh'd also, but as one before he
wakes,
Who feels a glimmering strangeness in
his dream.
Then looking at her : ' Too happy, fresh
and fair.
Too fresh and fair in our sad world's best
bloom,
To be the ghost of one who bore your
name
About these meadows, twenty year?, ago.'
' Have you not heard? ' said Katie, ' we
came back.
We bought the farm we tenanted be-
fore.
Am I so like her? so they said on
board.
Sir, if you knew her in her English
days.
My mother, as it seems you did, the days
That most she loves to talk of, come
with me.
My brother James is in the harvest-
field :
But she — you wiii be welcome — O, come
in!'
AYLMER'S FIELD.
1793.
Dust are our frames; and, gilded dust,
our pride
Looks only for a moment "whole and
sound ;
Like that long-buried body of the king,
Found lying with his urns and ornaments,
Which at a touch of light, an air of
heaven,
Slipt into ashes, and was found no more.
Here is a story which in rougher shape
Came from a grizzled cripple, whom I
saw
Sunning hiniself in a waste field alone —
Old, and a mine of memories — who had
served,
Long since, a bygone Rector of the place,
And been himself a part of what he told.
Sip Aylmer Aylmer, that almighty
man.
The county God — in whose capacious
hall,
Hung with a hundred shields, the family
tree
Sprang from the midriff of a prostrate
king —
Whose blazing wyvern weathercock'd the
spire.
Stood from his walls and wing'd his entry-
gates
And swang besides on many a windy
sign —
Whose eyes from under a pyramidal head
Saw from his windows nothing save his
own —
What lovelier of his own had he than
her,
His only child, his Edith, whom he loved
As heiress and not heir regretfully?
But * he that marries her marries her
name ' —
This fiat somewhat soothed himself and
wife.
His wife a faded beauty of the Baths,
Insipid as the Queen upon a card;
Her all of thought and bearing hardly
more
Than his own shadow in a sickly sun.
140
AYLMER'S FIELD.
A land of hops and poppy-mingled
corn,
Little about it stirring save a brook !
A sleepy land, where under the same
wheel
The same old rut would deepen year by
yeaui
Where almost all the village had one
name;
Where Aylmev followed Aylmer at the
Hall
And Averill Averill at the Rectory
Thrice over; so that Rectory and Hall,
Bound in an immemorial intimacy.
Were open to each other; tho to dream
That Love could bind them closer well
had made
The hoar hair of the Baronet bristle up
With horror, worse than had he heard
his priest
Preach an inverted scripture, sons of
men
Daughters of God; so sleepy was the
land.
And might not Averill, had he will'd
it so,
Somewhere beneath his own low range
of roofs,
Have also set his many-shielded tree?
There was an Aylmer-Averill marriage
once.
When the red rose was redder than itself,
And York's white rose as red as Lancas-
ter's,
With wounded peace which each had
prick'd to death.
' Not proven,' Averill said, or laughingly,
'Some other race of Averills' — prov'n
or no.
What cared he? what, if other or the
same?
He lean'd not on his fathers but himself.
But Leolin, his brother, living oft
With Averill, and a year or two before
Call'd to the bar, but ever call'd away
By one low voice to one dear neighbour-
hood.
Would often, in his walks with Edith,
claim
A distant kinship to the gracious blood
That shook the heart of Edith hearing
him.
Sanguine he was : a but less vivid hue
Than of that islet in the chestnut-bloom
Flamed in his cheek; and eager eyes,
that still
Took joyful note of all things joyful,
beam'd
Beneath a manelike^mass of rolling gold,
Their best and brightest, when they dwel*:
on hers,
Edith, whose pensive beauty, perfect else.
But subject to the season or the mood.
Shone like a mystic star between the less
And greater glory varying to and fro,
We know not wherefore; bounteously
made,
And yet so finely, that a troublous touch
Thinn'd, or would seem to thin her in a
day,
A joyous to dilate, as toward the Hght.
And these had been together from the
first.
Leolin's first nurse was, five years after,
hers:
So much the boy foreran; but when his
date
Doubled her own, for want of playmates,
he
(Since Averill was a decad and a half
His elder, and their parents underground)
Had tost his ball and flown his kite, and
roll'd
His hoop to pleasure Edith, with her dipt
Against the rush of the air in the prone
swing.
Made blossom-ball or daisy-chain, ar-
ranged
Her garden, sow'd her name and kept
it green
In living letters, told her fairy-tales,
Show'd her the fairy footings on the
grass.
The little dells of cowslip, fairy palms,
The petty marestail forest, fairy pines,
Or from the tiny pitted target blew
What look'd a flight of fairy arrows aim'd
All at one mark, all hitting: make-be-
lieves
For Edith and himself: or else he forged,
But that was later, boyish histories
Of battle, bold adventure, dungeon,
wreck,
Flights, terrors, sudden rescues, and true
love
AYLMER'S FIELD.
I4\
Crown'd after trial; sketches rude and
faint,
But where a passion yet unborn perhaps
Lay hidden as the music of the moon
Sleeps in the plain eggs of the nightin-
gale.
And thus together, save for college-times
Or Temple-eaten terms, a couple, fair
As ever painter painted, poet sang,
Or Heaven in lavish bounty moulded,
grew.
And more and more, the maiden woman-
grown.
He wasted hours with Averill; there,
when first
The tented winter-field was broken up
Into that phalanx of the summer spears
That soon should wear the garland;
there again
When burr and bine were gather'd;
lastly there
At Christmas; ever welcome at the Hall,
On whose dull sameness his full tide of
youth
Broke with a phosphorescence charming
even
My lady; and the Baronet yet had laid
No bar between them : dull and self-
involved,
Tall and erect, but bending from his
height
With half-allowing smiles for all the
world,
And mighty courteous in the main —
his pride
Lay deeper than to wear it as his ring —
He, like an Aylmer in his Aylmerism,
Would care no more for Leolin's walking
with her
Than for his old Newfoundland's, when
they ran
To loose him at the stables, for he rose
Twofooted at the limit of his chain,
Roaring to make a third: and how
should Love,
Whom the cross-lightnings of four
chance-met eyes
Flash into fiery life from nothing, follow
Such dear familiarities of dawn ?
Seldom, but when he does, Master of all.
So these young hearts not knowing
that they loved,
Not she at least, nor conscious of a bar
Between them, nor by plight or broken
ring
Bound, but an immemorial intimacy,
Wander'd at will, and oft accompanied
By Averill : his, a brother's love, that
hung
With wings of brooding shelter o'er her
peace.
Might have been other, save for Leo-
lin's—
Who knows? but so they wander'd, hour
by hour
Gather'd the blossom that rebloom'd,
and drank
The magic cup that fiU'd itself anew.
A whisper half reveal'd her to herself
For out beyond her lodges, where the
brook
Vocal, witii here and there a silence, ran
By sallowy rims, arose the labourers'
homes,
A frequent haunt of Edith, on low knolls
That dimpling died into each other, huts
At random scatter'd, each a nest in
bloom.
Her art, her hand, her counsel all had
wrought
About them : here was one that, sum-
mer-blanch'd.
Was parcel-bearded with the traveller's-
joy
In Autumn, parcel ivy-clad; and here
The warm-blue breathings of a hidden
hearth
Broke from a bower of vine and honey-
suckle :
One look'd all rosetree, and another wore
A close-set robe of jasmine sown with
stars :
This had a rosy sea of gillyflowers
About it ; this, a milky-way on earth,
Like visions in the Northern dreamer's
heavens,
A lily-avenue climbing to the doors;
One, almost to the martin-haunted eaves
A summer burial deep in hollyhocks;
Each, its own charm; and Edith's every-
where;
And Edith ever visitant with him.
He but less loved than Edith, of her
poor:
142
AYLMER'S FIELD.
For she — so lowly-lovely and so loving,
Queenly responsive when the loyal hand
Rose from the clay it work'd in as she
past,
Not sowing hedgerow texts and passing
by,
Nor dealing, goodly counsel from a height
That nwKes the .lowest hate it, but a
voice
Of comfort and an open hand of help,
A splendid presence flattering the poor
roofs
Revered as theirs, but kindlier than
themselves
To ailing wife or wailing infancy
Or old bedridden palsy, — was adored;
He, loved for her and for himself. A
grasp
Having the warmth and muscle of the
heart,
A childly way with children, and a laugh
Ringing like proven golden coinage true.
Were no false passport to that easy
realm.
Where once with Leolin at her side the
girl,
Nursing a child, and turning to the
warmth
The tender pink five-beaded baby-soles.
Heard the good mother softly whisper
' Bless,
God bless 'em : marriages are made in
Heaven.'
A flash of semi-jealousy clear'd it to
her.
My lady's Indian kinsman unannounced
With half a score of swarthy faces came.
His own, tho' keen and bold and sol-
dierly
Sear'd by the close ecliptic, was not fair;
Fairer his talk, a tongue that ruled the
hour,
Tho' seeming boastful : so when first he
dash'd
Into the chronicle of a deedful day,
Sir Aylmer half forgot his lazy smile
Of patron ' Good ! my lady's kinsman !
good ! '
My lady with her fingers interlock'd.
And rotatory thumbs on silken knees,
Call'd all her vital spirits into each ear
To listen : unawares they flitted off,
Busying themselves about the flowerage
That stood from out a stiff brocade in
which.
The meteor of a splendid season, she,
Once with this kinsman, ah so long ago,
Stept thro' the stately minuet of those
days :
But Edith's eager fancy hurried with
him
Snatch'd thro' the perilous passes of his
life:
Till Leolin ever watchful of her eye.
Hated him with a momentary hate.
Wife -hunting, as the rumour ran, was
he:
I know not, for he spoke not, only
shower'd
His oriental gifts on every one
And most on Edith : hke a storm he
came,
And shook the house, and like a storm
he went.
Among the gifts he left her (possibly
He flow'd and ebb'd uncertain, to return
When others had been tested) there was
one,
A dagger, in rich sheath with jewels
on it
Sprinkled about in gold that branch'd
itself
Fine as ice-ferns on January panes
Made by a breath. I know not whence
at first,
Nor of what race, the work; but as he
told
The story, storming a hill-fort of thieves
He got it; for their captain after fight,
His comrades having fought their last
below,
Was climbing up the valley; at whom
he shot :
Down from the beetling crag to which
he clung
Tumbled the tawny rascal at his feet.
This dagger with him, M'hich when now
admired
By Edith whom his pleasure was to
please,
At once the costly Sahib yielded to her.
And Leolin, coming after he was gone,
Tost over all her presents petulantly :
AYLMER'S FIELD.
143
^nd when she show'd the wealthy scab-
bard, saying
' Look what a lovely piece of workman-
ship ! '
Slight was his answer, ' Well — I care
not for it : '
Then playing with the blade he prick'd
his hand,
* A gracious gift to give a lady, this ! '
* But would it be more gracious,' ask'd
the girl,
* Were I to give this gift of his to one
That is no lady ? ' ' Gracious ?. No,'
said he.
* Me ? — but I cared not for it. O par-
don me,
I seem to be ungraciousness itself.'
* Take it,' she added sweetlv, ' tho' his
gift;
For I am more ungracious ev'n than you,
I care not for it either; ' and he said
' Why then I love it : ' but Sir Aylmer
past,
And neither loved nor liked the thing
he heard.
The next day came a neighbour.
Blues and reds
They talk'd of : blues were sure of it, he
thought :
Then of the latest fox — where started
— kili'd
In such a bottom : * Peter had the brush,
My Peter, first : ' and did Sir Aylmer
know
That great pock-pitten fellow had been
caught ?
Then made his pleasure echo, hand to
hand.
And rolling as it were the substance of it
Between his palms a moment up and
down —
The birds were warm, the birds were
, warm upon him;
We have him now : ' and had Sir Ayl-
mer heard —
Nay, but he must — the land was ring-
ing of it —
This blacksmith border-marriage — one
they knew —
Raw from the nursery — who could trust
a child?
That cursed France with her egalities !
And did Sir Aylmer (deferentially
With nearing chair and lower'd accent)
think —
For people talk'd — that it was wholly
wise
To let that handsome fellow Averill walk
So freely with his daughter ? people
talk'd —
The boy might get a notion into him;
The girl might be entangled ere she
knew.
Sir Aylmer Aylmer slowly stiffening
spoke :
'The girl and boy, Sir, know their differ-
ences ! '
* Good,' said his friend, ' but watch ! '
and he, * Enough,
More than enough. Sir ! I can guard my
own.'
They parted, and Sir Aylmer Aylmer
watch'd.
Pale, for on her the thunders of the
house
Had fallen first, was Edith that same
night;
Pale as the Jephtha's daughter, a rough
piece
Of early rigid colour, under which
Withdrawing by the counter door to that
Which Leolin open'd, she cast back upon
him
A piteous glance, and vanish'd. He, as
one
Caught in a burst of unexpected storm.
And pelted with outrageous epithets,
Turning beheld the Powers of the House
On either side the hearth, indignant ; her.
Cooling her false cheek with a feather fan.
Him, glaring, by his own stale devil
spurr'd,
And, like a beast hard-ridden, breathing
hard.
' Ungenerous, dishonourable, base,
Presumptuous ! trusted as he was with her.
The sole succeeder to their wealth, their
lands.
The last remaining pillar of their house.
The one transmitter of their ancient name.
Their child.' ' Our child ! ' ' Our heiress ! '
♦ Ours ! ' for still,
Like echoes from beyond a hollow, came
Her sicklier iteratii)n. Last he said.
144
AYLMER'S FIELD,
• Boy, mark me ! for your fortunes are to
make,
I swear you shall not make them out of
mine.
Now inasmuch as you have practised on
her,
Perplext her, made her half forget herself,
Swerve from her duty to herself and us —
Things in an Aylmer deem'd impossible,
Far as we track ourselves — I say that
this —
Else I withdraw favour and countenance
From you and yours for ever — shall you
do.
Sir, when you see her — but you shall not
see her —
No, you shall write, and not to her, but
me:
And you shall say that having spoken
with me,
And after look'd into yourself, you find
That you meant nothing — as indeed you
know
That you meant nothing. Such a match
as this !
Impossible, prodigious ! ' These were
words.
As meted by his measure of himself.
Arguing boundless forbearance: after
which,
And Leolin's horror-stricken answer, ' I
So foul a traitor to myself and her,
Never oh never,' for about as long
As the wind-hover hangs in balance,
paused
Sir Aylmer reddening from the storm
within,
Then broke all bonds of courtesy, and
crying,
*Boy, should I find you by my doors
again.
My men shall lash you from them like a
dog;
Hence ! ' with a sudden execration drove
The footstool from before him, and arose;
So, stammering * scoundrel ' out of teeth
that ground
As in a dreadful dream, while Leolin still
Retreated half-aghast, the fierce old man
FoUow'd, and under his own lintel stood
Storming with lifted hands, a hoary face
Meet for the reverence of the hearth, but
now.
Beneath a pale and unimpassion'd moon,
Vext with unworthy madness, and de
form'd.
Slowly and conscious of the rageful eye
That watch'd him, till he heard the
ponderous door
Close, crashing with long echoes thro' the
land,
Went Leolin; then, his passions all in
flood
And masters of his motion, furiously
Down thro' the bright lawns to his
brother's ran,
And foam'd away his heart at Averill's
ear :
Whom Averill solaced as he might,
amazed :
The man was his, had been his father's,
friend :
He must have seen, himself had seen it
long ;
He must have known, himself had known :
besides,
He never yet had set his daughter forth
Here in the woman-markets of the west,
Where our Caucasians let themselves be
sold.
Some one, he thought, had slander'd
Leolin to him.
' Brother, for I have loved you more as
son
Than brother, let me tell you : I myself —
What is their pretty saying ? jilted, is it ?
Jilted I was : I say it for your peace.
"Pain'd, and, as bearing in m3'self the
shame
The woman should have borne, humili-
ated,
I lived for years a stunted sunless life;
Till after our good parents past away
W^atching your growth, I seem'd again to
grow.
T^eolin, I almost sin in envying you:
The very whitest lamb in all my fold
Loves you: I know her: the worst
thought she has
Is whiter even than her pretty hand :
She must prove true : for, brother, where
two fight
The strongest wins, and truth and love are
strength,
And you are happy : let her parents be.'
AYLMER'S FIELD.
145
But Leolin cried out the more upon
them —
Insolent, brainless, heartless ! heiress,
wealth,
Their wealth, their heiress ! wealth
enough was theirs
For twenty matches. Were he lord of
this,
Why twenty boys and girls should marry
on it.
And forty blest ones bless him, and him-
self
Be wealthy still, ay wealthier. He be-
lieved
This filthy marriage-hindering Mammon
made
The harlot of the cities : nature crost
Was mother of the foul adulteries
That saturate soul with body. Name,
too ! name.
Their ancient name ! they might be
proud; its worth
Was being Edith's. Ah how pale she
had look'd,
Darling, to-night ! they must have rated
her
Beyond all tolerance. These old pheasant-
lords,
These partridge-breeders of a thousand
years,
Who had mildew'd in their thousands,
doing nothing
Since Egbert — why, the greater their
disgrace !
Fall back upon a name ! rest, rot in that !
Not keep it noble, make it nobler? fools,
With such a vantage-ground for noble-
ness!
He had known a man, a quintessence of
man.
The life of all — who madly loved — and
he,
Thwarted by one of these old father-fools,
Had rioted his life out, and made an end.
He would not do it ! her sweet face and
faith
Held him from that : but he had powers,
he knew it:
Back would he to his studies, make a name,
Name, fortune too : the world should ring
of him
To shame these mouldy Aylmers in their
graves :
Chancellor, or what is greatest would he
be —
* O brother, I am grieved to learn yout
grief-
Give me my fling, and let me say my say.'
At which, like one that sees his own
excess.
And easily forgives it as his own,
He laugh'd; and then was mute; but
presently
Wept like a storm: and honest Averill
seeing
How low his brother's mood had fallen,
fetch'd
His richest beeswing from a binn reserved
For banquets, praised the waning red, and
told
The vintage — when this Aylmer came of
age —
Then drank and past it; till at length the
two,
Tho' Leolin flamed and fell again, agreed
That much allowance must be made for
men.
After an angry dream this kindlier glow
Faded with morning, but his purpose held.
Yet once by night again the lovers met,
A perilous meeting under the tall pines
That darken'd all the northward of her
Hall.
Him, to her meek and modest bosom prest
In agony, she promised that no force.
Persuasion, no, nor death could alter her :
He, passionately hopefuller, would go,
Labour for his own Edith, and return
In such a sunlight of prosperity
He should not be rejected. 'Write tc
me !
They loved me, and because I love their
child
They hate me : there is war between us,
dear.
Which breaks all bonds but ours; we
must remain
Sacred to one another.' So they talk'd,
Poor children, for their comfort: the
wind blew;
The rain of heaven, and their own bitter
tears,
Tears, and the careless rain of heaven,
mixt
146
AYLMER'S FIELD.
Upon their faces, as they kiss'd each other
In darkness, and above them roar'd the
pine.
So Leolin went; and as we task our-
selves
To learn a language known but smatter-
ingly
In phrases here and there at random,
toil'd
Mastering the lawless science of our law,
That codeless myriad of precedent,
That wilderness of single instances,
Thro' which a few, by wit or fortune led,
May beat a pathway out to wealth and
fame.
The jests, that flash'd about the pleader's
room,
Lightning of the hour, the pun, the
scurrilous tale, —
Old scandals buried now seven decads
deep
In other scandals that have lived and
died,
And left the living scandal that shall
die —
Were dead to him already; bent as he
was
To make disproof of scorn, and strong in
hopes,
And prodigal of all brain-labour he,
Charier of sleep, and wine, and exercise,
Except when for a breathing-while at eve,
Some niggard fraction of an hour, he ran
Beside the river-bank : and then indeed
Harder the times were, and the hands of
power
Were bloodier, and the according hearts
of men
Seem'd harder too; but the soft river-
breeze,
Which fann'd the gardens of that rival
rose
Yet fragrant in a heart remembering
His former talks with Edith, on him
breathed
Far purelier in his rushings to and fro.
After his books, to flush his blood with
air.
Then to his books again. My lady's
cousin,
Half-sickening of hispension'd afternoon.
Drove in upon the student once or twice,
Ran a Malayan amuck against the times,
Had golden hopes for France and all
mankind,
Answer'd all queries touching those at
home
With a heaved shoulder and a saucy
smile,
And fain had haled him out into the
world,
And air'd him there : his nearer friend
would say,
'Screw not the chord too sharply lest it
snap.'
Then left alone he pluck'd her dagger
forth
From where his worldless heart had kept
it warm.
Kissing his vows upon it like a knight.
And wrinkled benchers often talk'd of
him
Approvingly, and prophesied his rise :
For heart, I think, help'd head : her
letters too,
Tho' far between, and coming fitfully
Like broken music, written as she found
Or made occasion, being strictly watch'd,
Charm'd him thro' every labyrinth till he
saw
An end, a hope, a light breaking upon
him.
But they that cast her spirit into flesh,
Her worldly-wise begetters, plagued them-
selves
To sell her, those good parents, for her
good.
Whatever eldest-born of rank or wealth
Might lie within their compass, him they
lured
Into their net made pleasant by the baits
Of gold and beauty, wooing him to woo.
So month by month the noise about their
doors,
And distant blaze of those dull banquets,
made
The nightly wirer of their innocent hare
Falter before he took it. All in vain.
Sullen, defiant, pitying, wroth, return'd
Leolin'.s rejected rivals from their suit
So often, that the folly taking wings
Slipt o'er those lazy limits down the wind
With rumour, and became in other fields
A mockery to the yeomen over ale,
ALYMER'S FIELD.
147
And laughter to their lords : but those at
home,
As hunters round a hunted creature draw
The cordon close and closer toward the
death,
Narrow'd her goings out and comings in;
P'orbade her first the house of Averill,
Then closed her access to the wealthier
farms,
Last from her own home-circle of the
poor
They barr'd her : yet she bore it : yet
her cheek
Kept colour : wondrous ! but, O mystery !
What amulet drew her down to that old
oak,
So old, that twenty years before, a part
Falling had let appear the brand of
John —
Once grovelike, each huge arm a tree,
but now
The broken base of a black tower, a cave
Of touchwood, with a single flourishing
spray.
There the manorial lord too curiously
Raking in that millennial touchwood-dust
Found for himself a bitter treasure-trove;
Burst his own wyvern on the seal, and read
Writhing a letter from his child, for which
Came at the moment Leolin's emissary,
A crippled lad, and coming turn'd to fly,
But scared with threats of jail and halter
gave
To him that fluster'd his poor parish wits
The letter which he brought, and swore
besides
To play their go-between as heretofore
Nor let them know themselves betray'd;
and then,
Soul-stricken at their kindness to him,
went
Hating his own lean heart and miserable.
Thenceforward oft from out a despot
dream
The father panting woke, and oft, as dawn
Aroused the black republic on his elms,
Sweeping the frothfly from the fescue
brush'd
Thro' the dim meadow toward his
treasure-trove,
Seized it, took home, an J to my lady, —
who made
A downward crescent of her minio*
mouth.
Listless in all despondence, — read; and
tore,
As if the living passion symbol'd there
Were living nerves to feel the rent; and
burnt.
Now chafing at his own great self defie»f,
Now striking on huge stumbling-blocks
of scorn
In babyisms, and dear diminutives
Scatter'd all over the vocabulary
Of such a love as like a chidden child,
After much wailing, hush'd itself at last
Hopeless of answer: then tho' Averill
wrote
And bade him with good heart sustain
himself —
All would be well — the lover heeded not,
But passionately restless came and went,
And rustling once at night about the place,
There by a keeper shot at, slightly hurt.
Raging return'd : nor was it M'ell for her
Kept to the garden now, and grove of
pines,
Watch'd even there; and one was set to
watch
The watcher, and Sir Aylmer watch'd
them all,
Yet bitterer from his readings: once
indeed,
Warm'd with his wines, or taking pride
in her,
She look'd so sweet, he kiss'd her tenderly
Not knowing what possess'd him : that
one kiss
Was Leolin's one strong rival upon earthy
Seconded, for my lady follow'd suit,
Seem'd hope's returning rose : and then
ensued
A Martin's summer of his faded love,
Or ordeal by kindness; after this
He seldom crost his child without a sneer;
The mother flow'd in shallower acrimo-
nies:
Never one kindly smile, one kindly word :
So that the gentle creature shut from all
Her charitable use, and face to face
With twenty months of silence, slowly lost
Nor greatly cared to lose, her hold on life.
Last, some low fever ranging round to
spy
The weakness of a people or a house.
148
AYLMER'S FIELD.
Like flies that haunt a wound, or deer, or
men,
Or abnost all that is, hurting the hurt —
Save Christ as we believe him — found
the girl
And flung her down upon a couch of
fire,
Where careless of the household faces
near.
And crying upon the name of Leolin,
She, and with her the race of Aylmer,
past.
Star to star vibrates light : may soul to
soul
Strike thro' a finer element of her own?
So, — from afar, — touch as at once? or
why
That night, that moment, when she named
his name.
Did the keen shriek, * Yes, love, yes, Edith,
yes,'
Shrill, till the comrade of his chambers
woke,
And came upon him half-arisen from sleep.
With a weird bright eye, sweating and
trembling,
His hair as it were crackling into flames,
His body half flung forward in pursuit,
And his long arms stretch'd as to grasp a
flyer :
Nor knew he wherefore he had made the
cry;
And being much befool'd and idioted
By the rough amity of the other, sank
As into sleep again. The second day.
My lady's Indian kinsman rushing in,
A 'breaker of the bitter news from home.
Found a dead man, a letter edged with
death
Beside him, and the dagger which himself
Gave Edith, redden'd with no bandit's
blood :
* From F^dith ' was engraven on the blade.
Then Averill went and gazed upon his
death.
And when he came again, his flock be-
lieved —
Beholding how the years which are not
Time's
Had blasted him — that many thousand
days
Were dipt by horror from his term oi
life.
Yet the sad mother, for the second death
Scarce touch'd her thro' that nearness of
the first,
And being used to find her pastor texts.
Sent to the harrow'd brother, praying
him
To speak before the people of her child.
And fixt the Sabbath. Darkly that day
rose :
Autumn's mock sunshine of the faded
woods
Was all the life of it; for hard on these,
A breathless burthen of low-folded
heavens
Stifled and chill'd at once; but every roof
Sent out a listener : many too had known
Edith among the hamlets round, and
since
The parents' harshness and the hapless
loves
And double death were widely murmur'd,
left
Their own gray tower, or plain-faced
tabernacle,
To hear him; all in mourning these, and
those
With blots of it about them, ribbon, glove
Or kerchief; while the church, — one
night, except
For greenish glimmerings thro' the lancets,
— made
Still paler the pale head of him, who
• tower'd
Above them, with his hopes in either
grave.
Long o'er his bent brows linger'd
Averill,
His face magnetic to the hand from which
Livid he pluck'd it forth, and labour'd
thro'
His brief prayer-prelude, gave the verse
' Behold,
Your house is left unto you desolate ! '
But lapsed into so long a pause again
As half amazed, half frighted all his flock :
Then from his height and loneliness of
grief
Bore down in flood, and dash'd his angry
heart
Against the desolations of the world.
AYLMER'S FIELD.
149
Never since our bad earth became one
sea,
Which rolling o'er the palaces of the
proud.
And all but those who knew the living
God —
Eight that were left to make a purer
world —
When since had flood, fire, earthquake,
thunder, wrought
Such waste and havock as the idolatries.
Which from the low light of mortality
Shot up their shadows to the Heaven of
Heavens,
And Worshipt their own darkness in the
Highest?
Gash thyself, priest, and honour thy
brute Baal,
And to thy worst self sacrifice thyself.
For with thy worst self hast thou clothed
thy God.
Then came a Lord in no wise like to
Baal.
The babe shall lead the lion. Surely now
The wilderness shall blossom as the rose.
Crown thyself, worm, and worship thine
own lusts ! —
No coarse and blockish God of acreage
Stands at thy gate for thee to grovel to —
Thy God is far diffused in noble groves
And princely halls, and farms, and flowing
lawns,
And heaps of living gold that daily grow,
And title-scrolls and gorgeous heraldries.
In such a shape dost thou behold thy
God.
Thou wilt not gash thy flesh for him ; for
thine
Fares richly, in fine linen, not a hair
Ruffled upon the scarfskin, even while
The deathless ruler of thy dying house
Is wounded to the death that cannot die;
And tho' thou numberest with the fol-
lowers
Of One who cried, " Leave all and follow
me."
Thee therefore with His light about thy
feet.
Thee with His message ringing in thine
ears.
Thee shall thy brother man, the Lord from
Heaven,
Born of a village girl, carpenter's son.
Wonderful, Prince of peace, the Mighty
God,
Count the more base idolater of the two;
Crueller : as not passing thro' the fire
Bodies, but souls — thy children's — thro'
the smoke,
The blight of low desires — darkening
thine own
To thine own likeness; or if one of
these,
Thy better born unhappily from thee.
Should, as by miracle, grow straight and
fair —
Friends, I was bid to speak of such a
one
By those who most have cause to sorrow
for her —
Fairer than Rachel by the palmy well,
Fairer than Ruth among the fields of
corn.
Fair as the Angel that said " Hail ! " she
seem'd,
Who entering fill'd the house with sudden
light.
For so mine own was brighten'd : where
indeed
The roof so lowly but that beam of
Heaven
Dawn'd sometime thro' the doorway?
whose the babe
Too ragged to be fondled on her lap,
Warm'd at her bosom? The poor child
of shame.
The common care ^Vhom no one cared
for, leapt
To greet her, wasting his forgotten heart,
As with the mother he had never known,
In gambols; for her fresh and innocent
eyes
Had such a star of morning in their blue.
That all neglected places of the field
Broke into nature's music when they saw
her.
Low was her voice, but won mysterious
way
Thro' the seal'd ear to which a louder
one •
Was all but silence — free of alms her
hand —
The hand that robed your cottage-walls
with flowers
Has often toil'd to clothe your little
ones;
Kr;o
AYLMER'S FIELD.
How often placed upon the sick man's
brow
Cool'd it, or laid his feverous pillow
smooth !
Had you one sorrow and she shared it
not?
One burthen and she would not lighten
it?
One spiritual doubt she did not soothe?
Or when some heat of difference sparkled
out,
How sweetly would she glide between
your wraths,
And steal you from each other ! for she
walk'd
Wearing the light yoke of that Lord of
love,
Who still'd the rolling wave of Galilee !
And one — of him I was not bid to
speak —
Was always with her, whom you also
knew.
Him too you loved, for he was worthy
love.
And these had been together from the
first;
They might have been together till the
last.
Friends, this frail bark of ours, when
sorely tried.
May wreck itself without the pilot's
guilt,
Without the captain's knowledge : hope
with me. *
Whose shame is that, if he went hence
with shame?
Nor mine the fault, if losing both of
these
I cry to vacant chairs and widow'd walls,
" My house is left unto me desolate." '
While thus he spoke, his hearers wept;
but some.
Sons of the glebe, with other frowns than
those
That knit themselves for summer shadow,
scowl'd •
At their great lord. He, when it seem'd
he saw
No pale sheet-lightnings from afar, but
fork'd
Of the near storm, and aiming at his
head.
Sat anger-charm'd from sorrow, soldier-
like.
Erect : but when the preacher's cadence
flow'd
Softening thro' all the gentle attributes
Of his lost child, the wife, who watch'd
his face,
Paled at a sudden twitch of his iron
mouth ;
And, ' O pray God' that he hold up,' she
thought,
* Or surely I shall shame myself and him.'
' Nor yours the blame — for who beside
your hearths
Can take her place — if echoing me you
cry
" Our house is left unto us desolate "?
But thou, O thou that killest, hadst thou
known,
O thou that stonest, hadst thou under-
stood
The things belonging to thy peace and
ours !
Is there no prophet but the voice that
calls
Doom upon kings, or in the waste " Re-
pent " ?
Is not our own child on the narrow way.
Who down to those that saunter in the
broad
Cries "Come up hither," as a prophet to
us?
Is there no stoning save with flint and
rock ?
Yes, as the dead we weep for testify —
No desolation but by sword and fire?
Yes, as your moanings witness, and my-
self
Am lonelier, darker, earthlier for my loss.
Give me your prayers, for he is past your
prayers.
Not past the living fount of pity in
Heaven.
But I that thought myself long-suffering,
meek.
Exceeding " poor in spirit " — how the
words
Have twisted back upon themselves, and
mean
Vileness, we are grown so proud — I
wish'd my voice
A rushing tempest of the wrath of God
AYLMER'S FIELD.
To blow these sacrifices thro' the world —
Sent like the twelve-divided concubine
To inflame the tribes : but there — out
yonder — earth
Lightens from her own central Hell —
O there
The red fruit of an old idolatry —
The heads of chiefs and princes fall so
fast,
They cling together in'the ghastly sack —
The land all shambles — naked marriages
Flash from the bridge, and ever-murder'd
France,
By shores that darken with the. gathering
wolf,
Runs in a river of blood to the sick
sea.
Is this a time to madden madness then?
Was this a time for these to flaunt their
pride?
May Pharaoh's darkness, folds as dense
as those
Which hid the Holiest from the people's
eyes
Ere the great death, shroud this great
sin from all !
Doubtless our narrow world must canvass
it:
O rather pray for those and pity them,
Who, thro' their own desire accom-
plish'd, bring
Their own gray hairs with sorrow to the
grave —
Who broke the bond which they desired
to break.
Which else had link'd their race with
times to come —
Who wove coarse webs to snare her
purity,
Grossly contriving their dear daughter's
good —
Poor souls, and knew not what they did,
but sat
Ignorant, devising their own daughter's
death !
May not that earthly chastisement suffice?
Have not our love and reverence left
them bare?
Will not anqther take their heritage?
Will there be children's laughter in their
hall
For ever and for ever, or one stone
Left on another, or is it a light thing
That I, their guest, their host, their
ancient friend,
I made by these the last of all my race,
Must cry to these the last of theirs, as
cried
Christ ere His agony to those that swore
Not by the temple but the gold, and made
Their own traditions God, and slew the
Lord,
And left their memories a world's curse —
" Behold,
Your house is left unto you desolate"?'
Ended he had not, but she brook'd no
more:
Long since her heart had beat remorse-
lessly.
Her crampt- up sorrow pain'd her, and a
sense
Of meanness in her unresisting life.
Then their eyes vext her; for on entering
He had cast the curtains of their seat
aside —
Black velvet of the costliest — she herself
Had seen to that : fain had she closed
them now.
Yet dared not stir to do it, only near'd
Her husband inch by inch, but when she
laid,
Wifelike, her hand in one of his, he veil'd
His face with the other, and at once, as
falls
A creeper when the prop is broken, fell
The woman shrieking at his feet, and
swoon'd.
Then her own people bore along the
nave
Her pendent hands, and narrow meagre
face
Seam'-d with the shallow cares of fifty
years :
And her the Lord of all the landscape
round
Ev'n to its last horizon, and of all
Who peer'd at him so keenly, foUow'd
out
Tall and erect, but in the middle aisle
Reel'd, as a footsore ox in crowded
ways
Stumbling across the market to his death,
Unpitied; for he groped as blind, and
seem'd
Always about to fall, grasping the pews
152
SEA DREAMS.
And oaken finials till he touch'd the
door;
Yet to the lychgate, where his chariot
stood,
Strode from the porch, tall and erect
again.
But nevermore did either pass the gate
Save under pall with bearers. In one
month,
Thro' weary and yet ever wearier hours,
The childless mother went to seek her
child;
And when he felt the silence of his
house
About him, and the change and not the
change,
And those fixt eyes of painted ancestors
Staring for ever from their gilded walls
On him their last descendant, his own
head
Began to droop, to fall; the man became
Imbecile ; his one word was ' desolate ; '
Dead for two years before his death was
he;
But when the second Christmas came,
escaped
His keepers, and the silence which he
felt,
To find a deeper in the narrow gloom
By wife and child; nor wanted at his
end
The dark retinue reverencing death
At golden thresholds; nor from tender
hearts.
And those who sorrow' d o'er a vanish'd
race.
Pity, the violet on the tyrant's grave.
Then the great Hall was wholly broken
down,
And the broad woodland parcell'd into
farms;
And where the two contrived their
daughter's good,
Lies the hawk's cast, the mole has made
his run.
The hedgehog underneath the plantain
bores,
The rabbit fondles his own harmless
face,
The slow-worm creeps, and the thin
weasel there
Follows the mouse, and all is open field.
SEA DREAMS.
A CITY clerk, but gently born and bred;
His wife, an unknown artist's orphan
child —
One babe was theirs, a Margaret, three
years old :
They, thinking that her clear germander
eye
Droopt in the giant-factoried city-gloom.
Came, with a month's leave given them,
to the sea :
For which his gains were dock'd, however
small :
Small were his gains, and hard his work;
besides,
Their slender household fortunes (for the
man
Had risk'd his little) like the little thrift,
Trembled in perilous places o'er a deep :
And oft, when sitting all alone, his face
Would darken, as he cursed his credulous-
ness,
And that one unctuous mouth which lured
him, rogue.
To buy strange shares in some Peruvian
mine.
Now seaward-bound for health they
gain'd a coast,
All sand and cliff and deep-inrunning
cave.
At close of day; slept, woke, and went
the next.
The Sabbath, pious variers from the
church,
To chapel; where a heated pulpiteer,
Not preaching simple Christ to simple
men,
Announced the coming doom, and ful-
minated
Against the scarlet woman and her creed ;
For sideways up he swung his arms, and
shriek'd
'Thus, thus with violence,' ev'n as if he
held
The Ap(>calyptic milestone, and himself
Were that great Angel; 'Thus with
violence
Shall Babylon be cast into the sea;
Then comes the close.' The gentle-
hearted wife
Sat shuddering at the ruin of a world ;
He at his own : but when the wordy storm
SEA DREAMS.
153
Had ended, forth they came and paced
the shore,
Ran in and out the long sea-framing caves,
Drank the large air, and saw, but scarce
believed
(The sootflake of so many a summer still
Clung to their fancies) that they saw, the
sea.
So now on sand they walk'd, and now on
cliff.
Lingering about the thymy promontories,
Till all the sails were darken'd in the west,
And rosed in the east : then homeward
and to bed :
Where she, who kept a tender Christian
hope,
Haunting a holy text, and still to that
Returning, as the bird returns, at niglit,
* Let not the sun go down upon your
wrath,'
Said, * Love, forgive him : ' but he did not
speak ;
And silenced by that silence lay the wife,
Remembering her dear Lord who died
for all.
And musing on the little lives of -men,
And how they mar this little by their feuds.
But while the two were sleeping, a full
tide
Rose with ground-swell, which, on the
foremost rocks
Touching, upjetted in spirts of wild sea-
smoke.
And scaled in sheets of wasteful foam,
and fell
In vast sea-cataracts — ever and anon
Dead claps of thunder from within the
cliffs
Heard thro' the living roar. At this the
babe.
Their Margaret cradled near them, wail'd
and woke
The mother, and the father suddenly cried,
* A wreck, a wreck ! ' then turn'd, and
groaning said,
* Forgive ! How many will sa}S " for-
give," and find
A sort of absolution in the sound
To hate a little longer ! No; the sin
That neither God nor man can well for-
give,
Hypocrisy, I saw it in him at once.
Is it so true that second thoughts are best?
Not first, and third, which are a riper first?
Too ripe, too late ! they come too late
for use.
Ah love, there surely lives in man and
beast
Something divine to warn them of their
foes:
And such a sense, when first I fronted
him,
Said, "Trust him not;" but after, when
I came
To know him more, I lost it, knew him
less;
Fought with what seem'd my own un-
charity;
Sat at his table; drank his costly wines;
Made more and more allowance for his
talk;
Went further, fool ! and trusted him with
all.
All my poor scrapings from a dozen years
Of dust and deskwork: there is no such
mine.
None ; but a gulf of ruin, swallowing gold,
Not making. Ruin'd ! ruin'd ! the sea
roars
Ruin : a fearful night ! V^
*Not fearful; fair,'
Said the good wife, *if every star in
heaven
Can make it fair: you do but hear the tide.
Had you ill dreams?'
*0 yes,' he said, 'I dream'd
Of such a tide swelling toward the land.
And I from out the boundless outer deep
Swept with it to the shore, and enter'd one
Of those dark caves that run beneath the
cliffs.
I thought the motion of the boundless
deep
Bore thro' the cave, and I was heaved
upon it
In darkness : then I saw one lovely star
Larger and larger. " What a world," I
thought,
"To live in ! " but in moving on I found
Only the landward exit of the cave.
Bright with the sun upon the stream
beyond:
154
SEA DREAMS.
And near the light a giant woman sat,
All over earthy, like a piece of earth,
A pickaxe in her hand : then out I slipt
Into a land all sun and blossom, trees
■ As high as heaven, and every bird that
sings :
And here the night-light flickering in my
eyes
Awoke me.'
'That was then your dream,' she said,
* Not sad, but sweet.'
' So sweet, I lay,' said he,
*And mused upon it, drifting up the
stream
In fancy, till I slept again, and pieced
The broken vision; for I dream'd that still
The motion of the great deep bore me on.
And that the woman walk'd upon the
brink :
I wonder'd at her strength, and ask'd her
of it:
" It came," she said, " by working in the
mines : '^
O then to ask her of my shares, I thought;
And ask'd; but not a word; she shook
her head.
And then the motion of the current
ceased.
And there was rolling thunder; and we
reach'd
A mountain, like a wall of burs and
thorns;
But she with her strong feet up the steep
hill
Trod out a path: I foUow'd; and at top
She pointed seaward: there a fleet of
glass.
That seem'd a fleet of jewels under me,
Sailing along before a gloomy cloud
That not one moment ceased to thunder,
past
In sunshine: right across its track there
lay,
Down in the water, a long reef of gold.
Or what seem'd gold : and I was glad at
first
To think that in our often-ransack'd world
Still so much gold was left; and then I
fear'd
Lest the gay navy there should splinter
on it,
And fearing waved my arm to warn them
off;
An idle signal, for the brittle fleet
(I thought I could have died to save it)
near'd,
Touch'd, clink'd, and clash'd, and van-
ish'd, and I woke,
I heard the clash so clearly. Now I see
My dream was Life; the woman honest
Work;
And my poor venture but a fleet of glass
Wreck'd on a reef of visionary gold.'
* Nay,' said the kindly wife to comfort
him,
* You raised your arm, you tumbled down
and broke
The glass with little Margaret's medicine
in it;
And, breaking that, you made and broke
your dream:
A trifle makes a dream, a trifle breaks.'
* No trifle,' groan'd the husband ; * yes«
^ terday
I met him suddenly in the street, and ask'd
That which I ask'd the woman in my
dream.
Like her, he shook his head. " Show me
the books ! "
He dodged me with a long and loose
account.
"The books, the books!" but he, he
could not wait,
Bound on a matter he of life and death :
When the great Books (see Daniel seven
and ten)
Were open'd, I should find he meant me
well;
And then began to bloat himself, and ooze
All over with the fat affectionate smile
That makes the widow lean. " My dearest
friend,
Have faith, have faith ! We live by faith,"
said he;
"And all things work together for the
good
Of those" — it makes me sick to quote
him — last
Gript my hand hard, and with God-bless-
you went.
I stood like one that had received a blow :
I found a hard friend in his loose accounts,
SEA DREAMS.
IS-?
A loose one in the hard grip of his hand,
A curse in his God-bless-} ou : then my
eyes
Pursued him down the street, and far
away.
Among the honest shoulders of the crowd,
Read rascal in the motions of his back,
And scoundrel in the supple-sliding knee.'
•Was he so bound, poor soul? 'said
the good wife;
* So are we all : but do not call him, love,
Before you prove him, rogue, and proved,
forgive.
His gain is loss; for he that wrongs his
friend
Wrongs himself more, and ever bears
about
A silent court of justice in his breast.
Himself the judge and jury, and himself
The prisoner at the bar, ever condemn'd:
And that drags down his life : then comes
what comes
Hereafter : and he meant, he said he
meant.
Perhaps he meant,- or partly meant, you
well.'
* " With all his conscience and one eye
askew " —
Love, let me quote these lines, that you
may learn
A man is likewise counsel for himself,
Too often, in that silent court of yours —
"With all his conscience and one eye
askew.
So false, he partly took himself for true;
Whose pious talk, when most his heart
was dry,
Made wet the crafty crowsfoot round his
eye;
Who, never naming God except for gain,
So never took that useful name in vain,
Made Him his catspaw and the Cross his
tool,
And Christ the bait to trap his dupe and
fool;
Nor deeds of gift, but gifts of grace he
forged.
And snake-like slimed his victim ere he
gorged ;
And oft at Bible meetings, o'er the rest
Arising, did his holy oily best,
Dropping the too rough H in Hell and
Heaven,
To spread the Word by which himself
had thriven."
How like you this old satire?'
* Nay,' she said,
' I loathe it : he had never kindly heart.
Nor ever cared to better his own kind.
Who first wrote satire, with no pity in it.
But will you hear my dream, for I had one
That altogether went to music? Still
It awed me.'
Then she told it, having dream'd
Of that same coast.
— But round the North, a light,
A belt, it seem'd, of luminous vapour, lay.
And ever in it a low musical note
Swell'd up and died; and, as it swell'd,
a ridge *
Of breaker issued from the belt, and still
Grew with the growing note, and when
the note
Had reach'd a thunderous fulness, on
those cHfTs
Broke, mixt with awful light (the same as
that
Living within the belt) whereby she saw
That all those lines of cliffs were cliffs no
more,
But huge cathedral fronts of every age,
Grave, florid, stern, as far as eye could
see.
One after one : and then the great ridge
drew.
Lessening to the lessening music, back,
And past into the belt and swell'd again
Slowly to music : ever when it broke
The statues, king or saint, or founder fell;
Then from the gaps and chasms of ruin
left
Came men and women in dark clusters
round.
Some crying, 'Set them up! they shall
not fall ! '
And others, * Let them lie, for they have
fall'n.'
And still they strove and wrangled : and
she grieved
In her strange dream, she knew not whv
to find
156
SEA DREAMS.
Their wildest wailings never out of tune
Here than ourselves, spoke with me on
With that sweet note; and ever as their
the shore;
shrieks
While you were running down the sands,
Ran highest up the gamut, that great wave
and made
Returning, while none mark'd it, on the
The dimpled flounce of the sea-furbelow
crowd
flap.
Broke, mixt with awful light, and show'd
Good man, to please the child. She
their eyes
brought strange news.
Glaring, and passionate looks, and swept
Why were you silent when I spoke to-
away
night?
The men of flesh and blood, and men of
I had set my heart on your forgiving
stone,
mm
To the waste deeps together.
Before you knew. We tnust forgive the
dead.'
♦Thenlfixt
My wistful eyes on two fair images,
'Dead! who is dead?'
Both crown'd with stars and high among
the stars, —
'The man your eye pursued.
The Virgin Mother standing with her
A little after you had parted with him,
child
He suddenly dropt dead of heart-disease.'
High up on one of those dark minster-
fronts —
•Dead? he? of heart-disease? what
Till she began to totter, and the child
heart had he
Clung to the- mother, and sent out a cry
To die of? dead ! '
Which mixt with little Margaret's, and I
woke,
* Ah, dearest, if there be
And my dream awed me: — well — but
A devil in man, there is an angel too.
what are dreams?
And if he did that wrong you charge him
Yours came but from the breaking of a
with,
glass.
His angel broke his heart. But your
And mine but from the crying of a
rough voice
child.'
(You spoke so loud) has roused the child
again.
' Oiild ? No ! ' said he, * but this tide's
Sleep, Httle birdie, sleep! will she not
roar, and his.
sleep
Our Boanerges with his threats of doom,
Without her "little birdie"? well then,
And loud-lung'd Antibabylonianisms
sleep.
(Altho' I grant but httle music there)
And I will sing you " birdie." '
Went both' to make your dream : but if
there were
Saying this.
A music harmonizing our wild cries.
The woman half turn'd round from him
Sphere-music such as that you dream'd
she loved,
about.
Left him one hand, and reaching thro'
Why, that would make our passions far
the night
too like
Her other, found (for it was close be-
The discords dear to the musician. No —
side)
(Jne shriek of hate would jar all the hymns
And half-embraced the basket cradle-
of heaven :
head
True Devils with no ear, they howl in tune
With one soft arm, which, like the pliant
With nothing but the Devil ! '
bough
That moving moves the nest and nestling.
* " True " indeed !
sway'd
One of our town, but later by an hour
The cradle, while she sang this baby song :
LUCRETIUS,
'57
What does little birdie say
In her nest at peep of day?
Let me fly, says little birdie,
Mother, let me fly away.
Birdie, rest a little longer.
Till the little wings are stronger
So she rests a little longer.
Then she flies away.
What does little baby say,
In her bed at peep of day?
Baby says, like little birdie,
Let me rise and fly away.
Baby, sleep a little longer,
Till the little limbs are stronger.
If she sleeps a little longer,
Baby too shall fly away.
*She sleeps: let us too, let all evil,
sleep.
He also sleeps — another sleep than
ours.
He can do no more wrong : forgive him,
dear.
And I shall sleep the sounder ! '
Then the man,
* His deeds yet live, the worst is yet to
come.
Yet let our sleep for this one night be
sound :
I do forgive him ! *
* Thanks, my love,' she said,
* Your own will be the sweeter,' and they
slept.
LUCRETIUS.
LuciLiA, wedded to Lucretius, found
Her master cold; for when the morning
flush
Of passion and the first embrace had died
Between them, tho' he lov'd her none the
less.
Yet often when the woman heard his
foot
Return from pacings in the field, and ran
To greet him with a kiss, the master took
Small notice, or austerely, for — his mind
Half buried in some weightier argument,
Or fancy-borne perhaps upon the rise
And long roll of the Hexameter — he past
To turn and ponder those three hundred
scrolls
Left by the Teacher, whom he held divine.
She brook'd it not ; but wrathful, petulant.
Dreaming some rival, sought and found
a witch
Who brew'd the philtre which had power,
they said.
To lead an errant passion home again.
And this, at times, she mingled with his
drink,
And this destroy'd him; for the wicked
broth
Confused the chemic labour of the blood.
And tickling the brute brain within the
man's
Made havock among those tender cells,
and check'd
His power to shape : he loathed himself;
and once
After a tempest woke upon a morn
That mock'd him with returning calm,
and cried :
' Storm in the night ! for thrice I heard
the rain
Rushing; and once the flash of a
thunderbolt —
Methought I never saw so fierce a fork —
Struck out the streaming mountain-side,
and show'd
A riotous confluence of watercourses
Blanching and billowing in a hollow of it.
Where all but yester-eve was dusty-dry.
* Storm, and what dreams, ye holy
Gods, what dreams !
For thrice I waken'd after dreams. Per-
chance
We do but recollect the dreams that come
Just ere the waking : terrible ! for it seem'd
A void was made in Nature ; all her bonds
Crack'd; and I saw the flaring atom-
streams
And torrents of her myriad universe,
Ruining along the illimitable' inane.
Fly on to clash together again, and make
Another and another frame of things
For ever: that was mine, my dream, I
knew it —
Of and belonging to me, as the dog
With inward yelp and restless forefoot
plies
58
LUCRETIUS.
His function of the woodland : but the
next !
I thought that all the blood by Sylla shed
Came driving rainlike down again on
earth,
And where it dash'd the reddening
meadow, sprang
No dragon warriors from Cadmean teeth.
For these I thought my dream would
show to me,
But girls, Hetairai, curious in their art,
Hired animalisms, vile as those that
made
The mulberry-faced Dictator's orgies
worse
Than aught they fable of the quiet Gods.
And hands they mixt, and yell'd and
round me drove
In narrowing circles till I yell'd again
Half-suffocated, and sprang up, and saw —
Was it the first beam of my latest day?
'Then, then, from utter gloom stood
out the breasts,
The breasts of Helen, and hoveringly a
sword
Now over and now under, now direct,
Pointed itself to pierce, but sank down
shamed
At all that beauty; and as I stared, a
fire,
The fire that left a roofless Ilion,
Shot out of them, and scorch'd me that
I woke.
*Is this thy vengeance, holy Venus,
thine.
Because I would not one of thine own
doves,
Not ev'n a rose, were offer'd to thee?
thine.
Forgetful how my rich prooemion makes
Thy glory fly along the Italian field,
In lays that will outlast thy Deity?
* Deity ? nay, thy worshippers. My
tongue
Trips, or I speak profanely. Which of
these
Angers thee most, or angers thee at all?
Not if thou be'st of those who, far aloof
From envy, hate and pity, and spite and
scorn,
Live the great life which all our greatest
fain
Would follow, centr'd in eternal calm.
* Nay, if thou canst, O Goddess, like
ourselves
Touch, and be touch'd, then would I cry
to thee
To kiss thy Mavors, roll thy tender arms
Round him, and keep him from the lust
of blood
That makes a steaming slaughter-house
of Rome.
'Ay, but I meant not thee; I meant
not her.
Whom all the pines of Ida shook to see
Slide from that quiet heaven of hers, and
tempt
The Trojan, while his neat-herds were
abroad ;
Nor her that o'er her wounded hunter
wept
Her Deity false in human-amorous tears;
Nor whom her beardless apple-arrbiter
Decided fairest. Rather, O ye Gods,
Poet-like, as the great Sicilian called
Calliope to grace his golden verse —
Ay, and this Kypris also — did I take
That popular name of thine to shadow
forth
The all-generating powers and genial
heat
Of Nature, when she strikes thro' the
thick blood
Of cattle, and Hght is large, and lambs
are glad
Nosing the mother's udder, and the bird
Makes his heart voice amid the blaze of
flowers :
Which things appear the work of mighty
Gods.
' The Gods ! and if I go my work is
left
Unfinish'd — if \ go. The Gods, who
haunt
The lucid interspace of world and world.
Where never creeps a cloud, or moves a
wind,
Nor ever falls the least white star of
snow.
Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans,
LUCRETIUS.
159
Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to
mar
Their sacred everlasting calm ! and such,
Not all so fine, nor so divine a calm.
Not such, nor all unlike it, man may gain
Letting his own life go. The Gods, the
Gods!
If all be atoms, how then should the
Gods
Being atomic not be dissoluble,
Not follow the great law? My master
held
That Gods there are, for all men so
believe.
I prest my footsteps into his, and meant
Surely to lead my Memmius in a train
Of flowery clauses onward to the proof
That Gods there are, and deathless.
Meant? I meant?
I have forgotten what I meant : my mind
Stumbles, and all my faculties are lamed.
* Look where another of our Gods, the
Sun,
Apollo, Delius, or of older use
All-seeing Hyperion — what you will —
Has mounted yonder; since he never
sware,
Except his wrath, were wreak'd on
wretched man.
That he would only shine among the
dead
Hereafter; tales! for never yet on earth
Could dead flesh creep, or bits of roast-
ing ox
Moan round the spit — nor knows he
what he sees;
King of the East altho' he seem, and
girt
With song and flame and fragrance,
slowly lifts
His golden feet on those empurpled
stairs
That climb into the windy halls of
heaven :
And here he glances on an eye new-born.
And gets for greeting but a wail of pain ;
And here he stays upon a freezing orb
That fain would gaze upon him to the
last;
And here upon a yellow eyelid fall'n
And closed by those who mourn a friend
in vain,
Not thankful that his troubles are no
more.
And me, altho' his fire is on my face
Blinding, he sees not, nor at all can tell
Whether I mean this day to end myself.
Or lend an ear to Plato where he says.
That men like soldiers may not quit the
post
Allotted by the Gods : but he that holds
The Gods are careless, wherefore need he
care
Greatly for them, nor rather plunge at
once,
Being troubled, wholly out of sight, and
sink
Past earthquake — ay, and gout and
stone, that break
Body toward death, and palsy, death-in-
life.
And wretched age — and worst disease
of all.
These prodigies of myriad nakednesses,
And twisted shapes of lust, unspeakable,
Abominable, strangers at my hearth
Not welcome, harpies miring every dish,
The phantom husks of something foully
done,
And fleeting thro' the boundless universe,
And blasting the long quiet of my breast
With animal heat and dire insanity?
' How should the mind, except it loved
them, clasp
These idols to herself? or do they fly
Now thinner, and now thicker, like the
flakes
In a fall of snow, and so press in, per-
force
Of multitude, as crowds that in an hour
Of civic tumult jam the doors, and bear
The keepers down, and throng, their
rags and they
The basest, far into that council-hall
Where sit the best and stateliest of the
land?
( *Can I not fling this horror off me
again,
Seeing with how great ease Nature can
smile,
Balmier and nobler from her bath of
storm.
At random ravage? and how easily
r6o
LUCRETIUS.
The mountain there has cast his cloudy
slough,
Now towering o'er him in serenest air,
A mountain o'er a mountain, — ay, and
within
All hollow as the hopes and fears of
men ?
*But who was he, that in the garden
snared
Picus and Faunus, rustic Gods? a tale
To laugh at — more to laugh at in my-
self—
For look ! what is it? there? yon arbutus
Totters; a noiseless riot underneath
Strikes through the wood, sets all the
tops quivering —
The mountain quickens into Nymph and
Faun;
And here an Oread — how the sun de-
lights
To glance and shift about her slippery
sides,
And rosy knees and supple roundedness.
And budded bosom-peaks — who this
way runs
Before the rest — A satyr, a satyr, see.
Follows; but him I proved impossible;
Twy-natured is no nature : yet he draws
Nearer and nearer, and I scan him now
Beastlier than any phantom of his kind
That ever butted his rough brother-brute
For lust or lusty blood or provender :
I hate, abhor, spit, sicken at him; and
she
Loathes him as well; such a precipitate
heel,
Fledged as it were with Mercury's ankle-
wing,
Whirls her to me : but will she fling her-
self.
Shameless upon me? Catch her, goat-
foot : nay,
Hide, hide them, million-myrtled wilder-
ness,
And cavern-shadowing laurels, hide ! do
I wish —
What? — that the bush were leafless? or
to whelm
All of them in one massacre? O ye Gods,
I know you careless, yet, behold, to you
From childly wont and ancient use I
caU —
I thought I lived securely as yourselves —
No lewdness, narrowing envy, monkey-
spite.
No madness of ambition, avarice, none :
No larger feast than under plane or pine
With neighbours laid along the grass, to
take
Only such cups as left us friendly-warm,
Affirming each his own philosophy —
Nothing to mar the sober majesties
Of settled, sweet. Epicurean life.
But now it seems some unseen monster
lays
His vast and filthy hands upon my will,
Wrenching it backward into his; and
spoils
My bliss in being; and it was not great;
For save when shutting reasons up in
rhythm.
Or Heliconian honey in living words.
To make a truth less harsh, I often grew
Tired of so much within our little life.
Or of so little in our little life —
Poor little life that toddles half an hour
Crown'd with a flower or two, and there
an end —
And since the nobler pleasure seems to
fade.
Why should I, beastJike as I find myself,
Not manlike end myself? — our privi-
lege —
What beast has heart to do it? And
what man.
What Roman would be dragg'd in tri-
umph thus?
Not I; not he, who bears one name
with her
Whose death-blow struck the dateless
doom of kings.
When, brooking not the Tarquin in her
veins,
She made her blood in sight of Collatine
And all his peers, flushing the guiltless
air.
Spout from the maiden fountain in her
heart.
And from it sprang the Commonwealth,
which breaks
As I am breaking now !
' And therefore now
Let her, that is the womb and tomb of all,
Great Nature, take, and fcwcing far apart
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
i6i
Those blind beginnings that have made
me man,
Dash them anew together at her will
Thro' all her cycles — into man once
more,
Or beast or bird or fish, or opulent flower :
But till this cosmic order everywhere'
Shatter'd into one earthquake in one
day
Cracks all to pieces, — and that hour
perhaps
Is not so far when momentary man
Shall seem no more a something to him-
self.
But he, his hopes and hates, his homes
and fanes,
And even his bones long laid within the
grave.
The very sides of the grave itself shall
pass,
Vanishing, atom and void, atom and
void.
Into the unseen for ever, — till that hour.
My golden work in which I told a truth
That stays the rolling Ixionian wheel.
And numbs the Fury's ringlet-snake, and
plucks
The mortal soul from out immortal hell,
Shall stand : ay, surely : then it falls at last
And perishes as I must; for O Thou,
Passionless bride, divine Tranquillity,
Yearn'd after by the wisest of the wise.
Who fail to find thee, being as thou art
Without one pleasure and without one
pain,
Howbeit I know thou surely must be mine
Or soon or late, yet out of season, thus
I woo thee roughly, for thou carest not
How roughly men may woo thee so they
win —
Thus — thus: the soul flies out and dies
in the air.'
With that he drove the knife into his
side:
She heard him raging, heard him fall;
ran in.
Beat breast, tore hair, cried out upon
herself
As having fail'd in duty to him, shriek'd
That she but meant to win him back, fell
on him,
Clasp'd, kiss'd him, wail'd: he answer'd,
* Care not thou !
Thy duty? What is duty? Fare thee
well!'
THE PRINCESS;
A MEDLEY.
PROLOGUE.
Sir Walter Vivian all a summer's day
Gave his broad lawns until the set of
sun
Up to the people : thither flock'd at
noon
His tenants, v.ife and child, and thither
half
The neighbouring borough with their
Institute
Of which he was the patron. I was
there
From college, visiting the son, — the son
A Walter too, — with others of our set.
Five others : we were seven at Vivian-
place.
And me that morning Walter show'd
the house,
Greek, set with busts : from vases in the
hall
Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than
their names,
Grew side by side; and on the pavement
lay
Carved stones of the Abbey-ruin in the
park.
Huge Ammonites, and the first bones of
Time ;
And on the tables every clime and age
Jumbled together; celts and calumets.
Claymore and snowshoe, toys in lava,
fans
Of sandal, amber, ancient rosaries.
[62
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere,
The cursed Malayan crease, and battle-
clubs
From the isles of palm : and higher on
the walls,
Betwixt the monstrous horns of elk and
deer,
His own forefathers' arms and armour
hung.
And 'This,' he said, * was Hugh's at
Agincourt;
And that was old Sir Ralph's at Ascalon :
A good knight he ! we keep a chronicle
With all about him ' — which he brought,
and I
Dived in a hoard of tales that dealt with
knights.
Half-legend, half-historic, counts and
kings
Who laid about them at their wills and
died ;
And mixt with these, a lady, one that
arm'd
Her own fair head, and sallying thro' the
gate,
Had beat her foes with slaughter from
her walls.
* O miracle of women,' said the book,
* O noble heart who, being strait-besieged
By this wild king to force her to his wish,
Nor bent, nor broke, nor shunn'd a
soldier's death,
But now when all was lost or seem'd as
lost —
Her stature more than mortal in the burst
Of sunrise, her arm lifted, eyes on fire —
Brake with a blast of trumpets from the
gate.
And, falling on them like a thunderbolt.
She trampled some beneath her horses'
heels,
And some were whelm'd with missiles of
the wall.
And some were push'd with lances from
the rock.
And part were drown'd within the whirl-
ing brook :
O miracle of noble womanhood ! '
So sang the gallant glorious chronicle ;
And, T all rapt in this, 'Come out,' he said,
' To the Abbey : there is Aunt Elizabeth
And sister Lilia with the rest.' We weni
(1 kept the book and had my hnger in it)
Down thro' the park : strange was the
sight to me;
For all the sloping pasture murmur'd,
sown
With happy faces and with holiday.
There moved the multitude, a thousand
heads :
The patient leaders of their Institute
Taught them with facts. One rear'd a
font of stone
And drew, from butts of water on the
slope.
The fountain of the moment, playing,
now
A twisted snake, and now a rain of pearls.
Or steep-up spout whereon the gilded
ball
Danced like a wisp : and somewhat lower
down
A man with knobs and wires and vials
fired
A cannon : Echo answer'd in her sleep
From hollow fields : and here were tele-
scopes
For azure views; and there a group of
girls
In circle waited, whom the electric shock
Dislink'd with shrieks and laughter :
round the lake
A little clock-work steamer paddling plied
And shook the lilies : perch'd about the
knolls
A dozen angry models jetted steam :
A petty railway ran : a fire-balloon
Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves
And dropt a fairy parachute and past :
And there thro' twenty posts of telegraph
They flash'd a saucy message to and fro
Between the mimic stations; so that sport
Went hand in hand with Science; other
where
Pure sport : a herd of boys with clamour
bowl'd
And stump'd the wicket; babies roll'd
about
Like tumbled fruit in grass; and men
and maids
Arranged a country dance, and flew thro'
light
And shadow, while the twanging violin
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
t63
Struck up with Soldier-laddie, and over-
head
The broad ambrosial aisles of lofty lime
Made noise with bees and breeze from
end to end.
Strange was the sight and smacking of
the time;
And long we gazed, but satiated at length
Came to the ruins. High-arch'd and ivy-
claspt,
Of finest Gothic lighter than a fire.
Thro' one wide chasm of time and frost
they gave
The park, the crowd, the house; but all
within
.The sward was trim as any garden lawn :
And here we lit on Aunt Elizabeth,
And Lilia with the rest, and lady friends
From "neighbour seats : and there was
Ralph himself,
A broken statue propt against the wall,
As gay as any. Lilia, wild with sport,
Half child half woman as she was, had
wound
A scarf of orange round the stony helm.
And robed the shoulders in a rosy silk.
That made the old warrior from his ivied
nook
Glow like a sunbeam : near his tomb a feast
Shone, silver-set; about it lay the guests,
And there we join'd them : then the
maiden Aunt
Took this fair day for text, and from it
preach'd
An universal culture for the crowd,
And all things great; but we, unworthier,
told
Of college : he had climb'd across the
spikes.
And he had squeezed himself betwixt
the bars,
And he had breathed the Proctor's dogs;
and one
Discuss'd his tutor, rough to common men,
But honeying at the whisper of a lord;
And one the Master, as a rogue in grain
Veneer'd with sanctimonious theory.
But while they talk'd, above their
heads I saw
The feudal warrior lady-clad; which
brought
My book to mind : and opening this I
read
Of old Sir Ralph a page or two that rang
With tilt and tourney; then the tale of
her
That drove her foes with slaughter from
her walls,
And much I praised her nobleness, and
♦ Where,'
Ask'd Walter, patting Lilia's head (she
lay
Beside him) ' lives there such a woman
now ? '
Quick answer'd Lilia, * There are thou-
sands now
Such women, but convention beats them
down :
It is but bringing up; no more than
that :
You men have done it : how I hate you
all!
Ah, were I something great ! I wish I
were
Some mighty poetess, I would shame
you then.
That love to keep us children ! O I wish
That I were some great princess, I would
build
Far off from men a college like a man's,
And I would teach them all that men are
taught;
We are twice as quick ! ' And here she
shook aside
The hand that play'd the patron with her
curls.
And one said smiling, ' Pretty were the
sight
If our old halls could change their sex,
and flaunt
With prudes for proctors, dowagers fcr
deans,
And sweet girl-graduates in their goldci.
hair.
I think they should not wear our rust;.
gowns.
But move as rich as Emperor-moths, or
Ralph
Who shines so in the corner; yet I fear,
If there were many Lilias in the brood,
However deep you might embower the
nest.
164
THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY.
Some boy would spy it.'
At this upon the sward
She tapt her tiny silken-sandal'd foot :
'That's your light way; but I would
make it death
For any mala thing but to peep at us.'
Petulant she spoke, and at herself she
laugh'd ;
A rosebud set with little wilful thorns,
And sweet as English air could make her-
she :
But \yalter hail'd a score of names upon
her,
And ' petty Ogress,' and 'ungrateful Puss,'
And swore he long'd at college, only
long'd.
All else was well, for she-society.
They boated and they cricketed; they
talk'd
At wine, in clubs, of art, of politics;
They lost their weeks; they vext the
souls of deans;
They rode; they betted; made a hun-
dred friends,
And caught the blossom of the flying
terms,
But miss'd the mignonette of Vivian-place,
The little hearth-flower Lilia. Thus he
spoke,
Part banter, part affection.
*True,' she said,
* We doubt not that. O yes, you miss'd
us much.
I'll stake my ruby ring upon it you did.'
She held it out; and as a parrot turns
Up thro' gilt wires a crafty loving eye,
And takes a lady's finger with all care.
And bites it for true heart and not for
harm,
So he with Lilia's. Daintily she shriek'd
And wrung it. ' Doubt my word again ! '
he said.
' Come, hsten ! here is proof that you
were miss'd :
We seven stay'd at Christmas up to read ;
And there we took one tutor as to read :
The hard-grain'd Muses of the cube and
square
Were out of season : never man, I think,
So moulder'd in a sinecure as he :
For while our cloisters echo'd frosty feet,
And our long walks were stript as bare
as brooms.
We did but talk you over, pledge you all
In wassail; often, like as many girls —
Sick for the hollies and the yewS of home —
As many little trifling Lilias — play'd
Charades and riddles as at Christmas
here.
And whaCs my thought and when and
where and how.
And often told a tale from mouth to
mouth
As here at Christmas.'
She remember'd that :
A pleasant game, she thought : she liked
it more
Than magic music, forfeits, all the rest.
But these — what kind of tales did men
tell men.
She wonder'd, by themselves?
A half-disdain
Perch'd on the pouted blossom of her
lips:
And Walter nodded at me; ^ He began.
The rest would follow, each in turn; and so
We forged a sevenfold story. Kind?
what kind?
Chimeras, crotchets, Christmas solecisms.
Seven-headed monsters only made to kill
Time by the fire in winter.'
' Kill him now.
The tyrant ! kill him in the summer too,'
Said Lilia; * Why not now? ' the maiden
Aunt.
* Why not a summer's as a winter's tale?
A tale for summer as befits the time,
And something it should be to suit the
place.
Heroic, for a hero lies beneath,
Grave, solemn ! '
Walter warp'd his mouth at this
To something so mock-solemn, that' I
laugh'd
And Lilia woke with sudden-shrilling
mirth
And echo like a ghostly woodpecker,
Hid in the ruins; till the maiden Aunt
(A little sense of wrong had touch'd her
face
With colour) turn'd to me with 'As you
will;
Heroic if you will, or what you will,
Or be yourself your hero if you will.'
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
165
*Take Lilia, then, for heroine,' clam-
our'd he,
* And make her some great Princess, six
feet high.
Grand, epic, homicidal ; and be you
The Prince to win her ! '
* Then follow me, the Prince,'
I answer'd, ' each be hero in his turn !
Seven and yet one, like shadows in a
dream. —
Heroic seems our Princess as required —
But something made to suit with Time
and place,
A Gothic ruin and a Grecian house,
A talk of college and of ladies' rights,
A feudal knight in silken masquerade.
And, yonder, shrieks and strange experi-
ments
For which the good Sir Ralph had burnt
them all —
This were a medley ! we should have him
back
Who told the " Winter's tale " to do it
for us.
No matter : we will say whatever comes.
And let the ladies sing us, if they will,
From time to time, some ballad or a song
To give us breathing-space.'
So I began,
And the rest follow'd : and the women
sang
Between the rougher voices of the men.
Like linnets in the pauses of the wind :
And here I give the story and the songs.
A prince I was, blue-eyed, and fair in
face,
Of temper amorous, as the first of May,
With lengths of yellow ringlet, like a girl.
For on my cradle shone the Northern
star.
There lived an ancient legend in pur
house.
Some sorcerer, whom a far-off grandsire
burnt
Because he cast no shadow, had foretold.
Dying, that none of all our blood should
know
The shadow from the substance, and that
one
Should come to fight with shadows and
to fall.
For so, my mother said, the story ran.
And, truly, waking dreams were, more or
less.
An old and strange affection of the house.
Myself too had weird seizures. Heaven
knows what:
On a sudden in the midst of men and day.
And while I walk'd and talk'd as hereto-
fore,
I seem'd to move among a world of
ghosts.
And feel myself the shadow of a dream.
Our great court-Galen poised his gilt-head
cane.
And paw'd his beard, and mutter'd ' cata-
lepsy.'
My mother pitying made a thousand
prayers;
My mother was as mild as any saint.
Half-canonised by all that look'd on her,
So gracious was her tact and tenderness :
But my good father thought a king a
king;
He cared not for the affection of the
house;
He held his sceptre like a pedant's wand
To lash offence, and with long arms and
hands
Reach'd out, and pick'd offenders from
the mass
For judgment.
Now it chanced that I had been,
While life was yet in bud and blade,
betroth'd
To one, a neighbouring Princess : she
to me
Was proxy-wedded with a bootless calf
At eight years old; and still from time
to time
Came murmurs of her beauty from the
South,
And of her brethren, youths of puissance ;
And still I wore her picture by my heart.
And one dark tress; and all around them
both
Sweet thoughts would swarm as bees
about their queen.
But when the days drew nigh that I
should wed,
My father sent ambassadors with furs
[66
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
And jewels, gifts, to fetch her : these
brought l:)ack
A present, a great hihour of the loom;
And therewithal an answer vague as
wind :
Besides, they saw the king; he took the
gifts;
He said there was a compact; that was
true:
But then she had a will; was he to blame?
And maiden fancies; loved to live alone
Among her women; certain, would not
wed. ,
That morning in the presence room T
stood
With Cyril and with Florian, my two
friends :
The first, a gentleman of broken means
(His father's fault) but given to starts
and bursts
Of revel ; and the last, my other heart.
And almost my half-self, for still we
moved
Together, twinn'd as horse's ear and eye.
Now, while they spake, I saw my
father's face
Grow long and troubled like a rising
moon,
Inflamed with wrath : he started on his
feet,
Tore the king's letter, snow'd it down,
and rent
The wonder of the loom thro' warp and
woof
From skirt to skirt; and at the last he
sware
That he would send a hundred thousand
men.
And bring her in a whirlwind : then he
chew'd
The thrice-turn'd cud of wrath, and
cook'd his spleen,
Communing with his captains of the war.
At last I spoke. * My father, let me go.
It cannot be but some gross error lies
In this report, this answer of a king.
Whom all men rate as kind and hospitable :
Or, maybe, I myself, my bride once seen,
Whate'er my grief to find her less than
fame,
May rue the bargain made.' And Florian
said :
* I have a sister at the foreign court,
Wlio moves about the Princess; she, you
know.
Who wedded with a nobleman from
thence :
He, dying lately, left her, as I hear,
The lady of three castles in that land :
Thro' her this matter might be sifted
clean.'
And Cyril whisper'd : * Take me with you
too.'
Then laughing 'what, if these weird
seizures come
Upon you in those lands, and no one neai
To point you out the shadow from the
truth !
Take me: I'll serve you better in a
strait;
I grate on rusty hinges here : ' but * No ! '
Roar'd the rough king, 'you shall not;
we ourself
Will crush her pretty maiden fancies dead
In iron gauntlets : break the council up.'
But when the council broke, I rose and
past
Thro' the wild woods that hung about the
town;
Found a still place, and pJuck'd her like-
ness out;
Laid it on flowers, and watch'd it lying
bathed
In the green gleam of dewy-tassell'd trees :
What were those fancies? wherefore
break her troth?
Proud look'd the lips : but while I medi-
■ tated
A wind arose and rush'd upon the South,
And shook the songs, the whispers, and
• the shrieks
Of the wild woods together; and a. Voice
Went with it, ' Follow, follow, thou shalt
win.'
Then, ere the silver sickle of that month
Became her gulden shield, I stole from
court
With Cyril and witli Florian, unperceived,
Cat-footed thro' the town and half in
dread
To hear my father's clamour at our backs
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
167
With Ho ! from some bay-window shake
the night;
But all was quiet: from the bastion'd
walls
Like threaded spiders, one by one, we
dropt,
And flying reach'd the frontier : then we
crost
To a livelier land; and so by tilth and
grange,
And vines, and blowing bosks of wilder-
ness,
We gain'd the mother-city thick with
towers,
And in the imperial palace found the
king.
His name was Gama; c^ack'd and
small his voice,
But bland the smile that like a wrinkling
wind
On glassy water drove his cheek in lines;
A little dry old man, without a star,
Not like a king : three days he feasted
us.
And on the fourth I spake of why we
came,
And my betroth'd. * You do us, Prince,'
he said.
Airing a snowy hand and signet gem,
'All honour. We remember love our-
selves
In our sweet youth : there did a compact
pass
Long summers back, a kind of cere-
mony—
I think the year in which our olives
, fail'd.
I would you had her, Prince, with all my
heart.
With my full heart: but there were
widows here,
Two widows, Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche;
They fed her theories, in and out of place
Maintaining that with equal husbandry
The woman were an equal to the man.
They harp'd on this; with this our ban-
quets rang;
Our dances broke and buzz'd in knots of
talk ;
Nothing but this; my very ears were hot
To hear them : knowledge, so my daughter
held.
Was all in all : they had but been, she
thought,
As children; they must lose the child,
assume
The woman : then. Sir, awful odes she
wrote.
Too awful, sure, for what they treated of,
But all she is and does is awful; odes
About this losing of the child ; and rhymes
And dismal lyrics, prophesying change
Beyond all reason : these the women
sang;
And they that know such things — I
sought but peace ;
No critic I — would call them master-
pieces :
They master'd me. At last she begg'd a
boon,
A certain summer-palace which I have
Hard by your father's frontier : I said no,
Yet being an easy man, gave it : and
there,
All wild to found an University
For maidens, on the spur she fled; and
more
We know not, — only this : they see no
men,
Not ev'n her brother Arac, nor the twins
Her brethren, tho' they love her, look
upon her
As on a kind of paragon; and I
(Pardon me saying it) were much loth to
breed
Dispute betwixt myself and mine : but
since
(And I confess with right) you think me
bound
In some sort, T can giv'e you letters to her;
And yet, to speak the truth, I rate your
chance
Almost at naked nothing.'
Thus the king;
And I, tho' nettled that he seem'd to slur
With garrulous ease and oily courtesies
Our formal compact, yet, not less (all frets
But chafing me on fire to find my bride)
Went forth again with both my friends.
W^e rode
Many a long league back to the North.
At last
From hills, that look'd across a land of
hope.
We dropt with evening on a rustic town
1 68
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
Set in a gleaming river's crescent-curve,
Close at the boundary of the liberties;
There, enter'd an old hostel, call'd mine
host
To council, plied him with his richest
wines,
And show'd the late-writ letters of the
king.
He with a long low sibilation, stared
As blank as death in marble; then ex-
claim'd
Averring it was clear against all rules
For any man to go : but as his brain
Began to mellow, ' If the king,' he said,
' Had given us letters, was he bound to
speak?
The king would bear him out; ' and at
the last —
The summer of the vine in all his veins —
* No doubt that we might make it worth
his while.
She once had past that way; he heard
her speak;
She scared him; life ! he never saw the
like;
She look'd as grand as doomsday and as
grave :
And he, he reverenced his liege-lady
there;
He always made a point tt) post with
mares;
His daughter and his housemaid were the
boys:
The land, he understood, for miles about
Was till'd by women; all the swine were
sows.
And all the dogs ' —
But while he jested thus,
A thought flash'd thro' me which I clothed
in act,
Remembering how we three presented
Maid
Or Nymph, or Goddess, at high tide of
feast.
In masque or pageant at my father's court.
We sent mine host to purchase female
gear;
He brought it, and himself, a sight to
shake
The midriff' of despair with laughter, holp
To lace us up, till, each, in maiden
plumes
We rustled : him we gave a costly bribe
To guerdon silence, mounted our good
steeds.
And boldly ventured on the liberties.
We foUow'd up the river as we rode.
And rode till midnight when the college
lights
Began to glitter firefly-like in copse
And linden alley : then we past an arch,
Whereon a woman-statue rose with wings
From four wing'd horses dark against the
stars;
And some inscription ran along the front,
But deep in shadow : further on we
gain'd
A little street half garden and half house;
But scarce could hear each other speak
for noise
Of clocks and chimes, like silver hammers
falling
On silver anvils, and the splash and stir
Of fountains spouted up and showering
down
In meshes of the jasmine and the rose :
And all about us peal'd the nightingale,
Rapt in her song, and careless of the
snare.
There stood a bust of Pallas for a sign.
By two sphere lamps blazon'd like Heaven
and Earth
With constellation and with continent,
Above an entry: riding in, we call'd;
A plump-arm'd Ostleress and a stable
wench
Came running at the call, and help'd U3
down.
Then stept a buxom hostess forth, and
sail'd.
Full-blown, before us into rooms which
gave
Upon a pillar'd porch, the bases lost
In laurel : her we ask'd of that and this,
And who were tutors. ' Lady Blanche,'
she said,
* And Lady Psyche.' * Which was pret-
tiest,
Best-natured?' * Lady Psyche.' * Hers
are we,'
One voice, we cried; and I sat down and
wrote,
In such a- hand as when a field of corn
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
169
Bows all its ears before the roaring East;
'Three ladies of the Northern empire
pray
Your Highness would enroll them with
your own.
As Lady Psyche's pupils.'
This I seal'd :
The seal was Cupid bent above a scroll,
And o'er his head Uranian Venus hung,
And raised the blinding bandage from his
eyes :
I gave the letter to be sent with dawn;
And then to bed, where half in doze I
seem'd
To float about a glimmering night, and
watcli
A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight,
swell
On some dark shore just seen that it was
rich.
II.
As thro' the land at eve we went.
And pluck'd the ripen'd ears,
We fell out, my wife and I,
O we fell out I know not why,
And kiss'd again with tears.
And blessings on the falling out
That all the more endears,
When we fall out with those we love
And kiss again with tears !
For when we came where lies the child
We lost in other years,
There above the little grave,
O there above the little grave.
We kiss'd again with tears.
At break of day the College Portress
came :
She brought us Academic silks, in hue
The lilac, with a silken hood to each,
And zoned with gold; and now when
these were on.
And we as rich as moths from dusk
cocoons.
She, curtseying her obeisance, let us know
The Princess Ma waited : out we paced,
I first, and following thro' the porch that
sang
All round with laurel, issued in a court
Compact of lucid marbles, boss'd with
lengths
Of classic frieze, with ample awnings gay
Betwixt the pillars, and with great urns
of flowers.
The Muses and the Graces, group'd in
threes,
Enring'd a billowing fountain in the
midst ;
And here and there on lattice edges lay
Or book or lute; but hastily we past,
And up a flight of stairs into the hall.
There at a board by tome and paper
sat,
With two tame leopards couch'd beside
her throne,
All beauty compass'd in a female form,
The Princess; liker to the inhabitant
Of some clear planet close upon the vSun,
Than our man's earth; such eyes were in
her head,
And so much grace and power, breathing
down
From over her arch'd brows, with every
turn
Lived thro' her to the tips of her long
hands,
And to her feet. She rose her height,
and said :
*\Ve give you welcome: not without
redound
Of use and glory to yourselves ye come,
The first-fruits of the stranger : aftertime,
And that full voice which circles round
the grave,
Will rank you nobly, mingled up with me.
What ! are the ladies of your land so
tall?'
* We of the court,' said Cyril. *From
the court,'
She answer'd, * then ye know the Prince? '
and he :
* The climax of his age ! as tho' there were
One rose in all the world, your Highness
that.
He worships your ideal : ' she replied :
' We scarcely thought in our own hall to
hear
This barren verbiage, current among men,
Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment
Your flight from out your bookless wilcis
would seem
As arguing love of knowledge and of
power;
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
Your language proves you still the child.
Indeed,
We dream not of him : when we set our
hand
To this great work, we purposed with
ourself
Never to wed. You likewise will do well,
Ladies, in entering here, to cast and
fling
The tricks, which make us toys of men,
that so.
Some future time, if so indeed you will,.
You may with those self-styled our lords
ally
Your fortunes, justlier balanced, scale with
scale.'
At those high words, we conscious of
ourselves,
Perused the matting; then an officer
Rose up, and read the statutes, such as
these:
Not for three years to correspond with
home;
Not for three years to cross the liberties;
Not for three years to speak with any
men;
And many more, which hastily subscribed.
We enter'd on the boards: and 'Now,'
she cried,
■'Ye are green wood, see ye warp not.
Look, our hall !
Our statues ! — not of those that men
desire,
Sleek Odalisques, or oracles of mode,
Nor stunted squaws of West or East; but
she
That taught the Sabine how to rule, and
she
The foundress of the Babylonian walk
The Carian Artemisia strong in war,
The Rhodope, that built the pyram.id,
Clelia, Cornelia, with the Palmyrene
That fought Aurelian, and the Roman
brows
Of Agrippina. Dwell with these, and
lose
Convention, since to look on noble forms
Makes noble thro' the sensuous organism
That which is higher. O lift your natures
up:
EoiDrace our aims : work out your free-
dom. Girls,
Knowledge is now no more a fountain
seal'd :
Drink deep, until the habits of the slave,
The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite
And slander, die. Better not be at all
Than not be noble. Leave us : you may
go:
To-day the Lady Psyche will harangue
The fresh arrivals of the week before;
For they press in from all the provinces,
And fill the hive.'
She spoke, and bowing waved
Dismissal : back again we crost the court
To Lady Psyche's : as we enter'd in,
There sat along the forms, like morning
doves
That sun their milky bosoms on the
thatch,
A patient range of pupils; she herself
Erect behind a desk of satin-wood,
A quick brunette, well-moulded, falcon
eyed.
And on the hither side, or so she look'd,
Of twenty summers. At her left, a child,
In shining draperies, headed like a star.
Her maiden babe, a double April old,
Aglaia slept. We sat : the Lady glanced :
Then Florian, but no livelier than the
dame
That whisper'd * Asses' ears ' among the
sedge,
* My sister.' * Comely, too, by all that's
fair,'
Said Cyril. * O hush, hush ! ' and she
began.
' This world was once a fluid haze of
light.
Till toward the centre set the starry tides,
And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast
The planets : then the monster, then the
man;
Tattoo'd or woaded, winter-clad in skins.
Raw from the prime, and crushing down
his mate;
As yet we find in barbarous isles, and
here
Among the lowest.'
Thereupon she took
A bird's-eye-view of all the ungracious
past;
Glanced at the legendary Amazon
As emblematic of a nobler age;
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
Appraised the Lycian custom, spoke of
those
That lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo;
Ran down the Persian, Grecian, Roman
lines
Of empire, and the woman's state in each.
How far from just; till warming with her
theme
She fulmined out her scorn of laws Salique
And little-footed China, touch'd on Ma-
homet
With much contempt, and came to
chivalry :
When some respect, however slight, was
paid
To woman, superstition all awry:
However then commenced the dawn: a
beam
Had slanted forward, falling in a land
Of promise; fruit would follow. Deep,
indeed,
Their debt of thanks to her who first had
dared
To leap the rotten pales of prejudice,
Disyoke their necks from custom, and
assert
None lordlier than themselves but that
which made
Woman and man. She had founded;
they must build.
Here might they learn whatever men were
taught :
Let them not fear : some said their heads
were less :
Some men's were small; not they the
least of men;
For often fineness compensated size :
Besides the brain was like the hand, and
grew
With using ; thence the man's, if more
was more ;
He took advantage of his strength to be
First in the field : some ages had been
lost;
But woman ripen'd earlier, and her life
Was longer; and albeit their glorious
names
Were fewer, scatter'd stars, yet since in
truth
The highest is the measure of the man,
And not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay,
Nor those horn-handed breakers of the
glebe,
But Homer, Plato, Verulam; even so
With woman : and in arts of government
Elizabeth and others; arts of war
The peasant Joan and others; arts of
grace
Sappho and others vied with any man :
And, last not least, she who had left her
place,
And bow'd he'r state to them, that they
might grow
To use and power on this Oasis, lapt
In the arms of leisure, sacred from the
blight
Of ancient influence and scorn.
At last
She rose upon a wind of prophecy
Dilating on the future; 'everywhere
Two heads in council, two beside the
hearth,
Two in the tangled business of the world,
Two in the liberal offices of life.
Two plummets dropt for one to sound
the abyss
Of science, and the secrets of the mind :
Musician, painter, sculptor, critic, more:
And everywhere the broad and bounteous
Earth
Should bear a double growth of those
rare souls.
Poets, whose thoughts enrich the blood
of the world.'
She ended here, and beckon'd us : the
rest
Parted ; and, glowing full-faced welcome,
she
Began to address us, and was moving on
In gratulation, till as when a boat
Tacks, and the slacken'd sail flaps, all
her voice
Faltering and fluttering in her throat, she
cried
*My brother!' 'Well, my sister.' 'O,'
she said,
'What do you here? and in this dress?
and these?
Why who are these? a wolf within the
foldr
A pack of wolves ! the Lord be gracious
to me !
A plot, a plot, a plot, to ruin all ! '
'No plot, no plot,' he answer'd.
* Wretched boy,
172
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
How saw you not the inscription on the
gate,
Let no man enter in on pain of
DEATH ? '
* And if I had,' he answer'd, ' who could
think
The softer Adams of your Academe,
0 sister, Sirens tho' they be, were such
As chanted on the blanching bones of
men?'
' But you will find it otherwise,' she said.
' You jest : ill jesting with edge-tools !
my vow
Binds me to speak, and O that iron will.
That axelike edge unturnable, our Head,
The Princess.' ' Well then, Psyche, take
my life.
And nail me like a weasel on a grange
For warning : bury me beside the gate,
And cut this epitaph above my bones;
Here lies a brother by a sister slain.
All for the common good of ivomankind.^
* Let me die too,' said Cyril, ' having
seen
And heard the Lady Psyche.'
I struck in :
'Albeit so mask'd, Madam, I love the
truth ;
Receive it; and in me behold the Prince
Your countryman, affianced years ago
To the Lady Ida: here, for here she was,
And thus (what other way was left) I
came.'
*0 Sir, O Prince, I have no country;
none;
If any, this; but none. Whate'er I was
Disrooted, what I am is grafted here.
Affianced, Sir? love-whispers may not
breathe
Within this vestal limit, and how should
I,
Who am not mine, say, live : the thunder-
bolt
Hangs silent ; but prepare : I speak ; it
Tails.'
' Yet pause,' I said : * for that inscription
there,
1 think no more of deadly lui'ks therein.
Than in a clapper clapping in a garth.
To scare the fowl from fruit: if more
there be,
If more and acted on, what follows?
war;
Your own work marr'd : for this your
Academe,
Whichever side be Victor, in the halloo
Will topple to the trumpet down, and
pass
With all fair theories only made to gild
A stormless summer.' * Let the Princess
judge
Of that,' she said : ' farewell. Sir — and
to you.
I shudder at the sequel, but I go.'
'Are you that Lady Psyche,' I rejoin'd^
'The fifth in line from that old Florian, •
Yet hangs his portrait in my father's hall
(The gaunt old Baron with his beetle brow
Sun-shaded in the heat of dusty fights)
As he bestrode my Grandsire, when he
fell.
And all else fled? we point to it, and we
say,
The loyal warmth of Florian is not cold,
But branches current yet in kindred
veins.'
'Are you that Psyche,' Florian added;
' she
With whom I sang about the morning
hills,
Flung ball, flew kite, and raced the
purple fly,
And snared the squirrel of the glen? are
you
That Psyche, wont to bind my throbbing
brow,
To smoothe my pillow, mix the foaming
draught
Of fever, tell me pleasant tales, and read
My sickness down to happy dreams? are
you
That brother-sister Psyche, both in one?
You were that Psyche, but what are you
now ? '
* You are that Psyche,' Cyril said, * for
whom
I would be that for ever which I seem,
Woman, if I might sit beside your feet,
And glean your scatter'd sapience.'
Then once more,
'Are you that LadyPsyche,' I began,
'That on her bridal morn before she
past
From all her old companions, when the
king
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
73
Kiss'd her pale cheek, declared that
ancient ties
Would still be dear beyond the southern
hills;
That were there any of our people there
In want or peril, there was one to hear
And help them? look! for such are
these and I.'
*Are you that Psyche,' Florian ask'd,
'to whom,
In gentler days, your arrow-wounded
fawn
Came living while you sat beside the
well?
The creature laid his muzzle on your lap.
And sobb'd, and you sobb'd with it, and
the blood
Was sprinkled on your kirtle, and you
wept.
That was fawn's blood, not brother's,
yet you wept.
O by the bright head of my little niece,
You were that Psyche, and what are
you now? '
* You are that Psyche,' Cyril said again,
'The mother of the sweetest little maid.
That ever crow'd for kisses.'
' Out upon it ! '
She answer'd, * peace ! and why should
I not play
The Spartan Mother with emotion, be
The Lucius Junius Brutus of my kind ?
Him you call great : he for the common
weal.
The fading politics of mortal Rome,
As I might slay this child, if good need
were.
Slew both his sons: and I, shall I, on
whom
The secular emancipation turns
Of half this world, be swerved from right
to save
A prince, a brother? a little will I yield.
Best so, perchance, for us, and well for
you.
O hard, when love and duty clash ! I
fear
My conscience will not count me fleck-
less; yet —
Hear my conditions : promise (otherwise
You perish) as you came, to slip away,
To-day, to-morrow, soon : it shall be
said.
These women were too barbarous, would
not learn;
They fled, who might have shamed us:
promise, all.'
What could we else, we promised
each; and she.
Like some wild creature newly-caged,
commenced
A to-and-fro, so pacing till she paused
By Florian; holding out her lily arms
Took both his hands, and smiling faintly
said :
* I knew you at the first : tho* you have
grown
You scarce have alter'd: I am sad and
glad
To see you, Florian. / give thee to
death
My brother ! it was duty spoke, not I.
My needful seeming harshness, pardon it.
Our mother, is she well?'
With that she kiss'd
His forehead, then, a moment after,
clung
About him, and betwixt them blossom'd
up
P'rom out a common vein of memory
Sweet household talk, and ' phrases ot
the hearth.
And far allusion, till the gracious dews
Began to glisten and to fall: and while
They stood, so rapt, we gazing, came a
voice,
* I brought a message here from Lady
Blanche.'
Back started she, and turning round we
saw
The Lady Blanche's daughter where she
stood,
Melissa, with her hand upon the lock,
A rosy blonde, and in a college gown.
That clad her like an April dartodilly
(Her mother's colour) witn her lip-
apart,
And all her thoughts as fair within her
eyes.
As bottom agates seen to wave and float
In crystal currents of clear morning seas.
So stood that same fair creature at the
door.
Then Lady Psyche, * Ah — Melissa — you i
174
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
You heard us? ' arid Melissa, 'O pardon
me
I heard, I could not help it, did not
wish :
But, dearest Lady, pray you fear me not.
Nor think I bear that heart within my
breast,
To give three gallant gentlemen to death.'
' I trust you,' said the other, ' for we two
Were always friends, none closer, elm
and vine :
But yet your mother's jealous tempera-
ment —
Let not your prudence, dearest, drowse,
or prove
The Danaid of a leaky vase, for fear
This whole foundation ruin, and I lose
My honour, these their lives.' * Ab, fear
me not,'
Replied Melissa; * no — I would not tell.
No, not for all Aspasia's cleverness.
No, not to answer, Madam, all those
hard things
That Sheba came to ask of Solomon.'
* Be it so,' the other, * that we still may
lead
The new light up, and culminate in peace,
For Solomon may come to Sheba yet.'
Said Cyril, 'TVIadam, he the wisest man
Feasted the woman wisest then, in halls
Of Lebanonian cedar : nor should you
(Tho', Madam, yoic should answer, we
would ask)
Less welcome find among us, if you came
Among us, debtors for our lives to you.
Myself for something more.' He said
not what.
But 'Thanks,' she answer'd, *Go: we
have been too long
Together: keep your hoods about the
face;
They do so that affect abstraction here.
Speak little; mix not with the rest; and
hold
Your promise : all, I trust, may yet be
well.'
We turn'd to go, but Cyril took the
child,
And held her round the knees against
his waist,
And blew the swoU'n cheek of a trump-
eter,
While Psyche Avatch'd them, smiling
and the child
Push'd her flat hand against his face
and laugh'd;
And thus our conference closed.
And then we stroll'd
For half the day thro' stately theatres
Bench'd crescent-wise. In each we sat,
we heard
The grave Professor. On the lecture
slate
The circle rounded under female hands
With flawless demonstration : follow'd
then
A classic lecture, rich in sentiment,
With scraps of thundrous Epic lilted out
By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies
And quoted odes, and jewels five-words
long
That on the stretch'd forefinger of all
Time
Sparkle for ever : then we dipt in all
I'hat treats of whatsoever is, the state.
The total chronicles of man, the mind.
The morals, something of the frame, the
rock.
The star, the bird, the fish, the shell, the
flower.
Electric, chemic laws, and all the rest.
And whatsoever can be taught and
known ;
Till like three horses that have broken
fence.
And glutted all night long breast-deep
in corn.
We issued gorged with knowledge, and
I spoke :
* Why, Sirs, they do all this as well as
we.'
'They hunt old trails,' said Cyril, 'very
well;
But when did woman ever yet invent?'
' Ungracious ! ' answered Florian; ' have
you learnt
No more from Psyche's lecture, you that
talk'd
The trash that made me sick, and almost
sad ? '
* O trash,' he said, ' but with a kernel in it.
Should I not call her wise, who made me
wise?
And learnt? I learnt more from her in a
flash,
THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY.
175
Than if my brainpan were an empty hull,
And every Muse tumbled a science in.
A thousand hearts lie fallow in these halls,
And round these halls a thousand baby
loves
Fly twanging headless arrows at the
hearts.
Whence follows many a vacant pang;
butO
With me, Sir, enter'd in the bigger boy,
The Head of all the golden-shafted firm,
The long-limb'd lad that had a Psyche
too;
He cleft me thro' the stomacher; and
now
What think you of it, Florian? do I chase
The substance or the shadow? will it
hold?
I have no sorcerer's malison on me,
No ghostly hauntings like his Highness. I
Flatter myself that always everywhere
I know the substance when I see it.
Well,
Are castles shadows? Three of them?
Is she
The sweet proprietress a shadow? If not,
Shall those three castles patch my tat-
ter'd coat?
For dear are those three castles to my
wants.
And dear is sister Psyche to my heart,
And two dear things are one of double
worth.
And much I might have said, but that
my zone
Unmann'd me : then the Doctors ! O to
hear
The Doctors! O to watch the thirsty
plants
Imbibing ! once or twice I thought to roar.
To break my chain, to shake my mane :
but thou.
Modulate me. Soul of mincing mimicry !
Make liquid treble of that bassoon, my
throat;
Abase those eyes that ever loved to meet
Star-sisters answering under crescent
brows;
Abate the stride, which speaks of man,
and loose
A flying charm of blushes o'er this cheek,
Where they like swallows coming out of
time
Will wonder why they came : but hark
the bell
For dinner, let us go ! '
And in we stream'd
Among the columns, pacing staid and still
By twos and threes, till all from end to end .
With beauties every shade of brown and
fair
In colours gayer than the morning mist,
The long hall glitter'd like a bed of
flowers.
How might a man not wander from his
wits
Pierced thro' with eyes, but that I kept
mine own
Intent on her, who rapt in glorious dreams,
The second-sight of some Astraean age,
Sat compass'd with professors : they, the
while,
Discuss'd a doubt and tost it to and fro :
A clamour thicken'd, mixt with inmost
terms
Of art and science : Lady Blanche alone
Of faded form and haughtiest lineaments.
With all her autumn tresses falsely brown.
Shot sidelong daggers at us, a tiger-cat
In act to spring.
At last a solemn grace
Concluded, and we sought the gardens :
there
One walk'd reciting by herself, and one
In this hand held a volume as to read.
And smoothed a petted peacock down
with that :
Some to a low song oar'd a shallop by.
Or under arches of the marble bridge
Hung, shadow'd from the heat : some
hid and sought
In the orange thickets : others tost a ball
Above the fountain-jets, and back again
With laughter: others lay about the
lawns.
Of the older sort, and murmur'd that their
May
Was passing: what was learning unto
them?
They wish'd to marry; they could rule a
house ;
Men hated learned women : but we three
Sat muffled like the Fates; and often
came
Melissa hitting all we saw with shafts
Of gentle satire, kin to charity.
176
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
That harm'd not: then day droopt; the
chapel bells
Call'd us: we left the walks; we mixt
with those
Six hundred maidens clad in purest white,
Before two streams of light from wall to
wall,
While the great organ almost burst his
pipes,
Groaning for power, and rolling thro' the
court
A long melodious thunder to the sound
Of solemn psalms, and silver litanies.
The work of Ida, to call down from
Heaven
A blessing on her labours for the world.
III.
Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea,
Low, low, breathe and blow.
Wind of the western sea!
Over the rolling waters go,
Come from the dying moon, and blow,
Blow him again to me;
While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.
Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,
Father will come to thee soon;
Rest, rest, on mother's breast,
Father will come to thee soon ;
Father will come to his babe in the nest.
Silver sails all out of the west ^
Under the silver moon:
Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.
Morn in the white wake of the morning
star
Came furrowing all the orient into gold.
We rose, and each by other drest with
care
Descended to the court that lay three parts
in shadow, but the Muses' heads were
touch'd
Above the darkness from their native East,
There while we stood beside the fount,
and watch'd
Or seem'd to watch the dancing bubble,
approach'd
Melissa, tinged with wan from lack of
sleep.
Or srief, and glowing round her dewy
^ves '
The circled Iris of a night of tears;
* And fly,' she cried, ' O fly, while yet you
may 1
My mother knows : ' and when I ask'd
her ' how,'
' My fault,' she wept, ' my fault ! and yet
not mine;
Yet mine in part. O hear me, pardon
me.
My mother, 'tis her wont from night to
night
To rail at Lady Psyche and her side.
She says the Princess should have been
the Head,
Herself and Lady Psyche the two arms;
And so it was agreed when first they
came ;
But Lady Psyche was the right hand now,
And she the left, or not, or seldom used;
Hers more than half the students, all the
love.
And so last night she fell to canvass you :
Her countrywomen ! she did not envy her.
" Who ever saw such wild barbarians?
Girls? — more like men!" and at these
words the snake.
My secret, seem'd to stir within rhy breast;
And oh, Sirs, could I help it, but my cheek
Began to burn and burn, and her lynx eye
To fix and make me hotter, till she
laugh'd :
" O marvellously modest maiden, you !
Men ! girls, like men ! why, if they had
been men
You need not set your thoughts in rubric
thus
For wholesale comment." Pardon, I am
shamed
That I must needs repeat for my excuse
What looks so little graceful : " men "
(for still
My mother went revolving on the word)
" And so they are, — very like men in-
deed—
And with that woman closeted for hours ! "
Then came these dreadful words out one
by one,
"Why — these — are — men:" I shud-
der'd : *' and you know it."
"O ask me nothing," I said: "And she
knows too.
And she conceals it." So my mother
clutch'd
THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY.
[77
The truth at once, but with no word from
me;
And now thus early risen she goes to
inform
The Princess: Lady Psyche will be
crush'd;
But you may yet be saved, and therefore
fly:
But heal me with your pardon ere you go.'
' What pardon, sweet Melissa, for a
blush?'
Said Cyril : * Pale one, blush again : than
wear
Those lilies, better blush our lives away.
Yet let us breathe for one hour more in
Heaven,'
He added, ' lest some classic Angel speak
In scorn of us, "They mounted, Gahy-
medes,
To tumble, Vulcans, on the second morn."
But I will melt this marble into wax
To yield us farther furlough : ' and he
went.
Melissa shook her doubtful curls, and
thought
He scarce would prosper. 'Tell us,'
Florian ask'd,
•How grew this feud betwixt the right
and left.'
• O long ago,' she said, ' betwixt these two
Division smoulders hidden; 'tis my
mother,
Too jealous, often fretful as the wind
Pent in a crevice : much 1 bear with her :
I never knew my father, but she says
(God help her) she was wedded to a fool;
And still she rail'd against the state of
things.
She had the care of Lady Ida's youth,
And from the Queen's decease she brought
her up.
But when your sister came she won the
heart
Of Ida : they were still together, grew
( For so they said themselves) inosculated ;
Consonant chords that shiver to one note;
One mind in all things : vet my mother
still
Affirms your Psyche thieved her theories,
And angled with them for her pupil's love :
She calls her plagiarist; I know not what :
But I must go : I dare nut tarry,' and
light,
As flies the -shadow of a bird, she fled.
Then murmur'd Florian gazing after
her,
' An open-hearted maiden, true and pure.
If I could love, why this were she : hov\
pretty
Her blushing was, and how she blush'i
again.
As if to close with Cyril's random wish :
Not like your Princess cramm'd with
erring pride.
Nor like poor Psyche whom she drags iii
tow.'
' The crane,' I said, * may chatter of the
crane,
The dove may murmur of the dove, but I
An eagle clang an eagle to the sphere.
My princess, O my princess ! true she errs,
But in her own grand way : being herself
Three times more noble than three score
of men.
She sees herself in every woman else.
And so she wears her error like a crown
To blind the truth and me : for her, and
her,
Hebes are they to hand ambrosia, mix
The nectar; but — ah she — whene'er she
moves
The Samian Here rises and she speaks
A Memnon smitten with the morning
Sun.'
So saying from the court we paced,
and gain'd
The terrace ranged along the Northern
front.
And leaning there on those balusters, high
Above the empurpled champaign, drank
the gale
That blown about the foliage underneath,
And sated with the innumerable rose,
Beat balm upon our eyelids. Hither came
Cyril, and yawning 'O hard task,' he
cried;
*No fighting shadows here! I forced a
way
Thro' solid opposition crabb'd andgnari'd.
Better to clear prime forests, heave and
thump
178
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
A league of street in summer solstice
down,
Than hammer at this reverend gentle-
woman,
I knock'd and bidden, enter'd; found
her there
At point to move, and settled in her
eyes
The green malignant light of coming
storm.
Sir, I was courteous, every phrase well-
oil'd,
As man's could be; yet maiden-meek I
pray'd
Concealment : she demanded who we
were.
And why we came? I fabled nothing fair,
But, your example pilot, told her all.
Up went the hush'd amaze of hand and
eye.
But when I dwelt upon your old affiance.
She ansvver'd sharply that I talk'd astray.
I urged the fierce inscription on the gate,
And our three hves. True — we had
hmed ourselves
With open eyes, and we must take the
chance.
But such extremes, I told her, well might
harm
The woman's cause. "Not more than
now," she said,
** So puddled as it is with favouritism."
I tried the mother's heart. Shame might
befall
Melissa, knowing, saying not she knew :
Her answer was, " Leave me to deal with
that."
I spoke of war to come and many deaths.
And she replied, her duty was to speak.
And duty duty, clear of consequences.
I grew discouraged, Sir; but since I knew
No rock so hard but that a little wave
May beat admission in a thousand years,
I recommenced; " Decide not ere you
pause.
I find you here but in the second place,
Some say the third — the authentic foun-
dress you.
I offer boldly : we will seat you highest :
Wink at our advent : help my prince to
gain
His rightful bride, and here I promise
you
Some palace in our land, where you shall
reign
The head and heart of all our fair she-
world,
And your great name flow on with broad-
ening time
For ever." Well, she ba;lanced this a
little,
And told me she would answer us to-day,
Meantime be mute : thus much, nor more
I gain'd.'
He ceasing, came a message from the
Head.
'That afternoon the Princess rode to take
The dip of certain strata to the North.
Would we go with her? we should find
the land
Worth seeing; and the river made a fall
Out yonder : ' then she pointed on to
where
A double hill ran up his furrowy forks
Beyond the thick-leaved platans of the
vale.
Agreed to, this, the day fled on thro'
all
Its range of duties to the appointed hour.
Then summon'd to the porch we went.
She stood
Among her maidens, higher by the head,
Her back against a pillar, her foot on
one
Of those tame leopards. Kittenlike he
roll'd
And paw'd about her sandal. I drew
near;
I gazed. On a sudden my strange seizure
came
Upon me, the weird vision of our house :
The Princess Ida seem'd a hollow show,
Her gay-furr'd cats a painted fantasy,
Her college and her maidens empty
masks,
And I myself the shadow of a dream.
For fell things were and were not. Yet
I felt
My heart beat thick with passion and
with awe;
Then from my breast the involuntary
sigh
Brake, as she smote me with the light <3f
eyes
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
79
That lent my knee desire to kneel, and
shook
My pulses, till to horse we got, and so
Went forth in long retinue following up
The river as it narrow'd to the hills.
I rode beside her and to me she said :
*0 friend, we trust that you esteem'd us
not
Too harsh to your companion yestermorn;
Unwillingly we spake.' ' No — not to her,'
I answer'd, ' but to one of whom we spake
Your Highness might have seem'd the
thing you say.'
'Again?' she cried, 'are you ambassa-
dresses
From him to me? we give you, being
strange,
A license : speak, and let the topic die.'
I stammer'd that I knew him — could
have wish'd —
'Our king expects — was there no pre-
contract?
There is no truer-hearted — ah, you seem
All he prefigured, and he could not see
The bird of passage flying south but
long'd
To follow : surely, if your Highness keep
Your purport, you will shock him ev'n to
death.
Or baser courses, children of despair.'
* Poor boy,' she said, ' can he not read
— no books?
Quoit, tennis, ball — no games? nor deals
in that
Which men delight in, martial exercise?
To nurse a blind ideal like a girl,
Methinks he seems no better than a girl;
As girls were once, as we ourself have
been :
We had our dreams; perhaps he mixt
with them :
We touch on our dead self, nor shun to
do it.
Being other — since we learnt our mean-
ing here,
To lift the woman's fall'n divinity
Upon an even pedestal with man.'
She paused, and added with a haughtier
smile
' And as to precontracts, we move, my
friend.
At no man's beck, but know ourself and
thee,
0 Vashti, noble Vashti ! Summon'd out
She kept her state, and left the drunken
king
To brawl at Shushan underneath the
palms.'
* Alas your Highness breathes full
East,' I said,
*0n that which leans to you. i know
the Prince,
1 prize his truth : and then how vast a
work
To assail this gray preeminence of man !
You grant me license; might I use it?
think;
Ere half be done perchance your life may
fail;
Then comes the feebler heiress of your
plan.
And takes and ruins all; and thus your
pains
May only make that footprint upon sand
Which old-recurring waves of prejudice
Resmooth to nothing : might I dread
that you,
With only Fame for spouse and your
great deeds
For issue, yet may live in vain, and miss.
Meanwhile, what every woman counts
her due,
Love, children, happiness?'
And she exclaim'd,
' Peace, you young savage of the Northern
wild !
What ! tho' your Prince's love were like
a God's,
Have we not made ourself the sacrifice?
You are bold indeed : we are not talk'd
to thus :
Yet will we say for children, would they
grew
Like field-flowers everywhere ! we like
them well :
But children die; and let me tell you,
Howe'er you babble, great deeds cannot
die;
They with the sun and moon renew their
light
i8o
THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY.
For ever, blessing those that look on
them.
Children — that men may pluck them
from our hearts,
Kill us with pity, break us with our-
selves —
O — children — there is nothing upon
earth
More miserable than she that has a son
And sees him err : nor would we work
for fame;
Tho' she perhaps might reap the applause
of Great,
Who learns the one pou sto whence after-
hands
May move the world, tho' she herself effect
But little : wherefore up and act, nor
shrink
':'^3r fear our solid aim be dissipated
By frail successors. Would, indeed, we
had been,
In lieu of many mortal flies, a race
Of giants living, each, a thousand years,
That we might see our own work out,
and watch
The sandy footprint harden into stone.'
I answer'd nothing, doubtful in myself
If that strange Poet-princess with her
grand
Imaginations might at all be won.
And she broke out interpreting my
thoughts :
* No doubt we seem a kind of monster
to you;
We are used to that : for women, up till
this
Cramp'd under worse than South-sea-isle
taboo,
Dwarfs of the gynsgceum, fail so far
In high desire, they know not, cannot
guess
How much their welfare is a passion to us.
If we could give them surer, quicker
proof —
Oh if our end were less achievable
By slow approaches, than by single act
Of immolation, any phase of death,
We were as prompt to spring against the
pikes.
Or down the fiery gulf as talk of it,
To compass our dear sisters' liberties.'
She bow'd as if to veil a noble tear;
And up we came to where the river
sloped
To plunge in cataract, shattering on
black blocks
A breadth of thunder. O'er it shook the
woods.
And danced the colour, and, below,
stuck out
The bones of some vast bulk that lived
and roar'd
Before man was. She gazed awhile and
said,
* As these rude bones to us, are we to
her
That will be.' * Dare we dream of that,'
I ask'd,
* Which wrought us, as the workman and
his work,
That practice betters ? ' ' How,' she
cried, * you love
The metaphysics ! read and earn our
prize,
A golden brooch : beneath an emerald
plane
Sits Diotima, teaching him that died
Of hemlock; our device; wrought to
the life;
She rapt upon her subject, he on her:
For there are schools for all.' *And
yet,' I said,
* Methinks I have not found among them
all
One anatomic' 'Nay, we thought of
that,'
She answer'd, ' but it pleased us not : in
truth
We shudder but to dream our maids
should ape
Those monstrous males that carve the
living hound.
And cram him with the fragments of the
grave,
Or in the dark dissolving human heart,
And holy secrets of this microcosm.
Dabbling a shameless hand with shame-
ful jest,
Encarnalise their spirits : yet we know
Knowledge is knowledge, and this mat-
ter hangs :
Howbeit ourself, foreseeing casualty,
Nor willing men should come among us,
learnt.
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
[8i
For many weary moons before we came,
This craft of healing. Were you sick,
ourself
Would tend upon you. To your ques-
tion now,
Which touches on the workman and his
work.
Let thei-e be light and there was light :
'tis so :
For was, and is, and will be, are but is;
And all creation is one act at once.
The birth of light : but we that are not
all,
-As parts, can see but parts, now this,
now that,
And live, perforce, from thought to
thought, and make
One act a phantom of succession : thus
Our weakness somehow shapes the
shadow, Time;
But in the shadow will we work, and
mould
The woman to the fuller day.'
She spake
With kindled eyes : we rode a league
beyond,
And, o'er a bridge of pinewood crossing,
came
On flowery levels underneath the crag,
Full of all beauty. * O how sweet,' I said
(For I was half-oblivious of my mask),
'To linger here with one that loved us.'
'Yea,'
She answer'd, * or with fair philosophies
That lift the fancy; for indeed these
fields
Are lovely, lovelier not the Elysian
lawns.
Where paced the Demigods of old, and
saw
The soft white vapour streak the crowned
towers
Built to the Sun : ' then, turning to her
maids,
' Pitch our pavilion here upon the sward;
Lay out the viands.' At the word, they
raised
A tent of satin, elaborately wrought
W^ith fair Corinna's triumph; here she
stood.
Engirt with many a florid maiden-cheek,
The woman-conqueror ; woman-con-
quer'd there
The bearded Victor of ten-thousand
hymns,
And all the men mourn'd at his side :
but we
Set forth to climb; then, climbing, Cyril
kept
With Psyche, with Melissa Florian, I
With mine affianced. Many a little hand
Glanced like a touch of sunshine on the
rocks,
Many a light foot shone like a jewel
set
In the dark crag: and then we turn'd,
we wound
About the cliffs, the copses, out and in.
Hammering and clinking, chattering
stony names
Of shale and hornblende, rag and trap
and tuff,
Amygdaloid and trachyte, till the Sun
Grew broader toward his death and fell,
and all
The rosy heights came out above the
lawns.
IV.
The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying.
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying,
dying.
O hark, O hear! how thin and clear.
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying,
dying.
O love, they die in yon rich sky.
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul.
And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dj'ing, dying,
dying.
•'There sinks the nebulous star we call
the Sun,
If that hypothesis of theirs be sound,'
Said Ida; 'let us down and rest; ' and
we
I82
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
Down from the lean and wrinkled preci-
pices,
By every coppice-feather'd chasm and
cleft,
Dropt thro' the ambrosial gloom to
where below
No bigger than a glow-worm shone the
tent
Lamp-lit from the inner. Once she
lean'd on me,
Descending; once or twice she lent her
hand,
And blissful palpitations in the blood,
Stirring a sudden transport rose and fell.
But when we planted level feet, and dipt
Beneath the satin dome and enter'd in.
There leaning deep in broider'd down
we sank
Our elbows : on a tripod in the midst
A fragrant flame rose, and before us
glow'd
Fruit, blossom, viand, amber wine, and
gold.
Then she, * Let some one sing to us :
lightlier move
The minutes fledged with music : ' and a
maid.
Of those beside her, smote her harp, and
sang.
-'Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean.
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn- fields.
And thinking of the days that are no more.
' Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld.
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
* Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more,
' Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are for others: deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.'
She ended with such passion that the
tear,
She sang of, shook and fell, an earing
pearl
*Lost in her bosom : but with some dis-
dain
Answer'd the Princess, ' If indeed there
haunt
About the moulder'd lodges of the Past
So sweet a voice and vague, fatal to
men.
Well needs it we should cram our ears
with wool
And so pace by: but thine are fancies
hatch'd
In silken-folded idleness; nor is it
Wiser to weep a true occasion lost.
But trim our sails, and let old bygones
be,
While down the streams that float us
each and all
To the issue, goes, like glittering bergs
of ice.
Throne after throne, and molten on the
waste
Becomes a cloud : for all things serve
their time
Toward that great year of equal mights
and rights,
Nor would I tight with iron laws, in the
end
Found golden : let the past be past; let
be
Their cancell'd Babels: tho' the rough
kex break
The starr'd mosaic, and the beard-blown
goat
Kang on the shaft, and the wild figtree
split
Their monstrous idols, care not while we
hear
A trumpet in the distance pealing news
Of better, and Hope, a poising eagle^
burns
Above the unrisen morrow : ' then to
me;
' Know you no song of your own land,'
she said,
'Not such as moans about the retrospect,
But deals with the other distance and the
hues
Of promise; not a death's-head at the
wine.'
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
183
Then I remember'd one myself had
made,
What time I watch'd the swallow wing-
ing south
From mine own land, part made long
since, and part
Now while I sang, and maidenlike as
far
As I could ape their treble, did I sing.
' O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South,
Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves.
And tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee.
* O tell her. Swallow, thou that knowest each.
That bright and fierce and fickle is the South,
And dark and true and tender is the North.
' O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and
light
Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill,
And cheep and twitter twenty million loves.
* O were I thou that she might take me in.
And lay me on her bosom, and her heart
Would rock the snowy cradle till I died.
' Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love,
Delaying as the tender ash delays
To clothe herself, when all the woods are green?
' O tell her. Swallow, that thy brood is flown:
Say to her, I do but wanton in the South,
But in the North long since my nest is made.
' O tell her, brief is life but love is long.
And brief the sun of summer in the North,
And brief the moon of beauty in the South.
' O Swallow, flying from the golden woods.
Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her
mine,
And tell her, tell her, that I follow thee.'
I ceased, and all the ladies, each at
each,
Like the Ithacensian suitors in old time,
Stared with great eyes, and laugh'd with
alien lips,
And knew not what they meant; for still
my voice
Rang false : but smiling, * Not for thee,'
she said,
' O Bulbul, any rose of Gulistan
Shall burst her veil : marsh-divers, rather,
maid.
Shall croak thee sister, or the meadow
crake
Grate her harsh kindred in the grass:
and this
A mere love-poem ! O for such, my friend.
We hold them, slight: they mind us of
the time
When we made bricks in Egypt. Knaves
are men,
That lute and flute fantastic tenderness,
And dress the victim to the offering up.
And paint the gates of Hell with Paradise,
And play the slave to gain the tyranny.
Poor soul! 1 had a maid of honour once;
She wept her true eyes blind for such a
one,
A rogue of canzonets and serenades.
I loved her. Peace be with her. She
is dead.
So they blaspheme the muse ! But great
is song
Used to great ends : ourself have often
tried
Valkyrian hymns, or into rhythm have
dash'd
The passion of the prophetess; for song
Is duer unto freedom, force and growth
Of spirit than to junketing and love.
Love is it ? Would this same mock-love,
and this
Mock-Hymen were laid up like winter
bats,
Till all men grew to rate us at our worth,
Not vassals to be beat, nor pretty babes
To be dandled, no, but living wills, and
sphered
Whole in ourselves and owed to none.
Enough !
Bitt now to leaven play with profit, you.
Know you no song, the true growth of
your soil,
That gives the manners of your country-
women?'
She spoke and turn'd her sumptuous
head with eyes
Of shining expectation fixt on mine.
Then while I dragg'd my brains for such
a song,
Cyril, with whom the bell-mouth'd glass
had wrought.
Or master'd by the sense of sport, began
To troll a careless, careless tavern-catch
i84
THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY.
Of Moll and Meg, and strange experiences
Unmeet for ladies. Florian nodded at
him,
I frowning; Psyche flush'd and wann'd
and shook;
The ladylike Melissa droop'd her brows;
' Forbear,' the Princess cried; 'Forbear,
Sir,' I ;
And heated thro' and thro' with wrath
and love,
I smote him on the breast; he started
up;
There rose a shriek as of a city sack'd;
Melissa clamour'd, ' Flee the death; ' *To
horse,'
Said Ida; ' home 1 to horse ! ' and fled,
as flies
A troop of snowy doves athwart the dusk.
When some one batters at the dovecote
doors,
Disorderly the women. Alone I stood
With Florian, cursing Cyril, vext at heart,
In the pavilion : there like parting hopes
I heard them passing from me : hoof by
hoof,
And every hoof a knell to my desires,
Clang'd on the bridge; and then another
shriek,
'The Head, the Head, the Princess, O
the Head!'
For blind with rage she miss'd the plank,
and roll'd
In the river. Out I sprang from glow to
gloom :
There whirl'd her white robe like a
blossom'd branch
Rapt to the horrible fall : a glance I
gave,
No more; but woman-vested as I was
Plunged; and the flood drew; yet I
caught her; then
Oaring one arm, and bearing in my left
The weight of all the hopes of half the
world.
Strove to buffet to land in vain. A tree
Was half-disrooted from his place and
stoop'd
To drench his dark locks in the gurgling
wave
Mid-channel. Right on this we drove
and caught,
And grasping down the boughs I gain'd
the shore.
There stood her maidens glimmeringly
group' d
In the hollow bank. One reaching for-
ward drew
My burthen from mine arms; they cried
' she lives : '
They bore her back into the tent : but I,
So much a kind of shame within me
wrought,
Not yet endured to meet her opening
eyes.
Nor found my friends; but push'd alone
on foot
(For since her horse was lost I left her
mine)
Across the woods, and less from Indian
craft
Than beelike instinct hiveward, found at
length
The garden portals. Two great statues.
Art
And Science, Caryatids, lifted up
A weight of emblem, and betwixt were
valves
Of open-work in which the hunter rued
His rash intrusion, manlike, but his
brows
Had sprouted, and the branches there-
upon
Spread out at top, and grimly spiked the
gates.
A Httle space was left betv^^een the
horns.
Thro' which I clamber'd o'er at top with
pain,
Dropt on the sward, and up the linden
walks,
And, tost on thoughts that changed from
hue to hue.
Now poring on the glowworm, now the
star,
I paced the terrace, till the Bear had
wheel'd
Thro' a great arc his seven slow suns.
A step
Of lightest echo, then a loftier form
Than female, moving thro' the uncertain
gloom,
Disturb'd me with the doubt 'if this were
she,'
But it was Florian. * Hist, O. hist,' he
said,
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
[85
'They seek us: out so late is out of
rules.
Moreover " seize the strai)gers " is the cry.
How came you here?' 1 told him: 'I,'
said he,
' Last ot the train, a moral leper, I,
To whom none spake, half-sick at heart,
return'd.
Arriving all confused among the rest
With hooded brows I crept into the hall,
And, couch'd behind a Judith, under-
neath
The head of Holofernes peep'd and saw.
Girl after girl was call'd to trial : each
Disclaim'd all knowledge of us: last of
all,
Melissa : trust me. Sir, I pitied her.
She, question'd if she knew us men, at
first
Was silent ; closer prest, denied it not :
And then, demanded if her mother
knew,
Or Psyche, she affirm'd not, or denied :
From whence the Royal mind, famihar
with her.
Easily gather'd either guilt. She sent
For Psyche, but she was not there ; she
call'd
For Psyche's child to cast it from the
doors;
She sent for Blanche to accuse her face
to face;
And I slipt out : but whither will you
now?
And where are Psyche, Cyril? both are
fled:
What, if together? that were not so well.
Would rather we had never come ! I
dread
His wildness, and the chances of the
dark.'
'And yet,' I said, 'you wrong him
more than I
That struck him : this is proper to the
clown,
Tho' smock'd, or furr'd and purpled,
still the clown,
To harm the thing that trusts him, and
to shame
That which he says he loves : for Cyril,
howe'er
He deal in frolic, as to-night — the song
Might have been worse and sinn'd in
grosser lips
Beyond all pardon — as it is, I hold
These flashes on the surface are not he.
He has a solid base of temperament :
But as the waterlily starts and slides
Upon the level in little puffs of wind,
Tho' anchor'd to the bottom, such is
he.'
Scarce had I ceased when from a tama-
risk near
Two Proctors leapt upon us, crying,
' Names : '
He, standing still, was clutch'd; but 1
began
To thrid the musky-circled mazes, wind
And double in and out the boles, and
race
By all the fountains : fleet I was of foot :
Before me shower'd the rose in flakes;
behind
I heard the puffd pursuer; at mine ear
Bubbled the nightingale and heeded
not.
And secret laughter tickled all my soul.
At last I hook'd my ankle in a vine,
That claspt the feet of a Mnemosyne,
And falling on my face was caught and
known.
They haled us to the Princess where
she sat
High in the hall : above her droop'd a
lamp,
And made the single jewel on her brow
Burn like the mystic fire on a mast-
head.
Prophet of storm : a handmaid on each
side
Bow'd toward her, combing out her long
black hair
Damp from the river; and close behind
her stood
Eight daughters of the plough, stronger
than men.
Huge women blowzed with health, and
wind, and rain,
And labour. Each was like a Druid
rock;
Or like a spire of land that stands apart
Cleft from the main, and wail'd about
with mews.
j86
THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY.
Then, as we came, the crowd dividing
clove
An advent to the throne : and there-
beside,
Half-naked as if caught at once from
bed
And tumbled on the purple footcloth, lay
The lily-shining child; and on the left,
Bow'd on her palms and folded up from
wrong.
Her round white shoulder shaken with
her sobs,
Melissa knelt; but Lady Blanche erect
Stood up and spake, an affluent orator.
* It was not thus, O Princess, in old
days :
You prized my counsel, lived upon my
lips:
I led you then to all the CastaHes;
I fed you with the milk of every Muse ;
I loved you like this kneeler, and you
me
Your second mother: those were gra-
cious times.
Then came your new friend : you began
to change —
I saw it and grieved — to slacken and to
cool;
Till taken with her seeming openness
You turn'd your warmer currents all to
her,
To me you froze : this was my meed for
all.
Yet I bore up in part from ancient love.
And partly that I hoped to win you back.
And partly conscious of my own deserts.
And partly that you were my civil head.
And chiefly you were born for something
great,
In which I might your fellow-worker be,
When time should serve; and thus a
noble scheme
Grew up from seed we two long since
had sown;
In us true growth, in her a Jonah's gourd.
Up in one night and due to sudden sun :
We took this palace ; but even from the
first
You stood in your own light and darken'd
mine.
What student came but that you planed
her path
To Lady Psyche, younger, not so wise,
A foreigner, and I your countrywoman,
I your old friend and tried, she new in all?
But still her lists were swell'd and mine
were lean;
Yet I bore up in hope she would be
known :
Then came these wolves : they knew her ;
they endured,
Long-closeted with her the yestermorn,
To tell her what they were, and she to
hear:
And me none told : not less to an eye
like mine
A lidless watcher of the public weal,
Last night, their mask was patent, and
my foot
Was to you : but I thought again : I fear'd
To meet a cold " We thank you, we shall
hear of it
From Lady Psyche : " you had gone to
her,
She told, perforce; and winning easy
grace,
No doubt, for slight delay, remain'd
among us
In our young nursery still unknown, the
stem
Less grain than touchwood, while my
honest heat
Were all miscounted as malignant haste
To push my rival out of place and power.
But public use required she should be
known;
And since my oath was ta'en for public
use,
I broke the letter qf it to keep the sense.
I spoke not then at first, but watch'd
them well,
Saw that they kept apart, no mischief
done;
And yet this day (tho' you should hate
me for it)
I came to tell you; found that you had
gone,
Ridd'n to the hills, she likewise : now, I
thought,
That surely she will speak ; if not, then I :
Did she? These monsters blazon'd what
they were.
According to the coarseness of their kind,
For thus I hear; and known at last (my
work)
THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY.
187
A.ncl full of cowardice and guilty shame,
I grant in her some sense of shame, she
flies;
And I remain on whom to wreak your
rage,
I, that have lent my life to build up yours,
I that have wasted here health, wealth,
and time.
And talent, I — you know it — I will not
boast :
Dismiss me, and I prophesy your plan.
Divorced from my experience, will be
chaff
P'or every gust of chance, and men will
say
We did not know the real light, but
chased
The wisp that flickers where no foot can
tread.'
She ceased : the Princess answer'd
• coldly, * Good :
Your oath is broken : we dismiss you : go.
For this lost lamb (she pointed to the
child)
Our mind is changed : we take it to our-
self.'
Thereat the Lady stretch'd a vulture
throat,
And shot from crooked lips a haggard
smile.
* The plan was mine. I built the nest,*
she said,
' To hatch the cuckoo. Rise ! ' and
stoop'd to updrag
Melissa : she, half on her mother propt,
Half-drooping from her, turn'd her face,
and cast
A liquid look on Ida, full of prayer,
Which melted Florian's fancy as she
hung,
A Niobean daughter, one arm out.
Appealing to the bolts of Heaven; and
while
We gazed upon her came a little stir
About the doors, and on a sudden rush'd
Among us, out of breath, as one pursued,
A woman-post in flying raiment. Fear
Stared in her eyes, and chalk'd her face,
and wing'd
Her transit to the throne, whereby she
fell
Delivering seal'd dispatches which the
Head
Took half-amazed, and in her lion's mood
Tore open, silent we with blind surmise
Regarding, while she read, till over brow
And cheek and bosom brake the wrath-
ful bloom
As of some fire against a stormy cloud.
When the wild peasant rights himself,
the rick
Flames, and his anger reddens in the
heavens;
For anger most it seem'd, while now her
breast.
Beaten with some great passion at htt-
heart.
Palpitated, her hand shook, and we heard
In the dead hush the papers that she held
Rustle : at once the lost lamb at her feet
Sent out a bitter bleating for its dam;
The plaintive cry jarr'd on her ire; she
crush'd
The scrolls together, made a sudden turn
As if to speak, but, utterance failing her.
She whirlVl them on to me, as who
should say
'Read,' and I read — two letters — one
her sire's.
* Fair daughter, when we sent the
Prince your way
We knew not your ungracious laws,
which learnt.
We, conscious of what temper you are
built,
Came all in haste to hinder wrong, but
fell
Into his father's hands, who has this
night,
You lying close upon his territory,
Slipt round and in the dark invested you,
And here he keeps me hostage for his
son.'
The second was my father's running
thus :
* You have our son : touch not a hair of
his head :
Render him up unscathed : give him your
hand :
Cleave to your contract : tho' indeed we
hear
You hold the woman is the better man:
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
A rampant heresy, such as if it spread
Would make all women kick against
their Lords
Thro' all the world, and which might
well deserve
That we this night should pluck your
palace down;
And we will do it, unless you send us
back
Our son, on the instant, whole.'
So far I read;
And then stood up and spoke impetu-
ously.
* O not to pry and peer on your reserve,
But led by golden wishes, and a hope
The child of regal compact, did I break
Your precinct; not a scorner of your sex
But venerator, zealous it should be
All that it might be: hear me, for I bear,
Tho' man, yet human, whatsoe'er your
wrongs.
From the flaxen curl to the gray lock a
life
Less mine than yours : my nurse would
tell me of you;
I babbled for you, as babies for the moon,
Vague brightness; when a boy, you
stoop'd to me
From all high places, lived in all fair
lights.
Came in long breezes rapt from inmost
south
And blown to inmost north; at eve and
dawn
With Ida, Ida, Ida, rang the woods;
The leader wildswan in among the stars
Would clang it, and lapt in wreaths of
glowworm light
The mellow breaker murmur'd Ida. Now,
Because I would have reach'd you, had
you been
Sphered up with Cassiopeia, or the en-
throned
Persephone in Hades, now at length,
hose winters of abeyance all worn out,
man I came to see you: but, indeed,
.)t in this frequence can I lend full
tongue,
) noble Ida, to those thoughts that wait
On you, their centre : let me say but this.
That many a famous man and woman,
town
And landskip, have I heard of, after seen
The dwarfs of presage : tho' when known,
there grew
Another kind of beauty in detail
Made them worth knowing; but in you
I found
My boyish dream involved and dazzled
down
And master'd, while 'that after-beauty
makes
Such head from act to act, from hour to
hour.
Within me, that except you slay me here.
According to your bitter statute-book,
I cannot cease to follow you, as they say
The seal does music; who desire you
more
Than growing boys their manhood; dy-
ing lips,
With many thousand matters left to do.
The breath of life; O more than poor
men wealth,
Than sick men health — yours, yours, not
mine — but half
Without you; with you, whole; and of
those halves
You worthiest; and howe'er you block
and bar
Your heart with system out from mine, I
hold
That it becomes no man to nurse despair,
But in the teeth of clench'd antagonisms
To follow up the worthiest till he die :
Yet that I came not all unauthorised
Behold your father's letter.'
On one knee
Kneeling, I gave -it, which she caught,
and dash'd
Unopen'd at her feet : a tide of fierce
Invective seem'd to wait behind her lips,
As waits a river level with the dam
Ready to burst and flood the world with
foam :
And so she would have spoken, but there
rose
A hubbub in the court of half the maids
Gather'd together : from the illumined hall
Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a
press
Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded
ewes.
And rainbow robes, and gems and gem-
like eyes.
THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY.
And gold and golden heads; they to and
fio
Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red,
some pale.
All open-niouth'd, all gazing to the light,
Some crying there was an army in the
land.
And some that men were in the very
walls.
And some they cared not; till a clamour
,grew
As of a new-world Babel, woman-built,
And worse-confounded : high above them
stood
The placid marble Muses, looking peace.
Not peace she look'd, the Head: but
rising up
Robed in the long night of her deep hair,
so
To the open window moved, remaining
there
Fixt like a beacon-tower above the waves
Of tempest, when the crimson-rolling eye
Glares ruin, and the wild birds on the
light
Dash themselves dead. She stretch'd
her arms and call'd
Across the tumult and the tumult fell.
' What fear ye, brawlers ? am not I
your Head?
On me, me, me, the storm first breaks:
/dare
All these male thunderbolts: what is it
ye fear?
Peace ! there are those to avenge us and
they come :
If not, — myself were like enough, O
girls,
To unfurl the maiden banner of our rights.
And clad in iron burst the ranks of war,
Or, falling, protomartyr of our cause.
Die : yet 1 blame you not so much for
fear;
Six thousand years of fear have made you
that.
From which I would redeem you: but
for those
That stir this hubbub — you and you — I
know
Your faces there in the crowd — to-morrow
morn
We hold a great convention : then shall
they
That love their voices more than duty,
learn
With whom they deal, dismiss'd in shame
to live
No wiser than their mothers, household
stuff.
Live chattels, mincers of each other's
fame,
Full of weak poison, turnspits for the
clown.
The drunkard's football, laughing-stocks
of Time,
Whose brains are in their hands and in
their heels,
But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to
thrum.
To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to
scour.
For ever slaves at home and fools abroad.'
She, ending, waved her hands : thereat
the crowd
Muttering, dissolved : then with a smile,
that look'd
A stroke of cruel sunshine on the cliff.
When all the glens are drown'd in azure
gloom
Of thunder-shower, she floated to us and
said :
*You have done well and like a
gentleman,
And like a prince : you have our thanks
for all :
And you look well too in your woman's
dress :
Well have you done and like a gentleman.
You saved our life: we owe you bitter.
thanks :
Better have died and spilt our bones in
the flood —
Then men had said — but now — What
hinders me
To take such bloody vengeance on you
both? —
Yet since our father — W^asps in our good
hive.
You would-be quenchers of the light to
be,
Barbarians, grosser than your native
bears —
190
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
0 would I had his sceptre for one hour !
You that have dared to break our bound,
and gtrll'd
Our servants, wrong'd and lied and
thwarted us —
/ wed with thee ! / bound by precontract
Your bride, your bondslave ! not tho' all
the gold
That veins the world were pack'd to
make your crown,
And every spoken tongue should lord
you. Sir,
Your falsehood and yourself are hateful
to us:
1 trample on your offers and on you :
Begone : we will not look upon you more.
Here, push them out at gates.'
In wrath she spake.
Then those eight mighty daughters of the
plough
Bent their broad faces toward us and
address'd
Their motion : twice I sought to plead
my cause,
But on my shoulder hung their heavy
hands,
The weight of destiny : so from her face
They push'd us, down the steps, and
thro' the court,
And with grim laughter thrust us out at
gates.
We cross'd the street and gain'd a petty
mound
Beyond it, whence we saw the lights and
heard
The voices murmuring. While I listen'd,
came
On a sudden the weird seizure and the
doubt :
I seem'd to move among a world of
ghosts;
The Princess with her monstrous woman-
guard.
The jest and earnest working side by side.
The cataract and the tumult and the kings
Were shadows ; and the long fantastic
night
With all its doings had and had not been,
And all things were and were not.
This went by
As strangely as it came, and on my spirits
Settled a gentle cloud of melancholy;
Not long; I shook it off; for spite ol
doubts
And sudden ghostly shadowings I was one
To whom the touch of all mischance but
came
As night to him that sitting on a hill
Sees the midsummer, midnight, Norway
sun
Set into sunrise; then we moved away.
Thy voice is heard thro' rolling drums.
That beat to battle where he stands;
Thy face across his fancy comes,
And gives the battle to his hands:
A moment, while the trumpets blow.
He sees his brood about thy knee;
The next, like fire he meets the foe,
And strikes him dead for thine and thee.
So Lilia sang: we thought her half
possess'd.
She struck such warbling fury thro' the
words ;
And, after, feigning pique at what she
call'd
The raillery, or grotesque, or false sub-
lime —
Like one that wishes at a dance to change
The music — clapt her hands and cried
for war.
Or some grand fight to kill and make an
end :
And he that next inherited the tale
Half turning to the broken statue, snid,
* Sir Ralph has got your colours : if I prove
Your knight, and fight your battle, what
for me?'
It chanced, her empty glove upon the
tomb
Lay by her like a model of her hand.
She took it and she flung it. * Fight,'
she said,
'And make us all we would be, great and
good.'
He knightlike in his cap instead of
casque,
A cap of Tyrol borrow'd from the hall.
Arranged the favour, and assumed the
Prince.
Now, scarce three paces measured from
the mound,
We stumliled on a stationary voice,
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY,
191
And 'Stand, who goes?' 'Two from
the palace,' I.
'The second two: they wait,' he said,
' pass on ;
His Highness wakes : ' and one, that
clash'd in arms.
By glimmering lanes and walls of canvas
led
Threading the soldier-city, till we heard
The drowsy folds of our great ensign
shake
From blazon'd lions o'er the imperial tent
Whispers of war.
Entering, the sudden light
Dazed me half-blind : I stood and seem'd
to hear,
As in a poplar grove when a light wind
wakes
A lisping of the innumerous leaf and dies,
Each hissing in his neighbour's ear; and
then
A strangled titter, out of which there
brake
On all sides, clamouring etiquette to
death.
Unmeasured mirth; while now the two
old kings
Began to wag their baldness up and
down.
The fresh young captains flash'd their
glittering teeth.
The huge bush-bearded Barons heaved
and blew,
And slain with laughter roll'd the gilded
Squire.
At length my Sire, his rough cheek
wet with tears.
Panted from weary sides, * King, you are
free !
We did but keep you surety for our son,
If this be he, — or a draggled mawkin,
thou.
That tends her bristled grunters in the
sludge : '
For I was drench'd with ooze, and torn
with briers,
More crumpled than a poppy from- the
sheath,
And all one rag, disprinced from head to
heel.
L hen some one sent beneath his vaulted
palm
A whisper'd jest to some one near him,
' Look,
He has been among his shado^vs.' * Satan
take
The old women and their shadows ! (thus
the King
Roar'd) make yourself a man to fight with
men.
Go: Cyril told us all.'
As boys that slink
From ferule and the trespass-chiding eye,
Away we stole, and transient in a trice
From what was left of faded woman-
slough
To sheathing splendovirs and the golden
scale
Of harness, issued in the sun, that now
Leapt from the dewy shoulders of the
Earth,
And hit the Northern hills. Here Cyril
met us.
A little shy at first, but by and by
We twain, with mutual pardon ask'd and
given
For stroke and song, resolder'd peace,
whereon
Follow'd his tale. Amazed he fled away
Thro' the dark land, and later in the night
Had come on Psyche weeping : * then we
fell
Into your father's hand, and there she
lies.
But will not speak, nor stir.'
He show'd a tent
A stone-shot off: we enter'd in, and there
Among piled arms and rough accoutre-
ments.
Pitiful sight, wrapp'd in a soldier's cloak,
Like some sweet sculpture draped from
head to foot.
And push'd by rude hands from its
pedestal,
All her fair length upon the ground she
lay :
And at her head a follower of the camp,
A charr'd and wrinkled piece of woman=
hood,
Sat watching like a watcher by the dead.
Then B'lorian knelt, and * Come,' he
whisper'd to her,
* Lift up your head, sweet sister : lie not
thus.
192
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
What have you done but right ? you could
not slay
Me, nor your prince : look up : be com-
forted :
Sweet is it to have done the thing one
ought,
When fall'n in darker virays.' And like-
wise I :
* Be comforted : have I not lost her too,
In whose least act abides the nameless
charm
That none has else for me ? ' She heard,
she moved,
She moan'd, a folded voice; and up she
sat.
And raised the cloak from brows as pale
and smooth
As those that mourn half-shrouded over
death
In deathless marble. ' Her,' she said,
'my friend —
Parted from her — betray'd her cause
and mine —
Where shall I breathe? why kept ye not
your faith?
O base and bad! what comfort? none
for me ! '
To whom remorseful Cyril, ' Yet I pray
Take comfort : live, dear lady, for your
child ! '
At which she lifted up her voice and cried.
'Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah, my
child,
My one sweet child, whom I shall see no
more !
For now will cruel Ida keep her back;
And either she will die from want of care,
Or sicken with ill-usage, when they say
The child is hers — for every little fault.
The child is hers; and they will beat my
girl
Remembering her mother : O my flower !
Or they will take her, they will make her
hard,
And she will pass me by in after-life
With some cold reverence worse than
were she dead.
Ill mother that I was to leave her there.
To lag behind, scared by the cry they
made.
The horror of the shame among them all :
But I will go and sit beside the doors,
And make a wild petition night and day,
Until they hate to hear me like a wind
Wailing for ever, till they open to me.
And lay my little blossom at my feet,
My babe, my sweet Aglaia, my one child :
And I will take her up and go my way,
And satisfy my soul with kissing her:
Ah ! what might that man not deserve of
me
Who gave me back my child?' *Be
comforted,'
Said Cyril, * you shall have it; ' but again
She veil'd her brows, and prone she sank,
and so
Like tender things that being caught feign
death.
Spoke not, nor stirr'd.
By this a murmur ran
Thro' all the camp and inward raced the
scouts
With rumour of Prince Arac hard at hand.
We left her by the woman, and without
Found the gray kings at parle : and ' Look
you,' cried
My father, 'that our compact be fulfiU'd :
You have spoilt this child; she laughs at
you and man :
She wrongs herself, her sex, and me, and
him :
But red-faced war has rods of steel and
fire;
She yields, or war.'
Then Gama turn'd to me :
* We fear, indeed, you spent a stormy
time
With our strange girl : and yet they say
that still
You love her. Give us, then, your mind
at large :
How say you, war or not ? '
* Not war, if possible,
O king,' I said, * lest from the abuse of
war.
The desecrated shrine, the trampled year,
The smouldering homestead, and the
household flower
Torn from the lintel — all the common
wrong —
A smoke go up thro' which I loom to her
Three times a monster : now she lightens
scorn
At him that mars her plan, but then
would hate
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY,
193
(And every voice she talk'd with ratify it,
And every face she look'd on justify it)
The general foe. More soluble is this
knot,
By gentleness than war. I want her love.
What were I nigher this altho' we dash'd
Your cities into shards with catapults,
She would not love; — or brought her
chain'd, a slave.
The lifting of whose eyelash is my lord,
Not ever would she love; but brooding
turn
The book of scorn, till all my flitting
chance
Were caught within the record of her
wrongs,
And crush'd to death : and rather, Sire,
than this
I would the old God of war himself were
dead,
Forgotten, rusting on his iron hills,
Rotting on some wild shore with ribs of
wreck,
Or like an old-world mammoth bulk'd in
ice, .
Not to be molten out.'
And roughly spake
My father, * Tut, you know them not, the
girls.
Boy, when I hear you prate I almost think
That idiot legend credible. Look vou,
Sir!
Man is the hunter; woman is his game :
The sleek and shining creatures of the
chase,
W^e hunt them for the beauty of their
skins;
They love us for it, and we ride them
down.
WheedHng and siding with them ! Out !
for shame !
Boy, there's no rose that's half so dear to
them
As he that does the thing they dare not do,
Breathing and sounding beauteous battle,
comes
With the air of the trumpet round him,
and leaps in
Among the women, snares them by the
score
Platter'd and fluster'd, wins, tho' dash'd
with death
• He reddens what he kisses : thus I won
Your mother, a good mother, a good wife,
Worth winning; but this firebrand —
gentleness
To such as her ! if Cyril spake her true.
To catch a dragon in a cherry net,
To trip a tigress with a gossamer,
Were wisdom to it.'
' Yea but Sire,' I cried,
* Wild natures need wise curbs. The
soldier? No:
What dares not Ida do that she should
prize
The soldier ? I beheld her, when she rose
The yesternight, and storming in extremes.
Stood for her cause, and flung defiance
down
Gagelike to man, and had not shunn'd the
death,
No, not the soldier's : yet I hold her, king,
True woman : but you clash them all in
one.
That have as many diffiferences as we.
The violet varies from the lily as far
As oak from elm ; one loves the soldier,
one
The silken priest of peace, one this, one
that,
And some unworthily; their sinless faith,
A maiden moon that sparkles on a sty.
Glorifying clown and satyr; whence they
need
More breadth of culture : is not Ida right?
They worth it? truer to the law within?
Severer in the logic of a life?
Twice as magnetic to sweet influences
Of earth and heaven? and she of whom
you speak,
My mother, looks as whole as some serene
Creation minted in the golden moods
Of sovereign artists; not a thought, a
touch.
But pure as lines of green that streak the
white
Of the first snowdrop's inner leaves; I^say,
Not like the piebald miscellany, man.
Bursts of great heart and slips in sensual
mire.
But whole and one : and take them all-
in-all.
Were we ourselves but half as good, as
kind.
As truthful, much that Ida claims as
right
194
THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY.
Had ne'er been mooted, but as frankly
theirs
As dues of Nature. To our point : not
war:
Lest I lose all.'
' Nay, nay, you spake but sense,'
Said Gama. * We remember love ourself
In our sweet youth ; we did not rate him
then
This red-hot iron to be shaped with blows.
You talk almost like Ida : she can talk ;
And there is something in it as you say :
But you talk kindlier : we esteem you for
it.—
He seems a gracious and a gallant Prince,
I would he had our daughter : for the
rest,
Our own detention, why, the causes
weigh'd,
Fatherly fears — you used us courteously —
We would do much to gratify your
Prince —
We pardon it; and for your ingress here
Upon the skirt and fringe of our fair
land.
You did but come as goblins in the night,
Nor in the furrow broke the ploughman's
head,
Nor burnt the grange, nor buss'd the
milking-maid.
Nor robb'd the farmer of his bowl of
cream :
But let your Prince (our royal word
upon it.
He comes back safe) ride with us to our
lines.
And speak with Arac: Arac's word is
thrice
As ours with Ida: something may be
done —
I know not what — and ours shall see us
friends.
You, likewise, our late guests, if so you
will,
Follow us: who knows? we four may
build some plan
Foursquare to opposition.'
Here he reach'd
White hands of farewell to my sire, who
growl'd
An answer which, half-muffled in his
beard,
Let so much out as gave us leave to go.
Then rode we with the old king across
the lawns
Beneath huge trees, a thousand rings oi
Spring
In every bole, a song on every spray
Of birds that piped their Valentines, and
woke
Desire in me to infuse my tale of love
In the old king's ears, who promised
help, and oozed
All o'er with honey'd answer as we rode
And blossom-flagrant slipt the heavy dews
Gather'd by night and peace with each
light air
On our mail'd heads : but other thoughts
than peace
Burnt in us, when we saw the embattled
squares.
And squadrons of the Prince, trampling
the flowers
With clamour : for among them rose a
cry
As if to greet the king; they made a
halt;
The horses yell'd; they clash'd their
arms; the drum
Beat; merrily-blowing shrill'd the mar-
tial fife;
And in the blast and bray of the long
horn
And serpent-throated bugle, undulated
The banner : anon to meet us lightly
pranced
Three captains out; nor ever had I seen
Such thews of men : the midmost and
the highest
Was Arac : all about his motion clung
The shadow of his'sister, as the beam
Of the East, that play'd upon them, made
them glance
Like those three stars of the airy Giant's
zone,
That glitter burnish'd by the frosty dark;
And as the fiery Sirius alters hue.
And bickers into red and emerald,
shone
Their morions, wash'd with morning, as
they came.
And I that prated peace, when first I
heard
War-music, felt the blind wildbeast of
force.
THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY.
195
Whose home is in the sinews of a man,
Stir in me as to strike : then took the
king
His three broad sons; with now a wan-
dering hand
And now a pointed finger, told them all :
A common light of smiles at our dis-
guise
Broke from their lips, and, ere the windy
jest
Had labour'd down within his ample
lungs,
The genial giant, Arac, roU'd himself
Thrice in the saddle, then burst out in
words.
* Our land invaded, 'sdeath ! and he
himself
Your captive, yet my father wills not
war:
And, ' 'sdeath ! myself, what care I, war
or no?
But then this question of your troth re-
mains :
And there's a downright honest meaning
in her;
She flies too high, she flies too high !
and yet
She ask'd but space and fairplay for her
scheme;
She prest and prest it on me — I myself,
What know I of these things? but, life
and soul !
I thought her half-right talking of^ her
wrongs ;
I say she flies too high, 'sdeath ! what of
that?
I take her for the" flower of woman-
kind.
And so I often told her, right or wrong,
And, Prince, she can be sweet to those
she loves,
And, right or wrong, I care not: this is
all,
I stand upon her side : she made me
swear it —
'Sdeath — and with solemn rites by
candle-light —
Swear by St. something — I forget her
name —
Her that talk'd down the fifty wisest
men;
She was a princess too; and so 1 swore.
Come, this is all; she will not: waive
your claim :
If not, the foughten field, what else, at
once
Decides it, sdeath ! against my father's
will.'
I lagg'd in answer, loth to render up
My precontract, and loth by brainless
war
To cleave the rift of difference deeper
yet;
Till one of those two brothers, half aside
And fingering at the hair about liis lip,
To prick us on to combat ' Like to like !
The woman's garment hid the woman's
heart.'
A taunt that clench'd his purpose like a
blow !
For fiery-short was Cyril's counter-scoff",
And sharp I answer'd, touch'd upon the
point
Where idle boys are cowards to their
shame,
'Decide it here : why not? we are three
to three.' •
Then spake the third, * But three to
tliree? no more?
No more, and in our noble sister's cause?
More, more, for honour: every captain
waits
Hungry for honour, angry for his king.
More, more, some fifty on a side, that
each
May breathe himself, and quick! by
overthrow
Of these or those, the question settled die.'
' Yea,' answer'd I, * for this wild
wreath of air.
This flake of rainbow flying on the
highest
Foam of men's deeds — this honour, if
ye will.
It needs must be for honour if at all :
Since, what decision? if we fail, we fail,
And if we win, we fail : she would not
keep
Her compact.' * 'Sdeath ! but we will
send to her,'
Said Arac, ' worthy reasons why she
should
196
THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY,
Bide by this issue : let our missive thro',
And you shall have her answer by the
word.'
• Boys ! ' shriek'd the old king, but
vainlier than a hen
To her false daughters in the pool; for
none
Regarded; neither seem'd there more to
say:
Back rode we to my father's camp, and
found
He thrice had sent a herald to the gates,
To learn if Ida yet would cede our claim.
Or Hy denial flush her babbling wells
With her own people's life : three times
he went :
The first, he blew and blew, but none
appear'd :
He batter'd at the doors; none came : the
next,
An awful voice within had warn'd him
thence :
The third, and those eight daughters of
the plough
Came sallying thro' • the gates, and
caught his hair.
And so belabour'd him on rib and cheek
They made him wild : not less one glance
he caught
Thro' open doors of Ida station'd there
Unshaken, clinging to her purpose, firm
Tho' compass'd by two armies and the
noise
Of arms; and standing like a stately Pine
Set in a cataract on an island-crag,
When storm is on the heights, and right
and left
Suck'd from the dark heart of the long
hills roll
The torrents, dash'd to the vale : and yet
her will
Bred will in me to overcome it or fall.
But when I told the king that I was
pledged
To fight in tourney for my bride, he
clash'd
His iron palms together with a cry;
Himself would tilt it out among the lads :
But overborne by all his bearclcd lords
With reasons drawn from age and state,
perforce
He yielded, wroth and red, with fierce
demur :
And many a bold knight started up in heat,
And sware to combat for my claim till
death.
All on this side the palace ran the field
Flat to the garden-wall : and likewise
here.
Above the garden's glowing blossom-belts,
A column'd entry shone and marble stairs,
And great bronze valves, emboss'd with
Tomyris
And what she did to Cyrus after fight.
But now fast barr'd : so here upon the flat
All that long morn the lists were hammer'd
up.
And all that morn the heralds to and fro.
With message and defiance, went and
came;
Last, Ida's answer, in a royal hand,.
But shaken here and there, and rolling
words
Oration-like. I kiss'd it and I read.
* O brother, you have known the pangs
we felt.
What heats of indignation when we heard
Of those that iron-cramp'd their women's
feet;
Of lands in which at the altar the poor
bride
Gives her harsh groom for bridal-gift a
scourge ;
Of living hearts that crack within the fire
Where smoulder their dead despots; and
of those, —
Mothers, — that, all prophetic pity, fling
Their pretty maids in the running flood,
and swoops
The vulture, beak and talon, at the heart
Made for all noble motion : and I saw
That equal baseness lived in sleeker times
With smoother men : the old leaven
leaven'd all :
Millions of throats would bawl for civil
rights.
No woman named : therefore I set my
face
Against all men, and lived but for mine
own.
Far off from men I built a fold for them :
I stored it full of rich memorial:
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
197
I fenced it round with gallant institutes,
And biting laws to scare the beasts of
prey
And prosper'd; till a rout of saucy boys
Brake on us at our books, and marr'd
our peace,
Mask'd like our maids, blustering I know
not what
Of insolence and love, some pretext held
Of baby troth, invalid, since my will
Seal'd not the bond — the striplings ! — for
their sport ! —
I tamed my leopards : shall I not tame
these ?
Or you? or I? for since you think m^
touch'd
In honour — what, I would not aught of
false —
Is not our cause pure? and whereas I
know
Your prowess, Arac, and what mother's
blood
You draw from, fight; you failing, I abide
What end soever : fail you will not. Still
Take not his life : he risk'd it for my own;
His mother lives : yet whatsoe'er you do,
Fight and fight well; strike and strike
home. O dear
Brothers, the woman's Angel guards you,
you
The sole men to be mingled with our
cause.
The sole men we shall prize in the after-
time,
Your very armour hallow'd, and your
statues
Rear'd, sung to, when, this gad-fly brush'd
aside,
We plant a ::olid foot into the Time,
And mould a generation strong to move
With claim on claim from right to right,
till she
Whose name is yoked with children's,
know herself;
And Knowledge in our own land make
her free.
And, ever following those two crowned
twins,
Commerce and conquest, shower the fiery
grain
Of freedom broadcast over all that orbs
Between the Northern and the Southern
Then came a postscript dash'd across
the rest.
* See that there be no traitors in your
camp :
We seem a nest of traitors — none to trust
Since our arms fail'd — this Egypt-plague
of men !
Almost our maids were better at their
homes,
Than thus man-girdled here : indeed I
think
Our chiefest comfort is the little child
Of one unworthy mother; which she left :
She shall not have it back: the chDd
shall grow
To prize the authentic mother of her mind.
I took it for an hour in mine own bed
This morning : there the tender orphan
hands
Felt at my heart, and seem'd to charm
from thence
The wrath I nursed against the world:
farewell.'
I ceased; he said, ' Stubborn, but she
may sit
Upon a king's right hand in thunder-
storms,
And breed up warriors ! See now, tho'
yourself
Be dazzled by the wildfire Love to sloughs
That swallow common sense, the spin-
dling king.
This Gama swamp'd in lazy tolerance.
When the man wants weight, the woman
takes it up.
And topples down the scales; but this is
fixt
As are the roots of earth and base of all;
Man for the field and woman for the
hearth:
Man for the sword and for the needle
she:
Man with the head and woman with the
heart:
Man to command and woman to obey;
All else confusion. Look you ! the gray
mare
Is ill to live with, when her whinny shrills
From tile to scullery, and her small good-
man
Shrinks in his arm-chair while the fires
of Hell
198
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
Mix with his hearth: but you — she's yet
a colt —
Take, break her : strongly groom'd and
straitly curb'd
She might not rank with those detestable
That let the bantling scald at home, and
brawl
Their rights or wrongs like potherbs in
the street.
They say she's comely; there's the fairer
chance :
/like her none the less for rating at her !
Besides, the woman wed is not as we,
But suffers change of frame. A lusty brace
Of twins mayweed her of her folly. Boy,
The bearing and the training of a child
Is woman's wisdom.'
Thus the hard old king:
I took my leave, for it was nearly noon :
I pored upon her letter which I held,
And on the little clause ' take not his
life : '
I mused on that wild morning in the
woods.
And on the ' Follow, follow, thou shalt
win: '
I thought on all the wrathful king had
said,
And how the strange betrothment was to
end :
Then I remember'd that burnt sorcerer's
curse
That one should fight with shadows and
should fall;
And like a flash the weird affection
came :
King, camp and college turn'd to hollow
shows;
I seem'd to move in old memorial tilts,
And doing battle with forgotten ghosts.
To dream myself the shadow of a dream :
And ere I woke it was the point of noon.
The lists were ready. Empanoplied and
plumed
We enter'd in, and waited, fifty there
Opposed to fifty, till the trumpet blared
At the barrier like a wild horn in a land
Of echoes, and a moment, and once
more
The trumpet, and again : at which* the
storm
Of galloping hoofs bare on the ridge of
spears
And riders front to front, until they
closed
In conflict with the crash of shivering
points.
And thunder. Yet it seem'd a dream,
I dream'd
Of fighting. On his haunches rose the
steed.
And into fiery splinters leapt the lance,
And out of stricken helmets sprang the
fire.
Part sat like rocks : part reel'd but kept
their seats :
Part roU'd on the earth and rose again
and drew:
Part stumbled mixt with floundering
horses. Down
From those two bulks at Arac's side, and
down
From Arac's arm, as from a giant's flail,
The large blows rain'd, as here and
everywhere
He rode the mellay, lord of the ringing
lists.
And all the plain, — ^ brand, mace, and
shaft, and shield, —
Shock'd, like an iron-clanging anvil
bang'd
With hammers; till* I thought, can this
be he
From Gama's dwarfish loins? if this be soj
The mother makes us most — and in my
dream
I glanced aside, and saw the palace-front
Alive with fluttering scarfs and ladies'
eyes.
And highest, among the statues, statue-
like,
Between a cymbal'd Miriam and a Jael,
With Psyche's babe, was Ida watching us,
A single band of gold about her hair,
Like a Saint's glory up in heaven : but she
No saint — inexorable — no tenderness —
Too hard, too cruel: yet she sees me
fight,
Yea, let her see me fall ! with that I
drave
Among the thickest and bore down a
Prince,
And Cyril, one. Yea, let me make my
dream
All that I would. But that large-
moulded man,
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
199
His visage all agrin as at a wake,
Made at me thro' the press, and, stagger-
ing back
With stroke on stroke the horse and
horseman, came
As comes a pillar of electric cloud,
Playing the roofs and sucking upthe drains,
And shadowing down the champaign till
it strikes
On a wood, and takes, and breaks, and
cracks, and splits.
And twists the grain with such a roar
that Earth
Reels, and the herdsmen cry; for every-
thing
Gave way before him : only Florian, he
That loved me closer than his own right
eye,
Thrust in between; but Arac rode him
down :
And Cyril seeing it, push'd against the
Prince,
With Psyche's colour round his helmet,
tough.
Strong, supple, sinew-corded, apt at arms;
But tougher, heavier, stronger, he that
smote
And threw him : last I spurr'd; I felt my
veins
Stretch with fierce heat; a moment hand
to hand,
And sword to sword, and horse to horse
we hung.
Till I struck out and shouted; the blade
glanced,
I did but shear a feather, and dream and
truth
Flow'd from me; darkness closed me;
and I fell.
Home they brought her warrior dead:
She nor swoon'd, nor utter'd cry:
All her maidens, watching, said,
' She must weep or she will die.*
Then they praised him, soft and low,
Call'd him worthy to be loved,
Truest friend and noblest foe ;
Yet she neither spoke nor moved.
Stole a maiden from her place.
Lightly to the warrior stept,
Took the face-clotli from the face;
Yet she neither moved nor wept.
Rose a nurse of ninety years,
Set his child upon her knee —
Like summer tempest came her tears —
' Sweet my child, I live for thee.'
My dream had never died or lived again.
As in some mystic middle state I lay;
Seeing I saw not, hearing not I heard:
Tho', if I saw not, yet they told me all
So often that I speak as having seen.
For so it seem'd, or so they said to me,
That all things grew more tragic and
more strange;
That when our side was vanquish'd and
my cause
For ever lost, there went up a great cry.
The Prince is slain. My father heard
and ran
In on the lists, and there unlaced my
casque
And grovell'd on my body, and after him
Came Psyche, sorrowing for Aglaia.
But high upon the palace Ida stood
With Psyche's babe in arm : there on
the roofs
Like that great dame of Lapidoth she
sang. •
' Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n : the seed,
The little seed they laugh'd at in the dark,
Has risen and cleft the soil, and grown a bulk
Of spanless girth, that lays on every side
A thousand arms and rushes to the Sun.
' Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: they
came ;
The leaves were wet with women's te&rs: they
heard
The noise of songs they would not understand :
They mark'd it with the red cross to the fall,
And would hav- -trown it, and. are fall'n them-
selves.
Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n:
came.
they
The woodmen with their axes: lo the tree!
But we will make it faggots for the hearth,
And shape it plank and beam ior roof and floor.
And boats and bridges for the use of men.
'Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: they
struck ;
With their own blows they hurt themselves, nor
knew
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
There dwelt an iron nature in the grain :
The glittering axe was broken in their arms,
Their arms were shattered to the shoulder blade,
* Our enemies have fall'n, but this shall grow
A night of Summer from the heat, a breadth
Of Autumn, dropping fruits of power: and roU'd
vVith music in the growing breeze of Time,
The tops shall strike from star to star, the fangs
Shall move the stony bases of the world.
'And now, O maids, behold our
sanctuary
Is violate, our laws broken : fear we not
To break them more . in their behoof,
whose arms
Champion'd our cause and won it with a
day
Blanch'd in our annals, and perpetual feast.
When dames and heroines of the golden
year
Shall strip a hundred hollows bare of
Spring,
To rain an April of ovation round
Their statues, borne aloft, the three : but
come,
We will be liberal, since our rights are
won.
Let them not lie in the tents with coarse
mankind,
111 nurses; but descend, and proffer these
The brethren of our blood and cause, that
there
Lie bruised and maim'd, the tender
ministries
Of female hands and hospitality.'
She spoke, and with the babe yet in
her arms,
Descending, burst the great bronze valves,
and led
A hundred maids in train across the Park.
Some cowl'd, and some bare-headed, on
they came.
Their feet in flowers, her loveliest: by
them went
The enamour'd air sighing, and on their
curls
From the high tree the blossom wavering
fell.
And over them the tremulous isles of light
Slided, they moving under shade : but
Blanche
At distance follow'd : so they came : anon
Thro' open field into the lists they wound
Timorously; and as the leader of the
herd
That holds a stately fretwork to the
Sun,
And follow'd up by a hundred airy does.
Steps with a tender foot, light as on air.
The lovely, lordly creature floated on
To where her wounded brethren lay;
there stay'd;
Knelt on one knee, — the child on one, —
and prest
Their h'^nds, and call'd them dear de-
liverers,
And happy warriors, and immortal names.
And said : ' You shall not He in the tents
but here.
And nursed by those for whom you
fought, and served
With female hands and hospitality.'
Then, whether moved by this, or was
it chance.
She past my way. Up started from my
side
The old lion, glaring with his whelpless
eye.
Silent; but when she saw me lying stark,
Dishelm'd and mute, and motionlessly
pale.
Cold ev'n to her, she sigh'd; and when
she saw
The haggard father's face and reverend
beard
Of grisly twine, all dabbled with the blood
Of his own son, shudder'd, a twitch of
pain
Tortured her mouth, and o'er her fore-
head past
A shadow, and her hue changed, and she
said:
* He saved my life : my brother slew him
for it.'
No more : at which the king in bitter
scorn
Drew from my neck the painting and the
tress.
And held them up : she saw them, and a
day
Rose from the distance on her memory.
When the good Queen, her mother, shore
the tress
With k isses, ere the days of Lady Blanche :
THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY.
And then once more she look'd at my
pale face :
Till understanding all the foolish work
Of Fancy, and the bitter close of all,
Her iron will was broken in her mind;
Her noble heart was molten in her breast ;
She bow'd, she set the child on the earth;
she laid
A feeling finger on my brows, and pres-
ently
"O Sire,' she said, 'he lives: he is not
dead :
O let me have him with my brethren here
In our own palace : we will tend on him
Like one of these ; if so, by any means.
To lighten this great clog of thanks, that
make
Our progress falter to the woman's goal.'
She said : but at the happy word ' he
lives,*
My father stoop'd, re-father'd o'er my
wounds.
So those two foes above my fallen life,
With brow to brow like night and evening
mixt
Their dark and gray, while Psyche ever
stole
A little nearer, till the babe that by us,
Half-lapt in glowing gauze and golden
brede,
Lay like a new-fall'n meteor on the grass,
Uncared for, spied its mother and began
A blind and babbling laughter, and to
dance
Its body, and reach its fatling innocent
arms
And lazy lingering fingers. She the appeal
Brook'd not, but clamouring out ' Mine —
mine — not yours.
It is not yours, but mine : give me the
child,'
Ceased all on tremble : piteous was the
cry :
So stood the unhappy mother open-
mouth'd,
And turn'd each face her way : wan was
her cheek
With hollow watch, her blooming mantle
torn,
Red grief and mother's hunger in her eye,
And down dead-heavy sank her curls, and
half
The sacred mother's bosom, panting, burst
The laces toward her babe; but she nor
cared
Nor knew it, clamouring on, till Ida heard,
Look'd up, and rising slowly from me,
stood
Erect and silent, striking with her glance
The mother, me, the child; but he that
lay
Beside us, Cyril, batter'd as he was,
Trail'd himself up on one knee: then he
drew
Her robe to meet his lips, and down she
look'd
At the arm'd man sideways, pitying as it
seem'd,
Or self-involved; but when she learnt his
face,
Remembering his ill-omen'd song, arose
Once more thro' all her height, and o'er
him grew
Tall as a figure lengthen'd on the sand
When the tide ebbs in sunshine, and he
said:
* O fair and strong and terrible !
Lioness
That with your long locks play the Lion's
mane !
But Love and Nature, these are two more
terrible
And stronger. See, your foot is on our
necks,
We vanquish'd, you the Victor of your
will.
What would you more? give her the
child ! remain
Orb'd in your isolation : he is dead.
Or all as dead : henceforth we let you be :
Win you the hearts of women; and
beware
Lest, where you seel: the common love
of these.
The common hate with the revolving
wheel
Should drag you down, and some great
Nemesis
Break from a darken'd future, crown'd
with fire,
And tread you out for ever: but how-
soe'er
i-ix'd in yourself, never in your own arms
To hold your own, deny not hers to her,
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
Give her the child ! 0 if, I say, you keep
To meet it, with an eye that swum in
One pulse that beats true woman, if you
thanks;
loved
Then felt it sound and whole from head
The breast that fed or arm that dandled
to foot,
you,
And hugg'd and never hugg'd it close
Or own one port of sense not flint to
enough,
prayer,
And in her hunger mouth'd and mum-
Give her the child ! or if you scorn to
bled it,
lay it,
And hid her bosom with it; after that
Yourself, in hands so lately claspt with
Put on more calm and added suppliantly :
yours.
Or speak to her, your dearest, her one
' We two were friends : I go to mine
fault
own land
The tenderness, not yours, that could not
For ever : find some other : as for me
kill,
I scarce am fit for your great plans : yet
Give tneKl: I will give it her.'
speak to me,
He said :
Say one soft word and let me part for-
At first her eye with slow dilation roll'd
given.'
Dry flame, she listening; after sank and
sank
But Ida spoke not, rapt upon the child.
And, into mournful twilight mellowing.
Then Arac. ' Ida — 'sdeath ! you blame
dwelt
the man;
Full on the child; she took it: 'Pretty
You wrong yourselves — the woman is so
bud!
hard
Lily of the vale ! half open'd bell of the
Upon the woman. Come, a grace to me !
woods !
I am your warrior: I and mine have
Sole comfort of my dark hour, when a
fought
world
Your battle : kiss her; take her hand, she
Of traitorous friend and broken system
weeps :
made
'Sdeath ! I would sooner fight thrice o'er
No purple in the distance, mystery,
than see it.'
Pledge of a love not to be mine, farewell;
These men are hard upon us as of old,
But Ida spoke not, gazing on the
We two must part: and yet how fain
ground;
was I
And reddening in the furrows of his chin.
To dream thy cause embraced in mine,
And moved beyond his custom, Gama
to think
said :
I might be something to thee, when I
felt
'I've heard that there is iron in the
Thy helpless warmth about my barren
blood,
breast
And I believe it. Not one word? not
In the dead prime : but may thy mother
one?
prove
Whence drew you this steel temper? not
As true to thee as false, false, false to me !
from me,
And, if thou needs must bear the yoke.
. Not from your mother, now a saint with
I wish it
saints.
Gentle as freedom ' — here she kiss'd it :
She said you had a heart — I heard her
then —
say it —
'All good go with thee ! take it, Sir,' and so
"Our Ida has a heart"— just ere she
Laid the soft babe in his hard-mailed
died —
hands,
" But see that some one with authority
Who turn'd half-round to Psyche as she
Be near her still " and I — I sought for
sprang
ope —
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
203
All people said she had authority —
The Lady Blanche : much profit ! Not
one word ;
No ! tho' your father sues : see how you
stand
Stiff as Lot's wife, and all the good knights
maim'd,
I trust that there is no one hurt .to death.
For your wild whim : and was it then for
this,
Was it for this we gave our palace up,
Where we withdrew from summer heats
and state, •
And had our wine and chess beneath the
planes,
And many a pleasant hour with her that's
gone,
Ere you were born to vex us? Is it kind?
Speak to her I say : is this not she of
whom,
When first she came, all flush'd you said
to me
Now had you got a friend of your own
age,
Now could you share your thought; now
should men see
Two women faster welded in one love
Than pairs of wedlock; she you walk'd
with, she
You talk'd with, whole nights long, up in
the tower.
Of sine and arc, spheroid and azimuth,
And right ascension. Heaven knows what ;
and now
A word, but one, one little kindly word,
Not one to spare her : out upon you,
flint!
You love nor her, nor me, nor any; nay.
You shame your mother's judgment too.
Not one?
You will not? well — no heart have you,
or such
As fancies like the vermin in a nut
Have fretted all to dust and bitterness.'
So said the small king moved beyond his
wont.
But Ida stood nor spoke, drain'd of
her force
By many a varying influence and so long.
Down thro' her limbs a drooping languor
wept :
Her head a little bent; and on her mouth
A doubtful smile dwelt like a clouded
moon
In a still water : then brake out my sire,
Lifting his grim head from my wounds.
' O you.
Woman, whom we thought woman even
now,
And were half fool'd to let you tend our
son,
Because he might have wish'd it — but
we see
The accomplice of your madness unfor-
given.
And think that you might mix his draught
with death,
When your skies change again : the
rougher hand
Is safer : on to the tents : take up the
Princ^.'
He rose, and while each ear was prick'd
to attend
A tempest, thro' the cloud that dimm'd
her broke
A genial warmth and light once more,
and shone
Thro' glittering drops on her sad friend.
'Come hither.
0 Psyche,' she cried out, ' embrace me,
come,
Quick while I melt; make reconcilement
sure
With one that cannot keep her mind an
hour :
Come to the hollow heart they slander so !
Kiss and be friends, like children being
chid!
/seem no more: /want forgiveness too:
1 should have had to do with none but
maids.
That have no links with men. Ah false
but dear,
Dear traitor, too much loved, why? —
why? — Yet see.
Before these kings we embrace you yet
once more
With all forgiveness, all oblivion,
And trust, not love, you less.
And now, O sire.
Grant me your son, to nurse, to wait
upon him.
Like mine own brother. For my debt
to him.
204
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
This nightmare weight of gratitude, I
know it;
Taunt me no more : yourself and yours
shall have
Free adit; we will scatter all our maids
Till happier times each to her proper
hearth :
What use to keep them here — now?
grant my prayer.
Help, father, brother, help; speak to
the king :
Thaw this male nature to some touch
of that
Which kills me with myself, and drags
me down
From my fixt height to mob me up with all
The soft and milky rabble of womankind,
Poor weakling ev'n as they are.'
Passionate tears
Follow'd : the king replied not : Cyril
said:
* Your brother, Lady, — Florian, — ask
for him
Of your great Head — for he is wounded
too —
That you may tend upon him with the
prince/
* Ay so,' said Ida with a bitter smile,
* Our laws are broken : let him enter too.'
Then Violet, she that sang the mournful
song.
And had a cousin tumbled on the plain,
Petition'd too for him. ' Ay so,' she said,
* I stagger in the stream : 1 cannot keep
My heart an eddy from the brawling
hour:
We break our laws with ease, but let
it be.'
*Ayso?' said Blanche: * Amazed am I
to hear
Your Highness: but your Highness
breaks with ease
The law your Highness did not make :
'twas I.
I had been wedded wife, I knew man-
kind.
And block'd them out; but these men
came to woo
Your Highness — verily I think to win.'
So she, and turn'd askance a wintry
eye:
But Ida with a voice, that like a bell
ToU'd by an earthquake in a trembling
tower.
Rang ruin, answer'd full of grief and
scorn.
' Pling our doors wide ! all, all, not
one, but all,
Not only he, but by my mother's soul.
Whatever man lies wounded, friend or
foe,
Shall enter, if he will. Let our girls flit.
Till the storm die ! but had you stood
by us, *
The roar that breaks the Pharos from
his base
Had left us rock. She fain would sting
us too,
But shall not. Pass, and mingle with
your likes.
We brook no further insult but are gone.'
She turn'd ; the very nape of her white
neck
Was rosed with indignation : but the
Prince
Her brother came; the king her father
charm'd
Her wounded soul with words : nor did
mine own
Refuse her proffer, lastly gave his hand.
Then us they lifted up, dead weights,
and bare
Straight to the doors : to them the doors
gave way
Groaning, and in the Vestal entry shriek'd
The virgin marble under iron heels :
And on they moved and gain'd the hall,
and there
Rested : but great the crush was, and
each base.
To left and right, of those tall columns
drown'd
In silken fluctuation and the swarm
Of female whisperers : at the further end
Was Ida by the throne, the two great
cats
Close by her, like supporters on a shield,
Bow-back'd with fear : but in the centre
stood
The common men with rolling eyes;
amazed
They glared upon the women, and aghast
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
205
The women stared at these, all silent,
save
When armour clash'd or jingled, while
the day,
Descending, struck athwart the hall, and
shot
A flying splendour out d brass and steel,
That o'er the statues leapt from head
to head,
Now fired an angry Pallas on the helm.
Now set a wrathful Dian's moon on flame,
And now and then an echo started up,
And shuddering fled from room to room,
and died
Of fright in far apartments.
Then the voice
Of Ida sounded, issuing ordinance :
And me they bore up the broad stairs,
and thro'
The long-laid galleries past a hundred
doors
To one deep chamber shut from sound,
and due
To languid limbs and sickness; left me
in it;
And others otherwhere they laid; and all
That afternoon a sound arose of hoof
And chariot, many a maiden passing
home
Till happier times; but some were left
of those
Held sagest, and the great lords out and
in,
From those two hosts that lay beside
the walls,
Walk'd at their will, and everything was
changed.
VII.
Ask me no more : the moon may draw the sea;
The cloud may stoop from heaven and take
the shape
With -.old to fold, of mountain or of cape;
But O too fond, when have I answer'd thee?
Ask me no more.
Ask me no more: what answer should I give?
I love not hollow cheek or faded eye:
Yet, O my friend, I will not have thee die !
Ask ir.e no more, lest I should bid thee live;
Ask me no more.
Ask me no more; thy fate and mine are seal'd:
I strove against the stream and all in vain:
Let the great river take me to the main:
No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield;
Ask me no more.
So was their sanctuary violated,
So their fair college turn'd to hospital;
At first with all confusion : by and by
Sweet order lived again with other laws:
A kindlier influence reign'd; and every-
where
Low voices with the ministering hand
Hung round the sick : the maidens came,
they talk'd.
They sang, they read: till she not fair
began
To gather light, and she that was, be-
came
Her former beauty treble; and to and fro
With books, with flowers, with Angel
ofiices.
Like creatures native unto gracious act,
And in their own clear element, they
moved.
But sadness on the soul of Ida fell,
And hatred of her weakness, blent with
shame.
Old studies fail'd; seldom she spoke:
but oft.
Clomb to the roofs, and gazed alone for
hours
On that disastrous leaguer, swarms of men
Darkening her female field : void was
her use.
And she as one that climbs a peak to gaze
O'er land and main, and sees a great
black cloud
Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of
night.
Blot out the slope of sea from verge to
shore,
And suck the blinding splendour from
the sand.
And quenching lake by lake and tarn
by tarn
Expunge the world : so fared she gazing
there;
So blacken'd all her world in secret,
blank
And waste it seem'd and vain; till down
she came,
And found fair peace once more amoii^
the sick.
206
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
And twilight dawn'dj and morn by
morn the lark
Shot up and shrill'd in flickering gyres,
but I
Lay silent in the muffled cage of life :
And twilight gloom'd ; and broader-grown
the bowers
Drew the great night into themselves,
and Heaven,
Star after star, arose and fell; but I,
Deeper than those weird doubts could
reach me, lay
Quite sunder'd from the moving Universe,
Nor knew what eye was on me, nor the
hand
That nursed me, more than infants in
their sleep.
But Psyche tended Florian : with her
oft,
Melissa came ; for Blanche had gone, but
left
Her child among us, willing she should
keep
Court-favour : here and there the small
bright head,
A light of healing, glanced about the
couch.
Or thro' the parted silks the tender face
Peep'd, shining in upon the wounded'man
With blush and smile, a medicine in
themselves
To wile the length from languorous hours,
and draw
The sting from pain ; nor seem'd it strange
that soon
He rose up whole, and those fair charities
Join'd at her side; nor stranger seem'd
that hearts
So gentle, so employ'd, should close in
love,
Than when two dewdrops on the petal
shake
To the same sweet air, and tremble deeper
down,
And slip at once all-fragrant into one.
Less prosperously the second suit ob-
tain'd
At first with Psyche. Not tho' Blanche
had sworn
That after that dark night among the
fields
She needs must wed him for her own
good name;
Not tho' he built upon the babe restored;
Nor tho' she liked him, yielded she, but
fear'd
To incense the Head once more; till on
a day
When Cyril pleaded, Ida came behind
Seen but of Psyche : on her foot she hung
A moment, and she heard, at which her
face
A little flush'd, and she past on ; but each
Assumed from thence a half- consent in-
volved
In stillness, plighted troth, and were at
peace.
Nor only these : Love in the sacred
halls
Held carnival at will, and flying struck
With showers of random sweet on maid
and man.
Nor did her father cease to press my claim,
Nor did mine own, now reconciled; nor
yet
Did those twin brothers, risen again and
whole ;
Nor Arac, satiate with his victory.
But I lay still, and with me oft she sat:
Then came a change; for sometimes I
would catch
Her hand in wild delirium, gripe it hard,
And fling it like a viper off, and shriek
* You are not Ida; ' clasp it once again,
And call her Ida, tho' 1 knew her not.
And call her sweet, as if in irony.
And call her hard and cold which seem'd
a truth :
And still she fear'd that I should lose my
mind.
And often she believed that I should die :
Till out of long frustration of her care,
And pensive tendance in the all-weary
noons,
And watches in the dead, the dark, when
clocks
Throbb'd thunder thro' the palace floors,
or call'd.
On flying Time from all their silver
tongues —
And out of memories of her kindlier days.
And sidelong glances at my father's grief,
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
207
And at the happy lovers heart in heart —
And out of hauntings of my spoken love,
And lonely listenings to my mutter'd
dream,
And often feeling of the helpless hands,
And wordless broodings on the wasted
cheek —
From all a closer interest flourish'd up,
Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to
these.
Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with
tears
By some cold morning glacier; frail at
first
And feeble, all unconscious of itself.
But such as gather'd colour day by day.
Last I woke sane, but well-nigh close
to death
For weakness: it was evening: silent
light
Slept on the painted walls, wherein were
wrought
Two grand designs; for on one side arose
The women up in wild revolt, and storm'd
At the Oppian law. Titanic shapes, they
cramm'd
The forum, and half-crush'd among the
rest
A dwarf-like Cato cower'd. On the other
side
Hortensia spoke against the tax; behind,
A train of dames : by axe and eagle sat,
With all their foreheads drawn in Roman
scowls,
And half the wolf's-milk curdled in their
veins.
The fierce triumvirs; and before them
paused
Hortensia pleading : angry was her face.
I saw the forms : I knew not where I
was:
They did but look like hollow shows;
nor more
Sweet Ida: palm to palm she sat: the
dew
Dwelt in her eyes, and softer all her shape
And rounder seem'd: I moved: Isigh'd:
a touch
Came round my wrist, and tears upon my
hand:
Then all for languor and self-pity ran
Mine down my face, and with what life I
had,
•And like a flower that cannot all unfold,
So drench'd it is with tempest, to the sun,
Yet, as it may, turns toward him, I on her
Fixt my faint eyes, and utter'd whisper-
ingly :
* If you be, what I think you, some
sweet dream,
I would but ask you to fulfil yourself:
But if you be that Ida whom I knew,
I ask you nothing : only, if a dream,
Sweet dream, be perfect. I shall die
to-night.
Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die.'
I could no more, but lay like one in
trance.
That hears his burial talk'd of by his
friends.
And cannot speak, nor move, nor make
one sign.
But lies and dreads his doom. She turn'd ;
she paused;
She stoop'd; and out of languor leapt a
cry;
Leapt fiery Passion from the brinks of
death ;
And I believed that in the living world
My spirit closed with Ida's at the lips^
Till back I fell, and from mine arms she
rose
Glowing all over noble shame ; and all
Her falser self slipt from her like a robe,
And left her woman, lovelier in her mood
Than in her mould that other, when she
came
From barren deeps to conquer all with
love;
And down the streaming crystal dropt;
and she
Far- fleeted by the purple island-sides.
Naked, a double light in air and wave.
To meet her Graces, where they declc'd
her out
For worship without end ; nor end of mine.
Stateliest, for thee ! but mute she glided
forth.
Nor glanced behind her, and I sank and
slept,
Fill'd thro' and thro' with Love, a happjf
sleep.
208
THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY.
Deep in the night I woke : she, near
me, held
A volume of the Poets of her land :
There to herself, all in low tones, she
read.
' Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:
The fire-fly wakens: waken thou with me.
Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.
Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars.
And all thy heart lies open unto me.
Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.
Now folds the lily ^11 her sweetness up.
And slips into the bosom of the lake:
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.'
I heard her turn the page; she found
a small
Sweet Idyl, and once more, as low, she
read :
' Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain
height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang)
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
Acd come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down
And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
Or nand in hand with Plenty in the maize.
Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
With Death and Morning on the silver horns,
Nor wilt ihou snare him in the white ravine.
Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice,
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors:
But follow; let the torrent dance thee down
To find him in the valley; let the wild
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dan,gling water-smoke,
That like a broken purpose waste in air:
So waste not thou ; but come ; for all the vales
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth
Arise to thee; the children call, and I
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn.
The moan of doves in immemorial elms.
And murmuring of innumerable bees.'
So she low-toned; while with shut
eyes I lay
Listening; then look'd. Pale was the
perfect face;
The bosom with long sighs labour'd; and
meek
Seem'd the full lips, and mild the lumi-
nous eyes,
And the voice trembled and the hand.
She said
Brokenly, that she knew it, she had fail'd
In sweet humility; had fail'd in all;
That all her labour was but as a block
Left in the quarry; but she still were loth,
She still were loth to yield herself to one
That wholly scorn'd to help their equal
rights
Against the sons of men, and barbarous
laws.
She pray'd me .not to judge their cause
from her
That wrong'd it, sought far less for truth
than power
In knowledge: something wild within
her breast,
A greater than all knowledge, beat her
down.
And she had nursed me there from week
to week :
Much had she learnt in little time. In
part
It was ill counsel had misled the girl
To vex true hearts: yet was she but a
girl —
*Ah fool, and made myself a Queen of
farce !
When comes another such ? never, I think.
Till the Sun drop, dead, from the signs.'
Her voice
Choked, and her forehead sank upon her
hands.
And her great heart thro' all the faultful
Past
Went sorrowing in a pause I dared not
break ;
Till notice of a change in the dark world
Was hspt about the acacias, and a bird,
That early woke to feed her little ones,
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
209
Sent from a dew^ breast a cry for light:
She moved, and at her feet the volume
fell.
'Blame not thyself too much,' I said,
' nor blame
Too much the sons of men and barbarous
lav/s;
These were the rough ways of the world
till now.
Henceforth thou hast n, helper, me, that
know
The woman's cause is man's: they rise
or 'sink
Together, dwarf 'd or godlike, bond or
free:
For she that out of Lethe scales with
man
The shining steps of Nature, shares with
man
His nights, his days, moves with him to
one goal,
Stays all the fair young planet in her
hands —
If she be small, slight-natured, miserable,
How shall men grow? but work no more
alone !
Our place is much : as far as in us lies
We two will serve them both in aiding
her —
Will clear away the parasitic forms
That seem to keep her up but drag her
down —
Will leave her space to burgeon out of
all
Within her — let her make herself her own
To give or keep, to live and learn and be
All that not harms distinctive womanhood.
For woman is not undevelopt man.
But diverse : could we make her as the
man.
Sweet Love were slain : his dearest bond
is this.
Not like to like, but like in difference.
Yet in the long years liker must they grow ;
The man be more of woman, she of man;
He gain in sweetness and in moral height.
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw
the world ;
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward
care,
Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind;
Till at the last she set herself to man,
Like perfect music unto noble words;
And so these twain, upon the skirts of
Time,
Sit side by side, fuU-summ'd in all their
powers.
Dispensing harvest, so\ving the To-be,
Self-reverent each and reverencing each.
Distinct in individualities.
But like each other ev'n as those who love.
Then comes the statelier Eden back to
men :
Then reign the world's great bridals,
chaste and calm :
Then springs the crowning race of human-
kind.
May these things be ! '
Sighing she spoke, * I fear
They will not.'
' Dear, but let us type them now
In our own lives, and this proud watch-
word rest
Of equal; seeing either sex alone
Is half itself, and in true marriage lies
Nor equal, nor unequal : each fulfils
Defect in each, and always thought in
thought,
Purpose in purpose, will in will, they
grow,
The single pure and perfect animal,
The two-cell'd heart beating, with one
full stroke,
Life.'
And again sighing she spoke : * A
dream
That once was mine ! what woman
taught you this?'
* Alone,' I said, ' from earlier than I
know,
Immersed in rich foreshadowings of the
world,
I loved the woman : he, that doth not,
lives
A drowning life, besotted in sweet self.
Or pines in sad experience worse than
death.
Or keeps his wing'd affections dipt with
crime :
Yet was there one thro' whom I loved
her, one
Not learned, save in gracious household
ways.
Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants,
2IO
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.
No Angel, but a dearer being, all dipt
In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise,
Interpreter between the Gods and men,
Who look'd all native to her place, and
yet
On tiptoe seem'd to touch upon a sphere
Too gross to tread, and all male minds
perforce
Sway'd to her from their orbits as they
moved,
And girdled her with music. Happy he
With such a mother ! faith in woman-
kind
Beats with his blood, and trust in all
things high
Comes easy to him, and tho' he trip and
fall
He shall not blind his soul with clay.'
' But I,'
Said Ida, tremulously, * so all unlike —
It seems you love to cheat yourself with
words :
This mother is your model. I have
heard
Of your strange doubts : they well might
be : I seem
A mockery to my own self. Never,
Prince;
You cannot love me.'
* Nay but thee,' I said,
• From yearlong poring on thy pictureid
eyes,
Ere seen I loved, and loved thee seen,
and saw
Thee woman thro' the crust of iron
moods
That mask'd thee from men's reverence
up, and forced
Sweet love on pranks of saucy boyhood :
now,
Giv'n back to life, to life indeed, thro'
thee,
Indeed I love : the new day comes, the
light
Dearer for night, as dearer thou for faults
Lived over: lift thine eyes; my doubts
are dead,
My haunting sense of hollow shows: the
change.
This truthful change in thee has kill'd it.
Dear,
Look up, and let thy nature strike on
mine,
Like yonder morning on the blind half
world ;
Approach and fear not; breathe upon
my brows;
In that fine air I tremble, all the past
Melts mist-like into this bright hour, and
this
Is morn to more, and all the rich to°
come
Reels, as the golden Autumn woodland
reels
Athwart the smoke of burning weeds.
Forgive me,
I waste my heart in signs : let be. My
bride,
My wife, my life. O we will walk this
world.
Yoked in all exercise of noble end,
And so thro' those dark gates across the
wild
That no man knows. Indeed I love
thee : come.
Yield thyself up : my hopes and thine
are one :
Accomplish thou my manhood and thy-
self;
Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust
to me.'
CONCLUSION.
So closed our tale, of vv'hich I give you
all
The random scheme as wildly as it rose :
The words are mostly mine; for when
we ceased
There came a minute's pause, and Wal-
ter said,
' I wish she had not yielded ! ' then to
me,
* What, if you drest it up poetically ! '
So pray'd the men, the women : I gave
assent :
Yet how to bind the scatter' d scheme
of seven
Together in one sheaf? What style
could suit?
The men required that I should give
throughout
The sort of mock-heroic gigantesque.
With which we banter'd little Lilia first:
The women — and perhaps they felt
their power,
THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY,
211
For something in the ballads which they
sang,
Or in their silent influence as they sat,
Had ever seem'd to wrestle with bur-
lesque,
And drove us, last, to quite a solemn
close —
They hated banter, vvish'd for something
real,
A gallant fight, a noble princess — why
Not make her true-heroic — true-sub-
lime ?
Or all, they said, as earnest as the close?
Which yet with such a framework scarce
could be.
Then rose a httle feud betwixt the two.
Betwixt the mockers and the realists :
And I, betwixt them both, to please
them both.
And yet to give the story as it rose,
I moved as in a strange diagonal.
And maybe neither pleased myself nor
them.
But Lilia pleased me, for she took no
part
In our dispute : the sequel of the tale
Had touch'd her ; and she sat, she
pluck'd the grass,
She flung it from her, thinking : last,
she fixt
A showery glance upon her aunt, and
said, •
*You — tell us what we are,' who might
have told,
For she was cramm'd with theories out
of books,
But that there rose a shout: the gates
were closed
At sunset, and the crowd were swarming
now.
To take their leave, about the garden
rails.
So I and some went out to these : we
cHmb'd
The slope to Vivian-place, and turning
saw
The happy valleys, half in light, and half
Far-shadowing from the west, a land of
peace;
Gray halls alone among their massive
groves;
Trim hamlets; here and there a rustic
tower
Half-lost in belts of hop and breadths of
wheat;
The shimmering glimpses of a stream;
the seas;
A red sail, or a white; and far beyond,
Imagined more than seen, the skirts of
France.
* Look there, a garden ! * said my col-
lege friend,
The Tory member's elder son, * and
there !
God bless the narrow sea which keeps
her off,
And keeps our Britain, whole within
herself,
A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled —
Some sense of duty, something of a faith,
Some reverence for the laws ourselves
have made.
Some patient force to change them when
we will,
Some civic manhood firm against the
crowd —
But yonder, whiff! there comes a sudden
heat.
The gravest citizen seems to lose his head.
The king is scared, the soldier will not
fight.
The little boys begin to shoot and stab,
A kingdom topples over with a shriek
Like an old woman, and down rolls the
world
In mock heroics stranger than our own;
Revolts, republics, revolutions, most
No graver than a schoolboys' barring out ;
Too comic for the solemn things they are.
Too solemn for the comic touches in
them.
Like our wild Princess with as wise a
dream
As some of theirs — God bless the narrow
seas!
I wish they were a whole Atlantic broad.'
* Have patience,' I replied, ' ourselves
are full
Of social wrong; and maybe wildest
dreams
Are but the needful preludes of the truth :
For me, the genial day, the happy crowd,
212
ODE ON THE DEATH OF
The sport half-science, fill me with a faith.
This fine old world of ours is but a child
Yet in the go-cart. Patience ! Give it
time
To learn its limbs : there is a hand that
guides.'
In such discourse we gain'd the garden
rails,
And there we saw Sir Walter where he
stood.
Before a tower of crimson holly- oaks.
Among six boys, head under head, and
look'd
No little lily-handed Baronet he,
A great broad-shoulder'd genial English-
man,
A lord of fat prize-oxen and of sheep,
A raiser of huge melons and of pine,
A patron of some thirty charities,
A pamphleteer on guano and on grain,
A quarter-sessions chairman, abler none;
Fair-hair'd and redder than a windy morn;
Now shaking hands with him, now him,
of those
That stood the nearest — now address'd
to speech —
Who spoke few words and pithy, such as
closed
Welcome, farewell, and welcome for the
year
To follow : a shout rose again, and made
The long line of the approaching rookery
swerve
From the elms, and shook the branches
of the deer
From slope to slope thro' distant ferns,
and rang
Beyond the bourn of sunset; O, a shout
More joyful than the city-roar that hails
Premier or king ! Why should not these
great Sirs
Give up their parks some dozen times a
year
To let the people breathe? So thrice
they cried,
I likewise, and in groups they stream'd
away.
But we went back to the Abbey, and
sat on,
So much the gathering darkness charm'd :
we sat
But spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie,
Perchance upon the future man : the
walls
Blacken'd about us, bats wheel'd, and
owls whoop'd,
And gradually the powers of the night,
That 'range above the region of the wind.
Deepening the courts of twilight broke
them up
Thro' all the silent spaces of the worlds,
Beyond all thought into the Heaven of
Heavens.
Last little Lilia, rising quietly,
Disrobed the glimmering statue of Sir
Ralph
From those rich silks, and home well-
pleased we went.
ODE ON THE DEATH OF THE
DUKE OF WELLINGTON.
PUBLISHED IN 1852.
I.
Bury the Great Duke
With an empire's lamentation.
Let us bury the Great Duke
To the noise of the mourning of a
mighty nation,
Mourning when their leaders fall,
Warriors carry the warrior's pall,
And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall.
II.
Where shall we lay the man whom we
deplore?
Here, in streaming London's central
roar.
Let the sound of those he wrought for,
And the feet of those he fought for,
Echo round his bones for evermore.
Lead out the pageant :' sad and slow,
As fits an universal woe.
Let the long long procession go,
And let the sorrowing crowd about it
grow.
And let the mournful martial music blow;
The last great Englishman is low.
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.
213
Mourn, for to us he seems the last,
Remembering all his greatness in the
Past.
No more in soldier fashion will he greet
With lifted hand the gazer in the street.
O friends, our chief state-oracle is mute :
Mourn for the man of long-enduring
blood,
The statesman-warrior, moderate, reso-
lute.
Whole in himself, a common good.
Mourn for the man of amplest influence.
Yet clearest of ambitious crime,
Our greatest yet with least pretence,
Great in council and great in war.
Foremost captain of his time.
Rich in saving common-sense,
And, as the greatest only are.
In his simplicity sublime.
O good gray head which all men knew,
O voice from which their omens all men
drew,
O iron nerve to true occasion true,
O fall'n at length that tower of strength
Which stood four-square to all the winds
that blew !
Such was he whom we deplore.
The long self-sacrifice of life is o'er.
The great World-victor's victor will be
seen no more.
All is over and done :
Render thanks to the Giver,
England, for thy son.
Let the bell be toll'd.
Render thanks to the Giver,
And render him to the mould.
Under the cross of gold
That shines over citv and river,
There he shall rest for ever
Among the wise and the bold.
Let the bell be toll'd :
And a reverent people behold
The towering car, the sable steeds:
Bright let it be with its blazon'd deeds.
Dark in its funeral fold.
Let the bell be toll'd :
And a deeper knell in the heart be
knoll'd;
And the sound of the sorrowing anthem
roll'd
Thro' the dome of the golden cross;
And the volleying cannon thunder his
loss;
He knew their voices of old.
For many a time in many a clime
His captain's-ear has heard them boom
Bellowing victory, bellowing doom :
When he with those deep voices wrought,
Guarding realms and kings from shame;
With those deep voices our dead captain
taught
The tyrant, and asserts his claim
In that dread sound to the great name,
Which he has worn so pure of blame.
In praise and in dispraise the same,
A man of well-temper'd frame.
O civic muse, to such a name,
To such a name for ages long.
To such a name.
Preserve a broad approach of fame,
And ever-echoing avenues of song.
VI.
Who is he that cometh, like an honour'd
guest.
With banner and with music, with soldier
and with priest,
With a nation weeping, and breaking on
my rest?
Mighty Seaman, this is he
Was great by land as thou by sea.
Thine island loves thee well, thou famous
man,
The greatest sailor since our world began.
Now, to the roll of muffled drums.
To thee the greatest soldier comes;
For this is he
Was great by land as thou by sea ;
His foes were thine; he kept us free*
O give him welcome, this is he
Worthy of our gorgeous rites,
And worthy to be laid by thee;
For this is England's greatest son,
He that gain'd a hundred fights,
Nor ever lost an English gun;
This is he that far away
Against the myriads of Assaye
Clash'd with his fiery few and won;
And underneath another sun.
Warring on a later day,
214
ODE ON THE DEATH OF
■ Round affrighted Lisbon drew
I'he treble works, the vast designs
Of his labour'd rampart-lines,
Where he greatly stood at bay,
Whence he issued forth anew,
And ever great and greater grew,
Beating from the wasted vines
Back to France her banded swarms.
Back to France with countless blows,
Till o'er the hills her eagles flew
Beyond the Pyrenean pines,
Follow'd up in valley and glen
With blare of bugle, clamour of men.
Roll of cannon and clash of arms,
And England pouring on her foes.
Such a war had such a close.
Again their ravening eagle rose
In anger, wheel'd on Europe-shadowing
wings.
And barking for the thrones of kings;
Till one that sought but Duty's iron
crown
On that loud sabbath shook the spoiler
down;
A day of onsets of despair !
Dash'd on every rocky square
Their surging charges foam'd themselves
away;
Last, the Prussian trumpet blew;
Thro' the long-tormented air
Heaven flash'd a sudden jubilant ray.
And down we swept and charged and
overthrew.
So great a soldier taught us there,
What long-enduring hearts could do
In that world-earthquake, Waterloo !
Mighty Seaman, tender and true.
And pure as he from taint of craven guile,
O saviour of the silver-coasted isle,
O shaker of the Balti; and the Nile,
If aught of things that here befall
Touch a spirit among things divine,
If love of country move thee there at all.
Be glad, because his bone:: are laid by
thine !
And thro' the centuries It a people's
voice
In full acclaim,
A people's voice,
The proof and echo of all human fame,
A people's voice, when they rejoice
At civic revel and pomp and game,
Attest their great commartder's claim
With honour, honour, honour, honoui
to him.
Eternal honour to his name.
VII.
A people's voice ! we are a people yet.
Tho' all men else their nobler dreams
forget.
Confused by brainless mobs and lawless
Powers;
Thank Him who isled us here, and
roughly set
His Briton in blown seas and storming
showers,
We have a voice, with which to pay the
debt
Of boundless love and reverence and
regret
To those great men who fought, and
kept it ours.
And keep it ours, O God, from brute
control;
O Statesmen, guard us, guard the eye,
the soul
Of Europe, keep our noble England
whole.
And save the one true seed of freedom
sown
Betwixt a people and their ancient
throne,
That sober freedom out of which there
springs
Our loyal passion for our temperate
kings;
For, saving that, ye help to save man-
kind
Till public wrong be crumbled into dust,
And drill the raw world for the march
of mind.
Till crowds at length be sane and crowns
be just.
But wink no more in slothful overtrust.
Remember him who led your hosts;
He bade you guard the sacred coasts.
Your cannons moulder on the seaward
wall;
His voice is silent in your council-hall
For ever; and whatever tempests lour
For ever silent; even if they broke
In thunder, silent; yet remember all
He spoke among you, and the Man who
spoke;
THE DU^E OF WELLINGTON.
215
Who never sold the truth to serve the
hour,
Nor palter'd with Eternal God for poM'er;
Who let the turb'd streams of rumour
flow
Thro' either babbling world of high and .
low;
Whose life was work, whose language
rife
With rugged maxims hewn from life;
Who never spoke against a foe;
Whose eighty winters freeze with one
rebuke
All great self-seekers trampling on the
right :
Truth-teller was our England's Alfred
named;
Truth-lover was our English Duke;
Whatever record leap to light
He never shall be shamed.
Lo, the leader in these glorious wars
Now to glorious burial slowly borne,
Follow'd by the brave of other lands,
He, on whom from both her open hands
Lavish Honour shower'd all her stars,
And affluent Fortune emptied all her
horn.
Yea, let all good things await
Him who cares not to be great.
But as he saves or serves the state.
Not once or twice 'n our rough island-
story,
The path of duty was the way to glory :
He that walks it, only thirsting
For the right, and learns to deaden
Love of self, before his journey closes.
He shall find the stubborn thistle burst-
ing
Into glossy purples, which outredden
All voluptuous garden-roses.
Not once or twice in our fair island-story,
The path of duty was the way to glory :
He, that ever following her commands,
On with toil of heart and knees and
hands,
Thro' the long gorge to the far light has
won
His path upward, and prevail'd.
Shall find the toppling crags of Duty
scaled
Are close upon the shining table-lands
To which our God Himself is moon and
sun.
Such was he : his work is done.
But while the races of mankind endure,
Let his great example stand
Colossal, seen of every land.
And keep the soldier firm, the statesman
pure :
Till in all lands and thro' all human story
The path of duty be the way to glory:
And let the land whose hearths he saved
from shame
For many and many an age proclaim
At civic revel and pomp and game,
And when the long-illumined cities
flame,
Their ever-loyal iron leader's fame,
With honour, honour, honour, honour to
him.
Eternal honour to his name.
IX,
Peace, his triumph will be sung
By some yet unmoulded tongue
Far on in summers that we shall not see :
Peace, it is a day of pain
For one about whose patriarchal knee
Late the little children clung:
O peace, it is a day of pain
For one, upon whose hand and heart and
brain
Once the weight and fate of Europe hung.
Ours the pain, be his the gain !
More than is of man's degree
Must be with us, watching here
At this, our great solemnity.
Whom we see not we revere;
We revere, and we refrain
From talk of battles loud and vain.
And brawling memories all too free
For such a wise humility
As befits a solemn fane :
We revere, and 'vhile we hear
The tides of Music's golden sea
Setting toward ^^ernity,
Uplifted high in heart and hope are we.
Until we doubt not that for one so true
There must be ocher nobler work to do
Than when he fought at Waterloo,
And Victor he must ever be.
For tho' the Giant Ages heave the hill
310
THE THIRD OF FEBRUARY, 1832.
And break the shore, and evermore
Make and break, and work their will;
Tho' world on world in myriad myriads
roll
Round us, each with different powers,
And other forms of life than ours,
What know we greater than the soul?
On God and Godlike men we build our
trust.
Hush, the Dead March wails in the peo-
ple's ears :
The dark crowd moves, and there are
sobs and tears :
The black earth yawns : the mortal
disappears;
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
He is gone who seem'd so great. —
Gone; but nothing can bereave him
Of the force he madq his own
Being here, and we believe him
Something far advanced in State,
And that he wears a truer crown
Than any wreath that man can weave
him.
Speak no more of his renown,
Lay your earthly fancies down,
And in the vast cathedral leave him,
God accept him, Christ receive him.
1852.
THE THIRD OF FEBRUARY,
1852.
My Lords, we heard you speak : you told
us all
That England's honest censure went
too far;
That our free press should cease to
brawl.
Not sting the fiery Frenchman into
war.
It was our ancient privilege, my Lords,
To fling whate'er we felt, not fearing, into
words.
We love not this French God, the child
of Hell,
Wild War, who breaks the converse of
the wise;
But though we love kind Peace so well.
We dare not ev'n by silence sanction
lies.
It might be safe our censures to with-
draw;
And yet, my Lords, not well : there is a
higher law.
As long as we remain, we must speak
free,
Tho' all the storm of Euror/; on us
break ;
No little German state are we,
But the one voice in Europe : we must
speak;
That if to-night our greatness were struck
dead.
There might be left some record of the
things we said.
If you be fearful, then must we be bold.
Our Britain cannot salve a tyrant
o'er.
Better the waste Atlantic roll'd
On her and us and ours for ever-
more.
What !• have we fought for Freedom from
our prime.
At last to dodge and palter with a public
crime ?
Shall we fear him? our own we never
fear'd.
From our first Charles by force we
wrung our claims.
Prick'd by the Papal spur, we rear'd.
We flung the burthen of the second
James.
I say, we never feared ! and as for these.
We broke them on the land, we drove
them on the seas.
And you, my Lords, you make the people
muse
In doubt if you be of our Barons' breed — •
Were those your sires who fought at
Lewes?
Is this the manly strain of Runnymede?
O fall'n nobility, that, overawed.
Would lisp in honey'd whispers of this
monstrous fraud !
We feel, at least, that silence here were
sin.
Not ours the fault if we have feeble
hosts —
THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE.
217
If easy patrons of their kin
Into the jaws of Death,
Have left the last free race with naked
Into the mouth of Hell
coasts !
Rode the six hundred.
They knew the precious things they
had
to guard :
IV.
For us, we will not spare the tyrant
one
Flash'd all their sabres bare,
hard word.
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Tho' niggard throats of Manchester
may
Sabring the gunners there.
Charging an army, while
bawl,
All the world wonder'd :
What England was,, shall her true
sons
Plunged in the battery-smoke
forget?
Right thro' the line they broke;
We are not cotton-spinners all,
Cossack and Russian
But some love England and her honour
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke
yet.
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
And these in our Thermopylae
shall
Then they rode back, but not —
stand.
Not the six hundred.
And hold against the world this honour
of the land.
V.
Cannon to right of them,
THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT
Cannon to left of them.
Cannon behind them
BRIGADE.
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
I.
While horse and hero fell,
Half a league, half a league,
They that had fought so well
Half a league onward,
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
All in the valley of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
Rode the six hundred.
All that was left of them.
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Left of six hundred.
Charge for the guns ! ' he said :
Into the valley of Death
VI.
Rode the six hundred.
When can their glory fade?
II.
0 the wild charge they made !
All the world wonder'd.
' Forward, the Light Brigade ! '
Honour the charge they made !
Was there a man dismay'd?
Honour the Light Brigade,
Not tho' the soldier knew
Noble six hundred !
Some one had blunder'd :
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
ODE SUNG AT THE OPENING
Theirs but to do and die :
Into the valley of Death
OF THE INTERNATIONAL EX-
Rode the six hundred.
HIBITION.
I.
III.
Uplift a thousand voices full and sweet,
Cannon to right of them.
In this wide hall with earth's invention
Cannon to left of them.
stored,
Cannon in front of them
And praise the invisible universal
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Lord,
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Who lets once more in peace the nations
Boldly they rode and well,
meet,
2l8
A WELCOME TO ALEXANDRA.
Where Science, Art, and Labour have
outpour'd
Their myriad horns of plenty at our feet.
O silent father of our Kings to be
Mourn'd in this golden hour of jubilee,
For this, for all, we weep our thanks to
thee!
III.
The world-compelHng plan was thine, —
And, lo ! the long laborious miles
Of Palace; lo ! the giant aisles,
Rich in model and design;
Harvest-tool and husbandry.
Loom and wheel and enginery,
Secrets of the sullen mine.
Steel and gold, and corn and wine,
Fabric rough, or fairy-fine.
Sunny tokens of the Line,
Polar marvels, and a feast
Of wonder, out of West and East,
And shapes and hues of Art divine !
All of beauty, all of use.
That one fair planet can produce.
Brought from under every star,
Blown from over every main.
And mixt, as life is mixt with pain.
The works of peace with works of war.
Is the goal so far away?
Far, how far no tongue can say,
Let us dream our dream to-day.
V.
O ye, the wise who think, the wise who
reign.
From growing commerce loose her latest
chain,
And let the faif white-wing'd peacemaker
fly
To happy havens under all the sky,
And mix the seasons and the golden
hours;
Till each man find his own in all men's
good.
And all men work in noble brotherhood.
Breaking their mailed fleets and armed
towers,
And ruling by obeying Nature's powers.
And gathering all the fruits of earth and
crown'd with all her flowers.
A WELCOME TO ALEXANDRA.
MARCH 7, 1 063.
Sea-kings' daughter from over the sea,
Alexandra !
Saxon and Normari and Dane are we,
But all of us Danes in our welcome of
thee, Alexandra !
Welcome her, thunders of fort and of fleet !
Welcome her, thundering cheer of the
street !
Welcome her, all things youthful and
sweet,
Scatter the blossom under her feet !
Break, happy land, into earlier flowers !
Make music, O bird, in the new-budded
bowers !
Blazon your mottoes of blessing and
prayer !
Welcome her, welcome her, all that is
ours!
Warble, O bugle, and trumpet, blare I
Flags, flutter out upon turrets and towers !
Flames, on the windy headland flare !
Utter your jubilee, steeple and spire !
Clash, ye bells, in the merry March air!
Flash, ye cities, in rivers of fire !
Rush to the roof, sudden rocket, and
higher
Melt into stars for the land's desire !
Roll and rejoice, jubilant voice,
Roll as a ground-swell dash'd on the
strand.
Roar as the sea when he welcomes the
land,
And welcome her, welcome the land's
desire,
The sea-kings' daughter as happy as fair,
Blissful bride of a blissful heir.
Bride of the heir of the kings of the
sea —
O joy to the people ana joy to the throne,
Come to us, love us and make us your
own :
For Saxon or Dane or Norman we,
Teuton or Celt, or whatever we be.
We are each all Dane in our welcome of
thee, Alexandra/
A WELCOME TO ALEXANDROVNA.
219
A WELCOME TO HER ROYAL
HIGHNESS MARIE ALEXAN-
DROVNA, DUCHESS OF' EDIN-
BURGH.
MARCH 7, 1874.
I.
The Son of him with whom we strove
for power —
Whose will is lord thro' all his world-
domain —
Who made the serf a man, and burst
his chain —
Has given our Prince his own imperial
Flower,
Alexandrovna.
And welcome, Russian flower, a people's
pride,
To Britain, when her flowers begin to
blow!
From love to love, from home to home
you go.
From mother unto mother, stately bride,
Marie Alexandrovna !
n.
The golden news along the steppes is
blown,
And at thy name the Tartar tents are
stirr'd ;
Elburz and all the Caucasus have
heard;
And all the sultry palms of India known,
Alexandrovna.
The voices of our universal sea
On capes of Afric as on cliffs of Kent,
The Maoris and that Isle of Continent,
And loyal pines of Canada murmur thee,
Marie Alexandrovna !
III.
Fair empires branching, both, in lusty
life ! —
Yet Harold's England fell to Norman
swords ;
Yet thine own land has bow'd to
Tartar hordes
Since English Harold gave its throne a
wife,
Alexandrovna !
For thrones and peoples are as waifs that
swing,
Ana float or fall, in endless ebb and
flow;
But who love best have best the grace
to know
That Love by right divine is deathless
king,
Marie Alexandrovna!
IV.
And Love has led thee to the stranger
land,
Where men are bold and strongly say
their say; —
See, empire upon empire smiles to-
day,
As thou with thy young lover hand in
hand
Alexandrovna !
So now thy fuller life is in the west.
Whose hand at home was gracious to
thy poor:
Thy name was blest within the narrow
door;
Here also Marie, shall thy name be blest,
Marie Alexandrovna !
V.
Shall fears and jealous hatreds flame
again?
Or at thy coming, Princess, every-
where,
The blue heaven break, and some
diviner air
Breathe thro' the world and change the
hearts of men,
Alexandrovna?
But hearts that change not, love that
cannot cease,
And peace be yours, the peace of soul
in soul !
And howsoever this wild world may roll.
Between your peoples truth and manful
peace,
Alfred — Alexandrovna !
SiO THE GRANDMOTHER.
THE GRANDMOTHER.
And Willy, my eldest-born, is gone, you say, little Anne?
Ruddy and white, and strong on his legs, he looks like a man.
And Willy's wife has written : she never was over-wise,
Never the wife for Willy : he wouldn't take my advice.
II.
For, Annie, you see, her father was not the man to save,
Hadn't a head to manage, and drank himself into his grave.
Pretty enough, very pretty ! but I was against it for one.
Eh ! — but he wouldn't hear me — and Willy, you say, is gone.
Willy, my beauty, my eldest-born, the flower of the flock;
Never a man could fling him : for Willy stood like a rock.
* Here's a leg for a babe of a week ! ' says doctor; and he would be bound.
There was not his like that year in twenty parishes round.
IV.
Strong of his hands, and strong on his legs, but still of his tongue !
I ought to have gone before him : 1 wonder he went so young.
I cannot cry for him, Annie : I have not long to stay;
Perhaps I shall see him the sooner, for he lived far away.
Why do you look at me, Annie? you think I am hard and cold;
But all my children have gone before me, I am so old :
I cannot weep for Willy, nor can I weep for the rest;
Only at your age, Annie, I could have wept with the best.
For I remember a quarrel I had with your father, my dear,
All for a slanderous story, that cost me many a tear.
I mean your grandfather, Annie: it cost me a world of woe,
Seventy years ago, my darling, seventy years ago.
VII.
For Jenny, my cousin, had come to the place, and I knew right well
That Jenny had tript in her time : I knew, but I would not tell.
And she to be coming and slandering me, the base little liar !
But the tongue is a fire as you know, my dear, the tongue is a fire.
And the parson made it his text that week, and he said likewise,
That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies,
That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright,
But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.
THE GRANDMOTHER. 221
And Willy had not been down to the farm for a week and a day;
And all things look'd baif-dead, tho' it was the middle of May.
Jenny, to slander me, who knew what Jenny had been !
But soiling another, Annie, will never make oneself clean.
X.
And I cried myself well-nigh blind, and all of an evening late
I climb'd to the top of the garth, and stood by the road at the gate.
The moon like a rick on fire was rising over the dale.
And whit, whit, whit, in the bush beside me chirrupt the nightingale.
XI.
All of a sudden he stopt : there past by the gate of the farm,
Willy, — he didn't see me, — and Jenny hung on his arm.
Out into the road I started, and spoke I scarce knew how;
Ah, there's no fool like the old one — it makes me angry now.
XII.
Willy stood up like a man, and look'd the thing that he meant;
Jenny, the viper, made me a mocking curtsey and went.
And I said, ' Let us part : in a hundred years it'll all be the same,
Vou cannot love me at all, if you love not my good name.'
And he turn'd, and I saw his eyes all wet, in the sweet moonshine :
' Sweetheart, I love you so well that your good name is mine.
And what do I care for Jane, let her speak of you well or ill;
But marry me out of hand : we two shall be happy still.'
XIV.
* Marry you, Willy ! ' said I, ' but I needs must speak my mind,
And I fear you'll listen to tales, be jealous and hard and unkind.*
But he turn'd and claspt me in his arms, and answer'd, * No, love, no; *
Seventy years ago, my darling, seventy years ago.
XV.
So Willy and I were wedded : I wore a lilac gown;
And the ringers rang with a will, and he gave the ring'^rs a crown.
But the first that ever I bare was dead before he was born,
Shadow and shine is life, little Annie, flower and thorn.
XVI.
That was the first time, too, that ever I thought of death.
There lay the sweet little body that never had drawn a breath.
I had not wept, little Anne, not since I had been a wife;
But I wept like a child that day, for the babe had fought for his life.
222 THE GRANDMOTHER.
XVII.
His dear little face was troubled, as if with anger or pain :
I look'd at the still little body — his trouble had all been in vain.
For Willy I cannot weep, I shall see him another morn :
But I wept like a child for the child that was dead before he was born.
But he cheer'd me, my good man, for he seldom said me nay :
Kind, like a man, was he; like a man, too, would have his way :
Never jealous — not he: we had many a happy year;
And he died, and I could not weep — my own time seem'd so near.
XIX.
But I wish'd it had been God's will that I, too, then could have died:
I began to be tired a little, and fain had slept at his side.
And that was ten years back, or more, if I don't forget :
But as to the children, Annie, they're all about me yet.
XX.
Pattering over the boards, my Annie who left me at two.
Patter she goes, my own little Annie, an Annie like you :
Pattering over the boards, she comes and goes at her will,
While Harry is in the five-acre and Charlie ploughing the hill,
XXI.
And Harry and Charlie, I hear them too — they sing to their team:
Often they come to the door in a pleasant kind of a dream.
They come and sit by my chair, they hover about my bed —
I am not always certain if they be alive or dead.
XXII.
And yet I know for a truth, there's none of them left alive;
For Harry went at sixty, your father at sixty-five :
And Willy, my eldest-born, at nigh threescore and ten;
I knew them all as babies, and now they're elderly men.
XXIII.
For mine is a time of peace, it is not often I grieve;
I am oftener sitting at home in my father's farm at eve :
And the neighbours come and laugh and gossip, and so do I;
I find myself often laughing at things that have long gone by.
To be sure the preacher says, our sins should make us sad :
But mine is a time of peace, and there is Grace to be had;
And God, not man, is the Judge of us all when life shall cease;
And in this Book, little Annie, the message is one of Peace.
NORTHERN FARMER. 223
XXV.
And age is a time of peace, so it be free from pain,
And happy lias been my life; but I would not live it again.
I seem to be tired a little, that's all, and long for rest;
Only at your age, Annie, I could have wept with the best.
XXVI.
So Willy has gone, my beauty, my eldest-born, my flower;
But how can I weep for Willy, he has but gone for an hour,
Gone for a minute, my son, from this room into the next;
I, too, shall go in a minute. What time have I to be vext?
And Willy's wife has written, she never was over-wise.
Get me my glasses, Annie : thank God that I keep my eyes.
There is but a trifle left you, when I shall have past away.
But stay with the old woman now : you cannot have long to stay.
NORTHERN FARMER.
OLD STYLE.
Wheer 'asta bean saw long and mea liggin' 'ere aloan?
Noorse? thourt nowt o' a noorse: whoy. Doctor's abean an' agoan:
Says that I moant 'a naw moor aale : but I beant a fool:
Git ma my aale, fur I beant a-gawin' to break my rule.
Doctors, they knaws nowt, fur a says what's nawways true :
Naw soort o' koind o' use to saay the things that a do.
I've 'ed my point o' aale ivry noight sin' I bean 'ere.
An' I've 'ed my quart ivry market-noight for foorty year.
in.
Parson's a bean loikewoise, an' a sittin' 'ere o' my bed.
'The amoighty's a taakin o' you^ to 'issen, my friend,' a said.
An' a towd ma my sins, an's toithe were due, an' I gied it in hond;
I done moy duty boy 'um, as I 'a done boy the lond.
Larn'd a ma' bea. I reckons I 'annot sa mooch to lam.
But a cast oop, thot a did, 'bout Bessy M arris's barne.
Thaw a knaws I hallus voated wi' Squoire an' choorch an' staate.
An' i' the woost o' toimes I wur niver agin the raate.
1 ou as in hour.
224 NORTHERN FARMER,
An' I hallus coom'd to 's chooch afoor moy Sally wur dead,
An' 'card 'um a bummin' awaay loike a buzzard-clock ^ ower my 'ead,
An' 1 niver knaw'd whot a mean'd but I thowt a 'ad summut to saay,
An' I thowt a said whot a owt to 'a said an' I coom'd awaay.
VI.
Bessy Marris's barne ! tha knaws she laaid it to mea.
Mowt a bean, mayhap, for she wur a bad un, shea.
'Siver, I kep 'um, I kep 'um my lass, tha mun understond;
I done moy duty boy 'um as I 'a done boy the lond.
VII.
But Parson a cooms an' a goas, an' a says it easy an' freea
'The amoighty's a taakin o' you to 'issen, my friend,' says *ea.
I weant saay men be loiars, thaw summun said it in 'aaste :
But 'e reads wonn sarmin a wee.ak, an' I 'a stubb'd Thurnaby waaste.
D'ya moind the waaste, my lass? naw, naw, tha was not born then;
Theer wur a boggle in it, I often 'card 'um mysen;
Moast loike a butter-bump,^ fur I 'eard 'um about an' about,
But I stubb'd 'um oop wi' the lot, an' raaved an' rembled 'um out.
IX.
Keaper's it wur; fo' they fun 'um theer a-laaid of 'is faace
Down i' the woild 'enemies ^ afoor I coom'd to the plaace.
Noaks or Thimbleby — toaner ^ 'ed shot 'um as dead as a naail.
Noaks wur 'ang'd for it oop at 'soize — but git ma my aale.
X.
Dubbut loook at the waaste: theer warn't not feead for a cow;
Nowt at all but bracken an' fuzz, an' loook at it now —
Warnt worth nowt a haacre, an' now theer's lots o' feead,
Fourscoor ^ yews upon it an' some on it down i' seead.*
XI.
Nobbut a bit on it's left, an' I mean'd to 'a stubb'd it at fall,
Done it ta-year I mean'd, an' runn'd plow thrufif it an' all,
If godamoighty an' parson 'ud nobbut let ma aloan,
Mea, wi' haate hoonderd haacre o' Squoire's, an' lond o' my oan.
Do godamoighty knaw what a's doing a-taakin' o' mea?
I beant wonn as saws 'ere a bean an' yonder a pea;
An' Squoire 'uU be sa mad an' all — a' dear a' dear !
And I 'a managed for Squoire coom Michaelmas thutty year.
* Cockchafer. * Bittern. ^ Anemones. * One or other. " ou as in hour. « Clover.
NORTHERN FARMER. 225
A mowt 'a taaen owcl Joanes, as 'ant not a 'aapoth o' sense,
Or a mowt 'a taaen young Robins — a niver mended a fence :
But godamoighty a moost taake mea an' taake ma now
Wi' aaf the cows to cauve an' Thurnaby hoalms to plow !
Loook 'ow quoloty smoiles when they seeas ma a passin' boy,
Says to thessen naw doubt ' what a man a bea sewer-loy ! '
Fur they knaws what I bean to Squoire sin fust a coom'd to the 'Allj
I done moy duty by Squoire an' I done moy duty boy hall.
Squoire's i' Lunnon, an' summun I reckons 'ull 'a to wroite,
For whoa's to howd the lond ater mea thot muddles ma quoit;
Sartin-sewer I bea, thot a weant niver give it to Joanes,
Naw, nor a moant to Robins — a niver rembles the stoans.
But summun 'ull come ater mea mayhap wi' 'is kittle o' steam
Huzzin' an' maazin' the blessed fealds wi' the Divil's oan team.
Sin' I mun doy I mun doy, thaw loife they says is sweet,
But sin' I mun doy I mun doy, for I couldn abear to see it.
What atta stannin' theer fur, an' doesn bring ma the aale?
Doctor's a 'toattler, lass, an a's hallus i' the owd taale ;
I weant break rules fur Doctor, a knaws naw moor nor a floy;
Git ma my aale I tell tha, an' if I mun doy I mun doy.
NORTHERN FARMER.
NEW STYLE.
Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaay?
Proputty, proputty, proputty — that's what I 'ears 'em saay.
Proputty, proputty, proputty — Sam, thou's an ass for thy paalns:
Theer's moor sense i' one o' 'is legs nor in all thy braains.
Woa — theer's a craw to pluck wi' tha, Sam: yon's parson's 'ouse-
Dosn't thou knaw that a man mun be eathei: a man or a mouse?
Time to think on it then; for thou'U be twenty to weeak.^
Proputty, proputty — woa then woa — let ma 'ear mysen speak.
1 This week.
226 NORTHERN FARMER.
III.
Me an' thy muther, Sammy, 'as bean a-talkin' o' thee;
Thou's bean talkin' to muther, an' she bean a tellin' it me.
Thou'll not marry for munny — thou's sweet upo' parson's lass —
Noa — thou'll marry for luvv — an' we boath on us thinks tha an ass.
Seea'd her todaay goa by — Saaint's-daay — they was ringing the bells.
She's a beauty thou thinks — an' soa is scoors o' gells.
Them as 'as munny an' all — wot's a beauty? — the flower as blaws.
But proputty, proputty sticks, an' proputty, proputty graws.
. V.
Do'ant be stunt : ^ taake time : I knaws what maakes tha sa mad.
Warn't I craazed fur the lasses mysen when I wur a lad ?
But I knaw'd a Quaaker feller as often 'as towd ma this :
* Doant thou marry for munny, but goa wheer munny is ! '
An' I went wheer munny war : an' thy muther coom to 'and,
Wi' lots o' munny laaid by, an' a nicetish bit o' land.
Maaybe she warn't a beauty : — I niver giv it a thowt —
But warn't she as good to cuddle an' kiss as a lass as 'ant nowt?
Parson's lass 'ant nowt, an' she weant 'a nowt when 'e's dead,
Mun be a guvness, lad, or summut, and addle ^ her bread :
Why? fur 'e's nobbut a curate, an' weant niver git hissen clear,
An' 'e maade the bed as 'e ligs on afoor 'e coom'd to the shere.
VIII.
'An thin 'e coom'd to the parish wi' lots o' Varsity debt,
Stook to his taail they did, an' 'e 'ant got shut on 'em yet.
An' 'e ligs on 'is back i' the grip, wi' noan to lend 'im a shuvv,
Woorse nor a far-welter'd ^ yowe : fur, Sammy, 'e married fur luvv.
IX.
Luvv? what's luvv? thou can luvv thy lass an' 'er munny too,
Maakin' 'em goa togither as they've good right to do.
Couldn I luvv thy muther by cause o' 'er munny laaid by?
Naay — fur I luvv'd 'er a vast sight moor fur it : reason why.
X.
Ay an' thy muther says thou wants to marry the lass,
Gooms of a gentleman burn : an' we boath on us thinks tha an ass.
Woa then, proputty, wiltha? — an ass as near as mays nowt* —
Woa then, wiltha? dangtha ! — the bees is as fell as owt.^
* Obstinate. ' Earn. ' Or fow-welter'd, — said of a sheep lying on its back.
* Makes nothing. ^ The flies nre as fierce as anything.
NORTHERN FARMER— THE DAISY.
227
XI.
Break me a bit o' the esh for his 'ead, lad, out o' the fence !
Gentleman burn ! what's gentleman burn? is it shillins an' pence?
Proputty, proputty's ivrything 'ere, an', Sammy, I'm blest
If it isn't the saame oop yonder, fur them as 'as it's the best.
Tis'n them as 'as munny as breaks into 'ouses an' steals.
Them as 'as coats to their backs an' taakes their regular meals.
Noa, but it's them as niver knaws wheer a meal's to be 'ad.
Taake my word for it, Sammy, the poor in a loomp is bad.
XIII.
Them or thir feythers, tha sees, mun 'a bean a laazy lot,
Fur work mun 'a gone to the gittin' whiniver munny was got.
Feyther 'ad ammost nowt; leastways 'is munny was 'id.
But 'e tued an' moil'd 'issen dead, an' 'e died a good un, 'e did.
XIV.
Loook thou theer wheer Wrigglesby beck cooms out by the 'ill !
Feyther run oop to the farm, an' I runs oop to the mill;
An' I'll run oop to the brig, an' that thou'll live to see;
And if thou marries a good un I'll leave the land to thee.
XV.
Thim's my noations, Sammy, wheerby I means to stick;
But if thou marries a bad un, I'll leave the land to Dick. —
Coom oop, proputty, proputty — that's what I 'ears 'im saay —
Proputty, proputty, proputty — canter an' canter awaay.
THE DAISY.
WRITTEN AT EDINBURGH.
O LOVE, what hours were thine and
mine,
In lands of palm and southern pine;
In lands of palm, of orange-blossom.
Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine.
What Roman strength Turbia show'd
In ruin, by the mountain road;
How like a gem, beneath, the city
Of little Monaco, basking, glow'd.
How richly down the rocky dell
The torrent vineyard streaming fell
To meet the sun and sunny waters.
That only heaved with a summer swell.
"What slender campanili grew
By bays, the peacock's neck in hue;
Where, here and there, on sandy
beaches
A milky-bell'd amaryllis blew.
How young Columbus seem'd to rovt,
Yet present in his natal grove.
Now watching high on mountain cor-
nice,
And steering, now, from a purple cove,
Now pacing mute by ocean's rim;
Till, in a narrow street and dim,
I stay'd the wheels at Cogoletto,
And drank, and loyally drank to him.
Nor knew we well what pleased us most,
Not the dipt palm of which they boast;
228
THE DAISY.
But distant colour, happy hamlet,
A moulder'd citadel on the coast,
Or tower, or high hill-convent, seen
A light amid its olives green;
Or olive-hoary cape in ocean;
Or rosy blossom in hot ravine,
Where oleanders flush' d the bed
Of silent torrents, gravel-spread ;
And, crossing, oft we saw the glisten
Of ice, far up on a mountain head.
We loved that hall, tho' white and cold,
Those niched shapes of noble mould,
A princely people's awful princes,
The grave, severe Genovese of old.
At Florence too what golden hours.
In those long galleries, were ours;
What drives about the fresh Cascine,
Or walks in Boboli's ducal bowers.
In bright vignettes, and each complete, .
Of tower or duomo, sunny-sweet.
Or palace, how the city glitter'd.
Thro' cypress avenues, at our feet.
But when we crost the Lombard plain
Remember what a plague of rain ;
Of rain at Reggio, rain at Parma ;
At Lodi, rain, Piacenza, rain.
And stern and sad (so rare the smiles
Of sunlight) look'd the Lombard piles;
Porch-pillars on the lion resting,
And sombre, old, colonnaded aisles. ~
0 Milan, O the chanting quires.
The giant windows' blazon'd fires,
The height, the space, the gloom, the
glory !
A mount of marble, a hundred spires !
1 climb'd the roofs at break of day
Sun-smitten Alps before me lay.
I stood among the silent statues,
And statued pinnacles, mute as they.
How faintly-flush'd, how phantom-fair,
Was Monte Rosa, hanging there
A thousand shadowy-penciU'd valleys
And snowy dells in a golden air.
Remember how we came at last
To Como; shower and storm and blast
Had blown the lake beyond his limit.
And all was flooded; and how we past
From Como, when the light was gray,
And in my head, for half the day.
The rich Virgilian rustic measure
Of Lari Maxume, all the way.
Like ballad-burthen music, kept.
As on the Lariano crept
To that fair port below the castle
Of Queen Theodolind, where we slept;
Or hardly slept, but watch'd awake
A cypress in the moonlight shake.
The moonhght touching o'er a ter-
race
One tall Agave above the lake.
What more? we took our last adieu.
And up the snowy Splugen drew.
But ere we reach'd the highest sum-
mit
I pluck'd a daisy, J gave it you.
It told of England then to me,
And now it tells of Italy.
O love, we two shall go no longer
To lands of summer across the sea;
So dear a Hfe your arms enfold
Whose crying is a cry for gold :
Yet here to-night in this dark city.
When ill and weary, alone and cold,
I found, tho' crush'd to hard and dry.
This nurseling of another sky
Still in the little book you lent me,
And where you tenderly laid it by :
And I forgot the clouded Forth,
The gloom that saddens Heaven and
Earth,
The bitter east, the misty summer
And gray metropolis of the North.
Perchance, to lull the throbs of pain.
Perchance, to charm a vacant brain,
Perchance, to dream you still beside
me.
My fancy fled to the South again.
TO THE REV. F. D. MAURICE— WILL.
229
TO THE REV. F. D. MAURICE.
Come, when no graver cares employ,
Godfather, come and see your boy :
Your presence will be sun in winter,
Making the Httle one leap for joy.
For, being of that honest few.
Who give the Fiend himself his due.
Should eighty-thousand college-coun-
cils
Thunder 'Anathema,' friend, at you;
Should all our churchmen foam in spite
At you, so careful of the right.
Yet one lay-hearth would give you
welcome
(Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight;
Where, far from noise and smoke of town,
I watch the twilight falling brown
All round a careless-order'd garden
Close to the ridge of a noble down.
You'll have no scandal while you dine,
But honest talk and wholesome wine.
And only hear the magpie gossip
Garrulous under a roof of pine :
For groves of pine on either hand.
To break the blast of winter, stand;
And further on, the hoary Channel
Tumbles a billow on chalk and sand;
Where, if below the milky steep
Some ship of battle slowly creep.
And on thro' zones of light and shadow
Glimmer away to the lonely deep.
We might discuss the Northern sin
Which made a selfish war begin ;
Disputethe claims, arrange the chances;
Emperor, Ottoman, which shall win :
Or whether war's avenging rod
Shall lash all Europe into blood;
Till you should turn to dearer matters.
Dear to the man that is dear to God;
How best to help the slender store.
How mend the dwellings, of the poor;
How gain in life, as life advances,
Valour and charity more and more.
Come, Maurice, come : the lawn as yet
Is hoar with rime, or spongy-wet;
But when the wreath of March has
blossom'd,
Crocus, anemone, violet,
Or later, pay one visit here,
For those are few we hold as dear;
Nor pay but one, but come for many,
Many and many a happy year.
Jatiuary, 1854.
WILL.
O WELL for him whose will is strong !
He sufiFers, but he will not suffer long;
He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong :
For him nor moves the loud world's
random mock,
Nor all Calamity's hugest waves confound,
Who seems a promontory of rock,
That, compass'd round with turbulent
sound,
In middle ocean meets the surging shock,
Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crown'd.
n.
But ill for him who, bettering not with
time,
Cortupts the strength of heaven-de-
scended Will,
And ever weaker grows thro' acted crime.
Or seeming-genial venial fault,
Recurring and suggesting still !
He seems as one whose footsteps halt,
Toiling in immeasurable sand,
And o'er a weary sultry land,
Far beneath a blazing vault.
Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill,
The city sparkles like a grain of salt.
IN THE VALLEY OF
CAUTERETZ.
All along the valley, stream that flashest
white.
Deepening thy voice with the deepening
of the night,
All along the valley, where thy waters
flow,
230 IN THE GARDEN AT SWAINSTON— THE SAILOR BOY.
I walk'd with one I loved two and thirty
years ago.
All along the valley, while I walk'd to-
day,
The two and thirty years were a mist that
rolls away;
For all along the valley, down thy rocky
bed,
Thy living voice to me was as the voice
of the dead.
And all along the valley, by rock and
cave and tree,
The voice of the dead was a living voice
to me.
IN THE GARDEN AT
SWAINSTON.
Nightingales warbled without,
Within was weeping for thee-:
Shadows of three dead men
Walk'd in the walks with me,
Shadows of three dead men and thou
wast one of the three.
Nightingales sang in his woods :
■ The Master was far away :
Nightingales warbled and sang
Of a passion that lasts but a day ;
Still in the house in his coffin the Prince
of courtesy lay.
Two dead men have I known
In courtesy like to thee :
Two dead men have I loved
With a love that will ever be :
Three dead men have I loved and thou
art last of the three.
THE FLOWER.
Once in a golden hour
I cast to earth a seed.
Up there came a flower.
The people said, a weed.
To and fro they went
Thro' my garden-bower,
And muttering discontent
Cursed me and my flower.
Then it grew so tall
It wore a crown of light.
But thieves from o'er the wall
Stole the seed by night.
Sow'd it far and wide
By every town and tower,
Till all the people cried,
' Splendid is the flower.'
Read my little fable :
He that runs may read.
Most can raise the flowers now,
For all have got the seed.
And some are pretty enough,
And some are poor indeed;
And now again the people
Call it but a weed.
REQUIESCAT.
Fair is her cottage in its place.
Where yon broad water sweetly slowly
glides.
It sees itself from thatch to base
Dream in the sliding tides.
And fairer she, but ah how soon to die !
Her quiet dream of life this hour may
cease.
Her peaceful being slowly passes by
To some more perfect peace.
THE SAILOR BOY.
He rose at dawn and, fired with hope,
Shot o'er the seething harbour-bar,
And reach'd the ship and caught the
rope.
And whistled to the morning star.
And while he whistled long and loud
He heard a fierce mermaiden cry,
* O boy, tho' thou art young and proud,
I see the place where thou wilt lie.
'The sands and yeasty surges mix
In caves about the dreary bay.
And on thy ribs the limpet sticks,
And in thy heart the scrawl shall play.'
THE ISLET— CHILD-SONGS.
231
' Fool,' he answer'd, ' death is sure
And his compass is but of a single note,
To those that stay and thosQ that roam,
That it makes one weary to hear.'
But I will nevermore endure
To sit with empty hands at home.
' Mock me not ! mock me not ! love, let
* My mother clings about my neck.
us go.'
My sisters crying, " Stay for shame; "
• No, love, no.
My father raves of death and wreck,
For the bud ever breaks into bloom on
They are all to blame, they are all to
the tree,
blame.
And a storm never wakes on the lonely
* God help me ! save I take my part
sea,
And a worm is there in the lonely wood ;
Of danger on the roaring sea,
That pierces the liver and blackens the
A devil rises in my heart.
blood ;
Far worse than any death to me.'
And makes it a sorrow to be.'
THE ISLET.
CHILD-SONGS.
* Whither, O whither, love, shall we go,'
I.
For a score of sweet little summers or so ?
The sweet little wife of the singer said,
THE CITY CHILD.
On the day that follow'd the day she was
Dainty little maiden, whither would you
wed,
wander?
'Whither, 0 whither, love, shall we go? '
Whither from this pretty home, the
And the singer shaking his curly head
home where mother dwells?
Turn'd as he sat, and struck the keys
* Far and far away,' said the dainty little
There at his right with a sudden crash,
maiden.
Singing, ' And shall it be over the seas
* All among the gardens, auriculas.
With a crew that is neither rude nor
anemones.
rash,
Roses and lilies and Canterbury-bells. '
But a bevy of Eroses apple-cheek'd.
In a shallop of crystal ivory-beak'd,
Dainty little maiden, whither would you
With a satin sail of a ruby glow.
wander?
To a sweet little Eden on earth that I
Whither from this pretty house, this
know,
city-house of ours?
A mountain islet pointed and peak'd?
' Far and far away,' said the dainty little
Waves on a diamond shingle dash,
maiden,
Cataract brooks to the ocean run.
* All among the meadows, the clover and
Fairily-delicate palaces shine
the clematis,
Mixt with myrtle and clad with vine.
Daisies and kingcups and honeysuckle-
And overstream'd and silvery-streak'd
flowers.'
With many a rivulet high against the
Sun
II.
The facets of the glorious mountain flash
Above the valleys of palm and pine.'
MINNIE AND WINNIE.
Minnie and Winnie
* Thither, 0 thither, love, let us go.'
Slept in a shell.
Sleep, little ladies!
'No, no, no!
And they slept well.
For in all that exquisite isle, my dear.
There is but one bird with a musical
, Pink was the shell within,
throat,
Silver without;
2^2
THE SPITEFUL LETTER— THE VICTIM.
Sounds of the great sea
Wander'd about.
Sleep, little ladies !
Wake not soon !
Echo on echo
Dies to the moon.
Two bright stars
Peep'd into the shell.
' What are they dreaming of?
Who can tell?'
Started a green linnet
Out of the croft;
Wake, little ladies,
The sun is aloft !
THE SPITEFUL LETTER.
Here, it is here, the close of the year,
And with it a spiteful letter.
My name in song has done him much
wrong,
For himself has done much better.
0 little bard, is your lot so hard,
If men neglect your pages?
1 think not much of yours or of mine,
I hear the roll of the ages.
Rhymes and rhymes in the range of the
times !
Are mine for the moment stronger?
Yet hate me not, but abide your lot,
I last but a moment longer.
This faded leaf, our names are as brief;
What room is left for a hater?
Yet the yellow leaf hates the greener
leaf,
For it hangs one moment later.
Greater than I — is that your cry?
And men will live to see it.
Well — if it be so — so it is, you know;
And if it be so, so be it.
Brief, brief is a summer leaf,
But this is the time of hollies.
O hollies and ivies and evergreens.
How I hate the spites and the follies !
LITERARY SQUABBLES.
Ah God ! the petty fools of rhyme
That shriek and sweat in pigmy wars
Before the stony face of Time,
And look'd at by the silent stars :
Who hate each other for a song,
And do their little best to bite
And pinch their brethren in the throng,
And scratch the very dead for spite :
And strain to make an inch of room
For their sweet selves, and cannot hear
The sullen Lethe rolling doom
On them and theirs and all things here :
When one small touch of Charity
Could lift them nearer God-like state
Than if the crowded Orb should cry
Like those who cried Diana great :
And I too, talk, and lose the touch
I talk of. Surely, after all,
The noblest answer unto such
Is perfect stillness when they brawl.
THE VICTIM.
A PLAGUE upon the people fell,
A famine after laid them low,
Then thorpe and byre arose in fire,
For on them brake the sudden foe;
So thick they died the people cried,
* The Gods are moved against the land.
The Priest in horror about his altar
To Thor and Odin lifted a hand :
' Help us from famine
And plague and strife !
What would you have of us?
Human life?
Were it our nearest,
Were it our dearest,
(Answer, O answer)
We give you his life.'
But still the foeman spoil'd and burn'd,
And cattle died, and deer in wood.
And bird in air, and fishes turn'd
And whiten'd all the rolling flood ;
THE VICTIM— WAGES.
233
And dead men lay all over the way,
They have taken our son,
Or down in a furrow scathed with
They will have his life.
flame :
Is he your dearest?
And ever and aye the Priesthood moan'd,
Or I, the wife?'
Till at last it seem'd that an answer
came.
V.
* The King is happy
The King bent low, with hand on brow,
In child and wife;
He stay'd his arms upon his knee :
Take you his dearest,
' 0 wife, what use to answer now?
Give us a life.'
For now the Priest has judged for me.'
III.
The King was shaken with holy fear;
'The Gods,' he said, ' would have chosen
The Priest went out by heath and hill;
well;
The King was hunting in the wild;
Yet both are near, and both are dear.
They found the mother sitting still;
And which the dearest I cannot tell ! '
She cast her arms about the child.
But the Priest was happy,
The child was only eight summers old,
His victim won :
His beauty still with his years in-
* We have his dearest.
creased,
His only son ! '
His face was ruddy, his hair was gold,
He seem'd a victim due to the priest.
VI.
The Priest beheld him.
The rites prepared, the victim bared.
And cried with joy,
The knife uprising toward the blow
'The Gods have answer'd:
To the altar-stone she sprang alone.
We give them the boy.'
' Me, not my darling, no ! '
He caught her away with a sudden cry;
IV.
Suddenly from him brake his wife.
The King return'd from out the wild.
And shrieking '/am his dearest, I —
He bore but Httle game in hand;
/ am his dearest ! ' rush'd on the
The mother said, 'They have taken the
knife.
child
And the Priest was happy,
To spill his blood and heal the land :
*0, Father Odin,
The land is sick, the people diseased.
We give you a life.
And blight and famine on all the
Which was his nearest?
lea:
Who was his dearest?
The holy Gods, they must be appeased,
The Gods have answer'd ;
So I pray you tell the truth to me.
We give them the wife ! *
WAGES.
Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song.
Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea —
Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong —
Nay, but she aim'd not at glory, no lover of glory she :
Give her the glory of going on, and still to be.
The wages of sin is death: if the wages of Virtue be dust.
Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly?
She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just.
To rest in a gulden grove, or to bask in a summer sky;
Give her the wages of going on, and not to die.
234
THE HIGHER PANTHEISM.
THE HIGHER PANTHEISM.
The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains —
Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns?
Is not the Vision He? tho' He be not that which He seems?
Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?
Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb,
Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him ?
Dark is the world to thee : thyself art the reason why;
For is He not all but that which has power to feel * I am I '?
Glory about thee, without thee; and thou fuUillest thy doom
Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendour and gloom.
Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet —
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.
God is law, say the wise; O Soul, and let us rejoice,
For if He thunder by law the thunder is yet His voice.
Law is God, say some : no God at all, says the fool;
For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool;
And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see;
But if we could see and hear, this Vision — were it not He ?
THE VOICE AND THE PEAK.
The voice and the Peak
Far over summit and lawn,
The lone glow and long roar
Green-rushing from the rosy thrones
of dawn !
II.
All night have I heard the voice
Rave over the rocky bar,
But thou wert silent in heaven,
Above thee glided the star.
Hast thou no voice, 6 Peak,
That standest high above all?
'I am the voice of the Peak,
I roar and rave for I fall.
IV.
' A thousand voices go
To North, South, East, and V^est;
They leave the heights and are troubled.
And moan and sink io their rest.
V.
• The fields are fair beside them,
The chestnut towers in his bloom;
But they — they feel the desire of the
deep —
Full, and follow their doom.
'The deep has power on the height.
And the height has power on the
deep;
They are raised for ever and ever,
And sink again into sleep.'
THE VOICE AND THE PEAK—BOADICAa.
235
vn.
Not raised for ever and ever,
But when their cycle is o'er,
The valley, the voice, the peak, the star
Pass, and are found no more.
VIII.
The Peak is high and flush'd
At his highest with sunrise fire;
The Peak is high, and the stars are high.
And the thought of a man is higher.
IX.
A deep below the deep,
And a height beyond the height !
Our hearing is not hearing,
And. our seeing is not sight.
X.
The voice and the Peak
Far into heaven withdrawn.
The lone glow and long roar
Green-rushing from the rosy thrones
of dawn !
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies.
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower — but if\ could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
A DEDICATION.
Dear, near and true — no truer Time
himself
Can prove you, tho' he make you ever-
more
Dearer and nearer, as the rapid of life
Shoots to the fall — take this . and pray
that he
Who wrote it, honouring your sweet faith
in him,
May trust himself; and after praise and
scorn,
As one who feels .the immeasurable
world,
Attain the wise indifference of the wise;
And after Autumn past — if left to pass
His autumn into seeming-leafless days —
Draw toward the long frost and longest
night,
W^earing his wisdom lightly, like the
fruit
Which in our winter woodland looks a
flower. 1
1 The fruit of the Spindle-tree {Euonymus
EuropcEiis).
EXPERIMENTS.
BOADICEA.
While about the shore of Mona those Neronian legionaries
Burnt and broke the grove and altar of the Druid and Druidess,
Far in the East Boadicea, standing loftily charioted,
Mad and maddening all that heard her in her fierce volubility.
Girt by half the tribes of Britain, near the colony Camuloddne,
Yell'd and shriek'd between her daughters o'er a wild confederacy.
* They that scorn the tribes and call us Britain's barbarous populaces,
Did they hear me, would they listen, did they pity me supplicating?
Shall I heed them in their anguish? shall I brook to be supplicated?
Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant !
Must their ever-ravening eagle's beak and talon annihilate us?
Tear the noble heart of Britain, leave it gorily quivering?
Bark an answer, Britain's raven ! bark and blacken innumerable,
236 BOADIC&A.
Blacken round the Roman carrion, make the carcase a skeleton,
Kite and kestrel, wolf and wolf kin, from the wilderness, wallow in it,
Till the face of Bel be brighten'd, Taranis be propitiated.
Lo their colony half-defended ! lo their colony, Camuloddne !
There the horde of Roman robbers mock at a barbarous adversary.
There the hive of Roman liars worship an emperor-idiot.
Such is Rome, and this her deity : hear it. Spirit of Cassiv6ladn !
* Hear it, Gods ! the Gods have heard it, O Icenian, O Coritanian !
Doubt not ye the Gods have answer'd, Catieuchlanian, Trinobant.
These have told us all their anger in miraculous utterances,
Thunder, a flying fire in heaven, a murmur heard aerially,
Phantom sound of blows descending, moan of an enemy massacred,
Phantom wail of women and children, multitudinous agonies.
Bloodily flow'd the Tamesa rolling phantom bodies of horses and men;
Then a phantom colony smoulder'd on the refluent estuary ;
Lastly yonder yester-even, suddenly giddily tottering —
There was one who watch'd and told me — down their statue of Victory fell.
Lo their precious Roman bantling, lo the colony Cam ulod tine,
Shall we teach it a Roman lesson? shall we care to be pitiful?
Shall we deal with it as an infant? shall we dandle it amorously?
* Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant !
While I roved about the forest, long and bitterly meditating,
There I heard them in the darkness, at the mystical ceremony,
Loosely robed in flying raiment, sang the terrible prophetesses,
" Fear not, isle of blowing woodland, isle of silvery parapets !
Tho' the Roman eagle shadow thee, tho' the gathering enemy narrow thee,
Thou shalt wax and he shall dwindle, thou shalt be the mighty one yet !
Thine the liberty, thine the glory, thine the deeds to be celebrated.
Thine the myriad-rolling ocean, light and shadow illimitable.
Thine the lands of lasting summer, many-blossoming Paradises,
Thine the North and thine the South and thine the battle-thunder of God,"
*So they chanted: how shall Britain light upon auguries happier?
So they chanted in the darkness, and there cometh a victory now.
'Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant!
Me the wife of rich Prasdtagus, me the lover of liberty.
Me they seized and me they tortured, me they lash'd and humiliated.
Me the sport of ribald Veterans, mine of ruffian violators !
See they sit, they hide their faces, miserable in ignominy !
Wherefore in me burns an anger, not by blood to be satiated.
Lo the palaces and the temple, lo the colony Camuloddne !
There they ruled, and thence they wasted all the flourishing territory,
Thither at their will they haled the yellow-ringleted Britoness —
Bloodily, bloodily fall the battle-axe, unexhausted, inexorable.
Shout Jcenian, Catieuchlanian, shout Coritanian, Trinobant,
Till the victim hear within and yearn to hurry precipitously
Like the leaf in a roaring whirlwind, like the smoke in a hurricane whirl'd.
Lo the colony, there they rioted in the city of Cunobeline !
There they drank in cups of emerald, there at tables of ebony lay.
Rolling on their purple couches in their tender effeminacy.
There they dwelt and there they rioted; there — there — they dwell no more.
boadicAa—in quantity.
237
Burst the gates, and burn the palaces, break the works of the statuary,
Take the hoary Roman head and shatter it, hold it abominable,
Cut the Roman boy to pieces in his lust and voluptuousness,
Lash the maiden into swooning, me they lash'd and humiliated.
Chop the breasts from off the mother^ dash the brains of the little one out,
Up my Britons, on my chariot, on my chargers, trample them under us.'
So the Queen Boadicea, standing loftily charioted.
Brandishing in her hand a dart and rolling glances lioness-like,
Yell'd and shriek'd between her daughters in her fierce volubility.
Till her people all around the royal chariot agitated,
Madly dash'd the darts together, writhing barbarous lineaments.
Made the noise of frosty woodlands, when they shiver in January,
Roar'd as when the roaring breakers boom and blanch on the precipices,
Yell'd as when the winds of winter tear an oak on a promontory.
So the silent colony hearing her tumultuous adversaries
Clash the darts and on the buckler beat with rapid unanimous baud,
Thought on all her evil tyrannies, all her pitiless avarice.
Till she felt the heart within her fall and flutter tremulously.
Then her pulses at the clamouring of her enemy fainted away.
Out of evil evil flourishes, out of tyranny tyranny buds.
Ran the land with Roman slaughter, multitudinous agonies.
Perish'd many a maid and matron, many a valorous legionary.
Fell the colony, city, and citadel, London, Verulam, Camuloddne.
IN QUANTITY.
ON TRANSLATIONS OF HOMER.
Hexameters and Pentameters.
These lame hexameters the strong-wing'd music of Homer !
No — but a most burlesque barbarous experiment.
When was a harsher sound ever heard, ye Muses, in England?
When did a frog coarser croak upon our Helicon?
Hexameters no worse than daring Germany gave us,
Barbarous experiment, barbarous hexameters.
MILTON.
Alcaics.
O mighty-MOUTH'd inventor of har-
monies,
O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity,
God-gifted organ-voice of England,
Milton, a name to resound for ages;
Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel,
Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous ar-
mouries.
Tower, as the deep- domed empyrean
Rings to the roar of an angel onset —
Me rather all that bowery loneliness,
The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring.
And bloom profuse and cedar arches
Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean,
Where some refulgent sunset of India
Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle,
And crimson-hued the stately palm-
woods
Whisper in odorous heights of even.
238
TRANSLATION OF THE ILIAD.
Hejtdecasyllabics.
O YOU chorus of indolent reviewers,
Irresponsible, indolent reviewers,
Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem
All composed in a metre of Catullus,
All in quantity, careful of my motion,
Like the skater on ice that hardly bears
him,
Lest I fall unawares before the people,
Waking laughter in indolent reviewers.
Should I flounder awhile without a tumble
Thro' this metrification of Catullus,
They should speak to me not without a
welcome.
All that chorus of indolent reviewers.
Hard, hard, hard is it, only not to
tumble,
So fantastical is the dainty metre.
Wherefore slight me not wholly, nor
believe me
Too presumptuous, indolent reviewers.
O blatant Magazines, regard me rather —
Since I blush to belaud myself a mo-
ment—
As some rare little rose, apiece of inmost
Horticultural art, or half coquette-like
Maiden, not to be greeted unbenignly.
SPECIMEN OF A TRANSLATION
OF THE ILIAD IN BLANK
VERSE.
So Hector spake; the Trojans roar'd
applause;
Then loosed their sweating horses from
the yoke,
And each beside his chariot bound his
own;
And oxen from the city, and goodly
sheep
In haste they drove, and honey-hearted
wine
And bread from out the houses brought,
and heap'd
Their firewood, and the winds from off
the plain
Roll'd the rich vapour far into the
heaven.
And these all night upon the bridge ^ of
war
Sat glorying; many a fire before them
blazed :
As when in heaven the stars about the
moon
Look beautiful, when all the winds are
laid.
And every height comes out, and jutting
peak
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens
Break open to their highest, and all the
stars
Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his
heart :
So many a fire between the ships and
stream
Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of
Troy,
A thousand on the plain; and close by
each
Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire;
And eating hoary grain and pulse the
steeds,
Fixt by their cars, waited the golden
dawn. Iliad \iii. 542-561.
■ 1 Or, ridge.
THE WINDOW.
239
THE WINDOW;
OR, THE SONG OF THE WRENS.
Four years ago Mr. Sullivan requested me to write a little song-cycle, German fashion, for him to
exercise his art upon. He had been very successful in setting such old songsas ' Orpheus with his
lute,' and I drest up for him, partly in the old style, a puppet, whose almost only merit is, perhaps,
that it can dance to Mr. Sullivan's instrument. I am sorry that my four-year-old puppet should
have to dance at all in the dark shadow of these days; but the music is now completed, and 1 am
bound by my promise.
December, 1870. A- Tennyson.
THE WINDOW.
ON THE HILL.
The lights and shadows fly !
Yonder it brightens and darkens down
on the plain.
A jewel, a jewel dear to a lover's
eye !
Oh is it the brook, or a pool, or her
window-pane,
When the winds are up in the
morning?
Qouds that are racing above,
And winds and lights and shadows that
cannot be still,
All running on one way to the home
of my love.
You are all running on, and I stand on
the slope of the hill.
And the winds are up in the morn-
ing!
Follow, follow the chase !
And my thoughts are as quick and as
quick, ever on, on, on.
O lights, are you flying over her sweet
little face?
And my heart is there before you are
come, and gone.
When the winds are up in the
morning !
Follow them down the slope !
And I follow them down to the window-
pane of my dear.
And it brightens and darkens and
brightens like my hope,
And it darkens and brightens and darkens
like my fear.
And the winds are up in the
morning.
AT THE WINDOW.
Vine, vine and eglantine.
Gasp her window, trail and twine !
Rose, rose and clematis.
Trail and twine and clasp and kiss.
Kiss, kiss; and make her a bower
All of flowers, and drop me a flower.
Drop me a flower.
Vine, vine and eglantine.
Cannot a flower, a flower, be mine?
Rose, rose and clematis,
Drop me a flower, a flower, to kiss.
Kiss, kiss — and out of her bower
All of flowers, a flower, a flower,
Dropt, a flower.
Gone!
Gone,
Gone,
Taken
Gone,
Flown
Down
GONE.
till the end of the year,
and the light gone with her, and
left me in shadow here !
Gone — flitted away,
the stars from ^the night and the
sun from the day !
and a cloud in my heart, and a
storm in the air !
to the east or the west, flitted I
know not where !
in the south is a flash and a groan :
she is there ! she is there !
The frost is here,
And fuel is dear.
And woods are sear,
And fires burn clear, .
And frost is here
And has bitten the hctl of the going year.
240
THE WINDOW.
Bite, frost, bite !
You roll up away from the light
The blue wood-louse, and the plump
dormouse,
And the bees are still'd, and the flies are
kill'd,
And you bite far into the heart of the
house,
But not into mine.
Bite, frost, bite !
The woods are all the searer.
The fuel is all the dearer,
The fires are all the clearer,
My spring is all the nearer,
You have bitten into the heart of the
earth.
But not into mine.
Birds' love and birds' song
Flying here and there.
Birds' song and birds' love.
And you with gold for hair !
Birds' song and birds' love.
Passing with the weather,
Men's song and men's love,
To love once and for ever.
Men's love and birds' love.
And women's love and men's !
And you my wren with a crown of gold,
You my queen of the wrens !
You the queen of the wrens —
We'll be birds of a feather,
I'll be King of the Queen of the wrens.
And all in a nest together.
THE LETTER.
Where is another sweet as my sweet,
Fine of the fine, and shy of the shy?
Fine little hands, fine little feet —
Dewy blue eye.
Shall I write to her? shall I go?
Ask her to marry me by and by?
Somebody said that she'd say no;
Somebody knows that she'll say ay !
Ay or no, if ask'd to her face?
Ay or no, from shy of the shy?
Go, little letter, apace, apace,
Fly;
Fly to the light in the valley below —
Tell my wish to her dewy blue eye :
Somebody said that she'd say no;
Somebody knows that she'll say ay !
NO ANSWER.
The mist and the rain, the mist and the
rain !
Is it ay or no? is it ay or no?
And never a glimpse of her window-pane !
And I may die but the grass will grow.
And the grass will grow when I am gone.
And the wet west wind and the world
will go on.
Ay is the song of the wedded spheres,
No is trouble and cloud and storm.
Ay is life for a hundred years.
No will push me down to the worm.
And when I*am there and dead and gone,
The wet west wind and the world will
go on.
The wind and the wet, the vi'ind and the
wet!
Wet west wind how you blow, you blow !
And never a line from my lady yet !
Is it ay or no? is it ay or no?
Blow then, blow, and when I am gone,
The wet west wind and the world may
go on.
NO ANSWER.
Winds are loud and you are dumb,
Take my love, for love will come.
Love will come but once a life.
Winds are loud and winds will pass !
Spring is here with leaf and grass:
Take my love and be my wife.
After-loves of maids and men
Are but dainties drest again :
Love me now, you'll love me then :
Love can love but once a life.
THE ANSWER.
Two little hands that meet,
Claspt on her seal, my sweet !
Must I take you and break you,
Two little hands that meet?
I must take you, and break you,
And loving hands must part —
THE WINDOW,
241
Take, take — break, break —
* A year hence, a year hence.'
Break — you may break my heart.
' We shall both be gray.'
Faint heart never won —
*A month hence, a month hence.
Break, break, and all's done.
• Far, far away.'
* A week hence, a week hence.'
AY.
'Ah, the long delay.'
• Wait a little, wait a little,
Be merry, all birds, to-day,
You shall fix a day.'
Be merry on earth as you never were
merry before,
* To-morrow, love, to-morrow,
Be merry in heaven, O larks, and
far
And that's an age away.'
away,
Blaze upon her window, sun.
And merry for ever and ever, and
one
And honour all the day.
day more.
Why?
MARRIAGE MORNING.
For it's easy to find a rhyme.
Look, look, how he flits.
Light, so low upon earth,
The fire-crown'd king of the wr
from out of the pine !
ens.
You send a flash to the sun.
Here is the golden close of love,
Look how they tumble the blossom,
the
All my wooing is done.
mad little tits !
Oh, the woods and the meadows,
* Cuck-00 ! Cuck-oo I ' was ever a
May
Woods where we hid from the wet,
so fine ?
Stiles where we stay'd to be kind,
Why?
For it's easy to find a rhyme.
Meadows in which we met !
0 merry the linnet and dove,
Light, so low in the vale
And swallow and sparrow and throstle.
You flash and lighten afar.
and have your desire !
For this is the golden morning of love,
0 merry my heart, you have gotten
the
And you are his morning star.
wings of love,
And flit like the king of the wrens
Flash, I am coming, I come,
with
By meadow and stile and wood,
a crown of fire.
Oh, lighten into my eyes and my heart.
Why?
Into my heart and my blood !
For it's ay ay, ay ay.
Heart, are you great enough
For a love that never tires?
WHEN.
0 heart, are you great enough for love?
I have heard of thorns and briers.
Sun comes, moon comes,
Over the thorns and briers.
Time slips away.
Over the meadows and stiles.
Sun sets, moon sets,
Over the world to the end of it
Love, fix a day.
Flash for a million miles.
IN MEMORIAM A. H. R
OBIIT MDCCCXXXIIL
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy
face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove j
R
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy
foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.
242
IN MEMORIAM.
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust :
Thou madest man, he knows not
why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him : thou art just.
Thou seemest human and divine.
The highest, holiest manhood, thou :
Our wills are ours, we know not
how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be :
They are but broken lights of thee.
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
We have but faith: we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see;
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness : let it grow.
Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverencd in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster. We are fools and slight;
We mock thee when we do not fear :
(But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.
Forgive what seem'd my sin in me;
What seem'd my worth since I
began ;
For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.
Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.
Forgive these wild and wandering cries.
Confusions of a wasted youth ;
Forgive them where they fail in truth.
And in thy wisdom make me wise.
. 1849.
I. ^
I HM.D it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
But who shall so forecast the years
And find in loss a gain to match?
Or reach a hand thro' time to catch
The far-off interest of tears?
Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd,
Let darkness keep her raven gloss :
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,
To dance with death, to beat the ground,
Than that the victor Hours should scorn
The long result of Love, and boast,
* Behold the man that loved and
lost.
But all he was is overworn.'
Old Yew, which graspest at the stones
That name the under-lying dead,
Thy fibres net the dreamless head,
Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.
The seasons bring the flower again.
And bring the firstling to the flock;
And in the dusk of thee, the clock
Beats out the little lives of men.
O not for thee the glow, the bloom,
Who changest not in any gale,
Nor branding summer suns avail
To touch thy thousand years of gloom :
And gazing on thee, sullen tree,
Sick for thy stubborn hardihood,
I seem to fail from out my blood
And grow incorporate into thee.
III.
O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,
O Priestess in the vaults of Death,
O sweet and bitter in a breath.
What whispers from thy lying lip?
'The stars,' she whispers, 'blindly run;
A web is wov'n across the sky;
From out waste places comes a cry,
And murmurs from the dying sun :
'And all the phantom, Nature, stands-^
With all the music in her tone,
A hollow echo of my own, —
A hollow form with empty hands.'
IN MEMORIAM.
243
And shall I take a thing so blind,
Embrace her as my natural good;
Or crush her, like a vice of blood,
Upon the threshold of the mind?
To Sleep I give my powers away;
My will is bondsman to the dark ;
I sit within a helmless bark,
And with my heart I muse and say :
0 heart, how fares it with thee now,
That thou should'st fail from thy
desire.
Who scarcely darest to inquire,
' What is it makes me beat so low?'
Something it is which thou hast lost.
Some pleasure from thine early years.
Break, thou deep vase of chilling
tears,
That grief hath shaken into frost !
Such clouds of nameless trouble cross
All night below the darken'd eyes;
With morning wakes the will, and
cries,
* Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.'
V.
1 sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
Like coarsest clothes against the
cold :
But that large grief which these
enfold
Is given in outline and no more.
One writes, that 'Other friends remain,'
That ' Loss is common to the race '—
And common is the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.
That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more :
Too common ! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.
O father, wheresoe'er thou be.
Who pledgest now thy gallant son;
A shot, ere half thy draught be done,
Hath still'd the life that beat from thee.
O mother, praying God will save
Thy sailor, — while thy head is bow'd,
His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud
Drops in his vast and wandering grave.
Ye know no more than I who wrought
At that last hour to please him well;
Who mused on all I had to tell.
And something written, something
thought;
Expecting still his advent home;
And ever met him on his way
With wishes, thinking, * here to-day,'
Or ' here to-morrow will he come.'
O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove,
. That sittest ranging golden hair;
And glad to find thyself so fair,
Poor child, that waitest for thy love !
For now her father's chimney glows
In expectation of a guest;
And thinking, * this will please him
best,'
She takes a riband or a rose;
For he will see them on to-night;
And with the thought her colour
burns;
And, having left the glass, she turns
Once more to set a ringlet right;
And, even when she turn'd, the curse ,
Had fallen, and her future Lord
Was drown'd in passing thro' the
ford.
Or kill'd in falling from his horse.
O what to her shall be the end?
And what to me remains of good?
To her, perpetual maidenhood,
And unto me no second friend.
244
IN MEMORIAM.
Dark house, by which once -more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to
beat
So quickly, waiting for^ hand,
A hand that can be clasp'd no more —
Behold me, for I cannot sleep, .
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
He is not here ; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank
day.
VIII.
A hiappy lover who has come
To look on her that loves him well,
Who 'lights and rings the gateway
bell,
And learns her gone and far from home;
He saddens, all the magic light
Dies off at once from bower and
hall,
And all the place is dark, and all
The chambers emptied of delight :
So find I every pleasant spot
In which we two were wont to
meet,
The field, the chamber and the
street,
For all is dark where thou art not.
Yet as that other, wandering there
In those deserted walks, may find
A flower beat with rain and wind,
Which once she foster'd up with care;
So seems it in my deep regret,
0 my forsaken heart, with thee
And this poor flower of poesy
Which little cared for fades not yet.
But since it pleased a.vanish'd eye,
1 go to plant it on his tomb,
That if it can it there may bloom,
Or dying, there at least may die.
IX.
Fair ship, that from the Italian shore
Sailest the placid ocean-plains
With my lost Arthur's loved re-
mains.
Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er.
So draw him home to those that mourn
In vain; a favourable speed
Ruffle thy mirror'd mast, and lead
Thro' prosperous floods his holy urn.
All night no ruder air perplex
Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright
As our pure love, thro' early light
Shall glimmer on the dewy decks.
Sphere all your lights around, above ;
Sleep, gentle heavens, before the
prow;
Sleep, gentle winds, as he 'sleeps
now,
My friend, the brother of my love;
My Arthur, whom I shall not see
Till all my widow'd race be run;
Dear as the mother to the son,
More than my brothers are to me.
X.
I hear the noise about thy keel;
I hear the bell struck in the night :
I see the cabin- window bright;
I see the sailor at the wheel.
Thou bring'st the sailor to his wife,
And travell'd men from foreign
lands;
And letters unto trembling hands;
And, thy dark freight, a vanish'd life.
So bring him : we have idle dreams :
This look of quiet flatters thus
Our home-bred fancies : O to us,
The fools of habit, sweeter seems
To rest beneath the clover sod,
That takes the sunshine and the
rains.
Or where the kneeling hamlet drains
The chalice of the grapes of God;
IN MEMORIAM.
245
Than if with thee the roaring wells
Should gulf him fathom-deep in
brine;
And hands so often clasp'd in mine,
Should toss with tangle and with shells.
X,. J
Calm is the morn without a sound,
Calm as to suit a calmer grief,
And only thro' the faded leaf
The chestnut pattering to the ground :
Calm and deep peace on this high wold,
And on these dews that drench the
furze,
And all the silvery gossamers
That twinkle into green and gold :
Calm and still light on yon great plain
That sweeps with all its autumn
bowers.
And crowded farms and lessening
towers,
To mingle with the bounding main :
Calm and deep peace in this wide air.
These leaves that redden to the fall;
And in my heart, if calm at all,
If any calm, a calm despair :
Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,
And waves that sway themselves in
rest.
And dead calm in that noble breast
Which heaves but with the heaving deep.
XII.
Lo, as a dove when up she springs
To bear thro' Heaven a tale of woe.
Some dolorous message knit below
The wild pulsation of her wings;
Like her I go; I cannot stay;
I leave this mortal ark behind,
A weight of nerves without a mind.
And leave the cliffs, and haste away
O'er ocean-mirrors rounded large,
And reach the glow of southern
skies.
And see the sails at distance rise.
And linger weeping on the marge,
And saying : * Comes he thus, my friend ?
Is this the end of all my care?'
And circle moaning in the air :
' Is this the end? Is this the end? '
And forward dart again, and play
About the prow, and back return
To where the body sits, and learn
That I have been an hour away.
XIII.
Tears of the widower, when he sees
A late-lost form that sleep reveals,
And moves his doubtful arms, and
feels
Her place is empty, fall like these;
Which weep a loss for ever new,
A void where heart on heart reposed ;
And, where warm hands have prest
and closed.
Silence, till I be silent too.
Which weep the comrade of my choice,
An awful thought, a life removed.
The human-hearted man I loved,
A Spirit, not a breathing voice.
Come Time, and teach me, many years,
I do not suffer in a dream;
For now so strange do these things
seem.
Mine eyes have leisure for their tears;
My fancies time to rise on wing.
And glance about the approaching
sails,
As tho' they brought but merchants*
bales.
And not the burthen that they bring.
If one should bring me this report.
That thou hadst touch'd the land
to-day.
And I went down unto the quay,
And found thee lying in the port;
And standing, muffled round with woe,
Should see thy passengers in rank
Come stepping lightly down the
plank.
And beckoning unto those they know;
246
IN MEMORIAM.
And if along with these should come
The man I held as half-divine;
Should strike a sudden hand in mine,
And ask a thousand things of home ;
And I should tell him all my pain,
And how my life had droop'd of late.
And he should sorrow o'er my state
And marvel what possess'd my brain;
And I perceived no touch of change.
No hint of death in all his frame,
But found him all in all the same,
I should not feel it to be strange.
To-night the winds begin to rise
And roar from yonder dropping day :
The last red leaf is whirl'd away,
The rooks are blown about the skies;
The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd.
The cattle huddled on the lea;
And wildly dash'd on tower and tree
The sunbeam strikes along the world :
And but for fancies, which aver
That all thy motions gently pass
Athwart a plane of molten glass,
I scarce could brook the strain and stir
That makes the barren branches loud;
And but for fear it is not so,
The wild unrest that lives in woe
Would dote and pore on yonder cloud
That rises upward always higher,
And onward drags a labouring breast,
And topples round the dreary west,
A looming bastion fringed with fire.
XVI.
What words are these have fall'n from me ?
Can calm despair and wild unrest
Be tenants of a single breast.
Or sorrow such a changeling be?
Or doth she only seem to take
The touch of change in calm or
storm ;
Rut knows no more of transient form
In her deep self, than some dead lake
That holds the shadow of a lark
Hung in the shadow of a heaven?
Or has the shock, so harshly given,
Confused me like the unhappy bark
That strikes by night a craggy shelf.
And staggers blindly ere she sink ?
And stunn'd me from my power to
think
And all my knowledge of myself;
And made me that delirious man
Whose fancy fuses old and new,
And flashes into false and true.
And mingles all without a plan ?
XVII.
Thou comest, much wept for: such a
breeze
CompelPd thy canvas, and my prayer
Was as the whisper of an air
To breathe thee over lonely seas.
For I in spirit saw thee move
Thro' circles of the bounding sky,
Week after week : the days go by :
Come quick, thou bringest all I love.
Henceforth, wherever thou may'st roam,
My blessing, like a line of light.
Is on the waters day and night.
And like a beacon guards thee home.
So may whatever tempest mars
Mid-ocean, spare thee, sacred bark;
And balmy drops in summer dark
Slide from the bosom of the stars.
So kind an office hath been done.
Such precious relics brought by thee;
The dust of him I shall not see
Till all my widow'd race be run.
XVIII.
'Tis well; 'tis something; we may stand
Where he in English earth is laid.
And from his ashes may be made
The violet of his native land.
'Tis little ; but it looks in truth
As if the quiet bones were blest
Among familiar names to rest
And in the places of his youth.
IN MEMORIAM.
247
Come then, pure hands, and bear the
head
That sleeps or wears the mask of
sleep,
And come, whatever loves to weep,
And hear the ritual of the dead.
Ah yet, ev'n yet, if this might be,
I, falling on his faithful heart.
Would breathing thro' his lips im-
part
The life that almost dies in me;
That dies not, but endures with pain.
And slowly forms the firmer mind.
Treasuring the look it cannot find,
The words that are not heard again.
The Danube to the Severn gave
The darken'd heart that beat no
more;
They laid him by the pleasant shore.
And in the hearing of the wave.
There twice a day the Severn fills;
The salt sea-wa'ter passes by,
And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.
The Wye is hush'd nor moved along.
And hush'd my deepest grief of all.
When fiU'd with tears that cannot
fall,
I brim with sorrow drowning song.
The tide flows down, the wave again
Is vocal in its wooded walls;
My deeper anguish also falls,
And I can speak a little then.
XX.
The lesster griefs that may be said.
That breathe a thousand tender vows,
Are but as servants in a house
Where lies the master newly dead;
Who speak their feeling as it is.
And weep the fulness from the
mind :
' It will be hard,' they say, ' to find
Another service such as this.'
My lighter moods are like to these,
That out of words a comfort win;
But there are other griefs within,
And tears that at their fountain freeze;
For by the hearth the children sit
Cold in that atmosphere of Death,
And scarce endure to draw the
breath.
Or like to noiseless phantoms flit :
But open converse is there none.
So much the vital spirits sink
To see the vacant chair, and think,
* How good ! how kind ! and he is
gone.'
XXI.
I sing to him that rests below,
And, since the grasses round me
wave,
I take the grasses of the grave.
And make them pipes whereon to blow.
The traveller hears me now and then.
And sometimes harshly will he
speak :
' This fellow would make weakness
weak.
And melt the waxen hearts of men.*
Another answers, 'Let him be,
He loves to make parade of pain,
That with his piping he may gain
The praise that comes to constancy.'
A third is wroth : * Is this an hour
For private sorrow's barren song,
When more and more the people
throng
The chairs and thrones of civil power?
* A time to sicken and to swoon.
When Science reaches forth her
arms
To feel from world to world, and
charms
Her secret from the latest moon? '
Behold, ye speak an idle thing :
Ye never knew the sacred dust :
I do but sing because I must.
And pipe but as the linnets sing :
248
IN MEMORIAM.
And one is glad; her note is gay,
For now her little ones have ranged;
And one is sad ; her note is changed,
Because her brood is stol'n away.
XXII.
The path by which we twain did go,
Which led by tracts that pleased us
well,
Thro' four sweet years arose and fell.
From flower to flower, from snow to snow :
And we with singing cheer'd the way.
And, crown'd with all the season
lent.
From April on to April went.
And glad at heart from May to May :
But where the path we walk'd began
To slant the fifth autumnal slope.
As we descended following Hope
There sat the Shadow fear'd of man;
Who broke our fair companionship,
And spread his mantle dark and
cold,
And wrapt thee formless in the fold,
And duU'd the murmur on thy lip.
And bore thee where I could not see
Nor follow, tho' I walk in haste.
And think, that somewhere in the
waste
The Shadow sits and waits for me.
XXIII.
Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut,
Or breaking into song by fits,
Alone, alone, to where he sits,
The Shadow cloak'd from head to foot,
Who keeps the keys of all the creeds,
I wander, often felling lame.
And looking back to whence I came.
Or on to where the pathway leads;
And crying, How changed from where it
ran
Thro' lands where not' a leaf was
dumb;
But all the lavish hills would hum
The murmur of a happy Pan :
When each by turns was guide to each.
And Fancy light from Fancy
caught.
And Thought leapt out to wed with
Thought
Ere Thought could wed itself with
Speech;
And all we met was fair and good.
And all was good that Time could
bring,
And all the secret of the Spring
Moved in the chambers of the blood;
And many an old philosophy
On Argive heights divinely sang,
And round us all the thicket rang
To many a flute of Arcady.
And was the day of my delight
As pure and perfect as I say?
The very source and fount of Day
Is dash'd with wandering isles of night.
If all was good and fair we met,
This earth had been the Paradise
It never look'd to human eyes
Since our first Sun arose and set.
And is it that the haze of grief
Makes former gladness loom so
great?
The lowness of the present state,
That sets the past in this relief?
Or that the past will always win
A glory from its being far;
And orb into the perfect star
We saw not, when we moved therein?
•
XXV.
I know that this was Life, — the track
Whereon with equal feet we fared;
And then, as now, the day pre
pared
The daily burden for the back.
But this it was that made me move
As light as carrier-birds in air;
I loved the weight I had to bear,
Because it needed help of Love :
IN MEMORIAM.
249
Nor could I weary, heart or limb,
When mighty Love would cleave in
twain
The lading of a single pain,
And part it, giving half to him.
XXVI.
Still onward winds the dreary way;
I with it; for I long to prove
No lapse of moons can canker
Love,
Whatever fickle tongues may say.
And if that eye which watches guilt
And goodness, and hath power to
see
Within the green the moulder'd
tree,
And towers fall'n as soon as built —
Oh, if indeed that eye foresee
Or see (in Him is no before)
In more of life true life no more
And Love the indifference to be,
Then might I find, ere yet the morn
Breaks hither over Indian seas,
That Shadow waiting with the
keys,
To shroud me from my proper scorn.
XXVII. /
I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage.
The linnet born within the cage, .
That never knew the summer woods :
I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;
Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of
sloth;
Nor any want-begotten rest.
I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
XXVIII.
The time draws near the birth of Christ:
The moon is hid; the night is still;
The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.
Four voices of four hamlets round,
From far and near, on mead and
moor.
Swell out and fail, as if a door
Were shut between me and the sound :
Each voice four changes on the wind,
That now dilate, and now decrease.
Peace and goodwill, goodwill and
peace,
Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.
This year I slept and woke with pain,
I almost wish'd no more to wake,
And that my hold on life would break
Before I heard those bells again :
But they my troubled spirit rule.
For they controU'd me when a boy;
They bring me sorrow touch'd with
joy,
The merry merry bells of Yule.
With such compelling cause to grieve
As daily vexes household peace,
And chains regret to his decease,
How dare we keep our Christmas-eve;
Which brings no more a welcome guest
To enrich the threshold of the night
With shower'd largess of delight
In dance and song and game and jest?
Yet go, and while the holly boughs
Entwine the cold baptismal font,
Make one wreath more for Use and
Wont,
That guard the portals of the house;
Old sisters of a day gone by,
Gray nurses, loving nothing new;
Why should they miss their yearly
due
Before their time ? They too will die.
250
IN MEMORIAM.
With trembling fingers did we weave
The holly round the Christmas
hearth ;
A rainy cloud possess'd the earth,
And sadly fell our Christmas-eve.
At our old pastimes in the hall
We gamboll'd, making vain pretence
Of gladness, with an awful sense
Of one mute Shadow watching all.
We paused : the winds were in the beech :
We heard them sweep the winter
land;
And in a circle hand-in-hand
Sat silent, looking each at each;
Then echo-like our voices rang;
We sung, tho' every eye was dim,
A merry song we sang with him
Last year : impetuously we sang :
We ceased : a gentler feeling crept
Upon us : surely rest is meet :
* They rest,' we said, * their sleep is
sweet,'
And silence follow'd, and we wept.
Our voices took a higher range;
Once more we sang : * They do not
die
Nor lose their mortal sympathy,
Nor change to us, altho' they change;
' Rapt from the fickle and the frail
With gather'd power, yet the same,
Pierces the keen seraphic flame
From orb to orb, from veil to veil.'
Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn,
Draw forth the cheerful day from
night :
O Father, touch the east, and light
The light that shone when Hope was
born.
XXXI.
When Lazarus left his charnel-cave.
And home to Mary's house return'd,
Was this demanded — if he yearn'd
To hear her weeping by his grave?
' Where wert thou, brother, those foui
days?'
There lives no record of reply.
Which telling what it is to die
Had surely added praise to praise.
From every house the neighbours met,
The streets were fiU'd with joyful
sound,
A solemn gladness even crown'd
The purple brows of Olivet.
Behold a man raised up by Christ !
The rest remaineth unreveal'd;
He told it not; or something seal'd
The lips of that Evangelist.
XXXII.
Her eyes are homes of silent prayer.
Nor other thought her mind admits
But, he was dead, and there he sits.
And he that brought him back is there.
Then one deep love doth supersede
All other, when her ardent gaze
Roves from the living brother's face,
And rests upon the Life indeed.
All subtle thought, all curious fears,
Borne down by gladness so complete,
She bows, she bathes the Saviour's
feet
With costly spikenard and with tears.
Thrice blest whose lives are faithful
prayers,
Whose'loves in higher love endure;
What souls possess themselves so
pure, ^
Or is there blessedness like theirs?
O thou that after toil and storm
Mayst seem to have reach'd a purer
air,
Whose faith has centre everywhere.
Nor cares to fix itself to form.
Leave thou thy sister when she prays.
Her early Heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadow'd hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.
IN MEMORIAM.
251
Her faith thro' form is pure as thine,
Her hands are quicker unto good:
Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood
To which she links a truth divine !
See thou, that countest reason ripe
In holding by the law within,
Thou fail not in a world of sin, •
And ev'n for want of such a type.
XXXIV. >/
My own dim life should teach me this,
That life shall live for evermore.
Else earth is darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that is;
This round of green, this orb of flame.
Fantastic beauty; such as lurks
In some wild Poet, when he works
Without a conscience or an aim.
What then were God to such as I ?
'Twere hardly worth my while to
choose
Of things all mortal, or to use
A little patience ere I die;
'Twere best at once to sink to peace,
Like birds the charming serpent
draws,
To drop head-foremost in the jaws
Of vacant darkness and to cease.
Yet if some voice that man could trust
Should murmur from .the narrow
house,
'The cheeks drop in; the body
bows;
Man dies : nor is there hope in dust : '
Might I not say? 'Yet even here,
But for one hour, O Love, I strive
To keep so sweet a thing alive : '
But I should turn mine ears ancl hear
The moanings of the homeless sea.
The sound of streams that swift or
slow
Draw down Ionian hills, and sow
The dust of continents to be;
And Love would answer with a sigh,
'The sound of that forgetful shore
Will change my sweetness more and
more,
Half-dead to know that I shall die.'
O me, what profits it to put
An id'c; case? If Death were seen
At fiv-t as Death, Love had not been,
Or been in narrowest working shut,
Mere fellowship of sluggish moods,
Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape
Had bruised the herb and crush'd
the grape,
And bask'd and batten'd in the woods.
xxxvr.
Tho' truths in manhood darkly join,
Deep-seated in our mystic frame.
We yield all blessing to the name
Of Him that made them current coin;
For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers.
Where truth in closest words shall
fail,
When truth embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors.
And so the Word had breath, and
wrought
With human hands the creed of
creeds
In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought;
Which he may read that binds the sheaf.
Or builds the house, or digs the grave,
And those wild eyes that watch the
wave
In roarings round the coral reef.
xxxvii.
Urania speaks with darken'd brow :
'Thou pratest here where thou art
least ;
This faith has many a purer priest.
And many an abler voice than thou.
'Go down beside thy native rill.
On thy Parnassus set thy feet,
And hear thy laurel whisper sweet
About the ledges of the hill.'
252
IN MEMORIAM.
And my Melpomene replies,
A touch of shame upon her cheek :
' I am not worthy ev'n to speak
Of thy prevailing mysteries;
*ForI am but an earthly Muse,
And owning but a little art
To lull with song an aching heart.
And render human love his dues;
* But brooding on the dear one dead,
And all he said of things divine,
(And dear to me as sacred wine
To dying lips is all he said),
* I murmur'd, as I came along,
Of comfort clasp'd in truth reveal'd;
And loiter'd in the master's field.
And darken'd sanctities with song.'
With weary steps I loiter on,
Tho' always under alter'd skies
The purple from the distance dies.
My prospect and horizon gone.
No joy the blowing season gives.
The herald melodies of spring,
But in the songs I love to sing
A doubtful gleam of solace lives.
If any care for what is here
Survive in spirits render'd free,
Then are these songs I sing of thee
Not all ungrateful to thine ear.
Old warder of these buried bones,
And answering now my random
stroke
With fruitful cloud and living smoke.
Dark yew, that graspest at the stones
And dippest toward the dreamless head,
To thee too comes the golden hour
When flower is feeling after flower;
But Sorrow — fixt upon the dead,
And darkening the dark graves of men, —
What whisper'd from her lying lips?
Thy gloom is kindled at the tips,
And passes into gloom again.
Could we forget the widow'd hour
And look on Spirits breathed away.
As on a maiden in the day
When first she wears her orange-flower !
When crown'd with blessing she doth
rise
To take her latest leave of home.
And hopes and light regrets that
come
Make April of her tender eyes;
And doubtful joys the father move.
And tears are on the mother's face,
As parting with a long embrace
She enters other realms of love;
Her office there to rear, to teach.
Becoming as is meet and fit
A link among the days, to knit
The generations each with each;
And, doubtless, unto thee is given
A life that bears immortal fruit
In those great offices that suit
The full-grown energies of heaven.
Ay me, the difference I discern !
How often shall her old fireside .
Be cheer'd with tidings of the bride,
How often she herself return,
And tell them all they would have told,
And bring her babe, and make her
boast,
Till even those that miss'd her
most
Shall count new things as dear as old :
But thou and I have shaken hands.
Till growing winters lay me low;
My paths are in the fields I know,
And thine in undiscover'd lands.
XLI.
Thy spirit ere our fatal loss
Did ever rise from high to higher;
As mounts the heavenward altar-
fire.
As flies the lighter thro' the gross.
IN MEMORIAM.
«53
But thou art turn'd to something strange,
And I have lost the links that bound
Thy changes; here upon the ground,
No more partaker of thy change.
Deep folly ! yet that this could be —
That I could wing my will with
might
To leap the grades of life and light.
And flash at once, my friend, to thee.
For tho' my nature rarely yields
To that vague fear implied in. death;
Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath.
The howlings from forgotten fields;
Yet oft when sundown skirts the moor
An inner trouble I behold,
A spectral doubt which makes me
cold,
That I shall be thy mate no more,
Tho' following with an upward mind
The wonders that have come to
thee,
Thro' all the secular to-be,
But evermore a life behind.
XLII.
I vex my heart with fancies dim :
He still outstript me in the race;
It was but unity of place
That made me dream I rank'd with
him.
And so may Place retain us still.
And he the much-beloved again,
A lord of large experience, train
To riper growth the mind and will :
And what delights can equal those
That stir the spirit's inner deeps.
When one that loves but knows not,
reaps
A truth from one that loves and knows?
XLIII.
If Sleep and Death be truly one,
And every spirit's folded bloom
Thro' all its intervital gloom
In some long trance should slumber
on;
Unconscious of the sliding hour.
Bare of the body, might it last,
And silent traces of the past
Be all the colour of the flower :
So then were nothing lost to man;
So that still garden of the souls
In many a figured leaf enrolls
The total world since life began;
And love will last as pure and whole
As when he loved me here in
Time,
And at the spiritual prime
Rewaken with the dawning soul.
How fares it with the happy dead?
For here the man is more and
more;
But he forgets the days before
God shut the doorways of his head.
The days have vanish'd, tone and tint.
And yet perhaps the hoarding sense
Gives out at times (he knows not
whence)
A little flash, a mystic hint;
And in the long harmonious years
(If Death so taste Lethean springs),
May some dim touch of earthly
things
Surprise thee ranging with thy peers.
If such a dreamy touch should fall,
O turn thee round, resolve the
doubt;
My guardian angel will speak out
In that high place, and tell thee all.
The baby new to earth and sky.
What time his tender palm is prest
Against the circle of the breast,
Has never thought that ' this is I : '
But as he grows he gathers much.
And learns the use of *I,' and
'me,'
And finds * I am not what I see.
And other than the things I touch.'
254
IN MEMORIAM.
So rounds he to a separate mind
From whence clear memory may
begin,
As thro' the frame that binds him in
His isolation grows defined.
This use may lie in blood and breath,
Which else were fruitless of their
due.
Had man to learn himself anew
Beyond the second birth of Death.
XLVI.
We ranging down this lower track,
The path we came by, thorn and
flower.
Is shadow'd by the growing hour,
Lest life should fail in looking back.
So be it: there no shade can last
In that deep dawn behind the tomb,
But clear from marge to marge shall
bloom
The eternal landscape of the past;
A lifelong tract of time reveal'd;
The fruitful hours of still increase;
Days order'd in a wealthy peace,
And those five years its richest field.
O Love, thy province were not large,
A bounded field, nor stretching
far;
Look also. Love, a brooding star,
A rosy warmth from marge to marge.
XLVII.
That each, who seems a separate whole.
Should move his rounds, and fusing
all
The skirts of self again, should fall
Remerging in the general Soul,
Is faith as vague as all unsweet :
Eternal form shall still divide
The eternal soul from -all beside;
And I shall know him when we meet :
And we shall sit at endless feast,
Enjoying each the other's good :
What vaster dream can hit the mood
Of Love on earth? He seeks at least
Upon the last and sharpest height,
Before the spirits fade away.
Some landing-place, to clasp and
say,
* Farewell ! We lose ourselves in light.'
If these brief lays, of Sorrow born,
Were taken to be such as closed
Grave doubts aild answers here pro-
posed,
Then these were such as men might
scorn :
Her care is not to part and prove;
She takes, when harsher moods
remit.
What slender shade of doubt may
flit,*
And makes it vassal unto love :
And hence, indeed, she sports with
words.
But better serves a wholesome law.
And holds it sin and shame to draw
The deepest measure from the chords :
Nor dare she trust a larger lay,
But rather loosens from the lip
Short swallow-flights of song, that
dip
Their wings in tears, and skim away.
XLIX.
From art, from nature, from the schools,
Let random influences glance,
Like light in many a shiver'd lance
That breaks about the dappled pools :
The lightest wave of thought shall lisp,
The fancy's tenderest eddy wreathe,
The shghtest air of song shall breathe
To make the sullen surface crisp.
And look thy look, and go thy way,
But blame not thou the winds that
make
The seeming-wanton ripple break,
The tender-pencill'd shadow play.
Beneath all fancied hopes and fears
Ay me, the sorrow deepens down,
IN MEMORIAM.
255
Whose muffled motions blindly
drown
The bases of my life in tears.
Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the
nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.
Be near me when the sensuous frame
Is rack'd with pangs that conquer
trust ;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a Fury slinging flame.
Be near me when my faith is dry,
And men the flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and
sing
And weave their petty cells and die.
Be near me when I fade away,
To point the term of human strife.
And on the low dark verge of life
The twilight of eternal day.
LI.
Do we indeed desire the dead
Should still be near us at our side?
Is there no baseness we would
hide?
No inner vileness that we dread?
Shall he for whose applause I strove,
I had such reverence for his blame.
See with clear eye some hidden
shame
And I be lessen'd in his love?
I wrong the grave with fears untrue :
Shall love be blamed for want of
faith?
There must be wisdom with great
Death :
The dead shall look me thro' and thru'.
Be near us when we climb or fall :
Ye watch, Hke God, the rolling hours
With larger other eyes than ours.
To make allowance for us all.
I cannot love thee as I ought,
For love reflects the thing beloved;
My words are only words, and moved
Upon the topmost froth of thought.
* Yet blame not thou thy plaintive song,'
The Spirit of true love replied ;
'Thou canst not move me from thy
side.
Nor human frailty do me wrong.
' What keeps a spirit wholly true
To that ideal which he bears?
What record ? not the sinless years
That breathed beneath the Syrian blue :
*So fret not, like an idle girl.
That life is dash'd with flecks of sin.
Abide : thy wealth is gather'd in,
When Time hath sunder'd shell from
pearl. '
Liii. y
How many a father have I seen,
A sober man, among his boys.
Whose youth was full of foolish
noise,
Who wears his manhood hale and green :
And dare we to this fancy give,
That had the wild oat not been
sown,
The soil, left barren, scarce had
grown
The grain by which a man may live?
Or, if we held the doctrine sound
For life outliving heats of youth,
Yet who would preach it as a truth
To those that eddy round and round?
Hold thou the good : define it well :
For fear divine Philosophy
Should push beyond her mark, and be
Procuress to the Lords of Hell.
Liv. •
Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will.
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ;
256
IN MEMORIAM.
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;
That not a worm is cloven in vain ;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain. ^
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last — far off— at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream : but what am I ?
An infant crying in the night :
An infant crying for the light :
And with no language but a cry.
/
The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the graye,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?
Are God and Nature then at strife.
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;
That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds.
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod.
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
LVI. ^
* So careful of the type ? ' but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, 'A thousand types are
gone :
I care for nothing, all shall go.
* Thou makest thine appeal to me :
I bring to life, I bring to death :
The spirit does but mean the breath :
I know no more.' And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair.
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry
" skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer.
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law —
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed —
Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills.
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal'd within the iron hills?
No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime.
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match'd with him.
O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless !
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.
Peace; come away: the song of woe
Is after all an earthly song :
Peace; come away: we do him
wrong
To sing so wildly : let us go.
Come; let us go : your cheeks are pale;
But half my Ufe I leave behind :
Methinks my friend is richly shrinedj
But I shall pass; my work will fail.
Yet in these ears, till hearing dies.
One set slow bell will seem to toll
The passing of tiie sweetest soul
That ever look'd with human eyes.
I hear it now, and o'er and o'er.
Eternal greetings to the dead;
And ' Ave, Ave, Ave,' said,
* Adieu, adieu,' for evermore.
IN MEMORIAM.
257
In those sad words I took farewell :
Like echoes in sepulchral halls,
As drop by drop the water falls
In vaults and catacombs, they fell;
And, falling, idly broke the peace
Of hearts that beat from day to day,
Half^conscious of their dying clay.
And those cold crypts where they shall
cease.
The high Muse answer' d : * Wherefore
grieve
Thy brethren with a fruitless tear?
Abide a little longer here.
And thou shalt take a nobler leave.*
LIX.
O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me
No casual mistress, but a wife,
My bosom-friend and half of life;
As I confess it needs must be;
O Sorrow, wilt thou rule my blood.
Be sometimes lovely like a bride,
And put thy harsher moods aside,
If thou wilt have me wise and good.
My centred passion cannot move,
Nor will it lessen from to-day;
But I'll have leave at times to play
As with the creature of my love;
And set thee forth, for thou art mine,
With so much hope for years to
come.
That, howsoe'er I. know thee, some
Could hardly tell what name were thine.
He past; a soul of nobler tone :
My spirit loved and loves him yet,
Like some poor girl whose heart is
set
On one whose rank exceeds her own
He mixing with his proper sphere,
She finds the baseness of her lot,
Half jealous of she knows not w^hat,
And envying all that meet him there.
The little village looks forlorn;
She sighs amid her narrow days,
Moving about the household ways,
In that dark house where she was born.
The foolish neighbours come and go,
And tease her till the day draws by :
At night she weeps, * How vain
am I !
How should he love a thing so low? '
LXI.
If, in thy second state sublime,
Thy ransom'd reason change replies
With all the circle of the wise,
The perfect flower of human time;
And if thou cast thine eyes below.
How dimly character'd and slight,
How dwarfd a growth of cold and
night,
How blanch'd with darkness must I grow !
Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore.
Where thy first form was made a
man;
I loved thee, Spirit, and love, nor can
The soul of Shakspeare love thee more.
Tho' if an eye that's downward cast
Could make thee somewhat blench
or fail,
Then be my love an idle tale.
And fading legend of the past;
And thou, as one that once declined,
When he was little more than boy.
On some unworthy heart with joy,
But lives to wed an equal mind;
And breathes a novel world, the while
His other passion wholly dies.
Or in the hght of deeper eyes
Is matter for a flying smile.
LXIII.
Yet pity for a horse o'er-driven,
And love in which my hound has
part,
Can hang no weight upon my heart
In its assumptions up to heaven;
258
IN MEMORIAM.
And I am so much more than these,
As thou, perchance, art more than I,
And yet I spare them sympathy,
And I would set their pains at ease.
So mayst thou watch me where I weep,
As, unto vaster motions bound,
The circuits of thine orbit round
A higher height, a deeper deep.
Dost thou look back on what hath been,
As some divinely gifted man,
Whose life in low estate began
And on a simple village green ;
Who breaks his birth's invidious bar.
And grasps the skirts of happy
chance.
And breasts the blows of circum-
stance.
And grapples with his evil- star;
Who makes by force his merit known
And lives to clutch the golden keys,
To mould a mighty state's decrees,
And shape the whisper of the throne;
And moving up from high to higher.
Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope
The pillar of a people's hope,
The centre of a world's desire;
Yet feels, as in a pensive dream.
When all his active powers are still,
A distant dearness in the hill,
A secret sweetness in the stream,
The limit of his narrower fate,
While yet beside its vocal springs
He play'd at counsellors and kings.
With one that was his earliest mate;
Who ploughs with pain his native lea
And reaps the labour of his hands,
Or in the furrow musing stands ;
* Does my old friend remember me? '
LXV.
Sweet soul, do with me as thou wilt;
I lull a fancy trouble-tost
With ' Love's too precious to be lost,
A little grain shall not be spilt.'
And in that solace can I sing,
Till out of painful phases wrought
There flutters up a happy thought,
Self-balanced on a lightsome wing :
Since we deserved the name of friends,
And thine effect so lives in me,
A part of mine may live in thee
And move thee on to noble ends.
You thought my heart too far diseased;
You wonder when my fancies play
To find me gay among the gay,
Like one. with any trifle pleased.
The shade by which my life was crost,
Which makes a desert in the mind,
Has made me kindly with my kind,
And like to him whose sight is lost;
Whose feet are guided thro' the land,
Whose jest among his friends is
free.
Who takes the children on his knee,
And winds their curls about his hand :
He plays with threads, he beats his chair
For pastime, dreaming of the sky;
His inner day can never die.
His night of loss is always there.
When on my bed the moonlight falls,
I know that in thy place of rest
By that broad water of the west.
There conies a glory on the walls :
Thy marble bright in dark appears,
As slowly steals a silver flame
Along the letters of thy name,
And o'er the number of thy years.
The mystic glory swims away;
From off my bed the moonlight dies;
And closing eaves of wearied eyes
I sleep till dusk is dipt in gray :
And then I know the mist is drawn
A lucid veil from coast to coast.
And in the dark church like a ghost
Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn.
IN MEMORIAM.
259
LXVIII.
He reach'd the glory of a hand,
That seem'd to touch it into leaf:
When in the down I sink my head,
The voice was not the voice of grief.
Sleep, Death's twin-brother, times
The words were hard to understand.
my breath;
Sleep, Death's twin-brother, knows
LXX.
not Death,
I cannot see the features right,
Nor can I dream of thee as dead:
When on the gloom I strive to paint
The face I know; the hues are faint
I walk as ere I walk'd forlorn,
And mix with hollow masks of night;
When all our path was fresh with
dew,
Cloud-towers by ghostly masons wrought.
And all the bugle breezes blew
A gulf that ever shuts and gapes.
Reveillee to the breaking morn.
A hand that points, and palled shapes
In shadowy thoroughfares of thought;
But what is this? I turn about,
I find a trouble in thine eye.
And crowds that stream from yawning
Which makes me sad I know not
doors,
why.
And shoals of pucker'd faces drive;
Nor can my dream resolve the doubt :
Dark bulks that tumble half alive.
And lazy lengths on boundless shores;
But ere the lark hath left the lea
I wake, and I discern the truth;
Till all at once beyond the will
It is the trouble of my youth
I hear a wizard music roll.
That foolish sleep transfers to thee.
And thro' a lattice on the soul
LXIX.
Looks thy fair face and makes it still.
I dream'd there would be Spring no
LXXI.
Sleep, kinsman thou to death and trance
more.
And madness, thou hast forged at
That Nature's ancient power was
last
lost:
A night-long Present of the Past
The streets were black with smoke
In which we went thro' summer France.
and frost,
They chatter'd trifles at the door :
Hadst thou such credit with the soul?
Then bring an opiate trebly strong,
I wander'd from the noisy town.
Drug down the blindfold sense of
I found a wood with thorny boughs :
wrong
I took the thorns to bind my brows.
That so my pleasure may be whole;
I wore them like a civic crown :
While now we talk as once we talk'd
X met with scoffs, I met with scorns
Of men and minds, the dust of
From youth and babe and hoary
change.
hairs :
The days that grow to something
They call'd me in the public squares
strange, ,
The fool that weats a crown of thorns :
In walking as of old we walk'd
They call'd me fool, they call'd me
Beside the river's wooded reach.
child :
The fortress, and the mountain
I found an angel of the night;
ridge,
The voice was low, the look was
The cataract flashing from the
bright;
bridge,
He look'd upon my crown and smiled :
The breaker breaking on the beach.
260
IN MEMORIAM.
LXXII.
Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,
And howlest, issuing out of night,
With blasts that blow the poplar
white.
And lash with storm the streaming
pane?
Day, when my crown'd estate begun
To pine in that reverse of ci )om.
Which sicken'd every living bloom,
And blurr'd the splendour of the sun;
Who ushefest in the dolorous hour
With thy quick tears that make the
rose
Pull sideways, and the daisy close
Her crimson fringes to the shower;
Who might'st have heaved a windless
flame
Up the deep East, or, whispering,
play'd
A chequer-work of beam and shade
Along the hills, yet look'd the same.
As wan, as chill, as wild as now;
Day, mark'd as with some hideous
crime.
When the dark hand struck down
thro' time.
And canceU'd nature's best : but thou
Lift as thou may'st thy burthen'd brows
Thro' clouds that drench the morn-
ing star,
And whirl the ungarner'd sheaf afar.
And sow the sky with flying boughs,
And up thy vault with roaring sound
Climb thy thick noon, disastrous
day;
Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray.
And hide thy shame beneath the ground.
So many worlds, so much to do,
So little done, such things to be.
How know I what had need of
thee,
For thou wert strong as thou wert true?
The fame is quench'd that I foresaw.
The head hath miss'd an earthly
wreath :
I curse not nature, no, nor death;
For nothing is that errs from law.
We pass; the path that each man trod
Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds :
What fame is left for human deeds
In endless age? It rests with God.
O hollow wraith of dying fame,
Fade wholly, while the soul exults.
And self-infolds the large results
Of force that would have forged a
name.
LXXIV.
As sometimes in a dead man's face.
To those that watch it more and
more,
A likeness, hardly seen before.
Comes out — to some one of his race:
So, dearest, now thy brows are cold,
I see thee what thou art, and know
Thy likeness to the wise below,
Thy kindred with the great of old.
But there is more than I can see.
And what I see I leave unsaid,
Nor speak it, knowing Death has
made
His darkness beautiful with thee.
I leave thy praises unexpress'd
In verse that brings myself relief,
And by the measure of my grief
I leave thy greatness to be guess'd;
What practice howsoe'er expert
In fitting aptest words to things,
Or voice the richest- toned that
sings.
Hath power to give thee as thou wert?
I care not in these fading days
To raise a cry that lasts not long,
And round thee with the breeze of
song
To stir a little dust of praise.
IN MEMORIAM.
261
Thy leaf has perish'd in the green,
And, while we breathe beneath the
sun,
The world which credits what is done
Is cold to all that might have been.
So here shall silence guard thy fame;
But somewhere, out of human view,
Whate'er thy hands are set to do
Is wrought with tumult of acclaim.
LXXVI.
Take wings of fancy, and ascend,
And in a moment set thy face
Where all the starry heavens of
space
Are sharpen'd to a needle's end;
Take wings of foresight; lighten thro'
The secular abyss to come,
And lo, thy deepest lays are dumb
Before the mouldering of a yew;
And if the matin songs, that woke
The darkness of our planet, last.
Thine own shall wither in the vast,
Ere half the lifetime of an oak.
Ere these have clothed their branchy
bowers
With fifty Mays, thy songs are vain;
And what are they when these re-
main
The ruin'd shells of hollow towers?
What hope is here for modern rhyme
To him, who turns a musing eye
On songs, and deeds, and lives, that
lie
Foreshorten'd in the tract of time?
These mortal lullabies of pain
May bind a book, may line a box.
May serve to curl a maiden's locks;
Or when a thousand moons shall wane
A man upon a stall may find,
And, passing, turn the page that
tells
A grief, then changed to something
else,
Sung by a long-forgotten mind.
But what of that? My darken'd ways
Shall ring with music all the same;
To breathe my loss is more than
fame,
To utter love more sweet than praise.
Again at Christmas did we weave
The holly round the Christmas
hearth ;
The silent snow possess'd the earth.
And calmly fell our Christmas-eve :
The yule-clog sparkled keen with frost,
No wing of wind the region swept,
But over all things brooding slept
The quiet sense of something lost.
As in the winters left behind.
Again our ancient games had place,
The mimic picture's breathing grace,
And dance and song and hoodman-blind.
Who show'd a token of distress?
No single tear, no mark of pain :
0 sorrow, then can sorrow wane?
O grief, can grief be changed to less?
O last regret, regret can die !
No — mixt with all this mystic frame.
Her deep relations are the same.
But with long use her tears are dry.
LXXIX.
* More than my brothers are to me,' —
Let this not vex thee, noble heart !
1 know thee of what force thou
art
To hold the costliest love in fee.
But thou and I are one in kind.
As moulded like in Nature's mint;
And hill and wood and field did
print
The same sweet forms in either mind.
For us the same cold streamlet curl'd
Thro' all his eddying coves; the
same
All winds that roam the twilight
came
In whispers of the beauteous world.
262
IN MEMORIAM.
At one dear knee we proffer'd vows,
One lesson from one book we learn'd,
Ere childhood's flaxen ringlet turn'd
To black and brown on kindred brows.
And so my wealth resembles thine,
But he was rich where I was poor,
And he supplied my want the more
As his unhkeness fitted mine.
If any vague desire should rise.
That holy Death ere Arthur died
Had moved me kindly from his
side,
And dropt the dust on tearless eyes;
Then fancy shapes, as fancy can.
The grief my loss in him had wrought,
A grief as deep as life or thought.
But stay'd in peace with God and man.
I make a picture in the brain;
I hear the sentence that he speaks;
He bears the burthen of the weeks
But turns his burthen into gain.
His credit thus shall set me free;
And, influence-rich to soothe and
save,
Umised example from the grave
Reach out dead hands to comfort me.
LXXXI.
Could I have said while he was here,
• My love shall now no further
range;
There cannot come a mellower
change.
For now is love mature in ear.'
Love, then, had hope of richer store :
What end is here to my complaint?
This haunting whisper makes me
faint,
' More yesrs had made me love thee
mors.'
But Death returns an answer sweet :
• My fiudden frost was sudden gain,
And gave all ripeness to the grain.
It might have drawn from after-heat.*
LXXXII.
I wage not any feud with Death
For changes wrought on form and
face;
No lower life that earth's embrace
May breed with him, can fright my
faith.
Eternal process moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks;
And these are but the shatter'd
stalks.
Or ruin'd chrysalis of one.
Nor blame I Death, because he bare
The use of virtue out of earth :
I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.
For this alone on Death I wreak
The wrath that garners in my heart ;
He put our lives so far apart
We cannot hear each other speak.
Dip down upon the northern shore,
O sweet new-year delaying long;
Thou doest expectant nature wrong;
Delaying long, delay no more.
What stays thee from the clouded noons,
Thy sweetness from its proper place?
Can trouble live with April days,
Or sadness in the summer moons?
Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire.
The little speedwell's darling blue,
Deep tulips dash'd with fiery dew,
Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire.
O thou new-year, delaying long,
Delayest the sorrow in my blood,
That longs to burst a frozen bud
And ficod a fresher throat with song.
When I contemplate all alone
The life that hat! been thine below,
And fix my thoughts on all the glow
To which thy crescent would have
grown;
IN MEMORIAM.
263
I see thee sitting crovvn'd with good,
A central warmth diffusing bliss
In glance and smile, and clasp and
kiss,
On all the branches of thy blood;
Thy blood, my friend, and partly mine;
For now the day was drawing on,
When thou should'st hnk thy life
with one
Of mine own house, and boys of thine
Had babbled ' Uncle ' on my knee;
But that remorseless iron hour
Made cypress of her orange flower,
Despair of Hope, and earth of thee.
1 seem to meet their least desire,
To clap their cheeks, to call them
mine.
I see their unborn faces shine
Beside the never-lighted fire.
I see myself an honour'd guest,
Thy partner in the flowery walk
Of letters, genial table-talk.
Or deep dispute, and graceful jest;
While now thy prosperous labour fills
The lips of men with honest praise,
And sun by sun the happy days
Descend below the golden hills
With promise of a morn as fair ;
And all the train of bounteous hours
Conduct by paths of growing powers.
To reverence and the silver hair;
Till slowly worn her earthly robe,
Her lavish mission richly wrought,
Leaving great legacies of thought,
Thy spirit should fail from off the globe ;
What time mine own might also flee.
As link'd with thine in love and fate,
And, hovering o'er the dolorous
strait
To the other shore, involved in thee,
Arrive at last the blessed goal,
And He that died in Holy Land
Would reach us out the shining hand
And take us as a single soul.
What reed was that on which I leant?
Ah, backward fanc}', wherefore wake
The old bitterness again, and break
The low beginnings of content.
This truth came borne with bier and pall,
1 felt it, when I sorrow'd most,
'Tis better to have loved and lost.
Than never to have loved at all —
O true in word, and tried in deed,
Demanding, so to bring relief
To this which is our common grief,
What kind of life is that I lead;
And whether trust in things above
Be dimm'd of sorrow, or sustain'd;
And whether love for him have
drain'd
My capabilities of love;
Your words have virtue such as draws
A faithful answer from the breast.
Thro' light reproaches, half exprest,
And loyal unto kindly laws.
My blood an even tenor kept,
Till on mine ear this message falls.
That in Vienna's fatal walls
God's finger touch'd him, and he slept.
The great Intelligences fair
That range above our mortal state.
In circle round the blessed gate.
Received and gave him welcome there;
And led him thro' the blissful chmes.
And shov/'d him in the fountain fresh
All knowledge that the sons of flesh
Shall gather in the cycled times.
But I remain'd, whose hopes were dim,
Whose life, whose thoughts were little
worth.
To wander on a darken'd earth,
Where all things round me breathed of
him.
O friendship, equal-poised control,
O heart, with kindliest motion warm,
O sacred essence, other form,
O solemn ghost, O crowned soul !
264
IN MEMORIAM,
Yet none could better know than I,
How much of act at human hands
The sense of human will demands
By which we dare to live or die.
Whatever way my days decline,
I felt and feel, tho' left alone,
His being- working in mine own,
The footsteps of his life in mine;
A life that all the Muses deck'd
With gifts of grace, that might ex-
press
All-comprehensive tenderness.
All-subtilising intellect :
And so my passion hath not swerved
To works of weakness, but I find
An image comforting the mind.
And in my grief a strength reserved.
Likewise the imaginative woe.
That loved to handle spiritual strife.
Diffused the shock thro' all my
life.
But in the present broke the blow.
My pulses therefore beat again
For other friends that once I met;
Nor can it suit me to forget
The mighty hopes that make us men.
I woo your love : I count it crime
To mourn for any overmuch;
I, the divided half of such
A friendship as had master'd Time;
Which masters Time indeed, and is
Eternal, separate from fears :
The all-assuming months and years
Can take no part away from this :
But Summer on the steaming floods,
And Spring that swells the narrow
brooks.
And Autumn, with a noise of rooks,
That gather in the waning woods.
And every pulse of wind and wave
Recalls, in change of light or
gloom,
My old affection of the tomb,
And my prime passion in the grave.
My old aff"ection of the tomb,
A part of stillness, yearns to speak :
'Arise, and get thee forth and seek
A friendship for the years to come.
'I watch thee from the quiet shore;
Thy spirit up to mine can reach;
But in dear words of human speech
We two communicate no more.'
And I, * Can clouds of nature stain
The starry clearness of the free?
How is it? Canst thou feel for me
Some painless sympathy with pain ? '
And lightly does the whisper fall;
• ' Tis hard for thee to fathom this;
I triumph in conclusive bliss,
And that serene result of all.'
So hold I commerce with the dead;
Or so methinks the dead would
say;
Or so shall grief with symbols play
And pining life be fancy-fed.
Now looking to some settled end,
That these things pass, and I shall
prove
A meeting somewhere, love with
love,
I crave your pardon, O my friend;
If not so fresh, with love as true,
I, clasping brother-hands, aver
I could not, if I would, transfer
The whole I felt for him to you.
For which be they that hold apart
The promise of the golden hours?
First love, first friendship, equal
powers.
That marry with the virgin heart.
Still mine, that cannot but deplore,
That beats within a lonely place,
That yet remembers his embrace.
But at his footstep leaps no more.
My heart, tho' wicfow'd, may not rest
Quite in the love of what is gone,
But seeks to beat in time with one
That warms another living breast.
IN MEMORIAM.
265
Ah, take the imperfect gift I bring.
Knowing the primrose yet is dear,
The primrose of the later year,
As not unlike to that of Spring.
LXXXVI.
Sweet after showers, ambrosial air,
That rollest from the gorgeous
gloom
Of evening over brake and bloom
And meadow, slowly breathing bare
The round of space, and rapt below
Thro' all the dewy-tassell'd wood,
And shadowing down the horned
flood
In ripples, fan my brows and blow
The fever from my cheek, and sigh
The full new life that feeds thy
breath
Throughout my frame, till Doubt
and Death,
111 brethren, let the fancy fly
From belt to belt of crimson seas
On leagues of odour streaming far.
To where in yonder orient star
A hundred spirits whisper ' Peace.'
I past beside the reverend walls
In which of old I wore the gown;
I roved at random thro' the town,
And saw the tumult of the halls;
And heard once more in college fanes
The storm their high-built organs
make,
And thunder-music, rolling, shake
The prophet blazon'd on the panes;
And caught once more the distant shout,
The measured pulse of racing oars
Among the willows ; paced the shores
And many a bridge, and all about
The same gray flats again, and felt
The same, but not the same; and
last
Up that long walk of limes I past
To see the rooms in which he dwelt.
Another name was on the door :
I linger'd; all within was noise
Of songs, and clapping hands, and
boys
That crash'd the glass and beat the floor;
Where once we held debate, a band
Of youthful friends, on mind and
art.
And labour, and the changing
mart.
And all the framework of the land;
When one would aim an arrow fair.
But send it slackly from the string;
And one would pierce an outer
ring.
And one an inner, here and there;
And last the master-bowman, he,
W^ould cleave the mark. A willing
ear
We lent him. Who, but hung to
hear
The rapt oration flowing free
From point to point, with power and
grace
And music in the bounds of law.
To those conclusions when we saw
The God within him light his face.
And seem to lift the form, and glow
In azure orbits heavenly-wise;
And over those ethereal eyes
The bar of Michael Angelo.
LXXXVIII.
Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet.
Rings Eden thro' the budded quicks,
0 tell me where the senses mix,
O tell me where the passions meet.
Whence radiate : fierce extremes employ
Thy spirits in the darkening leaf,
And in the midmost heart of grief
Thy passion clasps a secret joy :
And I — my harp would prelude woe —
1 cannot all command the strings;
The glory of the sum of things
Will flash along the chords and go..
266
JN MEMORIAM.
Witch-elms that counterchange the floor
Of this flat lawn with dusk and
bright;
And thou, with all thy breadth and
height
Of foliage, towering sycamore;
iiow often, hither wandering down,
My Arthur found your shadows fair,
And shook to all the liberal air
The dust and din and steam of town :
He brought an eye for all he saw;
He mixt in all our simple sports;
They pleased him, fresh from brawl-
ing courts
And dusty purlieus of the law.
O joy to him in this retreat,
Immantled in ambrosial dark,
To drink the cooler air, and mark
The landscape winking thro' the heat :
O sound to rout the brood of cares.
The sweep of scythe in morning
dew.
The gust that round the garden
flew,
And tumbled half the mellowing pears !
O bliss, when all in circle drawn
About him, heart and ear we're fed
To hear him as he lay and read
The Tuscan poets on the lawn :
Or in the all-golden afternoon
A guest, or happy sister, sung,
Or here she brought the harp and
flung
A ballad. to the brightening moon :
Nor less it pleased in livelier moods,
Beyond the bounding hill to stray,
And break the livelong summer day
With banquet in the distant woods;
Whereat we glanced from theme to
theme,
Discuss'd the books to love or hate.
Or touch'd the changes of the state.
Or threaded some Socratic dream;
But if I praised the busy town.
He loved to rail against it still,
For ' ground in yonder social mill
We rub each other's angles down,
'And merge,' he said, 'in form and
gloss
The picturesque of man and man.'
We talk'd : the stream beneath us
ran,
The wine-flask lying couch'd in moss,
Or cool'd within the glooming wave;
And last, returning from afar,
.Before the crimson-circled star
Had fall'n into her father's grave,
And brushing ankle-deep in flowers,
We heard behind the woodbine veil
The milk that bubbled in the pail,
And buzzings of the honied hours.
xc.
He tasted love with half his mind.
Nor ever drank the inviolate spring
Where nighest heaven, who first
could fling
This bitter seed among mankind;
That could the dead, whose dying eyes
Were closed with wail, resume their
hfe,
They would but find in child and wife
An iron welcome when they rise :
'Twas well, indeed, when warm with wine,
To pledge them with a kindly tear,
To talk them o'er, to wish them here,
To count their memories half divine;
But if they came who past away.
Behold their brides in other hands;
The hard heir strides about their
lands.
And will not yield them for a day.
Yea, tho' their sons were none of these,
Not less the yet-loved sire would
make
Confusion worse than death, and
shake
The pillars of domestic peace.
IN MEMORIAM.
267
Ah dear, but come thou back to me :
Whatever change the years have
wrought,
I find not yet one lonely thought
That cries against my wish for thee.
When rosy plumelets tuft the larch,
And rarely pipes the mounted
thrush;
Or underneath the barren bush
Flits by the sea-blue bird of March;
Come, wear the form by ^vhich I know
Thy spirit in time among thy peers;
The hope of unaccomplish'd years
Be large and lucid round thy brow.
When summer's hourly-mellowing change
May breathe, with many roses sweet,
Upon the thousand waves of wheat,
That ripple round the lonely grange;
Come : not in watches of the night.
But where the sunbeam broodeth
warm,
Come, beauteous in thine after form,
And like a finer light in light.
XCII.
If any vision should reveal
Thy likeness, I might count it vain
As but the canker of the brain;
Yea, the' it spake and made appeal
To chances where our lots were cast
Together in the days behind,
I might but say, I hear a wind
Of memory murmuring the past.
Yea, tho' it spake and bared to view
A fact within the coming year;
And tho' the months, revolving near,
Should prove the phantom-warning true,
They might not seem thy prophecies.
But spiritual presentiments,
And such refraction of events
As often rises ere they rise.
I shall not see thee. Dare I say
No spirit ever brake the band
That stays him from the native land
Where first he vvalk'd when claspt in clay?
No visual shade of som'e one lost.
But he, the Spirit himself, may come
Where all the nerve of sense is
numb;
Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost.
O, therefore from thy sightless range
With gods in unconjectured bliss,
O, from the distance of the abyss
Of tenfold-complicated change.
Descend, and touch, and enter; hear
The wish too strong for words to
name;
That in this blindness of the frame
My Ghost may feel that thine is near,
XCiv.
How pure at heart and sound in head.
With what divine affections bold
Should be the man whose thought
would hold
An hour's communion with the dead.
In vain shalt thou, or any, call
The spirits from their golden day,
Except, like them, thou too canst say,
My spirit is at peace with all.
They haunt the silence of the breast,
Imaginations calm and fair.
The memory like a cloudless air,
The conscience as a sea at rest :
But when the heart is full of din.
And doubt beside the portal waits.
They can but listen at the gates.
And hear the household jar within.
By night we linger'd on the lawn.
For underfoot the herb was dry;
And genial warmth ; and o'er the sky
The silvery haze of summer drawn;
And calm that let the tapers burn
Unwavering: not a cricket chirr'd:
The brook alone far-off was heard,
And on the board the fluttering urn :
268
IN MEMORIAM.
And bats went round in fragrant skies,
And wheel'd or lit the filmy shapes
That haunt the dusk, with ermine
capes
And woolly breasts and beaded eyes;
While now we sang old songs that peal'd
From knoll to knoll, where, couch'd
at ease,
The white kine glimmer'd, and the
trees
Laid their dark arms about the field.
But when those others, one by one,
Withdrew themselves from me and
night,
And in the house light after light
Went out, and I was all alone,
A hunger seized my heart; I read
Of that glad year which once had
been,
In those fall'n leaves which kept their
green,
The noble letters of the dead :
And strangely on the silence broke
The silent-speaking words, and
strange
Was love's dumb cry defying change
To test his worth; and strangely spoke
The faith, the vigour, bold to dwell
On doubts that drive the coward
back.
And keen thro' wordy snares to track
Suggestion to her inmost cell.
So word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touch'd me from the
past.
And all at once it seem'd at last
The living soul was flash'd on mine,
And mine in this was wound, and whirl'd
About empyreal heights of thought.
And came on that which is, and
caught
The deep pulsations of the world,
i^onian music measuring out
The steps of Time — the shocks of
Chance —
The blows of Death. At length my
trance
Was cancell'd, stricken thro' with doubt.
Vague words ! but ah, how hard to
frame
In matter-moulded forms of speech.
Or ev'n for intellect to reach
Thro' memory that which I became :
Till now the doubtful dusk reveal'd
The knolls once more where, couch'd
at ease,
The white -kine glimmer'd, and the
trees
Laid their dark arms about the field :
And suck'd from out the distant gloom
A breeze began to tremble o'er
The large leaves of the sycamore.
And fluctuate all the still perfume,
And gathering freshlier overhead,
Rock'd the full-foliaged elms, and
swung
The heavy-folded rose, and flung
The lilies to and fro, and said,
*The dawn, the dawn,' and died away;
And East and West, without a
breath,
Mixt their dim lights, like life and
death.
To broaden into boundless day.
XCVI.
You say, but with no touch of scorn.
Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue
eyes
Are tender over drowning flies,
You tell me, doubt is Devil-born.
I know not : one indeed I knew
In many a subtle question versed,
Who touch'd a jarring lyre at first,
But ever strove to make it true :
Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,
At last he beat his music out.
There lives more faith in honest
doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
IN MEMORIAM.
269
He fought his doubts and gather'd
strength,
He would not make his judgment
blind,
He faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them : thus he came at length
To find a stronger faith his own;
And Power was with him in the
night,
Which makes the darkness and the
light,
And dwells not in the light alone,
But in the darkness and the cloud,
As over Sinai's peaks of old,
While Israel made their gods of gold,
Altho' the trumpet blew so loud.
XCVII.
My love has talk'd with rocks and trees;
He finds on misty mountain-ground
His own vast shadow glory-crown'd ;
He sees himself in all he sees.
Two partners of a married life —
I look'd on these and thought of thee
In vastness and in mystery,
And of my spirit as of a wife.
These two — they dwelt with eye on eye,
Their hearts of old have beat in tune.
Their meetings made December June,
Their every parting was to die.
Their love has never past away;
The days she never can forget
Are earnest that he loves her yet,
Whate'er the faithless people say.
Her life is lone, he sits apart,
He loves her yet, she will not weep,
Tho' rapt in matters dark and deep
He seems to slight her simple heart.
He thrids the labyrinth of the mind,
He reads the secret of the star.
He seems so near and yet so far,
He looks so cold : she thinks him kind.
She keeps the gift of years before,
A wither'd violet is her bliss :
She knows not what his greatness is.
For that, for all, she loves him more.
For him she plays, to him she sings
Of early faith and plighted vows;
She knows "but matters of the house.
And he, he knows a thousand things.
Her faith is fixt and cannot move.
She darkly feels him great and wise,
She dwells on him with faithful eyeS;
' I cannot understand : I love.'
You leave us : you will see the Rhine,
And those fair hills I sail'd below,
When I was there with him; and go
By summer belts of wheat and vine
To where he breathed his latest breath.
That City. All her splendour seems
No livelier than the wisp that gleams
On Lethe in the eyes of Death.
Let her great Danube rolling fair
Enwind her isles, unmark'd of me :
I have not seen, I will not see
Vienna; rather dream that there,
A treble darkness. Evil haunts
The birth, the bridal; friend from
friend
Is oftener parted, fathers bend
Above more graves, a thousand wants
Gnarr at the heels of men, and prey
By each cold hearth, and sadness
flings
Her shadow on the blaze of kings :
And yet myself have heard him say.
That not in any mother town
With statelier progress to and fro
The double tides of chariots flow
By park and suburb under brown
Of lustier leaves; nor more content.
He told me, lives in any crowd,
When all is gay with lamps, and
loud
With sport and song, in booth and
tent.
270
IN MEMORIAM.
Imperial halls, or open plain ,
And wheels the circled dance, and
breaks
The rocket molten into flakes
Of crimson or in emerald rain.
Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,
So loud with voices of the birds,
So thick with lowings of the herds,
Da}^ when I lost the flower of men;
Who tremblest thro' thy darkling red
On yon swoU'n brook that bubbles
fast
By meadows breathing of the past.
And woodlands holy to the dead;
Who murmurest in the foliaged eaves
A song that slights the coming
care.
And Autumn laying here and there
A fiery finger on the leaves;
Who wakenest with thy balmy breath
To myriads on the genial earth,
Memories of bridal, or of birth.
And unto myriads more, of death.
O wheresoever those may be.
Betwixt the slumber of the poles.
To-day they count as kindred souls;
They know me not, but mourn with me.
I climb the hill: from end to end
Ofall the landscape underneath,
I find no place that does not breathe
Some gracious memory of my friend;
No gray old grange, or lonely fold,
Or low morass and whispering reed,
Or simple stile from mead to mead.
Or sheepwalk up the windy wold;
Nor hoary knoll of ash and haw
That hears the latest linnet trill.
Nor quarry trenched along the hill
And haunted by the wrangling daw;
Nor runlet tinkling from the rock ;
Nor pastoral rivulet that swerves
To left and right thro' meadowy
curves,
That feed the mothers of the flock;
But each has pleased a kindred eye.
And each reflects a kindUer day;
And, leaving these, to pass away,
I think once more he seems to die.
Unwatch'd, the garden bough shall sway,
The tender blossom flutter down,
Unloved, that beech will gather
brown.
This maple burn itself away;
Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair,
Ray round with flames her disk of
seed.
And many a rose-carnation feed
With summer spice the humming air;
Unloved, by many a sandy bar.
The brook shall babble down the
plain.
At noon or when the lesser wain
Is twisting round the polar star;
Uncared for, gird the windy grove.
And flood the haunts of hern and
crake;
Or into silver arrows break
The sailing moon in creek and cove;
Till from the garden and the wild
A fresh association blow,
And year by year the landscape
grow
Familiar to the stranger's child;
As year by year the labourer tills
His wonted glebe, or lops the
glades;
And year by year our memory fades
From all the circle of the hills.
We leave the well-beloved place
Where first we gazed upon the sky;
The roofs, that heard our earliest
cry,
Will shelter one of stranger race.
IN MEMORIAM.
271
We go, but ere we go from home,
As down the garden-walks I move.
Two spirits of a diverse love
Contend for loving masterdom.
One whispers, * Here thy boyhood sung
Long since its matin song, and
heard
The low love-language of the bird
In native hazels, tassel-hung.'
The other answers, * Yea, but here
Thy feet have stray'd in after hours
With thy lost friend among the
.bowers,
And this hath made them trebly dear.'
These two have striven half the day.
And each prefers his separate claim.
Poor rivals in a losing game.
That will not yield each other way.
I turn to go : my feet are set
To leave the pleasant fields and
farms;
They mix in one another's arms
To one pure image of regret.
On that last night before we went
From out the doors where I was bred,
I dream'd a vision of the dead.
Which left my after-morn content.
Methought I dwelt within a hall,
And maidens with me : distant hills
From hidden summits fed with rills
A river sliding by the wall.
The hall with harp and carol rang.
They sang of what is wise and good
And graceful. In the centre stood
A statue veil'd, to which they sang;
And which, tho' veil'd, was known to me.
The shape of him I loved, and love
For ever : then flew in a dove
And brought a summons from the sea :
And when they learnt that I must go
They wept and wail'd, but led the
way
To where a little shallop lay
At anchor in the flood below;
And on by many a level mead,
And shadowing bluff that made the
banks.
We glided winding under ranks
Of iris, and the golden reed;
And still as vaster grew the shore
And rolled the floods in grander
space,
The maidens gather'd strength and
grace
And presence, lordlier than before;
And I myself, who sat apart
And watch'd them, wax'd in every
limb;
I felt the thews of Anakim,
The pulses of a Titan's heart;
As one would sing the death of war,
And one would chant the history
Of that great race, which is to be.
And one the shaping of a star;
Until the forward-creeping tides
Began to foam, and we to draw
From deep to deep, to where we saw
A great ship lift her shining sides.
The man we loved was there on deck.
But thrice as large as man he bent
To greet us. Up the side I went.
And fell in silence on his neck :
Whereat those maidens with one mind
Bewail'd their lot; I did them wrong :
' We served thee here,' they said,
* so long.
And wilt thou leave us now behind ? '
So rapt I was, they could not win
An answer from my lips, but he
Replying, ' Enter likewise ye
And go with us : ' they enter'd in.
And while the wind began to sweep
A music out of sheet and shroud,
We steer'd her toward a crimson
cloud
That landlike slept along the deep.
272
JN MEMORIAM.
The time draws near the birth of Christ;
The moon is hid, the night is still;
A single church below the hill
Is pealing, folded in the mist.
A single peal of bells below,
That wakens at this hour of rest
A single murmur in the breast,
That these are not the bells I know.
Like strangers' voices here they sound.
In lands where not a memory strays,
Nor landmark breathes of other days,
But all is new unhallow'd ground.
cv.
To-night ungather'd let us leave
This laurel, let this holly stand :
We live within the stranger's land,
And strangely falls our Christmas-eve.
Our father's dust is left alone
And silent under other snows :
There in due time the woodbine
blows,
The violet comes, but we are gone.
No more shall wayward grief abuse
The genial hour with mask and
mime;
For change of place, like growth of
time,
Has broke the bond of dying use.
Let cares that petty shadows cast.
By which our lives are chiefly
proved,
A little spare the night I loved,
And hold it solemn to the past.
But let no footstep beat the floor,
Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm;
For who would keep an ancient form
Thro' which the spirit breathes no more?
Be neither song, nor game, nor feast;
Nor harp be touch'd, nor flute be
blown;
No dance, no motion, save alone
What lightens in the lucid east
Of rising worlds by yonder wood.
Long sleeps the summer in the seed;
Run out your measured arcs, and
lead
The closing cycle rich in good.
cvi. y
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sKy,
The flying cloud, the frosty light :
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and'let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new.
Ring, happy bells, across the snow :
The year is going, let him goj
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause.
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournfu2
rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
CVII.
It is the day when he was born,
A bitter day that early sank
Behind a purple-frosty bank
Of vapour, leaving night forlorn.
IN MEMORIAM.
273
The time admits not flowers or leaves
To deck the banquet. Fiercely
CIX.
flies
Heart-affluence in discursive talk
The blast of North and East, and
From household fountains never
ice
dry;
Makes daggers at the sharpen'd eaves,
The critic clearness of an eye,
That saw thro' all the Muses' walk;
And bristles all the brakes and thorns
To yon hard crescent, as she hangs
Seraphic intellect and force
Above the wood which grides and
To seize and throw the doubts of
clangs
man;
Its leafless ribs and iron horns
Impassion'd logic, which outran
The hearer in its fiery course;
Together, in the drifts that pass
To darken on the rolling brine
High nature amorous of the good,
That breaks the coast. But fetch
But touch'd with no ascetic gloom;
the wine,
And passion pure in snowy bloom
Arrange the board and brim the glass;
Thro' all the years of April blood ;
Bring in great logs and let them lie.
A love of freedom rarely felt,
To make a solid core of heat;
Of freedom in her regal seat
Be cheerful-minded, talk and treat
Of England; not the schoolboy
Of all things ev'n as he were by;
heat.
The blind hysterics of the Celt;
We keep the day. With festal cheer.
With books and music, surely we
And manhood fused with female grace
Will drink to him, whate'er he be,
In such a sort, the child would twine
And sing the songs he loved to hear.
A trustful hand, unask'd, in thine,
And find his comfort in thy face;
CVIII.
All these have been, and thee mine eyes
I will not shut me from my kind,
Have look'd on : if they look'd in
And, lest I stiffen into stone,
vain.
I will not eat my heart alone.
My shame is greater who remain,
Nor feed with sighs a passing wind :
Nor let thy wisdom make me wise.
What profit lies in barren faith,
ex.
And vacant yearning, tho' with might
To scale the heaven's highest height.
Thy converse drew us with delight,
Or dive below the wells of Death ?
The men of rathe and riper years :
The feeble soul, a haunt of fears,
What find I in the highest place,
Forgot his weakness in thy sight.
But mine own phantom chanting
hymns?
On thee the loyal-hearted hung,
And on the depths of death there
The proud was half disarm'd of
swims
pride.
The reflex of a human face.
Nor cared the serpent at thy side
To flicker with his double tongue.
I'll rather take what fruit may be
Of sorrow under human skies :
The stern wtx^ mild when thou wert by,
'Tis held that sorrow makes us
The flippant put himself to school
wise,
And heard thee, and the brazen fool
Whatever wisdom sleep with thee.
Was soften'd, and he knew not why;
274
IN MEMORIAM.
While I, thy nearest, sat apart,
For what wert thou? some novel power
And felt thy triumph was as mine;
Sprang up for ever at a touch.
And loved them more, that they were
And hope could never hope too
thine,
much,
The graceful tact, the Christian art;
In watching thee from hour to hour,
Nor mine the sweetness or the skill,
Large elements in order brought,
But mine the love that will not tire,
And tracts of calm from tempest
And, born of love, the vague desire
made.
That spurs an imitative will.
And world-wide fluctuation sway'd
CXI.
In vassal tides that follow'd thought.
ihe churl in spirit, up or down
CXIII.
Along the scale of ranks, thro' all.
'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise;
To him who grasps a golden ball,
Yet how much wisdom sleeps with
By blood a king, at heart a clown;
thee
Which not alone had guided me,
The churl in spirit, howe'er he veil
But served the seasons that may rise;
His want in forms for fashion's sake,
Will let his coltish nature break
For can I doubt, who knew thee keen
At seasons thro' the gilded pale :
In intellect, with force and skill
To strive, to fashion, to fulfil —
For who can always act? but he,
I doubt not what thou wouldst have
To whom a thousand memories call.
been:
Not being less but more than all
The gentleness he seem'd to be,
A life in civic action warm.
A soul on highest mission sent,
Best seem'd the thing he was, and join'd
A potent voice of Parliament,
Each office of the social hour
A pillar steadfast in the storm,
To noble manners, as the flower
And native growth of noble mind;
Should licensed boldness gather force,
Becoming, when the time has birth,
Nor ever narrowness or spite,
A lever to uplift the earth
Or villain fancy fleeting by,
And roll it in another course,
Drew in the expression of an eye,
Where God and Nature met in light;
With thousand shocks that come and go,
With agonies, with energies,
And thus he bore without abuse
With overthrowings, and with cries,
The grand old name of gentleman,
And undulations to and fro.
Defamed by every charlatan,
And soil'd with all ignoble use.
CXIV;
CXII.
Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall
rail
Against her beauty? May she mix
High wisdom holds my wisdom less.
That I, who gaze with temperate eyes
With men and prosper ! Who shall
On glorious insufficiencies.
fix
Set light by narrower perfectness.
Her pillars? Let her work prevail.
But thou, that fiUest all the room
But on her forehead sits a fire :
Of all my love, art reason why
She sets her forward countenance
I seem to cast a careless eye
And leaps into the future chance,
On souls, the lesser lords of doom.
Submitting all things to desire.
IN MEMORIAM.
275
Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain —
She cannot fight the fear of death.
What is she, cut from love and faith,
But some wild Pallas from the brain
Of Demons? fiery-hot to burst
All barriers in her onward race
P'or power. Let her know her place ;
She is the second, not the first.
A higher hand must make her mild,
If all be not in vain ; and guide
Her footsteps, moving side by side
With wisdom, like the younger child :
P'or she is earthly of the mind,
But Wisdom heavenly of the soul.
O friend, who earnest to thy goal
So early, leaving me behind,
I would the great world grew like thee.
Who grewest nojt alone in power
And knowledge, but by year and
hour
In reverence and in charity.
CXV.
Now fades the last long streak of snow.
Now. burgeons every maze of quick
About the flowering squares, and
thick
By ashen roots the violets blow.
Now rings the woodland loud and long,
The distance takes a lovelier hue.
And drown'd in yonder living blue ■
The lark becomes a sightless song.
Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
The flocks are whiter down the vale,
And milkier every milky sail
On winding stream or distant sea;
Where now the seamew pipes, or dives
In yonder greening gleam, and fly
The happy birds, that change their
sky
To build and brood; that live their lives
From land to land; and in my breast
Spring wakens too; and my regret
Becomes an April violet,
And buds and blossoms like the rest.
CXVI.
Is it, then, regret for buried time
That keenlier in sweet April wakes,
And meets the year, and gives and
takes
The colours of the crescent prime?
Not all : the songs, the stirring air,
The life re-orient out of dust.
Cry thro' the sense to hearten trust
In that which made the world so fair.
Not all regret : the face will shine
Upon me, while I muse alone;
And that dear voice, I once have
known.
Still speak to me of me and mine :
Yet less of sorrow lives in me
For days of happy commune dead;
Less yearning for the friendship
fled,
Than some strong bond which is to be.
CXVII.
O days and hours, your work is this,
To hold me from my proper place,
A little while from his embrace.
For fuller gain of after bliss :
That out of distance might ensue
Desire of nearness doubly sweet; '
And unto meeting when we meet,
Delight a hundredfold accrue.
For every grain of sand that runs,
And every span of shade that
steals.
And every kiss of toothed wheels.
And all the courses of the suns.
CXVIII.
Contemplate all this work of Time,
The giant labouring in his youth;
Nor dream of human love and truth,
As dying Nature's earth and lime;
But trust that those we call the dead
Are breathers of an ampler day
For ever nobler ends. They say,
The solid earth whereon we tread
276
IN MEMORIAM,
In tracts of fluent heat began,
And grew to seeming-random forms,
The seeming prey of cycUc storms,
Till at the last arose the man;
Who throve and branch'd from clime to
clime,
The herald of a higher race,
And of himself in higher place,
If so he type this work of time
Within himself, from more to more;
Or, crown'd with attributes of woe
Like glories, move his course, and
show
That life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears.
And dipt in baths of hissing tears.
And batter'd with the shocks of doom
To shape and use. Arise and fly
The reeling Faun, the sensual feast;
Move upward, working out the beast
And let the ape and tiger die.
CXIX.
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, not as one that weeps
I come once more; the city sleeps;
I smell the meadow in the street;
I hear a chirp of birds; I see
Betwixt the black fronts long-with-
drawn
A light-blue lane of early dawn.
And think of early days and thee.
And bless thee, for thy lips are bland,
And bright the friendship of thine
eye;
And in my thoughts with scarce a
. sigh
T take the pressure of thine hand.
cxx.
I trust I have not wasted breath :
I think we are not wholly brain,
Magnetic mockeries ; not in vain,
Like Paul with beasts, I fought with
Peath;
Not only cunning casts in clay:
Let Science prove we are, and then
What matters Science unto men.
At least to me ? I would not stay.
Let him, the wiser man who springs
Hereafter, up from childhood shape
His action like the greater ape,
But I v^'as born to other things.
Sad Hesper o'er the buried sun
And ready, thou, to die with him.
Thou watchest all things ever dim
And dimmer, and a glory done :
The team is loosen'd from the wain.
The boat is drawn upon the shore;
Thou listenest to the closing door,
And life is darken'd in the brain.
Bright Phosphor, frjesher for the night,
By thee the world's great work is
heard
Beginning, and the wakeful bird;
Behind thee comes the greater light :
The market boat is on the stream,
And voices hail it from the brink;
Thou hear'st the village hammer
clink.
And see'st the moving of the team.
Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name
For what is one, the first, the last.
Thou, like my present and my
past.
Thy place is changed; thou art the same.
CXXII.
Oh, wast thou with me, dearest, then.
While I rose up against my doom.
And yearn'd to burst the folded
gloom.
To bare the eternal Heavens again.
To feel once more, in placid awe,
The strong imagination roll
A sphere of stars about my soul,
In all her motion one with law;
If thou wert with me, and the grave
Divide us not, be with me now,
IN MEMORIAM,
277
And enter in at breast and brow
Till all my blood, a fuller wave.
Be quicken'd with a livelier breath.
And like an inconsiderate boy,
As in the former flash of joy,
I slip the thoughts of life and death;
And all the breeze of Fancy blows,
And every dew-drop paints a bow,^
The wizard lightnings deeply glow,
And every thought breaks out a rose.
CXXIII.
There rolls the deep where grew the tree.
0 earth, what changes hast thou
seen!
There where the long street roars
hath been
The stillness of the central sea.
The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing
stands;
They melt like mist, the solid lands.
Like clouds they shape themselves and
go-
But in my spirit will I dwell,
And dream my dream, and hold it
true;
For tho' my lips may breathe adieu,
I cannot think the thing farewell.
cxxiv. y
That which we dare invoke to bless;
Our dearest faith; our ghastliest
doubt;
He, They, One, All; within, with-
out;
The Power in darkness whom we guess;
I found Him not in world or sun,
Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye;
Nor thro' the questions men may
try.
The petty cobwebs we have spun :
If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep,
1 heard a voice, * Believe no more '
And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep;
A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason's colder part,
And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answer'd, * I have felt.'
No, like a child in doubt and fear :
But that blind clamour made me
wise ;
Then was I as a child that cries.
But, crying, knows his father near;
And what I am beheld again
What is, and no man understands;
And out of darkness came the
hands
That reach thro' nature, moulding men.
cxxv.
Whatever I have said or sung,
Some bitter notes my harp would
give,
Yea, tho' there often seemM to live
A contradiction on the tongue,
Yet Hope had never lost her youth;
She did but look through dimmer
eyes;
Or Love but play'd -with gracious
lies,
Because he felt so fix'd in truth :
And if the song were full of care.
He breathed the spirit of the song;
And if the words were sweet and
strong
He set his royal signet there;
Abiding with me till I sail
To seek thee on the mystic deeps,
And this electric force, that keeps
A thousand pulses dancing, fail.
Love is and was my Lord and King,
And in his presence I attend
To hear the tidings of my friend,
Which every hour his couriers bring.
Love is and was my King and Lord,
And will be, the' as yet I keep
Within his court on earth, and sleep
Encompass'd by his faithful guard,
278
IN MEMORIAM.
And hear at times a sentinel
Who moves about from place to
place,
And whispers to the worlds of space,
In the deep night, that all is well.
And all is well, tho' faith and form
Be sunder'd in the night of fear ;
Well roars the storm to those that
hear
A deeper voice across the storm,
Proclaiming social truth shall spread,
And justice, ev'n tho' thrice again
The red fool-fury of the Seine
Should pile her barricades with dead.
But ill for him that wears a crown,
And him, the lazar, in his rags :
They tremble, the sustaining crags;
The spires of ice are toppled down.
And molten up, and roar in flood;
The fortress crashes from on high,
The brute earth lightens to the sky,
And the great Man sinks in blood.
And compass'd by the fires of Hell;
While thou, dear spirit, happy star,
O'erlook'st the tumult from afar,
And smilest, knowing all is well.
The love that rose on stronger wings,
Unpalsied'when he met with Death,
Is comrade of the lesser faith
That sees the course of human things.
No doubt vast eddies in the flood
Of onward time shall yet be made,
And throned races may degrade;
Yet O ye mysteries of good,
Wild Hours that fly with Hope and Fear,
If all your office had to do
With old results that look like new;
If this were all your mission here.
To draw, to sheathe a useless sword.
To fool the crowd with glorious lies.
To cleave a creed in sects and cries.
To change the bearing of a word.
To shift an arbitrary power.
To cramp the student at his desk.
To make old bareness picturesque^
And tuft with grass a feudal tower;
Why then my scorn might well descend
On you and yours. I see in part
That all, as in some piece of art.
Is toil cooperant to an end.
Dear friend, far off, my lost desire.
So far, so near in woe and weal;
O loved the most, when most I feel
There is a lower and a higher;
Known and unknown; human, divine;
Sweet human hand and lips and eye:
Dear heavenly friend that canst not
die.
Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine;
Strange friend, past, present, and to be;
Loved deeplier, darklier understood;
Behold, I dream a dream of good.
And minglfe all the world with thee.
Thy voice is on the rolling air;
I hear thee where the waters run;
Thou standest in the rising sun,
And in the setting thou art fair.
What art thou then? I cannot guess;
But tho' I seem in star and flower
To feel thee some diffusive power,
I do not therefore love thee less :
My love involves the love before;
My love is vaster passion now;
Tho' mix'd with God and Nature
thou,
I seem to love thee more and more.
Far off thou art, but ever nigh ;
I have thee still, and I rejoice;
I prosper, circled with thy voice j
I shall not lose thee tho' I die.
cxxxi. '>/
O living will that shalt endure
When all that seems shall suffer
shock.
IN MEMORIAM.
279
Rise in the spiritual rock,
Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure,
That we may lift from out of dust
A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquer'd years
To one that with us works, and trust,
With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can be proved
Until we close with all we loved,
And ail we flow from, soul in soul.
^O true and tried, so well and long,
Demand not thou a marriage lay;
In that it is thy marriage day
Is music more than ^ny song.
Nor have I felt so much of bliss
Since first he told me that he loved
A daughter of our house ; nor proved
Since that dark day a day like this;
Tho' I since then have number'd o'er
Some thrice three years : they went
and came,
Remade the blood and changed the
frame,
And yet is love not less, but more ;
No longer caring to embalm
In dying songs a dead regret,
But like a statue solid-set,
And moulded in colossal calm.
Regret is dead, but love is more
Than in the summers that are flown,
For I myself with these have grown
To something greater than before;
Which makes appear the songs I made
As echoes out of weaker times.
As half but idle brawling rhymes.
The sport of random sun and shade.
But where is she, the bridal flower.
That must be made a wife ere noon?
She enters, glowing like the moon
Of Eden on its bridal bower :
On me she bends her blissful eyes
And then on thee; they meet thy look
And brighten like the star that shook
Betwixt the palms of paradise.
O when her life was yet in bud,
He too foretold the perfect rose.
For thee she grew, for thee she grows
For ever, and as fair as good.
And thou art worthy; full of power;
As gentle; liberal-minded, great,
Consistent; wearing all that weight
Of learning lightly like a flower.
But now set out : the noon is near,
And I must give away the bride;
She fears not, or with thee beside
"And me behind her will not fear:
For I that danced her on my knee,
That watch'd hev on her nurse's arm,
That shielded all her life from harm
At last must part with her to thee;
Now waiting to be made a wife,
Her feet, my darling, on the dead;
Their pensive tablets round her head,
And the most living words of life
Breathed in her ear. The ring is on.
The ' wilt thou ' answer'd, and again
The * wilt thou ' ask'd, till out of twain
Her sweet * I will ' has made you one.
Now sign your names, which shall be read.
Mute symbols of a joyful morn,
By village eyes as yet unborn;
The names are sign'd, and overhead
Begins the clash and clang that tells
The joy to every wandering breeze;
The blind wall rocks, and on the trees
The dead leaf trembles to the bells.
O happy hour, and happier hours
Await them. Many a merry face
Salutes them — maidens of the place,
That pelt us in the porch with flowers.
O happy hour, behold the bride
With him to whom her hand I gave.
They leave the porch, they pass the
grave
That has to-day its sunny side.
IN MEMORIAM.
To-day the grave is bright for me,
For them the light of life increased,
"Who stay to share the morning feast,
Who rest to-night beside the sea.
Let all my genial spirits advance
To meet and greet a whiter sun;
My drooping memory will not shun
The foaming grape of eastern France.
It circles round, and fancy plays,
And hearts are warm'd and faces
bloom,
As drinking health to bride and
groom
We wish them store of happy days.
Nor count me all to blame if I
Conjecture of a stiller guest,
Perchance,perchance,amongtherest,
And, tho' in silence, wishing joy.
But they must go, the time draws on.
And those white-favour'd horses wait ;
They rise, but linger; it is late;
Farewell, we kiss, and they are gone.
A shade falls on us like the dark
From little cloudlets on the grass,
But sweeps away as out we pass
To range the woods,, to roam the park,
Discussing how their courtship grew.
And talk of others that are wed,
And how she look'd, and what he said.
And back we come at fall of dew.
^Again the feast, the speech, the glee,
The shade of passing thought, the
wealth
Of words and wit, the double health.
The crowning cup, the three-times-three.
And last the dance; — till I retire :
Dumb is that tower which spake so
loud.
And high in heaven the streaming
cloud,
And on the downs a rising fire :
And rise, O moon, from yonder down.
Till over down and over dale
All night the shining vapour sail
And pass the silent-lighted town.
The white-faced halls, the glancing rills,
And catch at every mountain head,
And o'er the friths that branch and
spread
Their sleeping silver thro' the hills;
And touch with shade the bridal doors,
With tender gloom the roof, the
wall;
^nd breaking let the splendour fall
To spangle all the happy shores
By which they rest, 'and ocean sounds,
And, star and system rolling past,
A soul shall draw from out the vast
And strike his being into bounds,
And, moved thro' life of lower phase,
Result in man, be born and think,
And act and love, a closer link
Betwixt us and the crowning race
Of those that, eye to eye, shall look
On knowledge; under whose com-
mand
Is Earth and Earth's, and in their
hand
Is Nature like an open book;
No longer half-akin to brute,
For all we thought and loved and
did.
And hoped, and sufTer'd, is but seed
Of what in them is* flower and fruit ;
Whereof the man, that with me trod
This planet, was a noble type
Appearing ere the times were ripe,
That friend of mine who lives in God,
That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element.
And one far-off divine event.
To which the whole creation moves.
MAUD. 281
MAUD; A MONODRAMA.
PART I.
I.
I.
I HATE the dreadful hollow behind the little wood,
Its lips in the field above are dappled with blood-red heath,
The red-ribb'd ledges drip with a silent horror of blood,
And Echo there, whatever is ask'd her, answers ' Death.'
II.
For there in the ghastly pit long since a body was found,
His who had given me life — O father ! O God ! was it well? —
Mangled, and flatten'd, and crush'd, and dinted into the ground :
There yet lies the rock that fell with him when he fell.
Did he fling himself down? who knows? for a vast speculation had fail'd,
And ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever wann'd with despair.
And out he walk'd when the wind like a broken worldling wail'd,
And the flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands drove thro' the air.
I remember the time, for the roots of my hair were stirr'd
By a shuffled step, by a dead weight trail'd, by a whisper'd fright.
And my pulses closed their gates with a shock on my heart as I heard
The shrill-edged shriek of a mother divide the shuddering night.
Villainy somewhere ! whose? One says, we are villains all.
Not he ; his honest fame should at least by me be maintained :
But that old man, now lord of the broad estate and the Hall,
Dropt off gorged from a scheme that had left us flaccid and drain'd.
VI.
Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace? we have made them a curse.
Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own;
And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse
Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own hearthstone?
But these are the days of advance, the works of the men of mind.
When who but a fool would have faith in a tradesman's ware or his word?
Is it peace or war? Civil war, as I think, and that of a kind
The viler, as underhand, not openly bearing the sword.
282 MAUD.
VIII.
Sooner or later I too may passively take the print
Of the golden age — why not? I have neither hope nor trust;
May make my heart as a millstone, set my face as a flint,
Cheat and be cheated, and die: vi'ho knows? we are ashes and dust.
IX.
Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by.
When the poor are hovell'd and hustled together, each sex, like swine.
When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie;
Peace in her vineyard — yes ! — but a company forges the wine.
And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffian's head,
Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled wife.
And chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread,
And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life,
XI.
And Sleep must lie down arm'd,'for the villainous centre-bits
Grind on the wakeful ear in the hush of the moonless nights.
While another is cheating the sick of a few last gasps, as he sits
To pestle a poison'd poison behind his crimson lights.
XII.
When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a burial fee,
And Timour-Mammon grins on a pile of children's bones.
Is it peace or war? better, war ! loud war by land and by sea,
War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones.
For I trust if an enemy's fleet came yonder round by the hill.
And the rushing battle-boat sang from the three-decker out of the foam,
That the smooth-faced snubnosed rogue would leap from his counter and till,
And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating yardwand, home.
XIV.
What ! am I raging alone as my father raged in his mood?
Must / too creep to the hollow and dash myself down and die
Rather than hold by the law that I made, nevermore to brood
On a horror of shatter'd limbs and a wretched swindler's lie?
XV.
Would there be sorrow for me? there was love in the passionate shriek.
Love for the silent thing that had made false haste to the grave —
Wrapt in a cloak, as I saw him, and thought he would rise and speak
And rave at the lie and the liar, ah God, as he used to rave.
MAUD. 283
XVI.
I am sick of the Hall and the hill, I am sick of the moor and the main.
"Why should I stay? can a sweeter chance ever come to me here?
O, having the nerves of motion as well as the nerves of pain,
Were it not wise if I fled from the place and the pit and the fear?
XVII.
Workmen up at the Hall ! — they are coming back from abroad;
The dark old place will be gilt by the touch of a millionaire :
I have heard, I know not whence, of the singular beauty of Maud;
I play'd with the girl when a child; she promised then to be fair.
XVIII,
Maud with her venturous climbings and tumbles and childish escapes,
Maud the delight of the village, the ringing joy of the Hall,
Maud with her sweet purse-mouth when my father dangled the grapes,
Maud the beloved of my mother, the moon-faced darling of all, —
What is she now? My dreams are bad. She may bring me a curse.
No, there is fatter game on the moor : she will let me alone.
Thanks, for the fiend best knows whether woman or man be the worse.
I will bury myself in myself, and the Devil may pipe to his own.
II.
Long have I sigh'd for a calm : God grant I may find it at last !
It will never be broken by Maud, she has neither savour nor salt,
But a cold and clear-cut face, as I found when her carriage past.
Perfectly beautiful : let it be granted her: where is the fault?
All that I saw (for her eyes were downcast, not to be seen)
Faultily faultless, -icily regular, splendidly null,
Dead perfection, no more; nothing more, if it had not been
For a chance of travel, a paleness, an hour's defect of the rose,
Or an underlip, you may call it a little too ripe, too full,
Or the least little delicate aquiline curve in a sensitive nose.
From which I escaped heart-free, with the least little touch of spleen,
III.
Cold and clear-cut face, why come you so cruelly meek.
Breaking a slumber in which all spleenful folly was drown'd.
Pale with the golden beam of an eyelash dead on the cheek.
Passionless, pale, cold face, staiv sweet on a gloom profound;
Womanlike, taking revenge too deep for a transient wrong
Done but in thought to your beauty, and ever as pale as before
Growing and fading and growing upon me without a sound,
Luminous, genilike, ghostlike, deathlike, half the night long
Growing and fading and growing, till I could bear it no more.
But arose, and all by myself in my own dark garden ground,
284 MAUD,
Listening now to the tide in its broad-flung shipwrecking roar,
Now to the scream of a madden'd beach dragg'd down by the wave,
Walk'd in a wintry wind by a ghastly glimmer, and found
The shining daftbdil dead, and Orion low in his grave.
IV.
A million emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime
In the little grove where I sit — ah, wherefore cannot I be
Like things of the season gay, like the bountiful season bland,
When the far-off sail is blown by the breeze of a softer clime,
Half-lost in the liquid azure bloom of a crescent of sea,
The silent sapphire-spangled marriage ring of the land?
Below me, there, is the village, and looks how quiet and small !
And yet bubbles o'er like a city, with gossip, scandal, and spite;
And Jack on his ale-house bench has as many lies as a Czar;
And here on the landward side, by a red rock, glimmers the Hall;
And up in the high Hall-garden I see her pass like a light;
But sorrow seize me if ever that light be my leading star !
III.
When have I bow'd to her father, the wrinkled head of the race?
I met her to-day with her brother, but not to her brother I bow'd:
I bow'd to his lady-sister as she rode by on the moor;
But the fire of a foolish pride flash'd over her beautiful face.
O child, you wrong your beauty, believe it, in being so proud ;
Your father has wealth well-gotten, and I am nameless and poor.
I keep but a man and a maid, ever ready to slander and steal;
I know it, and smile a hard-set smile, like a stoic, or like
A wiser epicurean, and let the world have its way :
For nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal;
The Mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow spear'd by the shrike,
And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and prey.
V.
We are puppets, Man in his pride, and Beauty fair in her flower ;
Do we move ourselves, or are moved by an unseen hand at a game
That pushes us off from the board, and others ever succeed?
Ah yet, we cannot be kind to each other here for an hour;
We whisper, and hint, and chuckle, and grin at a brother's shame;
However we brave it out, we men are a little breed.
VI.
A monstrous eft was of old the Lord and Master of Earth,
For him did his high sun flame, and his river billowing ran.
MAUD.
28s
And he felt himself in his force to be Nature's crowning race.
As nine months go to the shaping an infant ripe for his birth,
So many a million of ages have gone to the making of man :
He now is first, but is he the last? is he not too base?
VII.
The man of science himself is fonder of glory, and vain,
An eye well-practised in nature, a spirit bounded and poor;
The passionate heart of the poet is whirl'd into folly and vice.
I would not marvel at either, but keep a temperate brain;
For not to desire or admire, if a man could learn it, were more
Than to walk all day like the sultan of old in a garden of spice.
VIII.
For the drift of the Maker is dark, an Isis hid by the veil.
Who knows the ways of the world, how God will bring them about ?
Our planet is one, the suns are many, the world is wide.
Shall I weep if a Poland fall? shall I shriek if a Hungary fail?
Or an infant civilisation be ruled with rod or with knout?
/have not made the world, and He that made it will guide.
Be mine a philosopher's life in the quiet woodland ways.
Where if I cannot be gay let a passionless peace be my lot,
Far-off from the clamour of liars belied in the hubbub of lies;
From the long-neck'd geese of the world that are ever hissing dispraise
Because their natures are little, and, whether he heed it or not,
Where each man walks with his head in a cloud of poisonous flies.
And most of all would I flee from the cruel madness of love,
The honey of poison-flowers and all the measureless ill.
Ah Maud, you milkwhite fawn, you are all unmeet for a wife.
Your mother is mute in her grave as her image in marble above;
Your father is ever in London, you wander about at your will;
You have but fed on the roses and lain in the lilies of life.
V.
A voice by the cedar tree
In the meadow under the Hall !
She is singing an air that is known to me,
A passionate ballad gallant and gay,
A martial song like a trumpet's call !
Singing alone in the morning of life.
In the happy morning of life and of May,
Singing of men that in battle array,
Ready in heart and ready in hand,
March with banner and bugle and fife
To the death, for their native land.
II.
Maud with her exquisite face.
And wild voice pealing up to the sunny
sky.
And feet like sunny gems on an English
green,
Maud in the light of her youth and her
grace.
Singing of Death, and of Honour that
cannot die,
Till I well could weep for a time so sordid
and mean,
And myself so languid and base.
286
MAUD,
Silence, beautiful voice !
Be still, for you only trouble the mind
With a joy in which I cannot rejoice,
A glory I shall not find.
Still ! I will hear you no more,
For your sweetness hardly leaves me a
choice
But to move to the meadow and fall before
Her feet on the meadow grass, and adore.
Not her, who is neither courtly nor kind,
Not her, not her, but a voice.
VI.
Morning arises stormy and pale,
No sun, but a wannish glare
In fold upon fold of hueless cloud,
And the budded peaks of the wood are
bow'd
'Caught and cuffd by the gale :
I had fancied it would be fair.
II.
Whom but Maud should I meet
Last night, when the sunset burn'd
On the blossom'd gable-ends
At the head of the village street.
Whom but Maud should I meet?
And she touch'd my hand with a smile so
sweet.
She made me divine amends
For a courtesy not return'd.
III.
And thus a delicate spark
Of glowing and growing light
Thro' the livelong hours of the dark
Kept itself warm in the heart of my
dreams.
Ready to burst in a colour'd flame;
Till at last when the morning came
In a cloud, it faded, and seems
But an ashen-gray delight.
IV.
What if with her sunny hair,
And smile as sunny as cold,
She meant to weave me a snare
Of some coquettish deceit,
Cleopatra-like as of old
To entangle me when we met, ,
To have her lion roll in a silken net
And fawn at a victor's feet.
Ah, what shall I be at fifty
Should Nature keep me alive,
If I find the world so bitter
When I am but twenty-five?
Yet, if she were not a cheat,
If Maud were all that she seem'd.
And her smile were all that I dream'd^
Then the world were not so bitter
But a smile could make it sweet.
What if tho' her eye seem'd full
Of a kind intent to me,
What if that dandy-despot, he,
That jewell'd mass of millinery.
That oil'd and curl'd Assyrian Bull
Smelling of musk and of insolence.
Her brother, from whom I keep aloof,
Who wants the finer politic sense
To mask, tho' but in his own behoof.
With a glassy smile his brutal scorn —
What if he had told her yestermorn
How prettily for his own sweet sake
A face of tenderness might be feign'd,
And a moist mirage in desert eyes.
That so, when the rotten hustings shake
In another month to his brazen lies,
A wretched vote may be gain'd.
For a raven ever croaks, at my side.
Keep watch and ward, keep watch and
ward.
Or thou wilt prove their tool.
Yea, too, myself from myself I guard,
For often a man's own angry pride
Is cap and bells for a fool.
VIII.
Perhaps the smile and tender tone
Came out of her pitying womanhood,
For am I not, am I not, here alone
So many a summer since she died,
My mother, who was so gentle and good?
Living alone in an empty house,
Here half-hid in the gleaming wood,
MAUD.
287
Where I hear the dead at midday
moan,
And the shrieking rush of the" wainscot
mouse,
And my own sad name in corners
cried,
When the shiver of dancing leaves is
thrown
About its echoing chambers wide,
Till a morbid hate and horror have
grown
Of a world in which I have hardly mixt,
And a morbid eating lichen fixt
On a heart half-turn'd to stone.
IX.
O heart of stone, are you flesh, and caught
By that you swore to withstand?
For what was it else within me wrought
But, I fear, the new strong wine of
love,
That made my tongue so stammer and
trip
When I saw the treasured splendour, her
hand.
Come sliding out of her sacred glove,
And the sunHght broke from her lip?
I have play'd with her when a child;
She remembers it now we meet.
Ah well, well, well, I may be beguiled
By some coquettish deceit.
Yet, if she were not a cheat.
If Maud were all that she seem'd,
And her smile had all that I dream'd,
Then the world were not so bitter
But a smile could make it sweet.
VII.
Did I hear it half in a doze
Long since, I know not where?
Did I dream it an hour ago,
When asleep in this arm-chair?
Men were drinking together,
Drinking and talking of me;
* Well, if it prove a girl, the boy
Will have plenty : so let it be,'
Is it an echo of something
Read with a boy's delight,
Viziers nodding together
In some Arabian night?
IV.
Strange, that I hear two men,
Somewhere, talking of me;
* Well, if it prove a girl, my boy
Will have plenty : so let it be.'
VIII.
She came to the village church,
And sat by a pillar alone;
An angel watching an urn
Wept over her, carved in stone;
And once, but once, she lifted her eyes,
And suddenly, sweetly, strangely blush'd
To find they were met by my own;
And suddenly, sweetly, my heart beat
stronger
And thicker, until I heard no longer
The snowy-banded, dilettante,
Delicate-handed priest intone;
And thought, is it pride, and mused and
sigh'd
* No surely, now it cannot be pride.'
IX.
I was walking a mile.
More than a mile from the shore,
The sun look'd out with a smile
Betwixt the cloud and the moor
And riding at set of day
Over the dark moor land,
Rapidly riding far away.
She waved to me with her hand.
There were two at her side.
Something flash'd in the sun,
Down by the hill I saw them ride,
In a moment they were gone :
Like a sudden spark
Struck vainly in the night,
Then returns the dark
With no more hope of light.
X.
I.
Sick, am I sick of a jealous dread?
Was not one of the two at her side
288
MAUD.
This new-made lord, whose splendour
plucks
The slavish hat from the villager's head?
"Whose ol'd grandfather has lately died,
Gone to a blacker pit, for whom
Grimy nakedness dragging his trucks
And laying his trams in a poison'd gloom
Wrought, till he crept from a gutted
mine
Master of half a servile shire,
And left his coal all turn'd into gold
To a grandson, first of his noble line.
Rich in the grace all women desire,
Strong in the power that air men adore.
And simper and set their voices lower,
And soften as if to a girl, and hold
Awe-stricken breaths at a work divine,
Seeing his gewgaw castle shine,
New as his title, built last year,
There amid perky larches and pine,
And over the sullen-purple moor
(Look at it) pricking a cockney ear.
What, has he found my jewel out?
For one of the two that rode at her side
Bound for the Hall, I am sure was he :
Bound for the Hall, and I think for a
bride.
Blithe would her brother's acceptance be.
Maud could be gracious too, no doubt
To a lord, a captain, a padded shape,
A bought commission, a waxen face,
A rabbit mouth that is ever agape —
Bought? what is it he cannot buy?
And therefore splenetic, personal, base,
A wounded thing with a rancorous cry.
At war with myself and a wretched race.
Sick, sick to the heart of life, am I.
III.
Last week came one to the country town.
To preach our poor little army down.
And play the game of the despot kings,
Tho' the state has done it and thrice
as well:
This broad-brimm'd hawker of holy
things.
Whose ear is cramm'd with his cotton,
and rings
Even in dreams to the chink of his pence,
This huckster put down war ! can he tell
Whether war be a cause or a consequence ?
Put down the passions that make earth
Hell!
Down with ambition, avarice, pride.
Jealousy, down ! cut off from the mind
The bitter springs of anger and fear;
Down too, down at your own fireside,
With the evil tongue and the evil ear,
For each is at war with mankind.
I wish I could hear again
The chivalrous battle-song
That she warbled alone in her joy !
I might persuade myself then
She would not do herself this great wrong,
To take a wanton dissolute boy
For a man and leader of men.
V,
Ah God, for a man with heart, head,
hand.
Like some of the simple great ones gone
For ever and ever by.
One still strong man in a blatant land.
Whatever they call him, what care I,
Aristocrat, democrat, autocrat — one
Who can rule and dare not lie.
VI.
And ah for a man to arise in me.
That the man I am may cease to be !
XI.
I.
0 let the solid ground
Not fail beneath my feet
Before my life has found
What some have found so sweet;
Then let come what come may.
What matter if I go mad,
1 shall have had my day.
II.
Let the sweet heavens endure.
Not close and darken above me
Before I am quite quite sure
That there is one to love me;
Then let come what come may
To a life that has been so sad,
I shall have had my day.
MAUD.
2S9
XII.
I.
Birds in the high Hall-garden
When twilight was falling,
Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud,
They were crying and calling.
II.
Where was Maud? in our wood;
And I, who else, was with her,
Gathering woodland lilies,
Myriads blow together.
III.
Birds in our wood sang
Ringing thro' the valleys,
Maud is here, here, here
In among the lilies.
IV.
I kiss'd her slender hand,
She took the kiss sedately;
Maud is not seventeen.
But she is tall and stately.
I to cry out on pride
Who have won her favour !
0 Maud were sure of Heaven
If lowliness could save her.
VI.
1 know the way she went
Home with her maiden posy,
For her feet have touch'd the meadows
And left the daisies rosy.
VII.
Birds in the high Hall -garden
Were crying and calling to her.
Where is Maud, Maud, Maud?
One is come to woo her.
Look, a horse at the door.
And little King Charley snarling,
Go back, my lord, across the moor,
You are not her darling.
XIII.
Scorn'd, to be scorn'd by one that I scorn,
Is that a matter to make me fret?
That a calamity hard to be borne?
Well, he may live to hate me yet.
Fool that I am to be vext with his pride !
I past him, I was crossing his lands;
He stood on the path a little aside;
His face, as I grant, in spite of spite,
Has a broad-blown comeliness, red and
white,
And six feet two, as I think, he stands;
But his essences turn'd the live air sick,
And barbarous opulence jewel-thick
Sunn'd itself on his breast and his hands.
Who shall call me ungentle, unfair,
I long'd so heartily then and there
To give him the grasp of fellowship;
But while I past he was humming an air,
Stopt, and then with a riding whip
Leisurely tapping a glossy boot.
And curving a contumelious lip,
Gorgonised me from head to foot
With a stony British stare.
III.
Why sits he here in his father's chair?
That old man never comes to his place :
Shall I believe him ashamed to be seen?
For only once, in the village street.
Last year, I caught a glimpse of his face,
A gray old wolf and a lean.
Scarcely, now, would I call him a cheat;
For then, perhaps, as a child of deceit,
She might by a true descent be untrue ;
And Maud is as true as Maud is sweet :
Tho' I fancy her sweetness only due
To the sweeter blood by the other side;
Her mother has been a thing complete.
However she came to be so allied.
And fair without, faithful within,
Maud to him is nothing akin :
Some peculiar mystic grace
Made her only the child of her mother
And heap'd the whole inherited sin
On that huge scapegoat of the race,
All, all upon the brother.
290
MAUD.
IV.
Peace, angry spirit, and let him be !
Has not his sister smiled on me?
XIV.
Maud has a garden of roses
And lilies fair on a lawn;
There she walks in her state
And tends upon bed and bower,
And thither I climb'd at dawn
And stood by her garden-gate;
A lion ramps at the top,
He is claspt by a passion-flower.
II.
Maud's own little oak-room
(Which Maud, like a precious stone
Set in the heart of the carven gloom,
Lights with herself, when alone
She sits by her music and books
And her brother lingers late
With a roystering company) looks
Upon Maud's own garden-gate :
And I thought as I stood, if a hand, as
white
As ocean-foam in the moon, were laid
On the hasp of the window, and my
Delight
Had a sudden desire, like a glorious ghost,
to glide,
Like a beam of the seventh Heaven, down
to my side.
There were but a step to be made,
III.
The fancy flatter'd my mind.
And again seem'd overbold;
• Now I thought that she cared for me.
Now I thought she was kind
Only because she was cold.
I heard no sound where I stood
But the rivulet on from the lawn
Running down to my own dark wood;
Or the voice of the long sea-wave as it
swell'd
Now and then in the d'm-gray dawn;
But I look'd, and round, all round the
house 1 beheld
The death-white curtain drawn;
Felt a horror over me creep.
Prickle my skin and catch my breath.
Knew that the death-white curtain meant
but sleep.
Yet I shudder'd and thought like a fool
of the sleep of death.
XV.
So dark a mind within me dwells,
And I make myself such evil cheer,
That if /be dear to some one else,
Then some one else may have much to
fear;
But if / be dear to some one else,
Then I should be to myself more dear.
Shall I not take care of all that I think,
Yea ev'n of wretched meat and drink,
If I be dear.
If I be dear to some one else.
XVI.
This lump of earth has left his estate
The lighter by the loss of his weight;
And so that he find what he went to
seek,
And fulsome Pleasure clog him, and
drown
His heart in the gross mud-honey of town.
He may stay for a year who has gone for
a week :
But this is the day when I must speak
And I see my Oread coming down,
O this is the day !
0 beautiful creature, what am I
That I dare to look her way;
Think I may hold dominion sweet.
Lord of the pulse that is lord of her breast,
And dream of her beauty with tender
dread.
From the delicate Arab arch of her feet
To the grace that, bright and light as the
crest
Of a peacock, sits on her shining head,
And she knows it not : O, if she knew it,
To know her beauty might half undo it.
1 know it the one bright thing to save
My yet young life in the wilds of Time,
MAUD.
29X
Perhaps from madness, perhaps from
crime,
Perhaps from a selfish grave.
II.
What, if she be fasten'd to this fool
lord,
Dare I bid her abide by her word?
Should 1 love her so well if she
Had given her word to a thing so low?
Shall I love her as well if she
Can break her word were it even for
me?
I trust that it is not so.
Catch not my breath, O clamorous
heart,
Let not my tongue be a thrall to my
eye.
For I must tell her before we part,
I must tell her, or die.
XVII.
Go not, happy day,
From the shining fields.
Go not, happy day.
Till the maiden yields.
Rosy is the West,
Rosy is the South,
Roses are her cheeks.
And a rose her mouth
When the happy Yes
Falters from her lips.
Pass and blush the news
Over glowing ships;
Over blowing seas.
Over seas at rest,
Pass the happy news,
Blush it thro' the West;
rill the red man dance
By his red cedar-tree,
And the red man's babe
Leap, beyond the sea.
Blush from West to East,
Blush from East to West,
Till the West is East,
Blush it thro' the West.
Rosy is the West,
Rosy is the South,
Roses are her cheeks,
And a rose her mouth.
XVIII.
I.
I have led her home, my love, my only
friend.
There is none like her, none.
And never yet so warmly ran my blood
And sweetly, on and on.
Calming itself to the long-wish'd-for
end,
Full to the banks, close on the promised
good.
None like her, none.
Just now the dry-tongued laurels' patter-
ing talk
Seem'd her light foot along the garden
walk.
And shook my heart to think she comes
once more;
But even then I heard her close the
door,
The gates of Heaven are closed, and she
is gone.
There is none like her, none.
Nor will be when our summers have de-
ceased.
O, art thou sighing for Lebanon
In the long breeze that streams to thy
delicious East,
Sighing for Lebanon,
Dark cedar, tho' thy limbs have here
increased.
Upon a pastoral slope as fair,
And looking to the South, and fed
With honey'd rain and delicate air.
And haunted by the starry head
Of her whose gentle will has changed
my fate,
And made my life a perfumed altar-
flame;
And over whom thy darkness must have
spread
With such delight as theirs of old, thy
great
Forefathers of the thornless garden,
there
Shadowing the snow-limb'd Eve from
whom she came.
292
MAUD.
IV.
Here will I lie, while these long branches
sway,
And you fair stars that crown a happy
day
Go in and out as if at merry play,
Who am no more so all forlorn,
x\s when it seem'd far better to be born
To labour and the mattock-harden'd
hand.
Than nursed at ease and brought to un-
derstand
A sad astrology, the boundless plan
That makes you tyrants in your iron
skies.
Innumerable, pitiless, passionless eyes,
Cold fires, yet with power to burn and
brand
His nothingness into man.
But now shine on, and what care I,
Who in this stormy gulf have found a
pearl
The countercharm of space and hollow
sky.
And do accept my madness, and would
die
To save from some slight shame one
simple girl.
Would die; for sullen-seeming Death
may give
More life to Love than is or ever was
In our low world, where yet 'tis sweet to
live.
Let no one ask me how it came to pass;
It seems that I am happy, that to me
A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass,
A purer sapphire melts into the sea.
VII.
Not die; but live a life of truest breath.
And teach true life to fight with mortal
wrongs.
O, why should Love, like men in drink-
ing-songs,
Spice his fair banquet with the dust of
death ?
Make answer, Maud my bliss,
Maud made my Maud by that long lov-
ing kiss.
Life of my life, wilt thou not answer this?
' The dusky strand of Death inwoven
here
With dear Love's tie, makes Love him-
self more dear.'
VIII.
Is that enchanted moan only the swell
Of the long waves that roll in yonder bay?
And hark the clock within, the silver
knell
Of twelve sweet hours that past in bridal
white.
And died to live, long as my pulses play;
But now by this my love has closed her
sight
And given false death her hand, and
stol'n away
To dreamful wastes where footless fan-
cies dwell
Among the fragments of the golden day.
May nothing there her maiden grace
affright !
Dear heart, I feel with thee the drowsy
spell.
My bride to be, my evermore delight,
My own heart's heart, my ownest own,
farewell ;
It is but for a little space I go :
And ye meanwhile far over moor and fell
Beat to the noiseless music of the night !
Has our whole earth gone nearer to the
glow
Of your soft splendours that you look so
bright?
/have climb'd nearer out of lonely Hell.
Beat, happy stars, timing with things
below.
Beat with my heart more blest than
heart can tell.
Blest, but for some dark undercurrent
woe
That seems to draw — but it shall not
be so :
Let all be well, be well.
XIX.
I.
Her brother is coming back to-night,
Breaking up my dream of delight.
MAUD.
293
II.
My dream? do I dream of bliss?
I have walk'd awake with Truth.
0 when did a morning ^hine
So rich in atonement as this
For my dark -dawning youth,
Darken-d watching a mother decline
And that dead man at her heart and
mine :
For who was left to watch her but I?
Yet so did I let my freshness die.
III.
1 trust that I did not talk
To gentle Maud in our walk
(For often in lonely wanderings
I have cursed him even to lifeless things)
But I trust that 1 did not talk,
Not touch on her father's sin :
I am sure I did but speak
Of my mother's faded cheek
When it slowly grew so thin,
That I felt she was slowly dying
Vext with lawyers and harass'd with debt :
For how often I caught her with eyes
all wet,
Shaking her head at her son and sighing
A world of trouble within !
IV.
And Maud too, Maud was moved
To speak of the mother she loved
As one scarce less forlorn,
Dying abroad and it seems apart ■
From him who had ceased to share her
heart.
And ever mourning over the feud.
The household Fury sprinkled with blood
By Which our houses are torn :
How strange was what she said,
When only Maud and the l-)rother
Hung over her dying bed —
That Maud's dark father and mine
Had bound us one to the other,
Betrothed us over their wine,
On the day when Maud was born;
Seal'd her mine from her first sweet
breath.
Mine, mine by a right, from birth till
death.
Mine, mine — our fathers have sworn.
V.
But the true blood spilt had in it a heat
To dissolve the precious seal on a bond
That, if left uncancell'd, had been so
sweet :
And none of us thought of a something
beyond,
A desire that awoke in the heart of the
child,
As it were a duty done to the tomb.
To be friends for her sake, to be recon-
ciled;
And I was cursing them and my doom.
And letting a dangerous thought run
wild
While often abroad in the fragrant gloom
Of foreign churches — I see her there.
Bright English lily, breathing a prayer
To be friends, to be reconciled !
But then what a flint is he !
Abroad, at Florence, at Rome,
I find whenever she touch'd on me
This brother had laugh'd her down.
And at last, when each came home.
He had darken'd into a frown.
Chid her, and forbid her to speak
To me, her friend of the years before;
And this was what had redden'd her
cheek
When I bow'd to her on the moor.
Yet Maud, altho' not blind
To the faults of his heart and mind,
I see she cannot but love him.
And says he is rough but kind,
And wishes me to approve him,
And tells me, when she lay
Sick once, with a fear of worse,
That he left his wine and horses and play,
Sat with her, read to her, night and day^
And tended her like a nurse.
VIII.
Kind? but the deathbed desire
Spurn'd by this heir of the liar —
Rough but kind? yet I know
He has plotted against me in this,
That he plots against me still.
Kind to Maud? that were not amiss.
294
MAUD.
Well, rough but kind; why let it be so:
For shall not Maud have her will !
II.
But to-morrow if we live,
IX.
Our ponderous squire will give
For, Maud, so tender and true,
A grand political dinner
As long as my life endures
To half the squirelings near;
I feel I shall owe you a debt,
And Maud will wear her jewels,
That I never can hope to pay; •
And the bird of prey will hover.
And if ever I should forget
And the titmouse hope to win her
That I owe this debt to you
With his chirrup at her ear.
And for your sweet sake to yours;
0 then, what then shall I say? —
III.
If ever I should forget,
May God make me more wretched
A grand political dinner
Than ever I have been yet !
To the men of many acres,
A gathering of the Tory,
X.
A dinner and then a dance
So now I have sworn to bury
All this dead body of hate,
I feel so free and so clear
For the maids and marriage-makers,
And every eye but mine will glance
At Maud in all her glory.
By the loss of that dead weight.
That I should grow hght-headed, I fear,
IV.
Fantastically merry;
But that her brother comes, like a blight
For I am not invited,
On my fresh hope, to the Hall to-night.
But, with the Sultan's pardon,
I am all as well delighted.
For I know her own rose-garden,
XX.
And mean to linger in it
Till the dancing will be over;
I.
And then, oh then, come out to me
Strange, that I felt so gay.
For a minute, but for a minute.
Strange, that / tried to-day
Come out to your own true lover,
That your true lover may see
To beguile her melancholy;
The Sultan, as we name him, —
Your glory also, and render
She did not wish to blame him —
All homage to his own darling,
But he vext her and perplext her
Queen Maud in all her splendour.
With his worldly talk and folly :
Was it gentle to reprove her
XXI.
For stealing out of view
From a little lazy lover
Rivulet crossing my ground.
Who but claims her as his due?
And bringing me down from the Hall
Or for chilling his caresses
This garden-rose that I found,
By the coolness of her manners.
Forgetful of Maud and me.
Nay, the plainness of her dresses?
And lost in trouble and moving round
Now I know her but in two,
Here at the head of a tinkling fall,
Nor can pronounce upon it
And trying to pass to the sea;
If one should ask me whether
0 Rivulet, born at the Hall,
The habit, hat, and feather.
My Maud has sent it by thee
Or the frock and gipsy bonnet
(If I read her sweet will right)
Be the neater and completer;
On a blushing mission to me.
For nothing can be sweeter
Saying in odour and colour, 'Ah, be
Than maiden Maud in either.
Among the roses to-night.'
MAUD.
29i
XXII.
I.
Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted
abroad.
And the musk of the rose is blown.
II.
For a breeze of morning moves.
And the planet of Love is on high,
Beginning to faint in the light that she
loves
On a bed of daffodil sky.
To faint in the light of the sun she loves,
To faint in his light, and to die.
III.
All night have the roses heard
The flute, violin, bassoon;
All night has the casement jessamine
stirr'd
To the dancers dancing in tune;
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
And a hush with the setting moon.
IV.
I said to the lily, * There is but one
With whom she has heart to be gay.
When will the dancers leave her alone?
She is weary of dance and play.'
Now half to the setting moon are gone,
And half to the rising day;
Low on the sand and loud on the stone
The last wheel echoes away.
I said to the rose, 'The brief night goes
In babble and revel and wine.
O young lord-lover, what sighs are those,
For one that will never be thine?
But mine, but mine,' so I sware to the rose,
* For ever and ever, mine.'
VI.
And the soul of the rose went into my
blood,
As the music clash'd in the hall;
And long by the garden lake I stood,
For I heard your rivulet fall
From the lake to the meadow and on to
the wood,
Our wood, that is dearer than all;
From the meadow your walks have left
so sweet
That whenever a March-wind sighs
He sets the jewel-print of your feet
In violets blue as your eyes.
To the woody hollows in which we meet
And the valleys of Paradise.
VIII.
The slender acacia would not shake
One long milk-bloom on the tree;
The white lake-blossom fell into the lake
As the pimpernel dozed on the lea;
But the rose was awake all night for your
sake,
Knowing your promise to me ;
The lilies and roses were all awake,
They sigh'd for the dawn and thee.
IX.
Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,
Come hither, the dances are done.
In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls.
Queen lily and rose in one;
Shine out, little head, sunning over with
cuils,
To the flowers, and be their sun.
There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, ' She is near, she is
near; '
And the white rose weeps, * She is
late ; '
The larkspur listens, ' I hear, I hear;'
And the lily whispers, ' I wait.'
XI.
She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread.
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
296
MAUD.
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
\nd blossom in purple and red.
PART II.
I.
-The fault was mine, the fault was
mine ' —
Why am I sitting here so stunn'd and still,
Plucking the harmless wild-flower on the
hill? —
It is this guilty hand ! —
And there rises ever a passionate cry
From underneath in the darkening land —
What is it that has been done?
O dawn of Eden bright over earth and
sky.
The fires of Hell brake out of thy rising
sun.
The fires of Hell and of Hate;
For. she, sweet soul, had hardly spoken a
word.
When her brother ran in his rage to the
gate.
He came with the babe-faced lord;
Heap'd on her terms of disgrace,
And while she wept, and I strove to be
cool,
He fiercely gave me the lie,
Till I with as fierce an anger spoke,
And he struck me, madman, over the
face.
Struck me before the languid fool,
Who was gaping and grinning by :
Struck for himself an evil stroke;
Wrought for his house an irredeemable
woe;
For front to front in an hour we stood,
And a million horrible bellowing echoes
broke
From the red-ribb'd hollow behind the
wood.
And thunder'd up into Heaven the Christ-
less code.
That must have life for a blow.
Ever and ever afresh they seem'd to grow.
Was it he lay there with a fading eye?
* The fault was mine/ he whisper'd, * fly ! '
Then glided out of the joyous wood
The ghastly Wraith of one that I know;
And there rang on a sudden a passionate
cry,
A cry for a brother's blood :
It will ring in my heart and my ears, till
I die. till I die.
Is it gone? my pulses beat —
What was it? a lying trick of the brain?
Yet I thought I saw her stand,
A shadow there at my feet.
High over the shadowy land.
It is gone; and the heavens fall in a
gentle rain.
When they should burst and drown with
deluging storms
The feeble vassals of wine and anger and
lust.
The little hearts that know not how to
forgive :
Arise, my God, and strike, for we hold
Thee just.
Strike dead the whole weak race of
venomous worms.
That sting each other here in the dust;
We are not worthy to live.
II.
See what a lovely shell,
Small and pure as a pearl,
Lying close to my foot.
Frail, but a work divine.
Made so fairily well
With delicate spire and whorl,
How exquisitely minute,
A miracle of design !
II.
What is it? a learned man
Could give it a clumsy name.
Let him name it who can.
The beauty would be the same.
III.
The tiny cell is forlorn.
Void of the little living will
That made it stir on the shore.
Did he stand at the diamond door
MAUD.
297
Of his house in a rainbow frill?
One would think that it well
Did he push, when he was uncurl'd,
Might drown all life in the eye, —
A golden foot or a fairy horn
That it should, by being so overwrought,
Thro' his dim water- world?
Suddenly strike on a sharper sense
For a shell, or a flower, little things
IV.
Which else would have been past by !
Slight, to be crush'd with a tap
And now I remember, I,
Of my finger-nail on the sand,
When he lay dying there,
Small, but a work divine,
I noticed one of his many rings
Frail, but of force to withstand,
(For he had many, poor worm) and
Year upon year, the shock
thought
Of cataract seas that snap
It is his mother's hair.
The three decker's oaken spine
Athwart the ledges of rock,
IX,
Here on the Breton strand !
Who knows if he be dead?
Whether I need have fled?
V.
Am I guilty of blood ?
Breton, not Briton; here
However this may be.
Like a shipwreck'd man on a coast
Comfort her, comfort her, all things
Of ancient fable and fear —
good,
Plagued with a flitting to and fro, .
While I am over the sea !
A disease, a hard mechanic ghost
Let me and my passionate love go by,
That' never came from on high
But speak to her all things holy and
Nor ever arose from below,
high,
But only moves with the moving eye,
Whatever happen to me !
Flying along the land and the main —
Me and my harmful love go by;
Why should it look like Maud?
But come to her waking, find her asleep,
Am I to be overawed
Powers of the height, Powers of the
By what I cannot but know
deep,
Is a juggle born of the brain?
And comfort her tho' I die.
VI.
III.
Back from the Breton coast,
Sick of a nameless fear,
Courage, poor heart of stone !
I will not ask thee why
Back to the dark sea-line
Thou canst not understand
Looking, thinking of all I have lost;
That thou art left for ever alone :
An old song vexes my ear;
But that of Lamech is mine.
Courage, poor stupid heart of stone. —
Or if I ask thee why.
VII.
Care not thou to reply :
She is but dead, and the time is at hand
For years, a measureless ill.
When thou shalt more than die.
For years, for ever, to part —
But she, she would love me still;
IV.
And as long, O God, as she
Have a grain 'of love for me.
'•
So long, no doubt, no doubt,
0 that 'twere possible
Shall 1 nurse in my dark heart,
After long grief and pain
However weary, a spark of will
To find the arms of my true love
Not to be trampled out.
Round me once again !
VIII,
II.
Strange, that the mind, when fraught
When I was wont to meet her
With a passion so intense
In the silent woody places
MAUD,
By the home that gave me birth,
We stood tranced in long embraces
Mixt M'ith kisses sweeter sweeter
Than anything on earth.
A shadow flits before me,
Not thou, but like to thee :
Ah Christ, that it were possible
For one short hour to see
The souls we loved, that they might tell us,
What and where they be.
IV.
It leads me forth at evening,
It lightly winds and steals
In a cold white robe before me,
When all my spirit reels
At the shouts, the leagues of lights,
And the roaring of the wheels.
V.
Half the night I waste in sighs.
Half in dreams I sorrow after
The delight of early skies;
In a wakeful doze I sorrow
For the hand, the lips, the eyes.
For the meeting of the morrow.
The delight of happy laughter,
The delight of low replies.
'Tis a morning pure and sweet,
And a dewy splendour falls
On the little flower that clings
To the turrets and the walls;
'Tis a morning pure and sweet.
And the light and shadow fleet ;
She is walking in the meadow,
And the woodland echo rings;
In a moment we shall meet;
She is singing in the meadow
And the rivulet at her feet
Ripples on in light and shadow
To the ballad that she sings.
VII.
Do I hear her sing as of old,
My bird with the shining head,
My own dove with the tender eye?
But there rings on a sudden a passionate
cry.
There is some one dying or dead.
And a sullen thunder is roll'd;
For a tumult shakes the city,
And I wake, my dream is fled;
In the shuddering dawn, behold,
Without knowledge, without pity,
By the curtains of my bed
That abiding phantom cold.
VIII.
Get thee hence, nor come again,
Mix not memory with doubt.
Pass, thou deathlike type of pain,
Pass and cease to move about !
'Tis the blot upon the brain
That will show itself without.
Then I rise, the eavedrops fall.
And the yellow vapours choke
The great city sounding wide;
The day comes, a dull red ball
Wrapt in drifts of lurid smoke
On the misty river-tide.
Thro' thehubbub of the market
I steal; a wasted frame,
It crosses here, it crosses there.
Thro' all that crowd confused and loud.
The shadow still the same;
And on my heavy eyelids
My anguish hangs like .shame.
Alas for her that met me.
That heard me softly call,
Came glimmering thro' the laurels
At the quiet evenfall.
In the garden by the turrets
Of the old manorial hall.
Would the happy spirit descend.
From the realms of light and song,
In the chamber or the street,
As she looks among the blest.
Should I fear to greet my friend
Or to say, * Forgive the wrong,'
Or to ask her, 'Take me, sweet.
To the regions of thy rest ' ?
MAUD.
299
But the broad light glares and beats,
And the shadow flits and fleets
And will not let me be;
And I loathe the squares and streets,
And the faces that one meets.
Hearts with no love for me :
Always I long to creep
Into some still cavern deep,
There to weep, and weep, and weep
My whole soul out to thee.
Dead, long dead,
Long dead !
And my heart is a handful of dust.
And the wheels go over my head,
And my bones are shaken with pain.
For into a shallow grave they are thrust.
Only a yard beneath the street.
And the hoofs of the horses beat, beat, '
The hoofs of the horses beat.
Beat into my scalp and my brain,
With never an end to the stream of
passing feet.
Driving, hurrying, marrying, burying.
Clamour and rumble, and ringing and
clatter,
And here beneath it is all as bad.
For I thought the dead had peace, but it
is not so;
To have no peace in the grave, is that
not sad?
But up and down and to and fro.
Ever about me the dead men go;
And then to hear a dead man chatter
Is enough to drive one mad.
II.
Wretchedest age since Time began,
They cannot even bury a man;
And tho' we paid our tithes in the days
that are gone,
Not a bell was rung, not a prayer was
read;
It is that which makes us loud in the
world of the dead;
There is none that does his work, not
one;
A touch of their ofiice might have
sufficed.
But the churchmen fain would kill their
church.
As the churches have kill'd their Christ.
III.
See, there is one of us sobbing,
No limit to his distress;
And another, a lord of all things, praying
To his own great self, as I guess;
And another, a statesman there, betraying
His party-secret, fool, to the press;
And yonder a vile physician, blabbing
The case of his patient — all for what?
To tickle the maggot born in an empty
head.
And wheedle a world that loves him not.
For it is but a world of the dead.
Nothing but idiot gabble !
For the prophecy given of old
And then not understood.
Has come to pass as foretold;
Not let any man think for the public
good.
But babble, merely for babble.
For I never whisper'd a private affair
Within the hearing of cat or mouse.
No, not to myself in the closet alone,
But I heard it shouted at once from the
top of the house;
Everything came to be known.
Who told him we were there?
Not that gray old wolf, for he came not
back
From the wilderness, full of wolves, where
he used to lie;
He has gather'd the bones for his o'er-
grown whelp to crack;
Crack them now for yourself, and howl,
and die.
VI.
Prophet, curse me the blabbing lip.
And curse me the British vermin, the rat;
I know not whether he came in the
Hanover ship,
But I know that he lies and listens mute
300
MAUD.
In an ancient mansion's crannies and
holes :
Arsenic, arsenic, sure, would do it,
Except that now we poison our babes,
poor souls !
It is all used up for that.
VII.
Tell him now : she is standing here at my
head;
Not beautiful now, not even kind;
He may take her now; for she never
speaks her mind.
But is ever the one thing silent here.
She is not ^us, as I divine;
She comes from another stiller world of
the dead,
Stiller, not fairer than mine.
But I know where a garden grows.
Fairer than aught in the world beside,
All made up of the lily and rose
That blow by night, when the season is
good,
To the sound of dancing music and flutes :
It is only flowers, they had no fruits.
And I almost fear they are not roses, but
blood;
For the keeper was one, so full of pride.
He linkt a dead man there to a spectral
bride ;
For he, if he had not been a Sultan of
brutes,
Would he have that hole in his side?
IX.
But what will the old man say?
He laid a cruel snare in a pit
To catch a friend of mine one stormy
day;
Yet now I could even weep to think
of it;
For what will the old man say?
When he comes to the second corpse in
the pit?
X.
Friend, to be struck by the public foe,
Then to strike him and lay him low,
That were a public merit, far.
Whatever the Quaker holds, from sin;
But the red life spilt for a private
blow —
I swear to you, lawful and lawless war
Are scarcely even akin.
XI.
0 me, why have they not buried me deep
enough?
Is it kind to have made me a grave so
rough.
Me, that was never a quiet sleeper?
Maybe still I am but half-dead;
Then I cannot be wholly dumb;
1 will cry to the steps above my head
And somebody, surely, some kind heart
will come
To bury me, bury me
Deeper, ever so little deeper.
PART III.
VI.
My life has crept so long on a broken wing
Thro' cells of madness, haunts of horror and fear,
That I come to be grateful at last for a little thing :
My mood is changed, for it fell at a time of year
When the face of night is fair on the dewy downs,
And the shining daffodil dies, and the Charioteer
And starry Gemini hang like glorious crowns
Over Orion's grave low down in the west,
That like a silent lightning under the stars
She seem'd to divide in a dream from a band of the blest.
MAUD. 301
And spoke of a hope for the world in the coming wars —
* And in that hope, dear soul, let trouble have rest.
Knowing I tarry for thee,' and pointed to Mars
As he glow'd like a ruddy shield on the Lion's breast.
II.
And it was but a dream, yet it yielded a dear delight
To have look'd, tho' but in a dream, upon eyes so fair,
That had been in a weary world my one thing bright;
And it was but a dream, yet it hghten'd my despair
When I thought that a war would arise in defence of the right,
That an iron tyranny now should bend or cease,
The glory of manhood stand on his ancient height,
Nor Britain's one sole God be the millionaire :
No more shall commerce be all in all, and Peace
Pipe on her pastoral hillock a languid note,
And watch her harvest ripen, her herd increase,
Nor the cannon-bullet rust on a slothful shore.
And the cobweb woven across the cannon's throat
Shall shake its threaded tears in the wind no more.
III.
And as months ran on and rumour of battle grew,
* It is time, it is time, O passionate heart,' said I
(P"or I cleaved to a cause that I felt to be pure and true),
* It is time, O passionate heart and morbid eye.
That old hysterical mock-disease should die.'
And I stood on a giant deck and mix'd my breath
With a loyal people shouting a battle cry,
Till I saw the dreary phantom arise and fly
Far into the North, and battle, and seas of death.
IV.
Let it go or stay, so I wake to the higher aims
Of a land that has lost for a little her lust of gold,
And love of a peace that was full of wrongs and shames,
Horrible, hateful, rrionstrous, not to be told ;
And hail once more to the banner of battle unroU'd !
Tho' many a light shall darken, and many shall weep
For those that are crush'd in the clash of jarring claims.
Yet God's just wrath shall be wreak'd on a giant liar;
And many a darkness into the light shall leap.
And shine in the sudden making of splendid names.
And noble thought be freer under the sun.
And the heart of a people beat with one desire;
For the peace, that I deem'd no peace, is over and done,
And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep,
And deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress, flames
The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire.
302
IDYLLS OF THE KING.
Let it flame or fade, and the war roll down like a wind,
We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are noble still,
And myself have awaked, as it seems, to the better mind;
It is better to fight for the good than to rail at the ill;
I have felt with my native land, I am one with my kind,
I embrace the purpose of God, and the doom assign'd.
IDYLLS OF THE KING.
IN TWELVE BOOKS.
Flos Regum Artkurtis.' — Joseph of Exeter.
DEDICATION.
These to His Memory — since he held
them dear.
Perchance as finding there unconsciously
Some image of himself — I dedicate,
I dedicate, I consecrate with tears —
These Idylls.
And indeed He seems to me
Scarce other than my king's ideal knight,
* Who reverenced his conscience as his
king;
Whose glory was, redressing human
wrong ;
Who spake no slander, no, nor listen'd
to it;
Who loved one onlv and who clave to
her — '
Her — over all whose realms to their last
isle.
Commingled with the gloom of imminent
war,
The shadow of His loss drew like eclipse.
Darkening the world. We have lost
him : he is gone :
We know him now: all narrow jealousies
Are silent; and we see him as he moved.
How modest, kindly, all-accomplish'd,
wise.
With what sublime repression of himself.
And in what limits, and how tenderly;
Not swaying to this faction or to that;
Not making his high place the lawless
perch
Of wing'd ambitions, nor a vantage-
ground
For pleasure; but thro' all this tract of
years
Wearing the white flower of a blameless
life,
Before a thousand peering littlenesses,
In that fierce light which beats upon a
throne.
And blackens every blot : for where is he,
Who dares foreshadow for an only son
A lovelier life, a more unstain'd than
his?
Or how should England dreaming of his
sons
Hope more for these than some inheri-
tance
Of such a life, a heart, a mind as thine.
Thou noble Father of her Kings to be,
Laborious for her people and her poor —
Voice in the rich dawn of an ampler
day —
Far-sighted summoner of War and Waste
To fruitful strifes and rivalries of peace —
Sweet nature gilded by the gracious
gleam
Of letters, dear to Science, dear to Art,
Dear to thy land and ours, a Prince
indeed,
Beyond all titles, and a household name,
Hereafter, thro' all times, Albert the
Good.
Break not, O woman's-heart, but still
endure;
Break not, for thou art Royal, but endure,
Remembering all the beauty of that star
THE COMING OF ARTHUR.
303
Which shone so close beside Thee that
ye made
One light together, but has past and leaves
The Crown a lonely splendour.
May all love,
His love, unseen but felt, o'ershadow Thee,
The love of all Thy sons encompass
Thee,
The love of all Thy daughters cherish
Thee,
The love of all Thy people comfort
Thee,
Till God's love set Thee at his side
again I
THE COMING OF ARTHUR.
Leodogran, the King of Cameliard,
Had one fair daughter, and none other
child;
And she was fairest of all flesh on earth,
Guinevere, and in her his one delight. -
For many a petty king ere Arthur
came
Ruled in this isle, and ever waging war
Each upon other, wasted all the land;
And still from time to time the heathen
host
Swarm'd overseas, and harried what was
left.
And so there grew great tracts of wilder-
ness.
Wherein the beast was ever more and
more.
But man was less and less, till Arthur
came.
For first Aurelius lived and fought and
died,
And after him King Uther fought and
died.
But either fail'd to make the kingdom
one.
And after these King Arthur for a space,
And thro' the puissance of his Table
Round,
Drew all their petty princedoms under
him.
Their king and head, and made a realm,
and reign'd.
And thus the land of Cameliard was
waste.
Thick with wet woods, and many a beast
therein,
And none or few to scare or chase the
beast;
So that wild dog, and wolf and boar and
bear
Came night and day, and rooted in the
fields,
And wallow'd in the gardens of the King.
And ever and anon the wolf would steal
The children and devour, but now and
then,
Her own brood lost or dead, lent her
fierce teat
To human sucklings; and the children,
housed
In her foul den, there at their meat
would growl.
And mock their foster-mother on four
feet,
Till, straighten'd, they grew up to wolf-
like men,
Worse than the wolves. And King
Leodogran
Groan'd fgr the Roman legions here
again,
And Caesar's eagle: then his brother king,
Urien, assail'd him : last a heathen
horde,
Reddening the sun with smoke and
earth with blood.
And on the spike that split the mother's
heart
Spitting the child, brake on him, till,
amazed,
He knew not whither he should turn for
aid.
But — for he heard of Arthur newly
crown'd,
Tho' not without an uproar made by
those
Who cried, ' He is not Uther's son ' —
the King
Sent to him, saying, ' Arise, and help us
thou!
For here between the man and beast we
die.'
304
THE COMING OF ARTHUR.
And Arthur yet had done no deed of
arms,
But heard the call, and came : and
Guinevere
Stood by the castle walls to watch him
pass;
But since he neither wore on helm or
shield
The golden symbol of his kinglihood,
But rode a simple knight among his
knights,
And many of these in richer arms than
he.
She saw him not, or mark'd not, if she
saw,
One among many, tho' his face was bare.
But Arthur, looking downward as he past,
Felt the light of her eyes into his life
Smite on the sudden, yet rode on, and
pitch'd
His tents beside the forest. Then he
drave
The heathen; after, slew the beast, and
feird
The forest, letting in the sun, and made
Broad pathways for the hunter and the
knight
And so return'd.
For while he linger'd there,
A doubt that ever smoulder'd in the
hearts
Of those great Lords and Barons of his
realm
Flash'd forth and into war: for most of
these,
Colleaguing with a score of petty kings,
Made head against him, crying, ' Who is
he
That he should rule us? who hath proven
him
King Uther's son? for lo! we look at
him.
And find nor face nor bearing, limbs nor
voice,
Are like to those of Uther whom we
knew.
This is the son of Gorlois, not the King;
This is the son of Anton, not the King.'
And Arthur, passing thence to battle,
felt
Travail, and throes and agonies of the life,
Desiring to be join'd with Guinevere;
And thinking as he rode, ' Her father
said
That there between the man and beast
they die.
Shall I not lift her from this land of
beasts
Up to my throne, and side by side with
me?
What happiness to reign a lonely king,
Vext — O ye stars that shudder over me,
0 earth that soundest hollow under me,
Vext with waste dreams? for saving I tje
join'd
To her that is the fairest under heaven,
1 seem as nothing in the mighty world,
And cannot will my will, nor work my
work
Wholly, nor make myself in mine own
realm
Victor and lord. But were I join'd with
her,
Then might we live together as one life,
And reigning with one will in everything
Have power on this dark land to lighten it.
And power on this dead world to make
it live.'
Thereafter — as he speaks who tells the
tale —
When Arthur reach'd a field-of-battle
bright
With pitch'd pavilions of his foe, the
world
Was all so clear about him, that he saw
The smallest rock far on the faintest hill,
And even in high day the morning star.
So when the King had set his banner
broad,
At once from either side, with trumpet-
blast.
And shouts, and clarions shrilling unto
blood,
The long-lanced battle let their horses
run.
And now the Barons and the kings pre-
vail'd.
And now the King, as here and there
that war
Went swaying; but the Powers who
walk the world
Made lightnings and great thunders over
him.
THE COMING OF ARTHUR.
305
And dazed all eyes, till Arthur by main
might,
And mightier of his hands with every
blow.
And leading all his knighthood threw the
kings
Carados, Urien, Cradlemont of Wales,
Claudius, and Clariance of Northumber-
land,
The King Brandagoras of Latangor,
With Anguisant of Erin, Morganore,
And Lot of Orkney. Then, before a
voice
As dreadful as the shout of one who
sees
To one who sins, and deems himself
alone
And all the world asleep, they swerved
and brake
Flying, and Arthur call'd to stay the
brands
That hack'd among the flyers, * Ho ! they
yield ! '
So like a painted battle the war stood
Silenced, the living quiet as the dead.
And in the heart of Arthur joy was lord.
He laugh'd upon his warrior whom he
loved
And honour'd most. 'Thou dost not
doubt me King,
So well thine arm hath wrought for me
to-day.'
' Sir and mv liege,' he cried, * the fire of
God
Descends upon thee in the battle-field :
I know thee for my King ! ' Whereat the
two.
For each had warded either in the fight,
Sware on the field of death a deathless
love.
And Arthur said, * Man's word is God in
man:
Let chance what will, I trust thee to the
death.'
Then quickly from the foughten field
he sent
Ulfius, and Brastias, and Bedivere,
His new-made knights, to King Leodo-
gran,
Saying, 'If I in aught have served thee
well.
Give me thy daughter Guinevere to wife.'
X
Whom when he heard, Leodogran in
heart
Debating — ' How should I that am a
king.
However much he holp me at my need,
Give my one daughter saving to a king,
And a king's soil ? ' — lifted his voice, and
called
A hoary man, his chamberlain, to whom
He trusted all things, and of him re-
quired
His counsel : * Knowest thou aught of
Arthur's birth?'
Then spake the hoary chamberlain and
said,
* Sir King, there be but two old men that
know :
And each is twice as old as I; and one
Is Merlin, the wise man that ever served
KingUther thro' his magic art; and one
Is Merlin's master (so they call him)
Bleys,
Who taught him magic; but the scholar
ran
Before the master, and so far, that Bleys
Laid magic by, and sat him down, and
wrote
All things and whatsoever Merlin did
In one great annal-book, where after-years
W^ill learn the secret of our Arthur's birth.'
To whom the King Leodogran replied,
' O friend, had I been holpen half as
well
By this King Arthur as by thee to-day.
Then beast and man had had their share
of me :
But summon here before us yet once more
Ulfius, and Brastias, and Bedivere.'
Then, when they came before him, the
King said,
*I have seen the cuckoo chased by lesser
fowl,
And reason in the chase : but wherefore
now
Do these your lords stir up the heat of
war,
Some calling Arthur born of Gorlois,
Others of Anton ? Tell me, ye yourselves,
Hold ye this Arthur for King Uther'5
son?'
306
THE COMING OF ARTHUR.
And Ulfius and Brastias answer'd, * Ay.'
Then Bedivere, the first of all his knights
Knighted by Arthur at his crowning,
spake —
For bold in heart and act and word was
he,
Whenever slander breatfied against the
King —
' Sir, there be many rumours on this
head:
For there be those who hate him in their
hearts,
Call him baseborn, and since his ways are
sweet,
And theirs are bestial, hold him less than
man :
And there be those who deem him more
than man.
And dream he dropt from heaven : but
my belief
In all this matter — so ye care to learn —
Sir, for ye know that in King Other's time
The prince and warrior Gorlois, he that
held
Tintagil castle by the Cornish sea.
Was wedded with awinsome wife, Ygerne :
And daughters had she borne him, — one
whereof,
Lot's wife, the Queen of Orkney, Belli-
cent,
Hath ever like a loyal sister cleaved
To Arthur, — but a son she had not borne.
And Uther cast upon her eyes of love :
But she, a stainless wife to Gorlois,
So loathed the bright dishonour of his
love,
That Gorlois and King Uther went to war :
And overthrown was Gorlois and slain.
Then Uther in his wrath and heat be-
sieged
Ygerne within Tintagil, where her men.
Seeing the mighty swarm about their
walls,
Left her and fled, and Uther enter'd in.
And there was none to call to but him-
self.
So, compass'd by the power of the King,
Enforced she was to wed him in her tears.
And with a shameful swiftness: after-
ward,
Not many moons. King Uther died him-
self,
Moaning and wailing for an hdr to rule
After him, lest the realm should go to
wrack.
And that same night, the night of the
new year,
By reason of the bitterness and grief
That vext his mother, all before his time
Was Arthur born, and all as soon as born
Deliver'd at a secret postern-gate
To Merhn, to be holden far apart
Until his hour should come; because the
lords
Of that fierce day were as the lords of this,
Wild beasts, and surely would have torn
the child
Piecemeal among them, hiad they known;
for each
But sought to rule for his own self and
hand,
And many hated Uther for the sake
Of Gorlois. Wherefore MerUn took the
child.
And gave him to Sir Anton, an old knight
And ancient friend of Uther; and his wife
Nursed the young prince, and rear'd him
with her own;
And no man- knew. And ever since the
lords
Have foughten like wild beasts among
themselves,
So that the realm has gone to wrack : but
now.
This year, when Merlin (for his hour had
come)
Brought Arthur forth, and set him in the
hall.
Proclaiming, " Here is Uther's heir, your
king,"
A hundred voices cried, " Away with him !
No king of ours ! a son of Gorlois he,
Or else the child of Anton, and no king,
Or else baseborn." Yet Merlin thro' his
craft.
And while the people, clamour'd for a
king.
Had Arthur crown'd; but after, the great
lords
Banded, and so brake out in open war.*
Then while the King debated with him-
self
If Arthur were the child of shamefulness,
Or born the son of Gorlois, after death,
THE COMING OF ARTHUR.
307
Or Uther's son, and born before his time,
Or whether there were truth in anything
Said by these three, there came to Came-
liard,
With Gawain and young Modred, her two
sons.
Lot's wife, the Queen of Orkney, Belli-
cent;
Whom as he could, not as he would, the
King
Made feast for, saying, as they sat at meat,
*A doubtful throne is ice on summer
seas.
Ye come from Arthur's court. Victor his
men
Report him ! Yea, but ye — think ye this
king —
So many those that hate him, and so
strong.
So few his knights, however brave they
be —
Hath body enow to hold his foemen
down?'
*0 King,' she cried, 'and I will tell
thee: few.
Few, but all brave, all of one mind with •
him;
For I was near him when the savage yells
Of Uther's peerage died, and Arthur sat
Crown'd on the dais, and his warriors
cried,
" Be thou the king, and we will work thy
will
Who love thee." Then the King in low
deep tones,
And simple words of great authority,
Bound them by so strait vows to his own
self.
That when they rose, knighted from
kneeling, some
Were pale as at the passing of a ghost.
Some flush'd, and others dazed, as one
who wakes
Half-blinded at the coming of a light.
* But when he spake and cheer'd his
Table Round
With large, divine, and comfortable words.
Beyond my tongue to tell thee — I beheld
From eye to eye thro' all their Order flash
A momentary likeness of the King :
And ere it left their faces, thro' the cross
And those around it and the Crucified,
Down from the casement over Arthur,
smote
Flame-colour, vert and azure, in three
rays,
One falling upon each of three fair queens,
Who stood in silence near his throne, the
friends
Of Arthur, gazing on him, tall, with bright
Sweet faces, who will help him at his
need.
* And there I saw mage Merlin, whose
vast wit
And hundred winters are but as the hands
Of loyal vassals toiling for their liege.
* And near him stood the Lady of the
Lake,
Who knows a subtler magic than his
own —
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonder-
ful.
She gave the King his huge cross-hilted
sword-.
Whereby to drive the heathen out : a mist
Of incense curl'd about her, and her face
Wellnigh was hidden in the minster
gloom ;
But there was heard among the holy
hymns
A voice as of the waters, for she dwells
Down in a deep ; calm, whatsoever storms
May shake the world, and when the
surface rolls,
Hath power to walk the waters like our
Lord.
'There likewise I beheld Excalibur
Before him at his crowning borne, the
sword
That rose from out the bosom of the lake,
And Arthur row'd across and took it —
rich
With jewels, elfin Urim, on the hilt.
Bewildering heart and eye — the blade so
bright
That men are blinded by it — on one side.
Graven in the oldest tongue of all this
world,
" Take me," but turn the blade and ye
shall see.
3o8
THE COMING OF ARTHUR.
And written in the speech ye speak your-
self,
"Cast me away ! " And sad was Arthur's
face
Taking it, but old Merlin counsell'd him,
" Take thou and strike ! the time to cast
away
Is yet far-off." So this great brand the
king
Took, and by this will beat his foemen
down.'
Thereat Leodogran rejoiced, but
thought
To sift his doubtings to the last, and ask'd,
Fixing full eyes of question on her face,
'The swallow and the swift are near akin,
But thou art closer to this noble prince,
Being his own dear sister;' and she said,
* Daughter of Gorlois and Ygerne am I; '
'And therefore Arthur's sister?' ask'd
the King.
She answer'd, 'These be secret things,'
and sign'd
To those two sons to pass, and let them be.
And Gawain went, and breaking into song
Sprang out, and foUow'd by his flying hair
Ran like a colt, and leapt at all he saw :
But Modred laid his ear beside the doors.
And there half-heard; the same that
afterward
Struck for the throne, and striking found
his doom.
And then the Queen made answer,
* What know I ?
For dark my mother was in eyes and hair,
And dark in hair and eyes am I ; and dark
Was Gorlois, yea and dark was Uther too,
Wellnigh to blackness; but this King is
fair
Beyond the race of Britons and of men.
Moreover, always in my mind I hear
A cry from out the dawning of my life,
A mother weeping, and I hear her say,
" O that ye had some brother, pretty one.
To guard thee on the rough ways of the
world." '
' Ay,' said the King, * and hear ye such
a cry?
But when did Arthur chance upon thee
first?'
« O King ! ' she cried, ' and I will tell
thee true :
He found me first when yet a little maid :
Beaten had I been for a little fault
Whereof I was not guilty; and out I ran
And flung myself down on a bank of
heath,
And hated this fair world and all therein,
And wept, and wish'd that I were dead;
and he —
I know not whether of himself he came,
Or brought by Merlin, who, they say,
can walk
Unseen at pleasure — he was at my side.
And spake sweet words, and comforted
my heart.
And dried my tears, being a child with me.
And many a time he came, and evermore
As I grew greater grew with me; and sad
At times he seem'd, and sad with him
was I,
Stern too at times, and then I loved him
not.
But sweet again, and then I loved him
well.
And now of late I see him less and less.
But those first days had golden hours for
me.
For then I surely thought he would be
king.
' But let me tell thee now another tale :
For Bleys, our Merlin's master, as they say,
Died but of late, and sent his cry to me,
To hear him speak before he left his life.
Shrunk like a fairy changeling lay the
mage;
And when I enter'd told me that himself
And Merlin ever served about the King,
Uther, before he died; and on the night
When Uther in Tintagil past away
Moaning and wailing for an heir, the two
Left the still King, and passing forth to
breathe.
Then from the castle gateway by the
chasm
Descending thro' the dismal night — a
night
In which the bounds of heaven and earth
were lost —
Beheld, so high upon the dreary deeps
It seem'd in heaven, a ship, the shape
thereof
THE COMING OF ARTHUR,
309
A dragon wing'd, and all from stem to
stern
Bright with a shining people on the decks,
And gone as soon as seen. And then
the two
Dropt to the cove, and watch'd the great
sea fall,
Wave after wave, each mightier than the
last,
Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the
deep
And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged
Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame :
And down the wave and in the flame was
borne
A naked babe, and rode to Merlin's feet.
Who stoopt and caught the babe, and
cried " The King !
Here is an heir for Uther ! " And the
fringe
Of that great breaker, sweeping up the
strand,
Lash'd at the wizard as he spake the word.
And all at once all round him rose in fire,
So that the child and he were clothed in
fire.
And presently thereafter follow'd calm.
Free sky and stars: "And this same
child," he said,
"Is he who reigns; nor could I part in
peace
Till thisSvere told." . And saying this the
seer
Went thro' the strait and dreadful pass of
death,
Nor ever to be question'd any more
Save on the further side ; but when I met
Merlin, and ask'd him if these things were
truth —
The shining dragon and the naked child
Descending in the glory of the seas —
He laugh'd as -is his wont, and ansvver'd
me
In riddling triplets of old time, and said :
* " Rain, rain, and sun ! a rainbow in
the sky !
A young man will be wiser by and by ;
An old man's wit may wander ere he die.
Rain, rain, and sun ! a rainbow on the
lea!
And truth is this to me, and that to thee;
And truth or clothed or naked let it be.
Rain, sun, and rain ! and the free
blossom blows :
Sun, rain, and sun ! and where is he who
knows ?
From the great deep to the great deep he
goes."
'So Merlin riddling anger'd me; but
thou
Fear not to give this King thine only child,"
Guinevere : so great bards of him will
sing
Hereafter; and dark sayings from of old
Ranging and ringing thro' the minds of
men.
And echo'd by old folk beside their fires
For comfort after their wage-work is done,
Speak of the King; and Merlin in our
time
Hath spoken also, not in jest, and sworn
Tho' men may wound him that he will
not die,
But pass, again to come; and then or now
Utterly smite the heathen underfoot,
Till these and all men hail him for their
king.'
She spake and King Leodogran re-
joiced,
But musing * Shall I answer yea or nay? '
Doubted, and drowsed, nodded and slept,
and saw,
Dreaming, a slope of land that ever grew,
Field after field, up to a height, the peak
Haze-hidden, and thereon a phantom
king,
Now looming, and now lost; and on the
slope
The sword rose, the hind fell, the herd
was driven.
Fire glimpsed; and all the land from
roof and rick.
In drifts of smoke before a rolling wind,
Stream'd to the peak, and mingled with
the haze
And made it thicker; while the phantom
king
Sent out at times a voice; and here or
there
Stood one who pointed toward the voice,
the rest
Slew on and burnt, crying, * No king of
ours,
3IO
THE COMING OF ARTHUR.
No son of Uther, and no king of ours; '
Till with a wink his drea"m was changed,
the haze
Descended, and the solid earth became
As nothing, but the King stood out in
heaven,
Crown'd. And Leodogran awoke, and
sent
Ulfius, and Brastias and Bedivere,
Back to the court of Arthur answering
yea.
Then Arthur charged his warrior whom
he loved
And honour'd most, Sir Lancelot, to ride
forth
And bring the Queen; — and watch'd him
from the gates :
And Lancelot past away among the
flowers,
(For then was latter April) and return'd
Among the flowers, in May, with Guine-
vere.
To whom arrived, by Dubric the high
saint,
Chief of the church in Britain, and before
The Stateliest of her altar-shrines, the
King
That morn was married, while in stainless
white.
The fair beginners of a nobler time,
And glorying in their vows and him, his
knights
Stood round him, and rejoicing in his joy.
Far shone the fields of May thro' open
door,
The sacred altar blossom'd white with May,
The Sun of May descended on their King,
They gazed on all earth's beauty in their
Queen,
Roll'd incense, and there past along the
hymns
A voice as of the waters, while the two
Sware at the shrine of Christ a deathless
love :
And Arthur said, * Behold, thy doom is
mine.
Let chance what will, I love thee to the
death ! '
To whom the Queen replied with drooping
eyes,
'King and my lord, I love thee to the
death ! '
And holy Dubric spread his hands and
spake,
' Reign ye, and live and love, and make
the world
Other, and may thy Queen be one with
thee.
And all this Order of thy Table Round
Fulfil the boundless purpose of their
King ! '
So Dubric said; but when they left the
shrine
Great Lords from Rome before the portal
stood,
In scornful stillness gazing -as they past;
Then while they paced a city all on fire
With sun and cloth of gold, the trumpets
blew.
And Arthur's knighthood sang before the
King : —
* Blow trumpet, for the world is white
with May;
Blow trumpet, the long night hath roll'd
away !
Blow thro' the living world — " Let the
King reign."
* Shall Rome or Heathen rule in
Arthur's realm?
Flash brand and lance, fall battleaxe upon
helm,
Fall battleaxe, and flash brand ! Let the
King reign.
* Strike for the King and live ! his
knights have heard
That God hath told the King a secret
word.
Fall battleaxe and flash brand ! Let the
King reign.
* Blow trumpet ! he will lift us from
I the dust.
I Blow trumpet ! live the strength and die
the lust !
Clang battleaxe, and clash brand ! Let
the King reign.
' Strike for the King and die ! and if
thou diest,
The King is King, and ever wills the
highest.
GARETH AND LYNETTE.
31]
Clang battleaxe, and clash brand ! Let
the King reign.
* Blow, for our Sun is mighty in his May !
Blow, for our Sun is mightier day by day !
Clang battleaxe, and clash brand ! Let
the King reign.
' The King will follow Christ, and we
the King
In whom high God hath breathed a secret
thing.
Fall battleaxe, and flash brand ! Let the
King reign.'
So sang the knighthood, moving to their
hall.
There at the banquet those great Lords
from Rome,
The slowly-fading mistress of the world.
Strode in, and claim'd their tribute as of
yore.
But Arthur spake, 'Behold, for these
have sworn
To wage my wars, and worship me their
King;
The old order changeth, yielding place
to new;
And we that fight for our fair father
Christ,
Seeing that ye be grown too weak and
old
To drive the heathen from your Roman
wall.
No tribute will we pay : ' so those great
lords
Drew back in wrath, and Arthur strove
with Rome.
And Arthur and his knighthood for a
space
Were all one will, and thro' that strength
the King
Drew in the petty princedoms under him.
Fought, and in twelve great battles over-
came
The heathen hordes, and made a realm
and reign'd.
THE ROUND TABLE.
GARETH AND LYNETTE.
THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT.
GERAINT AND ENID.
BALIN AND BALAN.
MERLIN AND VIVIEN.
GARETH AND LYNETTE.
The last tall son of Lot and Bellicent,
And tallest, Gareth, in a showerful spring
Stared at the spate. A slender-shafted
Pine
Lost footing, fell, and so was whirl'd
away.
* How he went down,' said Gareth, * as a
false knight
Or evil king before my lance if lance
Were mine to use — O senseless cataract.
Bearing all down in thy precipitancy —
And yet thou art but swollen with cold
snows
And mine is living blood : thou dost His
will,
The Maker's, and not knowest, and I
that know,
Have strength and wit, in my good
mother's hall
LANCELOT AND ELAINE.
THE HOLY GRAIL.
PELLEAS AND ETTARRE.
THE LAST TOURNAMENT.
GUINEVERE.
Linger with vacillating obedience,
Prison'd, and kept and coax'd and
whistled to —
Since the good mother holds me still a
child !
Good mother is bad mother unto me !
A worse were better; yet no worse
would I.
Heaven yield her for it, but in me put
force
To weary her ears with one continuous
prayer.
Until she let me fly discaged to sweep
In ever-highering eagle-circles up
Ta the great Sun of Glory, and thence
swoop
Down upon all things base, and dash
them dead,
A knight of Arthur, working out his will.
To cleanse the world. Why, Gawain,
when he came
312
GARETH AND LYNETTE.
"With Modred hither in the summer-
time,
Ask'd me to tilt with him, the proven
knight,
Modred for want of worthier was the
judge.
Then I so shook him in the saddle, he
said,
"Thou hast half prevail'd against me,"
said so — he —
Tho' Modred biting his thin lips was
mute,
For he is alway sullen : what care I? '
And Gareth went, and hovering round
her chair
Ask'd, * Mother, tho' ye count me still
the child,
Sweet mother, do ye love the child?'
She laugh'd,
'Thou art but a wild-goose to question
it.'
'Then, mother, and ye love the child,'
he said,
'Being a goose and rather tame than
wild.
Hear the child's story.' ' Yea, my well-
beloved,
An 'twere but of the goose and golden
eggs.'
And Gareth answer'd her with kind-
ling eyes,
*Nay, nay, good mother, but this egg of
mine
Was finer gold than any goose can lay;
For this an Eagle, a royal Eagle, laid
Almost beyond eye-reach, on" such a
palm
As glitters gilded in thy Book of Hours.
And there was ever haunting round the
palm
A lusty youth, but poor, who often saw
The splendour sparkling from aloft, and
thought
" An I could climb and lay my hand upon
it,
Then were I wealthier than a leash of
kings."
But ever when he reach'd a hand to
• climb,
One that had loved him from his child-
hood, caught
And stay'd him, " Climb not lest thou
break thy neck,
I charge thee by my love," and so the
boy.
Sweet mother, neither clomb, nor brake
his neck.
And brake his very heart in pining for it,
And past away.'
To whom the mother said,
'True love, sweet son, had risk'd himself
and climb'd.
And handed down the golden treasure to
him.'
And Gareth answer'd her with kindling
eyes,
'Gold? said I gold? — ay then, why he,
or she.
Or whosoe'er it was, or half the world
Had ventured — had the thing I spake of
been
Mere gold — but this was all of that true
steel,
"Whereof they forged the brand Excalibur,
And lightnings play'd about it in the
storm.
And all the little fowl were flurried at it.
And there were cries and clashings in the
nest,
That sent him from his senses : let me go.'
Then Bellicent bemoan'd herself and
said,
'Hast thou no pity upon my loneliness?
Lo, where thy father Lot beside the
hearth
Lies like a log, and all but smoulder'd
out!
For ever since when traitor to the King
He fought against him in the Barons' war,
And Arthur gave him back his territory.
His age hath slowly droopt, and now lies
there
A yet-warm corpse, and yet unburiable.
No more; nor sees, nor hears, nor
speaks, nor knows.
And both thy brethren are in Arthur's
hall,
Albeit neither loved with that full love
I feel for thee, nor worthy such a love :
Stay therefore thou; red berries charm
the bird,
GARETH AND LYNETTE.
313
And thee, mine innocent, the jousts, the
wars.
Who never knewest finger-ache, nor pang
Of wrench'd or broken limb — an often
chance
In those brain-stunning shocks, and
tourney-falls.
Frights to my heart; but stay: follow
the deer
By these tall firs and our fast-falling
burns;
So make thy manhood mightier day by
day;
Sweet is the chase : and I will seek thee
out
Some comfortable bride and fair, to grace
Thy climbing life, and cherish my prone
year.
Till falling into Lot's forgetfulness
I know not thee, myself, nor anything.
Stay, my best son ! ye are yet more boy
than man.'
Then Gareth, ' An ye hold me yet for
child.
Hear yet once more the story of the
child.
For, mother, there was once a King, like
ours.
The prince his heir, when tall and mar-
riageable,
Ask'd for a bride; and thereupon the
King
Set two before him. One was fair,
strong, arm'd —
But to be won by force — and many men
Desired her; one, good lack, no man
desired.
And these were the conditions of the
King :
That save he won the first by force, he
needs
Must wed that other, whom no man
desired,
A red-faced bride who knew herself so
vile.
That evermore she long'd to hide her-
self.
Nor fronted man or woman, eye to eye —
Yea — some she cleaved to, but they
died of her.
And one — they call'd her Fame; and
one, — O mother,
How can ye keep me tether'd to you —
Shame.
Man am I grown, a man's work must I
do.
Follow the deer? follow the Christ, the
King, . j
Live pure, speak true, right wrong, fol-j
low the King — I
Else, wherefore born? '
To whom the mother said,
* Sweet son, for there be many who deem
him not.
Or will not deem him, wholly proven
King —
Albeit in mine own heart I knew him
King,
When I was frequent with him in my
youth.
And heard him Kingly speak, and
doubted him
No more than he, himself; but felt him
mine.
Of closest kin to me : yet — wilt thou
leave
Thine easeful biding here, and risk thine
all,
Life, limbs, for one that is not proven
King?
Stay, till the cloud that settles round
his birth
Hath lifted but a little. Stay, sweet son.'
And Gareth answer'd quickly, ' Not
an hour.
So that ve yield me — I will walk thro'
fire,
Mother, to gain it — your full leave to go.
Not proven, who swept the dust of
- ruin'd Rome
From off the threshold of the realm,
and crush'd
The Idolaters, and made the people free?
Who should be King save him who
makes us free?'
So when the Queen, who long had
sought in vain
To break him from the intent to which
he grew.
Found her son's will unwaveringly one,
She answer'd craftily, * Will ye walk
thro' fire?
314
GARETH AND LYNETTE.
Who walks thro' fire will hardly heed
the smoke.
Ay, go then, an ye must : only one proof,
Before thou ask the King to make thee
knight,
Of thine obedience and thy love to me,
Thy mother, — I demand.'
And Gareth cried,
'A hard one, or a hundred, so I go.
Nay — quick ! the proof to prove me
to the quick ! '
But slowly spake the mother looking
at him,
* Prince, thou shalt go disguised to
Arthur's hall.
And hire thyself to serve for meats and
drinks
Among the scullions and the kitchen-
knaves,
And those that hand the dish across the
bar.
Nor shalt thou tell thy name to any one.
And thou shalt serve a twelvemonth and
a day.'
For so the Queen believed that when
her son
Beheld his only way to glory lead
Low down thro' villain kitchen-vassalage.
Her own true Gareth was too princely-
proud
To pass thereby; so should he rest with
her.
Closed in her castle from the sound of
arms.
Silent awhile was Gareth, then replied,
* The thrall in person may be free in soul.
And I shall see the jousts. Thy son am I,
And since thou art my mother, must obey.
I therefore yield me freely to thy will;
For hence will I, disguised, and hire
myself
To serve with scullions and with kitchen-
knaves;
Nor tell my name to any — no, not the
King.'
Gareth awhile linger'd. The mother's
eye
Full of the wistful fear that he would go,
And turning toward him wheresoe'er he
turn'd,
Perplext his outward purpose, till an hour,
When waken'd by the wind which with
full voice
Swept bellowing thro' the darkness on
to dawn.
He rose, and out of slumber calling two
That still had tended on him from his
birth,
Before the wakeful mother heard him,
went.
The three were clad like tillers of the
soil.
Southward they set their faces. The
birds made
Melody on branch, and melody in mid
air.
The damp hill-slopes were quicken'd
into green.
And the live green had kindled into
flowers,
For it was past the time of Easterday.
So, when their feet were planted on
the plain
That broaden'd toward the base of Game-
lot,
Far off they saw the silver-misty morn
Rolling her smoke about the Royal
mount.
That rose between the forest and the
field.
At times the summit of the high city
flash'd;
At times the spires and turrets half-way
down
Prick'd thro' the mist; at times the
great gate shone
Only, that open'd on the field below :
Anon, the whole fair city had disappear'd.
Then those who went with Gareth
were amazed,
One crying, * Let us go no further, lord.
Here is a city of Enchanters, built
By fairy Kings.' The second echo'd
him,
'Lord, we have heard from our wise
« man at home
To Northward, that this King is not the
King,
GARETH AND LYNETTE.
315
But only changeling out of Fairyland,
Who drave the heathen hence by sorcery
And Merlin's glamour.' Then the first
again,
' Lord, there is no such city anywhere.
But all a vision.'
Gareth answer'd them
With laughter, swearing he had glamour
enow
In his own blood, his princedom, youth
and hopes,
To plunge old Merlin in the Arabian
sea;
So push'd them all unwilling toward the
gate.
And there was no gate like it under
heaven.
For barefoot on the keystone, which was
lined
And rippled like an ever-fleeting wave,
The Lady of the Lake stood : all her
dress
Wept from her sides as water flowing
away ;
But like the cross her great and goodly
arms
Stretch'd under all the cornice and up-
held :
And drops of water fell from either
hand;
And down from one a sword was hung,
from one
A censer, either worn with wind and
storm;
And o'er her breast floated the sacred
fish;
And in the space to left of her, and right.
Were Arthur's wars in weird devices
done.
New things and old co-twisted, as if
Time
Were nothing, so inveterately, that men
Were giddy gazing there; and over all
High on the top were those three
Queens, the friends
Of Arthur, who should help him at his
need.
Then those with Gareth for so long a
space
Stared at the figures, that at last it
seem'd
The dragon-boughts and elvish emblem-
ings
Began to move, seethe, twine and curl :
they call'd
To Gareth, * Lord, the gateway is alive.'
And Gareth likewise on them fixt his
eyes
So long, that ev'n to him they seem'd to
move.
Out of the city a blast of music peal'd.
Back from the gate started the three, to
whom
From out thereunder came an ancient
man,
Long-bearded, saying, ' Who be ye, my
sons?'
Then Gareth, ' We be tillers of the soil.
Who leaving share in furrow come to see
The glories of our King : but these, my
men,
(Your city moved so weirdly in the mist)
Doubt if the King be King at all, or
come
From Fairyland; and whether this be
built
By magic, and by fairy Kings and
Queens;
Or whether there be any city at all,
Or all a vision : and this music now
Hath scared them both, but tell thou
these the truth.'
Then that old Seer made answer play-
ing on him
And saying, * Son, I have seen the good
ship sail
Keel upward, and mast downward, in
the heavens,
And solid turrets topsy-turvy in air :
And here is truth; but an it please thee
not.
Take thou the truth as thou hast told it
me.
For truly as thou sayest, a Fairy King
And Fairy Queens have built the city,
son;
They came from out a sacred mountain-
cleft
Toward the sunrise, each with harp in
hand,
And built it to the music of their harps.
316
GARETH AND LYNETTE.
And, as thou sayest, it is enchanted,
son,
For there is nothing in it as it seems
Saving the King; tho' some there be
that hold
The King a shadow, and the city real :
Yet take thou heed of him, for, so thou
pass
Beneath this archway, then wilt thou
become
A thrall to his enchantments, for the
King
Will bind thee by such vows, as is a
shame
A man should not be bound by, yet the
which
No man can keep; but, so thou dread
to swear,
Pass not beneath this gateway, but
abide
Without, among the cattle of the field.
For an ye heard a music, like enow
They are building still, seeing the city is
built
To music, therefore never built at all,
And therefore built for ever.'
Gareth spake
Anger'd, * Old Master, reverence thine
own beard
That looks as white as utter truth,- and
seems
Wellnigh as long as thou art statured
tall!
Why mockest thou the stranger that hath
been
To thee fair-spoken?'
But the Seer replied,
* Know ye not then the Riddling of the
Bards?
" Confusion, and illusion, and relation,
Elusion, and occasion, and evasion"?
I mock thee not but as thou mockest
me.
And all that see thee, for thou art not
who
Thou seemest, but I know thee who
thou art.
And now thou goest up to mock the
King,
Who cannot brook the shadow of any
lie.'
Unmockingly the mocker ending here
Turn'd to the right, and past along the
plain;
Whom Gareth looking after said, * My
men,
Our one white lie sits like a little ghost
Here on the threshold of our enterprise.
Let love be blamed for it, not she, nor I :
Well, we will make amends.'
With all good cheer
He spake and laugh'd, then enter'd with
his twain
Camelot, a city of shadowy palaces
And stately, rich in emblem and the
work
Of ancient kings who did their days in
stone;
Which Merlin's hand, the Mage at
Arthur's court,
Knowing all arts, had touch'd, and every-
where
At Arthur's ordinance, tipt with lessening
peak
And pinnacle, and had made it spire to
heaven.
And ever and anon a knight would pass
Outward, or inward to the hall : his arms
Clash'd; and the sound was good to
Gareth's ear.
And out of bower and casement shyly
glanced
Eyes of pure women, wholesome stars of
love;
And all about a healthful people stept
As in the presence of a gracious king.
Then into hall Gareth ascending heard
A voice, the voice of Arthur, and beheld
Far over heads in that long-vaulted hall
The splendour of the presence of the
King
Throned, and delivering doom — and
look'd no more —
But felt his young heart hammering in
his ears,
And thought, ' For this half-shadow of a
lie
The truthful King will doom me when I
speak.'
Yet pressing on, tho' all in fear to find
Sir Gawain or Sir Mod red, saw nor one
Nor other, but in all the listening eyes
GARETH AND LYNETTE.
3^7
//
Of those tall knights, that ranged about
the throne,
Clear honour shining like the dewy star
Of dawn, and. faith in their great King,
with pure
Affection, and the light of victory,
And glory gain'd, and evermore to gain.
Then came a widow crying to the King,
* A boon, Sir King ! Thy father, Uther,
reft
From my dead lord a field with violence :
For howsoe'er at first he proffer'd gold,
Yet, for the field was pleasant in our eyes,
We yielded not; and then he reft us of it
Perforce, and left us neither gold nor
field.'
Said Arthur, * Whether would ye ? gold
or field?'
To whom the woman weeping, * Nay, my
lord.
The field was pleasant in my husband's
eye.'
And Arthur, * Have thy pleasant field
again,
And thrice the gold for Uther's use
thereof.
According to the years. No boon is here,
But justice, so thy say be proven true.
Accursed, who from the wrongs his father
did
Would shape himself a right ! * /• ' '
And while she past.
Came yet another widow crying to him,
* A boon. Sir King ! Thine enemy. King,
am I.
With thine own hand thou slewest my
dear lord,
A knight of Uther in the Barons' war.
When Lot and many another rose and
fought
Against thee, saying thou wert basely
born.
I held with these, and loathe to ask thee
aught.
Yet lo ! my husband's brother had my
son
Thrall'd in his castle, and hath starved
him dead;
And standeth seized of that inheritance
Which thou that slewest the sire hast left
the son.
So tho' I scarce can ask it thee for hate,
Grant me some knight to do the battle
for me,
Kill the foul thief, and wreak me for my
son.'
Then strode a good knight forward,
crying to him,
' A boon, Sir King ! I am her kinsman, I.
Give me to right her wrong, and slay the
man.'
Then came Sir Kay, the seneschal, and
cried,
* A boon. Sir King ! ev'n that thou grant
her none,
This railer, that hath mock'd thee in full
hall —
None; or the wholesome boon of gyve
and gag.'
But Arthur, * We sit King, to help the
wrong'd
Thro' all our realm. The woman loves
her lord.
Peace to thee, woman, with thy loves and
hates !
The kings of old had doom'd thee to the
flames,
Aurelius Emrys would have scourged thee
dead.
And Uther slit thy tongue : but get thee
hence —
Lest that rough humour of the kings of
old
Return upon me ! Thou that art her
kin.
Go likewise; lay him low and slay him
not,
But bring him here, that I may judge the
right.
According to the justice of the King :
Then, be he guilty, by that deathless King
Who lived and died for men, the man
shall die.'
Then came in hall the messenger of
Mark,
A name of evil savour in the land.
The Cornish king. In either hand he
bore
3iB
GARETH AND LYNETTE,
What dazzled all, and shone far-ofif as
shines
A field of charlock in the sudden sun
Between two showers, a cloth of palest
gold,
Which down he laid before the throne,
and knelt.
Delivering, that his lord, the vassal king.
Was ev'n upon his way to Camelot;
For having heard that Arthur of his grace
Had made his goodly cousin, Tristram,
knight.
And, for himself was of the greater state.
Being a king, he trusted his liege-lord
W^ould yield him this large honour all the
more;
So pray'd him well to accept this cloth of
gold,
In token of true heart and fealty.
Then Arthur cried to rend the cloth, to
rend
In pieces, and so cast it on the hearth.
An oak-tree smoulder'd there. 'The
goodly knight !
What! shall the shield of Mark stand
among these?'
For, midway down the side of that long
hall
A stately pile, — whereof along the front.
Some blazon'd, some but carven, and
some blank.
There ran a treble range of stony
shields, —
Rose, and high-arching overbrow'd the
hearth.
And under every shield a knight was
named :
For this was Arthur's custom in his hall;
When some good knight had done one
noble deed.
His arms were carven only; but if twain
His arms were blazon'd also ; but if none.
The shield was blank and bare without a
sign
Saving the name beneath; and Gareth
saw
The shield of Gawain blazon'd rich and
bright.
And Modred's blank as death; and
Arthur cried
To rend the cloth and cast it on the
hearth.
* More like are we to reave him of his
crown
Than make him knight because men call
him king.
The kings we found, ye know we stay'd
their hands
From war among themselves, but left
them kings;
Of whom were any bounteous, merciful.
Truth-speaking, brave, good livers, them
we enroll'd
Among us, and they sit within our hall.
But Mark hath tarnish'd the great name
of king.
As Mark would sully the low state of
churl :
And, seeing he hath sent us cloth of
gold.
Return, and meet, rnd hold him from
our eyes.
Lest we should lap him up in cloth of
lead,
Silenced for ever — craven — a man of
plots,
Crafts, poisonous counsels, wayside am-
bushings —
No fault of thine : let Kay the seneschal
Look to thy wants, and send thee satis-
fied-
Accursed, who strikes nor lets the hand
be seen ! '
And many another suppliant crying
came
With noise of ravage wrought by beast
and man,
And evermore a knight would ride away.
Last, Gareth leaning both hands heavily
Down on the shoulders of the twain, his
men,
Approach'd between them toward the
King, and ask'd,
'A boon, Sir King (his voice was all
ashamed).
For see ye not how weak and hungerworn
I seem — leaning on these? grant me to
serve
For meat and drink among thy kitchen-
knaves
A twelvemonth and a day, nor seek my
name.
Hereafter I will fight.'
GARETH AND LYNETTE.
319
To him the King,
* A goodly youth and worth a goodlier
boon !
But so thou wilt no goodlier, then must
Kay,
The master of the meats and drinks, be
thine.'
He rose and past; then Kay, a man
of mien
Wan-sallow as the plant that feels itself
Root-bitten by white lichen,
' Lo ye now !
This fellow hath broken from some Abbey,
where,
God wot, he had not beef and brevvis
enow,
However that might chance ! but an he
work,
Like any pigeon will I cram his crop.
And sleeker shall he shine than any hog.'
Then Lancelot standing near, ' Sir
Seneschal,
Sleuth-hound thou knowest, and gray,
and all the hounds;
A horse thou knowest, a man thou dost
not know :
Broad brows and fair, a fluent hair and
fine.
High nose, a nostril large and fine, and
hands
Large, fair and fine ! — Some young lad's
mystery —
But, or from sheepcot or king's hall, the
boy
Is noble-natured. Treat him with all
grace.
Lest he should come to shame thy judging
of him.'
Then Kay, ' What murmurest thou of
mystery ?
Think ye this fellow will poison the
King's dish?
Nay, for he spake too fool-like : mys-
tery !
Tut, an the lad were noble, he had ask'd
For horse and armour: fair and fine,
forsooth !
Sir Fine-face, Sir Fair-hands? but see
thou to it
That thine own fineness, Lancelot, some
fine day
Undo thee not — and leave my man to me,'
So Gareth all for glory underwent
The sooty yoke of kitchen- vassalage ;
Ate with young lads his portion by the
door,
And couch'd at night with grimy kitchen-
knaves.
And Lancelot ever spake him pleasantly,
But Kay the seneschal, who loved him not,
Would hustle and harry him, and labour
him
Beyond his comrade of the hearth, and set
To turn the broach, draw water, or hew
wood,
Or grosser tasks; and Gareth bow'd
himself
With all obedience to the King, and
wrought
All kind of service with a noble ease
That graced the lowliest act in doing it.
And when the thralls had talk among
themselves.
And one would praise the love that linkt
the King
And Lancelot — how the King had saved
his life
In battle twice, and Lancelot once the
King's —
For Lancelot was the first in Tournament, i
But Arthur mightiest on the battle-field — \
Gareth was glad. Or if some other told,
How once the wandering forester at dawn.
Far over the blue tarns and hazy seas.
On Caer-Eryri's highest found the King,
A naked babe, of whom the Prophet
spake, .
* He passes to the Isle Avilion, /
He passes and is heal'd and cannot die ' — '
Gareth was glad. But if their talk were
foul.
Then would he whistle rapid as any lark,
Or carol some old roundelay, and so loud
That first they mock'd, but, after, rever-
enced him.
Or Gareth telling some prodigious tale
Of knights, who sliced a red life-bubbling
way
Thro' twenty folds of twisted dragon, held
All in agap-mouth'd circle his good mates
Lying or sitting round him, idle handS;
320
GARETH AND LYNETTE.
Chann'd; till Sir Kay, the seneschal,
would come
Blustering upon them, like a sudden
wind
Among dead leaves, and drive them all
apart.
Or when the thralls had sport among
themselves,
So there were any trial of mastery,
He, by two yards in casting bar or stone
Was counted best; and if there chanced
a joust,
So that Sir Kay nodded him leave to go.
Would hurry thither, and when he saw
the knights
Clash like the coming and retiring wave.
And the spear spring, and good horse
reel, the boy
Was half beyond himself for ecstasy.
So for a month he wrought among the
thralls;
But in the weeks that follow'd, the good
Queen,
Repentant of the word she made him
swear,
And saddening in her childless castle,
sent.
Between the in-crescent and de-crescent
moon,
Arms for her son, and loosed him from
his vow.
This, Gareth hearing from a squire of
Lot
With whom he used to play at tourney
once.
When both were children, and in lonely
haunts
Would scratch a ragged oval on the sand,
And each at either dash from either
end —
Shame never made girl redder than
Gareth joy.
He laugh'd; he sprang. 'Out of the
smoke, at once
I leap from Satan's foot to Peter's knee —
These news be mine, none other's — nay,
the King's —
Descend into the city : ' whereon he
sought
The King alone, and found, and told him
all.
* I have stagger'd thy strong Gawain in
a tilt
For pastime; yea, he said it : joust can I.
Make me thy knight — in secret! let my
name
Be hidd'n, and give me the first quest, I
spring
Like flame from ashes.'
Here the King's calm eye
Fell on, and check'd, and made him flush,
and bow
Lowly, to kiss his hand, who answer'd
him,
' Son, the good mother let me know thee
here.
And sent her wish Ihat I would yield thee
thine.
Make thee my knight? my knights ar$
sworn to vows
Of utter hardihood, utter gentleness.
And, loving, utter faithfulness in love,
And uttermost obedience to the King.'
Then Gareth, lightly springing from
his knees,
* My King, for hardihood I can promise
thee.
For uttermost obedience make demand
Of whom ye gave me to, the Seneschal,
No mellow master of the meats and
drinks !
And as for love, God wot, I love not yet,
But love I shall, God willing.'
And the King —
'Make thee my knight in secret? yea,
but he,
Our noblest brother, and our truest man,
And one with me in all, he needs must
know.'
' Let Lancelot know, my King, let
Lancelot know.
Thy noblest and thy truest ! '
And the King —
* But wherefore would ye men should
wonder at you?
Nay, rather for the sake of me, their King^
And the deed's sake my knighthood do
the deed,
Than to be noised of.'
GARETH AND LYNETTE,
3-21
Merrily Gareth ask'd,
' Have I not earn'd my cake in baking
of it?
Let be my name until I make my name !
My deeds will speak : it is but for a day.'
So with a kindly hand on Gareth's arm
Smiled the great King, and half-unwill-
ingly
Loving his lusty youthhood yielded to
him.
Then, after summoning Lancelot privily,
* I have given him the first quest : he is
not proven.
Look therefore when he calls for this in
hall,
Thou get to horse and follow him far
away.
Cover the lions on thy shield, and see
Far as thou mayest, he be nor ta'en nor
slain.'
Then that same day there past into
the hall
A damsel of high lineage, and a brow
May-blossom, and a cheek of apple-
blossom,
Hawk-eyes; and lightly was her slender
nose
Tip-tilted like the petal of a flower;
She into hall past with her page and
cried,
* O King, for thou hast driven the foe
without.
See to the foe within ! bridge, ford, beset
By bandits, everyone that owns a tower
The Lord for half a league. Why sit ye
there?
Rest would I not, Sir King, an I were
king.
Till ev'n the lonest hold were all as free
From cursed bloodshed, as thine altar-
cloth
From that best blood it is a sin to spill.'
* Comfort thyself,' said Arthur, ' I nor
mine
Rest : so my knighthood keep the vows
they swore.
The wastest moorland of our realm shall
be
Safe, damsel, as the centre of this hall.
What is thy name? thy need?'
Y
* My name? ' she said —
'Lynette my name; noble; my need, a
knight
To combat for my sister, Lyouors,
A lady of high lineage, of great lands.
And comely, yea, and comelier than my-
self.
She lives in Castle Perilous : a river
Runs in three loops about her living
place;
And o'er it are three passings, and three
knights
Defend the passings, brethren, and a
fourth
And of that four the mightiest, holds
her stayed
In her own castle, and so besieges her
To break her will, and make her wed
with him:
And but delays his purport till thou send
To do the battle with him, thy chief man
Sir Lancelot whom he trusts to over-
throw,
Then wed, with glory : but she will not
wed
Save whom she loveth, or a holy life.
Now therefore have I come for Lancelot.'
Then Arthur mindful of Sir Gareth
ask'd,
'Damsel, ye know this Order lives to
crush
All wrongers of the Realm. But say,
these four,
Who be they ? What the fashion of
the men?'
* They be of foolish fashion, O Sir King,
The fashion of that old knight-errantry
Who ride abroad, and do but what they
will;
Courteous or bestial from the moment,
such
As have nor law nor king; and three of
these
Proud in their fantasy call themselves
the Day,
Morning-Star, and Noon-Sun, and Even-
ing-Star,
Being strong fools; and never a whit
more wise
The fourth, who always rideth arm'd in
black,
322
GARETH AMD LYNETTE.
A huge man-beast of boundless sav-
Now two great entries open'd from the
agery.
hall,
He names himself the Night and oftener
At one end one, that gave upon a range
Death, ^
Of level pavement where the King would
And wears a 'helmet mounted with a
pace
skull,
At sunrise, gazing over plain and wood;
And bears a skeleton figured on his
And down from this a lordly stairway
arms,
sloped
To show that who may slay or scape the
Till lost in blowing trees and tops of
three,
towers;
Slain by himself, shall enter endless night.
And out by this main doorway past the
And all these four be fools, but mighty
King.
men.
But one was counter to the hearth, and
And therefore am I come for Lancelot.'
rose
High that the highest-crested helm could
Hereat Sir Gareth call'd from where
ride
he rose.
Therethro' nor graze : and by this entry
A head with kindling eyes above the
fled
throng,
The damsel in her wrath, and on to this
'A boon, Sir King — this quest!' then
Sir Gareth strode, and saw without the
— for he mark'd
door
Kay near him groaning like a wounded
King Arthur's gift, the worth of half a
bull —
town.
'Yea, King, thou knowest thy kitchen
A warhorse of the best, and near it stood
knave am I,
The two that out of north had follow'd
And mighty thro' thy meats and drinks
him:
am I,
This bare a maiden shield, a casque;
And I can topple over a hundred such.
that held
Thy promise, King,' and Arthur glan-
The horse, the spear; whereat Sir Ga-
cing at him.
reth loosed
Brought down a momentary brow.
A cloak that dropt from collar-bone to
' Rough, sudden,
heel,
And pardonable, worthy to be knight —
A cloth of roughest web, and cast it
Go therefore,' and all hearers were
down,
amazed.
And from it like a fuel-smother'd fire.
That lookt half-dead, brake bright, and
But on the damsel's forehead shame,
flash'd as those
pride, wrath
Dull-coated things, that making slide
Slew the May-white : she hfted either
apart
arm.
Their dusk wing-cases, all beneath there
* Fie on thee, King ! I ask'd for thy chief
burns
knight.
A jewell'd harness, ere they pass and fly.
And thou hast given me but a kitchen-
So Gareth ere he parted flash'd in arms.
knave.'
Then as he donn'd the helm, and took
Then ere a man in hall could stay her.
the shield
turn'd.
And mounted horse and graspt a spear,
Fled down the lane of access to the King,
of grain
Took horse, descended the slope street,
Storm-strengthen'd on a windy site, and
and p;ast
tipt
The weird white gate, and paused with-
With trenchant steel, around him slowly
out, beside
prest
The field of tourney, murmuring 'kitchen-
The people, while from out of kitchen
knave.'
came
GARETH AND LYNETTE.
323
The thralls in throng, and seeing who
had work'd
Lustier than any, and whom they could
but love,
Mounted in arms, threw up their caps and
cried,
* God bless the King, and all his fellow-
ship ! '
And on thro' lanes of shouting Gareth
rode
Down the slope street, and past without
the gate.
So Gareth past with joy; but as the cur
Pluckt from the cur he fights with, ere his
cause
Be cool'd by fighting, follows, being
named,
His owner, but remembers all, and growls
Remembering, so Sir Kay beside the door
Mutter'd in scorn of Gareth whom he used
To harry and hustle.
* Bound upon a quest
With horse and arms — the King hath
past his time —
My scullion knave ! Thralls to your work
again, '
For an your fire be low ye kindle mine !
Will there be dawn in West and eve in
East?
Begone ! — my knave ! — belike and like
enow
Some old head-blow not heeded in his
youth
So shook his wits they wander in his
prime —
Crazed! How the villain lifted up his
voice.
Nor shamed to bawl himself a kitchen-
knave.
Tut: he was tame and meek enow with
me,
Tillpeacock'd up with Lancelot's noticing.
Well — I will after my loud knave, and
learn
Whether he know me for his master yet.
Out of the smoke he came, and so my
lance
Hold, by God's grace, he shall into the
mire —
Thence, if the King awaken from his craze,
Into the smoke asain.'
But Lancelot said,
' Kay, wherefore wilt thou go against the
King,
For that did npver he whereon ye rail.
But ever meekly served the King in thee?
Abide: take counsel; for this lad is great
And lusty, and knowing both of lance and
sword.'
*Tut, tell not me,' said Kay, *ye are
overfine
To mar stout knaves with foolish courte-
sies : '
Then mounted, on thro' silent faces rode
Down the slope city, and out beyond the
gate.
But by the field of tourney lingering yet
Mutter'd the damsel, • Wherefore did the
King
Scorn me? for, were Sir Lancelot lackt,
at least
He might have yielded to me one of those
Who tilt for lady's love and glory here.
Rather than — O sweet heaven ! O fie
upon him —
His kitchen-knave.'
To whom Sir Gareth drew
(And there were none but few goodlier
than he)
Shining in arms, * Damsel, the quest is
mine.
Lead, and I follow.' She thereat, as one
That smells a foul-flesh'd agaric in the
holt.
And deems it carrion of some woodland
thing.
Or shrew, or weasel, nipt her slender
nose
With petulant thumb and finger, shrilling,
' Hence !
Avoid, thou smellest all of kitchen-grease.
And look who comes behind,' for there
was Kay.
* Knowest thou not me? thy master? I
am Kay.
We lack thee by the hearth.'
And Gareth to him,
' Master no more ! too well I know thee,
ay —
The most ungentle knight in Arthur's
hall.'
m
GARETH AND LYNETTE.
Have at thee then,' said Kay : they
shock'd, and Kay
Fell shoulder-slipt, and Gareth cried
again,
• Lead, and I follow,' and fast away she
fled.
But after sod and shingle ceased to fly
Behind her, and the heart of her good horse
Was nigh to burst with violence of the beat.
Perforce she stay'd, and overtaken spoke.
'What doest thou, scullion, in my
fellowship?
Deem'st thou that I accept thee aught the
more
Or love thee better, that by some device
Full cowardly, or by mere unhappiness.
Thou hast overthrown and slain thy
master — thou ! —
Dish-washer and broach-turner, loon ! —
to me
Thou smellest all of kitchen as before.'
'Damsel,' Sir Gareth answer'd gently,
* say
Whate'er ye will, but whatsoe'er ye say,
I leave not till I finish this fair quest,
Or die therefore,'
•Ay, wilt thou finish it?
Sweet lord, how like a noble knight he
talks !
The listening rogue hath caught the man-
ner of it.
But, knave, anon thou shalt be met with,
knave,
And then by such a one that thou for all
The kitchen brewis that was ever supt
Shalt not once dare to look him in the
face.'
• I shall assay,' said Gareth with a smile
That madden'd her, and away she flash'd
again
Down the long avenues of a boundless
wood,
And Gareth following was again beknaved.
* Sir Kitchen-knave, 1 have miss'd the
only way
Where Arthur's men are set along the
wood;
The wood is nigh as full of thieves as
leaves :
If both be slain, I am rid of thee; but
yet,
Sir SculUon, canst thou use that spit of
thine?
Fight, an thou canst; I have miss'd the
only way.'
So till the dusk that follow'd even-
song
Rode on the two, reviler and reviled;
Then after one long slope was mounted,
saw.
Bowl-shaped, thro' tops of many thousand
pines
A gloomy-gladed hollow slowly sink
To westward — in the deeps whereof a
mere,
Round as the red eye of an Eagle-owl,
Under the half-dead sunset glared; and
shouts
Ascended, and there brake a serving
man
Flying from out of the black wood, and
crying,
' They have bound my lord to cast him in
the mere.'
Then Gareth, ' Bound am I to right the
wrong'd.
But straitlier bound am I to bide with
thee.'
And when the damsel spake contempt-
uously,
' Lead, and I follow,' Gareth cried again,
' Follow, I lead ! ' so down among the
pines
He plunged; and there, blackshadow'd
nigh the mere.
And mid-thigh-deep in bulrushes and
reed,
Saw six tall men haling a seventh along,
A stone about his neck to drown him
in it.
Three with good blows he quieted, but
three
Fled thro' the pines; and Gareth loosed
the stone
From off" his neck, then in the mere beside
Tumbled it; oilily bubbled up the mere.
Last, Gareth loosed his bonds and on free
feet
Set him, a stalwart Baron, Arthur's friend.
GARETH AND LYNETTE.
325
' Well that ye came, or else these
caitiff rogues
Had wreak'd themselves on nie; good
cause is theirs
To hate me, for my wont hath ever been
To catch my thief, and then like vermin
here
Drown him, and with a stone about his
neck;
And under this wan water many of them
Lie rotting, but at night let go the stone,
And rise, and flickering in a grimly light
Dance on the mere. Good now, ye have
saved a life
Worth somewhat as the cleanser of this
wood.
And fain would I reward thee worship-
fully.
What guerdon will ye ? '
Gareth sharply spake,
* None ! for the deed's sake have I done
the deed,
In uttermost obedience to the King.
But wilt thou yield this damsel harbour-
age?'
Whereat the Baron saying, *I well
believe
You be of Arthur's Table,' a light laugh
Broke from Lynette, ' Ay, truly of a truth.
And in a sort, being Arthur's kitcheti-
knave ! —
But deem not I accept thee aught the
more.
Scullion, for running sharply with thy
spit
Down on a rout of craven foresters.
A thresher with his flail had scatter'd
them.
Nay — for thou smellest of the kitchen
still.
But an this lord will yield us harbourage,
well.'
So she spake. A league beyond the
wood,
All in a full-fair manor and a rich.
His towers w^here that day a feast had
been
Held in high hall, and many a viand left.
And many a costly cate, received the
three.
And there they placed a peacock in his
pride
Before the damsel, and the Baron set
Gareth beside her, but at once she rose.
* Meseems, that here is much dis-
courtesy,
Setting this knave. Lord Baron, at my
side.
Hear me — this morn I stood in Arthur's
hall,
And pray'd the King would grant me
Lancelot
To fight the brotherhood of Day and
Night —
The last a monster unsubduable
Of any save of him for whom I call'd —
Suddenly bawls this frontless kitchen-
knave,
" The quest is mine ; thy kitchen-knave
am I,
And mighty thro' thy meats and drinks
am I."
Then Arthur all at once gone mad
replies,
" Go therefore," and so gives the quest
to him —
Him — here — a villain fitter to stick
swine
Than ride abroad redressing woman's
wrong.
Or sit beside a noble gentlewoman.'
Then half-ashamed and part-amazed,
the lord
Now look'd at one and now at other, left
The damsel by the peacock in his pride,
And, seating Gareth at another board.
Sat down beside him, ate and then began.
' Friend, whether thou be kitchen-
knave, or not.
Or whether it be the maiden's fantasy,
And whether she be mad, or else the
King,
Or both or neither, or thyself be mad,
I ask not : but thou strikest a strong
stroke.
For strong thou art and goodly there-
withal.
And saver of my life; and therefore now,
For here be mighty men to joust with,
weigh
326
GARETH AND LYNETTE.
Whether thou wilt not with thy damsel
back
To crave again Sir Lancelot of the King.
Thy pardon; I but speak for thine avail,
The saver of my life.'
And Gareth said,
' Full pardon, but I follow up the quest,
Despite of Day and Night and Death
and Hell.'
So when, next morn, the lord whose
life he saved
Had, some brief space, convey'd them on
their way
And left them with God-speed, Sir Gareth
spake,
Lead, and I follow.' Haughtily she
replied,
* I fly no more : I allow thee for an
hour.
Lion and stoat have isled together,
knave.
In time of flood. Nay, furthermore,
methinks
Some ruth is mine for thee. Back wilt
thou, fool?
For hard by here is one will overthrow
And slay thee : then will I to court again,
And shame the King for only yielding
me
My champion from the ashes of his
hearth.'
To whom Sir Gareth answer'd cour-
teously,
* Say thou thy say, and I will do my
deed.
Allow me for mine hour, and thou wilt
find
My fortunes all as fair as hers who lay
Among the ashes and wedded the King's
son.'
Then to the shore of one of those long
loops
Wherethro' the serpent river coil'd, they
came.
Rough-thicketed were the banks and
steep; the stream
Full, narrow; this a bridge of single arc
Took at a leap; and on the further side
Arose a silk pavilion, gay with gold
In streaks and rays, and all Lent-lily in
hue,
Save that the dome was purple, and
above.
Crimson, a slender banneret fluttering.
And therebefore the lawless warrior
paced
Unarm' d. and calling, * Damsel, is this he,
The champion thou hast brought from
Arthur's hall?
For whom we let thee pass.' 'Nay,
nay,' she said,
' Sir Morning-Star. The King in utter
scorn
Of thee and thy much folly hath sent thee
here
His kitchen-knave : and look thou to
thyself:
See that he fall not on thee suddenly,
And slay thee unarm'd : he is not knight
but knave.'
Then at his call, * O daughters of the
Dawn,
And servants of the Morning-Star, ap-
proach,
Arm me,' from out the silken curtain-
folds
Bare-footed and bare-headed three fair
girls
In gilt and rosy raiment came : their feet
In dewy grasses glisten'd; and the hair
All over glanced with dewdrop or with
gem
Like sparkles in the stone Avanturine.
These arm'd him in blue arms, and gave
a shield
Blue also, and thereon the morning star.
And Gareth silent gazed upon the knight,
Who stood a moment, ere his horse was
brought,
Glorying; and in the stream beneath
him, shone
Immingled with Heaven's azure waver-
ingly,
The gay pavilion and the naked feet.
His arms, the rosy raiment, and the star.
Then she that watch'd him, 'Where-
fore stare ye so?
Thou shakest in thy fear: there yet is
time:
GARETH AND LYNETTE.
327
Flee down the valley before he get to
horse.
Who will cry shame? Thou art not
knight but knave.'
Said Gareth, ' Damsel, whether knave
or knight,
Far liefer had I fight a score of times
Then hear thee so missay me and revile.
Fair words were best for him who fights
for thee;
But truly foul are better, for they send
That strength of anger thro' mine arms,
I know
That I shall overthrow him.'
And he that bore
The star, when mounted, cried from o'er
the bridge,
*A kitchen-knave, and sent in scorn of
me !
Such fight not I, but answer scorn with
scorn.
For this were shame to do him further
wrong
Than set him on his feet, and take his
horse
And arms, and so return him to the
King.
Come, therefore, leave thy lady lightly,
knave.
Avoid : for it beseemeth not a knave
To ride with such a lady.'
* Dog, thou liest.
I spring from loftier lineage than thine
own.'
He spake; and all at fiery speed the two
Shock'd on the central bridge, and either
spear
Bent but not brake, and either knight at
once,
Hurl'd as a stone from out of a catapult
Beyond his horse's crupper and the
bridge.
Fell, as if dead; but quickly rose and
drew.
And Gareth lash'd so fiercely with his
brand
He drave his enemy backward down the
bridge,
The damsel crying, * Well-stricken,
kitchen-knave ! '
Till Gareth's shield was cloven; but one
stroke
Laid him that clove it grovelling on the
ground.
Then cried the fall'n, 'Take not my
life: I yield.'
And Gareth, ' So this damsel ask it of me
Good — I accord it easily as a grace.'
She reddening, * Insolent scullion : I of
thee?
I bound to thee for any favour ask'd ! '
* Then shall he die.' And Gareth there
unlaced
His helmet as to slay him, but she
shriek'd,
* Be not so hardy, scullion, as to slay
One nobler than thyself.' * Damsel, thy
charge
Is an abounding pleasure to me. Knight,
Thy life is thine at her command. Arise
And quickly pass to Arthur's hall, and
say
His kitchen-knave hath sent thee. See
thou crave
His pardon for thy breaking of his
laws.
Myself, when I return, will plead for
thee.
Thy shield is mine — farewell; and,
damsel, thou.
Lead, and I follow.'
And fast away she fled.
Then when he came upon her, spake,
' Methought,
Knave, when I watch'd thee striking on
the bridge
The savour of thy kitchen came upon
me
A little faintlier: but the wind hath
changed :
I scent it twenty-fold.' And then she
sang,
* " O morning star " (not that tall felon
there
Whom thou by sorcery or unhappiness
Or some device, hast foully overthrown),
" O morning star that smilest in the blue,
O star, my morning dream hath prcven
true.
Smile sweetly, thou ! my love hath smiled
on me."
328
CARET ff AND LYNETTE.
♦But thou begone, take counsel, and
Ten thousand-fold had grown, flash'd the
away,
fierce shield,
For hard bv here is one that guards a
All sun; and Gareth's eyes had flying
ford —
blots
The second brother in their fool's para-
Before them when he turn'd from watch-
ble-
ing him.
Will pay thee all thy wages, and to boot.
He from beyond the roaring shallow
Care not for shame : thou art not knight
roar'd,
but knave.'
* What doest thou, brother, in my marches
Iiere?'
And she athwart the shallow shrill'd
To whom Sir Gareth answer'd laugh-
ingly,
again.
* Parables? Hear a parable of the knave.
* Here is a kitchen-knave from Arthur's
When I was kitchen-knave among the
hall
rest
Hath overthrown thy brother, and hath
Fierce was the hearth, and one of my
his arms.'
co-mates
' Ugh ! ' cried the Sun, and vizoring up a
Own'd a rough dog, to whom he cast his
, ox
red
coat.
And cipher face of rounded foolishness,
•' Guard it," and there was none to med-
Push'd horse across the foamings of the
dle with it.
ford,
And such a coat art thou, and thee the
Whom Gareth met midstream : no room
King
was there
Gave me to guard, and such a dog am I,
For lance or tourney-skill : four strokes
To worry, and not to flee — and — knight
they struck
or knave —
With sword, and these were mighty; the
The knave that doth thee service as full
new knight
knight
Had fear he might be shamed; but as the
Is all as good, meseems, as any knight
Sun
Toward thy sister's freeing.'
Heaved up a ponderous arm to strike the
fifth,
The hoof of his horse slipt in the stream,
* Ay, Sir Knave !
Ay, knave, because thou strikest as a
the stream
knight.
Descended) and the Sun was wash'd
Being but knave, I hate thee all the
away.
more.
Then Gareth laid his lance athwart the
* Fair damsel, you should worship me
ford;
the more,
So drew him home; but he that' fought
That, being but knave, I throw thine
no more.
enemies.'
As being all bone-batter'd on the rock,
Yielded; and Gareth sent him to the
* Ay, ay,' she said, * but thou shalt meet
King.
thy match.'
'Myself when I return will plead for
thee.'
* Lead, and I follow.' Quietly she led.
So when they touch'd the second river-
loop,
* Hath not the good wind, damsel,
Huge on a huge red horse, and all in mail
changed again?'
Burnish'd to blinding, shone the Noon-
*Nay, not a point: nor art thou victor
day Sun
here.
Beyond a raging shallow. As if the
There lies a ridge of slate across the ford ;
flower,
His horse thereon stumbled — ay, for I
That blows a globe of after arrowlets,
saw it.
GARETH AND LYNETTE.
329
«"0 Sun" (not this strong tool whom
Larded thy last, except thou turn and
thou, Sir Knave,
fly-
Hast overthrown thro' mereunhappiness),
There stands the third fool of their
"0 Sun, that wakenest all to bliss or
allegory.'
pain,
0 moon, that layest all to sleep again,
For there beyond a bridge of treble
Shine sweetly: twice my love hath
bow,
smiled on me."
All in a rose-red from the west, and all
Naked it seem'd, and glowing in the
* What knowest thou of lovesong or of
broad
love?
Deep-dimpled current underneath, the
Nay, nay, God wot, so thou wert nobly
knight,
born,
That named himself the Star of Evening,
Thou hast a pleasant presence. Yea,
stood.
perchance, —
■
And Gareth, ' Wherefore waits the
•"0 dewy flowers that open to the
madman there
sun,
Naked in open dayshine?' *Nay,' she
0 dewy flowers that close when day is
cried,
done.
'Not naked, only wrapt in harden'd skins
Blow sweetly : twice my love hath smiled
That fit him like his own; and so ye
on me."
cleave
His armour off him, these will turn the
« What knowest thou of flowers, except.
blade.'
belike.
To garnish meats with? hath not our
Then the third brother shouted o'er
good King
the bridge,
Who lent me thee, the flower of kitchen-
•0 brother-star, why shine ye here so
dom.
low?
A foolish love for flowers? what stick ye
Thy ward is higher up : but have ye slain
round
The damsel's champion? ' and the damsel
The pasty? wherewithal deck the boar's
cried,
head?
Flowers? nay, the boar hath rosemaries
* No star of thine, but shot from Arthur's
and bay.
heaven
With all disaster unto thine and thee !
' " 0 birds, that warble to the morning
For both thy younger brethren have gone
sky,
down
0 birds that warble as the day goes by,
Before this youth; and so wilt thou, Sir
Sing sweetly : twdce my love hath smiled
Star;
on me,"
Art thou not old ? '
* What knowest thou of birds, lark,
* Old, damsel, old and hard.
mavis, merle.
Old, with the might and breath of twenty
Linnet? what dream ye when they utter
boys.'
forth
Said Gareth, «01d, and over-bold in
May-music growing with the growing
brag!
light.
But that same strength which threw the
Their sweet sun-worship? these be for
Morning Star
the snare
Can throw the Evening.*
(So runs thy fancy), these be icv the spit,
Larding and basting. See thou have
Then that other blew
not now
A hard and deadly note upon the horn.
330
GARETH AND LYNETTE.
' Approach and arm me ! ' With slow
steps from out
An old storm-beaten, russet, many-stain'd
Pavilion, forth a grizzled damsel came,
And arm'd him in old arms, and brought
a helm
With but a drying evergreen for crest,
And gave a shield w^hereon the Star of
Even
Half-tarnish'd and half-bright, his em-
blem, shone.
But when it glitter'd o'er the saddle-bow^
They madly hurl'd together on the bridge;
And Gareth overthrew him, lighted, drew.
There met him drawn, and overthrew him
again.
But up like fire he started : and as oft
As Gareth brought him grovelling on his
knees,
So many a time he vaulted up again ;
Till Gareth panted hard, and his great
heart.
Foredooming all his trouble was in vain,
Labour'd within him, for heseem'd as one
That all in later, sadder age begins
To war against ill uses of a life.
But these from all his life arise, and cry,
' Thou hast made us lords, and canst not
put us down ! '
He half despairs; so Gareth seem'd to
strike
Vainly,thedamsel clamouringall the while,
* Well done, knave-knight, well stricken,
O good knight-knave —
O knave, as noble as any of all the
knights —
Shame me not, shame me not. I have
prophesied —
Strike, thou art worthy of the Table
Round —
His arms are old, he trusts the harden'd
skin —
Strike — strike — the wind will never
change again.'
And Gareth hearing ever stronglier smote.
And hew'd great pieces of his armour off
him.
But lash'd in vain against the harden'd
skin,
And could not wholly bring him under,
more
Than loud Southwesterns, rolling ridge
on ridge,
The buoy that rides at sea, and dips and
sorings
For ever; till at length Sir Gareth's brand
Clash'd his, and brake it utterly to the
hilt.
* I have thee now; ' but forth that other
sprang,
And, all unknightlike, writhed his wiry
arms
Around him, till he felt, despite his mail.
Strangled, but straining ev'n his utter-
most
Cast, and so hurl'd him headlong o'er the
bridge
Down to the river, sink or swim, and
cried,
'Lead, and 1 follow.'
But the damsel said,
* I lead no longer; ride thou at my side;
Thou art the kingliest of all kitchen-
knaves.
* " O trefoil, sparkling on the rainy
plain,
O rainbow with three colours after rain,
Shine sweetly : thrice my love hath
cmiled on' me."
*Sir, — and, good faith, I fain had
added — Knight,
But that I heard thee call thyself a
knave, —
Shamed am I that I so rebuked, reviled,
Missaid thee; noble I am; and thought
the King
Scorn'd me and mine; and now thy
pardon, friend.
For thou hast ever answer'd courteously,
And wholly bold thou art, and meek
withal
As any ot Arthur's best, but, being knave,
Hast mazed my wit : I marvel what thou
art.'
' Damsel,' he said, ' you be not all to
blame,
Saving X^-J. you mistrusted our good
King
Would handle scorn, or yield you, asking,
one
Not fit to cope your quest. You said
your say;
GARETH AND LYNETTE.
331
Mine answer was my deed. Good
sooth ! I hold
He scarce is knight, yea but half-man,
nor meet
To fight for gentle damsel, he, who lets
His heart be stirr'd with any foolish heat
At any gentle damsel's waywardness.
Shamed ! care not ! thy foul sayings
fought for me :
And seeing now thy words are fair, me-
thinks
There rides no knight, not Lancelot, his
great self.
Hath force to quell me.'
Nigh upon that hour
When the lone hern forgets his melan-
choly.
Lets down his other leg, and stretching,
dreams
Of goodly supper in the distant pool.
Then turn'd the noble damsel smiling at
him.
And told him of a cavern hard at hand,
Where bread and baken meats and good
red wine
Of Southland, which the Lady Lyonors
Had sent her coming champion, waited
him.
Anon they past a narrow comb wherein
Were slabs of rock with figures, knights
on horse
Sculptured, and deckt in slowly-waning
hues.
* Sir Knave, my knight, a hermit once
was here.
Whose holy hand hath fashioc'd on the
rock
The war of Time against the soul of man.
And yon four fools have suck'd their alle-
gory
From these damp walls, and taken but
the form.
Klnow ye not these?' and Gareth lookt
and read —
In letters like to those the vexillary
Hath left crag-carven o'er the streaming
Gelt —
* Phosphorus,' then 'Meridies' — 'Hes-
perus ' —
' Nox ' — ' Mors,' beneath five figures,
armed men.
Slab after slab, their faces forward all,
And running down the Soul, a Shape that
fled
With broken wings, torn raiment and
loose hair,
For help and shelter to the hermit's cave.
' Follow the faces, and we find it. Look,
Who comes behind ! '
For one — delay'd at first
Thro' helping back the dislocated Kay
To Camelot, then by what thereafter
chanced, ^
The damsel's headlong error thro' the
wood —
Sir Lancelot, having swum the river-
loops —
His blue shield-lions cover'd — softly drew
Behind the twain, and when he saw the
star
Gleam, on Sir Gareth's turning to him,
cried,
* Stay, felon knight, I avenge me for my
friend.'
And Gareth crying prick'd against the cry;
But when they closed — in a moment — at
one touch
Of that skill'd spear, the wonder of the
world —
Went sliding down so easily, and fell,
That when he found the grass within his
hands
He laugh'd; the laughter jarr'd upon
Lynette :
Harshly she ask'd him, * Shamed and over-
thrown,
And tumbled back into the kitchen-knave,
Why laugh ye? that ye blew your boast
in vain? '
* Nay, noble damsel, but that I, the son
Of old King Lot and good Queen Belli-
cent,
And victor of the bridges and the ford,
And knight of Arthur, here lie thrown by
whom
I know not, all thro' mere unhappiness —
Device and sorcery and unhappiness —
Out, sword ; we are thrown ! ' And
Lancelot answer'd ' Prince,
O Gareth — thro' the mere unhappiness
Of one who came to help thee, not to harm,
Lancelot, and all as glad to find thee whole,
As on the day when Arthur knighted him.'
332
GARETH AND LYNETTE.
Then Gareth, ' Thou — Lancelot ! —
thine the hand
That threw me ? And some chance to mar
the boast
Thy brethren of thee make — which could
not chance —
Had sent thee down before a lesser
spear,
Shamed had I been, and sad — O Lancelot
— thou ! '
Whereat the maiden, petulant, ' Lance-
lot,,
Why came ye not, when call'd? and
wherefore now
Come ye, not call'd? I gloried in my
knave.
Who being still rebuked, would answer
still
Courteous as any knight — but now, if
knight.
The marvel dies, and leaves me fool'd
and tricked.
And only wondering wherefore play'd
upon:
And doubtful whether I and mine be
scorn'd.
Where should be truth if not in Arthur's
hall,
In Arthur's presence? Knight, knave,
prince and fool,
I hate thee and for ever.'
And Lancelot said,
* Blessed be thou, vSir Gareth ! knight
art thou
To the King's best wish. O damsel, be
you wise
To call him shamed, who is but over-
thrown?
Thrown have I been, nor once, but many
a time.
Victor from vanquish'd issues at the last.
And overthrower from being overthrown.
With sword we have not striven; and thy
good horse
And thou are wearyf yet not less I felt
Thy manhood thro' that wearied lance
of thine.
Well hast thou done; for all the stream
is freed.
And thou hast wreak'd his justice on his
foes,
And when reviled, hast answer'd gra-
ciously.
And makest merry when overthrown.
Prince, Knight,
Hail, Knight and Prince, and of our
Table Round ! '
And then when turning to Lynette he
tola
The tale of Gareth, petulantly she said,
' Ay well — ay well — for worse than being
fool'd
Of others, is to fool one's self. A cave,
Sir Lancelot, is hard by, with meats and
dilnks
And forage for the horse, and flint for fire.
But all about it flies a honeysuckle.
Seek, till we find.' And when they
sought and found.
Sir Gareth drank and ate, and all his life
Past into sleep; on whom the maiden
gazed.
' Sound sleep be thine ! sound cause to
sleep hast thou.
Wake lusty ! Seem I not as tender to him
As any mother? Ay, but such a one
As all day long hath rated at her child,
And vext his day, but blesses him asleep —
Good lord, how sweetly smells the honey-
suckle
In the hush'd night, as if the world were
one
Of utter peace, and love, and gentleness !
O Lancelot, Lancelot ' — and she clapt
her hands —
' Full merry am I to find my goodly knave
Is knight and noble. See now, sworn
have I,
Else yon black felon had not let me pass,
To bring thee back to do the battle with
him.
Thus an thou goest, he will fight thee first;
Who doubts thee victor? so will my
knight-knave
Miss the full flower of this accomplish-
ment.'
Said Lancelot, * Peradventure he, you
name,
May know my shield. Let Gareth, an
he will,
Change his for mine, and take my charger,
fresh,
CARET H AND LYNETTE.
333
Not to be spurr'd, loving the battle as well
As he that rides him.' ' Lancelot-like,'
she said,
'Courteous in this, Lord Lancelot, as in
all.'
And Gareth, wakening, fiercely clutch'd
the shield;
* Ramp ye lance-splintering lions, on whom
all spears
Are rotten sticks ! ye seem agape to roar !
Yea, ramp and roar at leaving of your
lord ! —
Care not, good beasts, so well I care for
you.
0 noble Lancelot, from my hold on these
Streams virtue — fire — thro' one that will
not shame
Even the shadow of Lancelot Uixder shield.
Hence : let us go.'
Silent the silent field
They traversed. Arthur's harp tho'
summer-wan.
In counter motion to the clouds, allured
The glance of Gareth dreaming on his
liege.
A star shot : ' Lo,' said Gareth, ' the foe
falls ! '
An owl whoopt : ' Hark the victor peal-
ing there ! '
Suddenly she that rode upon his left
Clung to the shield that Lancelot lent
him, crying,
* Yield, yield him this again : 'tis he must
fight:
1 curse the tongue that all thro' yesterday
Reviled thee, and hath wrought on
Lancelot now
To lend thee horse and shield : wonders
ye have done;
Miracles ye cannot : here is glory enow
In having flung the three : I see thee
maim'd,
Mangled: I swear thou canst not fling
the fourth.'
*And wherefore, damsel? tell me all
ye know.
You cannot scare me; nor rough face, or
voice.
Brute bulk of limb, or boundless savagery
Appall me from the quest.'
'Nay, Prince,' she cried,
* God wot, I never look'd upon the face,
Seeing he never rides abroad by day;
But watch'd him have I like a phantom
pass
Chilling the night : nor have I heard the
voice.
Always he made his mouthpiece of a page
Who came and went, and still reported
him
As closing in himself the strength of ten,
And when his anger tare him, massacring
Man, woman, lad and girl — yea, the soft
babe !
Some hold that he hath swallow'd infant
flesh,
Monster ! O Prince, I went for Lancelot
first.
The quest is Lancelot's : give him back
the'shield.'
Said Gareth laughing, * An he fight for
this,
Belike he wins it as the better man :
Thus — and not else ! '
But Lancelot on him urged
All the devisings of their chivalry
When one might meet a mightier than
himself;
How best to manage horse, lance, sword
and shield,
And so fill up the gap where force might
fail
With skill and fineness. Instant were
his words.
Then Gareth, ' Here be rules. I know
but one —
To dash against mine enemy and to
win.
Yet have I watch'd thee victor in the
joust.
And seen thy way.' * Heaven help thee,'
sigh'd Lynette.
Then for a space, and under cloud that
grew
To thunder-gloom palling all stars, they
rode
In converse till she made her palfrey halt,
Lifted an arm, and softly whisper '<^
' There.'
334
GARETH AND LYNETTE.
And all the three were silent seeing,
pitch'd
Beside the Castle Perilous on flat field,
A huge pavilion like a mountain peak
Sunder the glooming crimson on the
marge,
Black, with black banner, and a long
black horn
Beside it hanging; which Sir Gareth
graspt,
And so, before the two could hinder him,
Sent all his heart and breath thro' all the
horn.
Echo'd the walls; a light twinkled; anon
Came lights and lights, and once again
he blew;
Whereon were hollow tramplings up and
down
And muffled voices heard, and shadows
past;
Till high above him, circled with her
maids.
The Lady Lyonors at a window stood,
Beautiful among lights, and waving tq him
White hands, and courtesy; but when
the Prince
Three times had blown — after long hush
— at last —
The huge pavilion slowly yielded up.
Thro' those black foldings, that which
housed therein.
High on a nightblack horse, in nightblack
arms,
With white breast-bone, and barren ribs
of Death,
And crown'd with fleshless laughter —
some ten steps —
In the half-light — thro' the dim dawn —
advanced
The monster, and then paused, and spake
no word.
But Gareth spake and all indignantly,
' Fool, for thou hast, men say, the strength
of ten.
Canst thou not trust the limbs thy God
hath given.
But must, to make the terror of thee more,
Trick thyself out in ghastly imageries
Of that which Life hath done with, and
the clod.
Less dull than thou, will hide with
mantling flowers
As if for pity? ' But he spake no word;
Which set the horror higher : a maiden
swoon'd;
The Lady Lyonors wrung her hands and
wept.
As doom'd to be the bride of Night and
Death ;
Sir Gareth's head prickled beneath his
helm;
And ev'n Sir Lancelot thro' his warm
blood felt
Ice strike, and all that mark'd him were
aghast.
At once Sir Lancelot's charger fiercely
neigh'd.
And Death's dark war-horse bounded
forward with him.
Then thcsc that did not blink the terror,
sav.'
That Death was cast to ground, and
sicvvly rose.
But with one stroke Sir Gareth split the
skull.
Half fell to right and half to left and
lay.
Then witn a stronger buffet he clove the
helm
As throughly as the skull; and out from
this
Issued the bright face of a blooming
boy
Fresh as a flower new-born, and crying,
'Kr.ight,
Slay me not : my three brethren bade me
do it.
To make a horror all about the house,
And stay the world from Lady Lyonors.
They never dream'd the passes would be
past.'
Answer'd Sir Gareth graciously to one
Not manv a moon his younger, * My fair
child,
What ms-ness made thee challenge the
chief knight
Of Arthur'- hall? ' * Fair Sir, they bade
me do it.
They hate the King, and Lancelot, the
King's friend.
They hoped to slay him somewhere on
the stream.
They never dream'd the passes could be
past.'
THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT.
335
Then sprang the happier day from
underground;
And Lady Lyonors and her house, with
dance
And revel and song, made merry over
Death,
As being after all their foolish fears
And horrors only proven a blooming boy.
So large mirth lived and Gareth won the
quest.
And he that told the tale in older times
Says that Sir Gareth wedded Lyonors,
But he, that told it later, says Lynette.
THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT.
The brave Geraint, a knight of Arthu^:'s
court,
A tributary prince of Devon, one
Of that great Order of the Table Round,
Had married Enid, Yniol's only child,
And loved her, as he loved me light of
Heaven.
And as the light of Heaven varies, now
At sunrise, now at sunset, nov.' by night
With moon and trembling stars, so loved
Geraint
To make her beauty vary day by day.
In crimsons and in purples and in gems.
And Enid, but to please her husband's
eye,
Who first had found and loved her in a
state
Of broken fortunes, daily fronted him
In some fresh splendour; and the Queen
herself,
Grateful to Prince Geraint for service
done,
Loved her, and often with her own white
hands
Array'd and deck'd her, as the loveliest.
Next after her own self, in all the court.
And Enid loved the Queen, and v/ith true
heart
Adored her, as the stateliest and the best
And loveliest of all women upon earth.
And seeing them so tender and so close.
Long in their common love rejoiced
Geraint.
But when a rumour rose about the
Queen,
Touching her guilty love for Lancelot,
Tho' yet there lived no proof, nor yet
was heard
The world's loud whisper breaking into
storm.
Not less Geraint believed it; and there
fell ,
A horror on him, lest his gentle wife,
Thro' that great tenderness for Guinevere,
Had suffer'd, or should suffer any taint
In nature : wherefore going to the King,
He made this prete:xt, that his princedom
lay
Close on the borders of a territory,
Wherein were bandit earls, and caitiff
knights.
Assassins, and all flyers from the hand
Of Justice, and whatever loathes a law :
And therefore, till the King himself
should please
To cleanse this common sewer of all his
realm,
He craved a fair permission to depart.
And there defend his marches; and the
King,
Mused for a little on his plea, but, last,
Allowing it, the Prince and Enid rode.
And fifty knights rode with them, to the
shores
Of Severn, and they past to their own
land ;
Where, thinking, that if ever yet was wife
True to her lord, mine shall be so to me.
He compass'd her with sweet observances
And worship, never leaving her, and grew
Forgetful of his promise to the King,
Forgetful of the falcon and the hunt,
Forgetful of the tilt and tournament,
Forgetful of his glory and his name,
Forgetful of his princedom and its cares.
And this forgetfulness was hateful to her.
And by and by the people, when they
met
In twos and threes, or fuller companies.
Began to scoff and jeer and babble of him
As of a prince whose manhood was all
gone.
And molten down in mere uxoriousness.
And this she gather'd from the people's
eyes:
This too the women who attired her
head.
To please her, dwelling on his boundless
love,
336
THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT.
Told Enid, and they sadden'd her the
more :
And day by day she thought to tell Geraint,
But could not out of bashful delicacy;
While he that watched her sadden, was
the more ,
Suspicious that her nature had a taint.
At last, it chanced that on a summer
morn
(They sleeping each by either) the new
sun
Beat thro' the Windless casement of the
room,
And heated the strong warrior in his
dreams;
Who, moving, cast the coverlet aside,
And bared the knotted column of his
throat,
The massive square of his heroic breast.
And arms on which the standing muscle
sloped,
As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone,
' Running too vehemently to break upon it.
And Enid woke and sat beside the couch.
Admiring him, and thought within herself,
Was ever man so grandly made as he?
Then, like a shadow, past the people's talk
And accusation of uxoriousness
Across her mind, and bowing over him.
Low to her own heart piteously she said :
* O noble breast and all-puissant arms,
Am I the cause, I the poor cause that men
Reproach you, saying all your force is
gone?
I am the cause, because I dare not speak
And tell him what I think and what they
say.
And yet I hate that he should linger here ;
I cannot love my lord and not his name.
Far liefer had I gird his harness on him.
And ride with him to battle and stand by,
And watch his mightful hand striking
. great blows
At caitiffs and at wrongers of the world.
Far better w^ere I laid in the dark earth,
Not hearing any more his noble voice.
Not to be folded more in these dear arms,
And darken'd from the high light in his
eyes.
Than that my lord thro' me should suffer
shame.
Am I so bold, and could I so stand by.
And see my dear lord wounded in the
stnfe.
Or maybe pierced to death before mine
eyes,
And yet not dare to tell him what I think,
iAnd how men slur him, saying all his force
I Is melted into mere effeminacy?
1 0 me, I fear that I am no true wife.'
Half inwardly, half audibly she spoke,
And the strong passion in her made her
weep
True tears upon his broad and naked
breast.
And these awoke him, and by great mis-
chance
H-e heard but fragments of her later words,
And that she fear'd she was not a true
wife.
And then he thought, ' In spite of all my
care,
For all my pains, poor man, for all my
pains.
She is not faithful to me, and I see her
Weeping for some gay knight in Arthur's
hall.'
Then thu' he loved and reverenced her
too much
To dream she could be guilty of foul act.
Right thro' his manful breast darted the
pang
That makes a man, in the sweet face of
her
Whom he loves most, lonely and miser-
able.
At this he hurl'd his huge limbs out of
bed,
And sheok his drowsy squire awake and
cried,
* My cha. ~er and her palfrey; ' then to
her,
* I will ride forth into the wilderness;
For tho' it seems my spurs are yet to
win,
I have not fall'n so low as some would
wish.
And thou, put on thy worst and meanest
dress
And ride with me.' And Enid ask'd,
amazed,
' If Enid errs, let Enid learn her fault.'
But he, * I charge thee, ask not, but obey.'
THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT.
337
Then she bethought her of a faded silk,
'■ A faded mantle and a faded veil,
And moving toward a cedarn cabinet.
Wherein she kept them folded reverently
With sprigs of summer laid between the
folds,
'z She took them, and array'd herself
therein,
Remembering when first he came on her
Drest in that dress, and how he loved
her in it.
And all her foolish fears about the dress.
And all his journey to her, as himself
Had told her, and their coming to the
court.
For Arthur on the Whitsuntide before
Held court at old CaerTeon upon Usk.
There on a day, he sitting high in hall,
Before him came a forester of Dean,
Wet from the woods, with notice of a
hart '
Taller than all his fellows, milky-white,
First seen that day : these things he told
the King.
Then the good King gave order to let
blow
His horns for hunting on the morrow
morn.
And when the Queen petition'd for his
leave
To see the hunt, allow'd it easily.
So with the morning all the court were
gone.
• But Guinevere lay late into the morn.
Lost in sweet dreams, and dreaming of
her love
For Lancelot, and forgetful of the hunt;
But rose at last, a single maiden with her,
Took horse, and forded Usk, and gain'd
the wood;
There, on a little knoll beside it, stay'd
Waiting to hear the hounds; but heard
instead
A sudden sound of hoofs, for Prince
Geraint,
Late also, wearing neither hunting-dress
Nor weapon, save a golden-hilted brand,
Came quickly flashing thro' the shallow
ford
Behind them, and so gallop'd up the
knoll.
A purple scarf, at either end whereof
z
There swung an apple of the purest gold,
Sway'd round about him, as he gallop'd
. . "P
To join them, glancing like a dragon-fly
In summer suit and silks of holiday.
Low bow'd the tributary Prince, and she,
Sweetly and statelily, and with all grace
Of womanhood and queenhood, answer'd
him:
'Late, late, Sir Prince,' she said, Mater
than we ! '
'Yea, noble Queen,' he answer'd, 'and
so late
That I but come like you to see the hunt.
Not join it.' ' Therefore wait with me,'
she said ;
' For on this little knoll, if anywhere.
There is good chance that we shall hear
the hounds:
Here often they break covert at our feet.'
And while they listen'd for the distant
hunt,
And chiefly for the baying of Cavall,
King Arthur's hound of deepest mouth,
there rode
Full slowly by a knight, lady, and dwarf;
Whereof the dwarf lagg'd latest, and the
knight
Had vizor up, and show'd a youthful
face.
Imperious, and of haughtiest lineaments.
And Guinevere, not mindful of his face
In the King's hall, desired his name, and
sent
Her maiden to demand it of the dwarf;
Who being vicious, old and irritable,
And doubling all his master's vice of
pride,
Made answer sharply that she should not
know.
' Then will I ask it of himself,' she said.
' Nay, by my faith, thou shalt not,' cried
the dwarf;
' Thou art not worthy ev'n to speak of
him;'
And when she put her horse toward the
knight,
Struck at her with his whip, and she re-
turn'd
Indignant to the Queen; whereat Geraint
Exclaiming, * Surely I will learn the
name,'
338
THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT.
Made sharply to the dwarf, and ask'd it
of him,
Who answer'd as before; and when the
Prince
Had put his horse in motion toward the
knight,
Struck at him with his whip, and cut his
cheek.
The Prince's blood spirted upon the scarf,
Dyeing it; and his quick, instinctive hand
Caught at the hilt, as to abolish him :
But he, from his exceeding manfulness
And pure nobility of temperament.
Wroth to be wroth at such a worm, re-
frain'd
From ev'n a word, and so returning said :
' I will avenge this insult, noble Queen,
Done in your maiden's person to yourself :
And I will track this vermin to their
earths :
For tho' I ride unarm'd, I do not doubt
To find, at some place I shall come at,
arms
On loan, or else for pledge; and, being
found,
Then will I fight him, and will break his
pride,
And on the third day will again be here.
So that I be not fall'n in fight. Farewell.'
'Farewell, fair Prince,' answer'd the
stately Queen.
'Be prosperous in this journey, as in all;
And may you light on all things that you
love,
And live to wed with her whom first you
love:
But ere you wed with any, bring your
bride.
And I, were she the daughter of a king.
Yea, tho' she were a beggar from the
hedge,
Will clothe her for her bridals like the
sun.'
And Prince Geraint, now thinking that
he heard
The noble hart at bay, now the far horn,
A little vext at losing of the hunt,
A little at the vile occasion, rode.
By ups and downs, thro' many a grassy
glade
And valley, with fixt eye following the
three.
At last they issued from the world oi
wood,
And climb'd upon a fair and even ridge.
And show'd themselves against the sky,
and sank.
And thither came Geraint, and under-
neath
Beheld the long street of a little town
In a long valley, on one side whereof,
White from the mason's hand, a fortress
rose;
And on one side a castle in decay,
Beyond a bridge that spann'd a dry
ravine :
And out of town and valley came a noise
As of a broad brook o'er a shingly bed
Brawling, or like a clamour of the rooks
At distance, ere they settle for the night.
And onward to the fortress rode the
three.
And enter'd, and were lost behind the
walls.
' So,' thought Geraint, * I have track'd
him to his earth.'
And down the long street riding wearily,
Found every hostel full, and everywhere
Was hammer laid to hoof, and the hot
hiss
And bustling whistle of the youth who
scour'd
His master's armour; and of such a one
He ask'd, ' What means the tumult in
the town?'
Who told him, scouring still, 'The
sparrow-hawk ! '
Then riding close behind an ancient churl.
Who, smitten by the dusty sloping beam.
Went sweating underneath a sack of
corn,
Ask'd yet once more what meant the
hubbub here?
Who answer'd gifuffly, * Ugh ! the sparrow-
hawk.'
Then riding further past an armourer's.
Who, with back turn'd, and bow'd above
his work,
Sat riveting a helmet on his knee.
He put the self-same query, but the man
Not turning round, nor looking at him,
said:
THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT.
339
' Friend, he that labours for the sparrow-
hawk
Has little time for idle questioners.'
Whereat Geraint flash'd into sudden
spleen :
*A thousand pips eat up your sparrow-
hawk !
Tits, wrens, and all wing'd nothings peck
him dead !
Ye think the rustic cackle of your bourg
The murmur of the world ! What is it
to me?
O wretched set of sparrows, one and all,
Who pipe of nothing but of sparrow-
hawks !
Speak, if ye be not like the rest, hawk-
mad,
Where can I get me harbourage for the
night?
And arms, arms, arms to fight my enemy ?
Speak ! '
Whereat the armourer turning all amazed
And seeing one so gay in purple silks.
Came forward with the helmet yet in
hand
And answer'd, 'Pardon me, O stranger
knight;
We hold a tourney here to-morrow morn,
And there is scantly time for half the work.
Arms? truth! I know not: all are
wanted here.
Harbourage? truth, good truth, I know
not, save.
It may be, at Earl Yniol's, o'er the bridge
Yonder.' He spoke and fell to work
again.
Then rode Geraint, a little spleenful
yet,
Across the bridge that spann'd the dry
ravine.
There musing sat the hoary-headed Earl,
(His dress a suit of fray'd magnificence,
Once fit for feasts of ceremony) and
said:
'Whither, fair son?' to whom Geraint
replied,
'O friend, I seek a harbourage for the
night.'
Then Yniol, ' Enter therefore and partake
The slender entertainment of a house
Once rich, now poor, but ever open-
door'd,'
* Thanks, venerable friend,' replied
Geraint;
' So that ye do not serve me sparrow-
hawks
For supper, I will enter, I will eat
With all the passion of a twelve hours'
fast.'
Then sigh'd and smiled the hoary-headed
Earl,
And answer'd, • Graver cause than yours
is mine
To curse this hedgerow thief, the sparrow-
hawk:
But in, go in; for save yourself desire it.
We will not touch upon him ev'n in jest.'
Then rode Geraint into the castle court.
His charger trampling many a prickly star
Of sprouted thistle on the broken stones.
He look'd and saw that ^11 was ruinous.
Here stood a shatter'd archway plumed
with fern;
And here had fall'n a great part of a
tower,
Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the
cliff.
And like a crag was gay with wilding
flowers :
And high above a piece of turret stair,
Worn by the feet that now were silent,
wound
Bare to the sun, and monstrous ivy-stems,
Claspt the gray walls with hairy-fibred
arms,
And suck'd the joining of the stones, and
look'd
A knot, beneath, of snakes, aloft, a grove.
And while he waited in the castle court,
The voice of Enid, Yniol's daughter, rang
Clear thro' the open casement of the hall.
Singing; and as thfe sweet voice of a bird.
Heard by the lander in a lonely isle.
Moves him to think what kind of bird it is
That sings so delicately clear, and make
Conjecture of the plumage and the form:
So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint ;
And made him like a man abroad at morn
When first the liquid note beloved of men
Comes flying over many a windy wave
To Britain, and in April suddenly
Breaks from a coppice gemm'd with green
and red,
340
THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT.
And he suspends his converse with a
friend,
Or it may be the labour of his hands,
To think or say, * There is the nightingale ; '
So fared it with Geraint, who thought
and said,
* Here, by God's grace, is the one voice
for me.'
It chanced the song that Enid sang
was one
Of Fortune and her wheel, and Enid
sang:
'Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel and
lower the proud;
Turn thy wild wheel thro' sunshine,
storm, and cloud;
Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor
hate.
'Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with
smile or frown;
With that wild wheel we go not up or
down;
Our hoard is little, but our hearts are
great.
* Smile and we smile, the lords of many
lands;
Frown and we smile, the lords of our
own hands;
For man is man and master of his fate.
* Turn, turn thy wheel above the staring
crowd;
Thy wheel and thou are shadows in the
cloud;
Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor
hate.'
* Hark, by the bird's song ye may learn
the nest,'
Said Yniol; 'enter quickly.' Entering
then.
Right o'er a mount of newly-fallen stones;
The dusky-rafter'd ma'ny-cobwebb'd hall.
He found an ancient dame in dim bro-
cade;
And near her, lil^e a blossom vermeil-
white,
That lightly breaks a faded flower-sheath,
Moved the fair Enid, all in faded silk,
Her daughter. In a moment thought
Geraint,
' Here by God's rood is the one maid for
me.'
But none spake word except the hoary
Earl:
' Enid, the good knight's horse stands in
the court;
Take him to stall, and give him corn, and
then
Go to the town and buy us flesh and
wine ;
And we will make us merry as we may.
Our hoard is little, but our hearts are
great.'
He spake : the Prince, as Enid past
him, fain
To follow, strode a stride, but Yniol caught
His purple scarf, and held, and said, ' For-
bear !
Rest ! the good house, tho' ruin'd, O my
son.
Endures not that her guest should serve
himself. '
And reverencing the custom of the house
Geraint, from utter courtesy, forbore.
So Enid took his charger to the stall;
And after went her way across the bridge,
And reach'd the town, and while the
Prince and Earl
Yet spoke together, came again with one,
A youth, that following with a costrel bore
The means of goodly welcome, flesh and
wine.
And Enid brought sweet cakes to make
them cheer.
And in her veil enfolded, manchet bread.
And then, because their hall must also
serve
For kitchen, boil'd the flesh, and spread
the board,
And stood behind, and waited on the
three.
And seeing her so sweet and serviceable,
Geraint had longing in him evermore
To stoop and kiss the tender little thumb,
That crost the trencher as she laid it down :
But after all had eaten, then Geraint,
For now the wine made summer in his
veins.
Let his eye rove in following, or rest
THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT.
341
On Enid at her lowly handmaid-work,
Now here, now there, about the dusky
hall;
Then suddenly addrest the hoary Earl :
* Fair Host and Earl, I pray your cour-
tesy;
This sparrow-hawk, what is he? tell me
of him.
His name? but no, good faith, I will not
have it :
For if he be the knight whom late 1 saw
f / Ride into that new fortress by your town,
/ White from the mason's hand, then have
\ I sworn
From his own lips to have it — I am
Geraint
Of Devon — for this morning when the
Queen
Sent her own maiden to demand the
name.
His dwarf, a vicious under-shapen thing,
Struck at her with his whip, and she re-
turn'd
Indignant to the Queen ; and then I swore
That I would track this caitiff to his hold,
And fight and break his pride, and have
it of him.
And all unarm'd I rode, and thought to
find
Arms in your town, where all the men are
mad;
They take the rustic murmur of their
bourg
For the great wave that echoes round the
world ;
They would not hear me speak : but if ye
know
Where I can light on arms, or if yourself
Should have them, tell me, seeing I have
sworn
That I will break his pride and learn his
name,
Avenging this great insult done the
Queen.'
Then cried Earl Yniol, 'Art thou he
indeed,
Geraint, a name far-sounded among men
For noble deeds? and truly I, when first
I saw you moving by me on the bridge,
Felt ye were somewhat, yea, and by your
state
And presence might have guess'd you one
of those
That eat in Arthur's hall at Camelot.
Nor speak I now from foolish flattery;
For this dear child hath often heard me
praise
Your feats of arms, and often when 1
paused
Hath ask'd again, and ever loved to hear;
So grateful is the noise of noble deeds
To noble hearts who see but acts of
wrong :
0 never yet had woman such a pair
Of suitors as this maiden; first Limours,
A creature wholly given to brawls and
wine,
Drunk even when he woo'd; and be he
dead
1 know not, but he past to the wild land.
The second was your foe, the sparrow-
hawk,
My curse, my nephew — I will not let his
name
Slip from my lips if I can help it — he,
When I that knew him fierce and turbu-
lent
Refused her to him, then his pride awoke;
And since the proud man often is the
mean.
He sow'd a slander in the common ear.
Affirming that his father left him gold,
And in my charge, which was not ren-
der'd to him;
Bribed with large promises the men who
served
About my person, the more easily
Because my means were somewhat broken
into
Thro' open doors and hospitality;
Raised my own town against me in the
night
Before my Enid's birthday, sack'd my
house;
From mine own earldom foully ousted
me;
Built that new fort to overawe my friends,
For truly there are those who love me
yet;
And keeps me in this ruinous castle here.
Where doubtless he would put me soon
to death.
But that his pride too much despises me :
And I myself sometimes despise myself;
342
THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT.
For I have let men be, and have their way;
Am much too gentle, have not used my
power :
Nor know I whether I be very base
Or very manful, whether very wise
Or very foolish; only this I know,
That whatsoever evil happen to me,
I seem to suffer nothing heart or limb,
But can endure it all most patiently.'
* Well said, true heart,' replied Geraint,
' but arms,
That if the sparrow-hawk, this nephew,
fight
In next day's tourney I may break his
pride.'
AndYniol answer'd, 'Arms, indeed, but
old
And rusty, old and rusty, Prince Geraint,
Are mine, and therefore at thine asking,
thine.
But in this tournament can no man tilt.
Except the lady he loves best be there.
Two forks are fixt into the meadow
ground.
And over these is placed a silver wand,
And over that a golden sparrow-hawk.
The prize of beauty for the fairest there.
And this, what knight soever be in field
Lays claim to for the lady at his side,
And tilts with my good nephew there-
upon.
Who being apt at arms and big of bone
Has ever won it for the lady with him,
And toppling over all antagonism
Has earn'd himself the name of sparrow-
hawk.
But thou, that hast no lady, canst not
fight.'
To whom Geraint with eyes all bright
replied,
Leaning a little toward him, • Thy leave !
Let me lay lance in rest, O noble host,
For this dear child, becauso I never saw,
Tho' having seen all beauties of our time.
Nor can see elsewhere, anything so fair.
And if I fall her name will yet remain
Untarnish'd as before; but if I live,
So aid me Heaven when at mine utter-
most.
As I will make her truly my true wife.'
Then, howsoever patient, Yniol's heart
Danced in his bosom, seeing better days.
And looking round he saw not Enid
there,
(Who hearing her own name had stol'n
away)
But that old- dame, to whom full tenderly
And fondling all her hand in his he said,
* Mother, a maiden is a tender thing.
And best by her that bore her under-
stood.
Go thou to rest, but ere thou go to rest
Tell her, and prove her heart toward the
Prince.'
So spake the kindly-hearted Earl, and
she
With frequent smile and nod departing
found,
Half disarray'd as to her rest, the girl;
Whom first she kiss'd on either cheek,
and then
On either shining shoulder laid a hand
And kept her off" and gazed upon her
face.
And told her all their converse in the
hall.
Proving her heart : but never light and
shade
Coursed one another more on open
ground
Beneath a troubled heaven, than red and
pale
Across the face of Enid hearing her;
While slowly falling as a scale that falls,
When weight is added only grain by
grain,
Sank her sweet head upon her gentle
breast;
Nor did she lift an eye nor speak a word,
Rapt in the fear and in the wonder of it;
So moving without answer to her rest
She found no rest, and ever fail'd to draw
The quiet night into her blood, but lay
Contemplating her own unworthiness;
And when the pale and bloodless east
began
To quicken to the sun, arose, and raised
Her mother too, and hand in hand they
moved
Down to the meadow where the jousts
were held.
And waited there for Yniol and Geraint
THE MARRIAGE OF CERA TNT,
343
And thither came the twain, and when
Geraint
Beheld her first in field, awaiting him,
He felt, were she the prize of bodily
force,
Himself beyond the rest pushing could
move
The chair of Idris. Yniol's rusted arms
Were on his princely person, but thro'
these
Princelike his bearing shone; and errant
knights
And ladies came, and by and by the town
Flow'd in, and settling circled all the
lists.
And there they fixt the forks into the
ground.
And over these they placed the silver
wand.
And over that the golden sparrow-hawk.
Then Yniol's nephew, after trumpet
blown,
Spake to the lady with him and pro-
claim'd,
* Advance and take, as fairest of the fair,
What I these two years past have won
for thee,
The prize of beauty.' Loudly spake the
Prince,
* Forbear : there is a worthier,' and the
knight
With some surprise and thrice as much
disdain
Turn'd, and beheld the four, and all his
face
Glow'd like the heart of a great fire at
Yule,
So burnt he was with passion, crying
out,
*Do battle for it then,' no more; and
thrice
They clash'd together, and thrice they
brake their spears.
Then each, dishorsed and drawing, lash'd
at each
So often and with such blows, that all
the crowd
Wonder'd, and now and then from distant
walls
There came a clapping as of phantom
hands.
So twice they fought, and twice they
breathed, and still
The dew of their great labour, and the
blood
Of their strong bodies, flowing, drain'd
their force.
But cither's force was match'd till Yniol's
cry,
* Remember that great insult done the
Queen,'
Increased Geraint's, who heaved his
blade aloft.
And crack'd the helmet thro', and bit the
bone.
And fell'd him, and set foot upon his
breast.
And said, 'Thy name?' To whom the
fallen man
Made answer, groaning, * Edyrn, son of
Nudd!
Ashamed am I that I should tell it thee.
My pride is broken : men have seen my
fall.'
'Then, Edyrn, son of Nudd,' replied
Geraint,
* These two things shalt thou do, or else
thou diest.
First, thou thyself, with damsel and with
dwarf,
Shalt ride to Arthur's court, and coming
there,
Crave pardon for that insult done the
Queen,
And shalt abide her judgment on it;
next.
Thou shalt give back their earldom to
thy kin.
These two things shalt thou do, or thou
shalt die.'
And Edyrn answer'd, ' These things will
I do.
For I have never yet been overthrown,
And thou hast overthrown me, and my
pride
Is broken down, for Enid sees my fall ! '
And rising up, he rode to Arthur's
court.
And there the Queen forgave him easily.
And being young, he changed and came
to loathe
His crime of traitor, slowly drew him-
self
Bright from his old dark life, and fell at
last
In the great battle fighting for the King.
/
344
THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT.
But when the third day from the hunt-
ing-morn
Made a low splendour in the world, and
wings
Moved in her ivy, Enid, for she lay
With her fair head in the dim-yellow
light,
Among the dancing shadows of the birds,
Woke and bethought her of her promise
given
No later than last eve to Prince Geraint —
So bent he seem'd on going the third day.
He would not leave her, till her promise
given —
To ride with him this morning to the
court,
And there be made known to the stately
Queen,
And there be wedded with all cere-
mony.
At this she cast her eyes upon her
dress.
And thought it never yet had look'd so
mean.
For as a leaf in mid-November is
To what it was in mid-October, seem'd
The dress that now she look'd on to the
dress
She look'd on ere the coming of Geraint.
And still she look'd, and still the terror
grew
Of that strange bright and dreadful thing,
a court.
All staring at her in her faded silk :
And softly to her own sweet heart she
said:
* This noble prince who won our earl-
dom back,
So splendid in his acts and his attire,
Sweet heaven, how much I shall discredit
him!
Would he could tarry with us here
awhile,
But being so beholden to the Prince,
It were but little grace in any of us,
Bent as he seem'd on going this third
day,
To seek a second favour at his hands.
Yet if he could but tarry a day or two.
Myself would work eye dim, and finger
lame.
Far liefer than so much discredit him.'
And Enid fell in longing for a dress
All branch'd and flower'd with gold, a
costly gift
Of her good mother, given her on the
night
Before her birthday, three sad years ago,
That night of fire, when Edyrn sack'd
their house.
And scatter'd all they had to all the
winds :
For while the mother show'd it, and the
two
Were turning and admiring it, the work
To both appear'd so costly, rose a cry
That .Edyrn's men were on them, and
they fled
,With little save the jewels they had on.
Which being sold and sold had bought
them bread :
And Edyrn's men had caught them in
their flight,
And placed them in this ruin; and she
wish'd
The Prince had found her in her ancient
home;
Then let her fancy flit across the past.
And roam the goodly places that she
knew;
And last bethought her how she used
to watch.
Near that old home, a pool of golden
carp;
And one was patch'd and blurr'd and
lustreless
Among his burnish'd brethren of the
pool;
And half asleep she made comparison
Of that and these to her own faded self
And the gay court, and fell asleep again;
And dreamt herself was such a faded
form
Among her burnish'd sisters of the pool;
But this was in the garden of a king;
And tho' she lay dark in the. pool, she
knew
That all was bright; that all about were
birds
Of sunny plume in gilded trellis-work;
That all the turf was rich in plots that
look'd
Each like a garnet or a turkis in it;
And lords and ladies of the high court
went
THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT.
345
In silver tissue talking things of state;
And children of the King in cloth of
gold
Glanced at the doors or gamboU'd down
the walks;
And while she thought 'They will not
see me,' came
A stately queen whose name was Guine-
vere,
And all the children in their cloth of
gold
Ran to her, crying, *If we have fish at all
Let them be gold; and charge the
gardeners now
To pick the faded creature from the
pool,
And cast it on the mixen that it die.'
And therewithal one came and seized on
her,
And Enid started waking, with her heart
All overshadow'd by the foolish dream,
And lo ! it was her mother grasping her
To get her well awake; and in her hand
A suit of bright apparel, which she laid
Flat on the couch, and spoke exultingly :
* See here, my child, how fresh the
colours look,
How fast they hold like colours of a
shell
That keeps the wear and polish of the
wave.
Why not? It never yet was worn, I
trow :
Look on it, child, and tell me if ye know
it.'
And Enid look'd, but all confused at
first,
Could scarce divide it from her foolish
dream :
Then suddenly she knew it and rejoiced.
And answer'd, ' Yea, I know it ; your
good gift.
So sadly lost on that unhappy night;
Your -own good gift!' 'Yea, surely,'
said the dame,
'And gladly given again this happy
morn.
For when the jousts were ended yester-
day.
Went Yniol thro' the town, and every-
where
He found the sack and plunder of our
house
All scatter'd thro' the houses of the
town ;
And gave command that all which once
was ours
Should now be ours again : and yester-eve,
While ye were talking sweetly with your
Prince,
Came one with this and laid it in my
hand.
For love or fear, or seeking favour of us.
Because we have our earldom back
again.
And yester-eve I would not tell you of it,
But kept it for a sweet surprise at morn.
Yea, truly is it not a sweet surprise?
For I myself unwillingly have worn
My faded suit, as you, my child, have
yours.
And howsoever patient, Yniol his.
Ah, dear, he took me from a goodly
house.
With store of rich apparel, sumptuous
fare,
And page, and maid, and squire, and
seneschal.
And pastime both of hawk and hound,
and all
That appertains to noble maintenance.
Yea, and he brought me to a goodly
house;
But since our fortune swerved from sun
to shade,
And all thro' that young traitor, cruel
need
Constrain'd us, but a better time has
come ;
So clothe yourself in this, that better fits
Our mended fortunes and a Prince's
bride :
For tho' ye won the prize of fairest fair,
And tho' I heard him call you fairest fair.
Let never maiden think, however fair.
She is not fairer in new clothes than old.
And should some great court-lady say,
the Prince.
Hath pick'd a ragged-robin from the
hedge.
And like a madman brought her to the
court.
Then were ye shamed, and, worse, might
shame the Prince
346
THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT.
To whom we are beholden; but I know,
When my dear child is set forth at her
best,
That neither court nor country, tho' they
sought
Thro' all the provinces like those of old
That lighted on Queen Esther, has her
match.'
Here ceased the kindly mother out of
breath;
And Enid listen'd brightening as she lay;
Then, as the white and gUttering star of
morn
Parts from a bank of snow, and by and
by
Slips into golden cloud, the maiden rose.
And left her maiden couch, and robed
herself,
Help'd by the mother's careful hand and
eye,
Without a mirror, in the gorgeous gown;
Who, after, turn'd her daughter round,
and said,
She never yet had seen her half so fair;
And call'd her like that maiden in the
tale,
Whom Gwydion made by glamour out
of flowers,
And sweeter than the bride of Cassive-
laun,
Flur, for whose love the Roman Csesar
first
Invaded Britain, * But we beat him back.
As this great Prince invaded us, and we,
Not beat him back, but welcomed him
with joy.
And I can scarcely ride with you to
court.
For old am I, and rough the ways and
wild ;
But Yniol goes, and I full oft shall dream
I see my princess as I see her now,
Clothed with my gift, and gay among
the gay.'
But while the women thus rejoiced,
Geraint
Woke where he slept in the high hall,
and call'd
For Enid, and when Yniol made report
Of that good mother making F^nid gay
In such apparel as might well beseem
His princess, or indeed the stately Queen,
He answer'd : * Earl, entreat her by my
love.
Albeit I give no reason but my wish.
That she ride with me in her faded silk.'
Yniol with that hard message went; it
fell
Like flaws in summer laying lusty corn :
For Enid, all abash'd she knew not why,
Dared not to glance at her good mother's
face.
But silently, in all obedience,
Her mother silent too, nor helping her,
Xaid from her limbs the costly- broider'd
gift,
And robed them in her ancient suit
again,
And so descended. Never man rejoiced
More than Geraint to greet her thus
attired;
And glancing all at once as keenly at her
As careful robins eye the delver's toil,
Made her cheek burn and either eyelid
fall.
But rested with her sweet face satisfied;
Then seeing cloud upon the mother's
brow.
Her by both hands he caught, and
sweetly said,
* O my new mother, be not wroth or
grieved
At thy new son, for my petition to her.
When late I left Caerleon, our great
Queen,
In words whose echo lasts, they were so
sweet.
Made promise, that whatever bride I
brought,
Herself would clothe her like the sun
in Heaven.
Thereafter, when I reach'd this ruin'd
hall.
Beholding one so bright in dark estate,
I vow'd that could I gain her, our fair
Queen,
No hand but hers, should make your
Enid burst
Sunlike from cloud — and likewise
thought perhaps.
That service done so graciously would
bind
The two together; fain I would the two
GERAINT AND ENID.
347
Should love each other : how can Enid find
A nobler friend? Another thought was
mine;
I came among you here so suddenly,
That tho' her gentle presence at the lists
Might well have served for proof that I
was loved,
I doubted whether daughter's tenderness,
Or easy nature, might not let itself
Be moulded by your wishes for her weal;
Or whether some false sense in her own
self
Of my contrasting brightness, overbore
Her fancy dwelling in this dusky hall;
And such a sense might make her long
for court
And all its perilous glories: and I
thought.
That could I someway prove such force
in her
Link'd with such love for me, that at
a word
(No reason given her) she could cast
aside
A splendour dear to women, new to her,
And therefore dearer; or if not so new,
Yet therefore tenfold dearer by the power
Of intermitted usage; then I felt
That I could rest, a rock in ebbs and
flows,
N Fixt on her faith. Now, therefore, I do
rest,
A prophet certain of my prophecy.
That never shadow of mistrust can cross
Between us. Grant me pardon for my
thoughts :
And for my strange petition I will make
Amends hereafter by some gaudy-day.
When your fair child shall wear your
costly gift
Beside your own warm hearth, with, on
her knees.
Who knows? another gift of the high
God,
Which, maybe, shall have learn'd to lisp
you thanks.'
He spoke : the mother smiled, but
half in tears.
Then brought a mantle down and wrapt
her in it.
And claspt and kiss'd her, and they rode
away.
Now thrice that morning Guinevere
had climb'd
The giant tower, from whose high crest,
they say.
Men saw the goodly hills of Somerset,
And white sails flying on the yellow sea;
But not to goodly hill or yellow sea
Look'd the fair Queen, but up the vale
of Usk,
By the flat meadow, till she saw them
come;
And then descending met them at the
gates,
Embraced her with all welcome as a
friend,
And did her honour as the Prince's bride.
And clothed her for her bridals like the
sun;
And all that week was old Caerleon gay,
For by the hands of Dubric, the high
saint,
They twain were wedded with all cere-
mony.
And this was on the last year's Whit-
suntide.
But Enid ever kept the faded silk.
Remembering how first he came on her,
Drest in that dress, and how he loved
her in it.
And all her foolish fears about the dress.
And all his journey toward her, as him-
self
Had told her, and their coming to the
court.
And now this morning when he said
to her,
' Put on your worst and meanest dress,'
she found
And took it, and array'd herself therein.
GERAINT AND ENID.
O PURBLIND race of miserable men.
How many among us at this very hour
Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves,
By taking true for false, or false for true ;
Here, thro' the feeble twihght of this
world
Groping, how many, until we pass and
reach
That other, where we see as we are seen I
348
GERAINT AND ENID.
So fared it with Geraint, who issuing
forth
That morning, when they both had got
to horse,
Perhaps because he loved her passion-
ately,
And felt that tempest brooding round
his heart,
Which, if he spoke at all, would break
perforce
Upon a head so dear in thunder, said :
*Not at my side. I charge thee ride
before.
Ever a good way on before; and this
1 charge thee, on thy duty as a wife.
Whatever happens, not to speak to me,
No, not a word ! ' and Enid was aghast ;
And forth they rode, but scarce three
paces on,
When crying out, * Effeminate as I am,
I will not fight my way with gilded arms,
All shall be iron; ' he loosed a mighty
purse.
Hung at his belt, and hurl'd it toward
the squire.
So the last sight that Enid had of home
Was all the marble threshold flashing,
strown
With gold and scatter'd coinage, and
the squire
Chafing his shoulder: then he cried
again,
* To the wilds ! ' and Enid leading down
the tracks
Thro' which he bade her lead him on,
they past
The marches, and by bandit-haunted
holds,
Gray swamps and pools, waste places of
the hern,
And wildernesses, perilous paths, they
rode :
Round Was their pace at first, but slack-
en'd soon :
A stranger meeting them had surely
thought
They rode so slowly and they look'd so
pale,
That each had sufifer'd some exceeding
wrong.
For he was ever saying to himself,
* O I that wasted time to tend upon her.
To compass her with sweet observances,
To dress her beautifully and keep her
true ' —
And there he broke the sentence in his
heart
Abruptly, as a man upon his tongue
May break it, when his passion masters
him.
And she was ever praying the sweet
heavens
To save her dear lord whole from any
wound.
And ever in her mind she cast about
For that unnoticed failing in herself,
Which made him look so cloudy and so
cold;
Till the great plover's human whistle
amazed
Her heart, and glancing round the waste
she fear'd
In every wavering brake an ambus-
cade.
Then thought again, * If there be such in
me,
I . might amend it by the grace of
Heaven,
If he would only speak and tell me of it.'
But when the fourth part of the day
was gone.
Then Enid was aware of three tall
knights
On horseback, wholly arm'd, behind a
rock
In shadow, waiting for them, caitiffs all;
And heard one crying to his fellow,
' Look,
Here comes a laggard hanging down his
head.
Who seems no bolder than a beaten
hound ;
Come, we will slay him and will have
his horse
And armour, and his damsel shall be
ours.'
Then Enid ponder'd in her heart, and
said:
* I will go back a little to my lord.
And I will tell him all their caitiff talk;
P^or, be he wroth even to slaying me,
Far liefer by his dear hand had I die.
Than that my lord should suffer loss or
shame.'
GERAINT AND ENID.
349
Then she went back some paces of
return,
Met his full frown timidly firm, and said ;
' My lord, I saw three bandits by the
rock
Waiting to fall on you, and heard them
boast
That they would slay you, and possess
your .horse
And armour, and your damsel should be
theirs.'
He made a wrathful answer : ' Did I
wish
Your warning or your silence ? one com-
mand
I laid upon you, not to speak to me,
And thus ye keep it ! Well then, look
— for now,
Whether ye wish me victory or defeat,
Long for my life, or hunger for my
death,
Yourself shall see my vigour is not lost.'
Then Enid waited, pale and sorrowful,
And down upon him bare the bandit
three.
And at the midmost charging, Prince
Geraint
Drave the long spear a cubit thro' his
breast
And out beyond; and then against his
brace
Of comrades, each of whom had broken
on him
A lance that splinter'd like an icicle.
Swung from his brand a windy buffet
out
Once, twice, to right, to left, and stunn'd
the twain
Or slew them, and dismounting like a
man
That skins the wild beast after slaying
him,
Stript from the three dead wolves of
woman born
The three gay suits of armour which they
wore.
And let the bodies lie, but bound the
suits
Of armour on their horses, each on
each,
And tied the bridle-reins of all the three
Together, and said to her, * Drive them
on
Before you; ' and she drove them thro'
the waste.
He follow'd nearer : ruth began to
work
Against his anger in him, while he
watch'd
The being he loved best in all the world,
With difficulty in mild obedience
Driving them on: he fain had spoken to
her.
And loosed in words of sudden fire the
wrath
And smoulder'd wrong that burnt him
all within;
But evermore it seem'd an easier thing
At once without remorse to strike her
dead.
Than to cry * Halt,' and to her own
bright face
Accuse her of the least immodesty :
And thus tongue-tied, it made him wroth
the more
That she could speak whom his own ear
had heard
Call herself false : and suffering thus he
made
Minutes an age : but in scarce longer time
Than at Caerleon the full-tided Usk,
Before he turn to fall seaward again.
Pauses, did Enid, keeping watch, behold
In the first shallow shade of a deep wood.
Before a gloom of stubborn-shafted oaks.
Three other horsemen waiting, wholly
arm'd,
Whereof one seem'd far larger than her
lord.
And shook her pulses, crying, * Look, a
prize !
Three horses and three goodly suits of
arms.
And all in charge of whom? a girl : set
on.'
'Nay,' said the second, * yonder comes a
knight.'
The third, * A craven; how he hangs his
head.'
The giant answer'd merrily, 'Yea, but
one?
Wait here, and when he passes fall upon
him.'
35<>
GERAINT AND ENID.
And Enid ponder'd in her heart and
said,
'I will abide the coming of my lord,
And I will tell him all their villainy.
My lord is weary with the fight before,
And they will fall upon him unawares.
I needs must disobey him for his good ;
How should I dare obey him to his
harm?
Needs must I speak, and tho' he kill me
for it,
I save a life dearer to me than mine.'
And she abode his coming, and said
to him
With timid firmness, ' Have I leave to
speak ? '
He said, * Ye take it, speaking,' and she
spoke.
'There lurk three villains yonder in the
wood,
And each of them is wholly arm'd, and
one
Is larger-limb'd than you are, and they
say
That they will fall upon you while ye
pass.'
To which he flung a wrathful answer
back :
'And if there were an hundred in the
wood.
And every man were larger-limb'd than I,
And all at once should sally out upon me,
I swear it would not ruffle me so much
As you that not obey me. Stand aside,
And if I fall, cleave to the better man.'
And Enid stood aside to wait the event,
Not dare to watch the combat, only
breathe
Short fits of prayer, at every stroke a
breath.
And he, she dreaded most, bare down
upon him.
Aim'd at the helm, his lance err'd; but
Geraint's,
A little in the late encounter strain'd,
Struck thro' the bulky bandit's corselet
home,
And then brake short, and down his
enemy roU'd,
And there lay still; as he that tells the
tale "
Saw once a great piece of a promontory,
That had a sapling growing on it, slide
From the long shore-cliff's windy walls to
the beach,
And there lie still, and yet the sapling
grew :
So lay the man transfixt. His craven
pair
Of comrades making slowlier at the
Prince,
When now they saw their bulwark fallen,
stood;
On whom the victor, to confound them
more,
Spurr'd with his terrible war-cry; for as
one,
That listens near a torrent mountain-
brook,
All thro' the crash of the near cataract
hears
The drumming thunder of the huger fall
At distance, were the soldiers wont to
hear
His voice in battle, and be kindled by it,
And foemen scared, like that false pair
who turn'd
Flying, but, overtaken, died the death
Themselves had wrought on many an
innocent.
Thereon Geraint, dismounting, pick'd
the lance
That pleased him best, and drew from
those dead wolves
Their three gay suits of armour, each from
each.
And bound them on their horses, each on
each.
And tied the bridle-reins of all the three
Together, and said to her, ' Drive them on
Before you,' and she drove them thro' the
wood.
He foUow'd nearer still : the pain she
had
To keep them in the wild ways of the
wood.
Two sets of three laden with jingling arms.
Together, served a little to disedge
The sharpness of that pain about hei
heart :
GERAINT AND ENID.
35t
And they themselves, like creatures gently
born
But into bad hands fall'n, and now so long
By bandits groom'd, prick'd their light
ears, and felt
Her low firm voice and tender government.
So thro' the green gloom of the wood
they past.
And issuing under open heavens beheld
A little town with towers, upon a rock,
And close beneath, a meadow gemlike
chased
In the brown wild, and mowers mowing
in it:
And down a rocky pathway from the place
There came a fair-hair'd youth, that in his
hand
Bare victual for the mowers : and Geraint
Had ruth again on Enid looking pale :
Then, moving downward to the meadow
ground,
He, when the fair-hair'd youth came by
him, said,
'Friend, let her eat; the damsel is so
faint.'
* Yea, willingly,* replied the youth ; ' and
thou,
My lord, eat also, tho' the fare is coarse.
And only meet for mowers;' then set
down
His basket, and dismounting on the sward
They let the horses graze, and ate them-
selves.
And Enid took a little delicately.
Less having stomach for it than desire
To close with her lord's pleasure; but
Geraint
Ate all the mowers' victual unawares,
And when he found all empty, was
amazed ;
And * Boy,' said he, ' I have eaten all,
but take
A horse and arms for guerdon; choose
the best.'
He, reddening in extremity of delight,
* My lord, you overpay me fifty-fold.'
* Ye will be all the wealthier,' cried the
Prince.
* I take it as free gift, then,' said the boy,
* Not guerdon ; for myself can easily.
While your good damsel rests, return,
and fetch
Fresh victual for these mowers of our
Earl;
For these are his, and all the field is his,
And I myself am his; and I will tell him
How great a man thou art : he loves to
know
When men of mark are in his territory :
And he will have thee to his palace here,
And serve thee costlier than with mowers'
fare.'
Then said Geraint, * I wish no better
fare :
I never ate with angrier appetite
Than when I left your mowers dinnerless.
And into no Earl's palace will I go.
I know, God knows, too much of palaces !
And if he want me, let him come to me.
But hire us some fair chamber for the
night.
And stalling for the horses, and return
With victual for these men, and let us
know.'
' Yea, my kind lord,' said the glad
youth, and went,
Held his head high, and thought himself
a knight.
And up the rocky pathway disappear'd,
Leading the horse, and they were left
alone.
But when the Prince had brought his
errant eyes
Home from the rock, sideways he let
them glance
At Enid, where she droopt : his own false
doom,
That shadow of mistrust should never cross
Betwixt them, came upon him, and he
sigh'd;
Then with another humorous ruth re-
mark'd
The lusty mowers labouring dinnerless,
And watch'd the sun blaze on the turning
scythe.
And after nodded sleepiiy in the heat.
But she, remembering her old ruin'd hall,
And all the windy clamour of the daws
About her hollow turret, pluck'd the
grass
There growing longest by the meadow's
edge,
352
GERAINl^ AND ENID.
And into many a listless annulet,
Now over, now beneath her marriage
ring,
Wove and unwove it, till the boy return'd
And told them of a chamber, and they
went ;
Where, after saying to her, ' If ye will.
Call for the woman of the house,' to
which
She answer'd, 'Thanks, my lord; ' the
two remain'd
Apart by all the chamber's width, and
mute
As creatures voiceless thro' the fault of
birth.
Or two wild men supporters of a shield,
Painted, who stare at open space, nor
glance
The one at other, parted by the shield.
On a sudden, many a voice along the
street.
And heel against the pavement echoing,
burst
Their drowse; and either started while
the door,
Push'd from without, drave backward to
the wall,
And midmost of a rout of roisterers,
Femininely fair and dissolutely pale.
Her suitor in old years before Geraint,
Enter'd, the wild lord of the place,
Limours.
He moving up with pliant courtliness,
Greeted Geraint full face, but stealthily,
In the mid-warmth of welcome and graspt
hand.
Found Enid with the corner of his eye.
And knew her sitting sad and solitary. '
Then cried Geraint for wine and goodly
cheer
To feed the sudden guest, and sumptu-
ously
According to his fashion, bade the host
Call in what men soever were his friends,
And feast with these in honour of their
Earl;
'And care not for the cost; the cost is
mine.'
And wine and food were brought, and
Earl Limours
Drank till he jested with all ease, and told
Free tales, and took the word and play'd
upon it.
And made it of two colours; for his talk,
When wine and free companions kindled
him,
Was wont to glance and sparkle like a gem
Of fifty facets; thus he moved the Prince
To laughter and his comrades to applause.
Then, when the Prince was merry, ask'd
Limours,
* Your leave, my lord, to cross the room,
and speak
To your good damsel there who sits apart.
And seems so lonely ? ' * My free leave,'
he said;
* Get her to speak : she doth not speak to
me.'
Then rose Limours, and looking at his
feet,
Like him who tries the bridge he fears
may fail,
Crost and came near, lifted adoring eyes,
Bow'd at her side and utter'd whisper-
ingly :
* Enid, the pilot star of my lone life,
Enid, my early and my only love,
Enid, the loss of whom hath turn'd me
wild —
What chance is this? how is it I see you
here?
Ye are in my power at last, are in my
power.
Yet fear me not : I call .mine own self
wild.
But keep a touch of sweet civility
Here in the heart of waste and wilderness.
I thought, but that your father came
between.
In former days you saw me favourably.
And if it were so do not keep it back :
Make me a little happier : let me know it :
Owe you me nothing for a life half-lost?
Yea, yea, the whole dear debt of all you
are.
And, Enid, you and he, I see with joy.
Ye sit apart, you do not speak to him,
You come with no attendance, page or
maid.
To serve you — doth he love you as of old ?
For, call it lovers' quarrels, yet I know
Tho' men may bicker with the thing"
they love,
GERAINT AND ENID.
353
They would not make them laughable in
all eyes.
Not while they loved them; and your
wretched dress,
A wretched insult on you, dumbly speaks
Your story, that this man loves you no
more.
Your beauty is no beauty to him now :
A common chance — right well I know
it — pall'd —
For I know men : nor will ye win him
back,
For the man's love once gone never
returns.
But here is one who loves you as of old;
With more exceeding passion than of old :
Good, speak the word : my followers ring
him round :
He sits unarm'd; I hold a finger up;
They understand : nay; I do not mean
blood :
Nor need ye look so scared at what I
say:
My malice 'is no deeper than a moat,
No stronger than a wall : there is the
keep;
He shall not cross us more; speak but
the word :
Or speak it not; but then by Him that
made me
The one true lover whom you ever own'd,
I will make use of all the power I have.
O pardon me ! the madness of that hour,
When first I parted from thee, moves me
yet.'
At this the tender sound of his own
voice
And sweet self-pity, or the fancy of it.
Made his eye moist; but Enid fear'd his
eyes,
Moist as they were, wine-heated from the
feast;
And answer'd with such craft as women
use.
Guilty or guiltless, to stave off a chance
That breaks upon them perilously, and
said:
' Earl, if you love me as in former
years,
And do not practise on me, come with
morn,
And snatch me from him as by violence;
Leave me to-night : I am weary to the
death.'
Low at leave-taking, with his brandish'd
plume
Brushing his instep, bow'd the all-amorous
Earl,
And the stout Prince bade him a loud
good-night.
He moving homeward babbled to his men.
How Enid never loved a man but him.
Nor cared a broken egg-shell for her lord.
But Enid left alone with Prince Geraint,
Debating his command of silence given.
And that she now perforce must violate it.
Held commune with herself, and while
she held
He fell asleep, and Enid had no heart
To wake him, but hung o'er him, wholly
pleased
To find him yet unwounded after fight.
And hear him breathing low and equally.
Anon she rose, and stepping lightly,
heap'd
The pieces of his armour in one place.
All to be there against a sudden need;
Then dozed awhile herself, but overtoil'd
By that day's grief and travel, evermore
Seem'd catching at a rootless thorn, and
then
Went slipping down horrible precipices.
And strongly striking out her limbs
awoke ;
Then thought she heard the wild Earl at
the door.
With all his rout of random followers,
Sound on a dreadful trumpet, summoning
her;
Which was the red cock shouting to the
light,
As the gray dawn stole o'er the dewy
world,
And glimmer'd on his armour in the room.
And once again she rose to look at it.
But touch'd it unawares: jangling, the
casque
P'ell, and he started up and stared at her.
Then breaking his command of silence
given,
She told him all that Earl Limours had
said.
i54
GERAINT AND ENID.
Except the passage that he loved her not;
Nor left untold the craft herself had used;
But ended with apology so sweet,
Low-spoken, and of so few words, and
seem'd
So justified by that necessity,
That tho' he thought ' was it for him she
wept
In Devon? ' he but gave a wrathful groan.
Saying, 'Your sweet faces make good
fellows fools
And traitors. Call the host and bid him
bring
Charger and palfrey.' So she glided out
Among the heavy breathings of the
house,
And like a household Spirit at the walls
Beat, till she woke the sleepers, and
return'd :
Then tending her rough lord, tho' all
unask'd.
In silence, did him service as a squire;
Till issuing arm'd he found the host and
cried,
'Thy reckoning, friend?' and ere he
learnt it, ' Take
Five horses and their armours; ' and the
host
Suddenly honest, answer'd in amaze,
' My lord, I scarce have spent the worth
of one ! '
• ' Ye will be all the .wealthier,' said the
Prince,
And then to Enid, * Forward ! and to-day
I charge you, Enid, more especially,
What thing soever ye may hear, or see.
Or fancy (tho' I count it of small use
To charge you) that ye speak not but
obey.'
And Enid answer'd, 'Yea, my lord,
I know
Your wish, and would obey ; but riding
first,
I hear the violent threats you do not hear,
I see the danger which you cannot see :
Then not to give you warning, that seems
hard;
Almost beyond me : yet I would obey.'
*Yea so,' said he, 'do it: be not too
wise ;
Seeing that ye are wedded to a man,
Not all mismated with a yawning clown.
But one with arms to guard his head and
yours.
With eyes to find you out however far.
And ears to hear you even in his dreams.'
With that he turn'd and look'd as
keenly at her
As careful robins eye the delver's toil;
And that within her, which a wanton fool.
Or hasty judger would have call'd her
guilt,
Made her cheek burn and either eyelid fall.
And Geraint look'd and was not satisfied.
Then forv»'ard by a way which, beaten
broad.
Led from the territory of false Limours
To the waste earldom of another earl,
Doorm, whom his shaking vassals call'd
the Bull,
Went Enid with her sullen follower on.
Once she look'd back, and when she saw
him ride
More near by many a rood than yester-
morn.
It wellnigh made her cheerful; till
Geraint
Waving an angry hand as who should say
'Ye watch me,' sadden'd all her heart
again.
But while the sun yet beat a dewy blade,
The sound of many a heavily-galloping
hoof
Smote on her ear, and turning round she
saw
Dust, and the points of lances bicker in it.
Then not to disobey her lord's behest.
And yet to give him warning, for he rode
As if he heard not, moving back she held
Her finger up, and pointed to the dust.
At which the warrior in his obstinacy.
Because she kept the letter of his word.
Was in a manner pleased, and turning,
stood.
And in the moment after,, wild Limours,
Borne on a black horse, like a thunder-
cloud
Whose skirts are loosen' d by the breaking
storm,
Half ridden off with by the thing he
rode,
And all in passion uttering a dry shriek,
GERAINT AND ENID.
355
Dash'd on Geraint, who closed with him,
and bore
Down by the length of lance and arm
beyond
The crupper, and so left him stunn'd or
dead.
And overthrew the next that foUow'd him.
And blindly rush'd on all the rout behind.
But at the flash and motion of the man
They vanish'd panic-stricken, like a shoal
Of darting fish, that on a summer morn
Adown the crystal dykes at Camelot
Come slipping o'er their shadows on the
sand.
But if a man who stands upon the brink
But lift a shining hand against the sun.
There is not left the twinkle of a fin
Betwixt the cressy islets white in flower;
So, scared but at the motion of the man,
Fled all the boon companions of the Earl,
And left him lying in the public way;
So vanish friendships only made in wine.
Then like a stormy sunlight smiled
Geraint,
Who saw the chargers of the two that fell
Start from their fallen lords, and wildly
Mixt with the flyers. * Horse and man,'
he said,
* All of one mind and all right-honest
friends !
Not a hoof left : and I methinks till now
Was honest — paid with horses and with
arms;
I cannot steal or plunder, no nor beg :
And so what say ye, shall we strip him
there
Your lover ? has your palfrey heart enough
To bear his armour? shall we fast, or
dine?
No? — then do thou, being right honest,
pray
That we may meet the horsemen of Earl
Doorm,
I too would still be honest.' Thus he
said :
And sadly gazing on her bridle-reins,
And answering not one word, she led the
way.
But as a man to whom a dreadful loss
Falls in a far land and he knows it not.
But coming back he learns it, and the loss
So pains him that he sickens nigh to
death;
So fared it with Geraint, who being prick'd
In combat with the follower of Limours,
Bled underneath his armour secretly,
And so rode on, nor told his gentle wife
What ail'd him, hardly knowing it himself,
Till his eye darken'd and his helmet
wagg'd ;
And at a sudden swerving of the road,
Tho' happily down on a bank of grass,
The Prince, without a word, from his
horse fell.
And Enid heard the clashing of his fall.
Suddenly came, and at his side all pale
Dismounting, loosed the fastenings of his
arms.
Nor let her true hand falter, nor blue eye
Moisten, till she had lighted on his wound.
And tearing off her veil of faded silk
Had bared her forehead to the blistering
sun,
And swathed the hurt that drain'd her
dear lord's life.
Then after all was done that hand could do,
She rested; and her desolation came
Upon her, and she wept beside the way.
And many past, but none regarded her,
For in that realm of lawless turbulence,
A woman weeping for her murder'd mate
Was cared as much for as a summer
shower :
One took him for a victim of Earl Doorm,
Nor dared to waste a perilous pity on him :
Another hurrying past, a man-at-arms,
Rode on a mission to the bandit Earl;
Half whistling and half singing a coarse
song,
He drove the dust against her veilless
eyes :
Another, flying from the wrath of Doorm
Before an ever-fancied arrow, made
The long way smoke beneath him in his
fear;
At which her palfrey whinnying lifted
heel.
And scour'd into the coppices and was
lost.
While the great charger stood, grieved
like a man.
356
GERAINT AND ENID.
But at the point of noon the huge Earl
Doorm,
Broad-faced with under-fringe of russet
beard,
Bound on a foray, rolling eyes of prey,
Came riding with a hundred lances up;
But ere he came, hke one that hails a ship.
Cried out with a big voice, 'What, is he
dead?'
* No, no, not dead ! ' she answer'd in all
haste.
* Would some of your kind people take
him up.
And bear him hence out of this cruel sun?
Most sure am I, quite sure, he is not dead.'
Then said Earl Doorm: 'Well, if he
be not dead,
Why wail ye for him thus? ye seem a child.
And be he dead, I count you for a fool;
Your wailing will not quicken him : dead
or not.
Ye mar a comely face with idiot tears.
Yet, since the face is comely — some of
you.
Here, take him up, and bear him -to our
hall:
And if he live, we will have him of our
band;
And if he die, why earth has earth enough
To hide him. See ye take the charger too,
A noble one.'
He spake, and past away,
But left two brawny spearmen, who
advanced,
Each growling like a dog, when his good
bone
Seems to be pluck'd at by the village boys
W^ho love to vex him eating, and he fears
To lose his bone, and lays his foot upon it.
Gnawing and growling: so the ruffians
growl' d.
Fearing to lose, and all for a dead man.
Their chance of booty from the morning's
raid.
Yet raised and laid him on a litter-bier.
Such as they brought upon their forays
out
For those that might be wounded; laid
him on it
All in the hollow of his shield, and took
And bore him to the naked hall of Doorm
(His gentle charger following him unled).
And cast him and the bier in which he
lay
Down on an oaken settle in the hall.
And then departed, hot in haste to join
Their luckier mates, but growling as
before,
And cursing their lost time, and the dead
man,
And their own Earl, and their own souls,
and her.
They might as well have blest her : she
was deaf
To blessing or to cursing save from one.
So for long hours sat Enid by her lord.
There in the naked hall, propping his
head,
And chafing his pale hands, and calling
to him.
Till at the last he waken'd from his swoon,
And found his own dear bride propping
his head,
And chafing his faint hands, and calling
to him;
And felt the warm tears faUing on his face;
And said to his own heart, ' She weeps for
me: '
And yet lay still, and feign'd himself as
dead.
That he might prove her to the uttermost,
And say to his own heart, ' She weeps for
me.'
But in the falling afternoon retum'd
The huge Earl Doorm with plunder to
the hall.
His lusty spearmen follow'd him with
noise :
Each hurling down a heap of things that
rang
Against the pavement, cast his lance aside,
And dofiPd his helm : and then there
flutter'd in.
Half-bold, half-frighted, with dilated eyes,
A tribe of women, dress'd in many hues.
And mingled with the spearmen: and
Earl Doorm
Struck with a knife's haft hard against
the board,
And call'd for flesh and wine to feed his
spears.
And men brought in whole hogs and
quarter beeves,
GERAINT AND ENID.
357
And all the hall was dim with steam of
flesh:
And none spake word, but all sat down
at once,
And ate with tumult in the naked hall,
Feeding like horses when you hear them
feed;
Till Enid shrank far back into herself,
To shun the wild ways of the lawless tribe.
But when Earl Doorm had eaten all he
would,
He roll'd his eyes about the hall, and
found
A damsel drooping in a corner of it.
Then he reniember'd her, and how she
wept ;
And out of her there came a power upon
him;
And rising on the sudden he said, ' Eat !
I never yet beheld a thing so pale.
God's curse, it makes me mad to see you
weep.
Eat ! Look yourself. Good luck had
your good man.
For were I dead who is it would weep for
me?
Sweet lady, never since I first drew breath
Have I beheld a lily like yourself.
And so there lived some colour in your
cheek,
There is not one among my gentlewomen
Were fit to wear your slipper for a glove.
But listen to me, and by me be ruled.
And I will do the thing I have not done,
For ye shall share my earldom with me,
girl
And we will live like two birds in 'one
nest,
And I will fetch you forage from all fields.
For I compel all creatures to my will.'
He spoke : the brawny spearman let
his cheek
Bulge with the unswallow'd piece, and
turning stared;
While some, whose souls the old serpent
long had drawn
Down, as the worm draws in the wither'd
leaf .
And makes it earth, hiss'd each at other's
ear
What shall not be recorded — women
they,
Women, or what had been those gracious
things.
But now desired the humbling of their
best.
Yea, would have help'd him to it: and
all at once
They hated her, who took no thought of
them,
But answer'd in low voice, her meek head
yet
Drooping, ' I pray you of your courtesy,
He being as he is, to let me be.'
She spake so low he hardly heard her
speak,
But like a mighty patron, satisfied
With what himself had done so graciously,
Assumed that she had thank'd him, add-
ing, ' Yea,
Eat and be glad, for I account you mine.*
She answer'd meekly, ' How should I
be glad
Henceforth in all the world at anything.
Until my lord arise and look upon me?'
Here the huge Earl cried out upon her
talk,
As all but empty heart and weariness
And sickly nothing ; suddenly seized on
her.
And bare her by main violence to the
board.
And thrust the dish before her, crying,
' Eat.'
' No, no,' said Enid, vext, * I will not eat
Till yonder man upon the bier arise.
And eat with me.' ' Drink, then,' he
answer'd. ' Here ! '
(And fiU'd a horn with wine and held it
to her,)
' Lo ! I, myself, when flush'd with fight,
or hot,
God's curse, with anger — often I myself,
.Before I well have drunken, scarce can
eat:
Drink therefore and the wine will change
your will.'
* Not so,' she cried, * by Heaven, I will
not drink
Till my dear lord arise and bid me do it,
358
GERAINT AND ENID.
And drink with me; and if he rise no
more,
I will not look at wine until I die.'
At this he turn'd all red and paced his
hall,
Now gnaw'd his under, now his upper
lip,
And coming up close to her, said at last :
* Girl, for I see ye scorn my courtesies.
Take warning: yonder man is surely
dead ;
And I compel all creatures to my will.
Not eat nor drink? And wherefore wail
for one,
Who put your beauty to this flout and
scorn
By dressing it in rags? Amazed am I,
Beholding how ye butt against my wish,
That I forbear you thus : cross me no
more.
At least put off to please me this poor
gown,
This silken rag, this beggar-woman's
weed :
I love that beauty should go beautifully:
For see ye not my gentlewomen here,
How gay, how suited to the house of one
"Who loves that beauty should go beauti-
fully?
Rise therefore; robe yourself in this:
obey.'
He spoke, and one among his gentle-
women
Display'd a splendid silk of foreign loom,
Where like a shoaling sea the lovely
blue
Play'd into green, and thicker down the
front
With jewels than the sward with drops of
dew,
When all night long a cloud clings to the
hill,
Ajid with the dawn ascending lets the day
Strike where it clung : so thickly shone .
the gems.
But Enid answer'd, harder to be moved
Than hardest tyrants in their day of power.
With life-long injuries burning unavenged.
And now their hour has come; and
Enid said :
* In this poor gown my dear lord found
me first,
And loved me serving in my father's hall;
In this poor gown I rode with him to
court.
And there the Queen array'd me like the
sun:
In this poor gown he bade me clothe
myself.
When now we rode upon this fatal quest
Of honour, where no honour can be
gain'd :
And this poor gown I will not cast aside
Until himself arise a living man.
And bid me cast it. I have griefs enough :
Pray you be gentle, pray you let me be :
I never loved, can never love but him :
Yea, God, I pray you of your gentleness,
He being as he is, to let me be.'
Then strode the brute Earl up and
down his hall.
And took his russet beard between his
teeth;
Last, coming up quite close, and in his
mood
Crying, ' I count it of no more avail,
Dame, to be gentle than ungentle with
you;
Take my salute,' unknightly with flat hand,
However lightly, smote her on the cheek.
Then Enid, in her utter helplessness.
And since she thought, ' He had not
dared to do it.
Except he surely knew my lord was dead,'
Sent forth a sudden sharp and bitter cry,
As of a wild thing taken in the trap.
Which sees the trapper coming thro' the
wood.
This heard Geraint, and grasping at
his sword
(It lay beside him in the hollow shield),
Made but a single bound, and with a
sweep of it
Shore thro' the swarthy neck, and like a
ball
The russet-bearded head roU'd on the
floor.
So died Earl Doorm by him he counted
dead.
And all the men and women in the hall
GERAINT AND ENID.
359
Rose when they saw the dead man rise,
and fled
Yelling as from a spectre, and the two
Were left alone together, and he said :
' Enid, I have used you worse than
that dead man;
Done you more wrong : we both have
undergone
That trouble which has left me thrice
your own :
Henceforward I will rather die than doubt.
And here I lay this penance on myself,
Not, tho' mine own ears heard you
yestermorn —
You thought me sleeping, but I heard
you say,
I heard you say, that you were no true
wife :
I swear I will not ask your meaning in it :
I do believe yourself against yourself.
And will henceforward rather die than
doubt.'
And Enid could not say one tender
word,
She felt so blunt and stupid at the heart :
She only pray'd him, * Fly, they will
return
And slay you; fly, your charger is with-
out,
My palfrey lost.' 'Then, Enid, shall you
ride
Behind me.' * Yea,' said Enid, * let us go.'
And moving out they found the stately
horse,
Who now no more a vassal to the thief,
But free to stretch his limbs in lawful
fight,
Neigh'd with all gladness as they came,
and stoop'd
With a low whinny toward the pair : and
she
Kiss'd the white star upon his noble
front.
Glad also; then Geraint upon the horse
Mounted, and reach'd a hand, and on his
foot
She set her own and climb'd; he turn'd
his face
And kiss'd her climbing, and she cast
her arms
About him, and at once they rode away.
And never yet, since high in Paradise
O'er the four rivers the first roses blew.
Came purer pleasure unto mortal kind
Than lived thro' her, who in that perilous
hour
Put hand to hand beneath her husband's
heart,
And felt him hers again : she did not
weep.
But o'er her meek eyes came a happy
mist
Like that which kept the heart of Eden
green
Before the useful trouble of the rain :
Yet not so misty were her meek blue
eyes
As not to see before them on the path.
Right in the gateway of the bandit hold,
A knight of Arthur's court, who laid his
lance
In rest, and made as if to fall upon him.
Then, fearing for his hurt and loss of
blood.
She, with her mind all full of what had
chanced,
Shriek'd to the stranger * Slay not a dead
man! '
'The voice of Enid,' said the knight;
but she.
Beholding it was Edyrn son of Nudd,
Was moved so much the more, and
shriek'd again,
'O cousin, slay not liim who gave you
life.'
And Edyrn moving frankly forward spake :
' My lord Geraint, 1 greet you with all
love;
I took you for a bandit knight of Doorm ;
And fear not, Enid, I should fall upon
him,
W^ho love you. Prince, with something of
the love
Wherewith we love the Heaven that
chastens us.
For once, when I was up so high in pride
That I was halfwav down the slope to
Hell,
By overthrowing me you threw me higher.
Now, made a knight of Arthur's Table
Round,
And since I knew this Earl, when I my-
self
Was half a bandit in my lawless hour.
360
GERAINT AND ENID.
I come the mouthpiece of our King to
Doorm
(The King is close behind me) bidding
him
Disband himself, and scatter all his powers,
Submit, and hear the judgment of the
King.'
' He hears the judgment of the King of
kings,'
Cried the wan Prince ; ' and lo, the
powers of Doorm
Are scatter'd,' and he pointed to the field,
Where, huddled here and there on mound
and knoll,
Were men and women staring and aghast,
While some yet fled ; and then he plainlier
told
How the huge Earl lay slain within his
hall.
But when the knight besought him,
• Follow me,
Prince, to the camp, and in the King's
own ear
Speak what has chanced; ye surely
have endured
Strange chances here alone;' that other
flush'd.
And hung his head, and halted in reply,
Fearing the mild face of the blameless
King,
And after madness acted question ask'd :
Till Edyrn crying, * If ye will not go
To Arthur, then will Arthur come to you,'
* Enough,' he said, * I follow,' and they
went.
But Enid in their going had two fears,
One from the bandit scatter'd in the field,
And one from Edyrn. Every now and
then.
When Edyrn rein'd his charger at her
side.
She shrank a little. In a hollow land.
From which old fires have broken, men
may fear
Fresh fire and ruin. He, perceiving, said :
* Fair and dear cousin, you that most
had cause
To fear me, fear no longer, I am changed.
Yourself were first the blameless cause to
make
My nature's prideful sparkle in the blood
Break into furious flame; being repulsed
By Yniol and yourself, 1 schemed and
wrought
Until I overturn'd him; then set up
(With one main purpose ever at my heart)
My haughty jousts, and took a paramour;
Did her mock-honour as the fairest fair.
And, toppling over all antagonism.
So wax'd in pride, that I believed myself
Unconquerable, for I was wellnigh mad :
And, but for my main purpose in these
jousts,
I should have slain your father, seized
yourself.
I lived in hope that sometime you would
come
To these my lists with him whom best
you loved;
And there, poor cousin, with your meek
blue eyes.
The truest eyes that ever answer'd
Heaven,
Behold me overturn and trample on him.
Then, had you cried, or knelt, or pray'd
to me,
I should not less have kill'd him. And
you came, —
But once you came, — and with your
own true eyes
Beheld the man you loved (I speak as
one
Speaks of a service done him) overthrow
My proud self, and my purpose three
years old.
And set his foot upon me, and give me
Hfe.
There was I broken down; there was I
saved :
Tho' thence I rode all-shamed, hating
the hfe
He gave me, meaning to be rid of it.
And all the penance the Queen laid upon
me
Was but to rest awhile within her court;
Where first as sullen as a beast new-caged,
And waiting to be treated like a wolf,
Because I knew my deeds were known,
I found,
Instead of scornful pity or pure scorn,
Such fine reserve and noble reticence,
Manners so kind, yet stately, such a grace
Of tenderest courtesy, that I began
To glance behind me at my former life,
GERAINT AND ENID.
361
And find that it had been the wolfs
indeed :
And oft I talk'd with Dubric, the high
saint,
Who, with mild heat of holy oratory,
Subdued me somewhat to that gentleness,
Which, when it weds with manhood,
makes a man.
And you were often there about the
Queen,
But saw me not, or mark'd not if you
saw ;
Nor did I care or dare to speak with you,
But kept myself aloof till I was changed;
And fear not, cousin; I am changed
indeed.'
He spoke, and Enid easily believed,
Like simple noble natures, credulous
Of what they long for, good in friend or
foe.
There most in those who most have done
them ill.
And when they reach'd the camp the
King himself
Advanced to greet them, and beholding
her
Tho' pale, yet happy, ask'd her not a
word.
But went apart with Edyrn, whom he held
In converse for a little, and return'd.
And, gravely smiling, lifted her from
horse.
And kiss'd her with all pureness, brother-
like.
And show'd an empty tent allotted her.
And glancing for a minute, till he saw her
Pass into it, turn'd to the Prince, and
said :
* Prince, when of late ye pray'd me for
my leave
To move to your own land, and there
defend
Your marches, I was prick'd with some
reproof,
As one that let foul wrong stagnate and be.
By having look'd too much thro' alien
eyes.
And wrought too long with delegated
hands,
Not used mine own : but now behold me
come
To cleanse this common sewer of all my
realm.
With Edyrn and with others: have ye
look'd
At Edyrn? have ye seen how nobly
changed?
This work of his is great and wonderful.
His very face with change of heart is
changed.
The world will not believe a man repents :
And this wise world of ours is mainly
right.
Full seldom doth a man repent, or use
Both grace and will to pick the vicious
quitch
Of blood and custom wholly out of him,
And make all clean, and plant himself
afresh.
Edyrn has done it, weeding all his heart
As I will weed this land before I go.
I, therefore, made him of our Table
Round,
Not rashly, but have proved him every-
way
One of our noblest, our most valorous.
Sanest and most obedient : and indeed
This work of Edyrn wrought upon him-
self
After a life of violence, seems to me
A thousand-fold more great and wonderful
Than if some knight of mine, risking his
hfe.
My subject with my subjects under him,
Should make an onslaught single on a
realm
Of robbers, tho' he slew them one by one.
And were himself nigh wounded to the
death.'
So spake the King; low bow'd the
Prince, and felt
His work was neither great nor wonder-
ful,
And past to Enid's tent; and thither
came
The King's own leech to look into his
hurt;
And Enid tended on him there; and
there
Her constant motion round him, and the
breath
Of her sweet tendance hovering over
him.
362
BALIN AND BALAN.
Fill'd all the genial courses of his blood
With deeper and with ever deeper love,
As the south-west that blowing Bala lake
Fills all the sacred Dee. So past the
days.
But while Geraint lay healing of his
hurt,
The blameless King went forth and cast
his eyes
On each of all whom Uther left in charge
Long since, to guard the justice of the
King:
He look'd and found them wanting; and
as now
Men weed the white horse on the Berk-
shire hills
To keep him bright and clean as hereto-
fore.
He rooted out the slothful officer
Or guilty, which for bribe had wink'd at
wrong,
And in their chairs set up a stronger race
With hearts and hands, and sent a thou-
sand men
To till the wastes, and moving everywhere
Cleared the dark places and let in the law,
And broke the bandit holds and cleansed
the land.
Then, when Geraint was whole again,
they past
With Arthur to Caerleon upon Usk.
There the great Queen once more em-
braced her friend.
And clothed her in apparel like the day.
And tho' Geraint could never take again
That comfort from their converse which
he took
Before the Queen's fair name was breathed
upon,
He rested well content that all was well.
Thence after tarrying for a space they
rode.
And fifty knights rode with them to the
shores
Of Severn, and they past to their own
land.
And there he kept the justice of the King
So vigorously yet mildly, that all hearts
Applauded, and the spiteful whisper died :
And being ever foremost in the chase,
And victor at the tilt and tournament,
They call'd him the great Fringe and man
of men.
But Enid, whom her ladies loved to call
Enid the Fair, a grateful people named
Enid the Good; and in their halls arose
The cry of children, Enids and Geraints
Of times to be; nor did he doubt her
more,
But rested in her fealty, till he crown'd
A happy life with a fair death, and fell
Against the heathen of the Northern Sea
In battle, fighting for the blameless King.
BALIN AND BALAN.
Pellam the King, who held and lost with
Lot
In that first war, and had his realm restored
But render'd tributary, fail'd of late
To send his tribute; wherefore Arthur
call'd
His treasurer, one of many years, and
spake,
* Go thou with him and him and bring it
to us,
Lest we should set one truer on his throne.
Man's word is God in man.'
His Baron said
* We go but harken : there be two strange
knights
Who sit near Camelot at a fountain-side,
A mile beneath the forest, challenging
And overthrowing every knight who
comes.
Wilt thou I undertake them as we pass,
And send them to thee? '
Arthur laugh'd upon him.
* Old friend, too old to be so young,
depart,
Delay not thou for aught, but let them
sit,
Until they find a lustier than themselves.'
So these departed. Early, one fair
dawn.
The light-wing'd spirit of his youth
return'd
On Arthur's heart; he arm'd himself and
went.
So coming to the fountain-side beheld
Balin and Balan sitting statuelike,
BALIN AND BALAN.
363
Brethren, to right and left the spring, that
down.
From underneath a plume of lady-fern,
Sang, and the sand danced at the bottom
of it.
And on the right of Balin Balin's horse
Was fast beside an alder, on the left
Of Balan Balan's near a poplartree.
* Fair Sirs,' said Arthur, * wherefore sit
ye here?'
Balin and Balan answer'd, * For the sake
Of glory; we be mightier men than all
In Arthur's court; that also have we
proved;
For whatsoever knight against us came
Or I or he have easily overthrown.'
* I too,' said Arthur, ' am of Arthur's
hall.
But rather proven in his Paynim wars
Than famous jousts; but see, or proven
or not,
Whether me likewise ye can overthrow.'
And Arthur lightly smote the brethren
down.
And lightly so return'd, and no man knew.
Then Balin rose, and Balan, and beside
The carolling water set themselves again,
And spake no word until the shadow
turn'd;
When from the fringe of coppice round
them burst
A spangled pursuivant, and crying * Sirs,
Rise, follow ! ye be sent for by the
King,'
They follow'd ; whom when Arthur seeing
ask'd
* Tell me your names; why sat ye by the
well?'
Balin the stillness of a minute broke
Saying, ' An unmelodious name to thee,
Balin, "the Savage" — that addition
thine —
My brother and my better, this man here,
Balan. I smote upon the naked skull
A thrall of thine in open hall, my hand
Was gauntleted, half slew him; for I
heard
He had spoken evil of me; thy just wrath
Sent me a three-years' exile from thine
eyes.
I have not lived my life delightsomely :
For I that did that violence to thy thrall,
Had often wrought some fury on myself,
Saving for *Balan : those three kingless
years
Have past — were wormwood-bitter to
me. King,
Methought that if we sat beside the well,
And hurl'd to ground what knight soever
spurr'd
Against us, thou would'st take me gladher
back.
And make, as ten-times worthier to be
thine
Than twenty Balins, Balan knight. I
have said.
Not so — not all. A man of thine to-day
Abash'd us both, and brake my boast.
Thy. will?'
Said Arthur, 'Thou hast ever spoken
truth;
Thy too fierce manhood would not let
thee lie.
Rise, my true knight. As children learn,
be thou
Wiser for falling! walk with me, and
move
To music with thine Order and the King.
Thy chair, a grief to all the brethren,
stands
Vacant, but thou retake it, mine again ! '
Thereafter, when Sir Balin enter'd hall.
The Lost one Found was greeted as in
Heaven
With joy that blazed itself in woodland
wealth
Of leaf, and gayest garlandage of flowers.
Along the walls and down the board;
they sat.
And cup clash'd cup; they drank and
some one sang,
Sweet-voiced, a song of welcome, where-
upon
Their common shout in chorus, mount-
ing, made
Those banners of twelve battles overhead
Stir, as they stirr'd of old, when Arthur's
host
Proclaim'd him Victor, and the day was
won.
Then Balan added to their Order lived
A wealthier life than heretofore with these
And Balin, till their embassage return'd.
364
BALIN AND BALAN.
* Sir King,' they brought report, ' we
hardly found, *
So bush'd about it is with gloom, the hall
Of him to whom ye sent us, Pellam, once
A Christless foe of thine as ever dash'd
Horse against horse; but seeing that thy
realm
Hath prosper'd in the name of Christ, the
King
Took, as in rival heat, to holy things;
And finds himself descended from the
Saint
Arimathsean Joseph ; him who first
Brought the great faith to Britain over
seas;
He boasts his life as purer than thine
own;
Eats scarce enow to keep his pulse abeat;
Hath push'd aside his faithful wife, nor lets
Or dame or damsel enter at his gates
Lest he should be polluted. This gray
King
Show'd us a shrine wherein were wonders
— yea —
Rich arks with priceless bones of martyr-
dom,
Thorns of the crown and shivers of the
cross,
And therewithal (for thus he told us)
brought
By Holy Joseph hither, that same spear
Wherewith the Roman pierced the side
of Christ.
He much amazed us; after, when vi^e
sought
The tribute, answer'd " 1 have quite fore-
gone
All matters of this world : Garlon, mine
heir,
Of him demand it," which this Garlon gave
With much ado, railing at thine and thee.
* But when we left, in those deep woods
we found
A knight of thine spear-stricken from
behind,
Dead, whom we buried; more than one
of us
Cried out on Garlon, but a woodman there
Reported of some demon in the woods
Was once a man, who driven by evil
tongues
From all his fellows, lived alone, and came
To learn black magic, and to hate his kind
With such a hate, that when he died, his
soul
Became a Fiend, which, as the man in life
W^as wounded by blind tongues he saw
not whence.
Strikes from behind. This woodman
show'd the cave
From which he sallies, and wherein he
dwelt.
We saw the hoof-print of a horse, no
more.'
Then Arthur, ' Let who goes before
me, see
He do not fall behind me : foully slain
And villainously ! who will hunt for me
This demon of the woods? ' Said Balan,
*I!'
So claim'd the quest and rode away, but
first.
Embracing Balin, * Good my brother,
hear!
Let not thy moods prevail, when I am
gone
Who used to lay them ! hold them outer
fiends.
Who leap at thee to tear thee; shake
them aside,
Dreams ruling when wit sleeps ! yea, but
to dream
That any of these would wrong thee,
wrongs thyself.
Witness their flowery welcome. Bound
are they
To speak no evil. Truly save for fears.
My fears for thee, so rich a fellowship
Would make me wholly blest : thou one
of them,
Be one indeed : consider them, and all
Their bearing in their common bond of
love,
No more of hatred than in Heaven itself,
No more of jealousy than in Paradise.*
So Balan warn'd, and went; Balin
remain'd :
Who — for but three brief moons had
glanced away
From being knighted till he smote the
thrall.
And faded from the presence into years
Of exile — now would strictlier set himself
BALIN AND BALAN.
36S
To learn what Arthur meant by courtesy,
Manhood, and knighthood; wherefore
hover'd round
Lancelot, but when he mark'd his high
sweet smile
In passing, and a transitory word
Make knight or churl or child or damsel
seem
From being smiled at happier in them-
selves —
Sigh'd, as a boy lame-born beneath a
height,
That glooms his valley, sighs to see the
peak
Sun-flush'd, or touch at night the north-
ern star;
For one from out his village lately climb'd
And brought report of azure lands and fair,
Far seen to left and right; and he himself
Hath hardly scaled with help a hundred
feet
Up from the base: so Balin marvelling
oft
How far beyond him Lancelot seem'd to
move,
Groan'd, and at times would mutter,
'These be gifts,
Born with the blood, not learnable, divine.
Beyond my reach. Well had I foughten
— well —
In those fierce wars, struck hard — and
had I crown'd
With my slain self the heaps of whom I
slew —
So — better ! — But this worship of the
Queen,
That honour too wherein she holds him
— this,
This was the sunshine that hath given the
man
A growth, a name that branches o'er the
rest, ■
And strength against all odds, and what
the King
So prizes — overprizes — gentleness.
Her likewise would I worship an I might.
I never can be close with her, as he
That brought her hither. Shall I pray the
King
To let me bear some token of his Queen
Whereon to gaze, remembering her —
forget
My heats and violences? live afresh?
j What, if the Queen disdain'd to grant it!
nay
Being so stately-gentle, would she make
My darkness blackness? and with how
sweet grace
She greeted my return ! Bold will I be —
Some goodly cognizance of Guinevere,
In lieu of this rough beast upon my shield,
Langued gules, and tooth'd with grinning
savagery.'
And Arthur, when Sir Balin sought
him, said
* What wilt thou bear ? ' Balin was bold,
and ask'd
To bear her own crown-royal upon
shield,
Whereat she smiled and turn'd her to the
King,
Who answer'd, 'Thou shalt put the crown
to use.
The crown is but the shadow of the
King,
And this a shadow's shadow, let him
have it,
So this will help him of his violences ! '
' No shadow,' said Sir Balin, 'O my Queen,
But light to me ! no shadow, O my King,
But golden earnest of a gentler Hfe ! '
So Balin bare the crown, and all the
knights
Approved him, and the Queen, and all
the world
Made music, and he felt his being move
In music with his Order, and the King.
The nightingale, full-toned in middle
May,
Hath ever and anon a note so thin
It seems another voice in other groves;
Thus, after some quick burst of sudden
wrath,
The music in him seem'd to change, and
grow
Faint and far-off.
And once he saw the thrall
His passion half had gauntleted to death,
That causer of his banishment and shame,
Smile at him, as he deem'd, presumptu-
ously :
His arm half rose to strike again, but fell ;
366
BALIN AND BALAN.
The memory of that cognizance on shield
Weighted it down, but in himself he
moan'd :
*Too high this mount of Camelot for
me :
These high-set courtesies are not for me.
Shall I not rather prove the worse for
these ?
Fierier and stormier from restraining,
break
Into some madness ev'n before the
Queen?'
Thus, as a hearth lit in a mountain
home,
And glancing on the window, when the
gloom
Of twilight deepens round it, seems a
flame
That rages in a woodland far below.
So when his moods were darken'd, court
and King
And all the kindly warmth of Arthur's
hall
Shadow'd an angry distance: yet he
strove
To learn the graces of their Table, fought
Hard with himself, and seem'd at length
in peace.
Then chanced, one morning, that Sir
Balin sat
Qose-bower'd in that garden nigh the
hall.
A walk of roses ran from door to door;
A walk of lilies crost it to the bower :
And down that range of roses the great
Queen
Came with slow steps, the morning on
her face;
And all in shadow from the counter door
Sir Lancelot as to meet her, then at
once,
As if he saw not, glanced aside, and
paced
The long white walk of lilies toward the
bower.
FoUow'd.the Queen; Sir Balin heard her
* Prince,
Art thou so little loya. to thy Queen,
As pass without good morrow to thy
Queen? '
To whom Sir Lancelot with his eyes on
earth,
* Fain would I still be loyal to the Queen.'
*Yea so,' she said, 'but so to pass me
by-
So loyal scarce is loyal to thyself,
Whom all men rate the king of courtesy.
Let be : ye stand, fair lord, as in a
dream.'
Then Lancelot with his hand among
the flowers,
*Yea — for a dream. Last night me-
thought I saw
That maiden Saint who stands with lily
in hand
In yonder shrine. All round her prest
the dark.
And all the light upon'her silver face
Flow'd from the spiritual lily that she
held.
Lo ! these her emblems drew mine eyes
— away :
For see, how perfect-pure ! As light a
flush
As hardly tints the blossom of the quince
Would mar their charm of stainless
maidenhood.'
* Sweeter to me,' she said, * this garden
rose
Deep-hued and many-folded! sweeter
still
The wild-wood hyacinth and the bloom
of May.
Prince, we have ridd'n before among the
flowers
In those fair days — not ajl as cool as
these,
Tho' season-earlier. Art thou sad? or
sick?
Our noble King will send thee his own
leech —
Sick? or for any matter anger'd at me?'
Then Lancelot lifted his large eyes;
they dwelt
Deep-tranced on hers, and could not fall :
her hue
Changed at his gaze : so turning side by
side
They past, and Balin started from his
bower.
BALIN AND BALAN.
3^7
'Queen? subject? but I see not what
I see.
Damsel and lover? hear not what I
hear.
My father hath begotten me in his wrath.
I suffer from the things before me,
know,
Learn nothing; am not worthy to be
knight;
A churl, a clown ! ' and in him gloom on
gloom
Deepen'd: he sharply caught his lance
and shield,
Nor stay'd to crave permission of the
King,
But, mad for strange adventure, dash'd
away.
He took the selfsame track as Balan,
saw
The fountain where they sat together,
sigh'd,
'Was I not better there with him? ' and
rode
The skyless woods, but under open blue
Came on the hoarhead woodman at a
bough
Wearily hewing. * Churl, thine axe ! '
he cried,
Descended, and disjointed it at a blow:
To whom the woodman utter'd wonder-
ingly,
*Lord, thou couldst lay the Devil of
these woods
If arm of flesh could lay hiiti.' Balin
cried,
* Him, or the viler devil who plays his
part.
To lay that devil would lay the Devil in
me.'
'Nay,' said the churl, 'our devil is a
truth,
I saw the flash of him but yestereven.
And some do say that our Sir Garlon too
Hath learn'd black magic, and to ride
unseen.
Look to the cave.' But Balin answer'd
him,
* Old fabler, these be fancies of the churl,
Look to thy woodcraft,' and so leaving
him,
Now with slack rein and careless of him-
self,
Now with dug spur and raving at him-
self.
Now with droopt brow down the long
glades he rode;
So mark'd not on his right a cavern-chasm
Yawn over darkness, where, not far
within,
The whole day died, but, dying, gleam'd
on rocks
Roof-pendent, sharp; and others from
the floor,
Tusklike, arising, made that mouth of
night
Whereout the Demon issued up from
Hell.
He mark'd not this, but blind and deaf
to all
Save that chain'd rage, which ever yelpt
within.
Past eastward from the falling sun. At
once
He felt the hollow-beaten mosses thud
And tremble, and then the shadow of a
spear.
Shot from behind him, ran along the
ground.
Sideways he started from the path, and
saw,
With pointed lance as if to pierce, a
shape,
A light of armour by him flash, and pass
And vanish in the woods; and foUow'd
this.
But all so blind in rage that unawares
He burst his lance against a forest bough
Dishorsed himself, and rose again, and
fled
Far, till the castle of a King, the hall
Of Pellam, lichen-bearded, grayly draped
With streaming grass, appear'd, low-built
but strong;
The ruinous donjon as a knoll of moss,
The battlement overtopt with ivytods,
A home of bats, in every tower an owl.
Then spake the men of Pellam crying,
' Lord,
Why wear ye this crown-roval upon
shield ? '
Said Balin, ' For the fairest and the best
Of ladies living gave me this to bear.'
So stall'd his horse, and strode across the
court.
368
BALIN AND BALAN.
But found the greetings both of knight
and King
Faint in the low dark hall of banquet :
leaves '
Laid their green faces flat against the
panes,
Sprays grated, and the canker'd boughs
without
Whined in the wood; for all was hush'd
within,
Till when at feast Sir Garlon likewise
ask'd
* Why wear ye that crown-royal ? ' Balin
said
'The Queen we worship, Lancelot, I,
and all.
As fairest, best and purest, granted me
To bear it ! ' Such a sound (for Arthur's
knights
Were hated strangers in the hall) as
makes
The white swan-mother, sitting, when
she hears
A strange knee rustle thro' her secret
reeds.
Made Garlon, hissing; then he sourly
smiled.
* Fairest I grant her • I have seen ; but
best.
Best, purest? thou from Arthur's hall,
and yet
So simple ! hast thou eyes, or if, are
these
So far besotted that they fail to see
This fair wife-worship cloaks a secret
shame ?
Truly, ye men of Arthur be but babes.'
A goblet on the board by Balin,
boss'd
With holy Joseph's legend, on his right
Stood, all of massiest bronze : one side
had sea
And ship and sail and angels blowing on
it:
And one was rough with wattling, and
the walls
Of that low church he built at Glaston-
bury.
This Balin graspt, but while in act to
hurl,
Thro' memory of that token on the
shield
Relax'd his hold : ' I will be gentle,' ht
thought,
'And passing gentle,' caught his hand
away.
Then fiercely to Sir Garlon, * Eyes have I
That saw to-day the shadow of a spear.
Shot from behind me, run along the
ground ;
Eyes too that long have watch' d how
Lancelot draws
From homage to the best and purest,
might,
Name, manhood, and a grace, but
scantly thine,
Who, sitting in thine own hall, canst
endure
To mouth so huge a foulness — to thy
guest,
Me, me of Arthur's Table. Felon talk !
Let be ! no more ! '
But not the less by night
The scorn of Garlon, poisoning all his
rest.
Stung him in dreams. At length, and
dim thro' leaves
Blinkt the white morn, sprays grated,
and old boughs
Whined in the wood. He rose, de-
scended, met
The scorner in the castle court, and fain.
For hate and loathing, would have past
him by;
But when Sir Garlon utter'd mocking-
wfse,
' What, wear ye still that same crown-
scandalous?'
His countenance blacken'd, and his
forehead veins
Bloated, and branch'd; and tearing out
of sheath
The brand, Sir Balin with a fiery ' Ha !
So thou be shadow, here I make thee
ghost,'
Hard upon helm smote him, and the
blade flew
Splintering in six, and clinkt upon the
stones.
Then Garlon, reeling slowly backward,
fell.
And Balin by the banneret of his helm
Dragg'd him, and struck, but from the
castle a cry
BALIN AND BALAN.
369
Sounded across the court, and — men-at-
arms,
A score with pointed lances, making at
him —
He dash'd the pummel at the foremost
face.
Beneath a low door dipt, and made his
feet
Wings thro' a glimmering gallery, till he
mark'd
The portal of King Pellam's chapel wide
And inward to the wall; he stept behind;
Thence in a moment heard them pass
like wolves
Howling; but while he stared about the
shrine.
In which he scarce could spy the Christ
for Saints,
Beheld before a golden altar lie
The longest lance his eyes had ever seen.
Point-painted red; and seizing thereupon
Push'd thro' an open casement down,
lean'd on it.
Leapt in a semicircle, and lit on earth;
Then hand at ear, and barkening from
what side
The blindfold rummage buried in the
walls
Might echo, ran the counter path, and
found
His charger, mounted on him and away.
An arrow whizz'd to the right, one to the
left.
One overhead; and Pellam's feeble cry
* Stay, stay him ! he defileth* heavenly
things
With earthly uses ' — made him quickly
dive
Beneath the boughs, and race thro' many
a mile
Of dense and open, till his goodly horse,
Arising wearily at a fallen oak,
Stumbled headlong, and cast him face to
ground.
Half-wroth he had not ended, but all
glad,
Knightlike, to find his charger yet un-
lamed,
Sir Balin drew the shield from off his
neck,
Stared at the priceless cognizance, and
th( ught
2B
' I have shamed thee so that now thou
shamest me,
Thee will I bear no more,' high on a
branch
Hung it, and turn'd aside into the woods,
And there in gloom cast himself all
along,
Moaning * My violences, my violences ! '
But now the wholesome music of the
wood
Was dumb'd by one from out the hall of
Mark,
A damsel-errant, warbling, as she rode
The woodland alleys, Vivien, with her
Squire.
'The fire of Heaven has kill'd the
barren cold,
And kindled all the plain and all the
wold.
The new leaf ever pushes off the old.
The fire of Heaven is not the flame of
Hell.
' Old priest, who mumble worship in
your quire —
Old monk and nun, ye scorn the world's
desire.
Yet in your frosty cells ye feel the fire !
The fire of Heaven is not the flame of
Hell.
*The fire of Heaven is on the dusty
ways.
The wayside blossoms open to the blaze.
The whole wood-world is one full peal
of praise.
The fire of Heaven is not the flame of
Hell.
*The fire of Heaven is lord of all things
good,
And starve not thou this fire within thy
blood.
But follow Vivien thro' the fiery flood !
The fire of Heaven is not the flame of
Hell ! '
Then turning to her Squire, 'This fire
of Heaven,
This old sun-worship, boy, will rise
again,
370
BALIN AND BALAN.
And beat the cross to earth, and break
the King
And all his Table.'
Then they reach'd a glade,
Where under one long lane of cloudless
air
Before another wood, the royal crown
Sparkled, and swaying upon a restless elm
Drew the vague glance of Vivien, and her
Squire;
Amazed were these; * Lo there,' she
cried, ' a crown —
Borne by some high lord-prince of
Arthur's hall.
And there ahorse! the rider? where is
he?
See, yonder lies one dead within the
wood.
Not dead ; he stirs ! — but sleeping. I
will speak.
Hail, royal knight, we break on thy sweet
rest,
Not, doubtless, all unearn'd by noble
deeds.
But bounden art thou, if from Arthur's
hall.
To help the weak. Behold, I fly from
shame,
A lustful King, who sought to win my
love
Thro' evil ways : the knight, with whom
I rode.
Hath suffer'd misadventure, and my
squire
Hath in him small defence; but thou,
Sir Prince,
Wilt surely guide me to the warrior King,
Arthur the blameless, pure as any maid,
To get me shelter for my maidenhood.
I charge thee by that crown upon thy
shield.
And by the great Queen's name, arise
and hence.'
And Balin rose, * Thither no more !
nor Prince
Nor knight am I, but one that hath
defamed
The cognizance she gave me : here I
dwell
Savage among the savage woods, here
die —
Die : let the wolves' black maws en-
sepulchre
Their brother beast, whose anger was his
lord.
0 me, that such a name as Guinevere's,
Which our high Lancelot hath so lifted
up.
And been thereby uplifted, should thro'
me.
My violence, and my villainy, come to
shame.*
Thereat she suddenly laugh'd and
shrill, anon
Sigh'd all as suddenly. Said Balin to her
'Is this thy courtesy — to mock me, ha?
Hence, for I will not with thee.' Again
she sigh'd
* Pardon, sweet lord ! we maidens often
laugh
When sick at heart, when rather we
should weep.
1 knew thee wrong'd. I brake upon thy
rest.
And now full loth am I to break thy
dream.
But thou art man, and canst abide a truth,
Tho' bitter. Hither, boy — and mark
me well.
Dost thou remember at Caerleon once —
A year ago — nay, then I love thee not —
Ay, thou rememberest well — one summer
dawn —
By the great tower — Caerleon upon
Usk— _ -
Nay, trulv we were hidden : this fair
lord.
The flower of all their vestal knighthood,
knelt
In amorous homage — knelt — what else?
— Oay
Knelt, and drew down from out his
night-black hair
And mumbled that white hand whose
ring'd caress
Had wander'd from her own King's
golden head.
And lost itself in darkness, till she
cried. —
I thought the great tower would crash
down on both —
" Rise, my sweet King, and kiss me on
the lips,
BALIN AND BALAN.
yj"^
Thou art my King." This lad, whose
lightest word
Is mere white truth in simple nakedness,
Saw them embrace : he reddens, cannot
speak.
So bashful, he ! but all the maiden Saints,
The deathless mother-maidenhood of
Heaven,
Cry out upon her. Up then, ride with
me !
Talk not of shame ! thou canst not, an
thou would'st.
Do these more shame than these have
done themselves.'
She lied with ease; but horror-stricken
he.
Remembering that dark bower at Came-
lot.
Breathed in a dismal whisper *It is
truth.'
Sunnily she smiled * And even in this
lone wood.
Sweet lord, ye do right well to whisper
this.
Fools prate, and perish traitors. Woods
have tongues.
As walls have ears: but thou shalt go
with me.
And we will speak at first exceeding
low.
Meet is it the good King be not deceived.
See now, I set thee high on vantage
ground,
From whence to watch the time, and
eagle-like
Stoop at thy will on Lancelot and the
Queen.'
She ceased; his evil spirit upon him
leapt.
He ground his teeth together, sprang
with a yell,
Tore from the branch, and cast on earth,
the shield,
Drove his mail'd heel athwart the royal
crown,
Stampt all into defacement, hurl'd it from
him
Among the forest weeds, and cursed the
tale,
The told-of, and the teller.
That weird yell,
Unearthlier than all shriek of bird or
beast,
Thrill'd thro' the woods; and Balan
lurking there
(His quest was unaccomplish'd) heard
and thought
'The scream of that Wood-devil. I came
to quell ! '
Then nearing ' Lo ! he hath slain some
brother-knight.
And tramples on the goodly shield to
show
His loathing of our Order and the Queen.
My quest, meseems, is here. Or devil
or man
Guard thou thine head.' Sir Balin spake
not word.
But snatch'd a sudden buckler from the
Squire,
And vaulted on his horse, and so they
crash'd
In onset, and King Pellam's holy spear,
Reputed to be red with sinless blood,
Redden'd at once with sinful, for the
point
Across the maiden shield of Balan prick'd
The hauberk to the flesh; and Balin's
horse
Was wearied to the death, and, when
they clash'd,
Rolling back upon Balin, crush'd the man
Inward, and either fell, and swoon'd away.
Then to her Squire mutter'd the
damsel * Fools I
This fellow hath wrought some foulness
with his Queen :
Else never had he borne her crown, nor
raved
And thus foam'd over at a rival name :
But thou. Sir Chick, that scarce hast
broken shell.
Art yet half-yolk, not even come to
down —
Who never sawest Caerleon upon Usk —
And yet hast often pleaded for my love —
See what I see, be thou where I have
been.
Or else Sir Chick — dismount and loose
their casques,
I fain would know what manner of men
they be.'
372
BALIN AND BALAN.
And when the Squire had loosed them,
' Brother, I dwelt a day in Pellam'f
' Goodly ! — look !
hall:
They might have cropt the myriad flower
This Garlon mock'd me, but I heeded
of May,
not.
And butt each other here, like brainless
And one said " Eat in peace ! a liar
bulls,
is he.
Dead for one heifer ! *
And hates thee for the tribute!" this
good knight
Then the gentle Squire
Told me that twice a wanton damsel
«I hold them happy, so they died for
came.
love:
And sought for Garlon at the castle-
And, Vivien, tho' ye beat me Uke your
gates.
dog,
Whom Pellam drove away with holy
I too could die, as now I live, for thee.'
heat.
I well believe this damsel, and the one
* Live on, Sir Boy,' she cried. ' I
Who stood beside thee even now, the
better prize
same.
The living dog than the dead lion : away !
" She dwells among the woods," he said,
I cannot brook to gaze upon the dead.'
" and meets
Then leapt her palfrey o'er the fallen oak,
And dallies with him in the Mouth of
And bounding forward ' Leave them to
Hell."
the wolves.'
Foul are their lives; foul are their lips;
they lied.
But when their foreheads felt the
Pure as our own true Mother is our
cooling air.
Queen.'
Balin first woke, and seeing that true
*
face.
'O brother,' answer'd Balin, *woe is
Familiar up from cradle-time, so wan,
me !
Crawl'd slowly with low moans to where
My madness all thy life has been thy
he lay.
doom,
And on his dying brother cast himself
Thy curse, and darken'd all thy day;
Dying; and he lifted faint eyes; he felt
and now
One near him; all at once they found
The night has come. I scarce can see
the world,
thee now.
Staring wild-wide; then with a childUke
Goodnight ! for we shall never bid again
wail.
Goodmorrow — Dark my doom was here,
And drawing down the dim disastrous
and dark
brow
It will be there. I see thee now no
That o'er him hung, he kiss'd it, moan'd
more.
and spake :
I would not mine again should darken
--■
thine,
* O Balin, Balin, I that fain had died
Goodnight, true brother.'
To save thy life, have brought thee to
thy death.
Balan answer'd low
Why had ye not the shield I knew? and
'Goodnight, true brother here! good-
why
morrow there !
Trampled ye thus on that which bare the
We two were born together, and we
Crown ? '
die
Together by one doom : ' and while he
Then Balin told him brokenly, and in
spoke
gasps,
Closed his death-drowsing eyes, and slept
All that had chanced, and Balan moan'd
the sleep
again.
With Balin, either lock'd in cither's arm.
MERLIN AND VIVIEN
373
. MERLIN AND VIVIEN.
A STORM was coming, but the winds
were still,
And in the wild woods of Broceliande,
Before an? oak, so hollow, huge and old
It look'd a tower of ivied masonwork,
At Merlin's feet the wily Vivien lay.
For he that always bare in bitter
grudge
The slights of Arthur and his Table,
Mark
The Cornish King, had heard a wander-
ing voice,
A minstrel of Caerleon by strong storm
Blown into shelter at Tintagil, say
That out of naked knightlike purity
Sir Lancelot worshipt no unmarried girl
But the great Queen herself, fought in
her name,
Sware by her — vows like theirs, that
high in heaven
Love most, but neither marry, nor are
given
In marriage, angels of our Lord's report.
He ceased, and then — for Vivien
sweetly said
(She sat beside the banquet nearest
Mark),
*And is the fair example foUow'd, Sir,
In Arthur's household? ' — answer'd inno-
cently :
* Ay, by some few — ay, truly — youths
that hold
It more beseems the perfect virgin knight
To worship woman as true wife beyond
All hopes of gaining, than as maiden
girl.
They place their pride in Lancelot and
the Queen.
So passionate for an utter purity
Beyond the limit of their bond, are these.
For Arthur bound them not to singleness.
Brave hearts and clean ! and yet — God
guide them — young.'
Then Mark was half in heart to hurl
his cup
Straight at the speaker, but forbore : he
rose
To leave the hall, and, Vivien following
him,
Turn'd to her : ' Here are snakes within
the grass;
And you methinks, O Vivien, save ye
fear
The monkish manhood, and the mask of
pure
Worn by this court, can stir them till
they sting.'
And Vivien answer'd, smiling scorn-
fully,
'Why fear? because that foster'd 2X thy
court
I savour of thy — virtues? fear them? no.
As Love, if Love be perfect, casts out
fear.
So Hate, if Hate be p'erfect, casts out
fear.
My father died in battle against the
King,
My mother on his corpse in open field;
She bore me there, for born from death
was I
Among the dead and sown upon the
wind —
And then on thee ! and shown the truth
betimes.
That old true filth, and bottom of the
well,
Where Truth is hidden. Gracious lessons
thine
And maxims of the mud ! " This Arthur
pure !
Great Nature thro' the flesh herself hath
made
Gives him the lie ! There is no being
pure,
My cherub; saith not Holy Writ the
same?" —
If I were Arthur, I would have thy blood.
Thy blessing, stainless King ! I bring
thee back.
When I have ferreted out their burrow-
ings.
The hearts of all this Order in mine
hand —
Ay — so that fate and craft and folly
close.
Perchance, one curl of Arthur's golden
beard.
To me this narrow grizzled fork of thine
374
MERLIN AND VIVIEN.
Is cleaner-fashionM — Well, I loved thee
first,
That warps the wit.'
Loud laugh'd the graceless Mark.
But Vivien, into Camelot stealing, lodged
Low in the city, and on a festal day
When Guinevere was crossing the great
hall
Cast herself down, knelt to the Queen,
and wail'd.
* Why kneel ye there? What evil have
ye wrought?
Rise ! ' and the damsel bidden rise arose
And stood with folded hands and down-
ward eyes
Of glancing corner, and all meekly said,
'None wrought,* but sufter'd much, an
orphan maid !
My father died in battle for thy King,
My mother on his corpse — in open
field,
The sad sea-sounding wastes of Lyon-
esse —
Poor wretch — no friend ! — and now by
Mark the King
For that small charm of feature mine,
pursued —
If any such be mine — I fly to thee.
Save, save me thou — Woman of women
— thine
The wreath of beauty, thine the crown of
power,
Be thine the balm of pity, O Heaven's
own white
Earth-angel, stainless bride of stainless
King —
Help, for he follows ! take me to thy-
self!
O yield me shelter for mine innocency
Among thy maidens ! '
Here her slow sweet eyes
Fear-tremulous, but humbly hopeful, rose
Fixt on her hearer's, while the Queen
who stood
All glittering like May sunshine on May
leaves
In green and gold, and plumed with
green replied,
' Peace, child ! of overpraise and over-
blame
We choose the last. Our noble Arthur,
him
Ye scarce can overpraise, will hear and
know.
Nay — -.we believe all evil of thy Mark —
W^ell, we shall test thee farther; but this
hour
We ride a-hawking with Sir Lancelot.
He hath given us a fair falcon which he
train'd;
We go to prove it. Bide ye here the
while.'
She past; and Vivien murmur'd after,
♦Go!
I bide the while.' Then thro' the portal-
arch
Peering askance, and muttering broken-
wise,
As one that labours with an evil dream.
Beheld the Queen and Lancelot get to
horse.
* Is that the Lancelot? goodly — ay,
but gaunt :
Courteous — amends for gauntness —
takes her hand —
That glance of theirs, but for the street,
had been
A clinging kiss — how hand lingers in
hand !
Let go at last ! — they ride away — to
hawk
For waterfowl. Royaller game is mine.
For such a supersensual sensual bond
As that gray cricket chirpt of at our
hearth —
Touch flax with flame — a glance will
serve — the liars !
Ah little rat that borest in the dyke
Thy hole by night to let the boundless deep
Down upon far-off cities while they
dance —
Or dream — of thee they dream'd not —
nor of me
These — ay, but each of either : ride, and
dream
The mortal dream that never yet was
mine —
Ride, ride and dream until ye wake —
to me !
Then, narrow court and lubber King,
farewell !
MERLIN AND VIVIEN.
375
For Lancelot will be gracious to the rat,
And our wise Queen, if knowing that I
know.
Will Late, loathe, fear — l)ut honour me
the more.'
Yet while they rode together down the
plain.
Their talk was all of training, terms of art,
Diet and seeling, jesses, leash and lure.
' She is too noble,' he said, ' to check at
pies.
Nor will she rake : there is no baseness
in her.'
Here when the Queen demanded as by
chance,
'Know ye the stranger woman?' 'Let
her be,' .
Said Lancelot and unhooded casting off
The goodly falcon free; she tower'd;
her bells.
Tone under tone, shrill'd; and they lifted
up
Their eager faces, wondering at the
strength.
Boldness and royal knighthood of the
bird
Who pounced her quarry and slew it.
Many a time
As once — of old — among the flowers —
they rode.
But Vivien half-forgotten of the Queen
Among her damsels broidering sat, heard,
watch'd
And whisper'd : thro' the peaceful court
she crept
And whisper'd: then as Arthur in the
highest
Leaven'd the world, so Vivien in the
lowest.
Arriving at a time of golden rest,
And sowing one ill hint from ear to ear.
While all the heathen lay at Arthur's feet,
And no quest came, but all was joust and
play,
Leaven'd his hall. They heard and let
her be.
Thereafter as an enemy that has left
Death in the living waters, and with-
drawn,
The wily Vivien stole from Arthur's court.
She hated all the knights, and heard
in thought
Their lavish comment when her name
was named.
For once, when Arthur walking all alone,
Vext at a rumour issued from herself
Of some corruption crept among his
knights.
Had met her, Vivien, being greeted fair.
Would fain have wrought upon his cloudy
mood
With reverent eyes mock-loyal, shaken
voice.
And flutter'd adoration, and at last
With dark sweet hints of some who
prized him more
Than who should prize him most; at
which the King
Had gazed upon her blankly and gone
by:
But one had watch'd, and had not held
his peace :
It made the laughter of an afternoon
That Vivien should attempt the blame-
less King.
And after that, she set herself to gain
Him, the most famous man of all those
times.
Merlin, who knew the range of all their
arts.
Had built the King his havens, ships,
and halls.
Was also Bard, and knew the starry
heavens;
The people call'd him Wizard; whom at
first
She plav'd about with slight and sprightly
talk,
And vivid smiles, and faintly-venom'd
points
Of slander, glancing here and grazing
there;
And yielding to his kindlier moods, the
Seer
Would watch her at her petulance, and
play,
Ev'n when they seem'd unlovable, and
laugh
As those that watch a kitten; thus he
grew
Tolerant of what he half disdain'd, and
she,
Perceiving that she was but half disdain'd,
376
MERLIN AND VIVIEN.
Began to break her sports with graver fits,
Turn red or pale, would often when they
met
Sigh fully, or all-silent gaze upon him
With such a fixt devotion, that the old
man,
Tho' doubtful, felt the flattery, and at
times
Would flatter his own wish in age for love,
And half believe her true : for thus at
times
He waver'd; but that other clung to him,
Fixt in her will, and so the seasons went.
Then fell on Merlin a great melancholy;
He walk'd with dreams and darkness,
and he found
A doom that ever poised itself to fall.
An ever-moaning battle in the mist.
World-war of dying flesh against the
life,
Death in all life and lying in all love.
The meanest having power upon the
highest.
And the high purpose broken by the
worm.
So leaving Arthur's court he gain'd the
beach;
There found a little boat, and stept into it;
And Vivien follow'd, but he mark'd her
not.
She took the helm and he the sail; the
boat
Drave with a sudden w'ind across the
deeps.
And touching Breton sands, they dis-
embark'd.
And then she follow'd Merlin all the way,
Ev'n to the wild woods of Broceliande.
For Merlin once had told her of a charm,
The which if any wrought on any one
With woven paces and with waving arms.
The man so wrought on ever seem'd to lie
Closed in the four walls of a hollow tower.
From which was no escape for evermore;
And none could find that man for ever-
more,
Nor coukl lie see but him who wrought
the charm
Coming and going, and he lay as dead
And lost to life and use and name and
fame.
And Vivien ever sought to work the
charm
Upon the great Enchanter of the Time,
As fancying that her glory would be great
According to . his greatness whom she
quench'd.
There lay she all her length and kiss'd
his feet,
As if in deepest reverence and in love.
A twist of gold was round her hair; a
robe
Of samite without price, that more
exprest
Than hid her, clung about her lissome
limbs,
In colour like the satin-shining palm
On sallows in the windy gleams of March :
And while she kiss'd them, crying,
'Trample me.
Dear feet, that I have follow'd thro' the
world.
And I will pay you worship; tread me
down
And I will kiss you for it;' he was mute :
So dark a forethought roU'd about his
brain,
As on a dull day in an Ocean cave
The blind wave feeling round his long
sea-hall
In silence : wherefore, when she lifted up
A face of sad appeal, and spake and said,
* O Merlin, do ye love me? ' and again,
*0 Merlin, do ye love me?' and once
more,
'Great Master, do ye love me?' he was
mute.
And lissome Vivien, holding by his heel,
Writhed toward him, slided up his knee
and sat.
Behind his ankle twined her hollow feet
Together, curved an arm about his neck,
Clung like a snake; and letting her left
hand
Droop from his mighty shoulder, as a leaf,
Made with her right a comb of pearl to
part
The lists of such a beard as youth gone
out
Had left in ashes: then he spoke and
said.
Not looking at her, ' Who are wise in
love
MERLIN AND VIVIEN.
377
Love most, say least,' and Vivien an-
swer'd quick,
* I saw the little elf-god eyeless once
In Arthur's arras hall at Camelot :
But neither eyes nor tongue — O stupid
child !
Yet you are wise who say it; let me think
Silence is wisdom : I am silent then,
And ask no kiss;' then adding all at once,
'And lo, I clothe myself with wisdom,'
drew
The vast and shaggy mantle of his beard
Across her neck and bosom to her knee,
And call'd herself a gilded summer fly
Caught in a great old tyrant spider's
web,
Who meant to eat her up in that wild
wood
Without one word. So Vivien call'd her-
self.
But rather seem'd a lovely baleful star
Veil'd in gray vapour; till he sadly
smiled :
* To what request for what strange boon,'
he said,
'Are these your pretty tricks and fooleries,
0 Vivien, the preamble? yet my thanks,
For these have broken up my melancholy.'
And Vivien ansvver'd smiling saucily,
* What, O my Master, have ye found
your voice?
1 bid the stranger welcome. Thanks at
last!
But yesterday you never open'd lip,
Except indeed to drink : no cup had we :
In mine own lady palms I cuU'd the
spring
That gather'd trickling dropwise from
the cleft.
And made a pretty cup of both my hands
And ofifer'd you it kneeling: then you
drank
And knew no more, nor gave me one
poor word ;
O no more thanks than might a goat
have given
With no more sign of reverence than a
beard.
And when we halted at that other well,
And I was faint to swooning, and you lay
Foot-gilt with all the blossom-dust of
those
Deep meadows we had traversed, did
you know
That Vivien bathed your feet before her
own ?
And yet no thanks : and all thro' this wild
wood
And all this morning when I fondled
you :
Boon, ay, there was a boon, one not su
strange —
How had I wrong'd you? surely ye are
wise.
But such a silence is more wise than kind.'
And Merlin lock'd his hand in hers and
said :
* O did ye never lie upon the shore,
And watch the curl'd white of the com-
ing wave
Glass'd in the slippery sand before it
breaks?
Ev'n such a wave, but not so pleasurable.
Dark in the glass of some presageful
mood,
Had I for three days seen, ready to fall.
And then I rose and fled from Arthur's
court
To break the mood. You follow'd me
unask'd ;
And when I look'd, and saw you follow-
ing still,
My mind involved yourself the nearest
thing •
In that mind-mist : for shall I tell you
truth?
You seem'd that wave about to break
upon me
And sweep me from my hold upon the
world,
My use and name and fame. Your par-
don, child.
Your pretty sports have brighten'd all
again.
And ask your boon, for boon I owe you
thrice,
Once for wrong done you by confusion,
next
For thanks it seems till now neglected,
last
For these your dainty gambols: where-
fore ask;
And take this boon so strange and not so
strange.'
378
MERLIN AND VIVIEN.
And Vivien answer'd smiling mourn-
fully :
* O not so strange as my long asking it,
Not yet so strange as you yourself are
strange,
Nor half so strange as that dark mood of
yours.
I ever fear'd ye were not wholly mine;
And see, yourself have own'd ye did me
wrong.
The people call you prophet : let it be :
But not of those that can expound them-
selves.
Take Vivien for expounder; she will call
That three-days'-long presageful gloom of
yours
No presage, but the same mistrustful
mood
That makes you seem less noble than
yourself,
Whenever I have ask'd this very boon.
Now ask'd again : for see you not, dear
love.
That such a mood as that, which lately
gloom'd
Your fancy when ye saw me following
you.
Must make me fear still more you are not
mine,
Must make me yearn still more to prove
you mine,
And make me wish still more to learn
this charm
Of woven paces and of waving hands,
As proof of trust. O Merlin, teach it me.
The charm so taught will charm us both
to rest.
For, grant me some slight pov/er upon
your fate,
I, feeling that you felt me worthy trust.
Should rest and let you rest, knowing you
mine.
And therefore be as great as ye are named,
Not muffled round with selfish reticence.
How hard you look and how denyingly !
O, if you think this wickedness in me,
That I should prove it on you unawares,
That makes me passing wrathful; then
our bond
Had best be loosed fur ever : but think
or not.
By Heaven that hears I tell you the clean
truth,
As clean as blood of babes, as white as
milk :
0 Merlin, may this earth, if ever I,
If these unwitty wandering wits of mine,
Ev'n in the jumbled rubbish of a dream,
Have tript on such conjectural treachery —
May this hard earth cleave to the Nadir
hell
Down, down, and close again, and nip me
flat,
If I be such a traitress. Yield my boon,
Till which 1 scarce can yield you all I am;
And grant my re-reiterated wish,
The great proof of your love : because I
think.
However wise, ye hardly know me yet.'
And Merlin loosed his hand from hers
and said,
* I never was less wise, however wise,
Too curious Vivien, tho' you talk of trust,
Than when I told you first of such a
charm.
Yea, if ye talk of trust I tell you this.
Too much I trusted when I told you that,
And stirr'd this vice in you which ruin'd
man
Thro' woman the first hour; for howsoe'ef
In children a great curiousness be well.
Who have to learn themselves and all the
world,
In you, that are no child, for still I find
Your face is practised when I spell the
lines,
1 call it, — well, I will not call it vice :
But since you name yourself the summer
fly,
I well could wish a cobweb for the gnat.
That settles, beaten back, and beaten back
Settles, till one could yield for weariness :
But since I will not yield to give you
power
Upon my life and use and name and fame,
Why will ye never ask some other boon?
Yea, by God's rood, I trusted you too
much.'
And Vivien, like the tenderest-hearted
maid
That ever bided tryst at village stile.
Made answer, either eyelid wet with tears :
'Nay, Master, be not wrathful with your
maid ;
MERLIN AND VIVIEN,
379
Caress her : let her feel herself forgiven
Who feels no heart to ask another boon.
I think ye hardly know the tender rhyme
Of " trust nie not at all or all in all."
I heard the great Sir Lancelot sing it
once,
And it shall answer for me. Listen to it.
* '* In Love, if Love be Love, if Love be
ours,
Faith and unfaith can ne'er be equal
powers :
Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all.
' "It is the little rift within the lute,
That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all.
* "The little rift within the lover's lute
Or little pitted speck in garner'd fruit.
That rotting inward slowly moulders all.
* " It is not worth the keeping : let it go :
But shall it? answer, darling, answer, no.
And trust me not at all or all in all."
O Master, do ye love my tender rhyme? '
And Merlin look'd and half believed
her true,
.So tender was her voice, so fair her face.
So sweetly gleam'd her eyes behind her
tears
Like sunlight on the plain behind a
shower :
And yet he answer'd half indignantly :
* Far other was the song that once I
heard
By this huge oak, sung nearly vv^here we
sit:
For here we met, some ten or twelve of
us,
To chase a creature that was current
then
In these wild woods, the hart with golden
. horns.
It was the time when first the question
rose
About the founding of a Table Round,
That was to be, for love of God and men
And noble deeds, the flower of all the
world.
And each incited each to noble deeds.
And while we waited, one, the youngest
of us.
We could not keep him silent, out he
flash'd,
And into such a song, such fire for fame.
Such trumpet-blowings in it, coming down
To such a stern and iron-clashing close.
That when he stopt we long'd to hurl
together,
And should have done it; but the beau-
teous beast
Scared by the noise upstarted at our feet,
And like a silver shadow slipt away
Thro' the dim land; and all day long
we rode
Thro' the dim land against a rushing
wind.
That glorious roundel echoing in our
ears.
And chased the flashes of his golden
horns
Until they vanish'd by the fairy well
That laughs at iron — as our warriors
did —
Where children cast their pins and nails,
and. cry,
" Laugh, little well ! " but touch it with
a sword.
It buzzes fiercely round the point; and
there
We lost him : such a noble song was
that.
But, Vivien, when you sang me that
sweet rhyme,
I felt as tho' you knew this cursed charm,
Were proving it on me, and that I lay
And felt them slowly ebbing, name and
fame.'
And Vivien answer'd, smiling mourn-
_ fully :
* O mine have ebb'd away for evermore,
And all thro' following you to this wild
vs'ood.
Because I saw you sad, to comfort you.
Lo now, what hearts have men ! they
never mount
As high as woman in her selfless mood.
And touching fame, howe'er ye scorn my
song.
Take one verse more — the lady speaks
it — this: ,
38o
MERLIN AND VIVIEN.
' " My name, once mine, now thine, is
closelier mine.
For fame, could fame be mine, that fame
were thine,
And shame, could shame be thine, that
shame were mine.
So trust me not at all or all in all."
*Says she not well? and there is more
— this rhyme
Is like the fair pearl-necklace of the
Queen,
That burst in dancing, and the pearls
were split;
Some lost, some stolen, some as relics
kept.
But nevermore the same two sister pearls
Ran down the silken thread to kiss each
other
On her white neck — so is it with this
rhyme :
It lives dispersedly in many hands,
And every minstrel sings it differently;
Yet is there one true line, the pearl of
pearls :
" Man dreams of Fame while woman
wakes to love."
Yea ! Love, tho' Love were of the gross-
est, carves
A portion from the solid present, eats
And uses, careless of the rest; but Fame,
The Fame that follows death is nothing
to us;
And what is Fame in life but half-dis-
fame.
And counterchanged with darkness? ye
yourself
Know well that Envy calls you Devil's son,
And since ye seem the Master of all Art,
They fain would make you Master of
all vice.'
And Merlin lock'd his hand in hers
and said,
*I once was looking for a magic wee.d.
And found a fair young squire who sat
alone,
Had carved himself a knightly shield of
wood.
And then was painting on it fancied arms.
Azure, an Eagle rising, or the Sun
In dexter chief; the scroll "I follow
fame."
And speaking not, but leaning over him,
I took his brush and blotted out the bird,
And made a Gardener putting in a graff.
With this for motto, " Rather use than
fame."
You should have seen him blush; but
afterwards
He made a stalwart knight. O Vivien,
For you, methinks you think you love
me well;
For me, I love you somewhat; rest : and
Love
Should have some rest and pleasure in
himself,
Not ever be too curious for a boon,
Too prurient for a pi'oof against the grain
Of him ye say ye love : but Fame with
men,
Being but ampler means to serve man-
kind.
Should have small rest or pleasure in
herself.
But work as vassal to the larger love.
That dwarfs the petty love of one to one.
Use gave me Fame at first, and Fame
again
Increasing gave me use. Lo, there my
boon !
What other? for men sought to prove
me vile.
Because I fain had given them greater.
wits:
And then did Envy call me Devil's son :
The sick weak beast seeking to help
herself
By striking at her better, miss'd, and
brought
Her own claw back, and wounded her
own heart.
Sweet were the days when I was all
unknown.
But when my name was lifted up, the
storm
Brake on the mountain and I cared not
for it.
Right well know I that Fame is half-
disfame,
Yet needs must work my work. Tiiat
other fame,
To one at least, who hath not children,
vague,
The cackle of the unborn about the grave,
I cared not for it : a single misty star,
MERLIN AND VIVIEN.
381
Which is the second in a line of stars
That seem a sword beneath a belt of
three,
I never gazed upon it but I dreamt
Of some vast charm concluded in that
star
To make fame nothing. Wherefore, if
I fear,
Giving you power upon me thro' this
charm,
That you might play me falsely, having
power.
However well ye think ye love me now
(As sons of kings loving in pupilage
Have turn'd to tyrants when they came
to power),
I rather dread the loss of use than fame ;
If you — and not so much from wicked-
ness,
As some wild turn of anger, or a mood
Of overstrain'd affection, it may be.
To keep me all to your own self, — or else
A sudden spurt of woman's jealousy, —
Should try this charm on whom ye say
ye love.'
And Vivien answer'd smiling as in
wrath :
*Have I not sworn? I am not trusted.
Good !
Well, hide it, hide it; I shall find it out;
And being found take heed of Vivien.
A woman and not trusted, doubtless I
Might feel some sudden turn of anger
born
Of your misfaith; and your fine epithet
Is accurate too, for this full love of mine
Without the full heart back may merit well
Your term of overstrain'd. So used as I,
My daily wonder is, I love at all.
And as to woman's jealousy, O why not?
0 to what end, except a jealous one,
And one to make me jealous if I love.
Was this fair charm invented by yourself?
1 well believe that all about this world
Ye cage a buxom captive here and there.
Closed in the four walls of a hollow tower
From which is no escape for evermore.'
Then the great Master merrily answer'd
her:
*Full many a love in loving youth was
mine;
I needed then no charm to keep them
mine
But youth and love; and that full heart
of yours
Whereof ye prattle, may now assure you
mine;
So live uncharm'd. For those who
wrought it first.
The wrist is parted from the hand that
waved,
The feet unmortised from their ankle-
bones
Who paced it, ages back : but will ye
hear
The legend as in guerdon for your rhyme ?
'There lived a king in the most Eastern
East,
Less old than I, yet older, for my blood
Hath earnest in it of far springs to be.
A tawny pirate anchor'd in his port.
Whose bark had plunder'd twenty name-
less isles;
And passing one, at the high peep of
dawn.
He saw two cities in a thousand boats
All fighting for a woman on the sea.
And pushing his black craft among them
all.
He lightly scatter'd theirs and brought
her off.
With loss of half his people arrow-slain;
A maid so smooth, so white, so wonderful,
They said a light came from her when
she moved :
And since the pirate would not yield her
up.
The King impaled him for his piracy;
Then made her Queen: but those isle-
nurtured eyes
Waged such unwilling tho' successful
war
On all the youth, they sicken'd; councils
thinn'd.
And armies waned, for magnet-like she
drew
The rustiest iron of old fighters' hearts;
And beasts themselves would worship;
camels knelt
Unbidden, and the brutes of mountain
back
That carry kings in castles, bow'd black
knees
382
MERLIN AND VIVIEN.
Of homage, ringing with their serpent
hands,
To make her smile, her golden ankle-bells.
What wonder, being jealous, that he sent
His horns of proclamation out thro' all
The hundred under-kingdoms that he
sway'd
To find a wizard who might teach the
King
Some charm, which being wrought upon
the Queen
Might keep her all his own : to such a
one
He promised more than ever king has
given,
A league of mountain full of golden mines,
A province with a hundred miles of coast,
A palace and a princess, all for him :
But on all those who tried and fail'd, the
King
Pronounced a dismal sentence, meaning
by it
To keep the list low and pretenders back,
Or like a king, not to be trifled with —
Their heads should moulder on the city
gates.
And many tried and fail'd, because the
charm
Of nature in her overbore their own :
And many a wizard brow bleach'd on the
walls :
And many weeks a troop of carrion crows
Hung like a cloud above the gateway
towers.'
And Vivien breaking in upon him, said :
* I sit and gather honey; yet, methinks,
Thy tongue has tript a little : ask thyself.
The lady never made tinwilling war
With those fine eyes : she had her pleas-
ure in it,
And made her good man jealous with
good cause.
And lived there neither dame nor damsel
then
Wroth at a lover's loss? were all as tame,
I mean, as noble, as their Queen was fair?
Not one to flirt a venom at her eyes,
Or pinch a murderous dust into her drink,
Or make her paler with a poison'd rose?
Well, those were not our days : but did
they find
A wizard ? Tell me, was he like to thee ? *
She ceased, and made her lithe arm
round his neck
Tighten,' and then drew back, and let her
eyes
Speak for her, glowing on him, like a
bride's
On her new lord, her own, the first of
men.
He answer'd laughing, ' Nay, not like
to me.
At last they found — his foragers for
charms —
A little glassy-headed hairless man.
Who lived alone in a great wild on grass;
Read but q_ne book, and ever reading
grew
So grated down and filed away with
thought,
So lean his eyes were monstrous; while
the skin
Clung but to crate and basket, ribs and
spine.
And since he kept his mind on one sole
aim.
Nor ever touch'd fierce wine, nor tasted
flesh.
Nor own'd a sensual wish, to him the wall
That sunders ghosts and shadow-casting
men
Became a crystal, and he saw them thro' it,
And heard their voices talk behind the
wall,
And learnt their elemental secrets, powers
And forces; often o'er the sun's bright eye
Drew the vast eyelid of an inky cloud.
And lash'd it at the base with slanting
storm ;
Or in the noon of mist and driving rain,
When the lake whiten'd and the pine-
wood roar'd.
And the cairn'd mountain was a shadow,
sunn'd
The world to peace again : here was the
man.
And so by force they dragg'd him to the
King.
And then he taught the King to charm
the Queen
In such-wise, that no man could see her
more,
Nor saw she save the King, who wrought
the charm,
MERLIN AND VIVIEN.
383
Coming and going, and she lay as dead,
And lost all use of life : but when the
King
Made proffer of the league of golden
mines,
The province with a hundred miles of
coast,
The palace and the princess, that old
man
Went back to his old wild, and lived on
grass,
And vanish'd, and his book came down
to me.'
And Vivien answer'd smiling saucily :
* Ye have the book : the charm is written
in it :
Good : take my counsel : let me know it
at once :
For keep it like a puzzle chest in chest,
With each chest lock'd and padlock'd
thirty-fold,
And whelm all this beneath as vast a
mound
As after furious battle turfs the slain
On some wild down above the windy deep,
I yet should strike upon a sudden means
To dig, pick, open, find and read the
charm :
Then, if I tried it, who should blame me
then?'
And smiling as a master smiles at one
That is not of his school, nor any school
But that where blind and naked Ignorance
Delivers brawling judgments, unashamed,
On all things all day long, he answer'd
her:
* Thou read the book, my pretty Vivien !
O ay, it is but twenty pages long,
But every page having an ample marge.
And every marge enclosing in the midst
A square of text that looks a little blot.
The text no larger than the limbs of
fleas;
And every square of text an awful charm.
Writ in a language that has long gone by.
So long, that mountains have arisen since
With cities on their flanks — thou read
the book !
And every margin scribbled, crest, and
cramm'd
With comment, densest condensation,
hard
To mind and eye; but the long sleepless
nights
Of my long life have made it easy to
me.
And none can read the text, not even I;
And none can read the comment but
myself;
And in the comment did I find the charm.
O, the results are simple; a mere child
Might use it to the harm of any one.
And never could undo it : ask no more :
For tho' you should not prove it upon
me.
But keep that oath ye sware, ye might,
perchance.
Assay it on some one of the Table Round,
And all because ye dream they babble
of you.'
And Vivien, frowning in true anger,
said:
* What dare the full-fed liars say of me ?
They ride abroad redressing human
wrongs !
They sit with knife in meat and wine in
horn !
They bound to holy vows of chastity !
Were I not woman, I could tell a tale.
But you are man, you well can under-
stand
The shame that cannot be explain'd for
shame.
Not one of all the drove should touch
me : swine ! '
Then answer'd Merlin careless of her
words:
' You breathe but accusation vast and
vague.
Spleen-born, I think, and proofless. If
ye know.
Set up the charge ye know, to stand or
fall ! '
And Vivien answer'd frowning wrath-
fully :
' O ay, what say ye to Sir Valence, him
Whose kinsman left him watcher o'er
his wife
And two fair babes, and went to distant
lands;
384
MERLIN AND VIVIEN.
Was one year gone, and on returning
found
Not two but three? there lay the reck-
ling, one
But one hour old ! What said the happy
sire?
A seven-months' babe had been a truer
gift.
Those twelve sweet moons confused his
fatherhood.'
Then answer'd Merlin, * Nay, I know
the tale.
Sir Valence wedded with an outland
dame :
Some cause had kept him sunder'd from
his wife :
One child they had: it lived with her:
she died :
His kinsman travelling on his own affair
Was charged by Valence to bring home
the child.
He brought, not found it therefore : take
the truth.'
*0 ay,' said Vivien, * overtrue a tale.
What say ye then to sweet Sir Sagramore,
That ardent man? "to pluck the flower
in season,"
So says the song, " I trow it is no trea-
son."
0 Master, shall we call him overquick
To crop his own sweet rose before the
hour? '
And Merlin answer'd, ' Overquick art
thou
To catch a loathly plume fall'n from the
wing
Of that foul bird of rapine whose whole
prey
Is man's good name : he never wrong'd
his bride.
1 know the tale. An angry gust of
wind
PufPd out his torch among the myriad-
room'd
And many-corridor'd complexities
Of Arthur's palace : then he found a
door.
And darkling felt the sculptured ornament
That wreathen round it made it seem his
own:
And wearied out made for the couch and
slept,
A stainless man beside a stainless maid;
And either slept, nor knew of other there;
Till the high dawn piercing the royal rose
In Arthur's casement glimmer'd chastely
down,
Blushing upon them blushing, and at once
He rose without a word and parted from
her:
But when the thing was blazed about the
court,
The brute world howling forced them into
bonds,
And as it chanced they are happy, being
pure.'
' O ay,' said Vivien, * that were likely
too.
What say ye then to fair Sir Percivale
And of the horrid foulness that he
wrought,
The saintly youth, the spotless lamb of
Christ,
Or some black wether of St. Satan's fold.
What, in the precincts of the chapel-yard,
Among the knightly brasses of the graves,
And by the cold Hie Jacets of the dead ! '
And Merlin answer'd careless of her
charge,
'A sober man is Percivale and pure;
But once in life was fluster'd with new
wine,
Then paced for coolness in the chapel-
yard;
Where one of Satan's shepherdesses
caught
And meant to stamp him with her mas-
ter's mark;
And that he sinn'd is not believable;
For, look upon his face ! — but if he
sinn'd.
The sin that practice burns into the blood,
And not the one dark hour which brings
remorse,
Will brand us, after, of whose fold we be :
Or else were he, the holy king, whose
hymns
Are chanted in the minster, worse than
all.
But is your spleen froth'd out, or have ye
more? '
MERLIN AND VIVIEN.
38s
And Vivien answer'd frowning yet in
wrath :
'O ay; what say ye to Sir Lancelot,
friend ?
Traitor or true? that commerce with the
Queen,
I ask you, is it clamour'd by the child.
Or whisper'd in the corner? do ye know
- it?'
To which he answer'd sadly, * Yea, I
know it.
Sir Lancelot went ambassador, at first,
To fetch her, and she watch'd him from
her walls.
A rumour runs, she took him for the King,
So fixt her fancy on him : let them be.
But have ye no one word of loyal praise
For Arthur, blameless King and stainless
man? '
She answer'd with a low and chuckling
laugh :
' Man ! is he man at all, who knows and
winks?
Sees what his fair bride is and does, and
winks?
By which the good King means to blind
himself,
And blinds himself and all the Table
Round
To all the foulness that they work. My-
self
Could call him (were it not for woman-
hood)
The pretty, popular name such manhood
earns,
Could call him the main cause of all
their crime;
Yea, were he not crown'd King, coward,
and fool.'
Then Merlin to his own heart, loath-
ing, said :
* O true and tender ! O my liege and
King !
O selfless man and stainless gentleman,
Who wouklst against thine own eye-wit-
ness fain
Have all men true and leal, all women
pure;
How, in the mouths of base interpreters.
From over-fineness not intelligible
To things with every sense as false and
foul
As the poach'd filth that floods the
middle street,
Is thy white blamelessness accounted
blame ! '
But Vivien, deeming Merlin overborne
By instance, recommenced, and let her
tongue '
Rage like a fire among the noblest
names.
Polluting, and imputing her whole self.
Defaming and defacing, till she left
Not evea Lancelot brave, nor Galahad
clean.
Her words had issue other than she
will'd.
He dragg'd his eyebrow bushes down,
and made
A snowy penthouse for his hollow eyes.
And mutter'd in himself, *Tell her the
charm I
So, if she had it, would she rail on me
To snare the next, and if she have it not
So will she rail. What did the wanton
say?
"Not mount as high; " we scarce can
sink as low :
For men at most differ as Heaven and
earth.
But women, worst and best, as Heaven
and Hell.
I know the Table Round, my friends of
old;
All brave, and many generous, and some
chaste.
She cloaks the scar of some repulse with
lies;
I well believe she tempted them and fail'd.
Being so bitter : for fine plots may fail,
Tho* harlots paint their talk as well as face
With colours of the heart that are not
theirs.
I will not let her know: nine tithes of
times
Face-flatterer and backbiter are the same.
And they, sweet soul, that most impute a
crime
Are pronest to it, and impute themselves,
Wanting the mental range; or low desire
Not to feel lowest makes them level alL
386
MERLIN AND VIVIEN.
Vea, they would pare the mountain to the
plain,
To leave an equal baseness; and in this
Are harlots like the crowd, that if they
find
Some stain or blemish in a name of note,
Not grieving that their greatest are so
small.
Inflate themselves with some insane de-
light,
And judge all nature from her feet of clay,
Without the will to lift their eyes, and see
Her godlike head crown'd with spiritual
fire,
And touching other worlds. I am weary
of her.'
He spoke in words part heard, in
whispers part.
Half-suffocated in the hoary fell
And many-winter'd fleece of throat and
chin.
But Vivien, gathering somewhat of his
mood.
And hearing * harlot ' mutter'd twice or
thrice.
Leapt from her session on his lap, and
stood
Stiff" as a viper frozen; loathsome sight,
How from the rosy lips of life and love,
Flash'd the bare-grinning skeleton of
death !
White was her cheek; sharp breaths of
anger puff'd
Her fairy nostril out; her hand half-
clench'd
Went faltering sideways downward to her
belt,
And feeling; had she found a dagger
there
(For in a wink the false love turns to
hate)
She would have stabb'd him; but she
found it not :
His eye was calm, and suddenly she took
To bitter weeping like a beaten child,
A long, long weeping, not consolable.
Then her false voice made way, broken
with sobs:
* O crueller than was ever told in tale.
Or sung in song ! O vainly lavish'd love !
O cruel, there was nothing wild or strange,
Or seeming shameful — for what shame
in love.
So love be true, and not as yours is —
nothing
Poor Vivien had not done to win his trust
Who call'd her what he call'd her — ail
her crime,
All — all — the wish to prove him wholly
hers.'
She mused a little, and then clapt her
hands
Together with a wailing shriek, and said :
' Stabb'd through the heart's affections to
the heart !
Seethed like the kid in its own mother's
milk !
Kill'd with a word worse than a life of
blows !
I thought that he was gentle, being great :
0 God, that I had loved a smaller man !
1 should have found in him a greater
heart.
O, I, that flattering my true passion, saw
The knights, the court, the King, dark
in your light,
Who loved to make men darker than they
are.
Because of that high pleasure which I
had
To seat you sole upon my pedestal
Of worship — I am answer'd, and hence-
forth
The course of life that seem'd so flowery
to me
With you for guide and master, only you.
Becomes the sea-cliff pathway broken
short.
And ending in a ruin — nothing left.
But into some low cave to crawl, and
there.
If the wolf spare me, weep my life away,
Kill'd with inutterable unkindliness.'
She paused, she turn'd away, she hung
her head,
The snake of gold slid from her hair, the
braid
Slipt and uncoil'd itself, she wept afresh,
And the dark wood grew darker toward
the storm
In silence, while his anger slowly died
Within him, till he let his wisdom go
MERLIN AND VIVIEN.
387
For ease of heart, and half believed her
true :
Call'd her to shelter in the hollow oak,
' Come from the storm,' and having no
reply,
Gazed at the heaving shoulder, and the
face
Hand-hidden, as for utmost grief or
^hame;
Then thrice essay'd, by tenderest-touching
terms,
To sleek her ruffled peace of mind, in
vain.
At last she let herself be conquer'd by
him,
And as the cageling newly flown returns,
The seeming-injured simple-hearted thing
Came to her old perch back, and settled
there.
There while she sat, half-falling from his
knees,
Half-nestled at his heart, and since he
saw
The slow tear creep from her closed eye-
lid yet,
xVbout her, more in kindness than in love.
The gentle wizard cast a shielding arm.
But she dislink'd herself at once and rose.
Her arms upon her breast across, and
stood,
A virtuous gentlewoman deeply wrong'd,
Upright and flush'd before him : then she
said:
* There must be now no passages of love
Betwixt us twain henceforward evermore;
Since, if I be what I am grossly call'd,
What should be granted which your own
gross heart
Would reckon worth the taking? I will
go-
In truth, but one thing now — better
have died
Thrice than have ask'd it once — could
make me stay —
That proof of trust — so often ask'd in
vain !
How justly, after that vile term of yours,
I find with grief! I might believe i'ou
then.
Who knows? once more. Lo ! what was
once to me
Mere matter of the fancy, now hath grown
The vast necessity of heart and life.
Farewell; think gently of me, for I fear
My fate or folly, passing gayer youth
For one so old, must be to love thee
still.
But ere I leave thee let me swear once
more
That if I schemed against thy peace in
this,
May yon just heaven, that darkens o'er
me, send
One flash, that, missing all things els'^,
may make
My scheming brain a cinder, if I lie.'
ScarcQ had she ceased, when out of
heaven a bolt
(For now the storm was close above
them) struck.
Furrowing a giant oak, and javelining
With darted spikes and splinters of the
wood
The dark earth round. He raised his
eyes and saw
The tree that shone white-listed thro'
the gloom.
But Vivien, fearing heaven had heard
her oath.
And dazzled by the livid-flickering fork,
And deafen'd with the stammering
cracks and claps
That follow'd, flying back and crying out,
' O Merlin, tho' you do not love me, save.
Yet save me ! ' clung to him and hugg'd
him close;
And call'd him dear protector in her
fright,
Nor yet forgot her practice in her fright.
But wrought upon his mood and hugg'd
him close.
The pale blood of the wizard at her
touch
Took gayer colours, like an opal warm'd.
She blamed herself for telling hearsay
tales :
She shook from fear, and for her fault
she wept
Of petulancy; she call'd him lord and
liege,
Her seer, her bard, her silver star of eve.
Her God, her Merlin, the one passionate
love
Of her whole life; and ever overhead
388
LANCELOT AND ELAINE,
Bellow'd the tempest, and the rotten
branch
Snapt in the rushing of the river-rain
Above them; and in change of glare
and gloom
Her eyes and neck glittering went and
came;
Till now the storm, ils l^iurst of passion
spent,
Moaning and calling out of other lands,
Had left the ravaged woodland yet once
more
To peace; and what should not have
been had been,
For Merlin, overtalk'd and overworn,
Had yielded, told her all the charm, and
slept.
Then, in one moment, she put forth
the charm
Of woven paces and of waving hands.
And in the hollow oak he lay as dead.
And lost to life and use and name and
fame.
Then crying ' I have made his glory
mine,'
And shrieking out * O fool ! ' the harlot
leapt
Adown the forest, and the thicket closed
Behind her, and the forest echo'd ' fool.'
LANCELOT AND ELAINE.
Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable,
Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,
High in her chamber up a tower to the
east -
Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot;
Which first she placed where morning's
earliest ray
Might strike it, and awake her with the
gleam ;
Then fearing rust or soilure fashion'd for
it
A case of silk, and braided thereupon
All the devices blazon'd on the shield
In their own tinct, and added, of her wit,
A border fantasy of branch and flower,
And yellow-throated nestling in the nest.
Nor rested thus content, but day by day.
Leaving her household and good father,
climb'd
That eastern tower, and entering l)arr'd
her door,
Stript off the case, and read the naked
shield,
Now guess'd a hidden meaning in his
arms.
Now made a pretty history to herself
Of every dint a sword had beaten in it,
And every scratch a lance had made
upon it,
Conjecturing when and where : this cut
is fresh ;
That ten years back; this dealt him at
Caerlyle;
That at Caerleon ; this at Cariielot :
And ah God's mercy, what a stroke was
there !
And here a thrust that might have kill'd,
' but God
Broke the strong lance, and roU'd his
<enemy down.
And saved him : so she lived in fantasy.
How came the lily maid by that good
shield
Of Lancelot, she that knew not ev'n his
name ?
He left it with her, when he rode to tilt
For the great diamond in the diamond
jousts,
Which Arthur had ordain'd, and by that
name
Had named them, since a diamond was
the prize.
For Arthur, long before they crown'd
him King,
Roving the trackless realms of Lyo-
nesse.
Had found a glen, gray boulder and
black tarn.
A horror lived about the tarn, and clave
Like its ovi'n mists to all the mountain
side :
For here two brothers, one a king, had
met
And fought together; but their names
were lost;
Aud each had slain his brother at a blow;
And down they fell and made the glen
abhorr'd :
And there they lay till all their bones
were bleach'd.
LANCELOT AND ELAINE.
389
And lichen'd into colour with the crags :
Now for the central diamond and the
And he, that once was king, had on a
last
crown
And largest, Arthur, holding then his
Of diamonds, one in front, and four
court
aside.
Hard on the river nigh the place which
And Arthur came, and labouring up the
now
pass,
Is this world's hugest, let proclaim a joust
All in a misty moonshine, unawares
At Camelot, and when the time drew nigh
Had trodden that crown'd skeleton, and
Spake (for she had been sick) to Guine-
the skull
vere,
Brake from the nape, and from the skull
' Are you so sick, my Queen, you cannot
the crown
move
Rull'd into Hght, and turning on its rims
To these fair jousts?' 'Yea, lord,' she
Fled hke a glittering rivulet to the
said, 'ye know it.'
tarn :
'Then will ye miss,' he answer'd, 'the
And down the shingly scaur he plunged,
great deeds
and caught,
Of Lancelot, and his prowess in the lists,
And set it on his head, and in his hear^
A sight ye love to look on.' And the
Heard murmurs, ' Lo, thou likewise shalt
Queen
be King.'
Lifted her eyes, and they dwelt languidly
On Lancelot, where he stood beside the
Thereafter, when a King, he had the
King.
gems
He thinking that he read her meaning
Pluck'd from the crown, and show'd
there.
them to his knights,
'Stay with me, I am sick; my love is
Saying, 'These jewels, whereupon I
more
chanced
Than many diamonds,^ yielded; and a
Divinely, are the kingdom's, not the
heart
King's —
Love-loyal to the least wish of the Queen
For public use : henceforward let there
(However much he yearn'd to make
be.
complete
Once every year, a joust for one of these :
The tale of diamonds for his destined
For so by nine years' proof we needs
boon)
must learn
Urged him to speak against the truth.
Which is our mightiest, and ourselves
and say.
shall grow
' Sir King, mine ancient wound is hardly
In use of arms and manhood, till we
whole,
drive
And lets me from the saddle; ' and the
The heathen, who, some say, shall rule
King
the land
Glanced first at him, then her, and went
Hereafter, which God hinder.' Thus he
his way.
spoke :
No sooner gone than suddenly she began :
And eight years past, eight jousts had
been, and still
'To blame, my lord Sir Lancelot,
Had Lancelot won the diamond of the
much to blame !
year,
Why go ye not to these fair jousts? the
With purpose to present them to the
knights
Queen,
Are half of them our enemies, and the
When all were won; but meaning all at
crowd
once
Will murmur, "Lo the shameless ones.
To snare her royal fancy with a boon
who take
Worth half her realm, had never spoken
Their pastime now the trustful King is
word.
gone ! " '
390
LANCELOT AND ELAINE,
Then Lancelot vext at having lied in
vain :
'Are ye so wise? ye were not once so
wise,
My Queen, that summer, when ye loved
me first.
Then of the crowd ye took no more
account
Than of the myriad cricket of the mead,
When its own voice cUngs to each blade
of grass,
And every voice is nothing. As to
knights,
Them surely can I silence with all ease.
But now my loyal worship is allow'd
Of all men : many a bard, without offence,
Has link'd our names together in his lay,
Lancelot, the flower of bravery, Guine-
vere,
The pearl of beauty : and our knights at
feast
Have pledged us in this union, while tTie
King
Would listen smiling. How then? is
there more?
Has Arthur spoken aught? or would
yourself,
Nbw weary of my service and devoir,
Henceforth be truer to your faultless
lord?'
She broke into a little scornful laugh :
'Arthur, my lord, Arthur, the faultless
King,
That passionate perfection, my good
lord —
But who can gaze upon the Sun in heaven ?
He never spake word of reproach to me.
He never had a glimpse of mine untruth,
He cares not for me : only here to-day
There gleam'd a vague suspicion in his
eyes:
Some meddling rogue has tamper'd with
him — else
Rapt in this fancy of his Table Round,
And swearing men to vows impossible.
To make them like himself: but, friend,
to me
He is all fault who hath no fault at all :
For who loves me must have a touch of
earth ;
The low sun makes the colour : I am
yours,
Not Arthur's, as ye know, save by the
bond.
And therefore hear my words : go to the
jousts :
The tiny-trumpeting gnat can break our
dream
When sweetest; and the vermin voices
here
May buzz so loud — we scorn them, but
they sting.'
Then answer'd Lancelot, the chief of
knights :
*And with what face, after my pretext
made.
Shall I appear, O Queen, at Camelot, I
Before a King who honours his own
word,
As if it were his God's? '
' Yea,' said the Queen,
* A moral child without the craft to rule,
Else had he not lost me : but listen to me,
If I must find you wit : we hear it said
That men go down before your spear at
a touch.
But knowing you are Lancelot; your
great name,
This conquers: hide it therefore; go
unknown :
Win ! by this kiss you will : and our true
King
Will then allow your pretext, O my
knight,
As all for glory; for to speak him true,
Ye know right well, how meek soe'er he
seem.
No keener hunter after glory breathes.
He loves it in his knights more than
himself:
They prove to him his work: win and
return.'
Then got Sir Lancelot suddenly to
horse.
Wroth at himself. Not willing to be
known,
He left the barren-beaten thoroughfare,
Chose the green path that show'd the
rarer foot,
And there among the solitary downs,
Full often lost in fancy, lost his way;
Till as he traced a faintly-shadow'd track,
LANCELOT AND ELALNE.
391
That all in loops and links among the
dales
Ran to the Castle of Astolat, he saw
Fired from the west, far on a hill, the
towers.
Thither he made, and blew the gateway
horn.
Then came an old, dumb, myriad-
wrinkled man,
Who let him into lodging and disarm'd.
And Lancelot marvell'd at the wordless
man ;
And issuing found the Lord of Astolat
With two strong sons, Sir Torre and Sir
Lavaine,
Moving to meet him in the castle court;
And close behind them stept the lily
maid
Elaine, his daughter : niother of the house
There was not: some light jest among
them rose
With laughter dying down as the great
knight
Approach'd them : then the Lord of
Astolat :
* Whence comest thou, my guest, and by
what name
Livest between the lips? for by thy state
And presence I might guess thee chief of
those.
After the King, who eat in Arthur's halls.
Him have I seen : the rest, his Table
Round,
Known as they are, to me they are un-
known.'
Then answer'd Lancelot, the chief of
knights :
* Known am I, and of Arthur's hall, and
known.
What I by mere mischance have brought,
my shield.
But since I go to joust as one unknown
At Camelot for the diamond, ask me not,
Hereafter ye shall know me — and the
shield —
I pray you lend me one, if such you have.
Blank, or at least with some device not
Then said the Lord of Astolat, 'Here
is Torre's :
Hurt in his first tilt was my son, Sir Torre.
And so, God wot, his shield is blank
enough.
His ye can have.' Then added plain Sir
Torre,
* Yea, since I cannot use it, ye may have
it.'
Here laugh'd the father saying, ' Fie, Sir
Churl,
Is that an answer for a noble knight?
Allow him ! but Lavaine, my younger
here,
He is so full of lustihood, he will ride.
Joust for it, and win, and bring it in an
hour,
And set it in this damsel's golden hair,
To make her thrice as wilful as before.'
* Nay, father, nay, good father, shame
me not
Before this noble knight,' said young
Lavaine,
'For nothing. Surely I but play'd on
Torre :
He seem'd so sullen, vext he could not go :
A jest, no more ! for, knight, the maiden
dreamt
That some one put this diamond in her
hand.
And that it was too slippery to be held,
And slipt and fell into some pool or
stream.
The castle-well, belike; and then I said
That if\ went and if\ fought and won it
(But all was jest and joke among our-
selves)
Then must she keep it safelier. All was
jest.
But, father, give me leave, an if he will.
To ride to Camelot with this noble knight :
Win shall I not, but do my best to win :
Young as I am, yet would I do my best.'
* So ye will grace me,' answer'd
Lancelot,
Smiling a moment, 'with your fellowship
O'er these w^aste downs whereon I lost
myself.
Then were I glad of you as guide and
friend :
And you shall win this diamond, — as I
hear
It is a fair large diamond, — if ye may,
And yield it to this maiden, if ye will.'
39«
LANCELOT AND ELALNE.
' A fair large diamond^' added plain Sir
Torre,
* Such be for queens, and not for simple
maids.'
Then she, who held her eyes upon the
ground,
Elaine, and heard her name so tost about,
Flush'd slightly at the slight disparage-
ment
Before the stranger knight, who, looking
at her.
Full courtly, yet not falsely, thus relurn'd :
• If what is fair be but for what is fair,
And only queens are to be counted so.
Rash were my judgment then, who deem
this maid
Might wear as fair a jewel as is on earth,
Not violating the bond of hke to like.'
He spoke and ceased: the lily maid
Elaine,
Won by the mellow voice before she
look'd.
Lifted her eyes, and read his lineaments.
The great and guilty love he bare the
Queen,
In battle with the love he bare his lord.
Had marr'd his face, and mark'd it ere
his time.
Another sinning on such heights with one,
The flower of all the west and all the
world,
Had been the sleeker for it : but in him
His mood was often like a fiend, and
rose
And drove him into wastes and solitudes
For agony, who was yet a living soul.
Marr'd as he was, he seem'd the goodliest
man
That ever among ladies ate in hall.
And noblest, when she lifted up her eyes.
However marr'd, of more than twice her
years,
Seam'd with an ancient swordcut on the
cheek,
And bruised and bronzed, she lifted up
her eyes
And loved him, with that love which was
her doom.
Then the great knight, the darling of
the court,
Loved of the loveliest, into that rude hall
Stept with all grace, and not with half
disdain
Hid under grace, as in a smaller time,
But kindly man moving among his kind :
Whom they with meats and vintage of
their best
And talk and minstrel melody entertain'd.
And much they ask'd of court and Table
Round,
And ever well and readily answer'd he :
But Lancelot, when they glanced at
Guinevere,
Suddenly speaking of the wordless man.
Heard from the Baron that, ten years
before.
The heathen caught and reft him of his
tongue.
* He learnt and warn'd me of their fierce
design
Against my house, and him they caught
and maim'd;
But I, my sons, and httle daughter fled
From bonds or death, and dwelt among
the woods
By the great river in a boatman's hut.
Dull days were those, till our good Arthur
broke
The Pagan yet once more on Badon hill.'
' O there, great lord, doubtless,' Lavaine
said, rapt
By all the sweet and sudden passion of
youth
Toward greatness in its elder, 'you have
fought.
O tell us — for we live apart — you know
Of Arthur's glorious wars.' And Lancelot
spoke
And answer'd him at full, as having been
With Arthur in the fight which all day
long
Rang by the white mouth of the violent
Glem;
And in the four loud battles by the shore
OfDuglas; that on Bassa; then the war
That thunder'd in and out the gloomy
skirts
Of Celidon the forest ; and again
By castle Gurnion, where the glorious
King
Had on his cuirass worn our Lady's
Head,
Carv'd of one emerald centr'd in a sun
LANCELOT AND ELAINE.
393
Of silver rays, that lighten'd as he
.breathed;
And at Caerleon had he help'd his lord,
When the strong neighings of the wild
white Horse
Set every gilded parapet shuddering;
And up in Agned-Cathregonion too,
And down the waste sand-shores of Trath
Treroit,
Where many a heathen fell; ' and on the
mount
Of Badon I myself beheld the King
Charge at the head of all his Table Round,
And all his legions crying Christ and him.
And break them; and I saw him, after,
stand
High on a heap of slain, from spur to
plume
Red as the rising sun with heathen blood,
And seeing me, with a great voice he
cried,
" They are broken, they are broken ! "
for the King,
However mild he seems at home, nor
cares
For triumph in our mimic wars, the
jousts
For if his own knight cast him down, he
laughs
Saying, his knights are better men than
he —
Yet in this heathen war the fire of God
P'ills him : I never saw his like : there lives
No greater leader.'
While he utter'd this,
Low to her own heart said the lily maid,
* Save your great self, fair lord; ' and
when he fell
From talk of war to traits of pleasantry —
Being mirthful he, but in a stately kind —
She still took note that when the living
smile
Died from his lips, across him came a
cloud
Of melancholy severe, from which again.
Whenever in her hovering to and fro
The lily maid had striven to make him
cheer.
There brake a sudden-beaming tenderness
Of manners and of nature : and she
thought
That all was nature, all, perchance, for her.
And all night long his face before her
lived.
As when a painter, poring on a face,
Divinely thro' all hindrance finds the man
Behind it, and so paints him that his face,
The shape and colour of a mind and life,
Lives for his children, ever at its best
And fullest; so the face before her lived.
Dark-splendid, speaking in the silence,
full
Of noble things, and held her from her
sleep.
Till rathe she rose, half-cheated in the
thought
She needs must bid farewell to sweet
Lavaine.
First as in fear, step after step, she stole
Down the long tower-stairs, hesitating:
Anon, she heard Sir Lancelot cry in the
court,
'This shield, my friend, where is it?' and
Lavaine
Past inward, as she came from out the
tower.
There to his proud horse Lancelot turn'd,
and smooth'd
The glossy shoulder, humming to himself.
Half-envious of the flattering hand, she
drew
Nearer and stood. He look'd, and more
amazed ^
Than if seven men had set upon him, saw
The maiden standing in the dewy light.
He had not dream'd she was so beautiful.
Then came on him a sort of sacred fear.
For silent, tho' he greeted her, she stood
Rapt on his face as if it were a God's.
Suddenly flash'd on her a wild desire.
That he should wear her favour-at the tilt.
She braved a riotous heart in asking for it.
'Fair lord, whose name I know not —
noble it is,
I well believe, the noblest — will you wear
My favour at this tourney?' 'Nay,' said
he,
' Fair lady, since I never yet have worn
Favour of any lady in the lists.
Such is my wont, as those, who know me,
know.'
' Yea, so,' she answer'd; ' then in vi^earing
mine
Needs must be lesser likelihood, noble
lord,
394
LANCELOT AND ELAINE.
That those who know should know you.'
And he turn'd
Her counsel up and down within his mind,
And found it true, and answer'd, ' True,
my child.
Well, I will wear it : fetch it out to me :
What is it?' and she told him *A red
sleeve
Broider'd with pearls,' and brought it:
then he bound
Her token on his helmet, with a smile
Saying, ' I never yet have done so much
For any maiden living,' and the blood
Sprang to her face and fiU'd her with
delight;
But left her all the paler, when Lavaine
Returning brought the yet-unblazon'd
shield.
His brother's ; which he gave to Lancelot,
Who parted with his own to fair Elaine :
* Do me this grace, my child, to have my
shield
In keeping till I come.' ' A grace to me,'
She answer'd, * twice to-day. I am your
squire ! '
Whereat Lavaine said, laughing, * Lily
maid,
For fear our people call you lily maid
In earnest, let me bring your colour back;
Once, twice, and thrice : now get you
, hence to bed : '
So kiss'd her, and Sir Lancelot his own
hand,
And thus they moved away : she stay'd
a minute,
Then made a sudden step to the gate,
and there —
Her bright hair blown about the serious
face
Yet rosy-kindled with her brother's kiss —
Paused by the gateway, standing near
the shield
In silence, while she watch'd their arms
far-off
Sparkle, until they dipt below the downs.
Then to her tower she climb'd, and took
the shield,
There kept it, and so lived in fantasy.
Meanwhile the new companions past
away
Far o'er the long bacl<s of the bushless
downs,
To where Sir Lancelot knew there lived
a knight
Not far from Camelot, now for forty years
A hermit, who had pray'd, laboured and
pray'd,
And ever labouring had scoop'd himself
In the white rock a chapel and a hall
On massive columns, like a shorecliff cave,
And cells and chambers : all were fair
and dry;
The green light from the meadows under-
neath
Struck up and lived along the milky roofs;
And in the meadows tremulous aspen-trees
And poplars made a noise of falling
showers.
And thither wending there that night they
bode.
But when the next day broke from
underground.
And shot red fire and shadows thro' the
cave,
They rose, heard mass, broke fast, and-
rode away :
Then Lancelot saying, ' Hear, but hold
my name
Hidden, you ride with Lancelot of the
Lake,'
Abash'd Lavaine, whose instant rever-
ence,
Dearer to true young hearts than their
own praise.
But left him leave to stammer, *Is it
indeed? '
And after muttering 'The great Lancelot,'
At last he got his breath and answer'd,
'One,
One have I seen — that other, our. liege
lord.
The dread Pendragon, Britain's King of
kings.
Of whom the people talk mysteriously,
He will be there — then were I stricken
blind
That minute, I might say that I had seen.'
So spake Lavaine, and when they
reach'd the lists
By Camelot in the meadow, let his eyes
Run thro' the peopled gallery which half
round
Lay like a rainbow fall'n upon the grass,
LANCELOT AND ELAINE,
395
Until they found the clear-faced King,
who sat
Robed in red samite, easily to be known,
Since to his crown the golden dragon
clung,
And down his robe the dragon writhed
in gold,
And from the carven-work behind him
crept
Two dragons gilded, sloping down to
make
Arms for his chair, while all the rest of
them
Thro' knots and loops and folds innu-
merable
Fled ever thro' the w.oodwork, till they
found
The new design wherein they lost them-
selves,
Yet with all ease, so tender was the
work :
And, in the costly canopy o'er him set,
Blazed the last diamond of the nameless
king.
Then Lancelot answer'd young Lavaine
and said,
*Me you call great: mine is the firmer
seat.
The truer lance : but there is many a youth
Now crescent, who will come to all I am
And overcome it; and in me there dwells
No greatness, save it be some far-off touch
Of greatness to know well I am not great :
There is the man.' And Lavaine gaped
upon him
As on a thing miraculous, and anon
The trumpets blew; and then did either
side,
They that assail'd, and they that held the
lists,
Set lance in rest, strike spur, suddenly
move.
Meet in the midst, and there so furiously
Shock, that a man far-off might well
perceive.
If any man that day were left afield.
The hard earth shake, and a low thunder
of arms.
And Lancelot bode a little, till he saw
Which were the weaker; then he hurl'd
into it
Against the stronger : little need to speak
Of Lancelot in his glory ! King, duke,
earl.
Count, baron — whom he smote, he over-
threw.
But in the field were Lancelot's kith
and kin,
Ranged with the Table Round that held
the lists.
Strong men, and wrathful that a stranger
knight
Should do and almost overdo the deeds
Of Lancelot; and one said to the other,
*Lo!
What is he? I do not mean the force
alone —
The grace and versatility of the man !
Is it not Lancelot? ' ' When has Lance-
lot worn
Favour of any lady in the lists?
Not such his wont, as we, that know him,
know.'
*How then? who then?' a fury seized
them all,
A fiery family passion for the name
Of Lancelot, and a glory one with theirs.
They couch'd their spears and prick'd
their steeds, and thus.
Their plumes driv'n backward by the wind
they made
In moving, all together down upon him
Bare, as a wild wave in the wide North-
sea,
Green-glimmering toward the summit,
bears, with all
Its stormy crests that smoke against the
skies,
Down on a bark, and overbears the bark,
And him that helms it, so they overbore
Sir Lancelot and his charger, and a spear
Down-glancing lamed the charger, and a
spear
Prick'd sharply his own cuirass, and the
head
Pierced thro' his side, and there snapt,
and remain'd.
Then Sir Lavaine did well and wor-
shipfuUy ;
He bore a knight of old repute to the
earth.
And brought his horse to Lancelot where
he lay.
396
LANCELOT AND ELALNE.
He up the side, sweating with agony, got,
But thought to do while he might yet
endure,
And being lustily holpen by the rest,
His party, — tho' it seem'd half-miracle
To those he fought with, — drave his kith
and kin,
And all the Table Round that held the
lists,
Back to the barrier; then the trumpets
blew
Proclaiming his the prize, who wore the
sleeve
Of scarlet, and the pearls; and all the
knights,
His party, cried, ' Advance and take thy
prize
The diamond ; ' but he answer'd, ' Diamond
me
No diamonds ! for God's love, a little air !
Prize me no prizes, for my prize is death !
Hence will I, and I charge you, follow
me not.'
He spoke, and vanish'd suddenly from
the field
With young Lavaine into the poplar
grove.
There from his charger down he slid, and
sat,
Gasping to Sir Lavaine, * Draw the lance-
head:'
*Ah my sweet lord Sir Lancelot,' said
Lavaine,
* I dread me, if I draw it, you will die.'
But he, * I die already with it: draw —
Draw,' — and Lavaine drew, and Sir
Lancelot gave
A marvellous great shriek and ghastly
groan.
And half his blood burst forth, and down
he sank
For the pure pain, and wholly swoon'd
away.
Then came the hermit out and bare him
in.
There stanch'd his wound; and there, in
daily doubt
Whether to live or die, for many a week
Hid from the wide world's rumour by the
grove
Of poplars with their noise of falling
showers,
And ever- tremulous aspen-trees, he lay.
But on that day when Lancelot fled the
lists.
His party, knights of utmost North and
West,
Lords of waste marches, kings of desolate
isles,
Came round their great Pendragon, saying
to him,
' Lo, Sire, our knight, thro' whom we
won the day.
Hath gone sore wounded, and hath left
his prize
Untaken, crying that his prize is death.'
'Heaven hinder,' . said the King, 'that
such an one.
So great a knight as we have seen to-day —
He seem'd to me another Lancelot —
Yea, twenty times I thought him Lance-
lot-
He must not pass uncared for. Where-
fore, rise,
0 Gawain, and ride forth and find the
knight.
Wounded and wearied needs must he be
near.
1 charge you that you get at once to horse.
And, knights and kings, there breathes
not one of you
Will deem this prize of ours is rashly
given :
His prowess was too wondrous. We will
do him
No customary honour : since the knight
Came not to us, of us to claim the prize.
Ourselves will send it after. Rise and
take
This diamond, and deliver it, and -return.
And bring us where he is, and how he
fares,
And cease not from your quest until ye
find.'
So saying, from the carven flower above,
To which it made a restless heart, he
took,
Ahd gave, the diamond : then from where
he sat
At Arthur's right, with smiling face arose.
With smiling face and frowning heart, a
Prince
In the mid might and flourish of his May,
LANCELOT AND ELALNE.
397
Gawain, surnamed The Courteous, fair
Had made the pretext of a hindering
and strong.
wound.
And after Lancelot, Tristram, and
That he might joust unknown of all, and
Geraint
learn
And Gareth, a good knight, but there-.
If his old prowess were in aught decay'd;
withal
And added, " Our true Arthur, when he
Sir Modred's brother, and the child of
learns.
Lot,
Will well allow my pretext, as for gain
Nor often loyal to his word, and now
Of purer glory." '
Wroth that the King's command to sally
forth
Then replied the King:
In quest of whom he knew not, made him
' Far lovelier in our Lancelot had it been.
leave
In lieu of idly dallying with the truth.
The banquet, and concourse of knights
To have trusted me as he hath trusted thee.
\>^ and kings.
Surely his King and most familiar friend
^v. "
Might well have kept his secret. True,
So all in wrath he got to horse and
indeed,
went;
Albeit I know my knights fantastical,
While Arthur to the banquet, dark in
So fine a fear in our large Lancelot
mood,
Must needs have moved my laughter:
Past, thinking, ' Is it Lancelot who hath
now remains
come
But little cause for laughter : his own
Despite the wound he spake of, all for
kin —
gain
111 news, my Queen, for all who love him,
Of glory, and hath added wound to
this ! —
wound,
His kith and kin, not knowing, set upon
And ridd'n away to die? ' So fear'd the
him;
King,
So that he went sore wounded from the
And, after two days' tarriance there.
field :
return'd.
Yet good news too : for goodly hopes are
Then when he saw the Queen, embra-
mine
cing ask'd.
That Lancelot is no more a lonely heart.
•Love, are you yet so sick?' 'Nay,
He wore, against his wont, upon his helm
lord,' she said.
A sleeve of scarlet, broider'd with great
'And where is Lancelot?' Then the
pearls.
Queen amazed,
Some gentle maiden's gift.'
'Was he not with you? won he not your
. prize?'
' Yea, lord,' she said,
' Nay, but one like him.' ' Why that like
'Thy hopes are mine,' and saying that,
was he.'
she choked.
And when the King demanded how she
And sharply turn'd about to hide her face,
knew,
Past to her chamber, and there flung
Said, ' Lord, no sooner had ye parted
herself
from us.
Down on the great King's couch, and
Than Lancelot told me of a common talk
writhed upon it,
That men went down before his spear at
And clench'd her fingers till they bit the
a touch.
palm.
But knowing he was Lancelot; his great
And shriek'd out 'Traitor' to the un-
name
hearing wall.
Conquer'd; and therefore would he hide
Then flash'd into wild tears, and rose
his name
again.
From all men, ev'n the King, and to this
And moved about her palace, proud and
end
pale.
LANCELOT AND ELAINE.
Gavvain the while thro' all the region
round
Rode with his diamond, wearied of the
quest,
Touch'd at all points, except the poplar
grove,
And came at last, tho' late, to Astolat :
Whom glittering in enamell'd arms the
maid
Glanced at, and cried, ' What news from
Camelot, lord?
What of the knight with the red sleeve? '
' He won.'
* I knew it,' she said. * But parted from
the jousts
Hurt in the side,' whereat she caught her
breath ;
Thro' her own side she felt the sharp
lance go;
Thereon she smote her hand: wellnigh
she swoon'd :
And, while he gazed wonderingly at her,
came
The Lord of Astolat out, to whom the
Prince
Reported who he was, and on what
quest
Sent, that he bore the prize and could '
not find
The victor, but had ridd'n a random
round
To seek him, and had wearied of the
search.
To whom the Lord of Astolat, ' Bide
with us,
And ride no more at random, noble
Prince !
Here was the knight, and here he left a
shield;
This will he send or come for : further-
more
Our son is with him; we shall hear anon.
Needs must we hear.' To this the cour-
teous Prince
Accorded with his wonted courtesy,
Courtesy with a touch of traitor in it.
And stay'd; and cast his eyes on fair
Elaine :
Where could be found face daintier?
then her shape
From forehead down to foot, perfect —
again
From foot to forehead exquisitely turn'd :
'Well — if I bide, lo ! this wild flower
for me ! '
And oft they met among the garden yews,
And there he set himself to pla,y upon her
With sallying wit, free ilashes from a
height
Above her, graces of the court, and songs,
Sighs, and slow smiles, and golden elo-
quence
And amorous adulation, till the maid
Rebell'd against it, saying to him, ' Prince,
O loyal nephew of our noble King,
Why ask you not to see the shield he left,
Whence you might learn his name ? Why
slight your King,
And lose the quest he sent you on, and
prove
No surer than our falcon yesterday.
Who lost the hem we slipt her at, and
went
To all the winds ? ' ' Nay, by mine head,'
said he,
' I lose it, as we lose the lark in heaven,
O damsel, in the light of your blue eyes;
But an yc will it let me see the shield.'
And when the shield was brought, and
Gawain saw
Sir Lancelot's azure lions, crown'd with
gold,
Ramp in the field, he smote his thigh,
and mock'd :
* Right was the King ! our Lancelot !
that true man ! '
* And right was I,' - iC answer'd merrily,
'I,
Who dream'd my knight the greatest
knight of all'
*And if / dream'd,' said Gawain, '.that
you love
This greatest knight, your pardon ! lo,
ye know it !
Speak therefore : shall I waste myself in
vain? '
Full simple was her answer, * What know
I?
My brethren have been all my fellow-
ship;
And I, when often they have talk'd of
love,
Wish'd it had been my mother, for they
talk'd,
Mcseem'd, of what they knew not; so
myself —
LANCELOT AND ELAINE.
399
I know not if I know what true love is,
But if I know, then, if I love not him,
I know there is none other I can love.'
'Yea, by God's death,' said he, 'ye love
. him well.
But would not, knew ye what all others
know,
And whom he loves.' ' So be it,' cried
Elaine,
And lifted her fair face and moved away :
But he pursued her, calling, 'Stay a
little !
One golden minute's grace ! he wore
your sleeve :
Would he break faith with one I may not
name?
Must our true man change like a leaf at
last?
Nay — like enow: why then, far be it
from me
To cross our mighty Lancelot in his
loves !
And, damsel, for I deem you know full
well
Where your great knight is hidden, let
me leave
My quest Avith you; the diamond also:
here !
For if you love, it will be sweet to
give it;
And if he love, it will be sweet to
have it
From your own hand; and whether he
love or not,
A diamond is a diamond. Fare you well
A thousand times ! — a thousand times
farewell !
Yet, if he love, and his love hold, we
two
May meet at court hereafter: there, I
think.
So ye will learn the courtesies of the
court,
We two shall know each other.'
Then he gave,
And slightly kiss'd the hand to which he
gave,
The diamond, and all wearied of the
quest
Leapt on his horse, and carolling as he
went
A true-love ballad, lightly rode away.
Thence to the court he past; there told
the King
What the King knew, ' Sir Lancelot is
the knight.'
And added, 'Sir, my liege, so much I
learnt;
But fail'd to find him, tho' I rode all
round
The region : but I lighted on the maid
Whose sleeve he wore; she loves him;
and to her.
Deeming our courtesy is the truest law,
I gave the diamond: she will render it;
For by mine head she knows his hiding-
place.'
The seldom-frowning King frown'd,
and replied,
' Too courteous truly ! ye shall go no
more
On quest of mine, seeing that ye forget
Obedience is the courtesy due to kings.'
He spake and parted. Wroth, but all
in awe,
For twenty strokes of the blood, without
a word,
Linger'd that other, staring after him;
Then shook his hair, strode off, and
buzz'd abroad
About the maid of Astolat, and her love.
All ears were prick 'd at once, all tongues
were loosed :
'The maid of Astolat loves Sir Lance-
lot,
Sir Lancelot loves the maid of Astolat.'
Some read the King's face, some the
Queen's, and all
Had marvel what the maid might be, but
most
Predoom'd her as unworthy. One old
dame
Came suddenly on the Queen with the
sharp news.
She, that had heard the noise of it
before,
But sorrowing Lancelot should have
stoop'd so low,
Marr'd her friend's aim with pale tran-
quillity.
So ran the tale like fire about the court.
Fire in dry stul)ble a nine-days' wonder
flared :
400
LANCELOT AND ELAINE.
Till ev'n the knights at banquet twice or
thrice
Forgot to drink to Lancelot and the
Queen,
And pledging Lancelot and the lily maid
Smiled at each other, while the Queen,
who sat
With lips severely placid, felt the knot
Climb in her throat, and with her feet
unseen
Crush'd the wild passion out against the
floor
Beneath the banquet, where the meats
became
As wormwood, and she hated all who
pledged.
But far away the maid in Astolat,
Her guiltless rival, she that ever kept
The one-day-seen Sir Lancelot in her
heart,
Crept to her father, while he mused alone.
Sat on his knee, stroked his gray face
and said,
' Father, you call me wilful, and the fault
Is yours who let me have my will, and
now,
Sweet father. Will you let me lose my
wits ? '
' Nay,' said he, ' surely.' * Wherefore,
let me hence,'
She answer'd, ' and find out our dear
Lavaine.'
'Ye will not lose your wits for dear
Lavaine :
Bide,' answer'd he : * we needs must hear
anon
Of him, and of that other.' ' Ay,' she
said,
' And of that other, for I needs must hence
And find that other, wheresoe'er he be.
And with mine own hand give his diamond
to him.
Lest I be found as faithless in the quest
As yon proud Prince who left the quest
to me.
Sweet father, I behold him in my dreams
Gaunt as it were the skeleton of himself,
Death-pale, for lack of gentle maiden's
aid.
The gentler-born the maiden, the more
bound,
My father, to be sweet and serviceable
To noble knights in sickness, as ye know
When these have worn their tokens: let
me hence
I pray you.' Then her father nodding
said,
* Ay, ay, the diamond : wit ye well, my
child.
Right fain were I to learn this knight
were whole.
Being our greatest : yea, and you must
give it —
And sure I think this fruit is hung too
high
For any mouth to gape for save a
queen's —
Nay, I mean nothing : so then, get you
gone,
Being so very wilful you must go.'
Lightly, her suit allow'd, she slipt away,
And while she made her ready for her
ride,
Her father's latest word humm'd in her
ear,
* Being so very wilful you must go,'
And changed itself and edio'd in her
heart,
' Being so very wilful you must die.'
But she was happy enough and shook it
off,
As we shake off the bee that buzzes at us;
And in her heart she answer'd it and said,
* What matter, so I help him back to life?'
Then far away with good Sir Torre for
guide
Rode o'er the long backs of the bushless
downs
To Camelot, and before the city-gates
Came on her brother with a happy face .
Making a roan horse caper and curvet
For pleasure all about a field of flowers :
Whom when she saw, ' Lavaine,' she
cried, 'Lavaine,
How fares my lord Sir Lancelot?' He
amazed,
'Torre and Elaine! why here? Sir
Lancelot !
How know ye my lord's name is Lance-
lot?'
But when the maid had told him all her
tale,
Then turn'd Sir Torre, anc' being in bis
moods
LANCELOT AND ELAINE.
401
Left them, and under the strange-statued
gate,
Where Arthur's wars were render'd
mystically.
Past up the still rich city to his kin,
His own far blood, which dwelt at
Camelot;
And her, Lavaine across the poplar grove
Led to the caves : there first she saw the
casque
Of Lancelot on the wall: her scarlet
sleeve,
Tho' carved and cut, and half the pearls
away,
Stream'd from it still; and in her heart
she laugh'd,
Because he had not loosed it from his
helm.
But meant once more perchance to tour-
ney in it.
And when they gain'd the cell wherein
he slept,
His battle-writhen arms and mighty hands
Lay naked on the wolfskin, and a dream
Of dragging down his enemy made them
move.
Then she that saw him lying unsleek,
unshorn,
Gaunt as it were the skeleton of himself,
Utter'd a little tender dolorous cry.
The sound not wonted in a place so still
Woke the sick knight, and while he roll'd
his eyes
Yet blank from sleep, she started to him,
saying,
* Your prize the diamond sent you by the
King:'
His eyes glisten'd : she fancied * Is it for
me?'
And when the maid had told him all the
tale
Of King and Prince, the diamond sent,
the quest
Assign'd to her not worthy of it, she knelt
Full lowly by the corners of his bed.
And laid the diamond in his open hand.
Her face was near, and, as we kiss the
child
That does the^task assign'd, he kiss'd her
face.
At once she slipt like water to the floor.
* Alas,' he said, ' your ride hath wearied
you.
2D
Rest must you have.' * No rest for me,'
she said;
* Nay, for near you, fair lord, I am at rest.'
What might she mean by that? his large
black eyes,
Yet larger thro' his leanness, dwelt upon
her,
Till all her heart's sad secret blazed itself
In the heart's colours on her simple face;
And Lancelot look'd and was perplext in
mind,
And being weak in body said no more;
But did not love the colour; woman's
love.
Save one, he not regarded, and so turn'd
Sighing, and feign'd a sleep until he slept.
Then rose Elaine and glided thro' the
fields,
And past beneath the weirdly-sculptured
gates
Far up the dim rich city to her kin;
There bode the night: but woke with
dawn, and past
Down thro' the dim rich city to the fields.
Thence to the cave : so day by day she
past
In either twilight ghost-like to and fro
Gliding, and every day she tended him.
And likewise many a night : and Lancelot
Would, tho' he call'd his wound a little
hurt
Whereof he should be quickly whole, at
times
Brain-feverous in his heat and agony,
seem
Uncourteous, even he : but the meek
maid
Sweetly forbore him ever, being to him
Meeker than any child to a rough nurse.
Milder than any mother to a sick child.
And never woman yet, since man's first
fall,
Did kindlier unto man, but her deep love
Upbore her; till the hermit, skill'd in all
The simples and the science of that time,
Told him that her fine care had saved his
fife.
And the sick man forgot her simple blush.
Would call her friend and sister, swee-'
Elaine,
Would listen for her coming and regret
Her parting step, and held her tende4y,
402
LANCELOT AND ELAINE.
And loved her with all love except the
love
Of man and woman when they love their
best,
Closest and sweetest, and had died the
death
In any knightly fashion for her sake.
And peradventure had he seen her first
She might have made this and that other
world
Another world for the sick man; but now
The shackles of an old love straiten'd him,
His honour rooted in dishonour stood.
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.
Yet the great knight in his mid-sick^
ness made
Full many a holy vow and pure resolve.
These, as but born of sickness, could not
live :
For when the blood ran lustier in him
again,
Full often the bright image of one face,
Making a treacherous quiet in. his heart.
Dispersed his resolution like a cloud.
Then if the maiden, while that ghostly
grace
Beam'd on his fancy, spoke, he answer'd
not,
Or short and coldly, and she knew right
well
What the rough sickness meant, but what
this meant
She knew not, and the sorrow dimm'd
her sight,
And drave her ere her time across the
fields
Far into the rich city, where alone
She murmur'd, * Vain, in vain : it cannot
be.
He will not love me: how then? must
I die?'
Then as a little helpless innocent bird.
That has but one plain passage of few
notes.
Will sing the simple passage o'er and o'er
For all an April morning, till the ear
Wearies to hear it, so the simple maid
Went half the night repeating, * Must I
die?'
And now to right she turn'd, and now to
left,
And found no ease in turning or in rest;
And ' Him or death,' she mutter'd,
' death or him,'
Again and like a burthen, ' Him or death.'
But when Sir Lancelot's deadly hurt
was whole.
To Astolat returning rode the three.
There morn by morn, arraying her sweet
self
In that wherein she deem'd she look'd
her best,
She came before Sir Lancelot, for she
thought
* If I be loved, these are my festal robes.
If not, the victim's flowers iDefore he fall.'
And Lancelot ever prest upon the maid
That she should ask some goodly gift of
him
For her own self or hers; ' and do not
shun
To speak the wish most near to your true
heart; -
Such service have ye done me, that I make
My will of yours, and Prince and Lord
am I
In mine own land, and what I will I can.'
Then like a ghost she lifted up her face,
But like a ghost without the power to
speak.
And Lancelot saw that she withheld her
wish.
And bode among them yet a little space
Till he should learn it; and one morn it
chanced .
He found her in among the garden yews,
And said, * Delay no longer, speak your
wish.
Seeing I go to-day : ' then out she brake :
' Going? and we shall never see you more.
And I must die for want of one bold word.'
' Speak : that I live to hear,' he said, * is
yours.'
Then suddenly and passionately she
spoke :
*I have gone mad. I love you: let me
die.'
' Ah, sister,' answer'd Lancelot, * what is
this?'
And innocently extending her white arms,
' Your love,' she said, 'your love — to be
your wife.'
And Lancelot answer'd, ' Had I chosen
to wed.
LANCELOT A\D ELAINE.
403
I had been wedded earlier, sweet Elaine :
Stood grasping what was nearest, then
But now there never will be wife of mine.'
rephed :
■ No, no,' she cried, ' I care not to be
'Of all this will I nothing; ' and so
wife,
fell,
But to be with you still, to see your face.
And thus they bore her swooning to her
To serve you, and to follow you thro' the
world.'
And Lancelot answer'd, * Nay, the world.
tower.
Then spake, to whom thro' those black
the world.
walls of yew
All ear and eye, with such a stupid heart
Their talk had pierced, her father : * Ay,
To interpret ear and eye, and such a
a flash.
tongue
I fear me, that will strike my blossom
To blare its own interpretation — nay,
dead.
Full ill then should 1 quit your brother's
Too courteous are ye, fair Lord Lancelot.
love.
I pray you, use some rough discourtesy
And your good father's kindness.' And
To blunt or break her passion.'
she said, *
*Not to be with you, not to see your
Lancelot said,
face-
'That were against me: what I can I
Alas for me then, my good days are
will; '
done.'
And there that day remain'd, and toward
*Nay, noble maid,' he answer'd, 'ten
even
times nay !
Sent for his shield : full meekly rose the
This is not love : but love's first flash in
maid.
youth.
Stript off" the case, and gave the naked
Most common: yea, I know it of mine
shield;
own self ;
Then, when she heard his horse upon
And you yourself will smile at your own
the stones,
self
Unclasping flung the casement back, and
Hereafter, when you yield your flower of
look'd
life
Down on his helm, from which her sleeve
To one more fitly yours, not thrice your
had gone.
age:
And Lancelot knew the little clinking
And then will I, for true you are and
sound ;
sweet
And she by tact of love was well aware
Beyond mine old belief in womanhood,
That Lancelot knew that she was looking
More specially should your good knight
at him.
be poor.
And yet he glanced not up, nor waved
Endow you with broad land and territory
his hand.
Even to the half my realm beyond the
Nor bade farewell, but sadly rode away.
seas,
This was the one discourtesy that he
So that would make you happy : further-
used.
more,
Ev'n to the death, as tbo' ye were my
So in her tower alone the maiden sat :
blood.
His very shield was gone; only the case.
Iji all your quarrels will I be your knight.
Her own poor work, her empty labour.
This will I do, dear damsel, for your
left.
sake.
But still she heard him, still his picture
And more than this 1 cannot.'
form'd
And grew between her and the pictured
While he spoke
wall.
She neither 'blush'd nor shook, but
Then came her father, saying in low
deathly-pale
tones,
404
LANCELOT AND ELAINE.
* Have comfort,' whom she greeted
quietly.
Then came her brethren saying, * Peace
to thee,
Sweet sister,' whom she answer'd with
all calm.
But when they left her to herself again,
Death, like a friend's voice from a distant
field
Approaching thro' the darkness, call'd;
the owls
Wailing had power upon her, and she mixt
Her fancies with the sallow-rifted glooms
Of evening, and the moanings of the wind.
And in those days she made a little
song,
And call'd her song * The Song of Love
and Death,'
And sang it: sweetly could she make
and sing.
* Sweet is true love tho' given in vain,
in vain;
And sweet is death who puts an end to
pain :
I know not which is sweeter, no, not I.
'Love, art thou sweet? then bitter
death must be :
Love, thou art bitter; sweet is death to
me.
0 Love, if death be sweeter, let me die.
•Sweet love, that seems not made to
fade away.
Sweet death, that seems to make us
loveless clay,
1 know not which is sweeter, no, not I.
* I fain would follow love, if that could
be;
I needs must follow death, who calls for
me;
Call and I follow, I follow ! let me die.'
High with the last line scaled her voice,
and this.
All in a fiery dawning wild with wind
That shook her tow^er, the brothers heard,
and thought
With shuddering, • Hark the Phantom of
the house
That ever shrieks before a death,' and
call'd
The father, and all three in hurry and
fear
Ran to her, and lo ! the blood-red light
of dawn
Flared on her face, she shrilling, * Let
me die ! '
And when we dwell upon a word we
know,
Repeating, till the word we know so well
Becomes a wonder, and we know not
why.
So dwelt the father on her face, and
thought
*Is this Elaine?' tiir back the maiden
fell,
Then gave a languid hand to each, and
lay.
Speaking a still good-morrow with her
eyes.
At last she said, * Sweet brothers, yester-
night
I seem'd a curious little maid again,
As happy as when we dwelt among the
woods,
And when ye used to take me with the
tlood
Up the great river in the boatman's
boat.
Only ye would not pass beyond the cape
That has the poplar on it : there ye fixt
Your limit, oft returning with the tide.
And yet I cried because ye would not
pass
Beyond it, and far up the shining flood
Until we found the palace of the King.
And yet ye would not; but this night I
dream'd
That I was all alone upon the flood,
And then I said, "Now shall I have my
will : "
And there I woke, but still the wish
remain'd.
So let me hence that I may pass at last^
Beyond the poplar and far up the flood,
Until I find the palace of the King.
There will I enter in among them all.
And no man there will dare to mock a\
me;
But there the fine Gawain will wonder at
me,
LANCELOT AND ELAINE,
405
And there the great Sir Lancelot muse
at me;
Gawain, who bade a thousand farewells to
me,
Lancelot, who coldly went, nor bade me
one :
And there the King will know me and
my love,
And there the Queen herself will pity me,
And all the gentle court will welcome me.
And after my long voyage I shall rest ! '
* Peace,' said her father, ' O my child,
ye seem
Light-headed, for what force is yours to
go
So far, being sick? and wherefore would
ye look
On this proud fellow again, who scorns
us all?'
Then the rough Torre began to heave
and move.
And bluster into stormy sobs and say,
' I never loved him : an I meet with him,
I care not howsoever great he be,
Then will I strike at him and strike him
down,
Give me good fortune, I will strike him
dead.
For this discomfort he hath done the
house.'
To whom the gentle sister made reply,
* Fret not yourself, dear brother, nor be
wroth,
Seeing it is no more Sir Lancelot's fault
Not to love me, than it is mine to love
Him of all men who seems to me the
highest.'
* Highest ? ' the father answer'd, echo-
ing ' highest?'
(He meant to break the passion in her)
'nay,
Daughter, I know not what you call the
highest;
But this I know, for all the people know
it,
He loves the Queen, and in an open
shame :
And she returns his love in open shame;
If this be high, what is it to be low ? '
Then spake the lily maid of Astolat :
* Sweet father, all too faint and sick am I
For anger : these are slanders : never yet
Was noble man but made ignoble talk.
He makes no friend who never made a
foe.
But now it is my glory to have loved
One peerless, without stain : so let me
pass,
My father, howsoe'er I seem to you.
Not all unhappy, having loved God's best
And greatest, tho' my love had no return :
Yet, seeing you desire your child to live,
^Thanks, but you work against your own
desire;
For if I could l^elieve the things you say
I should but die the sooner; wherefore
cease.
Sweet father, and bid call the ghostly
man
Hither, and let me shrive me clean, and
die.'
So when the ghostly man had come and
gone.
She with a face, bright as for sin forgiven.
Besought Lavaine to write as she devised
A letter, word for word; and when he
ask'd
* Is it for Lancelot, is it for my dear lord?
Then will I bear it gladly; ' she replied,
' For Lancelot and the Queen and all the
world.
But I myself must bear it.' Then he wrote
The letter she devised; which being writ
And folded, ' O sweet father, tender and
true.
Deny me not,' she said — * ye never yet
Denied my fancies — this, however strange,
My latest : lay the letter in my hand
A little ere I die, and close the hand
Upon it; I shall guard it even in death.
And when the heat is gone from out my
heart.
Then take the little bed on which I died
For Lancelot's love, and deck it like the
Queen's
For richness, and me also like the Queen
In all I have of rich, and lay me on it.
And let there be prepared a chariot-bier
To take me to the river, and a barge
Be ready on the river, clothed in black-
I go in state to court, to meet the Queen.
4o6
LANCELOT AND ELAINE.
There surely I shall speak for mine own
self,
And none of you can speak for me so
well.
And therefore let our dumb old man alone
Go with me, he can steer and row, and he
Will guide me to that palace, to the doors.'
She ceased: her father promised;
whereupon
She grew so cheerful that they deem'd
her death
Was rather in the fantasy than the blood.
But ten slow mornings past, and on the
eleventh
Her father laid the letter in her hand,
And closed the hand upon it, and she
died.
So that day there was dole in Astolat.
But when the next sun brake from un-
derground.
Then, those two brethren slowly with bent
brows,
Accompanying, the sad chariot-bier
Past like a shadow thro' the field, that
shone
Full-summer, to that streani whereon the
barge,
Pall'd all its length in blackest samite,
lay.
There sat the lifelong creature of the
house,
Loyal, the dumb old servitor, on deck,
Winking his eyes, and twisted all his face.
So those two brethren from the chariot
took
And on the black decks laid her in her
bed.
Set in her hand a lily, o'er her hung
The silken case with braided blazonings.
And kiss'd her quiet brows, and saying to
her
' Sister, farewell for ever,' and again
' Farewell, sweet sister,' parted all in tears.
Then rose the dumb old servitor, and the
dead,
Oar'd by the dumb, went upward with
the flood —
In her right hand the lily, in her left
The letter — all her bright hair streaming
down —
And all the coverlid was cloth of gold
Drawn to her waist, and she herself in
white
All but her face, and that clear-featured
face
Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead.
But fast asleep, and lay as tho' she smiled.
That day Sir Lancelot at the palace
craved
Audience of Guinevere, to give at last
The price of half a realm, his costly gift,
Hard-won and hardly won with bruise and
blow.
With deaths of others, and almost his
own,
The nine-years-fought-for diamonds : for
he saw
One of her house, and sent him to the
Queen
Bearing his wish, whereto the Queen
agreed
With such and so unmoved a majesty
She might have seem'd her statue, but
that he.
Low-drooping till he wellnigh kiss'd her
feet
For loyal awe, saw with a sidelong eye
The shadow of some piece of pointed
lace.
In the Queen's shadow, vibrate on the
walls.
And parted, laughing in his courtly heart.
All in an oriel on the summer side,
Vine-clad, of Arthur's palace toward the
stream,
They met, and Lancelot kneeling utter'd,
' Queen,
Lady, my liege, in whom I have my joy.
Take, what I had rcjt won except for you.
These jewels, and make me happy, making
them
An armlet for the roundest arm on earth.
Or necklace for a neck to which the
swan's
Is tawnier than her cygnet's: these are
words : -
Your beauty is your beauty, and I sin
In speaking, yet O grant my worship of it
Words, as we grant grief tears. Such sin
in words
Perchance, we both can pardon : but, my
Queen,
LANCELOT AND ELALNE.
407
I hear of rumours flying thro' your court.
Our l)ond, as not the bond of man and
wife,
Should have in it an absohiter trust
To make up that defect : let rumours be :
When did not rumours fly? these, as I
trust
That you trust me in your own nobleness,
I may not well believe that you believe.'
While thus he spoke, half-turn'd away,
the Queen
Brake from the vast oriel-embowering
vine
Leaf after leaf, and tore, and cast them
off-.
Till all the place whereon she stood was
green;
Then, when he ceased, in one cold pas-
sive hand
Received at once and laid aside the gems
There on a table near her, and replied :
' It may be, I am quicker of belief
Than you believe me, Lancelot of the
Lake.
Our bond is not the bond of man and
wife.
This good is in it, whatsoe'er of ill,
It can be broken easier. I for you
This many a year have done despite and
wrong
To one whom ever in my heart of hearts
I did acknowledge nobler. What are
these?
Diamonds for me ! they had been thrice
their worth
Being your gift, had you not lost your
own.
To loyal hearts the value of all gifts
Must vary as the giver's. Not for me !
For her ! for your new fancy. Only this
Grant me, I pray you: have your joys
apart.
I doubt not that however changed, you
keep
So much of what is graceful: and myself
Would shun to break those bounds of
courtesy
In which as Arthur's Queen I move and
rule :
So cannot speak my mind. An end to
this!
A strange one ! yet I take it with Amea
So pray you, add my diamonds to hei
pearls ;
Deck her with these; tell her she shines
me down :
An armlet for an arm to which the
Queen's
Is haggard, or. a necklace for a neck
O as much fairer — as a faith once fail*
Was richer than these diamonds — hers
not mine —
Nay, by the mother of our Lord himself
Or hers or mine, mine now to work my
will —
She shall not have them,'
Saying which she seized,
And, thro' the casement standing wide
for heat,
Flung them, and down they flash'd, and
smote the stream.
Then from the smitten surface flash'd, «s
it were,
Diamonds to meet them, and they past
away.
Then while Sir Lancelot leant, in half
disdain
At love, life, all things, on the window
ledge.
Close underneath his eyes, and right
across
Where these had' fallen, slowly past the
barge
Whereon the lily maid of Astolat
Lay smiling, hke a star in blackest night.
But the wild Queen, who saw not, burst
away
To weep and wail in secret; and the
barge,
On to the palace-doorway sliding, paused.
There two stood arm'd, and kept the
door; to whom.
All up the marble stair, tier over tier.
Were added mouths that gaped, and eyes
that ask'd
' What is it?' but that oarsman's haggard
face.
As hard and still as is the face that men
Shape to their fancy's eye from broken
rocks
On some cliff-side, appall'd them, and
they said,
402J
LANCELOT AND ELAINE.
'He is enchanted, cannot speak — and
she,
Look how she sleeps — the Fairy Queen,
so fair !
Yea, but how pale ! what are they? flesh
and blood?
Or come to take the King to Fairyland?
For some do hold our Arthur cannot die.
But that he passes into Fairyland.'
While thus they babbled of the King,
the King
Came girt with knights : then turn'd the
toi^gueless man
From the half-face to the full eye, and
rose
And pointed to the damsel, and the
doors.
So Arthur bade the meek Sir Percivale
And pure Sir Galahad to uplift the maid;
And reverently they bore her into hall.
Then came the fine Gawain and wonder'd
at her,
And Lancelot later came and mused at
her,
And last the Queen herself, and pitied
her:
But Arthur spied the letter in her hand,
Stoopt, took, brake seal, and read it;
this was all :
* Most noble lord. Sir Lancelot of the
Lake,
I, sometime call'd the maid of Astolat,
Come, for you left me taking no farewell,
Hither, to take my last farewell of you.
I loved you, and my love had no return.
And therefore my true love has. been my
death.
And therefore to our Lady Guinevere,
And to all other ladies, I make moan :
Pray for my soul, and yield me burial.
Pray for my soul thou too, Sir Lancelot,
As thou art a knight peerless.'
Thus he read;
And ever in the reading, lords and dames
Wept, looking often from his face who
read
To hers which lay so silent, and at times,
So touch'd were they, half-thinking that
her lips,
Who had devised the letter, moved again.
Then freely spoke Sir Lancelot to them
all;
* My lord liege Arthur, and all ye that
hear,
Know that for this most gentle maiden's
death
Right heavy am I; for good she was and
true.
But loved me with a love beyond all love
In women, whomsoever I have known.
Yet to be loved makes not to love again;
Not at my years, however it hold in
youth.
I swear by truth and knighthood that I
gave
No cause, not willingly, for such a love :
To this I call my friends in testimony,
Her brethren, and her father, who him-
self
Besought me to be plain and blunt, and
use.
To break her passion, some discourtesy
Against my nature : what I could, I did.
I left, her and I bade her no farewell;
Tho', had I dreamt the damsel would
have died,
I might have put my wits to some rough
use,
And help'd her from herself.'
Then said the Queen
(Sea was her wrath, yet working after
storm),
*Ye might at least have done her so
much grace.
Fair lord, as would have help'd her from
her death.'
He raised his head, their eyes met and
hers fell,
He adding, *
' Queen, she would not be content
Save that I wedded her, which could not
be.
Then might she follow me thro' the world,
she ask'd;
It could not be. I told her that her love
Was but the flash of youth, would darken
down
To rise hereafter in a stiller flame
Toward one more worthy of her — then
would I,
More specially were he, she wedded,
poor,
LANCELOT AND ELALNE.
409
Estate them with large land and territory
In mine own realm beyond the narrow
seas,
To keep them in all joyance : more than
this
I could not; this she would not, and she
died.'
He pausing, Arthur answer'd, 'O my
knight,
It will be to thy worship, as my knight.
And mine, as head of all our Table
Round,
To see that she be buried worshipfully.'
So toward that shrine which then in
all the realm
Was richest, Arthur leading, slowly went
The marshall'd Order of their Table
Round,
And Lancelot sad beyond his wont, to see
The maiden buried, not as one unknown,
Nor meanly, but with gorgeous obsequies.
And mass, and rolling music, like a
queen.
And when the knights had laid her
comely head
Low in the dust of half-forgotten kings.
Then Arthur spake among them, * Let
her tomb
Be costly, and her image thereupon,
And let the shield of Lancelot at her
feet
Be carven, and her lily in her hand.
And let the story of her dolorous voyage
For all true hearts be blazon'd on her
tomb
la letters gold and azure ! ' which was
wrought
Thereafter ; but when now the lords and
dames
And people, from the high door stream-
ing, brake
Disorderly, as homeward each, the Queen,
Who mark'd Sir Lancelot where he
moved apart.
Drew near, and sigh'd in passing, * Lance-
lot,
Forgive me; mine was jealousy in love.'
He answer'd with his eyes upon the
ground,
'That is love's curse; pass on, my Queen,
forgiven.'
But Arthur, who beheld his cloudy brows,
Approach'd him, and with full affection
said,
* Lancelot, my Lancelot, thou in whom
I have
Most joy and most affiance, for I know
What thou hast been in battle by my
side,
And many a time have watch'd thee at
the tilt
Strike down the lusty and long-practised
knight,
And let the younger and unskill'd go by
To win his honour and to make his name,
And loved thy courtesies and thee, a man
Made to be loved; but now I would to
God,
Seeing the homeless trouble in thine eyes,
Thou couldst have loved this maiden,
shaped, it seems.
By God for thee alone, and from her face.
If one may judge the living by the dead,
Delicately pure and marvellously fair.
Who might have brought thee, now a
lonely man
Wifeless and heirless, noble issue, sons
Born to the glory of thy name and fame.
My knight, the great Sir Lancelot of
the Lake.'
Then answer'd Lancelot, * Fair she
was, my King,
Pure, as you ever wish your knights to be.
To doubt her fairness were to want an
eye,
To doubt her pureness were to want a
heart —
Yea, to be loved, if what is worthy love
Could bind him, but free love will not
be bound.'
* Free love, so bound, were freest,' said
the King.
'Let love be free; free love is for the
best:
And, after heaven, on our dull side of
death,
What should be best, if not so pure a
love
Clothed in so pure a loveliness? yet thee
She fail'd to bind, tho' being, as I think,
Unbound as yet, and gentle, as I know.'
4IO
THE HOL Y GRAIL.
And " Lancelot answer'd nothing, but
he went,
And at the inrunning of a little brook
Sat by the river in a cove, and watch'd
The high reed wave, and lifted up his
eyes
And saw the barge that brought her
moving down,
Far-off, a blot upon the stream, and said
Low in himself, * Ah, simple heart and
sweet.
Ye loved me, damsel, surely with a love
Far tenderer than my Queen's. Pray for
thy soul?
Ay, that will L Farewell too — now at
last —
Farewell, fair lily. "Jealousy in love?"
Not rather dead love's harsh heir, jealous
pride?
Queen, if I grant the jealousy as of
love.
May not your crescent fear for name and
fame
Speak, as it waxes, of a love that wanes?
Why did the King dwell on my name to
me?
Mine own name shames me, seeming a
reproach,
Lancelot, whom the Lady of the Lake
Caught from his mother's arms — the
wondrous one
Who passes thro' the vision of the night —
She chanted snatches of mysterious hymns
Heard on the winding waters, eve and
morn
She kiss'd, me saying, "Thou art fair,
my child,
As a king's son," and often in her arms
She bare me, pacing on the dusky mere.
Would she had drown'd me in it, wher-
e'er it be !
For what am I? what profits me my
name
Of greatest knight? I fought for it,
and have it:
Pleasure to have it, none; to lose it,
pain;
Now grown a part of me : but what use
in it?
To make men worse by making my sin
known?
Or sin seem less, the sinner seeming
great?
Alas for Arthur's greatest knight, a man
Not after Arthur's heart ! I needs must
break
These bonds that so defame me : not
without
She wills it: would I, if she will'd it?
nay.
Who knows? but if I Would not, then
may God,
I pray him, send a sudden Angel down
To seize me by the hair and bear me
far,
And fling me deep in that forgotten
mere,
Among the tumbled fragments of the
hills.'
So groan' d Sir Lancelot in remorseful
pain.
Not knowing he should die a holy man.
THE HOLY GRAIL.
From noiseful arms, and acts of prowess
done
In tournament or tilt, Sir Percivale,
Whom Arthur and his knighthood call'd
The Pure,
Had pass'd into the silent life of prayer.
Praise, fast, and alms; and leaving for
the cowl
The helmet in an abbey far away
PVom Camelot, there, and not long after,
died.
And one, a fellow-monk among the
rest,
Ambrosius, loved him much beyond the
rest,
And honour'd him, and wrought into
his heart
A way by love that waken'd love within,
To answer that which came : and as
they sat
Beneath a world-old yew-tree, darkening
half
The cloisters, on a gustful April morn
That pufiPd the swaying branches into
smoke
Above them, ere the summer when he
died.
The monk Ambrosius question'd Per-
civale :
THE HOLY GRAIL.
411
' O brother, I have seen this yew-tree
smoke,
Spring after spring, for half a hundred
years :
For never have I known the world with-
out,
Nor ever stray'd beyond the pale : but
thee.
When first thou earnest — such a courtesy
Spake thro' the limbs and in the voice —
I knew
For one of those who eat in Arthur's hall;
For good ye are and bad, and like to coins,
Some true, some light, but every one of you
Staihp'd with the image of the King; and
now
fell me, what drove thee from the Table
Round,
My brother ? was it earthly passion crost ? '
'Nay,' said the knight; 'for no such
passion mine.
But the sweet vision of the Holy Grail
Drove me from all vainglories, rivalries.
And earthly heats that spring and sparkle
out
Among us in the jousts, while women
watch
Who wins, who falls; and waste the
spiritual strength
Within us, better offer'd up to Heaven.'
To whom the monk : * The Holy
Grail ! — I trust
We are green in Heaven's eyes; but here
too much
We moulder — as to things without I
mean —
Yet one of your own knights, a guest of
ours,
Told us of this in our refectory,
But spake with such a sadness and so low
We heard not half of what he said. What
is it?
The phantom of a cup that comes and
goes?'
* Nay, monk ! what phantom ? ' an-
swer'd Percivale.
'The cup, the cup itself, from which our
Lord
Drank at the last sad supper with his own.
This, from the blessed land of Aromat —
After the day of darkness, when the dea-'
Went wandering o'er Moriah — the good
saint
Arimathaean Joseph, journeying brought
To Glastonbury, where the winter thorn
Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our
Lord.
And there awhile it bode; and if a man
Could touch or see it, he was heal'd at
once.
By faith, of all his ills. But then the times
Grew to such evil that the holy cup
Was caught away to Heaven, and disap-
pear'd.'
To whom the monk : * From our old
books I know
That Joseph came of old to Glastonbury,
And there the heathen Prince, Arviragus,
Gave him an isle of marsh whereon to
build;
And there he built with wattles from the
marsh
A little lonely church in days of yore.
For so they say, tjjese books of ours, but
se^m
Mute of this miracle, far as I have read.
But who first saw the holy thing to-day?'
* A woman,' answer'd Percivale, * a
nun.
And one no further off in blood from me
Than sister; and if ever holy maid
With knees of adoration wore the stone,
A holy maid; tho' never maiden glow'd.
But that was in her earlier maidenhood.
With such a fervent flame of human love.
Which being rudely blunted, glanced and
shot
Only to holy things; to prayer and praise
She gave herself, to fast and alms. And
yet.
Nun as she was, the scandal of the Court,
Sin against Arthur and the Table Round,
And the strange sound of an adulterous
race.
Across the iron grating of her cell
Beat, and she pray'd and fasted all the
more.
' And he to whom she told her sins, or
what
Her all but utter whiteness held for sin,
412
THE HOLY GRAIL.
A man wellnigh a hundred winters old,
Spake often with her of the Holy Grail,
A legend handed down thro' five or six,
And each of these a hundred winters old,
From our Lord's time. And when King
Arthur made
His Table Round, and all men's hearts
became
Clean for a season, surely he had thought
Ihat now the Holy Grail would come
again ;
But sin broke out. Ah, Christ, that- it
would come,
And heal the world of all their wicked-
ness !
" O Father ! " ask'd the maiden, " might
it come
To me by prayer and fasting? " " Nay,"
said he,
"I know not, for thy heart is pure as
snow."
And so she pray'd and fasted, till the sun
Shone, and the wind blew, thro' her, and
I thought
She might have risen apd floated when I
saw her.
' For on a day she sent to speak with
me.
And when she came to speak, behold her
eyes
Beyond my knowing of them, beautiful.
Beyond all knowing of them, wonderful,
Beautiful in the light of holiness.
And " O my brother Percivale," she said,
" Sweet brother, I have seen the Holy
Grail :
For, waked at dead of night, I heard a
sound
As of a silver horn from o'er the hills
Blown, and I thought, * It is not Arthur's
use
To hunt by moonlight; ' and the slender
sound
As from a distance beyond distance grevir
Coming upon me — O never harp nor horn,.
Nor aught we blow with breath, or touch
with hand.
Was like that music as it came; and then
Stream'd thro' my cell a cold and silver
beam,
And down the long beam stole the Holy
Grail,
Rose-red with beatings in it, as if alive,
Till all the white walls of my cell were
dyed
With rosy colours leaping on the wall;
And then the music faded, and the Grail
Past, and the beam decay'd, and from the
walls
The rosy quiverings died into the night.
So now the Holy Thing is here again
Among us, brother, fast thou too and
pray,
And tell thy brother knights to fast and
pray,
That so perchance the vision may be seen
By thee and those, and all the world be
heal'd."
'Then leaving the pale nun, I spake
of this
To all men; and myself fasted and
pray'd
Always, and many among us many a
week
Fasted and pray'd even to the uttermost.
Expectant of the wonder that would be.
*And one there was among us, ever
moved
Among us in white armour, Galahad.
" God make thee good as thou art beau-
tiful,"
Said Arthur, when he dubb'd him knight;
and none
In so young youth, was ever made a
knight
Till Galahad; and this Galahad, when
he heard
My sister's vision, fill'd me with amaze;
His eyes became so like her own, they
seem'd
Hers, and himself her brother more than I.
'Sister or brother none had he; but
some
Call'd him a son of Lancelot, and some
said
Begotten by enchantment — chatterers
they.
Like birds of passage piping up and down,
That gape for flies — we know not whence
they come;
For when was Lancelot wanderingly
lewd?
THE HOLY GRAIL,
413
' But she, the wan sweet maiden, shore
away
Clean from her forehead all that wealth
of hair
Which made a silken mat-work for her
feet;
And out of this she plaited broad and
long
A strong sword-belt, and wove with silver
thread
And crimson in the belt a strange device,
A crimson grail within a silver beam;
And saw the bright boy-knight, and
bound it on him.
Saying, " My knight, my love, my knight
of heaven,
O thou, my love, whose love is one with
mine,
I, maiden, round thee, maiden, bind my
belt.
Go forth, for thou shalt see what I have
seen.
And break thro' all, till one will crown
thee king
Far in the spiritual city:" and as she
spake
She sent the deathless passion in her
eyes
Thro' him, and made him hers, and laid
her mind
On him, and he believed in her belief.
* Then came a year of miracle : O
brother,
In our great hall there stood a vacant
chair,
Fashion'd by Merlin ere he past away,
And carven with strange figures; and in
and out
The figures, like a serpent, ran a scroll
Of letters in a tongue no man could
read.
And Merlin call'd it "The Siege peril--
ous,"
Perilous for good and ill; "for there,"
he said,
" No man could sit but he should lose
himself:"
And once by misadvertence Merlin sat
In his own chair, and so was lost ; but he,
Galahad, when he heard of Merlin's
doom,
Cried, " If I lose myself, I save myself! "
' Then on a summer night it came to
pass.
While the great banquet lay along the
hall,
That Galahad would sit down in Merlin's
chair.
* x^nd all at once, as there we sat, we
heard
A cracking and a riving of the roofs.
And rending, and a blast, and overhead
Thunder, and in the thunder was a cry.
And in the blast there smote along the hall
A beam of light seven times more clear
than day:
And down the long beam stole the Holy
Grail
All over cover'd with a luminous cloud,
And none might see who bare it, and it
past.
But every knight beheld his fellow's face
As in a glory, and all the knights arose,
And staring each at other like dumb men
Stood, till I found a voice and sware a
* I sware a vow before them all, that I,
Because I had not seen the Grail, would
ride
A twelvemonth and a day in quest of it.
Until I found and saw it, as the nun
My sister saw it; and Galahad sware the
vow,
And good Sir Bors, our Lancelot's cousin,
sware.
And Lancelot sware, and many among
the knights,
And Gawain sware, and louder than the
rest.'
Then spake the monk Ambrosius, ask-
ing him,
' What said the King? Did Arthur take
the vow ? '
* Nay, for my lord,' said Percivale,
' the King,
Was not in hall : for early that same day
Scaped thro' a cavern from a bandit hold.
An outraged maiden sprang into the hali
Crying on help : for all her shining hair
Was smear'd with earth, and either milk^
arm
414
THE HOLY GAAIL.
Red-rent with hooks of bramble, and all
she wore
Torn as a sail that leaves the rope is torn
In tempest: so the King arose and went
To smoke the scandalous hive of those
wild bees
That made such honey in his realm.
Howbeit
Some little of this marvel he too saw,
Returning o'er the plain that then began
To darken under Camelot; whence the
King
Look'd up, calling aloud, *' Lo, there !
the roofs
Of our great hall are roll'd in thunder-
smoke !
Pray Heaven, they be not smitten by the
bolt."
For dear to Arthur was that hall of ours,
As having there so oft with all his knights
Feasted, and as the stateliest under
heaven.
* O brother, had you known our mighty
hall,
Which Merlin built for Arthur long ago !
For all the sacred mount of Camelot,
And all the dim rich city, roof by roof.
Tower after tower, spire beyond spire,
By grove, and garden-lawn, and rushing
brook.
Climbs to the mighty hall that Merlin
built.
And four great zones of sculpture, set
betwixt
With many a mystic symbol, gird the hall :
And in the lowest beasts are slaying men,
And in the second men are slaying beasts,
And on the third are warriors, perfect
men.
And on the fourth are men with growing
wings,
And over all one statue in the mould
Of Arthur, made by Merlin, with a crown,
And peak'd wings pointed to the Northern
Star.
And eastward fronts the statue, and the
crown
And both the wings are made of gold,
and flame
At sunrise till the people in far fields,
Wasted so often l)y the heathen hordes,
Behold it, crying, " We have still a King."
* And, brother, had you known our hall
within,
Broader and higher than any in all the
lands !
Where twelve great windows blazon
Arthur's wars,
And all the light that falls upon the board
Streams thro' the twelve great battles of
our King.
Nay, one there is, and at the eastern end,
Wealthy with wandering lines of mount
and mere,
Where Arthur finds the brand Excalibur.
And also one to the west, and counter to it,
And blank: and who shall blazon it?
when and how? —
O there, perchance, when all our wars are
done.
The brand Excalibur will be cast away.
'So to this hall full quickly rode the
King,
In horror lest the work by Merlin wrought,
Dreamlike, should on the sudden vanish,
wrapt
In unremorseful folds of rolling fire.
And in he rode, and up I glanced, and
saw
The golden dragon sparkling over all :
And many of those who burnt the hold,
their arms
Hack'd, and their foreheads grimed with
smoke, and sear'd,
Follow'd, and in among bright faces, ours,
Full of the vision, prest : and then the
King
Spake to me, being nearest, " Percivale "
(Because the hall was all in tumult — ■
some
Vowing, and some protesting), "what is
this?"
' O brother, when I told him what had
chanced.
My sister's vision, and the rest, his face
Darken'd, as I have seen it more than
once,
When some brave deed seem'd to be
done in vain.
Darken; and " Woe is me, my knights,"
he cried,
" Had I been here, ye had not sworn the
vow."
THE HOLY GRAIL,
415
Bold was mine answer, " Had thyself
been here,
My King, thou wouldst have sworn."
" Yea, yea," said he,
** Art thou so bold and hast not seen ^he
Grail?"
*"Nay, lord, I heard the sound, I
saw the light.
But since I did not see the Holy Thing,
I sware a vow to follow it till I saw."
*Then when he ask'd us, knight by
knight, if any
Had seen it, all their answers were as
one:
" Nay, lord, and therefore have we sworn
our vows."
*"Lo now," said Arthur, "have ye
seen a cloud?
What go ye into the wilderness to see? "
•Then Galahad on the sudden, and in
a voice
Shrilling along the hall to Arthur, call'd,
" But I, Sir Arthur, saw the Holy Grail,
I saw the Holy Grail and heard a cry —
* O Galahad, and O Galahad, follow me.' "
*"Ah, Galahad, Galahad," said the
King, •' for such
As thou art is the vision, not for these.
Thy holy nun and thou have seen a sign —
HoHer is none, my Percivale, than she —
A sign to maim this Order which I made.
But ye, that follow but the leader's bell "
(Brother, the King was hard upon his
knights),
"Taliessin is our fullest throat of song,
And one hath sung and all the dumb will
sing.
Lancelot is Lancelot, and hath overborne
Five knights at once, and every younger
knight,
Unproven, holds himself as Lancelot,
Till overborne by one, he learns — and ye.
What are ye? Galahads? — no, nor
Percivales "
(For thus it pleased the King to range
me close
Aftet Sir Galahad); "nay," said he,
*' but men
With strength and will to right the
wrong'd, of power
To lav the sudden heads of violence
' flat.
Knights that in twelve great battles
splash' d and dyed
The strong White Horse in his own
heathen blood —
But one hath seen, and all the blind will
see.
Go, since your vows are sacred, being
made :
Yet — for ye know the cries of all my
realm
Pass thro' this hall — how often, O my
knights,
Your places being vacant at my side, .
This chance of noble deeds will, come
and go
Unchallenged, while ye follow wandering
fires
Lost in the quagmire ! Many of you, yea
most.
Return no more: ye think I show my-
self
Too dark a prophet: come now, let us
meet
The morrow morn once more in one full
field
Of gracious pastime, that once more the
King,
Before ye leave him for this Quest, may
count
The yet-unbroken strength of all his
knights.
Rejoicing in that Order which he made."
*So when the sun broke next from
under ground,
All the great table of our Arthur closed
And clash'd in such a tourney and so
full.
So many lances broken — never yet
Had Camelot seen the like, since Arthut
came;
And I myself and Galahad, for a strength
Was in us from the vision, overthrew
So many knights that all the people
cried.
And almost burst the barriers in their
heat,
Shouting, " Sir Galahad and Sir Perci-
vale ! "
4i6
THE HOLY GRAIL,
*But when the next Jay brake from
under ground —
O brother, had you known our Camelot,
Built by old kings, age after age, so old
The King himself had fears that it would
fall,
So strange, and rich, and dim ; for where
the roofs
Totter'd toward each other in the sky,
Met foreheads all along the street of
those
Who watch'd us pass; and lower, and
where the long
Rich galleries, lady-laden, weigh'd the
necks
Of dragons clinging to the crazy walls.
Thicker than drops from thunder, showers
of flowers
Fell as we past ; and men and boys astride
On wyvern, lion, dragon, griffin, swan,
At all the corners, named us each by
name.
Calling " God speed ! " but in the ways
below
The knights and ladies wept, and rich
and poor
"Wept, and the King himself could hardly
speak
For grief, and all in middle street the
Queen,
Who rode by Lancelot, wail'd and shriek'd
aloud,
"This madness has come on us for our
sins."
So to the Gate of the three Queens we
came,
Where Arthur's wars are render'd mysti-
cally,
And thence departed every one his way.
'And I was lifted up in heart, and
thought
Of all my late-shown prowess in the
lists.
How my strong lance had beaten down
the knights,
So many and famous names; and never
yet
Had heaven appear'd so blue, nor earth
so green,
For all my blood danced in me, and I
knew
That I should light upon the Holy Grail.
' Thereafter, the dark warning of our
King,
That most of us would follow wandering
fires.
Came like a driving gloom across my
mind.
Then every evil word I had spoken once,
And every evil thought I had thought of
old,
And every evil d,(tQA I ever did.
Awoke and cried, "This Quest is not for
thee."
And lifting up mine eyes, I found myself
Alone, and in a land of sand and thorns.
And I was thirsty even unto death;
And I, too, cried, " This Quest is not for
thee."
' And on I rode, and when I thought
my thirst
Would slay me, saw deep lawns, and then
a brook.
With one sharp rapid, where the crisping
white
Play'd ever back upon the sloping wave.
And took both ear and eye; and o'er
the brook
Were apple-trees, and apples by the
brook
Fallen, and on the lawns. " I will rest
here,"
I said, " I am not worthy of the Quest;"
But even while I drank the brook, and
ate
The goodly apples, all these things at
once
Fell into dust, and I was left alone,
And thirsting, in a land of sand and
thorns.
* And then behold a woman at a door
Spinning; and fair the house whereby
she sat,
And kind the woman's eyes and innocent,
And all her bearing gracious; and she
rose
Opening her arms to meet me, as who
should say,
" Rest here; " but when I touch'd her, lo !
she, too,
Fell into dust and nothing, and the
house
Became no better than a broken shed,
THE HOLY GRAIL.
A^l
And in it a dead babe; and also this
Fell into dust, and I was left alone.
' And on I rode, and greater was ni)
thirst.
Then flash'd a yellow gleam across the
world,
And where it smote the plowshare in the
field,
The plowman left his plowing, and fell
down
Before it; where it glitter'd on her pail,
The milkmaid left her milking, and fell
down
Before it, and I knew not why, but
thought
"The sun is rising," tho' the sun had
risen.
Then was I ware of one that on me
moved
In golden armour with a crown of gold
About a casque all jewels; and his horse
In golden armour jewell'd everywhere :
And on the splendour came, flashing me
blind;
And seem'd to me the Lord of all the
world,
Being so huge. But when I thought he
meant
To crush me, moving on me, lo ! he, too,
Open'd his arms to embrace me as he
came,
And up I went and touch'd him, and he,
too,
Fell into dust, and I was left alone
And wearying in a land of sand and
thorns.
* And I rode on and found a mighty
hill.
And on the top, a city wall'd : the spires
Prick'd with incredible pinnacles into
heaven.
And by the gateway stirr'd a crowd;
and these
Cried to me chmbing, " Welcome, Perci-
vale !
Thou mightiest and thou purest among
men ! "
And glad was I and clomb, but found at
top
No man, nor any voice. And thence I
past
2E
Far thro' a ruinous "city, and I saw
That man had once dwelt there; but
there I found
Only one man of an exceeding age.
" Where is that goodly company," said I,
"That so cried out upon me?" and he
had
Scarce any voice to answer, and yet
gasp'd,
" Whence and what art thou? " and even
as he spoke
Fell into dust, and disappear'd, and I
Was left alone once more, and cried in
grief,
" Lo, if I find the Holy Grail itself
And touch it, it will crumble into dust."
* And thence I dropt into a lowly vale,
Low as the hill was high, and where the
vale
Was lowest, found a chapel, and thereby
A holy hermit in a hermitage.
To whom I told my phantoms, and he
said:
' " O son, thou hast not true humility,
The highest virtue, mother of them all;
For when the Lord of all things made
Himself
Naked of glory for His mortal change,
* Take thou my robe,' she said, * for all is
thine,'
And all her form shone forth with sud-
den light
So that the angels were amazed, and she
FoUow'd Him down, and like a flying star
Led on the gray-hair'd wisdom of the
east;
But her thou hast not known : for what
is this
Thou thoughtest of thy prowess and thy
sins?
Thou hast not lost thyself to save thyself
As Galahad." When the hermit made
an end.
In silver armour suddenly Galahad shone
Before us, and against the chapel door
Laid lance, and enter' d, and we knelt in
prayer.
And there the hermit slaked my burning
thirst,
And at the sacring of the mass I saw
The holy elements alone; but he,
4i8
THE HOLY GRAIL.
" Saw ye no more? I, Galahad, saw the
Grail,
The Holy Grail, descend upon the
shrine :
I saw the fiery face as of a child
That smote itself into the bread, and
went;
And hither am I copie; and never yet
Hath what thy sister taught me first to see,
This Holy Thing, fail'd from my side, nor
come
Cover'd, but moving with me night and
day,
Fainter by day, but always in the night
Blood-red, and sliding down the blacken'd
marsh
Blood-red, and on the naked mountain
top
Blood-red, and in the sleeping mere
below
Blood-red. And in the strength of this
I rode.
Shattering all evil customs everywhere.
And past thro' Pagan realms, and made
them mine,
And clash'd with Pagan hordes, and
"bore them down,
And broke thro' all, and in the strength
of this
Come victor. But my time is hard at
hand.
And hence I go; and one will crown me
king
Far in the spiritual city; and come thou,
too.
For thou shalt see the vision when I go."
* While thus he spake, his eye, dwell-
ing on mine.
Drew me, with power upon me, till I
grew
One with him, to believe as he believed.
Then, when the day began to wane, we
went.
' There rose a hill that none but man
could climb,
Scarr'd with a hundred wintry water-
courses —
Storm at the top, and when we gain'd it,
storm
Round us and death; for every moment
glanced
His silver arms and gloom'd : so quick
and thick
The lightnings here and there to left and
right
Struck, till the dry old trunks about us,
dead,
Yea, rotten with a hundred years of
death,
Sprang into fire : and at the base we
found
On either hand, as far as eye could see,
A great black swamp and of an evil
smell,
Part black, part whiten'd with the bones
of men,
Not to be crost, save that some ancient
king
Had built a way, where, link'd with
many a bridge,
A thousand piers ran into the great Sea.
And Galahad fled along them bridge by
bridge.
And every bridge as quickly as he crost
Sprang into fire and vanish'd, tho' I
yearn'd
To follow; and thrice above him all the
heavens
Open'd and blazed with thunder such as
seem'd
Shoutings of all the sons of God : and
first
At once I saw him far on the great Sea,
In silver-shining armour starry-clear;
And o'er his head the Holy Vessel hung
Clothed in white samite or a luminous
cloud.
And with exceeding swiftness ran the
boat,
If boat it were — I saw not whence it
came.
And when the heavens open'd and blazed
again
Roaring, I saw him like a silver star —
And had he set the sail, or had the boat
Become a living creature clad with
wings?
And o'er his head the Holy Vessel hung
Redder than any rose, a joy to me,
For now I knew the veil had been with-
drawn.
Then in a moment when they blazed
again
Opening, I saw the least of little stars
THE HOLY GRAIL.
419
Down on the waste, and straight beyond
the star
I saw the spiritual city and all her spires
And gateways in a glory like one pearl —
No larger, tho' the goal of all the saints —
Strike from the sea; and from the star
there shot
A rose-red sparkle to the city, and there
Dwelt, and I knew it was the Holy" Grail,
Which never eyes on earth again shall
see.
Then fell the floods of heaven drowning
the deep.
And how my feet recrost the deathful
ridge
No memory in me lives; but that I
touch'd
The chapel-doors at dawn I know; and
thence
Taking my war-horse from the holy
man,
Glad that no phantom vext me more,
return'd
To whence I came, the gate of Arthur's
wars.'
'O brother,' ask'd Ambrosius, — 'for
in sooth
These ancient books — and they would
win thee — teem.
Only I find not there this Holy Grail,
With miracles and marvels like to these.
Not all unlike; which oftentime I read.
Who read but on my breviary with ease,
Till my head swims; and then go forth
and pass
Down to the little thorpe that lies so
close,
And almost plaster'd like a martin's nest
To these old walls — and mingle with
our folk;
And knowing every honest face of theirs
As well as ever shepherd knew his sheep.
And every homely secret in their hearts,
Delight myself with gossip and old wives,
And ills and aches, and teethings, lyings-
in,
And mirthful sayings, children of the
place.
That have no meaning half a league
away :
Oi lulling random squabbles when they
Chafferings and chatterings at the mar-
ket-cross.
Rejoice, small man, in this small world
of mine,
Yea, even in their hens and in their
eggs —
0 brother, saving this Sir Galahad,
Came ye on none but phantoms in your
quest,
No man, no woman ? '
Then Sir Percivale :
' All men, to one so bound by such a vow.
And women were as phantoms. O my
brother,
Why wilt thou shame me to confess to
thee
How far I falter'd from my quest and
vow ?
For after I had lain so many nights,^
A bedmate of the snail and eft and snake.
In grass and burdock, I was changed to
wan
And meagre, and the vision had not
come;
And then I chanced upon a goodly town
With one great dwelling in the middle
of it;
Thither I made, and there was I disarm'd
By maidens each as fair as any flower :
But when they led me into hall, behold.
The Princess of that castle was the one.
Brother, and that one only, who had ever
Made my heart leap; for when I moved
of old
A slender page about her father's. hah.
And she a slender maiden, all my heart
Went after her with longing: yet we
twain
Had never kiss'd a kiss, or vow'd a vow.
And now I came upon her once again,
And one had wedded her, and he was
dead.
And all his land and wealth and state
were hers.
And while I tarried, every day she set
A banquet richer than the day before
By me; for all her longing and her will
Was toward me as of old; till one fair
morn,
1 walking to and fro beside a stream
That flash'd across her orchard under-
neath
420
THE HOLY GRAIL.
Her castle-walls, she stole upon my walk,
And calling me the greatest of all knights,
Embraced me, and so kiss'd me the first
time,
And gave herself and all her wealth to
me. ^
Then I remember'd Arthur's warning
word.
That most of us would follow wandering
fires,
And the Quest faded in my heart. Anon,
The heads of all her people drew to me,
With supplication both of knees and
tongue :
" We have heard of thee : thou art our
greatest knight.
Our Lady says it, and we well believe :
Wed thou our Lady, and rule over us.
And thou shalt be as Arthur in our'land."
O me, my brother ! but one night my
vow
Burnt me within, so that I rose and fled.
But vvail'd and wept, and hated mine
own self.
And ev'n the Holy Quest, and all but
her;
Then after I was join'd with Galahad
Cared not for her, nor anything upon
earth.'
Then said the monk, * Poor men, when
yule is cold,
Must be content to sit by little fires.
And this am I, so that ye care for me
Ever so little; yea, and blest be. Heaven
That brought thee here to this poor
house of ours
Where all the brethren are so hard, to
warm
My cold heart with a friend : but O the
pity
To find thine own first love once more —
to hold.
Hold her a wealthy bride within thine
arms.
Or all but hold, and then — cast her
aside.
Foregoing all her sweetness, like a weed.
For we that want the warmth of double
life.
We that are plagued with dreams of
something sweet
Beyond all sweetness in a life so rich, —
Ah, blessed Lord, I speak too earthly-
wise,
Seeing I never stray'd beyond the cell,
But live like an old badger in his earth.
With earth about him everywhere, despite
All fast and penance. Saw ye none be-
side,"
None of your knights? '
* Yea so,' said Percivale :
' One nighi my pathway swerving east,
I saw .
The pelican on the casque of our Sir Bors
All in the middle of the rising moon :
And toward him spurr'd, and hail'd him,
and he me.
And each made joy of either; then he
ask'd,
"Where is he? hast thou seen him —
Lancelot? — Once,"
Said good Sir Bors, " he dash'd across
me — mad.
And maddening what he rode : and when
I cried,
* Ridest thou then so hotly on a quest
So holy,' Lancelot shouted, * Stay me not !
I have been the sluggard, and I rid?
apace.
For now there is a lion in the way.'
So vanish'd."
* Then Sir Bors had ridden on
Softly, and sorrowing for our Lancelot,
Because his former madness, once the
talk
And scandal of our table, had return'd;
For Lancelot's kith and kin so worship
him
That ill to him is ill to them; to Bors
Beyond the rest : he well had been con-
tent
Not to have seen, so Lancelot might
have seen,
i'he Holy Cup of healing; and, indeed.
Being so clouded with his grief and love.
Small heart was his after, the Holy Quest :
If God would send the vision, well : if not.
The Quest and he were in the hands of
Heaven.
* And then, with small adventure met.
Sir Bors
Rode to the lonest tract of all the realm,
THE HOLY GRAIL,
421
And found a people there among their
crags,
Our race and blood, a remnant that were
left
Paynim amid their circles, and the stones
They pitch up straight to heaven: and
their wise men
Were strong in that old magic which
can trace
The wandering of the stars, and scoff d at
him
And this high Quest as at a simple thing :
Told him he follovv'd — almost Arthur's
words —
A mocking fire : " What other fire than
he,
Whereby the blood beats, and the blossom
blows.
And the sea rolls, and all the world is
warm'd ? "
And when his answer chafed them, the
rough crowd,
Hearing he had a difference with their
priests.
Seized him, and bound and plunged him
into a cell
Of great piled stones; and lying bounden
there
In darkness thro' innumerable hours
He heard the hollow-ringing heavens
sweep
Over him till by miracle — what else? —
Heavy as it was, a great stone slipt and
fell.
Such as no wind could move : and thro*
the gap
Glimmer'd the streaming scud: then
came a night
Still as the day was loud; and thro' the
gap
The seven clear stars of Arthur's Table
Round —
For, brother, so one night, because they
roll
Thro' such a round in heaven, we named
the stars,
Rejoicing in ourselves and in our King —
And these, like bright eyes of familiar
friends,
In on him shone : " And then to me, to
me,"
Said good Sir Bors, "beyond all hopes
of mine.
Who scarce had pray'd or ask'd it for
myself —
Across the seven clear stars — O grace to
me —
In colour like the fingers of a hand
Before a burning taper, the sweet Grail
Glided and past, and close upon it peal'd
A sharp quick thunder." Afterwards, a
maid,
Who kept our holy faith among her kin
In secret, entering, loosed and let hiir
go.'
To whom the monk : * And I remember
now
That pelican on the casque : Sir Bors it
was
Who spake so low and sadly at our
board ;
And mighty reverent at our grace was he :
A square-set man and honest; and his
eyes.
An out-door sign of all the warmth within,
Smiled with his lips — a smile beneath a
cloud,
But heaven had meant it for a sunny one :
Ay, ay, Sir Bors, who else? But when
ye reach'd
The city, found ye all your knights re-
turn'd.
Or was there sooth in Arthur's prophecy,
Tell me, and what said each, and what
the King? '
Then answer'd Perc^vale : ' And that
can I,
Brother, and truly; sin<;e the living
words
Of so great men as Lancelot and our
King
Pass not from door to door and out
again.
But sit within the house. O, when we
reach'd
The city, our horses stumbling as they
trode
On heaps of ruin, hornless unicorns,
Crack'd basilisks, and splinter'd cocka-
trices.
And shatter'd talbots, which had left the
stones
Raw, that they fell from, brought us to
the hall.
422
THE HOLY GRAIL.
'And there sat Arthur on the dais-
throne,
And those that had gone out upon the
Quest,
Wasted and worn, and but a tithe of
them,
And those that had not, stood before the
King,
Who, when he saw me, rose, and bade me
hail,
Saying, " A welfare in thine eye reproves
Our fear of some disastrous chance for
thee
On hill, or plain, at sea, or flooding
ford.
So tierce a gale made havoc here of late
Among the strange devices of our kings;
Yea, shook this newer, stronger hall of
ours,
And from the statue Merlin moulded for
us
Half-wrench'd a golden wing; but now — .
the Quest,
This vision — hast thou seen the Holy
Cup,
That Joseph brought of old to Glaston-
bury?"
*So when I told him all thyself hast
heard,
Ambrosius, and my fresh but fixt resolve
To pass away into the quiet life,
He answer'd not, but, sharply turning,
ask'd
Of Gawain, " Gawain, was this Quest for
thee?"
* " Nay, lor(^," said Gawain, " not for
such as I.
Therefore I communed with a saintly
man.
Who made me sure the Quest was not
for me ;
For I was much awearied of the Quest :
But found a silk pavilion in a field.
And merry maidens in it; and then this
gale
Tore my pavilion from the tenting-pin.
And blew my merry maidens all about
With all discomfort; yea, and but for
this,
My twelvemonth and a day were pleasant
to me."
* He ceased ; and Arthur turn'd to
whom at first
He saw not, for Sir Bors, on entering,
push'd
Athwart the throng to Lancelot, caught
his hand.
Held it, and there, half-hidden by him,
stood.
Until the King espied him, saying to him,
•* Hail, Bors ! if ever loyal man and true
Could see it, thou hast seen the Grail;"
and Bors,
" Ask me not, for I may not speak of it :
I saw it;" and the tears were in his eyes.
'Then there remain'd but Lancelot,
for the rest
Spake but of sundry perils in the storm;
Perhaps, like him of Cana in Holy Writ,
Our Arthur kept his best until the last;
"Thou, too, my Lancelot," ask'd the
King, " my friend.
Our mightiest, hath this Quest avail'd for
thee?"
* *' Our mightiest ! " answer'd Lancelot,
with a groan;
" O King ! " — and when he paused, me-
thought I spied
A dying fire of madness in his eyes —
** O King, my friend, if friend of thine I
be,
Happier are those that welter in their
sin.
Swine in the mud, that cannot see for
slime.
Slime of the ditch : but in me lived a sin
So strange, of such a kind, that all of pure.
Noble, and knightly in me twined and
clung
Round that one sin, until the wholesome
flower
And poisonous grew together, each as
each.
Not to be pluck'd asunder; and when thy
knights
Sware, I sware with them only in the
hope
That could I touch or see the Holy Grail
They might be pluck'd asunder. Then I
spake
To one most holy saint, who wept and
said,
THE HOLY GRAIL.
423
That save they could be pluck'd asunder,
all
My quest were but in vain; to whom I
vow'd
That I would work according as he will'd.
And forth I went, and while I yearn'd
and strove
To tear the twain asunder in my heart,
My madness came upon me as of old,
And whipt me into waste fields far away;
There was I beaten down by little men,
Mean knights, to whom the moving of
my sword
And shadow of my spear had been enow
To scare them from me once; and then
I came
All in my folly to the naked shore.
Wide flats, where nothing but coarse
grasses grew;
But such a blast, my King, began to blow,
So loud a blast along the shore and sea,
Ye could not hear the waters for the blast,
Tho' heapt in mounds and ridges all the
sea
Drove like a cataract, and all the sand
Swept like a river, and the clouded
heavens
Were shaken with the motion and the
sound.
And blackening in the sea-foam sway'd a
boat,
Half-swallow'd in it, anchor'd with a
chain;
And in my madness to myself I said,
' I will embark and I will lose myself,
And in the great sea wash away my
sin.'
I burst the chain, I sprang into the boat.
Seven days I drove along the dreary deep,
And with me drove the moon and all the
stars;
And ':he wind fell, and on the seventh
night
I heard the shingle grinding in the surge.
And felt the boat shock earth, and look-
ing up.
Behold, the enchanted towers of Car-
iDonek,
A castle like a rock upon a rock.
With chasm-like portals open to the sea.
And steps that met the breaker ! there
was none
Stood near it but a lion on each side
That kept the entrv, and the moon was
full.
Then from the boat I leapt, and up the
stairs.
There drew my sword. With sudden-
flaring manes
Those two great beasts rose upright like
a man.
Each gript a shoulder, and I stood
between;
And, when I would have smitten them,
heard a voice,
'Doubt not, go forward; if thou doubt,
the beasts
Will tear thee piecemeal.' Then with
violence
The sword was dash'd from out my hand,
and fell.
And up into the sounding hall I past;
But nothing in the sounding hall I saw.
No bench nor table, painting on the wall
Or shield of knight; only the rounded
moon
Thro' the tall oriel on the rolling sea.
But always in the quiet house I heard,
Clear as a lark, high o'er me as a lark,
A sweet voice singing in the topmost
tower
To the eastward : up I climb'd a thousand
steps
With pain : as in a dream I seem'd to
climb
For ever : at the last I reach'd a door,
A light was in the crannies, and I heard,
* Glory and joy and honour to our Lord
And to the Holy Vessel of the Grail.'
Then in my madness I essay'd the door;
It gave ; and thro' a stormy glare, a heat
As from a seventimes- heated furnace, I,
Blasted and burnt, and blinded as I was.
With such a fierceness that I swoon'd
away —
O, yet methought I saw the Holy Grail,
All pall'd in crimson samite, and around
Great angels, awful shapes, and wings
and eyes.
And but for all my madness and my sin^
And then my swooning, I had sworn I
saw
That which I saw; but what I saw was
veil'd
And cover'd; and this Quest was not for
me."
424
THE HOLY GRAIL.
* So speaking, and here ceasing, Lance-
lot left
The hall long silent, till Sir Gawain — nay,
Brother, I need not tell thee foolish
words, —
A reckless and irreverent knight was he,
Now bolden'd by the silence of his
King, —
Well, I will tell thee: "O King, my
hege," he said,
" Hath Gawain fail'd in any quest of
thine?
When have I stinted stroke in foughten
field?
But as for thine, my good friend Percivale,
Thy holy nun and thou have driven men
mad,
Yea, made our mightiest madder than
our least.
But by mine eyes and by mine ears I
swear,
I will be deafer than the blue-eyed cat.
And thrice as blind as any noonday owl.
To holy virgins in their ecstasies,
Henceforward."
' " Deafer," said the blameless King,
"Gawain, and blinder unto holy things
Hope not to make thyself by idle vows,
Being too blind to have desire to see.
But if indeed there came a sign from
heaven.
Blessed are Bors, Lancelot and Percivale,
For these have seen according to their
sight.
For every fiery prophet in old times.
And all the sacred madness of the bard,
When God made music thro' them, could
but speak
His music by the framework and the
chord ;
And as ye saw it ye have spoken truth.
* " Nay — but thou errest, Lancelot :
never yet
Could all of true and noble in knight and
man
Twine round one sin, whatever it might
be.
With such a closeness, but apart there
grew.
Save that he were the swine thou spakest
of,
Some root of knighthood and pure noble-
ness;
Whereto see thou, that it may bear its
flower.
• " And spake I not too truly, O my
knights?
Was I too dark a prophet when I said
To those who went upon the Holy Quest,
That most of them would follow wander-
ing fires.
Lost in the quagmire? — lost to me and
gone.
And left me gazing at a barren board,
And a lean Order — scarce return'd a
tithe —
And out of those to whom the vision came
My greatest hardly will believe he saw;
Another hath beheld it afar off.
And leaving human wrongs to right
themselves.
Cares but to pass into the silent life.
And one hath had the vision face to face,
And now his chair desires him here in
vain.
However they may crown him otherwhere.
*'*And some among you .held, that if
the King
Had seen the sight he would have sworn
the vow :
Not easily, seeing that the King must
guard
That which he rules, and is but as the hind
To whom a space of land is given to
plow.
Who may not wander from the allotted
field
Before his work be done ; but, being done,
Let visions of the night or of the day
Come, as they will; and many a time
they come,
Until this earth he walks on seems not
earth.
This light that strikes his eyeball is not
light,
This air that smites his forehead is not
air
But vision — yea, his very hand and foot —
In moments when he feels he cannot
die,
And knows himself no vision to him
self,
PELLEAS AND ETTARRE.
425
Nor the high God a vision, nor that One
Who rose again : ye have seen what ye
have seen."
*So spake the King: I knew not all
he meant.'
PELLEAS AND ETTARRE.
King Arthur made new knights to fill
the gap
Left by the Holy Quest; and as he sat
In hall at old Caerleon, the high doors
Were softly sunder'd, and thro' these a
youth,
Pelleas, and the sweet smell of the fields
Past, and the sunshine came along with
him.
* Make me thy knight, because I know,
Sir King,
All that belongs to knighthood, and I love.'
Such was his cry : for having heard the
King
Had let proclaim a tournament — the prize
A golden circlet and a knightly sword,
Full fain had Pelleas for his lady won
The golden circlet, for himself the sword :
And there were those who knew him near
the King,
And promised for him : and Arthur made
him knight.
And this new knight, Sir Pelleas of the
isles —
But lately come to his inheritance.
And lord of many a barren isle was he —
Riding at noon, a day or twain before.
Across the forest call'd of Dean, to find
Caerleon and the King, had felt the sun
Beat like a strong knight on his helm,
and reel'd
Almost to falling from his horse; but
saw
Near him a mound of even-sloping side,
Whereon a hundred stately beeches grew,
And here and there great hollies under
them;
But for a mile all round was open space,
And fern and heath : and slowly Pelleas
drew
To that dim day, then binding his good
horse
To a tree, cast himself down; and as he
lay
At random looking over the brou n earth
Thro' that green-glooming twilight of the
grove,
It seem'd to Pelleas that the fern without
Burnt as a living fire of emeralds,
So that his eyes were dazzled looking at it.
Then o'er it crost the dimness of a cloud
Floating, and once the shadow of a bird
Flying, and then a fawn; and his eyes
closed.
And since he loved all maidens, but no
maid
In special, half-awake he whisper'd,
'Where?
O where? I love thee, tho' I know thee
not.
For fair thou art and pure as Guinevere,
And I will make thee with my spear and
sword
As famous — O my Queen, my Guinevere,
For I will be thine Arthur when we
meet.'
Suddenly waken'd with a sound of talk
And laughter at the limit of the wood.
And glancing thro' the hoary boles, he saw.
Strange as to some old prophet might
have seem'd
A vision hovering on a sea of fire.
Damsels in divers colours like the cloud
Of sunset and sunrise, and all of them
On horses, and the horses richly trapt
Breast-high in that-.bright line of bracken
stood :
And all the damsels talk'd confusedly.
And one was pointing this way, and one
that,
Because the way was lost.
And Pelleas rose.
And loosed his horse, and led him to the
light.
There she that seem'd the chief among
them said,
' In happy time behold our pilot-star !
Youth, we are damsels-errant, and we ride,
Arm'd as ye see, to tilt against the knights
There at Caerleon, but have lost our way ;
To right? to left? straight forward? bacV
again?
W^hich ? tell us quickly.'
426
PELLEAS AND ETTARRE.
Pelleas gazing thought,
Is Guinevere herself so beautiful?'
For large her violet eyes look'd, and her
bloom
A rosy dawn kindled in stainless heavens,
And round her limbs, mature in woman-
hood;
And slender was her hand and small her
shape:
And but for those large eyes, the haunts
of scorn,
She might have seem'd a toy to trifle with,
And pass and care no more. But while
he gazed
The beauty of her flesh abash'd the boy,
As tho' it were the beauty of her soul :
For as the base man, judging of the good,
Puts his own baseness in him by default
Of will and nature, so did Pelleas lend
All the young beauty of his own soul to
hers,
Believing her; and when she spake to
him,
Stammer'd, and could not make her a
reply.
For out of the waste islands had he come.
Where saving his own sisters he had
known
Scarce any but the women of his isles,
Rough wives, that laugh'd and scream'd
against the gulls,
Makers of nets, and living from the sea.
Then with a slow smile turn'd the lady
round
And look'd upon" her people j and as
when
A stone is flung into some sleeping tarn,
The circle widens till it lip the marge,
Spread the slow smile thro' all her com-
pany.
Three knights were thereamong; and
they too smiled,
Scorning him; for the lady was Ettarre,
And she was a great lady in her land.
Again she said, 'O wild and of the
woods,
Knowest thou not the fashion of our
speech ?
Or have the Heavens but given thee a fair
face.
Lacking a tongue?*
' O damsel,' answer'd he,
'I woke from dreams; and coming out
of gloom
Was dazzled by the sudden light, and
crave
Pardon: but will ye to Caerleon? I
Go likewise : shall I lead you to the King? '
'Lead then,' she said; and thro' the
woods they went.
And while they rode, the meaning in his
eyes,
His tenderness of manner, and chaste awe,
His broken utterances and bashfulness,
Were all a burthen to her, and in her
heart
She mutter'd, ' I have lighted on a fool.
Raw, yet so stale ! ' But since her mind
was bent
On hearing, after trumpet blown, her name
And title, ' Queen of Beauty,' in the lists
Cried — and beholding him so strong, she
thought
That peradventure he will fight for me,
And win the circlet: therefore flatter'd
him.
Being so gracious, that he wellnigh
deem'd
His wish by hers was echo'd; and her
knights
And all her damsels too were gracious to
him,
For she was a great lady.
And when they reach'd
Caerleon, ere they past to lodging, she.
Taking his hand, *0 the strong hand,'
she said,
* See ! look at mine ! but wilt thou fight
for me.
And win me this fine circlet, Pelleas,
That I may love thee? '
Then his helpless heart
Leapt, and he cried, * Ay ! wilt thou if I
win?'
* Ay, that will I,' she answer'd, and she
laugh'd,
And straitly nipt the hand, and flung it
from her;
Then glanced askew at those three knights
of hers.
Till all her ladies laugh'd along with her.
PELLEAS AND ETTARRE.
427
' O happy world,' thought Pelleas, * all,
meseems.
Are happy; I the happiest of them all.'
Nor slept that night for pleasure in his
blood,
And green wood-ways, and eyes among
the leaves;
Then being on the morrow knighted,
sware
To love one only. And as he came away.
The men Avho met him rounded on their
heels
And wonder'd after him because his face
Shone like the countenance of a priest of
old
Against the flame about a sacrifice
Kindled by fire from heaven : so glad
was he.
Then Arthur made vast banquets, and
strange knights
From the four winds came in : and each
one sat,
Tho' served with choice from air, land,
stream, and sea,
Oft in mid-banquet measuring with his
eyes
His neighbour's make and might: and
Pelleas look'd
Noble among the noble, for he dream'd
His lady loved him, and he knew himself
Loved of the King: and him his new-
made knight
Worshipt, whose lightest whisper moved
him more
Than all the ranged reasons of the world.
Then blush'd and brake the morning
of the jousts,
And this was call'd ' The Tournament of
Youth : '
For Arthur, loving his young knight,
withheld
His older and his mightier from the lists,
That Pelleas might obtain his lady's love.
According to her promise, and remain
Lord of the tourney. And Arthur had
the jousts
Down in the flat field by the shore of Usk
Holden : the gilded parapets were crown'd
With faces, and the great tower fill'd with
eyes
Up to the summit, and the trumpets blew.
There all dav long Sir Pelleas kept the
field
With honour : so by that strong hand of
his
The sword and golden circlet were
achieved.
Then rang the shout his lady loved:
the heat
Of pride and glory fired her face; her
eye
Sparkled ; she caught the circlet from his
lance,
And there before the people crown'd
herself:
So for the last time she was gracious to
him.
Then at Caerleon for a space — her
look
Bright for all others, cloudier on her
knight —
Linger'd Ettarre : and seeing Pelleas
droop,
Said Guinevere, ' We marvel at thee
much,
0 damsel, wearing this unsunny face
To him who won thee glory ! ' and she
said,
* Had ye not held your Lancelot in your
bower.
My Queen, he had not won.' Whereat
the Queen,
As one whose foot is bitten by an ant.
Glanced down upon her, turn'd and went
her way.
But after, when her damsels, and her-
self,
And those three knights all set their
faces home,
Sir Pelleas follow'd. She that saw him
cried,
' Damsels — and yet I should be shamed
to say it —
1 cannot bide Sir Baby. Keep him back
Among yourselves. Would rather that
we had
Some rough old knight who knew the
worldly way.
Albeit grizzlier than a bear, to ride
And jest with : take him to you, keep
him off.
428
PELLEAS AND ETTARRE.
And pamper him with papmeat, if ye
will,
Old milky fables of the wolf and sheep,
Such as the wholesome mothers tell their
boys.
Nay, should ye try him with a merry
one
To find his mettle, good : and if he fly
us,
Small matter ! let him.' This her damsels
heard,
And mindful of her small and cruel hand,
They, closing round him thro' the journey
home.
Acted her hest, and always from her
side
Restrain'd him with all manner of device,
So that he could not come to speech
with her.
And when she gain'd her castle, upsprang
the bridge,
Down rang the grate of iron thro' the
groove,
And he was left alone in open field.
' These be the ways of ladies,' Pelleas
thought,
*To those who love them, trials of our
faith.
Yea, let her prove me to'the uttermost.
For loyal to the uttermost am I.'
So made his moan; and, darkness falling,
sought
A priory not far off, there lodged, but
rose
With morning every day, and, moist or
dry,
Full-arm'd upon his charger all day long
Sat by the walls, and no one open'd to
him.
And this persistence turn'd her scorn
to wrath.
Then calling her three knights, she
charged them,*' Out !
And drive him from the walls.' And out
they came,
But Pelleas overthrew them as they
dash'd
Against him one by one; and these
return'd,
But still he kept his watch beneath the
wall.
' Thereon her wrath became a hate;
and once,
A week beyond, while walking on the
walls
With her three knights, she pointed
downward, 'Look,
He haunts me — I cannot breathe —
besieges me;
Down ! strike him ! put my hate into
your strokes.
And drive him from my walls.' And
down they went,
And Pelleas overthrew them one by one;
And from the tower above him cried
Ettarre,
' Bind him, and bring him in.'
He heard her voice;
Then let the strong hand, which had
overthrown
Her minion-knights, by those he over-
threw
Be bounden straight, and so they
brought him in.
Then when he came before Ettarre,
the sight
Of her rich beauty made him at one
glance
More bondsman in his heart than in his
bonds.
Yet with good cheer he spake, ' Behold
me. Lady,
A prisoner, and the vassal of thy will;
And if thou keep me in the donjon
here,
Content am I so that I see thy face
But once a day : for I have sworn my
vows,
And thou hast given thy promise, and I
know
That all these pains are trials of my faith.
And that thyself, when thou hast seen
me strain'd
And sifted to the utmost, wilt at length
Yield me thy love and know me for thy
knight.'
Then she began to rail so bitterly,
With all her damsels, he was stricken
mute;
But when she mock'd his vows and the
great King,
PELLEAS AND ETTARRE.
429
Lighted on words: 'For pity of thine
own self,
Peace, Lady, peace : is he not thine and
mine? '
* Thou fool,' she said, ' I never heard his
voice
But long'd to break away. Unbind him
now,
And thrust him out of doors; for save he
be
Fool to the midmost marrow of his
bones,
He will return no more.' And those,
her three,
Laugh'd and unbound, and thrust him
from th^ gate.
And after this, a week beyond, again
She call'd them, saying, 'There he
watches yet.
There like a dog before his master's
door !
Kick'd, he returns : do ye not hate him,
ye?
Ye know yourselves: how can ye bide
at peace,
Affronted with his fulsome innocence?
Are ye but creatures of the board and
bed.
No men to strike? Fall on him all at
once.
And if ye slay him I reck not : if ye fail.
Give ye the slave mine order to be
bound.
Bind him as heretofore, and bring him in :
It may be ye shall slay him in his bonds.'
She spake; and at her will they
couch'd their spears.
Three against one : and Gavvain passing
by,
Bound upon solitary adventure, saw
Low down beneath the shadow of those
towers
A villainy, three to one : and thro' his
heart
The fire of honour and all noble deeds
Flash'd, and he call'd, ' I strike upon thy
side —
The caitiffs ! ' ' Nay,' said Pelleas, ' but
forbear;
He needs no aid who doth his lady's
will,'
So Gawain, looking at the villainy
done,
P'orbore, but in his heat and eagerness
Trembled and quiver'd, as the dog, with-
held
A moment from the vermin that he sees
Before him, shivers, ere he springs and
kills.
And Pelleas overthrew them, one to
three;
And they rose up, and bound, and
brought him in.
Then first her anger, leaving Pelleas,
burn'd
Full on her knights in many an evil name.
Of craven, weakling, and thrice-beaten
hound :
'Yet, take him, ye that scarce are fit to
touch.
Far less to bind, your victor, and thrust
him out.
And let who will release him from his
bonds.
And if he comes again ' — there she
brake short;
And Pelleas answer'd, ' Lady, for indeed
I loved you and I deem'd you beautiful,
I cannot brook to see your beauty marr'd
Thro' evil spite : and if ye love me not,
I cannot bear to dream you so forsworn :
I had liefer ye were worthy of my love.
Than to be loved again of you — fare-
well ;
And tho' ye kill my hope, not yet my
love.
Vex not yourself: ye will not see me
more.'
While thus he spake, she gazed upon
the man
Of princely bearing, tho' in bonds, and
thought,
' Why have I push'd him from me? this
man loves.
If love there be : yet him I loved not.
Why?
I deem'd him fool? yea, so? or that in
him
A something — was it nobler than mv-
self ?—
Seem'd my reproach? He is not of my
kind.
430
PELLEAS AND ETTARRE.
He could not love me, did he know me
well.
Nay, let him go — and quickly.' And
her knights
Laugh'd not, but thrust him bounden out
of door.
Forth sprang Gawain, and loosed him
from his bonds,
And flung them o'er the walls; and
afterward.
Shaking his hands, as from a lazar's rag,
'Faith of my body,' he said, 'and art
thou not —
Yea thou art he, whom late our Arthur
made
Knight of his Table; yea and he that
won
The circlet? wherefore hast thou so
defamed
Thy brotherhood in me and all the rest,
As let these caitiffs on thee work their
will?'
And Pelleas answer'd, 'O, their wills
are hers
For whom I won the circlet; and mine,
hers.
Thus to be bounden, so to see her face,
Marr'd tho' it be with spite and mockery
now,'
Other than when I found her in the
woods;
And tho' she hath me bounden but in
spite.
And all to flout me, when they bring me in.
Let me be bounden, I shall see her face;
Else must I die thro' mine unhappiness.'
And Gawain answer'd kindly tho' in
scorn,
' Why, let my lady bind me if she will.
And let my lady beat me if she will :
But an she send her delegate to thrall
These fighting hands of mine — Christ
kill me then
But I will slice him handless by the
wrist,
And let my lady sear the stump for him,
Howl as he may. But hold me for your
friend :
Come, ye know nothing: here I pledge
my troth,
Yea, by the honour of the Table Round,
I will be leal to thee and work thy work,
And tame thy jailing princess to thine
hand.
Lend me thine horse and arms, and I
will say
That I have slain thee. She will let me
in
To hear the manner of thy fight and fall;
Then, when I come within her counsels,
then
From prime to vespers will I chant thy
praise
As prowest knight and truest lover, more
Than any have sung thee living, till she
long
To have thee back in lusty life again.
Not to be bound, save by white bonds
and warm,
Dearer than freedom. Wherefore now
thy horse
And armour : let me go : be comforted :
Give me three days to melt her fancy,
and hope
The third night hence will bring thee
news of gold.'
Then Pelleas lent his horse and all his
arms,
Saving the goodly sword, his prize, and
took
Gawain's, and said, * Betray me not, but
help —
Art thou not he whom men call light-of-
love?'
* Ay,' said Gawain, * for women be so
light.'
Then bounded forward to the castle walls,
And raised a bugle hanging from his neck,
And winded it, and that so musically
That all the old echoes hidden in the
wall
Rang out Hke hollow woods at hunting-
tide.
Up ran a score of damsels to the tower;
' Avaunt,' they cried, ' our lady loves thee
not.'
But Gawain lifting up his vizor said,
* Gawain am I, Gawain of Arthur's court,
And I have slain this Pelleas whom ye
hate:
PELLEAS AND ETTARRE.
431
Behold his horse and armour. Open
gates,
And I will make you merry.'
And down they ran,
Her damsels, crying to their lady, * Lo !
Pelleas is dead — he told us — he that hath
His horse and armour : will ye let him in ?
He slew him ! Gawain, Gawain of this
court,
Sir Gawain — there he waits below the
wall,
Blowing his bugle as who should say him
nay.'
And so, leave given, straight on thro'
open door
Rode Gawain, whom she greeted courte-
ously.
'Dead, is it so?' she ask'd. *Ay, ay,'
said he,
* And oft in dying cried upon your name.'
* Pity on him,' she answer'd, ' a good
knight.
But never let me bide one hour at peace.'
* Ay,' thought Gawain, ' and you be fair
enow :
But I to your dead man have given my
troth,
That whom ye loathe, him will I make
you love.'
So those three days, aimless about the
land,
Lost in a doubt, Pelleas wandering
Waited, until the third night brought a
moon
With promise of large light on woods and
ways.
Hot was the night and silent; but a
sound
Of Gawain ever coming, and this lay —
Which Pelleas had heard sung before the
Queen,
And seen her sadden listening — vext his
heart,
And marr'd his rest — * A worm within
the rose.'
' A rose, but one, none other rose had I,
A rose, one rose, and this was wondrous
fair,
One rose a rose that gladden'd earth and
sky,
One rose, my rose, that sweeten'd all
mine air —
I cared not for the thorns; the thorns
were there.
* One rose, a rose to gather by and by.
One rose, a rose to gather and to wear,
No rose but one — what other rose had I ?
One rose, my rose; a rose that will not
die, —
He dies who loves it, — if the worm be
there.'
This tender rhyme, and evermore the
doubt,
' Why lingers Gawain with his golden
news? '
So shook him that he could not rest, but
rode
Ere midnight to her walls, and bound his
horse
Hard by the gates. Wide open were the
gates,
And no watch kept; and in thro' these
he past.
And heard but his own steps, and his
own heart
Beating, for nothing moved but his own
self,
And his own shadow. Then he crost the
court.
And spied not any light in hall or bower.
But saw the postern portal also wide
Yawning; and up a slope of garden, all
Of roses white and red, and brambles mixt
And overgrowing them, went on, and
found.
Here too, all hush'd below the mellow
moon.
Save that one rivulet from a tiny cave
Came lightening downward, and so spilt
itself
Among the roses, and was lost again.
Then was he ware of three pavilions
rear'd
Above the bushes, gilden-peakt : in one.
Red after revel, droned her lurdane
knights
Slumbering, and their three squires across
their feet ;
432
PELLEAS AND ETTARRE.
In one, their malice on the placid lip
Froz'n by sweet sleep, four of her damsels
lay:
And in the third, the circlet of the jousts
Bound on her brow, were Gawain and
Ettarre.
Back, as a hand that pushes thro' the
leaf
To find a nest and feels a snake, he
drew;
Back, as a coward slinks from what he
fears
To cope with, or* a traitor proven or hound
Beaten, did Pelleas in an utter shame
Creep with his shadow thro' the court
again.
Fingering at his sword-handle until he
stood
There on the castle-bridge once more, and
thought,
* I will go back, and slay them where they
lie.'
And so went back, and seeing them yet
in sleep
Said, ' Ye, that so dishallow the holy
sleep,
Your sleep is death,' and drew the sword,
and thought,
* What ! slay a sleeping knight? the King
hath bound
And sworn me to this brotherhood; '
again,
'Alas that ever a knight should be so
false.'
then turn'd, and so return'd, and groan-
ing laid
The naked sword athwart their naked
throats
There left it, and them sleeping; and she
lay.
The circlet of the tourney round her
brows,
And the sword of the tourney across her
throat.
And forth he past, and mounting on
his horse
Stared at her towers that, larger than
themselves
Tn their own darkness, throng'd into the
moon.
Then crush'd the saddle with his thighs,
and clench'd
His hands, and madden'd with himseli
and moan'd :
'Would they have risen against me in
their blood
At the last day? I might have answer' d
them
Even before high God. O towers so
strong.
Huge, solid, would that even while I gaze
The crack of earthquake shivering to your
base
Split you, and Hell burst up your harlot
roofs
Bellowing, and charr'd you thro' and
thro' within,
Black as the harlot's heart — hollow as a
skull !
Let the fierce east scream thro' your eye-
let-holes.
And whirl the dust of harlots round and
round
In dung and nettles ! hiss, snake — I saw
him there —
Let the fox bark, let the wolf yell. Who
yells
Here in the still sweet summer night, but
I —
I, the poor Pelleas whom she call'd her
fool?
Fool, beast — he, she, or I ? myself most
fool;
Beast too, as lacking human wit — dis-
graced,
Dishonour'd all for trial of true love —
Love? — we be all alike : only the King
Hath made us fools and liars. O noble
vows !
0 great and sane and simple race of
brutes
That own no lust because they have no
law !
For why should I have loved her to my
shame? '
1 loathe her, as I loved her to my shame.
I never loved her, I but lusted for her —
Away — '
He dash'd the rowel into his horse,
And bounded forth and vanish'd thro'
the night.
PELLEAS AND ETTARRE.
433
Then she, that felt the cold touch on
her throat,
Awaking knew the sword, and turn'd
herself
To Gawain : ' Liar, for thou hast not slain
This Pelleas ! here he stood, and might
have slain
Me and thyself.' And he that tells the
tale
Says that her ever-veering fancy turn'd
To Pelleas, as the one true knight on
earth,
And only lover; and thro' her love her
life
Wasted and pined, desiring him in vain.
But he by wild and way, for half the
night;
And over hard and soft, striking the sod
From out the soft, the spark from off the
hard.
Rode till the star above the wakening sun,
Beside that tower where Percivale was
cowl'd.
Glanced from the rosy forehead of the
dawn.
For so the words were flash'd into his
heart
He knew not whence or wherefore : ' O
sweet star,
Pure on the virgin forehead of the dawn ! '
And there he would have wept, but felt
his eyes
Harder and drier than a fountain bed
In summer : thither came the village girls
And linger'd talking, and they come no
more
fill the sweet heavens have fiU'd it from
the heights
Again with living waters in the change
Of seasons: hard his eyes; harder his
heart
Seem'd; but so weary were his limbs,
that he.
Gasping, ' Of Arthur's hall am I, but here.
Here let me rest and die,' cast himself
down,
And gulfd his griefs in inmost sleep; so
lay,
Till shaken by a dream, that Gawain fired
The hall of Merlin, and the morning star
Reel'd in the smoke, brake into flame,
and fell.
2F
He woke, and being ware of some one
nigh,
Sent hands upon him, as to tear him,
crying,
' False ! and I held thee pure as Guine-
vere.'
But Percivale stood near him and
replied,
* Am I but false as Guinevere is pure ?
Or art thou mazed with dreams? or being
one
Of our free-spoken Table hast not heard
That Lancelot ' — there he check'd him-
self £tnd paused.
Then fared it with Sir Pelleas as with
one
Who gets a wound in battle, and the sword
That made it plunges thro' the wound
again.
And pricks it deeper : and he shrank and
wail'd,
* Is the Queen false?' and Percivale was
mute.
' Have any of our Round Table held their
vows ? '
And Percivale made answer not a word.
'Is the King true?' 'The King!' said
Percivale.
' Why then let men couple at once with
wolves.
What ! art thou mad? '
But Pelleas, leaping up.
Ran thro' the doors and vaulted on his
horse
And fled : small pity upon his horse had
he.
Or on himself, or any, and when he met
A cripple, one that held a hand for alms —
Hunch'd as he was, and like an old dwarf-
elm
That turns its- back on the salt blast, the
boy
Paused not, but overrode him, shouting,
' False,
And false with Gawain ! ' and so left him
bruised
And batter'd, and fled on, and hill and
wood
Went ever streaming by him till the gloom,
That follows on the turning of the world.
434
PELLEAS AND ETTARRE.
Darken'd the common path : he twitch'd
the reins,
And made his beast that better knew it,
swerve
Now off it and now on ; but when he saw
High up in heaven the hall that Merlin
built.
Blackening against the dead-"green stripes
of even,
* Black nest of rats,' he groan'd, * ye build
too high.'
Not long thereafter from the city gates
issued Sir Lancelot riding airily,
Warm with a gracious partirig from the
Queen,
Peace at his heart, and gazing at a star
And marvelling what it was : on whom
the boy.
Across the silent seeded meadow-grass
Borne, clash'd : and Lancelot, saying,
* What name hast thou
That ridest here so blindly and so hard?'
* No name, no name,' he shouted, ' a
scourge am I
To lash the treasons of the Table Round.'
* Yea, but thy name ? ' * I have many
names,' he cried :
* I am wrath and shame and hate and evil
fame.
And like a poisonous wind I pass to
blast
And blaze the crime of Lancelot and the
Queen.'
* First over me,' said Lancelot, * shalt
thou pass.'
* Fight therefore,' yell'd the youth, and
either knight
Drew back a space, and when they closed,
at once
The weary steed of Pelleas floundering
flung
His rider, who call'd out from the dark
field,
*Thou art false as Hell : slay me : I have
no sword.'
Then Lancelot, 'Yea, between thy lips —
and sharp;
But here will I disedge it by thy death.'
'Slay then,' he shriek'd, 'my will is to be
slain,'
And Lancelot, with his heel upon the
fall'n,
Rolling his eyes, a moment stood, then
spake :
' Rise, weakling; I am Lancelot; say thy
say.'
And Lancelot slowly rode his warhorse
back
To Camelot, and Sir Pelleas in brief
while
Caught his unbroken limbs from the dark
field.
And follow'd to the city. It chanced
that both
Brake into hall together, worn and pale.
There with her knights and dames was
Guinevere.
Full wonderingly she gazed on Lancelot
So soon return'd, and then on Pelleas,
him
Who had not greeted her, but cast him-
self
Down on a bench, hard-breathing. 'Have
ye fought? '
She ask'd of Lancelot. ' Ay, my Queen,'
he said.
* And hast thou overthrown him ? ' * Ay,
my Queen.'
Then she, turning to Pelleas, * O young
knight.
Hath the great heart of knighthood in
thee fail'd
So far thou canst not bide, unfrowardly,
A fall from hitn ? ' Then, for he answer'd
not,
* Or hast thou other griefs? If I, the
Queen,
May help them, loose thy tongue, and let
me know.'
But Pelleas lifted up an eye so fierce
She quail'd ; and he, hissing, ' I have no
sword,'
Sprang from the door into the dark.
The Queen
Look'd hard upon her lover, he on her;
And each foresaw the dolorous day to
be:
And all talk died, as in a grove all song
Beneath the shadow of some bird of
prey;
Then a long silence came upon the
hall.
And Modred thought, 'The time is hard
at hand.'
THE LAST TOURNAMENT.
435
THE LAST TOURNAMENT.
'Take thou the jewels of this dead inno-
cence.
And make them, an thou wilt, a tourney-
Dagonet, the fool, whom Gawain in his
mood
prize.'
Had made mock-knight of Arthur's Table
Round,
To whom the King, ' Peace to thine
At Camelot, high above the yellowing
eagle-borne
woods.
Dead nestling, and this honour after
Danced like a wither'd leaf before the
death.
hall.
Following thy will! but, 0 my Queen,
And toward him from the hall, with harp
I muse
in hand.
Why ye not wear on arm, or neck, or
And from the crown thereof a carcanet
zone
Of ruby swaying to and fro, the prize
Those diamonds that I rescued from the
Of Tristram in the jousts of yesterday,
tarn.
Came Tristram, saying, ' Why skip ye so,
And Lancelot won, methought, for thee
Sir Fool?'
to wear.'
For Arthur and Sir Lancelot riding once
* Would rather you had let them fall,'
Far down beneath a winding wall of rock
she cried.
Heard a child wail. A stump of oak
'Plunge and be lost — ill-fated as they
half-dead.
were.
From roots like some black coil of carven
A bitterness to me ! — ye look amazed,
snakes,
Not knowing they were lost as soon as
Clutch'd at the crag, and started thro'
given —
mid air
Slid from my hands, when I was leaning
Bearing an eagle's nest: and thro' the
out
tree
Above the river — that unhappy child
Rush'd ever a rainy wind, and thro' the
Past in her barge : but rosier luck will go
wind
W^ith these rich jewels, seeing that they
Pierced ever a child's cry : and crag and
came
tree
Not from the skeleton of a brother-
Scaling, Sir Lancelot from the perilous
slayer,
nest,
But the sweet body of a maiden babe.
This ruby necklace thrice around her
Perchance — who knows ? — the purest
neck.
of thy knights
And all unscarr'd from beak or talon,
May win them for the purest of my
brought
maids.'
A maiden babe; which Arthur pitying
took,
She ended, and the cry of a great
Then gave it to his Queen to rear : the
jousts
Queen
With trumpet-blowings ran on all the
But coldly acquiescing, in her white arms
ways
Received, and after loved it tenderly.
From Camelot in among the faded fields
And named it Nestling; so forgot herself
To furthest towers; and everywhere the
A moment, and her cares; till that young
knights
life
Arm'd for a day of glory before the King.
Being smitten in mid heaven with mortal
cold
But on the hither side of that loud
Past from her; and in time the carcanet
morn
Vext her with plaintive memories of the
Into the hall stagger'd, his visage ribb'd
child:
From ear to ear with dogwhip-weals, his
So she, delivering it to Arthur, said,
nose
436
THE LAST TOURNAMENT.
Bridge-broken, one eye out, and one
The heathen are upon him, his long lance
hand off,
Broken, and his Excaliljur a straw." '
And one with shatter'd fingers dangling
lame,
Then Arthur turn'd to Kay the senes-
A churl, to whom indignantly the King,
chal,
'Take thou my churl, and tend him
* My churl, for whom Christ died, what
curiously
evil beast
Like a king's heir, till all his hurts be
Hath drawn his claws athwart thy face?
whole.
or fiend?
The heathen — but that ever-climbing
Man was it who marr'd heaven's image
wave.
in thee thus? '
Hurl'd back again so often in empty foam.
Hath lain for years at rest — and rene-
Then, sputtering thro' the hedge of
gades.
splinter'd teeth,
Thieves, bandits, leavings of confusion.
Yet strangers to the tongue, and with
whom
blunt stump
The wholesome realm is purged of other-
Pitch-blacken'd sawing the air, said the
where,
maim'd churl,
Friends, thro' your manhood and your
fealty, — now
' He took them and- he drave them to
Make their last head like Satan in the
his tower —
North.
Some hold he was a table-knight of
My younger knights, new-made, in whom
thine —
your flower
A hundred goodly ones — the Red Knight,
Waits to be solid fruit of golden deeds,
he —
Move with me toward their quelling.
Lord, I was tending swine, and the Red
which achieved,
Knight
The loneliest ways are safe from shore to
Brake in upon me and drave them to his
shore.
tower;
But thou, Sir Lancelot, sitting in my place
And when I call'd upon thy name as one
Enchair'd to-morrow, arbitrate the field;
That doestxright by gentle and by churl.
For wherefore shouldst 'thou care to
Maim'd me and maul'd, and would out-
mingle with it,
right have slain,
Only to yield my Queen her own again?
Save that he sware me to a message.
Speak, Lancelot, thou art silent: is it
saying.
well?'
"Tell thou the King and all his liars,
that I
Thereto Sir Lancelot answer'd, * It is
Have founded my Round Table in the
well:
North,
Yet better if the King abide, and leave
And whatsoever his own knights have
The leading of his younger knights to me.
sworn
Else, for the King has will'd it, it is well.'
My knights have sworn the counter to
it — and say
Then Arthur rose and Lancelot follow'd
My tower is full of harlots, like his court.
him,
But mine are worthier, seeing they profess
And while they stood without the doors,
To be none other than themselves — and
the King
say
Turn'd to him saying, * Is it then so well?
My knights are all adulterers like his
Or mine the blame that oft I seem as he
own,
Of whom was written, "A sound is in his
But mine are truer, seeing they profess
ears"?
To be none other; and say his hour is
The foot that loiters, bidden go, — the
come,
glance
THE LAST TOURNAMENT.
437
That only seems half-loyal to command, —
A manner somewhat fall'n from rever-
ence —
Or have I dream'd the bearing of our
knights
Tells of a manhood ever less and lower?
Or whence the fear lest this my realm,
uprear'd,
By noble deeds at one with noble vows,
PVom flat confusion and brute violences,
Reel back into the beast, and be no
He spoke, and taking all his younger
knights,
Down the slope city rode, and sharply
turn'd
North by the gate. In her high bower
the Queen,
Working a tapestry, lifted up her head,
Watch'd her lord pass, and knew not
that she sigh'd.
Then ran across her memory the strange
rhyme
Of bygone Merlin, ' Where is he who
knows?
From the great deep to the great deep
he goes.'
But when the morning of a tourna-
ment.
By these in earnest those in mockery call'd
The Tournament of the Dead Innocence,
Brake with a wet wind blowing, Lancelot,
Round whose sick head all night, like
birds of prey.
The words of Arthur flying shriek'd,
arose.
And down a streetway hung with folds of
pure
White samite, and by fountains running
wine,
Where children sat in white with cups of
gold.
Moved to the lists, and there, with slow
sad steps
Ascending, fiU'd his double-dragon'd
chair.
He glanced and saw the stately gal-
leries,
Dame, damsel, each thro' worship of
their Queen
White-robed in honour of the stainless
child,
And some with scatter'd jewels, like a
bank
Of maiden snow mingled with sparks of
fire.
He look'd but once, and vail'd his eyes
again.
The sudden trumpet sounded as in a
dream
To ears but half-awaked, then one low
roll
Of Autumn thunder, and the jousts
began :
And ever the wind blew, and yellowing
leaf
And gloom and gleam, and shower and
shorn plume
Went down it. Sighing weariedly, as one
Who sits and gazes on a faded fire.
When all the goodlier guests are past
away.
Sat their great umpire, looking o'er the
lists.
He saw the laws that ruled the tourna-
ment
Broken, but spake not; once, a knight
cast doAvn
Before his throne of arbitration cursed
The dead babe and the follies of the
King;
And once the laces of a helmet crack'd,
And show'd him, like a vermin in its
hole,
Modred, a narrow face : anon he heard
The voice that billow'd round the barriers
roar
An ocean-sounding welcome to one
knight,
But newly-enter'd, taller than the rest,
And armour'd all in forest green, whereon
There tript a hundred tiny silver deer,
- And wearing but a holly-spray for crest,
With ever-scattering berries, and on shield
A spear, U harp, a bugle — Tristram — late
From overseas in Brittany return'd,
And marriage with a princess of that
realm,
Isolt the White — Sir Tristram of the
Woods —
Whom Lancelot knew, had held some-
time with pain
438
THE LAST TOURNAMENT.
His own against liim, and now yearn'd
to slaake
The burthen off his heart in one full
shock
With Tristram ev'n to death : his strong
hands gript
And dinted the gilt dragons right and left,
Until he groan'd for wrath — so many of
those,
That ware their ladies' colours on the
casque,
Drew from before Sir Tristram to the
bounds,
And there with gibes and flickering
mockeries
Stood, while he mutter'd, ' Craven crests !
O shame !
What faith have these in whom they sware
to love?
The glory of our Round Table is no more.'
So Tristram won, and Lancelot gave,
the gems,
Not speaking other word than ' Hast thou
won?
Art thou the purest, brother? See, the
hand
Wherewith thou takest this, is red ! ' to
whom
Tristram, half plagued by Lancelot's
languorous mood.
Made answer, *Ay, but wherefore toss
me this
Like a dry bone cast to some hungry
hound?
Let be thy fair Queen's fantasy. Strength
of heart
And might of limb, but mainly use and
skill,
Are winners in this pastime of our King.
My hand — belike the lance hath dript
upon it —
No blood of mine, I trow; but O chief
knight,
Right arm of Arthur in the battlefield.
Great brother, thou nor I have made the
world ;
Be happy in thy fair Queen as I in mine.'
And Tristram round the gallery made
his horse
Caracole ; then bow'd his homage, bluntly
saying.
' Fair damsels, each to him who worships
each
Sole Queen of Bea'uty and of love, behold
This day my Queen of Beauty is not here.'
And most of these were mute, some
anger'd, one
Murmuring, ' x\ll courtesy is dead,' and
one,
* The glory of our Round Table is no more.'
Then fell thick rain, plume droopt and
mantle clung.
And pettish cries awoke, and the wan day
Went glooming down in wet and weari-
ness :
But under her black brows a swarthy one
Laugh'd shrilly, crying, ' Praise the pa-
tient saints.
Our one white day of Innocence hath
past,
Tho' somewhat draggled at the skirt. So
be it.
The snowdrop only, flowering thro' the
year,
Would make the world as blank as Win-
ter-tide.
Come — let us gladden their sad eyes,
our Queen's
And Lancelot's, at this night's solemnity
With all the kindlier colours of the field.'
So dame and damsel glitter'd at the
feast
Variously gay : for he that tells the tale
Liken'd them, saying, as when an hour
of cold
Falls on the mountain in midsummer
snows,
And all the purple slopes of mountain
flowers
Pass under white, till the warm hour re-
turns
With veer of wind, and all are flowers
again;
So dame and damsel cast the simple white.
And glowing in all colours, the live grass,
Rose-campion, bluebell, kingcup, poppy,
glanced
About the revels, and with mirth so loud
Beyond all use, that, half-amazed, the
Queen,
And wroth at Tristram and the lawless
jousts,
THE LAST TOURNAMENT.
439
Brake up their sports, then slowly ta her
bower
Parted, and in her bosom pain was lord.
And little Dagonet on the morrow
morn,
High over all the yellowing Autumn-tide,
Danced like a wither'd leaf before the
hall.
Then Tristram saying, * Why skip ye so,
Sir Fool?'
Wheel'd round on either heel, Dagonet
replied,
'Belike for lack of wiser company;
Or being fool, and seeing too much wit
Makes the world rotten, why belike I skip
To know myself the wisest knight of all.'
* Ay, fool,' said Tristram, * but 'tis eating
dry
To dance without a catch, a roundelay
To dance to.' Then he twangled on his
harp.
And while he twangled little Dagonet
stood
Quiet as any water-sodden log
Stay'd in the wandering warble of a
brook ;
But when the twangling ended, skipt
again;
And being ask'd, • Why skipt ye not. Sir
Fool?'
Made answer, ' I had liefer twenty years
Skip to the broken music of my brains
Than any broken music thou canst make.'
Then Tristram, waiting for the quip to
come,
* Good now, what music have I broken,
fool?'
And little Dagonet, skipping, * Arthur, the
King's;
For when thou playest that air with
Queen Isolt,
Thou makest broken music with thy bride.
Her daintier namesake down in Brit-
tany —
And so thou breakest Arthur's music too,'
* Save for that broken music in thy brains,
Sir Fool,' said Tristram, ' I would break
thy head.
Fool, I came late, the heathen wars were
o'er,
The life had flown, we sware but by the
shell —
I am but a fool to reason with a fool —
Come, thou art crabb'd and sour : but
lean me down,
Sir Dagonet, one of thy long ass's ears.
And harken if my music be not true.
* " Free love — free field — we love but
while we may :
The woods are hush'd, their music is no
more :
The leaf is dead, the yearning past away :
New leaf, new life — the days of frost are
o'er:
New life, new love, to suit the newer day :
New loves are sweet as those that went
before :
Free love — free field — we love but while
we may."
*Ye might have moved slow-measure
to my tune.
Not stood slockstill. I made it in the
woods,
And heard it ring as true as tested gold.'
But Dagonet with one foot poised in
his hand,
'Friend, did ye mark that fountain yester-
day
Made to run wine? — but this had run
itself
All out Hke a long life to a sour end —
And them that round it sat with golden
cups
To hand the wine to whomsoever came —
The twelve small damosels white as In-
nocence,
In honour of poor Innocence the babe,
Who left the gems which Innocence the
Queen
Lent to the King, and Innocence the King
Ga- e for a prize — and one of those white
slips
Handed her cup and piped, the pretty one,
" Drink, drink, Sir Fool," and thereupon
I drank.
Spat — pish — the cup was gold, the
draught was mud.'
And Tristram, * Was it muddier than
thy gibes?
Is all the laughter gone dead out of
thee? —
440
THE LAST TOURNAMENT.
Not marking how the knighthood mock
thee, fool —
" Fear God : honour the King — his one
true knight —
Sole follower of the vows " — for here be
they
Who knew thee swine enow before I came,
Smuttier than blasted grain : but when
the King
Had made thee fool, thy vanity so shot up
It frighted all free fool from out thy
heart;
Which left thee less than fool, and less
than swine,
A naked aught — yet swine I hold thee
still,
For I have flung thee pearls and find thee
swine.'
And little Dagonet mincing with his
feet, •
' Knight, an ye fling those rubies round
my neck
In lieu of hers, I'll hold thou hast some
touch
Of music, since I care not for thy pearls.
Swine? I have wallow'd, I have wash'd
— the world
Is flesh and shadow — I have had my day.
The dirty nurse. Experience, in her kind
Hath foul'd me — an I wallow'd then I
wash'd — •
I have had my day and my philosophies —
And thank the Lord I am King Arthur's
fool.
Swine, say ye? swine, goats, asses, rams
and geese
Troop'd round a Paynim harper once,
who thruram'd
On such a wire as musically as thou
Some such fine song — but never a king's
fooL'
And Tristram, 'Then were swine, goats,
asses, geese
The wiser fools, seeing thy Paynim bard
Had such a mastery of his mystery
That he could harp his wife up out of hell.'
Then Dagonet, turning on the ball of
his foot,
'And whither harp'st thou thine? down !
and thyself
Down ! and two more : a helpful harpei
thou.
That harpest downward ! Dost thou know
the star
We call the harp of Arthur up in heaven? '
And Tristram, 'Ay, Sir Fool, for when
our King
Was victor wellnigh day by day, the
knights.
Glorying in each new glory, set his name
High on all hills, and in the signs of
heaven.'
And Dagonet answer'd, * Ay, and when
the land
Was freed, and the Queen false, ye set
yourself
To babble about him, all to show your
wit —
And whether he were King by courtesy.
Or King by right — and so went harping
down
The black king's highway, got so far, and
grew
So witty that ye play'd at ducks and
drakes
With Arthur's vows on the great lake of
fire.
Tuwhoo ! do ye see it? do ye see the
star?'
'Nay, fool,' said Tristram, 'not in
open day.'
And Dagonet, 'Nay, nor will: I see it
and hear.
It makes a silent music up in heaven,
And I, and Arthur and the angels hear.
And then we skip.' ' Lo, fool,' he said,
*ye talk
Fool's treason : is the King thy brother
fool?'
Then little Dagonet clapt his hands and
shrill'd,
'Ay, ay, my brother fool, the king of
fools !
Conceits himself as God that he can make
Figs out of thistles, silk from bristles,
milk
From burning spurge, honey from hornet-
combs.
And men from beasts — Long live the
king of fools I '
THE LAST TOURNAMENT.
441
And down the city Dagonet danced
away ;
But thro' the slowly-mellowing avenues
And solitary passes of the wood
Rode Tristram toward Lyonesse and the
west.
Before him fled the face of Queen Isolt
With ruby-circled neck, but evermore
Past, as a rustle or twitter in the wood
Made dull his inner, keen his outer eye
For all that walk'd, or crept, or perch'd,
or flew.
Anon the face, as, when a gust hath
blown,
Unruffling waters re-collect the shape
Of one that in them sees himself, return'd ;
But at the slot or fewmets of a deer,
Or ev'n a fall'n feather, vanish'd again.
So on for all that day from lawn to lawn
Thro' many a league-long bower he rode.
At length
A lodge of intertwisted b<?echen-boughs
Furze-cramm'd, and brack en-rooft, the
which himself
Built for a summer day with Queen Isolt
Against a shower, dark in the golden
grove
Appearing, sent his fancy back to where
She lived a moon in that low lodge with
him :
Till Mark her lord had past, the Cornish
King,
With six or seven, when Tristram was
away.
And snatch'd her thence; yet dreading
worse than shame
Her warrior Tristram, spake not any
word,
But bode his hour, devising wretchedness.
And now that desert lodge to Tristram
lookt
So sweet, that halting, in he past, and
sank
Down on a drift of foliage random-blown;
But could not rest for musing how to
smoothe
And sleek his marriage over to the Queen.
Perchance in lone Tintagil far from all
The tonguesters of the court she had not
heard.
But then what folly had sent him overseas
After she left him lonely here? a name?
Was it the name of one in Brittany,
Isolt, the daughter of the King? 'Isolt
Of the white hands ' they cail'd her: the
sweet name
Allured him first, and then the maid her-
self,
Who served him well with those white
hands of hers,
And loved him well, until himself had
thought
He loved her also, wedded easily.
But left her all as easily, and return'd.
The black-blue Irish hair and Irish eyes
Had drawn him home — what marvel?
then he laid
His brows upon the drifted leaf and
dream'd.
He seem'd to pace the strand of Brit-
tany
Between Isolt of Britain and his bride,
And show'd them both the ruby-chain,
and both
Began to struggle for it, till his Queen
Graspt it so hard, that all her hand was
red.
Then cried the Breton, * Look, her hand
is red !
These be no rubies, this is frozen blood,
And melts within her hand — her hand is
hot
With ill desires, but this I gave thee, look.
Is all as cool and white as any flower.'
Follow'd a rush of eagle's wings, and then
A whimpering of the spirit of the child,
Because the twain had spoil'd her car-
canet.
He dream'd ; but Arthur with a hun-
dred spears
Rode far, till o'er the illimitable reed,
And many a glancing plash and sallowy
isle.
The wide-wing'd sunset of the misty marsh
Glared on a huge machicolated tower
That stood with open doors, whereout
was roll'd
A roar of riot, as from men secure
Amid their marshes, ruffians at their ease
Among their harlot-brides, an evil song.
' Lo there,' said one of Arthur's youth,
for there,
442
THE LAST TOURNAMENT.
High on a grim dead tree before the
Down from the causeway heavily to the
• tower,
swamp
A goodly brother of the Table Round
Fall, as the crest of some slow-arching
Swung by the neck : and on the boughs
wave.
a shield
Heard in dead night along that table-
Showing a shower of blood in a field noir,
shore,
And therebeside a horn, inflamed the
Drops flat, and after the great waters
knights
break
x\t that dishonour done the gilded spur.
Whitening for half a league, and thin
Till each would clash the shield, and blow
themselves,
the horn.
Far over sands marbled with moon and
But Arthur waved them back. Alone he
cloud,
rode.
From less and less to nothing; thus he
Then at the dry harsh roar of the great
fell
horn,
Head-heavy; then the knights, who
That sent the face of all the marsh aloft
watch'd him, roar'd
An ever upward-rushing storm and cloud
And shouted and leapt down upon the
Of shriek and plume, the Red Knight
fall'n;
heard, and all,
There trampled out his face from being
Even to tipmost lance and topmost helm,
known.
In blood-red armour sallying, howl'd to
And sank his head in mire, and slimed
the King,
themselves :
Nor heard the King for their own cries,
'The teeth of Hell flay bare and gnash
but sprang
thee flat ! —
Thro' open doors, and swording right and
Lo ! art thou not that eunuch-hearted
left
King
Men, women, on their sodden faces,
Who fain had dipt free manhood from
hurl'd
the world —
The tables over and the wines, and slew
The woman-worshipper? Yea, God's
Till all the rafters rang with woman-yells.
curse, and I !
And all the pavement stream'd with
Slain was the brother of my paramour
massacre :
By a knight of thine, and I that heard
Then, echoing yell with yell, they fired
her whine
the tower,
And snivel, being eunuch-hearted too^
Which half that Autumn night, like the
Sware by the scorpion-worm that twists
live North,
in hell,
Red-pulsing up thro' Alioth and Alcor,
And stings itself to everlasting death,
Made all above it, and a hundred meres
To hang whatever knight of thine I fought
About it, as the water Moab saw
And tumbled. Art thou King? — Look
Come round by the East, and out beyond
to thy life ! '
them flush'd
The long low dune, and lazy-plunging
He ended: Arthur knew the voice ; the
sea.
face
Wellnigh was helmet-hidden, and the
So all the ways were safe from shore
name
to shore.
Went wandering somewhere darkling in
But in the heart of Arthur pain was
his mind.
lord.
And Arthur deign'd not use of word or
sword,
Then, out of Tristram waking, the red
But let the drunkard, as he stretch'd from
dream
horse
Fled with a shout, and that low lodge
To strike him, overbalancing his bulk,
return'd,
THE LAST TOURNAMENT.
443
Mid-forest, and the wind among the
boughs.
He whistled his good warhorse left to
graze
Among the forest greens, vaulted upon
him.
And rode beneath an ever-showering leaf.
Till one lone woman, weeping near a
cross,
Stay'd him. 'Whyweepye?' 'Lord,'
she said, ' my man
Hath left me or is dead; ' whereon he
thought —
* What, if she hate me now? I would
not this.
What, if she love me still? I would not
that.
I know not what I would ' — but said to
her,v
* Yet weep not thou, lest, if thy mate
return.
He find thy favour changed and love thee
not' —
Then pressing day by day thro' Lyo-
nesse
Last in a roky hollow, belling, heard
The hounds of Mark, and felt the goodly
hounds
Yelp at his heart, but turning, past and
gain'd
Tintagil, half in sea, and high on land,
A crown of towers.
Down in a casement sat,
•A low sea-sunset glorying round her hair
And glossy-throated grace, Isolt the
Queen.
And when she heard the feet of Tristram
grind
The spiring stone that scaled about her
tower,
Flush'd, started, met him at the doors,
and there
Belted his body with her white embrace,
Crying aloud, 'Not Mark — not Mark,
my soul !
The footstep flutter'd me at first : not he :
Catlike thro' his own castle steals my
Mark,
But warrior-wise thou stridest thro' his
halls
Who hates thee, as I him — ev'n to the
death.
My soul, I felt my hatred for my Mark
Quicken within me, and knew that thou
wert nigh.'
To whom Sir Tristram smiling, *I am
here.
Let be thy Mark, seeing he is not thine.'
And drawing somewhat backward she
replied,
' Can he be wrong'd who is not ev'n his
own.
But save for dread of thee had beaten
me,
Scratch'd, bitten, blinded, marr'd me
somehow — Mark ?
What rights are his that dare not strike
for them?
Not lift a hand — not, tho' he found me
thus!
But harken ! have ye met him? hence he
went
To-day for three days' hunting — as he
said —
And so returns belike within an hour.
Mark's way, my soul ! — but eat not
thou with Mark,
Because he hates thee even more than
fears;
Nor drink : and when thou passest any
wood
Close vizor, lest an arrow from the bush
Should leave me all alone with Mark and
hell.
My God, the measure of my hate for
Mark
Is as the measure of my love for thee.'
So, pluck'd one way by hate and one
by love,
Drain'd of her force, again she sat, and
spake
To Tristram, aS he knelt before her,
saying,
' O hunter, and O blower of the horn.
Harper, and thou hast been a rover too,
Yox, ere T mated with my shambling king.
Ye twain had fallen out about the bride
Of one — his name is out of me — the
prize,
If prize she were — (what marvel — she
could see) —
Thine, friend; and ever since my craven
seeks
444
THE LAST TOURNAMENT.
To wreck thee villainously: but, O Sir
Knight,
What dame or damsel have ye kneel'd to
last?'
And Tristram, 'Last to my Queen
Paramount,
Here now to my Queen Paramount of
love
And loveliness — ay, lovelier than when
first
Her light feet fell on our rough Lyo-
nesse,
Sailing from Ireland.'
Softly laugh'd Isolt;
* Flatter me not, for hath not our great
Queen
My dole of beauty trebled ? ' and he said,
* Her beauty is her beauty, and thine
thine,
And thine is more to me — soft, gracious,
kind —
Save when thy Mark is kindled on thy
lips
Most gracious; but she, haughty, ev'n to
him,
Lancelot ; for I have seen him wan enow
To make one doubt if ever the great
Queen
Have yielded him her love.'
To whom Isolt,
* Ah then, false hunter and false harper,
thou
Who brakest thro' the scruple of my
bond,
Calling me thy white hind, and saying
to me
That Guinevere had sinn'd against the
highest.
And I — misyoked with such a want of
man —
That I could hardly sin against the lowest.'
He answer'd, *0 my soul, be com-
forted !
If this be sweet, to sin in leading-strings.
If here be comfort, and if ours be sin,
Crown'd warrant had we for the crown-
ing sin
That made us happy : but how ye greet
me — fear
And fault and doubt — no word of that
fond tale —
Thy deep heart-yearnings, thy sweet
memories
Of Tristram in that year he was away.'
And, saddening on the sudden, spake
Isolt,
* I had forgotten all in my strong joy
To see thee — yearnings? — ay ! for, hour
by hour.
Here in the never-ended afternoon,
O sweeter than all memories of thee,
Deeper than any yearnings after thee
Seem'd those far-rolling, westward-
smiling seas,
Watch'd from this tower. Isolt of Britain
dash'd
Before Isolt of Brittany on the strand,
W^ould that have chill'd her bride-kiss?
Wedded her?
Fought in her father's battles? wounded
there ?
The King was all fulfiU'd with grateful-
ness.
And she, my namesake of the hands, that
heal'd
Thy hurt and heart with unguent and
caress —
Well — can I wish her any huger wrong
Than having known thee? her too hast
thou left
To pine and waste in those sweet
memories.
O were I not my Mark's, by whom all
men
Are noble, I should hate thee more than
love.'
And Tristram, fondling her light hands,
replied,
• Grace, Queen, for being loved : she
• loved me well.
Did I love her? the name at least I
loved.
Isolt? — I fought his battles, for Isolt!
The night was dark; the true star set.
Isolt !
The name was ruler of the dark Isolt?
Care not for her ! patient, and prayerful,
meek, '
Pale-blooded, she will yield herself to
God.'
THE LAST TOURNAMENT.
445
And Isolt answer'd, * Yea, and why
not I?
Mine is the larger need, who am not meek,
Pale-blooded, prayerful. Let me tell
thee now.
Here one black, mute midsummer night
I sat,
Lonely, but musing on thee, wondering
where,
Murmuring a light song I had heard thee
sing,
And once or twice I spake thy name aloud.
Then flash'd a levin-brand ; and near me
stood,
In fuming sulphur blue and green, a
fiend —
Mark's way to steal behind one in the
dark —
For there was Mark : " He has wedded
her," he said.
Not said, but hiss'd it : then this crown
of towers
So shook to such a roar of all the sky,
That here in utter dark I swoon'd away,
And woke again in utter dark, and cried^
" I will flee hence and give myself to
God" —
And thou wert lying in thy new leman's
arms.'
Then Tristram, ever dallying with her
hand,
* May God be with thee, sweet, when old
and gray,
And past desire ! ' a saying that anger'd
her.
* " May God be with thee, sweet, when
thou art old.
And sweet no more to me ! " I need
Him now.
For when had Lancelot utter'd aught so
gross
Ev'n to the swineherd's malkin in the
mast?
The greater man, the greater courtesy.
Far other was the Tristram, Arthur's
knight !
But thou, thro' ever harrying thy wild
beasts —
Save that to touch a harp, tilt with a
lance
Becomes thee well — art grown wild beast
thyself.
How darest thou, if lover, push me
even
In fancy from thy side, and set me far
In the gray distance, half a life away.
Her to be loved no more? Unsay it,
unswear !
Flatter me rather, seeing me so weak,
Broken with Mark and hate and solitude,
Thy marriage and mine own, that I
should suck
Lies like sweet wines: lie to me: I be-
lieve.
"Will ye not lie? not swear, as there ye
kneel.
And solemnly as when ye sware to him,
The man of men, our King — My God,
the power
Was once in vows when men believed the
King!
They lied not then, who sware, and thro'
their vows
The King prevailing made his realm : —
I say,
Swear to me thou wilt love me ev'n when
old,
Gray-hair'd, and past desire, and in de-
spair.'
Then Tristram, pacing moodily up and
down,
* Vows ! did you keep the vow you made
to Mark
More than I mine? Lied, say ye? Nay,
but learnt,
The vow that binds too strictly snaps
itself—
My knighthood taught me this — ay, being
snapt —
We run more counter to the soul thereof
Than had we never sworn. I swear no
more.
I swore to the great King, and am for-
sworn.
For once — ev'n to the height — I
honour'd him.
"Man, is he man at all?" methought,
when first
I rode from our rough Lyonesse, and
beheld
That victor of the Pagan throned in hall —
His hair, a sun that ray'd from off a brow
Like hillsnow high in heaven, the steel-
blue eyes.
445
THE LAST TOURNAMENT.
The golden beard that .clothed his lips
with light —
Moreover, that weird legend of his birth,
With Merlin's mystic babble about his end
Amazed me; then his foot was on a stool
Shaped as a dragon; he seem'd to me no
man,
But Michael trampling Satan ; so I sware,
Being amazed: but this went by — The
vows !
O ay — the wholesome madness of an
hour —
They served their use, their time; for
every knight
Believed himself a greater than himself,
And every follower eyed him as a God;
Till he, being lifted up beyond himself,
Did mightier deeds than elsewise he had
done,
And so the realm was made ; but then
their vows —
First mainly thro' that sullying of our
Queen —
Began to gall the knighthood, asking
whence
Had Arthur right to bind them to himself?
Dropt down from heaven? wash'd up
from out the deep?
They fail'd to trace him thro' the flesh
and blood
Of our old kings : whence then? a doubt-
ful lord
To bind them by inviolable vows,
Which flesh and blood perforce would
violate :
For feel this arm of mine — the tide
within
Red with free chase and heather-scented
air,
Pulsing full man; can Arthur make me
pure
As any maiden child ? lock up my tongue
From uttering freely what I freely hear?
Bind me to one? The wide world
laughs at it.
And worldling of the world am I, and
know
The ptarmigan that whitens ere his hour
Woos his own end; we are not angels
here
Nor shall be : vows — I am woodman of
the woods,
And hear the garnet-headed yaffingale
Mock them: my soul, we love but while
we may;
And therefore is my love so large for thee,
Seeing it is not bounded save by love.'
Here ending, he moved toward her,
and she said,
' Good : an I turn'd away my love for
thee
To some one thrice as courteous as thy-
self—
For courtesy wins woman all as well
As valour may, but he that closes both
Is perfect, he is Lancelot — taller indeed,
Rosier and comelier, thou — but say I
loved
This knightliest of all knights, and cast
thee back
Thine own small saw, " We love but
while we may,"
Well then, what answer?'
He that -while she spake,
Mindful of what he brought to adorn her
with,
The jewels, had let one finger lightly
touch
The warm white apple of her throat,
replied,
' Press this a little closer, sweet, until —
Come, I am hunger'd and half-anger'd —
meat,
Wine, wine — and I will love thee to the
death,
And out beyond into the dream to come.'
So then, when both were brought to
full accord.
She rose, and set before him allhewill'd;
And after these had comforted the blood
With meats and wines, and satiated their
hearts —
Now talking of their woodland paradise,
The deer, the dews, the fern, the founts,
the lawns;
Now mocking at the much ungainliness,
And craven shifts, and long crane legs of
Mark —
Then Tristram laughing caught the harp,
and sang:
' Ay, ay, O ay — the winds that bend
the brier !
GUINEVERE.
447
A star in heaven, a star within the mere !
Ay, ay, O ay — a star was my desire,
And one was far apart, and one was
near :
Ay, ay, O ay — the winds that bow the
grass !
And one was water and one star was fire,
And one will ever chine and one will
pass.
Ay, ay, O ay — the winds that move the
mere.'
Then in the light's last glimmer Tris-
tram show'd
And swung the ruby carcanet. She
cried,
'The collar of some Order, which our
King
Hath newly founded, all for thee, my
soul,
For thee, to yield thee grace beyond thy
peers.'
* Not so, my Queen,' he said, ' but the
red fruit
Grown on a magic oak-tree in mid-
heaven.
And won by Tristram as a tourney-prize.
And hither brought by Tristram for his
last
Love-offering and peace-offering unto
thee.'
He spoke, he turn'd, then, flinging
round her neck,
Claspt it, and cried * Thine Order, O my
Queen ! '
But, while he bow'd to kiss the jewell'd
throat,
Out of the dark, just as the lips had
touch'd,
Behind him rose a shadow and a shriek —
* Mark's way,' said Mark, and clove him
thro' the brain.
That night came Arthur home, and
while he climb'd,
All in a death-dumb autumn-dripping
gloom.
The stairway to the hall, and look'd and
saw
The great Queen's bower was dark, —
about his feet
A voice clung soj^bing till he question'd it,
'What art thou?' and the voice about
his feet
Sent up an answer, sobbing, ' I am thy
fool.
And I shall never make thee smile again.'
GUINEVERE.
Queen Guinevere had fled the court,
and sat
There in the holy house at Almesbury
Weeping, none with her save a little
maid,
A novice : one low light betwixt them
burn'd
Blurr'd by the creeping mist, for all
abroad,
Beneath a moon unseen albeit at full,
' The white mist, like a face-cloth to the
I face,
[clung to the dead earth, and the land
was still.
For hither had she fled, her cause of
flight
Sir Modred ; he that like a subtle beast
Lay couchant with his eyes upon the
throne.
Ready to spring, waiting a chance : for
this
He chill'd the popular praises of the
King
With silent smiles of slow disparage-
ment;
And tamper'd with the Lords of the
White Horse,
Heathen, the brood by Hengistleft; and
sought
To make disruption in the Table Round
Of Arthur, and to splinter it into feuds
Serving his traitorous end; and all his
aims
Were sharpen'd by strong hate for Lance-
lot.
For thus it chanced one morn when
all the court.
Green-suited, but with plumes that
mock'd the may.
Had been, their wont, a-maying and
return'd,
That Modred still in green, all ear and eye,
448
GUINEVERE,
Climb'd to the high top. of the garden-
wall
To spy some secret scandal if he might,
And saw the Queen who sat betwixt her
best
Enid, and lissome Vivien, of her court
The wiliest and the worst; and more
than this
He saw not, for Sir Lancelot passing by
Spied where he couch'd, and as the
gardener's hand
Picks from the colewort a green cater-
pillar,
So from the high wall and the flowering
grove
; Of grasses Lancelot pluck'd him by the
i heel.
And cast him as a worm upon the way;
But when he knew the Prince tho'
marr'd with dust,
He, reverencing king's blood in a bad
man.
Made such excuses as he might, and these
Full knightly without scorn; for in those
days
No knight of Arthur's noblest dealt in
scorn;
But, if a man were halt or hunch'd, in
him
By those whom God had made fuU-
Hmb'd and tall,
Scorn was allow' d as part of his defect.
And he was ansvver'd softly by the King
And all his Table. So Sir Lancelot holp
To raise the Prince, who rising twice or
thrice
Full sharply smote his knees, and smiled,
and went :
But, ever after, the small violence done
Rankled in him and ruffled all his heart.
As the sharp wind that ruffles all day
long
A little bitter pool about a stone
Oh the bare coast.
But when Sir Lancelot told
This matter to the Queen, at first she
laugh'd
Lightly, to think of Modred's dusty fall,
Then shudder'd, as the village wife who
cries
'I shudder, some one steps across my
grave;'
Then laugh'd again, but faintlier, for in-
deed
She half-foresaw that he, the subtle beast,
Would track her guilt until he found, and
hers
Would be for evermore a name of scorn.
Henceforward rarely could she front in
ball,
Or elsewhere, Modred's narrow foxy face.
Heart-hiding smile, and gray persistent
'" eye:
Henceforward too, the Powers that tend
the soul.
To help it from the death that cannot
die,
And save it even in extremes, began
To vex and plague her. Many a time for
hours,
Beside the placid breathings of the King,
In the dead night, grim faces came and
went
Before her, or a vague spiritual fear —
Like to some doubtful noise of creaking
• doors.
Heard by the watcher in a haunted house,
That keeps the rust of murder on the
walls —
Held her awake : or if she slept, she
dream'd
An awful dream; for then she seem'd to
stand
On some vast plain before a setting sun.
And from the sun there swiftly made at her
A ghastly something, and its shadow flew
Before it, till it touch'd her, and she
turn'd —
When lo ! her own, that broadening from
her feet.
And blackening, swallow'd all the land,
and in it
Far cities burnt, and with a cry she woke.
And all this trouble did not pass but grew;
Till ev'n the clear face of the guileless
King,
And trustful courtesies of household life.
Became her bane; and at the last she
said,
* O Lancelot, get thee hence to thine own
land.
For if thou tarry we shall meet again,
And if we meet again, some evil chance
Will make the smouldering scandal break
and blaze
GUINEVERE.
449
Before the people, and our lord the King.'
And Lancelot ever promised, but re-
main'd,
And still they met and met. Again she
said,
*0 Lancelot, if thou love me get thee
hence.'
And then they were agreed upon a night
(When the good King should not be
there) to meet
And part for ever. Vivien, lurking, heard.
She told Sir Modred. Passion-pale they
met
And greeted. Hands in hands, and eye
to eye.
Low on the border of her couch they sat
Stammering and staring. It was their
last hour,
A madness of farewells. And Modred
brought
His creatures to the basement of the tower
For testimony; and crying with full voice
'.Traitor, come out, ye are trapt at last,'
aroused
Lancelot, who rushing outward lionlike
Leapt on him, and hurl'd him headlong,
and he fell
Stunn'd, and his creatures took and bare
him off,
And all was still : then she, * The end is
come.
And I am shamed for ever;' and he said,
* Mine be the shame; mine was the sin:
but rise.
And fly to my strong castle overseas :
There will I hide thee, till my life shall end,
There hold thee with my life against the
world.'
She answer'd, * Lancelot, wilt thou hold
me so?
Nay, friend, for we have taken our fare-
wells.
i^ Would God that thou couldst hide me
from myself!
Mine is the shame, for I was wife, ancj thou
Unwedded : yet rise now, and let us fly.
For I will draw me into sanctuary.
And bide my doom.' So Lancelot got
her horse.
Set her thereon, and mounted on his own,
x\nd then they rode to the divided way.
There kiss'd, and parted weeping: for
he past.
Love-loyal to the least wish of the Queen,
Back to his land ; but she to Almesbury
Fled all night long by glimmering waste
and weald,
And heard the Spirits of the waste and
weald
Moan as she fled, or thought she heard
them moan :
And in herself she moan'd, 'Too late, too
late ! '
Till in the cold wind that foreruns the
morn,
A blot in heaven, the Raven, flying high,
Croak'd, and she thought, ' He spies a
field of death;
P^or now the Heathen of the Northern Sea,
Lured by the crimes and frailties of the
court.
Begin to slay the folk, and spoil the land.'
And when she came to Almesbury she
spake
There to the nuns, and said, ' Mine
enemies
Pursue me, but, O peaceful Sisterhood,
Receive, and yield me sanctuary, nor ask
Her name to whom ye yield it, till her
time
To tell you : ' and her beauty, grace and
power,
Wrought as a charm upon them, and
they spared
To ask it.
So the stately Queen abode
For many a week, unknown, among the
nuns;
Nor with them mix'd, nor told her name,
nor sought,
Wrapt in her grief, for housel or for
shrift.
But communed only with the little maid,
W^ho pleased her with a babbling heed-
lessness
Which often lured her from herself; but
now.
This night, a rumour wildly blown about
Came, that Sir Modred had usurp'd the
realm.
And leagued him with the heathen, while
the King
Was waging war on Lancelot : then she
thought,
450
GUINEVERE.
' With what a hate the people and the
King
Must hate me,' and bow'd down upon
her hands
Silent, until the little maid, who brook'd
No silence, brake it, uttering, ' Late ! so
late!
What hour, I wonder, now?' and when
she drew
No answer, by and by began to hum
An air the nuns had taught her, ' Late,
so late ! '
Which when she heard, the Queen look'd
up, and said,
' O maiden, if indeed ye list to sing.
Sing, and unbind my heart that I may
weep.'
Whereat, full willingly sang the little
maid.
* Late, late, so late ! and dark the
night and chill !
Late, late, so late ! but we can enter still.
Too late, too late ! ye cannot enter now.
* No light had we : for that we do
repent;
And learning this, the bridegroom will
relent.
Too late, too late ! ye cannot enter now.
* No light : so late ! and dark and chill
the night !
O let us in, that we may find the light !
Too late, too late : ye cannot enter now.
* Have we not heard the bridegroom is
so sweet?
O let us in, tho' late, to kiss- his feet !
No, no, too late ! ye cannot enter now.'
So sang the novice, while full passion-
ately.
Her head upon her hands, remembering
Her thought when first she came, wept
the sad Queen.
Then said the little novice prattling to
her,
* O pray you, noble lady, weep no
more;
But let my words, the words of one so
small.
Who knowing nothing knows but to
obey.
And if I do not there is penance given —
Comfort your sorrows; for they do not
flow
From evil done; right sure am I o.'
that.
Who see your tender grace and stateli-
ness.
But weigh your sorrows with our lord the
King's,
And weighing find them less; for gone is
he
To wage grim war against Sir Lancelot
there.
Round that strong castle where he holds
the Queen;
And Modred whom he left in charge of
all.
The traitor — Ah sweet lady, the King's
grief
For his own self, and his own Queen, and
realm.
Must needs be thrice as great as any of
ours.
For me, I thank the saints, I am not
great.
For if there ever come a grief to me
I cry my cry in silence, and have done.
None knows it, and my tears have brought
me good :
But even were the griefs of little ones
As great as those of great ones, yet this
grief
Is added to the griefs the great must
bear.
That howsoever much they may desire
Silence, they cannot weep behind a
cloud :
As even here they talk at Almesbury
About the good King and his wicked
Queen,
And were I such a King with such a
Queen,
Well might I wish to veil her wicked-
ness,
But were I such a King, it could not be.'
Then to her own sad heart mutter'd the
Queen,
* Will the child kill me with her innocent
talk?'
But openly she answer'd, * Must not I,
GUINEVERE.
45'
If this false traitor have displaced his
lord,
Grieve with the common grief of all the
realm ? '
* Yea,' said the maid, ' this is all
woman's grief.
That she is woman, whose disloyal life
Hath wrought confusion in the Table
Round
Which good King Arthur founded, years
ago.
With signs and miracles and wonders,
there
At Camelot, ere the coming of the Queen.'
Then thought the Queen within herself
again,
* Will the child kill me with her foolish
prate ? '
But openly she spake and said to her,
' O little maid, shut in by nunnery walls,
What canst thou know of Kings and
Tables Round,
Or what of signs and wonders, but the
signs
And simple miracles of thy nunnery? '
To whom the little novice garrulously,
* Yea, but I know : the land was full of
signs
And wonders ere the coming of the
Queen.
So said my father, and himself was knight
Of the great Table — at the founding of it ;
And rode thereto from Lyonesse, and he
said
That as he rode, an hour or maybe twain
After the sunset, down the coast, he heard
Strange music, and he paused, and turn-
ing— there,
All down the lonely coast of Lyonesse,
Each with a beacon-star upon his head,
And with a wild sea-light about his feet.
He saw them — headland after headland
flame
Far on into the rich heart of the west :
And in the light the white mermaiden
swam.
And strong man-breasted things stood
from the sea,
And sent a deep sea-voice thro' all the
land,
To which the little elves of chasm and
cleft
Made answer, sounding like a distant
horn.
So said my father — yea, and further-
more.
Next morning, while he passed the dim-
lit woods.
Himself beheld three spirits mad with joy
Come dashing down on a tall wayside
flower,
That shook beneath them, as the thistle
shakes
When three gray linnets wrangle for the
seed:
And still at evenings on before his horse
The flickering fairy-circle wheel'd and
broke
Flying, and link'd again, and wheel'd and
broke
Flying, for all the land was full of life.
And when at last he came to Camelot,
A wreath of airy dancers hand-in-hand
Swung round the lighted lantern of the
hall;
And in the hall itself was such a feast
As never man had dream'd; for every
knight
Had whatsoever meat he long'd for served
By hands unseen; and even jis he said
Down in the cellars merry bloated things
Shoulder'd the spigot, straddling on the
butts
While the wine ran : so glad were spirits
and men
Before the coming of the sinful Queen.*
Then spake the Queen and somewhat
bitterly,
•Were they so glad? ill prophets were
they all.
Spirits and men : could none of them
foresee.
Not even thy wise father with his signs
And wonders, what has fall'n upon the
realm ? '
To whom the novice garrulously again,
* Yea, one, a bard; of whom my father
said.
Full many a noble war-song had he sung,
Ev'n in the presence of an enemy's
fleet, ^
452
GUINEVERE.
Between the steep cliff and the coming
wave;
And many a mystic lay of life and death
Had chanted on the smoky mountain-
tops,
When round him bent the spirits of the
hills
With all their dewy hair blown back like
flame :
So said my father — and that night the
bard
Sang Arthur's glorious wars, and sang
the King
As wellnigh more than man, and rail'd
at those
Who call'd him the false son of Goflols :
For there was no man knew from whence
he came;
But after tempest, when the long wave
broke
All down the thundering shores of Bude
and Bos,
There came a day as still as heaven, and
then
They found a naked child upon the sands
Of dark Tintagil by the Cornish sea;
And that was Arthur; and they foster'd
him
Till he by miracle was approven King:
And that his grave should be a mystery
From all men, like his birth; and could
he find
A woman in her womanhood as great
As he was in his manhood, then, he
sang.
The twain together well might change
the world.
But even in the middle of his song
He falter'd, and his hand fell from the
harp.
And pale he turn'd, and reel'd, and would
have fall'n,
But that they stay'd him up; nor would
he tell
His vision; but what doubt that he fore-
saw
This evil work of Lancelot and the
Queen?'
Then thought the Queen, ' Lo ! they
have set her on.
Our simple-seeming Abbess and her
To play upon me,' and bow'd her head
nor spake.
Whereat the novice crying, with clasp'd
hands,
Shame on her own garrulity garrulously,
Said the good nuns would check her
gadding tongue
Full often, ' and, sweet lady, if I seem
To vex an ear too sad to listen to me,
Unmannerly, with prattling and the tales
Which my good father told me, check
me too
Nor let me shame my father's memory,
one
Of noblest manners, tho' himself would
say
Sir Lancelot had the noblest; and he
died,
Kill'd in a tilt, come next, five summers
back.
And left me; but of others who remain,
And of the two first-famed for courtesy —
And pray you check me if I ask amiss —
But pray you, which had noblest, while
you moved
Among them, Lancelot or our lord the
King?'
Then the pale Queen look'd up and
answer'd her,
* Sir Lancelot, as became a noble knight.
Was gracious to all ladies, and the same
In open battle or the tilting-field
Forbore his own advantage, and the King
In open battle or the tilting-field
Forbore his own advantage, and these
two
Were the most nobly-manner'd men of
all;
For manners are not idle, but
Of loyal nature, and of noble mind.
the fruit j
mind.' j
* Yea,' said the maid, *be manners such
fair fruit?
Then Lancelot's needs must be a thou-
sand-fold
Less noble, being, as all rumour runs.
The most disloyal friend in all the world.'
To which a mournful answer made the
Queen :
* O closed about by narrowing nunnery-
walls.
GUINEVERE.
*S3
What knowest thou of the world, and all
its lights
And shadows, all the wealth and all the
woe?
If ever Lancelot, that most noble knight,
Were for one hour less noble than him-
self,
Pray for him that he scape the doom of
fire.
And weep for her who drew him to his
doom.'
* Yea,' said the little novice, ' I pray for
both;
But I should all as soon believe that his.
Sir Lancelot's, were as noble as the
King's,
As I could think, sweet lady, yours
would be
Such as they are, were you the sinful
Queen.'
So she, like many another babbler, hurt
Whom she would soothe, and harm'd
where she would heal;
For here a sudden flush of wrathful heat
Fired all the pale face of the Queen, who
cried,
* Such as thou art be never maiden more
For ever ! thou their tool, set on to plague
And play upon, and harry me, petty spy
And traitress.' When that storm of anger
brake
From Guinevere, aghast the maiden rose,
White as her veil, and stood before the
Queen
As tremulously as foam upon the beach
Stands in a wind, ready to break and fly.
And when the Queen had added * Get
thee hence,'
Fled frighted. Then that other left alone
Sigh'd, and began to gather heart again,
Saying in herself, 'The simple, fearful
child
Meant nothing, but my own too-fearful
guilt,
Simpler than any child, betrays itself.
But help me, heaven, for surely I repent.
For what is true repentance but in
thought —
Not ev'n in inmost thought to think again
The sins that made the past so pleasant
to us:
And I have sworn never to see him more,
To see him more.'
And ev'n in saying this.
Her memory from old habit of the mind
Went slipping back upon the golden
days
In which she saw him first, when Lance-
lot came.
Reputed the best knight and goodliest
man,
Ambassador, to lead her to his lord
Arthur, and led her forth, and far ahead
Of his and her retinue moving, they.
Rapt in sweet talk or lively, all on love
And sport and tilts and pleasure, (for the
time
Was maytime, and as yet no sin was
dream'd,)
Rode under groves that look'd a paradise
Of blossom, over sheets of hyacinth
That seem'd the heavens upbreaking thro'
the earth,
"And on from hill to hill, and every day
Beheld at noon in some delicious dale
The silk pavilions of King Arthur raised
For brief repast or afternoon repose
By couriers gone before; and on again.
Till yet once more ere set of sun they
saw
The Dragon of the great Pendragonship,
That crown'd the state pavilion of the
King,
Blaze by the rushing brook or silent well.
But when the Queen immersed in such
a trance,
And moving thro' the past unconsciously,
Came to that point where first she saw
the King
Ride toward her from the city, sigh'd to
find
Her journey done, glanced at him, thought
him cold,
High, self-contain'd, and passionless, not
like him,
'Not like my Lancelot ' — while she
brooded thus
And grew half-guilty in her thoughts
again,
There rode an armed warrior to the doors.
A murmuring whisper thro' the nunnery
ran.
454
GUINEVERE,
Then on a sudden a cry, ' The King.'
She sat
Stiff-stricken, listening; but when armed
feet
Thro' the long gallery from the outer
doors
Rang coming, prone from off her seat
she fell,
And grovell'd with her face against the
floor:
There with her milkwhite arms and
shadowy hair
She made her face a darkness from the
King:
And in the darkness heard his armed
feet
Pause by her; then came silence, then a
voice.
Monotonous and hollow like a Ghost's
Denouncing judgment, but tho' changed,
the King's :
* Liest thou here so low, the child of
one
I honour'd, happy, dead before thy
shanie?
Well is it that no child is born of thee.
The children born of thee are sword and
fire,
Red ruin, and the breaking up of laws.
The craft of kindred and the Godless
hosts
Of heathen swarming o'er the Northern
Sea;
Whom I, while yet Sir Lancelot, my right
arm.
The mightiest of my knights, abode with
me,
Have everywhere about this land of
Christ
In twelve great battles ruining over-
thrown.
And knowest thou now from whence I
come — from him,
From waging bitter war with him : and
he.
That did not shun to smite me in worse
way.
Had yet that grace of courtesy in him left.
He spared to lift his hand against the King
Who made him knight : but many a
knight was slain ;
And manj^ more, and all his kith and kin
Clave to him, and abode in his own land
And many more when Modred raised
revolt.
Forgetful of their troth and fealty, clave
To Modred, and a remnant stays with me.
And of this remnant will I leave a part.
True men who love me still, for whom I
live.
To guard thee in the wild hour coming on.
Lest but a hair of this low head be harm'd.
Fear not : thou shalt be guarded till my
death.
Howbeit I know, if ancient prophecies
Have err'd not, that I march to meet my
doom.
Thou hast not made my life so sweet to
me.
That I the King should greatly care to
live;
For thou hast spoilt the purpose of my life.
Bear with me for the last time while I
show,
Ev'n for thy sake, the sin which thou hast
sinn'd.
For when the Roman left us, and their law
Relax'd its hold upon us, and the ways
Were fill'd with rapine, here and there a
deed
Of prowess done redress'd a random
wrong.
But I was first of all the kings who drew
The Knighthood-errant of this realm and
all
The realms together under me, their
Head,
In that fair Order of my Table Round,
A glorious company, the flower of men.
To serve as model for the mighty world,
And be the fair beginning of a time.
I made them lay their hands in mine and
swear
To reverence the King, as if he were
Their conscience, and their conscience as
their King,
To break the heathen and uphold the
Christ,
To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,
To speak no slande^:, no, nor listen to it.
To honour his own word as if his God's,
To lead sweet lives in purest chastity.
To love one maiden only, cleave to her.
And worship her by years of noble deeds,
Until they won her; for indeed I knew
GUINEVERE.
455
Of no more subtle master under heaven
Than is the maiden passion for a maid,
Not only to keep down the base in man,
But teach high thought, and amiable
words
And courtliness, and the desire of fame,
And love of truth, and all that makes a
man.
And all this throve before I wedded thee,
Believing, " lo mine helpmate, one to feel
My purpose and rejoicing in my joy."
Then came thy shameful sin with Lance-
lot;
Then came the sin of Tristram and Isolt;
Then others, following these my mightiest
knights,
And drawing foul ensample from fair
names,
Sinn'd also, till the loathsome opposite
Of all my heart had destined did obtain,
And all thro' thee ! so that this life of mine
I guard as God's high gift from scathe
and wrong.
Not greatly care to lose ; but rather think
How sad it were for Arthur, should he live,
To sit once more within his lonely hall.
And miss the wonted number of my
knights,
And miss to hear high talk of noble deeds
As in the golden days before thy sin.
For which of us, who might be left, could
speak
Of the pure heart, nor seem to glance at
thee?
And in thy bowers of Camelot or of Usk
Thy shadow still would glide from room
to room,
And I should evermore be vext with thee
In hanging robe or vacant ornament,
Or ghostly footfall echoing on the stair.
For think not, tho' thou wouldst not love
thy lord,
Thy lord has wholly lost his love for thee.
I am not made of so slight elements.
Yet must I leave thee, woman, to thy
shame.
I hold that man the worst of public foes
Who either for his own or children's sake,
To save his blood from scandal, lets the
wife
Whom he knows false, abide and rule the
house :
For being thro' his cowardice ^ow'd
Her station, taken everywhere for pure.
She like a new disease, unknown to men.
Creeps, no precaution used, among the
crowd.
Makes wicked lightnings of her eyes, and
saps
The fealty of our friends, and stirs the
pulse
W^ith devil's leaps, and poisons half the
young.
Worst of the worst were that man he that
reigns !
Better the King's waste hearth and aching
heart
Than thou reseated in thy place of light.
The mockery of my people, and their
bane.'
He paused, and in the pause she crept
an inch
Nearer, and laid her hands about his feet.
Far off a solitary trumpet blew.
Then waiting by the doors the warhorse
neigh'd
As at a friend's voice, and he spake again :
'Yet think not that I come to urge thy
crimes,
I did not come to curse thee, Guinevere,
I, whose vast pity almost makes me die
To see thee, laying there thy golden head.
My pride in happier summers, at my feet.
The wrath which forced ni\' thoughts on
that fierce law.
The doom of treason and the flaming
death
(When first I learnt thee hidden here), is
past.
The' pang — which while I weigh'd thy
heart with one
Too wholly true to dream untruth in thee,
Made my tears burn — is also past — in
part.
And all is past, the sin is sinn'd and I,
Lo ! I forgive thee, as Eternal God
Forgives : do thou for thine own soul the
rest.
But how to take last leave of all I loved?
O golden hair, with which I used to play
Not knowing ! O imperial-moulded form.
And beauty such as never woman wore,
Until it came a kingdom's curse with
thee —
456
GUINEVERE.
I cannot touch thy lips, they are not mine,
But Lancelot's : nay, they never were the
King's.
I cannot take thy hand; that too is flesh,
And in the flesh thou hast sinn'd; and
* mine own flesh,
Here looking down on thine polluted, cries
" I loathe thee : " yet not less, O Guinevere,
For I was ever virgin save for thee,
My love thro' flesh hath wrought into my
life
So far, that my doom is, I love thee still.
Let no man dream but that I love thee still.
Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul,
And so thou lean on our fair father Christ,
Hereafter in that world where all are pure
We two may meet before high God, and
thou
Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine,
and know
I am thine husband — not a smaller soul,
Nor Lancelot, nor another. Leave me
that,
I charge thee, my last hope. Now must
I hence.
Thro' the thick night I hear the trumpet
blow:
They summon me their King to lead mine
hosts
Far down to that great battle in the west.
Where I must strike against the man they
call
My sister's son — no kin of mine, who
leagues
With Lords of the White Horse, heathen,
and knights,
Traitors — and strike him dead, and meet
imyself
Death, or I know not what mysterious
doom.
And thou remaining here wilt learn the
event;
But hither shall I never come again,
Never lie by thy side; see thee no
more —
Farewell ! '
And while she grovell'd at his feet.
She felt the King's breath wander o'er
her neck.
And in the dnrkness o'er her fallen head.
Perceived the waving of his hands that
blest.
Then, listening till those armed steps
were gone,
Rose the pale Queen, and in her anguish
found
The casement : * peradventure,' so she
thought,
* If I might see his face, and not be seen.'
And lo, he sat on horseback at the door !
And near him the sad nuns with each a
light
Stood, and he gave them charge about
the Queen,
To guard and foster her for evermore.
And while he spake to these his helm
was lower'd.
To which for crest the golden dragon
clung
Of Britain; so she did not see the face,
Which then was as an angel's, but she
saw.
Wet with the mists and smitten by the
lights.
The Dragon of the great Pendragonship
Blaze, making all the night a steam of
fire.
And even then he turn'd; and more and
more
The moony vapour rolling round the
King,
Who seem'd the phantom of a Giant in
it,
Enwound him fold by fold, and made
him gray
And grayer, till himself became as mist
Before her, moving ghostlike to his doom.
Then she stretch'd out her arms and
cried aloud
' O Arthur ! ' there her voice brake sud-
denly.
Then — as a stream that spouting from-
a cliff
Fails in mid-air, but gathering at the base
Re-makes itself, and flashes down the
vale —
Went on in passionate utterance :
'Gone — my lord !
Gone thro' my sin to slay and to be slain !
And he forgave me, and I could not
Sjieak.
Farewell? I should have answer'd his
farewell.
GUINEVERE.
457
His mercy choked me. Gone, my lord
the King,
My own true lord ! how dare I call him
mine?
The shadow of another cleaves to me,
And makes me one pollution : he, the
King,
Call'd me polluted : shall I kill myself?
What help in that? I cannot kill my
sin.
If soul be soul; nor can I kill my shame;
No, nor by living can I live it down.
The days will grow to weeks, the weeks
to months,
The months will add themselves and
make the years,
The years will roll into the centuries,
And mine will ever be a name of scorn,
I must not dwell on that defeat of fame.
Let the world be; th^t is but of the
world.
What else? what hope? I think there
was a hope.
Except he mock'd me when he spake
of hope;
His hope he call'd it; but he never
mocks.
For mockery is the fume of little hearts.
And blessed be the King, who hath for-
given
My wickedness to him, and left me hope
That in mine own heart 1 can live down
sin
And be his mate hereafter in the heavens
Before high God. Ah, great and gentle
lord.
Who wast, as is the conscience of a saint
Among his warring senses, to thy
knights —
To whom my false voluptuous pride, that
took
Full easily all impressions from below,
Would not look up, or half-despised the
height
To which I would riot or 1 could not
climb —
I thought I couid not breathe in that
fine air
That pure severity of perfect light —
I yearn 'd for warmth and colour which
I found
In Lancelot — now I see thee what thou
art,
Thou art the highest and most human
too.
Not Lancelot nor another. Is there none
Will tell the King I love him tho' so
late?
Now — ere he goes to the great Battle?
none:
Myself must tell him in that purer life.
But now it were too daring. Ah my God,
W^hat might I not have made of thy fair
world,
Had I but loved thy highest creature
here?
It w^as my duty to have loved the highest :
It surely was my profit had I known :
It w'ould have been my pleasure had I
seen.
We needs must love the highest when
we see it.
Not Lancelot, nor another.'
Here her hand
Grasp'd, made her vail her eyes: she
look'd and saw
The novice, weeping, suppliant, and said
to her,
* Yea, little maid, for am / not forgiven? '
Then glancing up beheld the holy nuns
All round her, weeping; and her heart
was loosed
W^ithin her, and she wept with these and
said,
* Ye know me then, that wicked one,
who broke
The vast design and purpose of the King.
0 shut me round with narrowing nunnery-
walls,
Meek maidens, from the voices crying
"shame."
1 must not scorn myself: he loves me
' still.
Let no one dream but that he loves me
still.
So let me, if you do not shudder at me,
Nor shun to call me sister, dwell with
you;
Wear black and white, and be a nun
like you.
Fast with your fasts, not feasting with
your feasts;
Grieve with your griefs, not grieving at
your joys,
458
THE PASSING OF ARTHUR.
But not rejoicing; mingle with your rites;
Pray and be pray'd for; lie before your
shrines;
Do each low office of your holy house;
Walk your dim cloister, and distribute
dole
To poor sick people, richer in His eyes
Who ransom'd us, and haler too than I;
And treat their loathsome hurts and heal
mine own;
And so wear out in almsdeed and in
prayer
The sombre close ot that voluptuous
day,
Which wrought the fuin of my lord the
King.'
She said : they took her to themselves;
and she
Still hoping, fearing, ' is it yet too late?'
Dwelt with them, till in time their Ab-
bess died.
Then she, for her good deeds and her
pure life,
And for the power of ministration in her,
And likewise for the high rank she had
borne,
Was chosen Abbess, there, an Abbess,
lived
For three brief years, and there, an Ab-
bess, past
To where beyond these voices there is
peace.
End of * The Round Tabled
THE PASSING OF ARTHUR.
That story which the bold Sir Bedivere,
First made and latest ieft of all t)ie «
knights.
Told, when the man was no more than a
voice
In the white winter of his age, to those
With whom he dwelt, new faces, other
minds.
For on their march to westward, Bedi-
vere,
Who slowly paced among the slumbering
host.
Heard in his tent the moanings of the
King:
* I found Him in the shining of the
stars,
I mark'd Him in the flowering of His
fields.
But in His ways with men I find Him not.
I waged His wars, and now I pass and die.
O me ! for why is all around us here "
As if sojii£j£sser_giiiJLhad made the world,
But had not force to shape it as he would,
Till the High God behold it from beyond.
And enter it, and make it beautiful?
Or else as if the world were wholly fair.
But that these eyes of men are dense and
dim.
And have not power to see it as it is :
Perchance, because we see not to the
close ; —
For I, being simple, thought to work His
will.
And have but stricken with the sword in
vain;
And all whereon I lean'd in wife and
friend
Is traitor to my peace, and all my realm
Reels back into the beast, and is no more.
My God, thou hast forgotten me in my
death :
Nay — God my Christ — I pass but shall
not die.'
Then, ere that last weird battle in the
west.
There came on Arthur sleeping, Gawain
kill'd
In Lancelot's war, the ghost of Gawain
blown
Along a wandering wind, and past his ear
Went shrilling, * Hollow, hollow all de-
light !
Hail, King! to-morrow thou shalt pass
away.
Farewell ! there is an isle of rest .for thee.
And I am'blown along a wandering wind,
And hollow, hollow, hollow all delight.'
And fainter onward, like wild birds that
change
THE PASSING OF ARTHUR.
459
Their season in the night and wail their
way
From cloud to cloud, down the long wind
the dream
Shrill'd; but in going mingled with dim
cries
Far in the moonlit haze among the hills,
As of some lonely city sack'd by night,
When all is lost, and wife and child with
wail
Pass to new lords; and Arthur woke and
call'd,
•Who spake? A dream. O light upon
the wind.
Thine, Gawain, was the voice — are these
dim cries
Thine? or doth all that haunts the waste
and wild
Mourn, knowing it will go along with
me?'
This heard the bold Sir Bedivere and
spake :
' O me, my King, let pass whatever will.
Elves, and the harmless glamour of the
field;
But in their stead thy name and glory
cling
To all high places like a golden cloud
For ever : but as yet thou shalt not pass.
Light was Gawain in life, and light in
death
Is Gawain, for the ghost is as the man;
And care not thou for dreams from him,
but rise —
I hear the steps of Modred in the west.
And with him many of thy people, and
knights
Once thine, whom thou hast loved, but
grosser grown
Than heathen, spitting at their vows and
thee.
Right well in heart they know thee for
the King.
Arise, go forth and conquer as of old.'
Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedi-
vere:
* Far other is this battle in the west
Whereto we move, than when we strove
in youth.
And brake the petty kings, and fought
with Rome,
Or thrust the heathen from the Roman
wall.
And shook him thro' the north. Ill doom
is mine
To war against my people and my knights.
The king who fights his people fights him-
self.
And they my knights, who loved me once,
the stroke
That strikes them dead is as my death to
me.
Yet let us hence, and find or feel a way
Thro' this blind haze, which ever since I
saw
One lying in the dust at Almesbury,
Hath folded inthe passes of the world.'
Then rose the King and moved his
host by night.
And ever push'd Sir Modred, league by
league.
Back to the sunset bound of Lyonesse —
A land of old upheaven from the abyss
By fire, to sink into the abyss again;
Where fragments of forgotten peoples
dwelt.
And the long m'ountains ended in a coast
Of ever-shifting sand, and far away
The phantom circle of a moaning sea.
There the pursuer could pursue no more.
And he that fled no further fly the King;
And there, that day when the great light
of heaven
Burn'd at his lowest in the rolling year.
On the waste sand by the waste sea they
closed.
Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight
Like this last, dim, weird battle of the
west.
A death white mist slept over sand and
sea:
Whereof the chill, to him who breathed
it, drew
Down with his blood, till all his heart was
cold
With formless fear; and ev'n on Arthur
fell
Confusion, since he saw not whom he
fought.
For friend and foe were shadows in the
mist.
And friend slew friend not knowing whom
he slew;
46o
THE PASSING OF ARTHUR.
And some had visions out of golden youth,
And some beheld the faces of old ghosts
Look in upon the battle; and in the mist
Was many a noble deed, many a base.
And chance and craft and strength in
single fights,
And ever and anon with host to host
Shocks, and the splintering spear, the
hard mail hewn.
Shield-breakings, and the clash of brands,
the crash
Of battleaxes on shatter'd helms, and
shrieks
After the Christ, of those who falling
down
Look'd up for heaven, ahd only saw the
mist;
And shouts of heathen and the traitor
knights.
Oaths, insult, filth, and monstrous blas-
phemies,
Sweat, writhings, anguish, labouring of
the lungs
In that close mist, and cryings for the
- light.
Moans of the dying, and voices of the
dead.
Last, as by some one deathbed after
wail
Of suffering, silence follows, or thro' death
Or deathlike swoon, thus over all that
shore.
Save for some whisper of the seething
seas,
A dead hush fell; but when the dolorous
day
Grew drearier toward twilight falling,
came
A bitter wind, clear from the North, and
blew
The mist aside, and with that wind the
tide
Rose, and the pale King glanced across
the field
Of battle : but no man was moving there;
Nor any cry of Christian heard thereon,
Nor yet of heathen; only the wan wave
Brake in among dead faces, to and fro
Swaying the helpless hands, and up and
down
Tumbling the hollow helmets of the
fallen,
And shiver'd brands that once had fought
with Rome,
And rolling far along the gloomy shores
The voice of days of old and days to be.
Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedi-
vere,
And whiter than the mist that all day
•long
Had held the field of battle was the King :
* Hearest thou this great voice that
shakes the world.
And wastes the narrow realm whereon
we move.
And beats upon the faces of the dead,
My dead, as tho' they had not died for
me? —
O Bedivere, for on my heart hath fall'n
Confusion, till I know not what I am.
Nor whence I am, nor whether I be
King,
Behold, I seem but King among the
dead.'
Then spake the bold Sir Bedivere :
' My King,
King everywhere ! and so the dead have
kings.
There also will I worship thee as King.
Yet still thy life is whole, and still I live
Who love thee; but who hates thee, he
that brought
The heathen back among us, yonder
stands,
Modred unharm'd, the traitor of thine
house.'
Then spake the King : ' My house hath
been my doom.
But call not thou this traitor of my house
Who hath but dwelt beneath one roof
with me.
My house are rather they who sware my
vows.
Yea, even while they brake them, own'd
me King.
And well for thee, saying in my dark
hour.
When all the purport of my throne hath
fail'd,
That quick or dead thou boldest me for
King.
THE PASSING OF ARTHUR.
461
King am I, whatsoever be their cry;
Anvt one last act of kinghood shalt thou
see
Yet, ere I pass.' And uttering this the
King
Made at the man: then Modred smote
his liege
Hard on that helm which many a heathen
sword
Had beaten thin; while Arthur at one
blow,
Striking the last stroke with Excalibur,
Slew him, and all but slain himself, he
fell.
So all day long the noise of battle
roll'd
Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur's Table, man by man.
Had fall'n in Lyonesse about their lord.
King Arthur. Then, because his wound
was deep.
The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him,
And bore hira to a chapel nigh the field,
A broken chancel with a broken cross.
That stood on a dark strait of barren
land :
On one side lay the Ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full.
Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedi-
vere :
* The sequel of to-day unsolders all
The goodliest fellowship of famous Unights
Whereof this world holds record. Such
a sleep
They sleep — the men I loved. I think
that we
Shall never more, at any future time,
Delight our souls with talk of knightly
deeds,
Walking about the gardens and the halls
Of Camelot, as in the days that were.
I perish by this people which I made, —
Tho' Merlin svvare that I should come
again
To rule once more ; but, let what will be,
be,
I am so deeply smitten thro' the helm
That without help I cannot last till morn.
Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur,
Which was my pride : for thou remem-
berest how
In those old days, one summer noon, an
arm
Rose up from out the bosom of the lake,
Clothed in white samite, mvstic, wonder-
ful,
Holding the sword — and how I row'd
across
And took it, and have worn it, like a
king;
And, wheresoever I am sung or told
In aftertime, this also shall be known :
But now delay not : take Excalibur,
And fling him far into the middle mere :
Watch what thou seest, and lightly bring
me word.'
To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere :
' It is not meet. Sir King, to leave thee
thus,
Aidless, alone, and smitten thro' the
helm —
A little thing may harm a wounded man;
Yet I thy best will all perform at full.
Watch what 1 see, and lightly bring thee
word.'
So saying, from the ruin'd shrine he
stept,
And in the moon athwart the place of
tombs,
Where lay the mighty bones of ancient
men,
Old knights, and over them the sea- wind
sang
Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He,
stepping down
By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock,
Came on the shining levels of the lake.
There drew he forth the brand Excali-
bur,
And o'er him, drawing it, the winter
moon,
Brightening the skirts of a long cloud,
ran forth
And sparkled keen with frost against the
hilt : .
For all the haft twinkled with diamond
sparks.
Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work
Of subtlest jewellery. He gazed so long
That both his eyes were dazzled as he
stood.
462
THE PASSING OF ARTHUR.
This way and that dividing the swift
mind,
in act to throw : but at the last it seem'd
Better to leave Excalibur conceal'd
There in the many-knotted waterflags,
That whistled stiff and dry about the
marge.
So strode he back slow to the wounded
King.
Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedi-
vere:
* Hast thou perform'd my mission which
I gave?
What is> it thou hast seen? or what hast
heard?'
And answer made the bold Sir Bedi-
vere :
' I heard the ripple washing in the reeds,
And the wild water lapping on the crag.'
To whom replied King Arthur, faint
and pale :
' Thou hast betray'd thy nature and thy
name,
Not rendering true answer, as beseem'd
Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight :
For surer sign had follow'd, either hand.
Or voice, or else a motion of the mere.
This is a shameful thing for men to lie.
Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again.
As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing
I bade thee, watch, and lightly bring me
word.'
Then went Sir Bedivere the second
time
Across the ridge, and paced beside the
mere,
Counting the dewy pebbles, fix'd in
thought;
But when he saw the wonder of the hilt.
How curiously and strangely chased, he
smote
His palms together, and he cried aloud :
' And if indeed I cast the brand away,
Surely a precious thing, one worthy note,
Should thus be lost for ever from the
earth,
"Which might have pleased the eyes of
many men.
What good should follow this, if this
were done?
What harm, undone? Deep harm to
disobey.
Seeing obedience is the bond of rule.
Were it well to obey then, if a king
demand
An act unprofitable, against himself?
The King is sick, and knows not what
he does.
What record, or what relic of my lord
Should be to aftertime, but empty breath
And rumours of a doubt? But were this
kept,
Stored in some treasure-house of mighty
kings.
Some one might show it at a joust of
arms.
Saying, " King Arthur's sword, Excali-
bur,
Wrought by the lonely maiden of the
Lake.
Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the
deeps
Upon the hidden bases of the hills."
So might some old man speak in the
aftertime
To all the people, winning reverence.
But now much honour and much fame
were lost.'
So spake he, clouded with his own
conceit.
And hid Excalibur the second time.
And so strode back slow to the wounded
King.
Then spoke King Arthur, breathing
heavily :
* What is it thou hast seen? or what hast
heard? '
And answer made the bold Sir Bedi-
vere :
* I heard the water lapping on the crag,
And the long ripple washing in the reeds.'
To whom replied King Arthur, much
in wrath :
* Ah, miserable arid unkind, untrue,
Unknightly, traitor-hearted ! Woe is me !
Authority forgets a dying king.
Laid widow'd of the power in his eye
THE PASSING OF ARTHUR.
463
That bovv'd the will. I see thee what
thou art,
For thou, the latest-left of all my knights,
In whom should meet the offices of all.
Thou wouldst betray me for the precious
hilt;
Either from lust of gold, or like a girl
Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes.
Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice.
And the third time may prosper, get thee
hence :
But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur,
I will arise and slay thee with my hands.'
Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and
ran,
And, leaping down the ridges lightly,
plunged
Among the bulrush beds, and clutch'd
the sword.
And strongly wheel'd and threw it. The
great brand
Made lightnings in the splendour of the
moon.
And flashing round and round, and
whirl'd in an arch.
Shot like a streamer of- the northern
morn.
Seen where the moving isles of winter
shock
By night, with noises of the Northern
Sea.
So flash'd and fell the brand Excalibur :
But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm
Clothed in white samite, mystic, won-
derful,
And caught him by the hilt, and bran-
dish'd him
Three times, and drew him under in the
mere.
And lightly went the other to the King.
Then spoke King Arthur, drawing
thicker breath :
-Now see I by thine eyes that this is
done.
Speak out : what is it thou hast heard, or
seen?'
And answer" made the bold Sir Bedi-
vere :
* Sir King, I closed mine eyelids, lest the
gems
Should blind my purpose, for I never
saw,
Nor shall see, here or elsewhere, till I die,
Not tho' I live three lives of mortal men,
So great a miracle as yonder hilt.
Then with both hands I flung him, wheel-
ing him;
But when I look'd again, beholden arm,
Clothed in white samite, mystic, won-
derful,
That caught him by the hilt, and
brandish'd him
Three times, and drew him under in the
mere.'
And answer made King Arthur, breath-
ing hard :
'My end draws nigh; 'tis time that I
were gone.
Make broad thy shoulders to receive my
weight,
And bear me to the margin ; yet I fear
My wound hath taken cold, and I shall
die.'
So saying, from the pavement he half
rose,
Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm,
And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes
As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere
Remorsefully regarded thro' his tears,
And would have spoken, but he found
not words;
Then took with care, and kneeling on
one knee,
O'er both his shoulders drew the languid
hands.
And rising bore him thro' the place of
tombs.
But, as he walk'd. King Arthur panted
hard,
Like one that feels a nightmare on his
bed
When all the house is mute. So sigh'd
the King,
Muttering and murmuring at his ear,
' Quick, quick !
I fear it is too late, and I shall die.'
But the other swiftly strode from ridge.
to ridge.
Clothed with his breath, and looking, as
he walk'd,
464
THE PASSING OF ARTHUR.
Larger than human on the frozen hills.
He heard the deep behind him, and a cry
Before. His own thought drove him like
a goad.
Dry clash'd his harness in the icy caves
And barren chasms, and all to left and
rjght
The bare black cLff clang'd round him,
as he based
His feet on ju<:s of slippery crag that
rang
Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed
heels —
And on a sudden, lo ! the level lake,
And the long glories of the winter moon.
Then saw they how there hove a dusky
barge.
Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to
stern,
Beneath them; and descending they were
ware
That all the decks were dense with stately
forms,
Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream
— by these
Three Queens with crowns of gold : and
from them rose
A cry that shiver'd to the tingling stars,
And, as it were one voice, an agony
Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills
All night in a waste land, where no one
comes.
Or hath come, since the making of the
world.
Then murmur'd Arthur, * Place me in
the barge.'
So to the barge they came. There those
three Queens
Put forth their hands, and took the King,
and wept.
But she, that rose the tallest of them all
And fairest, laid his head upon her lap.
And loosed the shatter'd casque, and
chafed his hands,
And call'd him by his name, complaining
loud.
And dropping bitter tears against a brow
Striped with dark blood : for all his face
was white
And colourless, and like the wither'd
moon
Smote by the fresh beam of the spring.
ing east;
And all his greaves and cuisses dash'd
with drops
Of onset; and the light and lustrous
curls —
That made his forehead like a rising sun
High from the dais-throne — were parch'd
with dust;
Or clotted into points and hanging loose,
Mix'd with the knightly growth that
fringed his lips.
So like a shatter'd column lay the King;
Not like that Arthur who, with lance in
rest,
From spur to plume a star of tourna-
ment.
Shot thro' the lists at Camelot, and
charged
Before the eyes of ladies and of kings.
Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedi-
vere :
' Ah ! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I
go?
Where shall I hide my forehead and my
eyes?
For now I see the true old times are
dead.
When every morning brought a noble
chance.
And every chance brought out a noble
knight.
Such times have been not since the light
that led
The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh.
But now the whole Round Table is dis-
solved
Which was an image of the mighty
world.
And I, the last, go forth companionless,
And the days darken round me, and the
years,
Among new men, strange faces, other
minds.'
And slowly answer'd Arthur from the
barge :
' The old order changeth, yielding place
to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt
the world,
THE PASSING OF ARTHUR.
465
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?
I have lived my life, and that which I
have done
May He within himself make pure ! but
thou,
If thou shOuldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. ^Iore__tiiingsare
wroughtbyprayer
Than thls^orlH dreams of. Wherefore,
'^ let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and
day.
For what are men better than sheep or
goats
That nourish a blind life within the
brain,
If, knowing God, they lift riot hands of
prayer
Both for themselves and those who call
them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every
way
Bound by gold chains about the- feet of
God.
But now farewell. I am going a long
way
With these thou seest — if indeed I go
(For all my mind is clouded with a
doubt) —
To the island-valley of Avilion ;
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any
snow.
Nor 'ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard
lawns
And bowery hollows crown'd with sum-
mer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous
wound.'
So said he, and the barge with oar and
sail
Moved from the brink, like some full-
breasted swan
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death.
Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes
the flood
With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir
Bedivere
Revolving many memories, till the hull
Look'd one black dot against the verge
of dawn.
And on the mere the wailing died away.
2H
But when that moan had past for ever-
more,
The stillness of the dead world's winter
dawn
Amazed him, and he groan'd, ' The King
is gone.'
And therewithal came on him the weird
rhyme,
'From the great deep to the great deep
he goes.'
Whereat he slowly turn'd and slowly
clomb
The last hard footstep of that iron crag;
Thence mark'd the black hull moving
yet, and cried,
* He passes to be King among the dead.
And after healing of his grievous wound
He comes again; but — if he come no
more —
O me, be yon dark Queens in yon black
boat.
Who shriek'd and wail'd, the three
-whereat we gazed
On that high day, when, clothed with
living light,
They stood before his throne in silence,
friends
Of Arthur, who should help him at his
need?'
Then from the dawn it seem'd there
came, but faint
As from beyond the limit of the world,
Like the last echo born of a great cry.
Sounds, as if some fair city were one
voice
Around a king returning from his wars.
Thereat once more he moved about,
and clomb
Ev'n to the highest he could climb, and
saw.
Straining his eyes beneath an arch of
hand.
Or thought he saw, the speck that bare
the King,
Down that long water opening on the
deep
Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go
From less to less and vanish into light.
And the new sun rose bringing the new
year.
466
TO THE QUEEN.
TO THE QUEEN.
O LOYAL to the royal in thyself,
And loyal to the land, as this to thee —
Bear witness, that rememberable day,
When, pale as yet, and fever-worn, the
Prince
Who scarce had pluck'd his flickering
life again
From halfway down the shadow of the
grave,
Past with thee thro' thy people and
their love.
And London roll'd one tide of joy thro'
all
Her trebled millions, and loud leagues of
man
And welcome ! witness, too, the silent
cry.
The prayer of many a race and creed,
and clime —
Thunderless lightnings striking under
sea
From sunset and sunrise of all thy realm,
And that true North, whereof we lately
heard
A strain to shame us * keep you to your-
selves;
So loyal is too costly! friends — your
love
Is but a burthen : loose' the bond, and
go.'
Is this the tone of empire? here the faith
That made us rulers? this, indeed, her
voice
And meaning, whom the roar of Hougou-
mont
Left mightiest of all peoples under
heaven?
What shock has fool'd her since, that
she should speak
So feebly ? wealthier — wealthier — hour
by hour !
The voice of Britain, or a sinking land,
Some third-rate isle half-lost among her
seas?
There rang her voice, when the full city
peal'd
Thee and thy Prince ! The loyal to their
crown
Are loyal to their own far sons, who love
Our ocean-empire with her boundless
homes
For ever-broadening England, and her
throne
In our vast Orient, and one isle, one isle,
That knows not her own greatness; if
she knows
And dreads it we are fall'n. — But thou,
my Queen
Not for itself, but thro' thy living love
For one to whom I made it o'er his grave
Sacred, accept this old imperfect tale,
New-old, and shadowing Sense at war
with Soul
Ideal manhood closed in real man
Rather than that gray king, whose name,
a ghost.
Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from
mountain peak, ■
And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still;
or him
Of Geoffrey's book, or him of Malleor's,
one
Touch'd by the adulterous finger of a
time
That hover'd between war and wanton-
ness,
And crownings and dethronements : take
withal
Thy poet's blessing, and his trust that
Heaven
Will blow the tempest in the distance
back
From thine and ours : for some are scared,
who mark,
Or wisely or unwisely, signs of storm,
Waverings of every vane with every
wind,
Ajid wordy trucklings to the transient
hour,
And fierce or careless looseners of the
faith.
And Softness breeding scorn of simple
life,
Or Cowardice, the child of lust for gold,
Or Labour, with a groan and not a
voice,
Or Art with poisonous honey stol'n from
France,
THE LOVER'S TALE.
467
And that which knows, but careful for
itself,
And that which knows not, ruling that
which knows
To its own harm : the goal of this great
world
Lies beyond sight : yet — if our slowly-
grown
And crown'd Republic's crowning com-
mon-sense,
That saved her many times, not fail —
their fears
Are morning shadows huger than the
shapes
That cast them, not those gloomier which
forego
The darkness of that battle in the
West,
Where all of high and holy dies away.
THE LOVER'S TALE.
The original Preface to ' The Lover's Tale ' states that it was composed in my nineteenth year. Two
only of the three parts then written were printed, when, feeling the imperfection of the poem, I with-
drew it from the press. One of my friends, however, who, boylike, admired the boy's' work, distributed
among our common associates of that hour some copies of these two parts, without my knowledge,
without the omissions and amendments which I had in contemplation, and marred by the many mis-
prints of the compositor. Seeing that these two parts have of late been mercilessly pirated, and that
what I had deemed scarce worthy to live is not allowed to die, may I not be pardoned if I suffer the
whole poem at last to come into the light — accompanied with a reprint of the sequel — a work of my
mature life — ' The Golden Supper ' ?
May 1879.
ARGUMENT.
Julian, whose cousin and foster-sister, Camilla, has been wedded to bis friend arid rival, Lionel, en-
deavours to narrate the story of his own love for her, and the strange sequel. He speaks (in Parts IL
and in.) of having been haunted by visions and the sound of bells, tolling for a funeral, and at last
ringing for a marriage; but he breaks away, overcome, as he approaches the Event, and a witness to
it completes the tale.
I.
Here far away, seen from the topmost
cliff,
Filling with purple gloom the vacancies
Between the tufted hills, the sloping seas
Hung in mid-heaven, and half-way down
rare sails,
White as white clouds, floated from sky
to sky.
Oh ! pleasant breast of waters, quiet bay,
Like to a quiet mind in the loud world.
Where the chafed breakers of the outer
sea
Sank powerless, as anger falls aside
And withers on the breast of peaceful
love;
Thou didst receive the growth of pines
that fledged
The hills that watch'd thee, as Love
watcheth Love,
In thine own essence, and delight thyself
To make it wholly thine on sunny days.
Keep thou thy name of ' Lover's Bay.'
See, sirs,
Even now the Goddess of the Past, that
takes
The heart, and sometimes touches but
one string
That quivers, and is silent, and sometimes
Sweeps suddenly all its half-moulder'd
chords
To some old melody, begins to play
That air which pleased her first. I feel
thy breath ;
I come, great Mistress of the ear and eye :
Thy breath is of the pinewood; and tho'
years
Have hollow'd out a deep and stormy
strait
Betwixt the native land of Love and me,
Breathe but a little on me, and the sail
468
THE LOVER'S TALE.
Will draw me to the rising of the sun,
The lucid chambers of the morning star,
And East of Life.
Permit me, friend, I prythee,
To pass my hanrd across my brows, and
muse
On those dear hills, that never more will
meet
The sight that throbs and aches beneath
my touch.
As tho' there beat a heart in either eye;
For when the outer lights are darken'd
thus.
The memory's vision hath a keener edge.
It grows upon me now — the semicircle
Of dark-blue waters and the narrow fringe
Of curving beach — its wreaths of drip-
ping green —
Its pale pink shells — the summerhouse
aloft
That open'd on the pines with doors of
glass,
A mountain nest — the pleasure-boat that
rock'd,
Light-green with its own shadow, keel to
keel.
Upon the dappled dimplings of the
wave.
That blanch'd upon its side.
O Love, O Hope !
They come, they crowd upon me all at
once —
Moved from the cloud of unforgotten
things,
"That sometimes on the horizon of the
mind
Lies folded, often sweeps athwart in
storm —
Flash upon flash they lighten thro' me —
days
Of dewy dawning and the amber eves
When thou and I, Camilla, thou and I
Were borne about the bay or safely
moor'd
Beneath a low-brow'd cavern, where the
tide
Plash'd, sapping its worn ribs; and all
without
The slowly-ridging rollers on the cliffs
Clash'd, calling to each other, and thro'
the arch
Down those loud waters, like a setting
star,
Mixt with the gorgeous west the light-
house shone,
And silver-smiling Venus ere she fell
Would often loiter in her balmy blue,
To crown it with herself.
Here, too, my love
Waver'd at anchor with me, when day
hung
From his mid-dome in Heaven's airy
halls;
Gleams of the water-circles as they broke,
Flicker'd like doubtful smiles about her
lips,
Quiver'd a flying glory on her hair.
Leapt like a passing thought across her
eyes;
And mine with one that will not pass,
till earth
And heaven pass too, dwelt on my heaven,
a face
Most starry-fair, but kindled from within
As 'twere with dawn. She was dark-
hair'd, dark-eyed :
Oh, such dark eyes! a single glance of
them
Will govern a whole life from birth to
death.
Careless of all things else, led on with light
In trances and in visions : look at them.
You lose yourself in utter ignorance;
You cannot find their depth; for they
go back.
And farther back, and still withdraw
themselves
Quite into the deep soul, that evermore
Fresh springing from her fountains in the
brain.
Still pouring thro', floods with redundant
life
Her narrow portals.
Trust me, long ago
I should have died, if it were possible
To die in gazing on that perfectness
Whieh I do bear within me : I had died,
But from my farthest lapse, my latest ebb,
Thine image, like a charm of light and
strength
Upon the waters, push'd me back again
On these deserted sands of barren life,
THE LOVER'S TALE.
469
Tho' from the deep vault where the heart
of Hope
P'ell into dust, and crumbled in the dark —
Forgetting how to render beautiful
Her countenance with quick and health-
ful blood —
Thou didst not sway me upward; could
I perish
While thou, a meteor of the sepulchre,
Didst swathe thyself all round Hope's
quiet urn
For ever? He, that saith it, hath o'er-
stept
The slippery footing of his narrow wit,
And fall'n away from judgment. Thou
art light.
To which my spirit leaneth all her flowers,
And length of days, and immortality
Of thought, and freshness ever self-
renew'd.
For Time and Grief abode too long with
Life,
And, like all other friends i' the world, at
last
They grew aweary of her fellowship :
So Time and Grief did beckon unto
Death,
And Death drew nigh and beat the doors
of Life ;
But thou didst sit alone in the inner house,
A wakeful portress, and didst parle with
Death, —
'This is a charmed dwelling which I
hold;'
So Death gave back, and would no fur-
ther come.
Yet is my life nor in the present time.
Nor in the present place. To me alone,
Push'd from his chair of regal heritage,
The Present is the vassal of the Past :
So that, in that I have lived, do I live,
And cannot die, and am, in having been —
A portion of the pleasant yesterday.
Thrust forward on to-day and out of
place;
A body journeying onward, sick with
toil.
The weight as if of age upon my limbs,
The grasp of hopeless grief about my
heart.
And all the senses weaken'd, save in that,
Which long ago they had glean'd and
garner'd up
Into the granaries of memory —
The clear brow, bulwark of the precious
brain,
Chink'd as you see, and seam'd — and all
the while
The light soul twines and mingles with
the growths
Of vigorous early days, attracted, won,
Married, made one with, molten into all
The beautiful in Past of act or place.
And like the all-enduring camel, driven
Far from the diamond fountain by the
palms,
Who toils across the middle moonlit
nights.
Or when the white heats of the blinding
noons
Beat from the concave sand; yet in him
keeps
A draught of that sweet fountain that he
loves.
To stay his feet from falling, and his spirit
From bitterness of death.
Ye ask me, friends,
When I began to love. How should I
tell you?
Or from the after-fulness of my heart.
Flow back again unto my slender spring
And first of love, tho' every turn and
depth
Between is clearer in my life than all
Its present flow. Ye know not what ye
ask.
How should the broad and open flower
tell
What sort of bud it was, when, prest
together
In its green sheath, close-lapt in silken
folds.
It seem'd to keep its sweetness to itself.
Yet was not the less sweet for that it
seem'd?
For young Life knows not when young
Life was born,
But takes it all for granted : neither Love,
Warm in the heart, his cradle, can re-
member
Love in the womb, but resteth satisfied,
Looking on her that brought him to the
light:
Or as men know not when they fall asleep
Into delicious dreams, our other life.
470
THE LOVER'S TALE.
So know I not when I began to love.
This is my sum of knowledge — that my
love
Grew with myself — say rather, was my
growth,
My inward sap, the hold I have on earth,
My outward circling air wherewith I
breathe.
Which yet upholds my life, and evermore
Is to me daily life and daily death :
For how should I have lived and not
have loved?
Can ye take off the sweetness from the
flower,
The colour and the sweetness from the
rose,
And place them by themselves; or set
apart
Their motions and their brightness from
the stars.
And then point out the flower or the star?
Or build a wall betwixt my life and love.
And tell me where I am? 'Tis even
thus:
In that I live I love; because I love
I live : whate'er is fountain to the one
Is fountain to the other ; and whene'er
Our God unknits the riddle of the one,
There is no shade or fold of mystery
Swathing the other.
Many, many years
(For they seem many and my most of
life,
And well I could have linger'd in that
porch,
So unproportion'd to the dwelling-place),
In the Maydews of childhood, opposite
The flush and dawn of youth, we lived
together,
Apart, alone together :;n those hills.
Before he saw my day my father died,
And he was happy that he saw it not;
But I and the first daisy on his grave
From the same clay came into light at
once.
As Love and I ^o number equal years.
So she, my love, is of an age with me.
How like each other was the birth of
each!
On the sanie morning, almost the same
hour,
Under the selfsame aspect of the stars,
(Oh falsehood of all starcraft!) we were
born.
How like each other was the birth of
each !
The sister of my mother — she that bore
Camilla close beneath her beating heart.
Which to the imprison'd spirit of the child.
With its true-touched pulses in the flow
And hourly visitation of the blood,
Sent notes of preparation manifold.
And mellow'd echoes of the outer world —
My mother's sister, mother of my love,
Who had a twofold claim upon my heart,
One twofold mightier than the other was.
In giving so much beauty to the world,
And so much wealth as God had charged
her with —
Loathing to put it from herself for ever,
Left her own life with it; and dying thus,
Crown'd with her highest act the placid
face
And breathless body of her good deeds
past.
So were we born, so orphan'd. She
was motherless
And I without a father. So from each
Of those two pillars which from earth
uphold
Our childhood, one had fallen away, and
all
The careful burthen of our tender years
Trembled upon the other. He that gave
Her life, to me delightedly fulfiU'd
All lovingkindnesses, all offices
Of watchful care and trembling tender-
ness.
He waked for both : he pray'd for both :
he slept
Dreaming of both : nor was his love the
less
Because it was divided, and shot forth
Boughs on each side, laden with whole-
some shade,
Wherein we nested sleeping or awake,
And sang aloud the matin-song of life.
She was my foster-sister : on one arm
The flaxen ringlets of our infancies
Wander'd, the while we rested: one soft
lap
Pillow'd us both : a common light of eyes
THE LOVER'S TALE.
ATI'
Was on us as we lay : our baby lips,
Kissing one bosom, ever drew from thence
The stream of life, one stream, one life,
one blood.
One sustenance, which, still as thought
grew large,
Still larger moulding all the house of
thought.
Made all our tastes and fancies like,
perhaps —
All — all but one; and strange to me,
and sweet.
Sweet thro' strange years to know that
whatsoe'er
Our general mother meant for me alone.
Our mutual mother dealt to both of us :
So what was earliest mine in earliest life,
I shared with her in whom myself remains.
As was our childhood, so our infancy,
They tell me, was a very miracle
Of fellow-feeling and communion.
They tell me that we would not be
alone, —
We cried when we were parted; when I
wept.
Her smile lit up the rainbow on my tears,
Stay'd on the cloud of sorrow; that we
loved
The sound of one another's voices more
Than the gray cuckoo loves his name,
and learn'd
To lisp in tune together; that we slept
In the same cradle always, face to face.
Heart beating time to heart, lip pressing
lip,
Folding each other, breathing on each
other,
Dreaming together (dreaming of each
other
They should have added), till the morning
light
Sloped thro' the pines, upon the dewy
pane
Falling, unseal'd our eyelids, and we
woke
To gaze upon each other. If this be
true,
At thought of which my whole soul
languishes
And faints, and hath no pulse, no breath
— as tho'
A man in some still garden should infuse
Rich atar in the bosom of the rose,
Till, drunk with its own wine, and over-
full
Of sweetness, and in smelling of itself,
It fall on its own thorns — if this be true —
And that way my wish leads me ever-
more
Still to believe it — 'tis so sweet a thought,
Why in the utter stillness of the soul
Doth question'd memory answer not,
nor tell
Of this our earliest, our closest-drawn.
Most loveliest, earthly-heavenliest har-
mony?
O blossom'd portal of the lonely house,
Green prelude, April promise, glad new-
year
Of Being, which with earliest violets
And lavish carol of clear-throated larks
Fill'd all the March of life ! — I will not
speak of thee.
These have not seen thee, these can never
know thee,
They cannot understand me. Pass we
then
A term of eighteen years. Ye would but
laugh.
If I should tell you how I hoard in
thought
The faded rhymes and scraps of ancient
crones,
Gray relics of the nurseries of the world,
Which are as gems set in my memory,
Because she learnt them with me; or
what use
To know her father left us just before
The daffodil was blown? or how we
found
The dead man cast upon the shore? All
this
Seems to the quiet daylight of your minds
But cloud and smoke, and in the dark of
mine
Is traced with flame. Move with me to
the event.
There came a glorious morning, such a
one
As dawns but once a season. Mercury
On such a morning would have flung
himself
From cloud to cloud, and swum with
balanced wings
To some tall mountain : when I said to
her.
472
THE LOVER'S TALE.
* A day for Gods to stoop,' she answered,
'Ay,
And men to soar : ' for as that other
gazed.
Shading his eyes till all the fiery cloud,
The prophet and the chariot and the
steeds,
Suck'd into oneness like a little star
Were drunk into the inmost blue, we
stood.
When first we came from out the pines at
noon.
With hand's for eaves, uplooking and
almost
Waiting to see some blessed shape in
heaven,
So bathed we were in brilliance. Never
yet
Before or after have I known the spring
Pour with such sudden deluges of light
Into the middle summer; for that day
Love, rising, shook his wings, and charged
the winds
With spiced May-sweets from bound to
bound, and blew
Fresh fire into the sun, and from within
Burst thro' the heated buds, and sent his
soul
Into the songs of birds, and touch'd far-
off
His mountain-altars, his high hills, with
flame
Milder and purer.
Thro' the rocks we wound :
The great pine shook with lonely sounds
of joy
That came on the sea-wind. As moun-
tain streams
Our bloods ran free : the sunshine seem'd
to brood
More warmly on the heart than on the
brow.
We often paused, and, looking back, we
saw
The clefts and openings in the mountains
fill'd
With the blue valley and the glistening
brooks.
And all the low dark groves, a land of
love ! '
A land of promise, a land of memory,
A land of promise flowing with the milk
And honey of delicious memories !
And down to sea, and far as eye could
ken,
Each way from verge to verge a Holy
Land,
Still growing holier as you near'd the bay,
For there the Temple stood.
When we had reach'd
The grassy platform on some hill, I
stoop'd,
I gather'd the wild herbs, and for her
brows
And mine made garlands of the selfsame
flower.
Which she took smiling, and with my
work thus
Crown'd her clear forehead. Once or
twice she told me
(For I remember all things) to let grow
The flowers that run poison in their
veins.
She said, 'The evil flourish in the world.'
Then playfully she gave herself the lie —
'Nothing in nature is unbeautiful;
So, brother, pluck and spare not.' So I
wove
Ev'n the dull-blooded poppy-stem, ' whose
flower,
Hued with the scarlet of a fierce sunrise,
Like to the wild youth of an evil prince,
Is without sweetness, but who crowns
himself '
Above the naked poisons of his heart
In his old age.' A graceful thought of
hers
Grav'n on my fancy ! And oh, how like
a nymph,
A stately mountain nymph she look'd!
how native
Unto the hills she trod on ! While I
gazed
My coronal slowly disentwined itself
And fell between us both; tho' while I
gazed
My spirit leap'd as with those thrills of
bhss
That strike across the soul in prayer, and
show us
That we are surely heard. Methought a
light
Burst from the garland I had wov'n, and
stood
THE LOVER'S TALE.
473
A solid glory on her bright black hair;
A light methought broke from her dark,
dark eyes,
And shot itself into the singing winds;
A mystic light flash'd ev'n from her white
robe
As from a glass in the sun, and fell about
My footsteps on the mountains.
Last we came
To what our people call * The Hill of
Woe.'
A bridge is there, that, look'd at from
beneath
Seems but a cobweb filament to link
The yawning of an earthquake-cloven
chasm.
And thence one night, when all the winds
were loud,
A woful man (for so the story went)
Had thrust his wife and child and dash'd
himself
Into the dizzy depth below. Beldw,
Fierce in the strength of far descent, a
stream
Flies with a shatter'd foam along the
chasm.
The path was perilous, loosely strown
with crags :
We mounted slowly; yet to both there
came
The joy of life in steepness overcome,
And victories of ascent, and looking
down
On all that had look'd down on us; and
joy
In breathing nearer heaven; and joy to
me.
High over all the azure-circled earth,
To breathe with her as if in heaven itself;
And more than joy that I to her became
Her guardian and her angel, raising her
Still higher, past all peril, until she saw
Beneath her feet the region far away.
Beyond the nearest mountain's bosky
brows,
Arise in open prospect — heath and hill.
And hollow lined and wooded to the lips.
And steep-down walls of battlemented
rock
Gilded with broom, or shatter'd into
spires.
And glory of broad waters interfused,
Whence rose as it were breath and steam
of gold,
And over all the great wood rioting
And climbing, streak'd or starr'd at
intervals
With falling brook or blossom'd bush —
and last.
Framing the mighty landscape to the
west,
A purple range of mountain-cones, be-
tween
Whose interspaces gush'd in blinding
bursts
The incorporate blaze of sun and sea.
At length
Descending from the point and standing
both.
There on the tremulous bridge, that from
beneath
Had seem'd a gossamer filament up in air,
We paused amid the splendour. All the
west
And ev'n unto the middle south was
ribb'd
And barr'd with bloom on bloom. The
sun below,
Held for a space 'twixt cloud and wave,
shower'd down
Rays of a mighty circle, weaving over
That various wilderness a tissue of light
Unparallel'd. On the other side, the
moon,
Half-melted into thin blue air, stood still.
And pale and fibrous as a wither'd leaf.
Nor yet endured in presence of His eyes
To indue his lustre; most unloverlike,
Since in his al:)sence full of light and joy.
And giving light to others. But this
most.
Next to her presence whom I loved so
well,
Spoke loudly even into my inmost heart
As to my outward hearing: the loud
stream,
Forth issuing from his portals in the crag
(A visible link unto the home of my
heart),
Ran amber toward the west, and nigh
the sea
Parting my own loved mountains was
received.
Shorn of its strength, into the sympathy
474
THE LOVER'S TALE.
Of that small bay, which out to open
main
Glow'd intermingling close beneath the
sun.
Spirit of Love ! that little hour was bound
Shut in from Time, and dedicate to
thee:
Thy fires from heaven had touch'd it,
and the earth
They fell on became hallow'd evermore.
We turn'd : our eyes met : hers were
bright, and mine
"Were dim with floating tears, that shot
the sunset
In lightnings round me; and my name
was borne
Upon her breath. Henceforth my name
has been
A hallow'd memory like the names of
old,
A centr'd, glory-circled memory,
And a peculiar treasure, brooking not
Exchange or currency : and in that hour
A hope flow'd round me, like a golden
mist
Charm'd amid eddies of melodious airs,
A moment, ere the onward whirlwind
shatter it,
Waver'd and floated — which was less
than Hope,
Because it lack'd the power of perfect
Hope;
But which was more and higher than all
Hope,
Because all other Hope had lower aim;
Even that this name to which her gracious
lips
Did lend such gentle utterance, this one
name,
In some obscure hereafter, might in-
wreathe
(How lovelier, nobler then !) her life, her
love,
With my life, love, soul, spirit, and heart
and strength.
* Brother,' she said, ' let this be call'd
henceforth
The Hill of Hope; ' and I replied, 'O
sister,
My will is one with thine; the Hill of
Hope.*
Nevertheless, we did not change the name.
I did not speak : I could not speak my
love.
Love lieth deep : Love dwells not in lip-
depths;
Love wraps his wings on either side the
heart.
Constraining it with kisses close and warm,
Absorbing all the incense of sweet thoughts
So that they pass not to the shrine of
sound.
Else had the life of that delighted hour
Drunk in the largeness Ci the utterance
Of Love; but how should Earthly meas-
ure mete
The Heavenly-unmeasured or unlimited
Love,
Who scarce can tune his high majestic
sense
Unto the thundersong that wheels the
spheres.
Scarce living in the ^olian harmony,
And flowing odour of the spacious air,
Scarce housed within the circle of this
Earth,
Be cabin'd up in words and syllables.
Which pass with that which breathes
them? Sooner Earth
Might go round Heaven, and the strait
girth of Time
Inswathe the fulness of Eternity,
Than language grasp the infinite of Love.
O day which did enwomb that happy
hour.
Thou art blessed in the years, divinest day !
O Genius of that hour which dost uphold
Thy coronal of glory like a God,
Amid thy melancholy mates far-seen.
Who walk before thee, ever turning round
To gaze upon thee till their eyes are dim
With dwelling on the light and depth of
thine.
Thy name is ever worshipp'd among
hours !
Had I died then, I had not seem'd to die.
For bjiss stood round me like the light of
Heaven, —
Had I died then, I had not known the
death;
Yea had the Power from whose right
hand the light
Of Life issueth, and from whose left hand
flowetii
THE LOVER'S TALE.
475
The Shadow of Death, perennial efflu-
ences,
Whereof to all that draw the wholesome
air,
Some while the one must overflow the
other;
Then had he stemm'd my day with night,
and driven
My current to the fountain whence it
sprang, —
Even his own abiding excellence —
On me, methinks, that shock of gloom
had fall'n
Unfelt, and in this glory I had merged
The other, like the sun I gazed upon,
Which seeming for the moment due to
death,
And dipping his head low beneath the
verge,
Yet bearing round about him his own day,
In confidence of unabated strength,
Steppeth from Heaven to Heaven, from
light to light.
And holdeth his undimmed forehead far
Into a clearer zenith, pure of cloud.
We trod the shadow of the downward
hill;
We past from light to dark. On the
other side
Is scoop'd a cavern and a mountain hall,
Which none have fathom'd. If you go
far in
(The country people rumour) you may
hear
The moaning of the woman and the child.
Shut in the secret chambers of the rock.
I too have heard a sound — perchance of
streams
Running far on within its inmost halls.
The home of darkness; but the cavern-
mouth,
Half overtrailed with a wanton weed.
Gives birth to a brawling brook, that
passing lightly
Adown a natural stair of tangled roots,
Is presently received in a sweet grave
Of eglantines, a place of burial
Far lovelier than its cradle; for unseen.
But taken with the sweetness of the place,
It makes a constant bubbling melody
That drowns the nearer echoes. Lower
down
Spreads out a little lake, that, flooding,
leaves
Low banks of yellow sand; and from the
woods
That belt it rise three dark, tall cy-
presses, —
Three cypresses, symbols of mortal woe.
That men plant over graves.
Hither we came.
And sitting down upon the golden moss,
Held converse sweet and low — low con-
verse sweet.
In which our voices bore least part. The
wind
Told a lovetale beside us, how he woo'd
The waters, and the waters answering
lisp'd
To kisses of the wind, that, sick with
love,
Fainted at intervals, and grew again
To utterance of passion. Ye cannot
shape
Fancy so fair as is this memory.
Methought all excellence that ever was
Had drawn herself from many thousand
years.
And all the separate Edens of this earth,
To centre in this place and time. I
listen'd.
And her words stole with most prevailing
sweetness
Into my heart, as thronging fancies come
To boys and girls when summer days are
new.
And soul and heart and body are all at
ease:
What marvel my Camilla told me all?
It was so happy an hour, so sweet a place.
And I was as the brother of her blood,
And by that name I moved upon her
breath;
Dear name, which had too much of
nearness in it
And heralded the distance of this time !
At first her voice was very sweet and low.
As if she were afraid of utterance;
But in the onward current of her speech,
(As echoes of the hollow-banked brooks
Are fashion'd by the channel which they
keep).
Her words did of their meaning borrow
sound,
476
THE LOVER'S TALE.
Her cheek did catch the colour of her
words.
I heard and trembled, yet I could but
hear;
My heart paused — my raised eyelids
would not fall,
But still I kept my eyes upon the sky.
I seem'd the only part of Time stood
still.
And saw the motion of all other things;
While her words, syllable by S3dlable,
Like water, drop by drop, upon my ear
Fell; and I wish'd, yet wish'd her not to
speak ;
But she spake on, for I did name no wish,
What marvel my Camilla told me all
Her maiden dignities of Hope and Love —
' Perchance,' she said, 'return'd.' Even
then the stars
Did tremble in their stations as I gazed;
But she spake on, for I did name no
wish,
No wish — no hope. Hope was not
wholly dead,
But breathing hard at the approach of
Death, —
Camilla, my Camilla, who was mine
No longer in the dearest sense of mine —
For all the secret of her inmost heart.
And all the maiden empire of her mind.
Lay like a map before me, and I saw
There, where I hoped myself to reign as
king.
There, -where that day I crown'd myself
as king,
There in my realm and even on my throne.
Another ! then it seem'd as tho' a link
Of some tight chain within my inmost
frame
Was riven in twain : that life I heeded
not
Flow'd from me, and the darkness of the
grave,
The darkness of the grave and utter
night,
Did swallow up my vision; at her feet,
Even the feet of her I loved, I fell,
Smit with exceeding sorrow unto Death.
Then had the earth beneath me yawn-
ing cloven
With such a sound as when an iceberg
splits
From cope to base — had Heaven from
' all her doors.
With all her golden thresholds clashing,
roll'd
Her heaviest thunder — I had lain as
' dead,
Mute, blind and motionless as then I
lay;
Dead, for henceforth there was no life
for me !
Mute, for henceforth what use were
words to me !
Blind, for the day was as the night to
me !
The night to me was kinder than the
day;
The night in pity took away my day.
Because my grief as yet was newly born
Of eyes too weak to look upon the
light;
And thro' the hasty notice of the ear
Frail Life was startled from the tender
love
Of him she brooded over. Would I had
lain
Until the plaited ivy-tress had wound
Round my worn limbs, and the wild brier
had driven
Its knotted thorns thro' my unpaining
brows,
Leaning its roses on my faded eyes.
The wind had blown above me, and the
rain
Had fall'n upon me, and the gilded
snake
Had nestled in this bosom-throne of
Love,
But I had been at rest for evermore.
Long time entrancement held me. All
too soon
Life (like a wanton too-officious friend,
Who will not hear denial, vain and rude
With proffer of unwish'd-for services)
Entering all the avenues of sense
Past thro' into his citadel, the brain,
With hated warmth of apprehensiveness.
And first the chillness of the sprinkled
brook
Smote on my brows, and then I seem'd
to hear
Its murmur, as the drowning seaman
hears,
THE LOVER'S TALE.
477
Who with his head below the surface
dropt
Listens the muffled booming indistinct
Of the confused floods, and dimly knows
His head shall rise no more : and then
came in
The white light of the weary moon
above,
Diffused and molten into flaky cloud.
Was my sight drunk that it did shape to
me
Him who should own that name? Were
it not well
If so be that the echo of that name
Ringing within the fancy had updrawn
A fashion and a phantasm of the form
It should attach to? Phantom! — had
the ghastliest •
That ever lusted for a body, sucking
The foul steam of the grave to thicken
by it,
There in the shuddering moonlight
brought its face
And what it has for eyes as close to
mine
As he did — better that than his, than he
The friend, the neighbour, Lionel, the
beloved,
The loved, the lover, the happy Lionel,
The low-voiced, tender-spirited Lionel,
All joy, to whom my agony was a joy.
O how her choice did leap forth from his
eyes !
O how her love did clothe itself in smiles
About his lips! and — not one moment's
grace —
Then when the effect weigh'd seas upon
my head
To come my way ! to twit me with the
cause !
Was not the land as free thro' all her
ways
To him as me? Was not his wont to
walk
Between the going light and growing
night?
Had I not learnt my loss before he
came?
Could that be more because he came my
way?
Why should he not come my way if he
woiUd?
And yet to-night, to-night — when all my
wealth
Flash'd from me in a moment and I fell
Beggar'd for ever — why should he. come
my way
Robed in those robes of light I must not
wear,
With that great ccown of beams about
his brows —
Come like an angel to a damned soul,
To tell him of the bliss he had with
God —
Come like a careless and a greedy heir
That scarce can wait the reading of the
will
Before he takes possession ? Was mine
a mood
To be invaded rudely, and not rather
A sacred, secret, unapproached woe,
Unspeakable? 1 was shut up with Grief;
She took the body of my past delight,
Narded and swathed and balm'd it for
herself,
And laid it in a sepulchre of rock
Never to rise again. I was led mute
Into her temple like a sacrifice;
I was the High Priest in her holiest
place.
Not to be loudly broken in upon.
Oh friend, thoughts deep and heavy as
these wellnigh
O'erbore the limits of my brain : but he
Bent o'er me, and my neck his arm up-
stay'd.
I thought it was an adder's fold, and once
I strove to disengage myself, but fail'd,
Being so feeble : she bent above me, too ;
Wan was her cheek; for whatsoe'er of
blight
Lives in the dewy touch of pity had made
The red rose there a pale one — and her
eyes —
I saw the moonlight glitter on their
tears —
And some few drops of that distressful
rain
Fell on my face, and her long ringlets
moved.
Drooping and beaten by the breeze, and
brush 'd
My fallen forehead in their to and fro,
For in the sudden anguish of her heart
478
THE LOVER'S TALE.
Loosed from their simple thrall they had
flow'd abroad,
And floated on and parted round her
neck,
Mantling her form halfway. She, when
I woke,
Something she ask'd, I know not what,
and ask'd,
Unanswer'd, since I spake not; for the
sound
Of that dear voice so musically low.
And now first heard with any sense of
pain,
As it had taken life away before.
Choked all the syllables, that strove to
rise
From my full heart.
The blissful lover, too.
From his great hoard of happiness dis-
till'd
Some drops of solace; like a vain rich
man,
That, having always prosper'd in the
world.
Folding his hands, deals comfortable
words
To hearts wounded for ever; yet, in
truth,
Fair speech was his and delicate of
phrase,
Falling in whispers on the sense, ad-
dress'd
More to the inward than the outward
ear,
As rain of the midsummer midnight soft,
Scarce-heard, recalling fragrance and the
green
Of the dead spring : but mine was wholly
dead.
No bud, no leaf, no flower, no fruit for
me.
Yet who had done, or who had sufi'er'd
wrong?
And why was I to darken their pure
love.
If, as I found, they two did love each
other,
Because my own was darken'd? Why
was I
To cross between their happy star and
them?
To stand a shadow by their shining doors,
And vex them with my darkness? Did
I love her?
Ye know that I did love her; to this
present
My fuU-orb'd love has waned not. Did
I love her,
And could I look upon her tearful eyes?
What had she done to weep? Why
should she weep?
0 innocent of spirit — let my heart
Break rather — whom the gentlest airs
of Heaven
Should kiss with an unwonted gentleness.
Her love did murder mine ? What then ?
She deem'd
1 wore a brother's mind : she call'd me
brother :
She told me all her love : she shall not
weep.
The brightness of a burning thought,
awhile
In battle with the glooms of my dark
will.
Moonlike emerged, and to itself lit up
There on the depth of an unfathom'd
woe
Reflex of action. Starting up at once.
As from a dismal dream of my own
death,
I, for I loved her, lost my love in Love;
I, for I loved her, graspt the hand she
lov'd,
And laid it in her own, and sent my cry
Thro' the blank night to Him who loving
made
The happy and the unhappy love, that
He
Would hold the hand of blessing over
them,
Lionel, the happy, and her, and her, his
bride !
Let them so love that men and boys may
say,
* Lo ! how they love each other ! ' till
their love
Shall ripen to a proverb, unto all
Known, when their faces are forgot in
the land —
One golden dream of love, from which
may death
Awake them with heaven's music in a
life
THE LOVER'S TALE.
479
More living to some happier happiness,
Swallowing its precedent in victory.
And as for me, Camilla, as for me, —
The dew of tears is an unwholesome dew,
They will but sicken the sick plant the
more.
Deem that I love thee but as brothers do,
So shalt thou love me still as sisters do;
Or if thou dream aught farther, dream
but how
I could have loved thee, had there been
none else
To love as lovers, loved again by thee.
Or this, or somewhat like to this, I
spake,
When I beheld her weep so ruefully;
For sure my love should ne'er indue the
front
And mask of Hate, who lives on others'
moans.
Shall Love pledge Hatred in her bitter
draughts.
And batten on her poisons? Love for-
bid!
Love passeth not the threshold of cold
Hate,
And Hate is strange beneath the roof
of Love.
O Love, if thou be'st Love, dry up these
tears
Shed for the love of Love; for tho' mine
image,
The subject of thy power, be cold in
her,
Yet, like cold snow, it melteth in the
source
Of these sad tears, and feeds their down-
ward flow.
So Love, arraign'd to judgment and to
death,
Received unto himself a part of blame.
Being guiltless, as an innocent prisoner.
Who, when the woful sentence hath
been past,
And all the clearness of his fame hath
gone
Beneath the shadow of the curse of man,
First falls asleep in swoon, wherefrom
awaked,
And looking round upon his tearful
friends,
Forthwith and in his agony conceives
A shameful sense as of a cleaving
crime —
For whence without some guilt should
such grief be?
So died that hour, and fell into the
abysm
Of forms outworn, but not to me out-
worn,
W^ho never hail'd another — was there
one?
There might be one — one other, worth
the life
That made it sensible. So that hour died
Like odour rapt into the winged wind
Borne into alien lands and far away.
There be some hearts so airily built,
that they.
They — when their love is wreck'd — if
Love can wreck —
On that sharp ridge of utmost doom ride
highly
Above the perilous seas of Change and
Chance;
Nay, more, hold out the lights of cheer-
fulness;
As the tall ship, that many a dreary year
Knit to some dismal sandbank far at
sea.
All thro' the livelong hours of utter
dark,
Showers slanting light upon the dolorous
wave.
For me — what light, what gleam on
those black ways
Where Love could walk with banish'd*
Hope no more?
It was ill-done to part you. Sisters
fair;
Love's arms were wreath 'd about the neck
of Hope,
And Hope kiss'd Love, and Love drew in
her breath
In that close kiss, and drank her whis-
per'd tales.
They said that Love would die when
Hope was gone.
And Love mourn'd long, and sorrow'd
after Hope;
At last she sought out Memory, and th^y
trod
430
THE LOVER'S TALE.
The same old paths where Love had
walk'd with Hope,
And Memory fed the soul of Love with
tears.
IL
From that time forth I would not see her
more;
But many weary moons I lived alone —
Alone, and in the heart of the great
forest.
Sometimes upon the hills beside the sea
All day I watch'd the floating isles of
shade,
And sometimes on the shore, upon the
sands
Insensibly I drew her name, until
The meaning of the letters shot into
My brain ; anon the wanton billow wash'd
Them over, till they faded like my love.
The hollow caverns heard me — the black
brooks
Of the mid-forest heard me — the soft
winds.
Laden with thistledown and seeds of
flowers,
Paused in their course to hear me, for my
voice
Was all of thee : the merry linnet knew
me.
The squirrel knew me, and the dragonfly
Shot by me hke a flash of purple fire.
The rough brier tore my bleeding palms;
the hemlock,
Brow-high, did strike my forehead as I
past;
•Yet trod 1 not the wildflower in my path.
Nor bruised the wildbird's egg.
Was this the end?
Why grew we then together in one plot?
Why fed we from one fountain ? drew one
sun ?
Why were or,x. mothers' branches of one
stem?
Why were we one in all things, save in
that
Where to have been one had been the
cope and crown
Of all I hoped and fear'd? — if that same
nearness
Were father to this distance, and that cwi?
Vauntcourier to this double ? if Aff"ection
Living slew Love, and Sympathy hew'd out
The bosom-sepulchre of Sympathy?
Chiefly I sought the cavern and the
hill
Where last we roam'd together, for the
sound
Of the loud stream was pleasant, and the
wind
Came wooingly with woodbine smells.
Sometimes
All day I sat within the cavern-mouth,
Fixing my eyes on those three cypress-
cones
That spired above the wood; and with
mad hand
Tearing the bright leaves of the ivy-
screen,
I cast them in the noisy brook beneath.
And watch'd them till they vanish'd from
my sight
Beneath the bower of wreathed eglan-
tines:
And all the fragments of the living rock
(Huge blocks, which some old trembling
of the world
Had loosen'd from the mountain, till they
fell
Half-digging their own graves) these in
my agony
Did I make bare of all the golden moss,
Wherewith the dashing runnel in the
spring
Had liveried them all over. In my brain
The spirit seem'd to flag from thought to
thought,
As moonlight wandering thro' a mist:
my blood
Crept like marsh drains thro' all my lan-
guid limbs;
The motions of my heart seem'd far within
me,
Unfrequent, low, as tho' it told its pulses;
And yet it shook me, that my frame would
shudder,
As if 'twere drawn asunder by the rack.
But over the deep graves of Hope and
Fear,
And all the broken palaces of the Past,
Brooded one master-passion evermore.
Like to a low-hung and a fiery sky
Above some fair metropolis, earth*
shock'd, —
THE LOVER'S TALE.
4S1
Hung round with ragged rims and burn-
ing folds, —
Embathing all with wild and woful hues,
Great hills of ruins, and collapsed masses
Of thundershaken columns indistinct.
And fused together in the tyrannous
light —
Ruins, the ruin of all my life and me !
Sometimes I thought Camilla was no
more,
Some one had told me she was dead, and
ask'd
If I would see her burial : then I seem'd
To rise, and through the forest-shadow
borne
With more than mortal swiftness, I ran
down
The steepy sea-bank, till I came upon
The rear of a procession, curving round
The silver-sheeted bay : in front of which
Six stately virgins, all in white, upbare
A broad earth-sweeping pall of whitest
lawn,
Wreathed round the bier with garlands:
in the distance.
From out the yellow woods upon the hill
Look'd forth the summit and the pinna-
cles
Of a gray steeple — thence at intervals
A low bell tolling. iVll the pageantry,
Save those six virgins which upheld the
bier,
Were stoled from head to foot in flowing
black ;
One walk'd abreast with me, and veil'd
his brow.
And he was loud in weeping and in praise
Of her, we follow'd : a strong sympathy
Shook all my soul : I flung myself upon
him
In tears and cries : I told him all my love,
How I had loved her from the first;
whereat
He shrank and howl'd, and from his brow
drew back
His hand to push me from him; and the
face.
The very face and form of Lionel
Flash'd thro' my eyes into my innermost
brain,
And at his feet I seem'd to faint and fall,
To fall and die away. I could not rise
21
Albeit I strove to follow. They past on,
The lordly Phantasms! in their floating
folds
They past and were no more : but I had
fallen
Prone by the dashing runnel on the grass.
Alway the inaudible invisible thought,
Artificer and subject, lord and slave,
Shaped by the audible and visible.
Moulded the audible and visible ;
All crisped sounds of wave and leaf and
wind,
Flatter'd the fancy of my fading brain;
The cloud- pavilion'd element, the wood,
The mountain, the three cypresses, the
cave.
Storm, sunset, glows and glories of the
moon
Below black firs, when silent-creeping
winds
Laid the long night in silver streaks and
bars,
Were wrought into the tissue of my
dream :
The moanings in the forest, the lo"ud
brook,
Cries of the partridge like a rusty key
Turn'd in a lock, owl-whoop and dor-
hawk-whirr
Awoke me not, but were a part of sleep,
And voices in the distance calling to me
And in my vision bidding me dream on.
Like sounds without the twilight realm
of dreams.
Which wander ro»nd the bases of the
hills,
And murmur at the low-dropt eaves of
sleep.
Half-entering the portals. Oftentimes
The vision had fair prelude, in the end
Opening on darkness, stately vestibules
To caves and shows of Death : whether
the mind.
With some revenge, — even to itself un-
known, —
Made strange dfvision of its suffering
With her, whom to have suffering view'd
had been
Extremest pain; or that the clear-eyed
Spirit,
Being blunted in the Present, grew at
length
482
THE LOVER'S TALE.
Prophetical and prescient of whate'er
The Future had in store : or that which
most
Enchains belief, the sorrow of my spirit
Was of so wide a compass it took in
All I had loved, and my dull agony,
Ideally to her transferr'd, became
Anguish intolerable.
The day waned;
Alone I sat with her : about my brow
Her warm breath floated in the utterance
Of silver-chorded tones: her Hps were
sunder'd
With smiles of tranquil bliss, which broke
in light
Like morning from her eyes — her elo-
quent eyes,
(As I have seen them many a hundred
times)
Fill'd all with pure clear fire, thro' mine
down rain'd
Their spirit-searching splendours. As a
vision
Unto a haggard prisoner, iron-stay'd
In damp and dismal dungeons under-
ground,
Confined on points of faith, when strength
is shock'd
With torment, and expectancy of worse
Upon the morrow, thro' the ragged walls.
All unawares before his half-shut eyes,
Comes in upon him in the dead of night.
And with the excess of sweetness and of
awe,
Makes the heart tremble, and the sight
run over
Upon his steely gyves; so those fair eyes
Shone on my darkness, forms which ever
stood-
Within the magic cirque of memory,
Invisible but deathless, waiting still
The edict of the will to reassume
The semblance of those rare realities
Of which they were the mirrors. Now
the light
Which was their life, burst through the
cloud of thought
Keen, irrepressible.
It was a room
Within the summer-house of which I
spake,
Hung round with paintings of the sea,
and one
A vessel in mid-ocean, her heaved prow
Clambering, the mast bent and the ravin
wind
In her sail roaring. From the outer day,
Betwixt the close-set ivies came a broad
And solid beam of isolated light.
Crowded with driving atomies, and fell
Slanting upon that picture, from prime
youth
Well-known well-loved. She drew it
long ago
Forthgazing on the waste and open sea,
One morning when the upblown billow
ran
Shoreward beneath red clouds, and I had
pour'd
Into the shadowing pencil's naked forms
Colour and life : it was a bond and seal
Of friendship, spoken of with tearful
smiles;
A monument of childhood and of love;
The poesy of childhood; my lost love
Symbol'd in storm. We gazed on it
together
In mute and glad remembrance, and
each heart
Grew closer to the other, and the eye
Was riveted and charm-bound, gazing
like
The Indian on a still-eyed snake, low-
couch'd —
A beauty which is death; when all at
once
That painted vessel, as with inner life,
Began to heave upon that painted sea;
An earthquake, my loud heart-beats,
made the ground
Reel under us, and all at once, soul, life
And breath and motion, past and flow'd
away
To those unreal billows: round and
round
A whirlwind caught and bore us; mighty
gyres
Rapid and vast, of hissing spray wind-
driven
Far thro' the dizzy dark. Aloud she
shrieked;
My heart was cloven with pain; I wound
my arms
About her- we whirl'd giddily; the wind
THE LOVER'S TALE.
483
Sung; but I clasp'd her without fear:
her weight
Shrank in my grasp, and over my dim
eyes,
And parted lips which drank her breath,
down-hung
The jaws of Death : I, groaning, from
me flung
Her empty phantom : all the sway and
whirl
Of the storm dropt to windless calm, and I
Down welter'd thro' the dark ever and
ever.
III.
I CAME one day and sat among the
stones
Strewn in the entry of the moaning cave;
A morning air, sweet after rain, ran over
The rippling levels of the lake, and blew
Coolness and moisture and all smells of
bud
And foliage from the dark and dripping
woods
Upon my fever'd brows that shook and
throbb'd
From temple unto temple. To what
height
The day had grown I know not. Then
came on me
The hollow tolling of the bell, and all
The vision of the bier. As heretofore
I walk'd behind with one who veil'd his
brow.
Methought by slow degrees the sullen
bell
Toll'd quicker, and the breakers on the
shore
Sloped into louder surf: those that went
with me.
And those that held the bier before my
face.
Moved with one spirit round about the
bay.
Trod swifter steps; and while I walk'd
with these
In marvel at that gradual change, I
thought
Four bells instead of one began to ring,
Four merry bells, four merry marriage-
bells,
In clanging cadence jangling peal on
peal —
A long loud clash of rapid marriage-
bells.
Then those who led the van, and those
in rear,
Rush'd into dance, and like wild Bac-
chanals
Fled onward to the steeple in the woods :
I, too, was borne along and felt the blast
Beat on my heated eyelids : all at once
The front rank made a sudden halt; the
bells
Lapsed into frightful stillness; the surge
fell
From thunder into whispers; those six
maids
With shrieks and ringing laughter on the
sand
Threw down the bier; the woods upon
the hill
Waved w^ith a sudden gust that sweeping
down
Took the edges of the pall, and blew it far
Until it hung, a little silver cloud
Over the sounding seas : I turn'd : my
heart
Shrank in me, like a snowflake in the
hand.
Waiting to see the settled countenance
Of her I loved, adorn'd with fading
flowers.
But she from out her death-like chrysalis,
She from her bier, as into fresher life,
My sister, and my cousin, and my love,
Leapt lightly clad in bridal white — her
hair
Studded with one rich Provence rose —
a light
Of smiling welcome round her lips — her
eyes
And cheeks as bright as when she climb'd
the hill.
One hand she reach'd to those that came
behind.
And while I mused nor. yet endured to
take
So rich a prize, the man who stood with
me
Stept gaily forward, throwing down his
robes,
And claspt her hand in his: again the
bells
Jangled and clang'd : again the stormy
surf
484
THE GOLDEN SUPPER.
Crash'd in the shingle : and the whirling
Surely, but for a whisper, ' Go not yet,'
rout
Some warning — sent divinely — as it
Led by those two rush'd into dance, and
seem'd
fled
By that which follow'd — but of this I
Wind-footed to the steeple in the woods,
deem
Till they were swallow'd in the leafy
As of the visions that he told — the event
bowers,
Glanced back upon them in his after
And I stood sole beside the vacant bier.
life,
And partly made them — tho' he knew it
There, there, my latest vision — then the
not.
event!
IV.
And thus he stay'd and would not look
at her —
THE GOLDEN SUPPER.l
No not for months: but, when the
eleventh moon
(^Another speaks^
After their marriage lit the lover's Bay,
Heard yet once more the tolling bell, and
He flies the event : he leaves the event
said.
to me:
Would you could toll me out of life, but
Poor Julian — how he rush'd away; the
found —
bells.
All softly as his mother broke it to him —
Those marriage-bells, echoing in ear and
A crueller reason than a crazy ear.
heart —
For that low knell toUing his lady dead —
But cast a parting glance at me, you saw,
Dead — and had lain three days without
As who should say, 'Continue.' Well
a pulse :
he had
All that look'd on her had pronounced
One golden hour — of triumph shall I
her dead.
say?
And so they bore her (for in Julian's
Solace at least — before he left his home.
1-1
land
They never nail a dumb head up in
Would you had seen him in that hour
elm).
of his !
Bore her free-faced to the free airs of
He moved thro' all of it majestically —
heaven,
Restrain'd himself quite to the close —
And laid her in the vault of her own
but now —
kin.
Whether they were his lady's marriage-
What did he then? not die : he is here
bells,
and hale —
Or prophets of them in his fantasy.
Not plunge headforemost from the moun-
I never ask'd : but Lionel and the girl
tain there.
Were wedded, and our Julian came again
And leave the name of Lover's Leap:
Back to his mother's house among the
not he :
pines.
He knew the meaning of the whisper
But these, their gloom, the mountains
now.
and the Bay,
Thought that he knew it. 'This, I
The whole land weigh'd him down as
stay'd for this;
^tna does
0 love, I have not seen you for so long.
The Giant of Mythology : he would go,
Now, now, will I go down into the grave,
Would leave the land for ever, and had
I will be all alone with all I 'love,
gone
And kiss her on the lips. She is his no
1 This poem is founded upon a story in Boc-
more:
The dead returns to me, and I go down
caccio. See Introduction, p. 467.
To kiss the dead.'
THE LOVER'S TALE.
48s
The fancy stirr'd him so
He rose and went, and entering the dim
vault,
And, making there a sudden light, beheld
All round about him that which all will
be.
The light was but a flash, and went again.
Then at the far end of the vault he saw
His lady with the moonlight on her face;
Her breast as in a shadow-prison, bars
Of black and bands of silver, which the
moon
Struck from an open grating overhead
Hi^h in the wall, and all the rest of her
Drovvn'd in the gloom and horror of the
vault.
* It was my wish,' he said, * to pass, to
sleep,
To rest, to be with her — till the great
day
Peal'd on us with that music which rights
all.
And raised us hand in hand.' And
kneeling there
Down in the dreadful dust that once was
man.
Dust, as he said, that once was loving
hearts,
Hearts that had beat with such a love as
mine —
Not such as mine, no, nor for such as
her —
He softly put his arm about her neck
And kiss'd her more than once, till help-
less death
And silence made him bold — nay, but I
wrong him.
He reverenced his dear lady even in
death;
But, placing his true hand upon her
heart,
*0, you warm heart,' he moan'd, 'not
even death
Can chill you all at once : ' then starting,
thought
His dreams had come again. *Do I
wake or sleep?
Or am I made immortal, or my love
Mortal once more ? ' It beat — the heart
— it beat :
Faint — but it beat : at which his own
began
To pulse with such a vehemence that it
drown'd
The feebler motion underneath his hand.
But when at last his doubts were satisfied,
He raised her softly from the sepulchre,
And, wrapping her all over with the cloak
He came in, and now striding fast, and
now
Sitting awhile to rest, but evermore
Holding his golden burthen in his arms.
So bore her thro' the solitary land
Back to the mother's house where she
was born.
There the good mother's kindly minis-
tering.
With half a night's appliances, recall'd
Her fluttering life : she raised an eye that
ask'd
' Where ? ' till the things familiar to her
youth
Had made a silent answer : then she spoke
' Here ! and how came I here ? ' and
learning it
(They told her somewhat rashly as I
think)
At once began to wander and to wail,
*Ay, but you know that you must give
me back :
Send! bid him come; ' but Lionel was
away —
Stung by his loss had vanish'd, none
knew where.
*He casts me out,' she wept, 'and goes'
— a wail
That seeming something, yet was nothing,
born
Not from believing mind, but shatter'd
nerve,
Yet haunting Julian, as her own reproof
At some precipitance in her burial.
Then, when her own true spirit had
return'd,
' Oh yes, and you,' she said, * and none
but you?
For you have given me life and love
again.
And none but you yourself shall tell him
of it,
And you shall give me back when he
returns.'
' Stay then a little,' answer'd Julian,
* here.
486
THE GOLDEN SUPPER,
And keep yourself, none knowing, to
yourself;
And I will do your will. I may not stay,
No, not an hour; but send me notice of
him
When he returns, and then will I return,
And I will make a solemn offering of you
To him you love.' And faintly she
replied,
^ And I will do your will, and none shall
know. '
Not know? with such a secret to be
known.
But all their house was old and loved
them both.
And all the house had known the loves
of both;
Had died almost to serve them any way,
And all the land was waste and solitary :
And then he rode away; but after this,
An hour or two, Camilla's travail came
Upon her, and that day a boy was born.
Heir of his face and land, to Lionel.
And thus our lonely lover rode away,
And pausing at a hostel in a marsh.
There fever seized upon him : myself was
then
Travelling that land, and meant to rest
an hour;
And sitting down to such a base repast.
It makes me angry yet. to speak of it —
I heard a groaning overhead, and climb'd
The moulder'd stairs (for everything was
vile)
And in a loft, with none to wait on him.
Found, as it seem'd, a skeleton alone.
Raving of dead men's dust and beating
hearts.
A dismal hostel in a dismal land,
A flat malarian world of reed and rush !
But there from fever and my care of
him
Sprang up a friendship that may help us
yet.
For while we roam'd along the dreary
coast,
And waited for her message, piece by
piece
I learnt the drearier story of his life;
And, tho' he loved and honour'd Lionel,
Found that the sudden wail his lady
made
Dwelt in his fancy : did he know her
worth.
Her beauty even? should he not be
taught,
Ev'n by the price that others set upon it,
The value of that jewel he had to guard?
Suddenly came her notice and we past,
I with our lover to his native Bay.
This love is of the brain, the mind, the
soul :
That makes the sequel pure; tho' some
of us
Beginning at the sequel know no more.
Not such am I : and yet I say the bird
That will not hear my call, however
sweet.
But if my neighbour whistle answers
him —
What matter? there are others in the
wood.
Yet when I saw her (and I thought him
crazed,
Tho' not with such a craziness as needs
A cell and keeper), those dark eyes of
hers —
Oh ! such dark eyes ! and not her eyes
alone,
But all from these to where she touch'd
on earth,
For such a craziness as Julian's look'd
No less than one divine apology.
So sweetly and so modestly she came
To greet us, her young hero in her arms !
' Kiss him,' she said. * You gave me life
again.
He, but for you, had never seen it once.
His other father you! Kiss him, and
then
Forgive him, if his name be Julian too.'
Talk of lost hopes and broken heart !
his own
Sent such a flame into his face, I knew
Some sudden vivid pleasure hit him
there.
But he was all the more resolved to go,
And sent at once to Lionel, praying him
THE LOVER'S TALE.
487
By that great love they both had borne
the dead,
To come and revel for one hour with him
Before he left the land for evermore;
And then to friends — they were not
many — who lived
Scatteringly about that lonely land of
his,
And bade them to a banquet of farewells.
And Julian made a solemn feast : I
never
Sat at a costlier; for all round his hall
From column on to column, as in a
wood,
Not such as here — an equatorial one,
Great garlands swung and blossom'd;
and beneath,
Heirlooms, and ancient miracles of Art,
Chalice and salver, wines that, Heaven
knows when,
Had suck'd the fire of some forgotten
sun.
And kept it thro' a hundred years of
gloom,
Yet glowing in a heart of ruby — cups
Where nymph and god ran ever round in
gold —
Others of glass as costly — some with
gems
Movable and resettable at will,
And trebling all the rest in value — Ah
heavens !
Why need I tell you all? — suffice to say
That whatsoever such a house as his,
And his was old, has in it rare or fair
Was brought before the guest : and they,
the guest?,
Wonder'd at some strange light in Julian's
eyes
(I told you that he had his golden hour).
And such a feast, ill-suited as it seem'd
To such a time, to Lionel's loss and his
And that resolved self-exile from a land
He never would revisit, such a feast
So rich, so strange, and stranger ev'n
than rich,
But rich as fof the nuptials of a king.
And stranger yet, at one end of the
hall
Two great funereal curtains, looping
down,
Parted a little ere they met the floor.
About a picture of his lady, taken
Some years before, and falling hid the
frame.
And just above the parting was a lamp :
So the sweet figure folded round with
night
Seem'd stepping out of darkness with a
smile.
Well then — our solemn feast — we ate
and drank.
And might — the wines being of such
nobleness —
Have jested also, but for Julian's eyes,
And something weird and wild about it
all:
What was it? for our lover seldom spoke.
Scarce touch'd the meats; but ever and
anon
A priceless goblet with a priceless wine
Arising, show'd he drank beyond his use;
And when the feast was near an end, he
said:
* There is a custom in the • Orient,
friends —
I read of it in Persia — when a man
Will honour those who feast with him,
he brings
And shows them whatsoever he accounts
Of all his treasures the most beautiful.
Gold, jewels, arms, whatever it may be.
This custom '
Pausing here a moment, all
The guests broke in upon him with
meeting hands
And cries about the banquet — * Beautiful !
Who could desire more beauty at a feast? '
The lover answer'd, 'There is more
than one
Here sitting who desires it. Laud me not
Before my time, but hear me to the close.
This custom steps yet furtlier when the
guest
Is loved and honour'd to the uttermost.
For after he hath shown him gems or
gold,
He brings and sets before him in rich
guise
That which is thrice as beautiful as these.
488
THE GOLDEN SUPPER.
The beauty that is dearest to his heart —
" O my heart's lord, would I could show
you," he says,
"Ev'n my heart too." And I propose
to-night
To show you what is dearest to my heart,
And my heart too.
' But solve me first a doubt.
I knew a man, nor many years ago;
He had a faithful servant, one who loved
His master more than all on earth beside.
He falling sick, and seeming close on
death,
His master would not wait until he died,
But bade his menials bear him from the
door,
And leave him in the public way to die.
I knew another, not so long ago,
Who found the dying servant, took him
home.
And fed, and cherish'd him, and saved
his life.
I ask you now, should this first master
claim
His service, whom does it belong to? him
Who thrust him out, or him who saved
his life?'
This question, so flung down before
the guests,
And balanced either way by each, at
length
When some were doubtful how the law
woulct hold,
Was handed over by consent of all
To one who had not spoken, Lionel.
Fair speech was his, and delicate of
phrase.
And he beginning languidly — his loss
Weigh'd on him yet — but warming as he
went.
Glanced at the point of law, to pass it by,
Affirming that as long as either lived,
By all the laws of love and gratefulness.
The service of the one so saved was due
All to the saver — adding, with a smile,
The first for many weeks — a semi-smile
As at a strong conclusion — * body and
soul
And life and limbs, all his to work his
wiU.'
Then Julian made a secret sign to me
To bring Camilla down before them all.
And crossing her own picture as she came.
And looking as much lovelier as herself
Is lovelier than all others — on her head
A diamond circlet, and from under this
A veil, that seemed no more than gilded
air,
Flying by each fine ear, an Eastern gauze
With seeds of gold — so, with that grace
of hers,
Slow-moving as a wave against the wind.
That flings a mist behind it in the sun —
And bearing high in arms the mighty
babe.
The younger Julian, who himself was
crown'd
With roses, none so rosy as himself —
And over all her babe and her the jewels
Of many generations of his house
Sparkled and flash'd, for he had decked
them out
As for a solemn sacrifice of love —
So she came in : — I am long in telling it, .
I never yet beheld a thing so strange,
Sad, sweet, and strange together — floated
in —
While all the guests in mute amazement
rose —
And slowly pacing to the middle hall,
Before the board, there paused and stood,
her breast
Hard-heaving, and her eyes upon her feet,
Not daring yet to glance at Lionel.
But him she carried, him nor lights nor
feast
Dazed or amazed, nor eyes of men; who
cared
Only to use his own, and staring wide
And hungering for the gilt and jewell'd
world
About him, look'd, as he is like to prove.
When Julian goes, the lord of all he saw.
* My guests,' said Julian : * you are
honour'd now
Ev'n to the uttermost : in her behold
Of all my treasures the moSt beautiful,
Of all things upon earth the dearest to
me.'
Then waving us a sign to seat ourselves,
Led his dear lady to a chair of state.
And I, by Lionel sitting, saw his face
THE LOVER'S TALE.
489
Fire, and dead ashes and all fire again
Thrice in a second, felt him tremble too,
And heard him muttering, ' So like, so
like;
She never had a sister. I kne"-' none.
Some cousin of his and hers — O God, so
like ! '
And then he suddenly ask'd her if she
were.
She shook, and cast her eyes down; and
was dumb.
And then some other question'd if she
came
From foreign lands, and still she did not
speak.
Another, if the boy were hers : but she
To all their queries answer'd not a word.
Which made the amazement more, till
one of them
Said, shuddering, ' Her spectre ! ' But
his friend
Replied, in half a whisper, * Not at least
The spectre that will speak if spoken to.
Terrible pity, if one so beautiful
Prove, as I almost dread to nnd her,
dumb ! '
But Julian, sitting by her, ans-'.^er'd all :
* She is but dumb, because in her you
see
That faitliful servant whom we spoke
about.
Obedient to her second master now;
Which will not last. I have here to-night
a guest
So bound to me by common love and
loss
What! shall I bind him mde.' in his
behalf.
Shall I exceed the Persian, giving him
That which of all things is the dearest to
me,
Not only showing? and he himself pro-
nounced
That my rich gift is wholly mine to give.
* Now all be dumb, and promise all of
you
Not to break in on what I say byword
Or whisper, while I show you all my
heart.'
And then began the story of his love
As here to-day, but not so wordily —
The passionate moment would not suffer
that —
Past thro' his visions to the burial; thence
Down to this last strange hour in his own
hall;
And then rose up, and with him all his
guests
Once more as by enchantment ; all but he,
Lionel, who fain had risen, but fell again.
And sat as if in chains — to whom he said :
•Take my free gift, my cousin, for
your wife;
And were it only for the giver's sake,
And tho' she seem so like the one you lost.
Yet cast her not away so suddenly.
Lest there be none left here to bring her
back :
I leave this land for ever.' Here he
ceased.
Then taking his dear lady by one
hand,
And bearing on one arm the noble babe,
He slowly brought them both to Lionel.
And there the widower husband and dead
wife
Rush'd each at each with a cry, that rather
seem'd
For some new death than for a life re-
new'd;
Whereat the very babe began to wail;
At once they turn'd, and caught and
brought him in
To their charm'd circle, and, half killing
him
With kisses, round him closed and claspt
again.
But Lionel, when at last he freed himself
From wife and child, and lifted up a face
All over glowing with the sun of life.
And love, and boundless thanks — the
sight of'this
So frighted our good friend, that turning
to me
And saying, ' It is over : let us go ' —
There were our horses ready at the
doors —
We bade them no farewell, but mounting
these
He past for ever from his native land;
And I with him, my Julian, back ta
mine.
490
THE FIRST QUARREL.
TO ALFRED TENNYSON
MY GRANDSON.
Golden-hair'd Ally whose name is one with
mine,
Crazy with laughter and babble and earth's new
wine,
Now that the flower of a year and a half is thine,
0 little blossom, O mine, and mine of mine,
Glorious poet who never hast written a line.
Laugh, for the name at the head of my verse is
thine.
May'st thou never be wrong'd by the name that
is mine!
THE FIRST QUARREL.
(in the isle of wight.)
I.
*Wait a little,' you say, *you are sure
it'll all come right,'
But the boy was born i' trouble, an' looks
so wan an' so white :
Wait ! an' once I ha' waited — I hadn't
to wait for long.
Now I wait, wait, wait for Harry. — No,
no, you are doing me wrong !
Harry and I were married : the boy can
hold up his head,
The boy was born in wedlock, but after
my man was dead ;
1 ha' work'd for him fifteen years, an' I
work an' I wait to the end.
1 am all alone in the world, an' you are
my only friend.
II.
Doctor, if you can wait, I'll tell you the
tale o' my life.
When Harry an' I were children, he call'd
me his own little wife;
I was happy when I was with him, an'
sorry when he was away.
An' when we play'd together, I loved him
better than play;
He workt me the daisy chain — he made
me the cowslip ball,
He fought the boys that were rude, an' I
loved him better than all.
Passionate girl tho' I was, an' often at
home in disgrace,
1 never could quarrel with Harry — I had
but to look in his face.
in.
There was a farmer in Dorset of Harry's
kin, that had need
Of a goorl stout lad at his farm; he sent,
an' llie father agreed;
So Harry was bound to the Dorsetshire
tarm for years an' for years;
I walked with him down to the quay,
poor lad, an' we parted in tears.
The boai was beginning to move, we
heard them a-ringing the bell,
* I'll never love any but you, God bless
you, my own little Nell.'
IV.
I was a child, an' he was a child, an' he
L3>.rie to harm;
There was a girl, a hussy, that workt with
him up at the farm.
One had deceived her an' left her alone
with her sin an' her shame,
An' so she was wicked with Harry; the
giri was the most to blame.
An' years went over till I that was little
had grown so tall.
The meii would say of the maids, 'Our
Nelly's the flower of 'em all.'
I didn't take heed o' them, but 1 taught
m.yself all I could
To make a good wife for Harry, when
Harry came home for good.
VI.
Often I seem'd unhappy, and often as
haopy too.
For I heard it abroad in the fields * I'll
never love any but you ; '
* I'll never love any but you ' the morning
song of the lark,
* I'll never love any but you ' the nightin-
gale's hymn in the dark.
And Harry came home at last, but he
lock'd at me sidelong and shy,
Vext me a bit, till he told me that so
many years had gone by,
I had grown so handsome and tall — that
I might ha' forgot him somehow —
For he thought — there were other lads —
he v/as fear'd to look at me now.
THE FIRST QUARREL.
491
VIII.
Hard was the frost in the field, we were
married o' Christmas dsy,
Married among the red berries, an' all as
merry as May —
Those were the pleasant times, my house
an' my man were my pride,
We seem'd like ships i' the Channel
a-sailing with wind an' tide.
IX.
But work was scant in the Isle, tho' he
tried the villages round,
So Harry went over the Solent to see if
work could be found;
An' he Avrote 'I ha' six weeks' work,
little wife, so far as I know;
I'll come for an hour to-morrow, an' kiss
you before I go.'
So I set to righting the house, for wasn't
he coming that day?
An' I hit on an old deal-box that was
push'd in a corner away,
It was full of old odds an' ends, an' a
r letter along wi' the rest,
\: I had better ha' put my naked hand in a
hornets' nest.
XI.
• Sweetheart' — this was the letter — this
was the letter I read —
' You promised to find me work near you,
an' I wish I was dead —
Didn't you kiss me an' -promise? you
haven't done it, my lad.
An' I almost died o' your going away,
an' I wish that I had.'
XII.
I too wish that I had — in the pleasant
times that had past,
Before I quarrell'd with Harry — my
quarrel — the first an' the last.
XIII.
For Harry came in, an' I flung him the
letter that drove me wild,
An' he told it me all at once, as simple
as any child,
* What can it matter, my lass, what I did
wi' my single life?
I ha' been as true to you as ever a man
to his wife;
An' she wasn't one o' the worst,' * Then,'
I said, ' I'm none o' the best.'
An' he smiled at me, ' Ain't you, my
love ? Come, come, little wife, let
it rest !
The man isn't like the woman, no need
to make such a stir.'
But he anger'd me all the more, an' I said
' You were keeping with her.
When I was a-loving you all along an'
the same as before.'
An' he didn't speak for a while, an' he
anger'd me more and more.
Then he patted my hand in his gentle
way, ' Let bygones be ! '
'Bygones! you kept yours hush'd,' I said,
• when you married me !
By-gones ma' be come-agains; an' she —
in her shame an' her sin —
You'll have her to nurse my child, if I
die o' my lying in !
You'll make her its second mother ! I
hate her — an' I hate you ! '
Ah, Harry, my man, you had better ha'
beaten me black an' blue
Than ha' spoken as kind as you did,
when I were so crazy wi' spite,
' Wait a little, my lass, I am sure it 'ill
all come right.'
An' he took three turns in the rain, an' I
watch'd him, an' when he came in
I felt that my heart was hard, he was all
wet thro' to the skin.
An' I never said ' off wi' the wet,' I never
said ' on wi' the dry,'
So I knew my heart w^s hard, when he
came to bid me goodbye.
* You said that you hated me, Ellen, but
that isn't true, you know;
I am going to leave you a bit — vou'U
kiss me before I go? '
' Going! you're going to her — kiss her
— if you will,' I said —
I was near my time wi' the boy, I must
ha' been light i' my head —
492
RIZPAH.
* I had sooner be cursed than kiss'd ! ' —
I didn't know well what I meant,
But I turn'd my face from him, an' he
turned his face an' he went.
XVI.
I've
And then he sent me a letter,
gotten my work to do;
You wouldn't kiss me, my lass, an' I
never loved any but you;
I am sorry for all the quarrel an' sorry
for what she wrote,
I ha' six weeks' work in Jersey an' go to-
night by the boat.'
An' the wind began to rise, an' I thought
of him out at sea.
An' I felt I had been to blame; he was
always kind to me.
* Wait a little, my lass, I am sure it 'ill
all come right ' —
An' the boat went down that night —
the boat went down that night.
RIZPAH.
17—-
Wailing, wailing, wailing, the wind over
land and sea —
And Willy's voice in the wind, ' O mother
come out to me.'
Why should he call me to-night, when
he knows that I cannot go?
For the downs are as bright as day, and
the full moon stares at the snow.
II.
We should be seen, my dear; they would
spy us out of the town.
The loud black nights for us, and the
storm rushing over the down.
When I cannot see my own hand, but
am led by the creak of the chain,
And grovel and grope for my son till I
find myself drenched with the
rain.
III.
Anything fallen again ? nay — what was
there left to fall?
I have taken them home, I have num-
ber'd the bones, I have hidden
them all.
What am I saying? and what are you?
do you come as a spy?
Falls? what falls? who knows? As the
tree falls so must it lie.
IV.
Who let her in? how long has she been?
you — what have you heard?
Why did you sit so quiet? you never have
spoken a word.
O — to pray with me — yes — a lady —
none of their spies —
But the "ight has crept into my heart,
and begun to darken my eyes.
V.
Ah — you, that have lived so soft, what
should you know of the night.
The blast and the burning shame and the
bitter frost and the fright?
I have dene it, while you were asleep —
you were only made for the day.
I have gather'd my baby together — and
now you may go your way.
Nay — for it's kind of you. Madam, to
sit by an old dying wife.
But say nothing hard of my boy, I have
only an hour of life.
I kiss'd my boy in the prison, before he
went out to die.
* They dared me to do it,' he said, and he
never has told me a lie.
I whipt him for robbing an orchard once
when he was but a child —
* The farmer dared me to do it,' he said;
he was always so wild —
And idle — and couldn't be idle — my
Willy — he never could rest.
The King should have made him a sol-
dier, he would have been one of
his best.
RIZPAH.
493
VII.
But he lived with a lot of wild ma.tes, and
they never would let hin'i be good;
They swore that he dare not rob the
mail, and he swore that iie would;
And he took no life, but he rook one
purse, and when all was done
He flung it among his fellows — I'll none
of it, said my son.
VIII.
I came into court to the Judg** and the
lawyers. I told them my tale,
God's own truth — but they kill'd him,
they kill'd him for robbing the
mail.
They hang'd him in chains for a show —
we had always borne a good
name —
To be hang'd for a thief — and then put
away — isn't that enoug'ri shame?
Dust to dust — low down — let us hide !
but they set him so high
That all the ships of the v/crld could
stare at him, passing by.
God 'ill pardon the hell-black raven and
horrible fowls of the air,
But not the black heart of the lawyer who
kill'd him and hang'd 'him there.
IX.
And the jailer forced me away. I had
bid him my last goodbye;
They had fasten'd the door of his cell.
* O mother ! ' I heard him cry.
I couldn't get back tho' I tried, he had
something further to say,
And now I never shall know it. The
jailer forced me away.
X.
Then since I couldn't but hear that cry
of my boy that was dead,
They seized me and shut me up : they
fasten'd me down on my bed.
* Mother, O mother ' ' — he call'd in the
dark to me year after year —
They beat me for that, they beat me —
you know that I couldn't but hear;
And then at the last they found I had
grown so stupid and still
They let me abroad again — but the
creatures had worked their will.
XI.
Flesh of my flesh was gone, but bone of
my bone was left — .
I stole them all from the lawyers — and
you, will you call it a theft? —
My baby, the bones that had suck'd me,
the bones that had laugh'd and
had cried —
Theirs ? O no ! they are mine — not theirs
— they had moved in my side.
Do you think I was scared by the bones?
I kiss'd 'em, 1 buried 'em all —
I can't dig deep, I am old — in the night
by the churchyard wall.
My Willy 'ill rise up whole when the
trumpet of judgment 'ill sound;
But I charge you never to say that I laid
him in holy ground.
They would scratch him up — they would
hang him again on the cursed
tree.
Sin? O yes — we are sinners, I know —
let all that be.
And read me a Bible verse of the Lord's
good will toward men —
* P'ull of compassion and mercy, the Lord '
— let me hear it again;
* Full of compassion and mercy — long-
suffering.' Yes, O yes !
For the lawyer is born but to murder —
the Saviour lives but to bless.
^<?'ll never put on the black cap except
for the worst of the worst,
And the first may be last — I have heard
it in church — and the last may
be first.
Suff"ering — O long-suffering — yes, as the
Lord must know,
Year after year in the mist and the wind
and the shower and the snow.
494
THE NORTHERN COBBLER.
Heard, have you? what? they have told
you he never repented his sin.
How do they know it? are they his
mother? 2x0. you of his kin?
Heard ! have you ever heard, M'hen the
storm on the downs began,
The wind that 'ill wail like a child and
the sea that 'ill moan like a man?
XV.
Election, Election and Reprobation — it's
all very well.
But I go to-night to my boy, and I shall
not find him in Hell.
For I cared so much for my boy that the
Lord has look'd into my care,
And He means me I'm sure to be happy
with Willy, I- know not where.
And if he be lost — but to save my soul,
that is all your desire :
Do you think that I care for my soul if
my boy be gone to the fire?
I have been w- ith God in the dark — go,
go, you may leave me alone —
You never have borne a child — you- are
just as hard as a stone.
Madam, I beg your pardon ! I think
that you mean to be kind,
But I cannot hear what you say for my
Willy's voice in the wind —
The snow and the sky so bright — he used
but to call in the dark.
And he calls to me now from the church
and not from the gibbet — for
hark !
Nay — you can hear it yourself — it is
coming — shaking the walls —
Willy — the moon's in a cloud — Good-
night. I am going. He calls.
THE NORTHERN COBBLER.
I.
Waait till our Sally cooms in, fur thou
niun a' sights ^ to tell.
Eh, but I be maain glad to seea tha sa
'arty an' well.
* Cast awaay on a disolut land wi' a
vartical soon ^ ! '
Strange fur to goa fur to think what
saaiiors a' seean an' a' doon ;
* Summat to drink — sa' 'ot? ' I 'a nowt
but Adam's wine:
What's the 'eat o' this little 'ill-side to the
'eat o' the line?
'What's i' tha bottle a stanning theer?'
I'll tell tha. Gin.
But if thou wants thy grog, tha mun goa
fur it down to the inn.
Naay — fur I be maain-glad, but thaw tha
was iver sa dry.
Thou gits naw gin fro' the bottle theer,
an' I'll tell tha why.
Mea an' thy sister was married, when
wur it? back-end o' June,
Ten year sin', and wa 'greed as well as a
fiddle i' tune :
I could fettle and clump owd booots and
shoes wi' the best on 'em all,
As fer as fro' Thursby thurn hup to
Harmsby and Hutterby Hall.
We was busy as beeas i' the bloom an' as
'appy as 'art could think.
An' then the babby wur burn, and then
I taakes to the drink.
IV.
An' I wcant gaainsaay it, my lad, thaw
I be hafe shaamed on it now.
We could sing a good song at the Plow,
we could sing a good song at the
Plow;
Thaw once of a frosty night I slither'd an'
hurted my huck,^
An' I cuom'd neck-an'-crop soomtimes
slaape down i' the squad an' the
muck:
1 The vowels a'i, pronounced separately though
in the closest conjunction, best render the sound
of the long i and y in this dialect. But since such
words as crcain' , da'ihi', what, a'i (I), etc , look
awkward except in a page of express phonetics,
I have thought it better to leave the simple i and
y, and to trust that my readers will give them the
broader pronunciation.
2 The 00 short, as in * wood.' "^ Hip.
THE NORTHERN COBBLER.
495
An' once I fowt wi' the Taailor — not
hafe ov a man, my lad —
Fur he scravvm'd an' scratted my faace
like a cat, an' it maade 'sr sa mad
That Sally she turn'd a tongue-banger,^
an' raated ma, ' Sottin' thy Braains
Guzzlin' an' soakin' an' smoakin' an'
hawmin' ^ about i' the laanes,
Soa sow-droonk that tha doesn not touch
thy 'at to the Squire; '
An' I loook'd cock-eyed at my noase an'
I seead 'im a-gittin' o' fire;
But sin' I wur hallus i' liquor an" hallus
as droonk as a king,
Foalks' coostom flitted awaay like a kite
wi' a brokken string.
An' Sally she wesh'd foalks' cloaths to
keep the wolf fro' the door,
Eh but the moor she riled me, she druv
me to drink the moor,
Fur I fun', when 'er back wur turn'd,
wheer Sally's owd stockin' wur 'id.
An' I grabb'd the munny she maade, and
I wear'd it o' liquor, I did.
An' one night I cooras 'oam like a bull
gotten loose at a faair,
An' she wur a-waaitin' fo'mma, an' cryin'
and tearin' 'er 'aair,
An' I tummled athurt the craadle an'
swear'd as I'd break ivry stick
O' furnitur 'ere i' the 'ouse, an' I gied
our Sally a kick,
An' I mash'd the taables an' chairs, an'
she an' the babby beal'u,'
Fur I knaw'd naw moor what I did nor
a mortal beast o' the feald.
An' when I waaked i' the murnin' I seead
that our Sally went laamed
Cos' o' the kick as I gied 'er, an' I wur
dreadful ashaamed;
An' Sally wur sloomy * an' draggle taail'd
in an owd turn gown.
An' the babby's faace wurnt v.'-ish'il an'
the 'ole 'ouse hupsiile down.
* Scold. ^ Lounging. ^ Bellowed, cried out.
* Sluggish, out of spirits
VIII.
An' then I minded our Sally sa pratty
an' neat an' sweeat,
Straat as a pole an' clean as a flower fro'
'ead to feeat :
An' then I minded the fust kiss I gied
'er by Thursby thurn;
Theer wur a lark a-singin' 'is best of a
Sunday at mum,
Couldn't see 'im, we 'eard 'im a-mountin'
oop 'igher an' 'igher.
An' then 'e turn'd to the sun, an' 'e
shined like a sparkle o' fire.
' Doesn't tha see 'im,' she axes, * fur I
can see 'im? ' an' I
Seead nobbut the smile o' the sun as
danced in 'er pratty blue eye;
An' I says, ' I mun gie tha a kiss,' an'
Sally says *Noa, thou moant,'
But I gied 'er a kiss, an' then anoother,
an' Sally says 'doant ! '
IX.
at
An' when we coom'd into Meeatin .
fust she wur all in a tew,
But, arter, we sing'd the 'ymn togither
like birds on a beugh;
An' Muggins 'e preach'd o' Hell-fire an'
the loov o' God fur men,
An' then upo' coomin' awaay Sally gied
me a kiss ov 'ersen.
Heer wur a fall fro' a kiss to a kick like
Saatan as fell
Down out o' heaven i' Hell-fire — thaw
theer's naw drinkin' i' Hell;
Mea fur to kick our Sally as kep the wolf
fro' the door,
All along o' the drink, fur I loov'd 'er
as well as afoor.
Sa like a great num-cumpus I blubber' d
awaay o' the bed —
' Weant niver do it naw moor;' an'
Sally loookt up an' she said,
'I'll upowd it^ tha weiint; thou'rt like
the rest o' the men,
1 I'll uphold it.
496
THE NORTHERN COBBLER.
Thou'll goa sniffin' about the tap till tha
An' some on 'em said it wur watter — an
does it agean.
I wur chousiu' the wife,
Theer's thy hennemy, man, an' I knaws,
Fur I cculdn't 'owd 'ands off gin, wur it
as knaws tha sa well,
nobbut to saave my life ;
That, if tha seeas 'im an' smells 'im tha'll
An' blacksmith 'e strips me the thick ov
foller 'im slick into Hell.'
' 'is airm, an' 'e shaws it to me,
' Feeal thou this ! thou can't graw this
XII.
y-.-^io'' watter ! ' says he.
An' Doctor 'e calls 0' Sunday an' just as
* Naay,' says I, * fur I weant goa sniffin'
candles was lit,
about the tap.'
'Thou -.-noant do it,' he says, 'tha mun
'Weant tha?' she says, an' mysen I
break 'im off bit by bit.'
thowt i' mysen * mayhap.'
'Thou'rt but a Methody-man,' says Par-
* Noa : ' an' I started awaay like a shot.
soii, and laays down 'is 'at,
an' down to the Hinn,
An' 'e 'points to the bottle 0' gin, ' but I
An' I browt what tha seeas stannin' theer,
lespecks tha fur that;'
yon big black bottle o' gin.
An' Squire, his oan very sen, walks down
fro' the 'All to see.
XIII.
An' 'e spanks 'is 'and into mine, ' fur I
respecks tha,' says 'e;
* That caps owt,' i says Sally, an' saw she
An' coostom agean draw'd in like a wind
begins to cry,
fro' far an' wide,
But I puts it inter 'er 'ands an' I says to
And browt me the booots to be cobbled
'er, * Sally,' says I,
fro' hafe the coontryside.
'Stan' 'im theer, i' the naame o' the Lord
an' the power ov 'is Graace,
XVI.
Stan' 'im theer fur I'll loook my hennemy
strait i' the faace,
An' theer 'e stans an' theer 'e shall stan
Stan' 'im theer i' the winder, an' let ma
to my dying daay;
loook at 'im then.
I 'a goticn to loov 'im agean in anoother
'E seeams naw moor nor watter, an' 'e's
kind of a waay.
the Divil's oan sen.'
Proud on 'im, like, my lad, an' I keeaps
'iiii clean an' bright.
XIV.
Loovs 'im, an' roobs 'im, an' doosts 'im,
an' puts 'im back i' the light.
An' I wur down i' tha mouth, couldn't do
naw work an' all,
XVII.
Nasty an' snaggy an' shaaky, an' poonch'd
my 'and wi' the hawl,
Wouldn't a pint a' sarved as well as a
But she wur a power o' coomfut, an'
quart? Naw doubt:
Battled 'ersen o' my knee,
But I liked a bigger feller to fight wi' an'
An' coaxd an' coodled me oop till agean
fowt it out.
I feel'd mysen free.
Fine an' jneller 'e mun be by this, if I
cared to taaste,
XV.
But I moant, my lad, and I weant, fur
I'd feal mysen clean disgraaced.
An' Sally she tell'd it about, an' foalk
stood a-gawmin' 2 in'
XVIII.
As thaw it wur summat bewitch'd istead
of a quart 0' gin;
An' once I said to the Missis, * My lass.
when I cooms to die,
» That's beyond everything.
Smash the bottle to smithers, the Divil's
2 Staring vacantly.
in 'im,' said I.
THE REVENGE.
497
But arter I chaanged my mind, an' if
Sally he left aloan,
I'll hev 'im a-buried wi'mma an' taake
'im afoor the Throan.
Coom thou 'eer — yon laady a-steppin
along the streeat,
Doesn't tha knaw 'er — sa pratty, an'
feat, an' neat, an' sweeat?
Look at the cloaths on 'er back, thebbe
ammost spick-span-new,
An' Tommy's faace be as fresh as a codlin
wesh'd i' the dew.
'Ere be our Sally an' Tommy, an' we be
a-goin' to dine,
Baacon an' taates, an' a beslings-pud-
din' 1 an' Adam's wine ;
But if tha wants ony grog tha mun goa
fur it down to the Hinn,
Fur I weant shed a drop on 'is blood,
noa, not fur Sally's oan kin.
THE REVENGE.
A BALLAD OF THE FLEET.
At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard
Grenville lay.
And a pinnace, like a flutter'd bird, came
flying from far away :
* Spanish ships of war. at sea ! we have
sighted fifty-three ! '
Then sware Lord Thomas Howard :
' 'Fore God I am no coward;
But I cannot meet them here, for my
ships are out of gear,
And the half my men are sick. I must
fly, but follow quick.
We are six ships of the line; can we
fight with fifty-three?'
II.
Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: 'I
know you are no coward;
You fly them for a moment to fight with
them again.
1 A pudding made with the first milk of the
cow after calving.
2K
But I've ninety men and more that are
lying sick ashore.
I should CO ant myself the coward if I
left them, my Lord Howard,
To these Inquisition Jogs and the devil-
doms of Spain.'
III.
So Lord Howard past away with five
ships of war that day.
Till he melted like a cloud in the silent
summer heaven;
But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick
men from the land
Very carefully and slow.
Men of Bideford in Devon,
And we laid them on the ballast down
below ;
For we brought them all aboard,
And they blest him in their pain, that
they were not left to Spain,
To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the
glory of the Lord.
He had only a hundred seamen t6 work
the ship and to fight.
And he sailed away from Flores till the
Spaniard came in sight.
With his huge sea-castles heaving upon
the weather bow.
' Shall we fight or shall we fly?
Good Sir Richard, tell us now,
Por to fight is but to die !
There'll be little of us left by the time
this sun be set.'
And Sir Richard said again : * We be all
good English men.
Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the
children of the devil.
For I never turn'd my back upon Don or
devil yet.'
V.
Sir Richard spoke and he laugh'd, and
we roar'd a hurrah, and so
The little Revenge ran on sheer into the
heart of the foe,
With her hundred fitjliters on deck, and
her ninety sick below;
498
THE REVENGE.
For half of their fleet to the right and
half to the left were seen,
And the little Revenge ran on thro' the
long sea-lane between.
VI.
Thousands of their soldiers look'd down
from their decks and laugh'd,
Thousands of their seamen made mock
at the mad little craft
Running on and on, till delay'd
By their mountain-like San Philip that,
of fifteen hundred tons,
And up-shadowing high above us with
her yawning tiers of guns,
Took the breath from our sails, and we
stay'd.
VII.
And while now the great San Philip
hung above us like a cloud
"Whence the thunderbolt will fall
Long and loud,
Four galleons drew away
From the Spanish fleet that day,
And two upon the larboard and two upon
the starboard lay.
And the battle-thunder broke from them
all.
But anon the great San Philip, she be-
thought herself and went
Having that within her womb that had
left her ill content;
And the rest they came aboard us, and
they fought us hand to hand,
For a dozen times they came with their
pikes and musqueteers.
And a dozen times we shook 'em off as a
dog that shakes his ears
When he leaps from the water to the land.
IX.
And the sun went down, and the stars
came out far over the summer sea.
But never a moment ceased the fight of
the one and the fifty-three.
Ship after ship, the whole night long,
their high-built galleons came.
Ship after ship, the whole night long,
with her battle-thunder and flame;
Ship after ship, the whole night long,
drew back with her dead and het
shame.
For some were sunk and many were
shatter'd, and so could fight us no
more —
God of battles, was ever a battle like this
in the world before?
For he said * Fight on ! fight on ! '
Tho' his vessel was all but a wreck;
And it chanced that, when half of the
short summer night was gone,
With a grisly wound to be drest he had
left the deck,
But a bullet struck him that was dressing
it suddenly dead.
And himself he was wounded again in
the side and the head.
And he said * Fight on ! fight on ! '
XI.
And the night went down, and the sun
smiled out far over the summer sea,
And the Spanish fleet with broken sides
lay round us all in a ring;
But they dared not touch us again, for
they fear'd that we still could
sting.
So they watch'd what the end would be.
And we had not fought them in vain,
But in perilous plight were we.
Seeing forty of our poor hundred were
slain,
And half of the rest of us maim'd for life
In the crash of the cannonades and the
desperate strife;
And the sick men down in the hold were
most of them stark and cold,
And the pikes were all broken or bent,
and the powder was all of it spent;
And the masts and the rigging were
lying over the side;
But Sir Richard cried in his English pride,
* We have fought such a fight for a day
and a night
As may never be fought again !
We have won great glory, my men !
And a day less or more
At sea or ashore.
We die — does it matter when?
TFIE SISTERS.
499
Sink me the ship, Master Gunner — sink
her, split her in twain !
Fall into the hands of God, not into the
hands of Spain ! '
XII.
And the gunner said *Ay, ay,' but the
seamen made reply :
' We have children, we have wives,
And the Lord hath spared our lives.
We will make the Spaniard promise, if
we yield, to let us go;
We shall live to fight again and to strike
another blow.'
And the lion there lay dying, and they
yielded to the foe.
XIII.
And the stately Spanish men to their
flagship bore him then,
Where they laid him by the mast, old
Sir Richard caught at last,
And they praised him to his face with
their courtly foreign grace;
But he rose upon their decks, and he cried :
* I have fought for Queen and Faith like
a valiant man and true;
I have only done my duty as a man is
bound to do :
With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Gren-
ville die ! '
And he fell upon their decks, and he died.
XIV.
And they stared at the dead that had
been so valiant and true.
And had holden the power and glory of
Spain so cheap
That he dared her with one little ship
and his English few;
Was he devil or man? He was devil
for aught they knew.
But they sank his body with honour down
into the deep.
And they mann'd the Revenge with a
swarthier alien crew,
And away she sail'd with her loss and
long'd for her own;
When a wind from the lands they had
ruin'd awoke from sleep.
And the water began to heave and the
weather to moan.
And or ever that evening ended a great
gale blew.
And a wave like the wave that is raised
by an earthquake grew.
Till it smote on their hulls and their sails
and their masts and their flags.
And the whole sea plunged and fell on
the shot-shatter'd navy of Spain,
And the little Revenge herself went down
by the island crags
To be lost evermore in the main.
THE SISTERS.
They have left the doors ajar; and by
their clash.
And prelude on the keys, I know the
song.
Their favourite — which I call ' The Tables
Turned.'
Evelyn begins it * O diviner Air.'
EVELYN.
O diviner Air,
Thro' the heat, the drowth, the dust, the
glare,
Far from out the west in shadowing
showers.
Over all the meadow baked and bare,
Making fresh and fair
All the bowers and the flowers,
Fainting flowers, faded bowers,
Over all this weary world of ours.
Breathe, diviner Air !
A sweet voice that — you scarce could
better that.
Now follows Edith echoing Evelyn.
EDITH.
O diviner light.
Thro' the cloud that roofs our noon with
night,
Thro' the blotting mist, the blinding
showers,
Far from out a sky for ever bright,
Over all the woodland's flooded bowers.
Over all the meadow's drowning flowers,
Over all this ruin'd world of ours.
Break, diviner light !
500
THE SISTERS.
Marvellously like, their voices — and
themselves !
Tho' one is somewhat deeper than the
other,
As one is somewhat graver than the
other —
Edith than Evelyn. Your good Uncle,
whom
You count the father of your fortune,
longs
For this alliance : let me ask you then,
Which voice most takes you? for I do
not doubt
Being a watchful parent, you are taken
With one or other : tho' sometimes I
fear
You may be flickering, fluttering in a
doubt
Between the two — which must not be —
which might
Be death to one : they both are beautiful :
Evelyn is gayer, wittier, prettier, says
The common voice, if one may trust it :
she?
No ! but the paler and the graver, Edith.
Woo her and gain her then : no waver-
ing, boy !
The graver is perhaps the one for you
Who jest and laugh so easily and so well.
For love will go by contrast, as by likes.
No sisters ever prized each other more.
Not so : their mother and her sister loved
More passionately still.
But that my best
And oldest friend, yout Uncle, wishes it.
And that I know you worthy everyway
To be my son, I might, perchance, be loath
To part them, or part from them : and
yet one
Should marry, or all the broad lands in
your view
From this bay window — which our house
has held
Three hundred years — will pass collater-
ally.
My father with a child on either knee,
A hand upon the head of either child.
Smoothing their locks, as golden as his
own
Were silver, * get them wedded ' would
he say.
And once my prattling Edith ask'd him
'why?'
Ay, why? said he, 'for why should I go
lame ? '
Then told them of his wars, and of his
wound.
For see — this wine — the grape from
whence it flow'd
Was blackening on the slopes of Portugal,
When that brave soldier, down the terrible
ridge
Plunged in the last fierce charge at
Waterloo,
And caught the laming bullet. He left
me this.
Which yet retains a memory of its youth.
As I of mine, and my first passion.
Come !
Here's to your happy union with my child !
Yet must you change your name : no
fault of mine !
You say that you can do it as willingly
As birds make ready for their bridal-
time
By change of feather: for all that, my
boy.
Some birds are sick and sullen when they
moult.
An old and worthy name ! but mine that
stirr'd
Among our civil wars and earlier too
Among the Roses, the more venerable.
/ care not for a name — no fault of mine.
Once more — a happier marriage than my
own !
You see yon Lombard poplar on the
plain.
The highway running by it leaves a breadth
Of sward to left and right, where, long
ago.
One bright May morning in a world of
song,
I lay at leisure, watching overhead
The aerial poplar wave, an amber spire.
I dozed; I woke. An open landaulet
^yhir^d by, which, after it had past me,
show'd
Turning my way, the loveliest face on
earth.
The face of one there sitting opposite,
THE SISTERS.
501
On whom I brought a strange unhappi-
ness.
That time I did not see.
Love at first sight
May seem — with goodly rhyme and
reason for it —
Possible — at first glimpse, and for a face
Gone in a moment — strange. Yet once,
when first
I came on lake Llanberris in the dark,
A moonless night with storm — one light-
ning-fork
Flash'd out the lake; and tho' I loiter'd
there
The full day after, yet in retrospect
That less than momentary thunder-sketch
Of lake and mountain conquers all the
day.
The Sun himself has limn'd the face
for me.
Not quite so quickly, no, nor half as well.
For look you here — the shadows are too
deep.
And like the critic's blurring comment
make
The veriest beauties of the work appear
The darkest faults : the sweet eyes frown :
the lips
Seem but a gash. My sole memorial
Of Edith — no, the other, — both indeed.
So that bright face was flash'd thro'
sense and soul
And by the poplar vanish'd — to be found
Long after, as it seem'd, beneath the
tall
Tree-bowers, and those long-sweeping
beechen boughs
Of our New Forest. I was there alone :
The phantom of the whirling landaulet
For ever past me by : when one quick
peal
Of laughter drew me thro' the glimmer-
ing glades
Down to the snowlike sparkle of a cloth
On fern and foxglove. Lo, the face again.
My Rosalind in this Arden — Edith — all
One bloom of youth, health, beauty,
happiness.
And moved to merriment at a passing
jest.
There one of those about her knowing
me
Call'd me to join them; so with these I
spent
What seem'd my crowning hour, my day
of days.
I woo'd her then, nor unsuccessfully,
The worse for her, for me ! was I content?
Ay — no, not quite ; for now and then I
thought
Laziness, vague love-longings, the bright
May,
Had made a heated haze to magnify
The charm of Edith — that a man's ideal
Is high in Heaven, and lodged with
Plato's God,
Not findable here — content, and not con-
tent.
In some such fashion as a man may be
That having had the portrait of his friend
Drawn by an artist, looks at it, and says,
* Good ! very like ! not altogether he.'
As yet I had not bound myself by
words.
Only believing I loved Edith, made
Edith love 7ne. Then came the day
when I,
Flattering myself that all my doubts were
fools
Born of the fool this Age that doubts of
all —
Not I that day of Edith's love or mine —
Had braced my purpose to declare my-
self:
I stood upon the stairs of Paradise.
The golden gates would open at a word.
I spoke it — told her of my passion, seen
And lost and found again, had got so
far.
Had caught her hand, her eyelids fell —
I heard
Wheels, and a noise of welcome at the*
doors —
On a sudden after two Italian years
Had set the blossom of her health again,
The younger sister, Evelyn, enter'd —
there.
There was the face, and altogether she.
The mother fell about the daughter's
neck,
The sisters closed in one another's arms.
502
THE SISTERS.
Their people throng'd about them from
the hall,
And in the thick of question and reply
I fled the house, driven by one angel face
And all the Furies. .
I was bound to her;
I could not free myself in honour — bound
Not by the sounded letter of the word,
But counterpressures of the yielded hand
That timorously and faintly echoed mine,
Quick blushes, the sweet dwelling of her
eyes
Upon me when she thought I did not
see —
Were these not bonds? nay, nay, but
could I wed her
Loving the other? do her that great
wrong?
Had 1 not dream'd I loved her yester-
morn?
Had I not known where Love, at first a
fear,
Grew after marriage to full height and
form?
Yet after marriage, that mock-sister
there —
Brother-in-law — thefiery nearness of it —
Unlawful and disloyal brotherhood —
What end but darkness could ensue from
this
For all the three? So Love and Honour
jarr'd
Tho' Love and Honour join'd to raise
the full
High-tide of doubt that sway'd me up
and down
Advancing nor retreating.
Edith wrote :
* My mother bids me ask ' (I did not tell
you —
A widow with less guile than many a
child.
God help the wrinkled children that are
Christ's
As well as the plump cheek — she wrought
us harm.
Poor soul, not knowing) 'are you ill?'
(so ran
The letter) * you have not been here of
late.
You will not find me here. At last I go
On that long-promised visit to the North,
I told your wayside story to my mother
And Evelyn. She remembers you.
Farewell.
Pray come and see my mother. Almost
blind
With ever-growing cataract, yet she thinks
She sees you when she hears. Again
farewell.'
Cold words from one I had hoped to
warm so far
That I could stamp my image on her
heart !
' Pray come and see my mother, and
farewell.'
Cold, but as welcome as free airs of
heaven
After a dungeon's closeness. Selfish,
strange !
What dwarfs are men ! my strangled
vanity
Utter'd a stifled cry — to have vext myself
And all in vain for her — cold heart or
none —
No bride for me. Yet so my path was
clear
To win the sister.
Whom I woo'd and won.
For Evelyn knew not of my former suit,
Because the simple mother work'd upon
By Edith pray'd me not to whisper of it.
And Edith would be bridesmaid on the
day.
But on that day, not being all at ease,
I from the altar glancing back upon her,
Before the first ' I will ' was utter'd, saw
The bridesmaid pale, statuelike, passion-
less —
' No harm, no harm,' I turn'd again, and
placed
My ring upon the finger of my bride.
So, when we parted, Edith spoke no
word,
She wept no tear, but round my Evelyn
clung
In utter silence for so long, I thought,
* What, will she never set her sister free? '
We left her, happy each in each, and
then,
As tho' the happiness of each in each
THE SISTERS.
503
Were not enough, must fain have torrents,
lakes.
Hills, the great things of Nature and the
fair.
To lift us as it were from commonplace,
And help us to our joy. Better have
sent
Our Edith thro' the glories of the earth,
To change with her horizon, if true Love
Were not his own imperial all-in-all.
Far off we went. My God, I would not
live
Save that I think this gross hard-seem-
ing world
Is our misshaping vision of the Powers
Behind the world, that make our griefs
our gains.
For on the dark night of our marriage-
day
The great Tragedian, that had quench'd
herself
In that assumption of the bridesmaid —
she
That loved me — our true Edith — her
brain broke
With over-acting, till she rose and fled
Beneath a pitiless rush of Autumn rain
To the deaf church — to be let in — to
pray
Before that altar — so I think; and there
They found her beating the hard Protes-
tant doors.
She died and she was buried ere we knew.
I learnt it first. I had to speak. At
once
The bright quick smile of Evelyn, that
had sunn'd
The morning of our marriage, past away :
And on our home-return the daily want.
Of Edith in the house, the garden, still
Haunted us like her ghost; and by and
by,
Either from that necessity for talk
Which lives with blindness, or plain in-
nocence
Of nature, or desire that her lost child
Should earn from both the praise of
heroism,
The mother broke her promise to the
dead.
And told the living daughter with what
love
Edith had welcomed my brief wooing of
her,
And all her sweet self-sacrifice and
death.
Henceforth that mystic bond betwixt
the twins —
Did I not tell you they were twins? —
prevail'd
So far that no caress could win my wife
Back to that passionate answer of full
heart
I had from her at first. Not that her
love,
Tho' scarce as great as Edith's power of
love.
Had lessen'd, but the mother's garrulous
wail
For ever woke the unhappy Past again.
Till that dead bridesmaid, meant to be
my bride,
Put forth cold hands between us, and I
fear'd
The very fountains of her life were chill'd ;
So took her thence, and brought her here,
and here
She bore a child, whom reverently we
caird
Edith ; and in the second year was born
A second — this I named from her own
self,
Evelyn; then two weeks — no more —
she joined.
In and beyond the grave, that one she
loved.
Now in this quiet of declining life.
Thro' dreams by night and trances of the
day.
The sisters glide about me hand in hand,
Both beautiful alike, nor can I tell
One from the other, no, nor care to tell
One from the other, only know they
come,
They smile upon me, till, remembering
all
The love they both have born me, and
the love
I bore them both — divided as I am
From either by the stillness of the grave —
I know not which of these I love the
best.
S04
THE VILLAGE WIFE; OR, THE ENTAIL.
Bntyou love Edith; and her own true
eyes
Are traitors to her; our quick Evelyn —
The merrier, prettier, wittier, as they talk,
And not without good reason, my good
son —
Is yet untouch'd : and I that hold them
both
Dearest of all things — well, I am not
sure —
But if there lie a preference eitherway.
And in the rich vocabulary of Love
' Most dearest ' be a true superlative —
I think / likewise love your Edith most.
THE VILLAGE WIFE; OR, THE
ENTAIL.1
'OUSE-KEEPER Sent tha my lass, fur New
Squire coom'd last night.
Butter an' heggs — yis — yis. I'll goa wi'
tha back: all right;
Butter I warrants be prime, an' I war-
rants the heggs be as well,
Hafe a pint o' milk runs out when ya
breaks the shell.
Sit thysen down fur a bit : hev a glass o'
cowslip wine !
I liked the owd Squire an' 'is gells as
thaw they was gells o' mine,
Fur then we was all es one, the Squire
an' 'is darters an' me.
Hall but Miss Annie, the heldest, I niver
not took to she :
But Nelly, the last of the cletch,2 I liked
'er the fust on 'em all.
Fur hoffens we talkt o' my darter es died
o' the fever at fall :
An' I thowt 'twur the will o' the Lord, but
Miss Annie she said it wur draains.
Fur she hedn't naw coomfut in 'er, an'
arn'd naw thanks fur 'er paains.
Eh? thebbe all wi' the Lord my childer,
I han't gotten none !
Sa new Squire's coom'd wi' 'is taail in 'is
'and, an' owd Squire's gone.
1 See note to * Northern Cobbler.'
2 A brood of chickens.
III.
Fur 'staate be i' taail, my lass : tha dosn'
, knaw what that be?
But I knaws the law, I does, for the law-
yer ha towd it me.
* When theer's naw 'ead to a 'Ouse by
the fault o' that ere maale —
The gells they counts fur nowt, and the
next un he taakes the taail,'
IV.
What be the next un like? can tha tell
ony harm on 'im, lass? —
Naay sit down — naw 'urry — sa cowd ! —
hev another glass !
Straange an' cowd fur the time ! we may
happen a fall o' snaw —
Not es I cares fur to hear ony harm, but
I likes to knaw.
An' I 'oaps es 'e beant boooklarn'd : but
'e dosn' not coom fro' the shere;
We'd anew o' that wi' the Squire, an' we
haates boooklarnin' 'ere.
^ V.
Fur Squire wur a Varsity scholard, an'
niver lookt arter the land —
Whoats or tonups or taates — 'e 'ed hallus
a boook i' 'is 'and,
Hallus aloan wi' 'is boooks, thaw nigh
upo' seventy year.
An' boooks, what's boooks? thou knaws
thebbe naither 'ere nor theer.
VI.
An' the gells, they hedn't naw taails, an'
the lawyer he towd it me
That 'is taail were soa tied up es he
couldn't cut down a tree !
' Drat the trees,' says I, to be sewer I
haates 'em, my lass.
Fur we puts the muck o' the land an'
they sucks the muck fro' the j
An' Squire wur hallus a-smilin', an' gied
to the tramps goin' by —
An' all o' the wust i' the parish — wi'
hoffens a drop in 'is eye.
THE VILLAGE WIFE; OR, THE ENTAIL.
505
An' ivry darter o' Squire's hed her awn
ridin-erse to 'ersen,
An' they rampaged about vvi' their grooms,
an' was 'untin' arter the men,
An' hallus a-dallackt ^ an' dizen'd out, an'
a-buyin' new cloathes,
While 'e sit like a great glimmer-gowk ^
wi' 'is glasses athurt 'is noase,
An' 'is noase sa grufted wi' snufif es it
couldn't be scroob'd awaay,
Fur atween 'is readin' an' writin' 'e snifft
up a box in a daay,
An' 'e niver runn'd arter the fox, nor
arter the birds wi' 'is gun.
An' 'e niver not shot one 'are, but 'e
leaved it to Charlie 'is son.
An' 'e niver not fish'd 'is awn ponds, but
Charlie 'e cotch'd the pike.
For 'e warn't not burn to the land, an' 'e
didn't take kind to it Hke;
But I 'ears es 'e'd gie fur a howry ^ owd
book thutty pound an' moor,
An' 'e'd wrote an owd book, 'is awn sen,
sa 1 knaw'd es 'e'd coom to be poor ;
An' 'e gied — I be fear'd fur to tell tha 'ow
much — fur an owd scratted stoan,
An' 'e digg'd up a loomp i' the land an'
'e got a brown pot an' a boan.
An' 'e bowt owd money, es wouldn't goa,
wi' good gowd o' the Queen,
An' 'e bowt little statutes all-naakt an'
which was a shaame to be seen;
But 'e niver loookt ower a bill, nor 'e
niver not seed to owt.
An' 'e niver knawd nowt but boooks, an'
boooks, as thou knaws, beant nowt.
But owd Squire's laady es long es she
lived she kep 'em all clear.
Thaw es long es she lived I niver hed
none of 'er darters 'ere;
But arter she died we was all es one, the
childer an' me,
An' sarvints runn'd in an' out, an' oifens
we hed 'em to tea.
Lawk ! 'ow I laugh'd when the lasses 'ud
talk o' their Missis's waays,
An' the Missisis talk'd o.' the lasses. —
I'll tell tha some o' these daays.
1 Overdrest in gay colours.
3 Fihhy.
2 Owl.
Hoanly Miss Annie were saw stuck oop,
like 'er mother afoor —
'Er an' 'er blessed darter — they niver
derken'd my door.
IX.
An' Squire 'e smiled an' 'e smiled till
'e'd gotten a fright at last.
An' 'e calls fur 'is son, fur the 'turney's
letters they foUer'd sa fast;
But Squire wur afear'd o' 'is son, an' 'e
says to 'im, meek as a mouse,
* Lad, thou mun cut off thy taail, or the
gells 'ull goa to the 'Ouse,
Fur I finds es I be that i' debt, es I 'oaps
es thou'U 'elp me a bit,
An' if thou'll 'gree to cut off thy taail I
may saave mysen yit.'
But Charlie 'e sets back 'is ears, an' 'e
swears, an' 'e says to 'im * Noa.
I've gotten the 'staate by the taail an'
be dang'd if I iver let goa!
Coom! coom! feyther,' 'e says, 'why
shouldn't thy boooks be sowd?
I hears es soom o' thy boooks mebbe
worth their weight i' gowd.'
Heaps an' heaps o' boooks, I ha' see'd
'em, belong'd to the Squire,
But the lasses 'ed teard out leaves i' the
middle to kindle the fire;
Sa moast on 'is owd big boooks fetch'd
nigh to nowt at the saale.
And Squire were at Charlie agean to git
'im to cut off 'is taail.
XII.
Ya wouldn't find Charlie's likes — 'e were
that outdacious at 'oam,
Not thaw ya went fur to raake out Hell
wi' a small-tooth coamb —
Droonk wi' the Quoloty's wine, an' droonk
wi' the farmer's aJile,
Mad wi' the lasses an' all — an' 'e would-
n't cut off the taail.
5o6
THE VILLAGE WIFE; OR, THE ENTAIL.
Thou's coom'd oop by the beck; and a
thurn be a-grawin' theer,
I niver ha' see'd it sa white wi' the Maay
es I see'd it to-year —
Theerabouts Charlie joompt — and it gied
me a scare tother night,
Fur I thowt it wur Charlie's ghoast i' the
derk, fur it loookt sa white.
'Billy,' says 'e, ' hev a joomp!' — thaw
the banks o' the beck be sa high,
Fur 'e ca'd 'is 'erse Billy-rough-un, thaw
niver a hair wur awry;
But Billy fell bakkuds o' Charlie, an'
Charlie 'e brok 'is neck,
Sa theer wur a hend o' the taail, fur 'e
lost 'is taail i' the beck.
XIV.
Sa 'is taail wur lost an' 'is boooks wur
gone an' 'is boy wur dead.
An' Squire 'e smiled, an 'e smiled, but 'e
niver not lift oop 'is 'ead :
Hallus a soft un Squire ! an' 'e smiled,
fur 'e hedn't naw friend,
Sa feyther an' son was buried togither,
an' this wur the hend.
XV.
An' Parson es hesn't the call, nor the
mooney, but hes the pride,
'E reads of a sewer an' sartan 'oap o'
the tother side;
But I beant that sewer es the Lord, how-
siver they praay'd an' praay'd.
Lets them inter 'eaven easy es leaves
their debts to be paaid.
Siver the mou'ds rattled down upo' poor
owd Squire i' the wood,
An' I cried along wi' the gells, fur they
weant niver coom to naw good.
XVI,
Fur Molly the long un she walkt awaay
wi' a hofficer lad.
An' nawbody 'eard on 'er sin, sa o' coorse
she be gone to the bad !
An' Lucy wur laame o' one leg, sweet-
'arts she niver 'ed none —
Straange an' unheppen i Miss Lucy ! we
naamed her ' Dot an' gaw one ! '
y Ungainly, awkward.
An' Hetty wur weak i' the hattics, vvi'out
ony harm i' the legs,
An' the fever 'ed baaked Jinny's 'ead es
bald es one o' them heggs.
An' Nelly wur up fro' the craadle es big
i' the mouth es a cow.
An' saw she mun hammergrate,^ lass, oi
she weant git a maate onyhow !
An' es for Miss Annie es call'd me afoor
my awn foalks to my faace
* A hignorant village wife as 'ud hev to
be larn'd 'er awn plaace,'
Hes fur Miss Hannie the heldest hes now
be a-grawin' sa howd,
I knaws that mooch o' shea, es it beant
not fit to be towd !
XVII.
Sa I didn't not taake it kindly ov owd
Miss Annie to saay
Es I should be talkin' agean 'em, es soon
es they went awaay.
Fur, lawks ! 'ow I cried when they went,
an' our Nelly she gied me 'er 'and.
Fur I'd ha' done owt for the Squire an'
'is gells es belong'd to the land;
Boooks, es I said afoor, thebbe neyther
'ere nor theer !
But I sarved 'em wi' butter an' heggs fur
huppuds o' twenty year.
XVIII.
An' they hallus paaid what I hax'd, sa I
hallus deal'd wi' the Hall,
An' theyknaw'd what butter wur, an' they
knaw'd what a hegg wur an' all;
Hugger-mugger they lived, but they
wasn't that easy to please.
Till I gied 'em Hinjian cum, an' they
laaid big heggs es tha seeas;
An' I niver puts saame^ i' my butter,
they does it at Willis's farm,
Taaste another drop o' the wine — tweant
do tha naw harm.
Sa new Squire's coom'd wi' 'is taail in 'is
'and, arf owd Squire's gone;
I heard 'im a roomlin' by, but arter my
nightcap wur on;
1 Emigrate. ' Lard.
IN THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL.
507
Sa I han't clapt eyes on 'im yit, fur he
coom'd last night sa laate —
Pluksh ! ! ! ^ the hens i' the peas I why
didn't tha hesp the gaate?
IN THE CHILDREN'S
HOSPITAL.
EMMIE.
Our doctor had call'd in another, I never
had seen him before,
But he sent a chill to my heart when I
saw him come in at the door,
Fresh from the surgery-schools of France
and of other lands —
Harsh red hair, big voice, big chest, big
merciless hands !
Wonderful cures he had done, O yes, but
they said too of him
He was happier using the knife than in
trying to save the limb,
And that I can well believe, for he look'd
so coarse and so red,
I could think he was one of those who
would break their jests on the dead,
And mangle the living dog that had loved
him and fawn'd at his knee —
Drench'd with the hellish oorali — that
ever such things should be !
Here was a boy — I am sure that some of
our children would die
But for the voice of Love, and the smile,
and the comforting eye —
Here was a boy in the ward, every bone
seem'd out of its place —
Caught in a mill and crush'd — it was all
but a hopeless case :
And he handled him gently enough; but
his voice and his face were not kind.
And it was but a hopeless case, he had
seen it and made up his mind,
And he said to me roughly * The lad will
need httle more of your care.'
* All the more need,' I toki him, ' to seek
the Lord Jesus in prayer;
1 A cry accompanied by a clapping of hands
to scare trespassing fowl.
They are all his children here, and I pray
for them all as my own : '
But he turn'd to me, * Ay, good woman,
can prayer set a broken bone? '
Then he mutter'd half to himself, but I
know that I heard him say
* All very well — but the good Lord Jesus
has had his day.'
Had? has it come? It has only dawn'd.
It will come by and by.
O how could I serve in the wards if ^the
hope of the world were a lie?
How could I bear with the sights and the
loathsome smells of disease
But that He said ' Ye do it to me, when
ye do it to these ' ?
So he went. And we past to this ward
where the younger children are
laid :
Here is the cot of our orphan, our dar-
ling, our meek little maid ;
Empty you see just now ! We have lost
her who loved her so much —
Patient of pain tho' as quick as a sensi-
tive plant to the touch;
Hers was the prettiest prattle, it often
moved me to tears.
Hers was the gratefullest heart I have
found in a child of her years —
Nay, you remember our Emmie ; you used
to send her the flowers;
How she would smile at 'em, play with
'em, talk to 'em hours after hours \
They that can wander at will where the
works of the Lord are reveal'd
Little guess what joy can be got from a
cowslip out of the field ;
Flowers to these • spirits in prison ' are all
they can know, of the spring,
They freshen and sweeten the v/ards like
the waft of an Angel's wing;
And she lay with a flower in one hand and
her thin hands croston her breast —
Wan, but as pretty as heart can desire,
and we thought her at rest.
Quietly sleeping — so quiet, our doctor
said ' Poor little dear.
Nurse, I must do it to-morrow; she'll
never live thro' it, I fear.'
5o8
DEDICATORY POEM TO THE PRINCESS AIICE.
V.
I walk'd with our kindly old doctor as-
far as the head of the stair,
Then I return'd to the ward; the child
didn't see I was there.
VI.
Never since I was nurse, had I been so
grieved and so vext !
Emmie had heard him. Softly she call'd
from her cot to the next,
' He says I shall never live thro' it, O
Annie, what shall I do? '
Annie consider'd. * If I,' said the wise
little Annie, * was you,
I should cry to the dear Lord Jesus to
help me, for, Emmie, you see,
It's all in the picture there : " Little
children should come to me." '
(Meaning the print that you gave us, I
find that it always can please
Our children, the dear Lord Jesus with
children about his knees.)
* Yes, and I will,' said Emmie, * but then
if I call to the Lord,
How should he know that it's me? such
a lot of beds in the ward ! '
That was a puzzle for Annie. Again she
consider'd and said :
* Emmie, you put out your arms, and you
leave 'em outside on the bed —
The Lord has so much to see to ! but,
Emmie, you tell it him plain.
It's the little girl with her. arms lying out
on the counterpane.'
VII.
I had sat three nights by the child — I
could not watch her for four — •
My brain had begun to reel — I- felt I
could do it no more.
That was my sleeping-night, but I thought
that it never would pass.
There was a thunderclap once, and a
clatter of hail on the glass,
And there was a phantom cry that I heard
as I tost about,
The motherless bleat of a lamb in the
storm and the darkness without;
My sleep was broken besides with dreams
of the dreadful knife
And fears for our delicate Emmie who
scarce would escape with her life;
Then in the gray of the morning it seem'd
she stood by me and smiled.
And the doctor came at his hour, and we
went to see to the child.
He had brought his ghastly tools : we
believed her asleep again —
Her dear, long, lean, little arms lying out
on the counterpane;
Say that His day is done ! Ah why should
we care what they say?
The Lord of the children had heard her,
and Emmie had past away.
DEDICATORY POEM TO THE
PRINCESS ALICE.
Dead Princess, living Power, if that,
which lived
True life, live on — and if the fatal kiss,
Born of true life and love, divorce thee
not
From earthly love and life — if what we
call
The spirit flash not all at once from out
This shadow into Substance — then per-
haps
The mellow'd murmur of the people's
praise
From thine own State, and all our
breadth of realm.
Where Love and Longing dress thy deeds
in light.
Ascends to thee; and this March morn
that sees
Thy Soldier-brother'sbridal orange-bloom
Break thro' the yews and cypress of thy
grave.
And thine Imperial mother smile again,
May send one ray to thee ! and who can
tell —
Thou — England's England-loving daugh-
ter— thou
Dying so English thou wouldst have her
flag
Borne on thy coffin — where is he can
swear
But that some broken gleam from our
poor earth
May touch thee, while remembering thee,
Hay
THE DEFENCE OF LUCK NOW.
509
At thy pale feet this ballad of the deeds
Of England, and her banner in the
East?
THE DEFENCE OF LUCKNOW.
Banner of England, not for a season, O
banner of Britain, hast thou
Floated in conquering battle or flapt to
the battle-cry !
Never with mightier glory than when we
had rear'd thee on high
Flying at top of the roofs in the ghastly
siege of Lucknow — •
Shot thro' the staff or the halyard, but
ever we raised thee anew,
And ever upon the topmost roof our
banner of England blew.
II.
Frail were the works that defended the
hold that we held with our lives —
Women and children among us, God help
them, our children and wives !
Hold it we might — and for fifteen days
or for twenty at most.
•Never surrender, I charge you, but
every man die at his post ! '
Voice of the dead whom we loved, our
Lawrence the best of the brave :
Cold were his brows when we kiss'd
him — we laid him that night in
his grave.
* Every man die at his post ! ' and there
hail'd on our houses and halls
Death from their rifle-bullets, and death
from their cannon-balls,
Death in our innermost chamber, and
death at our slight barricade.
Death while w^ stood with the musket,
and death while we stoopt to the
spade.
Death to the dying, and wounds to the
wounded, for often there fell.
Striking the hospital wall, crashing thro'
it, their shot and their shell.
Death — for their spies were among us,
their marksmen were told of our
best.
So that the brute bullet broke thro' the
brain that could think for the rest;
Bullets would sing by our foreheads, and
bullets would rain at our feet —
Fire from ten thousand at once of the
rebels that girdled us round —
Death at the glimpse of a finger from
over the breadth of a street.
Death from the heights of the mosque
and the palace, and death in the
ground !
Mine? yes, a mine! Countermine!
down, down ! and creep thro' the
hole!
Keep the revolver in hand ! you can hear
him — the murderous mole !
Quiet, ah ! quiet — wait till the point of
the pickaxe be thro' !
Click with the pick, coming nearer and
nearer again than before —
Now let it speak, and you fire, and the
dark pioneer is no more;
And ever upon the topmost roof our
banner of England blew !
Ay, but the foe sprung his mine many
times, and it chanced on a day
Soon as the blast of that underground
thunderclap echo'd away.
Dark thro' the smoke and the sulphur
like so many fiends in their
hell —
Cannon-shot, musket-shot, volley on
volley, and yell upon yell —
Fiercely on all the defences our myriad
enemy fell.
What have they done? where is it? Out
yonder. Guard the Redan !
Storm at the Water-gate ! storm at the
Bailey-gate ! storm, and it ran
Surging and swaying all round us, as
ocean on every side
Plunges and heaves at a bank that is
daily devour'd by the tide —
So many thousands that if they be bold
enough, who shall escape?
Kill or be kill'd, live or die, they shall
know we are soldiers and men !
Ready! take aim at their leaders —
their masses are gapp'd with out
grape —
Backward they reel like the wave, like
the wave flinging forward again,
5IO
THE DEFENCE OF LUCK NOW.
Flying and foil'd at the last by the hand-
ful they could not subdue;
And ever upon the topmost roof our
banner of England blew.
Handful of men as we were, we were
English in heart and in limb,
Strong with the strength of the race to
command, to obey, to endure.
Each of us fought as if hope for the gar-
rison hung but on him ;
Still — could we watch at all points? we
were every day fewer and fewer.
There was a whisper among us, but only
a whisper that past :
' Children and wives — if the tigers leap
into the fold unawares —
Every man die at his post — and the foe
may outlive us at last —
Better to fall by the hands that they love,
than to fall into theirs ! '
Roar upon roar in a moment two mines
by the enemy sprung
Clove into perilous chasms our walls and
our poor palisades.
Rifleman, true is your heart, but be sure
that your hand be as true !
Sharp is the fire of assault, better aimed
are your flank fusillades —
Twice do we hurl them to earth from the
ladders to which they had clung,
Twice from the ditch where they shelter
we drive them with hand-grenades;
And ever upon the topmost roof our
banner of England blew.
Then on another wild morning another
wild earthquake out-tore
Clean from our lines of defence ten or
twelve good paces or more.
Rifleman, high on the roof, hidden there
from the light of the sun —
One has leapt up on the breach, crying
out : ' Follow me, follow me ! ' —
Mark him — befalls! then another, and
him too, and down goes he.
Had they been bold enough then, who
can tell but the traitors had won?
Boardings and rafters and doors — an em-
brasure ! make way for the gun 1
Now double-charge it with grape ! It is
charged and we fire, and they
run.
Praise to our Indian brothers, and let the
dark face have his due !
Thanks to the kindly dark faces who
fought with us, faithful and i^vi^
Fought with the bravest among us, and
drove them, and smote them, and
slew,
That ever upon the topmost roof our
banner in India blew.
Men will forget what we suffer and not
what we do. We can fight !
But to be soldier all day and be sentinel
all thro' the night —
Ever the mine and assault, our sallies,
their lying alarms.
Bugles and drums in the darkness, and
shoutings and soundings to arms,
Ever the labour of fifty that had to be
done by five.
Ever the marvel among us that one should
be left alive.
Ever the day with its traitorous death
from the loopholes around,
Ever the night with its coflinless corpse
to be laid in the ground.
Heat like the mouth of a hell, or a deluge
of cataract skies,
Stench of old otfal decaying, and infinite
torment of flies,
Thoughts of the breezes of May blowing
over an English field,
Cholera, scurvy, and fever, the wound
that zvould not be^ieal'd,
Lopping away of the limb by the pitiful-
pitiless knife, —
Torture and trouble in vaiji, — for it never
could save us a life.
Valour of delicate women who tended the
hospital bed.
Horror of women in travail among the
dying and dead,
Grief for our perishing children, and
never a moment for grief,
Toil and inefiable weariness, faltering
hopes of relief,
Havelock baffled, or beaten, or butcher'd
for all that we knew —
SIR JOHN OLD CASTLE, LORD COB HAM.
51'
Then day and night, day and night, com-
ing down on the still-shatter'd
walls
Millions of musket-bullets, and thousands
of cannon-balls —
But ever upon the topmost roof our
banner of England blew.
Hark cannonade, fusillade ! is it true what
was told by the scout,
Outram and Havelock breaking their way
through the fell mutineers?
Surely the pibroch of Europe is ringing
again in our ears !
All on a sudden the garrison utter a jubi-
lant shout,
Havelock's glorious Highlanders answer
with conquering cheers.
Sick from the hospital echo them, women
and children come out,
Blessing the wholesome white faces of
Havelock's good fusileers,
Kissing the war-harden'd hand of the
Highlander wet with their tears !
Dance to the pibroch ! — saved ! we are
saved ! — is it you? is it you?
Saved by the valour of Havelock, saved
by the blessing of Heaven !
* Hold it for fifteen days ! ' we have held
it for eighty-seven !
And ever aloft on the palace roof the old
banner of England blew.
SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE, LORD
COBHAM.
(in wales.)
My friend should meet me somewhere
hereabout
To take me to that hiding in the hills.
I have broke their cage, no gilded one,
I trow —
I read no more the prisoner's mute wail
Scribbled or carved upon the pitiless
stone;
I find hard rocks, hard life, hard cheer,
or none,
For I am emptier than a friar's brains;
But God is with me in this wilderness.
These wet black passes and foam-churn-
ing chasms —
And God's free air, and hope of better
things.
I would I knew their speech; not now
to glean,
Not now — I hope to do it — some scat-
ter'd ears,
Some ears for Christ in this wild field of
Wales —
But, bread, merely for bread. This
tongue that wagg'd
They said with such heretical arrogance
Against the proud archbishop Arundel —
So much God's cause was fluent in it —
is here
But as a Latin Bi!)le to the crowd;
*Bara!' — what use? The Shepherd,
when 1 speak,
Veiling a sudden eyelid with his hard
* Dim Saesneg ' passes, wroth at things
of old —
No fault of mine. Had he God's word
in Welsh
He might be kindlier : happily come the
day !
Not least art thou, thou little Bethle-
hem
In Judah, for in thee the Lord was born;
Nor thou in Britain, little Lutterworth,
Least, for in thee the word was born
again.
Heaven-sweet Evangel, ever-living
word,
Who whilome spakest to the South in
Greek
About the soft Mediterranean shores,
And then in Latin to the Latin crowd.
As good need was — thou hast come to
talk our isle.
Hereafter thou, fulfilling Pentecost,
Must learn to use the tongues of all the
world.
Yet art thou thine own witness that thou
bringest
Not peace, a sword, a fire.
What did he say,
My frighted Wiclif-preacher whom I
crost
In flying hither? that one night a crowd
512
SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE, LORD COBHAM.
Throng'd the waste field about the city
gates :
The king was on them suddenly with a
host.
Why there? they came to hear their
preacher. Then
.Some cried on Cobham, on the good
Lord Cobham;
Ay, for they love me ! but the king —
nor voice
Nor finger raised against him — took and
hang'd,
Took, hang'd and burnt — how many —
thirty-nine —
Call'd it rebelHon — hang'd, poor friends,
as rebels
And burn'd alive as heretics! for your
Priest
Labels — to take the king along with
him —
All heresy, treason: but to call men
traitors
May make men traitors.
Rose of Lancaster,
Red in thy birth, redder with household
war.
Now reddest with the blood of holy
men,
Redder to be, red rose of Lancaster —
If somewhere in the North, as Rumour
sang
Fluttering the hawks of this crown-lust-
ing line —
By firth and loch thy silver sister grow,i
That were my rose, there my allegiance
due.
Self-starved, they say — nay, murder'd,
doubtless dead.
So to this king I cleaved : my friend was
he,
Once my fast friend : I would have given
my life
To help his own from scathe, a thousand
lives
To save his soul. Hfr might have come
to learn
Our Wiclifs learning: but the worldly
Priests
Who fear the king's hard common-sense
should find
What rotten piles uphold their mason-
work,
1 Rkhaid II.
Urge him to foreign war. O had he
will'd
I might have stricken a lusty stroke foi
him,
But he would not; far liever led my
friend
Back to the pure and universal church,
But he would not : whether that heirless
flaw
In his throne's title make him feel so
frail,
He leans on Antichrist; or that his mind,
So quick, so capable in soldiership.
In matters of the faith, alas the while !
More worth than all the kingdoms of
this world.
Runs in the rut, a coward to the Priest.
Burnt — good Sir Roger Acton, my
dear friend !
Burnt too, my faithful preacher, Beverley !
Lord give thou power to thy two wit-
nesses !
Lest the false faith make merry over
them !
Two — nky, but thirty-nine have risen and
stand,
Dark with the smoke of human sacrifice,
Before thy light, and cry continually —
Cry — against whom?
Him, who should bear the sword
Of Justice — what! the kingly, kindly
boy;
Who took the world so easily heretofore.
My boon companion, tavern-fellow — him
Who gibed and japed — in many a merry
tale
That shook our sides — at Pardoners,
Summoners,
Friars, absolution-sellers, monkeries
And nunneries, when the wild hour and
the wine
Had set the wits aflame.
Harry of Monmouth,
Or Amurath of the East?
Better to sink
Thy fleurs-de-lys in slime again, and fling
Thy royalty back into the riotous fits
Of wine and harlotry — thy shame, and
mine,
Thy comrade — than to persecute the
Lord,
And play the Saul that never will be Paul
S/J^ JOHN OLDCASTLE, LORD COB HAM.
513
Burnt, burnt ! and while this mitred
Eh ! how I anger'd Arundel asking me
Arundel
To worship Holy Cross ! I spread mine
Dooms our unlicensed preacher to the
arms.
flame,
God's work, I said, a cross of flesh and
The mitre-sanction'd harlot draws his
blood
clerks
And holier. That was heresy. (My
Into the suburb — their hard celibacy,
good friend
Sworn to be veriest ice of pureness,
By this time should be with me.)
molten
'Images?'
Into adulterous living, or such crimes
' Bury them as God's truer images
As holy Paul — a shame to speak of
Are daily buried.' * Heresy. — Penance ? '
them —
* Fast,
Among the heathen —
Hairshirt and scourge — nay, let a man
Sanctuary granted
repent.
To bandit, thief, assassin — yea to him
Do penance in his heart, God hears him.'
Who hacks his mother's throat — denied
' Heresy —
to him,
Not shriven, not saved ? ' * What profits
Who finds the Saviour in his mother
an ill Priest
tongue.
Between me and my God? I would not
The Gospel, the Priest's pearl, flung down
spurn
to swine —
Good counsel of good friends, but shrive
The swine, lay- men, lay- women, who will
myself
come,
No, not to an Apostle.' * Heresy.'
God willing, to outlearn the filthy friar.
(My friend is long in coming.) * Pil-
Ah rather. Lord, than that thy Gospel,
grimages?'
meant
* Drink, bagpipes, revelling, devil's-
To course and range thro' all the world,
dances, vice.
should be
The poor man's money gone to fat the
Tether'd to these dead pillars of the
friar.
Church —
Who reads of begging saints in Script-
Rather than so, if thou wilt have it so.
ure? — * Heresy' —
Burst vein, snap sinew, and crack heart,
(Hath he been here — not found me —
and fife
gone again?
Pass in the fire of Babylon! But how
Have I mislearnt our place of meeting?)
long,
' Bread —
0 Lord, how long !
Bread left after the blessing?' how they
My friend should meet me here.
stared.
Here is the copse, the fountain and — a
That was their main test-question —
Cross !
glared at me !
To thee, dead wood, I bow not head nor
* He veil'd Himself in flesh, and now He
knees.
veils
Rather to thee, green boscage, work of
His flesh in bread, body and bread
God,
together,'
Black ■ holly, and white-flower'd wayfar-
Then rose the howl of all the cassock'd
ing-tree.
wolves,
Rather to the.e, thou living water,
'No bread, no bread. God's body I'
drawn
Archbishop, Bishop,
By this good WicHf mountain down from
Priors, Canons, Friars, bellringers,
heaven.
Parish-clerks —
And speaking clearly in thy native
* No bread, no bread ! ' — * Authority of
tongue —
the Church,
No Latin — He that thirsteth, come and
Power of the keys ! ' — Then I, God help
drink !
me, I
2L
514
COLUMBUS.
So mock'd, so spuru'd, so baited two
whole days —
I lost myself and fell from evenness,
And rail'd at all the Popes, that ever
since
Sylvester shed the venom of world-
wealth
Into the church, had only prov'n them-
selves
Poisoners, murderers. Well — God par-
don all —
Me, them, and all the world — yea, that
proud Priest,
That mock-meek mouth of utter Anti-
christ,
That traitor to King Richard and the
truth,
Who rose and doom'd me to the fire.
Amen !
Nay, I can burn, so that the Lord of life
Be by me in my death.
Those three ! the fourth
Was like the Son of God! Not burnt
were they.
On them the smell of burning had not
past.
That was a miracle to convert the king.
These Pharisees, this Caiaphas- Arundel
What miracle could turn? He here
again.
He thwarting their traditions of Him-
self,
He would be found a heretic to Himself,
And doom'd to burn alive.
So, caught, I burn.
Burn? heathen men have borne as much
as this,
For freedom, or the sake of those they
loved.
Or some less cause, some cause far less
than mine;
For every other cause is less than
mine.
The moth will singe her wings, and
singed return.
Her love of light quenching her fear of
pain —
How now, mv soul, we do not heed the
fire?
Faint-hearted? tut ! — faint-stomach'd !
faint as I am,
God willing, I will burn for Him.
Who comes?
A thousand marks are set upon my
head.
Friend ? — foe perhaps — a tussle for it
then ! .
Nay, but my friend. Thou art so well
disguised,
I knew thee not. Hast thou brought
bread with thee?
I have not broken bread for fifty hours.
None? I am damn'd already by the
Priest
For holding there was bread where bread
was none —
No bread. My friends await me yonder?
Yes.
Lead on then. Up the mountain? Is
it far?
Not far. Climb first and reach me down
thy hand.
I am not like to die for lack of bread
For 1 must live to testify by fire.i
COLUMBUS.
Chains, my good lord : in your raised
brows I read
Some wonder at our chamber ornaments.
We brought this iron from our isles of
gold.
Does the king know you deign to visit
him
Whom once he rose from off his throne
to greet
Before his people, like his brother king?
I saw your face that morning in the crowd.
At Barcelona — tho' you were not then
So bearded. Yes. The city deck'd
herself
To meet me, roar'd my name; the king,
the queen
Bade me be seated, speak, and tell them
all
The story of my voyage, and while I
spoke
The crowd's roar fell as at the ' Peace,
be still ! '
And when I ceased to speak, the king,
the queen,
^ He was burnt on Christmas Day, 1417.
COLUMBUS.
515
Sank from their thrones, and melted into
tears,
And knelt, and lifted hand and heart and
voice
In praise to God who led me thro' the
waste.
And then the great ' Laudamus ' rose to
heaven.
Chains for the Admiral of the Ocean !
chains
i^'or him who gave a new heaven, a new
earth,
As holy John had prophesied of me.
Gave glory and more empire to the kings
Of Spain than all their battles ! chains
for him
Who push'd his prows into the setting
sun,
And made West East, and sail'd the
Dragon's mouth.
And came upon the Mountain of the
World,
And saw the rivers roll from Paradise !
Chains ! we are Admirals of the Ocean,
we,
We and our sons for ever. Ferdinand
Hath sign'd it and our Holy Catholic
queen —
Of the Ocean — of the Indies — Admirals
we —
Our title, which we never mean to yield,
Our guerdon not alone for what we did,
But our amends for all we might have
done —
The vast occasion of our stronger life —
Eighteen long years of waste, seven in
your Spain,
Lost, showing courts and kings a truth
the babe
Will suck in with his milk hereafter —
earth
A sphere.
Werejj/^M at Salamanca? No.
vVe fronted there the learning of all
Spain,
All their cosmogonies, their astronomies :
Guess-work ///^j guess'd it, but the golden
guess
Is morning-star to the full round of truth.
No guess-work ! I wascertain of my goal;
Some thought it heresy, but that would
not hold.
King David call'd the heavens a hide, a
tent
Spread over earth, and so this earth was
flat:
Some cited old Lactantius : could it be
That trees grew downward, rain fell
upward, men
Walk'd like the fly on ceilings? and be-
sides,
The great Augustine wrote that none
could breathe
Within the zone of heat; so might there
be
Two Adams, two mankinds, and that
was clean
Against God's word : thus was I beaten
back.
And chiefly to my sorrow by the Church,
And thought to turn my face from Spain,
appeal
Once more to France or England; but
our Queen
Recall'd me, for at last their Highnesses
Were half-assured this earth might be a
sphere.
All glory to the all-blessed Trinity,
All glory to the mother of our Lord,
And Holy Church, from whom I never
swerved
Not even by one hair's-breadth of heresy,
I have accomplish'd what I came to do.
Not yet — not all — last night a dream
— I sail'd
On my first voyage, harass'd by the frights
Of my first crew, their curses and their
groans.
The great flame-banner borne bv Tene-
riffe.
The compass, like an old friend false at
last
In our most need, appall'd them, and the
wind
Still westward, and the weedy seas — at
length
The landbird,and the branch with berries
on it.
The carven staff" — and last the light, the
light
On Guanahani ! l:)ut I changed the name;
5i6
COLUMBUS.
San Salvador I call'd it; and the light
Grew as I gazed, and brought out a broad
sky
Of dawning over — not those alien palms,
The marvel of that fair new nature
— not
That Indian isle^ but our most ancient
East
Moriah with Jerusalem; and I saw
The glory of the Lord flash up, and beat
Thro' all the homety town from jasper,
sapphire,
Chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sardius.
Chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprase,
Jacynth, and amethyst — and those twelve
gates,
Pearl — and I woke, and thought — death
— I shall die —
I am written in the Lamb's own Book of
Life
To walk within the glory of the Lord
Sunless and moonless, utter light — but
no !
The Lord had sent this bright, strange
dream to me
To mind me of the secret vow I made
When Spain was waging war against the
Moor —
I strove myself with Spain against the
Moor.
There came two voices from the Sepul-
chre,
Two friars crying that if Spain should
oust
The Moslem from her limit, he, the fierce
Soldan of Egypt, would break down and
raze
The blessed tomb of Christ; whereon I
vow'd
That, if our Princes harken'd to my
prayer,
Whatever wealth I brought from that new
world
Should, in this old, be consecrate to lead
A new crusade against the Saracen,
And free the Holy Sepulchre from thrall.
Gold? I had brought your Princes
gold enough
If left alone ! Being but a Genovese,
I am handled worse than had I been a
Moor,
And breach'd the belting wall of Cambalu,
And given the Great Khan's palaces ta
the Moor,
Or clutch'd the sacred crown of Pr^stei
John,
And cast it to the Moor : but had I
brought
From Solomon's nov/-recover'd Ophir all
The gold that Solomon's navies carried
home.
Would that have gilded me? Blue blood
of Spain,
Tho' quartering your own royal arms of
Spain,
I have not : blue blood and black blood
of Spain,
The noble and the convict of Castile,
Howl'd me from Hispaniola; for you
know
The flies at home, that ever swarm about
And cloud the highest heads, and mur-
mur down
Truth in the distance — these outbuzz'd
me so
That even our prudent king, our right-
eous queen —
I pray'd them being so calumniated
They would commission one of weight
and worth
To judge between my slander'd self and
me —
Fonseca my main enemy at their court.
They sent me out his tool, Bovadilla, one
As ignorant and impolitic as a beast —
Blockish irreverence, brainless greed —
who sack'd
My dwelling, seized upon my papers,
loosed
My captives, fed the rebels of the crown,
Sold the crown-farms for all but nothing,
gave
All but free leave for all to work the
mines.
Drove me and my good brothers home
in chains.
And gathering ruthless gold — a single
piece
Weigh'd nigh four thousand Castillanos
— so
They tell me — weigh'd him down into
the abysm —
The hurricane of the latitude on him fell,
The seas of our discovering over-roll
Him and his goldj' the frailer caravel,
COLUMBUS.
SI7
With what Avas mine, came happily to
the shore.
There was a glimmering of God's hand.
And God
Hath more than glimmer'd on me. O
my lord,
I swear to you I heard his voice between
The thunders in the black Veragua nights,
*0 soul of little faith, slow to believe !
Have I not been about thee from thy
birth?
Given thee the keys of the great Ocean-
sea?
Set thee in light till time shall be no
more?
Is it I who have deceived thee or the
world ?
Endure ! thou hast done so well for men,
that men
Cry out against thee : was it otherwise
With mine own Son? '
And more than once in days
Of doubt and cloud and storm, when
drowning hope
Sank all but out of sight, I heard his
voice,
*Be not cast down. I lead thee by the
hand,
Fear not.' And I shall hear his voice
again —
I know that he has led me all my life,
I am not yet too old to work his will —
His voice again.
Still for all that, my lord,
I lying here bedridden and alone,
Cast off, put by, scouted by court and
king— '
The first discoverer starves — his follow-
ers, all
Flower into fortune — our world's way —
and I,
Without a roof that I can call mine own.
With scarce a coin to buy a meal withal,
And seeing what a door for scoundrel scum
I open'd to the West, thro' which the lust,
Villany, violence, avarice, of your Spain
Pour'd in on all those happy naked isles —
Their kindly native princes slain or slaved,
Their wives and children Spanish concu-
bines.
Their innocent hospitalities quench'd in
blood,
Some dead of hunger, some beneath the
scourge,
• Some over-labour'd, some by their own
hands, —
Yea, the dear mothers, crazing Nature,
kill
Their babies at the breast for hate of
Spain —
Ah God, the harmless people whom we
found
In Hispaniola's island-Paradise !
Who took us for the very Gods from
Heaven,
And we have sent them very fiends from
Hell;
And I myself, myself not blameless, I
Could sometimes wish I had never led
the way.
Only the ghost of our great Catholic
Queen
Smiles on me, saying, * Be thou com-
forted !
This creedless people will be brought to
Christ
And own the holy governance of Rome.'
But who could dream that we, who bore
the Cross
Thither, were excommunicated there.
For curbing crimes that scandalised the
Cross,
By him, the Catalonian Minorite,
Rome's Vicar in our Indies? who believe
These hard memorials of our truth to
• Spain
Clung closer to us for a longer term
Than any friend of ours at Court? and yet
Pardon — too harsh, unjust. I am rack'd
with pains.
You see that I have hung them by my
bed.
And I will have them buried in my grave.
Sir, in that flight of ages which are
God's
Own voice to justify the dead — per-
chance
Spain once the most chivalric race on
earth.
5i8
TFIE VOYAGE OF MAELDUNE.
Spain then the mightiest, wealthiest reahn
on earth,
So made by me, may seek to unbury me,
To lay me in some shrine of this old
Spain,
Or in that vaster Spain I leave to Spain.
Then some one standing by my grave will
say,
* Behold the bones of Christopher
Colon ' —
' Ay, but the chains, what do they mean
— the chains? ' —
I sorrow for that kindly child of Spain
Who then will have to answer, ' These
same chains
Bound these same bones back thro' the
Atlantic sea.
Which he unchain'd for all the world to
O Queen of Heaven who seest the souls
in Hell
And purgatory, I suffer all as much
As they do — for the moment. Stay, my
son
Is here anon : my son will speak for me
Ablier than I can in these spasms that
grind
Bone against bone. You will not. One
last word.
You move about the Court, I pray you
tell
King Ferdinand, who plays with me, that
one
Whose life has been no play with him and
his
Hidalgos — shipwrecks, famines, fevers,
fights.
Mutinies, treacheries — wink'd at, and
condoned —
That I am loyal to him till the death,
And ready — tho' our Holy Catholic
Queen,
Who fain had pledged her jewels on my
first voyage,
Whose hope was mine to spread the
Catholic faith.
Who wept with me when I return'd in
chains.
Who sits beside the blessed Virgin ncovv.
To whom I send my prayer by night and
day —
She is gone — but you will tell the King,
that I,
Rack'd as I am with gout, and wrench'd
with pains
Gain'd in the service of His Highness, yet'
Am ready to sail forth on one last voyage,
And readier, if the King would hear, to
lead
One last crusade against the Saracen,
And save the Holy Sepulchre from
thrall.
Going? I am old and slighted : you
have dared
Somewhat perhaps in coming? my poor
thanks !
I am but an alien and a Genovese.
THE VOYAGE OF MAELDUNE.
(founded on an IRISH LEGEND.
A.D. 700.)
I WAS the chief of the race — he had
stricken my father dead —
But I gather'd my fellows together, I
swore I would strike off his head.
Each of them look'd like a king, and was
noble in birth as in worth.
And each of them boasted he sprang from
the oldest race upon earth.
Each was as brave in the fight as the
bravest hero of song,
And each of theni liefer had died than
have done one another a wrong.
He lived on an isle in the ocean — we
sail'd on a Friday morn —
He that had slain my father the day
before I was born.
II.
And we came to the isle in the ocean,
and there on the shore was he.
But a sudden blast blew us out and away
thro' a boundless sea.
And we came to the Silent Isle that we
never had touch'd at before,
Where a silent ocean always broke on 'a,
silent shore,
THE VOYAGE OF MAELDUNE.
519
And the brooks glitter'd on in the light
without sound, and the loDg water-
falls
Pour'd in a thunderless plunge to the base
of the mountain walls,
And the poplar and cypress unshaken by
storm flourish'd up beyond sight,
And the pine shot aloft from the crag to
an unbelievable height,
And high in the heaven above it there
flicker'd a songless lark,
And the cock coialdn'f crow, and the bull
couldn't low, and the dog couldn't
bark.
And round it we went, and thro' it, but
never a murmur, a breath —
It was all of it fair as life, it was all of it
quiet as death,
And we hated the beautiful Isle, for
whenever we strove to speak
Our voices were thinner and fainter than
any flittermouse-shriek;
And the men that were mighty of tongue
and could raise such a battle-cry
That a hundred who heard it would rush
on a thousand lances and die —
O they to be dumb'd by the charm ! — so
fluster'd with anger were they
They almost fell on each other; but after
we sail'd away.
And we came to the Isle of Shouting, we
landed, a score of wild birds
Cried from the topmost summit with
human voices and words;
Once in an hour they cried, and whenever
their voices peal'd
The steer fell down at the plow and the
harvest died from the field.
And the men dropt dead in the valleys
and half of the cattle went lame.
And the roof sank in on the hearth, and
the dwelling broke into flame;
And the shouting of these wild birds ran
into the hearts of my crew.
Till they shouted along with the shouting
and seized one another and slew;
But I drew them the one from the other;
I saw tliat we could not stay,
And we left the dead to the birds and we
sail'd with our wounded away.
And we came to the Isle of Flowers:
their breath met us out on the seas,
For the Spring and the middle Summer
sat each on the lap of the breeze;
And the red passion-flower to the cliffs,
and the dark-blue clematis, clung,
And starr'd with a myriad blossom the
long convolvulus hung;
And the topmost spire of the mountain
was lilies in lieu of snow,
And the lilies like glaciers winded down,
running out below
Thro' the fire of the tulip and poppy, the
blaze of gorse, and the blush
Of millions of roses that sprang without
leaf or a thorn from the bush;
And the whole isle-side flashing down
from the peak without ever a tree
Swept like a torrent of gems from the sky
to the blue of the sea;
And we roll'd upon capes of crocus and
vaunted our kith and our kin.
And we wallow'd in beds of lilies, and
chanted the triumph of Finn,
Till each like a golden image was pollen'd
from head to feet
And each was as dry as a cricket, with
thirst in the middle-day heat.
Blossom and blossom, and promise of
blossom, but never a fruit !
And we hated the ^'lowering Isle, as we
hated the isle that was mute,
And we tore up the flowers by the million
and flung them in bight and bay,
And w-e left but a naked rock, and in
anger we sail'd away.
VI.
And we came to the Isle of Fruits : all
round from the cliffs and the capes,
Purple or amber, dangled a hundred
fathom of grapes.
And the warm melon lay like a little sun
on the tawny sand.
And the fig ran up from the beach and
rioted over the land,
And the mountain arose like a jewell'd
throne thro' the fragrant air.
Glowing with all-colour'd plums and with
golden masses of pear,
520
THE VOYAGE OF MAELDUNE.
And the crimson and scarlet of berries
that flamed upon bine and vine,
But in every berry and fruit was the
poisonous pleasure of wine;
And the peak of the mountain was apples,
the hugest that ever were seen.
And they prest, as they grew, on each
other, with hardly a leaflet between,
And all of them redder than rosiest
health or than utterest shame.
And setting, when Even descended, the
very sunset aflame;
And we stay'd three days, and we gorged
and we madden'd, till every one
drew
His sword on his fellow to slay him, and
ever they struck and they slew;
And myself, I had eaten but sparely, and
fought till I sunder'd the fray.
Then I bade them remember my father's
death, and we sail'd away.
VII.
And we came to the Isle of Fire : we were
lured by the light from afar,
For the peak sent up one league of fire
to the Northern Star;
Lured by the glare and the blare, but
scarcely could stand upright.
For the whole isle shudder'd and shook
like a man in a mortal affright;
We were giddy besides with the fruits we
had gorged, and so crazed that at
last
There were some leap'd into the fire;
and away we sail'd, and we past
Over that undersea isle, where the water
is clearer than air :
Down we look'd : what a garden ! O
bliss, what a Paradise there !
Towers of a happier time, low down in a
rainbow deep
Silent palaces, quiet fields of eternal sleep !
And three of the gentlest and best of my
people, whatever I could say.
Plunged head down in the sea, and the
Paradise trembled away.
VIII.
And we came to the Bounteous Isle, where
the heavens lean low on the land,
And ever at dawn from the cloud glitter'd
o'er us a sunbwght hand.
Then it open'd and dropt at the side ol
each man, as he rose from his rest.
Bread enough for his need till the labour-
less day dipt under the West;
And we wander'd about it and thro' it.
O never was time so good !
And we sang of the triumphs of Finn,
and the boast of our ancient blood,
And we gazed at the wandering wave as
we sat by the gurgle of springs,
And we chanted the songs of the Bards
and the glories of fairy kings;
But at length we began to be weary, to
sigh, and to stretch and yawn,
Till we hated the Bounteous Isle and the
sunbright hand of the dawn.
For there was not an enemy near, but the
whole green Isle was our own.
And we took to playing at ball, and we
took to throwing the stone.
And we took to playing at battle, but
that was a perilous play.
For the passion of battle was in us, we
slew and we sail'd away.
IX.
And we past to the Isle of Witches and
heard their musical cry —
' Come to us, O come, come ' in the
stormy red of a sky
Dashing the fires and the shadows of
dawn on the beautiful shapes.
For a wild witch naked as heaven stood
on each of the loftiest capes,
And a hundred ranged on the rock like
white sea-birds in a row,
And a hundred gamboU'd and pranced
on the wrecks in the sand below.
And a hundred splash'd from the ledges,
and bosom'd the burst of the spray,
But I knew we should fall on each other,
and hastily sail'd away.
X.
And we came in an evil time to the Isle
of the Double Towers,
One was of smooth-cut stone, one carved
all over with flowers,
But an earthquake always moved in the
hollows under the dells.
And they shock'd on each other and
butted each other with clashing
of bells,
DE PRO FUND IS.
521
And the daws flew out of the Towers and
jangled and wrangled in vain,
And the clash and boom of the bells rang
into the heart and the brain,
Till the pas^'.-^ii of battle was on us, and
all took sides with the Towers,
There were some for the clean-cut stone,
there v. ^le more for the carven
flowers,
And t].e wrathful thunder of God peal'd
over us all the day,
P or the one half slew the other, and after
we sail'd away.
XI.
And we came to the Isle of a Saint who
had sail'd with St. Brendan of
yore,
He had lived ever since on the Isle and
his winters were fifteen score,
And his voice was low as from other
worlds, and his eyes were sweet.
And his white hair sank to his heels and
his white beard fell to his feet.
And he spake to me, ' O Maeldune, let
be this purpose of thine !
Remember the words of the Lord when
he told us " Vengeance is mine ! "
His fathers have slain thy fathers in war
or in single strife.
Thy fathers have slain his fathers, each
taken a life for a life.
Thy father had slain his father, how long
shall the murder last?
Go back to the Isle of Finn and suffer
the Past to be Past.'
And we kiss'd the fringe of his beard and
we pray'd as we heard him pray,
And the Holy man he assoil'd us, and
sadly we sail'd away.
And we came to *-be Isle we were blown
from, aiid there on the shore was
he.
The man that had slain my father. I
saw him and let him be.
O weary was I of the travel, the trouble,
the strife and the sin,
When I landed again, with a tithe of my
men, on the Isle of Finn.
DE PROFUNDIS:
THE TWO GREETINGS.
I.
Out of the deep, my child, out of the
deep,
Where all that was ':^ be, in all that was,
Whirl'd for a million aeons thro' the vast
Waste dawn of multitudinous-eddying
light —
Out of, the deep, my child, out of the
deep,
Thro' all this changing world of change-
less law,
And every phase of ever-heightening life,
And nine long months of antenatal gloom.
With this last moon, this crescent — her
dark orb
Touch'd with earth's light — thou comest,
darling boy;
Our own; a babe in lineament and limb
Perfect, and prophet of the perfect man;
Whose face and form are hers and mine
in one,
Indissolubly married like our love;
Live, and be happy in thyself, and serve
This mortal race thy kin so well, that men
May bless thee as we bless thee, O young
life
Breaking with laughter from the dark;
and may
The fated channel where thy motion lives
Be prosperously shaped, and sway thy
course
Along the years of haste and random
youth
Unshatter'd; then full-current thro' full
man;
And last in kindly curves, with gentlest
fall.
By quiet fields, a slowly-dying power,
To that last deep where we and thou are
still.
II.
I.
Out of the deep, my child, out of the
deep,
From that great deep, before our world
begins,
522 PREFATORY SONNET— TO THE REV. W. H. BROOKFIELD.
Whereon the Spirit of God moves as he
will —
Out of the deep, my child, out of the
deep,
From that true world within the world
we see,
Whereof our world is but the bounding
shore —
Out of the deep, Spirit, out of the
deep.
With this ninth moon, that sends the
hidden sun
Down yon dark sea, thou comest, darling
boy.
II.
For in the world, which is not ours, They
said
* Let us make man * and that which
should be man.
From that one light no man can look
upon,
Drew to this shore lit by the suns and
moons
And all the shadows. O dear Spirit
half-lost
In thine own shadow and this fleshly
sign
That thou art thou — who wailest being
born
And banish'd into mystery, and the pain
Of this divisible-indivisible world
Among the numerable-innumerable
Sun, sun, and sun, thro' finite-infinite
space
In finite-infinite Time — our mortal veil .
And shatter'd phantom of that infinite
One,
Who made thee unconceivably Thyself
Out of His whole World-self and all in
all —
Live thou ! and of the grain and husk,
the grape
And ivyberry, choose; and still depart
From death to death thro' life and life,
and find
Nearer and ever nearer Him, who
wrought
Not Matter, nor the finite-infinite,
But this main-miracle, that thou art
thou,
With power on thine own act and on the
world.
THE HUMAN CRY.
Hallowed be Thy name — Halleluiah ! —
Infinite Ideality !
Immeasurable Reality !
Infinite Personality !
Hallowed be Thy name — Halleluiah !
We feel we are nothing — for all is Thou
^nd in Thee;
We feel we are something — that also has
come from Thee ;
We know we are nothing — but Thou
wilt help us to be.
Hallov/€?d be Thy name — Halleluiah !
PREFATORY SONNEf
TO THE 'NINETEENTH CENTURY.*
Those that of late had fleete'd far and
fast /^
To touch all shores, now leavmg to the
skill
Of others their old craft seaworthy still.
Have charter'd this; where, mindful of
the past.
Our true co-mates regather round the
mast;
Of diverse tongue, but with a common will
Here, in this roaring moon of daffodil
And crocus, to put forth and brave the
blast;
For some, descending from the sacred
peak
Of hoar high-templed Faith, have leagued
again
Their lot with ours to rove the world
about ;
And some are wilder comrades, sworn to
seek
If any golden harbour be for men
In seas of Death and sunless gulfs of
Doubt.
TO THE REV. W. H. BROOKFIELD.
Brooks, for they call'd you so that knew
you best.
Old Brooks, who loved so well to mouth
my rhymes,
MONTENEGRO — BATTLE OF BRUNANBURH.
52i
How oft we two have heard St. Mary's
chimes!
How oft the Cantab supper, host and
guest,
Would echo helpless laughter to your jest !
How oft with him we paced that walk of
limes.
Him, the lost light of those dawn-golden
times.
Who loved you well ! Now both are gone
to rest.
You man of humorous-melancholy mark,
Dead of some inward agony — is it so?
Our kindlier, trustier Jaques, past away I
I cannot laud this life, it looks so dark :
S/ctas ?>va.p — dream of a shadow, go —
God bless you. I shall join you in a day.
MONTENEGRO.
They rose to where their sovran eagle sails.
They kept their faith, their freedom, on
the height.
Chaste, frugal, savage, arm'd by day and
night
Against the Turk ; whose inroad nowhere
scales
Their headlong passes, but his footstep
fails.
And red with blood the Crescent reels
from fight
Before their dauntless hundreds, in prone
flight
By thousands down the crags and thro'
the vales.
O smallest among peoples ! rough rock-
throne
Of Freedom ! warriors beating back the
swarm
Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years,
Great Tsernogora ! never since thine
own
Black ridges drew the cloud and brake
the storm
Has breathed a race of mightier moun-
taineers.
TO VICTOR HUGO.
Victor in Drama, Victor in Romance,
Cloud-weaver of phantasmal hopes and
fears,
French of the French, and Lord of hu-
man tears;
Child-lover; Bard whose fame-lit laurels
glance
Darkening the wreaths of all that would
advance,
Beyond our strait, their claim to be thy
peers;
Weird Titan by thy winter weight of
years
As yet unbroken. Stormy voice of
France !
Who dost not love our England — so
they say;
I know not — England, France, all man
to be
Will make one people ere man's race be
run :
And I, desiring that diviner day,
Yield thee full thanks for thy full
courtesy
To younger England in the boy my son.
TRANSLATIONS, ETC.
BATTLE OF BRUNANBURH.
Constantinus, King of the Scots, after having
sworn allegiance to Athelstan, allied himself with
the Danes of Ireland under Anlaf, and invading
England, was defeated by Athelstan and his
brother Edmund with great slaughter at Brunan-
burh in the year 937.
1 Athelst.^n King,
Lord among Earls,
Bracelet-bestower and
Baron of Barons,
He with his brother,
Edmund Atheling,
Gaining a lifelong
Glory in battle,
Slew with the sword-edge
There by Brunanburh,
1 I have more or less availed myself of my
son's prose translation of this poem in the Con-
temporary Review (November 1876).
524
BATTLE OF BRUNANBURH.
Brake the shield -wall,
Hew'd the lindenvvood,!
Hack'd the battleshield,
Sons of Edward with hammer'd brands.
II.
Theirs was a greatness
Got from their Grandsires —
Theirs that so often, in
Strife with their enemies
Struck for their hoards and their hearths
and their homes.
Bow'd the spoiler,
Bent the Scotsman,
Fell the shipcrews
Doom'd to the death.
All the field with blood of the fighters
Flow'd,from when first the great
Sun-star of morningtide,
Lamp of the Lord God
Lord everlasting,
Glode over earth till the glorious creature
Sank to his setting.
IV.
There lay many a man
Marr'd by the javelin, .
Men of the Northland
Shot over shield.
There was the Scotsman
Weary of war.
We the West-Saxons,
Long as the daylight
Lasted, in companies
Troubled the track of the host that we
hated,
Grimly with swords that were sharp from
the grindstone,
Fiercely we hack'd at the flyers before
us.
VI.
Mighty the Mercian,
Hard was his hand-playj
Sparing not any of
Those that with Anlaf,
^ Shields of lindenwood.
Warriors over the
Weltering waters
Borne in the bark's-bosom,
Drew to this island :
Doom'd to the death.
VII.
Five young kings put asleep by the sword-
stroke.
Seven strong Earls of the army of Anlaf
Fell on the war-field, numberless numbers,
Shipmen and Scotsmen.
Then the Norse leader,
Dire was his need of it.
Few were his following,
Fled to his warship :
Fleeted his vessel to sea with the king
in it,
Saving his life on the fallow flood.
IX.
Also the crafty one,
Constantinus,
Crept to his North again,
Hoar-headed hero !
X.
Slender warrant had
He to be proud of
The welcome of war-knives —
He that was reft of his
Folk and his friends that had
Fallen in conflict.
Leaving his son too
Lost in the carnage.
Mangled to morsels,
A youngster in war !
Slender reason had
He to be glad of
The clash of the war-glaive
Traitor and trickster
And spurner of treaties —
He nor had Anlaf
With armies so broken
A reason for bragging
That they had the better
In perils of battle
ACHILLES OVER THE TREIVCH.
525
On places of slaughter —
The struggle of standards,
The rush of the javelins,
^he crash of the charges,^
The wielding of weapons —
The play that they play'd with
The children of Edward.
Then with their nail'd prows
Parted the Norsemen, a
Blood-redden'd relic of
Javelins over
The jarring breaker, the deep-
sea billow.
Shaping their way toward Dy-
flen - again.
Shamed in their souls.
Also the brethren,
King and Atheling,
Each in his glory,
Went to his own in his own West- Saxon-
land,
Glad of the war.
Many a carcase they left to be carrion.
Many a livid one, many a sallow-skin —
Left for the white-tail'd eagle to tear it,
and
Left for the horny-nibb'd raven to rend
it, and
Gave to the garbaging war-hawk to gorge
it, and
That gray beast, the wolf of the weald.
XV.
' Never had huger
Slaughter of heroes
Slain by the sword-edge —
Such as old writers
Have writ of in histories —
Hapt in this isle, since
Up from the East hither
Saxon and Angle from
Over the broad billow
Broke into Britain with
Haughty war-workers who
* Lit. ' the gathering of men.' ^ Dublin.
Harried the Welshman, when
Earls that were lured by the
Hunger of glory gat
Hold of the land.
ACHILLES OVER THE TRENCH.
ILIAD, xviii, 202.
So saying, light-foot Iris pass'd away.
Then rose Achilles dear to Zeus; and
round
The warrior's puissant shoulders Pallas
flung
Her fringed aegis, and around his head
The glorious goddess wreath'd a golden
cloud,
And from it lighted an all-shining flame.
As when a smoke from a city goes to
heaven
Far off from out an island girt by foes,
All day the men contend in grievous
war
From their own city, but with set of
sun
Their fires flame thickly, and aloft the
glare
Flies streaming, if perchance the neigh-
bours round
May see, and sail to help them in the
war ;
So from his head the splendour went to
heaven.
From wall to dyke he stept, he stood,
nor join'd
The Achaeans — honouring his wise
mother's vi^ord —
There standing, shouted, and Pallas far
away
Call'd; and a boundless panic shook the
foe.
For like the clear voice when a trumpet
shrills.
Blown by the fierce beleaguerers of a
town,
So rang the clear voice of ^EakidSs;
And when the brazen cry of /EakidSs
Was heard among the Trojans, all their
hearts
Were troubled, and the fuU-maned horses
whirl'd
The chariots backward, knowing griefs
at hand;
526
TO PRINCESS FREDERICA—TIRESIAS.
And sheer-astounded were the chariot-
SIR JOHN FRANKLIN.
eers
To see the dread, unweariable fire
ON THE CENOTAPH IN WESTMINSTER
That always o'er the great Peleion's
ABBEY.
head
Not here! the white North has thy
Burn'd, for the bright-eyed goddess made
bones; and thou.
it burn.
Heroic sailor-soul,
Thrice from the dyke he sent his mighty
Art passing on thine happier voyage now
shout,
Toward no earthly pole.
Thrice backward reel'd the Trojans and
allies;
TO DANTE.
And there and then twelve of their noblest
died
(written at REQUEST OF THE
Among their spears and chariots.
FLORENTINES.)
King, that hast reign'd six hundred years,
and grown
TO PRINCESS FREDERICA ON
In power, and ever growest, since thine
HER MARRIAGE.
own
Fair Florence honouring thy nativity,
0 YOU that were eyes and light to the
Thy Florence now the crown of Italy,
King till he past away
Hath sdught the tribute of a verse from
From the darkness of life —
me.
He saw not his daughter — he blest her :
I, wearing but the garland of a day.
the blind King sees you to-day,
Cast at thy feet one flower that fades
He blesses the wife.
away.
TIRESIAS
AND OTHER POEMS.
TO E. FITZGERALD.
Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange,
Where once I tarried for a while,
Glance at the wheeling Orb of change,
hxv\ greet it with a kindly smile;
Whom yet I see as there you sit
Beneath your sheltering garden-tree,
And while your doves about you flit,
And plant on shoulder, hand and knee.
Or on your head their rosy feet,
As if they knew your diet spares
iVhatever moved in that full sheet
Let down to Peter at his prayers;
Who live on milk and meal and grass;
And once for ten long weeks I tried-
Your table of Pythagoras,
And seem'd at first ' a thing enskied '
(As Shakespeare has it) airy-light
To float above the ways of men,
Then fell from that half-spiritual height
Chill'd, till I tasted flesh again
One night when earth was winter-black.
And all the heavens flash'd in frost;
And on me, half-asleep, came back
That wholesome heat the blood had lost.
And set me climbing icy capes
And glaciers, over which there roll'd
To meet me long-arm'd vines with grapes
Of Eshcol hugeness; for the cold
Without, and warmth within me, wrought
To mould the dream; but none can say
That Lenten fare makes Lenten thought.
Who reads your golden Eastern lay.
Than which I know no version' done
In English more. divinely well;
A planet equal to the sun
Which cast it, that large infidel
Your Omar; and your Omar drew
Full-handed plaudits from our best
In modern letters, and from two.
Old friends outvaluing all the rest.
Two voices heard on earth no more;
But we old friends are still alive,
TIRESIAS.
527
And I am nearing seventy-four,
While you have touch'd at seventy-
five,
And so I send a birthday line
Of greeting; and my son, who dipt
In some forgotten book of mine
With sallow scraps of manuscript,
And dating many a year ago.
Has hit on this, which you will take
My Fitz, and, welcome, as I know
Less for its own than for the sake
Of one recalling gracious times,
When, in our younger London days,
You found some merit in my rhymes.
And I more pleasure in your praise.
TIRESIAS.
I WISH I were as in the years of old.
While yet the blessed daylight made itself
Ruddy thro' both the roofs of sight, and
woke
These eyes, now dull, but then so keen
to seek
The meanings ambush'd under all they
saw,
The flight of birds, the flame of sacrifice.
What omens may foreshadow fate to man
And woman, and the secret of the Gods.
My son, the Gods, despite of human
prayer,
Are slower to forgive than human kings.
The great God, Ares, burns in anger still
Against the guiltless heirs of him from
Tyre,
Our Cadmus, out of whom thou art,
who found
Beside the springs of Dirce, smote, and
still'd
Thro' all its folds the multitudinous
beast,
The dragon, which our trembling fathers
call'd
The God's own son.
• A tale, that told to me.
When but thine age, by age as winter-
white
As mine is now, amazed, but made me
yearn
For larger glimpses of that more than
man
Which rolls the heavens, and lifts, and
lays the deep,
Yet loves and hates with mortal hates
and loves,
And moves unseen among the ways of
men.
Then, in my wanderings all the lands
that lie
Subjected to the Heliconian ridge
Have heard this footstep fall, altho' my
wont
Was more to scale the highest of the
heights
With some strange hope to see the nearer
God.
One naked peak — the sister of the
sun
Would climb from out the dark, and
linger there
To silver all the valleys with her shafts —
There once, but long ago, five-fold thy
term
Of years, I lay; the vnnds were dead
for heat;
The noonday crag made the hand burn;
and sick
For shadow — not one bush was near —
I rose
Following a torrent till its myriad falls
Found silence in the hollows under-
neath.
There in a secret olive-glade I saw
Pallas Athene climbing from the bath
In anger; yet one glittering foot disturb'd
The lucid well; one snowy knee was
prest
Against the margin flowers; a dreadful
fight
Came from her golden hair, her golden
helm
And all her golden armour on the grass.
And from her virgin breast, and virgin
eyes
Remaining fixt on mine, till mine grew
dark
For ever, and I heard a voice that said
* Henceforth be blind, for thou hast seen
too much.
And speak the truth that no man may
believe.'
Son, in the hidden world of sight, that
lives
Behind this darkness, I behold her still.
Beyond all work of those who carve the
stone,
$2»
TIRESIAS.
Beyond all dreams of Godlike woman-
hood.
Ineffable beauty, out of whom, at a
glance.
And as it were, perforce, upon me flash'd
The power of prophesying — but to me
No power — so chain'd and coupled with
the curse
Of blindness and their unbelief, who
heard
And heard not, when I spake of famine,
plague,
Shrine-shattering earthquake, fire, flood,
thunderbolt,
And angers of the Gods for evil done
And expiation lack'd — no power on Fate,
Theirs, or mine own ! for when the
crowd would roar
For blood, for war, whose issue was their
doom,
To cast wise words among the multitude
Was flinging fruit to lions; nor, in hours
Of civil outbreak, when I knew the twain
Would each waste each, and bring on
both the yoke
Of stronger states, was mine the voice to
curb
The madness of our cities and their kings.
Who ever turn'd upon his heel to hear
My warning that the tyranny of one
Was prelude to the tyranny of all?
My counsel that the tyranny of all
Led backward to the tyranny of one?
This power hath work'd no good to
aught that lives.
And these blind hands were useless in
their wars.
O therefore that the unfulfill'd desire.
The grief for ever born from griefs to be.
The boundless yearning of the Prophet's
heart —
Could /hat stand forth, and, like a statue
rear'd .
To some great citizen, win all praise
from all
Who past it, saying, 'That was he ! '
In vain !
Virtue must shape itself in deed, and those
Whom weakness or necessity have
cramp'd
Within themselves, immerging, each, his
urn
In his owii well, draw solace as he may.
Menoeceus, thou hast eyes, and I can
hear
Too plainly what full tides of onset sap
Our seven high gates, and what a weight
of war
Rides on those ringing axles ! jingle of
bits,
Shouts, arrows, tramp of the hornfooted
horse
That grma the glebe to powder ! Stony
showers
Of that ear-stunning hail of Ares crash
Along the sounding walls. Above,
below,
Shock after shock, the song-built towers
and gates
Reel, bruised and butted with the
shuddering
War- thunder of iron rams; and from
within
The city comes a murmur void of joy,
Lest she be taken captive — maidens,
wives,
And mothers with their babblers of the
dawn.
And oldest age in shadow from the night.
Falling about their shrines before their
Gods,
And wailing * Save us.'
And they wail to thee !
These eyeless eyes, that cannot see thine
own.
See this, that only in thy virtue lies
The saving of our Thebes; for, yester-
night.
To me, the great God Ares, whose one
bliss
Is war, and human sacrifice — himself
Blood-red from battle, spear and helmet
tipt
With stormy light as on a mast at sea.
Stood out before a darkness, crying
* Thebes,
Thy Thebes shall fall and perish, for I
loathe
The seed of Cadmus — yet if one of these
By his own hand — if one of these '
My son.
No sound is breathed so potent to
coerce.
And to conciliate, as their names who dare
For that sweet mother land which gave
them birth
TIRESIAS.
529
Nobly to do, nobly to die. Their names,
Graven on memorial columns, are a song
Heard in the future; few, but more than
wall
And rampart, their examples reach a
hand
Far thro' all years, and everywhere they
meet
And kindle generous purpose, and the
strength
To mould it into action pure as theirs.
Fairer thy fate than mine, if life's best
end
Be to end well ! and thou refusing this,
Unvenerable will thy memory be
While men shall move the lips: but if
thou dare —
Thou, one of these, the race of Cadmus
— then
No stone is fitted in yon marble girth
Whose echo shall not tongue thy glorious
doom.
Nor in this pavement but shall ring thy
name
To every hoof that clangs it, and the
springs
Of Dirce laving yonder battle-plain,
Heard from the roofs by night, will mur-
mur thee
To thine own Thebes, while Thebes thro'
thee shall stand
Firm-based with all her Gods.
The Dragon's cave
Half-hid, they tell me, now in flowing
vines —
Where once he dwelt and whence he
roU'd himself
At dead of night — thou knowest, and
that smooth rock
Before it, altar-fashion'd, where of late
The woman-breasted Sphinx, with wings
drawn back.
Folded her lion paws, and look'd to
Thebes.
There blanch the bones of whom she
slew, and these
Mixt with her own, because the fierce
beast found
A wiser than herself, and dash'd herself
Dead in her rage : but thou art wise
enough,
Tho' young, to love thy wiser, blunt the
curse
Of Pallas, hear, and tho' I speak the
truth
Believe I speak it, let thine own hand
strike
Thy youthful pulses into rest and quench
The red God's anger, fearing not to
plunge
Thy torch of life in darkness, rather —
thou
Rejoicing that the sun, the moon, the
stars
Send no such light upon the ways of mei
"As one g^reat deed.
Thither, my son, and there
Thou, that hast never known the embrace
of love,
Offer thy maiden life.
This useless hand !
I felt one warm tear fall upon it. Gone !
He will achieve his greatness.
But for me,
I would that I were gather'd to my rest.
And mingled with the famous kings of
old,
On whom about their ocean-islets flash
The faces of the Gods — the wise man's
word,
Here trampled by the populace under-
foot,
There crown'd with worship — and these
eyes will find
The men I knew, and watch the chariot
About the goal again, and hunters race
The shadowy lion, and the warrior-
kings.
In height and prowess more than human,
strive
Again for glory, while the golden lyre
Is ever sounding in heroic ears
Heroic hymns, and every way the vales
Wind, clouded with the grateful incense-
fume
Of those who mix all odour to the Gods
On one far height in one far-shining fire
* One height and one far-shining fire,'
And while I fancied that my friend
For this brief idyll would require
A less diff"use and opulent end.
And would defend his judgment well,
If I should deem it over nice —
530
THE WRECK.
The tolling of his funeral bell
Broke on my Pagan Paradise,
And mixt the dream of classic times
And all the phantoms of the dream,
With present grief, and made the rhymes,
That miss'd his living welcome, seem
Like would-be guests an hour too late,
Who down the highway moving on
With easy laughter find the gate
Is bolted, and the master gone.
Gone into darkness, that full light
Of friendship ! past, in sleep, away
By night, into the deeper night I
The deeper night? A clearer day
Than our poor twilight dawn on earth —
If night, what barren toil to be !
What life, so maim'd by night, were worth
Our living out? Not mine to me
Remembering all the golden hours
Now silent, and so many dead.
And him the last; and laying flowers,
This wreath, above his honour'd head,
And praying that, when I from hence
Shall fade with him into the unknown,
My close of earth's experience
May prove as peaceful as his own.
THE WRECK.
Hide me. Mother ! my Fathers belong'd
to the church of old,
I am driven by storm and sin and death
to the ancient fold,
I cling to the Catholic Cross once more,
to the Faith that saves,
My brain is full of the crash of wrecks,
and the roar of waves.
My life itself is a wreck, I have sullied
a noble name,
I am flung from the rushing tide of the
world as a waif of shame,
I am roused by the wail of a child, and
awake to a livid light.
And a ghastlier face than ever has
haunted a grave by night,
I would hide from the storm without, I
would flee from the storm within,
I would make my life one prayer for a
soul that died in his sin,
I was the tempter. Mother, and mine was
the deeper fall;
I will sit at your feet, I will hide my face,
I will tell you all.
He that they gave me to, Mother, a
. heedless and innocent bride —
I never have wrong'd his heart, I have
only wounded his pride —
Spain in his blood and the Jew — dark-
visaged, stately and tall — •
A princelier-looking man never stept
thro' a Prince's hall.
And who, when his anger was kindled,
would venture to give him the nay ?
And a man men fear is a man to be lovec.
by the women they say.
And I could have loved him too, if the
blossom can dote on the blight.
Or the young green leaf rejoice in the
frost that sears it at night;
He would open the books that I prized,
and toss them away with a yawn,
Repell'd by the magnet of Art to the
which my nature was drawn.
The word of the Poet by whom the deeps
of the world are stirr'd,
The music that robes it in language be-
neath and beyond the word !
My Shelley would fall from my hands when
he cast a contemptuous glance
From where he was poring over his
Tables of Trade and Finance;
My hands, when I heard him coming,
would drop from the chords or
the keys.
But ever I fail'd to please him, however
I strove to please —
All day long far-off in the cloud of the
city, and there
Lost, head and heart, in the chances of
dividend, consol, and share —
And at home if I sought for a kindly ca-
ress, being woman and weak,
His formal kiss fell chill as a flake of
snow on the cheek:
And so, when I bore him a girl, when I
held it aloft in my joy,
He look'd at it coldly, and sai-d to me,
* Pity it isn't a boy.'
The one thing given me, to love and to
live for, glanced at in scorn !
The child that I felt I could die for — as
if she were basely born I
THE WRECK,
531
I had lived a wild-flower life, I was
planted now in a tomb;
The daisy will shut to the shadow, I closed
my heart to the gloom;
I threw myself all abroad — I would play
my part with the young
By the low foot-lights of the world — and
I caught the wreath that was flung.
Mother, I have not — however their
tongues may have babbled of me —
Sinn'd thro' an animal vileness, for all
but a dwarf was he,
And all but a hunchback too; and I
look'd at him, first, askance,
With pity — not he the knight for an
amorous girl's romance !
Tho' wealthy enough to have bask'd in
the light of a dowerless smile.
Having lands at home and abroad in a
rich West-Indian isle;
But I came on him once at a ball, the
heart of a listening crowd' —
Why, what a brow was there ! he was
seated — speaking aloud
To women, the flower of the time, and
men at the helm of state —
Flowing with easy greatness and touch-
ing on all things great.
Science, philosophy, song — till I felt
myself ready to weep
For I knew not what, when I heard that
voice, — as mellow and deep
As a psalm by a mighty master and
peal'd from an organ, — roll
Rising and falling — for, Mother, the voice
was the voice of the soul;
And the sun of the soul made day in the
dark of his wonderful eyes.
Here was the hand that would help me,
would heal me — the heart that
was wise !
And he, poor man, when he learnt that
I hated the ring I wore.
He helpt me with death, and he heal'd
me with sorrow for evermore.
IV.
For I broke the bond. That day my
nurse had brought me the child.
The small sweet face was flush'd, but it
coo'd to the Mother and smiled.
'Anything ailing,' I ask'd her, 'with
baby?' She shook her head,
And the Motherless Mother kiss'd it, and
turn'd in her haste and fled.
V.
Low warm winds had gently breathed us
away from the land —
Ten long sweet summer days upon deck,
sitting hand in hand —
When he clothed a naked mind with the
wisdom and wealth of his own.
And I bow'd myself down as a slave to
his intellectual throne.
When he coin'd into English gold some
treasure of classical song.
When he flouted a statesman's error, *or
flamed at a public wrong.
When he rose as it were on the wings of
an eagle beyond me, and past
Over the range and the change of the
M'orld from the first to the last.
When he spoke of his tropical home in
the canes by the purple tide.
And the high star-crowns of his palm?
on the deep-wooded mountain-
side.
And cliff's all robed in lianas that dropt
to the brink of his bay,
And trees like the towers of a minster,
the sons of a winterless day.
* Paradise there ! ' so he said, but I seem'd
in Paradise then
With the first great love I had felt for the
first and greatest of men;
Ten long days of summer and sin — if it
must be so —
But days of a larger light than I ever
again shall know —
Days that will glimmer, I fear, thro' life
to my latest breath;
' No frost there,' so he said, * as in truest
Love no Death.'
VI.
Mother, one morning a bird with a warble
plaintively sweet
Perch'd on the shrouds, and then fell
fluttering down at my feet;
I took it, he made it a cage, we fondled
it, Stephen and I,
But it died, and I thought of the child
for a moment, I scarce know why.
532
THE WRECK.
VII.
But if sin be sin, not inherited fate, as
many will say,
My sin to my desolate little one found
me at sea on a day,
When her orphan wail came borne in the
shriek of a growing wind,
And a voice rang out in the thunders of
Ocean and Heayen 'Thou hast
sinn'd.'
And down in the cabin were we, for the
towering crest of the tides
Plunged on the vessel and swept in a
cataract off from her sides.
And ever the great storm grew with a
howl and a hoot of the blast
In the rigging, voices of hell — then came
the crash of the mast.
'The wages of sin is death,' and there I
began to v/eep,
' I am the Jonah, the crew should cast
me into the deep,
For ah God, what a heart was mine to
forsake her even for you.'
'Never the heart among women,' he said,
* more tender and true.'
*The heart! not a mother's heart, when
I left my darling alone.'
•Comfort yourself, for the heart of the
father will care for his own.'
'The heart of the father will spurn her,'
I cried, 'for the sin of the wife,
The cloud of the mother's shame will
enfold her and darken her life.'
Then his pale face twitch'd; ' O Stephen,
I love you, I love you, and yet ' —
As I lean'd away from his arms — ' would
God, we had never met ! '
And he spoke not — only the storm; till
after a little, I yearn'd
For his voice again, and he call'd to me
' Kiss me ! ' and there — as I
turn'd —
«The heart, the heart!' I kiss'd him, I
clung to the sinking form.
And the storm went roaring above us,
and he — was out of the storm.
VIII.
And then, then, Mother, the ship stag-
ger'd under a thunderous shock.
That shook us asunder, as if she had
Struck and crash'd on a rock;
For a huge sea smote every soul from the
decks of The Falcon but one;
All of them, all but the man that was
lash'd to the helm had gone;
And I fell — and the storm and the days
went by, but I knew no more —
Lost myself — lay like the dead by the
dead on the cabin floor,
Dead to the death beside me, and lost to
the loss that was mine.
With a dim dream, now and then, of a
hand giving bread and wine,
Till I woke from the trance, and the ship
stood still, and the skies were blue,
But the face I had known, O Mother,
was not the face that I knew.
IX.
The strange misfeaturing mask that I saw
so amazed me, that I
Stumbled on deck, half mad. I would
fling myself over and die !
But one — he was waving a flag — the one
man left on the wreck —
' W^oman ' — he graspt at my arm — ' stay
there' — I crouch'd upon deck —
'We are sinking, and yet there's hope:
look yonder,' he cried, ' a sail,'
In a tone so rough that I broke into
passionate tears, and the wail
Of a beaten babe, till I saw that a boat
was nearing us — then
All on a sudden I thought, I shall look
on the child again.
They lower'd me down the side, and
there in the boat I lay
With sad eyes fixt on the lost sea-home,
as we glided away,
And I sigh'd, as the low dark hull dipt
under the smiling main,
'Had I stay'd with him, I had now —
with him — been out of my pain.'
XI.
They took us aboard : the crew were
gentle, the captain kind;
But / was the lonely slave of an often-
wandering mind;
For whenever a rougher gust might
tumble a stormier wave,
DESPAIR.
533
•O Stephen,' I moan'd, 'I am coming to
thee in thine Ocean-grave.'
And again, wlien a bahiiier breeze curl'd
over a peacefuUer sea,
I found myself moaning again ' O child,
I am coming to thee.'
XII.
The broad white brow of the Isle — that
bay with the colour'd sand —
Rich was the rose of sunset there, as we
drew to the land;
All so quiet the ripple would hardly
blanch into spray
At the feet of the cliff; and I pray'd —
• my child ' — for I still could
pray —
* May her life be as blissfully calm, be
never gloom'd by the curse
Of a sin, not hers ! '
Was it well with the child?
I wrote to the nurse
Who had borne my flower on her hireling
heart; and an answer came
Not from the nurse — nor yet to the wife
— to her maiden name !
I shook as I opened the letter — I knevi^
that hand too well —
And from it a scrap, dipt out of the
' deaths ' in a paper, fell.
*Ten long sweet summer days' of fever,
and want of care !
And gone — that day of the storm — O
Mother, she came to me there.
DESPAIR.
A man and his wife having lost faith in a God,
and hope of a life to come, and being utterly
miserable in this, resolve to end themselves by
drowning. The woman is drowned, but the man
rescued by a minister of the sect he had aban-
doned.
I.
Is it you, that preach'd in the chapel
there looking over the sand?
FoUow'd us too that night, and dogg'd
us, and drew me to land?
What did I feel that night? You are
curious. How should I tell?
Does it matter so much what I felt?
You rescued me — yet — was it
well
That you came unwish'd for, uncall'd,
between me and the deep and my
doom.
Three days since, three more dark days
of the Godless gloom
Of a life without sun, without health, with-
out hope, without any delight
In anything here upon earth? but ah
God, that night, that night
When the rolling eyes of the lighthouse
there on the fatal neck
Of land running out into rock — they had
saved many hundreds from wreck —
Glared on our way toward death, I re-
member I thought, as we past,
Does it matter how many they saved?
we are all of us wreck'd at last —
* Do you fear? ' and there came thro' the
roar of the breaker a whisper, a
breath,
'Fear? am I not with you? I am
frighted at life not death.'
iili.
And the suns of the limitless Universe
sparkled and shone in the sky.
Flashing with fires as of God, but we
knew that their light was a lie —
Bright as with deathless hope — but,
however they sparkled and shone,
The dark little worlds running round
them were worlds of woe like our
own —
No soul in the heaven above, no soul on
the earth below,
A fiery scroll written over with lamenta-
tion and woe.
IV.
See, we were nursed in the drear night-
fold of your fatalist creed.
And we turn'd to the growing dawn, we
had hoped for a dawn indeed.
When the light of a Sun that was coming
would scatter the ghosts of the
Past,
And the cramping creeds that had
madden'd the peoples would
vanish at last.
534
DESPAIR.
And we broke away from the Christ, our
human brother and friend,
For He spoke, or it seem'd that He
spoke, of a Hell without help,
without end.
Hoped for a dawn and it came, but the
promise had faded away;
We had past from a cheerless night to
the glare of a drearier day ;
He is only a cloud and a smoke who was
once a pillar of fire.
The guess of a worm in the dust and the
shadow of its desire —
Of a worm as it writhes in a world of the
weak trodden down by the strong,
Of a dying worm in a world, all massacre,
murder, and wrong.
O we poor orphans of nothing — alone
on that lonely shore —
Born of the brainless Nature who knew
not that which she bore !
Trusting no longer that earthly flower
would be heavenly fruit —
Come from the brute, poor souls — no souls
— and to die with the brute
Nay, but I am not claiming your pity : I
know you of old —
Small pity for those that have ranged from
the narrow warmth of your fold,
Where you bawl'd the dark side of your
faith and a God of eternal rage.
Till you flung us back on ourselves, and
the human heart, and the Age.
But pity — the Pagan held it a vice — was
in her and in me,
Helpless, taking the place of the pitying
God that should be !
Pity for all that aches in the grasp of an
idiot power,
And pity for our own selves on an earth
that bore not a flower;
Pity for all that suff'ers on land or in air
or the deep,
And pity for our own selves till we long'd
for eternal sleep.
'Lightly step over the sands! the waters
— you hear them call !
Life with its anguish, and horrors, and
errors — away with it all ! '
And she laid her hand in my own — she
was always loyal and sweet —
Till the points of the foam in the dusk
came playing about our feet.
There was a strong sea-current would
sweep us out to the main.
' Ah God ' tho' I felt as I spoke I was
taking the name in vain —
'Ah God' and we turn'd to each other,
we kiss'd, we embraced, she and I,
Knowing the Love we were used to be-
lieve everlasting would die :
We had read their know-nothing books
and we lean'd to the darker side —
Ah God, should we find Him, perhaps,
perhaps, if we died, if we died;
We never had found Him on earth, this
earth is a fatherless Hell —
' Dear Love, for ever and ever, for ever
and ever farewell,'
Never a cry so desolate not since the
world began.
Never a kiss so sad, no, not since the
coming of man !
But the blind wave cast me ashore, and
you saved me, a valueless life.
Not a grain of gratitude mine ! You
have parted the man from the wife.
I am left alone on the land, she is all
alone in the sea;
If a curse meant aught, I would curse
you for not having let me be.
Visions of youth — for my brain was drunk
with the water, it seems;
I had past into perfect quiet at length
out of pleasant dreams.
And the transient trouble of drowning —
what was it when match'd with
the pains
Of the hellish heat of a wretched life
rushing back thro' the veins?
DESPAIR.
535
XII.
Why should I live ? one son had forged
on his father and fled,
And if I believed in a God, I would
thank him, the other is dead,
And there was a baby-girl, that had
never look'd on the light :
Happiest she of us all, for she past from
the night to the night.
But the crime, if a crime, of her eldest-
born, her glory, her boast,
Struck hard at the tender heart of the
mother, and broke it almost;
Tho', glory and shame dying out for ever
in endless time,
Does it matter so much whether crown'd
for a virtue, or hang'd for a crime?
XIV.
And ruin'd by him, by him, I stood
there, naked, amazed
In a world of arrogant opulence, fear'd
myself turning crazed,
And I would not be mock'd in a mad-
house ! and she, the delicate wife,
With a grief that could only be cured, if
cured, by the surgeon's knife, —
Why should we bear with an hour of
torture, a moment of pain.
If every man die for ever, if all his griefs
are in vain,
And the homeless planet at length will
be wheel'd thro' the silence of
space.
Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing
race,
When the worm shall have M'rithed its
last, and its last brother-worm
will have fled
From the dead fossil skull that is left in
the rocks of an earth that is dead?
Have I crazed myself over their horrible
infidel writings? O yes,
For these are the new dark ages, you see,
of the popular press.
When the bat comes out of his cave, and
the owls are whooping at noon.
And Doubt is the lord of this dunghill
and crows to the sun and the
moon.
Till the Sun and the Moon of our science
are both of them turn'd into blood,
And Hope will have broken her heart,
running after a shadow of good;
For their knowing and know-nothing
books are scatter'd from hand to
hand —
We have knelt in your know-all chapel
too looking over the sand.
XVII.
What ! I should call on that Infinite Love
that has served us so well?
Infinite crueltv rather that made everlast-
ing Hell,
Made us, foreknew us, foredoom'd us, and
does what he will with his own;
Better our dead brute mother who never
has heard us groan !
XVIII.
Hell? if the souls of men were immortal,
as men have been told.
The lecher would cleave to his lusts, and
the miser would yearn for his gold,
And so there were Hell for ever ! but
were there a God as you say,
His Love would have power over Hell
till it utterly vanish'd away.
XIX.
Ah yet — I have had some glimmer, at
times, in my gloomiest woe.
Of a God behind all — after all — the great
God for aught that I know;
But the God of love and of Hell together
— they cannot be thought.
If there be such a God may the Great
God curse him and bring him to
naught !
Blasphemy ! whose is the fault? is it
mine? for why would you save
A madman to vex you with wretched
words, who is best in his grave?
Blasphemy ! ay, why not, being damn'd
beyond hope of grace?
536
THE ANCIENT SAGE.
0 would I were yonder with her, and
away from your faith and your
face !
Blasphemy ! true ! I have scared you
pale with my scandalous talk,
But the blasphemy to my mind lies all in
the way that you walk.
XXI.
Hence 1 she is gone! can I stay? can I
breathe divorced from the Past?
You needs must have good lynx-eyes if I
do not escape you at last.
Our orthodox coroner doubtless will find
it a felo-de-se.
And the stake and the cross-road, fool,
if you will, does it matter to me?
THE ANCIENT SAGE.
A THOUSAND summers ere the time of
Christ
From out his ancient city came a Seer
Whom one that loved, and honour'd him,
and yet
Was no disciple, richly garb'd, but worn
From wasteful living, foUow'd — in his
hand
A scroll of verse — till that old man before
A cavern whence an affluent fountain
pour'd
From darkness into daylight, turn'd and
spoke.
This wealth of waters might but seem to
draw
From yon dark cave, but, son, the source
is higher,
Yon summit half-a-league in air — and
higher,
The cloud that hides it — higher still, the
heavens
Whereby the cloud was moulded, and
whereout
The cloud descended. Force is from the
heights.
1 am wearied of our city, son, and go
To spend my one last year among the
hills.
What hast thou there? Some deathsong
for the Ghouls
To make their banquet relish? let me
read.
" How far thro' all the bloom and brake
That nightingale is heard !
What power but the bird's could make
This music in the bird?
How summer-bright are yonder skies,
And earth as fair in hue !
And yet what sign of aught that lies
Behind the green and blue?
But man to-day is fancy's fool
As man nath ever been.
The ''.„uieless Power, or Powers, that rule
Were never heard or seen."
If thou would'st hear the Nameless, and
wilt dive
Into the Temple-cave of thine own self.
There, brooding by the central altar, thou
May'st haply learn the Nameless hath a
voice,
By which thou wilt abide, if thou be
wise.
As if thou knewest, tho' thou canst not
know ;
For Knowledge is the swallow on the
lake
That sees and stirs the surface-shadow
there
But never yet hath dipt into the abysm,
The Abysm of all Abysms, beneath,
within
The blue of sky and sea, the green of
earth,
And in the million-millionth of a grain
Which cleft'and cleft again for evermorei
And ever vanishing, never vanishes.
To me, my son, more mystic than myself,
Or even than the Nameless is to me.
And when thou sendest thy free soul
thro' heaven.
Nor understandest bound nor boundless-
ness.
Thou seest the Nameless of the hundred
names.
And if the Nameless should withdraw
from all
Thy frailty counts most real, all thy world
Might vanish like thy shadow in the dark
** And since — from when this earth
began —
The Nameless never came
Among us, never spake with man,
And never named the Name" —
THE ANCIENT SAGE.
<>yi
Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O
my son,
Nor canst thou prove the world thou
movest in,
Thou canst not prove that thou art body
alone,
Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit
alone,
Nor canst thou prove that thou art both
in one :
Thou canst not prove thou art immor-
tal, no
Nor yet that thou art mortal — nay, my
son,
Thou canst not prove that I, who speak
with thee,
Am not thyself in converse with thyself,
For nothing worthy proving can be
proven.
Nor yet disproven: wherefore thou be
wise,
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,
And cling to Faith beyond the forms of
Faith !
She reels not in the storm of warring
words,
She brightens at the clash of * Yes ' and
'No,'
She sees the Best that glimmers thro' the
Worst,
She feels the Sun is hid but for a night.
She spies the summer thro' the winter
bud,
She tastes the fruit before the blossom
falls.
She hears the lark within the songless
egg,
She finds the fountain where they wail'd
* Mirage ' !
" What Power ? aught akin to Mind,
The mind in me and you?
Or power as of the Gods gone blind
Who see not what they do? "
But some in yonder city hold, my son,
That none but Gods could build this
house of ours,
So beautiful, vast, various, so beyond
All work of man, yet, like all work of
man,
A beauty with defect till That which
knows.
And is not known, but felt thro' what we
feel
Within ourselves is highest, shall descend
On this half-deed, and shape it at the
last
According to the Highest in the Highest.
" What Power but the Years that make
And break the vase of clay.
And stir the sleeping earth, and wake
The bloom that fades away?
What rulers but the Days and Hours
That cancel weal with woe.
And wind the front of youth with flowers.
And cap our age with snow? "
The days and hours are ever glancing
by,
And seem to flicker past thro' sun and
shade.
Or short, or long, as Pleasure leads, or
Pain;
But with the Nameless is nor Day nor
Hour;
Tho' we, thin minds, who creep from
thought to thought, •
Break into ' Thens ' and * Whens ' the
Eternal Now :
This double seeming of the single
world ! —
My words are like the babblings in a
dream
Of nightmare, when the babblings break
the dream.
But thou be wise in this dream-world of
ours,
Nor take thy dial for thy deity.
But make the passing shadow serve thy
will.
" The years that made the stripling wise
Undo their work again,
And leave him, blind of heart and eyes,
The last and least of men;
Who clings to earth, and once would dare
Hell-heat or Arctic cold.
And now one breath of cooler air
Would loose him from his hold; \
His winter chills him to the root, \
He withers marrow and mind;
The kernel of the shrivell'd fruit
Is jutting thro' the rind ;
The tiger spasms tear his chest,
538
THE ANCIENT SAGE.
The palsy wags his head;
0 slender lily waving there,
The wife, the sons, who love him best
And laughing back the light.
Would fain that he were dead;
In vain you tell me ' Earth is fair '
b The griefs by which he once was
1 wrung
When all is dark as night."
Were never worth the while " —
My son, the world is dark with griefs and
graves,
Who knows ? or whether this earth-narrow
So dark that men cry out against the
life
Heavens.
Be yet but yolk, and forming in the shell?
Who knows but that the darkness is in
" The shaft of scorn that once had stung
man r
The doors of Night may be the gates of
But wakes a dotard smile."
Light;
For wert thou born or blind or deaf, and
The placid gleam of sunset after storm !
then
Suddenly heal'd, how would'st thou glory
"The statesman's brain that sway'd the
in all
past
The splendours and the voices of the
Is feebler than his knees;
world !
The passive sailor wrecks at last
And we, the poor earth's dying race, and
In ever-silent seas ;
yet
The warrior hath forgot his arms,
No phantoms, watching from a phantom
The Learned all his lore;
shore
The changing market frets or charms
Await the last and largest sense to make
The merchant's hope no more;
The phantom walls of this illusion fade,
The prophet's beacon burn'd in vain,
And show us that the world is wholly fair.
And now is lost in cloud ;
The plowman passes, bent with pain,
" But vain the tears for darken'd years
To mix with what he plow'd;
As laughter over wine.
The poet whom his Age would quote
And vain the laughter as the tears,
As heir of endless fame —
0 brother, mine or thine.
He knows not ev'n the book he wrote,
Not even his own name.
" For all that laugh, and all that weep,
For man has overlived his day.
And all that breathe are one
And, darkening in the light,
Slight ripple on the boundless deep
Scarce feels the senses break away
That moves, and all is gone."
To mix with ancient Night."
But that one ripple on the boundless deep
The shell must break before the bird can
Feels that the deep is boundless, and
fly.
itself
For ever changing form, but evermore
"The years that when my Youth began
One with the boundless motion of the
Had set the lily and rose
deep.
By all my ways where'er they ran,
Have ended mortal foes;
"Yet wine and laughter friends! and set
My rose of love for ever gone.
The lamps alight, and call
My lily of truth and trust —
For golden music, and forget
They made her lily and rose in one.
The darkness of the pall."
And changed her into dust.
0 rosetree planted in my grief,
If utter darkness closed the day, my
And growing, on her tomb,
son
Her dust is greening in your leaf,
But earth's dark forehead flyigs athwart
Her blood is in your bloom.
the heavens
THE ANCIENT SAGE.
539
Her shadow crown'd with stars — and
yonder — out
To northward — some that never set, but
pass
From sight and night to lose themselves
in day.
I hate the black negation of the bier,
And wish the dead, as happier than our-
selves
And higher, having climb'd one step
beyond
Our village miseries, might be borne in
white
To burial or to burning, hymn'd from
hence
With songs in praise of death, and
crown'd with flowers !
" O worms and maggots of to-day
Without their hope of wings ! "
But louder than thy rhyme the silent
Word
Of that world-prophet in the heart of man.
" Tho' some have gleams or so they say
Of more than mortal things."
To-day? but what of yesterday? for oft
On me, when boy, there came what then
I call'd,
Who knew no books and no philosophies,
In my boy-phrase * The Passion of the
Past.'
The first gray streak of earliest summer-
dawn,
The last long stripe of waning crimson
gloom.
As if the late and early were but one —
A height, a broken grange, a grove, a
flower
Had murmurs * Lost and gone and lost
and gone ! '
A breath, a whisper ■ — some divine fare-
well —
Desolate sweetness — far and faraway —
What had he loved, what had he lost,
the boy?
I know not and I speak of what has been.
And more, my son ! for more than
once when I
Sat all alone^, revolving in myself
The word that is the symbol of myself,
The mortal limit of the Self was loosed,
And past into the Nameless, as a cloud
Melts into Heaven. I touch 'd my limbs,
the limbs
Were strange not mine — and yet- no
shade of doubt.
But utter clearness, and thro' loss of Self
The gain of such large life as match'd
with ours
Were Sun to spark — unshadowable in
words.
Themselves but shadows of a shadow-
world.
" And idle gleams will come and go,
But still the clouds remain; "
The clouds themselves are children of the
Sun.
" And Night and Shadow rule below
When only Day should reign."
And Day and Night are children of the
Sun,
And idle gleams to thee are light to me.
Some say, the Light was father of the
Night,
And some, the Night was father of the
Light,
No night no day ! — I touch thy world
again —
No ill no good ! such counter-terms, my
son,
Are border-races, holding, each its own
By endless war : but night enough is there
In yon dark city : get thee back : and
since
The key to that weird casket, which for
thee
But holds a skull, is neither thine nor
mine.
But in the hand of what is more than
man.
Or in man's hand when man is more than
man.
Let be thy wail and help thy fellow men.
And make thy gold thy vassal not thy
king.
And fling free alms into the beggar's
bowl.
And send the day into the darken'd
heart;
540
THE FLIGHT.
Nor list for guerdon in the voice of men,
A dying echo from a falling wall;
Nor care — for Hunger hath the Evil
eye —
To vex the noon with fiery gems, or fold
Thy presence in the silk of sumptuous
looms;
Nor roll thy viands on a luscious tongue,
Nor drown thyself with flies in honied
wine;
Nor thou be rageful, like a handled bee,
And lose thy life by usage of thy sting;
Nor harm an adder thro' the lust for
harm,
Nor make a snail's horn shrink for wan-
tonness;
And more — think well ! Do-well will
follow thought,
And in the fatal sequence of this world
An evil thought may soil thy children's
blood ;
But curb the beast would cast thee in the
mire.
And leave the hot swamp of voluptuous-
ness
A cloud between the Nameless and thy-
self,
And lay thine .uphill shoulder to the
wheel.
And cHmb the Mount of Blessing, whence,
if thou
Look higher, then — perchance — thou
mayest — beyond
A hundred ever-rising mountain lines.
And past the range of Night and Shadow
— see
The high-heaven dawn of more than
mortal day
Strike on the Mount of Vision !
So, farewell.
fHE FLIGHT.
Are you sleeping? have you forgotten?
do not sleep, my sister dear !
How f«« you sleep? the morning brings
the day I hate and fear;
The cock has crow'd already once, he
crows before his time;
Awake ! the creeping glimmer steals, the
hills are white with rime.
Ah, clasp me in your arms, sister, ah,
fold me to your breast !
Ah, let me weep my fill once more, and
cry myself to rest !
To rest? to rest and wake no more were
better rest for me.
Than to waken every morning to that
face I loathe to see :
I envied your sweet slumber, all night so
calm you lay.
The night was calm, the morn is calm,
and like another day;
But I could wish yon moaning sea would
rise and burst the shore,
And such a whirlwind blow these woods,
as never blew before.
IV.
For, one by one, the stars went down
across the gleaming pane.
And project after project rose, and all of
them were vain;
The blackthorn-blossom fades and falls
and leaves the bitter sloe,
The hope I catch at vanishes and youth
is turn'd to woe.
V.
Come, speak a little comfort ! all night
I pray'd with tears.
And yet no comfort came to me, and
now the morn appears,
When he will tear me from your side,
who bought me for his slave :
This father pays his debt with me, and
weds me to my grave.
What father, this or mine, was he, who,
on that summer day
When I had fall'n from off the crag we
clamber'd up in play,
Found, fear'd me dead, and groan'd, and
took and kiss'd me, and again
He kiss'd me; anrl I loved him then;
he was my father :hen.
THE FLIGHT.
54?
VII.
No father now, the tyrant vassal of a
tyrant vice !
The Godless Jephtha vows his child . . .
to one cast of the dice.
These ancient woods, this Hall at last
will go — perhaps have gone,
Except his own meek daughter yield her
life, heart, soul to one —
To one who knows I scorn him. O the
formal mocking bow,
The cruel smile, the courtly phrase that
masks his malice now —
But often in the sidelong eyes a gleam of
all things ill —
It is not Love but Hate that weds a
bride against her will;
IX.
Hate, that would pluck from this true
breast the locket that I wear.
The precious crystal into which I braided
Edwin's hair !
The love that keeps this heart alive beats
on it night and day —
One golden curl, his golden gift, before
he past away.
X.
He left us weeping in the woods; his
boat was on the sand;
How slowly down the rocks he went,
how loth to quit the land !
And all my life was darken'd, as I saw
the white sail run,
And darken, up that lane of light into
the setting sun.
How often have we watch'd the sun fade
from us thro' the West,
And follow Edwin to those isles, those
islands of the Blest !
Is he not there? would I were there, the
friend, the bride, the wife.
With him, where summer never dies,
with Love, the Sun of life I
XII.
0 would I were in Edwin's arms — once
more — to feel his breath
Upon my cheek — on Edwin's ship, with
Edwin, ev'n in death,
Tho' all about the shuddering wreck the
death-white sea should rave.
Or if lip were laid to lip on the pillows
of the wave.
XIII.
Shall I take hiin ? I kneel with him ? \
swear and swear forsworn
To love him most, whom most I loathe,
to honour whom I scorn?
The Fiend would yell, the grave would
yawn, my mother's ghost would
rise —
To lie, to lie — in God's own house — the
blackest of all lies !
XIV.
Why — rather than that hand in mine,
tho' every pulse would freeze,
I'd sooner fold an icy corpse dead o(
some foul disease :
Wed him? I will not wed him, let them
spurn me from the doors.
And I will wander till I die about the
barren moors.
XV.
The dear, mad bride who stal>b'd her
bridegroom on her bridal night —
If mad, then I am mad, but sane, if she
were in the right.
My father's madness makes me mad —
but words are only words !
1 am not mad, not yet, not quite — There !
listen how the birds
XVI.
Begin to warble yonder in the budding
orchard trees !
The lark has past from earth to Heaven
upon the morning breeze !
How gladly, were I one of those, how
early would I wake I
And yet the sorrow that I bear is sorrow
for his sake.
542
THE FLIGHT.
XVII.
XXII.
They love their mates, to whom they
You will not leave me thus in grief to
sing; or else their songs, that meet
wander forth forlorn;
The morning with such music, would
We never changed a bitter word, not
never be so sweet !
once since we were born;
And tho' these fathers will not hear, the
Our dying mother join'd our hands; she
blessed Heavens are just,
knew this father well ;
And Love is fire, and burns the feet
She bade us love, like souls in Heaven,
would trample it to dust.
and now I fly from Hell,
XVIII.
XXIII.
A door was open'd in the house — who?
And you with me; and we shall light
who? my father sleeps!
upon some lonely shore.
A stealthy foot upon the stair ! he — some
Some lodge within the waste sea-dunes,
one — this way creeps !
and hear the waters roar.
If he? yes, he . . . lurks, listens, fears
And see the ships from out the West go
his victim may have fled —
dipping thro' the foam,
He ! where is some sharp-pointed thing?
And sunshine on that sail at last which
he comes, and finds me dead.
brings our Edwin home.
XIX.
XXIV.
Not he, not yet! and time to act — but
But look, the morning grows apace, and
how my temples burn !
lights the old church-tower.
And idle fancies flutter me, I know not
And lights the clock ! the hand points
where to turn;
five — 0 me — it strikes the hour —
Speak to me, sister; counsel me; this
I bide no more, I meet my fate, whatever
marriage must not be.
ills betide !
You only know the love that makes the
Arise, my own true sister, come forth !
world a world to me !
the world is wide.
XX.
XXV.
Our gentle mother, had she lived — but
And yet my heart is ill at ease, my eyes
we were left alone :
are dim with dew,
That other left us to ourselves; he cared
I seem to see a new-dug grave up yonder
not for his own ;
by the yew !
So all the summer long we roam'd in
If we should never more return, but
these wild woods of ours.
wander hand in hand
My Edwin loved to call us then ' His
With breaking hearts, without a friend.
two wild woodland flowers.'
and in a distant land !
XXI.
XXVI.
Wild flowers blowing side by side in
0 sweet, they tell me that the world is
God's free light and air.
hard, and harsh of mind.
Wild flowers of the secret woods, when
But can it be so hard, 30 harsh, as those
Edwin found us there.
that should be kind?
Wild woods in which we roved with him,
That matters not: let come what will;
and heard his passionate vow,
at last the end is sure,
Wild woods in which we rove no more,
And every heart that loves with truth is
if we be parted now !
equal to endure.
TOMORROW.
543
TOMORROW.
Her, that yer Honour was spakin' to?
Whin, yer Honour? last year —
Standin' here by the bridge, when last
yer Honour was here?
An' yer Honour ye gev her the top of the
mornin', 'Tomorra,' says she.
What did they call her, yer Honour?
They call'd her Molly Magee.
An' y£r Honour's the thrue ould blood
that always manes to be kind,
But there's rason in all things, yer
Honour, for Molly was out of
her mind.
Shure, an' meself remimbers wan night
comin' down be the sthrame.
An' it seems to me now like a bit of
yisther-day in a dhrame —
Here where yer Honour seen her — there
was but a slip of a moon,
But I hard thim — Molly Magee wid her
bachelor, Danny O'Roon —
* You've been takin' a dhrop o' the
crathur,' an' Danny says, ' Troth,
an' I been
Dhrinkin' yer health wid Shamus O'Shea
at Katty's shebeen; ^
But I must be lavin' ye soon.' 'Ochone
are ye goin' away?'
* Goin' to cut the Sassenach whate,' he
says, ' over the say ' —
*An' whin will ye meet me agin?' an' I
hard him, ' Molly asthore,
, I'll meet you agin tomorra,' says he, * be
the chapel-door.'
*An' whin are ye goin' to lave me?'
'O' Monday mornin',' says he;
*An' shure thin ye'll meet me tomorra?'
* Tomorra, .tomorra, Machree ! *
Thin Molly's ould mother, yer Honour,
that had x\o iikin' for Dan,
Call'd from her cabin an' tould her to
come away from the man,
An' Molly Magee kem flyin' acrass me,
as light as a lark.
An' Dan stood there for a minute, an'
thin wint into the dark.
* Grog-shop.
But wirrah ! the storm that night — the
tundher, an' rain that fell,
An' the sthrames runnin' down at the
back o' the glin 'ud 'a dhrownded
Hell.
III.
But airth was at pace nixt mornin', an'
Hiven in its glory smiled.
As the Holy Mother o' Glory that smiles
at her sleepin' child —
Ethen — she stept an the chapel-green,
an' she turn'd herself roun'
Wid a diamond dhrop in her eye, for
Danny was not to be foun'.
An' many's the time that I watch'd hfer
at mass lettin' down the tear,
For the Divil a Danny was there, yer
Honour, for forty year.
IV.
Och, Molly Magee, wid the red o' the
rose an' the white o' the May,
An' yer hair as black as the night, an'
yer eyes as bright as the day !
Achora, yer laste little whishper was
sweet as the lilt of a bird !
Acushla, ye set me heart batin' to music
wid ivery word !
An' sorra the Queen wid her sceptre in
sich an illigant han',
An' the fall of yer foot in the dance was
as light as snow an the Ian',
An' the sun kem out of a cloud whiniver
ye walkt in the shtreet.
An' Shamus O'Shea was yer shadda, an'
laid himself undher yer feet,
An' I loved ye meself wid a heart and a
half, me darlin', and he
'Ud 'a shot his own sowl dead for a kiss
of ye, Molly Magee.
V.
But shure we wor betther frinds whin I
crack'd his skull for her sake,
An' he ped me back wid the best he
could give at ould Donovan's
wake —
For the boys wor about her agin whin
Dan didn't come to the fore,
An' Shamus along wid the rest, but she
put thim all to the door.
544
TOMORROW.
An', afther, I thried her meself av the
bird 'ud come to me call,
But Molly, begorrah, 'ud listhen to naither
at all, at all.
VI.
An' her nabours an' frinds 'ud consowl
an' condovvl wid her, airly and
late,
* Your Danny,' they says, ' niver crasst
over say to the Sassenach whate;
He's gone to the States, aroon, an' he's
married another wife,
An' ye'll niver set eyes an the face of the
thraithur agin in life !.
An' to dhrame of a married man, death
alive, is a mortial sin.'
But Molly says, ' I'd his hand-promise, an'
shure he'll meet me agin.'
VII.
An' afther her paarints had inter'd glory,
an' both in wan day,
She began to spake to herself, the crathur,
an' whishper, an' say,
' Tomorra, Tomorra ! ' an' Father Mo-
lowny he tuk her in han',
' Molly, you're manin',' he says, ' me
dear, av I undherstan'.
That ye'll meet your paarints agin an'
yer Danny O'Roon afore God
Wid his blessed Marthyrs an' Saints; '
an' she gev him a friendly nod,
'Tomorra, Tomorra,' she says, an' she
didn't intind to desave.
But her wits wor dead, an' her hair was
as white as the snow an a grave.
VIII.
Arrah now, here last month they wor
diggin' the bog, an' they foun'
Dhrownded in black bog-wather a corp
lyin' undher groun'.
Yer Honour's own agint, he says to me,
wanst, at Katty's shebeen,
'The Divil take all the black Ian',
for a blessin' 'ud come wid the
green ! '
An' where 'ud the poor man, thin, cut
his bit o' turf for the fire?
But och ! bad scran to the bogs whin
they swallies the man intire !
An' sorra the bog that's in Hiven wid all
the light an' the glow.
An' there's hate enough, shure, widout
thim in the Divil's kitchen below.
Thim ould blind nagers in Agypt, I hard
his Riverence say,
Could keep their haithen kings in the
flesh for the Jidgemint day,
An', faix, be the piper o' Moses, they kep'
the cat an' the dog,
But it 'ud 'a been aisier work av they
lived be an Irish bog.
How-an-iver they laid this body they
foun' an the grass
Be the chapel-door, an' the people 'ud
see it that wint in to mass —
But a frish gineration had riz, an' most
of the ould was few,
An' I didn't know him meself, an' none
of the parish knew.
XII.
But Molly kem limpin' up wid her stick,
she was lamed av a knee.
Thin a slip of a gossoon call'd, ' Div ye
know him, Molly Magee?'
An' she stood up straight as the Queen of
the world — she lifted her head —
' He said he would meet me tomorra ! '
an' dhropt down dead an the dead.
XIII.
Och, Molly, we thought, machree, ye
would start back agin into life.
Whin we laid yez, aich be aich, at yer
wake like husban' an' wife.
Sorra the dhry eye thin but was wet for
the frinds that was gone !
Sorra the silent throat but we hard it
cryin' ' Ochone ! '
An' Shamus O'Shea that has now ten
childer, hansome an' tall,
Him an' his childer wor keenin' as if he
had lost thim all.
THE SPINSTER'S SWEET-ARTS.
545
Thin his Riverence buried thim both in
wan grave be the dead boor-tree,^
The young man Danny O'Roon wid his
ould woman, Molly Magee.
XV.
May all the flowers o' Jeroosilim blossom
an' spring from the grass,
Imbrashin' an' kissin' aich other — as
ye did — over yer Crass !
An' the lark fly out o' the flowers wid
his song to the Sun an' the Moon,
An' tell thim in Hiven about Molly
Magee an' her Danny O'Roon,
Till Holy St. Pether gets up wid his kays
an' opens the gate !
An' shure, be the Crass, that's betther
nor cuttin' the Sassenach whate ,
To be there wid the Blessed Mother, an'
Saints an' Marthyrs galore,
An' singin' yer * Aves ' an' * Fathers ' for
iver an' ivermore.
XVI.
An' now that I tould yer Honour what-
iver I hard an' seen,
Yer Honour'ill give me a thrifle to dhrink
yer health in potheen.
THE SPINSTER'S SWEET-ARTS.
Milk for my sweet-arts, Bess ! fur it mun
be the time about now
When Molly cooms in fro' the far-end
close wi' her paails fro' the cow.
Eh! tha be new to the plaace — thou'rt
gaapin' — doesn't tha see
I calls 'em arter the fellers es once was
sweet upo''me?
Naay to be sewer it be past 'er time.
What maakes 'er sa laate?
Goa to the laane at the back, an' loook
thruf Maddison's gaate !
1 Elder tree.
Sweet-arts ! Molly belike may 'a lighted
to-night upo' one.
Sweet-arts ! thanks to the Lord that I
niver not listen'd to noan !
So I sits i' my oan armchair wi' my oan
kettle theere o' the hob,
An' Tommy the fust, an' Tommy the
second, an' Steevie an' Rob.
IV.
Rob, coom oop 'ere o' my knee. Thou
sees that i' spite o' the men
I 'a kep' thruf thick an' thin my two
'oonderd a-year to mysen;
Yis ! thaw tha call'd me es pretty es ony
lass i' the Shere;
An' thou be es pretty a Tabby, but Robby
I seed thruf ya theere.
Feyther 'ud saay I wur ugly es sin, an' I
beant not vaain.
But I niver wur downright hugly, thaw
soom 'ud 'a thowt ma plaain,
An' I wasn't sa plaain i' pink ribbons, ye
said I wur pretty i' pinks.
An' I liked to 'ear it I did, but I beant
sich a fool as ye thinks;
Ye was stroakin ma down wi' the *air,
as I be a-stroakin o' you.
But whiniver I loooked i' the glass I wur
sewer that it couldn't be true;
Niver wur pretty, not I, but ye knaw'd it
wur pleasant to 'ear.
Thaw it warn't not me es wur pretty, but
my two 'oonderd a-year.
D'ya mind the murnin' when we was
a-walkin' togither, an' stood
By the claay'd-oop pond, that the foalk
be sa scared at, i' Gigglesby wood,
Wheer the poor wench drowndid hersen,
black Sal, es 'ed been disgraaced?
An' I feel'd thy arm es I stood wur
a-creeapin about my waaist;
An' me es wur alius afear'd of a man's
gittin' ower fond,
I sidled awaay an' awaay till I plumpt foot
fust i' the pond;
2N
546
THE SPINSTER'S SWEET-ARTS.
And, Robby, I niver 'a liked tha sa well,
as I did that daay,
Fur tha joompt in thysen, an' tha hoickt
my feet wi' a flop fro' the claay.
Ay, stick oop thy back, an' set oop thy
taail, tha may gie ma a kiss.
Fur I walk'd wi' tha all the way hoam
an' wur niver sa nigh saayin' Yis.
But \.'a boath was i' sich a clat we was
shaamed to cross GigglesbyGreean,
Fur a cat may loook at a king thou knaws
but the cat mun be clean.
Sa we boath on us kep out o' sight o' the
winders o' Gigglesby Hinn —
Naay, but the claws o' tha ! quiet ! they
pricks clean thruf to the skin —
An' wa boath slinkt 'oam by the brokken
shed i' the laane at the back,
Wheer the poodle runn'd at tha once, an'
thou runn'd oop o' the thack;
An' tha squeedg'd my 'and i' the shed,
fur theere we was forced to 'ide,
Fur I seed that Steevie wur coomin', and
one o' the Tommies beside.
Theere now, what art 'a mewin at, Steevie ?
for owt I can tell —
Robby wur fust to be sewer, or I mowt
'a liked tha as well.
VIII.
But, Robby, I thowt o' tha all the while
I wur clraangin' my gown,
An' I thowt shall I chaange my staate?
but, O Lord, upo' coomin' down —
My bran-new carpet es fresh es a midder
o' flowers i' Maay —
Why 'edn't tha wiped thy shoes? it wur
clatted all ower wi' claay.
An' I could 'a cried ammost, fur I seed
that it couldn't be,
An' Robby 1 gied tha a raatin that sattled
thy coortin o' me.
An* Molly an' me was agreed, as we was
a-cleanin' the floor,
That a man be a durty thing an' a trouble
an' plague wi' indoor.
But I rued it arter a bit, fur I stuck to
tha moor na the rest.
But I couldn't 'a lived wi' a man an' I
knaws it be all fur the best.
Naay — let ma stroak tha down till \
maakes tha es smooth es silk.
But if I 'ed married tha, Robby, thou'd
not 'a been worth thy milk,
Thou'd niver 'a cotch'd ony mice but 'a
left me the work to do.
And 'a taaen to the bottle beside, so es
all that I 'ears be true;
But I loovs tha to niaake thysen 'appy,
an' soa purr awaay, my dear.
Thou 'ed wellnigh purr'd ma awaay fro'
my oan two 'oonderd a-year.
Swearin agean, you Toms, as ye used to
do twelve year sin' !
Ye niver 'card Steevie swear 'cep' it wur
at a dog coomin' in.
An' boath o' ye mun be fools to be hallus
a-shawin' your claws,
Fur I niver cared nothink for neither —
an' one o' ye dead ye knaws !
Coom give hoaver then, weant ye? I
warrant ye soom fine daay —
Theere, lig down — I shall hev to gie
one or tother awaay.
Can't ye t^ake pattern by Steevie? ye
sha'n't hev a drop fro' the paail.
Steevie be right good manners bang thruf
to the tip o' the taail.
XI.
Robby, git down .wi'tha, wilt tha? let
Steevie coom oop o' my knee.
Steevie, my lad, thou 'ed very nigh be^n
the Steevie fur me !
Robby wur fust to be sewer, 'e wur burn
an' bred i' the 'ouse,
But thou be es 'ansom a tabby es iver
patted a mouse.
An' I beant not vaain, but I knaws I 'ed
led tha a quieter life
Nor her wi' the hepitaph yonder ! * A
faaithful an' loovin' wife ! '
An' 'cos o' thy farm by the beck, an' thy
windmill oop o' the croft,
Tha thowt tha would marry ma, did tha?
but that wur a bit ower soft,
THE SPINSTER'S SWEET-ARTS.
547
Thaw thou was es soaber es daay, wi' a
niced red faace, an' es clean
Es a shillin' fresh fro' the mint wi' a bran-
new 'ead o' the Queean,
An' thy farmin' es clean es thysen', fur,
Steevie, tha kep' it sa neat
That I niver not spied sa much es a
poppy along wi' the wheat,
An' the wool of a thistle a-flyin' an'
seeadin' tha haated to see;
Twur es bad es a battle-twig i 'ere i' my
oan blue chaumber to me.
Ay, roob thy whiskers agean ma, fur I
could 'a taaen to tha well.
But fur thy bairns, poor Steevie, a
bouncin' boy an' a gell.
XIII.
An' thou was es fond o' thy bairns es I
be mysen o' my cats.
But I niver not wish'd fur childer, I
hevn't naw likin' fur brats;
Pretty anew when ya dresses 'em oop,
an' they goas fur a walk,
Or sits wi' their 'ands afoor 'era, an'
doesn't not 'inder the talk !
But their bottles o' pap, an' their mucky
bibs, an' the clats an' the clouts.
An' their mashin' their toys to pieaces an'
maakin' ma deaf wi' their shouts,
An' hallus a-joompin' about ma as if they
was set upo' springs,
An' a-haxin' ma hawkard questions, an'
saayin' ondecent things,
An' a-callin' ma * hugly ' mayhap to my
faace, or a-tearin' my gown —
Dear ! dear ! dear ! I mun part them
Tommies — Steevie git down.
Ye be wuss nor the men-tommies, you.
I tell'd ya, na moor o' that !
Tom, lig theere o' the cushion, an' tother
Tom 'ere o' the mat.
XV.
Theere! I ha' master'd them! Hed I
married the Tomrriies — O Lord,
To loove an' obaay the Tommies ! 1
couldn't 'a stuck by my word.
To be horder'd about, an' waaked, when
Molly 'd put out the light,
^ Earwig.
By a man coomin' in wi' a hiccup at ony
hour o' the night !
An' the taable staain'd wi' 'is aale, an' the
mud o' 'is boots o' the stairs,
An' the stink o' 'is pipe i' the 'ouse,
an' the mark o' 'is 'ead o' the
chairs !
An' noan o' my four sweet-arts 'ud 'a let
me 'a hed my oan waay,
Sa I likes 'em best wi' taails when they
'evn't a word to saay.
XVI.
An' I sits i' my oan little parlour, an'
sarved by my oan little lass,
Wi' my oan little garden outside, an' my
oan bed o' sparrow-grass,
An' my oan door-poorch wi' the woodbine
an' jessmine a-dressin' it greean.
An' my oan fine Jackman i' purple a-
roabin' the 'ouse like a Queean.
XVII.
An' the little gells bobs to ma hoffens es
I be abroad i' the laanes.
When I goas fur to coomfut the poor es
be down wi' their haaches an'
their paains :
An' a haaf-pot o' jam, or a moss'el o' meat
when it beant too dear.
They maakes ma a graater Laady nor 'er
i' the mansion theer,
Hes 'es hallus to hax of a man how much
to spare or to spend;
An' a spinster I be an' I will be, if soa
please God, to the hend.
XVIII.
Mew ! mew ! — Bess wi' the milk ! what
ha maade our Molly sa laate ?
It should 'a been 'ere by seven, an' theere
— it be strikin' height —
' Cushie wur craazed fur 'er cauf,' well — I
'card 'er a-maakin' 'er moan,
An' I thowt to mysen * thank Gyd that I
hevn't naw cauf o' my oan.'
Theere !
Set it down !
Now Robby !
You Tommies shall waait to-night
Till Robby an' Steevie 'es 'ed their lap
— an' it sarves ye right,
548 LOCKSLEY HALL
LOCKSLEY HALL
SIXTY YEARS AFTER.
Late, my grandson ! half the morning have I paced these sandy tracts
Watch'd again the hollow ridges roaring into cataracts,
Wander' d back to living boyhood while I heard the curlews call,
I myself so close on death, and death itself in Locksley Hall. ,
So — your happy suit was blasted — she the faultless, the divine;
And you liken — boyjsh babble — this boy-love of yours with mine.
I myself have often babbled doubtless of a foolish past;
Babble, babble; our old England may go down in babble at last.
* Curse him! ' curse your fellow-victim? call him dotard in your rage?
Eyes that lured a doting boyhood well might fool a dotard's age.
Jilted for a wealthier ! wealthier? yet perhaps she was not wise;
I remember how you kiss'd the miniature with those sweet eyes.
In the hall there hangs a painting — Amy's arms about my neck —
Happy children in a sunbeam sitting on the ribs of wreck.
In my life there was a picture, she that clasp'd my neck had flown;
I was left within the shadow sitting on the wreck alone.
Yours has been a slighter ailment, will you sicken for her sake?
You, not you ! your modern amourist is of easier, earthlier make.
Amy loved me, Amy fail'd me, Amy was a timid child;
But your Judith — but your worldling —^ j,^<? had never driven me wild.
She that holds the diamond necklace dearer than the golden ring.
She that finds a winter sunset fairer than a morn of Spring.
She that in her heart is brooding on his briefer lease of life,
While she vows * till death shall part us,' she the would-be-widow wife.
She the worldling born of worldlings — father, mother — be content,
Ev'n the homely farm can teach us there is something in descent.
Yqnder in that chapel, slowly sinking now into the ground,
Lies the warrior, my forefather, with his feet upon the hound.
Cross'd ! for once he sail'd the sea to crush the Moslem in his pride;
Dead the warrior, dead his glory, dead the cause in which he died.
Yet how often T and Amy in the mouldering aisle have stood,
Gazing for one pensive moment on that founder of our blood.
SIXTY YEARS AFTER. 549
There again I stood to-day, and where of old we knelt in prayer,
Close beneath the casement crimson with the shield of Locksley — there,
All in white Italian marble, looking still as if she smiled,
Lies my Amy dead in child-birth, dead the mother, dead the child.
Dead — and sixty years ago, and dead her aged husband now —
I this old white-headed dreamer stoopt and kiss'd her marble brow.
Gone the fires of youth, the follies, furies, curses, passionate tears,
Gone like fires and floods and earthquakes of the planet's dawning years.
Fires that shook me once, but now to silent ashes fall'n away.
Cold upon the dead volcano sleeps the gleam of dying day.
Gone the tyrant of my youth, and mute below the chancel stones.
All his virtues — I forgive them — black in white above his bones.
Gone the comrades of my bivouac, some in fight against the foe.
Some thro' age and slow diseases, gone as all on earth will go.
Gone with whom for forty years my life in golden sequence ran,
She with all tjie charm of woman, she with all the breadth of man,
Strong in will and rich in wisdom, Edith, yet so lowly-sweet,
Woman to her inmost heart, and woman to her tender feet,
Very woman of very woman, nurse of ^iliagjiddy.-a»d-mkid^
She that link'd again the broken chain that bound me to my kind.
Here to-day was Amy with me, while I wander'd down the coast.
Near us Edith's holy shadow, smiling at the slighter ghost.
Gone our sailor son thy father, Leonard early lost at sea;
Thou alone, my boy, of Amy's kin and mine art left to me.
Gone thy tender- natured mother, wearying to be left alone,
Pining for the stronger heart that once had beat beside her own.
Truth, for Truth is Truth, he worshipt, being true as he was brave;
Good, for Good is Good, he foUow'd, yet he look'd beyond the grave.
Wiser there than you, that crowning barren Death as lord of all,
Deem this over-tragic drama's closing curtain is the pall !
Beautiful was death in him, who saw the death, but kept the deck, \ '
Saving women and their babes, and sinking with the sinking wreck, .^
Gone for ever ! Ever? no — for since our dying race began.
Ever, ever, and for ever was the leading light of man.
Those that in barbarian burials kill'd the slave and slew the wife
Felt within themselves the sacred passion of the second life.
55© LOCKSLEY HALL
Indian warriors dream of ampler hunting grounds beyond the night;
Ev'n the black Australian dying hopes he shall return, a white.
Truth for truth, and good for good ! The Good, the True, the Pure, the Just— >
Take the charm * For ever ' from them, and they crumble into dust.
Gone the cry of * Forward, Forward,' lost within a growing gloom;
Lost, or only heard in silence from the silence of a tomb.
Half the marvels of my morning, triumphs over time and space.
Staled by frequence, shrunk by usage, into commonest commonplace !
* Forward' rang the voices then, and of the many mine was one.
Let us hush this cry of ' Forward ' till ten thousand years have gone.
Far among the vanish'd races, old Assyrian kings would flay
Captives whom they caught in battle — iron-hearted victors they.
Ages after, while in Asia, he that led the wild Moguls,
Timur built his ghastly tower of eighty thousand human skulls,
Then, and here in Edward's time, an age of noblest English names,
Christian conquerors took and flung the conquer'd Christian into flames.
Love your enemy, bless your haters, said the Greatest of the great;
Christian love among the Churches look'd the twin of heathen hate.
From the golden alms of Blessing man had coin'd himself a curse :
Rome of Caesar, Rome of Peter, which was crueller? which was worse?
France had shown a light to all men, preach'd a Gospel, all men's good;
Celtic Demos rose a Demon, shriek'd and slaked the light with blood.
Hope was ever on her mountain, watching till the day begun —
Crown'd with sunlight — over darkness — from the still unrisen sun.
Have we grown at last beyond the passions of the primal clan?
* Kill your enemy, for you hate him,' still, * your enemy ' was a man.
Have we sunk below them? peasants maim the helpless harse, and drive
Innocent cattle under thatch, and burn the kindlier brutes alive.
Brutes, the brutes are not your wrongers — burnt at midnight, found at morn,
,Twisted hard in mortal agony with their offspring, born-unborn,
Clinging to the silent mother ! Are we devils? are we men?
Sweet St. Francis of Assisi, would that he were here again,
He that in his Catholic wholeness used to call the very flowers
Sisters, brothers — and the beasts — whose pains are hardly less than ours !
Chaos, Cosmos ! Cosmqs, Chaos ! who can tell how all will end?
Read the wide world's annals, you, and take their wisdom for your friend.
SIXTY YEARS AFTER. 551
Hope the best, but hold the Present fatal daughter of the Past,
Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hour will last.
Ay, if dynamite and revolver leave your courage to be wise :
When was age so cramm'd with menace? madness? written, spoken lies?
Envy wears the mask of Love, and, laughing sober fact to scorn,
Cries to Weakest as to Strongest, * Ye are equals, equal-born.'
Equal-born ? O yes, if yonder hill be level with the flat.
Charm us. Orator, till the Lion look no larger than the Cat,
Till the Cat thro' that mirage of overheated language loom
Larger than the Lion, — Demos end in working its own doom.
Russia bursts our Indian? barrier, shall we fight her? shall we yield?
Pause ! before you sound the trumpet, hear the voices from the field.
Those three hundred millions under one Imperial sceptre now.
Shall we hold them? shall we loose them? take the suffrage of the plow.
Nay, but these would feel and follow Truth if only you and you.
Rivals of realm-ruining party, when you speak were wholly true.
Plowmen, Shepherds, have I found, and more than once, and still could find,
Sons of God, and kings of men in utter nobleness of mind.
Truthful, trustful, looking upward to the practised hustings-liar;
So the Higher wields the Lower, while the Lower is the Higher.
Here and there a cotter's babe is royal-born by right divine;
Here and there my lord is lower than his oxen or his swine.
Chaos, Cosmos ! Cosmos, Chaos ! once again the sickening game;
Freedom, free to slay herself, and dying while they shout her name.
Step by step we gain'd a freedom known to Europe, known to all;
Step by step we rose to greatness, — thro' the tonguesters we may fall.
You that woo the Voices — tell them 'old experience is a fool,*
Teach your flatter'd kings that only those who cannot read can rule.
Pluck the mighty from their seat, but set no meek ones in their place;
Pillory Wisdom in your markets, pelt your offal at her face.
Tumble Nature heel o'er head, and, yelling with the yelling street.
Set the feet above the brain and swear the brain is in the feet.
Bring the old dark ages back without the faith, without the hope,
Break the State, the Church, the Throne, and roll their ruins down the slope.
Authors — essayist, atheist, novelist, realist, rhymester, play your part,
Paint the mortal shame of nature with the living hues of Art.
552
LOCKSLEY HALL
Rip your brothers' vices open, strip your own foul passions bare;
Down with Reticence, down with Reverence — forward — naked — let them stare.
Feed the budding rose of boyhood with the drainage of your sewer;
Send the drain into the fountain, lest the stream should issue pure.
Set the maiden fancies wallowing in the troughs of Zolaism, —
Forward, forward, ay and backward, downward too into the abysm.
Do your best to charm the worst, to lower the rising race of men;
Have we risen from out the beast, then back into the beast again?
Only 'dust to dust' for me that sicken at your lawless din,
Dust in wholesome old-world dust before the newer world begin.
Heated am I? you — ^you wonder — well, it scarce becomes mine age —
Patience ! let the dying actor mouth his last upon the stage.
Cries of unprogressive dotage ere the dotard fall asleep?
Noises of a current narrowing, not the music of a deep?
Ay, for doubtless I am old, and think gray thoughts, for I am gray:
After all the stormy changes shall we find a changeless May?
After madness, after massacre, Jacobinism and Jacquerie,
Some diviner force to guide us thro' the days I shall not see?
When the schemes and all the systems. Kingdoms and Republics fall,
Something kindlier, higher, holier — all for each and each for all?
All the full-brain, half-brain races, led by Justice, Love, and Truth;
All the millions one at length with all the visions of my youth?
All diseases quench'd by Science, no man halt or deaf or blind;
Stronger ever born of weaker, lustier body, larger mind?
Earth at last a warless world, a single race, a single tongue —
I have seen her far away — for is not Earth as yet so young? —
Every tiger madness muzzled, every serpent passion kill'd,
Every grim ravine a garden, every blazing desert till'd.
Robed in universal harvest up to either pole she smiles,
Universal ocean softly washing all her warless Isles.
Warless? when her tens are thousands, and her thousands millions, then —
All her harvest all too narrow — who can fancy warless men?
Warless? war will die out late then. Will it ever? late or soon?
Can it, till this outworn earth be dead as yon dead world the moon?
Dead thefnew astronomer calls her. . . . On this day and at this hour,
Jn this gap between the sandhills, whence you see the Locksley tower,
SIXTY YEARS AFTER. 553
Here we met, our latest meeting — Amy — sixty years ago —
She and I — the moon was falling greenish thro' a rosy glow,
Just above the gateway tower, and even where you see her now —
Here we stood and claspt each other, swore the seeming-deathless vow. . . .
Dead, but how her living glory lights the hall, the dune, the grass ! i""^
Yet the moonlight is the sunlight, and the Sun himself will pass.
Venus near her ! smiling downward at this earthlier earth of ours,
Closer on the Sun, perhaps a world of never fading flowers.
Hesper, whom the poet call'd the Bringer home of all good things.
All good things may move in Hesper, perfect peoples, perfect kings.
Hesper — Venus — were we native to that splendour or in Mars,
We should see the Globe we groan in, fairest of their evening stars.
Could we dream of wars and carnage, craft and madness, lust and spite,
Roaring London, raving Paris, in that point of peaceful light?
Might we not in glancing heavenward on a star so silver-fair.
Yearn, and clasp the hands and murmur, ' Would to God that we were there'?
Forward, backward, backward, forward, in the immeasurable sea,
Sway'd by vaster ebbs and flows than can be known to you or me.
All the suns — are these but symbols of innumerable man,
Man or Mind that sees a shadow of the planner or the plan?
Is there evil but on earth? or pain in every peopled sphere?
Well be grateful for the sounding watchword ' Evolution ' here,
Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good.
And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud. '^
What are men that He should heed us? cried the king of sacred song;
Insects of an hour, that hourly work their brother insect wrong,
While the silent Heavens roll, and Suns along their fiery way,
All their planets whirling round them, flash a million miles a day.
Many an M.oxv moulded earth before her highest, man, was born.
Many an ^on too may pass when earth is manless and forlorn.
Earth so huge, and yet so bounded — pools of salt, and plots of land —
Shallow skin of green and azure — chains of mountain, grains of sand !
Only That which made us, meant us to be mightier by and by,
Set the sphere of all the boundless Heavens within the human eye,
Sent the shadow of Himself, the boundless, thro' the human soul;
Boundless inward, in the atom, boundless outward, in the Whole.
554 LOCKS LEY HALL
Here is Locksley Hall, my grandson, here the lion-guarded gate.
Not to-night in I.ocksley Hall — to-morrow — you, you come so late.
Wreck'd — your train — or all but wreck'd? ashatter'd wheel? a vicious boy!
Good, this forward, you that preach it, is it well to wish you joy?
Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying in the Time,
City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime?
There among^ *he glooming alleys Progress halts on palsied feet.
Crime and hunger cast our maidens by the thousand on the street.
There the Master scrimps his haggard sempstress of her daily bread,
There a single sordid attic holds the living and the dead.
There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted floor,
And the crowded couch of incest in the warrens of the poor.
Nay, your pardon, cry your * forward,' yours are hope and youth, but I —
Eighty winters leave the dog too lame to follow with the cry,
Lame and old, and past his time, and passing now into the night;
Yet I would the rising race were half as eager for the light.
Light the fading gleam of Even? hght the glimmer of the dawn?
Aged eyes may take the growing glimmer for the gleam withdrawn.
Far away beyond her myriad coming changes earth will be
Something other than the wildest modern guess of you and me.
Earth may reach her earthly-worst, or if she gain her earthly-best.
Would she find her human offspring this ideal man at rest?
Forward then, but still remember how the course of Time v^ill swerve.
Crook and turn upon itself in many a backward streaming curve.
Not the Hall to-night, my grandson ! Death and Silence hold their own.
Leave the Master in the first dark hour of his last sleep alone.
Worthier soul was he than I am, sound and honest, rustic Squire,
Kindly landlord, boon companion — youthful jealousy is a liar.
Cast the poison from your bosom, oust the madness from your brain.
Let the trampled serpent show you that you have not lived in vain.
Youthful ! youth and age are scholars yet but in the lower school,
Nor is he the wisest man who never proved himself a fool.
Yonder lies our young sea-village — Art and Grace are less and less:
Science grows and Beauty dwindles — roofs of slated hideousness !
There is one old Hostel left us where they swing the Locksley shield.
Till the peasant cow shall butt the * Lion passant ' from his field.
SIXTY YEARS AFTER. 555
Poor old Heraldry, poor old History, poor old Poetry, passing hence,
In the common deluge drowning old political common-sense !
Poor old voice of eighty crying after voices that have fled !
All I loved are vanish'd voices, all my steps are on the dead.
All the world is ghost to me, and as the phantom disappears.
Forward far and far from here is all the hope of eighty years.
In this Hostel — I remember — I repent it o'er his grave —
Like a clown — by chance he met me — I refused the hand he gave.
From that casement where the trailer mantles all the mouldering bricks —
I was then in early boyhood, Edith but a "child of six —
While 1 shelter'd in this archway from a day of driving showers —
Peept the winsome face or Edith like a flower among the flowers.
Here to-night ! the Hall to-morrow, when they toll the Chapel bell !
Shall I hear in one dark room a wailing, * I have loved thee well.'
Then a peal that shakes the portal — one has come to claim his bride,
Her that shrank, and put me from her, shriek'd, and started from my side —
Silent echoes ! You, my Leonard, use and not abuse your day,
Move among your people, know them, follow him who led the way,
Strove for sixty widow'd years to help his homelier brother men,
Served the poor, and built the cottage, raised the school, and drain'd the fea
Hears he now the Voice that wrong'd him? wtio shall swear it cannot be?
Earth would never touch her worst, were one in fifty such as he.
Ere she gain her Heavenly-best, a God must mingle with the game :
Nay, there may be those about us whom we neither see nor name,
Felt within us as ourselves, the Powers of Good, the Powers of 111,
Strpwing balm, or shedding poison in the fountains of the Will.
Follow you the Star that lights a desert pathway, yours or mine.
Forward, till you see the highest Human Nature is divine.
Follow Light, and do the Right — for man can half-control his doom —
Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb.
Forward, let the stormy moment fly and mingle with the Past.
I that loathed, have come to love him. Love will conquer at the last.
Gone at eighty, mine own age, and I and you will bear the pall ;
Then I leave thee Lord and Master, latest Lord of Locksley Hall.
556 PROLOGUE— THE CHARGE OF THE HEAVY BRIGADE.
PROLOGUE
TO GENERAL HAMLEY.
Our birches yellowing and from each
The light leaf falling fast,
While squirrels from our fiery beech
Were bearing off the mast,
You came, and look'd and loved the view
Long-known and loved by me,
Green Sussex fading into blue
With one gray glimpse of sea;
And, gazing from this height alone.
We spoke of what had been
Most marvellous in the wars your own
Crimean eyes had seen;
And now — like old-world inns that take
Some warrior for a sign
That therewithin a guest may make
True cheer with honest wine —
Because you heard the lines I read
Nor utter'd word of blame,
I dare without your leave to head
These rhymings with your name,-
Who know you but as one of those
I fain would meet again,
Yet know you, as your England knows
That you and all your men
Were soldiers to her heart's desire,
When, in the vanish'd year,
You saw the league-long rampart-fire
Flare from Tel-el-Kebir
Thro' darkness, and the foe was driven,
And Wolseley overthrew
Ar^l)i, and the stars in heaven-
Paled, and the glory grew.
THE CHARGE OF THE HEAVY
BRIGADE AT BALACLAVA.
October 25, 1854.
The charge of the gallant three hundred,
the Heavy Brigade !
Down the hill, down the hill, thousands
of Russians,
Thousands of horsemen, drew to the
valley — and stay'd;
For Scarlett and Scarlett's three hundred
were riding by
When the points of the Russian lances
arose in the sky;
And he call'd * Left wheel into line ! *
and they wheel'd and obey'd.
Then he look'd at the host that had
halted he knew not why,
And he turn'd half round, and he bade
his trumpeter sound
To the charge, and he rode on ahead, as
he waved his blade
To the gallant three hundred whose glory
will never die —
* Follow, ' and up the hill, up the hill, up
the hill.
Follow' d the Heavy Brigade.
II.
The trumpet, the gallop, the charge,
and the might of the fight !
Thousands of horsemen had gather'd
there on the height,
With a wing push'd out to the left and
a wing to the right.
And who shall escape if they close? but
he dash'd up alone
Thro' the great gray slope of men,
Sway'd his sabre, and held his own
Like an Englishman there and then;
All in a moment foUow'd with force
Three that were next in their fiery
course,
Wedged themselves in between hprse
and horse,
Fought for their lives in the narrow gap
they had made —
Four amid thousands! and up the hill,
up the hill,
Gallopt the gallant three hundred, the
Heavy Brigade.
Fell like a cannonshot.
Burst like a thunderbolt,
Crash'd like a hurricane,
Broke thro' the mass from below,
Drove thro' the midst of the foe.
Plunged up and down, to and fro,
Rode flashing blow upon blow,
Brave Inniskillens and Greys
Whirling their sabres in circles of light !
And some of us, all in amaze.
Who were held for a while from the
fight,
THE CHARGE OF THE HEAVY BRIGADE — EPILOGUE. 557
And were only standing at gaze,
When the dark-muffled Russian crowd
Folded its wings from the left and the
right,
And roU'd them around like a cloud, —
O mad for the charge and the battle
were we,
When our own good redcoats sank from
sight,
Like drops of blood in a dark-gray sea,
And we turn'd to each other, whispering,
all dismay'd,
* Lost are the gallant three hundred of
Scarlett's Brigade ! '
* Lost one and all ' were the words
Mutter'd in our dismay;
But,they rode like Victors and Lords
Thro' the forest of lances and swords
In the heart of the Russian hordes,
They rode, or they stood at bay —
Struck with the sword-hand and slew,
Down with the bridle-hand drew
The foe from the saddle and threw
Underfoot there in the fray —
Ranged like a storm or stood like a rock
In the wave of a stormy day;
Till suddenly shock upon shock
Stagger'd the mass from without.
Drove it in wild disarray.
For our men gallopt up with a cheer and
a shout,
And the foeman surged, and waver'd,
and reel'd
Up the hill, up the hill, up the hill, out
of the field,
And over the brow and away.
V.
Glory to eacll and to all, and the charge
that they made !
Glory to all the three hundred, and all
the Brigade !
Note. — The ' three hundred ' of the 'Heavy
Brigade' who made this famous charge were the
Scots Greys and the and squadron of Inniskil-
lings, the remainder of the ' Heavy Brigade '
subsequently dashing up to their support.
The * three ' were Scarlett's aide-de-camp,
Elliot, and the trumpeter and Shegog the orderly,
who had been close behind him.
EPILOGUE.
Irene.
Not this way will you set your name
A star among the stars.
Poet.
W^hat way?
Irene.
You praise when you should blame
The barbarism of wars.
A juster epoch has begun.
Poet.
Yet tho' this cheek be gray.
And that bright hair the modern sun,
Those eyes the blue to-day.
You wrong me, passionate little friend.
I would that wars should cease,
I would the globe from end to end
Might sow and reap in peace.
And some new Spirit o'erbear the old,
Or Trade refrain the Powers
From war with kindly links of gold,
Or Love with wreaths of flowers.
Slav, Teuton, Kelt, I count them all
My friends and brother souls,
With all the peoples, great and small.
That wheel between the poles.
But since, our mortal shadow. 111
To waste this earth began —
Perchance from some abuse of Will
In worlds before the man
Involving ours — he needs must fight
To make true peace his own.
He needs must combat might with might,
Or Might would rule alone;
And who loves War for War's own sake
Is fool, or crazed, or worse;
But let the patriot-soldier take
His 'meed of fame in verse;
Nay — tho' that realm were in the wrong
For which her warriors bleed.
It still were right to crown with song
The warrior's noble deed —
A crown the Singer hopes may last.
For so the deed endures;
But Song will vanish in the Vast;
And that large phrase of yours
' A Star among the stars,' my dear,
Is girlish talk at best;
For dare we dally with the sphere
As he did half in jest.
558
TO VIRGIL.
Old Horace ? ' I will strike,' said he,
* The stars with head sublime,'
But scarce could see, as now we see,
The man in Space and Time,
So drew perchance a happier lot
Than ours, who rhyme to-day.
The fires that arch this dusky dot —
Yon myriad-worlded way —
The vast sun-clusters' gather'd blaze,
World-isles in lonely skies.
Whole heavens within themselves, amaze
Our brief humanities;
And so does Earth ; for Homer's fame,
Tho' carved in harder stone —
The falling drop will make his name
As mortal as my own.
No!
Irene.
Poet.
Let it live then — ay, till when?
Earth passes, all is lost
In what they prophesy, our wise men,
Sun-flame or sunless frost,
And deed and song alike are swept
Away, and all in vain
As far as man can see, except
The man himself remain;
And tho', in this lean age forlorn,
Too many a voice may cry
That man can have no after-morn,
Not yet of these am I.
The man remains, and whatsoe'er
He wrought of good or brave
Will mould him thro' the cycle-year
That dawns behind the grave.
And here the Singer for his Art
Not all in vain may plead
« The song that nerves a nation's Ifeart,
Is in itself a deed.'
TO VIRGIL.
WRITTEN AT THE REQUEST OF THE
MANTUANS FOR THE NINETEENTH
CENTENARY OF VIRGIL'S DEATH.
Roman Virgil, thou that singest
Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire,
Ilion falling, Rome arising,
wars, and filial faith, and Dido's
pyre;
II.
Landscape-lover, lord of language
more than he that sang the Works
and Days,
All the chosen coin of fancy
flashing out from many a golden
phrase;
III.
Thou that singest wheat and woodland,
tilth and vineyard, hive and horse
and herd;
All the charm of all the Muses
often flowering in a lonely word;
IV.
Poet of the happy Tityrus
piping underneath his beechen
bowers;
Poet of the poet-satyr
whom the laughing shepherd
bound with flowers;
Chanter of the Pollio, glorying
in the blissful years again to be,
Summers of the snakeless meadow,
unlaborious earth and oarless sea;
VI.
Thou that seest Universal
Nature moved by Universal
Mind;
Thou majestic in thy sadness
at the doubtful doom of human
kind ;
VII. •
Light among the vanish'd ages;
star that gildest yet this phantom
shore ;
Golden branch amid the shadows,
kings and realms that pass to rise
no more;
VIII.
Now thy Forum roars no longer,
fallen every purple Caesar's
dome —
THE DEAD PROPHET.
559
Tho' thine ocean-roll of rhythm
sound for ever of Imperial
Rome —
Now the Rome of slaves hath perish'd,
and the Rome of freemen holds
her place,
I, from out the Northern Island
sunder'd once from all the human
I salute thee, Mantovano,
I that loved thee since my day
began,
Wielder of the stateliest measure
ever moulded by the lips of man.
THE DEAD PROPHET.
1 82-.
I.
Dead!
And the Muses cried with a stormy cry
• Send them no more, for evermore.
Let the people die.'
II.
Dead!
* Is it he then brought so low? '
And a careless people flock'd from the
fields
With a purse to pay for the show.
Dead, who had served his time,
Was one of the people's kings,
Had labour'd in lifting them out of slime.
And showing them souls have wings !
Dumb on the winter heath he lay.
His friends had stript him bare.
And roU'd his nakedness everyway
That all the crowd might stare.
A storm-worn signpost not to be read,
And a tree with a moulder'd nest
On its barkless bones, stood stark by the
dead ;
And behind him, low in the West,
VI.
With shifting ladders of shadow and light,
And blurr'd in colour and form,
The sun hung over the gates of Night,
And glared at a coming storm.
VII.
Then glided a vulturous Beldam forth,
That on dumb death had thriven;
They call'd her ' Reverence ' here upon
earth.
And 'The Curse of the Prophet' in.
Heaven. *
VIII.
She knelt — * We worship him ' — all but
wept —
' So great, so noble was he ! '
She clear'd her sight, she arose, she swept
The dust of earth from her knee.
IX.
* Great ! for he spoke and the people
heard,
And his eloquence caught like a flame
From zone to zone of the world, till his
Word
Had won him a noble name.
X.
Noble ! he sung, and the sweet sound ran
Thro' palace and cottage door.
For he touch'd on the whole sad planet
of man,
The kings and the rich and the poor;
And he sung not alone of an old sun set.
But a sun coming up in his youth !
Great and noble — O yes — but yet —
For man is a lover of Truth,
XII.
And bound to follow, wherever she go
Stark-naked, and up or down,
Thro' her high hill-passes of stainless
snow,
Or the foulest sewer of the town —
560
EARLY SPRING.
Noble and great — O ay — but then,
Tho' a prophet should have his due,
"Was henoblier-fashion'd than other men?
Shall we see to it, 1 and you?
For since he would sit on a Prophet's
seat,
As a lord of the Human soul.
We needs must scan him from head to
feet
"V^ere it but for a wart or a mole ? '
XV.
His wife and his child stood by him in
tears,
But she — she push'd them aside.
* Tho' a name may last for a. thousand
years,
Yet a truth is a truth,' she cried.
And she that had haunted his pathway
still,
Had often truckled and cower'd
When he rose in his wrath, and had
yielded her will
To the master, as overpower'd,
XVII.
She tumbled his helpless corpse about.
' Small blemish upon the skin !
But 1 think we know what is fair without
Is often as foul within.'
She crouch'd, she tore him part from
part,
And out of his body she drew
The red * Blood-eagle ' ^ of liver and
heart;
She held them up to the view;
XIX.
She gabbled, as she groped in the dead.
And all the people were pleased;
1 Old Viking term for lungs, liver, etc., when
torn by the conqueror out of the body of the
conquered.
' See, what a little heart,' she said,
* And the liver is half-diseased ! '
She tore the Prophet after death,
And the people paid her well.
Lightnings flicker'd along the heath;
One shriek'd * The fires of Hell ! '
EARLY SPRING.
Once more the Heavenly Power
Makes all things new,
And domes the red-plow'd hills
With loving blue;
The blackbirds have their wills,
The throstles too.
Opens a door in Heaven;
From skies of glass
A Jacob's ladder falls
On greening grass.
And o'er the mountain-walls
Young angels pass.
Before them fleets the shower,
And burst the buds.
And shine the level lands,
And flash the floods;
The stars are from their hands
Flung thro' the woods,
IV.
The woods with living airs
How softly fann'd,
Light airs from where the deep,
All down the sand.
Is breathing in his sleep.
Heard by the land.
O follow, leaping blood.
The season's lure !
O heart, look down and up
Serene, secure.
Warm as the crocus cup,
Like snowdrops, pure I
PREFATORY POEM— HELEN'S TOWER.
561
Past, Future glimpse and fade
Thro' some slight spell,
A gleam from yonder vale,
Some far blue fell,
And sympathies, how frail,
In sound and smell !
VII.
Till at thy chuckled note,
Thou twinkling bird,
The fairy fancies range.
And, lightly stirr'd,
Ring little bells of change
From word to word.
VIII.
For now the Heavenly Power
Makes all things new.
And thaws the cold, and fills
The flower with dew;
The blackbirds have their wills,
The poets too.
PREFATORY POEM TO MY
BROTHER'S SONNETS.
Midnight, June 30, 1879.
I.
Midnight — in no midsummer tune
The breakers lash the shores :
The cuckoo of a joyless June
Is calling out of doors :
And thou hast vanish'd from thine own
To that which looks like rest,
True brother, only to be known
By those who love thee best.
Midnight — and joyless June gone by,
And from the deluged park
The cuckoo of a worse July
Is calling thro' the dark :
But thou art silent underground.
And o'er thee streams the rain,
True poet, surely to be found
When Truth is found again.
III.
And, now to these unsummer'd skies
The summer bird is still,
Far off a phantom cuckoo cries
From out a phantom hill;
And thro' this midnight breaks the sun
Of sixty years away.
The light of days when life begun.
The days that seem to-day.
When all my griefs were shared with thee,
As all my hopes were thine —
As all thou wert was one with me,
May all thou art be mine !
' FRATER AVE ATQUE VALE.'
Row us out from Desenzano, to your
Sirmione row !
So they row'd, and there we landed —
* O venusta Sirmio ! '
There to me thro' all the groves of olive
in the summer glow.
There beneath the Roman ruin where
the purple flowers grow,
Came that ' Ave atque Vale ' of the Poet's
hopeless woe,
Tenderest .of Roman poets nineteen
hundred years ago,
* Frater Ave atque Vale,' — as we wan-
der'd to and fro.
Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the
Garda Lake below.
Sweet CatuUus's all-but-island, olive-
silvery Sirmio !
HELEN'S TOWER.1
Helen's Tower, here I stand.
Dominant over sea and land.
Son's love built me, and I hold
Mother's love in letter'd gold.
Love is in and out of time,
I am mortal stone and lime.
Would my granite girth were strong
As either love, to last as long !
1 Written at the request of my friend. Lord
DufTerin.
562
EPITAPHS— HANDS ALL ROUND.
I should wear my crown entire
To and thro' the Doomsday fire,
And be found of angel eyes
In earth's recurring Paradise.
EPITAPH ON LORD STRATFORD
DE REDCLIFFE.
11^ WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
Thou third great Canning, stand among
our best
And noblest, now thy long day's work
hath ceased,
Here silent in our Minster of the West
"Who wert the voice of England in the
East.
EPITAPH
ON GENERAL GORDON.
IN THE GORDON BOYS' NATIONAL
MEMORIAL HOME NEAR WOKING.
Warrior of God, man's friend, and
tyrant's foe,
Now somewhere dead far in the waste
Soudan,
Thou livest in all hearts, for all men
know
This earth has never borne a nobler
man.
EPITAPH ON CAXTON.
IN ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER.
FIAT LUX (his motto).
Thy prayer was * Light — more Light —
while Time shall last ! '
Thou sawest a glory growing on the night,
But not the shadows which that light
would cast,
Till shadows vanish in the Light of Light.
TO THE DUKE OF ARGYLL.
O Patriot Statesman, be thou wise to
know
The limits of resistance, and the bounds
Determining concession; still be bold
Not only to slight praise but suffer scorn;
And be thy heart a fortress to maintain
The day against the moment, and the
year
Against the day; thy voice, a music
heard
Thro', all the yells and counter-yells of
feud
And faction, and thy will, a power to
make
This ever-changing world of circumstance,
In changing, chime with never-changing
Law.
HANDS ALL ROUND.
First pledge our Queen this solemn
night.
Then drink to England, every guest;
That man's the best Cosmopolite
Who loves his native country best.
May freedom's oak for ever live
With stronger life from day to day;
That man's the true Conservative
Who lops the moulder'd branch away.
Hands all round !
God the traitor's hope confound !
To this great cause of Freedom drink,
my friends.
And the great name of England, round
and round.
To all the loyal hearts who long
To keep our English Empire whole !
To all our noble sons, the strong
New England of the Southern Pole !
To England under Indian skies,
To those dark millions of her realm !
To Canada whom we love and prize.
Whatever statesman hold the helm.
Hands all round !
God the traitor's hope confound !
To this great name of England drink,
my friends.
And all her glorious empire, round and
round.
To all our statesmen so they be
True leaders of the land's desire !
To both our Houses, may they see
Beyond the borough and the shire !
We sail'd wherever ship could sail.
We founded many a mighty state;
FREEDOM— TO H.R.H. PRINCESS BEATRICE.
563
Pray God our greatness may not fail
Thro' craven fears of being great.
Hands ail round !
God the traitor's hope confound !
To this great cause of P>eedom drinlc,
my friends,
And the great name of England, round
and round.
FREEDOM.
O THOU SO fair in summers gone,
While yet thy fresh and virgin soul
Inform'd the pillar'd Parthenon,
The glittering Capitol;
So fair in southern sunshine bathed,
But scarce of such majestic mien
As here with forehead vapour-swathed
In meadows ever green;
III.
For thou — when Athens reign'd and
Rome,
Thy glorious eyes were dimm'd with
pain
To mark in many a freeman's home
The slave, the scourge, the chain;
O follower of the Vision, still
In motion to the distant gleam,
Howe'er blind force and brainless will
May jar thy golden dream
Of Knowledge fusing class with class,
Of civic Hate no more to be.
Of Love to leaven all the mass.
Till every Soul be free ;
Who yet, like Nature, wouldst not mar
By changes all too fierce and fast
This order of Her Human Star,
This heritage of the past;
O scorner of the party cry
That wanders from the public good.
Thou — when the nations rear on high
Their idol smear'd with blood,
VIII.
And when they roll their idol down —
Of saner worship sanely proud;
Thou loather of the lawless crown
As of the lawless crowd;
IX.
How long thine ever-growing mind
Hath still'd the blast and strown the
wave,
Tho' some of late would raise a wind
To sing thee to thy grave,
X.
Men loud against all forms of power —
Unfurnish'd brows, tempestuous
tongues —
Expecting all things in an hour —
Brass mouths and iron lungs !
TO H.R.H. PRINCESS
. BEATRICE.
Two Suns of Love make day of human
life.
Which else with all its pains, and griefs,
and deaths.
Were utter darkivess — one, the Sun of
dawn
That brightens thro' the Mother's tender
eyes,
And warms the child's awakening world
— and one
The later-rising Sun of spousal Love,
Which from her household orbit draws
the child
To move in other spheres. The Mother
weeps
At that white funeral of the single life.
Her maiden daughter's marriage; and
her tears
Are half of pleasure, half of pain — the
child
Is happy — ev'n in leaving her ! but Thou,
564
THE FLEET.
True daughter, whose all- faithful, filial eyes
Have seen the loneliness of earthly
thrones,
Wilt neither quit the widow'd Crown,
nor let
This later light of Love have risen in vain.
But moving thro' the Mother's home,
between
The two that love thee, lead a summer life,'
Sway'd by each Love, and swaying to
each Love,
Like some conjectured planet in mid
heaven
Between two Suns, and drawing down
, from both
The light and genial warmth of double day.
THE FLEET.i
You, you, e/you shall fail to understand
What England is, and what her all-in-all,
On you will come the curse of all the land,
Should this old England fall
Which Nelson left so great.
II.
His isle, the mightiest Ocean-power on
earth.
Our own fair isle, the lord of every
sea —
1 The speaker said that * he should like to
be assured that other outlying portions of the
Empire, the Crown colonies, and important coal-
ing stations were being as promptly and as
thoroughly fortified as the yarious capitals of the
self-governing colonies. He was credibly in-
formed this was not so. It was impossible, also,
not to feel some degree of anxiety about the
efficacy of present provision to defend and pro-
tect, by means of swift well-armed cruisers, the
immense mercantile fleet of the Empire. A third
source of anxiety, so far as the colonies were
concerned, was the apparently insufficient provi-
sion for the rapid manufacture of armaments and
their prompt despatch when ordered to their
colonial destination. Hence the necessity for
manufacturing appliances equal to the require-
ments, not of Great Britain alone, but of the
whole Empire. But the keystone of the whole
was the necessity for an overwhelmingly powerful
fleet and efficient defence for all necessary coaling
stations. This was as essential for the colonies
as for Great Britain. It was the one condition
Her fuller franchise — what would that
be worth —
Her ancient fame of Free —
Were she . . . a fallen state?
III.
Her dauntless army scatter'd, and so
small.
Her island-myriads fed from alien
lands —
The fleet of England is her all-in-all;
Her fleet is in your bands.
And in her fleet her Fate.
You, you, that have the ordering of her
fleet,
If yovi should only compass her disgrace.
When all men starve, the wild mob's
million feet
Will kick you from your place.
But then too late, too late.
OPENING OF THE INDIAN AND
COLONIAL EXHIBITION BY THE
QUEEN.
Written at the Request of the Prince
of Wales.
W^ELCOME, welcome with one voice !
In your welfare we rejoice,
for the continuance of the Empire. All that
Continental Powers did with respect to armies
England should effect with her navy. It was
essentially a defensive force, and could be moved
rapidly from point to point, but it should be equal
to all that was expected from it. It was to
strengthen the fleet that colonists would first
readily tax themselves, because they realised how
essential a powerful fleet was to the safety, not
only of that extensive commerce sailing in every
sea, but ultimately to the security of the distant
portions of the Empire. Who could estimate the.
loss involved in even a brief period of disaster to
the Imperial Navy? Any amount of money
timely expended in preparation would be quite
insignificant when compared with the possible
calamity he had referred to' — Extract from
Sir Graham Berry's Speech at the (^olonial
Institute, gth November 1886.
TO W. C. M ACRE AD Y,
565
Sons and brothers that have sent,
From isle and cape and continent,
Produce of your field and flood,
Mount and mine, and primal wood;
Works of subtle brain and hand,
And splendours of the morning land
Gifts from every British zone;
Britons, hold your own !
May we find, as ages run,
The mother featured in the son
And may yours for ever be
That old strength and constancy
Which has made your fathers great
In our ancient island State,
And wherever her flag fly.
Glorying between sea and sky,
Makes the might of Britain known;
Britons, hold your own !
Britain fought her sons of yore —
Britain fail'd; and never more.
Careless of our growing kin.
Shall we sin our fathers' sin.
Men that in a narrower day — .
Unprophetic rulers they —
Drove from out the mother's nest
That young eagle of the West
To forage for herself alone;
Britons, hold your own !
IV.
Sharers of our glorious past,
Brothers, must we part at last?
Shall we not thro' good and ill
Cleave to one another still?
Britain's myriad voices call,
* Sons, be welded each and all.
Into one imperial whole.
One with Britain, heart and soul !
One life, one flag, one fleet, one Throne !
Britons, hold your own !
POETS AND THEIR BIBLIOGRA-
PHIES.
Old poets foster'd under friendlier skies.
Old Virgil who would write ten lines,
they say,
At dawn, and lavish all the golden day
To make them wealthier in his readers'
eyes;
And you, old popular Horace, you the
wise
Adviser of the nine-years-ponder'd lay
And you, that wear a wreath of sweeter
bay,
Catullus whose dead songster never
dies;
If, glancing downward on the kindly
sphere
That once had roU'd you round and
round the Sun,
You see your Art still shrined in
human shelves,
You should be jubilant that youflourish'd
here
Before the Love of Letters, overdone.
Had swampt the sacred poets with them-
selves.
TO W. C. MACREADY.
1851.
Farewell, Macready, since to-night we
part;
Full-handed thunders often have con-
fess'd
Thy power, well-used to move the
public breast.
We; thank thee with our voice, and from
the heart.
Farewell, Macready, since this night we
part.
Go, take thine honours home; rank
with the best,
Garrick and statelier Kemble, and
the rest
Who made a nation purer through their
art.
Thine is it that our drama did not die.
Nor flicker down to brainless panto-
mime.
And those gilt gauds men-children
swarm to see.
Farewell, Macready; moral, grave, sub-
lime;
Our Shakespeare's bland and universal
eye
Dwells pleased, through twice a
hundred years, on thee.
QUEEN MARY
A DRAMA.
DRAMATIS PERSONS.
Queen Mary.
Philip, King- of Naples and Sicily, afterwards King of Spain.
The Princess Elizabeth.
Reginald Pole, Cardinal a7td Papal Legate.
Simon Renard, Spanish Ambassador.
Le Sieur de Noailles, French Ambassador.
Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbttry.
Sir Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York ; Lord Chancellor after Gardiner.
Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon.
Lord William Howard, afterwards Lord Howard, and Lord High Admiral.
Lord Williams of Thame. Lord Paget. Lord Petre.
Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor.
Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London. Thomas Thirlby, Bishop of Ely.
Sir Thomas Wyatt |. j^.^^^..^^ Leaders.
Sir Thomas Stafford '
Sir Ralph Bagenhall. Sir Robert Southwell.
Sir Henry Bedingfield. Sir William Cecil.
Sir Thomas White, Lord Mayor of London.
The Duke of Alva ) attending on Philip.
Father Cole.
Soto.
Father Bourne.
The Count de Feria )
Peter Martyr.
Villa Garcia.
Captain Brett \ Adherents of Wyatt.
Anthony Knyvett )
Peters, Gentleman of Lord Howard.
Roger, Servant to Noailles. William, Servant to Wyatt.
Steward of Household to the Princess Elizabeth.
Old Nokes and Nokes.
Marchioness of Yxkvkr, Mother of Courtenay.
Lady Clarence \
Lady Magdalen Dacres V Ladies in Waiting to the Queen.
Alice ' .
Maid of Honour to the Princess Elizabeth.
Jf"^^ j two Country Wives.
Lords and other Attendants, Members of the Privy Council, Members of Parliament, Two Gentle-
men, Aldermen, Citizens, Peasants, Ushers, Messengers, Guards, Pages, Gospellers, Marshal-
men, etc.
ACT I.
SCENE I. — Aldgate richly
decorated.
Crowd. Marshalmen.
Marshalman. Stand back, keep a
clear lane ! When will her Majesty
pass, sayst thou? why now, even now;
wherefore draw back your heads and
your horns before I break them, and
make what noise you will with your
tongues, so it be not treason. Long live
Queen Mary, the lawful and legitimate
daughter of Harry the Eighth ! Shout,
knaves !
Citizens. Long live Queen Mary !
First Citizen. That's a hard word,
legitimate; what does it mean?
Second Citizen. It means a bastard.
ACT I, SCENE I.
QUEEN MARY.
567
Third Citizen. Nay, it means true-
born.
First Citizen. Why, didn't the Par-
liament make her a bastard ?
Second Citizen. No; it was the Lady
Elizabeth.
Third Citizen. That was after, man;
that was after.
First Citizen. Then which is the
bastard?
Second Citizen. Troth, they be both
bastards by Act of Parliament and
Council.
Third Citizen. Ay, the Parliament
can make every true-born man of us a
bastard. Old Nokes, can't it make thee
a bastard? thou shouldst know, for thou
art as white as three Christmasses.
Old Nokes {^dreamily). Who's a-pass-
ing? King Edward or King Richard?
Third Citizen. No, old Nokes.
Old Nokes. It's Harry !
Third Citizen. It's Queen Mary.
Old Nokes. The blessed Mary's a-
passing ! [Falls on his knees.
Nokes. Let father alone, my masters !
he's past your questioning.
Third Citizen. Answer thou for him,
then ! thou'rt no such cockerel thyself,
for thou wast born i' the tail end of old
Harry the Seventh.
Nokes. Eh ! that was afore bastard-
making began. I was born true man at
five in the forenoon i' the tail of old
Harry, and so they can't make me a
bastard.
Third Citizen. But if Parliament can
make the Queen a bastard, why, it follows
all the more that they can make thee one,
who art fray'd i' the knees, and out at
elbow, and bald o' the back, and bursten
at the toes, and down at heels.
Nokes. I was born of a true man and
a ring'd wife, and I can't argue upon it;
but I and my old woman 'ud burn upon
it, that would we.
Marshal-man. What are you cackling
of bastardy under the Queen's own nose?
I'll have you flogg'd and burnt too, by
the Rood I will.
First Citizen. He swears by the
Rood. Whew !
Second Citizen. Hark ! the trumpets.
[ The Procession passes, Mary and
Elizabeth riding side by side, and
disappears under the gate.
Citizens. Long live Queen Mary !
down with all traitors ! God save her
Grace; and death to Northumberland!
[Exeunt.
Manent Two Gentlemen.
First Gentleman. By God's light a
noble creature, right royal !
Second Gentleman. She looks comelier
than ordinary to-day; but to my mind
the Lady Elizabeth is the more noble and
royal.
First Gentleman. I mean the Lady
Elizabeth. Did you hear (I have a
daughter in her service who reported it)
that she met the Queen at Wanstead with
five hundred horse, and the Queen (tho'
some say they be much divided) took her
hand, call'd her sweet sister, and kiss'd
not her alone, but all the ladies of her
following.
Second Gentleman. Ay, that was in
her hour of joy ; there will be plenty to
sunder and unsister them again : this
Gardiner for one, who is to be made
Lord Chancellor, and will pounce like a
wild beast out of his cage to worry
Cranmer.
First Gentleman. And furthermore,
my daughter said that when there rose a
talk of the late rebellion, she spoke even
of Northumberland pitifully, and of the
good Lady Jane as a poor innocent child
who had but obeyed her father; and
furthermore, she said that no one in her
time should be burnt for heresy.
Second Gentleman. Well, sir, I look
for happy times.
First Gentleman. There is but one
thing against them. I know not if you
know.
Second Gentleman. I suppose you
touch upon the rumour that Charles, the
master of the world, has offer' d her his
son Philip, the Pope and the Devil. I
trust it is but a rumour.
First Gentleman. She is going now
to the Tower to loose the prisoners there,
and among them Courtenay, to be made
Earl of Devon, of royal blood, of splendid
568
QUEEN MARY.
feature, whom the council and all her
people wish her to marry. May it be
so, for we are many of us Catholics, but
few Papists, and the Hot Gospellers will
go mad upon it.
Second Genilevian. Was she not
betroth'd in her babyhood to the Great
Emperor himself?
Firsi Gentleman. Ay, but he's too old.
Second Gentleman. And again to her
cousin Reginald Pole, now Cardinal;
but I hear that he too is full of aches and
broken before his day.
First Gentleman. O, the Pope could
dispense with his Cardinalate, and his
achage, and his breakage, if that were all :
will you not follow the procession?
Second Gentleman. No; I have seen
enough for this day.
First Gentleman. Well, I shall follow;
if I can get near enough I shall judge
with my own eyes whether her Grace in-
cline to this splendid scion of Plantagenet.
\_Exeunt.
SCENE II.
A Room in Lambeth Palace.
Cranmer. To Strasburg, Antwerp,
Frankfort, Zurich, Worms,
Geneva, Basle — our Bishops from their
sees
Or fled, they say, or flying — Poinet,
Barlow,
Bale, Scory, Coverdale; besides the
Deans
Of Christchurch, Durham, Exeter, and
Wells —
Ailmer and BuUingham, and hundreds
more;
So they report : I shall be left alone.
No : Hooper, Ridley, Latimer will not fly.
Enter Peter Martyr.
Peter Martyr. Fly, Cranmer ! were
there nothing else, your name
Stands first of those who sign'd the
Letters Patent
That gave her royal crown to Lady Jane.
Cranmer. Stand first it may, but it
was written last :
Those that are now her Privy Council,
sign'd
Before me : nay, the Judges had pro-
nounced
That our young Edward might bequeath
the crown
Of England, putting by his father's will.
Yet I stood out, till Edward sent for me.
The wan boy-king, with his fast-fading
eyes
Fixt hard on mine, his frail transparent
hand,
Damp with the sweat of death, and
griping mine,
Whisper'd me, if I loved him, not to yield
His Church of England to the Papal wolf
And Mary; then I could no more — I
sign'd.
Nay, for bare shame of inconsistency.
She cannot pass her traitor council by,
To make me headless.
Peter Martyr. That might be forgiven.
I tell you, fly, my Lord. You do not own
The bodily presence in the Eucharist,
Their wafer and perpetual sacrifice :
Your creed will be your death.
Cranmer. Step after step.
Thro' many voices crying right and left,
Have I climb'd back into the primal
church.
And stand within the porch, and Christ
with me :
My flight were such a scandal to the faith.
The downfall of so many simple souls,
I dare not leave my post.
Peter Martyr. But you divorced
Queen Catharine and her father; hence,
her hate
Will burn till you are burn'd.
Cranmer. I cannot help it.
The Canonists and Schoolmen were with
me.
*Thou shalt not wed thy brother's wife.'
— 'Tis written,
'They shall be childless.' True, Mary
was born.
But France would not accept her for a
bride
As being born from incest; and this
wrought
Upon the king; and child by child, you
know.
Were momentary sparkles out as quick
Almost as kindled; and he brought his
doubts
QUEEN MARY.
569
And fears to me. Peter, I'll swear for
him
He did believe the bond incestuous.
But wherefore am I trenching on the
time
That should already have seen your steps
a mile
From me and Lambeth? God be with
you ! Go.
Peter Martyr. Ah, but how fierce a
letter you wrote against
Their superstition when they slander'd
you
For setting up a mass at Canterbury
To please the Queen.
Cranmer. It was a wheedling monk
Set up the mass.
Peter Martyr. I know it, my good
Lord.
But you so bubbled over with hot terms
Of Satan, liars, blasphemy. Antichrist,
She never will forgive you. Fly, my
Lord, fly!
Cranmer. I wrote it, and God grant
me power to burn !
Peter Martyr. They have given me a
safe conduct: for all that
I dare not stay. I fear, I fear, I see
you.
Dear friend, for the last time; farewell,
and fly.
Cranmer. Fly and farewell, and let
me die the death.
\_Exit Peter Martyr.
Enter Old Servant.
0 kind and gentle master, the Queen's
Officers
Are here in force to take you to the Tower.
Cranmer. Ay, gentle friend, admit
them. I will go.
1 thank my God it is too late to fly.
[_Exeunt.
SCENE III. — St. Paul's Cross.
Fathp:r Bourne in the ptdpit. A crowd.
Marchioness of Exeter, Courte-
NAY. The Sieur de Noailles atid
his man Roger in front of the stage.
Hubbub.
Noailles. Hast thou let fall those
papers in the palace?
Roger. Ay, sir.
Noailles. * There will be no peace fot
Mary till Elizabeth lose her head.'
Roger. Ay, sir.
Noailles. And the other, 'Long live
Elizabeth the Queen ! '
Roger. Ay, sir; she needs must tread
upon them.
Noailles. Well.
These beastly swine make such a grunting
here,
I cannot catch what Father Bourne is
saying.
Roger. Quiet a moment, my masters;
hear what the shaveling has to say for
himself.
Croivd. H ush — hear!
Botirne. — and so this unhappy land,
long divided in itself, and sever'd from
the faith, will return into the one true
fold, seeing that our gracious Virgin
Queen hath
Croiud. No pope ! no pope !
Roger {to those about him, mimicking
Bourne). — hath sent for the holy legate
of the holy father the Pope, Cardinal
Pole, to give us all that holy absolution
which
First Citizen. Old Bourne to the
life!
Second Citizen. Holy absolution ! holy
Inquisition !
Third Citizen. Down with the Papist !
IHuhbuh.
Bourne. — and now that your good
bishop, Bonner, who hath lain so long
under bonds for the faith \^Niibbuh.
N^oailles. Friend Roger, steal thou in
among the crowd.
And get the swine to shout Elizabeth,
Yon gray old Gospeller, sour as midwinter,
Begin with him.
Roger {goes). By the mass, old friend,
we'll have no pope here while the Lady
Elizabeth lives.
Gospeller. Art thou of the true faith,
fellow, that swearest by the mass?
Roger. Ay, that am I, new converted,
but the old leaven sticks to my tongue
yet.
First Citizen. He says right; by the
mass we'll have no mass here.
Voices of the crowd. Peace ! hear him;
570
QUEEN MARY.
ACT I.
let his own words damn the Papist. From
thine own mouth I judge thee — tear him
down !
Bourne. — and since our Gracious
Queen, let me call her our second Virgin
Mary, hath begun to re-edify the true
temple
First Citizen. Virgin Mary ! we'll have
no virgins here — we'll have the Lady
Elizabeth !
{^Szvords are drawn, a knife is hurled
and sticks in the pulpit. The mob
throng to the pulpit stairs.
Marchioness of Exeter. Son Courtenay,
wilt thou see the holy father
Murdered before thy face? up, son, and
save him !
They love thee, and thou canst not come
to harm.
Courtenay (in the pulpit'). Shame,
shame, my masters ! are you Eng-
lish-born,
And set yourselves by hundreds against
one?
Crowd. A Courtenay ! a Courtenay !
\^A train of Spanish servants crosses
at the back of the stage.
Noailles. These birds of passage come
before their time :
Stave off the crowd upon the Spaniard
there.
Roger. My masters, yonder's fatter
game for you
Than this old gaping gurgoyle : look you
there —
The Frince of Spain coming to wed our
Queen !
After him, boys ! and pelt him from the
city.
[ They seize stones and follow the
Spaniards. Exeunt on the other
side Marchioness of Exeter and
Attendants.
Noailles {to Roger) . Stand from me.
If Elizabeth lose her head —
That makes for France.
And if her people, anger'd thereupon,
Arise against her and dethrone the
Queen —
That makes for France.
And if I breed confusion anyway —
That makes for France.
Good-day, my Lord of Devon;
A bold heart yours to beard that raging
mob !
Courtenay. My mother said. Go up;
and up I went.
I knew they would not do me any wrong,
For I am mighty popular with them,
Noailles.
Noailles. You look'd a king.
Courtenay. Why not? I am
king's blood.
Noailles. And in the whirl of change
may come to be one.
Courtenay. Ah !
Noailles. But does your gracious
Queen entreat you kinglike?
Courtenay. 'Fore God, I think she
entreats me like a child.
Noailles. You've but a dull life in this
maiden court,
I fear, my Lord?
Courtenay. A life of nods and yawns.
Noailles. So you would honour my
poor house to-night.
We might enliven you. Divers honest
fellows.
The Duke of Suffolk lately freed from
prison.
Sir Peter Carew and Sir Thomas Wyatt,
Sir Thomas Stafford, and some more —
we play.
Courtenay. At what?
Noailles. The Game of Chess.
Courtenay. The Game of Chess !
I can play well, and I shall beat you
there.
Noailles. Ay, but we play with Henry,
King of France,
And certain of his court.
His Highness makes his moves across the
Channel,
We answer him with ours, and there are
messengeis
That go between us.
Courtenay. Why, such a game, sir,
were whole -years a playing.
Noailles. Nay; not so long I trust.
That all depends
Upon the skill and swiftness of the
players.
Courtenay. The King is skilful at it?
Noailles. Very, my Lord.
Courtenay. And the stakes high?
Noailles. But not beyond your means.
SCENE IV.
QUEEN MARY.
571
Courtenay. Well, I'm the first of
players. I shall win.
Noailles. With our advice and in our
company,
And so you well attend to the king's moves,
I think you may.
Courtenay. When do you meet?
Noailles. To-night.
Courtenay {aside^. I will be there;
the fellow's at his tricks —
Deep— I shall fathom him. {Aloud.)
Good morning, Noailles.
\_Exit Courtenay.
Noailles. Good-day, my Lord. Strange
game of chess ! a King
That with her own pawns plays against a
Queen,
Whose play is all to find herself a King.
Ay; but this fine blue-blooded Courtenay
seems
Too princely for a pawn. Call him a
Knight,
That, with an ass's, not a horse's head,
Skips every way, from levity or from fear.
Well, we shall use him somehow, so that
Gardiner
And Simon Renard spy not out our game
Too early. Roger, thinkest thou that
anyone
Suspected thee to be my man ?
Roger. Not one, sir.
Noailles. No ! the disguise was perfect.
Let's away. \_Exeu7it.
SCENE IV.
London. A Room in the Palace.
Elizabeth. Enter Courtenay.
Courtenay. So yet am I,
Unless my friends and mirrors lie to me,
A goodher-looking fellow than this Philip.
Pah!
The Queen is ill advised : shall I turn
traitor?
They've almost talked me into it : yet the
word
Affrights me somewhat : to be such a one
As Harry Bolingbroke hath a lure in it.
Good now, my Lady Queen, tho' by your
age.
And by your looks you are not worth the
having,
Yet by your crown you are.
{^Seeing Elizabeth.
The Princess there?
If I tried her and la — she's amorous.
Have we not heard of her in Edward's
time,
Her freaks and frolics with the late Lord
Admiral ?
I do believe she'd yield. I should be
still
A party in the state; and then, who
knows —
Elizabeth. What are you musing on,
my Lord of Devon?
Courtenay. Has not the Queen —
Elizabeth. Done what. Sir?
Cotirtenay.' — made you follow
The Lady Suffolk and the Lady Lennox ? —
You,
The heir presumptive.
Elizabeth. Why do you ask? you
know it.
Courtenay. You needs must bear it
hardly.
Elizabeth. No, indeed !
I am utterly submissive to the Queen.
Courtenay. Well, I was musing upon
that; the Queen
Is both my foe and yours : we should be
friends.
Elizabeth. My Lord, the hatred of
another to us
Is no true bond of friendship.
Courtenay. Might it not
Be the rough prefaceof some closer bond?
Elizabeth. My Lord, you late were
loosed from out the Tower,
Where, like a butterfly in a chrysalis.
You spent your life; that broken, out
you flutter
Thro' the new world, go zigzag, now
would settle
Upon this flower, now that; but all things
here
At court are known; you have solicited
The Queen, and been rejected.
Courtenay. Flower, she !
Half faded ! but you, cousin, are fresh and
sweet
As the first flower no bee has ever tried.
Elizabeth. Are you the bee to try me?
why, but now
I called you butterfly.
572
QUEEN MARY.
ACT -U
Coiirtenay. You did me wrong,
1 love not to be called a butterfly :
Why do you call me butterfly?
Elizabeth. Why do you go so gay
then?
Courtenay. Velvet and gold.
This dress was made me as the Earl of
Devon
To take my seat in; looks it not right
royal ?
Elizabeth. So royal that the Queen
forbade you wearing it.
Courtenay. I wear it then to spite
her.
Elizabeth. My Lord, my Lord ;
I see you in the Tower again. Her
Majesty
Hears you affect the Prince — prelates
kneel to you. —
Courtenay. I am the noblest blood
in Europe, Madam,
A Courtenay of Devon, and her cousin.
Elizabeth. She hears you make your
boast that after all
She means to wed you. Folly, my good
Lord.
Courtenay. How folly ? a great party
in the state
Wills me to wed her.
Elizabeth. Failing her, my Lord,
Doth not as great a party in the state
Will you to wed me?
Courtenay. Even so, fair lady.
Elizabeth. You know to flatter ladies.
Courtenay. Nay, I meant
True matters of the heart.
Elizabeth. My heart, my Lord,
Is no great party in the state as yet.
Courtenay. Great, said you? nay, you
shall be great. I love you.
Lay my life in your hands. Can you be
close?
Elizabeth. Can you, my Lord?
Courtenay. Close as a miser's casket.
Listen :
The King of France, Noailles the Am-
bassador,
The Duke of Suffolk and Sir Peter Carew,
Sir Thomas Wyatt, I myself, some others,
Have sworn this Spanish marriage shall
not be.
If Mary will not hear us — well — con-
jecture —
Were I in Devon with my wedded bride,
The people there so worship me — Your
ear;
You shall be Queen.
Elizabeth. You speak too low,
my Lord;
I cannot hear you.
Courtenay. I'll repeat it.
Elizabeth. No !
Stand further off, or you may lose your
head.
Courtenay. I have a head to lose for
your sweet sake.
Elizabeth. Have you, my Lord? Best
keep it for your own.
Nay, pout not, cousin.
Not many friends are mine, except indeed
Among the many. I believe you mine;
And so you may continue mine, farewell,
And that at once.
Enter Mary, behind.
Mary. Whispering — leagued together
To bar me from my Philip.
Courtenay. Pray — consider —
Elizabeth {seeing the Queen). Well,
that's a noble horse of yours, my
Lord.
I trust that he will carry you well to-day,
And heal your headache.
Courtenay. Youare wild; what head-
ache?
Heartache, perchance; not headache.
Elizabeth {aside to Courtenay). Are
you blind ?
[Courtenay sees the Queen and exit.
Exit Mary.
Enter Lord William Howard.
Hoivard. Was that my Lord of Devon ?
do not you
Be seen in corners with my Lord of
Devon.
He hath fallen out of favour with the
Queen.
She fears the Lords may side with you
and him
Against her marriage; therefore is he
dangerous.
And if this Prince of fluff and feather
come
To woo you, niece, he is dangerous every
way.
SCENE IV.
QUEEN MARY.
573
Elizabeth. Not very dangerous that
way, my good uncle.
Howard. But your own state is full
of danger here.
The disaffected, heretics, reformers,
Look to you as the one to crown their
ends.
Mix not yourself with any plot I pray
you;
Nay, if by chance you hear of any such.
Speak not thereof — no, not to your best
friend.
Lest you should be confounded with it.
Still —
Perinde ac cadaver — as the priest says,
You know your Latin — quiet as a dead
body.
What was my Lord of Devon telling
you?
Elizabeth. Whether he told me any-
thing or not,
I follow your good counsel, gracious
uncle.
Quiet as a dead body.
Howard. You do right well.
I do not care to know ; but this I charge
you,
Tell Courtenay nothing. The Lord
Chancellor
(I count it as a kind of virtue in him.
He hath not many), as a mastiff dog
May love a puppy cur for no more reason
Than that the twain have been tied up
together,
Thus Gardiner — for the two were fellow-
prisoners
So many years in yon accursed Tower —
Hath taken to this Courtenay. Look to
it, niece.
He hath no fence when Gardiner ques-
tions him;
All oozes out; yet him — because they
know him
The last White Rose, the last Plantagenet
(Nay, there is Cardinal Pole, too), the
people
Claim as their natural leader — ay, some
say,
That you shall marry him, make him King
belike.
Elizabeth. • Do they say so, good
uncle?
Howard. Ay, good niece !
You should be plain and open with me,
niece.
You should not play upon me.
Elizabeth. No, good uncle.
Enter Gardiner.
Gardiner. The Queen would see your
Grace upon the moment.
Elizabeth. Why, my lord Bishop?
Gardiner. I think she means to coun-
sel your withdrawing
To Ashridge, or some other country
house.
Elizabeth. Why, my lord Bishop?
Gardiner. I do but bring the message,
know no more.
Your Grace will hear her reasons from
herself
Elizabeth. 'Tis mine own wish fulfill'd
before the word
Was spoken, for in truth I had meant to
crave
Permission of her Highness to retire
To Ashridge, and pursue my studies
there.
Gardiner. Madam, to have the wish
before the word
Is man's good Fairy — and the Queen is
yours.
I left her with rich jewels in her hand.
Whereof 'tis like enough she means to
make
A farewell present to your Grace.
Elizabeth. My Lord,
I have the jewel of a loyal heart.
Gardiner. I doubt it not, Madam,
most loyal. \_Boi.vs low and exit.
Howard. See,
This comes of parleying with my Lord of
Devon.
Well, well, you must obey; and I myself
Believe it will be better for your welfare.
Your time will come.
Elizabeth. I think my time will come.
Uncle,
I am of sovereign nature, that I know,
Not to be quell'd; and I have felt within
me
Stirrings of some great doom when God's
just hour
Peals — but this fierce old Gardiner —
his big baldness,
That irritable forelock which bfe rubs,
574
QUEEN MARY.
ACT 1.
His buzzard beak and deep-incavern'd
eyes
Half fright me.
Howard. You've a bold heart; keep
it so.
He cannot touch you save that you turn
traitor;
And so take heed I pray you — you are
one
Who love that men should smile upon
you, niece.
They'd smile you into treason — some of
them.
Elizabeth. 1 spy the rock beneath the
smiling sea.
But if this Philip, the proud Catholic
prince,
And this bald priest, and she that hates
me, seek
In that lone house, to practise on my
life,
By poison, fire, shot, stab —
Howa^'d. They will not, niece.
Mine is the fleet and all the power at
sea —
Or will be in a moment. If they dared
To harrn you, I would blow this Philip
and all
Your trouble to the dogstar and the
devil.
Elizabeth. To the Pleiads, uncle;
they have lost a sister.
Howard. But why say that? what
have you done to lose her?
Come, come, I will go with you to the
Queen. \_Exeunt.
SCENE V.
A Room in the Palace.
Mary with Philip's nmiiature. Alice.
• Mary {kissing the miniature). Most
goodly, Kinglike and an Emperor's
son,- —
A king to be, — is he not noble, girl?
Alice. Goodly enough, your Grace,
and yet, methinks,
I have seen goodlier.
Mary. Ay; some waxen doll
Thy baby eyes have rested on, belike;
All red and white, the fashion of our
land.
But my good mother came (God rest her
soul)
Of Spain, and I am Spanish in myself.
And in my likings.
Alice. By your Grace's leave
Your royal mother came of Spain, but
took
To the English red and white. Your
royal father
(For so they say) was all pure lily and
rose
In his youth, and like a lady.
Mary. O just God!
Sweet mother, you had time and cause
enough
To sicken of his lilies and his roses.
Cast off, betray'd, defamed, divorced,
forlorn !
And then the King — that traitor past
forgiveness.
The false archbishop fawning on him,
married
The mother of Elizabeth — a heretic
Ev'n as she is; but God hath sent me
here
To take such order with all heretics
That it shall be, before I die, as tho'
My father and my brother had not lived.
What M^ast thou saying of this Lady
Jane,
Now in the Tower?
Alice. Why, Madam, she was passing
Some chapel down in Essex, and with
her
Lady Anne Wharton, and the Lady Anne
Bow'd to the Pyx; but Lady Jane stood
up
Stiff as the very backbone of heresy.
And wherefore bow ye not, says Lady_
Anne,
To him within there who made Heaven
and Earth?
I cannot and I dare not tell your Grace
What Lady Jane replied.
Mary. But I will have it.
Alice. She said — pray pardon me,
and pity her —
She hath harken'd evil counsel — ah !
she said,
The baker made him.
Mary. Monstrous ! blasphemous !
She ought to burn. Hence, thou. {Exit
Alice.) No — being traitor
QUEEN MARY.
575
Her head will fall: shall it? she is but
a child.
We do not kill the child for doing that
His father whipt him into doing — a head
So full of grace and beauty ! would that
mine
Were half as gracious ! O my lord to be,
My love, for thy sake only.
I am eleven years older than he is.
But will he care for that?
No, by the holy Virgin, being noble,
But love me only : then the bastard
sprout.
My sister, is far fairer than myself.
Will he be drawn to her?
No, being of the true faith with myself.
Paget is for him — for to wed with Spain
Would treble England — Gardiner is
against him;
The Council, people, Parliament against
him;
But 1 will have him ! My hard father
hated me;
My brother rather hated me than loved;
My sister cowers and hates me. Holy
Virgin,
Plead with thy blessed Son; grant me
my prayer :
Give me my Philip; and we two will
lead
The living waters of the Faith again
Back thro' their widow'd channel here,
and watch
The parch'd banks rolling incense, as of
old.
To heaven, and kindled wdth the palms
of Christ !
Enter UsHER.
Who waits, sir?
Usher. Madam, the Lord Chancellor.
Mary. Bid him come in. {Enter
Gardinjek.) Good morning, my
good Lord. \_Exit Usher.
Gardiner. That every morning of your
Majesty
May be most good, is every morning's
prayer
Of your most loyal subject, Stephen
Gardiner.
Mary. Come you to tell me this, my
Lord?
Gardiner. And more.
Your people have begun to learn your
worth.
Your pious wish to pay King Edward's
debts,
Your lavish household curb'd, and the
remission
Of half that subsidy levied on the people,
Make all tongues praise and all hearts
beat for you.
I'd have you yet more loved : the realm
is poor.
The exchequer at neap-tide : we might
withdraw
Part of our garrison at Calais.
Mary. Calais !
Our one point on the main, - the gate of
France !
I am Queen of England ; take mine eyes,
mine heart,
But do not lose me Calais.
Gardiner. Do not fear it.
Of that hereafter. I say your Grace is
loved.
That I may keep you thus, who am your
friend
And ever faithful counsellor, might I
speak ?
Mary. I can forespeak your speaking.
Would I marry
Prince Philip, if all England hate him?
That is
Your question, and I front it with another :
Is it England, or a party? Now, your
answer.
Gardiner. My answer is, I wear be-
neath my dress
A shirt of mail : my house hath been
assaulted,
And when I walk abroad, the populace,
With fingers pointed like so many daggers.
Stab me in fancy, hissing Spain and
Philip;
And when I sleep, a hundred men-at-
arms
Guard my poor dreams for England.
Men would murder me.
Because they think me favourer of this
marriage.
Mary. And that were hard upon you,
my Lord Chancellor.
Gardiner. But our young Earl of
Devon —
Mary. Earl of Devon?
576
QUEEN MAkY.
ACl- 1
I freed him from the Tower, placed him
at Court;
I made him Earl of Devon, and — the
fool —
He wrecks his health and wealth on
courtesans.
And rolls himself in carrion like a dog.
Gardiner. More like a schoolboy that
hath broken bounds.
Sickening himself with sweets.
Alary. I will not hear of him.
Good, then, they will revolt : but I am
Tudor,
And shall control them.
Gardiner. I will help you. Madam,
Even to the utmost. All the church is
grateful.
You have ousted the mock priest, re-
pulpited
The shepherd of St. Peter, raised the
rood again.
And brought us back the mass. I am all
thanks
To God and to your Grace : j'et I know
well.
Your people, and- 1 go with them so far.
Will brook nor Pope nor Spaniard here
to play
The tyrant, or in commonwealth or
church.
Mary {showing the picture'). Is this the
face of one who plays the tyrant?
Peruse it; is it not goodly, ay, and gentle?
Gardiner. Madam, methinks a cold
face and a haughty.
And when your Highness talks of Cour-
tenay —
Ay, true — a goodly one. I would his
life
Were half as goodly {aside) .
Mary. What is that you mutter?
Gardiner. O Madam, take it bluntly;
marry Philip,
And be stepmother of a score of sons !
The prince is known in Spain, in Flanders,
ha!
For Philip —
Mary. You offend us; you may leave us.
You see thro' warping glasses.
Gardiner. If your Majesty —
Mary. I have sworn upon the body
and blood of Christ
I'll none but Philip.
Gardiner. Hath your Grace so sworn ?
Mary. Ay, Simon Renard knows it.
Gardiner. News to me !
It then remains for your poor Gardiner,
So you still care to trust him somewhat
less
Than Simon Renard, to compose the
event
In some such form as least may harm
your Grace.
Mary. I'll have the scandal sounded
to the mud.
I know it a scandal.
Gardiner. All my hope is now
It may be found a scandal.
Mary. You offend us.
Gardiner {aside). These princes are
like children, must be physick'd,
The bitter in the sweet. I have lost
mine office,
It may be, thro' mine honesty, like a fool.
lExit.
Enter Usher.
Mary. Who waits?
Usher. The Ambassador from France,
your Grace.
Mary {sits dozvn). Bid him come in.
Good morning. Sir de Noailles.
{^Exit Usher.
Noailles {entering) . A happy morning
to your Majesty.
Mary. And I should sometime have
a happy morning;
I have had none yet. What says the
King your master?
Noailles. Madam, my master hears
with much alarm,
That you may marry Philip, Prince of
Spain —
Foreseeing, with whate'er unwillingness,
That if this Philip be the titular king
Of England, and at war with him, your
Grace
And kingdom will be suck'd into the war,
Ay, tho' you long for peace; wherefore,
my master,
If but to prove your Majesty's good will,
Would fain have some fresh treaty drawn
between you.
Mary. Whysome fresh treaty? where-
fore should I do it?
Sir, if we marry, we shall still maintain
SCENE V.
QUEEN MARY.
Ill
All former treaties with his Majesty.
Our royal word for that ! and your good
master,
Pray God he do not be the first to break
them,
Must be content with that; and so, fare-
well.
Noailles {going, reha-ns). I would your
answer had been other. Madam,
For I foresee dark days.
Mary. And so do I, sir;
Your master works against me in the dark.
I do believe he holp Northumberland
Against me.
Noailles. Nay, pure phantasy, your
Grace.
Why should he move against you?
Mary. Will you hear why?
Mary of Scotland, — for I have not own'd
My sister, and I will not, — after me
Is heir of England; and my royal father.
To make the crown of Scotland one with
ours,
Ha^ mark'd her for my brother Edward's
bride;
Ay, but your king stole her a babe from
Scotland
In order to betroth her to your Dauphin.
See then :
Mary of Scotland, married to your
Dauphin,
Would make our England, France;
Mary of England, joining hands with
Spain,
Would be too strong for France.
Yea, were there issue born to her, Spain
and we,
One crown, might rule the world. There
lies your fear.
That is your drift. You play at hide and
seek.
Show me your faces !
Noailles. Madam, I am amazed :
French, I must needs wish all good
things for France.
That must be pardon'd me; but I protest
Your Grace's policy hath a farther flight
Than mine into the future. We but seek
Some settled ground for p ;ace to stand
upon.
Mary. Well, we will leave all this,
sir, to our council.
Have you seen Philip ever?
2P
Noailles. Only once.
Mary. Is this like Philip?
N'oailles. Ay, but nobler-looking.
Mary. Hath he the large ability of
the Emperor?
Noailles. No, surely.
Mary. I can make allowance for thee.
Thou speakest of the enemy of thy king.
Noailles. Make no allowance for the
naked truth.
He is everyway a lesser man than Charles;
Stone-hard, ice-cold — no dash of daring
in him.
Mary. If cold, his life is pure.
Noailles. Why {smiling), no, indeed.
Mary. Sayst thou?
Noailles. A very wanton life indeed
{s7nili7tg').
Mary. Your audience is concluded,
sir. \_Exit Noailles.
You cannot
Learn a man's nature from his natural foe.
Enter Usher.
Who waits?
Usher. The Ambassador of Spain,
your Grace. \_Exit,
Enter Simon Renard.
Mary {rising to meet him). Thou
art ever welcome, Simon Renard.
Hast thou
Brought me the letter which thine
Emperor promised
Long since, a formal offer of the hand
Of Philip?
Renard. Nay, your Grace, it hath not
reach'd me.
I know not wherefore — some mischance
of flood.
And broken bridge, or spavin'd horse, or
wave
And wind at their old battle: he must
have written.
Mary. But Philip never writes me
one poor word.
Which in his absence had been all my
wealth.
Strange in a wooer !
Renard. Yet I know the Prince,
So your king-parliament suffer him to
land.
Yearns to set foot upon your island shore.
578
QUEEN MARY,
Mary. God change the pebble which
his kingly foot
First presses into some more costly stone
Than ever blinded eye. I'll have one
mark it
And bring it me. I'll have it burnish'd
firelike;
I'll set it round with gold, with pearl,
with diamond.
Let the great angel of the church come
with him;
Stand on the deck and spread his wings
for sail !
God lay the waves and strow the storms
at sea,
And here at land among the people ! O
Renard,
I am much beset, I am almost in despair.
Paget is ours. Gardiner perchance is
ours;
But for our heretic Parliament —
Renard. O Madam,
You fly your thoughts like kites. My
master, Charles,
Bade you go softly with your heretics here.
Until your throne had ceased to tremble.
Then
Spit them like larks for aught I care.
Besides,
When Henry broke the carcase of your
church
To pieces, there were many wolves among
you
Who dragg'd the scatter'd limbs into their
den.
The Pope would have you make them
render these;
So would your cousin. Cardinal Pole; ill
counsel !
These let them keep at present; stir not
yet
This matter of the Church lands. At
his coming
Your star will rise.
Mary. My star ! a baleful one.
I see but the black night, and hear the
wolf.
A^hatstar?
Renard. Your star will be your
princely son.
Heir ofthisEnglandand the Netherlands!
And if your wolf the while should howl
for more.
We'll dust him from a bag of Spanish gold.
I do believe, I have dusted some already,
That, soon or late, your Parliament is ours.
Mary. Why do they talk so foully of
your Prince,
Renard ?
Renard. The lot of Princes. To sit
high
Is to be lied about.
Mary. They call him cold,
Haughty, ay, worse.
Renard. Why, doubtless, Philip shows"
Some of the bearing of your blue blood —
still
All within measure — nay, it well becomes
him.
Mary. Hath he the large ability of
his father?
Renard. Nay, some believe that he
will go beyond him.
Mary. Is this like him?
Renard. Ay, somewhat; but your
Philip
Is the most princelike Prince beneath^the
sun.
This is a daub to Philip.
Mary. Of a pure life?
Renard. As an angel among angels.
Yea, by Heaven,
The text — Your Highness knows it,
* Whosoever
Looketh after a woman,' would not graze
The Prince of Spain. You are happy in
him there,
Chaste as your Grace !
Mary. I am happy in him there.
Renard. And would be altogether
happy. Madam,
So that your sister were but look'd to
closer.
You have sent her from the court, but
then she goes,
I warrant, not to hear the nightingales,
But hatch you some new treason in the
woods.
Mary. We have our spies abroad to
catch her tripping.
And then if caught, to the Tower.
Renard. The Tower ! the block !
The word has turn'd your Highness pale;
the thing
Was no such scarecrow in your father's
time.
SCENE V.
QUEEN MARY.
579
I have heard, the tongue yet quiver'd
with the jest
When the head leapt — so common! I
do think
To save your crown that it must come to
this.
Mary. No, Renard; it must never
come to this.
Renard. Not yet; but your old Traitors
of the Tower —
Why, when you put Northumberland to
death,
The sentence having past upon them
all,
Spared you the Duke of Suffolk, Guildford
Dudley,
Ev'n that young girl who dared to wear
your crown?
Mary. Dared? nay, not so; the child
obey'd her father.
Spite of her tears her father forced it on
her.
Renard. Good Madam, when the
Roman wish'd to reign,
He slew not him alone who wore the
purple.
But his assessor in the throne, perchance
A child more innocent than Lady Jane.
Mary. I am English Queen, not
Roman Emperor.
Renard. Yet too much mercy is a
want of mercy.
And wastes more life. Stamp out the
fire, or this
Will smoulder and re-flame, and burn the
throne
Where you should sit with Philip: he
will not come
Till she be gone.
Mary. Indeed, if that were true —
For Philip comes, one hand in mine,
and one
Steadying the tremulous pillars of the
Church —
But no, no, no. Farewell. I am some-
what faint
With our long talk. Tho' Queen, I am
not Queen
Of mine own heart, which every now
and then
Beats me half dead : yet stay, this golden
chain —
My father on a birthday gave it me,
And I have broken with my father — take
And wear it as memorial of a morning
Which found me full of foolish doubts,
and leaves me
As hopeful.
Renard {aside) . Whew — the folly of
all follies
Is to be love-sick for a shadow. {Aloud.)
Madam,
This chains me to your service, not with
gold.
But dearest links of love. Farewell, and
trust me,
Philip is yours. \_Exit.
Mary. Mine — but not yet all mine
Enter Usher.
Usher. Your Council is in Session,
please your Majesty.
Mary. Sir, let them sit. I must have
time to breathe.
-No, say I come. {Exii\J^\iQX.) I won
by boldness once.
The Emperor counsell'd me to fly to
Flanders.
I would not; but a hundred miles I rode,
Sent out my letters, call'd my friends
together.
Struck home and won.
And when the Council would not crown
me — thought
To bind me first by oaths I could not
keep.
And keep with Christ and conscience —
was it boldness
Or weakness that won there? when I,
their Queen,
Cast myself down upon my knees before
them.
And those hard men brake into woman-
tears,
Ev'n Gardiner, all amazed, and in that
passion
Gave me my Crown.
Enter Alice.
Girl; hast thou ever heard
Slanders against Prince Philip in our
Court?
Alice. What slanders? I, your Grace;
no, never.
Mary. Nothing?
Alice. Never, your Grace.
580
QUEEN MARY.
ACT It
Mary. See that you neither hear
them nor repeat !
Alice {aside) . Good . Lord ! but I
have heard a thousand such.
Ay, and repeated them as often — mum !
Why comes that old fox-Fleming back
again ?
En^er Renard..
Renard. Madam, I scarce had left
your Grace's presence
Before I chanced upon the messenger
Who brings that letter which we waited
for —
The formal offer of Prince Philip's hand.
It craves an instant answer, Ay or No.
Mary. An instant Ay or No ! the
Council sits.
Give it me quick.
Alice {stepping before her). Your
ffighness is all trembling.
Mary. Make way.
\^Exit inlo the Council Chamber.
Alice. O Master Renard, Master
Renard,
If you have falsely painted your fine
Prince;
Praised, where you should have blamed
him, I pray God /
No woman ever love you, Master Renard.
It breaks my heart to hear her moan at
night
As tho' the nightmare never left her bed.
Renard. My pretty maiden, tell me,
did you ever
Sigh for a beard?
Alice. That's not a pretty question.
A'enard. Not prettily put? I mean,
my pretty maiden,
A pretty man for such a pretty maiden.
Alice. My Lord of Devon is a pretty
man.
I hate him. Well, but if I have, what
then?
Renard. Then, pretty maiden, you
should know that whether
A wind be warm or cold, it serves to fan
A kindled fire.
Alice. According to the spng.
His friends would praise him, I believed 'em,
His foes would blame him, and I scorn'd 'em,
His friends — as Angels I received 'em.
His foes — the Devil had subom'd 'em.
Renard. Peace, pretty maiden.
I hear them stirring in the Council
Chamber.
Lord Paget's * Ay ' is sure — who else ?
and yet.
They are ail too much at odds to close
at once
In one full-throated No ! Her Highness
comes.
Ettter Mary.
Alice. How deathly pale ! — a chair,
your Highness.
\^Bringi7ig one to the Queen.
Renard. Madam,
The Council?
Mary. Ay ! My Philip is all mine.
\_Sinks into chair, half fainting.
ACT II.
SCENE I. — Alington Castle.
Sir Thomas Wyatt. I do not hear
from Carew or the Duke
Of Suffolk, and till then I should not
move.
The Duke hath gone to Leicester;. Ca-
rew stirs »
In Devon : that fine porcelain Courtenay,
Save that he fears he might be crack'd
in using
(I have known a semi-madman in my
time
So fancy-ridd'n), should be in Devon too.
Enter William.
News abroad, William?
William. None so new, Sir Thomas,
and none so old. Sir Thomas. No new
news that Philip comes to wed Mary, no
old news that all men hate it. Old Sir
Thomas"would have hated it. The bells
are ringing at Maidstone. Doesn't your
worship hear?
IVyatt. Ay, for the Saints are come
to reign again.
Most like it is a Saint's-day. There's no
call
As yet for me; so in this pause, before
The mine be fired, it were a pious work
To string my father's sonnets, left about
Like loosely-scatter'd jewels, in fair orderi
QUEEN MARY.
5S1
And head them with a lamer rhyme of
mine,
To grace his memory.
William. Ay, why not, Sir Thomas?
He was a fine courtier, he; Queen Anne
loved him. All the women loved him.
I loved him, 1 was in Spain with him.
I couldn't eat in Spain, I couldn't sleep
in Spain. I hate Spain, Sir Thomas.
Wyatt. But thou could'st drink in
Spain if I remember.
William. Sir Thomas, we may grant
the wine. Old Sir Thomas always
granted the wine.
Wyatt. Hand me the casket with my
father's sonnets.
William. Ay — sonnets — a fine court-
ier of the old Court, old Sir Thomas.
lExit.
Wyatt. Courtier of many courts, he
loved the more
His own gray towers, plain life and
letter'd peace,
To read and rhyme in solitary fields.
The lark above, the nightingale below,
And answer them in song. The sire
begets
Not half his likeness in the son. I fail
Where he was fullest: yet — to write it
down. . \^He writes.
Re-enter William.
Williajn. There is news, there is news,
and no call for sonnet-sorting now, nor
for sonnet-making either, but ten thou-
sand men on Penenden Heath all calling
after your worship, and your worship's
name heard into Maidstone market, and
your worship the first man in Kent and
Christendom, for the Queen's down,
and the world's up, and your worship
a-top of it.
Wyatt. Invented ^sop — mountain
out of mouse.
Say for ten thousand ten — and pothouse
knaves,
Brain-dizzied with a draught of morning
ale.
Enter Anthony Knyvett.
William. Here's Anthony Knyvett.
Knyvett. Look you. Master Wyatt,
Tear up that woman's work there.
Wyatt. No; not these,
Dumb children of my father, that will
speak
When I and thou and all rebellions lie
Dead bodies without voice. Song flies
you know
For age's.
Knyvett. Tut, your sonnet's a flying
ant,
Wing'd for a moment.
Wyatt. Well, for mine own work,
[ Tearing the paper .
It lies there in six pieces at your feet;
For all that I can carry it in my head.
Knyvett. If you can carry your head
upon your shoulders.
Wyatt. I fear you come to carry it off
my shoulders,
And sonnet-making's safer.
Knyvett. Why, good Lord,
Write you as many sonnets as you will.
Ay, but not now; what, have you eyes,
ears, brains?
This Philip and the black-faced swarms
of Spain,
The hardest, cruellest people in the world,
Come locusting upon us, eat us up.
Confiscate lands, goods, money — Wyatt,
Wyatt,
Wake, or the stout old island will become
A rotten limb of Spain. They roar for
you
On Penenden Heath, a thousand of them
— more —
All arm'd, waiting a leader; there's no
glory
Like his who saves his country: and you
sit
Sing-songing here; but if I'm any judge.
By God, you are as poor a poet, Wyatt,
As a good soldier.
Wyatt. You as poor a critic
As an honest friend : you stroke me on
one cheek,
Buffet the other. Come, you bluster,
Anthony !
You know I know all this. I must not
move
Until I hear from Carew and the Duke.
I fear the mine is fired before the time.
Knyvett {shozving a paper) . But here's
some Hebrew. Faith, I half for-
got it.
582
QUEEN MARY.
Look; can you make it English? A
strange youth
Suddenly thrust it on me, whisper'd,
' Wyatt,'
And whisking round a corner, show'd his
back
Before I read his face.
Wyatt. Ha ! Courtenay's cipher.
\_Reads.
* Sir Peter Carew fled to France : it is
thought the Duke will be taken. I am
with you still; but, for appearance' sake,
stay with the Queen. Gardiner knows,
but the Council are all at odds, and the
Queen hath no force for resistance.
Move, if you move, at once.'
Is Peter Carew fled ? Is the Duke taken ?
Down scabbard, and out sword ! and let
Rebellion
Roar till throne rock, and crown fall.
No; not that;
But we will teach Queen Mary how to
reign.
Who are those that shout below there?
Knyvett. Why, some fifty
That follow'd me from Penenden Heath
in hope
To hear you speak.
Wyatt. Open the window, Knyvett;
The mine is fired, and I will speak to
them.
Men of Kent; England of England;
you that have kept your old customs
upright, while all the rest of England
bow'd theirs to the Norman, the cause
that hath brought us together is not the
cause of a county or a shire, but of this
England, in whose crown our Kent is the
fairest jewel. Philip shall not wed Mary ;
and ye have called me to be your leader.
I know Spain. I have been there with
my father; I have seen them in their own
land; have marked the haughtiness of
their nobles; the cruelty of their priests.
If this man marry our Queen, however
the Council and the Commons may fence
round his power with restriction, he will
be King, King of England, my masters;
and the Queen, and the laws, and the
people, his slaves. What? shall we have
Spain on the throne and in the parlia-
ment; Spain in the pulpit and on the
law-bench; Spain in all the great offices
of state; Spain in our ships, in our forts,
in our houses, in our beds?
Crowd. No ! no ! no Spain !
William. No Spain in our beds —
that were worse than all. I have been
there with old Sir Thomas, and the beds
I know. I hate Spain.
A Peasant. But, Sir Thomas, must we
levy war against the Queen's Grace?
Wyatt. No, my friend; -wax for the
Queen's Grace — to save her from herself
and Philip — war against Spain. And
think not we shall be alone — thousands
will flock to us. The Council, the Court
itself, is on our side. The Lord Chancel-
lor himself is on our side. The King of
France is with us; the King of Denmark
is with us; the world is with us — war
against Spain ! And if we move not now,
yet it will be known that we have moved;
and if Philip come to be King, O my
God ! the rope, the rack, the thumbscrew,
the stake, the fire. If we move not now,
Spain moves, bribes our nobles with her
gold, and creeps, creeps snake-like about
our legs till we cannot move at all; and
ye know, my masters, that wherever
Spain hath ruled she hath wither'd all
beneath her. Look at the New World —
a paradise made hell; the red man, that
good helpless creature, starved, maim'd,
flogg'd, flay'd,burn'd, boil'd, buried alive,
worried by dogs; and here, nearer home,
the Netherlands, Sicily, Naples, Lom-
bardy. I say no more — only this, their
lot is yours. Forward to London with
me ! forward to London ! If ye love
your liberties or your skins, forward to
London !
Crowd. Forward to London ! A
Wyatt! a Wyatt J
Wyatt. But first to Rochester, to take
the guns
From out the vessels lying in the river.
Then on.
A Peasant. Ay, but I fear we be too
few. Sir Thomas.
Wyatt. Not many yet. The world as
yet, my friend,
Is not half- waked ; but every parish tower
Shall clang and clash alarum as we pass,
QUEEN MARY.
583
And pour along the land, and swoll'n and
fed
With indraughts and side-currents, in full
force
Roll upon London.
Crozud. A Wyatt! a Wyatt ! For-
ward !
Knyvett. Wyatt, shall we proclaim
Elizabeth ?
Wyatt. I'll think upon it, Knyvett.
Knyvett. Or Lady Jane ?
Wyatt. No, poor soul; no.
Ah, gray old castle of Alington, green field
Beside the brimming Medway, it may
chance
That I shall never look upon you more.
Knyvett. Come, now, you're sonnet-
ting again.
Wyatt. Not I.
I'll have my head set higher in the state;
Or — if the Lord God will it — on the
stake. [^Exeunt.
SCENE II. — Guildhall.
Sir Thomas White (the Lord Mayor),
Lord William Howard, Sir Ralph
Bagenhall, Aldermen ««fl' Citizens.
White. I trust the Queen comes hither
with her guards.
Howard. Ay, all in arms.
\^Several of the citizens move hastily
out of the hall.
Why do they hurry out there?
White. My Lord, cut out the rotten
from your apple.
Your apple eats the better. Let them
go.
They go like those old Pharisees in John
Convicted by their conscience, -arrant
cowards.
Or tamperers with that treason out of
Kent.
When will her Grace be here?
Hozvard. In some few minutes.
She will address your guilds and com-
panies.
I have striven in vain to raise a man for
her.
But help her in this exigency, make
Your city loyal, and be the mightiest man
This day in England,
White. I am Thomas White.
Few things have fail'd to which I set my
will.
I do my most and best.
Howard. You know that after
The Captain Brett, who went with your
train bands
To fight with Wyatt, had gone over to him
With all his men, the Queen in that
distress
Sent Cornwallis and Hastings to the
traitor,
Feigning to treat with him about her
marriage —
Know too what Wyatt said.
White. He'd sooner be.
While this same marriage question was
being argued,
Trusted than trust — the scoundrel — and
demanded
Possession of her person and the Tower.
Howard. And four of her poor Coun-
cil too, my Lord,
As hostages. *
White. I know it. What do and say'
Your Council at this hour?
Howard. I will trust you.
We fling ourselves on you, my Lord.
The Council,
The Parliament as well, are troiibled
waters;
And yet like waters of the fen they know
not
Which way to flow. All hangs on her
address,
And upon you, Lord Mayor.
White. How look'd the city
When now you past it? Quiet?
Hozvard. Like our Council,
Your city is divided. As we past,
Some hail'd, some hiss'd us. There were
citizens
Stood each before his shut-up booth, and
look'd
As grim and grave as from a funeral.
And here a knot of ruffians all in rags.
With execrating execrable eyes,
Glared at the citizen. Here was a young
mother.
Her face on flame, her red hair all blown
back,
She shrilling * Wyatt,' while the boy she
held
584
QUEEN MARY,
ACT U
Mimick'd and piped her ' Wyatt,' as red
as she
In hair and cheek ; and almost elbowing
her.
So close they stood, another, mute as
death,
A.nd white as her own milk ; her babe in
arms
Had felt the faltering of his mother's
heart.
And look'd as bloodless. Here a pious
Catholic,
Mumbling and mixing up in his scared
prayers
Heaven and earth's Maries; over his
bow'd shoulder
Scowl'd that world-hated and world-
hating beast,
A haggard Anabaptist. Many such
groups.
The names of Wyatt, Elizabeth, Cour-
tenay,
Nay, the Queen's right to reign — 'fore
'God, the rogues —
Were freely buzz'd among them. So I
say
Your city is divided, and I fear
One scruple, this or that way, of success
Would turn it thither. Wherefore now
the Queen
In this low pulse and palsy of the state.
Bade me to tell you that shfe counts on
you
And on myself as her two hands; on you,
In your own city, as her right, my Lord,
For you are loyal.
White. Am I Thomas White?
One word before she comes. Elizabeth —
Her name is much abused among these
traitors.
Where is she ? She is loved by all of us.
I scarce have heart to mingle in this
matter,
If she should be mishandled.
Howard. No ; she shall not.
The Queen had written her word to
come to court :
Methought I smelt out Renard in the
letter.
And fearing for her, sent a secret missive,
Which told her to be sick. Happily or
not,
Ct found her sick indeed.
White. God send her well;
Here comes her Royal Grace.
Enter Guards, Mary, and Gardiner.
Sir Thomas White leads her to a
raised seat on the dais.
White. I, the Lord Mayor,- and these
our companies
And guilds of London, gathered here,
beseech
Your Highness to accept our lowliest
thanks
For your most princely presence; and we
pray
That we, your true and loyal citizens,
From your own royal lips, at once may
know
The wherefore of this coming, and so
learn
Your royal will, and do it. — I, Lord
Mayor
Of London, and our guilds and com-
panies.
Mary. In mine own person am I
come to you,
To tell you what indeed ye see and know.
How traitorously these rebels out of Kent
Have made strong head against ourselves
and you.
They would not have me wed the Prince
of Spain;
That was their pretext — so they spake
at first —
But we sent divers of our Council to them,
And by their answers to the question
ask'd.
It doth appear this marriage is the least
Of all their quarrel.
They have betray'd the treason of their
hearts :
Seek to possess our person, hold our
Tower,
Place and displace our councillors, and
use
Both us and them according as they will.
Now what I am ye know right well —
your Queen;
To whom, when I was wedded to the
realm
And the realm's laws (the spousal ring
whereof,
Not ever to be laid aside, I wear
Upon this fmger), ye did promise full
SCENE II.
QUEEN MARY.
585
Allegiance and obedience to the death.
Ye know my father was the rightful heir
Of England, and his right came down to
me,
Corr£)borate by your acts of Parliament :
And as ye were most loving unto him,
So doubtless will ye show yourselves to
me.
Wherefore, ye will not brook that any-
one
Should seize our person, occupy our
state,
iVIore specially a traitor so presumptuous
As this same Wyatt, who hath tamper'd
with
A public ignorance, and, under colour
Of such a cause as hath no colour, seeks
To bend the laws to his own will, and
yield
Full scope to persons rascal and forlorn.
To make free spoil and havock of your
goods.
Now as your Prince, I say,
I, that was never mother, cannot tell
How mothers love their children; yet,
methinks,
A prince as naturally may love his people
As these their childeen; and be sure your
Queen
So loves you, and so loving, needs must
deem
This love by you return'd as heartily;
And thro' this common knot and bond of
love.
Doubt not they will be speedily over-
thrown.
As to this marriage, ye shall understand
We made thereto no treaty of ourselves,
And set no foot theretoward unadvised
Of all our Privy Council; furthermore.
This marriage had the assent of those to
whom
The king, my father, did commit his trust ;
Who not alone esteem'd it honourable,
But for the wealth and glory of our realm.
And all our loving subjects, most ex-
pedient.
As to myself, .
I am not so set on wedlock as to choose
But where I list, nor yet so amorous
That 1 must needs be husbanded; I thank
God,
I have lived a virgin, and I noway doubt
But that with God's grace I can live so
still.
Yet if it might please God that 1 should
leave
Some fruit cf mine own body after me.
To be your king, ye would rejoice thereat.
And it would be your comfort, as I trust;
And truly, if I either thought or knew
This marriage should bring loss or danger
to you.
My subjects, or impair in any way
This royal state of England, I would never
Consent thereto, nor marry while I live;
Moreover, if this marriage should not
seem.
Before our own High Court of Parliament,
To be of rich advantage to our realm.
We will refrain, and not alone from this,
Likewise from any other, out of which
Looms the least chance of peril to our
realm.
Wherefore be bold, and with your lawful
Prince
Stand fast against our enemies and yours.
And fear them not. I fear them not.
My Lord,
I leave Lord William Howard in your
city.
To guard and keep you whole and safe
from all
The spoil and sackage aim'd at by these
rebels.
Who mouth and foam against the Prince
of Spain.
Voices. Long live Queen Mary !
Down with Wyatt !
The Queen !
White. Three voices from our guilds
and companies !
You are shy and proud- like Englishmen,
my masters,
And will not trust your voices. Under-
stand :
Your lawful Prince hath come to cast
herself
On loyal hearts and bosoms, hoped to fall
Into the widespread arms of fealty,
And finds you statues. Speak at once —
and all !
For whom?
Our sovereign Lady by King Harry's will ;
The Queen of England — or the Kentish
Squire ?
586
QUEEN MARY.
ACT It
I know you loyal. Speak ! in the name
of God !
The Queen of England or the rabble of
Kent?
The reeking dungfork master of the mace !
Your havings wasted by the scythe and
spade —
Your rights and charters hobnail'd into
slush —
Your houses fired — your gutters bubbling
blood —
Acclamation. No ! No ! The Queen !
the Queen !
White. Your Highness hears
This burst and bass of loyal harmony,
And how we each and all of us abhor
The venomous, bestial, devilish revolt
Of Thomas Wyatt. Hear us now make
oath
To raise your Highness thirty thousand
men.
And arm and strike as with one hand,
and brush
This Wyatt from our shoulders, like a flea
That might have leapt upon us unawares.
Swear with me, noble fellow-citizens, all,
With all your trades, and guilds, and
companies.
Citizens. We swear !
Mary. We thank your Lordship and
your loyal city.
\^Exit Mary attended.
White. I trust this day, thro' God, I
have saved the crown.
First Alderman. Ay, so my Lord of
Pembroke in command
Of all her force be safe; but there are
doubts.
Second Alderman. I hear that Gar-
diner, coming with the Queen,
And meeting Pembroke, bent to his
saddle-bow,
As if to win the man by flattering him.
Is he so safe to fight upon her side?
First Alderman. If not, there's no
man safe.
White. Yes, Thomas White.
I am safe enough ; no man need flatter me.
Second Alderman. Nay, no man need;
but did you mark our Queen?
The colour freely play'd into her face.
And the half sight which makes her look
so stern,
Seem'd thro' that dim dilated world of
hers,
To read our faces; I have never seen her
So queenly or so goodly.
White. Courage, sir,
That makes or man or woman look their
goodliest.
Die like the torn fox dumb, but never
whine
Like that poor heart, Northumberland,
at the block.
Bagenhall. The man had children,
and he whined for those.
Methinksmost men are but poor-hearted,
else
Should we so dote on courage, were it
commoner?
The Queen stands up, and speaks for her
own self;
And all men cry. She is queenly, she is
goodly.
Yet she's no goodHer; tho' my Lord
Mayor here,
By his own rule, he hath been so bold
to-day,
Should look more goodly than the rest of
us.
White. Goodly? I feel most goodly
heart and hand,
And strong to throw ten Wyatts and all
Kent.
Ha! ha! sir; but you jest; I love it: a
jest
In time of danger shows the pulses even.
Be merry ! yet. Sir Ralph, you look but
sad.
I dare avouch you'd stand up for your-
self,
Tho' all the world should bay like winter
wolves.
Bagenhall. Who knows? the man is
proven by the hour.
White. The man should make the
hour, not this the man;
And Thomas White will prove this
Thomas Wyatt,
And he will prove an Iden to this Cade,
And he will play the Walworth to this
Wat;
Come, sirs, we prate; hence all — gather
your men —
Myself must bustle. Wyatt comes to
South vvark:
SCENE III.
QUEEN MARY.
587
I'll have the drawbridge hewn into- the
Thames,
And see the citizens arm'd. Good-day;
good-day. \^Exit White.
Bagenhall. One of much outdoor
bluster.
Howard. For all that,
Most hone'^t, brave, and skilful; and his
wealth
A fountain of perennial alms — his fault
So thoroughly to tjelieve in his own self.
Bagenhall. Yet thoroughly to believe
in one's own self.
So one's own self be thorough, were to do
Great things, my Lord.
Howard. It may be.
Bagenhall. I have heard
One of your Council fleer and jeer at him.
Howard. The nursery-cocker'd child
will jeer at aught
That may seem strange beyond his nursery.
The statesman that shall jeer and fleer at
men.
Makes enemies for himself and for his
king;
And if he jeer not seeing the true man
Behind his folly, he is thrice the fool;
And if he see the man and still will jeer,
He is child and fool, and traitor to the
State.
Who is he? let me shun him.
Bagenhall. Nay, my Lord,
He is damn'd enough already.
Howard. I must set
The guard at Ludgate. Fare you well.
Sir Ralph.
Bagenhall. ' Who knows? ' I am for
England. But who knows,
That knows the Queen, the Spaniard, and
the Pope,
Whether I be for Wyatt, or the Queen?
{_£xeunl.
SCENE III. — London BridgEv
Enler Sir Thomas Wyatt and Brett.
MyaU. Brett, when the Duke of
Norfolk moved against us
Thou cried'st * A Wyatt ! ' and flying to
pur side
Left his all bare, for which I love thee,
Brett.
Have for thine asking aught that I can
give.
For thro' thine help we are come to
London Bridge;
But how to cross it balks me. I fear we
cannot.
Brett. Nay, hardly, save by boat,
swimming, or wings.
Wyatt. Last night I climb'd into the
gate-house, Brett,
And scared the gray old porter and his wife.
And then I crept along the gloom and saw
They had hewn the drawbridge down into
the river.
It roU'd as black as death ; and that same
tide
Which, coming with our coming, seem'd
to smile
And sparkle like our fortune as thou
saidest,
Ran sunless down, and moan'd against
the piers.
But o'er the chasm I saw Lord William
Howard
By torchlight, and his guard; four guns
gaped at me.
Black, silent mouths : had Howard spied
me there
And made them speak, as well he might
have done,
Their voice had left me none to tell you
this.
What shall we do?
Brett. On somehow. To go back
Were to lose all.
Wyatt. On over London Bridge
We cannot; stay we cannot; there is
ordnance
On the White Tower and on the Devil's
Tower,
And pointed full at Southwark; we must
round
By Kingston Bridge.
Brett. Ten miles about.
Wyatt. Ev'n so.
But I have notice from our partisans
Within the city that they will stand by us
If Ludgate can be reach'd by dawn to-
morrow.
Enter oneofV^YATi'i men.
Man. Sir Thomas, I've found this
paper; pray your worship read it; I
588
QUEEN MARY.
ACT IL
know not my letters; the old priests
taught me nothing.
Wyatt {reads). 'Whosoever will ap-
prehend the traitor Thomas Wyatt shall
have a hmidred pounds for reward.'
Man. Is that it? That's a big lot of
money.
Wyatt. Ay, ay, my friend; not read
it? 'tis not written
Half plain enough. Give me a piece of
paper !
[ Writes ' Thomas Wyatt ' large.
There, any man can read that.
[Stich it in his cap.
Brett. But that's foolhardy.
Wyatt, No ! boldness, which will
give my followers boldness.
Enter Man with a prisoner.
Man. We found him, your worship, a-
plundering o' Bishop Winchester's house;
he says he's a poor gentleman.
Wyatt. Gentleman! a thief! Go
hang him. Shall we make
Those that we come to serve our sharpest
foes?
Brett. Sir Thomas —
Wyatt. Hang him, I say.
Brett. Wyatt, but now you promised
me a boon.
Wyatt. Ay, and I warrant this fine
fellow's life.
Brett. Ev'n so; he was my neighbour
once in Kent.
He's poor enough, has drunk and gambled
out
All that he had, and gentleman he was.
We have been glad together; let him
live.
Wyatt. He has gambled for his life,
and lost, he hangs.
No, no, my word's my word. Take thy
poor gentleman !
Gamble thyself at once out of my sight.
Or I will dig thee with my dagger. Away !
Women and children !'
Enter a Crowd ^/ Women a^^^T Children.
First Woman. O Sir Thomas, Sir
Thomas, pray you go away, Sir Thomas,
or you'll make the White Tower a black
'un for us this blessed day. He'll be the
death on us; and you'll set the Divil's
Tower a-spitting, and he'll smash all out
bits o' things worse than Philip o' Spain.
Second Wojnati. Don't ye now go to
think that we be for Philip o' Spain.
Third Woman. No, we know that ye
be come to kill the Queen, and we'll
pray for you all on our bended knees.
But o' God's mercy don't ye kill the
Queen here, Sir Thomas; look ye, here's
little Dickon, and little Robin, and little
Jenny — though she's Iput a side-cousin —
and all on our knees, we pray you to kill
the Queen further off, Sir Thomas.
Wyatt. My friends, I have not come
to kill the Queen
Or here or there : 1 come to save you all.
And ril go further off.
Croivd. Thanks, Sir Thomas, we be
beholden to you, and we'll pray for you
on our bended knees till our lives' end.
Wyatt. Be happy, I am your friend.
To Kingston, forward ! {^Exeunt.
SCENE IV. — Room in the Gate-
house OF Westminster Palace.
Mary, Alice, Gardiner, Renard,
Ladies.
Gardiner. Their cry is, Philip never
shall be king.
Mary. Lord Pembroke in command
of all our force
Will front their cry and shatter them into
dust.
Alice. Was not Lord Pembroke with
Northumberland?
O Madam, if this Pembroke should be
false ?
Mary. No, girl; most brave and loyal,
brave and loyal.
His breaking with Northumberland broke
Northumberland.
At the park gate he hovers with our
guards.
These Kentish ploughmen cannot break
the guards.
Enter Messenger.
Messenger. Wyatt, your (jrace, hath
broken thro' the guards
And gone to Ludgate.
Gardiner. Madam, I much fear
SCENE IV.
QUEEN MARY.
589
That all is lost; but we can save your
Grace.
The river still is free. I do beseech
you,
There yet is time, take boat and pass to
Windsor.
Mary. ■ I pass to Windsor and I lose
my crown.
Gardiner. Pass, then, I pray your
Highness, to the Tower.
Mary. I shall but be their prisoner
in the Tower.
Cries without. The traitor ! treason !
Pembroke !
Ladies. Treason ! treason !
Mary. Peace.
False to Northumberland, is he false to
me?
Bear witness, Renard, that I live and
die
The true and faithful bride of Philip — A
sound
Of feet and voices thickening hither —
blows —
Hark, there is battle at the palace
gates.
And I will out upon the gallery.
Ladies. No, no, your Grace; see there
the arrows flying.
Mary. I am Harry's daughter, Tudor,
and not Fear.
[ Goes out on the gallery.
The guards are all driven in, skulk into
corners
Like rabbits to their holes. A gracious
guard
Truly ; shame on them ! they have shut
the gates !
Enter Sir Robert Southwell.
Southwell. The porter, please your
Grace, hath shut the gates
On friend and foe. Your gentlemen-at-
arms,
If this be not your Grace's order, cry
To have the gates set wide again, and
they
With their good battleaxes will do you
right
Against all traitors.
Mary. They are the flower of Eng-
land; set the gates wide.
\_Exit Southwell.
Enter Courtenay.
Courtenay. All lost, all lost, all
yielded ! A barge, a barge !
The Queen must to the Tower.
Mary. Whence come you, sir?
Courtenay. From Charing Cross; the
rebels broke us there.
And I sped hither with what haste I
might
To save my royal cousin.
Mary. Where is Pembroke?
Courtenay. I left him somewhere in
the thick of it.
Mary. Left him and fled; and thou
that would'st be King,
And hast nor heart nor honour. I myself
Will down into the battle and there bide
The upshot of my quarrel, or die with those
That are no cowards and no Courtenays.
Courtenay. I do not love your Grace
should call me coward.
Enter another Messenger.
Messenger. Over, your Grace, all
crush'd; the brave Lord William
Thrust him from Ludgate, and the traitor
flying
To Temple Bar, there by Sir Maurice
Berkeley
Was taken prisoner.
Mary. To the Tower with him 1
Messenger. 'Tis said he told Sii
Maurice there was one
Cognisant of this, and party thereunto,
My Lord of Devon.
Mary. To the Tower with him I
Courtenay. O la, the Tower, the
Tower, always the Tojver,
I shall grow into it — I shall be the Tower.
Mary. Your Lordship may not have
so long to wait.
Remove him !
Courtenay. La, to whistle out my life,
And carve my coat upon the walls again !
\_Exit Courtenay guarded.
Messenger. Also this Wyatt did con-
fess the Princess
Cognisant thereof, and party thereunto.
Mary. What ? whom — whom did you
say?
Messenger. Elizabeth,
Your Royal sister.
590
QUEEN MARY.
ACT la
Mary. To the Tower with her !
My foes are at my feet and I am Queen.
[Gardiner and her Ladies kneel to her.
Gardiner (rising) . There let tliem lie,
your footstool ! (^Aside.) Can I
strike
Elizabeth? — not now and save the life
Of Devon : if I save him, he and his
Are bound to me — may strike hereafter.
{Aloud.) Madam,
What Wyatt said, or what they said he
said,
Cries of the moment and the street —
Mary. He said it.
Gardiner. Your courts of justice will
determine that.
Renard {advancing). I trust by this
your Highness will allow
Some spice of wisdom in my telling you.
When last we talk'd, that Philip would
not come
Till Guildford Dudley and the Duke of
Suffolk,
And Lady Jane had left us.
Mary. They shall die.
Renard. And your so loving sister?
Mary. She shall die.
My foes are at my feet, and Philip King.
\_Exeunt.
ACT in.
SCENE L — The Conduit in Grace-
church,
Painted with the Nine Worthies, among
them King Henry VIII. holding a book,
on it inscribed ' Verbum Dei.'
Enter Sir Ralph Bagenhall and Sir
Thomas Stafford.
Bagenhall. A hundred here and hun-
dreds hang'd in Kent.
The tigress had unsheathed her nails at
last.
And Renard and the Chancellor sharpen'd
them.
In every London street a gibbet stood.
They are down to-day. Here by this
house was one;
The traitor husband dangled at the door,
And when the traitor wife came out for
bread
To still the petty treason therewithin.
Her cap would brush his heels.
Stafford. It is Sir Ralphj
And muttering to himself as heretofore.
Sir, see you aught up yondei ?
Bagenhall. I miss something.
The tree that only bears dead fruit is
gone.
Stafford. What tree, sir?
Bagenhall. Well, the
tree in Virgil, sir.
That bears not its own apples.
Stafford. What ! the gallows?
Bagenhall. Sir, this dead fruit was
ripening overmuch,
And had to be removed lest living Spain,
Should sicken at dead England.
Stafford. Not so dead,
But that a shock may rouse her.
Bagenhall. I believe
Sir Thomas Stafford?
Stafford. I am ill disguised.
Bagenhall. Well, are you not in peril
here?
Stafford. I think so.
I came to feel the pulse of England,
whether
It beats hard at this marriage. Did you
see it?
Bagenhall. Stafford, I am a sad man
and a serious.
Far liefer had I in my country hall
Been reading some old book, with mine
old hound
Couch'd at my hearth, and mine old flask
of wine
Beside me, than have seen it : yet I saw it.
Stafford. Good, was it splendid?
Bagenhall. Ay, if Dukes, and Earls,.
And Counts, and sixty Spanish cavaliers,
Some six or seven Bishops, diamonds,
pearls.
That royal commonplace too, cloth of
gold,
Could make it so.
Stafford. And what was Mary's dress?
Bagenhall. Good faith, I was too sorry
for the woman
To mark the dress. She wore red shoes !
Stafford. Red shoes !
Bagenhall. Scarlet, as if her feet were
wash'd in blood.
As if she had waded in It.
SCENE I.
QUEEN MARY.
59J
Stafford. Were your eyes
So bashful that you look'd no higher?
Bageiihall. A diamond,
And Philip's gift, as proof of Philip's love,
Who hath not any for any, — tho' a true
one,
Blazed false upon her heart.
Stafford. But this proud Prince —
Bagenhall. Nay, he is King, you
know, the King of Naples.
The father ceded Naples, that the son
Being a King, might wed a Queen — O he
Flamed in brocade — white satin his
trunk-hose,
Inwrought with silver, — on his neck a
collar.
Gold, thick with diamonds; hanging
down from this
The Golden Fleece — and round his knee,
misplaced.
Our English Garter, studded with great
emeralds,
Rubies, I know not what. Have you had
enough
Of all this gear?
Stafford. Ay, since you hate the
telling it.
How look'd the Queen?
Bagenhall. No fairer for her jewels.
And I could see that as the new-made
couple
Came from the Minster, moving side by
side
Beneath one canopy, ever and anon
She cast on him a vassal smile of love,
Which Philip with a glance of some dis-
taste,
Or so methought, return'd. I may be
wrong, sir.
This marriage will not hold.
Stafford. I think with you.
The King of France will help to break it.
Bagenhall. France !
We once had half of France, and hurl'd
our battles
Into the heart of Spain; but England
now
Is but a ball chuck'd between France
and Spain,
His in whose hand she drops; Harry of
Bolingbroke
Had holpen Richard's tottering throne to
stand.
Could Harry have foreseen that all our
nobles
Would perish on the civil slaughter-field,
And leave the people naked to the crown,
And the crown naked to the people; the
crown
Female, too ! Sir, no woman's regimen
Can save us. We are fallen, and as I
think.
Never to rise again.
Stafford. You are too black-blooded.
I'd make a move myself to hinder that :
I know some lusty fellows there in
France.
Bagenhall. You would but make us
weaker, Thomas Stafford.
Wyatt was a good soldier, yet he fail'd,
And strengthen'd Philip.
Stafford. Did not his last breath
Clear Courtenay and the Princess from
the charge
Of being his co-rebels?
Bagenhall. Ay, but then
What such a one as Wyatt says is
nothing :
We have no men among us. The new
Lords
Are quieted with their sop of Abbeylands,
And ev'n before the Queen's face Gardi-
ner buys them
With Philip's gold. All greed, no faith,
no courage !
Why, ev'n the haughty prince, Northum-
berland,
The leader of our Reformation, knelt
And blubber'd like a lad, and on the
scaffold
Recanted, and resold himself to Rome.
Stafford. I swear you do your country
wrong, Sir Ralph.
I know a set of exiles over there.
Dare-devils, that would eat fire and spit
it out
At Philip's beard: they pillage Spain
already.
The French King winks at it. An hour
will come
When they will sweep her from the seas.
No men?
Did not Lord Suffolk die like a true man?
Is not Lord William Howard a true man ?
Yea, you yourself, altho' you are black'
blooded :
592
QUEEN MARY.
And I, by God, believe myself a man.
Ay, even in the church there is a man —
Cranmer.
Fly would he not, when all men bade him
fly.
And what a letter he wrote against the
Pope!
There's a brave man, if any.
Bagenhall. Ay; if it hold.
Crowd {^coming on). God save their
Graces !
Stafford. Bagenhall, I see
The Tudor green and white. ( Tru7npets^
They are coming now.
And here's a crowd as thick as herring-
shoals.
Bagenhall. Be limpets to this pillar,
or we are torn
Down the strong wave of brawlers.
Crowd. God save their Graces !
[^Procession of Trumpeters, Javelin-
men, etc.; then Spanish and
flemish N'obles intermingled.
Stafford. Worth seeing, Bagenhall !
These black dog-Dons
Garb themselves bravely. Who's the
long-face there,
Looks very Spain of very Spain ?
Bagenhall. The Duke
Of Alva, an iron soldier.
Stafford. And the Dutchman,
Now laughing at some jest?
Bagenhall. William of Orange,
William the Silent.
Stafford. Why do they call him so?
Bagenhall. He keeps, they say, some
secret that may cost
Philip his life.
Stafford. But then he looks so merry.
Bagenhall. I cannot tell you why they
call him so.
^ The King and Queen pass, attended
by Peers of the Realm, Officers of
State, etc. Cannon shot off.
Crowd. Philip and Mary, Philip and
Mary!
Long live the King and Queen, Philip
and Mary !
Stafford. They smile as if content with
one another.
Bagenhall. A smile abroad is oft a
scowl at home.
[King and Qyxttn pass on. Procession.
First Citizen. I thougb.t this Philip
had been one of those black devils ot
Spain, but he hath a yellow beard.
Second Citizen. Not red like Iscariot's.
First Citizen. Like a carrot's, as thou
say'st, and English carrot's better than
Spanish licorice; but I thought he was a
beast.
Third Citizen. Certain I had heard
that every Spaniard carries a tail like a
devil under liis trunk-hose.
Tailor. Ay, but see what trunk-hoses !
Lord! they be fine; I never stitch'd
none such. They make amends for the
tails.
Fourth Citizen. Tut ! every Spanish
priest will tell you that all English heretics
have tails.
Fifth Citizen. Death and the Devil —
if he find I have one —
Fourth Citizen. Lo ! thou hast call'd
them up ! here they come — a pale horse
for Death and Cjardiner for the Devil.
Enter Gardiner {turning back from the
procession') .
Gardiner. Knave, wilt thou wear thy
cap before the Queen?
Man. My Lord, I stand so squeezed
among the crowd
I cannot lift my hands unto my head.
Gardiner. Knock off his cap there,
some of you about him !
See there be, others that can use their
hands.
Thou art one of Wyatt's men?
Man. No, my Lord, no.
Gardiner. Thy name, thou knave ?
Man. I am nobody, my Lord.
Gardiner {shouting). God's passion!
knave, thy name?
Man. I have ears to hear.
Gardiner. Ay, rascal, if I leave thee
ears to hear.
Find out his name and bring it me {to
Attendant).
Attendant. Ay, my Lord.
Gardiner. Knave, thou shalt lose
thine ears and find thy tongue,
And shalt be thankful if I leave thee that.
{^Coming before the Condtnt.
The conduit painted — the nine worthies
— ay!
SCENE I.
QUEEN MARY,
593
But then what's here? King Harry with
a scroll.
Ha — Verbum Dei — verbum — word of
God!
God's passion ! do you know the knave
that painted it?
Attendant. I do, my Lord.
Gardiner. Tell him to paint it out,
And put some fresh device in lieu of
it —
A pair of gloves, a pair of gloves, sir;
ha?
There is no heresy there.
Attendant. I will, my Lord;
The man shall paint a pair of gloves. I
am sure
(Knowing the man) he wrought it igno-
rantly,
And not from any malice.
Gardiner. Word of God
In English I over this the brainless loons
That cannot spell Esaias from St. Paul,-
Make themselves drunk and mad, fly out
and flare
Into rebellions. I'll have their Bibles
burnt.
The Bible is the priest's. Ay! fellow,
what 1
Stand staring at me ! shout, you gaping
rogue !
Man. I have, my Lord, shouted till
I am hoarse.
Gardiner. What hast thou shouted,
knave?
Man. " Long live Queen Mary !
Gardiner. Knave, there be two.
There be both King and Queen,
Philip and Mary. Shout !
Man. Nay, but, my I^ord,
The Queen comes first, Mary and Philip.
Gardiner. Shout, then,
Mary and Philip !
Matt. Mary and Philip !
Gardiner. Now,
Thou hast shouted for thy pleasure, shout
for mine !
Philip and Mary !
Man. Must it be so, my Lord?
Gardiner. Ay, knave.
Man. Philip and Mary !
Gardiner. I distrust thee.
Thine is a half voice and a lean assent.
What is thy name?
2Q
Man. Sanders.
Gardiner. What else?
Man. Zerubbabel
Gardiner. Where dost thou live?
Man. In Cornhill.
Gardiner. Where, knave, where?
Man. Sign of the Talbot.
Gardiner. Come to me to-morrow. —
Rascal ! — this land is like a hill of fire,
One crater opens when another shuts.
But so I get the laws against the heretic.
Spite of Lord Paget and Lord William
Howard,
And others of our Parliament, revived,
I will show fire on my side — stake and
fire —
Sharp work and short. The knaves are
easily cow'd.
Follow their Majesties.
\^Exit. The crowd following.
Bagenhall. As proud as Becket.
Stafford. You would not have him
murder'd as Becket was?
Bagenhall. No — murder fathers mur-
der : but I say
There is no man — there was one woman
with us —
It was a sin to love her married, dead
I cannot choose but love her.
Stafford. Lady Jane?
Crowd {going off). God save their
Graces !
Stafford. Did you see her die?
Bagenhall. No, no; her innocent
blood had blinded me.
You call me too black-blooded — true
enough
Her dark dead blood is in my heart with
mine.
If ever I cry out against the Pope
Her dark dead blood that ever moves
with mine
Will stir the living tongue and make the
cry.
Stafford. Yet doubtless you can tell
me how she died?
Bagenhall. Seventeen — and knew
eight languages — in music
Peerless — her needle perfect, and her
learning
Beyond the churchmen; yet so meek, so
modest.
So wife-like humble to the trivial boy
594
QUEEN MARY.
ACT III
Mismatch'd with her for policy ! I have
heard
She would not take a last farewell of him,
She fear'd it might unman him for his end.
She could not be unmann'd — no, nor
outwoman'd —
Seventeen — a rose of grace !
Girl never breathed to rival such a rose;
Rose never blew that equall'd such a bud.
Stafford. Pray you gc on.
Bagenhall. She came upon the
scaffold,
And said she was condemn'd to die for
treason;
She had but foUow'd the device of those
Her nearest kin : she thought they knew
the laws.
But for herself, she knew but little law,
And nothing of the titles to the crown;
She had no desire for that, and wrung
her hands,
And trusted God would save her thro' the
blood
Of Jesus Christ alone.
Stafford. Pray you go on.
Bagenhall. Then knelt and said the
Miserere Mei —
But all in English, mark you ; rose again,
And, when the headsman pray'd to be
forgiven,
Said, * You will give me my true crown
at last,
But do it quickly; ' then all wept but
she,
Who changed not colour when she saw
the block,
But ask'd him, childlike : ' Will you take
it off
Before I lay me down?' 'No, Madam,'
he said.
Gasping; and when her innocent eyes
were bound.
She, with her poor blind hands feeling —
* where is it?
Where is it ? ' — You must fancy that
which foUow'd,
If you have heart to do it !
Crowd (in the distance). God save
their Graces !
Stafford. Their Graces, our disgraces !
God confound them !
Why, she's grown bloodier ! when I last
was here,
This was against her conscience — would
be murder !
Bagenhall. The 'Thou shalt do no
murder,' which God's hand
Wrote on her conscience, Mary rubb'd
out pale —
She could not make it white — and over
that,
Traced in the blackest text of Hell —
'Thou shalt!'
And sign'd it — Mary !
Stafford. Philip and the Pope
Must have sign'd too. I hear this
Legate's coming
To bring us absolution from the Pope.
The Lords and Commons will bow down
before him —
You are of the house? what will you do,
Sir Ralph?
Bagenhall. And why should I be
bolder than the rest,
Or honester than all?
Stafford. But, sir, if I —
And oversea they say this state of yours
Hath no more mortice than a tower of
cards; •
And that a puff would do it — then if I
And others made that move I touch'd
upon,
Back'd by the power of France, and land-
ing here,
Came with a sudden splendour, shout,
and show, •
And dazzled men and deafen'd by some
bright
Loud venture, and the people so unquiet —
And I the race of murder'd Bucking-
ham—
Not for myself, but for the kingdom —
Sir,
I trust that you would fight along with us.
Bagenhall. No ; you would fling your
lives into the gulf.
Stafford. But if this Philip, as he's
Hke to do,
Left Mary a wife-widow here alone,
Set up a viceroy, sent his myriads hither
To seize upon the forts and fleet, and
make us
A Spanish province ; would you not fight
then?
Bagenhall. I think I should fight then,
Stafford, I am sure of it.
QUEEN MARY.
595
Hist ! there's the face coming on here of
one
Who knows me. I must leave you.
Fare you well,
You'll hear of me again.
Bagenhall. .Upon the scaffold.
\_Exeunt.
SCENE II.
-Room in Whitehall
Palace.
Mary. Enter Philip and
Cardinal Pole.
Pole. Ave Maria, gratia plena, Bene-
dicta tu in mulieribus.
Mary. Loyal and royal cousin,
humblest thanks.
Had you a pleasant voyage up the river?
Pole. We had your royal barge, and
that same chair,
Or rather throne of purple, on the deck.
Our silver cross sparkled before the
prow,
The ripples twinkled at their diamond-
dance,
The boats that foUow'd were as glowing-
gay
As regal gardens; and your flocks of
swans,
As fair and white as angels; and your
shores
Wore in mine eyes the green of Paradise.
My foreign friends, who dream'd us
blanketed
In ever-closing fog, were much amazed
To find as fair a sun as might have flash'd
Upon their lake of Garda, fire the
Thames;
Our voyage by sea was all but miracle;
And here the river flowing from the
sea,
Not toward it (for they thought not of
our tides), •'
Seem'd as a happy miracle to make
glide —
In quiet — home your banish'd country-
man.
Mary. We heard that you were sick
in Flanders, cousin.
Pole. A dizziness.
Mary. . And how came
you round again?
Pole. The scarlet thread of Rahab
saved her life;
And mine, a little letting of the blood.
Mary. Well? now?
Pole. Ay, cousin, as the
heathen giant
Had but to touch the ground, his force
return'd —
Thus, after twenty years of banishment,
Feeling my native land beneath my foot,
I said thereto : * Ah, native land of mine,
Thou art much beholden to this foot of
mine.
That hastes with full commission from
the Pope
To absolve thee from thy guilt of heresy.
Thou hast disgraced me and attainted me.
And mark'd me ev'n as Cain, and 1 return
As Peter, but to bless thee : make me well.'
Methinks the good land heard me, for to-
day
My heart beats twenty, when I see you,
cousin.
Ah, gentle cousin, since your Herod's
death.
How oft hath Peter knock'd at Mary's
gate !
And Mary would have risen and let him in,
But, Mary, there were those within the
house
Who would not have it.
Mary. True, good cousin Pole ;
And there were also those without the
house
Who would not have it.
Pole. I believe so, cousin.
State-policy and church-poHcy are con-
joint,
But Janus-faces looking diverse ways.
I fear the Emperor much misvalued me.
But all is well ; 'twas ev'n the will of God,
Who, waiting till the time had ripen'd,
now,
Makes me his mouth of holy greeting.
* Hail,
Daughter of God, and saver of the faith.
Sit benedictus fructus ventris tui ! '
Mary. Ah, heaven !
Pole. Unwell, your Grace?
Alary. No, cousin, happy — i
Happy to see you; never yet so happy
Since I was crown'd.
Pole, Sweet cousin, you forget
596
QUEEN MARY.
ACT III
That long low minster where you gave
your hand
To this great Catholic King.
Philip. Well said, Lord Legate.
Mary. Nay, not well said; I thought
of you, my liege,
Ev'n as I spoke.
Philip. Ay, Madam; my Lord Paget
Waits to present our Council to the
Legate.
Sit down here, all; Madam, between us
you.
Pole. Lo, now you are enclosed with
boards of cedar.
Our little sister of the Song of Songs !
You are doubly fenced and shielded sit-
ting here
Between the two most high-set thrones
on earth,
The Emperor's highness happily symboll'd
by
The King your husband, the Pope's
Holiness
By mine own self.
Mary, True, cousin, I am happy.
When will you that we summon both our
houses
To take this absolution from your lips,
And be regather'd to the Papal fold ?
Pole. In Britain's calendar the bright-
est day
Beheld our rough forefathers break their
Gods,
And clasp the faith in Christ; but after
that
Might not St. Andrew's be her happiest
day?
Mary. Then these shall meet upon
St. Andrew's day.
Enter Paget, who presents the Council.
Dumb shoiv.
Pole. I am an old man wearied with
my journey,
Ev'n with my joy. Permit me to with-
draw.
To Lambeth?
Philip. Ay, Lambeth has ousted
Cranmer.
It was not meet the heretic swine should
live
In Lambeth.
Mary. There or anywhere, or at all.
Philip. We have had it swept and
garnish'd after him.
Pole. Not for the seven devils to enter
in?
Philip. No, for we trust they parted
in the swine.
Pole. True, and I am the Angel of
the Pope.
Farewell, your Graces.
Philip. Nay, not here — tome;
I will go with you to the waterside.
Pole. Not be my Charon to the counter
side?
Philip. No, my Lord Legate, the
Lord Chancellor goes.
Pole. And unto no dead world; but
Lambeth palace,
Henceforth a centre of the living faith.
[^Exeunt Philip, Pole, Paget, etc.
Manet Mary.
Mary. He hath awaked! he hath
awaked !
He stirs v»'ithin the darkness !
Oh, Philip, husband ! now thy love to
mine
Will cling more close, and those bleak
manners thaw,
That make me shamed and tongue-tied
in my love.
The second Prince of Peace —
The great unborn defender of the Faith,
Who will avenge me of mine enemies -^
He comes, and my star rises.
The stormy Wyatts and Northumberlands,
The proud ambitions of Elizabeth,
And all her fieriest partisans — are pale
Before my star !
The light of this new learning wanes and
dies:
The ghosts of Luther and Zuinglius
fade
Into the deathless hell which is their
doom
Before my star !
His sceptre shall go forth from Ind to Ind !
His sword shall hew the heretic peoples
down !
His faith shall clothe the world that will
be his.
Like universal air and sunshine ! Open,
Ye everlasting gates ! The King is here ! —
My star, my son !
SCENE III.
QUEEN MARY.
597
Enter Philip, Duke of Alva, etc.
Oh, Philip, come with me;
Good news I have to tell ypu, news to
make
Both of us happy — ay, the Kingdom too.
Nay, come with me — one moment !
Philip {to Alva). More than that :
There was one here of late — William the
Silent
They call him — he is free enough in talk,
But tells me nothing. You will be, we
trust,
Sometime the viceroy of those provinces —
He must deserve his surname better.
Alva. Ay, sir;
Inherit the Great Silence.
Philip. True; the provinces
Are hard to rule and must be hardly
ruled ;
Most fruitful, yet, indeed, an empty rind,
All hollow'd out with stinging heresies;
And for their heresies, Alva, they will
fight;
You must break them or they break you.
Alva {proudly). The first.
Philip. Good !
Well, Madam, this new happiness of mine ?
\_Exeunt.
Enter Three Pages.
First Page. News, mates ! a miracle,
a miracle ! news !
The bells must ring; Te Deums must be
sung;
The Queen hath felt the motion of her
babe !
Second Page. Ay; but see here !
First Page. See what?
Second Page. This paper, Dickon.
I found it fluttering at the palace gates : —
'' The Queen of England is delivered of a
dead dog! '
Third Page. These are the things
that madden her. Fie upon it!
First Page. Ay; but I hear she hath
a dropsy, lad,
Or a high-dropsy, as the doctors call it.
Third Page. Fie on her dropsy, so
she have a dropsy !
I know that she was ever sweet to me.
First Page. For thou and thine are
Roman to the core.
Third Page. So thou and thine must
be. Take heed !
First Page. Not I,
And whether this flash of news be false
or true,
So the wine run, and there be revelry,
Content am I. Let all the steeples
clash.
Till the sun dance, as upon Easter Day.
\^Exeujit.
SCENE III. — Great Hall in
Whitehall.
At the far end a dais. On this three
chairs, two under one canopy for Mary
ajid Philip, another on the right of
these for Pole. Under the dais on
Pole's side, ranged along the wall,
sit all the Spi7-itual Peers, and along
the tuall opposite, all the Temporal.
The Commons on cross benches in front.,
a line of approach to the dais between
them. In the foreground, SiR Ralph
Bagenhall and other Members of the
Commons.
First Member. St. Andrew's day; sit
close, sit close, we are friends.
Is reconciled the word ? the Pope again ?
It must be thus; and yet, cocksbody !
how strange
That Gardiner, once so one with all of us
Against this foreign marriage, should
have yielded
So utterly! — strange! but stranger still
that he.
So fierce against the headship of the
Pope,
Should play the second actor in this
pageant
That brings him in; such a cameleon he !
Second Member. This Gardiner turn'd
his coat in Henry's time;
The serpent that hath slough'd will
slough again.
Ihird Member. Tut, then we all are
serpents.
Second Member. Speak for yourself.
Third Member. Ay, and for Gardiner !
being English citizen.
How should he bear a bridegroom out of
Spain?
598
QUEEN MARY,
ACT m
The Queen would have him ! being
English churchman
How should he bear the headship of the
Pope?
The Queen would have it! Statesmen
that are wise
Shape a necessity, as a sculptor clay,
To their own model.
Second Member, Statesmen that are
wise
Take truth herself for model. What say
you? [ To Sir Ralph Bagenhall.
Bagenhall. We talk and talk.
First Member. Ay, and what use to
talk?
Philip's no sudden alien — the Queen's
husband,
He's here, and king, or will be — yet
cocksbody !
So hated here ! I watch'd a hive of late;
My seven-years' friend was with me, my
young boy;
Out crept a wasp, with half the swarm
behind.
* Philip ! ' says he. I had to cuff the rogue
For infant treason.
Third Member. But they say that bees.
If any creeping life invade their hive
Too gross to be thrust out, will build him
round.
And bind him in from harming of their
combs.
And Philip by these articles is bound
From stirring hand or foot to wrong the
realm.
Second Member. By bonds of beeswax
like your creeping thing;
But your wise bees had stung him first
to death.
Third Member. Hush, hush !
You wrong the Chancellor: the clauses
added
To that same treaty which the Emperor
sent us
Were mainly Gardiner's : that no foreigner
Hold office in the household, fleet, forts,
army;
That if the Queen should die without a
child.
The bond between the kingdoms be
dissolved;
That Philip should not mix us any way
With his French wars —
Second Member. Ay, ay, but wbaJ
security,
Good sir, for this, if Philip — •
Third Member. Peace — the Queen,
Philip, and Pole. \^All rise, and stand.
Enter Mary, Philip, and Pole.
[Gardiner conducts them to the three
chairs of state. Philip sits on the
Queen's lefty Pole on her right.
Gardiner. Our short-lived sun, before
his winter plunge.
Laughs at the last red leaf, and Andrew's
day.
Mary. Should not this day be held
in after years
More solemn than of old ?
Philip. Madam, my wish
Echoes your Majesty's.
Pole. It shall be so.
Gardiner. Mine echoes both your
Graces'; {aside) but the Pope —
Can we not have the Catholic church as
well
Without as with the Italian? if we cannot,
Why then the Pope.
My Lords of the upper house,
And ye, my masters, of the lower house,
Do ye stand fast by that which ye resolved ?
Voices. We do.
Gardiner. And be you all one mind
to supplicate
The Legate here for pardon, and acknow-
ledge
The primacy of the Pope? »
Voices. We are all one mind.
Gardiner. Then must I play the vas-
sal to this Pole. [^Aside.
\_He draws a paper from under his
robes and presents it to the King
and Queen, who look through it
and return it to him ; then ascends
a tribune and reads.
We, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal,
And Commons her^ in Parliament assem-
bled.
Presenting the whole body of this realm
Of England, and dominions of the same.
Do make most humble suit unto your
Majesties,
In our own name and that of all the state,
That by your gracious means and inter*
cession
SCENE III.
QUEEN MARY.
S99
Our supplication be exhibited
To the Lord Cardinal Pole, sent here as
Legate
From our most Holy Father Julius, Pope,
And from the Apostolic see of Rome;
And do declare our penitence and grief
For our long schism and disobedience,
Either in making laws and ordinances
Against the Holy Father's primacy.
Or else by doing or by speaking aught
Which might- impugn or prejudice the
same;
By this our supplication promising.
As well for our own selves as all the realm.
That MOW we be and ever shall be quick,
Under and with your Majesties' authori-
ties,
To do to the utmost all that in us lies
Towards the abrogation and repeal
Of all such laws and ordinances made;
Whereon we humbly pray your Majesties,
As persons undefiled with our offence,
So to set forth this humble suit of ours
That we the rather by your intercession
May from the Apostolic see obtain,
Thro' this most reverend F'ather, absolu-
tion,
And full release from danger of all
censures
Of Holy Church that we be fall'n into,
So that we may, as children penitent.
Be once again received into the bosom
And unity of Universal Church;
And that this noble realm thro' after years
May in this unity and obedience
Unto the holy see and reigning Pope
Serve God and both your Majesties.
Voices. Amen. \_All sit.
\^He again presents the petition to the
King and Queen, who hand it
reverentially to Pole.
Pole {sitting). This is the loveliest day
that ever smiled
On England. All her breath should,
incenselike,
Rise to the heavens in grateful praise of
Him
Who now recalls her to His ancient fold.
Lo ! once again God to this realm hath
given
A token of His more especial Grace;
For as this people were the first of all
The islands call'd into the dawning church
Out of the dead, deep night of heathen-
dom.
So now are these the first whom God
hath given
Grace to repent and sorrow for their
schism ;
And if your penitence be not mockery.
Oh how the blessed angels who rejoice
Over one saved do triumph at this hour
In the reborn salvation of a land
So noble. \A' pause.
For ourselves we do protest
That our commission is to heal, not harm; ^
We come not to condemn, but reconcile;*
We come not to compel, but call again;
We come not to destroy, but edify;
Nor yet to question things already done;
These are forgiven — matters of the past —
And range with jetsam and with offal
thrown
Into the bUnd sea of forgetfulness.
\_A pause.
Ye have reversed the attainder laid on us
By him who sack'd the house of God;
and we,
Amplier than any field on our poor earth
Can render thanks in fruit for being sown,
Do here and now repay you sixty-fold,
A hundred, yea, a thousand thousand-fold.
With heaven for earth.
[^Rising and stretching forth his
hands. All kneel but Sir Ralph
Bagenhall, who rises and remains
standing.
The Lord who hath redeem'd us
With His own blood, and wash'd us from
our sins.
To purchase for Himself a stainless bride;
He, whom the Father hath appointed
head
Of all his church, He by His mercy
absolve you! \_A pause.
And we by that authority Apostolic
Given unto us, his Legate, by the Pope,
Our Lord and Holy Father, Julius,
God's Vicar and Vicegerent upon earth.
Do here absolve you and deliver you
And every one of you, and all the realm
And its dominions from all heresy.
All schism, and from all and every cen-
sure.
Judgment, and pain accruing thereupon;
And also we restore you to the bosom
6cx)
QUEEN MARY.
ACT III
And unity of Universal Church.
[ Ttirning to Gardiner.
Our letters of commission will declare
this plainlier.
[Queen heard sobbing. Cries of
Amen ! x\men ! Some of the
Members embrace one another.
All but Sir Ralph Bagenhall pass
out into the neighbouring chapel,
whence is heard the Te Deum.
Bagenhall. We strove against the
papacy from the first,
,In William's time, in our first Edward's
time,
And in my master Henry's time; but now,
The unity of Universal Church,
Mary would have it; and this Gardiner
follows ;
The unity of Universal Hell,
Philip would have it; and this Gardiner
follows !
A Parliament of imitative apes !
Sheep at the gap which Gardiner takes,
who not
Believes the Pope, nor any of them
believe —
These spaniel-Spaniard English of the
time,
Who rub their fawning noses in the dust,
For that is Philip's gold-dust, and adore
This Vicar of their Vicar. Would I had
been
Born Spaniard ! I had held my head up
then.
I am ashamed that I am Bagenhall,
English.
Enter Officer.
Officer. Sir Ralph Bagenhall !
Bagenhall. What of that?
Officer. You were the one sole man
in either house
Who stood upright when both the houses
fell.
Bagenhall. The houses fell !
Officer. I mean the houses knelt
Before the Legate.
Bagenhall. Do not scrimp your
phrase,
But stretch it wider; say when England
fell.
Officer. I say you were the one sole
man who stood.
Bagenhall. I am the one sole man in
either house,
Perchance in England, loves her like a
son.
Officer. Well, you one man, because
you stood upright.
Her Grace the Queen commands you to
the Tower.
Bagenhall. As traitor, or as heretic,
or for what?
Offi-cer. If any man in any way would
be
The one man, he shall be so to his cost.
Bagenhall. What ! will she have my
head?
Oflicer. A round fine likelier.
Your pardon. [ Calling to Attendant.
By the river to the Tower. \_Exeunt.
SCENE IV. — Whitehall.
IN THE Palace.
A Room
Mary, Gardiner, Pole, Paget,
Bonner, etc.
Mary. The King and I, my Lords,
now that all traitors
Against our royal state have lost the heads
Wherewith they plotted in their treason-
ous malice.
Have talk'd together, and are well agreed
That those old statutes touching Lollard-
ism
To bring the heretic to the stake, should
be
No longer a dead letter, but requicken'd.
One of the Council. Why, what hath
fluster'd Gardiner? how he rubs
His forelock !
Paget. I have changed a word with
him
In coming, and may change a word again.
Gardiner. Madam, your Highness is
our sun, the King
And you together our two suns in one;
And so the beams of both may shine upon
us,
The faith that seem'd to droop will feel
your light.
Lift head, and flourish; yet not light
alone.
There must be heat — there must be heat
enough
QUEEN MARY.
6oi
To scorch and wither heresy to the root.
For what saith Christ? 'Compel them
to come in.'
And what saith Paul? *I would they
were cut off
That trouble- you.' Let the dead letter
live !
Trace it in fire, that all the louts to
whom
Their A B C is darkness, clowns and
grooms
May read it ! so you quash rebellion too,
For heretic and traitor are all one :
Two vipers of one breed — anamphisbaena,
Each end a sting: Let the dead letter
burn !
Paget. Yet there be some disloyal
Catholics,
And many heretics loyal; heretic throats
Cried no God-bless-her to the Lady Jane,
But shouted in Queen Mary. So there be
Some traitor-heretic, there is axe and
cord.
To take the lives of others that are loyal.
And by the churchman's pitiless doom of
tire,
Were but a thankless policy in the crown.
Ay, and against itself; for there are
many.
Mary. If we could burn out heresy,
my Lord Paget,
We reck not tho' we lost this crown of
England —
Ay ! tho' it were ten Englands !
Gardiner. Right, your Grace.
Paget, you are all for this poor life of ours.
And care but little for the life to be.
Paget. I have some time, for curious-
ness, my Lord,
Watch'd children playing at their life to
be,
And cruel at it, killing helpless flies;
Such is our time— »- all times for aught I
know.
Gardiner. We kill the heretics that
sting the soul —
They, with right reason, flies that prick
the flesh.
Paget. They had not reach'd right
reason; little children !
They kill'd but for their pleasure and the
power
They felt in killing.
Gardiner. A spice of Satan, ha !
Why, good ! what then? granted! — we
are fallen creatures;
Look to your Bible, Paget I we are fallen.
Paget. I am but of the laity, my Lord
Bishop,
And may not read your Bible, yet I found
One day, a wholesome scripture, * Little
children,
Love one another.'
Gardiner, Did you find a scripture,
' I come not to bring peace but a sword ' ?
The sword
Is in her Grace's hand to smite with.
Paget,
You stand up here to fight for heresy,
You are more than guess'd at as a heretic,
And on the steep-up track of the true
faith
Your lapses are far seen.
Paget. The faultless Gardiner !
Mary. You brawl beyond the ques-
tion; speak, Lord Legate!
Pole. Indeed, 1 cannot follow with
your Grace :
Rather would say — the shepherd doth
not kill
The sheep that wander from his flock, but
sends
His careful dog to bring them to the fold.
Look to the Netherlands, wherein have
been
Such holocausts of heresy ! to what end?
For yet the faith is not established there.
Gardiner. The end's not come.
Pole. No — nor this way
will come,
Seeing there lie two ways to every end,
A better and a worse — the worse is here
To persecute, because to persecute .
Makes a faith hated, and is furthermore
No perfect witness of a perfect faith
In him who persecutes : when men are
tost
On tides of strange opinion, and not sure
Of their own selves, they are wroth with
their own selves,
And thence with others; then, who lights
the faggot?
Not the full faith, no, but the lurking
doubt.
Old Rome, that first made martyrs in the
Church,
602
QUEEN MARY,
Trembled for her own gods, for these
were trembling —
But when did our Rome tremble?
Paget. Did she not
In Henry's time and Edward's?
Pole. What, my Lord !
The Church on Peter's rock? never! I
have seen
A pine in Italy that cast its shadow
Athwart a cataract; firm stood the pine —
The cataract shook the shadow. To my
mind.
The cataract typed the headlong plunge
and fall
Of heresy to the pit : the pine was Rome.
You see, my Lords,
It was the shadow of the Church that
trembled;
Your church was but the shadow of a
church,
Wanting the Papal mitre.
Gardiner {muttering). Here be tropes.
Pole. And tropes are good to clothe a
naked truth,
And make it look more seemly.
Gardiner. Tropes again !
Pole. You are hard to please. Then
without tropes, my Lord,
An overmuch severeness, I repeat,
When faith is wavering makes the
waverer pass
Into more settled hatred of the doctrines
Of those who rule, which hatred by and
by
Involves the ruler (thus fhere springs to
light
That Centaur of a monstrous Common-
weal,
The traitor-heretic) then tho' some may
quail,
Yet others are that dare the stake and
fire.
And their strong torment bravely borne,
begets
An admiration and an indignation,
And hot desire to imitate; so the plague
Of schism spreads; were there l)ut three
or four
Of these misleaders, yet I would not say
Burn! and we cannot burn whole towns;
they are many,
As my Lord Paget says.
Gardiner. Yet my Lord Cardinal —
Pole. I am your Legate; please you
let me finish.
Methinks that under our Queen's regimen
We might go softlier than with crimson
rowel
And streaming lash. When Herod-
Henry first
Began to batter at your English Church,
This was the cause, and hence the judg-
ment on her.
She seethed with such adulteries, and the
lives
Of many among your churchmen were so
foul
That heaven wept and earth blush'd. I
would advise
That we should thoroughly cleanse the
Church within
Before these bitter statutes be requick-
en'd.
So after that when she once more is seen
White as the light, the spotless bride of
Christ,
Like Christ himself on Tabor, possibly
The Lutheran may be won to her again;
Till when, my Lords, I counsel tolerance.
Gardiner. What, if a mad dog bit
your hand, my Lord,
Would you not chop the bitten finger off,
Lest your whole body should madden
with the poison?
I would not, were I Queen, tolerate the
heretic.
No, not an hour. The ruler of a land
Is bounden by his power and place to see
His people Idc not poison'd. Tolerate
them !
Why? do they tolerate you? Nay, many
of them
Would burn — have burnt each other;
call they not
The one true faith, a loathsome idol-
worship?
Beware, Lord Legate, of a heavier crime
Than heresy is itself; beware, I say,
Lest men accuse you of indifference
To all faiths, all religion; for you know
Right well that you yourself have been
supposed
Tainted with Lutheranism in Italy.
Pole {angered'). But you, my Lord,
beyond all supposition.
In clear and open day were congruent
SCENE IV.
QUEEN MARY.
603
With that vile Cranmer in the accursed lie
Of good Queen Catharine's divorce —
the spring
Of all those evils that have flow'd upon us;
For you yourself have truckled to the
tyrant,
And done your best to bastardise our
Queen,
For which God's righteous judgment fell
upon you
In your five years of imprisonment, my
Lord,
Under young Edward. Who so bolster'd
up
The gross King's headship of the Church,
or more
Denied the Holy Father !
Gardiner. Ha ! what I eh ?
But you, my Lord, a polish'd gentleman,
A bookman, flying from the heat and
tussle,
You lived among your vines and oranges,
In your soft Italy yonder ! You were
sent for.
You were appeal'd to, but you still
preferr'd
Your learned leisure. As for what I did
I suffer'd and repented. You, Lord
Legate
And Cardinal-Deacon, have not now to
learn
That ev'n St. Peter in his time of fear
Denied his Master, ay, and thrice, my
Lord.
Pole. But not for five-and-twenty
years, my Lord.
Gardiner. Ha ! good ! it seems then
I was summon'd hither
But to be mock'd and baited. Speak,
friend Bonner,
And tell this learned Legate he lacks zeal.
The Church's evil is not as the King's,
Cannot be heal'd by stroking. The mad
bite
Must have the cautery — tell him — and at
once.
What would'st thou do had'st thou his
power, thou
That layest so long in heretic bonds with
me;
Would'st thou not burn and blast them
root and branch?
Bonner. Av, after you, my L,ord.
Gardiner. Nay, God's passion, before
me ! speak !
Bonner. I am on fire until I see them
flame.
Gardiner. Ay, the psalm-singing
weavers, cobblers, scum —
But this most noble prince Plantagenet,
Our good Queen's cousin — dallying over
seas
Even when his brother's, nay, his noble
mother's.
Head fell —
Pole. Peace, madman !
Thou stirrest up a grief thou canst not
fathom.
Thou Christian Bishop, thou Lord Chan-
cellor
Of England ! no more rein upon thine
anger
Than any child ! Thou mak'st me much
ashamed
That I was for a moment wroth at thee.
Mary. I come for counsel and ye give
me feuds.
Like dogs that set to watch their master's
gate.
Fall, when the thief is ev'n within the
walls.
To worrying one another. My Lord
Chancellor,
You have an old trick of offending us;
And but that you are art and part with us
In purging heresy, well we might, for this
Your violence and much roughness to the
Legate,
Have shut you from our counsels.
Cousin Pole,
You are fresh from brighter lands. Re-
tire with me.
His Highness and myself (so you allow
us)
Will let you learn in peace and privacy
What power this cooler sun of England
hath
In breeding godless vermin. And pray
Heaven
That you may see according to our sight.
Come, cousin.
{^Exeunt Queen and Pole, etc.
Gardiner. Pole has the Plantagenet
face.
But not the force made them our mightiest
kings.
6o4
QUEEN MARY.
ACT lU
Fine eyes — but melancholy, irresolute —
A fine beard, Bonner, a very full fine
beard.
But a weak mouth, an indeterminate — ha?
Bonner. Well, a weak mouth, per-
chance.
Gardiner. And not like thine
fo gorge a heretic whole, roasted or raw.
Bomter. I'd do my best, my Lord;
but yet the Legate
Is here as Pope and Master of the Church,
And if he go jiot with you —
Gardiner. Tut, Master Bishop,
Our bashful Legate, saw'st not how he
flush'd?
Touch him upon his old heretical talk,
He'll burn a diocese to prove his ortho-
doxy.
And let him call me truckler. In those
times.
Thou knowest we had to dodge, or duck,
or die;
I kept my head for use of Holy Church ;
And see you, we shall have to dodge again,
And let the Pope trample our rights, and
plunge
His foreign fist into our island Church
To plump the leaner pouch of Italy.
For a time, for a time.
Why? that these statutes may be put in
force,
And that his fan may thoroughly purge
his floor.
Bonner. So then you hold the Pope —
Gardiner. I hold the Pope !
What do I hold him? what do I hold
the Pope?
Come, come, the morsel stuck — this
Cardinal's fault —
1 have gulpt it down. I am wholly for
the Pope,
Utterly and altogether for the Pope,
The Eternal Peter of the changeless chair,
Crown'd slave of slaves, and mitred king
of kings,
God upon earth ! what more? what would
you have?
Hence, let's be gone.*
Enter Usher.
Usher. Well that you be not gone.
My Lord. The Queen, most wroth at
first with you.
Is now content to grant you full forgive'
ness,
So that you crave full pardon of the
Legate.
I am sent to fetch you.
Gardiner. Doth Pole yield, sir, ha!
Did you hear 'em? were you by?
Usher. I cannot tell you,
His bearing is so courtly-delicate;
And yet methinks he falters: their two
Graces
Do so dear-cousin and royal-cousin him,
So press on him the duty which as Legate
He owes himself, and with such royal
smiles —
Gardiner. Smiles that burn men.
Bonner, it will be carried.
He falters, ha? 'fore God, we change and
change;
Men now are bow'd and old, the doctors
tell you,
At three-score years; then if we change
at all
We needs must do it quickly; it is an age
Of brief life, and brief purpose, and brief
patience.
As I have shown to-day. I am sorry for it
If Pole be like to turn. Our old friend
Cranmer,
Your more especial love, hath turn'd so
often,
He knows not where he stands, which,
if this pass.
We two shall have to teach him; let 'em
look to it,
Cranmer and Hooper, Ridley and Latimer
Rogers and Ferrar, for their time is come,
Their hour is hard at hand, their * dies
Irae,'
Their * dies Ilia,' which will test their sect.
I feel it but a duty — you will find in it
Pleasure as well as duty, worthy Bonner, —
To test their sect. Sir, I attend the Queen
To crave most humble pardon — of her
most
Royal, Infallible, Papal Legate-cousin.
[^Exeunt.
SCENE V. — Woodstock.
Elizabeth, Lady in Waiting.
Elizabeth. So they have sent pool
Courtenay over sea.
QUEEN MARY,
605
Lady. And banish'd us to Woodstock,
and the fields.
The colours of our queen are green and
. white,
These fields are only green, they make
me gape.
Elizabeth. There's whitethorn, girl.
Lady. Ay, for an hour in May.
But court is always May, buds out in
masques.
Breaks into feather'd merriments, and
flowers
In silken pageants. Why do they keep
U3 here?
Why still suspect your Grace ?
Elizabeth. Hard upon both.
[ Writes on the window zuith a diamond.
Much suspected, of me
Nothing proven can be.
Quoth Elizabeth, prisoner.
Lady. What hath your Highness
written ?
Elizabeth. A true rhyme.
Lady. Cut with a diamond ; so to last
like truth.
Elizabeth. Ay, if truth last.
Lady. But truth, they say, will out.
So it must last. It is not like a word,
That comes and goes in uttering.
Elizabeth. Truth, a word !
The very Truth and very Word are one.
But truth of story, which I glanced at,
girl,
Is like a word that comes from olden
days,
And passes thro'thepeoples: every tongue
Alters it passing, till it spells and speaks
Quite other than at first.
Lady. I do not follow.
Elizabeth. How many names in the
long sweep of time
That so foreshortens greatness, may but
hang
On the chance mention of .some fool that
once
Brake bread with us, perhaps : and my
poor chronicle
Is but of glass. Sir Henry Bedingfield
May split it for a spite.
Lady. God grant it last,
- And witness to your Grace's innocence,
Till doomsday melt it.
Elizabeth. Or a second fire.
Like that which lately crackled underfoot
And in this very chamber, fuse the glass.
And char us back again into the dust
We spring from. Never peacock against
rain
Screara'd as you did for water.
Lady. And I got it.
I woke Sir Henry — and he's true to
you —
I read his honest horror in his eyes.
Elizabeth. Or true to you?
Lady. Sir Henry Bedingfield !
I will have no man true to me, your
Grace,
But one that pares his nails; to me? the
clown !
Elizabeth. Out, girl ! you wrong a
noble gentleman.
Lady. For, like his cloak, his man-
ners want the nap
And gloss of court; but of this fire he
says.
Nay swears, it was no wicked wilfulness.
Only a natural chance.
Elizabeth. A chance — perchance
One of those wicked wilfuls that men
make.
Nor shame to call it nature. Nay, I know
They hunt my blood. Save for my daily
range
Among the pleasant fields of Holy Writ
I might despair. But there hath some
one come;
The house is all in movement. Hence,
and see. \_Exit Lady.
Milkmaid {singing without).
Shame upon you, Robin,
Shame upon you now !
Kiss me would you? with my hands
Milking the cow?
Daisies grow again.
Kingcups blow again.
And you came and kiss'd me milking the cow
Robin came behind me,
Kiss'd me well I vow;
Cuff hinj could I? with my hands
Milking the cow?
Swallows fly again,
Cuckoos cry again,
And you came and kiss'd me milking the cow
6o6
QUEEN MARY.
ACT III.
Come, Robin, Robin,
Come and kiss me now;
Help it can 1? with my hands
Milking the cow?
Ringdoves coo again.
All things woo again.
Come behind and kiss me milking the cow !
Elizabeth. Right honest and red-
cheek'd ; Robin was violent,
And she was crafty — a sweet violence,
And a sweet craft. I would I were a
milkmaid,
To sing, love, marry, churn, brew, bake,
and die.
Then have my simple headstone by the
church.
And all things lived and ended honestly.
I could not if I would. I am Harry's
daughter :
Gardiner would have my head. They are
not sweet,
The violence and the craft that do divide
The world of nature; what is weak must
lie;
The lion needs but roar to guard his
young;
The lapwing lies, says * here ' when they
are there.
Threaten the child; 'I'll scourge you if
you did it : '
What weapon hath the child, save his
soft tongue,
To say *I did not'? and my rod's the
block.
I never lay my head upon the pillow
But that I think, * Wilt thou lie there to-
morrow ? '
How oft the falling axe, that never fell,
Hath shock'd me back into the daylight
truth
That it may fall to-day! Those damp,
black, dead
Nights in the Tower; dead — with the
fear of death
Too dead ev'n for a death-watch ! Toll
of a bell,
Stroke of a clock, the scurrying of a rat
Affrighted me, and then delighted me.
For there was life — And there was life
in death —
The little murder'd princes, in a pale light,
Rose hand in hand, and whisper'd, * Come
awayl
The civil wars are gone for evermore :
Thou last of all the Tudors, come away !
With us in peace ! ' The last? It was a
dream ;
I must not dream, not wink, but watch.
She has gone,
Maid Marian to her Robin — by and by
Both happy ! a fox may filch a hen by
night.
And make a morning outcry in the yard;
But there's no Renard here to • catch her
tripping.'
Catch me who can; yet, sometime I have
wish'd
That I were caught, and kill'd away at
once
Out of the flutter. The gray rogue,
Gardiner,
Went on his knees, and pray'd me to
confess
In Wyatt's business, and to cast myself
Upon the good Queen's mercy; ay, when,
my Lord?
God save the Queen ! My jailor —
Enter SiR Henry Bedingfield.
Bedim^field. One, whose bolts,
That jail "you from free life, bar you from
death.
There haunt some Papist ruffians here-
about
Would murder you.
Elizabeth. I thank you heartily, sir,
But I am royal, tho' your prisoner.
And God hath blest or cursed me with a
nose —
Your boots are from the horses.
Bedingfield. Ay, my Lady.
When next there comes a missive from
the Queen
It shall be all my study for one hour
To rose and lavender my horsiness.
Before I dare to glance upon your Grace.
Elizabeth, i^missive from the Queen :
last time she wrote,
I had like to have lost my life : it takes
my breath:
O God, sir, do you look upon your boots^
Are you so small a man? Help me:
what think you,
Is it life or death?
Bedingfield. I thought not on my
boots;
SCENE VI.
QUEEN MARY.
607
The devil take all boots were ever made
Since man went barefoot. See, I lay it
here,
For I will come no nearer to your Grace;
{^Laying dozvn the letter.
And, whether it bring you bitter news or
sweet,
And God hath given your Grace a nose,
or not,
I'll help you, if I may.
Elizabeth. Your pardon, then;
It is the heat and narrowness of the
cage
That makes the captive testy; with free
wing
The world were all one Araby. Leave
me now,
Will you, companion to myself, sir?
Beding field. Willi?
With most exceeding willingness, I will;
You know I never come till I be call'd.
{Exit.
Elizabeth. It lies there folded : is there
venom in it?
A snake — and if I touch it, it may sting.
Come, come, the worst !
Best wisdom is to know the worst at once.
\^Reads:
*It is the King's wish, that you
should wed Prince Philibert of Savoy.
You are to come to Court on the instant;
and think of this in your coming.
*Mary the Queen.*
Think ! I have many thoughts;
I think there may be birdlime here for
me;
I think they fain would have me from the
realm ;
I think the Queen may never bear a
child;
I think that I may be sometime the
Queen,
Then, Queen indeed : no"Toreign prince
or priest
Should fill my throne, myself upon the
steps.
I think I will not marry anyone,
Specially not this landless Philibert
Of Savoy; but, if Philip menace me,
I think that I will play with Philibert, —
As once the Holy Father did with mine,
Before my father married my good
•mother, —
For fear of Spain.
Enter Lady.
Lady. O Lord! your Grace, your
Grace,
I feel so happy : it seems that we shall fly
These bald, blank fields, and dance into
the sun
That shines on princes.
Elizabeth. Yet, a moment since,
I wish'd myself the milkmaid singing
here.
To kiss and cuff among the birds and
flowers —
A right rough life and healthful.
Lady. But the wench
Hath her own troubles; she is weeping
now;
For the wrong Robin took her at her word..
Then the cow kick'd, and all her milk
was spilt.
Your Highness such a milkmaid?
Elizabeth. I had kept
My Robins and my cows in sweeter order
Had I been such.
Lady {slyly). And had your Grace a
Robin?
Elizabeth. Come, come, you are chill
here; you want the sun
That shines at court;, make ready for the
journey.
Pray God, we 'scape the sunstroke.
Ready at once. {^Exeunt.
SCENE VI. — London. A Room in
THE Palace.
Lord Petre and Lord William
Howard.
Petre. You cannot see the Queen.
Renard denied her,
Ev'n now to me.
Howard. Their Flemish go-between
And all-in-all, I came to thank her
Majesty
For freeing my friend Bagenhall from
the Tower;
A grace to me ! Mercy, that herb-of«
grace,
Flowers now but seldom.
6o8
QUEEN MARY.
ACT III.
Petre. Only now perhaps.
Because the Queen hath been three days
m tears
For Philip's going — like the wild hedge-
rose
Of a soft winter, possible, not probable,
However you have prov'n it.
Howard. I must see her.
Ente)'- Renard.
Renard. My Lords, you cannot see
her Majesty.
Howard. Why then the King ! for I
would have him bring it
Home to the leisure wisdom of his Queen,
Before he go, that since these statutes
. past,
Gardiner out-Gardiners Gardiner in his
heat,
Bonner cannot out-Bonner his own self —
Beast! — but they play with fire as chil-
dren do.
And burn the house. I know that these
are breeding
A fierce resolve and fixt heart-hate in men
Against the King, the Queen, the Holy
Father,
The faith itself. Can I not see him?
Renard. Not now.
And in all this, my Lord, her Majesty
Is flint of flint, you may strike fire from
her,
Not hope to melt her. I will give your
message.
{^Exeunt Petre and Howard.
Enter Philip {musing).
Philip. She will not have Prince
Philibert of Savoy,
I talk'd with her in vain — says she will
live
And die true maid — a goodly creature too.
Would she had been the Queen ! yet she
must have him;
She troubles England : that she breathes
in England
Is life and lungs to every rebel birth
That passes out of embryo.
Simon Renard ! —
This Howard, whom they fear, what was
he saying?
Renard. What your imperial father
said, my liege,
To deal with heresy gentlier. Gardiner
burns,
And Bonner burns; and it would seem
this people
Care more for our brief life in their wet
land.
Than yours in happier Spain. I told my
Lord
He should not vex her Highness; she
would say
These are the means God works with,
that His church
May flourish.
Philip. Ay, sir, but in statesmanship
To strike too soon is oft to miss the blow.
Thou knovvest I bade my chaplain, Castro,
preach
Against these burnings.
Renard. And the Emperor
Approved you, and when last he wrote,
declared
His comfort in your Grace that you were
bland
And affable to men of all estates,
In hope to charm them from their hate of
Spain.
Philip. In hope to crush all heresy
under Spain.
But, Renard, I am sicker staying here
Than any sea could make me passing
hence,
Tho' I be ever deadly sick at sea.
So sick ain I with biding for this child.
Is it the fashion in this clime for women
To go twelve months in bearing of a
child?
The nurses yawn'd, the cradle gaped,
they led
Processions, chanted litanies, clash'd their
bells,
Shot off their lying cannon, and her
priests
Have preach 'd, the fools, of this fair
prince tp come;
Till, by St. James, I find myself the fool.
Why do you lift your eyebrow at me
thus?
Renard. I never saw your Highness
moved till now.
Philip. So weary am I of this wet
land of theirs.
And every soul of man that breathes
therein.
SCENE VI.
QUEEN MARY,
609
Kenai'd. My liege, we must not drop
the mask before
The masquerade is over —
Philip. — Have I dropt it?
I have but shown a loathing face to you,
Who knew it from the first.
Enter Mary.
Mary (aside). With Renard. Still
Parleying with Renard, all the day with
Renard,
And scarce a greeting all the day for me —
And goes to-morrow. \_Exit Mary.
Philip {to Renard, who advances to
him). Well, sir, is there more ?
Renard {u'ho has perceived the Queen).
May Simon Renard speak a single
word?
Philip. Ay.
Renard. And be forgiven for it?
Philip. Simon Renard
Knows me too well to speak a single
word
That could not be forgiven.
Renard. Well, my liege,
Your Grace hath a most chaste and loving
wife.
Philip. Why not? The Queen of
Philip should be chaste.
Renard. Ay, but, my Lord, you know
what Virgil sings,
Woman is various and most mutable.
Philip. She play the harlot ! never.
Renard. No, sire, no.
Not dream'd of by the rabidest gospeller.
There was a paper thrown into the palace,
•The King hath wearied of his barren
bride.'
She came upon it, read it, and then rent it,
With all the rage of one who hates a
truth
He cannot but allow. Sire, I would
have you —
What should I say, I cannot pick my
words —
Be somewhat less — majestic to your
Queen.
Philip. Am I to change my manners,
Simon. Renard,
Because these islanders are brutal beasts?
Or would you have me turn a sonneteer.
And warble those brief-sighted eyes of
hers?
2B
Renard. Brief-sighted tho' they be,
I have seen them, sire,
When you perchance were trifling royally
With some fair dame of court, suddenly
till
With such fierce fire — had it been fire
indeed
It would have burnt both speakers.
Philip.
Av, and then?
Renard. Sire, might it not be policy
in some matter
Of small importance now and then to
cede
A point to her demand?
Philip. Well, I am going.
Retiard. For should her love when
you are gone, my liege.
Witness these papers, there will not be
wanting
Those that will urge her injury — should
her love —
And I have known such women more
than one —
Veer to the counterpoint, and jealousy
Hath in it an alchemic force to fuse
Almost into one metal love and hate, —
And she impress her wrongs upon her
Council, ^
And these again upon her Parliament —
We are not loved here, and would be
then perhaps
Not so well holpen in our wars with
France,
As else we might be — here she comes.
Enter Mary.
O Philip !
Mary.
Nay, must you go indeed?
Philip. Madam, I must.
Mary. The parting of a husband and
a wife
Is like the cleaving of a heart; one half
Will flutter here, one there.
Philip. You say true, Madam.
Mary. The Holy Virgin will not have
me yet
Lose the sweet hope that I may bear a
prince.
If such a prince were born and you not
here !
Philip. I should be here if such a
prince were born.
Mary. But must you go?
6IO
QUEEN MARY.
Philip. Madam, you know my father,
Retiring into cloistral solitude
To yield the remnant of his' years to
heaven,
Will shift the yoke and weight of all the
world
From off his neck to mine. We meet at
Brussels.
But since mine absence will not be for
long,
Your Majesty shall go to Dover with me,
And wait my coming back.
Mary, To Dover? no,
I am too feeble. I will go to Greenwich,
So you will have me with you; and there
watch
All that is gracious in the breath of
heaven
Draw with your sails from our poor land,
and pass
And leave me, Philip, with my prayers
for you.
Philip. And doubtless I shall profit
by your prayers.
Mary. Methinks that would you tarry
one day more
(The news was sudden) I could mould
myself
To bear your going better; will you do
it?
Philip. Madam, a day may sink or
save a realm.
Mary. A day may save a heart from
breaking too.
Philip. Well, Simon Renard, shall we
stop a day?
Renard. Your Grace's business will
not suffer, sire,
For one day more, so far as I can tell.
Philip. Then one day more to please
her Majesty.
Mary. The sunshine sweeps across
my life again.
0 if I knew you felt this parting, Philip,
As I do !
Philip. By St. James I do protest.
Upon the faith and honour of a Span-
iard,
1 am vastly grieved to leave your Majesty.
Simon, is supper ready?
Renard. Ay, my liege,
I saw the covers laying.
Philip, Let us have it. \_Exeunt.
ACT IV.
SCENE I. — A Room in the Palace
Mary, Cardinal Pole.
Mary. What have you there?
Pole. So please your Majesty,
A long petition from the foreign exiles
To spare the life of Cranmer. Bishop
Thirlby,
And my Lord Paget and Lord William
Howard,
Crave, in the same cause, hearing of your
Grace.
Hath he not written himself — infatu-
ated—
To sue you for his life?
Mary. His life? Oh, no;
Not sued for that — he knows it were in
vain.
But so much of the anti-papal leaven
Works in him yet, he hath pray'd me not
to sully
Mine own prerogative, and degrade the
realm
By seeking justice at a stranger's hand
Against my natural subject. King and
Queen,
To whom he owes his loyalty after God,
Shall these accuse him to a foreign
prince?
Death would not grieve him more. I
cannot be
True to this realm of England and the
Pope
Together, says the heretic.
Pole. And there errs;
As he hath ever err'd thro' vanity.
A secular kingdom is but as the body
Lacking a soul; and in itself a beast.
The Holy Father in a secular kingdom
Is as the soul descending out of heaven
Into a body generate.
Mary. Write to him, then.
Pole. I will.
Mary. And sharply, Pole.
Pole. Here come the Cranmerites !
Enter Thirlby, Lord Paget, Lord
William Howard.
Howard. Health to your Grace!
Good morrow, my Lord Cardinal;
SCENE I.
QUEEN MARY.
6ii
We make our humble prayer unto your
Grace
That Cranmer may withdraw to foreign
parts,
Or into private life within the realm.
In several bills and declarations, Madam,
He hath recanted all his heresies.
Paget. Ay, ay; if Bonner have not
forged the bills, \_Aside.
Mary. Did not More die, and Fisher ?
he must burn.
Howard. He hath recanted, Madam.
Mary. The better for him.
He burns in Purgatory, not in Hell.
Howard. Ay, ay, your Grace; but it
was never seen
That anyone recanting thus at full,
As Cranmer hath, came to the fire on
earth.
Mary. It will be seen now, then.
Thirlby. O Madam, Madam !
I thus implore you, low upon my knees.
To reach the hand of mercy to my friend.
I have err'd with him; with him I have
recanted.
What human reason is there why my
friend
Should meet with lesser mercy than my-
self?
Mary. My Lord of Ely, this. After
a riot
We hang the leaders, let their following
go.
Cranmer is head and father of these here-
sies.
New learning as they call it; yea, may
God
Forget me at most need when I forget
Her foul divorce — my sainted mother —
No! —
Howard. Ay, ay, but mighty doctors
doubted there.
The Pope himself waver'd; and more
than one
Row'd in that galley — Gardiner to wit,
Whom truly I deny not to have been
Your faithful friend and trusty councillor.
Hath not your Highness ever read his
book,
His tractate upon True Obedience,
Writ by himself and Bonner?
Mary. I will take
Such order with all bad, heretical books
That none shall hold them in his house
and live.
Henceforward. No, my Lord.
Howard. Then never read it.
The truth is here. Your father was a man
Of such colossal . kinghood, yet so cour-
teous,
Except when wroth, you scarce could
meet his eye
And hold your own ; and were he wroth
indeed.
You held it less, or not at all. I say,
Your father had a will that beat men down ;
Your father had a brain that beat men
down —
Pole. Not me, my Lord.
Howard. No, for you were not here;
You sit upon this fallen Cranmer's throne;
And it would more become you, my Lord
Legate,
To join a voice, so potent with her High-
ness,
To ours in plea for Cranmer than to stand
On naked self-assertion.
Mary. All your voices
Are waves on flint. The heretic must
burn.
Howard. Yet once he saved your
Majesty's own life;
Stood out against the King in your be-
half.
At his own peril.
Mary. I know not if he did;
And if he did I care not, my Lord
Howard.
My life is not so happy, no such boon.
That I should spare to take a heretic
priest's,
Who saved it or not saved. Why do you
vex me?
Paget. Yet to save Cranmer were to
serve the Church,
Your Majesty's I mean; he is effaced,
Self-blotted out; so wounded in his
honour.
He can but creep down into some dark
hole
Like a hurt beast, and hide himself and
die;
But if you burn him, — well, your High-
ness knows
The saying, * Martyr's blood — seed of the
Church.'
6l2
QUEEN MARY.
ACT IV
Mary. Of the true Church; but his
is none, not will be.
You are too politic for me, my Lord
Paget.
And if he have to live so loath'd a life.
It were more merciful to burn him now.
Thirlby. Oh, yet relent. O Madam,
if you knew him
As I do, ever gentle, and so gracious.
With all his learning —
Mary. Yet a heretic still.
His learning makes his burning the more
just.
Thirlby. So worshipt of all those that
came across him;
The stranger at his hearth, and all his
house —
Mary. His children and his concu-
bine, belike,
Thirlby. To do him any wrong was
to beget
A kindness from him, for his heart was
rich.
Of such fine mould, that if you sow'd
therein
The seed of Hate, it blossom'd Charity.
Pole. * After his kind it costs him
nothing,' there's
An old world English adage to the
point.
These are but natural graces, my good
Bishop,
Which in the Catholic garden are as
flowers,
But on the heretic dunghill only weeds.
Howard. Such weeds make dunghills
gracious.
Mary. Enough, my Lords.
It is God's will, the Holy Father's will.
And Philip's will, and mine, that he
should burn.
He is pronounced anathema.
Howard. Farewell, Madam,
God grant you ampler mercy at your
call
Than you have shown to Cranmer.
S^Exeunt Lords.
Pole. After this.
Your Grace will hardly care to overlook
This same petition of the foreign exiles
For Cranmer's life.
Mary. Make out the writ to-night.
\_ExeunL
SCENE II. — Oxford. Cranmer m
Prison.
Cranmer. Last night, I dream'd the
faggots were alight,
And that myself was fasten'd to the stake,
And found it all a visionary flame.
Cool as the light in old decaying wood;
And then King Harry look'd out from
a cloud.
And bade me have good courage; and
I heard
An angel cry, 'There is more joy in
Heaven,' —
And after that, the trumpet of the dead.
[ Trumpets without.
Why, there are trumpets blowing now :
what is it?
Enter Father Cole.
Cole. Cranmer, I come to question
you again;
Have you remain'd in the true Catholic
faith
I left you in?
Cranmer. In thp true Catholic faith,
By Heaven's grace, I am more and more
confirm'd.
Why are the trumpets blowing, Father
Cole?
Cole. Cranmer, it is decided by the
Council
That you to-day should read your recan-
tation
Before the people in St. Mary's Church.
And there be many heretics in the town,
Who loathe you for your late return to
Rome,
And might assail you passing through
the street,
And tear you piecemeal : so you have
a guard.
Cranmer. Or seek to rescue me. I
thank the Council.
Cole. Do you lack any money ?
Cranmer. Nay, why should I?
The prison fare is good enough for me.
Cole. Ay, but to give the poor.
Cranmer. Hand it me, then !
I thank you.
Cole. For a little space, farewell;
Until I see you in St. Mary's Church.
\^Exit Cole,
QUEEN MARY.
613
Cranmer. It is against all precedent
to burn
One who recants; they mean to pardon
me.
To give the poor — they give the poor
who die.
Well, burn me or not burn me I am
fixt;
It is but a communion, not a mass :
A holy supper, not a sacrifice;
No man can make his Maker — Villa
Garcia.
Enter Villa Garcia.
Villa Garcia. Pray you write out this
paper for me, Cranmer.
Cranmer. Have I not writ enough
to satisfy you?
Villa Garcia. It is the last.
Cranmer. Give it me, then.
\_He writes.
Villa Garcia. Now sign.
Cranmer. I have sign'd enough, and
I will sign no more.
Villa Garcia, It is no more than
what you have sign'd already.
The public form thereof.
Cranmer. It may be so;
I sign it with my presence, if I read it.
Villa Garcia. But this is idle of you.
Well, sir, well.
You are to beg the people to pray for
you;
Exhort them to a pure and virtuous
life;
Declare the Queen's right to the throne;
confess
Your faith before all hearers; and retract
That Eucharistic doctrine in your book.
Will you not sign it now?
Cranmer. No, Villa Garcia,
I sign no more. Will they have mercy
on me?
■ Villa Garcia. Have you good hopes
of mercy ! So, farewell. \^Exit.
Cran?ner. Good hopes, not theirs,
have I that I am fixt,
Fixt beyond fall; however, in strange
hours,
After the long brain-dazing colloquies.
And thousand-times recurring argument
Of those two friars ever in my prison.
When left alone in my despondency,
Without a friend, a book, my faith would
seem
Dead or half-drown'd, or else swam
heavily
Against the huge corruptions of the
Church,
Monsters of mistradition, old enough
To scare me into dreaming, * what am I,
Cranmer, against whole ages? ' was it so,
Or am I slandering my most inward friend,
To veil the fault of my most outward
foe —
The soft and tremulous coward in the
flesh?
0 higher, holier, earlier, purer church,
1 have found thee and not leave thee
any more.
It is but a communion, not a mass —
No sacrifice, but a life-giving feast !
( Writes.) So, so; this will I say — thus
will I pray. \^Puts up the paper.
Enter BoNNER.
Bonner. Good-day, old friend; what,
you look somewhat worn;
And yet it is a day to test your health
Ev'n at the best : I scarce have spoken
with you
Since when? — your degradation. At
your trial
Never stood up a bolder man than you;
You would not cap the Pope's commis-
sioner—
Your learning, and your stoutness, and
your heresy,
Dumbfounded half of us. So, after that.
We had to dis-archbishop and unlord.
And make you simple Cranmer once
again.
The common barber dipt your hair, and I
Scraped from your finger-points the holy
oil;
And worse than all, you had to kneel to
me ;
Which was not pleasant for you. Master
Cranmer.
Now you, that would not recognise the
Pope,
And you, that would not own the Real
Presence,
Have found a real presence in the stake,
Which frights you back into the ancient
faith;
6i4
QUEEN MARY.
And so you have recanted to the Pope.
How are the mighty fallen, Master
Cranmer !
Cranmer, You have been more fierce
against the Pope than I;
But why fling back the stone he strikes
me with? \^Aside.
0 Bonner, if I ever did you kindness —
Power hath been given you to try faith
by fire —
Pray you, remembering how yourself have
changed,
Be somewhat pitiful, after I have gone,
To the poor flock — to women and to
children —
That when I was archbishop held with
me.
Bonner. Ay — gentle as they call you
— live or die !
Pitiful to this pitiful heresy?
1 must obey the Queen and Council, man.
Win thro' this day with honour to your-
self.
And I'll say something for you — so —
good-bye. \^Exit.
Cranmer. This hard coarse man of
old hath crouch'd to me
Till I myself was half ashamed for him.
Enter Thirlby.
Weep not, good Thirlby.
Thirlby. O my Lord, my Lord !
My heart is no such block as Bonner's is :
Who would not weep?
Cranmer. Why do you so my-lord me.
Who am disgraced?
Thirlby. On earth; but saved in
heaven
By your recanting.
Cranmer. Will they burn me,
Thirlby?
Thirlby. Alas, they will; these burn-
ings will not help
The purpose of the faith; but my poor
voice
Against them is a whisper to the roar
Of a spring-tide.
Craujuer. And they will surely
burn me?
Thirlby. Ay; and besides, will have
you in the church
Repeat your recantation in the ears
Of all men, to the saving of their souls.
Before your execution. May God help
you
Thro' that hard hour !
Cranmer. And may God bless you,
Thirlby !
Well, they shall hear my recantation
there.
\_Exit Thirlby.
Disgraced, dishonour'd ! — not by them,
indeed,
-By mine own self — by mine own hand!
0 thin-skinn'd hand and jutting veins,
'twas you
That sign'd the burning of poor Joan of
Kent;
But then she was a witch. You have
written much.
But you were never raised to plead for
Frith,
Whose dogmas I have reach'd: he was
deliver'd
To the secular arm to burn; and there
was Lambert;
Who can foresee himself? truly these
burnings.
As Thirlby says, are profitless to the
burners.
And help the other side. You shall burn
too.
Burn first when I am burnt.
Fire — inch by inch to die in agony!
Latimer
Had a brief end — not Ridley. Hooper
burn'd
Three-quarters of an hour. Will my
faggots
Be wet as his were ? It is a day of rain.
1 will not muse upon it.
My fancy takes the burner's part, and
makes
The fire seem even crueller than it is.
No, I doubt not that God will give me
strength.
Albeit I have denied him.
Enter Soto and Villa Garcia.
Villa Garcia. ' We are ready
To take you to St. Mary's, Master
Cranmer.
Cranmer. And I : lead on ; ye loose
me from my bonds. \^Ereunt.
SCENE III.
QUEEN MARY.
615
SCENE III. — St. Mary's Church.
Cole /« the Pulpit, Lord Williams of
Thame presiding. Lord Wijxiam
Howard, Lord Paget, and others.
Cranmer enters between SoTO and
Villa Garcia, and the whole Choir
strike up ' Nunc Dimittis.' Cranmer
is set upon a scaffbld before the people.
Cole. Behold him —
\^A pause: people in the foreground.
People. Oh, unhappy sight !
First Protestaftt. See how the tears
run down his fatherly face.
Second Protestant. James, didst thou
ever see a carrion crow
Stand watching a sick beast before he
dies?
First Protestant. Him perch'd up
there? I wish some thunderbolt
Would make this Cole a cinder, pulpit
and all.
Cole. Behold him, brethren : he hath
cause to weep ! —
So have we all : weep with him if ye will,
Yet —
It is expedient for one man to die.
Yea, for the people, lest the people die.
Yet wherefore should he die that hath
return'd
To the one Catholic Universal Church,
Repentant of his errors?
Protestant murmurs. Ay, tell us that.
Cole. Those of the wrong side will
despise the man.
Deeming him one that thro' the fear of
death
Gave up his cause, except he seal his faith
In sight of all with flaming martyrdom.
Cranmer. Ay.
Cole. Ye hear him, and albeit there
may seem
According to the canons pardon due
To him that so repents, yet are there
causes
Wherefore our Queen and Council at this
time
Adjudge him to the death. He hath been
a traitor,
A shaker and confounder of the realm;
And when the King's divorce was sued
at Rome,
He here, this heretic metropolitan,
As if he had been the Holy Father, sat
And judged it. Did I call him heretic?
A huge heresiarch ! never was it known
That any man so writing, preaching s6,
So poisoning the Church, so long con-
tinuing,
Hath found his pardon ; therefore he must
die,
For warning and example.
Other reasons
There be fct this man's ending, which
our Queen
And Council at this present deem it not
Expedient to be known.
Protestant viunnurs. I warrant you.
Cole. Take therefore, all, example by
this man.
For if our Holy Queen not pardon him,
Much less shall others in like cause
escape,
That all of you, the highest as the
lowest,
May learn there is no power against the
Lord.
There stands a man, once of so high
degree,
Chief prelate of our Church, archbishop,
first
In Council, second person in the realm.
Friend for so long time of a mighty King :
And now ye see downfallen and debased
From councillor to caitiff — fallen so low.
The leprous flutterings of the byway, scum
And offal of the city, would not change
Estates with him ; in brief, so miserable.
There is no hope of better left for him,
No place for worse.
Yet, Cranmer, be thou glad.
This is the work of God. He is glorified
In thy conversion : lo ! thou art reclaim'd;
He brings thee home : nor fear but that
to-day
Thou shalt receive the penitent thief's
award.
And be with Christ the Lord in Paradise.
Remember how God made the fierce fire
seem
To those three children like a pleasant
dew.
Remember, too.
The triumph of St. Andrew on his cross,
The patience of St. Lawrence in the fire.
6i6
QUEEN MARY.
ACT IV.
Thus, if thou call on God and all the
saints,
God will beat down the fury of the flame,
Or give thee saintly strength to undergo.
And for thy soul shall masses here be sung
By every priest in Oxford. Pray for him.
Cranmer. Ay, one and all, dear
brothers, pray for me;
Pray with one breath, one heart, one soul
for me.
Cole. And now, lest anyone among
you doubt
The man's conversion and remorse of
heart,
Yourselves shall hear him speak. Speak,
Master Cranmer,
Fulfil your promise made me, and pro-
claim
Your true undoubted faith, that all may
hear.
Cranmer. And that I will. O God,
Father of Heaven !
O Son of God, Redeemer of the world !
0 Holy Ghost ! proceeding from them
both,
Three persons and one God, have mercy
on me.
Most miserable sinner, wretched man.
1 have offended against heaven and earth
More grievously than any tongue can tell.
Then whither should I flee for any help?
I am ashamed to Hft mine eyes to heaven.
And I can find no refuge upon earth.
Shall I despair then"? — God forbid ! O
God,
For thou art merciful, refusing none
That come to Thee for succour, unto
Thee,
Therefore, I come; humble myself to
Thee;
Saying, O Lord God, although my sins
be great.
For thy great mercy have mercy! O
God the Son,
Not for. slight faults alone, when thou
becamest
Man in the Flesh, was the great mystery
wrought;
O God the Father, not for little sins
Didst thou yield up thy Son to human
death;
But for the greatest sin that can be sinn'd,
Yea, even such as mine, incalculable,
Unpardonable, — sin against the light.
The truth of God, which I had proven
and known.
Thy mercy must be greater than all sin.
Forgive me, Father, for no merit of mine.
But that Thy name by man be glorified,
And Thy most blessed Son's, who died
for man.
Good people, evjsry man at time of
death
Would fain set forth some saying that
may live
After his death and better humankind ;
For death gives life's last word a power
to live.
And, like the stone-cut epitaph, remain
After the vanish'd voice, and speak to
men.
God grant me grace to glorify my God !
And first I say it is a grievous case.
Many so dote upon this bubble world.
Whose colours in a moment break and
fly,
They care for nothing else. What saith
St. John : —
'Love of this world is hatred against
God.'
Again, I pray you all that, next to God,
You do unmurmuringly and willingly
Obey your King and Queen, and not for
dread
Of these alone, but from the fear of
Him
Whose ministers they be to govern you.
Thirdly, I pray you all to live together
Like brethren; yet what hatred Christian
men
Bear to each other, seeming not as
brethren.
But mortal foes ! But do you good to all
As much as in you lieth. Hurt no man
more
Than you would harm your loving natural
brother
Of the same roof, same breast. If any do,
Albeit he think himself at home with
God,
Of this be sure, he is whole worlds
away.
Protestant murmurs. What sort of
brothers then be those that lust
To burn each other?
Williams. Peace among you, there I
SCENE III.
QUEEN MARY,
617
Cranmer. Fourthly, to those that own
exceeding wealth,
Remember that sore saying spoken once
By Him that was the truth, ' How hard
it is
For the rich man to enter into Heaven; '
Let all rich men remember that hard word.
I have not time for more : if ever, now
Let them flow forth in charity, seeing now
The poor so many, and all food so dear.
Long have 1 lain in prison, yet have
heard
Of all their wretchedness. Give to the
poor,
Ye give to God. He is with us in the
poor.
And now, and forasmuch as I have
come
To the last end of life, and thereupon
Hangs all my past, and all my life to be.
Either to live with Christ in heaven with
joy,
Or to be still in pain with devils in hell;
And, seeing in a moment, I shall find
{^Pointing upwards.
Heaven or else hell ready to swallow me,
\^Pointutg downwards.
I shall declare to you my very faith
Without all colour.
Cole. Hear him, my good brethren.
Cranmer. I do believe in God, Father
of all;
In every article of the Catholic faith.
And every syllable taught us by our Lord,
His prophets, and apostles, in the Testa-
ments,
Both Old and New.
Cole. Be plainer, Master Cranmer.
Cranmer. And now I come to the
great cause that weighs
Upon my conscience more than anything
Or said or done in all my life by me;
For there be writings I have set abroad
Against the truth I knew within my heart.
Written for fear of death, to save my life,
If that might be; the papers by my hand
Sign'd since my degradation — by this
hand
\^Holding out his right hand.
Written and sign'd — I here renounce
them all;
And, since my hand offended, having
written
Against my heart, my hand shall first be
burnt,
So I may come to the fire.
\^Dead silence.
Protestant murmurs.
First Protestant. I knew it would be
so.
Second Protestant. Our prayers are
heard !
Third Protestant. God bless him !
Catholic murmurs. Out upon him !
out upon him !
Liar ! dissembler ! traitor ! to the fire !
Williams {raising his voice). You
know that you recanted all you
said
Touching the sacrament in that same
book
You wrote against my Lord of Winches-
ter;
Dissemble not; play the plain Christian
man.
Cranmer. Alas, my Lord,
I have been a man loved plainness all my
life;
I did dissemble, but the hour has come
For utter truth and plainness; wherefore,
I say,
I hold by all I wrote within that book.
Moreover,
As for the Pope I count him Antichrist,
With all his devil's doctrines; and refuse,
Reject him, and abhor him. I have said.
[ Cries on all sides, * Pull him down !
Away with him ! '
Cole. Ay, stop the heretic's mouth !
Hale him away !
Williams. Harm him not, harm him
not ! have him to the fire !
[Cranmer goes out between Two
Friars, stniling; hands are reached
to him from the crowd. Lord
William Howard and Lord
Paget are left alone in the church.
Paget. The nave and aisles all empty
as a fool's jest !
No, here's Lord William Howard. What,
my Lord,
You have not gone to see the burning?
Howard. Fie !
To stand at ease, and stare as at a show,
And watch a good man burn ! Never
again.
6ig
QUEEN MARY.
ACT IV,
I saw the deaths of Latimer and Ridley.
Moreover, tho' a Cathohc, 1 would not,
For the pure honour of our common
nature.
Hear what I might — another recanta-
tion
Of Cranmer at the stake.
Paget. You'd not hear that.
He pass'd out smiling, and he walk'd
upright ;
His eye was like a soldier's, whom the
general
He looks to and he leans on as his God,
Hath rated for some backwardness and
bidd'n him
Charge one against a thousand, and the
man
Hurls his soil'd life against the pikes
and dies.
Howard. Yet that he might not after
all those papers
Of recantation yield again, who knows?
Paget. Papers of recantation ! Think
you then
That Cranmer read all papers that he
sign'd ?
Or sign'd all those they tell us that he
sign'd?
Nay, I trow not : and you shall see, my
Lord,
That howsoever hero-like the man
Dies in the fire, this Bonner or another
"Will in some lying fashion misreport
His ending to the glory of their church.
And you saw Latimer and Ridley die ?
Latimer was eighty, was he not? his best
Of life was over then.
Howard. His eighty years
Look'd somewhat crooked on him in his
frieze ;
But after they had stript him to his
shroud.
He stood upright, a lad of twenty-one,
And gather'd with his hands the starting
flame.
And wash'd his hands and all his face
therein,
Until the powder suddenly blew him
dead.
Ridley was longer burning; but he died
As manfully and boldly, and, 'fore God,
I know them heretics, but right English
ones.
If ever, as heaven grant, we clash with
Spain,
Our Ridley-soldiers and our Latimer-
sailors
Will teach her something.
Paget. Your mild Legate Pole
Will tell you that the devil helpt them
thro' it.
\_A murmur of the croivd in the dis^
tance.
Hark, how those Roman wolfdogs howl
and bay him !
Hozvard. Might it not be the other
side rejoicing
In his brave end?
Paget. They are too crush'd,
too broken.
They can but weep in silence.
Howard. Ay, ay, Paget,
They have brought it in large measure
on themselves.
Have I not heard them mock the blessed
Host
In songs so lewd, the beast might roar
his claim
To being in God's image, more than
they?
Have I not seen the gamekeeper, the
groom,
Gardener, and huntsman, in the parson's
place,
The parson from his own spire swung
out dead.
And Ignorance crying in the streets, and
all men
Regarding her? I say they have drawn
the fire
On their own heads: yet, Paget, I do
hold
The Catholic, if he have the greater
right.
Hath been the crueller.
Paget. Action and re-action,
The miserable see-saw of our child-world,
Make us despise it at odd hours, my
Lord.
Heaven help that this re-action not re-
act
Yet fiercelier under Queen Elizabeth,
So that she come to rule us. -
Howard. The world's mad.
Paget. My Lord, the world is like a
drunken man.
SCENE III.
QUEEN MARY.
619
Who cannot move straight to his end —
but reels
Now to the right, then as far to the left,
Push'd by the crowd beside — and under-
foot
An earthquake; for since Henry for a
doubt —
Which a young lust had clapt upon the
back,
Crying, ' Forward ! ' — set our old church
rocking, men
Have hardly known what to believe, or
whether
They should believe in anything; the
currents
So shift and change, they see not how
they are borne,
Nor whither. I conclude the King a
beast;
Verily a lion if you will — the world
A most obedient beast and fool — myself
Half beast and fool as appertaining to it;
Altho' your Lordship hath as little of
each
Cleaving to your original Adam-clay,
As may be consonant with mortality.
Howard. We talk and Cranmer
suffers.
The kindliest man I ever knew; see, see,
I speak of him in the past. Unhappy
land !
Hard-natured Queen, half-Spanish in
herself.
And grafted on the hard-grain'd stock of
Spain —
Her life, since Philip left her, and she
lost
Her fierce desire of bearing him a child.
Hath, like a brief and bitter winter's day.
Gone narrowing down and darkening to
a close.
There will be more conspiracies, I fear.
Paget. Ay, ay, beware of France.
Howard. O Paget, Paget,
I have seen heretics of the poorer sort.
Expectant of the rack from day to day,
To whom the fire were welcome, lying
chain'd
In breathless dungeons over steaming
sewers,
Fed with rank bread that crawl'd upon
the tongue,
And putrid water, every drop a worm,
Until they died of rotted limbs; and
then
Cast on the dunghill naked, and become
Hideously alive again from head to heel.
Made even the carrion-nosing mongrel
vomit
With hate and horror.
Paget. Nay, you sicken vie
To hear you.
Hoivard. Fancy-sick; these things
are done.
Done right against the promise of this
Queen
Twice given.
Paget. No faith with heretics, mv
Lord !
Hist ! there be two old gossips — gospel-
lers,
I take it; stand behind the pillar here;
I warrant you they talk about the burn-
ing.
Enter Two Old Women. Joan, and
after her TiB.
Joan. Why, it be Tib !
Tib. I cum behind tha, gall, and
couldn't make tha hear. Eh, the wind
and the wet ! What a day, what a day !
nigh upo' judgment daay loike. Pwoaps
be pretty things, Joan, but they wunt set
i' the Lord's cheer o' that daay.
Joan. I must set down myself, Tib; it
be a var waay vor my owld legs up vro'
Islip. Eh, my rheumatizy be that bad
howiver be I to win to the burnin'.
Tib. I should saay 'twur ower by
now. I'd ha' been here avore, but
Dumble wur blow'd wi' the wind, and
Dumble's the best milcher in Islip.
Joan. Our Daisy's as good 'z her.
Tib. Noa, Joan.
Joajt. Our Daisy's butter's as good 'z
hern.
Tib. Noa, Joan.
Joan. Our Daisy's cheeses be better.
Tib. Noa, Joan.
Joan. Eh, then ha' thy waay wi' me,
Tib; ez thou hast wi' thy owld man.
Tib. Ay, Joan, and my owld man
wur up and awaay betimes wi' dree hard
eggs for a good pleace at the burnin';
and barrin' the wet, Hodge 'ud ha' been
a-harrowin' o' white peasen i' the outfield
620
QUEEN MARY.
ACT V.
— and barrin' the wind, Dumble wur
blow'd wi' the wind, so 'z we was forced
to stick her, but we fetched her round at
last. Thank the Lord therevore. Bum-
ble's the best mile her in Islip.
Joan. Thou's thy way wi' man and
beast, Tib. I wonder at tha', it beats
me ! Eh, but I do know ez Pwoaps and
vires be bad things; tell 'ee now, I heerd
summat as summun towld summun o'
owld Bishop Gardiner's end; there wur
an owld lord a-cum to dine wi' un, and
a wur so owld a couldn't bide vor his
dinner, but a had to bide howsomiver,
vor 'I wunt dine,' says my Lord Bishop,
says he, * not till I hears ez Latimer and
Ridley be a-vire;' and so they bided on
and on till vour o' the clock, till his man
cum in post vro' here, and tells un ez the
vire has tuk holt. 'Now,' says the
Bishop, says he, 'we'll gwo to dinner;'
and the owld lord fell to 's meat wi' a
will, God bless un ! but Gardiner wur
struck down like by the hand o' God
avore a could taste a mossel, and a set
un all a-vire, so 'z the tongue on un cum
a-lolluping out o' 'is mouth as black as a
rat. Thank the Lord, therevore,
Paget. The fools !
Tib. Ay, Joan; and Queen Mary
gwoes on a-burnin' and a-burnin', to get
her baaby born; but all her hurnin's 'ill
never burn out the hypocrisy that makes
the water in her. There's nought but
the vire of God's hell ez can burn out
■.hat.
Joan. Thank the Lord, therevore.
Paget. The fools !
Tib. A-burnin', and a-burnin', and
a-makin' o' volk madder and madder;
but tek thou my word vor't, Joan, — and
I bean't wrong not twice i' ten year — the
burnin' o' the owld archbishop 'ill burn
the Pwoap out o' this 'ere land vor iver
and iver.
Howard. Out of the church, you
brace of cursed crones,
Or I will have you duck'd ! ( Women
hurry out.) Said I not right?
For how should reverend prelate or
throned prince
Brook for an hour such brute malignity?
Ah, what an acrid wine has Luther brew'd !
Paget. Pooh, pooh, my Lord! pool
garrulous country-wives.
Buy you their cheeses, and they'll side
with you;
You cannot judge the liquor from the lees.
Howard. I think that in some sort
we may. But see,
Enter Peters.
Peters, my gentleman, an honest Catholic,
Who foUow'd with the crowd to Cran-
mer's fire.
One that would neither misreport nor lie,
Not to gain Paradise : no, nor if the Pope,
Charged him to do it — he is white as death,
Peters, how pale you look ! you bring
the smoke
Of Cranmer's burning with you.
Peters. Twice or thrice
The smoke ot Cranmer's burning wrapt
me round.
Howard. Peters, you know me
Catholic, but English.
Did he die bravely ? Tell me that, or leave
All else untold.
Peters. My Lord, he died most
bravely.
Howard. Then tell me all.
Paget. Ay, Master Peters, tell us.
Peters. You saw him how he past
among the crowd;
And ever as he walk'd the Spanish friars
Still plied him with entreaty and reproach :
But Cranmer, as the helmsman at the helm
Steers, ever looking to the happy haven
Where he shall rest at night, moved to
his death;
And I could see that many silent hands
Came from the crowd and met his own;
and thus,
When we had come where Ridley burnt
with Latimer,
He, with a cheerful smile, as one whose
mind
Is all made up, in haste put off the rags
They had mock'd his misery with, and all
in white.
His long white beard, which he had never
shaven
Since Henry's death, down-sweeping to
the chain.
Wherewith they bound him to the stake,
he stood
SCENE
QUEEN MARY.
621
More like an ancient father of the Church,
Than heretic of these times; and still
the friars
Plied him, but Cranmer only shook his
head,
Or answer'd them in smiling negatives;
Whereat Lord Williams gave a sudden
cry: —
* Make short ! make short ! ' and so they
lit the wood.
Then Cranmer lifted his left hand to
heaven,
And thrust his right into the bitter flame;
And crying, in his deep voice, more than
once,
•This hath offended — this unworthy
hand ! '
So held it till it all was burn'd, before
The flame had reach'd his body; I stood
near —
Msyrk'd him — he never uttered moan of
pain:
He never stirr'd or writhed, but, like a
statue,
Unmoving in the greatness of the flame,
Gave up the ghost; and so past martyr-
like—
Martyr I may not call him — past — but
whither?
Paget. To purgatory, man, to purga-
tory.
Peters. Nay, but, my Lord, he denied
purgatory.
Paget. Why then to heaven, and God
ha' mercy on him.
Howard. Paget, despite his fearful
heresies,
I loved the man, and needs must moan
for him;
0 Cranmer !
Paget. But your moan is useless now :
Come out, my Lord, it is a world of fools.
{^Exeunt,
ACT V.
SCENE I. — London. Hall in the
Palace.
Queen, Sir Nicholas Heath.
Heath. Madam,
1 do assure you, that it must be look'd
to:
Calais is but ill-garrison'd, in Guisnes
Are scarce two hundred men, and the
French fleet
Rule in the narrow seas. It must be
look'd to.
If war should fall between yourself and
France;
Or you will lose your Calais.
Mary. It shall be look'd to;
I wish you a good morning, ■ good Sir
Nicholas :
Here is the King. \_Exit Heath.
Enter Philip.
Philip. Sir Nicholas tells you true,
And you must look to Calais when I go.
Mary. Go? must you go, indeed —
again — so soon?
Why, nature's licensed vagabond, the
swallow.
That might live always in the sun's warm
heart.
Stays longer here in our poor north than
you: —
Knows where he nested — ever comes
again.
Philip, And, Madam, so shall I.
Mary. Oh, will you? will you?
I am faint with fear that you will come
no more.
Philip. Ay, ay; but many voices call
me hence.
Mary. Voices — I hear unhappy ru-
mours — nay,
I say not, I believe. What voices call
you
Dearer than mine that should be dearest
to you?
Alas, my Lord! what voices and how
many?
Philip. The voices of Castille and
Aragon,
Granada, Naples, Sicily, and Milan, —
The voices of Franche-Comte, and the
Netherlands,
The voices of Peru and Mexico,
Tunis, and Oran, and the Philippines,
And all the fair spice-islands of the East.
Mary {ad7?iiringly). You are the
mightiest monarch upon earth,
I but a little Queen: and so, indeed.
Need you the more.
Philip. A little Queen ! but when
622
QUEEN MARY.
I came to wed your majesty, Lord Howard,
Sending an insolent shot that dash'd the
seas
Upon us, made us lower our kingly flag
To yours of England.
Mary. Howard is all English !
There is no king, not were he ten times
king.
Ten times our husband, but must lower
his flag
To that of England in the seas of Eng-
land.
Philip. Is that your answer?
Mary. Being Queen of England,
I have none other.
Philip. So.
Mary. But wherefore not
Helm the huge vessel of your state, my
liege.
Here by the side of her who loves you
most?
Philip. No, Madam, no ! a candle in
the sun
Is all but smoke — a star beside the moon
Is all but lost; your people will not
crown me —
Your people are as cheerless as your
clime;
Hate me and mine : witness the brawls,
the gibbets.
Here swings a Spaniard — there an Eng-
lishman;
The peoples are unlike as their com-
plexion ;
Yet will I be your swallow and return —
But now I cannot bide.
Mary. Not to help me ?
They hate me also for my love to you,
My Philip; and these judgments on the
land —
Harvestless autumns, horrible agues,
plague —
Philip. The blood and sweat of here-
tics at the stake
Is God's best dew upon the barren field.
Burn more !
Mary. I will, I will ; and you will stay ?
Philip. Have I not said? Madam, I
came to sue
Your Council and yourself to declare war.
Mary. Sir, there are many English in
your ranks
To help your battle.
Philip. So far, good. I say
I came to sue your Council and yourself
To declare war against the King ot
France.
Mary. Not to see me?
Philip. Ay, Madam, to see you.
Unalterably and pesteringly fond ! {^Aside.
But, soon or late you must have war with
France;
King Henry warms your traitors at his
hearth.
Carew is there, and Thomas Stafford
there.
Courtenay, belike —
Mary. A fool and featherhead !
Philip. Ay, but they use his name.
In brief, this Henry
Stirs up your land against you to the in-
tent
That you may lose your English heritage.
And then, your Scottish namesake mar-
rying
The Dauphin, he would weld France,
England, Scotland,
Into one sword to hack at Spain and me.
Mary. And yet the Pope is now col-
leagued with France;
You make your wars upon him down in
Italy : —
Philip, can that be well?
Philip. Content you. Madam;
You must abide my judgment, and my
father's,
Who deems it a most just and holy war.
The Pope would cast the Spaniard out
of Naples:
He calls us worse than Jews, Moors,
Saracens.
The Pope has pushed his horns beyond
his mitre —
Beyond his province. Now,
Duke Alva will but touch him on the
horns.
And he withdraws; and of his holy
head —
For Alva is true son of the true church —
No hair is harm'd. Will you not help me
here?
Mary. Alas ! the Council will not
hear of war.
They say your wars are not the wars of
England.
They will not lay more taxes on a land
QUEEN MARY.
623
So hunger-nipt and wretched; and you
know
The crown is poor. We have given the
church-lands back :
The nobles would not; nay, they clapt
their hands
Upon their swords when ask'd; and
therefore God
Is hard upon the people. What's to be
done?
Sir, I will move them in your cause
again,
And we will raise us loans and subsidies
Among the merchants; and Sir Thomas
Gresham
Will aid us. There is Antwerp and the
Jews.
Philip. Madam, my thanks.
Mary. And you will stay your
going?
Philip. And further to discourage and
lay lame
The plots of France, altho' you love her
not,
You must proclaim Elizabeth your heir.
She stands between you and the Queen
of Scots.
Mary. The Queen of Scots at least is
Catholic.
Philip. Ay, Madam, Catholic; but I
will not have
The King of France the King of England
too.
Mary. But she's a heretic,' and, when
I am gone,
Brings the new learning back.
Philip. It must be done.
You must proclaim Elizabeth your heir.
Mary. Then it is done; but you will
stay your going
Somewhat beyond your settled purpose?
Philip. No !
Mary. What, not one day?
Philip. You beat upon the rock.
Mary. And I am broken there.
Philip. Is this a place
To wail in. Madam? what ! a public hall.
Go in, 1 pray you.
Mary. Do not seem so changed.
Say go; but only say it lovingly.
Philip. You do mistake. I am not
one to change.
I never loved you more.
Mary.
Come quickly.
Philip. Ay,
Sire, I obey you
\^Exit Mary.
Etiter Count de Feria.
Feria {aside). The Queen in tears!
Philip. Feria !
Hast thou not mark'd — come closer to
mine ear —
How doubly aged this Queen of ours hath
grown
Since she lost hope of bearing us a
child?
Feria. Sire, if your Grace hath mark'd
it, so have I.
Philip. Hast thou not likewise mark'd
Elizabeth,
How fair and royal — like a Queen,
indeed?
Feria. Allow me the same answer as
before —
That if your Grace hath mark'd her, so
have I.
Philip. Good, now; methinks my
Queen is like enough
To leave me by and by.
Feria. To leave you, sire ?
Philip. I mean not like to live.
Elizabeth —
To Philibert of Savoy, as you know,
We meant to wed her; but I am not
sure
She will not serve me better — so my
Queen
Would leave me — as — my wife.
Feria. Sire, even so.
Philip. She will not have Prince
Philibert of Savoy.
Feria. No, sire.
Philip. I have to pray you, some
odd time.
To sound the Princess carelessly on this;
Not as from me, but as your phantasy;
And tell me how she takes it.
Feria. Sire, I will.
Philip. I am not certain but that
Philibert
Shall be the man; and I shall urge his
suit
Upon the Queen, because I am not cer-
tain :
You understand, Feria?
Feria. Sire, I do.
624
QUEEN MARY.
Philip. And if you be not secret in
this matter,
You understand me there, too?
Feria. Sire, I do.
Philip. You must be sweet and supple,
like a Frenchman.
She is none of those who loathe the
honeycomb. \_Exit Feria.
Enter Renard.
Renard. My liege, I bring you goodly
tidings.
Philip. Well?
Renard. There will be war with
France, at last, my liege;
Sir Thomas Stafford, a bull-headed ass.
Sailing from France, with thirty English-
men,
Hath taken Scarboro' Castle, north of
York;
Proclaims himself protector, and affirms
The Queen has forfeited her right to reign
By marriage with an alien — other things
As idle; a weak Wyatt ! Little doubt
This buzz will soon be silenced; but the
Council
(I have talk'd with some already) are
for war.
This is the fifth conspiracy hatch'd in
France ;
They show their teeth upon it; and your
Grace,
So you will take advice of mine, should stay
Yet for awhile, to shape and guide the
event.
Philip. Good! Renard, I will stay
then.
Renard. Also, sire,
Might t not say — to please your wife,
the Queen?
Philip. Ay, Renard, if you care to
put it so. \_Exeunt.
SCENE
II. — A Room in the
Palace.
Mary, sitting: a rose in her hand.
Lady Clarence. Alice in the hack-
ground.
Mary. Look ! I have play'd with this
poor rose so long
I have broken off the head.
Lady Clarence. Your Grace hath been
More merciful to many a rebel head
That should have fallen, and may rise
again.
Mary. There were not many hang'd
for Wyatt's rising.
Lady Clarence, Nay, not two hundred.
Mary. 1 could weep for them
And her, and mine own self and all the
world.
Lady Clarence. For her? for whom,
your Grace?
Enter UsHER.
Usher. The Cardinal.
Enter Cardinal Pole. (Mary rises^
Mary. Reginald Pole, what news hath
plagued thy heart?
"What makes thy favour like the bloodless
head
Fall'n on the block, and held up by the
hair?
Philip? —
Pole. No, Philip is as warm in life
As ever.
Mary. Ay, and then as cold as ever.
Is Calais taken?
Pole. Cousin, there hath chanced
A sharper harm to Ergland and to Rome,
Than Calais taken. Julius the Third
Was ever just, and mild, and father-like;
But this new Pope Caraffa, Paul the
Fourth,
Not only reft me of that legateship
Which Julius gave me, and the legateship
Annex'd toCanterbury — nay, but worse —
And yet I must obey the Holy Father,
And so must you, good cousin; — worse
than all,
A passing bell toU'd in a dying ear —
He hath cited me to Rome, for heresy,
Before his Inquisition.
Mary. I knew it, cousin,
But held from you all papers sent by
Rome,
That you might rest among us, till the
Pope,
To compass which I wrote myself to
Rome,
Reversed his doom, and that you might
not seem
To disobey his Holiness.
SCENE II.
QUEEI^ MARY.
625
Pole. He hates Philip;
(It was God's cause); so far they call
He is all Italian, and he hates the
me now.
Spaniard;
The scourge and butcher of their English
He cannot dream that / advised the
church.
war;
Alary. Have courage, your reward is
He strikes thro' me at Philip and your-
Heaven itself.
self.
Pole. They proan amen; they swarm
Nay, but I know it of old, he hates me
into the .re
too;
Like flies — for what? no dogma. They
So brands me in the stare of Christendom
know nothing;
A heretic !
They burn for nothing.
Now, even now, when bow'd before my
Mary. You have done your best.
time,
Pole. Have done my best, and as a
The house half-ruin'd ere the lease be
faithful son,
out;
That all day long hath wrought his father's
When I should guide the Church in peace
work,
at home.
When back he comes at evening hath the
After my twenty years of banishment.
door
And all my lifelong labour to uphold
Shut on him by the father whom he
The primacy — a heretic. Long ago,
loved.
When I was ruler in the patrimony.
His early follies cast into his teeth,
I was too lenient to the Lutheran,
And the poor son turn'd out into the
And I and learned friends among our-
street
selves
To sleep, to die — I shall die of it.
Would freely canvass certain Lutheran-
cousin.
isms.
Mary. I pray you be not so' dis-
W^hat then, he knew I was no Lutheran.
consolate;
A heretic !
I still will do mine utmost with the Pope.
He drew this shaft against me to the
Poor cousin !
head,
Have not I been the fast friend of youi
When it was thought I might be chosen
life
Pope,
Since mine began, and it was thought we
But then withdrew it. In full consis-
two
tory,
Might make one flesh, and cleave unto
When I was made Archbishop, he
each other
approved me.
As man and wife?
And how should he "have sent me Legate
Pole. Ah, cousin, I remember
hither,
How I would dandle you upon my knee
Deeming me heretic? and what heresy
At lisping-age. I watch'd you dancing
since?
once
But he was evermore mine enemy,
With your huge father; he look'd the
And hates the Spaniard — fiery-choleric.
Great Harry,
A drinker of black, strong, volcanic
You but his cockboat; prettily you
wines,
did it.
That ever make him fierier. I, a heretic?
And innocently. No — we were not made
Your Highness knows that in pursuing
One flesh in happiness, no happiness
heresy
here;
I have gone beyond your late Lord
But now we are made one flesh in
Chancellor, —
misery ;
He cried Enough ! enough ! before his
Our bridemaids are not lovely — Dis-
death. -—
appointment,
Gone beyond him and mine own natural
Ingratitude, Injustice, Evil-tongue,
man
Labour-in-vain.
2S
626
QUEEN MARY.
ACT V
Mary. Surely, not all in vain.
Peace, cousin, peace ! I am sad at heart
myself.
Pole. Our altar is a mound of dead
men's clay.
Dug from the grave that yawns for us
beyond;
And there is one Death stands behind
the Groom,
And there is one Death stands behind
the Bride —
Mary. Have you been looking at the
'Dance of Death'?
Pole. No; but these libellous papers
which I found
Strewn in your palace. Look you here
— the Pope
Pointing at me with * Pole, the heretic.
Thou hast burnt others, do thou burn
thyself,
Or I will burn thee; ' and this other;
see ! —
* We pray continually for the death
Of our accursed Queen and Cardinal
Pole.'
This last — I dare not read it her. \_Aside.
Mary. Away !
Why do you bring me these?
I thought you knew me better. I never
read,
I tear them; they come back upon my
dreams.
The hands that write them should be
burnt clean ofif
As Cranmer's, and the fiends that utter
them
Tongue-torn with pincers, lash'd to death,
or lie
Famishing in black cells, while famish'd
rats
Eat them alive. Why do they bring me
these?
Do you mean to drive me mad ?
Pole. I had forgotten
How these poor libels trouble you. Your
pardon.
Sweet cousin, and farewell ! * O bubble
world.
Whose colours in a moment break and fly ! '
Why, who said that? I know not —
true enough !
\_Puts up the papers, all but the last,
which falls. Exit Pole.
Alice. If Cranmer's spirit were a
mocking one,
And heard these two, there might be
sport for him. [^Aside.
Alary. Clarence, they hate me; even
while I speak
There lurks a silent dagger, listening
In some dark closet, some long gallery,
drawn.
And panting for my blood as I go by.
Lady Clarence. Nay, Madam, there
be loyal papers too.
And I have often found them.
Mary. Find me one !
Lady Clarence. Ay, Madam; but Sir
Nicholas Heath, the Chancellor,
Would see your Highness.
Mary. Wherefore should I see him?
Lady Clarence. Well, Madam, he
may bring you news from Philip.
Mary. So, Clarence.
Lady Clarence. Let me first put
up your hair;
It tumbles all abroad.
Mary. And the gray dawn
Of an old age that never will be mine
Is all the clearer seen. No, no; what
matters ?
Forlorn I am, and let me look forlorn.
Enter Sir Nicholas Heath.
LLeath. I bring your Majesty such
grievous news
I grieve to bring it. Madam, Calais is
taken.
Mary. What traitor spoke? Here,
let my cousin Pole
Seize him and burn him for a Lutheran.
'LLeath. Her Highness is unwell. I
will retire.
Lady Clarence. Madam, your Chan-
cellor, Sir Nicholas Heath.
Mary. Sir Nicholas ! I am stunn'd
— Nicholas Heath?
Methought some traitor smote me on the
head.
What said you, my good Lord, that our
brave English
Had sallied out from Calais and driven
back
The Frenchmen from their trenches ?
LLeath. Alas! no.
That gateway to the mainland over which
SCENE II.
QUEEN MARY.
627
Our flag hath floated for two hundred
years
Is France again.
Mary. So; but it is n(jt lost —
Not yet. Send out: let England as of
old
Rise lionlike, strike hard and deep into
The prey they are rending from her — ay,
and rend
The renders too. Send out, send out,
and make
Musters in all the counties; gather all
From sixteen years to sixty; collect the
fleet;
Let every craft that carries sail and gun
Steer toward Calais. Guisnes is not
taken yet?
Heath. Guisnes is not taken yet.
Mary. There yet is hope.
Heath. Ah, Madam, but your people
are so cold;
I do much fear that England will not
care.
Methinks there is no manhood left among
us.
Mary. Send out; I am too weak to
stir abroad :
Tell my mind to the Council — to the
Parliament :
Proclaim it to the winds. Thou art cold
thyself
To babble of their coldness. O would I
were
My father for an hour! Away now —
Quick ! \^Exit Heath.
I hoped I had served God with all my
might !
It seems 1 have not. Ah ! much heresy
Shelter'd in Calais. Saints, I have re-
built
Your shrines, set up your broken images;
Be comfortable to me. Suffer not
That my brief reign in England be de-
famed
Thro' all her angry chronicles hereafter
By loss of Calais. Grant me Calais.
Philip,
We have made war upon the Holy
Father
All for your sake : what good could come
of that?
Lady Clarence. No, Madam, not
against the Holy Father;
You did but help King Philip's war with
France,
Your troops were never down in Italy.
Mary. I am a byword. Heretic and
rebel
Point at me and make merry. Philip gone !
And Calais gone ! Time that I were
gone too !
Lady Clarence. Nay, if the fetid gutter
had a voice
And cried I was not clean, what should
I care?
Or you, for heretic cries? And I believe,
Spite of your melancholy Sir Nicholas,
Your England is as loyal as myself.
Mary {seeijig the paper dropt by Pole).
There ! there ! another paper ! said
you not
Many of these were loyal? Shall I try
If this be one of such?
Lady Clarence. Let it be, let it be.
God pardon me ! I have never yet
found one. \^Aside.
Mary (reads) . ' Your people hate you
as your husband hates you.'
Clarence, Clarence, what have I done?'
what sin
Beyond all grace, all pardon? Mother,
of God,
Thou knowest never woman meant so
well,
And fared so ill in this disastrous world.
My people hate me and desire my death.
Lady Clarence. No, Madam, no.
Mary. My husband hates me, and
desires my death.
Lady Clarence. No, Madam; these
are libels.
Mary. I hate myself, and I desire my
death.
Lady Clarence. Long live your
Majesty ! Shall Alice sing you
One of her pleasant songs? Alice, my
child.
Bring us your lute. (Alice goes^ They
say the gloom of Saul
Was lighten'd by young David's harp.
Mary. Too young!
And never knew a Philip.
Re-enter Alice.
Give me the lute.
He hates ine !
628
QUEEN MARY.
ACT V.
i^She sings^
Hapless doom of woman happy in betrothing!
Beauty passes like a breath and love is lost in
loathing:
Low, my lute; speak low, my lute, but say the
world is nothing —
Low, lute, low!
Love will hover round the flowers when they first
awaken ;
Love will fly the fallen leaf, and not be over-
taken ;
Low, my lute! oh low, rhy lute! we fade and are
forsaken —
Low, dear lute, low !
Take it away ! not low enough for me !
Alice. Your Grace hath a low voice.
Mary. How dare you say it?
Even for that he hates me. A low voice
Lost in a wilderness where none can
hear!
A voice of shipwreck on a shoreless sea !
A low voice from the dust and from the
grave
(^Sitting on the ground'). There, am I
low enough now?
Alice. Good Lord ! how grim and
ghastly looks her Grace,
With both her knees drawn upward to
her chin.
There was an old-world tomb beside my
father's.
And this was open'd, and the dead were
found
Sitting, and in this fashion; she looks a
corpse.
Enter Lady Magdalen Dacres.
Lady Magdalen. Madam, the Count
de Feria waits without.
In hopes to see your Highness.
Lady Clarence (^pointing to Mary).
Wait he must —
Her trance again. She neither sees nor
hears,
And may not speak for hours.
Lady Magdalen. Unhappiest
Of Queens and wives and women !
Alice {in the foreground with Lady
Magdalen). And all along
Of Philip.
Lady Magdalen. Not so loud ! Our
Clarence there
Sees ever such an aureole round the
Queen,
It gilds the greatest wronger of her peace,
Who stands the nearest to her.
Alice. Ay, this Philip ;
I used to love the Queen with all my
heart —
God help me, but methinks I love her less
For such a dotage upon such a man.
I would I were as tall and strong as you.
Lady Magdalen. I seem half-shamed
at times to be so tall.
Alice. You are the stateliest deer in
all the herd —
Beyond his aim — but I am small and
scandalous,
And love to hear bad tales of Philip.
Lady Magdalen. Why?
I never heard him utter worse of you
Than that you were low-statured.
Alice. Does he think
Low stature is low nature, or all women's
Low as his own?
Lady Magdalen. There you strike in
the nail.
This coarseness is a want of phantasy.
It is the low man thinks the woman low;
Sin is too dull to see beyond himself.
Alice. Ah, Magdalen, sin is bold as
well as dull.
How dared he?
Lady Magdalen. Stupid soldiers oft
are bold.
Poor lads, they see not what the general
sees,
A risk of utter ruin. I am not
Beyond his aim, or was not.
Alice. Who? Not you?
Tell, tell me ; save my credit with myself.
Lady Magdalen. I never breathed it
to a bird in the eaves,
Would not for all the stars and maiden
moon
Our drooping Queen should know ! In
Hampton Court
My window look'd upon the corridor;
And I was robing; — this poor throat of
mine.
Barer than I should wish a man to see it, —
When he we speak of drove the window
back,
And, like a thief, push'd in his royal
hand;
SCENE II.
QUEEN MARY.
629
But by God's providence a good stout
staff"
Lay near me; and you know me strong
of arm ;
I do believe I lamed his Majesty's
For a day or two, tho', give the Devil
his due,
I never found he bore me any spite.
Alice. I would she could have wedded
that poor youth,
My Lord of Devon — light enough, God
knows.
And mixt with Wyatt's rising — and the
boy
Not out of him — but neither cold, coarse,
cruel,
And more than all — no Spaniard.
Lady Clarence. Not so loud.
Lord Devon, girls ! what are you whis-
pering here?
Alice. Probing an old state-secret —
how it chanced
That this young Earl was sent on foreign.
travel,
Not lost his head.
Lady Clarence. There was no proof
against him.
Alice. Nay, Madam; did not Gardiner
intercept
A letter which the Count de Noailles
wrote
To that dead traitor Wyatt, with full
proof
Of Courtenay's treason? What became
of that?
Lady Clarence. Some say that Gardi-
ner, out of love for him.
Burnt it, and some relate that it was
lost
When Wyatt sack'd the Chancellor's
house in Southwark.
Let dead things rest.
Alice. Ay, and with him who died
Alone in Italy.
Lady Clarence. Much changed, I
hear,
Had put off levity and put graveness on.
The foreign courts report him in his
manner
Noble as his young person and old shield.
It might be so — but all is over now;
He caught a chill in the lagoons of Venice,
And died in Padua.
Mary {looking up suddenly'). Died in
the true faith?
Lady Clarence. Ay, Madam, happily.
Mary. Happier he than I.
Lady Magdalen. It seems her High-
ness hath awaken'd. Think you
That I might dare to tell her that the
Count —
Mary. I will see no man hence for
evermore,
Saving my confessor and my cousin Pole..
L^ady Magdalen. It is the Count de
Feria, my dear lady.
Mary. What Count?
Lady Magdalen. The Count de Feria,
from his Majesty
King Philip.
Mary. Philip ! quick ! loop up my
hair !
Throw cushions on that seat, and make
it throne-like.
Arrange my dress — the gorgeous Indian
shawl
That Philip brought me in our happy
days ! —
That covers all. So — am I somewhat
Queenlike,
Bride of the mightiest sovereign upon
earth?
Lady Clarence. Ay, so your Grace
would bide a moment yet.
Mary. No, no, he brings a letter.
I may die
Before I read it. Let me see him at
once.
Enter Count de Feria (kneels).
Feria. I trust your Grace is well.
{Aside) How her hand burns !
Mary. I am not well, but it will
better me.
Sir Count, to read the letter which you
bring.
Feria. Madam, I bring no letter.
Mary. How! no letter?
Feria. His Highness is so vex'd with
strange affairs —
Mary. That his own wife is no affair
of his.
Feria. Nay, Madam, nay! he sends
his veriest love,
And says, he will come quickly.
630
QUEEN MARY.
Mary. Doth he, indeed?
You, sir, do you remember what you said
When last you came to England?
Feria. Madam, I brought
My King's congratulations; it was hoped
Your Highness was once more in happy
state
To give him an heir male.
Mary. Sir, you said more;
You said he would come quickly. I had
horses
On all the road from Dover, day and
night;
On all the road from Harwich, night and
day;
But the child came not, and the husband
came not;
And yet he will come quickly. . . Thou
hast learnt
Thy lesson, and I mine. There is no
need
For Philip so to shame himself again.
Return,
And tell him that I know he comes no
more.
Tell him at last I know his love is
dead,
And that I am in state to bring forth
death —
Thou art commission'd to Elizabeth,
And not to me !
Feria. Mere compliments and wishes.
But shall I take some message from your
Grace?
Mary. Tell her to come and close my
dying eyes.
And wear my crown, and dance upon my
grave.
Feria. Then I may say your Grace
will see your sister?
Your Grace is too low-spirited. Air and
sunshine.
I would we had you, Madam, in our warm
Spain.
You droop in your dim London.
Mary. Have him away !
I sicken of his readiness.
Lady Clarence. My Lord Count,
Her Highness is too ill for colloquy.
Feria {kneels., and kisses her hand^. I
wish her Highness better. {Aside)
How her hand burns ! \_Exeunt.
SCENE III. — A House near
London.
Elizabeth, Steward of the House-
hold, Attendants.
Elizabeth. There's half an angel
wrong'd in your account;
Methinks I am all angel, that I bear it
Without more ruffling. Cast it o'er
again.
Steward. I were whole devil if I
wrong'd you, Madam.
\^Exit Steward.
Attendant. The Count de Feria, from
the King of Spain.
Elizabeth. Ah ! — let him enter. Nay,
you need not go :
[ To her Ladies.
Remain within the chamber, but apart.
We'll have no private conference. Wel-
come to England !
Enter Feria.
Feria. Fair island star !
Elizabeth. I shine ! What else,
Sir Count?
Feria. As far as France, and into
Philip's heart.
My King would know if you be fairly
served.
And lodged, and treated.
Elizabeth. You see the lodging, sir,
I am well-served, and am in everything
Most loyal and most grateful to the
Queen.
Feria. You should be grateful to my
master, too.
He spoke of this; and unto him you owe
That Mary hath acknowledged you her
heir.
Elizabeth, No, not to her nor him;
but to the people,
Who know my right, and love me, as I
love
The people ! whom God aid !
Feria. You will be Queen,
And, were I Philip —
Elizabeth. Wherefore pause you —
what?
Feria. Nay, but I speak from mine
own self, not him;
Yoiir royal sister cannot last; your hand
SCENE IV.
QUEEN MARY.
631
Will be much coveted ! What a delicate
one !
Our Spanish ladies have none such — and
there,
Were you in Spain, this fine fair gossamer
gold —
Like sun-gilt breathings on a frosty
dawn —
That hovers round your shoulder —
Elizabeth. Is it so fine?
Troth, some have said so.
Feria. — would be deemed a miracle.
Elizabeth. Your Philip hath gold hair
and golden beard;
There must be ladies many with hair like
mine.
Feria. Some few of Gothic blood
have golden hair,
But none like yours.
Elizabeth. I am happy you approve it.
Feria. But as to Philip and your
Grace — consider, —
If such a one as* you should match with
Spain,
What hinders but that Spain and England
join'd,
Should make the mightiest empire earth
has known.
Spain would be England on her seas, and
England
Mistress of ^e Indies.
Elizabeth. It may chance, that
England
Will be the Mistress of the Indies yet,
Without the help of Spain.
Feria. Impossible ;
Except you put Spain down.
Wide of the mark ev'n for a madman's
dream.
Elizabeth. Perhaps; but we have
seamen. Count de Feria,
I take it that the King hath spoken to
you;
But is Don Carlos such a goodly match?
Feria. Don Carlos, Madam, is but
twelve years old.
Elizabeth. Ay, tell the King that I
will muse upon it;
He is my good friend, and I would keep
him so;
But — he would have me Catholic of
Rome,
And that I scarce can be; and, sir, till now
My sister's marriage, and my father's
marriages,
Made me full fain t<j live and die a maid.
But I am much beholden to your King.
Have you aught else to tell me?
Feria. Nothing, Madam,
Save that methought I gather'd from the
Queen
That she would see your Grace before she
— died.
Elizabeth. God's death ! and where-
fore spake you not before?
We dajly with our lazy moments here,
And hers are number'd. Horses there,
without !
I am much beholden to the King, your
master.
Why did you keep me prating? Horses,
there ! '\^Exit Elizabeth, etc.
Feria. So from a clear sky falls the
thunderbolt !
Don Carlos? Madam, if you marry
Philip,
Then I and he will snaffle your 'God's
death,'
And break your paces in, and make you
tame;
God's death, forsooth — you do not know
King Philip. {^Exit.
SCENE IV. — London. Before the
Palace.
A light burning within. VOICES of the
night passing.
First. Is not yon light in the Queen's
chamber?
Second. Ay,
They say she's dying.
First. So is Cardinal Pole.
May the great angels join their wings,
and make
Down for their heads to heaven !
Second. Amen. Come on.
\_Exeunt.
Two Others.
First. There's the Queen's light. I
hear she cannot live.
Second. God curse her and her Legate ,'
Gardiner burns
Already; but to pay them full in kind,
632
QUEEN MARY.
ACT V,
The hottest hold in all the devil's den
Were but a sort of winter; sir, in Guern-
sey,
I watch'd a woman burn; and in her
agony
The mother came upon her — a child
was born —
And, sir, they hurl'd it back into the
fire,
That, being but baptized in fire, the
babe
Might be in fire for ever. Ah, good
neighbour.
There should be something fierier than
fire
To yield them their deserts.
First. Amen to all
Your wish, and further,
A Third Voice. Deserts ! Amen to
what? Whose deserts? Yours? You
have a gold ring on your finger, and soft
raiment about your body; and is not the
woman up yonder sleeping after all she
has done, in peace and quietness, on a
soft bed, in a closed room, with light,
fire, physic, tendance; and I have seen
the true men of Christ lying famine-dead
by scores, and under no ceiHng but the
cloud that wept on them, not for them.
First. Friend, tho' so late, it is not
safe to preach.
You had best go home. What are you?
Third. What am I? One who cries
continually with sweat and tears to the
Lord God that it would please Him out
of His infinite love to break down all
kingship and queenship, all priesthood
and prelacy; to cancel and abolish all
bonds of human allegiance, all the magis-
tracy, all the nobles, and all the wealthy;
and to send us again, according to His
promise, the one King, the Christ, and
all things in common, as in the day of the
first church, when Christ Jesus was King.
First. If ever I heard a madman, —
let's away !
Why, you long-winded — Sir, you go
beyond me.
I pride myself on being moderate.
Good night ! Go home. Besides, you
curse so loud,
The watch will hear you. Get you home
at once. \_Exeunt.
SCENE V. — London. A Room in
THE Palace.
A Gallery on one side. The Moonlight
streajning through a range of windows
on the ivall opposite. Mary, Lady
Clarence, Lady Magdalen Dacres,
Alice. Queen pacing the Gallery.
A zvriting-table in front. Queen
comes to the table and writes and goes
again, pacing the Gallery.
Lady Clarejice. Mine eyes are dim :
what hath she written? read.
Alice. ' I am dying, Philip ; come to
me.'
Lady Magdalen. There — up and
down, poor lady, up and down.
Alice. And how her shadow crosses
one by one
The moonlight casements pattern'd on
the wall,
Following her like hei: sorrow. She
turns again.
[Queen sits and writes, and goes again.
Lady Clarence. What hath she written
now?
Alice. Nothing; but 'come, come,
come,' and all awry,
And blotted by her tears. This cannot
last. [Qugen returns.
Mary. I whistle to the bird has
broken cage,
And all in vain. [Sitting down.
Calais gone — Guisnes gone, too — and
Philip gone !
Lady Clarence. Dear Madam, Philip
is but at the wars;
I cannot doubt but that he comes again;
And he is with you in a measure still.
I never look'd upon so fair a likeness
As your great King in armour there, his
hand ,
Upon his helmet,
[Pointing to the portrait of Y\vXyp on
the ivall.
Mary. Doth he not look noble?
I had heard of him in battle over seas,
And I would have my warrior all in arms.
He said it was not courtly to stand
helmeted
Before the Queen. He had his gracious
moment,
QUEEN MARY,
633
Altho' you'll not believe me. How he
smiles
As if he loved me yet !
Lady Clarence. And so he does.
Mary. He never loved me — nay, he
could not love me.
It M^as his father's policy against France.
I am eleven years older than he, poor
boy ! [ Weeps.
Alice. That was a lusty boy of twenty-
seven ; * \_Aside.
Poor enough in God's grace !
Mary. — And all in vain !
The Queen of Scots is married to the
Dauphin,
And Charles, the lord of this low world,
is gone;
And all his wars and wisdoms past away;
And in a moment I shall follow him.
Lady Clarence. Nay, dearest Lady,
see your good physician.
Mary. Drugs — but he knows they
cannot help me — says
That rest is all — tells me I must not
think —
That I must rest — I shall rest by and by.
Catch the wild cat, cage him, and when
he springs
And maims himself against the bars, say
'rest':
Why, you must kill him if you would
have him rest —
Dead or alive you cannot make him
happy.
Lady Clarence. Your Majesty has
lived so pure a life.
And done such mighty things by Holy
Church,
I trust that God will make you happy yet.
Mary. What is the strange thing
happiness? Sit down here:
Tell me thine happiest hour.
Lady Clarence. I will, if that
May make your Grace forget yourself a
little.
There runs a shallow brook across our
field
For twenty miles, where the black crOw
flies five,
And doth so bound and babble all the
way
As if itself were happy. It was May-
time,
And I was walking with the man I loved.
I loved him, but I thought I was not loved.
And both were silent, letting the wild
brook
Speak for us — till he stoop'd and gath-
er'd one
From out a bed of thick forget-me-nots,
Look'd hard and sweet at me, and gave
it me.
I took it, tho' I did not know I took it,
And put it in my bosom, and all at once
I felt his arms about me, and his lips —
Mary. O God ! I have been too slack,
too slack;
There are Hot Gospellers even among
our guards —
Nobles we dared not touch. We have
but burnt
The heretic priest, workmen, and women
and children.
Wet, famine, ague, fever, storm, wreck,
wrath, —
We have so play'd the coward; but by
God's grace.
We'll follow Philip's leading, and set up
The Holy Office here — garner the wheat,
And burn the tares with unquenchable
fire!
Burn ! —
Fie, what a savour ! tell the cooks to
close
The doors of all the offices below.
Latimer !
Sir, we are private with our women
here —
Ever a rough, blunt, and uncourtly fel-
low—
Thou light a torch that never will go
out !
'Tis out — mine flames. Women, the
Holy Father
Has ta'en the legateship from our cousin
Pole —
Was that well done? and poor Pole pines
of it.
As I do, to the death. I am but a woman,
I have no power. — Ah, weak and meek
old man.
Seven-fold dishonour'd even in the sight
Of thine own sectaries — No, no. No
pardon ! —
Why that was false : there is the right
hand still
634
QUEEN MARY,
ACT V
Beckons me hence.
Sir, you were burnt for heresy, not for
treason,
Remember that ! 'twas I and Bonner did
it,
And Pole; we are three to one — Have
you found mercy there,
Grant it me here : and see, he smiles and
goes,
Gentle as in life.
Alice. Madam, who goes? King
Philip?
Mary. No, Philip comes and goes,
but -never goes.
Women, when I am dead.
Open my heart, and there you will find
written
Two names, Philip and Calais; open
his, —
So that he have one, —
You will find Philip only, policy, policy, —
Ay, worse than that — not one hour true
to me !
Foul maggots crawling in a fester'd vice !
Adulterous to the very heart of Hell.
Hast thou a knife?
Alice. Ay, Madam, but o' God's
mercy —
Mary. Fool, think'st thou I would
peril mine own soul
By slaughter of the body? I could not,
girl,
Not this way — callous with a constant
stripe,
Unwoundable. The knife !
Alice. Take heed, take heed !
The blade is keen as death.
Mary. This Philip shall not
Stare in upon me in my haggardness;
Old, miserable, diseased,
Incapable of children. Come thou down.
[ Cuts out the picture and throws it dowft.
Lie there. ( IVails) O God, I have kill'd
my Philip !
Alice. No,
Madam, you have but cut the canvas
out;
We can replace it.
Mary. All is well then ; rest —
I will to rest; he said, I must have rest.
[ Cries of ' Elizabeth ' in the street.
Aery! What's that? Elizabeth? revolt?
A new Northumberland, another Wyatt?
I'll fight it on the threshold of the
grave.
Lady Clarence. Madam, your royal
sister comes to see you.
Mary. I will not see her.
Who knows if Boleyn's daughter be my
sister?
I will see none except the priest. Your
arm. [ 7^o Lady Clarence.
O Saint of Aragon, with that sweet worn
smile
Among thy patient wrinkles — Help me
hence. {Exeunt.
The Priest passes. .Enter Elizabeth
and Sir William Cecil.
Elizabeth. Good counsel yours —
No one in waiting? still,
As if the chamberlain were Death him-
self!
The room she sleeps in — is not this the
way?
No, that way there are voices. Am I
too late?
Cecil , . . God guide me lest I lose the
way. \_Exit Elizabeth.
Cecil. Many points weather'd, many
perilous ones.
At last a harbour opens; but therein
Sunk rocks — they need fine steering —
much it is
To be nor mad, nor bigot — have a
mind —
Nor let Priests' talk, or dream of worlds
to be,
Miscolour things about her — sudden
touches
For him, or him — sunk rocks; no pas-
sionate faith —
But — if let be — balance and compro-
mise;
Brave, wary, sane to the heart of her —
a Tudor
School'd by the shadow of death — a
Boleyn, too,
Glancing across the Tudor — not so well.
Enter Alice.
How is the good Queen now?
Alice. Away from Philip.
Back in her childhood — prattling to her
mother
Of her betrothal to the Emperor Charles,
SCENE V.
QUEEN MARY.
635
And childlike-jealous of him again — and
once
She thank'd her father sweetly for his
book
Against that godless German. Ah, those
days
Were happy. It was never merry world
In England, since the Bible came among
us.
Cecil. And who says that?
Alice. It is a saying among the
Catholics.
Cecil. It never will be merry world
in England,
Till all men have their Bible, rich and
poor.
Alice. The Queen is dying, or you
dare not say it.
Enter Elizabeth.
Elizabeth. - The Queen is dead.
Cecil. Then here she stands! my
homage.
Elizabeth. She knew me, and ac-
knowledged me her heir,
Pray'd me to pay her debts, and keep
the Faith;
Then claspt the cross, and pass'd away
in peace.
I left her lying still and beautiful,
More beautiful than in life. Why would
you vex yourself,
Poor sister? Sir, I swear I have no heart
To be your Queen. To reign is restless
fence,
Tierce, quart, and trickery. Peace is
with the dead.
Her life was winter, for her spring was
nipt:
And she loved much : pray God she be
forgiven.
Cecil. Peace with the dead, who never
were at peace !
Yet she loved one so much — I needs
must say —
That never English monarch dying left
England so little.
Elizabeth. But with Cecil's aid
And others, if our person be secured
From traitor stabs — we will make Eng-
land great.
Enter Paget, and other Lords of the
Council, Sir Ralph Bagenhall, etc.
Lords. God save Elizabeth, the Queen
of England !
Bagenhall. God save the Crown ! the
Papacy is no more.
Paget {aside) . Are we so sure of that ?
Acclamation. God save the Queen !
HAROLD:
A DRAMA.
To His Excellency
THE RIGHT HON. LORD LYTTON,
Viceroy and Governor-General of India.
My dear Lord Lytton, — After old-world records — such as the Bayeux tapestry and the Roman
de Rou, — Edward Freeman's History of the Norman Conquest, and your father's Historical Romance
treating of the same times, have been mainly helpful to me m writing this Drama. Your father
dedicated his ' Harold ' to my father's brother ; allow me to dedicate my ' Harold ' to yourself.
A. TENNYSON.
SHOW-DAY AT BATTLE ABBEY, 1876.
A GARDEN here — May breath and bloom of spring —
The cuckoo yonder from an English elm
Crying ' with my false egg I overwhelm
The native nest: ' and fancy hears the ring
Of harness, and that deathful arrow sing,
And Saxon battleaxe clang on Norman helm.
Here rose the dragon-banner of our realm:
Here fought, here fell, our Norman-slander'd king.
O Garden blossoming out of English blood !
O strange hate-healer Time ! We stroll and stare
Where might made right eight hundred.years ago;
Might, right? ay good, so all things make for good —
But he and he, if soul be soul, are where
Each stands full face with all he did below.
Sons of
Godwin.
DRAMATIS PERSON-M.
King Edward the Confessor.
Stigand, created Archbishop of Canterbury by the Antipope Benedict.
AiSiRB.0, Archbishop of York. 'Ihe Norman Bishop of London.
Harold, Earl of Wessex, afterivards King of England
TosTiG, Earl of Northumbria
GuRTH, Earl of East A nglia
Leofwin, Earl of Kent and Essex
wulfnoth
Count William of Normandy. William Rufus.
William Malet, a Norman Noble. ^
Edwin, Earl of Mercia ) Sons of Alfgar of
MoRCAR, Earl of Northumbria after Tosiig S Mercia.
Gamel, a Northumbrian Thane. GuY, Count of Ponthieu.
Rolf, a Ponthieu Fisherman. Hugh Margot, a Norman Monk.
OsGOD and Athelric, Canons from Waltham.
The Queen, Edward the Confessor's Wife, Daughter of Godwin.
Aldwvth, Daughter of Alfgar and Widow of Griffyth, King of Wales.
Edith, Ward of King Edward.
Courtiers, Earls a7td Thanes, Men-at-Arms, Canons of Waltham, Fishermen, etc.
1 . • . quidam partim Normannus et Anglus
Compater Heraldi. (^Guy of Amienst sZj.)
ACT I, SCENE
HAROLD.
637
ACT I.
SCENE I. — London. The King's
Palace.
(/4 comet seen through the open zvmdoiv.)
Aldwyth, Gamel, Courtiers talking
together.
First Courtier. Lo? there once more
— this is the seventh night!
Yon grimly -glaring, treble - brandish'd
scourge
Of England !
Second Courtier. Horrible !
First Courtier. Look you, there's a star
That dances in it as mad with agony !
Third Courtier. Ay, like a spirit in
Hell who skips and flies
To right and left, and cannot scape the
flame.
Second Courtier. Steam'd upward
from the undescendible
Abysm.
First Courtier. Or floated downward
from the throne
Of God Almighty.
Aldwyth. Gamel, son of Orm,
What thinkest thou this means?
Gamel. War, my dear lady !
Aldwyth. Doth this affright thee?
Gamel. Mightily, my dear lady !
Aldwyth. Stand by me then, and look
upon my face,
Not on the comet.
{Fnter Morcar.)
Brother ! why so pale ?
Morcar. It glares in heaven, it flares
upon the Thames,
The people are as tnick as bees below,
They hum like bees, — they cannot speak
— for awe;
Tvook to the skies, then to the river, strike
Their hearts, and hold their babies up to it.
I think that they would Molochise them
too,
To have the heavens clear.
Aldwyth. They fright not me.
{Enter Leofwin, after him Gurth.)
Ask thou Lord Leofwin what he thinks
of this !
Morcar. Lord Leofwin, dost thou
believe, that these
Three rods of blood-red fire up yonder
mean
The doom of England and the wrath of
Heaven ?
Bishop of London (passing'). Did ye
not cast with bestial violence
Our holy Norman bishops down from all
Their thrones in England? I alone
remain.
Why should not Heaven be wroth ?
Leofwin. With us, or thee?
Bishop of London. Did ye not outlaw
your archbishop Robert,
Robert of Jumieges — well-nigh murder
him too?
Is there no reason for the wrath of
Heaven?
Leofwin. Why then the wrath of
Heaven hath three tails.
The devil only one.
\_Exit Bishop of London.
{Enter Archbishop Stigand. )
Ask our Archbishop.
Stigand should know the purposes of
Heaven.
Stigand. Not I. I cannot read the
face of heaven;
Perhaps our vines will grow the better for it.
Leofwin {laughing'). He can but read
the king's face on his coins.
Stigand. Ay, ay, young lord, there the
king's face is power.
Gurth. O father, mock not at a public
fear.
But tell us, is this pendent hell in heaven
A harm to England?
Stigand. Ask it of King Edward !
And he may tell thee, / am a harm to
England.
Old uncanonical Stigand — ask of me
Who had my pallium from an Antipope !
Not he the man — for in our windy world
What's up is faith, what's down is heresy.
Our friends, the Normans, holp to shake
his chair.
I have a Norman fever on me, son.
And cannot answer sanely. . . . What it
means?
Ask our broad Earl.
{^Pointing to Harold, who enters.
638
HAROLD.
ACT i.
Harold {seeing Gamel). Hail, Gamel,
son of Orm !
Albeit no rolling stone, my good friend
Gamel,
Thou hast rounded since we met. Thy
life at home
Is easier than mine here. Look ! am I not
Work-wan, flesh-fallen?
Gamel. Art thou sick, good Earl?
Harold. Sick as an autumn swallow
for a voyage,
Sick for an idle week of hawk and hound
Beyond the seas — a change ! When
camest thou hither?
Gamel. To-day, good Earl.
Harold. Is the North quiet, Gamel?
Gamel. Nay, there be murmurs, for
thy brother breaks us
With over-taxing — quiet, ay, as yet —
Nothing as yet.
Harold. Stand by him, mine old
friend.
Thou art a great voice in Northumber-
land !
Advise him : speak him sweetly, he will
hear thee.
He is passionate but honest. Stand thou
by him !
More talk of this to-morrow, if yon weird
sign
Not blast us in our dreams. — Well, father
Stigand —
[ To Stigand, ivho advances to him.
Stigand {pointing to the comet). War
there, my son? is that the doom
of England?
Harold. Why not the doom of all the
world as well?
For all the world sees it as well as Eng-
land.
These meteors came and went before our
day.
Not harming any: it threatens us no
more
Than French or Norman. War? the
worst that follows
Things that seem jerk'd out of the com-
mon rut
Of Nature is the hot religious fool,
Who, seeing war in heaven, for heaven's
credit
Makes it on earth : but look, where
Edward draws
A faint foot hither, leaning upon Tostig.
He hath learnt to love our Tostig much
of late.
Leofwin. And he hath learnt, despite
^ the tiger in him.
To sleek and supple himself to the king's
hand.
Gurth. I trust the kingly touch that
cures the evil
May serve to charm the tiger out of him.
Leofwin. He hath as much of cat as
tiger in him.
Our Tostig loves the hand and not the
man.
Harold. Nay ! Better die than lie !
Enter King, Queen, and Tostig.
Edivard. In heaven signs !
Signs upon earth ! signs everywhere !
your Priests
Gross, worldly, simoniacal, unlearn'd !
They scarce can read their Psalter; and
your churches
Uncouth, unhandsome, while in Norman-
land
God speaks thro' abler voices, as He
dwells
In statelier shrines. I say not this, as
being
Half Norman-blooded, nor as some have
held.
Because I love the Norman better — no,
But dreading God's revenge upon this
realm
For narrowness and coldness : and I say
it
For the last time perchance, before I go
To find the sweet refreshment of the
Saints.
I have lived a life of utter purity :
I have builded the great church of Holy
Peter :
I have wrought miracles — to God the
glory —
And miracles will in my name be wrought
Hereafter. — I have fought the fight and
go —
I see the flashing of the gates of pearl —
And it is well with me, tho' some of you
Have scorn'd me — ay — but after I am
gone
Woe, woe to England I I have had a
vision;
SCENE I.
HAROLD.
639
The seven sleepers in the cave at Ephesus
Have turn'd from right to left.
Harold. My most dear Master,
"What matters? let them turn from left to
right
And sleep again.
Tostig. Too hardy with thy king !
A life of prayer and fasting well may see
Deeper into the mysteries of heaven
Than thou, good brother.
Aldwyth {aside). Sees he into thine,
That thou wouldst have his promise for
the crown?
Edward. Tostig says true; my son,
thou art too hard,
Not stagger'd by this ominous earth and
heaven :
But heaven and earth are threads of the
same loom,
Play into one another, and weave the web
That may confound thee yet.
Harold. Nay, I trust not,
For I have served thee long and honestly.
Edward. I know it, son; I am not
thankless: thou
Hast broken all my foes, lighten'd for me
The weight of this poor crown, and left
me time
And peace for prayer to gain a better one.
Twelve years of service ! England loves
thee for it.
Thou art the man to rule her !
Aldwyth {aside). So, not Tostig!
Harold. And after those twelve years
a boon, my king.
Respite, a holiday : thyself wast wont
To love the chase : thy leave to set my feet
On board, and hunt and hawk beyond
the seas !
Edward. What with this flaming
horror overhead?
Harold. Well, when it passes then.
. Edward. Ay if it pass.
Go not to Normandy — go not to Nor-
mandy.
Harold. And wherefore not, my king,
to Normandy?
Is not my brother Wulfnoth hostage there
For my dead father's loyalty to thee?
I pray thee, let me hence and bring him
home.
Edivard. Not thee, my son: some
other messenger.
Harold. And why not me, my lord,
to Normandy?
Is not the Norman Count thy friend and
mine?
Edward. I pray thee, do not go to
Normandy.
Harold. Because my father drove the
Normans out
Of England? — That was many a summer
gone —
Forgotten and forgiven by them and thee.
Edivard. Harold, I will not yield thee
leave to go.
Harold. Wiiy then to Flanders. I
will hawk and hunt
In Flanders.
Edward. Be there not fair woods and
fields
In England? Wilful, wilful. Go — the
Saints
Pilot and prosper all thy wandering out
And homeward. Tostig, I am faint again.
Son Harold, I will in and pray for thee.
\_Exit, leaning on Tostig, and fol-
lowed by Stigand, Morcar, and
Courtiers.
Harold. What lies upon the mind of
our good king
That he should harp this way on Nor-
mandy?
Queen. Brother, the king is wiser
than he seems;
And Tostig knows it; Tostig loves the
king.
Harold. And love should know; and
— be the king so wise, —
Then Tostig too were wiser than he
seems.
I love the man but not his phantasies.
{Re-enter To'SiYG.)
Well, brother.
When didst thou hear from thy North-
umbria?
Tostig. When did I hear aught but
this ' When ' from thee?
Leave me alone, brother, with my North-
umbria :
She is my mistress, let me look to her !
The King hath made me Earl; make me
not fool !
Nor make the King a fool, who made
me Earl !
640
HAROLD.
Harold. No, Tostig — lest I make
myself a fool
Who made the King who made thee,
make thee Earl.
Tostig. Why chafe me then? Thou
knowest I soon go wild.
Gurth. Come, come ! as yet thou art
not gone so wild
But thou canst hear the best and wisest
of us.
Harold. So says old Gurth, not I :
yet hear ! thine earldom,
Tostig, hath been a kingdom. Their old
crown
Is yet a force among them, a sun set
But leaving light enough for Alfgar's
house
To strike thee down by — nay, this ghastly
glare
May heat their fancies.
Tostig. My most worthy brother,
Thou art the quietest man in all the
world —
Ay, ay and wise in peace and great in
war —
Pray God the people choose thee for
their king !
But all the powers of the house of Godwin
Are not enframed in thee.
Harold. Thank the Saints, no !
But thou hast drain'd them shallow by
thy tolls,
And thou art ever here about the King :
Thine absence well may seem a want of
care.
Cling to their love; for, now the sons of
Godwin
Sit topmost in the field of England, envy,
Like the rough bear beneath the tree,
good brother,
Waits till the man let go.
Tostig. Good counsel truly !
I heard from my Northumbria yesterday.
Harold. How goes it then with thy
Northumbria? Well?
Tostig. And wouldst thou that it went
aught else than well?
Harold. I would it went as well as
with mine earldom,
Leofwin's and Gurth's.
Tostig. Ye govern milder men.
Gurth. We have made them milder
by just government.
Tostig. Ay, ever give yourselves your
own good word.
Leofwin. An honest gift, by all the
Saints, if giver
And taker be but honest ! but they bribe
Each other, and so often, an honest world
Will not believe them.
Harold. I may tell thee, Tostig,
I heard from thy Northumberland to-day.
Tostig. From spies of thine to spy my
nakedness
In my poor North !
Harold. There is a movement there,
A blind one — nothing yet.
Tostig. Crush it at once
With all the power I have ! ■^— I must — I
will ! —
Crush it half-born! Fool still? or wis-
dom there.
My wise head-shaking Harold?
Harold. Make not thou
The nothing something. Wisdom when
in power
And wisest, should not frown as Power,
but smile
As kindness, watching all, till the true
must
Shall make her strike as Power: but
when to strike —
O Tostig, O dear brother — If they prance,
Rein in, not lash them, lest they rear and
run
And break both neck and axle.
Tostig. Good again !
Good counsel tho' scarce needed. Pour
not water
In the full vessel running out at top
To swamp the house.
Leofivin. Nor thou be a wild thing
Out of the waste, to turn and bite the
hand
Would help thee from the trap.
Tostig. Thou playest in tune,
Leofwin. To the deaf adder thee, that
wilt not dance
However wisely charm'd.
Tostig. No more, no more !
Gurth. I likewise cry ' no more.'
Unwholesome talk
For Godwin's house ! Leofwin, thou hast
a tongue !
Tostig, thou look'st as thou wouldst
spring upon him.
SCENE II.
HAROLD.
641
St. Olaf, not while I am by ! Come, come,
Join hands, let brethren dwell in unity;
Let kith and kin -stand close as our
shield-wall,
Who breaks us then ? I say, thou hast a
tongue,
And Tostig is not stout enough to bear it.
Vex him not, Leofwin.
Tostig. No, I am not vext, —
Altho' ye seek to vex me, one and all.
I have to make report of my good earl-
dom
To the good king who gave it — not to
you —
Not any of you. — I am not vext at all.
Ha7-old. The king? the king is ever
at his prayers;
In all that handles matter of the state
I am the king.
Tostig. That shalt thou never be
If I can thwart thee.
Harold. Brother, brother !
Tostig. Away !
\Exit Tostig.
Queen. Spite of this grisly star ye
three must gall
Poor Tostig.
Leofwin. Tostig, sister, galls himself;
He cannot smell a rose but pricks his
nose
Against the thorn, and rails against the
rose.
Queen. I am the only rose of all the
stock
That never thorn'd him; Edward loves
him, so
Ye hate him. Harold always hated him.
Why — how they fought when boys —
and. Holy Mary !
How Harold used to beat him !
Harold. Why, boys will fight.
Leofwin would often fight me, and I beat
him.
Even old Gurth would fight. I had much
ado
To hold mine own against old Gurth.
Old Gurth,
We fought like great states for grave
cause; but Tostig —
On a sudden — at a something — for a
nothing —
The boy would fist me hard, and when
we fought
I conquer'd, and he loved me none the
less.
Till thou wouldst get him all apart, and
tell him
That where he was but worsted, he was
v/rong'd.
Ah ! thou hast taught the king to spoil
him too;
Now the spoilt child sways both. Take
heed, take heed;
Thou art the Queen; ye are boy and girl
no more :
Side not with Tostig in any violence,
Lest thou be sideways guilty of the vio-
lence.
Queen. Come fall not foul on me. I
leave thee, brother.
Harold. Nay, my good sister —
\_Exetint Queen, Harold, Gurth, and
Leofwin.
Aldtvyih. Gamel, son of Orm,
W^hat thinkest thou this means?
\_Pointi7ig to the comet.
Gamel. War, my dear lady,
War, waste, plague, famine, all maligni-
ties.
Aldzuyth. It means the fall of Tostig
from his earldom.
Gamel. That were too small a matter
for a comet !
Aldwyth. It means the lifting of the
house of Alfgar.
Gamel. Too small ! a comet would
not show for that !
Aldtvyth. Not small for thee, if thou
canst compass it.
Gamel. Thy love?
Aldwyth. As much as I can give
thee, man;
This Tostig is, or like to be, a tyrant;
Stir up thy people : oust him !
Gamel. And thy love?
Aldtvyth. As much as thou canst bear.
Gamel. _ I can, bear all,
And not be giddy.
Aldwyth. No more now : to-morrow.
SCENE II. — In the Garden. The
King's House near London. Sun-
SErr.
Edith. Mad for thy mate, passionate
nightingale . . .
642
HAROLD,
ACT 1.
I love thee for it — ay, but stay a mo-
ment;
He can but stay a moment : he is going.
I fain would hear him coming ! . . . near
me , . . near,
Somewhere' — To draw him nearer with a
charm
Like thine to thine.
{Singing.)
Love is come with a song and a smile.
Welcome Love with a smile and a song :
Love can stay but a little while.
Why cannot he stay? They call him
away:
Ye do him wrong, ye do him wrong;
Love will stay for a whole life long.
Enter Harold.
Harold. The nightingales in Have-
ringatte-Bower
Sang out their loves so loud, that Ed-
ward's prayers
Were deafen'd and he pray'd them dumb,
and thus
I dumb thee too, my wingless nightingale !
{^Kissing her.
Edith. Thou art my music ! Would
their wings were mine
To follow thee to Flanders ! Must thou
go?
Harold. Not must, but will. It is but
for one moon.
Edith. Leaving so many foes in Ed-
ward's hall
To league against thy weal. The Lady
Aldwyth
Was here to-day, and when she touch'd
on thee,
She stammer' d in her hate; I am sure
she hates thee,
Pants for thy blood.
Harold. Well, I have given her
• c^use —
I fear no woman.
Edith. Hate not one who felt
Some pity for thy hater ! I am sure
Her morning wanted sunlight, she so
praised
The convent and lone life — within the
pale —
Beyond the passion. Nay — she held
with Edward,
At least methought she held with holy
Edward,
That marriage was half sin.
Harold. A lesson worth
Finger and thumb — thus {snaps his fin-
gers). And my answer to *it —
See here — an interwoven H and E!
Take thou this ring; I will demand his
ward
From Edward when I come again. Ay,
would she?
She to shut up my blossom in the dark !
Thou art my nun, thy cloister in mine
arms.
Edith {taking the ring). Yea, but
Earl Tostig —
Harold. That's a truer fear !
For if the North take fire, I should be
back ;
I shall be, soon enough.
Edith. Ay, but last night
An evil dream that ever came and went —
Harold. A gnat that vext thy pillow !
Had I been by,
I would have spoil'd his horn. My girl,
what was it?
Edith. Oh ! that thou wert not going !
For so methought it was our marriage-
morn.
And while we stood together, a dead man
Rose from behind the altar, tore away
My marriage ring, and rent my bridal
veil;
And then I turn'd, and saw the church
all fill'd
With dead men upright from their graves,
and all
The dead men made at thee to murder
thee,
But thou didst back thyself against a
pillar,
And strike among them with thy battle-
axe —
There, what a dream !
Harold. Well, well — a dream —
no more !
Edith. Did not Heaven speak to men
in dreams of old ?
Harold. Ay — well — of old. I tell
thee what, my child;
Thou hast misread this merry dream of
thine,
Taken the rifted pillars of the wood
HAROLD.
643
For smooth stone columns of the sanct-
uary,
The shadows of a hundred fat dead deer
For dead men's ghosts. True, that the
battle-axe
Was out of place; it should have been
the bow. —
Come, thou shalt dream no more such
dreams; I swear it,
By mine own eyes — and these two sap-
phires — these
Twin rubies, that are amulets against all
The kisses of all kind of womankind
In Flanders, till the sea shall roll me back
To tumble at thy feet.
Edith. That would but shame me.
Rather than make me vain. The sea may
roll
Sand, shingle, shore-weed, not the living
rock
Which guards the land.
Harold. Except it be a soft one.
And undereaten to the fall. Mine
amulet . . .
This last . . . upon thine eyelids, to
shut in
A happier dream. Sleep, sleep, and thou
shalt see
My greyhounds fleeting like a beam of
light.
And hear my peregrine and her bells in
heaven;
And other bells on earth, which yet are
heaven's;
Guess what they be.
Edith. He cannot guess who knows.
Farewell, my king.
Harold. Not yet, but then — my queen.
\_Exeunt.
Enter Aldjvyth from the thicket.
Aldwyth. The kiss that charms thine
eyelids into sleep.
Will hold mine waking. Hate him? I
could love him
More, tenfold, than this fearful child can
do;
Griffyth I hated : why not hate the foe
Of England? Griffyth when I saw him
flee.
Chased deer-like up his mountains, all
the blood
That should have only pulsed for Griffyth,
beat
For his pursuer. I love him or think I
love him.
If he were King of England, I his queen,
I might be sure of it. Nay, I do love
him. —
She must be cloister'd somehow, lest the
king
Should yield his ward to Harold's will.
What harm?
She hath but blood enough to live, not
love. —
When Harold goes and Tostig, shall I
play
The craftier Tostig with him ? fawn upon
him?
Chime in with all? *0 thou more saint
than king ! '
And that were true enough. ' O l)lessed
relics ! '
* O Holy Peter ! ' If he found me thus,
Harold might hate me; he is broad and
honest.
Breathing an easy gladness . . . not
like Aldwyth . . .
For which I strangely love him. Should
not England
Love Aldwyth, if she stay the feuds that
part
The sons of Godwin from the sons of
Alfgar
By such a marrying? Courage, noble
Aldwyth !
Let all thy people bless thee !
Our wild Tostig,
Edward hath made him Earl : he would
be king : —
The dog that snapt the shadow, dropt the
bone. —
I trust he may do well, this Gamel, whom
I play upon, that he may play the note
Whereat the dog shall howl and run, and
Harold
Hear the king's music, all alone with
him,
Pronounced his heir of England.
I see the goal and half the way to it. —
Peace-lover is our Harold for the sake
Of England's wholeness — so — to shake
the North
With earthquake and disruption — some
division —
644
HAROLD.
Then fling mine own fair person in the gap
A sacrifice to Harokl, a peace-offering,
A scape-goat marriage — all the sins of
both
The houses on mine head — then a fair
life
And bless the Queen of England.
Morcar {^coming frotn the thicket). Art
thou assured
By this, that Harold loves but Edith?
Aldwyth. Morcar !
Why creep'st thou like a timorous beast
of prey
Out of the bush by night?
Morcar. I follow'd thee.
Aldwyth. Follow my lead, and I will
make thee earl.
Morcar. What lead then?
Aldwyth. Thou shalt flash it secretly
Among the good Northumbrian folk,
that 1 —
That Harold loves me — yea, and pres-
ently
That I and Harold are betroth'd — and
last —
Perchance that Harold wrongs me; tho'
I would not
That it should come to that.
Morcar. I will both flash
And thunder for thee.
Aldwyth. I said * secretly ' ;
It is the flash that murders, the poor
thunder
Never harm'd head.
Morcar. But thunder may bring down
That which the flash hath stricken.
Aldwyth. Down with Tostig !
That first of all. — And when doth Harold-
go?
Morcar. To-morrow — first to Bosham,
then to Flanders.
Aldwyth. Not to come back till
Tostig shall have shown
And redden'd with his people's blood the
teeth
That shall be broken by us — yea, and
thou
Chair'd in his place. Good-night, and
dream thyself
Their chosen Earl. [^Exit Aldwyth.
Morcar. Earl first, and after that
Who knows I may not dream myself their
king!
ACT II.
SCENE I. — Seashore. Ponthieu.
Night.
Harold and his Men, wrecked.
Harold. Friends, in that last inhos-
pitable plunge
Our boat hath burst her ribs; but ours
are whole;
I have but bark'd my hands.
Attendant. I dug mine into
My old fast friend the shore, and clinging
thus
Felt the remorseless outdraught of the
deep
Haul like a great strong fellow at my legs.
And then I rose and ran. The blast that
came
So suddenly hath fallen as suddenly —
Put thou the comet and this blast to-
gether —
Harold. Put thou thyself and mother-
wit together.
Be not a fool !
{Enter Fishermen with torches, Harold
going tip to one of them, Rolf.)
Wicked sea-will-o'-the-
isp :
Wolf of the shore ! dog, with thy lying
lights
Thou hast betray'd us on these rocks of
thine !
Rolf. Ay, but thou liest as loud as the
black herring-pond behind thee. We be
fishermen; I came to see after my nets.
Harold. To drag us into them.
Fishermen ? devils !
Who, while ye fish for men with your
false fires,
Let the great Devil fish for your own souls.
Rolf Nay then, we be liker the blessed
Apostles ; they were fishers of men. Father
Jean says.
Harold. I had liefer that the fish had
swallowed me.
Like Jonah, than have known there were
such devils.
What's to be done?
[ To his Men — goes apart with them.
Fisherman. Rolf, what fish did swallow
Jonah?
SCENE II.
HAROLD.
645
Rolf, A whale !
Fisherman. Then a whale to a whelk
we have swallowed the King of England.
I saw him over there. Look thee, Rolf,
when I was down in the fever, she was
down with the hunger, and thou didst
stand by her and give her thy crabs, and
set her up again, till now, by the patient
Saints, she's as crabb'd as ever.
Rolf. And I'll give her my crabs again,
when thou art down again.
Fisherman. I thank thee, Rolf. Run
thou to Count Guy; he is hard at hand.
Tell him what hath crept into our creel,
and he will fee thee as freely as he will
wrench this outlander's ransom out of
him — and why not? for what right had
he to get himself wrecked on another
man's land?
Rolf. Thou art the human-heartedest,
Christian-charitiest of all crab-catchers.
Share and share alike ! \^Exit.
I/aroM (lo FishQYmsLn). Fellow, dost
thou catch crabs?
Fisherman. As few as I may in a
wind, and less than I would in a calm.
Ay!
Harold. I have a mind that thou shalt
•catch no more.
Fisher m an. How?
Harold. I have a mind to brain thee
with mine axe.
Fisherman. Ay, do, do, and our great
Count crab will make his nippers meet
in thine heart; he'll sweat it out of thee,
he'll sweat it out of thee. Look, he's
here! He'll speak for himself! Hold
thine own, if thou canst !
Etiter Guy, Count of Ponthieu.
Harold. Guy, Count of Ponthieu?
Guy. Harold, Earl of Wessex !
Harold. Thy villains with their lying
lights have wreck'd us!
Guy. Art thou not Earl of Wessex?
Harold. In mine earldom
A man may hang gold bracelets on a
bush,
And leave them for a ye'ar, and coming
back
Find them again.
Guy. Thou art a mighty man
In thine own earldom !
Harold. Were such murderous liars
In Wessex — if I caught them, they
should hang
ClifT-gibbeted for sea-marks; our sea-mew
Winging their only wail !
Guy. Ay, but my men
Hold that the shipwreckt are accursed of
God; —
What hinders me to hold with mine own
men?
Harold. The Christian manhood of
the man who reigns !
Guy. Ay, rave thy worst, but in our
oubliettes
Thou shalt or rot or ransom. Hale him
hence ! [ To one of his Attendants.
Fly thou to William; tell him we have
Harold.
SCENE II. — Bayeux. Palace.
Count William and William Malet.
William. We hold our Saxon wood-
cock in the springe.
But he begins to flutter. As I think
He was thine host in England when I
went
To visit Edward.
Malet. Yea, and there, my lord,
To make allowance for their rougher
fashions,
I found him all a noble host should be.
William. Thou art his friend : thou
know'st my claim on England
Thro' Edward's promise : we have him
in the toils.
And it were well, if thou shouldst let him
feel
How dense a fold of danger nets him
round.
So that he bristle himself against my will.
Malet. What would I do, my lord, if
I were you?
William. What wouldst thou do?
Malet. My lord, he is thy guest.
William. Nay, by the splendour of
God, no guest of mine.
He came not to see me, had past me by
To hunt and hawk elsewhere, save for
the fate
Which hunted him when that un-Saxon
blast,
646
HAROLD.
ACT II.
And bolts of thunder moulded in high
heaven
To serve the Norman purpose, drave and
crack'd
His boat on Ponthieu beach; where our
friend Guy
Had wrung his ransom from him by the
rack,
But that I stept between and purchased
him,
Translating his captivity from Guy
To mine own hearth at Bayeux, where he
sits
My ransom'd prisoner.
Malet. Well, if not with gold,
With golden deeds and iron strokes that
brought
Thy war with Brittany to a goodlier close
Than else had been, he paid his ransom
back.
William. So that henceforth they are
not like to league
With Harold against me.
Malet. A marvel, how
He from the liquid sands of Coesnon
Haled thy shore-swallow'd, armour'd
Normans up
To fight for thee again !
IVilliafn. Perchance against
Their saver, save thou save him from
himself.
Malet. But I should let him home
again, my lord.
William. Simple ! let fly the bird
within the hand.
To catch the bird again within the bush !
No.
Smooth thou my way, before he clash
with me;
I want his voice in England for the
crown,
I want thy voice with him to bring him
round ;
And being brave he must be subtly cow'd,
And being truthful wrought upon to swear
Vows that he dare not break. England
our own
Thro' Harold's help, he shall be my dear
friend
As well as thine, and thou thyself shalt
have
Large lordship there of lands and terri-
tory.
Malet. I knew thy purpose; he and
Wulfnoth never
Have met, except in public; shall they
meet
In private? I have often talk'd with
Wulfnoth,
And stuff'd the boy with fears that these
may act
On Harold when they meet.
William. Then let them meet !
Malet. I can but love this noble,
honest Harold.
William. Love him! why not? thine
is a loving office,
I have commission'd thee to save the
man :
Help the good ship, showing the sunkei:'
rock.
Or he is wreckt for ever.
Enter William Rufus.
William Rufus. Father.
William. Well, boy.
William Rufus. They have taken
away the toy thou gavest me.
The Norman knight.
Williajn. Why, boy?
Willia?n Rufus. Because I broke
The horse's leg — it was mine osvn to
break;
I like to have my toys, and break them
too.
Williatn. Well, thou shalt have an-
other Norman knight !
William Rufus. And may I break
his legs?
William. Yea, — get thee gone !
William Rufus. I'll tell them I have
had my way with thee. \_Exit.
Malet. I never knew thee check thy
will for aught
Save for the prattling of thy little ones.
William. Who shall be kings of
England. I am heir
Of England by the promise of her king.
Malet. But there the great Assembly
choose their king.
The choice of England is the voice of
EnglandT
William. I will lie king of England
by the laws.
The choice, and voice of England.
Malet. Can that be I
SCENE II.
HAROLD.
647
William. The voice of any people is
the sword
That guards them, or the sword that beats
them down.
Here comes the would-be what I will
be . . . kinglike . . .
The' scarce at ease; for, save our meshes
break,
More kinglike he than like to prove a
king.
{Enter Harold, musing., with his eyes
on the grotcnd.')
He sees me not — and yet he dreams of
me.
Earl, wilt thou fly my falcons this fair
day?
They are of the best, strong-wing'd against
the wind.
Harold {looking up suddenly, having
caught but the last word) . Which
way does it blow?
Willia?n. Blowing for England, ha?
Not yet. Thou hast not learnt thy quar-
ters here.
The winds so cross and jostle among
these towers.
Harold. Count of the Normans, thou
hast ransom'd us,
Maintain'd, and entertain'd us royally !
William. And thou for us hast fought
as loyally.
Which binds us friendship-fast for ever !
Harold. Good !
But lest we turn the scale of courtesy
By too much pressure on it, I would fain,
Since thou hast promised Wulfnoth home
with us.
Be home again with Wulfnoth.
William. Stay — as yet
Thou hast but seen how Norman hands
can strike,
But walk'd our Norman field, scarce
touch'd or tasted
The splendours of our Court.
Harold, I am in no mood :
I should be as the shadow of a cloud
Crossing your light.
William. Nay, rest a week or two,
And we will fill thee full of Norman sun,
And send thee back among thine island
mists
With laughter.
Harold. Count, I thank thee, but
had rather
Breathe the free wind from off our Saxon
downs,
Tho' charged with all the wet of all the
west.
William. Why if thou wilt, so let it
be — thou shalt.
That were a graceless hospitality
To chain the free guest to the banquet-
board ;
To-morrow we will ride with thee to
Harfleur,
And set thee shipt, and pray in thy behalf
For happier homeward winds than that
which crack'd
Thy bark at Ponthieu, — yet to us, in faith,
A happy one — whereby we came to know
Thy valour and thy value, noble earl.
Ay, and perchance a happy one for thee,
Provided — I will go with thee to-mor-
row—
Nay — but there be conditions, easy
ones.
So thou, fair friend, will take them easily.
Enter Page.
Page. My lord, there is a post from
over seas
With news for thee. [^Exit Page.
William. Come, Malet, let us hear !
\_Exeunt Count WiUiam and Malet.
Harold. Conditions? What condi-
tions? pay him back
His ransom? ' easy' — that were easy —
nay —
No money-loVer he ! What said the
King?
* I pray you do not go to Normandy. '
And fate hath blown me hither, bound
me too
With bitter obligation to the Count —
Have I not fought it out? What did he
mean?
There lodged a gleaming grimness in his
eyes,
Gave his shorn smile the lie. The walls
oppress me.
And yon huge keep that hinders half the
heaven.
Free air ! free field !
\_Moves to go 07it. A Man-at-arms
follows him.
648
HAROLD,
ACT U
Harold (to ike Man-at-arms) . I need
thee not. Why dost thou follow
me?
Man-at-arms. I have the Count's
commands to follow thee.
Harold. What then ? Am I in danger
in this court?
Man-at-arms. I cannot tell. I have
the Count's commands.
Harold. Stand out of earshot then,
and keep me still
In eyeshot.
Man-at-arms. Yea, lord Harold.
[ Withdraws.
Harold. And arm'd men
Ever keep watch beside my cnamber door,
And if I walk within the lonely wood.
There is an arm'd man ever glides behind !
(Enter Malet.)
Why am I foUow'd, haunted, harass'd,
watch'd ?
See yonder !
{^Pointing to the Man-at-arms.
Malet. *Tis the good Count's care for
thee!
The Normans love thee not, nor thou the
Normans,
Or — so they deem.
Harold. But wherefore is the wind,
Which way soever the vane-arrow swing,
Not ever fair for England? Why but
now
He said (thou heardst him) that I must
not hence
Save on conditions.
Malet. So in truth he said,
Harold. Malet, thy mother was an
Englishwoman ;
There somewhere beats an English pulse
in thee !
Malet. Well — for my mother's sake
I love your England,
But for my father I love Normandy.
Harold. Speak for thy mother's sake,
and tell me true.
Malet. Then for my mother's sake,
and England's sake
That suffers in the daily want of thee.
Obey the Count's conditions, my good
friend,
Harold. How, Malet, if they be not
honourable !
Malet. Seem to obey them.
Harold. Better die than lie'.
Malet. Choose therefore whether thou
wilt have thy conscience
White as a maiden's hand, or whether
England
Be shatter'd into fragments.
Harold. News from England?
Malet. Morcar and Edwin have stirr'd
up the Thanes
Against thy brother Tostig's governance;
And all the North of H umber is one
storm.
Harold. I should be there, Malet, I
should be there !
Malet. And Tostig in his own hall
on suspicion
Hath massacred the Thane that was his
guest.
Camel, the son of Orm : and there be more
As villainously slain.
Harold. The wolf ! the beast !
Ill news for guests, ha, Malet ! More ?
What more?
What do they say? did Edward know of
this?
Malet. They say his wife was know-
ing and abetting.
Harold. They say, his wife! — To
marry and have no husband
Makes the wife fool. My God, I should
be there.
I'll hack my way to the sea.
Malet. Thou canst not, Harold;
Our Diike is all between thee and the
sea,
Our Duke is all about thee like a God;
All passes block'd. Obey him, speak
him fair.
For he is only debonair to those
That follow where he leads, but stark as
death
To those that cross him. — Look thou,
here is Wulfnoth !
I leave thee to thy talk with him alone;
How wan, poor lad ! how sick and sad
for home ! \_Ejcit Malet.
Harold (muttering). Go not to Nor-
mandy— go not to Normandy!
(Enter WuLFNOTH,)
Poor brother ! still a hostage !
Wulfnoth. Yea, and 1
SCENE II.
HAROLD.
649
Shall see the dewy kiss of dawn no more
Make blush the maiden-white of our tall
cliffs,
Nor mark the sea-bird rouse himself and
hover
Above the windy ripple, and fill the sky
With free sea-laughter — never — save
indeed
Thou canst make yield this iron-mooded
Duke
To let me go.
Harold. Why, brother, so he will;
But on conditions. Canst thou guess at
them?
Wulfnoth. Draw nearer, — I was in
the corridor,
I saw him coming with his brother Odo
The Bayeux bishop, and I hid myself.
Harold. They did thee wrong who
made thee hostage; thou
Wast ever fearful.
Wulfnoth. And he spoke — I
heard him —
*This Harold is not of the royal blood,
Can have no right to the crown,' and
Odo said,
'Thine is the right, for thine the might;
he is here.
And yonder is thy keep.'
Harold. No, Wulfnoth, no.
Wulfnoth. And William laugh'd and
swore that might was right,
Far as he knew in this poor world of
ours —
'Marry, the Saints must go along with
us.
And, brother, we will find a way,' said
he-
Yea, yea, he would be king of England.
Harold. Never !
Wulfnoth. Yea, but thou must not this
way answer him.
Harold. Is it not better still to speak
the truth?
Wulfnoth. Not here, or thou wilt
never hence nor I :
For in the racing toward this golden
goal
He turns not right or left, but tramples
flat
Whatever thwarts him; hast thou never
heard
His savagery at Alengon — the town
Hung out raw hides along their walls,
and cried,
* Work for the tanner.'
Harold. That had anger'd me
Had I been William.
Wulfnoth. Nay, but he had prisoners,
He tore their eyes out, sliced their hando
away,
And flung them streaming o'er the battle-
ments
Upon the heads of those who walk'd
within —
Oh, speak him fair, Harold, for thine own
sake.
Harold. Your Welshman says, ' The
Truth against the World,'
Much more the truth against myself.
Wulfnoth. Thyself?
"But for my sake, O brother ! oh ! for
my sake !
Harold. Poor Wulfnoth ! do they not
entreat thee well?
Wulfnoth. I see the blackness of my
dungeon loom
Across their lamps of revel, and beyond
The merriest murmurs of their banquet
clank
The shackles that will bind me to the
wall.
Harold. Too fearful still !
Wulfnoth. Oh no, no — speak
him fair !
Call it to temporise; and not to lie;
Harold, I do not counsel thee to lie.
The man that hath to foil a murderous aim
May, surely, play with words.
Harold. Words are the man.
Not ev'n for thy sake, brother, would I
lie.
Wtilfnoth. Then for thine Edith?
Harold. There thou prick'st me
deep.
Wulfnoth. And for our Mother Eng-
land?
Harold. Deeper still.
Wulfnoth. And deeper still the deep-
down oubliette,
Down thirty feet below the smiling day —
In blackness — dogs' food throv/n upon
thy head.
And over thee the suns arise and set,
And the lark sings, the sweet stars come
and go,
650
HAROLD.
ACT II.
And men are at their markets, in their
fields,
And woo their loves and have forgotten
thee;
And thou art upright in thy living grave,
Where there is barely room to shift thy
side,
And all thine England hath forgotten thee;
And he our lazy-pious Norman King,
With all his Normans round him once
again.
Counts his old beads, and hath forgotten
thee.
Harold. Thou art of my blood, and
so methinks, my boy.
Thy fears infect me beyond reason.
Peace !
Wulfnoth. And then our fiery Tostig,
while thy hands
Are palsied here, if his Northumbrians rise
And hurl him from them, — I have heard
the Normans
Count upon this confusion — may he not
make
A league with William, so to bring him
back?
Harold. That lies within the ijhadow
of the chance.
Wulfnoth. And like a river in flood
thro' a burst dam
Descends the ruthless Norman — our good
King
Kneels mumbling some old bone — our
helpless folk
Are wash'd away, wailing, in their own
blood —
Harold. Waihng! not warring? Boy,
thou hast forgotten
That thou art English.
Wtilfnoth. Then our modest women —
I know the Norman license — thine ovi^n
Edith —
Harold. No more ! I will not hear
thee — William comes.
Wulfnoth. I dare not well be seen
in talk with thee.
Make thoii not mention that I spake
with thee.
\_Moves away to the back of the stage.
Enter William, Malet, and Officer.
Officer. We have the man that rail'd
against thy birth.
William. Tear out his tongue.
Ofp,cer. He shall not rail again.
He said that he should see confusion
fall
On thee and on thine house.
William. Tear out his eyes,
And plunge him into prison.
Officer. It shall be done.
lExit Officer.
William. Look not amazed, fair earl !
Better leave undone
Than do by halves — tongueless and eye-
less, prison'd —
Harold. Better methinks have slain
the man at once !
William. -We have respect for man's
immortal soul.
We seldom take man's life, except in
war;
It frights the traitor more to maim and
Hind.
Harold. In mine own land I should
have scorn'd the man,
Or lash'd his rascal back, and let him go.
William. And let him go? To slan-
der thee again !
Yet in thine own land, in thy father's day
They blinded my young kinsman, Alfred
— ay,
Some said it was thy father's deed.
Harold. They lied.
William. But thou and he — whom
at thy word, for thou
Art known a speaker of the truth, I free
From this foul charge —
Harold. Nay, nay, he freed himself
By oath and compurgation from the
charge.
The king, the lords, the people clear'd
him of it.
William. But thou and he drove our
good Normans out
From England, and this rankles in us yet.
Archbishop Robert hardlv scaped with
Hfe.
Harold. Archbishop Robert ! Robert
the Archbishop !
Robert of Jumieges, he that —
Malet. Quiet! quiet!
Harold. Count ! if there sat within
the Norman chair
A ruler all for England — one who fiU'd
All offices, all bishopricks with English —
SCENE II.
HAROLD.
651
We could not move from Dover to the
Humber
Saving thro' Norman bishopricks — I say
Ye would applaud that Norman who
should drive
The stranger to the fiends !
William. Why, that is reason !
Warrior thou art, and mighty wise withal !
Ay, ay, but many among our Norman
lords
Hate thee for this, and press upon me —
saying
God and the sea have given thee to our
hands —
To plunge thee into life-long prison
here : —
Yet I hold out against them, as I may,
Yea — would hold out, yea, tho' they
should revolt —
For thou hast done the battle in my
cause ;
I am thy fastest friend in Normandy.
Harold. I am doubly bound to thee
... if this be so.
William. And I would bind thee
more, and would myself
Be bounden to thee more.
Harold. Then let me hence
With Wulfnoth to King Edward.
William. So we will.
We hear he hath not long to live.
Harold. It may be.
William. Why then the heir of Eng-
land, who is he?
Harold. The Atheling is nearest to
the throne.
William. But sickly, slight, half-
witted and a child.
Will England have him king?
Harold. It may be, no.
William. And hath King Edward
not pronounced his heir?
Harold. Not that I know.
Williai7i. When he was here
in Normandy,
He loved us and we him, because we
found him
A Norman of the Normans.
Harold. So did we.
William. A gentle, gracious, pure
and saintly man !
And grateful to the hand that shielded
him.
He promised that if ever he were king
In England, he would give his kingly
voice
To me as his successor. Knowest thou
this?
Harold. I learn it now.
William. Thou knowest I am his
cousin,
And that my wife descends from Alfred?
Harold. Ay.
William. Who hath a better claim
then to the crown
So that ye will not crown the Atheling?
Harold. None that I know ... if
that but hung upon
King Edward's will.
William. Wilt thoti uphold my claim?
Malet {aside to Harold). Be careful
of thine answer, my good friend.
Wulfnoth {aside to Harold). Oh!
Harold, for my sake and for thine
own!
Harold. Ay ... if the king have
not revoked his promise.
William. But hath he done it then?
Harold. Not that 1 know.
William. Good, good, and thou wilt
help me to the crown?
Harold. Ay ... if the Witan will
consent to this.
William. Thou art the mightiest voice
in England, man,
Thy voice will lead the Witan — shall I
have it?
Wulfnoth {aside to Harold). Oh!
Harold, if thou love thine Edith,
ay.
Harold. Ay, if —
Malet {aside to Harold). Thine 'ifs'
will sear thine eyes out — ay.
William. I ask thee, wilt thou help
me to the crown?
And I will make thee my great -Eaii of
Earls,
Foremost in England and in Normandy;
Thou shalt be verily king — all but the
name —
For I shall most sojourn in Normandy;
And thou be my vice-king in England.
Speak.
Wulfnoth {aside to Harold). Ay,
brother — for the sake of England
— ay.
652
HAROLD.
Harold. My lord —
Malet {aside to Harold). Take heed
now.
Harold. Ay.
WilliafJi. I am content,
For thou art truthful, and thy word thy
bond.
To-morrow will we ride with thee to
Harfleur. \^Exit William.
Malet. Harold, I am thy friend, one
life with thee.
And even as I should bless thee saving
mine,
I thank thee now for having saved thy-
self. lExit Malet.
Harold. For having lost myself to
save myself.
Said * ay ' when I meant ' no,' lied like
a lad
That dreads the pendent scourge, said
' ay ' for ' no ' !
Ay ! No ! — he hath not bound me by
an oath —
Is *ay' an oath? is *ay' strong as an
oath?
Or is it the same sin to break my word
As break mine oath? He call'd my
word my bond !
He is a liar who knows I am a liar,
And makes b'elieve that he believes my
word —
The crime be on his head — not bounden
— no.
\_Suddenly doors are flung open, dis-
covering in an inner hall Count
William in his state robes, seated
upon his throne, between two
Bishops, Odo of Bayeux being
one : in the centre of the hall an ark
covered with cloth of gold; and on
either side of it the A^orman barons.
Enter a. Jailor before William's throne.
William (to Jailor). Knave, hast
thou let thy prisoner scape?
Jailor. Sir Count,
He had but one foot, he must have hopt
away,
Yea, some familiar spirit must have
help'd him.
William. Woe knave to thy familiar
and to thee !
Give me ^hy keys. [ They fall clashing.
Nay let them lie. Stand there and wait
my will.
[ llie Jailor stands aside.
William {to Harold). Hast thou
such trustless jailors in thy North?
Harold. We have few prisoners in
mine earldom there,
So less chance for false keepers.
William. We have heard
Of thy just, mild, and equal governance;
Honour to thee ! thou art perfect in all
honour !
Thy naked word thy bond ! confirm it
now
Before our gather'd Norman baronage.
For they will not believe thee — as I
believe.
\_Descends from his throne and stands
by the ark.
Let all men here bear witness of our
bond !
\_Beckons to Harold, who advances.
{Enter Malet behind hi jji.)
Lay thou thy hand upon this golden
pall!
Behold the jewel of St. Pancratius
Woven into the gold. Swear thou on
this!
Harold. What should I swear? Why
should I swear on this?
William {savagely). Swear thou to
help me to the crown of England.
Malet {whispering Harold). My
friend, thou hast gone too far to
palter now.
Wulfnoth {whisperi/tgH Sir old). Swear
thou to-day, to-morrow is thine
own.
Harold. I swear to help thee to the
crown of England . . .
According as King Edward promises.
William. Thou must swear abso-
lutely, noble Earl.
Malet {whispering). Delay is death
to thee, ruin to England.
Wulfnoth {zuhispering). Swear, dear-
est brother, I beseech thee, swear !
Harold {putting his hand on the
jewel). I swear to help thee to
the crown of England.
William. Thanks, truthful Earl; I
did not doubt thy word,
SCENE II.
HAROLD.
653
But that my barons might believe thy
word,
And that the Holy Saints of Normandy
When thou art home in England, with
thine own,
Might strengthen thee in keeping of thy
word,
I made thee swear. — Show him by
whom he hath sworn.
[ Thetzvo Bishops advance, and raise
the cloth of gold. 'I he bodies and
bo7ies of saints are seen lying in
the ark.
The holy bones of all the Canonised
From all the holiest shrines in Normandy !
Harold. Horrible ! {^Ihey let the cloth
fall again.
William. Ay, for thou hast sworn an
oath
"Which, if not kept, would make the
hard earth rive
To the very Devil's horns, the bright sky
cleave
To the very feet of God, and send her
hosts
Of injured Saints to scatter sparks of
plague
Thro' all your cities, blast your infants,
dash
The torch of war among your standing
corn.
Dabble your hearths with your own blood.
— Enough !
Thou wilt not break it ! I, the Count —
the King —
Thy friend — am grateful for thine honest
oath,
Not coming fiercely like a conqueror, now,
But softly as a bridegroom to his own.
For I shall rule according to your laws.
And make your ever-jarring Earldoms
move
To music and in order — Angle, Jute,
Dane, Saxon, Norman, help to build a
throne
Out-towering hers of France. . . . The
wind is fair
For England now. . . . To-night we
will be merry.
To-morrow will I ride with thee to Har-
fleur.
\_Exennt William and all the Nor-
man barons^ etc.
Harold. To-night we will be merry —
and to-morrow —
Juggler and bastard — bastard — he hates
that most —
William the tanner's bastard ! Would
he heard me !
O God, that I were in some wide, waste
field
With nothing but my battle-axe and
him
To spatter his brains ! Why let earth
rive, gulf in
These cursed Normans — yea and mine
own self.
Cleave heaven, and send thy saints that
I may say
Ev'n to their faces, ' If ye side with
William
Ye are not noble.' How their pointed
fingers
Glared at me ! Am I Harold, Harold,
son
Of our great Godwin? Lo! I touch
mine arms,
My limbs — they are not mine — they
are a liar's —
•I mean to be a liar — I am not bound —
Stigand shall give me absolution for
it —
Did the chest move? did it move? I
am utter craven !
O Wulfnoth, Wulfnoth, brother, thou
hast betray'd me !
Wulfnoth. Forgive me, brother, I
will live here and die.
Enter Page.
Page. My lord ! the Duke awaits
thee at the banquet.
Harold. Where they eat dead men's
flesh, and drink their blood.
Page. My lord —
Harold. I know your Norman cook-
ery is so spiced.
It masks all this.
Page. My lord ! thou art
white as death.
Harold. With looking on the dead.
Am I so white?
Thy duke will seem the darker. Hence,
I follow. \^Exeunt^
654
HAROLD,
ACT 111.
ACT III.
SCENE I. — The King's Palace.
London.
King Edward dying on a couch, and by
him standing the Queen, Harold,
Archbishop Stigand, Gurth, Leof-
vvin, Archbishop Aldred, Aldwyth,
and Edith.
Stigand. Sleeping or dying there?
If this be death.
Then our great council wait to crown
thee king —
Come hither, I have a power;
[ To Harold.
They call me near, for I am close to thee
And England — I, old shrivell'd Stigand,
I,
Dry as an old wood-fungus on a dead
tree.
I have a power !
See here this little key about my neck !
There lies a treasure buried down in Ely :
If e'er the Norman grow too hard for
thee,
Ask me for this at thy most need, son
Harold,
At thy most need — not sooner.
Harold. So I will.
Stigand. Red gold — a hundred purses
— yea, and more !
If thou canst make a wholesome use of
these
To chink against the Norman, I do
believe
My old crook'd spine would bud out two
young wings
To fly to heaven straight with.
Harold. Thank thee, father !
Thou art English, Edward too is English
now,
He hath clean repented of his Norman-
ism.
Stigand. Ay, as the libertine repents
who cannot
Make done undone, when thro' his dying
sense
Shrills * lost thri)' thee.' They have built
their castles here;
Our priories are Norman; the Norman
adder
Hath bitten us; we are poison'd: our
dear England
Is demi-Norman. He ! —
\_Pointing to King Edward, sleeping.
Harold. 1 would I were
As holy and as passionless as he !
That I might rest as calmly ! Look at
him —
The rosy face, and long down-silvering
beard.
The brows unwrinkled as a summer
mere. —
Stigand. A summer mere with sudden
wreckful gusts
From a side-gorge. Passionless? How
he flamed
When Tostig's anger'd earldom flung
him, nay,
He fain had calcined all North umbria
To one black ash, but that thy patriot
passion
Siding with our great Council against
Tostig,
Out-passion'd his! Holy? ay, ay, for-
sooth, ■
A conscience for his own soul, not his
realm;
A twilight conscience lighted thro' a
chink ;
Thine by the sun ; nay, by some sun to be.
When all the world hath learnt to speak
the truth.
And lying were self-murder by that state
Which was the exception.
Harold. That sun may God speed !
Stigand. Come, Harold, shake the
cloud oft"!
Harold. Can I, father?
Our Tostig parted cursing me and Eng-
land ;
Our sister hates us for his banishment;
He hath gone to kindle Norway against
England,
And Wulfnoth is alone in Normandy.
For when I rode with William down to
Harfleur,
'Wulfnoth is sick,' he said; 'he cannot
follow;'
Then with that friendly-fiendly smile of
his,
* We have learnt to love him, let him a
little longer
Remain a hostage for the loyalty
SCENE I.
HAROLD.
655
Of Godwin's house/ As far as touches
Wulfnoth
I that so prized plain word and naked
truth
Have sinn'd against it — all in vain.
Leofiuin. Good brother,
By all the truths that ever priest hath
preach'd,
Of all the hes that ever men have lied,
Thine is the pardonablest.
Harold. May be so !
I think it so, I think I am a fool
To think it can be otherwise than so.
Stigand. Tut, tut, I have absolved
thee : dost thou scorn me.
Because I had my Canterbury pallium,
From one whom they dispoped?
Harold. No, Stigand, no !
Sligajtd. Is naked truth actable in
true life?
I have heard a saying of thy father
Godwin,
That, were a man of state nakedly true,
Men would but take him for the craftier
liar.
Leofiuin. Be men less delicate than
the Devil himself ?
I thought that naked Truth would shame
the Devil
The Devil is so modest.
. Gurlh. He never said it !
Leofiuin. Be thou not stupid-honest,
brother Gurth !
Harold. Better to be a liar's dog, and
hold
My master honest, than believe that
lying
And ruling men are fatal twins that
cannot
Move one without the other. Edward
wakes ! —
Dazed — he hath seen a vision.
Edward. The green tree !
Then a great Angel past along the highest
Crying 'the doom of England,' and at
once
He stood beside me, in his grasp a sword
Of lightnings, wherewithal he cleft the
tree
From off the bearing trunk, and hurl'd it
from him
Three fields away, and then he dash'd
and drench'd,
He dyed, he soak'd the trunk with
human blood.
And brought the sunder'd tree again,
and set it
Straight on the trunk, that thus baptized
in blood
Grew ever high and higher, beyond my
seeing,
And shot out sidelong boughs across the
deep
That dropt themselves, and rooted in far
isles
Beyond my seeing : and the great Angel
rose
And past again along the highest crying
* The doom of England ! ' — Tostig, raise
my head ! [Falls back senseless.
Harold {raising him) . Let Harold
serve for Tostig !
• Queen. Harold served
Tostig so ill, he cannot serve for Tostig !
Ay, raise his head, for thou hast laid it low !
The sickness of our saintly king, for
whom
My prayers go up as fast as my tears fall,
I well believe, hath mainly drawn itself
From lack of Tostig — thou hast banish'd
him.
Harold. Nay — but the council, and
the king himself.
Queen. Thou hatest him, hatest him.
Harold {coldly^ Ay — Stigand,
unriddle
This vision, canst thou?
Stigand. Dotage !
Edward {starting up) . It is finish'd.
I have built the Lord a house — the Lord
hath dwelt
In darkness. I have built the Lord a
house —
Palms, flowers, pomegranates, golden
cherubim
With twenty-cubit wings from wall to
wall —
I have built the Lord a house — sing,
Asaph ! clash
The cymbal, Heman ! blow the trumpet,
priest !
Fall, cloud, and fill the house — lo ! my
two pillars,
Jachin and Boaz ! —
[Seeing Harold atid Gurth.
Harold, Gurth, — where am I?
656
HAROLD.
ACT Hi.
Where is the charter of our Westminster?
Stigand. It lies beside thee, king,
upon thy bed.
Edward. Sign, sign at once — take,
sign it, Stigand, Aldred !
Sign it, my good son Harold, Gurth, and
Leofwin,
Sign it, my queen !
All. We have sign'd it.
Edzvard. It is finish'd !
The kingliest Abbey in all Christian
lands.
The lordliest, loftiest minster ever built
To Holy Peter in our English isle !
Let me be buried there, and all our kings.
And all our just and wise and holy men
That shall be born hereafter. It is
tinish'd !
Hast thou had absolution for thine oath?
[ To Harold.
Harold. Stigand hath given me abso-
lution for it.
Edward. Stigand is not canonical
enough
To save thee from the w^rath of Norman
Saints.
Stigand. Norman enough ! Be there
no Saints of England
To help us from their brethren yonder?
Edzuard. Prelate,
The Saints are one, but those of Norman-
land
Are mightier than our own. Ask it of
Aldred. [ To Harold.
Aldred. It shall be granted him, my
king; for he
Who vows a vow to strangle his own
mother
Is guiltier keeping this, than breaking it.
Edward. O friends, I shall not over-
live the day.
Stigand. Why then the throne is
empty. Who inherits?
For tho' we be not bound by the king's
voice
In making of a king, yet the king's
voice
Is much toward his making. Who
inherits?
Edgar the Atheling?
Edward. No, no, but Harold.
I love him : he hath served me : none
but he
Can rule all England. Yet the curse is
on him
For swearing falsely by those blessed
bones;
He did not mean to keep his vow.
Harold. Not mean
To make our England Norman.
Edward. There spake Godwin,
Who hated all the Normans; but their
Saints
Have heard thee, Harold.
Edith. O my lord, my king !
He knew not whom he sware by.
Edward. Yea, I know
He knew not, but those heavenly ears
have heard,
Their curse is on him; wilt thou bring
another,
Edith, upon his head?
Edith. No, no, not I.
Edward. Why then, thou must not
wed him.
Harold. Wherefore, wherefore?
Edward. O son, when thou didst tell
me of thine oath,
I sorrow'd for my random promise given
To yon fox-lion. I did not dream then
I should be king. — My son, the Saints
are virgins;
They love the white rose of virginity,
The cold, white lily blowing in her cell r
I have been myself a virgin; and I
sware
To consecrate my virgin here to heaven —
The silent, cloister'd, solitary life,
A life of life-long prayer against the curse
That lies on thee and England.
Harold. No, no, no.
Edward. Treble denial of the tongue
of flesh,
Like Peter's when he fell, and thou wilt
have
To wail for it like Peter. O my son !
Are all oaths to be broken then, all
promises
Made in our agony for help from heaven ?
Son, there is one who loves thee : and a
wife,
What matters who, so she be serviceable
In all obedience, as mine own hath been :
God bless thee, wedded daughter.
{^Laying his hand on the Queen's head.
Queen. Bless thou too
HAROLD,
651
That brother whom I love beyond the
rest,
My banish'd Tostig.
Edward. All the sweet Saints
bless him !
Spare and forbear him, Harold, if he
comes !
And let him pass unscathed; he loves
me, Harold !
Be kindly to the Normans left among us,
Who follow'd me for love ! and dear son,
swear
When thou art king, to see my solemn
vow
Accomplish'd.
Harold. Nay, dear lord, for I have
sworn
Not to swear falsely twice.
Edward. Thou wilt not swear?
Harold. I cannot.
Edward. Then on thee remains
the curse,
Harold, if thou embrace her : and on thee,
Edith, if thou abide it, —
\_The King swoons; Edith y^/A and
kneels by the couch.
Stigand. He hath swoon'd !
Death? . . . no, as yet a breath.
Harold. Look up ! look up !
Edith !
Aldred. Confuse her not; she hath
begun
Her life-long prayer for thee.
Aldivyth. O noble Harold,
I would thou couldst have sworn.
Harold. For thine own pleasure?
Aldwyth. No, but to please our dying
icing, and those
Who make thy good their own — all
England, Earl.
Aldred. I would thou couldst have
sworn. Our" holy king
Hath given his virgin lamb to Holy
Church
To save thee from the curse.
Harold. Alas ! poor man,
His promise brought it on me.
Aldred. O good son !
That knowledge made him all the care-
fuller
To find a means whereby the curse might
glance
From thee and England.
2U
Harold. Father, we so loved —
Aldred. The more the love, the
mightier is the prayer;
The more the love, the more acceptable
The sacrifice of both your loves to
heaven.
No sacrifice to heaven, no help from
heaven;
That runs thro' all the faiths of all the
world.
And sacrifice there must be, for the king
Is holy, and hath talk'd with God, and
seen
A shadowing horror; there are signs in
heaven —
Harold. Your comet came and went.
Aldred. And signs on earth !
Knowest thou Senlac hill?
Harold. I know all Sussex;
A good entrenchment for a perilous
hour !
Aldred. Pray God that come not
suddenly ! There is one
Who passing by that hill three nights
ago —
He shook so that he scarce could out
with it —
Heard, heard —
Harold. The wind in his hair?
Aldred. A ghostly horn
Blowing continually, and faint battle-
hymns,
And cries, and clashes, and the groans of
men;
And dreadful shadows strove upon the
hill,
And dreadful lights crept up from out
the marsh —
Corpse-candles gliding over nameless
graves —
Harold. At Senlac?
Aldred. Senlac.
Edward {waking). Senlac! Sanguelac,
The Lake of Blood !
Stigand. This lightning before death
Plays on the word, — and Normanises
too!
Harold. Hush, father, hush !
Edward. Thou uncanonical fool,
Wilt thou play with the thunder? North
and South
Thunder together, showers of blood are
blown
658
HAROLD.
ACT III.
Before a never ending blast, and hiss
Against the blaze they cannot quench —
a lake,
A sea of blood — we are drown'd in
blood — for God
Has fill'd the quiver, and Death has
drawn the bow —
Sanguelac ! Sanguelac ! the arrow ! the
arrow ! S^Dies.
Stigand. It is the arrow of death in
his own heart —
And our great council wait to crown thee
king.
SCENE II. — In the Garden. The
King's House near London.
Edith. Crown'd, crown'd and lost,
crown'd king — and lost to me !
(^Singing.)
Two young lovers in winter weather,
None to guide them,
Walk'd at night on the misty heather;
Night, as black as a raven's feather;
Both were lost and found together,
None beside them.
That is the burthen of it — lost and found
Together in the cruel river Swale
A hundred years ago; and there's an-
other,
Lost, lost, the light of day,
To which the lover answers lovingly,
* I am beside thee.'
Lost, lost, we have lost the way.
* Love, I will guide thee.'
Whither, oh, whither? into the river,
Where we two may be lost together,
And lost for ever ? ' Oh ! never, oh !
never,
.Tho' we be lost and be found together.'
Some think they loved within the pale
forbidden
By Holy Church : but who shall say? the
truth
Was lost in that fierce North, where they
were lost,
Where all good things are lost, where
Tostig lost
The good hearts of his people. It is
Harold !
{Enter Harold.)
Harold the King'!
Harold. Call me not King, but
Harold.
Edith. Nay, thou art King !
Harold. Thine, thine, or King
or churl \
My girl, thou bast been weeping: turn
not thou
Thy face away, but rather let me be
King of the moment to thee, and com-
mand
That kiss my due when subject, which
will make
My kingship kinglier to me than to reign
King of the world without it.
Edith. Ask me not,
Lest I should yield it, and the second
curse
Descend upon thine head, and thou be
only
King of the moment over England.
Harold. Edith,
Tho' somewhat less a king to my true self
Than ere they crown'd me one, for I have
lost
Somewhat of upright stature thro' mine
oath,
Yet thee I would not lose, and sell not
thou
Our living passion for a dead man's
dream;
Stigand believed he knew not what he
spake.
O God ! I cannot help it, but at times
They seem to me too narrow, all the
faiths
Of this grown world of ours, whose baby
eye
Saw them sufficient. Fool and wise, I
fear
This curse and scorn it. But a little
light ! —
And on it falls the shadow of the priest;
Heaven yield us more ! for better,
Woden, all
Our cancell'd warrior-gods, our grim
Walhalla,
SCENE II.
HAROLD.
659
Eternal war, than that the Saints at
peace
The Holiest of our Holiest one should be
This WilHam's fellow-tricksters; — better
die
Than credit this, for death is death, or
else
Lifts us beyond the lie. Kiss me — thou
art not
A holy sister yet, my girl, to fear
There might be more than brother in my
kiss,
And more than sister in thine own.
Edith. I dare not.
Harold. Scared by the church —
* Love for a whole life long '
When was that sung?
Edith. Here to the nifhtingales.
Harold. Their anthems of no church,
how sweet they are !
Nor kingly, priest, nor priestly king to
cross
Their billings ere they nest.
Edith. They are but of spring,
They fly the winter change — not so with
us —
No wings to come and go.
Harold. But wing'd souls flying
Beyond all change and in the eternal
distance
To settle on the Truth.
Edith. They are not so true,
They change their mates.
Harold. Do they? I did not know it.
Edith. They say thou art to wed the
Lady Aldvtyth.
Harold. They say, they say.
Edith. If this be politic,
And well for thee and England — and for
her —
Care not for me who love thee.
Gurtk (^calling). Harold, Harold!
Harold. The voice of Gurth ! (^Enter
GuRTH.) Good even, my good
brother !
Gurth. Good even, gentle Edith.
Edith. Good even, Gurth.
Gurth. Ill news hath come ! Our
hapless brother, Tostig —
He, and the giant King of Norway,
Harold
Hardrada — Scotland, Ireland, Iceland,
Orkney,
Are landed North of Humber, and in a
field
So packt with carnage that the dykes and
brooks
Were bridged and damm'd with dead,
have overthrown
Morcar and Edwin.
Harold. Well then, we must
fight.
How blows the wind?
Gurth. Against St. Valery
And William.
Harold. Well then, we will to the
North.
Gurth. Ay, but worse news: this
William sent to Rome,
Swearing thou swarest falsely by his
Saints :
The Pope and that Archdeacon Hilde-
brand
His master, heard him, and have sent him
back
A holy gonfanon, and a blessed hair
Of Peter, and all France, all Burgundy,
Poitou, all Christendom is raised against
thee;
He hath cursed thee, and all those who
fight for thee.
And given thy realm of England to the
bastard.
Harold. Ha! ha!
Edith. Oh ! laugh not ! . . . Strange
and ghastly in the gloom
And shadowing of this double thunder-
cloud
That lours on England — laughter !
Harold, No, not strange !
This was old human laughter in old Rome
Before a Pope was born, when that which
reign'd
Call'd itself God. — A kindly rendering
Of 'Render unto Caesar.' . . . The Good
Shepherd !
Take this, and render that.
Gurth. They have taken York.
Harold. The Lord was God and came
as man — the Pope
Is man and comes as God. — York taken?
Gurth. Yea,
Tostig hath taken York !
Harold. To York then. Edith,
Hadst thou been braver, I had better
braved
66o
HAROLD.
All — but I love thee and thou me — and
that
Remains beyond all chances and all
churches,
And that thou knowest.
Edith. Ay, but take back thy ring.
It burns my hand — a curse to thee and me.
I dare not wear it.
[^Proffers Harold the ring, which he takes.
Harold. But I dare. God with thee !
{^Exeunt Harold ^w^Gurth.
Edith. U'he King hath cursed him, if
he marry me;
The Pope hath cursed him, marry me or
no r
God help me ! I know nothing — can but
pray
For Harold — pray, pray, pray — no help
but prayer,
A breath that fleets beyond this iron world,
And touches Him that made it.
* ACT IV.
SCENE I. — In Northumbria.
Archbishop Aldred, Morcar, Edwin,
and Forces. Enter Harold. The
standard of the golden Dragon of Wes-
sex preceding him.
Harold. What ! are thy people sullen
from defeat?
Our Wessex dragon flies beyond the
Humber,
No voice to greet it.
Edwin. Let not our great king
Believe us sullen — only shamed to the
quick
Before the king — as having been so
bruised
By Harold, king of Norway; but our help
Is Harold, king of England. Pardon us,
thou !
Our silence is our reverence for the king !
Harold. Earl of the Mercians ! if the
truth be gall,
Cram me not thou with honey, when our
good hive
Needs every sting to save it.
Voices. Aldwyth ! Aldwyth !
Harold. Why cry thy people on thy
sister's name?
Morcar. She hath won upon oui
people thro' her beauty,
And pleasantness among them.
Voices. Aldwyth ! Aldwyth !
Harold. They shout as they would
have her for a queen.
Morcar. She hath follow'd with our
host, and suffer'd all.
Harold. What would ye, men?
Voice. Our old Northumbrian
crown,
And kings of our own choosing.
Harold. Your old crown
Were little help without our Saxon carles
Against Hardrada.
Voice. Little ! we are Danes,
Who conquer'd what we walk on, our
ovfn field.
Harold. They have been plotting here !
{^Aside.
Voice. He calls us little !
Harold. The kingdoms of this world
began with little,
A hill, a fort, a city — that reach'd a hand
Down to the field beneath it, 'Be thou
mine,'
Then to the next, ' Thou also ! ' If the
field
Cried out ' I am mine own,' another hill
Or fort, or city, took it, and the first
Fell, and the next became an Empire.
Voice. Yet
Thou art but a West Saxon : we are Danes !
Harold. My mother is a Dane, and I
am English;
There is a pleasant fable in old books.
Ye take a stick, and break it; bind a score
All in one faggot, snap it over knee,
Ye cannot.
Voice. Hear King Harold ! he
says true !
Harold. Would ye be Norsemen?
Voices. No !
Harold. Or Norman ?
Voices. No !
Harold. Snap not the faggot-band then.
Voice. That is true !
Voice. Ay, but thou art not kingly,
only grandson
To Wulfnoth, a poor cow-herd.
Harold. This old Wulfnoth
Would take me on his knees and tell me
tales
SCENE I.
HAROLD.
66i
Of Alfred and of Athelstan the Great
Who drove you Danes; and yet he held
that Dane,
Jute, Angle, Saxon, were or should be all
One England, for this cow-herd, like my
father,
Who shook the Norman scoundrels off
the throne,
Had in him kingly thoughts — a king of
men,
Not made iDut born, like the great king
of all,
A light among the oxen.
Voice. That is true !
Voice. Ay, and I love him now, for
mine own father
Was great, and cobbled.
Voice. Thou art Tostig's brother,
Who wastes the land.
Harold. This brother comes to save
Your land from waste; I saved it once
before,
For when your people banish'd Tostig
hence,
And Edward would have sent a host
against you,
Then I, who loved my brother, bade the
king
Who doted on him, sanction your decree
Of Tostig's banishment, and choice of
M or car.
To help the realm from scattering.
Voice. King ! thy brother.
If one may dare to speak the truth, was
wrong'd.
Wild was he, born so: but the plots
against him
Had madden'd tamer men.
Morcar. Thou art one of those
Who brake into Lord Tostig's treasure-
house
And slew two hundred of his following,
And now, when Tostig hath come back
with power,
Are frighted back to Tostig.
Old Thane. Ugh ! Plots and feuds!
This is my ninetieth birthday. Can ye
not
Be brethren? Godwin still at feud with
Alfgar,
And Alfgar hates King Harold. Plots
and feuds !
This is my ninetieth birthday I
Harold. Old man, Harold
Hates nothing; not his fault, if our two
houses
Be less than brothers.
Voices. Aldwyth, Harold, Aldwyth !
Harold, Again ! Morcar ! Edwin !
What do they mean?
Edwin. So the good king would deign
to lend an ear
Not overscornful, we might chance — per-
chance —
To guess their meaning.
Morcar. Thine own meaning, Harold,
To make all England one, to close all
feuds,
Mixing our bloods, that thence a king
may rise
Half-Godwin and half- Alfgar, one to rule
All England beyond question, beyond
quarrel.
Harold. Who sow'd this fancy here
among the people?
Morcar. Who knows what sows itself
among the people?
A goodly flower at times.
Harold. The Queen of Wales?
Why, Morcar, it is all but duty in her
To hate me; I have heard she hates me.
Morcar. No !
For I can swear to that, but cannot swear
That these will follow thee against the
Norseman,
If thou deny them this.
Harold. Morcar and Edwin,
When will ye cease to plot against my
house?
Edwin. The king can scarcely dream
that we, who know
His prowess in the mountains of the West,
Should care to plot against him in the
North.
Morcar. Who dares arraign us, king,
of such a plot?
Harold. Ye heard one witness even
now.
Morcar. The craven !
There is a faction risen again for Tostig,
Since Tostig came with Norway — fright
nut love.
Harold. Morcar and Edwin, will ye,
if I yield,
Follow against the Norseman?
Morcar. Surely, surely .'
662
HAROLD.
Act IV
Harold. Morcar and Edwin, will ye
upon oath,
Help us against the Norman?
Morcar. With good will;
Yea, take the Sacrament upon it, king.
Harold. Where is thy sister?
Morcar. Somewhere hard at hand.
Call and she comes.
\_One goes out, then enter Aldwyth.
Harold. I doubt not but thou knowest
Why thou art summon'd.
Aldwyth. Why? — I stay with these,
Lest thy fierce Tostig spy me out alone.
And flay me all alive.
Harold. Canst thou love one
Who did discrown thine husband, unqueen
thee?
Didst thou not love thine husband?
Aldwyth. Oh ! my lord.
The nimble, wild, red, wiry, savage
king —
That was, my lord, a match of policy.
Harold. Was it?
I knew him brave : he loved his land :
he fain
Had made her great : his finger on her
harp
(I heard him more than once) had in it
Wales,
Her floods, her woods, her hills : had I
been his,
I had been all Welsh.
Aldwyth. Oh, ay — all Welsh — and
yet
I saw thee drive him up his hills — and
women
Cling to the conquer'd, if they love, the
more;
If not, they cannot hate the conqueror.
We never — oh ! good Morcar, speak for
us,
His conqueror conquer'd Aldwyth.
Harold. Goodly news !
Morcar. Doubt it not thou! Since
Griffyth's head was sent
To Edward, she hath said it.
Harold. I had rather
She would have loved her husband.
Aldwyth, Aldwyth,
Canst thou love me, thou knowing where
I love?
Aldwyth. I can, my lord, for mine
own sake, for thine,
For England, for thy poor white dove,
who flutters
Between thee and the porch, but then
would find
Her nest within the cloister, and be still
Harold. Canst thou love one whc
cannot love again?
Aldwyth. Full hope have I that love
will answer love.
Harold. Then in the name of the
great God, so be it!
Come, Aldred, join our hands before the
hosts,
That all may see.
[Aldred joins^ the hands of Harold
and Aldwyth and blesses them.
Voices. Harold, Harold and Aldwyth !
Harold. Set forth our golden Dragon
let him flap
The wings that beat down Wales !
Advance our Standard of the Warrior,
Dark among gems and gold; and tho
brave banner,
Blaze like a night of fatal stars on those
Who read their doom and die.
Where lie the Norsemen? on the Der-
went? ay
At Stamford-bridge.
Morcar, collect thy men; Edwin, my
friend —
Thou lingerest, — Gurth, —
Last night King Edward came to me in
dreams —
The rosy face and long down-silvering
beard —
He told me I should conquer: —
I am no woman to put faith in dreams.
( To his army.^
Last night King Edward came to me in
dreams,
And told me we should conquer.
Voices. Forward ! Forward !
Harold and Holy Cross !
Aldzvyth. The day is won !
SCENE II. — A Plain. Before the
Battle of Stamford-bridge.
Harold and his Guard.
Harold. Who is it comes this way?
Tostig? {Enter Tostig with a
small force.') O l:)rother,
What art thou doing here?
SCENE III.
HAROLD.
663
Tostig. I am foraging
For Norway's army.
Harold. I could take and slay thee.
Thou art in arms against us.
Tostig. Take and slay me,
For Edward loved me.
Harold. Edward bade me spare thee.
Tostig. I hate King Edward, for he
join'd with thee
Tc drive me outlaw'd. Take and slay
me, I say.
Or I shall count thee fool.
Harold. Take thee, or free thee,
Free thee or slay thee, Norway will have
war;
No man would strike with Tostig, save
for Norway.
Thou art nothing in thine England, save
for Norway,
Who loves not thee but war. What dost
thou here,
Trampling thy mother's bosom into blood ?
Tostig. She hath wean'd me from it
with such bitterness.
I come from mine own Earldom, my
Northumbria;
Thou hast given it to the enemy of our
house.
Harold, Northumbria threw thee off,
she will not have thee,
Thou hast misused her : and, O crowning
crime !
Hast murder'd thine own guest, the son
of Orm,
Game], at thine own hearth.
Tostig. The slow, fat fool !
He drawl'd and prated so, I smote him
suddenly,
I knew not what I did. He held with
Morcar. —
I hate myself for all things that I do.
Harold. And Morcar holds with us.
Come back with him.
Know what thou dost; and we may find
for thee, <
So thou be chasten'd by thy banishment,
Some easier earldom.
Tostig. What for Norway then?
He looks for land among us, he and
his.
Harold. Seven feet of English land,
or something more,
Seeing he is a giant.
Tostig. That is noble !
That sounds of Godwin.
Harold. Come thou back, and be
Once more a son of Godwin.
Tostig {turns away). O brother,
brother,
0 Harold —
Harold {laying his hand on Tostig's
shoulder'). Nay then, come thou
back to us !
Tostig {after a pause turning to him).
Never shall any man say that I,
that Tostig
Conjured the mightier Harold from his
North
To do the battle for me here in England,
Then left him for the meaner ! thee ! —
Thou hast no passion for the House of
Godwin —
Thou hast but cared to make thyself a
king —
Thou hast sold me for a cry. —
Thou gavest thy voice against me in the
Council —
1 hate thee, and despise thee, and defy
thee.
Farewell for ever ! \^Exit.
Harold. On to Stamford-bridge !
SCENE in.
After the Battle of Stamford-
bridge. Banquet.
Harold ajid Aldwyth. Gurth,
Leofvvin, Morcar, Edwin, and
other Earls and Thanes.
Voices. Hail! Harold! Aldwyth!
hail, bridegroom and bride !
Aldwyth {talking with Harold). An-
swer them thou !
Is this our marriage-banquet? Would
the wines
Of wedding had been dash'd into the
cups
Of victory, and our marriage and thy glory
Been drunk together ! these poor hands
but sew.
Spin, broider — would that they were
man's to have held
The battle-axe by thee !
Harold. There was a moment
664
HAROLD.
ACT IV.
When being forced aloof from all my
guard,
And striking at Hardrada and his mad-
men
I had wish'd for any weapon.
Aldwyth. Why art thou sad?
Harold. I have lost the boy who
play'd at ball with me,
With whom I fought another fight than
this
Of Stamford-bridge,
Aldwyth. Ay ! ay ! thy victories
Over our own poor Wales, when at thy
side
He conquer'd with thee.
Harold. No — the childish fist
That cannot strike again.
Aldivyth. Thou art too kindly.
Why didst thou let so many Norsemen
hence?
Thy fierce forekings had clench'd their
pirate hides
To the bleak church doors, like kites
upon a barn.
Harold. Is there so great a need to
tell thee why?
Aldwyth. Yea, am I not thy wife?
Voices. Hail, Harold, Aldwyth !
Bridegroom and bride !
Aldwyth. Answer them ! [ To Harold.
Harold {to all). Earls and Thanes !
Full thanks for your fair greeting of my
bride !
Earls, Thanes, and all our countrymen !
the day.
Our day beside the Derwent will not
shine
Less than a star among the goldenest
hours
Of Alfred, or of Edward his great son,
Or Athelstan, or English Ironside
Who fought with Knut, or Knut who
coming Dane
Died English. Every man about his
king
Fought like a king; the king like his own
man,
No better; one for all, and all for one,
One soul ! and therefore have we shatter'd
back
The hugest wave from Norseland ever
yet
Surged on us, and our battle-axes broken
The Raven's wing, and dumb'd his carrion
croak
PVom the gray sea for ever. Many are
gone —
Drink to the dead who died for us, the
living
Who fought and would have died, but
happier lived,
If happier be to live; they both have life
In the large mouth of England, till her
voice
Die with the world. Hail — hail!
Morcar. May all invaders perish like
Hardrada !
All traitors fail like Tostig !
\_All drink but Harold.
Aldwyth. Thy cup's full !
Harold. I saw the hand of Tostig
cover it.
Our dear, dead, traitor-brother, Tostig,
him
Reverently we buried. Friends, had I
been here.
Without too large self-lauding I must
hold
The sequel had been other than his
league
With Norway, and this battle. Peace
be with him !
He was not of the worst. If there be
those
At banquet in this hall, and hearing me —
For there be those I fear who prick'd the
lion
To make him spring, that sight of Danish
blood
Might serve an end not English — peace
with them
Likewise, if they can be at peace with
what
God gave us to divide us from the wolf!
Aldwyth {aside to Harold). Make not
our Morcar sullen : it is not wise.
Harold. Hail to the living who fought,
the dead who fell !
Voices. Hail, hail !
First Thane. How ran that answer
which King Harold gave
To his dead namesake, when he ask'd
for England?
Leofwin. * Seven feet of English earth,
or something more,
Seeing he is a giant ! *
SCENE III.
HAROLD.
665
First Thane. Then for the bastard
Six feet and nothing more !
Leo/win. Ay, but belike
Thou hast not learnt his measure.
I'i7'si Thane. By St. Edmund
I over-measure him. Sound sleep to the
man
Here by dead Norway without dream or
dawn !
Second Thane. "What ! is he bragging
still that he will come
To thrust our Harold's throne from under
him?
My nurse would tell me of a molehill crying
To a mountain ' Stand aside and room
for me ! '
First Thane. Let him come ! let him
come. Here's to him, sink or
swim ! [^Drinks.
Second Thane. God sink him I
First Thane. Cannot hands which
had the strength
To shove that stranded iceberg off our
shores,
And send the shatter'd North again to
sea,
Scuttle his cockle-shell? What's Brun-
anburg
To Stamford-bridge? a war- crash, and so
hard,
So loud, that, by St. Dunstan, old St.
Thor —
By God, we thought him dead — but our
old Thor
Heard his own thunder again, and woke
and came
Among us again, and mark'd the sons of
those
Who made this Britain England, break
the North :
Mark'd how the war-axe swang,
Heard how the war-horn sang,
Mark'd how the spear-head sprang,
Heard how the shield-wall rang,
Iron on iron clang.
Anvil on hammer bang —
Second Thane. Hammer on anvil,
hammer on anvil. Old dog.
Thou art drunk, old dog !
First Thane. Too drunk to fight with
thee!
Second Thane. Fight thou with thine
own double, not with me,
Keep that for Norman William !
First Thane. Down with William !
Third Thane. The washerwoman's
brat!
Fourth Thane. The tanner's bastard !
Fifth Thane. The Falaise byblow !
\_Enter a Tha.ne, from Pevensey, spat-
ter'd zvith mud.
Harold. Ay, but what late guest,
As haggard as a fast of forty days.
And caked and plaster'd with a hundred
mires,
Hath stumbled on our cups?
Thane from Fevensey. My lord the
King!
William the Norman, for the wind had
changed —
Harold. I felt it in the middle of that
fierce fight
At Stamford-bridge. William hath landed,
ha?
Thane from Pevensey, Landed at
Pevensey — I am from Pevensey —
Hath wasted all the land at Pevensey —
Hath harried mine own cattle — God con-
found him !
I have ridden night and day from Peven-
sey—
A thousand ships — a hundred thousand
men —
Thousands of horses, like as many lions
Neighing and roaring as they leapt to
land —
Harold. How oft in coming hast thou
broken bread?
Thane from Pevensey. Some thrice,
or so.
Harold. Bring not thy hoUowness
On our full feast. Famine is fear, were
it but
Of being starved. Sit down, sit down,
and eat,
And, when again red-blooded, speak
again ;
(^Aside.) The men that guarded Eng-
land to the South
Were scatter'd to the har.vest. . . . No
power mme
To hold their force together,
are fallen
Many
666
HAROLD.
ACT V
At Stamford-bridge ... the people
stupid-sure
Sleep like their swine . . . In South and
North at once
I could not be.
{Aloud.) Gurth, Leofwin,
Morcar, Edwin !
{Pointing to the revellers.) The curse of
England ! these are drown'd in
wassail,
And cannot see the world but thro' their
wines !
Leave them ! and thee too, Aldwyth,
must I leave —
Harsh is the news ! hard is our honey-
moon !
Thy pardon. ( Turning round to his
attendants.) Break the banquet
up. ... Ye four !
And thou, my carrier-pigeon of black
news.
Cram thy crop full, but come when thou
art call'd. \_Exit Harold.
ACT V.
SCENE I. — A Tent on a Mound,
FROM WHICH CAN BE SEEN THE FlELD
OF Senlac.
Harold sitting; by him standing Hugh
Margot the Monk, Gurth, Leofwin.
Harold. Refer my cause, my crown
to Rome ! . . . The wolf
Mudded the brook and predetermined all.
Monk,
Thou hast said thy say, and had my
constant * No '
For all but instant battle. I hear no
more.
Margot. Hear me again — for the last
time. Arise,
Scatter thy people home, descend the
hill.
Lay hands of full allegiance in thy Lord's
And crave his mercy, for the Holy Father
Hath given this realm of England to the
Norman.
Harold. Th.en for the last time, monk,
I ask again
When had the Lateran and the Holy
Father
To do with England's choice of her own
king?
Margot. Earl, the first Christian
Caesar drew to the East
To leave the Pope dominion in the West.
He gave him all the kingdoms of the
West.
Harold. So!— did he? — Earl — I
have a mind to play
The William with thine eyesight and thy
tongue.
Earl — ay — thou art but a messenger of
William.
I am weary — go : make me not wroth
with thee !
Margot. Mock-king, I am the mes-
senger of God,
His Norman Daniel ! Mene, Mene,
Tekel !
Is thy wrath Hell, that I should spare to
cry,
Yon heaven is wroth with thee? Hear
me again !
Our Saints have moved the Church that
moves the world.
And all the Hea-vens and very God : they
heard —
They know King Edward's promise and
thine — thine.
Harold. Should they not know free
England crowns herself?
Not know that he nor I had power to
promise ?
Not know that Edward cancell'd his own
promise?
And for my part therein — back to that
juggler, . ^Rising.
Tell him the Saints are nobler than he
dreams.
Tell him that God is nobler than the
Saints,
And tell him we stand arm'd on Senlac
hill.
And bide the doom of God.
Margot. Hear it thro' me.
The realm for which thou art forsworn is
cursed.
The babe enwomb'd and at the breast is
cursed.
The corpse thou whelmest with thine
earth is cursed,
The soul who fighteth on thy side is
cursed.
HAROLD.
667
The seed thou sowest in thy field is
cursed,
The steer wherewith thou plowest thy
field is cursed,
The fowl that fleeth o'er thy field is
cursed,
And thou, usurper, liar —
Harold. Out, beast monk !
\_Lifting his hand to strike him.
Gurth stops the blow.
I ever hated monks.
Margot. I am but a voice
Among you: murder, martyr me if ye
will —
Harold. Thanks, Gurth ! The simple,
silent, selfless man
Is worth a world of tonguesters. ( To
Margot.) Get thee gone !
He means the thing he says. See him
out safe !
Leofivin. He hath blown himself as
red as fire with curses.
An honest fool ! Follow me, honest fool,
But if thou blurt thy curse among our
folk,
I know not — • I may give that egg-bald
head
The tap that silences.
Harold. See him out safe.
{^Exeunt Leofwin and Margot.
Gurth. Thou hast lost thine even
temper, brother Harold !
Harold. Gurth, when I past by
Waltham, my foundation
For men who serve the neighbour, not
themselves,
I cast me down prone, praying; and,
when I rose,
They told me that the Holy Rood had
lean'd
And bow'd above me; whether that which
held it
Had weaken'd, and the Rood itself were
bound
To that necessity which binds us down;
Whether it bow'd at all but in their fancy;
Or if it bow'd, whether it symboll'd ruin
Or glory, who sb^U tell? but they were
sad.
And somewhat sadden'd me.
Gurth. Yet if a fear,
Or shadow of a fear, lest the strange
Saints
By whom thou swarest, should have power
to balk
Thy puissance in this fight with him, who
made
And heard thee swear — brother — /have
not sworn —
If the king fall, may not the kingdom
fall?
But if I fall, I fall, and thou art king;
And, if I win, I win, and thou art king;
Draw thou to London, there make
strength to breast
Whatever chance, but leave this day to
me.
Leofivitt {entering). And waste the
land about thee as thou goest.
And be thy hand as winter on the field,
To leave the foe no forage.
Harold. Noble Gurth !
Best son of Godwin ! If I fall, I fall —
The doom of God ! How should the
people fight
When the king flies? And, Leofwin, art
thou mad?
How should the King of England waste
the fields
Of England, his own people? — no glance
yet *
Of the Northumbrian helmet on the
heath?
Leofwin. No, but a shoal of wives
upon the heath,
And someone saw thy willy-nilly nun
Vying a tress against our golden fern.
Harold. Vying a tear with our cold
dews, a sigh
With these low-moaning heavens. Let
her be fetch'd.
We have parted from our wife without
reproach,
Tho' we have pierced thro' all her
practices;
And that is well.
Leofwin. I saw her even now :
She hath not left us.
Harold. Naught of Morcar then ?
Gurth. Nor seen, nor heard; thine,
William's or his own
As wind blows, or tide flows : belike he
watches,
If this war-storm in one of its rough rolls
Wash up that old crown of Northumber-
Isind.
668
HAROLD.
Harold. I married her for Morcar —
a sin against
The truth of love. Evil for good, it
seems,
Is oft as childless of the good as evil
For evil.
Leoftvin. Good for good hath borne
at times
A bastard false as William.
Harold. Ay, if Wisdom
Pair'd not with Good. But I am some-
what worn,
A snatch of sleep were like the peace of
God.
Gurth, Leofwin, go once more about the
hill —
What did the dead man call it — Sangue-
lac,
The Lake of Blood?
Leofwin. A lake that dips in William
As well as Harold.
Harold. Like enough. I have seen
The trenches dug, the palisades uprear'd
And wattled thick with ash and willow-
wands ;
Yea, wrought at them myself. Go round
once more;
See all be sound and whole. 'No Norman
horse
Can shatter England, standing shield by
shield;
Tell that again to all.
Gurth. I will, good brother.
Harold. Our guardsman hath but
toil'd his hand and foot,
I hand, foot, heart and head. Some
wine ! ( One pours wine into a
goblet which he hands to Harold.)
Too much !
What? we must use our battle-axe to-day.
Our guardsmen have slept well, since we
came in?
Leofivin. Ay, slept and snored. Your
second-sighted man
That scared the dying conscience of the
king,
Misheard their snores for groans. They
are up again
And chanting that old song of Brunan-
burg
Where England conquered.
Harold. That is well. The Norman,
What is he doing?
Leofivin. Praying for Normandy;
Our scouts have heard the tinkle of their
bells.
• Harold. And our old songs are prayers
for England too !
But by all Saints —
Leofivin. Barring the Norman !
Harold. Nay,
Were the great trumpet blowing dooms-
day dawn,
I needs must rest. Call when the
Norman moves —
[^Exeunt all but Harold.
No horse — thousands of horses — our
shield wall —
Wall — break it not — break not — break —
\_Sleeps.
Vision of Edward. Son Harold, I thy
king, who came before
To tell thee thou shouldst win at Stam-
ford-bridge,
Come yet once more, from where I am
at peace.
Because I loved thee in my mortal day,
To tell thee thou shalt die on Senlac
hill -
Sanguelac !
Vision of Wulfnoth. O brother, from
my ghastly oubliette
I send my voice across the narrow seas —
No more, no more, dear brother, never-
more—
Sanguelac !
Vision of Tostig. . O brother, most
unbrotherlike to me,
Thou gavest thy voice against me in my
Ufe,
I give my voice against thee from the
grave — '
Sanguelac !
Vision of Norman Saints. O hapless
Harold ! King but for an hour !
Thou swarest falsely by our blessed
bones.
We give our voice against thee out of
heaven !
Sanguelac ! Sanguelac ! The arrow ! the
arrow !
Harold (^starting up^ battle-axe in
hand). Away!
My battle-axe against your voices. Peace !
The king's last word — * the arrow 1 * I
shall die —
SCENE I.
HAROLD.
669
I die for England then, who lived for
England —
What nobler? men must die.
I cannot fall into a falser world —
I have done no man wrong. Tostig,
poor brother,
Art thoti so anger'd?
Fain had I kept thine earldom in thy
hands
Save for thy wild and violent will that
wrench'd
All hearts of freemen from thee. I could
do
No other than this way advise the king
Against the race of Godwin. Is it possible
That mortal men should bear their earthly
heats
Into yon Ijloodless world, and threaten us
thence
Unschool'd of Death? Thus then thou
art revenged —
I left our England naked to the South
To meet thee in the North. The Norse-
man's raid
Hath helpt the Norman, and the race of
Godwin
Hath ruin'd Godwin. No — our waking
thoughts
Suffer a stormless shipwreck in the pools
Of sullen slumber, and arise again
Disjointed : only dreams — where mine
own self
Takes part against myself! Why? for a
spark
Of self-disdain born in me when I sware
Falsely to him, the falser Norman, over
His gilded ark of mummy-saints, by
whom
I knew not that I sware, — not for my-
self—
For England — yet not wholly —
{Enter Edith.)
Edith, Edith,
Get thou into thy cloister as the king
Will'd it : be safe : the perjury-mongering
Count
Hath made too good an use of Holy
Church
To break her close ! There the great
God of truth
Fill all thine hours with peace ! — A lying
devil
Hath haunted me — mine oath — my
wife — I fain
Had made my marriage not a lie; I
could not:
Thou art my bride ! and thou in after
years
Praying perchance for this poor soul of
mine
In cold, white cells beneath an icy moon —
This memory to thee ! — and this to
England,
My legacy of war against the Pope
From child to child, from Pope to Pope,
from age to age,
Till the sea wash her level with her shores,
Or till the Pope be Christ's.
Enter Aldwyth.
Aldwyth {to Edith). Away from him !
Edith. I will ... I have not spoken
to the king
One word; and one I must. Farewell!
[ Going.
Harold. Not yet.
Stay.
Edith. To what use?
Harold. The king commands thee,
woman !
( To Aldwyth.)
Have thy two brethren sent their forces
in?
Aldwyth. Nay, I fpar not.
Harold. Then there's no force in thee !
Thou didst possess thyself of Edward's ear
To part me from the woman that I loved !
Thou didst arouse the fierce Northum-
brians !
Thou hast been false to England and to
me ! —
As ... in some sort ... I have been
false to thee.
Leave me. No more — Pardon on both
sides — Go !
Aldwyth. Alas, my lord, I loved thee.
Harold {bitterly). With a love
Passing thy love for Griffyth ! wherefore
now
Obey my first and last commandment.
Go!
Aldwyth. O Harold I husband ! Shall
we meet again?
Harold. After the battle — after the
battle. Go.
670
HAROLD.
ACT V.
Aldwyth. I go. {Aside.') That I could
stab her standing there !
\_Exii Aldwyth.
Edith. Alas, my lord, she loved thee,
Harold. Never ! never !
Edith. I saw it in her eyes !
Harold. I see it in thine.
And not on thee — nor England — fall
God's doom !
Edith. On thee? on me. And thou
art England ! Alfred
Was England. Ethelred was nothing.
England
Is but her king, and thou art Harold !
Harold. Edith,
The sign in heaven — the sudden blast
at sea —
My fatal oath — the dead Saints — the
dark dreams —
The Pope's Anathema — the Holy Rood
That bow'd to me at Waltham —Edith, if
I, the last English king of England —
Edith. No,
First of a line that coming from the people,
And chosen by the people —
Harold. And fighting for
And dying for the people —
Edith. Living ! living !
Harold. Yea so, good cheer ! thou
art Harold, I am Edith !
Look not thus wan !
Edith. What matters how I look?
Have we not broken Wales and Norse-
land? slain.
Whose life was all one battle, incarnate
war,
Their giant-king, a mightier man-in-arms
Than William?
Harold. Ay, my girl, no tricks in
him —
No bastard he ! when all was lost, he
yell'd,
And bit his shield, and dash'd it on the
ground,
And swaying his two-handed sword about
him.
Two deaths at every swing, ran in upon us
And died so, and I loved him as I hate
This liar who made me liar. If Hate
can kill.
And Loathing wield a Saxon battle-axe —
Edith. Waste not thy might before
the battle !
Harold. No,
And thou must hence. Stigand will see
thee safe.
And so — farewell.
\_He is going, but turns back.
The ring thou darest not wear,
I have had it fashion'd, see, to meet my
hand,
[Harold shoius the ring which is on
his finger.
Farewell !
[//^ is going, but turns back again.
I am dead as Death this day to aught of
earth's
Save William's death or mine.
Edith. Thy death ! — to-day !
Is it not thy birthday?
Harold. Ay, that happy day !
A birthday welcome ! happy days and
many!
One — this ! [ They embrace.
Look, I will bear thy blessing into the
battle
And front the doom of God,
Norman cries (heard in the distance).
Ha Rou ! Ha Rou !
Enter Gurth.
Gurth. The Norman moves !
Harold. Harold and Holy Cross !
\_Exeunt Harold and Gurth.
Enter Stigand.
Stigand. Our Church in arms — the
lamb the lion — not
Spear into pruning-hook — the counter
way —
Cowl, helm ; and crozier, battle-axe.
Abbot Alfwig,
Leofric, and all the monks of Peter-
boro'
Strike for the king; but I, old wretch,
old Stigand,
With hands too limp to brandish iron —
and yet
I have a power — would Harold ask me
for it —
I have a power.
Edith. What power, holy father?
Stigand. Power now from Harold to
command thee hence
And see thee safe from Senlac.
Edith. 1 remain!
SCENE I.
HAROLD,
67,
Stigand. Yea, so will I, daughter,
until I lind
Which way the battle balance. I can
see it
From where we stand : and, live or die,
I would
I were among them !
Canons from Walthatn {singing without) .
Salva patriam
Sancte Pater,
Salva Fili,
Salva Spiritus,
Salva patriam,
Sancta Mater.^
Edith. Are those the blessed angels
I quiring, father?
Stigand. No, daughter, but the canons
out of Waltham,
The king's foundation, that have foUow'd
; him.
I Edith. O God of battles, make their
wall of shields
Firm as thy cliffs, strengthen their
palisades !
What is that whirring sound?
Stigand. The Norman arrow !
Edith. Look out upon the battle — is
he safe?
Stigand. The king of England stands
between his banners.
He glitters on the crowning of the hill.
God save King Harold !
Edith. — chosen by his people
And fighting for his people !
Stigand. There is one
Come as Goliath came of yore — he flings
His brand in air and catches it again,
He is chanting some old war-song.
Edith. And no David
I To meet him?
Stigand. Ay, there springs a Saxon
on him.
Falls — and another falls.
Edith. Have mercy on us !
I Stigand. Lo ! our good Gurth hath
smitten him to the death.
Edith. So perish all the enemies of
Harold!
Canons {singing).
1 The a througliout these Latin hymns should
be sounded broad, as in ' father,'
Hostis in Angliam
Ruit praedator,
lllorum, Uomine,
Scutum scindatur !
Hostis per Angliae
Plagas bacchatur;
Casa crematur,
Pastor fugatur
Grex trucidatur —
Stigand. lUos trucida, Domine.
Edith. Ay, good father.
Canons {singing).
lllorum scelera
Poena sequatur !
English cries. Harold and Holy
Cross ! Out ! out !
Stigand. Our javelins
Answer their arrows. All the Norman
foot
Are storming up the hill. The range of
knights
Sit, each a statue on his horse, and wait.
English cries. Harold and God Al-
mighty !
Norman cries. Ha Rou ! Ha Rou !
Canons {singing).
Eques cum pedite
Praepediatur !
lllorum in lacrymas
Cruor fundatur !
Pereant, pereant,
Anglia precatur.
Stigand. Look, daughter, look.
Edith. Nay, father, look for me !
Stigand. Our axes lighten with a
single flash
About the summit of the hill, and heads
And arms are sliver'd off and splinter'd
by
Their lightning — and they fly — tke Nor-
man flies.
Edith. Stigand, O father, have we
won the day?
Stigand. No, daughter, no — they fall
behind the horse —
Their horse are thronging to the bar-
ricades;
I see the gonfanon of Holy Peter
Floating above their helmets — ha ! he is
down I
672
HAROLD.
ACT V
Edith. He down ! Who down?
Stigajtd. The Norman Count is down.
Edith. So perish all the enemies of
England !
Stigand. No, no, he hath risen again
— he bares his face —
Shouts something — he points onward —
all their horse
Swallow the hill locust-like, swarming up.
Edith. O God of battles, make his
battle-axe keen
As thine own sharp-dividing justice,
heavy
As thine own bolts that fall on crimeful
heads
Charged with the weight of heaven
wherefrom they fall !
Canons (singing).
Jacta tonitrua
Deus bellator !
Surgas e tenebris,
Sis vindicator !
Fulmina, fulmina
Deus vastator !
Edith. O God of battles, they are
three to one,
Make thou one man as three to roll them
down !
Canons (singing).
Equus cum equite
Dejiciatur !
Acies, Acies
Prona sternatur !
Illorum lanceas
Frange Creator !
Stigand. Yea , yea, for how their lances
snap and shiver
Against the shifting blaze of Harold's
axe !
War-woodman of old Woden, how he
•fells
The mortal copse of faces ! There ! And
there !
The horse and horseman cannot meet the
shield,
The blow that brains the horseman
cleaves the horse,
The horse and horseman roll along the
hill.
They fly once more, they fly, the Norman
flies!
Equus cum equite
Prsecipitatur.
Edith. O God, the God of truth hath
heard my cry.
P^ollow them, follow them, drive them to
the sea !
Illorum scelera
Poena sequatur !
Stigand. Truth ! no; a lie; a trick,
a Norman trick !
They turn on the pursuer, horse against
foot,
They murder all that follow.
Edith. Have mercy on us !
Stigand. Hot-headed fools — to burst
the wall of shields !
They have broken the commandment of
the king!
Edith. His oath was broken — O holy
Norman Saints,
Ye that are now of heaven, and see
beyond
Your Norman shrines, pardon it, pardon it,
That he forsware himself for all he loved.
Me, me and all ! Look out upon the
battle !
Stigand. They thunder again upon
the barricades.
My sight is eagle, but the strife so thick — •
This is the hottest of it : hold, ash ! hold,
willow !
English cries. Out, out!
Norman cries. Ha Rou !
Stigand. Ha ! Gurth hath leapt upon
him
And slain him : he hath fallen.
Edith. And I am heard.
Glory to God in the Highest ! fallen,
fallen !
Stigand. No, no, his horse — he
mounts another — wields
His war-club, dashes it on Gurth, and
Gurth,
Our noble Gurth, is down !
Edith. Have mercy on us !
Stigand. And Leofwin is down !
Edith. Have mercy on us !
O Thou that knowest, let not my strong
prayer
Be weaken 'd in thy sight, because I love
The husband of another !
SCENE II.
HAROLD.
673
Norman cries. Ha Rou ! Ha Rou !
Edith. I do not hear our English
war-cry.
Siigand. No.
Edith. Look out upon the battle — is
he safe?
Stigand. He stands between the ban-
ners with the dead
So piled about him he can hardly move.
Edith {takes tip the war-cry). Out !
out!
Norman cries. Ha Rou !
Edith {cries out). Harold and Holy
Cross !
Norman cries. Ha Rou ! Ha Rou !
Edith. What is that whirring sound ?
Stigand. The Norman sends his
arrows up to Heaven,
They fall on those within the palisade !
Edith. Look out upon the hill — is
Harold there?
Stigand. Sanguelac — Sanguelac —
the arrow — the arrow ! — away !
SCENE IL
- Field of the Dead.
Night.
Aldv^th and Edith.
Aldwyth. O Edith, art thou here? O
Harold, Harold —
Our Harold — we shall never see him
more.
Edith. For there was more than sister
in my kiss,
And so the Saints were wroth. I cannot
love them.
For they are Norman Saints — and yet I
should — •
They are so much holier than their har-
lot's son
With whom they play'd their game*
against the king !
Aldwyth. The king is slain, the
Kingdom overthrown !
Edith. No matter !
Aldivyth. How no matter, Harold
slain? —
I cannot find his body. O help me thou !
O Edith, if I ever wrought against thee,
Forgive me thou, and help me here !
Edithi No matter !
Aldwyth. Not help me, nor forgive me ?
2X
Edith. So thou saidest.
Aldwyth. I say it now, forgive me !
Edith. Cross me not !
I am seeking one who wedded me in
secret.
Whisper ! God's angels only know it.
Ha!
What art thou doing here among the
dead?
They are stripping the lead bodies naked
yonder,
And thou art come to rob them of their
rings !
Aldwyth. O Edith, Edith, I have lost
both crown
And husband.
Edith. So have I.
Aldivyth. I tell thee, girl,
I am seeking my dead Harold.
Edith. And I mine !
The Holy Father strangled him with a hair
Of Peter, and his brother Tostig.helpt;
The wicked sister clapt her hands and
laugh'd;
Then all the dead fell on him.
Aldwyth. Edith, Edith —
Edith. What was he like, this hus-
band? like to thee?
Call not for help from me. I knew him
not.
He lies not here : not close beside the
standard.
Here fell the truest, manliest hearts of
England.
Go further hence and find him.
Aldivyth. She is crazed !
Edith. That doth not matter either.
Lower the light.
He must be here.
Enter two Canons, Osgod and
Athelric, with torches. They
turn over the dead bodies and
examine them as they pass.
Osgod. I think that this is Thurkill.
Athelric. More likely Godric.
Osgod. I am sure this body
Is Alfvvig, the king's uncle.
Athelric. So it is !
No, no — brave Gurth, one gash from
brow to knee !
Osgod. And here is Leofwin.
Edith. And here is He I
674
HAROLD.
ACT V.
Aldwyth. Harold? Oh no — nay, if
it were — my God,
They have so niaim'd and murder'd all
his face
There is no man can swear to him.
Edith. But one woman!
Look you, we never mean to part again.
I have found him, I am happy.
Was there not someone ask'd me for
forgiveness?
I yield it freely, being the true wife
Of this dead King, who never bore re-
venge. ♦
Enter Count William and William
Malet.
William. Who be these women?
And what body is this?
Edith. Harold, thy better !
William. Ay, and what art thou?
Edith. His wife !
Malet. Not true, my girl, here is the
Queen ! \^Pointing out Aldwyth.
William {to Aldwyth). Wast thou
his Queen?
Aldwyth. I was the Queen of Wales.
William. Why then of Englandr
Madam, fear us not.
{To Malet.) Knowest thou this other?
Malet. When I visited England,
Some held she was his wife in secret —
some —
Well — some believed she was his para-
mour.
Edith. Norman, thou liest ! liars all
of you,
Your Saints and all ! / am his wife !
and she —
For look, our marriage ring !
\She draws it off the finger ^Harold.
I lost it somehow —
I lost it, playing with it when I was wild.
That bred the doubt ! but I am wiser
now. . . .
I am too wise. . . . Will none among
you all
Bear me true witness — only for this
once —
That I have found it here again?
\_She puts it on.
And thou,
Thy wife am I for ever and evermore.
\^Falls on the body and dies.
William. Death! — and enough of
death for this one day,
The day of St. Calixtus, and the day,
My day when I was born.
Malet. And this dead king's
Who, king or not, hath kinglike fought
and fallen,
His birthday, too. It seems but yestereven
I held it with him in his English halls.
His day, with all his rooftree ringing
' Harold,'
Before he fell into the snare of Guy;
When all men counted Harold would be
king,
And Harold was most happy.
William. Thou art half English.
Take them away !
Malet, I vow to build a church to God
Here on the hill of battle; let our high
altar
Stand where their standard fell . . .
where these two lie.
Take them away, I do not love to see
them.
Pluck the dead woman off the dead man,
Malet !
Malet. Faster than ivy. Must I hack
her arms off ?
How shall I part them?
William. Leave them. Let them be !
Bury him and his paramour together.
He that was false in oath to me,, it seems
Was false to his own wife. We will not
give him
A Christian burial : yet he was a warrior,
And wise, yea truthful, till that blighted
vow
Which God avenged to-day.
Wrap them together in a purple cloak
And lay them both upon the waste sea-
shore
•At Hastings, there to guard .he land for
which
He did forswear himself — a warrior — ay.
And but that Holy Peter fought for us.
And that the false Northumbrian held
aloof.
And save for that chance arrow which the
Saints
Sharpen'd and sent against him — who
can tell? —
Three horses had I slain beneath me:
twice
SCENE 11.
HAROLD.
675
I thought that all was lost. Since I
knew battle,
And that was from my boyhood, never
yet —
No, by the splendour of God — have I
fought men
Like Harold and his brethren, and his
guard
Of English. Every man about his king
Fell where he stood. They loved him :
and, pray God
My Normans may but move as true with
me
To the door of death. Of one self-stock
at first,
Make them again one people — Norman,
English ;
And English, Norman; we should have
a hand
To grasp the world with, and a foot to
stamp it . . .
Flat. Praise the Saints. It is over.
No more blood !
I am king of England, so they thwart me
not,
And I will rule according to their laws.
{^To Aldwyth.) Madam, we will entreat
thee with all honour.
Aldwyth. My punishment is more
than I can bear.
BECKET.
To THE Lord Chancellor,
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE EARL OF SELBORNE.
My dear Selborne — To you, the honoured Chancellor of our own day, I dedicate this dramatic
memorial of your great predecessor ; —which, altho' not intended in its present form to meet the
exigencies of our modern theatre, has nevertheless — for so you have assured me — won your approba-
tion. — Ever yours, TENNYSON.
DRAMATIS PERSONM.
Henry II. {^son of the Earl of Anj'oii).
Thomas Becket, Chancellor of England, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.
Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London.
Roger, A rchbishop of York.
Bishop of Hereford.
. Hilary, Bishop of Chichester.
JoCELYN, Bishop of Salisbury.
John of Salisbury ) ^^.^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^^^
Herbert of Bosham )
Walter Map, reputed author of 'Golias,' Latin poems against the priesthood.
King Louis of France.
Geoffrey, son of Rosamund and Henry.
Grim, a monk of Cambridge.
Sir Reginald Fitzurse ~|
Sir Richard de Brito 1 ^j^^y^^^ knights of the King's household, enemies of Becket.
Sir William de Tracy ( ^ *> •> ■=> -^
Sir Hugh de Morville J
De Broc of Saltwood Castle.
Lord Leicester.
Philip de Eleemosyna.
Two Knight Templars.
John of Oxford {called the Swearer^.
Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of England {divorced from Louis of France^.
Rosamund de Clifford.
Margery.
Knights, Monks, Beggars, etc.
PROLOGUE.
A Castle in Normandy. Interior of the
Hall. Roofs of a City seen thro''
Windows.
Henry and Becket at chess.
Henry. So then our good Archbishop
Theobald
Lies dying.
Becket. I am gd-jved to know as
much.
Henry. But we must have a mightier
man than he
For his successor.
Becket. Have you thought of one?
Henry. A cleric lately poison'd his
own mother,
And being brought before the courts of
the Church,
They but degraded him. I hope they
whipt him.
I would have hang'd him.
Becket. It is your move.
Henry. Well — there. {^Moves.
The Church in the pell-mell of Stephen's
time
Hath climb'd the throne and almost
clutch'd the crown;
But by the royal customs of our realm
PROLOGUE.
BECKET.
677
The Church should hold her baronies of
me,
Like other lords amenable to law.
I'll have them written down and made
the law.
Becket. My liege, I move my bishop.
Henry. And if I live.
No man without my leave shall excom-
municate
My tenants or my household.
Becket. Look to your king.
Henry. No man without my leave
shall cross the seas
To set the Pope against me — I pray your
pardon.
Becket. Well — will you move ?
Henry. There. \_Moves.
Becket. Check — you move so wildly.
Henry. There then ! \_Moves.
Becket. Why — there then, for you see
my bishop
Hath brought your king to a standstill.
You are beaten.
Henry {kicks over the board^. Why,
there then — down go bishop and
king together.
I loathe being beaten; had I fixt my
fancy
Upon the game I should have beaten
thee.
But that was vagabond.
Becket. Where, my liege? With
Phryne,
Or Lais, or thy Rosamund, or another?
Henry. ' My Rosamund is no Lais,
Thomas Becket;
And yet she plagues me too — no fault in
. her —
But that I fear the Queen would have her
life.
Becket. Put her away, put her away,
my liege !
Put her away into a nunnery !
Safe enough there from her to whom thou
art bound
By Holy Church. And wherefore should
she seek
The life of Rosamund de Clifford more
Than that of other paramours of thine?
Henry. How dost thou know I am
not wedded to her?
Becket. How should I know?
Henry. That is my secret, Thomas.
Becket. State secrets should be patent
to the statesman
Who serves and loves his king, and whom
the king
Loves not as statesman, but true lover
and friend.
Henry. Come, come, thou art but
deacon, not yet bishop.
No, nor archbishop, nor my confessor
yet.
I would to God thou wert, for I should
find
An easy father confessor in thee.
Becket. St. Denis, that thou shouldst
not. I should beat
Thy kingship as my bishop hath beaten
it.
Henry. Hell take thy bishop then,
and my kingship too !
Come, come, I love thee and I know thee,
I know thee,
A doter on white pheasant-flesh at feasts,
A sauce-deviser for thy days of fish,
A dish-designer, and most amorous
Of good old red sound liberal Gascon
wine :
Will not thy 'body rebel, man, if thou
flatter it?
Becket. That palate is insane which
cannot tell
A good dish from a bad, new wine from
old.
Henry. Well, who loves wine loves
woman.
Becket. So I do.
Men are God's trees, and women are
God's flowers;
And when the Gascon wine mounts to
my head,
The trees are all the statelier, and the
flowers
Are all the fairer.
Henry. And thy thoughts, thy fancies?
Becket. Good dogs, my liege, well
train'd, and easily call'd
Off from the game.
Henry. Save for some once or twice,
When they ran down the game and
worried it.
Becket. No, my liege,*no ! — not once
— in God's name, no !
Henry. Nay, then, I take thee at thy
word — believe thee
678
BECKET.
PROLOGUE.
The veriest Galahad of old Arthur's hall.
And so this Rosamund, my true heart-
wife,
Not Eleanor — she whom I love indeed
As a woman should be loved — Why dost
thou smile
So dolorously?
Becket. My good liege, if a man
Wastes himself among women, how should
he love
A woman, as a woman should be loved?
Henry. How shouldst thou know
that never hast loved one?
Come, I would give her to thy care in
England
When I am out in Normandy or Anjou.
Becket. My lord, I am your subject,
not your
Henry. Pander.
God's eyes! I know all that — not my
purveyor
Of pleasures, but to save a life — her life;
Ay, and the soul of Eleanor from hell-fire.
I have built a secret bower in England,
Thomas,
A nest in a bush.
Becket. And where, my liege?
Henry (zvhispers) . Thine ear.
Becket. That's lone enough.
Henry {laying paper on table). This
chart here mark'd ^Her Bower^
Take, keep it, friend. See, first, a cir-
cling wood,
A hundred pathways running everyway,
And then a brook, a bridge; and after
that
This labyrinthine brickwork maze in
maze,
And then another wood, and in the midst
A garden and my Rosamund. Look,
this line —
The rest you see is colour'd green — but
this
-DraAvs thro' the chart to her.
Becket. This blood-red line ?
Henry. Ay ! blood, perchance, except
thou see to her.
Becket. And where is she? There
in her English nest?
Henry. Would God she were — no,
here within the city.
We take her from her secret bower in
Anjou
And pass her to her secret bower in
England.
She is ignorant of all but that I love
her.
Becket. My liege, I pray thee let me
hence : a widow
And orphan child, whom one of thy wild
barons
1 Henry. Ay, ay, but swear to see to
her in England.
Becket. Well, well, I swear, but not
to please myself.
4 Henry. Whatever come between us?
Becket. What should come
Between us, Henry?
t^ Henry. Nay — I know not, Thomas.
Becket. What need then? Well —
whatever come between us.
[ Going.
Henry. A moment ! thou didst help
me to my throne
In Theobald's time, and after by thy
wisdom
Hast kept it firm from shaking; but
now I,
For my realm's sake, myself must be the
wizard
To raise that tempest which will set it
trembling
Only to base it deeper. I, true son
Of Holy Church — no croucher to the
Gregories
That tread the kings their children under-
heel —
Must curb her; and the Holy Father,
while
This Barbarossa butts him from his chair,
Will need my help — be facile tg my
hands.
Now is my time. Yet — lest there should
be flashes
JAnd fulminations from the side of Rome,
An interdict on England — I will have
My young son Henry crown'd the King
of England,
That so the Papal bolt may pass by
England,
As seeming his, not mine, and fall abroad.
I'll have it done — and now.
Becket. Surely too young
Even for this shadow of a crown; and
tho'
I love him heartily, I can spy already
PROLOGUE.
BECKET.
679
A strain of hard and headstrong in him.
Say,
The Queen should play his kingship
against thine !
Henry. I will not think so, Thomas.
Who shall crown him?
Canterbury is dying.
Becket. The next Canterbury.
Henry. And who shall he be, my
friend Thomas? Who?
Becket. Name him; the Holy Father
will confirm him.
Henry (Jays his hand on Becket's
shoulder'). Here!
Becket. Mock me not. I am not
even a monk.
Thy jest — no more. Why — look — is
this a sleeve
For an archbishop?
Henry. But the arm within
Is Becket's, who hath beaten down my
foes.
Becket. A soldier's, not a spiritual
arm.
Henry. I lack a spiritual soldier,
Thomas —
A man of this world and the next to boot.
Becket. There's Gilbert F'oliot.
Henry. He ! too thin, too thin.
Thou art the man to fill out the Church
robe;
Your Foliot fasts and fawns too much
for me.
Becket. Roger of York.
Henry. Roger is Roger of York.
King, Church, and State to him but foils
wherein
To set that precious jewel, Roger of York.
No.
Becket. Henry of Winchester?
Henry. Him who crown'd Stephen —
King Stephen's brother ! No ; too royal
for me.
And I'll have no more Anselms.
Becket. Sire, the business
Of thy whole kingdom waits me: let
me go.
Henry. Answer me first.
Becket. Then for thy barren jest
Take thou mine answer in bare common-
place —
Nolo episcopari.
Henry. Ay, but Nolo
Archiepiscopari .^ my good friend,
Is quite another matter.
Becket. A more awful one.
Make me archbishop ! Why, my liege,
I know
Some three or four poor priests a thou-
sand times
Fitter for this grand function. Me arch-
bishop !
God's favour and king's favour might so
clash
That thou and I That were a jest
indeed !
Henry. Thou angerest me, man: I
do not jest.
Enter Eleanor atid Sir Reginald
FiTZURSE.
Eleanor {singing). Over! the sweet
summer closes,
The reign of the roses is done
Henry (Jo Becket, who is going) . Thou
shalt not go. I have not ended
with thee.
Eleanor {seeing chart on table) . This
chart with the red line ! her bower !
whose bower?
Hen?y. The chart is not mine, but
Becket's : take it, Thomas,
Eleanor. Becket ! O — ay — and these
chessmen on the floor — the king's crown
broken ! Becket hath beaten thee again
— and thou hast kicked down the board.
I know thee of old.
Henry. True enough, my mind was
set upon other matters.
Eleanor. What matters? State mat-
ters? love matters?
Henry. My love for thee, and thine
for me.
Eleanor. Over ! the sweet summer
closes,
The reign of the roses is done;
Over and gone with the roses.
And over and gone with the sun.
Here; but our sun in Aquitaine lasts
longer. I would I were in Aquitaine
again — your north chills me.
Over ! the sweet summer closes,
And never a flower at the close;
Over and gone with the roses.
And winter again and the snows.
68o
BECKET.
PROLOGUE,
That was not the way I ended it first —
but unsymmetrically, preposterously, illog-
ically, out of passion, without art — like
a song of the people. Will you have
it? The last Parthian shaft of a for-
lorn Cupid at the King's left brea^^t,
and all left-handedness and under hand-
edness.
And never a flower at the close,
Over and gone with the roses,
Not over and gone with the rose.
True, one rose will outblossom the rest,
one rose in a bower. I speak after my
fancies, for I am a Troubadour, you
know, and won the violet at Toulouse;
but my voice is harsh here, not in tune,
a nightingale out of season ; for marriage,
rose or no rose, has killed the golden
violet.
Becket. Madam, you do ill to scorn
wedded love.
Eleanor. So I do. Louis of France
loved me, and 1 dreamed that I loved
Louis of France: and I loved Henry of
England, and Henry of England dreamed
that he loved me; but the marriage-gar-
land withers even with the putting on,
the bright hnk ruits with the breath of
the first after-marriage kiss, the harvest
moon is the ripening of the harvest, and
the honeymoon is the gall of love; he
dies of his honeymoon. I could pity
this poor world myself that it is no better
ordered.
Henry. Dead is he, my Queen?
What, altogether? Let me swear nay to
that by this cross on thy neck. God's
eyes ! what a lovely cross ! what jewels !
Eleanor. Doth it please you? Take
it and wear it on that hard heart of yours
— there. [ Gives it to him.
Henry {puts it on). On this left breast
before so hard a heart.
To hide the scar left by thy Parthian dart.
Eleanor. Has my simple song set
you jingling? Nay, if I took and trans-
lated that hard heart into our Provencal
facilities, I could so play about it with
the rhyme
Henry. That the heart were lost in-
the rhyme and the matter in the metre.
May we not pray you, Madam, to spare
us the hardness of your facility?
Eleanor. The wells of Castaly are
not wasted "upon the desert. We did
but jest.
Henry. There's no jest on the brows
of Herbert there. What is it, Herbert?
Enter Herbert of Bosham.
Herbert. My liege, the good Arch-
bishop is no more.
Henry. Peace to his soul !
Herbert. I left him with peace on his
face — that sweet other- world smile, which
will be reflected in the spiritual body
among the angels. But he longed much
to see your Grace and the Chancellor
ere he past, and his last words were a
commendation of Thomas Becket to your
Grace as his successor in the archbishop-
rick.
Henry. Ha, Becket ! thou remem-
berest our talk !
Becket. My heart is full of tears — I
have no answer.
Henry. Well, well, old men must
die, or the world would grow mouldy,
would only breed the past again. Come
to me to-morrow. Thou hast but to
hold out thy hand. Meanwhile the
revenues are mine. A-hawking, a-hawk-
ing! If I sit, I grow fat.
\_Leaps over the table, and exit.
Becket. He did prefer me to the
chancellorship,
Believing I should ever aid the Church —
But have I done it ? He commends me
now
From out his grave to this archbishop-
rick.
Herbert. A dead man's dying wish
should be of weight.
Becket. His should. Come with me.
Let me learn at full
The manner of his death, and all he said.
\_Exeunt Herbert and Becket.
Eleanor. Fitzurse, that chart with the
red line — thou sawest it — her bower.
Fitzurse. Rosamund's?
Eleanor. Ay — there lies the secret of
her whereabouts, and the King gave it to
his Chancellor,
PROLOGUE.
BECKET.
68i
Fitziirse. To this son of a London
merchant — how your Grace must hate
him !
Eleanor. Hate him? as brave a
soldier as Henry and a goodlier man :
but thou — dost thou love this Chancellor,
that thou hast sworn a voluntary alle-
giance to him?
Fitzurse. Not for my love toward
him, but because he had the love of the
King. How should a baron love a
beggar on horseback, with the retinue of
three kings behind him, outroyalling
royalty? Besides, he holp the King to
break down our castles, for the which I
hate him.
Eleanor. For the which I honour
him. Statesman not Churchman he.
A great and sound policy that: I could
embrace him for it : you could not see
the King for the kinglings.
Fitzurse. Ay, but he speaks to a
noble as tho' he were a churl, and to a
churl as if he were a noble.
Eleanor. Pride of the plebeian !
Fitzurse. And this plebeian like to be
Archbishop !
Eleanor. True, and I have an in-
herited loathing of these black sheep of
the Papacy. Archbishop? I can see
further into a man than our hot-headed
Henry, and if there ever come feud
between Church and Crown, and I do
not then charm this secret out of our
loyal Thomas, I am not Eleanor.
Fitzurse. Last night I followed a
woman in the city here. Her face was
veiled, but the back methought was
Rosamund — his paramour, thy rival. I
can feel for thee.
Flleanor. Thou feel for me ! — para-
mour— rival ! King Louis had no para-
mours, and I loved him none the more.
Henry had many, and I loved him none
the less — now neither more nor less —
not at all; the cup's empty. I would she
were but his paramour, for men tire of
their fancies; but I fear this one fancy
hath taken root, and borne blossom too,
and she, whom the King loves indeed, is
a power in the State. Rival ! — ay, and
when the King passes, there may come a
crash and embroilment as in Stephen's
time; and her children — canst thou not
— that secret matter which would heat
the King against thee {juhispers him and
he starts). Nay, that is safe with me as
with thyself: but canst thou not — thou
art drowned in debt — thou shalt have our
love, our silence, and our gold — canst
thou not — if thou light upon her — free
me from her?
Fitzurse. Well, Madam, I have loved
her in my time.
Eleanor. No, my bear, thou hast not.
My Courts of Love would have held
thee guiltless of love — the fine attrac-
tions and repulses, the delicacies, the
subtleties.
Fitzurse. Madam, I loved accord-
ing to the main purpose and intent of
nature.
Eleanor. I warrant thee ! thou
wouldst hug thy Cupid till his ribs
cracked — enough of this. Follow me
this Rosamund day and night, whither-
soever she goes; track her, if thou canst,
even into the King's lodging, that I may
{clenches her fist) — may at least have
my cry against him and her, — and thou
in thy way shouldst be jealous of the
King, for thou in thy way didst once,
what shall I call it, affect her thine own
self.
Fitzurse. Ay, but the young colt
winced and whinnied and flung up her
heels; and then the King came honey-
ing about her, and this Becket, her
father's friend, like enough staved us
from her.
Eleanor. Us !
Fitzurse. Yea, by the Blessed Virgin !
There were more than I buzzing round
the blossom — De Tracy — even that
flint De Brito.
Eleanor. Carry her off among you;
run in upon her and devour her, one and
all of you; make her as hateful to her-
self and to the King, as she is to me.
Fitzurse. I and all would be glad to
wreak our spite on the rosefaced minion
of the King, and bring her to the level
of the dust, so that the King
Eleanor. Let her eat it like the ser-
pent, and be driven out of her para-
dise.
682
BECKET.
ACT I
ACT I.
SCENE I. — Becket's House in Lon-
don.
Chamber barely furnished. Becket
unrobing. Herbert of Bosham and
Servant.
Servant. Shall I not help your lord-
ship to your rest?
Becket. Friend, am I so much better
than thyself
That thou shouldst help me? Thou art
wearied out
With this day's work, get thee to thine
own bed.
Leave me with Herbert, friend.
[^:fzV Servant.
Help me off, Herbert, with this — and
this.
Herbert. Was not the people's bless-
ing as we past
Heart-comfort and a balsam to thy
blood?
Becket. The people know their Church
a tower of strength,
A bulwark against Throne and Baronage.
Too heavy for me, this; off with it,
Herbert !
Herbert. Is it so much heavier than
thy Chancellor's robe?
Becket. No; but the Chancellor's and
the Archbishop's
Together more than mortal man can
bear.
Herbert. Not heavier than thine
armour at Thoulouse?
Becket. O Herbert, Herbert, in my
chancellorship
I more"thah once have gone against the
Church.
Herbert. To please the King?
Becket. Ay, and the King of kings,
Or justice; for it seem'd to me but just
The Church should pay her scutage like
the lords.
But hast thou heard this cry of Gilbert
Foliot
That I am not the man to be your
Primate,
For Henry could not work a miracle —
Make an Archbishop of a soldier?
Herbert. Ay,
For Gilbert Foliot held himself the man.
Becket. Am I the man? My mother,
ere she bore me,
Dream'd that twelve stars fell glittering
out of heaven
Into her bosom.
Herbert. Ay, the fire, the light.
The spirit of the twelve Apostles enter'd
Into thy making.
Becket. And when I was a child,
The Virgin, in a vision of my sleep,
Gave me the golden keys of Paradise.
Dream,
Or prophecy, that?
Herbert. Well, dream and prophecy
both.
Becket. And when I was of Theobald's
household, once —
The good old man would sometimes have
his jest —
He took his mitre off, and set it on me.
And said, ' My young Archbishop — thou
wouldst make
A stately Archbishop i ' Jest or prophecy
there?
Herbert. Both, Hiomas, both.
r" Becket. Am I the man? That rang
I Within my head last night, and when I
■ slept
Methought I stood in Canterbury Min-
ster,
, And spake to the Lord God, and said,
j 'O Lord,
• I have been a lover of wines, and deli-
cate meats,
And secular splendours, and a favourer
; Of players, and a courtier, and a feeder
Of dogs and hawks, and apes, and lions,
and lynxes.
Am / the man ? ' And the Lord answer'd
me,
* Thou art the man, and all the more the
man.'
And then I ask'd again, * O Lord my God,
Henry the King hath been my friend, my
brother,
And mine uplifter in this world, and
chosen me
For this thy great archbishoprick, be-
lieving
That I should go against the Church
with him,
I
SCENE I.
BECKET.
683
And I shall go against him with the.
Church, '
And I have said no word of this to him :
Am /the man? ' And the Lord answer'd'
me,
* Thou art the man, and all the more the j
man.' i
And thereupon, methought, He drew '
toward me, \
And smote me down upon the Minster i
floor. /
I fell. -^ '
Herbert. God make not thee, but thy
foes, fall.
Becket. I fell. Why fall? Why did
He smite me? What?
Shall I fall off — to please the King once
more ?
Not fight — tho' somehow traitor to the
King —
My truest and mine utmost for the
Church?
Herbert. Thou canst not fall that
way. Let traitor be;
For how have fought thine utmost for the
Church,
Save from the throne of thine archbishop-
rick?
And how been made Archbishop hadst
thou told him,
• I mean to fight mine utmost for the
Church,
Against the King'?
Becket. But dost thou think the King
Forced mine election?
Herbert. I do think the King
Was potent in the election, and why
not?
Why should not Heaven have so inspired
the King?
Be comforted. Thou art the man — be
thou .
A mightier Ahselm.
Becket. I do believe theej_theru I^
am the man.
And yet I seem appall'd — on such a
sudden.
At such an eagle-height I stand and see
The rift tFaf runs between me .axuL-the
King.
I served our Theobald well when I was
with him;
I served King Henry well as Chancellor;
I am his no more, and I must serve the
Church.
This Canterbury is only less than Rome,
And all my doubts I fling from me like
dust,
Winnow and scatter all scruples to the
wind,
And all the puissance of the warrior.
And all the wisdom of the Chancellor,
And all the heap'd experiences of life,
I cast upon the side of Canterbury —
Our holy mother Canterbury, who sits
With tatter'd robes. Laics and barons
.thro'
The random gifts of careless kings, have
graspt
Her livings, her advowsons, granges,
farms,
And goodly acres — we will make her
whole;
Not one rood lost. And for these Royal
customs,
These ancient Royal customs — they are
Royal,
Not of the Church — and let them be
anathema,
And all that speak for them anathema.
Herbert. Thomas, thou art moved too
much.
Becket. O Herbert, here
I gash myself asunder from the King,
TKo^reavTng each, a wound; mine 'own,
a grief
To show the scar for ever — his, a hate
Not ever to be heal'd.
Enter Rosamund de Clifford, fly-
ing from Sir Reginald Fitzurse.
,Drops her veil.
Becket. Rosamund de Clifford !
Rosamund. Save me, father, hide me
— they follow me — and I must not be
known.
Becket. Pass in with Herbert there.
\_Exeunt Rosamund aiid Herbert by
side door.
Enter Fitzurse.
Fitzurse. The Archbishop !
Becket. Ay ! what wouldst thou, Regi-
nald?
Fitzurse. Why — why, my lord, I fol-
low'd — follow'd one
684
BECKET.
ACT 1.
Becket. And then what follows? Let
me follow thee.
Fitzurse. It much imports me I should
know her name.
Becket. What her?
Fitzurse. The woman that I foUow'd
hither.
Becket. Perhaps it may import her
all as much
Not to be known.
Fitzurse. And what care I for that?
Come, come, my lord Archbishop; I saw
that door
Close even now upon the woman.,
Becket. Well?
Fitzurse {making for the door). Nay,
let me pass, my lord, for I must
know,
Becket. Back, man !
Fitzurse. Then tell me who
and what she is.
Becket. Art thou so sure thou fol-
lowedst anything?
Go home, and sleep thy wine off, for
thine eyes
Glare stupid-wild with wine.
Fitzurse {making to the door). I must
and will.
I care not for thy new archbishoprick.
Becket. B-ack, man, I tell thee !
What !
Shall I forget my new archbishoprick
And smite thee with my crozier on the
skull?
'Fore God, I am a mightier man than
thou.
Fitzurse. It well befits thy new arch-
bishoprick
To take the vagabond woman of the
street
Into thine arms !
Becket. O drunken ribaldry !
Out, beast ! out, l)ear !
Fitzurse. I shall remember this.
Becket. Do, and begone !
[Exit Fitzurse.
\_Going to the door, sees De Tracy.
Tracy, what dost thou here?
De Tracy. My lord, I foUow'd
Reginald Fitzurse.
Becket. Follow him out !
De Tracy. I shall remember this
Discourtesy. \_Exit.
Becket. Do. These be those baron-
brutes
That havock'd all the land in Stephen's
day.
Rosamund de Clifford.
Re-enter Rosamund and Herbert.
Rosamund. Here am I.
Becket. Why here?
We gave thee to the charge of John of
Salisbury,
To pass thee to thy secret bower to-
morrow.
Wast thou not told to keep thyself from
. sight?
Rosamund. Poor bird of passage ! so
I was; but, father,
They say that you are wise in winged
things,
And know the ways of Nature. Bar the
bird
From following the fled summer — a
chink — he's out,
Gone ! And there stole into the city a
breath
Full of the meadows, and it minded me
Of the sweet woods of Clifford, and the
walks
Where I could move at pleasure, and I
thought
Lo ! I must out or die.
Becket. Or out and die.
And what hast thou to do with this
Fitzurse?
Rosamund. Nothing. He sued my
hand. I shook at him.
He found me once alone. Nay — nay
I cannot
Tell you : my father drove him and his
friends,
De Tracy and De Brito, from our castle.
I was but fourteen and an April then.
I heard him swear revenge.
Becket. Why will you court it
By self-exposure? flutter out at night?
Make it so hard to save a moth from the
fire?
Rosamund. I have saved many of
'em. You catch 'em, so.
Softly, and fling them out to the free
air.
They burn themselves within-CLOOt.
Becket. ' Our good John
SCENE I.
BECKET.
685
Must speed you to your bower at once.
The_ciiild
Is there already.
Kosamund. Yes — the child — the
child —
O rare, a whole long day of open field.
Becket. Ay, but you go disguised.
Rosamund. O rare again !
We'll baffle them, I warrant. What
shall it be?
I'll go as a nun.
Becket. No.
Rosamund. What, not good enough
Even to play at nun?
Becket. Dan John with a nun.
That Map, and these new railers at the
Church
May plaister his clean name with scur-
rilous rhymes!
No!
Go like a monk, cowling and clouding up
That fatal star, thy Beauty, from the
squint
Of lust and glare of malice. Good
night ! good night !
Rosamund. Father, I am so tender
to all hardness !
Nay, father, first thy blessing.
Becket. Wedded?
Rosamund. Father !
Becket. Well, well ! I ask no more.
Heaven bless thee ! hence !
Rosamund. O holy father, when thou
seest him next.
Commend me to thy friend.
Becket. What friend?
. Rosamund. The King.
Becket. Herbert, take out a score of
armed men
To guard this bird of passage to her
cage;
And watch Fitzurse, and if he follow
thee,
Make him thy prisoner. I am Chancel-
lor yet.
S^Exeunt Herbert and Rosamund.
Poor soul ! poor soul !
My friend, the King! ... O thou
Great Seal of England,
Given me by my dear friend the King
• of England —
We long have wrought together, thou
and I —
Now must I send thee as a common
friend
To tell the King, my friend, I am against
him.
We are friends no more: he will say
^~ thatj^nol I:
The worldly bond between us is dissolved,
Not yet the love : can I be under him
iVa Chancellor? as^Archbishop over him?
Go therefore like a friend slighted by
one
That hath climb'd up to nobler company.
Not slighted — all but moan'd for : thou
must go.
I have not dishonour'd thee — I trust J
have not;
Not mangled justice. May the hand
that next
Inherits thee be but as true to thee
As mine hath been ! O my dear friend,
the King !
0 brother ! — 1 may come to martyrdom.
1 am martyr in myself already. — Her-
bert !
Herbert {re-entering). My lord, the
town is quiet, and the moon
Divides the whole long street with light
and shade.
No footfall — no Fitzurse. We have seen
her home.
Becket. The hog hath tumbled him-
self into some corner.
Some ditch, to snore away his drunken-
ness
Into the sober headache, — Nature's
moral
Against excess. Let the Great Seal be
sent
Back to the King to-morrow.
Herbert. Must that be?
The King may rend the bearer limb from
limb.
Think on it again.
Becket. Against the moral excess
No physical ache, but failure it may be
Of all we aim'd at. John of Salisbury
Hath often laid a cold hand on my
heats,
And Herbert hath rebuked me even
now.
I will be wise and wary, not the soldier
As Foliot swears it. — John, and out of
breath !
686
BECKET.
ACT I
Enter John of Salisbury.
John of Salisbury. Thomas, thou wast
not happy taking charge
Of this wild Rosamund to please the
King,
Nor am I happy having charge of her —
The included Uanae has escaped again
Her tower, and her Acrisius — where to
seek?
1 have been about the city.
Becket. Thou wilt find her
Back in her lodging. Go with her — at
once —
To-night — my men will guard you to
the gates.
Be sweet to her, she has many enemies.
Send the Great Seal by daybreak. Both,
good night !
SCENE IL — Street in Northampton
LEADING TO THE CaSTLE.
Eleanor's Retainers and Becket's
Retainers fighting. Enter Eleanor
and Becket /r£?/« opposite streets.
Eleanor. Peace, fools !
Becket. Peace, friends ! what idle
brawl is this?
Retainer of Becket. They said — her
Grace's people — thou wast
found —
Liars ! I shame to quote 'em — caught,
my lord.
With a wanton in thy lodging — Hell
requite 'em !
Retainer- of Eleanor. My liege, the
Lord Fitzurse reported this
In passing the Castle even now.
Retainer of Becket. And then they
mock'd us and we fell upon 'em.
For we would live and die for thee, my
lord.
However kings and queens may frown
on thee.
Becket to his Retainers. Go, go — no
more of this !
Eleanor to her Retainers. Away ! —
(£'jr^«w/' Retainers) Fitzurse
Becket. Nay, let him be.
Eleanor. No, no, my Lord
Archbishop,
'Tis known you are midwinter to all
women,
But often in your chancellorship you
served
The follies of the King.
Becket. No, not these follies !
Eleanor. My lord, Htzurse beheld
her in your lodging.
Becket. Whom?
Eleanor. Well — you know — the
minion, Rosamund,
Becket. He had good eyes !
EJeanor. Then hidden in the street
He watch'd her pass with John of Salis-
bury
And heard her cry ' Where is this bower
of mine?'
Becket. Good ears too !
Eleanor. You are going to the Castle,
Will you subscribe the customs?
Becket. I leave that,
Knowing how much you reverence Holy
Church,
My liege, to your conjecture.
Eleanor. I and mine —
And many a baron holds along with
me —
Are not so much at feud vi^ith Holy
Church
But we might take your side against the
customs —
So that you grant me one slight favour.
Becket. What?
Eleanor. A sight of that same chart
which Henry gave you
With the red line — ' her bower.'
Becket. And to what end?
Eleanor. That Church must scorn
herself whose fearful Priest
Sits winking at the license of a king,
Altho' we grant when kings are dangerous
The Church must play into the hands of
kings;
Look ! I would move this wanton from
his sight
And take the Church's danger on myself.
Becket. For which she should be duly
grateful.
Eleanor. True !
Tho' she that binds the bond, herself
should see • -
That kings are faithful to their marriage
vow.
SCENE III.
BECKET.
687
Becket. Ay, Madam, and queens also.
Eleanor. And queens also !
What is your drift?
Becket. My drift is to the Castle,
Where I shall meet the Barons and my
King. \^Exit.
De Broc, De Tracy, De Brito,
De Morville {passing):
Eleanor. To the Castle ?
De Broc. Ay !
Eleanor. Stir up the King, the Lords !
Set all on fire against him !
De Brito. Ay, good Madam !
\^Exeunt.
Eleanor. Fool ! I will make thee
hateful to thy King.
Churl ! I will have thee frighted into
France,
And I shall live to trample on thy grave.
SCENE III.— The Hall in North-
AMiTON Castle.
On one side of the stage the doors of an
inner Council-chamber, half-open.
At the bottom, the great doors of the
Hall. Roger Archbishop of York,
FoLiOT Bishop of London, Hilary
of Chichester, Bishop of Here-
ford, Richard de Hastings {Grand
Prior of Templars), Philip de Elee-
MOSYNA {the Pope^s Almoner), and
others. De Broc, Fitzhrse, De Brito,
De Morville, De Tracy, and other
Barons assembled-^ a table before
them. John of Oxford, President
of the Council.
Enter Becket and Herbert of
BOSHAM.
Becket. Where is the King?
Roger of York. Gone hawking on
the Nene,
His heart so gall'd with thine ingrati-
tude,
He will not see thy face till thou hast
sign'd
These ancient laws and customs of the
realm.
Thy sending back the Great Seal mad-
den'd him,
He all but pluck'd the bearer's eyes
away.
Take heed, lest he destroy thee utterly.
Becket. Then shall thou step into my
place and sign.
Roger of York. Didst thou not promise
Henry to obey
These ancient laws and customs of the
realm?
Becket. Saving the honour of my
order — ay.
Customs, traditions, — clouds that come
and go;
The customs of the Church are Peter's
rock.
Roger of York. Sa\ing thine order!
But King Henry sware
That, saving his King's kingship, he
would grant thee
The crown itself. Saving thine order,
Thomas,
Is black and white at once, and comes
to naught.
O bolster'd up with stubbornness and
pride.
Wilt thou destroy the Church in fighting
for it.
And bring us all to shame?
Becket. Poger of York,
When I and thou were youths in Theo-
bald's house.
Twice did thy malice and thy calumnies
Exile me from the face of Theobald,
Now I am Canterbury and thou art York.
Roger of York. And is not York the
peer of Canterbury?
Did not Great Gregory bid St. Austin here
Found two archbishopricks, London and
York?
Becket. What came of that? The
first archbishop fled.
And York lay barren for a hundred years.
Why, by this rule, Foliot may claim the
pall
For London too.
Foliot. And with good reason too,
For London had a temple and a priest
When Canterbury hardly bore a name.
Becket. The pagan temple of a pagan
Rome !
The heathen priesthood of a heathen
creed !
Thou goest beyond thyself in petulancy I
688
BECKET.
ACT L
Who made thee London? Who, but
Canterbury?
John of Oxford. Peace, peace, my
lords ! these customs are no longer
As Canterbury cani"~tTvem, wandering
clouds,
But by the King's command are written
~^own,
And by the King's command I, John of
Oxford,
The President of this Council, read them.
Becket. Read !
John of Oxford (reads). * All causes
of adyowsons and presentations, whether
between laymen or clerics, shall be tried
in the King's court.'
Becket. But that I cannot sign : for
that would drag
The cleric before the civil judgment-seat,
And on a matter wholly spiritual.
John of Oxford. ' If any cleric be
accused of felony, the Church shall not
protect him; buL_he. shall answer to the
summons of the King's court to be tried
therein.'
Becket. And that I cannot sign.
Is not the Church the visible Lord on
. earth ?
Shall hands that do create the Lord be
bound
Behind the back like laymen-criminals?
The Lord be judged again by Pilate? No !
John of Oxford. 'When a bishoprick
falls vacant, the King, till another Tdc
appointed, shall receive the revenues
thereof.'
Becket. And that I cannot sign. Is
the King's treasury
A fit place for the monies of the Church,
That be the patrimony of the poor?
John of Oxford. * And when the va-
cancy is to be filled up, the King shall
summon the chapter of that church to
court, and the election shall be made in
the Chapel Royal, with the consent of our
lord the King, and by the advice of his
Government.'
Becket. And that I cannot sign : for
that would mal^e
Our island-Church a schism from Chris-
tendom,
And weight down all free choice beneath
the throne.
Foliot. And was thine own election
so canonical,
Good father?
Becket. If it were not, Gilbert Foliot,
I mean to cross the sea to France, and lay
My crozier in the Holy Father's hands.
And bid him re-create me, Gilbert Fohot.
Foliot. Nay ; by another of these cus-
toms thou
WiU not be suffer 'd so to cross_the^seas
Without the license of our lord the King.
Becket. That, too, I cannot sign.
De Broc, De Brito, De Tracy, Fitz-
URSE, De Morville, start up — a clash
of swords.
Sign and obey !
Becket. My lords, is this a combat or
a council?
Are ye my masters, or my lord the King?
Ye make this clashing for no love o' the
customs
Or constitutions, or whate'er ye call them.
But that there^e among XQU those that
hold
Lands reft from Canterbury.
De Broc. And mean to keep them.
In spite of thee !
Lords {shouting). Sign, and obey the
crown ! ,
Becket. The crown? Shall I do less
for Canterbury
Than Henry for the crown? King Ste-
phen gave
Many of the crown lands to those that
helpt him;
So did Matilda, the King's mother. Mark,
When Henry came into his own again.
Then he took back not only Stephen's
gifts,
But his own mother's, lest the crown
should be •
Shorn of ancestral splendour. This did
Henry.
Shall I do less for mine own Canterbury?
And thou, De Broc, that holdest Salt-
wood Castle
De Broc. And mean to hold it, or
Becket. To have my life.
De Broc. The King is quick to anger;
if thou anger him.
We wait but the King's word to strike
thee dead.
SCENE III.
BECKET.
689
Becket. Strike^and I die the death of
martyrdom;
Strike, and ye set thege customs by my
death ~
Ringing their own death -knell thro' all
the realm.
Herbert. And I can tell you, lords, ye
' are all as like
To lodge a fear in Thomas Becket's heart
As find a hare's form in a lion's cave.
John of Oxford. Ay, sheathe your
swords, ye will displease the King.
De Broc. Why down then thou ! but
an he come to Saltwood,
By God's death, thou shalt stick him like
a calf ! [ Sheathing his sword.
Hilary. O my good lord, I do entreat
thee — sign.
Save the King's honour here before his
barons.
He hath sworn that thou shouldst sign,
and now but shuns
The semblance of defeat; I have heard
him say
He means no more; so if thou sign, my
lord,
That were but as the shadow of an assent.
Becket. 'Twould seem too like the
substance, if I sign'd.
Philip de Eleemosyna. My lord, thine
ear ! I have the ear of the Pope.
As thou hast honour for the Pope our
master,
Have pity on him, sorely prest upon
By the fierce Emperor and his Antipope.
Thou knowest he was forced to fly to
France;
He pray'c? me to pray thee to pacify
Thy King; for if thou go against thy
King,
Then must he likewise go against thy
King,
And then thy King might join the Anti-
pope,
And that would shake the Papacy as it
stands.
Besides, thy King swore to our cardinals
He meant no harm nor damage to the
Church.
Smooth thou his pride — thy signing is
but form;
Nay, and should harm come of it, it is
. the Pope
Will be to blame — not thou. Over and
over
He told me thou shouldst pacify the
King,
Lest there be battle between Heaven and
Earth,
And Earth should get the better — for the
time.
Cannot the Pope absolve thee if thou
sign ?
Becket. Have I the orders of the
Holy Father?
Philip de Eleemosyna. Orders, my
lord — why, no; for what am I?
The secret whisper of the Holy Father.
Thou, that hast been a statesman, couldst
thou always
Blurt thy free mind to the air?
Becket. If Rome be feeble, then should
I be firm.
Philip. Take it not that way — balk
not the Pope's will.
When he hath shaken off" the Emperor,
He heads the Church against the King
with thee.
Richard de Hastings {kneeling^.
Becket, I am the oldest of the
Templars;
I knew thy father; he would be mine age
Had "he lived now; think of me as thv
father !
Behold thy father kneeling to thee,
Becket.
Submit; I promise thee on my salvation
That thou wilt hear no more o' the
customs.
Becket. What !
Hath Henry told thee? hast thou talk'd
with him?
Another Templar (Jzneeling) . Father,
I am the youngest of the Tem-
plars,
Look on me as I were thy bodily son,
For, like a son, I lift my hands to thee.
Philip. Wilt thou hold out for ever,
Thomas Becket?
Dost thou not hear?
■ Becket {signs'). Why — there then —
there — I sign, '
And swearto obey the customs.
Poliot. Is it thy will,
My lord Archbishop, that we too should
sign?
690
BECKET.
ACT \
Becket. O ay, by that canonical
obedience
Thou still hast owed thy father, Gilbert
Foliot.
Foliot. Loyally and with good faith,
my lord Archbishop?
Becket. O ay, with all that loyalty
and good faith
Thou still hast shown thy primate, Gilbert
Foliot.
[Becket draws apart with Herbert.
Herbert, Herbert, have I betray'^d the
Church?
I'll have the paper back — blot out my
name.
Herbert. Too late, my lord : you see
they are signing there.
Becket. False to myself — it isjhgjwill
Tn hrpak ms, biqv^, me Jiothing of iny-
^dfj
This Almoner hath tasted Henry's gold.
The cardinals have finger'd Henry's gold.
And Rome is venal ev'n to rottenness.
I see it, I see it.
•Lamjio soldier, as he said^.at least
No leader. Herbert, till I hear from the
Pope
I will suspend myself from all my func-
tions.
If fast and prayer, the lacerating
scourge
Foliot {from the table'). My lord
Archbishop, thou hast yet to seal.
Becket. First, Foliot, let me see what
I have sign'd. [ Goes to the table.
What, this ! and this ! — what ! new and
old together !
Seal? If a seraph shouted from the sun,
And bade me seal against the rights of
the Church,
I would anathematise him. I will not seal.
\^Exit with Herbert.
Enter King Henry.
Henry. Where's Thomas? hath he
sign'd? show me the papers !
Sign'd and not seal'd ! How's that?
John of Oxford. He would not seal.
And when he sign'd, his face was stormy-
red —
Shame, wrath, I know not what. He
sat down there
And dropt it in his hands, and then a
paleness.
Like the wan twilight after sunset, crept
Up even to the tonsure, and he groan'd,
« False to myself! It is the will of God ! '
Henry. God's will be what it will,
the man shall seal.
Or I will seal his doom. My burgher's
son —
Nay, if I cannot break him as the prelate,
I'll crush him as the subject. Send for
him back. \^Sits on his throne.
Barons and bishops of our realm of Eng-
land,
After the nineteen winters of King
Stephen —
A reign which was no reign, when none
could sit
By his own hearth in peace; when mur-
der common
As nature's death, like Egypt's plague,
had fill'd
All things with blood ; when every door-
way blush'd,
Dash'd red with that unhallow'd passover ;
When every baron ground his blade in
blood;
The household dough was kneaded up
with blood ;
The mill wheel turn'd in blood; the
wholesome plow
Lay rusting in the furrow's yellow weeds.
Till famine dwarft the race — I came,
your King !
Nor dwelt alone, like a soft lord of the
East,
In mine own hall, and sucking thro'
fools' ears
The flatteries of corruption — went abroad
Thro' all my counties, spied my people's
ways;
Yea, heard the churl against the baron
— yea,
And did him justice; sat in mine own
courts
Judging my judges, that had found a
King
Who ranged confusions, made the twilight
day.
And struck a shape from out the vague,
and law
From madness. And the event— '"QW
fallows till'd.
SCENE III.
BECKET.
69Z
Much corn, repeopled towns, a realm
again.
So far_ my course, albeit not glassy-
smooth,
Had prospered in the maini, but suddenly
Jarr'd on this rock. 4,sktic viftl^tsd
The,,iiaughjtexjQ.f..bis JiiOStj.and murder'd
him.
Bishops* — York, London, Chichester,
Westminster —
Ye, ,haled„ this tonsured devil into your
jcourts;
Butjinceyour canon will not let you take
LifieL.fQr.a life, ye but degraded.him
Where I had hang'd \^vax. What..(lQth
hard murder care
Iior —degradation? and that made me
muse,
Being bounden by my coronation oath
To do men justice. Look to it» your
own selves !
Say that a cleric murder'd an archbishop,
^hat could ye do? Degrade, imprison
him —
Not death for death.
John of Oxford. But I, my liege,
could swear.
To death for death.
Henry. And, looking thro' my reign,
I found a hundred ghastly murders done
By men, the scum and offal of the
Church ;
Then, glancing thro' the story of this
realm,
I came on certain wholesome usages.
Lost in desuetude, of my grandsire's day.
Good royal customs — had them written
fair
For John of Oxford here to read to you.
John of Oxford. And I can easily
swear to these as being
The King's will and God's will and justice;
yet
I could but read a part to-day, be-
cause
Fitzurse. Because my lord of Canter-
bury
De Tracy. Ay,
This lord of Canterbury
De Brito. As is his wont
Too much of late whene'er your royal
rights
Are mooted in our councils — —
Fitzurse. — made an uproar.
Henry. And Becket had my bosom
on all this;
If ever man by bonds of gratefulness —
I raised him from the puddle of the
gutter,
I made him porcelain from the clay of
the city —
Thought that I knew him, err'd thro'
love of him.
Hoped, were he chosen archbishop,
Church and Crown,
Two sisters gliding in an equal dance,
Two rivers gently flowing side by side —
But no !
The bird that moults sings the same song
again.
The snake that sloughs comes out a snake
again.
Snake — ay, but he that lookt a fangless
one.
Issues a venomous adder.
For he, when having dofft the Chancellor's
robe —
Flung the Great Seal of England in my
face —
Claim'd some of our crown lands for
Canterbury —
My comrade, boon companion, my co-
reveller.
The master of his master, the King's
king. —
God's eyes ! I had meant to make him
all but king.
Chancellor-Archbishop, he might well
have sway'd
All England under Henry, the young
King,
When I was hence. What did the traitor
say?
False to himself, but ten-fold false to me !
The will of God — why, then it is my
will —
Is he coming?
Messenger {entering). With a crowd
of worshippers,
And holds his cross before him thro' the
crowd.
As one that puts himself in sanctuary.
Henry. His cross !
Roger of York. His cross ! I'll front
him, cross to cross.
\_Exit Roger of York.
692
BECKET.
ACT 1
Henry. His cross! it is the traitor
that imputes
Treachery to his King !
It is not safe for me to look upon him.
Away — with me !
\_Goes in zvith his Barons to the
Council- Chamber, the door of
which is left open.
Enter Becket, holding his cross of silver
before hh?i. The Bishops come round
him.
Hereford. The King will not abide
thee with thy cross.
Permit me, my good lord, to bear it for
thee,
Being thy chaplain.
Becket. No : it must protect me.
Herbert. As once he bore the stand-
ard of the Angles,
So now he bears the standard of the
angels.
Foliot. I am the Dean of the province :
let me bear it.
Make not thy King a traitorous murderer.
Becket. Did not your barons draw
their swords against me?
Enter Roger of York, with his cross,
advancing to Becket.
Becket. Wherefore dost thou presume
to bear thy cross,
Against the solemn ordinance from Rome,
Out of thy province?
Roger of York. Why dost thou pre-
sume,
Arm'd with thy cross, to come before the
King?
If Canterbury bring his cross to court,
Let York bear his to mate with Canter-
bury.
Foliot {seizing hold of Becket's cross^ .
Nay, nay, my lord, thou must not
brave the King.
Nay, let me have it. I will have it !
Becket. Away !
{^Flinging him off.
Foliot. He fasts, they say, this mitred
Hercules!
He fast ! is that an arm of fast ? My
lord,
Hadst thou not sign'd, I had gone along
with thee;
But thou the shepherd hast betray'd the
sheep.
And thou art perjured, and thou wilt not
seal.
As_ Chancellor thou wast against the
Church,
Now as Archbishop goest against the
King; "
For, like a fool, thou knowst no middle
, way. ''
Ay, ay ! but art thou stronger than the
King?
Becket. Strong — not in mine own
';elf, but iliaven; true
To eitht.. function, holding it; and thou
Fast, scourge thyself, and mortify thy
flesh,
Not spirit — thou remainest Gilbert Foliot,
A worldly follower of the worldly strong.
I, bearing this great ensign, make it clear
Under what Prince I fight.
Foliot. My lord of York,
Let us go in to the Council, where our
bishops
And our great lords will sit in judgment
on him.
Becket. Sons sit in judgment on their
father ! — then
The spire of Holy Church may prick the
graves —
Her crypt among the stars. Sign? seal?
I promised
The King to obey these customs, not yet
written,
Saving mine order; true too, that when
written
I sign'd them — being a fool, as Foliot
call'd me.
I_hold not by my signing. Get ye hence,
Tell wTiat 1 say to the King.
\_Exeunt Hereford, Foliot, ajid other
Bishops.
Roger of York. The phurch
will hate thee. \_Exit.
Becket. Serve my best friend and
make him my worst foe;
Fight for the Church, and set the Church
against me !
Herbert. To be honest is to set all
knaves against thee.
A.h ! Thomas, excommunicate them all !
Hereford {re-entering^. I cannot
brook the turmoil thou hast raised.
SCENE III.
BECKET.
693
I would, my lord Thomas of Canterbury,
Thou wert plain Thomas and not Canter-
bury,
Or that thou wouldst deliver Canterbury
To our King's hands again, and be at
peace.
Hilary {re-entering). For hath not
thine ambition set the Church
This day between the hammer and the
anvil —
Fealty to the King, obedience to thyself?
Herbert. What say the bishops?
Hilary. Some have pleaded for him,
But the King rages — most are with the
King;
And some are reeds, that one time sway
to the current,
And to the wind another. But we hold
Thou art forsworn; and no forsworn
Archbishop
Shall helm the Church. We therefore
place ourselves
Under the shield and safeguard of the
Pope,
And cite thee to appear before the Pope,
And answer thine accusers. . . . Art
thou deaf?
Becket. I hear you. \^Clash of arms.
Hilary. Dost thou hear those others?
Becket. Ay !
Roger of York {re-entering). The
King's ' God's eyes ! ' come now
so thick and fast,
We fear that he may reave thee of thine
own.
Come on, come on ! it is not fit for us
To see the proud Archbishop mutilated.
Say that he blind thee and tear out thy
tongue.
Becket. So be it. He begins at top
with me :
They crucified St. Peter downward.
Roger of York. Nay,
But for their sake who stagger betwixt
thine
Appeal, and Henry's anger, yield.
Becket. Hence, Satan !
\_Exit Roger of York.
Fitzurse {re-entering). J^y^ lord, the
^ing demands three hundred
marks, '! "
Due from his castles of Berkhamstead and
Eye
When thou thereof wast warden.
Becket. ~ Tell the King
I spent thrice that in fortifying his castles.
De Tracy {re-entering). My lord, the
King demands seven hundred
marks.
Lent at the siege of Thoulouse by the
King.
Becket. I led seven hundred knights
and fought his wars.
De Brito {re-entering). My lord, the
King demands five hundred marks.
Advanced thee at his instance by the
Jews,
For which the King was bound security.
Becket. I thought it was a gift; I
thought it was a gift.
Enter Lord Leicester {followed by
Barons and Bishops).
Leicester. My lord, I tome unwillingly.
The King
Demands a strict account of all those
revenues
From all the vacant sees and abbacies.
Which came into thy hands when Chan-
cellor.
Becket. How much might that amount
to, my lord Leicester?
Leicester. Some thirty — forty thou-
sand silver marks.
Becket. Are these your customs? O
my good lord Leicester,
The King and I were brothers. All 1 1
had
I lavish'd for the glory of the King;
I shone from him, for him, his glory, his
Reflection : now the glory of the Church |
Hath swallow'd up the glory of the King; j
I am his no more, but hers. Grant me
one day
To ponder these demands.
Leicester. Hear first thy sentence !
The King and all his lords
Becket. Son, first hear fue s
Leicester. Nay, nay, canst thou, that
boldest thine estates
In fee and barony of the King, decline
The judgment of the King?
Becket. The King ! I hold
Nothing in fee and barony of the King.
Whatever the Church owns — she holds
it in
694
BECKET.
Free and perpetual alms, unsubject to
One earthly sceptre.
Leicester. Nay, but hear thy judgment.
The King and all his barons
Becket. Judgment ! Barons !
Who but the bridegroom dares to judge
the bride.
Or he the bridegroom may appoint? Not
he
That is not of the house, but from the
street
Stain'd with the mire thereof.
I had been so true
To Henry and mine office that the King
Would throne me in the great Arch-
bishoprick :
And I, that knew mine own infirmity,
For the King's pleasure rather than God's
cause
Took it upon me — err'd thro' love of
him.
Now therefore God from me withdraws
Himself,
And the King too.
What ! forty thousand marks !
W^hy thou, the King, the Pope, the
Saints, the world.
Know that when made Archbishop I was
. freed.
Before the Prince and chief Justiciary,
From every bond and debt and obligation
Incurr'd as Chancellor.
Hear me, son.
As gold
Outvalues dross, light darkness, Abel
Cain,
The soul the body, and the Church the
Throne,
I charge thee, upon pain of mine anath-
ema.
That thou obey, not me, but God in me.
Rather than Henry. I refuse to stand
By the King's censure, make my cry to
the Pope,
By whom I will be judged; refer myself,
The King, these customs, all the Church,
to him.
And under his authority — I depart.
[ Going.
[Leicester looks at him doubtingly.
Am I a prisoner?
Leicester. By St. Lazarus, no !
I am confounded by thee. Go in peace.
De Broc. In peace now — but after
Take that for earnest.
\^Flings a bone at him from the rushes.
De Brito, Fitzurse, De Tracy, and
others (^fiinging zvisps of rushes). Ay,
go in peace, caitiff, caitiff! And that
too, perjured prelate — and that, turncoat
shaveling ! There, there, there ! traitor,
traitor, traitor !
Becket. Mannerless wolves !
[ Turning and facing them.
Herbert. Enough, my lord, enough !
Becket. Barons of England and of
Normandy,
When what ye shake at doth but seem to
fly,
True test of coward, ye follow with a yell.
But I that threw the mightiest knight of
France,
Sir Engelram de Trie,
Herbert. Enough, my lord.
Becket. More than enough. I play
the fool again.
Enter Herald.
Herald. The King commands you,
upon pain of death.
That none should wrong or injure your
Archbishop.
Foliot. Deal gently with the young
man Absalom.
[ Great doors of the Hall at the back
open, and discover a crowd. They
shout :
Blessed is he that cometh in the name of
the Lord !
SCENE IV. — Refectory of the
Monastery at Northampton.
A banquet on the Tables.
Enter Becket. Becket's Retainers.
\st Retainer. Do thou speak first.
2nd Retainer. Nay, thou ! Nay,
thou ! Hast not thou drawn the short
straw ?
\st Retainer. My lord Archbishop,
wilt thou permit us
Becket. To speak without stanlmering
and like a free man? Ay.
\st Retainer. My lord, permit us then
to leave thy service.
SCENE IV.
BECKET.
695
Becket. When?
\st Retainer. Now.
Becket. To-night?
L \st Retainer. To-night, my lord.
I Becket. And why?
^ \st Retainer. My lord, we leave thee
not without tears.
Becket. Tears? Why not stay with
me then?
\st Retainer. My lord, we cannot
yield thee an answer altogether to thy
satisfaction.
Becket. I warrant you, or your own
either. Shall I find you one? The
King hath frowned upon me.
\st Retainer. That is not altogether
our answer, my lord.
Becket. No; yet all but all. Go,
go ! Ye have eaten of my dish and
r drunken of my cup for a dozen years.
I \st Retainer. And so we have. We
- mean thee no wrong. Wilt thou not
say, 'God bless you,' ere we go?
Becket. God bless you all ! God
redden your pale blood ! But mine is
human-red; and when ye shall hear it is
poured out upon earth, and see it mount-
ing to Heaven, my God bless you, that
seems sweet to you now, will blast and
blind you like a curse.
\st Retainer. We hope not, my lord.
: . Our humblest thanks for your blessing.
Farewell ! {^Exeunt Retainers.
Becket. Farewell, friends ! farewell,
swallows! I wrong the bird; she leaves
only the nest she built, they leave the
builder. Why? Am I to be murdered
^o-night? \^Knocking at the door .
Attendant. Here is a missive left at
the gate by one from the castle.
Becket. Cornwall's hand or Leices-
ter's: they write marvellously alike.
\_Reading.
* Fly at once to France, to King Louis
of France : there be those about our
King who would have thy blood.'
Was not my lord of Leicester bidden
to our supper?
Attendant. Ay, my lord, and divers
other earls and barons. But the hour
is past, and our brother, Master Cook,
he makes moan that all be a-getting
cold.
Becket. And I make my moan along
with him. Cold after warm, winter after
summer, and the golden leaves, these
earls and barons, that clung to me,
frosted off me by the first cold frown of
the King. Cold, but look how the table
steams, like a heathen altar; nay, like
the altar at Jerusalem. Shall God's good
gifts be wasted? None of them here!
Call in the poor from the streets, and let
them feast.
Herbert. That is the parable of our
blessed Lord.
Becket. And why should not the
parable of our blessed Lord be acted
again? Call in the poor! The Church
is ever at variance with the kings, and
ever at one with the poor. I marked a
group of lazars in the marketplace — half-
rag, half-sore — beggars, poor rogues
(Heaven bless 'em) who never saw nor
dreamed of such a banquet. I will
amaze them. Call them in, I say.
They shall henceforward be my earls and
barons — our lords and masters in Christ
Jesus. \^Exit Herbert.
If the King hold his purpose, I am
myself a beggar. Forty thousand marks !
forty thousand devils — and these craven
bishops !
Enter a Poor Man with his dog.
Man. My lord Archbishop, may I
come in With my poor friend, my dog?
The King's verdurer caught him a-hunt-
ing in the forest, and cut off his paws.
The dog followed his calling, my lord. I
ha' carried him ever so many miles in my
arms, and he licks my face and moans
and cries out against the King.
Becket. Better thy dog than thee.
The King's courts would use thee worse
than thy dog — they are too bloody.
Were the Church king, it would be
otherwise. Poor beast ! poor beast !
set him down. I will bind up his
wounds with my napkin. Give him a
bone, give him a bone ! Who misuses
a dog v\'ould misuse a child — they cannot
speak for themselves. Past help! his
paws are past help. God help him!
696
BECKET.
ACT I
Etiter the Beggars (^and seat themselves
at the Tablis^. Beckkt and Her-
bert wait upon thetJi.
1st' Be^^ar. Swine, sheep, ox —
here's a P>ench supper. W] en thieves
fall out, honest men
ind Beggar.^ Is the Archbishop a
thief who gives thee thy supper?
\st Beggar. Well, then, how does it
go? When honest men fall out, thieves
— no, it can't be that.
2nd Beggar. Who stole the widow's
one sitting hen o' Sunday, when she was
at mass?
\st Beggar. Come, come ! thou
hadst thy share on her. Sitting hen !
Our Lord Becket's our great sitting-hen
cock, and we shouldn't ha' been sitting
here if the barons and bishops hadn't
been a-sitting on the Archbishop.
Becket. Ay, the princes sat in judg-
ment against me, and the Lord hath
prepared your table — Sederunt principes,
ederunt pauper es.
A voice. Becket, beware of the knife !
Becket. Who spoke?
3^,3!' Beggar. Nobody, my lord.
What's that, my lord?
Becket. Venison.
yd Beggar. Venison?
Becket. Buck; deer, as you call it.
yd Beggar. King's .neat ! By the
Lord, won't we pray for your lo iship !
Becket. And, my childreii, your
prayers will do more for me in the day
of peril that dawns darkly and drearily
over the house of God — yea, and in the
day of judgment also, than the swords of
the craven sycophants would have done
had they remained true to me whose
bread they have partaken. I must leave
you to your banquet. Feed, feast, and
be merry. Herbert, for the sake of the
Church itself, if not for my own, I must
fly to France to-night. Come with me.
[ Exit ivith H e rb e r t .
yd Beggar. Here — all of you —
my lord's health {they drink'). Well —
if that isn't goodly wine
\st Beggar. Then there isn't a goodly
wench to serve him with it : they were
fighting for her to-day in the street.
yd Beggar. Peace !
1st Beggar. The black sheep baaed
to the miller's ewe-lamb.
The miller's away for to-night.
Black sheep, quoth she, too black a sin
for me.
And what said the black sheop, my
masters?
We can make a black sin white.
yd Beggar. Peace !
\st Beggar. ' Ewe lamb, ewe lamb,
I am here by the dam.'
But the miller came home that night,
And so dusted his back with the meal in
his sack.
That he made the black sheep white.
yd Beggar. Be we not of the family?
be we not a-supping with the head of the
family? be we not in my lord's own
refractory? Out from among us; thou
art our black sheep.
Enter the four Knights.
Fitzurse. Sheep, said he? And sheep
without the shepherd, too. Where is my
lord Archbishop? Thou the lustiest and
lousiest of this Cain's brotherhood, answer.
yd Beggar. With Cain's answer, my
lord. Am I his keeper? Thou shouldst
call him Cain, not me.
Fitzurse. So I do, for he would
murder his brother the State.
yd Beggar {rising and advancing).
No, my lord; but because the Lord hath
set his mark upon him that no man should
murder him.
Fitzurse. Where is he? where is he?
yd Beggar. With Cain belike, in
the land of Nod, or in the land of France
for aught I know.
Fitzurse. France ! Ha ! De Morville,
Tracy, Brito — fled is he? Cross swords
all of you ! swear to follow him !
Remember the Queen !
£ The four Knights cross their swords.
De Brito. They mock us; he is here.
\_All the Beggars rise and advance
upon them.
Fitzurse. Come, you filthy knaves, let
us pass.
yd Beggar. Nay, my lord, let us
pass. We be a-going home after our
supper in all humbleness, my lord; fot
BECKET.
697
the Archbishop loves humbleness, my
lord; and though we be fifty to four, \ve
daren't fight you with our crutches, my
lord. There now, if thou hast not laid
hands upon me ! and my fellows know
that I am all one scale like a fish. I
pray God I haven't given thee my leprosy,
my lord.
\Y\\.z\xx%Q shrinks froi?i him and ajtother
presses upon De Brito.
De Brito. Away, dog !
4//^ Beggar. iVnd I was bit by a mad
dog o' Friday, an' I be half dog already
by this token, that tho' I can drink wine
1 cannot bide water, my lord; and I
want to bite, I want to bite, and they do
say the very breath catches.
De Brito. Insolent clown ! Shall I
smite him with the edge of the sword?
De Morville. No, nor with the flat of
it either. Smite the shepherd and the
sheep are scattered. Smite the sheep
and the shepherd will excommunicate
thee.
De Brito. Yet my fingers itch to beat
him into nothing.
^th Beggar. So do mine, my lord. I
was born with it, and sulphur won't bring
it out o' me. But for all that the Arch-
bishop washed my feet o' Tuesday. He
likes it, my lord.
dth Beggar. And see here, my lord,
this rag fro' the gangrene i' my leg. It's
humbling — it smells o' human natur'.
Wilt thou smell it, my lord? for the
Archbishop likes the smell on it, my lord;
for I be his lord and master i' Christ, my
lord.
De Morville. Faugh ! we shall all be
poisoned. Let us go.
[ They draw back, Beggars following.
yth Beggar. My lord, I ha' three
sisters a-dying at home o' the sweating
sickness. - They be dead while I be a-
supping.
Sth Beggar. And I ha' nine darters i'
the spital that be dead ten times o'er i'
one day wi' the putrid fever; and I bring
the taint on it along wi' me, for the
Archbishop likes it, my lord.
[Pressing upon the Knights till they
disappear thro'' the door.
yd Beggar. QrutcheSjjj,nd itches, and
,leprosies, and ulcers, and gangrenes, and
running sores, praise ye the Lord, for
to-night ye have saved our Archbishop !
\st Beggar. I'll go back again. I
hain't half done yet.
Herbert of Bosham {entering) . My
friends, the Archbishop bids you good
night. He hath retired to rest, and
being in great jeopardy of his life, he
hath made his bed between the altars,
from whence he sends me to bid you
this night pray for him who hath fed you
in the wilderness.
yd Beggar. So we will — so we will,
I warrant thee. Becket shall be king,
and the Holy Father shall be king, and
the world shall live by the King's venison
and the bread o' the Lord, and there -
shall be no more poor for ever. Hurrah !
Vive le Roy ! That's the English of it.
ACT II.
SCENE I. — Rosamund's Bower.
A Garden of Flowers. In the midst a
bank of wild-flowers tuith a bench be-
fore it.
Voices heard singing atnong the trees.
Duet.
1. Is it the wind of the dawn that I hear
in the pine overhead?
2. No; but the voice of the deep as it
hollows the cliffs of the land.
1. Is there a voice coming up with the
voice of the deep from the strand,
One coming up with a song in the
flush of the glimmering red?
2. Love that is born of the deep coming
up with the sun from the sea.
1. Love that can shape or can shatter a
hfe till the life shall have fled?
2. Nay, let us welcome him. Love that
can lift up a life from the dead.
1. Keep him away from the lone little
isle. Let us be, let us be.
2. Nay, let him make it his own, let him
reign in it — he, it is he,
Love that is born of the deep coming
up with the sun from the sea.
O
698
BECKET.
ACT n
Enter Henry and Rosamund.
Rosamund. Be friends with him again
— I do beseech thee.
Henry, With Becket? I have but
one hour with thee —
Sceptre and crozier clashing, and the
mitre
Grappling the crown — and when I flee
from this
For a gasp of freer air, a breathing-
while
To rest upon thy bosom and forget
him —
Why thou, my bird, thou pipest Becket,
Becket —
Yea, thou my golden dream of Love's
own bower.
Must be the nightmare breaking on my
peace
With ' Becket.'
Rosamund. O my life's life, not to
smile
Is all but death to me. My sun, no
cloud !
Let there not be one frown in this one
hour.
Out of the many thine, let this be mine !
Look rather thou all-royal as when first
I met thee.
Henry, Where was that?
Rosamund. Forgetting that
Forgets me too.
Henry. Nay, I remember it well.
There on the moors.
Rosamund. And in a narrow path.
A plover flew before thee. . Then I saw
Thy high black steed among the flaming
furze.
Like sudden night in the main glare of
day.
And from that height something was
said to me
I knew not what.
Henry. I ask'd the way.
Rosamund. I think so.
So I lost mine.
Henry, Thou wast too shamed to
answer.
Rosamund. Too scared — so young!
Henry. The rosebud of my rose ! —
Well, well, no more of him — I have sent
his folk,
His kin, all his belongings, overseas;
Age, orphans, and babe-breasting mothers
— all
By hundreds to him — there to beg,
starve, die —
So that the fool King Louis feed them
not.
The man shall feel that I can strike him
yet.
Rosamund, Babes, orphans, mothers !
is that royal. Sire?
Henry. And I have been as royal
with the Church.
He shelter'd in the Abbey of Pontigny.
There wore his time studying the canon
law
To work it against me. But since he
cursed
My friends at Veselay, I have let them
know.
That if they keep him longer as their
guest,
I scatter all their cowls to all the hells.
Rosamund. And is that altogether
royal?
Henry. Traitress !
Rosamund. A faithful traitress to thy
royal fame.
Henry. Fame ! what care I for fame ?
Spite, ignorance, envy,
Yea, honesty too, paint her what way
they will.
Fame of to-day is infamy to-morrow;
Infamy of to-day is fame to-morrow;
And round and round again. What
matters? Royal —
I mean to leave the royalty of my crown
Unlessen'd to mine heirs.
Rosamutid. Still — thy fame too:
I say that should be royal.
Henry. And I say,
I care not for thy saying.
Rosamund. And I say,
I care not for thy saying. A greater
King
Than thou art, Love, who cares not for
the word,
Makes ' care not ' — care. There have I
spoken true?
Henry. Care dwell with me for ever,
when I cease
To care for thee as ever !
Rosamund. No need ! no need ! . # •
BECKET.
699
There is a bench. Come, wilt thou sit?
. . . My bank
Of wild-flowers (he sits). At thy feet !
\_She sits at his feet.
Henry. I bade them clear
A royal pleasaunce for thee, in the wood.
Not leave these countryfolk at court.
Rosamtind. I brought them
In from the wood, and set them here. I
love them
More than the garden flowers, that seem
at most
Sweet guests, or foreign cousins, not half
speaking
The language of the land. I love them
too,
Yes. But, my liege, I am sure, of all
the roses —
Shame fall on those who gave it a dog's
name —
This wild one (^picking a briar-rose') —
nay, I shall not prick myself —
Is sweetest. Do but smell !
Henry. Thou rose of the world !
Thou rose of all the roses ! \_Muttering.
I am not worthy of her — this beast-
body
That God has plunged my soul in — I,
that taking
The Fiend's advantage of a throne, so
long
Have wander'd among women, — a foul
stream
Thro' fever-breeding levjsls, — at her side,
Among these happy dales, run clearer,
drop
The mud I carried, like yon brook, and
glass
The faithful face of heaven
\_Lookingather, and unconsciously aloud,
— thine ! thine !
Rosamund. I know it.
Henry (^muttering). Not hers. We
have but one bond, her hate of
Becket.
Rosamund (^ha If hearing). Nay ! nay !
what art thou muttering? /hate
Becket?
Henry {muttering). A sane and
natural loathing for a soul
Purer, and truer and nobler than herself;
And mine a bitterer illegitimate hate,
A bastard hate born of a former love.
Rosamund. My fault to name him I
O let the hand of one
To whom thy voice is all her music, stay it
But for a breath,
\^Puts her hand before his lips.
Speak only of thy love.
Why there — like some loud beggar at
thy gate —
The happy boldness of this hand hath
won it
'L<:)Vt^%2\xiss,,\h^\^\'!& {looking at her hand)
— Sacred ! I'll kiss it too.
S^Kissing it.
There ! wherefore dost thou so peruse it?
Nay,
There may be crosses in my line of life.
Henry. Not half her hand — nahand
to mate with her,
If it should come to that.
Rosamund. With her? with whom?
Henry. Life on the hand is naked
gipsy-stuff;
Life on the face, the brows — clear inno-
cence !
Vein'd marble — not a furrow yet — and
hers \_Muttering.
Crost and recrost, a venomous spider's
web
Rosamund {springing up) . Out of the
cloud, my Sun — out of the eclipse
Narrowing my golden hour !
Henry. O Rosamund,
I would be true — would tell thee all —
and something
I had to say — I love thee none the less —
Which will so vex thee.
Rosamund. Something against me?
Henry. No, no, against myself.
Rosamund. I will not hear it.
Come, come, mine hour ! I bargain for
mine hour.
I'll call thee little Geoffrey.
Henry. Call him !
Rosamund. Geoffrey !
Enter GEOFFREY.
Henry. How the boy grows !
Rosamtind. Ay, and his brows are
thine;
The mouth is only Clifford, my dear
father.
Geoffrey. My liege, what hast thou
brought me?
TOO
BECKET.
ACT II.
Henry. Venal imp !
What say'st thou to the Chancellorship of
England ?
Geoffrey. O yes, my liege.
Henry. ' O yes, my liege ! ' He
speaks
As if it were a cake of gingerbread.
Dost thou know, my boy, what it is to
be Chancellor of England?
Geoffrey. Something good, or thou
wouldst not give it me.
Henry. It is, my boy, to side with
the King when Chancellor, and then to
be made Archbishop and go against the
King who made him, and turn the world
upside down.
Geoffrey. I won't have it then. Nay,
but give it me, and I promise thee not to
turn the world upside down.
Henry {giving him a bait). Here is a
ball, my boy, thy world, to turn anyway
and play with as thou wilt — which is more
than I can do with mine. Go try it, play.
\_Exit Geoffrey.
A pretty lusty boy.
Rosamund. So like to thee;
Like to be liker.
Henry. Not in my chin, I hope !
That threatens double.
Rosamund. Thou art manlike
perfect.
Henry. Ay, ay, no doubt; and were
I humpt behind,
Thou'dst say as much — the goodly way
of women
Who love, for which 1 love them. May
God grant
No ill befall or him or thee when I
Am gone.
Rosamund. ■ Is he thy enemy?
Henry. He? who? ay!
Rosamund. Thine enemy knows the
secret of my bower.
Henry. And I could tear him asunder
with wild horses
Before he would betray it. Nay — no fear !
More like is he to excommunicate me.
Rosamund. And I would creep, crawl
over knife-edge flint
Barefoot, a hundred leagues, to stay his
hand
Before he flash'd the bolt.
Henry. And when he flash'd it
Shrink from me, like a daughter of the
Church.
Rosamtnid. Ay, but he will not.
Henry. Ay I but if he did ?
Rosamund. O then ! O then ! I
almost fear to say
That my poor heretic heart would ex-
communicate
His excommunication, clinging to thee
Closer than ever.
Henry (r<2zVz«^ Rosamund and kissing
her). My brave-hearted Rose!
Hath he ever been to see thee?
Rosamtaid. Here? not he.
And it is so lonely here — no confessor.
Hen7y. Thou shalt confess all thy
sweet sins to me.
Rosamund. Besides, we came away
in such a heat,
I brought not ev'n my crucifix.
Henry. Take this.
\_Giving her the Crucifix zvhich Elea-
nor gave him.
Rosamund. O beautiful ! May I have
it as mine, till mine
Be mine again?
Henry {throwing it round her neck) .
Thine — as I am — till death!
Rosamund. Death? no! I'll have it
with me in my shroud.
And wake with it, and show it to all the
Saints.
Henry. Nay — I must go; but when
thou layegt thy lip
To this, remembering One who died for
thee.
Remember also one who lives for thee
Out there in France; for I must hence
to brave
The Pope, King Louis, and this turbu-
lent priest.
Rosamund {kneeling). O by thy love
for me, all mine for thee.
Fling not thy soul into the flames of hell :
I kneel to thee — be friends with him
again.
Henry, Look, look ! if little Geoffrey
have not tost
His ball into the brook ! makes after it too
To find it. Why, the child will drown
himself.
Rosajnund. Geoffrey ! Geoffrey !
[^Exeuntc
SCENE II.
BECKET.
701
SCENE II. — MONTMIRAIL.
* The Meeting of the Kings: John of
^ Oxford and Henry. Croivd in the
distance.
John of Oxford. You have not crown'd
young Henry yet, my liege?
Henry. Crown'd ! by God's eyes, we
will not have him crown'd.
I spoke of late to the boy, he answer'd
me,
As if he wore the crown already — No,
We will not have him crown'd.
'Tis true what Becket told me, that the
mother
Would make him play his kingship
against mine.
John of Oxford. Not have him
crown'd?
Hejtry. Not now — not yet! and
Becket —
Becket should crown him were he crown'd
at all :
But, since we would be lord of our own
manor,
This Canterbury, like a wounded deer,
Has fled our presence and our feeding-
grounds.
John of Oxford. Cannot a smooth
tongue lick him whole agaiin
To serve your will?
Henry. He hates my will, not me.
John of Oxford. There's York, my
liege.
Henry. But England scarce would
hold
Young Henry king, if only crown'd by
York,
And that would stilt up York to twice
himself.
There is a movement yonder in the
crowd —
See if our pious — what shall I call him,
John? —
Husband-in-law, our smooth-shorn suze-
rain,
Be yet within the field.
John of Oxford. I will. \_Exit.
Henry. Ay ! Ay !
Mince and go back ! his politic Holiness
Hath all but climb'd the Roman perch
again,
And we shall hear him presently wiih
clapt wing
Crow over Barbarossa — at last tongue-
free
To blast my realms with excommunication
And interdict. I must patch up a peace —
A piece in this long-tugged-at, threadbare-
worn
Quarrel of Crown and Church — to rend
again.
His Holiness cannot steer straight thro'
• shoals.
Nor I. The citizen's heir liath conquer'd
me
For the moment. So we make our
peace with him.
Enter Louis.
Brother of France, what shall be done
with Becket?
Louis. The holy Thomas ! Brother,
you have traffick'd
Between the Emperor and the Pope,
between
The Pope and Antipope — a perilous
..game.
Fp,r_men to play with God.
Henry. Ay, ay, good brother,
They call you the Monk-King.
Louis. Who calls me? she
That was my wife, now yours? You
have her Duchy,
The point you aim'd at, and pray God
she prove
True wife to you. You have had the
better of us
In secular matters.
Henry. Come, confess, good brother,
You did your best or worst to keep her
Duchy.
Only the golden Leopard printed in it
Such hold-fast claws that you perforce
again
Shrank into France. Tut, tut ! did we
convene
This conference but to babble of our
wives ?
They are plagues enough in-door.
Louis. We fought in the East,
And felt the sun of Antioch scald our
mail.
And push'd our lances into Saracen-
hearts.
702
BECKET.
ACT 11.
W^ never hounded on the State at home
To spoil the Church.
Henry. How should you see this
rightly?
Louis. Well, well, no more ! I am
proud of my ' Monk-King,'
Whoever named me ; and, brother, Holy
Church
May rock, but will not wreck, nor our
Archbishop
Stagger on the slope decks for any rough
sea
Blown by the breath of kings. We do
forgive you
For aught you v^^rought against us.
\_Henry holds up his hand.
Nay, I pray you,
Do not defend yourself. You will do
much
To rake out all old dying heats, if you,
At my requesting, will but look into
The wrongs you did him, and restore his
kin,
Reseat him on his throne of Canterbury,
Be, both, the friends you vt^ere.
Henry. The friends we were !
Co-mates we were, and had our sport
together,
Co-kings we were, and made the laws
together.
The world had never seen the like before.
You are too cold to know the fashion of it.
Well, well, we will be gentle with him,
gracious — ■
Most gracious.
Enter Becket, after him, John of
Oxford, Roger of York, Gilbert
FoLiOT, De Broc, Fitzurse, etc.
Only that the rift he made
May close between us, here I am wholly
king.
The word should come from him.
Becket (kneeling) . The n, my dear liege,
I here deliver all this controversy
Into your royal hands.
Henry. Ah, Thomas, Thomas,
Thou art thyself again, Thomas again.
Becket (rising). Saving God's honour !
Henry. Out upon thee, man !
Saving the Devil's honour, his yes and no.
Knights, bishops, earls, this London
spawn — by Mahound,
I had sooner have been born a Mussul-
man—
Less clashing with their priests —
I am half-way down the slope — will no
man stay me?
I dash myself to pieces — I stay myself —
Puff — it is gone. You, Master Becket,
you
That owe to me your power over me —
Nay, nay —
Brother of France, you have taken,
cherish'd him
Who thief-like fled from his own church
by night,
No man pursuing. 1 would have had
him back.
Take heed he do not turn and rend you
too:
For whatsoever may displease him — that
Is clean against God's honour — a shift, a
trick
Whereby to challenge, face me out of all
My regal rights. Yet, yet — that none
may dream
I go against God's honour — ay, or him-
self
In any reason, choose
A hundred of the wisest heads from
England,
A hundred, too, from Normandy and
Anjou :
Let these decide on what was customary
In olden days, and all .the Church of
France
Decide on their decision, I am content.
More, what the mightiest and the holiest
Of all his predecessors may have done
Ev'n to the least and meanest of my
own,
Let him do the same to me — I am con-
tent.
Louis. Ay, ay ! the King humbles
himself enough.
Becket. (Aside?) Words! he will
wriggle out of them like an eel
When the time serves. (Aloud.) My
lieges and my lords.
The thanks of Holy Church are due to
those
That went before us for their work, which
we
Inheriting reap an easier harvest,
Yet
BECKET,
703
Louis. My lord, will you be greater
than the Saints, -
More than St. Peter? whom what is
it you doubt?
Behold your peace at hand.
Becket. I say that those
Who went before us did not wholly clear
The deadly growths of earth, which Hell's
own heat
So dwelt on that they rose and darken'd
Heaven.
Yet they did much. Would God they
had torn up all
By the hard root, which shoots again;
our trial
Had so been less ; but, seeing they were
men
Defective or excessive, must we follow
All that they overdid or underdid?
Nay, if they were defective as St. Peter
Denying Christ, who yet defied the
tyrant,
We hold by his defiance, not his defect.
0 good son Louis, do not counsel me,
1^0, to suppress God's honour for the sake
jQf any king that breathes. No, God
forbid !
Henry. No ! God forbid ! and turn
me Mussulman !
No God but one, and Mahound is his
prophet.
But for your Christian, look you, ^ou
shall have
^qne other God^ but _me — me, Thomas,
son
Of Gilbert Becket, London merchant.
Out!
1 hear no more. \_Exit,
Louis. Our brother's anger puts him,
Poor man, beside himself — not wise.
My lord,
We have claspt your cause, believing that
our brother
Had wrong'd you; but this day he
proffer'd peace.
You will have war; and tho' we grant
the Church
King over this world's kings, yet, my
good lord.
We that are kings are something in this
world,
And so we pray you, draw yourself from
under
The wings of France. We shelter you
no more. \_Exit.
John of Oxford. I am glad that
France hath scouted him at last :
I told the Pope what manner of man he
was. \_Exit.
Roger of York. Yea, since he flouts
the will of either realm,
Let either cast him away like a dead
dog ! \^Exit.
Foliot. Yea, let a stranger spoil his
heritage.
And let another take his bishoprick !
S^Exit.
De Broc. Our castle, my lord, be-
longs to Canterbury.
I pray you come and take it. \^Exit.
Fitzurse. When you will. {^Exit.
Becket. Cursed be John of Oxford,
Roger of York,
And Gilbert Foliot! cursed those De
Brocs
That hold our Saltwood Castle from our
see !
Cursed Fitzurse, and all the rest of them
That sow this hate between my lord and
me !
Voices from ike Crowd. Blessed be
the Lord Archbishop, who hath with- -,
stood two Kings to their faces for the /
honour of God.
Becket. Out of the mouths of babes \
and sucklings, praise ! ^^
I thank you, sons; when kings but hold
by crowns,
The crowd that hungers for a crown in ;
Heaven y
Is my true king.
Herbert. Thy true King bade thee be
A fisher of men; thou hast them in thy
net.
Becket. I am too like the King here;
both of us
Too headlong for our office. Better have
been
A fisherman at Bosham, my good Herbert,
Thy birthplace — the sea-creek — the
petty rill
That falls into it — the green field — the
gray church —
The. simple lobster-basket, and the
mesh —
The more or less of daily labour done —
764
BRCKET.
ACT ir.
The pretty gaping bills in the home-nest
Piping for bread — the daily want sup-
plied—
The daily pleasure to supply it.
Herbert. Ah, Thomas,
You had not borne it, no, not for a day.
Becket. Well, maybe, no.
Herbert. But bear with Walter Map,
For here he comes to comment on the
time.
Enter Walter Map.
Walter Map. Pity, my lord, that you
have quenched the warmth of France to-
ward you, tho' His Holiness, after much
smouldering and smoking, be kindled
again upon your quarter.
Becket. Ay, if he do not end in smoke
again.
Walter Map. My lord, the fire, when
first kindled, said to the smoke, ' Go up,
my son, straight to Heaven.' And the
smoke said, *1 go; ' but anon the North-
east took and turned him South-west,
then the South-west turned him North-
east, and so of the other winds; but it
was in him to go up straight if the time
had been quieter. Your lordship affects
the unwavering perpendicular; but His
Holiness, pushed one way by the Em-
pire and another by England, if he
move at all, Heaven stay him, is fain to
diagonalise.
Herbert. Diagonalise ! thou art a word-
monger.
Our Thomas never will diagonalise.
Thou art a jester and a verse-maker.
Diagonalise !
Walter Map. Is the world any the
worse for my verses if the Latin rhymes
be rolled out from a full mouth? or any
harm done to the people if my jest be in
defence of the Truth?
Becket. Ay, if the jest be so done that
the people
Delight to wallow in the grossness of it,
Till Truth herself be shamed of her
defender.
Non defensoribus istis, Walter Map.
Walter Map. Is that my case? so if
the city be sick, and I cannot call the
kennel sweet, your lordship would sus-
pend me from verse-writing, as you sus-
pended yourself after sub-writing to the
customs.
Becket. I pray God pardon mine in-
firmity.
Walter Alap. Nay, my lord, take
heart; for tho' you suspended yourself,
the Pope let you down again; and tho'
you suspend Foliot or another, the Pope
will not leave them in suspense, for the
Pope himself is always in suspense, like
Mahound's coffin hung between heaven
and earth — always in suspense, like the
scales, till the weight of Germany or the
gold of England brings one of them
down to the dust — always in suspense,
like the tail of the horologe — to and
fro — tick-tack — we make the time, we
keep the time, ay, and we serve the
time; for I have heard say that if you
boxed the Pope's ears with a purse, you
might stagger him, but he would pocket
the purse. No saying of mine — Jocelyn
of Salisbury. But the King hath bought
half the College of Redhats. He warmed
to you to-day, and you have chilled him
again. Yet you both love God. Agree
with him quickly again, even for the sake
of the Church. My one grain of good
counsel which you will not swallow. I
hate a split between old friendships as I
hate the dirty gap in the face of a Cis-
tercian monk, that will swallow anything.
Farewell. \_Exit.
Becket. Map scoffs at Rome. I all
but hold with Map.
Save for myself no Rome were left in
J^^nglandj
All had been his.. W^hy should this
Rome, this Rome,
Still choose Barabbas rather than the
Christ,
Absolve the left-hand thief and damn the
right?
Take fees of tyranny, wink at sacri-
lege,
Which even Peter had not dared? con-
demn
The blameless exile? —
Herbert. Thee, thou holy Thomas !
I would that thou hadst been the Holy
Father.
Becket. I would have done my mosfv
to keep Rome holy, \
BECKET.
705
I would have made Rome know she still
is Rome —
Who stands aghast at her eternal self
And shakes at mortal kings — her vacilla-
tion,
Avarice, craft — O God, how many an
innocent
Has left his bones upon the way to Rome
Unwept, uncared for. Yea — on mine
own self
The King had had no power except for
Rome.
'Tis not the King who is guilty of mine
exile.
But Rome, Rome, Rome !
Herbert. My lord, I see this Louis
Returning, ah ! to drive thee from his
realm.
Becket. He said as much before.
Thou art no prophet.
Nor yet a prophet's son.
Herbert. Whatever he say,
Deny not thou God's honour for a king.
The King looks troubled.
Re-enter King Louis.
I ^ Louis. My dear lord Archbishop,
^- 1 learn but now that those poor Poitevins,
That in thy cause were stirr'd against
King Henry,
Have been, despite his kingly promise
given
To our own self of pardon, evilly used
And put to pain. I have lost all trust in
him.
The Church alone hath eyes — and now
I see
That I was blind — suffer the phrase —
surrendering
God's honour to the pleasure of a man.
Forgive me and absolve me, holy father.
i\_Kneels.
Becket. Son, I absolve thee in the
name of God.
Louis {rising). Return to Sens, where-
we will care for you.
The wine and wealth of all our France
are yours;
Rest in our realm, and be at peace with
all. {^Exeunt.
Voices from the Crowd. Long live
the good King Louis ! God bless the
great Archbishop !
2Z
Re-enter Henry and John of Oxford.
Henry {looking after King Louis and
Becket). Ay, there they go — both
backs are turn'd to me —
Why then I strike into my former path
For England, crown young Henry there,
and make
Our waning Eleanor all but love me !
John,
Thou hast served me heretofore with
Rome — and well.
They call thee John the Swearer.
John of Oxford. For this reason,
That, being ever duteous to the King,
I evermore have sworn upon his side.
And ever mean to do it.
Henry {claps him on the shoulder^.
Honest John !
To Rome again ! the storm begins again.
Spare not thy tongue ! be lavish with our
coins,
Threaten our junction with the Emperor
— flatter
And fright the Pope — bribe all the Car-
dinals— leave
Lateran and Vatican in one dust of gold —
Swear and unswear, state and misstate
thy best !
I go to have young Henry crown'd by
York.
ACT HL
SCENE I. — The Bower.
Henry and Rosamund.
Henry. All that you say is just. I
cannot answer it.
Till better times, when I shall put
away
Rosamund. What will you put away?
Henry. That which you ask me
Till better times. Let it content you
now
There is no woman that I love so well.
Rosamund. No woman but should be
content with that
Henry. And one fair child to fondle !
Rosamund. O yes, the child
We waited for so long — heaven's gift at
last —
7o6
BECKET,
ACT III
And how you doted on him then! To-
day
1 almost fear'd your kiss was colder —
yes —
But then the child is such a child. What
chance
That he should ever spread into the man
Here in our silence? I have done my
best.
I am not learn'd.
Henry. I am the King, his father,
And 1 will look to it. Is our secret ours?
Have you had any alarm? no stranger?
Rosamund. No.
The warder of the bower hath given
himself
Of late to wine. I sometimes think he
sleeps
When he should .watch; and yet what
fear? the people
Believe the wood enchanted. No one
comes.
Nor foe nor friend; his fond excess of
wine
Springs from the loneliness of my poor
bower.
Which weighs even on me.
Henry. Yet these tree-towers.
Their long bird-echoing minster-aisles, —
the voice
Of the perpetual brook, these golden
slopes
Of Solomon-shaming flowers — ^^that was
your saying,
All pleased you so at first.
Rosamund. Not now so much.
My Anjou bower was scarce as beautiful.
But you were oftener there. I have none
but you.
The brook's voice is not yours, and no
flower, not
The sun himself, should he be changed
,to one,
Could shine away the darkness of that gap
Left by the lack of love.
Henry. The lack of love !
Rosamund. Of one we love. Nay, I
would not be bold.
Yet hoped ere this you might — —
\_Looks earnestly at him.
Henry. Anything further?
Rosamund. Only my best bower-
maiden died of late,
And that old priest whom John of Salis-
bury trusted
Hath sent another.
Henry. Secret?
Kosaniund. I but ask'd her
One question, and she primm'd her
mouth and put
Her hands together — thus — and said,
God help her.
That she was sworn to silence.
Henry. What did you ask her?
Rosamund. Some daily something-
nothing.
Henry. Secret, then?
Rosamund. I do not love her. Must
you go, my liege.
So suddenly?
Henry. I came to England suddenly,
And on a great occasion sure to wake
As great a wrath in Becket
Rosamund. Always Becket !
He always comes between us.
Henry. — And to meet it
I needs must leave as suddenly. It is
raining.
Put on your hood and see me to the
bounds. \_Exeunt.
Margery {singing behind scene).
Babble in bower
Under the rose !
Bee mustn't buzz,
Whoop— -but he knows.
Kiss me, little one.
Nobody near !
Grasshopper, grasshopper,
Whoop — you can hear.
Kiss in the bower,
Tit on the tree !
Bird mustn't tell,
Whoop — he can see.
Enter Margery.
I ha' been but a week here and I ha'
seen what I ha' seen, for to be sure it's
no more than a week since our old
Father Philip that has confessed our
mother for twenty years, and she was
hard put to it, and to speak truth, nigh
at the end of our last crust, and that
mouldy, and she cried out on him to put
SCENE I.
BECKET.
707
me forth in the world and to make me a
woman of the world, and to win my own
bread, whereupon he asked our mother
if I could keep a quiet tongue i' my head,
and iK)t speak till I was spoke to, and I
answered for myself that I never spoke
more than was needed, and he told me
he would advance me to.the service of a
great lady, and took me ever so far away,
and gave me a great pat o' the cheek for
a pretty wench, and said it was a pity to
blindfold such eyes as mine, and such to
be sure they be, but he blinded 'em for
all that, and so brought me no-hows as
I may say, and the more shame to him
after his promise, into a garden and not
into the world, and bade me whatever I
saw not to speak one word, an' it 'ud be
well for me in the end, for there were
great ones who would look after me, and
to be sure I ha' seen great ones to-day —
and then not to speak one word, for
that's the rule o' the garden, tho' to be
sure if I had been Eve i' the garden I
shouldn't ha' minded the apple, for what's
an apple, you know, save to a child, and
I'm no child, but more a woman o' the
world than my lady here, and I ha' seen
what I ha' seen — tho' to be sure if I
hadn't minded it we should all on us
ha' had to go, bless the Saints, wi' bare
backs, but the backs 'ud ha' counte-
nanced one another, and belike it 'ud ha'
been always summer, and anyhow I am
as well-shaped as my lady here, and I
ha' seen what I ha' seen, and what's the
good of my talking to myself, for here
comes my lady {enter Rosamund), and,
my lady, tho' I shouldn't speak one
word, I wish you joy o' the King's
brother.
Rosamund. What is it you mean?
Margery. I mean your goodman,
your husband, my lady, for I saw your
ladyship a-parting wi' him even now i'
the coppice, when I was a-getting o'
bluebells for your ladyship's nose to
smell on — and I ha' seen the King once
at Oxford, and he's as like the King as
fingernail to fingernail, and I thought at
first it was the King, onlv you know the
King's married, for King Louis
Rosamund. Married !
Margery. Years and years, my lady,
for her husband, King Louis
Rosamund. Hush!
Margery. — And I thought if it were
the King's brother he had a better bride
than the King, for the people do say
that his is bad beyond all reckoning,
and
Rosamutid. The people lie.
Margery. Very like, my lady, but
most on 'em know an honest woman and
a lady when they see her, and besides
they say, she makes songs, and that's
against her, for I never knew an honest
woman that could make songs, tho' to be
sure our mother 'ill sing me old songs by
the hour, but then, God help her, she
had 'em from her mother, and her mother
from her mother back and back for ever
so long, but none of 'em ever made
songs, and they were all honest.
Rosamund. Go, you shall tell me of
her some other time.
Margery. There's none so much to
tell on her, my lady, only she kept the
seventh commandment better than some
I know on, or I couldn't look your lady-
ship i' the face, and she brew'd the best
ale in all Glo'ster, that is to say in her
time when she had the * Crown.'
Rosamund. The crown ! who?
Margery. Mother.
Rosamund. I mean her whom you
call — fancy — my husband's brother's
wife.
Margery. Oh, Queen Eleanor. Yes,
my lady; and tho' I be sworn not to
speak a word, I can tell you all about
her, if
Rosamund. No word now. I am
faint and sleepy. Leave me. Nay — go.
What ! will you anger me?
\^Exit Margery.
He charged me not to question any of those
About me. Have I? no! she question'd
me.
Did she not slander him ? Should she
stay here?
May she not tempt me, being at my side,
To question her? Nay, can I send her
hence
Without his kingly leave? I am in the
dark.
7o8
BECKET.
I have lived, poor bird, from cage to
• cage, and known
Nothing but him — happy to know no
more.
So that he loved me — and he loves me
— yes,
And bound me by his love to secrecy
Till his own time.
Eleanor, Eleanor, have I
Not heard ill things of her in France?
Oh, she's
The Queen of France. I see it — some
confusion,
Some strange mistake. I did not hear
aright,
Myself confused with parting from the
King.
Margery {behind scene). Bee mustn't
buzz.
Whoop — but he knows.
Rosamund. Yet her — what her? he
hinted of some her —
When he was here before —
Something that would displease me.
Hath he stray'd
From love's clear path into the common
bush,
And, being scratch'd, returns to his true
rose,
Who hath not thorn enough to prick him
for it,
Ev'n with a word?
Margery {behind scene) . Bird mustn't
tell.
Whoop — he can see.
Rosamund. I would not hear him.
Nay — there's more — he frown'd
*No mate for her, if it should come to
that ' —
To that — to what?
Margery {behind scene). Whoop —
but he knows.
Whoop — but he knows.
Rosamund. O God ! some dreadful
truth is breaking on me —
Some dreadful thing is coming on me.
{^Enter Geoffrey.
Geoffrey !
Geoffrey. What are you crying for,
when the sun shines?
Rosamund, flath not thy father left
us to ourselves?
Geoffrey. Ay, but he's taken the rain
with him. I hear Margery : I'll go play
with her. \^Exit Geoffrey.
Rosamund. Rainbow, stay,
Gleam upon gloom,
Bright as my dream,
Rainbow, stay !
But it passes away,
Gloom upon gleam,
Dark as my doom —
O rainbow, stay.
SCENE II.— Outside the Woods
NEAR RoSAxMUND's BoWER.
Eleanor. Fitzurse.
Eleanor. Up from the salt lips of the
land we two
Have track'd the King to this dark inland
wood;
And somewhere hereabouts he vanish'd.
Here
His turtle builds; his exit is our adit :
Watch ! he will out again, and presently.
Seeing he must to Westminster and
crown
Young Henry there to-morrow.
Fitzurse. We have watch'd
So long in vain, he hath pass'd out again,
And on the other side.
\_A great horn winded.
Hark ! Madam !
Eleanor. Ay,
How ghostly sounds that horn in the
black wood !
\_A countryman Jiying.
Whither away, man? what are you flying
from?
Countryman. The witch ! the witch !
she sits naked by a great heap of gold in
the middle of the wood, and when the
horn sounds she comes out as a wolf.
Get you hence ! a man passed in there
to-day : I holla'd to him, but he didn't
hear me : he'll never out again, the witch
has got him. I daren't stay — I daren't
stay!
Eleanor. Kind of the witch to give
thee warning tho'. \^Man flies.
Is not this wood-witch of the rustic's fear
Our woodland Circe that hath witch'd
the King?
l^Horn sounded. Another flying.
BECKET.
709
^Fitzurse. Again ! stay, fool, and tell
me why thou fliest.
Countryman. Fly thou too. The
King keeps his forest head of game here,
and when that horn sounds, a score of
wolf-dogs are let loose that will tear thee
piecemeal. Linger not till the third
horn. Fly! {^Exit.
Eleanor. This is the likelier tale.
We have hit the place.
Now let the King's fine game look to
itself. \_FIorn.
Fitzurse. Again ! —
And far on in the dark heart of the wood
I hear the yelping of the hounds of hell.
Eleanor. I have my dagger here to
still their throats.
Fitzurse. Nay, Madam, not to-night
— the night is falling.
What can be done to-night?
Eleanor. Well — well — away.
SCENE III. — Traitor's Meadow at
Fr^teval. Pavilions and Tents
OF THE English and French Bar-
onage.
R Becket and Herbert of Bosham.
Becket. See here !
Herbert. What's here?
Becket. A notice from the priest.
To whom our John of Salisbury com-
mitted
The secret of the bower, that our wolf-
Queen
Is prowling round the fold. I should be
back
In England ev'n for this.
Herbert. These are by-things
In the great cause.
Becket. The.by-things of the Lord
Are the wrong'd innocences that will cry
From all the hidden by-ways of the
world
In the great day against the wronger. I
know •
Thy meaning. Perish she, I, all, before
The Church should suffer wrong !
Herbert. Do you see, my lord.
There is the King talking with Walter
Map?
Becket. He hath the Pope's last
letters, and they threaten
The immediate thunder-blast of interdict :
Yet he can scarce be touching upon those.
Or scarce would smile that fashion.
Herbert. ^ Winter sunshine !
Beware of opening out thy bosom to it.
Lest thou, myself, and all thy flock
should catch
An after ague-fit of trembling. Look !
He bows, he bares his head, he is coming
hither.
Still with a smile.
Enter King Henry and Walter Map.
Henry. We have had so many hours
together, Thomas,
So many happy hours alone together.
That I would speak with you once more
alone.
Becket. My liege, your will and happi-
ness are mine.
\^Exeutit King and Becket.
Herbert. The same smile still.
Walter Map. Do you see that great
black cloud that hath come over the sun
and cast us all into shadow?
Herbert. And feel it too.
Walter Map. And see you yon side-
beam that is forced from under it, and
sets the church-tower over there all
a-hell-fire as it were?
Herbert. Ay.
Walter Map. It is this black, bell-
silencing, anti-marrying, burial-hindering
interdict that hath squeezed out this side-
smile upon Canterbury, whereof may
come conflagration. Were I Thomas, I
wouldn't trust it. Sudden change is a
house on sand; and tho' I count Henry
honest enough, yet when fear creeps in
at the front, honesty steals out at the
back, and the King at last is fairly scared
by this cloud — this interdict. I have
been more for the King than the Church
in this matter — yea, even for the sake of
the Church : for, truly, as the case stood,
you had safelier have slain an archbishop
than a she-goat : but our recoverer and
upholder of customs hath in this crown-
ing of young Henry by York and London
so violated the immemorial usage of the
Church, that, like the gravedigger's child
I have heard of, trying to ring the bell,
he hath half-hanged himself in the rope
7IO
BECKET,
ACT m
of the Church, or rather pulled all the
Church with the Holy Father astride of
it down upon his own head.
Herbert. Were you there ?
Walter Map. In the church rope? —
no. I was at the crowning, for I have
pleasure in the pleasure of crowds, and
to read the faces of men at a great
show.
Herbert. And how did Roger of York
comport himself?
Walter Map. As magnificently and
archiepiscopally as our Thomas would
have done : only there was a dare-devil
in his eye — I should say a dare-Becket.
He thought less of two kings than of one
Roger the king of the occasion. Foliot
is the holier man, perhaps the better.
Once or twice there ran a twitch across
his face as who should say what's to
follow? but Salisbury was a calf cowed
by Mother Church, and every now and
then glancing about him like a thief at
night when he hears a door open in the
house and thinks 'the master.'
Herbert. And the father-king?
Walter Map. The father's eye was so
tender it would have called a goose off
the green, and once he strove to hide
his face, like the Greek king when his
daughter was sacrificed, but he thought
better of it: it was but the sacrifice of a
kingdom to his son, a smaller matter;
but as to the young crownling himself, he
looked so malapertJn the eyes, that had
I fathered him I had given him more of
the rod than the sceptre. Then followed
the thunder of the captains and the
shouting, and so we came on to the
banquet, from whence there puffed out
such an incense of unctuosity into the
nostrils of our Gods of Church and State,
that Lucullus or Apicius might have
sniffed it in their Hades of heathenism,
so that the smell of their own roast had
not come across it
Herbert. Map, tho' you make your
butt too big, you overshoot it.
Walter Map. — For as to the fish,
they de-miracled the miraculous draught,
and might have sunk a navy
Herbert. There again, Goliasing and
QoUathising !
Walter Map. — And as for the flesh
at table, a whole Peter's sheet, with all
manner of game, and four-footed things,
and fowls
Herbert. And all manner of creeping
things too?
Walter Map. —Well, there were
Abbots — but they did not bring their
women; and so we were dull enough at
first, but in the end we flourished out
into a merriment; for the old King
would act servitor and hand a dish to
his son ; whereupon my Lord of York —
his fine-cut face bowing and beaming
with all that courtesy which hath less
loyalty in it than the backward scrape
of the clown's heel — 'great honour,'
says he, ' from the King's self to the
King's son.' Did you hear the young
King's quip?
Herbert. No, what was it?
Walter Map. Glancing at the days
when his father was only Earl of Anjou,
he answered : — * Should not an earl's
son wait on a king's son ? ' And when
the cold corners of the King's mouth
began to thaw, there was a great motion
of laughter among us, part real, part
childlike, to be freed from the dulness
— part royal, for King and kingling both
laughed, and so we could not but laugh,
as by a royal necessity — part childlike
again — when we felt we had laughed
too long and could not stay ourselves —
many midriff-shaken even to tears, as
springs gush out after earthquakes — but
from those, as I said before, there may
come a conflagration — tho', to keep the
figure moist and make it hold water, I
should say rather, the lacrymation of a
lamentation; but look if Thomas have
not flung himself at the King's feet.
They have made it up again — for the
moment.
Herbert. Thanks to the blessed Mag-
dalen, whose day it is.
Re-enter Henry and Becket. (^Dur-
ing their conference the BaronS and
Bishops of France and England
come in at back of stage. ^
Becket. Ay, King! for in thy king-
dom, as thou knowest,
SCENE III.
BECKET.
,1
The spouse of the Great King, thy King,
hath fallen —
The daughter of Zion lies beside the
way —
The priests of Baal tread her under-
foot—
The golden ornaments are stolen from
her
Henry. Have I not promised to re-'
^ store her, Thomas,
And send thee back again to Canter-
bury?
Becket. Send back again those exiles
of my kin
Who wander famine-wasted thro' the
world.
Henry. Have I not promised, man,
to send them back?
Becket. Yet one thing more. Thou
hast broken thro' the pales
Of privilege, crowning thy young son by
York,
London and Salisbury — not Canterbury.
Henry. York crown'd the Conqueror
— not Canterbury.
Becket. .There was no Canterbury in
William's time.
Henry. But Hereford, you know,
crown'd the first Henry.
Becket. But Anselm crown'd this
Henry o'er again.
Henry. And thou shalt crown njy
Henry o'er again.
Becket. And is it then with thy good-
will that I
Proceed against thine evil councillors,
And hurl the dread ban of the Church
on those
Who made the second mitre play the first,
And acted mq?
Henry. Well, well, then — have thy
way!
It may be they were evil councillors.
What more, my lord Archbishop? What
more, Thomas?
1 make thee full amends. Say all thy say,
But blaze not out before the Frenchmen
here.
Becket. More? Nothing, so thy
promise be thy deed.
Henry {holding out his hand). Give
me thy hand. My Lords of
France and England,
My friend of Canterbury and myself
Are now once more at perfect amity.
Unkingly should I be, and most mn-
knightly,
Not striving still, however much in vain.
To rival him in Christian charity.
Herbert. All praise to Heaven, and
sweet St. Magdalen !
Henry. And so farewell until we
meet in England.
Becket. I fear, my liege, we may not
meet in England.
Henry. How, do you make me a
traitor?
Becket. . No, indeed !
That be far from thee.
Henry. Come, stay with us, then,
Before you part for England.
Becket. I am bound
For that one hour to stay with good
King Louis,
Who helpt me when none else.
Herbert. He said thy life
Was not one hour's worth in England
save
King Henry gave thee first the kiss of
peace.
Henry. He said so? Louis, did he?
look you, Herbert,
When I was in mine anger with King
Louis,
I sware I would not give the kiss of
peace.
Not on French ground, nor any ground
but Enghsh,
Where his cathedral stands. Mine old
friend, Thomas,
I would there were that perfect trust
between us.
That healtTi of heart, once ours, ere
Pope or King
Had come between us ! Even now —
who knows? —
,1 might deliver all things to thy hand —
If_^. . . but I say no more . . . fare-
"^ well, my lord.
Becket. Farewell, my liege !
\_Exit Henry, then the Barons and
Bishops.
Walter Map. There again ! when the
full fruit of the royal promise might
have dropt into thy mouth hadst thou
but opened it to thank him.
712
BECKET.
ACT IV.
Becket. He fenced his royal promise
with an if.
Walter Map. And is the King's if
too high a stile for your lordship to over-
step and come at all things in the next
field?
Becket. Ay, if this if be like the
Devil's ' if
Thou wilt fall down and worship me,'
Herbert. Oh, Thomas,
I could fall down and worship thee, my
Thomas,
For thou hast trodden this wine-press
alone.
Becket. Nay, of the people there are
many with me.
Walter Map. I am not altogether
with you, my lord, tho' I am none of
those that would raise a storm between
you, lest ye should draw together like
two ships in a calm. You wrong the
King: he meant what he said to-day.
Who shall vouch for his to-morrows?
One word further. Doth not the few-
ness of anything make the fulness of it in
estimation? Is not virtue prized mainly
for its rarity, and great baseness loathed
as an exception? for were all, my lord,
as noble as yourself, who would look up
to you? and were all as base as — who
shall I say — Fitzurse and his following —
who would look down upon them? My
lord, you have put so many of the King's
household out of communion, that they
begin to smile at it.
Becket. At their peril, at their peril
Walter Map. — For tho' the drop
may hollow out the dead stone, doth not
the living skin thicken against perpetual
whippings? This is the second grain of
good counsel I ever proffered thee, and
so cannot suffer by the rule of frequency.
Have I sown it in salt? I trust not, for
before God I promise you the King hath
many more wolves than he can tame in
his woods of England, and if it suit their
purpose to howl for the King, and you
still move against him, you may have no
Jess than to die for it; but God and his
free wind grant your lordship a happy
home-return and the King's kiss of peace
in Kent. Farewell ! I must follow the
King. {^Exit.
Herbert. Ay, and I warrant the cus-
toms. Did the King
Speak of the customs?
Becket. No ! — To die for it —
X liye^to die for it, I die tq^live for it.
The State will die, the Church .can never
die.
The King's not like to die for that which
dies;
But I must die for that whicL never dies.
JUwill be so — my visions in the Lord :
It must be so, my friend! the wolves of
England
Must murder her one shepherd,, that the
sheep
May feed in peace. False figure. Map
would say.
Earth's falses are heaven's truths. And
when my voice
Is martyr'd mute, and this man disappears,
That perfect trust may come again between
us,
And there, there, there, not here I shall
rejoice
To find my stray sheep back within the
fold.
The crowd are scattering, let us move
away !
And thence to England. \_Exeunt.
ACT IV.
SCENE I. — The Outskirts of the
Bower.
Geoffrey (^coming out of the zvood^.
Light again ! light again ! Margery? no,
that's a finer thing there. How it glitters !
Eleanor {entering) . Come to me, little
one. How camest thou hither?
Geoffrey. On my legs.
Eleanor. And mighty pretty legs too.
Thou art the prettiest child I ever saw.
Wilt thou love me?
Geoffrey. No; I only love mother.
Eleanor. Ay; and who is thy mother?
Geoffrey. They call her But she
lives secret, you see.
EAeanor. Why?
Geoffrey. Don't know why.
Eleanor. Ay, but some one comes to
see her now and then. Who is he?
Geoffrey. Can't tell.
BECKET.
713
Eleanor. What does she call him?
Geoffrey. My liege.
Eleanor. Pretty one, how earnest thou ?
Geoffrey. There was a bit of yellow
silk here and there, and it looked pretty
like a glowworm, and I thought if I
followed it I should find the fairies.
Eleanor. I am the fairy, pretty one,
a good fairy to thy mother. Take me
to her.
Geoffrey. There are good fairies and
bad fairies, and sometimes she cries, and
can't sleep sound o' nights because of the
bad fairies.
Eleanor. She shall cry no more; she
shall sleep sound enough if thou wilt take
me to her. I am her good fairy.
Geoffrey. But you don't look like a
good fairy. Mother does. You are not
pretty, like mother.
Eleanor. We can't all of us be as
pretty as thou art — {aside) little bastard.
Come, here is a golden chain I will give
thee if thou wilt lead me to thy mother.
Geoffrey. No — no gold. Mother says
gold spoils all. Love is the only gold.
Eleanor. I love thy mother, my
pretty boy. Show me where thou camest
out of the wood,
Geoffrey. By this tree; but I don't
know if I can find the way back again.
Eleanor. Where's the warder?
Geoffrey. Very bad. Somebody struck
him.
Eleanor. Ay? who was that?
Geoffrey. Can't tell. But I heard say
he had had a stroke, or you'd have heard
his horn before now. Come along, then;
we shall see the silk here and there, and
I want my supper. \_Exeiint.
SCENE IT. — Rosamund's Bower.
Rosamund. The boy so late; pray
God, he be not lost.
I sent this Margery, and she comes not
back;
I sent another, and she comes not back.
I go myself — so many alleys, crossings.
Paths, avenues — nay, if I lost him,
now
The folds have fallen from the mystery,
And left all naked, I were lost indeed.
Enter Geoffrey and Eleanor.
Geoffrey, the pain thou hast put me to !
\_Seeing Eleanor.
Ha, you!
How came you hither?
Eleanor. Your own child brought me
hither !
Geoffrey. You said you couldn't trust
Margery, and I watched her and followed
her into the woods, and I lost her and
went on and on till I found the light and
the lady, and she says she can make you
sleep o' nights.
Rosamund. How dared you? Know
you not this bower is secret,
Of and belonging to the King of England,
More sacred than his forests for the
chase ?
Nay, nay, Heaven help you; get you
hence in haste
Lest worse befall you.
Eleanor. Child, I am mine own self
Of and !)elonging to the King. The
King
Hath divers ofs and ons, ofs and belong-
ings.
Almost as many as your true Mussulman —
Belongings, paramours, whom it pleases
him •
To call his wives; but so it chances,
child.
That I am his main paramour, his sultana.
But since the fondest pair of doves will
jar,
Ev'n in a cage of gold, we had words of
late.
And thereupon he call'd my children
bastards.
Do you believe that you are married to
him?
Rosamund. I should h€i\tMQ. it.
Eleanor. You must not believe it,
Because I have a wholesome medicine
here
Puts that- belief asleep. Your answer,
beauty !
Do you believe that you are married to
him?
Rosamund. Geoffrey, my boy, I saw
the ball you lost in the fork of the great
willow over the brook. Go. See that
you do not fall in. Go.
7H
BECKET,
ACT I>
Geoffrey. And leave you alone with
the good fairy. She calls you beauty,
but I don't lilce her looks. Well, you
bid me go, and I'll have my ball anyhow.
Shall I find you asleep when I come
back?
Rosamund. Go. \^Exit Geoffrey.
Eleanor. He is easily found again.
Do you believe it?
I pray you then to take my sleeping-
draught;
But if you should not care to take it —
See ! [Draws a dagger.
What ! have I scared the red rose from
your face
Into your heart? But this will find it
there,
And dig it from the root for ever.
Rosamund. Help ! help !
Eleanor. They say that walls have
ears; but these, it seems.
Have none ! and I have none — to pity
thee.
Rosamund. I do beseech you — my
child is so young,
So backward too; I cannot leave him yet.
I am not so happy I could not die myself,
But the child is so young. You have
children — his;
And mine is the'King's child; so, if you
love him —
Nay, if you love him, there is great wrong
done
Somehow; but if you do not — there are
those
Who say you i^o not love him — let me go
With my young boy, and I will hide my
face,
Blacken and gipsyfy it; none shall know
me;
The King shall never hear of me again.
But I will beg my bread along the world
With my young boy, and God will be
our guide.
I never meant you harm in any way.
See, I can say no more.
Eleanor. Will you not say you are
not married to him?
Rosamund. Ay, Madam, I can say it,
if you will.
Eleanor. Then is thy pretty boy a
bastard ?
Rosamund. No.
Eleanor. And thou thyself a proven
wanton?
Rosamund. No.
I am none such. I never loved but one.
I have heard of such that range from
love to love.
Like the wild beast — if you can call it
love.
I have heard of such — yea, even among
those
Who sit on thrones — I never saw any
such.
Never knew any such, and howsoever
You do misname me, match'd with any
such,
I am snow to mud.
Eleanor. The more the pity then
That thy true home — the heavens — cry
out for thee
Who art too pure for earth.
Enter FiTZURSE.
Fitzurse. Give her to me.
Eleanor. The Judas-lover of our
passion-play
Hath track'd us hither.
Fitzurse. Well, why not? I follow'd
You and the child: he babbled all the
way.
Give her to me to make my honey-moon.
Eleanor. Ay, as the bears love honey.
Could you keep her
Indungeon'd from one whisper of the
wind,
Dark even from a side glance of the
moon.
And oublietted in the centre — No !
I follow out my hate and thy revenge.
Fitzurse. You bade me take revenge
another way —
To bring her to the dust. . . . Come
with me, love.
And I will love thee. . . . Madam, let
her live.
I have a far-off burrow where the King
Would miss her and for ever.
Eleanor. How sayest thou,
sweetheart?
Wilt thou go with him? he will marry
thee.
Rosamund. Give me the poison; set
me free of him !
[Eleanor offers the vial.
SCENE II.
BECKET,
715
No, no ! I will not have it.
Eleanor. Then this other,
The wiser choice, because my sleeping-
draught
May bloat thy beauty out of shape, and
make
Thy body loathsome even to thy child;
While this but leaves thee with a broken
heart;
A doll-face blanch'd and bloodless, over
which
If pretty Geoffrey do not break his own.
It must be broken for him.
Rosamund. O I see now
Your purpose is to fright me — a trouba-
dour
You play with words. You had never
used so many,
Not if you meant it, I am sure. The
child . . .
No . . . mercy! No! (^Kneels.')
Eleanor. Play! . . . that
bosom never
Heaved under the King's hand with such
true passion
As at this loveless knife that stirs the riot
Which it will quench in blood! Slave,
if he love thee,
Thy life is worth the wrestle for it : arise,
And dash thyself against me that I may
slay thee !
The worm ! shall I let her go ? But
ha! what's here?
By very God, the cross I gave the King !
His village darling in some lewd caress
Has wheedled it off the King's neck to
her own.
By thy leave, beauty. Ay, the same !
I warrant
Thou hast sworn on this my cross a
hundred times
Never to leave him — and that merits
death.
False oath on holy cross — for thou must
leave him
To-day, but not quite yet. My good
Fitzurse,
The running down the chase is kindlier
sport
Ev'n than the death. Who knows but
that thy lover
May plead so pitifully, that i may spare
thee?
3A
Come hither, man; stand there. {To
Rosamund.) Take thy one chance;
Catch at the last straw. Kneel to thy
lord Fitzurse;
Crouch even because thou hatest him;
fawn upon him
For thy life and thy son's.
Rosamund {rising). I am a Clifford,
„My son a Clifford and Plantagenet.
I am to die then, tho' there stand beside
thee
One who might grapple with thy dagger,
if he
Had aught of man, or thou of woman;
or I
Would bow to such a baseness as would
make me
Most worthy of it : both of us will die.
And I will fly with my sweet boy to
heaven.
And shriek to all the saints among the
stars : .
' Eleanor of Aquitaine, Eleanor of Eng-
land!
Murder'd by that adulteress Eleanor,
Whose doings are a horror to the east,
A hissing in the west ! ' Have we not
heard
Raymond of Poitou, thine own uncle —
nay,
Geoffrey Plantagenet, thine own hus-
band's father —
Nay, ev'n the accursed heathen Salad-
deen
Strike !
I challenge thee to meet me before God.
Answer me there.
Eleanor {raising the dagger) . This in
thy bos9m, fool.
And after in thy bastard's !
Enter Becket from behind. Catches
hold of her arm.
Becket. Murderess !
\_lhe dagger falls; they stare at one
another. After a pause.
Eleanor. My lord, we know you
proud of your fine hand.
But having now admired it long enough.
We find that it is mightier than it
seems —
At least mine own is frailer: you are
laming it.
7i6
BECKET.
ACT IV.
Becket, And lamed and maim'd to
dislocation, better
Than raised to take a life which Henry
bade me
Guard from the stroke that dooms thee
after death
To wail in deathless flame.
Eleanor. Nor you, nor I
Have now to learn, my lord, that our
good Henry
Says many a thing in sudden heats,
which he
Gainsays by next sunrisiiig — often ready
To tear himself for having said as much.
My lord, Fitzurse
Becket. He too ! what dost thou here ?
Dares the bear slouch into the lion's den?
One downward plunge of his paw would
rend away
Eyesight and manhood, life itself, from
thee.
Go, lest I blast thee with anathema,
And make thee a world's horror.
Fitzurse. My lord, I shall
Remember this.
Becket. I do remember thee;
Lest I remember thee to the lion, go.
\^Exit Fitzurse.
Take up your dagger; put it in the
sheath.
Eleanor. Might not your courtesy
stoop to hand it me?
But crowns must bow when mitres sit so
high.
Well — well — too costly to be left or lost.
S^Picks up the dagger.
I had it from an Arab soldan, who.
When I was there in Antioch, marvell'd
at
Our unfamiliar beauties of the west ;
But wonder'd more at my much constancy
To the monk-king, Louis, our former
burthen,
From whom, as being too kin, you know,
my lord,
God's grace and Holy Church deliver'd
us.
I think, time given, I could have talk'd
him out of
His ten wives into one. Look at the
hilt.
What excellent workmanship. In our
poor west
We cannot do it so well.
Becket. We can do worse.
Madam, I saw your dagger at her throat;
I heard your savage cry.
Eleanor. Well acted, was it?
A comedy meant to seem a tragedy —
A feint, a farce. My honest lord, you
are known
Thro' all the courts of Christendom as
one
That mars a cause with over-violence.
You have wrong'd Fitzurse. I speak not
of myself.
We thought to scare this minion of the
King
Back from her churchless commerce with
the King
To the fond arms of her first love,
Fitzurse,
Who swore to marry her. You have
spoilt the farce.
My savage cry ? Why, she — she — when
I strove
To work against her license for her
good,
Bark'd out at me such monstrous charges,
that
The King himself, for love of his own
sons.
If hearing, would have spurn'd her;
whereupon
I menaced her with this, as when we
threaten
A yelper with a stick. Nay, I deny not,
That I was somewhat anger'd. Do you
hear me?
Believe or no, I care not. You have
lost
The ear of the King. I have it. . . .
My lord Paramount,
Our great High-priest, will not your
Holiness
Vouchsafe a gracious answer to your
Queen?
Becket. Rosamund hath not answer'd
you one word;
Madam, I will not answer you one word.
Daughter, the world hath trick'd thee.
Leave it, daughter;
Come thou with me to Godstow nunnery,
And live what may be left thee of a life
Saved as by miracle alone with Him
Who gave it.
BECKET.
717
Re-e7tter Geoffrey.
Geoffrey. Mother, you told me a great
fib : it wasn't in the willow.
Becket. Follow us, my son, and we
will find it for thee —
Or something manlier.
\_Exeunt Becket, Rosamund, and
Geoffrey.
Eleanor. The world hath trick'd her
— that's the King; if so,
There was the farce, the feint — not mine.
And yet
I am all but sure my dagger was a feint
Till the worm turn'd — not life shot up
in blood.
But death drawn in; — {looking at the
vial) this was no feint then? no.
But can I swear to that, had she but
given
Plain answer to plain query? nay, me-
thinks
Had she but bow'd herself to meet the
wave
Of humiliation, worshipt whom she
loathed,
I should have let her be, scorn'd her too
much
To harm her. Henry — Becket tells him
this —
To take my life might lose him Aquitaine.
Too politic for that. Imprison me?
No, for it came to nothing — only a feint.
Did she not tell me I was playing on
her?
I'll swear to mine own self it was a
feint.
Why should I swear, Eleanor, who am,
or was,
A sovereign power? The King plucks
out their eyes
Who anger him, and shall not I, the
Queen,
Tear out her heart — kill, kill with knife
or venom
One of his slanderous harlots? 'None
of such? '
I love her none the more. Tut, the
chance gone,
She lives — but not for him; one point is
gain'd.
O I, that thro' the Pope divorced King
Louis,
Scorning his monkery, — I that wedded
Henry,
Honouring his manhood, — will he not
mock at me
The jealous fool balk'd of her will — with
hiin ?
But he and he must never meet again.
Reginald Fitzurse !
Re-enter Fitzurse.
Fitzurse. Here, Madam, at
your pleasure.
Eleanor. My pleasure is to have a
man about me.
Why did you slink away so like a cur?
Fitzurse. Madam, I am as much man
as the King.
Madam, I fear Church-censures like
your King.
Eleanor. He grovels to the Church
when he's black-blooded,
But kinglike fought the proud archbishop,
— kinglike
Defied the Pope, and, like his kingly sires,
The Normans, striving still to break or
bind
The spiritual giant with our island laws
And customs, made me for the moment
proud
Ev'n of that stale Church-bond which
link'd me with him
To bear him kingly sons. I am not so
sure
But that I love him still. Thou as much
man !
No more of that; we- will to France and be
Beforehand with the King, and brew from
out
This Godstow-Becket intermeddling such
A strong hate-philtre as may madden him
— madden
Against his priest beyond all hellebore.
ACT V.
SCENE I. — Castle in Normandy.
King's Chamber.
Henry, Roger of York, Foliot,
JocELYN OF Salisbury.
Roger of York. Nay, nay, my liege,
He rides abroad with armed followers,
Hath broken all his promises to thyself,
7i8
BECKET.
Cursed and anathematised us right and
left,
Stirr'd up a party there against your
son
Henry. Roger of York, you always
hated him,
Even when you both were boys at Theo-
bald's.
Roger of York. I always hated bound-
less arrogance.
In mine own cause I strove against him
there,
And in thy cause I strive against him
now.
Henry. I cannot think he moves
against my son,
Knowing right well with what a tender-
ness
He loved my son.
Roger of York. Before you made him
king.
But Becket ever moves against a king.
The Church is all — the crime to be a
king.
We trust your Royal Grace, lord of more
land
Than any crown in Europe, will not
yield
To lay your neck beneath your citizen's
heel.
Henry. Not to a Gregory of my thron-
ing ! No.
Foliot. My royal liege, in aiming at
your love.
It may be sometimes I have overshot
My duties to our Holy Mother Church,
Tho' all the world allows I fall no inch
Behind this Becket, rather go beyond
In scourgings, macerations, mortifyings,
Fasts, disciplines that clear the spiritual
eye.
And break the soul from earth. Let all
that be.
I boast not : but you know thro' all this
quarrel
I still have cleaved to the crown, in hope
the crown
Would cleave to me that but obey'd the
crown,
Crowning your son; for which our loyal
service,
And since we likewise swore to obey the
customs,
York and myself, and our good Salisbury
here,
Are push'd from out communion of the
Church.
Jocelyn of Salisbury. Becket hath
trodden on us like worms, my
liege ;
Trodden one half dead; one half, but
half-alive,
Cries to the King.
Henry {aside). Take care o' thvself,
O King.
Jocelyn of Salisbury. Being so crush'd
and so humiliated
We scarcely dare to bless the food we eat
Because of Becket.
Henry. What would ye have me do?
Roger of York. Summon your ban>ns;-
take their counsel : yet
I know — could swear — as long as
Becket breathes.
Your Grace will never have one quiet
hour.
Henry. What? ... Ay . . . but
pray you do not work upon me.
I see your drift ... it may be so . . .
and yet
You know me easily anger'd. Will you
hence?
He shall absolve you . . . you shall have
redress.
I have a dizzying headache. Let me
rest,
I'll call you by and by.
{^Exeunt Roger of York, Foliot, and
Jocelyn of Salisbury.
Would he were dead ! I have lost all
love for him.
If God would take him in some sudden
way —
Would he were dead. S^Lies down.
Page {entering) . My liege, the Queen
of England.
Henry. God's eyes! \_Starting up.
Enter Eleanor.
Eleanor. Of England? Say of
Aquitaine.
I am no Queen of England. I had
dream'd
I was the bride of England, and a queen.
Henry. And, — while you dream'd
you were the bride of England,—
BECKET.
719
Stirring her baby-king against me? ha !
Eleanor. The brideless Becket is thy
king and mine :
I will go live and die in Aquitaine.
Henry. Except I clap thee into prison
here,
Lest thou shouldst play the wanton there
again.
Ha, you of Aquitaine ! O you of Aqui-
taine !
You were but Aquitaine to Louis — no
wife ;
You are only Aquitaine to me — no wife.
Eleanor. And why, my lord, should I
be wife to one
That only wedded me for Aquitaine ?
Yet this no wife — her six and thirty
sail
Of Provence blew you to your English
throne;
And this no wife has borne you four brave
sons,
And one of them at least is like to prove
Bigger in our small world than thou art.
Henry. Ay —
Richard, if he be mine — I hope him
mine.
But thou art like enough to make him
thine.
Eleanor. Becket is like enough to
make all his.
Henry. Methought I had recover'd
of the Becket,
That all was planed and bevell'd smooth
again.
Save from some hateful cantrip of thine
own.
Eleanor. I will go live and die in
Aquitaine.
I dream'd I was the consort of a king,
Not one whose back his priest has broken.
Henry. What !
Is the end come? You, will you crown
my foe
My victor in mid-battle? I will be
Sole master of my house. The end is
mine.
What game, what juggle, what devilry
are you playing?
Why do you thrust this Becket on me
again ?
Eleanor. Why? for I am true wife,
and have my fears
Lest Becket thrust you even from your
throne.
Do you know this cross, my liege?
Henry {turning his head). Awayl
Not I.
Eleanor. Not ev'n the central dia-
mond, worth, I think,
Half of the Antioch whence I had it?
Henry. That?
Eleanor. I gave it you, and you your
paramour;
She sends it back, as being dead to
earth.
So dead henceforth to you.
Henry. Dead ! you have murder'd
her,
Found out her secret bower and murder'd
her!
Eleanor. Your Becket knew the
secret of your bower.
Henry {calling out). Ho there! thy
rest of life is hopeless prison.
Eleanor. And what would my own
Aquitaine say to that?
First, free thy captive from her hopeless
prison.
Henry. O devil, can I free her from
the grave?
Eleanor. You are too tragic : both
of us are players
In such a comedy as our court of Pro-
vence
Had laugh'd at. That's a delicate Latin
lay
Of Walter Map: the lady holds the
cleric
Lovelier than any soldier, his poor
tonsure
A crown of Empire. Will you have it
again ?
( Offering the cross. He dashes it down.)
St. Cupid, that is too irreverent.
Then mine once more. {Puts it on.)
Your cleric hath your lady.
Nay, what uncomely faces, could he see
you!
Foam at the mouth because King
Thomas, lord
Not only of your vassals but amours,
Thro' chastest honour of the Decalogue
Hath used the full authority of his
Church
To put her into Godstow nunnery.
720
BECKET,
Henry. To put her into Godstovv
nunnery !
He dared not — liar! yet, yet I remem-
ber —
I do remember.
He bade me put her into a nunnery —
Into Godstovv, into Hellstow, Devilstow f
The Church ! the Church !
God's eyes ! I would the Church were
down in hell ! \^Exit.
Eleanor. Aha !
Enter the four Knights.
Fitzurse. What made the King cry
out so furiously ?
Eleanor. Our Becket, who will not
absolve the Bishops.
I think ye four have cause to love this
Becket.
Fitzurse. I hate him for his insolence
to all.
De Tracy. And I for all his insolence
to thee.
De Brito. I hate him for I hate him
is my reason,
And yet I hate him for a hypocrite.
De Morville. I do not love him, for
he did his best
To break the barons, and now braves the
King.
Eleanor. Strike, then, at once, the
King would have him — See !
Re-enter Henry.
Henry. No man to love me, honour
j me, obey me !
! Sluggards and fools !
The slave that eat my bread has kick'd
his King !
The dog I cramm'd with dainties worried
me !
The fellow that on a lame jade came to
court,
A ragged cloak for saddle — he, he, he,
To shake my throne, to push into my
chamber —
My bed, where ev'n the slave is private
— he —
I'll haVe her out again, he shall absolve
The bishops — they but did my will —
not you —
Sluggards and fools, why do you stand
and stare?
You are no King's men — you — you — '
you are Becket's men,
Down with King Henry! up with the
Archbishop !
Will no man free me from this pestilent
priest? \_Exit.
[ The Knights draw their swords.
Eleanor. Are ye king's men? I am
king's woman, I.
The Knights. King's men! King's
,-— ' men !
SCENE II. — A Room in Canterbury
Monastery.
Becket and John of Salisbury.
Becket. York said so?
John of Salisbury. Yes : a man may
take good counsel
Ev'n from his foe.
Becket. York will say anything.
What is he saying now? gone to the
King
And taken our anathema with him. York !
Can the King de-anathematise this York ?
John of Salisbury. Thomas, I would
thou hadst return'd to England,
Like some wise prince of this world from
^his wars, '
With more of olive-branch and amnesty
For foes at home — thou hast raised the
world against thee.
Becket. Why, John, my kingdom is
not of this world.
John of Salisbury. If it were more of
this world it might be
More of the next. A policy of wise
pardon
Wins here as well as there. To bless
thine enemies
Becket. Ay, mine, not Heaven's.
John of Salisbury. And may there
not be something
Of this world's leaven in thee too, when
crying ♦
On Holy Church to thunder out her
rights
And thine own wrong so pitilessly? Ah,
Thomas,
The lightnings that we think are only
Heaven's
Flash sometimes out of earth against the
heavens.
SCENE II.
BECKET.
72r
The soldier, when he lets his wliole self go
Lost in the common good, the common
wrong,
Strikes truest ev'n for his own self. I
crave
Thy pardon — I have still thy leave to
speak.
Thou hast waged God's war against the
King; and yet
We are self-uncertain creatures, and we
may,
Yea, even when we know not, mix our
spites
And private hates with our defence of
Heaven,
Enter Edward Grim.
Becket. Thou art but yesterday from
Cambridge, Grim;
What say ye there of Becket?
Grim. /believe him
The bravest in our roll of Primates down
From Austin — there are some — for
there are men
Of canker'd judgment everywhere
Becket. Who hold
With York, with York against me.
Grim. Well, my lord,
A stranger monk desires access to you.
Becket. York against Canterbury,
York against God !
I am open to him. \_Exit Grim.
Enter Rosamund as a Monk.
Rosamund. Can I speak with you
Alone, my father?
Becket. Come you to confess?
Rosamund. Not now.
Becket. Then speak; this
is my other self,
Who like my conscience never lets me be.
Rosam und ( throzving back the cowl) . I
know him; our good John of
Salisbury,
Becket. Breaking already from thy
noviciate
To plunge into this bitter world again —
These wells of Marah. I am grieved,
my daughter.
I thought that I had made a peace for
thee.
Rosamund. Small peace was mine in
my noviciate, father.
3A
Thro' all closed doors a dreadful whisper
crept
That thou wouldst excommunicate the
King.
I could not eat, sleep, pray : I had with me
The monk's disguise thou gavest me for
my bower :
I think our Abbess knew it and allow'd it.
I fled, and found thy name a charm to
get me
Food, roof, and rest. I met a robber
once,
I told him I was bound to see the Arch-
bishop;
* Pass on,' he said, and -in thy name I
pass'd
From house to house. In one a son
stone-blind
Sat by his mother's hearth : he had gone
too far
Into the King's own woods; and the
poor mother.
Soon as she learnt I was a friend of
thine,
Cried out against the cruelty of the
King.
I said it was the King's courts, not the
King;
But she would not believe me, and she
wish'd
The Church were' king: she had seen
the Archbishop once,
So mild, so kind. The people love thee,
father.
Becket. Alas ! when I was Chan-
cellor to the King,
I fear I was as cruel as the King.
Rosamund. Cruel? Oh, no — it is
the law, not he;
The customs of the realm.
Becket. The customs ! customs I
Rosamund. My lord, you have not
excommunicated him?
Oh, if you have, absolve him !
Becket. Daughter, daughter.
Deal not with things you know not.
Rosamund. I know him.
Then you have done it, and I call you
cruel.
/ohn of Salisbtiry. No, daughter, you
mistake our good Archbishop;
For once in France the King had been
so harsh.
722
BECKET.
He thought to excommunicate him —
Thomas,
You could not — old affection master'd
you,
You falter'd into tears.
Rosamund. God bless him for it.
Becket. Nay, make me not a woman,
John of Salisbury,
Nor make me traitor to m;^ holy office.
Did not a man's voice ring along the
aisle,
* The King is sick and almost unto
death'?
How could I excommunicate him then ?
Rosamund. 'And wilt thou excom-
municate him now?
Becket. Daughter, my time is short,
I shall not do it.
And were it longer — well — I should not
do it.
Rosamund. Thanks in this life, and
in the life to come.
Becket. Get thee back to thy nunnery
with all haste;
Let this be thy last trespass. But one
question —
How fares thy pretty boy, the little
Geoffrey?
No fever, cough, croup, sickness?
Rosamund. No, but saved
From all that by our solitude. The
plagues
That smite the city spare the solitudes.
Becket. God save him from all sick-
ness of the soul !
Thee too, thy solitude among thy nuns,
May that save thee ! Doth he remember
me?
Rosamund. I warrant him.
Becket. He is marvellously like thee.
Rosamund. Liker the King.
Becket. No, daughter.
Rosamund. Ay, but wait
Till his nose rises; he will be very
king.
Becket. Ev'n so : but think not of
the King : farewell !
Rosamund. My lord, the city is full
of armed men.
Becket. Ev'n so : farewell !
Rosamund. I will but pass to vespers,
And breathe one prayer for my liege-lord
the King,
His child and mine own soul, and so
return.
Becket. Pray for me too : much need
of prayer have I.
[Rosamund kneels and goes.
Dan John, how much we lose, we celi-
bates,
Lacking the love of woman and of child !
John of Salisbury. More gain than
loss; for of your wives you shall
Find one a slut whose fairest linen seems
P'oul as her dust-cloth, if she used it — •
one
So charged with tongue, that every thread
of thought
Is broken ere it joins — a shrew to boot,
Whose evil song far on into the night
Thrills to the topmost tile — no hope but
death ;
One slow, fat, white, a burthen of the
hearth;
And one that being thwarted ever swoons
And weeps herself into the place of
power;
And one an uxor pauperis Ibyci.
So rare the household honeymaking
bee,
Man's help ! but we, we have the blessed
Virgin
For worship, and our Mother Church
for bride;
And all the souls we saved and father'd
here
Will greet us as our babes in Paradise.
What noise was that? she told us of
arm'd rrien
Here in the city. Will you not with-
draw?
Becket. I once was out with Henry
in the days
When Henry loved me, and we came
upon
A wild-fowl sitting on her nest, so still
I reach'd my hand and touch'd; she did
not stir;
The snow had frozen round her, and she
sat
Stone-dead upon a heap of ice-cold
eggs.
Look ! how this love, this mother, runs
thro' all
The world God made — even the beast
— the bird I
BECKET.
723
John of Salisbury. Ay, still a lover of
the beast and bird?
But these arni'd men — will you not hide
yourself?
Perchance the fierce De Brocs from Salt-
wood Castle,
To assail our Holy Mother lest she
brood
Too long o'er this hard egg, the world,
and send
Her whole heart's heat into it, till it
break
Into young angels. Pray you, hide
yourself.
Becket. There was a little fair-hair'd
Norman maid
Lived in my mother's house : if Rosa-
mund is
The world's rose, as her name imports
her — she
Was the world's lily.
John of Salisbury. Ay, and what of
her?
Becket. She died of leprosy.
fohn of Salisbury. I know not why
You call these old things back again, my
lord.
Becket. The drowning man, they say,
remembers all
The chances of his life, just ere he dies.
John of Salisbury. Ay — but these
arm'd men — will_j/^« drown /^^r-
self?
He loses half the meed of martyrdom ■■'*-
WliQ,. will be martyr when he might
escape.
Becket. What day of the week?
Tuesday?
John of Salisbury. Tuesday, my lord.
Becket. On a Tuesday was I born,
and on a Tuesday
Baptized^ and on a Tuesday did I fly
Forth from Northampton ; on a Tuesday
pass'd
From England into bitter banishment;
On a Tuesday at Pontigny came to
me
The ghostly warning of my martyrdom;
On a Tuesday from mine exile I return'd,
And on a Tuesday
[Tracy enters, then Fitzurse, De
Brito, and De Morville. Monks
following.
— on a Tuesday Tracy !
\_A long silence broken ^/Fitzurse say-
ing, contemptuously)
God help thee V
John of Salisbury {aside). How the
good Archbishop reddens !
He never yet could brook the note of
scorn.
Fitzurse. My lord, we bring a message
from the King
Beyond the water; will you have it
alone.
Or with these listeners near you?
Becket. As you will.
Fitzurse. Nay, as you will.
Becket. Nay, as you will.
John of Salisbury. Why then
Better perhaps to speak with them apart.
Let us withdraw.
\^All go out except the four Knights
and Becket,
Fitzurse. We are all alone with him.
Shall I not smite him with his own cross-
staff?
De Morville. No, look ! the door is
open : let him be.
Fitzurse. The King condemns your
excommunicating
Becket. This is no secret, but a public
matter.
In here again !
[John of Salisbury and Monks return.
Now, sirs, the King's commands !
Fitzurse. The King beyond the water,
thro' our voices.
Commands you to be dutiful and leal
To your young King on this side of the
water.
Not scorn him for the foibles of his youth.
What ! you would make his coronation
void
By cursing those who crown'd him ! Out
upon you !
Becket. Reginald, all men know I
loved the Prince.
His father gave him to my care, and I
Became his second father: he had his
faults.
For which I would have laid mine own
life down
To help him from them, since indeed I
loved him,
And love him next after my lord his father.
724
BECKET.
ACT V
Rather than dim the splendour of his
crown
I fain would treble and quadruple it
With revenues, realms, and golden prov-
inces
So that were done in equity.
Fitzurse. You have broken
Your bond of peace, your treaty with the
King —
Wakening such brawls and loud disturb-
ances
In England, that he calls you oversea
To answer for it in his Norman courts.
Becket. Prate riot of bonds, for never,
oh, never again
Shall the waste voice of the bond-break-
ing sea
Divide me from the mother church of
England,
My Canterbury. Loud disturbances !
Oh, ay — the bells rang out even to
deafening,
Organ and pipe, and dulcimer, chants
and hymns
In all the churches, trumpets in the halls.
Sobs, laughter, cries: they spread their
raiment down ,
Before me — would have made my path-
way flowers,
Save that it was mid-winter in the street,
But full mid-summer in those honest
hearts.
Fitzurse. The King commands you
to absolve the bishops
Whom you have excommunicated.
Becket. I?
Not I, the Pope. Ask him for absolution.
Fitzurse. But you advised the Pope.
Becket. And so I did.
They have but to submit.
The four Knights. The King com-
mands you.
We are all King's men.
Becket. King's men at least
should know
That their own King closed with me last
July
That I should pass the censures of the
Church
On those that crown'd young Henry in
this realm,
And trampled on the rights of Canter-
bury.
Fitzurse. What ! dare you charge
the King with treachery?
He sanction thee to excommunicate
The prelates whom he chose to crown
his son !
Becket. I spake no word of treachery,
Reginald.
But for the truth of this I make appeal
To all the archbishops, bishops, prelates,
barons,
Monks, knights, five hundred, that were
there and heard.
Nay, you yourself were there : you heard
yourself.
Fitzurse. I was not there.
Becket. I saw you there.
Fitzurse. I was not.
Becket. You were. I never forget
anything.
Fitzurse. He makes the King a
traitor, me a liar.
How long shall we forbear him?
John of Salisbury {draiving Becket
aside'). O my good lord,
Speak with them privately on this here-
after.
You see they have been revelling, and I
fear
Are braced and brazen'd up with
Christmas wines
For any murderous brawl.
Becket. And yet they prate
Of mine, my brawls, when those, that
name themselves
Of the King's part, have broken down
our barns,
Wasted our diocese, outraged our tenants.
Lifted our produce, driven our clerics
out-T-
Why they, your friends, those ruffians,
the De Brocs,
They stood on Dover beach to^ murder
me,
They slew my stags in mine own manor
here.
Mutilated, poor brute, my sumpter-mule,
Plunder'd the vessel full of Gascon wine,
The old King's present, carried off the
casks,
Kill'd half the crew, dungeon'd the other
half
In Pevensey Castle
De Morville. Why not rather then,
SCENE II.
BECKET.
725
If this be so, complain to your young
King,
Not punish of your own authority ?
Becket. Mine enemies barr'd all access
to the boy.
They knew he loved me.
Hugh, Hugh, how proudly you exalt
your head !
Nay, when they seek to overturn our
rights,
I ask no leave of king, or mortal man,
To set them straight again. Alone I do it.
Give to the King the things that are the
King's,
And those of God to God,
Fitzurse. Threats ! threats !
ye hear him.
What ! will he excommunicate all the
world ?
[ The Knights come round Becket.
De Tracy. He shall not.
De Brito. Well, as yet —
I should be grateful — ;
He hath not excommunicated me.
Becket. Because thou wast born ex-
communicate.
I never spied in thee one gleam of grace.
De Brito. Your Christian's Christian
charity !
Becket. By St. Denis
De Brito. Ay, by St. Denis, now will
he flame out.
And lose his head as old St. Denis did.
Becket. Ye think to scare me from
my loyalty
To God and 'to the Holy Father. No !
Tho' all the swords in England flash'd
above me
Ready to fall at Henry's word or yours —
Tho' all the loud-lung'd trumpets upon
earth
Blared from the heights of all the thrones
of her kings.
Blowing the world against me, I would
stand
Clothed with the full authority of Rome,
Mail'd in the perfect panoply of faith,
First of the foremost of their files, who
die
For God, to people heaven in the great
day
When God makes up his jewels. Once
I fled —
Never again, and you — I marvel at you —
Ye know what is between us. Ye have
sworn
Yourselves my men when I was Chan-
cellor —
My vassals — and yet threaten your
Archbishop
In his own house.
Knights. Nothing can be between us
That goes against our fealty to the King.
Fitzurse. And in his name we charge
you that ye keep
This traitor from escaping.
Becket. Rest you easy.
For I am easy to keep. I shall not fly.
Here, liere, here will you find me.
De Morville. Know you not
You have spoken to the peril of your
life?
Becket. As I shall speak again.
Fitzurse, De Tracy, and De Brito.
To arms !
[ They rush out, De Morville lingers.
Becket. De Morville,
I had thought so well of you; and even
now
You seem the least assassin of the four.
Oh, do not damn yourself for company !
Is it too late for me to save your soul?
I pray you for one moment stay and
speak.
De Morville. Becket, it is too late.
{^Exit.
Becket. Is it too late ?
Too late on earth may be too soon in
hell.
Knights {in the distance^ Close the
great gate — ho, there — upon the
town.
Beckefs Retainers. Shut the hall-
doors. \_A pause.
Becket. You hear them, brother John ;
Why do you stand so silent, brother
John?
John of Salisbury. For I was musing
on an ancient saw,
Suaviter in modo, for titer in re.
Is strength less strong when hand-in-
hand with grace?
Gratior in pulchro cor^ore virtus.
Thomas,
Why should you heat yourself for such as
these?
726
BECKET.
Becket. Methought I answer'd mod-
erately enough.
John of Salisbury. As one that blows
the coal to cool the fire.
My lord, I marvel why you never lean
On any man's advising but your own.
Becket. Is it so, Dan John? well,
what should I have done?
John of Salisbury. You should have
taken counsel with your friends
Before these bandits brake into your
presence.
They seek — you make — occasion for
your death.
Becket. My counsel is already taken,
John,
I am prepared to die.
Johti of Salisbury. We are sinners all,
The best of all not all-prepared to die.
Becket. God's will be done !
John of Salisbury. Ay, well.
God's will be done !
Grim {re-entering). My lord, the
knights are arming in the garden
Beneath the sycamore.
Becket. Good ! let them arm.
Grim. And one of the De Brocs is
with them, Robert,
The apostate monk that was with Ran-
dulf here.
He knows the twists and turnings of the
place.
Becket. No fear !
Grim. No fear, my lord.
\_Cr ashes on the hall-doors. The
Monksy?^^.
Becket (rising). Our dovecote flown !
I cannot. tell why monks should all be
cowards.
John of Salisbury. Take refuge in
your own cathedral, Thomas,
Becket. Do they not fight the Great
Fiend day by day?
Valour and holy life should go together.
Why should all monks be cowards?
John of Salisbury. Are they so?
I say, take refuge in your own cathedral.
Becket. Ay, but I told them I would
wait them here.
Grim. May they not say you dared
not show yourself
In your old place? and vespers are
beginning.
\^Bell rings for vespers till end of scene.
You should attend the office, give them
heart.
They fear you slain : they dread they
know not what.
Becket. Ay, monks, not men.
Gri77i. 1 am a monk, my lord.
Perhaps, my lord, you wrong us.
Some would stand by you to the death,
Becket. Your pardon.
John of Salisbury. He said, * Attend
the office,'
Becket. Attend the office?
Why then — The Cross ! — who bears my
Cross before me ?
Methought they would have brain'd me
with it, John. [Grim takes it.
Grim. I ! Would that I could bear
thy cross indeed !
Becket. The Mitre !
John of Salisbury. Will you wear it?
— there !
[Becket puts on the mitre.
Becket. The Pall !
I go to meet my King !
\_Puts on the pall.
Grim. To meet the King !
[ Crashes on the doors as they go out.
John of Salisbury. Why do you move
with such a stateliness?
Can you not hear them yonder like a
storm,
Battering the doors, and breaking thro*
the walls?
Becket. Why do the heathen rage?
My two good friends.
What matters murder'd here, or murder'd
there?
And yet my dream foretold my martyr-
dom
In mine own church. It is God's will.
Go on.
Nay, drag me not. We must not seem
to fly.
SCENE III.— North Transept of
Canterbury Cathedral.
On the right hand a flight of steps leading
to the Choir, another flight on the left,
leading to the North Aisle. Winter
afternoon slowly darkening. . Low
BECKET,
727
thunder now and then of an approach-
ing storm. Monks heard cha nting the
service. ROSAMUND kneeling.
Rosamund. O blessed saint, O glori-
ous Benedict^ —
These arm'd men in the city, these fierce
faces —
Thy holy follower fv nnded Canterbury —
Save that dear heaa which now is Can-
terbury,
Save him, he saved my life, he saved my
child,
Save him, his blood would darken
Henry's name;
Save him till all as saintly as thyself
He miss the searching flame of purgatory,
And pass at once perfect to Paradise.
{_Noise of steps and voices in the cloisters.
Hark ! Is it they? Coming! He is not
here —
Not yet, thank heaven. O save him !
[ Goes up steps leadijtg to choir.
Becket {^entering, forced along by John
of Salisbury and Grim). No, I
tell you !
I cannot bear a hand upon my person,
Why do you force me thus against my
will?
Grim. My lord, we force you from
your enemies.
Becket. As you would force a king
from being crown'd.
John of Salisbury. We must not force
the crown of martyrdom.
\_Service stops. Monks come down from
the stairs that lead to the choir.
Monks. Here is the great Archbishop !
He lives ! he lives !
Die with him, and be glorified together.
Becket. Together? . . . get you back!
go on with the office.
Monks. Come, then, with us to
vespers.
Becket. How can I come
When you so block the entry? Back, I
say!
Go on with the office. Shall not Heaven
be served
Tho' earth's last earthquake clash'd the
minster-bells,
And the great deeps were broken up
again,
And hiss'd against the sun?
\_Noise in the cloisters.
Monks. The murderers, hark !
Let us hide ! let us hide !
Becket. What do these people fear?
.Monks. Those arm'd men in the
cloister.
Becket. Be not such cravens !
I will go out and meet them.
Grim and others. Shut the doors !
We will not have him slain before our
face.
[ They close the doors of. the transept.
Knocking.
Fly, fly, my lord, before they burst the
doors ! \_Knocking.
Becket. Why, these are our own
monks who follow'd us !
And will you bolt them out, and have
them slain?
Undo the doors: the church is not a
castle :
Knock, and it shall be open'd. Are you
deaf?
What, have I lost authority among you?
Stand by, make way !
\_0pe7ts the doors. Enter Monks
from cloister.
Come in, my friends, come in !
Nay, faster, faster !
Monks. Oh, my lord Archbishop,
A score of knights all arm'd with swords
and axes —
To the choir, to the choir !
[Monks divide, part flying by the
stairs on the right, part by those on
the left. The rush of these last
bears Becket along with them some
way up the steps, where he is left
standing alone.
Becket. Shall I too pass to the choir,
And die upon the Patriarchal throne
Of all my predecessors?
John of Salisbury. No, to the crypt!
Twenty steps down. Stumble not in the
darkness.
Lest they should seize thee.
Grim. To the crypt? no — no,
To the .chapel of St. Blaise beneath the
roof!
John of Salisbury {pointing upward
and dowmvard). That way, or
this ! Save thyself either way.
^28
BECKET.
ACT V.
Becket. Oh, no, not either way, nor
any way
Save by that way which leads thro' night
to light.
Not twenty steps, but one.
And fear not I should stumble in the
darkness,
Not tho' it be their hour, the power of
darkness,
But my hour too, the power of light in
darkness !
I am not. in the darkness but the light.
Seen by the Church in Heaven, the
Church on earth —
v^ The power of life in death to make her
free!
\_Enter the four Knights. John of
Salisbury flies to the altar of St.
Benedict.
Fitzurse. Here, here, King's men !
[ Catches hold of the lastflyiitg Monk.
Where is the traitor Becket?
Monk. I am not he ! I am not he,
my lord.
I am not he indeed !
Fitzurse. Hence to the fiend !
{^Pushes him away.
Where is this treble traitor to the King?
De Tracy. Where is the Archbishop,
Thomas Becket?
Becket. Here.
N> traitor to the King, but Priest of
God,
Primate of England.
[^Descending into the transept.
I am he ye seek.
What would ye have of me?
Fitzurse. Your life.
De Tracy. Your life.
De Morville. Save that you will ab-
solve the bishops.
Becket. Never, —
Except they make submission to the
Church.
You had my answer to that cry before.
De Morville. Why, then .you are a
dead man; flee !
Becket. I will not.
1 am readier to be slain, than thou to slay.
Hugh, I know well thou hast but half a
heart
To bathe this sacred pavement with my
blood.
God pardon thee and these, but God's
full curse
Shatter you all to pieces if ye harm
One of my flock !
Fitzurse. Was not the great gate
shut?
They are thronging in to vespers — halt
the town.
We shall be overwhelm'd. Seize him
and carry him !
Come with us — nay — thou art our pris-
oner— -come!
De Morville. Ay, make him prisoner,
do not harm the man.
[Fitzurse lays hold of the Arch-
bishop's/a//.
Becket. Touch me not !
De Brito. How the good
priest gods himself!
He is not yet ascended to the Father.
Fitzurse. I will not only touch, but
drag thee hence.
Becket. Thou art my man, thou art
my vassal. Away !
\_Fli7igs him off till he reels, almost
to falling.
De Tracy (Jays hold of the pall).
Come; as he said, thou art our
prisoner.
Becket. Down !
[ Throws him headlong.
Fitzurse (^advances with drawn sword).
I told thee that I should re-
member thee !
Becket. Profligate pander !
Fitzurse. Do you hear that?
strike, strike.
[^Strikes off the Archbishop's mitre.,
and zvounds him in the forehead.
Becket {covers his eyes with his hand).
I do commend my cause to God, the
Virgin,
St. Denis of France and St. Alphege of
England,
And all the tutelar Saints of Canter-
bury.
[Grim wraps his arms about the
Archbishop.
Spare this defence, dear brother.
[Tracy has arisen, and approaches,
hesitatijigly., with his sword
raised.
Fitzurse. Strike him, Tracy I
SCENE III.
BECKET.
729
Rosa77iund {I'ushing doivn steps from
the choir). No, No, No, No !
Fitzurse. This wanton here, De
Morville,
Hold her away.
De Morville. I hold her.
Rosamtaid {held back by De Morville,
and stretching out her arms').
Mercy, mercy.
As you would hope for mercy.
Fitzurse. Strike, I say.
Grim. O God, O noble knights, O
sacrilege !
Strike our Archbishop in his own cathe-
dral !
The Pope, the King, will curse you —
the whole world
Abhor you; ye will die the death of dogs !
Nay, nay, good Tracy. \_Lifts his arm.
Fitzurse. Answer not, but strike.
De Tracy. There is my answer then.
\_S2vord falls on Grim's arm, and
glances from it^ wounding
Becket.
G?-im. Mine arm is sever'd.
I can no more — fight out the good fight
— die
Conqueror.
\_Staggers into the chapel of St. Benedict.
Becket {^falling on his knees). At the
right hand of Power —
Power and great glory — for thy Church,
O Lord —
Into Thy hands, O Lord — into Thy
hands! \^Sinks prone.
De Brito. This last to rid thee of a
world of brawls ! \^Kills him.
The traitor's dead, and will arise no more.
Fitzurse. Nay, have we still'd him?
What ! the great Archbishop !
Does he breathe? No?
De Tracy. No, Reginald, he is dead.
{^Storm btirsts.^
De Morville. Will the earth gape and
swallow us?
De Brito. The deed's done —
Away !
[De Brito, De Tracy, Fitzurse, rush
out, crying ' Kin^s 7nen !^ De
Morville follows slozuly. Flashes
of lightning thro* the Cathedral.
Rosamund seen kneeling by tht
body of Becket.
^ A tremendous thunderstorm actually
broke over the Cathedral as the murderers
were leaving it.
THE CUP.
A TRAGEDY.
DRAMATIS PERSONS.
GALATIANS.
Synorix, an ex-Tetrarch.
SiNNATUS, a Tetrarch.
Attendant.
Boy.
Antonius, a Roman General,
PUBLIUS.
ROMANS.
ACT I.
SCENE I. — Distant View of a City
OF Galatia.
As the curtain rises. Priestesses are heard
singing in the Temple. Boy discovered
on a pathway among Rocks, picking
grapes. A party of Roman Soldiers,
guarding a prisoner in chains, come
down the pathway and exeunt.
Enter Synorix {looking round^. Sing-
ing ceases.
Synorix. Pine, beech and plane, oak,
walnut, apricot.
Vine, cypress, poplar, myrtle, bowering-in
The city where she dwells. She past me
here
Three years ago when I was flying from
My tetrarchy to Rome. I almost touch'd
her —
A maiden slowly moving on to music
Among her maidens to this Temple —
O Gods !
She is my fate — else wherefore has my
. fate
Brought me again to her own city? —
married
Since — married Sinnatus, the Tetrarch
here —
But if he be conspirator, Rome will
chain,
Or slay him. I may trust to gain her
then
When I shall have my tetrarchy restored
Maid.
Phcebe.
Camma, wzye of Sinnatus, afterwards
Priestess in the Temple of Artemis-
Nobleiuan.
Messenger.
By Rome, our mistress, grateful that I
show'd her
The weakness and the dissonance of our
clans,
And how to crush them easily. Wretched
race !
And once I wish'd to scourge them to the
bones.
But in this narrow breathing-time of life-
Is vengeance for its own sake worth the
while,
If once our ends are gain'd? and now
this cup —
I never felt such passion for a woman.
{^Brings out a cup and scroll from
under his cloak.
What have I written to her?
S^Reading the scroll.
'To the admired Camma, wife of
Sinnatus, the Tetrarch, one who years
ago, himself an adorer of our great god-
dess, Artemis, beheld you afar off worship-
ping in her Temple, and loved you for it,
sends you this cup rescued from the burn-
ing of one of her shrines in a city thro'
which he past with the Roman army : it
is the cup we use in our marriages.
Receive it from one who cannot at pres-
ent write himself other than
'A Galatian serving by force in
the Roman Legion.'
[ Turns and looks up to Boy.
Boy, dost thou know the house of
Sinnatus?
Boy. These grapes are for the house
of Sinnatus —
ACT I, SCENE I.
THE CUP.
731
Close to the Temple.
Synorix. Yonder ?
Boy. Yes.
Synorix {aside) . •- That I
With all my range of women should yet
shun
To meet her face to face at once ! My
boy,
\_Boy comes down rocks to him.
Take thou this letter and this cup to
Camma,
The wife of Sinnatus.
Boy. Going or gone to-day
To hunt with Sinnatus.
Synorix. That matters not.
Take thou this cup and leave it at her
doors.
[ Gives the cup and scroll to the Boy.
Boy. I will, my lord.
[ Takes his basket of grapes and exit.
Enter Antonius.
Antonius {ineeting the Boy as he goes
out) . Why, whither runs the boy ?
. Is that the cup you rescued from the fire?
Synorix. I send it to the wife of
Sinnatus,
One half besotted in religious rites.
You come here with your soldiers to
enforce
The long-withholden tribute : you suspect
This Sinnatus of playing patriotism,
Which in your sense is treason. You
have yet
No proof against him : now this pious cup
Is passport to their house, and open
arms
To him who gave it; and once there I
warrant
I worm thro' all their windings.
Antonius. If you prosper,
Our Senate, wearied of their tetrarchies,
Their quarrels with themselves, their
spites at Rome,
Is like enough to cancel them, and throne
One king above them all, who shall be
true
To the Roman : and from what I heard
in Rome,
This tributary crown may fall to you^
Synorix. The king, the crown ! their
talk in Rome ? is it so ?
[Antonius nods.
Well — I shall serve Galatia taking it.
And save her from herself, and be to
Rome
More faithful than a Roman.
[ Turns and sees Camma coming.
Stand aside.
Stand aside; here she comes!
[ Watching Camma as she enters
with her Maid.
Camma {to Maid) . Where is he, girl ?
Maid. You know the waterfall
That in the summer keeps the mountain
side.
But after rain o'erleaps a jutting rock
And shoots three hundred feet.
Camma. The stag is there?
Maid. Seen in the thicket at the
bottom there
But yester-even.
Camma. Good then, we will climb
The mountain opposite and watch the
chase.
[ 1 hey descend the rocks and exeunt.
Synorix {watching her) . {Aside.) The
bust of Juno and the brows and
eyes
Of Venus; face and form unmatchable !
Antonius. Why do you look at her
so lingeringly?
Synorix. To see if years have changed
her.
Antonius {sarcastically). Love her, do
you?
Synorix. I envied Sinnatus when he
married her.
Antonius. She knows it? Ha!
Synorix. She — no, nor ev'n my face.
Antonius. Nor Sinnatus either?
Synorix. No, nor Sinnatus.
Antonius. Hot-blooded ! I have
heard them say in Rome,
That your own people cast you from their
bounds,
For some unprincely violence to a woman.
As Rome did Tarquin.
Synorix. Well, if this were so,
I here return like Tarquin — for a crown.
Antonius. And may be foil'd like
Tarquin, if you follow
Not the dry light of Rome's straight-going
policy.
But the fool-fire of love or lust, which
well
73^
THE CUP.
ACT 1
May make you lose yourself, may even
drown you
In the good regard of Rome.
Synorix. Tut — fear me not ;
I ever had my victories among women.
I am most true to Rome.
Antonius {aside). I hate the man!
What filthy tools our Senate works with !
Still
I must obey them. {Aloud.) Fare you
well. \^Going.
Synorix. Farewell !
Antonius {stopping). A moment ! If
you track this Sinnatus
In any treason, I give you here an
order {^Produces a paper.
To seize upon him. Let me sign it.
{Signs it.) There
* Antonius leader of the Roman Legion.'
{^Hands the paper to Synorix. Goes
up pathway and exit.
Synorix. Woman again ! — but I am
wiser now.
No rushing on the game — the net, — the
net.
\_Shouts of * Sinnatus ! Sinnatus ! '
Then horn.
Looking off stage."] He comes, a rough,
bluff, simple-looking fellow.
If we may judge the kernel by the
husk,
Not one to keep a woman's fealty when
Assailed by Craft and Love. I'll join
with him:
I may reap something from him — come
upon her
Again, perhaps, to-day — her. Who are
with him?
I see no face that knows me. Shall I
risk it?
I am a Roman now, they dare not touch
me.
I will.
Enter Sinnatus, Huntsmen and hounds.
Fair Sir, a happy day to you !
You reck but little of the Roman here.
While you can take your pastime in the
woods.
Sinnatus. Ay, ay, why not? What
would you with me, man?
Synorix. I am a life-long lover of the
chase,
And tho' a stranger fain would be allow'd
To join the hunt.
Sinnatus. Your name?
Synorix. Strato, my name.
Sinnatus. No Roman name?
Synorix. A Greek, my lord; you
know
That we Galatians are both Greek and
Gaul.
[^Shoi{ts and horns in the distance.
Sinnatus. Hillo, the stag ! ( 7^o
Synorix.) What, you are all un-
furnish'd ?
Give him a bow and arrows — follow^ —
follow.
\_Exit,-foll(m}ed by Huntsmen.
Synorix. Slowly but surely — till I
see my way.
It is the one step in the dark beyond
Our expectation, that amazes us.
{^Distant shouts and horns.
Hillo! Hillo!
\^Exit Synorix. Shouts and horns.
SCENE II. — A Room in the
Tetrarch's House.
Frescoed figures on the walls. Evening.
Moonlight outside. A couch with
cushions on it. A small table with a
fiagon of zvine, cups, plate of grapes,
etc., also the cup of Scene I. A chair
with drapery on it.
Camma enters, and opens curtains of
window.
Camma. No Sinnatus yet — and there
the rising moon.
[ Takes up a cithern and sits on couch.
Plays and sings.
Moon on the field and the foam,
Moon on the waste and the wold,
Moon bring him home, bring him home
Safe from the dark and the cold,
Home, sweet moon, bring him home.
Home with the flock to the fold —
Safe from the wolf
{Listening.) Is he coming? I thought
I heard
A footstep. No, not yet. They say that
Rome
Sprang from a wolf. I fear my dear
lord mixt
SCENE II.
THE CUJ^.
733
With some conspiracy against the wolf.
This mountain shepherd never dream'd
of Rome.
(^Si/i^s.) Safe from the wolf to the
fold
And that great break of precipice that
runs
Thro' all the wood, where twenty years
ago
Huntsman, and hound, and deer Were all
neck-broken !
Nay, here he comes.
£yi^er Sinnatus followed by Synorix.
Sinnattis {angrily). I tell thee, my
good fellow,
My arrow struck the stag.
Synorix. But was it so ?
Nay, you were further off: besides the
wind
Went with my arrow.
Sinnatus. I am sure / struck him.
Synorix. x\nd I am just as sure, my
lord, /struck him.
{.4side.) And I may strike your game
when you are gone,
Camma. Come, come, we will not
quarrel about the stag.
] have had a weary day in watching you.
Vouis must have been a wearier. Sit
and eat,
And take a hunter's vengeance on the
meats.
Sinnatus. No, no — we have eaten
— we are heated. Wine!
Cdmma. Who is our guest?
Sinnatus. Strato he calls himself.
[Camma offers ivine to Synorix, zv/iile
Sinnatus helps himself.
Sinnatus. I pledge you, Strato.
\^Dri7tks.
Synorix. And I you, my lord.
{^Drinks.
Sinnatus (seeing the cup sent to Cam-
ma). What's here?
Camma. A strange gift sent to me
to-day.
A sacred cup saved from a blazing
shrine
Of our great Goddess, in some city where
Antonius past. I had believed that
Rome
H^de war upon the peoples not the Gods.
Synorix. Most like the city rose
against Antonius,
Whereon he fired it, and the sacred
shrine
By chance was burnt along with it.
Sinnatus. Had you then
No message with the cup?
Cajnma. Why, yes, see here.
[ Gives him the scroll.
Sinnattis {reads). 'To the admired
Camma, — beheld you afar off — loved
you — sends you this cup — the cup we
use in our marriages — cannot at present
write himself other than
*A Galatian serving by force in
THE Roman Legion.'
Serving by force ! Were there no boughs
to hang on.
Rivers to drown in? Serve by force?
No force
Could make me serve by force.
Sy7iorix. How. then, my lord?
The Roman is encampt without your
city —
The force of Rome a thousand-fold our
own.
Must all Galatia hang or drown herself?
And you a Prince and Tetrarch in this
province
Sinnatus. Province !
Synorix. Well, well, they
call it so in Rome.
Sinnatus {angrily). Province!
Synorix. A noble anger! but An-
tonius
To-morrow will demand your tribute —
you.
Can you make war? Have you alliances?
Bithynia, Pontus, Paphlagonia?
We have had our leagues of old with
Eastern kings.
There is my hand — if such a league
there be.
What will you do?
Sinnatus. Not set myself abroach
And run my mind out to a random guest
Who join'd me in the hunt. You saw
my hounds
True to the scent; and we have two-
legg'd dogs
Among us who can smell a true occasion,
And when to bark and how.
Synorix. My good Lord Sinnatus
734
THE CUP.
ACT I.
I once was at the hunting of a lion.
Roused by the clamour of the chase he
woke,
Came to the front of the wood — his
monarch mane
Bristled about his quick ears — he stood
there
Staring upon the hunter. A score of
dogs
Gnaw'd at his ankles : at the last he felt
The trouble of his feet, put forth one
paw,
Slew four, and knew it not, . and so
remain'd
Staring upon the hunter : and this Rome
Will crush you if you wrestle with her;
then
Save for some slight report in her own
Senate
Scarce know what she has done.
(^szde.) Would I could move him.
Provoke him anyway! (.-i/otid.) The
Lady Cam ma,
Wise I am sure as she is beautiful,
Will close with me that to submit at
once
Is better than a wholly-hopeless war,
Our gallant citizens murder'd all in vain.
Son, husband, brother gash'd to death in
vain.
And the small state more cruelly trampled
on
Than had she never moved.
Camma. Sir, I had once
A boy who died a babe; but were he
living
And grown to man and Sinnatus will'd
it, I
Would set him in the front rank of the
fight
With scarce a pang. {Rises.) Sir, if a
state submit
At once, she may be blotted out at once
And swallow'd in the conqueror's chron-
icle.
Whereas in wars of freedom and defence
The glory and grief of battle won or lost
Solders a race together — yea — tho' they
fail.
The names of those who fought and fell
are like
A bank'd-up fire that flashes out again
From century to century, and at last
May lead them on to victory — I hope
so —
Like phantoms of the Gods.
Sinnatus. Well spoken, wife.
Synorix (Jwiviug). Madam, so well I
yield.
Sinnatus. I should not wonder
If Synorix, who has dwelt three years in
Rome
And wrought his worst against his native
land,
Returns with this Antonius.
Synorix. What is Synorix?
Sinnatus. Galatian, and not know?
This Synorix
Was Tetrarch here, and tyrant also — did
Dishonour to our wives.
Synorix. Perhaps you judge him
With feeble charity: being as you tell
me
Tetrarch, there might be willing wives
enough
To feel dishonour, honour.
Camma. Do not say so.
I know of no such wives in all Galatia.
There may be courtesans for aught I
know
Whose life is one dishonour.
Enter Attendant.
Attendant {aside') . My lord, the men !
Sinnatus {aside). Our anti-Roman
faction ?
Attendant {aside). Ay, my lord.
Synorix {overhearing). {Aside.) I
have enough — their anti- Roman
faction.
Sinnatus {aloud). Some friends of
mine would speak with me with-
out.
You, Strato, make good cheer till I re-
turn. [^Exit.
Synorix. I have much to say, no
time to say it in.
First, lady, know myself am that Galatian
Who sent the cup.
Camma. I thank you from my heart.
Synorix. Then that I serve with
Rome to serve Galatia.
That is my secret: keep it, or you sell
me
To torment and to death. [ Coming closer.
For your ear only —
SCENE II.
THE CUP.
735
I love you — for your love to the great
Goddess.
The Romans sent me here a spy upon
you,
To draw you and your husband to your
doom.
I'd sooner die than do it.
[ Takes out paper given him by Antonius.
This paper sign'd
Antonius — will you take it, read it?
there !
Camma. {Reads.') * You are to seize
on Sinnatus, — if '
Synorix. {Snatches paper.) No more.
What follows is for no wife's eyes. O
Camma,
Rome has a glimpse of this conspiracy;
Rome never yet hath spar'd conspirator.
Horrible ! flaying, scourging, crucify-
ing ^
Camma. I am tender enough. Why
do you practise on me ?
Syno?-ix. Why should I practise on
you? How you wrong me !
I am sure of being every way malign'd.
And if you should betray me to your
husband
Cajuma. Will you betray him by this
order?
Synorix. See,
I tear it all to pieces, never dream'd
Of acting on it. [ Tears the paper.
Camma. I owe you thanks for ever.
Synorix. Hath Sinnatus never told
you of this plot? •
Camma. What plot?
Synorix. A child's sand-
castle on the beach
For the next wave — all seen, — all calcu-
lated.
All known by Rome. No chance for
Sinnatus.
Camma. Why said you not as much
to my brave Sinnatus?
Synorix. Brave — ay — too brave, too
over-confident.
Too like to ruin himself, and you, and
me !
Who else, with this black thunderbolt of
Rome
Above him, would have chased the stag
to-day
In the full face of all the Roman camp?
A miracle that they let him home again.
Not caught, maim'd, blinded him.
[Camma shudders.
{Aside.) I have made her tremble.
{Aloud.) I know they mean to torture
him to death,
I dare not tell him how I came to know
it;
I durst not trust him with — my serving
Rome
To serve Galatia : you heard him on the
letter.
Not say as much? I all but said as
much.
I am sure I told him that his plot was
folly.
I say it to you — you are wiser — Rome
knows all.
But you know not the savagery of Rome.
Camma. O — have you power with
Rome ? use it for him !
Synorix. Alas ! I have no such
power with Rome. All that
Lies with Antonius.
\_As if struck by a sudden thought.
Comes over to her.
He will pass to-morrow
In the gray dawn before the Temple
doors.
You have beauty, — O great beauty, —
and Antonius,
So gracious toward women, never yet
Flung back a woman's prayer. Plead to
him,
I am sure you will prevail.
Camma. Still — I should tell
My husband.
Synorix. Will he let you plead for
him
To a Roman?
Camma. I fear not.
Synorix. Then do not tell him.
Or tell him, if you will, when you return.
When you have charm'd our general into
mercy,
And all is safe again. O dearest lady,
\_Mur?nurs of * Synorix ! Synorix ! '
heard outside.
Think, — torture, — death, — and come.
Camma. I will, I will.
And I will not betray you.
Synorix {aside). {As Sinnatus enters.)
Stand apart
736
THE CUP.
ACT 1.
Enter Sinnatus and Attendant.
Sinnatus. Thou art that Synorix !
One whom thou hast wrong'd
Without there, knew thee with Antonius.
They howl for thee, to rend thee head
-from limb.
Synorix. I am much malign'd. I
thought to serve Galatia.
Sinnatus. Serve thyself first, villain !
They shall not harm
My guest within my house. There !
{points to door) there ! this door
Opens upon the forest ! Out, begone !
Henceforth I am thy mortal enemy.
Synorix. However I thank thee
{draws his szvord)', thou hast
saved my life. \_Exit.
Sinnatus. { To Attendant.) Return
and tell them Synorix is not here.
\_Exit Attendant.
What did that villain Synorix say to you?
Caimna. Is he — that — Synorix ?
Sinnatus. Wherefore should you
doubt it?
One of the men there knew him.
Gamma. Only one,
And he perhaps mistaken in the face.
Sinnatus. Come, come, could he
deny it? What did he say?
Camnia. What should he say?
Sinnatus. What should he say, my
wife !
He should say this, that being Tetrarch
once
His ow^n true people cast him from their
doors
Like a base coin.
Camma. Not kindly to them?
Sinnatus. Kindly?
O the most kindly Prince in all the
world !
Would clap his honest citizens on the
back,
Bandy their own rude jests with them,
be curious
About the welfare of their babes, their
wives,
O ay — their wives — their waves. What
should he say?
He should say nothing to my wife if I
Were by to throttle him ! He steep'd
himself
In all the lust of Rome. How should
you guess
What maner of beast it is?
Ca?nma. Yet he seem'd kindly,
And said he loathed the cruelties that
Rome
Wrought on her vassals.
Sinnatus. Did he, hojiest man?
Camma. And you, that seldom brook
the stranger here,
Have let him hunt the stag with you to-
day.
Sinnatus. I warrant you now, he said
he struck the stag.
Camnia. Why no, he never touch'd
upon the stag.
Sinnatus. Why so I said, my arrow.
Well, to sleep.
[ Goes to close door.
Camma. Nay, close not yet the door
upon a night
That looks half day.
Simiatus. True; and my friends may
spy him
And slay him as he runs.
Camma. He is gone already.
Oh look, — yon grove upon the moun-
tain, — white
In the sweet moon as with a lovelier
snow!
But what a blotch of blackness under-
neath !
Sinnatus, you remember — yea, you must,
That there three years ago — the vast
vine-bowers
Ran to the summit of the trees, and
dropt
Their streamers earthward, which a
breeze of May
Took ever and anon, and open'd out
The purple zone of hill and heaven;
there
You told your love; and like the sway-
ing vines —
Yea, — with our eyes, — our hearts, our
prophet hopes
Let in the happy distance, and that all
But cloudless heaven which we have
found together
In our three married years ! You kiss' d
me there
For the first time. Sinnatus, kiss me
now.
SCENE III.
THE CUP.
737
Sinnatus. First kiss. {Kisses her.')
There then. You talk almost as
if it
Might be the last.
Camma. Will you not eat a little?
, Sinnatus. No, no, we found a goat-
herd's hut and shared
His fruits and milk. Liar! You will
believe
Now that he never struck the stag — a
brave one
Which you shall see to-morrow.
Camma. I rise to-morrow
In the gray dawn, and take this holy cup
To lodge it in the shrine of Artemis.
Sinnatus, Good !
Caninia. If I be not back
in half an hour,
Come after me.
Sinnatus. What! is there danger?
Camma. Nay,
None that I know : 'tis but a step from
here
To the Temple.
Sinnatus. All my brain is full of
sleep.
Wake me before you go, I'll after you —
After 7?ie now ! [ Closes door and exit.
Camma {drawing curtains^. Your
shadow. Synorix —
His face was not malignant, and he said
That men malign'd him. Shall I go?
Shall I go?
Death, torture —
* He never yet flung back a woman's
prayer ' —
I go, but I will have my dagger with
me. \_Exit.
SCENE HI.— Same as Scene I.
Dawn.
Music and Singing in the Temple.
Enter Synorix watchfully, after him
PuBLius and Soldiers.
Synorix. Publius !
Fublius. Here !
Synorix. Do you re-
member what. I told you?
Publius. When you cry * Rome,
Rome,' to seize
3B
On whomsoever may be talking with
you,
Or man, or woman, as traitors unto
Rome.
Synorix. Right. Back again. How
many of you are there?
Publius. Some half a score.
{^Exeunt Soldiers and Publius.
Synorix. I have my guard
about me.
I need not fear the crowd that hunted
me
Across the woods, last night. I hardly
gain'd
The camp at midnight. Will she come
to me
Now that she knows me Synorix? Not
if Sinnatus
Has told her all the truth about me.
Well,
I cannot help the mould that I was cast
in.
I fling all that upon my fate, my star.
I know that I am genial, I would be
Happy, and make all others happy so
They did not thwart me. Nay, she will
net come.
Yet if she be a true and loving wife
She may, perchance, to save this husband.
Ay!
See, see, my white bird stepping toward
the snare.
Why now I count it all but miracle.
That this brave heart of mine should
shake me so.
As helplessly as some unbearded boy's
When first he meets his maiden in a
bower.
\^Enter Camma {with cup).
The lark first takes the sunlight on his
wing,
But you, twin sister of the morning
star,
Forelead the sun.
Camma. Where is Antonius?
Synorix. Not here as yet. You are
too early for him.
\_She crosses toivards Temple.
Synorix. Nay, whither go you now?
Camma. To lodge this cup
Within the holy shrine of Artemis,
And so return.
Synorix. To find Antonius here.
738
THE CUP.
ACT X
\^She goes into the Temple, he looks
after her.
The loveliest life that ever drew the
light
From heaven to brood upon her, and
enrich
Earth with her shadow ! I trust she will
return.
These Romans dare not violate the
Temple.
No, I must lure my game into the camp.
A woman I could live and die for.
What!
Die for a woman, what new faith is this?
I am not mad, not sick, not old enough
To dote on one alone. Yes, mad for
her,
Camma the stately, Camma the great-
hearted.
So mad, I fear some strange and evil
chance
Coming upon me, for by the Gods I
seem
Strange to myself.
Re-enter Camma.
Camma. Where is Antonius?
Synorix. Where? As I said before,
you are still too early.
Camma. Too early to be here alone
with thee;
For whether men malign thy name, or
no,
It bears an evil savour among women.
W^here is Antonius ? {Loud.)
Synorix. Madam, as you know
The camp is half a league without the
city;
If you will walk with me we needs must
meet
Antonius coming, or at least shall find
him
There in the camp.
Camma. No, not one step with thee.
Where is Antonius? {Louder.)
Synorix {advancing towards her).
Then for your own sake,
Lady, I say it with all gentleness.
And for the sake of Sinnatus your
husband,
I must compel you.
Camma {drawing her dagger). Stay!
— too near is death.
Synorix {disarming her). Is it not
easy to disarm a woman?
Enter SiNNATUS {seizes him frotn behind
by the throat).
Synorix {throttled and scarce audible).
Rome ! Rome !
Sinnatus. Adulterous dog !
Synorix {stabbing him with Gamma's
dagger) . What ! will you have it ?
[Gamma utters a cry and
runs to Sinnatus.
Sinnatus {falls backward). I have
it in my heart — to the Temple —
fly-
For ??iy sake — or they seize on thee.
Remember !
Away — farewell ! [^Dies.
Camma {runs up the steps into the
Temple, looking back) . Farewell !
Synorix {seeing her escape). The
women of the Temple drag her in.
Publius ! Publius ! No,
Antonius would not suffer me to break
Into the sanctuary. She hath escaped.
{^Looking down at Sinnatus.
' Adulterous dog ! ' that red-faced rage at
me !
Then with one quick short stab — eternal
peace.
So end all passions. Then what use in
passions?
To warm the cold bounds of our dying life
And, lest we freeze in mortal apathy.
Employ us, heat us, quicken us, help us,
keep us
From seeing all too near, that urn, those
ashes
Which all must be. Well used, they
serve us well.
I heard a saying in Egypt, that ambition
Is like the sea wave, which the more you
drink,
The more you thirst — yea — drink too
much, as men
Have done on rafts of wreck — it drives
you mad.
I will be no such wreck, am no such
gamester
As, having won the stake, would dare
the chance
Of double, or losing all. The Roman
Senate.
THE CUP.
739
For I have always play'd into their
hands,
Means me the crown. And Camma for
my bride —
The people love her — if I win her love,
They too will cleave to me, as one with
her.
There then I rest, Rome's tributary king.
[^Looking down on Sinnatus.
Why did I strike him? — having proof
enough
Against the man, I surely should have
left
That stroke to Rome. He saved my life
too. Did he?
It seem'd so. 1 have play'd the sudden
fool.
And that sets her against me — for the
moment.
Camma — well, well, I never found the
woman
I could not force or wheedle to my
will.
She will be glad at last to wear my
crown.
And I will make Galatia prosperous too,
And we will chirp among our vines, and
smile
At bygone things till that {pointing to
Sinnatus) eternal peace.
Rome ! Rome !
\_Enter Publius and Soldiers.
Twice I cried * Rome.' Why came ye not
before ?
Pttblius. Why come we now ? Whom
shall we seize upon?
Synorix {pointing to the body of Sin-
natus). The body of that dead
traitor Sinnatus.
Bear him away.
Music and Singing in Temple.
ACT II.
SCENE. — Interior of the Temple
OF Artemis.
Small gold gates on platform in front of
the veil before the colossal statue of the
Goddess, and in the centre of the Tem-
ple a tripod altar, on which is a lighted
lamp. Lamps {lighted) suspended be-
tween each pillar. Tripods^ vases,
garlands of flowers, etc., about stage.
Altar at back close to Goddess, with
two cups. Solemn mtuic. Priestesses
decorating the Temple.
( The Chorus 0/ Priestesses sing as
they enter ^
Artemis, Artemis, hear us, O Mother,
hear us, and bless us I
Artemis, thou that art life to the wind, to
the wave, to the glebe, to the fire !
Hear thy people who praise thee ! O
help us from all that oppress us !
Hear thy priestesses hymn thy glory !
O yield them all their desire !
Priestess. Phoebe, that man from Syn-
orix, who has been
So oft to see the Priestess, waits once more
Before the Temple.
Phoebe. We will let her know.
\_Signs to one of the Priestesses, who
goes out.
Since Camma fled from Synorix to our
Temple,
And for her beauty, stateliness, and power
Was chosen Priestess here, have you not
mark'd
Her eyes were ever on the marble floor?
To-day they are fixt and bright — they
look straight out.
Hath she made up her mind to marry
him?
Priestess. To marry him who stabb'd
her Sinnatus !
You will not easily make me credit that.
Phcebe. Ask her.
Enter Camma as Priestess {in front of
the curtains) .
Priestess. You will not marry Synorix ?
Camma. My girl, I am the bride of
Death, and only
Marry the dead.
Priestess. Not Synorix then?
Camma. My girl.
At times this oracle of great Artemis
Has no more power than other oracles
To speak directly.
Ph(Ebe. Will you speak to him,
The messenger from Synorix who waits
Before the Temple?
Camma. Why not? Let him enter.
[ Comes forward on to step by tripod.
740
THE CUP.
ACT II
Enter a MESSENGER.
Messenger {kneels). Greeting and
health from Synorix ! More than
once
You have refused his hand. When last
I saw you.
You all but yielded. He entreats you
now
For your last answer. When he struck
at Sinnatus —
As I have many a time declared to you —
He knew not at the moment who had
fasten'd
About his throat — he begs you to for-
get it
As scarce his act: — a random stroke:
all else
Was love for you: he prays you to be-
lieve him.
Cajn77ia. I pray him to believe — that
I believe him.
Messenger. Why that is well. You
mean to marry him?
Camma. I mean to marry him — if
that be well.
Messenger. This very day the Romans
crown him king
For all his faithful services to Rome.
He wills you then this day to marry him,
And so be throned together in the sight
Of all the people, that the world may
know
You twain are reconciled, and no more
feuds
Disturb our peaceful vassalage to Rome.
Camma. To-day? Too sudden. I
will brood upon it.
When do they crown him?
Messenger. Even now.
Camma. And where?
Messenger. Here by your temple.
Camma. Come once more to me
Before the crowning, — I will answer you.
^Exit Messenger.
Phoebe. Great Artemis! O Camma,
can it be well,
Or good, or wise, that you should clasp
a hand
Red with the sacred blood of Sinnatus?
Camma. Good ! mine own dagger
driven by Synorix found
All good in the true heart of Sinnatus,
And quench'd it there for ever. Wise !
Life yields to death and wisdom bows to
Fate,
Is wisest, doing so. Did not this man
Speak well? We cannot fight imperial
Rome,
But he and I are both Galatian-born,
And tributary sovereigns, he and I
Might teach this Rome — from know-
ledge of our people —
Where to lay on her tribute — heavily
here
And lightly there. Might I not live for
that.
And drown all poor self-passion in the
sense
Of public good?
PhcBbe. I am sure you will not
marry him.
Camma. Are you so sure? I pray
you wait and see.
\_Shouts (yfrom the distance),
' Synorix ! Synorix ! '
Camma. Synorix, Synorix ! So they
cried Sinnatus
Not so long since — they sicken me. The
One
Who shifts his policy suffers something,
must
Accuse himself, excuse himself; the
Many
Will feel no shame to give themselves the
lie.
Phoebe. Most like it was the Roman
soldiers shouted.
Camma. Their shield-borne patriot
of the morning star
Hang'd at mid-day, their traitor of the
dawn
The clamour'd darling of their afternoon !
And that same head they would have
play'd at ball with
And kick'd it featureless — they now
would crown.
[^Flourish of trumpets.
Enter a Galatian Nobleman with crozun
on a cushion.
Noble {kneels). Greeting and health
from Synorix. He sends you
This diadem of the first Galatian Queen,
That you may feed your fancy on the
glory of it,
ACT II.
THE CUP.
74X
And join your life this day with his, and
wear it
Beside him on his throne. He waits
your answer.
Camnia. Tell him there is one shadow
among the shadows,
One ghost of all the ghosts — as yet so
new.
So strange among them — such an alien
there,
So much of husband in it still — that if
The shout of Synorix and Camma sitting
Upon one throne, should reach it, it
would rise
He! . . . He, with that red star between
the ribs.
And my knife there — and blast the king
and me.
And blanch the crowd with horror. I
dare not, sir !
Throne him — and then the marriage —
ay and tell him
That I accept the diadem of Galatia —
\^All are amazed.
Yea, that ye saw me crown myself
withal. \^Puts on the crmmt.
I wait him his crown'd queen.
Noble. So will I tell him. {^Exit.
Music. Two Priestesses go up the steps
before the shrine, draw the curtains on
either side {discovering the Goddess),
then open the gates and remain on
steps, one on either side, and kneel. A
Priestess goes off and returns ivith a
veil of marriage, then assists Phcebe to
veil Camma. At the same time
Priestesses enter and stand on either
side of the 7'ejnple. Camjna and all
the Priestesses kneel, raise their hands
to the Goddess, and bow dojvn.
[^Shouts, ' Synorix ! Synorix ! ' All rise.
Camma. Fling wide the doors and
let the new-made children
Of our imperial mother see the show.
\_Sunlight potirs through the doors.
I have no heart to do it. ( To Phoebe.')
Look for me !
[ Crouches. Phoebe looks out.
[Shouts, ' Synorix ! Synorix ! '
Phoebe. He climbs the throne. Hot
blood, ambition, pride
So bloat and redden his face — O would
it were
His third last apoplexy ! O bestial !
O how unlike our goodly Sinnatus.
Camma {on the ground). You wrong
him surely; far as the face goes
A goodlier-looking man than Sinnatus.
Phcebe (^aside). How dare she say it?
I could hate her for it
But that she is distracted.
[A flourish of trumpets.
Camma. Is he crown'd?
Phoebe. Ay, there they crown him.
[ Crowd without shout, ' Synorix !
Synorix ! '
{_A Priestess brings a box of spices to
Camma, zvho throws them on the
altar-flame.
Camma. Rouse the dead altar-flame,
fling in the spices,
Nard, Cinnamon, amomum, benzoin.
Let all the air reel into a mist of
odour,
As in the midmost heart of Paradise.
Lay down the Lydian carpets for the
king.
The king should pace on purple to his
bride.
And music there to greet my lord the
king. \_Music.
( To Phcebe). Dost thou remember when
I wedded Sinnatus?
Ay, thou wast there — whether from
maiden fears
Or reverential love for him I loved,
Or some strange second-sight, the mar-
riage cup
Wherefrom we make libation to the
Goddess
So shook within my hand, that the red
wine
Ran down the marble and lookt like
blood, like blood.
Phoebe. I do remember your first-
marriage fears.
Camma. I have no fears at this my
second marriage.
See here — I stretfch my hand out — hold
it there.
How steady it is !
Phcebe. Steady enough to stab him !
Caf?tma. O hush ! O peace ! This
violence ill becomes
742
THE CUP.
ACT II.
The silence of our Temple. Gentleness,
Low words best chime with this solem-
nity.
Enter a procession of Priestesses and
Children bearing garlands and golden
goblets, and streiving Jiozvers.
Enter Synorix {as King, zvith gold
laurel-wreath croivn and purple
robes), followed by Antonius, Pub-
Lius, N'oblemen, Guards, and the
Populace.
Camma. Hail, King!
Synorix. Hail, Queen !
The wheel of Fate has roll'd me to the
top.
I would that happiness were gold, that I
Might cast my largess of it to the crowd !
I would that every man made feast to-day
Beneath the shadow of our pines and
planes !
For all my truer life begins to-day.
The past is like a travell'd land now sunk
Below the horizon — like a barren shore
That grew salt weeds, but now all
drown'd in love
And glittering at full tide — the bounteous
bays
And havens filling with a blissful sea.
Nor speak I now too mightily, being
King
And happy ! happiest. Lady, in my
power
To make you happy.
Camma. Yes, sir.
Synorix. Our Antonius,
Our faithful friend of Rome, tho' Rome
may set
A free foot where she will, yet of his
courtesy
Entreats he may be present at our
marriage.
Camma. Let him come— a legion
with him, if he will.
( To Antonius.) Welcome, my lord An-
tonius, to our Temple.
( To Synorix.) You on this side the altar.
( To Antonius.) You on that.
Call first upon the Goddess, Synorix.
[^All face the Goddess. Priestesses,
Children, Populace, and Guards
kneel — the others remain standing.
Synorix. O Thou, that dost inspire
the germ with life.
The child, a thread within the house of
birth.
And give him limbs, then air, and send
him forth
The glory of his father — Thou whose
breath
Is balmy wind to robe our hills with
grass.
And kindle all our vales with myrtle-
blossom.
And roll the golden oceans of our grain,
And sway the long grape-bunches of our
vines,
And fill all hearts with fatness and the lust
Of plenty — make me happy in my
marriage !
Chorus {chanting). Artemis, Artemis,
hear him, Ionian Artemis !
Camma. O Thou that slayest the-
babe within the womb
Or in the being born, or after slayest him
As boy or man, great Goddess, whose
storm-voice
Unsockets the strong oak, and rears his
root
Beyond his head, and strows our fruits,
and lays
Our golden grain, and runs to sea and
makes it
Foam over all the fleeted wealth of kings
And peoples, hear.
Whose arrow is the plague — whose quick
flash splits
The mid-sea mast, and rifts the tower to
the rock,
And hurls the victor's column down with
him
That crowns it, hear.
Who causes the safe earth to shudder
and gape,
And gulf and flatten in her closing chasm
Domed cities, hear.
Whose lava-torrents blast and blacken a
province
To a cinder, hear.
Whose winter-cataracts find a realm and
leave it
A waste of rock and ruin, hear. I call
thee
To make my marriage prosper to my
wish!
THE CUP.
743
Chorus. Artemis, Artemis, hear her,
Ephesian Artemis !
Camma. Artemis, Artemis, hear me,
Galatian Artemis !
I call on our own Goddess in our own
Temple.
Chorus. Artemis, Artemis, hear her,
Galatian Artemis !
[ Ihunder. All rise.
Synorix {aside). Thunder! Ay, ay,
the storm was drawing hither
Across the hills when I was being
crown'd.
I wonder if I look as pale as she?
Camma. Art thou — still bent — on
marrying?
Synorix. Surely — yet
These are strange words to speak to
Artemis.
Camma. Words are not always what
they seem, my King.
I will be faithful to thee till thou die.
Synorix. I thank thee, Camma, — I
thank thee.
Camma {turning to Antonius). An-
tonius.
Much graced are we that our Queen
Rome in you
Deigns to look in upon our barbarisms.
[ Turns, goes up steps to altar before
the Goddess. Takes a cup from
off the altar. Holds it towards
Antonius. Antonius goes up to
the foot of the steps opposite to
Synorix.
You see this cup, my lord.
[ Gives it to him.
Antonius. Most curious !
The many-breasted mother Artemis
Emboss'd upon it.
Camma. It is old, I know not
How many hundred years. Give it me
again.
It is the cup belonging our own Temple.
\^Puts it back on altar, and takes up
the cup of Act I. Shoiving it to
Antonius.
Here is another sacred to the Goddess,
The gift of Synorix; and the Goddess,
being
For this most grateful, wills, thro' me
her Priestess,
In honour of his gift and of our marriage.
That Synorix should drink from his own
cup.
Synorix. I thank thee, Camma, — I
thank thee.
Camtna. For — my lord —
It is our ancient custom in Galatia
That ere two souls be knit for life anc"
death,
They two should drink together from one
cup.
In symbol of their married unity.
Making libation to the Goddess. Bring
me
The costly wines we use in marriages.
[ They bring in a large jar of wine.
Camma pours wine into cup.
( To Synorix.) See here, I fill it. ( To
Antonius.) Will you drink, my
lord?
Antonius. . I? Why should I? I
am not to be married.
Camma. But that might bring a
Roman blessing on us.
Antonius {refusing cup). Thy pardon,
Priestess !
Camma. Thou art in the right.
This blessing is for Synorix and for me.
See first I make libation to the Goddess.
[yWakes libation.
And now I drink.
\^Drinks and fills the cup again.
Thy turn, Galatian King,
Drink and drink deep — our marriage will
be fruitful.
Drink and drink deep, and thou wilt
make me happy.
• [Synorix goes up to her. She hands
him the cup. He drinks.
Synorix. There, Camma ! I have
almost drain'd the cup —
A few drops left.
Camma. Libation to the Goddess.
[//<? throivs the remaining drops on
the altar and gives Camma the cup.
Camma {placing the cup on the altar).
Why then the Goddess hears.
{Comes doTvn and forward to tripod.
Antonius follows.
Antonius,
Where wast thou on that morning when
I came
To plead to thee for Sinnatus's life,
Beside this temple half a year ago?
744
THE CUP.
Antonuis. I never heard of this re-
quest of thine.
Synorix (^coming forzuard hastily to
foot of tripod steps) . I sought him
and I could not find him. Pray
you,
Go on with the marriage rites.
Canitna. Antonius
* Camma ! ' who spake ?
Antonitis. Not I.
Phoebe. Nor any here.
Camma. I am all but sure that some
one spake. Antonius,
If you had found him plotting against
Rome,
Would you have tortured Sinnatus to
death?
Antonius. No thought was mine, of
torture or of death,
But had I found him plotting, I had
counsell'd him
To rest from vain resistance. Rome is
fated
To rule the world. Then, if he had not
listen'd,
I might have sent him prisoner to Rome.
Synorix. Why do you palter with the
ceremony?
Go on with the marriage rites.
Camma. They are finish' d.
Synorix. How !
Camma. Thou hast drunk deep
enough to make me happy.
Dost thou not feel the love I bear to thee
Glow thro' thy veins?
Synorix. The love I bear to thee
Glows thro' my veins since first I look'd
on thee.
But wherefore slur the perfect ceremony?
The sovereign of Galatia weds his Queen.
Let all be done to the fullest in the sight
Of all the Gods.
Nay, rather than so clip
The flowery robe of Hymen, we would
add
Some golden fringe of gorgeousness
beyond
Old use, to make the day memorial,
when
Synorix, first King, Camma, first Queen
o' the Realm,
Drew here the richest lot from Fate, to
live
And die together.
This pain — what is it? — again?
I had a touch of this last year — in —
Rome.
Yes, yes. ( 7^(3 Antonius.) Your arm —
a moment — it will pass.
I reel beneath the weight of utter joy —
This all too happy day, crown — queen
at once. \_S taggers.
0 all ye Gods — Jupiter ! — Jupiter !
\_Falls backward.
Camjna. Dost thou cry out upon the
Gods of Rome ?
Thou art Galatian-born. Our Artemis
Has vanquish'd their Diana.
Synorix {on the ground). I am
poison'd.
She — close the Temple door. Let her
not fly.
Camma {leaning on tripod). Have I
not drunk of the same cup with
thee?
Synorix. Ay, by the Gods of Rome
and all the world.
She too — she too — the bride ! the
Queen ! and I —
Monstrous ! I that loved her.
Camma. . I loved him.
Synorix. O murderous mad-woman !
I pray you lift me
And make me walk awhile. I have
heard these poisons
May be walk'd down.
[Antonius and Publius raise him up.
My feet are tons of lead,
They will break in the earth — I am
sinking — hold me —
Let me alone.
[ They leave him ; he sinks down on
ground.
Too late — thought myself wise —
A woman's dupe. Antonius, tell the
Senate
1 have been most true to Rome — would
have been true
To her — if — if {^Falls as if dead.
Camma {coming and leaning over hint).
So falls the throne of an hour.
Synorix {half rising). Throne? is it
thou? the Fates are throned,
not we —
Not guilty of ourselves — thy doom and
mine —
THE CUP.
745
Thou — coming my way too — Camma —
good-night. {^Dies.
Cajnma {upheld by weeping Priest-
esses). Thy way? poor worm,
crawl down thine own black hole
To the lowest Hell. Antonius, is he
there?
I meant thee to have follow'd — better
thus.
Nay, if my people must be thralls of
Rome,
He is gentle, tho' a Roman.
\^Si7iks back into the arms of the Priestesses.
Antonius. Thou art one
With thine own people, and though a
Roman I
Forgive thee, Camma.
Camma {raising herself) . ' Camma ! '
— why there again
I am most sure that some one call'd. O
women.
Ye will have Roman masters. I am
glad
I shall not see it. Did not some old
Greek
Say death was the chief good? He had
my fate for it,
Poison'd. (Sinhs bach again.) Have I
the crown on ? I will go
To meet him, crown'd ! crown'd victor
of my will —
On my last voyage — but the wind has
fail'd —
Growing dark too — but light enough to
row.
Row to the blessed Isles! the blessed
Isles! —
Sinnatus !
Why comes he not to meet me? It is
the crown
Offends him — and my hands are too
sleepy
To lift it off. [Phoebe takes the crown off.
Who touch'd me then? I thank you.
\^Rises, with outspread arms.
There — league on league of ever-shining
shore
Beneath an ever-rising sun — I see him —
' Camma, Camma ! ' Sinnatus, Sinnatus !
\_Dies,
THE FALCON.
DRAMATIS PERSONS.
The Count Federigo degli Alberighi.
FiLiPPO, Count's foster-brother.
The Lady Giovanna.
Elisabetta, the Count's nurse.
SCENE. — An Italian Cottage.
Castle and Mountains seen
THROUGH Window.
Elisabetta discovered seated on stool iji
window, darning. I'ke Count zvitk
Falcon on his hand comes down through
the door at back. A withered wreath
on the wall.
Elisabetta. So, my lord, the Lady
Giovanna, who hath been away so long,
came back last night with her son to the
castle.
Count. Hear that, my bird ! Art
thou not jealous of her?
My princess of the cloud, my plumed
purveyor,
My far-eyed queen of the winds — thou
that canst soar
Beyond the morning lark, and howsoe'er
Thy quarry wind and wheel, swoop down
upon him
Eagle-like, lightning-like — strike, make
his feathers
Glance in mid heaven.
\_Crosses to chair.
I would thou hadst a mate !
Thy breed will die with thee, and mine
with me :
I am as lone and loveless as thyself.
\^Sits in chair.
Giovanna here! Ay, ruffle thyself — be
jealous !
Thou should'st be jealous of her. Tho'
I bred thee
The full-train'd marvel of all falconry,
And love thee and thou me, yet if
.Giovanna
Be here again — No, no ! Buss me, my
bird!
The stately widow has no heart for me.
Thou art the last friend left me upon
earth —
No, no again to that. \_Rises and turns.
My good old nurse,
I had forgotten thou wast sitting there.
Elisabetta. Ay, and forgotten thy
foster-brother too.
Count. Bird -babble for my falcon !
Let it pass.
What art thou doing there?
Elisabetta. Darning, your lordship.
■We cannot flaunt it in new feathers
now :
Nay, if we will buy diamond necklaces
To please our lady, we must darn, my
lord.
This old thing here (^points to necklace
round her neck),
they are but blue beads — my Piero,
God rest his honest soul, he bought 'em
for me.
Ay, but he knew I meant to marry him.
How couldst thou do it, my son? How
couldst thou do it?
Count. She saw it at a dance, upon
a neck
Less lovely than her own, and long'd for
it.
Elisabetta. She told thee as much?
Count. No, no — a friend of hers.
Elisabetta. Shame on her that she
took it at thy hands,
Ske rich enough to have bought it for
herself!
Count. She would have robb'd me
then of a great pleasure.
Elisabetta. But hath she yet return'd
thy love?
Count. Not yet !
Elisabetta. She should return thy
necklace then.
Count. Ay, if
She knew the giver; but I bound the
seller
To silence, and I left it privily
THE FALCON.
747
At Florence, in her palace.
Elisabetta. And sold thine own
To buy it for her. She not know? She
knows
There's none such other
Count. Madman anywhere.
Speak freely, tho' to call a madman
mad
Will hardly help to make him sane again.
Enter Filippo.
Filippo. Ah, the women, the women !
Ah, Monna Giovanna, you here again !
you that have the face of an angel and
the heart of a — that's too positive ! You
that have a score of lovers and have not
a heart for any of them — that's positive-
negative : you that have not the head of
a toad, and not a heart like the jewel in
it — that's too negative; you that have a
cheek like a peach and a heart like the
stone in it — that's positive again — that's
better !
Elisabetta. Sh — sh — Filippo !
Filippo {turns half round) . Here has
our master been a-glorifying and a-velvet-
ing and a-silking himself, and a-peacock-
ing and a-spreading to catch her eye for
a dozen year, till he hasn't an eye left in
his own tail to flourish among the pea-
hens, and all along o' you, Monna Gio-
vanna, all along o' you !
Elisabetta. Sh — sh — Filippo ! Can't
you hear that you are saying behind his
back what you see you are saying afore
his face?
Count. Let him — he never spares
me to my face !
Filippo. No, my lord, I never spare
your lordship to your lordship's face, nor
behind your lordship's back, nor to right,
nor to left, nor to round about and back
to your lordship's face again, for I'm
honest, your lordship.
Count. Come, come, Filippo, what
is there in the larder?
[Elisabetta crosses to fireplace and
puts on wood.
Filippo. Shelves and hooks, shelves
and hooks, and when I see the shelves I
am like to hang myself on the hooks.
Count. No bread?
Bilippo. Half a breakfast for a rat !
Count. Milk? "
Filippo. Three laps for a cat !
Coufit. Cheese?
Filippo. A supper for twelve mites.
Count. Eggs?
Filippo. One, but addled.
Count. No bird?
Filippo. Half a tit and a hern's bill.
Count. Let be thy jokes and thy
jerks, man ! Anything or nothing?
Filippo. Well, iny lord, if all-but-
nothing be anything, and one plate of
dried prunes be all-but-nothing, then
there is anything in your lordship's larder
.at your lordship's service, if your lord-
ship care to call for it.
Count. Good mother, happy was the
prodigal son.
For he return'd to the rich father; I
But add my poverty to thine. And all
Thro' following of my fancy. Pray thee
make
Thy slender meal out of those scraps and
shreds
Filippo spoke of. As for him and me.
There sprouts a salad in the garden still.
{To the Falcon^ Why didst thou miss
thy quarry yester-even?
To-day, my beauty, thou must dash us
down
Our dinner from the skies. Away,
Filippo !
\^Exit, follojued by Filippo.
Elisabetta. I knew it would come to
this. She has beggared him. I always
knew it would come to this! {Goes up
to table as if to resume darning, and^
looks out of window.) Why, as I live,
there is Monna Giovanna coming down
the hill from the castle. Stops and
stares at our cottage. Ay, ay ! stare at
it : it's all you have left us. Shame
on you ! She beautiful : sleek as a
miller's mouse ! Meal enough, meat
enough, well fed ; but beautiful — bah !
Nay, see, why she turns down the path
through our little vineyard, and I sneezed
three times this morning. Coming to
visit my lord, for the first time in her
life too! Why, bless the saints! I'll
be bound to confess her love to him at
last. I forgive her, I forgive her ! I
knew it would come to this — I always
748
THE FALCON.
knew it must come to this! {Goes up
to door during latter part of speech and
opens it.') Come in, Madonna, come in.
{Retires to front of table and curtseys as
the Lady Gipvanna enters, then moves
chair towards the hearth^ Nay, let me
place this chair for your ladyship,
[Lady Giovanna moves sloiuty down
stage, then crosses to chair, looking
about her, boivs as she sees the Ma-
donna over fireplace, then sits in
chair.
Lady Giovanna. Can I speak with
the Count?
Elisabetta. Ay, my lady, but won't
you speak with the old woman first, and
tell her all about it and make her happy?
for I've been on my knees every day for
these half-dozen years in hope that the
saints would send us this blessed morning;
and he always took you so kindly, he
always took the world so kindly. When
he was a little one, and I put the bitters
on my breast to wean him, he made a
wry mouth at it, but he took it so kindly,
and your ladyship has given him bitters
enough in this world, and he never made
a wry mouth at you, he always took you
so kindly — which is more than I did,
,my lady, more than I did — and he so'
handsome — and bless your sweet face,
you look as beautiful this morning as the
very Madonna her own self — and better
late than never — but come when they
will — then or now — it's all for the best,
come when they will — they are made by
the blessed saints — ^ these marriages.
\^Raises her hands.
Lady Giovanna. Marriages? I shall
never marry again !
Elisabetta {rises and turns). Shame
on her then !
Lady Giovanna, Where is the Count?
Elisabetta. Just gone
To fly his falcon.
Lady Giovanna. Call him back and
say
f come to breakfast with him.
Elisabetta. Holy mother !
To breakfast ! Oh, sweet saints ! one
plate of prunes !
Well, Madam, I will give your message
to him. [^Exii.
Lady Giovanna. His falcon, and 1
come to ask for his falcon,
The pleasure of his eyes — boast of his
hand —
Pride of his heart — the solace of his
hours —
His one companion here — nay, I have
heard
That, thro' his' late magnificence of
living
And this last costly gift to mine own self,
\_Shows diamond necklace.
He hath become so beggar'd, that his
falcon
Ev'n wins his dinner for him in the
field.
That must be talk, not truth, but truth
or talk.
How can I ask for his falcon?
\_Rises and moves as she speaks.
O my sick boy !
My daily fading Florio, it is thou
Hath set me this hard task, for when I
say
What can I do — what can I get for
thee?
He answers, * Get the Count to give me
his falcon.
And that will make me well.' Yet if I
ask.
He loves me, and he knows I know he
loves me !
Will he not pray me to return his
love —
To marry him? — {pause) — I can never
marry him.
His grandsire struck ray grandsire in a
brawl
At Florence, and my grandsire stabb'd
him there.
The feud between our houses is the bar
I cannot cross; I dare not brave my
brother,
Break with my kin. My brother hates
him, scorns
The noblest-natured man alive, and I —
Who have that reverence for him that
I scarce
Dare beg him to receive his diamonds
bagk —
How can I, dare I, ask him for his fal-
con?
\JPuts diamonds in her casket.
THE FALCON-.
749
Re-enter Count and Filippo. Count
turns to Filippo.
Count. Do what I said; I cannot do
it myself.
Filippo. Why then, my lord, we are
pauper'd out and out.
Count. Do what I said !
\_Advances and bo7us low.
Welcome to this poor cottage, my dear
lady.
Lady Giovanna. And welcome turns
a cottage to a palace.
Count. 'Tis long since we have met !
Lady Giovanna. To make amends
I come this day to break my fast with you.
Count. I am much honour'd — yes —
[ Turns to Filippo.
Do what I told thee. Must I do it
myself?
Filippo. I will, I will. (^Sighs.') Poor
fellow ! [Exit.
Count. Lady, you bring your light
into my cottage
Who never deign'd to shine into my
palace.
My palace wanting you was but a cot-
tage;
My cottage, while you grace it, is a
palace.
Lady Giovanna. In cottage or in
palace, being still
Beyond your fortunes, you are still the
king
Of courtesy and liberality.
Count. I trust I still maintain my
courtesy;
My liberality perforce is dead
Thro' lack of means of giving.
Lady Giovanna. Yet I come
To ask a gift.
\_Moves toward him a little.
Count. It will be hard, I fear,
To find one shock upon the field when all
The harvest has been carried.
Lady Giovanna. But my boy —
(^Aside.) No, no ! not yet — I cannot !
Count. Ay, how is he,
That bright inheritor of your eyes — your
boy?
Lady Giovanna. Alas, my Lord
Federigo, he hath fallen
Into a sickness, and it troubles me.
Count. Sick ! is it so ? why, when
he came last year
To see me hawking, he was well enough ;
And then I taught him all our hawking-
phrases.
Lady Giovanna. Oh yes, and once
you let him fly your falcon.
Count. How charm'd he was ! what
wonder? — A gallant boy,
A noble bird, each perfect of the breed.
Lady Giovanna {sinks in chair).
What do you rate her at?
Count. My bird? a hundred
Gold pieces once were offer'd by the
Duke.
I had no heart to part with her for
money.
Lady Giovartna. No, not for money.
[Count turns away and sighs.
Wherefore do you sigh?
Count. I have lost a friend of late.
Lady Giovanna. I could sigh with
you
For fear of losing more than friend, a
son;
And if he leave me — all the rest of
life —
That wither'd wreath were of more worth
to me.
[Looking at wreath on wall.
Count. That wither'd wreath is of
more worth to me
Than all the blossom, all the leaf of this
New-wakening year.
[Goes and takes down wreath.
Lady Giovatina. And yet I never saw
The land so rich in blossom as this year.
Count {holdijig wreath toward her).
Was not the year when this was
gather'd richer?
Lady Giovanna. How long ago was
that?
Count. Alas, ten summers !
A lady that was beautiful as day
Sat by me at a rustic festival
With other beauties on a mountain
meadow,
And she was the most beautiful of all;
Then but fifteen, and still as beautiful.
The mountain flowers grew thickly round
about.
I made a wreath with some of these; I
ask'd
750
THE FALCON.
A ribbon from her hair to bind it with;
I whisper'd, Let me crown you Queen of
Beauty,
And softly placed the chaplet on her
head.
A colour, which has colour'd all my life,
Flush'd in her face; then I was call'd
away;
And presently all rose, and so departed.
Ah ! she had thrown my chaplet on the
grass,
And there I found it.
\^Lets his hands fall, holding wreath
despondingly.
Lady Giovanna {after pause). How
long since do you say?
Count. That was the very year before
you married.
Lady Giovanna. When I was married
you were at the wars.
Count. Had she not thrown my
chaplet on the grass.
It may be I had never seen the wars.
\_Replaces wreath whence he has taken it.
Lady Giovanna. Ah, but, my lord,
there ran a rumour then
That you were kill'd in battle. I can
tell you
True tears that year were shed for you in
Florence.
Count. It might have been as well for
me. Unhappily
I was but wounded by the enemy there
And then imprison'd:
Lady Giovanna. Happily, however,
I see you quite recover'd of your wound.
Count. No, no, not quite. Madonna,
not yet, not yet.
Re-enter FiLlPPO.
Filippo. My lord, a word with you.
Count. Pray, pardon me !
[Lady Giovanna crosses and passes
behind chair and takes down
wreath; then goes to chair by
table.
Count {to Filippo), What is it, Fi-
lippo?
Filippo. Spoons, your lordship.
Count. Spoons !
Filippo. Yes, my lord, for wasn't my
lady born with a golden spoon in her
ladyship's mouth, and we haven't never
so much as a silver one for the golden
lips of her ladyship.
Count. Have we not half a score of
silver spoons?
Filippo. Half o' one, my lord !
Count. How half of one?
Filippo. I trod upon him even now,
my lord, in my hurry, and broke him.
Count. And the other nine?
Filippo. Sold ! but shall I not mount
with your lordship's leave to her lady-
ship's castle, in your lordship's and her
ladyship's name, and confer with her
ladyship's seneschal, and so descend again
with some of her ladyship's own appur-
tenances?
Count. Why — no, man. Only see
your cloth be clean. \_Exit Filippo.
Lady Giovanna. Ay, ay, this faded
ribbon was the mode
In Florence, ten years back. What's
here? a scroll
Pinn'd to the wreath.
My lord, you have said so much
Of this poor wreath that I was bold
enough
To take it down, if but to guess what
flowers
Had made it; and I find a written scroll
That seems to run in rhymings. Might
I read?
Count. Ay, if you will.
Lady Giovanna. It should be if you
can.
{Reads.) * Dead mountain.' Nay, for
who could trace a hand
So wild and staggering?
Count. This was penn'd. Madonna,
Close to the grating on a winter morn
In the perpetual twilight of a prison,
When he that made it, having his right
hand
Lamed in the battle, wrote it with his
left.
L^ady Giovanna. O heavens ! the
very letters seem to shake
With cold, with pain perhaps, poor
prisoner ! Well,
Tell me the words — or better — for I see
There goes a musical score along with
them.
Repeat them to their music.
Count. You can touch
THE FALCON.
751
No chord in me that would not answer
you
In music.
Lady Giovanna. That is musically
said.
[Count takes guitar. Lady Gio-
vanna sits listening with wreath
in her hand, and quietly removes
scroll arid places it on table at the
end of the song.
Count {sings, playing guitar) . ' Dead
mountain flowers, dead mountain-
meadow flowers,
Dearer than when you made your moun-
tain gay,
Sweeter than any violet of to-day,
Richer than all the wide world-wealth of
May,
To me, tho' all your bloom has died
away,
You bloom again, dead mountain-meadow
flowers.'
^ Enter Elisabetta with cloth.
Elisabetta. A word with you, my
lord!
Count {singing') . *0 mountain flowers ! '
Elisabetta. A word, my lord ! {Louder.)
Count {sings) . * Dead flowers ! *
Elisabetta. A word, my lord !
{Louder.)
Count. I pray you pardon me again !
[Lady Giovanna looking at wreath.
Count {to Elisabetta). What is it?
Elisabetta. My lord, we have but
one piece of earthenware to serve the
salad in to my lady, and that cracked !
Count. "Why then, that flower'd bowl
my ancestor
Fetch'd from the farthest east — we never
use it
For fear of breakage — but this day has
brought
A great occasion. You can take it,
nurse !
Elisabetta. I did take it, my lord, but
what with my lady's coming that had so
flurried me, and what with the fear of
breaking it, I did break it, my lord : it is
broken !
Count. My one thing left of value in
the world !
No matter ! see your cloth be white as
snow 1
Elisabetta {pointing thro' window).
White? I warrant thee, my son, as the
snow yonder on the very tip-top o' the
mountain.
Count. And yet to speak white truth,
my good old mother,
I have seen it like the snow on the
moraine.
Elisabetta. How can your lordship
say so ? There, my lord !
\_Lays cloth.
O my dear son, be not unkind to me.
And one word more. [ Going — returns.
Count {touching guitar). Good! let
it be but one.
Elisabetta. Hath she return'd thy love?
Count. Not yet !
Elisabetta. And will she?
Count {lookitig at Lady Giovanna) . I
scarce believe it !
Elisabetta. Shame upon her then !
\^Exit.
Count {sings). 'Dead mountain
flowers '
Ah well, my nurse has broken
The thread of my dead flowers, as she
has broken
My china bowl. My memory is as dead.
{Goes and replaces guitar.
Strange that the words at home with me
so long
Should fly like bosom friends when needed
most.
So by your leave if you would hear the
rest,
The writing.
Lady Giovanna {holding wreath tow-
ard him). There! my lord, you
are a poet.
And can you not imagine that the wreath,
Set, as you say, so hghtly on her head,
Fell with her motion as she rose, and she,
A girl, a child, then but fifteen, however
Flutter'd or flatter'd by your notice of her.
Was yet too bashful to return for it?
Count. Was it so indeed? was it so?
was it so?
\_ I cans forward to take wreath, and
touches Lady Giovanna's hand,
which she withdraws hastily; he
places wreath on corner of chair.
752
THE FALCON.
Lady Giovanna {with dignity). I did
not say, my lord, that it was so;
I said you might imagine it was so.
Enter Filippo zvith boivl of salad, which
he places on table.
Filippo. Here's a fine salad for my
lady, for tho' we have been a soldier, and
ridden by his lordship's side, and seen
the red of the battle-field, yet are we now
drill-sergeant to his lordship's lettuces,
and profess to be great in green things
and in garden-stuff".
Lady Giovanna. I thank thee, good
Fihppo. [^Exit Filippo.
Enter Elisabeita 7vith bird on a dish
which she places on table.
Elisabetta {close to table). Here's a
fine fowl for my lady; I had scant time to
do him in. I hope he be not underdone,
for we be undone in the doing of him.
Lady Giovanna. I thank you, my
good nurse.
Filippo {re-entering zvith plate of
prunes). And here are fine fruits for my
lady — prunes, my lady, from the tree
that my lord himself planted here in the
blossom of his boyhood — and so I,
Filippo, being, with your ladyship's par-
don, and as your ladyship knows, his
lordship's own foster-brother, would com-
mend them to your ladyship's most pecul-
iar appreciation.
\^Puts plate on table.
Elisabetta. Filippo !
Lady Giovanna (Count leads her to
table) . Will you not eat with me,
my lord?
Count. I cannot,
Not a morsel, not one morsel. 1 have
broken
My fast already. I will pledge you.
Wine !
Filippo, wine !
\^Sits near table; Filippo brings flask,
fills the Count's goblet, then I.ady
Giovanna's; Elisabetta stands at
the back of Lady Giovanna's chair.
Count. It is but thin and cold,
Not like the vintage blowing round your
castle.
We lie too deep down in the shadow
here.
Your ladyship lives higher in the sun.
[ Ihey pledge each other and drink.
Lady Giovanna. If I might send you
down a flask or two
Of that same vintage ? There is iron in it.
It has been much commended as a medi-
cine.
I give it my sick son, and if you be
Not quite recover'd of your wound, the
wine
Might help you. None has ever told me
yet
The story of your battle and your wound.
Filippo {cojning forzvard) . I can tell
you, my lady, I can tell you.
Elisabetta. Filippo ! will you take the
word out of your master's own mouth ?
Filippo. Was it there to take? Put
it there, my lord.
Count. Giovanna, my dear lady, in
this same battle
We had been beaten — they were ten to
one.
The trumpets of the fight had echo'd
down,
I and Filippo here had done our best,
And, having passed unwounded from the
field.
Were seated sadly at a fountain side.
Our horses grazing by us, when a troop,
Laden with booty and with a flag of ours
Ta'en in the fight
L'ilippo. Ay, but we fought for it back,
And kiU'd
Elisabetta. Filippo !
Count. A troop of horse
Filippo. Five hundred !
Count. Say fifty !
Filippo. And we kill'd 'em by the
score !
Elisabetta. Filippo !
Filippo. Well, well, well !
I bite my tongue.
Count. We may have left their fifty
less by five.
However, staying not to count how many.
But anger'd at their flaunting of our flag,
We mounted, and we dash'd into the
heart of 'em.
I wore the lady's chaplet round my neck;
It served me for a blessed rosary.
THE FALCON.
753
I am sure that more than one brave fel-
low owed
His death to the charm in it.
Elisabetta. Hear that, my lady !
Count. I cannot tell how long we
strove before
Our horses fell beneath us; down we
went
Crush'd, hack'd at, trampled underfoot.
The night.
As some cold-manner'd friend may
strangely do us
The truest service, had a touch of frost
That help'd to check the flowing of the
blood.
My last sight ere I swoon'd was one
sweet face
Crown'd with the wreath. That seem'd
to come and go.
They left us there for dead !
Elisabetta. Hear that, my lady !
Filippo. Ay, and I left two fingers
there for dead. See, my lady ! (^Show-
ing his hand.)
Lady Giovanna. I see, Filippo !
Filippo. And I have small hope of
the gentleman gout in my great toe.
Lady Giovanna. And why, Filippo?
{^Smiling absently.
Filippo. I left him there for dead, too !
Elisabetta. She smiles at him — how
hard the woman is !
My lady, if your ladyship were not
Too proud to look upon the garland, you
Would find it stain'd
Count {rising). Silence, Elisabetta!
Elisabetta. — Stain'd with the blood
of the best heart that ever
Beat for one woman.
\^Points to wreath on chair.
Lady Giovanna {rising sloivly). I can
eat no more !
Count. You have but trifled with our
homely salad,
But dallied with a single lettuce-leaf;
Not eaten anything.
Lady Giovanna. Nay, nay, I cannot.
You know, my lord, I told you I was
troubled.
My one child Florio lying still so sick,
I bound myself, and by a solemn vow.
That I would touch no flesh till be were
3C
Here, or else well in Heaven, where all
is well.
[Elisabetta clears table of bird and
salad: Filippo snatches up the
plate of pruius and holds them to
Lady Giovanna.
Filippo. But the prunes, my lady,
from the tree that his lordship
Lady Giovanna. Not now, Filippo.
My lord Federigo,
Can I not speak with you once more
alone?
Count. You hear, Filippo? My good
fellow, go !
Filippo. But the prunes that your
lordship
Elisabetta. Filippo !
Count. Ay, prune our company of
thine own and go !
Elisabetta. Filippo !
Filippo {turning). Well, well! the
women ! ' S^Exit.
Count. And thou too leave us, my
dear nurse, alone.
Elisabetta {folding up cloth and going).
And me too ! Ay, the dear nurse will
leave you alone; but, for all that, she
that has eaten the yolk is scarce like to
swallow the shell.
[ Turns and curtseys stiffly to Lady
Giovanna, then exit. Lady Gio-
vanna takes out diajnond necklace
from casket.
Lady Giovanna. I have anger'd your
good nurse; these old-world
servants
Are all but flesh and blood with those they
serve.
My lord, I have a present to return you.
And afterwards a boon to crave of you.
Count. No, my most honour'd and
long-worshipt lady,
Poor Federigo degli Alberighi
Takes nothing in return from you except
Return of his affection — can deny
Nothing to you that you require of
him.
Lady Giovanna. Then I require you
to take back your diamonds —
[ Offering necklace.
I doubt not they are yours. No other
heart
Of such magnificence in courtesy
754
THE FALCON.
Beats — out of heaven. They seem'd too
rich a prize
To trust with any messenger. I came
In person to return them.
[ Count draws back.
If the phrase
* Return ' displease you, we will say —
exchange them
For your — for your
Count {takes a step toward her and then
back') . For mine — and what of
mine?
Lady Giovanna. Well, shall we say this
wreath and your sweet rhymes?
Count. But have you ever worn my
diamonds?
Lady Giovanna. No !
For that would seem accepting of your
love.
I cannot brave my brother — but be sure
That I shall never marry again, my lord !
Count. Sure ?
Lady Giovanna. Yes !
Count. Is this your brother's order?
Lady Giovanna. No !
For he would marry me to the richest
man
In Florence; but I think you know the
saying —
* Better a man without riches, than riches
without a man.'
Count. A noble saying — and acted
on would yield
A nobler breed of men and women.
Lady,
I find you a shrewd bargainer. The
wreath
That once you wore outvalues twenty-
fold
The diamonds that you never deign'd to
wear.
But lay them there for a moment !
\_Points to table. Lady Giovanna
places necklace on table.
And be you
Gracious enough to let me know the boon
By granting which, if aught be mine to
grant,
I should be made more happy than I
hoped
Ever to be again.
Lady Giovanna. Then keep your
wreath,
But you will find me a shrewd bargainer
still.
I cannot keep your diamonds, for the
gift
I ask for, to my mind and at this present
Outvalues all the jewels upon earth.
Count. It should be love that thus
outvalues all.
You speak like love, and yet you love
me not.
I have nothing in this world but love for
you.
Lady Giovanna. Love? it is love,
love for my dying boy.
Moves me to ask it of you.
Count. What? my time?
Is it my time? Well, I can give my
time
To him that is a part of you, your son.
Shall I return to the castle with you?
Shall I
Sit by him, read to him, tell him my
tales,
Sing him my songs? You know that I
can touch
The ghittern to some purpose.
I^ady Giovanna. No, not that !
I thank you heartily for that — and
you,
I doubt not from your nobleness of
nature.
Will pardon me for asking what I ask.
Count. Giovanna, dear Giovanna, I
that once
The wildest of the random youth of
Florence
Before I saw you — all my nobleness
Of nature, as you deign to call it, draws
From you, and from my constancy to you.
No more, but speak.
Lady Giovanna. I will. You know
sick people.
More specially sick children, have strange
fancies.
Strange longings; and to thwart them
in their mood
May work them grievous harm at times,
may even
Hasten their end. I would you had a
son !
It might be easier then for you to make
Allowance for a mother — her — who
comes
THE FALCON.
755
To rob you of your one delight on earth.
How often has my sick boy yearn'd for
this!
I have put him off as often; but to-day
I dared not — so much weaker, so much
worse
For last day's journey. I v.as weeping
for him;
He gave me his hand : * I should be well
again
If the good Count would give me '
Count. Give me.
Lady Giovanna. His falcon.
Count (^starts back). My falcon !
Lady Giovanna. Yes, your falcon,
Federigo !
Count. Alas, I cannot !
Lady Giovanna. Cannot? Even so !
I fear'd as much. O this unhappy
world !
How shall I break it to him? how shall
I tell him?
The boy may die : more blessed were
the rags
Of some pale beggar-woman seeking alms
For her sick son, if he were like to live,
Than all my childless wealth, if mine
must die.
I was to blame — the love you said you
bore me —
My lord, we thank you for your enter-
tainment [ With a stately curtsey.
And so return — Heaven help him ! — to
our son. [ Turns.
Count {rushes fonuard) . Stay, stay,
I am most unlucky, most unhappy.
You never had look'd in on me before.
And when you came and dipt your
sovereign head
Thro' these low doors, you ask'd to eat
with me.
I had but emptiness to set before you.
No not a draught of milk, no not an egg.
Nothing but my brave bird, my noble
falcon.
My comrade of the house, and of the field.
She had to die for it — she died for you.
Perhaps I thought with those of old, the
nobler
The victim was, the more acceptable
Might be the sacrifice. I fear you scarce
Will thank me for your entertainment
now.
Lady Giovanna {returning], I bear
with him no longer.
Count. No, Madonna !
And he will have to bear with it as he
may.
Lady Giovanna. I break with him
for ever !
Count. Yes, Giovanna,
But he will keep his love for you for
ever !
Lady Giovattna. Yc
you
? not
you ! My brother ! my hard
brother !
0 Federigo, Federigo, I love you !
Spite of ten thousand brothers, Federigo.
\^Falls at his feet.
Count {impetuously'). Why then the
dying of my noble bird
Hath served me better than her living —
then
[ Takes diamonds from table.
These diamonds are both yours and mine
— have won
Their value again — beyond all markets
— there
1 lay them for the first time round your
neck.
\_Lays necklace round her neck.
And then this chaplet — No more feuds,
but peace.
Peace and conciliation ! I will make
Your brother love me. See, I tear away
The leaves were • darken'd by the bat-
tle—
\^Pulls leaves off and throws them down^
— crown you
Again with the same crown my Queen
of Beauty.
[^Places wreath on her head.
Rise — I could almost think that the
dead garland
Will break once more into the living
blossom.
Nay, nay, I pray you rise.
\_Raises her with both hands.
We two together
Will help to heal your son — your son
and mine —
We shall do it — we shall do it.
\^Embraces her.
The purpose of my being is accomplish'd,
And I am happy !
Lady Giovanna. And I too, Federiga
THE PROMISE OF MAY.
' A surface man of theories, true to none.'
DRAMATIS PERSONM.
Farmer Dobson.
Mr. Philip Edgar (^qftenuards Mr. Harold).
Farmer Steer (Dora and Eva's Father),
Mr. Wilson {a Schoolmaster).
HiGGINS 1
James
Dan Smith \ Farm Labourers.
Jackson
Allen J
Dora Steer.
Eva Steer.
Sally Allen ) ^^^^^ Servants.
MiLLY )
Farm Servants, Labourers, etc.
ACT I.
SCENE. — Before Farmhouse.
Farming Alen and Women. Farming
Men carrying forms, etc. Women
carrying baskets of knives and forks,
etc.
1st Farming Man. Be thou a-gawin'
to the long barn?
2nd Farming Man. Ay, to be sewer !
Be thou?
1st Farming Man. Why, o' coorse,
fur it be the owd man's birthdaay. He
be heighty this very daay, and 'e telled
all on us to be i' the long barn by one
o'clock, fur he'll gie us a big dinner, and
haafe th' parish '11 be theer, an' Miss
Dora, an' Miss Eva, an' all !
2nd Farming Man. Miss Dora be
coomed back, then?
1st Farming Alan. Ay, haafe an hour
ago. She be in theer now. (^Pointing
to house^ Owd Steer wur afeard she
wouldn't be back i' time to keep his
birthdaay, and he wur in a tew about it
all the murnin'; and he sent me vvi' the
gig to Littlechester to fetch 'er; and 'er
an' the owd man they fell a-kissin' o' one
another like two swect'arts i' the poorch
as soon as he clapt eyes of 'er.
2nd Farming Man. Foalks says he
likes Miss Eva the best.
1st Farming Man. Naay, I knaws
nowt o' what foalks says, an' I caares
nowt neither. Foalks doesn't hallus
knaw thessens; but sewer I be, they be
two o' the purtiest gels ye can see of a
summer murnin'.
2nd Farming Man. Beant Miss Eva
gone off a bit of 'er good looks o' laatei*
\st Far77ting Man. Noa, not a bit.
2nd Farming Man. Why coom
awaay, then, to the long barn.
\^Exetint.
IDoRA. looks out of windozv. Fnter DOBSOH.
Dora {sitiging).
The town lay still in the low sun-light.
The hen cluckt late by the white farm gate,
The maid to her dairy came in from the
cow,
The stock-dove coo'd at the fall of night.
The blossom had open'd on every bough;
O joy for the promise of May, of May,
O joy for the promise of May.
(^Nodding at Dobson.)- I'm coming
down, Mr. Dobson. I haven't seen Eva
yet. Is she anywhere in the garden?
Dobson. Noa, Miss. I ha'n't seed
'er neither.
ACT I.
THE PROMISE OF MA Y.
757
Dora {enters singing) .
But a red fire woke in the heart of the
town,
And a fox from the glen ran away with
the hen,
And a cat to the cream, and a rat to the
•cheese;
And the stock-dove coo'd, till a kite dropt
down.
And a salt wind burnt the blossoming
trees;
O grief for the promise of May, of May,
O grief for the promise of May.
I don't know why I sing that song; I
don't love it.
Dobso7t. Blessings on your pretty
voice, Miss Dora. Wheer did they larn
ye that?
Dora. In Cumberland, Mr. Dobson.
Dobson. An' how did ye leave the
owd uncle i' Coomberland?
Dora. Getting better, Mr. Dobson.
But he'll never be the same man again.
Dobson. An' how d'ye find the owd
man 'ere?
Dora. As well as ever. I came back
to keep his birthday.
Dobson. Well, I be coomed to keep
his birthdaay an' all. The owd man be
heighty to-daay, beant he?
Dora. Yes, Mr. Dobson. And the
day's bright like a friend, but the wind
east like an enemy. Help me to move
this bench for him into the sun. ( They
move bench.) No, not that way — here,
under the apple tree. Thank you.
Look how full of rosy blossom it is.
\_Pointing to apple tree.
Dobson. Theer be redder blossoms
nor them, Miss Dora.
Dora. Where do they blow, Mr.
Dobson ?
Dobson. Under your eyes, Miss Dora.
Dora. Do they?
Dobson. And your eyes be as blue
as
Dora. What, Mr. Dobson? A
butcher's frock?
Dobson. Noa, Miss Dora; as blue
as
Dora. Bluebell, harebell, speedwell,
bluebottle, succory, forget-me-not?
Dobson. Noa, Miss Dora; as blue
as
Dora. The sky? or the sea on a blue
day?
Dobson. Naay then. I mean'd they
be as blue as violets.
Dora. Are they?
Dobson. Theer ye goas agean. Miss,
niver believing owt I says to ye — hallus
a-fobbing ma off, tho' ye knaws I love ye.
I warrants ye'U think moor o' this young
Squire Edgar as ha' coomed among us —
the Lord knaws how — ye'U think more
on 'is little finger than hall my hand at
the haltar.
Dora. Perhaps, Master Dobson. I
can't tell, for I have never seen him. But
my sister wrote that he was mighty
pleasant, and had no pride in him.
Dobson. He'll be arter you now, Miss
Dora.
Dora. Will he? How can I tell?
Dobson. ■ He's been arter Miss Eva,
haant he?
Dora. Not that I know.
Dobson. Didn't I spy 'em a-sitting i'
the woodbine harbour togither?
Dora. What of that? Eva told me
that he was taking her likeness. He's
an artist.
Dobson. What's a hartist? I doant
believe he's iver a 'eart under his waist-
coat. And I tells ye what. Miss Dora :
he's no respect for the Queen, or the
parson, or the justice o' peace, or owt.
I ha' heard 'im a-gawin' on' 'ud make
your 'air — God bless it ! — stan' 'on end.
And wuss nor that. When theer wur a
meeting o' farmers at Littlechester t'other
daay, and they was all a-crying out at the
bad times, he cooms up, and he calls
out among our oan men, ' The land
belongs to the people ! '
Dora. And what did yoii say to that?
Dobson. Well, I says, s'pose my pig's
the land, and you says it belongs to the
parish, and theer be a thousand i' the
parish, taakin' in the women and childer;
and s'pose I kills my pig, and gi'es it
among 'em, why there wudn't be a
dinner for nawbody, and I should ha' lost
the pig.
Dora. And what did he say to that?
758
THE PROMISE OF MA V.
ACT I.
Dobson. Nowt — what could he saay ?
But I taakes 'im fur a bad lot and a burn
fool, and I haates the very sight on him.
Dora {looking at Dobson). Master
Dobson, you are a comely man to look at.
Dobson. I thank you for that, Miss
Dora, onyhow.
Dora. Ay, but you turn right ugly
when you're in an ill temper; and I
promise you that if you forget yourself in
your behaviour to this gentleman, my
father's friend, I will never change word
with you again.
Enter Farming M.ic^ from barn.
Farming Man. Miss, the farming
men 'ull hev their dinner i* the long
barn, and the master 'ud be straange an'
pleased if you'd step in fust, and see that
all be right and reg'lar fur 'em afoor he
coom. {Exit.
Dora. I go. Master Dobson, did
you hear what I said?
Dobson. Yeas, yeas ! I'll not meddle
wi' 'im if he doant meddle wi' mea.
{Exit Dora.) Coomly, says she. I
niver thowt o' mysen i' that waay; but
if she'd taak to ma i' that waay, or ony
waay, I'd slaave out my life fur 'er.
* Coomly to look at,' says she — but she
said it spiteful-like. To look at — yeas,
'coomly'; and she mayn't be so fur out
theer. But if that be nowt to she, then
it be nowt to me. {Looking off stage.)
Schoolmaster ! Why if Steer ha'n't
haxed schoolmaster to dinner, thaw 'e
knaws I was hallus agean heving school-
master i' the parish ! fur him as be handy
wi' a book bean't but haafe a hand at a
pitchfork.
Enter Wilson.
Well, Wilson. I seed that one cow
o' thine i' the pinfold agean as I wur a-
coomin' 'ere.
Wilson. Very likely, Mr. Dobson.
She ivill break fence. I can't keep her
in order.
Dobson. An' if tha can't keep thy
one cow i' border, how can tha keep all
thy scholards i' border? But let that
goa by. What dost a knaw o' this Mr.
Hedgar as be a-lodgin' wi' ye? I
coom'd upon 'im t'other daay lookin' at
the coontry, then a-scrattin upon a bit o'
paaper, then a-lookin' agean; and I
taaked 'im fur soom sort of a land-sur-
veyor— but a beant.
Wilson. He's a Somersetshire man,
and a very civil-spoken gentleman.
Dobson. Gentleman! What be he
a-doing here ten mile an' moor fro' a
raail? We laays out o' the waay fur
gentlefoalk altogither — leastwaays they
niver cooms 'ere but fur the trout i' our
beck, fur they be knaw'd as far as
Littlechester. But 'e doant fish neither.
Wilson. Well, it's no sin in a gentle-
man not to fish.
Dobson. Noa, but I haates 'im.
Wilson. Better step out of his road,
then, for he's walking to us, and with a
book in his hand.
Dobson. An' I haates boooks an' all,
fur they puts foalk off the owd waays.
Enter Edgar, reading — not seeing
Dobson and Wilson.
Edgar. This author, with his charm
of simple style
And close dialectic, all but proving man
An automatic series of sensations.
Has often numb'd me into apathy
Against the unpleasant jolts of this rough
road
That breaks off short into the abysses —
made me
A Quietist taking all things easily.
Dobson. {Aside.) There mun be
summat wrong theer, Wilson, fur I doant
understan' it.
Wilson. {Aside.) Nor I either, Mr.
Dobson.
Dobson {scornfully). An' thou doant
understan' it neither — and thou school-
master an' all.
Edgar. What can a man, then, live
for but sensations,
Pleasant ones? men of old would un-
dergo
Unpleasant for the sake of pleasant ones
Hereafter, like the Moslem beauties
waiting
To clasp their lovers by the golden gates.
For me, whose cheerless Houris after
death
ACT i.
THE PROMISE OF MAY.
759
Are Night and Silence, pleasant ones —
the while —
If possible, here ! to crop the flower and
pass.
Dobson. Well, I never 'eard^the likes
o' that afoor.
Wilson. {Aside.) But I have, Mr.
Dobson. It's the old Scripture text,
*, Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we
die.' I'm sorry for it, for, tho' he never
comes to church, I thought better of
him.
Edgar. ' What are we,' says the blind
old man in Lear?
•As flies to the Gods; they kill us for
their sport.'
Dobson. {Aside.) Then the owd man
i' Lear should be shaamed of hissen, but
noan o' the parishes goas by that naame
'ereabouts.
Edgar. The Gods! but they, the
shadows of ourselves.
Have past for ever. It is Nature kills,
And not for her sport either. She knows
nothing.
Man only knows, the worse for him ! for
why
Cannot he take his pastime like the flies?
And if my pleasure breed another's pain,
'Well — is not that the course of Nature
too,
From the dim dawn of Being — her main
law
Whereby she grows in beautv — that her
fl'ies
Must massacre each other? this poor
Nature !
Dobson. Natur ! Natur ! Well, it
be i' my natur to knock 'im o' the 'ead
now; but I weant.
Edgar. A Quietist taking all things
easily — why —
Have I been dipping into this again
To steel myself against the leaving her?
[ Closes book, seeing Wilson.
Good day !
Wilson. Good day, sir.
[Dotson looks hard at Edgar.
Edgar {to Dobson). Have I the
pleasure, friend, of knowing you?
Dobson. Dobson.
Edgar. Good dav, then, Dobson.
\Exit.
Dobson. * Good daay then, Dobson ! '
Civil-spoken i'deed ! Why, Wilson, tha
'card 'im thysen — the feller couldn't find
a Mister in his mouth fur me, as farms
five hoonderd haacre.
Wilson. You never find one for me,
Mr. Dobson.
Dobso7i. Noa, fur thou be nobbut
schoolmaster; but I taakes 'im for a
Lunnun swindler, and a burn fool.
Wilson. He can hardly be both, and
he pays me regular every Saturday.
Dobson. Yeas; but I haates 'im.
Enter Steer, Farm Men and Women.
Steer {goes and sits under apple tree).
Hev' ony o' ye seen Eva?
Dobson. Noa, Mr. Steer.
Steer. Well, I reckons they'll hev' a
fine cider-crop to-year if the blossom
'owds. Good murnin', neighbours, and
the saame to you, my men. I taakes it
kindly of all o' you that you be coomed
— what's the newspaaper word, W^ilson?
— celebrate — to celebrate my birthdaay
i' this fashion. Niver man 'ed better
friends, and I will saay niver master 'ed
better men : fur thaw I may ha' fallen out
wi' ye sometimes, the fault, mebbe, wur
as much mine as yours; and, thaw I says
it mysen, niver men 'ed a better master —
and I knaws what men be, and what
masters be, fur I wur nobbut a laabourer,
and now I be a landlord — burn a plow-
man, and now, as far as money goas, I be
a gentleman, thaw I beant naw scholard,
fur I 'edn't naw time to maake mysen a
scholard while I wur maakin' mysen a
gentleman, but I ha' taaen good care to
turn out boath my darters right down
fine laadies.
Dobson. An' soa they be.
\st Farming Ma?i. Soa they be ! soa
they be !
2}td Farming Man. The Lord bless
boath on 'em !
T^rd Farming Man. An' the saame
to you, Master.
^th Farming Man. And long life to
boath on 'em. An' the saame to you
Master Steer, likewise.
Steer. Thank ye !
760
THE PROMISE OF MAY.
ACT X
Enter EvA.
Wheer 'asta been?
Eva {tU7iidly^. Many happy returns
of the day, father.
Steer. They can't be many, my dear,
but I 'oapes they'll be 'appy.
Dobson. Why, tha looks haale anew
to last to a hoonderd.
Steer. An' why shouldn't I last to a
hoonderd? Haale! why shouldn't I be
haale? fur thaw I be heighty this very
daay, I niver 'es sa much as one pin's
prick of paain; an' I can taake my glass
along wi' the youngest, fur I niver
touched a drop of owt till my oan wed-
ding-daay, an' then I wur turned huppads
o' sixty. Why shouldn't I be haale? I
ha' plowed the ten-aacre — it be mine
now — afoor ony o' ye wur burn — ye all
knaws the ten-aacre — 1 mun ha' plowed
it moor nor a hoonderd times; hallus
hup at sunrise, and I'd drive the plow
straait as a line right i' the faace o' the
sun, then back' agean, a-follering my oan
shadder — then hup agean i' the faace o'
the sun. Eh ! how the sun 'ud shine,
and the larks 'ud sing i' them daays, and
the smell o' the mou'd an' all. Eh ! if I
could ha' gone on wi' the plowin' nobbut
the smell o' the mou'd 'ud ha' maade ma
live as long as Jerusalem.
Eva. Methusaleh, father.
Steer. Ay, lass, but when thou be as
owd as me thou'U put one word fur
another as I does.
Dobson. But, Steer, thaw thou be
haale anew I seed tha a-limpin' up just
now wi' the roomatics i' the knee.
Steer. Roomatics! Noa; I laame't
my knee last night running arter a thief.
Beant there house-breakers down i' Little-
chester, Dobson — doant ye hear of ony?
Dobson. Ay, that there be. Im-
manuel Goldsmith's was broke into o'
Monday night, and ower a hoonderd
pounds' worth o' rings stolen.
Steer. So I thowt, and I heard the
winder — that's the winder at the end o'
the passage, that goas by thy chaumber.
( Turning to Eva.) Why, lass, what
maakes tha sa red ? Did 'e git into thy
chaumber?
Eva. Father !
Steer. Well, I runned arter thief i*
the dark, and fell agean coalscuttle and
my kneea gev waay or I'd ha' cotched
'im, but afoor I coomed up he got thruff
the winder agean,
Eva. Got thro' the window again?.
Steer. Ay, but he left the mark of 'is
foot i' the flower-bed; now theer be noan
•0' my men, thinks I to mysen, 'ud ha'
done it 'cep' it were Dan Smith, fur I
cotched 'im once a-stealin' coals, an' I
sent fur 'im, an' I measured his foot wi'
the mark i' the bed, but it wouldn't fit
— seeams to me the mark wur maade by
a Lunnun boot. {Looks at Eva.) Why,
now, what maakes tha sa white?
Eva. Fright, father !
Steer. Maake thysen easy. I'll hev
the winder naailed up, and put Towser
under it.
. Eva (^clasping her hands). No, no,
father ! Towser'll tear him all to pieces.
Steer. Let him keep a^vaay, then;
but coom, coom ! let's be gawin'. They
ha' broached a barrel of aale i' the long
barn, and the fiddler be theer, and the
lads and lasses 'uU hev a dance.
Eva. (Aside.) Dance ! small heart
have I to dance. I should seem to be
dancing upon a grave.
Steer. Wheer be Mr. Edgar? about
the premises?
Dobson. Hallus about the premises!
Steer. So much the better, so much
the better. I likes 'im, and Eva likes
'im. Eva can do owt wi' 'im; look for
'im, Eva, and bring 'im to the barn.
He 'ant naw pride in 'im, and we'll git
'im to speechify for us arter dinner.
Eva. Yes, father ! [Exit.
Steer. Coom along then, all the rest
o' ye ! Churchwarden be a-coomin', thaw
me and 'im we niver 'grees about the
tithe; and Parson mebbe, thaw he niver
mended that gap i' the glebe fence as I
telled 'im; and Blacksmith, thaw he
niver shoes a herse to itiy likings; and
Baaker, thaw I sticks to hoam-maade —
but all on 'em welcome, all on 'em wel-
come ; and I've hed the long barn cleared
out of all the machines, and the sacks,
and the taaters, and the mangles, and
ACT I.
THE PROMISE OF MA Y.
761
theer'll be room anew for all o' ye.
FoUer me.
All. Yeas, yeas! Three cheers for
Mr. Steer !
\_All exeunt except Dobson into barn.
Enter Edgar,
Dobson {zvho is going, turns) . Squire!
— if so be you be a squire.
Edgar. Dobbins, I think.
Dobson. Dobbins, you thinks; and I
thinks ye wears a Lunnun boot.
Edgar. Well?
Dobson. And I thinks I'd like to
taake the measure o' your foot.
Edgar. Ay, if you'd like to measure
your o\yn length upon the grass,
Dobson. Coom, coom, that's a good
un. Why, I could throw four o' ye;
but I promised one of the Misses I
wouldn't meddle wi' ye, and I weant.
\_Exit into barn.
Edgar. Jealous of me with Eva ! Is
it so?
Well, tho' I grudge the pretty jewel, that
I
Have worn, to such a clod, yet that
might be
The best way out of it, if the child could
keep
Her counsel, I am sure I wish her
happy.
But I must free myself from this en-
tanglement.
I have all my life before me — so has
she —
Give her a month or two, and her affec-
tions
Will flower toward the light in some new
face.
Still I am half-afraid to meet her now.
She will urge marriage on me. I hate
tears.
Marriage is but an old tradition. I hate
Traditions, ever since my narrow father,
After my frolic with his tenant's girl,
Made younger elder son, violated the
whole
Tradition of our land, and left his heir,
Born, happily, with some sense of art, to
live
By brush and pencil. By and by, when
Thought
Comes down among the crowd, and man
perceives that
The lost gleam of an after-life but leaves
him
A beast of prey in the dark, why then
the crowd
May wreak my wrongs upon my wrongers.
Marriage !
That fine, fat, hook-nosed uncle of mine,
old Harold,
Who leaves me all his land at Little-
ch ester,
He, too, would oust me from his will,
if I
Made such a marriage. And marriage
in itself —
The storm is hard at hand will sweep
away
Thrones, churches, ranks, traditions,
customs, marriage
•One of the feeblest ! Then the man, the
woman.
Following their best affinities, will each
Bid their old bond farewell with smiles,
not tears;
Good wishes, not reproaches; with no
fear
Of the world's gossiping clamour, and no
need
Of veiling their desires.
Conventionalism,
Who shrieks by day at what she does by
night.
Would call this vice; but one time's vice
may be
The virtue of another; and Vice and
Virtue
Are but two masks of self; and what
hereafter
Shall mark out Vice from Virtue in the
gulf
Of never-dawning darkness?
Enter Eva.
My sweet Eva,
Where have you lain in ambush all the
morning?
They say your sister, Dora, has return'd.
And that should make you happy, if you
love her !
But you look troubled,
Eva. Oh, I love her so,
I was afraid of her, and I hid myself.
702
THE PROMISE OF MA Y.
ACT \
We never kept a secret from each other;
She would have seen at once into my
trouble,
And ask'd me what I could not answer.
. Oh, Philip,
Father heard you last night. Our savage
mastiff,
That all but kill'd the beggar, will be
placed
Beneath the window, Philip.
Edgar. Savage, is he?
What matters? Come, give me your
hand and kiss me
This beautiful May-morning.
Eva. The most beautiful
May we have had for many years !
Edgar. And here
Is the most beautiful morning of this
May.
Nay, "you must smile upon me ! There
— )rOtt make
iThe May and morning still more beauti-
ful.
You, the most beautiful blossom of the
May.
Eva. Dear Philip, all the world is
beautiful
If we were happy, and could chime in
with it.
Edgar. True; for the senses, love,
are for the world;
That for the senses,
Eva. Yes.
Edgar. And when the man,
The child of evolution, flings aside
His swaddling-bands, the morals of the
tribe,
He, following his own instincts as his
God,
Will enter on the larger golden age;
No pleasure then taboo'd : for when the
tide
Of full democracy has overwhelm'd
This 'Old world, from that flood will rise
the New,
Like the Love-goddess, with no bridal
veil,
Ring, trinket of the Church, but naked
Nature
\n all her loveliness.
Eva. What are you saying?
Edgar. That, if we did not strain to
make ourselves
Better and higher than Nature, we might be
As happy as the bees there at their
honey
In these sweet blossoms.
Eva. Yes; how sweet they smell !
Edgar. There ! let me break some
off for you.
\_Breaking branch off.
Eva. My thanks.
But, look, how wasteful of the blossom
you are !
One, two, three, four, five, six — you
have robb'd poor father
Of ten good apples. Oh, I forgot to tell
you
He wishes you to dine along with us.
And speak for him after — you that are
so clever !
Edgar. I grieve I cannot; but, in-
deed
Eva What is it?
Edgar. Well, business. I must leave
you, love, to-dr.y.
Eva. Leave me, to-day ! And wnen
will you return?
Edgar. I cannot tell precisely;
but
Eva. But what?
Edgar. I trust, my dear, we shall be
always friends.
Eva. After all that has gone between
us — friends !
What, only friends? \_Drops branch.
Edgar. All that has gone
between us
Should surely make us friends.
Eva. But keep us lovers.
Edgar. Child, do you love me now?
Eva. Yes, now and ever.
Edgar. Then you should wish us
both to love for ever.
But if you 7vill bind love to one for ever,
Altho' at first he take his bonds for
flowers.
As years go on, he feels them press upon
him,
Begins to flutter in them, and at last
Breaks thro' them, and so flies away for
ever ;
While, had you left him free use of his
wings,
Who knows that he had ever dream'd of
flying?
ACT I.
THE PROMISE OF MAY.
763
Eva. But all that sounds so wicked
and so strange;
*Till death us part ' — those are the only
words,
The true ones — nay, and those not true
enough,
For they that love do not believe that
death
Will part them. Why do you jest with
me, and try
To fright me? Tho' you are a gentle-
man,
I but a farmer's daughter
Edgar. Tut ! you talk
Old feudalism. When the great Democ-
racy
Makes a new world
Eva. And if you be not jesting.
Neither the old world, nor the new, nor
father,
Sister, nor you, shall ever see -me more.
Edgar {moved) . Then — {aside) Shall
I say it? — (^alottd) fly with me
to-day.
Eva. No ! Philip, Philip, if you do
not marry me,
I shall go mad for utter shame and
die.
Edgar. Then, if we needs must be
conventional, *
When shall your parish-parson bawl our
banns
Before your gaping clowns?
Eva. Not in our church —
I think I scarce could hold my head up
there.
Is there no other way?
Edgar. Yes, if you cared
To fee an over-opulent superstition.
Then they would grant you what they
call a license
To marry. Do you wish it?
Eva. Do I wish it?
Edgar. In London.
Eva. You will write to me?
Edgar. I will.
Eva. And I will fly to you thro' the
night, the storm —
Yes, tho' the fire should run along the
ground,
As once it did in Egypt. Oh, you see,
I was just out of school, I had no
mother —
My sister far away — and you,. a gentle-
man,
Told me to trust you: yes, in e\'ery-
thing —
Tltat was the only true love; and I
trusted —
Oh, yes, indeed, I would have died for
you.
How could you — oh, how could you?
— nay, how could I ?
But now you will set all right again,
and I
Shall not be made the laughter of the
village.
And poor old father not die miserable.
Dora {singing in the distance).
O joy for the promise of May, of
May,
O joy for the promise of May.
Edgar. Speak not so loudly; that
must be your sister.
You never told her, then, of what has
past
Between us.
Eva. Never !
Edgar. Do not till I bid you.
Eva. No, Philip, no. [ Turns a^vay.
Edgar {moved). How gracefully
there she stands.
Weeping — the little Niobe! What! we
prize
The statue or the picture all the more
When we have made them ours ! Is she
less lovable.
Less lovely, being wholly mine? To
stay —
Follow my art among these quiet fields.
Live with these honest folk
And play the fool !
No ! she that gave herself to me so easily
Will yield herself as easily to another.
Eva. Did you speak, Philip?
Edgar. Nothing more, farewell.
[ They embrace.
Dora {coming nearer).
O grief for the promise of May, of
May,
O grief for the promise of May.
Edgar {still embracing her). Keep
up your heart until we meet
■ again.
Eva. If that should break before we
meet again?
764
THE PROMISE OF MAY.
ACT II.
Edgar ^ Break ! nay, but call for
Philip when you will,
And he returns.
Eva. Heaven hears you, Philip
Edgar !
Edgar {??ioved). And he would hear
you even from the grave.
Heaven curse him if he come not at
your call! \_Exit.
Enter Dora.
Dora. Well, Eva !
Eva. Oh, Dora, Dora, how long you
have been away from home ! Oh, how
often I have wished for you ! It seemed
to me that we were parted for ever.
Dora. For ever, you foolish child !
What's come over you? We parted like
the brook yonder about the alder island,
to come together again in a moment and
to go on together again, till one of us be
married. But where is this Mr. Edgar
whom you praised so in your first letters?
You haven't even mentioned him in your
last?
Eva. He has gone to London.
Dora. Ay, child; and you look thin
and pale. Is it for his absence? Have
you fancied yourself in love with him?
That's all nonsense, you know, such a
baby as you are. But you shall tell me
all about it.
E.va. Not now, — presently. Yes, I
have been in trouble, but I am happy —
I think, quite happy now.
Dora {taking Eva's hand). Come,
then, and make them happy in the long
barn, for father is in his glory, and there
is a piece of beef like a house-side, and a
plum-pudding as big as the round hay-
stack. But see they are coming out for
the dance already. Well, my child, let
us join them.
Enter all from barn laughing. Eva sits
reluctantly under apple tree. Steer
enters smoking, sits by Eva.
Dance.
ACT II.
Five years have elapsed between Acts
I. and II.
SCENE. — A Meadow. On one side
a Pathway going over a rustic
Bridge. At back the Farmhouse
among Trees'. In the distance a
Church Spire.
DoBSON and Dora.
Dobson. So the owd uncle i' Coom-
berland be dead. Miss Dora, beant he?
Dora. Yes, Mr. Dobson, I've been
attending on his deathbed and his burial.
Dobson. It be five yesir sin' ye went
afoor to him, and it seems to me nobbut
t'other day. Hesn't he left ye nowt?
Dora. No, Mr. Dobson.
Dobson. But he were mighty fond o'
ye, warn't he?
Dora. Fonder of poor Eva — like
everybody else.
Dobson (handing Dora basket of roses) .
Not like me. Miss Dora; and I ha'
browt these roses to ye — I forgits what
they calls 'em, but I hallus gi'ed soom
on 'em to Miss Eva at this time o' year.
Will ya ta^ke 'em? fur Miss Eva, she
set the bush by my dairy winder afoor
she went to school at Littlechester — so
I alius browt soom on 'em to her; and
now she be gone, will ye taake 'em, Miss
Dora?
Dora. I thank you. They tell me
that yesterday you mentioned her name
too suddenly before my father. See that
you do not do so again !
Dobson. Noa; I knaws a deal better
now. I seed how the owd man wurvext.
Dora. I take them, then, for Eva's
sake.
[ Takes basket, places some in her dress.
Dobson. Eva's saake. Yeas. Poor
gel, poor gel ! I can't abear to think on
'er now, fur I'd ha' done owt fur 'er my-
sen; an' ony o' Steer's men, an' ony o'
my men 'ud ha' done owt fur 'er, an' all
the parish 'ud ha' done owt fur 'er, fur
we was all on us proud on 'cr, an' them
theer be soom of her oan roses, an' she
wur as sweet as ony on 'em — the Lord
THE PROMISE OF MA Y.
765
bless 'er — 'er oan sen; an' weant ye
taake 'em now, Miss Dora, fur 'er saake
an' fur my saake an' all?
Dora. Do you want them back again ?
Dobson. Noa, noa ! Keep 'em. But
I bed a word to saay to ye.
Dora. Why, Farmer, you should be
in the hayfield looking after your men;
you couldn't have more splendid weather.
Dobson. I be a-going theer; but I
thowt I'd bring tha them roses fust. The
weather's well anew, but the glass be a
bit shaaky. S'iver we've led moast on it.
Dora. Ay ! but you must not be too
sudden with it either, as you were last
year, when you put it in green, and your
stack caught fire.
Dobson. I were insured. Miss, an' I
lost nowt by it. But I weant be too
sudden wi' it; and I feel sewer, Miss
Dora, that I' ha' been noan too sudden
wi' you, fur I ha' sarved for ye well nigh
as long as the man sarved for 'is sweet'art
i' Scriptur'. Weant ye gi'e me a kind
answer at last?
Dora. I have no thought of marriage,
my friend. We have been in such grief
these five years, not only on my sister's
account, but the ill success of the farm,
and the debts, and my father's breaking
down, and his blindness. How could I
think of leaving him?
Dobson. Eh, but I be well to do;
and if ye would nobbut hev me, I would
taake the owd blind man to my oan fire-
side. You should hev him alius wi' ye.
Dora. You are generous, but it can-
not be. I cannot love you ; nay, I think
I never can be brought to love any man.
It seems to me that I hate men, ever
since my sister left us. Oh, see here.
{Pulls out a feller.) I wear it next my
heart. Poor sister, I had it five years
ago. * Dearest Dora, — I have lost my-
self, and am lost for ever to you and my
poor father. I thought Mr. Edgar the
best of men, and he has proved himself
the worst. Seek not for me, or you may
find me at the bottom of the river. — Eva.'
Dobson. Be that my fault?
Dora. No; but how should I, with
this grief still at my heart, take to the
milking of your cows, the fatting of your
calves, the making of your butter, and
the managing of your poultry?
Dobson. Naay, but I hev an owd
woman as 'ud see to all that; and you
should sit i' your oan parlour quite like a
laady, ye should !
Dora. It cannot be.
Dobson. An' plaay the planner, if ye
liked, all daay long, like a laady, ye
should an' all.
Dora. It cannot be.
Dobson. And I would loove tha moor
nor ony gentleman 'ud loove tha.
Dora. No, no ; it cannot be.
Dobson. And p'raps ye hears 'at I
soomtimes taakes a drop too much; but
that be all along o' you, Miss, because
ye weant hev me; but, if ye would, I
could put all that o' one side easy anew.
Dora. Cannot you understand plain
words, Mr. Dobson? I tell you, it can-
not be.
Dobsott. Eh lass ! Thy feyther eddi-
cated his darters to marry gentlefoSlk,
and see what's coomed on it.
Dora. That is enough, Farmer Dob-
son. You have shown me that, though
fortune had born you into the estate of a
gentleman, you would still have been
Parmer Dobson. You had better attend
to your hayfield. Good afternoon.
[Exit.
Dobson. * Farmer Dobson ! ' Well,
I be Farmer Dobson; but I thinks
Farmer Dobson's dog 'ud ha' knaw'd
better nor to cast her sister's misfortin
inter 'er teeth arter she'd been a-readin'
me the letter wi' 'er voice a-shaakin', and
the drop in 'er eye. Theer she goas !
Shall I foller 'er and ax 'er to maake it
up? Noa, not yet. Let 'er cool upon
it; I likes 'er all the better fur taakin'
me down, like a laady, as she be.
P'armer Dobson ! I be Farmer Dobson,
sewer anew; but if iver I cooms upo'
Gentleman Hedgar agean, and doant
laay my cartwhip athurt 'is shou'ders,
why then I beant Farmer Dobson, but
summun else — blaame't if I beant !
Enter Haymakers with a load of hay.
The last on it, eh?
\st Haymaker. Yeas.
766
THE PROMISE OF MA Y.
Dobson, Hoam wi' it, then.
\^Exit surlily.
\st Haymaker, Well, it be the last
load hoam.
2nd Haymaker. Yeas, an' owd Dob-
son should be glad on it. What maakes
'im alius sa glum?
Sally Allen. Glum ! he be wuss nor
glum. He coom'd up to me yisterdaay
i' the haayfield, when mea and my
svveet'art was a-working along o' one
side wi' one another, and he sent 'im
awaay to t'other end o' the field; and
'when I axed 'im why, he telled me 'at
sweet'arts niver worked well togither;
and I telled Hm 'at sweet'arts alius
worked best togither; and then he
called me a rude naame, and I can't
abide 'im.
James, Why, lass, doant tha knaw he
be sweet upo' Dora Steer, and she weant
sa much as look at 'im ? And wheniver
'e sees two sweet'arts togither like thou
and me, Sally, he be fit to bust hissen wi'
spites and jalousies.
Sally. Let 'im bust hissen, then, for
owt / cares.
1st Haymaker, Well but, as I said
afoor, it be the last load hoam; do thou
and thy sweet'art sing us hoam to supper
— *The Last Load Hoam.'
All. Ay ! 'The Last Load Hoam.'
Song.
What did ye do, and what did ye saay,
Wi' the wild white rose, an' the wood-
bine sa gaay,
An' the midders all mow'd, an' the sky
sa blue —
What did ye saay, and what did ye do,
When ye thovvt there were nawbody
watchin' o' you,
And you an' your Sally was forkin' the
haay,
At the end of the daay,
For the last load hoam?
What did we do, and what did we saay,
Wi' the briar sa green, an' the wilier sa
graay,
An' the midders all mow'd, an' the sky
sa blue —
Do ye think I be gawin' to tell it to you,
What we raowt saay, and what we mowt
do.
When me an' my Sally was forkin' the
haay,
At the 'end of the daay.
For the last load hoam?
But what did ye saay, and what did ye do,
Wi' the butterflies out, and the swallers
at plaay.
An' the midders all mow'd, an' the sky
sa blue?
Why, coom then, owd feller, I'll tell it to
you;
For me an' my Sally we swear'd to be
true.
To be true to each other, let 'appen what
maay,
Till the end of the daay
And the last load hoam.
All. Well sung !
James, Fanny be the naame i' the
song, but I swopt it fur she,
{^Pointing to Sally.
Sally. Let ma aloan afoor foalk, wilt
tha?
1st Haymaker, Ye shall sing that
agean to-night, fur owd Dobson'U gi'e us
a bit o' supper.
Sally, I weant goa to owd Dobson;
he wur rude to me i' tha haayfield, and
he'll be rude to me agean to-night. Owd
Steer's gotten all his grass down and
wants a hand, and I'll goa to him.
\st Haymaker, Owd Steer gi'es nub-
but cowd tea to Hs men, and owd Dob-
son gi'es beer.
Sally. But I'd like owd Steer's cowd
tea better nor Dobson's beer. Good-bye.
[ Going.
James. Gi'e us a buss fust, lass.
Sally. I telled tha to let ma aloan !
James, Why, wasn't thou and me
a-bussin' o' one another t'other side o'
the haaycock, when owd Dobson coom'd
upo' us? I can't let tha aloan if I
would, Sally. [ Offering to kiss her,
Sally. Git along wi' ye, do ! [Exit,
\_All laugh ; exeunt singing.
'To be true to each other, let 'appen
what maay,
ACT II.
THE PROMISE OF MAY.
767
Till the end o' the daay
An' the last load hoam,'
E7iter Harold.
Harold. Not Harold! ' Philip Edgar,
Philip Edgar ! '
Her phantom call'd me by the name she
loved.
I told her I should hear her from the
grave.
Ay ! yonder is her casement. I re-
member
Her bright face beaming starlike down
upon me
Thro' that rich cloud of blossom. Since
I left her
Here weeping, I have ranged the world,
and sat
Thro' every sensual course of that full
feast
That leaves but emptiness.
Song.
*To be true to each other, let 'appen
what maay,
To the end o' the daay
An' the last load hoam.'
Hm-old. Poor Eva! O my God, if
man be only
A willy-nilly current of sensations —
Reaction needs must follow revel — yet —
Why feel remorse, he, knowing that he
must have
Moved in the iron grooves of Destiny?
Remorse then is a part of Destiny,
Nature a liar, making us feel guilty
Of her own faults.
My grandfather — of him
They say, that women —
O this mortal house,
Which we are born into, is haunted by
The ghosts of the dead passions of dead
men;
And these take flesh again with our own
flesh,
And bring us to confusion.
He was only
A poor philosopher who call'd the mind
Of children a blank page, a tabula ra.a.
There, there, is written in invisible inks
'Lust, Prodigality, Covetousness, Craft,
Cowardice, Murder' — and the heat and
fire
Of life will bring them out, and black
enough.
So the child grow to manhood: better
death
With our first wail than life —
Song {further off).
'Till the end o' the daay
An' the last load hoam.
Load hoam.'
This bridge again ! {Steps on the bridge.')
How often have I stood
With Eva here ! The brook among its
flowers !
Forget-me-not, meadowsweet, willow-
herb.
I had some smattering of science then.
Taught her the learned names, anatomised
The flowers for her — and now I only wish
This pool were deep enough, that I
might plunge
And lose myself for ever.
Enter Dan Smith {singing).
Gee cop ! whoa ! Gee oop ! whoa !
Scizzars an' Pumpy was good uns to goa
Thruf slush an' squad
When roads was bad,
But hallus 'ud stop at the Vine-an'-the-
Hop,
Fur boath on 'em knawed as well as
niysen
That beer be as good fur 'erses as
men.
Gee oop ! whoa ! Gee oop ! whoa !
Scizzars an' Pumpy was good uns to
goa.
The beer's gotten oop into my 'ead.
S'iver I mun git along back to the farm,
fur she telled ma to taake the cart to
Littlech ester.
Enter DoRA.
Half an hour late ! why are you loiter-
ing here? Away with you at once.
\^Exit Dan Smith.
{Seeing Harold on bridge^
Some madman, is it,
768
THE PROMISE OF MAY.
ACT \\
Gesticulating there upon the bridge?
I am half afraid to pass.
Harold. Sometimes I wonder,
When man has surely learnt at last that
all
His old-world faith, the blossom of his
youth,
Has faded, falling fruitless — whether then
All of us, all at once, may not be seized
With some fierce passion, not so much
for Death
As against Life ! all, all, into the dark —
No more ! — and science now could drug
and balm us
Back into nescience with as little pain
As it is to fall asleep.
This beggarly life,
This poor, flat, hedged-in field — no dis-
tance— this
Hollow Pandora-box,
With all the pleasures flown, not even
Hope
Left at the bottom !
Superstitious fool.
What brought me here? To see her
grave? her ghost?
Her ghost is everyway about me here.
Dora {coming forward'). Allow me,
sir, to pass you.
Harold. Eva !
Dora. Eva !
Harold. What are you? Where do
you come from?
Dora. From the farm
Here, close at hand.
Harold. Are you — you are — that
Dora,
The sister. I have heard of you. The
likeness
Is very striking.
Dora. You knew Eva, then?
Harold. Yes — I was thinking of her
when — Oh yes,
Many years back, and never since have
met
Her equal for pure innocence of nature,
And loveliness of feature.
Dora. No, nor I.
Harold. Except, indeed, I have found
it once again
In your own self.
Dora. You flatter me. Dear Eva
Was always thought the prettier.
Harold. And her charm
Of voice is also yours; and- 1 was brood-
ing
Upon a great unhappiness when you
spoke.
Dora. Indeed, you seem'd in trouble,
sir.
Harold. And you
Seem my good angel who may help me
from it.
Dora. {Aside.) How worn he looks,
poor man ! who is it, I wonder.
How can I help him? (^Aloud.) Might
I ask your name?
Harold. Harold.
Dora. I never heard her mention you.
Harold. I met her first at a farm in
Cumberland —
Her uncle's.
Dora. She was there six years ago.
Harold. And if she never mention'd
me, perhaps
The painful circumstances which I
heard —
I will not vex you by repeating them —
Only last week at Littlechester, drove me
From out her memory. She has dis-
appear'd,
They told me, from the farm — and
darker news.
Dora. She has disappear'd, poor
darling, from the world —
Left but one dreadful line to say, that we
Should find her in the river; and we
dragg'd
The Littlechester river all in vain :
Have sorrow'd for her all these years in
vain.
And my poor father, utterly broken down
By losing her — she was his favourite
child —
Has let his farm, all his affairs, I fear,
But for the slender help that I can give.
Fall into ruin. Ah ! that villain, Edgar,
If he should ever show his face among us.
Our men and boys would hoot him, stone
him, hunt him
With pitchforks off the farm, for all of
them
Loved her, and she was worthy of all
love.
Harold. They say, we should forgive
oiur enemies.
THE PROMISE OF MA Y.
769
. Dora. Ay, if the wretch were dead I
might forgive him;
fcVe know not whether he be dead or
living.
Harold. What Edgar?
Dora. Philip Edgar of Toft Hall
In Somerset. Perhaps you know him?
Harold. Slightly.
{Aside.') Ay, for how slightly have I
known myself.
Do}-a. This Edgar, then, is living?
Harold. Living? well —
One Philip Edgar of Toft Hall in Som-
erset
Is lately dead.
Dora. Dead ! — is there more than
one?
Harold. Nay — now — not one, {aside)
for I am Philip Harold.
Dora. That one, is he then — dead !
Harold. {Aside.) My father's death,
Let her believe it mine; this, for the
moment,
Will leave me a free field.
Dora. Dead ! and this world
Is brighter for his absence 'as that other
Is darker for his presence.
Harold. Is not this
To speak too pitilessly of the dead ?
Dora. My five-years' anger cannot
die at once,
Not all at once with death and him. I
trust
I shall forgive him — by-and-by — not
^ now.
O sir, you seem to have a heart; if you
Had seen us that wild morning when we
found
Her bed unslept in, storm and. shower
lashing
Her casement, her poor spaniel wailing
for her.
That desolate letter, blotted yf'iXh her
tears,
Which told us we should never see her
more —
Our old nurse crying as if for her own
child,
My .alher stricken with his first paralysis.
And then with blindness — had you been
one of us
And seen all this, then you would know
it is not
3i>
So easy to forgive — even the dead.
Harold. But sure am I that of your
gentleness
You will forgive him. She, you mourn
for, seem'd
A miracle of gentleness — would not blur
A moth's wing by the touching; would
not crush
The fly that drew her blood; and, were
she living,
Would not — if penitent ^ have denied
him her
Forgiveness. And perhaps the man
himself.
When hearing of that piteous death, has
suffer'd
More than we know. But wherefore
waste your heart
In looking on a chill and changeless Past?
Iron will fuse, and marble melt; the Past
Remains the Past. But you are young,
and — pardon me —
As lovely as your sister. Who can tell
What golden hours, with what full hands,
may be
Waiting you in the distance? Might I
call
Upon your father — I have seen the
world —
And cheer his blindness with a traveller's
tales?
Dora. Call if you will, and when you
will. I cannot
Well answer for my father; but if you
Can tell me anything 0/ our sweet Eva
When in her brighter girlhood, I at least
Will bid you welcome, and will listen to
you.
Now I must go.
Harold. But give me first your hand :
I do not dare, like an old friend, to
shake it.
I kiss it as a prelude to that privilege
W^hen you shall know me better.
Dora. {Aside.) How beautiful
His manners are, and how unlike the
farmer's !
You are staying here?
Harold. Yes, at the wayside inn
Close by that alder-island in your brook,
'The Angler's Home.'
Dora. Axt you ox\q1
Harold. No, but I
770
THE PROMISE OF MA Y.
Take some delight in sketching, and the
country
Has many charms, altho' the inhabitants
Seem semi-barbarous.
Dora. I am glad it pleases you;
Yet I, born here, not only love the
country,
But its inhabitants too; and you, I doubt
not.
Would take to them as kindly, if you
cared
To live some time among them.
Harold. If I did,
Then one at least of its inhabitants
Might have more charm for me than all
the country.
Dora. That one, then, should be
grateful for your preference.
Harold. I cannot tell, tho' standing
in her presence.
(Aside.) She colours !
Dora. Sir !
Harold. Be not afraid of me,
For these are no conventional flourishes.
I do most earnestly assure you that
Your likeness
\_Shouts and cries without.
Dora. What was that? my poor
blind father
Enter YAv.umG Man.
Farming Alan. Miss Dora, Dan
Smith's cart hes runned ower a laady i'
the holler laane, and they ha' ta'en the
body up inter yojir chaumber, and they
be all a-callin' for ye.
Dora. The body ! — Heavens ! I come !
Harold. But you are trembling.
Allow me to go with you to the farm.
[^Exeunt.
Enter Dobson.
Dobson. What feller wur it as 'a' been
a-talkin' fur haafe an hour wi' my Dora?
(Looking after him.) Seeams I ommost
knaws the back on 'im — drest hke a
gentleman, too. Damn all gentlemen,
says I! I should ha' thowt they'd hed
anew o' gentlefoak, as I telled 'er to-daay
when she fell ft)ul upo' me.
Minds ma o' summun. I could swear
to that; but that be all one, fur I haates
'im afoor I knaws what 'e be. Theer 1
he turns round. Philip Hedgar o'
Soomerset ! Philip Hedgar o' Soomer-
set ! — Noa — yeas — thaw the feller's
gone and maade such a litter' of his faace.
Eh lad, if it be thou, Til Philip tha !
a-plaayin' the saame gaame wi' my Dora
— I'll Soomerset tha.
I'd like to drag 'im thruf the herse-
pond, and she to be a-lookin' at it. I'd
like to leather 'im black and blue, and
she to be a-laughin' at it. I'd like to
fell 'im as dead as a bullock ! ( Clench-
ing his fist.)
But what 'ud she saay to that? She
telled me once not to meddle wi' 'im, and
now she be fallen out wi' ma, and I can't
coom at 'er.
It mun be him. Noa! Fur she'd
niver 'a' been talkin' haafe an hour wi'
the divil 'at killed her oan sister, or she
beant Dora Steer.
Yeas ! Fur she niver knawed 'is faace
when 'e wur 'ere afoor; but I'll maake
'er knaw ! I'll maake 'er knaw !
Enter Harold.
Naay, but I mun git out on 'is waay
now, or I shall be the death on 'im.
\_Exit.
Harold. How the clown glared at
me ! that Dobbins, is it.
With whom I used to jar? but can he
trace me
Thro' five years' absence, and my change
of name.
The tan of southern summers and the
beard?
I may as well avoid him.
Ladylike !
Lilylike in her stateliness and sweetness !
How came she by it? — a daughter of
the fields,
This Dora !
She gave her hand, unask'd, at the farm
gate;
I almost think she half return'd the
pressure
Of mine. What, I that held the orange
blossom
Dark as the yew? but may not those,
who march
Before their age, turn back at times, and
make
ACT II.
THE PROMISE OF MAY.
771
Courtesy to custom? and now the
stronger motive,
Misnamed free-will — the crov ^ would
call it conscience —
Moves me — to what? I am dreaming;
for the past
Look'd thro' the present, Eva's eyes
thro' hers —
A spell upon me ! Surely I loved Eva
More than I knew ! or is it but the past
That brightens in retiring? Oh, last
night,
Tired, pacing my new lands at Little-
chester,
I dozed upon the bridge, and the black
river
Flow'd thro' my dreams — if dreams they
were. She rose
From the foul flood and pointed toward
the farm.
And her cry rang to me across the years,
' I call you, Philip Edgar, Philip Edgar !
Come, you will set all right again, and
father
Will not die miserable.' I could make
his age
A comfort to him — so be more at peace
With mine own self. Some of my former
friends
Would find my logic faulty; let them.
Colour
Flows thro' my life again, and I have
lighted
On a new pleasure. Anyhow we must
Move in the line of least resistance when
The stronger motive rules.
But she hates Edgar
May not this Dobbins, or some other, spy
Edgar in Harold? Well then, I must
make her
Love Harold first, and then she will for-
give
Edgar for Harold's sake. She said her-
self
She would forgive him, by-and-by, not
now —
For her own sake then, if not for mine —
not now —
But by-and-by.
Enter Dobson behind.
Dobson. By-and-by — eh, lad, dosta
knaw this paaper? Ye dropt it upo' the
road. 'Philip Edgar, Esq.' Ay, you be
a pretty squire. I ha' fun' ye out, I hev.
Eh, lad, dosta knaw what tha means wi'
by-and-by? Fur if ye be goin' to sarve
our Dora as ye sarved our Eva — then,
by-and-by, if she weant listen to me when
I be a-tryin' to saave 'er — if she weant
— look to thysen, for, by the Lord, I'd
think na moor o' maakin' an end o' tha
nor a carrion craw — noa — thaw they
hanged ma at 'Size fur it.
Harold. Dobbins, I think !
Dobson. I beant Dobbins.
Harold. Nor am I Edgar, my good
fellow.
Dobson. Tha lies ! What hasta been
. saayin' to viy Dora ?
Harold. I have been telling her of
the death of one Philip Edgar of Toft
Hall, Somerset.
Dobson. Tha lies !
Harold (^pulling out a newspaper^.
Well, my man, it seems that you can
read. Look there — under the deaths.
Dobson. 'O' the 17th, Philip Edgar,
o' Toft Hall, Soomerset.' How coom
thou to be sa like 'im, then?
Harold. Naturally enough; for I am
closely related to the dead man's family.
Dobson. An' 'ow coom thou by the
letter to 'im?
Harold. Naturally again; for as 1
used to transact all his business for him,
1 had to look over his letters. Now
then, see these {takes out letters^. Half
a score of them, all directed to me —
Harold.
Dobson. 'Arold ! 'Arold ! 'Arold, so
they be.
Harold. My name is Harold ! Good
day, Dobbins! \^Exit.
Dobson. 'Arold ! The feller's clean
daazed, an' maazed, an' maated, an' mud-
dled ma. Dead ! It mun be true, fur it
wur i' print as black as owt. Naay, but
' Good daay, Dobbins.' Why, that wur
the very twang on 'im. Eh, lad, but
whether thou be Hedgar, or Hedgar's
business man, thou hesn't naw business
'ere wi' my Dora, as 1 knaws on, an'
w:hether thou calls thysen Hedgar or
Harold, if thou stick to she I'll stick to
thee — stick to tha like a weasel to a
772
THE PROMISE OF MAY.
ACT 111.
rabbit, I will. Ay ! and I'd like to shoot
tha like a rabbit an' all. 'Good daay,
Dobbins.' Dang tha !
ACT III.
SCENE. — A Room in Steer's House.
Door leading into Bedroom at the
BACK.
Dora {ringing a handbell^. Milly !
Enter MiLLY.
Milly. The little 'ymn? Yeas, Miss;
but I wur so ta'en up wi' leadin' the owd
man about all the blessed murnin' 'at I
ha' nobbut larned mysen haafe on it.
' O man, forgive thy mortal foe,
Nor ever strike him blow for blow;
For all the souls on earth that live
To be forgiven must forgive.
Forgive him seventy times and seven;
For all the blessed souls in Heaven
Are both forgivers and forgiven.'
But I'll git the book agean, and larn
mysen the rest, and saay it to ye afoor
dark; ye ringed fur that, Miss, didn't ye?
Dora. No, Milly; but if the farming
men be come for their wages, to send
them up to me.
Milly. Yeas, Miss. \^Exit.
Dora {sitting at desk counting money) .
Enough at any rate for the present.
{^Enter Farming Men.) Good afternoon,
my friends. I am sorry Mr. Steer still
continues too unwell to attend to you,
but the schoolmaster looked to the paying
you your wages when I was away, didn't
he?
Men. Yeas; and thanks to ye.
Dora. Some of our workmen have
left us, but he sent me an alphabetical
list of those that remain, so, Allen, I may
as well begin with you.
Alle7t {with his hand to his ear).
Halfabitical ! Taake one o' the young
'uns fust, Miss, fur I be a bit deaf, and I
wur hallus scaared by a big word; least-
waays, I should be wi' a lawyer.
Dora. I spoke of your names, Allen,
as they are arranged here {shows book) —
according to their first letters.
Allen. Letters! Yeas, I sees now.
Them be what they larns the childer' a:
school, but 1 were burn afoor schoolin*
time.
Dora. But, Allen, tho' you can't read,
you could whitewash that cottage of yours
where your grandson had the fever.
Allen. I'll hev it done o' Monday.
Dora. Else if the fever spread, the
parish will have to thank you for it.
Allen. Mea? why, it be the Lord's
doin', noan o' mine; d'ye think I^d gCt
'em the fever? But I thanks ye all the
saame. Miss. ( 1'akes money.)
Dora {calling out names). Higgins,
Jackson, Luscombe, Nokes, Oldham,
Skipworth ! {All take money.) Did you
find that you worked at all the worse
upon the cold tea than you would have
done upon the beer?
Higgins. Noa, Miss; we worked naw
wuss upo' the cowd tea; but we'd ha'
work'd better upo' the beer.
Dora. Come, come, you worked well
enough, and I am much obliged to all
of you. There's for you, and you, and
you. Count the money and see if it's all
right.
Men. All right, Miss; and thank ye
kindly.
{^Exeunt Luscombe, Nokes, Old-
ham, Skipworth.
Dora. Dan Smith, my father and I
forgave you stealing our coals.
[Dan Smith advances to Dora.
Dan Smith {bellowing). Whoy, O
lor. Miss ! that wur sa long back, and
the walls sa thin, and the winders brok-
ken, and the weather sa cowd, and my
missus a-gittin' ower 'er lyin'-in.
Dora. Didn't I say that we had for-
given you? But, Dan Smith, they tell
me that you — and you have six children
— spent all your last Saturday's wages at
the ale-house; that you were stupid
drunk all Sunday, and so ill in conse-
quence all Monday that you did not
come into the hayfield. Why should I
pay you your full wages?
Dan Smith. I be ready to taake the
pledge.
Dora. And as ready to break it again.
Besides it was you that were driving the
ACT III.
THE PROMISE OF MAY.
773
cart — and I fear you were tipsy then,
too — when you lamed the lady in the
hollow lane.
Dan Smith (belloiving). O lor, Miss!
noa, noa, noa ! Ye sees the holler laane
be hallus sa dark i' the arternoon, and
wheere the big eshtree cuts athurt it, it
gi^es a turn like, and 'ow should I see to
laame the laady, and mea coomin' along
pretty sharp an' all?
Dora. Well, there are your wages;
the next time you waste them at a pot-
house you get no more from me. {Exit
Dan Smith.) Sally Allen, you worked
for Mr. Dobson, didn't you?
Sally (advancing). Yeas, Miss; but
he wur so rough wi' ma, I couldn't
abide 'im.
Dora. Why should he be rough with
you? You are as good as a man in the
hayfield. What's become of your
brother?
Sally. 'Listed for a soadger. Miss, i'
the Queen's Real Hard Tillery.
Dora. And your sweetheart — when
are you and he to be married?
Sally. At Michaelmas, Miss, please
God.
Dora. You are an Jionest pair. I
will come to your wedding.
Sally. An' I thanks ye fur that. Miss,
moor nor fur the waage.
(Going — returns.) 'A cotched ma
about the waaist, Miss, when 'e wur 'ere
afoor, an' axed ma to be 'is little sweet-
'art, an 'soa I knaw'd 'im when I seed
'im agean an' I telled feyther on 'im.
Dora. What is all this, Allen?
Allen. Why, Miss Dora, mea and
my maates, us three, we wants to hev
three words wi' ye.
Higgins. That be 'im, and mea, Miss.
Jackson. An' mea. Miss.
Allen. An' we weant mention naw
naames, we'd as lief talk o' the Divil
afoor ye as 'im, fur they says the master
goas clean off his 'ead when he 'ears the
naame on 'im : but us three, arter Sally'd
telled us on 'im, we fun' 'im out a-walkin'
i' West Field wi' a white 'at, nine o'clock,
upo' Tuesday murnin', and all on us, wi'
your leave, we wants to leather 'im.
Dora. Who?
Allen. Him as did the mischief here,
five year sin'.
Dora. Mr. Edgar?
Allen. Theer, Miss ! You ha' naiimed
'im — not me.
Dora. He's dead, man — dead ; gone
to his account — dead and buried.
Allen. I beant sa sewer o' that, fur
Sally knaw'd 'im. Now then?
Dora. Y'es; it was in the Somerset-
shire papers.
Allen. Then yon mun be his brother,
an' we'll leather />;/.
Dora. I never heard that he had a
brother. Some foolish mistake of
Sally's; but what! would you beat a
man for his brother's fault? That were
a wild justice indeed. Let bygones be
bygones. Go home ! Good-night ! (All
exeunt.) I have once more paid them
all. The work of the farm will go on
still, but for how long? We are almost
at the bottom of the well : little more to be
drawn from it — and what then ? Encum-
bered as we are, who would lend us any-
thing? We shall have to sell all the
land, which father, for a whole life, has
been getting together, again, and that, I
am sure, would be the death of him.
What am I to do? Farmer Dobson,
were I to marry him, has promised to
keep our heads above water; and the
man has doubtless a good heart, and a
true and lasting love for me : yet — though
I can be sorry for him — as the good Sally
says, ' I can't abide him ' — almost brutal,
and matched with my Harold is like a
hedge thistle by a garden rose. But
then, he, too — will he ever be of one
faith with his wife? which is my dream
of a true marriage. Can I fancy him
kneeling with me, and uttering the same
prayer; standing up side by side with me,
and singing the same "hymn? I fear not.
Have I done wisely, then, in accepting
him? But may not a girl's love-dream
have too much romance in it to be real-
ised all at once, or altogether, or any-
where but in Heaven? And yet 1 had
once a vision of a pure and perfect mar-
riage, where the man and the woman,
only differing as the stronger and the
weaker, should walk hand in hand to-
774
THE PROMISE OF MAY.
ACT 111
gather down this valley of tears, as they
call it so truly, to the grave at the bottom,
and lie down there together in the dark-
ness which would seem but for a moment,
to be wakened again together by the light
of the resurrection, and no more part-
ings for ever and for ever. ( Walks ^ up
and down. She sings.^
*0 happy lark, that warblest high
Above thy lowly nest,
O brook, that brawlest merrily by
Thro' fields that onte were blest,
O tower spiring to the sky,
O graves in daisies drest,
O Love and Life, how weary am I,
And how I long for rest.'
There, there, I am a fool ! Tears ! 1
have sometimes been moved to tears by
a chapter of fine writing in a novel; but
what have I to do with tears now? All
depends on me — Father, this poor girl,
the farm, everything; and they both love
me — I am all in all to both; and he
loves me too, I am quite sure of that.
Courage, courage ! and all will go well.
(^Goes to bedroom door ; opens it.) How
dark your room is ! Let me bring you
in here where there is still full daylight.
(^Brings Eva forzvard.) Why, you look
better.
Eva. And I feel so much better, that
I trust I may be able by-and-by to help
you in the business of the farm; but I
must not be known yet. Has anyone
found me out, Dora?
Dora. Oh, no; you kept your veil
too close for that when they carried you
in; since then, no one has seen you but
myself.
Eva. Yes — this Milly.
Dora. Poor blind Father's little guide,
Milly, who came to us three years after
you were gone, how should she know you?
But now that you have been brought to
us as it were from the grave, dearest Eva,
and have been here so long, will you not
speak with Father to-day?
Eva. Do you think that I may? No,
not yet. I am not equal to it yet.
Dora. Why ? Do you still suffer
from your fall in the hollow lane?
Eva. Bruised; but no bones broken.
Dora. I have always told Father that
the huge old ashtree there would cause
an accident some day; but lie would
never cut it down, because one of the
Steers had planted it there in former tinies.
Eva. If it had killed one of the Steers
there the other day, it might have been
better for her, for him, and for you.
Dora. Come, come, keep a good
heart ! Better for me ! That's good.
How better for me?
Eva. You tell me you have a lover.
Will he not fly from you if he learn the
story of my shame and that I am still
living?
Dora. No; I am sure that when we
are married he will be willing that you
and Father should live with us; for, in-
deed, he tells me that he met you once in
the old times, and was much taken with
you, my dear.
Eva. Taken with me; who was he?
Have you told him I am here?
Dora. No; do you wish it? '
Eva. See, Dora; you yourself are
ashamed of me {%veeps), and I do not
wonder at it.
Dora. But I should wonder at myself
if it were so. Have we not been all in
all to one another from the time when
we first peeped into the bird's nest,
waded in the brook, ran after the butter-
flies, and prattled to each other that we
would marry fine gentlemen, and played
at being fine ladies?
Eva. That last was my Father's fault,
poor man. And this lover of yours —
this Mr. Harold — is a gentleman?
Dora. That he is, from head to foot.
I do believe I lost my heart to him the
very first time we met, and I love him so
much
Eva. Poor Dora !
' Dora. That I dare not tell him how
much I love him.
Eva. Better not. Has he offered you
marriage, this gentleman?
Dora. Could I love him else?
Eva. And are you quite sure that
after marriage this gentleman will not be
shamed of his poor farmer's daughter
among the ladies in his drawing-room?
THE PROMISE OF MAY.
775
Dora. Shamed of me in a drawing-
room ! Wasn't Miss Vavasour, our
schoolmistress at Littlech ester, a lady
born? Were not our fellow-pupils all
ladies? Wasn't dear mother herself at
least by one side a lady? Can't I speak
like a lady; pen a letter like a lady; talk
a little French like a lady; play a little
like a lady? Can't a girl when she loves
her husband, and he her, make herself
anything he wishes her to be? Shamed
of me in a drawing-room, indeed! See
here ! * I hope your Lordship is quite
recovered of your gout?' {^Curtsey s^
* Will your Ladyship ride to cover to-day?
( Curtseys.^ I can recommend our Volti-
geur.' ' I am sorry that we could not
attend your Grace's party on the loth ! '
(^Curtseys.) There, I am glad my non-
sense has made you smile !
Eva. I have heard that 'your Lord-
ship,' and ' your Ladyship,' and ' your
Grace ' are all growing old-fashioned !
Dora. But the love of sister for sister
can never be old-fashioned. I have been
unwilling to trouble you with questions,
but you seem somewhat better to-day.
We found a letter in your bedroom torn
into bits. I couldn't make it out.
What was it?
Eva. From him ! from him ! He
said we had been most happy together,
and he trusted that sometime we should
meet again, for he had not forgotten his
promise to come when I called him.
But that was a mockery, you know, for
he gave me no address, and there was
no word of marriage; and, O Dora, he
signed himself ' Yours gratefully ' — fancy,
Dora, ' gratefully ' ! * Yours gratefully ' !
Dora. Infamous wretch ! {Aside.')
Shall I tell her he is dead? No; she is
still too feeble.
Eva. Hark ! Dora, some one is com-
ing. I cannot and I will not see any-
body.
Dora. It is only Milly.
Enter Milly zvith basket of roses.
Dora. Well, Milly, why do you come
in so roughly? The sick lady here might
have been asleep.
Milly. Please, Miss, Mr. Dobson
telled me to saay he's browt some of Miss
Eva's roses for the sick laady to smell on.
Dora. Take them, dear. Say that
the sick lady thanks him ! Is he here?
Milly. Yeas, Miss; and he wants to
speak to ye partic'lar.
Dora. Tell him 1 cannot leave the
sick lady just yet.
Milly. Yeas, Miss; but he says he
wants to tell ye summut very partic'lar.
Dora. Not to-day. What are you
staying for?
3Iilly. Why, Miss, I be afeard I shall
set him a-swearing like onythink.
Dora. And what harm will that do
you, so that you do not copy his bad .
manners? Go, child. {Exit Milly.)
But, Eva, why did you write, ' Seek me at
the bottom of the river ' ?
Eva. Why? because I meant it! —
that dreadful night ! that lonely walk to
Littlechester, the rain beating in my face
all the way, dead midnight when I came
upon the bridge; the river, black, slimy,
swirling under me in the lamplight, by
the rotten wharfs — but I was so mad,
that I mounted upon the parapet
Dora. You make me shudder !
Eva. To fling myself over, when I
heard a voice, * Girl, what are you doing
there?' It was a Sister of Mercy, come
from the death-bed of a pauper, who had
died in his misery blessing God, and the
Sister took me to her house, and bit by
bit — for she promised secrecy — I told
her all.
Dora. And what then?
Eva. She would have persuaded me
to come back here, but I couldn't.
Then she got me a place as nursery
governess, and when the children grew
too old for me, and I asked her once
more to help me, once more she said,
' Go home;' but I hadn't the heart or face
to do it. And then — what would Father
say? I sank so low that I went into
service — the drudge of a lodging-house
— and when the mistress died, and I
appealed to the Sister again, her answer
— I think I have it about me — yes, there
it is!
Dora {reads). 'My dear Child, — I
can do no more for vou. I have done
776
THE PROMISE OF MAY.
ACT III.
wrong in keeping your secret ; your Father
must be now in extreme old age. Go
back to him and ask his forgiveness be-
fore he dies. — Sister Agatha.' Sister
Agatha is right. Don't you long for
Father's forgiveness?
Eva. I would almost die to have it !
Dora. And he may die before he
gives it; may drop oft' any day, any hour.
You must see him at once. {A'ings bell.
Enter Milly.) Milly, my dear, how did
you leave Mr. Steer?
Milly. He's been a-moanin' and a-
groanin' in 'is sleep, but I thinks he be
wakkenin' oop.
Dora. Tell him that I and the lady
here wish to see him. You see she is
lamed, and cannot go down to him.
Milly. Yeas, Miss, I will.
S^Exit Milly.
Dora. I ought to prepare you. You
must not expect to find our Father as he
was five years ago. He is much altered;
but I trust that your return — for you
know, my dear, you were always his
favourite — will give him, as they say, a
new lease of life.
Eva {clinging to Dora). Oh, Dora,
Dora!
Enter Steer led by Milly.
Steer. Has the cow cawved?
Dora. No, Father.
Steer. Be the colt dead?
Dora. No, father.
Steer. He wur sa bellows'd out wi'
the wind this murnin', 'at I telled 'em to
gallop 'im. Be he dead?
Dora. Not that I know.
Steer. What hasta sent fur me, then,
fur?
Dora {taking Steer's ami). Well,
Father, 1 have a surprise for you.
Steer. I ha' niver been surprised but
once i' my life, and I went blind upon it.
Dora. Eva has come home.
Steer. Hoam? fro' the bottom o' the
river?
Dora. No, Father, that was a mis-
take. She's here again.
Steer. The Steers were all gentlefoalks
i' the owd times, an' I worked early an'
laate to maake 'em all gentlefoalks agean.
The land belonged to the Steers i' the
owd times, an' it belongs to the Steers
agean : I bowt it back agean ; but I
couldn't buy my darter back agean when
she lost hersen, could I? I eddicated
boalh on 'em to marry gentlemen, an' one
on 'em went an' lost hersen i' the river.
Dora. No, Father, she's here.
Steer. Here ! she moant coom here.
What would her mother saay? If it be
her ghoast, we mun abide it. We can't
keep a ghoast out.
Eva {Jailing at his feet) . Oh, forgive
me ! forgive me !
Steer. Who said that? Taake me
awaay, little gell. It be one o' my bad
daays. ^Exit Steer led by Milly.
Dora {sfnoothing Eva's forekead) . Be
not so cast down, my sweet Eva. You
heard him say it was one of his bad days;
He will be sure to know you to-morrow.
Eva. It is almost the last of my bad
days, I think. I am very faint. I
must lie down. Give me your arm.
Lead me back again.
[Dora takes Eva into inner room. '
Enter Milly.
Milly. Miss Dora ! Miss Dora !
Dora {returning and leaving the bed-
room door ajar). Quiet ! quiet ! What
is it?
Milly. Mr. 'Arold, Miss.
Dora. Below?
Milly. Yeas, Miss. He be saayin*"
a word to the owd man, but he'll coom
up if ye lets 'im.
Dora. Tell him, then, that I'm wait-
ing for him.
Milly. Yeas, Miss.
\_Exit. Dora sits pensively and waits.
Enter Harold.
Harold. You are pale, my Dora!
but the ruddiest cheek
That ever charm'd the plowman of your
wolds
Might wish its rose a lily, could it look
But half as lovely. I was speaking
with
Your father, asking his consent — you
wish'd me —
THE PROMISE OF MA Y.
777
That we should marry : he would answer
nothing,
I could make nothing of him; but, my
flower,
You look so weary and so worn ! What
is it
Has put you out of heart?
Dora. It puts me in heart
Again to see you; but indeed the state
Of my poor father puts me out of heart.
Is yours yet living?
Harold. No — I told you.
Dora. When?
Harold. Confusion ! — Ah well, well !
the state we all
Must come to in our spring-and-winter
world
If we live long enough ! and poor Steer
looks
The very type of Age in a picture, bow'd
To the earth he came from, to the grave
he goes to,
Beneath the burthen of years.
Dora. More like the picture
Of Christian in my ' Pilgrim's Progress '
here,
Bow'd to the dust beneath the burthen
of sin.
Harold. Sin! What sin?
Dora, Not his own.
Harold. That nursery-tale
Still read, then?
Dora. Yes; our carters and
our shepherds
Still find a comfort there.
Harold. Carters and shepherds !
Dora. Scorn ! I hate scorn. A
soul with no religion —
My mother used to say that such a one
Was without rudder, anchor, compass —
might be
Blown everyway with every gust and
wreck
On any rock ; and tho' you are good and
gentle,
Yet if thro' any want
Harold. Of this religion?
Child, read a little history, you will find
The common brotherhood of man has
been
Wrong'd by the cruelties of his religions
More than could ever have happen'd thro'
the want
Of any or all of them.
Dora^ — But, O dear friend,
If thro' the want of any — I mean the true
one —
And pardon me for saying it — you should
ever
Be tempted into doing what might seem
Not altogether worthy of you, I think
That I should break my heart, for you
have taught me
To love you.
Harold. What is this ? some one been
stirring
Against me? he, your rustic amourist,
The polish'd Damon of your pastoral here,
This Dobson of your idyll ?
Dora. No, Sir, no !
Did you not tell me he was crazed with
jealousy.
Had threaten'd ev'n your life, and would
say anything?
Did /not promise not to listen to him.
Nor ev'n to see the man?
Harold. Good; then what is it
That makes you talk so dolefully?
Dora. I told you —
My father. Well, indeed, a friend just
now.
One that has been much wrong'd, whose
griefs are mine.
Was warning me- that if a gentleman
Should wed a farmer's daughter, he
would be
Sooner or later shamed of her among
The ladies, born his equals.
Harold. More fool he !
What I that have been call'd a Socialist,
A Communist, a Nihilist — what you
will !
Dora. What are all these?
Harold. Utopian idiotcies.
They did not last three Junes. Such
rampant weeds
Strangle each other, die, and make the
soil
For Ccesars, Crom wells, and Napoleons
To root their power in. I have freed
myself
From all such dreams, and some will say
because
I have inherited my Uncle. Let them.
But — shamed of you, my Empress! I
should prize
773
THE PROMISE OF MAY.
The pearl of Beauty, even if I found it
Dark with the soot of slums.
Dora. But I can tell you.
We Steers are of old blood, tho' we be
fallen.
See there our shield. (^Pointing to arms
on mantelpiece.^
For I have heard the Steers
Had land in Saxon times; and your own
name
Of Harold sounds so English and so old
I am sure you must be proud of it.
Harold. Not I !
As yet I scarcely feel it mine. I took it
For some three thousand acres. I have
land now
And wealth, and lay both at your feet.
Dora. And what was
Your name before?
Harold. Come, come, my girl, enough
Of this strange talk. I love you and you
me.
True, 1 have held opinions, hold some still,
Which you would scarce approve of: for
all that,
I am a man not prone to jealousies,
Caprices, humours, moods; but very
ready
To make allowances, and mighty slow
To feel ofifences. Nay, I do believe
I could forgive — well, almost anything —
And that more freely than your formal
priest.
Because I know more fully than he can
What poor earthworms are all and each
of us,
Here crawling in this boundless Nature.
Dora,
If marriage ever brought a woman happi-
ness
I doubt not I can make you happy.
Dora. You make me
Happy already.
Haroldi And I never said
As much before to any woman living.
Dora. No ?
Harold. No ! by this true kiss, you
are the first
I ever have loved truly.
[ They kiss each other.
Eva {with a wild cry) . Philip Edgar !
Harold. The phantom cry! You —
di'1 you hear a cry?
Dora. She must be crying out ' Edgar'
in her sleep.
Harold. Who must be crying out
' Edgar' in her sleep?
Dora. Your pardon for a minute.
She must be waked.
Harold. Who must be waked?
Dora. I am not deaf: you fright me.
What ails you?
Harold. Speak.
Dora. You know her, Eva.
Harold Eva !
\_Eva opens the door and stands in the entry.
She!
Eva. Make her happy, then, and I
forgive you. \_Falls dead.
Dora. Happy! What? Edgai:? Is
it so? Can it be?
They told me so. Yes, yes ! I see it
all now.
Oh, she has fainted. Sister, Eva, sister !
He is yours again — he will love you
again ;
I give him back to you again. Look up !
One word, or do but smile ! Sweet, do
you hear me?
\^Puts her hand on Eva's heart.
There, there — the heart, O God! — the
poor young heart
Broken at last — all still — and nothing left
To live for.
[Falls on body of her sister,
Harold. Living . . . dead . . .
She said ' all still.
Nothing to live for.'
She — she knows me — now . . .
{A pause.)
She knew me from the first, she juggled
with me.
She hid this sister, told me she was dead —
I have wasted pity on her — not dead
now —
No ! acting, playing on me, both of them.
They drag the river for her ! no, not
they!
Playing on me — not dead now — a swoon
— a scene —
Yet — how she made her wail as for the
dead !
Enter Milly.
Milly. Please, Mister 'Arold.
Harold {roughly).
Well?
THE PROMISE OF MAY.
779
Milly. The owd man's coom'd agean
to 'issen, an' wants
To hev a word \vi' ye about the maiiiage.
Harold. The what?
Milly. The marriage.
Harold. The marriage?
Milly. Yeas, the marriage.
Granny says marriages be maade i' 'eaven.
Harold. She Hes ! They are made
in Hell. Child, can't you see?
Tell them to fly for a doctor.
Milly. Oh, law — yeas. Sir !
I'll run fur 'im mysen. \_Exit.
Harold. All silent there.
Yes, deathlike! Dead? I dare not
look : if dead.
Were it best to steal away, to spare my-
self,
And her too, pain, pain, pain?
My curse on all
This world of mud, on all its idiot gleams
Of pleasure, all the foul fatalities
That blast our natural passions into
pains !
Enter DoBSON.
Dobson. You, Master Hedgar, Harold,
or whativer
They calls ye, for I warrants that ye goas
By haafe a scoor o' naames — out o' the
chaumber.
\_Dragging him past the body.
Harold. Not that way, man ! Curse
on your brutal strength !
I cannot pass that way.
Dobson. Out o' the chaumber !
I'll mash tha into novvt.
Harold. The mere wild-beast !
Dobson. Out o' the chaumber, dang
tha!
Harold. Lout, churl, clown !
[ While they are shonting and strug-
gling Dora rises and comes be-
tween them.
Dora (Jo Dobson) . Peace, let him be :
it is the chamber of Death !
Sir, you are tenfold more a gentleman,
A hundred times more worth a woman's
love,
Than this, this — but I waste no words
upon him :
His wickedness is like my wretchedness —
Beyond all language.
( To Harold.)
You — you see her there !
Only fifteen when first you came on her.
And then the sweetest flower of all the
wolds.
So lovely in the promise of her May,
So winsome in her grace and gaiety,
So loved by all the village people here,
So happy in herself and in her home
Dobson {agitated^. Theer, theer ! ha'
done. I can't abear to see her.
S^Exit.
Dora. A child, and all as trustful as
a child !
Five years of shame and suffering broke
the heart
That only beat for you; and he, the
father,
Thro' that dishonour which you brought
upon us,
Has lost his health, his eyesight, even
his mind.
Harold (^covering his face) . Enough !
Dora. Itseem'dso; only there was left
A second daughter, and to her you came
Veiling one sin to act another.
Harold. No !
You wrong me there ! hear, hear me !
I wish'd, if you [Pauses.
Dora. If I
Harold. Could love me, could be
brought to love me
As I loved you
Dora. What then?
Harold. I wish'd, I hoped
To make, to make
Dora. What did you hope to make?
Harold. 'Twere best to make an end
of my lost life.
O Dora, Dora !
Dora. What did you hope to make?
Harold. Make, make ! I cannot find
the word — forgive it —
Amends.
Dora. For what? to whom?
Harold. To him, to you !
\^Falling at her feet.
Dora. To him ! io me !
No, not with all your wealth.
Your land, your life ! Out in the fiercest
storm
That ever made earth tremble — he,
nor I —
78o
THE PROMISE OF MA Y.
The shelter ol your roof — not for one
moment —
Nothing from you !
Sunk in the deepest pit of pauperism,
Push'd from all doors as if we bore the
plague,
Smitten with fever in the open field,
Laid famine-stricken at the gates of
Death —
Nothing from you !
But she there — her last word
Forgave — and I forgive you. If you
ever
Forgive yourself, you are even lower and
baser
Than even I can well believe you. Go !
\_He lies at her feet. Curtain falls
DEMETER
AND OTHER POEMS.
TO THE MARQUIS OF DUF-
FERIN AND AVA.
At times our Britain cannot rest,
At times her steps are swift and rash;
She moving, at her girdle clash
The golden keys of East and West.
Not swift or rash, when late she lent
The sceptres of her West, her East,
To one, that ruling has increased
Her greatness and her self-content.
III.
Your rule has made the people love
Their ruler. Your viceregal days
Have added fulness to the phrase
Of ' Gauntlet in the velvet glove.'
But since your name will grow with Time,
Not all, as honouring your fair name
Of Statesman, have I made the name
A golden portal to my rhyme :
But more, that you and yours may know
From me and mine, how dear a debt
We owed you, and are owing yet
To you and yours, and still would owe.
VI.
For he — your India was his Fate,
And drew him over sea to you —
He fain had ranged her thro' and thro',
To serve her myriads and the State, —
A soul that, watch'd from earliest youth.
And on thro' many a brightening year,
Had never swerved for craft or fear.
By one side-path, from simple truth;
Who might have chased and claspt
Renown
And caught her chaplet here — and
there
In haunts of jungle-poison'd air
The flame of life went wavering down;
IX.
But ere he left your fatal shore,
And lay on that funereal boat,
Dying, * Unspeakable,' he wrote,
'Their kindness,' and he wrote no more;
And sacred is the latest word;
And now the Was, the Might-havC'
been.
And those lone rites I have not seen.
And one drear sound I have not heard,
Are dreams that scarce will let me be.
Not there to bid my boy farewell,
When That within the coffin fell.
Fell — and flash'd into the Red Sea,
XIll
Beneath a haril Arabian moon
And alien stars. To question, why
The sons before the fathers die.
Not mine ! and I may meet him soon ;
XIII.
But while my life's late eve endures,
Nor settles into hueless gray.
My memories of his briefer day
Will mix with love for you and yours.
782
ON THE JUBILEE OF QUEEN VICTORIA.
ON THE JUBILEE OF QUEEN
VICTORIA.
I.
Fifty times the rose has flower'd and
faded,
Fifty times the golden harvest fallen,
Since our Queen assumed the globe, the
sceptre.
II.
She beloved for a kindliness
Rare in Fable or History,
Queen, and Empress of India,
Crovi^n'd so long with a diadem
Never worn by a worthier,
Now with prosperous auguries
Comes at last to the bounteous
Crowning year of her Jubilee.
Nothing of the lawless, of the Despot,
Nothing of the vulgar, or vainglorious.
All is gracious, gentle, great and Queenly.
IV.
You then joyfully, all of you,
Set the mountain aflame to-night,
Shoot your stars to the firmament,
Deck your houses, illuminate
All your towns for a festival.
And in each let a multitude
Loyal, each, to the heart of it.
One full voice of allegiance,
Hail the fair Ceremonial
Of this year of her Jubilee.
Queen, as true to womanhood as Queen-
hood,
Glorying in the glories of her people,
Sorrowing with the sorrows of the lowest !
You, that wanton in affluence.
Spare not now to be bountiful.
Call your poor to regale with you.
All the lowly, the destitute.
Make their neighbourhood health-
fuller,
Give your gold to the Hospital,
Let the weary be comforted,
Let the needy be banqueted.
Let the maim'd in his heart rejoice
At this glad Ceremonial,
And this year of her Jubilee.
Henry's fifty years are all in shadow,
Gray with distance Edward's fifty sum-
mers,
Ev'n her Grandsire's fifty half forgotten.
You, the Patriot Architect,
You that shape for Eternity,
Raise a stately memorial,
Make it regally gorgeous,
Some Imperial Institute,
Rich in symbol, in ornament,
Which may speak to the centuries,
All the centuries after us.
Of this great Ceremonial,
And this year of her Jubilee.
IX.
Fifty years of ever-broadening Com-
merce !
Fifty years of ever-brightening Science !
I'lfty years of ever-widening Empire !
You, the Mighty, the Fortunate,
You, the Lord-territorial,
You, the Lord-manufacturer,
You, the hardy, laborious.
Patient children of Albion,
You, Canadian, Indian,
Australasian, African,
All your hearts be in harmony,
All your voices in unison,
Singing * Hail to the glorious
Golden year of her Jubilee ! '
XI.
Are there thunders moaning in the dis-
tance?
Are there spectres moving in the dark-,
ness?
Trust the Hand of Liglit will lead her
people.
Till the thunders pass, the spectres
vanish,
DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE.
783
And the Light is Victor, and the dark-
ness
Dawns into the Jubilee of the Ages.
TO PROFESSOR JEBB,
WITH THE Following Poem.
Fair things are slow to fade away,
Bear witness you, that yesterday 1
From out the Ghost of Pindar in
you
RoU'd an Olympian; and they say 2
That here the torpid mummy wheat
Of Egypt bore a grain as sweet
As that which gilds the glebe of
England,
Sunn'd with a summer of milder heat.
So may this legend for awhile,
If greeted by your classic smile,
Tho' dead in its Trinacrian Enna,
Blossom again on a colder isle.
DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE.
(In Enna.)
Faint as a climate-changing bird that
flies
All night across the darkness, and at
dawn
Falls on the threshold of her native land,
And-can no more, thou camest, O my
child,
Led upward by the God of ghosts and
dreams.
Who laid thee at Eleusis, dazed and
dumb
With passing thro' at once from state
to state,
Until I brought thee hither,' that the
day.
When here thy hands let fall the gather'd
flower,
Might break thro' clouded memories
once again
On thy lost self. A sudden nightingale
Saw thee, and flash'd into a frolic of
song
1 In Bologna
* They say, for the fact is doubtful.
And welcome; and a gleam as of the
moon,
When first she peers along the tremulous
deep,
Fled wavering o'er thy face, and chased
away
That shadow of a likeness to the king
Of shadows, thy dark mate. Persephone !
Queen of the dead no more — my child!
Thine eyes
Again were human-godlike, and the Sun
Burst from a swimming fleece of winter
gray,
And robed thee in his day from head
to feet —
* Mother ! ' and I was folded in thine
arms.
Child, those imperial, disimpassion'd
eyes
Awed even me at first, thy mother — eyes
That oft had seen the serpent-wanded
power
Draw downward into Hades with his
drift
Of flickering spectres, lighted from below
By the red race of fiery Phlegethon;
But when before have Gods or men be-
. held
The Life that had descended re-arise,
And lighted from above him by the Sun?
So mighty was the mother's childless
cry,
A cry that rang thro' Hades, Earth, and
Heaven !
So in this pleasant vale we stand again,
The field of Enna, now once more ablaze
With flowers that brighten as thy foot-
step falls,
All flowers — but for one black blur of
earth
Left by that closing chasm, thro' which
the car
Of dark Aidorieus rising rapt thee hence.
And here, my child, tho' folded in thine
arms,
I feel the deathless heart of motherhood
Within me shudder, lest the naked glebe
Should yawn once more into the gulf,
and thence
The shrilly whinnyings of the team of
Hell,
784
DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE.
Ascending, pierce the glad and songful
air,
And all at once their arch'd necks, mid-
night-maned,
Jet upward thro' the mid-day blossom.
No!
For, see, thy foot has touch' d it; all the
space
Of blank earth-baldness clothes itself
afresh.
And breaks into the crocus-purple hour
That saw thee vanish.
Child, when thou wert gone,
I envied human wives, and nested birds,
Yea, the cubb'd lioness; went in search
of thee
Thro' many a palace, many a cot, and
gave
Thy breast to ailing infants in the night.
And set the mother waking in amaze
To find her sick one whole; and forth
again
Among the wail of midnight winds, and
cried,
'Where is my loved one? Wherefore
do ye wail?'
And out from all the night an answer
shrill'd,
' We know not, and we know not why
we wail.'
I climb'd on all the cliffs of all the
seas.
And ask'd the waves that moan about
the world,
* Where? do ye make your moaning for
my child?'
And round from all the world the voices
came,
*We know not, ^^ id we know not why
we moan.'
* Where ? ' and I stared from every eagle-
peak,
I thridded the black heart of all the
woods,
I peer'd thro' tomb and cave, and in the
storms
Of Autumn swept across the city, and
heard
The murmur of their temples chanting
me,
Me, me, the desolate Mother ! * Where ? '
— and turri'd.
And fled by many a waste, forlorn of
man.
And griev'd for man thro' all my grief
for thee, —
The jungle rooted in his shatter'd hearth.
The serpent coil'd about his broken shaft,
The scorpion crawling over naked
skulls; —
I saw the tiger in the ruin'd fane
Spring from his fallen God, but trace of
thee
I saw not; and far on, and, following out
A league of labyrinthine darkness, came
On three gray heads beneath a gleaming
rift.
' Where ? ' and I heard one voice from
all the three,
* We know not, for we spin the lives of
men.
And not of Gods, and know not why we
spin !
There is a Fate beyond us.' Nothing
knew.
Last, as the likeness of a dying man.
Without his knowledge, from him flits to
warn
A far-off friendship that he comes no
more,
So he, the God of dreams, who heard
my cry.
Drew from thyself the likeness of thyself
Without thy knowledge, and thy shadow
past
Before me, crying, * The Bright oite in
the highest
Is brother of the Dark one in the lowest.
And Bright and Dark have sworn that I,
the child
Of thee, the great Earth-Mother, thee,
the Power
That lifts her buried life from gloom to
bloom.
Should be for ever and for evermore
The Bride of Darkness.'
So the Shadow wail'd.
Then I, Earth-Goddess, cursed the Gods
of Heaven.
I would not mingle with their feasts; to
me
Their nectar smack'd of hemlock on the
lips,
DE METER AND PERSEPHONE— OWD ROA.
785
Their rich ambrosia tasted aconite.
The man, that only lives and loves an
hour,
Seem'd nobler than their hard Eternities.
My quick tears kill'd the flower, my
ravings hush'd
The bird, and lost in utter grief I fail'd
To send my life thro' olive-yard and
vine
And golden grain, my gift to helpless
man.
Rain-rotten died the wheat, the barPsy-
spears
Were hollow-husk'd, the leaf fell, and
the sun,
Pale at my grief, drew down before his
time
Sickening, and ^tna kept her winter
snow.
Then He, the brother of this Darkness,
He
Who still is highest, glancing from his
height
On earth a fruitless fallow, when he
miss'd
The wonted steam of sacrifice, the praise
And prayer of men, decreed that thou
should'st dwell
For nine white moons of each whole year
with me.
Three dark ones in the shadow with thy
King.
Once more the reaper in the gleam of
dawn
Will see me by the landmark far away,
Blessing his field, or seated in the dusk
Of even, by the lonely threshing-floor,
Rejoicing in the harvest and the grange.
Yet I, Earth-Goddess, am but ill-
content
With them, who still are highest. Those
gray heads.
What meant they by their ' Fate beyond
the Fates'
But younger kindlier Gods to bear us
down.
As we bore down the Gods before us?
Gods,
To quench, not hurl the thunderbolt, to
stay,
Not spread the plague, the famine; Gods
indeed,
3E
To send the noon into the night and
break
The sunless halls of Hades into Heaven?
Till thy dark lord accept and love the
Sun,
And all the Shadow die into the Light,
When thou shalt dwell the whole bright
year with me,
And souls of men, who grew beyond
their race,
And made themselves as Gods against
the fear
Of Death and Hell; and thou that hast
from men,
As Queen of Death, that worship which
is Fear,
Henceforth, as having risen from out the
dead,
Shalt ever send thy life along with mine
From buried grain thro' springing blade,
and bless
Their garner'd Autumn also, reap with
me.
Earth-mother, in the harvest hymns of
Earth
The worship which is Love, and see no
more
The Stone, the Wheel, the dimly-
glimmering lawns •
Of that Elysium, all the hateful fires
Of torment, and the shadowy warrior
ghde
Along the silent field of Asphodel.
OWD ROA.i
Naay, noa mander^ o' use to be callin^
'im Roa, Roa, Roa,
Fur the dog's stoan-deaf, an' e's blind, 'e.
can naither stan' nor goa.
But I means fur to maake 'is owd aage
as 'appy as iver I can.
Fur I owas owd Roaver moor nor I iver
owad mottal man.
Thou's rode of 'is back when a babby,
afoor thou was gotten too owd,
Fur 'e'd fetch an' carry like owt, 'e was
alius as good as gowd.
1 Old Rover.
* Manner.
786
01V£> ROA.
Eh, but 'e'd fight M'i' a will wheti 'e
fowt; 'e could howd^ 'is oan,
An' Roa was the dog as knaw'd when
an' wheere to bury his boane.
An' 'e kep' his head hoop Hke a king, an'
'e'd niver not down wi' 'is taail,
Fur 'e'd niver done nowt to be shaamed
on, when we was i' Howlaby
Daale.
An' 'e sarved me sa well when 'e lived,
that, Dick, when 'e cooms to be
dead,
I thinks as I'd like fur to hev soom soort
of a sarvice read.
Fur 'e's moor good sense na the Parlia-
ment man 'at stans fur us 'ere,
An' I'd voat fur 'im, my oan sen, if 'e
could but Stan' fur the Shere.
* Faaithful an' True ' — them words be i'
Scriptur — an' Faaithful an' True
'Ull be fun' ^ upo' four short legs ten times
fur one upo' two.
An' maaybe they'll walk upo' two but I
knaws they -runs upo' four,^ —
Bedtime, Dicky ! but waait till tha 'ears
it be strikin' the hour.
Fur I wants to tell tha o' Roa when we
lived i' Howlaby Daale,
Ten year sin' — Naay — naay ! tha mun
nobbut hev' one glass of aale.
Straange an' owd-farran'd * the 'ouse, an'
belt^ long afoor my daay
Wi' haafe o' the chimleys a-twizzen'd^
an' twined like a band o' haay.
The fellers as maakes them picturs, 'ud
coom at the fall o' the year,
An' sattle their ends upo' stools to pictur
the door-poorch theere,
An' the Heagle 'as hed two heads stannin'
theere o' the brokken stick; '^
An' they niver 'ed seed sich ivin'^ as
graw'd hall ower the bricTc;
* Hold. 2 Found. ^ * Ou ' as in ' house.'
* * Owd-farran'd,' old-fashioned. ^ Built.
6 * Twizzen'd,' twisted. '^ On a staff ragule.
8 Ivy.
An' theere i' the 'ouse one night — but
it's down, an' all on it now
Goan into mangles an' tonups,i an'
raaved slick thruf by the plow —
Theere, when the 'ouse wur a house, one
night I wur sittin' aloan,
Wi' Roaver athurt my feeat, an' sleeapin
still as a stoan,
Of a Christmas Eave, an' as cowd as
• this, an' the midders^ as white,
An' the fences all on 'em bolster'd oop
wi' the windle^ that night;
An' the cat wur a-sleeapin alongside
Roaver, but I wur awaake.
An' smoakin' an' thinkin' o' things —
Doant maake thysen sick wi' the
caake.
Fur the men ater supper 'ed sung their
songs an' 'ed 'ed their beer,
An' 'ed goan their waays; ther was nob-
but three, an' noan on 'em theere.
They was all on 'em fear'd o' the Ghoast
an' dussn't not slgeap i' the 'ouse,
But Dicky, the Ghoast moastlins* was
nobbut a rat or a mouse.
An' I loookt out wonst^ at the night,
an' the daale was all of a thaw,
Fur I seed the beck coomin' down like a
long black snaake i' the snaw,
An' I heard great heaps o' the snaw
slushin' down fro' the bank to the
beck,
An' then as I stood i' the doorwaay, I
feeald it drip o' my neck.
Saw I turn'd in agean, an' I thowt o'
the good owd times 'at was goan.
An' the munney they maade by the war,
an' the times 'at was coomin' on;
Fur I thowt if the Staate was a-gawin'
to let in furriners' wheat,
Howiver was British farmers to stan'
agean o' their feeat.
^ Mangolds and turnips.
2 Meadows. ^ Drifted snow.
* * Moastlins,' for the most part, generally.
6 Once.
OlVn ROA.
787
Howiver was I fur to find my rent an'
to paay my men?
An' all along o' the feller ^ as turn'd 'is
back of hissen.
rhou slep' i' the chaumber above us, we
couldn't ha' 'card tha call,
Sa Moother 'ed tell'd ma to bring tha
down, an' thy craadle an' all;
Fur the gell o' the farm 'at slep' wi' tha
then 'ed gotten wer leave,
Fur to goa that night to 'er foalk by cause
o' the Christmas Eave;
But I clean forgot tha, my lad, when
Moother *ed gotten to bed,
An' I slep' i' my chair hup-on -end, an'
the Freea Traade runn'd i' my
'ead,
Till I dream'd 'at Squire walkt in, an' I
says to him, • Squire, ya're laate,'
Then I seed at 'is faace wur as red as the
Yule-block theere i' the graate.
An' •'e says, ' Can ya paay me the rent to-
night?' an' I says to 'im, *Noa,'
An' 'e cotch'd howd hard o' my hairm,^
' Then hout to-night tha shall goa.'
*Tha'll niver,' says I, 'be a-turnin' ma
hout upo' Christmas Eave?'
Then I waaked an' I fun it was Roaver
a-tuggin' an' tearin' my slieave.
An' I thowt as 'e'd goan clean-wud,* fur
I noawaays knaw'd 'is intent;
An' I says, ' Git awaay, ya beast,' an' I
fetcht 'im a kick an' 'e went.
Then 'e tummled up stairs, fur I 'card
'im, as if 'e'd 'a brokken 'is neck,
An' I'd clear forgot, little Dicky, thy
chaumber door wouldn't sneck;*
An' I slep' i' my chair agean wi' my
hairm hingin' down to the floor.
An' I thowt it was Roaver a-tuggin' an'
tearin' me wuss nor afoor,
iPeel. 2 Arm. 3 Mad. * Latch.
An' I thowt 'at I kick'd 'im agean, but I
kick'd thy Moother istead.
•What arta snorin' theere fur? the house
is afire,' she said.
Thy Moother 'ed beSn a-naggin' about
the gell o' the farm.
She offens 'ud spy summut wrong when
there warn't not a mossel o' harm;
An' she didn't not solidly mean I wur
gawin' that waay to the bad.
Fur the gell ^ was as howry a troUope as
iver traapes'd i' the squad.
But Moother was free of 'er tongue, as I
offens 'ev tell'd 'er niysen,
Sa I kep' i' my chair, fur I thowt she
was nobbut a-rilin' ma then.
An' 1 says, ' I'd be good to tha, Bess, if
tha'd onywaays let ma be good,'
But she skelpt ma haafe ower i' the chair,
an' scread like a Howl gone
wud^ —
* Ya mun run fur the lether.^ Git cop,
if ya're onywaays good for owt.'
And I says, * If I beant noawaays — not
nowadaays — good fur nowt —
• Yit I beant sich a Nowt * of all Nowts
as 'ull hallus do as 'e's bid.'
' But the stairs is afire,' she said; then I
seed 'er a-cryin', I did.
An' she beald, * Ya mun saave little Dick,
an' -be sharp about it an' all,'
Sa I runs to the yard fur a lether, an'
sets 'im agean the wall.
An' I claums an' I mashes the winder
hin, when I gits to the top,
But the heat druv hout i' my heyes till I
feald mysen ready to drop.
1 The girl was as dirty a slut as ever trudged
in the mud, but there is a sense of slatternliness
in ' traapes'd' which is not expressed in ' trudged. '
2 She half overturned me and shrieked like an
owl gone mad. ^ Ladder.
* A thoroughly insignificant or worthless
person.
788
OfVn ROA — VASTNESS.
Thy Moother was howdin' the lether, an'
tellin' me not to be skeard,
An' I wasn't afeard, or I thinks leaast-
waays as I wasn't afeard;
But I couldn't see fur the smoake wheere
thou was a-liggin, my lad,
An' Roaver was theere i' the chaumber
a-yowlin' an' yaupin' like mad;
An' thou was a-bealin' likewise, an' a-
squealin', as if tha was bit,
An' it wasn't a bite but a burn, fur the
merk'si o' thy shou'der yit;
Then I call'd out Roa, Roa, Roa, thaw
I didn't haafe think as 'e'd 'ear.
But V cooni'd thruf the fire wi'' my bairn
V Hs mouth to the winder theere!
He coom'd like a H angel o' marcy as
soon as 'e 'eard 'is naame,
Or like tother Hangel i' Scriptur 'at
summun seed i' the flaame,
When summun 'ed hax'd fur a son, an'
'e promised a son to she.
An' Roa was as good as the Hangel i'
saavin' a son fur me.
Sa I browt tha down, an' I says, ' I mun
gaw up agean fur Roa.'
' Gaw up agean fur the varmint? ' I tell'd
'er^ ' Yeas I mun goa.'
An' I claumb'd up agean to the winder,
an' clemm'd ^ owd Roa by the 'ead,
An' 'is 'air coom'd off i' my 'ands an' I
taaked 'im at fust fur dead;
Fur 'e smell'd like a herse a-singein', an'
seeam'd as blind as a poop,
An' haafe on 'im bare as a bublin'.^ I
couldn't wakken 'im oop,
But I browt 'im down, an' we got to the
barn, fur the barn wouldn't burn
Wi' the wind blawin' hard tother waay,
an' the wind wasn't like to turn.
1 Mark. 2 Clutched.
3 * Bubbling,' a young unfledged bird.
An' /kep'a-callin' o' Roa till 'e waggled
'is taail fur a bit.
But the cocks kep"' a-crawin' an' crawin
all night, an' I 'ears 'em yit;
An' the dogs was a-yowlin' all round, and
thou was a-squealin' thysen,
An' Moother was naggin' an' groanin' an'
moanin' an' naggin' agean;
An' I 'eard the bricks an' the baulks i
rummle down when the roof gev
waay.
Fur the fire was a-raagin' an' raavin' an'
roarin' like judgment daay.
Warm enew theere sewer-ly, but the barn
was as cowd as owt,
An' we cuddled and huddled togither, an'
happt '^ wersens oop as we mowt.
An' I browt Roa round, but Moother 'ed
bean sa soak'd wi' the thaw
'At she cotch'd 'er death o' cowd that
night, poor soul, i' the straw.
Haafe o' the parish runn'd oop when the
rigtree ^ was tummlin' in — *
Too laate — but it's all ower now — hall
hower — an' ten year sin';
Too laate, tha mun git tha to bed, but
I'll coom an' I'll squench the light.
Pur we moant 'ev naw moor fires — and
soa little Dick, good-night.
VASTNESS.
Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs
after many a vanish'd face.
Many a planet by many a sun may roll
with the dust of a vanish'd race.
Raving politics, never at rest — as this
poor earth's pale history runs, —
What is it all but a trouble of ants in the
gleam of a million million of suns?
1 Beams. 2 Wrapt ourselves.
3 The beam that runs along the roof of fh*
house just beneath tlie ridge.
FASTNESS.
789
III.
Lies upon this side, lies upon that side,
truthless violence mourn'd by the
Wise,
Thousands of voices drowning his own in
a popular torrent of lies upon lies;
IV.
Stately purposes, valour in battle, glorious
annals of army and fleet,
Death for the right cause, death for the
wrong cause, trumpets of victory,
groans of defeat;
Innocence seethed in her mother's milk,
and Charity setting the martyr
aflame;
Thraldom who walks with the banner of
Freedom, and recks not to ruin a
realm in her name.
VI.
Faith at her zenith, or all but lost in the
gloom of doubts that darken the
schools;
Craft with a bunch of all-heal in her
hand, foUow'd up by her vassal
legion of fools;
VII.
Trade flying over a thousand seas with
her spice and her vintage, her silk
and her corn;
Desolate offing, sailorless harbours,
famishing populace, wharves for-
lorn;
VIII.
Star of the morning, Hdpe in the sunrise;
gloom of the evening, Life at a
close ;
Pleasure who flaunts on her wide down-
way with her flying robe and her
poison'd rose ;
IX.
Pain, that has crawl'd from the corpse of
Pleasure, a worm which writhes
all day, and at night
Stirs up again in the heart of the sleeper,
and stings him back to the curse
of the light;
X.
Wealth with his wines and his wedded
harlots; honest Poverty, bare to
the bone;
Opulent Avarice, lean as Poverty;
Flattery gilding the rift in a
throne ;
XI.
Fame blowing out from her golden
trumpet a jubilant challenge to
Time and to Fate;
Slander, her shadow, sowing the nettle on
all the laurel'd graves of the Great;
Love for the maiden, crown'd with
marriage*, no regrets - for aught
that has been,
Household happiness, gracious chil-
dren, debtless competence, golden
mean;
XIII.
National hatreds of whole generations,
and pigmy spites of the village
spire;
Vows that will last to the last death-
ruckle, and vows that are snapt
in a moment of fire ;
He that has lived for the lust of the
minute, and died in the doing it,
flesh without mind;
He that has nail'd all flesh to the Cross,
till Self died out in the love of
his kind;
XV.
Spring and Summer and Autumn and
Winter, and all these old revolu-
tions of earth ;
All new-old revolutions of Empire —
change of the tide — what is all of
it worth?
XVI.
What the philosophies, all the sciences,
poesy, varying voices of prayer?
790
THE RING.
All that is noblest, all that is basest, all
that is filthy with all that is fair?
XVII.
What is it all, if we all of us end but in
. being our own corpse-coffins at
last,
Swallow'd in Vastness, lost in Silence,
drown'd in the deeps of a mean-
ingless Past?
What but a murmur of gnats in the
gloom, or a moment's anger of
bees in their hive? —
Peace, let it be ! for I loved him, and
love him for ever : the dead are
not dead but alive.
©flJicateU to tijc l^on. 3. Kusscll
ILobJElL
THE RING.
Miriam and her Father.
Miriam (singing).
Mellow moon of heaven,
Bright in blue,
Moon of married hearts,
Hear me, you !
Twelve times in the year
Bring me bliss,
Globing Honey Moons
Bright as this.
Moon, you fade at times
From the night.
Young again you grow
Out of sight.
Silver crescent-curve.
Coming soon,
Globe again, and make
Honey Moon.
Shall not my love last,
Moon, with you,
For ten thousand years
Old and new?
Father. And who was he with such
love-drunken eyes
They made a thousand honey moons ol
one?
Miriam. The prophet of his own, my
Hubert — his
The words, and mine the setting. *Air
and Words,'
Said Hubert, when I sang the song, ' are
bride
And bridegroom.' Does it please you?
Father. Mainly, child,
Because I hear your Mother's voice in
yours.
'She Why, you shiver tho' the wind
is west
With all the warmth of summer.
Miriam. Well, I felt
On a sudden I know not what, a breath
that past
With all the cold of winter.
Father {muttering to himself). Even
so.
The Ghost in Man, the Ghost that once
was Man,
But cannot wholly free itself from Man,
Are calling to each other thro' a dawn
Stranger than earth has ever seen; the
. veil
Is rending, and the Voices of the day
Are heard across the Voices of the dark.
No sudden heaven, nor sudden hell, for
man,
But thro' the Will of One who knows
and rules —
And utter knowledge is but utter love —
yEonian Evolution, swift or slow,
Thro' all the Spheres — an ever opening
height.
An ever lessening earth — and she per-
haps,
My Miriam, breaks her latest earthly link
With me to-day.
Miriam. You speak so low, what is
it?
Your ' Miriam breaks ' — is making a new
link
Breaking an old one?
Father. No, for we, my child,
Have been till now each other's all-in-all.
THE RING.
791
Mh'iam. And you the lifelong guar-
dian of the child.
Father. I, and one other whom you
have not known.
Miriam. And who? what other?
Father. Whither are you bound?
For Naples which we only left in May?
Miriam. No ! father, Spain, but
Hubert brings me home
With April and the swallow. Wish me
joy !
Father. What need to wish when
Hubert weds in you
The heart of Love, and you the soul of
Truth
In Hubert?
Miriam. Tho' you used to call me
once
The lonely maiden-Princess of the wood,
Who meant to sleep her hundred sum-
mers out
Before a kiss should wake her.
Father. Ay, but now
Your fairy Prince has found you, take
this ring.
Miriam. ' to t'amo ' — and these dia-
monds — beautiful !
• From Walter,' and for me from you then?
Father. Well,
One way for Miriam.
Miriam. Miriam am I not?
Father. This ring bequeath'd you by
your mother, child.
Was to be given you — such her dying
wish —
Given on the morning when you came of
age
Or on the day you married. Both the
days
Now close in one. The ring is doubly
yours.
Why do you look so gravely at the tower?
Miriam. I never saw it yet so all
ablaze
With creepers crimsoning to the pin-
nacles,
As if perpetual sunset linger'd there.
And all ablaze loo in the lake below !
And how the birds that circle round the
tower
Are cheeping to each other of their flight
To summer lands !
Father. And that has made you grave ?
Fly — care not. Birds and brides must
leave the nest.
Child, I am happier in your happiness
Than in mine own.
Miriam. It is not that !
Father. What else?
Miria?Ti. That chamber in the tower.
Father. What chamber, child?
Your nurse is here?
Miriam. My Mother's nurse and mine.
She comes to dress me in my bridal veil.
Father. What did she say?
Miriam. She said, that you and I
Had been abroad for my poor health so
long
She fear'd I had forgotten her, and I
ask'd
About my Mother, and she said, *Thy
hair
Is golden like thy Mother's, not so fine.'
Father. What then? what more?
Miriam,. She said — perhaps indeed
She wander'd, having wander'd now so
far
Beyond the common date of death — that
you.
When I was smaller than the statuette
Of my dear Mother on your bracket
here —
You took me to that chamber in the
tower,
The topmost — a chest there, by which
you knelt —
And there were books and dresses — left
to me,
A ring too which you kiss'd, and I, she
said,
I babbled. Mother, Mother — as I used
To prattle to her picture — stretch' d my
hands
As if I saw her; then a woman came
And caught me from my nurse. I hear
her yet —
A sound of anger like a distant storm.
Father. Garrulous old crone.
Miriam. Poor nurse !
Father. I bade her keep.
Like a seal'd book, all mention of the
ring,
For I myself would tell you all to-day.
Miriam. ' She too might speak to-
day,' she mumbled. Still,
I scarce have learnt the title of your book,
794
THE RING.
But you will turn the pages.
Father. Ay, to-day !
I brought you to that chamber on your
third
September birthday with your nurse, and
felt
An icy breath play on me, while I stoopt
To take and kiss the ring.
Miriam. This very ring
lo t'amo?
Father. Yes, for some wild hope was
mine
That, in the misery of my married life,
Miriam your Mother might appear to
me.
She came to you, not me. The storm,
you hear
Far-off, is Muriel — your stepmother's
voice.
Mii'iam. Vext, that you thought my
Mother came to me?
Or at my crying * Mother'? or to find
My Mother's diamonds hidden from her
• there,
Like worldly beauties in the Cell, not
shown
To dazzle all that see them?
Father. Wait awhile.
Your Mother and step-mother — Miriam
Erne
And Muriel Erne — the two were cousins
— lived
With Muriel's mother on the down, that
sees
A thousand squares of corn and meadow,
far
As the gray deep, a landscape which
your eyes
Have many a time ranged over when a
babe.
Miriam. I climb'd the hill with
Hubert yesterday.
And from the thousand squares, one
silent voice
Came on the wind, and seem'd to say
' Again.'
We saw far off an old forsaken house.
Then home, and past the ruin'd mill.
Father. ■ And there
I found these cousins often by the brook,
For Miriam sketch'd and Muriel threw
the fly;
The girls of equal age, but one was fair.
And one was dark, and both were beauti-
ful.
No voice for either spoke within my heart
Then, for the surface eye, that only dotes
On outward beauty, glancing from the one
To the other, knew not that which
pleased it most.
The raven ringlet or the gold; but both
Were dowerless, and myself, I used to
walk
This Terrace — morbid, melancholy;
mine
And yet not mine the hall, the farm, the
field;
For all that ample woodland whisper'd
. ' debt,'
The brook that feeds this lakelet mur-
mur'd ' debt,'
And in yon arching avenue of old elms,
Tho' mine, not mine, I heard the sober
rook
And carrion crow cry 'mortgage.'
Miriam. Father's fault
Visited on the children !
Father. Ay, but then
A kinsman, dying, summun'd me to
Rome —
He left me wealth — and while I jour
ney'd hence.
And saw the world fly by me like a
dream,
And while I communed with my truest
self,
I woke to all of truest in myself.
Till, in the gleam of those mid-summer
dawns,
The form of Muriel faded, and the face
Of Miriam grew upon me, till I knew;
And past and future mix'd in Heaven
and made i
The rosy twilight of a perfect day. '--\
Miriam. So glad? no tear for him,
who left you wealth.
Your kinsman? *
Father. I had seen the man but onco, I
He loved my name not me; and then I a
pass'd
Home, and thro' Venice, where a jeweller.
So far gone down, or so far up in life,
That he was nearing his own hundred,
sold
This ring to me, then laugh'd, * The ring
is weird.'
THE RING,
793
And weird and worn and wizard-like was
A hollow laughter !
he.
Miriam. Vile, so near the ghost
• Why weird? ' 1 ask'd him; and he said,
Himself, to laugh at love in death ! But
' The souls
you?
Of two repentant Lovers guard the ring; *
Father. Well, as the bygone lover
Then with a ribald twinkle in his bleak
thro' this ring
eyes —
Had sent his cry for her forgiveness, I
' And if you give the ring to any maid,
Would call thro' this * lo t'amo ' to the
They still remember what it cost them
heart
here,
Of Miriam; then I bade the man en-
And bind the maid to love you by the
grave
ring;
' From Walter ' on the ring, and send it
And if the ring were stolen from the
— wrote
maid,
Name, surname, all as clear as noon, but
The theft were death or madness to the
he —
thief,
Some younger hand must have engraven
So sacred those Ghost Lovers hold the
the ring —
gift.'
His fingers were so stifFen'd by the frost
And then he told their legend :
Of seven and ninety winters, that he
* Long ago
scrawl'd
Two lovers parted by a scurrilous tale
A ' Miriam ' that might seem a ' Muriel ';
Had quarrell'd, till the man repenting
And Muriel claim'd and open'd what I
sent
meant
This ring " lo t'amo " to his best beloved.
For Miriam, took the ring, and flaunted
And sent it on her birthday. She -in
it
wrath
Before that other whom I loved and love.
Return'd it on her birthday, and that day
A mountain stay'd me here, a minster
His death-day, when, half-frenzied by the
there.
ring.
A galleried palace, or a battlefield,
He wildly fought a rival suitor, him
Where stood the sheaf of Peace: but —
The causer of that scandal, fought and
coming home —
fell;
And on your Mother's birthday — all but
And she that came to part them all too
yours —
late.
A week betwixt — and when the tower as
And found a corpse and silence, drew the
now
ring
Was all ablaze with crimson to the roof,
From his dead finger, wore it till her
And all ablaze too plunging in the lake
death,
Head-foremost — who were those that
Shrined him within the temple of her
stood between
heart,
The tower and that rich phantom of the
Made every moment of her after life
tower?
A virgin victim to his memory,
Muriel and Miriam, each in white, and
And dying rose, and rear'd her arms, and
Hke
cried
May-blossoms in mid autumn — was it
" I see him, lo t'amo, lo t'amo." '
they?
Miriam. Legend or true? so tender
A light shot upward on them from the
should be true !
lake.
Did he believe it? did you ask him?
What sparkled there? whose hand was
Father. Ay !
that? they stood
But that half skeleton, like a barren
So close together. I am not keen of
ghost
sight.
From out the fleshless world of spirits,
But coming nearer — Muriel had the
laugh'd :
^ ring —
794
THE RING.
* O Miriam ! have you given your ring to
her?
O Miriam ! ' Miriam redden'd, Muriel
clench'd
The hand that wore it, till I cried again :
' O Miriam, if you love me take the ring ! '
She glanced at me, at Muriel, and was
mute.
* Nay, if you cannot love me, let it be.'
Then — Muriel standing ever statue-like —
She turn'd, and ia her soft imperial way
And saying gently : ' Muriel, by your
leave,'
Unclosed the hand, and from it drew the
ring,
And gave it me, who pass'd it down her
own,
* lo t'amo, all is well then.' Muriel fled.
Miriam. Poor Muriel !
Father. Ay, poor Muriel
when you hear
What follows ! Miriam loved me from
the first,
Not thro' the ring; but on her marriage-
morn
This birthday, death -day, and betrothal
ring,
Laid on her table overnight, was gone;
And after hours of search and doubt and
threats,
And hubbub, Muriel enter'd with it,
* See ! —
Found in a chink of that old moulder'd
floor ! '
My Miriam nodded with a pitying smile,
As who should say * that those who lose
can find.'
Then I and she were married for a
year.
One year without a storm, or even a
cloud;
And you my Miriam born within the
year;
And she my Miriam dead within the year.
I sat beside her dying, and she gaspt :
'The books, the miniature, the lace are
hers.
My ring too when she comes of age, or
when
She marries; you — you loved me, kept
your word.
You love me still "lo t'amo." — Muriel
— no —
She cannot love; "she loves her own
hard self.
Her firm will, her fix'd purpose. Prom-
ise me,
Miriam not Muriel — she shall have the
ring.'
And there the light of other life, which
lives
Beyond our burial and our buried eyes,
Gleam'd for a moment in her own on
earth.
I swore the vow, then with my latest
kiss
Upon them, closed her eyes, which would
not close.
But kept their watch upon the ring and
you.
Your birthday was her death -day.
Miriam. O poor Mother !
And you, poor desolate Father, and
poor me.
The little senseless, worthless, wordless
babe.
Saved when your life was wreck'd !
Father. Desolate? yes!
Desolate as that sailor, whom the storm
Had parted from his comrade in the boat,
And diash'd half dead on barren sands,
was I.
Nay, you were my one solace; only —
you
Were always ailing. Muriel's mother
sent.
And sure am I, by Muriel, one day came
And saw you, shook her head, and patted
yours.
And smiled, and making with a kindly
pinch
Each poor pale cheek a momentary rose —
* That should be fix'd,' she said; 'your
pretty bud.
So blighted here, would flower into full
health
Among our heath and bracken. Let her
come !
And we will feed her with our mountain
air.
And send her home to you rejoicing.*
No —
We could not part. And once, when
you my girl
Rode on my shoulder home — the tiny
fist
THE RING.
795
Had graspt a daisy from your Mother's
And all her talk was of the babe she
grave —
loved;
By the lych-gate was Muriel. ' Ay,' she
So, following her old pastime of the
said,
brook.
'Among the tombs in this damp vale of
She threw the fly for me; but oftener
yours !
left
You scorn my Mother's warning, but the
That angling to the mother. * Muriel's
child
health
Is paler than before. We often walk
Had weaken'd, nursing little Miriam.
In open sun, and see beneath our feet
Strange !
The mist of autumn gather from your
She used to shun the wailing babe, and
lake,
dotes
And shroud the tower; and once v(4e
On this of yours.' But when the matirn
only saw
saw
Your gilded vane, a light above the
That hinted love was only wasted bait,
mist ' —
Not risen to, she was bolder. 'Ever
(Our old bright bird that still is veering
since
there
You sent the fatal ring " — I told her
Above his four gold letters) 'and the
* sent
light,'
To Miriam,' 'Doubtless — ay, but ever,
She said, * was like that light ' — and there
since
she paused,
In all the world my dear one sees but
And long; till I believing that the girl's
you —
Lean fancy, groping for it, .could not
In your sweet bal:)e she finds but you —
find
she makes
One likeness, laugh'd a little and found
Her heart a mirror that reflects but you.'
her two —
And then the tear fell, the voice broke.
* A warrior's crest above the cloud of
Her heart !
war ' —
I gazed into the mirror, as a man
' A fiery phoenix rising from the smoke,
Who sees his face in water, and a stone,
The pyre he burnt in.' — * Nay,' she said,
That glances from the bottom of the
' the light
pool,
That glimmers on the marsh and on the
Strike upward thro' the shadow; yet at
grave.'
last.
And spoke no more, but turn'd and
Gratitude — loneliness — desire to keep
pass'd away.
So skilled a nurse about you always —
Miriam, I am not surely one of those
nay!
Caught by the flower that closes on the
Some half remorseful kind of pity too —
fly,
Well ! well, you know I married Muriel
But a:fter ten slow weeks her fix'd intent.
Erne.
In aiming at an all but hopeless mark
*I take thee Muriel for my wedded
To strike it, struck; I took, I left you
wife' —
there;
I had forgotten it was your birthday.
I came, I went, was happier day by
child —
day;
When all at once with some electric
For Muriel nursed you with a mother's
thrill
care;
A cold air pass'd between us, and the
Till on that clear and heather-scented
hands
height
Fell from each other, and were join'd
The rounder cheek had brighten'd into
again.
bloom.
No second cloudless honeymoon was
She always came to meet me carrying.
mine.
you,
For by and by she sicken'd of the farce.
796
THE RING.
She dropt the gracious mask of mother-
hood,
She came no more to meet me, carrying
you.
Nor ever cared to set you on her knee,
Nor ever let you gambol in her sight,
Nor ever cheer'd you with a kindly
smile,
Nor ever ceased to clamour for the ring;
Why had I sent the ring at first to her?
Why had I made her love me thro' the
ring,
And then had changed? so fickle are
men — the best !
Not she — but now my love was hers
again.
The ring by right, she said, was hers
again.
At. times too shrilling in her angrier
moods,
* That weak and watery nature love you?
No!
" lo t'amo, lo t'amo " ! ' flung herself
Against my heart, but often while her
lips
Were warm upon my cheek, an icy
breath.
As from the grating of a sepulchre.
Past over both. I told her of my vow.
No pliable idiot I to break my vow;
But still she made her outcry for the
ring;
For one monotonous fancy madden'd her,
Till I myself was madden'd with her
cry.
And even that * lo t'amo,' those three
sweet
Italian words, became a weariness.
My people too were scared with eerie
sounds,
A footstep, a low throbbing in the walls,
A noise of falling weights that never
fell.
Weird whispers, bells that rang without
a hand.
Door-handles turn'd when none was at
the door.
And bolted doors that open'd of them-
selves :
And one betwixt the dark and light had
seen
Her., bending by the cradle of her
babe.
Miriam. And I remember once that
being waked
By noises in the house — and no one
near —
I cried for nurse, and felt a gentle hand
Fall on my forehead, and a sudden face
Look'd in upon me like a gleam and
pass'd
And I was quieted, and slept again.
Or is it some half memory of a dream?
Father, Your fifth September birth-
day.
^Miriam. And the face,
The hand, — my Mother.
Father. Miriam, on that day
Two lovers parted by no scurrilous tale —
Mere want of gold — and still for twenty
years
Bound by the golden cord of their first
love —
Had ask'd us to their marriage, and to
share
Their marriage -banquet. Muriel, paler
then
Than ever you were in your cradle,
moan'd,
* I am fitter for my bed, or for ray grave,
I cannot go, go you.' And then she
rose,
She clung to me with such a hard em-
brace,
So lingeringly long, that half-amazed
I parted from her, and I went alone.
And when the bridegroom murmur'd,
* With this ring,'
I felt for what I could not find, the key,
The guardian of her relics, of her ring.
I kept it as a sacred amulet
About me, — gone ! and gone in that
embrace !
Then, hurrying home, I found her not
in house
Or garden — up the tower — an icy air
Fled by me. — There, the chest was open
— all
The sacred relics tost about the floor —
Among them Muriel lying on her face —
I raised her, call'd her, ' Muriel, Muriel,
wake ! '
The fatal ring lay near her; the glazed
eye
Glared at me as in horror. Dead! I
took
THE RING — FORLORN.
797
And chafed the freezing hand. A red
mark ran
All round one finger pointed straight,
the rest
Were crumpled inwards. Dead ! — and
maybe stung
With some remorse, had stolen, worn the
ring —
Then torn it from her finger, or as if —
For never had I seen her show remorse —
Asif—
Miriam. — those two Ghost Lovers —
Father. — lovers yet —
Mifiaj?i. Yes, yes !
Father. — but dead so long, gone up
so far,
That now their ever-rising life has
dwarfd
Or lost the moment of their past on
earth.
As we forget our wail at being born.
Asif—
Miriam. — a dearer ghost had —
Father. — wrsnch'd it away.
Miriam. Had floated in with sad
reproachful eyes.
Till from her own hand she had torn the
ring
In fright, and fallen dead. And I my-
self
Am half afraid to wear it.
Father. Well, no more !
No bridal music this ! but fear not you !
You have the ring she guarded; that
poor link
With earth is broken, and has left her
free,
Except that, still drawn downward for
an hour,
Her spirit hovering by the church, where
she
Was married too, may linger, till she
sees
Her maiden coming like a Queen, who
leaves
Some colder province in the North to
gain
Her capital city, where the loyal bells
Clash welcome — linger, till her own, the
babe
She lean'd to from her Spiritual sphere.
Her lonely maiden-Princess, crown'd with
flowers,
Has enter'd on the larger woman-w^orld
Of wives and mothers.
But the bridal veil —
Your nurse is waiting. Kiss me, child,
and go.
FORLORN.
He is fled — I wish him dead —
He that wrought my ruin —
O the flattery and the craft
Which were my undoing . . .
In the night, in the night,
When the storms are blowing.
II.
Who was witness of the crime?
Who shall now reveal it?
He is fled, or he is dead,
Marriage will conceal it . . .
In the night, in the night.
While the gloom is growing.'
III.
Catherine, Catherine, in the night,
What is this you're dreaming?
There is laughter down in Hell
At your simple scheming ...
In the night, in the night,
When the ghosts are fleeting.
IV.
You to place a hand in his
Like an honest woman's.
You that lie with wasted lungs
Waiting for your summons . .
In the night, O the night,
O the deathwatch beating !
There will come a witness soon
Hard to be confuted,
All the world will hear a voice
Scream you are polluted . . .
In the night, O the night,
When the owls are wailing !
798
FORL ORN— HAPP Y,
VI.-
XII.
Shame and marriage, Shame and mar-
Death and marriage. Death and
mar-
riage,
riage !
Fright and foul dissembling,
Funeral hearses rolling !
Bantering bridesman, reddening priest,
Black with bridal favours mixt !
Tower and altar trembling . . .
Bridal bells with tolling ! . . .
In the night, O the night,
In the night, 0 the night.
"When the mind is failing !
When the wolves are howling.
VII.
XIII.
Mother, dare you kill your child?
Up, get up, the time is short,
How your hand is shaking !
Tell him now or never !
Daughter of the seed of Cain,
Tell him all before you die,
What is this you're taking? . .. .
Lest you die for ever . . .
In the night, 0 the night.
In the night, 0 the night.
While the house is sleeping.
Where there's no forgetting.
VIII.
XIV.
Dreadful ! has it come to this.
Up she got, and wrote him all,
O unhappy creature?
All her tale of sadness,
You that would not tre.'.d on a worm
Blister'd every word with tears,
For your gentle nature . . .
And eased Rer heart of madness .
, ,
In the night, O the night,
In the nighty and nigh the dawn,
0 the night of weeping !
And while the moon was setting.
IX.
Murder would not veil your sin,
HAPPY.
Marriage will not hide it,
^
Earth and Hell will brand your name
THE leper's BRIDE.
Wretch you must abide it . . .
I.
In the night, O the night.
Long before the dawning.
W^iiY wail you, pretty plover? and what
is it that you fear?
X.
Is he sick your mate like mine?
you lost him, is he fled?
have
Up, get up, and tell him all.
Aiul there — the heron rises from
his
Tell him you were lying !
watch beside the mere,
Do not die with a lie in your mouth,
And flies above the leper's hut, v>
'here
You that know you're dying . . .
lives the living-dead.
In the night, 0 the night.
^
While the grave is yawning.
II.
XI.
Come back, nor let me know it ! w
he live and die alone?
'ould
No — you will not die before,
And has he not forgiven me yet
, his
Tho' you'll ne'er be stronger;
over-jealous bride,
You will live till that is born,
Who am, and was, and will be his
, his
Then a little longer . . .
own and only own,
In the night, 0 the night,
To share his living death with
him,
While the Fiend is prowling.
die with him side by side?
HAPPY.
799
III.
Is that the leper's hut on the solitary
moor,
Where noble Ulric dwells forlorn, and
wears the leper's weed?
The door is open. He ! is he standing
at the door,
My soldier of the Cross? it is he and
he indeed!
My roses — will he take them nozv —
mine, his — from off th^ tree
We planted both together, happy in
our marriage morn?
O God, I could blaspheme, for he fought
. Thy fight for Thee,
And Thou hast made him leper to com-
pass him with scorn —
Hast spared the flesh of thousands, the
coward and the base.
And set a crueller mark than Cain's on
him, the good and brave !
He sees me, waves me from him. I will
front him face to face.
You need not wave me from you. I
w^ould leap into your grave.
My warrior of the Holy Cross and of the
conquering sword.
The roses that you cast aside — once
more I bring you these.
No nearer? do you scorn me- when you
tell me, O my lord,
You wtould not mar the beauty of your
bride with your disease.
You say your body is so foul — then here
I stand apart,
Who yearn to ky my loving head upon
your leprous breast.
The leper plague may scale my skin but
never taint my heart;
Your body is not foul to me, and body
is foul at best.
VIII.
I loved you first when young and fair,
but now I love you most;
The fairest flesh at last is filth on which
the worm will feast;
This poor rib-grated dungeon of the holy
human ghost,
This house with all its hateful needs no
cleaner than the beast,
This coarse diseaseful creature which in
Eden was divine,
This Satan-haunted ruin, this little
city of sewers,
This wall of solid flesh that comes between
your soul and mine,
W^ill vanish and give place to the
beauty that endures,
The beauty that endures on the Spiritual
height.
When we shall stand transfigured, like
Christ on Hermon hill,
And moving each to music, soul in soul
and light in light,
Shall flash thro' one another in a
moment as we will.
Foul ! foul ! the word was yours not
mine, I worship that right hand
Which fell'd the foes before you as the
woodman fells the wood,
And sway'd the sword that lighten'd back
the sun of Holy land.
And clove the Moslem crescent moon,
and changed it into blood.
XII.
And once I worshipt all too well this
creature of decay,
For Age will chink the face, and Death
will freeze the supplest limbs —
Yet you in your mid manhood — O the
grief when yesterday
They bore the Cross before you to the
chant of funeral hymns.
8oo
HAPPY.
XIII.
XVIII.
'Libera me, Domine ! ' you sang the
You never once accused me, but" I wept
Psalm, and when
alone, and sigh'd
The Priest pronounced you dead, and
In the winter of the Present for the
flung the mould upon your feet,
summer of the Past;
A beauty came upon your face, not that
That icy winter silence — how it froze
of living men,
you from your bride,
But seen upon the silent brow when
Tho' I made one barren effort to break
life has ceased to beat.
it at the last.
XIV.
XIX.
'Libera nos, Domine' — you knew not
I brought you, you remember, these roses,
one was there
when I knew
Who saw you kneel beside your bier,
You were parting for the war, and you
and weeping scarce could see ;
took them tho' you frown'd;
May I come a httle nearer, I that heard,
You frown'd and yet you kiss'd them.
and changed the prayer
All at once the trumpet blew.
And sang the married 'nos' for the
And you spurr'd your fiery horse, and
solitary ' me.'
you hurl'd them to the ground.
XV.
XX.
My beauty marred by you? by you! so
You parted for the Holy War without a
be it. All is well
word to me.
If I lose it and myself in the higher
And clear myself unask'd — not I. My
beauty, yours.
nature was too proud.
My beauty lured that falcon from his
And him I saw but once again, and far
eyry on the fell,
away was he,
"Who never caught one gleam of the
When I was praying in a storm — the
beauty which enduies —
crash was long and loud —
XVI.
XXI.
The Count who sought to snap the bond
That God would ever slant His bolt from
that link'd us life to life,
falling on your head —
Who whisper'd me, • Your Ulric loves '
Then I lifted up my eyes, he was coming
— a little nearer still —
down the fell —
He hiss'd, * Let us revenge ourselves,
I clapt my hands. The sudden fire from
your Ulric woos my wife ' —
Heaven had dash'd him dead,
A lie by which he thought he could
And sent him charr'd and blasted to
subdue me to his will.
the deathless fire of Hell.
XVII.
XXII.
I knew that you were near me when I
See, I sinn'd but for a moment. I re-
let him kiss my brow;
pented and repent.
Did he touch me on the lips? I was
And trust myself forgiven by the God
jealous, anger'd, vain,
to whom I kneel.
And I meant to make you jealous. Are
A little nearer? Yes. I shall hardly be
you jealous of me now?
content
Your pardon, 0 my love, if I ever gave
Till I be leper like yourself, my love,
you pain.
from head to heeL
HAPPY.
8oi
XXIII.
O foolish dreams, that you, that I, would
slight our marriage oath :
I held you at that moment even dearer
than before;
Now God has made you leper in His
loving care for both.
That we might cling together, never
doubt each other more.
XXIV.
The Priest, who join'd you to the dead,
has join'd our hands of old;
If man and wife be but one flesh, let
mine be leprous too.
As dead from all the human race as if
beneath the mould;
If you be dead, then I am dead, who
only live for you.
Would Earth tho' hid in cloud not be
foUow'd by the Moon?
The leech forsake the dying bed for
terror of his life ?
The shadow leave the Substance in the
brooding light of noon?
Or if / had been the leper would you
have left the wife?
XXVI.
Not take them ! Still you wave me off
— poor roses — must I go —
I have worn them year by year — from
the bush we both had set —
What ? fling them to you ? — well — that
were hardly gracious. No !
Your plague but passes by the touch.
A little nearer yet !
XXVII.
There, there ! he buried you, the Priest;
the Priest is not to blame,
He joins us once again, to his either
office true :,
I thank him. I am happy, happy.
Kiss me. In the name
Of the everlasting God, I will live and
die with you.
3F
[Dean Milman has remarked that the protection
and care afforded by the Church to this blighted
race of lepers was among the most beautiful of
its offices during the Middle Ages. The leprosy
of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was
supposed to be a legacy of the crusades, but was
in all probability the offspring of meagre and
unwholesome diet, miserable lodging and cloth-
ing, physical and moral degradation. The ser-
vices of the Church in the seclusion of these
unhappy sufferers were most affecting The stem
duty of looking to the public welfare is tempered
with exquisite compassion for the victims of this
loathsome disease. The ritual for the sequestra-
tion of the leprous differed little from the burial
service. After the leper had been sprinkled with
holy water, the priest conducted him into the
church, the leper singing the psalm ' Libera me
domine,' and the crucifix and bearer going before.
In the church a black cloth was stretched over
two trestles in front of the altar, and the leper
leaning at its side devoutly heard mass. The
priest, taking up a little earth in his cloak, threw
it on one of the leper's feet, and put him out of
the church, if it did not rain too heavily; took
him to his hut in the midst of the fields, and then
uttered the prohibitions: ' I forbid you entering
the church .... or entering the company of
others. I forbid you quitting your home without
your leper's dress.' He concluded: 'Take this
dress, and wear it in token of humility; take
these gloves, take this clapper, as a sign that you
are forbidden to speak to any one. You are not
to be indignant at being thus separated from
others, and as to your little wants, good people
will provide for you, and God will not desert
you.' Then in this old ritual follow these sad
words : ' When it shall come to pass that the
leper shall pass out of this world, he shall be
buried in his hut, and not in the churchyard.*
At first there was a doubt whether wives should
follow their husbands who had been leprous, or
remain in the world and marry again. The
Church decided that the marriage-tie was indis-
soluble, and so bestowed on these unhappy being>
this immense source of consolation. With a love
stronger than this living death, lepers were fol-
lowed into banishment from the haunts of men
by their faithful wives. Readers of Sir J.
Stephen's Essays on Ecclesiastical Biography
will recollect the description of the founder of the
Franciscan order, how, controlling his involun-
tary disgust, St. Francis of Assisi washed the
feet and dressed the sores of the lepers, once at
least reverently applying his lips to their wounds.
— Boucher-James.]
This ceremony of quasiAinrvsS. varied consider-,
ably at different times and in different places
8o2
TO ULYSSES.
In some cases a grave was dug, and the leper's
A name that earth will not forget
face was often covered during the service.
Till earth has roll'd her latest year —
TO ULYSSES. 1
VIII.
I, once half-crazed for larger light
1.
On broader zones beyond the foam,
Ulysses, much-experienced man,
Whose eyes have known this globe of
But chaining fancy now at home
Among the quarried downs of Wight,
ours.
Her tribes of men, and trees, and
IX.
flowers.
Not less would yield full thanks to you
From Corrientes to Japan,
For your rich gift, your tale of lands
I know not,^ your Arabian sands;
II.
Your cane, your palm, tree-fern, bamboq
To you that bask below the Line,
I soaking here in winter wet —
X.
The century's three strong eights have
The wealth of tropic bower and brake;
met
Your Oriental Eden-isles,*
To drag me down to seventy-nine
Where man, nor only Nature smiles;
III.
Your wonder of the boiling lake; ^
In summer if I reach my day —
XI.
To you, yet young, who breathe the
Phra-Chai, the Shadow of the Best,^
balm
Phra-bat • the step; your Pontic coast;
Of summer- winters by the palm
Crag- cloister; » Anatolian Ghost ;9
And orange grove of Paraguay,
Hong-Kong,!*^ Kfirnac,^! and all the rest
IV.
I tolerant of the colder time,
XII.
Thro' which I follow'd line by line
Who love the winter woods, to trace
Your leading hand, and came, my
On paler heavens the branching grace
friend,
Of leafless elm, or naked lime,
To prize your various book, and send
y^
A gift of slenderer value, mine.
And see my cedar green, and there
My giant ilex keeping leaf
1 ' Ulysses,' the title of a number of essays by
W. G. Palgrave. He died at Monte Video before
When frost is keen and days are
seeing my poem.
2 Garibaldi said to me, alluding to his barren
brief—
island, ' I wish I had your trees.'
Or marvel hdw in English air
SThetaleofNejd.
4 The Philippines.
VI.
B In Dominica,
6 The Shadow of the Lord. Certain obscure
My yucca, which no winter quells.
markings on a rock in Siam, which express the
A tho' the months have scarce begun.
image of Buddha to the Buddhist more or less
Has push'd toward our faintest sun
distinctly according to his faith and his moral
A spike of half-accomplish'd bells —
worth.
7 The footstep of the Lord on another rock.
VII.
8 The monastery of Sumelas.
» Anatolian Spectre stories.
Or watch the waving pine which here
10 The Three Cities.
The warrior of Caprera set,^
" Travels in Egypt.
TO MARY BOYLE.
803
TO MARY BOYLE.
With the following Poem.
* Spring -flowers'! While you still
delay to take
Youf leave of Town,
Our elmtree's ruddy-hearted blossom-
flake
Is fluttering down.
Be truer to your promise. There ! I
heard
Our cuckoo call.
Be needle to the magnet of your word,
Nor wait, till all
III.
Our vernal bloom from every vale and
plain
And garden pass.
And all the gold from each laburnum
chain
Drop to the grass.
IV.
Is memory with your Marian gone to
rest,
Dead with the dead?
For ere she left us, when we met, you
prest
My hand, and said
' I come with your spring-flowers.* You
camf not, friend;
My birds would sing,
You heard not. Take then this spring-
flower 1 seni.
This song of spring,
VI.
Found yesterday — forgotten mine own
rhyme
By mine old self,
As I shall be forgotten by old Tim;;
Laid on the shelf —
VII.
A rhyme that flower'd betwixt the whiten-
ing sloe
And kingcup blaze,
And more than half a hundred years ago.
In rick-fire days,
VIII.
When Dives loathed the times, and paced
his land
In fear of worse.
And sanguine Lazarus felt a vacant hand
Fill with his purse.
For lowly minds were madden'd to the
height
By tonguester tricks,
And once — I well remember that red
night
When thirty ricks,-
X.
All flaming, made an English homestead
Hell —
These hands of mine
Have helpt to pass a bucket from the well
Along the line,
XI.
When this bare dome had not begun to
gleam
Thro' youthful curls.
And you were then a lover's fairy dream.
His girl of girls;
XII.
And you, that now are lonely, and with
Grief
Sit face to face,
Might find a flickering glimmer of relief
In change of place.
What use to brood? this life of mingled
pains
And joys to me.
Despite of every Faith and Creed, remaxna
The Mystery.
8o4
THE PROGRESS OF SPRING.
Let golden youth bewail the friend, the
wife,
For ever gone.
He dreams of that long walk thro' desert
life
Without the one.
The silver year should cease to mourn
and sigh —
Not long to wait —
So close are we, dear Mary, you and I
To that dim gate.
XVI.
Take, read ! and be the faults your Poet
makes
Or many or few,
He rests content, if his young music
wakes
A wish in you
XVII.
To change our dark Queen-city, all her
realm
Of sound and smoke.
For his clearheaven, and these few lanes
of elm
And whispering oak.
THE PROGRESS OF SPRING.
I.
The groundflame of the crocus breaks
the mould,
Fair Spring slides hither o'er the
. Southern sea.
Wavers on her thin stem the snowdrop
cold
That trembles not to kisses of the
bee :
Come, Spring, for now from all the
dripping eaves
The spear of ice has wept itself away,
And hour by hour unfolding woodbine
leaves
O'er his uncertain shadow droops the
day.
She comes! The loosen'd rivulets run;
The frost-bead melts upon her golden
hair;
Her mantle, slowly greening in the Sun,
Now wraps' her close, now arching
leaves her bare
To breaths of balmier air;
II.
Up leaps the lark, gone wild to welcome
her,
About her glance the tits, and shriek
the jays.
Before her skims the jubilant woodpecker,
The linnet's bosom blushes at her gaze,
While round her brows a woodland culver
flits,
Watching her large light eyes and
gracious looks,
And in her open palm a halcyon sits
Patient — the secret splendour of the
brooks.
Come, Spring ! She comes on waste and
wood.
On farm and field : but enter also here.
Diffuse thyself at will thro' all my blood,
And, tho' thy violet sicken into sere,
Lodge with me all the year !
III.
Once more a downy drift against the
brakes,
Self-darken' d in the sky, descending
slow !
But gladly see I thro' the wavering flakes
Yon blanching apricot like snow in
snow.
These will thine eyes not brook in forest-
paths.
On their perpetual pine, nor round
the beech;
They fuse themselves to little spicy baths,
Solved in the tender blushes of the
peach;
They lose themselves and, die
On that new life that gems the haw-
thorn line;
Thy gay lent-lilies wave and put tbem by.
And out once more in varnish'd glory
• shine
Thy stars of celandine.
THE PROGRESS OF SPRING.
805
She floats across the hamlet. Heaven
lours,
But in the tearful splendour of her
smiles
I see the slowly-thickening chestnut
towers
Fill out the spaces by the barren tiles.
Now past her feet the swallow circling flies,
A clamorous cuckoo stoops to meet
her hand;
Her light makes rainbows in my closing
eyes,
I hear a charm of song thro' all the
land.
Come, Spring ! She comes, and Earth
is glad
To roll her North below thy deepening
dome.
But ere thy maiden birk be wholly clad,
And these low bushes dip their twigs
in foam.
Make all true hearths thy home.
Across my garden ! and the thicket stirs.
The fountain pulses high in sunnier jets.
The blackcap warbles, and the turtle purrs.
The starling claps his tiny castanets.
Still round her forehead wheels the
woodland dove,
And scatters on her throat the sparks
of dew.
The kingcup fills her footprint, and above
Broaden the glowing isles of vernal
blue.
Hail ample presence of a Queen,
Bountiful, beautiful, apparell'd gay,
Whose mantle, every shade of glancing
green,
Flies back in fragrant breezes to display
A tunic white as May !
She whispers, * From the South I bring
you balm.
For on a tropic mountain was I born,
While some dark dweller by the coco-
palm
Watch'd my far meadov/ zoned with
airy morn;
From under rose a muffled moan of
floods;
I sat beneath a solitude of snow;
There no one came, the turf was fresh,
the woods
Plunged gulf on gulf thro' all their
vales below.
I saw beyond their silent tops
The steaming marshes of the scarlet
cranes.
The slant seas leaning on the mangrove
copse,
And summer basking in the sultry
plains
About a land of canes;
VII.
'Then from my vapour-girdle soaring
forth
I scaled the buoyant highway of the
birds,
And drank the dews and drizzle of the
North,
That I might'mix with men, and hear
their words
On pathway'd plains; for — while my
hand exults
Within the bloodless heart of lowly
flowers
To work old laws of Love to fresh
results.
Thro' manifold effect of simple powers —
I too would teach the man
Beyond the darker hour to see the
bright.
That his fresh life may close as it began.
The still-fulfilling promise of a light
Narrowing^ the bounds of night.'
So wed thee with my soul, that I may
mark
The coming year's great good and
varied ills,
And new developments, whatever spark
Be struck from out the clash of warring
wills;
Or whether, since our nature cannot rest,
The smoke of war's volcano burst
again
From hoary deeps that belt the changeful
West,
8o6
MERLIN AND THE GLEAM.
Old Empires, dwellings of the kings
Great the Master,
of men;
And sweet the Magic,
Or should those fail, that hold the helm,
When over the valley,
While the long day of knowledge
In early summers.
grows and warms,
Over the mountain,
And in the heart of this most ancient
On human faces.
• realm
And all around me,
A hateful voice be utter'd and alarms
Moving to melody,
Sounding * To arms ! to arms ! '
Floated The Gleam.
IX.
A simpler, saner lesson might he learn
III.
Once at the croak of a Raven
Who reads thy gradual process, Holy
who crost it.
Spring.
A barbarous people.
Thy leaves possess the season in their
Blind to the magic,
turn,
And deaf to the melody,
And in their time thy warblers rise on
Snarl'd at and cursed me.
wing.
A demon vext me.
How surely glidest thou from March to
The light retreated.
IVIay,
The landskip darken'd,
And changest, breathing it, the sullen
The melody deaden'd.
wind,
The Master whisper'd,
Thy scope of operation, day by day,
' Follow The Gleam.'
Larger and fuller, like the human mind !
Thy warmths from bud to bud
IV.
Accomplish that blind model in the
seed,
And men have hopes, which race the
restless blood,
That after many changes may succeed
Then to the melody.
Over a wilderness
Gliding, and glancing at
Elf of the woodland,
Gnome of the cavern,
Life, which is Life indeed.
Griffin and Giant,
And dancing of Fairies
In desolate hollows.
MERLIN AND THE GLEAM.
And wraiths of the mountain,
And rolling of dragons
I.
By warble of water.
0 YOUNG Mariner,
Or cataract music
You from the haven*
Of falling torrents.
Under the sea-cliff,
Flitted The Gleam.
You that are watching
The gray Magician
V.
With eyes of wonder,
Down from the mountain
/am Merlin,
And over the level.
And / am dying,
And streaming and shining on
/am Merlin
Silent river.
Who follow The Gleam.
Silvery willow,
Pasture and plowland,
II.
Innocent maidens,
Mighty the Wizard
Garrulous children,
Who found me at sunrise
Homestead and harvest.
Sleeping, and woke me
Reaper and gleaner.
And learn'd me Magic !
And rough-ruddy faces
MERLIN AND THE GLEAM — ROMNEY' S REMORSE.
807
Of lowly labour,
Slided The Gleam —
VI.
Then, with a melody
Stronger and statelier,
Led me at length
To the city and palace
Of Arthur the king;
Touch'd at the golden
Cross of the churches,
Flash'd on the Tournament,
Flicker'd and bicker'd
From helmet to helmet,
And last on the forehead
Of Arthur the blameless
Rested The Gleam.
Clouds and darkness
Closed upon Camelot;
Arthur had vanish'd
I knew not whither,
The king who loved me,
And cannot die;
For out of the darkness
Silent and slowly
The Gleam, that had waned to
wintry glimmer
On icy fallow
And faded forest,
Drew to the valley
Named of the shadow.
And slowly brightening
Out of the glimmer,
And slowly moving again to
melody
Yearningly tender.
Fell on the shadow,
No Ibnger a shadow.
But clothed with The Gleam.
VIII.
And broader and brighter
The Gleam flying onward.
Wed to the melody,
Sang thro' the world;
And slower and fainter.
Old and weary.
But eager to follow,
I saw, whenever
In passing it glanced upon
Hamlet or city,
That under the Crosses
The dead man's garden,
The mortal hillock.
Would break into blossom
And so to the land's
Last limit I came
And can no longer,
But die rejoicing.
For thro' the Magic
Of Him the Mighty,
Who taught me in childhood.
There on the border ,
Of boundless Ocean,
And all but in Heaven
Hovers The Gleam.
Not of the sunlight,
Not of the moonlight.
Not of the starlight !
O young Mariner,
Down to the haven.
Call your companions.
Launch your vessel.
And crowd your canvas.
And, ere it vanishes
Over the margin,
After it, follow it.
Follow The Gleam.
ROMNEY'S REMORSE.
' I read Hayley's Life of Romney the other
day — Romney wanted but education and reading
to make him a very fine painter; but his ideal
was not high nor fixed. How touching is the
close of his life! He married at nineteen, and
because Sir Joshua and others had said that
" marriage spoilt an artist " almost immediately
left his wife in the North and scarce saw her till
the end of his life; when old, nearly mad, and
quite desolate, he went back to her and she
received him and nursed hm till he died. This
quiet act of hers is worth all Romney's pictures!
even as a matter of Art, I am sure ' (^Letters
and Literary Remains of Edward Fitzgerald,
vol. i.)
* Beat, little heart — I give you this and
this,'
Who are you? W^hat ! the Lady
Hamilton?
8o»
ROMNEY'S REMORSE.
Good, I am never weary painting you.
To sit once more? Cassandra, Hebe,
Joan,
Or spinning at your wheel beside the
vifie —
Bacchante, what you will; and if I fail
To conjure and concentrate into form
And colour all you are, the fault is less
In me than Art. What Artist ever yet
Could make pure light live on the canvas?
Art!
Why should I so disrelish that short
word2>
Where am I? snow on all the hills!
so hot,
So fever'd ! never colt would more de-
light
To roll himself in meadow grass than I
To wallow in that winter of the hills.
Nurse, were you hired? or came of
your own will
To wait on one so broken, so forlorn ?
Have I not met you somewhere long ago?
I am all but sure I have — in Kendal
church —
0 yes ! I hired you for a season there,
And then we parted; but you look so
kind
That you will not deny my sultry throat
One draught of icy water. There — you
spill
The drops upon my forehead. Your
hand shakes.
1 am ashamed. I am a trouble to you.
Could kneel for your forgiveness. Are
they tears?
For me — they do me too much grace —
for me ?
O Mary, Mary !
Vexing you with words !
Words only, born of fever, or the fumes
Of that dark opiate dose you gave me,
— words,
Wild babble. I have stumbled back again
Into the common day, the sounder self.
God stay me there, if only for your sake,
The truest, kindliest, noblest-hearted wife
That ever wore a Christian marriage-ring.
My curse upon the Master's apothegm,
That wife and children drag an Artist
down !
This seem'd my lodestar in the Heaven
of Art,
And lured me from the household fire on
earth.
To you my days have been a life-long lie,
Grafted on half a truth; and tho' you say
' Take comfort, you have won the Painter's
fame,'
The best in me that sees the worst in me,
And groans to see it, finds no comfort
there.
.What fame? I am not Raphael,
Titian — no
Nor even a Sir Joshua, some will cry.
Wrong there ! The painter's fame ? but
mine, that grew
Blown into glittering by the popular
breath.
May float awhile beneath the sun, may
roll
The rainbow hues of heaven about it —
There !
The colour'd bubble bursts above the
abyss
Of Darkness, utter Lethe.
Is it so?
Her sad eyes plead for my own fame
with me
To make it dearer.
Look, the sun has risen
To flame along -another dreary day.
Your hand. How bright you keep your
marriage-ring !
Raise me. I thank you.
Has your opiate then
Bred this black mood? or am I conscious,
more
Than other Masters, of the chasm
between ^
Work and Ideal? Or does the gloom
of Age
And suffering cloud the height I stand
upon
Even from myself? stand? stood . . .
no more.
And yet
The world would lose, if such a wife as
you
Should vanish unrecorded. Might I crave
One favour? I am bankrupt of all claim
On your obedience, and my stronges*
wish
ROMNEY'S REMORSE.
809
Falls flat before your least unwillingness.
Still would you — if it please you — sit
to me?
I dream'd last night of that clear
summer noon,
When seated on a rock, and foot to foot
With your own shadow in the placid lake,
You claspt our infant daughter, heart to
heart.
I had been among the hills, and brought
you down
A length of staghorn-moss, and this you
twined
About her cap. I see the picture yet,
Mother and child. A sound from far away,
No louder than a bee among the flowers,
A fall of water luU'd the noon asleep.
You still'd it for the moment with a song
Which often echo'd in me, while I stood
Before the great Madonna-masterpieces
Of ancient Art in Paris, or in Rome.
Mary, my crayons ! if I can, I will.
You should have been — I might have
made you once.
Had I but known you as I know you
now —
The true Alcestis of the time. Your
song —
Sit, listen ! I remember it, a proof
That I — even I — at times remember'd
you,
* Beat upon mine, little heart ! beat,
beat !
Beat upon mine ! you are mine, my
sweet !
All mine from your pretty blue eyes
to your feet,
My sweet.'
Less profile ! turn to me — three-quarter
face.
* Sleep, little blossom, my honey, my
bliss !
For I give you this, and I give you this !
And I blind your pretty blue eyes with
a kiss !
Sleep ! '
Too early blinded by the kiss of death —
'Father and Mother will watch you
grow ' —
You watch'd not I, she did not grow,
she died,
' Father and Mother will watch you
grow,
And gather the roses whenever they
blow,
And find the white heather wherever
you go.
My sweet.'
Ah, ray white heather only blooms in
.heaven
With Milton's amaranth. There, there,
there ! a child
Had shamed me at it — Down, you idle
tools,
Stampt into dust — tremulous, all awry,
Blurr'd Uke a landskip in a ruffled pool, —
Not one stroke firm. This Art, that
harlot-like
Seduced me from you, leaves me harlot-
like.
Who love her still, and whimper, im-
potent .
To win her back before I die — and
then —
Then, in the loud world's bastard judg-
ment-day.
One truth t\'ill damn me with the mind-
less mob.
Who feel no touch of my temptation, more
Than all the myriad lies, that blacken round
The corpse of every man that gains a
name;
' This model husband, this fine Artist ' !
Fool,
What matters? Six foot deep of burial
mould
Will dull their comments ! Ay, but when
the shout
Of His descending peals from Heaven,
and throbs
Thro' earth, and all her graves, if He
should ask,
*Why left you wife and children? for
my sake,
According to my word?' and I replied,
' Nay, Lord, for Art^ why, that would
sound so mean
That all the dead, who wait the doom of
Hell
For bolder sins than mine, adulteries.
8io
PARNASSUS— BY AN EVOLUTIONIST.
Wife-murders, — nay, the ruthless Mussul-
man
Who flings his bowstrung Harem in the
sea,
Would turn, and glare at me, and point
and jeer.
And gibber at the worm, who, living,
made
The wife of wives a widow-bride, and lost
Salvation for a sketch.
I am wild again !
The coals of fire you heap upon my head
Have crazed me. Some one knocking
there without?
No! Will my Indian brother come? to
find
Me or my coffin? Should I know the
man?
This worn-out Reason dying in her house
May leave the windows blinded, and if so,
Bid him farewell for me, and tell him —
Hope!
I hear a death-bed Angel whisper * Hope.'
'The m_iserable have no medicine
But only Hope ! ' He said it ... in
the play.
His crime was of the senses; of the mind
Mine; worse, cold, calculated.
Tell^my son —
0 let me lean my head upon your breast.
' Beat little heart ' on this fool brain of
mine.
1 once had friends — and many — none
like you.
I love you more than when we married.
Hope !
O yes, I hope, or fancy that, perhaps.
Human forgiveness touches heaven, and
thence —
For you forgive me, you are sure of that —
Reflected, sends a light on the forgiven.
PARNASSUS.
Exegi monumentum . . .
Quod non . . .
Posfiit diruere ...
. . . innumerabilis
Annorum series et fuga temporum. — Horace.
What be those crown'd forms high over
the sacred fountain?
Bards, that the mighty Muses have raised
to the heights of the mountain,
And over the flight of the Ages ! O
Goddesses, help me up thither ! .
Lightning may shrivel the laurel of
Caesar, but mine would not wither.
Steep is the mountain, but you, you will
help me to overcome it.
And stand with my head in the zenith,
and roll my voice from the summit,
Sounding for ever and ever thro' Earth
and her listening nations.
And mixt with the great Sphere-music of
stars and of constellations.
What be those two shapes high over the
sacred fountain,
Taller than all the Muses, and huger
than all the mountain?
On those two known peaks they stand
ever spreading and heightening;
Poet, that evergreen laurel is blasted by
more than lightning ! .
Look, in their deep double shadow the
crown'd ones all disappearing !
Sing like a bird and be happy, nor hope
for a deathless hearing !
'Sounding for ever and ever?' pass on!
the sight confuses —
These are Astronomy and Geology, ter-
rible Muses!
III.
If the lips were touch 'd with fire from off
a pure Pierian altar,
Tho' their music here be mortal need the
singer greatly care ?
Other songs for other worlds ! the fire
within him would not falter;
Let the golden Iliad vanish. Homer here
is Homer there.
BY AN EVOLUTIONIST.
The Lord let the house of a brute to the
soul of a man.
And the man said, 'Ami your debtor? '
And the Lord — * Not yet : but make it
as clean as you can,
And then I will let you a better.*
FAR-FAR- A WAY— BE A UTIFUL CIT Y.
8ii ^
If my body come from brutes, my soul
uncertain, or a fable,
Why not bask amid the senses while
the sun of morning shines,
I, the liner brute rejoicing in my hounds,
and in my stable,
Youth and Health, and birth and
wealth, and choice of women and
of wines?
What hast thou done for me, grim Old
Age, save breaking my bones on
the rack?
Would I had past in the morning that
looks so bright from afar !
Old Age.
Done for thee? starved the wild beast
that was linkt with thee eighty
years back.
Less weight now for the ladder-of-
heaven that hangs on a star.
if my body come from brutes, tho'
somewhat finer than their own,
I am heir, and this my kingdom.
Shall the royal voice be mute?
No, but if the rebel subject seek to drag
me from the throne.
Hold the sceptre. Human Soul, and
rule thy Province of the brute.
II.
I have climb'd to the snows of Age, and
I gaze at a field in the Past,
Where I sank with the body at times
in the sloughs of a low desire.
But I hear no yelp of the beast, and the
Man is quiet at last
As he stands on the heights of his life
with a glimpse of a height that is
higher.
FAR — FAR — AWAY.
(for music.)
What sight so lured him thro' the fields
he knew
As where earth's green stole into heaven's
own hue.
Far — far — away ?
What sound was dearest in his native
dells?
The mellow lin-lan-lone of evening bells
Far — far — away.
What vague world-whisper, mystic pain
or joy,
Thro' those three words would haunt him
when a boy,
Far — far — away ?
A whisper from his dawn of life? a
breath
From some fair dawn beyond the doors
of death
Far — far — away ?
Far, far, how far? from o'er the gates of
Birth,
The faint horizons, all the bounds of
earth.
Far — far — away ?
What charm in words, a charm no words
could give?
O, dying words, can Music make you live
Far — far — away ?
POLITICS.
We move, the wheel must always move,
Nor always on the plain.
And if we move to such a goal
As Wisdom hopes to gain.
Then you that drive, and know your Craft,
Will firmly hold the rein.
Nor lend an ear to random cries.
Or you may drive in vain.
For some cry * Quick ' and some cry
* Slow,'
But, while the hills remain,
Up hill ' Too-slow ' will need the whip,
Down hill 'Too-quick,' the chain.
BEAUTIFUL CITY.
Beautiful city, the centre and crater of
European confusion,
O you with your passionate shriek for
the rights of an equal humanity,
8l2
THE ROSES ON THE TERRACE— THE OAK.
How often your Re-volution has proven
but E-volution
Roll'd again back on itself in the tides of
a civic insanity !
THE ROSES ON THE TERRACE.
Rose, on this terrace fifty years ago,
When I was in my June, you in your
May,
Two words, ^My Rose ' set all your face
aglow.
And now that I am white, and you are
gray.
That blush of fifty years ago, my dear,
Blooms in the Past, but close to me
to-day
As this red rose, which on our terrace here
Qows in the blue of fifty miles aVvay.
THE PLAY.
Act first, this Earth, a stage so gloom'd
with woe
You all but sicken at the shifting
scenes.
And yet be patient. Our Playwright
may show
In some fifth Act what this wild Drama
means.
ON ONE WHO AFFECTED AN
EFFEMINATE MANNER.
While man and woman still are incom-
plete,
I prize that soul where man and woman
meet.
Which types all Nature's male and female
plan,
But, friend, man-woman is not woman--
man.
TO ONE WHO RAN DOWN THE
ENGLISH.
You make our faults too gross, and thence
maintain
Our darker future. May your fears be
vain!
At times the small black fly upon the
pane
May seem the black ox of the distant
plain.
THE SNOWDROP.
Many, many welcomes
February fair-maid.
Ever as of old time,
SoHtary firstling.
Coming in the cold time.
Prophet of the gay time,
Prophet of the May time.
Prophet of the roses,
Many, many welcomes
February fair-maid !
THE THROSTLE.
* Summer is coming, summer is coming.
I know it, I know it, I know it.
Light again, leaf again, life again, love
again,'
Yes, my wild little Poet.
Sing the new year in under the blue.
Last year you sang it as gladly.
' New, new, new, new ! ' Is it then so
new
That you should carol so madly?
' Love again, song again, nest again, young
again,'
Never a prophet so crazy !
And hardly a daisy as yet, little friend,
See, there is hardly a daisy.
* Here again, here, here, here, happy
year ! '
O warble unchidden, unbidden !
Summer is coming, is coming, my dear.
And all the winters are hidden.
THE OAK. '
Live thy L*ife,
Young and old.
Like yon oak.
Bright in spring,
Living gold ;
IN MEMORIAM.
813
Summer-rich
Then; and then
Autumn-changed,
Soberer-hued
Gold again.
All his leaves
Fall'n at length,
Look, he stands,
Trunk and bough.
Naked strength.
IN MEMORIAM.
W. G. Ward.
Farewell, whose like on earth I shall
not find.
Whose Faith and Work were bells of
full accord,
My friend, the most unworldly of man-
kind,
Most generous of all Ultramontanes,
Ward,
How subtle at tierce and quart of mind
with mind.
How loyal in the following of thy
Lord!
THE FORESTERS.*
ACT I. — Scene I., The Bond; Scenes
II., III., The Outlawry.
ACT I.
SCENE I.— The Garden before Sir
Richard Lea's Castle.
Kate. {gathering flotvers). These roses
for my Lady Marian ; these lilies to lighten
Sir Richard's black room, where he sits
and eats his heart for want of money to
pay the Abbot.
\_Sings.
The warrior Earl of Allendale,
He loved the Lady Anne;
The lady loved the master well,
The maid she loved the man.
All in the castle garden,
Or ever the day began,
The lady gave a rose to the Earl,
The maid a rose to the man.
' I go to fight in Scotland
With many a savage clan; '
The lady gave her hand to the Earl,
The maid her hand to the man.
' Farewell, farewell, my warrior Earl! *
And ever a tear down ran.
She gave a weeping kiss to the Earl,
And the maid a kiss to the man.
Enter four ragged Retainers.
First Retainer. You do well, Mistress
Kate, to sing and to gather roses. You be
fed with tit-bits, you, and we be dogs that
have only the bones, till we be only bones
our own selves.
Second Retainer. I am fed with tit-
bits no more than you are, but I keep a
good heart and make the most of it, and,
truth to say, Sir Richard and my Lady
Marian fare wellnigh as sparely as their
people.
Third Retainer. And look at our
suits, out at knee, out at elbow. We be
more like scarecrows in a field than
decent serving men ; and then, I pray
you, look at Robin Earl of Huntingdon's
men.
First Retainer. She hath looked well
'at one of 'em, Little John.
Third Retainer. Ay, how fine they
be in their liveries, and each of 'em as
full of meat as an egg, and as sleek and
as round-about as a mellow codlin.
Fourth Retainer. But I be worse off
than any of you, for I be lean by nature,
and if you cram me crop full I be little
better than Famine in the picture, but if
you starve me I be Gaffer Death himself.
I would like to show you. Mistress Kate,
how bare and spare I be on the rib : I be
ianker than an old horse turned out to
die on the common.
Kate. Spare me thy spare ribs, I pray
thee; but now I ask you all, did none of
you love young Walter Lea?
First Retainer. Ay, if he had not
gone to fight the king's battles, we should
have better battels at home.
Kate. Right as an Oxford scholar, but
the boy was taken prisoner by the Moors.
First Retainer. Ay.
Kate. And Sir Richard was told he
might be ransomed for two thousand
marks in gold.
First Retainer. Ay.
Kate. Then iie borrowed the monies
from the Abbot of York, the Sheriff's
brother. And if they be not paid back
at the end of the year, the land goes to
the Abbot.
First Retainer. No news of young
Walter?
Kate. None, nor of the gold, nor the
man who took out the gold : but now ye
know why we live so stintedly, and why
ye have so few grains to peck at. Sir
Richard must scrape and scrape till he
get to the land again. Come, come, why
do you loiter here? Carry fresh rushes
into the dining-hall, for those that are
there they be so greasy and smell so vilely
that my Lady Marian holds her nose when
she steps across it.
Fourth Retainer. Why there, now!
that very word * greasy ' hath a kind of
unction in it, a smack of relish about it.
The rats have gnawed 'em already. I
pray Heaven we may not have to take to
the rushes. [Exeunt,
814
* Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co.
THE FORESTERS.
,:i
Kate. Poor fellows !
The lady gave her hand to the Earl,
The maid her^hand to the man.
Efiter Little John.
Little John. My master, Robin the
Earl, is always a-telling us that every man,
for the sake of the great blessed Mother
in heaven, and for the love of his own
little mother on earth, should handle all
womankind gently, and hold them in all
honour, and speak small to 'em, and not
scare 'em, but go about to come at their
love with all manner of homages, and
observances, and circumbendibuses.
Kate.
The lady gave a rose to the Earl,
The maid a rose to the man.
Little John {seeing her) . O the sacred
little thing ! What a shape ! what lovely
arms ! A rose to the man ! Ay, the man
had given her a rose and she gave him
another.
Kate. Shall I keep one little rose for
Little John? No.
Little John. There, there ! You see
I was right. She hath a tenderness
toward me, but is too shy to show it.
It is in her, in the woman, and the man
must bring it out of her.
Kate.
She gave a weeping kiss to the Earl,
The maid a kiss to the man.
Little John. Did she? But there I
am sure the ballad is at fault. It should
have told us how the man first kissed
the maid. She doesn't see me. Shall I
be bold? shall I touch her? shall I give
her the first kiss? O sweet Kate, my
first love, the first kiss, the first kiss !
Kate {turns and kisses him). Why
look est thou so amazed?
Little John. I cannot tell; but I came
to give thee the first kiss, and thou hast
given it me.
Kate. But if a man and a maid care
for one another, docs it matter so much
if the maid give the first kiss?
Little John. I cannot tell, but I had
sooner have given thee the first kiss. I
was dreaming of it all the way hither.
Kate. Dream of it, then, all the way
back, for now I will have none of it.
Little John. Nay, now thou hast given
me the man's kiss, let me give thee the
maid's.
Kate. If thou draw one inch nearer,
I will give thee a buffet on the face.
Little John. Wilt thou not give me
rather the little rose for Little John?
Kate {throzvs it down and tramples on
it). There!
[Kate seeing Marian exit hurriedly.
Enter Marian {singing).
Love flew in at the window,
As Wealth walk'd in at the door.
' You have come for you saw Wealth coming,'
said I.
But he flutter'd his wings with a sweet little cry,
I'll cleave to you rich or poor.
Wealth dropt out of the window.
Poverty crept thro' the door.
* Well now you would fain follow Wealth,' said I,'
But he flutter'd his wings as he gave me the lie,
I cling to you all the more.
Little John. Thanks, my lady — inas-
much as I am a true believer in true love
myself, and your Ladyship hath sung the
old proverb out of fashion.
Marian. Ay but thou hast ruffled my
woman, Little John. She hath the fire
in her face and the dew in her eyes. I
beheved thee to be too solemn and formal
to be a ruffler. Out upon thee !
Little John. I am no ruffler, my lady;
but I pray you, my lady, if a man and a
maid love one another, may the maid
give the first kiss?
Marian. It will be all the more
gracious of her if she do.
Little John. I cannot tell. Manners
*be so corrupt, and these are the days of
Prince John. {^Exit.
Enter Sir Richard Lea {reading a
bond) .
Sir Richard. Marian !
Marian. Father !
Sir Richard. Who parted from thee
even now?
Marian. That strange starched stiff
creature. Little John, the Earl's man.
He would grapple with a Hon like the
King, and is flustered by a girl's kiss.
8i6
THE FORESTERS.
Sir Richard. There never was an
Earl so true a friend of the people as
Lord Robin of Huntingdon.
Marian. A gallant Earl. I love him
as I hate John.
Sir Richard. I fear me he hath wasted
his revenues in the service of our good
King Richard against the party of John,
as I have done, as I have done : and where
is Richard?
Marian. Cleave to him, father ! he
will come home at last.
Sir Richard. I trust he will, but if he
do not I and thou are but beggars.
Marian. We will be beggar'd then
and be true to the King.
Sir Richard. Thou speakest like a
fool or a woman. Canst thou endure to
be a beggar whose whole life hath been
folded like a blossom in the sheath, like
a careless sleeper in the down; who never
hast felt a want, to whom all things, up
to this present, have come as freely as
heaven's air and mother's milk?
Marian. Tut, father ! I am none of
your delicate Norman maidens who can
only broider and mayhap ride a-hawking
with the help of the men. I can bake
and I can brew, and by all the saints I can
shoot almost as closely with the bow as
the great Earl himself. I have played at
the foils too with Kate : but is not to-day
his birthday?
Sir Richard. Dost thou love him
indeed, that thou keepest a record of
his birthdays? Thou knowest that the
Sheriff of Nottingham loves thee.
Marian. The Sheriff dare to love me?
me who worship Robin the great Earl of
Huntingdon? I love him as a damsel of
his day might have loved Harold the
Saxon, or Hereward the Wake. They
both fought against the tyranny of the
kings, the Normans. But then your
Sheriff, your little man, if he dare to fight
at all, would fight for his rents, his leases,
his houses, his monies, his oxen, his din-
ners, himself. Now your great man, your
Robin, all England's Robin, fights not
for himself but for the people of England.
.This John — this Norman tyrauny — the
stream is ffbaring us all down, and our
little Sheriff will ever swim with the
stream ! but our great man, our Robin,
against it. And how often in old histories
have the great men ^striven against the
stream, and how often in the long sweep
of years to come must the great man
strive against it again to save his country,
and the liberties of his people ! God
bless our well-beloved Robin, Earl of
Huntingdon.
Sir Richard. Ay, ay. He wore thy
colours once at a tourney. I am old and
forget. Was Prince John there?
Marian. The Sheriff of Nottingham
was there — not John.
Sir Richard. Beware of John and the
Sheriff of Nottingham. They hunt in
couples, and when they look at a maid
they blast her.
Marian. Then the maid is not high-
hearted enough.
Sir Richard. There — there — be not
a fool again. Their aim is ever at that
which flies highest — but O girl, girl, I am
almost in despair. Those two thousand
marks lent me by the Abbot for the ran-
som of my son Walter — I believed this
Abbot of the party of King Richard, and
he hath sold himself to that beast John
— they must be paid in a year and a
month, or I lose the land. There is one
that should be grateful to me overseas,
a Count in Brittany — he lives near
Quimper. I saved his life once in battle.
He has monies. I will go to him. I
saved him. I will try him. I am all
but sure of him. I will go to him.
Marian. ■ And I will follow thee, and
God help us both.
Sir Richard. Child, thou shouldst
marry one who will pay the mortgage.
This Robin, this Earl of Huntingdon — he
is a friend of Richard — I know not, but he
may save the land, he may save the land-
Marian {showing a cross hung round
her neck). Father, you see this cross?
Sir Richard. Ay the King, thy god-
father, gave it thee when a baby.'
Marian. And he said that whenever
I married he would give me away, and
on this cross I have sworn \kisses it\ that
till I myself pass away, there is no other
man that shall give me away.
Sir Richard. Lo there — thou art fool
SCENE II.
THE FORESTERS.
817
again — I am all as loyal as thyself, but
what a vow ! what a vow !
Re-enter LITTLE John.
Little John. My Lady Marian, your
woman so flustered me that I forgot my
message from the Earl. To-day he hath
accomplished his thirtieth birthday, and
he prays your ladyship and your ladyship's
father to be present at his banquet to-night.
Marian. Say, we will come.
Little John. And I pray you, my lady,
to stand between me and your woman,
Kate.
Marian. I will speak with her.
Little John. I thank you, my lady,
and I wish you and your ladyship's father a
most exceedingly good morning. \^Exit.
Sir Richard. Thou hast answered for
me, but I know not if I will let thee go.
Marian. I mean to go.
Sir Richard. Not if I barred thee up
in thy chamber, like a bird in a cage.
Marian. Then I would drop from the
casement, like a spider.
Sir Richard. But I would hoist the
drawbridge, like thy master.
Marian. And I would swim the moat,
like an otter.
Sir Richard. But I would set my
men-at-arms to oppose thee, like the
Lord of the Castle.
Marian. And I would break through
them all, like the King of England.
Sir Richard. "V^iell, thou shalt go, but
O the land ! the land ! my great great
great grandfather, my great great grand-
father, my great grandfather, my grand-
father and my own father — they were
born and bred on it — it was their mother
— they have trodden it for half a thou-
sand years, and whenever I set my own
foot on it I say to it. Thou art mine, and
it answers, I am thine to the very heart
of the earth — but now I have lost my
gold, I have lost my son, and I shall lose
my land also. Down to the devil with
this bond that beggars me !
\_Flings down the bojid.
Marian. Take it again, dear father,
be not wroth at the dumb parchment.
Sufficient for the day, dear father ! let us
be merry to-night art the banquet,
SCENE II. — A Banqueting- HALL in
THE House of Robin Hood the Earl
OF Huntingdon.
Doors open into a banqueting-hall where
he is at feast with his friends.
Drinking Song.
Long live Richard,
Robin and Richard !
Long live Richard 1
Down with John !
Drink to the Lion-heart
Every one !
Pledge the Plantagenet,
Him that is gone.
Who knows whither ?
God's good Angel
Help him back hither,
And down with John!
Long live Robin,
Robin and Richard !
Long live Robin,
And down with John !
Enter Prince John disguised as a monk
and the SHERIFF OF NOTTINGHAM.
Cries of *Down with John,'' '■Long live
Kifig Richardy *Down with John.^
Prince John. Down with John ! ha.
Shall I be known? is my disguise per-
fect?
Sheriff. Perfect — who should know
you for Prince John, so that you keep the
cowl down and speak not?
\^Shouts from the banquet-room.
Prince John. Thou and I will still /
these revelries presently.
\_Shouts, ' Long live King Richard ! '
I come here to see this daughter of Sir
Richard of the Lea and if her beauties
answer their report. If so —
Sheriff. If so—
\^Shouts, ' Down with John ! '
Prince John. You hear !
Sheriff. Yes, my lord, fear not. I will
answer for you.
Enter Little John, Scarlet, Much,
&'c.,fro?n the banquet singing a snatch
of the Drinking Song.
Little John. I am a silent man myself,
and all the more wonder at our Earl.
What a wealth of words — O Lord, I will
live and die for King Richard — not so
much for the cause as for t?ffe Earl. O
Lord, I am easily led by words, but I
8i8
THE FORESTERS.
ACT I.
think the Earl hath right. Scarlet, hath
not the Earl right? What makes thee so
down in the mouth?
Scarlet. I doubt not, I doubt not, and
though I be down in the mouth, I will
swear by the head of the Earl.
Little John. Thou Much, miller's son,
hath not the Earl right?
Much. More water goes by the mill
than the miller wots of, and more goes to
make right than I know of, but for all
that I will swear the Earl hath right.
But they are coming hither for the
dance —
{Enter Friar Tuck.)
be they not, Friar Tuck ? Thou art the
Earl's confessor and shouldst know.
Tuck, Ay, ay, and but that I am a
man of weight, and the weight of the
church to boot on my shoulders, I would
dance too. Fa, la, la, fa, la, la.
[ Capering.
Much. But doth not the weight of the
flesh at odd times overbalance the weight
of the church, ha friar?
Ttick. Homo sum. I love my dinner
— but I can fast, I can fast; and as to
other frailties of the flesh — out upon thee !
Homo sum, sed virgo sum, I am a virgin,
my masters, I am a virgin.
Much. And a virgin, my masters,
three yards about the waist is like to
remain a virgin, for who could embrace
such an armful of joy?
Tuck. Knave, there is a lot of wild
fellows in Sherwood Forest who hold by
King Richard. If ever I meet thee there,
I will break thy sconce with my quarter-
staff.
Enter from the banqueting-hall Sir
Richard Lea, Robin Hood, &=c.
Robin. My guests and friends, Sir
Richard, all of you
Who deign to honour this my thirtieth
year,
And some of you were prophets that I
might be.
Now that the sun our King is gone, the
light
Of these dafk hours; but this new moon,
I fear,
Is darkness. Nay, this may be the last
time
When I shall hold my birthday in this
hall:
I may be outlaw'd, I have heard a rumour.
All. God forbid !
Robin. Nay, but we have no news of
Richard yet.
And ye did wrong in crying ' Down with
John;'
For be he dead, then John, may be our
King.
All. God forbid !
Robin. Ay God forbid.
But if it be so we must bear with John.
The man is able enough — no lack of wit,
And apt at arms and shrewd in policy.
Courteous enough too when he wills; and
yet
I hate him for his want of chivalry.
He that can pluck the flower of maiden-
hood
From off the stalk and trample it in the
mire,
And boast that he hath trampled it. I
hate him,
I hate the man. I may not hate the
King
For aught 1 know.
So that our Barons bring his baseness
under.
I think they will be mightier than the
king.
\_Dance music.
(Marian enters with other damsels^
Robin. The high Heaven guard thee
from his wantonness
Who art the fairest flower of maidenhood
That ever blossom'd on this English isle.
Marian. Cloud not thy birthday with
one fear for me.
My lord, myself and my good father pray
Thy thirtieth summer may be thirty-fold
As happy as any of those that went before.
Robin. My Lady Marian you can
make it so
If you will deign to tread a measure with
me.
Marian. Full willingly, my lord.
[ They dance.
Robin {after dance). My Lady, will
you answer me a question?
THE FORESTERS,
819 ^
Marian. Any that you may ask.
Robin. A question that every true
man asks of a woman once in his life.
Marian. I will not answer it, my lord,
till King Richard come home again.
Prince John {to Sheriff). How she
looks up at him, how she holds
her face !
Now if she kiss him, I will have his
head.
Sheriff. Peace, my lord; the Earl and
Sir Richard come this way.
Robin. Must you have these monies
before the year and the month end?
Sir Richard. Or I forfeit my land to
the Abbot. I must pass overseas to one
that I trust will help me,
Robin. Leaving your fair Marian alone
here.
Sir Richard. Ay, for she hath some-
what of the lioness in her, and there be
men-at-arms to guard her.
[Robin, Sir Richard, and Marian
pass on.
Prince John {to Sheriff). Why that
will be our opportunity
"When I and thou will rob the nest of her.
Sheriff. Good Prince, art thou in need
of any gold ?
Prince John. Gold? why? not now.
Sheriff. I would give thee any gold
So that myself alone might rob the nest.
Prince John. Well, well then, thou
shalt rob the nest alone.
Sheriff. Swear to me by that relic on
thy neck.
Prince John. I swear then by this
relic on my neck —
No, no, I will not swear by this ; I keep it
For holy vows made to the blessed Saints
Not pleasures, women's matters.
Dost thou mistrust me? Am I not thy
friend ?
Beware, man, lest thou lose thy faith in
me.
I love thee much; and as I am thy friend,
I promise thee to make this Marian thine.
Go now and ask the maid to dance with
thee.
And learn from her if she do love this
Earl.
Sheriff {advancing /<?:£/«■ ;y/ Marian and
Robin). Pretty mistress !
Robin. What art thou, man? Sheriff
of Nottingham ? •
Sheriff. Ay, my lord. I and my
friend, this monk, were here belated, and
seeing the hospitable lights in your castle,
and knowing the fame of your hospitality,
we ventured in uninvited.
Robin. You are welcome, though I
fear you be of those who hold more by
John than Richard.
Sheriff. True, for through John I had
my sheriffship. I am John's till Richard
come back again, and then I am Richard's.
Pretty mistress, will you dance ?
[ They dance.
Robin {talking to Prince John) . What
monk of what convent art thou? Why
wearest thou thy cowl to hide thy face?
[Prince John shakes his head.
Is he deaf, or dumb, or daft, or drunk
belike?
[Prince John shakes his head.
Why comest thou like a death's head at
my feast?
[Prince John points to the Sheriff,
who is dancing with Marian. .
Is he thy mouthpiece, thine interpreter?
[Prince John nods.
Sheriff {to Marian as they pass'). Be-
ware of John !
Marian. I hate him.
Sheriff. Would you cast
An eye of favour on me, I would pay
My brother all his debt and save the land.
Marian. I cannot answer thee till
Richard come.
Sheriff. And when he comes?
Marian. Well, you must wait
till then.
Little John {dancing with Kate). Is
it made up? Will you kiss me?
Kate. You shall give me the first kiss.
Little John. T\:i^xQ. {kisses her) . Now
thine.
Kate. You shall wait for mine till Sir
Richard has paid the Abbot.
[ They pass on.
[ The Sheriff leaves Marian with her
father and coines toward Robin.
Robin {to Sheriff, Prince John standing
by) . Sheriff, thy friend, this monk, is but
a statue.
Sheriff. Pardon him, my lord : he is
820
THE FORESTERS.
ACT I.
a holy Palmer, bounden by a vow not to
show his face, nor to speak word to any-
one, till he join King Richard in the
Holy Land.
Robin. Going to the Holy Land to
Richard ! Give me thy hand and tell
him Why, what a cold grasp is
thine — as if thou didst repent thy cour-
tesy even in the doing it. That is no
true man's hand. I hate hidden faces.
Sheriff. Pardon him again, I pray
you; but the twihght of the coming day
already glimmers in the east. We thank
you, and farewell. *
Robin. Farewell, farewell. I hate hid-
den faces.
\^Exeunt Prince John ajid Sheriff.
Sir Richard {coming forzuard wiik
Maid Marian). How close the
Sheriff peer'd into thine eyes !
What did he say to thee?
Marian. Bade me beware
Of John : what maid but would beware
of John?
Sir Richard. What else ?
Marian. I care not what he said.
Sir Richard. What else?
Marian. That if I case an eye of
favour on him.
Himself would pay this mortgage to his
brother,
And save the land.
Sir Richard. Did he say so, the
Sheriff?
Robin. I fear this Abbot is a heart of
flint,
Hard as the stones of his abbey.
0 good Sir Richard,
1 am sorry my exchequer runs so low
I cannot help you in this exigency;
For though my men and I flash out at
times
Of festival like burnish'd summer- flies.
We make but one hour's buzz, are only
like
The rainbow of a momentary sun.
I am mortgaged as thyself.
Sir Richard, Ay ! I warrant thee —
thou canst not be sorrier than I am.
Come away, daughter.
Robin. Farewell, Sir Richard; fare-
well, sweet Marian.
Marian. Till better times.
Robin. But if the better times should
never come?
Marian. Then I shall be no worse.
Robin. And if the worst time come?
Afarian. Why then I will be better
than the time.
Robin. This ring my mother gave me :
it was her own
Betrothal ring. She pray'd me when I
loved
A maid with all my heart to pass it down
A finger of that hand which should be
mine
Thereafter. Will you have it? Will you
wear it?
Marian. Ay, noble Earl, and never
part with it.
Sir Richard Lea (^coming up). Not
till she clean forget thee, noble
Earl.
Mai-ian. Forget him — never-^by this
Holy Cross
Which good King Richard gave me when
a child —
Never !
Not while the swallow skims along the
ground,
And while the lark flies up and touches
heaven !
Not while the smoke floats from the cot-
tage roof,
And the white cloud is roll'd along the
sky!
Not while the rivulet babbles by the door.
And the great breaker beats upon the
beach !
Never —
Till Nature, high and low, and great and
small
Forgets herself, and all her loves and
hates
Sink again into chaos.
Sir Richard Lea. Away ! away !
\_Exeunt to music.
SCENE HI.— Same as Scene II.
Robin and his men.
Robin. All gone ! — my ring — I am
happy — should be happy.
She took my ring. I trust she loves me
—yet
I heard this Sheriff tell her he would pay
SCENE III.
THE FORESTERS.
821
The mortgage if she favour'd him. I fear
Not her, the father's power upon her.
Friends, {to his men')
I am only merry for an hour or two
Upon a birthday : if this life of ours
Be a good glad thing, why should we
make us merry
Because a year of it is gone? but Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to
come
Whispering * it will be happier,' and old
faces
Press round us, and warm hands close
with warm hands.
And thro' the blood the wine leaps to
the brain
Like April sap to the topmost tree, that
shoots
New buds to heaven, whereon the throstle
rock'd
Sings a new song to the new year — and you
Strike up a song, my friends, and then to
bed.
Liitle John. What will you have, my
lord?
Robin. * To sleep ! to sleep ! '
Little John. There is a touch of sad-
ness in it, my lord,
But ill befitting such a festal day.
Robin. I have a touch of sadness in
myself.
Sing.
Song.
To sleep ! to sleep ! The long bright day is done,
And darkness rises from the fallen sun.
To sleep ! to sleep !
Whate'er thy joys, they vanish with the day;
Whate'er thy griefs, in sleep they fade away.
To sleep ! to sleep !
Sleep, mournful heart, and let the past be past!
Sleep, happy soul ! all life will sleep at last.
To sleep ! to sleep !
\_A trumpet blown at the gates.
Robin. Who breaks the stillness of
the morning thus?
Little John {going out and returning).
It is a royal messenger, my lord :
I trust he brings us news of the King's
coming.
Enter a Pursuivant who reads.
O yes, O yes, O yes ! In the name of
the Regent. Thou, Robin Hood Earl of
Huntingdon art attainted and hast lost
thine earldom of Huntingdon. More-
over thou art dispossessed of all thy
lands, goods, and chattels; and by virtue
of this writ, wliereas Robin Hood Earl
of Huntingdon by force and arms ^hath
trespassed against the king in d'ivers
manners, therefore by the judgment of
the officers of the said lord king, accord-
ing to the law and custom of the king-
dom of England Robin Hood Earl of
Huntingdon is outlawed and banished.
Robin. I have shelter'd some that
broke the forest laws.
This is irregular and the work of John.
[' Irregular, irregular ! {tumult) Down
with him, tear his coat from his
back ! '
Messenger. Ho there ! ho there, the
Sheriff's men without !
Robin. Nay, let them be, man, let
them be. We yield.
How should we cope with John? The
London folkmote
Has made him all but king, and he hath
seized
On half the royal castles. Let him alone !
{to his men)
A worthy messenger ! how should be
help it?
Shall we too work injustice? what, thou
shakest !
Here, here — a cup of wine — drink and
begone ! \_Exit Messenger.
We will away in four-and-twenty hours.
But shall we leave our England?
Tuck. Robin, Earl—
Robin. Let be the Earl. Henceforth
I am no more
Then plain man to plain man.
Tuck. Well, then, plain man.
There be good fellows there in merry
Sherwood
That hold by Richard, tho' they kill his
deer.
Robin. In Sherwood Forest. I have
heard of them.
Have they no leader?
Tuck. Each man for his own.
Be thou their leader and they will all of
them
Swarm to thy voice like bees to the brass
pan.
822
THE FORESTERS.
ACT II
Robin. They hold by Richard— the
wild wood ! to cast
All threadbare household habit, mix with
all
The lusty life of wood and underwood,
Hawk, buzzard, jay, the mavis and the
merle,
The tawny squirrel vaulting thro' the
boughs.
The deer, the highback'd polecat, the
wild boar.
The burrowing badger — By St. Nicholas
I have a sudden passion for the wild
wood —
We should be free as air in the wild
wood —
What say you? shall we go? Your
hands, your hands !
\_Gives his hand to each.
You, Scarlet, you are always moody here.
Scarlet. 'Tis for no lack of love to
you, my lord,
But lack of happiness in a blatant wife.
She broke my head on Tuesday with a
dish.
I vi^ould have thwack'd the woman, but I
did not.
Because thou sayeTst such fine things of
women.
But I shall have to thwack her if I stay.
Robin. Would it be better for thee in
the wood?
Scarlet. Ay, so she did not follow me
to the wood.
Robin. Then, Scarlet, thou at least
wilt go with me.
Thou, Much, the miller's son, I knew thy
father :
He was a manly man, as thou art. Much,
And gray before his time as thou art,
Much.
Much. It is the trick of the family,
my lord.
There was a song he made to the turning
wheel —
Robin. ' Turn ! turn ! ' but I forget it.
Much. I can sing it.
Robin. Not now, good Much ! And
thou, dear Little John,
Who hast that worship for me which
Heaven knows
I ill deserve — you love me, all of you.
But I am outlaw'd, and if caught. I die.
Your hands again. All thanks for all
your service;
But if you follow me, you may die with me.
All. We will live and die with thee,
we will live and die with thee.
ACT II.— The Flight of Marian.
ACT II.
SCENE I.— A Broad Forest Glade.
Woodman' s hut at one side with half-
door, Foresters are looking to their
bows and arrows, or polishing their
swords.
Foresters sing {as they disperse to their
work) .
There is no land like England
Where'er the light of day be;
There are no hearts like English hearts
Such hearts of oak as they be.
There is no land like England
Where'er the light of day be;
There are no men like Englishmen
So tall and bold as they be.
(^Full chorus.)
And these will strike for England
And man and maid be free
To foil and spoil the tyrant
Beneath the greenwood tree.
There is no land like England
Where'er the light of day be;
There are no wives like English wives
So fair and chaste as they be.
There is no land like England
Where'er the light of day be;
There are no maids like English maids
So beautiful as they be.
{Full chorus.)
And these shall wed with freemen,
And all their sons be free,
To sing the songs of England
Beneath the greenwood tree.
Robin (alone). My lonely hour !
The king of day hath stept from off his
throne,
Flung by the golden mantle of the cloud.
And sets, a naked fire. The King of
England
Perchance this day may sink as glori-
ously,
Red with his own and enemy's blood —
but no !
We hear he is in prison. It is my birthday.
SCENE I.
THE FORESTERS.
823 ^
I have reign'd one year in the wild wood.
My mother,
For whose sake, and the blessed Queen ■
of Heaven,
I reverence all women, bad me, dying.
Whene'er this day should come about, to
carve
One lone hour from it, so to meditate
Upon my greater nearness to the birth-
day
Of the after-life, when all the sheeted
dead
Are shaken from their stillness in the
grave
By the last trumpet.
Am I worse or better?
I am outlaw'd. I am none the worse for
that.
I held for Richard, and I hated John.
I am a thief, ay, and a king of thieves.
Ay ! but we xoh the robber, wrong the
wronger,
And what we wring from them we give
the poor.
I am none the worse for that, and all the
better
For this free forest-life, for while I sat
Among my thralls in my baronial hall
The groining hid the heavens; but since
I breathed,
A houseless head beneath the sun and
stars.
The soul of the woods hath stricken thro'
my blood.
The love of freedom, the desire of God,
The hope of larger life hereafter, more
Tenfold than under roof. \_Horn bloion.
True, were I taken
They would prick out my sight. A price
is set
On this poor head; but I believe there
lives *
No man who truly loves and truly rules
His following, but can keep his followers
true.
1 am one with mine. Traitors are rarely
bred
Save under traitor kings. Our vice-king
John,
True king of vice — true play on words —
our John
By his Norman arrogance and dissolute-
ness.
Hath made me king of all the discontent
Of England up thro' all the forest land
North to the Tyne : being outlaw'd in a
land ^ •
Where law lies dead, we mate ourselves
the law.
Why break you thus upon my lonely
hour?
Enter Little John and Kate.
Little John. I found this white doe
. wandering thro' the wood,
Not thine, but mine. I have shot her
thro' the heart.
Kate. He lies, my lord. I have shot
him thro' the heart.
Robin. My God, thou art the very
woman who waits
On my dear Marian. Tell me, tell me oi
her.
Thou comest a very angel out of heaven.
Where is she? and how fares she?
Kate. O my good lord,
I am but an angel by reflected light.
Your heaven is vacant of your angel.
John-
Shame oh him ! —
Stole on her, she was walking in the
garden.
And after some slight speech about the
Sheriff
He caught her round the waist, whereon
she struck him.
And fled into the castle. She and Sir
Richard
Have past away, I know not where; and I
Was left alone, and knowing as I did
That I had shot him thro' the heart, I
came
To eat him up and make an end of him.
Little yohn. In kisses?
Kate. You, how dare you
mention kisses?
But I am weary pacing thro' the wood.
Show me some cave or cabin where I
may rest.
Robin. Go with him. I will talk wfth
thee anon.
[^Exeunt Little John and Kate.
She struck him, my brave Mariar, struck
the Prince,
The serpent that had crept into the gar-
den
824
THE FORESTERS.
And coil'd himself about her sacred
waist.
I think I should have stricken him to
the death.
He never will forgive her.
O the Sheriff
Would pay this cursed mortgage to his
brother
If Marian would marry him ; and the son
Is most like dead — if so the land may
come
To Marian, and they rate the land five-
fold
The worth of the mortgage, and who
marries her
Marries the land. Most honourable
Sheriff!
{Passionately) Gone, and it may be gone
for evermore !
0 would that I could see her for a mo-
ment
Glide like a light across these woodland
ways !
Tho' in one moment she should glance
away,
1 should be happier for it all the year.
O would she moved beside me -like my
shadow !
O would she stood before me as my
queen,
To make this Sherwood Eden o'er again,
And these rough oaks the palms of Para-
dise !
Ah ! but who be those three yonder
with bows? — not of my band — the Sher-
iff, and by heaven. Prince John himself
and one of those mercenaries that suck
the blood of England. My people are
all scattered I know not where. Have
they come for me? Here is the witch's
hut. The fool-people call her a witch —
a good witch to me ! I will shelter hfre.
{^Knocks at the door of the hut.
Old Woman comes out.
Old Woman {kisses his hand). Ah
dear Robin ! ah noble captain, friend of
the poor !
Robin. I am chased by my foes. I
have forgotten my horn that calls my
men together. Disguise me — thy gown
and thy coif.
Old Woman. Come in, come in; I
would give my life for thee, for when the
Sheriff had taken all our goods for the
King without paying, our horse and our
little cart
Robin. Quick, good mother, quick !
Old Woman. Ay, ay, gown, coif, and
petticoat, and the old woman's blessing
with them to the last fringe.
[ They go in.
Enter Prince John, Sheriff of Not-
tingham, and Mercenary.
Prince John. Did we not hear the
two would pass this way?
They must have past. Here is a wood-
man's hut.
Mercenary. Take heed, take heed ! in
Nottingham they say
There bides a foul witch somewhere here-
about.
Sheriff. Not in this hut I take it.
Prince John. Why not here?
Sheriff. I saw a man go in, my lord.
Prince John. Not two?
Sheriff. No, my lord, one.
Prince John. Make for the
cottage then !
Interior of the hut. Robin disguised as
old -woman.
Prince John {without^ . Knock again !
knock again !
Robin {to Old Woman). Get thee into
the closet there, and make a ghostly wail
ever and anon to scare 'em.
Old Woman. I will, I will, good
Robin. [ Goes into closet.
Prince John {without). Open, open,
or I will drive the door from the doorpost.
Robin {opens door). Come in, come in.
Prince John. W^hy did ye keep us
at the door so4ong?
Robin {curtseying). I was afear'd it
was the ghost, your worship.
Prince John. Ghost ! did one in white
pass?
Robin {curtseying) . No, your worship.
Prince John. Did two knights pass?
Robin {c2irtseying). No, your worship.
Sheriff. I fear me we have lost our
labour, then.
Prince John. Except this old hag
have been bribed to lie.
SCENE I.
THE FORESTERS.
825
Robin. We old hags should be bribed
to speak truth, for, God help us, we lie
by nature.
Prince John. There was a man just
now that enter'd here?
Robin. There is but one old woman
in the hut. [Old Woman yells.
Robin. I crave your worship's pardon.
There is yet another old woman. She
was murdered here a hundred year ago,
and whenever a murder is to be done
again she yells out i' this way — so they
say, your worship.
Mercenary. Now, if I hadn't a sprig
o' wickentree sewn into my dress, I should
run.
Prince John. Tut ! tut ! the scream
of some wild woodland thing."
How came we to be parted from our men?
We shouted, and they shouted, as I
thought.
But shout and echo play'd into each
other
So hollowly we knew not which was
which.
Robin. The wood is full of echoes,
owls, elfs, ouphes, oafs, ghosts o' the
mist, wills-o'-the-wisp ; only they that be
bred in it can find their way a-nights
in it.
Prince John. I am footsore and
famish'd therewithal.
Is there aught there ?
{^Pointing to cupboard.
Robin. Naught for the likes o' you.
Prince John. Speak straight out,
crookback.
Robin. Sour milk and black bread.
Prince John. Well, set them forth.
I could eat anything.
\_He sets out a table with black
bread.
This is mere marble. Old hag, how
should thy one tooth drill thro' this?
Robin. Nay, by St. Gemini, I ha'
two; and since the Sheriff left me naught
but an empty belly, they can meet upon
anything thro' a millstone. You gentles
that live upo' manchet-bread and march-
pane, what should you know o' the food
o' the poor? Look you here, before you
can eat it you must hack it with a hatchet,
break it all to pieces, as you break the
poor, as you would hack at Robin Hood
if you could light upon him {hacks it and
flings two pieces). There's for you, and
there's for you — and the old woman's
welcome.
Prince John. The old wretch is mad,
and her bread is beyond me : and the
milk — faugh ! Hast thou anything to
sweeten this?
Robin. Here's a pot o' wild honey
from an old oak, saying your sweet
reverences.
Sheriff. Thou hast a cow then, hast
thou?
Robin. Ay, for when the Sheriff took
my little horse for the King without pay-
ing for it
Sheriff. *How hadst thou then the
means to buy a cow?
Robin. Eh, I would ha' given my
whole body to the King had he asked for
it, like the woman at Acre when the Turk
shot her as she was helping to build the
mound against the city. I ha' served
the King living, says she, and let me
serve him dead, says she; let me go to
make the mound : bury me in the mound,
says the woman.
Sheriff. Ay, but the cow?
Robin, She was given me.
Sheriff. By whom?
Robin. By a thief.
Sheriff. Who, woman, who?
Robin {sings^.
He was a forester good ;
He was the cock o' the walk;
He was the king o' the wood.
Your worship may find another rhyme
if you care to drag your brains for such
a minnow.
Sheriff. That cow was mine. I have
lost a cow from my meadow. Robin
Hood was it? I thought as much. ' He
will come to the gibbet at last.
[Old Woman _y^//y.
Mercenary. O sweet sir, talk not of
cows. You anger the spirit.
Prince John. Anger the scritch-owl.
Mercenary. But, my lord, the scritch-
owl bodes death, my lord.
Robin. I beseech you all to speak
lower. Robin may be hard by wi' three-
826"
THE FORESTERS.
score of his men. He often looks in here
by the moonshine. Beware of Robin.
[Old Woman ^<?//j.
Mercenary, Ah, do you hear ? There
may be murder done.
Sheriff. Have you not finished, my lord ?
Robin. Thou hast crost him in love,
and I have heard him swear he will be
even wi' thee. [Old Woman jj"?//^.
Mercenary. Now is my heart so down
in my heels thai: it I stay, I can't run.
Sheriff. Shall we not go?
Robin. And, old hag tho' I be, I can
spell the hand. Give me thine. Ay, ay,
the line o' life is marked enow; but look,
there is a cross line o' sudden death. I
pray thee, go, go, for tho' thou wouldst
bar me fro' the milk o' my cotv, I wouldn't '
have thy blood on my hearth.
Prince John. Why do you listen, man,
to the old fool?
Sheriff. I will give thee a silver penny
if thou wilt show us the way back to
Nottingham.
Robin {with a very low curtsey'). All
the sweet saints bless your worship for
your alms to the old woman ! but make
haste then, and be silent in the wood.
Follow me. [ Takes his bow.
( They come out of the hut and close the
door carefully.')
■ [ Outside hut.
Robin. Softly ! softly ! there may be a
thief in every bush.
Prince John. How should this old
lamester guide us? Where is thy good-
man?
Robin. The saints were so kind to
both on us that he was dead before he
was born.
Prince John. Half-witted and a witch
to boot ! Mislead us, and I will have thy
life ! and what doest thou with that who
art more bow-bent than the very bow thou
carriest?
Robin. 1 keep it to kill nightingales.
Prince John. Nightingales !
Robin. You see, they are so fond o'
their own voices that I cannot sleep o'
nights 'by cause on 'em.
Prince John. True soul of the Saxon
churl for whom song has no charm-
Robin. Then I roast 'em, for I have
nought else to live on {whines). O your
honour, I pray you too to give me an
alms. ( To Prince John.)
Sheriff. This is no bow to hit night-
ingales; this is a true woodman's bow
of the best yew-wood to slay the deer.
Look, my lord, there goes one in the
moonlight. Shoot !
Prince "John {shoots) . Missed ! There
goes another. Shoot, Sheriff!
Sheriff {shoots). Missed!
Robin. And here comes another.
Why, an old woman can shoot closer
than you two.
Prince John. Shoot then, and if thou
miss I will fasten thee to thine own door-
post-and make thine old carcase a target
for us three.
Robin {raises himself upright, shoots,
and hits). Hit! Did I not tell you an
old woman could shoot better?
Prince John. Thou standest straight.
Thou speakest manlike. Thou art no old
woman — thou art disguised — thou art one
of the thieves.
\_Makes a clutch at the gown, which
co?7ies in pieces and falls, show-
ing Robin in his forester^ s dress.
Sheriff. It is the very captain of the
thieves !
Prince John. We have him at last;
we have him at advantage. Strike,
Sheriff! Strike, mercenary !
[ They dratu szvords and attack him ;
he defends himself with his.
Enter Little John.
Little John. I have lodged my pretty
Katekin in her bower.
How now? Clashing of swords —
three upon one, and that one our Robin !
Rogues, have you no manhood?
\_Draws and defends Robin.
Enter Sir Richard Lea {draws his
stvord).
Sir Richard Lea. Old as I am, I will
not brook to see
Three upon two.
(Maid Marian in the armour of a
Red-cross Knight follows half un-
sheathing her szvord and half seen.)
SCENE I.
THE FORESTERS.
827
Back ! back ! I charge thee, back !
Xs this a game for thee to play at? Away.
(^She retires to the fringe of the copse.)
\_He fights on Robin's side. The other
three are beaten off and exeunt.
Enter Friar Tuck.
Friar Tuck. I am too late then with
my quarterstaff !
Robin. Quick, friar, follow them :
See whether there be more of 'em in the
wood.
Friar Tuck. On the gallop, on the
gallop, Robin, like a deer from a dog, or
a colt from a gad-fly, or a stump-tailed ox
in May-time, or the cow that jumped over
the moon. . \_Exit.
Robin. Nay, nay, but softly, lest they
spy thee, friar !
[ To Sir Richard Lea tvho reels.
Take thou mine arm. Who art thou,
gallant knight?
Sir Richard. Robin, I am Sir Richard
of the Lea.
Who be those three that I have fought
withal ?
Robin. Prince John, the Sheriff, and
a mercenary.
Sir Richard. Prince John again. We
are flying from this John.
The Sheriff" — I am grieved it was the
Sheriff";
For, Robin, he must be my son-in-law.
Thou art an outlaw, and couldst never
pay
The_ mortgage on my land. Thou wilt
not see
My Marian more. So — so — I have pre-
samed
Beyond my strength. Give me a draught
of wine. [Marian comes forzuard.
This is my son but late escaped from
prison,
For whom I ran into my debt to the
Abbot,
Two thousand marks in gold. I have
paid him half.
That other thousand — shall I ever pay
it?
A draught of wine.
Robin. Our cellar is hard by.
Take him, good Little John, and give him
wine.
\_Exit Sir Richard leaning on Little John.
A brave old fellow but he angers me.
[ To Maid Marian who is fol-
loxving her father.
Young Walter, nay, I pray thee; stay a
moment.
Marian. A moment for some matter
of no moment!
Well — ! take and use your moment, while
you may.
Robin. Thou art her brother, and her
voice is thine.
Her face is thine, and if thou be as gentle
Give me some news of my sweet Marian.
Where is she?
Alai'ian. Thy sweet Marian? I
believe
She came with me into the forest here.
Robin. She follow'd thee into the
forest here?
Marian. Nay — that, my friend, I am
sure I did not !^ay. ^
Robin. Thou blowest hot and cold.
Where is she then?
Marian. Is she not here with thee?
Robin. Would God she were !
Marian. If not with thee I know not
where she is.
She may have lighted on your fairies here,
And now be skipping in their fairy-rings.
And capering hand in hand with Oberon.
Robifi. Peaca!
Alarian. Or learning witchcraft of
your woodland witch
And how to charm and waste the hearts
of men.
Robijt. That is not brother-like.
Marian (foijtting to the sky). Or
there perchance
Up yonder with the man i' the moon.
Robin. No more !
Marian. Or haply fallen a victim to
the wolf.
Robin. Tut ! be there wolves in Sher-
wood ?
Marian. The wolf, John !
Robin. Curse him ! but thou art mock-
ing me. Thou art
Her brother — I forg'.ve thee. Come be
thou
My brother too. She loves me,
828
THE FORESTERS.
ACT II.
Marian. Doth she so?
Robin. Do you doubt me when I say
she loves me, man?
. Marian. No, but my father will not
lose his land,
Rather than that would wed her with the
Sheriff.
Robin. Thou hold'st with him?
Marian. Yes, in some sort I do.
He is old and almost mad to keep the
land.
Robin. Thou hold'st with him?
Marian. I tell thee, in some sort.
Robin {angrily^. Sort! sort! what
sort? what sort of man art thou
For land, not love? Thou wilt inherit
the land,
And so wouldst sell thy sister to the
Sheriff,
O thou unworthy brother of my dear
Marian !
And now, I do bethink me, thou wast by
And never drewest sword to help the old
man
When he was fighting.
Marian. There were three to
three.
Robin. Thou shouldst have ta'en his
place, and fought for him.
■ Marian. He did it so well there was
no call for me.
Robin, My God !
That such a brother — she marry the
Sheriff!
Come now, I fain would have a bout with
thee.
It is but pastime — nay, I will not harm
thee.
Draw!
Marian. Earl, I would fight with any
man but thee.
Robin. Ay, ay, because I have a name
for prowess.
Marian. It is not that.
Robiti. That! I believe thou fell'st
into the hands
Of these same Moors thro' nature's base-
ness, criedst
*1 yield' almost before the thing was
ask'd,
And thro' thy lack of manhood hast be-
tray'd
Thy father to the losing of his land.
Come, boy ! 'tis but to see if thou cans)
fence.
Draw ! [^Draws.
Marian. No, Sir Earl, I will not fight
to-day.
Robijt. To-morrow then?
Marian. Well, I will fighl
to-morrow.
Robin. Give me thy glove upon it.
Marian {pulls off her glove and gives ii
to hifn). There!
Robin. O God !
What sparkles in the moonhght on thy
hand? \_Takes her hand.
In that great heat to wed her to the
Sheriff
Thou hast robb'd my girl of her betrothal
ring.
Marian. No, no !
Robin. What ! do I not know
mine own ring?
Marian. I keep it for her.
Robin. Nay, she swore it never
Should leave her finger. Give it me, by
heaven,
Or I will force it from thee.
Marian. O Robin, Robin !
Robin. O my dear Marian,
Is it thou? is it thou? I fall before thee,
clasp
Thy knees. I am ashamed. Thou shalt
not marry
The Sheriff, but abide with me who love
thee.
\_She moves from him, the moon-
light falls upon her.
O look ! before the shadow of these dark
oaks
Thou seem'st a saintly splendour out from
heaven.
Clothed with the mystic silver of her
moon.
Speak but one word not only of forgive-
ness.
But to show thou art mortal.
Marian. Mortal enough.
If love for thee be mortal. Lovers hold
True love immortal. Robin, tho' I love
thee.
We cannot come together in this world.
Not mortal ! after death, if after death—
Robin- Life, life. I know not death.
Why do you vex me
SCENE II.
THE FORESTERS,
829
With raven- croaks of death and after
death?
Marian. And I and he are passing
overseas:
He has a friend there will advance the
monies,
So now the forest lawns are all as bright
As ways to heaven, I pray thee give us
guides
To lead us thro' the windings of the wood.
Robin. Must it be so? If it were so,
myself
Would guide you thro' the forest to the
sea.
But go not yet, stay with us, and when
thy brother
Marian. Robin, I ever held that say-
ing false
That Love is blind, but thou hast proven
it true.
Why — even your woodland squirrel sees
the nut
Behind the shell, and thee however
mask'd
I should have known. But thou — to
dream that he
My brother, my dear Walter — now, per-
haps,
Fetter'd and lash'd, a galley-slave, or
closed
For ever in a Moorish tower, or wreckt
And dead beneath the midland ocean, he
As gentle as he's brave — that such as he
Would wrest from me the precious ring I
promised
Never to part with — No, not he, nor any.
I would have battled for it to the death.
[/« her excitement she draws her
sword.
See, thou hast wrong'd my brother and
myself
Robin {kneeling). See then, I kneel
once more to be forgiven.
Enter Scarlet, Much, several of the
Foresters, rushing on.
Scarlet. Look ! look ! he kneels ! he
has aftiger'd the foul witch.
Who melts a waxen image by the fire.
And drains the heart and jxkarrow from a
man.
Much. Our Robin beaten, pleading
for his life !
Seize on the knight ! wrench his sword
from him !
[ Tliey all rush on Marian.
Robin {springing up and waving his
hand). Back!
Back all of you ! this is Maid Marian
Flying from John — disguised.
Men. Maid Marian? she?
Scarlet. Captain, we saw thee cower-
ing to a knight
And thought thou wert bewitch'd.
Marian. You dared to dream
That our great Earl, the bravest English
heart
Since Hereward the Wake, would cower
to any
Of mortal build. Weak natures that im-
pute
Themselves to their unlikes, and their
own want
Of manhood to their leader ! he would
break.
Far as he might, 'the power of John — but
you —
What rightful cause could grow to such a
heat
As burns a wrong to ashes, if the followers
Of him, who heads the movement, held
him craven?
Robin — I know not, can I trust myself
With your brave band ? in some of these
may lodge
That baseness which for fear or monies,
might
Betray me to the wild Prince.
Robin. No, love, no !
Not any of these, I swear.
Men. No, no, we swear.
SCENE II. — Another Glade in the
Forest.
Robin and Marian passing. Enter
Forester.
Forester. Knight, your good father
had his draught of wine
And then he swoon,'d away. He had
• been hurt.
And bled beneath his armour. Now he
cries
*Tiie land! the land! ' Come to him.
Marian. O my poor father 1
830
THE FORESTERS.
ACT II.
Robin. Stay with us in this wood, till
he recover.
We know all balms and simples of the
field
To help a wound. Stay with us here,
sweet love,
Maid Marian, till thou wed what man
thou wilt.
All here will prize thee, honour, worship
thee.
Crown thee with flowers; and Jie will
soon be well :
All will be well.
Marian. O lead me to my father !
\_As they are going out enter Little
-John and Kate who falls on the
neck of Marian.
Kate. No, no, false knight, thou canst
not hide thyself
From her who loves thee.
Little John. What !
By all the devils in and put of Hell !
Wilt thou embrace thy sweetheart 'fore
my face?
Quick with thy sword ! the yeoman braves
the knight.
There ! {strikes her with the flat of his
sword).
Marian {laying about her). Are the
men all mad? there then, and
there !
Kate. O hold thy hand ! this is our
Marian.
Little John. What ! with this skill of
fence ! let go mine arm.
Robin. Down with thy sword ! She is
my queen and thine.
The mistress of the band.
Marian {sheathi7tg her sword). A
maiden now
Were ill-bested in these dark days of
John,
Except she could defend her ivinocence.
0 lead me to my father.
{^Exeunt Robin and Marian.
^ Little John. Speak to me,
1 am like a boy now going to be whipt;
I know I have done amiss, have been a
fool,
Speak to me, Kate, and say you pardon
me !
Kate. I never will speak word to thee
again.
What? to mistrust the girl you say you
love
Is to mistrust your own love for your girl !
How should you love if yoii mistrust your
love?
Little John, O Kate, true love and
jealousy are twins,
And love is joyful, innocent, beautiful.
And jealousy is wither'd, sour and ugly :
Yet are they twins and always go to-
gether.
Kate. Well, well, until they cease to
go together,
I am but a stone and a dead stock to thee.
Little John. I thought 1 saw thee
clasp and kiss a man
And it was but a woman. Pardon me.
Kate. Ay, for I much disdain thee,
but if ever
Thou see me clasp and kiss a man indeed,
I will again be thine, and not till then.
\_Exit.
Little John. I have been a fool and I
have lost my Kate. \_Exit.
Re-enter RoBiN.
Robin. He dozes. I have left her
watching him.
She will not marry till her father yield.
The old man dotes.
Nay — and she will not marry till Richard
come,
And that's at latter Lammas — never per-
haps.
Besides, tho' Friar Tuck might make us
one,
An outlaw's bride may not be wife in law.
I am weary. \_Lying down on a bank.
What's here? a dead bat in the fairy
ring-
Yes, I remember. Scarlet hacking down
A hollow ash, a bat flew out at him
In the clear noon, and hook'd him by the
hair.
And he was scared and slew it. My men
say
The fairies haunt this glade; — if one
could catch '
A glimpse of them and of their fairy
Queen —
Have our loud pastimes driven them all
away?
I never saw them : yet I could believe
THE FORESTERS.
831
There came some evil fairy at my birth
And cursed me, as the last heir of my
"race :
*This boy will never wed the maid he
loves,
Nor leave a child behind him ' (yawns).
Weary — weary
As tho' a spell were on me {he breams),
[ The whole stage lights up, and fairies
are seen swinging on boughs and
nestling in hollow trunks.
TiTANiA on a hill. Fairies on either
side of her. The moon above the hill.
First Fairy,
Evil fairy! do you hear?
So he said who lieth here.
Second Fairy.
We be fairies of the wood,
We be neither bad nor good.
First Fairy.
Back and side and hip and rib,
Nip, nip him for his fib.
Titania.
Nip him not, but let him snore.
We must flit for evermore.
First Fairy.
Tit, my queen, must it be so?
Wherefore, wherefore should we go?
Titania.
I Titania bid you flit.
And you dare to call me Tit.
First Fairy.
Tit, for love and brevity.
Not for love of levity.
Titania.
Pertest of our flickering mob,
Wouldst thou call my Oberon Ob?
First Fairy.
Nay, an please your Elfin Grace,
Never Ob before his face.
Titania.
Fairy realm is breaking down
When the fairy slights the crown.
First Fairy.
No, by wisp and glowworm, no.
Only wherefore sbould we go?
Titania.
We must fly from Robin Hood
And this new queen of the wood.
First Fairy.
True, she is a goodly thing.
Jealousy, jealousy of the king.
Titania.
Nay, for Oberon fled away
Twenty thousand leagues to-day.
Chorus.
Look, there comes a deputation
From our finikin fairy nation.
Enter several Fairies.
Third Fairy.
Crush'd my bat whereon I flew.
Found him dead and drench'd in dew,
Queen.
Fourth Fairy,
my frog that used
'. vaulted on his back.
Quash'd my frog that used to quack
When I vaulted on his back.
Queen.
Fifth Fairy.
Kill'd the sward where'er they sat,
Queen.
Sixth J^airy.
Lusty bracken beaten flat,
Queen.
Seventh Fairy.
Honest daisy deadly bruised,
Queen.
Eighth Fairy.
Modest maiden lily abused.
Ninth Fairy.
Beetle's jewel armour crack'd.
Queen.
Queen.
Tenth Fairy.
Reed I rock'd upon broken-back'd.
Queen.
Fairies {in chorus).
We be scared with song and shout-
Arrows whistle all about.
All our games be put to rout.
All our rings be trampled out.
Lead us thou to some deep glen.
Far from solid foot of men,
Never to return again.
Queen
Titania {to First Fairy).
Elf, with spiteful heart and eye,
Talk of jealousy? You see why
We must leave the wood and fly.
«32
THE FORESTERS.
ACT III.
( To all the fairies who sing at intervals
■with Titania.)
Up with you, out of the forest and over the hills
and away,
And over this Robin Hood's bay !
Up thro' the light of the seas by the moon's long-
silvering ray!
To a land where the fay,
Not an eye to survey,
In the night, in the day.
Can have frolic and play.
Up with you, all of you, out of it ! hear and obey,
Man, lying here alone.
Moody creature.
Of a nature
Stronger, sadder than my own,
Were I human, were I human,
I could love you like a woman.
Man, man.
You shall wed your Marian.
She is true, and you are true,
And you lov.e her and she loves you;
Both be happy, and adieu for evM and for ever-
more— adieu. •
Robin (half waking). Shall I
happy? Happy vision, stay.
be
Titania.
Up with you, all of you, off with you, out of it,
over the wood And away !
Note. — In the stage copy of my play I have
had this Fairy Scene transferred to the end of the
Third Act, for the sake of modern dramatic effect.
ACT HI. — ^The Crowning of Marian.
SCENE I. — Heart of the Forest.
Marian and ELate (in Foresters' green) .
Kate. What makes you seem so cold
to Robin, lady?
Marian. What makes thee think I
seem so cold to Robin?
Kate. You never whisper close as
lovers do,
Nor care to leap into each other's arms.
Marian. There is a fence I cannot
overleap,
My father's will,
Kate. Then you will wed the Sheriff?
Marian. When heaven falls, I may
light on such a lark !
But who art thou to catechize me — thou
That hast not made it i^) with Little
John!
Kate. I wait till Little John makes
up to me.
Marian. Why, my good Robin fan-
cied me a man,
And drew his sword upon me, and Little
John
Fancied he saw thee clasp and kiss a man.
Kate. Well, if he fancied that / fancy
a man
Other than him, he is not the man for me.
Marian. And that would quite wwman
him, heart and soul.
For both are thine.
(Looking up.)
But listen — overhead —
Fluting, and piping and luting * Love,
love, love ' —
Those* sweet tree-Cupids half-way up in
heaven,
The birds — would I were one of 'em !
O good Kate —
If my man-Robin were but a bird-Robin,
How happily would we lilt among the
leaves
* Love, love, love, love ' — ^what merry
madness — listen !
And let them warm thy heart to Little
John.
Look where he comes !
Kate. I will not meet him yet,
I'll watch him from behind the trees,
but call
Kate when you will, for -I am close at
hand.
Kate stands aside and enter Robin, and
after him at a little distance Little
John, Much the Miller's son, and
Scarlet with an oaken chaplet, and
other Foresters.
Little John. My lord— Robin— I
crave pardon — you always seem to me
my lord — I Little John, he Much the
miller's son, and he Scarlet, honouring
all womankind, and more especially my
lady Marian, do here, in the name of
all our woodmen, present her with this
oaken chaplet as Queen of the wood, I
Little John, he, young Scarlet, and he,
old Much, and all the rest of us.
Much. And I, old Much, say as much,
for being every inch a man I honour
every inch of a woman.
Robin. Friend Scarlet, art thou less a
man than Much?
SCENE I.
THE FORESTERS.
833
Why art thou mute? Dost thou not
honour woman?
Scarlet. Robin, I do, but I have a
bad wife.
Robin. Then let her pass as an ex-
ception. Scarlet.
Scarlet. So I would, Robin, if any
man would accept her.
Marian (^puts on the chaplet^. Had I
a bulrush now in this right hand
For sceptre, I were like a queen indeed.
Comrades, I thank you for your loyalty,
And take and wear this symbol of your
love;
And were my kindly father sound again,
Could live as happy as' the larks in
heaven.
And join your feasts and all your forest
games
As far as maiden might. Farewell, good
fellows !
\^Exeunt several foresters, the
others ivithdraw to the back.
Robin. Sit here by me, where the
most beaten track
Runs thro' the forest, hundreds of huge
oaks,
Gnarl'd — older than the thrones of Eu-
rope— look.
What breadth, height, strength — torrents
of eddying bark !
Some hollow-hearted from exceeding
age-
That never be thy lot or mine ! — and
some
Pillaring a leaf-sky on their monstrous
boles,
Sound at the core as we are. Fifty
leagues
Of woodland hear and know my horn,
that scares
The Baron at the torture of his churls,
The pillage of his vassals.
O maiden-wife,
The oppression of our people moves me so.
That when I think of it hotly, Love him-
self
Seems but a ghost, but when thou feel'st
with me
The ghost returns to Marian, clothes
itself
In maiden flesh and blood, and looks
at once
3H
Maid Marian, and that maiden freedom
which
Would never brook the tyrant. Live
thou maiden !
Thou art more my wife so feeling, than
if my wife
And siding with these proud priests, and
these Barons,
Devils, that make this blessed England
hell.
Marian. Earl
Robin. Nay, no Earl
am I. I am English yeoman.
Marian. Then / am yeo-woman. O
the clumsy word !
Robin. Take thou this light kiss for
thy clumsy word.
Kiss me again.
Marian. Robin, I will not kiss thee.
For that belongs to marriage; but I hold
thee
The husband of my heart, the noblest
light
That ever flash'd across my life, and I
Embrace thee with the kisses of the soul.
Robiti. I thank thee.
Marian. Scarlet told me
— is it true ? —
That John last week return'd to Notting-
ham,
And all the foolish world is pressing
thither.
Robin. Sit here, my queen, and jttdge
the world with me.
Doubtless, like judges of another bench.
However wise, we must at times have
wrought
Some great injustice, yet, far as we knew,
We never robb'd one friend of the true
King.
We robb'd the traitors that are leagued
with John;
We robb'd the lawyer who went against
the law;
We spared the craftsman, chapman, all
that live
By their ov-n hands, the labourer, the
poor priest;
We spoil' d the prior, friar, abbot, monk.
For playing upside down with Holy Writ.
' Sell all thou hast and give it to the
p>oor;'
Take all they have and give it to thyself!
834
THE FORESTERS.
ACT III.
Then after we have eased them of their
coins
It is our forest custom they should revel
Along with Robin.
Marian. And if a woman pass
Robin. Dear, in these days of Nor-
man license, when
Oar English maidens are their prey, if
ever
A Norman damsel fell into our hands,
In this dark wood when all was in our
power
We never wrong'd a woman.
Marian. Noble Robin.
Little John {coming forward^ . Here
come three beggars.
Enter the three Beggars.
Little John. Toll !
First Beggar. Eh ! we be beggars,
we come to ask o' you. We ha' nothing.
Second Beggar. Rags, nothing but
our rags.
Third Beggar. I have but one penny
in pouch, and so you would make it two
I should be grateful.
Marian. Beggars, you are sturdy
rogues that should be set to work. You
are those that tramp the country, filch
the linen from the hawthorn, poison the
house-dog, and scare lonely maidens at
the farmstead. Search them. Little John.
Little John. These two have forty
gold marks between them, Robin.
Robin. Cast them into our treasury,
the beggars' mites. Part shall go to the
almshouses at Nottingham, part to the
shrine of our Lady. Search this other.
Little John. He hath, as he said, but
one penny.
Robin. Leave it with him and add a
gold mark thereto. He hath spoken
truth in a world of lies.
Third Beggar. I thank you, my lord.
Little John. A fine, a fine ! he hath
called plain Robin a lord. How much
for a beggar?
Robin. Take his penny and leave him
his gold mark.
Little John. Sit there, knaves, till the
captain call for you.
[ They pass behind the trunk of an
odk on the right.
Marian. Art thou not hard upon
them, my good Robin?
Robin. They might be harder upon
thee, if met in a black lane at midnight:
the throat might gape before the tongue
could cry who?
Little John. Here comes a citizen,
and I think his wife.
Enter Citizen and Wife.
Citizen. That business which we have
in Nottingham
Little John. Halt !
Citizen. O dear wife, we
have fallen into the hands
Of Robin Hood.
Marian. And Robin Hood hath
sworn — '
Shame on thee. Little John, thou hast
forgotten —
That by the blessed Mother no man, so
His own true wife came with him, should
be stay'd
From passing onward. Fare you well,
fair lady ! [^Bowijig to her.
Robin. And may your business thrive
in Nottingham !
Citizen. I thank you, noble sir, the
very blossom
Of bandits. Courtesy to him, wife, and
thank him.
Wife. I thank you, noble sir, and will
pray for you
That you may thrive, but in some kindlier
trade.
Citizen. Away, away, wife, wilt thou
anger him?
\_Exeunt Citizen and his Wife.
Little John. Here come three friars.
Robin. Marian, thou and thy woman
{looking round) , Why, where is Kate ?
Marian {calling) . Kate !
Kate. Here!
Robin. Thou and thy woman are a
match for three friars. Take thou my bow
and arrow and compel them to pay toll.
Marian. Toll !
Enter three Friars.
First Friar {advancing). Behold a
pretty Dian of the wood,
Prettier than that same widow which you
wot of.
THE FORESTERS.
835
Ha, brother. Toll, my dear? the toll of
love.
Marian {drawing bow) . Back ! how
much money hast thou in thy
jjurse?
First Friar. Thou art playing with
us. How should poor friars have money ?
Marian. How much? how much?
Speak, or the arrow flies.
First Friar. How much? well, now
I bethink me, I have one mark in gold
which a pious son of the Church gave me
this morning on my setting forth.
Marian {benditig bow at the second).
And thou?
Second Friar. Well, as he said, one
mark in gold.
Marian {bending bow at the third).
And thou?
Third Friar. One mark in gold.
Marian, Search them, Kate, and see
if they have spoken truth.
Kate. They are all mark'd men. They
have told but a tenth of the truth : they
have each ten marks in gold.
Marian. Leave them each what they
say is theirs, and take the twenty-seven
marks to the captain's treasury. Sit
there till you be called for.
First Friar. We have fall'n into the
hands of Robin Hood.
[Marian and Kate return to Robin.
[ 77/1? Friars pass behind an oak
on the left.
Robin. Honour to thee, brave Marian,
and thy Kate.
I know them arrant knaves in Notting-
ham.
One half of this shall go to those they
have wrong' d,
One half shall'pass into our treasury.
Where lies that cask of wine whereof we
plunder'd
The Norman prelate?
Little John. In that oak, where twelve
Can stand upright, nor touch each other.
Robin. Good !
Roll it in here. These friars, thieves,
and liars.
Shall drink the health of our new wood-
land Queen.
And they shall pledge thee, Marian, loud
enough
To fright the wild swan passing over-
head.
The mouldwarp underfoot.
Marian. They pledge me, Robin?
The silent blessing of one honest man
Is heard in heaven — the wassail yells of
thief
And rogue and liar echo down in Hell,
And wake the Devil, and I may sicken
by 'em.
Well, well, be it so, thou strongest thief
of all.
For thou hast stolen my will,' and made it
thine.
Friar Tuck, Little John, Much,
and Scarlet roll in cask.
Friar Tuck. I marvel is it sack or
Malvoisie ?
Robin. Do me the service to tap it,
and thou wilt know.
Friar Tuck. I would tap myself in thy
service, Robin.
Robin. And thou wouldst run more
wine than blood.
Friar Tuck. And both at thy service,
Robin.
Robin. I believe thee, thou art a good
fellow, though a friar.
[ They pour the wine into cups.
Friar Tuck. Fill to the brim. Our
Robin, King o' the woods.
Wherever the horn sound, and the buck
bound,
Robin, the people's friend, the King o'
the woods. [ They drink.
Robin. To the brim and over till the
green earth drink
Her health along with us in this rich
draught,
And answer it in flowers. The Queen o'
the woods,
Wherever the buck bound, and the horn
sound.
Maid Marian, Queen o' the woods !
[ They drink.
Here, you three rogues,
[ To the Beggars. 7 hey come otit.
You caught a lonely woodman of our
band,
And bruised him almost to the death, and
took
iiis monies.
8^
THE FORESTERS.
Third Beggar. Captain, nay, it wasn't
me.
Robin. You ought to dangle up there
among the crows.
Drink to the health of our new Queen o'
the woods.
Or else be bound and beaten.
First Beggar. Sir, sir — well.
We drink the health of thy new Queen o'
the woods.
Robin. Louder ! louder ! Maid Marian,
Queen o' the woods !
Beggars (^shouting). Maid Marian,
Queen o' the woods: Queen o'
the woods.
First and Second Beggars (aside) . The
black fiend grip her !
[ They drink.
Robin (to the Friars). And you three
holy men, [ They come out.
You worshippers of the Virgin, one of you
Shamed a too trustful widow whom you
heard
In her confession; and another —
worse ! —
An innocent maid. Drink to the Queen
o' the woods,
Or else be bound and beaten.
First Friar. Robin Hood,
These be the lies the people tell of us,
Because we seek to curb their vicious-
ness.
However — to this maid, this Queen o' the
woods.
Robin. Louder, louder, ye knaves.
Maid Marian !
Queen o' the woods !
Friars (shouting). Maid Marian,
Queen o' the woods.
First Fria r (aside) . M aid ?
Second Friar (aside). Paramour!
Third Friar (aside). Hell take her !
[ l^hey drink.
Friar Tuck. Robin, will you not hear
one of these beggars' catches? They can
do it. I have heard 'em in the market
at Mansfield.
Little John. No, my lord, hear ours
— Robin — I crave pardon, I always think
of you as my lord, but I may still say my
lady; and, my lady, Kate and 1 have
fallen out again, and I pray you to come
between us again, for, my lady, we have
made a song in your honour, so your lady-
ship care to listen.
Robin. Sing, and by St. Mary these
beggars and these friars shall join you.
Play the air. Little John.
Little John. Air and word, my lady,
are maid and man. Join them and they
are a true marriage; and so, 1 pray you,
my lady, come between me and my Kate
and make us one again. Scarlet, begin.
{^Playing the air on his viol.
Scarlet.
By all the deer that spring
Thro' wood and lawn and ling,
When all the leaves are green ;
By arrow and gray goosewing,
When horn and echo ring,
We care so much for a King;
We care not much for a Queen —
For a Queen, for a Queen o' the woods.
Marian. Do you call that in my
honour?
Scarlet. Bitters before dinner, my lady,
to give you a relish. The first part —
made before you came among us — they
put it upon me because I have a bad wife.
I love you all the same. Proceed.
\_All the rest sing.
By all the leaves of spring,
And all the birds that sing
- When all the leaves are green ;
By arrow and by bowstring.
We care so much for a King
That we would die for a Queen —
For a Queen, for a Queen o' the woods.
Enter Forester.
Forester. Black news, black news
from Nottingham ! I grieve
I am the Raven who croaks it. My lord
John,
In wrath because you drove him from the
forest,
Is coming with a swarm of mercenaries
To break our band and scatter us to the
winds.
Marian. O Robin, Robin ! See that
men be set
Along the glades and passes of the wood
To warn us of his coming ! then each man
That owns a wife or daughter, let him
bury her
Even in the bowels of the earth to scape
The glance of John
Robin. You hear your Queen, obey 1
SCfiNE 1.
THE FORESTERS.
837
ACT IV.— The Conclusion..
ACT IV.
SCENE. — A Forest Bower, Cavern in
Background. Sunrise.
Marian ( rising to meet Robin). Robin,
the sweet light of a mother's eye,
That beam of dawn upon the opening
flower,
Has never glanced upon me when a child.
He was my father, mother, both in one.
The love that children owe to both I give
To him alone.
(Robin offers to caress her.')
Marian. Quiet, good Robin, quiet !
You lovers are such clumsy summer-flies
For ever buzzing at your lady's face.
Robin. Bees rather, flying to the
flower for honey.
Afar tan (sings).
The bee buzz'd up in the heat.
* I am faint for your honey, my sweet.'
The flower said ' Take it, my dear,
For now is the spring of the year.
So come, come ! '
'Hum!'
And the bee buzz'd down from the heat.
And the bee buzz'd up in the cold
When the flower was wither'd and old.
' Have you still any honey, my dear? '
She said * It's the fall of the year,
But come, come ! '
' Hum J '
And the bee buzz'd 06" in the cold.
Robin. Out on thy song !
Marian. Did I not sing it in tune?
Robin. No, sweetheart ! out of tune
with Love and me.
Marian. And yet in tune with Nature
and the bees.
Robin. Out on it, I say, as out of tune
and time !
Marian. Till thou thyself shalt come
to sing it — in time.
Robin {taking a tress of her hair in
his hand). Time! if his back-
ward-working alchemy
Should change this gold to silver, why,
the silver
Were dear as gold, the wrinkle as the
dimple.
Thy bee should buzz about the Court of
John.
No ribald John is Love, no wanton
Prince,
The ruler of an hour, but lawful King,
Whose writ will run thro' all the range
of hfe.
Out upon all hard-hearted maidenhood !
Marian. And out upon all simple
batchelors !
Ah, well 1 thou seest the land has come
between us.
And my sick father here has come be-
tween us,
And this rich Sheriff too has come be-
tween us;
So, is it not all over now between us?
Gone, like a deer that hath escaped
thine arrow !
Robin. What deer when I have
mark'd him ever yet
Escaped mine arrow? over is it? wilt thou
Give me thy hand on that?
Marian. Take it.
Robin {kisses her hand ) . The Sheriff !
This ring cries out against thee. Say it
again.
And by this ring the lips that never
breathed
Love's falsehood to true maid will seal
Love's truth
On those sweet lips that dare to dally
with it.
Marian. Quiet, quiet! or I will to
my father.
Robin. So, then, thy father will not
grace our feast
With his white beard to-day.
Marian. Being so sick
How should he, Robin?
Robin. Then that bond he hath
Of the Abbot — wilt thou ask him for it?
Marian. Why?
Robin. I have sent to the Abbot and
justiciary
To bring their counter-bond into the
forest.
Marian. But will they come?
Robin. If not I have let them know
Their lives unsafe in any of these our
woods.
And in the winter I will fire their farms.
But I have sworn by our Lady if they come
838
THE FORESTERS.
ACT IV
I will not tear the bond, but see fair play
Betwixt them and Sir Richard— promised
too,
So that they deal with us like honest men,
They shall be handled with all courteous-
ness.
Marian. What wilt thou do with the
bond then?
Robin. Wait and see.
What wilt thou do with the Sheriff?
Marian. Wait and see.
I bring the bond. \_Exit Marian.
Enter LITTLE JOHN, Friar Tuck, and
Much, and Foresters and Peasants
laughing and talking.
Robin. Have you glanced down thro'
all the forest ways
And mark'd if those two knaves from
York be coming?
Little John. Not yet, but here comes
one of bigger mould.
Enter King Richard.
Art thou a knight?
King Richard. I am.
Robin. And walkest here
Unarmour'd? all these walks are Robin
Hood's
And sometimes perilous,
Ki7ig Richard. Good ! but having lived
For twenty days and nights in mail, at
last
I crawl' d like a sick crab from my old
shell.
That I might breathe for a moment free
of shield
And cuirass in this forest where I dream'd
That all was peace — not even a Robin
Hood—
(Aside) What if these knaves should
know me for their King?
Robin. Art thou for Richard, or allied
to John?
King Richard. I am allied to John.
Robin. The worse for thee.
King Richard. Art thou that banish'd
lord of Huntingdon,
The chief of these outlaws who break the
law?
Robin. I am the yeoman, plain Robin
Hood, and being out of the law how
should we break the law? if we broke
into it again we should break the law,
and then we were no longer outlaws.
King Richard. But, Earl, if thou be
he
Friar Tuck. Fine him ! fine him ! he
hath called plain Robin an earl. How
much is it, Robin, for a knight?
Robin. A mark.
. King Richard {gives it). There.
Robin. Thou payest easily, like a good
fellow.
But being o' John's side we must have
thy gold.
King Richard. But I am more for
Richard than for John,
Robin. What, what, a truckler ! a
word-eating coward !
Nay, search him then. How much hast
thou about thee?
King Richard. I had one mark.
'Robin. What more?'
King Richard. No more, I think.
But how then if I will not bide to be
search'd?
Robin. We are four to one.
King Richard. And I might
deal with four.
Robin. Good, good, I love thee for
that ! but if I wind
This forest-horn of mine I can bring down
Fourscore tall fellows on thee.
King Richard. Search me then.
I should be hard beset with thy fourscore.
Little yohn (searching King Richard).
Robin, he hath no more. He hath
spoken truth.
Robin. I am glad of it. Give him
back his gold again.
King Richard. But I had liefer than
this gold again —
Not having broken fast the livelong
day —
Something to eat.
Robin. And thou shalt have it, man.
Our feast is yonder, spread beneath an
oak,
Venison, and wild boar, wild goose, be-
sides
Hedge-pigs, a savoury viand, so thou be
Squeamish at eating the King's venison.
King Richard. Nay, Robin, I am like
thyself in that
I look on the King's venison as my own,
SCENE I.
THE FORESTERS,
839
Friar Tuck. Ay, ay, Robin, but let
him know our forest laws : he that pays
not for his dinner must fight for it. In
the sweat of thy brow, says Holy Writ,
shalt thou eat bread, but in the sweat of
thy brow and thy breast, and thine arms,
and thy legs, and thy heart, and thy liver,
and in the fear of thy life shalt thou eat
the King's venison — ay, and so thou fight
at quarterstaff for thy dinner with our
Robin, that will give thee a new zest for
it, though thou wert like a bottle full up
to the cork, or as hollow as a kex, or the
shambles-oak, or a weasel-sucked ^^g, or
the head of a fool, or the heart of Prince
John, or any other symbol of vacuity.
[ They bring otit the quarter staffs, and
the foresters and peasants crowd
rotind to see the games, and ap-
plaud at intervals.
King Richard. Great woodland king,
I know not quarterstaff.
Little John. A fine ! a fine ! He hath
called plain Robin a king.
Robin. A shadow, a poetical fiction —
did ye not call me king in your song? —
a mere figure. Let it go by.
Friar Tuck. No figure, no fiction,
Robin. What, is not man a hunting
animal? And look you now, if we kill
a stag, our dogs have their paws cut off,
and the hunters, if caught, are blinded,
or worse than blinded. Is that to be a
king? If the king and the law work in-
justice, is not he that goes against the
king and the law the true king in the
sight of the King of kings? Thou art
the king of the forest, and I woul^ thou
wert the king of the land.
King Richard. This friar is of much
boldness, noble captain.
Robin. He hath got it from the bottle,
noble knight.
Friar Tuck. Boldness out of the
bottle ! I defy thee.
Boldness is in the blood. Truth in the
bottle.
She lay so long at the bottom of her well
In the cold water that she lost her voice.
And so she glided up into the heart
O' the bottle, the warm wine, and found
it again.
In vino Veritas. Shall I undertake
The knight at quarterstaff, or thou?
Robin. Peace, magpie !
Give him the quarterstaff. Nay, but thy-
self
Shalt play a bout with me, that he may see
The fashion of it.
\_Plays with Little John at qtiarterstaff.
King Richard. Well, then, let me try.
[ They play.
I yield, I yield. I know no quarterstaff.
Robin. Then thou shalt play the game
of buffets with us.
King Richard. What's that?
Robin. I stand up here, thou there.
I give thee
A buffet, and thou me. The Holy Virgin
Stand by the strongest. I am over-
breathed.
Friar, by my two bouts at quarterstaff.
Take him and try him, friar.
Friar Tuck. There ! {^Strikes.
King Richard (strikes). There !
[¥x\2iX falls.
Friar Tuck. There !
Thou hast roll'd over the Church militant
Like a tod of wool from wagon into ware-
house.
Nay, I defy thee still. Try me an hour
hence.
I am misty with my thimbleful of ale.
Robin. Thou seest. Sir Knight, our
friar is so holy
That he's a miracle-monger, and can
make
Five quarts pass into a thimble. Up,
good Much.
Friar Tuck. And show thyself more
of a man than me.
Much. W^ell, no man yet has ever
bowl'd me dawn.
Scarlet. Ay, for old Much is every
inch a man.
Robin. We should be all the more
beholden to him.
Much. Much" and more ! much and
more ! I am the oldest of thy men, and
thou and thy youngsters are always much-
ing and moreing me.
Robin. Because thou art always so
much more of a man than my youngsters-
old Much.
Much. Well, we Muches be old.
840
THE FORESTERS.
Robin. Old as the hills.
Much. Old as the mill. We had it i'
the Red King's time, and so I may be
more of a man than to be bowled over
like a ninepin. There ! {^Strikes.
King Richard. There! [Much/a//y.
Robin. * Much would have more,'
says the proverb; but Much hath had
more than enough. Give me thy hand,
Much; I love thee {lifts him up). At
him, Scarlet !
Scarlet. I cannot cope with him : my
wrist is strain'd.
King Richard. Try, thyself, valorous
Robin !
Robin. I am mortally afear'd o' thee,
thou big man.
But seeing valour is one against all odds,
There !
King Richard. There !
[Robin falls back, and is caught
in the arms t?/" Little John.
Robin. Good, now I love thee might-
ily, thou tall fellow.
Break thine alliance with this faithless
John,
And live with us and the birds in the
green wood.
King Richard. I cannot break it,
Robin, if I wish'd.
Still I am more for Richard than for John.
Little John. Look, Robin, at the far
end of the glade
I see two figures crawling up the hill.
[^Distant sound of trumpets.
Robin. The Abbot of York and his
justiciary.
King Richard {aside). They know
me. I must not as yet be known.
Friends, your free sports have swallow'd
my free hour.
Farewell at once, for I must hence upon
The King' s affair.
Robin. Not taste his venison first?
Friar Tuck. Hast thou not fought
for it, and earn'd it? Stay,
Dine with my brethren here, and on thine
own.
King Richard. And which be they ?
Friar Tuck. Wild geese, for how
canst thou be thus allied
With John, and serve King Richard save
thou be
A traitor or a goose? but stay with Robin;
For Robin is no scatterbrains like Rich-
ard,
Robin's a wise man, Richard a wiseacre,
Robin's an outlaw, but he helps the poor.
While Richard hath outlaw'd himself, and
helps
Nor rich, nor poor. Richard's the king
of courtesy,
For if he did me the good grace to kick
me
I covild but sneak and smile and call it
courtesy.
For he's a king.
And that is only courtesy by courtesy —
But Robin is a thief of courtesy
Whom they that suffer by him call the
blossom
Of bandits. There — to be a thief of
courtesy —
There is a trade of genius, there's glory!
Again, this Richard sacks and wastes a
town
With random pillage, but our Robin takes
From whom he knows are hypocrites and
liars.
Again this Richard risks his life for a
straw,
So lies in prison — while our Robin's life
Hangs by a thread, but he is a free man.
Richard, again, is king over a realm
He hardly knows, and Robin king of
Sherwood,
And loves and doats on every dingle
of it.
Again this Richard is the lion of Cyprus,
Robin, the lion of Sherwood — may this
mouth
Never suck grape again, if our true Robin
Be not the nobler lion of the twain.
King Richard. Gramercy for thy
preachment ! if the land
Were ruleable by tongue, thou shouldst
be king.
Ahd yet thou know'st how little of thy
king!
What was this realm of England, all the
crowns
Of all this world, to Richard when he
flung
His life, heart, soul into those holy wars
That sought to free the tomb-place of the
King
THE FORESTERS.
841
Of all the world? thou, that art church-
man too
In a fashion, and shouldst feel with him.
Farewell !
I left mine horse and armour with a
Squire,
And I must see to 'em.
Robin. When wilt thou return?
King Richard. Return, I ? when ?
when Richard will return.
Robin. No sooner? when will that be ?
canst thou tell?
But I have ta'en a sudden fancy to thee.
Accept this horn ! if e'er thou be assail'd
In any of our forests, blow upon it
Three mots, this fashion — listen ! {blows)
Canst thou do it?
[King Richard blows.
Blown like a true son of the woods.
Farewell !
\_Exit King Richard.
Enter Abbot and Justiciary.
Friar Tuck. Church and Law, halt
and pay toll !
Justiciary. Rogue, we have thy cap-
tain's safe-conduct; though he b'e the
^ chief of rogues, he hath never broken his
word.
Abbot. There is our bond.
[ Gives it to Robin.
Robin. I thank thee.
Justiciary. Ay, but where.
Where is this old Sir Richard of the Lea?
Thou told'st us we should meet him in
the forest.
Where he would pay us down his thou-
sand marks.
Robin. Give him another month, and
he will pay it.
Justiciary. We cannot give a month.
Robin. Why then a week.
Justiciary. No, not an hour : the debt
is due to-day.
Abbot. Where is this laggard Richard
of the Lea?
Robin. He hath been hurt, was grow-
ing whole again.
Only this morning in his agony
Lest he should fail to pay these thousand
marks
He is stricken with a slight paralysis.
Have you no pity ? must you see the man?
Justiciary. Ay, ay, what else? how
else can this be settled?
Robin. Go men, and fetch him hither
on the litter.
[Sir Richard Lea is brought in.
Marian comes with him.
Marian. Here is my father's bond.
\_Gives it to Robin Hood.
Robin. I thank thee, dear.
Justiciary. Sir Richard, it was agreed
when you borrowed these monies from
the Abbot that if they were not repaid
within a limited time your land should be
forfeit.
Sir Richard. The land ! the land !
Marian. You see he is past himself.
What would you more ?
Abbot. What more? one thousand
marks.
Or else the land.
You hide this damsel in your forest here,
\_Pointing to Marian.
You hope to hold and keep her for your-
self.
You heed not how you soil her maiden
fame,
You scheme against her father's weal and
hers,
For so this maid would wed our brother,
. he
Would pay us all the debt at once, and thus
This old Sir Richard might redeem his
land.
He is all for love, he cares not for the
land.
Sir Richard. The land ! the land !
Robin {giving two bags to the Abbot).
Here be one thousand marks
Out of our treasury to redeem the land.
\^Pointing to each of the bags.
Half here, half there.
\_Plaudits from his band.
Justiciary. Ay, ay, but there is use,
four hundred marks.
Robin {giving a bag to Justiciary).
There then, four hundred marks.
\^Plaudits.
Justiciary. What did I say?
Nay, my tongue tript — five hundred marks
for use.
Robin {giving another bag to hini) . A
hundred more? There then, a
hundred more. \_Plaudits.
842
THE FORESTERS.
Justiciary. Ay, ay, but you see the
bond and the letter of the law. It is
stated there that these monies should be
paid in to the Abbot at York, at the end
of the month at noon, and they are de-
livered here in the wild wood an hour
after noon.
Marian. The letter — O how often
justice drowns
Between the law and letter of the law !
0 God, I would the letter of the law
Were some strong fellow here in the wild
wood.
That thou might'st beat him down at
quarterstaff !
Have you no pity?
Justiciary. You run down your game,
We ours. What pity have you for your
game?
Robin. We needs must live. Our
bowmen are so true
They strike the deer at once to death —
he falls
And knows no more.
Marian. Pity, pity! — There was a
man of ours
Up in the north, a goodly fellow too,
He met a stag there on so narrow a
ledge —
A precipice above, and one below —
There was no room to advance or to
retire.
The man lay down — the delicate-footed
creature
Came stepping o'er him, so as not to harm
him —
The hunter's passion flash'd into the man.
He drove his knife into the heart of the
deer.
The deer fell dead to the bottom, and the
man
Fell with him, and was crippled ever
after.
1 fear I had small pity for that man. —
You have the monies and the use of them.
What would you more?
Justiciary. What? must we dance
attendance all the day?
Robin. Dance ! ay, by all the saints
and all the devils ye shall dance. When
the Church and the law have forgotten
God's music, they shall dance to the
music of the wild wood. Let the birds i
sing, and do you dance to their song.
What, you will not ? Strike up our music,
Little John. (//^ plays.) They will
not ! Prick 'em in the calves with the
arrow-points — prick 'em in the calves.
Abbot. Rogue, I am full of gout. I
cannot dance.
Robin. And Sir Richard cannot. re-
deem his land. Sweat out your gout,
friend, for by my life, you shall dance till
he can. Prick him in the calves !
Justiciary. Rogue, I have a swollen
vein in my right leg, and if thou prick me
there I shall die.
Robin. Prick him where thou wilt, so
that he dance.
Abbot. Rogue, we come not alone.
Justiciary. Not the right.
Abbot. We told the Prince and the
Sheriff of our coming.
Justiciary. Take the left leg for the
love of God.
Abbot. They follow us.
Justiciary. You will all of you
hang.
Robin. Let us hang, so thou dance
meanwhile ; or by that same love of God
we will hang thee, prince or no prince,
sheriff or no sherift'.
Justiciary. Take care, take care ! I
dance — I will dance — I dance.
[x\bbot and Justiciary dance to music,
each holding a bag in each hand.
Enter Scarlet.
Scarlet. The Sheriff! the Sheriff, fol-
low'd by Prince John
And all his mercenaries ! We sighted
'em
Only this moment. By St. Nicholas
They must have sprung like Ghosts from
underground,
Or, like the Devils they are, straight up
from Hell.
Robin. Crouch all into the bush !
[ The foresters and peasants hide
behind the bushes.
Marian. Take up the litter !
Sir Richard. Move me no more ! I
am sick and faint with pain !
Marian. But, Sir, the Sheriff
Sir Richard. Let me be, I say !
The Sheriff will be welcome ! let me be !
SCENE 1.
THE FORESTERS.
843
Marian. Give me my bow and arrows^
I remain
Beside my Father's litter.
Robin. And fear not thou !
Each of us has an arrow on the cord;
We all keep watch.
Enter Sheriff of Nottingham.
Sheriff. Marian !
Marian. Speak not. I wait upon a
dying father.
Sheriff. The debt hath not been paid.
She will be mine.
What are you capering for? By old St.
Vitus
Have you gone mad? Has it been paid?
Abbot {dancing) . O yes.
Sheriff. Have I lost her then?
Justiciary {dancing). Lost her?
O no, we took
Advantage of the letter — O Lord, the
vein !
Not paid at York — the wood — prick me
no more !
Sheriff. What pricks thee save it be
thy conscience, man? .
Justiciary. By my halidome I felt
him at my leg still. \Vhere be they
gone to?
Sheriff. Thou art alone in the silence
of the forest
Save for this maiden and thy brother
Abbot,
And this old crazeling in the litter there.
Enter on one side Friar Tuck from che
bush, and on the other Prince John
and his Spearmen, with banners and
trumpets, etc.
Justiciary {examining his leg) . They
have missed the vein.
Abbot. And we shall keep the land.
Sheriff. Sweet Marian, by the letter
of the law
It seems thy father's land is forfeited.
Sir Richard. No ! let me out of the
litter. He shall wed thee :
The land shall still be mine. Child, thou
shalt wed him.
Or thine old father will go mad — he
will.
He will — he feels it in his head.
Marian. O peace !
Father, I cannot marry till Richard
comes.
Sir Richard. And then the Sheriff!
Marian. Ay, the Sheriff, father,
Would buy me for a thousand marks in
gold-
Sell me again perchance for twice as
much.
A woman's heart is but a little thing.
Much lighter than a thousand marks in
gold :
But pity for a father, it may be.
Is weightier than a thousand ma'rks in
gold.
I cannot love the Sheriff.
Sir Richard. But thou wilt wed
him?
Marian. Ay, save King Richard,
when he comes, forbid me.
Sweet heavens, I could wish that all the
land
Were plunged beneath the waters of the
sea,
Tho' all the world should go about in
boats.
Friar Tuck. Why, so should all the
love-sick be sea-sick.
Marian. Better than heart-sick, friar.
Prince John {to Sheriff). See you not
They are jesting at us yonder, mocking
us?
Carry her off, and let the old man die.
\_Advancing to Marian.
Come, girl, thou shalt along with us on
the instant.
Friar Tuck {brandishing his staff).
Then on the instant I will break
thy head.
Sheriff. Back, thou fool-friar!
Knowest thou not the Prince?
Friar Tuck {muttering). He may be
prince; he is not gentleman.
Prince John. Look 1 1 will take the
rope from off thy waist
And twist it round thy neck and hang
thee by it.
Seize him and truss him up, and carry
her off.
[Friar Tuck slips into the bush.
Marian {draivingthe bow). No nearer
to me ! back ! My hand is firm,
Mine eye most true to one hair's-breadth
of aim.
844
THE FORESTERS,
You, Prince, our king to come — you that
dishonour
The daughters and the wives of your own
faction —
Who hunger for the body, not the soul —
This gallant Prince would have me of
his — what?
Household? or shall I call it by that new
term
Brought from the sacred East, his harem?
Never,
Tho' you should queen me over all the
realms
Held by King Richard, could I stoop
so low
As mate with one that holds no love is
pure,
No friendship sacred, values neither man
Nor woman save as tools — God help the
mark —
To his own unprincely ends. And you,
you, Sheriff,
[ Turning to the Sheriff,
Who thought to buy your marrying me
with gold.
Marriage is of the soul, not of the body.
Win me you cannot, murder me you may.
And all I love, Robin, and all his men,
For I am one with him and his; but
while
I breathe Heaven's air, and Heaven looks
down on me.
And smiles at my best meanings, I remain
Mistress of mine own self and mine own
soul.
{^Retreating, with bow drawn, to the bush.
Robin !
Robin. I am here, my arrow on the
cord.
He dies who dares to touch thee.
Prince John. Advance, advance !
What, daunted by a garrulous, arrogant
girl!
Seize her and carry her off into my castle.
Sheriff. Thy castle !
Prince John. Said I not, I loved thee,
man?
Risk not the love I bear thee for a girl.
Sheriff. Thy castle !
Prince John. See thou thwart
me not, thou fool!
When Richard comes he is soft enough
to pardon
His brother; but all those that held with
him,
Except I plead for them, will hang as high
As Haman.
Sheriff. She is mine. I have thy
promise.
Prince John. O ay, she shall be thine
— first mine, then thine.
For she shall spend her honeymoon with
me.
Sheriff. Woe to that land shall own
thee for her king !
Prince John. Advance, advance !
[ They advance shouting. The King
in armour reappears from the
wood.
King Richard. What shouts are these
that ring along the M^ood?
Friar Tuck {coming forward). Hail,
knight, and help us. Here is one
would clutch
Our pretty Marian for his paramour.
This other, willy-nilly, for his bride.
King Richard. Damsel, is this the
. truth?
Marian. Ay, noble knight.
Friar Tuck, Ay, and she will not
marry till Richard come.
King Richard {raising his vizor). I
am here, and I am he.
Prince John {lozvering his, and whis-
pering to his men) . It is not he — •
his face — tho' very like —
No, no ! we have certain news he died in
prison.
Make at him, all of you, a traitor coming
In Richard's name — it is not he — not he.
[ The men stand amazed.
Friar Tuck {going back to the bush).
Robin, shall we not move?
Robin. It is the King
Who bears all down. Let him alone
awhile.
He loves the chivalry of his single arm.
Wait till he blow the horn.
Friar Tuck {coming back). If thou
be king,
Be not a fool ! Why blowest thou not
the horn?
King Richard. I that have turn'd
their Moslem crescent pale —
I blow the horn against this rascal rout !
SCENE I.
THE FORESTERS.
845
[Friar Tuck plucks the horn from him
and blows. Richard dashes alone
against the Sheriff a«^ John's men^
and is almost borne down, when
Robin aiid his men rush in and
rescue him.
King Richard {to Robin H ood) . Thou
hast saved my head at the peril of
thine own.
Prince jfohn. A horse ! a horse ! I
must away at once;
I cannot meet his eyes. I go to Notting-
ham.
Sheriff, thou wilt find me at Nottingham.
lExit.
Sheriff. If anywhere, I shall find thee
in hell.
Vhat ! go to slay his brother, and make
me
'he monkey that should roast his chest-
nuts for him !
King Richard. I fear to ask who left
us even now.
Robin. I grieve to say it was thy
father's son.
lall I not after him and bring him back ?
King Richard, No, let him be.
Sheriff of Nottingham,
[Sheriff kneels.
have been away from England all these
years,
eading the holy war against the Moslem,
'hile thou and others in our kingless
realms
ere fighting underhand unholy wars
gainst your lawful king.
Sheriff. My liege, Prince John —
King Richard. Say thou no word
against my brother John.
Sheriff. Why then, my liege, I have
no word to say.
King Richard {to Robin). My good
friend Robin, Earl of Huntingdon,
: Earl thou art again, hast thou no
fetters
• those of thine own band who would
betray thee?
lobin. I have; but these were never
worn as yet.
;ver found one traitor in my band.
'^ing Richard. Thou art happier than
thy king. Put him in chains.
\_They fetter the Sheriff.
Robin. Look o'er these bonds, my
liege.
\_Shows the King the bonds. They
talk together.
King Richard. You, my lord Abbot,
you Justiciary,
[ The Abbot and Justiciary kneel,
I made you Abbot, you Justiciary :
You both are utter traitors to your king.
Justiciary. O my good liege, we did
believe you dead.
Robin. Was justice dead because the
King was dead?
Sir Richard paid his monies to the Abbot.
You crost him with a quibble of your law.
Kijig Richard. But on the faith and
honour of a king
The land is his again.
Sir Richard. The land ! the land !
I am crazed no longer, so I have the land.
\_Comes out of the litter and kneels.
God save the King !
King Richard {raising Sir Richard).
I thank thee, good Sir Richard.
Maid Marian.
Marian. Yes, King Richard.
King Richard. Thou wouldst marry
This Sheriff when King Richard came
again
Except —
Marian. The King forbad it. True,
my liege.
King Richard. How if the King com-
mand it
Marian. Then, my liege.
If you would marry me with a traitor
sheriff,
I fear I might prove traitor with the
sheriff.
King Richard. But if the King for-
bid thy marrying
With Robin, our good Earl of Hunting-
don.
Marian. Then will I live for ever in
the wild wood.
Robin {coming fortvard) . And I with
thee.
King Richard. On nuts and acorns,
ha!
Or the King's deer? Earl, thou when
we were hence
Hast broken all our Norman forest-laws,
And scruplest not to flaunt it to our face
846
THE FORESTERS.
That thou wilt break our forest laws
again
When we are here. Thou art overbold.
Robin. My king,
I am but the echo of the lips of love.
King Richard. Thou hast risk'd thy
life for mine : bind these two men.
[ They take the bags fro??i the Abbot
and Justiciary, and proceed to
fetter them.
Justiciary . But will the King, then,
judge us all unheard?
I can defend my cause against the traitors
Who fain would make me traitor. If the
King
Condemn us without trial, men will call
him
An Eastern tyrant, not an English king.
Abbot. Besides, my liege, these men
are outlaws, thieves,
They break thy forest laws — nay, by the
rood
They have done far worse — they plunder
— yea, ev'n bishops,
Yea, ev'n archbishops — if thou side with
these,
Beware, O King, the vengeance of the
Church.
Friar Tuck {brandishing his staff).
I pray you, my liege, let me execute the
vengeance of the Church upon them. I
have a stout crabstick here, which longs
to break itself across their backs.
Robin. Keep silence, bully friar, be-
fore the King,
Friar Tuck. If a cat may look at a
king, may not a friar speak to one ?
King Richard. I have had a year of
prison-silence, Robin,
And heed him not — the vengeance of the
Church !
Thou shalt pronounce the blessing of the
Church
On those twd here, Robin and Marian.
Marian. He is but hedge-priest, Sir
King.
King Richard. And thou their Queen.
Our rebel Abbot then shall join your
hands,
Or lose all hopes of pardon from us — yet
Not now, not now — with' after-dinnci
grace.
Nay, by the dragon of St. George, we
shall
Do some injustice, if you hold us here
Longer from our own venison. Where
is it?
I scent it in the green leaves of the wood.
Marian. First, king, a boon !
King Richard. Why surely ye are
pardon'd.
Even this brawler of harsh truths — I
trust
Half truths, good friar: ye shall with us
to court.
Then, if ye cannot breathe but woodland
air.
Thou Robin shalt be ranger of this forest,
And have thy fees, and break the law no
more.
Marian. It is not that, my lord.
King Richard. Then what, my lady?
Robin. This is the gala-day of thy
return.
I pray thee for the moment, strike the
bonds I
From these three men, and let them dine
with us.
And lie with us among the flowers, and
drink— j
Ay, whether it be gall or honey to 'em —
The king's good health in ale and Mal-
voisie.
King Richard. By Mahound I couldj
strive with Beelzebub ! '
So now which way to the dinner?
Marian. , Past the bank
Of foxglove, then to left by that one yew.
You see the darkness thro' the lighter
leaf.
But look! who comes?
Enter Sailor.
Sailor. We heard Sir Richard Lej
was here with Robin.
O good Sir Richard, I am like the man ]
In Holy Writ, who brought his talen
back ; \
For tho' we touch'd at many pirate ports I
We ever fail'd to light upon thy son. |
Here is thy gold again. I am sorry for ii J
Sir Richard. The gold — my son — ra
gold, my son, the land —
Here Abbot, Sheriff — no — no, Robi
Hood.
SCENE I.
THE FORESTERS.
847
Robin. Sir Richard, let that wait till
we have dined.
Are all our guests here ?
King Richard. No — there's yet
one other :
I will not dine without him. Come from
out
Enter Walter Lea.
That
young warrior
Here
That
oak-tree ! This
broke his prison
And join'd my banner in the Holy Land,
And cleft the Moslem turban at my
side.
My masters, welcome gallant Walter Lea.
Kiss him, Sir Richard — kiss him, my
sweet Marian.
Maria7i. O Walter, Walter, is it thou
indeed
W^hose ransom was our ruin, whose return
Builds up our house again? I fear I
dream.
-give me one sharp pinch upon the
cheek
I may feel thou art no phantom —
yet
Thou art tann'd almost beyond my know-
ing, brother. [ They embrace.
Walter Lea. But thou art fair as ever,
my sweet sister.
Sir Richard. Art thou my son?
Walter Lea. I am, good father, I
am.
Sir Richard. I had despair'd of thee
— that sent me crazed.
Thou art worth thy weight in all those
marks of gold.
Yea, and the weight of the very land
itself,
Down to the inmost centre.
Robin. Walter Lea,
Give me that hand which fought for
Richard there.
Embrace me, Marian, and thou, good
Kate, [ To Kate entering.
Kiss and congratulate me, my good Kate.
\^She kisses him.
Little John. Lo now ! lo now !
I have seen thee clasp and kiss a man
indeed.
For our brave Robin is a man indeed.
Then by thine own account thou shouldst
be mine.
Kate. Well then, who kisses first?
Little John. Kiss both together.
[ They kiss each other.
Robin. Then all is well. In this full
tide of love.
Wave heralds wave : thy match shall fol-
low mine {to Little John).
Would there were more — a hundred
lovers more
To celebrate this advent of our King !
Our forest games are ended, our free life.
And we must hence to the King's court.
I trust
We shall return to the wood. Meanwhile,
farewell
Old friends, old patriarch oaks. A thou-
sand winters
Will strip you bare as death, a thousand
summers
Robe you life-green again. You seem, as
it were.
Immortal, and we mortal. How few
Junes
Will heat our pulses quicker ! How few
frosts
Will chill the hearts that beat for Robin
Hood!
Marian. And yet I think these oaks
at dawn and even.
Or in the balmy breathings of the night,
Will whisper evermore of Robin Hood.
We leave but happy memories to the
forest.
We dealt in the wild justice of the woods.
All those poor serfs whom we have served
will bless us.
All those pale mouths which we have fed
will praise us —
All widows we have holpen pray for us,
Our Lady's blessed shrines throughout the
land
Be all the richer for us. You, good
friar.
You Much, you Scarlet, you dear Little
John,
Your names will cling like ivy to the
wood.
And here perhaps a hundred years
away
Some hunter in day-dreams or half asleep
Will hear our arrows whizzing overhead.
And catch the winding of a phantom
horn.
THE FORESTERS.
Robin. And surely these old oaks
will murmur thee
Marian along with Robin. I am most
happy —
Art thou not mine? — and happy that our
King
Is here again, never I trust to roam
So far again, but dwell among his own.
Strike up a stave, my masters, all is well.
Song while they dance a Coufttry Dance.
Now the king is home again, and nevermore to
roam again,
Now the king is home again, the king will have
his own again,
Home again, home again, and each will have his
own again,
All the birds in merry Sherwood sing and sing
him home agaiin.
THE
DEATH OF GENONE,
AKBAR'S DREAM,
AND OTHER POEMS
BY
ALFRED
LORD TENNYSON
POET LAUREATE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1905
Ail rights reserved
Copyright, 1892,
By MACMILLAN AND CO.
THE DEATH OF OENONE,
AKBAR'S DREAM,
AND OTHER POEMS.
JUNE BRACKEN AND
HEATHER.
To .
There on the top of the down,
The wild heather round me and over me
June's high blue,
When I look'd at the bracken so bright
and the heather so brown,
I thought to myself I would offer this
book to you,
This, and my love together^
To you that are seventy-seven.
With a faith as clear as the heights of
the June-blue heaven.
And a fancy as summer-new
As the green of the bracken amid the
gloom of the heather.
TO THE MASTER OF
BALLIOL.
Dear Master in our classic town,
You, loved by all the younger gown
There at Balliol,
Lay your Plato for one minute down,
And read a Grecian tale re-told.
Which, cast in later Grecian mould,
Quintus Calaber
Somewhat lazily handled of old;
And on this white midwinter day —
For have the far-off hymns of May,
All her melodies,
All her harmonies echo'd away? —
* Copyright, 1892,
IV.
To-day, before you turn again
To thoughts that lift the soul of men.
Hear my cataract's
Downward thunder in hollow and glen,
V.
Till, led by dream and vague desire,
The woman, gliding toward the pyre,
Find her warrior
Stark and dark in his funeral fire.
THE DEATH OF CENONE.*
CEnone sat within the cave from out
Whose ivy-matted mouth she used to gaze
Down at the Troad ; but the goodly view
Was now one blank, and all the serpent
vines
Which on the touch of heavenly feet had
risen.
And gliding thro' the branches over-
bower'd
The naked Three, were wither'd long ago.
And thro' the sunless winter morning-
mist
In silence wept upon the flowerless earth.
And while she stared at those dead
cords that ran
Dark thro' the mist, and linking tree to
tree,
But once were gayer than a dawning sky
With many a pendent bell and fragrant
star,
Her Past became her Present, and she
saw
Him, climbing toward her with the golden
fruit,
Him, happy to be chosen Judge of Gods,
Her husband in the flush of youth and
dawn,
Paris, himself as beauteous as a God.
by Macmillan & Co. gci
852
THE DEATH OF (ENONE.
Anon from out the long ravine below,
She heard a wailing cry, that seem'd at
first
Thin as the batlike shrilWngs of the Dead
When driven to Hades, but, in coming
near.
Across the downward thunder of the
brook
Sounded ' CEnone '; and on a sudden he,
Paris, no longer beauteous as a God,
Struck by a poison'd arrow in the fight,
Lame, crooked, reeling, livid, thro' the
mist
Rose, like the wraith of his dead self,
and moan'd
* CEnone, my CEnone, while we dwelt
Together in this valley — happy then —
Too happy had I died within thine arms,
Before the feud of Gods had marr'd our
peace.
And sunder'd each from each. I am
dying now
Pierced by a poison'd dart. Save me.
Thou knowest,
Taught by some God, whatever herb or
balm
May clear the blood from poison, and thy
fame
Is blown thro' all the Troad, and to thee
The shepherd brings his adder-bitten
lamb,
The wounded warrior climbs from Troy
to thee.
My life and death are in thy hand. The
Gods
Avenge on stony hearts a fruitless prayer
For pity. Let me owe my life to thee.
I wrought thee bitter wrong, but thou
forgive.
Forget it. Man is but the slave of Fate.
CEnone, by thy love which once was
mine.
Help, heal me. I am poison'd to the
heart.'
* And I to mine ' she said * Adulterer,
Go back to thine adulteress and die ! '
He groan'd, he turn'd, and in the mist
at once
Became a shadow, sank and disappear'd,
But, ere the mountain rolls into the
plain.
Fell headlong dead; and of the shep-
herds one
Their oldest, and the same who first had
found
Paris, a naked babe, among the woods
Of Ida, following lighted on him there,
And shouted, and the shepherds heard
and came.
One raised the Prince, one sleek'd the
squalid hair.
One kiss'd his hand, another closed his
eyes,
And then, remembering the gay play-
mate rear'd
Among them, and forgetful of the man,
Whose crime had half unpeopled Ilion,
these
All that day long labour'd, hewing the
pines,
And built their shepherd-prince a funeral
pile;
And, while the star of eve was drawing
light
From the dead sun, kindled the pyre,
and all
Stood round it, hush'd, or calling on his
name.
But when the white fog vanish'd like a
ghost
Before the day, and every topmost pine
Spired into bluest heaven, still in her
cave.
Amazed, and ever seeming stared upon
By ghastlier than the Gorgon head, a
face, —
His face deform'd by lurid blotch and
blain —
There, like a creature frozen to the heart
Beyond all hope of warmth, CEnone sat
Not moving, till in front of that ravine
Which drowsed in gloom, self-darken'd
from the west.
The sunset blazed along the wall of Troy.
Then her head sank, she slept, and
thro' her dream
A ghostly murmur floated, * Come to me,
CEnone ! I can wrong thee now no more,
CEnone, my CEnone,' and the dream
Wail'd in her, when she woke beneath
the stars.
What star could burn so low? not Ilion
yet.
What light was there? She rose and
slowly down.
By the long torrent's ever-deepen'd roar,
ST. TELEMACHUS.
853
Paced, following, as in trance, the silent
cry.
She waked a bird of prey that scream'd
and past;
She roused a snake that hissing writhed
away;
A panther sprang across her path, she
heard
The shriek of some lost life among the
pines,
But when she gain'd the broader vale,
and saw
The ring of faces redden'd by the flames
Enfolding that dark body which had lain
Of old in her embrace, paused — and then
ask'd
Falteringly, 'Who lies on yoncler pyre?'
But every man was mute for reverence.
Then moving quickly forward till the heat
Smote on her brow, she lifted up a voice
Of shrill command, ' Who burns upon the
pyre ? '
Whereon their oldest and their boldest
said,
' He, whom thou wouldst not heal ! ' and
all at once
The morning light of happy marriage
broke
Thro' all the clouded years of widowhood.
And muffling up her comely head, and
crying
' Husband ! ' she leapt upon the funeral
pile,
And mixt herself with hi7n and past in fire.
ST. TELEMACHUS.*
Had the fierce ashes of some fiery peak
Been hurl'd so high they ranged about
the globe?
For day by day, thro' many a blood-red
eve,
In that four-hundredth summer after
Christ,
The wrathful sunset glared against a cross
Rear'd on the tumbled ruins of an old
fane
No longer sacred to the Sun, and flamed
On one huge slope beyond, where in his
cave
The man, whose pious hand had built the
cross.
A man who never changed a word with
men.
Fasted and pray'd, Telemachus the Saint.
Eve after eve that haggard anchorite
Would haunt the desolated fane, and
there •
Gaze at the ruin, often mutter low
' Vicisti Galilaee '; louder again.
Spurning a shatter'd fragment of the God,
' Vicisti Galilaee ! ' but — when now
Bathed in that lurid crimson — ask'd ' Is
earth .
On fire to the West? or is the Demon-god
Wroth at his fall? ' and heard an answer
' Wake
Thou deedless dreamer, lazying out a life
Of self-suppression, not of selfless love.'
And once a flight of shadowy fighters
crost
The disk, and once, he thought, a shape
with wings
Came sweeping by him, and pointed to
the West,
And at his ear he heard a whisper
* Rome '
And in his heart he cried 'The call of
God!'
And call'd arose, and, slowly plunging
down
Thro' that disastrous glory, set his face
By waste and field and town of alien
tongue.
Following a hundred sunsets, and the
sphere
Of westward-wheeling stars ; and every
dawn
Struck from him his own shadow on to
Rome.
Foot-sore, way-worn, at length he
touch'd his goal,
The Christian city. All her splendour
fail'd
To lure those eyes that only yearn'd to
see,
Fleeting betwixt her column'd palace-
walls,
The shape with wings. Anon there past
a crowd
With shameless laughter, Pagan oath,
and jest,
Hard Romans brawling of their monstrous
games;
He, all but deaf thro' age and weariness.
Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co.
854
AKBAR'S DREAM.
And muttering to himself 'The call of
God'
And borne along by that full stream of
men,
Like some old wreck on some indrawing
sea, •
Gain'd their huge Colosseum. The caged
beast
Yell'd, as he yell'd of yore for Christian
blood.
Three slaves were trailing a dead lion
away,
One, a dead man. He stumbled in, and
sat
Blinded; but when the momentary gloom.
Made by the noonday blaze without, had
left
His aged eyes, he raised them, and beheld
A blood-red awning waver overhead.
The dust send up a steam of human
blood,
The gladiators moving toward their fight.
And eighty thousand Christian faces
watch
Man murder man. A sudden strength
from heaven,
As some great shock may wake a palsied
limb,
Turn'd him again to boy, for up he sprang,
And glided lightly down the stairs, and
o'er
The barrier that divided beast from man
Slipt, and ran on, and flung himself be-
tween
The gladiatorial swords, and call'd * For-
bear
In the great name of Him who died for
men,
Christ Jesus ! ' For one moment after-
ward
A silence follow'd as of death, and then
A hiss as from a wilderness of snakes,
Then one deep roar as of a breaking
sea,
And then a shower of stones that stoned
him dead.
And then once more a silence as of
death.
His dream became a deed that woke
the world,
For while the frantic rabble in half-amaze
Stared at him dead, thro' all the nobler
hearts
* Copyright, 1892, by
In that vast Oval ran a shudder of shame.
The Baths, the Forum gabbled of his
death,
And preachers linger'd o'er his dying
words.
Which would not die, but echo'd on to
reach
Honorius, till he heard them, and decreed
That Rome no more should wallow in this
old lust
Of Paganism, and make her festal hour
Dark with the blood of man who mur-
der'd man.
(For Honorius, who succeeded to the sov-
ereignty over Europe, supprest the gladiatorial
combats practised of old in Rome, on occasion of
the following event. There was one Telemachus,
embracing the ascetic mode of life, who setting
out from the East and arriving at Rome for this
very purpose, while that accursed spectacle was
being performed, entered himself the circus, and
descending into the arena, attempted to hold back
those who wielded deadly weapons against each
other. The spectators of the murderous fray,
possest with the drunken glee of the demon who
delights in such bloodshed, stoned to death the
preacher of peace. The admirable Emperor
learning this put a stop to that evil exhibition.
— Theodoret's Ecclesiastical History.)
AKBAR'S DREAM.*
An Inscription by Abul Fazl for a Temple
IN Kashmir (Blochmann xxxii.).
O God in every temple I see people that see
thee, and in every language I hear spoken, peo-
ple praise thee.
Polytheism and Islam feel after thee.
Each religion says, * Thou art one, without
equal.'
If it be a mosque people murmur the holy
prayer, and if it be a Christian Church, people
ring the bell from love to Thee.
Sometimes I frequent the Christian cloister,
and sometimes the mosque.
But it is thou whom I search from temole to
temple.
Thy elect have no dealings with either heresy
or orthodoxy ; for neither of them stands behind
the screen of thy truth.
Heresy to the heretic, and religion to the
orthodox,
But the dust of the rose-petal belongs to the
heart of the perfume seller.
Macmillan & Co.
AKBAR'S DREAM.
855
Akbar and Abul Fazl before the palace
at Futehpur-Sikri at night.
' Light of the nations ' ask'd his Chron-
icler
Of Akbar ' what has darken'd thee to-
night?'
Then, after one quick glance upon the
stars,
And turning slowly toward him, Akbar
. said
' The shadow of a dream — an idle one
It may be. Still I raised my heart to
heaven,
I pray'd against the dream. To pray, to
do —
To pray, to do according to the prayer,
Are, both, to worship Alia, but the prayers,
That have no successor in deed, are faint
And pale in Alla's eyes, fair mothers they
Dying in childbirth of dead sons. I vow'd
Whate'er my dreams, I still would do the
right
Thro' all the vast dominion which a
sword.
That only conquers men to conquer peace,
Has won me. Alia be my guide !
But come,
My noble friend, my faithful counsellor.
Sit by my side. While thou art one with
me,
I seem no longer like a lonely man
In the king's garden, gathering here and
there
From each fair plant the blossom choic-
est-grown
To wreathe a crown not only for the king
But in due time for every Mussulmin,
Brahmin, and Buddhist, Christian, and
Parsee,
Thro' all the warring world of Hindustan.
Well spake thy brother in his hymn to
heaven
" Thy glory baffles wisdom. All the tracks
Of science making toward Thy Perfect-
ness
Are blinding desert sand; we scarce can
spell
The Alif of Thine Alphabet of Love."
He knows Himself, men nor them-
selves nor Him,
For every splinter'd fraction of a sect
Will clamour " / am on the Perfect Way,
All else is to perdition."
Shall the rose
Cry to the lotus "No flower thou"? the
palm
Call to the cypress " I alone am fair "?
The mango spurn the melon at his foot?
" Mine is the one fruit Alia made for
man."
Look how the living pulse of Alia beats
Thro' all His world. If every single star
Should shriek its claim " I only am in
heaven "
Why that were such sphere-music as the
Greek
Had hardly dream'd of. There is light
in all.
And light, with more or less of shade, in
all
Man-modes of worship; but our Ulama,
Who " sitting on green sofas contemplate
The torment of the damn'd " already,
these
Are like wild brutes new-caged — the
narrower
The cage, the more their fury. Me they
front
With sullen brows. What wonder! I
decreed
That even the dog was clean, that men
may taste
Swine-flesh, drink wine; they know too
that whene'er
In our free Hall, where each philosophy
And mood of faith may hold its own,
they blurt
Their furious formalisms, I but hear
The clash of tides that meet in narrow
seas, —
Not the Great Voice not the true Deep.
To drive
A people from their ancient fold of Faith,
And wall them up perforce in mine-
unwise,
Unkinglike; — and the morning of my
reign
Was redden'd by that cloud of shame
when I . . .
I hate the rancour of their castes and
creeds,
I let men worship as they will, I reap
No revenue from the field of unbelief.
I cull from every faith and race the best
And bravest soul for counsellor and friend.
856
AK BAR'S DREAM.
I loathe the very name of infidel.
I stagger at the Kordn and the sword.
I shudder at the Christian and the stake;
Yet " Alia," says their sacred book, " is
Love,"
And when the Goan Padre quoting Him,
Issa Ben Mariam, his own prophet, cried
"Love one another little ones" and
" bless "
Whom? even "your persecutors" ! there
methought
The cloud was rifted by a purer gleam
Than glances from the sun of our Islam.
And thou rememberest what a fury
shook
Those pillars of a moulder'd faith, when
he,
That other, prophet of their fall, pro-
claimed
His Master as " the Sun of Righteous-
ness,"
Yea, Alia here on earth, who caught and
held
His people by the bridle-rein of Truth.
What art thou saying? "And was not
Alia caird
In old Iran the Sun of Love ? and Love
The net of truth?"
A voice from old Ir^n !
Nay, but I know it — his, the hoary
Sheik,
On whom the women shrieking "Atheist "
flung
Filth from the roof, the mystic melodist
Who all but lost himself in Alia, him
Abft Satd
— a sun but dimly seen
Here, till the mortal morning mists of
earth
Fade in the noon of heaven, when creed
and race
Shall bear false v*^itness, each of each, no
more.
But find their limits by that larger light.
And overstep them, moving easily
Thro' after-ages in the love of Truth,
The truth of Love.
The sun, the sun ! they rail
At me the Zoroastrian. Let the Sun,
Who heats our earth to yield us grain
and fruit,
And laughs upon thy field as well as
mine.
And warms th6 blood of Shiah and
Sunnee,
Symbol the Eternal ! Yea and may noi
kings
Express Him also by their warmth of
love
For all they rule — by equal law for all?
By deeds a light to men?
But no such light
Glanced from our Presence on the face
of one.
Who breaking in upon us yestermorn.
With all the Hells a-glare in either eye,
Yeli'd " hast thou brought us down a new
Korin
From heaven? art thou the Prophet?
canst thoti work
Miracles?" and the wild horse, anger,
plunged
To fling me, and fail'd. Miracles ! no,
not I
Nor he, nor any. I can but lift the torch
Of Reason in the dusky cave of Life,
And gaze on this great miracle, the
World,
Adoring That who made, and makes,
and is.
And is not, what I gaze on — all else Form,
Ritual, varying with the tribes of men.
Ay but, my friend, thou knowest I hold
that forms
Are needful: only let the hand that
rules.
With politic care, with utter gentleness,
Mould them for all his people.
And what are forms?
Fair garments, plain or rich, and fitting
close
Or flying looselier, warm'd but by the
heart
Within them, moved but by the living
limb.
And cast aside, when old, for newer, —
Forms !
The Spiritual in Nature's market-place — ■
The silent Alphabet-of-heaven-in-man
Made vocal — banners blazoning a Power
That is not seen and rules from far away —
A silken cord let down from Paradise,
When fine Philosophies would fail, to
draw
The crowd from wallowing in the mire
of earth,
AKBAR'S DREAM.
857
And all the more, when these behold
their Lord,
Who shaped the forms, obey them, and
himself
Here on this bank in jt'w^way live the life
Beyond the bridge, and serve that Infinite
Within us, as without, that All-in-all,
And over all, the never-changing One
And ever-changing Many, in praise of
Whom
The Christian bell, the cry from off the
mosque.
And vaguer voices of Polytheism
Make but one music, harmonising, "Pray."
There westward — under yon slow-fall-
ing star,
The Christians own a Spiritual Head;
And following thy true counsel, by thine
aid.
Myself am such in our IslSm, for no
Mirage of glory, but for power to fuse
My myriads into union under one;
To hunt the tiger of oppression out
From office; and to spread the Divine
Faith
Like calming oil on all their stormy
creeds.
And fill the hollows between wave and
wave ;
To nurse my children on the milk of
Truth,
And alchemise old hates into the gold
Of Love, and make it current; and beat
back
The menacing poison of intolerant priests,
Those cobras ever setting up their hoods —
One Alia! oneKalifa!
Still — at times
A doubt, a fear, — and yester afternoon
I dream'd, — thou knowest how deep a
well of love
My heart is for my son, Saleem, mine
heir, —
And yet so wild and wayward that my
dream —
He glares askance at thee as one of those
Who mix the wines of heresy in the cup
Of counsel — so — I pray thee
Well, I dream'd
That stone by stone I rear'd a sacred
fane,
A temple, neither Pagod, Mosque, nor
Church,
But loftier, simpler, always open-door'd
To every breath from heaven, and Truth
and Peace
And Love and Justice came and dwelt-
therein;
But while we stood rejoicing, I and thou,
I heard a mocking laugh " the new
Kordn ! "
And on the sudden, and with a cry
" Saleem "
Thou, thou — I saw thee fall before me,
and then
Me too the black-wing'd Azrael overcame,
But Death had ears and eyes; I watch'd
my son,
And those that follow'd, loosen, stone
from stone.
All my fair work; and from the ruin
arose
The shriek and curse of trampled mil-
lions, even
As in the time before; but while I
groan'd,
From out the sunset pour'd an alien
race.
Who fitted stone to stone again, and
Truth,
Peace, Love and Justice came and dwelt
therein.
Nor in the field without were seen or
heard
Fires of Siittee, nor wail of baby-wife.
Or Indian widow; and in sleep I said
" All praise to Alia by whatever hands
My mission be accomplish'd ! " but we
hear
Music : our palace is awake, and morn
Has lifted the dark eyelash of the Night
From off the rosy cheek of waking Day.
Our hymn to the sun. They sing it. Let
us go.'
Hymn.
I.
Once again thou flamest heavenward, once again
we see thee rise.
Every morning is thy birthday gladdening human
hearts and eyes.
Every morning here we greet it, bowing
lowly down before thee,
Thee the Godlike, thee the changeless in thine
ever-changing skies.
858
AKBARS DREAM.
Shadow-maker, shadow-slayer, arrowing light
from clime to clime,
Hear thy myriad laureates hail thee monarch in
their woodland rhyme.
Warble bird, and open flower, and, men,
below the dome of azure
Kneel adoring Him the Timeless in the flame
that measures Time !
NOIES TO AKBAR'S DREAM.
The great Mogul Emperor Akbar was born
October 14, 1542, and died 1605. At 13 he suc-
ceeded his father Humayun; at 18 he himself
assumed the sole charge of government. He
subdued and ruled over fifteen large provinces;
his empire included all India north of the Vindhya
Mountains — in the south of India he was not
so successful. His tolerance of religions and
his abhorrence of religious persecution put our
Tudors to shame. He invented a new eclectic
religion by which he hoped to unite all creeds,
castes and peoples; and his legislation was re-
markable for vigour, justice and humanity.
' Thy glory baffles wisdom* The Emperor
quotes from a hymn to the Deity by Faizi, brother
of Abul Fazl, Akbar's chief friend and minister,
who wrote the Am z"y][,^(5a;>-/ (Annals of Akbar).
His influence on his age was immense. It may
be that he and his brother Faizi led Akbar's mind
away from Isldm and the Prophet — this charge is
brought against him by every Muhammadan
writer; but Abul Fazl also led his sovereign to a
true appreciation of his duties, and from the
moment that he entered Court, the problem of suc-
cessfully ruling over mixed races, which Isldm in
few other countries had to solve, was carefully
considered, and the policy of toleration was the
result (Blochmann xxix.).
Abul Fail thus gives an account of himself
* The advice of my Father with difficulty kept me
back from acts of folly ; my mind had no rest and
my heart felt itself drawn to the sages of Mongolia
or to the hermits on Lebanon. I longed for in-
terviews with the Llamas of Tibet or with the
padres of Portugal, and I would gladly sit with
the priests of the Parsis and the learned of the
Zendavesta. I was sick of the learned of my own
land.'
He became the intimate friend and adviser of
Akbar, and helped him in his tolerant system of
government. Professor Blochmann writes * Im-
pressed with a favourable idea of the value of his
Hindu subjects, he (Akbar) had resolved when
pensively sitting in the evenings on the solitary
stone at Futehpur-Sikri to rule with an even hand
all men in his dominions; but as the extreme
views of the learned and the lawyers continually
urged him to persecute instead of to heal, he
instituted discussions, because, believing himself
to be in error, he thought it his duty as ruler to
inquire.' ' These discussions took place every
Thursday night in the Ibadat-khana a building at
Futehpur-Sikri, erected for the purpose' (Mai-
leson) .
In these discussions Abul Fazl became a great
power, and he induced the chief of the disputants
to draw up a document defining the ' divine Faith *
as it was called, and assigning to Akbar the rank
of a Mujahid, or supreme khalifah, the vicegerent
of the one true God.
Abul Fazl was finally murdered at the insti-
gation of Akbar's son Salim, who in his Memoirs
declares that it was Abul Fazl who had perverted
his father's mind so that he denied the divine
mission of Mahomet, and turned away his love
from his son.
Faizi. When Akbar conquered the North-
West Provinces of India, Faizi, then 20, began
his life as a poet, and earned his living as a
physician. He is reported to have been very
generous and to have treated the poor for nothing.
His fame reached Akbar's ears who commanded
him to come to the camp at Chitor. Akbar was
delighted with his varied knowledge and scholar-
ship and made the poet teacher to his sons. Faizi
at 33 was appointed Chief Poet (1588"). He col-
lected a fine library of 4300 MSS. and died at the
age of 40 (1595) when Akbar incorporated his
collection of rare books in the Imperial Library.
The Warring World of Hindostan. Akbar's
rapid conquests and the good government of his
fifteen provinces with their complete military,
civil and political systems make him conspicuous
among the great kings of history.
The Goan Padre. Abul Fazl relates that
' one night the Ibadat-khana was brightened by
the presence of Padre Rodolpho, who for intelli-
gence and wisdom was unrivalled among Chris-
tian doctors. Several carping and bigoted men
attacked him and this afforded an opportunity
for the display of the calm judgment and justice
of the assembly. These men brought forward
the old received assertions, and did not attempt
to arrive at truth by reasoning. Their statements
were torn to -pieces, and they were nearly put to
shame, when they began to attack the contradic-
tions of the Gospel, but they could not prove
their assertions. With perfect calmness, and
earnest conviction of the truth he replied to their
arguments.'
Abie Sa'td. ' Love is the net of Truth, Love
THE BANDIT'S DEATH.
859
is the noose of God' is a quotation from the great
Sufee poet Abu Sa'id — born a.d. 968, died at the
age of 83. He is a mystical poet, and some
of his expressions have been compared to our
George Herbert. Of Shaikh Abu Sa'id it is re-
corded that he said, ' when my affairs had reacht
a certain pitch I buried under the dust my books
and opened a shop on my own account (z'.^.
began to teach with authority) , and verily men
represented me as that which I was not, until it
came to this, that they went to the Qadhi and
testified against me of unbelieverhood ; and
women got upon the roofs and cast unclean
things upon me.' ( Vide reprint from article in
Nati07ial Review, March, 1891, by C. J. Pick-
ering.)
Aziz. I am not aware that there is any rec-
ord of such intrusion upon the king's privacy,
but the expressions in the text occur in a letter
sent by Akbar's foster-brother Aziz, who refused
to come to court when summoned and threw up
his government, and ' after writing an insolent
and reproachful letter to Akbar in which he
asked him if he had received a book from heaven,
or if he could work miracles like Mahomet that
he presumed to introduce a new religion, warned
him that he was on the way to eternal perdition,
md concluded with a prayer to God to bring him
lack into the path of salvation' (Elphinstone),
' The Koran, the Old and New Testament,
aid the Psalms of David are called books by way
oi excellence, and their followers " People of the
Ebok"' (Elphinstone).
Akbar according to Abdel Kadir had his son
Mirad instructed in the Gospel, and used to
mdce him begin his lessons ' In the name of
Chist ' instead of in the usual way ' In the name
of(od.'
71? drive
A ^opiefrom the ir ancient fold of Truth, etc.
Malison says ' This must have happened because
Akb*- states it, but* of the forced conversions
I ha^ found no record. This must have taken
place vhilst he was still a minor, and whilst the
chief iithority was wielded by Bairam.'
*I rea^no revetiue from the f eld of unbelief '
The H^us are fond of pilgrimages, and Akbar
removeta remunerative tax raised by his prede-
cessors n pilgrimages. He also abolished the
fezza orcapitation tax on thosfe who differed
from thriMahomedan faith. He discouraged
all exceslve prayers, fasts and pilgrimages.
Sati. Vkbar decreed that every widow who
showed th least desire not to be burnt on her
husband's ineral pyre, should be let go free and
unharmed.
Baby-wife. He forbad marriage before the
age of puberty.
Indian widow. Akbar ordained that remar-
riage was lawful.
Music. ' About a watch before daybreak,'
says Abul Fazl, the musicians played to the king
in the palace. ' His Majesty had such a knowl-
edge of the science of music as trained musicians
do not possess.'
' The Divine Faith.' The Divine Faith slowly
passed away under the immediate successors of
Akbar. An idea of what the Divine Faith was
may be gathered from the inscription at the head
of the poem. The document referred to, Abul
Fazl says ' brought about excellent results (i)
the Court became a gathering place of the sages
and learned of all creeds ; the good doctrines of
all religious systems were recognized, and their
defects were not allowed to obscure their good
features; (2) perfect toleration or peace with all
was established; and (3) the perverse and evil-
minded were covered with shame on seeing the
disinterested motives of His Majesty, and these
stood in the pillory of disgrace.' Dated Septem-
ber 1579 — Ragab 987 (Blochmann xiv.).
THE BANDITS DEATH.*
TO SIR WALTEP. SCOTT.i
0 great and gallant scott,
True gentleman heart, blood and bone,
1 WOULD IT had been MY LOT
To have seen thee, and heard thee, and
known.
Sir, do you see this dagger? nay, why do
you start aside?
I was not going to stab you, tho' I am the
Bandit's bride.
You have set a price on, his head : I may
claim it without a lie.
What have I here in the cloth? I will
show it you by-and-by.
Sir, I was once a wife. I had one brief
summer of bliss
But the Bandit had woo'd me in vain, and
he stabb'd my Piero with this.
* I have adopted Sir Walter Scott's version of
the following story as given in his last journal
(Death of II Bizarro) — but I have taken the
liberty of making some slight alterations.
* Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co.
86o
THE CHURCH-WARDEN AND THE CURATE,
And he dragg'd me up there to his cave
in the mountain, and there one
day
He had left his dagger behind him. I
found it. I hid it away.
For he reek'd with the blood of Piero;
his kisses were red with his crime,
And I cried to the Saints to avenge me.
They heard, they bided their time.
In a while I bore him a son, and he loved
to dandle the child,
And that was a link between us; but I —
to be reconciled? —
No, by the Mother of God, tho' I think I
hated him less.
And — well, if I sinn'd last night, I will
find the Priest and confess.
Listen ! we three were alone in the dell
at the close of the day.
I was lilting a song to the babe, and it
laugh'd like a dawn in May.
Then on a sudden we saw your soldiers
crossing the ridge,
And he caught my little one from me :
we dipt down under the bridge
By the great dead pine — you know it —
and heard, as we crouch'd below,
The clatter of arms, and voices, and men
passing to and fro.
Black was the night when we crept away
— not a star in the sky —
Hush'd as the heart of the grave, till the
little one utter'd a cry.
I whisper'd ' give it to me,' but he would
not answer me — then
He gript it so hard by the throat that the
boy never cried again.
We return'd to his cave — the link was
broken — he sobb'd and he wept,
And cursed himself; then he yawn'd, for
the wretch cou/d sleep, and he slept
Ay, till dawn stole into the cave, and a
ray red as blood
Glanced on the strangled face — I could
make Sleep Death, if I would —
Glared on at the murder'd son, and the
murderous father at rest, . . .
I drove the blade th^t had slain my hus-
band thrice thro* his breast.
He was loved at least by his dog : it was
chain'd, but its horrible yell
* She has kill'd him, has kill'd him, has
kill'd him ' rang out all down thro'
the dell.
Till I felt I could end myself too with the
dagger — so deafen'd and dazed —
Take it, and save me from it ! I fled. I
was all but crazed
With the grief that gnaw'd at my heart,
and the weight that dragg'd at my
hand;
But thanks to the Blessed Saints that I
came on none of his band;
And the band will be scatter'd now thei'
gallant captain is dead.
For I with this dagger of his — do yoi
doubt me? Here is his head !
THE CHURCH-WARDEN A^D
THE CURATE.
This is written in the dialect which was curent
in my youth at Spilsby and in the country aboit it
Eh? good daay! good daay! thtw it
bean't not mooCh of a daay.
Nasty, casselty weather! an' meahaafe
down wi' my haay !
How be the farm gittin on? joaways.
Gittin on i'deead !
Why, tonups was haafe on 'er fingers
an' toas, an' the mare ^rokken-
kneead.
An' pigs didn't sell at fall, a' wa lost
wer Haldeny cow.
An' it beats ma to knaw wot se died on,
but wool's looking oof ony how.
THE CHURCH-WAkDEN AND THE CURATE,
86i
III.
A.n' soa they've niaade tha a parson, an*
thou'll git along, niver fear,
Fur I bean chuch-warden mysen i' the
parish fur lifteen year.
Well— sin ther bea chuch- wardens, ther
mun be parsons an' all,
An' if t'one stick alongside t'uther the
chuch weant happen a fall.
Fur I wvir a Baptis wonst, an' agean the
toithe an' the raate,
Till I fun that it warn't not the gaainist
waay to the narra Gaate.
An' I can't abear 'em, I can't, fur a lot
on 'em coom'd ta-year —
I wur down wi' the rheumatis then — to
my pond to wesh thessens theere —
Sa I sticks like the ivin as Icag as I lives
to the owd chuch now,
Fur they wesh'd their sins i' my pond,
an' I doubts they poison'd the cow.
Ay, an' ya seed the Bishop. They says
'at he coom'd fra nowt —
Burn i' traade. Sa I warrants 'e niver
said haafe wot 'e thowt,
But 'e creeapt an' 'e crawl'd along, till 'e
feeald 'e could hovvd 'is oan.
Then 'e married a great Yerl's darter, an'
sits o' the Bishop's throan.
Now I'll gie tha a bit o' my mind an' tha
weant be taakin' offence.
Fur thou l>e a big scholard now wi' a
hoonderd haacre o' sense —
But sich an obstropulous lad — naay, naay
— fur 1 minds tha sa well,
Tha'd niver not hopple thy tongue, an'
the tongue's sit afire o' Hell, _
As I says to my missis to-daay, when she
hurl'd a plaate at the cat
An' anoother agean my noase. Ya was
niver sa bad as that.
But I minds when i' Howlaby beck won
daay ya was ticklin' o' trout,
An' keeaper 'e seed ya an roon'd, an' 'e
beal'd to ya ' Lad coom hout '
An' ya stood oop maakt i' the beck, an'
ya tell'd 'im to knaw his awn plaace
An' ya call'd 'im a clown, ya did, an' ya
thraw'd the fish i' 'is faace.
An' 'e torn' d 'as red as a stag-tuck ey's
wattles, but theer an' then
I coamb'd 'im down, fur I promised ya'd
niver not do it agean.
An' I cotch'd tha wonst i' my garden,
when thou was a height-year-howd,
An' I fun thy pockets as full o' my pippins
as iver they'd 'owd,
An' thou was as pearky as owt, an' tha
maade me as mad as mad.
But I savs to tha * keeap 'em, an' welcome '
fur thou was the parson's lad.
IX.
An' Parson 'e 'ears on it all, an' then
taakes kindly to me,
An' then 1 wur chose Chuch-warden an'
coom'd to the top o' the tree,
Fur Quoloty's hall my friends, an' they
maakes ma a help to the poor,
When I gits the plaate fuller o' Soondays
nor ony chuch-warden afoor,
Fur if iver thy feyther 'ed riled me I kep'
mysen meeak as a lamb,
An' saw by the Graace o' the Lord, Mr.
Harry, I ham wot I ham.
But Parson 'e will speak out, saw, now 'e
be sixty-seven.
He'll niver swap Owlby an' Scratby fur
owt but the Kingdom o' Heaven;
An' thou'll be 'is Curate 'ere, but, if iver
tha means to git 'igher,
Tha mun tackle the sins o' the Wo'ld, an'
not the faults o' the Squire.
An' I reckons tha'U light of a Hvin' some-
wheers i' the Wov/d or the P'en,
If tha cottons down to thy betters, an'
keeaps thysen to thysen.
But niver not speak plaain out, if th?
wants to git forrards a bit,
But creeap along the hedge-bottoms, an
thou'll be a Bishop yit.
862
CHARITY,
XI.
Naay,
but tha i7iun speak hout to the
Baptises here i' the town,
Fur moast on 'em talks agean tithe,
an' I'd Uke tha to preach 'em down,
Fur the/vG been a-preachin' 7?iea down,
they heve, an' I haates 'em now,
Fur they leaved their nasty sins i' my
pond, an' it poison'd the cow.
GLOSSARY.
' Casselty,' casualty, chance weather.
' Haafe down wi' my haay,' while my grass is
only half-mown.
' Fingers an' toas,' a disease in turnips.
' Fall,' autumn.
' If t'one stick alongside t'uther,' if the one
hold by the other. One is pronounced like
' own.'
' Fun,' found.
' Gaainist,' nearest.
' Ta-year,' this year.
* Ivin,' ivy,
* Obstropulous,' obstreperous— here the Curate
makes a sign of deprecation.
' Hopple ' or ' hobble,' to tie the legs of a skit-
tish cow when she is being milked.
* Beal'd,' bellowed.
In such words as * torned,' * turned,' * hurled,*
the r is hardly audible.
' Stag-tuckey,' turkey-cock.
* Height-year-howd,' eight-year-old.
' 'Owd,' hold.
' Pearky,' pert.
' Wo'ld,' the world. Short o.
' Wowd,' wold.
CHARITY/
What am I doing, you say to me, ' wast-
ing the sweet summer hours'?
Haven't you eyes? I am dressing the
grave of a woman with flowers.
For a woman ruin'd the world, as God's
own scriptures tell,
And a man ruin'd mine, but a woman,
God bless her, kept me from Hell.
Love me ? O yes, no doubt — how long —
till you threw me aside !
Dresses and laces and jewels and never a
ring for the bride.
All very well just now to be calling me
darling and sweet.
And after a while would it matter so
much if I came on the street?
You when I met you first — when ^e
brought you ! — I turn'd away
And the hard blue eyes have it still, that
stare of a beast of prey.
You were his friend — you — you — when he
promised to make me his bride.
And you knew that he meant to betray
me — you knew — you knew that he
lied.
He married an heiress, an orphan with
half a shire of estate, —
I sent him a desolate wail and a curse,
when I learn'd my fate.
For I used to play with the knife, creep
down to the river-shore,
Moan to myself ' one plunge — then quiet
for evermore.'
Would the man have a touch of remorse
when he heard what an end was
mine?
Or brag to his fellow rakes of his conquest
over their wine?
Money — my hire — Ais money-
back what he gave,-^
-I sent him
* Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co.
KAPIOLANl.
863
Will you move a little that way? your
shadow falls on the grave.
Two trains clash'd : then and there he
was crush'd in a moment and died,
But the new-wedded wife was unharm'd,
tho' sitting close at his side.
She found my letter upon him, my wail
of reproach and scorn;
I had cursed the woman he married, and
him, and the day I was born.
They put him aside for ever, and after a
week — no more —
A stranger as welcome as vSatan — a widow
came to my door :
So I turn'd my face to the wall, I was
mad, I was raving-wild,
I was close on that hour of dishonour, the
birth of a baseborn child.
O you that can flatter your victims, and
juggle, and lie and cajole,
Man, can you even guess at the love of a
soul for a soul?
I had cursed her as woman and wife, and
in wife and woman I found
The tenderest Christ-like creature that
ever stept on the ground.
XVII.
She watch'd me, she nursed me, she fed
me, she sat dav and night by my
bed.
Till the joyless birthday came of a boy
born happily dead.
And her name? what was it? I ask'd
her. She said with a sudden glow
On her patient face ' My dear, I will tell
you before I go.'
XIX.
And I when I learnt it at last, I shriek'd,
I sprang from my seat,
I wept, and I kiss'd her hands, I flung
myself down at her feet,
And we pray'd together for him, for hivi
who had given her the name.
She has left me enough to live on. I
need no wages of shame.
XXI.
She died of a fever caught when a nurse
in a hospital ward.
She is high in the Heaven of Heavens,
she is face to face with her Lord,
And He sees not her like anywhere in
this pitiless world of ours !
I have told you my tale. Get you gone.
I am dressing her grave with flow-
ers.
KAPIOLANl.
Kapiolani was a great chieftainess who lived
jn the Sandwich Islands at the beginning of this
century. She won the cause of Christianity by
openly defying the priests of the terrible goddess
Peele. In spite of their threats of vengeance she
ascended the volcano Mauna-Loa, then clambered
down over a bank of cinders 400 feet high to the
great lake of fire (nine miles round) — Kilauea —
the home and haunt of the goddess, and flung into
the boiling lava the consecrated berries which it
was sacrilege for a woman to handle.
When from the terrors of Nature a peo-
ple have fashion'd and worship a
Spirit of Evil,
864
THE DAWN.
Blest be the Voice of the Teacher who
calls to them
* Set yourselves free ! '
Noble the Saxon who hurl'd at his Idol
a valorous weapon in olden Eng-
land !
Great and greater, and greatest of women,
island heroine, Kapiolani
Clomb the mountain, and flung the berries,
and dared the Goddess, and freed
the people
Of Hawa-i-ee !
A people believing that Peele the Goddess
would wallow in fiery riot and revel
On Kilauea,
Dance in a fountain of flame with her
devils, or shake with her thunders
and shatter her island.
Rolling her anger
Thro' blasted valley and flaring forest in
blood-red cataracts down to the
sea!
Long as the lava-light
Glares from the lava-lake
Dazing t;he starlight.
Long as the silvery vapour in daylight
Over the mountain
Floats, will t)ie glory of Kapiolani be min-
gled with either on Hawa-i-ee.
V.
What said her Priesthood?
* Woe to this island if ever a woman
should handle or gather the berries
of Peele !
Accursed were she !
And woe to this island if ever a woman
should climb to the dwelling of
Peele the Goddess !
Accursed were she ! '
One from the Sunrise
Dawn'd on His people, and slowly before
bim
Vanish'd shadow-like
Gods and Goddesses,
None but the terrible Peele remaining as
Kapiolani ascended her mountain.
Baffled her priesthood.
Broke the Taboo,
Dipt to the crater,
Call'd on the Power adored by the Chris-
tian, and crying ' I dare her, let
Peele avenge herself! '
Into the flame-billow dash'd the berries,
and drove the demon from Pla-
THE DAWN.
You are but children."
Egyptiati Priest to Solon.
Red of the Dawn !
Screams of a babe in the red-hot palms
of a Moloch of Tyre,
Man with his brotherless dinner on
man in the tropical wood.
Priests in the name of the Lord passing
souls thro' fire to the fire,
Head-hunters and boats of Dahomey that
float upon human blood !
Red of the Dawn!
Godless fury of peoples, and Christless
frolic of kings.
And the bolt of war dashing down upon
cities and blazing farms.
For Babylon was a child new-born, and
Rome was a babe in arms.
And London and Paris and all the res*:
are as yet but in leading-strings.
III.
Dawn not Day,
While scandal is mouthing a bloodless
name at her cannibal feast.
And rake-ruin'd bodies and souls go
down in a common wreck,
And the Press of a thousand cities is
prized for it smells of the beast.
Or easily violates virgin Truth for a coin
or a cheque.
THE MAKING OF MAN—MECHANOPHILUS.
865
IV.
Dawn not Day !
Is it Shame, so few should have climb'd
from the dens in the level below,
Men, with a heart and a soul, no slaves
of a four-footed will ?
But if twenty million of summers are
stored in the sunlight still.
We are far from the noon of man, there
v. time for the race to grow.
Red of the Dawn !
Is it turning a fainter red? so be it, but
when shall we lay
The Ghost of the Brute that is walking
and haunting us yet, and be free?
In a hundred, a thousand winters? Ah,
what will our children be,
The men of a hundred thousand, a million
summers away?
THE MAKING OF MAN.
Where is one that, born of woman, alto-
gether can escape
From the lower world within him, moods
of tiger, or of ape ?
Man as yet is being made, and ere the
crowning Age of ages,
Shall not aeon after seon pass and touch
him into shape?
All about him shadow still, but, while
the races flower and fade.
Prophet-eyes may catch a glory slowly
gaining on the shade,
Till the peoples all are one, and all
their voices blend in choric
Hallelujah to the Maker ' It is finish'd.
Man is made.'
THE DREAMER.
On a midnight in midwinter when all but
the winds were dead,
*The meek shall inherit the earth ' was a
Scripture that rang thro' his head,
rill he dream'd that a Voice of the Earth
went wailingly past him and said :
3«^
* I am losing the light of my Youth
And the Vision that led me of old,
And I clash with an iron Truth,
When I make for an Age of gold,
And I would that my race were run,
For teeming with liars, and madmen,
and knaves.
And wearied of Autocrats, Anarchs,
and Slaves,
And darken'd with doubts of a Faith
that saves.
And crimson with battles, and hollow
with graves.
To the wail of my winds, and the moan
of my waves
I whirl, and I follow the Sun.'
Was it only the wind of the Night shrill-
ing out Desolation and wrong
Thro' a dream of the dark? Yet he
thought that he answer'd her wail
with a song —
Moaning your losses, O Earth,
Heart- weary and overdone!
But all's well that ends well,
Whirl, and follow the Sun !
He is racing from heaven to heaven
And less will be lost than won,
For all's well that ends well.
Whirl, and follow the Sun !
The Reign of the Meek upon earth.
O weary one, has it begun?
But all's well that ends well,
Whirl, and follow the Sun I
For moans will have grown sphere
music
Or ever your race be run !
And all's well that ends well.
Whirl, and follow the Sun !
MECHANOPHILUS.
(In the time of the first railways.)
Now first we stand and understand.
And sunder false from true.
And handle boldly with the hand,
And see and shape and do.
866
RIFLEMEN FORM— THE TOURNEY.
Dash 6ack that ocean with a pier,
Strow yonder mountain flat,
A railway there, a tunnel here.
Mix me this Zone with that !
Bring me my horse — my horse? my wings
That I may soar the sky,
For Thought into the outward springs,
I find her with the eye.
O will she, moonlike, sway the main,
And bring or chase the storm,
Who was a shadow in the brain,
And is a living form?
Far as the Future vaults her skies,
From this my vantage ground
To those still-working energies
I spy nor term nor bound.
As we surpass our fathers' skill.
Our sons will shame our own;
A thousand things are hidden still
And not a hundred known.
And had some prophet spoken true
Of all we shall achieve,
The wonders were so wildly new
That no man would believe.
Meanwhile, my brothers, work, and wield
The forces of to-day,
And plow the Present like a field.
And garner all you may !
You, what the cultured surface grows.
Dispense with careful hands :
Deep under deep for ever goes.
Heaven over heaven expands.
RIFLEMEN FORM!
There is a sound of thunder afar,
Storm in the South that darkens the day !
Storm of battle and thunder of war !
Well ii it do not roll our way.
Storm, Storm, Riflemen form !
Ready, be ready against the storm !
Riflemen, Riflemen, Riflemen form !
Be not deaf to the sound that warns,
Be not gull'-d by a despot's plea !
Are figs of thistles? or grapes of thornrl
How can a despot feel with the Free?
Form, Form, Riflemen Form !
Ready, be ready to meet the storm !
Riflemen, Riflemen, Riflemen form !
Let your reforms for a moment go !
Look to your butts, and take good aims !
Better a rotten borough or so
Than a rotten fleet and a city in flames !
Storm, Storm, Riflemen form !
Ready, be ready against the storm !
Riflemen, Riflemen, Riflemen form !
Form, be ready to do or die !
Form in Freedom's name and the Queen's\
True we have got — such a faithful ally
That only the Devil can tell what he
means.
Form, Form, Riflemen Form !
Ready, be ready to meet the storm !
Riflemen, Riflemen, Riflemen form ! ^
1 I have been asked to republish this old
poem, which was first published in ' The Times,'
May 9, 1859, before the Volunteer movement
began.
THE TOURNEY.
Ralph would fight in Edith's sight,
For Ralph was Edith's lover,
Ralph went down like a fire to the fight^
Struck to the left and struck to the right,
Roli'd them over and over.
' Gallant Sir Ralph,' said the king.
Casques were crack'd and hauberks
hack'd.
Lances snapt in sunder.
Rang the stroke, and sprang the blood,
Knights were thwack'd and riven, and
hew'd
Like broad oaks with thunder.
' O what an arm,' said the king,
Edith bow'd her stately head.
Saw them lie confounded,
Edith Montfort bow'd her head,
Crovvn'd her knight's, and flush'd as red
As poppies when she crown'd it.
' Take her Sir Ralph,' said the king.
BEE AND FLOWER— DOUBT AND PRAYER.
867
THE BEE AND THE FLOWER.
The bee buzz'd up in the heat.
' I am faint for your honey, my sweet.'
The flower said ' Take it my dear,
For now is the spring of the year.
So come, come ! '
' Hum ! '
And the bee buzz'd down from the heat.
And the bee buzz'd up in the cold
When the flower was wither'd and old.
' Have you still any honey, my dear?'
She said ' It's the fall of the year,
But come, come ! '
' Hum ! '
And the bee buzz'd off" in the cold.
THE WANDERER.
The gleam of household sunshine ends,
And here no longer can I rest;
Farewell ! — You will not speak, my friends,
Unfriendly of your parted guest.
O well for him that finds a friend,
Or makes a friend where'er he come.
And loves the world from end to end.
And wanders on from home to home !
0 happy he, and fit to live,
On whom a happy home has power
To make him trust his life, and give
His fealty to the halcyon hour !
1 count you kind, I hold you true;
But what may follow who can tell?
Give me a hand — and you — and you —
And deem me grateful, and farewell !
POETS AND CRITICS.
This thing, that thing is the rage,
Helter-skelter runs the age;
Minds on this round earth of ours
Vary like the leaves and flowers,
Fashion'd after certain laws;
Sing thou low or loud or sweet,
All at all points thou canst not meet,
Some will pass and some will pause.
What is true at last will tell :
Few at first will place thee well;
Some too low would have thee shine.
Some too high — no fault of thine —
Hold thine own, and work thy will !
Year will graze the heel of year.
But seldom comes the poet here,
And the Critic's rarer still.
A VOICE SPAKE OUT OF THE
SKIES.
A Voice spake out of the skies
To a just man and a wise —
'The world and all within it
Will only last a minute ! '
And a beggar began to cry
* Food, food or I die ! '
Is it worth his while to eat,
Or mine to give him meat,
If the world and all within it
Were nothing the next minute?
DOUBT AND PRAYER.
Tho' Sin too oft, when smitten by Thy
rod,
Rail at ' Blind Fate ' with many a vain
' Alas ! '
From sin thro' sorrow into Thee we pass
By that same path our true forefathers
trod;
And let not Reason fail me, nor the
sod
Draw from my death Thy living flower
and grass,
Before I learn that Love, which is, and
was
My Father, and my Brother, and my
God!
Steel me with patience ! soften me with
grief !
Let blow the trumpet strongly while I
pray.
Till this embattled wall of unbelief
My prison, not my fortress, fall away !
Then, if thou wiliest, let my day be brief,
So Thou wilt strike Thy glory thro' the
day.
868
FAITH— DEATH OF THE DUKE OF CLARENCE.
FAITH.
Doubt no longer that the Highest is the
wisest and the best,
Let. not all that saddens Nature blight thy
hope or break thy rest,
Quail not at the fiery mountain, at the
shipwreck, or the rolling
Thunder, or the rending earthquake, or
the famine, or the pest !
II.
Neither mourn if human creeds be lower
than the heart's desire !
Thro' the gates that bar the distance
comes a gleam of what is higher.
Wait till Death has flung them open,
when the man will make the Maker
Dark no more with human hatreds in the
glare of deathless fire !
THE SILENT VOICES.*
When the dumb Hour, clothed in black.
Brings the Dreams about my bed.
Call me not so often back.
Silent Voices of the dead,
Toward the lowland ways behind me,
And the sunlight that is gone !
Call me rather, silent voices,
Forward to the starry track
Glimmering up the heights beyond me
On, and always on !
GOD AND THE UNIVERSE.
Will my tiny spark of being wholly van-
ish in your deeps and heights?
Must my day be dark by reason, O ye
Heavens, of your boundless nights.
Rush of Suns, and roll of systems, and
your fiery clash of meteorites?
'Spirit, nearing yon dark portal at the
limit of thy human state,
Fear not thou the hidden purpose of that
Power which alone is great,
'Nor the myriad world. His shadow, nor
the silent Opener of the Gate.'
THE DEATH OF THE DUKE
OF CLARENCE AND AVON-
DALE.
To THE Mourners.
The bridal garland falls upon the bier,
The shadow of a crown, that o'er him
hung,
Has vanish'd in the shadow cast by
Death.
So princely, tender, truthful, reverent,
pure —
Mourn ! That a world-wide Empire
mourns with you.
That all the Thrones are clouded by your
loss.
Were slender solace. Yet be comforted;
For if this earth be ruled by Perfect
Love,
Then, after his brief range of blameless
days,
The toll of funeral in an Angel ear
Sounds happier than the merriest mar-
riage-bell.
The face of Death is toward the Sun
of Life,
His shadow darkens earth : his truer
name
Is ' Onward,' no discordance in the roll
And march of that Eternal Harmony
Whereto the worlds beat time, tho' faintly
heard
Until the great Hereafter. Mourn in
hope !
* Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Ca
CROSSING THE BAR.
869
CROSSING THE BAR.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark !
Sunset and evening star,
And may there be no sadness of fare-
And one clear call for me !
well.
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I embark;
When I put out to sea,
For tho' from out our bourne of Time
But such a tide as moving seems asleep.
and Place
Too full for sound and foam,
The flood may bear me far.
When that which drew from out the
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
boundless deep
When I have crost the bar.
Turns again home.
ADDITIONAL POEMS.
These Poems were not included by the Poet Laureate in his col-
lected Poems, but have, since his death, been published by his son,
Hallam, Lord Tennyson. They were submitted, according to the
Poet's desire, to an expert committee of friends, before publication.
ADDITIONAL POEMS.
* I, LOVING Freedom for herself,
And much of that which is her form,
Wed to no faction in the state,
A voice before the storm,
I mourn in spirit when I think
The year, that comes, may come with
shame,
Lured by the cuckoo-voice that loves
To babble its own name.
* Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com-
pany.
* Life of the Life within my blood.
Light of the Light within mine eyes,
The May begins to breathe and bud.
And softly blow the balmy skies;
Bathe with me in the fiery flood.
And mingle kisses, tears, and sighs,
Life of the Life within my blood.
Light of the Light within mine eyes.
* Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com-
pany.
TO .*
Thou may'st remember what I said
When thine own spirit was at strife
With thine own spirit. " From the tomb
And charnel-place of purpose dead.
Thro' spiritual dark we come
Into the light of spiritual life."
God walk'd the waters of thy soul,
And still'd them. When from change to
change.
Led silently by power divine.
Thy thought did scale a purer range
Of prospect up to self-control.
My joy was only less than thine.
♦Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com-
pany.
THE HESPERIDES.*
[Published and suppressed by my father, and
republished by me here (with accents written
by him) in consequence of a talk that I had
with him, in which he regretted that he had
done away with it from among his "Juve-
nilia,"]
Hesperus and his daughters three
That sing about the golden tree. Contus.
The North wind fall'n, in the new-starred
night
Zidonian Hanno, wandering beyond
The hoary promontory of Soloe,
Past Thymiaterion in calmed bays
Between the southern and the western
Horn,
Heard neither warbling of the nightingale.
Nor melody of the Libyan Lotus-flute
Blown seaward from the shore; but from
a slope
That ran bloom-bright into the Atlantic
blue.
Beneath a highland leaning down a
weight
Of cliffs, and zoned below with cedar-
shade,
Came voices like the voices in a dream
Continuous; till he reach'd the outer
sea: —
Song of the Three Sisters.
I.
The Golden Apple, the Golden Apple,
the hallow'd fruit,
Guard it well, guard it warily.
Singing airily,
* Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com>
pany.
873
874
THE HESPERIDES.
Standing about the charmed root.
Round about all is mute,
As the snowfield on the mountain-peaks,
As the sandfield at the mountain-foot.
Crocodiles in briny creeks
Sleep and stir not : all is mute.
If ye sing not, if ye make false measure,
We shall lose eternal pleasure.
Worth eternal want of rest.
Laugh not loudly : watch the treasure
Of the wisdom of the W^est.
In a corner wisdom whispers. Five and
three
(Let it not be preach'd abroad) make
an awful mystery :
For the blossom unto threefold music
bloweth ;
Evermore it is born anew,
And the sap to threefold music floweth,
From the root,
Drawn in the dark.
Up to the fruit,
Creeping under the fragrant bark,
Liquid gold, honeysweet thro and thr6.
(^slow movement')
Keen'cyed Sisters, singing airily,
Looking warily
Every way.
Guard the apple night and day,
Lest one from the East come and take it
away.
Father Hesper, Father Hesper, Watch,
watch, ever and aye.
Looking under silver hair with a silver
eye.
Father, twinkle not thy stedfast sight :
Kingdoms lapse, and climates change,
and races die;
Honour comes with mystery;
Hoarded wisdom brings delight.
Number, tell th<^m over, and number
How many the nystic fruit-tree holds,
Lest the red-comb'd dragon slumber
Roll'd together in. purple folds.
Look to him, father, lest he wink, and the
golden apple be stol'n away.
For his ancient heart is drunk with over-
watchings night and day
Round about the hallow'd fruit-tree
curl'd —
Sing away, sing alodd evermore in the
wind without stop, (^Anapcest)
Lest his sealed eyelid drop.
For he is older than the world.
If he waken, we waken,
Rapidly levelling eager eyes.
If he sleep, zue sleep.
Dropping the eyelid over our eyes.
If the golden apple be taken
The world will be overwise.
Five Hnks, a golden chain are we,
Hesper, the Dragon, and Sisters three
Bound about the golden tree.
Father Hesper, Father Hesper, Watch,
watch, night and day.
Lest the old wound of the world be
healed.
The glory unsealed,
The golden apple stol'n away,
And the ancient secret revealed.
Look from West to East along:
Father, old Himala weakens, Caucasus is
bold and strong.
Wandering waters unto wandering waters
^call;
Let them clash together, foam and fall.
Out of watchings, out of wiles.
Comes the bliss of secret smiles.
All things are not told to all.
Half-round the mantling night is drawn.
Purplefringed with even and dawn
Hesper hateth Phosphor, evening hateth
IV.
Eve/y flower and every fruit the redolent
breath
Of the warm seawind ripeneth,
Arching the billow in his sleep:
But the land-wind wandereth.
Broken by the highland steep.
Two streams upon the violet deep.
For the Western Sun, and the Western
Star,
And the low west-wind, breathing afar,
The end of day and beginning of
night.
Keep the apple Holy and Bright;
Holy and Bright, round and full, bright
and blest,
THE STATESMAN ^ THE LITTLE MAID,
875
Mellow'd in a land of rest :
Watch it warily night and day ;
All good things are in the West.
Till mid-noon the cool East light
Is shut out by the round of the tall hill
brow.
But, when the full-faced Sunset yel-
lowly
Stays on the flowerful arch of the
bough,
The luscious fruitage clustereth mel-
lowly,
Golden-kerneird, Golden-cored,
Sunset-ripen'd above on the tree.
The world is wasted with fire and
sword.
But the Apple of gold hangs over the
- Sea!
Five links — a Golden chain are we —
Hesper, the Dragon, and Sisters three,
Daughters three,
Round about.
All round about
The gnarl'd bole of the charmed tree.
The Golden Apple, The Golden Apple,
The hallow'd fruit.
Guard it well.
Guard it warily.
Watch it warily.
Singing airily.
Standing about the charmed root.
THE STATESMAN.*
They wrought a work which Time re-
veres,
A pure example to the lands.
Further and further reaching hands
For ever into coming years;
They worshipt Freedom for her sake ;
We faint unless the wanton ear
Be tickled with the loud "hear, hear,"
To which the slight-built hustings shake;
For where is he, the citizen,
Deep-hearted, moderate, firm, who
sees
His path before him? not with' these.
Shadows of statesmen, clever men !
Uncertain of ourselves we chase
The clap of hands; we jar like boys:
And in the hurry and the noise
Great spirits grow akin to base.
A sound of words that change to blows !
A sound of blows on armed breasts !
And individual interests
Becoming bands of armed foes !
A noise of hands that disarrange
The social engine ! fears that waste
The strength of men, lest overhaste
Should fire the many wheels of change !
Ill fares a people passion-wrought,
A land of many days that cleaves
In two great halves, when each one
leaves
The middle road of sober thought !
Not he that breaks the dams, but he
That thro' the channels of the state
Convoys the people's wish, is great;
His name is pure, his fame is free :
He cares, if ancient usage fade.
To shape, to settle, to repair.
With seasonable changes fair.
And innovation grade by grade :
Or, if the sense of most require
A precedent of larger scope.
Not deals in threats, but works with
hope.
And lights at length on his desire :
Knowing those laws are just alone
That contemplate a mighty plan.
The frame, the mind, the soul of
man,
Like one that cultivates his own.
He, seeing far an end sublime,
Contends, despising party-rage,
To hold the Spirit of the Age
Against the Spirit of the Time.
* Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com
pany.
THE LITTLE MAID.*
Along this glimmering gallery
A child she loved to play;
This chamber she was born in ! See,
The cradle where she lay !
876
THE ANTE-CHAMBER— THE GRAVE,
That little garden was her pride,
With yellow groundsel grown !
Those holly-thickets only hide
Her grave — a simple stone !
* Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com
pany.
THE ANTE-CHAMBER*
That is his portrait painted by himself.
Look on those manly curls so glossy dark,
Those thoughtful furrows in the swarthy
cheek;
Admire that stalwart shape, those ample
brows,
And that large table of the breast dis-
pread,
Between low shoulders; how demure a
smile.
How full of wisest humour and of love.
With some half-consciousness of inward
power,
Sleeps round those quiet lips; not quite
a smile ;
And look you what an arch the brain
has built
Above the eat>! and what a settled mind,
Mature, harbour'd from change, contem-
plative.
Tempers the peaceful light of hazel eyes,
Observing all things. This is he I loved.
This is th^ man of whom you heard me
speak.
My fancy was the more luxurious.
But his was minted in a detper mould.
And took in more of Nature than mine
own :
Nor proved I such delight as he, to mark
The humours of the polling and the
wake,
The hubbub of the market and the
booths :
How this one smiled, that other waved
his arms,
These careful and those candid brows,
how each —
Down to his slightest turns and atti-
tudes —
Was something that another could not be.
How every brake and flower spread and
rose,
A various world ! which he compell'd
once more
Thro' his own nature, with well mingled
hues.
Into another shape, born of the first.
As beautiful, but yet another world.
All this so stirr'd him in his hour of joy,
Mix'd with the phantom of his coming
fame.
That once he spake : " I lift the eyes ot
thought,
I look thro' all my glimmering life, I see
At the end, as 'twere athwart a colour'c
cloud.
O'er the bow'd shoulder of a bland old
Age,
The face of placid Death." Long, Eus-
tace, long
May my strong wish, transgressing the
low bound
Of mortal hope, act on Eternity
To keep thee here amongst us ! Yet he
lives;
His and my friendship have not suffer'd
loss.
His fame is equal to his years: his
praise
Is neither overdealt, nor idly won.
Step thro' these doors, and I will show
to you
Another countenance, one yet more dear,
More dear, for what is lost is made more
dear;
" More dear " I will not say, but rather
bless
The All-perfect Framer, Him, who made
the heart,
Forethinking its twinfold necessity.
Thro' one whole life an overflowing u. i,
Capacious both of Friendship and ci
Love.
* Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com-
pany.
THREE POEMS OMITTED FROM
"IN MEMORIAM."
The Grave (Originally No. lvii.).*
I.
I KEEP no more a lone distress.
The crowd have come to see thy grave,
Small thanks or credit shall I have,
But these shall see it none the less.
TO A. H. H.— THE VICTOR HOURS — HAVELOCK— JACK TAR. ^tj
The happy maiden's tears are free
And she will weep and give them way;
Yet one unschool'd in want will say
" The dead are dead and let them be."
Another whispers sick with loss:
" O let the simple slab remain !
The * Mercy Jesu ' in the raiii !
The ' Miserere ' in the moss ! "
" I love the daisy weeping dew,
I hate the trim-set plots of art ! "
My friend, thou speakest from the heart,
But look, for these are nature too.
- * Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com-
pany.
To A. H. H. (Originally No. cviii.).*
II.
Young is the grief I entertain,
And ever new the tale she tells,
And ever young the face that dwells
With reason cloister'd in the brain :
Yet grief deserves a nobler name :
She spurs an imitative will;
'Tis shame to fail so far, and still
My failing shall be less my shame :
Considering what mine eyes have seen.
And all the sweetness which thou wast
In thy beginnings in the past.
And all the strength thou wouldst have
been:
A master mind with master minds,
An orb repulsive of all hate,
A will concentric with all fate,
A life four-square to all the winds.
* Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com-
pany.
The Victor Hours ( Originally No.
CXXVII.),*
Are those the far-famed Victor Hours
That ride to death the griefs of men?
I fear not ; if I feared them, then
Is this blind flight the winged Powers.
Behold, ye cannot bring but good,
And see, ye dare not touch the truth.
Nor Sorrow beauteous in her youth,
Nor Love that holds a constant mood.
Ye must be wiser than your looks.
Or wise yourselves, or wisdom-led.
Else this wild whisper round my head
Were idler than a flight of rooks.
Go forward ! crumble down a throne.
Dissolve a world, condense a star,
Unsocket all the joints of war,
And fuse the peoples into one.
* Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com-
pany.
HAVELOCK. Nov. 25TH, 1857.*
Bold Havelock march'd.
Many a mile went he.
Every mile a battle,
Every battle a victory.
Bold Havelock march'd.
Charged with his gallant few.
Ten men fought a thousand.
Slew them and overthrew.
Bold Havelock march'd.
Wrought with his hand and his head,
March'd and thought and fought,
March'd and fought himself dead.
Bold Havelock died.
Tender and great and good.
And every man in Britain
Says " I am of Havelock's blood ! "
* Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com-
pany.
JACK TAR.*
They say some foreign powers have laid
their heads together
To break the pride of Britain, anc.
bring her on her knees,
There's a treaty, so they tell us, of some
dishonest fellows.
To break the noble pride of the Mis-
tress of the Seas.
Up, Jack Tars, and save us !
The whole world shall not brave us !
Up and save the pride of the Mis-
tress of the Seas !
* Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com-
pany.
87S
JACK TAR.
We quarrel here at home, and they plot
against us yonder,
They will not let an honest Briton sit
at home at ease :
Up, Jack Tars, my hearties ! and the
d — 1 take the parties !
Up and save the pride of the Mistress
of the Seas !
Up, Jack Tars, and save us !
The whole world shall not brave us !
Up and save the pride of the Mis-
tress of the Seas 1
The lasses and the little ones. Jack Tars,
they look to you !
The despots over yonder, let 'em do
whate'er they please !
God bless the little isle where a man may
still be true !
God bless the noble isle that is Mis-
tress of the Seas !
Up, Tack Tars, and save us !
The whole world shall not brave us !
\iyoM will save the pride of the Mis-
tress of the Seas.
NOTES
AUTHOR'S PREFATORY
NOTES
POETRY is like shot silk with many glowing
colours, and every reader must find his own
interpretation according to his ability, and
according to his sympathy with the poet.
I am told that my young countrymen
would like notes to my poems. Shall I write
what dictionaries tell to save some of the
idle folk trouble? or am I to try to fix a
moral to each poem ? or to add an analysis
of passages? or to give a history of my
similes ? I do not like the task.
Knowledge, shone, knoll — let him who
reads me always read the vowel in these
words long.
My paraphrases of certain Latin and
Greek Unes seem too obvious to be men-
tioned. Many of the parallelisms here
given are accidental. The same idea must
often occur independently to two men
looking on the same aspects of Nature.
There is a wholesome page in Eckermann's
"Conversations with Goethe," where one
or the other (I have not the book by me)
remarks that the prosaic mind finds plagiar-
ism in passages that only prove "the
common brotherhood of man." — T,
P. I, To THE Queen.
lished in 1851. — Ed.]
[First pub-
P. I. lines 7, 8.
This laurel greener from the brows
Of him that utter'd nothing base.
[Wordsworth. On Nov. 19, 1850, my
father was appointed Poet Laureate in
succession to Wordsworth. See Memoir,
vol. i, p. 334 foil., and "Reminiscences of
Tennyson in Early Days," Memoir, vol. i.
pp. 208-210. — Ed.]
The third verse in proof stood —
Nor should I dare to flatter state,
Nor such a lay would you receive.
Were I to shape it, who beUeve
Your nature true as you are great.
P. 2. (Juvenilia) Claribel. [First
pubhshed in 1830. — Ed.] All these ladies
were evolved, like the camel, from my
own consciousness. [Isabel was more or
less a portrait. See p. 880, note to p. 6,
Isabel. — Ed.]
"JuveniUa" were pubhshed in 1830.
John Stuart Mill reviewed the volume in
the London Review (July 1835) ; Leigh
Hunt in the Tatler; and Professor Wilson
(Christopher North) in Blackwood.
P. 2, line 15. lintwhite, i.e. linnet.
P. 2. Nothing will Die. [First
published in 1830. — Ed.] All things are
evolved. [Cf . the early poem :
01 p40VT€S
All thoughts, all creeds, all dreams are true,
All visions wild and strange ;
Man is the measure of all truth
Unto himself. All truth is change;
All me;i do walk in sleep, and all
Have faith in that they dream :
For all things are as they seem to all,
And all things flow like a stream.
There is no rest, no calm, no pause.
Nor good nor ill, nor light nor shade,
879
88o
::dtes
Nor essence nor eternal laws :
For nothing is, but all is made.
But if I dream that all these are,
They are to me for that I dream :
For all things are as they seem to all,
•And all things flow like a stream.
Ed.]
P. 3. All Things will Die. [First
published in 1830. — Ed.]
P. 3, line 35.
Nine times goes the passing bell.
Nine times for a man.
P. 3. Leonine Elegiacs. [First pub-
lished in 1830. — Ed.] Line 10. "hyaline."
[Cf. ws 6d\a<T<Ta vakivr], "a sea of glass
like unto crystal" (Rev. iv. 6), and Par.
Lost, vii. 619. — Ed.]
P. 3, line 13. The ancient poetess singeth.
Fecrwepe, ir&vra (p^peis, 6cra (palvoXis
i<TK48acr aijots,
(p^peis 6iv, (f>4peLS ah/a, cpipeis fxaripi
'r'*'^"- Sappho.
P. 3. Supposed Confessions of a
Second-rate Sensitive Mind. [First
published in 1830. — Ed.] If some kind
friend had taken him by the hand and
said, "Come, work" — "Look not every
man on his own things, but every man
also on the things of others" (Philippians
ii. 4) — he might have been a happy man,
though sensitive.
P. S- The Kraken. [First published
in 1830. — Ed.] See the account which
Erik Pontoppidan, the Norwegian bishop,
born 1698, gives of the fabulous sea-
monster — the kraken {Biographic Uni-
verselle) :
"Ce prodigieux polype dont le dos a
une demilieue de circonference ou plus . . .
quelquefois ses bras s'elevent a la hauteur
des m^ts d'un navire de moyenne grandeur
... on croit que s'ils accrochaient le
plus gros vaisseau de guerre, ils le feraient
couler h. fond . . . les iles flottantes ne
sent que des krakens."
P. 6. Lilian. [First published in 1830.
— Ed.]
P. 6. Isabel. [First published in 1830.
In the poem of Isabel the poet's mother
was more or less described. "A remark-
able and saintly woman," "One of the
most innocent and tender-hearted ladies I
ever saw," wrote Edward FitzGerald. She
devoted herself entirely to her husband and
her children. — Ed.]
P. 7. Mariana. [First published in
1830. — Ed.] The moated grange was no
particular grange, but one which rose to
the music of Shakespeare's words: "There,
at the moated grange, resides this dejected
Mariana" {Measure for Measure, Act III,
Sc. i.).
P. 7, line 4. pear. Altered from
"peach," because "peach" spoils the
desolation of the picture. It is not a
characteristic of the scenery I had in mind.
P. 7, col. 2, Unes 6-9.
Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The cock sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her.
Compare Ballad of Clerk Saunders :
" 0 Cocks are crowing of merry midnight,
I wot the wild fowls are boding day.
The psalms of heaven will sure be
simg," etc.
[Cf.
At midnight the cock was crowing.
The Ballad of Oriana, p. 17. — Ed.]
P. 7, col. 2, line 2. marish-mosses, the
little marsh-moss lumps tnat float on the
surface of water.
P. 8. To — -. [First published in
1830. — Ed.] The first lines were ad-
dicssed to Blakesley (afterwards Dean of
Lincoln), but the poem wandered oil to
describe an imaginary man.
[Of Blakesley my father said: '■'He
ought to be Lord Chancellor, for he is a
subtle and powerful reasoner, and an
honest man." — Ed.]
P. 8, line 6. Ray-fringed eyelids. Cf.
"Under the opening eyelids of the mom."
Lycidas.
P. 8, col. 2, line 2. Yabbok. Jabbok not
so sweet as Yabbok. Cf. Gen. xxxii, 22-
32. The Hebrew J is Y.
P. 8, col. 2, line 3.
And heaven's mazed signs stood still.
The stars stood still in their courses to
watch.
NOTES
88i
P. 8. fMADELiNE. First published in
1830. — Ed.]
P. 9. First Song to the Owl. [The
songs were first published in 1830. — Ed.]
Verse ii. line 6, his five wits, the five
senses. Cf. "Bless thy five wits! Tom's
a-cold, — O, do de, do de, do de" {King
Lear, III. iv. 59).
P. 9. Recollections of the Arabl4N
Nights, [First published in 1830. —
Ed.] Haroun Alraschid lived at the time
of Charlemagne, and was renowned for
his splendour and his patronage of literary
men. I had only the translation — from
the French of Galland — of the Arabian
Nights when this was written, so I talked
of sofas, etc. Lane was yet unborn.
P. 9, Unes 13, 14.
The low and bloomed foliage, drove
The fragrant, glistening deeps.
Not "drove over," as one commentator
takes it, but the passage means that the
deeps were driven before the prow.
P. 9, line 23. platans, plane trees.
Cf.
The thick-leaved platans of the vale.
The Princess, iii. 159.
P. 10, col. I, Une 6. rivage, bank.
P. 10, col. I, line 27. coverture. Cf.
"the woodbine coverture " (Much Ado
about Nothing," ni. i. 30).
P. 10, col. I, Une 29. bulbul, the
Persian name for Nightingale. Cf.
"Not for thee," she said,
• "O Bulbul, any rose of Gulistan
Shall burst her veil."
The Priricess, iv. 104.
P. 10, col. I, line 43. counter changed,
chequered. Cf.
Witch-elms that counterchange the floor
Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright.
In Memoriam, Lxxxix.
P. 10, col. 2, line 37. silvers, silver
candelabra.
P. 10, col. 2, line 39. mooned, crowned
with the Mohammedan crescent moon.
The crescent is Ottoman, not Arabian, an
anachronism pardonable in a boy's vision.
P. 10, col. 2, line 46. Persian girl.
3 L
The Persian girl "Noureddin, the fair
Persian," in The Arabian Nights' Enter-
tainments.
P. II, Ode to Memory. [First pub-
lished in 1830. My father considered this
one of the best of his early and pecuUarly
concentrated Nature-poems. — Ed.]
The Ode to Memory is a very early
poem; all except the lines beginning
"My friend, with you to live alone,"
which were addressed to Arthur Hal lam
and added.
P. II, line 9. yesternight, the past.
P. II, col. 2, line 34 to p. 12, col. i, Une 5.
Of purple cliffs, aloof descried;
Come from the woods that belt the gray
hill-side,
The seven elms, the Poplars four
That stand beside my father's door,
A nd chiefly from the brook that loves
To purl o'er matted cress and ribbed sand.
Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves.
The rectory at Somersby. The poplars
have gone.
[The lawn at Somersby was over-
shadowed on one side by the wych-elms,
and on the other by larch and sycamore
trees. Here the poet made his early song,
"A spirit haunts the year's last hours."
Beyond the path, bounding the greensward
to the south, ran in the old days a deep
border of lilies and roses, backed by holly-
hocks and sunflowers. Beyond that was
a garden bower'd close
With plaited alleys of the trailing rose.
Long alleys falUng down to twilight grots,
Or opening upon level plots
Of crowned lilies, standing near
Purple-spiked lavender —
sloping in a gradual descent to the parson's
field, at the foot of which flows, by "lawn
and lea," the swift steep-banked brook,
where are "brambly wildernesses," and
"sweet forget-me-nots," and under the
water the "long mosses sway." The
charm and beauty of this brook haunted
him through Ufe. — Ed.]
P. 12, col. I, Une 12. wolds. Somersby
is on the wolds or hills, about seven miles
from the fens.
[Edward FitzGerald writer; **Long
882
NOTES
after A. T. had settled in the Isle of
Wight, I used to say he never should
have left old Lincolnshire, where there
were not only such grand seas, but also
such fine Hill and Dale among The Wolds,
which he was brought up on, as people in
general scarce thought of." — Ed.]
P. 12, col. I, line 41. Pike. Cumber-
land word for Peak.
P. 12, col. I, lines 42-44 refer to Mable-
thorpe.
I used to stand [when a boy] on the
sand-built ridge at Mablethorpe and
think that it was the spine-bone of the
world. The seas there are interminable
waves rolling along interminable shores of
sand.
P. 12. Song. [Written at Somersby;
first published in 1830. — Ed.]
P. 12, line 12.
Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.
On a sloping bed the tiger-liUes drooped
on a dank, damp day.
[In 1828 my father had written the
following (hitherto unpublished) poem
about his home:
HOME
What shall sever me
From the love of home ?
Shall the weary sea.
Leagues of soimding foam ?
Shall extreme distress,
Shall unknown disgrace.
Make my love the less
For my sweet birth-place ?
Tho' my brains grow dry,
Fancy mew her wings,
And my memory
Forget all other things, —
Tho' I could not tell
My left hand from my right, —
I should know thee well,
Home of my delight ! Ed.]
P. 13. A Character. [First pubUshed
in 1830. This man was "a very plaus-
ible, parliament-hke, and self-satisfied
speaker at the Union Debating Society."
— Edward FitzGerald.
The following character-poem was also
written at Cambridge :
TO
Thou may'st remember what I said
When thine own spirit was at strife
With thine own spirit. "From the tomb
And chamel-place of purpose dead,
Thro' spiritual dark we come
Into the light of spiritual hfe."
God walk'd the waters of thy soul,
And still'd them. When from change to
change.
Led silently by power divine.
Thy thought did scale a purer range
Of prospect up to self-control.
My joy was only less than thine. Ed.]
P. 13. The Poet. [First published in
1830. — Ed.]
P. 13, line 3.
Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of
scorn.
The poet hates hate; and scorns scorn.
[My father denounced hate and scorn as
if they were "the sins against the Holy
Ghost." — Ed.]
P. 13, col. 2, line 5. Calpe. Gibraltar
(one of the pillars of Hercules) was the
western limit of the old world, as Caucasus
was the eastern.
P. 13, col. 2, line 19. the arrow-seeds of
the field-flower, the dandelion.
P. 14. The Poet's Mind. [First pub-
lished in 1830. — Ed.]
P. 14. The Sea-Fairies. [First pub-
Ushed in 1830. — Ed.]
P. 15. The Deserted House = the
body which Life and Thought have left.
[First published in 1830. — Ed.]
P. 15. The Dying Swan. [First pub-
Ushed in 1830. — Ed.]
P. 16, col. I, line 5.
Chasing itself at its own wild will.
The circling of the swallow.
P. 16, col. I, Une 14. the coronach, the
Gaelic funeral song.
P. 16, col. I, Une 26, soughing. Anglo-
Saxon sweg, a sound. Modified into an
onomatopoeic word for the soft sound or
the deep sighing of the wind,
NOTES
883
P. 16. A Dirge. [First published in
1830. — Ed.]
P. 16, col. 2, line i. carketh, vexeth.
[From late Latin car care, to load, whence
to charge. — Ed.]
P. 16, col. 2, line 16, eglatere, for
eglantine. Cf.
"With sicamour was set and eglatere."
The Floure and the Leafe.
P. 16, col. 2, line 22. pleached, plaited
iplico). [Cf. Much Ado about Nothing,
III, i. 7 :
" the pleached bower,
Where honeysuckles, ripen'd by the sun.
Forbid the sun to enter." Ed.]
P. 16, col. 2, line 24. long purples {Vicia
Cracca), the purple vetch. Nothing to
do with " long purples" (Hamlet, iv. vii.
170).
P. 17, col. I, line i. balm-cricket, cicala.
There is an old school-book used by me
when a boy {Analecta Grasca Major a et
Minora). In the notes there to a poem
of Theocritus I found Te-mri^ translated
"balm-cricket." "Balm" was evidently
a corruption of Baum, tree (Baum-grille) .
[A confusion was evidently made be-
tween the German Baum and the French
baume. — Ed.]
P. 17. Love and Death. [First pub-
lished in 1830. — Ed.]
P. 17, line 4. cassia (Gk. Ka<rla, a spice
like cinnamon), a kind of laurel.
P. 17, line 8, sheeny vans, shining wings.
Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, ii. 927 :
"At last his sail-broad vans
He spreads for flight."
P. 17, line 13. eminent, standing out
like a tree.
P, 17. The Ballad of Oriana.
[First published in 1830. — Ed.]
P. 17, col. 2, line i.
In the yew-wood black as night.
Lear made a fine sketch of this at
Kingley Bottom, near Chichester, which is
a striking vale with a yew grove in it.
When we saw the yews their blackness
was crowned with the wild white clematis.
P. 18. Circumstance. [First published
in 1830. — Ed.]
P. 18. The Merman. [First published
in 1830. — Ed.]
P. 19, col. I, line 4. Turkis. Milton
calls it "turkis," for turquoise is the
French word with an ugly nasal sound in
the oi diphthong.
P. 19, col. I, line 4. almondine, a small
violet garnet, first brought from Alabanda,
a city of Asia Minor. Hence "almondine"
is a corruption of the Latin adjective Ala-
bandina.
[First published
The Mermaid.
-Ed.]
P. 19.
in 1830.
"No more misshapen from the waist.
But like a maid of mortal frame."
W. Scott.
P. 19, col. 2, line 30. hollow sphere of
the sea, an underworld of which the sea is
the heaven.
P. 20. Adeline. [First published in
1830. — Ed.]
P. 20, col. 2, line 12. Sabcean.
Arabian.
P. 20, col. 2, line 21. Letters cowslips.
Referring to the red spots on the cowslip
bell, as if they were letters of a fairy
alphabet. Cf. Cymbeline, 11. ii. 39:
"like the crimson drops
I' the bottom of a cowsUp."
P. 20. Margaret. [First published
in 1832. All the poems dated 1833 were
pubUshed at the end of 1832. — Ed.]
P. 21, col. I, line 40. leavy. Cf.
"Since summer first was leavy."
Much Ado, II. iii. 75.
[Macbeth, v. vi. i; Pericles, v. i. 51.
Later editions read "leafy." -^ Ed.]
P. 21. Rosalind. [First published in
1832. — Ed.]
P. 22. Eleanore. [First pubHshed in
1832. — Ed.]
P. 23. Verse viii. Cf. Sappho:
(paiveraL fWL ktjvos t<ros deoiaip
iixfxev &V7JP, ScTTis ivavrios roi
l^dv€L, Kal ir\a<rLov d5i> ^wveiJ-
cas U7raK0i/€t
884
NOTES
Kal yeXal<ras Ifiepdev, t6 /xol jxav
Kapdiav iv (XT'qdeo'iv eirrbaaev '
ws yap els cr t'Soj /Spax^ws p-e (pJjvas
oidiv €T etKei '
dXXA Kap. p-kv yXdaaa eaye Xiirrov d'
aijTLKa x/JcD irvp virobebpbp^aKev^
6TnrdT€<raL d' ovd^v 6pr]pi , iirippbp.-
^eiaL 5' &KOvai..
a 5i fJL tdpus KaKx^erat^ rpopos 8^
iraaav dypei ' x^^P^'^^P'^ ^^ Troias
epLp,L • T€dvdKT]v 8 oXlyio 'TTiSeijris
<paivop.a.L &X\a.
dXkcL xav T6Xp.aTov, \_eirel Kal Tr^vTjra^.
P. 23. My life is full of weary
DAYS, and the next poem beginning
"When in the darkness over me," were
originally two poems, tho' one in the
edition, dated 1833, published in 1832.
P. 24. When in the darkness over
ME.
P. 24, line 10. scritches. Originally
"laughters." I was one day walking with
a friend in a copse, and I heard bird-
laughter. I have no eyes, so to speak.
He said, "That's a jay." It may have
been a woodpecker as far as my ears could
tell. However, whether he was right in
his eyesight or I in my hearing, I did once
catch a jay in the act of laughing. I once
crept with the greatest caution thro' a
wood and came right underneath a jay.
I heard him chuckling to himself ; and the
afternoon sun was full upon him; I broke
by chance a little rotten twig of the tree he
was perched on, and away he went.
P. 24. Sonnet I. To . [First pub-
lished in 1832. — Ed.]
P. 24. Sonnet II. To J. M. K. To
my old college friend, J. M. Kemble.
[First published in 1830. He gave up
his thought of taking Orders, and devoted
himself to Anglo-Saxon history and Utera-
ture. — Ed.]
P. 24. Sonnet IV. Alexander. [First
published in 1872, although written much
earUer. — Ed.]
P. 25, line 4. Ammonian Oasis. This
refers to Alexander's visit to the famous
temple of Zeus Ammon in the Libyan
desert.
P. 25. Sonnet V. Buonaparte. [First
published in 1832. — Ed.]
P. 25. Sonnet VI. Poland. [First pub-
lished in 1832. — Ed.]
Pp. 25, 26. Sonnets VII, VIII, IX.
[First published in 1865, although written
in early life. — Ed.]
P. 26. Sonnet X. [First published in
1832. — Ed.]
P. 26. Sonnet XL The Brldesmaid.
[First published in 1872. On May 24,
1836, my father's best-loved brother,
Charles Tennyson Turner, married Louisa
Sell wood, my mother's youngest sister.
My mother as a bridesmaid was taken into
church by my father. They had rarely
been in each other's company since their
first meeting in 1830, when the Sell woods
had driven over one spring day from Horn-
castle to call at Somersby Rectory.
Two other early sonnets are worthy of
insertion here :
LOVE
I
Thou, from the first, unborn, undying Love,
Albeit we gaze not on thy glories near.
Before the face of God didst breathe and
move.
Though night and pain and ruin and death
reign here.
Thou foldest like a golden atmosphere.
The very throne of the eternal God ;
Passing thro' thee, the edicts of His fear
Are mellow'd into music, borne abroad
By the loud winds, though they uprend
the sea.
Even from his centred deeps ; thine empery
Is over all ; thou wilt not brook ecUpse ;
Thou goest and returnest to His Lips
Like lightening; thou dost ever brood
above
The silence of all hearts, unutterable Love.
To know thee is all wisdom, and old age
Is but to know thee ; dimly we behold thee
Athwart the veils of evil which enfold thee.
We beat upon our aching hearts wdth rage ;
We cry for thee; we deem the world thy
tomb.
As dwellers in lone planets look upon
NOTES
88s
The mighty disk of their majestic sun,
Hallow' d in awful chasms of wheeling gloom,
Making their day dim, so we gaze on thee.
Come, thou of many crowns, white-robed
Love,
O rend the veil in twain ! all men adore thee ;
Heaven crieth after thee; earth waileth
for thee ;
Breathe on thy winged throne, and it shall
. move
In music and in Ught o'er land and sea.
Ed.]
P. 27. The Lady of Shalott. [First
published in 1832, and much altered in
1842. — Ed.] Taken from an Italian
novelette. Donna di ScaloUa. Shalott and
Astolat are the same words. The Lady of
Shalott is evidently the Elaine of the Morte
d' Arthur, but I do not think that I had
ever heard of the latter when I wrote the
former. Shalott was a softer sound than
"Scalott." Stalott would have been
nearer Astolat.
P. 27, col. I, line 5. Camelot (unlike
the Camelot of the Celtic legends) is on the
sea in the Italian story.
[The key to this tale of magic symbolism
is of deep human significance and is to be
found in the lines :
Or when the moon was overhead.
Came two young lovers lately wed ;
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.
Ed.]
P. 27, col. I, line 30. cheerly. Cf.
"cheerly drawing breath" {Rich. II. I.
iii. 66).
P. 28, col. 2, line 30.
Till her blood was frozen slowly.
George Eliot liked my first the best :
Till her smooth fact sharpen' d slowly.
P. 29. Mariana in the South. [First
published in 1832. — Ed.] The idea of
this came into my head between Narbonne
and Perpignan.
['Tt is intended, you will perceive, as a
kind of pendant to his former poem of
Mariana, the idea of both being the
expression of desolate loneliness, but
with this distinctive variety in the second,
that it paints the forlorn feeling as it
would exist under the influence of different
impressions of sense. When we were
journeying together this summer through
the South of France we came upon a range
of country just corresponding to his pre-
conceived thought of a barrenness, . . .
and the portraiture of the scenery in this
poem is most faithful. You will, I think,
agree with me that the essential and dis-
tinguishing character of the conception
reqviires in the Southern Mariana a greater
lingering on the outward circumstances,
and a less palpable transition of the poet
into Mariana's feelings, than was the case
in .the former poem." (A. H. Hallam to
W.B.Donne.)— Ed.]
P. 30, col. I, line 4.
At eve a dry cicala sung.
Originally in MS.
At fall of eve a cricket sung.
P. 30. The Two Voices.
[The Two Voices, or Thoughts of a
Suicide (first published in 1844, but dated
1833), describing the conflict in a soul
between Faith and Scepticism, was begun
after the death of Arthur Hallam, which,
as my father told me, for a while blotted
out all joy from his life, and made him
long for death.
In the earliest manuscript of The Two
Voices a fine verse which was omitted in
the published edition is found after "under
earth" (p. 34, col. i, line 39) :
From vv'hen his baby pulses beat
To when his hands in their last heat
Pick at the death-mote on the sheet.'
Ed.]
P. 30, col. 2, line 15. for thy deficiency,
for the want of thee.
P. 32, col. 2, line 15.
Look up, the fold is on her brow.
The fold = the cloud.
P. 32, col. 2, line 16. oblique. Our
grandfathers said "obleege," which is now
oblige; in the same way I pronounce
"oblique" oblique.
P. 32, col. 2, line 18. Embracing cloud.
Ixion embraced a cloud, hoping to embrace
a goddess.
886
NOTES
P. 33, col. I, line 12.
The elements were kindlier mix'd.
Some have happier dispositions.
P- 2>2i, col. 2, line 22.
The simple senses crowfi'd his head.
The simple senses made death a king.
P. 34, col. I, lines 31, 32.
Before the Utile duds began
To feed thy bones with lime.
[Cf. Animal Physiology, by W. B. Car-
penter: "In the first development of the
embryo, a sort of mould of cartilage is laid
down for the greater part of the bones.
. . . The process of ossification, or bone-
formation, commences with the deposit of
calcareous matter in the intercellular sub-
stance of the cartilage, so as to form a sort
of network, in the interspaces of which are
seen the remains of the cartilage-cells.
The tissue thus formed can scarcely be
considered as true bone, for it contains
neither lacunce nor canaliculi. Before
long, however, it undergoes very important
changes; for many of the partitions are
removed, so that the minute chambers
which they separated coalesce into larger
ones; and thus are formed the cancelli of
the spongy substance, and the Haversian
canals of the more compact." — Ed.]
P. 36, col. I, line 3.
You scarce could see the grass for flowers.
[Edward FitzGerald says: "Composed
as he walked about the Dulwich meadows."
— Ed.]
P. 36. The Miller's Daughter.
[First published in 1832; much altered in
1842. — Ed.] No particular mill, but if
I thought at all of any mill it was that of
Trumpington, near Cambridge.
[FitzGerald notes: "This Poem, as
may be seen, is much altered and enlarged
from the ist Ed. (dated) 1833; in some
respects, I think, not for the better ; losing
somewhat of the easy character of 'Talk
over the Walnuts and the Wine.' Any-
how, would one not preserve the first
stanza of the original, slightly altered, as
A. T. suggested to me ?
I met in all the close green ways,
While walking with my rod and line,
The Miller with his mealy face.
And long'd to take his hand in mine.
He look'd so jolly and so good.
When fishing in the milldam-water,
I laugh' d to see him as he stood.
And dreamt not of the miller's daughter."
Ed.]
P. 36, col. 2, lines 32, 33.
Below the chestnuts, when their buds
Were glistening to the breezy blue.
First reading :
Beneath those gummy chestnut buds
That gUstened in the April blue.
P. 37. Verse omitted after col. i, line 38.
That slope beneath the chestnut tall
Is woo'd with choicest breaths of air ;
Methinks that I could tell you all
The cowsUps and the kingcups there,
Each coltsfoot down the grassy bent
Whose round leaves hold the gather'd
shower.
Each quaintly-folded cuckoo-pint
And silver-paly cuckoo flower.
[Cuckoo-pint, or Lords and Ladies,
Arum maculatum. Cuckoo-flower, Car-
damine pratensis. — Ed.]
P. 37, col. 2, lines 17-40. [Spedding
writes in the Edinburgh for April 1843 :
'"The Millers Daughter' is much en-
riched by the introduction of the mother
of the lover ; and the following beautiful
stanzas (which many people however, will
be ill satisfied to miss) are displaced to
make room for beauty of a much higher
order :
Remember you the clear moonlight
That whiten' d all the eastern ridge.
When o'er the water dancing white
I stepp'd upon the old mill bridge ?
I heard you whisper from above,
A lute-toned whisper, ' I am here ! '
I murmur'd ' Speak again, my love,
The stream is loud : I cannot hear ! '
I heard, as I have seem'd to hear.
When all the under-air was still.
The low voice of the glad New Year
Call to the freshly-flov/er'd hill.
I heard, as I have often heard,
The nightingale in leavy woods
Call to its mate when nothing stirr'd
To left or right but falling floods.
NOTES
887
"These, we observe, are away; and the
following graceful and tender picture, full
of the spirit of English rural life, appears
in their place. (The late squire's son, we
should presume, is bent on marrying the
daughter of the wealthy miller) :
And slowly was my mother brought
Approaching, press' d you heart to heart."
Ed.]
P. 38. Fatima. [Published in 1832, to
which this quotation from Sappho was pre-
fixed:
(paiverai /xoi ktjpos (<ros deoicnv
efiixev 6vr]p. Ed.]
P. 39. QEnone. Married to Paris, and
afterwards deserted by him for Helen.
The sequel of the tale is poorly given in
Quintus Calaber.
[See The Death of CEnone, p. 85.
My father visited the Pyrenees with
Arthur Hallam in 1830. From this time
forward the lonely Pyrenean peaks, the'
mountains with "their streaks of virgin
snow," like the Maladetta, mountain
"lawns and meadow-ledges midway
down," and the "long brook falling thro'
the clov'n ravine," were a continual source
of inspiration. He wrote part of CEnone
in the valley of Cauteretz. His sojourn
there was also commemorated one-and-
thirty years afterward in "All along the
valley." CEnone was first published in
1832, but was republished in 1842 with
considerable alterations. — Ed.]
I had an idiotic hatred of hyphens in
those days, but though I printed such
words as "glenriver," " tendriltwine " I
always gave them in reading their full two
accents. Coleridge thought because of
these hyphened words that I could not
scan. He- said that I ought to write in a
regular metre in order that I might learn
what metre was — not knowing that in
earliest youth I had written hundreds of
lines in the regular Popian measure. I
remember my father (who was himself
something of a poet and wrote very regular
metre) saying to me when in my early
teens, "Don't write always such exact
metre — break it now and then to avoid
monotony." I now think that we want
two forms of hyphen, e.g. "Paper hang-
ing Manufacturer" is a "Manufacturer
made of paper and hung in effig>'." Paper-
hanging=Manufacturer. "Invalid Chair-
maker" is a sick maker of chairs. Invalid-
chair=maker.
P. 39, col. I, line i. Ida. On the
south of Troas.
P. 39, col. 2, line 4. Gargara or Gargaron.
The highest part of Mt. Ida.
Ipsa suas mirantur Gargara messes.
Georg. ir 103.
• P. 39, col. 2, Une 10. Paris, once her
playmate on the hills. [See Apollodorus,
iii. 12, etc. — Ed.]
P. 39, col. 2, lines 16, 17. This sort of
refrain :
O mother Ida, many-fountain' d Ida,
Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die
is found in Theocritus. For "many-foun-
tain'd" cf. //. viii. 47 :
IStji/ 5' 'Uave TroXviridaKa, firjT^pa dripCbv
and elsewhere in the Iliad.
P. 39, col. 2, line 18.
For now the noonday quiet holds the hill.
fjLecrafi^pLpr] 5' eix ^pos rfavxt-o--
CaUimachus, Lavacrum Palladis, 72.
P, 39, col. 2, Une 21. and the winds
are dead. Altered from the original read-
ing of 1842, "and the cicala sleeps." In
these lines describing a perfect stillness, I
did not like the jump, "Rests like a shadow
— and the cicala sleeps." Moreover, in
the heat of noon the cicala is generally at
its loudest, though I have read that, in
extreme heat, it is silent. Some one (I
forget who) found them silent at noon on
the slopes of Etna.
In the Pyrenees, where part of this poem
was written, I saw a very beautiful sp>ecies
of cicala, which had scarlet wings spotted
with black. Probably nothing- of the kind
exists in Mount Ida.
P. 39, col. 2, Une 22. flower droops.
"Flowers droop" in the original edition
of 1842 was a misprint for "flower droops."
P. 39, col. 2, line 24.
My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love.
This line, that any child might have
NOTES
written, is not, as some writers say, taken
from Shakespeare:
"Mine eyes are full of tears, my heart of
grief."
2 Henry VI, ii. iii. 17.
P. 39, col. 2, line 34.
Rose slowly to a music slowly breathed.
[Cf. Tithonus, p. 95, col. 2, lines 1,2:
Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing,
While Ilion like a mist rose into towers ;
and Ovid, Heroides, xvi. 179:
Ilion adspicies, firmataque turribus altis
Moenia, Phoebeae structa canore lyrae.
Ed.]
P. 40, col. I, line 17. foam-bow. The
rainbow in the cataract, formed by the
simshine on the foam.
P. 46, col. I, line 22. Hesperian gold,
from the gardens of the Hesperides.
P. 40, col. I, line 31. married brows,
meeting eye-brows, (T^vo<ppvs K6pa, Theoc.
viii. 72. [Cf. Ovid, Artis Amatoriae, iii.
201, "confinia supercilii." — Ed.]
P. 40, col. 2, line 16.
And at their feet the crocus brake like fire.
[Cf. xP^<^^^y^^ KpbKos, Oed. Coloneus, 685.
— Ed.]
It is the fiame-like petal of the crocus
which is alluded to, not only the colour.
I will answer for it that no modem poet
can write a single line but among the in-
numerable authors of the world you will
somewhere find a striking parallelism. It
is the unimaginative man who thinks every-
thing borrowed.
P. 40, col. 2, line 17. amaracus, mar-
joram.
P. 40, col. 2, Hne 17. asphodel, a sort
of lily. The word "daflfodil" is said to
be derived from "asphodel." [Fleur
d'asphodele. — Ed.]
P. 40, col. 2, line 24. peacock, sacred to
Her6.
P. 41, col. I, line 17.
Rest in a happy place and quiet seats.
Scilicet is Superis labor est, ea cura quietos
Sollicitat.
Aeneid, iv. 379-7380.
and . . . sedesque quietae
Quas neque concutiunt venti.
Lucretius, De Rerum Nat. iii. 18.
P. 41, col. I, line 25. O'erthwarted.
Founded on the Chaucerian word "over-
thwart," across. Cf. Troilus and Criseyde,
Bk. iii. 685.
P. 41, col. 2, line 7. Sequel of guerdon.
addition of reward.
P. 41, col. 2, line 18. [The Goddess
pictures the full-grown, full-orbed Will like
a young planet pursuing its mighty path in
a series of revolutions, each revolution
more and more symmetrical, and devoid of
halting epicycles; until its course ^is fric-
tionless, — pure unhesitating Will, — fulfil-
ling without let or hindrance the law of its
being in absolute freedom. My father
often repeated his lines on Free Will :
This main-miracle, that thou art thou,
With power on thine own act and on the
world ;
and would enlarge upon man's consequent
moral obUgations, upon the law which
claims a free obedience, and upon the
pursuit of moral perfection (in imitation of
the Divine) to which man is called. — Ed.]
P. 41, col. 2, line 27. Paphian. Idalium
and Paphos in Cyprus are sacred to
Aphrodite.
P. 42, col. 2, line 7. The Abominable,
Eris the goddess of strife, discord.
P. 43, col. I, line 11.
A fire dances before her, and a sound.
Cf.
xairaT, ooov rh irvp ' iiripx^TaL 5^ fioL.
Aesch. Ag. 1256.
P. 43. The Sisters. [First published
in 1832. — Ed.] Mrs. Tom Taylor has
made a fine setting for this.
P. 43. The Palace of Art. [First
pubhshed in edition dated 1833 ; but
really 1832. — Ed.] Trench (afterwards
Archbishop of Dublin) said, when we were
at Trinity (Cambridge) together, "Tenny-
son, we cannot live in Art."
Beauty, Good and Knowledge are three
sisters . . .
That never can be sunder'd without tears.
NOTES
88q
And he that shuts out Love, in turn shall be
Shut out from Love, and on her threshold
he.
Howling in outer darkness.
[Spedding writes that the poem "repre-
sents allegorically the condition of a mind
v/hich, in the love of beauty, and the
triumphant consciousness of knowledge,
and intellectual supremacy, in the intense
enjoyment of its own power and glory, has
bst sight of its relation to man and God."
— Ed.]
When I first conceived the plan of The
Pahce of Art, I intended to have intro-
duced both sculptvures and paintings into
it, but I only finished two sculptures.
One was the Tishbite whom the raven fed,
As when he stood on Carmel-steeps,
With one arm stretch'd out bare, and
mock'd and said,
"Come, cry aloCid — he sleeps."
Tall, eager, lean and strong, his cloak
wind-borne
Behind, his forehead heavenly bright
From the clear marble pouring glorious
scorn,
Lit as with inner light.
Olympias was the mother of Alexander
the Great, and devoted to the Orphic rites.
She was wont in the dances proper to
these ceremonies to have great tame
serpents about her.
One was Olympias : the floating snake
RoU'd round her ankles, round her waist
Knotted, and folded once about her neck.
Her perfect lips to taste,
1 Down from the shoulder moved ; she
seeming blithe
Declined her head : on every side
The dragon's curves melted, and mingled
with
The woman's youthful pride
Of rounded limbs.
P. 44, col. I, fine 2. [Sleeps. The
shadow of Saturn thrown on the luminous
ring, though the planet revolves in ten and
a half hours, appears to be motionless. —
Ed.]
P. 44, col. I, line 26. That lent broad
verge, a broad horizon.
1 MS. reading.
P. 45, col. I, line 8. hoary. The
underside of the olive leaf is white.
P. 45, col. I, line 23, branch-work of
costly sardonyx. The Parisian jewellers
apply graduated degrees of heat to the
sardonyx, by which the original colour is
changed to various colours. They imitate
thus, among other . things, bunches of
grapes with green tendrils.
P. 45, col. I, fine 24.
Sat smiling, babe in arm.
[Edward FitzGerald wrote a note for me
on this: "After visiting Italy some twenty
years after this poem was written, he told
me that he had been prepared for Raffaelle,
but not for Michael Angelo ; whose picture
at Florence of a Madonna dragging a
'ton of a child' over one shoulder almost
revolted him at first, but drew him toward
itself afterward, and 'would not out of
memory.' I forget if he saw the Dresden
Raffaelle, but he would speak of the Child
in it as 'perhaps finer than the whole
composition, in so far as one's eyes are
more concentrated on the subject. The
child seems to be the furthest reach of
human art. His attitude is a man's; his
countenance a Jupiter's, perhaps too much
so.' But when A. T. had a babe of his
own, he saw it was not ' too much so.' 'I
am afraid of him : babies have a grandeur
which children lose, their look of awe and
wonder. I used to think the old painters
overdid the expression and dignity of their
infant Christs, but I see they didn't.' " —
Ed.]
P. 4S, col. I, line 33.
Or mythic Uther's deeply-wounded son.
Arthur when he was "smitten thro' the
helm" by Modred.
Here this verse was omitted :
Or blue-eyed Kriemhilt from a craggy hold
Athwart the light-green rows of vine,
Pour'd blazing hoards of Nibelimgen gold
Down to the gulfy Rhine.
P. 45, col. 2, line 3.
The wood-nymph, stay'd the Ausonian king
to hear.
Egeria, who gave the laws to Numa
Pompilius.
Sqo
NOTES
P. 45, col. 2, line 5. engrail'd
[heraldic term for serrated. — Ed.J.
P. 45, col. 2, line 7. Indian Cama,
the Hindu God of young love, son of
Brahma.
P. 45, col. 2, line 9. blew. "Blue,"
as it appears in some editions, was a
printer's error. [Cf. Moschus, Id. ii.
1 2 1-5. — Ed.]
P. 45, col. 2, line 18, the supreme
Caucasian mind. [The Caucasian range
was thought to form the N.W. border of
Western Asia, from which the races who
peopled Europe originally came. — Ed.]
P. 45, col. 2, line 29. Ionian father,
Homer.
P. 46, col. I, line 17. large-brow'd
Veridam. The bust of Bacon in Trinity
College Library. "Livy" is in one of
the original verses here, and looks queer.
Our classical tutor at Trinity College used
to call him such a great poet that I
suppose he got into my palace thro' his
recommendation.
[FitzGerald wrote: "In this advance-
ment of Livy I recognize the fashion of
A. T.'s college days, when the German
school, with Coleridge, Julius Hare, etc.,
to expound, came to reform all our
Notions. I remember that Livy and
Jeremy Taylor were 'the greatest poets
next to Shakespeare.' "
The "original verses" referred to ran
thus :
Cervantes ; the bright face of Calderon ;
Rgbed David, touching holy strings ;
The Halicarnassean ; and alone,
Alfred, the flower of kings.
Isaiah with fierce Ezekiel,
Swarth Moses by the Coptic sea,
Plato, Petrarca, Livy, and Raphael,
And eastern Confutzee.
And many more that in their life-time were
Full-welling fountain-heads of change,
etc. Ed.]
P. 46. col. I, line 18.
The first of those who know
is Bacon.
"II maestro di color chi sanno,"
as Dante says of Aristotle in Inferno, iii.
In the first edition, in the centre of the
four quadrangles was a huge tower.
Hither, when all the deep unsounded skies
Shudder'd with silent stars, she clomb,
And as with optic glasses her keen eyes
Pierced thro' the mystic dome,
Regions of lucid matter taking forms,
Brushes of fire, hazy gleams.
Clusters and beds of worlds, and bee-like
swarms
Of suns, and starry streams.
She saw the snoAvy poles and moons of Mars,
That mystic field of drifted light
In mid Orion and the married stars.^
"Moons of Mars" is the only modern
reading here. All the rest are more than
h^lf a century old.
P. 46, col. I, line 25, as morn from
Memnon. [The statue of Memnon near
Thebes was said to give forth music when
the rays of the rising sun struck it. — Ed.]
P. 46, col. 2, line 6, anadems, crowns.
[Cf. Shelley's Adonais, xi. :
"and threw
The wreath upon him, like an anadem.
Which frozen tears instead of pearls
begem." Ed.]
P. 46, col. 2, line 8. hollowed moons
of gems [gems hollowed out for lamps. —
Ed.].
P. 46. After line 16 in col. 2 used to
come these verses :
"From shape to shape at first within the
womb
The brain is moulded," she began,
"And thro' all phases of all thought I come
Unto the perfect man.
All nature widens upward. Evermore
The simpler essence lower lies,
More complex is more perfect, owning more
Discourse, more widely wise."
P. 47, col. I, line 7.
The abysmal deeps of Personality.
Arthur Hallam once pointed out to me,
or I to him, a quotation in some review
from J. P. Richter where he talks of an
1 These last three lines were altered by my
father from the 18^2 edition, and written down
by him for this Note.
NOTES
891
"abysmal Ich." "I brieve that re-
demption is universal in so far as it left no
obstacle between man and God but man's
own will; that indeed is in the power of
God's election, with whom alone rest the
abysmal secrets of personality" {A. H.
Hallam's Remains, p. 132).
P. 47, col. I, line 26.
And, with dim fretted foreheads all.
Cf. "moth-fretted garments." Not
wrinkled, but worm-fretted (Old English
fretan, to eat).
P. 47, col. 2, line^.
The hollow orb of moving Circumstance.
Some old writer calls the Heavens "the
Circumstance." When an undergraduate,
a friend said to me, "How fine the word
'circumstance' is, used in that sense."
Here it is more or less a play on the word.
The Ptolemaic astronomy describes the
universe as scooped out of chaos.
P. 48. Lady Clara Vere de Vere.
[First published in 1842, although written
early. — Ed.] A dramatic poem drawn
from no particular character.
P. 48, col. 2, line 21.
The gardener Adam and his wife.
"The grand old gardener" in my
original MS. was altered to "the gardener
Adam" because of the frequent letters
from friends asking me for explanation.
P. 49. The May Queen. [An early
poem first written in Lincolnshire, and
published in the edition dated 1833, except
the "Conclusion," added and pubUshed
in 1842. FitzGerald says: "The May.
Queen is all' Lincolnshire inland, as Locksley
Hall its sea-board." — Ed.]
P. 49, line 30. cuckoo-flowers. Lady's
smock {Cardamine pratensis). [Cf.
"When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver- white," etc.
Lovers Labour's Lost, v. ii. 905. — Ed.]
P. so. The May Queen : New Year's
Eve.
P. So, line 8. The blossom on the
blackthorn. "The May upon the black-
thorn" — -how did this reading get into the
original text? The May was so late that
there was only blackthorn in May.
P. 50, line 12. Charles's Wain, "The
Great Bear," or "The Plough," or, accord-
ing to the old Egyptians, "The Thigh."
P. 51. The May Queen: Conclu-
sion.
P. 51, Hne 21. death-watch, a beetle
{Anobium tessellatum) whose ticking is
supposed to forebode death.
P. 52, line 15. window-bars. Looks as
if brought in for the rhyme. I was think-
ing of our old house, where all the upper
windows had iron bars, for there were
eleven of us children lixang in the upper
story.
P. 53, The Lotos-Eaters. [First
pubhshed in the edition dated 1833, much
altered and published in 1842. — Ed.] The
treatment of CEnone and The Lotos-Eaters
is, as far as I know, original. Of course
the subject of The Lotos-Eaters is taken
from the Odyssey, ix. 82 foil.
P. 53, line 3.
In the afternoon they came unto a land.
"The strand" was, I think, my first
reading, but the no rhyme of "land" and
"land" was lazier.
P. S3, line 8.
And like a downward smoke, the slender
stream.
Taken from the waterfall at Gavarnie,
in the Pyrenees, when I was 20 or 21.
P. S3> line II. Slow-dropping veils of
thinnest lawn. Lying among these
mountains before this waterfall, that comes
down one thousand or twefve hundred feet,
I sketched it (according to my custom
then) in these words.
P. 53, line 23. slender galingale. I
meant the Cyperus papyrus of Linnaeus.
P. 53, col. 2, line 13. wandering fields.
Made by me on a voyage from Bordeaux
to Dublin (1830). I saw a great creamy
slope of sea on the horizon, rolling toward
us.
I often, as I say, chronicle on the spot,
in four or five words or more, whatever
strikes me as picturesque in nature.
P. 53. Lotos-Eaters: Choric Song,
892
NOTES
P. 53, 1. 6.
Than tir^ eyelids upon tir'd eyes.
1 printed, contrary to my custom, "tir'd,"
not "tired," for fear that the readers might
pronounce the word "tired," whereas I
wished them to read it "tierd," prolonging
as much as might be the diphthongic i}
[When at Somersby (1830-37) my father
now and then listened to the singing and
playing of his sisters. He had a love for
the simple style of Mozart, and for our own
national airs and ballads, but only cared for
complicated music as suggesting echoes of
winds and waves. FitzGerald, in a note on
The Dream of Fair Women, St. xliv.,
says: "A. T. was not thought to have an
ear for music, and I remember little of his
execution in that line except humming over
'The weary pund o' tow,' which was more
because of the weary moral, I think, than for
any music's sake. Carlyle, however, once
said, 'The man must have music dormant
in him, revealing itself in verse.' I re-
member A. T. speaking of Haydn's 'Chaos,'
which he had heard at some Oratorio. He
said, ' The violins spoke of light.' " Venables
wrote in 1835 : "I almost wonder that you
with your love of music and tobacco do not
go and live in some such place" (as Prague).
— Ed.]
P. 54, col. 2, line 13.
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy.
An early sonnet on "first love" {English-
man's Magazine, 1831) ran thus:
Check every outflash, every ruder sally
Of thought and speech; speak low, and
give up wholly
Thy spirit to mild-minded Melancholy —
This is the place: Thro' yonder poplar
valley
Below the blue-green river windeth slowly :
But in the middle of the sombre valley
The inspir'd waters whisper musically,
And all the haunted place is dark and holy.
The nightingale, with long and low pre-
amble
Warbled from yonder knoll of solemn
larches.
And in and out the woodbine's flowery
arches.
1 Making the word neither monosyllabic nor
dissyllabic, but a dreamy child of the two.
The summer midges wove their wanton
gambol,
And all the white-stemm'd pinewood slept
above —
When in that valley first I told my love.
P. 55, col. I, line 3, amaranth, the
immortal flower of legend.
P. 55, col. I, line 3, moly, the sacred
herb of mystical power, used as a charm by
Odysseus against Circe.
P. 55, col. I, line 12. acanthus, the
plant seen in the capitals of Corinthian
pillars.
P. 55, col. I, line 25. On the hills like
Gods together. [Cf. note above on p. 904
{(Enone, p. 41, col. i, hne 17), and
Lucretius, v. 83, vi. 58:
Nam bene qui didicere deos securum agere
aevum.
Hor. Sat, i. 5. loi :
Namque deos didici securum agere aevum.
Ed.]
P. 55. A Dream of Fair Women.
Pu Wished in 1832 [in the edition dated
1833, and much altered in 1842. — Ed.]
[FitzGerald notes: "The Dream of
Fair Women in the ist Ed. of (dated)
1833 begins with the following stanzas, of
which the three first may stand as a
separate Poem : —
As when a man that sails in a balloon,
Down-looking, sees the solid shining
ground
Stream from beneath him in the broad
blue noon,
Tilth, hamlet, mead and mound :
And takes his flags and waves them to the
mob.
That shout below, all faces turn'd to
where
Glows ruby-like the far-up crimson globe,
Fill'd with a finer air;
So, lifted high, the poet at his will
Lets- the great world flit from him, seeing
all.
Higher thro' secret splendours mounting
still.
Self-poised, nor fears to fall,
NOTES
893
Hearing apart the echoes of his fame.
While I spoke thus, the seedsman,
memory,
Sow'd my deep-fxirrow'd thought with
many a name.
Whose glory will not die." Ed.]
P. 55, line 3. the morning star of song.
Chaucer, the first great Enghsh poet,
wrote the Legend of Good Women. From
among these Cleopatra alone appears in
my poem.
P. 55, line 5. Dan, from dominus.
[Cf. Spenser's
"Dan Chaucer, well of Enghsh undefiled."
Faerie Queene, TV. ii. xxxii. — Ed.]
P. 56, col. I, Une 15. tortoise, the
"testudo" of ancient war. Warriors
with shields upheld on their heads ad-
vanced, as under a strong shed, against
the wall of a beleaguered city.
P. 56, col. 2, line 12. In an old wood.
The wood is the Past. Cf. p. 57, col. i,
lines 9, 10 :
the wood is all thine own
Until the end of time,
i.e. time backward.
P. 56, col. 2, Unes 19-22.
The dim red morn had died, her journey
done.
And with dead lips smiled at the twilight
plain,
Half-faU'n across the threshold of the sun,
Never to rise again. >
This stanza refers to the early past.
How magnificently old Turner would have
painted it.
P. 57, col. I, line 11.
At length I saw a lady within call.
Helen of Troy.
P. 57, col. I, line 13. A daughter of
the gods, daughter of Zeus and Leda.
Some call her daughter of Zeus and
Nemesis.
P. '57, col. I, line 26.
To one that stood beside.
Iphigenia, who was sacrificed by Aga-
memnon to Artemis.
P. 57, col. I, Une 32.
Which men call'd Aulis in those iron years.
This line (as far as I recollect) is almost
synchronous with the old reading; but
the inversion there, "Which yet to name
my spirit loathes and fears," displeased
me.
P. 57, col. I, line S3-
My father held his hand upon his face.
[No doubt my father had in his mind
the famous picture by Timanthes, The
Sacrifice of Iphigeneia (described by
Valerius Maximus, viii. 11, 6), of which
there is a Pompeiian wall-painting. Also
the passage in Lucretius, i. 84 foil. — Ed.]
P. 57, col. 2, lines 5-8.
The high masts flickered as they lay afloat;
The crowds, the temples, wavered, and
the shore;
TJte bright death quivered at the victim's
throat;
Touched; and I knew no more.
Originally the verse, which I thought too
ghastly reaUstic, ran thus :
The tall masts quiver'd as they lay afloat ;
The temples and the people and the
shore,
One drew a sharp knife thro' my tender
throat
Slowly, — and nothing more.
P. 57, col. 2, line 19.
A queen, with swarthy clieeks and bold
black eyes.
I was thinking of Shakespeare's Cleo-
patra :
"Think of me
That am with Phoebus' amorous pinches
black."
Antony and Cleopatra, I. v. 28.
MiUais has made a mulatto of her in his
illustration. I know perfectly well that
she was a Greek. "Swarthy" merely
means sunburnt. I should not have
spoken of her breast as "polished silver"
if I had not known her as a white woman.
Read "sunburnt" if you like it better.
P. 58, col. r, line i. That dull cold-
blooded Ccesar. [After the battle of Actium
Cleopatra strove to fascinate Augustus, as
894
NOTES
she had fascinated Caesar, but, not suc-
ceeding, "with a worm" she "balk'd"
his determination to carry her captive to
Rome. — Ed.T
P. 58, col. I, line 8. Canopus, in the
constellation of Argo.
P. 58, col. I, line 23. / died a Queen.
Cf. "Non humilis mulier" (Hor. Od. i.
37. 32).
P. 58, col. 2, line 12.
A noise of some one coming ihro' the lawn.
Jephthah's daughter. Cf. Judges, chap. xi.
P. 59, col. I, line 26. battled, em-
battled, battlemented.
P. 59, col. 2, line 3.
Saw God divide the night with flying flame.
[Cf.
Diespiter
Igni corusco nubila dividens.
Horace, Od. i. 34. 5. — Ed.]
P. 59, col. 2, lines 15-17.
my race
Hew'd Ammon, hip and thigh, from Aroer
On Arnon unto Minneth.
See Judges xi.
P. 59, col. 2, line 21.
Thridding the sombre boskage of the wood.
Threading the dark thickets. Cf. "every
bosky bourn" {Comus, 313).
P. 60, col. I, line 7. Fulvia, wife of
Antony, named by Cleopatra as a parallel
to Eleanor.
P. 60, col. I, Hues II, 12.
The captain of my dreams
Ruled in the eastern sky.
Venus, the star of morning.
P. 60, col. I, lines 14, 15.
her, who clasp'd in her last trance
Her murdered father'' s head.
Margaret Roper, daughter of Sir Thomas
More, who is said to have transferred his
headless corpse from the Tower to Chelsea
Church. Sir Thomas More's head had
remained for fourteen days on London
Bridge after his execution, and was about
to be thrown into the Thames to make
room for others, when she claimed and
bought it. For this she was cast into
prison. She died nine years after her
father, and was buried at St. Dunstan's,
Canterbury, but in the year 17 15 the vault
was opened, and it is stated that she was
found in her coffin, clasping the small
leaden box which inclosed her father's
head.
P. 60, col. I, lines 17-20.
Or her who knew that Love can vanquish
Death,
Who kneeling, with one arm about her
king.
Drew forth the poison with her balmy
breath,
Sweet as new buds in Spring.
Eleanor, wife of Edward I., went with
him to the Holy Land (1269), where he
was stabbed at Acre with a poisoned
dagger. She sucked the poison from the
wound.
P. 60. The Blackbird. [Written
about 1833 and published in 1842. — Ed.]
P. 60, line 12. jenneting, an early apple,
ripe in June. Juneting, i.e. June-eating.
P. 60, line 17.
And in the sultry garden-squares
was in the original MS.
I better brook the drawling stares,
i.e. starlings.
P. 60, lines 19, 20.
/ hecir thee not at all, or hoarse
As when a hawker hawks his wares.
Charles Kingsley confirmed this.
P. 60. The Death of the Old Year.
[First published in 1832. — Ed.]
P. 61, col. I, line 41. rue for you, mourn
for you. Cf. intransitive use of "rue" :
"Nought shall make us rue."
King John, v. vii. 117.
P. 61. To J. S. [First published in
1832. — Ed.] Addressed to James Sped-
ding, the biographer of Bacon. His brother
was Edward Spedding, a friend of mine,
who died in his youth.
P. 61, line 19. Once thro' mine own
doors. The death of my father. [Charles'
Tennyson Turner writes (March 1831) :
"He suffered little, and after death his
NOTES
895
countenance, which was strikingly lofty
and peaceful, was, I trust, an image of
the condition of his soul, which on earth
was daily racked by bitter fancies, and
tossed about by stormy troubles." — Ed.]
P. 62. On a Mourner. [Written
early, but first published in Selections,
1865. See Memoir, vol. ii. p. 19. — Ed.]
P. 62, line 9. humm'd the dropping
snipe. The snipe makes a humming noise
as it drops toward earth.
P. 62, Une 10. marish-pipe, marestail.
(Originally the paddock-pipe')
P. 63, col. I, lines 7, 8.
while all the fleet
Had rest by stony hills of Crete.
[Cf. Aeneid, iii. 135, 147-177. — Ed.
P. 63. You ASK ME WHY, THO' ILL
AT EASE. [Written about 1833, and first
published in 1842. — Ed.]
This and the two foUoAving poems, Of
old sat Freedom and Love thou thy land,
are said to have been versified from a
speech by my friend Spedding at the
Cambridge Union. I am reported as
having gone home and written these three
poems during the night and shown them
to him in the morning. The speech is
purely mythical ; at least I never heard it,
and no poem of mine was ever founded
upon it.
In the first. You ask me why, etc., there
is a similarity to a note by Spedding [which
Sir Henry Taylor has introduced at the
close of one of his plays], and why not,
for I thoroughly agreed with him about
politics. Aubrey de Vere showed these
poems to Wordsworth; they were the
first poems oi mine which he read. [Cf.
Memoir, vol. i. p. 126. — Ed.]
P. 63, line II.
[Where Freedom slowly broadens down.
has been repeatedly misprinted "broadens
slowly." My father never, if he could
help it, put two s's together, and the
original MS. stood as it stands now. —
Ed.]
P. 63. Of old sat Freedom on the
HEIGHTS. [First pubUshed in 1842,
written about 1833. — Ed.]
P. 63, line 15.
Who, God-like, grasps the triple forks.
Like Zeus with his "trisulca fulmina,"
the thunderbolts. [Ovid, Met. ii. 848,
"trisulcis ignibus"; Ovid, lb. 471, "telo
trisculco." — Ed.]
P. 63. Love thou thy land, with
love far-brought. [First published in
1842, written about 1833. — Ed.]
P. 64, col. 2, line 12. [the rising wind
of revolutionary change. — Ed.]
P. 65. England and America in
1782. First pubUshed in a New York
paper in 1874.
P. 65, line 8.
Retaught the lesson thou hadst taught.
Copy of part of a letter of mine to Walt
Whitman:
Nov. 15, 87.
"The coming year should give new Hfe
to every American, who has breathed the
breath of that soil which inspired the great
founders of the American constitution,
whose work you are to celebrate. Truly
the mother-country, pondering on this,
may feel that howmuchsoever the daughter
owes to her, she the mother has something
to learn from the daughter. Especially I
would note the care taken to guard a
noble constitution from rash and unwise
innovators."
P. 65. The Goose. [First pubUshed
in 1842. — Ed.]
P. 66. The Epic. Mrs. Browning
wanted me to continue this: she has put
my answer in Aurora Leigh.
P. 66, col. 2, Une 24. mouthing out his
hollow oes and aes.
[Edward FitzGerald writes: "Morte
d' Arthur when read to us from manuscript
in 1835 had no introduction or epilogue;
which were added to anticipate or excuse
the 'faint Homeric echoes,' etc.^ Mouth-
ing out his hollow oes and aes, deep-chested
music, this is something as A. T. read,
with a broad north country vowel. . . .
His voice, very deep and deep-chested,
but rather murmuring than mouthing, like
1 As in The Day-Dream, to give a reason for
telling an old-world tale.
896
NOTES
the sound of a far sea or of a pine-wood,
This voice, I remember, greatly struck
Carlyle when he first came to know him."
— Ed.]
P. 67. MoRTE d' Arthur. [First
written in 1835, and published in 1842.
My father was fond of reading this poem
aloud. At the end of May 1835 he re-
peated some of it to FitzGerald while in a
boat on Windermere. FitzGerald notes
the two lines :
Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the
deeps
Upon the hidden bases of the hills.
'"That is not bad, I think,' (A. T)
said to me while rowing on Windermere
with him, in May 1835, when this Poem
was in MS."
In Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales
there are four primitive poems naming
Arthur which my father often quoted :
1. Vol. i. p. 259. Welsh in vol ii. p. 155.
2. " 261. " " 50.
3. " 264. " " 181.
4. " 266. '■ " 274 and 37.
(i) is by Taliessin, named Kadeir
Teyrnon (Sovereign's Chair), where Arthur
is called "the blessed Arthur."
(2) only names Arthur.
(3) is also by Taliessin, named Preidden
Annwf n (the Spoils of Hades) , and appears
to relate to one of Arthur's expeditions.
(4) on Geraint and Llongborth, where
Arthur is called "Amheraudyr Uauur" —
"Imperator laboris."
Arthur's unknown grave is mentioned in
No. XLiv. of the Verses on the Graves of
Warriors (Englynnionn y Bedef) (Skene,
vol. i. 315 and ii. 28) :
"A mystery to the world, the grave of
Arthur."
In the Triads of Arthur and his Warriors
(Skene, vol. ii, pp. 456-7), Arthur's name
is mentioned in No. i. as chief lord of
three tribe thrones, and occurs again in
Nos. xviii., XXIII.
The seventh stanza of the Apple song
about Arthur, as printed in Stephens'
Literature of the Kymry, ^876 (which my
father considered an excellent book),
prophesies the return of Arthur and Med-
rawd, and renewal of the battle of Camlan.
— Ed.]
P. 67, line 4. Lyonnesse. The country
of legend that lay between Cornwall and
the Scilly Islands and included part of
Cornwall.
P. 67, col. I, line 31. samite, a rich silk
stuff inwrought with gold and silver threads.
{i^dfUTOv, woven with six kinds of thread.)
P. 67, col. 2, hne 21. topaz-lights. The
topaz is a precious stone of varying colours
(perhaps from root "tap," to shine. —
Skeat).
P. 67, col. 2, hne 21. jacinth is the
hyacinth stone, blue and purple. Cf.
Rev. xxi. 20.
P. 67, col. 2, line 24.
This way and that dividing the swift mind.
A translation of V^irgil, Aeneid, iv. 285:
Atque animum nunc hue celerem, nunc •
dividit illuc.
iv 54 ol ijTop . . . 8Ldv8Lxa fxepf^iipi^ev.
II. i. 188.
P. 68, col. I, hne 12. lief, beloved.
Alder-Hefest (2 Hen. VI. 1. i. 28), most
beloved of all.
P. 69, col. I, line i, a streamer of the
northern morn, Aurora Borealis.
P. 69, col. I, line 2. the moving isles
of winter, icebergs.
P. 69, col. I, line 17. three lives of
mortal men. Nestor was called rpiyipiov.
Anthol. P. vii. 144. Cf. Od.An. 245 :
Tpls yap bif p.[v (f)aaiv avd^aadat. ykvi
dvdpQip.
P. 69, col. 2, hne 26. Three Queens.
In the original Morte D' Arthur one was
King Arthur's sister, Queen Morgan le
Fay; the other was the Queen of North-
galis; the third was the Queen of the
Waste Lands. Some say that the three
Queens are Faith, Hope, and Charity.
[The Bishop of Ripon once asked my
father whether they were right who inter-
preted the three Queens as Faith, Hope,
and Charity. He answered: 'They are
right, and they are not right. They mean
that, and they do not. They are three
of the noblest of women. They are also
NOTES
897
those three Graces, but they are much
more. I hate to be tied down to say,
'This means thai,' because the thought
within the image is much more than any
one interpretation." — Ed.]
P. 70, col. I, ^e II. greaves and
cuisses, leg and thigh armour {coxa, thigh) .
P. 70, col. 2, line 5.
Lest one good custom should corrupt the
world.
E.g. chivalry, by formaUsm of habit or by
any other means.
P. 70, col. 2, line 18. Bound by gold
chains. [My father said that this passage
was not, as has been said, suggested by
//. viii. 19 :
(xeipijv xpvo'^l-V^ ^^ ovpavbdev Kp€fxd<ravT esf
iravres 5' e^diTTecde deol irdaal re d^aivai'
d\\ ovK B.V ipijaaiT^ i^ ovpavbQev TreSiovde
TiTJv viraTov iJLi}<TT(ap\ oi>8' ei fidXa iroXXd
KdfJMire.
or by Plato, Theaetetus, 153. — Ed.]
P. 70, col. 2, line 22.
To the island-valley of Avilion,
or Avalon. There is an island of this
name off Brittany, and Avilion also stands
for the ancient "isle of Glastonbury."
The Welsh Afallon Uterally means the
"Apple-trees." It is here the island to
which Arthur is borne in the barge, and
from which he will some day return — the
Isle of the Blest.
P. 70, col. 2, line 23.
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow.
Cf . Od. iv. 566 :
OV VlCpCTOS, OVT &.p X^l-f^<^^ 7ro\l>S 0ijT€ TOT
6/M^po$.
and Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, iii. 18
foil. :
. . . sedesque quietae
Quas neque concutiunt venti, nee nubila
nimbis
Aspergunt neque nix acri concreta pruina
Cana cadens violat semperque innubilus
aether
Integit, et large diffuso lumine rident.
P. 70, col. 2, Une 25. Deep-meadow' d.
dijK€v de Kai ^advKeiixov virb Kippas dyup
•n-irpav KpaTrjaiiroda ^piKiav.
Pind. Pyth. x. 23.
3M
Also Jli.vdei.av ^ad'u\eLfxov,Yiom. Il.'ix. 151.
P. 70, col. 2, line 26. crowned with
summer sea. Cf.
vrjaov, T^v tr^pi irbvros direlpiTos ia-recpdvw-
rai. Od. X. 195.
P. 71. The Gardener's Daughter;
OR, THE Pictures. Written at Cambridge
[and corrected in Spedding's chambers at
60 Lincoln's Inn Fields, and published in
1842. — Ed.].
The centre of the poem, that passage
describing the girl, must be full and rich.
The poem is so, to a fault, especially the
descriptions of nature, for the lover is an ,
artist, but, this being so, the central picture
must hold its place.
P. 72, col. I, lines, 12, 13.
Barge-laden, to three arches of a bridge
Crowned with the minster-towers.
Sir Henry Taylor used to quote this as a
picture for a painter.
P. 72, col. 2, line 23.
The mellow ouzel (pronoimced oozel) fluted
in the elm.
"The wooselcock so black of hue,
With orange-tawny bill."
Mid. Night's Dream, ni. i. 128.
The merry blackbird sang among the trees
would seem quite as good a line to nine-
tenths of all English men and women.
Who knows but that the Cockney may
come to read it:
The meller housel fluted i' the helm.
Who knows what Enghsh may come to ?
P. 72, col. 2, line 24, redcap. Provin-
cial for goldfinch.
[I remember my father's telling me that
FitzGerald had guessed rightly that the
autumn landscape, which in the first edition
was described in the lines beginning "Her
beauty grew," was taken from the back-
ground of a Titian (Lord EUesmere's Ages
of Man). My father said that perhaps in
consequence they had been omitted. They
ran thus :
Her beauty grew: till drawn in narrowing
arcs
The southing Autumn touch'd with sallower
gleams
The granges on the fallows. At that time
NOTES
Tired of the noisy town I wander'd there ;
The bell toU'd four; and by the time I
reach'd
The Wicket-gate I found her by herself.
Ed.]
P. 75. Dora. [Written about 1835,
and first published in 1842. — Ed.] Partly
suggested by Miss Mitford's story, Dora
Creswell, which is cheerful in tone, whereas
this is sad ; it is the same landscape — one
in sunshine, the other in shadow.
Spedding used humorously to say that
this was the poem which Wordsworth
always intended to have written.
P. 75, lines 15, 16.
he and I
Had once hard words.
This quarrel is not in Miss Mitford.
P. 76, col. 2, line 15.
Far ojff the farmer came into the field.
From this line to the end of the poem I
have not followed Miss Mitford.
P. 76, col. 2, line 20.
And the sun fell, and all the land was
dark.
diKxerd r ij^Xios, (tki6(»}pt6 re vdcrai ayviai.
Homer, Od. passim.
P. 78. AuDLEY Court. [First pub-
lished in 1842. — Ed.] Partially suggested
by Abbey Park at Torquay in the old time.
P. 78, col. 2, hne 14. four-field system
[the planting in rotation of turnips, barley,
clover, and wheat. — Ed.].
P. 79, col. I, line 34.
Sole star of phosphorescence in the calm.
This line was added afterwards. No
reader seemed to have understood this
allusion. A French translator has trans-
lated it une verte etincelle. Torquay was
in the old days the loveliest sea-village in
England, and is now a town. In those
old days I, coming down from the hill
over Torquay, saw a "star of phosphor-
escence" made by the little buoy appearing
and disappearing in the dark sea, and was
at first puzzled by it.
P. 79. Walking to the Mail. [First
published in 1842. — Ed.]
P. 80, col. 2, Une 17. flay flint, a skin-
flint.
P. 80, col. 2, line 19. [We paid in
person. He had a sow, sir. This is an
Eton story. The "leads" were above
Long Chamber. — Ed.]
P. 81, col. I, line 14. best foot. "Best
boot" was a misprint in several editions.
P. 81. Edwin Morris ; or, the Lake.
[First published in 1851. — Ed.]
P. 82, col. I, line 30. [The Latin song
I learnt at school refers to Catullus, Acme
and Septimius, xlv. lines 8, 9 :
Hoc ut dixit. Amor, sinistra ut ante,
Dextram sternuit approbationem.
Ed.]
P. 82, col. 2, line 30. Sweet-Gale, bog-
myrtle.
P. 83, col. I, line 21. a mystic token
from the king. Writ from the old Court of
Common Pleas.
P. 83. St. Simeon Stylites. [First
published in 1842. To be read of in
Gibbon's Decline and Fall, iv. 320
(Milrhan-Smith's), and Hone's Every-Day
Book, vol. i. pp. 35-36. FitzGerald notes:
"This is one of the Poems A. T. would
read with grotesque Grimness, especially
at such pa.ssages as 'Coughs, Aches,
Stitches, etc.,' laughing aloud at times."
See the pendant to this poem, St. Tele-
machus, p. 878. — Ed.]
P. 86. The Talking Oak. [First
published in 1842. My father told Aubrey
de Vere that "the poem was an experi-
ment meant to test the degree in which it
was in his power as a poet to humanise
external nature." — Ed.]
P. 87, col. I, line 31. Blufl Harry.
Henry VHI. : "the man-minded offset"
of the next stanza being Elizabeth. S pence,
the monks' buttery.
P. 87, col. I, lines 39, 40.
In which the gloomy brewer's soul
Went by me, like a stork.
It is said that history "does not justify
the poet in calling him a brewer." No,
l:)ut that old Tory the oak calls him a
brewer, as the old Cavaliers did.
Like a stork. The stork, a republican
NOTES
899
bird, is said to have gone out of England
with the Commonwealth. And the' the
Commonwealth did hot expire till some
months after the death of Oliver, it prac-
tically went out with him. The night
when he died was a night of storm.
P. 87, col. 2, line 5.
In teacup-times of hood and hoop.
Queen Anne's times.
P. 87, col. 2, line 9.
The modish Cupid of the day.
In many editions misprinted "modest."
P. 88, col. I, line 23. holt, copse.
P. 88, col. 2, line 33. those ^lind
motions of the Spring. Rising of the sap.
P. 90, col. I, line 24.
Or that Thessalian growth-
[The oaks of Dodona in Epirus. The
'Thessalians came out of Thesprotia. Cf.
Herod, vii. 176. — Ed.]
The oaks are those on which the swarthy
dove, flying from Thebes in Egypt, sat
and pronounced that in this place should
be set up an oracle of Zeus. [Cf. Soph,
Trach. 171 ; Herod, ii. 55. — Ed.]
P. 90. Love and Duty. [First pub-
lished in 1842. — Ed.]
P. 91, col. I, line 17. The slow sweet
hours. Cf. Theocritus, Idyl xv. 104-105 :
^dpdia-Tai, ixaKapcav '^Qpai cpiXai dXXa
TTodeival
ipxovrai irdvTeaai ^porois aiei ti (pipoLaai.
P. 91, col. 2, line 11. pathos. This
word is used in opposition to apathetic in
line 12, page 90.
The set gray life, and apathetic end.
P. 91. The Golden Year. [First
published in 1846. — Ed.]
P. 92, col. I, line 9. daughters of the
horseleech. "The horseleach hath two
daughters, crying, Give, give" (Proverbs
XXX. 15).
P. 93, col. I, line 7. high above: "high
o'erhead" original reading.
P. 93, col. I, line 9.
And buffet round the hills, from bluff to bluff.
Onomatopoeic. "Bluff to bluff" gives
the echo of the blasting as I heard it from
the mountain on the counter side, opposite
to Snowdon.
P. 93. Ulysses. [First published in
1842. Edward FitzGerald notes: "This
was the Poem which, as might perhaps be
expected, Carlyle liked best in the Book.
I do not think he became acquainted with
A. T. till after these Volumes (1842)
appeared; being naturally prejudiced
against one whom every one was praising,
and praising for a Sort of Poetry which he
despised. But directly he saw, and heard,
the Man, he knew there was A Man to
deal with: and took pains to cultivate
him; assiduous in exhorting him to leave
Verse and Rhyme, and to apply his Genius
to Prose and Work." — Ed.]
Carlyle wrote to me when he read
Ulysses: "These lines do not make me
weep, but there is in me what would fill
whole Lachrymatories as I read." Cf.
Odyssey, xi, 100-137, and Dante, Inferno,
Canto xxvi. 90 foil. : n A
Mi diparti' da Circe, che sottrasse
Me pill d' un anno la presso a Gaeta,
Prima che si Enea la nominasse,
Ne dolcezza di figlio, ne la pieta
Del vecchio padre, ne il debito amore,
Lo qual dovea Penelope far lieta,
Vincer poter dentro da me F ardor e
Ch' i' ebbi a divenir del mondo esperto,
E degli vizii umani e del valore ;
Ma misi me per l' alto mare aperto
Sol con un legno e con quella compagna
Picciola, dalla qual non fui deserto.
L' un lito e l' altro vidi infin la Spagna,
Fin nel Marrocco, e 1' isola de' Sardi,
E r altre che quel mare intorno bagna.
lo e i compagni eravam vecchi e tardi,
Quando venimmo a quella foce stretta,
Ov' Ercole segno li suoi riguardi,
Acciocche V uom piu oltre non si metta ;
Dalla man destra mi lasciai Sibilia,
Dall' altra gia m' avea lasciata Setta.
"O frati," dissi, "che per cento milia
Perigli siete giunti all' occidente,
A questa tanto picciola vigilia
Dei vostri sensi, ch' e del rimanente,
Non vogliate negar l' esperienza,
Diretro al sol, del mondo senza gente.
Considerate la vostra semenza :
Fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
Ma per seguir virtute e conoscenza."
900
NOTES
[In the Odyssey, xi. 100-137, the ghost
of Tiresias foretells his future to Ulysses.
He is to return home to Ithaca and to slay
the suitors. After which he is to set off
again on a mysterious voyage. This is
elaborated by the author of the Telegoneia.
My father, Uke Eugammon, takes up the
story of further wanderings at the end of
the Odyssey. Ulysses has Uved in Ithaca
for a long while before the craving for
fresh travel seizes him. The comrades he
addresses are of the same heroic mould as
his old comrades. 1 ^- Ed.]
The poem was written soon after Arthur
Hallam's death, and it gives the feeling
about the need of going forward and
braving the struggle of life perhaps more
simply than anything in In Memoriam.
P. 93, line 10. the rainy Hyades.
Arcturum pluviasque Hyadas geminosque
Triones. Virgil, Aen. i. 744.
P. 93, hne 18.
I am a part of all that I have met.
Cf. "quorum pars magna fui" (Virgil,
Aen. ii. 6).
P. 93, col. 2, line 8, spirit yearning.
[Accusative absolute. — Ed.]
P. 94, col. I, lines 2, 3.
weU in order smite
The sounding furrows.
€^r]s d'e^dfievoi ttoXltjv aXa t^ittov iperfwis
(A hne frequent in Homer's Odyssey.)
P. 94. TiTHONUS. Beloved by Aurora,
who gave him eternal life but not eternal
youth. He grew old and infirm, and as
he could not die, according to the legend,
was turned into a grasshopper.
[This poem was first published in the
Cornhill Magazine, February i860, and
was praised by Matthew Arnold, who greatly
admired the blank verse. My father writes
in this year: "My friend Thackeray and
his publishers had been so urgent with me
to send them something, that I ferreted
among my old books and found this
Tithonus, written upwards of, a quarter of
a century ago, and now queerly enough at
the tail of a flashy novel." — Ed.]
1 Perhaps the Odyssey has not been strictly
adhered to, and some of the old comrades may
be still left.
P. 94, col. 2, Hne 8. the silver star,
Venus.
"P. 94, col. 2, line 13. the goal of ordi-
nance, appointed limit.
P. 95, col. 2, line 14. I earth in earth.
"Terra in terra" (Dante). Forget. Will
forget.
P. 95. LocKSLEY Hall. [First pub-
Hshed in 1842. — Ed.] An imaginary place
and imaginary hero.
Mr. Hallam said to me that the English
people liked verse in trochaics, so I wrote
the poem in this metre.
[Sir William Jones' prose translation of
the Modllakdt, the seven Arabic poems
(which are a selection from the work of
pre-Mohammedan poets) hanging up in the
temple of Mecca, gave the idea of the
poem.
My father spoke and wrote of this ^nd
Maud and other monodramatic poema.
thus: "In a certain way, no doubt, poets
and novelists, however dramatic they are,
give themselves in their works. The mis-
take that people make is that they think
the poet's poems are a kind of 'catalogue
raisonne' of his very own self, and of all
the facts of his life, not seeing that they
often only express a poetic instinct, or
judgment on character real or imagined,
and on the facts of lives real or imagined.
Of course some poems, like my Ode to
Memory, are evidently based on the poet's
own nature, and on hints from his own
Ufe." — Ed.]
P. 95, line 4.
Dreary gleams about the moorland flying
over Locksley Hall.
I.e. while dreary gleams of light are flying
across a dreary moorland, — put absolutely
radiis volantibus (not referring to the
curlews, as some commentators insist).
Edward FitzGerald notes about verses ii.
and iii. : "This is all Lincolnshire coast:
about Mablethorpe, where A. T. stayed
much, and where he said were the finest
Seas except in Cornwall."
P. 97, lines II, 12.
Well — 'tis well that I should bluster! —
Hadst thou less unworthy proved —
Would to God — for I had loved thee more
than ever wife was loved.
NOTES
901
He is a passionate young man, and the
same emotional nature is reproduced in
old age in the second Locksley Hall. The
whole poem represents young life, its good
side, its deficiencies, and its yearnings.
P. 97, line 16. crow. Rooks are called
crows in the Northern Counties.
P. 97, line 24.
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remem-
bering happier things.
Ed ella a me: "Nessun xnaggior dolore,
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella rqiseria." , Dante, Inf. v. 121.
P. 98, lines 25, 26.
And at night along the dusky highway near
and nearer drawn,
Sees in. heaven the light of London flaring
like a dreary dawn.
A simile drawoi from old times and the
top of the mail-coach. They that go by
trains seldom see this.
P. 99, Unes II, 12.
Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion
creeping nigher,
Glares at one that nods and winks behind
a slowly-dying fire.
and supra, p. 96, lines 17, 18.
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on
all the chords with might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling,
pass'd in music out of sight.
[my father considered two of his finest
similes. The image of the Hon was founded
on a passage from A Narrative of a Resi-
dence in South Africa, by Thomas Pringle,
p. 39 : "About midnight we were suddenly
roused by the roar of a Hon close to our
tents. It was so loud and tremendous that
for the moment I actually thought that a
thunderstorm had burst upon us. . . . We
roused up the half-extinguished fire to a
roaring blaze." — Ed.]
P. 99, line 14. process of the suns,
progress of years.
P. 99. [After line 36, ending "knots
of Paradise," in the original MS. was the
following fine couplet :
All about a summer ocean, leagues on
leagues of golden calm,
And within melodious waters rolling round
the knolls of palm. Ed.]
P. 100, line 22,
Let the great world spin for ever down the
ringing grooves of change.
When I went by the first train from
Liverpool to Manchester (1830) I thought
that the wheels ran in a groove. It was a
black night, and there was such a vast
crowd round the train at the station that
we could not see the wheels. Then I
made tliis line.
P. 100, line 24. Cathay, the old name
for China.
P. loi. GoDiVA. [Written after his
visit to Stratford-on-Avon, Kenilworth,
and Coventry in 1840, and first published
in 1842. Lady Godiva lived in the middle
of the eleventh century. She was sister of
Thoroldus de Bukendale in Lincolnshire,
of which county she was vice-comes or
sheriflf. She married Leofric, Count of
Leicester or Mercia, as the charter of
Thoroldus published in the Codex Diplo-
matic. Anglo-Sax. vol. iv. p. 126 shows.
This charter, dated 1057, commences thus:
"Ego Thoroldus de Bukendale coram
nobilissimo domino meo Leofrico Co mite
Leycesterie et nobilissima. Comitessa sua
Domina Godiva sorore mea," etc. — Ed.]
See Sir William Dugdale's Antiquities
of Wanvlckshire (1656), who writes :
"The Countess Godiva, bearing an extra-
ordinary affection to this place (Coventry),
often acid earnestly besought her husband
that, for the love of God and the blessed
Virgin, he would free it from that grievous
servitude whereunto it was subject ; but he,
rebuking her for importuning him in a
manner so inconsistent with his profit,
commanded that she should thenceforward
forbear to move thereon; yet she, out of
her womanish pertinacity, continued to
solicit him, insomuch that he told her if
she would ride on horseback naked from
one end of the town to the other, in sight
of all the people, he would grant her re-
quest. Whereunto she replied, 'But will
ye give me leave to do so?' And he re-
plying 'Yes,' the noble lady, upon an
appointed day, got on horseback naked,
with her hair loose, so that it covered all
her body but her legs; and thus perform-
ing her journey, she returned with joy to
her husband, who thereupon granted to the
902
NOTES
inhabitants a charter of freedom. ... In
memory whereof the picture of him and his
lady was set up in a south window of
Trinity Church in this city about Richard
II. 's time, his right hand holding a charter
with these words written thereon : —
I, Luriche, for love of thee,
doe make Coventry Tol-free.'"
P. loi, line II. a thousand summers.
Earl Leofric died in 1057. [He and Lady
Godiva were buried in the porch of the
Monastery, of which there are still some
ruins. — Ed.]
P, loi, col. 2, line 23. wide-mouth'd
heads,- gargoyles.
P. 102. The Day-Dream. [Part of
this poem, The Sleeping Beauty, was pub-
Ushed in 1830, the other part was pubUshed
in 1842.
Edward FitzGerald writes: "The Pro-
logue and Epilogue were added after 1835
(when the poem was written), for the same
reason that caused the Prologue of the
Morte d^ Arthur, giving an excuse for tell-
ing an old-world tale. ... Of this second
volume the Morte d' Arthur, Day-Dream,
Lord of Burleigh were in MS. in a httle
red Book, from which they were read to
me and Spedding of a Night, 'when all
the House was mute,' at Spedding's House,
Mirehouse, by Bassenthwaite Lake, in
Cumberland." — -Ed.]
P. 104. The Revival. Line 25. Pardy,
par dieu.
"Why then, belike, he likes it not, perdy."
Hamlet, iii. ii. 305.
P. 104. The Departure. Col. 2, line 2.
In that new world which is the old.
The world of Love.
P. 104, line 20. crescent-bark, crescent-
moon.
P. 105. L'Envoi. Col. 2, lines 9, 10.
Where on the double rosebud droops
The fulness of the pensive mind.
A recollection of the bust of Clytie.
P. 105. Epilogue. Lines 7, 8.
Like long-taiVd birds of Paradise
That float thro' Heaven, and cannot light.
["The great bird of Paradise, Paradisea
apoda, which was the first known repre-
sentative of the entire family, derives its
specific name from having been described
by Linnaeus from a skin prepared in the
Papuan fashion with the wings and feet
cut off" (Lydekker, Royal Nat. Hist.). —
Ed.]
P. 105. Amphion. [First pubhshed in
1842. My mother writes of this poem:
"Genius must not deem itself exempt
from work." — Ed.]
P. 107. St. Agnes' Eve. First pub-
hshed in The Keepsake, 1837. The poem
is a pendant to "Sir Galahad."
P. 107, col. I, line 34. One sabbath.
"Are" was misprinted for "One" in The
Keepsake. No revises were sent me.
P. 107. Sir Galahad. [First pub-
lished in 1842. Edward FitzGerald notes:
"Of the Chivalry Romances he said to me,
' I could not read Palmerin of England, nor
Amadis, nor any other of those Romances
through. The Morte d' Arthur is much
the best : there are very fine things in [it] ;
but all strung together without Art.'" —
Ed.]
P. 107, col. 2, line 34.
Three angels bear the holy Grail.
"The Holy Grail" was originally the
Holy Dish at the Last Supper, and is
probably derived from cratella, a little
bowl. Then it was said by some to be the
dish in which Joseph of Arimathaea caught
the blood of Christ as He hung on the
cross; afterwards by others to be the cup
of sacramental wine used at the Last
Supper, and to have been brought by
Joseph to England. [Cf. Malory's Morte
d'Arthur, Bk. xvii. chaps, xviii.-xxii. In
chap. xxii. Joseph of Arimathaea says to
Sir Galahad: "Thou hast resembled me
in two things, in that thou hast seen the
marvels of the Sangreal, and in that thou
hast been a clean maiden, as I have been
and am." — Ed.]
P. 108. Edward Gray. [First written
in a letter to my mother in 1840, and
published in 1842. — Ed.] Sir Arthur
Sullivan has set this well.
P. 108. Will Waterproof's Lyrical
Monologue. [First published in 1843.
NOTES
903
Edward FitzGerald writes: "The 'plump
Head- waiter of The Cock,' by Temple
Bar, famous for chop and porter, was
rather offended when told of this poem.
'Had Mr. Tennyson dined oftener there,
he would not have minded it so much,' he
said. I think A. T.'s chief Dinner-resort
in these Ante-laureate Days was Bertolini's
at the Newton's Head, close to Leicester
Square. We sometimes called it Dirto-
lini's ; but not seriously : for the Place
was dean as well as very cheap, and the
Cookery good for the Price. Bertolini
himself, who came to take the money at
the end of the Feast, was a grave and
polite man. He retired with a Fortxme, I
think." — Ed.]
P. 109, col. I, line 45. rafs, scraps.
["A fansie fed me ones to wryte in verse
and rime.
To wang my griefe, to crave reward, to
aver still my crime ;
To frame a long discourse on stirring of a
strawe.
To rumble rime in raffe and ruffe, yet all
not worth an hawe."
Gascoigne, The Green Knighfs
Farewell to Fansie.
Ed.]
P. no, col. I, line 17.
Sipt wine from silver, praising God.
As the bird drinks he holds up his neck.
There is accordingly an old English say-
ing about the cock "praising God" when
he drinks.
P. no, col. I, line 22.
That kmcckled at the taw.
A phrase that every boy knows from the
game of marbles.
P. no, col. 2, line 45. , ana, Shak-
speariana, Scaligerana, etc. [Swarm'd,
caused to swarm. — Ed.]
P. Ill, col. I, line 40. Old boxes. The
pews where the diners sit [which have
been transferred to the new "Cock
Tavern." — Ed.].
P. Ill, col. 2, line 21. [One of the
ancient "pint-pots neatly graven" was
presented to my father by the proprietors
when the old tavern was pulled down. —
Ed.]
P. III. Lady Clare. [First pub-
lished in 1842. — Ed.] Founded on Miss
Ferrier's novel of The Inheritance.
The following stanza was originally in
place of the existing first two stanzas, and
the poem began :
Lord Ronald courted Lady Clare,
I trow they did not part in scorn,
Lord Ronald her cousin courted her.
And they will wed the morrow morn.
P. Ill, col. 2, line 26. as I live by
bread was a common phrase. Cf. "As
true as I am aHve."
P. 112, col. I, line 3.
[Peter Bayne wrote to my father in
1890: "A serious flaw has been allowed
by you to remain in one of your master-
pieces, in quality if not in size. When
Lady Clare's nurse tells her that she is her
own child, she, Lady Clare, uses in reply
the words, 'If I'm a beggar born.' The
criticism of my heart tells me that Lady
Clare could never have said that." To
which my father replies u "You make no
allowance for the shock of the fall from
being Lady Clare to finding herself the
child of a nurse. She speaks besides not
without a certain anger. 'Peasant-born'
would be tame and passionless." — Ed.]
P. 112. The Captain. A Legend of
THE Navy. [First published in 1865. —
Ed.] Possibly suggested by the story told
of the ship Hermione (1797). Published
first in my Selections, 1865.
P. 113. The Lord of Burleigh.
[First published in 1842. — Ed.] Line 8.
And a village maiden she.
Sarah Hoggins, a Shropshire maiden,
became wife of the ninth Earl of Exeter in
1791.
[She is said, locally, to have often talked
to her dairy-maids, and told them how
much happier she was in old times.
Edward FitzGerald writes: "When this
Poem was read from MS. in 1835 I
remember the Author doubting if it were
not too familiar with its 'Let us see the
handsome houses, etc.,' for public Taste.
But a Sister, he said, had liked it: we
never got it out of our heads from the
first hearing; and now, is there a greater
favourite where Enghsh is spoken ? " — 'Ed.]
904
NOTES
P. 114, col. I, lines 7, 8.
As it were with shame she blushes.
And her spirit changed within.
The mood changes from happiness to
unhappiness, and the present tense changes
to the past.
P. 114. The Voyage. [First pubUshed
in 1864. — Ed.] Life is the seai;ch after
the ideal. See Henry Sidgwick: A Memoir,
p. 120:
"What growth there is in the man
mentally ! How he has caught the spirit
of the age in The Voyage ! I thought he
had fallen ofif into the didactic-dramatic
mood that grows on poetic souls with
advancing years ; but how wonderful — to
me — is the lyricised thought of verse 9. I
cannot get it out of my head :
Now high on waves that idly burst
Like Heavenly Hope she crown'd the
sea,
And now, the bloodless point reversed,
She bore the blade of Liberty.
How sad — but a chastened sadness, our
sadness — that of the second half of the
19th century — no ' Verzweiflung.' The
dream in City Clerks [Sea Dreams] is as
good; but, you know, I am always most
moved by lyrics."
P. 115, col. I, Hne 7. the whole sea
burn'd, i.e. with phosphorescence.
P. IIS, col. 2, line 21. laws of nature
were our scorn. [We felt that the Free
Will is not bound by the Laws that govern
the Material Universe. — Ed.]
P. IIS, col. 2, Kne 5. the whirlwind's
heart of peace, the calm centre of the
whirlwind.
P. IIS. Sir Launcelot and Queen
Guinevere. [First published in 1842.
See The Coming of Arthur :
And Lancelot past away among the flowers,
(For then was latter April) and retum'd
Among the flowers, in May.
Edward Fitz Gerald notes: "Some verses
of Sir Launcelot' s Courtship were handed
about among us in 1832 (I think) at
Cambridge :
Life of the Life within my Blood,
Light of the Light within mine Eyes,
The May begins to breathe and bud.
And softly blow the balmy skies :
Bathe with me in the fiery Flood,
And mingle Kisses, Tears, and Sighs —
Life of the Life within my Blood,
Light of the Light within mine Eyes !"
Ed.]
P. IIS, line 12. sparhawk, sparrow-
hawk.
P. 116. A Farewell. [To the brook
at Somersby. First pubUshed in 1842. —
Ed.]
P. 116. The Beggar Maid. [First
pubhshed in 1842. — Ed.]
"Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so
trim,
When Kling Cophetua loved the beggar-
maid." Rom. and Jul. 11. i. 14.
P. 116. The Eagle. [First published
in 1851. — Ed.]
P. 116. Move eastward, happy
earth, and leave. [First published in
1842. — Ed.] Line 6. Thy silver sister-
world, the moon.
P. 116. Come not, when I am dead.
[First pubUshed in The Keepsake, 1S51. —
Ed.] The first printed "But go thou by"
was an error of the printers for "But thou,
go by."
P. 117. The Letters. [First pubUshed
in i8s5- — Ed.]
P. 117. The Vision of Sin. [First
pubUshed in 1842. Edward FitzGerald
writes: "Oddly enough, Johnson's 'Long-
expected One-and-Twenty ' has the swing,
and something of the Spirit of the old
Sinner's Lyric." — Ed.] This describes the
soul of a youth who has given himself up
to pleasure and Epicureanism. He at
length is worn out and wrapt in the mists
of satiety. Afterwards he grows into a
cynical old man afflicted with the "curse
of nature," and joining in the Feast of
Death. Then we see the landscape which
symbolizes God, Law and the future life.
P. 120, col. I, line 32.
Of sense avenged by sense that wore with
time.
The sensuaUst becomes worn out by his
senses.
NOTES
90s
[Two lines are omitted here which were
published in 1865, and were intended by
my father to make the thought clearer:
Another answer'd : "But a crime of sense?
Give him new nerves with old experience."
Ed.]
P. 120, col. 2, line 6. an awful rose
of dawn. [I have heard my father say
that he "would rather know that he was
to-be lost eternally than not know that the
whole human race was to live eternally";
and when he speaks of "faintly trusting
ihe larger hope," he means by "the larger
hope" that the whole human race would
through, perhaps, ages of suffering be at
length purified and saved, even those who
"better not with time"; so that at the
end of this Vision we read :
God made Himself an awful rose of dawn.
Ed.]
P. 120. To . [First pubhshed in
The Examiner, March 24, 1849. My
father was indignant that Keats' wild love-
letters should have been published ; but he
said that he did not v/ish the public to think
that this poem had been written with any
particular reference to Letters and Literary
Remains of Keats (published in 1848), by
Lord Houghton. — Ed.]
P. 121. To E. L., ON HIS Travels in
Greece. [First published in 1853. — Ed.]
Edward Lear, the well-known landscape
painter and author of Journals of a Land-
scape Painter in Albania and Illyria, in
Calabria and in Corsica, and of the Book of
Nonsense.
P. 121. Break, break, break. [First
pubUshed in 1842. — Ed.] This poem first
saw the light along with the dawn in a
Lincolnshire lane at 5 o'clock in the
morning.
P. 121. The Poet's Song. [First
published in 1842. — Ed.]
P. 122. Enoch Arden. [Written in a
httle summer-house in the meadow called
Maiden's Croft looking over Freshwater
Bay and toward the downs. First pub-
lished in 1864. — Ed.]
Enoch Arden (like Aylmer's Field) is
founded on a theme given me by the
sculptor Woolner. I believe that his
particular story came out of Suffolk, but
something like the same Story is told in
Brittany and elsewhere.
I have had several similar true stories
sent me since I wrote Enoch Arden.
[Of this poem there are nine German
translations, eight French, as well as
Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Danish, Hungarian
and Bavarian versions. — Ed.]
P. 122, line 7. Danish barrows. [Cf.
Tithonus:
And grassy barrows of the happier dead.
There are several on the Freshwater
downs. — Ed.]
P. 123, col. 2, line 9. peacock-yewtree.
Cut in the form of a peacock.
P. 124, col. I, line 4. And isles a light
in the offing. This Une was made at
Brighton, from the islands of light on the
sea on a day of sunshine and clouds.
P. 127, col. 2, line 18. whitening.
When the breeze blows, it turns upward
the silver>^ under-part of the leaf.
P. 130, col. I, line 10.
She slipt across the summer of the world.
The Equator.
P. 131, col. I, Hne 26. dewy-glooming,
dewy and dark.
P. 131, col. I, Une 29. in the ringing of
his ears. (Cf. Eothen, chap, xvii.)
Mr. Kinglake told me that he had
heard his own parish bells in the midst of
an Eastern desert, not knowing at the
time that it was Sunday, when they would
have been ringing the bells at home; and
added, "I might have had a ringing in my
ears, and the imaginative memory did the
rest."
[My father would say that there is
nothing really supernatural, mechanically
or otherwise, in Enoch Arden's hearing
bells ; tho' he most probably did intend the
passage to tell upon the reader mystically.
— Ed.]
P. 131, col. 2, line 25. sweet water.
Cf.
Intus aquae dulces vivoque sediUa saxo.
Virgil, Aen. i. 167.
9o6
NOTES
P. 132, col. 2, line i.
last, as it seemed, a great mist-blotted
light.
From Philip's house, the latest house to
landward.
P. 13s, col. 2, line 33.
There came so loud a calling of the sea.
"The calUng of the sea," a term used,
I believe, chiefly in the western parts of
England, to signify a ground swell. When
this occurs on a windless night, the echo of
it rings thro' the timbers of old houses in
a haven, and is often heard many miles
inland.
P. 136, col. I, line 3.
Had seldom seen a costlier funeral.
The costly funeral is all that poor Annie
could do for him after he was gone. This
is entirely introduced for her sake, and, in
my opinion, quite necessary to the per-
fection of the Poem and the simplicity of
the narrative.
P. 136. The Brook. [First published
in 1855. — Ed.] Not the brook near
Somersby mentioned in The Ode to
Memory.
P. 136, line 14.
When all the wood stands in a mist of
green.
This I remember as particularly beautiful
one spring at Park House, Kent.
P. 136, col. 2, line 28. grigs, crickets.
P. 137, col. I, line 14.
Still makes a hoary eyebrow for the gleam.
The arch of the bridge over the stream,
through which you can look.
P. 137, col. 2, line 5.' a wizard penta-
gram. [A star-like five-pointed figure which
was used by astrologers in the Middle Ages.
— Ed.]
P. 138, col. I, line 3.
Twinkled the innumerable ear and tail.
This Une made in the New Forest.
P. 138, col. 2, line 12.
. I make the netted sunbeam dance.
Long after this line was written we * saw
1 [My father and I. — Ed.)
the "netted sunbeam" dance in a
marvellous way in the Silent Pool near
Guildford as the stream poured from the
chalk over the green-sand.
P. 138, col. 2, lines 25, 26.
the dome
Of Brunelleschi.
The Duomo or cathedral at Florence,
the dome the work of Brunelleschi (1407).
P. 138, col. 2, line 32. converse-seasons
was too sibilant in sound, so I wrote
April-autumns.
[My father said: "I hate sibilation in
verse. Always kick the hissing geese if
you can out of the boat." — Ed.]
The summers in Australia are of course
the v/inter- tides of Europe.
P. 139, col. I, lines 28, 29.
My brother James is in the harvest-field:
But she — you will be welcome — 0, come in!
The Father is dead.
P. 139. Aylmer's Field. [Written at
Farringford, and first pubUshed in 1864. —
Ed.] Line 3.
Like that long-buried body of the king.
This happened on opening an Etruscan
tomb at the city of Tarquinii in Italy.
[The warrior was seen for a moment
stretched on the couch of stone, and then
vanished as soon as the air touched him,
— Ed.]
P. 139, line 17. wyvern [winged two-
legged dragon of heraldry. — Ed.].
P. 140, col. 2, line 2. that islet in the
chestnut-bloom. [The rosy spot in the
flower. — Ed.]
P. 140, col. 2, line 9.
Shone like a mystic star between the less.
The variable star of astronomy with its
maximums and minimums of brightness,
e.g.^ Persei or Algol and many others.
P. 140, col. 2, line 27. fairy footings,
fairy rings.
P. 140, col. 2, line 31. What looked
a flight of fairy arrows. The seeds from
the dandelion globe. Cf. Gareth and
Lynette :
the flower
That blows a globe of after arrowlets.
NOTES
907
P. 141, col. I, line 6. Temple-eaten
terms. [Terms spent as a student in the
Temple, when he has to eat so many
dinners to keep his terms. — Ed.]
P. 141, col. I, line 11. The tented
winter-field. Referring to the way in
which the hop poles are stacked in winter.
P. 141, col. I, line 14. burr and bine
refer to the hop-plant. "Burr," the rough
cone; "bine," the climbing stem.
P. 141, col. 2, line 20. parcel-bearded,
partly bearded. Cf. "parcel-gilt" (Shake-
speare, 2 Henry /F. 11. i. 94).
P. 142, col. I, line 26. close ecliptic, sun
of tropics.
P. 143, col. I, line 28. blacksmith
border-marriage. At Gretna Green for
many years a blacksmith married the
runaway couples by Scotch law. In 1856
these marriages were made illegal.
P. 146, col. I, line 26. the gardens of
that rival rose. The Temple garden
where Somerset picked the red, Plantagenet
the white roses. Cf. i Henry VI. 11. iv.
P. 146, col. I, line 29. Far purelier,
when the city was smaller and less smoky.
P. 146, col. 2, line i.
Ran a Malayan amuck against the times.
"Amuck." Made an attack Uke those
Malays who rush about in a frenzy and
attack their fellow-men, yelling, "Amook."
P. 147, col. I, lines 10-12.
What amulet drew her down to that old
oak,
So old, that twenty years before, a part
Falling had let appear the brand of John.
In cutting down trees in Sherwood
Forest, letters have been foimd in the
heart of the trees, showing the brands of
particvdar reigns — those of James I.,
William and Mar>', and one of King
John. King John's was eighteen inches
within the bark.
P. 147, col. I, line 14. The broken base.
[The trunk of the tree was hollow and
decayed, with only one branch in leaf. —
Ed.]
P. 147, col. I, line 33. frothfly from
the fescue. The fly that lives in the cuckoo
spit on the meadow fescue, a kind of gras^
Festuca pratensis.
P. 148, col. 2, line 4.
And being used to find her pastor texts.
It is implied that she had given Averill
the text upon which he preached.
P. 148, col. 2, line 8. mock sunshine.
A day without sun, the only faint resem-
blance to sunshine being the bright yellow
of the faded autumn leaves.
P. 148, col. 2, Une 20. greenish glim-
merings, greenish glass of the lancet
windows.
P. 149, col. I, line 17.
No coarse and blockish God of acreage.
The Roman god Terminus, who presided
over the boundaries of private properties.
P. 149, col. I, line 27. deathless ruler,
the soul.
P. 149, col. 2, line 21. wasting his
forgotten heart, lavishing his neglected
feelings of love.
P. 151, col. I, line 2. the twelve-
divided concubine. Judges xix. 29.
P. 151, col. I, line 7. They cling
together. He alludes to the report, hor-
rible and hardly credible, that when the
heads were taken out of the sack, two
were sometimes found clinging together,
one having bitten into the other in the
momentary convulsion that followed de-
capitation.
P. 152, col. I, line 20. retinue. Accent
on the penultimate. Shakesp>eare and
Milton accented this word in the same
way. [Cf. The Princess, in. :
Went forth in long retinue following up,
and Guinevere :
Of his and her retinue moving, they.
Ed.)
P. 152, col. I, line 23.
Pity, the violet on the tyrant's grave.
A chance parallel (like many others quoted
in these notes). Cf. Persius, Sat. i. 39:
Nunc non e tumulo fortunataque favilla
Nascentur violae ?
9o8
NOTES
P. 152, col, I, lines 30, 31.
The slow-worm creeps, and the thin weasel
there
Follows the mouse.
Original reading —
There the thin weasel, with faint hunting
cry
Follows his game.
The Duke of Argyll says of them that
in hunting rabbits, in packs, they give a
"faint hunting cry."
P. 152. Sea Dreams. [First pub-
lished in Macmillan's Magazine, January,
i860. — Ed.] The glorification of honest
labour, whether of head or hand, no
hasting to be rich, no bowing down to
any idol.
P. 152, line 4. germander eye. Blue
like the Germander Speedwell.
P. 153, col. I, line 3. large air.
Largior hie campos aether et lumine vestit
Purpureo. Virg. Aen. vi. 640, 641.
P. 153, col. I, line 21. upjetted. On
Bray Head, at the end of the Island of
Valentia, where I lay in 1848, with all the
revolutions of Europe behind me, the
waves appeared like ghosts playing at
hide and seek as they leapt above the
cliffs. This passage was not, however,
made at that time, but later.
P. 155, col. 2, line 19.
That all those lines of cliffs were cliffs no
more.
The ages that go on with their illumina-
tion breaking down everything.
P. 156, col. I, line 2. With that sweet
note. The great music of the World.
P. 156, col. I, line 7. men of stone.
"The statues, king or saint or founder"
on the cathedrals which the worshippers
worshipt.
P. 156, col. 2, line 3.
The dimpled flounce' of the sea-furbelow flap.
The reference is to a long dark-green
seaweed, one of the Laminaria, called the
"sea-furbelow," with dimpled flounce-like
edges. Boys sometimes running along the
sand against the wind with this seaweed in
their hands make it flap for sport. The
name "sea-furbelow" is not generally
known.
P. 157, col. I, line i.
What does little birdie say.
This song ends joyfully. Sullivan in his
setting makes it end dolefully.
P. 157. Lucretius. [First published
in Macmillan's Magazine, August 1868.
See Jerome's addition to the Eusebian
Chronicle under date 94 B.C.: "Titus
Lucretius poeta nascitur qui postea
amatorio poculo in furorem versus, cum
aUquot hbros per intervalla insaniae con-
scripsisset, quos postea Cicero emendavit,
propria se manu interfecit anno aetatis
XLiv." — Ed.]
Munro said that everything was
Lucretian thro' this poem, and that there
was no suggestion which he could make.
He, however, did suggest the alteration of
"shepherds" to "neat-herds."
Lucretius is portrayed in this poem as
having taken the love- philtre of Lucilia his
wife, who imagines him cold to her from
brooding over his philosophies. Thus a
loving and beautiful nature — that delights
in friends, the universe, the birds and the
flowers — is distraught by the poison. He
is haunted by the doubt, which from his
affection for Epicurus, "whom he held
divine," had long been kept in check:
The Gods, the Gods !
If all be atoms, how then should the Gods
Being atomic not be dissoluble.
Not follow the great law ?
He himself had always aimed at "divine
tranquillity," and now is tortured by un-
rest. The unrest drives him to frenzy and
he kills himself.
["As a masterly study of the great
Roman sceptic," writes Andrew Lang,
"it (the poem) is beyond praise." "No
prose commentary on the 'De Rerura
Natura,' however long and learned, con-
veys so clearly as this concise study in
verse the sense of magnificent mingled
ruin in the mind and power of the
Roman." — Ed.]
P. 157, col. 2, line 27. / saw the flaring
atom-streams, etc. [De Rer. Nat. i. 999 ff.
— Ed.]
NOTES
909
P. 157, col. 2, lines 33, 34.
as the dog
With inward yelp.
[De Rer. Nat. iv. qqi flf. :
Venantumque canes in moUi saepe quiete
Jactant crura, etc. Ed.]
P. 158, col. I, line 7. Hetairai,
courtezans.
P. 158, col. I, line 9. mulberry-faced
Dictator. [Sylla in his later life. Cf.
Plutarch, Sulla, ii. 451 :
avKdfjiivdp iad' 6 SuWas a\(plT(^ irewaa-
fxivov
Clough's Plutarch's Lives, vol. iii. p.
142, "Sylla": "The scurrilous jesters at
Athens made the verse upon him :
Sulla is a mulberry sprinkled over with
meal." Ed.]
P. 158, col. I, line 23.
Because I would not one of thine own
doves, etc.
[De Rer. Nat. v. 1198 flf. — Ed:]
P. 158, col. I, hne 25. my rich procemion.
[De Rer. Nat. i. i ff . — Ed.]
P. 158, col. 2, hne 5. Mavors, Mars.
Cf. De Rer. Nat. i. 31 ff-
P. 158, col. 2, line 16. great Sicilian.
[Empedocles. — Ed.] De Rer. Nat. i.
729-733. See for reference to Kypris,
KrjTrpidos opfiiadeTo-a reXelois ev Xifxivea-ai
and elsewhere.
P. 158, col. 2, line 19. That popular
name of thine. [Cf. De Rer. Nat. i. 2 flf.
— Ed.]
P. 158, col. 2, line 27. The Gods, who
haunt. Cf. Homer, Od. iv. 566.
P. 159, col. I, line 9. That Gods there
are. [Cf. De Rer. Nat. v. 146-194, 1161-
1291. — Ed.]
P. 159, col. I, line 10. / prest my foot-
steps into his. [De Rer. Nat. iii. i flf. —
Ed.]
P. 159, col. I, line 11. my Memmius. \
[Caius Memmius Gemellus, to whom the j
De Rerum Natura was dedicated. — Ed.]
P. 159, col. 2, line 5. Or lend an ear i
to Plato, etc. Cf. Phaedo, vi. ["We men j
are as it were in ward, and a man ought I
not to free himself from it, or to run away."
— Ed.]
P. 160, col. I, line 17. him I proved
impossible. [De Rer. Nat. ii. 700; v.
837 ff., 878ff. — Ed.]
P. 160, col. 2, line 5. Laid along the
grass. [Cf. De Rer. Nat. ii. 29 flf. :
Cum tamen inter se prostrati in gramine
molh, etc. Ed.]
P. 160, col. 2, line 9.
Of settled, sweet, Epicurean life.
[Cf. De Rer. Nat. iii. 66: "Dulci vita
stabilique." — Ed.]
P. 160, col. 2, line 15. Or Heliconian
honey. [Cf. De Rer. Nat. i. 936 flf.; iv.
II flf. — Ed.]
P. 160, col. 2, Hne 26. not he, who bears
one name with her. "Her" is Lucretia.
P. 160, col. 2, line 34. the womb and
tomb of all. [Cf . De Rer. Nat. v. 258 :
Omniparens eadem rerum commune sepul-
chrum. Ed.]
P. 161, col. I, lines 5, 6.
But till this cosmic order everywhere
Shattered into one earthquake in one day,
etc.
[De Rer. Nat. v. 94 flf. — Ed.]
P. 161, col. I, line 15. My golden
work, etc. [De Rer. Nat. iv. 8, 9 ff . ; iii.
978-1023. — Ed.]
THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTORY
NOTES
In the Prologue the "Tale from mouth
to mouth" was a game which I have more
than once played when I was at Trinity
College, Cambridge, with my brother-
undergraduates. Of course, if he "that
inherited the tale" had not attended very
carefully to his predecessors, there were
contradictions; and if the story were his-
torical, occasional anachronisms.
In defence of what some have called the
too poetical passages, it should be recol-
lected that the poet of the party was
requested to "dress the tale up poetically,"
QIO
NOTES
and he was full of the "gallant and heroic
chronicle." A parable is perhaps the
teacher that can most surely enter in at
all doors.
In 1 85 1 the "weird seizures" of the
Prince were inserted. Moreover, the words
"dream- shadow," "were and were not"
doubtless refer to the anachronisms and
improbabiUties of the story. Compare
the Prologue :
Seven and yet one, like shadows in a dream,
and p. 198, col. i, line 22 :
And like a flash the weird aflfection came :
I seem'd to move in old memorial tilts.
And doing battle with forgotten ghosts.
To dream myself the shadow of a dream.
It may be remarked that there is scarcely
anything in the story which is not prophetic-
ally glanced at in the Prologue.
The child is the link thro' the parts, as
shown in the Songs (inserted 1850), which
are the best interpreters of the poem.
Some of my remarks on passages in The
Princess have been published by Dawson
of Canada (1885), who copied them from
the following letter which I wrote to him
criticising his edition of The Princess.
I thank you for your able and thoughtful essay
on The Princess. You have seen amongst
other things that if women ever were to play such
freaks, the burlesque and the tragic might go
hand in hand. . . ; Your explanatory notes are
very much to the purpose, and I do not object to
yoiu: finding parallelisms. They must always
occur. A man (a Chinese scholar) some time ago
wrote to me saying that in an imknown, imtrans-
lated Chinese poem there were two whole lines 1
of mine almost word for word. Why not? Are
not human eyes all over the world looking at the
same objects, and must there not consequently be
coincidences of thought and impressions and ex-
pressions ? It is scarcely possible for any one to
say or write anything in this late time of the
world to which, in the rest of the literature of the
world, a parallel could not somewhere be found.
But, when you say that this passage or that was
suggested by Wordsworth or Shelley or another,
I demur; and more, I wholly disagree. There
was a period in my life when, as an artist, Turner
for instance, takes rough sketches of landskip,
etc. , in order to work them eventually into some
great picture, so I was in the habit of chronicling,
in four or five words or more, whatever might
strike me as picturesque in Nature. I never put
1 The Peak is high, and the stars are high.
And the thought of a man is higher.
The Voice and the Peak.
these down, and many and many a line has gone
away on the north wind, but some remain : e.g.
A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight.
Suggestion.
The sea one night at Torquay, when Torquay
was the most lovely sea- village in England, tho'
now a smoky town. The sky was covered with
thin vapour, and the moon behind it.
A great black cloud
Drags inward from the deep.
Suggestion.
A coming storm seen from the top of Snowdon.
In the Idylls of the King.
With all
Its stormy crests that smoke against the skies.
Suggestion.
A storm which came upon us in the middle of
the North Sea.
As the water-lily starts and slides.
Suggestion.
Water-lilies in my own pond, seen on a gusty
day with my own eyes. They did start and
slide in the sudden puffs of wind till caught and
stayed by the tether of their own stalks, quite as
true as Wordsworth's simile and more in detail.
A wild wind shook, —
Follow, follow, thou shall win.
Suggestion.
I was walking in the New Forest. A wind did
arise and
Shake the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks
Of the wild woods together.
The wind I believe was a west wind, but
because I wished the Prince to go south, I turned
the wind to the south, and naturally the wind said
"follow." I believe the resemblance which you
note is just a chance one. Shelley's lines are not
familiar to me, tho' of course, if they occur in the
Prometheus,^ I must have read them. I could
multiply instances, but I will not bore you, and
far indeed am I from asserting that books as well
as Nature are not, and ought not to be, suggestive
to the poet. I am sure that I myself, and many
others, find a peculiar charm in those passages of
such great masters as Virgil or Milton where they
adopt the creation of a bygone poet, and reclothe
it, more or less, according to their own fancy.
But there is, I fear, a prosaic set growing up
among U3, editors of booklets,book-worms, index-
hunters, or men of great memories and no
imagination, who impute themselves to the poet,
and so believe that he, too, has no imagination,
but is for ever poking his nose between the pages
of some old volume in order to see what he can
appropriate. They will not allow one to say
"Ring the bell" without finding that we have
taken it from Sir P. Sidney, or even to use such
a simple expression as the ocean "roars," without
finding out the precise verse in Homer or
Horace from which we have plagiarised it (fact).
1 a' wind arose among the pines, etc. .
NOTES
911
I have known an old fish-wife, who had lost
two sons at sea, clench her fist at the advancing
tide on a stormy day, and cry out, "Ay! roar,
do ! how I hates to see thee show thy white
teeth." Now if I had adopted her exclamation
and put it into the mouth of some old woman in
one of my poems, I daresay the critics would have
thought it original enough, but would most likely
have ^advised me to go to Nature for my old
women and not to my own imagination ; 1 and
indeed it is a strong figure.
Here is another anecdote about suggestion.
When I was about twenty or twenty-one I went
on a tour to the Pyrenees. Lying among these
mountams before a waterfall * that comes down
one thousand or twelve hundred feet I sketched
it (according to my custom then) in these words:
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn.
When I printed this, a critic informed me that
"lawn" was the material used in theatres to
imitate a waterfall, and graciously added, " Mr.
.T. should not go to the boards of a theatre but to
Nature herself for his suggestions." And I had
gone to Nature herself.
I think it is a moot point whether, if I had
known how that effect was produced on the stage,
I should have ventured to publish the line.
I find that I have written, quite contrary to my
custom, a letter, when I had merely intended to
thank you for your interesting commentary.
Thanking you again for it, I beg you to believe
me
Very faithfully yours,
A. Tennyson.
Before the first edition came out, I
deliberated with myself whether I should
put songs between the separate divisions of
the poem; again I thought that the poem
would explain itself, but the public did not
see the drift.
The first song I wrote was named "The
Losing of the Child."
The child was sitting on the bank
Upon a stormy day.
He loved the river's roaring soimd ;
The river rose and burst his bound.
Flooded fifty leagues around,
Took the child from off the ground.
And bore the child away.
O the child so meek and wise,
Who made us wise and mild !
All was strife at home about him.
Nothing could be done without him ;
Father, mother, sister, brother.
All accusing one another ;
O to lose the child !
1 He used to compare with this the Norfolk
saying which he heard when we were staying
with the Rev. C. T. Digby at Warham: "The
sea's a-moanin'; she's lost the wind."
* In the Cirque de Gavamie.
The river left the child unhurt,
But far within the wild.
Then we brought him home again,
Peace and order come again.
The river sought his bound again
The child was lost and foimd again.
And we will keep the child.
Another old song of mine I intended
to insert was that of "The Doctor's
Daughter":
Sweet Kitty Sandilands,
The daughter of the doctor.
We drest her in the Proctor's bands,
And past her for the Proctor;
All the men ran from her
That would have hasten'd to her.
All the men ran from her
That would have come to woo her.
Up the street we took her
As far as to the Castle,
Jauntily sat the Proctor's cap
And from it himg the tassel.
"Sir Ralph" is another song which I
omitted :
Ralph would fight in Edith's sight,
For Ralph was Edith's lover,
Ralph went down like a fire to the fight,
Struck to the left and struck to the right,
Roll'd them over and over.
"Gallant Sir Ralph," said the king.
Casques were crack'd and hauberks hack'd
Lances snapt in sunder.
Rang the stroke and sprang the blood.
Knights were thwack'd and riven, and
hew'd
Like broad oaks with thunder.
"O what an arm," said the king.
Edith bow'd her stately head.
Saw them lie confounded,
Edith Montfort bow'd her head,
Crown'd her knight's, and flush'd as red
As poppies when she crown'd it.
"Take her. Sir Ralph," said the king.
So Lilia sang. I thought she was possess'd
She struck such warbling fire into the notes.
[Charles Kingsley writes in Fraser's
Magazine, September 1850: —
"At the end of the first canto, fresh from
the description of the female college, with
912
NOTES
its professoresses and hostler esses, and
other Utopian monsters, we turn the page,
and —
As through the land at eve we went.
O there above the little grave
We kiss'd again with tears.
Between the next two cantos intervenes
the well-known cradle-song, perhaps the
best of all ; and at the next interval is the
equally well-known bugle-song, the idea
of which is that of twin-labour and twin-
fame in a pair of lovers. In the next the
memory Of wife and child inspirits the
soldier on the field; in the next the sight
of the fallen hero's child opens the sluices
of his widow's tears ; and in the last
('Ask me no more') the poet has succeeded
in superadding a new form of emotion to
a canto in which he seemed to have ex-
hausted every resource of pathos which his
subject allowed." — Ed.]
P. i6i. Tbte Princess; a Medley.
PubUshed in 1847. Dedicated to Henry
Lushington in 1848.
[Dawson of Canada, who edited The
Princess, and to whom my father wrote as
stated above, says: "At the time of the
publication of The Princess the surface-
thought of England was intent solely upon
Irish famines, corn-laws and free-trade.
It was only after many years that it became
conscious of anything being wrong in the
position of women. . . . No doubt such
ideas were at the time 'in the air' in
England, but the dominant, practical
Philistinism scoffed at them as 'ideas'
banished to America, that refuge for
exploded European absurdities. I beUeve
the Vindication of the Rights of Woman,
by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792), first turned
the attention of the people of England to
the 'wrongs of women.' "
The plan of The Princess ma> have
suggested itself when the project of a
Women's College was in my father's mind
(1839), or it may have arisen in its mock-
heroic form from a Cambridge joke, such
as he commemorated in the lines, "The
Doctor's Daughter." See above, p. 927.
— Ed.J
The Prologue
The Prologue was written about a feast
of the Mechanics' Institute held in the
Lushington's grounds at Park House, near
Maidstone, 6th July 1842.
P. 161, col. 2, line 8. calumets. Long-
fellow sent me one of these pii)es of peace,
which belonged to a Red Indian chief.
P. 163, col. I, line 28. And he had
breathed the Proctor's dogs. Made the
proctor's attendants out of breath.
P. 163, col. 2, line 25. Emperor-moths,
Saturnia Carpini.
Canto I
P. 165, col. 2, line 10. Galen, the great
doctor of Pergamus, a.d. 131 to 200.
P. 165, col. 2, line 24.
Was proxy-wedded with a bootless calf.
The proxy of the king used to place his
bare leg imder the coverlet of the king's
betrothed.
[Bacon in his Henry VII. writes of the
proxy marriage of Maximilian, the king of
the Romans, with Anne of Brittany, 1489 :
"For she was not only publicly con-
tracted, but stated as a bride, and solemnly
bedded ; and after she was laid, there came
in Maximilian's ambassador, with letters of
procuration, and in the presence of sundry
noble personages, men and women, put
his leg, stript naked to the knee, between
the espousal sheets; to the end that the
ceremony might be thought to amoimt to
a consummation and actual knowledge."
— Ed.]
P. 166, col. 2, lines 24-25.
A wind arose and rush'd upon the South,
And shook the songs, the whispers, and the
shrieks
Of the wild woods together.
See letter to Dawson, p. 926.
P. 167, col. I, line 6. blowing bosks,
blossoming thickets.
P. 167, col. 2, line 19. Her brethren, —
accusative after "see."
P. 168, col. I, line 2. the liberties.
[Blackstone in his Commentaries, ii. 37,
defines a "liberty" as a "Royal privilege
NOTES
913
or branch of the King's prerogative, sub-
sisting in the hands of a subject." The
term "hberties" is here applied to the
estate over which the privilege can be
exercised. — Ed.]
P. 169, col. 2, line 11. A full sea glazed
with muffled moonlight. See letter to
Dawson, p. 926.
Canto II
P. 170, col. I, line 20. Sleek Odalisques,
female slaves of the harem.
P. 170, col. I, lines 21, 22.
• but she
That taught the Sabine how to rule.
The wood-nymph Egeria, who was said
to have given the laws to Numa Pompilius.
["And in all that he did, he knew that
he should please the gods; for he did
everything by the direction of the nymph
Egeria, i^ho honoured him so much that
she took him to be her husband, and
taught him in her sacred grove, by the
spring that welled out from the rock, all
that he was to do towards the gods and
towards men." Arnold's History of Rome,
vol. i. ch. i.; Livy, i. 19; Ovid. Fasti,
iii. 276. — Ed.]
P. 170, col. I, line 23.
The foundress of the Babylonian wall.
Semiramis. [Diodorus, 11. viii. — Ed.]
P. 170, col. I, line 24.
The Carian Artemisia strong in war.
She who fought so bravely for Xerxes at
Salamis that he said* that his women had
become men and his men women. [Herod,
viii. 88: 'iS!,ip^7]v 8^ eiirai XiyeruL irpbs tcl
(ppa^Sfxeva' Ot fiiv c^vdpes yeySpaai /xol
yvvacKes, ai 8^ yvvalKes dvdpes. — Ed.]
P. 170, col. I, line 30.
The Rhodope, that built the pyramid.
A celebrated Greek courtesan of Thracian
origin, who was said to have built a
pyramid near Memphis. iElian -relates
that she married Psammetichus, King of
Egypt.
"A statelier pyramis to her I'll rear
Than Rhodope's or Memphis' ever was."
I Henry VI. i. vi. 22.
3N
Doricha was probably her real name (she
is so called by Sappho), and she perhaps
received that of Rhodopis, "rosy-cheeked,"
on account of her beauty.
P. 170, col. I, line 26. Clelia, who
swam the Tiber in escaping from Porsenna's
camp (Livy, ii. 13).
P. 170, col. I, line 26. Cornelia,
mother of the Gracchi.
P. 170, col. I, line 26. Palmyrene.
Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra. [See Gibbon,
ch. xi. sub anno a.d. 272. — Ed.]
P. 170, col. I, line 28. Agrippina,
grand-daughter of Augustus, married to
Germanicus.
P. 170, col. 2, line 19. headed like a
star, with bright golden hair. [Cf. //. vi,
401 : dXLyKLov aar^pL Kay (a. — Ed.]
P. 170, col. 2, lines 22, 23.
but no livelier than the dame
That whispered ^ Asses ^ ears.'
Midas in The Wyf of Bathe's Tale con-
fides the secret of his hairy asses' ears only
to his wife.
[The good dame could not resist telling
it to a neighbouring "mareys" in a
whisper.
And as a bitore bombleth in the myre
She leyde hir mouth unto the water doun :
'Biwreye me nat, thou water, with thy
soun,'
Quod she, ' to thee I telle it and namo, —
Myn housbonde hath longe asses erys two.'
Ed.]
P. 170, col. 2, line 26.
This world was once a fluid haze of light,
etc.
The nebular theory as formulated by
Laplace. [Cf . In Memoriam, cxviii. iii. ;
Lxxxix. xii. — Ed.]
P. 171, col. I, line i. Appraised the
Lycian custom. Herodotus (i. 173) says
that the Lycians took their names from
their mothers instead of their fathers.
P. 171, col. I, line 2. [Lar or Lars,
as in Lars Porsena, signifies noble. — Ed.]
P. 171, col. I, line 2. Lucumo is an
Etruscan prince or priest.
914
NOTES
P. 171, col. I, line 6. Salique. The
laws of the Salian Franks forbad inherit-
ance by women.
P. 171, col. I, lines 7, 8. touched . . .
contempt. Had she heard that, according
to the Mohammedan doctrine, hell was
chiefly occupied by women ?
P. 171, col. I, line 24. if more was
more. Greater in size meant greater in
power.
P. 172, col. 2, line 13. As he bestrode my
Grandsir^. In defence. [Cf. Shakespeare,
I Henry IV. v. i. 122, and Comedy of
Errors, v. i. 192: "When I bestrid thee
in the wars." — Ed.]
P. 173, col. I, line 20.
The Lucius Junius Brutus of my kind ?
Who condemned his sons to death for
conspiracy against the city (Livy, ii. 5).
P. 173, col. 2, line 26.
That clad her like an April daffodilly.
The Quarterly Review objected to
"April daffodilly." Daffodils in the
North of England belong as much to
April as to March. 1 On the 15th of April
in the streets of Dublin I remember a man
presenting me with a handful of daffodils ;
and in 1887 at Farringford I saw daffodils
still in bloom in May.
P. 173, col. 2, line 29. As bottom
agates, etc. It has been said that I took
this simile partly from Beaumont and
Fletcher, partly from Shakespeare, whereas
I made it while I was bathing in Wales.
P. 175, col. 2, line 7.
The long hall glittered like a bed of flowers.
Lady Psyche's "side" (pupils) wore
lilac robes, and Lady Blanche's robes of
daffodil colour.
P. 175, col. 2, line 29. Astrcean.
Astraea, daughter of Zeus and Themis, is
to come back first of the celestials on the
return of the Golden Age [even as she was
the last to leave earth in the Age of Iron :
Victa jacet pietas, et virgo caede madentes
Ultima caelestum terras Astraea reliquit.
Ov. Met. i. 150. — Ed.]
1 March the poet calls " the roaring moon of
daflfodil and crocus" in his Prefatory Sonnet to
the " Nineteenth Century."
Canto III
P. 177, col. I, line 30. Consonant . . .
note. If two stringed instruments are
together, and a note is struck on one, the
other will vibrate with the same harmony.
P. 177, col. 2, line 21. The Samian
Here. The Greek Here, whose favourite
abode was Samos.
P. 177, col. 2, line 22.
A Memnon smitten with the morning Sun.
The statue in Egypt which gave forth a
musical note when "smitten with the
morning sun."
[Cf. Pausanias i. 42 and The Palace of
Art:
And from her lips, as morn from Memnon,
drew
Rivers of melodies. Ed.]
P. 178, col. 2, line 13. ran up his
furrowy forks. The early editions have
"dark-blue forks" or peaks.
P. 179, col. 2, line 6.
'Alas your Highness breathes full East,'
I said.
A playful reference to the cold manner of
an Eastern queen and the east wind.
P. 180, col. I, line 8. pou sto. dbs tov
(XtG) Kal Kbffixov KLvqaw ("Give me where
I may stand and I will move the world"),
an often-quoted saying of Archimedes.
P. 180, col. I, line 24. gynceceum,
women's quarters in a Greek house.
P. 180, col. 2, line 4. shook the woods.
They shook in the wind made by the
cataract. •
P. 180, col. 2, line 19. Diotima. Said
to have been an instructress of Socrates.
She was a priestess of Mantinea. (Cf.
Plato's Symposium.)
P. 180, col. 2, line 23.
And cram him with the fragments of the
grave.
See Hogarth's picture in the "Stages of
Cruelty." It was asserted that they used
to give dogs the remnants of the dissecting-
room.
P. 181, col. 2, line 23. Elysian lawns
are the lawns of Elysium and have nothing
to do with Troy, as some critics explain,
NOTES
915
or perhaps they. refer to the Islands of the
Blest. Cf. Pindar, Olympia, ii. 128.
P. 181, col. I, line 30. Corinna. She is
the Boeotian poetess who is said to have
triumphed over Pindar in poetical com-
petition (Pausanias, ix. 22). The Princess
probably exaggerates.
Canto IV
The opening song was written after
hearing the echoes at Killamey in 1848.
When I was there I heard a bugle blown
beneath the "Eagle's Nest," and eight
distinct echoes.
P. 181, col. I, line 19.
There sinks the nebulous star we call the
Sun.
Norman Lockyer says that this is a true
description of the sun.
P. 182, col. I, line 21.
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they
mean.
This song came to me on the yellowing
autumn -tide at Tin tern Abbey, full for me
of its bygone memories. It is the sense of
the abiding in the transient.
[My father thought that his brother
Charles Tennyson Turner's sonnet "Time
and TwiUght "had the same sort of mystic
damonisch feeling, "the Passion of the
Past."
TIME AND TWILIGHT
In the dark twiUght of an autumn mom
I stood within a little country-town,
Wherefrom a long acquainted path went
down
To the dear village haunts where I was born ;
The low of oxen on the rainy wind,
Death and the Past, came up the well-
known road,
And bathed my heart with tears, but stirred
my mind
To tread once more the track so long
imtrod ;
But I was warned, "Regrets which are not
thrust
Upon thee, seek not; for this sobbing
breeze
Will but unman thee: thou art bold to
trust
Thy woe-worn thoughts among these roar-
ing trees,
And gleams of by-gone playgrounds. Is't
no crime
To rush by night into the arms of Time?"
Ed.]-
P. 182, col. 2, Une 19. rough hex,
hemlock. [Cf. "kecksies," Henry V. v.
ii. 52. — Ed.]
P. 182, col. 2, lines 20, 21.
beard-blown goat
Hang on tJte shaft.
The wind blew his beard on the height of
the ruined pillar.
[Wild figtree split, etc. Cf. Juvenal,
X. 145. — Ed.]
P. 183, col. I, lines 31, 32.
Like the Ithacensian suitors in old time,
. . . laughed with alien lips.
[Cf. Odyssey, xx. 347 :
ol 8' tJSt) yvadnotcTL yeXdojv dWoTpioiatv.
Ed.]
P. 183, col. 2, line i. meadow-crak^,
corn-crake or landrail.
P. 183, col. 2, Une 16. Valkyrian hymns.
[Like those sung by the Valkyrian maidens,
"the choosers of the slain," in the Northern
mythology. — Ed.]
P. 184, col. 2, line 12. Caryatids.
"female figures used as bearing shafts"
(Vitruv. i.), e.g. the maidens supporting
the light entablature of the portico of the
Erechtheum at Athens.
P. 184, col. 2, lines 14, 15.
Of open-work in which the hunter rued
His rash intrusion.
Actaeon turned into a stag for looking on
Diana bathing.
P. 185, col. 2, lines 5, 6.
But as the waterlily starts and slides
Upon the level in little pujfs of wind.
Waterlilies in my own pond, and seen by
me on' a gusty day. They started and slid
in the sudden puffs of wind till caught and
stayed by the tether of their own stalks.
(See supra, letter to Dawson.)
P. 185, col. 2, line 16.
Bubbled the nightingale and heeded not.
9i6
NOTES
When I was in a friend's garden in
Yorkshire, I heard a nightingale singing
with such a frenzy of passion that it was
unconscious of everything else, and not
frightened though I came and stood quite
close beside it. I saw its eye flashing and
felt the air bubble in my ear through the
vibration.
P. 185, col. 2, line 19. Mnemosyne,
goddess of memory, mother of the Muses.
P. 185, col. 2, line 24. mystic fire, St.
Elmo's fire.
[St. Elmo's phosphorescent light flickers
on the tops of masts when a storm is
brewing. Cf. Tempest, i. ii. 197, and
Longfellow's Golden Legend :
"Last night I saw St. Elmo's stars,
With their glimmering lanterns all at
play.
On the tops of the masts, and the tips of
the spars.
And I knew we should have foul weather
to-day." Ed.]
P. 185, col. 2, line 29. blowzed, blown-red.
P. 186, col. 2, line 10.
A lidless watcher of the public weal.
Lidless = wakeful, wide-eyed.
P. 187, col. I, line 24. A Niobean
daughter. Niobe was proud of her twelve
children, and in consequence boasted her-
seK as superior to Leto, mother of Apollo
and Artemis, who in revenge shot them all
dead.
P. 187, col. 2, lines 7, 8.
When the wild peasant rights himself, the
rick
Flames, and his anger reddens in the
heavens.
I remember seeing thirty ricks burning
near Cambridge, and I helped to pass the
bucket from the well to help to quench the
fire. [Cf. To Mary Boyle, verse vii. and
verse x. — Ed.]
P. 188, col. 2, line 2. dwarfs of presage.
[Afterwards seen to be far short of ex-
pectation. — Ed.]
P. 189, col. I, lines 13-15-
Fixt like a beacon-tower above the waves
Of tempest, when the crimson-rolling eye
Glares ruin, etc.
[Cf . Enoch Arden :
Allured him, as the beacon-blaze allures
The bird of passage, till he madly strikes
Against it, and beats out his weary Ufe.
Ed.]
P. 190. Song beginning
Thy voice is heard thro' rolling drums.
Cf. Sedgwick's Life, ii. 103. — Extract of
a letter from J. Eaton, a private serving in
the Battle of Aliwal, 1846, and a son of
two of Sedgwick's servants :
"Also, my dear mother, tell Rhoda
Harding I thought of her in the battle's
heat, and that as I cut at the enemy and
parried their thrusts my arm was strong on
her account ; for I felt at that moment that
I loved her more than ever, and may God
Almighty bless her."
Sedgwick's comment: "This is, I think,
exquisitely beautiful, for it is the strong
language of pure feeling in the hour of
severest trial."
My first version of this song was pub-
lished in Selections, 1865 :
Lady, let the rolling dnuns
Beat to battle where thy v/arrior stands ;
Now thy face across his fancy comes
And gives the battle to his hands.
Lady, let the trumpets blow,
Clasp thy little babes about thy knee :
Now their warrior father meets the foe
And strikes him dead for thine and thee.
Canto V
P. 191, col. I, line 4. glimmering lanes
refers to the lines of tents just visible in the
darkness.
P. 191, col. I, line 23. mawkin, kitchen-
wench. [Cf. "malkin," Coriolanus, 11. i.
224. — Ed.]
P. 193, col. I, line 16. mammoth bulk'd
in ice, bulky mamijioth buried in ice.
P. 194, col. 2, line 25. the airy Giant's
zone, the stars in the belt of Orion.
P. 194, col. 2, line 29. morions [steel
helmets (Spanish, morrion). — Ed.].
P. 19s, col. I, line 28.
Her that talk'd down the fifty wisest men.
St. Catherine of Alexandria, niece o!
NOTES
917
Constantine the Great. [The Emperor
Maxentius during his persecution is related
to have sent fifty of his wisest men to con-
vert her from Christianity, but she com-
bated and confuted them all. — Ed.]
P. ig6, col. I, Unes 21, 22.
and standing like a stately Pine
Set in a cataract on an island-crag.
Taken from a torrent above Cauteretz.
[Cf. Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough,
Sept. 7, 1861, p. 269: "Cauterets,
September 7. — I have been out for a walk
with A. T. to a sort of island between
two waterfalls, with pines on it, of which
he retained a recollection from his visit
thirty -one years ago, and which, moreover,
furnished a simile to The Princess. He
is very fond of the place evidently, as it is
more in the mountains than any other,
and so far superior." In 1875 he took me
to this same island and talked of Arthur
Hallam and Clough. — Ed.]
P. 196, col. 2, line 8. Tomyris, queen
of the Massagetae, who cut off the head of
Cyrus the Great after defeating him, and
dipped it in a skin which she had filled
with blood and bade him, as he was in-
satiate of blood, to drink his fill, gorge*
himself with blood. [Cf. Herod, i. 212:
•^ fi^v ae iy<b Kai dirXrjaTov idvra aifxaros
Kop^au}. And of this threat she reminds
the dead body of Cyrus after his victorj- :
liV iikv ifji^ ^d}ov(rdv re Kal viK^ovcrdv (re
(J.dxv dircbXeaas iralda top iindv iXitv ddXifX,
ak 5' ^yw, Kardirep -qTreiXTja-a, atfiaros
Kop^aco. — Ed.]
P. 196, col. 2, line 21.
Gives her harsh groom for bridal-gift a
scourge.
An old Russian custom. [See Hakluyt's
Navigations, 1 599-1600. — Ed.]
P. 196, col. 2, lines 22, 23.
Of living hearts that crack within the fire
Where smoulder their dead despots.
Suttee in India.
P. 196, col. 2, lines 24, 25.
Mothers, — that, all prophetic pity, fling
Their pretty maids in the running .
The "flood" is the Ganges.
P. 199, col. I, lines 4-8.
As comes a pillar of electric cloud,
. . . till it strikes
On a wood, and takes, and breaks, and
■ cracks, and spUts,
And twists the grain.
Taken from the havoc worked by a storm
in Tunby wood near Horncastle. One oak
was wrapped round ^dth bands of what
looked Uke Kst, the strips of its bark turned
inside out. Two concentric circles of trees
were thrown down with their heads in-
ward.
C.\NTO VI
P. 199. Home they brought her warrior
dead. I published this version of the song
in the Selections, 1865 :
Home they brought him slain with spears.
They brought him home at even-fall ;
AH alone she sits and hears
Echoes in his empty Hall,
Sounding on the morrow.
The sun peep'd in from open field.
The boy began to leap and prance,
Rode upon his father's lance,
Beat upon his father's shield,
Oh hush my joy, my sorrow.
P. 199, col. 2, line 20.
Like that great dame of Lapidoth she sang.
Cf. Judges iv. 4 and following.
P, 200, col. I, lines 32, S3'
And over them the tremulous isles of light
Slided.
Spots of sunshine coming through the
leaves, and seeming to slide from one to
the other, as the procession of girls
"moves under shade."
P. 201, col. I, line 20. brede, em-
broidery.
P. 202, col. I, line 4. port, for haven.
Misprinted "part" in earlier editions.
P. 202, col. I, Une 24. dead prime,
earliest dawn.
P. 203, col. I, line 19. [The azimuth
of any point on a, horizontal plane is the
angle between a line drawn to that point,
and a fixed line in the horizontal plane,
usually chosen to be a line drawn due
9i8
NOTES
North. (Arab, al, the, and samt, way,
quarter.) — Ed.]
P. 203, col. I, line 26. like the vermin
in a nut. The worm eats a nut and leaves
behind but dry and bitter dust.
P. 204, col. 2, line 2. answer' d full of
grief and scorn. After this line, these
among other lines have been omitted :
Go help the half-brain'd dwarf, Society,
To find low motives unto noble deeds.
To fix all doubt upon the darker side ;
Go fitter thou for narrower neighbourhoods.
Old talker, haimt where gossip breeds and
seethes
And festers in provincial sloth ! and you
That think we sought to practise on a life
Risked for our own, 'and trusted to our
hands.
What say you. Sir? you hear us; deem
ye not
'Tis all too Uke that even now we scheme,
In one broad death confounding friend
and foe.
To drug them all ? revolve it ; you are man,
And therefore no doubt wise ; but after this
We brook no further insult but are gone.
Canto VII
P. 205, col. 2, lines 23-29.
And she as one that climbs a peak to gaze
O'er land and main, and sees a great black
cloud
Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of
night,
Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore,
And suck the blinding splendour from' the
sand.
And quenching lake by lake and tarn by
tarn
Expunge the world.
An approaching storm seen from the
summit of Snowdon.
P. 206, col. I, line 27. obtained, prevailed.
P. 207, col. " I, line 17. Oppian law.
When Hannibal was nearing Rome a law
was carried by C. Oppius, Trib. Pleb.,
215 B.C., forbidding women to wear more
than half an ounce of gold, or brilliant
dresses, and no woman was to come within
a mile of Rome or of any town save on
accoimt of public sacrifices in a conveyance
drawn by horses. [In 195 B.C. the Oppian
Law was, in spite of Cato's protests, re-
pealed. Livy, xxxiv. 8, — Ed.]
P. 207, col. I, Une 20. Hortensia.
[She pleaded against the proposed tax on
Roman matrons after the assassination of
Julius Caesar which was to be raised in
order to pay for the expenses of the war
against Brutus and Cassius. Val. Max.
VIII. iii. § 3 ; Quint, i. i. § 6 ; Appian,
B.C. iv. 32. — Ed.]
P. 207, col. 2, lines 17-19.
Leapt fiery Passion from the brinks of
death;
And I believed that in the living world
My spirit closed with Ida's at the lips.
This used to run :
Crown'd passion from the brinks of death,
and up
Along the shuddering senses struck the
soul
And closed on fire with Ida's at the lips.
P. 207, col. 2, lines 23, 24.
And left her woman, lovelier in her mood
Than in her mould that other.
Aphrodite passed before his brain
'drowsy with weakness. (Cf. Hesiod,
Theog. 190-191.)
P. 208, col. I, lines 10, 11.
Now lies the earth all Dana'e to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.
Zeus came down to Danae when shut up
in the tower in a shower of golden stars.
P. 208, col. I, line 20. Come down, 0
maid, is said to be taken from Theocritus,
but there is no real likeness except perhaps
in the Greek Idyllic feeling.
[For simple rhythm and vowel music
my father considered this Idyllic song,
written in Switzerland — chiefly at Lauter-
brunnen and Grindelwald — and descriptive
of the waste Alpine heights and gorges
and of the sweet rich valleys below, as
among his most successful work. — Ed.]
P. 208, col. I, line 31. nor cares to walk.
[Ci. Hamlet, i. i. 167. — Ed.]
P. 208, col. I, line 32. Death and
Morning. Death is the lifelessness on the
high snow peaks.
NOTES
919
P. 208, col. I, line 36. dusky doors.
The opening of the gorge is called dusky
as a contrast with the snows all about.
P. 208, col. 2, line 4. moan of doves.
Nee gemere aeria cessabit turtur ab ulmo.
Virgil, Ed. i. 59.
P. 209, col. I, Une 12.
Stays all the fair young planet in her
hands.
[Cf . Ross Wallace's, lines :
"The hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world." Ed.]
P. 210, col. I, line 20.
From yearlong poring on thy pictured eyes.
Next line :
Or some mysterious or magnetic touch,
was omitted.
P. 210, col. I, lines 28, 29.
my doubts are dead,
My haunting sense of hollow shows.
You have become a real woman to me.
[The realization of her womanhood was
the magic touch which gave her reality
and dispelled his haunting sense of the
imreality of things. — Ed.]
P. 210, col. 2, line 2. Approach and
fear not. [Spoken in answer to Ida's
* I have heard •
Of your strange doubts: they well might
be : I seem
A mockery to my own self. Never, Prince ;
You cannot love me.'
The Prince had replied directly to these
words :
' lift thine eyes ; my doubts are dead.
My haunting sense of hollow shows' :
and following out the train of thought,
appeals to her to let her nature strike on
his
'Like yonder morning on the blind half-
world.'
It must be remembered that the Prince had
overheard Ida's self-accusings and excus-
ings (p. 208) :
but she still were loth.
She still were loth to yield herself to one
That wholly scom'd, etc. Ed.]
Conclusion
This has been a good deal altered from
the first version.
P. 211, col. I, line 21. 'You — tell us
what we are.' After this it ran :
who there began
A treatise growing with it, and might have
flow'd
In axiom worthier to be graven on rock
Than all that lasts of old world hieroglypli,
Or lichen-fretted Rune and arrowhead !
But that there rose a shout ; the gates werj
closed
At svmdown, and the crowd were swarming
now.
To take their leave, about the garden rails,
And I and some went out, and mingled
with: them.
These lines were omitted, and the forty-
six lines (pp. 211, 212), who might have
told to garden rails, were inserted, written
just after the disturbances in France,
February 1848, when Louis Philippe was
compelled to abdicate.
P. 212, col. I, line 9.
No little lily-handed Baronet he.
An imaginary character.
P. 212, col. I, line 12, pine, pine-apple.
P. 212. Ode on the Death of the
Duke of Wellington. [Written at
Twickenham, and first published on the
day of the funeral, November 18, 1852.
Many of the alterations which appeared in
the second edition of this poem were in
the original MS. — Ed.]
I saw the funeral procession from
Somerset House, and afterwards read an
account of the burial in St. Paul's and
added a few lines to the original.
P. 212, line 9.
Here, in streaming London's central roar.
[One day in 1842 Edward FitzGerald
records a visit to St. Paul's with my
father, when he said, "Merely as an
enclosed space in a huge city this is very
fine;" and when they went out into the
"central roar," "This is the mind; that
a mood of it." — Ed]
P. 213, col. I, line 2.
Remembering all his greatness in the Past.
920
NOTES
The first version was :
Our sorrow draws but on the golden Past.
P. 213, col. I, line 21. four-square. Cf.
TCTpdyojuos (Simonides), though I did not
think of this parallel when I wrote it.
[The word four-square is found in
Maloiy, I. iii. : "There was sene in the
chirchyard, against the hyghe aulter a grete
stone four-square." — Ed.]
P. 213, col. I, line 38.
Bright lei it be with its bUzon'd deeds.
WelUngton's victories were inscribed in
gold letters on the car.
P. 213, col. 2, lines 21-23. Who . . .
rest? These three lines are spoken by the
"mighty seaman," Nelson, who lies in
St. Paul's.
P. 213, col. 2, line 40.
Against the myriads of As say e.
His first victory was in Hindostan, near
this small town, where he defeated the
Mahratta army with a force a tenth of
their number (1803).
P. 214, col. I, line 3.
Of his laboured rampart-lines.
The lines of Torres Vedras ; the outermost
ran 29 miles.
P. 214, col. I, line 21.
On that loud sabbath shook the spoiler down.
The day of Waterloo, Sunday, June 18,
1815.
P. 214, col. I, line 27.
Heaven flash' d a sudden jubilant ray. ■
The setting sun glanced on this last
charge of the English and Prussians.
P. 214, col. I, line 37.
Touch a spirit among things divine.
Dwell upon the word "touch" and
make it as long as "can touch."
P. 214, col. 2, line 22.
But wink no more in slothful over trust.
After this line were five other lines in
first edition :
Perchance our greatness will increase ;
Perchance, a darkening future yields
Some reverse from worse to worse,
The blood of men in quiet fields.
And sprinkled on the sheaves of peace.
P. 215, col. I, lines 17-19.
He, on whom from both her open hands
Lavish Honour showered all her stars,
And affluent Fortune emptied all her horn.
These are full-vowelled lines to describe
Fortune emptying her Cornucopia.
P. 216. [The Third of February
1852 was written when the House of Lords
seemed to condone Louis Napoleon's coup
d^etat in December 1851, and rejected the
Bill for the organization of the Militia
when he was expected to attack England.
It was first published in The Examiner,
Feb. 7, 1852. Hands all round was pub-
lished in the same number, and Britons,
guard your own in the number dated' Jan.
31, 1852. Edward FitzGerald writes:
"The Authorship was kept secret, because
of the Poet being Laureate to the Queen,
then being, and wishing to be, on good
Terms with Napoleon." — Ed.]
HANDS ALL ROUND ! 1
[When "Britons, guard your own, " and "Hands
all round" were written, my father along
with many others regarded France under
Napoleon as a serious menace to the peace
of Europe. In later years after the Franco-
German war, he was filled with admiration
at the dignified way in which France was
gradually gathering herself together. He
rejoiced whenever England and France were
in agreement, and co-operated harmoniously
for the good of the world.]
First drink a health, this solemn night,
A health to England, every guest ;
That man's the best cosmopolite.
Who loves his native country best.
May Freedom's oak for ever live
With stronger life from day to day ;
That man's the true Conservative
Who lops the moulder'd branch away.
Hands all round !
God the tyrant's hope confound !
To this great cause of Freedom drink, my
friends.
And the great name of England round ajid
round.
1 Feb. gth, 1852. I must send you what
Landor says in a note this morning: "'Hands
all round !' is incomparably the best (convivial)
lyric in the language, though Dryden's 'Drink-
ing Song' is fine." — John Forster to Mrs.
Tennyson.
NOTES
921
A health to Europe's honest men !
Heaven guard them from her tyrants'
jails !
From wrong'd Poerio's noisome den,
From iron'd limbs and tortured nails !
We curse the crimes of southern kings,
The Russian whips and Austrian rods.
We, likewise, have our evil things ;
Too much we make our Ledgers Gods,
Yet hands all round !
God the tyrant's cause confound !
To Europe's better health we drink, my
friends.
And the great name of England round and
round.
What health to France, if France be she.
Whom martial prowess only charms ?
Yet tell her — Better to be free
Than vanquish all the world in arms.
Her frantic city's flashing heats
But fire to blast the hopes of men.
Why change the titles of your streets ?
You fools, you'll want them all again.
Yet hands all round !
God the tyrant's cause confound !
To France, the wiser France, we drink,
my friends,
And the great name of England round and
round.
Gigantic daughter of the West,
We drink to thee across the flood,
We kiyjw thee most, we love thee best
For art thou not of British blood ?
Should war's mad blast again be blown.
Permit not thou the tyrant powers
To fight thy mother here alone.
But let thy broadsides roar with ours.
Hands all round !
God the tyrant's cause confound !
To our great kinsmen of the West, my
friends.
And the great name of England round and
round.
O rise, our strong Atlantic sons.
When war against our freedom springs !
O speak to Europe thro' your gims !
They can be understood by kings.
You must not mix our Queen with those
That wish to keep their people fools ;
Our freedom's foemen are her foes.
She comprehends the race she rules.
Hands all round !
God the tyrant's cause confound !
To our great kinsmen of the West, my
friendsj
And the great cause of Freedom round and
round.
P. 217. The Charge of the Light
Brigade.
This poem (written at Farringford, and
pubUshed in The Examiner, Dec. 9, 1854)
was written after reading the first report of
The Times correspondent, where only 607
sabres are mentioned as having taken part
in the charge (Oct. 25, 1854). Drayton's
Agiticoiirt was not in my mind; my poem
is dactylic, and founded on the phrase,
" Some one had blundered."
At the request of Lady Franklin I dis-
tributed copies among our soldiers in the
Crimea and the hospital at Scutari. The
charge lasted only twenty-five minutes. I
have heard that one of the men, with .the
blood streaming from his leg, as he was
riding by his officer, said, "Those d — d
heavies will never chaff us again," and fell
down dead.
P. 217, h'ne I. Half a league. Captain
Nolan delivered the order. He rode in
his saddle upright some moments after he
was shot, his sword-hand uplifted, and was
the first man killed. See Kinglake, vol.
V. p. 220. Lord Cardigan and the Light
Brigade covered a mile and a half, with
Russian batteries on either hand and in
front of them, before they encountered the
enemy.
P. 217, col. 2, line 15. Noi the six hun-
dred. Only 195 returned.
P. 217. Ode sung at the Opening
OF the International Exhibition.
[First published in The Times, April 24,
1862, incorrectly ; published afterv/ards
correctly in Eraser's Magazine, June 1862.
— Ed.]
The Prince Consort originated Inter-
national Exhibitions.
P. 2i8. Welcome to Alexandra.
[Written at Farringford and published on
March 10, 1863, the date of the marriage.
— Ed.]
P. 219. Welcome to Marie Alex-
ANDROVNA. [Written at Farringford and
published in The Times, June 23, 1874,
after the marriage. — Ed.]
922
NOTES
P. 220. The Grandmother. [Written
at Farringford and first published in Once
a Week, July 16, 1859. — Ed.]
P. 225. Northern Farmer, Old
Style and New Style. [First published
in 1864 and 1869 respectively. — Ed.]
Roden Noel calls these two poems
photographs, but they are imaginative.
The first is founded on the dying words
of a fann-baiUff, as reported to me by my
old great-uncle when he was verging upon
80: "God A'mighty little knows what
He's about a-taking me. An' Squire will
be so mad an' all." I conjectured the
man from that one saying.
The Farmer, New Style is likewise
founded on a single sentence: "When I
canters my 'erse along the ramper (high-
way) I 'ears 'proputty, proputty, pro-
putty.'" I had been told that a rich
fanner in our neighbourhood was in the
habit of saying this. I never saw the man
and know no more of him. It was also
reported of the wife of this worthy that
when she entered the salle a manger of a
sea-bathing place she slapt her pockets and
said, "When I married, I brought him
£5000 on each shovilder."
P. 224. line 16. radved an' rembled
'um out [tore up and threw them out. —
Ed.].
P. 227. The Daisy. [First published
in 1855. — Ed.] In a metre which I in-
vented, representing in some measure the
grandest of metres, the Horatian Alcaic.
This poem is a record of a tour taken in
1851.
P. 227, line 5. Turbla, in the Western
Riviera.
P, 228, col. I, line 11. The Palazzo
Ducale.
P. 228, col. I, line 17. Cascine, the Park
of Florence.
P. 228, col. I, line 18. BoboU's ducal
bowers [gardens behind the Pitti Palace. —
Ed.].
P. 228, col. 2, line 7. rich Virgilian
rustic measure.
Anne lacus tantos? Te, Lari maxume,
teque
Fluctibus et fremitu adsurgens, Benace,
marino. Virg. Georg. ii. 159, 160.
P. 228, col. 2, line 11. fair port.
Varenna, with its memories of Queen
Theodolind.
P. 228, col. 2, line 36.
And gray metropolis of the North.
A Scotch professor objected to this.
So I asked him to call. London if he liked
the "black metropolis of the south."
P. 229. To the Rev. F. D. Maurice.
[This invitation to Farringford was first
published in 1855.
Mr. Maurice had been ejected from his
professorship at King's College for non-
orthodoxy. He had especially alarmed
some of the "weaker brethren" by point-
ing out that the word "eternal" in "eternal
punishment" (aldbpios), strictly translated,
referred to the quality not the duration of
the punishment.
He wrote accepting the duties of god-
father, August 1852, with "thankfulness
and fear." He writes again on August
30th: "I have so much to thank you for,
especially of late years since I have known
your poetry better, and I hope I have been
somewhat more in a condition to learn
from it, that I cannot say how thankful I
feel to you for wishing that I should stand
in any nearer and more personal relation
to you." — Ed.]
P. 229. Will. [First published in 1855.
— Ed.]
P. 229. In the Valley of Cauteretz.
[Written in 1861, pubhshed in 1864. — Ed.]
A valley in the Pyrenees, where I had been
with Arthur Hallam in former years, and
in which at this time my family and I met
Clough,
P. 230. In the Garden at Swains-
ton. [Written in 1870 and first pub-
lished in 1874. — Ed] Line 3.
Shadows of three dead men.
Sir John Simeon, Henry Lu?hington, and
Arthur Hallam.
P. 230, line 7. The Master. [Sir John
Simeon died at Friburg, 1870. — Ed.]
P. 230. The Flower. [Written at
Farringford and first published in 1864. —
Ed.] This does not refer to my poetr>'.
It was written as a universal apologue, and
NOTES
923
the people do not as yet call my flower a
weed.
[Mrs. Richard Ward, daughter of Sir
John Simeon, wrote to me of this poem:
"However absorbed Tennyson might be
in earnest talk, his eye and ear were always
alive to the natural objects around him.
I have often known him stop short in a
sentence to listen to a blackbird's song, to
watch the sunlight glint on a butterfly's
wing, or to examine a field-flower at his
feet. The lines of The Flower weie the
result of an investigation of the 'love-in-
idleness' growing at Farringford. He made
them nearly all on the spot, and said them
to me (as they are) next day." — Ed.]
P. 230. Requiescat. [First published
in 1864. — Ed.]
P. 230. The Sailor Boy. First pub-
lished in the Victoria Regia, edited by Miss
Emily Faithfull, 1861.
. P. 230, line 12. scrawl, the young of
the dog-crab.
P. 231. The Islet. [First published
in 1864. — Ed.]
A mountain islet pointed and peaked;
Waves on a diamond shingle dash.
Cataract brooks to the ocean run,
F airily-delicate palaces skitie
Mixt with myrtle and clad with vine,
And overstream'd and silvery-streak' d
With many a rivulet high against the Sun
The facets of the glorious mountain flash
Above the valleys of palm and pine.
These lines, a fragment, were the
nucleus of the poem, and perhaps it would
have been better not to have expanded
them into the singer and his wife.
P. 231. Child Songs. [First pub-
lished in St. Nicholas, February 1880; set
to music by my mother. — Ed.]
I. The City Child. Rejected from The
Princess.
II. Minnie and Winnie. Rejected from
The Princess.
P. 232. The Spiteful Letter. First
published in Once a Week, January 1868.
It is no particular letter that I meant. I
have had dozens of them from one quarter
and another.
P. 232. Literary Squabbles. [First
published in Punch, March 7, 1846. — Ed.]
P. 232. The Victim. [Printed in 1867
at the Guest Printing Press, Wimbome,
and first published in Good Words, January
1869. — Ed.] I read the story in Miss
Yonge's Golden Deeds, and made it Scandi-
P. 232, line 3. thorpe and byre, town
and farm.
P. 233. Wages. [First pubHshed in
Macmillan's Magazine, February 1868. —
Ed.]
P. 234. The Higher Pantheism.
[Written for the Metaphysical Society in
1869, and first published in 1869. — Ed.]
P. 234. The Voice and the Peak.
[First published in 1874. — Ed.] Line 4.
Green-rushing from the rosy thrones of
dawn I
This line was made in the Val d'Anzasca
after looking at Monte Rosa flushed by the
dawn and rising above the chestnuts and
I walnuts (Sept. 4, 1873).
i P. 235. Flower in the crannied
WALL. [First pubUshed in 1869. — Ed.]
The flower was plucked out of a wall at
"Waggoners WeUs," near Haslemere.
P. 235. A Dedication. [First pub-
lished in 1864. Written at Farringford,
and addressed to my mother. — Ed.]
P. 235. BoADiCEA. [Written at Far-
ringford, and first pubUshed in 1864. — -
Ed.] This is a far-off echo of the metre
of the Attis of Catullus.
P. 235, line 6.
Yell'd and shriek'd betwien her daughters
o'er a wild confederacy
is accented as I mark the accents. Let it
be read straight like prose and it will come
all right.
[Farmy Kemble writes: "I do not
think any reading of Tennyson's can ever
be as striking and impressive as that
'Curse of Boadicea' that he intoned to us,
while the oak-trees were writhing in the
storm that lashed the windows and swept
over Blackdown the day we were there." — ■
Ed.]
924
NOTES
P. 236, line 38. miserable in ignominy
is metrically equivalent to Catullus', for I
put a tribrach where Catullus has a trochee.
P. 237. [The translation from Homer
and the experiments in quantity first pub-
lished in the CornhiU Magazine, December
1863. — Ed.]
P. 237. Hexameters and Pentameters
(in English) do not run well. See Cole-
ridge's shockingly bad couplet as far as
quantity goes — with the pentameter.
In the pentameter aye falling In mel6dy
back.
Much better would be
Up goes Hexameter with might as a foun-
tain arising,
Lightly thg fountain falls, lightly the penta-
meter.
It is noteworthy that in English doubling
the consonant generally makes the foot
preceding short, e.g. valley, etc.
[My father thought that quantitative
English Hexameters were as a rule only fit
for comic subjects, though he said: "Of
course you might go on with perfect Hex-
ameters of the following kind, but they
would grow monotonous :
'High woods roaring above me, dark
leaves falling about me.'"
Some of the Hexameters in two quanti-
tative experiments, "Jack and the Bean-
stalk" and "Bluebeard," published by me
anonymously in Miss Thackeray's Blue-
beard's Keys, were made or amended by
him. Throughout the Hexameters, by his
advice, quantitj'^, except here and there for
the sake of variety, coincides with accent.
— Ed.]
P. 237. Alcaics. My Alcaics are not
intended for Horatian Alcaics, nor are
Horace's Alcaics the Greek Alcaics, nor
are his Sapphics, which are vastly inferior
to Sappho's, the Greek Sapphics. The
Horatian Alcaic is perhaps the stateliest
metre in the world except the Virgilian
hexameter at its best ; but the Greek Alcaic,
if we may judge from the two or three
specimens left, had a much freer and lighter
movement : and I have no doubt that an
old Greek if he knew our language would
admit my Alcaics as legitimate, only Milton
must not be pronounced Mil/'w.
di>T\r)p eTrel /ce vdos ifi^q. (Alcaeus).
Is that very Horatian? I did once begin
an Horatian Alcaic Ode to a great painter,
of which I only recollect one line :
"Munificently rewarded Artist."
P. 237, line 3.
God-gifted organ-voice of England.
Mr. Calverley attacked the "an" in
"organ" as being too short, forgetting
that in the few third Hnes of the stanzas
left by Alcaeus this syllable is more than
once short.
fjL^\tXpov, avrap dfj-cpl Kbpcrq.
again :
& BiJ/cx', (pdpfxaKov 3' dpicrrou.
Look at Sappho's third line in the only
Alcaic left of hers :
afSws K^ <x ov Kixoivev d-mrdr- '
Besides, I deny that the "an" in " organ-
voice" is short. Some would prefer
God-gifted August Voice of England. •
"An ' must be long by position. In
rb 8 evdev dfiaes d hv rb fieaaov (Alcaeus)
is es 0' shorts
P. 237, lines 6, 7. [from and as are
long by position. — Ed.]
P. 237, line 15. Some would prefer
also in my line
' And crimson-hued the stately palm- woods'
"those stately palm-woods." I do not
agree with them, and I think that an old
Greek would bear me out. The before st
is long, I declare.
[I attempted the following translation of
Horace's "Persicos Odi" into Sapphics, in
which my father made the two lines :
Dream not of where some sunny rose may
linger
Later in autumn.
PERSICOS ODI
Boy, we despise that revel of the Persian;
Loathe the lime-wreaths so delicately
woven ;
Dream not of where some sunny rose may
linger
Later in autumn !
NOTES
92s
Twine me some chaplet, be it only myrtle !
Myrtle will deck thee, filler of the wine-cup !
Myrtle will deck me, quaffing wine beneath
this
Vine-trellis arbour ! Ed.]
P. 238. Hcndecasyllabics. These must
be read With the English accent.
P. 238. Specimen of a Translation
OF THE Iliad in Blank Verse. Some,
and among these one at least of our best
and greatest (Sir John Herschel), have
endeavoured to give us the Iliad in English
hexameters, and by what appears to me
their failure have gone far to prove the im-
possibihty of the task. I have long held
by our blank verse in this matter, and now,
having spoken so disrespectfully here of
these hexameters, I venture or rather feel
bound to subjoin a specimen (however brief
and with whatever demerits) of a blank
verse translation.
[My father also translated into prose the
following passage from the Sixth Book of
the Iliad : —
Nor did Paris linger in his lofty halls,
but when he had girt on his gorgeous armour,
all of varied bronze, tlicn he rushed through
the city, glorying in his airy feet. And as
when a stall-kept horse, that is barley-fed
at the manger, breaketh his tether, and
dasheth thro' the plain, spurning it, being
wont to bathe himself in the fair-running
river, rioting, and reareth his head, and
his mane flieth backward on either shoulder,
and he glorieth in his beauty, atid his knees
bear him at the gallop to the haunts and
meadows of the mares; — even so ran the son
of Priam, Paris, from the height of Per-
gamus, all in arms, glittering like the sun,
laughing for Ughtkeartedness, and his swift
feet bare him.
At the end of 1865 my father wrote the
following poem, which was published in
Good Words, March 1868, and ruined by
the absurd illustrations :
FARRINGFORD 1 865-1 866
I stood on a tower in the wet.
And New Vear and Old Year met.
And winds were roaring and blowing ;
And I said, "O years, that meet in tears.
Have ye aught that is worth the knowing ?
Science enough and exploring, —
Wanderers coming and going, —
Matter enough for deploring, —
But aught that is worth the knowing?"
Seas at my feet were flowing.
Waves on the shingle pouring.
Old Year roaring and blowing,
And New Year blowing and roaring !
Ed.]
P. 23g. The Window. [Printed at the
Guest Printing Press at Wimbome, 1867 ;
published with music by Arthur Sullivan,
1871, and with the Poems, 1884. — Ed.]
IN MEMORIAM
[Half a mile to the south of Clevedon in
Somersetshire stands Clevedon Church,
"obscure and solitary," on a lonely hill
overlooking a wide expanse of water, where
the Severn flows into the Bristol Chaimel.
It is dedicated to St. Andrew, the chancel
being the original fishermen's chapel.
From the graveyard you can hear the
music of the tide as it washes against the
low cliffs not a hundred yards away. In
the manor aisle of the church, under which
is the vault of the HaUams, may be read
this epitaph to Arthur Hallam, written by
his father :
TO
THE MEMORY OF
ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM
ELDEST SON OF HENRY HALLAM
ESQUIRE
AND OF jfULIA MARIA HIS WIFE
DAUGHTER OF SIR ABRAHAM ELTON
BARONET
OF CLEVEDON COURT
WHO V/AS SNATCHED AWAY BY SUDDEN DEATH
AT VIENNA ON SEPTEMBER ISTH 1833
IN THE TWENTY-THIRD YEAR OF mS AGE
AND NOW IN THIS OBSCURE AND SOLITARY CHURCH
REPOSE THE MORTAL REMAINS OF
ONE TOO EARLY LOST FOR PUBLIC F.\ME
BUT ALREADY CONSPICUOUS AMONG HIS
CONTEMPORARIES
FOR THE BRIGHTNESS OF HIS GENIUS
THE DEPTH OF mS UNDERSTANDING
THE NOBLENESS OF HIS DISPOSITION
THE FERVOUR OF HIS PIETY
AND THE PURITY OF HIS LIFE
926
NOTES
VALE DULCISSIME
VALE DILECTISSIME DESIDERATISSME
REQUIESCAS IN PACE
PATER AC MATER HIC POSTHAC REQUTESCAMUS
TECUM
USQUE AD TUBAM
In this part of the church there is also
another tablet to the memory of Henry
Hallam, the epitaph written by my father :
who thought the simpler the epitaph, the
better it would become the simple and
noble man, whose work speaks for him:
HERE WITH HIS WIFE AND
CHILDREN RESTS
HENRY HALLAM THE HISTORIAN
One of the ablest reviews of In Memo-
riam was by Gladstone. From this review
I quote the following to show that in
Gladstone's opinion my father had not over-
estimated Arthur Hallam :
In 1850 Mr. Tennyson gave to the world under
the title of In Memoriam, perhaps the richest
oblation ever ofifered by the affection of friendship
at the tomb of the departed. The memory of
Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly in
1833, at the age of twenty -two, will doubtless live
chieflj' in connection with this volume. But he
is well known to have been one who, if the term
of his days had been prolonged, would have
needed no aid from a friendly hand, would have
built his own enduring monument, and would
have bequeathed to his country a name in all
likelihood greater than that of his very distin-
guished father. The writer of this paper was,
more than half a century ago, in a condition to
say
I marked him
As a far Alp ; and loved to watch the sunrise
Dawn on his ample brow.^
There perhaps was no one among those who
were blessed with his friendship, nay, as we see,
not even Mr. Tennyson,^ who did not feel at once
bound closely to him by commanding affection,
and left far behind by the rapid, full and rich
development of his ever-searching mind; by his
All-comprehensive tenderness,
AU-subtilising intellect.
It would be easy to show what in the varied
forms of human excellence, he might, had life
been granted him, have accomplished: much
more difl&cult to point the finger and to say,
"This he never could have done." Enough
remains from among his early efforts, to accredit
whatever mournful witness may now be borne of
him. But what can be a nobler tribute than this,
that for seventeen years after his death a poet,
fast rising towards the lofty summits of his art,
1 De Vere's Mary Tudor, iv. i .
«See In Memoriam, ax., ex., cxi., cxn.,
cxm.
found that young fading image the richest source
of his inspiration, and of thoughts that gave him
buoyancy for a flight such as he had not hitherto
attained.! — Ed.)
The following poems were omitted from
In Memoriam when I pubhshed, because
I thought them redundant .2
THE GRAVE (originally No. lvii.)
(Unpublished)
I keep no more a lone distress.
The crowd have come to see thy
grave.
Small thanks or credit shall I have,
But these shall see it none the less.
The happy maiden's tears are free
And she will weep and give them way ;
Yet one unschool'd in want will say
"The dead are dead and let them be."
Another whispers sick with loss :
"O let the simple slab remain !
The ' Mercy Jesu ' ^ in the rain !
"The 'Miserere' ^ in the moss !
"I love the daisy weeping dew,
I hate the trim-set plots of art !"
My friend, thou speakest from the
heart,
But look, for these are nature too.
TO A. H. H. (originally No. cviir.)
{Unpublished)
Young is the grief I entertain.
And ever new the tale she tells.
And ever young the face that dwells
With reason cloister'd in the brain :
Yet grief deserves a nobler name.
She spurs an imitative wiI^;
'Tis shame to fail so far, and still
My failing shall be less my shame.
Considering what mine eyes have seen,
And all the sweetness which thou wast,
And thy beginnings in the past.
And all the strength thou would'st have
been:
1 Gladstone's Gleanings 0/ Past Years, vol. ii.
pp. 136. 137-
2"0 Sorrow, wilt thou live with me" was
added in 1851.
» As seen by me in Tintem Abbey.
NOTES
927
A master mind with master minds,
An orb repulsive of all hate,
A will concentric with all fate,
A life four-square to all the winds.
THE VICTOR HOURS
(originally No. cxxvii.)
{Unpublished)
Are those the far-famed Victor Hours
That ride to death the griefs of men ?
I fear not, if I fear'd them then ; —
Is this blind flight the winged Powers ?
Behold, ye cannot bring but good,
And see, ye dare not touch the truth.
Nor Sorrow beauteous in her youth.
Nor Love that holds a constant mood.
Ye must be wiser than your looks.
Or wise yourselves or wisdom-led.
Else this wide whisper round my head
Were idler than a flight of rooks. ^
Go forward ! crumble down a throne.
Dissolve a world, condense a star,
Unsocket all the joints of war,
And fuse the peoples into one.
P. 247. In Memoriam. [My father
wrote in 1839: "We must bear or we
must die. It is easier perhaps to die, but
infinitely less noble. The immortaUty of
man disdains and rejects the thought — the
immortality of man to which the cycles and
aeons are as hours and days." — Ed.]
P. 241. Introduction. Verse i. immortal
Love. [In answer to a friend my father
said: "This might be taken in a St. John
sense," Cf . i John iv. and v. — Ed.]
P. 241. Introduction. Verse ii.
Thine are these orbs of light and shade.
Sun and moon.
P. 242. Introduction. Verse iv. [An
old version of this verse was left by my
father in MS. in a book of prayers written
by my mother :
Thou seemest human and divine.
Thou madest man, without, within,
But who shall say thou madest sin ?
For who shall say, 'It is not mine' ?
Ed.]
P. 242. Introduction. Verse vi.
For knowledge is of things we see.
rd (paivbiJjeva.
P. 242. Introduction. Verse vii.
May make one music as before.
As in the ages of faith.
P. 242. Section i. Verse i., lines 3
and 4. I alluded to Goethe's creed.
Among his last words were these: "Von
Aenderungen zu hoheren Aenderimgen,"
"from changes to higher changes."
P. 242. Section I. Verse i. divers tones.
[My father would often say, "Goethe is
consummate in so many different styles."
— Ed.]
P. 242. Section I. Verse ii.
The far -of interest of tears.
The good that grows for us out of grief.
P. 242. Section i. Verses iii., iv. [Yet
it is better to bear the wild misery of
extreme grief than that Time should ob-
Uterate the sense of loss and deaden the
power of love. — Ep.]
P. 242. Section II. Verse i.
Thy fibres net the dreamless head.
Ne/ciJwv d/jLevrjua Kdprjva.
Od. X. 521, etc.
P. 242. Section 11. Verse iii. Cf.
xxxrx.
To touch thy thousand years of gloom.
[No autumn tints ever change the green
gloom of the yew. — Ed.]
P. 242. Section iii. First reahzation of
blind sorrow.
P. 242. Section in. Verse ii.
A web is wov'n across the sky.
[Cf . cxxii. i. — Ed.]
From out waste places comes a cry,
And murmurs from the dying sun.
Expresses the feeling that sad things in
Nature affect him who mourns.
P. 243. Section iv. Verse iii.
Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears,
That grief hath shaken into frost.
Water can be brought below freezing-
point and not turn into ice — if it be kept
still ; but if it be moved suddenly it turns
into ice and may break the vase.
928
NOTES
P. 243. Section vi. Verses i., ii.
One writes, that ' Other friends remain,'
That ' Loss is common 1,0 the race ' —
And common is the commonplace,
And vacant cha^ff well meant for grain.
That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more:
Too common I Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.
Cf. Lucretius ii. 578 :
Ni^c nox ulla diem neque noctem Aurora
secuta est,
Quae non audierit mixtos vagitibus aegris
Ploratus.
My friend W. G. Ward, the well-
known metaphysician, used to carry these
two verses in his pocket — for he said that
he felt so keenly that the vast sorrow in
the wt)rld made no difference to his own
personal deep sorrows — but through the
feeling of his own sorrow he felt the
universal sorrow more terribly than could
be conceived. [Cf . Memoir, i. 202 ; ib.
436. — Ed.]
P. 243. Section vt. Verse v. [My
father was writing to Arthur Hallam.in
the hour that he died. — Ed.]
P. 244. Section vii. Verse i.
Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street.
67 Wimpole Street [the house of the
historian Henry Hallam. A. H. H. used
to say, "You will always find us at sixes
and sevens." Cf. cxix. — Ed.].
P. 244. Section ix. Verse iii. Phosphor,
star of dawn.
P. 244. Section ix. Verse iv. Sphere.
[Addressed to the starry heavens. Cf.
Enoch Arden:
Then the great stars that globed them-
selves in heaven. Ed.]
P. 244. Section ix. Verse v. [See
below, Lxxix. — Ed.]
P, 244. Section x. Verse iii. [home-bred
fancies refers to the lines that follow — the
wish to rest in the churchyard or in the
chancel. — Ed.]
P. 245. Section x. Verse v. tangle, or
"oar- weed" {Laminaria digitata).
P. 245. Section xi. Verse ii.
Calm and deep peace on this high wold.
A Lincolnshire wold or upland from which
the whole range of marsh to the sea is
visible.
P. 245. Section xii. Verse ii,
/ leave this mortal ark behind.
My spirit flies from out my material self.
P. 245. Section xii. Verse iii. ocean-
mirrors rounded large. [The circles of
water which bound the horizon as seen
below in the flight. Cf.
Thro' many a fair sea-circle, day by day.
Enoch Arden. — Ed.]
P. 245. Section xiii. Verse iv. [Time
will teach him the full reality of his loss,
whereas now he scarce believes in it, and
is like one who between sleep and waking
can weep and has dream-fancies. — Ed.]
Mine eyes have leisure for their tears.
[Contrast the tearless grief in iv. iii., and
XX. — Ed.]
P. 245. Section xiv. [The unreality of
Death.] 1
P. 246. Section xiv. Verse iii.
The man I held as half -divine.
[My father said, "He was as near per-
fection as mortal man covdd be." — Ed.]
P. 246. Section xv. [The stormy night,
except it were for my fear for the "sacred
bark," would be in sympathy with me. —
Ed.]
P. 246. Section xv. Verse i.
And roar from yonder dropping day.
From the West.
P. 246. Section xv. Verse iii.
Athwart a plane of molten glass.
A calm sea.
P. 246. Section xvi. [He questions
himself about these alternations of "calm
despair" and "wild unrest." Do these
changes only pass over the surface of the
mind while in the depth still abides his
unchanging sorrow? or has his reason
been stunned by his grief ? — Ed.]
1 Note by my mother.
NOTES
929
Cf.
P. 246. Section xVni. Verse i.
Where he in English earth is laid.
Clevedon.
The violet of his native land.
"Lay her in the earth,
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring."
Hamlet, v. i. 261.
P. 247. Section xix. [Written at Tintem
Abbey. — Ed.]
P. 247. Section xix. Verse i.
T/ie Danube to the Severn gave.
He died at Vienna and was brought to
Clevedon to be buried.
P. 247. Section xrx. Verse ii.
There twice a day the Severn fills ;
The salt sea-v>§ter passes by,
And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.
Taken from my own observation — the
rapids of the Wye are stilled by the in-
coming sea.
P. 248. Section xxn. Verse i. four
sweet years. [1828-32. — Ed.]
P. 248. Section xxm. Verse ii.
Who keeps the keys of all the creeds.
After death we shall learn the truth of all
beliefs.
P. 248. Section xxm. Verse v.
And all the secret of the Spring.
Re-awakening of life.
P. 248. Section xxiv. Verse i. wander-
ing isles of night, sim-spots.
P. 248. Section xxiv. Verse iv.
And orb into the perfect star, etc.
[Cf. Locksley Hall Sixty Years After:
Hesper — Venus — were we native to that
splendour or in Mars,
We should see the Globe we groan in,
fairest of their evening stars.
Ed.]
P, 248. Section xxv. Verse i. this was
Life — chequered, but the burden was
shared.
P. 249. Section xxvi. Verse ii.
And if thai eye which watcher guilt, etc.
The Eternal Now. I AM.
30
P. 249. Section xxvi. Verse iii.
And Love the indifference to be..
[And that the present Love will end in
future indifference. — Ed.]
P. 249. Section xxvi. Verse iv.
Then might I fitid, ere yet the morn
Breaks hither over Indian seas.
[Cf. Midsummer-Night's Dream, 11, ii. 10,
and Comiis, 140 :
"Ere the blabbing eastern scout.
The nice mom on the Indian steep,
From her cabin'd loophole peep."
Then might I was in the original MS.
So might I. — Ed.]
my proper scorn, scorn of myself.
P. 249. Section xxvii. Verse iii. \want-
begotten rest means rest — the result of some
deficiency or narrowness. — Ed.]
P. 249. Section xxvii. Verse iv.
Tw better to have loved and lost, etc.
[My father regretted that Clough imitated
these Unes in Alteram Partem:
'Tis better to have fought and lost
Than never to have fought at all. Ed.]
P. 249. Section xxvm. Verse v.
The merry merry bells of Yule.
They always used to ring on Xmas Eve.
P. 249. Section xxlx. [Original reading
of first verse (MS.) :
With such compeUing cause to grieve
As that which drains our days of peace,
And fetters thought to his decease.
How dare we keep our Christmas-eve.
Ed.]
P. 249. Section xxrx. [Original read-
ing of third verse (MS.) :
But this — to keep it like the last,
To keep it even for his sake ;
Lest one more link should seem to
break,
And Death sweep all into the Past. Ed.]
P. 250. Section xxx. Verse ii. the hall
was the dining-room at Somersby which
my father [the Rev. G. C. Tennyson] built.
P. 250. Section xxx. Verse vii.
Rapt from the fickle and the frail.
930
NOTES
{Cf. The Ring:
No sudden heaven, nor sudden hell, for
man,
But thro' the Will of One who knows and
rules —
And utter knowledge is but utter love —
Ionian Evolution, swift or slow.
Thro' all the Spheres — an ever opening
height.
An ever lessening earth.
Cf. Memoir, ii. 365. — Ed.]
Rapt, taken.
P. 250. Section xxx. Verse viii. when
Hope was born. [My father often said :
"The cardinal point of Christianity is the
life after death." — Ed.]
P. 250. Section xxxi. "She goeth
unto the grave to weep there" (St. John
xi. 31).
P. 250. Section xxxi. Verse ii.
Had surely added praise to praise.
[Would have doubled our sense of thanks-
giving. — Ed.]
P. 250. Section xxxi. Verse iv. [He is
Lazarus. — Ed.]
P. 250. Section xxxiii. Verse ii.
A life that leads melodious days.
Cf. Statins, Silv. i. 3 :
ceu veritus turbare Vopisci
Pieriosque dies et habentes carmina
somnos.
P. 251. Section xxxiii. Verse iv.
In holding by the law within.
[In holding an intellectual faith which does
not care "to fix itself to form." — Ed.]
P. 251. Section xxxi v. Verse i. See
Introduction, Eversley Edition, pp. 218-19.
P. 251. Section xxxv. Verse i. the
narrow house, the grave.
P. 251. Section xxxv. Verse iii.
Monian hills, the everlasting hills.
The vastness of the Ages to come may
seem to militate against that Love. [Cf.
cxxiii. ii. — Ed.]
P. 251. Section xxxv. Verse iv.
The sound of that forgetful shore.
"The land where all things are forgotten."
P. 251. Section xxxvi. See Introduc-
tion, Eversley Edition, p. 222.
P. 251. Section xxxvi. Verse ii.
For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers,
Where truth in closest words shall fail,
When truth embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors.
For divine Wisdom had to deal with the
limited powers of humam'ty, to which truth
logically argued out would be ineffectual,
whereas truth coming in the story of the
Gospel can influence the poorest.
P. 251. Section xxxvi. Verse iii. the
Word. [As in the first chapter of St.
John's Gospel — the Revelation of the
Eternal Thought of the Universe. — Ed.]
P. 251. Section xxxvi. Verse i v. those
wild eyes. By this is intended the Pacific
Islanders, "wild" having a sense of "bar-
barian" in it.
P. 251. Section xxxvii. The Heavenly
muse bids the poet's muse sing on a less
lofty theme.
[Melpomene, the earthly muse of
tragedy, answers for the poet: "I am
compelled to speak — as I think of the
dead and of his words — of the comfort in
the creed of creeds, although I feel myself
unworthy to speak of such mysteries."] ^
P. 252. Section xxx vii. Verse v. [The
original reading in first edition :
And dear as sacramental wine.
Ed.]
P. 252. Section xxxvii. Verse vi.
master's field, the province of Christianity
(see XXXVI.).
P. 252. Section xxxviii. Verse ii. the
blowing season, the blossoming season.
P. 252. Section xxxvni. Verse iii.
[// any care for what is here
Survive in spirits rendered free.
Cf. Aen. iv. 34:
Id cinerem aut Manes credis curare sepultos ?
. Ed.]
P. 252. Section XXXIX. Verse i. smoke.
This section was added in 1869. The
yew, when flowering, in a wind or if struck
^ Note by my mother.
NOTES
931
sends up its pollen like smoke. [Cf. The
Holy Grail:
Beneath a world-old yew-tree, darkening
half
The cloisters, on a gustful April morn
That puff'd the swaying branches into
smoke.
Cf. Memoir, ii. 53. — Ed.]
P. 252. Section xxxix. Verse ii.
When flower is feeling after flower.
[The yew is dicecious. — Ed.]
P. 252. Section xxxtx. Verse iii. In
Section n., as in the two last lines of this
section. Sorrow only saw the winter gloom
of the foliage.
P. 252. Section XL. Verse vii. [would
have told means — would desire to be told.
— Ed.]
P. 252. Section XL. Verse viii. I have
parted with thee until I die, and my
paths are in the fields I know, whilst thine
are in lands which I do not know. [Cf.
"the undiscovered country," Hamlet, iii. i.
— Ed.]
P. 252. Section XLi. [This section
alludes to the doctrine which from first to
last, and in so many ways and images, my
father proclaimed — "the upward and on-
ward progress of life." — Ed.]
P. 253. Section xLi. Verse iv.
The howlings from forgotten fields.
The eternal miseries of the Inferno.
[More especially, I feel sure, a reminis-
cence of Dante's Inferno, Canto iii. lines
25-51, which he often quoted as giving
terribly the horror of it all. They describe
those wretched beings, who for ever shriek
and wail and beat their breasts because
they are despised, and forgotten, and con-
signed to everlasting nothingness on ac-
count of their colourlessness and indiflfer-
ence during life :
Fama di loro il mondo esser non lassa ;
Misericordia e giustizia gli sdegna ;
Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda e passa.
Ed.]
P. 253. Section xli. Verse vi. sectdar
to-be, aeons of the future. [Cf. lxxvi. ii. :
The secular abyss to come.
Ed.]
P. 253. Section xliii. If the immediate
life after death be only sleep, and the spirit
between this life and the next should be
folded like a flower in a night slumber,
then the remembrance of the past might
remain, as the smell and colour do in the
sleeping flower; and in that case the
memory of our love would last as true,
and would live pure and whole within the
spirit of my friend until it was unfolded at '
the breaking of the morn, when the sleep
was over.
P. 253. Section xliii. Verse i.
Thro' all its intervital gloom.
In the passage between this life and the
next.
P. 253. Section xlui. Verse iv.
And at the spiritual prime.
Dawn of the spiritual life hereafter.
P. 253'^ Section xliv. Verse i.
God shut the doonvays of his head.
Closing of the skull after babyhood.
The dead after this life may have no
remembrance of life, like the living babe
who forgets the time before the sutures of
the skull are closed, yet the living babe
grows in knowledge, and though the
remembrance of his earliegt days has
vanished, yet with his increasing knowledge
there comes a dreamy vision of what has
been; it may be so with the dead; if so,
resolve my doubts, etc.
P. 254. Section xlv. Verse iv.
This use may lie in blood and breath.
[The purpose of the life here may be to
realise personal consciousness. — Ed.]
P. 254. Section xlvi. [The original
reading of first verse (MS.) : —
In travelling thro' this lower clime.
With reason our memorial power
Is shadow' d by the growing hour.
Lest this should be too much for timi .
It is better for us who go forward on
the path of life that the past should in the
main grow dim. — Ed.]
P. 254. Section xlvi. Verse iv.
Original reading of first line was :
O me, Love's province were not large.
932
NOTES
Love, a brooding star. As if Lord of
the whole life.
[Memory fails here, but memory in the
next life must have all our being and exist-
ence clearly in view; and will see Love
shine forth as if Lord of the whole life
(not merely of those five years of friend-
ship), — the wider landscape aglow with
the sunrise of "that deep dawn behind
the tomb."
For the use of 'Look,' cf. Dedication,
'Dear, near and true.'
'Which in our winter woodland looks a
flower.' — Ed.]
P. 254. Section xlvii. The individu-
ality lasts after death, and we are not
utterly absorbed into the Godhead. If we
are to be finally merged in the Universal
Soul, Love asks to have at least one more
parting before we lose ourselves.
P. 254. Section xlviii. Verse iii.
shame to draw
The deepest measure.
[For there are "thoughts that do often
lie too deep for " mere poetic words. — Ed.]
P. 254. Section xlix. Verse ii. crisp
[curl, ripple. Cf.
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach.
, The Lotos-Eaters. — Ed.].
P. 255. Section Li. Verse iv. [See
Memoir, i. 481. The Queen quoted this
verse to my father about the Prince
Consort, just after his death, and told him
that it had brought her great comfort.
— Ed.]
P. 255. Section Lii. [T cannot love thee
as I ought, for human nature is frail, and
cannot be perfect like Christ's. Yet it is
the ideal, and truth to the ideal, which
make the wealth of life.^ The more direct
line of thought is that not even the Gospel
tale keeps man wholly true to the ideal of
Christ. But nothing — no shortcoming of
frail humanity — can move that Spirit of
the highest love from our side which bids
us endure and abide the issue. — Ed.]
P. 255. Section lii. Verse iv. Abide,
wait without wearying.
P. 255. Section liii. Verses ii., iii., iv.
And dare we to this fancy give.
1 Note by my mother.
There is a passionate heat of nature in a
rake sometimes. The nature that yields
emotionally may turn out stfaighter than a
prig's. Yet we must not be making
excuses, but we must set before us a rule
of good for young as for old.
P. 255. Section liii. Verse iv. divine
Philosophy. [Cf . xxiii. vi. — Ed.]
P. 256. Section lv. Verse i.
The likest God within the soul.
The inner consciousness — the divine in man.
P. 256. Section LV. Verse iii.
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear.
"Fifty" should be "myriad."
P. 256. Section LV. Verse v. the larger
hope. [My father means by "the larger
hope" that the whole human race would,
through, perhaps, ages of suffering, be at
length purified and saved, even those who
now "better not with time," so that at
the end of The Vision of Sin we read :
God made Himself an awful rose of dawn.
Ed.]
P. 256. Section lvi. Verse vi. Dragons
of the prime. The geologic monsters of
the early ages.
P. 256. Section LVii. [Cf. The Grave.
See supra, p. 926. — Ed.]
P. 256. Section lvii. Verse ii. / shall
pass; my work will fail. The poet speaks
of these poems. Methinks I have built a
rich shrine to my friend, but it will not last.
P. 256. Section lvii. Verse iv. Ave,
Ave. Cf. Catullus, Carm.- ci. 10, these
terribly pathetic lines :
Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu
Atque in perpetuum frater Ave atque
Vale.
[My father wrote: "Nor can any
modern elegy, so long as men retain the
least hope in the after-life of those whom
they loved, equal in pathos the desolation
of that everlasting farewell." — Ed.]
P. 257. Section lviii. Ulysses was
written soon after Arthur Ilallam's death,
and gave my feeUngs about the need of
going forward and braving the struggle of
life perhaps more simply than anything in
In Memoriam.
NOTES
933
P. 257. Section lix. [Inserted in 185 1
as a pendant to Section in. — Ed.]
P. 257. Section lxi. In power of love
not even the greatest deed can surpass the
poet.
P. 257. Section lxi. Verse i. [Cf.
xxxvni. iii. — Ed.]
P. 257. Section lxi. Verse iii. doubt-
ful shore. [Cf.
and that which should be man,
From that one light no man can look upon,
Drew to this shore lit by the suns and
moons
And all the shadows. De Profundis.
And:
And we, the poor earth's dying race, and
yet
No phantoms, watching from a phantom
shore.
Await the last and largest sense to make
The phantom walls of this illusion fade,
And show us that the world is wholly fair.
The Ancient Sage. — Ed.]
P. 258. Section lxiv. [This section
was composed by my father when he was
walking up and down the Strand and Fleet
Street. — Ed.]
P. 258. Section lxiv. Verse iii. golden
keys [keys of office of State. — Ed.].
P. 258. Section lxvii. Verse i.
By that broad water of the west.
The Severn.
P. 258. Section Lxvn. Verse iv. I my-
self did not see Clevedon till years after
the burial of A. H. H. (Jan. 3, 1834),
and then in later editions of In Memoriam
I altered the word "chancel" (, which was
the word used by Mr. Hallam in his
Memoir) to "dark church."
P. 259. Section lxviii. Verse i.
Death's twin-brother. " Consanguineus
Leti Sopor" (Aen. vi. 278).
[Cf. //. xiv. 231 ; II. xvi. 672 and 682.
— Ed.]
P. 259. Section LXix. To write poems
about death and grief is "to wear a crown
of thorns," which the people say ought to
be laid aside.
. P. 259. Section lxix. V.?rse iv.
f found an angel of the night.
But the Divine Thing in the gloom brought
comfort.
P. 259. Section Lxxi. [The original
reading of first verse (MS.) :
Old things are clear in waking trance.
And thou, O Sleep, hast made at last
A night-long Present of the Past
In which we went thro' svmny France.
Ed.]
we went [in 1832 (see Memoir, i. 51
foil., and the poem In the Valley of
Cauteretz. — ^ Ed.].
P. 259. Section lxxi. [The original
reading of last verse (MS.) :
Beside the river's wooded reach.
The meadow set with summer flags.
The cataract clashing from the crags.
The breaker breaking on the beach.
Ed.]
P. 259. " Section lxxi. Verse iv.
The cataract flashing from the bridge.
[That is, from under the bridge. — Ed.]
P. 260. Section lxxii. Hallam's death-
day, September the 15th. [Cf. xcix.
— Ed.]
P. 260. Section lxxii. Verse iv. yet
look'd. [Yet wouldst have looked. — Ed.]
P 260. Section lxxii. Verse vii. thy
dull goal of joyless gray [the dull sunset. —
Ed.].
P. 260. Section Lxxiii. Verse ii.
For nothing is that errs from law.
Cf. Zoroaster's saying, "Nought errs. from
law."
P. 260. Section lxxiii. Verse iv.
A nd self -infolds the large results
Of force that would have forged a name.
[And conserves the strength which would
have gone to the making of a name. Cf.
Ode on the Death of the Duke of Welling-
ton:
Gone ; but nothing can bereave him
Of the force he made his own
Being here,
and foil. — Ed.]
P. 260. Section lxxv. Verse iii. the
breeze of song. Cf. Pindar, Pyth. iv. 3:
ovpov Vfiviav.
934
NOTES
P. 261. Section lxxv. Verse iv.
Thy leaf has perish'd in the green.
At twenty-three.
P. 261. Section lxxvi. Verse i.
Take wings of fancy, and ascend,
A nd in a moment set thy face
Where all the starry heavens of space
Are sharpen'' d to a needless end.
So distant in void space that all our firma-
ment would appear to be a needle-point
thence.
P. 261. Section lxxvi. Verse ii.
The secular abyss to come
= the ages upon ages to be (cf. Sect. xo.
vi.).
P. 261. Section lxxvi. Verse iii. the.
matin songs. The great early poets.
P. 261. Section LXXVI. Verse iv. these
remain. [The yew and oak. — Ed.]
P. 261. Section Lxxvii. Verse iii. then
changed to something else. [The grief that
is no longer a grief. — Ed.]
P. 261. Section lxxviii. Verse iii.
The mimic picture's breathing grace.
Tableaux vivants.
P. 261. Section lxxviii. Verse iii.
hoodman-blind, blind man's bufif. [Cf.
"What devil was't
That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-
blind ? " Hamlet, m. iv. 77. — Ed.]
P. 261. Section Lxxix. The section is
addressed to my brother Charles (Tenny-
son Turner).
[My father wrote to Mr. Gladstone:
"He was almost the most lovable human
being I have ever met." — Ed.]
P. 261. Section lxxix. Verse i. in fee
[in possession. Cf. Wordsworth's sonnet
on Venice :
"Once did she hold the gorgeous East in
fee." Ed.].
P. 262. Section lxxix. Verse iv. kin-
dred brows was originally "brother brows."
P. 262. Section lxxxi. Verse i.
Could I have said while he was here
— Would that I could have said, etc.
[I printed this explanatory note, which
my father read and did not alter; and he
told me, as far as I remember, that a note
of exclamation had been omitted by acci-
dent after "ear" (thus, "ear!"). James
Spedding, in a pencil note on the MS. of
In Memoriam, writes, "Could I have said"
— meaning, "I wish I could." — Ed.]
P. 262. Section lxxxi. Verse ii. Love,
then. [Love at that time. — Ed.]
P. 262. Section lxxxii. Verse ii.
From state to state the spirit walks.
[Cf. Sect. XXX. vi. and vii., and
Some draught of Lethe might await
The slipping thro' from state to state.
The Two Voices. — Ed.]
P. 263. Section lxxxiv. Verse iii.
When thou should'st link thy life with
one
Of mine own house.
The projected marriage of A. H. H. with
Emily Tennyson.
P. 263. Section lxxxiv. Verse xi.
A rrive at last the blessed goal.
Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, Bk. ii. :
"ere he arrive
The happy isle."
P. 263. Section lxxxiv. Verse xii. back-
ward. [Looking back on what might have
been. — Ed.]
P. 263. Section lxxxv. Verse vi.
The great Intelligences fair.
Cf . Lycidas :
"There entertain him all the Saints above
In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
That sing, and singing in their glory
move.
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes. "
[Cf. Milton, Par. Lost, v. 407, and
Dante, // Convito, ii. 5 :
Intelligenze, le quali la volgare gente chiama
Angeli. Ed.]
P. 263. Section lxxxv. Verse vii.
cycled times [earthly periods. — Ed.].
P. 264. Section lxxxv. Verse x.
Yet none could better know than I,
How much of act at human hands
The sense of human will demands.
Yet I know that the knowledge that we
have free will demands from us action.
NOTES
935
P. 264. Section lxxxv. Verse xiv.
imaginative woe. [The imaginative and
speculative sorrow of the poet. Cf. infra,
verse xxiv. :
And pining life be fancy-fed.
Ed.]
P. 264.. Section lxxxv. Verse xxiii.
[Think of me as having reached the final
goal of bliss, and as triumphing in the
one far-off divine event
To which the whole creation moves.
Ed.]
P. 264. Section lxxxv. Verse xxvi.,
line I.
[With love as true, if not so fresh.
Ed.]
P. 264. Section lxxxv. Verse xxvii.
hold apart. [Set by itself, above rivalry. —
Ed.]
P. 264. Section lxxxv. Verse xxix.,
refers to his 'bride to be,' Emily Sell wood.
P. 265. Section lxxxvi. Written at
Barmouth.
P. 265. Section lxxxvi. Verse i. am-
brosial air. It was a west wind.
P. 265. Section Lxxx\a. Verse ii. the
horned flood. Between two promontories.
P. 265. Section lxxxvi. Verse iv. orient
star. Any rising star is here intended.
P. 265. Section lxxxvii. Trinity Col-
lege, Cambridge.
P. 265. Section Lxxxvn. Verse iv. the
rooms. Which were in New Court, Trinity.
[Now "3 G. — Ed.]
P. 265. Section lxxxvii. Verse x.
The bar of Michael Angelo.
The broad bar of frontal bone over the
eyes of Michael Angelo.
P. 265. Section lxxxviii. To the
Nightingale.
P. 265. Section lxxxviii. Verse i.
quicks [quickset thorn. — Ed.].
P. 266. Section lxxxix. Somersby.
P. 266. Section lxxxix. Verse i.
counterchange [chequer. — Ed.].
The "towering sycamore" is cut down,
and the four poplars are gone, and the
lawn is no longer flat.
P. 266. Section lxxxix. Verse xii.
Before the crimson-circled star
Had falVn into her father's grave.
Before Venus, the evening star, had dipt
into the sunset. The planets, according
to Laplace, were evolved from the sun.
P. 266. Section xc. [He who first
suggested that the dead would not be
welcome if they came to life again knew
not the highest love. Cf.
For surely now our household hearths are
cold:
Oiu" sons inherit us : our looks are strange :
And we should come like ghosts to trouble
joy. The Lotos-Eaters. — Ed.]
P. 267. Section xci. Verse i.
Flits by the sea-blue bird of March.
Darts the sea-shining bird of March
would best suit the Kingfisher. 1 used to
see him in our brook first in March. He
came up from the sea. aXiirdpcpvpos etapos
6pvis (Alcman). Cf. Memoir, ii. 4. —
Ed .J
P. 267. Section xcii. Verse iv.
Ami such refractiov of events
As often rises erv lliey rise.
The heavenly bodies are seen above the
horizon, by refraction, before they actually
rise.
P. 267. Section xciii. Verse ii.
Where all the fierve of sense is numb.
[This spiritual state is described in Sect,
xciv. — Ed.]
P. 267. Section xciu. Verse iii.
With gods in unconjectured bliss.
[Cf . Camus, 1 1 :
"Among the enthroned gods on sainted
seats." Ed.]
tenfold-complicated. ' [Refers to the ten
heavens of Dante. Cf. Paradiso, xxviii.
15 foil. — Ed.]
P. 267. Section xciv. Verse iii.
They haunt the silence of the breast.
This was what I felt.
P. 267. Section xcv. Verse ii.
The brook alone far-off was heard.
It was a marvellously still night, and I
936
NOTES
asked my brother Charles to listen to the
brook, which we had never heard so far off
before,
P. 268. Section xcv. Verse iii. lit
the filmy shapes
That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes
And woolly breasts and beaded eyes.
Moths; perhaps the ermine or the puss-
moth.
P. 268. Section xcv. Verse ix. The
living soul. The Deity, maybe. The
first reading, "his living soul," troubled
me, as perhaps giving a wrong impression.
[The old passage that troubled him was :
His living soul was flash' d on mine.
And mine in' his was wound, and whirl' d
About empyreal heights of thought,
And came on that which is.
With reference to the later reading, my
father would say: "Of course the greater
Soul may include the less." He preferred,
however, for fear of giving a wrong im-
pression, the vaguer and more abstract
later reading; and his further comment
was: "I have often had that feeling of
being whirled up and rapt into the Great
Soul." — Ed.]
P. 268. Section xcv. Verse x. that
which is. IT6 6v, the Absolute Reality. —
Ed.]
P. 268. Section xcv. Verse xi. The
trance came to an end in a moment of
critical doubt, but the doubt was dispelled
by the glory of the dawn of the "boundless
day."
P. 268. Section xcvi. Verse ii.
/ know not: one indeed I knew
In many a subtle question versed,
Who touched a jarring lyre at first.
But ever strove to make it true.
A. H. H.
P. 269. Section xcvi. Verse vi. Cf.
Exod. xix. 16, "And it came to pass on the
third day, in the morning, that there were
thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud
upon the mount, and the voice of the
trumpet exceeding loud."
[The thought suggested in this verse is
that the stronger faith of Moses — found in
the darkness of the cloud through commune
with the Power therein dwelling — is of a
higher order than the creeds of those who
walk by sight rather than by insight. — Ed.]
P. 269. Section xcvii. The relation
of one on earth to one in the other and
higher world. Not my relation to him
here. He looked up to me as I looked up
to him.
The spirit yet in the flesh but united in
love with the spirit out of the flesh re-
sembles the wife of a great man of science.
She looks up to him — but what he knows
is, a mystery to her.
[Love finds his image everywhere. The
relation of one on earth to one in the other
world is as a wife's love for her husband
after a love which has been at first de-
monstrative. Now he is compelled to be
wrapt in matters dark and deep. Although
he seems distant, she knows that he loves
her as well as before, for she loves him in
all true faith.] ^
P. 269. Section xcvii. Verse i.
His own vast shadow glory-crown' d.
Like the spectre of the Brocken.
P. 269. Section xcviii. Verse i. You
leave us. "You" is imaginary.
P. 269. Section xcviii. Verse ii. wisp,
ignis-fatuus.
P. 269. Section XCVIII. Verse v. Gnarr,
snarl.
P. 269. Section xcviii. Verse vi.
mother town, metropolis.
P. 270. Section xcix. Verse i.
Day, when I lost the flower of men.
September the isth. Cf. lxxii. ii.
P. 270. Section xcix. Verse iii. coming
care [the hardship of winter. — Ed.].
P. 270. Section xcix. Verse v.
Betwixt the slumber of the poles.
The ends of the axis of the earth, which
move so slowly that they seem not to move,
but slumber.
P. 270. Section c. (1837.) Verse i. /
climb the hill. Hill above Somersby.
P. 270. Section c. Verse iv.
Nor runlet tinkling from the rock.
The rock in Holywell, which is a wooded
ravine, commonly called there "the Glen."
1 Note by my mother.
NOTES-
937
P. 270. Section ci. Verse iii. The
brook. [The brook at Somersby, the charm
and beauty of which was a joy to my father
all his life. — Ed.]
or when the lesser wain. [My father
would often spend his nights wandering
about the wolds, gazing at the stars.
Edward FitzGerald writes: "Like Words-
worth on the mountains, Alfred too, when
a lad abroad on the wold, sometimes of a
night with the shepherd, watched not only
the flock on the greensward, but also
the fleecy star that bears
Andromeda far off Atlantic seas."
Cf. Memoir, i. 19. — Ed.]
P. 271. Section en. Verse ii.
Two spirits of a diverse love.
First, the love of the native place ; second,
this enhanced by the memory of A. H. H.
P. 271. Section cin. [I have a dream
which comforts me on leaving the old home
and brings me content. The departure
suggests the departure of death, and my
reunion with him. I have grown in spiritual
grace as he has. The gorgeous sky at the
end of the section typifies the glory of the
hope in that which is to be.] ^
P. 271. Section cni. Verse ii.
Methought I dwelt within a hall,
And maidens with me.
They are the Muses, poetry, arts — all
that made life beautiful here, which we hope
will pass with us beyond the grave.
hidden summits, the divine.
river, life.
P. 271. Section cm. Verse iv. sea,
eternity.
P. 271. Section cm. Verse vii. The
Progress of the Age.
P. 271. Section cm. Verse ix. The
great hopes of hvmianity and science.
P. 272. Section civ. Verse i.
A single church below the hill.
Waltham Abbey church.
P. 272. Section crv. Verse iii.
But all is new unhallow'd ground.
1 Note by my mother.
High Beech, Epping Forest (where we
were Uvingj. [Cf. xcix. ii. — Ed.]
P. 272. Section cv. Verse iii. abuse.
[Cf . XXX. ii. In the old sense — wrong. —
Ed.]
P. 272. Section cv. Verses vi.-vii.
No dance, no motion, save alone
What lightens in the lucid east
Of rising worlds by yonder wood.
The scintillating motion of the stars that
rise.
P. 272. Section cv. Verse vii.
[Run out your measured arcs, and lead
The closing cycle.
Fulfil your appointed revolutions, and
bring the closing period "rich in good."
Cf . Virgil, Eel. iv. 4 :
Ultima Cymaei venit jam carminis aetas.
Ed.]
P. 272. Section cvi. Verse viii.
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
The broader Christianity of the future.
P. 272. Section cvii. Verse i.
// is the day when he was born.
February i, 181 1.
P. 273. Section cvii. Verse iii. grides,
grates.
P. 273. Section cvii. Verse iv. drifts.
[Fine snow which passes in squalls to fall
into the breaker, and darkens before
melting in the sea. Cf. The Progress of
Spring, III. — Ed.]
P. 273. Section cvm. Verse i.
/ will notjhut me from my kind.
Grief shall not make me a hermit, and I
will not indulge in vacant yearnings and
barren aspirations; it is useless trying to
find him in the other worlds — I find nothing
but the reflections of myself ; I had better
learn the lesson that sorrow teaches.
P. 273. Section cvm. -Verse iv. [The
original reading of last line (MS.) :
Yet how much wisdom sleeps with thee.
Cf. cxm. i.
A pencil note by James Spedding on
the MS. of In Memoriam says: "You
might give the thought a turn of this kind :
'The wisdom that died with you is lost for
938
•NOTES
ever, but out of the loss itself some other
wisdom may be gained.'" — Ed.]
P. 273. Section cix. [My father wrote
to Henry Hallam on February 14, 1834:
"That you intend to print some of my
friend's remains (tho' only for private
circulation) has given me greater pleasure
than anything I have experienced for a
length of time. I attempted to draw up a
memoir of his life and character, but I
failed to do him justice. I failed even to
please myself. I could scarcely have
pleased you. I hope to be able at a
future period to concentrate whatever
powers I may possess on the construction
of some tribute to those high speculative
endowments and comprehensive sympathies
which I ever loved to contemplate ; but at
present, tho' somewhat ashamed at my
own weakness, I find the object yet is too
near me to permit of any very accurate
deUneation. You, with your clear insight
into human nature, may perhaps not
wonder that in the dearest service I could
have been employed in, I should be found
most deficient. ... I know not whether
among the prose pieces you would include
the one which he was accustomed to call
his Theodicean Essay. I am inclined to
think it does great honour to his originality
of thought. Among the poems — if you
print the one entitled Timbuctoo — I would
request you, for my sake, to omit the
initiatory note. The poem is everyway so
much better than that wild and unmethod-
ized performance of my own, that even
his praise on such a subject v/ould be
painful." 1 The judgment on Hallam of
his contemporaries coincided with that of
my father. See Memoir, i. 105-08. —
Ed.]
P. 273. Section CIX. Verse i.
Heart-affluence in discursive talk
From household fountains never dry.
[Cf. The Princess, p. 173, col. 2, line 15:
and betwixt them blossom'd up
From out a common vein of memory
Sweet household talk, and phrases of the
hearth,
And far allusion.
1 From an unpuhlii'icl letter in possession of
Mr. Arthur Lee, M.P.
See also Coleridge, Dejection, an Ode:
"I may not hope from outward forms to
win
The passion and the life, whose fountains
are within." Ed.]
P. 273. Section cix. Verse vi.
Nor let thy wisdom make me wise.
If I do not let thy wisdom make me wise.
P. 273. Section ex. Verse i.
The men of rathe and riper years.
["Rathe," Anglo-Saxon hrceth, "early."
Cf. Lancelot and Elaine: "Till rathe she
rose." Ed.]
P. 274. Section cxi. Verse v. Drew in
[contracted, narrowed. — Ed.].
Where God and Nature met in light.
Cf. Lxxxvii. Verse ix. :
The God within him light his face.
P. 274. Section CXI. Verse vi. charlatan.
From Ital. ciarlatano, a mountebank;
hence the accent on the last syllable.
P. 274. Section cxii. Verse i. [High
wisdom is ironical. "High wisdom" has
been twitting the poet that although he
gazes with calm and indulgent eyes on
unaccomplished greatness, yet he rnakes
light of narrower natures more perfect in
their own small way. — Ed.]
glorious insufficiencies. Unaccomplished
greatness such as Arthur Hallam's.
Set light by, make light of.
[In answer to "high wisdom" the poet
says: "The power and grasp and origin-
aHty of A. H. H.'s intellect, and the great-
ness of his nature [which are not mere
"glorious insufficiencies"], make me seem
careless about those that have a narrower
perfectness."] ^
P. 274. Section cxii. Verse ii. the lesser
lords of doom. Those that have free-will,
but less intellect.
P. 274. Section cxiii. Verse i. [Cf.
cviii. iv. — Ed.]
P. 274. Section cxiv. Verse i.
Who shall fix
Her pillars ?
"Wisdcm hath builded her house, she
1 Note by my mother.
NOTES
939
hath hewn out her seven pillars" (Pro v.
ix. i).
P. 275. Section cxv. Verse i. burgeons,
buds.
maze of quick, quickset tangle.
squares. [Ci. The Ring:
the down, that sees
A thousand squares of com and meadow,
far
As the gray deep. Ed.]
P. 275. Section cxvi. Verse i. crescent
prime, growing spring.
P. 275. Section cx\ai. Verse iii.
And every span of shade that steals.
The sim-dial.
And every kiss of toothed wheels.
The clock.
P. 276. Section cxvin. Verse iv. [type,
represent. Cf. The Princess, p. 209, col. 2,
lines 12, 13:
Dear, but let us type them now
In our own lives. Ed.]
P. 276. Section cxviii. Verse v. [By
gradual self-development, or by sorrows
and fierce strivings and calamities. — Ed.]
P. 276. Section cxrx. [Cf. vn. — Ed.]
P. 276. Section cxx. Verse i. Like
Paul with beasts. "If after the manner
of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus,
what advantageth it me ? " (i Cor. xv. 32).
P. 276. Section cxx. Verse iii.
Let him, the wiser man who springs
Hereafter, up from childhood shape
His action like the greater ape.
Spoken ironically against mere materialism,
not against evolution.
born to other things. [Cf. By an Evolu-
tionist:
The Lord let the house of a brute to the
soul of a man,
And the man said "Am I your debtor?"
And the Lord — " Not yet : but make it as
clean as you can.
And then I will let you a better."
Ed.]
P. 276. Section cxxi. [Written at Ship-
lake, where my father and mother were
married. — Ed.]
P. 276. Section cxxi. Verse v.
Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name.
The evening star is also the morning star,
death and sorrow brighten into death and
hope.
P. 276. Section cxxii. Verse i. doom
— that of grief.
P. 277. Section cxxii. Verse v.
And every dew-drop paints a bow.
Every dew-drop turns into a miniature
rainbow.
P. 277; Section cxxin. Geologic changes.
[All material things are unsubstantial,' yet
there is that in myself which assures me
that the spiritual part of man abides, and
that we shall meet again.] ^
P. 277. Section cxxin. Verse i.
The stillness of the central sea.
Balloonists say that even in a storm the
middle sea is noiseless.
[Professor George Darwin writes: "Peo-
ple always talk at sea of the howling of
the wind and lashing of the sea, but it is
the ship that makes it all. A man clinging
to a spar in a heavy sea would only hear
a Uttle gentle swishing from the 'white
horses.'" — Ed.]
P. 277. Section cxxm. Verse iii.
For tho' my lips may breathe adieu,
I cannot think the thing farewell.
[Cf. note to Lvii. iv., and the poem Prater
Ave atque Vale. — Ed.]
P. 277. Section cxxiv. Verse v. [blind
clamour refers to
I heard a voice 'believe no more'
And heard an ever-brealcing shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep.
Ed.]
P. 277. Section cxxvi. [The following
was originally the second verse (MS.) :
Love is my king, nor here alone.
But where I see the distance loom.
For in the field behind the tomb
There rests the shadow of his throne.
Ed.]
1 Note by my mother.
940
NOTES
P. 278. Section cxxvi. [The following
was originally the third verse (MS.) :
And here at times a sentinel
That moves about from place to place
And whispers to the vast of space
Among the worlds, that all is well.
Ed.]
P. 278. Section cxxvii. Verse iv. brute
earth. [Cf. "bruta tellus," the heavy,
inert earth (Hor. Carm. i. xxxiv.). — Ed.]
P. 278. Section cxxviii. [In comrade-
ship with Love that is all the stronger for
facing Death, the Faith which believes in
the progress of the world sees that all in
the individual as in the race is working to
one great result, however retrograde the
eddies of the world-currents may at times
appear to be.] ^ (This section must be
read in 'close connection with cxxvi. and
CXXVII.)
P. 278. Section cxxix. [These two
faiths are in reality the same. The thought
of thee as human and divine mingles with all
great thoughts as to the destiny of the world
(cf. cxxx.).] 2
He "shall live though he die."
^ P. 278. Section cxxxi. [The following
words were uttered by my father in January
1869, and bear upon this section : — "Yes,
it is true that there are moments when the
flesh is nothing to me, when I feel and
know the flesh to be the vision, God and
the Spiritual the only real and true. Depend
upon it, the Spiritual is the real : it belongs
to one more than the hand and the foot.
You may tell me that my hand and my
foot are only imaginary symbols of my
existence, I could beheve you; but you
never, never can convince me that the I is
not an eternal Reahty, and that the Spiritual
is not the true and real part of me." These
words he spoke with such passionate earnest-
ness that a solemn silence fell on us as he
left the room. — Ed.]
P. 278. Section cxxxi. Verse i. 0 living
will. That which we know as Free-will in
man.
spiritual rock. [Cf. i Cor. x. 4. — Ed.]
P. ■279. Section cxxxi. Verse ii. con-
1 Note by my mother. 2 Note by my mother.
quer'd years. [Cf. "Victor Hours," i. iv.
— Ed.]
P. 279. Conclusion. The marriage of
Edmund Lushington and Cecilia Tennyson,
Oct. 10, 1842.
[These two verses were probably written
at this time :
SPEAK TO ME
Speak to me from the stormy sky ! .
The wind is loud in holt and hill,
It is not kind to be so still :
Speak to me, dearest, lest I die.
Speak to me, let me hear or see !
Alas, my life is frail and weak :
Seest thou my faults and wilt not speak ?
They are not want of love for thee.
Ed.]
P. 281. Maud; a Monodrama.
[First pubUshed in 1855. My father Uked
reading aloud this poem, a "Drama of the
Soul," set in a landscape glorified by Love,
and, according to Lowell, "The anti-
phonal voice to Iti Memoriam," which is
the "Way of the Soul." The whole of it,
except "O that 'twere possible" (see Note
on Part II. iv. and Introduction), was
written at Farringford. — Ed.] The stanzas
where he is mad in Bedlam, from 'Dead,
long dead' to 'Deeper, ever so little deeper,'
were written in twenty minutes, and some
mad doctor wrote to me that nothing since
Shakespeare has been so good for madness
as this.
"At the opening of the drama, the chief
person or hero of the action is introduced
with scenery and incidents artistically dis-
posed around his figure, so as to make the
reader at once acquainted with certain facts
in his history. Although still a young man,
he has lost his father some years before by
a sudden and violent death, following im-
mediately upon unforeseen ruin brought
about by an unfortunate speculation in
which the deceased had engaged. Whether
the death was the result of accident, or
self-inflicted in a moment of despair, no
one knows, but the son's mind has been
painfully possessed -by a suspicion of viUainy
and foul play somewhere, because an old
friend of his family became suddenly and
unaccountably rich by the same transaction
that had brought ruin to the dead. Shortly
NOTES '
941
after the decease of his father, the bereaved
young man, by the death of his mother, is
left quite alone in the world. He continues
thenceforth to reside in -the retired village
in which his early days have been spent,
but the sad experiences of his youth have
confirmed the bent of a mind constitu-
tionally prone to depression and melancholy.
Brooding in loneliness upon miserable
memories and bitter fancies, his tempera-
ment as a matter of course becomes more
and more morbid and irritable. He can
see nothing in human affairs that does not
awaken in him disgust and contempt. Evil
glares out from all social arrangements, and
unqualified meanness and selfishness appear
in every human form, and he keeps to
himself and chews the cud of cynicism
and discontent apart from his kind. Such
in rough outline is the figure the poet has
sketched as the foundation and centre of
his plan. . , . Since the days of his early
youth up to the period when the immediate
action of the poem is supposed to com-
mence, the dreamy recluse has seen
nothing of the family of the man to whom
circumstances have inclined him to attri-
bute his misfortunes. This individual,
although since his accession to prosperity
the possessor of the neighbouring hall and
of the manorial lands of the village, has
been residing abroad. Just at this time,
however, there are workmen up at the
dark old place, and a rumour spreads that
the absentees are about to return. This
rumour, as a matter of course, stirs up
afresh rankling memories in the breast of
the recluse, and reawakens there old griefs.
But with the group of associated recollec-
tions that come crowding forth, there is
one of the child Maud, who was in happier
days his merry playfellow. She will now,
however, be a child no longer." — Robert
James Mann, M.D., F.R.A.S., etc.
Part I
[The division into Parts does not exist
in the original 1855 edition, which contains
XXVI. Sections. — Ed.]
P. 281. I. Before the arrival of Maud.
P. 281. I. Verse i. blood-red heath.
[My father would say that in calling heath
"blood "-red the hero showed his extra-
vagant fancy, which is already on the
road to madness. — Ed.]
P. 383. Verse xix. [My father allowed
me to print in these notes some few of the
variorum readings for which his friends
had asked, but he said to me, "Very often
what is published in my poems as the
latest edition has been the original version
in the first manuscript, so that there is no
possibility of really tracing the history of
what may seem to be a new word or
passage. For instance, in the first edition
of Maud I wrote 'I will bury myself in
my books and the Devil may pipe to his
own,' which was afterwards altered, to 'I
will bury myself in myself ,' etc. This was
highly commended by the critics as an
improvement on the original reading,
whereas it was actually in the first MS.
draft of the poem. Great works have
been entirely spoilt for me by the modern
habit of giving every various reading along
with the text." — Ed.]
P. 283. II. First sight of Maud.
P. 283. III. Visions of the night. Broad-
flung shipwrecking roar. In the Isle of
Wight the roar can be heard nine miles
away from the beach.
[Many of the descriptions of Nature
are taken from observations of natural
phenomena at Farringford, although the
locaUties in the poem are all imaginary. —
Ed.]
P. 284. IV. Mood of bitterness after
fancied disdain.
P. 284. rv. Verse vi. A monstrous eft,
the great old lizards of geolog>^
P. 285. IV. Verse viii. an I sis hid by the
veil. The great Goddess of the Egyptians.
'E7Ci» el/XL irav t6 yeyovds, Kai 6p, Kai
ecrSnevov, Kai t6v ifxbp iriir\ov ovdels ttw
dvTjrbs aireKi\v\pe.
P. 285. V. He fights against his
growing passion.
P. 286. VI. First interview with Maud.
P. 286. VI. Verse vi. Assyrian Bull.
With hair curled like that of the bulls on
Assyrian sculpture.
P. 287. VII. He remembers his father
and her father talking just before the birth
of Maud.
942
NOTES
P. 287. vin. It cannot be pride that
she did not return his bow. (Sec. iv.
verse iii.)
P. 287. DC. First sight of the young
lord.
P. 288. X. Verse iii.
Last week came one to the county town.
The Westminster Review said this was
an attack on John Bright. I did not even
know at the time that he was a Quaker.
[It was not against Quakers but against
peace-at-all-price men that the hero ful-
minates.]
This was originally verse iii., but I
omitted it :
Will she smile if he presses her hand,
This lord-captain up at the Hall ?
Captain ! he to hold a command !
He can hold a cue, he can pocket a ball ;
And sure not a bantam cockerel lives
With a weaker crow upon English land,
Whether he boast of a horse that gains,
Or cackle his own applause. . . .
What use for a single mouth to rage
At the rotten creak of the State-machine ;
Tho' it makes friends weep and enemies
smile,
That here in the face of a watchful age.
The sons of a gray-beard-ridden isle
Should dance in a round of an old routine.
P. 289. XII. Interview with Maud.
P. 289. XII. Verse i.
Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud.
Like the rook's caw.
P. 289. XII. Verse iii.
Maud is here, here, here.
Like the call of the little birds.
P. 289. XII. Verse vi.
And left the daisies rosy.
Because if you tread on the daisy, it
turns up a rosy underside.
P. 289. xni. Morbidly prophetic. He
sees Maud's brother, who will not recognize
him.
P. 290. XVI. He will declare his love.
P. 291. XVII. Accepted.
P. 291. xviii. Happy. The sigh in
the cedar branches seems to chime in with
his own yearning.
P. 292. xviii. Verse iv. The sad
astrology is modern astronomy, for of old
-astrology was thought to sympathise with
and rule man's fate. The stars are "cold
fires," for tho' they emit light of the highest
intensity, no perceptible warmth reaches
us. His newer astrology describes them
(verse viii.) as "soft splendours."
P. 292. xviii. Verse vii.
Not die; but live a life of truest breath.
This is the central idea — the holy power
of Love.
P. 292. xviii. Verse vii.
The dusky strand of Death inwoven here.
Image taken from the coloured strands
inwoven in coloured ropes, e.g. in the
Admiralty rope.
P. 294. XXI. Before the Ball.
P. 295. XXII. In the Hall-Garden.
Part II
P. 296. I. The Phantom (after the duel
with Maud's brother).
P. 296. II. In Brittany. The shell
undestroyed amid the storm perhaps sym-
bolises to him his own first and highest
nature preserved amid the storms of
passion.
P. 297. II. Verse vi.
But that of Lamech is mine.
"I have slain a man to my wounding,
and a young man to my hurt" (Gen. iv.
23).
P. 297. III. He felt himself going mad.
P. 297. IV. Haunted (after Maud's
death).
"O that 'twere possible" appeared first
in the Tribute, 1837. Sir John Simeon
years after begged me to weave a story
round this poem, and so Maud came into
being.
P. 299. V. In the madhouse.
P. 299. v. Verse iv.
Who told him we were there?
i.e. the brother.
P. 299. v. Verse v. gray old wolf.
[Cf. Part I. XIII. iii. — Ed.]
NOTES
943
P. 299. V. Verse v. Crack them now
for yourself. For his son is, he thinks,
dead.
P. 299. V. Verse vi.
And curse me the British vermin, the rat.
The Norwegian rat has driven out the
old EngUsh rat. [The Jacobites asserted
that the brown Norwegian rat came to
England with the House of Hanover, 17 14,
and hence called it "the Hanover rat." —
Ed.]
P. 300. V. Verse viii. the keeper = the
brother.
P. 300. V. Verse viii. a dead man, that
is, himself in his fancy.
P. 300. V. Verse ix. what will the old
man say? Maud's father.
The second corpse is Maud's brother, '
the lover's father being the first corpse,
whom the lover thinks that Maud's father
murdered.
Part III
P. 300. VI. Sane, but shattered. Written
when the cannon was heard booming from
the battleships in the Solent before the
Crimean War.
[Some of the reviews accused my father
of loving war, and urging the country to
war, charges which he suflSciently answered
in the "Epilogue to the Heavy Brigade":
And who loves War for War's own sake "
Is fool, or crazed, or worse ;
But let the patriot-soldier take
His meed of fame in verse.
Indeed, he looked passionately forward to
the
Parliament of man, the Federation of the
world.
What the hero in Maud says is that the
sins of the nation, "civil war" as he calls
them, are deadlier in their effect than what
is commonly called war, and that they may
be in a measure subdued by the war
between nations, which is an evil more
easily ■ recognised. Cf. Gladstone's Glean-
ings, vol. ii., on Maud. — Ed.]
P. 300. VI. [On the i6th of March
1854 my father was looking through his
(Farringford) study window at the planet
Mars, "as he glow'd like a ruddy shield
on the Lion's breast," and so determined
to name his second son, who was born on
that day, Lionel. — Ed.]
THE IDYLLS OF THE KING
INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY THE
EDITOR
The earhest prose fragment about King
Arthur that I can find among my father's
MSS. was probably written about 1833.
I give it as it stands.
King Arthur
On the latest limit of the West in the
land of Lyonnesse, where, save the rocky
Isles of Scilly, all is now wild sea, rose the
sacred Mount of Camelot. It rose from
the deeps with gardens and bowers and
palaces, and at the top of the Mount was
King Arthur's hall, and the holy Minster
with the Cross of gold. Here dwelt the
King, in glory apart, while the Saxons
whom he had overthrown in twelve battles
ravaged the land, and ever came nearer
and nearer.
The Mount was the most beautiful in
the world, sometimes green and fresh in
the beam of morning, sometimes all one
splendour, folded in the golden mists of
the West. But all underneath it was
hollow, and the mountain trembled, when
the seas rushed bellowing through the
p>orphyry caves ; and there ran a prophecy
that the mountain and the city on some
wild morning would topple into the abyss
and be no more.
It was night. The King sat in his Hall.
Beside him sat the sumptuous Guinevere
and about him were all his lords and
knights of the Table Round. There they
feasted, and when the feast was over the
Bards sang to the King's glory.
The following memorandum was given
by my father to Sir James Knowles at
Aldworth on October i, 1869, who told
him that it was between thirty and forty
years old. It was probably written at the
same time as the fragment which I have
just quoted. However, the allegorical
drift here marked out was fundamentally
changed in the later scheme of the Idylls.
944 NOTES
From an Original MS., about 1833.
NOTES
945
Before 1840 it is evident that my father
wavered between casting the Arthurian
legends into the form of an epic or into
that of a musical masque; for in one of
his 1 833-1 840 MS. books there is the
following first rough draft of a scenario,
into which the Lancelot and Elaine scenes
were afterwards introduced.
First Act
Sir Mordred and his party. Mordred
inveighs against the King and the Round
Table. The knights, and the quest.
Mordred scoffs at the Ladies of the Lake,
doubts whether they are supernatural
beings, etc. Mordred's cringing interview
with Guinevere. Mordred and the Lady
of the Lake. Arthur lands in Albyn.
Second Act
Lancelot's embassy and Guinevere. The
Lady of the Lake meets Arthur and en-
deavours to persuade him not to fight with
Sir Mordred. Arthur will not be moved
from his purpose. Lamentation of the
Lady of the Lake. Elaine. Marriage of
Arthur. ^, . , .
Third Act
Oak tomb of Merlin. The song of
Nimue. Sir Mordred comes to consult
Merlin. Coming away meets Arthur.
Their fierce dialogue. Arthur consults
Sir L. and Sir Bedivere. Arthur weeps
over Merlin and is reproved by Nimue,
who inveighs against Merlin. Arthur asks
Merlin the issue of the battle. MerUn will
not enlighten him. Nimue requests Arthur
to question Merlin again. Merlin tells him
he shall bear rule again, but that the Ladies
of the Lake can return no more. Guine-
vere . throws away the diamonds into the
river. The Court and the dead Elaine.
Fourth Act
Discovery by Mordred and Nimue of
Lancelot and Guinevere. Arthur and
Guinevere's meeting and parting.
Fifth Act
The battle. Chorus of the Ladies of
the Lake. The throwing away of Excali-
bur and departure of Arthur.
After this my father began to study the
epical King Arthur in earnest. He had
3P
travelled in Wales, and meditated a tour
in Cornwall. He thought, read, talked
about King Arthur. He made a poem on
Lancelot's quest of the San Graal; "in as
good verse," he said, " as I ever wrote — no,
I did not write, I made it in my head, and
it has altogether slipt out of memory." ^
What he called "the greatest of all poetical
subjects" perpetually haunted him. But it
was not till 1855 that he determined upon
something like the final shape of the poem,
and not until 1859 that he published the
first instalment, Enid,^ Vivien, Elaine,
Guinevere. In spite of the public applause
he did not rush headlong into the other
Idylls of the King, although he had carried
a more or less perfected scheme of them in
his head over thirty years. For one thing,
he did not consider that the time was ripe.
In addition to this, he did not find himself
in the proper mood to write them, and he
never could work except at what his heart
impelled him to do. — Then, however, he
devoted himself with all his energies and
with infinite enthusiasm to that work alone.
Gladstone says : ^
We know not where to look in history or in
letters for a nobler or more overpowering concep-
tion of man as he might be, than in the Arthur
of this volume. Wherever he appears, it is as
the great pillar of the moral order, and the
resplendent top of human excellence. But even
he only reaches to his climax in these two really
wonderful speeches [at the end of Guinevere].
They will not bear mutilation : they must be
read, ahd pondered, to be known.
Most explanations and analyses, although
eagerly asked for by some readers,
appeared to my father somewhat to dwarf
and limit the life and scope of the great
Arthurian tragedy; and therefore I will
add no more, except what Jowett wrote in
1893 : "Tennyson has made the Arthur
legend a great revelation of human experi-
ence, and of the thoughts of many hearts."
P. 302. Dedication. To the Prince
Consort. [First published in the edition
of 18.62. — Ed.]
1 Letter from my father to the Duke of Argyll,
1859.
2 He found out that the "E" in "Enid" was
pronounced short (as if it were spelt "Ennid"),
and so altered the phrase in the proofs "weddecl
Enid" to "married Enid."
Had married Enid, Yniol's only child.
^Gleanings of Past Years, vol. ii. p. 166,
946
NOTES
P. 302, col. I, line 5. Idylls. Regard-
ing the Greek derivation, I spelt my Idylls
with two /'s mainly to divide them from
the ordinary pastoral idyls usually spelt
with one /. These idylls group themselves
round one central figure.
P. 302, col. I, line 6.
Scarce other than my king's ideal knight.
[The first reading, "my own ideal
knight," was altered because Leslie Stephen
and others called King Arthur a portrait
of the Prince Consort. — Ed.]
P. 302, col. I, line 12. the gloom of
imminent war. Owing to the Trent
affair, when two Southern Commissioners
accredited to Great Britain and France
by the Confederate States were taken off
a British steamship, the Trent, by the
captain of the Federal man-of-war San
Jacinto. The Queen and the Prince
Consort were said to have averted war by
their modification of a dispatch.
P. 302, col. 2, lines 14, 15.
[Far-sighted summoner of War and Waste
To fruitful strifes and rivalries of peace
refers to the Prince Consort's work in the
planning of the International Exhibitions
of 1851 and 1862. — Ed.]
You brought a vast design to pass
When Europe and the scatter'd ends
Of oiir fierce world were mixt as
friends
And brethren in her walls of glass
were lines that I wrote about the 1851
Exhibition.
P. 302, col. 2, line 18. thy land is
Saxe-Coburg Gotha, whence Prince Albert
came.
P. 303. The Coming of Arthur.
[First published in the Holy Grail volume,
1869. In this Idyll the poet lays bare
the main lines of his story and of his
parable. — Ed.]
How much of history we have in the
story of Arthur is doubtful. Let not my
readers press too hardly on details whether
for history or for allegory. Some think
that King Arthur may be taken to typify
conscience. He is anyhow meant to be a
man who spent himself in the cause of I
honour, duty and self-sacrifice, who felt
and aspired with his nobler knights,
though with a stronger and a clearer
"conscience than any of them, "reveren-
cing his conscience as his king." "In
short, God has not made since Adam was,
the man more perfect than Arthur," as
an old writer says. 'Major praeteritis
majorque futuris Regibus." The vision of
Arthur as I have drawn him came upon
me when, little more than a boy, I first
lighted upon Malory.
]>e time co \>e wes icoren :
i>a wes Ar'Sur iboren.
Sone swa he com an eor^e:
aluen hine iuengen.
heo bigolen ]?at child :
mid galdere swiS'e stronge
heo 5eue him mihte :
to beon bezst aire cnihten.
heo Seuen him an o^er Wng :
|>at he scolde beon riche king.
heo giuen hi l^at i^ridde :
]>at he scolde longe libben.
heo gisen him J^at kine-bem :
custen swi'Se gode.
Ijat he wes mete-custi :
of alle quikemonnen.
t>is \>e alus him gef :
And al swa hat child il'aeh.
Layamon's Brut, Madden, vol. ii. 384.
(The time came that was chosen, then
was Arthur born. So soon as he came on
earth, elves took him ; they enchanted the
child with magic most strong, they gave
him might to be the best of all knights;
they gave him another thing, that he
should be a rich king; they gave him the
third, that he should live long ; they gave to
him, the child, virtues most good, so that
he was most generous of all men alive:
This the elves gave him, and thus the child
thrived.)
The blank verse throughout each of
the twelve Idylls varies according to the
subject.
[Examples of blank verse :
With three beats —
And Balin by the banneret of his hdm.
With four beats —
For hdte and ]6athing would have pass'd
him by.
NOTES
947
With five beats —
In which he scarce could spy the Christ
for saints.
With six beats —
What, wear ye still the same crown-
scandalous ?
With seven beats —
The two-cell'd heart beating with one full
stroke. Ed.]
P- 303> col. I, line 5. For many a petty
king. This explains the existence of
Leodogran, one of the petty princes.
"Cameliard is apparently," according to
Wright, "the district called CarmeUde in
the English metrical romance of Merlin,
on the border of which was a town called
'Breckenho' (Brecknock)." —T. Wright's
edition of the Mort d'Arthure (London :
J. R. Smith), vol. i. p. 40.
P. 303, col. I, line 13. For first Aurelius.
Aurelius (Emrys) Ambrosius was brother
of King Uther. [For the histories of
Aurelius and Uther see Geoffrey of Mon-
mouth's Chronicle, Bks. v. and vi. — Ed.]
P. 303, col. I, hne 17. Table Round.
A table called King Arthur's is kept at
Winchester. It was supposed to symbolize
the world, being flat and round.
P. 303, col. I, line 18.
Drew all their petty princedoms under him.
The several petty princedoms were under
one head, the "pendragon."
P. 303, col. 2, line 8. mock their foster-
mother. Imitate the wolf by going on
four feet.
P. 303, col. 2, line 9.
Till, straightened, they greiv up to wolf-like
men.
Compare what is told of in some parts of
India {Journal of Anthropological Society
of Bombay, vol. i.), and of the loup-garous
and were- wolves of France and Germany.
P- 303, col. 2, line 11. Groaned for the
Roman legions. Cf. Groans of the Britons,
by Gildas. • .
P. 303, col. 2, line 13. Urien. King of
North Wales.
P. 304, col. I, line 5.
The golden symbol of his kinglihood.
The golden dragon.
P. 304, col. I, line 14. The heathen.
Angles, Jutes, and Saxons.
P. 305, col. I, line 17. his warrior whom
he loved. [Cf. p. 310, col. i, lines 8, 9.
— Ed.]
P. 306, col. I, line 15.
Tintagil castle by the Cornish sea.
[T have a note of my father's touching a
vf?it to Tintagil in 1887: "The woman
who inhabits the house below the castle
knew me again in 1887, after forty years,
and began quoting passages from the
Idylls. We were nearly swamped landing
in Arthur's cave. After landing I was
pulled up the cliff by the barefooted sailors."
He pictured to himself Iseult there when
the cliff was "crown'd with towers."
He examined what he called "the secret
PDst€m" arch, through which the babe
Arthur had been handed to Merlin. All
the old memories and visions of the Idylls
came upon him, and he regarded the whole
place with a kind of first-love feeling. — Ed.]
P. 306, col. I, line 18. the Queen of
Orkney. The kingdom of Orkney and
Lothian composed the North and East of
Scotland.
P. 306, col. 2, line 29. the people
clamour'd for a king. Wherefore all the
commons cried at once, "We will have
Arthur unto our king" (Malory, Bk. i.).
P. 307, col. I, line 13. body enow =
strength.
P. 307, col. 2, line 25. three fair queens.
[Cf. note to Morte d' Arthur, p. 896. — Ed.]
P. 307, col. 2, line 12. the Lady of the
Lake in the old legends is the Church.
P. 307, col. 2, line 20. A voice as of the
waters. Cf. "I heard a voice from heaven,
as the voice of many waters" (Rev. xiv. 2).
P. 307, col. 2. line 24. Excalibur.
Said to mean "cut-steel." In the Romance
of Merlin the sword bore the following
inscription :
"Ich am y-hote Escalabore
Vnto a king a fair tresore."
and it is added :
"On Inglis is this writing
Kerve steel and yren and al thing."
948
NOTES
P. 309, col. I, line 6. [Every ninth
wave is supposed by the Welsh bards to
be larger than those that go before. — Ed.]
P. 309, col. I, line 32. Rain, rain, and
sun! [The truth appears in different guise to
different persons — either (i) with spiritual
significance as a rainbow in the sky, or as
(2) with earthly significance as a rainbow
on the lea in the dewy grass.] The one fact
is that man comes from the great deep and
returns to it. This is an echo of the triads
of the Welsh bards. [Cf. Gareth and
Lynette, p. 316, col. i, line 22 :
Know ye not then the Riddhng of the Bards ?
' Confusion, and illusion, and relation.
Elusion, and occasion, and evasion'?
Ed.]
P. 310, col. I, line 14. Dubric, Arch-
bishop of Caerleon. His crozier is said to
be at St. David's.
P. 310, col. I, line 16. The stateliest of
her altar-shrines. According to Malory,
the Church of St. Stephen at Camelot.
P. 310, col. 2, lines 7, 8.
Great Lords from Rome before the portal
stood,
In scornful stillness gazing as they past.
Because Rome had been the Lord of Britain.
P. 310, col. 2, line 13. Blow trumpet, etc.
[My father wrote to my mother that this
Viking song, a pendant to MerUn's song,
"rings like a grand music." This and
Leodogran's dream give the drift and grip
of the poem, which describes the aspirations
and ambitions of Arthur and his knights,
doomed to downfall — the hints of coming
doom being heard throughout. — Ed.]
P. 311, col. I, line 3. for our Sun is
mightier day by day. [Contrast p. 459, col.
2, line 23, "Burn'd at his lowest." — Ed.]
P. 311, col. 2, line 5. your Roman
wall. A line of forts built by Agricola
betwixt the Firth of Forth and the Clyde,
forty miles long.
P. 311, col. 2, line 11. twelve great
battles. [See Lancelot and Elaine, pp. 392,
393. — Ed.]
THE ROUND TABLE
P. 311. Gareth and Lynette. [The
story is founded on Malory, Book vii.
First published in 1872. Mostly written
at Aldworth. My mother writes, Oct. 7th,
1869: "He gave me his beginning of
Beaumains (Sir Gareth) (the golden time
of Arthur's Court) to read (written, as was
said jokingly, 'to describe a pattern youth
for his boys')."
Edward FitzGerald's comment is: "I
have a word to say about 'Gareth.' I
don't think it is mere Perversity which
makes me like it better than all its Pre-
decessors, except of course the old
'Morte.' The subject, the young Knight
who can endure and conquer, interests me
more than all the Heroines of the ist
Volume. I do not know if I admire more
Separate Passages in this Idyll than in the
others: for I have admired Many in All.
But I do admire Several here very
much : —
The Journey to Camelot,
All Gareth' s Vassalage,
Departure with Lynette,
Sitting at Table with the Barons,
Phantom of Past Life,
and many other Passages and Expressions
quae nunc perscribere longum est." — Ed.]
P. 311, col. I, line 3. the spate, the
river in flood.
P. 311, col. 2, line 6. Heaven yield her
for it. ["Yield" = reward, cf. Hamlet,
IV. V. 41, and Antony and Cleopatra, iv.
ii. 33. — Ed.]
P. 311, col. 2, line 9.
In ever-highering eagle-circles up.
He invents a verb in his youthful exuber-
ance.
P. 311, col. 2, line 13. Gawain. Gawain
and Modred, brothers of Gareth.
P. 312, col. I, line 26. leash of kings,
three kings. Cf. a leash of dogs.
P. 314, col. 2, line 2. his outward pur-
pose = his purpose to go.
P. 315, col. I, line 13. The Lady of the
Lake. ' The Lady of the Lake in the old
romances of Lancelot instructs him in the
mysteries of the Christian faith.
P. 315, col. I, line 26. those three
Queens. [Cf. note to Mprte d' Arthur,
p. 896. — Ed.]
NOTES
949
P. 315, col. 2, line i. dragon-boughts ,
bends (German Beugen), folds of the
dragons' tails.
["His huge long tayle, wownd up in
hundred foldes,
Does overspred his long bras-scaly back,
Whose wreathed boughtes whenever he
unfoldes,
And thick entangled knots adown does
slack. . . ."
Spenser's Faery Queen, Bk. I.
Canto XI. Ver. xi.
"And ever, against eating cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian airs.
Married to immortal verse,
Such as the meeting soul may pierce.
In notes with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out. . . ."
Milton's V Allegro, 139. — Ed.]
. P. 315, col. 2, line 8.
From out thereunder came an ancient man.
Merlin.
P. 315, col. 2, lines 21, 22.
/ have seen the good ship sail
Keel upward, and mast downward, in the
heavens.
Refraction by mirage.
P. 315, col. 2, line 25.
Take thou the truth as thou hast told it me
is ironical.
P. 315, col. 2, line 29. Toward the
sunrise. The religions and the arts that
came from the East.
P. 316, col. I, lines 11, 12.
but abide
Without, among the cattle of the field.
Be a mere beast.
P. 316, col. I, lines 14, 15.
They are building still, seeing the city is
built
To music.
By the Muses. *
P. 316, col. 2, line 15. spire to heaven.
Symbolizing the divine.
P. 317, col. 2, line 8. Sir Kay, the
seneschal. In the Roman de la Rose Sir
Kay is given as a pattern of rough dis-
courtesy :
En Keux le seneschal te mire
Qui jadis par son mokeis
Fu mal renommes et hais.
Tant cum Gauvains li bien apris
, Par sa courtoisie ot le pris,
Autretant ot de blasme Keus,
Por ce qu'il fu fel et crueus,
Ramponieres et mal-parliers
Desus tous autres chevaliers.
2ICX)-2Io8.
P. 317, col. 2, lines 9 flf. A boon, Sir
King, etc. ["Now aske,' said King Ar-
thur, "and yee shall have your petition."
"Now, sir," said he, "this is my petition
for this feast that ye shall give me meate
and drinke sufficiently for these twelve
monethes, and at that day I will aske mine
other two giftes." "My faire sonne," said
King Arthur, "aske better I counsaile
thee, for this is but a simple asking, for my
heart giveth mee to thee greatly that thou
art come of men of worship, and greatly
my conceit faileth me but thou shalt prove
a man of right great worship" (Malory).
— Ed.]
P. 319, col. I, lines 5, 6.
Wan-sallow as the plant that feels itself
Root-bitten by white lichen.
One of my cypresses at Farringford died in
this way.
P. 319, col. I, line 8. brewis, broth.
P. 319, col. I, line 26. Sir Fair-hands.
[Kay says in the Morte d' Arthur, "And
sithen he hath no name, I shall give him a
name, that shall be Beaumains — that is to
say, Faire hands." — Ed.]
P. 319, col. 2, line II. broach, spit.
P. 319, col, 2, line 25. Caer-Eryri.
Snowdon.
P. 322, col. 2, lines 22, 23.
DuU-coated things, that making slide apart
Their dusk wing-cases.
Certain insects which have brilliant bodies
underneath dull wing-cases. [Cf. The Two
Voices, p. 30, lines 8-15 :
'To-day I saw the dragon-fly
Come from the wells where he did lie.
950
NOTES
An inner impulse rent the veil
Of his old husk : from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.
He dried his wings : like gauze they grew ;
Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew
A living flash of light he flew.'
Ed.-]
P. 323, col. I, lines 7-1 1.
bui as the cur
Pluckt from the cur he fights with, ere his
cause
Be cool'd by fighting, follows, being named.
His owner, but remembers all, and growls
Remembering.
When we lived in Kent we had two
large dogs, one a large white one, an un-
educated rufiian always chained to an
apple-tree, the other a larger black one and
much more of a gentleman. One day
while I was passing with this last too near
the tree, the white one seized hold of him
and tore his ear. Then followed a duel.
I separated them with some difficulty and
then took my dark friend on a walk of
some six miles. All the way out and half
the way back he growled and swore to
himself about every five minutes.
P. 823, col. 2, line 20. agaric in the holt,
an evil-smelling fungus of the wood com-
mon at Aldworth.
P. 324, col. I, line 2. shoulder-slipt ,
shoulder-dislocated .
P. 324, col. 2, lines 13-28. there brake a
serving-man to oilily bubbled up the mere.
["So as they thus rode in the wood, there
came a man flying all that he might.
'Whither wilt thou?' said Beaumains.
'O lord,' said he, 'helpe mee, for hereby
in a shade are six theeves which have taken
my lord, and bound him, and I am afraid
least they will slay him.' 'Bring me
thither,' said Sir Beaumains. And so they
came there as the knight was bound, and
then he rode into the theeves, and strake
one at the first stroke to death, and then
another, and the third strooke he slew the
third theefe; and then the other three fled,
and hee rod after and overtooke them, and
then these three theeves turned again and
hard assailed Sir Beaumains: but at the
last bee slew them; and then returned and
unbound the knight" (Malory). — Ed.]
P. 325, col. 2, line 11. frontless, shame-
less.
P. 325, col. 2, line 21. peacock in his
pride, brought in on the trencher with his
tail-feathers left. [When it was served,
"all the guests, male and female, took a
solemn vow; the knights vowing bravery,
and the ladies engaging to be loving and
faithful" (Stanley's History of Birds).— Et).]
P. 326, col. I, lines 22, 23.
My fortunes all as fair as hers who lay
Among the ashes and wedded the King's son.
"Hers" is Cinderella's.
P. 326, col. I, line 24. one of those long
loops. The three loops of the river typify
the three ages of life ; and the guardians at
the crossing the temptations of these ages.
P. 326, col. 2, line 2. Lent-lily, daffodil.
P. 326, col. 2, line 21.
Like sparkles in the stone Avanturine.
Avanturine, sometimes called the Panther-
stone — a kind of gray-green or brown
quartz with sparkles in it.
[The first reading was :
Like stars within the stone Avanturine.
This simile was taken from a fine piece of
the stone Avanturine, set in an etui-case
belonging to my mother. "Look at it,"
my father said, "see the stars in it, worlds
within worlds." — Ed.]
P. 328, col. I, lines 26, 27.
As if the flower,
That blows a globe of after arr owlets.
The dandelion.
P. 329, col. I, line 2. unhappiness,
mischance.
P. 329, col. I, line 20. twice my love
hath smiled on me. [Because of his having
overthrown two krfights. A light has
broken on her. Her morning dream has
twice proved true, that she should find a
worthy champion. — Ed.]
P. 329, col. 2, line 10. only wrapt in
hardened skins. Allegory of habit.
P. 329, col. 2, line 14.
O brother-star, why shine ye here so low ?
[Gareth has taken the shield of the
Morning-Star (p. 327). — Ed.]
NOTES
951
P. 331, col. I, lines 28-30.
Hath left crag-caroen o'er the streaming
Gelt —
'PHOSPHORUS,' then 'MERIDIES' —
'HESPERUS' —
'NOX' — 'MORS,' beneath five figures,
armed men.
[Symbolical of the temptations of youth,
of middle-age, of later life, and of death
overcome by the youthful and joyous
Gareth. — Ed.]
Years ago, when I was visiting the
Howards at Naworth Castle, I drove over
to the little river Gelt to see the inscription
carved upon the crags. It seemed to me
very pathetic, this sole record of the
vexillary or standard-bearer of the sacred
Legion (Augusta) . This is the inscription :
VEX • LLEG • II AVG • ON • AP • APRO E
M-AXIMO CONSULIBUS SUB AGRICOLA OP •
OFICINA MERCATI.
P. 332, col. 2, lines 19-21,
Good lord, how sweetly smells the honeysuckle
In the hush'd night, as if the world were
one
Of utter peace, and love, and gentleness I
Lines made at Aldworth on a summer
night on the lawn about the honeysuckle
that climbs up the house.
P- 333, col. I, line 13. Arthur's harp,
Lyra.
P. 334, col. I, line 4. glooming crimson,
sunrise.
P- 334, col. I, lines 14-18. ["'Sir,'
said the damosel Lynet unto Sir Beaumains,
'look that yee be merry and light, for yonder
is your deadly enemy, and at yonder
window is my lady my sister dame Lyones.'
'Where?' said Sir Beaumains. 'Yonder,'
said the damosell, and pointed with her
finger. 'That is sooth,' said Sir Beaimiains,
'shee seemeth afarre the fairest lady that I
ever looked uppn, and truely,' said hee,
'I aske no better quarrell than now to doe
battaile, for truely shee shall bee my lady,
and for her will I fight'" (Malory). — Ed.]
P- 334, col. I, line 22. And crown'd
with fleshless laughter. With a grinning
skull.
P- 335, col. I, lines 7, 9. [He that told
the tale in older times — Malory. He that
told it later — my father. — Ed.]
P- 335- The Marriage of Geraint.
[In 1857 six copies of Enid and Nimu'e:
the True and the False were printed. This
Idyll is founded on Geraint, son of Erbin,
in the Mabinogion, translated by Lady
Charlotte Guest, and has "brought the
story within compass." It was begun on
April i6th, 1856, and first published in
1859 in the Idylls of the King. My father
had also read Erec and Enid, by Chrestien
de Troyes. The greater part of the Idylls
contained in the volume of 1859 was
written at Farringford. But the end of
Geraint and Enid was written in July and
August of 1856 in Wales, where he read,
in the original, Hanes Cymru (Welsh his-
tory), the Mabinogion, and Llywarch Hen.
The first four Idylls were, as Edward
FitzGerald notes of the earlier poems,
"written on foolscap folio Parchment,
bound blank books such as Accounts are
kept on (only not ruled), which I used to
call 'The Butcher's Book.' The Poems
were written in A. T.'s very fine Hand (he
once said, not thinking of himself, that
Great Men generally write 'terse' hands)
toward one Side of the large Page : the
unoccupied Pages and Edges and Corners
being often stript down for pipe-lights,
taking care to save the MS., as A. T. once
seriously observed."
The other Idylls were written on smaller
blue and red bound books, bound by my
mother. — Ed.]
P- 335, col. 2, hne 20. Of Severn.
Geraint was at Caerleon, and would have
to cross the Bristol Channel to go to Devon.
P- 335, col. 2, line 20. past. I hke the
/ — the strong perfect in verbs ending in s,
p, and X — past, slipt, vext.
P. 336, col. I, line 14. As slopes a
wild brook. I made this simile from a
stream, and it is 'different, tho' like Theo-
critus, Idyll xxii. 48 ff. :
iv bk fiOes (rTepeoiffi jS/oax^ocrti' &Kpov iir''
€<TTa<rap, ijvTe ir^rpoL oXoirpoxoi, ova-re
KvXLvSuv
XeifMOLppovs TTorafjubs fieydXais Trept^^ecre
divaii.
952
NOTES
[When some one objected that he had
taken this simile from Theocritus, he
answered : "It is quite different. Geraint's
muscles are not compared to the rounded
stones, but to the stream pouring vehe-
mently over them." — Ed.]
P- 337> col. I, line 5. sprigs of summer,
lavender.
P- 337. col. I, line 13. Caerleon.
Arthur's capital, "castra Legionis," is in
Monmouthshire on the Usk, which flows
into the Bristol Channel.
P- 337. col. 2, line 17. of deepest mouth.
Cf. "match'd in mouth like bells" {Mid-
summer-Night's Dream, rv. i. 128).
P- 339, col. I, line 4. pips, a bird-
disease.
P- 339, col. 2, line 17.
And like a crag was gay with wilding
flowers.
These lines were made at Middleham
Castle.
'P- 339, col. 2, line 21.
Claspt the gray walls with hairy-fibred
arms.
Tintem Abbey.
P-. 340, col. I, line 8.
Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel and lower
the proud.
[This song of noble and enduring
womanhood has its refrain in
Pero giri Fortuna la sua ruota,
Come le place.
Dante, Inf. xv. 95. — Ed.]
P. 340, col. 2, line 2. hy God's rood.
Rood (originally the same as "rod") is
the old word for cross.
P. 340, col. 2, line 20. costrel, a bottle
with ear or ears, by which it could be hung
from the waist (costrer, by the side), hence
sometimes called "pilgrim's bottle."
P. 340, col. 2, line 23. manchet bread,
little loaves or rolls made of fine wheat
flour.
P. 341, col. 2, line 17. When I that
knew, etc. [In the Mabinogion Earl Yniol
is the wrong-doer, and has earned his
reward; but the poet has made the story
more interesting and more poetic by mak-
ing the tale of wrong-doing a calumny on
the part of the Earl's nephew.
"And when they had finished eating,
Geraint talked with the hoary -headed man,
and he asked him in the first place, to
whom belonged the palace that he was in.
'Truly,' said he, 'it was I that built it,
and to me also belonged the city and the
castle which thou sawest.' 'Alas!' said
Geraint, ' how is it that thou hast lost them
now?' 'I lost a great earldom as well as
these,' said he, 'and this is how I lost
them. I had a nephew, the son of my
brother, and I took his possessions to my-
self; and when he came to his strength,
he demanded of me his property, but I
withheld it from him. So he made war
upon me, and wrested from me all that
I possessed'" (Lady Charlotte Guest's
Mabinogion, p. 147). In the Idyll, for
the greater unity of the tale, the nephew
and the knight of the Sparrow-hawk are
one. — Ed.]
P. 342, col. 2, lines 28, 29.
ever fail' d to draw
The quiet night into her blood.
[Cf.
neque unquam
Solvitur in somnos, oculisve aut pectore
noctem
Accipit. Virgil, ylew. iv. 529. — ^Ed.]
P. 342, col. 2, hne 34. jousts. From
juxtare. Low Latin, to approach.
P. 343, col. I, line 5. chair of Idris.
Idris was one of the three primitive Bards.
Cader Idris, the noblest mountain next to
Snowdon in N. Wales.
[My mother writes, Sept. 8th, 1856:
"A. climbed Cader Idris. Pouring rain
came on. . . . I heard the roar of waters,
streams and cataracts, and I never saw
anything more awful than that great veil of
rain drawn straight over Cader Idris, pale
light at the lower edge. It looked as if
death were behind it." — Ed.]
P. 343, col. I, lines 27, 28.
from distant walls
There came a clapping.
This is the echo of the sword-clash.
NOTES
953
P. 344, col. I, line 2. Made a low
splendour, eh;. [In the dim yellow light of
dawn at Farringford my father used to
delight in watching the dancing shadows
of the birds and of the long swaying fingers
of the cedar tree on the door opposite his
bed. — Ed.]
Pp. 344, 345 flf. [This episode is
founded on the following passage in Lady
Charlotte Guest's Mabinogion (p. 85) :
"'Where is the Earl Yniol,' said Geraint,
'and his wife, and his daughter?' 'They
are in the chamber yonder,' said the Earl's
chamberlain, 'arraying themselves in gar-
ments which the Earl has caused to be
brought for them.' 'Let not the damsel
array herself,' said he, 'except in her vest
and her veil, until she come to the court of
King Arthur, to be clad by Gwenhwy^^ar,
in such garments as she may choose.' So
the maiden did not array herself." — Ed.]
P. 346, col. I, line 16. that maiden in
the tale. The tale of Math, son of Math-
onwy. "So they took the blossoms of
the oak, and the blossoms of the broom,
and the blossoms of the meadowsweet,
and produced from them a maiden, the
fairest and most graceful that man ever
saw. And they baptized her and gave her
the name of Blodenwedd (flower- vision)."
— Mabinogion, p. 426.
P. 346, col. I, line 18. the bride of
Cassivelaun. [The love of a British
maiden named Flur, who was betrothed
to Cassivelaimus, according to the Welsh
legend, led Caesar to invade Britain
(Mabinogion, p. 392). — Ed.]
P. 346, col. 2, line 6. flaws in summer.
[Cf. Hamlet, v. i. 239, "the winter's
flaw" = gusts of wind. — Ed.]
P. 346, col. 2, line 16.
As carefid robins eye the delver^s toil.
[This line was made one day while my
father was digging, as was his wont then,
in the kitchen garden at Farringford, when
he was much amused by the many watch-
ful robins round him. — Ed.]
P. 347, col. I, line 27. gaudy-day.
[Holiday — now only used of special feast-
days at the Universities, — Ed.]
P. 347. Geraint and Enid. [First
published in 1859. The Marriage of
Geraint and Geraint and Enid were
originally one poem, and were divided
into two Idylls in 1888. The sin of
Lancelot and Guinevere begins to breed,
even among those who woiUd "rather
die than doubt," despair and want of
trust in God and man. — Ed.]
P. 347, line I.
0 purblind race of miserable men, etc.
[Cf. Lucretius, ii. 14 :
O miseras hominum mentes, O pectora
caeca, etc. Ed.]
P. 350, col. 2, lines 11-15.
as one.
That listens near a torrent mountain-brook.
All thro' the crash of the near cataract hears
The drumming thunder of the huger fall
At distance, were the soldiers wont to hear
His voice in battle.
A memory of what I heard near Festiniog,
but the scenery imagined is vaster.
[My father agreed with Wordsworth that
much of poetry takes its origin from emotion
remembered in tranquillity. — Ed.]
P. 351, col. 2, line 23. doom, judgment.
P- 353, col. I, line 15.
My malice is no deeper than a moat.
[= I will not kill him, but I wiU put him
in prison. — Ed.]
P- 353. col. 2, line 28. the red cock
shouting to the light. [Cf.
Before the red cock crows from the farm
upon the hill.
May Queen, p. 49. — Ed.]
P. 354, col. 2, line 33. like a thunder-
cloud. The horse's mane is compared to
the skirts of the rain-cloud.
P- 355, col. I, line 29. shall we fast, or
dine? Shall we go hungry, or shall we
take his spoils and pay for our dinner with
them?
P- 355, col. I, line 30. No? — then do
thou. Enid shrinks from taking anything
from her old lover.
P- 357, col. I, line 31. as the worm draws
in the withered leaf. I used to watch worms
954
NOTES
drawing in withered leaves on the lawn at
Farringford.
[My father would quote this simile as
good, and that in Merlin and Vivien, p.
387, col. 2, line 25 :
The pale blood of the wizard at her touch
Took gayer colours, like an opal warm'd.
Ed.]
P. 358, col. I, line 15.
This silken rag, this beggar-woman's weed.
"Weed," A.S. woed, garment. [Cf.
Midsummer-Night's Dream, 11. i. 256 :
"Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in,"
and elsewhere in Shakespeare. — Ed.]
P. 358, col. I, lines 24, 25.
Play'd into green, and thicker down the
front
With jewels than the sward with drops of
dew.
I made these lines on the High Down one
morning at Freshwater.
P. 358, col. I, Une 30. their day of
power. The worst tyrants are those who
have long been tyrannized over, if they
have tyrannous natures.
P. 362, col. I, line 4. the sacred Dee.
Cf.
"Where Deva spreads her wizard stream."
Lycidas, 55.
P. 362, col. I, line 10. weed the white
horse. The white horse near Wantage
on the Berkshire hills which commemorates
the victorj' at Ashdown of the English
under Alfred over the Danes (871). The
white horse was the emblem of the English
or Saxons, as the raven was of the Danes,
and as the dragon was of the Britons.
P. 362, col. 2, line 8. A hapPy life
with a fair death. [Llywarch Hen's
elegy on Geraint's death in the battle of
Llongborth, beUeved by some to have been
Portsmouth, is well known. See Lady
Charlotte Guest's Mabinogion, vol. ii. pp.
150-151: —
" Before Geraint, the terror of the foe,
I saw steeds fatigued with the toil of
battle.
And after the shout was given, how
dreadful was the onset.
At Llongborth I saw the tvmiult
And the slain drenched in gore.
And red-stained warriors from the
assault of the foe.
Before Geraint, the scourge of the enemy,
I saw steeds white with foam,
And after the shout of battle, a fearful
torrent.
At Llongborth I saw the raging of
slaughter
And an excessive carnage.
And warriors blood-stained from the
assault of Geraint.
At Llongborth was Geraint slain,
A valiant warrior from the woodlands of
Devon
Slaughtering his foes as he fell." Ed.]
P. 362. Balin and Balan. [Partly
founded on Bk. ii. of Malory, written mostly
at Aldworth, soon after Gareth and Lynette,
and first published in 1885. The story of
the poem is largely original. "Loyal
natures are wrought to anger and madness
against the world." — Ed.]
P. 363, col. I, lines 1-3.
to right and left the spring, that down,
From underneath a plume of lady-fern.
Sang, and the sand danced at the bottom of it.
[Suggested by a spring which rises near
t!ie house at Aldworth. — Ed.]
P. 364, col. 2, lines 2-5.
his soul
Became a Fiend, which, as the man in life
Was wounded by blind tongues he saw not
whence.
Strikes from behind.
[Symbolic of Slander. — Ed.]
P. 365, col. 2, line 7. Langued gules
[red-tongued — language of heraldry. — Ed.].
P. 366, col. I, lines 8 ff. [This simile
beginning
Thus as a hearth lit in a mountain home
was suggested by what he often saw from
his own study at Aldworth : the fire in the
grate at night reflected in the window,
and seemingly a fire raging in the wood-
land below. — Ed.]
P. 368, col. I, lines 21 ff. [The goblet
is embossed with scenes from the story of
Joseph of Arimathea, his voyage, and the
NOTES
955
wattle-built church he raised at Glaston-
bury. King Pellam represents the type of
asceticism and superstition. — Ed.1
Pp. 368-369. See for a passage of rapid
blank verse (wHere the pauses are light,
and the accentuated syllables under the
average — some being short in quantity,
and the narrative brief and animated).
He rose, descended to face to ground.
P. 373. Merlin and Vivien.
[For the name of Vivien my father is
indebted to the old Romance of Merlin.
Begun in February and finished on March
31st, 1856, and first pubhshed in 1859.
"Some even among the highest intellects
become the slaves of the evil which is at
first half disdained." My father created-
the character of Vivien with much care —
as the evil genius of the Round Table 1 —
who in her lustfulness of the flesh could not
believe in anything either good or great.
The story of the poem of Merlin and
Vivien is essentially original, and was
founded on the following passage from
Malory :
"Merlin was assetted and doted on one
of the ladies of the lake (Nimue). But
Merlin would let her have no rest, but
always he would be with her. . . . And
always Merlin lay about the lady to have
her love. . . . But she was ever passing
weary of him, and fain would have been
delivered of him, for she was afeard of
him because he was a devil's son, and she
could not put him away by no means.
And so on a time it happed that Merlin
shewed to her in a rock, whereas was a
great wonder and wrought by enchantment
that went under a great stone. So by her
subtle working she made Merlin to go
under that stone, to let her wit of the
marvels there, but she wrought so there
for him that he came never out for all the
craft that he could do. And so she
departed and left MerUn." — Bk. iv. ch. i.
— Ed.]
P. 373, line 2. Broceliande. The forest
of Broceliand in Brittany near St. Malo.
P. 374, col. 2, line 28.
Ride, ride and dream until ye wake — to me !
1 Even to the last. See Guinevere, p. 448,
col. I, lines 4, 5.
The only real bit of feeling, and the only
pathetic line which Vivien speaks.
P- 375, col. I, lines 6-8. [Seeling,
sewing up eyes of hawk. Jesses, straps
of leather fastened to legs. Check at pies,
fly at magpies. Nor will she rake, nor will
she fly at other game. — Ed.]
P- 375, col. I, line 12. tower' d, soared.
P- 375, col. I, line 16. pounced her
quarry [swooped on her game. — Ed.].
P- 375, col. I, lines 28, 29.
Thereafter as an enemy that has left
Death in the living waters.
Poisoned the wells.
P. 376, col. I, line 13.
An ever-meaning battle in the mist.
The vision of the battle at the end.
P. 376, col. 2, line 17.
As on a dull day in an Ocean cave.
This simile is taken from what I saw in-
the Caves of Ballybunion.
P- 377, col. 2, lines 9-1 1.
0 did ye never lie upon the shore,
And watch the curVd white of the coming
wave
Glass' d in the slippery sand before it breaks?
I thought of these lines at Alum Bay in
the Isle of Wight if anywhere.
P. 379, col. I, line 23.
Like sunlight on the plain behind a shower.
As seen from a hill in Yorkshire.
P. 379, col. I, line 25.
Far ether was the song that once I heard.
The song about the clang of battle-
axes, etc.. in the Coming of Arthur.
P. 380, col. 2, line 32 to p. 381, col. i, line 3.
a single misty star.
Which is the second in a line of stars
That seem a sword beneath a belt of three.
d Orionis — the nebula in which is im-
bedded the great multiple star. When
this was written some astronomers fancied
that this nebula in Orion was the vastest
object in the Universe — a firmament of
suns too far away to be resolved into stars
by the telescope, and yet so huge as to be
seen by the naked eye.
9S6
NOTES
[My father often pondered on the
nothingness of human fame by comparison
with the charm of those immense spatial
and temporal cosmic weavings and wav-
ings. — Ed.]
P. 381, col. 2, line 9 to p. 382, col. i,
line 22. There lived a king to the gateway
towers. People have tried to discover this
legend, but there is no legend of the kind
that I know of.
P. 382, col. 2, line 5 to p. 383, col. i, line 7.
He answered laughing to came down to me.
Nor is this a legend to be found.
P. 382, col. 2, line 22. lashed, like
an eyelash. A German translation has
peitschte (whipt it), but — "eye " and "eye-
lid" having immediately preceded — the
translator might have guessed better.
P. 384, col. I, line 2. the reckling [the
puny infant. — Ed.].
P. 384, col. 2, line 30. holy king, David.
P. 387, col. 2, line 15. white-listed,
striped with white.
P. 388. Lancelot and Elaine.
[Begun at the home of G. F. Watts,
R.A., and of the Prinseps, Little Holland
House, Kensington, in July 1858, and
first pubhshed in 1859. "The tenderest
of all natures sinks under the blight, that
which is of the highest in her working her
doom." See Malory, xviii. ch. 9-20.
Jowett wrote of this Idyll : "It moves me
like the love of Juliet in Shakespeare. . . .
There are hundreds and hundreds of all
ages (and men as well as women) who,
although they have not died for love (have
no intention of doing so), will find there
a sort of ideal consolation of their own
troubles and remembrances." — Ed.]
P. 388, line 2. Astolat, said to be
Guildford.
P. 388, col. 2, line 21. Lyonnesse. A
land that is said to have stretched between
Land's End and Scilly, and to have con-
tained some of Cornwall as well.
P. 392, col. 2, lines 16-18.
That some one put this diamond in her hand,
And that it was too slippery to be held,
And slipt and Jell into some pool or stream.
A vision prophetic of Guinevere hurling
the diamonds into the Thames.
Pp. 392-393. [For these battles see Nen-
nius, Hist. Brit. § 50, in Bohn's translation :
"Thus it was that the magnanimous
Arthur, with all the kings and military
force of Britain, fought against the Saxons.
And though there were many more noble
than himself, yet he was twelve times
chosen their commander, and was as often
conqueror. The first battle in which he
was engaged was at the mouth of the
river Glem. The second, third, fourth,
and fifth were on another river, by the
Britons called Duglas, in the region Linuis.
The sixth on the river Bassas. The
seventh in the wood Celidon, which the
Birtons call Cat Colt Celidon. The eighth
was near Gumion Castle, where Arthur
bore the image of the Holy Virgin, mother
of God, upon his shoulders, and through
the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
the holy Mary, put the Saxons to flight,
and pursued them the whole day with
great slaughter. The ninth was at the
City of Legion, which is called Caerleon.
The tenth was on the banks of the river
Trat Treuroit. The eleventh was on the
mountain Breguoin, which we call Cat
Bregion. The twelfth was a most severe
contest, when Arthur penetrated to the
hill of Badon. In this engagement, nine
hundred and forty fell by his hand alone,
no one but the Lord affording him assist-
ance. In all these engagements the
Britons were successful. For no strength
can avail against the will of the Almighty."
— Ed.]
P- 393, col. I, line 3. white Horse.
[See note on p. 362, col. i, line 10. — Ed.]
P. 393, col. 2, line 10. rathe, early
(thence "rather").
P. 393, col. 2, line 13.
Down the \long tow\er-stairs,\hesit\ating.
"Stairs" is to be read as a monosyllable,
with a pause after it.
[Spedding writes: "The art with which
A. T. has represented Elaine's action by
the slow and fingering movement, the
sudden arrest, and the hesitating advance
of the metre, has been altogether lost on
some critics." -^ Ed.]
P. 393, col. 2, line 30 to p. 394» col. i,
line 6. [" So thus as shee came too and fro,
NOTES
shee was so hoot in her love that shee
besought Sir Launcelot to weare upon him
at the justes a token of hers. 'Faire
damosell,' said Sir Launcelot, 'and if I
graunt you that, yee ma> say I doe more
for your love than ever I did for lady
or damosell.' . . . And then hee said,
'Faire damosell, I will graunt you to
weare a token of yours upon my helmet,
and therefore what it is, show me.' 'Sir,'
said shee, 'it is a red sleeve of mine
of scarlet, well-embroadered with great
pearles.' And so shee brought it him"
(Malory). — Ed.]
P. 395, col. 2, lines 19-22.
Bare, as a wild wave in the wide North-sea,
Green- glimmering toward the summit, bears,
with all
Its stormy crests that smoke against the skies,
Down on a bark.
Seen on a voyage of mine to Norway.
["Next day (July 24th, 1858) very fine
but in the night toward morning storm
arose and our top-mast was broken off. I
stood next morning a long time by the
cabin door and watched the green sea
looking like a mountainous country, far-
off waves with foam at the top looking
like snowy mountains bounding the scene;
one great wave, green-shining, past with
all its crests smoking high up beside the
vessel. As I stood there came a sudden
hurricane and roared drearily in the funnel
for twenty seconds and past away" {Letter
from my father to my mother). — Ed.]
P. 402, col. I, hne 18. ghostly grace.
Vision of Guinevere.
P. 402, col. I, line 27.
Then as a little helpless innocent bird.
Chaffinch.
Pp. 402-403. ["'My lord Sir Launcelot,
now I see that yee will depart : faire and
curteous knight, have mercy upon mee,
and suffer mee not to die for your love.'
'What would yee that I did?' said Sir
Launcelot. 'I would have you unto my
hu.sband,' said the maide Elaine. 'Faire
damosell, I thanke you,' said Sir Launcelot ;
'but certainly,' said he, 'I cast mee never
to be married.' . . . 'Alas,' said she,
'then must I needes die for your love'"
(Malory). — Ed.]
P. 405, col. 2, lines 3, 4.
never yet
Was noble tnan but made ignoble talk.
The noblest are ever subject to calumny.
P. 401, col. I, line i.
/ hear of rumours flying thro' your court.
Rumoiirs of his love for Elaine.
P. 408, col. I, lines 19-29. ["Most
noble knight, my lord Sir Launcelot du
Lake, now hath death made us two at
debate for your love; I was your lover,
that men called the faire maiden of Astolat :
therefore unto all ladies I make my moane ;
yet for my soule that yee pray, and bury
me at the least, and offer yee my masse-
peny. This is my last request: and a
cleane maide I died, I take God to my
witnesse. Pray for my soule. Sir Launce-
lot, as thou art a knight pearles" (Malory).
— Ed.]
P. 409, col. I, lines g-17.
So toward that shrine which then in all
the realm
Was richest, Arthur leading, slowly went
The marshalVd Order of their Table Round,
And Launcelot sad beyond his wont, to see
The maiden buried, not as one unknown,
Nor meanly, but with gorgeous obsequies.
And mass, and rolling music, like a queen.
And when the knights had laid her comely
head
Low in the dust of half-forgotten kings.
This passage and the "tower-stair"
passage (p. 393) are among the best blank
verse in Lancelot dnd Elaine, I think.
[I asked my father why he did not write
an Idyll "How Sir Lancelot came unto
the hermitage, and how he took the habit
unto him ; how he went to Almesbury and
found Queen Guinevere dead, whom they
brought to Glastonbury; and how Sir
Lancelot died a holy man"; and he
answered, "Because it could not be done
better than by Malory." My father loved
his own great imaginative knight, the
Lancelot of the Idylls. — Ed.]
P. 410. The Holy Grail. [First
pubhshed in 1869. See Malory, 13-17.
The story of this Idyll is full of my father's
invention and imagination. "Faith de-
clines, religion in many turns from practical
958
NOTES
goodness to the quest after the supernatural
and marvellous and selfish rehgious excite-
ment. Few are those for whom the quest
is a source of spiritual strength."
My mother notes in her Journal : " 1868,
r Sept. qih. A. read a bit of his San Graal,
/ which he has just begun. Sept, i^ih. He
has almost finished the San Graal. It
came like a breath of inspiration. Sept.
23rd. We took Lionel to Eton. ... At
Dr. Warre's request A. read the San Graal
MS. complete in the garden. 1869, May
iSth. A. read the San Graal. I doubt
Vtfhether the San Graal would have been
written but for my endeavour, and the
Queen's wish, and that of the Crown
Princess. Thank God for it. He has
had the subject in his mind for years, ever
since he began to write about Arthur and
his knights."
About this poem my father said to me:
"At twenty-four I meant to write an epic
or a drama of King Arthur, and I thought
that I should take twenty years about the
work. They will no^ say that I have been
forty years about it. The Holy Grail is
one of the most imaginative of my poems.
I have expressed there my strong feeling
as to the Reality of the Unseen. The
end, where the King speaks of his work
and of his visions, is intended to be the
summing up of all in the highest note by
the highest of men."
These three lines (pp. 424-425) in Arthur's
speech are the (spiritually) central lines of
the poem :
In moments when he feek he cannot die,
And knows himself no vision to himself,
Nor the high God a vision.
Sir James Knowles writes to me : —
I was introduced to your father by King Arthur
— for my little book on the Arthur legends, dedi-
cated to him, first brought me to his acquaintance
thirty-five years ago — and this probably explains
why he chose to give me so much of his con-
fidence on the subject of his Idylls of the King.
He used to say (in jest), "I know more about
Arthur than any other man in England, and you
know next most," and when, in 1867 and after-
wards, he became our frequent guest at Clapham
Common, he would talk with me for hours upon
the subject, and I always urged him to resume
his forsaken project of making a whole great
poem on it.
The recent and immense success of his first
four Idylls helped my cause greatly, but he
would constantly protest that it was next to im-
possible now to put the thing properly together,
because he had taken up with a fragmentary
mode of treatment instead of the continuous sym-
bolic epic he had meditated in his youth, and
"which the Reviews had knocked out of him."
Frequent importunity, however, had its effect,
and in the end he came to admit that the plan of
a series of separate pictures connected by a pur- '
pose running through them all, as a thread
connects beads, had its merits, and, under the
circumstances, had better be tried.
He resumed his great scheme with The Holy
Grail.
As the revised plan took more and more shape
and drew towards completion, he would some-
times point his finger at me with a grim smile,
and say : "I had given it all up long ago, though
I was often urged to go on with it ; and then
this beast said 'Do it,' and I did it."
He always told me that he had from the begin-
ning meant to make Arthur something more
and other than a mystic or historic king, but
that he had changed his mind from his original
meaning. In 1869 he gave me a memorandum
written in his own hand which he told me was then
thirty or forty years old. He said that in those
early days (about 1830) the poem was to be a sort
of allegory of the Church, but that now King
Arthur was to stand in a symbolic way for the
Soul, and his Knights for the human passions
which the Soul was to order and subdue.
He encouraged me to write a short paper, in
the form of a letter to the Spectator,^ on the inner
meaning of the whole poem, v/hich I did, simply
upon the lines he himself indicated. He often
said, however, that an allegory should never be
pressed too far, and that "there were many
glancing meanings in everything he wrote."
Considerable trouble and changing with pub-
lishers went on during the production of the
Idylls (of 1869), and he was so anxious about
misprints that, for the greater security against
errors, he caused the proofs of them to be sent
to me, as well as to himself. He would go over
them with me in the most minute manner, and
afterwards would write such letters as the
following :
Farringford, Freshwater,
Isle of Wight, April 5, 1872.
Gareth is not finished yet. I left him off once
altogether, finding him more difficult to deal
with than anything I had ever tried, excepting
perhaps Aylmer's Field. If I were at liberty,
which I think I am not, to print the names of
the speakers "Gareth," "Linette," over the
short snip-snap of their talk, and so avoid the'
perpetual "said" and its varieties, the work
would be much easier. I have made out the
plan, however, and perhaps some day it will be
completed; and it will be then to consider
whether or no it should go into the Contemporary
or elsewhere.
Edward FitzGerald's comment on The
Holy Grail is: "The whole myth of
Arthur's Round Table Dynasty in Britain
» See Appendix, Tennyson and his Friends.
NOTES
9SQ
presents itself before me with a sort of
cloudy, Stonehenge grandeur. I am not
sure if the old knights' Adventures do not
tell upon me better, touched in some Lyric
Way, like your own Lady of Shalott. I
never could care for Spenser, Tasso,
Ariosto, whose epic has a ballad ring
about it. But I never could care much
for the old Prose Romances either, except
Don Quixote. . . . They talk of 'meta-
physical Depth and Subtlety.' Pray, is
there none in The Palace of Art, The
Vision of Sin (which last touches on the
Limit of Disgust without ever faUing in),
Locksley Hall also, with some little Passion,
I think ! only that all these being clear to
the Bottom, as well as beautiful, do not
seem to Cockney eyes so deep as Muddy
Waters?" — Ed.]
P. 411, col. I, line i.
O brother, I have seen this yew-tree smoke.
The pollen in Spring, which, blown
abroad by the wind, looks like smoke.
Cf. Memoir, vol. ii. p. 53, and In
Memoriam, xxxix.
P. 411, col. I, line 31. Aromat. Ari-
mathea, the home of Joseph of Arimathea,
who, according to the legend, received in
the Grail the blood that flowed from our
Lord's side.
P. 411, col. 2, lines i, 2.
when the dead
Went wandering o'er Moriah.
[Cf. St. Matthew xxvii. 50 ff. — Ed.]
P. 411, col. 2, lines 4, 5.
To Glastonbury, where the winter thorn
Blossoms at Christmas.
[It was believed to have been grown
from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea. ^
Ed.]
P. 413, col. I, line 24. 'The Siege
perilous.' The perilous seat which stands
for the spiritual imagination.
["And anon he brought him unto the
Siege Perilous, where beside sat Sir
Launcelot. And the good old man lift
up the cloth, and found there letters that
said, 'This is the siege of Sir Galahad, the
good knight.' 'Sir,' said the old man,
'wit yea well this place is yours.' And
tha
then hee set him down surely in
siege" (Malory). — Ed.]
P. 413, col, 2, line 31. shining hai{r.
[Cf. irXoKd/jLovs (paeivo6s (II. xiv. 176) -v
Ed.]
P. 414, col. I, line 22. [The four zones
represent human progress : the savage state
of society; the state where man lords it
over the beast; the full development of
man ; the progress toward spiritual ideals.
— Ed.]
P. 414, col. 2, line 16.
In unremorseful folds of rolling fire.
This line gives onomatopoeically the
"unremorseful flames." i
P. 415, col. I, lines 18, 19. \
'Ah, Galahad, Galahad,' said the Kint,
'for such
As thou art is the vision, not for these.'
The king thought that most men ought
to do the duty that lies closest to them, and
that to few only is given the spiritual en-
thusiasm. Those who have it not ought
not to afifect it.
P. 415, col. 2, line 4. White Horse.
[See note on p. 368, col. 2, line 30. — Ed.]
P. 416, col. I, line 13. wyvern, two-
legged dragon. Old French wivre, viper.
P. 416, col. 2, lines 2a- 23.
But even while I drank the brook, and ate
The goodly apples, all these things at once
Fell into dust, and I was left alone,
And thirsting, in a land of sand and thorns.
The gratification of sensual appetite brings
Per ci vale no content.
P. 416, col. 2, lines 24 to p. 417, col. i, line
2 . Nor does wifely love and the love of the
family.
P. 417, col. I, lines 3-10. Nor does
wealth, which is worshipt by labour.
P. 417, col. I, lines 11-22. Nor does
glory. \
P. 417, col. I, line 23 to col. 2, line 11.
Nor does Fame.
P. 417, col. 2, line 25.
Led on the gray-hair'd wisdom of the east.
The Magi.
NOTES
fP. 418, col. 2, line 34. sacring, con-
saoration.
i P. 418, col. I, line 3.
/ saiv the fiery face as of a child.
[See Malory, xvii, 20: "And then he
took an ubbly (a cake of the Sacrament),
which was made in the likenesse of bread;
and at the Ufting up there came a figure in
the likenesse of a child, and the visage was
as bright and red as any fire, and smote
himself into that bread, so that they all
saw that the bread was formed of a fleshly
man." — Ed.]
P. 418, col. I, line 28.
S'torm at the top, and ivhen we gain'd it,
) storm.
li was a time of storm when men could
ionagine miracles, and so storm is em-
phasized.
! P. 418, col. I, hne 34. [My father looked
on this description of Sir Galahad's quest,
and on that of Sir Lancelot's, as among the
best blank verse he had written. He
pointed out the difference between the five
visions of the Grail, as seen by the Holy
]S{un, Sir Galahad, Sir Percivale, Sir
Lancelot, Sir Bors, according to their
different, their own peculiar natures and
circumstances, their selflessness, and the
perfection or imperfection of their Christian-
ity. He dwelt on the mystical treatment
of every part of his subject, and said the
key is to be found in a careful reading of
Sir Percivale's visions. He would also call
attention to the babbling homely utterances
of the village priest Ambrosius as a contrast
to the sweeping passages of blank verse
that set forth the visions of spiritual en-
thusiasm. — Ed.]
P. 421, col. I, Hnes 3, 4.
Paynim amid their circles, and the stones
They pitch up straight to heaven.
The temples and upright stones of the
Druidic religion.
. P. 421, col. I, line 9. A mocking fire.
The sun-worshippers that were said to dwell
on Lyonnesse scoffed at Perceval.
P. 421, col. I, line 23.
The seven clear stars of Arthur's Table
Round.
The Great Bear.
P. 421, col. 2, lines 4, 5.
the sweet Grail
Glided and past.
It might have been a meteor.
P. 421, col. 2, lines 10, 11.
Sir Bors it was
Who spake so low.
[Cf. p. 411, col. I, lines 23, 24:
Yet one of your own knights, a guest of ours,
Told us of this in our refectory. Ed.]
P. 421, col. 2, line 28. basilisks, the
fabulous crown'd serpent whose look killed.
P. 421, col. 2, line 28. cockatrices. In
heraldry, winged snakes.
P. 421, col. 2, line 29. talbots, heraldic
dogs.
Pp. 430, 431. ["And there he said,
'My sinne and my wretch ednesse hath
brought me unto great dishonour; for
when I sought worldly adventures, and
worldly desires, I ever achieved them, and
had the better in every place, and never
was I discomfited in no quarrell, were it
right or wrong. And now I take upon me
the adventures of holy things: and now I
see and uijderstan that mine old sinne
hindreth mee, and also_ shameth mee, so
that I had no power to stire nor to speak
when the holy blood appeared before mee.'
So thus hee sorrowed till it was day, and
heard the f oules of the ayre sing ; then was
hee somewhat comforted " (Malory) . — Ed.]
P. 423, col. 2, lines 13, 14.
only the rounded moon
Thro' the tall oriel on the rolling sea.
[My father was fond of quoting these
lines for the beauty of the sound. "The
lark" in the tower toward the rising sun
symbolizes Hope. — Ed.]
P. 424, col. I, line 13. deafer than the
blue-eyed cat. [Cf. Darwin's Origin of
Species, ch. i. : "Thus cats which are
entirely white and have blue eyes are
generally deaf; but it has lately been
pointed out by Mr. Tait that this is
confined to the males." — Ed.]
P. 424, col. 2, line 3.
[And spake I not too truly, 0 my knights,
etc.
refers to King Arthur's speech (pp. 291-
NOTES
961
299), given in Malory as follows:-^
"'Alas!' said King Arthur unto Sir
Gawaine, 'yee have nigh slaine me with
the vowe and promise that yee have
made; for through you yee have bereft
mee of the fairest fellowship and the truest
of knighthood that ever were scene together
in any realme of the world. For when
they shall depart from hence, I am sure
that all shall never meete more in this
world, for there shall many die in the
quest, and so it forethinketh me a little;
for I have loved them as well as my Ufe,
wherefore it shall grieve me right sore the
separation of this fellowship, for I have
had an old custome to have them in my
fellowship. And therewith teares fell into
his eyes." — Ed.]
P. 424, col. 2, line 24 to p. 425, col. i,
line 2. Arthur suggests that all the
material universe may be but vision.
[As far back as 1839 my father had
written to my mother: "Annihilate within
yourself these two dreams of Space and
Time." "I think," he said, "matter is
merely the shadow of something greater
than itself, which we poor short-sighted
creatures cannot see." — Ed.]
P. 424, col. -2, line 31 to p. 425, col. i,
line I.
In moments when he feels he cannot die,
And knows himself no vision to himself,
Nor the high God a vision.
[Cf. The Ancient Sage:
for more than once when I
Sat all alone, revolving in myself
The word that is the symbol of myself.
The mortal limit of the Self was loosed,
And past into the Nameless, as a cloud
Melts into Heaven. I touch'd my limbs,
the limbs
Were strange not mine — and yet no shade
of doubt,
But utter clearness, and thro' loss of Self
The gain of such large life as match'd with
ours
Were Sun to spark. Ed.]
P. 425, col. I, lines i, 2.
nor that One
Who rose again.
[My father said (I think) about this
passage: "There is something miraculous
3Q
in man, and there is more in Christianity
than some people think. It is enough to
look on Christ as Divine and Ideal without
defining more. They will not easily beat
the character of Christ, that imion of man
and woman, strength and sweetness." —
Ed.]
P. 425. Pelleas and Ettarre. [First
published in 1869. See Malory, iv. 20-23.
— Ed.] Almost the saddest of the Idylls.
The breaking of the storm.
P. 425, col. 2, lines 4, 5.
It seem'd to Pelleas that the fern without
Burnt as a living fire of emeralds.
Seen as I lay in the New Forest. [This
whole passage is descriptive of the New
Forest, which he called "the finest bit of
old England left, the most peculiar." —
Ed.]
P. 430, col. 2, line 9. prowest, noblest.
P. 431, col. 2, line 29. lurdatie, from
Old French lourdin, heavy. [Cf. Scott's
Abbot, iv. : "I found the careless lurdane
feeding him with 'unwashed flesh." — Ed.)
P. 432, col. I, line 24.
And the sword of the tourney across her
throat.
The line gives the quiver of the sword
across their throats.
["And when he cam to the pavilions he
tied his horse to a tree, and pulled out his
sword naked in his hand, and went straight
to them where as they lay together, and
yet he thought that it were great shame for
him to sley them sleeping, and laid the
naked sword overthwart both their throates,
and then he tooke his horse, and rod forth
his way, making great and wofull lamenta-
tion" (Malory). — Ed.]
P. 434, col. I, line 28. Yea, between thy
lips — and sharp. [Cf. Cymbeline, ni. iv.
35. -Ed.]
P. 435. The Last Tournament.
[First published in The Contemporary
Review, December 1871. The bare out-
line of the story and of the vengeance of
Mark is taken from Malory; my father
often referred with pleasure to his creation
of the half-hum9rous, half -pathetic fool
Dagonet. — Ep.]
962
NOTES
P. 436, col. I, line 8. strangers to the
tongue, rough.
P. 436, col. 2, line 8. bluni stump,
where the hand had been cut off and the
stump had been pitched.
P. 436, col. I, line 12. the Red Knight.
Pelleas.
P. 436, col. 2. [Cf. Isaiah xiv. 13. —
Ed.]
P. 437, col. I, lines 15, 16. [See Mer-
lin's song in The Coming of Arthur, p. 309.
— Ed.]
P. 437, col. 2, line 4. vaiVd, drooped.
[Cf . Hamlet, i. ii. 70 :
"Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust."
Ed.]
• P. 437, col. 2, line 7. Of Autumn
thunder, the autumn of the Round Table.
P. 437, col. I, lines 28, 29.
A spear, a harp, a bugle — Tristram — late
From overseas in Brittany returned.
He was a harper and a hunter.
["And so Tristram learned to be an
harper passing all other, that there was
none such called in no countrey. And so
in harping and in instruments of musike
hee applied himself in his youth for to
learne, and after as he growed in his might
and strength, he laboured ever in hunting
and hawking, so that we never read of no
gentleman more that so used himself
therein. . . .
"And every day Sir Tristram would
ride in hunting; for Sir Tristram was that
time called the best chacer of the world,
and the noblest blower of an home of all
manner of measures. For as bookes re-
port, of Sir Tristram came all the good
termes of vencry and of hunting, and the
sises and measures of blowing of an home.
And of him we had first all the termes of
hawking, and which were beasts of chace
and beasts of venery, and what were
vermines, and all the blasts that long to all
manner of games. First to the uncoupeling,
to the seeking, to the rechace, to the flight,
to the death, and to strak, and many other
blasts and termes, that all manner of
gentlemen have cause to the world's end
to praise Sir Tristram and to pray for his
soule" (Malory). — Ed.]
P. 438, col. I, line 14. Art thou the
purest, brother? Because the Queen had
said:
"The purest of thy knights
May use them for the purest of my mdds."
P. 438, col. I, lines 27-28 to col. 2, lines
1-6. It was the law to give the prize to
some lady on the field, but the laws are
broken, and Tristram the courteous has lost
his courtesy, for the great sin of Lancelot
was sapping the Round Table.
P. 438, col. 2, line 14.
The snowdrop only, flowering thro^ the year.
Because they were dressed in white.
P. 438, col. 2, lines 21, 22.
Liken' d them, saying, as when an hour of
cold
Falls on the mountain in- midsummer
snows.
Seen by me at Miirren in Switzerland.
P. 439, col. 2, line 28.
Her daintier namesake down in Brittany.
Isolt of the white hands.
P. 439, col. 2, line ^^. shell, husk.
P. 440, col. I, line 26. Paynim bard,
Orpheus.
P. 440, col. 2, line 3. harp of Arthur,
Lyra.
P. 440, col. 2, line 27. burning spurge,
the juice of the common spurge. I re-
member two early lines of mine :
Spurge with fairy crescent set
Like the flower of Mahomet.
P. 441, col. I, line 8. outer eye, the
hunter's eye.
P. 441, col. I, line 13. slot, trail.
P. 44 1, col. I, line 13. fewmets, droppings,
P. 442, col. I, line 27. the name,.
Pelleas.
P. 442, col. 2, lines 2-5.
Fall, as the crest of some slow-arching wave,.
Heard in dead night along that table-shore.
Drops flat, and after the great waters break
Whitening for half a league, and thin
themselves,
NOTES
963
Far over sands marbled mth moon and
cloud,
From less and less to nothing.
As I have heard and seen the sea on the
shore of Mablethorpe.
P. 442, col. 2, line 20. Alioth and
Alcor, two stars in the Great Bear.
P. 442, col. 2, line 22. as the water
Moab saw. [Cf. 2 Kings iii. 22. — Ed.]
P. 443, col. I, line 8. What, if she hate
me now? "She" is his wife.
P. 443, col. I, line 14. roky [misty.
Cf. Macbeth, iii. ii. 51 — Ed.].
P. 443, col. I, line 22.
The spiring stone that scaled about her
tower.
Winding stone staircase.
P. 444, col. I, line 7. Sailing from
Ireland. Tristram had told his uncle
Mark of the beauty of Isolt, when he saw
her in Ireland, so Mark demanded her hand
in marriage, which he obtained. Then
Mark sent Tristram to fetch her as in my
Idylls Arthur sent Lancelot for Guinevere.
P. 445, col. I, line 24. malkin in the
mast, slut among the beech nuts.
P. 446, col. I, line 10.
Believed himself a greater than himself.
When the man had an ideal before him.
P. 446, col. I, line 30.
The ptarmigan that whitens ere his hour.
Seen by me in the Museum at Christiania
in Norway.
P. 446, col. I, line 33. yaffingale. Old
word, and still provincial for the green
wood-pecker (so called from its laughter).
In Sussex "yaffel."
P. 446, col. 2, line 30 to p. 447, col. i,
line 7. Like an old Gaelic song — the two
stars symbolic of the two Isolts.
P. 447, col. I, lines 22, 23. ["Also
that false traitour King Marke slew the
noble knight Sir Tristram as he sat harping
before his lady La beale Isoud, with a
trenchant glaive, for whose death was
much bewaiUng of every knight that ever
was in King Arthur's dales. . . . And La
Beale Isoud died swooning upon the cross
of Sir Tristram, whereof was great pity"
(Malory). — Ed.]
P. 447. Guinevere. [First published
in 1859. This Idyll is largely original,
being founded on the following passage
from Malory: "And so shee went to
Almesbury, and there shee let make her-
self a nunne and ware white cloathes and
blacke. And great pennance shee tooke
as ever did sinfull lady in this land: and
never creature could make her merry,
but lived in fastings, prayers, and almes
deedes, that all manner of people mervailed
how vertuously shee was changed. Now
leave wee Queene Guenever in Almesbury,
that was a nunne in white cloathes and
blacke; and there she was abbesse and
ruler, as reason would." Guinevere was
called Gwenhwyvar (the white ghost) by
the bards, and is said by Taliessin to have
been "of a haughty disposition even in
her youth." Malory calls her the daughter
of Leodogran of the land of Camelyard.
According to Geoffrey of Monmouth,
"Guanhumara" was "descended from a
noble family of Romans, and educated
under Duke Cador of Cornwall, and
surpassed in beauty all the women of the
island."
"Some one," writes my father, "asks
how long it took to write Guinevere?
About a fortnight." He used to say
something of this kind: "Perfection in
art is perhaps more sudden than we think ;
but then the long preparation for it, that
unseen germination, that is what we ignore,
and forget."
My mother notes in her Journal : "/«/y
Qth, 1857. A. has brought me as a birth-
day present the first two lines that he has
made of Guinevere, which might be the
nucleus of a great poem. Arthur is parting
from Guinevere, and says:
But hither shall I never come again.
Never lie by thy side ; see thee no more ;
Farewell!" Ed.]
P. 447, line 2. Almesbury, near Stone-
henge, now Amesbury.
P. 449, col. 2, line 23. housel. Anglo-
Saxon husel, the Eucharist.
P. 451, col. 2, line 21. spigol, the bung.
964
NOTES
P. 452, col. I, line 12. Bude and Bos.
North of Tintagil.
P. 453, col. 2, line 15. That seem'd the
heavens. [This simile was made from the
hyacinths in the Wilderness at Farringford.
— Ed.]
P. 456, col. 2, line 14. Pendragonship.
The headship of the tribes who had con-
federated against the Lords of the White
Horse. "Pendragon" not a dactyl as
some make it, but Pen-dragon. Tho' in
the first edition of the Palace of Art, I
ended one line with Pendragon. I never in
reading pronounced it dactylically, but
Pendragon.
P. 457, col. 2, line 14. vail. See p.
437, col. 2, line 4.
P. 458. The Passing of Arthur.
["The temporary triumph of evil, the
confusion of moral order, closing in the
Great Battle of the West." This complete
Idyll was published in 1869. 169 lines at
the beginning and 30 lines at the end were
added to the Morte d' Arthur, originally
published in 1842. Cf. Notes on the
"Morte d' Arthur," Memoir, vol. i. pp.
384-390- — Ed.]
P. 458. line 14. lesser god. Cf. the
demiurge of Plato, and the gnostic belief
that lesser Powers created the world.
P. 458, col. 2, lines 11, 12.
blown
Along a wandering wind.
aliae panduntur inanes
Suspensae ad ventos.
Virgil, A en. vi. 740-741.
P. 459, col. I, lines 13, 14.
0 me, my King, let pass whatever will,
Elves, and the harmless glamour of the
field.
The legends which cluster round the King's
name.
P. 459, col. I, line 19. for the ghost is
as the man. The spirit.
P. 459, col. 2, line 16. fragments of
forgotten peoples. Perhaps old Celts.
P. 459, col. 2, line 23.
Burn'd at his lowest in the rolling year.
The winter solstice.
P. 459, col. 2, line 23. rolling year.
[Cf. irepiTrXofJiivov ipiavToO. — Ed.]
P. '459, col. 2, lines 25, 26.
Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight
Like this last, dim, weird battle of the
west.
A Vision of Death.
P. 460, col. I, line 13. monstrous
blasphemies. Cf. Rev. xvi., the battle of
Armageddon.
P. 460, col. 2, lines 2, 3.
And rolling far along the gloomy shores
The voice of days of old and days to be.
This grim battle in the mist contrasts
with Arthur's glorious battle in the Coming
of Arthur, fought on a bright day when
"he saw the smallest rock far on the
faintest hill."
P. 463, col. I, line 16. And flashing
. ... in an arch. The extra syllable gives
the rush of the sword as it is whirled in
parabolic curve.
P. 463, col. I, line 17.
Shot like a streamer of the northern morn.
The Aurora Borealis.,
P. 463, col. I, line 18. the moving
isles of winter, icebergs.
P. 463, col. I, line 26. drawing thicker
breath, breathing more heavily.
P. 463, col. 2, line 18. As in a picture.
[Cf. ws ^v 7/3a0a?s (Aesch. Ag. 241).
— Ed.]
P. 464, col. I, line 31. like the withered
moon, when smitten by the rising sun.
Cf. Fatima, "Like a dazzled morning
moon."
P. 465, col. 2, line 5.
From the great deep to the great deep he
goes.
See Merlin's song in The Coming of Arthur,
P- 315.
P. 465, col. 2, line 17.
Then from the dawn it seem'd there came,
but faint.
From (the dawn) the East, whence have
sprung all the great religions of the world.
A triumph of welcome is given to him who
has proved himself "more than conqueror."
NOTES
96s
P. 465, col. 2, line 24. an arch of
hand. [Cf. Soph. Oed. Col. 1650: *
dvuKTa 5' avrbv d/uL/xdrcov iiricKLOV
Xet/o' avrix^^"^^ Kpards. Ed.]
P. 465, col. 2, line 28.
From less to less and vanish into light.
The purpose of the individual man may
fail for a time, but his work cannot die.
[To this my father would add: "There
are two beliefs I have always held — that
there is Someone Who knows — God watch-
ing over all, — and that Death is not the
end-all of Man's existence.'' — Ed.]
Cf. Malory: "Yet somme say in many
partyes of Englond that King Arthur is
not deed, But had by the wylle of our
Lord Jhesu in to another place, and men
say that he shal come ageyn and he shall
Wynne the holy crosse."
And cf. what Arthur says in Layamon's
Brut, 28619, Madden's edition, vol. iii.
p. 144:
"And seothe ich cumen wuUe
to mine kineriche,
and wunien mid Brutten,
mid muchelere wunne."
(And afterwards I will come (again) to
my kingdom, and dwell with the Britons
with much joy.)
P. 466. To THE Queen. [First printed
in Strahan's Library Edition, my father's
favourite edition of his works, in 1872-3.
— Ed.]
P. 466, line 3. rememberahle day. When
the Queen and the Prince of Wales went
to the thanksgiving at St. Paul's (after the
Prince's dangerous illness) in February
1872.
P. 466, col. I, Hne 14. true North,
Canada. A leading London journal had
written advocating that Canada should
sever her connection with Great Britain,
as she was "too costly": hence these
lines.
P. 466, col. I, line 20. Hougoumont.
Waterloo.
P. 466, col. 2, line 7.
For one to whom I made it o'er his grave.
[Referring to the Dedication to the Prince
Consort. — Ed.]
P. 466, col. 2, line 11. Rather than
that gray king. [The legendary Arthur
from whom many mountains, hills, and
cairns throughout Great Britain are named.
— Ed.]
P. 466, col. 2, line 14. Geoffrey's,
Geoffrey of Monmouth's.
P. 466, col. 2, Hne 14. Malleor. Malory's
name is given as Maleorye, Maleore, and
Malleor.
Some passages of the Idylls were first
written in prose. See "The Dolorous
Stroke," Memoir, vol. ii. p. 134.
P. 467. The Lover's Tale. The
original Preface to The Lover's Tale states
that it was composed in my nineteenth
year. Two only of the three parts then
written were printed, when, feeling the im-
perfection of the poem, I withdrew it from
the press. One of my friends however
who, boylike, admired the boy's work,
distributed among our common associates
of that hour some copies of these two parts,
without my knowledge, without the omis-
sions and amendments which I had in
contemplation, and marred by the many
misprints of the compositor. Seeing that
these two parts have been mercilessly
pirated, and that what I had deemed
scarce worthy to live is not allowed to die,
may I not be pardoned if I suffer the whole
poem at last to come into the light — accom-
panied with a reprint of the sequel — a work
of my mature life — The Golden Supper /
[My father said: "'The Lover's Tale'
was written before I had ever seen Shelley,
though it is called Shelley an" — from the
character of the verse, and the luxuriance
and exuberance of the imagery. " Allowance
must be made for abundance of youth. It
is rich and full, but there are mistakes in it.
The poem is the breath of young Love."
Andrew Lang says: "Perhaps not even
Keats in his earliest work displayed more
of promise, and gave more assurance of
genius. Here and there come turns and
phrases, 'all the charm of all the Muses,'
which remind a reader of things later well
known in poems more mature. Such lines
are —
Strange to me and sweet,
Sweet thro' strange years, —
966
NOTES
and
Like to a low-hung and a fiery sky —
Hung round with ragged rims and burning
folds —
and
Like sounds without the twilight realm of
dreams,
Which wander roimd the bases of the hills."
Ed.]
P. 490. The First Quarrel. [First
published in Ballads and other Poems,
1880, dedicated to his grandson Alfred
Browning Stanley Tennyson, born 1878.
— Ed.]
Founded on facts told me by Dr. Dabbs,
who is the doctor. The poor woman
quarrelled with her husband. He started
the night of the quarrel for Jersey; the
boat, in which he was, struck a reef and
went down.
[More than once in his life my father
lived much among fisher folk both on the
east and on the south coast. Carlyle's
comment on the poem was: "Ah, but
that's a dreary tragic tale. Poor fellow,
he was just an honest plain man, and she
was a curious production of the century, and
I am sorry for that poor girl too." — Ed.]
P. 492. RizPAH. [First published in
1880. For the title see 2 Samuel xxi. — Ed.]
Founded on a paragraph which I read
in a penny magazine. Old Brighton (lent
me by my friend and neighbour Mrs.
Brotherton), about a poor woman at
Brighthelmstone groping for the body of
her son at nights on the Downs. He had
been hung in chains for highway robbery,
and his corpse had been left on the gallows,
as was customary in the eighteenth century.
("When the elements had caused the
clothes and flesh to decay, his aged mother,"
night after night, in all weathers, and the
more tempestuous the weather the more
frequent the visits, made a sacred pilgrim-
age to the lonely spot on the Downs, and
it was noticed that on her return she
always brought something away with her
in her apron. Upon being watched it was
discovered that the bones of the hanging
man were the objects of her search, and
as the wind and rain scattered them on
the ground she conveyed them to her
home. .There she kept them, and, when
the gibbet was stripped of its horrid
burden, in the dead silence of the night
she interred them in the hallowed enclosure
of old Shoreham Churchyard. What a
sad story of a Brighton Rizpah!" {Old
Brighton). — Ed.]
P. 494. The Northern Cobbler.
[First pubhshed in 1880. — Ed.] Founded
on a fact that I heard in early youth. A
man set up a bottle of gin in his window
when he gave up drinking. A village
drunkard, hearing this poem read at a
Village Reading, rose from his seat and
left the room. "Sally," I suppose, got
on his brain, and he was heard to grumble
out, "Women knaws too mooch nowa-
daays."
P. 494. Verse iii. fettle and clump
[mend and put new soles to. — Ed.].
P. 494. Verse iv. squad [dirt. — Ed.].
P. 494. Verse iv. scrawm'd an'' scratted
[clawed and scratched. — Ed.],
P. 495. Verse v. wedr'd [spent. — Ed.].
P. 495. Verse ix. tew [stew. — Ed.].
P. 495. Verse xi. num-cumpus, non-
compos.
P. 496. Verse xiv. snaggy [ill-tempered.
— Ed.].
P. 497. The Revenge; A Ballad
OF THE Fleet. [First published in The
Nineteenth Century, March 1878, under
the title of "Sir Richard Grenville: a
Ballad of the Fleet" ; afterwards published
in Ballads and Poems, 1880. The line
At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard
Grenville lay
was on my father's desk for two years,
but he set to work and finished the ballad
at last all at once in a day or two. He
wrote to my mother: "Sir Richard
Grenville, in one ship, The Revenge,
fought fifty-three Spanish ships of the line
for fifteen hours : a tremendous story, out-
rivalling Agincourt." Carlyle's comment
on the poem was: "Eh! Alfred, you
have got the grip of it." — Ed.]
This tremendous story is told finely by
Walter Raleigh in his Report of the truth
of the fight about the Isles of Azores this
last summer, and by PVoude — also by
NOTES
967
Bacon. "The action," says Froude,
"struck a deeper terror, though* it was
but the action of a single ship, into the
hearts of the Spanish people; it dealt a
more deadly blow upon their fame and
moral strength than the Armada itself."
Sir Richard Grenville commanded Sir
Walter Raleigh's first colony which went
out to Virginia. He was always re-
garded with .superstitious reverence by the
Spaniards, who declared for instance that
he would carouse three or four glasses of
wine, and take the glasses between his
teeth and crush them to pieces and swallow
them down. The Revenge was the same
ship of 500 tons in which Drake had sailed
against the Armada three years before this
sea-fight .1
Flores is a dissyllable, Azores a trisyllable.
P. 498. Verse vii. galleons. Pro-
nounced like "allion" in "medallion"
(derived fiom galea).
P. 499. Sir Richard "commanded the
master gunner, whom he knew to be a
most resolute man, to split and sink the
ship, that thereby nothing might remain
of glory or victory to the Spaniards, seeing
in so many hours they were not able to
take her, having had about fifteen hours'
time, fifteen thousand men, and fifty-three
sail of men of war to perform it withal"
(Raleigh).
P. 499. Verse xiii.
'/ have fought for Queen and Faith like a
valiant man and true;
I have only done my duly as a man is
bound to do:
With a joyful spirit ' I Sir Richard
Grenville die ! '
"His exact words were: 'Here die I,
Richard Greenfield, with a joyful and
quiet mind, for that I have ended mj'^ life
as a tnie soldier ought to do, that hath
fought for his country, Queen, religion, and
honour. Whereby my soul most joyfully
departeth out of this body, and shall
iSee R. L. Stevenson, "The English Ad-
mirals," in Virginibus Puerisque, p. 205: "I
must tell one more story, which has lately been
made familiar to us all, and that in one of the
noblest ballads in the English language. I had
written my prose abstract, I shall beg the reader
to believe, when I had no notion that the sacred
bard designed an immortality for Grenville."
always leave behind it an everlasting fame
of a valiant and true soldier that hath
done his duty as he was bound to do.'
When he had finished these or such other
like words, he gave up the Ghost with a
great and stout courage, and no man
could perceive any true sign of heaviness
in him." (Jan Huygen van Linschoten,
translated into English 1598.)
P. 499. Verse xiv.
When a wind from the lands they had
ruined awoke from, sleep.
West Indies. "A fleet of merchantmen
joined the Armada immediately after the
battle, forming in all 140 sail; and of these
140 only 32 ever saw Spanish harbour."
Gervase Markham wrote a poem entitled
The Most Honourable Tragedie of Sir
Richard Grenuile, Knight, in 1595, and
in his postscript to the poem writes:
"What became of the Revenge after Sir
Richard's death, divers report diversly,
but the most probable and sufficient proof e
sayeth, that within fewe dayes after the
knightes death, there arose a great storme
from the West and North-West, that all
the Fleet was dispersed, as well the Indian
Fleet, which were then come unto them,
as all the rest of the Armada, which
attended their arivall; of which fourteen
sayle, together with the Revenge, and her
two hundred Spanyards were cast away
uponn the He of St. Michaels; so it
pleased them to honour the buriall of that
renowned ship the Revenge, not suffering
her to perrish alone, for the great honour
shee atchieved in her Ufe-time."
P. 499. The Sisters. [First pub-
lished in 1880. Partly founded on a
story, known to my father, of a girl who
consented to be bridesmaid to her sister,
although she secretly loved the bridegroom.
The night after the wedding the unhappy
bridesmaid ran away from home. They
searched for her high and low, and at last
she was found, knocking at the church
door, in the "pitiless rush of autumn
rain," her wits gone —
The great Tragedian, that had quench 'd
herself
In that assumption of the bridesmaid.
The scene of the picnic was a personal
968
NOTES
experience in the New Forest. He would
oiten quote as his own belief these lines:
My God, I would not live
Save that I think this gross hard-seeming
world
Is our misshaping vision of the Powers
Behind the world, that make our griefs
our gains. Ed.]
P. 501, col. I, lines 7-n.
A moonless night with storm — one light-
ning-fork
Flashed out the lake; and tho' I loiter' d
there
The full day after, yet in retrospect
That less than momentary thunder-sketch
Of lake and mountain conquers all the day.
What I saw myself at Llanberis, in
North Wales.
P. 504. The Village Wife; or,
The Entail. [First published in 1880.
— Ed.] The village wife herself is the
only portrait in the Lincolnshire poems that
is drawn from life.
P. 504. Verse iii. tfie fault 0' that ere
madle. By delauU of the heir male.
P. 505. Verse ix. ^Ouse [Workhouse, —
Ed.].
P. 505. Verse xi. Heaps an' heaps 0'
boooks. This really happened to some of
the most valuable books in the great
library formed by Johnson's friend, Bennet
Langton.
P. 506. Verse xv. Siver the mou'ds.
[However, the earth rattled down on poor
old Squire's coffin. — Ed.]
P. 506. Verse xix. roomlin' [rumbling.
— Ed.].
P. 507. In the Children's Hospital.
[First published in 1880. — Ed.] A true
story told me by Mary Gladstone. The
doctors and hospital are unknown to me.
The two children are the only characters
taken from life in this little dramatic poem,
in which the hospital nurse and not the
poet is speaking throughout.
P. 507. Verse i. oorali or curari (ex-
tracted from the Strychnos toxifera), which
paralyzes the nerves while still the victim
feels.
P. 508. Dedicatory Poem to the
Princess Alice. [First published with
The Defence of Lucknow in The Nineteenth
Century, April 1879, afterwards in Ballads
and Poems, 1880. — Ed-.]
P. 508, line 2. fatal kiss. Princess
Alice (Grand Duchess of Hesse-Darmstadt)
died of kissing her child, who was ill with
diphtheria (December 14th, 1878).
P. 508, line II. Thy Soldier-brother's.
[The Duke of Connaught, married on
March 13th, 1879, to Louise Marguerite,
Princess of Prussia. — Ed.]
P. 509. The Defence of Lucknow.
The old* flag, used during the defence
of the Residency, was hoisted on the
Lucknow flagstaff by General Wilson, and
the soldiers who still survived from the
siege were all mustered on parade, in
honour of this poem, when my son Lionel
(who died on his journey from India) visited
Lucknow. A tribute overwhelmingly touch-
ing.
P. 509. Verse ii. Lawrence. Sir Henry
Lawrence died of his wounds on July 4th,
1857.
P. 510. Verse vi.
Ever the mine and assault, our sallies, their
lying alarms.
3292 feet of gallery alone was dug out.
See Outram's account and Colonel Inglis's
modest manly record. Lucknow was
relieved on Sept. 25th by Havelock and
Outram.
P. sxi. Sir John Oldcastle, Lord
CoBHAM. [First pubHshed in 1880. — Ed.]
I took as subject of this poem Sir John
Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, because he is a
fine historical figure. He was named by
the people "the good Lord Cobham,"
a friend of Henry V. As a follower of
Wycliff, he was cited before a great council
of the Church, which was presided over
by Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canter-
bury, and was condemned to be burnt
alive for heresy. He escaped from the
Tower to Wales, and four years later was
captured and burnt in chains.
P. six, col. 2, line 13. ^Dim Saesneg.'
Welsh for 'No English.'
NOTES
969
P. 512, col. 2, line 13. John of Beverley,
burnt Jan. 19th, 1414.
P. 512, col. 2, line 22. My boon com-
panion. This passage has reference to
the story that Sir John Falstaff was Sir
John Oldcastle. For Oldcastle, etc., see
Epilogue to 2 Henry IV.
P. 512, col. 2, line 28.
Or Amurath of tJie East?
[Cf. 2 Henry IV. v. ii. 48:
"This is the. English, not the Turkish
. court ;
Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds.
But Harry Harry." Ed.]
P. 514, col. I, line 4. Sylvester was
Pope from 314 to 335 and received the
Donation from Constantine.
P. 514. Columbus. [First published
in 1880. — Ed.]
Columbus on his return into Spain was
thrown into chains.
My poem of Columbus was founded on
the following passage in Washington
Irving's Life of Columbus: — "The caravels
set sail early in October, bearing oflf
Columbus shackled like the vilest of culprits,
amid the scoffs and shouts of a miscreant
rabble, who took a brutal joy in heaping
insults on his venerable head, and ' sent
curses after him from the island he had so
recently added to the civilized world. The
worthy Villejo, as well as Andreas Martin,
the master of the caravel, felt deeply
grieved at his situation. They would have
taken off his irons, but to this he would
not consent. 'No,' said he proudly,
'their Majesties commanded me by letter
to submit to whatever Bobadillo should
order in their name ; by their authority he
has put upon me these chains; I will wear
them until they shall order them to be
taken off, and I will afterwards preserve
them as relics and memorials of the reward
of my services.' 'He did so,' adds his
son Fernando in his history. 'I saw them
always hanging in his cabinet, and he
requested that, when he died, they might
be buried with him.' "
P. 515, col. I, line 11. the Dragon's mouth.
[Bocca del Drago, the channel so named by
Columbus between the island of Trinidad
and South America. — Ed.]
P. 515, col. I, line 12. the Mountain of the
World. [Adam's Peak in Ceylon. — Ed.]
P. 515, col. 2, line 2. King David,
etc. [Cf. Psalm civ. 2. — Ed.]
P. 515, col. 2, Une 4. Lactantius.
[A famous Christian apologist of the fourth
century, called by some the Christian
Cicero. — Ed.]
P. 515, col. 2, line 30. Guanahani.
[Native name of the first island discovered
by Columbus. — Ed.]
P. 516, col. I, line SS- Cambalu. [Cf.
" Cambalu, seat of Cathayan Can."
Paradise Lost, xi. 388.
Ed.]
P. 516, col. 2, line 2. Prester John.
[Cf. "I will fetch you a tooth- picker now
from the furthest inch of Asia, bring you
the length of Prester John's foot" {Much
Ado, II. i. 274). Prester John was a
legendary Christian king. — Ed.]
P. 516, col. 2, line 10. Hispaniola.
[The name given to Hayti by Columbus. — -
Ed.]
P. 517, col. I, line 5. Veragua. [A
Spanish province of New Grenada in South
America. — Ed.]
P. 517, col. 2, line 19. Catalonian
Minorite. [Bernard Buil, a Benedictine
monk sent by the Pope to the West Indies
in June 1493 as Apostolic Vicar. He con-
tinually tried to thwart Columbus. — Ed.]
P. 518. The Voyage of Maeldune.
[First published in 1880. By this story
my father intended to represent, in his own
original way, the Celtic genius; and en-
joyed writing the poem as he had a genuine
love for the peculiar exuberance of the Irish
genius. — Ed.]
The oldest form of Maeldune is in The
Book of the Dun Cow (a.d. 1160). I read
the legend in Joyce's Old Celtic Romances,
but most of the details are mine.
[It was in 1878 at Kilkee that Mr.
Perceval Graves recommended to my father
this book ; because he said that he desired
to write an Irish poem. "When telling
Tennyson of Joyce's book," he writes, "and
several of the tales which relate to Finn
and his heroic companions, I had hoped
he would have treated one of them, by
970
NOTES
choice Oisin (Ossian) in Tirrnanoge (The
Land of Youth) rather than 'The voyage of
Maeldune.' For the mention of Ossian
has started him off into an expression of
admiration of some passages in Macpher-
son's work for which I was not prepared.
'Listen to this,' he said: 'O thou, that
rollest above, round as the shield of my
fathers ! Whence are thy beams, O Sun ?
thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth
in thy awful beauty ; the stars hide them-
selves in the sky; the moon, cold and
pale, sinks on the western wave; but thou
thyself movest alone. Who can be a com-
panion of thy course? The vales of the
mountain fall; the mountains themselves
decay with years; the ocean shrinks and
grows again; the moon herself is lost in
heaven; but thou art for ever the same,
rejoicing in the brightness of thy course.
When the world is dark with tempest,
when thunder rolls and lightning flies,
thou lookest in thy beauty from the clouds
and laughest at the storm." — Ed.]
P. 519. Verse iii. jliUermouse. A bat.
P. 520. Verse viii. Finn was the most
famous of old Irish leaders. He was com-
mander of the Feni of Erin and was father
of the poet Ossian. He was killed, a.d.
284, at Athbrea on the Boyne.
P. 520. Verse x. [Symbolical of the
contest between Roman Catholics and
Protestants. — Ed.]
P. 521. Verse xi. St. Brendan sailed on
his voyage .some time in the sixth century
from Kerry, and some say he visited
America.
P. 521, De Profundis. [Begun at
the birth of his son Hallam, Aug. nth,
1852; first pubhshed in The Nineteenth
Century, May 1880. — Ed.]
NOTE ON DE PROFUNDIS^
By Mr. Wilfrid Ward
He (Tennyson) had often said he would
go through the "De Profundis" with me
line by line, and he did so late in January or
1 From Problems and Persons, by Wilfrid
Ward, published here by his kind permission
and that of Longmans, Green & Co.
early in February 1889, when I was staying
at Farringford. He was still very ill, having
had rheumatic fever in the previous year;
and neither he nor his friends expected
that he would recover after his many
relapses. He could scarcely move his
limbs, and his fingers were tied with
bandages. We moved him from bed to
sofa, but he could not sit up. His mind,
however, was quite clear. He read through
the "De Profundis," and gave the sub-
stance of the explanation I have written
down. He began languidly, but soon got
deeply interested. When he reached the
prayer at the end, he said: "A B"
(naming a well-known Positivist thinker)
"exclaimed, when I read it to him, 'Do
leave that prayer out; I like all the rest
of it.' "
I proceed to set down the account of
the poem written (in substance) im-
mediately after his explanation of it.
The mystery of life as a whole which so
constantly exercised him is here most fully
dealt with. He supposes a child just born,
and considers the problems of human
existence as presented by the thought of
the child's birth, and the child's future life
with all its possibiUties. The poem takes
the form of two greetings to the new-born
child. In the first greeting life is viewed
as we see it in the world, and as we know
it by physical science as a phenomenon;
as the materialist might view it; not
indeed coarsely, but as an outcome of all
the physical forces of the universe, which
have ever contained in themselves the
potentiality of all that was to come — "all
that was to be in all that was." These
vast and wondrous forces have now issued
in this newly given life — this child born
into the world. There is the sense of
mystery in our greeting to it; but it is of
the mysteries of the physical Universe and
nothing beyond; the sense of awe fitting
to finite man at the thought of infinite Time,
of the countless years before human life
was at all, during which the fixed laws of
Nature were ruling and framing the earth
as we know it, of the countless years earlier
still, during which, on the nebular hypK)-
thesis, Nature's laws were working before
our planet was separated off from the mass
of the sun's light, and before the similar
NOTES
971
differentiation took place in the rest of the
''vast waste dawn of multitudinous eddy-
ing light." Again, there is awe in con-
templating the vastness of space; in the
thoughts which in ascending scale rise from
the new-born infant to the great globe of
which he is so small a part, from that to
the whole solar system, from that again to
the myriad similar systems "glimmering
up the heights beyond" us which we
partly see in the Milky Way ; from that to
those others which human sight can never
descry. Forces in Time and Space as
nearly infinite as our imagination can con-
ceive, have been leading up to this one
birth, with the short life of a single man
before it. May that life be happy and
noble ! Viewing it still as the course
determined by Nature's laws — a course
unknown to us and yet unalterably fixed —
we sigh forth the hope that our child may
pass unscathed through youth, may have a
full and prosperpus time on earth, blessed
by man for good done to man, and may
pass peacefully at last to rest. Such is the
first greeting — full of the poetry of life, of
its wondrous causes, of the overwhelming
greatness of the Universe of which this
new-given baby is the child, cared for,
preserved hitherto unscathed amid these
awful powers, all in all to its parents, in-
spiring the hope which new-given joy
makes sanguine, that fortune may be kind
to it, that happiness may be as great,
sorrow and pain as little, as the chances of
the world allow.
After his explanation, he read the first
greeting to the child.
And then comes the second greeting.
A deeper chord is struck. The listener,
who has, perhaps, felt as if the first greet-
ing contained all — all the mystery of birth,
of life, of death — hears a sound unknown,
unimagined before. A new range of ideas
is opened to us. The starry firmament
disappears for the moment. The "deep"
of infinite time and space is forgotten. A
fresh sense is awakened, a deeper depth
disclosed. We leave this wondrous world
of appearances. We gaze into that other
deep — the world of spirit, the world of
realities; we see the new-born babe
coming to us from that true world, with
all the "abysmal depths of personality,"
no longer a mere link in the chain of
causes, with a fated course through the
events of life, but a moral being, with the
awful power of making or marring its own
destiny and that of others. The propor-
tions are abruptly reversed. The child is
no longer the minute outcome of natural
forces so much greater than itself. It is
the "spirit," the moral bdng, a reality
which impinges on the world of appear-
ances. Never can I forget the change of
voice, the change of manner, as Lord
Tennyson passed from the first greeting,
with its purely human thoughts, to the
second, so full of awe at the conception of
the world behind the veil and the moral
nature of man; an awe which seemed to
culminate when he paused before the word
"Spirit" in the seventh line and then gave
it in deeper and more piercing tones:
"Out of the deep — Spirit,— out of the
deep." This second greeting is in two
parts.
Note that the second greeting considers
the leality of the child's life and its mean-
ing, the first only its appearance. The
great deep of the spiritual world is "that
true world within the world we see,
Whereof our world is but the bounding
shore." And this indication that the
second greeting gives the deeper and truer
view, is preserved in some of the side
touches of description. In the first greet-
ing, for example, the moon is spoken of as
"touch'd with earth's light"; in the
second the truer and less obvious fact is
suggested. It "sends the hidden sun
down yon dark sea." The material view
again looks at bright and hopeful appear-
ances in life, and it notes the new-born
babe "breaking with laughter from the
dark." The spiritual view foresees the
woes which, if Byron is right in calling
melancholy the "telescope of truth," are
truer than the joys. It notes no longer
the child's laughter, but rather its tears,
"Thou wailest being born and banished
into mystery." Life, in the spiritual view,
is in part a veiling and obscuring of the
true self as it is, in a world of appearances.
The soul is "half lost" in the body which
is part of the phenomenal world, "in thine
own shadow and in this fleshy sign that
thou . art thou." The suns and moons.
972
NOTES
too, are but shadows, as the body of the
child itself is but a shadow — shadows of
the spirit- world and of God Himself. The
physical life is before the child ; but not as
a fatally determined course. Choice of
the good is to lead the spirit ever nearer
God. The wonders of the material Uni-
verse are still recognized: "Sun, sun,
and sun, thro' finite-infinite space, in finite-
infinite Time"; but they vanish into
insignificance when compared to the two
great facts of the spirit-world which con-
sciousness tells us unrhistakably — the facts
of personahty and of a responsible will.
The great mystery is "Not Matter, nor
the finite-infinite," but "this main-miracle,
that thou art thou, with power on thine own
act and on the world."
"Out of the deep" — in this conception
of the true "deep" of the world behind
the veil we have the thought which recurs
so often, as in the "Passing of Arthur"
and in "Crossing the Bar" ^ — of birth
and death as the coming from and return-
ing to the spirit-world and God Himself.
Birth 2 is the coming to land from- that
deep; "of which our world is but the
bounding shore"; death the re-embarking
on the same infinite sea, for the home of
truth and light.
He seemed so much better when he had
finished his explanation that I asked him
to read the poem through again. This he
did, more beautifully than I ever heard
him read. I felt as though his long illness
and his expectation of death gave more
intensity and force to his rendering of this
wonderful poem on the mystery of life. He
began quietly, and read the concluding lines
of the first "greeting," the brief descrip-
tion of a peaceful old age and death, from
the human standpoint, with a very tender
pathos. Then he gathered force, and his voice
deepened as the greeting to the immortal
soul of the man was read. He raised his
eyes from the book at the seventh line and
1 " Froid the great deep to the great deep he
goes ; and "when that which drew from out
the boundless deep turns again home."
* For in the world which is not ours, they said,
"Let us make man," and that which should
be a man.
From that one light no man can look upon,
Drew to this shore, lit by the suns and moons
And all the shadows.
looked for a moment at his hearer with an
indescribable expression of awe before he
uttered the word "spirit"; "Out of the
deep — Spirit, — out of the deep." When
he had finished the second greeting he was
trembling much. Then be read the prayer
— a prayer he had told me of self-pros-
tration before the Infinite. I think he
intended it as a contrast to the analytical
and reflective character of the rest. It is
an outpouring of the simplest and most
intense self-abandonment to the Creator.
P. 522. Part II. At times I have
possessed the power of making my in-
dividuality as it were dissolve and fade
away into boundless being, and this not a
confused state but the clearest of the clear-
est, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond
words, where death was an almost laugh-
able impossibility, and the loss of per-
sonality, if so it were, seeming no alteration
but the only true life. (See The Holy
Grail, ad fin.)
P. 522. Prefatory Sonnet to the
'Nineteenth Century.' [First pub-
Ushed in the first number of The Nine-
teenth Century, March 1877, afterwards in
Ballads and other Poems, 1880. — Ed.]
P. 522, Hne 3. their old craft. The
Contemporary Review.
P. 522, line 7.
. Here, in this roaring moon of daffodil.
Written in March.
P. 522. To the Rev. W. H. Brook-
field. [First published in Lord Lyttelton's
Preface to Brookfield's Sermons, afterwards
in Ballads and other Poems, 1880. Dr.
Thompson, the Master of Trinity, wrote:
"He was far the most amusing man I ever
met, or shall meet. At my age it is not
likely that I shall ever again see a whole
party lying on the floor for purposes
of unrestrained laughter, while one of
their number is pouring forth, with a per-
fectly grave face, a succession of imaginary
dialogues between characters, real and
fictitious, one exceeding another in humour
and drollery." — Ed.]
P. 523. Montenegro, [Written after
talking with Gladstone about the bravery
of the Montenegrins, and first published
in The Nineteenth Century, March 1877,
NOTES
973
afterwards in Ballads and other Poems,
1880. — Ed.]
P.« 523, col. 2, line 3. Tsernogora
(Black mountain). The Slavonic name
for Montenegro.
P. 523. To Victor Hugo. [Published
in The Nineteenth Century, June 1877,
afterwards in Ballads and other Poems,
1880. — Ed.]
After my son Lionel's visit to him in
Paris.
[Victor Hugo thanked my father in the
following letter : —
MON EMINENT ET CHER CONFRERE,
Je lis avec emotion vos vers superbes, c'est
un reflet de gloire que vous m'envoyez.
Comment n'aimerais-je pas I'Angleterre
qui produit des hommes tels que vous !
I'Angleterre de Wilberforce ! I'Angleterre
de Milton et de Newton ! I'Angleterre de
Shakespeare ! France et Angleterre sont
pour moi un seul peuple comme Verite et
Liberte sont une seule lumiere. Je crois a
1 'unite divine. J'aime tous les peuples et
tous les hommes et j'admire vos nobles
vers. Recevez mon cordial serrement de
main. Victor Hugo.
J'ai ete heureux de connaitre votre
charmant fils — il m'a semble, que serrer sa
main, c'etait presser la votre.
Ed.]
P. 523. Battle of Brunanburh.
[First published in 1880. — Ed.] I have
more or less availed myself of my son's
prose translation of this poem in The
Contemporary Review, November 1876.
["But tell your father that, when I saw
his version of your Battle of Brunanburh,
I said t© myself, and afterwards to others,
'There's the way to render ^Eschylus'
Chorus at last ! ' unless indeed it might
overpower any blank verse dialogue"
{Edward FitzGerald to Hallam Tennyson).
— Ed.]
P. 525. Achilles over the Trench.
[First published in The Nineteenth Century,
August 1877. — Ed.]
P. 526. To Princess Frederica on
her Marriage. [Written on the marriage
of Princess Frederica, daughter of George
v., the blind King of Hanover, with
Baron von Pawel-Rammingen at Windsor,
April 24th, 1880. Published in 1880. —
Ed.]
P. 526. Sir John Franklin. [Written
in 1877 for the cenotaph in Westminster
Abbey, and published in Ballads and other
Poems, 1880. — Ed.]
P. 526. To Dante. [Written for the
sixth anniversary of Dante's birth at the
request of the people of Florence, May 14th,
1865, and published in Ballads and other
Poems, 1880. The few lines addressed to
Dante have a curious history. In 1865
Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton) met
a brother of my father's friend Canon
Warburton, and said to him, "Tennjson
is not going to the Dante Centenary, but
he has given me some lines which I am
to recite to the Florentines," and he then
repeated the lines. The same evening
Canon Warburton met his brother, who
observed, "Milnes has just been saying
to me some lines which Tennyson has
given him to recite at the Centenary, for
he is not going himself." He then repeated
the lines. Some fifteen years or so later,
my father was talking to the Canon about
the probably short-lived duration of all
modern poetical fame. "Who," said he,
"will read Alfred Tennyson one hundred
years hence? And look at Dante after six
hundred years!" "That," Warburton
answered, "is a renewal of the garland-
of-a-day superstition." "What do you
mean?" "Your own words!" "What
can you mean?" "Don't you remember
those Hues you gave to Milnes to recite for
you at the Dante Centenary ? " My father
had quite forgotten the lines, whereupon
Warburton then wrote them out as far as
he could nemember them. Shortly after-
wards I was able to send the Canon a
letter, telling him that my father had
recalled the correct version of the poem.
My father would say: "One must dis-
tinguish from among the poets the great
sage poets of all, who are both great
thinkers and great artists, like ^schylus,
Shakespeare, Dante, and Goethe." — Ed.]
P. 526. [TiRESIAS AND OTHER POEMS
was affectionately dedicated "To my good
friend, Robert Browning, whose genius
and geniality will best appreciate what
974
NOTES
may be best, and make most allowance for
what may be worst."
Browning had previously dedicated a
Selection of his own poems to my father :
To Alfred Tennyson
In poetry illustrious and consummate,
In friendship noble and sincere.
These brother-poets revelled as it were in
each other's praise, and were always most
loyal to one another. For example, on
one occasion Browning v/as very angry
because an anonj^mous critic had accused
my father of plagiarism ; and, knowing
the wealth of similes and metaphors in his
poems and in his ordinary conversation,
said to Lecky: "Tennyson suspected of
plagiarism ! why, you might as well suspect
the Rothschilds of picking pockets." — Ed.]
P. 526. To E. FitzGerald. [First
pubHshed in 1885. Written after our
visit to Woodbridge, 1876, when we sailed
down the river Orwell with Edward Fitz-
Gerald. He died before Tiresias was
published.
His vegetarianism had interested my
father, and he was charmed by the picture
of the lonely philosopher, a "man of
humorous-melancholy mark," with his gray
floating locks, sitting among his doves,
which perched about him on head and
shoulder and knee, and cooed to him as
he sat in the sunshine beneath his roses.
FitzGerald wrote to Fanny Kemble of
our visit Sept. 21st, 1876: "Who should
send in his card to me last week, but the
old poet himself — he and his elder son
Hallam passing through Woodbridge from
a town in Norfolk. 'Dear old Fitz,' ran
the card in pencil, 'we are passing thro.'
I had not seen him for twenty years — he
looked much the same, except for his
fallen locks ; and what really surprised me
was, that we fell at once into the old
humour, as if we had only been parted
twenty days instead of so many years. I
suppose this is a sign of age — not al-
together desirable. But so it was. He
stayed two days, and we went over the
same old grounds of debate, told some
of the old stories, and all was well. I
suppose I may never see him again."
The dream, to which allusion is made
in the poem, my father related to us in
these words :
"I never saw any landscape that came
up to the landscapes I have seen in my
dreams. The mountains of Switzerland
seem insignificant compared with the
mountains I have imagined. One of the
most wonderful experiences I ever had was
this. I had gone without meat for six
weeks, living only on vegetables; and at
the end of the time, when I came to eat
a mutton-chop, I shall never forget the
sensation. I never felt such joy in my
blood. When I went to sleep, I dreamt
that I saw the vines of the South, with
huge Eshcol branches, traiUng over the
glaciers of the North." — Ed.]
P. 526, col. I, line 15. ' a thing enskied.'
[See Measure for Measure, i. iv. 34.
— Ed.]
P. 526, col. 2, line 12. golden. [Fitz-
Gerald's translation of the Rubdiydt of
Omar Khayyam. — Ed.]
P. 527. Tiresias. [Partly written at
the same time as Ulysses; first published
in 1885. — Ed.]
Pp. 529-530. For the close of the poem
cf. Pindar, Frag. x. No. i. of the QpTjvoi. :
Toiai \dfxirei /j^v /iivos deXlov tclp ivddde
v^KTa Kdroo
(f>oiutKop68oi^ rivl Xei/juliveaa-i irpodcmov
avrCjv
Kal XtjSdj'Cfj (TKiapq. Kal xP^<^^ols Kapirocs
^i^pidev.
Kal Tol jxkv Linrois yv/xvaaloL^ re, toI 5^
Tol 5^ (f>opiJ.lyyea-ai T^pwovTai, irapd S^
(T(pi.(XLv evavdrjs diras ridaXev 6X/3os'
ddfjLCL 5' iparbv Kara x^pof KLdparai
alei dOa fiiyvtJVTOjp irvpl rrjXecpavei iravrota
OeCov ipi /3a>/xots.
P. 530. The Wreck. [First published
in 1885. The catastrophe (see viii.) which
happened to an Italian vessel, named the
Rosina, bound from Catania for New
York, was the nucleus of the poem. One
da/, at the end of October, she was nearly
capsized by a sudden squall in the middle
of the Atlantic. All hands were summoned
instantly to take in sail, and all, together
with the captain, were actively engaged,
NOTES
975
when an enormous wave swept the deck
of every Uving person, leaving only one
of the crew who happened to be below.
For eight days he struggled against wind
and sea, without taking an instant's re-
pose, when the Marianna, a Portuguese
brigantine, boj-e down upon her, as she
was sinking, and rescued him. — Ed.]
P. 531. Verse vi.
Mother, one morning a bird with a warble
plaintively sweet
Pcrch'd on the shrouds, and tfien fell
fluttering doivn at my feet.
This happened in the Pembroke Castle
on our voyage to Copenhagen in 1883
with the Gladstones.
P- 533- Verse xii.
The broad white brow of the Isle — that bay
with the coloured sand.
Alum Bay in the Isle of Wight.
P- 533- Despair. [First pubHshed in
The Nineteenth Century, November 1881,
afterwards in Tiresias, 1885. — Ed.]
P- 533- Verse iv.
See, we were nursed in the drear night-
fold of your fatalist creed.
In my boyhood I came across this
Calvinist creed — and assuredly, however
unfathomable the mystery, if one cannot
believe in the freedom of the human will
as of the divine, life is hardly worth the
living.
P. 536. The Ancient S.^ge. [First
published in 1885. My father considered
this as one of his best later poems. — Ed.]
What the Ancient Sage says is not the
philosophy of the Chinese philosopher
Laot-ze, but it was written after reading
his life and maxims. ["What I might
have believed," my father said, "about
the deeper problems of life 'A thousand
summers ere the birth of Christ.' In my
old age, I think I have a stronger faith in
God and human good than I had in
youth." Compare with this poem The
Mystic, written in his .boyhood, which
records his early intimations, or indistinct
visions, af the mind's power to pass be-
yond the shadows of the world — to pierce
beyond the enveloping clouds of ignorance
and illusion, and to reach some region of
pure light and untroubled calm, where
perfect knowledge shall have extinguished
doubt. -pjjg MYSTIC
Angels have talked with him, and showed
him thrones : -
Ye knew him not : he was not one of ye.
Ye scorned him with an undiscerning
scorn ;
Ye could not read the marvel in his eye,
The still serene abstraction ; he hath felt
The vanities of after and before ;
Albeit, his spirit and his secret heart
The .stem experiences of converse lives.
The linked woes of many a fiery change
Had purified, and chastened, and made
free.
Always there stood before him, night and
day.
Of wayward vary colored circumstance,
The imperishable presences serene
Colossal, without form, or sense, or sound.
Dim shadows but unwaning presences
Fourf aced to four comers of the sky ;
And yet again, three shadows, fronting one.
One forward, one respectant, three but
one;
And yet again, again and evermore.
For the two first were not, but only seemed,
One shadow in the midst of a great light,
One reflex from eternity on time.
One mighty countenance of perfect calm,
Awful with most invariable eyes.
For him the silent congregated hours.
Daughters of time, divinely tall, beneath
Severe and youthful brows, with shining
eyes
Smiling a godlike smile (the innocent hght
Of earliest youth pierced through and
through with all-
Keen knowledges of low-embowed eld)
Upheld, and ever hold aloft the cloud
Which droops low hung on either gate of
life.
Both birth and death; he in the centre
fixt.
Saw far on each side through the grated
gates
Most pale and clear and lovely distances.
He often lying broad awake, and yet
Remaining from the body, and apart
In intellect and power and will, hath heard
Time flowing in the middle of the night,
And all things creeping to a day of doom.
976
NOTES
How could ye know him? Ye were yet
within
The narrower circle; he had wellnigh
reached
The last, with which a region of white
flame,
Pure without heat, into a larger air
Upburning, and an ether of black blue,
Investeth and ingirds all other lives.
Ed.]
P. 538, col. 2, hne 15.
The phantom walls of this illusion fade.
Or may I make use of a parable?
Man's Free-will is but a bird in a cage;
he can stop at the lower perch, or he can
mount to a higher. Then that which is
and knows — for it has always seemed to
me there must be that which knows — will
enlarge his cage, give him a higher and a
higher perch, and at last break off the top
of his cage, and let him out to be one with
the only Free-will of the Universe.
P. 539, col. I, line 19. 'The Passion of
the Past.' The whole poem is very
personal. This Passion of the Past I used
to feel when a boy. [See Far — far — away,
p. 873. — Ed.]
P. 539, col. 2, line 5.
But utter clearness, and thro' loss of Self-
This is also a personal experience which
I have had more than once.
[Professor Tyndall wrote :
In the year 1885 . . . were published Tiresias
and other Poems, by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
For a copy of this remarkable volume I am
indebted to its author. It contains a poem called
The Ancient Sage.
My special purpose in introducing this poem,
however, is to call your attention to a passage
further on which greatly interested me. The
poem is, throughout, a discussion between a
believer in immortality and one who is unable to
believe. The method pursued is this. The Sage
reads a portion of the scroll, which he has taken
from the hands of his follower, and then brings
his own arguments to bear upon that portion,
with a view to neutralising the scepticism of the
younger man. Let me here remark that I read
the whole series of poems published under the
title Tiresias, full of admiration for their fresh-
ness and vigour. Seven years after I had first
read them your father died, and you, his son,
asked me to contribute a chapter to the book
which you contemplate publishing. I knew that
I had some small store of references to rny
interview with your father carefully written in
ancient journals. On the receipt of your request,
I looked up the account of my first visit to
Farringford, and there, to my profound astonish-
ment, I found described that experience of your
father's which, in the mouth of the Ancient Sage,
was made the ground of an important argument
against materialism and in favour of personal
immortality eight-and-twenty years afterwards.
I had completely forgotten it, but here it was
recorded in black and white. If you turn to
your father's account of the wonderful state of
consciousness superinduced by» thinking of his
own name, and compare it with the argument of
the Ancient Sage, you will see that they refer to
one and the same phenomenon.
And more, my son ! for more than once when I
Sat all alone, revolving in myself
The word that is the symbol of myself,
The mortal limit of the Self was loosed,
And past into the Nameless, as a cloud
Melts into Heaven. I touch'd my limbs, the
limbs
Were strange not mine — and yet no shade of
doubt,
But utter clearness, and thro' loss of Self
The gain of such large life as match 'd with ours
Were Sun to spark — unshadowable in words,-
Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world.
Ed.]
P. 540. The Flight. [First pubHshed
in 1885. — Ed.] This is a very early poem.
P. 543. Tomorrow. [First published
in 1885. — Ed.] This story was told me
by Aubrey de Vere. [The body of a
young man was laid out on the grass by
the door of a chapel in the West of Ireland,
and an old woman came, and recognized
it as that of her young lover, who had
been lost in a peat-bog many years before :
the peat having kept him fresh and fair as
when she last saw him.
He corrected his Irish from Carleton's
admirable Truths of the Irish Peasantry.
"Tennyson," writes Mr. Perceval Graves,
"certainly could not have written that
intensely dramatic poem, had he not been
de^ly sensible of the tragic side of Irish
peasant life, as he saw it with his own eyes
so shortly after the potato famine. How
gracefully too he presses into his service
the poetic imagery of the Western Gael.
It is moreover an interesting assertion of
his belief in the artistic value of Irish
dialect in verse — 'Irish Doric,' as he once
wrote of it to me." — Ed.]
P. 545. The Spinster's Sweet-Arts.
[First published in 1885. — Ed.]
P. 547. Verse xvi. Jackman V purple a
rodbin' the 'ouse like a Queedn. Clematis
Jackmanni.
NOTES
977
P. 548. LOcKSLEY Hall Sixty Years
After. [First published in 1886, and
dedicated to my mother, partly because it
seemed to my father that the two Locksley
Halls were Hkely to be in the future two of
the most historically interesting of his
poems, as descriptive of the tone of the
age at two distant periods of his life:
partly because the following lines were
written immediately after the death of my
brother, and described his chief character-
istics :
Truth, for Truth is Truth, he worshipt,
being true as he was brave ;
Good, for Good is Good, he foUow'd, yet
he look'd beyond the grave !
Truth for Truth, and Good for Good!
The Good, the True, the Pure, the
Just!
Take the charm "For ever" from them
and they crumble into dust,
Ed.]
A dramatic poem, and the Dramatis
Personae are imaginary. Since it is so
much the fashion in these days to regard
each poem and story as a story of the
poet's life, or part of it, may I not be
allowed to remind my readers of the
possibility, that some event which comes
to the poet's knowledge, some hint flashed
from another mind, some thought or
feeling arising in his own, or some mood
coming — he knows not whence or how —
may strike a chord from which a poem
evolves its life, and that this to other eyes
may bear small relation to the thought or
tact or feeling to which the poem owes its
birth, whether the tenor be dramatic or
given as a parable ?
Gladstone says: "The method in the
old Locksley Hall and the new is the same.
In each the maker is outside his work, and
in each we have to deal with it as strictly
'impersonal'") Nineteenth Century, Jan.
1887).
P. 548, line 13. In the hall there hangs
a painting. These four lines were the
nucleus of the poem, and were written
fifty years ago.
P. 549, line 10.
Cold upon the dead volcano sleeps the gleam
of dying day.
3R
[My father always quoted this line as
the most imaginative in the poem. — Ed.]
P. 550, line 27. peasants maim. The
modern Irish cruelties.
P. 551, line 17. Plowmen, Shepherds,
etc. and the three following verses show
that the hero does not (as has been said)
by any means dislike the democracy.
P. 552, line 17. Jacquerie. Originally
a revolt in 1358 against the Picardy
nobles; and afterwards appUed to insur-
rections of the mob.
This and the eight following verses
show that he is not a pessimist, I think.
P. 553, line 9. Bringer home. [See
note on Leonine Elegiacs, p. 896. — Ed.]
P. 556. Prologue to General
Hamley. [First published in 1885. —
Ed.] Written from Aldworth, Black-
down.
P. 556, line 28. Tel-el-KeUr. [Where
Lord Wolseley defeated the Egyptians
under Arabi Pasha, September 13th, 1882.
— Ed.]
P. 556. The Charge of the Heavy
Brigade at Balaclava. [First published
in Macmillan's Magazine, March 1882 ;
afterwards, in 1885, in Tiresias. — Ed.]
Written at the request of Mr. Kinglake.
An ofl&cer, who was in this charge, said
that it was "the finest excitement" he had
ever known, and that "gambling and
horse-racing were nothing to it."
[The following is what Kinglake wrote
for my father at the time : —
1ST Instant.
Scarlett seeing the enemy and preparing to
confront him.
Scarlett is marching eastward with his
"300" in marching order, when, casting
his eyes towards the heights on his left, i.e.
towards the north, he sees a host of
Russians breaking over the sky-line and
presently advancing downhill towards the
south. Thereupon he instantly gives the
order, "Left wheel into line!" The effect
of this is to make the "300" no longer
978
NOTES
show their flank to the enemy, but confront
him.
^e the order, AfUr the order.
D- O CJ-
One peculiarity attending that ist In-
stant was that apparently the idea of not
accepting battle on terms of one to ten did
not occur to anybody !
2ND Instant.
Suspense.
The acreage of Russian horsemen is de-
scending the hill-side at a trot-, and the
"300" confronting them are deliberately
dressing their line, the regimental officers
directing the process with their faces to
their men as in a barrack-yard. This in
the presence of a vast mass of cavalry
coming down the hill-side to assail them
was an interesting and, as I imagine, a
rare phenomenon.
3RD Instant.
The Russian halt and Scarlett's de-
termination.
The Russians slacken and halt. Scarlett,
all things considered, determines that he
will lead the charge, and for that purpose
takes the usual course, i.e. places himself
in front of the line with his aide-de-camp,
followed by his trumpeter and one orderly.
Orders to charge. His passage over the
intervening space marked only, so far as
observers could tell, by one shout of
" Come on ! " and one wave of his sword.
4TH Instant.
The combat maintained by the four.
This personal, and like something medi-
aeval, and not yet involving the tumult of
battle. The four penetrate so deeply into
the column as to be secure from the ap-
proaching crash that will follow when their
own line comes up.
STH Instant.
The crashing charge of the Greys
one squadron of tlte Inniskillingers.
and
6th Instant.
The fight within the column.
The 2nd squadron of the Inniskillings,
hearing on the outside their comrades of
the I St squadron, crash in on the right.
Ed.]
P. 558. Epilogue. Col. i, lines i, 2.
'/ will strike,'' said he,
' The stars with head sublime.'
See Hor. Od. 1, i. 35, 36 ;
Quodsi me lyricis vatibus inseres,
Sublimi feriam sidera vertice.
P. 558. To Virgil. [Was written at
the request of the Mantuans for the nine-
teenth centenary of Virgil's death, and
first published in The Nineteenth Century,
Sept. 1882, and afterwards in Tiresias,
1885. There was a curious misprint in
the first printed copies of the poem:
"Thou that singest . . .. tithe and vine-
yard" instead of "tilth and vineyard." —
Ed.]
P- 559- Verse ix.
sunder' d once from all the human race.
[Cf.
Et penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos.
Virg. Eel. i. 67. — Ed.]
P- 559- Verse x. Mantovano, Mantuan.
Cf. Dante, Purg. vi. 74. — Ed.]
P. '559. The Dead Prophet. [First
published in Tiresias, 1885. — Ed.] About
no particular prophet.
[My father said when writing this poem :
"While I live the owls !
When I die the ghouls ! ! "
He had a strong conviction that the
world likes to know about the roughnesses,
eccentricities, and defects of a man of
genius, rather than what he really is. At
this time he said of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle :
"I am sure that Froude is wrong. I saw
a great deal of them. They were always
NOTES
979
'chafl&ng' one another, and they could not
have done that if they had got on so ' badly
together' as Froude thinks." — Ed.]
P. 560. Early Spring. [An early
poem, slightly altered, first published in
The Youth's Companion, Boston, U.S.A.,
1884, afterwards in Tiresias, 1885. Mary
Brotherton, in the following lines on my
father, written after his death, well ex-
pressed his attitude toward Nature : —
"He look'd'on Nature's lowest thing
For some sublime God's word ;
And lived for ever listening
Lest God should speak unheard."
Ed.]
P. 561. Prefatory Poem to my
Brother's Sonnets. [PubHshed in 1880.
— Ed.] Addressed to my brother, Charles
Tennyson Turner, who died at Cheltenham
on April 25th, 1879, after a life spent with
his wafe among his parishioners in Grasby,
Linconshire.
[His sonnets, Letty^s Globe, Time and
Twilight, On seeing a child blush on his
first view of a corpse, The Buoy Bell, The
Schoolboy's Dream, On shooting a swallow
in early youth, had in my father's judgment
all the tenderness of the Greek epigram,
and he ranked sonnets such as Time and
Twilight, and The Holy Emerald, among
the noblest in the language.
My uncle with his aquihne nose, dark
eyes and black hair was very like my
father, and Thackeray seeing him in
middle life called him a "Velasquez tout
crache." No one who reads his poems
can fail to see the "alma beata e bella"
breathing thiough them. The poem was
written as a preface to the Collected Sonnets,
published in 1880. — Ed.]
P. 561. 'Frater Ave atque Vale.'
[Written in 1880 when my father and I
visited Sirmione, the peninsula of Catullus
on the Lago di Garda. He rejoiced in
the old olives, the old ruins, and the
greensward stretching down to the blue
lake with the mountains beyond. First
published in The Nineteenth Century,
March 1883, and afterwards in Tiresias
and other Poems, 1885. — Ed.]
P. 561, line 4. where the purple flowers
grow. [Refers to a very beautiful Iris
with deep purple flowers {Iris benacensis)
which grows beneath the ruins near the
Lake of Garda. — Ed.]
P. 561. Helen's Tower. [Written
in 1 86 1 for Lord Dufferin in answer to the
following letter : —
Clanjjeboy, Belfast, Sept. 24th, 1861.
My DEAR Mr. Tennyson — I wonder if you
will think me very presumptuous for doing what
at last, after many months' hesitation, I have
determined to do.
You must know that here in my park in Ireland
there rises a high hill, from the top of which 1
look down not only on an extensive tract of Irish
land, but also on St. George's Channel, ? long
blue line of Scotch coast, and the mountains of
the Isle of Man.
On the summit of this hill I have built an old-
world tower which I have called after my mother
"Helen's Tower."
In it I have placed on a golden tablet the
birthday verses which my mother wrote to me
on the day I came of age, and I have spared no
pains in beautifying it with aU imaginable de-
vices. In fact my tower is a little "Palace of
Art." Beneath is a rough outline of its form and
situation.
Now there is only one thing wanting to make
it a perfect little gem of architecture and decora-
tion and that is "a voice." It is now ten years
since it was built and all that time it has stood
silent. Yet if he chose there is one person in the
world able to endow it with this priceless gift,
and by sending me some little short distich for it
to crown it for ever with a glory it cannot other-
wise obtain, and render it a memorial of the
personal friendship which its builder felt for the
great poet of our age. — Yours ever,
Dufferin.
Afterwards published in Tiresias and
other Poems, 1885. — Ed.]
P. 562, col. I, line 4. earth's recurring
Paradise. The fancy of some poets and
theologians that Paradise is to be the reno-
vated earth.
P. 562. Epitaphs on Lord Stratford
DE Redcliefe, General Gordon, and
Caxton. [Published in Tiresias and
other Poems, 1885. The epitaph on General
Gordon (first published in the Times,
May 7, 1885) was written in answer to
a request made by the American poet^
Whittier. — Ed.]
P. 562. To THE Duke of Argyll.
[Written when the Duke resigned the office
of Privy Seal (1881) on account of liis-
vehement opposition to Gladstone's Irish
Bill. First published in Tiresias and other
Poems, 1885. — Ed.]
gSo
NOTES
P. 562. Hands all Round. When
this poem was recast and published in 1882
it was sung all over the Empire on the
Queen's birthday. [Set to music by my
mother ; arranged by Sir Charles Stanford.
Edward FitzGerald writes of the first edition
(Eversley Edition, vol. ii. 322-4) that my
father said to him : "I know I wrote these
lines with the Tears running down my
Cheeks." — Ed.]
P. 563. Freedom. [First published in
the New York Independent, 1884, and in
Macmillan's Magaaine, December 1884,
afterwards in Tiresias and other Poems,
1885. — Ed.]
"It were good that men in their innova-
tions should follow the example of Time
itself, which indeed innovateth greatly but
quietly, and by degrees, scarce to be per-
ceived. ... It is good also not to try ex-
periments in States except the necessity be
urgent, or the utility evident : and well to
beware that it be the reformation that
draweth on the change, and not the desire
of change that pretendeth the change"
(Bacon).
P- 563. Verse i. pillar'd Parthenon.
Misprinted "column'd Parthenon."
P. 563. To H.R.H. Princess Bea-
trice. On her marriage with Prince Henry
of Battenberg, July 23rd, 1885 [and first
published in the Times, July 23rd, 1885,
and afterwards in Tiresias and other Poems.
My father sent the poem to Queen Victoria,
and she wrote to him about the wedding
as follows : —
From the Queen
Osborne, Aug. 7th, 1885.
Dear Lord Tennyson — ... As I gazed on
the happy young couple, and on my two sons
Alfred and Arthur and their bonnie bairns, I
could not but feel sad in thinking that their hour
of trial might come, and earnestly prayed God
would spare my sweet Beatrice and the husband
she so truly loves and confides in, for long, long
to each other.
Till sixty-one no real inroad of any kind had
been made in our circle, and how heavy has
God's hand been since then on me !
Mother, husband, children, truest friends, all
have been taken from me, and yet I must "still
endure," and I shall try to do so. Your beautiful •
lines have been greatly admired.
I wish you could have seen the wedding, for
every one says it was the prettiest they ever saw.
The simple, pretty, little village church, all
decorated with flowers, the sweet young bride,
the handsome young husband, the ten brides-
maids, six of them quite children with flowing
fair hair, the brilliant sunshine and the blue sea,
all made up pictures not to be forgotten. —
Believe me always yours affectionately,
V. R. I.
And he answered thus :
Aldworth, Aug. Qlh, 1885.
As to the sufferings of this momentary life, we
can but trust that in some after-state when v/e
see clearer, we shall thank the Supreme Power
for having made us, thro' these, higher and
greater beings.
Still it surely cannot be unlawful to pray that
our children, and our children's children, may
pass thro' smoother waters to the other shore.
The wedding must have been beautiful, the
Peace of Heaven seemed on the day.
Your Majesty's affectionate subject,
Tennyson.
Ed.]
P. 563, line I. Two Suns. [Sir George
Darwin writes: "There are in the heavens
many double Suns — twin Suns revolving
about one another. We may well im-
agine that such systems may have planets
attached to them, of course invisible to
us. Each of such planets would have a
double day, one arising from the illumi-
nation of one Sun, and the other from
the other Sun. Your father was not con-
cerned with computing the orbit of such a
planet, moving under the attraction of two
centres instead of one as in our case. The
conception seems to me very fine, and fits
in admirably with the rest of the poem."
— Ed.]
P. 564. The Fleet. [First published
in the Times, April 23rd, 1885, afterwards
in Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, 1886.
— Ed.]
P. 564. Opening of the Indian and
Colonial Exhibition by the Queen,
May 4th, 1886. [First published in
Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, 1886.
This ode was written under the shadow of
a great grief, as his son Tionel was very ill
in India, and died on April 20th. — Ed.]
P. 565. Poets and their Biblio-
graphies. [First published in Tiresias
and other Poems, 1885. — Ed.]
P. 565, line 2. Virgil. [Cf. Prof. H.
Nettleship's Vergil, pp. 71 and 76: "Vergil
was engaged upon the Aeneid from 29 to
19 B.C. We have the testimony of Sue-
NOTES
981
tonius that he first drafted it in prose, and
then wrote different parts in no certain
order, but just as the fancy took him. The
division into twelve books was part of
his original plan. . . . When writing the
Geor^ics we are told that he would dictate
a great number of verses in the morning,
and spend the rest of the day in reducing
them to the smallest possible quantity,
Ucking them, as he himself said, into shape,
as a bear does its cub." Cf. also Tiberii
Claudii Donati Vita P. Vergilii Maronis,
ix., and Quintilian, Inst. Oral. x. 3. 8:
"Vergilium quoque paucissimos die com-
posuisse versus, auctor est Varus." — Ed.]
P. 565, col. 2, line 3. Horace. [See De
Arte Poetica, line 386 -et seq. :
si quid tamen olim
Scripseris, in Metii descendat iudicis aures
Et patris et nostras, nonumque prematur
in annum,
Membranis intus positis. Ed.]
P. 565, col. 2, line 6. Catullus. [See "De
Smyrna Cinnae poetae," xcv. Hues 1,2:
Smyrna mei Cinnae nonam post denique
messem
Quam coepta est nonamque edita post
hiemem, etc. Ed.1
NOTES ON QUEEN MARY
P. 566. Queen Mary. [First pub-
lished in 1875. Played at the Lyceum in
1876, April i8th to May 13th, Henry Irving
as PhiUp and Mrs. Crowe as Mary, with
incidental music by Sir Charles Stanford.
"Philip" was one of Irving's best
characters.
During 1874 and 1875 my father
worked hard and unceasingly at his Queen
Mary, "more of a chronicle-play" he
called it. The first list of books which he
read on the subject is written down in
his note-book: "Collier's Ecclesiastical
History, Fuller's Church History, Burnet's
Reformation, Foxe's Book of Martyrs,
Hayward's Edward, Cave's P. X. Y.,
Hooker, Neale's History of the Puri-
tans, Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials,
Strype's Cranmer, Strype's Parker,
Phillips' Pole, Primitive Fathers No
Papists, Lingard's History of England,
Church Historians of England, Zurich
Letters, and Original Letters and Corre-
spondence of Archbishop Parker (pubUshed
by the Parker Society)," in addition to
Froude, Holinshed, and Camden.
The well-known critic Mons. Augustin
Filon writes in Le Theatre contemporain
(1895): "Vienne une main pieuse qui
degage ces deux drames (Queen Mary and
Harold), fasse circuler I'air et la lumiere
autour de leurs lignes essentielles: vienne
un grand acteur qui compresse et Lncarne
Harold, une grande actrice qui se passionne
pour le caractere de Marie, et, sans effort,
Tennyson prendra sa place parmi les
dramaturges."
The plays also seem to have appealed
to no less an authority than Mons. Jules
Claretie, who has described them as
"beaux drames, et nobles inventions
theatrales."
See Sir Richard Jebb's essays on Queen
Mary, Harold, and Becket in the Eversley
Edition. — Ed.]
P. 572, col. I, line 4. (Act i. Sc. iv.)
ELIZABETH. Why do you go so gay then ?
COURTNEY. Velvet and gold.
[The Queen treated Courtenay as a
child, and forbad him to dine abroad with-
out permission, or to wear his velvet and
gold dress which he had had made to take
his seat in. Renard feared him as a rival
to PhiUp. (Renard to Charles V., Sept.
iQ. 1553. Rolls House MSS., and Froude's
History of England, vol. vi. p. 97.) — Ed.]
P. 574, col. I, line 17. (Act i. Sc. iv.)
To the Pleiads, uncle; they have lost a sister.
[The Pleiads were daughters of Atlas,
and were placed among the stars by Zeus.
One of them, Electra, left her place in the
heavens that she might not witness the fall
of Troy, which her son Dardanus had
founded. — Ed.]
P. 579, col. I, line 16. (Act i. Sc. v.)
/ am English Queen, not Roman Emperor
was always much cheered in the theatre, for
the play came out when Queen Victoria had
been lately proclaimed Empress of India.
P. 583, col. I, line 9. (Act 11. Sc i.)
[Alington Castle, on the Medway. My
982
NOTES
father often visited this castle (built by the
father of the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir
Henry Wyatt) when he was staying with
his brother-in-law, Edmund Lushington,
at Park House. Thomas Wyatt, the poet,
was born here in 1503, and died in 1542,
and left it to his son, who is the Wyatt of
the play. — Ed.]
P. 584, col. 2, line 12. (Act ii. Sc. ii.)
For Queen Mary's speech, In mine own
person, see Holinshed. [She spoke in a
deep voice like a man.
La voce grossa et quasi de huomo.
Giovanni Michele, Ellis, vol. ii. series 2.
Ed.]
P. 590. (Act in. Sc. i.) [Nine Worthies,
Joshua, David, Judas Maccabaius, Hector,
Alexander, Julius Caesar, King Arthur,
Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon. —
Ed.]
P. SQO, col. 2, line 9. (Act iii. Sc. i.)
the tree in Virgil. See Aeneid, vi. 206.
P. 595, col. 2, line 4. (Act iii. Sc. ii.)
the heathen giant [Antaeus. — Ed.]
P. 599, col. 2, line 8. (Act iii. Sc. iii.)
For ourselves we do ,protest. [For Pole's
speech see Froude's History of England,
vol. vi. pp. 276-281 :
"I confess to you that I have the keys
— not as mine own keys, but as the keys
of him that sent me: and yet I cannot
open, not for want of power in me to give,
but for certain impediments in you to
receive, which must be taken away before
my commission can take effect. This I
protest before you, my commission is not
of prejudice to any person. I am come
not to destroy but to build; I come to re-
concile, not to condemn; I am not come
to compel but to call again; I am not
come to call anything in question already
done; but my commission is of grace and
clemency to such as will receive it — for,
touching all matters that be past, they
shall be as things cast into the sea of for-
getfulness. But the mean whereby you
shall receive this benefit is to revoke
and repeal those laws and statutes which
be impediments, blocks, and bars to the
execution of my commission. For, like as
I myself had neither place nor voice to
speak here amongst you, but was in all
respects a banished man, till such time as
ye had repv^aled those laws that lay in my
way, even 30 cannot you receive the benefit
and grace offered from the Apostolic
See until the abrogation of such laws
whereby you had disjoined and dissevered
yourselves from the unity of Chiist's
Church." — Ed.]
P. 601, col. I, lines 9, 10. (Act iii. Sc. iv.)
an amphisbcena,
Each end a sting.
[Cf.
"Scorpion and asp and amphisbaena dire."
Par. Lost, x. 524. — Ed.]
P. 608, col. I, lines 3, 4. (Act in, Sc.
vi.)
like the wild hedge-rose
Of a soft winter, possible, noi probable.
[My father made this simile from a wild-
rose bush at Freshwater which was in full
blossom in January. — Ed.]
P. 609, col. I, line 20. (Act in. Sc.
vi.) what Virgil sings. Cf. Virgil's
Aeneid, iv. 569.
P. 610. (Act III. Sc. vi.) [Philip was
weary of England and of his childless
queen. "He told her that his father
wanted to see him, but that his absence
would npt be extended beyond a fortnight
or three weeks ; she should go with him to
Dover; and if she desired she could wait
there for his return" (Noailles, vol. v. pp.
77-82 ; Froude's History of England, vol.
vi. p. 362). — Ed.]
P. 616, col. 2, line 17. (Act iv. Sc. iii.)
What saith St. John? i John ii. 15.
P. 617, col. I, line 12. (Act iv. Sc. iii.)
And now, and forasmuch as I have come.
["And now, forasmuch as I am come to
the last end of my life, whereupon hangeth
all my life past and all my life to come,
either to Uve with my Saviour Christ in joy,
or else to be ever in pain with wicked devils
in hell; and I see before mine eyes
presently either heaven" {pointing up-
wards) "or hell" {pointing downwards)
"ready to swallow me. I shall therefore
declare unto you my very faith, without
colour or dissimulation; for now it is no
NOTES
983
time to dissemble. I believe in God the
Father almighty, Maker of heaven and
earth ; in every article of the Catholic
faith; every word and sentence taught by
our Saviour Christ, his apostles and pro-
phets, in the Old and New Testament.
And now I come to the great thing that
troubleth my conscience more than any
other thing that ever I said or did in my
life, and that is the setting abroad of
writings contrary to the truth, which here
I now renounce and refuse, as things written
with my hand contrary to the truth which
I thought in my heart, and written for fear
of death to save my life, if it might be;
and that is, all such bills and papers as I
have written and signed with my hand
since my degradation, wherein I have
written many things untrue; and foras-
much as my hand offended in writing
contrary to my heart, my hand therefore
shall first be punished; for if I may come
to the fire, it shall be the first burnt." (See
Harleian MSS. 417 and 422, and Froude's
History of England, vol. vi. pp. 426-428.)
— Ed.]
P. 618, col. 2, lines 19, 20. (Act iv.
Sc. iii.)
And Ignorance crying in the streets, and
all men.
Regarding her.
[Cf . Proverbs i. 20. — Ed.]
Pp. 619-620. (Act IV. Sc. iii.) [The
Berkshire dialect of Joan and Tib was
corrected for my father by Tom Hughes,
author of Tom Brown's Schooldays. — • Ed.]
P. 622, col. I, line 3. (Act v. Sc. i.)
hwer our kingly flag. See Prescott's
History of Philip the Second, vol. i. p.
113: "Lord Howard is said to have fired
a gun, as he approached Philip's squadron,
in order to compel it to lower its topsails
in acknowledgment of the supremacy of
the English on the narrow seas."
P- 633, col. 2, line 25.
Thou light a torch that never will go out !
[She refers to Latimer's words to Ridley
when they were burnt at the stake: "We
shall this day Hght such a candle, by God's
grace, as I trust shall never be put out." —
Ed.]
P. 634, col. 2, line 7. (Act. v. Sc. v.)
After Mary's speech, ending "Help me
hence," the end of the last Act of the Act-
ing Edition ' ran thus :
[Falls into the arms of Lady
Clarence.
Alice. The hand of God hath help'd
her hence.
L.vdy Clarence. Not yet.
[To Elizabeth as she enters.
Speak, speak, a word of yours may wake
her.
Elizabeth {kneeling at her sister's
knee). Mary!
Mary. Mary ! who calls? 'tis long since
any one
Has called me Mary — she —
There in the dark she sits and calls for
me —
She that should wear her state before the
world.
My father's own true wife. Ay, madam.
Hark!
For she will call again.
Elizabeth. Mary, my sister !
Mary. That's not the voice !
Who is it steps between me and the light?
[Puts her arm round Elizabeth's neck.
I held her in my arms a guileless babe,
And mourn 'd her orphan doom along with
mine.
The crown ! she comes for that ! take it
and feel it !
It stings the touch ! It is not gold but
thorns ! [Mary starts up.
The crown of crowns ! Play not with holy
things !
[Clasps her hands and kneels.
Keep you the faith ! . . . yea, mother, yea
I come ! _ [Dies.
Lady Clarence. She is dead.
Elizabeth {kneeling by the body). Poor
sister ! Peace be with the dead.
[Curtain.
1 As produced at the Lyceum Theatre with
Irving as Philip, and Miss Kate Bateman as
Queen Mary.
On the AustraUan stage Miss Dargon won a
triumph in Queen Mary. It was very popular
when produced at the Melbourne Theatre-Royal,
and had a long run; and when reproduced at
the Bijou Theatre in the same city had a second
long run.
984
NOTES
APPENDIX TO NOTES ON
QUEEN MARY
Letters from Robert Browning
19 Warwick Crescent, W.,
June 30th, 1875.
My dear Tennyson — - Thank you very much
for Queen Mary, the gift, and even more for
Queen Mary, the poem : it is astonishingly fine.
Conception, execution, the whole and the parts,
I see nowhere the shade of a fault, thank you
once again ! I am going to begin it afresh now.
What a joy it is that such a poem should be, and
be yours !
All affectionate regards to Mrs. Tennyson from
yours ever, Robert Browning.
19 Warwick Crescent, W.,
April igth, 1876.
My dear Tennyson — I want to be among the
earliest who assure you of the complete success of
your Queen Mary last night. I have more than
once seen a more satisfactory performance of it,
to be sure, in what Carlyle calls "the Private
Theatre under my own hat," because there and
then not a line nor a word was left out; nay,
there were abundant "encores" of half the
speeches; still whatever was left by the stage
scissors suggested what a quantity of "cuttings"
would furnish one with an after-feast.
Irving was very good indeed, and the others
did their best, nor so badly.
The love as well as admiration for the author
was conspicuous, indeed, I don't know whether
you ought to have been present to enjoy it, or
were not safer in absence from a smothering of
flowers and deafening "tumult of acclaim," out
Hallam was there to report, and Mrs. Tennyson
is with you to believe. All congratulations to you
both from yours affectionately ever,
Robert Browning.
NOTES ON HAROLD
By the Author
P. 636. Harold. [First published in
1876, dated 1877. "A tragedy of Doom"
my father called it. — Ed.]
P. 637, col. I, lines 5, 6. (Act. i. Sc. i.)
Look you, there\s a star
That dances in it as mad with agony!
[My mother writes, October 4th, 1858,
of my father: "He went to meet Mr. and
Mrs. Roebuck at dinner at Swainston;
and the comet was grand, with Arcturus
shining brightly over the nucleus. At
dinner he said he must leave the table to
look at it, and they all followed. They
saw Arcturus seemingly dance as if mad
when it passed out of the comet's tail.
H'i said of the comet's tail, 'It is like a
besom of destruction sweeping the sky.'"
— Ed.]
P. 637, col. 2, line 9. (Act i. Sc. i.)
Did ye not outlaw your archbishop Robert?
Robert, a monk of Jumieges in Nor-
mandy, was appointed Archbishop of
Canterbury by Edward the Confessor. He
was the head of the Norman, as Earl
Godwin was of the national party in Eng-
land; and he so far wrought upon the
Norman predilections of the. king that in
the end he procured the banishment of
Godwin and all his sons. After a while,
however, these returned with a formidable
force, but the Enghsh would not fight for
King Edward against them. It was then
settled that the matters of quarrel between
Edward and Godwin should be referred
to a Gemot or Great National Council.
The Normans throughout the kingdom
knew well what would be the vote of this
Council, and, not daring to abide by the
result, fled, and among the rest Robert of
Jumieges. He, it is said, escaped by the
east gate of London, and killing or wound-
ing all that stayed him, reached Walton-
on-the-Naze, whence he took ship, and
past overseas never to come back.
Of all the Norman bishops, William,
the Bishop of London, alone retained his
bishopric.
P. 637, col, 2, line 25. (Act. i. Sc. i.)
Who had my pallium from an Antipo'pe !
On the death of Stephen IX. in 1058,
the Imperial party at Rome sent a humble
message to the Empress Agnes, asking her
to nominate a new Pope. Meanwhile the
old Roman feudatory barons elected an
anti-Pope of their own, the Cardinal
Bishop of Velletri (Benedict X.), whom
they hastily inaugurated, and enthroned by
night. This was resented by the Empress
as an act of usurpation, whereupon she
empowered Hildebrand to take measures
for a fresh election. Accordingly Gerard,
Archbishop of Florence, was chosen, who
is known by the name of Nicholas II. I
quote from Milman's Latin Christianity
the pathetic history of Benedict's subse-
quent degradation :
"Hildebrand the archdeacon seized him
(Benedict) by force, and placed him before
NOTES
98s
Nicholas and a council in the Lateran*
Church. They stripped him before the
altar of his pontifical robes (in which he
had been again invested), set him thus de-
spoiled before the synod, put a writing in
his hand, containing a long confession of
every kind of wickedness. He resisted a
long time, knowing himself perfectly inno-
cent of such crimes: he was compelled to
read it with very many tears and groans.
His mother stood by, her hair dishevelled,
and her bosom bare, with many sobs and
lamentations. His kindred stood weeping
around. Hildebrand then cried aloud to
the people: 'These are the deeds of the
Pope whom ye have chosen ! ' They re-
arrayed him in the pontifical robes, and
formally deposed him. He was allowed to
retire to the monastery of St. Agnes, where
he lived in the utmost wretchedness. They
prohibited him from all holy functions,
would not allow him to enter the choir.
By the intercession of the Archpresbyter of
St. Anastasia he was permitted at length to
read the Epistle; a short time after, the
Gospel; but never suffered to read mass.
He lived to the Pontificate of Hildebrand,
who, when informed of his death, said, 'In
an evil hour did I behold him; I have
committed great sin.' Hildebrand com-
manded that he should be buried with
Pontifical honours" (Milman, viii. p. 48).
It was from this Benedict that Stigand
received the pallium, or sacred badge of the
archiepiscopate.
P. 639, col. I, line 35. (Act. i. Sc. i.)
Is not my brother Wulfnoth hostage there?
One version of the story relates that
Godwin, after his reconcilation with
Edward, gave hostages for his good con-
duct, and among them his son Wulfnoth,
and that these were handed over by the
king to Count William for their better
custody.
P. G45, col. 2, line 14. (Act. 11. Sc. ii.)
He was thine host in England when I
went.
Malet was half-Norman, half-English.
P. 646, col. I, hne 17. (Act 11. Sc. ii.)
Haled thy shore-swallow' d, armour'd Nor-
mans up.
In that section of the Bayeux tapestry
which depicts William's war against Conan
of Brittany, Harold is seen plucking the
Norman soldiers two at a time from the
quicksands below Mont St. Michel where
the river Coesnon flows into the sea.
P. 647, col. I, lines i, 2. (Act 11.
Sc. i.)
The voice of any people is the sword
That guards them, or the sword that beats
them down.
[Two favourite lines of Mr. Gladstone's.
— Ed.]
P. 650, col. 2, line 19. (Act it. Sc. ii.)
Some said it was thy father's deed.
Alfred, the son of Emma (who was also
mother of Edward the Confessor, and great-
aunt of William the Conqueror), coming
into England during the reign of Harold
the Dane, the son of Cnut, was seized and
blinded. This crime was imputed to
Godwin; but the Witan acquitted him of
the charge.
P. 651, col. I, line 24. (Act 11. Sc. ii.)
The Atheling is nearest to the throne.
Edgar the Atheling was grandson of
Edmund Ironside, and the last male repre-
sentative of the House of Cerdic.
P. 652, col. 2, line 13. (Act 11. Sc. ii.)
Behold the jewel of St. Pancr alius.
Concerning this jewel of Saint Pancratius,
"gemma tam speciosa quam spatiosa,!'
see Freeman's Norman Conquest, vol. iii.
p. 686.
P. 659, col. 2, line 12. (Act iii. Sc. ii.)
The Pope and that Archdeacon Hildebrand.
[Alexander II., and Hildebrand, afterwards
Gregory VII. (1073)- — Ed.]
P. 665, col. I, line 12. (Act iv. Sc. iii.)
Let him come ! Let him come !
Bublie crient e weissel
E laticome e drincheheil,
Drinc Hindrewart e Drintome
Drinc Helf e drinc tome.
Roman de Rou, 12473.
P. 667, col. I, lines 19, 20. (Act v. Sc. i.)
Waltham, my foundation
For men who serve the neighbour, not them-
selves.
"Of his liberahty his great foundation at
986
NOTES
Waltham is an everlasting monument, and
it is a monument not more of his liberality
than of his wisdom. To the monastic orders
Harold seems not to have been specially
liberal ; his bounty took another and a better
chosen direction. The toundation of a great
secular college, in days when all the world
seemed mad after monks, when King
Eadward and Earl Leofric vied with each
other in lavish gifts to religious houses at
home and abroad, was in itself an act dis-
playing no small vigour and independence
of mind. The details, too, of the founda-
tion were such as showed that the creation
of Waltham was not the act of a moment of
superstitious dread or of reckless bounty,
but the deliberate deed of a man who felt
the responsibilities of lofty rank and bound-
less wealth, and who earnestly sought the
welfare of his Church and nation in all
things" (Freeman's Norman Conquest,
vol. ii. p. 41).
P. 668, col. I, lines 30, 31. (Act v. Sc. i.)
that old song of Brunanburg
Where England conquered.
Constantinus, King of the Scots, after
having sworn allegiance to Athelstan, allied
himself with the Danes of Ireland under
Anlaf, and invading England, was defeated
by Athelstan and his brother Edmund with
great slaughter at Brunanburh in the year
937.
See my translation of the Song of
Brunanburh (entitled Battle of Brunan-
burh, p. 534). In rendering this Old
Enghsh war-song into modern language
and alliterative rhythm I have made free
use of the dactylic beat. I suppose that
the original was chanted to a slow, swing-
ing recitative.
P. 671, col. I, line 25. (Act v. Sc. i.)
Come as Goliath came of yore. Taillefer
the minstrel, a man of gigantic stature,
who rode out alone in front of the Norman
army chanting :
Taillefer, ki mult ben cantout,
Sor un cheval ki tost alout,
Devant li Dus alout cantant
De Karlemaine e de RoUant
E d' Oliver e des vassals
Ki morurent en Renchevals.
Roman de Ron, 13 149.
P. 673, col. 2, line 18. (Act v. Sc. ii.)
Then all the dead fell on him.
Alluding to her dream in Act i. Sc. ii. :
and all
The dead men made at thee to murder thee.
APPENDIX TO NOTES ON HAROLD
Letter from Robert Browning
19 Warwick Crescent,
Dec. 2ist, 1876.
My dear Tennyson — True thanks again, this
time for the best of Christmas presents, another
great work, wise, good and beautiful. The scene
where Harold is overborne to take the oath is
perfect, for one instance. What a fine new ray of
light you are entwining with your many coloured
wreath !
I know the Conqueror's Country pretty well :
stood last year in his Castle of Bonneville, on the
spot where tradition is that Harold took the oath ;
and I have passed through Dives, the place of
William's embarcation, perhaps twenty times:
and more than once visited the church there,
built by him, where still are inscribed the names
of the Norman knights who accompanied him in
his expedition. You light this up again for me.
All happiness befall you and yours, this good
season and ever. — Yours affectionately,
R. Browning.
NOTES ON BECKET
By the Editor
In 1879 my father printed the first proofs
of his tragedy of Becket, which he had
begun in December 1876. But he con-
sidered that the time was not ripe for its
publication ; and this therefore was deferred
until December 1884. We had visited
Canterbury in August 1877, and gone over
each separate scene of Becket's martyrdom.
"Admirers of Becket," my father notes,-
"will find that Becket's letters, and the
writings of Herbert of Bosham, Fitzstephen,
and John of Salisbury throw great light on
those days. Bishop Lightfoot found out
about Rosamund for me."
The play is so accurate a representation
of the personages and of the time, that
J. R. Green said that all his researches
into the annals of the twelfth century had
not given him "so vivid a conception of
the character of Henry II. and his court as
was embodied in Tennyson's Becket."
My father's view of Becket was as fol-
NOTES
987
lows : Becket was a really great and impul-
sive man, with a firm sense of duty, and,
when he renounced the world, looked upon
himself as the head oi that Church which
was the people's "tower of strength, their
bulwark against throne and baronage."
This idea so far wrought in his dominant
nature as to betray him into many rash
acts: and later he lost himself in the idea.
His enthusiasm reached a spiritual ecstasy
which carries the historian along with it;
and his humanity and abiding tenderness
for the poor, the weak and the unprotected,
heighten the impression so much as to
make the poet feel passionately the wronged
Rosamund's reverential devotion for him
(most touchingly rendered by Ellen Terr>'),
when she knelt praying over his body in
Canterbury Cathedral.
In 1879 Irving refused the play: but in
1 89 1 he asked leave to produce it, holding
that the taste of the theatre-going public
had changed in the interval, and that it
was now likely to be a success on the stage.
He writes to me U893) :
We have passed the fiftieth performance of
Becket (produced Feb. 6, 1893). which is in the
heyday of its success. I think that I may, with-
out hereafter being credited with any inferior
motive, give again the opinion which I previously
expressed to your loved and honoured father.
To me Becket is a very noble play, with some-
thing of that lofty feeling and that far-reaching
influence, which belong to a '"passion play."
There are in it moments of passion and pathos
which are the aim and end of dramatic art, and
which, when they exist, atone to an audience for
the endurance of long acts. Some of the scenes
and passages, especially in the list act, are full
of sublime feeling, and are with regard to both
their dramatic effectiveness and their poetic
beauty as fine as anything in our language. I
know that such a play has an ennobling influence
on both the audience who see it and the actors
who play in it.
Some of the last lines which my father
ever wrote are at the end of the North-
ampton scene, an anthem-speech written
for Irving :
The voice of the Lord is in the voice of
the people.
The voice of the Lord is on the warring
flood,
And He will lead His people into peace !
The voice of the Lord will shake the
wilderness.
The barren wilderness of unbelief !
The voice of the Lord will break the cedar-
trees,
The Kings and Rulers that have closed
their ears
Against the Voice, and at their hour of
doom
The voice of the Lord will hush the hounds
of Hell
In everlasting silence.
The play had a long run and was after-
wards frequently played in the provinces
and America. The incidental music was
written by Sir Charles Stanford. His
identification of Becket with the Gre-
gorian melody "Telluris ingens conditor"
is particularly impressive.
UNPUBLISHED SONNET
(Written originally as a Preface to
"Becket")
Old ghosts whose day was done ere mine
began,
If earth be seen from your conjectured
heaven,
Ye knov/ that History is half-dream — ay
even
The man's life in the letters of the man.
There lies the letter, but it is not he
As he retires into himself and is :
Sender and sent-to go to make up this,
Their offspring of this union. And on me
Frown not, old ghosts, if I be one of those
Who make you utter things you did not
say.
And mould you all awry and mar your
worth ;
For whatsoever knows us truly, knows
Thiit none can truly write his single day.
And none can write it for him upon earth.
P. 676. (Prologue.) Becket as chess-
player. John of Salisbury and Fitzstephen
describe him as an accomplished che^ss-
player, a master in hunting and falconry,
and other manly exercises.
P. 677, col. 2, lines 5, 6. (Prologue.)
nor my confessor yet.
I would to God thou werl.
Archbishop Theobald writes to Becket
(John of Salisbury, Ep. 78): "It sounds
in the ears and mouths of people that you
and the king are one heart and soul."
He helped Henry to improve the state of
988
NOTES
the country, and to lighten many of the
oppressive laws and enactments (Lingard,
vol. ii.)-
P. 677, col. 2, line 14. (Prologue.) A
dish-designer. When Becket went to Paris,
all the French were astonished at his
sumptuous living. One dish of eels alone
was said to have cost 100 shillings
(Fitzstephen, 197, 8, 9).
P. 682. (Act I. Sc. i.) Chamber barely
furnished. John of Salisbury says, "Con-
secratus autem statim veterem exuit
hominem, cilicium et monachum induit."
P. 682, col. I, line 21. (Act i. Sc. i.)
scutage. The acceptance of a money com-
pensation for military service dates from
this time (1159). See Freeman's Norman
Conquest.
P. 686. (Act I. Sc. iii.) In this great
scene at Northampton (J. R. Green writes)
"his life was said to be in danger, and all
urged him to submit. But in the presence
of danger the courage of the man rose to
its full height. Grasping his archiepiscopal
cross he entered the royal court, forbade
the nobles to condemn him, and appealed
to the Papal See. Shouts of 'Traitor!
traitor ! ' followed him as he retired. The
Primate turned fiercely at the word : ' Were
I a knight,' he retorted, 'my sword should
answer that foul taunt.' " — Short History
of the English People, p. 108.
P. 687. (Act I. Sc. iii.) "He (Henry
II.) wished to put an end to the disgrace-
ful state of things which had arisen, by
subjecting clerical offenders against the
public peace to the same jurisdiction with
the criminals, and, with a view to this, he
now required that clerks accused of any
outrage should be tried in his own courts;
that, on conviction or confession, they
should be degraded by the Church, and
that they then should be remanded to the
secular officers for the execution of the
sentence which had been passed upon
them. On the other hand, the Archbishop,
although unsupported by his brethren in
general, who dreaded a risk of a breach
with the State while the Church was
divided by a schism, considered himself
bound to offer the most strenuous resistance
to a proposal which tended to lessen the
privileges of the hierarchy; and on this
quarrel the whole of the subsequent history
turned" {Becket, by Canon Robertson,
PP- 76, 77).
P. 690, col. I, line 9. (Act i. Sc. iii.)
False to myself — it is the will of God.
"It is the Lord's will that I perjure
myself" (Foliot, v. 271, 2).
P. 692, col. 2, line i. (Act i. Sc. iii.)
A worldly follower of the worldly strong.
Foliot fasted much, and was famous for
his learning, for his subtle trickery, and
flattery of persons in high station. When
he was plotting against Becket, he is said
to have heard "an exceeding terrible voice:
O Gilberte Foliot
Dum resolvis tot et tot,
Deus tuus est Ashtaroth."
(Roger Wendover, ii. 323.)
P. 693, col. I, line 31. (Act i. Sc. iii.)
Hence, Satan ! See Alan of Tewkesbury,
i- 347.
P. 694, col. 2, lines 13, 14. (Act i.
Sc. iii.)
But I that threw the mightiest knight of
France,
Sir Engelram de Trie.
In 1 1 59 Becket, in cuirass and helmet,
marched at the head of his troops against
the County of Toulouse, which had passed
to Henry on his marriage with Eleanor,
and there he unhorsed in single combat
Sir Engelram de Trie.
P. 694, col. 2, line 19. (Act i. Sc. iii.)
Deal gently with the young man Absalom.
(Fitzstephen, i. 236; Foliot, iii. 280;
Roger of Hoveden, 284.)
P. 644. (Act I. vSc. iv.) For Becket's
entertainment of the poor and his washing
of their feet see Fitzstephen, 204; John of
SaUsbury, 324; Herbert of Bosham, 24.
My father regretted the excision of this
scene and of his Walter Map scenes from
the Acting Edition.
P. 696, col. I, line 41. (Act i. Sc. iv.)
/ must fly to France to-night. Not long after
he landed in France, under the assumed
name of Brother Christian, a boy, who was
standing by the roadside with a hawk on
NOTES
989
his wrist, was attracted by the evident
pleasure with which the stranger eyed his
bird, and cried out, "Here goes the Arch-
bishop." At Gravelines the landlord of
the inn where he spent the night had longer
time for observation, and recognised him,
as Herbert of Bosham says, "by liis re-
markably tall figure, his high forehead, the
stern expression of his beautiful counten-
ance, and, above all, by the exquisite
delicacy of his hands" (Hurrell Froude's
Remains, vol. iv. p. 91).
P. 698, col. I, line 34, col. 2, line i.
(Act II. Sc. i.)
I have sent his folk,
His kin, all his belongings, overseas.
Edward Grim of Cambridge writes:
"Those of whom God especially styles Him-
self the Father and Judge — orphans, widows,
children altogether innocent, and unknow-
ing of any discord, aged men, women with
their little ones hanging at their breasts,
clerks, and lay folk of whatever age and sex,
of the Archbishop's kindred, and some of his
friends, were seized in the depth of winter,
and mercilessly transported beyond sea,
after having been obliged to swear that they
would seek him out" (Grim, 1-51).
P. 702, col. I, line 32. (Act 11. Sc. ii.)
Saving God's honour. Becket substituted
this phrase in place of " salvo ordine nostro, "
which had been objected to by Henry. The
King would not allow any diiGference, and
burst into uncontrollable fury (John of
Salisbury, ii.). Becket wrote to the Pope
after Montmirail: "We answered ... we
were prepared to yield him (the king)
every service, even more than our pre-
decessors had done saving my order; but
that new obligations, unbeknown to the
Church, and such as my predecessors were
never bound by, ought not to be under-
taken by us : first, because it was bad as a
precedent; secondly, because, when in the
city of Sens, your Holiness' self absolved
me from the observance of these Usages,
hatefvd to God and to the Church, and
from the pledge which force and fear had
extorted from me in a special manner ; and
after a grave rebuke, which, by God's grace,
shall never pass from my mind, prohibited
me from ever again obliging myself to any
one on a like cause except saving God's
honour and my order. You added too, if
you are pleased to recollect, that not even
to save his life should a Bishop oblige
himself, saving God's honour and his order"
(Hurrell Froude's Remains, vol. iv. p. 389).
P. 703, col. 2, line 6. (Act 11. Sc. ii.)
let a stranger spoil his heritage. Cf.
Psalm cix.
P. 703, col. 2, line 26 ff. (Act n. Sc. ii.)
My father's note is: "The description of
Bosham was made as we (my son Hallam
and I) saw the little fishing village on a
summer's day."
P. 711, col. I, line 2. (Act iii. Sc. iii.)
The daughter of Zion lies beside the way.
Lamentations i.-ii.
P. 711, col. I, lines i, 2. (Act in.
Sc. iii.)
The spouse of the Great King, thy King,
hath fallen —
The daughter of Zion lies beside the way.
See Becket's Ep. i. 63, in Hurrell
Froude's Remains, iv. 139. The Arch-
bishop to the King of England: "I
entreat you, 0 my Lord, to bear with me
for a while that by the grace of God I may
disburden my conscience, to the benefit of
my soul. . . . My Lord, the daughter of
Zion is held captive in thy kingdom. The
spouse of the Great King is oppressed by
her enemies, afflicted by those who ought
most to honour her, and especially by you."
See, too, the Archbishop of Canterbury
to the Pope (after Freteval), Hurrell
Froude's Remains, iv. 503 : " God hath
looked with an eye of pity on His Church,
and changed at length her sorrow into joy.
The King of England, as soon as he had
received your last letters, and understood
that you would no longer spare him, even
as you had not spared the Emperor
Frederic, but would lay his territories under
an Interdict, forthwith made peace with us,
to the honour of God, as we would hope,
and the great advantage of His Church.
The Usages which were once so insisted
upon, he did not even allude to. He
exacted no oath of us, or any belonging to
us. He restored to us the possessions
which we had been deprived of, according
to the enumeration of them in our own
schedule; and, with them, peace and
990
NOTES
security, and a return from our exile to all
our companions; and even promised the
kiss, if we wished to press him so far. In
short he gave way in everything, insomuch
that some called him perjured, who had
heard him swear that he would not admit
us to the kiss that day."
P. 711, col. I, line 17. (Act iii. Sc. iii.)
And thou shall crown my Henry o'er again.
Upon this Becket dismounted and pre-
pared to throw himself at Henry's feet,
but Henry also dismounted, and em-
braced the Archbishop, and held his
stirrup for him in order that he might
remount.
P. 713. (Act IV. Sc. ii.) "That Rosa-
mund was not killed may be ascertained
by the charters . . ." (see vol. i. p. 213,
Miss Strickland's Lives of Queens of
England) .
P. 722, col. 2, line 15. (Act v. Sc. ii.)
uxor pauperis Ibyci (Horace, Carm. iii.
XV. i).
P. 723, col. I, line 3. (Act v. Sc. ii.)
From "On a Tuesday was I born" to the
end of the play is founded on the graphic
accounts by Fitzstephen, and Grim, the
monk of Cambridge, who was with Becket
in Scenes ii. and iii,
P. 725, col. I, line 33. (Act v. Sc. ii.)
When God makes up his jewels. Malachi
iii. 17.
APPENDIX TO NOTES ON BECKET
Letter from The Right Honourable J. Bryce
As I have been abroad for some time it was only
a little while ago that I obtained and read your
Becket. Will you, since you were so kind as to
read me some of it last July, let me tell you how
much enjoyment and light it has given me?
Impressive as were the parts read, it impresses
one incomparably more when studied as a whole.
One cannot imagine a more vivid, a more per-
fectly faithful picture than it gives both of Henry
and of Thomas. Truth in history is naturally
truth in poetry; but you have made the
characters of the two men shine out in a way
which, while it never deviates from the im-
pression history gives of them, goes beyond and
perfects history. This is eminently conspicuous
m the way their relations to one another are
traced; and in the delineation of the influence
on Thomas of the conception of the Church,
blending with his own haughty spirit and
sanctifying it to his own conscience. There is
not, it seems to me, anything in modern poetry
which helps us to realize, as your drama does,
the sort of power the Church exerted on her
ministers: and this is the central fact of the
earlier middle ages. I wish you were writing a
play on Hildebrand also. Venturing to say this
to you from the point of view of a student of
history, I scarcely presume to speak of the drama
on its more purely literary side, how full of
strength and beauty and delicacy it is, because
you must have heard this often already from
more competent critics.
NOTES ON THE CUP
By the Editor
Founded on a story in Plutarch. The
story was first read by my father in Lecky :
A powerful noble once solicited the hand of a
Galatian lady named Camma, who, faithful to
her husband, resisted all his entreaties. Re-
solved at any hazard to succeed, he caused her
husband to be assassinated, and when she took
refuge in the temple of Diana, and enrolled her-
self among the priestesses, he sent noble after
noble to induce her to relent. After a time he
ventured himself into her presence. She feigned
a willingness to yield, but told him it was first
necessary to make a libation to the goddess.
She appeared as a priestess before the altar
bearing in her hand a cup of wine, which she
had poisoned. She drank half of it herself,
handed the remainder to her guilty lover, and
when he had drained the cup to the dregs, burst
into a fierce thanksgiving that she had been per-
mitted to avenge, and was soon to rejoin, her
murdered husband. (Plutarch, De Mulier. Virt.)
The Cup was first published with The
Falcon in 1884; planned in March 1879,
begun in November 1879, and printed late
in 1880. Produced at the Lyceum, Jan. 3,
1 88 1, and ran for one hundred and twenty-
eight nights.
At Irving's request three short speeches
for Synorix were added. Act i. Sc. iii. ;
and at the end of Act i. Sc. ii., pp. 207-
208, the quarrel between Sinnatus and
Synorix was lengthened by two Hues, and
Camma was made to interrogate Sinnatus
as to what Synorix had said, and three or
four entrances were made less abrupt.
Irving inserted most of the stage-directions,
and devised the magnificent scenery, and
the drama was produced by him with
signal success at the Lyceum, and played
to crowded houses. He wrote to my
father: "I hope that the splendid success
of your grand Tragedy will be followed by
other triumphs equally great."
NOTES
991
While Miss Mary Anderson was acting
in The Winter's Tale in London she
signed an agreement to revive The Cup.
My father reinserted from his first MS.
four lines for her, to be sung by the
priestesses as they enter the Temple :
Artemis, Artemis, hear us, O mother, hear
us and bless us !
Artemis, thou that art life to the wind, to
the wave, to the glebe, to the fire,
Hear thy people who praise thee ! O
help us from all that oppress us.
Hear thy priestesses hymn thy glory ! O
yield them all their desire.
P. 731, col. 2, line 31. (Act i. Sc. i.)
I here return like Tarquin — for a crown.
This refers to Tarquinius Superbus, the
last king of Rome, who was expelled 510
B.C. 4n consequence of the outrage by his
son on Lucretia, the wife of his cousin,
Tarquinius CoUatinus. The last effort of
Tarquin to recover his crown was ex-
hausted by the decisive victory gained by
the Romans over him at Lake Regillus,
490 B.C. It is related that he died miser-
ably at Curaae.
P. 732, col. I, line 15. (Act i. Sc. i.)
the net, — the net. Cf. Horace, Ode i. i.
28 f/ passim.
P. 734, col. 2, line 25. (Act i. Sc. ii.)
"Some friends of mind" in first edition
misprint for "Some friends of mine."
P. 745, col. I, line 13. (Act n.) some
old Greek. See Plato's Apology, Church's
translation: "And if we reflect in another
way, we shall see that we may well hope
that death is a good. For the state of
death is one of two things: either the
dead whoUy cease to be and lose all sensa-
tion, or death (as is commonly beUeved) a
change and a migration of the soul into
another place. Now if death is the
absence of all sensation, and life a dream-
less sleep, it will be a wonderful gain. . . .
But if it is a passing to another place, and
the common belief be true, that all who have
died are there, what could be greater than
this? . . . What one would not give to
converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and
Hesiod and Homer ! I am willing to die
many times if this be true.*'
P. 745, col. 2, line 14. (Act 11.)
'Camma, Camma!' Sinnatus, Sinnatusl
The blank verse ending the play, with
only four beats, gives the passion of
Gamma's death-cry.
NOTES ON THE FALCON
By the Editor
P. 746. The Falcon. First published
in 1884. Founded on a story in Boc-
caccio (the ninth novel of the fifth day
of the' Decameron), and produced by Mr.
and Mrs. Kendal at the St. James' Theatre,
who played it for sixty-seven nights.
HazUtt first suggested the story as suit-
able for stage treatment. Fanny Kemble
called the play "an exquisite little idyll in
action Uke one of A. de Musset's." Mrs.
Brotherton writes to me: "Well do I
remember your father reading The Falcon
to me (still in MS.), in a Uttle attic at
Farringford. The ivy outside was blowing
against the casement like pattering rain,
all the time. When he had finished he
softly closed the simple 'copy-book' it was
written in, and said softly, 'Stately and
tender, isn't it ? ' exactly as if he were com-
menting on another man's work — and no
more just comment could have come from
the whole world of critics."
NOTES ON THE PROMISE
OF MAY
By the Editor
First prose version printed in 1882, and
revised and pubUshed in 1886 with Locksley
Hall Sixty Years After. It was produced
by Mrs. Bernard Beere at the Globe
Theatre on Nov. nth, 1882, and ran
until Dec. isth. The first printed copies
in prose, which were used for stage pur-
F>oses, were not pubUshed in 1882, as my
father wished to write part of the drama in
poetry for the reading pubUc.
Edgar is "a surface man of theories true
to none." I subjoin the analysis of the
hero's character by my brother, as it best
gives my father's conception.
992
NOTES
Edgar is not, as the critics will have it, a free-
thinker, drawn into crime by his Communistic
theories; Edgar is not even an honest Radical, '
nor a sincere follower of Schopenhauer; he is
nothing thorough and nothing sincere. He has
no conscience until he is brought face to face with
the consequences of his crime, and in the awaken-
ing of that conscience the poet has manifested his
fullest and subtlest strength. At our first intro-
duction to Edgar, we see him perplexed with the
haunting of a pleasure that has sated him. " Let
us eat and drink, for to-morrojv we die " has been
his motto; but we can detect that his appetite,
for all pleasure has begun to pall. He repeats
wearily the formuL-e of a philosophy which he has
followed because it suits his mode of life. He
plays with these formulae, but they do not satisfy
him. So long as he had on him the zest of liber-
tinism he did not, in all probability, troiAle him-
self with philosophy. But now his selfishness
compels him to take a step of which he feels the
wickedness and repugnancy. He must endeavour
to justify himself to himself. The companionship
of the girl he has betrayed no longer gives him
pleasure ; he hates her tears because they remind
him of himself — his proper self. He abandons
her with a pretence of satisfaction ; but the philo-
sophical formulae he repeats no more satisfy him
than they satisfy the poor girl whom he deserts.
Her innocence has not, however, been wantonly
sacrificed by the dramatist. She has sown the
seed of repentance in her seducer, though the fruit
is slow in ripening. Years after he returns, like
the ghost of a murderer to the scene of his crime.
He feels remorse. He is ashamed of it ; he battles
against it ; he hurls the old formulae at it ; he acts
the cynic more thoroughly than ever. But he is
changed. He feels a desire to "make amends."
Yet that desire is still only a form of selfishness.
He has abandoned the "Utopian Idiocy" of
Communism. Perhaps, as he says, with a self-
mockery that makes the character so individual
and remarkable, "because he has inherited
estates." His position of gentleman is forced on
his notice ; he would qualify himself for it, selfishly
and without doing excessive penance. To marry
the surviving sister and rescue the old father
from ruin would be a meritorious act. He sets
himself to perform it. At first everything goes
well for him ; the old weapons of fascination, that
had worked the younger sister's ruin, now con-
quer the heart of the elder. He is comfortable
in his scheme of reparation, and lays that flatter-
ing "unction to his soul."
Suddenly, however, the girl whom he has be-
trayed, and whom he thought dead, returns; she
hears him repeating to another the words of love
she herself had heard from him and believed.
"Edgar !" she cries, and staggers forth from her
concealment, as she forgives him with her last
breath.
Then, and not till then, the true soul of the
man rushes to his lips ; he recognizes his wicked-
ness, he knows the blankness of his life. That is
his punishment.
He feels then, and will always feel, aspirations
after good which he can never or only imperfectly
fulfil. The position of independence, on which
he prided himself, is wrested from him, he is
humiliated. The instrument of his selfish repent-
ance turns on him with a forgiveness that annihil-
ates him ; the bluff and honest farmer whom he
despises triumphs over him, not with the brute
force of an avenging hand, but with the pre-
eminence of superior morality. Edgar quits the
scene, never again, we can believe, to renew his
libertine existence, but to expiate with lifelong
contrition the monstrous wickedness of the past.
My father drew his characters from the
Lincolnshire country life of his boyhood
carefully, and wrote, when the play was
violently attacked by Lord Queensberry:
"I had a feeling that I would at least strive
in my plays to bring the true drama of life
and character back again. I gave them
one leaf out of the great book of Truth
and Nature."
P. 759, col. I, line ii. (Act i.)
What are we, says the blind old man in
Lear?
Cf . King Lear, iv, i. 38 :
As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport.
P. 767, col. 2, line 17. (Act 11.)
Scizzars an' Pumpy. Caisar and Pompey.
P. 772, col. I, line 9. (Act in.)
0 man, forgive thy mortal foe.
This is the only hymn my father has
written, except "The Human Cry" at the
end of De Profundis (p. 533), which he
wrote at Jowett's request.
In 1 89 1 he said to Dr. Warren, the
present Professor of Poetry at Oxford: "A
good hymn is the most difficult thing in
the world to write. In a good hymn you
have to be commonplace and poetical.
The monient you cease to be commonplace
and put in any expression at all out of the
common, it ceases to be a hymn. Of
hymns I like Heber's 'Holy, Holy, Holy'
better than most — it is a fine metre too."
He said that Jowett had hked the simple
hymn for children in The Promise of May.
He would often quote this passage from
the version of the Psalms by Stemhold and
Hopkins :
"And on the wings of all the winds
Came flying all abroad."
P- 773, col. I, line 24. (Act in.) the
Queen's Real Hard Tillery. The Royal
Artillery. *
NOTES
993
P. 781. [Demeter and other Poems
was dedicated to Lord Dufferin as a tribute
of affection and of gratitude for the unre-
mitting kindness shown by Lady Dufterin
and himself to my brother Lionel during
bis last fatal illness in India. From earliest
childhood Lionel's had always been an
affectionate and beautiful nature. None of
his age in the India Office, where he was
for some time a clerk, knew more about
India, and i have not a few letters from
bis chiefs, speaking in the warmest terms
of his ability, and of the high place that,
had he lived, he would have made for him-
self. While shooting in Assam he caught
jungle fever. On his return to Calcutta he
fell dangerously ill, and never recovered.
He started for home at the beginning of
April, and passed away peacefully at three
in the afternoon of April 20th. The burial
service was at nine that same evening, under
a great silver moon. The ship stopped off
Perim, in the Red Sea, and the coffin was
lowered into the phosphorescent waves. —
Ed.]
P. 781. To THE Marquis of Dufferin
AND AvA. [First published in 1889. See
Memoir, vol. ii. pp. 322-323. — Ed.]
P. 782. On the Jubilee of Queen
ViCTORL\. [Published in pamphlet form
and in MacmiUaris Magazine, April 1887,
on the fiftieth anniversary of the Queen's
coronation. — Ed.]
P. 783. To Professor Jebb. [First
published in 1889. My father met Jebb
at Cambridge for the first time in 1872.
He gave him the following Sapphic in
English with the Greek cadence, because
Jebb admired it :
Faded ev'ry violet, aU the roses ;
Gone the glorious promise ; and the victim,
Broken in this anger of Aphrodite,
Yields to the victor.
What impressed my father most in this
visit to Cambridge was the change in the
relations between don and undergraduate..
While he was keeping his terms (1828-
1831) there was "a great gulf fixed" be-
tween the teacher and the taught. As he
said to Dr. Butler, the present Master of
Trinity: "There was a want of love in
Cambridge then;" and in consequence he
3S
had written in 1830 these denunciatory
lines :
Therefore your Halls, your ancient Colleges,
Your portals statued with old kings and
queens.
Your gardens, myriad-volumed libraries.
Wax-lighted chapels, and rich carven
screens.
Your doctors, and your proctors, and your
deans.
Shall not avail you, when the Day-beam
sports
New-risen o'er awaken'd Albion. No !
Nor yet your solemn organ-pipes that blow
Melodious thunders thro' your vacant courts
At noon and eve, because your manner
sorts
Not with this age wherefrom ye stand
apart,
Because the lips of little children preach
Against you, you that do profess to teach
And teach us nothing, feeding not the
heart.
Ed.]
P. 783. Demeter and Persephone.
[First published in 1889. Cf. the Homeric
Hymn to Demeter; Hesiod, Theog. 912
ff.; and Ovid, Met. v. 341, and Fasti, iv.
419 ff. The poem was written at my
request, because I knew that my father con-
sidered Demeter one of the most beautiful
types of womanhood. He said: "I will
write it, but when I write an antique like
this I must put it into a frame — something
modern about it. It is no use giving a
mere rechauffe of old legends." He would
give as an example of the frame :
Yet I, Earth-Goddess, am but ill-content
And all the Shadow die into the Light.
To Signor Francisco Clementi, who
translated this poem into Italian and told
my father that the Italian youth were grate-
ful to him and had profited much by his
work, he wrote, Feb. 4th, 1891: "I send
you my best thanks for your kind and
generous cpmmentarj'. ' If I have done
any good to your countrymen or others,
by what I have written, that is more grate-
ful to me than any modem fame, which to
a man nearing 82 — r for I was born in 1809
— seems somewhat pale and colourless." —
Ed.]
994
NOTES
P. 784, col. I, lines 10, 11. gave thy
breast, the breast which had suckled thee.
P. 784, col. 2, lines 11-14.
'Where'? and I heard one voice from all
the three
'We know not, for we spin the lives of
men,
And not of Gods, and know not why we
spin !
There is a Fate beyond us J
Cf.
'Talia saecla,' suis dixerunt, 'currite,' fusis
Concordes stabili fatorum numine Parcae.
-J, Virgil, Eel. iv. 46.
P. 785, col. I, line 27. bear us down. [Cf.
Aesch. Prom. Vinct. 907, etc. :
^ fxrjp eTL Zeus, Kaiirep audddrjs (ftpevdv
ecrrai TaTreLvds, k.t.X. Ed.]
P. 785. OwD RoA. [First published in
1889. — Ed.] I read in one of the daily
papers of a child saved by a black retriever
from a burning house. The details in
this story are, of course, mine. When the
Spectator, reviewing The Northern Farmer,
etc., remarked that I must have found
these poems difl&cult ^to accomplish, as
b^ing out of my way, I wrote to a friend
that they were easy enough, for I knew the
men — by which I meant the kind of men
and their manner of speaking, not any par-
ticular individual.
P. 788, col. I, line 10. Or like tother
Eangel, etc. See Judges xiii. 20.
P. 788. Vastness. [First published in
The Nineteenth Century, November 1885 ;
afterwards in Demeter and other Poems,
1889. — Ed.] The last line means "What
matters anything in this world without faith
in the immortality of the soul and of
Love ? "
P. 790. The Ring. [First published in
1889. — Ed.]
P. 790, col. 2, lines 21-28.
the Voices of the day
Are heard across the Voices of the dark.
No sudden heaven, nor sudden hell, for
man.
But thro' the Will of One who knows and
rules —
And utter knowledge is but utter love —
jEonian Evolution, swift or slow,
Thro' all the Spheres — an ever opening
height,
An ever lessening earth.
[My father would quote these lines as
giving his own belief that "the after-life is
one of progress." — Ed.]
P. 791, col. I, line 12.
The lonely maiden-Princess of the wood.
See The Day-Dream.
P. 792, col. I, line 23,
A thousand squares of corn and meadow,
far
As the gray deep, a landscape which your
eyes
Have many a time ranged over when a
babe.
[The view from Aldworth. — Ed.]
P. 797, col. I, lines i, 2.
A red mark ran
All round one finger.
Mr. Lowell told me this legend, or some-
thing like it, of a house near where he had
once lived.
[In answer to a letter respecting the
legend Mr. Lowell writes: "I shall only
be too glad to be in any the remotest way
the moving cause of a new poem by one to
whom we are all so nobly indebted. Henry
James, by the way, to whom I told the
legend many years ago, made it the
subject of a short story. But this would
be no objection, for the poet wovild
make it his own by right of eminent
domain." — Ed.]
P. 797. Forlorn. [An early poem, first
pubUshed in 1889. — Ed.]
P. 798. Happy. [First published in 1889.
On the Power of Spiritual Love. — Ed.]
P. 802. To Ulysses. Ulysses was the
title of a volume of Palgrave's essays. He
died at Monte Video before seeing my
poem. [First published in 1889. My
father used to say: "Gififord Palgrave is
the cleverest man I ever saw." — Ed.]
P. 802. Verse vii.
Or watch the waving pine which here
The warrior of Caprera set.
NOTES
995
A Wellingtonia which Garibaldi planted
when at Farringford in April 1864. Gari-
baldi said to me, alluding to his barren
island (Caprera), "I wish I had your
trees." See Introduction.
P. 803. To Masy Boyle. [Written
at Farringford and first published in 1889.
Mary Boyle was an aunt of my wife's
(Audrey Tennyson, nee Boyle). In 1883
my father wrote to her: "I verily believe
that the better heart of me beats stronger
at 74 than ever it did at 18." — Ed.] ,
P. 803. Verse iv. your Marian. Lady
Marian Alford.
P. 803. Verse x. an English home-
stead Hell. Near Cambridge, 1830. [See
Memoir, vol. i. p. 41. Cf. The Princess,
IV.:
As of some fire against a stormy cloud,
When the wild peasant rights himself, the
rick
Flames, and his anger reddens in the
heavens. Ed.]
P. 804. The Progress of Spring.
[Written in early youth. First published
in 1889. — Ed.]
P. 805. Verse v.
The starling claps his tiny castanets.
[My father said, in 1889: "This hne
was written fifty-six years ago under the
elms on the sloping field at Somersby, and
then four or five years ago I see the same
phrase (before the poem was published) in
a modem novel, not taken from the poem,
I presume, but I suppose the critics would
not beUeve that." — Ed.]
P. 806. Merlin and the Gleam.
[First published in 1889. — Ed.] In the
story of Merlin and Nimu'e I have read
that Nimue means the "Gleam," which
signifies in my poem the higher poetic
imagination. Verse iv. is the early
imagination; Verse v. alludes to the
Pastorals.
[For those who cared to know about his
literary history he wrote Merlin and the
Gleam. From his boyhood he had felt the
magic of Merlin — that spirit of poetry —
which bade him know his power and follow
throughout his work a pure and high ideal,
with a simple and single devotedness and
a desire to ennoble the life of the world,
and which helped him through doubts and
difficulties to "endure as seeing Him who
is invisible."
Great the Master,
And sweet the Magic,
When over the valley,
In early summers,
Over the mountain,
On human faces.
And all around me,
Moving to melody.
Floated the Gleam.
In his youth he sang of the brook
flowing through his upland valley, of the
"ridged wolds" that rose above his home,
of the mountain-glen and snowy summits
of his early dreams, and of the beings,
heroes and fairies, with which his imaginary
world was peopled. Then was heard the
"croak of the raven," the harsh voice of
those who were imsympathetic —
The light retreated,
The landskip darken'd.
The melody deaden'd.
The Master whisper'd
"Follow the Gleam."
Still the inward voice told him not to be
faint-hearted but to follow his ideal. And
by the delight in his own romantic fancy,
and by the harmonies of nature, "the
warble of water," and "cataract music of
falUng torrents," the inspiration of the
poet was renewed. His Eclogues and
Enghsh Idyls followed, when he sang the
songs of country life and the joys and
griefs of coimtry folk, which he knew
through and through.
Innocent maidens.
Garrulous children,
Homestead and harvest,
Reaper and gleaner.
And rough-ruddy faces
Of lowly labour.
By degrees, having learnt somewhat of
the real philosophy of life and of humanity
from his own experience, he rose to a
melody "stronger and statelier." He
celebrated the glory of "human love and
of hvunan heroism" and of human thought, '
and began what he had already devised, his
Epic of King Arthur, "typifying above all
things the life of man," wherein he had
996
NOTES
intended to represent some of the great
religions of the world. He had purposed
that this was to be the chief work of his
manhood. Yet the death of his friend,
Arthur Hallam, and the consequent darken-
ing of the whole world for him made him
almost fail in this purpose ; nor any longer
for a while did he rejoice in the splendour
of his spiritual visions, nor in the Gleam
that had "waned to a wintry glimmer."
Clouds and darkness
Closed upon Camelot ;
Arthur had vanish'd
I knew not whither.
The king who loved me,
And cannot die.
Here my father united the two Arthurs,
the Arthur of the Idylls and the Arthur
"the man he held as half divine." He
himself had fought with death, and had
come out victorious to find "a stronger
faith his own," and a hope for himself,
for all those in sorrow and for universal
humankind, that never forsook him through
the future years.
And broader and brighter
The Gleam flying onward.
Wed to the melody,
Sang thro' the world.
I saw, whenever
In passing it glanced upon
Hamlet or city.
That under the Crosses
The dead man's garden,
The mortal hillock.
Would break into blossom ;
And so to the land's
Last limit I came.
Up to the end he faced deatli with the
same earnest and unfailing courage that he
had always shown, but with an added
sense of the awe and the mystery of the
Infinite.
I can no longer.
But die rejoicing.
For thro' the Magic
Of Him the Mighty,
Who taught me in childhood,
There on the border
Of boundless Ocean,
And all but in Heaven
Hovers the Gleam.
That is the reading of the poet's riddle
as he gave it to me. He thought that
Merlin and the Gleam would probably be
enough of biograph^^ for those friends who
urged him to write about himself. — Ed.]
P. 807. Rom:ney's Remorse. [First
pubUshed in 1889. — Ed.]
P. 809, col. 2, line 7. With Milton's
amaranth.
"Lowly reverent
Towards either throne they bow, and to
the ground
With solemn adoration down they cast
Their crowns inwove with amarant and
gold.
Immortal amarant, a flower which once
In Paradise, fast by the Tree of Life,
Began to bloom; but, soon for Man's
offence
To Heaven removed where first it grew,
there grows
And flowers aloft, shading the Fount of
Life, etc.
Par. Lost, iii. 349-357-
P. 810, col. I, line 9. my Indian
brother. When his brother arrived from
India, Romney did not know him.
P. 810, col. I, line 16. He said it . . •
in the play. Cf. Measure for Measure,
m. i. 2 :
"The miserable have'no other medicine
But only hope."
P. 810. Parnassus. [First published
in 1889. Norman Lockyer visited him in
October 1890, and said of my father:
"His mind is saturated with astronomy."
— Ed.]
P. 810. By AN Evolutionist.
[Written at Farxingford, and first pub-
lished in 1.889. My father brought " Evolu-
tion" into Poetry. Ever since his Cam-
bridge days he believed in it. Andrew
Lang notes: "It was part of the origin-
ality of Tennyson, as a philosophic poet,
that he had brooded from boyhood on
these early theories of evolution, in an
age when they were practically unknown
to the literary, and were not patronised
by the scientific world." He has given,
perhaps, the best expression of this belief
in a remarkable passage in Sea Dreams,
beginning "But round the North, a
NOTES
Wt
light," p. 159. There we have a dream
of the restless spirit of progress throughout
the ages, and the "note never out of tune"
underlying it. — Ed.]
P. 811. Far — FA-R — AWAY. (For
Music.) Before I could read I was in
the habit on a stormy day of spreading
my arms to the wind and crying out,
"I hear a voice that's speaking in
the wind," and the words "far, far away"
had always a strange charm for me.
[First published in 1889. My father wrote
this after his severe illness in 1888. As
he was lying on his sofa in the window at
Aldworth, and looking out on the great
landscape of the weald of Sussex, he said
that he had wonderful thoughts about God
and the Universe, and felt as if looking
into the other world. Distant bells always
charmed him with their "lin-lan-lone,"
and when heard over a sea or a lake, he
was never tired of listening to them. — Ed.]
P. 811. Politics. [Addressed to Glad-
stone, and first published in 1889. — Ed.]
P. 811. Beautiful City. Paris. [First
published in 1889. ■ — Ed.]
P. 812. The Roses on the Terrace.
At Aldworth. [First published in 1889.
About this time he sent the following lines
to E. V. B. (Mrs. Richard Boyle) for her
Ros Rosarum:
THE ROSEBUD
The night with sudden odour reel'd,
The southern stars a music peal'd.
Warm beams across the meadow stole ;
For love flew over grove and field,
Said, "Open, Rosebud, open, yield
Thy fragrant soul."
See also letter from my father to Dean
Hole from Aldworth: "The Book of
Roses was heartily welcomed by me : I do
not worship the yellow but the Rosy Roses
— rosy means red, not yellow — and the
homage of my youth was given to what I
must ever look up to as the Queen of
Roses — the Provence — but then you as a
great Rose master may not agree with me.
I never see my Queen of Roses anywhere
now. We have just been planting a garden
of Roses, and were glad to find that out
of our native wit we had associated the
berberis with them as you advise." — Ed.]
P. 812. The Play, and On One \^m^o
affected an Effeminate Manner.
[First published in 1889. — Ed.]
P. 812. To One who ran down the
English. [Written at Aldworth, and
first pubUshed in 1889. — Ed.]
P. 812. The Snowdrop. [Written
at Farringford about i860, and first pub-
Ushed in 1889. — Ed.]
P. 812. The Throstle. [First pub-
lished in the New Review, October 1889,
and misprinted; afterwards in Demetcr
and other iPoems, 1889. My father had
been writing his poem. By an Evolutionist,
between severe attacks of gout in the
winter of 1889. He fed the thrushes and
other birds as usual out of his window at
Farringford. Toward the end of Feb-
ruary he sat in his kitchen-garden summer-
house, listening attentively to the different
notes of the thrush, and finishing his song
of The Throstle, which had been begun in
the same garden years ago :
Summer is coming, is coming, my dear,
And all the winters are hidden.
Talking of hopefulness, he said: "Hope
is the kiss of the Future." — Ed.]
P. 812. The Oak. [First published
in 1889. My father called this poem
"clean-cut like a Greek epigram." The
allusion is to the gold of the young oak
leaves in spring, and to the autumnal
gold of the fading leaves (at Aldworth) . —
Ed.]
P. 813. In Memoriam. — W. G. Ward.
[First published in The Athenceum. May
nth, 1889. Ward was a neighbour of
my father's at Freshwater. He had been
one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement,
and afterwards of the CathoUc Revival.
He died in 1882. — Ed.]
NOTES ON THE FORESTERS
By the Editor
Written eleven years before publication
in 1 881. First published and perfonned
998
NOTES
On March 25 th The Foresters was pro-
duced at New York by Daly, the incidental
music being by Sir Arthur Sullivan. It
gave my father great pleasure to hear that
American people were "appreciative of
the fancy and of the beauty, and especially
of the songs and of the wise sayings about
life in which the woodland play abounds." ^
The houses were packed and the play had
a long and most successful run.
Before the production my father wrote
to Daly :
I wish you all success with my Robin Hood
and Maid Marian. From what I know of Miss
Ada Rehan I am sure that she will play her part
to perfection, and I am certain that under your
management, with the music by one so popular as
Sir Arthur Sullivan, with the costumes fashioned
after the old designs in the British Museum, with
the woodland scenes taken from Mr. Whymper's
beautiful pictures of the Sherwood of to-day. my
play will be produced to advantage both in
America and in England. I am told that your
company is good, and that Mr. Jefferson once
belonged to it. When he was in England, I saw
him play Rip Van Winkle, and assuredly nothing
could have been better.
With all cordial greetings to my American
friends, I remain faithfully yours,
Tennyson.
And after the production he received the
following from Miss Ada Rehan :
Let me add my congratulations to the many
on the success of The Foresters. I cannot tell
you how delighted I was when I felt and saw,
from the first, the joy it was giving to our large
audience. Its charm is felt by all. Let me
thank you for myself for the honour of playing
your Maid Marian, which I have learned to
love, for while I am playing the part I feel all its
beauty and simplicity and sweetness, which make
me feel for the time a happier and a better womaa.
I am indeed proud of its great success for your
sake as well as my own.
P.S. — The play is now one week old, and each
audience has been larger than the last, and all as
sympathetic as the first.
And Professor Jebb wrote:
Being here on my way to the Johns Hopkins
University at Baltimore, where I have some Lec-
tures to give, I naturally went to see The Foresters
at Augustin Daly's last night. The Theatre,
which is of moderate size, was densely packed,
and as I had not engaged my seat by cablegram
from Liverpool, I bore no resemblance, in respect
of spacious comfort, to the ideal spectator, the
masher or "dude," depicted on the play -bill
which I send you by this post. I was a highly
compressed and squalid object in a back seat,
1 Jowett.
amid a seething mass of humanity, but I saw the
play very well. It was very cordially received
and was well acted, I thought, especially by Ada
Rehan and Drew. The fairy scene in the third
Act was perfectly lovely, and the lyrics were
everywhere beautifully given. The mounting of
the play was excellent throughout.
The criticism of The Foresters which
pleased my father most was in a letter
addressed to Lady Martin [Miss Helen
Faucit] by the eminent Shakespearian
scholar, Mr. Horace Fumess of Phil-
adelphia, when the piece was being per-
formed in New York :
After dinner we went to see The Foresters.
Men and women — of a different time, to be sure,
but none too good "for human nature's daily
food" — live their idyllic lives before you, and
you feel that all is good, very good. The atmo-
sphere is so real, and we fall into it so completely,
that, Americans though we be through and
through, we can listen with hearty assent to the
chorus that "There is no land like England,"
and that "There are no wives like English wives."
Nay, come to think of it, that song was encored.
It was charming, charming from beginning to
end. And Miss Rehan acted to perfection. I
had to leave in the midnight train for home, and
during two hours' driving through the black night,
I smoked and reflected on the unalloyed charm
of such a drama. And to see the popularity, too !
It had been running many weeks — six, I think —
and the theatre was full, not a seat unoccupied.
I do revel, I confess, in such a proof as this that
there will always be a full response to what is fine
and good, and that the modern sensational French
drama is not our true exponent.
P. 821. (Act I. Sc. iii.) To Sleep.
First published in New Review, 1891, and
set to music by my mother. (See Mile.
Janotha's edition of Lady Tennyson's
songs, published by Novello.)
P. 825, coL I, line 15. (Act 11. Sc. i.)
wickentree, mountain-ash.
P. 831. Act ir. Sc. ii. ad finem. The
whole stage lights up, and fairies are seen
swinging on boughs and nestling in hollow
trunks, etc.
My father said to Mr. Daly: "I don't
care for The Foresters as I do for Becket
and Harold. Irving suggested the fairies
in my Robir. Hood, else I should not have
dreamed of trenching on Shakespeare's
ground in that way. Then Irving wrote
to me that the play was not 'sensational'
enough for an English public. It is a
woodland play — a pastoral without shep-
NOTES
999
herds. The great stage-drama is wholly
unlike most of the drama of modem times.
I do not hke the idea of every scene being
obhged to end with a bang." About
"There is no land like England," he added,
"I wrote that song when I was nine-
teen. It has a beastly chorus against the
French, and I must alter that if you will
have it."
P. 833, col. I, line 18. (Act iii. Sc. i.)
torrents of eddying bark. I heard my father
first use these words about the great trunks
of the Spanish chestnuts in Cowdray Park
near Midhurst. He and I stayed in Sher-
wood Forest in 1881, at the time when he
was writing The Foresters.
P. 835, col. I, line 25. (Act m. Sc. i.)
Instead of the short scene between Robin
and Marian, beginning "Honour to thee,
brave Marian," to "my will, and made it
thine," my father had written in the first
proof of the play the following lively and
charming scene, which he cut out when
Miss Mary Anderson was to have acted
Marian ^ : —
Robin
Honour to thee, brave Marian, and thy
Kate.
I know them arrant knaves in Nottingham.
One half of this shall go to those that they
have wrong'd.
One half shall pass into our treasury.
Marian
My father has none with him. See to him,
Kate.
[Exit Kate.
Robin
Where lies that cask of wine whereof we
plunder'd
The Norman prelate ?
Little John
In that oak, where twelve
Can stand upright, nor touch each other.2
1 She fell ill and left the stage, else she was to
have played in The Foresters and The Cup.
2 The oak described here was standing in
Sherwood Forest when we visited it in 1881.
^^^^^ Good!
Roll it in here. These beggars and these
friars
Shall drink the health of our new woodland
Queen.
[Exeunt Robin's men.
{To Marian) And now that thou hast
triumph'd as our Queen,
I have a mind to embrace thee as our
Queen.
Marian (frantically)
Quiet, Robin, quiet. You lovers are
such summer flies, always buzzing at the
face of your lady.
Robin
Say rather we are bees that fly to the
flower for honey.
M.ARIAN
Your soul should worship her soul, your
heart her heart, and all your thoughts
should be higher-winged in the spiritual
heaven of love.
Robin
Ay, but we lovers are not cherubim,
wings and no more.
Marian
True, Robin, thou art plimip enough for
my robin, but thy face is too gaunt for a
cherub's.
Robin
Yet I would I were a winged cherub,
that I might fly and hide myself in thy
bosom.
Marian
Ay, but, cherub, if thou flewest so close
as that, I should fly like the maid in the
heathen fable when the would-be god lost
his nymph in the wood.
Robin
What was she ?
Marian
I forget. The Maid [Marian of these
times behke.
Robin
And how did he lose her ?
NOTES
Maioan
As many men lose many women if they
fly too near — as thou mayest lose me in
this forest. She turned herself into a
laurel.
Robin
I would have gathered the leaves, and
made a crown of it.
Marian
And the laurel would have withered in a
day, and the nymph would have been dead
wood to thee for ever.
Robin
No, no; I would have clasped and
kissed, and warmed the dead wood till it
broke again into living leaf.
Marian
Well, well, to tell love's truth, I sighed
for a touch of thy lips a year ago, but the
Sheriff has come between us. Is it not all
over now — gone like a deer that hath
escaped from thine arrow ?
Robin
What deer, when I have marked him,
ever escaped from mine arrow? The
Sheriff — over is it ? Wilt thou give me thy
hand upon that ?
Marian
Take it.
Robin
The Sheriff ! [Kisses her hand.
This ring cries out against thee. Say it
again.
And by this ring, the lips that never
breathed
Love's falsehood to true maid will seal
love's truth
On those sweet lips that dare to dally
with it.
P. 851. June Bracken and Heather.
[First published in 1892, written on Black-
down, and dedicated to my mother. Cf.
the poem my father addressed on his
wedding-day to his old friend Drummond
Rawnsley, the Vicar of Shiplake (June 13,
1850), by whom they were married:
TO THE VICAR OF SHIPLAKE
Vicar of that pleasant spot,
Where it was my chance to marry.
Happy, happy be your lot
In the Vicarage by the quarry :
You. were he that knit the knot.
Sweetly, smoothly flow your life.
Never parish feud perplex you.
Tithe unpaid, or party strife.
All things please you, nothing vex you;
You have given me such a wife.
Have I seen in one so near
Aught but sweetness aye prevailing ?
Or, thro' more than half a year.
Half the fraction of a failing ?
Therefore bless you, Drummond dear.
Good she is, and pure and just.
Being conquer'd by her sweetness
I shall come thro' her, I trust.
Into fuller-orb'd completeness;
Tho' but made of erring dust.
You, meanwhile, shall day by day
Watch your standard roses blowing,
And your three young things at play
And your triple terrace growing
Green and greener every May.
Smoothly flow your life with Kate's,^
Glancing off from all things evil,
Smooth as Thames below your gates,
Thames along the silent level
Streaming thro' his osier'd aits.
Ed.]
P. 851, col. I, line i. the down. Black-
down, on which Aldworth stands.
P. 851. The Death of (Enone,
[With Dedication to the Master of Balliol
(Professor Jowett). First published in
1892. Sir Richard Jebb wrote to me for
my father's information : —
Aug. 8, 1889.
I had meant to write yesterday, but was in-
terrupted.
The principal extant source for the story of
Paris and (Enone is an epic poem called
Td iJ.ed'\)fjLrjpov ("Posthomerica"), by Quintus
"Smyrnaeus," so called because he seems to
have lived in or near Smyrna. (In old books
you will find him called Quintus "Calaber," for
no other reason than that the MS. by which his
work first became known in modern times was
found at Otranto in Calabria.) The idea of his
1 Mrs. Drummond Rawnsley.
NOTES
epic is to continue the Iliad, from the death of
AchUles to the fall of Troy, — just as some of
the older "Cyclic" poets had done. He wrote
perhaps about 350-400 a.d., though some have
assigned him to the fifth century.
His epic is in fourteen books. The episode
of (Enone occurs in Book X. Paris having been
wounded by a poisoned arrow from the bow of
Philoctetes, comes to CEnone^ and makes a
speech to her, to the effect that he hopes she
will forget his odious behaviour, and nurse him
(284-305). She replies that she will see him
somewhere first (308-327). He goes away
lamenting, and dies in the wilds of Ida. She
hears of his death, and comes to his funeral
pyre. When she sees the corpse, she utters no
cry, but hides her face in her robe, and throws
herself on the flames (467). Thus the wh61e
story in Quintus occupies a little less than 200
lines. He is an exceedingly feeble and frigid
writer.
Ed.]
P. 853. St. Telemachus. [First pub-
lished in 1892. My father thought of also
writing the story of St. Perpetua in verse
as a companion poem. — Ed.]
P- 853, col. I, line 22. some fiery peak.
These lines were suggested by the memory
of the eruption of Krakatoa, between Java
and vSumatra, when the volcanic dust was
swirled round the earth and made the sun-
sets extraordinarily brilliant.
P. 853, col. 2, line 6. Vicisti Galilcee.
[Julian, who restored the heathen worship
and persecuted the Christians, is reported
to have said these words when dying.
— Ed.]
P. 854 col. I, line 11. blood-red awning.
[The velaritmi, which shaded the spectators
from the sun. — Ed.]
P. 854. Akbar's Dream. [First pub-
lished in 1892. Sir Alfred Lyall writes:
"The general conception of his (Akbar's)
character and position is drawn in grand
outUne." ^ Ed.]
P. 856, col. I, lines 26-31.
[when creed and race
Shall bear false witness, each of each, no
more.
But find their limits by that larger light,
And overstep them, moving easily
Thro' after-ages in the love of Truth,
The truth of Love
give my father's strong and deep feeling,
that in the end Christianity without bigotry
will triumph, when the controversies of
creeds shall have vanished, and that "in
the roll of the ages" the spirit of Christ
will still grow from more to more. — Ed.]
P. 856, col. 2, Hne 22 to p. 857, col. 1,
line 10.
A7i4 what are forms?
Make but one music, harmonising ^'PrayJ'
[My father said: "I dread the losing
hold of forms. I have expressed this in my
Akbar. There must be forms, yet I hate
the need for so many sects and separate
services." — Ed.]
P. 857. Hymn. [My father began
this hymn to the sun in a new metre at
Dulverton, and finished it on board Colonel
Crozier's yacht, the Assegai, on his return
voyage to the Isle of Wight. "A magnifi-
cent metre," he said; "I should Hke to
write a long poem in it." The philosophies
of the East had a great fascination for him,
and he felt -that the Western reUgion might
learn from them much of spirituality.
During one of the Bishop of Ripon's last
visits my father said to him: "Looked at
from one point of view, I can understand
the Persian dualism; there is much which
looks like the conflict of the powers of light
and darkness."
About that time he wrote the following
sketch of an unpublished poem, Ormuzd
and Ahriman: —
"In the eternal day before the days
were, the Almighty created Freewill in the
two great spirits Ormuzd and Ahriman.
"And these two came before the throne
of the Almighty, and spoke to Him, say-
ing, 'Thou hast shown thyself of Al-
mightiness to make us free; now therefore
to be free is to act, how should we be idle ? '
"And the Lord said to them, 'The ele-
ments are in your hands.'
"And they answered and said, 'W^e will
make the world.'
"And the Lord said, 'One of you is
dark, and one is bright, and ye will con-
tend each against each, and your work will
be evil. Ormuzd will put pleasure into that
which he does, and Ahriman will put pain."
"And Ormuzd said, 'The pleasuie will
overbear the pain.' And Ahriman said,
'The pain will overbear the pleasure.' And
the Lord said to Ahriman, ' Why wilt thou
work against Ormuzd?' And Ahriman
NOTES
said, 'I know not, Thou hast made me.'
And the Lord said, 'I know why I have
made thee, -but thou know est not.' And
the two went forth from before the Lord,
and made the world." — Ed.]
P. 859. The Bandit's Death. [First
pubUshed in 1892. This story is taken from
Sir Walter Scott's last Journal. My father
said of him : " Scott is the most chivalrous
Uterary figure of this century, and the
author with the widest range since Shake-
speare." He would read two or three of
his novels every year. Old Mortality he
thought "his greatest novel." In his
boyhood he wrote the following poem after
reading The Bride of Lammermoor, which
he also ranked high : —
THE BRIDAL
The lamps were bright and gay
On the merry bridal-day,
When the merry bridegroom
Bore the bride away !
A merry, merry bridal,
A merry bridal-day !
And the chapel's vaulted gloom
Was misted with perfume.
"Now, tell me, mother, pray,
Why the bride is white as clay,
Although the merry bridegroom
Bears the bride away.
On a merry, merry bridal,
A merry bridal-day ?
And why her black eyes burn
With a hght so wild and stern?"
**They revel as they may,"
That skinny witch did say,
"For — now the merry bridegroom
Hath borne the bride away —
Her thoughts have found their wings
In the dreaming of past things :
And though girt in glad array.
Yet her own deep soul says nay :
For tho' the merry bridegroom
Hath borne the bride away,
A dark form glances quick
Thro' her worn brain, hot and sick."
And so she said her say —
This was her roundelay —
That tho' the merry bridegroom
Might lead the bride away,
Dim grief did wait upon her,
In glory and in honour.
- j
In the hall, at close of day.
Did the people dance and play,
For now the merry bridegroom
Hath borne the bride away.
He from the dance hath gone
But the revel still goes on.
Then a scream of wild dismay
Thro' the deep hall forced its way,
Altho' the merry bridegroom
Hath borne the bride away ;
And, staring as in a trance,
« They were shaken from the dance.
Then they foimd him where he lay
Whom the wedded wife did slay,
Tho' he a merry bridegroom
Had borne the bride away,
And they saw her standing by,
With a laughing crazed eye.
On the bitter, bitter bridal,
The bitter bridal-day. Ed.]
P. 860. The Churchwarden and
THE Curate. [First pubUshed in 1892.
On June 23rd, 1890, I have an entry in
my diary: "Walked on the Common
(Blackdown). My father is working at his
Lincolnshire poem, The Church-warden,
and laughed heartily at 'the humorous
passages as he made them." It was founded
on two sayings which Canon Rawnsley
told him. One of a "Lincolnshire Church-
warden," who addressed him: "There's
no daub (sham) about you, I know. Thou'lt
be maain and plaain and straaight, I know,
but hooiver, tek my adivce, doant thou saay
nowt to nobody for a year or more, but crip
and crawl and git along under the hedge-
bottoms for a bit, and they'll maake a
bishop on ye yit." The other, that of a
Lincolnshire farmer who had lost a cow:
"The poor thing was bound to die, drat
it. I blaam them howry owd Baptises fur
it all, coming and pizening my pond by
leavin' their nasty owd sins behint them.
It's nowt nobbut their dippin' as did it, we
may be very sartain sewer." — Ed.]
P. 862. Charity. [Founded on a true
story. First pubUshed in 1892. — Ed.]
P. 863. Kapiolani. [First pubUshed
in 1892. My father read the story in
I Miss Yonge's Golden Deeds. — Ed.]
NOTES
1003
Pp. 864 ff. The Dawn, The Making
OF Man, The Dreamer, Faith, The
Silent Voices, God and the Uni-
verse. [This group of poems was
written at the end of his life, and first
published in 1892. — Ed.]
P. 865. Mechanophilus. [W^ritten
at the time of the first railways, and first
published in 1892. — Ed.]
P. S66. Riflemen form ! [First
published in The Times, Aug. 9th, 18^9,
when it rang like a trumpet-call through
the land. — Ed.]
P. 866. The Tourney. [One of the
poems rejected 'from the songs of Th^
Princess, and first published in 1892. — Ed.]
P. 867. Poets and Critics. [First
published in 1892. — Ed.]
P. 867. A Voice spake out of the
Skies. [First published in 1892. — Ed.]
P. 867. Doubt and Prayer. [An
early sonnet, altered and first published in
1892. — Ed.]
P. 867, col. 2, line 26.
My Father, and my Brother, and my God!
[My father's view of the Trinity of Love.
— Ed.]
P. 868. Faith. [My father said:
"It is hard to believe in God; but it is
harder not to believe in God. My most
passionate desire is to have a clearer and
fuller vision of God." — Ed.]
P. 868. The Silent Voices. [A
melody in F minor,i written by my mother
at my father's express desire, and arranged
for foiu- voices by Sir Frederick Bridge,
was sung at his funeral in the Abbey. — Ed.]
P. 868. God and the Universe.
[As he was dying on Oct. 5th, 1892, he
exclaimed: "I have opened it." Whether
this referred to the Cymbeline opened by
him at
"Hang there like fruit, my soul,
Till the tree die,"
1 See Appendix to Notes.
which he always called among the tenderest
lines in Shakespeare, or to the dirge in
Cymbeline; or whether these lines, which
he often repeated, were running through
his head, I cannot tell :
Thro' the gates that bar the distance
comes a gleam of what is higher,
Wait till Death has flung them open ;
and
Fear not thou the hidden purpose of that
Power which alone is great.
Nor the myriad world. His shadow, nor
the silent Opener of the Gate.
Ed.]
P. 868. The Death of the Duke
OF Clarence and Avondale, [First
published in The Nineteenth Century,
February 1892. This poem began to
bring on my father's final illness, as he
worked feeling tired. He wrote it at that
time, so as to bring some comfort to the
poor mother. He wanted G. F. Watts
to paint this great picture —
The face of Death is toward the Sun of
Life,
His shadow darkens earth.
He sent the poem, with the following letter,
to Queen Victoria : —
Madam — I venture to write, but I do not know
how to express the profound sympathy of myself
and my family with the great sorrow which has
befallen your Majesty and your children. I
know that your Majesty has a perfect trust in the
Love and Wisdom which order the circumstances
of our life, and in this alone is there comfort. — I
am always your Majesty's affectionate servant,
Tennyson. .
Ed.]
P. 869. Crossing the Bar. [Made
in my father's eighty-first year, in October
1889, on crossing the Solent after his
serious illness in 1888-9. When he re-
peated it to me in the evening, I said,
"That is the crown of j'our life's work."
He answered, "It came in a moment." —
Ed.]
P. 869. Verse iv.
/ hope to see my Pilot face to face.
The pilot has been on board all the while,
but in the dark I have not seen him.
[We now know the pilot only by faith —
I004
NOTES
we shall then see him face to face. My
father had often watched the pilots from
Southampton Water climb down from the
great mail-ships into their cutters oflf
Headon Hill, near the Needles.
He explained the Pilot as "that Divine
and Unseen Who is always guiding us."
A few days before his death he said to me,
"Mind you put my Crossing the Bar at
the end of all editions of my poems." This
poem. Merlin and the Gleam, The Death
of the Duke of Clarence, The Dawn, The
Making of Man, The Dreamer (expressive
of Hope in the Light that leads us), Th;
Wanderer, A Voice spake out of the Skies,
Doubt and Prayer, Faith, God and ths
Universe, and The Silent Voices, breath-
ing peace and courage and hope and faith,
were felt by my father, when he wrote them,
to be his last testament to the world. — Ed.]
"Poetry," my father wrote, "should be
the flower and fruit of a man's Hfe, in
whatever stage of it, to be a worthy offer-
ing to the world."
APPENDIX TO NOTES
^be Silent IDoices
BY
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
MUSIC BY
EMILY, LADY TENNYSON
ARRANGED FOR FOUR VOICES FOR
Zbc funeral ot XorD tTenni^gon
IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY, OCTOBER 12, 1892
BY
J. FREDERICK BRIDGE, Mus.D.
ioo6
APPENDIX TO NOTES
TLbc Silent Voices
Words by Lord Tennyson.
Slowly and ivith solemnity,
Music by Lady Tennyson.
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APPENDIX TO NOTES
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ioo8 APPENDIX TO NOTES
The following is one of my father's later poems, and was by inadvertence never
published by him.
RETICENCE
Not to Silence would I build
A temple in her naked field ;
Not to her would raise a shrine :
She no goddess is of mine ;
But to one of finer sense.
Her half sister, Reticence.
Latest of her worshippers,
I would shrine her in my verse!
Not like Silence shall she stand,
Finger-lipt, but with right hand
Moving toward her lip, and there
Hovering, thoughtful, poised in air.
Her garment slips, the left hand holds
Her up-gather'd garment folds,
And veils a breast more fair to me
Than aught of Anadyomene !
Near the shrine, but half in sun,
I would have a river run.
Such as never overflows
With flush of rain, or molten snows.
Often shallow, pierced with light.
Often deep beyond the sight.
Here and there about the "lawn
Wholly mute, but ever drawn
Under either grassy brink
In many a silver loop and link
Variously from its far spring.
With long tracts of murmuring,
Partly river, partly brook.
Which in one delicious nook,
Where the doubtful shadows play.
Lightly lisping, breaks away ;
Thence, across the summit hurl'd,
Showers in a whisper o'er the world.
itM ,r^ %^ k ne ?n-<w^y '^^ A* ^«'»-.
W 7/*^ f>> 4r rot,
iff} fW ^Cdw^ t^/rjW'j
f]w4^ kJtXto h^jni.
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.C£.
INDEX TO THE FIRST LINES.
A CITY clerk, but gently born and bred, 152.
Aci first, this Earth, a stage so gloom'd with
woe, 812.
Ah God ! the petty fools of rhyme, 232.
Airy, fairy Lilian, 6. [229
All along the valley, stream that flashest white,
Along this glimmering gallery, 875.
Altho* I be the basest of mankind, 83.
And Willy, my eldest born, is gone, you say,
little Anne? 220.
A plague upon the people fell, 232.
Are those the far-famed Victor Hours, 877
Are you sleeping? have you forgotten? do not
sleep, my sister dear ! 540.
A spirit haunts the year's last hours, 12.
A still small voice spake unto me, 30.
A storm was coming, but the winds were still, 373.
As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood,
24. ^ [lay, 497.
At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville
At Francis Allen's on the Christmas Eve, 66.
Athelstan King, 523.
A thousand summers ere the time of Christ, 536,
At times our Britain cannot rest, 781.
A Voice spake out of the skies, 867.
Banner of England, not for a season, O banner
of Britain, hast thou, 509.
■ Beat, little heart — I give you this and this,' 807.
Beautiful city, the centre and crater, 8:1.
Below the thunders of the upper deep, 5.
Be thou a-gawin' to the long barn, 756
Bold Havelock marched, 877.
Break, break, break, 121. [best, 522.
Brooks, for they call'd you so that knew you
Bury the Great Duke, 212,
Caress'd or chidden by the slender hand, 25.
Chains, my good lord : in your raised brows I
read, 514.
Clear-headed friend, whose joyful scorn, 8.
Clearly the blue river chimes in its flowing, 3.
Come not, when I am dead, 116.
Come, when no graver cares employ, 229.
Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis
early morn, 95.
* Courage ! ' he said, and pointed toward the
land, 53.
Dagonet, the fool, whom Gawain in his moo<jii
435-
Dainty little maiden, whither would you wander?
231.
Dead, 559.
Dead Princess, living Power, if that, which lived,
508.
Dear Master in our classic town, 851.
Dear, near and true — no truer Time himself, 235.
Deep on the convent-roof the snows, 107.
Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters
awaay? 225.
Doubt no longer that the Highest is the wisest
and the best, 868.
Dust are our frames; and, gilded dust, our pride,
139-
Eh? good daay! good daay! thaw it bean't not
mooch of a daay, 860.
Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable, 388.
Eyes not down-dropt nor over-bright, but fed, 6.
Faint as a climate-changing bird that flies, 783.
Fair is her cottage in its place, 230.
Fair things are slow to fade away, 783.
Farewell, Macready, since to-night we part,
565.
Farewell, whose like on earth I shall not find,
813.
Fifty times the rose has flower'd and faded, 782.
First pledge our Queen this solemn night, 562.
Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea, 116.
Flower in the crannied wall, 235.
From noiseful arms, and acts of prowess done, 41a
Full knee-deep lies the winter snow, 60.
INDEX TO THE FIRST LINES.
Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song,
233. [490.
Golden- haired Ally whose name is one with mine,
Had the fierce ashes of some fiery peak, 853.
Half a league, half a league, 217.
Hallowed be Thy name — Halleluiah N522.
He clasps the crag with crooked hands, 116.
' He is fled — I wish him dead — , 797.
Helen's Tower, here I stand, 561.
Her arms across her breast she laid, 116.
Her, that yer Honour was spakin' to ? Whin,
yer Honour? last year, 543.
Here, by this brook, we parted; I to the East, 136.
Here far away, seen from the topmost cliff, 467.
Here, it is here, the close of the year, 232.
He rose at dawn and, fired with hope, 230,
He that only rules by terror, 112.
He thought to quell the stubborn hearts of oak, 25.
Hide me, Mother! my Fathers belong'd to the
church of old, 530.
How long, O God, shall men be ridden dowK, 25.
I BUILT my soul a lordly pleasure-house, 43.
If I were loved, as 1 desire to be, 26.
I had a vision when the night was late, 117,
I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood,
281.
I keep no more a lone distress, 876.
I knew an old wife lean and poor, 65.
Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls, 121.
I, loving Freedom for herself, 873.
I'm glad I walk'd. How fresh the meadows
look, 79.
In her ear he whispers gaily, 113.
I read, before my eyelids dropt their shade, 55.
I see the wealthy miller yet, 36.
I send you here a sort of allegory, 43.
Is it you, that preach'd in the chapel there look-
ing over the sand? 533.
It little profits that an idle king, 93.
It was the time when lilies blow, in.
I waited for the train at Coventry, loi.
I was the chief of the race — he had stricken my
father dead, 518.
I wish I were as in the years of old, 527.
King Arthur made new knights to fill the gap,
425-
King, that hast reign'd six hundred years, and
grown, 526.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere, 48.
Late, my grandson! half the morning have I
paced these sandy tracts, 548.
Leodogran, the King of Cameliard, 303.
Life and thought have gone away, 15.
Life of the Life within my blood, 8-3.
' JLight of the nations' ask'd his Chronicler, 855.
Like souls that balance joy and pain, 115.
Live thy Life, 812.
Lo ! there once more — this is the seventh night,
637-
Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm, 122.
Love thou thy land, with love far-brought, 63.
Low flowing breezes are roaming the broad val-
ley dimm'd in the gloaming, 3.
Lucilia, wedded to Lucretius, found, 157.
Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs after
many a vanished face, 788.
Many, many welcomes, 812.
Mellow moon of heaven, 790.
Midnight — in no midsummer tune, 561.
Milk for my sweet-arts, Bess! fur it mun be the
time about now, 545.
Mine be th2 strength of spirit, full and free, 24.
Minnie and Winnie, 231.
Move eastward, happy earth, and leave, 116.
My father left a park to me, 105.
My friend should meet me somewhere hereabout,
5"-
My good blade carves the casques of men, 107.
My heart is wasted with my woe, 17.
My hope and heart is with thee — thou wilt be, 24.
My life is full of weary days, 23.
My Lords, we heard you speak : you told us all,
216.
My Rosalind, my Rosalind, 21.
Mystery of mysteries, 20.
Naav, noa mander o* use to be callin' 'im Roa,
Roa, Roa, 785.
Nature, so far as in her lies, 62.
Nightingales warbled without, 230.
Not here! the white North has thy bones; and
thou, 526.
Not this way will you set«your name, 557.
Now first we stand and understand, 865.
Now is done thy long day's work, 16.
O blackbird! sing me something well, 60.
O bridesmaid, ere the happy knot was tied, 26.
CEnone sat within the cave from out, 851.
Of love that never found his earthly close, 90.
Of old sat Freedom on the heights, 63.
O God! my God! have mercy now, 3.
O Lady Flora, let me speak, 102.
Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange, 526.
Old poets foster'd under friendlier skies, 565.
O Love, Love, Love! O withering might! 38.
O love, what hours were thine and mine, 227.
O loyal to the royal in thyself, 466.
O me, my pleasant rambles by the lake, 81.
O mighty -mouth'd inventor of harmonies, 237.
On a midnight in midwinter when all but the
winds were dead, 865.
INDEX TO THE FIRST LINES.
1013
Once in a golden hour, 230.
Once more the gate behind me falls, 86.
Once more the Heavenly Power, 560.
On either side the river lie, 27.
O Patriot Statesman, be thou wise to know, 562.
O plump head-waiter at The Cock, 108.
O purblind race of miserable men, 347.
O sweet pale Margaret, 20.
O thou so fair in summers gone, 563.
O thou, that sendest out the man, 65.
Our birches yellowing and from each, 556.
Our doctor had call'd in another, I never had
seen him before, 507.
'Ouse-keeper sent tha my lass, fur New Squire "
coom'd last night, 504.
Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep, 521.
O well for him whose will is strong. 229.
O you chorus of indolent reviewers, 238.
O young Mariner, 806.
O you that were eyes and light to the King till
he past away, 526.
Pell.\m the King, who held and lost wiih Lot,
. 362.
Pine, beech and plane, oak, walnut, apricot,
730.
Queen Guinevere had fled the court, and sat,
447-
Ralph would fight in Edith's sight, 866.
Red of the Dawn ! 864.
Revered, beloved — O you that hold, i.
Roman Virgil, thou that singest, 558.
Rose, on this terrace fifty years ago, 812.
Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione
row! 561.
Sea-kings' daughter from over the sea, 218.
Sir, do you see this dagger. -^ nay, why do you
start aside? 859.
Sir Walter Vivian all a summer's day, 161.
Slow sail'd the weary mariners and saw, 14.
So all day long the noise of battle roU'd, 67.
So Hector spake; the Trojans roar'd applause,
238,
So saying, light-foot Iris pass'd away, 525.
So, my lord, the Lady Giovanna, who hath been
away, 746.
So then our good Archbishop Theobald, 676.
' Spring-flowers ' ! While you still delay to take,
803.
Stand back, keep a clear lane ! 566.
Still on the tower stood the vane, 117.
Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 241.
■ Summer is coming, summer is coming, 812.
Sunset and evening star, 869.
Sweet Emma Moreland of yonder town, 108.
That is his portrait painted'by himself, 876.
That story which the bold Sir Bedivere, 458.
The bee buzz'd up in the heat, 867.
The brave Geraint, a knight of Arthur's court, 335.
The bridal garland falls upon the bier, 868.
'The Bull, the Fleece are cramm'd and not a
room, 78.
The charge of the gallant three hundred, the
Heavy Brigade! 556.
The form, the form alone is eloquent ! 25.
The gleam of household suqshine ends, 867.
The groundflame of the crocus breaks the mould,
804.
The last tall son of Lot and Bellicent, 311.
The lights and shadows fly ! 239.
The Lord let the house of a brute to the soul of a
man, 810.
The North wind fall'n in the new-starred night,
873.
The plain was grassy, wild and bare, 15.
The poet in a golden clime was born, 13.
The rain had fallen, the Poet arose, 121.
There is a sound of thunder afar, 866.
There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier, 39.
There on the top of the down, 851.
These lame hexameters the strong-wing'd music
of Homer! 237.
These roses for my Lady Marian, 814.
These to His Memory — since he held them dear,
302. [219.
The Son of him with whom we strove for power.
The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills
and the plains, 234.
The voice and the Peak, 234.
The winds, as at their hour of birth, 6.
The wind, that beats the mountain, blows, 61.
The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, 94.
They have left the doors ajar; and by their clash,
499.
They rose to where their sovran eagle sails, 523.
They say some foreign powers have laid their
heads together, 877.
They wrought a work which Time reveres, 875.
This morning is the morning of the day, 71.
This thing, that thing is the rage, 867.
Those that of late had fleeted far and fast, 522.
Thou art not steep'd in golden languors, 8.
Thou may'st remember what I said, 873.
Tho' Sin too oft, when smitten by Thy rod, 867.
Thou third great Canning, stand among our best,
562.
Thou who stealest fire, 11.
Thy dark eyes open'd not, 22.
Thy prayer was 'Light — more Light — waile
Time shall last!* 562.
Thy tuwhits are luU'd, I wot, 9.
Two children in two neighbour villages, 18.
Two Suns of Love make day of human life, 563.
IOI4
INDEX TO THE FIRST LINES.
Ulysses, much-experienced man, 802.
Uplift a thousand voices full and sweet, 217.
Vex not thou the poet's mind, 14.
Victor in Drama, Victor in Romance, 523.
Waait till our Sally cooms in, fur thou mun a'
sights to tell, 494.
Wailing, wailing, wailing, the wind over land
and sea, 492.
* Wait a little,' you /say, 'you are sure it'll all
come right,' 490.
Wan Sculptor, weepest thou to take the cast, 26.
Warrior of God, man's friend and tyrant's foe, 562.
Warrior of God, whose strong right arm debased,
24-
We left behind the painted buoy, 114.
Welcome, welcome, with one voice ! 564.
■^Vell, you shall have that song which Leonard
w.rote, 91.
We move, the wheel must always move, 811.
We were two daughters of one race, 43.
What am I doing, you say to me, ' wasting the
sweet summer hours'? 862.
What be those crown'd forms high over the sacred
fountain? 810.
What sight so lured him thro' the fields he knew,
811.
What time the mighty moon was gathering light,
17.
Wheer asta bean saw long and mea Hggin' 'ere
aloan? 223.
When cats run home and light is come, 9.
When from the terrors of Nature a people have
fashion'd and worship a Spirit of Evil, 863.
When the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free, 9.
When the dumb Hour, clothed in black, 868.
When will the stream be aweary of flowing, 2.
Where Cl.iribel low-lieth, 2.
Where is one that, born of woman, altogether can
escape, 865.
While about the shore of Mona those Neronian
legionaries, 235.
While man and woman still are incomplete, 812.
* Whither, O whither, love, shall we go,' 231.
Who would be, 18.
Who would be, 19.
Why wail you, pretty plover? and what is it that
you fear? 798.
Will my tiny spark of being wholly vanish in
your deeps and heights? 868.
With a half-glance upon the sky, 13.
With blackest moss the flower-plots, 7.
With farmer Allan at the farm abode, 75.
With one black shadow at its feet, 29.
You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease, 63.
You make our faults'too gross, and thence main-
tain, 812.
You might have won the Poet's name, 120.
You must wake and call me early, call me early,
mother dear, 49.
Young is the grief I entertain, 877.
You, you, zy you shall fail to understand, 564.
INDEX TO ' IN MEMORIAM ' (P. 241).
Again at Christmas did we weave, Ixxviii.
A happy lover who has come, viii.
And all is well, tho' faith and form, cxxvii.
And was the day of my delight, xxiv.
As sometimes in a dead man's face, Ixxiv.
Be near me when my light is low, 1.
By night we^linger'd on the lawn, xcv.
Calm is the mom without a sound, xi;
Contemplate all this work of Time, cxviii.
Could I have said while he was here, Ixxxi.
Could we forget the widow'd hour, xl.
Dark house, by which once more I stand, vii.
Dear friend, far ofif, my lost desire, cxxix.
Dip down upon the northern shore, Ixxxiii.
Doors, where my heart was used to beat, cxix.
Dost thou look back on what hath been, Ixiv.
Do we indeed desire the dead, li.
Fair ship, that from the Italian shore, ix.
From art, from nature, from the schools, xlix.
Heart-affluence in discursive talk, cix.
He past ; a soul of nobler tone, Ix.
Her eyes are homes of silent prayer, xxxii.
He tasted love with half his mind, xc.
High wisdom holds my wisdom less, cxii.
How fares it with the happy dead ? xliv.
How many a father have I seen, liii.
How pure at heart and sound in head, xciv.
I cannot love thee as I ought. Hi.
I cannot see the features right, Ixx.
I climb the hill : from end to end, c.
I dream'd there would be Spring no more, Ixix.
I envy not in any moods, xxvii.
If any vague desire should rise, Ixxx.
If any vision should reveal, xcii.
If, in thy second state sublime, Ixi.
If one should bring me this report, xiv.
If Sleep and Death be truly one, xliii.
If these brief lays, of Sorrow bom, xlviii.
I hear the noise about thy keel, x.
I held it truth, with him who sings, i.
I know that this was Life — the track, xxv.
I leave thy praises unexpress'd, Ixxv.
In those sad words I took farewell, Iviii.
I past beside the reverend walls, Ixxxvii.
I shall not see thee. Dare I say, xciii. ^
Is it, then, regret for buried time, cxvi.
I sing to him that rests below, xxi.
I sometimes hold it half a sin, v.
It is the day when he was bom, evil.
I trust I have not wasted breath, cxx.
I vex my heart with fancies dim, xlii.
I wage not any feud with Death, Ixxxii.
I will not shut me from my kind, cviii.
Lo, as a dove when up she springs, vii.
Love is and was my Lord and King, cxxvi.
'More than my brothers are to me,' Ixxix.
My love has talk'd with rocks and trees, xcvii.
My own dim life shoujd teach me this, xxxiv.
Now fades the last long streak of snow, cxv.
Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut, xxiii.
O DAYS and hours, your work is this, cxvii.
Oh, wast thou with me, dearest, then, cxxii.
Oh yet we trust that somehow good, liv.
Old warder of these buried bones, xxxix.
Old Yew, which graspest at the stones, ii.
O living will that shalt endure, cxxxi.
One writes, that 'Other friends remain,' vi.
On that last night before we went, ciii.
O Sorrow, cruel fellowship, iii.
O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me, lix.
O thou that after toil and storm, xxxiii.
Peace ; come away : the song of woe, Ivii.
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, cvi.
Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again, Ixxii.
i Risest thou thus, dim da.wn, again, xcix.
lois
ioi6
INDEX TO 'IN MEMORIAM.
Sad Hesper o'er the buried sun, cxxi.
Sleep, kinsman thou to death and trance, !xxi.
' So careful of the type ? ' but no, Ivi.
So many worlds, so much to do, Ixxiii.
Still onward winds the dreary way, xxvi.
Sweet after showers, ambrosial air, Ixxxvi.
Sweet soul, do with me as thou wilt, Ixv.
Take wings of fancy, and ascend, Ixxvi.
Tears of the widower, when he sees, xiii.
That each, who seems a separate whole, xlvii.
That which we dare invoke to bless, cxxiv.
The baby n^w to earth and sky, xlv.
The churl in spirit, up or down, cxi.
The Danube to the Severn gave, xix.
The lesser griefs that may be said, xx.
The love that rose on stronger wings, cxxviii.
The path by which we twain did go, xxii.
There rolls the deep where grew the tree, cxxiii.
The time draws near the birth of Christ, xxviii.
The time draws near the birth of Christ, civ.
The wish, that of the living whole, Iv.
This truth came borne with bier and pall, Ixxxv.
Thou comest, much wept for: such a breeze,
xvii.
Tho' if an eye that's downward cast, Ixii.
Tho' truths in manhood darkly join, xxxvi.
Thy converse drew us with delight, ex.
Thy spirit ere our fatal loss, xli.
Thy voice is on the rolling air, cxxx.
'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise, cxiii.
'Tis well; 'tis something; we may stand, xviii.
To-night the winds begin to rise, xv.
To-night ungather'd let us leave, cv.
To Sleep I give my powers away, iv.
Unwatch'd, the garden bough shall sway, ci.
Urania speaks with darken'd brow, xxxvii.
We leave the well-beloved place, cii.
We ranging down this lower track, xlvi.
Whatever I have said or sung, cxxv.
What hope is here for modern rhyme, Ixxvii.
What words are these have fall'n from me? xvi.
When I contemplate all alone, Ixxxiv.
When in the down I sink my head, Ixviii.
When Lazarus left his charnel-cave, xxxi.
When on my bed the moonlight falls, Ixvii.
When rosy plumelets tuft the larch, xci.
Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail,
cxiv.
Wild birds, whose warble, liquid sweet, Ixxxviii.
Witch-elms that counterchange the floor, Ixxxix.
With such compelling cause to grieve, xxix.
With trembling fingers did we weave, xxx.
With weary steps I loiter on, xxxviii.
Yet if some voice that man could trust, xxxv.
Yet ^ity for a horse o'er-driven, Ixiii.
You leave us : you will see the Rhine, xcviii.
You say, but with no touch of scorn, xc\'i.
You thought my heart too far diseased, Ixvi,
INDEX TO SONGS.
A ROSE, but one, none other rose had I, 431.
Artemis, Artemis, hear us, O Mother, 739.
Ask me no more : the moon may draw the sea,
205.
As thro' the land at eve we went, 169.
Ay, ay, O ay — the winds that bend the brier,
446.
Babble in bower, 706.
Beat upon mine, little heart ! beat, beat ! 809.
Blow trumpet, for the world is white with May,
310.
By all the deer that spring, 836.
Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain
height, 208.
Dead mountain flowers, 751.
Free love — free field — we love but while we
may, 439-
Gee OOP ! whoa ! Gee oop,
! 767.
H.\PLESS doom of woman happy in betrothing !
628.
His friends would praise him, I believed 'em, 584.
Home they brought her warrior dead, 199.
I coiiE from haunts of coot and hem, 136.
In Love, if Love be Love, if Love be ours, 379.
Is it the wind of the dawn that I hear in the pine
overhead? 697.
It is the miller's daughter, 38.
Late, late, so late ! and dark the night and chill !
450.
Long live Richard, 817.
Love flew in at the window, 815.
Love that hath us in the net, 38.
Mellow moon of heaven, 790.
Moon on the field and the foam, 732.
Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white,
20S.
Now the King is home again, 848.
O DrvTNER Air, 499.
O di\aner light, 499.
O happy lark, that warblest high, 774.
O joy for the promise of May, of May, 763.
O man, forgive thy mortal foe, 772.
O mother Ida, many-fountain 'd Ida, 40.
Once again thou flamest heavenward, 857.
O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South, 183.
Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n, the seed, 199.
Over ! the sweet summer closes, 679.
Rainbow, stay, 708.
Shame upon you, Robin, 605.
Sleep, Ellen Aubrey, sleep, and dream of me, 79.
Sweet and low, 176. '
Sweet is true love the' given in vain, in vain,
404.
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
182.
The bee buzz'd up in the heat, 837.
There is no land like England, 822.
The splendour falls on castle walls, 181.
The town lay stiU in the low sun-light, 756.
The warrior Earl of Allendale, 814.
Thy voice is heard thro' rolling drums, igo.
To sleep ! to sleep ! The long bright day is
done, 821.
Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel and lower the
proud, 340.
Two young lovers in winter weather, 658.
Up with you, out of the forest, 832.
We sleep and wake and sleep, but all things
move, 92.
What did ye do, and what did ye saay, 766.
What does little birdie say, 157.
IO17
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