Part 2

All is silent in the study; But the door-hinge creaks anon, And a woman enters softly Seeking something that seems hidden-- One unnaturally wan.

What she seeks is not in phials Nor in jars, but in a book; And she mutters as she searches Through the book-shelves with a kind of Brooding hurry in her look;

And she finds the book, and takes it To the window for more light; And she reads a passage slowly With constrained and hissing breathing And dark brow contracted tight.

“_Most of them_,” it says, “_are corpses That have lain beneath the moon, And that quit their graves at midnight, Prowling round to prey on sleepers; But the daybreak scares them soon_.

“_But the worst, called soulless bodies, Plague the world but now and then; They have died in some great sickness; But reviving in the moonbeams Rise once more and mix with men_.

“_And they act and feel like others, Never guessing they be dead, Common food of men they love not; But at night, impelled by hunger, In their sleep they quit their bed_;

“_And they fasten on some sleeper, Feeding on his living blood; Who, when life has left his body, Must in turn arise, and, prowling, Seek the like accursed food_.”

And the book slips from her fingers And she casts her down to pray; But convulsions seize and twist her, And delirious ramblings mingle With the prayers she tries to say.

In her mouth there is a saltness, On her lips there is a stain; In her soul there is a horror; In her vitals there is something More like raging thirst than pain;

And she cries, “O God, I knew it: Have I not, at dead of night, Waking up, looked round and found me On the ledge of roofs and windows In my shift, and shrunk with fright?

“Have I not, O God of mercy, Passed by shambles in the street, And stopped short in monstrous craving For the crimson blood that trickled In the gutter at my feet?

“Did I not, at last Communion, Cough the Holy Wafer out? Blood I suck, but Christ’s blood chokes me. O my God, my God, vouchsafe me Some strong light in this great doubt!”

And she sinketh crushed and prostrate In the twilight on the floor, While the darkness grows around her, And her quick and laboured breathing Grows convulsive more and more.

IV.

Sister Mary, all is quiet In thy wards, and midnight nears: Seek the scanty rest thou needest; Seek the scanty rest thou grudgest, All is hushed and no one fears.

But, though midnight, Sister Mary Thinks it yet not time to go; And the night-lamps shining dimly Show her vaguely in the shadow Moving softly to and fro.

What is it that she is doing, Flitting round one sleeper’s bed; Is she sprinkling something round it, Something white as wheaten flour, And on which she will not tread?

And at last the work is over, And she goeth to her rest; And she sleeps at once, exhausted By long labour, and, it may be, By strong struggles in her breast.

Nothing breaks upon the stillness Of the night, except, afar, Some faint shouts of ending revel Or of brawling, in the quarters Where the Spanish soldiers are.

Time wades slowly through the darkness Till at last it reaches day, And the city’s many steeples Buried in the starless heaven Grow distinct in sunless grey.

And the light wakes Sister Mary, And she dresses in strange haste, Giving God no prayer, and leaving On her bed the beads and crosses That should dangle from her waist.

And with unheard steps she hurries Through the ward where all sleep on To the bed in which is lying He who day by day is growing More inexorably wan.

All around the bed is sprinkled Something white, like thin fresh snow, Where a naked foot has printed In the night a many footprints, Sharp and clear from heel to toe:

Sister Mary, Sister Mary, Dost thou know thy own small foot? Would it fit those marks which make thee Turn more pale than thy own paleness If upon them it were put?

And the dying youth smiles faintly Pleasure’s last accorded smile; And he murmurs as he hears her, “Sister Mary, I am better; Let me hold thy hand awhile:

“Sister Mary, I would tell thee Fain one thing before I die; For a dying man may utter What another must keep hidden In the fastness of a sigh.

“Sister Mary, I have loved thee-- Is it sin to tell thee this? And I dreamt--O God, be lenient If ’tis sin--that thou didst give me On the throat a long, long kiss.”

THE BRIDE OF PORPHYRION.

DIOCLEA.

Pass on, pass on, and seek thy lair, lone man, If neighbouring lair thou hast. Night falls; and God For whom thou once didst snap all human ties Requires thy evening prayer.

PORPHYRION.

Oh, if I stop Upon my path and bandy words with woman-- I who for years have shunned man, woman, child, But woman most--I would not have thee think In error that thy old familiar voice, Which seems to come from out the past, has called Emotion back to life, or that I care To take advantage of the freak of chance Which brings us face to face and makes us stand Each like a spectre in the other’s eyes. But I suspect thee of a rash design Abhorrent to the Christian; and I ask, Woman, once more, what brings thee here at dusk-- Here by the deep lone Nile, when rise the mists Heavy with death, when prowl devouring beasts, And when God’s lonely dweller in the waste Alone has nought to fear?

DIOCLEA.

What brings me here? The Nile flower is closing with the day; The Nile bird hastens to her bulrush nest; All Nature that is not of night and evil Is seeking rest; and why should not I too, If I am weary, find repose at dusk Where rolls the deep dark stream?

PORPHYRION.

Because the Lord, Through my unworthy voice, has bid thee quit This perilous brink, and bear such heavy load As He, whom none shall judge, may choose to heap Upon thy head.

DIOCLEA.

Resume thy path, lone man-- Resume thy path in peace. Oh, thou art rash To linger out this meeting of dead souls! Art thou not that Porphyrion who escaped Into the waste to shun the sight of woman, However pure and spotless she might be? Then leave me to myself; go seek thy lair, And leave me to the darkness and the night; Else will I tell thee in one monstrous word What she now is who once was Dioclea, And make thy desert-nurtured chastity Shrink back in fear as from a gust from hell!

PORPHYRION.

Oh, I have wrestled with the Fiend too long And placed my heel too oft upon his neck To fear contamination from thy breath! I care not what thou wast, nor what thou art, Now that my soul is safe and that long years Of ruthless castigation of the flesh Have put me out of reach of woman’s snare; But, as a Christian servant of the Lord, I may not let thee do the thing thou wouldst, And which God hates. Thy soul is on the brink Of the abyss; and God now bids me stretch My hand to save it.

DIOCLEA.

Oh, not thine, not thine! The wanton hand that broke the precious vessel Shall not attempt to mend it.

PORPHYRION.

What I did Upon that day, I did at God’s command.

DIOCLEA.

Upon my bridal morn my father’s house Was full of song; my heart was full of sun; Yea, and of earnest love and brave intent: Less snowy was the linen I had woven With my own hands for thee; less fresh the wreaths The bridesmaids still were twining; and less pure The gold of bridal gifts which guest-friends brought, Than was the heart that waited to be thine.

PORPHYRION.

Upon thy bridal morn my heart was filled With doubt and fear. My hounded spirit groped Like one who fears pursuers in the dark And knows no issue. Yea, within my breast, Like captive eagles in a cage too narrow, The love of God, the love of thee, did fight. I cursed the perilous lustre of thy eyes; I cursed thy smile and laugh; and cursed myself That loathed them not. The sounds of mirth and song That filled the house fell grating on my ear; The nuptial cakes smacked bitter in my mouth, Ay, worse than gall; the dewy bridal wreaths Stank in my nostrils, while an inner voice Kept thundering in my soul: “Away, away! The howling waste awaits thee. Not for thee Are care and kiss of woman; not for thee Are hearth and home, and kith and kin and friend; But scourge and shirt of hair!”

DIOCLEA.

And like a thief, After the priest had blessed us and before The feast was over, thou didst skulk away, And all at once convert the sound of song Into the hum of pity and derision. I sat alone upon my empty bed, Wrapped in the double gloom of night and woe. The pillars of my faith in human good Had given way; the roof had fallen in Upon my life. Oh how I cursed the night For dragging out its black and silent creep! And when dawn came, oh how I cursed the dawn For its intrusive stare! And yet that night Was but the first of many equal nights; That dawn was but the first of many dawns In ushering in a loathed and lonely day. I held aloof from every happier woman, Suspiciously and silently to brood; Grudging to one her husband’s look of love, And to the next the infant at her breast; Grudging to all their house, their home, their hearth, Their dignity, their duties, and their cares: And shunning, I was shunned, and, as it were, Marked out for future shame.

PORPHYRION.

If like a thief I stole away unseen, oh it was not To spend that night in any rival’s arms! Rock, hard and wind-swept, was my marriage bed; The wilderness my bride; the starry sky My roof; the distant, interrupted howl Of beasts of prey my nuptial lullaby. Before me lay the waste, strewn here and there With ribs of men and camels, or the wreck Of perished cities; yea, and thirst and pain In vaguely measured sum. But in my soul The voice of thunder cried: “Push on, push on Into the waste, Porphyrion! thou art still Too near to human haunts, too far from God!” And I pushed on; and in an empty tomb In a deserted city of the dead I made my lair, alone with stones and God; Living off locusts and such scanty herbs As grew in clefts of rock and empty wells. Oh what a silence, what a loneliness! The temple columns and the huge carved stones Cast long black shadows on the sun-baked sand In endless rows; and through the livelong day No moving shadow crossed them save my own, As, like a leper whom his sores have doomed To lead the lonely life, I prowled for food. Oh, it was hard! For knowing that the Fiend Would come ere long to scare and tempt me back To human haunts, I sought with prayer, and scourge, And thirst, and hunger, and restricted sleep To arm myself against him and his strength; And come he did. He prowled at first at night, Shaped as a roaring lion, round and round My lonely cell; but his re-echoing roar Deterred me not, nor stopped a single prayer. And then he came with soft insidious step During my sleep, and strove to tempt the flesh In woman’s guise--yea, in thy very shape-- And sought to lure me to caress and kiss, Taking thy face, thy eyes, thy very voice In all their beauty and their blandishment; But I defied him, and he howling fled, And changed his plan. He made the solid ground Lurch ever and anon beneath my feet; He made me shiver in the blazing sun With mortal cold; and sometimes, in the dusk He made the huge stone heads of sphinxes nod And gibber as I passed them. Oh, for years I wrestled with him in the awful waste; But I o’ercame his strength.

DIOCLEA.

And dost thou think That I, in that worse waste, which was not strewn Like thine with stones, but with the wreck of hopes And wreck of love, was not sought out by fiends As well as thou? Ay, ay, they came, the fiends; They whispered in my ear that I was young, And that my youth was passing unenjoyed; They whispered in my ear that I was fair-- Fairer than any other far or near, And that the beauty that a fool had spurned Would wane before its time. They said: “Look up! Thou mournest Love whom thou believest dead, And Love, hard by, is waiting for one word, One motion of encouragement, one glance. Give but the signal, and the lonely one Whom maid and matron scorn, and who now holds Suspiciously aloof from life and joy, Will be a very Empress new-enthroned, And waste her life no more.” But oh, I clung To the dull honour of my broken life; I struggled with the Tempter long and hard; I said unto myself that after all Thou mightst at last return to me; and strove With all my strength to keep me pure for thee. But years went by and still thou didst not come, And round and round my heart the Tempter prowled, Nearer and ever nearer with new arts, New wiles, new snares, new whispers, day by day, And proved at last the stronger of the two. I fled my father’s house for ever more; I loved; was loved; I saw luxurious cities Where pleasure triumphed--Alexandria, Antioch and Athens, ay, and even Rome-- Courted where’er I went; until the day When he proved false, and when once more I sat Upon my lonely bed and prayed for dawn. And yet I loved again; yea, twice and thrice. Down, down the winding stair of love I went, Until the slippery and precipitous steps Became so dark and noisome all at once That I threw up my arms and shrieked in fear; But all my strength was gone, and heaven’s faint light Too far above my head. Oh, since we two Last saw each other’s eyes, not thou alone Hast felt the scourge alight upon thy back, Not thou alone hast known the howling waste; For I have felt that nine times knotted scourge Which makes the soul and not the body writhe. Descending on me fiercely; and have found In men’s embrace a loneliness more dread, A desert more terrific and more bare Than any which thy bruised unsandalled foot Has ever trodden yet.

PORPHYRION.

The worse for thee. I freed thee from the weight of human ties; I pointed out the path that leads to heaven Across life’s wreck; and if, instead of God, Thou chosest Satan, what is that to me? Thou mightst have built a mansion for thy soul Upon the ruins of an earthly home; Thou mightst like me have wrestled with the Fiend, And felt the pride of bruising with thy heel The Tempter’s head; thou mightst like me have felt The fierce voluptuous pleasure of the scourge; Nay, even, like myself thou mightst, with time, Have sought to snatch from Heaven’s hand the crown, The glorious crown of martyrdom: for if Upon this day thou meetest me so near The haunts of men, it is because I wait For some fresh outburst of the Pagan’s wrath Against our sect, to court the lingering death. But lo, we waste our words; for I have warned And summoned thee to leave the perilous brink Of this dark circling water; and if thou Still cleavest to thy heathenish design Of self-destruction, not upon my soul Shall fall the wrath of Heaven for the deed. Once more I bid thee, woman, leave the brink; For see, the night has come; and, as thou say’st, God needs my evening prayer.

DIOCLEA.

Ay, ay, the night Has wrapped us round: I scarce can see the flowers That glimmered on the current; though I hear The sweet faint rustling of the stream-bent reeds. Pass on thy way, lone man--pass on in peace; There is no link between us, and no love. Go, find thy rest, as I at last find mine; And leave me here, beside the deep lone Nile, Where woe will sink, and haply leave no trace.

HUNTING THE KING.

1792.

And the two in the twilight spurred fiercely again, While behind them went trooping the trees, And the darkening rutty cross-roads of Champagne, With their patches of wood and their patches of grain, Grew more solemn and lone by degrees.

Like the hurrying ghosts of two riders they rode,-- For the few whom they met, indistinct; And the lights that sprang up few and far away showed Where, to right or to left, lay a human abode; And more stars overhead came and winked.

Through the maze of cross-roads they went ever more fast, As if he who led on never doubted; Till the other by dint of hard spurring at last Brought his horse alongside, and between them there passed Hurried words that were broken and shouted.

“Slacken pace! slacken pace!” “Spur him on without stay! What’s a horse to the saving of France?” “Art thou sure of the place where they change the relay?” “At Varennes, nigh on twelve. Trust to me for the way! France is saved if we get in advance!”

And the postmaster Drouet once more shot ahead, Closely followed by Guillaume his friend; Never seeming to waver or doubt as he led, Or to see less distinct the invisible thread Of short-cut on short-cut without end.

But the roads and the fields and the low hedges grew Every minute more lonely and dark, While his horse, nearly merged in the darkness, now drew From the flint of the road with its thundering shoe Every minute more brilliant a spark.

But he thought in his heart: “If the moon does not rise When we get to the woods, I shall doubt; And he’ll get to the army and German allies, And the land, unprepared, will be caught by surprise, And the great revolution stamped out.”

But a glow, faint at first, and then brighter, was spread In the sky, and the moon showed her face, And the plain and the hills were lit up far and wide; And a galloping shadow appeared at his side, And took part all at once in the race.

Oh the moon that plays tricks with the shadows she throws Might have given that shadow the shape Of the Rider who rides us all down, friends and foes, And was now ere their time coming down upon those Who had trusted to God for escape.

Hurry on, ye postillions, so royally paid, That suspect not a King and a Queen! Though ye never have heard in the course of your trade Of a thing that the doctors of Paris have made, Of a thing that they call Guillotine!

Hurry on to the chopper-shaped square of Varennes Where your fellow-postillions await! Hurry on! hurry on, ye dull whip-cracking men! For each stride that ye take, there is one who takes ten, And who gallops like Death and like Fate!

He caught sight of a face in the dark carriage-hood As ye rolled from his door and were gone, And he looked with a closeness that boded no good At the crumpled bank-note where that face graven stood-- Hurry on! hurry on! hurry on!

There were clouds near the moon, and they girt her about As if trying to screen and to save, And the darkness one moment filled Drouet with doubt; But she baffled them all and shone brilliantly out To abet with the light that she gave.

And the stems of the corn flashed metallic and bright And like bayonets distantly blue, And the breeze-rippled patches of grain in the light Looked like distant battalions restrained from the fight That a thrill of impatience runs through.

But the patches of grain grew more scanty anon, And the road grew more hard to discern; And they entered the lonely dark woods of Argonne Where the moon through the branches could ill help them on, And they trampled on brushwood and fern.

As they galloped each oak with its black knotty arm Seemed to grab at the two like a claw; While the air seemed all full of destruction and harm, And the one who rode second felt vaguely alarm At each shadow and shape that he saw.

But the other dashed on, as with hounds on the scent In his thundering, thundering speed; Giving neither a thought to his horse nearly spent Nor a look to his comrade, but solely intent On a prey that was royal indeed.

Did no angel of life, as he spurred yet more fast, Cry, “O God, for a slip or a stumble That shall save from the block the heads sinking at last Into sleep, now that fear of pursuers is past, And the heads of a many more humble!

“O Thou God for a doubt that shall bring to a stop, For a stone in the shoe to retard, Or more heads in the basket of sawdust will drop Than the bunches of grapes that the vintagers lop On a day that their labour is hard; “And the fields will be lashed not by tempests of rain, But by tempests of iron and lead; And manured year by year with fresh blood all in vain, And each summer will bring not a harvest of grain, But a harvest of cripples and dead;

“And the nations in carnage will ceaselessly strive With a roar that disperses the clouds; Where the trains of artillery furiously drive And the gun-wheels make ruts through the dead and the live, And the balls make long lanes through the crowd.

“Let his horse break a vein or his saddle a girth, Trip him up on the rough, hardened mud! For each drop from the rowel that falls to the earth If he reaches Varennes, O Thou God, will give birth To an ocean of innocent blood!”

Or did spirits invisible fly by his side And in whispers excite him and goad And exulting foretell him the end of his ride, As his spur-mangled horse with his long fatal stride One by one killed the miles of the road.

Did they cry: “Lash him on, as in lightness of heart They have ridden the people to death; Lash him on, as the Saviour of France that thou art; Lash him on, till the blood from his nostrils shall start; Lash him on! never think of his breath!”

Did they cry: “Lash him on without mercy or stay!” As his arm, numb with lashing, desisted; “Lash him on, as the quarterers lashed on the day When their horses ’mid clapping of hands tugged away, And the live limbs of Damiens resisted!

“Lash him on, for the freedom of nations depends On the flag which at last is unfurled! Lash him on, lash him on, till his very life ends! Lash him on, lash him on, for the breath that he spends Is for Freedom, and France, and the World!

“So shall Kellermann’s steed at Marengo be spurred When the earth by his squadrons is shaken, And the thunder of man o’er God’s thunder is heard, And there runs from the Alps to the Tiber one word, And the lands from their torpor awaken!

“So the couriers shall spur and the miles disappear From the Oder, the Elbe, and the Po, When the victories follow each other so near That the bearers of tidings are filled with a fear Lest another their tidings outdo!

“Lash him on, lash him on! and the three-coloured flag That has sprung from the black Paris gutter Shall be carried by plain and by valley and crag And, all riddled by bullets, a mere tattered rag, From Alhambra to Kremlin shall flutter!”