Part 3

And he lashed, and he left his companion behind And sped furiously on all alone, With the sinister shadow the moon had designed Flitting on just in front of him, vaguely defined, At a pace that was wild as his own.

And as midnight was nearing, at last there appeared The faint lights of Varennes far ahead, And then only it was, as he finally cleared The last miles of the road, that he suddenly feared That his horse might fall suddenly dead.

But his horse did not drop; and with thundering feet He dashed on to the inn of the Post; While he shouted to all that his eye chanced to meet, “Sound the tocsin! the tocsin! all up the long street! Bar the Bridge! bar the Bridge! or all’s lost!”

And the patriots crouched in the shade of the old Narrow archway, all holding their breath; Till a carriage and four was heard coming, and rolled Slowly, heavily, in; while the tocsin still tolled Like a knell that anticipates death.

ABRAHAM CAREW.

Ye righteous Judges of this Christian state, Ye bid me speak; ye bid me show good cause Why I, whose hand is red with Christian blood, Yea, even with the blood of my own child, Of my own Edith, should not be condemned To die upon the scaffold, nor be locked For life within a mad-house: and I speak. I fear not death; for now that she is dead, Now that dull silence hath replaced her voice, Life hath but little charm; and were it not That to consent to ignominious death For having acted by command of God Would be unfit, and might call down His wrath Upon the land, I think I scarce should take The pains to plead; but strength hath narrow bounds, And I confess intolerable fear Lest ye condemn me to complete my years Among the mad. O Thou Almighty God Who for Thy purposes inscrutable Hast pushed me on and nerved my quaking arm To slay my child, preserve from such dread fate One who has offered up what most he loved Here upon earth, and give unto my tongue Such eloquence as may convince these men That I am sane!

I am a self-made man Grown rich by building engines for the rail, A man of little learning; one whose youth Was spent in striking sparks from reddened iron Amid the roar and clanging of a forge; Knowing no books except the Book of books, Whose sacred pages when my work was done I turned with grimy hands, therein to learn The will and orders of a jealous God, A God of wrath, a God whose unseen hand Falls heavily and chasteningly on all, And most on them He loveth. Little time Did I bestow on pleasure and those sports, Unseemly for the most part, which divert The spirit from obedience, and prevent The growth of labour’s fruit; and God allowed That I should prosper in my worldly wealth. And that the name of Abraham Carew Should hold high credit in the market-place, And that my fellow-townsmen one and all Should put their faith in my integrity, Electing me an Elder of the Church And civil Magistrate. But, as I say, The Lord doth love to chasten; and He laid, As years went by and multiplied my store, Great tribulations on me. One by one I saw the godly household which had grown Around me, fall as fell the summer flowers Around an aged tree when winter nears, And leave him in his listless loneliness. One child alone, one twining clinging flower-- Edith, my latest born--remained unnipped, And in my rash presumption I believed That God would spare her; for upon her cheek The hectic spot appeared not which had marked Her mother and her brethren; and I saw With sinful joy how she increased in strength As grew her beauty and her loveliness-- Yea, yea, a sinful joy which was to rouse The jealousy of God. But if my tongue Is to convince you of the thing I tell And justify His ways, oh let me speak-- Oh let me tell you how I loved my child! I loved her as an old man loves the sun Which warms his limbs and keeps the palsy off; I loved her as the plundered miser loves The small secreted heap that yet remains; I loved her as the shipwrecked drowning wretch Loves the frail plank which each approaching wave May tear from his embrace.

No vain gold chain, No gaudy ribbon decked her nut-brown hair; But in such sober raiment as befits The virgin-mistress of a godly house She went the round of her domestic duties, In need of no adornment to enhance The chaste and holy beauty which she wore Unconscious to herself, and lived her life Of cheerfulness and thrift, beloved by all; Reading at morn and eve the Bible page To our assembled servants, in a clear And reverent voice; devoting patient hours To teaching little children; and by help Of her own needle, plied while others slept, Providing winter clothing for the poor Before the earliest chill of autumn came. A grave and gracious girl, whose smile of love Was as a light for my declining years; Who prized the walks which we were wont to take Together, through the lanes and ripening corn, Above all routs and shows. Too great, too great To please a jealous God, had grown the love For Edith in my bosom; and at times I felt a cruel tightening of the heart, And a prophetic something seem to say Unto my spirit: “Abraham, beware! The Lord will claim His rights, and ask again For that which He hath given unto thee. Thy love is given to an earthly thing; A common, natural instinct rules thy life, And not the love of God.” But on her cheek The ruddiness of health diminished not, And I loved on.

There came a Sabbath day, On which it chanced that at the Meeting House The Scripture page was read in which it said How he whose name I bear, in days of yore Obeyed the dire injunction of the Lord, And offered up his Isaac. By my side Edith was sitting listening to the words With fixed attention, as was e’er her wont. The light athwart the high and narrow window Streamed down upon her, lighting up her hair With golding streakings, just as rays of sun Light up the seaweed in a tide-left pool, And played upon her features--ne’er before Had she appeared so lovely. As my eyes Were resting thus upon her sitting there, A fear flashed through my spirit, and I thought: “What if the Lord were to demand her life, And bid thee offer up thy only child As Abraham did Isaac?” and I felt A strange and frightful struggle stir my soul-- Yea, stir my nature to its inmost depths. I listened little to the words of prayer; And on our homeward way, when Edith asked What made my brow so suddenly o’ercast, I answered not.

Ye wise and upright men Who sit to-day deciding on my fate, Ye wonder at the measure of my speech Ye miss what ye expected ye would find, A madman’s incoherence, or the glare And desperate wild defence of guilt at bay? Confess, confess, I speak not like the mad. Oh, I have drilled and disciplined my tongue In these long months of prison; I From morn to eve within my narrow cell Taming my own excitement, so that if, When came the day of trial, God should make No outward revelation of the truth To save His servant, I might yet convince My judges and the world. He hath not deigned To make the attestation at my prayer. No thunder from the blue unclouded sky, No quaking of the earth hath helped my cause, And God hath left me only earthly means To prove to men that what they call a crime I did by His command.

It came, it came, That dread command! I had not long to wait; I seemed to feel it coming; day and night The frightful expectation filled my soul; And by a natural instinct, thrice accurst, The more I dreaded that an angry God, Roused by the sinful greatness of my love, Would claim her life, the more my love increased. It came, it came, the awful summons came! It was the dead of night: I lay awake; And in the soundless darkness, all at once, While on my flesh the hair from fear stood up, I heard the awful voice: it cried, “Arise, Take up thy knife, and sacrifice thy child Whom I bestowed; for I the Lord thy God, I am a jealous God, and bid thee strike.”

Then came three days of human agony; The flesh contending with the will of God, And writhing upward like a trodden snake Beneath religion’s heel: for I believed That God would pardon me three days’ delay To conquer human nature. Once I thought To tell her all--to ask her for her life-- To call on her obedience to submit-- To shift upon her shoulders half the weight Of agony and horror; but I looked Upon her face and set aside the plan, Misdoubting woman’s strength. In Edith’s eyes I saw a strange suspicious look--a look Which told me that the tempest in my soul Was finding outward vent upon my face. I caught her watching me, and understood That if I struck not soon, perchance my arm Would be restrained by man; so I prepared. There was a spot beside the sedgy stream, A solitary spot, which in our walks We sometimes crossed. I led her out that way. It was a hot close day; no ray of sun Shone through the lowering clouds, and now and then The thunder’s distant rumble met the ear. We reached the lonely river-bank. I stopped, And was about to do it, when she laid Her hand upon my arm with a caress, And asked me in her sweet familiar voice To pluck a water-lily, which I did, And then walked on, for somehow I was balked; I could not do it.

With the fall of night The pent-up tempest burst; and in its roar I seemed to hear God’s formidable wrath. I heard it in the howling of the wind; I heard it in the pelting of the rain Against the windows; and each rattling peal, Each burst of rolling echo in the dark Which made me cower like a chastened hound Recalled me to obedience. But the flesh, The strong rebellious flesh, oh how it writhed Against the spirit! How the natural love, The common human instinct, fought and fought, And, backed by Satan’s whisper, held its own! At length the spirit conquered, and I rose To do the will of God; but, in my crushed And humbled anguish, I implored the Lord To stay my lifted arm, and at the last To save her life as Isaac’s had been saved. Then I went up the stairs, as if each step Were a delay, a respite, and a hope, And sought the chamber where my Edith slept. The walk had worn her limbs; her sleep was deep. The storm had not aroused her; nor did I. I kissed her, and I slew her; for the Lord Did not vouchsafe to stay His servant’s arm. For one short moment after she was dead, I thought perchance that He would bring her back To life. But all was silent there.

And now, Ye righteous judges of this Christian land, Ye godly Elders, look me in the face. Ye know ye dare not hang me. Will ye dare To place me in the madhouse for a deed Which God Himself exacted--which ye teach Your children to revere in Abraham From year to year? Ye know ye dare not do it. And if ye ask me how I knew God’s voice, Ask of the shepherd’s watch-dog how he knows His master’s call when darkness girds the fold! Ye know that Abraham of old, if now He stood before you, could at your command Give you no other answer. It was God Who, putting to the test His servant’s faith, Impelled my hand. Ye may not judge this deed.

AN ODE OF THE TUSCAN SHORE.

When the Spirits that are masters Of the ever-ready storm, And that love to hound the waters, To destroy and to deform, See a mortal in their power They prepare a joyous hour, Venting their primeval hatred Of the thing whose blood is warm.

And they lay on ocean’s surface Their innumerable hands, And each hand creates a billow That advances and expands; Till, amid the petrel’s screaming, Rope and tattered sail are streaming High above the seething water From the mast that still withstands.

But then hate is blind: they know not What each human prey is worth: Not more cruel than impartial Is their elemental mirth: And their fury is not keener O’er the greater than the meaner, Though their victim were a Shelley And the glory of the earth.

Look around thee in the sunshine; Watch this satin-surfaced deep, Which alone some rolling dolphins Stir out yonder in its sleep, Till upon the sea shall settle Sunset hues of molten metal, Red and bright as crater gleamings, And the noon shall cease to creep.

Here was washed ashore the greatest Of the victims snatched away By the Spirits that are masters Of the wind and of the spray; When the waves might have exulted O’er the body they insulted With a shriller wilder clamour Than since Nature’s earliest day!

Cæsar braved the great Sea Spirits, And he bade his men row on; And he cried: “Ye carry Cæsar: Then why tremble and turn wan?” And the great waves roared more loudly; But his galley sailed out proudly From the peril of the tempest Like an onward-hurried swan.

Yet the world would scarce have missed him-- There be Cæsars more than one: But a poet like to Shelley, Where be such beneath the sun? And mankind had lost a treasure Past all mourning and all measure, When the beach-waves gently shelved him With a moan for what was done.

For an English ear, the breakers On this fatal Tuscan shore Seemed to lisp the name of Shelley, And to mourn it evermore; And the name appears to mingle With the rolling of the shingle And with every sound of Nature Which he lived but to adore.

Oh, I hear it in the murmur Of the fragrant woods of pine As the sea-breeze softly hurries Through their long-extended line; And I hear it faintly coming From the never-ending humming Of the world of busy insects That the undergrowths confine.

’Tis the spot; and nought discordant Mars its beauty and repose. All along the tideless margin Pine or bay or ilex grows, Filled with an eternal warble; While Carrara’s crags of marble, Bare and lofty, print the azure, And, to landward, all enclose.

All is peace and glorious sunshine; Nature seems redeemed from war. Nothing stirs from beach to offing, Where a few feluccas are, Waiting for the breeze that’s lazy; While beyond, where all is hazy, Like the ghost of dwindled power Loometh Elba, faint and far.

But his genius knew no Elba, And his star, without decline, Was extinguished at its zenith In the wild and tossing brine; Not war’s red and lurid planet As of incandescent granite, But a star of whiter radiance, Clear, effulgent and divine.

Mighty treasures lie for ever In each slimy ocean cave; Galleons with their gold lie buried Where the dark depth knows no wave; But the total of their measure Matches not the matchless treasure That in yonder stretch of water Has for ever found a grave:

There the great unwritten poems Of a mighty poet lie-- Unborn children of a lineage Which, once born, may never die. But the water mirrors heaven With the smile of one forgiven, While the breakers in the sunshine Sing an endless lullaby.

SWORD AND SICKLE.

“_’Mid the harvest-shining plain_ _Where the peasant heaps his grain_ _In the garner of his foe._”

In the noontide, safe and free, Basks the plain of Lombardy. Never now, nor near nor far Looms the lurid form of War That to overspread it came With her wings of smoky flame. Unmanured with blood the plain Yields in peace its yearly grain; And the milk-white broad-browed pair Of huge bullocks in the glare Drag the fruit of Freedom’s tillage Through each straggling Lombard village Which no Croat thirsts to pillage. Not a foe, save where unseen In the rice-swamp’s treacherous green Fever lurks, while wade and reap Through the sparkling waters deep Girls ill-sheltered from the sun, Which shoots down to scorch and stun, By their crimson kerchiefs light, And who there in Fever’s spite Cheer their souls with laugh and song As the noontide creeps along; Not a foe, save when o’erflows Adige big with melted snows, Or when Po’s dark whirling foam Threatens many a thriving home, Rolling all its bridges under With a dull unceasing thunder, Till it sweeps ere close of day Bridge and dyke and home away.

Through the broad Subalpine plain Peace and work and freedom reign. Here and there in monstrous heaps Some vast ossuary keeps For men’s wondering eyes the bones Of the nation’s slaughtered sons; But no other traces show Where a few short years ago Countless balls of iron ploughed Through the serried quivering crowd-- Where the broadcast Austrian lead Fell on furrows live and dead-- Where for miles and miles were heaped The human harvests freshly reaped-- Where the routed fled like chaff At the canon’s thunderous laugh, While the gun-wheels made red mud Of men weltering in their blood. Times are changed, and memories hold In the breasts but of the old. On Custozza’s once red earth By the Lombard peasant’s hearth Now the Austrian may sit Where no brows with hate shall knit: Who would dream that there can be Such a thing as tyranny? Italy appeals no longer To God’s throne against the stronger; And the Poet loves her now For the beauty of her brow, Not for that great crown of woe Whence the blood-drops used to flow.

Lands are freed, and lands enslaved; But your name is there engraved In the hearts of those now freed Ye who helped them in their need! Nor do they remember now Those who lent them all the glow Of their genius and their feeling, And Compassion’s balm that’s healing, And the thunder of their curse In a heaven-shaking verse. Reckon not on thanks for long, Ye who fight with sword or song For the weak against the strong: Give your help for justice’ sake, Caring no reward to take. Freedom’s face is not less fair For remembering not your share; And the sheaves of sacred wheat, Which spring up beneath her feet From the liberated plain, Not less full of golden grain.

Years ago one day I stood, In the autumn’s sunset flood, Looking down with sweeping sight From a bastion’s terraced height On the then unconquered plain Of the fair and French Lorraine. Scarce was autumn’s first leaf yellow; Ripened Earth had made air mellow. Like a snake inert and blue, Winding slowly corn-fields through, Wound the broad Moselle afar To the horizon’s utmost bar, Catching on each burnished fold Restless gleams of molten gold Till the sun was near to sink, When it caught a flaming pink From the crimson clouds slow sailing Where the amber light was failing. And surveying that expanse, What, I thought, is fair as France? Now the Prussian sentries stand Where I stood, and scan the land, Which for ever seems their own, With their ugly Prussian frown; And the sullen land has nought But the freedom of its thought, Of its thought that hopes and hates And from year to year awaits.

And what of thee upon whose head All evil’s phials have been shed-- Thou whom those who now have gotten Their own freedom, have forgotten-- Thou whose name is never heard, Thou whose hope is aye deferred, Thou whose tongue thy foes outroot, Thou whose sons they chain and shoot-- Poland, heiress of the knout? Lo, the century grows old And thy hour has not yet tolled. On thy form benumbed and bruised, Whence the life-blood half has oozed, Lies the dark Colossus still Whom his own sons now would kill-- Tormentors that like vipers start From his huge frame’s every part; But he holds thee all the tighter While thy bloodless face grows whiter, And his limbs that on thee weigh Grow more rotten day by day.

Hark! I hear a muffled sound Deep beneath the frozen ground Where a buried Poland pines In the dark Siberian mines, In the sunless vaults that ape Those of Hell in gloom and shape, Where the gangs who death await Unlearn to think, but not to hate: Is’t a growl of joy that runs Where are chained half Poland’s sons? Ay, a growl of joy it is To each mine’s extremities, And for once Despair has laughed In each black pestiferous shaft: He who sent them there lies dead On his gory Imperial bed-- He who made them walk in chains, In long goaded staggering trains, Through the endless snow-clad plains To the grave in which they lie, Not yet dead, but soon to die: Even he has found his hour, Murdered in his boundless power By his own, and rots in death As they rot who here draw breath.

A PAGEANT OF SIENA.

The old red, towered walls climb round the hills On which Siena stands in lonely state, Scanning the ridgy plain, where gleam no rills And loom no towns, but only endless lines Of livid furrowed hillocks which the great White, ploughing bullocks speck. From gate to gate A few tall cypresses and scattered pines Climb too, where, guarding streets that silence fills, The old red, towered walls climb round the hills.

Silent and empty in the August glare The old depopulated city sleeps; Its dizzy belfry climbs the fiery air Into the sky’s inexorable blue; Across its great scooped shell-shaped square there creeps No living soul, nor up the high paved steeps That be its streets; perhaps some carts sway through Its dusty gates, behind a huge-horned pair, Creaking and empty in the August glare.

O for the pageantry of olden days, Thou silent square--ye palaces that wind Up to the still cathedral, where the rays, Now gentler, kiss the marble and the gold! O for the throngs that Time has left behind, Ye buttressed lanes, ye lofty archways lined With faded saints; show those ye used to hold When the strong prosperous city loved displays And gaudy pageantry in olden days.

I hear a hum of men, a tramp and tread; The city’s Districts muster. First appears The District of the Panther--white and red Its men-at-arms and pages, fifes and drums; And next the yellow-liveried troop that bears The Ghibelline standard of the Eagle nears; Then Tortoise, Hedgehog, Snail and Glowworm come; And the Guelf She-Wolf, with her arms ahead All black and silver, comes with tramp and tread.