Part 5

And--O mean beast, Mean coward that I was!--I dared not face The sight of Strongclyffe; but I fled the place, Leaving a letter; and in guilt and fear, Just like a thief, stole back to England here, Alone with my incomparable debt. He never saw me more; although we met In these o’er-crowded London streets one day, And oh how changed he was--how old and grey He had become, though scarce two years had passed Over his head since I had seen him last! He saw me not, but passed with vacant eye; While I, as if to vanish bodily Into the solid stones, shrank to the wall. He now is dead--and I? Oh, does not all Compel me too to die? What have I done, In these ten years of anguish, to atone For having chosen life? What use--what good Have I been to mankind since first I stood So fatally and wholly in its debt? What drops of compensation have I yet Wrung out of my weak worthless self, and cast Into the deep abyss? Oh, I have passed A cruel, cruel time! And year by year I feel less wish to live, less strength to bear The weight of my immense insolvency. And in the street as each man passes by I mutter to myself, “If he but knew What he has lost, would he not stop and sue For what can ne’er be paid, and cry, ‘Come forth! And show thyself to men, what thou art worth! Thou art the thing which men have got instead Of the Incomparable: raise thy head!’”

IPSISSIMUS.

Thou Priest that art behind the screen Of this confessional, give ear: I need God’s help, for I have seen What turns my vitals limp with fear. O Christ, O Christ, I must have done More mortal sin than anyone Who says his prayers in Venice here!

And yet by stealth I only tried To kill my enemy, God knows; And who on earth has e’er denied A man the right to kill his foes? He won the race of the Gondoliers; I hate him and the skin he wears-- I hate him and the shade he throws.

I hate him through each day and hour; All ills that curse me seem his fault: He makes my daily soup taste sour, He makes my daily bread taste salt; And so I hung upon his track At dusk to stab him in the back In some lone street or archway vault.

But oh give heed! As I was stealing Upon his heels, with knife grasped tight, There crept across my soul a feeling That I myself was kept in sight; Each time I turned, dodge as I would, A masked and unknown watcher stood Who baffled all my plan that night.

What mask is this, I thought and thought, Who dogs me thus when least I care? His figure is nor tall nor short, And yet has a familiar air. But oh, despite this watcher’s eye, I’ll reach my man yet by-and-by, And snuff his life out yet, elsewhere.

And though compelled to still defer, I schemed another project soon; I armed my boat with a hidden spur To run him down in the lagoon. At dusk I saw him row one day Where lone and wide the waters lay, Reflecting scarce the dim white moon.

No boat, as far as sight could strain, Loomed on the solitary sea; I saw my oar each minute gain Upon my death-doomed enemy, When lo, a black-masked gondolier, Silent and spectre-like, drew near, And stepped between my deed and me.

He seemed from out the flood to rise, And hovered near to mar my game; I knew him and his cursed guise, His cursed mask: he was the same. So, balked once more, enraged and cowed, Back through the still lagoon I rowed In mingled wonder, wrath, and shame.

Oh, were I not to come and pray Thee for thy absolution here In the Confessional, to-day My very ribs would burst with fear. Leave not, good Father, in the lurch A faithful son of Mother Church, Whose faith is firm and soul sincere.

Behind St. Luke’s, as the dead men know, A pale apothecary dwells, Who deals in death both quick and slow, And baleful philters, withering spells; He sells alike to rich and poor, Who know what knocks to give his door, The yellow dust that rings the knells.

Well, then, I went and knocked the knock With cautious hand, as I’d been taught; The door revolved with silent lock, And I went in, suspecting nought. But oh, the self-same form stood masked Behind the counter, and unasked In silence proffered what I sought.

My knees and hands like aspens shook: I spilt the powder on the ground; I dared not turn, I dared not look; My palsied tongue would make no sound. Then through the door I fled at last With feet that seemed more slow than fast, And dared not even once look round.

And yet I am an honest man Who only sought to kill his foe: Could I sit down to see each plan That I took up frustrated so, When as each plan was marred and balked, And in the sun my man still walked, I felt my hate still greater grow?

I thought, “At dusk with stealthy tread I’ll seek his dwelling, and I’ll creep Upstairs and hide beneath his bed, And in the night I’ll strike him deep.” And so I went; but at his door The figure, masked just as before, Sat on the step as if asleep.

Bent, spite all fear, upon my task, I tried to pass: there was no space. Then rage prevailed; I snatched the mask From off the baffling figure’s face, And oh, unutterable dread! The face was mine, mine white and dead, Stiff with some frightful death’s grimace.

What sins are mine, O luckless wight, That doom should play me such a trick And make me see a sudden sight That turns both soul and body sick? Stretch out thy hands, thou priest unseen That sittest there behind the screen, And give me absolution, quick!

O God, O God, his hands are dead! His hands are mine, O monstrous spell! I feel them clammy on my head. Is he my own dead self as well? Those hands are mine--their scars, their shape: O God, O God, there’s no escape, And seeking Heaven, I fall on Hell!

AN ODE TO THE TRAVELLING THUNDER.

(Suggested by a line in the magnificent opening description of Miss A. MARY F. ROBINSON’S “Janet Fisher.”)

God’s wrath is travelling overhead, God’s wrath upon the wing, Which makes man cower in his bed If he has heaven’s strength to dread, And hides some guilty thing.

The booming peals of thunder shake These walls and the black night; They make the mountains thrill and quake: I listen as I lie awake, While Earth and Heaven fight.

What seek’st thou with repeated stroke, Wrath, as thou hurriest past? Is it, through night’s scorched riven cloak, Some huge old solitary oak Or some doomed storm-bent mast?

The mountains court thy blow and each Unfathomable abyss, Where thy white blasting stroke may reach Some Titan still unstruck whose speech Is the wild torrent’s hiss.

There mayst thou, where presumptuous pines To climb God’s sky aspire, Do battle ’gainst their serried lines, And ere the lurid storm-dawn shines, Strike dead their kings with fire.

There may thy peal, enclosed by rock, Long struggle and die slow; And while it seeks some gorge’s lock, Growl, laugh and roar, and fiercely mock Each sound of human woe.

Along the backs of the mountain chain Where thou awhile mayst cling, O’er the boundless sea and the endless plain, With driven hail and sheeted rain Thick shaken from thy wing, Thou hurriest on, black cloud of wrath, Thou hater of human walls, Shaking men’s souls upon thy path As thou dost shake the beams, like lath, In battlemented halls;

Or pausing, broodest o’er the night, In silence gathering strength; While, ever and anon, the light Quivers from out thee, dazzling bright, And shows earth’s breadth and length.

So have I seen thee, dreaded Power, Show Venice in her sleep More vivid than at noon’s fierce hour, With every palace, dome, and tower That rises from the deep;

Tinting the briny city pink, In one long quivering flash; Then snatching back, ere you could think, All into darkness black as ink-- Dumb save the ceaseless plash.

Then on, and on, black cloud of fire, Upon thy stormy ways, To vault the shaken sky with ire, To shatter the presumptuous spire, To make the forest blaze.

To roll in folds of lurid steam O’er ocean’s rolling waves, With rolling peals of sound that seem To ask account for the dead that teem In all its oozy caves.

By sea or land, by night or day, Thy savage booming voice Makes, as thou hurriest on thy way, And all earth’s shaken pillars sway, My awe-struck soul rejoice.

Even as stormy passions here, Battling with God above, Revenge and wrath, despair and fear, Make glorious music to my ear, Beyond all songs of love.

SONNETS.

IDLE CHARON.

The shores of Styx are lone for evermore, And not one shadowy form upon the steep Looms through the dusk, far as the eye can sweep, To call the ferry over as of yore; But tintless rushes all about the shore Have hemmed the old boat in, where, locked in sleep, Hoar-bearded Charon lies; while pale weeds creep With tightening grasp all round the unused oar. For in the world of Life strange rumours run That now the Soul departs not with the breath, But that the Body and the Soul are one; And in the loved one’s mouth, now, after death, The widow puts no obol, nor the son, To pay the ferry in the world beneath.

THE OBOL.[A]

Scarce have I rhymed of Charon looming grey Amid pale rushes through the dusky air, And of the obol we no longer care To put in dead men’s mouths as ferry-pay, When, lo, I find, amongst some pence, to-day Received as common change, I know not where, A stray Greek obol, seeming Charon’s fare To put between my lips when I be dead. Poor bastard Obol, even couldst thou cheat The shadowy Boatman, I should scarcely find The heart to cross: extinction seems so sweet. I need thee not; and thou shalt be consigned To some old whining beggar in the street, Whose soul shall cross, while mine shall stay behind.

[A] The coin referred to in this sonnet was a modern Greek piece of five lepta, rather smaller than a halfpenny, and bearing the word _Obolos_ on the reverse.

LETHE.

I had a dream of Lethe, of the brink Of leaden waters, whither many bore Dead, pallid loves, while others, old and sore, Brought but their tottering selves, in haste to drink. And, having drunk, they plunged, and seemed to sink Their load of love or guilt for evermore, Reaching with radiant brow the sunny shore That lay beyond, no more to think and think.

Oh, who will give me, chained to Thought’s dull strand, A draught of Lethe, salt with final tears, Were it no more than fills the hollow hand? Oh, who will rid me of the wasted years, The thought of Life’s fair structure vainly planned, And each false hope, that mocking re-appears?

ACHERON.

Where rolls in silent speed through cave on cave Soul-freighted Acheron, and no other light Evokes the rocks from an eternal night Than the pale phosphorescence of the wave, Shall men not meet, and have one chance to crave Forgiveness for rash deeds--one chance to right Old earthly quarrels, and in Death’s despite Unsay the said, and kill the pang they gave?

See, see! there looms from yonder soul-filled bark That passes ours, a long-loved, long-lost face, And with a cry we stretch our ghostly arms. But heeding not, they whirl into the dark, Bound for a sea beyond all time and space, Which neither life nor love nor sunlight warms.

ON SIGNORELLI’S FRESCO OF THE RESURRECTION.

I saw a vast bare plain; with, overhead, A half-chilled sun, that shed a sickly light; And all around, till out of reach of sight, The earth’s thin crust heaved with the rising dead, Who, as they struggled from their dusty bed, At first mere bones, by countless years made white, Took gradual flesh, and stood all huddled tight In mute, dull groups, as yet too numb to dread. And all the while the summoning trump on high With rolling thunder never ceased to shake The livid vault of that unclouded sky, Calling fresh hosts of penitents to take Each his identity; until well-nigh The whole dry worn-out earth appeared to wake.

ON SIGNORELLI’S FRESCO OF THE BINDING OF THE LOST.

In boundless caves, lit only by the glare Of pools of molten stone, the lost are pent In countless herds, inextricably blent, Yet each alone with his own black despair; While, through the thickness of the lurid air, The bat-winged fiends, from some far, unseen vent, Bring on their backs the damned in swift descent, To swell the crowds that wait in silence there.

And then begins the binding of the lost With snaky thongs, before they be transferred To realms of utter flame or utter frost; And, like a sudden ocean boom, is heard, Uprising from the dim and countless host, Pain’s first vague roar, Hell’s first wild useless word.

MUSSET’S LOUIS D’OR.

Asleep, a little fisher-girl one day Lay on the sands, within an old boat’s shade; Her skirt was tattered, and the sea-breeze played With her brown loosened hair a ceaseless play. A poet chanced to pass as there she lay; Her sun-burnt face, her tatters he surveyed; A golden coin between her lips he laid, And, letting her sleep on, he went his way.

What came of that gold windfall? Did it breed Those long-loved coins which patient thrift can show With proud pure smile to meet the household need? Or stolen gold? or those curst coins which grow Each year more sought, more loathed, and are the meed Of women’s loveless kisses? Who can know?

THE PHANTOM SHIP.

We touch Life’s shore as swimmers from a wreck Who shudder at the cheerless land they reach, And find their comrades gathered on the beach Watching a fading sail, a small white speck-- The phantom ship, upon whose ample deck There seemed awhile a homeward place for each. The crowd still wring their hands and still beseech, But see, it fades, in spite of prayer and beck.

Let those who hope for brighter shores no more Not mourn, but turning inland, bravely seek What hidden wealth redeems the shapeless shore. The strong must build stout cabins for the weak; Must plan and stint; must sow and reap and store; For grain takes root though all seems bare and bleak.

SPRING.

For those who note the fate of earthly things There lurks a sadness in the April air, A dreamy sense of what the future brings To things too good, too hopeful, and too fair. The spring brings greenness to the recent grave, But brings no solace to the mourning heart; Nor will its rustling and its piping save A single pang to him who must depart. The ivy bloom is full of humming bees; The linnets whistle in the leaves on high; Around the stems of all the orchard trees In flaky heaps the fallen blossoms lie: But every leaf upon each new-clad tree Tells but of boundless mutability.

TO V. P.,

ABOUT TO VISIT OXFORD.

So you will see what I can see no more: The broad quadrangles where the sunlit sward, At which you peep through some old oaken door, Is girt around by stone-work black and scarred; The sedgy Isis, which the swift Eight cleaves With mighty stroke, all rippled by the breeze; The narrow Cherwell, gliding under leaves; The City’s towers rising o’er the trees. All this, alas, for me is fading fast, And dimness seems descending on those walls While Cherwell slowly glides into the Past. The throng in cap and gown which filled those halls Is turning into ghosts, whose names at last I shall forget, as twilight round me falls.

BY THE FIRE.

I sat beside the fire, ten years ago, And in the dusk wreathed fancies in its flare, Meting the Future out, to each his share, While danced the restless shadows to and fro. And when at last the yellow flame grew low And leapt and licked no more, I still sat there Watching with eyes fast fixed, but mind elsewhere The darkening crimson of the flameless glow.

And lo, at dusk, I watch once more to-day The slowly-sinking flame, the faint dull crash Of crumbling embers deadening into grey; But see alone the Past, misspent and rash, And wasted gifts, and chances thrown away. The Present and the Future? All is ash.

NIGHT.

Thou heedest not, inexorable Night, Whether besought from some lone prison cell To stay thy hours, by one whose scaffold-knell Will sound not later than return of light, Or prayed to urge them by some suffering wight Who notes their creep as wearily and well As men not for eternity in Hell May note the purging flames’ decreasing height.

Hark! in the street I hear a distant sound Of music and of laughter and of song, As go a band of revellers their round: And under prison-walls it comes along, And under dull sick-rooms, where moans abound; For who shall grudge their strumming to the strong?

RIVER BABBLE.

The wreathing of my rhymes has helped to chase Away despair from each untasted day, And, on my soul, I pray of Time to stay His hand, when I be dead, and not efface. Yet would I tear them all, could that replace The fly-rod in my hand, this day of May, And watch unmoved their fragments float away Into oblivion, on a trout-stream’s face.

Alas, thou fool! thou weary, crippled fool! Thou never more wilt leap from stone to stone, Where rise the trout in every rocky pool! Thou never more wilt stand at dusk alone Girt round by gurgling waters, in the cool, While dance the flies, and make the trout thy own!

SUNKEN GOLD.

In dim green depths rot ingot-laden ships, While gold doubloons that from the drowned hand fell Lie nestled in the ocean-flower’s bell With Love’s gemmed rings once kissed by now dead lips. And round some wrought-gold cup the sea-grass whips And hides lost pearls, near pearls still in their shell, Where sea-weed forests fill each ocean dell, And seek dim sunlight with their countless tips.

So lie the wasted gifts, the long-lost hopes, Beneath the now hushed surface of myself, In lonelier depths than where the diver gropes. They lie deep, deep; but I at times behold In doubtful glimpses, on some reefy shelf, The gleam of irrecoverable gold.

ON RAPHAEL’S ARCHANGEL MICHAEL.

From out the depths of crocus-coloured morn With rush of wings the strong Archangel came And glistening spear; and leapt as leaps a flame On Satan unprepared and earthward borne; And rolled the sunless Rebel, bruised and torn, Upon the earth’s bare plain, in dust and shame, Holding awhile his spear’s suspended aim Above the humbled head in radiant scorn. So leaps within the soul on Wrong or Lust The warrior Angel whom we deem not near, And rolls the rebel impulse in the dust, Scathing its neck with his triumphal tread, And holding high his bright coercing spear Above its inexterminable head.

ON A SURF-ROLLED TORSO OF VENUS,

FOUND AT TRIPOLI VECCHIO, AND NOW IN THE LOUVRE.

One day in the world’s youth, long, long ago, Before the golden hair of Time grew grey, The bright warm sea, scarce stirred by the dolphins’ play, Was swept by sudden music soft and low; And rippling, as ’neath kisses, parted slow, And gave a new and dripping goddess birth, Who brought transcendent loveliness on earth, With limbs more pure than sunset-tinted snow. And lo, that self-same sea has now upthrown A mutilated Venus, rolled and rolled For ages by the surf, and that has grown More soft, more chaste, more lovely than of old, With every line made vague, so that the stone Seems seen as through a veil which ages hold.

ON MANTEGNA’S SEPIA DRAWING OF JUDITH.

I.

What stony, bloodless Judith hast thou made, Mantegna? Draped in many a stony fold, What walking sleeper hast thou made, to hold A stony head and an unbloody blade? In thine own savage days, wast thou afraid To paint such Judiths as thou mightst behold In open street, and paint the heads that rolled Beneath the axe, in every square displayed? No, no; not such was Judith, on the night When, in the silent camp, she watched alone, Like some dumb tigress, in the tent’s dim light Her sleeping prey; nor, when her deed was done, She seized the head, and with intent delight Stared in a face as quivering as her own.

II.

There was a gleam of jewels in the tent Which one dim cresset lit--a baleful gleam-- And from his scattered armour seemed to stream A dusky, evil light that came and went. But from her eyes, as over him she bent, Watching the surface of his drunken dream, There shot a deadlier ray, a darker beam, A look in which her life’s one lust found vent. There was a hissing through her tightened teeth, As with her scimitar she crouched above His dark, doomed head, and held her perilous breath, While ever and anon she saw him move His red lascivious lips, and smile beneath His curled and scented beard, and mutter love.

STRANGLED.

There is a legend in some Spanish book About a noisy reveller who, at night, Returning home with others, saw a light Shine from a window, and climbed up to look, And saw within the room, hanged to a hook, His own self-strangled self, grim, rigid, white, And who, struck sober by that livid sight, Feasting his eyes, in tongue-tied horror shook.

Has any man a fancy to peep in And see, as through a window, in the Past, His nobler self, self-choked with coils of sin, Or sloth or folly? Round the throat whipped fast The nooses give the face a stiffened grin. ’Tis but thyself. Look well. Why be aghast?

PROMETHEAN FANCIES.

I.

When on to shuddering Caucasus God pours The phials of his anger hoarded long, Plunging in each abyss his fiery prong As if to find a Titan; when loud roars The imprisoned thunder groping for the doors Of never-ending gorges; when, among The desperate pines, Storm howls his battle-song-- Then wakes Prometheus, and his voice upsoars.

Yea, when the midnight tempest hurries past, There sounds within its wail a wilder wail Than that which tells the anguish of the blast; And when the thunder thunders down the gale, A laugh within its laugh tells woe so vast That God’s own angels in the darkness quail.

II.