CANTO VI

Chapter 62,144 wordsPublic domain

The sun was high in heaven and Dymer stood A bright speck on the endless mountain-side. Till, blossom after blossom, that rich mood Faded and truth rolled homeward, like a tide Before whose edge the weak soul fled to hide In vain, with ostrich head, through many a shape Of coward fancy, whimpering for escape.

But only for a moment; then his soul Took the full swell and heaved a dripping prow Clear of the shattering wave-crest. He was whole. No veils should hide the truth, no truth should cow The dear self-pitying heart “I’ll babble now No longer,” Dymer said. “I’m broken in. Pack up the dreams and let the life begin.”

With this he turned. “I must have food to-day,” He muttered. Then among the cloudless hills By winding tracks he sought the downward way And followed the steep course of tumbling rills --Came to the glens the wakening mountain fills In springtime with the echoing splash and shock Of waters leaping cold from rock to rock.

And still, it seemed, that lark with its refrain Sang in the sky and wind was in his hair And hope at heart. Then once, and once again, He heard a gun fired off. It broke the air As a stone breaks a pond, and everywhere The dry crags echoed clear: and at the sound Once a big bird rose whirring from the ground.

In half an hour he reached the level land And followed the field-paths and crossed the stiles, Then looked and saw, near by, on his left hand An old house, folded round with billowy piles Of dark yew hedge. The moss was on the tiles, The pigeons in the yard, and in the tower A clock that had no hands and told no hour.

He hastened. In warm waves the garden scent Came stronger at each stride. The mountain breeze Was gone. He reached the gates; then in he went And seemed to lose the sky--such weight of trees Hung overhead. He heard the noise of bees And saw, far off, in the blue shade between The windless elms, one walking on the green.

It was a mighty man whose beardless face Beneath grey hair shone out so large and mild It made a sort of moonlight in the place. A dreamy desperation, wistful-wild, Showed in his glance and gait: yet like a child, An Asian emperor’s only child, was he With his grave looks and bright solemnity.

And over him there hung the witching air, The wilful courtesy, of the days of old. The graces wherein idleness grows fair; And somewhat in his sauntering walk he rolled And toyed about his waist with seals of gold, Or stood to ponder often in mid-stride, Tilting his heavy head upon one side.

When Dymer had called twice, he turned his eye: Then, coming out of silence (as a star All in one moment slips into the sky Of evening, yet we feel it comes from far), He said, “Sir, you are welcome. Few there are That come my way”: and in huge hands he pressed Dymer’s cold hand and bade him in to rest.

“How did you find this place out? Have you heard My gun? It was but now I killed a lark.” “What Sir,” said Dymer, “shoot the singing bird?” “Sir,” said the man, “they sing from dawn till dark, And interrupt my dreams too long. But hark... Another? Did you hear no singing? No? It was my fancy, then ... pray, let it go.

“From here you see my garden’s only flaw. Stand here, Sir, at the dial.” Dymer stood. The Master pointed; then he looked and saw How hedges and the funeral quietude Of black trees fringed the garden like a wood, And only, in one place, one gap that showed The blue side of the hills, the white hill-road.

“I have planted fir and larch to fill the gap,” He said, “because this too makes war upon The art of dream. But by some great mishap Nothing I plant will grow there. We pass on.... The sunshine of the afternoon is gone. Let us go in. It draws near time to sup --I hate the garden till the moon is up.”

They passed from the hot lawn into the gloom And coolness of the porch: then, past a door That opened with no noise, into a room Where green leaves choked the window and the floor Sank lower than the ground. A tattered store Of brown books met the eye: a crystal ball: And masks with empty eyes along the wall.

Then Dymer sat, but knew not how nor where, And supper was set out before these two, --He saw not how--with silver old and rare But tarnished. And he ate and never knew What meats they were. At every bite he grew More drowsy and let slide his crumbling will. The Master at his side was talking still.

And all his talk was tales of magic words And of the nations in the clouds above, Astral and aerish tribes who fish for birds With angles. And by history he could prove How chosen spirits from earth had won their love, As Arthur, or Usheen: and to their isle Went Helen for the sake of a Greek smile.

And ever in his talk he mustered well His texts and strewed old authors round the way, “Thus Wierus writes,” and “Thus the Hermetics tell,” “This was Agrippa’s view,” and “Others say With Cardan,” till he had stolen quite away Dymer’s dull wits and softly drawn apart The ivory gates of hope that change the heart.

Dymer was talking now. Now Dymer told Of his own love and losing, drowsily. The Master leaned towards him, “Was it cold, This spirit, to the touch?”--“No, Sir, not she,” Said Dymer. And his host: “Why this must be Aethereal, not aereal! Oh my soul, Be still ... but wait. Tell on, Sir, tell the whole.”

Then Dymer told him of the beldam too, The old, old, matriarchal dreadfulness. Over the Master’s face a shadow drew, He shifted in his chair and “Yes” and “Yes,” He murmured twice. “I never looked for less! Always the same ... that frightful woman shape Besets the dream-way and the soul’s escape.”

But now when Dymer made to talk of Bran, A huge indifference fell upon his host, Patient and wandering-eyed. Then he began, “Forgive me. You are young. What helps us most Is to find out again that heavenly ghost Who loves you. For she was a ghost, and you In that place where you met were ghostly too.

“Listen! for I can launch you on the stream Will roll you to the shores of her own land.... I could be sworn you never learned to dream, But every night you take with careless hand What chance may bring? I’ll teach you to command The comings and the goings of your spirit Through all that borderland which dreams inherit.

“You shall have hauntings suddenly. And often, When you forget, when least you think of her (For so you shall forget) a light will soften Over the evening woods. And in the stir Of morning dreams (oh, I will teach you, Sir) There’ll come a sound of wings. Or you shall be Waked in the midnight murmuring, ‘It was she.’”

“No, no,” said Dymer, “not that way. I seem To have slept for twenty years. Now--while I shake Out of my eyes that dust of burdening dream, Now when the long clouds tremble ripe to break And the far hills appear, when first I wake, Still blinking, struggling towards the world of men, And longing--would you turn me back again?

“Dreams? I have had my dream too long. I thought The sun rose for my sake. I ran down blind And dancing to the abyss. Oh, Sir, I brought Boy-laughter for a gift to Gods who find The martyr’s soul too soft But that’s behind. I’m waking now. They broke me. All ends thus Always--and we’re for them, not they for us.

“And she--she was no dream. It would be waste To seek her there, the living in that den Of lies.” The Master smiled. “You are in haste! For broken dreams the cure is, Dream again And deeper. If the waking world, and men, And nature marred your dream--so much the worse For a crude world beneath its primal curse.”

--“Ah, but you do not know! Can dreams do this, Pluck out blood-guiltiness upon the shore Of memory--and undo what’s done amiss, And bid the thing that has been be no more?” --“Sir, it is only dreams unlock that door,” He answered with a shrug. “What would you have? In dreams the thrice-proved coward can feel brave.

“In dreams the fool is free from scorning voices. Grey-headed whores are virgin there again. Out of the past dream brings long-buried choices, All in a moment snaps the tenfold chain That life took years in forging. There the stain Of oldest sins--how do the good words go?-- Though they were scarlet, shall be white as snow.”

Then, drawing near, when Dymer did not speak, “My little son,” said he, “your wrong and right Are also dreams: fetters to bind the weak Faster to phantom earth and blear the sight. Wake into dreams, into the larger light That quenches these frail stars. They will not know Earth’s bye-laws in the land to which you go.”

--“I must undo my sins,”--“An earthly law, And, even in earth, the child of yesterday. Throw down your human pity; cast your awe Behind you; put repentance all away. Home to the elder depths! for never they Supped with the stars who dared not slough behind The last shred of earth’s holies from their mind.”

“Sir,” answered Dymer, “I would be content To drudge in earth, easing my heart’s disgrace, Counting a year’s long service lightly spent If once at the year’s end I saw her face Somewhere, being then most weary, in some place I looked not for that joy--or heard her near Whispering, ‘Yet courage, friend,’ for one more year.”

“Pish,” said the Master. “Will you have the truth? You think that virtue saves? Her people care For the high heart and idle hours of youth; For these they will descend our lower air, Not virtue. You would nerve your arm and bear Your burden among men! Look to it, child: By virtue’s self vision can be defiled.

“You will grow full of pity and the love of men, And toil until the morning moisture dries Out of your heart. Then once, or once again It may be you will find her: but your eyes Soon will be grown too dim. The task that lies Next to your hand will hide her. You shall be The child of earth and gods you shall not see.”

Here suddenly he ceased. Tip-toes he went. A bolt clicked--then the window creaked ajar, And out of the wet world the hedgerow scent Came floating; and the dark without one star Nor shape of trees nor sense of near and far, The undimensioned night and formless skies Were there, and were the Master’s great allies.

“I am very old,” he said. “But if the time We suffered in our dreams were counting age, I have outlived the ocean and my prime Is with me to this day. Years cannot gauge The dream-life. In the turning of a page, Dozing above my book, I have lived through More ages than the lost Lemuria knew.

“I am not mortal. Were I doomed to die This hour, in this half-hour I interpose A thousand years of dream: and, those gone by, As many more, and in the last of those, Ten thousand--ever journeying towards a close That I shall never reach: for time shall flow, Wheel within wheel, interminably slow.

“And you will drink my cup and go your way Into the valley of dreams. You have heard the call. Come hither and escape. Why should you stay? Earth is a sinking ship, a house whose wall Is tottering while you sweep; the roof will fall Before the work is done. You cannot mend it. Patch as you will, at last the rot must end it.”

Then Dymer lifted up his heavy head Like Atlas on broad shoulders bearing up The insufferable globe. “I had not said,” He mumbled, “Never said I’d taste the cup. What, is it this you give me? Must I sup? Oh lies, all lies.... Why did you kill the lark? Guide me the cup to lip ... it is so dark.”