Part 3

In one white, empty chamber two brethren, yet as one, And as a sepulchre their home made bare. Ye ask what they have done? And the poor answer, “These would have no treasure Save this, that they can die.” O solemn pleasure To see their home a casket everywhere Wrought for their hour of death! Gone the slow mornings Through which they wearied out the Emperor’s warnings! Now they would hold their jewel safe in their white walls, with prayer.

The silence! One can listen how the gold morning sun Sings through the air, the hush is grown so fine. Steps!--Thus intrusive run Rain-storms on solitudes--A white-flashed gleaming! The brow of Jove, the cloud-white hair, the beaming Cloud-swirl of beard! A voice that bids, “Incline, And offer homage!” ... How the silence tingles! The sun with air in call and echo mingles: Those brethren of closed senses--peace! they have made no sign.

They had not sought to gather, even for the sick and poor, The lilies of their garden--head by head, The older with the newer-- Nor violet-roots from Pæstum, the weaved roses. And now the garden of their home uncloses To cover into secrecy the dead: Deep hidden by the roses they had watered, Lying together sanctified and slaughtered, Their blood upon them underground, above the rose-leaves spread.

. . . .

Lured, as the demons wander, demons sore afraid, Unclean, tormented, and that do not cease Their rending cries for aid, The son of him who slew the saints, by daytime Wandering, by night, that garden in the Maytime, Is cured of his distraction and at peace: Then glad Terentius, coming to the garden, Of which his well-belovèd is the warden, Plucketh a reed to glorify the martyrs he hath made.

IN MONTE FANNO

Sylvester by an open tomb Beheld Time’s vanity and doom-- A lovely body, as a flower, Left by a ploughman’s foot, wet in a shower.

Sylvester meditated, thought His days to solitude were brought. Sight of a corpse within its grave!... To be an eremite alone were brave.

Sylvester is a monk: and men Grow frequent round his holy den: Thence to a mount he leads them out, Called _Fannus_ ... through the wood they hear a shout.

Sylvester builds his cloister.--Hush! Across the doorstep comes a rush, And all the monks faint with a lure That those in burgeoning woods lost deep endure.

Sylvester calls into the dark-- There is a breath of those that hark-- “Peace, peace! I am Sylvester! Peace!” Trespass and echoes and sweet motions cease.

Sylvester in the woods, as still Even as the grave that bowed his will, When he became at first a monk, Rules every power in oak and olive-trunk.

Sylvester conquers by his name: King Fannus and all Fauns lie tame Beneath it, and the wild-wood Cross, That he hath planted deep into the moss.

Sylvester and his monks are clear From any advent warm and drear Through any door: but sometimes he Looks with slant eyes through piles of leafery.

MACRINUS AGAINST TREES

“How bare! How all the lion-desert lies Before your cell! Behind, are leaves and boughs on which your eyes Could, as the eyes of shepherd, on his flock, That turn to the soft mass from barren rock, Familiarly dwell.”

“O Traveller, for me the empty sands Burning to white! There nothing on the wilderness withstands The soul or prayer. I would not look on trees; My thoughts and will were shaken in their breeze, And buried as by night.

“Yea, listen! If you build a cell, at last, Turned to the wood, Your fall is near, your safety over-past; And if you plant a tree beside your door Your fall is there beside it, and no more The solitude is frank and good.

“For trees must have soft dampness for their growth, And interfold Their boughs and leaves into a screen, not loath To hide soft, tempting creatures at their play, That, playing timbrels and bright shawms, delay, And wear one’s spirit old.

“Smoothly such numberless distractions come-- Impertinence Of multiplicity, salute and hum. Away with solitude of leafy shade, Mustering coy birds and beasts, and men waylaid, Tingling each hooded sense!

“Did not God call out of a covert-wood Adam and Eve, Where, cowering under earliest sin, they stood, The hugged green-leaves in bunches round their den? Himself God called them out--so lost are men Whom forest-haunts receive!”

PASCHAL’S MASS

The sheep still in dew, but the sky In sun, the far river in sun; And the incense of flowers steeped bright-- Their smell as sweet light; And the shepherd-boy tethered on high To his flock and his day’s work begun.

The bees in the wind of the dawn; The larks not yet climbing aloft As high as the Aragon Hills ... What bell-ringing thrills Through the bell-wether’s pastoral lorn? From the valley a bell clear and soft.

The shepherd-boy kneeling in dew; The bell of his wether rung sharp; Below him the tinkle and sway, From far, far away, Of the sacring-bell, clear as a harp In its chime of God lifted anew.

For his God, in the vale, on the height He weeps; while the morning-larks rise. Lo, in chasuble, living and rich Golden rays cross-stitch, Foreshown by magnificent light-- Lo, an angel grows firm on his eyes!

As an altar of marvellous stone Before him the mountain hath blazed, Round the angel, who lifts in the air A Sun that is there: To the sheep and the shepherd-boy shown, With the ringing of larks, God is raised.

O Angel-priest, fragrant with thyme, Girt with sixfold glorious wings! O sky of the mountains above Adventurous Love! How through air and the larks’ watchful chime Earth her incense, as thurifer, flings!

O Sacrament, shown to a boy, More blest than the Shepherds of old, He is thine for his lifetime, cast On his mountain vast, In his joy, his great freshness of joy From that high, singing daylight of gold!

A SNOW-CAVE

Suddenly the snow is falling fast: Slow the lovely speed, All the air being full with fulness cast On the mounded world ... And the firmamental snow will give no heed, Nor the snow terrestrial have a care For anything its heavy deluge hides, For anything upcurled In its mountain-hug, nor what abides Imprisoned deep of the imprisoning air.

Peter of Alcantara, how wide And untrodden quite Swells the sudden snow on every side, Speckled with no sign, One in uncontrollable and fearful white!

. . . .

Swiftly, as it came, its mood is changed ... Now it drifts a white flame of caress, As if it took design, Learnt a new art of its loveliness, And in a cave above the Saint is ranged.

Hour on hour the world is flooded bright With fair agency, In continuance a sleep, of might To lay death athwart Any bosom, any limbs that cannot flee: Yet safely housed the holy traveller waits, Though in that white storm caught; For the deep snow of earth its snow abates Before a force of deeper chastity.

Little flakes, that touch with feet like birds, Touch him not at all, But lie convex in a wave that curds, Bowed upon its vault, Stooping on him almost won to fall, Yet in strength withheld, whole in its love, As a virgin praying for a priest: So in its lovely halt, So aloof from sense, it rears above The saint its covert, not a flake released.

PROPHET

Blessed with joy, as daybreak under cloud-- Tender light of youth in the old face-- Blessed with joy beneath the weight and shroud Of the years before this day of Grace, Simeon blesses God and praises Him, As a little child and mother slim With first girlhood come their way Toward his face, and night becometh day.

Prophet, joy for thee and for thy land! Wide the welcome and the peace of joy! But he takes the infant on his hand, Graciously receives the milking boy From the mother’s bosom, from her heart, While she stands in reverence apart. Lo, the old man’s countenance, In a wave of anguish breaks from trance!

All the features lift with power, and sink, As if sudden earthquake heaved and rolled Through them, from a sudden thought they think. Can a child of but a few weeks old So confuse with terror an old man? Yea, this child, laid on his fingers’ span, Is for the ruin or the rise Of the generations, Simeon cries.

Yea, a child, a tender handful, sleek As a pearl--and the dire earthquake’s power In his little body set, to wreak Dread requital on the souls that cower Mad with desolation, naked, lost, Or uplifted wild from a dead host: For the rise and ruin set Of so many--but not yet, not yet!

Shattered by the Child, the Prophet turns To the slender Mother, bright and bowed. Woe again! A flawless lightning burns Through his eyes and his weak voice rings loud, How a sword shall pierce her heart alone That out of many hearts their thoughts be shown. Simeon, terror masks all joy In this Mother and her milking Boy!

LOOKING UPON JESUS AS HE WALKED

What is it thou hast seen, O desert prophet, hung with camel’s hair, and lean? What makes thine eyes so wide? Not the huge desert where the camel-owners ride; But One, who comes along, So humble in His steps, and yet to Him belong Thy days in their surcease, Because He must increase as thou must now decrease. Behold thy God, whose strength Is as the coiling-in of thy life’s length! Thou of wide eyes, wide soul, Thy heart-blood as He comes to thee heaves on its goal!

Saint of the sinner, John, Those whom thy lustral water hath been poured upon, Those who have kept thy fast With locusts and wild honey and long hours have passed In penance, when they see Christ coming toward them, young and fair with what shall be, And giving God delight, They know, by very doom of that remorseless sight, That they, as they have been, Will fade away, diminish and no more be seen: They must, O desert saint, Bow them to certain death and yet they must not faint, And yet they must proclaim The obliterating flourish of their Slayer’s name.

A DANCE OF DEATH

How lovely is a silver winter-day Of sturdy ice. That clogs the hidden river’s tiniest bay With diamond-stone of price To make an empress cast her dazzling stones Upon its light as hail-- So little its effulgency condones Her diamonds’ denser trail Of radiance on the air! How strange this ice, so motionless and still, Yet calling as with music to our feet, So that they chafe and dare Their swiftest motion to repeat These harmonies of challenge, sounds that fill The floor of ice, as the crystalline sphere Around the heavens is filled with such a song That, when they hear, The stars, each in their heaven, are drawn along!

Oh, see, a dancer! One whose feet Move on unshod with steel! She is not skating fleet On toe and heel, But only tip-toe dances in a whirl, A lovely dancing-girl, Upon the frozen surface of the stream. Without a wonder, it would seem, She could not keep her sway, The balance of her limbs Sure on the musical, iced river-way That, sparkling, dims Her trinkets as they swing, so high its sparks Tingle the sun and scatter song like larks.

She dances mid the sumptuous whiteness set Of winter’s sunniest noon; She dances as the sun-rays that forget In winter sunset falleth soon To sheer sunset: She dances with a languor through the frost As she had never lost, In lands where there is snow, The Orient’s immeasurable glow.

Who is this dancer white-- A creature slight, Weaving the East upon a stream of ice, That in a trice Might trip the dance and fling the dancer down? Does she not know deeps under ice can drown?

This is Salome, in a western land, An exile with Herodias, her mother, With Herod and Herodias: And she has sought the river’s icy mass, Companioned by no other, To dance upon the ice--each hand Held, as a snow-bird’s wings, In heavy poise. Ecstatic, with no noise, Athwart the ice her dream, her spell she flings; And Winter in a rapture of delight Flings up and down the spangles of her light.

Oh, hearken, hearken!... Ice and frost, From these cajoling motions freed, Have straight given heed To Will more firm. In their obedience Their masses dense Are riven as by a sword.... Where is the Vision by the snow adored? The Vision is no more Seen from the noontide shore. Oh, fearful crash of thunder from the stream, As there were thunder-clouds upon its wave! Could nothing save The dancer in the noontide beam? She is engulphed and all the dance is done. Bright leaps the noontide sun-- But stay, what leaps beneath it? A gold head, That twinkles with its jewels bright As water-drops.... O murdered Baptist of the severed head, Her head was caught and girded tight, And severed by the ice-brook sword, and sped In dance that never stops. It skims and hops Across the ice that rasped it. Smooth and gay, And void of care, It takes its sunny way: But underneath the golden hair, And underneath those jewel-sparks, Keen noontide marks A little face as grey as evening ice; Lips, open in a scream no soul may hear Eyes fixed as they beheld the silver plate That they at Macherontis once beheld; While the hair trails, although so fleet and nice The motion of the head as subjugate To its own law: yet in the face what fear, To what excess compelled!

Salome’s head is dancing on the bright And silver ice. O holy John, how still Was laid thy head upon the salver white, When thou hadst done God’s Will!

OBEDIENCE

O instrument of God, baptizing men In vehement, lone Jordan of the wilds, Amid the rushes, when Thou wert startled by the sight Of One coming, simply bright As a Lamb, across the sand, Thou didst tremble to abide In the shallows and to dash the tide Of the current on a Head That must bow beneath the sin of men! Thou wouldst only, at command, Keep thy awful station, grown more awful then.

But thou wert obedient to His word, Who was greater beyond words than thou, As thy lips averred: And, obedient, thou wert blest With the presence manifest Of the Holy Trinity-- Thou the Body of the Son Didst behold on which thy rite was done; Thou didst hear the Father’s Voice, As the firmament soft thunder heard; And thy senses, blest to hear and see, Might behold the Spirit poised, a sunlit Bird.

GARDENS ENCLOSED

Garden by the brook, The brook Kedron-- Olive-silvered nook, Red flowers to kneel on: There in blood and strife divine, There a Eucharist outspread, Christ gave the Father in a chalice Wine, And in His yielded Will He offered Bread.

Garden on the hill, Mount Golgotha, Have you a running rill From your rocky spur? “Yea, a water from His side, Who was hanging on a Tree: Son of Man, they called Him, and He died, And is hidden in my rock with me.”

GARDEN-SEED

What art Thou sowing in the garden-ground, Sowing, sowing with such pain? Clouds are overhead, and all around Spring hath fallen spring-rain Of seed-growing power. Lo, where Thou bowest down, it seems a shower Hath laid the grass, as rain ran through, Engendering rain, stronger than early dew.

It is Thy Agony that pierces deep Through the sod of that still place; For Thou bowest down where Thou dost weep, Bowest down Thy face; And Thou sowest seed, Drops of Thy most Holy Blood, that bleed Through brow and limbs in sweat, and stay Red on the Earth, while the tears sink away.

Sower, what herb shall spring, what flower be born? Will pomegranate-apples hang, When we pass this way, some morn? Struck with spring’s own pang, _This_ our eyes will see-- Faith that shoulders great buds lustily; Hope that shoots up a hundredfold; And Love in roses wondrous to behold.

UNIVERSA COHORS

They call the cohort from all sides together.... There is a king, a king of mockery, His kingdom a pretence, An actor to be dressed for all to see, Whose body oozes from the cords or leather That struck with lashes dense-- There is a king to mock, a make-believe To be derided, a poor form to grieve With haughty purple of the robe of state, And acclamations powerless to elate; A victim to be tortured and made grand With clothes whose pomp He cannot understand, Claiming with slavish brow their heritage: There is the mocking of a solemn dupe, With laughter and a jollity of rage. They call together, like the vultures called To feast on what is yet a feast forestalled, The cohort in a troop.

O Martyrs, press together from all regions, You have a King, a King for whom you died-- His kingdom built on gems-- And ye are dressed in purple from His side; The stoles of glory, clothing all your legion, His purple to their hems! Press round Him whom the Romans mocked that day, Press round Him, Martyrs; keep His foes at bay! And let me, though far off from your bright red Of vestures triumphing in Blood He shed, Yet wrap my heart in His deep sanguine robe, Ensanguined from the scourge, and nails that probe, And spear that cleaves! Wrapt in His Blood, O heart, We must bear witness that His purple dress Is not the dressing of an actor’s part, But of a Royalty no woof of man Might clothe that Day of Woe, nor ever can-- That is the Martyr’s dress.

IN EXTREMIS

What is the desert? Thirst, And very immolation’s loneliness! Upon that land of death dry ridges press, Like to sand-drifts on the tongue-- And the sequestered heart through fear will burst.

Armies have gone along, Defeated, to oblivion among The naught of those bare sands-- Banners and horses and bright-harnessed bands. None hath beheld the banners wave and slip Abyssward, and the horses, under whip Of crazy dust, plunge down With manes sand-tossed, Beneath the plain they crossed, Making athwart the breadth a little frown, Gone in its very moment, like the smile That followed, as the horsemen flashed awhile Above the grave, and sank bright, and were gone.

O desert, full of plots, On lapping water, of sleek palm-tree knots, And isles in haunted channels; cruel earth, Mirage of desolation, grace of dearth, Many have died in anguish at the pain Never to drink those lakes that gibe and wane! “I thirst”--“My God, Thou hast forsaken Me!” Parched, sinking in abysses mortally, O Christ, and there is none to succour Thee, Water of Life, perpetual Deity!

A LIGNO

There were trees that spring-- One on a little hill, One in a small, green field. One stood a leaf-stripped thing; One had begun to fill With leaves from shoots unsealed, With purple flowers along the wood-- So those trees stood.

One bore up a Form On the clean branches nailed, Ineffable in peace: One bent as if a storm In its descent had trailed Down the red blossom-fleece; And where the boughs most sullen hung A crisped form swung.

One the Tree of Life-- Both near Jerusalem-- And one of Death the Tree! One bore a bitter strife; A cry came from its stem: “Thou hast forsaken Me!” The other heard no sound at all, Save a dumb fall.

Both were gibbet-trees-- From one was said, “Forgive! They know not what they do.” One rocked in purple breeze Despair, that would not live, Nor trust forgiveness:--no! And from the wreathèd branches fell A soul to Hell.

ONE REED

Shaken by winds to sigh, to song, One reed amid the misty throng That to a reed-bed, Christ, belong-- One reed among Those who are reeds to every wind, Now in Thy Presence, now declined:

Cut me away from dim caprice, And sheer me from the reedy fleece! Let my poor, shivering motion cease, Dead of Thy peace: A reed and no more shaken--yea, No more a slant sedge-reed I pray!

No more! But, Mercy infinite, Let me not be a reed to smite The thorns within Thy forehead tight, And urge to sight Thy sacred Blood and urge Thy pain! Better the devious winds again!

Upon Thy lips let me but lay Such sour, dun vintage as I may; Push not the sponge-tipped spear away, But let it stay! Oh, let the bitter draught through me Bring to Thy Cross some lenity!

CRYING OUT

In the Orient heat He stands-- Heat that makes the palm-trees dim, Palms that do not shelter Him, As under the fierce blue He stands with outstretched hands.

As a lizard of the rocks, Under furnace-sun He stays; Earth beneath Him in a daze Is faint and trembling, spite of rocks, in shadeless blocks.

He among them mid the blue, With a mouth wide open held, As a lion-fountain welled Under the spaciousness of blue, the heat throbs through.

Wide His mouth as lion’s, set Wide for waters of a fount! Through them words of challenge mount, Great words that cry through them, wide-set, where men have met.

“Ye the thirsty come to Me!” So He cries with lion-roar: “Ye will thirst not any more. Come!” and He stands for all to see, and offers free.

Jesus, in the Eastern sun, A strange prophet with His cry! While the folk are passing by, And clack their tongues, nor will they run where thirst is done.

AD MORTEM

This sin is unto death. Whose death? Fair tomb Of virgin rock, not for my corse such room! Where never man hath lain Shall I by sin attain-- Among the unpolluted crystals lie In my malignity?

For I have killed my God, and I behold His burial, behold His Body rolled In a new sheet with nard, And in the grotto hard Lying as hard--O tenderest Love!--as block Of that new-cloven rock.

As a vile, wandering spectre I must stray, Now I have quenched the Light, that was my Day, By wickedness, almost Against the Holy Ghost, Laying within His tomb God, laying Him Wound tight in face and limb.

I cannot see! My eyes are wells that beat Fountains of tears forth on my hands and feet: With fire of pain I cry, That angels of the sky Come forth.... “My God, arise and live once more! My sin I will abhor!