Part 3

‘Why, see! this diadem’s pleasure a Turk might sigh to inherit,-- Heart-beats thrumming; a torpid and solitary cheer; No call to arms, no measure of progress! Well, let him wear it Unquestioned ... I spurned the bauble when I killed your snake last year.’

MOUSTACHE.

A FRIENDLESS pup that heard the fife Sprang to the column thro’ the clearing, And on to Switzerland and strife Went grenadiering.

Much he endured, and much he dared The long hot doomsday of the nations: He wore a trooper’s scars; he shared A trooper’s rations;

Warned pickets, seized the Austrian spies, Bore the despatches; thro’ the forces From fallen riders, prompt and wise, Led back the horses;

Served round the tents or in the van, Quick-witted, tireless as a treadle: ‘This private wins,’ said Marshal Lannes, ‘Ribbon and medal.’

(‘Moustache, a brave French dog,’ it lay Graven on silver, like a scholar’s; ‘Who lost a leg on Jena day, But saved the colors!’)

At Saragossa he was slain; They buried him, and fired a volley: End of Moustache. Nay, that were strain Too melancholy.

His immortality was won, His most of rapture came to bless him, When, plumed and proud, Napoleon Stooped to caress him.

His Emperor’s hand upon his head! How, since, shall lesser honors suit him? Yet ever, in that army’s stead, Love will salute him.

And since not every cause enrolls Such little, fond, sagacious henchmen, Write this dog’s moral on your scrolls, Soldiers and Frenchmen!

As law is law, can be no waste Of faithfulness, of worth and beauty; Lord of all time the slave is placed Who doth his duty.

No virtue fades to thin romance But Heaven to use eternal moulds it: Mark! Some firm pillar of new France, Moustache upholds it.

RANIERI.

TO the lute Ranieri played, Once beneath the jasmine shade In a June-bright bower imprisoned, Many a Pisan beauty listened, Velvet-eyed, with head propped under Her gold hair’s uncoifed wonder; Like the rich sun-blooded roses Whom the wind o’ertakes in poses Of some marble-still delight, On the dewy verge of night.

‘Merrily and loud sang he, With the fairest at his knee, Sky-ringed in that garden nest! Who, save sorcerers, had guessed Whither sylph and minstrel came From the awful Archer’s aim? Or that, glossy-pined below, Lay the city in her woe, For her sins, as it was written, Desolate and fever-smitten?

‘Apt Ranieri was, and young, Love’s persuasion on his tongue; And his high-erected glance, Softened into dalliance, Laughed along its haughty level: Foremost in all skill and revel, Steeled against the laws that seemed Monkish figments idly dreamed, Early dipping his wild wing In the pools of rioting, With the moaning world shut out, With the damosels about; Crimson-girdled, in the sun Regnant, as if he were one For whom Death himself was mute;-- So he sat, and twanged his lute.’ (Placid, in her novice veil, Sister Claudia told the tale.)

‘When, across the air of June, Like a mist half-risen at noon, Or a fragrance barely noted, A Judæan Vision floated! Who, midway of music’s burst, Pleadingly, as if athirst, Long athirst, and long unsated, Sighed: “Ranieri!” sighed and waited.

‘Ah, the Prodigal that heard Fell to ashes at the word! But with broken murmurings Putting by the wreathèd strings,-- From the safe and craven places, From the fond, bewildered faces, Trembling with the rush of thought, With contrition overwrought, At a royal gesture, down Straight to the dismantled town; Girt with justice, chaste and tender, To all risks himself to render, Of all sorrows rude and froward To be prop and cure henceforward; By no lapse of irksome duty Swerving from the Only Beauty, By no olden lure enticed;-- Saint Ranieri followed Christ!’ (Said the little nun: ‘Amen: Christ who calleth, now as then.’)

SAINT CADOC’S BELL.

I.

SAILOR! with wonder thou hearest me, Moored where the roots of thine anchors be, Tolling and wailing, bursting and failing, afar in the heart of the sea.

A bell was I of Pagan lands Forged and welded in might and beauty, But captured by Christian chivalry, And set in a belfry by godly hands, With chrisms and benedictions three, For a fourfold consecrated duty: To summon to pray, to peal for the fray, To measure the hours, to moan for the dead; To moan for the dead, ah me! ah me! Where the wild gold parasites suck and spread, Where the sea-flower rears her dreamy head; In the grots of immortality The cool weird singing mermaids dwell in; In the still city, with its empurpled air Shaken upon the eye from bastions fair Of coral, and pearl, and unbought jasper’s glisten, I toll and wail, I burst and fail, ah, listen! I, the holy bell, the gift of the Lord Llewellyn, Now the keel of a Cornish ship looms over my prison, Call from the underworld in mine old despair.

II.

They brought me in my virgin fame To the carven minster wonder-high, Close to the glorious sun and sky, With song, and jubilee, and acclaim: The fountains brimming with wine sprayed out on the crowd; In the chapel-porches the viols and harps clanged loud, And the slim maids danced a solemn measure, ever and aye the same, Singing: ‘Behold, we hang our bell in The freedom of spring, in the golden weather, The gift of the Lord Llewellyn, Redeemed from heathenry and strange shame, The lion-strong bell, for our service at last led hither, Flower-woven, caressed, and in Christ made willing and tame.’ But ere the pleased stir of the people had died, Llewellyn, fresh home from the wars, with his soldierly stride Climbed, bearded and splendid in mail, and his only young child Held up from his shoulder in sight of them all; till they cried Peal on peal of delight when the rosy babe turned, and her lip Laid sweetly upon me in benison mild. Yea, sailor! and thou that hearest my voice from thy ship, Thou knowest my sorrow’s beginning, thou knowest, ah me! Whence my tolling and wailing, my breaking and failing, afar in the heart of the sea.

III.

I served the Lord ten years and a day, In Saint Cadoc’s church by the surging bay; And housed with the gathering webs and must, ’Mid whirring of velvety wings outside, In calm and in wind, brooding over the tide, And the bright massed roofs, and the crags’ array, My strong life, innocent and just, Fell of a sudden to ashes and dust, And on my neck hotly the demon laid the bare rod of his sway!

How it befell, I know not yet, (Sailor, with wonder thou hearest me), Save that a passionate sharp regret, An exile’s longing, o’ermastered not, Seared thought like a pestilential spot, And sent my day-dreams traitorously Back to the place where my life began, To the long blue mornings, blown and wet, To the pyre by the sacred rivulet, And the chanting Cappadocian. No more a Christian bell was I! For all became, which seemed so good, Vile thraldom, in my bitter mood That thrust the old conformance by. Sullen and harsh, to the acolyte I answered of a Sabbath night, And sprang on the organ’s withdrawing peal To shatter its pomp, like a charge of steel. The good monks puzzled and prayed, I trow: But against their Heaven I set my brow.

IV.

To me, by the ancient, triple-roped, Lone, tortuous stair, whereby I made A tingling silence, a heavy concentric shade, The twelve-years’ child of the Lord Llewellyn groped: With May-wreaths laden, the loving strange child came! And my pulses that throbbed at sight of her, ten years gone, Chilled and recoiled at her delicate finger-touch, guessing Along my brazen-wrought margin, the laud and the blessing Traced, thro’ the vine, thro’ the tangle of star and of sun, By her dead father’s name, by Llewellyn’s magnificent name. And even as she stood in the dark, the doom and the horror rushed on me; (I had weakened my soul, and they won me!) I felt the desire at my vitals, the unbearable joy that is pain: With one mad tigerish spring against the dim rafter, I smote the sweet child in my rage, I smote her with laughter, And a sound like the rain Whirled east on the casement, died after: And I knew that the life in her brain I had quenched at the stroke, and flung even my darling of yore Down the resonant, tottering stair, down, down to the centuried door! Then the swift hurricane, The clamoring army thronged up from below, my allegiance to claim! Lean goblins, brown-flecked like a toad, the gnomic horned ghosts, Imps flickering, quarry-sprites grim, all the din of the dolorous hosts, All the glory and glee of the cursèd hissed round me and round, as a flame. And they loosened my hold from the tower, and my hope from the hem Of the garment of Him who could save, as they jeered! and with speed Crashed down past the rocks and the wrecks; and the horrible deed Was done. I was theirs; and I gave up my spirit to them.

V.

In a mossy minaret Fathoms under, I am set. All the sea-shapes undulating At my gates forlorn are waiting, All the dreary faint-eyed people Watch me in my hollow steeple, While the glass-clear city heaves Oft beneath its earthy eaves. So in sorrow, sorrow, sorrow Yestereven and to-morrow, Thro’ the æons, in a cell Hangs Saint Cadoc’s loveless bell, Orbèd, like a mortal’s tear, On the moony atmosphere, Bearing, the refrain of time, Memory, and unrest, and crime. Thou that hast the world sublime! I that was free, I am lost, I am damned, I am here! And whenever a child among men by a blow is dead, Docile for aye from the deeps must I lift my head, And from the heathen heart of me that breaks, The unextinguishable music wakes, Naught availing, naught deterred. And the sailor heareth me, Even as thou, alas! hast heard, Fallen in awe upon thy knee, Tolling and wailing, bursting and failing, afar in the ominous sea.

A CHOUAN.

FROM the school-porch at Vannes Weaponed, the children ran; One little voice began, Lark-like ascended:

‘Treason is on the wing, Black vows, and menacing: March, boys! God save the King!’ Allio ended.

Singing, with sunny head, Battleward straight he led, Stones for his captain’s bed, Herbs for his diet:

He and his legion brave, Trouble enough they gave! Ere the Blues’ bullets drave Them into quiet.

Spared, with a few as bold, Once the storm over-rolled, Allio, twelve years old, Crept from the clamor;

Came, when the days were brief, To the old desk in grief, Thumbing anew the leaf Of the old grammar.

Kings out!... rang the chime, Kings in!... answered Time. In his ignoring clime, Silent, he studied;

Till, ere his youth was done, For him, the chosen one, Shepherd disclaimed of none, Aaron’s rod budded.

Long, in unbroken round, Peace on his paths he found; Saw the glad Breton ground Husbanded, quarried:

Blessed it, the record saith, All the years he had breath, Till the dim eightieth Snowed on his forehead.

President!... Emperor!... President!... On the floor Spake a sharp Senator Widening his ranges:

‘From Paris I impeach Vannes for disloyal speech; Send thither troops to teach, How the world changes!’

Down on the peasants then Rode the Republic’s men, Trampling the corn again, Miring the flowers;

Hewed thro’ the rebels nigh, Scoffed at the women’s cry, Set the tricolor high On the church towers.

Pale in his cot that day, Dying, the pastor lay, Where still his eye could stray Up valleys gleaming;

Watchers were at his side; Prayer unto prayer replied: Hush! what was that he spied, Pinnacle-streaming?

(Nothing was he aware In his deaf Breton air,-- So gray traditions there Throve unforgotten,--

That, by a final chance, Kings all were led a dance; Long since, in fickle France, Sceptres were rotten!)

Sprang the old lion, still Live with prodigious will, To his stone casement-sill; Foolish and true one!

Snatched up the blade he bore, Rough with its rust of yore, Kissed it, a saint no more-- Only a Chouan!

Barred from the charging mass In the choked market-pass, All he could do, alas! Now, was to clang it:

Nay, more:--‘God save the King!’ With a last clarion ring, Shot ere he ceased to sing, Allio sang it.

LYRICS

YOUTH.

LET us hymn thee for our silent brothers, Freely as the wild impellent wind blows, Briefly, rudely, in the smoky pauses Of a battle, in the stress and scourging Of the sail apast thy heavenly margin; Let us hymn thee, while the gallant pulses In high heart and limbs one kingliest instant, Boom and flash thy name and their allegiance; ‘Once, and for one only,’ let us hymn thee, O Delight, O Sunrise, O sole Answer, Empery unbought, supreme Adventure, Youth, ah, Youth! all men’s desire and sorrow.

Let us hymn thee, we, the passing, dying, Out of bondage by a vision lifted, Since by chance sublime, in secret places, Goddess! we, Aktaion-like, have seen thee. Tho’ our voice as a spent eagle’s voice is, Let us hymn thee, while the doom is forging; Holding, losing, thro’ one first last moment, One mad moment worth dull life forever, Triumphing in anguish, let us hymn thee! Thine, beholden Beauty, thine this heart-break, Thine, O Hope forsworn! this salutation, Youth, ah, Youth! all men’s desire and sorrow.

THE LAST FAUN.

HOW hath he stumbled hither, in search of love and praise, A tardy comer and goer across the world’s highways, A kind shape from the thicket, a wanderer all his days?

He finds a rocky seat where the moiling town recedes: The altered shepherds flout him; but O he little heeds! Incredulous he swings there, and drones upon his reeds.

He stamps his cloven heel, and he laughs adown the wind, With eye that wanes and waxes at doings of mankind. Slow, slow creeps the invader upon that happy mind.

The apple breasts his fellow; doves wheel by two and three, And ever dance in circle the shallops on the sea; The goats and deer are many; but playmate none hath he, Nor nymph nor child to follow upon his signals rude; He smiles: there is no frolic; he snarls: there is no feud. He feels his poor heart sinking at every interlude.

His shaggy ear and freakish resents the wail and din; Earth’s rumors chill his veins with their ghostly gliding in; He aches to slip these tethers, and be where he hath been.

Elsewhere is waking glory, and here the dream, the thrall. Hush! hear the sunless waters, the wrestling leaves that call! He lops the grass, and whistles; and while he cheats them all,

Obeys, is gone, gone wholly. From alien air too cold, The Faun, with garlands flying, with sylvan ditties trolled, Being homesick, being patient, regains his greenwood old.

KNIGHTS OF WEATHER.

WHEN down the filmy lanes The too wise sun goes grieving, A wake of splendor leaving Upbillowed from the ground; When at the window-panes The hooded chestnuts rattle, And there is clash of battle New England’s oaks around: Oh, then we knights of weather, We birds of sober feather, Fill up the woods with revel That summer’s pomp is slain; And make a mighty shouting For King October’s outing, The Saracen October Astride the hurricane!

When dappled butterflies Have crept away to cover, And one persistent plover Is coaxing from the fen; When apples show the skies Their bubbly lush vermilion, And from a rent pavilion Laugh down on maids and men: Oh, then we knights of weather, We birds of sober feather, Fill up the woods with revel That summer’s pomp is slain; And make a mighty shouting For King October’s outing, The Saracen October Astride the hurricane!

When pricks the winy air; When o’er the meadows clamber Cloud-masonries of amber; When brooks are silver-clear; When conquering colors dare The hills and cliffy places, To hold, with braggart graces, High wassail of the year: Oh, then we knights of weather, We birds of sober feather, Fill up the woods with revel That summer’s pomp is slain; And make a mighty shouting For King October’s outing, The Saracen October Astride the hurricane!

DAYBREAK.

THE young sun rides the mists anew; his cohorts follow from the sea. Let Aztec children shout and sue, the Persian lend a thankful knee: Those glad auroral eyes shall beam not anywhere henceforth on me.

Up with the banners on the height, set every matin bell astir! The tree-top choirs carouse in light; the dew’s on phlox and lavender: Ah, mockery! for, worlds away, the heart of morning beats with her.

ON SOME OLD-MUSIC.

TO lie beside a stream, upon the sod At ease, while weary shepherds homeward plod, And feel benignly by, as daylight mellows, The mountains in their weathering period; Aye so, with silence shod To lie in depth of grass with man’s meek fellows, The cattle large and calm, aware of God,

And, keen as if to flesh the spirit sprang, To hear,--O but to hear that silvern clang Of young hale melody! and hither rally The thrill, the aspiration, and the pang Again, as once it rang Sovereign and clear thro’ all the Saco valley, Whose slaves were we that heard, and he that sang!

Happy the spot, the hour, the spanning strain Precious and far, the rainbow of the rain, The seal of patience, dark endeavor’s summing, The heaven-bright close of Pergolese’s pain! Sighs bid it back in vain, Nor win its peer, till craftsmen aftercoming Lost art, lost heart, from shipwrecked years regain.

How, like an angel, it effaced the crime, The moil and heat of our tempestuous time, And brought from dewier air, to us who waited, The breath of peace, the healing breath sublime! As falls, at midnight’s chime To an old pilgrim, plodding on belated, The thought of Love’s remote sunshining prime.

There flits upon the wind’s wing, as we gaze, Our northern springtime, virgin-green three days; The racy water shallowing, the glory Of jonquils strewn, the wafted apple-sprays: O let it be thy praise, Child-song too lovely and too transitory! Thou art as they; thy feet have gone their ways.

O beauty unassailable! O bride Of memory! while yet thou didst abide The yester joy was ours, the joy to-morrow, Life’s brimming whole: and since to earth denied, Soft ebbed thy dreamy tide, To us the first, the full, the only sorrow, Wild as when Abel out of Eden died.

LATE PEACE.

AS a pool beset with lilies In the May-green copses hid, Far from wayfarers and wrongers, Clangors, rumors, disillusions, Neighbored by the wild-grape only, By the hemlock’s dreamy host, By the Rhodian nightingale, O remote, remote, O lonely!-- So thy life is.

Whence and wherefore is it Never peace may be co-dweller With my lakelet Too belovèd and too sheltered, That, secure from broil of cities, From a secret regnant spring To its own wild depth awaking, Makes but moaning and resistance, Undiminishable protest; Mimicking with pain and fury Of humanity the struggle; Fretting, foaming, pacing ever Round and round its fragrant cloister, All within itself perplexèd, Every heart-vein bruised but eager; And its clear soul, doubt-o’erladen, ’Neath the stirred and floating foulness, Long abased, long dumb, ah! long?-- So thy life is.

Comes the respite, comes the guerdon; The perfect truce arrives In the honey-dropping twilight, The southwestering pallid sunshine, The magian clouds a-fire, The mooring galleon-wind: At whose spell, Potent daily, The lulled water is beguiled Back to saneness, back to sweetness. All its arrowy hissing atoms Gather from the chase forsaken; The sphered galaxy of bubbles, Fragments, motes, the lees unrestful, Disunite, as to heard music, Like weird dancers, from their wreathings Each to its cool grotto swaying; Till there follows, on their fervor, Depth, and crystal clarity. So thy life is, so thy life! Darkling to beatitude, Shaken in the saving change. And the spirit made wise, not weary By the throes that youth endureth, When old age falls, evening-placid, On the mystery unriddled, Yet in empire, yet in honor, In submission not ignoble, Glistens to a central quiet, Leal to the most lovely moon.

TO A YOUNG POET.

SIGH not to be remembered, dear, Nor for Time’s fickle graces strive; Vex not thy spirit’s songful cheer With the sick ardor to survive.

But be content, thou quick bright thing A while than lasting stars more fair: A lone high-flashing skylark’s wing Across obliterating air.

O rich in immortality! Not thee Fame’s graven stones benight; But ever, to some world-worn eye, All Heaven is bluer for thy flight.

DE MORTUIS.

THE skilfullest of mankind! So praise him, reckoning By shot in the sea-gull’s wing, By doubts in boyhood’s mind.

DOWN STREAM.

SCARRED hemlock roots, Oaks in mail, and willow-shoots Spring’s first-knighted; Clinging aspens grouped between, Slender, misty-green, Faintly affrighted:

Far hills behind, Sombre growth, with sunlight lined, On their edges; Banks hemmed in with maiden-hair, And the straight and fair Phalanx of sedges:

Wee wings and eyes, Wild blue gemmy dragon-flies, Fearless rangers; Drowsy turtles in a tribe Diving, with a gibe Muttered at strangers;

Wren, bobolink, Robin, at the grassy brink; Great frogs jesting; And the beetle, for no grief Half-across his leaf Sighing and resting;

In the keel’s way, Unwithdrawing bream at play, Till from branches Chestnut-blossoms, loosed aloft, Graze them with their soft Full avalanches!

This is very odd! Boldly sings the river-god: ‘Pilgrim rowing! From the Hyperborean air Wherefore, and O where Should man be going?’

Slave to a dream, Me no urgings and no theme Can embolden; Now no more the oars swing back, Drip, dip, till black Waters froth golden.

Musketaquid! I have loved thee, all unbid, Earliest, longest; Thou hast taught me thine own thrift: Here I sit, and drift Where the wind’s strongest.