Part 17

This Octave illustrates also what may be made as a general statement regarding its companions in the volume, that while the glamour may not rest equally upon the poems, they do not lack charm and distinction even in their less creative touches; and there are few in which there does not lurk some surprise in the way of picturesque phrasing.

In the ordering of his cadences Mr. Upson shows a musician’s sense of rhythm; note, for example, how the transposition in the following lines enhances their melody and conveys in the initial one the sense of a river flowing:

It was the lip of murmuring Thames along When new lights sought the wood all strangely fair, Such quiet lights as saints transfigured wear In minster windows crept the glades among. And far as from some hazy hill, yet strong, Methought an upland shepherd piped it there, Waking a silvern echo from her lair: “Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song!”

Mr. Upson not only obeys by artist instinct the laws of counterpoint, but employs the word with the music in it, and his effects are achieved by the innate harmony of his diction and the poetry in the theme he is shaping. Take as an illustration of this his Octave upon the “Roman Glassware Preserved in the Ashmolean.” Doubtless those fragments of crystal, sheathed, by centuries in the earth, in a translucent film through which shine tints of mother-of-pearl, have met the eyes of many of us, but it needed a poet to deduce from them this illustration:

Fair crystal cups are dug from earth’s old crust, Shattered but lovely, for, at price of all Their shameful exile from the banquet-hall, They have been bargaining beauties from the dust. So, dig my life but deep enough, you must Find broken friendships round its inner wall— Which once my careless hand let slip and fall— Brave with faint memories, rich in rainbow-rust!

One notes in Mr. Upson’s work a restraint that is the apogee of good taste. He conveys the mood, whether of love or other emotion, and makes his feeling another’s, but the veil of the temple is never wholly rent; one may but divine the ministries and sacrifices of its altar. He is an idealist, not yet come to the place of disillusion; though wandering at times near to the border of that chilly realm, he wraps his seamless robe of dreams more closely about him and turns back. Mr. Upson is not, however, an unthinking singer to whom all is cheer because he has not the insight to enter into those phases of life that have not yet touched him; on the contrary, his note is not a blithe one, it is meditative, inclining to the philosophical, and tinctured with a certain pensiveness.

Now and again the cosmos thrusts forward a suggestion which becomes the motive of one of the Octaves, as when the garden breeze loosens from the chink a

… measure of earth To match my body’s dust when its rebirth To sod restores old functions I forsook,—

which, in turn, induces a reflection upon the microcosm:

Strange that a sod for just a thrill or two Should ever be seduced into the round Of change in which its present state is found In this my form! forsake its quiet, true And fruitfullest retirement, to go through The heat, the strain, the languor and the wound! Forget soft rain to hear the stormier sound,— Exchange for burning tears its peaceful dew!

Again one has the applied illustration both of the pains and requitals that cling about the sod in its “strange estate of flesh,” in these lines declaring that

Some dust of Eden eddies round us yet. Some clay o’ the Garden, clinging in the breast, Down near the heart yet bides unmanifest. Last eve in gardens strange to me I let The path lead far; and lo, my vision met Old forfeit hopes. I, as on homeward quest, By recognizing trees was bidden rest, And pitying leaves looked down and sighed, “Forget!”

Mr. Upson has one of his characteristic touches in the words “old forfeit hopes,” pictured as starting suddenly before one in the new path that has beguiled him. In looking over the Octaves, which embrace a variety of themes, one doubts if his selections have adequately represented the finely textured lines, pure and individual diction, and the ripe and mellow flavor of it all.

Mr. Upson’s work has had its meed of recognition abroad: his first volume, _Westwind Songs_, contained a warmly appreciative introduction by “Carmen Sylva,” the poet-queen of Roumania, and his drama, _The City_, just issued in Edinburgh, is introduced by Count Lützow of the University of Prague, a well-known scholar and authority upon Bohemian literature. Taking a backward glance at the first volume before looking at _The City_, one finds few of the ear-marks of a first collection of poetry, which it must become the subsequent effort of the writer to live down.

The lines “When We Said Good-Bye” are among the truest in feeling, though almost too intimate to quote; and this sympathetic lyric, entitled “Old Gardens,” has a delicate grace:

The white rose tree that spent its musk For lovers’ sweeter praise, The stately walks we sought at dusk, Have missed thee many days.

Again, with once-familiar feet, I tread the old parterre— But, ah, its bloom is now less sweet Than when thy face was there.

I hear the birds of evening call; I take the wild perfume; I pluck a rose—to let it fall And perish in the gloom.

_Westwind Songs_, however, waft other thoughts than those of love. There is a heavier freight in this “Thought of Stevenson”:

High and alone I stood on Calton Hill Above the scene that was so dear to him Whose exile dreams of it made exile dim. October wooed the folded valleys till In mist they blurred, even as our eyes upfill Under a too sweet memory; spires did swim, And gables rust-red, on the gray sea’s brim— But on these heights the air was soft and still. Yet not all still: an alien breeze did turn Here as from bournes in aromatic seas, As round old shrines a new-freed soul might yearn With incense to his earthly memories. And then this thought: Mist, exile, searching pain, But the brave soul is free, is home again!

How fine is the imaginative thought of October wooing the valleys till they blurred with mist, as one’s “eyes upfill under a too sweet memory,” and still finer the touch of the “alien breeze” turning

Here as from bournes in aromatic seas.

So one might imagine the journeying winds blowing hither from Vaea, and the intensely human soul of Stevenson yearning to the vital sympathies of earth.

Mr. Upson has recently published in Edinburgh and America a poem-drama entitled _The City_, and containing, as previously mentioned, a scholarly introduction by Count Lützow of the Bohemian University of Prague, who points out the historical and traditional sources of the story.

The drama is embraced in one act, and covers a period of but one day, from dawn to dusk; nevertheless, it is not wanting in incident, since its operative causes reach their culmination in this period. The “conditions precedent” of the plot, briefly summarized, show that Abgar, King of Edessa, has married Cleonis, an Athenian, whose foster-sister, Stilbe, having been an earlier favorite of the king, is actuated by jealousy of the pair, and although dwelling as an inmate of the royal household, plots with her lover, Belarion, against the government of the king, ill at his palace outside the city and awaiting the arrival of Jesus to heal him of his disease.

The subjects of Abgar have rebelled not only at his protracted absence from the city, in dalliance, as they deem it, with the Athenian queen, but because of measures of reform instituted by him which had done despite to their ancient idolatries and desecrated certain shrines in the public improvements of the city.

Not only had the king progressed beyond his day in the material advancement of his realm, but his eager, swiftly conceiving mind had imaged a spiritual ideal even more vital; and at the opening of the drama he awaits the coming of the Nazarene to heal him, that he may devote himself to the development of his people.

The scene opens at the dawn in the portico of the palace, where the queen’s women, attired in white pepli, have spent the night singing soft music to the accompaniment of the lyre to charm the fevered sleep of the king. They are dismissed by Agamede, cousin of the queen, who detains Stilbe to learn the cause of her discontent. Sufficient is revealed to indicate that Belarion, the betrothed of Stilbe, whom the oracle has declared a man of promise, is plotting against the life of the king, aided in this design by Stilbe, who has been summoned almost from the marriage altar to attend the queen.

The second scene takes place four hours later, in the palace garden, and pictures the return of the messenger and his attendants sent to conduct Jesus to Edessa. The opening dialogue occurs between Ananias, the returned messenger, and the old and learned doctor of the court, who details with elaborate minuteness the ministries of his skill since the departure of the former to Jerusalem. While this dialogue is characteristic, well phrased, and indirectly humorous, it is a dramatic mistake to introduce it at such length, retarding the action, which should be focused sharply upon the essential motive of the scene,—the conveying to the queen the message of the Nazarene and the incidents of his refusal. The literary quality of the dialogue between the queen and Ananias has much beauty, being memorable for the picture it conveys of Jesus among his disciples at Bethany, “a hamlet up an olive-sprinkled hill,” where, guided by Philip, the Galilean, the messenger found him. The description of the personality and manner of Christ is a subtle piece of portraiture. To the question of Cleonis,—

Tell me of his appearance. What said he?

Ananias replies:

He had prepared this scroll and gave it me With courteous words, yet, as I after thought, Most singularly free from deference For one who ranks with artisans. His look Betrayed no satisfaction with our suit; Yet did he emanate a grave respect Which seemed habitual, much as Stoics use, Yet kinder; and his bearing had more grace Than any Jew’s I ever saw before. As for his words, I own I scarce recall them, And have been wondering ever since that I, Bred at a Court and tutored to brave deeds, Should be so sudden silenced. For I stood Obedient to unknown authorities Which spake in eye and tone and every move, In that his first mild answer of refusal.

Ere the departure of the king’s embassy from Jerusalem, the tragic drama of the crucifixion had been enacted and in part witnessed by them, which Ananias also describes with graphic force; in it appears an adaptation of the Veronica story. The lines well convey the picture:

As the way widened past the high-walled house Of Berenis, the throng thinned, and I saw Plainer the moving figure of the man And the huge beam laid on him. Suddenly From the great gate I saw a form dart forth Straight towards him, pause, and seem to have some speech With the condemned, as, by old privilege, Sometimes the pious ladies do with those Who tread the shameful road. Her speech was brief. She turned, and, as I saw ’twas Berenis, Towards me she came, and her eyes, wet with tears, Smiled sadly, and she said these final words:

“Such shame a mighty purpose led him to, Yet he shrinks not, but steadfast to this end Inevitable hath he come his way. A woman of my house was healed of him By kissing once the border of his garment. Take your King this, and say that as he dragged His cruel but chosen cross to his own doom Some comfort in its cooling web he found, And left a blessing in its pungent folds.”

In the third scene of the drama, occurring in the afternoon, Abgar is informed of the Healer’s refusal to accede to his request, but in the presence of the queen and the attendants assembled in the royal garden, the letter of the Nazarene, promising healing and peace, is read to him by the returned envoy, and at length the linen, received from the hand of Berenis, and upon whose folds the healing power of Christ had been invoked, is given into the keeping of Abgar, through whose veins, as by the visible touch of the divine hand, the current of new life throbs and courses. The moment is fraught with intense reality, which Mr. Upson has kept as much as possible to such effects as transcend words. Just previous to the vital transformation Abgar has said:

I have not yet resolved the Healer’s words Into clear meaning; but their crystal soon In the still cup of contemplation may Give up its precious drug to heal our cares,—

but the supreme end was not wrought by contemplation, nor could its processes be resolved by analysis, or other words be found to proclaim it than the simple but thrilling exclamation:

I feel it now! All through these withered veins I feel it bound and glow! O life, life, life!

From this period the incidents of the drama develop with all the tensity of action which previous to this scene it has lacked, giving to the close a certain sense of crowding when compared with the slow movement of the previous scenes consisting chiefly of recital, well told, but with little to enact, making the work to this point rather a graphically related story than a drama. The incidents which come on apace in the latter part of the play have, to be sure, been foreshadowed in the earlier part, but one is scarcely prepared for the swift succession of events, nor for their bloody character after the sabbatical mood into which the earlier scenes of the work have thrown him. If the drama covered a longer period, giving time between scenes for the development of events, even though such development were but suggested by a statement of dates, the impression of undue haste in the climax would be obviated; but in the interval of one day, even though all events leading to the issue have been working silently for months or years, their culmination seems to come without due preparation to the reader’s mind, and one is swept off his feet by consummations with whose causes he had scarcely reckoned.

Immediately following the healing of Abgar, the queen’s cousin, Agamede, enters breathless and announces to the king the plot on foot to overthrow him, which inspires the king with a resolve to set forth at once to the city. Upon the attempt of the queen to deter him, Abgar relates a prophetic dream of his city and its destiny through him, which is one of the finest conceptions, both in spiritual import and elevation of phrase, contained in the drama. The dream is related as having appeared to the king in three distinct visions, glimpsing his city in its past, present, and future. It is too long to follow in detail, but this glimpse is from the vision of the past, where

Through that wreck of fortress, mart and fane And fallen mausoleum crowded o’er With characters forevermore unread, Only the wind’s soft hands went up and down Scattering the obliterative sands. I, led in trance by shapes invisible, Approached a temple’s splendid architrave Half sunk in sod betwixt its columns’ bases, And there by sudden divination read The deep-cut legend of that awful gate:

APPEASE WITH SACRIFICE THE UNKNOWN POWERS.

The next vision is of the city in its present state, “builded on like dust,” but teeming with activity and material purpose, through which a glimmering ideal begins to dawn:

They toiled, or played, or fought, or sued the gods, Absorbed each in his own peculiar lust, As if there were no morrow watching them; Yet each was happier in the morrow-dream Than ever in all achievéd yesterdays.

Then is revealed to the mind of Abgar the high commission intrusted to him:

And as I looked, I saw a man who long In upward meditation on his roof Sat all alone, communing with his soul, And he arose, and presently went down, Down in the long black streets among his kind, And there with patience taught them steadfastly; But, for the restless souls he made in them, They turned and slew him and went on their ways, And a great fog crept up and covered all.

Here surely is keen spiritual psychology, that “for the restless souls he made in them” they slew him. All martyrdoms are traced to their source in this line, which holds also the suggestive truth as to the final acceptance of that for which the prophet dies. Once having planted the seed whose stirring makes the “restless soul,” its growth is committed to the Law, and can no more be prevented than the shining of the sun or the flowing of the tides. Abgar was granted a third vision, of the city in its embodied ideal; its ultimate beauty and achievement were given definite shape before him, and the recital ends with the triumphal note:

Fear not for me: I go unto the city!

The last scene is enacted an hour later in the garden lighted only by the moon, and opens with the lyric sung by Agamede to the blossoming oleander-tree ’neath which her child lies buried. These are lines of a pathos as delicate and spiritual as the moonlight, the fragrance, the memory inspiring them:

Grow, grow, thou little tree, His body at the roots of thee; Since last year’s loveliness in death The living beauty nourisheth.

Bloom, bloom, thou little tree, Thy roots around the heart of me; Thou canst not blow too white and fair From all the sweetness hidden there.

Die, die, thou little tree, And be as all sweet things must be; Deep where thy petals drift I, too, Would rest the changing seasons through.

Then follows a dialogue of warmly emotional feeling between the king and queen, in the interval of waiting for the chariot and attendants to be brought to the gate. All the physical side of the healing of Abgar has now been resolved into its spiritual meaning, and he reinterprets the words of the Nazarene’s message that of his infirmity he shall know full cure and those most dear to him have peace; but while Abgar speaks of his changed ideal, looking now to a “city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God,” a clamor is heard at the gate, and the body-slave rushes to the king with the tidings that armed troops approach the palace, and begs him to flee in the waiting chariot. Spurning thought of escape, the king and queen mount the dais and stand calmly watching in the moonlight the heroic spectacle of the approaching army. At this moment the queen’s women rush into the garden, demanding flight; the conflict begins along the wall; the gate bursts open, and Ananias retreats to the garden, wounded, and shortly dies. A brief interval of quiet, but full of portent, succeeds, when Stilbe, who had plotted with the king’s enemies, rushes through the gate, pursued by the soldiers and bleeding from wounds of their sabres. She is shot, apparently by the hand of her former lover, Belarion, and falls dead at the king’s feet. Here Mr. Upson leaves an unravelled thread of his plot, or at least one for whose clew I have sought vainly. No cause has been shown for violence toward her on the part of the soldiers whom she aids, nor on that of her supposed lover and betrothed, Belarion. Why, then, she should become his victim, or why he should look upon her dead body and exclaim:

“Thus Fate helps out!”

is at least a riddle past my solving. If, as the results indicate, Belarion has been using Stilbe as a tool to aid his ambitions, it should scarcely have been related in good faith in the beginning of the drama that their marriage was to be celebrated the week in which the action of the play falls. If logical reasons exist for this change of front, Mr. Upson should have indicated them more clearly.

The climax of the play follows immediately upon the death of Stilbe, when the king, called to account by the insolent Belarion, in righteous indignation strikes him down. It may be questioned whether such a deed could follow so quickly upon the rapt spiritual state to which the king had been lifted; but one inclines to rejoice that the natural man, impelled by who shall say what higher force, triumphed, ere the queen, pointing to the dead body of the trusted messenger, Ananias, and repeating the Nazarene’s words, “Those most dear to you have peace,”—demanded of the king his blade.

As they stand defenceless but assured, the soldiers, awed by the might of some inner force in the king, shrink back, and the drama closes with the victorious words,—

Together, Love, we go unto the city!

Though the play, looked upon from a dramatic standpoint, lacks in the earlier scenes a certain magnetism of touch and vividness of action, and in the last scene is somewhat overcharged with them, it has many finely conceived situations which strike the golden mean, and the characterization throughout is strongly defined. Its literary quality must, however, take precedence of its dramatic in the truer appraisal. In diction it shows none of the strained effort toward the supposed speech of an earlier time, which usually distinguishes poetic dramas laid far in the past, but has throughout a fitting dignity and harmony, combined with ease and flexibility of phrase and frequent eloquence of dialogue, especially in the passages spoken by Abgar.

It is a play rather of character and high motive than of plot, a piece of sheer idealism, notable alike for its spiritual and its poetic quality.

BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX

BROWN, Alice. Born Hampton Falls, N. H., Dec. 5, 1857. Graduated Robinson Seminary, Exeter, N. H., 1876. On staff of Youth’s Companion. Author: Fools of Nature; Meadow-Grass; By Oak and Thorn (English travels); Life of Mercy Otis Warren; The Road to Castaly (poems); The Days of his Youth; Robert Louis Stevenson, A Study (with Louise I. Guiney); Tiverton Tales; King’s End; Margaret Warrener; The Mannerings; Judgment. Resides in Boston.

BURTON, Richard. Born Hartford, Conn., March 14, 1859. Graduated Trinity College, Hartford. Ph.D. Johns Hopkins, 1887. Married Oct. 7, 1889. Taught Old English Johns Hopkins, 1888. Managing Editor N. Y. Churchman, 1888-89. Travelled in Europe, 1889-90. Literary Editor Hartford Courant, 1890-97. Associate Editor Warner Library World’s Best Literature, 1897-99. Professor English Literature, University of Minnesota, 1898-1902. Editor Lothrop Publishing Co., 1902-04. Lectures upon literature and the drama. Author: (verse) Dumb in June, 1895; Memorial Day, 1897; Lyrics of Brotherhood, 1899; Message and Melody, 1903; (prose) Literary Likings, essays, 1898; Life of Whittier, in Beacon Biography Series, 1900; Forces in Fiction, essays, 1902. Resides in Boston.

CARMAN, Bliss. Born Fredericton, N. B., April 15, 1861. Graduate University of New Brunswick, 1881. Postgraduate student University of Edinburgh, 1882-83, and of Harvard, 1886-88. Studied law, practised civil engineering, taught school. Office Editor N. Y. Independent, 1890-1902. For past four years has contributed a weekly column, called “Marginal Notes,” to the Evening Post, Chicago, The Transcript, Boston, and the Commercial Advertiser, N. Y. Unmarried. Author: Low Tide on Grand Pré, 1893; A Sea-Mark, 1895; Behind the Arras, 1895; Ballads of Lost Haven, 1897; By the Aurelian Wall, 1897; Songs from Vagabondia, in collaboration with Richard Hovey, 1894; More Songs from Vagabondia, 1896; Last Songs from Vagabondia, 1900; St. Kavin, a Ballad, 1894; At Michaelmas, 1895; The Girl in the Poster, 1897; The Green Book of the Bards, 1898; Vengeance of Noel Bassard, 1899; Ode on the Coronation of King Edward, 1902; From the Book of Myths, 1902; Pipes of Pan No. 1, 1902; Pipes of Pan No. 2, 1903; The Word at St. Kavins, 1903; Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics, 1903. Resides in New York.