 | The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere |  |
217
SAINT BONIFACE AT FULDA.
(DIED A.D. 755.)
ARGUMENT.
Saint Boniface, first called Winfrid, belonged to Wessex. When a child, he was taken by his father to see Saint Cuthbert, and ever afterwards desired to evangelize the heathen, and to seal his testimony by his blood. Both wishes were granted. For forty years he preached Christ in Germany, of which country he is revered as the Apostle. That work accomplished, he was slain by bandits with all his fellow-labourers near the stream Borduc in Friesland.
While his companions take their noontide rest, the Saint meditates the events of his long life—his first failure in Friesland—his sojourn in Rome, where Pope Gregory changed his name to Boniface, and made him Archbishop of Mentz—his daily labours and sufferings in the great German forest, and the benignant dreams by which those sufferings were nightly assuaged. He praises the German races, and adjures them to remain for ever faithful to Christ.
So wondrous seem this day? 'Tis always fair,
Balm-breathing, glorious, like a monarch throned
Or priest who kneels gold-vested by God's altar
Offering to God man's praise. 'Tis always great:
Though we discern its greatness but in glimpses;
This day that greatness grows to palpable;
This day anticipates those heavens and earth
That shall be when immortalizing Death
Removes for us their veil. Again I feel
As when, a seven-years child, near Carleol
218
And gazed on great St. Cuthbert's reverend Face,
And saw therein all heaven.
The passion of my life was one and sole
To die for Christ. What argues love, like death?
Next to that great desire my hope was this,
To free our brethren of the German Forest
From vassalage blind to Odin and to Thor.
This was my childhood's dream on Wessex' coast:
This was my boyhood's vow at Escancester:
That vanished life how strangely since the morn
It haunts me! If this day should prove my last
Why not? My happiest it may also prove.
My brethren take their noontide sleep: no doubt
All heavenly are their dreams. To me more healing
Will be my memories of the years gone by.
'Twas well no doubt my earliest effort failed:
It humbled me. To Friesland I had gone;
Later I passed to Rome: a Roman noble
Showed me its pagan glories. What were they?
The sum of all that virtue counts for naught;
That Faith esteems as loss. A nightmare 'twas,
A bad man's wickedest dream—such dream as stands
Near him, belike, death past, his destined penance
In bodiless worlds where sin is known as sin.
From trophies of proud wrong to them I fled
The houses of Cecilia and Prassedé
Churches full fair this day. Awe-struck I bent,
O'er that black vault, the dread Mamertine prison,
Where sat of old Saint Peter and Saint Paul
In silence side by side. Three months I dwelt
In that metropolis of the Christian world.
Three times that later Gregory then the Pope
219
Next he ordained me Bishop; smiling, last,
He changed my name to Boniface from Winfred,
And bade me to the heathen. I made vow
To guard Christ's Faith from wrong, His Church from schism;
Can he love Christ who little loves His Church?
The scroll whereon that vow was writ I laid
Upon Saint Peter's tomb.
Nigh forty years
I roamed from realm to realm that German land,
Pannonia, and Thuringia, Dacia, Rhetia,
Bavaria, and Burgundia. Oft, how oft
I longed for that high grace, the ‘gift of tongues,’
Then when the natives crowding round me came,
Each with his woes—and sins—and none to help him!
I looked at them and wept; yet thus I mused
Forward! great Love suffices, Love can teach:
And thus I spake: ‘Demand thou light from God:’
Those words I knew in all their languages;
And still I pointed to the heavens; and still
Taking the hand of each, three times I drew
From brow to breast the Venerable Sign:
That gave them help. They knew my heart: they said
‘This man brings tidings good and cannot speak them!’
God spake them in their hearts. In later days
I learned their tongues. To frivolous questioners
I answered thus: ‘No theologian I!
I bear a message; I divulge the Tidings:’
The unanswered question was forgotten soon;
The Tidings welcomed. Marvellous was their Faith:
How oft I cried, ‘the single eye is theirs:
Venturous are they to seek for Truth, then use it:
220
Is none of theirs. Like storms, passions may rend them;
Then comes that counter-passion of Remorse
And burns away the stain.’
Transitions swift
O'er-swept them. Once when, axe in hand, we hewed
An oak to Odin vowed, they closed around us:
Circles they made: the inner raised their clubs,
The outer, lances level with their shoulders;
They stood; they glared:—we smote with stroke o'er stroke
The stem; the strong root shrieked; the crash succeeded:
We looked for death: their rage had changed to awe:
Kneeling they cried: ‘Great Odin then is dead!’
Next day they sawed from that dismembered tree
The planks that walled our church.
There stand those walls
High on that hill where storms have thinned the woods.
Saint Paul is instant in his affirmation
That Faith and Hope are children both of Love.
O noble Twins, I never felt your greatness
Until that happy day! There 'mid yon woods
I founded Fulda, and its Monastery!
That Church will prove a Mother Church! Yet there
I met my first repulse.
When times were worst,
All were not mild and loyal like the best:
Of them who joined our following some betrayed us:
That was our worst of trials; next to that
Hunger and frost-wind fanged with death, and cry
Day-long of wolves echoed from woods and rocks,
And death of good men from our English shores
221
When times were worst
This thought recurred; the woes we face, what are they
Compared with that wild dread which shook the world
Three hundred years gone by? Then man to man
Whispered death-pale, ‘The Barbarous hordes advance;’
And in the bridegroom's hand the hand of bride
Shivered ice-cold. ‘Where plants my horse his foot
Grass grows no more;’ thus cried King Attila:
Huge realms became as lands the locust-cloud
But late o'erswept: where temple and street had stood,
High as their horses' chests the conquerors rode
Through ashes strewn. Civility was dead.
That day the sage and peasant side by side
Watched from the city-wall the advancing woe
As when the fountain of the mighty deep
Had open burst, and tremblers on hill crests
Eyed the great Deluge with its watery wall
On moving t'ward them. Faith alone remained,
That Faith a weeping Faith. The greatest man
And best that time on earth was Saint Augustine.
He saw that Terror reach the Afric coast:
He heard the echoes of the falling cities:
At last the Vandal reached his sacred See,
He said, ‘The shepherd with his flock should die:’
Daily, though broken, to his church he crept:
Daily he taught the poor. When sickness smote him
He spread his pallet midmost in his cell
And gave command to trace upon its walls
In letters large the Penitential Psalms
Which evermore he read till ceaseless tears
Dimmed the strong eyes nigh fourscore years had left
Like eagles' eyes. At last he gave command
222
In holy sorrow thus Augustine died.
Ah me! man's sorrows are his chief illusions!
One half of those Tribes Barbaric now are Christ's,
With them our English Kingdoms Seven.
Worst days
At night were gladdened oft by dreams divine.
The first was sent that day I reached this land:
In dream I roamed our Wessex shores; the sun
Reddened, late risen, the broad trunks of the oaks,
Or fired their mossy roots. The fair green lawns
Swelled up 'mid bosky knolls of beech o'er-dewed
And orchards whence sea-scented breezes rapt
White bloom o'er azure waves. Onward I passed
To where a river, widening, joined the sea.
There on a promontory stood a house;
The ripple lapp'd its basement; gladsomer sounds
Allured my footsteps; 'twas our garden old!
Brightening the borders of our English sea,
My brothers and my sisters trod its grass!
No gesture, face, or voice 'scaped my remembrance:
Like mist the happy years had passed. There stood
That maiden child, with hair half brown half gold;
A spirit of love she stood with yearning eyes
All light; close by, that vestal pale, her sister,
Statelier though younger, and with look severe.
I leaned upon the gate; a sweet voice said,
‘Yon aged man is wayworn: bid him rest:’
They drew a bench beside me; kissed my hand
Honouring white hairs, and then resumed their game.
There midmost sat my Father and my Mother:
Delight of health and strength within them glowed;
Around them all was fortunate; joyous all;
Misgiving lived not. Half my present years;
Seemed theirs, or less. Sixty o'er me had passed:
Thirty seemed theirs. The strangest of emotions
Is his, methinks, who from the heights of age
Looks back upon his parents in their youth,
Sees them once more in some remembered scene
Their day of youth—the old man's day of childhood.
'Tis still with childhood's Reverence he regards them;
But Reverence which, commingled with a love
Foreboding, half parental, prompts that prayer,
‘Help them, great God! Their inexperience shield!’
The heavenliest of those dreams was mine last night.
The moon had set. Alone I paced a cliff:
That Wessex height it seemed whereon, a boy,
Nightly I walked—its name the cliff of Torre—
Not distant from a blue south-facing bay.
I saw the Hyads and the Pleiads rise
And the dim seas star-gemmed. A sudden glory
Drank up those lesser lights. Aloft I gazed:
And lo! from western heavens a marvel shone;
Downward and onward both, lapsing it moved,
With exquisitest cadence nearing earth:
At last it stood, a mystic fabric fair,
Self-radiant and serene. High-towered it stood
Like minster's portal triple-arched. Within
I saw a wondrous company, and knew
Each one by name. These were the Saxon Saints,
My country's, and—one family with them—
(For kindreds in the skies are spirit-linked)
More closely than by bonds of flesh and blood,
Erin's and Rome's that drew our race to Christ:
High Kings of Peace they stood, yet wearing, each,
God's armour, and the Truth's, the Spirit's sword
Breast-plate of Faith, and helmet of Salvation.
There stood our great Augustine; by his side
King Ethelbert, Queen Bertha, hand in hand;
Saint Laurence glorying in God's rights restored;
King Sebert gazing t'ward Saint Peter's Church
New-risen on Thamis' bank; Northumbrian Oswald
Beckoning Columba's sons to bless his realm;
Those three great Bishops, Aidan, Finan, Colman,
Iona's lights shining from Lindisfarne;
Bernician Oswy by his consort's tears
To penance won and peace. Apart I saw
Heida, the prophetess of dark woods, who found
In Odin's faith our Christ. With beaming brow
Stood Hilda as she stood on Whitby's rock
Listening from Cædmon's lips the immortal song;
Cædmon stood near her—silent; for his ear
Had heard the song of angels. Frideswida
Mused on her destined Oxford. Cuthbert smiled
As when beside that flood near Carleol
I fixed on him mine eyes, and heard him say,
‘Of men the greatest is that man who draws
To God, God's creatures.’ Venerable Bede
Sat central there in stillness of great love
Brow-bent above his scroll. From these remote
And taller far a monarch stood, with front
Monastic but the sceptre-wielding hand:
Foretold long since in Wessex Banquet Hall,
When spake God's Prophet, ‘Alfred is his name.’
At night were gladdened oft by dreams divine.
The first was sent that day I reached this land:
In dream I roamed our Wessex shores; the sun
Reddened, late risen, the broad trunks of the oaks,
Or fired their mossy roots. The fair green lawns
Swelled up 'mid bosky knolls of beech o'er-dewed
And orchards whence sea-scented breezes rapt
White bloom o'er azure waves. Onward I passed
To where a river, widening, joined the sea.
There on a promontory stood a house;
The ripple lapp'd its basement; gladsomer sounds
Allured my footsteps; 'twas our garden old!
Brightening the borders of our English sea,
My brothers and my sisters trod its grass!
No gesture, face, or voice 'scaped my remembrance:
Like mist the happy years had passed. There stood
That maiden child, with hair half brown half gold;
A spirit of love she stood with yearning eyes
All light; close by, that vestal pale, her sister,
Statelier though younger, and with look severe.
I leaned upon the gate; a sweet voice said,
‘Yon aged man is wayworn: bid him rest:’
They drew a bench beside me; kissed my hand
Honouring white hairs, and then resumed their game.
There midmost sat my Father and my Mother:
Delight of health and strength within them glowed;
Around them all was fortunate; joyous all;
Misgiving lived not. Half my present years;
223
Thirty seemed theirs. The strangest of emotions
Is his, methinks, who from the heights of age
Looks back upon his parents in their youth,
Sees them once more in some remembered scene
Their day of youth—the old man's day of childhood.
'Tis still with childhood's Reverence he regards them;
But Reverence which, commingled with a love
Foreboding, half parental, prompts that prayer,
‘Help them, great God! Their inexperience shield!’
The heavenliest of those dreams was mine last night.
The moon had set. Alone I paced a cliff:
That Wessex height it seemed whereon, a boy,
Nightly I walked—its name the cliff of Torre—
Not distant from a blue south-facing bay.
I saw the Hyads and the Pleiads rise
And the dim seas star-gemmed. A sudden glory
Drank up those lesser lights. Aloft I gazed:
And lo! from western heavens a marvel shone;
Downward and onward both, lapsing it moved,
With exquisitest cadence nearing earth:
At last it stood, a mystic fabric fair,
Self-radiant and serene. High-towered it stood
Like minster's portal triple-arched. Within
I saw a wondrous company, and knew
Each one by name. These were the Saxon Saints,
My country's, and—one family with them—
(For kindreds in the skies are spirit-linked)
More closely than by bonds of flesh and blood,
Erin's and Rome's that drew our race to Christ:
High Kings of Peace they stood, yet wearing, each,
God's armour, and the Truth's, the Spirit's sword
Breast-plate of Faith, and helmet of Salvation.
There stood our great Augustine; by his side
224
Saint Laurence glorying in God's rights restored;
King Sebert gazing t'ward Saint Peter's Church
New-risen on Thamis' bank; Northumbrian Oswald
Beckoning Columba's sons to bless his realm;
Those three great Bishops, Aidan, Finan, Colman,
Iona's lights shining from Lindisfarne;
Bernician Oswy by his consort's tears
To penance won and peace. Apart I saw
Heida, the prophetess of dark woods, who found
In Odin's faith our Christ. With beaming brow
Stood Hilda as she stood on Whitby's rock
Listening from Cædmon's lips the immortal song;
Cædmon stood near her—silent; for his ear
Had heard the song of angels. Frideswida
Mused on her destined Oxford. Cuthbert smiled
As when beside that flood near Carleol
I fixed on him mine eyes, and heard him say,
‘Of men the greatest is that man who draws
To God, God's creatures.’ Venerable Bede
Sat central there in stillness of great love
Brow-bent above his scroll. From these remote
And taller far a monarch stood, with front
Monastic but the sceptre-wielding hand:
Foretold long since in Wessex Banquet Hall,
When spake God's Prophet, ‘Alfred is his name.’
Then raised those Saints their hymn, and with that hymn,
For what hath Heavenly birth returns to Heaven,
Onward and up that glory slowly rose,
And as it rose they stretched to me their hands:
Therefore 'tis certain I shall die ere long,
Perhaps to them be joined.
Eternal Power
For what hath Heavenly birth returns to Heaven,
Onward and up that glory slowly rose,
And as it rose they stretched to me their hands:
Therefore 'tis certain I shall die ere long,
Perhaps to them be joined.
225
To Thee, my Maker. Sinner though I be
My life has not been void. The coral worm
In the dark laborious, builds up continents:
Shall we, Thy creatures of the hand and head,
Leave naught for God or man? Through help of Thine
I laboured to be worthy of that help;
Yea, tremble ofttimes to have wrought some tasks
Fitter for cleaner hand. Cædmon bewailed
‘In youth I shamed to sing amiss: in age
To have sung, impostor-like, some strains too high
For one so scant of grace.’—At best I made
Beginning only: perfect, Thou, that work
Lest, lacking roof the rain corrode the walls.
My People want not zeal, but they are heady:
Imaginations wild take hold of them
As sensual lures on men of southern climes,
Yea, with a subtler might; for thus 'tis writ,
‘Our wrestling is with Spirits in high places,
The Princes of the Powers of the air
That rule in Darkness.’ Teach my People, God,
Humility! When those tempestuous fires
That swell this day their hearts, to the brain ascending
There kindle storm of thought—bid them that hour
Revere his voice, the Gentiles' Teacher sage,
The man for measureless wisdom scorned as mad,
Who, raised at times to visions of the Lord,
A mystic walking ever in the Spirit,
Was instant thus: ‘Be sober, and keep watch:
Be not o'er-wise, for knowledge puffeth up,
Charity buildeth up.’
Brethren, arise!
'Tis time we were afoot! What sound was that
226
Men spake of bandits late.
Brethren, awake! 'Tis Eve of Whit-Sunday:
Eve of the Birth-day of God's Church on Earth:
His Church Triumphant waits us in the skies.
But we have humbler visitants this hour:
Three thousand late baptized in Borduc's stream—
Thanks to this balmy June nor girl nor boy
Nor sire grey-haired shivered in the water—
We them meet us in yon wood this day
For the Confirmation Rite. Arise. They wait.
| The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere | |