THE FALL OF RORA.
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(THE LAST SCENE OF A LYRICAL DRAMA WRITTEN IN YOUTH.)
Alas! and see you those poor children straying
Still on, by cavern, brake, and rifted pine?
They seek, but hope no more to find the maid.
(Children pass through the caverns singing.)
1
We have sought her in her bower;
In the garden we have sought her:
In the forest, hour by hour,
We have sought the chieftain's daughter.
She that was to us so tender,
Answer now she gives us none:
She is gone we know not whither:
If we knew where she is gone,
We would gather flowers, and send her
Those she loved, the last to wither.
Agnes! our belovèd! come
To thy children and thy home!
2
She was not like others, gay—
But the mirthful loved her sadness:
And the mourner oft would say,
None could yield so soft a gladness.
As a star, remote and lonely,
Piercing depths of midnight woods,
Makes the dark leaves dance in lightness;
So into dejected moods,
She, that mournful lady only,
Shone with beams of heavenly brightness.
Agnes, O belovèd! come
To thy children and thy home!
3
O belovèd Agnes! where,
Where art thou so long delaying?
O'er what mountains bleak and bare
Are thy tender feet a-straying?
They have told us thou art taken
To some palace white like snow;
And some think that thou art sleeping
This we know not; but we know,
Every morning when we waken,
All our lids are wet with weeping.
O belovèd Agnes! come
To thy children and thy home!
CHORUS.
Hark, hark the Storm! the voice not long
Outstrips the Presence: see you now,
Not leaves alone, but branch and bough!
They roof the glen, a rushing throng,
Fast borne in current fierce and strong:
The cliffs that wall the vale are shaking:
The forests to their heart are quaking:
Crouch in caves who will: but I
Exulting pace this platform high!
My panting soul, with joy o'er-awed,
I cast upon the storm abroad:
And soon will hurl, inspired by wrong,
Thereon my vengeance and my Song!
A WOMAN.
Is it the gasping of the storm
That makes her wan cheek red and warm?
Lo! how she fixes now her eyes—
CHORUS.
Catching the quickening impulse from those kindling skies!
See, see the storm grows radiant now,
As radiant as a lifted brow
Too long abased! lo, fast and wide,
Avenging Forms the tempest ride;
And answer, round, above, and under,
With choruses of rapturous thunder!
Burst on the tyrant, Storm from God!
Hurl them like leaves from rock to rock!
Trample them down through clay and sod:
From dark to dark!—their banners mock
The purple and the blood-stained gold
Thy clouds have righteously unrolled—
A WOMAN.
She lifts her hands, and far away
Flings forth the ban!
CHORUS.
1.
For Tyrants say
That men were shaped but to obey:
Dead spokes alone, to roll and reel
Within their car's revolving wheel!
Let them take heed, for they have driven
In frenzy o'er the rocky plain,
Till earth's deep groans are heard in heaven,
And fire bursts from those wheels amain.
Not soon the stormy flames expire
When hearts contagious in their ire
Burst forth, like forests catching fire!
2.
Or else this madness preys upon their spirit—
That all good things to man's estate which fall
Drop from their sacred prescience: they inherit
Wisdom divine to nurse this mundane ball!
Yea, they apportion times; with care dispensing
The seasons; when to sow, what days for reaping,
What space for food and labour, praying, sleeping;
With stellar beams our harvests influencing;
Forth from the heaven of high conceit diffusing
Sunshine and breeze amid our murmuring grain;
Showering the former and the latter rain—
Or else with groans their vacant hours amusing,
And sending forth a famine, to fulfil
On men of froward heart the counsels of their will!
Such airy dream to realise,
All rights, all instincts they despise;
On every heart they plant a foot,
Importunate, impure, and brute:
Round every bed a serpent creeps:
They make along the venomed wall
The hundred-footed Whisper crawl—
But Vengeance in a moment leaps
Forth from the frowning caverns of her noontide sleeps!
FIRST WOMAN.
How her high passion teems with thoughts as high;
Like fire from Earth's deep heart quickening the seeds
In some volcanic soil to stateliest growth!
Flushed is her cheek with crimson as she cow'rs
Beneath their umbrage!
CHORUS.
Ha! how well
That Chief made answer. At the door
The herald stood, and shook all o'er;
And spake: ‘These tumults thou shalt quell;
Or else, a deep oath I have sworn,
Thy wife, the children of thy joy,
With fire in vengeance to destroy.’
Then made he answer, without scorn:
‘Their flesh thou mayest consume; Time must:
But I commend their spirits
To God, in whom we trust.’
WOMEN.
See, see that man! he's hurt—how goes the battle?
MESSENGER.
Thrice have they rushed upon us: thrice fled back:
They form for the last onset. Arnold sent me—
He prays you to remove.
WOMEN.
We will not stir!
Why should we move?
MESSENGER.
The fight is worse than doubtful:
Fresh troops are pouring on us—Christoval—
Mario—the rest—have burst into the valley
From every entrance. We are girt—surrounded—
CHORUS.
Smooth song no more; an idle chime!
'Tis ours, 'tis ours, ere yet we die,
To hurl into the tide of Time
The bitter Book of Prophecy.
For ages we have fought this fight;
For ages we have borne this wrong:
How long, Holy and Just! how long,
Shall lawless might oppress the right?
No dreamy influence numbs my song!
Too long suspended it has hung
Like glaciers bending in their trance
From cliffs, some hornèd valley's wall;
One flash, from God one ireful glance,
To vengeful plagues hath changed them all:
Down, headlong torrents—'tis your hour
Of triumph—on the Invading Power!
Woe, woe to Tyrants! Who are they?
Whence come they? Whither are they sent?
Who gave them first their baleful sway
O'er ocean, isle, and continent?
Wild beasts they are, ravening for aye;
Vultures that make the world their prey;
Pests, ambushed in the noontide day;
Ill stars of ruin and dismay;
Tempestuous winds that plague the ocean:
Hoar waves along some rock-strewn shore
That rush and race, with dire commotion
Raking those rocks in blind uproar!
FIRST WOMAN.
She sings aright: this music of her anger
Makes my blood leap like founts from the warm earth:
My chill is past.
SECOND WOMAN.
'Tis well. We shall die free!
CHORUS.
As though this Freedom they demand of us
Were ours, at will to keep or to bestow!
To them a boon profane, a gift of woe;
For us a loss fatal and blasphemous!
This Freedom—man's dread Birthright of the Soul—
It is not man's, nor under man's control:
From God it comes; His prophet here, and martyr;
Which when He gives to man, man's sword must guard:
No toy for sport; no merchandise for barter;
A duty, not a boast; the Spirit's awful ward!—
Dread, sullen stillness, what art thou portending?
Once more each word I mutter on mine ear,
Forward in anguish bending,
Drops resonant and clear—
The forest wrecks, each branch and bough,
O'er voiceless caves lie silent now:
No sound, except the wind's far wail,
Forth issuing through the portals of the vale,
Now low, now louder and more loud,
Under the bridge-like archway of yon low-hung cloud!
FIRST WOMAN.
O God, what light is that? See, see, it spreads!
The vale is all one flame—the clouds catch fire—
Our hearths, our homes! all lost—gone, gone, for ever!
SECOND WOMAN.
It wakes another tempest! From the gorges
And deep glens on all sides the winds come rushing,
And mate themselves unto that terrible flame,
As we shake hands fiercely with our despair!
Lo, once again that sound! that flame, behold!
Once more it leaps off from its burning altar
Up, up, to heaven—
CHORUS.
To be our witness there!
A SECOND MESSENGER.
Arnold is dead! He felt the wound was mortal:
Then stood he up from slaying of his foes,
And smiled, and gave this staff to me, and said:
‘If there be yet one free spot left on Earth,
Let them plant there this staff—
And there, not on my grave, remember me!’
FIRST SEMI-CHORUS.
Boast not, haughty conqueror!
Not from thee hath fallen this woe:
He, the Lord of Peace and War,
He alone hath laid us low.
Boast not, haughty conqueror!
Slay, but boast not. Woe! Woe! Woe!
SECOND SEMI-CHORUS.
From Heaven the curse was shaken
On this predestined head:
From thy hand the plague was taken;
By a mightier vengeance sped.
Mine is the sorrow,
Mine, and for ever;
Who can turn back again
A mighty archer's arrow?
Who can assuage my pain?
Who can make calm my brain?
Who can deliver?
CHORUS.
1.
But within me thoughts are rising,
Severer thoughts, and soul-sufficing:
Swift, like clouds in exhalation,
Come they rushing: whilst a glory
Falls on locks this fiery Passion
Turns from black to hoary!
Voices round me borne in clangour
Sound the trump of things to be:
And heavenly flashes of wise anger
Give my spirit light to see
The great Future; and aright
Judge this judgment of to-night.
2.
I trembled when the strife began—
Praying, my clasped hands trembled
With ill-timed weakness ill-dissembled
But now beyond the strength of man,
My strength has in a moment grown;
And I no more my griefs deplore
Than doth a shape of stone—
A marble Shape, storm-filled, and fair
With might resurgent from despair
I walk triumphant o'er my woe:
For well I feel and well I know,
That God with me this wrong sustains,
And, in me swelling, bursts my chains!
3.
And dost thou make thy boast then of their lying
All cold, upon the mountain and the plain,
My Sons whom thou hast slain?
And that nor tears nor sighing
Can raise their heads again?
My Sons, not vainly have ye died,
For ye your Country glorified!
Each moment as in death ye bowed
On high your martyred Souls ascended;
Yea, soaring in perpetual cloud,
This earth with heaven ye blended—
A living chain in death ye wove;
And rising, raised our world more near those worlds above!
4.
They perish idly? they in vain?
When not a sparrow to the plain
Drops uncared for! Tyrant! they
Are radiant with eternal day!
And oft, unseen, on us they turn
Those looks that make us inly burn,
And swifter through our pulses flow
The bounding blood, their blood below!
How little cause have those for fear
Whose outward forms alone are here!
How nigh are they to Heaven, who there
Have stored their earliest, tenderest care!
Whate'er was ours of erring pride,
This agony hath sanctified:
O'er us the storm hath passed, and we
Are standing here immovably
Upon the platform of the Right;
And we are inwardly as bright
As those last drops which hang like fire
Close-clustered on the piny spire,
When setting suns their glories pour
On yellow vales perturbed no more;
While downward from the eagle's wing
One feather falls in tremulous ring,
And far away the wearied storms retire.
5.
I heard, prophetic in my dreams,
The roaring of a million streams,
While downward from their sources torn,
Came pines and rocks in ruin borne:
Then spake that Storm to me and said,
‘Quake thou with awe, but not with dread:
For these are Thrones and Empires rolled
Down Time's broad torrent, as of old:
But thou those flowers remember well,
By foaming floods in peace that dwell;
For thus 'mid wrecks of fear and strife,
Rise up the joys of hourly life;
And all pure bonds and charities
Exhale their sweetness to the skies—
But woe to haughtier spirits! They,
At God's command, are swept away,
Into the gulfs that know not day.’
6.
And now my Song is sung. I go
Far up to fields of endless snow:
Alone till death I walk, unsoiled
By air the tyrants have defiled.
Over a cheek no longer pale
I drop henceforth a funeral veil,
And only dimmed and darkened see
The mountains I have looked on free.
Ye that below abide, unblest,
Paint now no more with flowers your dells;
Nor speak in tone like that which swells,
Loud-echoed from the freeman's breast:
In sable garments walk, and spread
With cerements black your buried dead.
Farewell to all: I go alone;
And dedicate henceforth my days
To muse on God's high Will, and raise
My hands toward th' eternal Throne—
And I beneath the stars will thread
The dark beads of my rosaries;
And ofttimes earth ward bow my head,
And listen ofttimes for the tread
Of some far herald, swiftly sent,
To crown with light a shape time-bent,
And dry a childless widow's eyes
With tidings grave of high content,
Wherein unheeded prophecies
Shall find their great accomplishment!
