University of Virginia Library

II. Part II MEDIÆVAL RECORDS

LEGENDS OF THE CID.

I. The Cid's Marriage.

Within Valencia's streets were dole and woe;
Among the thoughtful, silence long and then
Sharp question and brief answer; sobs and tears
Where women gathered; something strange concealed
From children; rapid step of priest grey-grown
As though his mission were to beds of death.
The cause? Nine days before, the sea had swarmed
With ships continuous like the locust cloud
Full sail from far Morocco; six days later
Strange tents had crowded all the coasts as thick
As spots on corpse plague-stricken. The Cid lay dead,
Valencia's bulwark, but her sire much more.
Who else had made her Spain's;—Spain's Mother-City
Frowning defiance on the Prophet's coasts
Minarets enskied, gold domes, huge palaces
With ivory fretwork washed by azure waves,
Even to the fabulous East?
Day passed: night came:
Within Valencia's chiefest church the monks
Knelt round their Great One. He had sat since death
Throned near the Eastern altar. At the West
The many-columned aisles nigh lost in gloom
Changed to a fortress pile with massive walls
Lost in the mother rock, since Faith and War
That time were brethren vowed. Beneath its vault
Good knights kept watch, that stronghold's guard at need:
Glimmerings from distant altar lights, though faint,
Made way to them, oft crossed by shadowy forms
Gliding in silence o'er the pavements dim
With bosom-beating hand: the music strain
Reached them at times; less oft the voice of prayer.
Compline long past, the eldest of those knights,
By name Don Raymond, Lord of Barcelona,
Not rising, thus addressed low-toned his mates:
With great desire the nations will desire
To know our Cid in ages yet to come,
And yet will know him not. He was not one
Who builds a history up, complete and whole,
A century's blazon crying, ‘That was I!’
The day's work ever was the work he worked,
And laughingly he wrought it. Spake another:
Ay, 'twas no single act that made his greatness:
Yet greatness flashed from all his acts—the least;
A peasant cried one day, ‘God sent that man;’
A realm made answer, ‘God.’
Don Sambro next:
I witnessed—'twas in youth—his earliest deed;
Gladsome it was, and gladdening when remembered,
Yet nowise alien 'mid these vaults of death:
His sire, Don Diego, was an aged man;
Between him and Count Gomez, Gormaz' lord,
Debate arose. Gomez had flourished long
A warrior prime: whene'er the Cortes met
He spake its earliest word. Among the hills
A thousand watched his hand, and wrought its hest.
That day, inflamed by wine, he struck Diego:
Diego, warrior once, then weak from age,
Was all unmeet for combat in the lists:
Daily he sat, grief-worn, beside his hearth
And shrank from friend like one who fears to infect
Sound man by hand diseased. He spake but once,
‘Till that black hour dishonour none defiled
Layn Calvo's blood!’ His son, our Cid, Rodrigo,
Then twelve years old, leaped up! ‘Mudarra's sword!
That and your blessing!’ Strong through both he rode,
Nor stayed until his horse foam-flecked stood up
At Gormaz’ gate. Gomez refused his challenge:
Rodrigo smote him: soon the lists were formed:
Not long the strife: sole standing o'er the dead
Thus 'mid that knightly concourse spake the boy,
‘Had he but struck my cheek, and not my sire's,
Far liefer had I lopped mine own left hand
Than yon sage head!’ Count Gomez’ orphaned daughter,
Child of ten years, hearing that word, replied,
‘He also had a Father.’
August's sun
Westering had tinged the castle hall with red:
There sat Diego at the supper-board
But eating not. A horse's foot was heard:
In rushed, all glowing like that sun, the boy:
He knelt; then rising, laughed. Aloud he cried,
‘Father, your fare hath scanty been of late
As spider's when long frosts have frozen the flies:
Haply this herb may sharpen appetite!’
His mantle fell: he lifted by the locks
The unjust Aggressor's head. Diego rose:
First with raised eyes he tendered thanks to Heaven;
Then added: ‘Son, my sentence ever stood,
The hand that battles best is hand to rule:
Henceforth live thou sole master in this house;’
He pointed, and the seneschal kneeling laid
The castle's keys before the young man's feet.
Then clamour rose, ‘O'er yon portcullis fix
That traitor's head, that all may gaze upon it
And hate it as a true man knows to hate!’
Not thus Rodrigo willed He sent that head
To Gormaz with a stately retinue—
Ten knights, and priests entoning ‘Miserere.’
This solaced Gomez’ child. Then rose that saying,
‘He strikes from love, not hate.’
Don Martin next—
Don Martin of Castile: Witness was I
Not less of wonders by Rodrigo wrought.
Eight years went by: his father died. The Moors
Swarmed forth o'er many a region of Castile,
Domingo, La Calzada, Vilforado,
Capturing whole herds, white flocks, and brood-mares many:
Rodrigo of Bivar to battle rushed;
Smote them where Oca's mountains closed them round;
Retook their spoil. Five Moorish kings, their best,
He haled in triumph home to Bivar's gate
And bade them kneel chain-bound before his mother.
That homage tendered, thus he spake: ‘Depart!’
That holy Lady still had taught her son
Reverence for sufferers, and the Poor of Christ,
And courtesy 'mid wildest storms of war.
On her he looked, later on them; continued:
‘I scorn to hold you captive! from this hour
My vassals ye. I want nor slaves nor serfs.’
The Five made answer ‘Yea,’ and called him ‘Cid,’
Their term for ‘Lord’: he bore it from that hour.
Don Garcia next: A fairer sight by far
And fitter to beguile our sorrowful watch,
I saw—his marriage. Our great King Ferrando,
Who made one realm of Leon and Castile,
Beside that new-built bridge Zimara called
Was standing 'mid his nobles on a day
What time that name, ‘The Cid,’ rang first o'er Spain:
Then drew to him a maiden clothed in black,
A sister at each side. She spake: ‘Sir King,
I come your suitor, child of Gomez, once
Your counsellor and your friend, but come not less
The claimant of my right. Betwixt my sire
And Diego, father of that Cid world-famed
This hour for valour and for justice both,
Unhappy feud arose: my father smote him:
Aggrieved by that mischance the Cid, then young,
Challenged my sire and in the tourney slew him,
To me great grief albeit, on wars intent,
My father seldom saw me. Since that day
Tumult perpetual shakes our vassal realm:
Who wills breaks down the bridge; who wills diverts
The river from our mill-wheel to his own:
Daily the insurgent commons toss their heads,
Clamouring “No tax.” I fear for these, my sisters,
Fear more the downfall of our House and Name,
And, motherless, have none with whom to counsel.
King! some strong hand and just should quell this wrong!
What hand but his who caused it? 'Twas his right
To smite his Father's smiter. 'Tis my right
To choose for champion him who wrought the woe.
Command him to espouse me! That implies
Privilege and Duty both to ward our House,
And these my sisters young.’ Level and clear
She fixed upon the King her eyes like one
Who knows her cause is just.
Ferrando mused,
Then answered, smiling, ‘Damsel, have your will!
You are happier than you know! Rodrigo's Wife!
Of him you wot as little as of marriage!
Yon Cid will prove the greatest man in Spain.’
Then with a royal frankness added thus:
‘Moreover, maid, your lands are broad: another
Conjoining them with his might plot and scheme:
The Throne itself might suffer some despite:
Not so the Cid: that man was loyal born;
My kinsman. He shall wed you!’
Straight he wrote:
‘Cid, at Palencia seek me at your earliest,
There to confer on things that touch the State,
Likewise God's glory, and your weal besides.’
Incontinent to Palencia rode my Cid
With kinsfold companied and many a knight;
The King received him in his palace chapel,
Vespers concluded but the aisles still thronged;
Embraced him; then stepped back, and, gazing on him,
Exclaimed, ‘Not knighted yet! My fault, my sin!
I must redeem the offence! Good kinsman, kneel!’
High up the bells renewed their silver clamour;
Ferrando knighted him: Ferrando's Queen
Led to the gate his charger: the Infanta
Girt him with spurs. Then gave the King command
Like bishop missioning priest but late ordained,
‘That gift now thine communicate to others!’
Straight to the chapel's altar moved the Cid
And lifted thence the sword of state. Before him
Three youthful nobles knelt. He with that sword
Their knighthood laid upon them.
Masque and dance
Lasted three days: then spake to him the King,
‘Cid—for that name by which all Spain reveres you,
Albeit a title not by me conferred,
I recognize well pleased—Donna Ximena,
Heiress of Gomez slain by you of old,
Warrior and counsellor dear to me and mine,
Stands sore imperilled through that righteous deed,
Her subjects in revolt and every knave
Flouting her princely right. Revolts spread fast;
Ere long my kingdom may lie meshed in such:
I see the hand that best can deal with treason!
My royal honour stands to her impledged
That you—first wedding her—her lands your own—
Should, in the embraces of your name and glory,
Foster the tender weakness of her greatness.
Wilt thou redeem that pledge?’
The youth, ‘This maid,
King, is she good and fair?’
Ferrando smiled;
‘Glad am I that, as in my youthful days,
Goodness and grace still reign; kings rule not all!
Good she must needs be since her sire was good;
Majestical she is: her suit she made
As one who gives command; but you shall see her.
Seek we the Presence Chamber!’
Thenceforward knights
Flocked daily to the Cid. Each month, each week
The Impostor's hosts, with all their banners green
Moon-blazoned, fled before him like the wind.
Now champaign broad, now fortress eyeing hard
From beetling cliff the horizon's utmost bound
Witnessed well pleased the overthrow of each:
Merida fell, Evora, Badajoz,
Bega in turn; more late Estramadura.
Fiercest of those great conflicts was the fifth:
From that red battle-field my Cid despatched
Unbounded spoil that raised a mighty tower
O'er Burgos' church wherein he was baptized.
Moreover, after every conquering march
Huge doles he sent to Christian and to Moor;
For thus he said: ‘Though war be sport to knights
The tears of poor men and their beardless babes
Bedew the trampled soil.’ His vow fulfilled,
Five victories won, five months gone by, with joy
Once more to Bivar's towers the Cid returned.
There, at its gate, they stood who loved him best:
On the third step—as when he saw them last—
His mother and Ximena. First he kissed
His mother, next Ximena.
Musing sat,
The legend of that Bridal at an end,
Long time those watchers. Lastly rose a knight,
The youngest of that company elect,
Silent till then, and slender as a maid;
With countenance innocent as childhood's self
Yet venerable as a priest's grey-haired.
He spake: ‘A bridal then, and now a death,
A short glad space between them! Such is life!
That means our earthly life is but betrothal;
The marriage is where marriage vows are none.
Lo there! once more the altar lights flash forth:
That Widow-Wife, five months a Maiden-Wife,
Kneels 'mid their splendour.’ Eastward moved the knights,
And, kneeling near the altar, with the monks
Entoned the Miserere.

II. The Cid in Exile.

Next night once more in that Cathedral keep
Walled by its mother-rock the warriors watched:
After long silence, leaving not his seat,
At length there spake a noble knight and brave,
Don Aquilar of Gabra: low his voice;
His eyes oft resting on the altar lights,
At times on listener near:
‘Sirs, all applaud the Conqueror: braver far
Our Cid that hour when he refused the battle:
I heard that tale in childhood.’ ‘Let us hear it,’
The others cried; and thus that knight began:
Our King, Ferrando, nighing to his death,
Beckoned the Cid and spake: ‘We two were friends;
Attend my dying charge. My race is Goth,
And in the brain, and blood, and spirit of Goth
Tempest but sleeps to waken. I have portioned
My kingdom in three parts among my sons,
Don Sanchez, Don García, Don Alphonso,
And throned my daughter in Zamora's towers:
When bickerings rise, sustain my testament.’
He died; his son, King Sanchez, was a churl:
One day he rode abroad: at set of sun
Zamora faced him: many-towered it stood
Crowning a rock and flinging far its shade
O'er Douro's crimsoned wave. He muttered low:
‘Yon city mine, all Spain were mine.’ That night
Thus spake he, careless seeming, to the Cid:
‘Ill judged my father dowering with yon fort
A woman-hand. At morn search out that woman;
Accost her thus from me: “My kingdom's flank
Lies bare: it needs for shield thy city's fortress.
I yield to thee Medina in its place
Tredra not less.”’ Ill pleased, the Cid replied,
Though reverent not concealing his displeasure:
‘Send other herald on that errand, King!
Ofttimes, a boy I dwelt in yonder fort
When lodged therein Ferrando and Urraca,
And will not wrong your father's testament.’
King Sanchez frowned. Unmoved, the Cid resumed:
‘I take thy missive, King, and bring her answer,
But proffer service none.’ At morn he placed
That missive in Urraca's hand; she rose;
And raised her hands to heaven and answered fierce:
‘His brother, Don García, he hath bound;
His brother, Don Alphonso, driven to exile;
Elvira next, my sister and his own,
He mulct of half her lands; he now mulcts me!
Swallow me, earth, if I obey his hest!
Cid! thee I blame not, for I know thy heart!
Forth with my answer to my traitor brother!
Zamora's sons and I will die ere yet
I yield her meanest stone to force or fraud.’
Then spake the Cid: ‘The answer of a queen,
And meet for King Ferrando's child! Urraca,
This sword shall ne'er be raised against thy right!
My knighthood was in part through thee conferred.’
The Cid returned: King Sanchez stormed and raged:
‘This work is thine!’ Unmoved, my Cid replied,
‘True vassal have I proved to thee, O King,
But sword against the daughter of thy sire
I will not lift.’ King Sanchez: ‘For his sake
I spare thy life! Henceforth thou livest an exile!’
Low bowed the Cid. Bivar he reached that night,
And summoning all his knights, twelve hundred men,
Rode thence and reached Toledo.
Sirs, ere long
God dealt with that bad man. Three days his host
Fought malcontent: grimly they scaled the walls;
Zamora's sons hurled on them stones and rocks
The battlements themselves, till ditch and moat
Thickened with corpses, and the Douro left
Daily a higher blood-line on those walls
While whispered man to man; ‘Our toil is lost,
He spurned our best; what cares he for men's lives?’
Then from Zamora sped a knight forsworn
By name Vellido Dolfos, crafty man,
Fearless in stratagem, in war a coward.
Like one pursued he galloped to the camp,
Checked rein at Sanchez’ tent, and, breathless, cried:
‘King, I had slain thee gladly yesternight;
This day a wronged man sues thee. Sir, revenge
'Gainst thy false sister is the meed I claim,
Thy sister kind to caitiffs, false to friends!
I know a secret postern to yon fort;
It shall be thine this night.’ ‘Who sees believes,’
Sanchez replied; ‘That postern—let me see it!’
They rode to where the forest's branching skirt
Screened it from random eyes. The King dismounted,
And, companied by that traitor knight alone,
Peered through that postern's bars. With lightning speed
The traitor launched his javelin 'gainst the King;
It nailed him to that ivy-mantled wall:
Vellido through the woodland labyrinths scaped.
The king ere sunset died.
Don Sanchez dead,
At once, from exile King Alphonso burst:
The Cortes met: with haughty brow he claimed
Allegiance due, like one who knows his rights,
Full sovereignty, God-given, and not from man,
Of Leon and Castile. They gave consent;
At Burgos in procession long and slow
The knights and nobles passed, and passing kissed
Each the King's hand. Alone the Cid stood still.
Astonished sat the King. He spake: ‘The Cid
Alone no homage pays.’ The Cid replied:
‘Sir, through your total realm a rumour flies,
And kings, all know, must live above suspicion—
That in your brother's death a part was yours:
Sir, in his day your brother did me wrong:
I, for that wrong am none the less his vassal:
Make oath, sir King, that rumour is a lie!
Till then from me no homage!’ Silent long
Alphonso sat: then ‘Be it so,’ he said.
Next day he rode to Burgos' chiefest church,
And there heard Mass. About him stood that hour
His nobles and hidalgos: Mass surceased,
Crowned, on a dais high, in sight of all
Alphonso sat: behind him stood twelve knights:
Slowly my Cid advanced, upon his breast
Clasping the Gospels open thrown. The King
Laid on them hands outspread. Then spake my Cid:
‘I swear that in my brother's death no part
Was mine.’ Low-bowed, Alphonso said, ‘I swear;’
Likewise his twelve hidalgos. Then the Cid:
‘If false my oath, mine be my brother's fate.’
Alphonso said ‘Amen’; but at that word
His colour changed. With eye firm-fixed my Cid
Slowly that oath repeated; and once more
The King and his hidalgos said ‘Amen!’
Three times he spake it; thrice the monarch swore:
Then waved the standards, and the bells rang out;
And sea-like swayed the masses t'ward the gates.
Parting, Alphonso whispered to my Cid—
None heard the words he spake.
They reached old Burgos
At noontide, while for heat the dogs red-tongued
Slept in the streets. The King had given command
‘Let no man lodge the Cid, or give him bread!’
As slowly on his sixty warriors rode
And gazed on bakers' shops, yet touched no loaf
The gentle townsmen wept, ‘A sorry sight!’
Women were bolder: ‘Vassal good,’ they cried,
‘To churlish Suzerain!’ The Posado's gate
He smote three times with spear-shaft: none replied.
At last beneath its bars there crept a child
Dark-eyed, red-lipped, a girl of nine years old,
Clasping a crust. Sweet-toned she made accost:
‘Great Cid, we dare not open window or door
The King would blind us else. Stretch down thy hand
That I may kiss it!’ At her word my Cid
Stretched down his hand. She kissed it, hiding next
Therein the crust, and closing one by one
O'er it the mail-clad fingers. Laughed my Cid:
‘God's saints protect that shining head from hurt
And those small feet from ways unblest, and send
In fitting time fit mate.’ The sixty laughed:
Once more the child crept in beneath the bars:
They noted long the silver feet upturned
With crimson touches streaked. That night my Cid
Couched on a sand plain with his company
The palm-boughs rustling 'gainst their stems thickscaled.
Half-sleeping thus he mused. ‘Could I, unworthy,
So all unlike that child in faith and love,
Have portioned out that crust among my knights
God might have changed it to a Sacrament
And caused us in the strength thereof to walk
Full forty days.’
Ere yet the bird of Dawn
In neighbouring farm its earliest clarion rang
The Cid had mounted; reached ere nones that haunt
Wherein his wife had taken sanctuary,
San Pedro de Cardena. At the gate
He blew his battle-horn. They knew it well!
Rushed forth Ximena and her ladies first:
O what a weeping was there at his feet!
Then followed many a monk with large slow eyes:
The abbot long had wished to see the Cid;
And now rejoiced: the feast was great that day
And great the poor man's share; and chimed the bells
So loudly that the King, in Burgos throned,
Frowned but spake nought. Next day two hundred knights
Flocked to the Cid's white standard. On the third,
Ere shone its sunrise, by that Abbey's gate
My Cid for blessing knelt, then spake: ‘Lord Abbot,
Be careful of my wife, Donna Ximena,
For princelier lady stands not on this earth
Of stouter courage or of sweeter ways:
Likewise breed up my babes in holy life;
Thy convent shall not lack, and if I die
God is my banker and will pay my debts.’
Next, to her lord Ximena with slow steps
Made way, and knelt; and weeping thus she spake:
‘Sundered ere death! I knew not that could be!’
Their parting seemed like parting soul and body.
Last came two ladies with his daughters twain.
He took them in his arms: his tears fell on them
Because they wept not but bewildered smiled;
And thus he spake: ‘Please God, with Mary's prayers,
I yet shall give these little maidens mine
With mine own hand to husbands worthy of them.’
He said; and shook his rein, nor once looked back;
And the rising sun shone bright on many a face
Tear-wet in that dim porch.
Then spake a knight
Revered by all, Don Incar of Simancas
With strenuous face, keen eyes, and hectic hand:
A stripling I, when first that war began;
Rapturous it was as hunting of the stag
When blares the horn from echoing cliff and wood,
And deer-like bound the coursers. Sport began
Nigh to Castregon; next, like wind it rushed
To Fita, Guadalgara, and Alcala,
Thence to Heneres, and Torancio's plain,
And the olive-shaded gorge of Bobierca.
We crossed its dark-bright stream. A Moorish maid
Sold us red apples, and from wells snow-cold
Drew water for our mules. Our later deeds
Fade from my mind. We captured castles twelve
And raised the Cross upon them. Once dim mist
Lifted at morn shewed Moors uncounted nigh;
We stood in doubt. Our standard-bearer cried;
‘Sustain your standard, sirs; or if it please you,
Consign it to the Moors!’ He galloped on;
The dusky hordes closed round him. Torrent-like
We dashed upon them! Soon the morning shone
Through that black mass. The standard saved the host,
And not the host the standard. Likewise this
Clings to my memory trivial as it seems:
At Imbra, when the Moors bewailed their kine
Snatched from its golden mead, my Cid replied:
‘God save you, sirs! My King and I are foes.
In exile gentlemen must live on spoil.
What! would you set us spinning flax or wool?
Not kine alone, but all your vales and plains
Are ours by ancient right! To Afric back!
This land is Spain—our Spain!’
That warfare past,
My Cid addressed him thus to Alvar Fanez:
‘Cousin, betake thee to that saintly place,
San Pedro, where abide my wife and babes:
Raise first those Moorish banners in its aisles,
Then noise abroad thy tidings. Greet with spoil
That abbot old. Seek last the King, Alphonso:
Give him his fifth: make no demand in turn;
Much less request. I wait not on his humours.’
Alvar went forth: In fair Valladolid
Ere long he met Alphonso with his train
Half way betwixt the palace and cathedral
Recent from Mass. The monarch—without greeting—
‘What means yon train of horses trapped in gold,
And swords inwrought with gems?’ Alvar replied
‘Sir King, my Cid bestows them on your Highness,
The fifth part of his spoil: for battles still
He wins, and wide domains, and tower, and town.
King, if the Cid but kept the lands he conquers
Half Spain would be his realm. Content he is
To hold them from your Grace in vassalage.
Therefore restore him to your royal favour!’
Alphonso then: ‘'Tis early in the morn
To take a banished man to grace and favour!
'Twere shame to stint my wrath so soon. For spoil,
Kings need not spoil! Not less, since thus the Moors
Are stripped, his work is work of God in part:
Let him send still my fifth!’
Then laughing spake
A humorous knight, Don Leon of Toledo:
Ay, ay, our King can jest when jest means gold!
Our Cid could jest with lions in his path!
A hundred tales attest it: this is one:
Here dwelt he long in royal state. One day
It chanced, the banquet o'er, asleep he fell
Still seated on the dais for the noon
Was hot, while talked or laughed the noble guests
Ranged as their custom was around his board;
His palace held some guests beside hidalgos
That day, and one from Afric, not a Moor;
A lion's cage stood in the outer court;
Its door was left ajar. Scenting the meat
That lion reached at last the banquet chamber:
The ladies screamed: the warriors drew their swords:
The Infantes twain of Carrion most were mazed;
The elder backed into a wine-vat brimmed
Purpling the marble floors; the youngest crept
Beneath the board to where the Cid was throned
And quivering clasped his feet. The Cid awoke;
Rubbed first his eyes; gazed round him; marked that lion;
Advanced, though still half sleeping; by the mane
Drew him obedient as a mastiff hound;
Relodged him; barred his prison; re-enthroned
His own brave bulk. The knights pushed back their swords:
The Infantes strove to laugh: the ladies smiled;
A priest gave thanks in Latin, first for meat,
Next that that beast had failed on them to banquet;
Ere ceased that grace my Cid again slept well;
Sole time, men say, he ever slept at prayer,
Albeit at sermons oft.
Sir Incar next;
Your boasters see not far! Fortune ere long
On King Alphonso cast a glance oblique,
For vassals weak and meek grew strong and haughty;
And when huge tracts were flooded now, now parched,
Men cried ‘our King is bad.’ That King sent gifts
Suing the Cid's return. The Cid replied:
‘To others gifts! for me my lands suffice.
My King commands my sword; my terms are these:
“To each hidalgo thirty days, not nine,
Shall stand conceded ere his banishment,
And courts beside wherein to plead his cause.
Next, charters old shall have their reverence old
As though their seals were red with martyrs' blood.
Lastly the King shall nowhere levy tax
Warring on law. Such tax is royal treason:
Thus wronged, the land is free to rise in arms.”’
Long time the King demurred; then frowned consent;
And there was peace thenceforth. That day arose
This saying: ‘Happy exile he that home
Returning to his country, bring her gifts.
His rest shall be in Heaven.’
No tale beside
Succeeded. Sweetly and slowly once again
From that remote high altar rose a hymn
Tender and sad: that female train once more
Approached it two by two, with steps as soft
As though they trod on hearts—Ximena last;
And star by star the altar lights shone out.
The knights arose, and, moving t'ward the east
Knelt close behind those kneelers.

III. The Cid at Valencia.

Once more the warriors watched: the first to speak
A knight of splenetic lips though roughly kind,
Don José de Maria, thus began:
Sirs, some have boasted deeds if quaint yet brave,
And some have lectured long of lesser triumphs
The Cid's half jesting feats. Such chroniclers
Because they shared those battles give them praise,
Praising therein themselves. Valencia! there
Flamed forth the man's true greatness like the sun!—
The Moors' chief city, where their noblest dwelt
In garden-girdled palaces 'mid palms.
Seaward it looks t'ward every coast where waves
Their prophet's flag accurst. Thus spake the Cid:
‘Valencia's King sent kinglings on a day
When I, new wedded, hunted on his grounds,
To visit me. We grappled; and they fled:
Decorum needs that we return that visit.’
Pass we the lesser triumphs on his march.
He took Valencia's suburb chief. Huge walls
Manned by an army barred our farther progress;
Our scaling ladders near them seemed like toys.
The Cid encamped before them: missives sent:
‘Sirs, have your choice! or fight or die of hunger!’
But they had seen him in the field too oft
To fight as once they fought. The Cid flung back
With scorn their petulant sallies. Day by day
Their stores were minished. Sorer week by week
The anguish of their hunger. Many a Moor
Rushed to our serried ranks loud clamouring, ‘Bread!
‘Make us your slaves, but feed our babes!’
At last
An unexpected promise dawned upon them;
The mightiest of the Moorish hosts drew near,
The Almoravides; and Valencia's sons,
Fools of a credulous hope, exultant cried:
‘To Allah praise! Yon Christian foe is doomed;
Ere long their bones shall whiten vale and plain!’
So sang they, clustered on the city walls
As twilight deeper grew, and plainlier shone
The Moorish camp-fires far. Meantime my Cid
Had given command to rive the dams and bridges
And open fling the sluices to the sea,
For prescient was the man and knew his foe
Must cross a lowland wide. The sea rushed in;
Twilight to blackness changed. The moon was drowned
In plunging storm of hail and rain and snow:
Emerging thence it stared on wandering floods
From sea and river, and the mountain walls
Whose torrents, glimpsed but when the lightning flared,
Thundered far off. Vain were the Moslem vows,
For countless prayers of Christians in all lands
From Breton coasts to the utmost German forest
And all that empire old of Charlemagne
Meeting them, drave them past the heavenly gates
Abortive shapes and frustrate. All night long
The Moors down crouched upon their city bastions
Clinging to tower and coign. At dawn came news!
That Moorish force had fled; Valencia's sons
When spread those tidings deemed themselves dead men;
Yea, as the blind they groped about their streets,
Or staggered on like drunkards; neither knew
Each man the face of neighbour or of friend,
But gazed at him and passed: at other times
Old enemies clasped hands but spake no word;
And some flung forth their arms like swimmer spent
That sinks in black seas lost. Ten days went by;
The famine spread till chiefs remote drew near
Crying: ‘Thy vassals we!’
Four weeks had passed;
Then rose a white-haired elder, prophet deemed,
And famed for justice long, a silent man;
For three whole years he had not spoken word
Save thrice. He scaled Valencia's topmost tower,
And while around its base the people thronged
Made thus the lamentation of the City:
Nine times he made it ere the sun went down.
‘Valencia, my Valencia! Trouble and grief
Have come upon thee, and the hour decreed:
If ever God on any place shewed mercy
Now let Him shew it. For thy name was joy:
All Moors that live their boasting made of thee.
If God this day should utterly consume thee
Thy doom is doom of pride. If those four stones
The corner-stones that bind thy walls in one
Could leave their dread foundations, and draw nigh
And speak with stony mouth to stony ear,
The burden of their dirge would be thy sin.
Thy towers far-gazing see but woe. Thy river,
Old Guadalever, from its course is bent,
And all those watery ministers of thine
Far-sluiced behold their channels choked with mud;
Dried are the gardens green that sucked their freshness:
The wolf and the wild boar root thy plantains down;
Thy fields are baked like clay.
Thy harbour vast,
The mirror of thy greatness, and the marvel
Of merchant princes, guests from every land,
Rots thick with corpses; and above it far
Drifts the red smoke from burning tower and town
From coast to coast.
Valencia, my Valencia!
This is the death-cry from a breaking heart,
Repent thee of thy sins!’
When sank the sun
That burthen ceased. Then round that pillar's base
Rang forth a mighty and a piercing cry;
And headlong from it through the city rushed
Women and men. Then first that saying rose,
‘Upon my right hand breaks the sea to drown me,
The lion on my left to crush my bones:
Behind me is the fire: before my face
And all around, the hunger.’
From that hour
Whoso had bread or grain in earth interred it
Like wild beast that inearths its remnant spoil,
And gnawed it stealthily—an ounce a day—
With keen eyes glancing round. At last a beggar
Groped his blind way into the market place
And cried, ‘Give up the city!’ Straight that cry
Ran through Valencia; and its elders rose
And paced barefoot, and found the Cid, and knelt,
And laid the City's keys before his feet:
Right courteously and sadly he received them;
Helmless he rode through silent streets, his horse
With muffled feet in reverence for their woe;
The Cross first raised he on the Alcazar's tower,
Then freed the Christian slaves. Proclaim he made
‘Let all who will depart the city free:’
Two days sufficed not for thosè throngs forth-streaming:
Thousands remained so well they loved that place;
O'er these he set, alcalde of their race,
That elder—Alfaraxi was his name—
Who mounting to Valencia's topmost tower
Had sung that city's dirge.
Through that just man
The Moors their tribute paid. Thenceforth his fame
Drew thousands to the Cid. From that far East
Whence came the Magi following still the star
To Bethlehem's crib, drew near a wondrous man
Close shorn and shaven, Don Hieronymo,
On foot a monk, a warrior when on horse;
Hating the Moors, he came to waste and slay them.
My Cid received that priest full honourably,
And gave him armour and a horse. Withal
Bishop he made him of Valencia's city,
With instant charge that every mosque should change
Thenceforth to Christian church.
The Cid next day
Sent to San Pedro's Convent golden store
And mystic gems; for well he loved that haunt
Within whose balmy bosom dwelt once more
His wife and infants twain—not infants now
But virgins in the lap of womanhood.
He sent command to speed them to Valencia:
That missive read, they knelt and raised their hands
Much weeping for great joy. The abbot old
Wept also not for gladness but for grief
Since much he loved them. Brief was his reply:
‘I send them, Cid: our convent year by year
Will pray for thine and thee.’
A week went by;
And now Ximena with her daughters twain
Nighed to Valencia, and my Cid rode forth
To meet her, helmed and mailed. Hieronymo,
Who, clad in mystic raiment white and black,
Followed Perfection, sent his clergy forth:
That great procession met them, golden-robed,
Three crosses at their head. Behind them trooped
The knights, a glittering company. The Cid
Rode at its head. Their Mother and those maids
Leaped down and rushed to him with arms extended.
Silent he clasped them each. At last he spake,
Laughing like one who jests that he may weep not:
‘Enter Valencia! 'Tis your heritage!
I hold it but in fief.’ Entrance they made
Through streets with countless windows tapestry-hung
And arches vine-entwined. Wondering, they marked
Its gilded minarets, and high palace fronts
Mosaic-wrought. At last they reached that tower,
The same which heard so late the prophet's dirge.
They clomb its marble steps. To the West they saw
The city's myriad gardens fountain-lit;
Eastward the sea. They knelt and sang ‘Te Deum’;
And from the vast and marvelling mass beneath
The great ‘Amen’ ascended.
Sirs, a tale
For children made might here find happy end;
But life, a teacher rough, when all looks well
Genders its tempest worst. Winter went by
With feast and tourney rich. Spring-tide returned:
A sudden flame of flowers o'er-ran the earth;
To see that sight, they clomb again that tower:
What met their eyes? A spectacle unlooked for!
The horizon line was white with countless sails.
The Cid but smiled: ‘I told you not of this,
A sorry seasoning for your winter banquets,
But knew it well. In far Morocco sits
The Emperor of the Afric Moors. Yon fleet
Wafts here his son, with thirty kings all vowed
Their steeds to water in our Holy Wells
Then stable them in every Christian church:
What sayst thou, lady mine?’ Ximena spake:
‘How many come they?’ And the Cid replied
‘Full fifty thousand; and five thousand ours!’
Death-pale his daughters grew and silent stood:
Ximena made reply, her large black eyes
Dilating at each word, ‘What God inflicts
Man can endure.’ That moment strange eclipse
Darkened the sun; and from that fleet storm-hid
The Arab tambours rolled their thunders forth:
The Cid but stroked his beard, and smiling said:
‘Daughters, take heart! The larger yonder host
The shamefuller their defeat; our spoil the greater!
I promised you long since good mates in time:
This day I promise you fair marriage portions!’
He turned; not once again he sought that tower:
Not once he sallied from Valencia's wall
Till the last Moor had landed.
Don José ceased:
Then shouted loud Don Ivor of Morena
With hands high holden and with eyes upraised,
‘O Cid, my Cid, how glorious were thy days!
How many a minstrel sang thee in far lands!
What greetings came from kings! The French king thus,
“Hail, Cid, no king, yet prop of all our kings!
In vain Charles Martel with his Paladins
Had trod the Crescent down on Poitiers' plain
Thy later aid withheld!”’
Then rose once more
That youngest knight and slender as a maid
Who on the earliest of those knightly vigils
Spake thus, ‘Our earthly life is but betrothal.’
Again he spake: The Cid's most happy day
Was one that neither brought him gift nor triumph:
The day when came to him that silent man
Whom from the first his heart had loved and honoured,
The Alcalde Alfaraxi—he of whom
Hieronymo had said, ‘Watch well yon man,
For when he speaks he'll teach us lore worth knowing.’
That day he sought the Cid and thus addressed:
‘Sir, I give thanks to God Who sent you here!
Here dwelt my forefathers: I loved this spot;
The Christians took me captive yet a child,
And taught me their religion: but my kin
Ransomed me later; with their seers I bode
And won from them all learning of the Moors;
Yea, zealous for their Prophet's law was I.
Now, sir, a man of silence, musing long,
And measuring Christian Faith with Moslem Law,
Albeit on many loosely hangs that Faith
Else I had been a Christian many a year,
My sentence is with Christ and not Mahomet;—
I will to be baptized.’ Then laughed for joy
My Cid: he kissed that Moor, and caught his hand
And led him straight to where Ximena sat
Crying, ‘Rejoice! The Alcalde is our brother!’
Ximena heard, and rose, and, like her husband,
That Christian kissed, and largess sent to shrines,
And decked the palace gates because God's Church
Is Gate, as all men know, 'twixt earth and heaven;
And on the morn of Holy Saturday
The font new-blessed, when leaped therein once more
‘God's creature, water, holy and innocent,’
His god-mother was she. From that day forth
Gill Diaz was his name. That eve my Cid
Whispered a priest, ‘I often mused why God
Had sent me hither, not some worthier knight:
Perchance 'twas but to serve one silent soul!’
In three months more Gill Diaz was a Saint.
He taught the Cid to rule the Moors with kindness
Judged by their proper law. They loved that Cid
For gracious ways in peace, though fierce in war,
And ofttimes when he passed the gates cried loud,
‘Great Cid, our prayers attend thee!’
The young knight ceased. Then glittering from afar,
Again before the Altar shone the lights:
Again Ximena 'mid their radiance knelt;
Again arose that saintly ‘Miserere’;
Again those warriors joined the rite august.

IV. The Death of the Cid.

The latest of those watchful days had come:
The Knights still held discourse of ancient times
And wonders of the Cid. At last arose
A man silent till then though restless oft,
A silver-haired Castilian flushed of brow:
He spake like one that hides his grief no more.
‘Sirs, ye converse of things long past as present,
For still ye laud the Cid who rests with God
And, angel-praised, regards not praise of man,
Yet near things see through mist. Sirs, look around!
Morocco's Soldan knocks against your gates;
His navies close your ports; his hosts this hour
Thrice number those our Great One chased whilome.
To business, sirs! A week, and of those present
Few will survive, I ween.’
To him replied
That youngest knight who at their earliest watch
Had said, ‘Man's earthly life is but betrothal.’
‘Sirs, it had ill become us, warriors vowed,
Had we discoursed of danger ere our dirge
O'er greatness dead had reached an honest end.
That done, devise we how to save the city.’
Then laughing cried, with hands together rubbed,
That mirthful knight, Don Leon de Toledo:
‘Devise we counsel, sirs! but wot ye well
Counsel is bootless if the counsellors
Be men of rueful face. Such face, moreover,
Insults our Cid, to whom all wars were jest
And jest at times was sermon in disguise:
Glad man was he—our Cid!’
Don Sanchez then:
‘Supreme of jests were this: to place our Cid,
Though dead, upon his horse with face to foe!
Santiago! but to hear his laugh in heaven!
The rogues would fly!’
To him Don Aquilar:
‘Brother, your jest was to our Cid no jest,
But serious thought. In sickness twice he cried:
“For this alone is Death a thing unwelcome,
It stays us from the Moors! Should ill confront us
When dead I lie, set me upon my horse;
This arm shall smite them still!”’ Don Ramon next
Know ye no more? Ximena told me all.
The Cid, Morocco's navy full in sight,
Confessed to her that peril till then unknown
Compassed the Christian cause. ‘Bucar,’ he said,
‘Nursing five years his rage, stirs up this day
The total hosts of Barbary against us.
What if our pride of late, or sins beside,
Invoke God's chastening hand?’ That fleet arrived,
He, sickness-stricken, cried aloud, ‘Ah me,
That I should live unprofitable this day!
Raise up, great God, some nobler! Let him walk
Thy knight elect!’
Distressed he lay that night,
Tranquil at morn. He spake: ‘Fear naught, Ximena!
There came to me last night trial unknown—
Pray God it come no more! A trance fell on me
That was not sleep. Before me sat a man
At sunset in an ancient castle's hall:
Low-bent his forehead rested on his hands:
At last he raised his head: it was my sire,
The man I ever loved the best on earth:
Sad image seemed he of that speechless woe
His when his race and house had suffered shame.
An age methought that dreadful trance endured.
Sudden, like breeze from Pyrenean snows,
Some Breath Divine transpierced my heart:—that Breath
Which cheered me oft at danger's worst. I heard
“Be strong! When night is darkest day is night!”
Then all my palace filled with wondrous light
And from that splendour issued forth a Man
Hoary but strong—two keys his girdle bore.
He spake: “Regard no more yon host, for God
In thirty days will call thee to His peace
Because thou serv'dst Him with true heart though frail,
And lov'dst right well my convent of Cardena.
Thy God will not forsake thee! Like a mist
The Moor shall vanish; and thyself, though dead,
When Spain's high Patron fights that final fight,
Shalt share his victory for thy body's honour.
Likewise that day thou diest the Power accurst
Shall fall in Holy Land; the Faith be free:
The Cross of Christ shine forth from Salem's towers:
And Bullogne's Godfrey live God's knight elect,
Fulfilling thus thy prayer.”’
Thus spake the Cid, and ceased. Ximena fixed
Her eyes upon him. Then the Cid resumed:
‘The body's weakness is the Spirit's strength.
I saw these things, and more: he came to me,
That boy all beautiful we lost in youth.
You too shall see him soon.’
Again he mused, and sudden ended thus:
‘Would God that when that final battle joins,
The strength of men might place me on my horse
Facing the Moor; for God, methinks, that hour
Will work some great deliverance for mankind;
Also the greater then will be His praise
When all men cry, “'Twas God, and not our Cid,
Conquered of old: now through the Dead He conquers.”
But let these things be done as they deem best—
Hieronymo, that Perfect One, and these
My cousin Alvar Fanez, and Bermudez.
Gill Diaz I ordain for charge of thee.’
Then spake that slender knight and meek as maid:
Sirs, rest assured that wish was not pride-born,
Since what could be more humble than his death?
He bade them bear him to St. Peter's Church,
There entering, spake: ‘I suffer none to mourn;
Sirs, all that live must die; but know ye this:
Christian who goes reluctantly to God
Is like a soldier who hath ta'en a city
Yet fears to enter it and hail his lord
There new-enthroned and crowned.’ Full reverently
Then at the Bishop's feet he knelt, and there
Humblest confession made and was assoiled.
They that stood nigh in circle heard his words:—
Great scorn had still our Cid of all concealment:
The words he spake they heard.
Don Sanchez last:
Sirs, in this matter God hath shewn His will
By manifest signs. Regard our Cid! He sits
Beside yon altar, changeless. Sirs, attend!
What time Valencia fell, for months, for years
Far nations sent him gifts; Persia's arrived
The last with camel train and long procession.
‘Can Moslem love a Christian?’ was our cry!
Sirs, of her gifts the chief, ye know, was this,
A golden Vial, and around it graved
Inscription strange which no man could decipher
Knight, clerk, or stranger. Don Hieronymo
At last confession made: ‘God sent that Gift,
Not man: and God its import will divulge
When most our need.’ This likewise, sirs, ye know,
That when that Moor who sang Valencia's dirge,
The Alcalde Alfaraxi, Christian made,
Was shewn that Vial sealed from Moslem eye,
He, sage in Persian lore, the inscription read:
‘The body of the just man, ere his death
Washed in this balsam shall not see corruption:’
Sirs, in that balsam was our Great One washed
Ere yet he died and hath not seen corruption:
Therefore 'twas God, we know, who sent that Gift!
He sent it that our Cid, the Elect of God,
Should triumph in his death. The battle-field,
Sirs, shall attest my words!
Then rose the cry,
‘Place we our Cid upon his horse, Bavieca,
Full armed, and with his countenance to the Moor,
Leaving the rest to God.’
Again he saith,
That Chronicler, the Moors, their panic spent,
Surceased from that their fratricidal war
While prophet bald, grim seer, and fakir fierce,
Nursed on mad visions 'mid Arabian peaks
Rushed through the red ranks with uplifted hands
Exhorting and denouncing. Bucar well pleased
Watched from his height the lulling of that storm
And hurrying up with all his great reserves
Missioned long since from every Afric coast,
Tremessian, Zianidian, or Tunisian
Whate'er vexed Syrtes kens o'er raging waves
Or Atlas through grey cloud—with these begirt,
Their dazzling chivalry and standards green,
Himself in midst of those late-warring hosts
With crown imperial and with sceptre gemmed
Sudden appeared, nor stayed, but vanward passed
Assuming sole command. Back rushed the Moors
Now formed anew, to where the Christian Knights
Waited unmoved though destined as might seem
To certain death and swift, and waiting raised
Once more Spain's shout of onset, ‘Santiago!’
'Twas heard in heaven! The eyes of either host
Were opened, and they saw the Hills of God
Round them thick-set with knights innumerable
On snow-white steeds and armed in mail snow-white;
Their Chief a wondrous One with helm cross-crowned
Who bore upon his breast a bleeding cross
And raised a sword all fire. The Moslems fled;
Their Soldan first. Later they sware the earth
Upheaved like waves had hurled them t'ward the sea.
That flight was murderous more than battle's worst:
Whole squadrons perished trampled under foot;
Not once they turned on those four thousand knights
Loud thundering in their rear. The harbour reached,
Thousands lay smothered 'mid the ships or waves
By their own armour cumbered to the death—
Among them kings eighteen. The rest made sail
With Bucar to Morocco. Never again
That Soldan looked on Spain.
The rising sun
Shone fair next morning on Valencia's walls
As from them moved a solemn pilgrimage—
Spain's greatest son upon his horse world-famed,
Borne slowly t'ward San Pietro di Cardena.
Upright he sat: upon his right hand walked
His Wife, and on his left Hieronymo
Behind them priests intoning gladsome psalms.
Each evening as they neared their place of rest
Its bishop and his priests approached cross-led,
With anthem and sad dirge. The second day
The Donna Sol, his daughter eldest-born
Beside her Aragonian lord drew near,
And knights a hundred mailed, with shields reversed
Hung from their saddle-bows. Wondering they gazed
So awful looked that dead man yet so sweet,
His household standard o'er him, and his knights
Not funeral-garbed but splendid as beseems
High tournament or coronation feast.
Not thus the Donna Sol. Her glittering tiar
She cast on the earth and wailed. Ximena then:
‘Daughter, you sin against your Father's charge;
Lamentings he forbade.’ Then Donna Sol
Kissed first her father's hand and next her mother's,
And answered low, ‘In ignorance I sinned.’
Elvira, youngest daughter of the Cid,
Next morning joined them with Navarre, her husband:
Silent she wept, knowing her father's will.
Day after day great companies drew nigh
With kings among them regnant in far lands,
Blackening both vale and plain. At last the Cid,
Faithful in death, reached that majestic pile
So loved by him, San Pietro di Cardena:
The abbot, aged now a hundred years,
And all his monks before the portals ranged
Received him silent.
King Alphonso dwelt
That season at Toledo. In sombre silence
He hastened to those obsequies of one
By him so long revered, so scantly loved
And yet to him so helpful at his need;
Long time he stood a-gazing on the dead:
At last he spake: ‘Spain ne'er had man like that man,
Saw never knight so loyal and so true
So gladsome, simple, holy and brave and sage.
'Twas well for me he never knew his greatness!
In heaven they'll rise to meet him!’ Six whole days
He graced the Cid with vigils and with rites
Befitting Christians dead. He willed besides
To lay him in a golden coffin gemmed
Beyond the funeral pomps of Spanish kings.
Ximena would not. Once again the wife
Stood up as stately as the maid that stood
Before Ferrando, making then demand
‘Let him who crushed my father's house restore it!’
As calm she answered now that monarch's son:
‘It shall not be! There let him sit enthroned,
For many a throne throughout his stormy life
My husband spurned, thus answering, “Of my sires
No man was king.” Look there! There sits, not lies,
The man, not king, who propp'd the thrones of kings—
There in that house which roofed his exiled babes:
There let him rest.’ Alphonso at her word
Sent to Toledo for that ivory chair
Raised on a dais where the Cortes met
Yearly, whereon till then had no man sat,
The kingly symbol of an absent king,
And reared it at the right of Peter's altar
And spread thereon a cloth of gold impearled,
And o'er it raised a wondrous tabernacle
Azure, gold-starred, and flushed with arms of kings
The blazonries of Leon and Castile
Navarre and Aragon, and with these the Cid's:
And on Saint Peter's day the King Alphonso,
The Infantes of Navarre and Aragon,
And Don Hieronymo, in sacred state
Throned on that chair the Cid, and round him spread
That purple robe the Persian Soldan's gift,
And reared within his grasp his sword Tirzona,
Whereof the meaning is the ‘Brand of Fire’—
Not bare but sheathed since now its work was done;
Upon its hilt was graved ‘Ave Maria’:
Likewise before his feet that earlier sword
They laid, Colada, graved with ‘Yea’ and ‘Nay’
At either side its blade; since plain of speech
The Cid had ever been.
Thenceforth till death
In that magnific pile Ximena dwelt,
Watched by her husband's latest friend, Gill Diaz,
His latest yet most honoured, most beloved,
Serving the poor of Christ. Long nights she knelt
In prayer beside her lord, lest aught ill-done
Or left undone might bar him from God's Vision,
Though restful with those Saints who wait God's time
In that high paradise of Purgatory
Sung by the Tuscan, where Eunoe flows
And Lethe, and Matilda gathers flowers.
Four years fulfilled, in peace and joy she died.
Three days before her death she spake these words
'Twixt sleep and waking to her maidens near:
‘I go to be at last in heaven his Bride
With whom I lived in troth not spousal here.’
Gill Diaz yet remained. Daily he led
His master's charger—no man rode him now—
To where beside a cross a spring uprose
Fresher than Akbar's 'mid those palm-trees seven:
O'er it the old charger bent. Full many a time
There standing, though with thirst unsatisfied,
Troubled he lifted up his ears and listened,
And when he heard his master's voice no more,
Sighed and moved on, deject. Two years he lived,
Then died. Before that monastery's gate
Gill Diaz buried him, above his grave
Planting two elms, and dying, gave command,
‘Beside Bavieca's grave in turn be mine,
Because both knew to serve.’
Here maketh end
That book world-famous, the ‘Cid's Chronicle,’
Writ by a king, Alphonso named the Wise
Sage in all science and a Troubadour.
Two centuries and a half the Cid was dead:
Then sent Alphonso faithful men and true
Through all the cities and the vales of Spain
To garner up all relics old that song
History or tale had treasured of that man
Who was the manliest man that e'er shed tear,
The tenderest man that ever fought in war,
The lowliest man that e'er rejected thrones:
All these that king into a garland wove.
With England's Arthur and with Charlemagne
The Cid hath place; and since he left this earth
He rests and reigns among the Blest in heaven.

POPE HILDEBRAND BESIEGED IN THE CASTLE OF ST. ANGELO BY THE EMPEROR HENRY IV.

(A.D. 1084.)

Hugo, these words may never meet thine eyes:—
What then? My thoughts may reach thy heart not less
I watch thee kneeling under Cluny's vaults;
Then write; then pace once more my fortress prison,
St. Angelo, of old great Adrian's tomb,
Adrian, the sagest of Rome's emperors
The man who, dying, questioned of his soul
In song half sad, half gay. Those Pagans old
Had in them valorous stuff. Had they been Christians
Among them many had been of Christian mould
Manlier than some we boast. He guessed not, Hugo,
A spiritual kingdom clasping earth one day
Would find its centre here where sat so long
The Prince of this world crowned! The City's roar
From all its hills shakes ever these grey walls
Or crash more piercing as the roof-tree drops
Of palace, fane, or keep. For leagues around
Yon Infidel's watch-fires shoot their insolent glare;
But scantly dimmed by flying flakes of March
While houseless thousands crouch 'neath arches low
Dead Diocletian's Baths or the Coliseum:
God shield those helpless heads! This two-years siege
Draws to its close.
Think'st thou I faint among these woes, my friend?
I tell thee, nay! A peasant's son am I,
A nursling of snow-blasts on Tuscan hills
Mocker since youth of winter bears and wolves.
The wound's elsewhere:—
Constantine's City, mother-city first
Which raised salvation's sign o'er tower and dome,
Gibbers schismatic drivel. Half the West
Faithful to Faith is faithless to her Lord,
And sells His Heritage for a mess of potage.
O'er fields Christ trod the Impostor's crescent waves:
Thence on to Nilus old. Ten years ago
Thus to yon Emperor wrote I—‘Sin of thine
Holds the wide East grovelling in dust this hour:
The Emperor should have led God's armies there!
The Emperor's naught. I, priest of God, will lead them.
They wait the crosiered hand.’
Hugo, you smile:
What smile like yours for mixed reproach and sweetness?
Storming at priests corrupt I saw it not;
But lavishly if I spake of Kings deposed
'Twas ever near, above or 'neath the surface.
Plainly you warned me once: ‘You'll fail in much,
Succeed in more. You'll win the Church's Freedom:
There lies your limit. Kings are lion-cubs:
God sees them ramp and roar, and bears with them:
Fret not thyself!’
Hugo, God bears with them
That they may weep their sins not triumph in sin.
God's Church reveres true Emperors, true Kings;
They hold from God: the Peoples must obey:
But Kings are sworn to rule with truth and right:
The King forsworn his people may depose him:—
Two claimants these: both need an arbitrator
And, free in choice, have chosen as such the Pope.
Are Kings thus injured? Kings will cry one day
‘That arbitrator's hand raised but a sceptre;
The popular hand an axe.’
Kings claim their rights: I claim His rights for God:
All know His Church's freedom is God's right:
That Popes are bound to guard it.
Those vassal priests
Call me a dreamer. Hugo, you are none,
Have seen no visions. I can guess the cause:
Your whole life long is intellectual vision,
The seeing of the life of spiritual things;
We, men of action, when beside our hand
There lies no act, see visions. Once I saw them;
Not since Life's battle closed around my steps.
At Cluny was my first. You knew it not:
Matins were sung: in chapter sat the monks
You at their head. Your voice rang out denouncing
Monastic sloth. I marked beside you close
A vacant stall. Again I looked: and lo
Within that stall with sorrowing face He sate
Who wore the thorny crown: that hour He wore it,
And on a parchment wrote with hand that bled:
The words He wrote you spake.
Another crash!
Once more far roofs fall in, and flames rush up!
Those archers know my casement. Fools, to know not
Their shafts but glance from wall to roof! My foot
Still snaps them as I pace. My friend, these things
Are of the moment, not eternity:
Such merit not long thought.
What mean yon fires?
This and but this. The men who love not Christ
Love not His Church; and, loving not, abhor her.
Christ only truly sees His Church's face:
At times she wears a sable veil: then cries
The world: ‘A widow is she, not the Bride!’
At times she wears a denser veil gold-woven;
Then cries the fool: ‘The world hath wedded her!’
So prate the market babes!
An Emperor that!
An Emperor! Call ye that an Emperor? She,
God's Church, made first the Christian Emperor.
The thought was great: the hope but half fulfilled.
How palpable the snare that marred that greatness!
The Emperor needed not to be a King;
Save for high cause should ne'er have been a King;
His claims were Virtue, Wisdom, Strength: his crown
The badge of Europe's soldier magistracy:
His might was spiritual half; his sword but vowed
Sin to chastise. The Church that—plagued by Rome
For centuries—honoured Rome, her name, her law,
That used her tongue in offices divine,
She crowned her Emperor with his Roman title:
She clothed him with dalmatic and with stole
A canon of St. Peter's and St. Paul's,
His name she honoured in the Mass itself!
What more could she have done for him? This boy,
What is he but a heathen king o'er-grown
Who strives to build again the old Asian empire?
I stand in this tomb-tower begirt with fires,
Protector of the Peoples and the Kings
Against his petulance—ay, but more, far more,
Avenger of God's Kingdom. In thy grave
Turn round, old Leo, of that name the Third,
Whose hands high-lifted crowned thy Charlemagne;
Roll 'neath those shaggy brows thine eyes o'er earth,
And say if on it stand a prince this hour
In whom thine eyes had seen an Emperor!
Where hid they when for forty years at Rome
Bandits usurping Peter's Chair—
Canossa!
The world will have the telling of that tale
At last will yield it credence. To Canossa
I bade not yonder boy; he came unsummoned:
If there the frost wind bit him 'twas his choice;
I bade him to depart. A year before
I summoned him to Rome to answer charges;
Reply he made not but convoked at Worms
Gathering of bishops few and false; through these
Deposed Christ's Vicar. I deposed the traitor:
The German Kings my sentence ratified
Unless within a year he purged his crime
By frank submission made. That year nigh ebbed
He rushed across the Alps; knelt at my gates;
I knew him false; I saw his aim: 'twas this,
My pardon won, the German league dissolved,
To break his pledge and mock his feigned submission.
This knowing I refused to see his face.
Three days he beat my gates in sackcloth clad:
The snow fell fast. At length through ceaseless prayer,
Matilda's, ay, and, Hugo, thine, whose hands
Had held the infant Emperor o'er his font,
Against my word reiterate, prescient bodings,
I bade him enter. At my feet he wept;
Tendered submission; pledged eternal faith.
Save for that fraud the lights of Candlemas
Had seen his crown in the dust!
He broke his vow:
That morn which saw him to the Church restored
He knelt within Canossa's castle chapel:
I sang the Mass. In reverence low he bowed;
I proffered him the Blessed Sacrament
But added thus, ‘In pledge of faithful heart.’
Aghast he rose, and, pretext urged, forth fled.
I fixed on him mine eye but spake no word.
Ere passed six days that Emperor with a troop
Waylaid my person. To the banks of Po
He lured me on pretence of conference new:
Hard riding saved my life.
In this I erred:
Three years I hurled not forth my final sentence:
Three years a crowned transgressor shamed the world;
Thereof there came much bloodshed. What if I
For that cause fail to tread the Promised Land?
God's will be done! Feet worthier far shall tread it:
I see it—from this height!
'Tis strange, this stillness!
The night is well-nigh spent: the fires burn low:
'Tis stranger yet, that stillness in my breast!
Long years seem nought—I see my childhood's home,
Saint Mary's Convent on Mount Aventine
That overlooks half Rome. Again I note
That white-haired monk draw nigh me; hear him speak;
‘Boy, where thou gazest gazed in years gone by
Rome's oldest Augur, and King Romulus.
Ravens eleven in slow, successive flight
Sailed from the East. That Augur watched them long:
Then spake: “Yon ravens, King, are centuries;
Thy realm will last for centuries ten and one,
Then crumbling, leave its cycle incomplete
Since all is incomplete which is not God.”’
So spake that monk white-haired. I answered thus:
‘Ten centuries! thousand centuries fled, God's Church
Will yet be in her prime!’
Scandal the third—the last—
Cleric concubinage ill named a marriage:
The canons old and use of purest times
Forbade the bond. A Sacrament is marriage,
The image of Christ's bridal with His Church.
God's Church hath ever honoured holy marriage,
Banned all beside. There's nought so like that Church
As hearth of peasant pure with children girt:
Ay, but a celibate clergy is its fence!
The unfaithful weds the mart, the farm, the shop:
The faithful priest is wedded to his charge;
I have heard such clerics cry, ‘We are not angels!’
I answered, ‘No, nor men, if, bound by vows,
Ye lack the strength to keep them.’
Work and wait!
The regulars walked as men by hemlock drugged
But late, as now the seculars. Hope nigh dead
A beam went through the mist. 'Twas Hanno's work:
A sudden sickness seized him at Cologne,
His pastoral charge. Within St. Martin's Church
The monks sang matins. From his bed he crawled:
Knelt at the casement, listened, made resolve;
Restored, within a week he sped true monks
To those fair convents twain, Siegberg and Saalfield:
Reform descended on them hundred-handed
And each hand sceptred! Fast the example spread;
New convents rose; the sterner was the rule
The readier loyal hearts to bow before it.
‘Touch thou thy mountain-tops, and they shall smoke.’
The hand of God had touched the heights. Ere long
The lowlands caught the flame.
Again I see them!
O'er northern Germany the infection raced;
O'er southern next, Suabia, Hungarian wilds,
All hailed that great Reform. The Forest Black
Clasped to its inmost heart the noble guest.
Hirschau was next to claim it; three years sped,
A score of monasteries owned her sway;
Schaffaussen rose, St. Blaise; to these there flocked
Princes and nobles worn in this world's strife
True priests, and youthful knights. Whole villages
Neighbouring those convents gloried in their rule,
Echoed their hymns. In Vallombrosa's woods
Against the storm-laid trunk the kneeling maid
Pressed her pure bosom; children joined her prayer:
Praying, the mason lifted course on course
Unpaid, to breast the storm of centuries
And flash the dawn unrisen o'er golden plains.
I saw those sights: I heard those psalms through crash
Of falling roofs this night. 'Twas these that kept
A heart sore tried unflawed.
This is my mission,
To stand till death Reformer of the Church:
Let none who love her vindicate abuse.
Reform she needs, not once, but age by age
For ever dying like our Alpine forests,
Like them for aye renewed. She dies to live;
Dies locally to sow by tempest winged
The strong seed of her omnipresent life.
Who are her foes? Who mine? Foul, merchant cities,
Despotic monarchs, and false priests world-tamed:
Who are her friends? The poor in every land,
Devout men; youths high-hearted; feudal lords
Honest and brave; the sons of Benedict;—
Monte Cassino! Ay, 'tis she that aids me!
She breeds me bishops, canonists, missionaries:
This arm grows old: concede Thy Church, great God,
A century of Benedictine Popes—
These shall avenge Thy cause!
I read this night
By lurid lights Saint Chrysostom, thy words:
‘Not Heaven itself is stable as God's Church:
She was not made for Heaven but Heaven for her:
God said: “The heavens and earth shall pass away;”
But of the Church He said, “Upon this Rock
I build My Church. The gates of Hell shall never
Prevail against it.” Think ye, sons of men,
Its walls are walls of stone? I tell you nay:
Its walls are multitudinous walls of Souls;
Its pillars Spirit-Pillars based on Faith.’
I read: a Hand from Heaven was on my head:
It stayed me where I stood.
What man is he
That wars against us? He too has a son:
That son will strike that sire as he strikes me.
The end draws near. Henry, I think, will fail:
Guiscard, who wills me well, may prove worse foe:
A flame is he ravening on all he meets,
And liefer far to burn his best friend's house
Than let his least of rivals scape alive.
Long since there are that scatter lies against me;
On me they charge these woes—
I will not draw my sword against my people:
If Rome, this present trouble past, revolts,
With staff and book a pilgrim I depart
Exile on alien shores.
I think that I shall die beside the sea:
I ever loved it: on its beaming marge
I found no littleness. What brings this hour
That image of Salerno's coast before me?
I saw it first with him, its gentle Bishop:
The amenities of that benign sea-clime
About him clung methought. We paced that shore:
Interminably before us spread the deep,
All calm, all splendour, all beatitude.
Thereon—far off—his eyes were fixed: more near,
The unending breaker, high as castle wall,
O'er-arching, and down-toppling fell in thunder.
Armies confronting it had died the death.
I touched his arm, and said; ‘Look nearer, friend!’
He mused; I spake: ‘God wills the death of none:
God is all Love. Yet this is true not less,
Through all the infinitudes of God's measureless Being
Justice and Love are one. If men reject
That Love, that Justice needs must mount against them;
Fall—like yon breaker. 'Tis their will, not His.’

ST. FRANCIS AND PERFECT JOY.

ARGUMENT.

St. Francis, walking one day from Perugia to St. Mary of the Angels, chief house of the Franciscan Order then newly founded, instructs Brother Leone as to that in which Perfect Joy consists.

ROBERT BRUCE'S HEART;

OR, THE LAST OF THE CRUSADERS.

JOAN OF ARC.

She heard a voice well known, but saw no shape:
‘Maid, more a maid than all the maids of France
Who ever kissed, then plucked, her fleur-de-lys,
Leave on that bank thy crook of shepherdess,
That lamb whose head is couched upon thy knee.
Get thee to Chinon: heedless there abides
Thy prince, a weakling 'mid a wanton court.
Tell him that, since nor valiant man nor wise
Avails to raise him to his father's throne,
God lays on thee that mission—thee who ne'er
Hast lifted sword, since strength is God's alone.
To Vaucouleurs! There speak with Baudricourt.’
Then answered she whom all men called ‘The Maid,’
The slight, pale damsel with the naked feet,
Red lips, red kirtle, visionary eyes:
‘The worthier see thy Face; thy Voice alone
I hear, and oft have heard, and love it well,
Saint Michael, Prince of all those heavenly Powers
That hurled Rebellion forth from Heaven, I go.’
Then 'twixt the eyes she kissed her little lamb
And laid it down; and on her homeward way
She heard a second voice, yet nothing saw:
‘Maid, when thou seest that prince thou think'st on ever,
Arouse his nobler nature speaking thus:
“Sleepest thou, my Prince? If so, to me, a maid,
Grant horse and arms! To Orleans I must ride;
With me true men alone. Thy foes shall vanish;
And France, that sign discerned, shall right thy wrong.”’
Listening that voice the maid had knelt. It ceased.
She rose and spake: ‘Great Alexandrian Saint,
Catherine! Full well I recognize that voice
Which drew to Christ the famed Egyptian seers.
Of all the legends in that blazoned book
I love that tale the best. I see thee not;
But when I hear that Voice I dream that Face,
That smile which o'er it spreads, while slowly, slowly,
That Babe, forth leaning from His Mother's arms,
Adown thy finger draws His bridal ring.
Thy mandate I obey.’
On she pushed
Through fields and thorny woodlands. Some aver
That, tasked by stoniest paths, her slender feet
Bled never, 'mid the miry showed no stain;
That on green downs the lambs around her played;
The bird sole-singing on the quivering spray
Cheered her, while furry shapes peered out from holes:
That cottage inmates gave her bread and placed
Their infant in her arms and bade her bless it
And watched her long departed. Yea, 'tis said
A boy of six years old from hill to hill
Tracked her six hours and more.
On moonlight nights
Her head oft rested on a wild-deer's flank.
When flocked the hinds to Mass from field and farm
Noting the corn-stacks near the household trees
She wept, for still her heart was with the poor:—
‘Alas, must all their little humble store
Be prey to fire and sword?’
The twentieth eve
Her travel reached its term. Majestic Loire
By sunset flushed rolled on in massive flood
Solemn though swift. O'er it the countless towers
Of Tours sent forth their tender vesper chimes,
Echoes of vesper chimes in ages past
That smoothed Time's pathway to eternity.
She passed to Chinon's gates; then stood in prayer,
Her wont ere yet she crossed each threshold new;
For thus she mused, perchance some dying man
Lies here; perchance some pretty babe new-born;—
Then entered them unbid.
A music strain
Far heard, her guide, she passed from hall to hall,
Some armour-hung to where rich doors flung wide
Shewed a long gallery thronged by knights and dames.
Some talked, some laughed; at times a lady held
One finger o'er the chess-board hovering long,
Then dropped it down on castle, queen, or knight,
Yet hesitated still and marked whose eyes
Pursued the ivory wanderer. At her harp
Sat Agnes Sorel singing. As the song
Soared from her lips the smile around them brightened
And larger beamed her azure eyes. The Maid
Glanced on her lightly, and, misliking, passed
To where, with many near him, stood a youth
In velvet black. Irresolute was his face
Though delicately shaped. Not distant sat,
Scarce marked, a lady pale that widow seemed;
Yet was both Wife and Queen.
The Maid addressed him:
‘God save thee, gentle Dauphin: may His grace
Accord thee holy life.’ The prince replied—
News he had heard of her from Baudricourt,
And willed to test her—‘Maid, the King is yon!’
He spake, and pointed to a warrior tall
And stately, starred with emblems of his greatness,
Dunois, best soldier deemed that day in France.
She answered: ‘Gentle Prince, that may not be;
God tells me thou art King and not another.’
‘Damsel, thy name?’—‘Men call me “Joan the Maid.”
Dauphin, this word I bear thee from thy God,
He yields thee back thy realm! God reigns: in thee
He sees His France's heir.’ Again she spake:
‘Dauphin, provide me armour and a horse:
At once the siege of Orleans I must raise,
And later see thee crowned in holy Rheims.
These tasks discharged my mission is fulfilled,
And I, to happy lowliness restored,
Clasp my young sister. This shall be the sign.
Bend low that I may whisper.’
Near her lips,
Red rose-leaves by light zephyrs agitated,
He stooped his ear. Her whisper lasted long
As when a young child says his ‘Ave Mary’
With recollection. Charles' cheek grew pale:
He cried: ‘Of all who tread the earth not one
Had cognisance of that vow! Maid, I believe!
To Orleans with my standard in thy hand!
At daybreak forth and conquer!’
Those hard by
Clapped hands obsequious in enthusiasm.
All save Dunois. In silence stood the Maid
A little bowed with palms upon her breast;
While Agnes Sorel glancing from afar
With sideway forehead leaning on her harp
In tone her royal lover could not hear
Spake splenetic; ‘Yon girl's foot-bare! Alas!
I fear those rushes hurt her dainty feet!’
Last Citaux's hoary Abbot rose; he spake:
‘Sir and my King, at Poitiers three days hence
A spiritual Council meets honouring that field
Whereon Charles Martel smote that Moslem host
Else lords ere now of earth! That Maid send thither.
They'll speak the truth as Martel fought for truth;
No ambling half-breeds they!’
The King agreed,
And she, that sad, sweet lady clothed in black
Advancing clasped in hers the Maid's slight hands;
Then looking on them said: ‘No ring; so best!’
Thus adding: ‘Maid, be guest and friend this night
Of one not rich in friends.’ But near a casement—
Through it a low wind brushed at times her harp—
Sat Agnes Sorel with sad eyes averse
Fixed on a glittering stream that girt remote
Her little islet home ablaze with flowers,
A place of tombs hard by.
The Maid that night
Reposed the first time on a perfumed pillow.
She mused—how mournful seemed that youthful prince!
How angel-like yet childlike that old monk!
Ere long she saw in dream her parents' house
Close by that ‘Fairy Tree’ beneath whose shade
She oft had danced. A rose o'er-trailed that wall
Painted with warlike deeds a century later.
She trod its floor. The cottage inmates slept;
The old mastiff guarding still in sleep that cradle
Which had not held its babe for seventeen years.
She sought the garden; hid in apple-bloom
A bird half wakened chirped. She clomb a rock
And eastward saw among the woody hills
The upper waters of the silver Meuse
Winding relaxed down from the dawn-touched Vosges.
She saw; and sighed to wake.
Three days passed by:
The Council met at Poitiers. In the midst
The Maid stood up. Briefly she told her tale.
The Council next made question of her Faith:
Her answers pleased it. Insight keen they shewed
Humble albeit, and joined with lofty mind
Strange soberness of heart. Great Truths to her,
Thus spake those Elders whispering each to each,
Shone through a diamond air: what others saw
She touched with naked hand. They sent to Arc;
Made inquest of her life. The peasants answered
She was the lamb's best friend against the wolf:
The answer of her parents was more brief:—
‘The child is good enough.’
Thus to the King
The Council judgment sent: ‘That Maid is true:
In her we find no ill but good alone,
Faith, courage, love, pure life and upright heart.
Your Grace instructs us that, untaught by men,
She knew you, and that vow divulged to none.
Next you demand, were these things miracles?
Sir, miracles will glorify God's Church
Till flames the last roof on the Judgment Day;
But to distinguish miracles unquestioned
From others fancy-feigned is hard. Your Grace
Fitliest will act trusting at once this Maid
And testing her. Let counsellors none approach her:
Loose rein concede her. If her work be God's
'Twill tell its tale ere long.’
The King obeyed:
Thus he addressed her: ‘Maid, thy suit is won:
To Orleans lead ten thousand men—my best—
Since there thou sayest that God will shew a sign.’
She answered: ‘Ere I march I claim three things:
The first is this: the men who share that march
Must be unhired; true men whose wage is God.
My next demand is this: that standard old
In the first Crusade the glory of old Tours:
The world's Creator stands 'mid fleurs-de-lys
Blazoned thereon—a gold sphere in His hand:
That standard I must bear. My last demand—
A sword there lies within Saint Catherine's Church
At Fierbois: record of it none remains:
Yet thrice in vision I have seen that sword:
That sword must go before us on our march.’
The King complied. On the third night at twelve
They found that sword she spake of; on its hilt
That gravure she had seen.
Swift as a blast
Of hymns in rapture of thanksgiving borne
O'er lands long parched when rain dissolves the drought,
Rushed the great tidings. Edward the Black Prince
And that fifth Henry, Crecy, and Agincourt
Had done their work; and now an alien babe
Lorded the realm. At last the shout had risen
‘Warriors and statesmen failed to shield our France:
A Maid shall save her;’ and the land believed.
While marched that Maid along the bank of Loire
'Mid pastures green new lit with fires of spring
Thousands around her flocked. Round Orleans' walls
The chiefest captains of that age were camped:
Warnings she sent them. Mad with merriment
They flung her missives on the winds: but some
Who laughed not, whispered: ‘Brothers, bide the event!
What God decrees shall come!’
On the third eve
That Host triumphant eyed the foe they spurned;
Ten thousand men fronted the setting sun
Alone—the first—that standard in her hand,
The Maid! Like men in dream they stood: ere long
Divided. Through the lane thus formed she passed,
She and her host unhired. No shout was heard:
Like frozen men they stood. Vainly that hour
Old warriors urged them on. The Maid and hers
Through city-gates self-opening as might seem,
Their summits thronged by starvelings pale and mute
Rode to the minster; kneeling there gave thanks
The in-rushing townsfolk sang aloud ‘Te Deum.’
In Orleans there was feast that night. Next day
Their panic past that leaguering foe fought hard:
Again the battle-cries of Salisbury rose
Of Talbot and of Suffolk. In a week
Again was silence.
Six thousand lay in death beyond the walls:
The remnant made retreat.
Not unpursued—
The Maid and her Ten Thousand followed fast.
That mystic sword rapt from St. Catherine's Church
Though borne before her in the battle's van
She wielded never. In her sword-hand flamed
The Oriflamme alone.
Each battle won clothed her with light as when
Miriam sole standing by the Red Sea raised
Her cymbal, singing, ‘The Lord hath triumphed.’
Oft o'er the noble dead she wept; yet laughed
To hear how Suffolk on the red grass lay
Wounded, and how above him towered Renaud:
‘Art thou a knight?’ the old warrior made demand:
Renaud replied, ‘Not yet.’ Then Suffolk laid
On the young man's shoulder knighthood with his blade
And said, ‘Your prisoner, Sir.’ She heard, and cried
‘Brave man and true! God grant him speedy ransom!
All good men should be friends!’
There are who swear
'Twas not her faith alone which bore her on:
By gift divine the science of the wars
Was hers, infused; yet all confess alike
Hers was besides some loftier inspiration.
Later by thirty years thus Dunois witnessed:
‘Whate'er she wrought, or spake, or looked, in her
A something supernatural still I noted.
She seemed to live in God. The superstitions
At which I laughed in peasant and in prince
In her possessed no place. She spake not oft,
And still her uttered words however great
Seemed less than others which remained unuttered,
Breed of the same high stock.’
Three months went by:
Then to the King she sent. Her words were these:
‘Sleep'st thou, my King? Not thus thine ancestors!
Sir, Heaven has done its part, and many a land
Looks round amazed: and asks, “The King, where is he?”
Sir, and my King, fulfilled is half my mission;
Share with me the remainder. March to Rheims!’
The King obeyed. Girt by twelve thousand men
She made that marvellous march — two hundred miles—
Whereon each castled crag still frowned upon her
Each city sent a host to bar her way.
At last her mission's bourne, old holy Rheims,
Shone from afar. Ere set of sun it sent
Its best and noblest in procession long
To greet the conqueror with the city's keys.
That Conqueror was the Maid. The King it was
Who thanked them with such grace, that all men cried,
A Charlemagne restored! But verily
No Charlemagne was he!
Three days and more
They venerated that city of Sanctuaries
Where Clovis, earliest Christian king of France,
With him three thousand thousand of his iron race,
Led thither by his saintly wife, Clotilde,
The young, the pure, the beautiful, the good,
To Christ was joined in baptism. There, 'tis said,
Saint Remi preached the Passion; there King Clovis
Leaped to his feet and smote the altar steps
Thrice with his sword, and cried, ‘Had I been there
My Franks and I, that race accurst had perished!’
Upon Saint Osmond's Feast the King was crowned:
The Mass completed, through the minster swelled
Sound as of soft seas crushing sandy shores:
Next with grave feet tuned as to strains in heaven
Slowly advanced the prelate to the King:
Beside that King, steel-clad from brow to foot
And holding high the standard consecrate
Stood up the Maid Elect. The mitred man
Lodged in the monarch's grasp sceptre and globe,
Chaunting that prayer ‘Stand firmly and hold fast.’
Thus was that second prophecy fulfilled:—
‘He shall be crowned at Rheims.’
The Maid Elect
Sank on her knees. Thus spake she: ‘From my birth
I hated those who stained our France with blood:
No man henceforth I hate!’ She rose and spake:
‘Fair King, of kisses on thy hand impressed
In pledge of fealty true the first be mine.’
She kissed his hand. Like homage paid by all
Once more she spake. She spake with lifted hand
That sceptreless appeared itself a sceptre:
‘Most gentle King, attend! Through help of God
Orleans is free once more; the King is crowned.
One duty yet remains. Within this church
I leave this armour worn at God's command:
My parents' home is near; to them I speed;
I yearn to see them and my little sister,
And tend once more our flock.’
A rapid glance
The counsel-loving King around him cast,
The award of all instinctively descried
(Unkingly faculty, and yet his chiefest).
He spake: ‘The coronation feast attends;
We'll treat of this to-morrow.’ As he spake
On the Maid's brow fell shade till then unseen.
Next morning, ere that weariness and chill
Which follows fierce excitements had dispersed
The weight of many a war-field on her still,
Dunois approached the Maid. ‘The war without you,’
He said, ‘will turn to wreck.’—From the sweet lip
Came answer sad. ‘Dunois! It may not be!
Orleans is free: the King is crowned at Rheims:
These were my Mission: nought was given beside:
A year ends all.’
A bishop rose: ‘A year?
How many a crime a year of war brings forth!
Maid, to thy prince thy duty is fulfilled;
Fight next for France! For this a month suffices.’
Others their supplications joined with his—
An hour went by and more—
The King made entrance. ‘Let the damsel be!
She warned me early—“All shall kiss thy hand;
In pledge of fealty true: the first be mine.”
The first that tendered pledge forsakes me first;
Many will leave me soon.’
One night a dream
She dreamed—ah, how unlike that Chinon dream!—
The war was past; to Arc she walked alone,
Less buoyant was her footstep than of old;
Heavy with August sunshine spread the boughs;
The harvest slopes were golden. Near arrived,
Her heart already in her childhood's home,
She clomb a rock which over-gazed the village.
Back she recoiled. There endless winter reigned!
Deep snow hid all. The Maid—so ran her dream—
Thought thus—or heard it from a stranger near
‘The Penance this of some poor soul that sinned.’
Rushed from that rock, pushed knee-deep through that snow:
She found her parents' hut half fallen. One hearth
Remained, a cradle near, a mastiff dead—
It had not stiffened yet.
Next day she led
A sally from Compiègne then leaguered long:
A storm burst forth and lightning smote the earth.
Blinded she seemed at first then gazed around.
A panic seized her followers, and they fled.
She scorned to fly; an arrow pierced her horse.
He fell; the battle tempest o'er her rolled.
Some sware 'twas treason's work.
To the end—since shames
There are, such shames 'tis shameful to record them.
By laws of war that Maid, her ransom paid,
Had walked in freedom. Traitors, that law well knowing
Flung soon around their prey the hunter's net.
Beauvais' false prelate from his see expelled
By popular suffrage for conspiracy
With Bedford—Bedford's creature since that day,
Devised that plot,—they tried the Maid for crimes
Unknown to courts of war—not civil treason
But sorcery, magic, and such spiritual sins
As meet their doom in spiritual courts alone.
In Rouen sat that court, Beauvais its head;
Beside him fifty doctors, casuists, lawyers,
With others. Cardinal Beaufort was of these,
That prince world-famous for his terrible end
Who saw the murdered Gloster's spectre near
And cried, ‘Comb down his hair! It stands upright,
Like limed twigs set to catch my winged soul!’
Then passed to judgment.
Midmost in that court
The Maid stood daily, friendless, unalarmed;
A wild-eyed throng around her raged for joy
As late with fear; since all that Norman realm
Sworn to Duke William's offspring hated France,
Her most, the Maid, yet half believed her mission.
Unmoved she stood; at times she smiled; at times
Her dark eye rested with a sadness sweet
On brows, some mitred, yet unvenerable,
And wrinkled scribes with hot and hurrying hand
Transmuting Truth to lies. Question on question
They hurled at her in mass. ‘Fair sirs,’ she said
Like one by children's petulance half-amused
‘I pray you put your questions one by one
Not thus at random.’ Some one called her ‘Joan’;
She answered, ‘Gentle lord, men call me “Maid”;
That name I answer best.’ ‘Are you in grace?’
She answered, ‘If I be, God keep me in it;
Better to die than live not loving God.’
Questions doctrinal next they put to snare her.
First gravely, then with sternness she replied,
‘Fair sirs, be wise in questioning! Themes there are
On which I answer not and should not answer.
My gentle lords, ye call yourselves my judges:
Ye are such; therefore judge with judgment just.
This is your trial day!’
The murder craft
Ended not there. Next morning she awoke
Roused by a sun-flash from her knightly mail
In malice filched from her when captured first,
In malice worse restored. With beating heart
She gazed upon those arms. She mused: ‘I feared
At first to wear them though at God's command.
How soon that maiden fear was changed to joy
At Orleans late delivered, then at Rheims
Rheims where I longed to leave them—that is past!
Armour no more I wear in war for ever.
What then? My task is wrought, my King is King!
This chance reveals to me my last high duty:—
I wear them one hour more.’
Steel panoplied
She sang her last ‘Te Deum.’ It was heard
By angel ears.
Not theirs alone—‘Relapsed!’
The spies rushed forward crying: ‘Renegade false
Who swore'st to bear no arms!’ Upon their leader
She fixed her gaze. ‘Bishop, by you I die:
Last eve you veiled your plot; you now divulge it!
Your charge is false. I swore last eve to bear
Thenceforth no arms in war: I keep that oath.
I swore those Voices were authentic Voices
The Voices of God's Saints. That oath is true;
I disobeyed those Voices once alone,
Sore tempted then. That sin they have forgiven;
Not two months since they promised me deliverance
How that may come I know not. Be it so:
Not seeing, I believe.
“Relapsed.” That word bears meaning—“Death by fire!”
Farewell, my lord!’
The man dismissed retired
Incensed yet glad to go.
That morn by one,
A beauteous English boy—her sword had saved him
In battle's fiercest, and he loved her well—
She sent a message to old Baudricourt,
A message, for she ne'er had learned to write:
‘Farewell, true friend! That eve we spake together
You thus addressed me: “God has given you Faith:
Pray God it walk beside you all your life,
Sustain you at your death!”
At that word “death” a tear was in your eye;
I marked it, and I should have thanked you for it.
I thank you for it now.’ To those her dearest
Her words were few:—‘God's work is worked, thank God!
O what a meeting will be ours in heaven!
Till then rejoice! O father! and O mother!
O sister mine, farewell!’

THE HIGHER PURGATORY.

HYMNS FROM ST. GERTRUDE.

HYMN OF PRAISE TO GOD.

(THOUGHTS FROM ST. GERTRUDE.)

HYMN ON THE DIVINE HUMANITY OF CHRIST.

(THOUGHTS FROM ST. GERTRUDE.)

THE TRUE HUMANITY.

(FROM ST. GERTRUDE.)

Sacred Humanity of Christ, all hail!
Glorified Manhood Who alone art Man;
Great Archetype in God's own image formed
From everlasting. Adam was to Thee
Second, not first. Essential Man art Thou;
We are but pigmy and distorted shades
Down cast from Adam's lightning-blasted trunk
Upon the blighted heath of mortal life,
Or timeless and abortive fruit unblest
Cumbering his boughs. True God, alone true Man!
Thou from Whose touch deific streams that power
Which keeps from further and more bestial lapse
The race created Human; hail, O hail!
Hail in Thy Paradise of lonely light
Walking with God; in Thy Regalities
The Mediatorial Realm from pole to pole
Swaying: all hail, great Pontiff, with Thyself
Lighting Thy Church: all hail, Prophetic Power
God's Wisdom prime, His Uncreated Word,
Before Whose eyes Creation yet unborn
In vision passed; and from Whose tongue her Works
Their Names received, and were what they were called.

COLUMBUS AND THE SEA-PORTENT.

COLUMBUS AT SEVILLE.

A number of charges have recently been made against Columbus which are strikingly at variance with a crowd of high authorities, charges that represent him as little better than a selfish adventurer, if not a brutal buccaneer. Such an estimate would cheat the world of the reverence which it has been hitherto privileged to feel for one of its greatest men. Those who wrote at more leisure on the subject will not, however, be very easily put out of court. Washington Irving speaks thus: ‘The system of Columbus (he refers to the Ripartimentos) may have borne hard upon the Indians, born and brought up in untasked freedom, but it was never cruel or sanguinary. He (Columbus) inflicted no wanton massacres, nor vindictive punishments; his desire was to cherish and civilize the Indians, and to render them useful subjects, not to oppress and persecute and destroy them. When he beheld the desolation that had swept them from Maryland during his suspension from authority, he could not suppress the strong expression of his feelings. In a letter written to the king after his return to Spain he thus expresses himself on the subject: “The Indians of Hispaniola were and are the riches of the island: for it is they who cultivate, and make the bread and the provisions for the Christians, who dig the gold from the mines, and perform all the offices and labours both of men and beasts. I am informed that since I left this island six parts out of seven of the natives are dead, all through ill treatment and inhumanity.” They had,’ Irving tells us, ‘loved him well, and wept at his departure.’ Irving also insists on it that zealous as Columbus was for the advancement of scientific knowledge, ‘still he regarded it (the discovery of America) but as a minor event preparatory to the great enterprise,’ the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. ‘The spirit of the Crusades had not passed away.’ Sir Arthur Helps writes: ‘Columbus had all the spirit of a Crusader, and, at the same time, the investigating nature of a modern man of science. It is thus that Prescott speaks of Columbus: ‘The finger of the historian will find it difficult to point to a single blemish in his moral character. His correspondence breathes the sentiment of devoted loyalty to his sovereigns. His conduct habitually displayed the utmost solicitude for the interests of his followers. ... His dealings were regulated by the nicest principles of honour and justice.... The grand object to which he devoted himself seemed to expand his whole soul.... It (Columbus' character) was in perfect harmony with the grandeur of his plans, and their results more stupendous than those which heaven has permitted any other mortal to achieve.’—Ferdinand and Isabella, Part II. chap. ix.

A vindictive and unworthy habit of brooding over his own wrongs has been by some attributed to Columbus, on the ground that he ordered that the chains placed upon him when he was sent home to Spain a disgraced man should be buried with him. But a letter written by him in his later life, and published long since, distinctly states that his aim in issuing that command, or at least in sustaining it, was that the memory of his wrongs should be interred with him. He feared lest those chains might excite in their beholders feelings of a vindictive character and one injurious to the king and queen. Had the act of Columbus not been one of a distinctly generous character there need still have been nothing vindictive about it.

Another charge brought against Columbus is that he urged the Spanish Government to send the Spanish criminals to the Indies. Had this counsel meant that those criminals were ever to mix with the general population of the Indies it would have been a grievous error, though one which in very recent times has disgraced colonization. As Washington Irving states it, the counsel more probably was only that Spanish criminals should expiate their crimes, so long as their sentences lasted, upon public works in the Indies not in Spain, thus protecting the Indian population from the heaviest toils and supplying labour for arduous works absolutely necessary in the new Spanish settlements.

It can hardly be supposed that Columbus, who, though a wonderful Christian hero, was a man and not an angel, never fell into any error or inconsistency in the course of his long and stormy career. We do not know how truly great and good a man is unless we know both how seldom he errs seriously, and how seriously he laments such errors. Perhaps this consideration weighed with me when representing Columbus as, on a single occasion and under most trying circumstances, adopting a course which seemed at the time to him right and necessary, but which at a later time he condemned. Whether his earlier judgment or his later was sound we cannot now know. It need not be observed that no severity of self-condemnation could in him be a measure of its justice, since great natures often lament imaginary defects, and exaggerate every deviation from their high abiding aim, while meaner natures deny or extenuate their errors. If Columbus erred on that one occasion his greatness can well afford the admission of that error by his most ardent admirers. But the act in question was one which we cannot now judge; for Columbus was surrounded by traitors bent on his destruction, who falsified his deeds in order to cover their own crimes, and who may well have tampered with his correspondence no less. In the life of a great man belonging to times long past there generally occur some obscure passages. The sole clue to such passages is that one afforded by the known character of the man and the general tenor of his acts; for then the part is interpreted by the whole, as honesty requires.

(A.D. 1504.)

The Queen is dead: four days the huge round earth
Has been a tomb. To Spain her death is judgment;
To the Indies—to the total West—'tis ruin!
Long since and oft by mandates signed and sealed
She swore to all who bore her high commission
‘Make ye those Indians free men!’ They are slaves:
She sped me from her death-bed tidings of them;
They reached me with the tidings of her death:
An Indian Queen, their noblest, Anacaona,
Friendliest to us till racked by Spanish crimes,
Was snared but late, then slain—her chiefs made slaves!
Ovando, he that fills my seat, had done it.
Made slaves! But three months since I saw their slaves!
Then first I fully learned what slavery means
When demons are the masters.
Slaves! What are slaves? In ancient times we know
Slavery at least had pretext. Lawless tribes
Reduced, revolters quelled in honest war
Were slaves, though ofttimes kindly used. This hour
What means that word? It means man's meekest race
Scourged to their river-brims and groping there
Blind hands and blinder eyes—groping for gold.
It means the prince deposed; the children orphaned;
It means the fugitive youth by bloodhounds chased;
It means whole tribes in council met and there
Each man self-slain. Twelve years ago—no more—
I leaped on that new shore and blessed its Maker!
That hour a doubt there clutched me by my throat.
Ere three years passed they left their herds, their flocks,
Starved 'mid their forests. Sins till then unknown
Our teaching, our bequest, wrought death on others—
We Christians did that work. The race will vanish:
The vengeance—that remaineth!
From the first
They loved us; fain had worship'd us; drew near
With widening wondering eyes: they brought the kid
The lamb. I cried, ‘Behold those gracious looks!
That boon they seek is Christ.’ On nearer knowledge
I found them chaste and honest, yea devout
Though to false gods. They neither stole nor lied.
That morn I sailed from Spain a monk addressed me
My host at old Rabida's cloistral home
On Palos' chestnut-shaded steep far seen;
‘Fair are thine omens, Christopher Columbus!
Saint Christopher was that giant who, staff-propt
Bore on bent neck that Babe across the strait:
Thou bear'st him o'er a stormier sea. Columba!
A Dove it was wafted that olive spray:
Thou bearest God's Fruit of Life!’ Ah me, ah me!
I bore the Cross, not Creed!
Could I have foreseen—
The men who shared with me my earliest voyage
Were men devout who loved the Indians well:
To these I gave waste lands: the native race
Served them for hire. Ere long I sailed for Spain:
The wonders of that West were noised abroad,
Its gold, its gems. Then darkened God's fair heaven;
Yea, where the carcase lay, the eagles flocked,
Prodigals disgraced, adventurers without honour
Rushed o'er the waves. They bought new lands for nought;
Headlong they hurled the natives on the mines—
I knew not yet the worst.
'Twas thirst for gold!
It spread like plague from spotted face to face:
I saw the human semblance rot beneath it.
The Monks denounced slave-holders day and night;
They stood betwixt the living and the dead
With arms far stretched. The Queen, the King, the Laws
Frowned on the sin. What made their protests null?
What makes a mockery of them to this hour?
A knot of merchants vile by distance screened;
Bribed governors, trencher-priests the Gospel's shame
Casuists who cancelled Christ. Through them He bleeds
Before the New World's gates.
Spain shared that crime!
She lacked the simple aim, the ‘single eye’:
Her statesmen wished the Indians well, but willed—
Not Ximenes—far more that Spain should stand
Full-mirrored in her every attribute
Alcaldes, Procurados, Alguazils
Where'er her sceptre ruled—
Spain should have sent the West but missionaries;
Right gladly had they sailed and burned their ships!
The monks it was that Christianized the lands
God and their own right hand their inspiration,
Not statesmen—seldom kings—
They would have left their martyrs; won the Pagans.
The omitted duty to committed sin
Strode with a giant's strides.
Weighed and found wanting!
Not Spain alone; a world whose boast was Christ
Had sat enthroned for ages. Then from heaven
God's strong right hand let down God's golden scales:
This was God's test. ‘From age to age,’ He said,
‘I gave to thee My Kingdom and My Truth
And made thee wondrous in the Gentiles' eyes:
That done I lifted high the veil, and shewed thee
A stone-blind people wandering in deep night:
I bade thee lay thy hand in benediction
Down on that people's head. Thou stretch'dst it forth;—
Then centuries of thy sins prevailed against thee:
That people knelt:—it rose to Leper changed
And vanished in the darkness.’
Weep for me, Earth!
And thou wide Heaven compassionate my woe!
Yea all who love the right! The Queen is dead:
The Truth looks on me from those great dead eyes—
Who lives that ne'er at one unhappy hour
Warred on the sacred tenor of a life?
I was the Indians' friend; and well they knew it;
Yet once—but once—walking by earthly lights
Swerved from the perfect way.
Not less that day
Will come when Nations shall resound my praise!
I trample on such glories. In my youth
My least ambition was to find those Indies;
My chief was this:—to lead a Christian host
Its cost defrayed by new-discovered worlds,
Myself to Palestine or serve content
Among its meanest ranks. That king knew all:—
I promised him new realms and named my terms:
I swore: and kept my vow. He filched my guerdon
Like huckstering churl; left me a bankrupt hand
To launch a new crusade upon the East.
Spain with his fraud connived. The worse for her!
That gold she ravished from the Indian streams
Will pamper first her vices, after that
Famish her honest industry, then leave her
Stripp'd bare, a beggar in the winter sun.
Europe that shared the guilt will share the penance
Surfeit without, but leanness in the soul;
Devoutest deeds, delight of harpers old,
Will kindle hearts no more; earlier crusades
That day be noted but for blots that blurred them
Like dark spots on the sun—
Loyalty next will perish: Liberty
Kneel to the despot throned on money-bags
False Nobles traffic make of Faith and Honour
Propping with ravished Church-lands starveling homes;
Brambles usurp Religious shrines; her chalice
Brighten the feaster's board. Sin's fire this day
Pastures, a glutton, on the fair green tree;
Will it spare the dry? Behold my gifts to man!
I will'd to find new worlds: I marred the old:
To spread Christ's Realm: I fouled it with disgrace;
My greater task remains a dream abortive:
My work consummate proves a monster birth—
The churl who spurned me back to Spain in chains
Was Prophet and inspired!
Four days; four nights
Since last I closed my eyes! What strains are these?
What dew celestial weighs my eyelids down?
I shall awake renewed or die in slumber. [He falls asleep.]

Thank God! That slumber saved me. When it fell
The noontide scorched me; now the sun is setting:
In sleep I heard angelic choirs: they sang
‘The Woe is past!’ Hark! now a different strain!
Those mild Franciscans chaunt their vesper psalms;
How like those psalms they sang at loved Rabida!
I smell its thymy height! Thank Heaven, they first
Sang Mass on Indian shores!
The fever's gone!
A light creeps o'er me like that dawn which crept
At last o'er waveless waters as we lay
Close-anchored by that Indian Isle first kenned
San Salvador.
Ah me, again that wail!
Four days I heard it as the sun descended
While from yon Minster's cave-like portals streamed
That crowd black-stoled crying ‘The Queen is dead.’
Poor fools! Poor fools! To cry ‘The Queen is dead’;
That were to say that Virtue's self can die.
Of all her Virtues Love was still the root:
Others need many virtues; she but one;
Through Love her Faith believed; her hope upsoared;
Through Love she saw in everything God's Image
Not knowing that round her lived that clime which drives
Base things to dens and holes. She is not dead!
O great and holy creature, sweet and brave,
By nature great, sun-clad by more than nature,
So spirit-free and yet so bound by duty,
So queenly yet so humble—
O type of faithfulness in word and deed,
O Flower of all perfections known on earth,
O pledge of those that bloom alone in heaven
That heaven her presence makes more heavenly still—
She is not dead: now first she lives.
All hail
Thou day of days when I beheld her first!
'Twas at Granada's siege. Spain's leaguering force
Had done its part: yet summer heats unceasing
Had marred its martial beauty. A shout was heard:
On steed snow-white she rode into the war:
At once the battle brightened in her beam:
At once a spirit of life rushed forth through all things:
That plain between the city and the snows
Glistened ere long; a tournament shone round us;
Dusk Arab chiefs with nobles and with knights
Fresh from their towers in Aragon and Castile
Encountered daily 'neath their ladies' eyes:
The Queen's white crest was ever 'mid the foremost!
I saw it swooping through Granada's gates.
My breast swelled larger for the wounds it bore.
Come what come may that war was a Crusade!
O God, how dire a storm has raged around me!
How strange this respite! What if half those storms
That wreck us be but storms ourselves have raised?
One Storm there is sent from the Eternal Stillness,
Sent in God's Love. In that supreme of Trials
When earth beneath us heaves and in our soul
Huge gulfs, so seems it, open that presage
Not death, not death—but worse—Annihilation,
Even then God's peace is nigh. That storm's Illusion!
It is a Spirit that rushes at that hour
Through air unmoved! We, clinging to His skirts,
Mistake for Storm that Spirit's onward flight:
And cling the closest when that flight is fleetest:
'Tis then the Soul makes way. Teach us, great God,
That in the Storm of Centuries not less
Man's total Race makes progress like the Man
They most perchance the Races trampled most,
Progress through agonies from nought to Thee,
'Tis so! It must be so! O Suffering Race
Through Him ye know not and the world less knows,
They least who boast His Name but mock His Laws,
Thy Suffering must be somehow joined with His,
Must draw from His some grace expiatory,
Must make for all Earth's Sufferers intercession
Crying beneath God's altar ‘Lord, how long?’
That lore we should have taught thee teach to us
Then when thy crown is golden, ours of thorn!
This is thy day of anguish:—ay but God
Counts every tear thou shed'st and lays His Hand
Numbering its pulses down upon thy heart;
Leads thee through pain to peace, from peace to glory:—
Pardon, high Sufferers, if I mourned your wrong:
God's Angels bless it! Ages while our Race
From sin to sorrow works its way below
That Race we scourged shall triumph in yon skies!
Its Land perchance rule earth, that Land it loved;
That Land which never will forget its sorrows.
The Timeless works through Time.
Your time will come:
Asia is dead: Europe survives a while:
A few more centuries, and her crown will fall!
Sad Western Land so long without a name—
Let it be never mine—I am unworthy—
What if thy pangs presage some lordlier birth
Than Earth has witnessed yet? Thy destined Race,
When that which now laments hath passed to glory
That Race shall be a nobler Race than Spain's,
A Race that rivets not the bond but breaks it,
A race the children of some Land which now
Names thee the Sunset World! It little knows
The Sunrise of the Future is with thee
Though thunder-showers whose rain was rain of blood
Proved its sad omen! Every sunset casts
A circling sunrise round the sphere before it;
Yon orb back-gazing now on Seville's towers—
An angry gaze methinks, a sanguine gaze—
Will dawn in turn on Ganges, Salem, Rome,
Then light once more these coasts. A Spiritual Sun
Our Christian Sun ‘with healing on its wings’
Rides on not less through spiritual heavens
Cinctures our Planet still with trailing skirts
Of spiritual radiance. Centuries make its day,
Centuries its night; and each successive day
May pass—will pass the earlier thrice in splendour.
Christ's first Great Day hath clasped but half our earth;
As yet not half Earth's Races name His Name:
A Second comes; and then the endless End.
Land of high Hope, there lived who knew and loved thee!
She died—our Queen—to plead thy cause in Heaven!
I wrought my little work: others will mend it:
I said of old, ‘Inter with me my chains!’
I say it now; but add, in sager sense,
‘That so all memory of my wrongs may cease
Nor move in ignorant men a futile spleen.’
I deem those chains the best of my possessions—
Wrongs! Had I wrongs? Not I but those poor Indians!

THE DEATH OF COPERNICUS.

Sonnets on Mediæval Science and Art.

SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS.

GIOTTO'S CAMPANILE AT FLORENCE.

Enchased with precious marbles pure and rare
How gracefully it soars and seems the while
From every polished stage to laugh and smile
Playing with gleams of that clear southern air!
Fit resting-place methinks that summit were
For a descended Angel! happy isle
Mid life's rough sea of sorrow force and guile
For Saint of royal race or vestal fair
In this seclusion—call it not a prison—
Cloistering a bosom innocent and lonely.
O Tuscan Priestess! gladly would I watch
All night one note of thy loud hymn to catch
Sent forth to greet the sun when first, new-risen,
He shines on that aërial station only!

OLD PICTURES AT FLORENCE.

Thrice happy they who thus before man's eyes
Restored the placid image of his prime;
Illustrating th' abortive shows of Time
With gleams authentic caught from Paradise.
Those Godlike forms are men! Impure disguise
By Man now suffered! O for wings to climb
Once more to Virtue's mountain seats sublime
And be what here we poorly recognize!
From these fair pictures our Humanity
Looks down upon us kindly. 'Tis no dream:—
Truth stands attested by Consistency;
Here all the Virtues meet in peace supreme
So meet, so blend, that in those Forms we see
The sum of all we are and fain would be.

ON A PICTURE BY COREGGIO AT PARMA.

Paint thou the pearl gates of the Morning Star
Loftiest of Painters and the loveliest
For only of thy pencil worthy are
Those ever-smiling mansions of the blest!
Thyself when homeward summoned to thy rest
Couldst scarce have marked our earth's receding bar:
No happier shapes could greet thee near or far
Than oft in life thy radiant fancy drest.
God when He framed the earth beheld it good;
That light from His approving smile that shone
For thee waned never from her features wan:
Before thine eyes—unfallen if unrenewed—
Still moved that Race supreme and fairest made;
And Love and Joy, twin stars, still on their foreheads played.

COREGGIO'S CUPOLAS AT PARMA.

Creatures all eyes and brows and tresses streaming
By speed divine blown back:—within, all fire
Of wondering zeal and storm of bright desire;
Round the broad dome the immortal throngs are beaming:
With elemental Powers that vault is teeming:
We gaze, and, gazing, join yon fervid choir
In spirit launched on wings that ne'er can tire
Like those that buoy the breasts of children dreaming.
The exquisitest hand that e'er in light
Revealed the subtlest smile of new-born pleasure
Here sounds the abysses and attains the height,
Is strong the strength of heavenly hosts to measure
Draws back the azure curtain of the skies
And antedates our promised Paradise.

A PICTURE BY PIETRO PERUGINO.

Glory to God of all fair things the maker
For that He dwelleth in the mind of Man!
Glory to Man of that large grace partaker
For that he storeth thus his spirit's span
With shapes our earth creates not, neither can
Till like a flood her youth shall overtake her,
And voices new to loftier labours wake her
High artist then, as now poor artizan.
Mark, mark those awful sons of martyrdom
With their uplifted hands but eyes down-cast
As though the uncreated light had dazed them:—
The error of our brief existence past
They stand like Saints resurgent from the tomb,
Suspended still on that great Voice which raised them!

FRESCOES BY MASACCIO.

Well hast thou judged that sentence ‘Had ye Faith
Ye could move mountains.’ In those forms I see
What God at first ordained that Man should be,
His Image crowned triumphant over death.
Born of that Word which never perisheth
Those Prophets here resume the empery
Of old in Eden lost. Their eye, their breath
Cancels disease, lays prone the anarchy
Of Passion's fiercest waves. Secret as Fate
Like Fate's the powers they wield are infinite:
Their very thoughts are laws: their will is weight—
On as they move in majesty and might
The demons yield their prey, the graves their dead:
And to her centre Earth is conscious of their tread.

A TYROLESE VILLAGE.

This village, thronged with churches, needeth none:
Each house like some old missal rich and quaint
Is blazoned o'er with prophet, seer, and saint:
Each court a separate sanctity hath won.
Here a great Angel stands crowned with the sun:
Magdalene there pours her perpetual plaint:
There o'er her child the Maiden without taint
Bends—as His mercy bends o'er worlds undone.
Of earth's proud centres none like this recalls
That mystic City in the realms supernal
Built upon God, whose light is God alone;
The very stones cry out: the eloquent walls
Plainly confess that Name the proud disown;
The Father's glory and the Son Eternal.

AN EARLY PICTURE BY RAFFAEL.

Dark, infinitely dark, a midnight blue
Those orbs that, resting on the skies, appear
To pierce the veil of Heaven and wander through
Searching the centre of the starry sphere:
Angels, be sure, unseen are hovering near!
Their fanning plumes with faintest blush imbue
That pearly cheek, a lily else in hue,
And from that brow the auburn tresses clear.
One hand is laid upon her mantled breast
To us an unrevealed paradise,
Nor bodied in the ascetic Painter's dream—
Hidden it lies in everlasting rest
Beneath those purple robes that earthward stream
Cyphered with star-emblazoned mysteries.

BOCCACCIO AND CERTALDO.

The world's blind pilgrims tendering praise for blame,
Passing Certaldo, point and smile and stare
And with Boccaccio's triumph din the air:—
Ah, but for him how high had soared thy fame
Italian Song! False Pleasure is a flame
That brands the Muses' pleasaunce; burns it bare
As some volcanic isle with barren glare:
O Italy! exult not in thy shame!
'Twas here, 'twas here thy Song's crystalline river
Lost its last sight of hoar Parnassus' head
And swerved through flowery meads to sandy bar:
Its saintly mission here it spurned for ever:
It sighed to Laura, and with Tancred bled
But caught no second flash from Dante's star!

I. THE CAMPO SANTO AT PISA.

There needs not choral song nor organ's pealing:—
This mighty cloister of itself inspires
Thoughts breathed like hymns from spiritual choirs
While shades and lights in soft succession stealing
Along it creep, now veiling now revealing
Strange forms here traced by Painting's earliest sires,
Angels with palms and purgatorial fires
And Saints caught up and demons round them reeling.
Love, long remembering those she could not save
Here hung the cradle of Italian Art:
Faith rocked it: hence, like hermit child, went forth
That heaven-born Power which beautified the earth:
She perished when the world had lured her heart
From her true friends, Religion and the grave.

II. THE CAMPO SANTO AT PISA.

Lament not thou: the cold winds as they pass
Through the ribbed fret-work with low sigh or moan
Lament enough; let them lament alone
Counting the sear leaves of the innumerous grass
With thin, soft sound like one prolonged alas!
Spread thou thy hands on sun-touched vase or stone
That yet retains the warmth of sunshine gone,
And drink warm solace from that ponderous mass.
Gaze not around thee. Monumental marbles
Time-clouded frescoes mouldering year by year
Dim cells in which all day the night-bird warbles—
These things are sorrowful elsewhere not here:
A mightier Power than Art's hath here her shrine:
Stranger! thou tread'st the soil of Palestine!

THE FEAST OF ST. PETER'S CHAIR AT ANTIOCH;

OR, THE DEAD PATRIARCHATES.

MURILLO'S PICTURE, ‘THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION’.

HYMN.

THE FEAST OF ST. PETER'S CHAIR AT ROME.

A few lines at the beginning of this poem are taken from a well-known passage in St. Jerome.