The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

Not long before his death Columbus receives the news of Queen Isabella's death, learning at the same time that greater cruelties than those he had recently witnessed in the Indies had since then been inflicted on the native race—cruelties which had daily increased during the five years since he had been deprived of his viceregal authority.

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:

374

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

375

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!

Whose sin was that?
Was it theirs who stretched their hands to Christ, or ours
Who, preaching Christ in word, in act denied Him?
We named those isles ‘Conception,’ ‘Santa Cruz’—
These things we did—and one beside—we made
Christ's Faith, thus honoured, unbelievable.

How oft of old I made confession thus,
‘'Twas not from compass, measured sphere, old books
I won my faith in that far western world:
Mine was an Inspiration from above!’
With what a smile quivering on tortured lips
The Indian might reiterate my words,
‘An Inspiration!’

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:

376

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—

377

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.

That Thought, that Thought
Hung ever o'er my sick-bed, pointing West:
There hung it all that night when died the Queen:
It said ‘Remember!’ When have I forgotten?

378

Intrigues of State had kept me long in Spain:
Westward returned I found an Indian race
In mad revolt against us and subdued them.
Then came worse trial. Roldan's mutiny raged
That wiliest of that wily Spanish race:
The man had dowered his crew with lands slaveworked;
Desperate his crew; my friends but few nor trusty.
He beckoned to the Indian race; it rose—
Such fratricidal war, thus complicated,
Could only end in universal slaughter
And my New World abandoned, yea, abhorred.
The few I still could trust whispered ‘Beware!’
Then only in my life I temporized:
I sealed those cessions made to Roldan's tools:
To balance these on true men I conferred
Lands of revolted natives changed to slaves
Rebels not pardoned. Never had I designed
That bondage should be lasting. Laws of mine
In time had raised them first to serfs then freemen.
To the King I wrote, ‘They dragged from me these terms:
King, cancel or confirm them.’ He confirmed them:
That royal confirmation I confirm not
Nor condemnation shun from righteous men
Rightly informed. Las Casas disapproved:
The Queen reproved me: knaves outstripped my orders:
What if worse miscreants falsified my letters?
At first my star appeared to reach its zenith;
I trusted not that promise; from that hour
I trusted none—nor others, nor myself.
Roldan renewed his plots; traitors their treasons;
False tidings reached the King: he plucked me down.

379

Five years were passed in shipwrecks, frauds and wrongs:
The platform laid by me had never trial:
The rebel and the just alike were slaved.
But once again I trod that Isle. Misrule
Had changed it to a Hell.

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;

380

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.’

381

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!

382

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;

383

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

384

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!

That this was Columbus' noble aspiration is proved by a letter of his written late in life.

University of Virginia Library

(A.D. 1504.)

ARGUMENT.