University of Virginia Library

THE QUEST OF HAIDEE

A Poem in Ten Cantos

Canto 1 The universal lure exercised by London.

London! Thy lure is over all the world.
For thou dost call the plough-boy from the plough,
Or aged labourer from his clayey toil,
Or farmer from his stacks and mellowing fruit.
The highroads to thee with wild hopes are thronged,
Thou art the mighty candle of the world,
In whose flame all those human moths are burned,
Returning and returning till they drop
Shrivelled at last, yet fain still of the flame.
The young girl, discontented in her lanes,
Yearns to be whirled into thy fuller life,
And then falls strangled or returns to die.
The widow, pined with solitary thought,
Throws out at eve her lonely thought to thee,
And sighs for the distraction of thy streets,
The numbing roar, the hoarse relief of wheels,
And mesmerising murmur. Now to thee
Returns the mother, o'er her boy to watch,
Her only son, by many a snare beset
In thy great whirlpool. Little can she do
But pray alone and trust her vehement sigh
May pierce the dreadful curtain thou hast raised,
As though to hide thyself from God himself,
And to transgress obscure. The good man hears
Thy far off soft depopulating voice,
And desert-making whisper and he feels
That thou wilt give him greater space for good
And wider opportunity, and wings
That may sustain him in such arduous flight.
In thee the schemer sees more scope for schemes
And dazzling crown for cold audacity.
How shall the thief in country lane employ
His dexterous art? To thee, to thee he comes
And thou receiv'st him, as all others, well.
Why should the village queen, so fresh of face,
Wither beside the winding of the stream
And age unseen beneath the ancient elm?
To thee she carries, one dark night, unknown,
Unguessed at, unsuspected, all she hath;
A cheek of wanton dew and milky bloom,
And thou dost take her in thy fell embrace,
And dryest all the dew upon her cheek,
And makest pale her bloom. Yet some have come
To make within thy shadow splendid names,
Trudging unknown through many a weary field,
By mighty hope upheld; or driven perhaps
From quietude by fate to waiting glory,
And crown which thou alone didst hold. And yet
Even of these we must remember some
Who wrote and wrestled, but went down at last;
He who in great hope coming from the North,
Carrying his thoughts with him like arrows sheaved,
Took poison for the bread thou didst deny.
And some whom thou hast called, in theatre
And senate, or by fire of written page
Have risen unto glory. Still to thee
The seaman turns far out on landless foam,
And for thy harbours yearns and for thy docks.
The soldier standing sentry in midnight,
Under the Northern or the Eastern star,
Remembers each familiar street and haunt
Where with his friends he drank his final cup,
Ere for the distant conflict he embarked.
And thou dost call to thee the glittering East,
The sparkling potentates of sunwashed plains,
Thy whisper's in the ear of the orient
And sad and dark and bearded, yet arrayed
With all those filched lights of Indian soil
They ride thy streets. For ever, city strange,
Thou shalt attract, some to a desperate doom
And to thy multitudinous loud grave;
Others, though fewer, to the throne of souls.
Thou feedest like a spider on thy sons,
Enmeshed, enwebbed, thou feedest on them slow.
Thou beckonest, and thy river is the bourne.
Thou whisperest and dark winter is the end.
A million hearts that beat beyond the seas
Beat but for thee. What loveliness is thine,
What mass of pinnacle or masonry
That lures the wanderer back, the stranger charms!
Thy beauty that so fascinates the soul,
Is not of rule or line, to be appraised,
Or shown as model: but beneath the moon
Thou art as history laid bare, and strange
As fable or as legend are thy towers,
Bridges with beauty clothed and silent stream
That flows with all its memories upcast.
Is this the hour, the hour of midnight deep,
London, that thou becom'st a living thing,
With superhuman power, with spirit will,
With strong attraction on the air of night?
Is this the hour thou weavest, without word,
The spell that draws the village girl and boy
All to forsake and run into thy arms?
Or art thou like some goddess, sitting blind,
Feeling with dreadful and with doubtful arms
Outstretched to take, to imprison and to stay?
And now for centuries thou hast had power
To woo from alien lands and other shores.
One maiden in old time out of the East
Wandered from Palestine o'er perilous sea
And hostile land to seek that lover out
Who by her father had been prisoner held
And whom she learned to love with secret heart.
And knowing but one word, and that thy name,
London, and murmuring London, on and on,
Fought out her long way to his English arms.
Her then I sing and how to thee she came.

Canto 2

Long on the plains of parching Palestine,
Under the Eastern sun or Eastern stars,
Had Europe's chivalry with Paynim clashed,
In doubtful shock and in protracted siege,
To wrest from heathen hands the tomb of Christ;
And many a mighty deed was seen and sung,
And many a brave man bit the bloody dust,
And many in strange dungeons were detained,
Of all who took the field of Palestine,
Leaving the English cliffs and barriers pale
To battle for their Lord on distant shore.
None fairer shone in tent or tournament,
Or in the raging battle's wild onset,
Than young A'Becket from fair London town.
How strange to him from London streets to fare
Over the grey sea to that fiery shore.
What different fields he viewed, what other skies,
A larger sun with nearer fire; and stars
Pulsing magnificently in a vault
More thickly strewn than here we ever scan.
For if the star of Love in English heavens
Shows beautiful, more beautiful she glows
In Eastern midnights or in Eastern eves;
A sudden palace of immortal love
Disclosed in sapphire and in flame revealed.
He often, after the hot fight was over,
Would from his tent come forth into the cool
And feel the vastness of that serried host,
Removed from battle and from human strife
And he drank strength in from immortal space,
And death itself seemed but a little thing.
To die and pass into that glory of light!
The thought gave strength unto his arm at dawn
And a cool careless courage to his brow.
Oft in the mortal joust of spurring steeds
Had young A'Becket foremost shone and struck
And many a desperate necessary charge
Had led; but though in thickest fight so oft,
In rally or retreat or dangerous shock,
Ne'er had he suffered wound to keep him fast
Within the camp or from the saddle hold him.
It seemed that where he pricked without a fear,
Or thundered without qualm amid the press,
That there alone was safety; yet at times,
Did others so essay ill fared they all;
Some trampled under foot, some travail taken,
Some fortunately borne by comrades back.
But at the last it chanced, before the walls
Of some high city that had long endured
The shock of European chivalry
And stood unshaken yet, at last it chanced,
For Fortune will not evermore uphold,
And of her favourites wearies in her time,
That Gilbert, so the boy had at the font
Been named, was struck from off his horse and fell,
Blind in his own blood in the rising dust.
The wound was deep and he could lift not arm
Nor rise, while in the twilight now his friends
Retreated, all unknowing of his fate.
He was made captive as he lay near death
By an Emir El Selim, bearded, grave,
Silent and proud, for to the Sultan scarce
He bent his knee, so old his lineage read,
So pure the blood he bore within his veins.
He then commanded that his prisoner
Should to his castle suddenly be borne,
And there immured until his friends should seek
To free him by rich ransom from afar.
Here then the English soldier lay for long,
Until his captor, silent, stern at first,
Was won to speech and with his prisoner,
Who slowly had that Eastern tongue rehearsed,
Would long hours of the olden land enquire
Whence Gilbert came, and of the city famed
Whose name was noised unto the orient.
So as a guest he now entreated him,
And half he hoped that Gilbert would abide,
Making his home there in a foreign land,
For the Emir had no son of his own.
No son had he, only a daughter fair,
As beautiful as is a summer night
Or summer eve ere yet the moon is risen,
A breezeless night of clear and cloudless bliss.
Although her eye might melancholy seem,
Holding within the secret of all night,
Yet was her smile like sudden Paradise,
And seemed to lap one in a warmer world.
And when she spoke, her voice was as the sound
Of some lone rivulet on mossy stones,
That in the green heart of a forest flows
Afar from men, unheard but of itself.
She then the wounded man was at the last
Permitted by her father to o'erwatch,
And tend the deep scar that so near to death
Had brought him. Sweetly ministering she
Moved as an angel round about his couch,
And first would smooth a pillow for his head,
Or some cool draught would bring him to allay
The fever that would rise upon his lips;
And ever as she came she longer stayed.
And though at first in broken jargon, he
From converse with her father, slowly learned
To speak to her in language of her own.

Canto 3

So West the East and East the West allured,
For to his Western eyes and colder blood
She wore a shimmering charm which English maids
Lacked; moving all too slowly, without grace.
Beside, she had a sweet variety
Of swiftly changing mood from smiles to tears,
From tears to smiles, a true yet fickle way.
At times she seemed the vision of the East
Made flesh; of gold beginnings of the world,
Where first the sun sprang and the seas uplit.
And all that feminine uncertainty,
So that he never knew from hour to hour
How he should find her, both perplexed and pleased.
There was no dullness in that intercourse,
Which is the death of western marriages;
Where, all the fire died out, the married sit
In hopeless silence, or with solemn words
Eke out the hapless evening: blessed perhaps
With riches and substantial toys of life;
Yet on the gleaming silver they avert
Their looks, and since together most alone.
The music of her feet was as a dance
Perpetual, and her voice as from the stars,
Not hallowed, yet from finer regions come.
After our staider virgins she allured
His heart, his very sense, and as she moved
In Eastern pity for a western wound,
She seemed to move as an immortal shape,
Sent down from the great skies to tend his hurt.
If then this Eastern maiden had such power
Upon the prostrate soldier; yet had he
No less attraction for the Eastern maid.
Shattered was all her life for sake of him;
To her wild eyes his slower strength appealed
As shadow against burning peril, or
As cool protection and as guidance sure.
His measured words were full of deep advice
And of a colder wisdom than she heard
From the bronzed fiery children of her clime;
His fair hair and his blue and Saxon eyes,
Were things most strange and novel to her gaze.
Then too that he was wounded in fierce fight
Caught at her woman's heart; that he was young,
That in a hundred jousts of violent arms
He by the clear admission of his foes
Had flinched not once, but where the peril was
Had ever there been found; for courage then
As still, will fire a woman to a man.
And he being simple and she subtler far
Wove a still firmer bond between the two.
For she would laugh out at his artless speech.
Though he so much had seen, she so much less,
She in her inexperience was more wise
And in her woman instinct grasped at truths
Which to the world-worn soldier were denied.
He like a child was taught the great world's love,
Even by a girl imprisoned as a child,
Excluded from all converse by the rule
Of the fanatic race with whom she dwelt.
Yet held so close, and veiled, invisible,
Her learned soul in silence she maintained,
Her maiden heart of passion was compact,
Her virgin body knew the secret thrills
Of midnight or of twilight or of dawn.
Then too the strangeness of that far-off land
From which he came, the mystery of the West
Set her adream and foreign cities charmed;
She heard the great sea beat but on his speed,
She saw the long wave foam but in his voice,
And the hoarse beach but echoed in his tongue,
The ocean in his memories came to her.
Most of that city London whence he roved
She grew to think, the high and narrow streets,
The merchants and the warriors and the knights.
And “London,” “London,” to herself would say
As though some talisman against a hurt.
These things, the growing passion of these two
The Emir regarded not: on many an eve,
When the intolerable sun was down,
He would to question and to conference
His prisoner draw, his prisoner now a guest,
Made free of that huge castle so that he
Might wander where he would no question asked.
And to that fierce and silent Eastern mind
Came no suspicion of his daughter's thought.
There would she live till he in his good time
Found for her hand a suitor of her race.
Had he suspected all that growing fire,
His dagger on young Gilbert's heart had been,
His dagger in his daughter's bosom plunged.
No friendship, and no filial love had stayed
The shiv'ring blow; but he, while these two burned
Each for the other with a flame more strong,
As any sun lent to that flame a torch,
Paced to and fro unconscious, deaf and blind.
And yet more lingered she about his room,
Moving this thing or that to give excuse
For all the tarrying, and could hardly draw
Her eyes away from him as she at last
Departed silent; and he evermore
Followed with luminous glance her every step.

Canto 4

But now at last, despite the glimmering charm,
The gliding motion round about his couch
And the soft voice like evening in his ears,
Gilbert, as now the wound to healing grew,
So yearned out of the East for Western fields.
Not for the streets of London he repined,
But he remembered, deep in country soil,
A rising spire that pointed to the clouds,
And circling rooks and heavy slumbrous trees,
And grasses of green England growing bright.
A rude and pealing music broke his dreams
Often; and he would start up in his bed.
Only the eastern moon and eastern stars
In a hot silence bickered and were still.
And buzzing flies, and all that nightly stings,
Stings and is shrill, the human ear torments,
These things tormented him in dead of night.
For here a branded heaven his eyes beheld,
A windless midnight, and like staring eyes
Great stars upon him lent an aspect fierce.
And more and more he longed for English nights,
For drifting clouds and silent falling dew,
For the soft crowded gardens of the West,
The drowsing bird and gradual ceasing song,
The trees from moment until moment stirred,
The foliage now wind-taken and now still.
Then the sweet cattle with low voices he
Recalled amid the angry hum of flies,
Voices of milk far-off, the lowing kine,
Or the dim music of a hundred doves.
Alas, how cool, how fragrant and afar
These ancient sounds and ancient sights appeared,
And often would he speak to her of these.
But she though wishing every wish of his
To grant, and being moved by all this speech
Of him who lay sore wounded on the couch
Yet could not face again a lonely life,
Where this strange influence had lain on her.
If she had seen him never, never nursed
This alien soldier back unto his strength,
Then little had she heard of English clouds
Or English gloamings, or the floating bird,
Or smell of the heaped hay of which he spoke,
Forgetful of his wound a moment then
And rising on his arm to speak to her.
But he had burst into her life, and now
Not easily could she a parting bear.
For much it was to her although perhaps
Briefly she saw him, briefly heard his voice,
Yet much it was to her to know that he
Was sleeping under the same dome as she;
For being woman she could lie content,
Knowing the masonry that wound her round,
Him also held; there was no need of speech,
Or even of look, though both of these were sweet;
The moonbeam that upon her fell, on him
Fell with an equal silver: this she knew,
And knowing this her eastern patience kept.
But if he went from her to cross the sea,
And the great water put between the two
And nevermore unto the East returned,
But there where he was born, in peace remained,
Perhaps another maiden of his race
To take unto his bosom and his heart,
How should she the bright noontide of the East
Or darted light from many a blistering star
Endure alone? So she made bold to speak.
And somewhat in such words as follow here,
Did she in her sweet jargon with long sighs
The heavy secret of her heart disclose:
“Oh, sir, I fain would help you to the shore
From which to battle for your master's tomb
You crossed the Seas, and since in many a fight
Wert crowned with glory, till at last unhorsed
And deeply wounded to our house wast brought,
Where not unkindly, as I think by me,
Nor by my father hast thou tended been.
For more as to a guest or neighbour dear
Have we discoursed with thee, and hour on hour
Unwearying beside the lamp have talked.
But ah, I grudge thee to thy cloudy skies,
And to the breaking sound of English seas,
I speak quite simply out, I love thee then,
And love with the quick passion of our race,
Since first beneath our portal thou hast come.
But what perhaps was fancy then has grown
Into a something not to be despised
And not discarded lightly; for each hour,
Each moment has been guiding me to thee.
My life was shattered, but to be rebuilt
On grander issues, and on mightier thoughts
Than ever in this lonely East had been.
Thou art a new thing come from far away,
Bringing a different air, another light
With thee and having seen the one no more
I can forget, or part thee from my mind.
Then if I aid thee to escape, how then
Stands the lone soul that watches thee depart?
Why should I send thee from me to my hurt?”

Canto 5

But Gilbert tossing thro' the sultry night
Exclaimed: “Sweet Haidee, by these burning stars
I swear I am as loth to leave thy side
As thou, thou sayest, art loth to see me gone.
Me thou wouldst please in aught, I know it well;
How often hast with thy Eastern swiftness done
What I with slower Western mind had thought,
Sweetly preventing the dull speech that rose
Even then upon my lips; or some request
Unuttered hast thou granted instantly;
Surely this is the half of ministering,
Not only to stand ready with the draught,
To time the pulse and cool the beaded brow,
To smooth the pillow or the coverlet,
All these are well and hasten health again;
But subtler is the silent ministry
To mind, the understanding of the eyes,
To hear the unspoken whisper of the sick.
Ah, fortunate he, who stricken on his couch,
Watches a lady of high breed and blood
Steal to and fro, with guesses beautiful
Responding to the muteness of the mind.
Such hast thou been to me; by day, by night,
And understanding too how all unused
To the great fire so closely wrapping us,
Or nights without a breath, this frame has been.
What was most natural a delight to thee,
Thou yet couldst see was to a stranger hard,
And difficult unmurmuring to bear.
Such wisdom cometh from the heart, not head,
And more in women than in men is found.
All this I know; that thou wouldst gratify
Each smallest whim if in thy power it came,
Much more a deeper longing that each day
Grows stronger, to return unto my land.
Yet even with thy hands outstretched to aid,
Falters thy heart, and lingers half thy soul.
And thou dost grudge me to the English breeds.
But, Haidee, though I love thee and each day
More truly; though I would thy heart were spared
The arrow of our parting and the sting,
Yet in the night dear faces visit me
In hopeless sorrow and with watching pale.
Faces not young nor beautiful as thine,
But thrilling out of childhood and brave youth.
I can but think upon my father old
Who goeth to and fro the house undone
And mourns for me in silence day and night.
I can but think upon my mother grey,
Who sent me forth to battle with such pride
And yet such sorrow, for her heart misgave
If she should ever see her son again.
Ah, I can feel these two sit hand in hand
In heavy evening ere the stars have come,
Hopelessly gazing through a falling dew.
No word perhaps is said: and yet I see
From time to time one hand the other press,
Or a slow tear come to the eyes and fall.
For they abide beside a lonely sea,
Now that old age from London has withdrawn
The hurrying merchant weary of his bales
And hospitable rites of many friends
Not unpleased to be ridded at the last.
So from the lone sea-window will they watch
The unresponding ocean, and cold foam,
And hear the friendless rhythm of the brain,
For of my comrades who have safe returned
What do they know? Whether I live or die,
Or wounded or imprisoned, or to death
Put secretly in dungeon of the East?
All they can tell and most they can report
Is that unhorsed I on the ground was left
None knowing, while the host retreated safe
From ramparts unassailable and strong.
And how they will have hope that still I live,
And suddenly may come again to them,
And how the hope will go out as a light
And they believe me dead in a strange land.
For, Haidee, know I am their only son;
No other have they, and no daughter young
Who might console, support, at least distract
The fixèd mind and old remembering hearts.
I was their sunrise, I was all their dawn,
Themselves forgotten; to my fate they looked,
And ever glorious as they looked it seemed.
But now a blank has settled down on them,
Uncertainty far worse than cruel truth:
For dreadful as the shock and news of death,
It spends itself, and slowly tolerable
The sun returns and the moon goes her path
And in a daze and heavy dream we move,
Save now and then for the quiet hidden dart
Of recollection and of hopeless love.
So might they come with time, at last with time,
Not to forget, ah never to forget,
But gradually in my far-off doom
To acquiesce, and closer grow to me,
Being old and near the greeting that awaits
All souls that loved beyond the earthly grave.
But now! Ah, sweet, forgive me if my thought
Seems false to thee and to return to them,
It is not so; but I am troubled sore
And suffer many things because of them,
And lest they pass away ere I return,
Then, sweet, forgive me, speak and ease my fears.”

Canto 6

Then she to him with lingering eyes of dew:
“Far be it from me that I come between
Thee and thy aged father and mother old
Who pine for thee beside the unanswering wave,
And unresponding billow: then thou art
Their only son; no other to console,
No daughter to put arms about their neck,
And whisper sweet untruths with good intent;
For often a girl may to the heart convey
Comfort in ways not understood of men.
Then as thou sayest, dread uncertainty
Far worse than actual shock of sudden truth.
I would not intervene to break the past
And shatter all those holy memories.
But then! O then! If thou shouldst leave me quite,
Forgive me, Gilbert, that I can but think
A little of the life forlorn to be.
Ere I had met thee, simple were my days
And if tranquillity be happiness,
Then was I happy; for the simple toil
That calls an Eastern maiden to her task
Was all-sufficient; to and fro I went
And my grave father pleased, and that I pleased
Was all my life; little to me he spoke,
And never of the matters of the heart;
Since in the East a maid secluded lives,
Walled in; and exiled and deaf and blind and dumb;
So that I had no audience but the stars,
Nor any close companion but the moon.
Then! Then! When West broke in upon the East,
Then languid thou wast carried to this house,
And suffering, with strange and alien eyes
Thou didst regard me mistily and mute,
Then by thy coming all my life did cease,
For a new splendour burst upon my soul.
It was not thou, but all that thou didst mean,
O breaker of a silence as of tombs!
O hurler of a bolt from serene skies!
Thou, thou didst pluck the veil from off my face,
Aye, and the deeper veil from off my soul.
Then I began to breathe, to move and live,
And the sweet stirring of a vaster life
Caught at my heart and like to coming spring,
With a wild ache and odour streamed on me.
I had been so enfolded till that hour,
That the first falling dew of thee was pain,
Pain and yet joy; a light, yet not a light,
A light that made my darkness yet more dark.
And when I came to minister to thee,
The solace that I gave thee made more deep
What I had dreamed ere to thy couch I came.
To hover o'er thee, to suppress each sound,
To see that silence sweetly was observed
And that no voice broke in too harsh on thee;
These, all these duties added to my flame,
And made that active which till now had slept.
The placing of a pillow at thy head,
The bringing of a cool draught to thy lips,
To ease thee in the hot and fiery night,
These tasks but fed like fuel silent fire.
And after, when thou hadst the strength to speak,
In broken whisper, then in stammering tongue,
Which soon our Eastern music and our words
Learned to pronounce; when of a different land,
Of distant sun, and glooms of heavy dew,
Of peaceful farms, and wandering cattle thou
Didst give me the strange picture, I have wept,
I know not why, but still so sweet it seemed.
So thou becam'st to me more than thyself
An image of the half-world yet unseen,
And in deep night I felt thy claims arise
Over the English graves and English fields.
Such hast thou been to me! Ah not, believe,
Merely a human being but lying crowned
With mystery of gardens and of grass,
And shivering trees, and birds invisible,
And with the strange spray of a solemn sea.
For never the great sea have I beheld
But in thy words, never the thousand ships,
Nor heard the bursting billow at midnight.
O, thou hast sung to me from thy sick bed
Of Wonder and of things beyond my ken,
A messenger from other worlds art thou,
And ah! I cannot lose thee, let thee go,
No not for father's or for mother's sake,
For going thou dost take away my dreams,
My very being and breath, all which I late
Have learned of the great world in which we dwell.
O Gilbert, wheresoever thou goest I go,
And if I aid or can contrive escape,
Dear, leave me not behind! I should but pine,
And wither slowly to an Eastern grave.
Then should my father say to me ‘My child,
What ails thee?’ Or some man of medicine call,
Fool, with his herbs and drugs to make me well.
Then dying to my father I perchance
Would speak, and ‘Father,’ weakly I would say,
‘Since he hath gone, the life in me is gone,
With his departing I am lone and lost.
Ah, if thou wouldst my breath revisit me,
Call him again over the foreign sea,
Else I shall go without him to my grave.’”

Canto 7

Meanwhile in England, by the grey sea-ridge
Did Gilbert's father and his mother old
Mourn over him, from the red hour of dawn,
Which slowly lit the sea and brought the day,
Till in mid-heaven, like to an empress' throne,
The sun above the vassal waters reigned,
And so till he declined transparent bright,
Or on a cloudy wonder glorious,
The vast orb in the Western ocean sunk,
Ceased not these two in silence to lament.
What use for words? O'er the lone waste they gazed,
The waste that would not yield them up their son,
Or bring on its horizon any sail.
And the days passed, the months passed, and the years,
But never the red dawn on lighted sea,
Or the sun standing noon-tide emperor,
Or setting in the wonder of his clouds,
Gave them a hope or faintest gleam of hope.
At length the father said: “What think you, wife?
Here to abide will bring not Gilbert back,
For he may touch upon a different shore,
And landed make for London in his zeal.
He knows not that we have forsook the town,
Wearied at last of bales and merchandise.
If he should sudden upon London burst,
Thinking to take us by some sweet surprise,
And full of memories, of adventure hard,
Of battle-shocks, perchance imprisonment,
And many evils happily escaped,
Think the long night to while away from rest;
What should he think to find a closèd house,
A barred up mansion, and a solitude,
Where mighty welcome he might most expect.”
But she replied: “He will not come again,
For I am sure within me he is dead.
Some word, some wandering whisper from the sea
Had reached us all this time full sure am I,
Or some belated warrior of our host,
Released perhaps from foreign chains would find
A way to me to tell me of his fate,
Whether alive or dead.” Then said the man,
“Surely a wonder would it be if we
Had any word or wandering whisper heard,
Or any warrior from afar had come
To apprise us of his state. That were indeed
Too great things to expect; no, his first news
Will be himself. But all these things apart,
Whether our son be dead or still alive,
Doth not the lonely surge increase our pain,
Doth not the nightly billow with slow break
Still more and more our loss accentuate?
Alas, how the bereavèd mind can read
Its proper desolation into waves!
And mingle with that mighty music all
That lies about the heart and will not leave us
Thought-free a moment. Then I say again
The pain were less, where all that murmur comes
Of various life, and various faces seen,
For nothing, no not London, vast houses
And loud and hoarse the narrow-streeted town,
Can interpose between us and our dead,
Or once distract us from our memory.
Still even slight and passing things may make
The intolerable weight a little lift,
And in the shifting show and changèd scene
Relief is drawn, relief however short.
Is not this wise then, for a double cause,
Now to forsake, if only for a time,
The melancholy coast and hanging clouds,
The grey reminding rocks and floating gulls?”
So these two journey back to London town,
A journey then tardy and dangerous,
Full of delays, and ever with a fear
Of footpad or of mounted robber met.
At last the little city, large to them,
Still in the madding cloaks of masonry,
Yet with a smokeless charm, upon them broke.
There then once more they rested agèd limbs,
And still desired the coming of their son.
But he, whether because more sultry grew
The air and full of buzzings and of stings,
Lay in long fever; ever at his side
The Eastern damsel with cool hands of peace,
And in the whirl of his delirium
Ever and ever “London” would he cry,
And “London”; so that word of all our tongue
She treasured fast and murmured to herself,
And thought she, “If his flight I do contrive,
And loose him to the far and pined for shore,
And to those reverend hearts that mourn for him,
To London will he go, whate'er the way,
However far the plains and seas between,
And if he will not suffer me to go
But as his page to follow and attend,
For all his whims who knows if I know not?
If he forbid me then to follow him,
Unseen, unheard I will to London haste,
And saying his sweet name from door to door,
At last I will discover him, and then
Let him do with me even as he please.”
And “London” still she murmured to herself.

Canto 8

But as the prisoner's strength returned to him;
And sadly back she nursed him in her thought,
For it would come to pass that he at length
Restored and full of rest would leave her side;
So, with his gathering strength, the thought grew strong
To fare away over the distant sea
And clasp those first inspirers of his life
Yet once again on his long parted breast.
And she—she saw the ungovernable hope
Spring in his eyes each day and settle there.
Then would she commune thus with her lone heart.
“And if I find some means for his escape,
If I devise his solitary flight,
For without me, and my sad aid at hand,
He never shall escape this prisoning stone!
If I, who love him so, deliberately,
Even with stratagem, and peril too,
Conspire to lose him, what the gain to me?
Why should I not then hold him as a bird,
My favourite bird to look on at all hours,
To keep and nurture, ever in my sight?
Shall I, who hang upon the thought of him,
Unbar the cage for my own misery,
And see with swimming eyes him flee away?
For never again shall he return to me,
Once having gained the vast and spacious plains,
Even should he meet with violence on his road,
Or yet again a prisoner should be held,
Or put to midnight-death in forest deep,
Or in wild tempest thrown upon the track,
And all that lovely body with the sea
Rise and subside, then sink for evermore.
Whate'er might chance to him in wandering
Back to that isle which lures him night and day,
Never shall I behold him any more,
Unless”—and now a light came to her cheek
And sudden splendour on her upraised face,
“Unless I set him free; then follow him,
Not as his servant or attending page,
But all unknown, whate'er the perils be.
For I should have more comfort in my heart,
Be better able to oppose distress,
Or danger or whate'er calamity,
So that I felt each step that I did take,
Was bringing me the nearer to his side.
O this were better! Ten times better this
Than here to languish full of memories,
Breathing what has been rather than what is.
My mother long is dead: she shall not mourn
Whate'er betide me; only I repent
My father stern, yet ever soft to me,
Left to uncertainty of my wild fate.
He to his father flies, but mine I leave.
And when did ever a woman or a girl,
Whose heart love filled, weigh old against the young,
Or father against lover; or ever set
The maiden past against the future wild,
That beckons on and ever on her soul?
So cannot I: at once I'll set him free,
But never a word of my adventure hint
And half the pain of his departure miss
In secret joyous knowledge of the heart.”
So chanced it then that, preparation made,
The Guard, cajoled or bribed or drugged asleep,
Upon a lucky night of solid gloom,
He, softly swinging down a rope, touched earth,
And was away into the ebon night.
But ere he went, again and yet again
He thanked her, and would kiss her burning lips
And swear him chained unto her memory
For ever: and if things about his hearth
Prospered, he would return and ask her hand,
Of the stern father from whose grasp he fled.
And all the while her heart was smiling fast
To think that she would follow him amain,
He knowing nothing. Last she asked of him
To say again the far-off city's name,
Which he so oft had murmured in his dreams.
“London,” he murmured; “London,” murmured she,
As though she clasped to her a talisman
Or put a key within her bosom safe
That should unlock the gates of all the West.
He being fled, Haidee her father's wrath
Must dare; but never in his mind it slipped
That she, his daughter, that escape devised.
The guards were fettered for a while; but they
Had payment full, and at their fetters laughed.
The storm of passion from her father passed;
His rage subsiding as a sea, when winds
That lifted the wild billow to the clouds
Sink; and the sun smiles out upon a floor
Of gold and scarcely heaving waters bright.
And now her own more perilous escape
She must devise and without quailing make.
First thought she, should she have companions by
And take one with her but to exchange a word,
And lighten the great solitude of nights?
But better at the last it seemed that she
Should all the adventure brave out by herself,
And if she perished, perish then alone.

Canto 9

At last a night fell dim, benignant, dark
Midnight consenting all her stars concealed
And ruled the huge heaven with her serried clouds.
She then the long expected night embraced,
And being clothed, accoutred as a youth,
With free limbs slipt down from the massy tower
Where since a child she slept. She lighted safe;
And being well-provided in her dress
With many a jewel secreted; here was hid
A pearl and here a diamond, here again
A sea-blue sapphire; for the peril naught
Dismayed her: forth she sped into the dark.
Nor did she reck of robber or of thief,
Or being slain in some dark forest glade,
For sake of what she carried fearlessly.
The one thought in her brain and in her heart
Was that she followed him throughout the world.
And in deep ecstasy she wandered on,
Under the massy cloud. Who guided her?
For no stars in the firmament uprose,
By which she might have told her trackless way,
And no moon came to aid her on her road.
Still through the gloom she pressed; and to herself
“London” she murmured; “London” yet again,
As though she cried unto that city far
To take her to its arms, and to his arms
Who in delirium murmured oft the name.
Wearied at last, uncertain of her path,
She lay down in a forest, all whose leaves
Murmured about her in a solemn song,
Or congregated hymn of foliage.
Then as the dawn not yet appearing made
A stillness in the world and one by one
Bird upon bird awoke, and dreamily
Each to the other dimly felt for voice,
She sank asleep and as she slept, she dreamed.
Yet not of him she loved, so much she dreamed,
But that a child unto them two was born,
And was a mighty figure in that land
Whereto he journeyed, and she followed him.
Dim was the history to her unrolled,
And now one scene was bright and then was lost;
But he their son, it seemed, was as a king,
And friend of some great king who ruled the land.
He and the English monarch to and fro
Paced hand in hand and to each other spoke,
Now gravely and now lightly, so it seemed;
They were as comrades, sportive as are boys;
And nothing, one would deem, would part these two,
Or jar the easy friendship of the twain.
Sudden she woke and cried aloud and sprang
Upright: the ghostly forest had been changed
To some cathedral, and an altar stood
Before her, and as on that altar she
Gazed; on a sudden armèd knights inrushed
With drawn swords and their son who mildly stood
Still in the holy place, they seized and slew.
She looked about her on the leaves for blood,
His blood; for blood of his had sure been shed,
Had she not seen it dripping on the steps?
Long while she stood and pondered on the dream,
Then to the unaccustomed air and space,
The falling dew, the murmuring of trees,
The vision she ascribed; and yet how like
That murdered face that reeled before her still
To him whom now she followed, though in fear,
Yet followed, and would follow to the end!
Here idle all her travel to recount;
How captured by a lawless brigandage,
And how, by her strange tale and eyes of truth,
She won from violence their captain rude,
Who sent with her an escort to the coast.
How then by giving certain splendid stones
She was conveyed over sea, though once well nigh
Wrecked, and cast up upon a rocky shore.
Yet even in Eastern desert, in forest huge
And various murmuring ocean still it seemed
That London wooed her safely to its arms.
At last in the first dawn before her rose
Those cliffs so dear that pine across the wave,
And yearn forever in a broken thought
With faces that remember or aspire.
There disembarked; yet she no word could say,
But to the questioning inhabitants
“London,” and “London,” “London” yet again,
So, slowly and by difficult degrees,
Through many a village, many a town made she,
And all with wonder gathered round her steps.
Some styled her as an Eastern sorceress,
And she from many a village and small town
Was driven with the cries of ignorance.
Yet never failed her heart; and since she still
Held sewn about her many a glimmering gem,
Easily could she bargain for her way
Until by midnight on the highroad shone
The city of her wishes and her prayer,
The home of him she came so far to find.
Here day on day she wandered thro' the streets,
Murmuring the city's name through city ways,
Yet never the abode of him she loved
Could light on, until fortune drew her steps
Thither unto her goal of wandering.

Canto 10