University of Virginia Library

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.