University of Virginia Library

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.

Thou sleepest! Thou wilt never wake again!
No more for ever among mortal men
That scrutinous eye under the giant brow
Shall rede the riddles of their life. Even now
Thou sleepest well, where bitter indignation
No more can lacerate thy heart!—No more
The babble of misprision, and the sore
Galling of treacherous craft and envious passion
Vex thee, there sleeping
Where greatness breeds not hatred, and thy Fame
Can turn no more to shame
The dwarf ambitions round thy Titan-grandeur creeping!
Asleep? Nay, rather, on this Christmas Eve
Dost thou not sup with Shakspere, and receive
Immortal welcome of the Great of old?—
Ah, pitiful dream! The man we loved lies cold,
Cold, very cold and still!
The brave true heart will never beat again:
There dwells no thought within the kingly brain:
All spent the liberal fountains of the will!
O Master, O true Friend! I cannot borrow
The bitter laurels of a fabulous sorrow
To strew thy bier withal! The word I speak
This night is one I must! If all too weak,
Thou wilt forgive me! There be times and moods
That slay the soul with silence. When the floods
Yawn for Arion, he must sing or die!
O well is he, whose numerous verse and high
To his whole thought can then give utterance meet,
And speak the word that saves,—for ever sweet,
Sweet, and for ever strong!
O Thou, if e'er of old, dread Soul of song,
This night speak with me once again! Ere yet
My life slope downward to the suns that set,—
Now, ere the brain wax feeble, and the heart
Unlearn its youthful madness;—ere mine Art
Slip from me like the glory from a cloud,
Leaving me dark, a melancholy shroud
Of dead imaginations; yet once more
Give me this night to soar
Beyond these visible shows which men deem Life,
Thither, where mortal sorrow, pain and strife,
And toil and turmoil seem but as they are,
Mere dreams fast fleeting. Yea, if e'er thy star
I have sought devoutly, if nor lust of Fame,
Nor lust of Gold,—far other, yet the same,—
Have marred the song I brought Thee in old time,
Grant me that this my rhyme,
Though wintry pale the blossoms of my wreath,
And dashed with dews of Death,
Live, not unworthy, on that deathless head!
O Master! O true Friend! what word of mine
Can meetly solve the arrears of glory due?
Can tell how wise thou wert, how brave, how true?
Can speak to after years
The fulness of our love, our loss, our tears?—
I who, unlessoned in the skill divine,
Hear of thy fall, as under a strange shield,
Far in the fameless outskirt of the field,
Namelessly warring, haply young Lavaine
Might hear of Lancelot smitten through the brain
Full in the fore-front of the Table Round!—
O peerless Knight, and flower of chivalry!
No more at trumpet's sound
Thy grasp shall whiten on that mighty hilt,
To cleave the brazen panoply of guilt,
Rescue his victims, set his captives free!—
No more, no more in Knightly brotherhood,
Thy presence cheer us in the Eternal Fight!—
There, where thy greatness stood
A gate of strength, unyielding 'gainst the flood,
Surges even now the ghastly tide-rush in,
Falsehood, and falsehood's kin,
Fair-kirtled foulness, snowy-mantled sin!—
One sunny Sabbath in a sweet September,
Dost thou remember
How fair, far sheening o'er the pleasant wealds
The mellow Autumn on the woods and fields
Of Sidney's Penshurst lay? O Master mine,
Red I aright that silent mood of thine?—
Yea, I too saw them, heard them as they came,—
Sidney, and Sidney's sister, and her son,
And whispered with thee! Came, too, one by one,
Thy starry brethren in immortal fame,
Who, wistful lingering on those awful lawns
Still walk on springtide dawns,
Spenser and Jonson, peaceful Wotton came,
And Shakspere!—Shakspere, for I saw thee bow
Thy hoary wisdom, and upon thy brow
There glowed a light as of ethereal flame:
And musingly thou question'dst:“Is it true
That Shakspere walked indeed with Herbert there?”
Dost thou remember?—In that haunted air
I felt thy kindred with the mightier few;
Ay, and the secret of thy might I knew,—
That strength to bind, and that swift power to loose,
That gave thee lordship over want and use,
To wield unshorn man's high prerogative,
And live the life that Nature bade thee live:
The whole man subject to thy strong control,
To hold the temperate tenor of thy soul,
And even if stung by common blame or praise,
To nurse a strong will in emasculate days,
And through their pedlar pettiness to keep
In thought and deed, a something of the sweep
Of life Elizabethan, and the grand
Old days when there were giants in the land,
Ere the poor pigmies of a conscious time,
Owned the Man less, but styled the Age sublime—
To teach,—whate'er thy motley mood might be,
Even in jest, the Truth that makes men free;
Even in jest, the Love that makes men kin;—
The Faith in noble deeds that deigns no sin.
Ulysses? Ay, whate'er all capitals,
Street, market, minster, palace and hall and cot
Could tell or teach of manners and of men,
Their loves, hates, toils, sports, fasts, and festivals,
Thou in the lidless treasury of thy soul
Didst prodigally hoard, and from thy store
Scattering thy wealth, didst ever garner more!
And, lest thy teaching lacked perfection yet,
Came Misery, dreadful Angel, and Regret
Sate tracing evermore
With hieroglyphs of woe thy hearthstone o'er and o'er!
Ah, Christ! For ever must the Poet's lore
Be perfected e'en thus? O gentle Child,
To those who kneel this night in Bethlehem,
Hast thou no sweeter message?—Thou to them
Wilt thou say calmly:“Go ye forth, and grieve?”
O Mary, mother mild!
I pray thee by thy sevenfold crown of sorrows,
Is this the mystery of thy holy eve?—
Is there no meaning left in our to-morrows?—
Hark! Even now their answer, and again
Comes borne of little voices, high and low,
That wintry nightwinds blow
About the highways with the drizzling rain!
Friend! Thou, too, heardst that answer! In the loss,
And strife, and manifold agony of sore pain,
Thou hadst achieved that wisdom of the Cross,
And made thy griefs thine own, thy brethren's gain!
Was it some effluence of the mood and time,
That seemed even now to lighten through my rhyme?
Alas, that mood is o'er!
I dreamed last night that in a minster old
One wandered with me, and I said, “Come down
Into the Charnel Royal, and behold
The ancient Monarch with his carven crown,
Where he lies stately on his sepulchre!”
And we went down, but lo! the tomb was gone
That I remembered, though the broad flat stone,
Whereon it stood, remained; and underneath
We knew that ancient Monarch slept in death.
And kneeling down among the bones of kings,
And skulls still crowned, and gilt moth-eaten things,
That once were robes of Princes, here and there
With ruby, topaz, emerald glistening still,—
We swept aside into a little hill
The kingly dust from off that marble square,
And read the runes that in clear-chiselled rhyme
Fringed that old Empire's last gray coverlid,
Though all the words of that forgotten time
Were in the tongue that none can understand
Save the dead only:—but the glittering sand,
Full in the centre of the stone, as though
There stirred beneath some living creature hid,
Shook tremblingly, and lo!
We read thy name there, Thackeray, carven deep,
And knew thee, lying low,
Among thy brethren in that sovran sleep!
Then, through the rounded window, in the green
And sunlit churchyard I beheld the tomb
That I remembered,—from the charnel gloom
Unflawed, forth-lifted into God's free air,
And marvelled that I knew not Thou hadst been
Even of old the crowned One sculptured there.
O Friend!—I dare not see thee as thou art!—
These idle fancies are but as the flow
Of bubbling organ-trebles, clear but low,
At dawn in sleeping nunneries, that grow
Louder and ever louder, till the white
Sisters awake to their old undelight!—
Ay, me!—And I awaken with a start,
To feel thy cold hand pressed against my heart!