University of Virginia Library

Why fell not Kossuth with the fall of his country?
Wherefore yielded he not to the blind inspiration
Of the cup with which Despair her own agony heightens
To madness, that traces no longer the progress of sorrow,
Swells to one spasm, exhausts her own being, and is not?
Some such poetic ending one asks of the hero,
Stamped in the bloody coinage of battle with greatness.
As the centurial aloe responds to its hour,
Shooting its petals aloft to the eyebrows of heaven,
And dying when they die, our natural loves and desires
All rush or creep on to crises of anguish or rapture.
After the utmost comes peace—the cup of our nuptials
We shiver to shards, as knowing too well that life brings us
Sordid and slow desecration of symbols most holy.
Moth and rust gather dim on the white sacramental
Garment—the body forsaken descends to corruption.
Well held the ancients to their ministration of fire
That rids man's heart and home of their festering burthen.
Even the sacrifice brought to bleed at God's altar
Should not survive the mood of devotion that urged it.
They, at once ceasing, shall thus be together remembered.
Why could the man not die with his day of dominion?
His work at end, wherefore live to be scantily pensioned
By hearts that grudge the reward when it follows the labor?

Are then man's days his own? thou, the languid survivor
Of pangs and delights that leave nothing to wish for but dying,
Is it thy fault that a smiling, necessitous patience
Greenly o'ergroweth thy destiny's grandiose ruins?
Had the death-angel stood at the shrine of thy nuptials,
Thou wouldst have laid thy passion-shorn head on his shoulder,
Glad to weep out thy life and thy sorrow together.
That could not be—from thy scathèd trunk of existence,
Joy sprang up, the immortal, the ever-perennial,
Bursting through ancient films of reserve and submission,
Bearing aloft in unwonted fragance and blossom
The force of thy nature, too long in itself darkly circling.
Still the pale stranger will come, not in haste indecorous,
With pinions all ruffled, evoked by thy wild adjuration;
But in state serene; with hands whose soft coolness persuadeth,
And lips that hold their own pause in the music of heaven.

As I walk in the dreary streets of the city,
Voiceless of music, and empty of joy and of beauty,
Meanly adorned for the meaner pleasure of buying,
With such sickly growths as bloom out in the newest Spring fashion,
Something arrests me—a painful thrill of compassion
Strikes through my heart, ere my wandering reason can question,
‘Wherefore this pang?’ 'Tis a print of a face most familiar
Between the imperial crown and imperial purple;
But oftener seen with the old chapeau and the gray coat,
Its regal insignia the eye, and the brow, and the lip then.
The world looked little to him, as you see by his glances
Embracing it all, and embracing yet more, so I read them,
The full outpouring of power that stops at no frontier,
But follows I would with I can, and I can with I do it;
While common minds stand agape at the mighty ambition,
Nor hear the march till the standards come flashing upon them.

Know you this man? why, the dome of the Invalides trembles
When some poor mutilate remnant of soldierly valor
Comes limping towards you, and, touching your arm with his finger,
Whispers: ‘He's there!’ and his dead presence fastens upon you
In proportions unearthly, while, choking and swelling,
The heart in your breast with his passionless ashes claims kindred.

Know you this man? Him even the unwilling Muses
Honored, without whose honor Success is not Triumph.
Marble and canvas grew great with his wonderful features;
Though best in warrior bronze from his column he towers,
Calmly rebuking the frivolous race that forsook him,
Terribly threat'ning the monarchs that crouched at his bidding.
Thorwald, th' inspired, must fashion the frieze for his chamber,
Dead Alexander hang on the wall as his trophy,
In the Roman palace he deigned not to visit.
Only, nearest Apollo, the sons of the lyre
Scattered more sparsely their homage, as bound to withhold it
Till Death enrolled him among the calm shades of the mighty,
Whom to blame is not cruel, to praise not inglorious.
Then from Italy swept the high mass of Manzoni,
And De Lamartine led the sweet psalm of his vespers.

But here we see him, in sordid and careless attire,
Shabby, forgotten, neglected, an invalid prisoner,
With all his ruined life on his pent bosom resting,
And his lion-like despair on his forehead grown patient.
Sorrow has sickened and shaken, but dare not destroy him,
Lest she abridge one pang of his long doom of anguish.
In his dressing-gown stands he, his listless feet in
His slippers, a kerchief replacing the crown of an empire.
Mild-souled Las-Casas writes on, accustomed to hearing
Querulous plaints of unkind and uncourteous treatment,
Meals insufficient, ill lodging, and spies that pursue him
Here even, where fatally wounded to die he has laid him.

But at this moment, one hopes, from the pitiful present,
Sublime, the past reclaims him with thick-thronging visions,
Covers with banners and trophies the walls dank and dreary,
Leads up the barren isle her magnificent vista.
Dreams he, perchance, of a new point of fusion for Europe,
And in his cabinet models her map and her fortune?
Or has he, choosing a royal name for his infant,
Made Rome, in the palace of Gaul, a subordinate title?
Or 'mid the stir of the camp gives he order for battle,
And sees his plumeless eagle new-fledged in the sun's face?
‘This was at Jena,’ he says: ‘how we made the dogs tremble,
Routed their armies,—terror like lightning pursued them!’
Or: ‘This was when I welded my way over icebergs,
And like a warrior's bride lay the fair land before me.’
Or: ‘That was when the kings of the world met in Paris,
Cringing like dutiful slaves at the nod of my pleasure.’

Thus, in Memory's moonlight he harmlessly wanders,
Friend and ancient in shadowy semblance attend him,
Till from her ambush Reality rushes upon him,
Strikes hand to hand, dispersing his phantasmic glories.
By the dull shock awakened, he gathers his senses,
Discerns but understands not himself and his prison;
Fixes the heart of his hearer with mute looks that question:
‘Surely such things have been?’ But the mournful face answers
The past with the present despair, then he lowers between them
The leaden vizard of pride, the stern lips lock in silence,
The breast keeps its broad arches still, and the passing convulsion
Lies frozen in fathomless eyes that to tears condescend not.
Break, mighty heart, that, remembering nothing but greatness,
Look'st on the smallest of worlds, still too large for thy freedom.
Break, and, in breaking, acknowledge—thy gifts and thy glories,
The civic wreath, and the bloodier garlands of battle,
The sounding procession, the glittering marches of triumph
That beggared the treasures of Europe, resistlessly led thee
To this high court of despair, to this kingdom of horror,
Where ev'n the silent majesty of thy sorrow
(Over itself still despotic) not wholly exempts thee
From the world's tribute of pity, unwished for and shameful.

And he, this new Prometheus, wherefore remains he
Held by the torturing will of his dreadful enchainer?
How is he narrowly caged for his captor's diversion,
While the coarse vulture sits leisurely tearing his vitals,
Till his foemen, ashamed of the anguish he suffers,
Would set him free, did their statesmanly maxims permit it?
Death is the birthright of all men, could he not compel it?
He who had scattered so widely its terrible largesse,
Had he reserved no delivering drop for his own lip?
Could not a soldier's fate end his great soldier fortune?
Ev'n the deserter dies not by the hands of the hangman,
Nor pines in dungeons—the weapons he faithlessly wedded
Stand him in stead, and from grief and dishonor release him.
What divine word has judged him, God's crystallized treasure,
The man of the ages, the quickened convulsive outworker
Of Nature's deep passive forces, in him grown volcanic:
Him, right or wrong, I say, what divine word doth judge him
Fit only to rot and waste for an Englishman's pleasure?

In that last battle, when he, the true point of resistance,
(Centre of France, as France was of Europe the centre,)
He towards whose will all power instinctively gathered,
Thence to re-emanate, great with the stamp of his purpose,
Holding the past in solution, and sure of the future,
Was by some force undiscernible strangely out-counselled,
It had been easy, one thinks, to have led a wild onslaught,
Swift with the rage of desperate-hearted defiance,
Terrible with the intent to be deadly in dying.
He might have flung away life, as a boon of no value,
Lees from a shattered cup, last coin of a great stake
Scornfully swept by the gambler to fill up his ruin.
Proud and contemptuous then had remained his last gesture,
Death had found him undwindled, had known him unconquered
By the stern smile congealed on his lips' bloody marble.
Why died he not? How easy a thing to declare thee!
In all the fiery hail of that dreadful encounter,
Fell there no bullet commissioned of heaven to touch him.
Destiny, faithfully shielding, through numberless perils
Circled him still, and reserved him to perish by inches.
God's war-angel stooped near him, from battle-cloud lowering,
Till his deep whisper thrilled the proud heart of the leader.
After this wise he spake: ‘Thus far for thy pleasure;
Now for God's teaching, to thee and to other men in thee.
Evade it thou canst not, best thou abid'st it in patience.
Fly! but it follows thee—choose an asylum! it waits thee.
And, as he flies, the prophecy darkly attends him.
Seek thee a palace to screen the last act of thine empire?
This is not modest enough—thou must abdicate freedom.
Give up thy crown? thou must give up the crown of thy manhood.
Yield all command? ay, command not thy boy nor his mother.
France wilt thou leave? Somewhat further behind than thou wot'st of;
Skies less congenial than these shall grow vengeful above thee;
Walls not so stately compress thy last spasm to silence.
In thy desolate sleep and more desolate waking
Spirits unbidden shall question thy will and thine actions.
Voices that heed not thine anger shall iterate precepts
Of truths eternal that sit where the stars sit and judge thee.
Pitiless fingers shall point, neither hating nor loving,
Pointing out simply thy blemishes stript of their halo,
And the great thoughts of God which, involving thy failure,
Set thee aside as a feather, a fragment, an atom
Inharmonious with infinite laws of Creation.
If they call thee infamous, answer avails not;
Brazen clamor of trumpets drowns not their still speaking.
If they smite thee, the folded arms cannot shield thee,
Nor flashing eyes avenge—on thy heart, swift as lightning,
Falls the keen stroke, the immortal must suffer and die not.
Suffer till Self, interclouding 'twixt soul and divineness,
Vaporous, huge, phantasmic, condense to its essence.
Suffer till flesh and bone bear the terrible traces,
And the soul sculpture its woe on the walls of its prison;
Till the closed eye, and the paralyzed lip, fixed in dying,
Speak as no tongue could speak, and in piteous pleading
Claim from men's hearts the upheaving of grief for a brother.’

Further the angel spake—from his dead mask I read it:
‘History wrot'st thou in blood, which the angels, transcribing,
Color with light and with shadow by thee unimagined.
They hold the book to thine eyes—thou must learn the deep lesson,
Ev'n as a child that would not with chiding and scourging;
Till with a wiser heart and a forehead less lofty
On the steps of the temple thou meet the most gentle,
Making thee glad with these words: “The long school time is over,
The Father hath sent me—his heart and his mansion await thee.”’

Have I writ long? and have my wanderings led me
Spinning frail webs from the thread abrupt of thy question?
Why died not Kossuth? Men die as God pleases;
Felons and madmen alone anticipate rudely
The last consummation, and yet from their doom escape not.
Think'st thou thy work at end, and thy discipline perfect?
Other pangs still remain, other labors and sorrows;
Other the crises of Fate than the crises of Being.
Let me round my words with one brief admonition:
Take for the bearings of life, thine own or another's,
This motto, blazoned on cross and on altar: ‘God's patience.’