 | Calmstorm, the reformer |  |
CALMSTORM, THE REFORMER.
A Dramatic Comment.
- Calmstorm, the Reformer.
- First Citizen, His Supporter.
- Second Citizen, His Supporter.
- Third Citizen, His Supporter.
- Waning, a Man of the World.
- A Creditor.
- A Prisoner.
- Darkledge, the Judge.
- Slinely, the Journalist.
- First Politician,
- Second Politician,
- Third Politician.
- Lifeless.
- First Rabble,
- Second Rabble,
- Third Rabble.
- A Smith.
- A Mason.
- A Carpenter.
- Umena, Wife of Calmstorm.
- Dorcas, her friend.
CHARACTERS.
5
1. PART I.
SCENE I.
Scene—A City in America.—A Public Square. First Citizen. Second Citizen. Third Citizen.
Sec. Cit.
It cannot be he that rises now
Upon the people's gaze; a tower where Strength,
And Fortitude, and Hope would build their homes,
And hold secure their look-out o'er the world!
Third Cit.
He lived deep in the west in his youth, 'tis said.
Sec. Cit.
I've heard, for this I know not of myself,
From a low, damp, and shadowy corner
Of the city he springs: an obscure haunt.
First Cit.
We look upon a man forth issuing from an arch,
As if he bore something of glory from within;
All men walk forth into the changeful world
Under the blue heaven that bends above us,
And glorifies us all. This Calmstorm's our old
Schoolfellow, of the public and the common school,
Who fiercely struck the master, charging him
With an untruth in some small word.
Sec. Cit.
An eager, resolute, and dark-eyed boy,
Who railed at sleep, and pined a week, unfed,
For some poor slight the scholars put on him?
I think I recollect him now.
Third Cit.
Ay, Calmstorm, to be sure,
6
Sometimes, of taking to the wild sea,
Sometimes, of mountain-travel, far removed
From human haunts.
First Cit.
That Calmstorm!
Stands he not before you now, and you—
As in the anguish of his eager soul,
On the play-ground, pausing, he swore some day,
When he should come of manly years, afar
To the free-footed, woody west to fly,
And by great rivers, walking, neighborless,
Forever to disown masters and bonds,
And servitude of this our civil life?
You stood near him, Saul, I recollect,
And as he stretched his arms, desiringly,
He struck you, that you roared again!
Third Cit.
We'll watch his course?
First Cit.
We will. He'll put a soul into this world
Of ours, that's been a corpse too long.
[Exeunt.
Another part of the Square. Calmstorm, Umena at the background. Enter, meeting in front, a Smith, a Mason, a Carpenter.
Smith.
How goes your labor now? Still lengthening?
Mason.
Ten hours a day, and half an hour for meals.
We're still at work on that great darkling pile,
With pigeon-slips for human habitations—
And still stick in the chimney-top a sprig
Of green, for joy that a new house is builded.
Smith.
We wrought all through last night, the night before,
And yet the night before, to meet an order,
Sudden and large, for chains to bind a rising
In the up-river prison. And how with you,
7
Carpen.
Oh yes, as cheerful as a beggar's hearse
For I last night upon a gallows toiled
Within the prison-yard; and all the while
A pale white face hung at the grated bar
Upon the gloomy night; lamp-struck he glared
On every hammer-beat and timber lifted,
As if the life would leap forth from his eyes
At every look, and when at length the death-tree
Rose dark in the air, back from the grated bar
He fell, with a sharp cry.
Umena.
[Aside.]
He fell, alas!
As if in terrible adoration
Of another cross, whereby men perish
And are not saved! Heaven's cheerful eye may see,
Saddest of all the city holds this day
Lies that poor prisoner. Guilty ten years
Perchance, before the art, and innocentest, now;
Comfort, dear Christ, comfort for that poor prisoner!
Smith.
Come, we must not halt, and idly talk here,
At this hour of the day. The sun's sharp beams
Compel me to the dusky shop, where waits
The master growling.
Mason.
A hundred years from this we'll not stand here
And mind it: your murderer will be dust,
Your many-binding chains a linkless dross,
And my high building rubbish.
Smith.
Meantime the day's work's to be done. Let's on.
[Exeunt Smith, Mason, Carpenter.
Calm.
[Advancing.]
Why spake the swarthiest of his master?
The man who takes his toil and gives him money—
He is his fellow-bondman in humanity,
8
Swift death or slow: they firmly, each to each,
Are linked in the great round of order
By no constant but a changing mastery,
That each in turn may know obedience,
And his bless'd twin, authority.
Umena.
I think they murmured not for want of bread.
Calm.
The man that with his level struck the earth,
Keenly reproached its hardness, that it yields
But scantling food to him and his: Umena,
I am sad, as if I sat close by my grave!
Umena.
Why are you sad? The sun shines in the air
As clear as though he were new-made for us,
The breath of day creeps hither from the river,
Fresh and sweet, and softly to our gracious ear
The city's hum murmurs familiar:
There's comfort bounteous in the world abroad,
There should be comfort in our minds within.
Calm.
It may be that the men who just passed on
Have troubled me; I wish the city would
But stop its din, for that perplexes me.
Why should this always be? O, why forever,
In chains or grief, or silent sadnesses
Shall men toil on, nor see the sun nor moon,
By night or day, the things they are!—
New Land of Hope! these things become not thee:
From earth thou risest, youth-like, up, or should—
Fresh as the morn, unblemished and unpanged;
Thine hair is not so gray, nor are thine eyes
So dim, that thou should'st, faltering, palsy-shake,
As if the guilty centuries sate upon thee.
Swiftness, unrest, and haste, betray thy youth—
From where the east kindles in dewy light,
9
Thy ponderous beam of power rocks up and down,
Jarring the continent. Behold, behold
Thy thousand sails are set, full-flowing,
Thy thousand engines creak and clank and groan
To bear the world straight in the sun's eye,
Rushing forever from the calm-wheeling round
Old nations run!
Enter Waning.
Wan.
What now?—you wear a sword!
Calm.
I do and shall, until the end has come.
Wan.
This is a time of peace, and not of war.
Calm.
War! war!—the age of war has just begun!—
When the rough hands of false and tyrannous men
May on these guiltless limbs be freely laid;
When so-called popular opinion
Plays the out-numbering despot with me—
In passion's name, let passion be the law,
And set its fiery foot against th' opposer.
Wan.
Your private grief is not so huge, that you
May shove aside the great-compacted world,
And take the path.
Calm.
This sword has done keen service
On the violator once, and shall again,
When the rash time unsheathes it.
Wan.
See now, your eyes
Seize hold upon the stained and darkened blade,
As though there lived a spirit worship-worthy
In its edge!
Calm.
There does. Its own best record,
Best remembered of itself: that sword,
A lightning flash, has leaped, from age to age,
10
To strike, with blasting stroke, whoe'er or wheresoe'er
'T has found the doer of a wrong;
Yea men, heroic men, have blithely died
To give it edge and brightness durable.
This sword, now in its third age, borne by a man
Of the stern truth, who lived in this green world
Ere cities pressed it, has struck to death, not seldom,
The wasteful Indian, when he upon
The leafy-sheltered household sprung,
Out of the dark—the creature of its gloom:—
Through all that war, the old ancestral war,—
At name of which up leaps the whole world's heart,—
Waged by this rugged child, wood-nursed America,
It fought as though it had a separate life
From him that bore it, and blazed in blood,
As the great day of th' enfranchised battle set:
And when it smote not long ago, in this
Our later day, one that essayed to check,
In free assembly met, a speaker for the truth,
He went to his grave all-honored: and 'tis mine.
That once it failed in use, alone repents me!
Wan.
The eyes with which you look upon the world
Provoke the world to have a quarrel with you.
Calm.
You see these trenches, and these scars upon
My hand! I am not always forward
In my walk, they say!—and I am told, at times,
When the blood rushes back from the full heart,
There grows a sullen darkness 'neath mine eyes.
Wan.
You may forget the past, though not forgive it.
Umena.
He may forgive it easier than forget:
Oh, take the staff of kindliness and peace,
And let the rash blade cast down decay,
As do the hands that used it.
11
Death on his head,
A death tempestuous, bitter and swift,
Who from this minute forth shall dare to lay
The touch of statute-scorning violence
On Calmstorm! I, I am the law in that!
Mine own adviser, judge, and executioner,
The fortress of myself, mine own right arm.
Wan.
Calmstorm, the prudent foot, it needs, the subtle tongue,
To walk the world in safety, more than loud
Tumultuous speech, and blows of angry force!—
Break up your sword, and make your tongue its heir,
Sheathed or unsheathed, as times require, misted
Or bright, as wills the breath that breathes upon it.
Umena.
Draw near to me—nearer—I ask you both:—
Waning, Calmstorm, there is a Spirit Blest,
That needs no sword to cleave its peaceful way,
No cunning tongue to be its pleader:
A Comforter about us when we know it not,
A Friend, whose hand is ever laid in ours,
A Spirit that rides the roughest seas as though in calm,
And walks bright-footed on the mountain-top:
Give me your hands.
Wan.
Another day, Umena;
I have a business urgent that calls me hence,
Another day we'll talk of this again.
[Exit Waning.
Calm.
He is disordered at your speech, but see,
Umena, see, what shadow of a man
Flits on before us!
Enter, crossing, Lifeless.
Lifeless.
The world and I are square; it owes me nothing,
Nor I it: I lost my fortune yesterday,
12
A chance of life.
[Exit Lifeless.
Enter a crowd of Beggars: Calmstorm advances, and they follow him.
1st Beg.
Ours is an underground apartment, sir,
As deep down in the cold moist earth as lies
Our little sister's church-yard grave; and when
At night we stretch ourselves to sleep, we lie
Abreast with her.
2d Beg.
My old gray father lives beneath the bleak
Ridge of the house, whither he has been borne
By hapless luck; and there, from the windows,
Heaven we might behold, but for the rags
That keep the wind from biting us. 'Tis cold, sir,
Very cold.
[Other beggars approach Calmstorm, who muses on what they tell him.
Umena.
[Advancing.]
A blessing on your poor young heads,
And on your souls the dew of peace!
[She gives them alms.
Beg.
The gentleman's thinking. He'll remember us
Some other day.
[Exeunt the Beggars.
Calm.
Whether these children fable or speak true,
'Tis clear the fountain whence they draw their life
Is muddied. One begs because its father finds
No work; another because the work he finds
Pleases him not, some hard, debasing toil;
Another, whose sickness, abruptly come,
Lays him too swiftly on a pauper's bed,
With no hand, heaven-like, beneath him cast:—
Lift up thine arms, thou world of easy livers,
Slow doers—take to thine heart this other world
Of hungry childhood, manhood overtoiled!
13
In answer for the world, do thou, dear Calmstorm
Stand forth, the unfeed friend of the first man
That owns a full-fledged grief to strike at!
Calm.
I will, I will—and be my tongue and hand
The double pledge that it be done, and do it!
Who comes this way? One officered on either side,
Paler than death, at his own image scared.
Enter, a Prisoner, in charge.
Pris.
Oh, drag me not at such a pace! my knees
Bend with the weight my body makes them bear.
Officer.
'Tis our order to hale you quickly on,
The blackness of your case is warrant for it.
Calm.
[Advancing.]
May I ask, sir, what special thing it is
That makes it black?
Officer.
Something of fraud, I guess,
Is the Black Cat that has him in her claws:
He wronged a worthy man who was his friend,
Of sundry round dollars, by certain lies
And tricks.
Pris.
It is not so.
Officer.
Silence!
Will you contradict a member of the court!
You're in my hands, and that half-proves the charge.
Calm.
[To the prisoner.]
How was it, sir?
If you will let him tell while here he breathes
A space.
Pris.
There was a man whom once I held my friend,
Because together we trafficked often.
Because we often shook a friendly hand,
Because my door went easily to and fro
For him; and oft of him I borrowed
14
He was a smiler then; oh, beautiful
As the young day his far-off glances were
Whene'er we met, his parting faces shone
In a red sunset of the friendliest light.
Calm.
[To himself.]
Which the dread blackness ever follows!
Pris.
When, so it came about there rose upon the ground,
Upon this very ground of ours we stand on,
An exhalation which, in its golden folds,
Wrapped all the world. I, sheltered
In a quiet skirt, bought so much land
As it o'ershadowed, borrowed of him to buy;
And when the gilded vapor passed away,
As swiftly in this land they do and will,
He griped me, this faithful, good old friend of mine,
With a close, hungry hand, and wrung from me,
In promise writ to run a few short months,
All that I had. The land was dust and ashes
In his grasp; and now this money, he says,
I leaned of him upon a lie.
Calm.
He says you wilfully deceived him?
Pris.
He does. He now insists, and by these bonds
Will hold me 'gainst disproof invincibly,
That I had much to build on, I professed,
Which now proves nothing: Ah, sir, you know how oft
The whole building of our petty fortunes falls,
E'en as we look on it!—a scaffold, not a house:
He shortened my life with daily asking,
Blasted my look with his one everlasting face
Of fierce reproach: moneyless aversion.
O, my poor wife, my children lone and poor—
The long, long day must run, ere I may see you
15
A cripple in his limbs as in his mind,
He clattered with his crutch down stairs,
A score of times a-day, and knocked aloud
Against my shaking heart at every step:
They shrunk like the young aspen-tree
At every breath he spake—my children and my wife!
[The creditor approaches.
He follows after, as you see; yes, yes,
I am the slave of that pale man who knits his brow,
And murmurs as if counting. Come this way further!
O, sir, when feeds the air your lungs enough to breathe,
And from the baker's crusts are furnished,
Your limbs just weathered in their nakedness,
Change not, for Fortune then thou hast at odds—
I must go on; they bear me to my trial.
Calm.
When comes your trial on? not instantly?
Pris.
I'm heard to-morrow, this man has told me,
Whether the judge will grant me leave or not,
To be at large until the final trial's called.
Calm.
The hour?—
Pris.
At ten, I think, of morning.
O, let me fly, for he pursues! Bear me
To prison, rather than see his hideous face.
Officer.
[To Calm.]
At ten it is, sir, before Judge Darkledge.
Calm.
I am your counsel, and will be there,
To do you right, or learn that you are wrong.
[Exeunt Prisoner, Officer, &c.
Umena.
Blest be the wide heavens that have o'erruled him!
He strikes into another path, the darkness
Of the one behind forgot, with all its things of evil!
[Aside.
Calm.
To court—to court it is—to-morrow—
16
Stay thou, Umena!—I recollect,
And so dost thou, thou sweet deliverer—
Upon the sunset borders of this land,
A region swept by storms, not of the sky,
But of the earth, where Anger fierce, uncaged,
And Hate, sudden and deep, and black as death—
Seize, with quick-motioned and huge-handed grasp,
The thing they like not, and, breathless, whirl aloft,
Whence it returns not ever, with its life—
Or with its life in spirit humbled and abased;—
For so with something of a court-like front,
The van of human kind adjudge and execute:
A man may stand this minute, calm and free,
His unstained hands spread out against the sky,
To plead for truth or what he deems the truth,
And at the next stifle its brightness
With the reek of his cold, damp, and shattered corpse—
Umena.
O, Thou, that hast the issues of his thoughts,
The unborn sadness, woe that comes from far,
In thine almighty breath, to strike or not—
O, let remembrance of that time go by,
Reason untouched; unshook the sphere-like heart!—
O, may it be a cloud that flies and drops no rain,
An evening's pang, and not a night's disease!
[Aside.
Calm.
Back, back! thou vision hideous!
Be sunk thy hills, thy forests swept into the air,
Thou violent earth!
No, no—I'd bless it, rather—bless it for what?
Umena.
Bless it that it has sent you, clothed in sober strength,
Back to this mighty seat of life, to know again
The safety of its steepled streets, to hear
Its regular pulses beat, a music hopeful.
17
A slower and a sadder pace to walk,
But ne'er forego the end we walk to!
Yes, orderly and silent, here moves on
The great procession of the pleaded truth,
And here, unchilled, the tongue may sound the alarm
Through all the commonwealth of man or men,
Though the small debtor seek his right,
Alone:—that man's sadness is a shadow that lives
All by itself, without a by-gone joy,
A growth that shoots up from the heart of things,
And wraps him in its pitchy folds, around,
Around, till all his nature die!
Umena.
Marked you not how
His eyes and features backward faded,
E'en as I looked, he ceased to look on me,
His sad, pale face was then beside his hearth,
With his lone wife and with his children poor,
More than with us.
Calm.
Heaven's clear lightning, visiting courts
Through their thick roofs, he shall be justified:
Upon the dark the double morn shall rise
For him; and he, aloft, defy the noon
In all its glory, with his rended chain!
[Exeunt.
2. PART II.
SCENE I.
—A street. Calmstorm and Waning, walking.Calm.
How thin the streets are of their usual throng!
Wan.
The world's an hour behind its time this morning;
For yesterday was festival, one of the few,
And after holidays men lie in bed,
18
And dreaming back again the day gone by.
Calm.
They gather at a point about the court,
Perhaps, and leave the outer city bare.
Mine eye is keen enough, and clear enough the sky,
That I could pierce this visible blue, e'en now,
And see the Great Ruler on his throne—
There is a smile upon his front that makes heaven dizzy.
[Aside.
Wan.
O yes, the court may have its listeners!
The idle multitude has ears that flap
With joy, like the wild elephant's, hearkening
To that concerns it not.
Calm.
Concerns it not! O, say not so, dear Waning,
For in the issue of this day there lives
Or dies the hope of thousands.
Wan.
One good man's peace is worth the idle toil
Of the blind millions; whosoever fights
That they may live at ease, battles the air
At large, and buys a blank, of worthlessness
Immeasurable.
Calm.
You speak, I know, more from the prompting
Of a timeless meal, miscombing of your hair
To-day, or the chance stumbling 'gainst a stool,
That vexed your blood, than under judgment
In its best session at a seasonable hour:
Your heart lives in the heart of those around you,
And beats with theirs in all its better pulses
As does mine. You see, as now we near the court,
How they pour in! A blessing on their cheerful brows!
Entering the Court, officers oppose them at the door.
What mean you, fellow? I am Calmstorm,
Counsel for the man within!
Wan.
Give us way,
19
If you please.
[They pass in.
1st Officer.
If that big one is surly, inside there,
As with us, old Darkledge will put out his fire
In half a twinkling. Stand off there, men, the court
Will be along in half a minute—stand back!
2d Officer.
Get nearer to the door, John, that we may have
A left ear a-piece, within, to listen with
When the case opens.
[They move in.
SCENE II.
—In Court. Darkledge, Calmstorm, Waning Slinely, and others, with a crowd of spectators.Dark.
Close down the eastern window, officer!
The racket of the eager street about
Disturbs the court.
Calm.
[Rising.]
And yet, of all who help to make this din
This man alone is held in servile bonds
Because he owes a certain petty sum to this.
The suitor, failing, as he has, by courts of law,
From lack of goods, to seize, to get his own,
Has now a fraud to charge, and hurries here,
To find or make this man a criminal:
For this free state allows no man to breathe
A prison's air for money's mere mischance.
The learned gentleman who spake for law
And not for truth, said, as well knows the court—
The court wrote it out with a bold, broad pen
To stare, hugely and black, against the prisoner—
That this one knew at heart, from first to last,
The land he laid in pledge was trash, to grow
Grasses and stubbles, not seats for castles,
Or cities in their largeness and their strength:
That he, this prisoner, in his secret soul,
20
To live on the other's hard-wrought means,
A Cheat (they say), a Knave, a Hypocrite!
The court has knowledge that the whole wide land
Was in a city thrown, with towers to the skies,
Walls laid to the root and centre of the earth,
By general zeal, wildness not singly his,
A fever lodged at large and not his special guest—
This knows the court, know all who sit
Beneath this roof: the wide earth we stand on knows it;
A wealth-desire, that swallows up land, house,
The sea and all it holds, the vital air—
More hungry than the whirlwind, gaunt and fierce,
When down it shakes its gloomy mane, the trees
Of all the earth, and rushes, hungry still,
Out on the wild, unmeasured space.
Slinely rises and interposes.
Slinely.
Will the court permit me that I report
For the Organ, its doings of to-day?
Dark.
The court do not object.
Calm.
Nor I; if he will be that that he should,
The clear, sound glass through which the world may see,
As if it looked upon it, the chances of this case—
And not a mirror to distort, misshape,
And render back, dark and false-imaged, all:
Set down, would he but be the friend of truth,
The room, the hour, the attitude of each,
How stands the speaker, how the audience stand,
Whether the judge, with eyes and mind awake,
Listens to what is for the prisoner said,
Or stares upon his plea, half-slumbering.
If you are called to sound the bell of truth,
Let its clear voice your air-borne pages ring
Over the land, unmuffled and unmarred.
[To Slinely.
21
He knows his duty, sir, and has the court's consent.
Calm.
I grant it, sir; we all our duties know,
And now that we're aroused and pricked to hear
With ears wide-opened—
Dark.
[Studiously interrupting.]
What tumult's that in yonder crowd?
Officer.
'Tis Lifeless, a poor hanger-on of the court,
Crowding for an end of bench, and because
He's lost it, is shuffling out of court.
Calm.
A moment's use more of the wise court's ear.
A Hypocrite, a Knave, a debt-struck Cheat!
Let all men pay in full their honest debts
In heaven's own coin, the world will need change sides—
Dark.
[Starting.]
You're not content, eh, with the things that stand,
You seek a change throughout the world?
Calm.
I do. A change that gliding 'mid the forms of life—
Shall crumble down the old-cemented wrongs,
E'en at a touch, yes, instant, all throughout,
As though, when thus I dash mine angry heel
Against the earth, I could shake down,
In all its continents, on all its shores—
Its homes, its temples, and its justice-halls,
Its prisons, fortresses, and towers of state!
[Darkledge regards him in amaze.
Due! there are some dues beside the dollar!
This man is debtor now, this very hour,
Unto this other! Take this one from the box,
And put the other there! For where's the courtesy,
Truth and honest dealing in look and hand,
And speech, whereof he wronged and robbed, so oft,
This prisoner? A daily fraud and hourly:
Practiced within the law, the rogue's enclosure,
22
Thou purer blaze! that judges, soul-smit, may fall
Saul-like, in worship.
Dark.
[Angrily.]
Halt, sir, the court
Cannot sit silent, and listen to this talk.
The court worships nothing, 'twould have you know.
Calm.
Then Nothing is a devil bigger by a mountain's girth,
Than e'er he claimed to be before!
Dark.
You mock us, do you?
Stand ready here, a force of officers!
We mean the court will not let counsel say
What thing it worships, kneels to, prays to, judges by—
There is the Bible, there the Statute-book!—
[Looking towards Slinely.]
We're understood?
Sline.
[Rising.]
If the court please, we've writ for the public eye,
“The court has its own well-established worship,
“Of which 'twill not be questioned by counsel over-curious:
“The Bible's there, and there the Statute-Book—
“We stand by both. Now let the case proceed!”
Calm.
That is your record, is it?—
Sit down, thou foolish man! and slit thy quills—
Out of the court's mere idle words of chance,
You've built a lie as black and huge as Alleghany!
Sline.
We ask the court's protection: shall he
Upbraid us that we fairly chronicle
The pure judgments of the court?
Calm.
Protect! Banish you, rather, into
A desert everlasting beyond these walls,
No more to write the misinterpreted truth.
Dark.
These matters are not in the case, nor
Any part of it. He must not be disturbed:
In what he does, he must take his free course—
23
And so must I. Thou man of perfect truth,
That in the Saul-like blaze sitt'st radiant!—
Even thou, Darkledge, the judge immaculate.—
Dark.
Come forward, officers! on either side
Stand ready on your staves: if he affront
The court, seize him, and bear him swiftly down!—
Calm.
And in the edges of its fire, the prisoner's withes are snapped!
Think what it is to be Heaven's chancellor!
You sit upon that bench, as on his throne
Sits He, to measure out the golden grains of justice,
Which are the bread and staff of this world's life.
Unseen his angels come, each minute, down,
And back return, reporting what Darkledge,
In his evil thought or good, determines.
See! o'er the judge's face God's visible shadow
Passes. He signs and trembles, trembles but signs.
[The order is handed to the Clerk by Darkledge.
Clerk.
[Reading.]
The order's adverse to the prisoner.
Calm.
You're in the cold, hard cell, as fixed as if
The frozen sea in ice had locked you!
[To the prisoner.
Another day is added to the days
Of wrong! His forehead smites the cruel rail,
As though a bolt had struck him from afar!
[Exit Calmstorm.—Scene closes.
SCENE III.
—Without the Court. Calmstorm and Waning.Calm.
The case is lost, blackly and forever lost!
Wan.
You should have bent your knee a little
To the judge, a little would have served you,
And not with that high voicing spoke,
As if you wished that Heaven, rather than he,
Should hear you. A sad mistake, no doubt,
Calmstorm, a sad mistake in policy.
[Exit Waning.
24
[Looking upward.]
This, bear it in belief, thou looker-on,
Sun, that shinest calmly, yonder and here!
This is the chamber where justice lodges,
It is said. In her own habitation
She's a stranger, aloof from what goes on,
Hiding, perhaps, in crannies of her battered house,
And, looking archly forth from where she hides,
The spirit of the crevice and invisible,
Laughs at and mocks the doings of her servitors.
Enter Umena.
Umena.
It would not be amiss, I hope 'twould not,
Although the public court, the public trial's past,
To follow still this poor down-trodden prisoner—
To knit a few kind words to strew his prison with?
Calm.
[Musing.]
It would not be amiss.
Umena.
To bear him alms of truth,
And food to cherish body and spirit?
Calm.
It would not.
Umena.
A word upon the way he takes to prison,
Might cheer him through the first o'erwhelming night:
Shall I pursue him, as his jailors
Bear him on?
Calm.
You might.
[Exit Umena.
Calm.
O, come the time,
As swift and general as the night that folds
The world in shining arms, and runs its errands
To the sun, when on a thousand hills
Crowned right shall sit, and 'neath its sceptres
Earth lie calmly as the cradled babe!—
When, in and out of courts and council-chambers,
Lean Want may walk as free as lusty Pride,
25
Nor in a bandaged twilight longer stumble,
Lured by the small gold's falsely-tinkling voice,
Rather than upright Truth's full-beaming look!
[Exit.
SCENE IV.
—A street. Umena, Dorcas, meeting.Umena.
Whither so nimbly speeding, Dorcas?
Dorcas.
To you, if needed in the great court,
With what I had of counsel and of help.
Umena.
The court is ended, and the poor prisoner
Is borne along, close-kept, as you behold,
Unto his cell.
Dorcas.
Thus, thus I always linger:
I came down by the river, bending as it bent,
Pausing where'er it paused, and yielding every way
To its blue mastery: a blest and noble sight,
From the far inland there came hurrying on,
A mighty wind, in which the many vessels
Setting toward the sea (and many that desired
To voyage quite the other way) bent their smooth masts
On toward invisible shores,
As trees that lean their trunks in orchards, show
Whence heaven has oftenest blown since they were set,
As if 'twas ever their fixed, fruitful course;
And the great woodland sitting calm, upon
The bank beyond, laughed in the mighty wind.
Umena.
Swift as those happy ships hastened to sea,
Bear we to him and his deserted house
Succor, and whatsoever else we may;
For in this hour, dark'ning his narrow sky,
Where sit they by the lone hearth lamenting,
God sends us more than when the unquestioned sun
Is out. I follow the prisoner to his cell.
26
And I to the house where pine, unfathered
And unhusbanded, his children and his wife.
Umena.
Speed thee, good Dorcas, for thy beaming face,
Kindled anew, from the sad cloud shall shine
Upon their low estate, a happiness
Next to the birth of day and the sweet light
That brings it!
[Exeunt, severally, Umena, Dorcas.
SCENE V.
—Without the Court. Calmstorm, to him enter Waning.Wan.
Darkledge and Slinely in a by-street
I just now passed. There's darkness about them,
And a silent talk like that of spectres:
You should have taken Slinely by the hand,
In the full face of all the lookers-on,
And asked him of his child's health and his wife's,
With something of a yielding or a truckling,
As the weak world would call it, in your look.
Calm.
Good men are made and bad are bettered, doubtless,
My good friend Waning, by confounding them,
As in a hat or jury-wheel. O, that the world
Would for a day let go the crank by which
It jumbles clean and foul in one!
Wan.
He bit his lips, and looked from 'neath his lids
Upon you—I wished you could have picked a time,
At least, with a warm hand to greet him, though
'T had been in the undistinguishable throng,
Or in the passage from the court, even
The secret angle of the open door.
Calm.
What goblin's this that I must worship
Openly, or court in stealthy favor?
Wan.
The darkest Spirit of the city, Calmstorm!
Who keeps a secret book wherein is writ
27
Each man's peculiar bias from the right,
Who darkly with his neighbor's wife has erred,
And who has clutched, with fingers lawless,
The vaulted gold; what judge, libidinous,
What priest, who hugs him in his catlike robe,
Holding his pitch above the unsheltered world;—
He cuts the thread and tumbles on the ground,
At his convenient time, fluttered and broken,
Soiled and pitiful. He is the city's fiend,
And keeps the evil count of all our deeds,
Avenging God in gloomy merriment.
Whiter than angels in his look: at heart
Blacker than devils in the sulphurous fire.
Calm.
By what charter plays he
These pranks on the round earth, so far beyond
His pale? And who is he?
Wan.
'Tis Slinely, the journalist: the master
Of the Organ that every morning breathes
Ruin or Joy on whom it pleases.
Calm.
Accursed be he who'd yield a single jot
Of all he holds at such a bidding! Must I,
Or smile, or look, or shake a greeting hand,
Or bear myself erect or bowed, this road
Pursue or that to public councils, sit
At my worship, or kneel at such suggestion?
Heaven's patent to free man runs not so writ,
Nor is it sent, blackening and dark, to these.
And yet there is a power, next Heaven's omnipotence,
That governs, guides, and soothes the vexed community
Whose eye unsleeping at the dead of night,
Looks on the secret heart of life, and counts
Its pulses to the morning sun: that all the world
28
And brethren shake hands a thousand miles apart,
In far lands or seas, communing
By magic of the true journal's speedy breath!
Wan.
Look yonder, Calmstorm!
Arm-in-arm, you see Darkledge, the judge,
And the dark writer, passing. They look at you
Together, and pass on.
Calm.
[A newspaper in his hand.]
Death-like thou smilest, dost thou, winding-sheet!
Thou hast thy tricks of use, in circles various,
In high and low, in near and far, as the globe's belt.
I hold thee as a shield before my breast,
I shake thee as a banner in the air,
I spread thee on the ground, a battle's map;
Column on column, fold on fold, I see thou curl'st
About the membered life, fanged in its heart,
Or nursing underneath thy snow-white wings
In downy calm, the gentle brood of truth.—
How round about this place a dreadful stillness
Reigns, where late it roared with harshest sounds
Of trampling and of voices!
Wan.
Marked you
With what a cry the outside sitters
Of the court welcomed the rendering
Of the adverse order to the clerk? and how
The old judge smiled, and how they clapped again!
Calm.
Upon my spirit this silence falls,
Thickly as if another world were placed
Atop of this. Let us fly hence!
[Exeunt.
29
3. PART III.
SCENE I.
—A Tavern. Darkledge, Slinely, at a table. around them 1st Rabble, 2d Rabble, &c.Dark.
I thought the fellow would have tweaked the nose
Of the court, with his familiar fingers.
1st Rab.
There's been, I'm sure, no bullying done, Judge,
In your court, equal to this, since Buckram,
In his soiled coat, called you ‘liar’ where you sat.
Dark.
Buckram!—ah, yes, and where is Buckram now?
1st Rab.
In his grave, I think, of a jail fever
Caught in a wet cell, whither contempt of court
Brought him to lie by the heels.
Sline.
A brazen front beyond example, sir—
In the court where you preside!—I know
This Calmstorm where he thinks I know him not.
On a late summer evening, a trusty friend of mine,
Who walks the world at times, spying out what he can,
Passed a raised window, and from within came forth
A voice railing upon the general press,
The Organ by name. Could he have known it,
The death-rattle fanged his throat, e'en as he spake;
And what to-day annexed, has built his bier.
Dark.
[To the Rabble.]
There hangs, my friends,
On yonder wall at the back of the room,
A painting on which the court would take your mind—
E'en here, you see its excellent; a buffalo
Of burly build, worried by wolves—look at it
Closely, point by point, and, half an hour from this,
Give us the advantage of your shrewd opinion.
[1st, 2d Rabble, &c., scramble away to the picture.
[To Slinely.]
Draw this way. This Calmstorm goes about, I'm told,
30
Whether he aims at me or others, I know not.
General or special, he seeks to overset
The ordered tribunals, now standing:
To let them lie in the dust or build anew,
Who knows? I'm out for one, and this life-tenure
May be bought for an hour's purchase.
Sline.
He in his secret soul works 'neath your feet,
And cuts the props of your particular bench,
And this I know.
Dark.
How, how—tell me—how know you that?
Sline.
No matter; I know it.
Dark.
And how to reach him?
He owes nothing, has out no bond nor lease,
Nor obligation of man to man,
Of any name; self-poised lives much apart,
Whence can he not be drawn into a net of law;
No violence could touch him, worst of all,
His name's as white as the babe's sprinkled face.
Sline.
You see this sheet?
[Showing a paper.
Dark.
As white as newest snow.
Sline.
And now?
[Casts ink upon it.
Dark.
Black-spotted as the devil himself.
Sline.
E'en so plague-marked shall be the name of Calmstorm,
When a few days are past. To-night he sleeps in peace,
To-morrow a hundred tongues shall, through the city,
Whisper dreadful things: imagine them!
Men on the corners stopping, talk in wonder,
That yet the city holds him, and by degrees,
Slander shall climb or fly each round
Of the ladder, to the highest, and there flap its wings
In darkness, over his forever-perished name.
31
Love him as we may, we'll neither stab him
Nor have him to be stabbed at night with knives,
Nor shot with pistols.
Sline.
The work is done, you see,
Without the waste of steel or powder. Stop, stop,
I hear a murmuring in the street, and some one names his name.
Dark.
We'll part as we go forth; yes—and after,
Should we think fit, this day's contempt of court
Shall rise to throttle him; brought to lie
A few days in prison, will break his spirit,
'Tis to be hoped, beyond all healing.
1st Rab.
[Cries out from the distance.]
Capital!
You see how the great black wolf steals round him,
And springs at his throat under the shadow
That the sun makes!
[Exeunt.
SCENE II.
—A Street. Waning.Wan.
Why, what a tumult everywhere he makes!
Rage-struck, he should not thus have matched himself
Against the wise-set customs of mankind!—
The eye-mark of the thousand vexing shafts
That bearded Use, Ulysses-like, lets slip
At him who doubts or dares antiquity!—
Is he the sole man that lives in nature,
Disfurnishing to make him up and feed his pride
The universal world?—Is there no other
Chamber but Calmstorm, where truth may dwell
And be at home? A strength majestic
As the pillared heavens, he needs, in truth—
And some something of it, too, perhaps he has—
To live in the deep flood and everlasting surge
That breaks against the single and unbannered man.
32
To have the great world change its orbed course,
And run back from the West unto the East,
All the days 't has yet to come!—Fie, fie—
'T is better, I know, to keep a close-shut cell
Where comes a single ray, than rush into the sun,
And be burned up: he must not ask his friends
To come into the blaze with him, in sport,
When he is howling; no, that will not do.
[Exit Waning.
Enter First Citizen, Second Citizen, &c.
Third Cit.
I say,
That man from man, each by himself a world,
Is so by nature set apart, that each,
E'en by his shadow, may be known at once
From every other.
First Cit.
Now who is that, that sits
Within, whose image paints itself against
The curtain of the tavern window yonder?
Third Cit.
The bowed one with the broken hat?
Lifeless, I guess.
First Cit.
He rises and moves toward the door.
Third Cit.
It is; and see, no longer he lifts his head
With his old manner, nor has a word to speak!
Clerkless, and officeless, and houseless—loosed
Of every link that makes him man with men,
See how he droops and downward shambles
On his way, as if a hand invisible
Pushed him to the end.
First Cit.
He is in truth less than his shadow's shadow—
The lingering of himself: but where is Calmstorm?
This man's is special to himself, a hap particular,
But Calmstorm I seek, for that have I seen this day
33
And shake the fell hair of all his lion strength;
A firmamented wrong, within whose blaze
This pales to nothing!
Third Cit.
You'll find him, I think,
On the great square, near by the river
On the East; for this is the hour he's used
To walk there.
Second Cit.
You'll not disturb his walk;
'Tis there he listens for whatsoe'er of wrong
The wide world has to tell.
[Exeunt, severally, First Citizen, &c.
Enter First Politician, Second Politician, &c.
First Pol.
You're on your way to market, are you?
You'll soon be stopped in that—by this perfect honest man,
That seeks to rob us of our dear-won rights;
Who would that in its old order should no longer run
The round of office, the old good-will of people
And servant, officer and citizen. A comet he
That would disturb the harmony of the world:
Would have laws made at once, and once for all,
(So pure and elemental in their principle),
Who from men's arms would take the steadying chain
Of tax, restraint and guidance, whereby
'T is made to do its work neither too fast,
Nor yet too slow.
Second Pol.
'T is said, indeed, he would have no law,
But let each, by his self-kept conscience,
His neighbor and himself adjudge.
Third Pol.
And that all houses and lodgments should be
As like as beavers' huts or rabbits' burrows.
First Pol.
Remove but once, my friends, the wheel-pins
34
And we shall all, you must perceive, tumble
In the mud together.
Second Pol.
Of course, of course,
And you would lose the trust that now you hold.
[To First Politician.
Third Pol.
And you ne'er gain the one you look for.
[To Second Politician.
First Pol.
And you no longer be the firm good friend
Of both, in farming out the public contracts.
[To Third Politician.
Third Pol.
This Calmstorm is a dangerous man,
To be put down speedily, fair means or foul,
The public good demands it: a perfect honest man's
Too great a monster for these difficult
Times in which we live.
First Pol.
Open to all men, on all sides,
He walks the streets, and sits in public halls,
Unclaimed by any, benched by himself,
And with himself communing, belongs
To neither faction; and in assemblies popular,
He stands apart, a moon-like power, to make
The baser world look coward in his light.
Second Pol.
And as in scorn he holds us nothing,
'T is just that we, in hate, hold him for all
That's rash and serviceless.
Third Pol.
A monstrous man, this no man's man,
Unnatural and strange, who has no party,
No rout of followers, and no creed to swear by!
We'll have him yet! The secret committees
Shall work like the sly otter in the dark!
[Exeunt First Politician, &c
35
SCENE III.
—A Public Square. Calmstorm.Calm.
Help, help, through all the watches of the night,
Amid the arches of the calm, blue day,
In every name, in every tongue, I hear
A cry for help. What answers? and whence is't?
An answer or a mocking, who can say?—
Wide over every land I see—the new earth's sons—
Black engines swing their terrible arms
On every side, as if to beat the rounded globe
Into another shape than that it took from God!—
If these will do men's work, will rush with nostrils fiery,
Upon the sinew-cracking toil, seize and devour
All obstacle from the way, let men be free
And holiday making, in presence of their dark
And gloomy slaves, ever be lords unlabored and erect.
And yet to toil is not to die outright.
In its right aims, and rightly sought, I know,
And rightly served, 't is sacred as the sainted hand,
But work gone to by needy men, in herds, at noon,
Panniered with dull cold meals, homeward at night
To plod with weary steps, dim eyes, lost hours,
Disjointed faculties, doubles a curse
That nature meant!—
Down in the pent and gloomy mine to grope,
To stifle, 'neath the gabled and the sooty roof,
The childhood white and pure, a moment lit,
In the thick reek of cells and prisoned airs,
Cheaply to waste the great, red, mournful heart,
To be a screw, a rack, a hoisting-way,
A camel and a dog, a mere utensil
And a clod, insensible to what it works in,
To what end, unknowing of the beauty lapped
Deep down in every art, in every toil,
36
Arms withered in youth, and eyeballs seared
Darker than age, in the huge furnace-blaze:
Oh, better, curbless rush, in swift black speed,—
These horses dreadful of the land and sea,
Over the earth, and be alone, in see,
The children of her hollow-hearted breast,
Masters and ministers, unmenial in their acts.—
I would decree six hours of honest toil
From every faithful citizen—the rest
In sleep, in thought, in airy garden walks,
In the calm pleasures of an unploughed heart,
Where every best thing had its chance to grow;
And over the face of life a spirit should fly,
Whose wings would shake down blessings manifold—
And then—
Enter a Citizen.
Your cheek is pale with news your tongue dares not
Report. Speak! speak!
Cit.
The air still shakes and lives
In the echo of the deed! A stone's throw only hence—
In the thick of the city, 'neath this quick-eyed
Hour of noon, a citizen has struck a citizen
Unto the heart, upon the public way,
And there he gasps in the sun, even now,
A gentle woman only bending over him.
I must speed on to bring the officer.
[Exit Citizen.
Calm.
God save us now! for all affrighted beats
The general heart, by many pulses swifter;
And men, each by himself, steal home to-night,
Earlier by an hour: night by its own darkness
Black, and day with shadows of the brain.
37
And golden order is confounded.
All men fear all, and who is free, who bond
To murderous thoughts, the hour nor season knows:
The link that holds the balanced earth
To heaven, breaks in the sun, and wide away
The orbless world rides to its doom.
Enter another Citizen, passing.
Cit.
A murder, a dreadful, dreadful murder, sir!
[Exit Citizen.
Calm.
O, thou that strikest at a human life,
Think how the spot is blasted, how the street
Where gushed the bloody stream, is dimmed forever
With a ruddy cloud, rising and falling
'Twixt the earth and sun! How every foot is tainted,
And shakes with fear, that stood within
The mortal round! How from the dagger's point,
There spring to life the shapes of hate and fear,
In bosoms numberless, till the glad round earth
Shudders to think of thee, shudders in secret,
And gives back thy bloody act,
Populous to overwhelm thee in thy shame!
Enter in front Umena, Dorcas, meeting.
Umena.
Peace with you, Dorcas! For dark and sad a sight
This day has seen: is there no blood upon
My face, no wildness in mine eye, as one
Who has o'erbent a gasping man?
Dorcas.
Too little, not too much;
Your features paler than their use cut the hushed air,
And make it, chilly, creep about you.
38
Doth denote.
Umena.
A little instant since,
I brushed the garments of a man who fell,
In a street westward, nearer to the city's heart,
Struck to the life—
Dorcas.
At noon, at this crowned hour?
Umena.
The clock, near by, spoke out at ‘twelve’
Upon the blow—there was a minute's pause
Between the stroke and the out-going life.
Believe, in tenderness and faith, believe
The sweet peace of Heaven stole down and filled it!
Dorcas.
For your sake, Umena, I will and must:
'T was in the garden at that very hour I was alone,
Tending the dewy musk-rose in her pride,
And counting, free, the crimson flecks of light
Under the yet unvanished dew, and when
Upon the ear the clanging summons struck,
There rose into the air, over the quarter
Of the west, a shape that drizzled blood
Upon the city's spires; up as it rose,
At each fresh flight it changed its baser form,
Cast swift away its earthy 'parelling,
And took a bright new robe, as for a feast;
And as it neared the blue and holy heaven,
It raised its arms in deep request, as if
Against its murderer then scudding in escape,
Along the earth below; over the wall
Afar, I saw the shadowy fugitive.
Umena.
'T was more a pleading for his own sad soul,
Sent up in haste O, let us hope he entered in!
Dorcas.
He did, he did! these eyes beheld him—
Beheld the happy light, from far beyond,
39
A glory in his half-averted face,
Wonder and bliss subdued, and lost within
The inconceivable fire!
Umena.
Awake, you saw it,
Dorcas, or in a dream?
Dorcas.
Awake as is the river yonder—
The great, blue, shining, and triumphant stream,
Whose ever-present eye, watches the city
In its every street, and house, and spire,
In the sun's glimpses and the moon's,
Forever looking in!
Umena.
If on the instant thus, the murdered spirit
May ascend, who knows but he may plead
For him that sent it—who, in the dark of earth,
Lingers and frets upon his hapless act.
Dorcas.
Black must his shadow lie upon the earth,
While flies the other, shining, up to Heaven.
Umena.
O, let us seek Calmstorm; if he has known
Of this, it will new-rack his much-vexed soul,
And make him comfortless as nights of storm.
Enter First Citizen.
First Cit.
Heaven lets go its hold upon this dull,
Low-swinging sphere, and all 's at odds with God!
Calm.
[Advances.]
Why stand you, with your mouth agape,
As with a sense of pain? your whole aspect
Blighted, in memory of some dreadful thing.
First Cit.
Bring succor if you can, and speak for peace!
Calm.
Why halt you in this terrible revolt of silence,
'Gainst that which should be said if you would live?
First Cit.
There is an island near the city, sir,—
You know it, as do all who by its white walls sail,—
40
Or chattering talk, or gaping vacancy,
Wallow, and rougher grow than shaggy dogs,
Or the rough north wind, that in at the door
Of their sad pinfold, looks oftenest
Of all the winds, their rugged visitor:
Here lie the wanderers of mankind, the laggards
Who have fallen in the great march of men,
In kennels, lanes, or on the blustery square,
Trampled, forgot, and overborne by all.
You shiver as you stand within
The circle of their soulless eyes, and feel
That God, their Maker, has withdrawn himself,
And left them imageless of Him.
Calm.
Oh, God—that first forsook their tyrants,
Whosoe'er they be, thou smitest this heart
Beyond its power to bear. Lead me
To the pillar at the wall.
[They lead him asid
Umena.
O, blessed Christ!
It rather must be borne or ere it can be
Bettered.
[Aside.
Calm.
[Awakening.]
Almighty Master! strike through these hearts
That think thy realm is masterless, a fear
That with their blood shall live, and through
Each organ and each power creep, colder than death!
At night upon their eyelids move, in throngs
Of boding shapes, and let the day be night,
Blacker by reason of its angry light!
Umena.
How far is it, know you, to this island, sir?
First Cit.
To the ferry and the river that bears
You to it, three miles from where we stand.
[Exeunt, Umena, Dorcas.
41
At whose door is it that sits,
This cross-legged and accursed sin?
First Cit.
The dull, deaf, stone-blind magistracy
Of this streeted city, is the spirit
That walks, in darkness, 'gainst the soul's peace
Of these poor men.
Calm.
Another mighty wheel of many, that crush
What they should lift from out the miry way.
I'll think of this—I'll think of this—watch thou
And learn all that thou canst that seals it.
First Cit.
A hundred souls wait, darkly, till your thought
Has taken shape—swiftness be in your brain!
[Exit First Citizen.
Calm.
Is this the globe I stand on? This mankind?
Or is 't a red dream of devils furious?
I recollect, when first I grew to be a man,
'T was said, an angel o'er the city passed
For many nights, and trumpets blowing, gave
City and citied to a stony doom—
Those wailing trumpets still I hear, and still
In dread lie down each night, and wake at morn,
To wonder at the living face of things,
Unshattered through the trials of the dark!
[Exit.
4. PART IV.
SCENE I.
—A Council Chamber. Magistrates of the City assembled. In the background, Calmstorm.Chief Mag.
The House of Idiots on the island—
What order on that, gentlemen?
42
The ordinance regulating the venders of wine and tavern licenses comes first, I think.
Another Mag.
I have in my hand the keeper's list, which shows they had twenty-five pounds of bread last week, and I am told, on good authority, that an end window of the prison hangs over their house, through which the convicts cast frequent crumbs and morsels of food.
A Mag.
That house should be suppressed—it's a shameful waste of the public money—if they were let alone, the race would die out in a short time, and the whole thing be ended.
Calmstorm comes forward.
Calm.
Shame on you all, ye talking Nothings!—
I 'd say, were 't not a deep, throat-clogging lie,
I am a suppliant here for certain poor,
Outcast, down-trodden, and most pitiful men:
I am a quarreler with your narrowness,
Upbraider of your laws—
Chief Mag.
Another time
We'll hear you, sir.
Calm.
Another time, another time!—
The court of politic-pated fools: the hour
That on its instant hinges turns, swings some
Into the everlasting gulf remediless,
And others lets, for a brief day, upon
The light of life: God on his single finger
Of the instant time, poises the universe,
And all its goings-on.
Chief Mag.
You come unlike all other suitors here,
Brandishing an open blade before our eyes.
Calm.
The law prohibits not that I should bear
A sword, and wave it when and where I will:
'T is good that you should see its edge at times—
Should know there is a quick divorcer
43
Upon your faces flat—
Ye sordid scorners of the spirit's right!—
And when the pigmiest thinker seeks your ear,
Beg him to speak forever, and be still!
A blight upon your babble at the full!—
Though men with the black plagues should howl,
And all community should fall at odds,
The endless battle still goes on, and on.
Be seasoned to your shame, or swift or slow,
The food you snatch from hunger's icy teeth,
That the dull malady may clinch you,
Where you sit, or the keen anguish lead you
Through the gaping streets,
A show for boys to mock, and men to scorn!
A Mag.
He 's mad.
Several Mags.
Unquestionably mad.
Another Mag.
It were charity to have him cared for: a sad spectacle to see a man, of his fair look, brought to this pass: we'll place him in custody of an officer.
A Mag.
The people should not have their minds distracted and their persons endangered by such a man at large.
Calm.
You sit as if the moon were in your upturned eyes!
A hundred souls, know you, a hundred souls,
Now make a hundred trumpets of the air,
That Heaven may hear them through the watchful day,
In the slow creeping night.—
In storm he sometimes answers, oftener
In silence working at the heart and core;
When one day falls the evil tree, with all its fruit,
Though the sun shine, and by it flows
The smiling stream.
Ch. Mag.
You must not menace us!
44
Menace! Who threatens dogs before he strikes?
Would that He above vouchsafed, as once he did,
To write upon the whited wall the order of his wrath!
A few swift strokes should slid the idle thread,
And let you drop to chambers too serene,
Where talkers lie alone; flatterers apart
Must mole the ground to reach them;
And empty hands, once gesture-mad,
May play in the dust!
The storm is at your back and blows you thither,
Swifter than rivers over cataracts.
[Exit Calmstorm.
The Mags.
Mad, mad beyond all cure!
[Scene closes.
SCENE II.
—Umena and Dorcas. A Country Road, beyond the City.Dorcas.
Behold in yonder nibbled field, Umena,
A bright young foal as happy as the day,
That when he moves seems to possess the earth,
And, when he stops, to own the air he stands in
In beauty's right. E'en so, so fair and so unbacked
The foal was, which our gracious Saviour rode,
In the old time, over the branching palms
And followed by the people jubilant.
Umena.
O, mightier, Dorcas, in his beauty, far,
Than that other, the pale white horse of Death,
That rides against Him.
Dorcas.
How, when he pricks his ears,
They twinkle in the air, and shake the light off
That it drops like dew upon the ground!
Umena.
Look, Dorcas! toward the East,
[Points to Buildings before them.
A dark gray Sorrow rises—the House
45
That 'gainst the glad pulses of the Brain
In hushy darkness moves.
Dorcas.
And yet,
The swallows in the air are free to rove.
In a pure instinct, clear of mortal taint!—
They wind about the Heaven as if it were their own.
Umena.
For Heaven, Dorcas, is careful of their ways.
And, still beyond, where skim their wings e'en now,
The white walls rise that are the free man's grave
Yet while he lives!
[A prison in the distance.
Dorcas.
Keep from those windows far,
All fair, free Things of Nature, lest the wild eyes
That glitter through their bars make you to droop,
E'en as you fly.
Umena.
Farther, yet farther on—
Behold, a dull, obscure, low, dusky shed,
[An asylum.
In the cold shadow of the prison-walls,
Slumbers and cowers in beast-like fear.—
Have you the basket, Dorcas, safely borne?
Dorcas.
Yes, yes—food for the body here I bear,
[Shows the basket.
To raise it from its cold decline; and here's the viol
You bade me bring, to speak unto the ear,
And raise the spirit yet another step
Up toward its bright estate.
Umena.
There is another thing,
Sweeter to taste than is the nectared fruit,
And music more to the weary spirit's ear,
To whisper softly to the low-down soul,
And nourish it sweetly back to what it was
Six thousand happy years ago!
Dorcas.
The Book, the Book I bear,
46
Upon the slimy ooze and troublous state,
Where soon on yonder shore we mean to tread—
But lo,—we've wandered past the gate,
And must go back to find the way.
[Exeunt.
Umena.
[Returning and appearing before the gate.]
I pray
That Calmstorm be not hurt at heart
When he shall learn this act of ours!—He thinks
These wrongs must righted be, not each by each,
But with a general scope, storm-like falling
On the massed vileness, not like the light,
Gently and slow and single-rayed.
Dorcas.
The beauty of this world is bred
In single growths, of flower and leaf and tree:
Each sapling in the woodland knows his right
To his own color, and leans in the air
To the separate murmur of his own fond leaves.
Umena.
Yes, one by one, the children of the dark
Are led into the day.
[Umena, Dorcas, enter at the gate.
SCENE III.
—A Chamber. Darkledge and Slinely.Slinely.
It all works well; swiftly and excellently,
The cloud grows in the air and thickens
As it nears him; be silent and be cautious.
Dark.
There is a summons drawn to be let slip
Against him for the old court-contempt,
When comes the moment fullest of distress
And swift to o'erwhelm him.
Sline.
Be silent and be cautious, Darkledge—
There is no need we should be known in this;
Nature and Providence and excellent men
Work out our pure designs more surely
In a happy secresy, than could our hands,
47
The general mind by what the Organ oft
Hath spoken, is colored to a touch
For any figure we would draw therein.
Dark.
The service of the summons shall be left
That it may seem the last and crowning act
Of the indignant people, eager, most
In vindication of Justice and the Law:
And shall be laid upon his evil head
Most lightning-like, when know we well
Your cunning under-plot has cut the roots beneath.
Sline.
The whirlwind, Darkledge, that towards him sweeps,
Has lightning in its breast, and stony hail
And blinding darkness, deep beyond the elements.
Dark.
There shall be no blow struck?
Sline.
None other than the irresistible stroke
Wherewith the people's breath reverberates
In the doomed ear! No finger on him laid,—
Nor shall a single hair be touched by aught
Save by the awed and eager power within
The man, that in an hour may whiten it.
Dark.
Sweet Judgeship, and high seat of power!
Oh, who could lose, without a pang,
The waiving courtesy of the men of worth,
The uplooking faces of the multitude,
The hushed and terrible awe of prisoners
At the charge!
Sline.
We meet again in half an hour!
[Exeunt severally.
SCENE IV.
—A street. First Citizen. Second Citizen, &c.Second Cit.
The elements are all astir: whate'er
Of base, of mean design or falsest hope
48
From every point the desperate shouters cry,
And make it seem that Heaven ordains his death.
First Cit.
Bravely we should make up our force of men,
And in a body, show that we uphold
His hands, e'en at the direst edge of peril.
Third Cit.
Calmstorm withdraws himself, nor will be seen
To-day, because the city has declared
'Gainst a poor suitor in the wealth-struck courts.
First Cit.
Fear not, his countenance will clear as the great day goes on.
This little cross cannot defeat his soul—
As though a cloud through the wide heavens should chase
The sun and seek to quench it!—
What though the eagle on the earth may sit
Awhile, and see the clouds, nor see the sun,
The folded thunder of his wings he yet
Shall free, and quell despairing with his upward look!
Sec. Cit.
Gather the people,
If we can, in the Great Square, an hour from this.
First Cit.
We, in the flush of youth, the spirit's flush,
Should love him, cheer him, nourish and sustain;
For beautiful and bright he seems to us,
The earnest helper of his brother man,
As though the day had clothed him with his sun,
The night had crowned him with her peaceful stars!
[Exeunt severally.
SCENE V.
—A street. Calmstorm, Waning.Wan.
Can you look up, from where we stand, and by
The nearest church-clock, the great brown one, tell me
What time of day it is?
Calm.
I am not time-noter to the city,
49
We both behold, I think, I think I may—
Upon the one.
Wan.
Upon the one! Exactly:
I was afraid your senses with your judgment
Might have gone, if what I heard was true.
Calm.
You prologue nothing with a grievous face.
Whate'er your ear has heard, your tongue,
Free as the clock to strike, might say without a fear.
Wan.
To speak as you would have me, plainly,
The city teems in every corner of its breadth
With rumors of a dark and dreadful front:
That you esteem the world, as now it goes,
Cheaper than the clipt hair in barbers' shops,
Have spoken evil of the sacred Press,
Are a blasphemer in your common speech,
Calling, in Courts of Justice, upon Heaven
Wantonly, and worst and last of all,
That you denounce the honest magistracy.
Calm.
Having a friendly faith in what I aimed at,
You laughed away those whisperings of the town?
Wan.
I did not, Calmstorm; I thought it rather
Became me to wear a sad and serious look,
'Till you had given me rightful leave to laugh,
By purging from your name such hideous stains.
Calm.
You did?
Wan.
I did.
Calm.
Were there a special God, who by himself,
Sate in His sole Heaven, and kept a count
Through all the endless ages, of broken troths
In man or woman, to Him I'd lift mine eyes
And ask, how He had entered there the name
You bore this morning!
50
Pardon me, Calmstorm, 'till I have told you,
For your own use and special good alone,
A score of writs or near that number,
Issue to-morrow in the State's name,
Or that of many injured people,
Who rouse, 'tis said, at mention of your practices.
Calm.
Are any in the name of injured Waning?
Wan.
You know, you know there could be none, for though
I think you rash, indeed, you have meant well,
And mostly thought well,—so have your accusers.
Calm.
Is it then so?
These men do rise against me, one and all?
Wan.
Desperately.
Calm.
And this must pass unquestioned,
And they go challengeless?
Wan.
I think it must.
Calm.
It shall not pass! Shall the stale politician,
Or pampered magistrate, and the loose
Wielder of a wicked pen, so keep at bay
The keen and gnashing hunger of the world?
Although it rive the very ear of peace,
And crack the charter of the insolent day,
I'll make appeal.
[He moves toward an elevated ground.
Waning attempting to hold him back.]
Upon your perilled life,
Waning, you stay me now!
[Pushes him away.
(Aloud, and toward the distant streets.)
Ye men that bear
The iron load of unavailing toil,
Ye women housed in the obscure despair,
Ye children reared with eyes that drink the light
But to grow dim before the noon has come!
51
Do ye not feel the mountain weight of life
As I do now? When strain the links of life
With the hard pang of much—how much—desired
And little got, look ye not upward then
Into the empty heaven, as with the hope
That it might rain relief? and yet anew,
And day by day, the ever-blinding dust
To which hard labor grinds the fair green earth,
Whirls up aloft. Rain, Rain, the blessed Rain,
With peace, content, and the old Eden-life—
Oh let it fall!
Wan.
You cry aloud in vain.
They're deaf or far away.
Calm.
The earth is dry, and all its fountains dry—
Blest be the shower that falls, and let it fall
At once!
[As certain stragglers give promise of approach, Waning glides away.
Who would have dreamed the trial-hour
Would see him wear this ugly mask of doubt,
And weigh his words in scruples? And yet,
I cannot forget, there was a shadow
Creeping ever before and round about his acts
Foreboding this: He always spoke his farewells
Doubtingly, and shuddered at good-bye
As if he grinned at death. This fear
Lay deeper in his nature than I thought,
And all his powers are fellows of the same
Height and aspect. The Organ-master,
In his blind toil of venomous and underground report,
Is working, it seems, and Darkledge, the Judge,
I cannot doubt, has put the wasting grindstones
52
The white sail bears its way, to sink when Heaven
Withholds its breezes!
[Exit Calmstorm.
SCENE VI.
A street. First Politician. Second Politician, &c.Second Pol.
Have you assembled the committees,
And shown them, clearly, how this honest man
Opposes all their kind, all close and secret councils,
Would have all business done under the sky,
And free to all?
Third Pol.
They know it and they hate
Him for it.
First Pol.
In the great Hall, I, yesterday
Denounced him, a rioter, disorderer
Of affairs, who had some hidden views
To serve, which he concealed, and they'd do well
To learn and nip in the bud.
Sec. Pol.
They'll do it?
First Pol.
They'll pass his house, as if by accident,
Now, in an hour, and greet him with their sense
Of his deserts, the voice of the opinion
Which sways the world—the Public Voice.
Third Pol.
In all the news-haunts of the town, 'tis known
How dangerous a man he is.
First Pol.
Fail we to put him down,
The noisome stuff he broaches will put us down,
And it might be a long June day before
We rose again. Be full and prompt at gathering.
[Exeunt.
SCENE VII.
A street. First Rabble. Second Rabble, &c.First Rab.
It is appointed that, an hour from this,
We gather and move toward Calmstorm.
53
Whoever sings in the nose or groans a deeper bass,
Or shrieks most hideously: But not a blow!
Third Rab.
Oh, not a blow! That's the old fashion,
But the new one cuts deeper than the knife—
Is that right?
First Rab.
The doctrine that we live by.
You might as well consider too he bears a sword,
And would not be perhaps o'er-kind to his assailer!
But some of you that know the business,
Rush back and forth through distant streets,
And raise the terrible cry of fire,
And let the bells ring in the markets
Dreadfully. This will perplex and confound
Him at the dark hour as if the end of time
Was near, and the Great Burning lit.
Third Rab.
Hurrah, hurrah for that! That draws no blood.
[Exeunt, shouting.
SCENE VIII.
—A street. First Beggar. Second Beggar, &c.First Beg.
What, that man
That wants to shut the poor-house—
Second Beg.
And who says
We shall not run the streets; 'gad we'll go
If it's half a mile! I'll clatter my basket
Before his door, worse than a dozen coopers.
Third Beg.
Yes, lads, he's the man who says he wants to serve us—
He serve us!—a starveling from a back street
Himself. If he had been a grave, round,
Red-cheeked citizen who offered alms
It would be well! But he, a sick white man,
Whose door's unsilvered with his name,
54
He's no better than we!
Sec. Beg.
We'll clatter him deaf,
With every basket in the town.
Enter, another Beggar.
Fourth Beg.
News, Tom, news—Lifeless is dead!
I heard as I came out at break of day,
A poor dead man was floating in the river:
And true enough when I got there, who should
I see, with his old gaunt look sharpened a little,
In his old dress, and dull, slow, fishy eyes—
But Lifeless.
Third Beg.
Thrown himself in?
Fourth Beg.
Partly he might—
A banker's coach backed for the rich man's ease—
From restiveness of his o'erpampered horses,
Pushed him from the wharf's end, as though
By merest chance—I guess he meant they should,
And this way saved the hanging of himself.
Sec. Beg.
No doubt now if the truth was known my Jack,
This Calmstorm had a hand in it. Let's off, boys.
[Exeunt, hastily.
SCENE IX.
—At the entrance to a House. Calmstorm to him Enter Waning.Wan.
Calmstorm, bestir you!—Through the near streets
The howling beggars rush in eager troops:
They cry you've striven to crush them basely;
And down another way the people pour,
Nor will I forget, the officers of the Law
Come on, wielding their staves in terrible
Array against you.
Calm.
Alas, he seems at this quick instant
55
[Aside.
Wan.
They will not, be sure, window-shatter your house
Nor on your person wreak their pent-up rage:
With hisses, howls, and every hideous cry,
With looks of scorn and finger-pointing hate,
Motions and looks remembered long after
The speedy blow, they'll make themselves known to you.
I hope that all will yet go well, but we,
Radical apart in soul, must part e'en here.
Calm.
We parted many years ago when first
You had a doubt.
Wan.
Should Darkness, Calmstorm, cover up your fame—
I was your well-wisher to the end.
[Exit Waning.
Enter Umena.
Umena.
Why sped Waning away so swiftly?
Calm.
He speeds unto his ends, and I to mine.
Umena.
I've marked, of late, when Waning talked with you
At the same minute his eye looked at you
And away: and his feet he shuffled
As one who forges fables. His friendship is, I fear,
Declining.
Calm.
It is declined to dust and nothingness.
Umena.
And is it for this you walk so much apart,
And pause perpetually, gazing at the great Earth
As if to pierce a Secret that she hides forever?
Calm.
The world, is better and worse, Umena,
Than that I deemed when first I laid my hand
Upon it, to soothe it, as I hoped,
Into a better harmony.—There is
A jar incurable through all its chords.
Umena.
O say not that its woe's not med'cinable!
For, up and down the wide world's sounding way,
The Saviour walks: the loaves and fishes still distributes
56
Within the house and on the open way.
Calm.
O, will the Power that governs us
And shapes the world, let honest Fortune blow
And waken music only! Through orders limitless
Let faculty, in each peculiar man,
Find its free range, unpewed in priestly fears,
And shackleless of slavish ordinance!
Umena.
A sadness creeps into your voice, unlike
Yourself: What evil is it shadows your brow,
And shakes your step?
Calm.
Nothing, my dear and gentle wife.
If the dark hour draws near, thief-like it comes;
I feel it not, and sleep as yet with the bright
Morning shining over me, a few hours onward.
Umena.
There is a fear that lives within his hope,
Too great for it to nourish and endure.
[Aside. Exit Umena.
Calmstorm.
The world I now have walked, for two
And thirty summers, have seen the good man
Often hang his head, and the raised villain's brow
Affront the light unblenched.
The two great wheels of time and chance roll on,
Still on their axle rides the bulky world,
And overbears justice, and truth, and manly force,
And lowly merit, downcast pure desert.
There was a Power, there is a Power,
Unto whose heart these children should be
All as one: whose mantle should enfold
The beggared crutch, and be a garment
To the gilded throat, a Power above despair,
Aloof from petty wrong, and capable
As the wide earth to do its wish.
57
As still they would, the onward masses move
Beneath the bannered fate that conquers with a look
And quells before it strikes. Why stand ye still
When through the air there springs a cry
For help?
Lift up, lift up the banner Thou!—
The new, the fair—land of too many hopes,
Too many fears!—Oh, I could weep e'en now,
At thought of what thou art, what thou may'st be:—
That I go hence shall not dethrone thee, mother!
Be fairer thou that I am gone, and I
Lie down to rest gently as any child
Pillowed in softest sleep by summer play.
The People, the howling Beggars, and the Law
Sweep towards me—the invincible hour is come—
It need not that they bear their frightful staves,
Or bring their scornful looks or tongues of hate:
The sky, the all-surrounding air, both far and near,
Is thronged beyond the presence of all hate,
With faces that for many, many days,
Loathing and fierce, have smitten me, where'er
I walked. The hour, the hour is come.
[Exit.
5. PART V.
SCENE I.
—A street. Second and Third Citizens meeting.Sec. Cit.
Whither haste you with a foot so gloomy,
Swift and silent?
Third Cit.
There's but one place—the Square.
Sec. Cit.
But one. I too am thither bent. Know you
58
Third Cit.
More than I would, and more than you would hear.
A man who dwells next-neighboring him, reports
That all last night, most at the dead of night,
And at the hour when slumber turns upon
The ridgy dark to catch a glimpse of day
As it comes on toward the dreaming lid,
One walked in Calmstorm's chamber up and down,
Who seemed—for so a rushing sound, and then
A silence, would make known—to struggle
With th' invisible air, and groanings from him came
That shook the house: 'Twas a dark, dreary night,
And the black Heavens (he said) pressed sullen and close,
Against his dwelling windows.
Sec. Cit.
The day,
I fear, will, brief or long, outlive the man:
I saw afar how this dark hand would at the end
Grasp up the heaven. 'Tis feared his mind is touched.
Third Cit.
Could pity now begin, and weep forever
From this hour till time is fallen to ashes
And a cinder's gloom, her tears would be
A second's dew to what this sadness asks,
Of fountains, rivers, seas, not all insensible.
Sec. Cit.
I dread to go.
Third Cit.
And I, yet more, to stay:
And yet the wheel must roll through all its round
Until the Great Disposer stop it. Let's hasten.
[Exeunt.
SCENE II.
—A Public Square. Calmstorm.Calmstorm.
O why are all the forces of the world in arms
Against a single heart? I hear them not, I see them not,
59
The engines that the world has built to break its peace
And crush its blessers!—
Enter Umena, Dorcas.
Umena.
Bear up, dear Calmstorm, and remember
Deep-centered in the Universe's heart,
The Power that looks on these our trial-days,
And is at peace if we endure them well:
For Suffering is fellow with the mighty God,
And walked with him, and slept and rose with him
Through all his way in old Judea.
Calm.
I hear two Voices, one on either hand—
[Cheers and shouts
Listen again! The one resounds with rage,
Wilder than is the bison's angry mane,
And harsher than the crying jaguar's throat—
Ominous of shattered walls, fires in the air,
And tempests in the streets of cities.
It is the great Rabble's cry—Why, oh why
Will ye rend the fair breast of the realm,
And scatter on the ground the branches
Of its hope? Listen, again, Umena.
Not smoother is the down upon the dove,
More musical the pause of dying winds,
And orderly as is the white condor's flock
When down it flies from Alleghany
Unto the rivered vale. This is the People's:
Of this is born in calmness, strength and truth,
The popular edict, born in the Law,
And for the Law and through the Law, unquenchable
As are th' Eternal courses of the Sun!—
It happens, I know, at times, that this great voice
Is dumb. This latter, now that I hearken,
60
And cheer me.
The Double Cry sweeps this way swiftly,
And is confounded, each with each;
Alas, my ear distinguishes them not—
A voiceless tumult and no more.
[Walks apart.
Dorcas.
O, be not thou downcast, Umena.
Umena.
I am sorrowful, Dorcas, that he is sad,
Doubting the hope and future of his race,
His brethren, and his kin of human kind—
Would that some angel, winged and blest of God,
And better-souled than they that stand aloof,
Might 'mid the waters of his grief descend,
And bring him healing!
Dorcas.
I have a fear as well as you—
There was a wren, a small, brown, quiet wren,
That came this morning, at the early light,
And on the threshold of his window sate—
Umena.
Spare him!—he must not go so soon from me!
Dear Heaven! swing all your crystal windows wide,
And pour down Truth! least Earth should yawn
Upon his wandering steps, and snatch him in the dark
From all he loves and all he loves to look on.
Spare me!—I cannot look on this and live.
[Exit Umena, followed by Dorcas.
Enter First Politician.
Calm.
You seek me, and would speak with me?
First Pol.
I am a suitor that you will sign a bond
In my behalf, as one who seeks to serve,
Humbly, in a small trust, the general weal.
[Presents a paper.
Calm.
You've fallen in your search on the worst day of days:
I have no power to serve the humblest man,
61
Whatever, in faith and zeal, men do or may,
To lift the weight of penury or woe
From other men, is passed clean from my reach.—
You see that little cloud that dwindles in the east!—
Alas, 'tis gone before you lift your eyes—
That vapor vanishable and vanished now,
Has greater power to serve you and to harm you,
When after many days or many weeks
Or many months, slowly it reappears,
In a returning rain, or summer's gust,
Or in the silent dew of night, than I.
First Pol.
You're touched, I fear, with some old malady,
That wears upon you: the hollowness
Of your look, an hour gone by, has dug.
Calm.
You seem to be the spirit of my thought!—
Know you the inward and the backward
Of my days?
First Pol.
This much I know, too much, perhaps—
You've tried or try Fortune's each edge:
You have outlived the fierce and furious West—
The East—what think you of its silent way?
Calm.
I know them both.
First Pol.
The word or blow, the eye or hand, choose either,
And you get buffets that reach the heart of life.
Calm.
I am a man of glass, and all men spy
My swiftly-running sands.
[Aside.
First Pol.
Spirit or body, which be killed and who shall kill?—
Oh, sad and woful sons of men, that this must be!
Calm.
The Avenger crouching on the Earth behind,
And the Dark Angel beckoning me before!
62
Believe me sir, and I well know what I would speak—
There is no hope of the world—
Where'er I go, I hear such dreadful tales
Of tumults and of wars, such faith-breach deep,
Such heart-burns, and such angers, and such frays
In the universal and the single world,
Such sad confounding of the high and low—
Calm.
Oh, catalogue it not in dark detail,
But let it be a blackness undefined!
First Pol.
Such jars and jealousies, groanings of the poor,
And pale lamentings of the rich,
The secret and the open hand of malice,
The bitterness of evil tongues—the nation strifes—
Calm.
You do—you do! I cannot doubt it.
Would they—oh! will they never so accord?
The Europe-born, he of the Far Isles,
Asian, and Afric black as night that moves
Slowly across her troubled face, with New America
Join hands about the earth, upholding it
Mother and fountain Spirit to them all!—
One as the globe itself, though mountain-varied,
Each cinctured with its own peculiar clime,
Together ne'er make up,
A round and perfect whole, without a flaw,
A clear and crystal orb of power and love!—
But whither do I stray? your voice recalls me.—
First Pol'n.
Murders as though each human arm were red,
And struck at the other in a general fray;
And baleful risings of the armed upon
The weaponless; bloody o'erwhelmings of the weak;
Whole tribes driven irresistibly off—
The harsh unprosperous plough pursuing
63
Calm.
Your voice rolls on and might, till it become
One with the blasting of the general trump—
The same in fearfulness, the same in sound—
First Pol.
And so it might! For flash on flash, the tidings follow,
'Till the pale earth verberates!
Hear you that raging shout!
[A shout at a distance.
Allow me that I take your hand in mine
Before we part. 'Tis cold and damp.
[Aside.]
Th' avenging shaft has struck!—
[Exit First Pol.
Calmstorm.
What means he? He mocked me or he seemed to—
Great memory's globe moves round, and brings me light,
The mist clears off, and now it rushes back,
Not the meek suitor's with a low request,
But heading fierce th' unappeasable van;
That face I knew it, and must know it,—
A hundred angry faces all in one—
Through all the ages of illimitable life,
For he it was that knit my hideous bonds,
Beneath the eye of the enkindled West,
Cheer'd by her fiery throng, and cheering them;
He is the deadly double of my life,
For now he ties them with his subtle speech
Closer than hands; a knot unseverable.
If I spread out these arms I cannot meet
The foe: if I advance this foot I find him not,
Impalpable he comes upon me as the air
In his dread periods of plague and tempest.
They kill me with Opinion's hellish shot;
Opinion that, as the dead man's spirit walks,
A fatal exhalation, no body to be seen,
64
'Tis not my life they strike at, but my name
They would shake down from its high-fixed
And towery station.
Pass on, thou dream that seemed the Time to come
In its sweet dawning; with thee bear along
The dreamer, on whose lids and in whose eyes
Thy cradle was for many years of joy!
There lingers in the limbs a sense of chains
After the chains are shattered; the thought
Of that sweet bondage binds me for a little yet,
Until believer and belief in the one
Same grave are laid.
Who, who this knot will disentangle
Of life, and weal and woe in life, for men
In the massed city, on the crowded way,
In links and ranks innumerable.
Who break this net of meshes numberless,
Where to be free is to be bound: where speech
That should give hope, enmeshes more the foot,
Than silence that consents to bondage!
Enter First Citizen, gazes at Calmstorm fixedly, for a while.
First Cit.
Umena's dead.
Calm.
[pausing.]
There was one spoke to me just now.
The voice came from a far land whose dialect
I should not know. Dead?
First Cit.
Heart-struck with grief
At the sad going-out of all your hopes:
Her tresses spread upon the silent ground,
Her face, winter and summer sweetly mixed,
Turned to the sky, a woman no longer,
But a painting wrought most cunningly
By passion's hand—the earth she beautifies.
65
That heals and saves the world—Calmstorm, look up!
And then she passed away to Him she spake of.
[Gazes silently at Calmstorm, and then Exit.
Calmstorm.
Fairer!—oh, what in all the all-embracing air,
In thought or speech or look, fairer than thou!
The tears my spirit, too sadly, knows thy due
Cannot be stayed nor shed, but at their flood-tide pause
The next motion of the moon to see
What time brings on.
[Loud sounds without.
Hearken again!—The tumult deepens like a sea.
I have disturbed the general peace; and now
They rage and riot, objectless, against
The men of no offence! Once more, rouse up
Thou troubled heart, and seek to give the anger
Of the popular strength an aim of nobleness:
Once more, thou breaking spirit, be thyself,
And drive the shaggy uproar to his den!
[Exit Calmstorm.
SCENE III.
—A street. Slinely and Darkledge.Sline.
I've heard from him within the last half hour—
An ashy paleness in his features grows,
And his hands shake when he would lift them
To his brow.—Signs unquestionable these,
Of what draws near: The great blight has struck him;
His wife is dead.
Dark.
She might have lived, and yet the world gone
Fairly on. A sudden malady?
Sline.
No suddener than the overthrow that comes
On Calmstorm. It broke her woman's foolish heart,
To look on him and see the strong thought
Of his doom shake all his powers.
66
She goes before him to account some hour
Or two. A pity—confess Slinely—
That he's o'ermastered by too fierce a zeal
To tamper with high station, and the ordered rule
Of the world.
[Enter a messenger, whispers Slinely, Exit.
Sline.
Calmstorm has come forth and walks in the Square,
A pace or two from this, an old-used haunt of his—
There is a friend's house hard by there, in which
A window I have borrowed.
[Another messenger as before.
The crowd swells swiftly through all this fervent
Neighborhood. The window looks upon
The very point where they must gather,
And thence, we may, unseen, gaze on the end.
[Another messenger, &c.
Hearken! Heard you not that, a wide, deep hiss,
As if all the wildernesses of the world
Had emptied into a street, near by,
Their serpents in a rage.—A moment more,
And you will hear a shout to rock you
From your feet. The Popular Tongue clamours,
[A shout.
As if it were the bell of doom. Again!
Again! The bravest shouters of the world!
The sea when mad, the sky most merciless
Has not a speech one half so deep or rough.
There is a silence, now—let's hasten on—
For in their faces, still with deepest scorn,
In fingers pointed at his treacherous heart,
We shall behold the power 'gainst which no man,
Of adamant or iron or the pure diamond built,
Can stand.
[Exeunt Darkledge, Slinely.
SCENE IV.
—A street. First Citizen, Second Citizen, &c.First Cit.
On the high open square,
Dripping a spray of blood from the red storm
67
His sword piercing in silence the calm ground—
Cathedral-like he stands and looks to Heaven:
Nor words nor prayers would pierce his solitude.
Look therefore for the rending of the temple
That inwalls his mighty spirit: He can
But stand in silence endless, and so die.
Third Cit.
He weeps not, nor sobs?
First Cit.
Murmurs no more than ocean
Gone to rest for a whole summer's night.
Third Cit.
Alas! alas! a word were worth a world,
From that true spirit now! The city darkens on us,
As I think what sight the city witnesses
In this up-breaking heart.
First Cit.
Behold, this way the mournful pageant moves,
Calmstorm, unheralded and unpursued:
Alone, yet in his sad white features see
The ruins of a world more than in columns
Desert-struck, down-broken empire's ways,
And arches desolate. He yet will speak again.
Third Cit.
Be silent as the earth
The hour before 'twas walked by man!
Enter Calmstorm.
Calm.
I see it now, I see it now—the fatal force
That dwells in men like me; that summons,
By some sad potency, all devil-like
And hideous qualities—to rend the caller.
Could ye not stay your hands from me,—whose hand
And heart and spirit were yours to the last strain!
Was I the image where was gathered up
All that you hate, and hating, would destroy,
And not a worker with you to o'erthrow
Such idols!
68
For all my past days are lighted up
To view by this late blaze!—
And now, as then in the ensanguined west,
The furnace-fiery throng pursue me from afar,
Their eager eyes outrun their steps, although their feet
Are winged,—their hands are swifter than their sight,
Their hate before them all!
An open field of large rough-bearded men,
Who've cast away each hook that holds them
To the world of house, of temple, and of judgment-seat,
They stand amassed, and I before them stand—
The guilty and the free—arraigner and arraigned;
And as the torches on their faces flash,
They lift me up on high—they look on me,
I look on them; the court's arrayed in full,—
There is a shuffle, and a quick-breathed talk,
As of a dark offence; when from the throng
A shout of “guilty” springs—a thousand arms
Flung in the air, as one and all at once,
Clash into a loud and long resounding,
Like the sea, and thousand-throated
As the bison bulls trampling the green immeasurable,
“Guilty” again strikes up against the unmoved heaven.
Juror, and judge, and criminal, they wrap me
In their hideous arms, and storm-like sweep away
Confusion in the earth, the heaven, the troubled air.
Blighted forever be that tree, accursed
The hand that set it!
First Cit.
Ah, woeful hour! the branches black, e'en now
Upon his countenance lie, and shakes he
Darkly, as they shook when swayed the chill wind
Their double life, amid the dreary wood.
[Aside.
69
These limbs, these limbs that bear me now erect,
Knit by these hungry cords, and by that evil hand;
I smote him while these arms were free, that back
He reeled, indenting deep his followers—
A man whom I had keenly once rebuked,
For certain dark and most outrageous wrongs—
He put a spell in every knot, yet closer knit
By the fierce eyes of many lookers-on,
That, vulture-like, drank up each motion of his hand:
The unhoused wood, the lean untended wolf,
My neighbor only—the long, dull, changeless day,
And the dead night;
The heavens were shivered as a glass, in haste;
The earth reliable, crumbled away beneath
My feet, and fell like dust, or seemed to fall
Into the under void: the infinite of stars,
And the mooned whiteness of the rolling night,
Paled to an idle glimmer far away.
Alone remained
The mournful waving of the dark-leaved branch,
And the sad swaying of its painful trunk.
And this re-echoes that with blood and hate,
And overwhelming hopelessness.
I now should lean, an arm on each, upon
The pillars of the world. They've crumbled from me;
And I stand a naked man, too capable
Of decline for it to need me any more!
There was a time once, on the other side
Of this walled darkness, where felicity
And the young faith, sweet-throated omens, sung:
I had a hope, which at its glowing birth
Was full of joy.—It smiled and shook its locks,
And looked upon me tranquil, bright, and free—
70
Of all best things.
It filled the earth with joy, it filled the heavens,
And in its golden light men walked or seemed
Angels, whose free, glad feet murmured
Along the earth, murmured at every fall;
The golden light has passed away,
Unto another planet, to another sphere.
Oh, dark and chill seems the sad earth,
And clanking chains I hear, and wailing tongues;
And far in the thick onward time,
Behold the sadness that enwraps the world
Unrent, forever and forever, still unrent—
Look on that fair young Hope, it pines and dies
An outcast on the threshold of the world.
Thou Land, Colossus-like, that spread'st thyself,
Until, a foot on either shore, thou may'st
Thy neck unconquerable stoop, and bathe
Thy sinewy arms wide as thou wilt and deep,
In the salt greenness of the two great seas,
And have no watcher of thy lonesome sport!
Ye masses of mankind, thou Populous Heart!
[Casting his sword on the ground.
Lie there, thou ancient champion,
Until another hand, and worthier
Of thy wielding, lift thee, or lie forever.
I will not mar thy serviceable blade
Longer with this vain breath, nor with the air,
A shieldless and invulnerable foe,
Bemock thee more!
[He falls.
First Cit.
Oh let him fall not on the earth unpropped!
Calm.
Kind friend, good friends, why take you thus
My hand, and look on me in this wild way?
71
I would have been its friend, but am its beggar:
The counsel that I take with her, henceforth
Must be as secret as the eyeless worm.
What light is that that flashes yonder up?
What faces do I see? What voices hear
Innumerable? Reach me thine hand, dark spirit,
And help me over the perilous flood
Upon whose brink I stand—
First Cit.
See, how his hand
Wanders the air, as if it sought another,
Stretched to him from above!
Calm.
The heavens are bowed in blackness at my gaze,
And then, again, the tinkling of the pastoral bells
Comes up—
Good-bye, good-bye to all, and lay me
By the swift river's bank, where first I dreamed
This dream. And let the Hope sit by my grave.
Umena knows it,—alas!
[He dies.
[Slinely, Darkledge, Waning, Dorcas, &c., approaching and gazing on.
Third Cit.
Life's lightning
From his marble limbs is gone.
First Cit.
And the sphered thunder of his speech
Is now forever still!
[Curtain falls.
THE END.
| Calmstorm, the reformer | |