Calmstorm, the reformer A Dramatic Comment |
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 | Calmstorm, the reformer |  |
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.
| Calmstorm, the reformer | |