VII.
BELL AND CAIRN.
Eloi lama sabachthani!”
And, swooning, strove no more.
Nor gone
For every heart, whate'er they say,
The eclipse that cry of cries brought down,
And clamors through the darkness blown.
More wide for some it spreads in sway,
Involves the lily of the Easter Day.
A chance word of the Swede in place—
Allusion to the anguished face,
Recalled to Clarel now the cry,
The ghost's reproachful litany.
Disturbed then, he apart would go;
And passed among the crags; and there,
Like David in Adullum's lair—
Could it be Vine, and quivering so?
'Twas Vine. He wore that nameless look
About the mouth—so hard to brook—
Which in the Cenci portrait shows,
Lost in each copy, oil or print;
Lost, or else slurred, as 'twere a hint
Which if received, few might sustain:
A trembling over of small throes
In weak swoll'n lips, which to restrain
Desire is none, nor any rein.
Clarel recalled the garden's shade,
And Vine therein, with all that made
The estrangement in Gethsemane.
Reserves laid bare? and can it be?
The dock-yard forge's silent mound,
Played over by small nimble flame—
Raked open, lo, the anchor's found
In white-heat's alb.
With shrinking-frame,
Grateful that he was unespied,
Clarel quite noiseless slipped aside:
Ill hour (thought he), an evil sign:
No more need dream of winning Vine
Or coming at his mystery.
O, lives which languish in the shade,
Puzzle and tease us, or upbraid;
What noteless confidant, may be,
Withholds the talisman, the key!
Or if indeed it run not so,
And he's above me where I cling;
Then how these higher natures know
Except in shadow from the wing?—
Hark! as in benison to all,
Borne on waste air in wasteful clime,
What swell on swell of mellowing chime,
Which every drooping pilgrim rallies;
How much unlike that ominous call
Pealed in the blast from Roncesvalles!
Was more than silver in this shell
By distance toned. What festival?
What feast? of Adam's kind, or fay?
Hark—no, not yet it dies away.
Where the sexton of the vaulted seas
Buries the drowned in weedy grave,
While tolls the buoy-bell down the breeze;
There, off the shoals of rainy wave
Outside the channel which they crave,
The sailors lost in shrouding mist,
Unto that muffled knelling list,
The more because for fogged remove
The floating belfry none may prove;
So, yet with difference, do these
Attend.
“Chimes, chimes? but whence? thou breeze;”
Here Derwent; “convent none is near.”
“Ay,” said the Druze, “but quick's the ear
In deep hush of the desert wide.”
“'Tis Saba calling; yea,” Rolfe cried,
“Saba, Mar Saba summons us:
O, hither, pilgrims, turn to me,
Escape the desert perilous;
Here's refuge, hither unto me!”
A lateral lodgment won, they wheeled,
And toward the abandoned ledge they glanced:
Near, in the high void waste advanced,
They saw, in turn abrupt revealed,
An object reared aloof by Vine
In whim of silence, when debate
Was held upon the cliff but late
And ended where all words decline:
A heap of stones in arid state.
The cairn (thought Clarel), meant he—yes,
A monument to barrenness?
