University of Virginia Library

Dead silence o'er the pass, from Alp to Alp.
The silence of a midnight, whose thin breath
Slept silvered on the torrent dumb with frost,
The silence of eternal towers of ice,
The silence of eternal glades of snow,
The silence of the ghostly mountain-tops,
And crowning these the silence of the stars.

A death-white wilderness, whereon a moon
Of gleaming marble from an ice-green sky
Gazed as upon her mirror. Like a shroud
The glistening snow-slope swept in shaded folds
Down from the peak, and spread its wrinkled skirts
Far o'er the solid lake, whose polished face,
Muffled to scarce a tarn by curving drifts,
Lay twinkling with a million miles of depth.
Heaving and vast the moonlit glaciers stared,
Streaked with huge wrecks and riven to the base,
As if, when grappling storms were at their full
In some wild Arctic channel, while the bergs
Boomed, and the billows swilled their heads with foam
A sudden hush had fallen, and the breath
Of the great God had smitten all to ice.

Dead silence; and a loneliness so vast,
So awful in its self-sufficient calm,
The very shadows of the starward spires,
Scarce creeping, flake by flake, along the snow,
Seemed fearful of their presence, stealing past
Like sinners that have entered unawares
The Holiest of Holies; for it seemed
Death's inmost temple, whose high psalmody
Is silence, and whose worship breathlessness.

Death's solemn temple, whose huge buttresses
Were planted and its deep foundations laid
In molten crystal, when this world was yet
One furnace; whose gigantic aisles were hewn
By earthquake; whose stern columns were upreared
By fire, and carven by the stormy hand
Of everlasting winter; whose wide floor
Was paved with ice and strewn with winnowed snow,
Grain upon grain, for ages; and its dome,
Girdled with fretted pinnacles of pearl,
Built without bound and gemmed with countless worlds.
Death's chosen temple, waiting but for one
Worthy of such a vast and spotless shrine.

Dead silence; yet the silence of a death
That seemed the utmost life; like to the calm
Which sleeps upon the whirlpool's glassy breast,
Or some great spirit motionless with thought;
That hush of heart which is the open grave
Of deepest agony. For yesternight
The bosom of the mountains shook with storm,
And all the mighty orchestra of heaven,
From ravined crypt to trembling spire, crashed
With God's own passion-music; the big blasts
Were hurled from height to height; the scudding mists
Writhed in their pain; the rattling ice-flakes flew;
And limbs of mountain, bristling with black pines,
Leapt thundering down and down, from ridge to ridge,
To shatter and be shattered in the depths
Of yelling forests and abysmal floods
Dammed with their ruin. But or e'er the moon
Had groped her blindfold way through shaggy clouds
Hounding her westward, the great symphony
Had told its heart of sorrow; and all day
Moaned in its sleep or woke in rarer bursts
Of fitful anguish; till with eventide
The mighty instruments lay hushed below,
The worn-out echo of its parting breath
Had died upon the distance, and no sound,
Not e'en the whisper of a feathery flake,
Profaned the utter silence.

Nor in vain
Did Heaven proclaim her passion; nor in vain
Her loneliest star kept watch with veilless eyes,
And all that awful sanctuary lay
Breathless with expectation. For to-night
The purest kingly heart that ever glowed
With love to the dear God that lives in man,
Must rest awhile amid the mountain-tops,
Icy and still as they.

And even now,
Far in the phantom depths; athwart the bridge
That spanned the ice-hushed torrent; through straight chasms
Steeped on one hand with moonlight, one with gloom;
Up winding terraces, whence sheer below
Sank precipices whose dim base was lost
In distance, and above, bare flanks of rock
Smoothed by a thousand snow-slips; long and slow,
With muffled tread and voices dumb with awe,
Crept on the dark procession—the dead hope
Of Christendom, the ashes of that flame
Whose throbbing for two hundred years had fired
All Europe to a hero, and now lay
Quenched in her blood.

Nearer, but scarcely heard,
Moved the sad blot across the waste of white,
The remnant of the chivalry of France,
The wreck of that fair Eastward host which left,
But six moons since, with proudly-tossing plumes,
Their summer land, dazzling the village crowds
With blaze of shield and bickering of lance,
While greybeards left their world beside the hearth
To wave the crutch, and beldams knelt to pray,
And mothers held their babes toward the sight,
And maidens blest them, and the very leaves
Shook with God-speed—the wreck of that fair host;
Heads deeply bowed, and shoulders stooped in pain;
Soiled arms, that flashed no longer to the moon;
Eyes, that were wont to lighten for the fray,
Sodden and bleared and bent upon the snow;
A prince sore sick, half-longing for the grave,
Orphaned of father, brother, sister, wife,
Of him whose death was widowhood to France,
Of that one Christian king who ruled for Christ,
And bearing now their bones at last to rest,
Over the winter-world, beneath one pall
Stiff-set with frost and glistering with rime.

Onward and upward, till the mountain-stairs
And over-reaching corridors of ice
Lay far beneath them, looming through the wreaths
Of moonlit vapour, and they stood amazed
Within that lofty temple draped with snow,
And spake no word, but falling on their knees
Felt the eternal majesty of Death.

Then Philip beckoned; and with trembling hands
They laid their solemn burden on the snow,
And all that night held fearful watch, with eyes
That dare not close, and lips that dare not speak;
While ranged around the lonely mountain-tops
Stood sentinel, and overhead the stars
Kept boundless vigil o'er the sacred heart.

Dead silence; save that once a smothered sound,
Like echo of far thunder, from above
Boomed, and grew downward, shocking with great leaps
The feeling hush; till with one gathered crash
It left the shelving pass; and then a pause,
Long as a man might hold his breath; and then,
Scarce heard, the dreadful message of its doom
Far down upon the glacier; and again,
But that each watcher heard his startled heart,
Dead silence.

So the awful night wore on.
And crystal grew to crystal o'er the pall,
And starker every fold that wrapt the urn,
And sparkling white with frost the rigid men
Seemed fragments of the ice whereby they crouched,
And seen like mist their breathing rose to heaven.

But care lay tossing on the troubled breast
Of Philip, and his heart was swollen with pain,
And sore with its own restlessness, nor drew
The nestling silence in, but evermore
Leapt hotter from itself, as one that flees
Starts at the echo of his own wild steps;
For still the plague was smouldering in his veins,
And in that realm of mind, where princely will
Was wont to rule o'er serviceable thoughts,
Disorder now ran riot; and a crowd
Of vague forebodings and dark memories
Whirled hotly through the brain's still council-halls,
Stifling each other in their eager throng.

Once more he heard the moaning of the surge,
Unutterably sad, swell forth, and sink,
And swell again, along the desert shore.
Once more he felt the panic of the plague
Curdle his wholesome blood, till the night-air,
That missed the sense for very purity,
Seemed laden with the reek of pestilence,
And the white peaks dim-glimmering 'mid the stars
Seemed tents beset with corpses. Once again
He knelt beside a father's dying bed,
And felt the pressure of the parting hand,
So weak, so strong, until the frosty damp
About his lips chilled like the damp of death.
Then, as the crag descended, heard again
The roar of battle, yell, and curse, and groan,
With clash of scimitar and snap of lance,
And felt his good sword stagger in the bulk
Of many a flying Saracen, and swung
Its deadly lightnings right and left; and knelt
Victorious by that unimpassioned form,
Printing a kiss upon the sealèd eyes.
Then, as he stared upon the gulfs of ice,
The wide crevasses ran like furrowed sea,
The long moraines were seen to rise and fall
Like lines of huddling wreck, and once again
He reeled on the steep slippery deck, and clung,
And heard the gurgling cry of drowning men,
And saw the stout ships take their last slow plunge
Beneath the boiling billows, and the flood
Suck down, and whirl, and bubble where they sank.
Last, when his labouring brain was near to burst,
Saw that which many a sleepless night had saved
His soul from madness, softening agony
To tenderest tears; saw his true-hearted wife,
Robed in a texture like the green wall-moss
Lit by a flash of April, gently stroke
With grateful words her palfrey's glossy neck,
Pausing to let him drink, while the swift stream
Chafed pettishly against his weary feet;
Heard the false rattle of the slimy stones—
The cry—and felt his heart give one great leap
That choked him, as she fell, and with her fell
The unborn hope of France. Then with a moan
He turned to where her form, despoiled of love,
Lay 'neath the frozen pall, and heart-wrung tears
Fretted the senseless snow.

But when that storm
Of stifled pain had sobbed itself to rest,
And life with all its dragging load of cares
Seemed a dull dream, as to some passionate child
Who cries himself to weakness, the sick prince
Upraised his glistening eyes, and his purged soul,
Lost in the vast tranquillity of Heaven,
Grew as it gazed, and touched the feet of God.

Then every form of thought, which heretofore
Had veiled for him that dreadful Majesty,
Fell earthward to its birthplace, and he stood
Before his very Maker unafraid;
And saw no frown of judgment, but a brow
Of passionless repose; and heard no voice
Pealing the doom of nations, but a hush
Beyond all utterance; and felt the arms
Of everlasting pity fold the world.

And so he gazed and listened, till he heard
The heart of all things beating with his own,
And his great grief went forth in chastened prayer.

“Father!—forgive the passion of a woe
That murmured at Thy bidding—it is well.
Thou teachest every star its hour to set,
Thou teachest every flake its hour to fall,
Thou tellest every grave beneath the moon;
And they, who were the pledges of Thy love,
Are in Thy faithful keeping—it is well.
Pardon the sin of prayer that thwarts Thy will,
The ignorance of the prayer that cries for good;
Shall God do wrong because His children weep,
Or stifle the strong promptings of His love
Because we know them not?—Yet we believe,
If love Divine admitteth more and less,
Thou, as an earthly father his weak babes,
Most lovest when we seek Thy heart in prayer.
Saviour of men!—not for the far-off dead
My spirit pleads; the dead are past our reach;
For them a thousand requiems shall make moan
Unceasingly—who knows with what avail?—
But these, Thy weary tempest-driven sheep,
These, the long-suffering soldiers of Thy Cross,
Are still to help; and I, their feeble stay,
Totter beneath the burden, and would lean
On Thy Almighty arm.—O King of kings,
Whose throne is Heaven, Whose reign Eternity,
Whose realm exceedeth unimagined space,
By Whose right hand the world-sown Universe
Was fashioned and directed, yet Who deign'st
To make Thy home within the broken heart;
Thou Light of lights, by Whose eternal Sun
Our brightest thoughts are but as shadows cast,
Illume my soul with somewhat of that ray
Which lit the life now nearer to Thyself
By all my sorrow's distance; that my yoke
May lie as light as his on stricken France,
That men may feel his firmly-gentle hand
Still guiding them, though oft against their will,
To their own good, and hear his temperate voice
Warning them still to truth and righteousness.
Father! now most my Father!—for we feel
The sacred dead are almost one with Thee—
Father! forgive, hear me, and answer!”—

He ceased;—and while he listened, the deep hush
Grew ever deeper; the vast loneliness
More desolate; the stars, that seemed erewhile
To quiver as with some celestial life,
Were glazed like dying eyes, and death seemed lord;
Death in the moon, death on the world of ice,
Death 'neath the pall, and death about his heart,
Till Heaven itself seemed lifeless, and a chill
Smote to his very spirit, and his head
Sank on his breast in uttermost despair.

But now a whisper like the voice of God
Quickened the silence; and the western stars
Paled, one by one, and slowly drowned themselves
In that which seemed a dream of golden sea;
While round the topmost spires there played a tint
Faint as a primrose wan in maidenhood,
And all the East deepened to purple gloom.
Then, as the West grew livid, every height
Became a folded rose, and blushing swift
From pink to crimson cast dark sapphire streaks
Far o'er the snowfields, till the moonlight-shades
Faded abashed; then the wide grave of night
Was filled with colour, ocean's deepest blue,
The lurid flush of thunder, and above
Pale turquoise; and the golden mountain-loins
Were girt with scarves of rainbow; and the sky
Was ringed with ruby, amethyst, and pearl,
Zone upon zone; but when the dawn-flash flew
Downward from height to height, as butterflies
From bloom to bloom, the lightening peaks of snow
Swam in a dove-hued softness, bathing all
The round horizon-line, and overhead
Melting to searchless azure. Last, there rayed
Great beams of glory upward from the East,
As if the dungeoned monarch of the morn
Gilded, ere yet he burst, the bars of night;
Which, ever widening, spread, a giant fan
Of silver ribs o'erwebbed with opal gauze,
E'en to the zenith, while each jagged ridge
Was rimmed with molten gold. Then from behind,
Rejoicing in the splendour he had wrought,
Uprose the living sun; and, as a dream
Dissolveth in the waking of the bliss
That gave it birth, so vanished those fair mists
Before that dazzling flood of sudden sheen,
Until the air itself was lost in light,
Till every col flashed like a cataract
Cloven by crags of crystal, every peak
Was hewn from one great diamond, and the plain
Heaped with its countless brilliants. Over all
A calm of spotless blue; so near, it seemed
To kiss the snow; so far, it seemed to faint
If any eye would fathom its pure depth.

Then all the woe which bound the young king's blood
Was thawed by that full glory, and he felt
The spirit of the morning flush his veins
With vigour, and a stream of thankfulness
Rushed from his swelling heart.

“Thanks be to God!
And praisèd be the Father of all life!
Who hideth not the radiance of His face
E'en from His meanest creature, but doth shed
His bounteous warmth alike on weed and flower,
His bounteous love alike on wretch and king.
Thine is the first grey glimmer that foretells
The fresh dominion of ascending Day,
Ere yet the birds have thrust with dewy wing
The beaded twigs aside, and shyly chirped
The half-remembered music of their dreams;
Thine the first frail anemone that lifts
A starry head above the mouldering leaves,
To tell the naked underwood of Spring;
Thine the first sunbeam on the latest snow;
Thine the first laughter of the new-born babe;
And Thine, dear God, the earliest ray of hope
That gilds the night and winter of despair.
Blest be the silent-growing power of Day,
Blest be the slowly-widening dawn of Truth,
Blest be the ever-conquering might of Good,
And blest the surely-coming reign of Love.
Let shine Thy light!—we long to see, nor flinch
From naked fact; if ill await, 'twill be,
However hid, and hidden seems the worst;
But if not ill—as deeply, 'mid the storms
Of doubt and dread and wreckage of our joys,
We still have faith—then, the same fostering hand,
That sowed the seed of hope in darksomeness,
Will bring it to fair blossom and full fruit
In open sunlight.—Shine upon the dead!
We dare, in the strong buoyancy of morn,
To look that gross corruption in the face,
Whose phantom was the terror of the night;
We listen in the darkness—and the hush
Of the stilled heart, the hollow of the cheek,
The sunken eyelid, and the marble chill
Seem all the man; we view it in broad light—
And these, the worn-out vesture of the soul,
Are empty, and the life is far away,
Thou knowest where.—Shine upon darkened France!
Let Thy bright comfort, smiling through her tears,
Weave the full rainbow of celestial hope,
Proclaiming the rich promise of a day
When, widely storming from a blood-red dawn,
Her beams of thought shall lighten through the West,
Break up the frost of hardened centuries,
And melt the barren ice of selfish use
To streams of fertile freedom. Shine on Man,
Thine own benighted and bewildered child,
Striving, with many a stumble, many a halt
And wilful wandering, still towards Thy light;
That from his eyes may melt the blearing fog
Of ignorant fore-judgment; that the life,
Bright-bounding through the channels of his heart,
May sweep it clear of avarice and of lust,
And crawling pride, and trembling tyranny,
And all that loves the darkness which it makes;
That never may his limbs grow stiff in sloth,
Never the sacred sword of manful deed
Rust in its scabbard, but, whate'er attained,
A somewhat nobler tempt him, till he reach
Full liberty, and scale the heights of Heaven!”

Thus thanks, as oft it doth from hungry hearts,
Became a loftier prayer, and braced the soul
Of the sore-proven prince to still endure;
And sweetly on his jaded senses came
The trickling of the secret mountain-rill,
Swelling its way beneath the splintered ice,
The tinkle of the falling icicle,
The sun-awakened stir amid the flakes,
And all the subtle music of the morn;
As when the spring-song of a mated thrush
Breaks on the ear of one that all night long
Hath watched beside the death-bed of his love;
Gently he draws aside the casement-blind,
And meets the grey untroubled eyes of Dawn;
Nor grudges the poor bird its happiness,
But feels the scene withdrawing through his tears,
Leaving within his heart an undertone
Of hope amid the discords of despair,
And raving anguish hallowed to deep calm.
So tenderly the beauty of the morn
Touched the sore heart of Philip, and his grief
Softened to tranquil strength.

By this, the sun
Had quenched the watch-fires, which the livelong night
Had gamboled with the moonbeams o'er the ice
In sparkling rivalry, to hoary ash;
And lit the lines of many an anxious brow
That hour by hour had stooped around the flames,
Lightening darkly in the fickle glow,
And now, scarce conscious of the crownèd dawn,
Still brooded o'er the embers. Then the prince
Gave word, and caring little for their life,
Yet holding by it, as a trusty watch
Stands by the desperate post he knows must fall,
They ate their bread in silence, and once more
The sad procession whispered through the snow
Its painful passage.

Slow, with faltering haste,
That feared itself yet dared not slacken speed,
With struggling pantings strangled in the birth,
Toiled on the broken army of the Cross;
In dread at every step to hear above
The stealthy hiss of the long avalanche
Sliding, a snowy snake, adown the slope;
In dread, lest echo of the faintest sound,
Shivering along the frosty sunlit calm,
Might wake the whirlwind's slumber, and arouse
The monster couching on the burdened heights;
Who, leaping with a low growl from his lair,
And roaring ever louder as he neared,
Would bound, through following rocks and crashing woods,
A rushing storm-cloud of tempestuous snow,
Charged with terrific bolts of crag and ice,
Down on his prey, and bury as he slew.
But safely grew the young day to its prime,
And firmly the broad bosom of the noon
Arrayed itself in steel against the towers
Of glittering white; and not a harsher sound
Jarred on the crystal silence than the cry
Of the high eagle poised with level wings,
Lone in his peerless kingship, the dull threats
Of the frost-throttled torrent, the shrill notes
Of chattering runnels, and the measured drip
Of the sun-smitten cornice.

So they passed,
With quick weak hearts, beneath the roof of snow,
Where curling over, like a giant wave
Proud-lingering o'er its fall, it hung aloft,
Fringed with transparent javelins of ice,
That breathed again the atmosphere they shed
Of emerald lost in azure, till the air
And ice were all one gleam, and the dazed men
Seemed to be standing in the radiant heart
Of some great jewel.

Then they wound their way
Along the skirts of a wide steep of pine,
That wrapt the mountain with a dark-lined robe
Of spotless ermine; and they heard the voice
Of the hoarse torrent, wrestling deep below,
Grow slowly nearer, till at length they felt
The damp of its chill breath upon their cheek;
And stood before the mouth of a dim cave,
Whose horrid jaws bristled with teeth of ice,
Like some huge monster yawning for its prey;
While from its throat resounded the career
Of plunging waters, thundering their mad way,
With echoes drumming all along the roof,
On to the cataract; and a narrow ledge
Of ice-clad rock, wet with perpetual foam,
Lessened, a fearful pathway, to a disc
Of far-off blue, the lofty roof of France.

Then with a short instinctive cry to Heaven—
Not that they held their shattered lives so dear,
Yet longing to be laid in some still spot
Of hallowed ground, where the mild evening sun
Might rest upon their grave, and homely flowers
Utter the simple tenderness of love,
And not to lie engulfed in that loud chasm,
The ghastly plaything of the demon flood—
So praying, the o'erwearied men crept on
In deafened silence, every step a thought;
Till, toiling for an hour towards the light,
They reached a sudden precipice, and saw
The eager waters make a glassy arch,
Through which there gleamed unruffled the black slab
Of polished rock, while mountain-deep below,
And smothered 'neath a cloud of spray, arose
The dull reverberation of the fall.
Midway, upon a jutting crag, there clung
A single tree, whose leafless tresses swayed
Upon the wind begotten of the flood;
And, like a pennon in the thunderous smoke
Of battle, half a rainbow faintly smiled
Athwart the veiled abysm.

With shrinking eyes,
And feet rebellious to the daring will,
They bore the royal dead along the brink
Of that stupendous gulf, and gained the point,
Marked by a storm-stained cross, where gallant hearts,
Mindful of others in their own sore need,
Had planted ladders 'gainst the upright rock.
Gently they lowered their sacred burden down;
And, that steep peril passed, with steadier hearts
Threaded the horror of the dark defile;
Till, rounding a sharp curve, which from afar
Seemed the barred gate of hope, a shout of joy
Burst from their breasts, nor wronged the quiet dead;
For stretching far away beneath their feet,
Asleep in the still sunshine, half revealed,
Half hidden in its own deep loveliness,
Lay the soft-sloping bosom of Savoy;
A mile below, warm-nestling in a fold
Of the rich robe that wrapt the mountain's feet,
The stooping gables of a little thorpe
Peeped through a brooding haze of hoary smoke;
And dreaming o'er the distance, the faint hills,
Lost in the misty border of the sky,
Seemed the horizon of a sea becalmed.

At that fair sight the weary months of pain,
Remorseful memory and deluded hope,
Vanished, as when one waketh from a night
Of crowded anguish struggling with itself,
And finds his pillow wet with passionate tears,
And the warm sunbeam reddening through his lids,
And cries aloud “Thank God, it was a dream!”
So lightened, the sick prince spake words of cheer;
And that sweet pain which hungers in the soul
Rapt on a lovely scene, as if some sense
Were wanting to embrace its loveliness,
Welled up in the worn hearts; and yearningly
They thought of their true wives and tender babes
And lordly homes beyond the bourn of sight,
While ever the black wall of mountain scowled
Higher behind them, and the village-roofs
Broadened beneath their feet; till at the last
They halted in the sleepy street, and watched
The great sun sink upon his snowy couch,
And one by one the blushing mountain-heads
Draw their grey mantles round them, and the moon
Steal the faint beauty of the afterglow.

And sweet it was to see the peaceful smoke
Drowsily curl from the warm hearths of men
Athwart the crimson sky; once more to hear
The low of homeward oxen, and the chime
Of children's voices, and the chapel-bell
Pleading for evening-worship; and when all
Had long lain hushed beneath the quivering stars,
Twas sweet to think upon that last dread night,
And hear the watch-dog's bark, and cheery crow
Of the first cock chiding the sluggard morn.

But ere the herdsman left his dreamless sleep,
Rich meed of wholesome toil, while yet the sun
Was weaving low beyond the moonlit peaks
His daily-fresh apparel, the young king,
Roused by the sight of his fair fatherland
To lend a speedy hand to her grave cares,
And spurred by anxious thoughts of coming state,
Urged on the solemn progress.

So they left
The narrow village slumbering, and passed forth
Into a world of coral, every twig
Crusted with heavy rime, and every bud
Glassed in an ice-drop. But when scarce three leagues
Of the crisp road were printed with their feet,
The risen sun, whose sovereign influence
Had slowly steeped the breathing morn with light,
Burst through the threadbare mist, and far and wide
Scattered his flashing jewels o'er the land.
Then sprinkling lightest music the hoar frost
Dissolved, and the dry earth sucked in the dew
At every pore, and many a lowly plant
Felt the strong nurture mantling in its veins;
While glistening threads of sunny rain unsealed
The pointed sheath wherein the chestnut's fan
Slept folded round its bloom, and overflowed
The daisy's red-rimmed cup, and brightly kissed
The honeysuckle's winter-braving buds,
And moved the modest-drooping violet
To fragrant tears of joy. The neighbouring woods
Were changing their warm winter-robe of brown
And dusky purple for the soft grey veil
They wear before they don their golden green;
And fringing them the hazel's tasselled twigs
Were gemmed with ruby-tufted buds, most like
The tiny sea-anemone, that spreads
Its fairy arms deep in some tranquil dell
Of ocean, while the great storms swing above
Nor stir its silent home. The same faint smell
That reached the nostrils of the angry God,
Relenting o'er the water-silenced world,
Rose from the growing earth; a quintessence
Of pure spring-scents; the breathing of young buds,
The steam of wayside brooklets bearing forth
The fragrance of their mosses, the warm reek
Giddily dancing o'er the tender crops
And strips of fresh-turned soil, with all the sweets
Distilled by sun and moisture from wild life;
While over all the upward-quivering lark
Poured wave on wave of overflowing song,
And almost burst his heart for ecstasy.

Thrice rode the sun across the noontide blue
In dazzling panoply of silver-white;
Thrice lashed his steeds adown the western slope,
Hastening with smoking flanks to their repose;
But when the netted shadows of the trees
Doubled their stature eastward, and the star
Of the third eve was lonely, far away
They heard the faint, weird murmur of a town
Swell on the hushing twilight; and when Day
Lay buried, and the distant poplar-plumes
Stood ranged like lingering mourners, sable-tall,
Against the pallor brooding o'er his grave,
They gained the peopled pride of Lyonnais,
And saw the starlit bosom of the Saone
Blend with its mightier sister-tide, and bound
With one full pulse on to the longing sea.

And so from dawn to gloaming, ten fair days
Of girlish Spring, the shadow of their woe
Passed onward, darkening all the lusty land;
Onward through treeless plains, where every clod
Was clothed with promised harvest, and the road,
Straight-seen for miles, a narrowing line of white,
Wakened a lonely sadness; through the hush
Of pine-woods, where the darkened solitude
Seemed as a house of death; o'er many a bridge
Flecked with the smiles of under-dancing waves,
Where the quick trout took shelter in the gleam
Of eddies mingling o'er the reeling stones,
Or darted 'neath the tresses of the nymphs
Hiding their faces in the shining sand;
On through sequestered hamlets, where for hours
The eager hinds had flocked from miles around,
Leaving the plough-share gleaming in the loam,
To line the way with whispering files, and lounge,
When the rare sight had passed, in gossip-groups
Through half the day—a rich experience told
To make their grandsons gape; onward through towns
Idle in grief and thronged with curious awe;
Till, looming grandly through the vapour-pall
That hid the mother-city from the stars,
Towered the sombre bulk of Notre Dame.

Thither they bore the dead, and all that night
The shadowy aisles and dusty-raftered roof,
Scarce seen by the faint glow of pendent lamps
Slow-swaying in the incense-laden gloom,
Re-echoed to the muffled bass of priests
Moaning their ceaseless requiem; and wan Dawn,
Stealing athwart the twilight sanctuary,
Found the young king a watcher by the dead.
But when the summer of high noon declined
Into that weary autumn pensiveness
Which saddens ere the sunset, Philip raised
The urn wherein his father's worn-out heart
Lay sleeping, and with hardly-measured tread
Passed from the hushed cathedral.
Twice a league
Of living road, whose banks were human throngs,
Silent, save only when a stronger sob
Burst from its prison; lines of soldiery
With arms reversed and eyes upon the earth,
Bare-headed priests whose sorrow was a prayer,
Women with infants cowering to the breast,
Maidens with snowy garlands fresh with tears,
Children with smileless faces wonder-wide,
Rich nobles poor as beggars in their loss,
And beggars poorer by their servant-king.
Two leagues of reverent worship of the dead,
Two leagues of loyalty to him who bore
Upon his shoulder all that could decay
Of that great heart.

Onward for two deep hours
Moved the bowed prince—a kinglier funeral,
And worthier of the pride-disdaining dead,
Than all the pomp of hired pageantry.
And wheresoe'er he stayed to rest awhile
His sacred load, arose a graceful cross,
Mute witness to the ages yet unborn
Of the good king.

But when the setting sun
Mellowed the sculptured porch of Saint Denis—
That aged abbey, where the Lords of France,
Gathered around their father Dagobert,
Lay in the fretless fellowship of death—
And stained the curious pavement with blurred form
Of saint and prophet, peopling the rich glass
That darkened all it lightened; while the bell
With sorrow-stifled tongue tolled heavily
The lengthening moments, and the waiting priests
Stretched, a black aisle, from door to outer gate;
Then, trembling 'neath his burden, stepped the prince
Across the threshold, blind with beating thought,
Yet ever after the vague memory
Haunted his eyelids; slowlier paced the aisle
Whose distance seemed a lifetime, and stood girt
With priests and knights, facing the lofty tomb
Of Dagobert, reared southward in the choir,
At his behest, whose chiefest minister
And abbot of the royal fane had laid
The floor with costliest marble-work and filled
The windows' branching tracery with Heaven,
At his behest, whose silence was the soul
Of that day's mourning.

Then, while all the roof
Sighed with the dying music, Philip took
The oriflamme, dulled by the jealous sun
Of Tunis, and with kingly reverence
Laid it behind the altar, praying thus:—

“Strong Saint of France! I thought not, when the hand
Of my good father plucked thy oriflamme
From this, its solemn resting-place, to waft
Thy blessing o'er the host, I little thought
That I, his worthless son, should render it
Again to thee, standing beside his death.
Thou knowest the pang that wrings a nation's heart,
Thou knowest the after-ache of dull regret,
Thou knowest the lasting sorrow clinging-sweet;
And, knowing, wilt forgive us when we make
Our blindfold love blaspheme thy providence.
O lend us some small measure of the faith
Which conquers through defeat. He hath not failed.
That royal soul, so gentle and so brave,
Thy care on earth, thy latest friend in Heaven,
Bore not thy banner vainly, if so be
That love and truth are stronger than all lust,
And Cæsar less than Christ. I yield it back
More sacred than when first he bore it hence,
More potent unto final victory,
By that heroic patience whose effect,
However foiled, yet in a noble cause
Endureth beyond death and is the strength
Of all that follow.”

So with fuller trust
Turned the bereavèd prince, and stood once more
Beside the grave; and while a trembling hush
Held all the glooming abbey, and without
The lonely wind moaned like a spirit fled,
They laid the weary heart at last to rest.

To rest, till that wild time when the deep hell,
That somewhere lurks in every human breast,
Boiled from the riven volcano-heart of France
And weltered on the surface; when the thirst
Of patient men to fare no worse than beasts,
The thirst that kings had scarcely deigned to scorn,
Was slaked with blood of princes, and the force
Compressed for ages burst with awful right
The bonds of serfdom; when, for three fierce days,
The hands that haled a monarch to his doom
Rifled the royal treasure-house of Death,
And half a hundred tombs stood gaping wide,
And half a hundred mangled bodies rolled,
Trampled with unknown dust, to one vile trench.

And so the ashes of the guileless king
Were scattered o'er the bleeding land, whose wounds
His hand had ever been the first to heal;
And the loud clamour of a thousand tongues,
Wagging for selfish prominence, hath drowned
The quiet memory of his gentle sway.
He was a ruler after Christ's own heart,
Who, judging all things by the Master's law,
Dealt justice to the weak ones of his realm,
Revered the poor, and sought not his own name;
Who, staggering oft—as who of men shall not,
When Christ himself prayed that the cup might pass—
Yet bore his burden bravely to the end,
Led by the loadstar of an aim sublime;
Who, gazing down the ages' avenue,
When other thrones sought but to quench the fire
Of God's bright East, saw far ahead but sure
The universal brotherhood of man,
One fold, one shepherd, and laid down his life
To bring it nearer. But the dull-eyed crowd,
Caught by the vulgar spangle of the names
That time will tarnish, misses the rare jewel
Whose inward glow outlasts the centuries.
His very loftiness to lower minds
Seemed wavering; as when one stands beneath
Some heaven-aspiring tower, and looks up,
And sees the light clouds skimming o'er its head,
And thinks it totters, till he turns to find
His own weak footsteps reeling, but the tower
Erect against the everlasting blue.