University of Virginia Library

And Mary pondered much upon these things,
And prayed, until the time was come to her
Which brought the one man-child of all the world,
As every mother deems her first-born son.
She saw his face upon Saint Michael's day;
The mother who should die at Hallowmas.

And in that little space of motherhood,
She prayed full many a heart-born prayer for him,
The baby Michael, in whose sturdy limbs
His father's strength should grow with growing years;
The clear-eyed boy, whose lusty life was fed
From a clean-hearted Irish peasant's breast.

Passioned with love and faith she spake to him;
‘Michael, my Michael, I am weak, but thou
Art born no weakling; thou shalt fight and win;
Shalt wrestle with the dragon, my beloved,
And beat him down, and pierce his cursed head;
The dragon of wrath and wrong; thou trampling him
In thy superb young strength.’

And Mary died.
And now for John the time was out of joint,
Although the boy was born; and he was changed,
This strong man, who was wont to look as though
He could have borne all blows that Fate could give,
Nor winced at all beneath her buffetings.
So his flesh fell from him; and in his eyes
There came a look of one who hears a call
From yonder side o' the ferry; and he died
Before his boy had learned to go alone.

He had no fear nor dread for Michael's sake,
For William Villiers had him in his heart,
His brother's son being even as his own.
So Michael from a child grew to a boy,
A healthy strong-limbed lad, expert at games,
Who swam, and ran, and wrestled, with the best,
And rode cross-country at his uncle's side.
‘His father's son,’ Sir William proudly said,
But kindlier to his book than Jack had been.
And Michael had the mother's strain; her eyes
With some unspoken question in their depths;
The Irish music of her voice; her hands
Of delicate shape, stronger in muscle and nerve;
Her Keltic quickness, as it were to leap
Up to a truth, and catch it in the air;
Albeit when his manhood came to him,
He vext his very soul with questioning
If the fair thing were truth indeed or no.
And there was in him willingness to face
Truth grim for lacking mixture of a lie;
No willingness to hold a good unshared,
Whate'er it might be, knowledge, gold, or love:
A passionate sense of justice; not the sense
Which drives a man to wrestle for his right,
Cost what it may; but that which bids him look
With careful eyes, to see if any wrong
Come of his right to any other man:
A questioning soul that sent upon his lips
Full oftentimes the curious hows and whys
Which posed Sir William and his teachers too,
Although they never thought that they were posed;
Such as, ‘Why do we live at Villiers Keep,
And Gardener Robin in a little house?
And why do rich folk hunt and fish and ride,
And go to balls, and poor folk work all day?
And why have I the things I like to have,
For asking, sometimes even for a wish,
While Jim—who is he? why, Dick Hallett's son,
The boy I told you all about one time,
You know—at Herbert Eyre's, last holidays—
He could not buy a decent pair of boots;
We bought a pair for him, Herbert and I;
His father makes so little for his pains;
He works the whole day long whene'er he can,
And sometimes has not any work to do,
And then he has no money; Uncle Will,
You've lots of money and you do not work;
I should so like to know the reason why.’
So on, so on; questions which met replies,
Such as, ‘These things are all ordained, my lad;
There must be rich and poor in every land;
But Mr. Eyre of Eyreleigh ought to look
After his tenants better; you'll not find
Such things at Villiers Keep, I think, my boy!’
‘It's true we do not plow, and dig, and hoe,
But we have much to do in other ways;
And we have what the labourers do not have,
And you will have, one day when I am gone—
Responsibility—that's a big word,
And a big thing; you'll know it by-and-by.’
‘If every man had equal share to-day
In all the wealth that England's owner of,
A year hence one man would be twice as rich,
Another in the workhouse.’

Michael heard
These things again, after he was a boy,
And after he had grappled, might and main,
With the grim problem, Poverty and Wealth.

And many questions stayed in Michael's soul,
Not to die there, but bide their hour; and time
Went on, and brought him work and holiday,
And friends, and many things that mould a life
Into the beauty narrowness and strain
Hurt often with irreparable hurt.
Sir William said, ‘His life shall be as bright
As I can make it, and his tether as long.
If he gets into scrapes,—and who that's worth
A straw avoids them?—he'll get out again.
Our house has ever kept its honour unstained,
He'll keep it so; and I will teach the boy,
And yet, perhaps he will not need to learn,
To hurt no woman for his mother's sake;
And come whatever may, we'll still be friends.’

So Michael had his uncle's love, and knew
Strong was the bond that bound them each to each;
Albeit his life was fed from many a source
His uncle's had not known. That Nature whom
Sir William knew as maker of dale and down,
Breeder of deer, guardian of fish and game,
Servant of man, especially of men
Who had, like him, their portion in the land,
To Michael was a mystery and delight,
Of spirit not his own, and yet at times
Seeming his own; a glory and a sheen,
And a shadow and a terror; and he knew
All the great poems that are living souls,
And greater ones, spirits of quickening;
And pondered much upon their winged words.
But more he pondered on some things wherein
The shallow-sighted see no poetry.
He looked about the world, and saw and felt
What men were doing and what men had done
In that great land which gave his father birth;
He mused upon the many-mannered world
Outside of England, thought upon its ways,
But never lingered long away from home,
His uncle being old; and year by year,
He went to see that land where he was born,
And saw the grave wherein his mother slept;
And knew each one among the villagers,
His foster-mother and her bonny brood
The best. And Michael Villiers thought and thought,
Having much stuff for thought. He knew each one
Of all the tenantry, and was his friend
As far as might be; seeing he was set
Away from them by birth and circumstance,
And all those old traditions, strong to bind
And loose, beyond the force of any law;
He might forget them, but they never could.
And Michael knew the men who loved him much
Were separate from him and all apart
By barriers; not fine linen and broadcloth; nay,
Nor yet by culture of body, soul, and mind;
But by the barriers, custom called, and caste,
Invisible symbolized by visible
Difference in clothing of body, soul, and mind:
Barriers which individuals perhaps
Here and there overleap; but classes ne'er.
We say that God made men;—and classes too?
Man from man differeth, and class from class.
Shall Death, the old great Leveller, stand alone
To make us equals in our beds of clay?
Not so; we are not equals even then,
By all the glory of that which cannot die,
Set on a generation's heart to give
A light for generations yet to be,
The light of noble thought and nobly deed
By freemen nobly thought and nobly done,
Which yet their brothers could not think nor do,
Because their day was one grim fight to keep
Their little spark of life from going out.
So Michael thought when he had come to face
Things worse than death in the heart of our great towns:
And so he thought and thought.

Some men all night
Wrestle, with wrestlings vehement and strong,
To gain the blessing; and go maimed for life,
For the fierce grip which Truth has laid on them:
And others find the angel as they go
About the common things of every day,
In rain and sunshine; and he speaks them fair,
And bares his loveliness, and lets them see
Things sweeter than sweet dreams, and clearer much
Than clearest visions. Truth has many ways
Of revelation to the sons of men.

None knoweth what may come, nor how, to them
Who set their faces steadfastly to go
Toward the City of cities; for to some
The daily walk, the commonest thoughts and cares,
Are the Delectable Mountains, whence they see
That Shining City, whereunto their feet
Shall come untired; the while for other men,
The mists hang dull and heavy, and their eyes
Are dim, their shoulders bowed, and their feet torn
With briars and brambles of the wilderness.