I. PART I.
ARGUMENT.
Euphemian, the descendant of a great Roman stock, is a
Christian, as is Aglaë, his wife; and each day they have three
tables set forth—one for orphans, one for widows, and one for
pilgrims. After many years a son is granted to their prayers.
While yet a child, he is esteemed by all Christian Rome to be a
Saint. In time, his parents contract the youth to a Greek
maiden. On the day of his marriage, there is sent to Alexis
one of those wondrous mandates from on high, whereof men read
in the sacred Scriptures; and he at once leaves all, and abides
at Edessa, among the pilgrims who kneel in the porches of its
chief church. After many years, a second divine mandate
requires him to return to his father's house, and abide there
unknown till death. There he lies ever in a little cell under
a marble staircase, being unable to rise through great pains.
After many years, when death draws nigh, he commands
that paper and ink should be brought; and he writes down his
history and dies alone. As soon as that scroll is read there is
great lamentation in the house; but God turns that sorrow into
joy, and Alexis is followed to his grave by all the great ones of
Rome; and the house of his fathers is changed into a church,
which remains to this day.
In Rome long since upon Mount Aventine
There stood a marble palace vast and fair
'Mid gardens rich in mulberry and vine,
With columned atrium and Parian stair,
Statued by godlike forms at either side,
Ancestral chiefs, a Roman noble's pride.
That stock was ancient when great Cæsar fell;
Ancient when Hannibal with gloomy brow
From Zama rode, till then invincible;
Ancient when Cincinnatus left his plough;
Ancient when Liberty in crimson dyed
Leaped forth, re-virgined, from a virgin's side—
Virginia's bleeding 'neath her father's knife;
Ancient when Rome in civil conflict reeled
By rapine torn or fratricidal strife
Ill fruit of that Licinian Law repealed,
And free-born peasants, famed in peace and war,
Gave place to slaves, base scum from realms afar.
Then too the Euphemian race held high its head
Above the custom new and mist of error;
The native husbandmen with freedom's tread
Walked still its fields; in gladness not in terror
Their young, fair daughters, rising from the board,
Greeted the entrance of an unfeared lord.
He came not only when the flocks were shorn
To claim his half; when corn-clad slopes grew fat;
When russet sheaves to golden barns were borne;
When olives bled, or grapes made red the vat:
He stood among them when the son was wed;
He followed to his grave the grandsire dead.
Centuries went by; they brought a dread reward:
That Senate-Order of a later day,
Fooled by their flatterers, by their slaves abhorred,
Reaped as they sowed, each upstart anarch's prey
Successively proscribed. 'Mid seas of blood
The Empire by the dead Republic stood.
The Christian Truth, held truly, had sufficed
Even then to save that Empire: nought availed
The name invoked but not the Faith of Christ,
Or Faith that made its boast in words, but failed
To rear on Pagan wrecks of sense and pride
The Christian throne of greatness sanctified.
The imperial sceptre to the East transferred
Left prouder still the West. More high each day
The pomp up-swelled of Rome's great Houses, stirred
By legendary lore and servile lay,
And hungry crowds contented long to wait
The bread-piled basket at the palace-gate.
‘My Lord receives his clients.’ In they throng,
Freedman and slave, Greek cook and Syrian priest,
Wizard and mime, adepts in dance or song;
The perfumed patron, recent from the feast
Or drunken slumbers reddening still his eyes,
Enters; and plausive shouts insult the skies,
Startling a score of scriveners, forms grotesque
That bend lean foreheads, seamed by fevered veins,
Across the ledger broad or mouldering desk;
For then each Roman noble held domains
By Rhenus, Rhodanus, and every shore
That hears or viol's sigh or panther's roar.
Those nobles seldom rode to battle-fields;
They steered to distant ports no ships broad-sailed;
But well they knew that gain which usury yields;
Or, borrowing oft, when tricksome fortune failed
Pawned their best plate and many a gem beside,
Knee-crooked to soothe some upstart lender's pride.
The gilded barge is launched: a score of slaves
Drag back the flashing oars; a second score
With incense charge each wind that curls the waves,
Or harmonize blue Baiæ's watery floor
With strains that charmed Calypso's halls erewhile,
Or lured Ulysses t'ward the Siren's isle.
They trod the marbles of the Thermæ vast
Their skirts aflame with legend-broideries;
Bull-born, Europa here the Bosphorus passed,
The Idean shepherd there adjudged the prize;
Or Venus, fisher turned, with bending rod
Down dropped a wet-winged Cupid on the sod.
Their litters borne by sweating slaves, they clomb
On August noons Soracte's steepest ridge;
Or, pinnace-cradled, pushed the creamy foam
Onward through dusk Avernus' waving sedge;
They turned not there great Maro's page, yet oft
Alike the Poet and his Sibyl scoffed.
Temples and shrines adorned their palaces;
Syrian the rite once Roman, later Greek:
Old libraries remained: they sought them less
For song heroic than for tale lubrique;
Here sophists warred in turn on body and soul;
There dust lay thick on Plato's godlike scroll.
Travelling, a troop Numidian cleared their way;
Their carrucæ were silver, gold-émbossed;
In festal barge they coasted Cumæ's bay:
If there a keener gust the ripple crossed
They shook like some sick child that sees in dream
Ixion's doom or rage of Polypheme.
Harp, lyre, and lute for ever dinned their bowers;
But witless, loud, or shrill was every strain:
They feared the incense-breath of innocent flowers
Yet quaffed their wine-cups near the uncovered drain;
Feared omens more than wrath divine, and fled
The fevered child, the parent's dying bed.
The poison root of those base ways was this:
Self-love had slain or fouled each household tie:
The wedded seldom loved, or loved amiss:
Child-birth was tribute paid to ancestry;
Rottenness reigned: the World, grown old, stripped bare,
More ruled than when the Witch was young and fair.
Need was there that the Lord of Love should burst
Once more on man as in man's prime estate,
And, teaching that the ‘First Command’ is first
The ‘Second’ second only, vindicate
For human loves that greatness theirs alone
When Love's far source and heavenly end are known.
Ages of Sin had heaped on high a debt
Heroic Virtue could alone defray:
The limb ill-joined could never be re-set
Till broken; Love, till cleansed, resume its sway.
Conventual cells that seemed to spurn the earth
And hermit caves, built up the Christian Hearth.
Fire-scorched Thebais, lion-tenanted!
'Twas in thy lion's abdicated lair
Ascetic Virtue laid its infant head:
The heart, dried up, found waters only there:
That Faith burnt in upon it from above
By pain, sent up at last Faith's offspring—Love.
Rome caught the sacred flame. Brave men, and those
Infected least by wealth and popular praise
Could walk in strength, in dignity repose,
In part were faithful to the old Roman ways:
Matrons there were on whom Cornelia's eye
Might rest; and youths well pleased like Regulus to die.
Pagan were these ofttimes, but less revered
Venus than Pallas, Plutus less than Pan:
The gods ‘Pandemian’ they nor loved nor feared:
In nobler gods the noblest thoughts of man
Looked down, so deemed they, from the Olympian throne,
Or types or delegates of that ‘God Unknown.’
Others, incensed at priestly conjuring trick,
Reluctant bade the fane profaned adieu,
But with the Sophist's godless rhetoric
Their own hearts wronged not. Far as truth they knew
They lived it; wrought for man, and peace ensued
Branding the Bad, and cleaving to the Good.
An exhalation of celestial grace
Moved o'er the Empire from the Martyrs' tombs:
Christians, oft slaves, were found in every place;
Their words, their looks, brightened the heathen gloom:
Such gleams still hallow Antoninus' page,
The saintly Pagan and Imperial Sage.
Prescient of fate the old worship lay in swoon,
Helpless though huge, dying and all but dead;
The young Faith clasped it as the keen new moon
A silver crescent risen o'er ocean's bed
Clasps that sad orb whose light from earth is won:—
Its youthful conqueror parleys with the sun.
The Poor came first, and reaped the chief reward;
Old Houses next: Truth loves Humility:
Humility is humblest when most hard
To reach—the lowliness of high degree:
Such bowed to Christ: in turn He gave to them
The stars of Truth's whole heaven for diadem.
The thought of greatness in them long had dwelt:
The difference 'twixt the greatness counterfeit
And genuine greatness plainly now they felt:
Eyes had they; and they saw it. Henceforth sweet
Was every sacrifice that Vision brought:
No wish had these to purchase heaven for naught.
They knew 'twas sense and valour, not the hand
In unguents drenched, that won the world for Rome:
Sublimer ends sublimer pains demand:
A spiritual kingship, country, hope, and home
Shone out and hailed them from the far-off shore—
‘To sea, though tempests rage and breakers roar!’
Piercing remorse was theirs whene'er they mused
On all which God to Rome in trust had given;
The majesties profaned, the rights abused:
What help to earth, what reverence to heaven,
Had these bequeathed? What meant her realm world-wide?
Injustice throned, and Falsehood deified!
Through all that boundless realm from East to West
Had Virtue flowered? Had Wisdom come to fruit?
Had Freedom raised to heaven her lordlier crest?
Had household Peace pushed down a deeper root?
More true were wives, were maids more pure that day
Than Portia, Clelia, or Nausicaa?
Behold, the flowering was of vices new;
The fruitage fruits of hate and self-disgust;
Knowledge had bathed her roots in lethal dew:
If higher now her branching head she thrust
The Upas shade spread wider than of old;
And wealth had bound man's heart in chains of gold.
The Christian noble spurned the old Roman pride;
Whate'er the Christian prized the Pagan hated,
And clasped, his zeal by wrath intensified,
Rome's meanest boasts with passion unabated:
Their homes stood near: for that cause further still
The inmates were estranged in thought and will.
The Christian ofttimes sold his all, and gave
The poor its price; another kept his lands
But spent their increase freeing serf and slave,
Himself sustained by labour of his hands:
Thus each renounced himself, for others wrought
Yet found that personal good he had not sought.
Wedded were some, and reverently to Christ
Upreared a race to Him obedient. Some
For His sake hearth and household sacrificed;
Others, in that fresh dawn of Christendom,
Though spoused lived on in vestal singleness,
Young chastity's severe yet sweet excess.
Of Christian homes the noblest and the first
Was that huge palace on Mount Aventine:
Fortune and Pagan spite had done their worst:
They maimed it, yet not marred. The time's decline
Made it but holier seem. The Christian Truth
Shone, starlike, from its breast in endless youth.
Three hundred freemen served there as of yore,
Bondsmen whilom. The clients of old time
Walked there as children, parasites no more;
Mastery and service, like recurrent rhyme,
Kissed with pure lip; for one great reverence swayed
Alike their hearts who ruled and who obeyed.
The beast that drew the water from the well
In nearer stream had earlier quenched his thirst,
Nor laboured over-burdened: placable
Was each man: vengeance there was held accursed:
Before one altar knelt the high, the low;
Heard the same prayer: it rose for friend and foe.
Euphemian was the name far-known of him
The lord of all those columned porticoes
Those gardens vast with ilex alleys dim
Those courts enriched with orange and with rose:
Happy in youth; thrice happier since his bride,
Aglae, paced those halls her lord beside.
She was a being beautiful as day,
Tender and pliant to her husband's will
As to the wind that flower each breath can sway
While branch and blade hang near it hushed and still,
And therefore ‘wind-flower’ named. On her Christ's Poor
Looked ever with moist eyes and trust secure.
One thing alone was wanting to this pair—
The sound of children's feet patting the floor,
The ring of children's laughter on the air,
Their clamorous joy at opening of a door
To see, to clasp their parents newly come
From watery Tibur or green Tusculum.
The Poor pray well: at last the prayer was heard
From countless hearths ascending eve and morn;
From countless hearts. The joy so long deferred
Was sent at last; the longed-for boy was born.
That day all Rome kept festival; that night
Each casement shone, and every face was bright.
The months went swiftly by: the Seven-Hilled City
Well loved that Babe; the poor man's boast was he,
The theme of neighbour's tale and minstrel's ditty:
Maiden and matron clasped him on her knee:
And many a saintly mother said—and smiled—
‘Christ died a Man: but came to earth a Child!’
Once as he slept his mother near him knelt:
She prayed as never she had prayed before,
And, praying, such an inspiration felt
As though some breeze from God o'er ocean's floor
Missioned from Bethlehem's star-loved crib, came flying
O'er her and him in that small cradle lying.
One night within her memory rose that word
Simeon to Blessed Mary spake erewhile,
‘Also through thine own soul shall pierce the sword;’
She mused, like those who weep at once and smile,
‘The Mother of a Saint, how great soe'er
Her joy, in Mary's sacred grief must share!’
Years passed: a Monk, that child at vespers singing
‘Salve Regina,’ while a tear down stole,
Spake thus, that anthem through the rafters ringing,
‘That voice is music of a singing Soul!
Yon child shall live on earth as lives a Spirit;
When dead, some crown seraphic shall inherit!’
The child became the boy, but never lost
That charm which beautified his childhood's ways:
Skilful the most of those the quoit who tossed
Or chased the boar, he nothing did for praise,
Nor e'er in feast or revel sought a part;
Rome was to him pure as a forest's heart.
Raptured he read her legends of old time—
The Father-Judge who doomed his sons to die;
The Wife that, sentencing another's crime,
Pierced her own heart, then sank without a sigh.
Great Acts to him were all: not then he knew
That oft Endurance wins a crown more true.
Later, for him the Meditative wore
Greatness more great than Action's, and more dear:
The weight of Thought with neck unbowed he bore
As Saints their aureole crowns. All objects near
Were lost in lights of sunset or sunrise:
His one sole passion was Self-Sacrifice.
His guides in Christian as in Classic lore
Boasted untired the youth's intelligence:
Ere long he marked these twain were still at war,
The prophets one of Spirit, one of Sense:
‘I will not serve two masters;’ thus he cried,
And pushed the flower-decked pagan scroll aside.
Was it that sacred moment shaped his life,
Keeping it flawless? Thousands safeliest pace
Faith's lower road, dusty and dinned with strife;
Not so the man elect to loftier place,
For sins in others small are great in him
Whose grace is large—such grace least stains bedim.
Thenceforth his ‘eye was single.’ Loss was gain
To him, since Suffering had the world redeemed;
For that cause still he sought the haunts of pain;
Still on the sufferer's couch like morn he beamed,
And in his father's house with wine and bread
Served still God's Poor, or with them sat and fed.
He lived a life all musical, for still
Discords of earth by faith grew harmonized;
He lived in a great silence, spirit and will
Hushed in his God. Because naught else he prized
Loud as that first, great world-creating word,
God's ‘small, still voice’ within him, still he heard.
Nothing in him was sad, nothing morose;
The serious face still tended to a smile;
In him sorrow and joy still harboured close,
Like eve and dawn met in some boreal isle.
Bad actions named, sad looked he and surprised;
But seldom strove, rebuked, or criticised.
There were who marvelled at his piercing thought;
There were who marvelled at his simpleness:
High Truths, and Inspirations rapture-fraught
Came to his mind like angels: not the less
Where fools walk well at times his footstep erred:
He heard the singing spheres, or nothing heard.
Father and mother both with tender pride
Loved him: there only, pride regained a part;
They who had spurned the world, its scorn defied,
Now gladdened that their son had won its heart.
They smiled when kinsmen said: ‘This boy shall raise
Waste places of thy House in later days!’
‘All that is mine Alexis must inherit,’
He answered. Then the mother, ‘Who is she
Worthy by race, by beauty, and by merit
To be to him true wife as I to thee?’
Such maid they sought long time; when hope was o'er
They found her—found on earth's most famous shore.
Her race had dwelt in Athens ere it wrestled
With Sparta for the foremost place in Greece;
Earlier, in Colchian vales, less known had nestled
Ere Jason thence had filched the Golden Fleece.
Thus to his mates on wintry nights her sire
Boasted—true Greek—beside the fir-cone fire.
Euphemian and that sire were ancient friends
So far as Greek and Roman friends might be,
Friends in their youth; but though unlikeness blends
Natures cognate with finer sympathy,
So diverse these, men said 'twas memory's tie,
Not love's, that held them still, through severance, nigh.
Few months ere died the Greek, that friend of old
Had sought him out, and standing by his bed,
Had vowed to nurture in his own fair fold
That orphan lonely left. Her father dead,
And sacred mourning days expired, the twain
Spread sail for Rome across the wine-dark main.
At sea, to please the maid, her guardian took
The sweet and venerable name of Sire;
Her winsome grace, her wit, her every look—
But few could witness such and not admire;
Gravely Euphemian marked them, sadly smiled;
Yet loved her as a father loves his child.
Likewise, as up and down his musings swayed,
A thought recurred: ‘The girl is light of wing!
What then? Alexis is too grave and staid:
Christian she is; to each the years must bring
Fit aid by friendly difference best supplied:
Ere three months more Zoe shall be his bride.’
Zoe, the loveliest of Athenian girls,
Was prouder thrice to bear the Athenian name
Than if the East had rained its gems and pearls
Knee-deep about her path. To Rome she came
Curious, yet spleenful too. The world's chief site
To her meant sceptred dulness, brainless might.
The ship that bore her thither smiled to waft
Creature so bright; smooth seas revered their charge:
Cythera's uplands, as she neared them, laughed:
The Ætnean heights, Trinacria's wave-washed marge,
Gladdened; they sang, ‘Our Proserpine again
Is come to gather flowers on Enna's plain!’
When Zoe entered Rome, she turned, heart-sick,
From arch and column flattering regal pride,
From cliff-like walls up-piled of sun-burned brick
Beneath whose shade men lion-torn had died,
From alien obelisks hieroglyph-o'ergraven,
For centuries glassed in Egypt's stillest haven.
That mood went by: sudden the cloud she spurned
And, shaking from lashed lids an angry tear,
To that mute man beside her, laughing, turned
And spake: ‘The trophies of all lands are here!
Rome conquered earth: but why? Too dull her brain
For better tasks, the victories which remain!
‘They boast their Heroes: but they love them not!
Lo, there! An Emperor stands yon column's crown!
What Greek would strain his eyes to scan a spot
Jet-black in sun-bright skies? No Attic clown!
There Trajan towers, and, eastward, Antonine:
O brains Beotian, fatter than your kine!’
Lightly thus spake that beaming creature hard,
Nor noted that, as one in still disdain,
Her comrade silent rode. A fixed regard
He bent upon a cross-surmounted fane:
A Grecian temple near it stood: his eye
Saw but that small, low church, that sunset sky.
He answered late: ‘Your Grecian pride of Art,
Daughter, and Rome's old pagan pride of arms,
Alike stand sentenced here. For Christian heart
No greatness save of heavenly birth hath charms.
In Rome the Faith found martyrs three long ages:
She won but audience from the Athenian sages!’
The beauteous one looked up; her sensitive lip
And tender cheek asked leave, it seemed, to smile;
Then, as a bud that frosts of April nip,
That smile, discouraged, died. Pensive awhile
She rode; her palfrey nearer drew to his:
She raised his hand, and pressed thereon a kiss.
‘Forgive,’ she said, ‘the petulance of youth!
Wisdom serene, and Virtue proved by years,
Note not—’ She wept; but soon her cheek in sooth
Like leaves rain-washed beamed brighter for her tears,
And livelier than before her critic tongue
This way and that its shafts of satire flung.
At times the unbending Roman smiled perforce;
At times the patriot stern essayed to frown:
She noted either mood; and her discourse
Accordant winged its light way up or down
Like those white-pinioned birds that sink then soar
O'er high-necked waves breasting a sandy shore.
The sun had set; they clomb Mount Aventine,
That Augur-haunted height. They paused: she saw
Old Tiber, lately bright, in sanguine line
Wind darkening t'wards the sea. A sudden awe
Chilled her. She felt once more that evening breeze
Which waves that yew-grove of the Eumenides
Where Athens fronts Colonos. There of old
Sat Destiny's blind mark, King Œdipus;
And, oft as she had passed it, shudderings cold
Ran through her fibred frame, made tremulous
As the jarred sounding-board of lyre or harp:
So thrilled the girl that hour with shiverings sharp.
‘I know it! This is Rome's Oracular Hill!
Dreadful it looks; a western Calvary!
A sacrificial aspect dark and still
It wears, that saith, “Prepare, O man, to die!”
Father! you house not on this mount of Fate?’
Thus as she spake they reached his palace gate.
There stood, still fair—tenderer than when more young—
She who had made her husband's youth so bright:
Long to her neck the Athenian Exile clung
Wearied and sad. Not less that festal night
The gladsomest of the radiant throng was she,
Centre and soul of Roman revelry.
