The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

Not far from where Euphrates, that great river,
From heights of Taurus seaward winds in flood
Its mighty youth replenishing for ever,
In days of yore a royal city stood:
Two lesser streams embraced it like two arms
That clasp some bright one in her bridal charms.

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Around it gleamed Plane-tree and Poplar shivering
In Syrian gales tempered by mountain snows,
And gardens green traversed by runnels quivering
And Palms at each side set in columned rows:
High in the midst a church of ancient fame
There rose. Edessa was that city's name.

Before that church there stood five porches fair
Wherein the maimed and crippled sued for alms;
Likewise God's penitents, admitted there
As men beloved, might hear the hymns and psalms
Until, their penance past, once more the shrine
Received them, and they fed on food divine.

Within that fivefold narthex one there knelt
Of race unknown, and humbler than the rest,
His garment hair-cloth 'neath a leathern belt;
He deemed himself unmeet to stand a guest
Within that hallowed precinct whose embrace
Cherished the Veil all-blest and ‘Sacred Face.’

For that cause year by year he dwelt without
Although in spirit kneeling still within;
And neither civic pomp nor popular shout
Made way to him. Propping a haggard chin
On haggard hand he sat with low-bent brows
Absorbed in heavenly thoughts, unearthly vows.

Meantime o'er all the world's circumference
Euphemian sent wise men to seek his son:
Some to Laodicea sailed, and thence
Their way like others to Edessa won;
Near him they drew; upon him turned their eye;
They knew him not; yet passed him with a sigh.

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There were who turned again, and, instinct-taught,
Lodged on those fingers worn a piece of bread;
And he with gladness ate it, for his thought
Grew humbler daily; breaking it, he said
‘Thank God that I have eaten of their hand
Whom once I fed and held at my command!’

So thus by patience and long-suffering first,
And next through heart self-emptied to its core,
The inmost of Christ's Teaching on him burst;
And ‘Blessed they who mourn,’ ‘Blessed the poor,’
Lived on his lips, as he in them with awe
The shrouded vision of God's greatness saw.

He saw the things men see not. In a glass
Nearer to God than Nature's best, in Man
He saw that God Who ever is and was:
In those whom this world lays beneath her ban
The halt, the stricken, saw their Maker most:
The saved he saw in those the fool deems lost.

Now when those years were past, within the church
One day, as vespers ceased, was heard a Voice,
‘Bring in My Son who kneeleth in the porch:
The same shall see My Countenance and rejoice.’
Then forth God's people rushed, both old and young,
And haled the man to where that picture hung.

Instant that Pilgrim fixed his eyes thereon,
And saw that Countenance through its mist of blood
Which some see not: and still, ere set of sun,
A change miraculous swifter than a flood
O'erswept it. Grief and shame far off were driven:
It shone as shines the Saviour's Face in heaven.

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And still he said: ‘Behold, these Faces twain
Reveal the portions twain to man allowed;
For one of these is earth and Holy Pain,
And one is heavenly Glory, when the cloud
Of time dissolves.’ And still his prayer he made
For those far off: ‘Aid them, Thou Saviour, aid!’

'Twas needed sore. The day Alexis fled
His mother sat in ashes on the ground,
And thenceforth day by day; and still she said,
‘Lo, thus I sit until the Lost is found!’
And night by night murmured the one-day bride,
‘His wife I am: faithful I will abide.

‘I will not muse, as once, in groves of Greece,
Nor dance, as once, in palace halls of Rome;
Until this wedded widowhood shall cease,
Here with his parents I will make my home:
I must be patient now, though proud of yore:
He called me “Child!” He said, “We meet once more.”’

While sinks the sun nighing his watery bed
The shadow reacheth soon the valley's breast;
More late it climbeth to the mountain's head—
His loved one gone, Euphemian hoped the best:
Not yet the shade had reached him. Every morn
He said: ‘Ere night Alexis may return!

‘The day my Son was born—the self-same hour—
I shook the dust from many a treasured scroll
Precious with lore which time would fain devour,
The great deeds of our House. In one fair whole
To blend those annals was my task for years:
The pages bled: they cannot end in tears.’

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But when his messengers from all the lands
Returning, early some, and others late,
From Gaul, Iberia, Thrace, from Syrian sands,
Red Libyan coasts, and Calpé's golden gate,
Brought back the self-same tidings as the first,
That grief which reached him last was grief the worst.

Silent he mused: ‘Were these our prayers of old?
Sent was our child, that late-conceded boy,
To be the lamb unblemished of our fold,
Then vanish, and to by-word change our joy?
Had he but won the martyr's crown and fame!
But now God's Church shall never hear his name.

‘O ancient House, revered in days of yore,
House blind yet just, I deemed that years to be
Fourfold to thee, now Christian, would restore
What time or heathen hate had reft from thee,
And of thy greatness make a boon for all—
That dream is over! Let the roof-tree fall!’

Thus as his father mourned Alexis knelt
One day before that picture-hallowed shrine,
When suddenly he heard at once and felt
A voice oracular, awful yet benign:
‘This day in prayer be mighty for those Three,
Since what to them I grant I grant through thee.’

Then prayed the Saint as Saints alone can pray;
And on that far-off Three, they knew not why,
There fell a calm undreamed of till that day,
As when some great storm ceases from the sky
Sudden, and into harbour sweeps the bark,
And green hills laugh, and singing mounts the lark.

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Thenceforth for things gone by they hungered less,
And of the joy to come had oftener vision;
Thenceforth self-will inflamed not heart-distress,
Nor pride that draws from pain perverse fruition:
The parents saw their son once more a child;
The wife, as when he saw her first, and smiled.

Again a year passed by:—within his heart
That son received an answer from his God:
‘Go to the great sea down, and thence depart
To Tarsus, where My servant, Paul, abode;
For I will show thee there by tokens true
The things which thou must suffer and must do.’

The man of God arose, and gat him down
To where Laodicea's mast-thronged bay
Mirrored that queenly city's towery crown,
And found a ship for Tarsus bound that day,
And sailed till o'er the morn-touched deep arose
Her walls, and hills beyond her white with snows.

Then from those hills a storm rushed forth, as when
An eagle from high cliffs has kenned its quarry;
And the black ship before it raced like men
Who flee the uplifted sword they dare not parry
With necks low bent. So fled that ship: each sail
Split; and the masts low leaned like willows in the gale.

Amid the slanted rain of falling spars
And roar of winds and billows far and near
Astonished stood those sea-worn mariners
Yet mute, since none his neighbour's voice might hear:
Then heard God's Saint: ‘For all this company
Fear nought; for thine they are. They shall not die.

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‘Fear not for thine own self: this storm is Mine;
The same shall lay thee by thy father's door:
There shall the last storm greet thee—storm benign,
For what I take, that fourfold I restore.’
Next morn they entered Tiber's mouth: at Rome
He stood ere noon, and saw his father's home,

Saw it far off whilst yet upon his way
To earth's cathedral metropolitan,
‘Mother and Head of Churches,’ there to pray
That what to him remained of life's brief span
Might, through God's help, accomplish God's decree,
And praise His name for all eternity.

Entering, he knelt before that crypt cross-crowned
Where in a subterranean chapel small
Reposed, awaiting God's Last Trumpet's sound,
The sacred bones of Peter and of Paul:
A child he oft had knelt its gates before;
There learned what God had yet for him in store.

Evening drew nigh: he left the Lateran:
Anon, as slow he paced Rome's stateliest street,
From Cæsar's palace issued forth a man
Though bent, majestic, with attendance meet.
That man Alexis knew. With steadfast eye
The sire drew near the son; and passed him by.

Then cried that son with anguished voice and face
‘Servant of God, revered and loved of all,
Within thy house yield me a little place
That I may daily eat the crumbs that fall
Down from thy table.’ And his sire replied:
‘So be it, Pilgrim: walk thou by my side.’

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Through lonely ways dimmed by the day's decline
That sire and son made way, and neither spake
Till, step by step climbing Mount Aventine
They reached that well-known mansion. Flake by flake
The snows were falling. 'Twas not like the day
Of that fair bridal in that far-off May.

Alexis spake: ‘A stripling, sir, I saw
Ofttime thy house; memory thereof I keep:
Beneath the great stair—on a bed of straw—
Slept then a mastiff: there I fain would sleep.’
And answered thus Euphemian: ‘Let it be!
Long since he died: his place remains for thee.’

Once more the son: ‘Footsore and weak am I:
'Tis time to sleep: my pilgrimage is made:
The mastiff died: the Pilgrim soon will die.’
Then down upon the straw his limbs he laid,
And sank asleep. For hours, as there he slept
Two women by his couch their vigil kept.

Down from the head of one, silk-soft, snow-white,
Rolled waves of hair: the younger kept her bloom
Though worn. They sat beside him till twilight
At last was lost in evening's deepening gloom,
And longed that he might wake and eat; and spread
Their silks and velvets closelier on his bed.

At morn he woke. Anguish and crippling pain
Fixed from that hour their eyes on that sole man;
And like to dead men on the battle-plain
Silent he lay. In pain his day began,
In pain worked on till daylight's last had fled
As though great nails had fixed him to his bed.

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And ever by his couch they ministered
Who loved that sufferer well yet knew him not:
For at the first note of the wakening bird
That mother came who o'er her infant's cot
Ere break of day so oft had peered; at noon
His sire drew nigh: and when the rising moon

Flung o'er the marble floor a beam as bright
As that long path wherewith it paves the sea
Softly she came upon whose bridal night
So black a shade had fallen so suddenly;
And on his bed sat in the white moonshine
Like one that inly says: ‘This place is mine.’

Some deem they knew him not because so long
Fierce Syrian suns that sweet face had imbrowned;
And some because at God's command there clung
A mist illusive still their eyes around;
While some are sure that mist, deepening with years,
Was unmiraculous, and a mist of tears.

Yet one avers that, gazing evermore,
Year after year upon that Sacred Face,
Its semblance spread that Pilgrim's countenance o'er,
Its anguish fixed, its gleams of heavenly grace,
So that who saw the living face, beneath
That veil saw, too, the Face of Christ in death.

But when his parents at high festivals
Serving the mighty Rite were absent long
A slave, late Pagan, reared in those great halls
Of him had charge. At times he did him wrong;
Then cried—that blow rebuked by no complaint—
‘The man's a fool! Not less the fool's a Saint!’

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And oft an Elder to his couch there came
Old ere his time, with haught yet pleading eye,
Who spake: ‘My sires to me an ancient name
Bequeathed. When I am dead, that name shall die.’
The pilgrim answered: ‘Household none on earth
Can last, save Christ's. The rest are nothing worth.’

And oft a woman sat beside that bed
Meek-eyed, with soft white hair: ‘A child had I:
The twentieth winter now is past and fled:
That child returns not. O that I might die!’
And he replied: ‘Have courage, and endure;
Pray well; and find thy children in Christ's Poor.’

And many a time low-bent beneath the rod
One proud of old, still fair as fair may be,
Though bright no longer, spake: ‘Pray, man of God,
That, living yet, my husband I may see
A living man!’ Softly he made reply:
‘Yea, thou shalt see thy husband ere thou die!’

And ever when those Three were set at meat
Euphemian sent him viands, flesh and wine,
But he of barley crusts alone would eat:
And still, he spake to them of things divine;
And still, when back he sank and ceased from speech
Musing they sat, or staring each on each.

For others spake of great things through the ear
Divulged to faith: he spake of great things seen
That flash as stars descried through ether clear,
Clearer for frosty skies and north wind keen:
The Martyr means the Witness: such was he,
Martyr, not slain, of selfless charity.

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At times the old passion in their bosoms burned;
At times the wound half-healed welled forth anew;
Then to that man of woes those strong ones turned,
Child-like; and thus he gave them solace true:
‘God yearns to grant you peace, yet waits until
Your wills are one with His all-loving Will.’

And when they said, ‘Weary we grow of prayer
Because God hath not given us that we sought,’
He answered: ‘Love in God, and work, and bear;
Let no man say, “Serve they their God for nought?”
Pray for great Rome; for him your Lost One pray,
That he be faithful till his dying day.’

Suns rose and set; the seasons circled slow;
Upon that House settled a gradual peace
Breathed from that spot obscure and pallet low;
Yea, as the dews of midnight drench a fleece
So drenched was every heart with that strange calm,
And wounds long festered felt the healing balm.

Now when the years decreed had all gone by
There came from God an answer to His Saint:
‘Rejoice! Thy work is worked, and thou shalt die:’
Then gave he thanks in happy tone though faint,
And, turning to that slave with quiet smile,
Demanded parchment scroll and writing-style.

Straightway he wrote the story of his life
And God's Command in love that spares not, given;
And ended thus: ‘O Parents, and O Wife!
We meet ere long: no partings are in heaven.
I loved you well. Strangely my faith God proved:
Yet know that few are loved as ye were loved.

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‘Farewell! God sent you trials great below
Because for you He keeps great thrones on high:
Likewise by you God willeth to bestow
New gifts on man. Each dear domestic tie
Whereof so many a year ye stood amerced
Shall yet rule earth—but raised and hallowed first.

‘Because ye loved your God as few men love
He called you forth His witnesses to be
That Love there is all human loves above,
A Love all-gracious in its jealousy
That, all exacting, all suffices too;
The world must learn this lesson, and from you.’

When all was writ he crossed upon his breast
His arms, and in his right hand clasped that scroll:
And as the Roman monks arose from rest
Nocturns to chant, behold, that dauntless soul
Cleansed here on earth by fire expiatory
When none was near passed hence into the glory:

At noontide, in the Lateran basilic,
Blessed Pope Innocent who, throned that day
High in Saint Peter's world-wide bishopric
O'er all the churches of the world held sway
Had sung at Mass that text, though dread, benign,
‘Unless a man leave all he is not Mine.’

That moment from the Holy Place a Voice
Went forth: ‘All ye who labour, come to Me:’
And yet again: ‘All ye that weep, rejoice!’
At once that mighty concourse sank on knee
And each man laid his forehead near the ground:
Then, close to each, those pillared aisles around

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Distinct and clear thus heard they, word by word:
‘Seek out My Saint, and bid him pray for Rome:
Yea, if he pray, his pleading shall be heard
That lighter thus My Judgments may become,
For now the things concerning Rome have end.
Seek in Euphemian's house My Servant and My Friend.’

That hour uprising in procession went
The Roman People. With them paced that day
The Emperors twain, and holy Innocent
Between them, higher by the head than they.
Their crowns Arcadius and Honorius wore,
His mitre Blessed Peter's successor.

Arrived, they questioned if beneath that roof
There dwelt a Saint. The Christians said: ‘Not here;’
Then rose that whilome slave that sat aloof,
He who had watched the sick man all that year:
He spake: ‘A Saint is here; I did him wrong,
Yet never heard from him upbraiding tongue.’

Straight to that marble stair Euphemian ran
And passed beneath its central arch; and lo!
Dead on his small straw pallet lay the man;
And on that face, so long a face of woe,
Strange joy there lived and mystical content;
And o'er him with wide wings an Angel bent.

Aloud Euphemian cried: they flocked around
And saw and knelt. But some that stood espied
That parchment in the dead hand clasped and wound,
And strove to loose it. To that pallet's side

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The brother Emperors drew, and each was fain
To win it from his hold, but strove in vain.

Lastly Pope Innocent approached, and spread
Softly upon the dead man's hand his own;
And lo, that parchment dropped upon the bed:
Long, standing by that sacred head alone
The Pontiff eyed that scroll—at last he raised;
While each man, rising, nearer drew and gazed.

He spread it wide: he read: the listeners trembled;
Each heart beat slow, and every cheek grew pale
And strong men wept with passion undissembled;
For short, and plain, and simple was that tale:
No praise it sued; no censure seemed to shun:
Record austere of great things borne and done.

Now when Euphemian saw these things, and heard,
Motionless stood the man like shape of stone;
Ere long he fell a-shivering without word;
And lastly dropped upon the pavement prone:
But when kind arms had raised him, on the dead
He fixed unseeing eyes, and nothing said.

Next through that concourse rushed the Mother, wailing,
‘Let be! Shall I not see the babe I bore?’
And reached the dead; and then, her forces failing,
Sank to her knees, and eyed him, weeping sore;
And as a poplar sways in stormy air
So swayed she; and back streamed her long white hair.

A change—she stood. She who her whole life long
Had lived the soft and silent life of flowers

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Pleased with the beam, patient of rain and wrong,
Had held, unconscious all those years and hours
A fire within hidden 'neath ashes frore:
It rose—to speak but once, and spake no more.

It spake reproach: ‘Ah me! thy Sire and I
Sought thee while near thou lay'st, but vainly sought,
Likewise a household slave right ruthlessly
Smote thee at seasons: thou didst answer nought:
Thou didst not stanch our tears! O Son, O Son!
Make answer from the dead, was this well done?’

Last, with firm foot drew near the one-day Wife,
And looked on him, and said: ‘I know that face!
Dead is the hope that cheered the widow's life:
'Tis time the Wife her Husband should embrace!’
She spake, and sank in swoon upon his breast,
And in that swoon her heart—then first—had rest.

But by the Dead still stood Pope Innocent;
His deacons placed the mitre on his head;
And on his pastoral staff the old man leant:
Upon that throng his eye he fixed, and said,
‘Henceforth I interdict all tears. A Saint
Lies here. Insult not such with grief or plaint.

‘This man was God's Elect; for from a child
He walked God's prophet in an age impure:
Ye knew him, sirs, harmless and undefiled
He nothing preached. To act and to endure,
To live in God's light hid, unknown to die—
This task was his. He wrought it faithfully.

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‘This man a great work wrought: its greatness fills
True measure since His Work Who still divides
To each man severally as He wills;
He common souls in common courses guides:
To some He points strange paths till then untrod:
This thing had been ill-done had it not come from God.

‘Behold! He spreads the smooth and level way
And blesses those that walk there pure and lowly:
Behold! He calls, “Ascend My hill, and pray,
And holy be ye for your God is holy:
Let each man hear My Voice and heed My Call:
For what I give to each I give for all.”’

He spake, and ceased. Then lo! an angel strain
At first breathed softly round that straw-laid bed
Swelled through those halls: and with it mingled plain
That voice so loved of him so lately dead
Then when, a child, he breathed that vesper hymn
‘Salve, Regina,’ through the twilight dim.

Again and yet again that strain ascended;
And in it, sweeter each time than before,
The child-voice with the angelic met and blended;
The courts, the garden bowers were flooded o'er,
Till sorrow seemed to all some time-worn fable,
As when, to lull sick babes, old nurses babble.

It ceased. The Emperors gave command and straight
Men stretched the Dead upon a golden bier
For kings ordained and passed the palace gate
And laid him in a church to all men dear;
And lo! that night blind men who near him prayed
Made whole, gave thanks, departing without aid.

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But in that palace where their Saint was born
Till death his parents, sad no more, abode;
And, yearly as recurred her marriage morn,
His wife put on her wedding-dress, and showed
A paler, tenderer reflex, many said,
Of what she looked the morning she was wed.

Serving their God—all lame half-service past—
Serving their God, and, in their God, His poor,
They lived; and God, Whose best gift is His last,
Suffered not these that anguish to endure
Worn patriots feel watching their land's decay:
Ere Rome had fall'n they died—on the same day.

Euphemian's latest act had given command
To raise where stood his Fathers' house in pride
A church to God. This day that church doth stand
Honouring the spot whereon his dearest died
Of that huge house remains that stony stair
Alone, which roofed the dying lion's lair.

The Romans bring their infants to that spot;
Young children peer therein, then shrink away
Between those columned ranges twain that blot
With evening shades the glistening pavements grey;
And oft the latest lingerer drops a tear
For those so sternly tried, and yet so dear.

But ever while the bells salute that morn
When from the darksome womb of mortal life
Their Saint into the heavenly realm was born,
Old Aventine with bannered throngs is rife;
They mount o'er ruins where the great courts stood:
They mark old Tiber, now a shipless flood.

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They reach the church. Star-bright the Altar stands
The Benediction Hymn ascends once more:
Nearer they gather: Apostolic hands
Uplift the Eternal Victim: all adore.
The world without is nought: within that fane
Abide the things that are and that remain.

There still thou livest, Alexis! livest for ever
There and in heaven, rooted in endless peace—
Thou, and those Three—like trees beside a river
That clothe each year their boughs with fresh increase
Of flower and fruit embalming airs divine:
In that high realm forget not me and mine!

University of Virginia Library

PART III.