The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

Saint Germanus, of Auxerre, reaches Nanterre, near Paris. Among the Christian people there he notes a child of seven years old, by name Genevieve, and knows by divine inspiration that she is a Saint. He enjoins upon her a great faithfulness to her Lord, and lifting from the ground a small iron relic, with the cross graven thereon, commands her to wear it round her neck till death, and to wear no ornament besides. Lastly, he announces that God will, through that child, draw many from their sins, and that she will one day be honoured as the Patron Saint of Paris; which predictions were fulfilled.

Germanus, Saint and Bishop, who erewhile
So glorious made his sacred see, Auxerre,
Journeyed to Britain, then ‘The Northern Isle’
Styled by the Gauls. Heretic sin raged there:
The Church of God had sent him for that cause
To vindicate Christ's Faith, His Church's laws.

One eve he reached, as slowly sank the sun,
A tree-girt hamlet loud with children's sport
His resting-place, for wont was he to shun
Those cities huge where wealth and pride consort.
Lutetian Paris stood not far: but he
Loved men of lofty heart and low degree.

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Red on the church-roof hung the sunset fire;
Thus spake he: ‘I in yonder church must pray
To Him, its Guardian, 'mid the angelic choir—
Great joy that Spirit should thus keep watch o'er clay!—
First for that hamlet's children; next that I
Though weak, may prosper in my mission high.’

That place was Pagan half and Christian half;
Its Christian half swarmed forth to meet their guest
Matron and elder leaning on his staff
Young men and maids in crimson kirtle drest;
In front a priest with brows to earth inclined
Moved with slow footsteps: children raced behind.

The Sire of men with lifted hand and heart
Sent forth his blessing o'er that gladsome throng,
Then moved among them zealous to impart
The lore they loved. That time, Christ's poor among,
A bishop still was greeted with such zest
As when the callow fledgelings of a nest

What time they hear the mother-bird returning
Make gladsome stir and open beaks uplift
For needful food, her foray's harvest, yearning;
Then grateful feed, unquestioning of the gift:—
Sudden that bishop's piercing eye was stayed
Upon a child hard by, a seven-years maid.

A heaven-like beauty triumphed in her face,
A beauty such as vulgar souls pass by:
Visibly on her beamed supernal grace:
The whole sweet-moulded form, like lip and eye,
Shone out in gracious meanings, made appeal
To men who think aright because they feel.

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Germanus watched her long; then downward sped
From heaven upon his spirit, there fell a beam;
O'er his worn face that inner splendour spread;
And thus he spake: ‘O friends we walk in dream:
Far glories fancy-born, for these we sigh,
For that cause miss God's marvels ever nigh.

‘See ye that child with eyes fast fixed on heaven?
Elect was she ere sun or moon had birth!
I tell you that, besides that angel given—
Seraph perchance—her Guardian here on earth,
Thousands this hour are following from above
That creature's steps this hour with gaze all love.

‘I tell you that while wolf and wild boar trample
God's Church, His Eden through all lands diffused,
Within that infant breast God holds a temple
That ne'er by man or fiend shall be abused;
That sinners many she shall save, and bless
This land, its mother-city's Patroness.’

Germanus ceased: then to that child he drew
And straight she turned, as one who wakes from trance,
Her dusk eyes from that heaven of deepening blue
And fastened them on his. No transient glance
Was hers, but fearless gaze and frank the while
All round her quick red lips there ran a smile.

He spake: ‘My child, if God should spare your life,
In what sort would you live it when full grown?
In convent or in house; a Christian wife
With babes, or spoused to Christ, and His alone?’
She mused; then answered softly; ‘I would bide
With Christ alone, His handmaid, child, and bride:

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‘For where the convent rises from yon grove
Spouses of Christ there dwell; and glad are they;
From morn to eve their life is peace and love;
And still they tend His poor, and still they pray:
Me too, though stammerer yet, they teach to sing
His praises. Hark! Their vesper bell they ring!

‘Beseech thee, Man of God, to lead me there!
Beseech thee, bid those sisters in their choir
To place me grown to maid-hood.’ Unaware
She stretched to him both hands. That child's desire
To that grey patriarch seemed as God's command:
T'ward that still convent paced they hand in hand.

Behind them thronged that concourse wondering much:
Not few among them censured sore that child
Demanding, ‘dares she then that hand to touch?’
Not so the Nuns: they saw from far, and smiled;
Then near the altar raised a rustic throne
And waited in the porch with myrtles strewn.

Germanus entered: on that throne he sate:
Unawed beside him stood that little maid;
And ever, as the legends old relate,
His wrinkled hand upon her head was stayed;
His eyes were downward bent: upraised were hers
As though the roof she saw not, but the stars.

Some say that, heavenward while that anthem soared
Which Mary made, knowledge of things to be
Fell on him in the visions of the Lord,
Those visions spirit-eyes alone can see;
Such as the Hebrew Prophets saw of old,
And Paul and Peter in God's later fold.

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He saw her climb, her lantern in her hand,
Nightly, Montmartre, piercing the midnight gloom;
He saw the Church that rose at her command
Thereon, and hallowed more Saint Denis' tomb.
Bright was that lantern: brighter far that light
Which later from her grave made glad each night!

He saw her, one slight finger raised, discourse
With steel-clad Clovis on the Christian Faith,
And t'ward it draw the warrior with sweet force:
Lastly he saw her laid in happy death
Near him and his Clotilde. For centuries fame
Gave to that church wherein they slept her name.

The anthem ended, with them died the day:
Staff-propp'd, Germanus neared a threshold low:
He beckoned to her parents: wondering, they
Obeyed, and thus he spake in accents slow:
‘Severus and Gerontia, blest are ye
Since great among God's Saints your child shall be.

‘Full oft, I deem, her slender hand and arm
Ye raised, and with them traced the Sacred Sign
To shield her infant brow and breast from harm
Ere she that ritual's meaning could divine:
It helped her well: better than I she knows,
Few better, what that Cross on man bestows.

‘Liegeful I know hath been your wedded life,
And that ye reverenced God's high sacrament
Marriage, that rite which husband joins to wife
With mystic meaning and benign intent:
Reverence His Saint that 'neath your roof doth tarry
As He, that Patriarch Husband, reverenced Mary.

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‘She seeks that “better part” fitted for few:
Nurse ye that hope; shield her from all things base;
Rule her, and keep her holy, humble, true,
For great the prize she claims, and hard the race:
Farewell! Return at morn when heaven grows grey;
With her return. Far hence I take my way.’

Next morn, an hour ere light, her parents led
Their child to where that Sire of men had slept,
Who, kneeling now, his matin office said:
Throngs gathered near: round eastern clouds there crept
A fiery fringe; next kindled hill and wood;
Then, lo! before their eyes Germanus stood.

The Blessing given, he turned him to that child—
‘Child, hast thou memory of thy wish last eve?’
The maid once more that smile bewildering smiled,
Then spake; ‘I wished that I might never leave
That house where Christ's sweet spouses dwell in bliss,
But still, like them, be His, and only His.’

Then fixed the Patriarch on that child an eye
Tender and strong yet edged with boding quest:
He spake: ‘The woman's snare is vanity;
When older, bar from it thine eyes, thy breast:
Shun them who praise thee; bid them keep that praise
For God: wise men it scares; the unwise betrays.’

That moment through disparted mists a beam
Shot from the circlet of the ascending sun,
Flashed on the pebbly path a spark-like gleam:
The old man stooped, and from the shingles won
A pilgrim's roughest relic. Thereupon
Burnished like brass the Sign Redeeming shone.

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Silent he lodged it in that small white hand;
Then closed her fingers. Next he spake with breath
Low-toned; ‘In future years no gems demand
Save this: this wear till death, and after death.’
She knelt: he laid his hands upon her head
In blessing; kissed it last; then northward sped.

She kept his gift. That wish, fair as a flower,
To live for Christ might as a flower have died—
A flower by March winds blighted. From that hour
Solid it grew like stream-growth petrified
Or like that relic which,—amid her dust—
Guards still perchance its memorable trust.

A people hath, like children, instincts sage:
Significance in trifles it discerns;
Keeps faith with vanished things from age to age;
Drains heaven's nepenthé from earth's frailest urns:
In faithful hearts, though rude the race, that hour
God dropp'd a seed: the plant held healing power.

That people knew what lived in Genevieve
Like Saint Germanus when he saw her first;
Knew it more late; they most the wise and brave
They best who felt for heaven the heavenliest thirst,
Whose heart was deepest and whose hope most high:
Nearest they felt to God that creature nigh.

They marked that things they dimly saw were clear
To her as trees to them, or hills or skies;
They knew that sensuous things to worldlings dear
For her existed not, her ears, her eyes:
Inmate of alien worlds she seemed; and yet
Who heard her once could ne'er that voice forget.

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One half of Europe then the darkness covered;
Night held its own; yet morning was at hand;
Dubious betwixt the two her country hovered
Like bird that half belongs to sea, half land.
To France, sin's cripple, others preached the Word;
Her life the Angel was Bethesda's well that stirred.

The way of words is the way round-about:
Good-will believes; and words lack power to give it:
Die for thy Faith! then dies the good man's doubt:
If Faith is tried no more by death, then live it!
A great, true Faith expressed in life as true
Lifts heart to heaven as sunbeams lift the dew.

Her valour 'twas that taught in later times,
The Maid of Orleans taught, to love her well;
For centuries household bards in honest rhymes
To breathless throngs were wont her deeds to tell
Ere yet the Troubadour had tuned his song
To hymn base loves and crown triumphant wrong.

One sang how Childeric his Franks had led
From that huge forest of the northern sea
Where Varus lay with all his legions dead:
How Childeric's host frenzied by victory
Girt Paris like a wall:—no food remained;
On the dead mother's breast the infant plained.

Louder he sang how dear Saint Genevieve
Launched her light bark and faced that downward flood,
She and her four; beat back the insurgent wave;
Baffled the shafts from bank and rain-drenched wood:

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She steered; they rowed while night was in the sky:
Back sailed the Saint at dawn, that bark with loaves heaped high!

As oft he sang to them in hut or hall
A sister legend of their favourite Saint:
The Frank was throned in Paris: fled the Gaul,
Save one small band by foul and fell constraint
Long weeks in dungeon vaults alive entombed,
Their country's bravest sons: for that cause doomed.

Childeric had seen the Saint; had heard that none
Had power her strength and sweetness to resist:
Wary the man: he vowed that face to shun:
The power of female beauty well he wist:
The power of Virtue he had yet to learn:
That king had instincts high, though proud and stern.

Paris, that time a fortress pile, most part
Secure within its high-tower'd island lay:
A wooden bridge the river stretched athwart
Fenced by that grim gate of the Chatêley:
To them who held that gate Childeric sent word
‘Obey, or die! Entrance to none accord!’

Propt by that gate at noon the warders slept:
Sudden in trance they saw Saint Genevieve:
Nearer she moved: strange music o'er them swept
As when through portals of a huge sea-cave
Makes way the organ anthem of the sea;
That strain that fortress reach'd: its gate gave entrance free.

That hour, that moment by King Childeric's throne
Saint Genevieve stood up! If words she spake

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These words to angels, not to men, are known:
The king sat mute. As one that half awake
Sits blinded by the matin beam he stared:—
This only know we; that the doomed were spared.

Such acts survive: as age to age succeeds
Man's sequent generations, mountain-wise,
Reverberate echoes of heroic deeds:
Each echo dies yet lives, and lives yet dies:
And still, as on from cliff to cliff they float
The strain remotest yields the tenderest note.

These be the lesser things of Christian story
By some o'er-prized. To o'er-prize them or impugn
Alike is littleness. Faith's ampler glory
Sits higher throned. There waxing as the moon,
Strong as the sun, it lights the Christian sky:
More great than miracle is Sanctity.

Thence came that love which, 'mid those ages wild,
France in her virgin breast, though rough yet true,
That vernal morn conceived for that fair child
On whom his long, last gaze Germanus threw
Checking, as northward forth he rode, his rein,
And looking back. That twain ne'er met again.

Thence came that reverence which in France increased
As Christian Faith deepened therein its sway;
Which gladdened Lenten fast and Paschal feast;
Inspired her Trouvére's tale, her harper's lay;
Brightened young eyes; on wounded hearts dropt balm
O'er Hosts crusading waved their Oriflamme.

In later wars, when riot filled the tent
One name sufficed to lull it—Genevieve:

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In peace to maids on girlish sports intent
One thought of her a heavenlier gladness gave.
They looked like those she led at dawn of day
Before the Baptistery's shrine to pray.

Ofttimes a Saint dear to his natal place
Elsewhere is ill-remembered or unknown:
But she, wherever spread her country's race,
Was loved: the Loire revered her as the Rhone:
Three names for aye blazed on that country's shield—
Saint Genevieve, Saint Denis, Saint Clotilde.

University of Virginia Library

THE LEGEND OF SAINT GENEVIEVE.

(DIED A.D. 512.)

ARGUMENT.