University of Virginia Library

BOOK VII. LEGENDS, BALLADS, AND ROMANCES.

FAREWELL TO THE HOLY LANDS.

(ELEVENTH CENTURY.)

DOGE ORSO'S NIGHT'S WORK.

(ELEVENTH CENTURY.)

SALZBURGENSIS VAGABUNDUS.

(THIRTEENTH CENTURY.)

Pax Dei vobiscum! We are, by your leave, friends,
Three poor travelling scholars. All the more we grieve, friends,
That now-a-days good wine's so dear, and learning still so cheap, alas!
O ghost of good Archbishop Reinhold, you for us would weep Alas!
But you have left this wicked world, and you are gone to glory.
Mihi est propositum in tabernâ mori!
All the way from Salzburg here, in this season blowy,
Bitter blue the hill tops were, bleak the roads and snowy.
Sure, a man must warm his wits when the weather pinches,
And the snow's above his boots some half dozen inches!
We from hostle on to hostle, thirsting to replenish
Empty bellies and dry throttles with a flask of Rhenish,
Set the Muses up for sale,—liquor begg'd for learning,
Not a doit for all our pains from the numskulls earning.
Little favour did'st thou get, great Horatius Flaccus,
Of our thick-skull'd Thaliarchs swilling German Bacchus!
Folly's citadel resists each classic catapulta,
Penitus inutilis, penitusque stulta!
Lord! you should have seen the looks of those unlatined laics,
Hail'd in choice hexameters, and sued to in alcaics!
Hairy Jews with money bags: troopers from Pavìa:
Hamburgers, and Bambergers . . . . Herr Josef! Frau Maria!
Zum Teuffel! groans my yellow Jew: the trooper growls va via!
Zounds! I wish those Jews, with all my heart, into . . . . Judæa!
Bare-foot trots the begging Muse among this harum-scarum.
Loca vitant publica quidam poetarum.
Snug as hedgehog hid in hedge, most comfortably curl'd up,
And looking not a whit less proud than if it wrapp'd the world up,
Safe upon the mountain side, secured from all infraction,
And reckless how the plain may fare, in high self-satisfaction
Smiled this blessèd burg;—resolved we three should make a climb of it,
And cool as Lot's small city when the rest had a hot time of it.
‘Vides,’ then ‘ut altâ’ . . . there . . . ‘stet nive’ . . . shouted Hax to us,
And Fritz . . . ‘'Tis not good wine, I trust, the little city lacks!’ to us.
‘Deprome,’ then, ‘quadrimum,’ I . . . so here we are among you,
Praying the Lord, good gentlefolks, your good lives to prolong you!
There's in us a thirsty devil raging to consume us.
Salutemus igitur bibuli qui sumus!
Sure, you haven't heard the news? The Hohenstaufen . . . Zooks there!
Is that mine host's fair daughter? `Faith, I knew her by her looks there.
Illa formosissimis tam nota virgo brachiis!
The brute that's not in love with her no better than a lackey is!
What's the little lady's name? To Lina rhymes divina.
Dear demozel, if I were Rex, I know who'd be Regina.
See her foot and ankle fine! if you'd a soul for beauty
You'd fit me with the proper phrase . . . egregia juventute!
Sir, will you buy an epitaph for your now-sainted lady?
Something pious, chaste, and sweet, to suit the yew-trees shady?
Hax, here, with his lanthorn jaws . . . Beseech you only try Hax!
He'll turn you off in half a trice a score of elegiacs.
Sic solamine non carebis for the dear departed.
Or you, young lord, a lovesong fierce, impassion'd, fiery-hearted,
For your heart's queen with strong black eyes . . . or blue? It matters little.
Fritz there, with his woman's face, will paint her to a tittle.
Fritz knows all the pretty things in Ovid and Tibullus,
For all his looks demure . . . non facit monachum cucullus.
Whate'er you want we'll furnish you, cantandum aut scribendum,
But if you want a drinksong, come to me for Nunc bibendum!

A KING AND A QUEEN.

WILLIAM OF LORIS TO THE LADY OF THE ROSE.

FAIR YOLAND WITH THE YELLOW HAIR.

TRIAL BY COMBAT.

RABBI BEN EPHRAIM'S TREASURE.

PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS IN SPAIN. (FIFTEENTH CENTURY.)

I.

The days of Rabbi Ben Ephraim
Were two score years and ten, the day
The hangman call'd at last for him,
And he privily fled from Cordova.
Drop by drop, he had watch'd the cup
Of the wine of bitterness fill'd to the brim;
Drop by drop, he had drain'd it up;
And the time was an evil time for him.
An evil time! For Jehovah's face
Was turn'd in wrath from His chosen race,
And the daughter of Judah must mourn,
Whom His anger had left, in evil case,
To be dogg'd by death from place to place,
With garments bloody and torn.
The time of the heavy years, from of old
By the mouth of His servant the Prophet foretold,
In the days of Josiah the king,
When the Lord upon Jacob his load should bring,
And the hand of Heaven, in the day of His ire,
Be heavy and hot upon son and sire,
Till from out of the holes into which they were driven
Their bones should be strown to the host of Heaven
Whose bodies were burn'd in the fire.
Rabbi Ben Ephraim, day by day
(As the hangman, beating up his bounds
Thro' the stifled Ghetto's sinks and stews,
Or the Arch Inquisitor, going his rounds,
Was pleased to pause, and pick, and choose,
—Too sure of his game, which could not stray,
To miss the luxury of delay)
Had mark'd with a moody indignation
The abomination of desolation,
With the world to witness, and none to gainsay,
Set up in the midst of the Holy Nation,
And the havoc, which Heaven refused to stay,
In the course of his horrible curse move on,
Where, sometimes driven in trembling crews,
Sometimes singly one by one,
Israel's elders were beckon'd away
To the place where the Christians burn the Jews:
Till he, because that his wealth was known,
And because the king had debts to pay,
Was left, at the last, almost alone
Of all his people in Cordova,
A living man picked out by fate
To bear, and beware of, the daily jibe,
And add the same to the sum of the hate,
Made his on behalf of a slaughter'd tribe.

II.

III.

Rabbi Ben Ephraim never more
Saw Cordova. For the Lord had will'd
That the dust should be dropp'd on his eyes before
The curse upon Israel was fulfill'd.
Therefore he ended the days of his life
In evil times; and by the hand
Of Rachel his daughter, and Zillah his wife,
Was laid to rest in another land.
But, before his face to the wall he turn'd,
As the eyes of the women about his bed
Grew hungry and hard with a hope unfed,
And the misty lamp more misty burn'd,
To Zillah and Rachel the Rabbi said
Where they might find, if fate turn'd kind,
And the fires in Cordova, grown slack,
Should ever suffer their footsteps back,
The tomb where by stealth he had buried his wealth
In the evil place, when in dearth and lack
He fled from the foe, and the stake, and the rack;

IV.

“A strand of colours, clear to be seen
By the main black cord of it twined between
The scarlet, the golden, and the green:
All the length of the Moorish wall the line
Runs low with his mystic serpent-twine,
Until he is broken against the angle
Where thin grizzled grasses dangle
Like dead men's hairs, from the weeds that clot
The scurfy side of a splinter'd pot,
Upon the crumbled cornice squat,
Gaping, long-ear'd, in his hue and shape
Like a Moor's head cut off at the nape.
The line, till it touches the angle follow,
Take pebbles then in the hand and drop
Stone after stone till the ground sounds hollow.
Thence walk left, till there starts, to stop
Your steps, a thorn-tree with an arm
Stretch'd out as tho' some mad alarm
Had seized upon it from behind.
It points the way until you find
A flat square stone, with letters cut.
Stoop down to lift it, 'twill not move,
More than you move a mountain, but
Upon the letter which is third
Of seven in the seventh word
Press with a finger, and you shove
Its weight back softly, as the South
Turns a dead rose lightly over:
Back falls it, and there yawns earth's mouth;
Wherein the treasure is yet to discover,
By means of a spiral cut down the abyss
To the dead men.”

V.

When he had utter'd this
Rabbi Ben Ephraim turn'd his face,
And slept.

VI.

The years went on apace.
Manassah his son, his youngest born,
Trading the isleted sea for corn,
Was wreck'd and pick'd up by the smuggler boat
Of a certain prowling Candiote;
And, being young and hale, was sold
By the Greek a bondsman to the Turk.
Zillah, his wife, wax'd white and old.
Rachel, his daughter, loved not work,
But walk'd by the light of her own dark eyes
In wicked ways for the sake of gain.
Meanwhile, Israel's destinies
Survived the scorching stake, and Spain
At length grew weary of burning men;
When hunger'd, and haggard, and gaunt, these two
Forlorn Jew women crept again
Into Cordova; because they knew
Where Rabbi Ben Ephraim by stealth,
When he turn'd his back on his own house-door,
Had buried the whole of his wondrous wealth
In the evil place; and they two were poor.

VII.

So poor indeed, they had been constrain'd
To filch from the refuse flung out to the streets
('Mid the rags and onion-peelings rain'd
Where the town's worst gutter's worst filth greets
With his strongest gust and most savoury sweets
Those blots and failures of Human Nature,
Refused a name in her nomenclature,
That spawn themselves toward night, and bend
To finger the husks and shucks heap'd there,)
The wretched, rat-bitten candle-end
Which, found by good luck, they had treasured with care
Not a whit less solemn than tho' it were
That famous work of the son of Uri,
The candlestick of candlesticks,
—He the long-lost light of Jewry,
Whose almond bowls and scented wicks
Were the boast of the desert, and Salem's glory
Of the knops and flowers, with his branches six!
For this impov'rish'd, curtail'd, flaw'd,
Maltreated, worried, gnaw'd and claw'd
Remnant of what perchance made bright
Once, for laughter and delight,
Some chamber gay, with arras hung,
Whose marbles, mirrors, and flowers among
A lover, his lady's lute above,
To a dear dark-eyelash'd listener sung
Of the flame of a never-dying love,
—Little heeding, meanwhile, the fitful spite
Of the night-wind's mad and mocking sprite,
Which stealthily in at the lattice sprung,
And was wrying the taper's neck apace,—
Must now, with its hungry half-starved light,
Make bold the shuddering flesh to face
The sepulchre's supernatural night,
And the Powers of the Dark keeping guard on the place.

VIII.

And, when to the place of tombs they came,
The spotted moon sunk. Night stood bare
In the waste unlighted air
Wide-arm'd, waiting, and aware,
To horribly hem them in. The flame
The little candle feebly gave,
As it wink'd and winced from grave to grave,
Went fast to furious waste; the same
As a fever-famisht human hope
That is doom'd, from grief to grief, to grope
On darkness blind to a doubtful goal,
And, sway'd by passion here and there
In conflict with some vast despair,
Consumes the substance of the soul
In wavering ways about the world.
The deep enormous night unfurl'd
Her banner'd blackness left and right,
Fold heap'd on fold, to mock such light
With wild defiance; no star pearl'd
The heavy pall, but horror hurl'd
Shadow on shadow; while for spite
The very graves kept out of sight,
And heaven's sworn hatred, winning might
From earth's ill-will, with darkness curl'd
Darkness, all space confounding quite,
So to engender night on night.

IX.

X.

A strand
Of chorded colours, clear to be seen
By the main black dominant, twined between
The scarlet, the golden, and the green.

XI.

XII.

Things that dangle
Hairy and grey o'er the wall's choked angle
From something dull, in hue and shape
Like a Moor's head cut off at the nape.

XIII.

XIV.

Yonder comes
A thorn-tree with a desperate arm
Flung out fierce in wild alarm
Of something which, it madly feels,
The night to plague it yet conceals.
No help it gets tho'! An owl dash'd out
Of the darkness, steering his ghostliness thither,
Pry'd in at the boughs, and pass'd on with a shout
From who-knows-whence to who-knows-whither:
The unquiet Spirit abroad on the air
Moved with a moan that way, and spent
A moment or more in the effort to vent
On the tortured tree which he came to scare
The sullen fit of his discontent;
But, laughing low as he grew aware
Of the long-already-imposed despair
Of the terrified thing he had paused to torment,
He pass'd, pursuing his purpose elsewhere,
And follow'd the whim of his wicked bent:
A rheumy glow-worm, come to peer
Into the hollow trunk, crawl'd near,
And glimmer'd awhile, but intense fear,
Or tame connivance with something wrong
Which the night was intending, quench'd ere long
His lantern. Therefore the tree remains,
For all its gestures void and vain,
Which still at their utmost fail to explain
Any natural cause for the terror that strains
Each desperate limb to be freed and away,
In sheer paralysis of dismay
Struck stark,—and so, night's abject, stands.

XV.

XVI.

A square stone cut
With letters. Thick the moss is driven
Thro' the graver's work now blunt and blurr'd:
There be seven words with letters seven:
A finger-touch on the letter third
Of seven in the seventh word,
And the stone is heaved back: earth yawns and gapes:
A cold strikes up the clammy dark,
And clings: a spawn of vaporous shapes
Floats out in films: a sanguine spark
The taper spits: the snaky stair
Gleams, curling down the abyss laid bare,
Where Rabbi Ben Ephraim's treasure is laid.

XVII.

XVIII.

CATTERINA CORNARO.

(A PICTURE.—A.D. 1470.)

I.

II.

A Queen: a child: fair: happy: scarce nineteen!
In whose white hands her little sceptre lies,
Like a new-gather'd flowret, in surprise
At being there. To keep her what she is,
—A thing too rare for the familiar kiss
Of household loves,—wifehood and motherhood,—
Fit only to be delicately woo'd
With wooings fine and frolicksome as those
Wherewith the sweet West woos a small blush-rose,
Her husband first, and then her babe, away
Slipp'd from her sight, each on a summer day,
Ere she could miss them, into the soft shade
Of flowery graves. She doth not feel afraid
To be alone. Because she hath her toy,
Her pretty kingdom. And it is her joy
To dandle the doll-people, and be kind
And careful to it, as a child. Each wind
O' the world on her smooth eyelids lightly breathes,
As morn upon a lily whence frail wreaths
Of little dew-drops hang, easily troubled,
As such things are. The June sun's joy is doubled,
Shining thro' shadow in her golden hair.
Light-wedded, and light-widow'd, and unaware
Of any sort of sorrow doth she seem;
Albeit the times are stormy, and do teem
With tumult round her tiny throne. Primrose,
Pert violet, hardy vetch,—no blossom blows
In March less conscious of a cloudy sky,
More sweet in sullen season. Days go by
Daintily round her. If her crown's light weight
Upon her forehead fair and delicate
Leave the least violet stain, when laid away
At close of some great summer holiday,
Her lovers kiss the sweet mark smooth and white
Ere it can pain her. She hath great delight
In little things: and of great things small care.
The people love her; tho' the nobles are
Wayward and wild. Yet fears she not, nor shrinks
To show she fears not. ‘For in truth,’ she thinks,
‘My Uncle Andrew, and my Uncle Mark,
Have care of me.’ And, truly, dawn or dark,
These Uncles Mark and Andrew, busiest two
In Cyprus, find no lack of work to do:
Go up and down the noisy little state
Silent all day: and, when the night is late,
Write letters, which she does not care to read,
(The Ten, she knows, will ponder them with heed)
To Venice—not so far from Cyprus' shore,
But what the shadow of St. Mark goes o'er
The narrow sea to touch her island throne.

III.

JACQUELINE,

COUNTESS OF HOLLAND AND HAINAULT. (1436.)

THE DIRGE.