The New Medusa, and other poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

The New Medusa, and other poems

By Eugene Lee-Hamilton

Lee-Hamilton, Eugene

[dedication]

POEMS AND SONNETS.

PART I.

SONNETS.

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POEMS AND SONNETS.

I. PART I.

INTRODUCTION.

There was a captive once at Fenestrèl,
To whom there came an unexpected love
In the dim light which reached his narrow cell
From high above.

No hinge had turned, no gaoler seen her pass;
But when once there, she undisturbed remained;
For who would grudge a harmless blade of grass
To one long chained?

Between the flagstones of his prison floor
He saw one day a pale green shoot peep out,
And with a rapture never felt before
He watched it sprout.

The shoot became a flower: on its life
He fixed all hope, and ceased of self to think;
Striving to widen with his pointless knife
The cruel chink.

He bore great thirst when, parched, she drooped her head
In that close cell, to give her of his cup;
And when it froze, he stripped his wretched bed
To wrap her up.

Naming her Picciola; and week by week
Grew so enamoured as her leaves unfurled
That his fierce spirit almost ceased to seek
The outer world.

Oh such another Picciola hast thou,
My prison-nurtured Poetry, long been;
Sprung up between the stones, I know not how,
From seed unseen!

This book is all a plant of prison growth,
Watered with prison water, not sweet rain;
The writer's limbs and mind are laden both
By heavy chains.

Not by steel shackles, riveted by men,
But by the clankless shackles of disease;
Which Death's own hand alone can sever, when
He so shall please.

What work I do, I do with numbed, chained hand,
With scanty light, and seeing ill the whole,
And each small part, once traced, must changeless stand
Beyond control.

The thoughts come peeping, like the small black mice
Which in the dusk approach the prisoner's bed,
Until they even nibble at his slice
Of mouldy bread.

The whole is prison work: the human shapes
Are such fantastic figures, one and all,
As with a rusty nail the captive scrapes
Upon his wall.

But if some shape of horror makes you shrink,
It is perchance some outline he has got
From nightmare's magic lantern. Do you think
He knows it not?

Scratched on that prison stone-work you will find
Some things more bold than men are wont to read.
The sentenced captive does not hide his mind;
He has no need.

Oh, would my prison were of solid stone
That knows no change, for habit might do much,
And men have grown to love their dungeons lone;
But 'tis not such.

It is that iron room whose four walls crept
On silent screws, and came each night more near
By steady inches while the victim slept,
And had no fear.

At dawn he wakes; there somehow seems a change;
The cell seems smaller; less apart the beams.
He sets it down to fancy; yet 'tis strange
How close it seems!

The next day comes; his narrow strip of sky
Seems narrower still: all day his strained eyes sweep
Floor, walls, and roof. He's sure the roof's less high:
He dares not sleep.

The third day breaks. He sees—he wildly calls
On God and man, who care not to attend;
He maims his hands against the conscious walls
That seek his end.

All day he fights, unarmed and all alone,
Against the closing walls, the shrinking floor,
Till Nature, ceasing to demand her own,
Rebels no more.

Then waits in silence, noting the degrees—
Perhaps with hair grown white from that dread doubt—
Till those inexorable walls shall squeeze
His strong soul out.

Siena, July, 1882.

THE NEW MEDUSA.

A.D. 1620.

Grown strangely pale? Grown silent and morose
In my three years of travel? Brother John,
Oh, once for all, why watch me thus so close?
When since my childhood was my cheek not wan,
My soul not moody, and my speech not short?
As Nature made me, let me then live on.
Spare me thy questions; seek such noisy sport
As suits thy stronger frame and happier mood,
And cease thy preaching of this irksome sort.
It suits my whim to hold aloof and brood;
Go, medler, go! Forgive me, I recall
The word; it was too harsh, for thou art good.
O cruel Heaven, shall I tell him all?
God knows I need a hand to cling to tight,
For on my path all Horror's shadows fall.
I am like one who's dogged, and who, as night
Is closing in, must cross a lonely spot,
And needs some staunch companion in his flight.

My enemy is Madness: I have got
His stealthy step behind me, ever near,
And he will clutch me if thou help me not.
Oh, I have sailed across a sea of fear,
And met new lands to add to Horror's realms,
And shores of Guilt whence none may scatheless steer.
A very world of jarring thoughts o'erwhelms
My cowering soul when I would tell what's been
Since last I saw this Hall, these English elms.
Yet must the tale be told, and every scene
Gone o'er again. I fear some monstrous thing
From my own self, and on thy strength must lean.

So listen. I had spent the early spring
In Venice, till Ascension Feast—the day
On which the Doge casts in his bridal ring;
And had embarked, with pleasant winds of May
And gentle seas, on a Venetian ship
Bound for Palermo, where I meant to stay.
All gave us promise of a prosperous trip;
Yet, by the second day, mishap began,
And 'tween two Turkish sail we had to slip.
From dawn to dusk before the Turk we ran,
Till, safe and breathless off Illyria's coast,

We each thanked God to be a chainless man.
'Twas but the respite of an hour at most;
The weather changed with dread rapidity.
As in rebuke of Safety's hasty boast,
God laid His mighty hand upon the sea,
Moulding at once a million liquid peaks
That ever round us tossed more furiously.
For three whole days the tempest blanched the cheeks
Of men whom years of storm had ill enriched,
And long familiar with the petrel's shrieks.
It was as if the maddened ocean itched
Beneath the ship; so desperately it tried
To shake it off, and bounded, roared, and pitched,
And, like a lion in whose quivering hide
An insect burrows, wasted strength and wrath,
In rush on rush, by littleness defied.
At last, like one who no more hoping hath,
It ceased the strife; and we, at dawn of day,
Had set the helm to seek our long-lost path,
When in the offing, on the lurid grey,
Where tossed black waves, as if of ire still full,
We saw a something looming far away.
It proved to be a small dismasted hull,
To all appearance empty, which remained

Upon one spot, just like a sea-rocked gull.
On closer search we found that it contained
A woman, lashed to remnants of a mast,
Who seemed a corpse, but, slowly, life regained.
Her black, wet, rope-like locks she backward cast,
And in her troubled memory seemed to seek;
Then strangely, doggedly, concealed the past.
Her garb, her features, said she was a Greek,
But Tuscan she spoke well; and 'tis that tongue
Which she and I in aftertimes did speak.
And as she stood amid the wondering throng,
And no account of home or kindred gave,
A murmur 'mong the sailors ran along.
“Keep her,” they cried; “we'll sell her as a slave;
She owns no kin that she should be exempt;
She's common prize tossed up by wind and wave.”
She caught the words, but made no vain attempt
To melt their hearts by prayer and sobs and sighs,
And looked around her with a queen's contempt.
And then it was that suddenly her eyes,
Singling me out, were fastened upon mine
So searchingly, that all felt huge surprise;
And that, like one who by some secret sign
Knows that a strange command will be obeyed,
She cried, “Lord, buy me;” and I paid her fine.

So she my slave, and I her slave was made,
She taking eager bondage from that hour,
And binding me in chains that never weighed.
She seemed contented with a latent power,
Keeping slave garb, and took small gifts alone,
As might an empress from some love below her.
She bade me name her, and I named her Joan,
Feeling no wish to pry within her breast,
Or learn what name her former life might own.
With all the strong lithe beauty, she possessed
The noiseless tread of a tame leopardess,
Docile, majestic, holding strength repressed.
With wondrous insight soon she learned to guess
My gloomy temper's ever-shifting mood,
And, fierce in love, was chary of caress.
Now wisely silent, she would let me brood
Until the fit was over; now she cheered
With such fantastic tales as tribes still rude
Delight to hear, the night till dawn appeared;
Now sang unto the lute some old Greek air,
Like gusts of moaning tempest wild and weird.
And other gifts she had, and arts more rare;
For when at Syracuse I once fell ill
Of a malignant fever, and her care
Preserved my life, she showed a leech's skill

In mingling drugs, and knew how to extract
From long-sought herbs a juice for ague's cure.
Oh she was strangely dowered, and she lacked
Nought that can rivet man to woman's side,
Nought that can win, or on the senses act.
But there were moments when a fear would glide
Across my heart, I knew not well of what,
And on the secret which her life might hide
My mind would work; and yet she daily got
A firmer tenure of the love she'd won,
And felt each day my kisses grow more hot,
Even as those of the Sicilian sun,
Which made of winter spring, with fiery love,
Long ere the thaw had in our clime begun.

She loved, like me, from place to place to move,
And seldom we long lingered where mere chance
Had made us stop, but sought some lovelier grove,
Where, from deep shade, we saw the sunshine dance
On the blue sea which lapped the tideless coast,
And watched the sails which specked the blue expanse.
But when that happened which I dread to reach,
We were abiding where the owlet made

The night oft sleepless with his lonesome screech.
It was a sea-girt castle much decayed,
Belonging to an old Sicilian prince
With whom, when at Palermo, I had stayed.
He loathed the place, would go to no expense
To keep it up; but, loving town resorts,
Had left it in his youth, nor seen it since.
It suited well my mood. The weird reports,
The legends which the peasants loved to tell
About its empty halls and grass-grown courts;
Its garden paths where unpicked flowers fell;
Its silent rooms where many echoes woke
And fancies came—all made me love it well.
Its furniture of carved and blackened oak
Looked ghostly in the twilight; while the walls
Were hung with shields and swords of mighty stroke.
Of mighty stroke? Ay, ay, my tongue forestalls
My hesitating thoughts as I relate,
And every item that I name appals,
As I retread in mind where monstrous Fate
Changed love to horror; every look I cast
Makes me all love, all horror, re-create.

One night—O John, I come to it at last—

One night I had a nightmare in my sleep
For vividness and terror unsurpassed.
Methought I felt a snake's cold body creep
About my hand and throat, entwine them tight,
And o'er my breast a hideous mastery keep.
Awhile I lay all-helpless, in despite
Of agony, and felt the pressed veins swell,
Then forced a smothered cry into the night.
My cry awoke me, waking Joan as well,
When, panting still with nightmare fear, I found
That the black locks that on her bosom fell
Had crept about my throat and girt it round
So tightly as awhile to stop the breath,
While other locks about my arms had wound.
We laughed away my ugly dream of death,
And in the silence of the night that waned
We heaped up kisses, burying fear beneath.
I gave the thing no thought; but Hell ordained
That this same dream, before a week was cut,
Should be repeated, and its horror strained.
Once more the snakes encompassed me about,
Once more I woke her with my strangled cry,
Once more I found her locks around my throat.

Then I began to brood; and by and by

Strange things of God's strong chastisement of crime
Recurred all vaguely to my memory.
I seemed to recollect from olden rhymes
Some tale about the hair of those who take
A many lives through poison; how at times,
When guilt haunts sleep, each lock becomes a snake,
While they remain unconscious of the change;
And turns again to hair so soon they wake.
Smile not, or I will throttle thee. The range
Of Nature is so vast that it hath room
For things more strange than what we call most strange.
I am not mad. I thought with growing gloom
How we had met her, tossed alone at sea,
And how the Turks who rule those coasts oft doom
Their women to strange punishments. Might she,
For some great crime, not have been made to brave
The winds and waves by some such strange decree?
And then I thought what proof she often gave
Of skill in medicine and botanic lore;
And how that serves to kill that serves to save.
I struggled with these thoughts—I struggled sore:
With shame and self-contempt I cast them out,

And, looking on her beauty, loved her more.
But listen, John. A month or thereabout
Went by unmarked, and then there came a night
Which seemed to put an end to every doubt.

I was awake; there was no sound, no light.
Yes, there was sound: her breathing met my ear,
The breath of dreamless sleep—low, smooth, and slight.
But suddenly it quickened, as in fear,
And broken words whose sense I could not tell
Escaped her lips; my name I seemed to hear.
Now listen, John. Methought she lay not well,
I stretched my hand to slightly raise her head;
But what my hand encountered was, O hell!
No locks of silky hair: it met instead
A something cold which whipt around my wrist
Unholdable, and through my fingers fled.
I groped again and felt two others twist
About my arm;—a score of vipers twined
Beneath my hand, and, as I touched them, hissed.
There is a horror which leaves free the mind
But glues the tongue. Without a word I slipt
From out the bed, and struck a light behind
Its ample curtain; then, unheard, I crept

Close up and let the light's faint radiance hover
Over the Gorgon's features as she slept.
The snakes were gone. But long I bent me over
Her placid face with searching, sickened glance,
Like one who in deep waters would discover
A corpse, and can see nothing save, perchance,
The landscape's fair reflected shapes, which keep
Balking the vision with their endless dance.
It seemed to me that in that placid sleep,
Beneath that splendid surface lay concealed
Unutterable horror sunken deep.
And, seeking not to have the whole revealed,
I fled that fatal room without a sound,
And sought the breeze of night with brain that reeled.

How long I wandered 'mid the rocks around,
Like some priced outlaw—whether one, or two,
Or three whole days I know not—fever bound
A veil across my brain, and I've no clue
To guide my memory through those days accurst,
Or show me what my misery found to do.
I recollect intolerable thirst,
And nothing more; until the night again
Enwrapped the earth, and with it brought the worst.

A mighty wish, with which I fought in vain,
Came o'er my soul to see once more her face,
And dragged me back, as by an unseen chain.
Where love and horror struggle, there is place
For countless fierce and contradict'ry tides
Of Will and Sense within one short day's space.
With every hour the gale has shifted sides;
The needle of Thought's compass will have leapt
From pole to pole, and chance at last decides.
So I returned, and like a thief I crept
Into the house, where every light was out,
And sought the silent chamber where she slept.

O brother, brother! I'm in awful doubt.
If what I saw, and what shall now be told,
Was a mere figment of the brain throughout,
Then will the sickened Heaven ne'er behold
A deed more monstrous than the deed I've done,
Though this old earth should grow again as old.
But if the thing was real, if 'twas one
Of hell's corroborations of great guilt,
My hand was an avenger's hand alone.
So wonder not, if, with the blood I've spilt
Still on my hand, I fain would have thee think
That the great wall, which God Himself hath built

Between this world and hell, may have a chink
Through which some horror, yet unknown to earth,
And over great for us, may sometimes slink.
May not such strays from Hell have given birth
To poets' fancies which the wise deride,
And olden saws of which we now make mirth.
Oh who shall have the courage to decide
Between the things that are and those that seem,
And tell the spirit that the eyes have lied?
Watch thy own face reflected in the stream;
Is that a figment? Who shall dare to call
That unsubstantial form a madman's dream?
Or watch the shadow on the sunlit wall,
If thou could'st clutch it great would be thy skill;
Thou'lt feel a chilly spot—and that is all.
So may the spectres which, more subtle still,
Elude the feeble intellect of man,
And leave us empty-handed with a chill,
Be just as much reality. We spend
Life 'mid familiar spectres, while the soul
In fear denies the rest. But hear the end.

The moon was at the full; but o'er the whole
Vast vault of heaven was stretched a fleecy tent,
Through which her baffled light but dimly stole,

Save where the breezes of the night had rent
On some few points that subtle woof o'erhead,
That men might catch her glances as she went.
And as once more I trod with stealthy tread
Each silent, vast, and solitary room,
Where, through the tiny panes, encased in lead,
Of Gothic windows, moonlight broke the gloom
So dimly that I scarce could thread my way,
I seemed a ghost returning to its tomb.
I neared the fatal bed in which she lay;
Its sculptured columns had a ghostly look;
Its heavy daïs, of faded silk by day,
Looked stony in its tintlessness, and took
The semblance of the marble canopy
Above some Templar's tomb. Yea, every nook
Of this strange room bred awe, I know not why,
While dim mysterious gleamings seemed to thrill
From swords and shields that decked the walls on high.
With soundless step, approaching nearer still,
I touched the sculptured oak, while love and fear
Contesting in my breast suspended will.
I saw her shape but vaguely, but could hear
Her placid breath attesting, if aught could,
A dreamless sleep and conscience wholly clear.

Love in my breast was winning, as I stood
And watched her thus some moments in her sleep;
Her tranquil breathing seemed to do me good.
But suddenly it quickened with a leap,
Becoming like the fierce and panting breath
Of one in flight, who climbs a rocky steep.
The soul seemed struggling with the fear of death,
While broken utterings in a tongue unknown
Escaped at moments through her tightened teeth.
I was about to wake her, when the moon
Lit up the bed, and let me see a sight
Which for a while changed flesh and blood to stone.
All round the face, convulsed in sleep and white,
Innumerable snakes—some large and slow,
Some lithe and small—writhed bluish in the light,
Each striving with a sort of ceaseless flow
To quit the head, and groping as in doubt;
Then, fast retained, returning to the brow.
They glided on her pillow; all about
The moonlit sheet in endless turn and coil,
And all about her bosom, in and out;
While round her temples, pale as leaden foil,
And fast closed lids, live curls of vipers twined,
Whose endless writhe had made all hell recoil.

Long I stood petrified; both limbs and mind
Refusing in the presence of that face
The customary work to each assigned.
But, all at once, I felt a fire replace
My frozen blood, and unseen spirits seemed
To call for an Avenger, and to brace
My arm for one great blow. Above me gleamed
A double-handed sword upon the wall,
Whose weight, till then, beyond my strength I deemed.
I seized it, swung it high, and let it fall
Like thunder on the sleeping Gorgon's neck
Before her eye could see or tongue could call.
And, O my God! as if herself a snake
Which, stricken of a sudden in its sleep,
Coils up and writhes all round the injuring stake,
She coiled about the weapon in a heap,
But gave no sound, while all the sheet soaked red,
Except a sort of gurgle hoarse and deep,
Which made me strike again, until the head,
Whose beauty death's convulsion seemed to spare,
Rolled like a heavy ball from off the bed.
I held the dripping trophy by the hair,
Which now no more was snakes, but long black locks,

And scanned the features with a haggard stare.
And, like to one around whose spirit flocks
Too great a crowd of thoughts for thought to act,
I fled once more along the moonlit rocks.
Then Doubt, with his tormentors, came and racked.

A BALLAD OF THE PLAGUE OF FLORENCE.

A.D. 1348.

In some corpse-strewn plain of the sun-baked East
Or some foul dark prison, the Plague had arisen,
And had leapt on the back of the Wind;
For the children of men overmuch had increased,
It was time that their crowds should be thinned.

And the Wind with the Plague over Florence arrived,
As many a tower was striking the hour,
For men to seek rest without fear;
And a hum uprose, as of bees new hived,
From the streets, that was pleasant to hear.

And the morrow a many a knell was tolled,
Nor ceased the bells to sound the knells,
Till the ringers turned black and dropped;
Nor the biers to pass by till, relaxing their hold
The carriers staggered and stopped.

Then neighbour would neighbour suspiciously meet,
And would eye him askance with a searching glance,
And the sound of men's labour was hushed;
Yea, they started aghast, as they passed in the street,
If by chance 'gainst each other they brushed.

And the lover would shudder on touching the tips
Of the fingers fair, or the locks of hair
That he loved, but were laden with death;
And would shrink from the kiss of Love's blackening lips,
As if hell were contained in a breath.

And father bade son from his doorstep avaunt,
If but gleamed his eye, and would let him die
In the streets like a dog, without help;
For Fear makes men wild as the wolves that haunt
Round the sheepfold at night and yelp.

Through a veil of horror the sun seemed black,
And the limpid air seemed too dense for prayer
To reach to the throne on high;

As, faster and faster pursuing its track,
The invisible scythe swept by.

And high o'er the wail of the trembling crowd,
And the cries to Heaven of souls unshriven,
Rose strumming, and filthy song,
And the rattle of dice, and the laughter loud
Of the dying and ghastly throng.

O thou great and strong God, cried each strong heart then,
Is this guilty Florence Thy eyes' abhorrence?
Is it doomed like the Towns of the Plain?
Though worse is this rotting and dropping of men
Than the falling of fiery rain!

But the unseen Mower, with his unseen scythe,
Mowed on as through grass, through the populous mass,
Till his arm seemed slowly to tire;
And of what had been Florence remained but a tithe
To relate God's terrible ire.

Now just about the time that this selfsame Plague
Was preparing to poison the air with its foison,

There was living in Florence a dame.
She was young and had eyes that were dreamy and vague,
And was known as Ginevra by name.

And her fame was pure as a pebbly spring,
Though by one accord 'twas said that her lord
Was harsh and ne'er valued her beauty,
And though suffering many a pitiful thing,
She but clung all the more to her duty.

She lived in a house which is solid still,
Though the thick stone wall is blackened all
By the centuries five that have flown,
With escutcheon on door and sculptured sill
In the old, old heart of the town.

There, while squandered her husband his time at play,
His sweet young wife led her weary life,
Secluded from friends and from pleasure
(Though her father was rich and her brothers were gay),
And had nought but the past as a treasure.

As she sat all unkissed in her chamber and wove
The tapestry flowers, in long lone hours,
She would think of her girlhood and weep;
And her thoughts would revert, though against it she strove,
To the hopes that lay buried deep.

She thought, oh! how different now were her life
Had they let her but wed, long ago, instead,
Antonio, her early love,
Whose dream was to make her the happiest wife
In the face of Heaven above.

For Antonio had been her father's clerk;
And though good his birth and known his worth,
His state had been deemed too lowly;
And she thought as she wept in the twilight and dark
That he now had forgotten her wholly.

But Ginevra was wrong; for that love is but hollow
Which, robbed of hope, doth flap and drop
Like a windless sail on the mast:

And his joy was to follow
Her life of each day as it passed.

He would watch in the aisle of the church, where the streams
Of crimson light fell warm and bright,
As her prayers on the tombstones she said;
And would envy the dead who could hear in their dreams
Her whispered words overhead.

He would lurk at dusk in the lonely street
Till her lamp should be lit and her shadow should flit,
Like a restless bird, on the blind;
And with painful tightening his heart would beat
As he pictured the room behind.

And he found a spot whence, with cruel delight,
He could see the lady as she walked in her shady
Court, which high walls defended;
And he scaled them to pluck, like a thief in the night,
Some flower her hand had tended.

Well, the Plague broke out; and more closely than ever
Indoors she was pent, and her dull days spent
Till her cheeks' waning roses had died,
While Francesco her husband all ties had to sever
With the perilous world outside.

And he feared for his life, and his fear made him cruel,
As death each day swept great crowds away,
And all on Ginevra was vented;
For he knew of Antonio, and hatred found fuel
In wrongs that his fancy invented.

And it chanced that he went to her chamber one day,
And o'erwhelmed her awhile with language vile;
And he struck her a blow as he left,
And when he returned in the evening she lay
On the ground, of all motion bereft.

A waxen mass is more bloodless not
Than her face was now; and more cold was her brow

Than her pillow the marble floor;
While her loosened dress showed a blackening spot
On her bosom that heaved no more.

And the knees of the coward with terror shook;
For the Plague struck even as fast as from heaven
Descendeth the fiery fork;
He would scarcely approach, but the chamber forsook,
And left to his menials the work

Of shrouding the body so white and fair,
And of closing the bier in haste and fear,
As even the great were then buried.
And, unfollowed by friend and unhallowed by prayer,
To the family vault she was hurried.

Then darkness and silence the city surprised;
Through the alleys lonely there rumbled only
The dead-cart with flickering light;
And the silent church, where she lay with the dead,
Was more silent than ever that night.

The round moon rose, and her white light crept
Through the painted panes to the columned lanes
Of the aisles with their ornaments pale,
And turned the stone garb of the knights who there slept
Into something like silvery mail.

But all of a sudden the silence ceased,
And a sound of sighs and of muffled cries
Rose up from the vault below;
Then an echo of planks, and a sound which increased,
As of movements uncertain and slow.

And the door revolved of the steep vault stairs,
And a woman staggered, convulsed and haggard,
Across the broad nave to the street;
And she hid her breast with her long loose hair,
And her limbs with a funeral sheet.

For Ginevra had risen from out of her tomb,
And the plague-spot dark had been but the mark
Of the blow that her cruel lord gave;
And through ill-closed doors the friendly moon
Had helped her to leave her grave.

And she threaded her way in her awful plight,
Down the stony street with injured feet,
To her father's house which was near;
And the few whom she met at her white shroud's sight
Fled wildly before her in fear.

At her father's door she stood and knocked,
Till a window at last was open cast,
But at once it was slammed with a shriek,
And though long she implored, not again was't unlocked,
For none cared with a spectre to speak.

So she wandered on with a waning strength
Till she stood before her husband's door,
In her grave-clothes scanty and weird,
And shouted and knocked till Francesco at length
Himself at the window appeared.

And she cried: “Fear not; I am flesh and blood;
Ginevra, thy wife; not a ghost, but in life;
Though I walk, like a ghost, in a shroud.
Oh, open the door!” and she shivering stood,
And her prayers grew more pressing and loud.

But he, answering nothing, looked down for a while
At her bare white feet, and the moonlit street,
Which pointed stones did pave;
Then he suddenly said, with a sinister smile,
“Wert thou not at thy ease in thy grave?

“Plague-struck or not thou hast jostled the dead,
And trodden the alleys where the great foe sallies,
By whom we all fear to be clutched;
So seek thou a shelter elsewhere for thy head,
For I know not whom thou hast touched.”

And the window closed with a quick harsh sound,
And opened no more, though, with prayers long and sore,
The night of its silence she robbed,
Till at last she sat down on the pitiless ground,
In her shroud in the moonlight, and sobbed.

And as she sat with no counsel nigh,
Inert and dejected, and wholly rejected
By men and by Heaven above,
Her thoughts reverted, she knew not why,
To Antonio her early love.

And she straightway rose, and resumed her way,
Through the sad streets lonely, and halted only
At the door of the house where he dwelt.
And her limbs as she knocked were as cold as clay,
But strange warmth in her heart she felt.

And she knocked and called, and Antonio heard,
And on seeing her staggered, like a man that's daggered,
While her story she hurriedly told.
And he led her within, never speaking a word,
While she trembled with joy and cold.

And he called his mother, and they wrapped her up
In blankets of wool, and with hearts over full.
He bandaged her feet that were bleeding,
And when they were bandaged he gave her to sup,
For sorely some food she was needing.

And so, till men's courage (the plague being over)
Began to revive, and the city to thrive,
In the house of Antonio she tarried,
When, strange though it seemeth, one morning her lover
Led Ginevra to church and they married.

And Francesco the husband began then and there
A great legal strife to recover his wife
In the archiepiscopal courts;
Of which, in the archives, such persons as care
May find to this day the report.

But the lawyers decided, at mighty expense
Of parchment and ink (but with wisdom, I think),
That Francesco did vilely behave;
That Ginevra his wife had been buried long since,
And that all are released by the grave.

A BALLAD OF THE SACK OF PRATO.

A.D. 1512.

Said the Spaniards: “By to-morrow,
If ye victual us not and well,
We will storm the town, and borrow
For your use three days of hell.”

But the rash, rash Prato people
Did not listen, but delayed,
And from every tower and steeple
Looked to Florence, hoping aid.

But the lean and tattered Spaniards
Kept their word, and stormed the town,
Rich with thriving looms and tan-yards,
Like a flood that bears all down,

Like a flood whose scummy waters
Sweep with hungry, hideous roar
Down the streets of busy quarters,
Gurgling in at every door.

But the waters find a level:
There is mercy in the flood;
While the Spaniards in their revel
Soaked the very roofs with blood;

Hunting on the flying dwellers
In each house from room to room;
Ratting them from out the cellars;
Cutting down no matter whom.

Then they sought with screw and fire
What the rich had hid in haste;
Raising their exactions higher
For the time they made them waste;

And they tightened and they twisted,
And they limb from socket drew
Unrestrained and unresisted,
Till no thumb remained to screw.

And they lashed men, gagged and stifled,
To the beds where writhed their wives,
And in sight of fathers rifled
What was dearer than their lives.

There were girls on terrace ledges
In their fetid, hot embrace,
Who, by wriggling to the edges,
Dragged pollution into space.

And, behind the Spaniards, followed
Flame, with red and restless tongue;
And a many of them it swallowed
With the prey to which they clung.

And for three whole days no pity—
Plunder, torture, fire, and rape;
In the little blood-soaked city
Greed and lust took fearful shape.

Till it weltered in its horror,
Giving night a lurid glow,
Like a dying, mute Gomorrah
Waiting for God's final blow.

Then the scum of Spanish galleys,
Gorged with plunder, stained with blood,
Ebbed from out its streets and alleys
Like the oozing river flood;

Dragging with them girls and women
Stupid with despair and shame,
To such lands as evil omen
Doomed to slaughter, sack, and flame.

And among these women carried
Off from Prato and all things dear,
Was an armourer's wife, new married,
Who nor sobbed nor shed a tear.

Neither did she pine and languish
As the seasons rolled along;
No, nor learn to drown her anguish
In debauchery and song.

Nothing showed that while obeying
She was writhing under fate;
Nothing, save the scowl, betraying
Inextinguishable hate

For the captain who had torn her
From her husband and her child,
And had made all Nature scorn her,
As its thing the most defiled.

Silent, as if God had made her
Dumb, but with her teeth clenched tight
She endured the blows which paid her
For a twice attempted flight.

Even as she bore his kisses
With a clenching of her teeth,
And a silence where abysses
Of destruction lay beneath;

Like a tigress that hath shaken
All the railings of her cage,
And has many lashings taken,
With a smothered roar of rage,

But reserves her spring for later,
When her tamer has no help,
While her hate grows daily greater
With her yearning for her whelp.

Seven years through camp and city,
In the ravaged Lombard plain,
She was dragged, and asked no pity,
Letting time enlarge her stain,

Till, in one terrific minute,
She might wash it out in gore,
And see Prato and those in it
Pure in spirit as before.

And that minute came: the army
Far to south, to Parma, went,
And the night was dark and stormy,
And ill-guarded was his tent.

In his drunken sleep, she lashed him
With the tent-ropes to his bed,
And she took his sword and slashed him
Till she severed off his head.

And she donned his clothes and, springing
On his charger, rode away;
With her gory trophy swinging
From her pommel, night and day.

And she rode and never slackened
In a three days' thundering flight,
Until towers old and blackened
And familiar, were in sight.

And she galloped, stained and haggard,
Into Prato with reins slackened,
On a horse that wheezed and staggered,
As she leaped from off his back.

Then she tied it to the door-ring
Of a cherished dwelling there,
Where an armourer's forge was roaring
And all smoky was the air.

And she cried to him who met her
On the threshold, “It is I.
I'm not dead; for I'd a better
Task before me than to die.”

And he started back all trembling,
While his sweating brow turned pale,
Standing silent, and assembling
Thoughts too crowded to avail.

“Dost thou see this head, and know it?
It's a love-gift which I bring.”
And she held aloft, to show it,
By the hair, the hideous thing,

Saying, as he more recoiled,
“Hast thou ne'er a dead dog seen?
If I bring my body soiled,
Oh, I bring my spirit clean!

“To ensure return I waited
Seven years ere taking life;
I can love as I have hated:
Dost thou own me as thy wife?”

But her husband, still not giving
Any answer to her speech,
Scanned the dead and scanned the living,
With an equal gloom for each.

And at last he said, “I hear thee;
I say neither yea nor nay;
Thou art fearful, and I fear thee,
Though I've mourned thee many a day.

“Seven years hast thou been missing;
What if wast a willing slave
Who did kill him, once his kissing
Neither gold nor pleasure gave?

“To the market-place I'll take thee,
And the people shall decide;
And a wife again shall make thee,
Or shall bid thee further ride.”

And she turned without debating,
And he led her to the door,
Where her panting steed was waiting,
And he bade her mount once more.

Then he led her by the bridle,
While a mighty, mighty throng,
Of the curious and the idle
Gathered as they went along.

Till the mass of people darkened
The cathedral's steps and square,
And they knew him, and they hearkened
With a thousand headed stare.

And he spoke and told the story
Loud, that all might understand;
And he showed her with the gory,
Livid trophy in her hand.

And he cried, “See, she has brought me
From afar the villain's head,
And returned at once and sought me,
Shall I take her to my bed?”

And the people's heart was with her,
And they shouted, “Take her back!
None so brave has galloped hither
Since the burning and the sack.”

And on high the people raised her
When her triumph was decreed;
And the Tuscan cities praised her
For her bold and bloody deed.

And the bells from every steeple
Rang as when a land's heart beats,
As she rode to please the people
Through the flower-littered streets.

THE IDYL OF THE ANCHORITE.

A.D. 1000.

[I.]

The great firs moaned in the valleys below;
But high up in the pass, in the wastes of snow,
'Mid the great lone rocks where no live thing stirred,
All was mute, for the torrents had ceased to flow.

Save at times when the cry of some travel-spent bird,
Or the long, low howl of a wolf was heard;
For the wolves in great numbers had traversed the Rhine
On the ice that winter, by hunger stirred.

The wintry light in its rapid decline
Illumined the rocks with a sickly shine;
All was stone and was snow; all was dumb and was wan:
Of plants no vestige, of man no sign.

And yet one human life upon
Those crags (if life you could call it) went on,
Where even in summer no herb was gleaned,
The life of the anchorite, John of Avonne.

A lair, half cave, half cabin, screened,
Up there where nature had never greened,
The man who daily at dawn resumed
This long, lone war with himself and the Fiend.

His frame, by vigil and fast consumed,
Was bent ere age, and his face had assumed
A colour more sallow than baker's paste,
A look more haggard than corpse exhumed.

Six years had he lived on that mountain waste,
Which the very stones that his foot displaced,
The very waters that bubbled there,
Deserted with loathing and headlong haste.

Six years had he borne in shirt of hair
In summer the sun's terrific glare,
In winter great frost, to be nearer to God
In a mixture of rapture and dull despair.

And not God, but the Fiend on his footsteps trod
And tempted him, spite of his scourging rod
And his long, long prayer, and his hearth without fire,
And the tasteless herb, and the hard wild pod.

And whispering devils inflamed his desire
For all that men care for, and do and admire;
And murmured of riches and pleasure and ease,
And made him regret mother, sister, and sire.

And others, whose task was to plague and to tease,
Took in summer the shape of uncatchable fleas,
As he knelt at his prayers, and made his thoughts stray,
And in winter they made him to cough and to sneeze.

And they stole his dry herbs and made him mislay
His beads, and confused him till scarce he could pray,
And they sent him to sleep when he still had to kneel,
And they left not unplayed any trick they could play.

And devils in semblance of women would steal
To the side of his bed, till he thought he could feel
Their breath on his cheek, and their hot kiss feared,
Which should forfeit for ever his heavenly weal.

And from under the mat of his cell they peered,
And tempted and tickled and beckoned and leered;
While their round, rosy limbs to his horror peeped out,
And their laughter-filled eyes at his chastity jeered.

And they circled him nearer and nearer about,
While he trembled with horror with lust and with doubt;
And brought him so near the eternal abyss,
That all panting he woke with an amorous shout.

II.

It was winter now, and so cold as this
It had never yet been in his cell, I wiss;
The night wind had risen, and ceased not to sweep
The slopes of snow with an angry kiss.

He had lit a fire at last, to keep
His soul with his body; and, half asleep,
Was telling his beads as he crouched on his mat
By the flickering light of the blazing heap.

Had you watched him there, as he silent sat,
And the work he was sluggishly busy at,
You might have felt wonder that God should have made
So bloodless and listless a thing as that.

It was more than a month since the devils had played
Any tricks, and untroubled the anchorite prayed,
While sense and sensation began to depart,
In numb beatitude unafraid.

But all of a sudden he gave a start,
The stagnant blood seemed to flow to his heart
And he listened awhile to some outer noise
With brow contracted and lips apart.

For more than six years no woman's voice
Had dropped on his ear by his own fierce choice,
And now he could hear one imploring outside,
And faith made him fear, and nature rejoice.

“Let me in! let me in!” the suppliant cried,
“Whoever thou art whose blest light I have spied;
For the love of God give me shelter and food,
I have strayed from the path, and have well-nigh died.”

In doubt one moment the anchorite stood
Between mercy, and fear, of womanhood;
But what conquered was dread of the flesh and its snares,
And he stopped his ears with his coarse brown hood.

And he knelt once more and resumed his prayer,
And placed himself well in the Virgin's care,
And, like one who his heart with a strong hand locks,
He thanked God that no woman might enter there.

But louder and louder resounded the knocks,
While she cried in a tone to move stones and stocks
“Let me in! let me in! the wolves are near:
“I can hear them: they've tracked me since dusk on the rocks.”

And he listened, and thought he could distantly hear
The howl of a wolf; and in spite of chaste fear
He opened the door, and he let her rush by
With the icy blast of the night in rear.

In a strange, wild way, with a strange, wild cry,
She rushed to the fire that still blazed high;
And she crouched by the flame as if she would hold
The logs and their heat to her bosom more nigh.

Her face was so pinched and so warped by the cold
That you scarcely could say was she young or old,
And her long black hair, which hid partly her cheek,
On her shoulders fell loose, by the wind unrolled.

He pushed her some food and bade her not speak,
But leave him to prayer; and, like those who seek
Both shadow and peace, dragged his matting of straw
To a corner, and watched her with glance oblique.

And, little by little, with terror he saw,
As the cold relaxed the icy claw
With which it was holding so tightly her frame,
And the blood in her veins began to thaw,

That from minute to minute she younger became
By the steadier light of the higher fed flame,
And her form became rounded, her cheek increased,
And, from minute to minute, she seemed not the same.

And she seemed as her roundness and colour increased,
In his eyes, unaccustomed to beauty, at least,
To be terribly lovely; his blood quicker ran,
And the prayers he was muttering gradually ceased.

And a frightful trial of strength began
In the breast of the savage and lonely man,
Between fear for his soul and the pent up lust,
Whose fire her presence had come to fan.

He thought how for years, in ashes and dust,
He had hungered on herbs of the waste and on crust,
And had chastened with scourge and with shirt of hair
The flesh that may not, the flesh that must.

And had climbed half way up Heaven's desolate stair,
Where each step that he took was beset with a snare,
And would soon reach the top where he could not fall,
To be paid for the ills he had chosen to bear.

He tried to do like the bloodless snail,
Which gathers up body and horns and tail,
And to shrink in his cowl, and escape from her view;
But his cowl was no shell, nor would shrinking avail.

For an awful force like a magnet drew
His senses out, and more terrible grew
The more he resisted and tried to be
A feelingless thing, and to pray anew.

And already he crept on hand and knee,
(For still in the posture of prayer was he)
When a sudden thought made Austerity win
And roused all his fury, while setting him free.

He remembered the Fiend had once been let in,
In the shape of a girl, by Saint Victorin,
And had prayed for a shelter from wolves in his cell,
And had tempted him sorely and made him sin.

It was he! it was he! Oh, he now knew him well,
It was he! it was he! He had come out of hell
To make him do sin which no prayer could purge,
But, thank God, 'twas still time to refrain and expel.

And he sprang from his mat, and he seized his scourge,
And, like one whom invisible spirits urge,
He let the lash fall on the neck soft and round,
Which had brought him so near to destruction's verge.

She started and shrank, with no other sound
Than a loud, inarticulate cry, like a hound
Who feels on his back sudden lashes alight,
But understands nought, and lies still on the ground.

Then, as faster and faster he ceased not to smite,
And bade her avaunt, and begone from his sight,
All bewildered with terror, she fled to the door
And sought peace in the cold and the darkness of night.

III.

He fastened the bolt and, alone once more,
He knelt on his mat, and repeated a score
Of monotonous prayers, while the sobs outside
Grew faint in the wind which howled as before.

The night was advanced; and the sleep he defied
Was numbing his brain, and though hard he still tried
To mutter more prayers, his eyelids fell,
But his lips their mechanical task still plied.

At last his lips stopped, and he dreamt of hell,
Which seemed to be somehow encircling his cell,
And he heard the damned at his door knock loud
With wild entreaty and dreadful yell.

They seemed to his fancy a numberless crowd,
Whose voice was with infinite horror endowed,
While above them the fiends, still more countless than they,
Fast scourging and rending them, hung like a cloud.

And they shrieked in so urgent and frightful a way
That he woke, with a forehead as clammy as clay,
And listened in fear; but the wind howled alone,
And he turned on his side, and he slept till day.

And the bleak light of morning lividly shone
On the dreary desert of snow and stone;
The clouds hung low, like a great lid of lead,
Though the wind still blew with a fitful moan.

And the anchorite rose from his hard, mean bed,
And he thought, as his long, long prayers he said,
How well he had treated the Fiend with his whip
Last night, and how quickly the Fiend had fled.

And a dull contempt curled faintly his lip
As he thought how Saint Victorin let the Fiend slip

After letting him tempt him to do what none should,
While he had belaboured him, shoulder and hip.

And he covered his head with his coarse brown hood,
And taking his pail on his threshold stood,
And looked out on the waste, ere he went to the spring,
But he stared, for the snow was all stained as with blood;

And remnants that seemed of a human thing,
To which fluttering tatters appeared to cling,
On the paw-printed snow had been dragged here and there,
While the carrion birds rose with a flapping of wings.

And the anchorite gave it a long dull stare;
Then he thought: this thing is some new-laid snare
Of the wily old Fiend; but he wastes his pains,
For I am as cunning, and take good care.

And he passed on his way; and the strange re-remains
Were borne off by the birds; while the dark red stains
Were effaced next day by the thick-flaked snow,
Which for many a week seemed, on mountains and plains,
As if it would never cease deeper to grow.

THE RAFT.

He shook his head. “No, no,” he said, “a man
Need neither be insane nor wholly bad
Who does that kind of thing. I say again,
That there are minutes in the lives of all
When Satan seems to pass across the heart
Just as a shadow flits across the path;
And if it happen that we be possessed
Of power in such minutes, woe betide
Ourselves and others. Bring not yet the lamp,
But let the twilight have its way; the fire
Is light enough; I have a tale to tell,
And care not, as I tell it, to be watched.
My children, you shall hear what made me leave,
Some fifty years ago, my native land,
And seek this colony, then barely formed.
I speak at last; for I am old, so old
That human justice, even if it cared,
Could scarce o'ertake me on the final brink.
But human justice cares not; I am safe.
All has been long forgotten in that land

Whose very language I have long unlearned.
I would to God I could forget as well
A desperate shriek, which ever and anon
Rings in my ears.

Now listen. I was born
In the Black Forest, on the Upper Murg,
A noble torrent, which with rush and roar
Fights its way out through many a fir-crowned gorge
And rocky pass, till, with diminished strength
And slackened pace, it falls into the Rhine.
A noble torrent truly: not pale green
With silvery shallows, like the rivers here,
But with clear coppery gleamings and a grand
Voluminous impulsion. Fast as light
Across the rapids, down the watery slopes
Swoop many rafts—long, narrow, supple—
Which men with pikes, one standing at each end,
Guide past projecting rocks, to right and left,
With perilous dexterity. And then
There are the shoots of timber. Once a year
All that the ever-sounding axe has felled
Of giant trunks for miles and miles around
Stored in a mighty mountain reservoir

Is hurled into the stream, and rushes down
In one terrific and tumultuous race.
Ten thousand struggling, rolling, tossing trunks
Press like a routed army through the gorge,
And, hampered by their number and the rocks,
O'erride each other in their desperate flight,
Sink, reappear, and sink o'erwhelmed once more;
Crashing with splintery crunchings and a roar
Like never-ending thunder. So for hours
The furious rush continues, and the stream
Appears alive with logs. Then by degrees
The numbers thin, the crowd contends no more,
And single stragglers, leaving far behind
Their stranded comrades, gently make their way
To distant saw-mills. On the lower Murg,
At Ottenau and Gernsbach, where the deal
Is stored and sold and floated down the Rhine
To Rotterdam, the timber merchants drive
A busy commerce—or at least they did;
All may have altered.

When I did the thing
Which changed my life, and made me, like a thief,
Desert the country, I was twenty-five.
My father was the owner of a mill

And well-to-do. We sawed a many plank.
The heaps of sawdust in the wide mill yard
Grew year by year, the income keeping pace;
For sawing is a profitable trade,
With small fatigue: the water does the work.
I had obtained the liking of a girl,
The daughter of a miller higher up,
And we were to be married. All men thought
That I was over lucky, as my bride
Was heiress to her father's mill, and I
Would thus inherit two. As I have said,
I had a deal of leisure—far too much.
My uncle was a ranger of the Duke's;
He gave me shooting in the neighbouring hills,
And many a roebuck fell beneath my gun.
And then I left the fish but little peace.
The fish abounded in the shallow runs;
You saw the greyling turning on their sides
In shoals, like flashing mirrors, and the trout,
Large, yellow-bellied trout, leapt at the flies
By scores at dusk.

It was an August night—
Warm, moonlit, still, and breezeless. I had spent
The evening at the miller's, and had met,

On my way home, a village chum, with whom,
Before we parted company, I took
A glass of spirits at the village inn.
I fear it was not much: I say I fear,
Because each single drop that I can plead,
When I shall answer for that evening's work,
Will be of value at the bar of Heaven.
O God Almighty! would I had gone home
And sought my bed as usual! But instead
The evil powers which obstruct our fate
Made me pass on along the riverside,
And seek a certain spot, there to rebait
Some night-lines which I'd sunk the day before.
It was a quiet pool, in which a raft
Would sometimes moor and wait for break of day
Before it crossed a longish stretch of stream
Of ticklish navigation just beyond,
Where long, dark slopes of water, which were split
By tooth-like points, sucked down the rafts like straws,
And called for proven skill, for ready wits,
And for good light. Woe to the luckless raft
Which lacking these passed in: its fate was sealed.

Well, to resume. I reached the shallow pool

Above the entrance of the gorge—the place
Where I had laid the night-lines; there I found
What I had not expected on that night,
A raft, with men asleep; three lay curled up,
While, in the middle of the raft, a sort
Of little cabin served, perhaps, to shield
Women or children from the dew; the poles
With which they steered the raft were on the bank,
Together with an axe; and by ill luck
The raft was moored upon the very spot
Where I had sunk the night-lines. What to do?
The men were fast asleep; the river's roar,
Monotonous and ceaseless, drowned my step.
I bared my arm, and tried to find the lines
Beneath the raft; it was of no avail;
Then with the axe I tried to fish them up,
But with no more success. Then by the raft
I sat me down. I think my mind at first
Was with the lines; then by degrees my thoughts
Passed to the sleeping men, on whom my eyes
Mechanically rested; and I thought
How wondrously unconscious were these men
Of my existence and my presence there;
In what security they slept; while I
Was moving, watching, thinking not two yards

From where they lay. Something like
A sense of power over them began to grow
Upon me as I looked. And then it was
That Satan's shadow passed across my heart:
Together with the power came the wish
To play them, in their false security,
A sort of monster trick. The single rope
Which held the raft was close beside my knee,
The axe within my hand. Within myself
I heard a voice which seemed to say,
“Cut it, and send them spinning. Cut it quick.
Thou hast enormous power in thy hands;
Thou need'st but raise a finger. What, afraid?
They are unconscious: see how sound they sleep,
The careless fools. On thee alone depends
A mighty wakening. Never will these hills
Have seen so great a scamper. Cut it quick;
Cut it, I say!” And with a single stroke
I cut the tether, and I pushed the raft.
It drifted slowly out into the light
And left me in the shadow. Suddenly
The current caught it, swung it sharply round,
So that it struck a rock, and off it shot.
There was a shout of men, a woman's shriek,
Some figures flitted wildly to and fro upon it

As it vanished. I was free
To find my lines at leisure.

But I stood
Upon the bank and trembled. Long I looked
Adown the stream, and tried to see and hear;
But all was hushed except the water's roar,
Monotonous and ceaseless. Then I turned,
And, like a man who bears a crushing weight
Which may not be set down, and who succeeds
Only by rapid staggering straight ahead
In reaching to his goal, I staggered home,
Crushed and pushed forward and deprived of thought
By the great weight of crime which was to rest
Upon my head until I reached the grave.
What roundabout untrodden path I took
I have no notion, nor how long I walked:
Next day I found red clay upon my clothes,
And there was none for miles. And yet I doubt
If what I felt in that first great recoil
Was what you call remorse; what crushed my soul
Was not the horror of the new-done thing,
But its enormity: I was as yet

A culprit, not a criminal, and felt
Responsible to men, and not to God.
Whether or not I slept I cannot tell.
I think I must have slept, for I have heard
That the first sleep of murderers is deep.
A sudden crime exhausts. 'Tis later on,
When Fear begins to sit beside your bed,
And makes a danger of each sound of night,
And at each moment twitches you and cries,
“Awake! awake! they come!” 'Tis later on,
When from behind your pillow sharp remorse
Whispers, “Not yet to sleep, not yet, not yet!”
And fills you with self-horror, that you hear
The weary striking of the tardy hours,
And pray for dawn. I think that when I woke
And slowly dressed I had alone a sense
That a misfortune had o'ertaken me, that now
I had an awful secret to preserve,
And that my life was changed. The daily hum,
The clatter, and the sawing of the mill,
The cackling of the poultry, and the song
Of lighter-hearted neighbours, hurt my ear.
Then thought began, and I surveyed the deed,
But only as we measure the extent
Of some great accident. Beyond a doubt

Whoever passed the rapids unprepared
(Even supposing that the raft should stick,
And not be shivered by repeated shocks),
Would be swung off or washed away at once.
Below the rapids, both to right and left,
The banks were high and rocky: no escape.
An ugly job, a very ugly job,
And inconceivable. But it was done.
What most was to be feared was that my looks,
When men began to talk, would let it out,
And then I prayed an impious prayer to God,
That this event might vanish and be lost,
Just as the raft had vanished into night;
That none might seek or mourn, and that the flood
Into whose awful keeping I had given
These unknown men and women in their sleep
Might be for ever dumb.

I heard a step:
It was my father bidding me get up,
And seek a distant village, down the stream,
To settle some transaction for the mill.
Down stream! I thought—Oh not for worlds down stream!

But he insisted, and I feared to rouse
Suspicion by refusal; so I went.
The road, at first, was not along the bank,
It met it only nearly two miles off
Below the rapids, when both road and stream
Passed through a gorge. On entering this gorge
There fell upon my heart, I know not why,
Together with the shadow of the place,
A sudden fear: I feared to be alone
With this dark river, even as a man
May fear to be alone with one whose hand
For price of gold had served him over well.
The aspect of the gorge was sinister,
The road and river both were tightly squeezed
To half their width, in Nature's rocky gripe:
A sunless home of echoes, where you saw,
On looking up, a narrow strip of sky,
On which the kites, which circled round and round,
Were sharply printed. Rapid, deep, and black,
The stream, between two cruel walls of rock,
Formed whirling pools, and ever and anon
Rolled some huge root, which in the distant gloom
Looked like a drowning wretch that none could help.
I stopped in doubt; but to retrace my steps

Was dangerous; and so I hurried on,
Not looking at the river by my side.
Half through the gorge, just where it made a bend,
The banks were less abrupt; some ridge-like rocks
Ran out into the water, shelving down
To meet the current. On the first of these
Lay something dark. I had to pass close by,
And had to look; it was a human form;
The body of a woman lately drowned.
She lay half in, half out; the circling flood,
Which still retained possession of her feet,
Gave her strange tugs and twitches, and kept up
A lapping and a flapping of her clothes
Beyond all measure horrible. Her eyes,
Wide open like her mouth, seemed fixed on mine,
Drawing me onwards by resistless force.
She seemed to be still young—thirty at most.
I dared not turn, and yet I dared not pass;
At last I passed her quickly, and I fled;
And as I fled I shrank as one pursued
Who feels a hand descending on his back.
I seemed to feel at every step I took
Her clammy hand upon me, and to hear
Her ever louder and more threatening voice
Claim back her stolen life.

Beyond the gorge
There was a little village, where I heard
That fragments of a raft had floated down,
And that the body of a man, fresh drowned,
Had just been found. I dared not let them know
What I myself had seen upon the rock,
Lest they should make me lead them to the spot.
They'll find the body soon enough, I thought.
Not all the riches that the world contained
Would have induced me, quaking still with fear,
To face that sight or pass that gorge again;
And when the business which I had to do
Was settled (how I did it Heaven knows),
And I returned, it was by rugged paths,
Which passed not near the river, but which went
Across the fir-clad mountains.

One by one
The bodies were recovered; they were six:
Three men, two women, and a little girl.
All went to see them, I alone held back.
And soon a rumour spread from door to door
That the catastrophe was not the work
Of accident; that where the raft had moored,
And where the poles were lying with an axe,

A bit of rope, sharp severed, had been found,
Which tallied with another severed rope,
Still dangling from a piece of shivered raft
Upon the rocks. But who had done the deed?
There was no evidence, and I was safe.
If altered looks and habits could convict,
I think you might have hung me; for in truth
Whate'er I was, I was no hypocrite;
And great as was the need, I hid but ill
The gloom of guilt. To smile and seem at ease
And live as usual was beyond my strength;
I held aloof from all my village friends;
As you may think, I left the trout in peace;
And if, at times, I still would take my gun
And wander in the hills, it was because
It took me from the river. I was changed.
And yet the neighbours, strange as it may seem,
Had no suspicion; men are sometimes blind.
One person only, almost from the first,
Suspected me, and that was my betrothed.
I saw it, and I writhed. When once or twice
The raft was spoken of, I caught her eye
Rest on me for one moment in a way
That made me turn aside; and when anon
She told me that the match was broken off,

I bowed my head, although I loved her still,
And asked no explanation.

Oh God's hand
Was heavy on me then, and I believe,
By all that is most holy upon earth,
That those whom I had hurried unprepared
Into destruction were as well avenged
As if the Law had held me in its gripe.
Nay, there were moments when the Law's revenge
Seemed lighter in the balance; and the dread
Of heaping shame upon my father's home
Alone withheld me, hounded by remorse,
From giving myself up; and there were times
(I shudder at the memory) when the stream,
Desisting from its old accusing roar,
Made wild seductive music in my ears
And lured me to its brink. Then, bending o'er
Some dark and whirling pool, about to leap,
A hideous fear would seize me that the corpse
Of the drowned woman might be in its depth
Awaiting my embrace. Oh, I repeat,
God's hand was heavy on me. When, at night,
Great storms would shake the hills, and dazzling shafts

Would fall with rattling simultaneous crash
Of thunder near the mill, and make it quake
Even to its foundations, I would start
And, cowering like a craven in my bed,
Would think, “It is the messenger of God
Who seeks me in the darkness.”

Such a life,
Had it gone on much longer, would have led
Either to madness or to further crime.
There came a moment when I felt that nought
Could save me but departure and a life
Of all engrossing enterprise. And so,
Within six months of that most fatal night,
And unconvicted, save by God above,
I fled my country like a hunted thief,
Without a blessing or a farewell wish,
Nor have I seen it since. For fifty years,
Out here beyond the ocean, I have lived
A life of work, acquiring by degrees
Both wealth and influence; and have obtained
With bitter satisfaction the respect
Of men unstained by crime; and I believe
That what a man can do to purchase back
His self-respect and win a smile from Heaven

I have not left undone. But the schools
And all the hospitals which I could found
Would not bring back again the dead to life.
And, like the captives who in former days
Were fettered to a heavy cannon ball,
Which, if they wished to move from place to place,
They had to raise and carry, I am chained
To one great load of guilt; the cannon ball
Which I have dragged through life has been unseen;
But not the less immense has been its weight.

ON A TUSCAN ROAD.

A SKETCH.

Now the white bullocks, in need of no goad,
Homeward, at sunset, are coming from tillage;
Blithely the labourer carries his load;
Creaking and swaying, the wain blocks the road
Nearing the village.

Slowly the sunset departs from the shrine
Close to the road, but still touches the fountain;
Fewer are those who pass by with a sign;
Dark grow the maize and the hemp and the vine,
Blue is the mountain.

Foxglove and wallflowers cling to the stone
Over the lamp of the shrine that is crumbling;
Twilight is falling; the landscape is lone;
Save at the grating, where lingers a crone
Piously mumbling.

Over the valley there creepeth a chill;
Slowly, far off, dies the bird's song of gladness;
Louder the frogs, with monotonous trill,
Croak in the rivulets, seeming to fill
Nature with sadness.

Then with the mournful and tremulous croak,
Even as night by degrees is unrolling
Over the lonely plantations her cloak,
Mingles a knell of lugubrious stroke
Distantly tolling.

Suddenly priest-carried tapers appear,
Faint in the twilight; their business seems holy;
Men who support on their shoulders a bier,
Covered with gold and with velvet, draw near
Through the corn, slowly

Who is the mortal who, freed from his woes,
Wends with such trappings from out of the present?
Who is the one who so sumptuously goes
Out of the reach of his friends or his foes?
Only a peasant.

Only a peasant, whom peasants are now,
After a harvest day, going to render
Back to the earth, tilled with sweat of his brow,
Decking his bier with a little cheap show,
Villager's splendour.

Slowly the tapers, with flickering light,
Pass, reappear, and are lost in the distance;
While, overhead, in the gathering night
Twinkling, the stars grow more countless and bright,
Taking consistence.

Still, for a while, tolls the funeral bell,
Breaking the silence of fields that are lonely;
Then the frogs' croak, with its tremulous swell,
Rising again in the place of the knell,
Breaketh it only.

THE MANDOLIN.

A.D. 1559.

Sit nearer to my bed.
Have I been rambling? I can ill command
The sequence of my thoughts, though words come fast.
A fire is in my head
And in my veins, like hell's own flame fast fanned.
No sleep for eighty nights. It cannot last.
The Pope ere long, perhaps ere close of day,
Will have a scarlet hat to give away.

Good priest, dost hear a sound,
A faint far sound as of a mandolin?
Thou hearest nought? Well, well; it matters not.
I, who was to be crowned
At the next Conclave! I was safe to win;
And t'will be soon: Caraffa's step has got
So tottering. O God, that I should miss
The prize within my grasp and end like this!

Three little months ago
What Cardinal was so robust as I?
And now the rings drop off my fingers lean!
I have a deadly foe
Who steals away my life till I shall die,
A foe whom well I know, though all unseen,
Unseizable, unstrikable; he lurks
Ever at hand, and my destruction works.

Thou thinkest I am mad?
Not mad, no, no; but kept awake to death,
And sent by daily inches into hell.
Slow starving were less bad
Or measured poison, or the hard-drawn breath
And shrivelling muscles of a wasting spell.
I tell thee, Father, I've been months awake,
Spent with the thirst that sleep alone can slake.

O holy, holy Sleep,
Thou sweet but over-frightenable power!
Thou, whom a tinkle scares or whispered word;
Return, return and creep

Over my sense, and in this final hour
Lay on my lids the kiss so long deferred.
But ah, it may not be; and I shall die
Awake, I know; the foe is hovering nigh.

Attend; I'll tell thee all:
I tried to steal his life; and, in return,
Night after night he steals my sleep away.
Oh, I would slowly maul
His body with the pincers, or would burn
His limbs upon red embers, or would flay
The skin from off him slowly, if he fell
Into my hands, though I should sicken hell.

The mischief all began
With Claudia, whom thou knewest, my own niece,
My dowered ward brought up in my own home.
I had an old pet plan
That she should wed Duke Philip, and increase
The number of my partisans in Rome.
Oh they were matched; for he had rank and power,
And she rare beauty and a princely dower.

With infinite delight
I saw her beauty come, and watched its growth
With greater rapture than a miser knows,
Who in the silent night
Counts up his growing treasure, and is loth
To close the lid, and seek his lone repose.
And long before her beauty was full-blown
Men called her worthy of a ducal crown.

But as her beauty grew
Her lip would often curl, her brow contract,
With ominous impatience of control;
The least compulsion drew
Rebellious answers; all respect she lacked;
The spirit of resistance filled her soul:
She took not to Duke Philip, as the year
For marriage neared; and I begun to fear.

Give me again to drink:
There is a fierce excitement in my brain,
And speech relieves me; but my strength sinks fast,
The end is near, I think.

And I would tell thee all, that not in vain
May be thy absolution at the last.
Where was it I had got? I lose the thread
Of thought at times, and know not what I've said.

Ay, now I recollect.
There was a man who hung about me ever,
One Hannibal Petroni, bastard born,
Whom I did half suspect
Of making love to Claudia. He was clever,
And had the arts and ways which should adorn
A better birth; but from the first I hated
His very sight, and hatred ne'er abated.

He played with rare, rare skill
Upon the mandolin; his wrist was stronger
Than that of any player I have known;
And with his quivering quill
He could sustain the thrilling high notes longer
Than others could; and drew a voice-like tone
Of unexampled clearness from the wire,
Which often made me, while I loathed, admire.

For 'tis wondrous thing
The mandolin, when played with cunning hand,
And charms the nerves till pleasures grows too sharp;
Now mimicking the string
Of a guitar, now aping at command
The viol or the weird Æolian harp,
The sound now tinkles, now vibrates, now comes
Faint, thin, and threadlike; 'tis a gnat that hums.

And he would often come
On breezeless, moonlit nights of May and June,
And play beneath these windows, or quite near,
When every sound in Rome
Had died away; and I abhorred his tune,
For well I knew it was for Claudia's ear;
And I would pace my chamber while he played
And, in my heart, curse moon and serenade.

How came this thing about?
My mind grows hazy and my temples swell.
Give me more drink! Oh, I remember now.
One morning I found out

That they were corresponding—letters fell
Into my hands. It was a crushing blow;
My plans were crumbling. In my fear and wrath
I said, “Why wait? Remove him from thy path.”

It's easy here in Rome,
Provided you are liberal with the price;
The willing Tiber sweeps all trace away.
Yet ere I sent him home
To heaven or hell, I think I warned him twice
To go his way; but he preferred to stay.
He braved me in his rashness, and I said,
‘Let his destruction be on his own head.”

When Claudia learnt his death,
What a young tigress! I can see her now,
With eyes illumined by a haggard flame,
And feel her withering breath,
As in a hissing, never-ending flow
She poured her awful curses on my name.
'Twas well I kept her close; for she had proofs
And would have howled them from the very roofs.

It is an ugly tale,
And must be told; but what was I to do?
I wanted peace not war; but one by one
I saw my efforts fail.
She was unmanageable, and she drew
Her fate upon herself—aye, she alone.
I placed her in a convent, where they tried
All means in vain. She spurned her food and died.

But he, the cause of all,
I know not how, has risen from the dead,
And takes my life by stealing sleep away.
No sooner do I fall
Asleep each night, than, creeping light of tread
Beneath my window, he begins to play.
How well I know his touch! It takes my life
Less quickly but more surely than the knife.

Now 'tis a rapid burst
Of high and brilliant melody, which ceases
As soon as it has waked me with a leap.
And now a sound, at first

As faint as a gnat's humming, which increases
And creeps between the folded thoughts of sleep,
Tickling the brain, and keeping in suspence
Through night's long hours the o'er-excited sense.

Oh! I have placed my spes
All round the house, and offered huge rewards
To any that may see him; but in vain.
The cunning rogue defies
The best-laid plan, and fears nor troops nor swords;
But, scarce my eyes are closed, begins again
His artful serenade. Oh, he is sly!
And lovest to fool the watchman and the spy.

But I should find a way
To catch him yet, if my retainers had
A little faith and helped me as they ought.
I overheard one say,
“Mark me, the cardinal is going mad;
He hears a mandolin where there is nought.”
Ay, that's Petroni's skill. He sends the sound
Straight to my ear, unheard by those around!

Once, on a moonlit night,
I caught a glimpse of him; the villain sat
Beneath my window on the garden-wall;
And, in the silvery light,
I saw his mandolin. Then, like a cat,
I crept downstairs, with fierce intent to fall
Upon and throttle him. I made a rush
And seized him by the throat. It was a bush.

But I have talked o'ermuch;
And something like a drowsiness descends
Upon my eyelids with a languid weight.
Oh, would it were the touch
Of sweet, returning sleep, to make amends
For long desertion, ere it be too late!
My fevered pulse grows calm; my heated brow
Aches less and less, and throbs no longer now.

O sleep, O gentle sleep!
I feel thee near; thou hast returned at last.
It was that draught of soothing hellebore.
I feel sweet slumber creep

Across each aching sense, as in the past,
And consciousness is fading more and more.
I care not to awake again; let death,
Whenever sleep shall leave me, take my breath.

Give ear! give ear! give ear!
I hear him; he is coming; it is he!
He plays triumphant strains, faint, far away.
Ye fools, do ye not hear?
Oh, we shall catch him yet, and you shall see
A year of hell compressed into a day.
Bring me my clothes, and help me out of bed.
Oh, I can stand; I'm weak, but not yet dead.

Bring me my scarlet cloak
And scarlet stockings. No, they're dyed with blood.
Oh, you may laugh! but it's beyond a doubt
The dyer's let them soak,
In every street, in murder-reddened mud;
It is the only dye which won't wash out.
The Pope is dead; Caraffa's dead at last.
I'm wanted at the conclave: dress me fast.

Who dares to hold me down?
I'm papable. By noon we must convene;
Bring me my clothes, and help me quick to rise.
When I've the triple crown
Safe on my head, I'll sweep the cesspool clean.
What's all that muttering? Speak out loud, ye spies!
There's a conspiracy at work, I know,
To keep me from the conclave—but I'll go.

The Papacy is lost.
Lost, wholly lost! The Papal keys, all black
With rust and dirt, won't turn the lock of heaven.
What's that? what's that? The Host?
There's poison in the wafer—take it back!
I'll spit it out! I'll rather die unshriven!
Help, Claudia, help! Where's Claudia? Where's she fled?
They're smothering me with pillows in my bed!

A LETTER TO MISS A. MARY F. ROBINSON.

A promise is the frailest thing I know:
A very soap-bubble which rashness flings
On whatsoever breeze may chance to blow;
We watch it float, and in its iris-glow
See fair precarious things.

And you have promised to return and spend
A while with us ere Tuscan leaves be sere;
Oh break your promise not, nor grieve a friend
To whom the Fates but little pleasure send,
I ween, from year to year.

Come with the dying summer's golden mist;
Come with the ripeness of the autumn air;
Come when the sun aweary shall desist,
And when all Nature, long too fiercely kissed,
Lies weak, but not less fair.

Come when no more the endless noontide creeps,
And each hot tile-roof tremulously steams;
Come when no more the shrill cicala keeps
Sawing the empty air, and he who sleeps
Abhors it through his dreams.

Come when no more the vesper bell shall rouse
The inmates of each sun-entranced abode;
And when no more the peasant shades with boughs
His slow, white oxen's fly-tormented brows,
Upon the glaring road.

Come when the hungry yellow wasp forestalls
The vintager, and mars the prosperous grape;
And when the vine leaves on the trellised walls
Take hectic patches ere the bunches fall
In hods of conic shape.

Come when the splitting wrapper of the maize
The massive golden lump no more can hold;
And when the meanest cottage front displays
A tapestry of ingots, which outweighs
All Eldorado's gold.

100

Come when the chestnut drops with rustling sound,
Through scanty leaves, and bursts its bristly husk
Just at your feet upon the mossy ground,
Where fragrant ferns and flowers wild abound
And scent the early dusk.

Oh, they are sweet, those chestnut woods where never
My foot, alas, can trample down the moss—
Those woods where others, full of health, may sever
The ferny stems, while I, debarred for ever,
Hold all, save strength, as dross.

The old, old chestnut-trees, whose trunks uncouth,
All gray with lichen and of monstrous girth,
Are hollowed out, and gnawed by each year's tooth,
Have bright green leaves, like impulses of youth
Which in old hearts take birth.

They cover the innumerable spurs
Of Apennine, the mighty boulders crowned,
By village strongholds, walled, and black with years,
And penetrate the gullies where one hears
The storm-born torrents bound.

101

Which seek the limpid Lima, as it brings
Its waters to the Serchio, green and bright,
Beneath black bridges where the wall-flower clings,
And where the mirrored kingfisher oft wings
His straight and rapid flight.

And you will see, as through an open door,
Where Serchio's gorges suddenly expand;
The Garfagnana rich with autumn's store,
Where Ariosto held command of yore—
A tract of faery land.

And watch the stream which, as the sun declines,
Winds like a glistening snake whose motion flags
Through ripeness-scented fields and reeds and vines,
Dividing from the cloud-capped Apennines
Carrara's marble crags.

But there are times, in later autumn's rains,
When that same stream is like no glistening snake,
But like a lion tawny flanked, which gains
In strength each moment, and whose roar retains
The anxious boor awake.

102

Then in its wrath, resistless Serchio tears
Through gorge and valley, threatening many a home;
Shaking with watery claws the great stone piers
Of each old bridge, against whose strength it rears
With mane of muddy foam.

A desperate hug, which sometimes rips asunder
The stoutest arch, though deep the piles be driven;
When, with a crack, which fills the hills with wonder,
The masonry, out-thundering the thunder,
Hurls up the flood to heaven.

But I must stop; or else I shall defeat
My only object, to attract you here;
And at the thought that you perhaps may meet
A sudden watery end, you will retreat
Elsewhere in haste and fear.

Be not afraid; but simply brush away
The picture I have held before your eyes.
I told you once that you were like a ray
Of sunshine; and so long as sunshine stay
The river will not rise.

103

AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF A LADY

Who Died at Florence February 29, 1880.

Behold, behold, the joyous spring has come—
The spring which she has missed. On every side
The mighty wave of sap is bubbling up
From deepest rootlet to the topmost twig;
On every side the sunny Tuscan fields
Are full of large wild tulips, red as flame;
The meadows full of daffodils; the woods
Are full of rustling, warbling, chirping sounds;
The silver poplars fill the air with down,
Which floating slowly settles on the path
In drifts of mimic snow, while earthy scents
Proclaim a recent shower: all is youth
And freshness now. But spring, triumphant spring,
Which means the strength and jubilee of earth,
Means also the incalculable deaths
Of all the generations that have been

104

Since life first sprouted on this rocky ball,
From insects up to kings. To make this spring
The busy populations came and went
Of now forgotten cities; and the hosts
Of loud exulting conquerors swept by
To glory and oblivion, and the whole
Of what we call the Past manured the world.
And so she too has gone to form a part
Of some fair future spring.

For I admit
No other resurrection: of the earth
We mortals are, and to her lap return,
Small portions of the ever-shifting whole,
Detached, made men, with mean or noble shapes,
With mean or noble minds, as fleeting things
As are the clouds which rise from out the sea,
Take varied forms, are wafted by the winds,
Are dull, or glow superbly, and anon
Pass off from the horizon, summoned back
By their eternal parent. Even so
Is she we mourn for, after some brief days
Of frail existence and a vivid glow
Of noble aspiration, mixed again

105

With elemental Nature: shall we curse
Great Mother Earth who calleth back her child?

Oh if a fair and gifted human thing
Pursued its way, as feelingless and cold
As does the cloud which streaks the summer sky,
And in its progress through these earthly scenes
Knew nought of pain, of undeserved reproach,
Of misappreciation, and of hopes
Rough trodden underfoot; if it were nought
Except a fair appearance sent to charm,
And then to vanish, Fate were free from guilt;
But ere her birth, nay, ere all years began,
The cruel Power which we ne'er behold
Affianced her to strong and bitter Death;
Decreed a princely dowry of rare gifts
And life-endearing instincts, and ordained
That in her innocent and tender frame
A seed of slow disease should lurk unseen
Till early womanhood, to make the gifts
Derision, dust. And so it came to pass.
Her eye grew lustrous, thin and white her hand,
As if some enemy, with muttered spells,
Were letting slowly melt before the fire

106

Her effigy in wax: while round and round
In ever closer circles hovered Death.
And when at last he seized her by the wrist,
And bade her come, she cried, “Not yet, not yet!
It is too soon to die. Not in the spring—
Not when fresh life is poured into the world
In measureless abundance.” But in vain.

There was small mercy in the God who framed
This self-destructive Nature, this great world
Which feeds upon itself, and when 'twas made
Departed none knows whither, for all time;
The Absentee to whom all living things
Pay hourly rent in multifarious aches;
Who, ere he left, made never-changing laws;
Linked Health to Madness, Beauty to Disease,
And Genius to Starvation; mingling Good
With Evil in a horrible alloy;
Now welding them together, as the steel
And gold are welded in an Indian blade,
Into a beautiful and deadly thing;
Now choking good with evil sickeningly
In foul contamination, like a pearl
Imbedded in the mire; and by a strange

107

And cynical provision, tying up
With each great wrong a partial remedy,
Perchance opposing to the million sobs
Of innocents a tear in pity shed;
Or giving man, when doomed to die,
The vain conceit of immortality.

Death underlies all Nature. See the corn
Which stands and ripens in the evening sun,
With here and there a poppy in its midst;
And cottages beyond, while nought is heard
Except the grasshopper and distant shouts
Of home-returning children. Who shall say
Here, never was a battle lost or won;
Here, nought was ever sickled in its strength
Except the grain; nought ever trampled down
Except the stubble; here no steel has gleamed
Except the shining ploughshare? Or, again,
Look out upon the sea when all is calm,
When o'er the vast extent of lazy blue
At most a ripple hovers; when the shore
Looks dreamy in the distance, and the sails
Of fishing boats are listless: would ye care
If that calm sea could be one moment drained,

108

To see the plains and valleys where the ribs
Of ships and men are lying, strewn as thick
As leaves in autumn woods? Nay, this same breeze
Which softly fans the cheek and rocks the buds
And strews the almond blossoms on the grass
Like flakes of rosy snow, has been at times
The all-pervading messenger of death,
And, coming laden with the scents of spring,
Has thinned the streets of cities. Nature teems
With death in every shape—with mighty wars
And isolated pinings; with the loud
And far-trumped death of heroes, and the still
And unobtrusive endings of the poor;
The unresisted slaughter of dumb brutes,
The rapid tragedies of insect life,
The slow decline of flowers; and behold,
Beside these deaths, innumerable births,
Triumphant renovation, fierce increase,
And life for ever winning in the race
With silent-footed Death. Behold all round
Start up new crops of heroes and new crops
Of beauties for the scythe, who for a while
Overtop the mass, the nameless, fameless mass,
As countless as the new-created swarms
Of whirling midges.

109

But to be a mind
As noble as was hers, one so akin
To those that leave imperishable works;
To live awhile upon that purer food,
To breathe that purer air, to feel as they,
And then be mingled wholly and at once
With the forgotten, with the nameless dead;
'Tis hard, 'tis hard! And yet, why ask for more?
Is't not enough to be a noble thing
Beneath the sun which warms us? Must we live
As well on dusty bookshelves and be great?
Oh, let not any turn away in scorn
From such a grave as this, and ask for fame.
She was of those for whom the great exist,
She was of those whose wise, sincere delight
Out-values all the loud, misplaced applause
Of fickle generations, and compels
The lasting recognition of the world.
She trod not on the stage where Genius stands
In presence of the vulgar, but sat high
Above both crowd and actors, and enjoyed.

And now beneath these Tuscan hills she lies
Where friendly sunbeams kiss away the tears

110

Which every passing April cloud lets fall
Upon her grave. All through the day
Such tears and kisses and the song of birds
Have been the gift of spring—the spring she missed.
But now the sun is low: before it leaves
It sends a slanting ray to kiss the stone.
Then pearly twilight settles over all;
The cypresses grow black, the air grows chill,
The mighty dome of Florence stands distinct,
With Giotto's belfry near it, on the sky.
Then by degrees they mingle with the night,
Like fading ghosts. The city's hum is hushed,
And through the dusk there comes the mellow boom
Of a great bell, tolled slowly, which brings home
A sense of peace in mutability.

SONNETS.

SOULAC.

A lone square house, all time-stained, used to stand
Upon the French west coast, where sparse pines keep
Their footing ill, while battling sea winds sweep
The hillocks of untilled and restless sand.
A house? it was the belfry, Norman-planned
Of long-lost Soulac's minster, buried deep
In sand, which Ocean never ceased to heap
For centuries, encroaching on the land.
All else was gone. Oh is not such the fate
That overtakes the rich and stately pile
Which, arch on arch, our youthful hopes create?
The Real slowly clogs it, nave and aisle;
The arches crash; and we are glad if, late,
Some humble vestige shelters us awhile.

WAIFS OF TIME.

When some good ship has long ago been wrecked,
And the repentant waves have long since laid
Upon the beach the booty which they made,
And years have passed, and men no more expect,
The sea will sometimes suddenly eject
A solitary waif, defaced, decayed,
On which in graven letters is displayed
The old ship's name which few can recollect.
So, ever and anon, the mighty sea
Which we call Time casts up upon our strand
Some splendid waif of Greek antiquity.
A headless god or Faun with shattered hand,
From Art's great wreck is suddenly set free,
And stands before us all, serene and grand.

WINTER.

The month is come when Nature may display
Her frosty jewelry in all men's eyes;
And when the wind which through the brushwood sighs
Brings down her brilliants in a sparkling spray.
Like spots of blood upon the snowstrewn way
The crimson berries lie, the robins' prize;
While in the leafless woods the poor man tries
To find some faggots for the bitter day.
On every sleeping pool the winter fits
With unseen hand a strong and glassy lid;
The fish all quaking down below are hid,
As overhead the circling skater flits.
While hoary Christmas at his banquet sits,
Where all whom hunger pinches not are bid.

LIFE'S GAME.

Life's Evil Genius with the sunless wing
And our white Guardian Angel sit and play
Their silent game of skill from day to day,
Where thoughts are pawns, and deeds are queens and kings.
And every move on that strange chessboard brings
Some change in us—in what we do or say;
Till with our life the winner sweeps
The last few pawns to which his rival clings.
We seem permitted, ever and anon,
To catch a glimpse of that great fatal game
By which our soul shall be or lost or won.
We watch one move, then turn away in shame;
But though we lack the courage to look on,
The game goes on without us all the same.

LOST YEARS.

My boyhood went: it went as went the trace
Left by the pony's hoof upon the sand;
It fled as fled the stream sought rod in hand;
It vanished as the ice on the pond's face.
Then went my youth; it went where went the lights
Of crowded ball-rooms at the dawn's advance;
It died as died the echoes of the dance;
It went where go all sorry wasted nights.
And now my manhood goes where goes the song
Of pent-up bird, the cry of crippled things;
It goes where goes the day that unused dies.
The cage is narrow and the bars are strong
At which my restless spirit beats its wings,
While round me stretch immeasurable skies