The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Buchanan :: :: University of Virginia Library

One starry midnight there did rise
That pallid Shape with human eyes,
Who, clad in grave-clothes and thorn-crown'd,
Stood silently and gazed around
From face to face,—and as on each
He looked in sorrow with no speech,
Each face grew wan and chill as clay,
And faded wearily away!
Ay, one by one those forms had fled,
Till all the heavenly host were dead,
Cast down and conquer'd, overthrown
Like broken shapes of marble stone.
Pallas, with pansies in her hair,
Like to a statue wondrous fair
Stricken and fall'n;—Selene white,
Cold, sleeping in the starry light;
Great Zeus, Apollo, and sad Pan,
With all his flocks Arcadian,
Strewn down like dead leaves on the tomb
Of Him who slew them in their bloom.
All dead! the brightest and the best!
And Cytherea with the rest!

And now He too, who cast in thrall
All shapes within that banquet-hall,
Who came to slay and overcome
The shining gods of Greece and Rome,
Had crept again to find repose
In the dark grave from which He rose;
And there for fifteen centuries
Had lain unseen with closèd eyes,
Had slept, and had not stirr'd a limb,
Though men grew mad for lack of Him.
‘Awake, O Christ!’ they cried in pain,
‘For lo! no other gods remain;
And Thou hast promised to return
With robes that flame and eyes that burn,
'Midst thunder-flash and trumpet-peal,
Legions of angels at Thy heel,
To take Thy throne, and overwhelm
Thine enemies, and rule Thy realm!’
In vain! Within His clay-cold prison
Silent He slept, and had not risen—
Though all the other gods were fled,
Though no god ruled the quick or dead,
Though all the eyes of Earth were wet,
He slept,—and had not risen yet.

Meantime, to keep his name in Rome,
The Eighth Pope Innocent had come
Instead of Christ, and from Christ's seat
Thrown down his bastards to the street—
So wither'd up with sin and death,
The dark world drew laborious breath
Beneath his footstool;—and no fair
Dead god would waken to its prayer!

It happen'd at this very time,
When in the sinful Church's slime
Grew monsters of malignant birth,
To eat man's substance on the earth,
And sit, where gods had sat, in Rome
(Where Christ would sit if He should come),
In this dark moment of eclipse,
When prayer was silent on the lips
And faith was dead within the thought,
The mystic miracle was wrought.
For Lombard workmen, on a day,
Digging beneath the Appian way,
Sifting the ruins of Rome dead,
Untomb'd, in wonder and in dread,
A marble coffin strangely scroll'd,
Enwrought with ivory and with gold.
Stain'd was it with great earthen stains,
Worn with the washing of the rains,
And splash'd with blots of blood-red clay,
But sealèd as a shrine it lay;
And when they raised it to the light,
After a thousand years of night,
Their eyes read its inscription thus:
‘Fulia, the child of Claudius!’

The Church authorities were brought—
Great cardinals in raiment wrought
With gold and red, and trains resplendent
Of mighty priests and monks attendant;
And while these cross themselves and strew
The coffin cold with holy dew,
They force the lid, and lo! they find—
Not dust to scatter on the wind,
Not bleaching bones, not blacken'd clay
Horrible in the light of day,
Nought o'er whose sweetness Death hath power,
Not dark corruption,—but a Flower!

Flower of the flesh, as soft and new
As when she drank the sun and dew,
Golden her hair with light from heaven,
As if she slept but yester-even;
Her lips, that softly lay apart,
Still red as any beating heart;
Her form, still fairy-like and bright,
Though marble-cold and lily-white,—

Her hands, unwither'd, softly prest
Upon her still unstainèd breast,—
A Maiden Flower she slumber'd there,
After a thousand years still fair,
Within her white sarcophagus.

‘Julia, the child of Claudius!’

Out of the coffin cold as ice
Rich fumes of cinnabar and spice
Still floated; as she lay within
Flower-sweet she scented, and her skin
Shone as anointed. One soft fold
Of precious woof around her roll'd
Half veil'd, with its transparent dress,
Her lithe and luminous loveliness;
Upon her wrists bracelets of gold
Were fastened; on one finger cold
Glimmer'd an onyx ring. So sweet,
She lay, embalm'd from head to feet,
Kept (by some secret long forgot)
Without a stain, without a spot,
As when, a thousand years before,
In days of god and emperor,
She closed her eyes and slumber'd thus.

‘Julia, the child of Claudius!’

When thus she turn'd with soft last breath
Into the chilly arms of Death,
She might have seen the happy light
Some sixteen years,—but form so bright
Ne'er trembled between childish glee
And tremulous virginity.
Only a child; yet far too fair
For any child of mortal air,
Since Passion's fiery flame, it seem'd,
Still play'd about her locks, and stream'd
From 'neath her eyelids; and her limbs
Were amber with such light as swims
Round Love's own altar; and her lips,
Untouch'd by darkness or eclipse,
Were wonderful and poppy-red
With kisses of a time long dead,—
When Love indeed in naked guise
Still walk'd the world with awful eyes
And flaming hair. So fair she lay,
Burning like amber in the ray,
As burns a lamp with sweet oils fed
Within some shrine no foot may tread,
No hand of any mortal mar;
And as men gaze on some new star,
Men marvell'd while they gazed on her.
Soundly she slept, and did not stir:
And far away beyond the sea
The white Christ slept as sound as she!