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

O night of wonder! O enchanted Night!
Full of strange whisperings and wondrous light,
How shall I, singing, summon up again
Thine hours of awe and deep miraculous pain?
For as I stood upon those streets of stone
I seem'd to hear the wailing winds intone
‘Ahasuerus!’—while with lips apart,
His thin hand prest upon his fluttering heart,
His face like marble lit by lightning's glare,
His frail feet bleeding, and his bosom bare,
List'ning he stood!

From the blue Void o'erhead
Starlight and moonlight round his shape were shed,
And the chill air was troubled all around
With piteous wails and echoes of such sound
As fills the great sad Sea on nights of Yule,
When all the cisterns of the heavens are full
And one great hush precedes the coming Storm.
And like a snow-wrapt statue seem'd the form
I looked on, and of more than mortal height!
Wintry his robe, his hair and beard snow-white
Frozen like icicles, his face all dim,
And in the sunken, sunless eyes of him
Silent despair, as of a lifeless stone!

And then meseem'd that in some frozen zone,
Where never flower doth blossom or grass is green,
Chill'd to the heart by cruel winds and keen
Shiv'ring I stood, and the thick choking breath
Of Frost was round me, terrible as Death,
And he I look'd on was a figure wan
Hewn out of snow in likeness of a Man;

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And all the silent City in a trice
Was turn'd to domes and towers of rayless ice,
As of some spectral City whose pale spires
Are lighted dimly with the auroral fires
That gleam for ever at the sunless Pole!

How long this glamour clung upon my Soul
I know not; but at last methought I spake,
Like one who, fresh from vision, half awake,
Murmurs his thought: ‘Father of men that roam,
Outcast from God and exile from thy home
(If such there be for any Soul in need),
I will not say, God bless thee, since indeed
God's blessing is a burthen and a blight;
Yet will I bless thee, in that God's despite,
Knowing thy sorrow manifold and deep.
Aye me, aye me, what may I do but weep,
Seeing thy poor grey hair, and frail shape driven
Hither and thither by the winds of Heaven,
Sharing thy sorrow, hearing thy sad moan
That penetrates all hearts but God's alone,
Knowing thee mortal, yet predoom'd to fare
For ever, with no rest-place anywhere,
Although all other mortal things may die!
Death is the one good thing beneath the sky;
Death is the one sweet thing that men may see;
Yet even this God doth deny to thee!
Thou canst not die!’ With feeble lips of clay
He answered, yet the voice seem'd far away,
‘Yea, Death is best, and yet I cannot die!’

Before my vision, as I heard the cry,
There flash'd a glamour of the Dead; and lo!
I saw a hooded Phantom come and go
Across great solitary plains by night,
Red with all nameless horror of the fight,
And dead white faces glimmer'd from the sward,
And here a helmet gleamed and there a sword,
And all was still and dreadful, and the scent
Of carnage thickened where the Phantom went.
This faded, and methought I stood stone-still
In a great Graveyard strewn with moonbeams chill
Like bleaching shrouds, and through the grassy glooms
Pale crosses glimmer'd and great marble tombs;
But as I crost my frozen hands to pray
The apparition changed and died away,
And I was walking very silently
Some oozy bottom of the sunless Sea.
And 'midst the sombre foliage I could mark
Black skeletons of many a shipwreck'd bark
Within whose meshes, washing to and fro,
Were skeletons of men as white as snow
Picked clean by many a hideous ocean-thing.
The waters swung around me as they swing
Round drowning men, and with a choking pain
I struggled,—and that moment saw again
The sleeping City and the cold Moonshine,
And in the midst, with his blank eyes on mine,
That Man of Mystery who could not die!

And lo, his lips were open'd with a cry,
And his lean hands were stretchèd up to Heaven.
‘Ah, woe is me,’ he said, ‘to stand bereaven
Of that which every man of clay may share!
Eternity hath snowed upon my hair,
And yet, though feeble and weary, I endure.
Still might I fare, if Death at last were sure,
If I might see, eternities away,
A grave, wide open, where my feet might stay!’
Then in a lower voice more deep with dread,
‘Father which art in Heaven,’ the old Man said,
‘Thou from the holy shelter of whose wing
I came, an innocent and shining thing,
A lily in my hand and in mine eyes
The passion and the peace of Paradise,
Thou who didst drop me gently down to rest
A little while upon my Mother's breast,
Wrapt in the raiment of a mortal birth,
How long, how long, across Thy stricken Earth

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Must I fare onward, deathless? Tell me, when
May I too taste the cup Thou givest to men,
My brethren and Thy children and the heirs
Of all my spirit's sorrows and despairs?
My work is o'er—my sin (if sin there be)
Is buried with the bones of Calvary;
My blessing has been spoken, and my curse
Is wingèd vengeance in Thy Universe;
My voice hath thrill'd Thy dark Eternity
To protestation and to agony,
And Man hath listen'd with wild lips apart
As to a cry from his own breaking heart!
What then remains for me to do, O God,
But fold thin hands and bend beneath Thy rod,
And ask for respite after labour done?’

In sorrow and in awe he spake, as one
Communing with some Shape I could not mark,
And all his words seem'd wild, his meaning dark;
And as he ceased the Heavens grew dark in woe,
And faster, thicker, fell the encircling Snow
Wrapping him with its whiteness round and round;
But from the Void above no sign, no sound,
Came answering his prayer.

‘Father,’ I said,
‘Chill falls the snow upon thy holy head
(Yea, holy through much sorrow 'tis to me),
And He to whom thou prayest so piteously
Hears not, and will not hear, and hath not heard
Since first the Spirit of Man drew breath and stirred!
Let us seek shelter!’ But I spake in vain—
He heard not; but as one that dies in pain
Sank feebly on the parapet of stone.
Upon his naked breast the Snow was blown
Thicker and colder—on his hoary head
Heavily like a cruel hand of lead
It thickened—so he stood from head to feet
Smother'd and wrapt as in a winding sheet,
Forlorn and weary, panting, overpowered.

Then lo! a miracle!—For a space he cowered
As if o'ermastered by the cruel touch,
But all at once, as one that suffers much
Yet quickeneth into anger suddenly,
He said, in a sharp voice of sovereignty,
‘Cease, cease!’ and at the very voice's sound,
The white Snow wildly wavering round and round
Rose like a curtain, leaving all things bright!

Spell-bound and wonder-stricken at the sight,
And comprehending not its import yet
(For still my Soul with fever and with fret
Was laden, and I bore upon my mind
The darkness of that doubt that keeps men blind),
I cried, ‘See! see! the elemental Snow
Obeys thy call, in pity for thy woe—
Gentler than He who fashioned men for pain,
The white Snow and the wild Wind and the Rain
Would bless thee, and there is no cruel beast
Which He hath made, the greater or the least,
Which would not spare thy life and lick thy hand,
Poor outcast comer from a lonely land.
Yea, only God is cruel—Only He
Whose foot is on the Mountains and the Sea,
And on the bruisèd frame and flesh of Man!’