The Poetical Works of Sydney Dobell :: :: University of Virginia Library

A Dungeon.
The Monk, Vittorio Santo, and a few of his chosen followers (among them ‘The Mother’ of Scene VI.) who are admitted to see him for the last time. They are conversing. His trial, by Austrian Court-martial, takes place at day-break.
The Monk.
I grant you there must be for every man
Some hill, plain, valley, or familiar tree,
Beside whose sweetness his young sould beholding,
Grew till the invisible within put on
The outward beauty. As your Roman mothers
Conceiving gazed upon their marble gods,
And brought forth sons like them. But if these homesteads
Contain that wealth of utterless affections,
Hopes, fears, traditions, duties, memories,
Inborn respects, instincts of good and evil,
That creature faith, that visible religion,
Which my soul utters when I say ‘My country,’
Then the best sight makes the best citizen,
The horizon of our rights shuts in with age,
Each day of weeping leaves us less to weep for,
Infirmity makes outlaws, and the blind
Are aliens everywhere.

150

A Youth.
Belovèd master,
For thus—sublime in the near neighbourhood
Of death—I must behold thee, even as men
On hill-tops seen against the heaven beyond
Seem giants——

The Monk.
Friend, forbear. Who made me ruler
And judge among you—or who gave thee licence
To be a slave? Beloved, thou art young: the time
May come when thou shalt tremble to create
Or to depose a master. In dominion—
The universal idol—the world worships
The unknown God. Sometimes in these last hours
I have had visions of a more divine
Iconoclast, who shall demand, ‘Will God
Be worshipp'd in the noblest image?’ Let
That pass. I feel it has not pass'd for ever.
Meanwhile learn this. Drawing near authority
To make or to unmake—Man, put thy shoes
From off thy feet, for the place where thou standest
Is holy ground.

A Friend.
Who then shall dare rebel?

The Monk.
Well ask'd, brave patriot, where is that blasphemer
Who dares rebel? Let us obey. But, Roman,
Shall we obey the living or the dead?
‘The powers that be!’ By what sign will ye know
The powers that be? My friends, we are the fools
Of eyesight and the earthly habitudes

151

Which cannot look aloft. Walking the plank
Of life o'er the abyss, we fear to glance
Or upward to the stars, or downward to the grave.
Our souls, yoke-strain'd, in attitude of toil
Bend earthward. Oft the unworshipp'd angel passeth
While we, with eyes fix'd on the ground from which
We came, adore his footsteps in the sand.
And God, this while, is in the heaven of heavens!
Stand! Christian! thou who hastest towards a throne
By that old pathway which our fathers wore
When a king sat there. Traitor! yon blood-stain'd
Mad sans-culotte, whose godless feet are rattling
Among kings' bones,—you vulture of the nations,
Yelling instinctive through the fateful air
To deathstruck dynasties,—yon maniac serf
Ringing his broken chains, and piling, wild
With freedom, hills of courtly slain to reach
The thronèd effigy to which thou kneelest,
And strew the imperial tatters to the wind—
That outlaw is no rebel! What art thou
Who bendest to the empty rags which once
Enrobed dominion, and with stiff knee passest
That uncrown'd presence, unbegilt, unfeather'd
Naked and full of God, whose step disturbs
The centre of the world?

Friends! Gessler's hat
Two centuries hence had more divinity
Than any crown to-day. Is aught on earth

152

Eternal? Man has rights; but is a corpse
A man? Doth the heir rob the dead? The stars
Themselves burn out. Spring, summer, autumn, winter,
Each traitor to the past, and each in turn
To its own season loyal. Are these things
Dumb? Look on high. That which you call rebellion
Is but the changed obedience which we pay
To changing dispensations. The true rebel
Is he who worships for the powers that are
Powers that are not.

Enter a Jailor secretly disposed to favour the Monk.
Jailor.
The hour, most reverend Sir,
Of which you bade me warn you, struck but now.
One more is all the grace I dare. Even that
Discover'd, would be bought with all my own.

The Monk.
Good friend, we thank thee. Did we not know, jailor,
That the time cometh when to have done this service
To these and me this night shall more avail thee
Than an imperial signet, we would speak
Of recompence. Yet wear this, [taking a ring from his finger,]
and forget not
When it was given and why. Enough. We count
The moments.

Gentle Romans, when ye enter
The land of milk and honey, recollect
That God spared Rahab. The great day of reckoning

153

Is not so far hence that ye shall forget
Vittorio Santo's keeper.

A Friend.
Show me why
It does not dawn to-morrow. 'T may suit well
Thy monk's disguise to draw the sword of the Spirit,
And wrestle not with flesh and blood, but hath
Rome one arm only? How shall he whose tongue
Fate hung awry be eloquent? My comrades,
Thus! [with a gesture].
In truth, Santo, my right worthy friend,
Methinks thou hast even offer'd up thyself
And thy good cause on a cold altar——

The Monk.
So
Did Abel.

The Friend.
Yes, 'tis well, 'tis very well,
Noble no doubt and wondrous heavenly, but——

An elder Friend.
Peace, stripling! Friend revered, thou hast wrought out
Thy chosen path to freedom. It ends here.

The Monk
(pointing up).
There. I am no such royal guest, dear Cosmo,
But I can stand a moment at the gate.

Cosmo.
We, reverent of thy martyr zeal, but hearing
A voice which calls us by a shorter road
To be cut out by hands, ask if the sword
That patriot draws be guilty?

The Monk.
When the Baptist
Call'd to repentance, did he weigh the dust

154

And measure out the sackcloth? Let a prophet
Wait upon silence. Who can hold his peace
Hath said his message. Things that once have dwelt
In heaven will make that prison, a man's heart,
Glad to release them. Let the seer see
And he will cry. Herein I have not seen.
The image that for me fills earth and heaven
Shuts out the shapes beyond.

A Woman
Yet, father, —oh

[_]

(‘The Mother’ in Scene VI.)

Let me still call thee so!—are there not hard
Unripen'd times, when the gold sickle of angels
Reaps not the harvest—early dawns of truth,
When we must burn a grosser light than day?

The Monk.
If the true man were of the world, and had
The sun of his great orbit in its centre,
And kept the measure of its seasons, then,
Daughter, thou hadst said well. But he who steps
Forth from the radiant chambers of the future
To show us how the unseen ages look;
He who comes forth a voluntary hostage
Of the supreme good-will of times to come;
He who grew up among your children's children,
And calls by name the years you never knew;
He who takes counsel of the things that yet
Are not, and answers with his kindling eyes
Questions ye cannot hear; he who is set

155

Among us pigmies, with a heavenlier stature
And brighter face than ours, that we must leap
Even to smite it,—that man, friends, must have
The self-existence of a god. From him
The poor necessities, hopes, fears, and fashions
Of the expedient Present, fall like waves
From adamant. Friends! learn a prophet's patience.
Do you remember how, in backward years,
Night after night the patient harvest-moon
Climbs her high seat above the silent fields,
In act to reign? Bating no majesty
For her great solitude. Unmann'd, below,
The golden plenty spreads, unwarn'd of change,
Ample repose. From corn-crown'd hill to hill,
From waving slope to slope, where sickly winds
Disturb'd flit blind from sudden sleep to sleep,
From calm auriferous deeps and from the broad
Pale distance, drowsy in the genial light,
From all the dull expanse of voiceless plains,
O'er which, unscared, the midnight curlew cries,
No answering horn salutes her. Smile on, pale,
Prophetic queen! Know ere thy wane, thine hosts,
Thy sounding hosts, shall darken all the vales!
Not otherwise the poet and the prophet,
The patriot and the sage.

The Youth.
This is well said.
And if we desperate men had calm or leisure
To seek the fruit of knowledge where it hangs

156

Through all the fair wide gardens of the soul,
Doubtless 'twere reverend idlesse. But, good Sir,
A partisan in war time must needs carry
His daily meed of duty in his hand.
We have no time—we freemen——

The Monk.
Ah, young friend,
Dost thou too die to-morrow?

Gonzalo (a friend).
Noble Sir,
Forgive him!

The Monk.
He spake not amiss, Gonzalo,
A little out of tune, no more. I thank him.
And if I could dismiss you from this last
Communion, with no ampler utterance
Than yet hath pass'd between us; if I left you
Here upon earth, and with the clouds above,
To the dim sayings of the sibylline stars,
And now, at midnight, gave your tear-blind eyes
No compass but the land-marks, which serve angels
Journeying heaven and earth, Rezzio's rebuke
Flying before would shut against my soul
The gates of paradise. I have come short
Of my high calling, friends, but (I thank God)
Not thus far. The old Castellan, just now,
Came not unbidden. I desired, my brethren,
To ask of you, this our last mutual hour,
A death gift,—if you like it—laid upon
My funeral pile. Somewhat I had to say.

A Friend
(aside).
Son.

157

The Son
(aside).
Father.

The Friend
(aside).
Mine own chaplain—hasten——

The Monk
(observing them).

Marquis,
Are we such strangers? Sirs, ye do me wrong.
What chrysm can hold, what hand of flesh can spread
The unction of a soul? I bear in me
The priesthood of a Christian man, and do
My own death-rites. What sins I have, are written
On high: and that angelic record needs
No death-bed supplement. Son! let us brighten
This last best hour with thoughts that shining through
To-morrow's tears shall set in our worst cloud
The bow of promise. In my life, long past,
There is a passage, friends, which set apart
From our rich confidence, I have reserved
As burden for this hour. Ye are just, brethren,
And will believe me that I dig this dust
Of personal remembrance as the sands
Of golden shores. In giving you the wisdom
Which I received, and now commit to your
Chaste hands, with prayers ye may be better stewards,
I wish, if I may speak thus, to transplant,
Not the fruit only, but the tree whereon
It grew; that so they may have life in you,
Unto a goodlier increase. And for this
Awful and mystic husbandry I chose
The climate of the grave. And if, dear friends,
I stray some moments from my history,

158

Through the sideways of sterile circumstance,
Be gracious to the old man garrulous.
The old man, friends. Age is the shadow of death,
Cast where he standeth in the radiant path
Of each man's immortality. What age,
To the dumb infant of eternity,
Bring threescore years and ten? Brother Gonzalo,
Prithee that prison water-jar. My lips
Are feverish with to-morrow.

[He drinks.

Wells the spring
Pure even here? Oh nature, nature, thou
Hast done thy part! Thanks, gentle friends.

Now, soul,
I turn thee loose among the fields of old.

[He pauses.

Imperial Summer in hot luxury
Reign'd like a new-crown'd caliph. Heavy Noon,
Golden and dead-asleep, oppressive lay,
Athwart the sated world. I, book in hand,
Wander'd since dawn, it was my wont, those fair
Campanian fields where ancient poets went
To learn the fragrance of ambrosial air,
And every nymph was Hebe—but where now,
When the serf makes his lair where Romans dwelt,
Nature, disdainful of the hideous trespass,
Teaches, retributive, the wasting cheek
How slaves should look. From early morn to eve
My feet had roam'd these plains, my heart the ages.

159

And burden'd with the brightness of the hour,
I sought the shade which old Vespasian built.
Those walls which, lest degenerate tongues disturb
The indignant dead, we call the Coliseum—
Those wondrous walls which, like the monument
Of some old city of the plague, stand up
Mighty in strength and ruin, with no more
Decay than serves for epitaph, and takes
Impiety from pride, and breaks the crown'd
Pillar of triumph on the conqueror's grave.
Those walls whose grey infirmities seem only
The mood of an imperishable face,
Awful as scars upon a Titan's brow,
Dread as a strong man's tears. Small marvel, truly,
With that eternal witness looking on,
That thou, Campagna! art for very shame
True to the days of old!

Entering, I sat
Refresh'd in shadow, and like some high wizard,
In wayward hour, call'd with a god's caprice
Spirits of new and old. In that doom-ring
Of time, who would not be magician? Now,
I sought old chronicles for Nero's house,
That golden crown that made mount Palatine
Royal. And those imperial halls wherein
Cæsar is still august. Now, pensive, sitting
Within the very shade of destiny,
I saw their ruins strew the hills of Rome.

160

And looking forth through rents, by which the years
Pass in and out, I gazed as one should gaze
Upon some battle-field of the old gods.
And the Olympian slain lay there, unearth'd,
With whitening limbs—like bark'd oaks, thunder-scarr'd,
Loading the fearful ground, ghastly and gaunt,
In all the dreadful attitudes of death.
So sojourning—a pilgrim of the past—
Kind sleep o'ertook me, travel-worn of soul.
My eyes, unconscious, closed to scenes without,
And at a shout I opened them within
Upon the world of dreams. With strange recoil
As at a nod, the extended scroll of time
Roll'd up full fifteen ages. That Honorius
Who cut the world in two, gave holiday
To all the pride of Rome. The new arena,
(For in old Rome three hundred years seem'd new,)
Which great Vespasian, working for all time,
Built up with Jewish hands, (as he would sweat
Their immortality into the stone,)
Teem'd to the parapet. The sun of noon
Shed golden evening through a silken heaven,
Fair floating, which for clouds received the incense
Of all the Arabies. Luxurious art
Ensnared the unwilling winds, and like toil'd eagles,
Held them through all the hot Italian day,
Flapping cool pleasures. Ever falling-waters
Solaced the ear, themselves beheld through fragrance,

161

Till the lapp'd sense in soft confusion own'd
Redolent light. Behind a hedge of gold
In the elysian field, imperial state
Purpled the ring. High, high, and higher rose
The babel tower of heap'd up life, and o'er
This strange rich arras, rainbow-hued and vast,
The eternal marble, imminent, look'd down,
And the cyclopean mass of the huge walls
Frown'd from the arches. And before their stern
And monumental grandeur, the up-piled
Mortality was as this hand beside
This rock-hewn dungeon. In the midest stand I,
On that tremendous theatre condemn'd
To play the last red scene of a short life,
Lest Cæsar yawn. You heavens!

And do the hideous courtesies of war,
My senses, quick with fate, learn all the scene,
And snuff, prescient, on the heavy air
The perfumed death. My foe, a Spartacus
In make and weapon, took with careless scorn
The languid challenge; and with his flat sword
Spurn'd me to action. So have I beheld
At the unequal pleasure of the winds,
Some poplar giant—tyrant of the plain—
Fall foul of some slim cypress. Point to point,
And blade to blade, and hilt to hilt opposed,
The glittering mazes of the gleaming glaive

162

Coil and recoil. The waxing strife has shrunk
The earth to standing-ground. The whole wrapt being
Sent hot into the hand, spares not one sense
Beyond the sword-arm's circle. Into which
Half-understood, the dreadful seas of clamour
Thunder their surges. So, meseems, a soul
Falling through mid-space hears the passing shout
Of unseen worlds. And now the giant, stung,
Casts off his sword craft. Striding like a storm,
Uproots me, lightening. See my blade fly up
Like a flung torch; myself into the dust
Hurl'd like a spear; and the Goliath folding
His untask'd arms upon his unbreathed breast,
Look up without a flush for the well-known
Signal of doom. Two hundred thousand hands
Gave it. He saw. While the sword rose and fell,
Up from the podium to the beetling height
I turn'd one dying look to the mute nation
Which—stretching neck and nerve with sanguine strain
To catch the bloody joy—through all its legions
Held such a stifled horrible expectance,
As if the greed of anguish could not spare
The groan a sigh might cover. Round the vast
O'er-peopled hell the terrible haste of death
Took my mad eyes, and, in the indistinct
Wild glance, its serried thousands glared on me
Like one tremendous face.

Consenting sat

163

That day, all that the world most loved, fear'd, worshipp'd.
Sages whose household words, caught up, made proverbs
For far-off nations; grey proconsuls, warriors
Whose mere names stood for victory in all
The tongues of Europe; senators whose title
Ennobled kings; priests of all orders, bishops
Whose heavenly treasure was not lent, as yet,
To earthly usury; great merchants, men
Who dealt in kingdoms; ruddy aruspex,
And pale philosopher, who bent beneath
The keys of wisdom; artists, and whatever
In Rome claimed to be poet; woman, too,
And passing fair,—not that mine eye had note
Of any separate loveliness, or knew
More than a sense of exquisite relief,
A more or less in hate, an intuition
That in the living mountain which rose round
All was not adamant; a milder mood
In a most terrible destiny. I saw it,
As when upon the fretful parapet
Of some vast cloud that doth engird the west,
Flush'd and distemper'd with the angry hues
Of passionate sunset, oft at eve there shineth
A line of purer light. All these sat there
Consenting, and with them the purple pride
To which all these bow'd down;—and I must die.
Swept through the silence a great wind of voices,

164

‘Look to the podium!’ Breaking from the ranks
A Christian priest—I knew him by his habit—
Cleaves the gold fences,—lion-proof—with more
Than lion's heart, and, as the sword fell, stands
'Twixt me and slaughter. Abdiel with such gesture
Held Satan off. The rude barbarian, scorning
The feeble game, flings down his sword. That moment
Methought hell burst, and in a death-trance heard I
The outcry of the damn'd. The observant host
Rose like the simultaneous tide when hid
Volcanos heave the ocean, and a long
Vast wave engulfs an island. Not the war
Even of those seas drowning the blasphemies
Of shrieking sinking cities, storms the ear
Like what I heard. Tremendous rushing life
Yell'd round the place, and, as the howling vortex
Belch'd up its sounds, the screaming horrors struck
The impassive walls, and like caged fiends came back
Convulsed with madness. Then the tempest turns
Inwards, and with one gust, as at a sign,
Guts the stone entrails of the awful tower
In whirlwind of revenge. Like an explosion
Down hails the hurricane fury. So Vesuvius
With mountains wrench'd from her own bowels, piles
Shouting the blasted plain.

Slain, slain and buried
By the same act, under one terrible heap
Lay martyr, victor, vanquish'd. Last to die

165

I felt the growing weight and heard through all
The exulting thousands. How the sounds dash'd down
Like stamping furies. Here the vision ends:
With the death-pang I woke.

Absolute calm,
A silence like the silence of the desert,
Silence beyond repose, lone, lifeless, stagnant,
Muter than any grave. Silence too dead
For living tongue to name. Silence more placid
Than peace or night or death; (for these are strings
Unstruck but to be stricken;) idiot silence,
Sterile, and blank, and blind. A breathless pause
In heaven and earth; held till the moving thought
Seems turbulence, this human nature grows
Unseemly on us, our life's common functions
Impertinent and gross, and conscious cheeks
Excuse the beating heart with blushes. Silence
As of a listening world. Such strange defect,
Such lean and hungry quiet, such keen sense
Of absence grown effectual, that the ear
Faints as for breath, and even the very substance
Of latent sound seems dead. Alas! for language,
We sing the healing darkness of sweet night,
But for Egyptian darkness that was felt
Have names no blacker. When you speak of silence,
'Tis as the sweet content of voiceless woods
After the nightingale—as the home-genius
Sole watching by the sleep of happy babes

166

With finger at her lip, and shows of stillness,
Meanwhile the sleeper smileth and the air
Stirs with dream-music. When I use the word
Think of some other silence. In that other
I woke.
From sound to stillness as when stormy hearts
In passion break. From tempest to dead calm,
As when at some strange portent clashing hosts
Halt in mid-shock. From all to nothingness,
A soul from chaos shot into the void
Beyond the universe.

In my short rest
From imminent heights, the dust of slow decay—
Sands from the glass of time shaken of winds—
Crumbs from the feast of desolation—strew'd
My slumbering face upturn'd. The Gorgon Sleep
Made them a shower of stones. My wondering eyes
O'er-charged with sense, in shuddering unbelief
Unclose upon the lone inane expanse
Of summer turf, from which the mouldering walls
Shut not the sunshine; like a green still lake
Girt by decaying hills. Urging my gaze
Round the tremendous circle, arch on arch,
And pile on pile, that tired the travell'd eye,
I saw the yawning jaws and sightless sockets
Gape to the heedless air. Like the death's-head
Of buried empire. And the sun shone through them
With calm avoidance that left them more dark,

167

And pleasured him with some small daisy's face
Grass-grown. As though even from the carrion of gods,
The instinct of the living universe
Held heaven and earth aloof. All through the lorn
Vacuity winds came and went, but stirr'd
Only the flowers of yesterday. Upstood
The hoar unconscious walls, bisson and bare,
Like an old man deaf, blind, and grey, in whom
The years of old stand in the sun and murmur
Of childhood and the dead. From parapets
Where the sky rests, from broken niches—each
More than Olympus,—for gods dwelt in them,—
Below from senatorial haunts and seats
Imperial, where the ever-passing fates
Wore out the stone, strange hermit birds croak'd forth
Sorrowful sounds, like watchers on the height
Crying the hours of ruin. When the clouds
Dress'd every myrtle on the walls in mourning
With calm prerogative the eternal pile
Impassive shone with the unearthly light
Of immortality. When conquering suns
Triumph'd in jubilant earth, it stood out dark
With thoughts of ages: like some mighty captive
Upon his deathbed in a Christian land,
And lying, through the chant of Psalm and Creed
Unshriven and stern, with peace upon his brow,
And on his lips strange gods.

Rank weeds and grasses,

168

Careless and nodding, grew, and asked no leave,
Where Romans trembled. Where the wreck was saddest
Sweet pensive herbs, that had been gay elsewhere,
With conscious mien of place rose tall and still,
And bent with duty. Like some village children
Who found a dead king on a battle-field,
And with decorous care and reverent pity
Composed the lordly ruin, and sat down
Grave without tears. At length the giant lay,
And everywhere he was begirt with years,
And everywhere the torn and mouldering Past
Hung with the ivy. For Time, smit with honour
Of what he slew, cast his own mantle on him,
That none should mock the dead.

Oh, Solitude,
What dost thou here? Where are those legions? They
Were men, not spirits. Where those shouts that like
Wild waves upen a low lee shore, but now
Lash'd me to death? Thou Earth, where didst thou quake
When they went down? Was it that shock, oh Earth,
That left these ruins? Crying thus, I ponder'd
The subject of my dream. Beside me still
Lay that old chronicle whence, as from some
Quaint ancient banquet-hall, a gorgeous bevy
Of gods and men had pass'd forth with my soul
Into sleep's stranger pleasaunce, and thence straying
Wander'd the world. The open page, held wide

169

By my stretch'd slumbering arm, interpreted
The vision. There my waking eyes had closed.
'Twas where Honorius on a high day gives
Games to great Rome; and one unfriended priest,
Telemachus by name, soul-stricken, leaps
The circus fences, and in mid-arena
Stays the unholy combat, and dies there,
Stoned by the people. When he walk'd through Rome
That morning, no man turned to gaze on him.
He had no friend, no mistress, no disciple,
No power, fame, fortune, wealth, or human cunning,
And hath no record upon earth but this,
That he died there. Yet those walls where he suffer'd—
Those great imperial monumental walls
Built to feast nations in for ever—stand
From that day tenantless. In that man's blood
Baptized to ruin. Then my heart cried out,
Herein, oh prophet, learn a prophet's duty!
For this cause is he born, and for this cause,
For this cause comes he to the world—to bear
Witness. Oh God-ordain'd! thine hands are God's!
Sully them not. The days shall come when men
Who would be angels shall look back to see
What thou wert. Live for them. Speak, speak thy message;
The world runs post for thee. The good by nature,
The bad by fate;—whom the avenging gods
Having condemn'd have first demented. Know

170

By virtue of that madness they are thine.
Lay-brothers working where the sanctity
Of thine high office comes not. Savage friends
Who, scattering in their wrath thy beacon, light
The fire that clears the wilderness. Unconscious
Disciples, writing up the martyr's title
In Hebrew, Greek, and Latin on his cross.
Love him who loves thee; his sweet love bath bought
A place in heaven. But love him more who hates,
For he dares hell to serve thee. Pray for him
Who hears thee gladly; it shall be remember'd
On high. But, martyr! count thy debt the greater
To the reviler; he hath bought thy triumph
With his own soul. In all thy toils forget not
That whoso sheddeth his life's blood for thee
Is a good lover; but thy great apostle,
Thy ministering spirit, thy spell-bound
World-working giant, thy head hierophant
And everlasting high priest, is that sinner
Who sheds thine own.

A Friend.
Alas!

Another.
'Tis a hard saying,
Who can hear it?