Canto the Fourth. Where is Comfort?
1, 2. Amo's body on the river-bank. 3. What comfort in reflections the
thought of it suggests? All great souls self-sacrificed in the cause of
Good, a protest against Annihilation. 4. Fate's cruelty forces belief
in a future state. If Doubt needful to create Trust and Soul-excellence?
5. No theories good against Grief. 6. Yet Ranolf's buoyant
nature will survive to learn how sorrow elevates, and (7) is the
nurse of heroism.
I.
So was despair, in our heart-broken Bride,
Quenched, rudely quenched—in that tumultuous tide!—
But if that self-forgetting Life was passed,
To peace, it seemed, it had been lulled at last.
For one who by the river's side
Far lower down, that day by chance descried
A floating form he could not aid,
Glide swiftly by, soon after said
The Maiden lay, as past she hied,
Upon her back as on a quiet bed.
Her eyes were closed—the lashes long and sleek,
Reposing on the placid cheek;
Along the yellow waters wild
Her jet-black tresses softly streamed;
And though careworn, just then it seemed,
Her face was so serene and mild,
So mournful, yet with meek content so deep,—
She looked an innocent Child,
Laid on its couch asleep.
And that informant told them how they found,
Cast on the gravel by the riverside,
The body of the Maiden drowned.
II.
Alas, for Ranolf! in his passionate pain
That image ever was before his brain
In terrible distinctness night and day!
With pertinacious torture self-applied
How would he conjure up to his despair,
And paint with accurate anguish-seeking care
Its harrowing details o'er and o'er again!
How, while the river ran its calm career,
From the spent freshet's fury once more clear;
All heartless Nature, bright, alive and gay
With its accustomed, gentle, joyous stir—
How then they found—O say not her!
She could not be the form that lay
So stilly—half above and half beneath
The shallow, bright, transparent stream,
Upon the clean smooth gravel bank
From which it slowly shrank:
Such mournful meek content upon the face
That you could think it for a little space
Lit by some sadly-pleasing dream;
But then so marble-like and motionless—
Persistent in intensest quietness—
Too soon the moulded lineaments you know
Fixed in the dread serenity of death.
One quiet arm the peaceful head below—
While ever in its flow
The eddying current would come up and play
With the long tresses—as to coax away
And lure the floating tangles to and fro;
While others, in the sunshine dried,
The idle breeze at times would lift aside
Gently—then leave at rest,
Where curling they caressed
The cold unheaving breast;
Or revelled in the gloss and gleam of life,
As if in mockery spread
Along the form that lay as still and dead
As any of the logs of driftwood rife,
By the decreasing tide
Left near it as it fled.—
But piteous—O how piteous! there to see
The wavelets in their sunny chase
In that deserted place—
Upon the bank exposed and lone,
With such an inward-happy sound,
Familiarly and carelessly
Gurgling against and rippling round
The sad and sacred human face,
As if it were a stone.
III.
And had he any comfort in the thought,
The sight his fancy fashioned would have brought
A mind like his when he could calmly think?—
“That sad—sad face! as there it lay
Beside the river's brink,
So calm, neglected—helpless—meek—
Would not its silence seem to speak—
In mournful whispers seem to say,
For such a heart, for such a soul,
This cannot be the end—the whole!—
“But O! great God of heaven!
Who must be—if thou be at all
Eternal Justice both to great and small,
And Absolute Love for all beneath the Sun!
If in the poor dead face of one
Slight savage girl who thus has given
Her life's light for another's good in vain—
All her high hopes and generous aims undone!
If in its stony stillness and fixed woe,
All the more harrowing for the mournful show
Of sad resigned repose on mouth and brow—
If from that face, in very deed,
Such obstacle and protest and disdain
Arise against the desolating creed
Of soul-annihilation in the disarray
And dissolution of our worthless clay—
O what a vast Himmálayan pinnacle-chain
Of insurmountable obstruction Thou
Hast thrown in the pale spectral Conqueror's way;
And what a boundless protest has been wrung—
(Although to absolute Love's all-pitying eyes
The humblest instance would the whole comprise)
A protest myriad-voiced as Ocean's roar,
Compelled to just Omnipotence to soar,—
In all the baffled lives and labours flung
Ungrudgingly thy great White Throne before—
The death-requited sacrifices through all time
Made in thy cause by hero-hearts sublime!
IV.
“Yet what a thought it is, O God! that we
But by the incredible cruelty of Fate
Ordained by Thee,
Are by a strong revulsion forced to flee
To Reason's refuge in her grief,
The astounding beautiful belief
In Death reviving to some glorious state
Which all that cruelty shall compensate!—
Say, that it is so, and must ever be,
By Nature's strong necessity;—
As air plunged deep in water still must rise,
So, plunged in Life, the Soul to the Eternal flies!—
And if it be denied
That Nature—which is Thou!
Does that necessity provide,
Even Doubt must still avow
It should be so provided—must and should—
If Thou art what we must conceive Thee—good!
Or if at last Doubt will remain,
Were it too wild a fancy—to maintain,
(Till clearer light the mystery explain)
Faith has to be created—self-resigning Trust
In Thee—the all-generous and just?
And Trust like that, for aught we know,
Can but in the absence of Assurance grow;
Can but be strengthened to the due degree
By actual plunging in the furnace-glow
And wavering flames of forced Uncertainty:
The Soul can but be fashioned so,
Into the shape of Beauty, and substance clear
Of crystal Confidence sincere—
The form and fineness its high fates require;
As the glass-worker whirls and moulds
Into a graceful vase the glass he holds
Molten in jets intense of fierce white fire.”
V.
Ah no! but no such speculation now
Could smooth the agony on Ranolf's brow.
And so he may depart,
And bind up as he can his bleeding heart;
And moan his lovely wild-flower reft away
With unresigning anguish night and day;
And gnash his teeth and tear his hair,
Untaught to bear!
And for a time his faith in joy forswear;
And feel how vain
Are high-built theories to stifle pain;
How impotent against the ready sting
Of every trivial and inanimate thing
That seems to start up eloquent everywhere,
More poignant memories of the Lost to bring—
All leagued with Love to drive him to despair!
Not only the brief words she left to tell
The motive and the purpose of her flight,
Scratched upon shining flax-blades with a shell
And laid to meet—but not too soon—his sight;—
Ah! how it tore his heart—that simple scrawl—
Pothooks and hangers painfully produced—
Disjointed—childlike! yet a wonder all,
In one to symbolled language so unused,
And with such marvellous aptitude acquired—
The tenfold talent by the heart inspired—
Docility no school but one e'er knew
Whose teacher Love, has Love for learner too!
Not these alone—but every object round
Had silent power and pungency to wound:
The withered wreaths of flowers hung up with care
Which for his pleasure she so loved to wear;
The span-broad mirror on the reeded wall
That oft had imaged such a happy smile
And so much beauty on its surface small;
The broidry-staves her tedium to beguile—
Rude with still-dangling vary-coloured strands;—
Half-charred mid ashes white, the very brands
Left lying where her loving busy hands
Had laid them on that latest fire extinct—
Ah, with what torturing memories were they linked!
Ah, those dumb things—how deeply did he feel
The maddening pathos of their mute appeal!
Yes! let him wrestle with distress;
And feel how grief grown languid, though not less,
In the exhaustion of mere weariness,
Renews itself from its excess;—
Learn how the heart bereft of one beloved,
Will, self-upbraiding, self-reproved,
In bitterest grief feel bitter grief,
Because its grief seems all too slight and brief;
Because it cannot grieve enough—nor feed
The ravenous appetite for woe the sense
Of its immeasurable loss will breed—
Thirsting for grief more crushing—more intense;
Recoiling from the hateful thought, that e'er
The time should come when it may bear
To think upon such loss, and not despair!
VI.
Yet should he long endure
Such pangs and pains, be sure
He must escape them—being left alive;
For the old joyous temper must revive.
The clouds of Anguish o'er the blue would drive
And hide—but not annihilate the Sun:
Grief has a work to do—which must be done.
Though o'er his Soul the waves of Sorrow surge,
That buoyant joyous Nature must emerge
By animal force into a realm more bright;
And that reflective tendency would urge
His Soul—long after—into peaceful light.
And he would first experience—and then know,
How great a purger of the Soul is Woe;
A fine manipulator skilled to drain
The Spirit of the grosser atmosphere
Which can alone give life to and sustain
Prides—lusts—ambitions—passions fierce and vain;
Until the heart is a receiver clear
Exhausted of the elements they need,
And wanting which, they droop and disappear.
VII.
Aye! to our Optimist 'twould surely seem
An actual pre-arrangement in a scheme
By primal Mind compacted—that the seed
Of Soul best in the soil of Sorrow grows;
And that such pangs and tortures are indeed
Sharp chisel-strokes and heavy mallet-blows
Wherewith the grand Soul-Sculptor cleaves and chips
His native marble into nobler shapes:
And as the mallet swings and chisel trips,—
Out from the sluggish cold chaotic heap
Wherein as possibilities they sleep,
Out come, emerging from their long eclipse
Into vitality that kindling glows
Ever more clear, significant and deep—
Heroic white Existences serene
And lovely, which the divine Artist drapes
With qualities his great Idea must mean
Should make his glorious marbles fit to be
Shrined in high temples of Eternity!
And he would learn, like all who calmly viewed
What sad results from simple love ensued,
How foresight—prudence—cold considerate powers
We need for guidance of this life of ours:
To follow instincts—doing ill to none—
Nay—loving everything beneath the sun—
This will not do—it seems!
Alas!—for such the World with misery teems.
But this—all this would be for Time to teach;
A goal his sanguine soul not yet may reach.
All he has now to do is to depart
And bind up as he may his bleeding heart.
