The Serpent Play :: :: University of Virginia Library

To his hill-slope again at break of day
Was Cœlis summoned to fulfil
Within his own some stronger will
That like the weight of love upon him lay.
He dared not mingle in a feast
That was to mock man's pitying thought
For sorrows that had ceased,
Though on the stage once more to memory brought.
Nature, so radiant, gives not back the groan
And lends no sanction to its stern rehearsal;
Though sympathising millions hear the moan,
What once has been has no reversal.

The swelling morn, the living breath,
That all within the clear expanse inhale,
Down from the tumbling mountains to the vale,
These call not back the bitterness of death.

CŒLIS.
‘O Psyche, the saviour, in whom we inherit
The gifts of an all-loving, plenteous Spirit,
Who onward for ever thy dream dost pursue;
Our hope, as we follow, in whom we renew;
In thy passion immersed all things glow around me;
On pinions uplifted in bliss thou hast bound me;
Steeped in thy light, in thy holy emotion,
I drain thy last philtre, the life-giving potion.’

So rapt, he glances o'er the fields:
The dense spectators, the fast-swelling train
Have there no meaning, though his eyes
They vex, and are to him as reveries
That buzz outside the archway of the brain.
There, little earnest, maid and swain
The lover's antics rudely feign,
And care not who rejects or yields.
There they act their courtship dances;
Near and nearer each advances;
Swift the music, swift the pace:
So in pairs the lovers drift,
Till all the youths at length uplift
Their arms and ask a maid's embrace.

It was but a re-acted scene;
But how it smites on Voragine,
When winds the bugle's call defiant
From the lung-clangour of a giant,
And echoes through far-reaching alleys:
The Serpent's track into the hostile valleys!
Those slaughter-sounds,—how like his own
Even to the last high-bounding thrill,
That seemed to summon to his former will
His troops, that dire defeat had never known!
But where was now the army he had led!
Not near to serve him in his narrow strait:
His enemies are now within the gate,
And he their country's blood has shed.

As thus he muses, troops o'er-stride
These scenes of peace, these pastures wide;
They issue from the wooded lands
To where the flowery vale expands,
And through the dancers spread confusion,
Who act so well their clamourous fear
It needs must be that death is near;
The mutual fury crushing all illusion.
Are these the troops of Voragine
Clad as were his, and his Cross-banner flying?
'Tis but in mockery of a former scene!
The women to the soldiers cling,
And for defence their arms about them fling,
But soon in that embrace are dying.

Torch-bearers set the painted scene a blaze,
The pine-trees crackle in the conflagration:
The awed spectators rise and in amaze
Shout out: 'Tis an invading nation!
The Warrior, his sister and his bride
Sit pale; they must the end abide.

The troops drive off the frighted cattle,
As lawful spoil of victors after battle.
The shepherds gather up their dead
And kiss them with hot lips, revenge imbibing,
Then the fresh turf upon the bodies spread.
No home is left, but earth that welters
In the warm blood, the pile accepts and shelters.
This done around the slaughtered crowd the living
And on their spades a fervid oath inscribing,
They brandish them with gestures unforgiving.
And where is Cœlis in that hour? The clang
Of myriad heart-throbs fills him with a pang
Of suffering for all; but panic-held
He waits as by a higher power compelled.
He can interpret all he now beholds;
He sees one fate his family enfolds;
Sees that before that bugle blew,
Or Voragine gave challenge throat to throat,
Those slaughter-sounds the welkin smote,
And that the fields of doom that battle knew,
Fought by the present foes in shadowy fight;
Rehearsed throughout all time ere they beheld the light.