 | Two dramatic poems by Menella Bute Smedley |  |
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II. PART II.—TRIAL.
[Scene I.]
Cyril in his study. Evening.CYRIL
The tree of life, earth-rooted, blooms in heaven
Where its height reaches. Our impatient faith
Outstrips our hope, and at the base of growth
Clamours for fruit. If here it dropped for us
How should it ripen in that rich Beyond
For which we work? We can afford to wait
Being so sure. Thus have I conned my task;
Yet by long waiting surest Hope grows sick.
What boots nice ordering of a feast for him
Who faints upon the threshold? What the light
Of far-off welcome, for blind hearts that break
Worn out with travelling homeward? O! I want
The music of possession! One It-is
Outweighs a world of Shall-be's. If I knew
That I had gained one soul—that I could set
One trophy on my heart, with ‘this is mine—
Mine and no other's!’—when I see the brink
Lean over darkness, if I once could stand
A wall upon the slope of that despair
To save one dangerous traveller, seizing him
Just as he falls, whether by will or choice—
If, reeling with the shock of victory,
I, with that joyful burden on my breast
Could reach my Master's feet—let it there crush me,
What matter, so the triumph crush me there!
But that were easy crowning. Not the toil,
But the utter darkness of the toil appals me.
The saints of old saw where their weapons struck,
Aye, they endured as verily seeing Him
Who is for us invisible. He came
About them as Day comes about the world;
The comfort of His glory strengthened them
When they beheld it, for they were not left
To wish and murmur, desolate with doubt
(Our palmless martyrdom); they saw and heard,
And grasped and handled their substantial hopes.
Could he doubt heaven, for whom the car of fire
Rose, bearing from his gaze the friend beloved?
Or they for whom the waters split and stood
A two-fold wall, could they deny God's power?
Could she mistrust the pity of God, whose arms
Drearily wrapt about her weeping face
Were severed into swift embrace, receiving
Her own from the dead again? Was not their life
Transparent for the Deity within
As a vast allegory? I remember
Ten years ago, when I began to think,
How fair the old Greek life appeared to me,
That creed of fairy tales which left no nook
Of the rich world a blank—all populous
With superhuman fancies; and I thought
This, not being true, was yet more beautiful
Than any truth; and had these fancies been
Noble and pure as they were beautiful
I could have wished to die believing them;
Then sprang the thought How was it? These things were
A Past for ever; for we cannot pierce
The deep of years and catch them in the fact,
And find the living souls who lived among them;
The tale was evermore a tale; the Greek
Heard ever from his father of the gods,
Sat in the lovely leisure of the woods
And dreamed of Dryads never seen. Lo, then
Truth leaped upon me like an armèd man,
And I fell down and worshipped. I beheld,
Knew, felt that God had once been in the world;
That old familiar Bible of my youth,
Learnt as a task and reverenced as a rule,
Became a living wonder and a power
New from that moment, never read again
With the same eyes. To me the universe
Was one sublime tradition; not a cloud
But traced His pathway through the wilderness,
And not a tree but talked of Olivet.
Where its height reaches. Our impatient faith
Outstrips our hope, and at the base of growth
Clamours for fruit. If here it dropped for us
How should it ripen in that rich Beyond
For which we work? We can afford to wait
Being so sure. Thus have I conned my task;
Yet by long waiting surest Hope grows sick.
What boots nice ordering of a feast for him
Who faints upon the threshold? What the light
Of far-off welcome, for blind hearts that break
Worn out with travelling homeward? O! I want
The music of possession! One It-is
Outweighs a world of Shall-be's. If I knew
That I had gained one soul—that I could set
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Mine and no other's!’—when I see the brink
Lean over darkness, if I once could stand
A wall upon the slope of that despair
To save one dangerous traveller, seizing him
Just as he falls, whether by will or choice—
If, reeling with the shock of victory,
I, with that joyful burden on my breast
Could reach my Master's feet—let it there crush me,
What matter, so the triumph crush me there!
But that were easy crowning. Not the toil,
But the utter darkness of the toil appals me.
The saints of old saw where their weapons struck,
Aye, they endured as verily seeing Him
Who is for us invisible. He came
About them as Day comes about the world;
The comfort of His glory strengthened them
When they beheld it, for they were not left
To wish and murmur, desolate with doubt
(Our palmless martyrdom); they saw and heard,
And grasped and handled their substantial hopes.
Could he doubt heaven, for whom the car of fire
Rose, bearing from his gaze the friend beloved?
Or they for whom the waters split and stood
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Could she mistrust the pity of God, whose arms
Drearily wrapt about her weeping face
Were severed into swift embrace, receiving
Her own from the dead again? Was not their life
Transparent for the Deity within
As a vast allegory? I remember
Ten years ago, when I began to think,
How fair the old Greek life appeared to me,
That creed of fairy tales which left no nook
Of the rich world a blank—all populous
With superhuman fancies; and I thought
This, not being true, was yet more beautiful
Than any truth; and had these fancies been
Noble and pure as they were beautiful
I could have wished to die believing them;
Then sprang the thought How was it? These things were
A Past for ever; for we cannot pierce
The deep of years and catch them in the fact,
And find the living souls who lived among them;
The tale was evermore a tale; the Greek
Heard ever from his father of the gods,
Sat in the lovely leisure of the woods
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Truth leaped upon me like an armèd man,
And I fell down and worshipped. I beheld,
Knew, felt that God had once been in the world;
That old familiar Bible of my youth,
Learnt as a task and reverenced as a rule,
Became a living wonder and a power
New from that moment, never read again
With the same eyes. To me the universe
Was one sublime tradition; not a cloud
But traced His pathway through the wilderness,
And not a tree but talked of Olivet.
Why do I say this now? My faith is weak,
It wavers, it is weary, but it is faith!
Like the faint life which in a sick man's heart
Persists, half-quenched, and seems about to cease
A thousand times, and yet a thousand times
Revives, invisible to watching eyes
But always there, and growing even through swoons
To link the latter to the former health;
So trembling it persists, and so believes
With unbelief, and shall be strong at last
Reaching to deathless hope across despair.
It wavers, it is weary, but it is faith!
Like the faint life which in a sick man's heart
Persists, half-quenched, and seems about to cease
A thousand times, and yet a thousand times
Revives, invisible to watching eyes
But always there, and growing even through swoons
To link the latter to the former health;
So trembling it persists, and so believes
With unbelief, and shall be strong at last
Reaching to deathless hope across despair.
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CYRIL
O! not to-night!
MARKHAM
How, friend—you welcome me
Strangely.
CYRIL
You come like Mephistophiles
To tempt me when I waver.
MARKHAM
Rather say
To help you when you stumble.
CYRIL
Ay, but to help me
Into that path whereon I would not walk.
MARKHAM
So—you are weak—you strike before I threaten.
Are you that miracle, an honest saint,
Who, having braced his armour on, confesses
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What has dismayed you?
CYRIL
Only solitude
And my own soul. I perish in the calm.
You, like a new wind, shake my sleeping sails
Against their work; so come, refreshing shock,
And I'll encounter you.
MARKHAM
Lift the metaphor
And let us see the fact—you are not content.
CYRIL
Is any man content?
MARKHAM
We men of earth,
Who see but with our eyes, and think life short
For all our eyes can show us, are content.
CYRIL
If your philosophy comes but by gazing
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Enough of noble sadness; for I think
All men who look around them, and within,
Take leave of their boy-laughter.
MARKHAM
Say you so,
Believing that God rules the world He made
And made for His own ruling? Infidels
Put such a creed to shame. I hold, myself,
A deaf Law better than a scornful God
Who hears and heeds not. In the hollow Past
Under the root of Time, only discerned
By penetrative eyes of after-thought,
Was movement—you would say the Spirit moved,
But I, the Matter; germs evolving laws,
Or laws in germ, but only by their work
Revealed. We, looking from these latter heights,
Can trace them, step by step, and none astray,
None needless, so that from the vague At-first,
Wherein all things seemed possible, there grew
(Because each moment limited the next)
These final certainties, which cannot be
Other than as they are. Did we know all
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All kinds, all shapes, all shades of difference,
All acts, all thoughts, all signs and modes of being,
Are as they must be; wheresoe'er you touch
The interminable chain, you touch a link,
Result and cause—a moment, which concludes
The Past, begins the Future. Therefore Life
Must be received in patience; as we live
We mend and mould, and hand it to our sons
More gently than we took it from our sires.
CYRIL
Where learned you this strange history?
MARKHAM
Do you ask?
Behold a pupil of the Universe!
CYRIL
Lo, friend, you deem me credulous, and proclaim
(You, uncommissioned by a miracle)
The top of mystery! Your logic builds
On likelihood; a balance, not a base,
Safe till disturbed. I wait a surer proof.
At every point and pause of your advance
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And choose one path among a thousand. Nay,
'Tis a hard task to prove by circumstance
In all its motives and particulars
Merely one deed, done by one living man,
And would you make the world by't? Pray you tell me
How many million moments in the years
Did pass, whereat some tiny difference
May not have changed it all? Some sudden witness
(If such there were) might burst upon you now
And quench you with a fatal ‘thus it was,’
Leaving you dumb for ever. Sure I am
It might teach angels sarcasm, to behold
These dust-born sticklers, bound by etiquette
Never to mention God in His own world,
Who guess through all the ages, and devise
Gossip, about Creation.
MARKHAM
This is grand!
I love you in this humour. Let's sit down
And fight in peace.
[He seats himself. Cyril remains standing at the window.
I love you in this humour. Let's sit down
And fight in peace.
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That was a clattering phrase
That ‘gossip of creation’—I perceive
You ‘stand up’ like the poet's ‘man in wrath’
(He should have written ‘woman’) and proclaim
That you ‘have felt,’ not reasoned.
That ‘gossip of creation’—I perceive
You ‘stand up’ like the poet's ‘man in wrath’
(He should have written ‘woman’) and proclaim
That you ‘have felt,’ not reasoned.
CYRIL
Reason, friend,
Is only half the mystery of Man;
Till you have felt a truth it is not yours
Though Reason grasp it in her iron hand.
I have heard learn'd musicians, who by the hour
Would stuff you with elaborate sequences
And fretful involutions; faultless all,
Ingenious, satisfactory and cold,
Not to be answered—till a Master came
And with some sudden simple turn of sound
Would charm you to unreasonable tears
At his fifth note.
MARKHAM
I am too plain a man
To follow argument by parable.
CYRIL
One greater than ourselves held parable
The fittest teaching for the plainest men.
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You pass the question.
CYRIL
But I touch in passing.
Let us speak heart to heart. This creed of yours
Is not the sole philosophy. We, who judge
By fruits, and tracing, not too certainly,
The backward story of this various world,
Divine an undetected difference
In each unknown Beginning, before growth,
I think we reason no whit worse than you
Who, as the long lines lessen to a point,
Believe they issued from it; making sense
The measure of the Thing which it perceives,
Not of its own perception. Circumstance
Stretched through incalculable tracts of Time
Life's limit, mould, condition, is to you
A god—to us a great Epiphany.
We wonder—and examine—and adore;
You wonder—and examine—and deny:
Which is more wise?
MARKHAM
(rising and joining Cyril at the window)
This is the way with you,
You run all themes to one. I meant to talk
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But of the present evils, which I take
For calm necessities, to be endured
By patient sages—you—
CYRIL
For devil's work
To be annihilated by God's men!
Ah—did you see it pass?
MARKHAM
What passed? You are pale.
CYRIL
That dismal, desperate, unholy thing
Which was a child and should be now a man,
One of your ‘calm necessities.’
MARKHAM
A man?
No more? I deemed you watched along the street
Some drifting wreck of woman.
CYRIL
Always women!
There is some deep unsoundness in the Time
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And lets its men alone. Or, by your leave,
What kind of God were He that should be served
Only by women, and whose laws were made
Merely for girls to keep? Have done with this,
And let a man concern himself with men.
We are the poison—we who are the springs—
Lords of the heavenly heritage we waste,
False to high charges, deaf to glorious notes
Which ring around us as we walk. For us
Build refuges, and sanctify retreats
And open daily churches! We were meant
To be as tender, temperate, pure, devout,
As the most cloistered maiden upon earth;
We have our strength for this, to conquer evil.
You hold with me—shall we go down at once
And track this monster?
MARKHAM
If in such a quest
Your energies are spent, I marvel not
I found you sorrowful. 'Tis frenzy, Cyril!
Die if you will in watching by the sick
While the pulse quivers and the slow eyes move,
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You cannot raise them. When you have done all,
When your bright years, and all the happy gifts
That might have made you famous, and the hopes
(Wings, till you crushed them), and the high pursuits
Which beautified your time, and the fine hues
Which your unshackled and deliberate hand
Might lay and touch and soften, till you made
A finished picture, all are sacrificed,
And dreary toil among earth's basest things
Possesses and degrades you—is there fruit?
How many hard hearts melted can you show
For your own broken? Cyril, is there one?
CYRIL
Man, am I Christ that I should change men's hearts?
I have a work to do. You talk to me
Like my temptations. Ere you came, I strove
With some such thought; it does not plague me now,
I am afire for work. There is a haunt
Down yonder where the worst and wildest souls
(And sometimes too the saddest) congregate;
There oft I go in twilight and encounter
Strange moments. Here and there I sow a word,
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That shall be garnered when the harvest comes;
But I may save a soul by speaking there,
Or I might lose a soul by leaving it,
Or lastly I am merely at my post
And do this business on my own account.
Will you come with me?
MARKHAM
Aye, to study life
In a new aspect.
[They go down into the Street.
CYRIL
Is it not wonderful
To see that gentle glory in the sky
Behind the houses? Lo, how black they look,
Knowing how foul and mean a world they hide
From the still splendours of eternity!
Yet is the twilight fairness spread for them,
With all its tints profuse and delicate,
As for the mountains and the royal woods
Which have a right to it. Behold the Spire,
It is not black, it enters into light
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A second firmament—God still has witness
In man's aspiring and in earth's repose
Despite all evil.
[A Woman stops Cyril.
WOMAN
O sir, will you come
To see my husband? It is soon to ask,
But since the morning he has cried for you,
And still he mutters to himself the words
You spoke, and seems to sort them in his thoughts,
Trying to note them all. He will not sleep
Till he has seen your face.
CYRIL
Well, he shall see it,
I'll give him that small comfort. Say to him
He may expect me in an hour.
WOMAN
I know
I shall be dearly welcome for that word.
[Exit.
[A young Girl passes.
CYRIL
Too late i' the streets, my child—what is your errand?
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(shyly)
My father sent me to buy bread.
CYRIL
Go home
And say I sent you. I will bring the bread
As I come back. Good-night.
[Exit Girl.
CYRIL
(lays his hand on a Boy's shoulder)
Ah, runaway,
I have you. Stand and answer. Nay, you shall!
Why have you fled from school? What—not a word?
I'll tell you then—unless you are ashamed
To hear yourself explained.
BOY
Please sir—
CYRIL
How meek
You are to me! We have been friends, but now
I'll not be friends with you till you are meek
In the right place. Come, you shall do your duty;
'Tis but a coward's part to run away
Because you heard some talk about your faults.
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Sir, sir, it was not that.
CYRIL
Well, I believe
'Twas nothing. Breakfast at my house to-morrow
And tell me all.
BOY
I'll come, sir.
CYRIL
So
Good-night, and grow more wise.
[Exit Boy.
MARKHAM
Are these your sheep?
CYRIL
O, very harmless lambs. If these were all
I might be gathering daisies all the day.
Look here!
[They stop and look in at the window of a house. There is a fire, and men and women of the lowest description are gathered around it; others enter and join the group. Oaths and foul language are
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MARKHAM
Why, there's our ruffian! I profess
In fitting company! That downward man,
With all the deadly sins upon his face,
I should not like to meet i' the dark. There's one
With a most feeble voiceless countenance,
Merely an empty vessel, to be filled
With poison if you please—and there a woman
Brazen, hard-eyed, incredible—and here
One like a beast, cunning and ravenous—
One spiritless and haggard as a corpse.
Fie, what a group! Now, if I thought as you
That these are rushing to a certain doom
I could not bear—
CYRIL
(grasping his hand)
O, not the future, friend!
The visible damnation of these souls
Tears me to pieces! True, the sleeker sins
Of our soft equals may appear as black
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(For Sin is viler than its consequence);
But we have knowledge, we have looked on God,
We choose our path. What can we say of these,
Who feed on darkness, and embrace contempt,
And breathe pollution? Had they any choice?
When have they seen the good or heard the true?
O! how should they believe themselves beloved
Being so forgotten? If I stand aloof
These sins are mine!
MARKHAM
You are too passionate.
The world is full of these uneven lives:
You did not make them, and you cannot mend;
You do your utmost—never man did more—
Be satisfied!
CYRIL
What, here?
[They look in silently for a little while.
CYRIL
I pray you, note
In this foul place the sacred light of grief.
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About the pillow of her dying babe
Speaks like a poem. We can see from this
Why God afflicts. There is no heart so dumb
But by divine compulsion of great woe
It utters transient music. I, who have
My conversation in the griefs of men,
Will take this for my passport.
[They enter, and Cyril goes up to the sick child. The men stare, and stop for a moment in their talk. One speaks with another.
MAN
Who is here?
ANOTHER MAN
O, the mad parson. Let him be. He'll go
When he has preached a little.
[They resume their uproar. Cyril lifts the child tenderly in his arms. The mother, who has been busy about it in a helpless bewildered way, looks up.
CYRIL
(gently)
He is restless—
There—he seems easier now.
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My pretty boy!
Who says that he must die? O he's too young—
He has not even learnt to stand alone—
He cannot die yet. And I love him so
God would not have the heart to take him from me.
See—he grows white. Ah, hold him! If he dies
I'm sure there's nothing good that rules the world.
What has he done? What anger has he caused?
He has not sinned; I and his father sinned
Who have not even a finger-ache. Look now,
He lies quite still—the cruel savage pain
Hurts him no more—his head is on your breast
So quietly, I cannot hear him breathe,
(But you can)—you have children of your own
Who teach you mother-skill. I wish they did not
Shout so loud there by the fire. I want to hear
The pleading murmur of his baby-breath,
But their noise drowns it. You must hear it, sir,
Having his heart so close against your own.
Is he not sweet? No, do not give him to me;
I do not want to have him in my arms;
If I should feel him motionless and cold,
Though it is only sleep (I know he sleeps),
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I should cry out for fear it might be death,
Which is impossible. O help me, help me,
And keep him for me!
CYRIL
God shall keep him for you
Better than I, poor mother.
ONE OF THE MEN
What's the noise?
ANOTHER
Now, parson, what's the matter with the child?
[The Woman utters a loud scream. One of the other women goes to her and begins caressing her. Cyril comes forward with the child still in his arms.
MARKHAM
What drives you to them with such eyes of fire?
CYRIL
Let me alone! I drive against their hearts. [He stands among them.
The child is dead. Brothers, the child is born!
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This tender pureness is not terrible;
See the shut eyes which can shed no more tears,
What do they now behold? Touch the soft lips
Through which no sound of sorrow or of sin
Shall ever pass—be not afraid to touch them,
They cannot be defiled. O, what repose
Dwells with this everlasting Innocence!
Can this fair thing be Death? Look on each other,
From this face look to those—do you believe
You look from Death to Life? If it be so
Who would not choose this calm pathetic triumph
Instead of that dark struggle? Little child,
If you had lived you would have looked like these,
Having to live among them! Twenty years,
A time to ripen, what would you have been?
Familiar with all evil and no shame,
Hardened by trouble, enervate with sin,
Scarred with a thousand traces of despair,
With just a wordless murmur at your heart
Revealing that there was a far-off time
When you looked—thus! O brothers, think of it!
You have made life, God's greatest gift, a thing
So hideous, that the mother for her child,
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Could find no better cry to lift to God
Than this, ‘O snatch him from it!’ You yourselves
Know what you are—take but this one to-day
Out of your lives, and think its minutes through,
And turn to this pure face, and say with me
Praise God, for He hath slain another babe! [There is a sound of tears in the room. Cyril gives the child to the Woman, and comes into the midst of the men with outstretched arms.
Stand still, and let me talk to you of Christ!
| Two dramatic poems by Menella Bute Smedley | |