University of Virginia Library

Scene III.

—A Churchyard.—Comnenus, Alexius, and Guide.
Comnenus.
This road is but uneven. How is this?

Guide.
It is the burial-ground, my Lord; these hills are graves.

Comnenus.
Then do we trespass; but the dead ne'er heed us.
Ha! Pray you, trip not up my heels, good friends,
That lie in wait so stilly.

Guide.
Hush, my Lord.

Comnenus.
I tell thee that they heed us not.

Guide.
Our feet
They heed not and they hear not; but some tell
How a light word's recorded till the day
When they shall burst their graves.

Comnenus.
And so it is;
Words though from earth with wings they fly away
Yet perish not nor lose themselves in space,
But bend their course towards eternity,
And roost beneath the judgment-seat of God.
What may yon shape be, hewn upon the tomb?

Guide.
A cherub 'tis, my Lord.

Comnenus.
What, with that damnable visage?

Guide.
It is thus, my Lord, they carve them.

Comnenus.
'Tis wondrous hideous. When I die, Alexius,
I'll have an image of another mould
Shall smile a cherub's blessing o'er my dust.
What, ha! again—that rogue,
The bungling sexton, overplied his task
And buried us the epitaph; this stone
Hath but one knob above ground, which obtrudes
“Siste Viator” to who journey darkling.
Well, there's a lesson when the tablet's buried
More than its scroll could read us. Sit we here.
This stone is new: there's but one name inscribed,
And a long blank for chronicling the friends
Whose hour comes after. Why not write their names?
Then were the date but wanting. Look again—
“Here lieth” (say rather “here once lay”)
“The body of Peter Andros, a true spouse
“And tender father—may the dust lie light . . .”
Why, look you there! the relict of this Peter
(Whom I once knew) and his all-duteous sons
Drave Peter hitherward ere they bore him here;
And here they stood around the low-laid sire,
Echoing the hollow rattle of the mould
Upon his coffin-lid with hollow groans;
And then they wrote his epitaph,—a true one,
Which yet they lied in writing. Could we call up
The rings of mourners that have girt these mounds
And bid them show their faces, 'twere a sight
That to behold the Devil should jump for joy.
But they have followed.—What may be the name
Of yonder church?

Guide.
It bears its founder's name,
St. Nicolaus Pontifex, my Lord.

Comnenus.
Ay, is it so? Alexius, this place
I should have known, but that the dusk deceived me.
Once in this ground I saw a friend interred,
And I would fain revisit now the spot.
From hence I know my road. I'll follow you.
[Exeunt Alexius and Guide.
This is the very earth that covers her,
And, lo! we trample it like common clay!
Chance shall I call it merely—but blind chance,
That at this fateful, questionable hour,
Brings me to blunder thus upon the spot
That I have shunned for years as haunted ground!
Is it not haunted? When I last stood here
Disguised to see a lowly girl laid down
Into her early grave, there was such light
As now half shows it, but a bleaker air,
For it was in December. 'Tis most strange;
I can remember now each circumstance
Which then I scarce was conscious of; like words
That leave upon the still susceptive sense
A message undelivered till the mind
Awakes to apprehensiveness and takes it.
'Twas o'er—the muttered unattended rite,
And the few friends she had beside myself
Had risen and gone; I had not knelt, but stood
With a dull gaze of stupor as the mould
Was shovelled over and the broken sods
Fitted together; whilst some idle boys
Who had assisted at the covering in,
Ran off in sport, and trailed the shovels with them,
Rattling upon the gravel; the sexton then
Flattened the last sods down, and knocked his spade
Against a neighbouring tomb-stone to shake off
The clinging soil,—with a contented mien,
Even as a ditcher who has done his work.
I, at that sound, had started from my trance,
Conscious of its completion, but the keen frost
Had ta'en the power of motion from my limbs.
How I came thence I know not, nor dared ask.
But now I dare recall these things. Oh, Christ!
How that which was the life's life of our being
Can pass away and we recall it thus!
Irene! if there's aught of thee that lives,
Thou hast beholden me a suffering man;
Hast seen the mind—its native strength how racked,
Hast seen the bodily frame how sorely shaken,
And thou wilt judge me, not as they do who live,
But gently as thou didst judge all the world
When it was thy world.—
On many a battle's eve, in many climes,
By the ice-caverned course of black Araxes,
By Ister's stream and Halys and Euphrates,
By Antioch's walls and Palestine's sea-shore,
I have addressed wild prayers unto thy spirit
And with a mind against its natural bent
Tortured to strong devotion, have besought
That thou wouldst meet me then, or that denied,
That I might seek thy world upon the morrow.
And then it would have seemed a thing most sweet,
Though awful, to behold thy bodiless spirit.
But now—and whether from the body's toil
I know not if it be, or fevered blood,
Or wakefulness, or from the mind's worn weakness—
It were a very terror to the flesh
To look on such a phantom:—it is strange
That what we have loved and lost we fear to find
In any shape,—strange that the form so sweet,
So gentle and beloved, I saw laid here,
Now new-arisen would make my blood run cold!
Up, Moon! for I am fearful of the darkness,
And I have heard a voice that cries aloud—
Home, home, Comnenus!
[A voice at a distance, calling Comnenus.
Where hath he a home?
His home is with the dead—his home is here—
Father of mercies, take him to his home!

Enter Alexius.
Alexius.
Isaac, you stay too long.

Comnenus.
Ha! What?—too long!

Alexius.
What ails you? are you present to yourself?
I left you but just now.

Comnenus.
True, 'twas just now.

Alexius.
And now you look so ghastly! Why is this?

Comnenus.
Ay, it was something that I saw just now.

Alexius.
You speak without the concert of your mind;
Collect your senses; whence this sudden change?

Comnenus.
Be not alarmed; 'twas but some idle thought;
Nought else,—a bodiless creature of the brain;
Think it no more. Alexius, as you said
I am a much changed man, and phantoms come
Before my sight most palpably like truths,
But going thus show clearly what they are.
We should survey yon villa on the left;
Some fifty men might hold it for an hour
And cover our advance till Cos be won.
Come, let us onward. Why, you stand amazed.

Alexius.
Go on; I will not quit you.

Comnenus.
Time runs out;
'Tis dawn by three o'clock; and ere that hour
Macrinus will be up with half his force
As far as Ithé. I'll send word—but come—
The Moon looms large and shows our footing well.