 | Poems (1895) |  |
141
HELENA.
I
To Love inhaloed with self-plenitude,Is no without-door world. For Helena—
Tho' shining is the moon in her calm mood,
And the stream plaining, fretful runaway!
And nightingales are singing in the wood—
No nightingales are glad, no stream is pining,
And no calm moon is in the concave shining!
II
For she is in her bower with Agathon;And in his face she sees her universe,
142
Into her spirit's depths did keenly pierce;
And in his passion, as within a zone,
All her fair world of woman's beauty lay—
Soft, dim and swooning as the Starry-Way.
III
At the top step of bliss we nearest areTo the first downward ledge of misery;
And thus with Helena the truth did fare:
In all her senses bow'd them passively
To the great love to which they servile were;
And touch, sight, hearing, were therewith imbued,
And all-absorb'd in its infinitude.
IV
A sense of love was all with Helena:A sense of beauty ruled in Agathon,
And of a power o'er beauty: to allay
His intense love of loveliness, he won
Sweet souls to love him—in the selfsame way
As he would gather buds and blushing flowers,
And fondle them to death in silent hours.
143
V
But when dull clouds of circumstance betweenHim and the heart he brighten'd louring came,
He staid not for the darkness of the scene,
In which he shared not; but the lambent flame
Of his incessant radiance o'er serene
And happier creatures, in its wandering, fell;
And still his thought made heavens to veil its hell.
VI
He glozed o'er fact with fancy's imagery;And tho' all hapless things for him were dead,
They still were deathless in his memory;
And still the passion of his musing fed,
Which prey'd upon their light incessantly;
And made a Paradise of shadows brave,
Whose substances were sorrowing to their grave.
VII
Ah! this was very sad for Helena;For heavenly Helena all sad and drear!
After that night, there came a slow dismay
Over her soul, till madness sprang from fear;
And reckless Agathon was far away
From the green hovel in a lonely lane,
Where woke she from her raving trance of pain.
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VIII
Beside her bed there watch'd a wrinkled dame,With careful eye and hand the lady tending;
And ever sedulously went and came,
A loving-kindness with quick duty blending.—
Why o'er her paleness flits a hue of flame?
Why turn her eyes from vacant wandering,
To looks that seem to seek some precious thing?
IX
Poor Helena comes back to consciousness.“Thou long wert with me,” said she, “hidden creature!
“And my love reach'd thee thro' my deep distress,
“With doting on thine unseen form and feature;
“And in a dream of strange mysteriousness,
“Surely, I felt thee leave me? saw thine eyes
“And tiny hands? and heard thy feeble cries?
X
“Vacant I feel thy long-abiding place;“And yet, nor see nor hear thee! Where, oh! where,
“Vanish'd the beauty of thy little face—
“A cherub's, in the cloud of my despair?
“Nurse! bring my child to my intense embrace,
“For with this longing all my heart is shook!”—
There was no comfort in the matron's look.
145
XI
“That cavalier,” responded she—with speechWhich seem'd to tremble at its own drear sound—
“Who brought thee hither, when the months did reach
“The limit of their nature-fixed bound,
“Return'd, with one attendant—I beseech
“Thy best of patience, lady!—and they bore,
“Whilst thou wert tranced, thy infant from my door.
XII
“And—‘Tell her,’ said to me thy noble friend,“‘That in good time this faithful servitor
“‘Will at her own good pleasure reattend
“‘Her safely homeward.’” “And he said no more?”
Cried Helena, with accents that did rend
The heart that utter'd and the ears that heard,
With all the human woe that fills a word!
XIII
“No more; but with his kisses he did bring“The glowing crimson to thy pallid cheek.”
Sweet Helena smiled sadly; murmuring,
Now, of false Agathon, with blamings meek
Of his forswearing and abandoning;
And now loud-calling, with great sorrow wild,
For restoration of her little child.
146
XIV
No lover's kisses stay'd her bootless raving;No child was given to her stretching arms:
But soon the servitor came to her, craving
That she would heal her grief with comfort-balms,
Nor longer seek for things beyond her having;
But straightway with him to her home return,
That her dear kindred there might cease to mourn.
XV
And at length homeward did she weeping go;And found fresh wrinkles on her mother's cheek,
And greyer hairs upon her father's brow,
Grown of the sorrow which they did not speak;
For but to kill would be upbraiding now:
And so they nothing blamed, and question'd naught;
And ways to solace their dear daughter sought.
XVI
Their dwelling with all pleasant things they fill'dWhich God's dear mercy hath for humankind:
Small birds in cages wide their joyance trill'd;
But these she from their prison unconfined,
And gave a fatal freedom, that but kill'd:
Sweet lyres, wind-finger'd, in the casements play'd;
But they her griefs with deeper grief o'erlaid:
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XVII
And painting was to her but sembled woe;And song the pampering food of agony;
And music but an echoing of the throe
Which trembled in her bosom torturingly:
Upon house-creatures would her hand bestow
No fond caress; and friend nor servant ever
Might cheer her, with their best of heart-endeavour.
XVIII
At length, a solace mild she found in flowersThat grow on herby banks and grassy meadows;
And both her waking and her dreaming hours
She feasted with them and their vision'd shadows—
Transplanting them into her garden-bowers
In storied vases of clear porcelain;
And near them let no haughty blooms remain.
XIX
Gorgeous exotics, the art-fostered boastOf those who joy in flower-menageries;
Nor all the proud and statelier garden-host
Of lilies tall and globed peonies;
Nor gaudy tulips, raised at florist's cost;
Formal ranunculus, nor iris fine,
Drew from her fancy one regard divine.
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XX
But, daisies, primroses and violets;Cowslips, and bird's-eye-flowers—so heavenly blue,
The adoring eye their transient date forgets,
And sees undying love in their sweet hue—
Windflowers, light Zephyr's airy coronets;
And all wild blooms that keep their own pure natures,
Free from the touch of meddling human creatures:
XXI
Of these she unafflicted prisoners made,Wrapt in their native mould, and moss, and grass,
And treasured them in many a garden-glade;
And never did she by their beauty pass
Without a pause of tears, whose silence said—
“Such little flowers as these do sleep and wave
“Amid the dews upon my baby's grave?”
XXII
Whence came the Rose-tree, in its costly vase,Amid those creatures meek of banks and fields?
There had it not even yesternight a place;
But this fair morning to their eyes it yields
A vision of intense, but placid grace;
All robed in bud and bloom, and light and dew—
As sunrise' self had beam'd it on the view!
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XXIII
And Helena stood gazing on its glory;Tranced as a soul that sees its own strange thought
Air-figured, with precision transitory;
Till with her wonder grief grew inter-wrought,
And words slept in her eyes which spake her sorry
That her fond-tended flock of little flowers
Should underserve this pride of garden-bowers.
XXIV
Resentfully she pluck'd it, bud and bloom;And made a shower, silent as love-looks, fall
Of its rich blossom-leaves; that final doom
Seem'd close awaiting on its beauty all—
When Helena, with doubly-clouded gloom
Stirring its earth, lay startled finger on
A tablet, superwrit—“From Agathon.
XXV
“I saw thy love's fruit, in its birth death-stricken,“Was doom'd to darkness in its dawn of life;
“And sought to spare thee all the forms that sicken
“The soul of grief, and all the vulgar strife
“That greets the evidence of pulse that quicken
“Too surely at the leap of blood to blood,
“And all the babble of the multitude.
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XXVI
“The bud that from the blooms of our sweet pleasure“Derived its life, being dead, and seen of none,
“Thy maiden honour shall have no erasure:
“Men's eyes, and not the cloud, make shade i' the sun.
“O, still thy love for me, deep-hearted, treasure!
“And this assurance in thy soul receive—
“Thou in my thought a deathless thought dost live.
XXVII
“I wander o'er the earth; and common make“All that to thee great faith had sanctified:
“Yet hoard this grace of flowers for my bad sake,
“And tend it as thy child with mother's pride;
“It to thy inmost bower of musing take;
“Be with it ever whilst its roses bloom,
“And thou alone its time-dried stem entomb!”
XXVIII
She read, and wept; and wept, and read, and read;And with her tears the tree gleam'd dewily:
The delicate leaves which she had scattered
She, one by one, collected heedfully,
And made her bosom their sad funeral-bed;
And wofully her trembling hand upbraided,
Whose ignorance their sacred source invaded.
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XXIX
What human hands had in the night convey'dThat Rose-tree to her garden's far recesses
Could no one tell: and so, her maidens made
Strange stories of it, as they wreathed their tresses
Where in dim light dull chamber-shadows play'd;
And made their own inventions their belief,
And superstitions of their lady's grief.
XXX
Unnoted now of mourning HelenaThe little flowers that love the grass and moss:
Upon her Rose-tree tendeth she alway;
And every moment deems eternal loss
In which she near it doth not weep and pray,
Or sit in dreamings of the awful past,
And of the lulling death that comes at last.
XXXI
One night, she slumber'd on a couch star-lit,Her Rose-tree breathing balm o'er her soft sleeping;
When slowly all its flowers grew interknit,
And clung together in a dewy weeping;
And mystic lights did thro' their blent leaves flit—
Like gemm'd rings twinkling thro' a silken glove,
Or stars thro' cloudlets on heaven's zone of love.
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XXXII
And then, like golden insects gently painingA little bloom by feeding on its life,
A something seem'd to be their veins constraining,
And they to writhe with some disturbing strife;
And from their crowd arose a balmy plaining—
As sweet as from May-flowers come southern gales,
And dulcet as the notes of nightingales.
XXXIII
Till, from the midst, the heart of all those roses,A little child looks forth seraphical;
And its joy-throbbing limbs warm interposes
Among the Rose-tree's tiny branches all:
Its pretty hand the clustering green uncloses,
And blush-like leaves, and emerald, o'er her eyes
Scatters, with chuckled infant-ecstasies.
XXXIV
She knew it was the never-clasped creatureWhich long and painfully her frame embower'd;
For such the radiant smile, and such the feature,
That oft thro' all her waking visions shower'd
Intense conviction to her craving nature;
And up she sprang to kiss its face endear'd—
It vanish'd playfully; and reappear'd;
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XXXV
And said, with voice more faintly audibleThan wave of bird-wing thro' the dim twilight—
“When we shall meet again, I may not tell;
“But when a death-air doth the Rose-tree blight
“Thy babe to thee shall be perceptible;
“But not as now—and pray, sweet mother! pray,
“Against the woe to follow that decay.”
XXXVI
Again she leap'd to clasp its beaming form;Again it vanish'd, and return'd no more:
And then she started from her slumber warm,
And all her hair and all her garments tore,
In her despair; and all her soul in storm
Was raging, with dread sense of that transition
To fact accursed from beatific vision.
XXXVII
Is the sweet Rose-tree dying? Every starOf early sunlight wears the radiant veil,
And the glad flowers awake and dew-dropp'd are;
But all its buds and blooms are drooping, pale,
And of a latent death oracular:
And Helena is calm'd from her despair
By the sad aspect of its glories fair.
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XXXVIII
“But when a death-air doth the Rose-tree blight“Thy babe to thee shall be perceptible;
“But not as now!” Those dream-words, at the sight
Of that blight-stricken plant, brain echoing fell
Upon her heart, with meanings infinite;
Re-echoed in those words of Agathon,
That she should dig the fair tree's grave alone.
XXXIX
“Against the woe to follow that decay,“Sweet mother! pray.” She wrung her piteous hands;
And on her trembling knees to God did pray,
That he would loose from her the painful bands
Of life that kept her from her babe away;
And then all tears she sank—like love-eyed flowers,
Wept to their heavy death by thunder-showers.
XL
What was to come she knew not; but, to comeSome fearful thing there was, she felt and knew.
Morn after morn, eve after eve, the doom
Of her adored Rose-tree nearer drew,
Which faded in green leaf, and bud, and bloom:
And oft she sat all thought, in love and fear,
How to avert the terror felt so near.
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XLI
“Companion sweet! wherefrom, in blessed dreams,“My little cherub ever shines on me,
“And the bright spirit of thy blossoms seems;
“Mine only bliss of earth! memorial-tree!
“Upon whose every leaf are love-writ themes
“Whose purity nor crimes nor wrongs deprave—
“O, do not die! or, die upon my grave!”
XLII
Poor blighted willow! o'er the plaintive riverOf her profound woe fading, in whose depth
All precious things lay buried, thus she ever
For her fast-dying Rose-tree moan'd and wept;
Until a gentle handmaid, with endeavour
Of dear heart-duty, said that needful space
For its quick growth had fail'd it in its vase:
XLIII
And to her lady she a larger brought,Figured with those sweet stories ancient
Which tell of youths and maidens passion-fraught
Changed into flowers of sweetness eminent,
With the fine skill of poet-sculptor wrought;
And with the Rose-tree, and the vases twain,
Sat Helena; and would alone remain.
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XLIV
As if a midnight deed of death were plann'd(So weigh'd her task on her instinctive heart!)
She first extinguish'd, with a creeping hand,
The tapers that robb'd darkness of its part;
Save one which in a dim recess did stand:
And then all stealthily did haste to clamber
From forth the bower'd casement of her chamber.
XLV
Of winding paths the foliage she divided;Startling small birds from their light slumberings,
And little moths, which from the green leaves glided,
With sembled music on their pearly wings
And letter'd gold: a glade in which she prided
Herself with her wild flowers, she now did tread,
And saw them in the lurid moonlight dead;
XLVI
Nor paused to sigh or weep; but, all intentOn preservation of her Rose-tree's life,
Into a honeysuckle-bower she went,
And took therefrom a curved garden-knife
And a pearl-hafted delving instrument:
These in the foldings of her robe she buried,
And back into her lonely chamber hurried.
157
XLVII
Far night it was—and all the household slept:Only, the watch-dogs bay'd the flitting moon,
Deform'd and white, by fast clouds overswept;
The bats were sporting in their dismal noon;
Low, sullen winds thro' all the dark leaves crept;
The frogs were croaking from a stagnant moat,
Fitfully echoed from the nighthawk's throat.
XLVIII
The portals all she barr'd; and by the gloomOf moon and taper, which the clouds and wind
Made intermit with darkness thro' the room,
The mould around the vase she 'gan unbind,
To free her Rose-tree from that narrow tomb;
And dug beneath its roots with tenderest care,
And gently raised the black mass to the air.
XLIX
By one strong fibre a strange something swungThat with its load made shake her feverish hand,
And the dread vision-words like thunder rung
Thro' all her beating soul: still she did stand
As a white gravestone churchyard-yews among:
The wind blew out the taper, and the clouds
Choked the dim-gasping moon in tempest-shrouds.
158
L
Terror! what show'd the grey dawn's coming bland?A woman, with ope mouth and glaring eyes,
Maniacally laughing: in one hand
Holding a Rose-tree towards the placid skies,
As to spell-bind them with that awful wand;
And with the other on her dead-child's face—
A clod among the root-clods at its base!
LI
O, misery! O, utter misery!Sorrow, the bitter blood of love's full heart
Kills, kills, quite kills! O, dismal agony!
That all which passion doth to life impart
Can end in desolation, mournfully;
In beauty wreck'd, and reason all astray,
And dotage on a piece of livid clay!
LII
Alas, for the poor wits of Helena!Even as a quivering cloud they long had fared
Which doth insensibly in heaven decay,
Unnotedly by subtle airs impair'd;
And now a tempest-gale had swept that way,
Impelling it, with fierce and thunderous wings,
To wild and fragmentary wanderings.
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LIII
Now did she weep; and now chant long and cheerily,As to the morning joy's inebriate bird;
Now hollowly laugh loud; and then most drearily
Moan with a vacant gazing, without word;
Then dance, with swingings bacchanal; till wearily
She sank into a brief-enduring trance—
With madness lined upon her countenance!
LIV
At soft alarums at her chamber-door,She started to her feet; and in its vase
The terror-veiling Rose-tree placed once more;
And to her garden-grotto hied apace,
And set it on its cool-recessed floor;
And gave strange mandates to her people all
For celebration of its funeral.
LV
They saw that she was mad; and all she didAnd all she said, to that dire cause assign'd;
And all that she fantastically bid
Obey'd, still soothing thus her raging mind:
And she the secret in her grotto hid
Continually fondled, day and night,
And shut it with her Rose-tree from all sight.
160
LVI
She freed it tenderly from root and mouldOf the now wither'd thing to which it cleaved;
And in her grotto-fountain clear and cold
Its earth-defiled body gently laved;
And each small tangled hair she did unfold,
And perfumed oils to each administer;
And steep'd its little limbs in lavender.
LVII
And then, enwrapp'd in a purpureal vest,She laid it on her soft lap lovingly,
And over all its face her lips imprest;
And sang to it a low-voiced lullaby,
And fondled it to her blue-veined breast;
And never mother o'er her health-rosed child
With more impassion'd mother-fondness smiled.
LVIII
A gurgle from the still fount of her heartRose to the loud air of her storm-torn mind,
As thus her madness played its reason-part,
And sigh'd sweet peace about her. O, to find
A fond dream realized, love so doth start
Into fulfilment, that the grave's due bones
With life's aurorean beauty it enzones!
161
LIX
“Dead is my sweet babe, and must buried be;“We may not keep the dust we love, for ever:
“Go with thee graveward shall thine own Rose-tree,
“And I, dear baby! will forsake thee never;
“But soon beneath the sod will come, to see
“How spring the fresh flowers from thy pillow drear
“We three will have one rest, my baby dear!”
LX
Thus murmur'd Helena, as she enwreathedThe tiny clay with all the balmiest flowers
That ceaseless fragrance thro' her garden breathed
In procreant greeting to their paramours,
And with her Rose-tree's ruins all-o'erdeath'd;
And slowly swathed it in a shroud of white,
O'ergarlanded with pearls, of circling light.
LXI
The precious relic in the vase she laid,And with its former mould recover'd it:
The vase with ivy green she did embraid,
With eglantine and woodbine interknit;
And a gold-broider'd silken cloth she made,
To bind in sumptuous foldings over all;
And closed it in an ivory coffin small.
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LXII
No learned music; soul-impenetrating,Supreme in the authority of sounds,
Death-ceremonies with great pomp enstating;
Was heard in Helena's lone garden-grounds,
As all her servants stood her will awaiting
Around the little grave prepared there
For sad interment of her Rose-tree fair:
LXIII
But, as she lower'd it to its burial,And as the hiding earth around it fell,
She moan'd a low dirge o'er its funeral—
“Sweet death-in-life, and life-in-death, farewell!”
She said, with hollow voice—“within the pall
“Of my involving heart I fold thee still,
“And it shall warm thee in thy slumbers chill!
LXIV
“Ha! ha! there nothing is 'twixt life and death;“For I have seen thine eyes of heaven-hue,
“And felt upon my cheek thy violet breath,
“And kiss'd upon thy cheek the rose's dew;
“And so, where now thy beauty slumbereth,
“Wilt thou in my blown Rose-tree reappear:
“We three will have one waking, baby dear!”
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LXV
They cannot laugh, those vacant servitors,Altho' they deem it all mad mockery;
But each, in fear, the mournful scene deplores,
And muses on the hour when he must die;
And sees the picture which he most abhors—
Himself encoffin'd, and to darkness thrust,
And worms the sole life in his livid dust.
LXVI
Mad, mad, to her last hour, was Helena!Of naught but rose-trees was her eager care:
With anxious eye she watch'd for their decay,
And their most living grace was her despair:
Vase after vase she broke; and sobb'd dismay
And agony of heart, to there behold
Nothing but matted roots and clotted mould.
LXVII
And where her Rose-tree had its garden-grave,The icy winds upon her bare frame beating,
They found her, shatter'd as a breaking wave,
One winter-midnight; of the ground entreating
With piteous cries, some instant boon to have
And clutching with her nails the frozen sod,
And praying for her buried babe to God!
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LXVIII
They bore her to her chamber; and there grewOver poor Helena, before she died,
A faintest consciousness: but all she knew,
Was of her Rose-tree and its stricken pride;
And when another in her pining view
Was placed, with hope to comfort, she but smiled
At the kind cheat, and would not be beguiled.
LXIX
“Let me be buried with my Rose-tree sweet;“For then I may have dreams to light the grave!”
Thus, in that gleam of sense, did she entreat;
And then anew of fearful things did rave,
Until her throbbing heart-pulse ceased to beat:
Her prayer with those who heard was sanctified;
And she was buried by her baby's side.
LXX
And, what of Agathon? What of a cloudOf sun and mist, that pauseth o'er the hills?
What, of a lark which ether-beams enshroud?
What, of a rose whose balm the soft air fills?
A zephyr by whose breath frail flowers are bow'd?
What, of a hue? a tone? a look?—a thought,
Which even the pensive thinker fixeth not?
THE END
The subject of this poem was suggested to its author by a tale narrated to him by a poetry-adoring friend of his, to whom he had been reading Keats' divinely beautiful version of the pathetic novella of Boccacio—“Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil.” The principal incident of the one story will be found to bear much “unlike likeness” to that of the other. This somewhat immaterial circumstance is here intimated, merely that the author's “anticipation” may forestall the critic's “discovery.”
| Poems (1895) | |