Fra Dolcino, and other poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Christ Jesus! who upon the cross
Didst count by pangs six hours of death,
Lord, hast thou counted all my loss
Of years that had no life save breath?
If Love was guilt that Wrath must blast,
Has not, unscourged, far darker sin
Met thro' an unshamed life Thy gaze—
While five-and-twenty years since last
I saw the light, are buried in
The gulf of the dead yesterdays.—
O light! in one short day amassed—
O day! the last of my rich past.
Deep in my brain with fire are graven
All that day's sights from earth to heaven.

Where the King's summer-castle stood
For sylvan sport, below the hills
Up which pine-forests waved and caught
Voices from birds and streams and rills,
There from the courtyards overflowed
The tide of youth, one April day,
Rippling with hawk, and hound, and gay

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With all the colours of the spring.
Into the forest forth we rode,
But halted, waiting for the King.

The dawn for mist was scarce discerned,
The grass was clouded white with dew,
But on the dews the sunrise burned,
And winds in pine-tops trembled too,
And, whispering of the morning, through
The depth on depth of boughs at rest,
They waked a wild dove in her nest.
I fancied how the brooding breast
Was fluttering o'er the wealth within,
Transparent silvery shells, so thin,
Such as a touch might break or melt—
I felt—what matter what I felt?
What fancies curled in a young brain
That soon should die to joy and pain?

The silver-leaved abeles were waving—
Myriads of white and azure eyes
Laughed from the bank, where, stilly laving
Their cool dark roots with moss entangled,
The stream, o'erdanced by dragon flies,
Crept on thro' meadows blossom-spangled,
And by the heron-haunted trees.—
The woods, with leaf-buds just unfurled,
Swelled hourly by the sun and breeze;
Beneath, the young fern's yellow curled
Soft tufts; beyond, the steeper world

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Of gorse-clad hills, whose sides unfold
A sudden passionate bloom of gold—
Carved out in light, I see it all;
Under an oak,—in dreams of love
I stood and watched a shadow fall,
From one great curling bough above,
On the broad sunny stem clear traced;
For now the sun was making haste
To melt all clouds and dew in light—
The King was coming—all was right!

I see my horse, the glittering mist
He snuffs with nostrils keenly spread,
And my jer falcon on my wrist,
That just unhooded shakes her head,
And wide expands her shining eye,
And flaps her wings and longs to fly,
Proud of her beauty, and my hound
That well nigh tumbles to the ground,
With his great frantic leaps of joy,
My page, my bright-faced guileless boy.
The faces round so glad—I think
They made the spring bud everywhere—
My Jesu! how I seem to drink
That crystalline Sierra air!
And those fair riders—Time has dimmed
Your gay vain smiles, you supple-limbed
And bold Dianas—lures so light
For such light prey!—yet I recall

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Those broad black eyes, those mockeries showered
From rich red lips on plumed knight,
Or page so proud of being tall—
And that face, fairest far of all—
Left there behind me, safely bowered
In her close myrtle-nook of love—
My secret flower, my hidden dove!
I see that smile thro' trellised screen
That flashed the soul up thro' her eyes,
The small fair hand pushed out half seen,
Waving triumphant prophesies;
Unheeding that she missed the place
Once hers, for rank and skill and grace—
Fairest and foremost in the chase!
I left her there alone, to weave
Her dream of happiness till eve.
Mad dream of lovers madly wed!
No guilt is punished like th'excess
Of an audacious happiness.
Ere eve God's lightning struck ours dead.

And what is Count Saldaña now?
And what the bride of regal brow,
Too strangely precious to avow?
That beauty for whose crimson bloom
I in my youth of fervent trust
Dared all things, torture, bonds, the tomb,—
Happier than I—has long been dust.
While for that one year brief and bright
I sit in expiating night.

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Ah, Count Saldaña! chief confest,
Thy horse, thy hawk, thy hound the best,
On whom from marble balconies
Spontaneous crowns have dropt from eyes
That others died for, thou so used
To gifts at Fortune's lavish pleasure,
Nothing demanded nor refused,
And every hour itself a treasure,—
Art thou the grey blind man subdued
And sad, who in his prison tower
Marks but by each scant meal the hour,
And has to watch his gaoler's mood
For all the pastime he can wrest
From this huge blank of days unblest—
Some half-told news, some surly jest?

Ah, saw'st thou, Lord, that fierce despair,
When young, strong, loving, hating, first
They dragged me hither—where, oh where?
I felt, but could not see, my tomb—
How the blind eyeballs seemed to burst,
Seeking the fiend who wrought my doom,
And hers—oh, worse than murderer-King,
Didst thou sleep sound thro' all those nights,
Whilst I, a blighted, blasted thing,
Helpless and bare to all affrights,
Fancying, all round, the universe
Was narrowing to a coffin, walled
In that death-blackness, dreamed appalled
Or waking saw, th'embodied Curse—

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For eyes in this world's darkness thralled
Can yet see spirits—a gliding, black
And dragon creature, with a track
Of sombre fire behind, that crawled
Up from the pit of hell and came
Close to my bed—O God! the shame
To be so terrified as I
Was at that dull inanity!
For now 't is worn away, the strong
Quick youth that was my torment long,
My nights are calm at least; I lie
And wakeful muse more tranquilly
On all those past unmeaning shows,
And when this weary life will close.