University of Virginia Library

O thou Ocean, rolling up the shore
With thy long-drawn passion evermore,
Sobbing Ocean! is it with remorse
For the craft thou'st shivered in thy course?
Art thou like a mighty lyre whereon
Storm-winds thunder their shipwrecking tune?
Art thou weary of the basalt caves
Where, in sounds that drip from cell to cell,
Do the sea-nymphs to the drowsy waves
Their eternal murmured secrets tell?
Or complainest thou against this Earth
Thou hast battled with since either's birth,
Eating her black limestone-ramparts down,
Wrinkling their hoar faces with a frown,
Fretting chasms to fill with hissing spray—
Yet canst never sweep her quite away!

Well thou suitest him whose life is curst
By a burning ever-baffled thirst—
Not for vengeance—no, that cup ran o'er,
Yet his heart was craving as before.
For his ruth the murderer-king had prayed,
At Bernardo's feet his sceptre laid,
Had himself endured the captive's lot,
Loosed in scorn, had died a wretch forgot.
Not for power—for he had let the crown
Destined once for him, like some scorned toy,
Lightly to Ramiro's brow slip down—
While with bitter laugh he wished him joy.
Not for glory—all the Spanish land
Started at the footsteps of his fame;
Seen for moments, traced for long, a grand
Dreadful marvel, living, he became;
Till, like carven foliage wreathed around
Some tall column in a lonely ground,
Lay and legend clustered round his name.

But there sat a ghost, a haunting grief,
By the pillow of the robber-chief.
'Twas the moment's glimpse of a lost heaven,
'Twas the father's blessing never given;
Love that drew so nigh, then winged away,
Never more to make a moment's stay;
Hopes that of the boy a hero made,
Turned the youth to robber-renegade;
Church and kindred, home and land abjured,
Nothing left him but his name and sword.
Never with Asturian mountaineers,
Bold, gay youths, in happier times his peers,
Went he now exultingly to face
All the rapturous perils of the chase;
Never with them, when the dawn crept chill
From the arms of night silvery and still,
Pressed he up the dew-drenched mountain glades,
Dim with ancient oak and chestnut shades,
And with shout and javelin from his lair
Roused the grey old monster slumbering there.
Never in the almond-blossomed vale
Sighed he to love-warbling nightingale,
Never shared the vintage revels when
Rich grape bubbles danced in hearts of men,
And the noblest youths flew hand in hand
With the brightest maidens of the land;
Far away mid Paynims of the south
Passed what hours were spared from fierce affray;
There his lurid melancholy youth
Wasted without fellowship away.

For, thus cleft from Christian brotherhood,
Yet 'mongst Moslems he a stranger stood,
As his rock-built castle seems to stand
Haughtily apart from sea and land.
And at times by Guadalquivir's side,
Or in Merida's embattled pride,
Or when lured a false brief rest to seize,
In a trance of Oriental ease,
In the carven cedar-chambers lying,
Where on Moorish lutes sweet sighs are dying,
Would there come, from strong reaction born,
Dreams of that ancestral hold forlorn,
Where, by him in gloom and silence brought,
Lay the dead who never left his thought,
In a chapel-vault that heard the sea
Round and o'er it moan incessantly.
So at last some desperate foray ended,
To his followers leaving all his share
Of the spoils he won them, thence he wended
Northward to that fortress of despair.

Strangely stood it, meet for such as he!
On Asturia's wild, rock-splintered shore;
Where far down, beneath the mighty sea,
In earth's morning æons, when its core
Gushed out flames upon the ocean floor,
Floods of fiery stone had cooled to rocks;
Through the cloven waters then their blocks
Forced their way, built upward stair by stair,
In black giant steps that, splitting there,
Grew into a storm-swept, turret-crag;
Built by men thereon were walls of stone,
On whose highest tower a sullen flag,
Drinking the salt-sea winds, waved alone.
There flap cormorant wings, heavily sailing,
'Twixt the leaden sea and leaden sky,
There amongst the rocks the seamews wailing
In and out their ancient hollows fly.

On those long-abandoned walls he lay,
Listening to the turmoil of the bay,
All the roaring surges of Biscay;
Dreaming of some pirate ship whose sail,
Set for wild adventure on the deep,
Far away should bear him from that wail
Of the waters round his castled steep—
Far away from Spain, lost land of shame!
Never more to greet his wandering helm,—
Make himself a new race and new name,
Die the hero of an unknown realm.

“Would,” he thought, “that I might reach the North,
Dark and stormy world whence sea-gods roam,
Whence wild lays like seabirds winging forth
Bear the shrill fierce music of their home;
Land of mountains and deep dells that show
Pure white snows above, black pines below;
Land of wolf-men and swan-maidens, land
Where fight gods and giants hand to hand,
Wrath divine with mad brute rage at strife,
Æsir against Jötun—where man's life,
In a world of warring phantoms made,
Is a tempest black with wild endeavour,
That soon howls itself to rest, and laid
In a tomb of frost, sleeps sound for ever!”

Ocean-dreams in brooding darkness nurst!—
But from that vague trance his spirit burst,
When he heard what set in flame his blood;
All that district owning his command
By a rival chief had been subdued;
So with fire and sword he scoured the land,
Till one evening with his weary band
Came he where he saw a convent stand,
In the twilight, on a knoll's still crest—
Rock, stone-wall and trees, together prest,
Sheltered, sleeping, dreaming, dim with rest.
Olive woods around it filled the dell
With their soft grey melancholy shade,
Only where the evening gold-streaks fell,
Slanting, on the sharp-cut leaves, they made
Silver touches in the greyish green—
On the greensward, tranquilly, between
Those white, many-cleft and twisted stems
Like Laocoon-serpents, grazed the sheep;
Distant hills wore soft cloud-diadems,
Unseen waters murmured half-asleep.

Hearken! floating upward from the choir,
Like a flight of doves from dusky shade,
Or as blessed souls to heaven aspire,
Soft heart-yearning notes of pure desire,
Vestals hymning sweet the Mother-maid—
Mute the soldiers stood, as though they prayed.
But—as spirits lost from music flee—
Turned their chief, between his teeth a curse;
“Stop those sounds,” he cried, “they madden me!
Better far the wailing round a hearse!
Fling we wide th'accursed gates—away!
Let the captives loose—then hurl your brands,
And yon jail of souls in ashes lay—
Only first the chapel for my hands!”
Loud the shrieking—from the invaders run
Timid forms invoking names divine;
With a scornful laugh the obdurate one
Strode into the chapel; at the shrine
Knelt the Abbess and an aged Nun—
“Ho!” he said, “begone! this place is mine!
I have sworn to level with the ground
Every roof where captives may be found.”

Then arose the Abbess, and she faced
Him, the grim destroyer, undismayed,
Raised an ivory crucifix—the haste
Of his onward rush awhile was stay'd;
Though a hard defiant glare replies
To the world of sorrow in her eyes:
And she said, “Bernardo, dost thou see?
'Tis thy mother kneeling by my side;
Whom so scornfully thou viewest, she
Is Estella, long ago thy bride.
Have these twenty years of dark despair
Hardened thee to heaven and innocence?
Shall not twenty years of peace and prayer
Win for us this grace, thy penitence?”

Strangely on her did the robber look
With a wild despairing scrutiny—
All the truth read there, yet could not brook
Eyes that pierced him so with days gone by.
Stifling half a groan, he turned to go;
But a something held him—could he so
Part from all that once had made life sweet,
And not kneel and kiss Estella's feet?
From that mother lost and found again,
As tho,' by a lightning-flash descried,
A new world had risen? found all in vain—
Better ere such meeting to have died!—
So he paused, he turned—hot, sudden tears
Burnt up that hard crust of twenty years.
Mother! long ago believed at rest,
Where the broken hearts forget all pain—
Art thou living, suffering? can thy breast
From that drear half-life one throb retain?
Shall this meeting compensate his wrong
From that vision waited for so long,
In the flash of its fulfilment lost?
Comes it not too late? and will it cost
All the remnant of that feeble breath?
Seven days did Ximena hold from death,
But to fill them with the unknown past;
Her Saldaña from the dead to win,
And the life of motherhood at last
In the twilight of the grave begin.
All was lived through, that dim dreamland first
Of her youth's enchanted wedding-morn,
And the childhood she had never nurst,
Of the marvel in that dreamland born.
Saw she then that lost and beauteous one
In this haggard stranger called her son?—
Still she gazed on him with dream-helped eyes,
Shaping through the clouds that earlier truth,
Till together the two faces rise,
In the glorious beauty of their youth;
Now the long-lost husband, now the son,
Now the double image melts in one.
Through a gentle trance of happy dying,
Murmuring love and hope and peace again,
Those faint tones, like some good angel sighing
In Bernardo's ear his holy strain,
Cast the devil out of wrath and pride,
And he prayed her blessing ere she died.

From that day all knew—but how, none guest—
In Bernardo's place a blank there came;
Years went on, conjecture ceased her quest,
But the Convent stood, the land had rest,
And the Abbess slept—a sainted name.
Long amid the rocks, ten miles away,
Morn and eve was heard a chapel bell
To the boatmen out upon the bay,
Oft at nightfall, through the ocean swell,
Came a voice that chaunted Miserere,
But the shore no cell, no chapel shows;
Only near, all ghost-like, blank and dreary,
On its crag the robber-castle rose.
Some bold fishers sought at last the spot—
From the sea they scaled the cliff and found
That below 't was hollowed to a grot;
And with snowy hair upon the ground,
On the hard stone floor, the hermit lay,
Ivory crucifix, and reliquaire
In those hands death-frozen, and, they say,
By his side an open book of prayer,
With one name—Estella—written there.