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1.113_-_Daybreak

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1.113_-_Daybreak

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   1 Gregory the Great
   1 G K Chesterton
   1 Jorge Luis Borges

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   8 Anonymous
   5 Zora Neale Hurston
   5 Martin Luther King Jr
   5 Holly Black
   5 Conrad Potter Aiken
   5 Christina Georgina Rossetti
   5 Andr Aciman
   4 William Butler Yeats
   4 Fyodor Dostoyevsky
   3 Walt Whitman
   3 Kurt Cobain
   3 Jorge Luis Borges
   3 G K Chesterton
   3 Dante Gabriel Rossetti
   2 Victor Hugo
   2 T a Obreht
   2 Rick Riordan
   2 Paul Celan
   2 Mervyn Peake
   2 Maya Angelou

1:Daybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance." ~ G K Chesterton,

2:The dawn intimates that the night is over; it does not yet proclaim the full light of day…Are not all of us who follow the truth in this life daybreak and dawn? We do some things which already belong to the light but are not free from the remnants of darkness ~ Gregory the Great,

3:On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand... ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:Daybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

2:It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom. ~ aristotle, @wisdomtrove

3:Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise. Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear, I rise. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove

4:I refuse to accept the view . . . that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove

5:[The Return of the Prodigal book] came out of my emotional and spiritual journey during the four months I was gone from Daybreak because of depression. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove

6:Unto him who is able to keep us from falling, and lift us from the dark to the bright mountain of hope, from the midnight of desperation to the daybreak of joy, to him be power and authority for ever and ever. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove

7:Daybreak is one of the greatest disadvantages of living under the solar system: It means having to get up almost the very minute you go to bed, And bathe and shave and scrub industriously at your molar system And catch a train and go to the office an ~ ogden-nash, @wisdomtrove

8:I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove

9:I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove

10:I need not instruct you of my belief: Time gives all and takes all away ; everything changes but nothing perishes ; One only is immutable, eternal and ever endures, one and the same with itself. With this philosophy my spirit grows, my mind expands. Whereof, how r ever obscure the night may be, I await daybreak, and they who dwell in day look for night Rejoice therefore, and keep whole, if you can, and return love for love. ~ giordano-bruno, @wisdomtrove

11:Ah, Father! That’s words and only words! Forgive! If he’d not been run over, he’d have come home today drunk and his only shirt dirty and in rags and he’d have fallen asleep like a log, and I should have been sousing and rinsing till daybreak, washing his rags and the children’s and then drying them by the window and as soon as it was daylight I should have been darning them. What’s the use of talking forgiveness! I have forgiven as it is! ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove

12:On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but of the dawn. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:You're more dangerous than daybreak. ~ Holly Black,

2:You are more dangerous than daybreak. ~ Holly Black,

3:Daybreak is a good time for decisions. ~ Rick Riordan,

4:Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown. ~ Paul Celan,

5:At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,

6:grandfather's farm sometime before daybreak, after ~ Willa Cather,

7:Even the darkness of night brings the promise of daybreak. ~ K Larsen,

8:Death does not bring the night, dear ones. Death brings daybreak. ~ Anya Allyn,

9:And walking on like that, I found the well at daybreak. ~ Antoine de Saint Exup ry,

10:At daybreak Morn shall come to meIn raiment of the white winds spun. ~ Madison Cawein,

11:If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don’t keer if you die at dusk. ~ Zora Neale Hurston,

12:us at daybreak with your love, that all our days we may sing for joy.’” “Psalm ~ Carla Neggers,

13:Daybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance. ~ G K Chesterton,

14:Daybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance." ~ G K Chesterton,

15:Look at the fate of summer flowers, which blow at daybreak, droop ere even-song. ~ William Wordsworth,

16:The whole point of love is that it happens now. Here. Between daybreak and nightfall. ~ Jordan Weisman,

17:Daybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,

18:It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom. ~ Aristotle,

19:daybreak, d Lord, You hear my voice; at daybreak I plead my case to You e and watch expectantly. ~ Anonymous,

20:It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom. ~ Aristotle,

21:It’s an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak. ~ O Henry,

22:At daybreak, when loath to rise, have this thought in thy mind: I am rising for a man's work. ~ Publilius Syrus,

23:Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise. Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear, I rise. ~ Maya Angelou,

24:Don't decide yet," Hephaestus advised. "Wait until daybreak. Daybreak is a good time for decisions. ~ Rick Riordan,

25:I've been so blessed and so lucky to be a part of great shows like 'Chuck' and projects 'Daybreak.' ~ Ryan McPartlin,

26:At daybreak, Lord, You hear my voice; at daybreak I plead my case to You and watch expectantly Psalm 5:3 ~ Beth Moore,

27:At daybreak, LORD, You hear my voice; at daybreak I plead my case to You and watch expectantly. Psalm 5:3 ~ Beth Moore,

28:The council now beginning rises in the Church like the daybreak, a forerunner of most splendid light. ~ Pope John XXIII,

29:All my life's a circle; Sunrise and sundown; Moon rolls thru the nighttime; Till the daybreak comes around. ~ Harry Chapin,

30:I refuse to accept the view . . . that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. ~ Martin Luther King Jr,

31:What breaks in daybreak? Is it the night? Is it the sun, cracked in two by the horizon like an egg, spilling out light? ~ Margaret Atwood,

32:If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don't keer if you die at dusk. It's so many people never seen de light at all. ~ Zora Neale Hurston,

33:From daybreak to sunset she turned her thoughts, like boulders, over. She set them in long lines. She rearranged their order... ~ Mervyn Peake,

34:If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don’t keer if you die at dusk. It’s so many people never seen de light at all. Ah ~ Zora Neale Hurston,

35:Lie A-Bed Lie a-bed, Sleepy head, Shut up eyes, bo-peep; Till daybreak Never wake: Baby, sleep. ~ Christina Georgina Rossetti,

36:I don't know who it is who lives or dies, who rests or wakes, but it is your heart that distributes all the graces of the daybreak in my breast. ~ Pablo Neruda,

37:Birds scream at the top of their lungs in horrified hellish rage every morning at daybreak to warn us all of the truth, but sadly we don't speak bird. ~ Kurt Cobain,

38:[The Return of the Prodigal book] came out of my emotional and spiritual journey during the four months I was gone from Daybreak because of depression. ~ Henri Nouwen,

39:When will they fight?” I asked. “Tomorrow. Daybreak. It is man’s work.” I laughed. “I too have fought and killed, Kotta. It is the work of fools, not men. ~ Tanith Lee,

40:Gazing at her for a long moment with something like horror, as though he was seeing her for the first time, he spoke. “You are more dangerous than daybreak. ~ Holly Black,

41:And there shall be a flame-green daybreak soon. And love itself will cry for insurrection! For tomorrow is also a day - and Titus has entered his stronghold. ~ Mervyn Peake,

42:I sit up talking till daybreak with the young people and we have almost Athenian evenings, Athenian, I mean, only in their intellectual subtlety and refinement. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,

43:If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don’t keer if you die at dusk. It’s so many people never seen de light at all. Ah wuz fumblin’ round and God opened de door. ~ Zora Neale Hurston,

44:It was going to be a beautiful morning, I remember thinking, as I left the house; soft and close, bursting with whispered promises, as only a daybreak in early summer can be. ~ Kate Chopin,

45:There is a special charm to journeys undertaken before daybreak in hot lands: the air is soft and cool and the coming of dawn reveals a landscape fresh from the night dew. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi,

46:[On Venice:] Every hour of the day is a miracle of light. In summer with daybreak the rising sun produces such a tender magic on the water that it nearly breaks one's heart. ~ Peggy Guggenheim,

47:They stood in the noon of that strange and solemn splendor, as if it were the light that is to reveal all secrets, and the daybreak that shall unite all who belong to one another ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne,

48:On fine nights when the cold and the drumtaps, and the hooting of the owls, and the moonlight, have got into their wild, woodland blood and made it even wilder, they will dance till daybreak. ~ C S Lewis,

49:Shot the man! Shed human blood! Hid in a pool!" ejaculated Mr. Dove, overcome. "Really, Rachel, you are a most trying daughter. Why should you go out before daybreak and do such things? ~ H Rider Haggard,

50:How many times in a life, he thought, will I lie down in a darkness whose character I cannot imagine, to see what daybreak reveals of my new circumstances? Or is that every day of my life? ~ Gregory Maguire,

51:It was still dark outside and bitter cold although mercifully there was little wind. Why is it calm in the early morning? You will notice that lakes are usually still and smooth before daybreak. ~ Charles Portis,

52:I don't know in the world why anyone would consent to be a king, and never to be left to himself, but to be worried and wearied and interfered with from dark to daybreak and from morning to the fall of night. ~ Lady Gregory,

53:Unto him who is able to keep us from falling, and lift us from the dark to the bright mountain of hope, from the midnight of desperation to the daybreak of joy, to him be power and authority for ever and ever. ~ Martin Luther,

54:I channel the rote and the new and unseen. My head has always been the busiest of crossroads, a festival of happy and unhappy arrivals. In the hours before daybreak when I was a boy, god sent me words as visitors. ~ Jim Shepard,

55:Keep a sharp lookout! For you do not know when I[*] will come, at evening, at midnight, early dawn or late daybreak. Don’t let me find you sleeping. Watch for my return! This is my message to you and to everyone else. ~ Anonymous,

56:At daybreak, the gloom had lifted. The mood was more confident. There were those who said: “Who knows, they may be sending us away for our own good. The front is getting closer, we shall soon hear the guns. And then surely ~ Anonymous,

57:Our negative life situations are essential elements for us to fulfill our intended destiny. However, unless we possess the power of endurance to live through the dark of the night, we will not see the glory of daybreak. ~ Chin Ning Chu,

58:Comings and goings in the middle of the night are nothing out of the ordinary. The unspoken rule is that as long as everyone is back in their own room by daybreak, everyone else will pretend that nothing untoward has happened. ~ T E Kinsey,

59:Birds... scream at the top of their lungs in horrified hellish rage every morning at daybreak to warn us all of the truth. They know the truth. Screaming bloody murder all over the world in our ears, but sadly we don't speak bird. ~ Kurt Cobain,

60:It was the hushed daybreak of the Roman revelation in particular that he could usually best recover – the way that there above all, where the princes and popes had been before him, his divination of his faculty had gone to his head. He ~ Henry James,

61:light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is ~ Anonymous,

62:An apparent confusion, if lived with long enough, may become orderly . . . A rare experience of a moment at daybreak, when something in nature seems to reveal all consciousness, cannot be explained at noon. Yet it is part of the day's unity ~ Charles Ives,

63:I know that my singing doesn’t make the moon rise, nor does it make the stars shine. But without my song, the night would seem empty and incomplete. There is more to daybreak than light, just as there is more to nighttime than darkness. ~ Geoffrey Chaucer,

64:Does the presence of the other, who yesterday morning felt almost like and intruder, become ever more necessary because it shields us from our own hell--so that the very person who causes our torment by daybreak is the same who'll relieve it at night? ~ Andr Aciman,

65:For three weeks it had rained every day. For those past three weeks, daybreak was a gloomy affair. The skies gradually moved from a thick blanket of dingy white clouds to the deepest shade of grey, peaking here and there in ominous black thunderheads ~ Celina Grace,

66:Gazing at her for a long moment with something like horror, as though he was seeing her for the first time, he spoke. “You are more dangerous than daybreak.” Before Tana could reply, he stepped into the lengthening shadows of morning and was gone. ~ Holly Black,

67:Or does the presence of the other, who yesterday morning felt almost like an intruder, become ever more necessary because it shields us from our own hell—so that the very person who causes our torment by daybreak is the same who’ll relieve it at night? ~ Andr Aciman,

68:It was as if knowing that I had to leave revealed something to me that only [he] could explain. But everything felt wrong. In the dim-blue daybreak I began seeing the the entire world reversed and spinning through a deserted tunnel of falsity and sorrow. ~ Daniel Kine,

69:An awe so quiet I don't know when it began. A gratitude had begun to sing in me. Was there some moment dividing song from no song? When does dewfall begin? When does night fold its arms over our hearts to cherish them? When is daybreak? ~ Denise Levertov,

70:When daybreak came we were zooming through New Jersey with the great cloud of Metropolitan New York rising before us in the snowy distance. Dean had a sweater wrapped around his ears to keep warm. He said we were a band of Arabs coming in to blow up New York. ~ Jack Kerouac,

71:In the circle of yellow lamplight, These few roof-beams and columns Of what could be a Mogul Emperor's palace. The Prince chews his long nails, The Princess lowers her green eyelids. They both smoke too much, Never go to bed before daybreak. ~ Charles Simic,

72:At daybreak, the gloom had lifted. The mood was more confident. There were those who said: “Who knows, they may be sending us away for our own good. The front is getting closer, we shall soon hear the guns. And then surely the civilian population will be evacuated … ~ Anonymous,

73:26 “But don’t be afraid of those who threaten you. For the time is coming when everything that is covered will be revealed, and all that is secret will be made known to all. 27 What I tell you now in the darkness, shout abroad when daybreak comes. What I whisper in your ~ Anonymous,

74:I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. ~ Martin Luther King Jr,

75:Keep this thought at the ready at daybreak, and through the day and night—there is only one path to happiness, and that is in giving up all outside of your sphere of choice, regarding nothing else as your possession, surrendering all else to God and Fortune.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 4.4.39 ~ Ryan Holiday,

76:I can, from the distance of years now, still think I’m hearing the voices of two young men singing these words in Neapolitan toward daybreak, neither realizing, as they held each other and kissed again and again on the dark lanes of old Rome, that this was the last night they would ever make love again. ~ Andr Aciman,

77:113. DAYBREAK (AL-FALAQ) In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful 1 Say, ‘I seek refuge in the Lord of the daybreak 2 from the evil of what He has created, 3 from the evil of darkness as it descends, 4 from the evil of those who blow on knots 5 and from the evil of the envier when he envies.’a ~ Anonymous,

78:The gray half-tones of daybreak are not the gray half-tones of the day's close, though the degree of their shade may be the same. In the twilight of the morning, light seems active, darkness passive; in the twilight of evening it is the darkness which is active and crescent, and the light which is the drowsy reverse. ~ Thomas Hardy,

79:Chapter 14 The next day, the 16th of April, and Easter Sunday, the settlers issued from the Chimneys at daybreak, and proceeded to wash their linen. The engineer intended to manufacture soap as soon as he could procure the necessary materials--soda or potash, fat or oil. The important question of renewing their wardrobe ~ Jules Verne,

80:I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. ~ Martin Luther,

81:... after daybreak is when I will already have died. At that moment I will only know of beautiful things: the certainties, the desires. When the sun bathes me, I will be something else: without mirrors, without sadness. I will have passed away, but will have been reborn. I will whistle mellifluous melodies. Discredited but, in the end, light. ~ Ondjaki,

82:. . . winter always carries with it something of our sadness; then April came, that daybreak of summer, fresh like every dawn, gay like every childhood; weeping a little sometimes like the infant that it is. Nature in this month has charming gleams which pass from the sky, the clouds, the trees, the fields, and the flowers, into the heart of man. ~ Victor Hugo,

83:Out of the huts of history's shame I rise Up from a past that's rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise. ~ Maya Angelou,

84:Soon it will be daybreak. Soon the day will break. I can't stop it from breaking in the same way it always does, and then from lying there broken; always the same day, which comes around again like clockwork. It begins with the day before the day before, and then the day before, and then it's the day itself. A Saturday. The breaking day. The day the butcher comes. ~ Margaret Atwood,

85:In the pale light of daybreak the gravestones looked like so many white sails of boats anchored in a busy harbor. They were sails that would never again be filled with wind, sails that, too long unused and heavily drooping, had been turned into stone just as they were. The boats' anchors had been thrust so deeply into the dark earth that they could never again be raised. ~ Yukio Mishima,

86:I can, from the distance of years now, still think I’m hearing the voices of two young men singing these words in Neapolitan toward daybreak, neither realizing, as they held each other and kissed again and again on the dark lanes of old Rome, that this was the last night they would ever make love again. “Tomorrow let’s go to San Clemente,” I said. “Tomorrow is today,” he replied. ~ Andr Aciman,

87:Daybreak,' he said, looking out at it. 'I always thought it was funny that dawn should be called daybreak. This is when the day is made - it's the beginning. I'ts the best part: you've got all the potential of the day to come, and you haven't wasted yet. When it gets dark, that should be daybreak. When the day is broken. When it turns into night time, that's when it all start's to go wrong. ~ Erin Kelly,

88:Daybreak," he said, looking out at it. "I've always thought it was funny that dawn should be called daybreak. This is when the day is made: it's the beginning. It's the best part: you've got all the potential of the day to come, and you haven't wasted it yet. When it gets dark, that should be daybreak. When the day is broken. When it turns into nighttime, that's when it all starts to go wrong. ~ Erin Kelly,

89:Messengers wait outside the door, to carry urgent orders for release. It is difficult, when the pen skips over a name, to associate it with the corpse it might belong to, tomorrow or the day after that. There is no sense of evil in the room, just tiredness and the aftertaste of petty squabbling. Camille drinks quite a lot of Fabre’s brandy. Towards daybreak, a kind of dismal camaraderie sets in. ~ Hilary Mantel,

90:The door to the cottage was open. She was standing there in her nightdress, breathing deeply of the daybreak air. She was tall and slender, with coppery hair that fell in curls around her shoulders. Hearing him, she turned to Jonas and smiled. He thought he heard her say, “I see the sun.” Indeed, the sky was pink with dawn light. Then Jonas looked past Claire and saw Gabe approaching on the path.   THE END ~ Lois Lowry,

91:People like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves. When they get blind-drunk, cheat, steal, beat their wives, starve an old woman, when they kill a trapped fox with an axe or riddle the last existing unicorn with arrows, they like to think that the Bane entering cottages at daybreak is more monstrous than they are. They feel better then. They find it easier to live. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski,

92:She knows that making it to the orphanage in the city is the only chance Usha has. Usha, dawn. The name came to her in the quiet hours of early morning after the midwife left them alone. It echoed in her mind as she gazed at her baby girl, trying to memorize every detail of her face. Amid the first rays of light that crept into the hut, as the cocks crowed the daybreak, Kavita silently named her daughter. ~ Shilpi Somaya Gowda,

93:I see the spectacle of morning from the hilltop over against my house, from daybreak to sunrise, with emotions which an angel might share. The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid transformations; the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,

94:we got out of the car for air and suddenly both of us were stoned with joy to realize that in the darkness all around us was fragrant green grass and the smell of fresh manure and warm waters. 'We're in the South! We've left the winter!' Faint daybreak illuminated green shoots by the side of the road. I took a deep breath; a locomotive howled across the darkness, mobile-bound. So were we. I took off my shirt and exulted ~ Jack Kerouac,

95:I need not instruct you of my belief: Time gives all and takes all away ; everything changes but nothing perishes ; One only is immutable, eternal and ever endures, one and the same with itself. With this philosophy my spirit grows, my mind expands. Whereof, how r ever obscure the night may be, I await daybreak, and they who dwell in day look for night Rejoice therefore, and keep whole, if you can, and return love for love. ~ Giordano Bruno,

96:Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. ~ Martin Luther King Jr,

97:Rain On Autumn Night Cold, cold this third night of autumn Rain makes me sleepy Alone, this old man is contented and idle It's late when I extinguish the lamp and lie down To sleep, listening to the beautiful sound of rain Incense ashes still glowing in the burner My only heat in this lodging At daybreak, I will stay under the quilt to stay warm And the steps will be covered by frosty red leaves ~ Bai Juyi,

98:The Bible assures us that a morning will dawn bright and glorious someday. All the sorrow and sadness and difficulty we’ve known in the darkened skies of life will vanish. The Lord will return for us at the daybreak of eternity, and there will be no more weeping, no more pain or suffering, no more broken hearts. There will be no more valleys plunging away from the peaks. He will dry every tear, and there will be joy in that great morning. ~ David Jeremiah,

99:On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night.  What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn. ~ G K Chesterton,

100:Ah, Father! That’s words and only words! Forgive! If he’d not been run over, he’d have come home today drunk and his only shirt dirty and in rags and he’d have fallen asleep like a log, and I should have been sousing and rinsing till daybreak, washing his rags and the children’s and then drying them by the window and as soon as it was daylight I should have been darning them. What’s the use of talking forgiveness! I have forgiven as it is! ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky,

101:Ah, Father! That’s words and only words! Forgive! If he’d not been run over, he’d have come home today drunk and his only shirt dirty and in rags and he’d have fallen asleep like a log, and I should have been sousing and rinsing till daybreak, washing his rags and the children’s and then drying them by the window and as soon as it was daylight I should have been darning them. What’s the use of talking forgiveness! I have forgiven as it is! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,

102:On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but of the dawn. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,

103:Tell me why entire sleepless nights flash by in an inexhaustible blithe happiness, and when the dawn shines in through the windows, pink and radiant, and daybreak illumines the cheerless room with that uncertain fantastical light we know in Petersburg, does our dreamer, worn out and weary, throw himself on to his bed and fall asleep amid the blissful afterglow of his painfully shaken spirit and with such a languishingly sweet pain about his heart? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,

104:Birds are and always have been reincarnated old men with Tourette's syndrome having somehow managed to dupe the reproductive saga. They fuck each other and tend to their home repairs and children while never missing their true mission. To scream at the top of their lungs in horrified hellish rage every morning at daybreak to warn us all of the truth. They know the truth. Screaming bloody murder all over the world in our ears, but sadly we don't speak bird. ~ Kurt Cobain,

105:«Chiagneva sempe ca durmeva sola, mo dorme co' li muorte accompagnata. She always wept because she slept alone, Now she sleeps among the dead.» I can, from the distance of years now, still think I'm hearing the voices of two young men singing these words in Neapolitan toward daybreak, neither realizing, as they held each other and kissed again and again on the dark lanes of old Rome, that this was the last night they would ever make love again. ~ Andr Aciman,

106:To paint is to love again, live again, see again. To get up at the crack of dawn in order to take a peek at the water colors one did the day before, or even a few hours before, is like stealing a look at the beloved while she sleeps. The thrill is even greater if one has first to draw back the curtains. How they glow in the cold light of early dawn! … Is there any writer who rouses himself at daybreak in order to read the pages of his manuscript? Perish the thought! ~ Henry Miller,

107:At daybreak, when Kathleen went down to the breakfast room, she was shocked to find West sitting at one of the round tables, staring morosely into the depths of a teacup. He looked ghastly, the skin under his eyes pleated, his complexion pallid and damp. “Good morning,” Kathleen murmured, taken aback. “Are you ill?” He gave her a bleary glance, his eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed in his gray complexion. “Only if one considers sobriety to be an illness. Which I do. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

108:If you walk east at daybreak from the town To the cliff’s foot, by climbing steadily You cling at noon whence there is no way down But to go toppling backward to the sea. And not for birds nor birds’ eggs, so they say, But for a flower that in these fissures grows, Forms have been seen to move throughout the day Skyward; but what its name is no one knows. ’Tis said you find beside them on the sand This flower, relinquished by the broken hand. ~ Edna St Vincent Millay,

109:EACH MORNING THERE WAS a moment, before I had fully awakened, when my mind still groped its clumsy way back to consciousness, my body not yet remembered, reality not yet acknowledged. That moment was always full of pure, sweet, uncontrollable hope. I did not ask for this hope to come; I did not even want it, for it trailed disappointment in its wake. Yet there it was, hovering within me—hope that my illness had vanished with the night and my health had returned magically with daybreak. ~ Elisabeth Tova Bailey,

110:The road is my wedded companion. She speaks to me under my feet all day, she sings to my dreams all night.   My meeting with her had no beginning, it begins endlessly at each daybreak, renewing its summer in fresh flowers and songs, and her every new kiss is the first kiss to me.   The road and I are lovers. I change my dress for her night after night, leaving the tattered cumber of the old in the wayside inns when the day dawns. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, Lovers Gifts XLVII - The Road Is ,

111:So I say to you, seek God and discover him and make him a power in your life. Without him all of our efforts turn to ashes and our sunrises into darkest nights. Without him, life is a meaningless drama with the decisive scenes missing. But with him we are able to rise from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope. With him we are able to rise from the midnight of desperation to the daybreak of joy. St. Augustine was right—we were made for God and we will be restless until we find rest in him. ~ Martin Luther King Jr,

112:Hold your hands out over the earth as over a flame. To all who love her, who open to her the doors of their veins, she gives of her strength, sustaining them with her own measureless tremor of dark life. Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places. For the gifts of life are the earth’s and they are given to all, and they are the songs of birds at daybreak, Orion and the Bear, and dawn seen over ocean from the beach. ~ Henry Beston,

113:Just at daybreak I went over to the 'Endurance' with Wild and Hurley, in order to retrieve some tins of petrol that could be used to boil up milk for the rest of the men. The ship presented a painful spectacle of chaos and wreck. The jib-boom and bowsprit had snapped off during the night and now lay at right angles to the ship, with the chains, martingale, and bob-stay dragging them as the vessel quivered and moved in the grinding pack. The ice had driven over the forecastle and she was well down by the head. ~ Ernest Shackleton,

114:In popular idiom, that waking period between dark and daybreak is called the “Hour of the Wolf,” an image evoking the eerie, predatory fatalism that tends to come calling in the small hours of the night. It is believed to be the hour when most people die and when the nightmares we wake from are likeliest to seem real. It is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by secret fears—when the ghosts and demons they scarecely believe in by daylight suddenly come to life. Supposedly, it is also the hour when most babies are born. ~ Clark Strand,

115:Your boyfriend should not have left you here." "He's not my boyfriend. I can tell because I don't have his name drawn inside a heart on a single notebook. I swear. And who says he left me? Maybe I left him? Maybe we found someplace safe and I stashed him there." "I doubt that," Stefan said. "I'd totally leave him, you know. Boys are annoying." "True. But there is no safe place. And I am no fool. I knew you would come for the phone. I have been watching this spot since daybreak. I saw him go over the edge. ~ Ally Carter,

116:do not only describe your situation, that event, that person, place or that thing. By describing, we limit our thoughts in pondering. We ought to prescribe. The sick describes his illness to the doctor and the doctor prescribes an antidote. We all do have stories to tell in life, we all do face challenges each day, and likewise we experience joyous moments; that is life. To espouse an unpopular cause, prescribe a great antidotes to every life occurrence from daybreak to sunset. Remember prefer prescribe to describe! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah,

117:Hold your hands out over the earth as over a flame. To all who love her, who open to her the doors of their veins, she gives of her strength, sustaining them with her own measureless tremor of dark life. Touch the earth, love the earth, honor the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places. For the gifts of life are the earth's and they are given to all, and they are the songs of birds at daybreak, Orion and the Bear, and dawn seen over ocean from the beach. ~ Henry Beston,

118:There were pauses in the music for the rushing, calling, halting piano. Everything would stop except the climbing of the soloist; he would reach a height and everything would join him, the violins first and then the horns; and then the deep blue bass and the flute and the bitter trampling drums; beating, beating and mounting together and stopping with a crash like daybreak. When I first heard the Messiah I was alone; my blood bubbled like fire and wine; I cried; like an infant crying for its mother’s milk; or a sinner running to meet Jesus. ~ James Baldwin,

119:Now with the squadrons marshaled, captains leading each, the Trojans came with cries and the din of war like wildfowl when the long hoarse cries of cranes sweep on against the sky and the great formations flee from winter's grim ungodly storms, flying in force. shrieking south to the Ocean gulfs, speeding blood and death to the Pygmy warriors, laonching at daybreak savage battle down upon their heads. But Achaea's armies came on strong in silence, breathing combat-fury, hearts ablaze to defend each other to the death. ~ Fagles Robert,

120:Halsted Street Car Come you, cartoonists, Hang on a strap with me here At seven o’clock in the morning On a Halsted street car. Take your pencils And draw these faces. Try with your pencils for these crooked faces, That pig-sticker in one corner—his mouth— That overall factory girl—her loose cheeks. Find for your pencils A way to mark your memory Of tired empty faces. After their night’s sleep, In the moist dawn And cool daybreak, Faces Tired of wishes, Empty of dreams. ~ Carl Sandburg,

121:On This Long Storm The Rainbow Rose 194 On this long storm the Rainbow rose— On this late Morn—the Sun— The clouds—like listless Elephants— Horizons—straggled down— The Birds rose smiling, in their nests— The gales—indeed—were done— Alas, how heedless were the eyes— On whom the summer shone! The quiet nonchalance of death— No Daybreak—can bestir— The slow—Archangel's syllables Must awaken her! ~ Emily Dickinson,

122:8 There were many lamps in the upper room where they* were gathered together. 9 And in a window sat a certain young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep. He was overcome by sleep; and as Paul continued speaking, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. 10 But Paul went down, fell on him, and embracing him said, “Do not trouble yourselves, for his life is in him.” 11 Now when he had come up, had broken bread and eaten, and talked a long while, even till daybreak, he departed. 12 And they brought the young man in alive, ~ Anonymous,

123:At daybreak, my face still turned to the wall, and before I had seen above the big window-curtains what shade of colour the first streaks of light assumed, I could already tell what the weather was like. The first sounds from the street had told me, according to whether they came to my ears deadened and distorted by the moisture of the atmosphere or quivering like arrows in the resonant, empty expanses of a spacious, frosty, pure morning; as soon as I heard the rumble of the first tramcar, I could tell whether it was sodden with rain or setting forth into the blue. ~ Marcel Proust,

124:Silence Since I lost you I am silence-haunted, Sounds wave their little wings A moment, then in weariness settle On the flood that soundless swings. Whether the people in the street Like pattering ripples go by, Or whether the theatre sighs and sighs With a loud, hoarse sigh: Or the wind shakes a ravel of light Over the dead-black river, Or night’s last echoing Makes the daybreak shiver: I feel the silence waiting To take them all up again In its vast completeness, enfolding The sound of men. ~ David Herbert Lawrence,

125:The forty days of the soul begin on the morning after death. That first night, before its forty days begin, the soul lies still against sweated-on pillows and watches the living fold the hands and close the eyes, choke the room with smoke and silence to keep the new soul from the doors and the windows and the cracks in the floor so that it does not run out of the house like a river. The living know that, at daybreak, the soul will leave them and make its way to the places of its past...and sometimes this journey will carry it so far for so long that it will forget to come back. ~ T a Obreht,

126:At seven o’clock Ivan got into the train and set off to Moscow. ‘Away with the past. I’ve done with the old world for ever, and may I have no news, no echo, from it. To a new life, new places, and no looking back!’ But instead of delight his soul was filled with such gloom, and his heart ached with such anguish, as he had never known in his life before. He was thinking all the night. The train flew on, and only at daybreak, when he was approaching Moscow, he suddenly roused himself from his meditation. ‘I am a scoundrel,’ he whispered to himself. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,

127:A Wife&Mdash;At Daybreak I Shall Be 461 A Wife—at daybreak I shall be— Sunrise—Hast thou a Flag for me? At Midnight, I am but a Maid, How short it takes to make a Bride— Then—Midnight, I have passed from thee Unto the East, and Victory— Midnight—Good Night! I hear them call, The Angels bustle in the Hall— Softly my Future climbs the Stair, I fumble at my Childhood's prayer So soon to be a Child no more— Eternity, I'm coming—Sire, Savior—I've seen the face—before! ~ Emily Dickinson,

128:Her Long Illness Daybreak until nightfall, he sat by his wife at the hospital while chemotherapy dripped through the catheter into her heart. He drank coffee and read the Globe. He paced; he worked on poems; he rubbed her back and read aloud. Overcome with dread, they wept and affirmed their love for each other, witlessly, over and over again. When it snowed one morning Jane gazed at the darkness blurred with flakes. They pushed the IV pump which she called Igor slowly past the nurses' pods, as far as the outside door so that she could smell the snowy air. ~ Donald Hall,

129:When one has lived a long time alone, one wants to live again among men and women, to return to that place where one's ties with the human broke, where the disquiet of death and now also of history glimmers its firelight on faces, where the gaze of the new baby looks past the gaze of the great granny, and where lovers speak, on lips blowsy from kissing, that language the same in each mouth, and like birds at daybreak blether the song that is both earth's and heaven's, until the sun has risen, and they stand in the daylight of being made one: kingdom come, when one has lived a long time alone. ~ Galway Kinnell,

130:Describing to the emperor Trajan what he has learned of Christian practice, Pliny writes that “on an appointed day they had been accustomed to meet before daybreak, and to recite a hymn antiphonally to Christ, as a god.”[4] Later accounts testify that hymn singing was well established in Christian worship by the second century. As it developed, believers used models from the New Testament like the following lyric passage from Colossians. In it the early Christian community declares the centrality of Jesus in creation and in the church, looking back to Christ’s death and resurrection and forward to the restoration of all things in him: ~ Mark A Noll,

131:This is called the Great Snow Dance and it is done every year in Narnia on the first moonlit night when there is snow on the ground. Of course it is a kind of game as well as a dance, because every now and then some dancer will be the least little bit wrong and get a snowball in the face, and then everyone laughs. But a good team of dancers, Dwarfs, and musicians will keep it up for hours without a single hit. On fine nights when the cold and the drum-taps, and the hooting of the owls, and the moonlight, have got into their wild, woodland blood and made it even wilder, they will dance till daybreak. I wish you could see it for yourselves. ~ C S Lewis,

132:The Little Hangletons all agreed that the old house was ‘creepy’. Half a century ago, something strange and horrible had happened there, something that the older inhabitants of the village still liked to discuss when topics for gossip were scarce. The story had been picked over so many times, and had been embroidered in so many places, that nobody was quite sure what the truth was any more. Every version of the tale, however, started in the same place: fifty years before, at daybreak on a fine summer’s morning, when the Riddle House had still been well kept and impressive, and a maid had entered the drawing room to find all three Riddles dead. ~ J K Rowling,

133:An old Hasidic rabbi asked his pupils how they could tell when the night had ended and day begun, for daybreak is the time for certain holy prayers. “Is it,” proposed one student, “when you can see an animal in the distance and tell whether it is a sheep or a dog?” “No,” answered the rabbi. “Is it when you can clearly see the lines on your own palm?” “Is it when you can look at a tree in the distance and tell if it is a fig or a pear tree?” “No,” answered the rabbi each time. “Then what is it?” the pupils demanded. “It is when you can look on the face of any man or woman and see that they are your sister or brother. Until then it is still night. ~ Jack Kornfield,

134:The resurrection of Jesus is not just a happy ending to the gospel story; it is the dawn of a new creation. No one captures this idea better than G. K. Chesterton in the close of part one of his classic work, The Everlasting Man. On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn. ~ Brian Zahnd,

135:Autumn Daybreak Cold wind of autumn, blowing loud At dawn, a fortnight overdue, Jostling the doors, and tearing through My bedroom to rejoin the cloud, I know—for I can hear the hiss And scrape of leaves along the floor— How may boughs, lashed bare by this, Will rake the cluttered sky once more. Tardy, and somewhat south of east, The sun will rise at length, made known More by the meagre light increased Than by a disk in splendour shown; When, having but to turn my head, Through the stripped maple I shall see, Bleak and remembered, patched with red, The hill all summer hid from me. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay,

136:I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. ~ Martin Luther King Jr,

137:The lot of love is chosen. I learnt that much Struggling for an image on the track Of the whirling Zodiac. Scarce did he my body touch, Scarce sank he from the west Or found a subtetranean rest On the maternal midnight of my breast Before I had marked him on his northern way, And seemed to stand although in bed I lay. I struggled with the horror of daybreak, I chose it for my lot! If questioned on My utmost pleasure with a man By some new-married bride, I take That stillness for a theme Where his heart my heart did seem And both adrift on the miraculous stream Where wrote a learned astrologer The Zodiac is changed into a sphere. ~ William Butler Yeats, The Chosen ,

138:Before The Paling Of The Stars Before the winter morn, Before the earliest cock crow, Jesus Christ was born: Born in a stable, Cradled in a manger, In the world his hands had made Born a stranger. Priest and king lay fast asleep In Jerusalem; Young and old lay fast asleep In crowded Bethlehem; Saint and angel, ox and ass, Kept a watch together Before the Christmas daybreak In the winter weather. Jesus on his mother's breast In the stable cold, Spotless lamb of God was he, Shepherd of the fold: Let us kneel with Mary maid, With Joseph bent and hoary, With saint and angel, ox and ass, To hail the King of Glory. ~ Christina Georgina Rossetti,

139:Sonnet Lxiv: Ardour And Memory The cuckoo-throb, the heartbeat of the Spring; The rosebud's blush that leaves it as it grows Into the full-eyed fair unblushing rose; The summer clouds that visit every wing With fires of sunrise and of sunsetting; The furtive flickering streams to light re-born 'Mid airs new-fledged and valorous lusts of morn, While all the daughters of the daybreak sing:— These ardour loves, and memory: and when flown All joys, and through dark forest-boughs in flight The wind swoops onward brandishing the light, Even yet the rose-tree's verdure left alone Will flush all ruddy though the rose be gone; With ditties and with dirges infinite. ~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,

140:He feels a second pang now for the existence of perfection, the stubborn existence of perfection in the most vulnerable of things and in the face of his refusal-logical-admirable refusal-to engage with this existence in his heart, in his mind. For the comfortless logic, the curse of clear sight, no matter which string he pulls on the same wretched knot: (a) the futility of seeing given the fatality in a place such as this where a mother still bloody must bury her newborn, hose off, and go home to pound yam into paste; (b) the persistence of beauty, in fragility of all places!, in a dewdrop at daybreak, a thing that will end, and in moments, and in a garden, and in Ghana, lush Ghana, soft Ghana, verdant Ghana, where fragile things die. ~ Taiye Selasi,

141:A word then, (for I will conquer it,) The word final, superior to all, Subtle, sent up--what is it?--I listen; Are you whispering it, and have been all the time, you sea-waves? Is that it from your liquid rims and wet sands? Whereto answering, the sea, Delaying not, hurrying not, Whisper’d me through the night, and very plainly before daybreak, Lisp’d to me the low and delicious word death, And again death, death, death, death, Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my arous’d child’s heart, But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet, Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me softly all over, Death, death, death, death, death." -from "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking ~ Walt Whitman,

142:Epitaph. (On A Commonplace Person Who Died In Bed) THIS is the end of him, here he lies: The dust in his throat, the worm in his eyes, The mould in his mouth, the turf on his breast; This is the end of him, this is best. He will never lie on his couch awake, Wide-eyed, tearless, till dim daybreak. Never again will he smile and smile When his heart is breaking all the while. He will never stretch out his hands in vain Groping and groping--never again. Never ask for bread, get a stone instead, Never pretend that the stone is bread. Never sway and sway 'twixt the false and true, Weighing and noting the long hours through. Never ache and ache with chok'd-up sighs; This is the end of him, here he lies. ~ Amy Levy,

143:Very often, when she had shut herself in her room for the night, Ottilie would kneel in front of the open chest and look at her birthday presents. She had touched none of them. Very often she would hurry out of the house at daybreak, out of the place where she had formerly found all her happiness, into the open, into the country which had formerly had no attraction for her. She would even want to get off the land itself, she would leap into the boat and row to the middle of the great lake, and there she would take out a travel-book and let herself be rocked by the waves and read and dream herself into a far country; and there she would always discover her friend, he would tell her she had always been close to his heart, she would tell him he had always been close to hers. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,

144:I went to sleep, and Jim didn’t call me when it was my turn. He often done that. When I waked up just at daybreak he was sitting there with his head down betwixt his knees, moaning and mourning to himself. I didn’t take notice nor let on. I knowed what it was about. He was thinking about his wife and his children, away up yonder, and he was low and homesick; because he hadn’t ever been away from home before in his life; and I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their’n. It don’t seem natural, but I reckon it’s so. He was often moaning and mourning that way nights, when he judged I was asleep, and saying, “Po’ little ’Lizabeth! po’ little Johnny! it’s mighty hard; I spec’ I ain’t ever gwyne to see you no mo’, no mo’!” He was a mighty good nigger, Jim was. ~ Mark Twain,

145:Over west to Elephant Butte, up off the Rio Grande. Just a greenhorn, sleepin’ out where we was movin’ cattle. July of ’forty-five. They was a high wind that night and rain, and I didn’t get much sleep. Curled up against a big rock out of the wind. I was still in my bedroll at daybreak when come a god-terrible flash. I jumped up figurin’ one of the boys took a flashbulb pitcher of me sleepin’ on the job. Course nobody had a Kodak. Couple minutes later the ground started rumblin’. We heard plenty of TNT goin’ off to Almagordy before, but we never heard nothin’ like that noise. Sound just kept roarin’. ‘Oh, Jesus,’ I says, ‘what’d they go and do now?’ Next month we saw wheres they bombed Heerosaykee, Japan. We never knowed what an A-tomic bomb was, but we knowed that one flash wasn’t no TNT blockbuster.” “The ~ William Least Heat Moon,

146:THE FORTY DAYS OF THE SOUL BEGIN ON THE MORNING after death. That first night, before its forty days begin, the soul lies still against sweated-on pillows and watches the living fold the hands and close the eyes, choke the room with smoke and silence to keep the new soul from the doors and the windows and the cracks in the floor so that it does not run out of the house like a river. The living know that, at daybreak, the soul will leave them and make its way to the places of its past—the schools and dormitories of its youth, army barracks and tenements, houses razed to the ground and rebuilt, places that recall love and guilt, difficulties and unbridled happiness, optimism and ecstasy, memories of grace meaningless to anyone else—and sometimes this journey will carry it so far for so long that it will forget to come back. ~ T a Obreht,

147:Waiting Today I will let the old boat stand Where the sweep of the harbor tide comes in To the pulse of a far, deep-steady sway. And I will rest and dream and sit on the deck Watching the world go by And take my pay for many hard days gone I remember. I will choose what clouds I like In the great white fleets that wander the blue As I lie on my back or loaf at the rail. And I will listen as the veering winds kiss me and fold me And put on my brow the touch of the world's great will. Daybreak will hear the heart of the boat beat, Engine throb and piston play In the quiver and leap at call of life. To-morrow we move in the gaps and heights On changing floors of unlevel seas And no man shall stop us and no man follow For ours is the quest of an unknown shore And we are husky and lusty and shouting-gay. ~ Carl Sandburg,

148:Marjan Aminpour slowly sipped at her hot tea and studied the changing horizon. Mornings in Ireland were so different from those of her Persian childhood, she thought, not for the first time. Were she still in the land of her birth, Marjan mused, daybreak would be marked by the crisp sounds of a 'sofreh', the embroidered cloth upon which all meals were enjoyed, flapping over a richly carpeted floor. Once spread, the 'sofreh' would be covered by jars of homemade preserves- rose petal, quince-lime, and sour cherry- as well as pots of orange blossom honey and creamy butter. The jams and honey would sit alongside freshly baked rounds of 'sangak' bread, golden and redolent with crunchy sesame seeds. Piled and teetering like a tower, the 'sangak' was a perfect accompaniment to the platters of garden mint, sweet basil, and feta cheese placed on the 'sofreh', bought fresh from the local bazaar. ~ Marsha Mehran,

149:Insomnia Thin are the night-skirts left behind By daybreak hours that onward creep, And thin, alas! the shred of sleep That wavers with the spirit's wind: But in half-dreams that shift and roll And still remember and forget, My soul this hour has drawn your soul A little nearer yet. Our lives, most dear, are never near, Our thoughts are never far apart, Though all that draws us heart to heart Seems fainter now and now more clear. To-night Love claims his full control, And with desire and with regret My soul this hour has drawn your soul A little nearer yet. Is there a home where heavy earth Melts to bright air that breathes no pain, Where water leaves no thirst again And springing fire is Love's new birth? If faith long bound to one true goal May there at length its hope beget, My soul that hour shall draw your soul For ever nearer yet. ~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,

150:The Bus The tarpaulin flaps are buttoned down on the windows of the state transport bus. all the way up to jejuri. a cold wind keeps whipping and slapping a corner of tarpaulin at your elbow. you look down to the roaring road. you search for the signs of daybreak in what little light spills out of bus. your own divided face in the pair of glasses on an oldman`s nose is all the countryside you get to see. you seem to move continually forward. toward a destination just beyond the castemark beyond his eyebrows. outside, the sun has risen quitely it aims through an eyelet in the tarpaulin. and shoots at the oldman`s glasses. a sawed off sunbeam comes to rest gently against the driver`s right temple. the bus seems to change direction. at the end of bumpy ride with your own face on the either side when you get off the bus. you dont step inside the old man`s head. ~ Arun Kolatkar,

151:Destarte! How musical! What does it mean?" "You can't say it except in Mescalero. It means Morning, but that isn't what it means, either. Indian words are more than just that. They also mean the feel and the sound of the name. It means like Crack of Dawn, the first bronze light that makes the buttes stand out against the gray desert. It means the first sound you hear of a brook curling over some rocks-some trout jumping and a beaver crooning. It means the sound a stallion makes when he whistles at some mares just as the first puff of wind kicks up at daybreak. "It means like you get up in the first light and you and her go out of the wickiup, where it smells smoky and private and just you and her, and kind of safe with just the two of you there, and you stand outside and smell the first bite of the wind coming down from the high divide and promising the first snowfall. Well, you just can't say what it means in English. Anyway, that was her name. Destarte. ~ Louis L Amour,

152:Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sunrise would kill me, If I could not now and always send sunrise out of me. We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun, We found our own my soul in the calm and cool of the daybreak. My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach, With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds. Speech is the twin of my vision.... it is unequal to measure itself. It provokes me forever, It says sarcastically, Walt, you understand enough.... why don’t you let it out then? Come now I will not be tantalized.... you conceive too much of articulation. Do you not know how the buds beneath are folded? Waiting in gloom protected by frost, The dirt receding before my prophetical screams, I underlying causes to balance them at last, My knowledge my live parts.... it keeping tally with the meaning of things, Happiness.... which whoever hears me let him or her set out in search of this day. ~ Walt Whitman,

153:Destarte! How musical! What does it mean?” “You can’t say it except in Mescalero. It means Morning, but that isn’t what it means, either. Indian words are more than just that. They also mean the feel and the sound of the name. It means like Crack of Dawn, the first bronze light that makes the buttes stand out against the gray desert. It means the first sound you hear of a brook curling over some rocks—some trout jumping and a beaver crooning. It means the sound a stallion makes when he whistles at some mares just as the first puff of wind kicks up at daybreak. “It means like you get up in the first light and you and her go out of the wickiup, where it smells smoky and private and just you and her, and kind of safe with just the two of you there, and you stand outside and smell the first bite of the wind coming down from the high divide and promising the first snowfall. Well, you just can’t say what it means in English. Anyway, that was her name. Destarte.” Rather amazed, Angie stared at him. “Why, that’s poetry! ~ Louis L Amour,

154:On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand... ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph,

155:In Sugamo, Louie asked his escort what had happened to the Bird. He was told that it was believed that the former sergeant, hunted, exiled and in despair, had stabbed himself to death. The words washed over Louie. In prison camp, Watanabe had forced him to live in incomprehensible degradation and violence. Bereft of his dignity, Louie had come home to a life lost in darkness, and had dashed himself against the memory of the Bird. But on an October night in Los Angeles, Louie had found, in Payton Jordan’s words, “daybreak.” That night, the sense of shame and powerlessness that had driven his hate the Bird had vanished. The Bird was no longer his monster. He was only a man. In Sugamo Prison, as he was told of Watanabe’s fate, all Louie saw was a lost person, a life beyond redemption. He felt something that he had never felt fro his captor before. With a shiver of amazement, he realized that it was compassion. At that moment, something shifted swiftly inside him. It was forgiveness, beautiful and effortless and complete. For Louie Zamperini, the was was over. ~ Laura Hillenbrand,

156:Creeks and summits are brilliant at sunset. I laze in a boat, my way in the wind's hands. Watching wild landscapes I forget distance and come to the water's edge. Gazing at lovely far woods and clouds I guess I've lost my way. How could I know this lucid stream would turn, leading me into mountains? I abandon my boat, pick up a light staff and come upon something wonderful, four or five old monks in contemplation, enjoying the shade of pines and cypresses. Before the forest dawns they read Sanskrit. Their nightly meditation quiets the peaks. Here even shepherd boys know the Dao. Woodcutters bring in worldly news. They sleep at night in the woods with incense, on mats clean as jade. Their robes are steeped in valley fragrances; the stone cliffs shine under a mountain moon. I fear I will lose this refuge forever so at daybreak I fix it in my mind. People of Peach Tree Spring goodbye. I'll be back when flowers turn red. [1508.jpg] -- from To Touch the Sky: Poems of Mystical, Spiritual & Metaphysical Light, Translated by Willis Barnstone ~ Wang Wei, Stone Gate Temple in the Blue Field Mountains ,

157:De Profundis by Oscar Wilde (this excerpt inspired my book, The Persecution of Mildred Dunlap. Wilde wrote it to his lover while in prison.) When first I was put into prison some people advised me to try and forget who I was. It was ruinous advice. It is only by realizing what I am that I have found comfort of any kind. Now I am advised by others to try on my release to forget that I have ever been in a prison at all. I know that would be equally fatal. It would mean that I would always be haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace, and that those things that are meant for me as much as for anybody else – the beauty of the sun and moon, the pageant of the seasons, the music of daybreak and the silence of great nights, the rain falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping over the grass and making it silver – would all be tainted for me, and lose their healing power, and their power of communicating joy. To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul. ~ Paulette Mahurin,

158:The Testimony Of Light Our life is a fire dampened, or a fire shut up in stone. --Jacob Boehme, De Incarnatione Verbi Outside everything visible and invisible a blazing maple. Daybreak: a seam at the curve of the world. The trousered legs of the women shimmered. They held their arms in front of them like ghosts. The coal bones of the house clinked in a kimono of smoke. An attention hovered over the dream where the world had been. For if Hiroshima in the morning, after the bomb has fallen, is like a dream, one must ask whose dream it is. {1} Must understand how not to speak would carry it with us. With bones put into rice bowls. While the baby crawled over its dead mother seeking milk. Muga-muchu {2}: without self, without center. Thrown up in the sky by a wind. The way back is lost, the one obsession. The worst is over. The worst is yet to come. 1--...is the question asked by Peter Schwenger in Letter Bomb. Nuclear Holocaust and the Exploding Word. 2--...is from Robert Jay Lifton's Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima. ~ Carolyn Forché,

159:In a little wind-lull, Tea Cake touched Janie and said, ‘Ah reckon you wish now you had of stayed in yo’ big house ’way from such as dis, don’t yuh?’ ‘Naw.’ ‘Naw?’ ‘Yeah, naw. People don't die till dey time come nohow, don't keer where you at. Ah’m wid mah husband in uh storm, dat’s all.’ ‘Thanky, Ma’am. But ’sposing you wuz tuh die, now. You wouldn’t git mad at me for draggin’ yuh heah?’ ‘Naw. We been tuhgether round two years. If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don’t keer if you die at dusk. It’s so many people never seen de light at all. Ah wuz fumblin’ round and God opened de door.’ He dropped to the floor and put his head in her lap. ‘Well then, Janie, you meant whut you didn’t say, ’cause Ah never knowed you wuz so satisfied wid me lak dat, Ah kinda thought—’ The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God. ~ Zora Neale Hurston,

160:PERCY AND PADFOOT Harry was the first to awake in his dormitory next morning. He lay for a moment watching dust swirl in the chink of sunlight falling through the gap in his four-poster’s hangings and savored the thought that it was Saturday. The first week of term seemed to have dragged on forever, like one gigantic History of Magic lesson. Judging by the sleepy silence and the freshly minted look of that beam of sunlight, it was just after daybreak. He pulled open the curtains around his bed, got up, and started to dress. The only sound apart from the distant twittering of birds was the slow, deep breathing of his fellow Gryffindors. He opened his schoolbag carefully, pulled out parchment and quill, and headed out of the dormitory for the common room. Making straight for his favorite squashy old armchair beside the now extinct fire, Harry settled himself down comfortably and unrolled his parchment while looking around the room. The detritus of crumpled-up bits of parchment, old Gobstones, empty ingredient jars, and candy wrappers that usually covered the common room at the end of each day was gone, as were all Hermione’s elf hats. Wondering vaguely how many elves had now been set free whether they wanted to be or not, Harry uncorked his ink bottle, dipped his quill into it, ~ J K Rowling,

161:Three years ago, when this book first appeared, some people thought it was worth while to dispute the authorship! Some asserted that it was an English book, and others that it was an American book. What a singular mania there is for seeking the origin of matters at a great distance; trying to trace from the source of the Nile, the streamlet which washes one’s street. Alas! this work is neither English, neither American nor Chinese. The author found the idea of The Last Day of a Condemned, not in a book, for he is not accustomed to seek his ideas so far afield, but where you all might find it, where perhaps you may all have found it, (for who is there that has not reflected and had reveries of The Last Day of a Condemned,) there, on the public walk, on the Place de Grève. It was there, while passing casually during an execution, that this forcible idea occurred to him; and, since then, after those funereal Thursdays of the Court of Cassation, which send forth through Paris the intelligence of an approaching execution, the hoarse voices of the spectators going to the Grève, as they hurried past his windows, filled his mind with the prolonged misery of the person about to suffer, which he pictured to himself from hour to hour, according to what he conceived was its actual progress. It was a torture which commenced from daybreak and ~ Victor Hugo,

162:He was trying to sleep. Could one fall asleep here? Wasn’t it dangerous to lower one’s guard, even for a moment, when death could strike at any time? Those were my thoughts when I heard the sound of a violin. A violin in a dark barrack where the dead were piled on top of the living? Who was this madman who played the violin here, at the edge of his own grave? Or was it a hallucination? It had to be Juliek. He was playing a fragment of a Beethoven concerto. Never before had I heard such a beautiful sound. In such silence. How had he succeeded in disengaging himself? To slip out from under my body without my feeling it? The darkness enveloped us. All I could hear was the violin, and it was as if Juliek’s soul had become his bow. He was playing his life. His whole being was gliding over the strings. His unfulfilled hopes. His charred past, his extinguished future. He played that which he would never play again. I shall never forget Juliek. How could I forget this concert given before an audience of the dead and dying? Even today, when I hear that particular piece by Beethoven, my eyes close and out of the darkness emerges the pale and melancholy face of my Polish comrade bidding farewell to an audience of dying men. I don’t know how long he played. I was overcome by sleep. When I awoke at daybreak, I saw Juliek facing me, hunched over, dead. Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse. ~ Elie Wiesel,

163:In contrast to classical physics, with its exclusive focus on material causation, quantum physics offers a mechanism that validates the intuitive sense that our conscious thoughts have the power to affect our actions. Quantum theory, in the von Neumann-Wigner formulation as developed by Henry Stapp, offers a mathematically rigorous alternative to the impotence of conscious states: it allows conscious experience to act back on the physical brain by influencing its activities. It describes a way in which our conscious thoughts and volitions enter into the causal structure of nature and focus our thoughts, choose from among competing possible courses of action, and even override the mechanical aspects of cerebral processes. The quantum laws allow mental effort to influence the course of cerebral processes in just the way our subjective feeling tells us it does. How? By keeping in focus a stream of consciousness that would otherwise diffuse like mist at daybreak. Quantum theory demonstrates how mental effort can have, through the process of willfully focusing attention, dynamical consequences that cannot be deduced or predicted from, and that are not the automatic results of, cerebral mechanisms acting alone. In a world described by quantum physics, an insistence on causal closure of the physical world amounts to a quasi-religious faith in the absolute powers of matter, a belief that is no more than a commitment to brute, and outmoded, materialism. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz,

164:I marveled at an Ocean without shore, and at a Shore that did not have an ocean; And at a Morning Light without darkness, and at a Night that was without daybreak; And then a Sphere with no locality known to either fool or learned scholar; And at an azure Dome raised over the earth, circulating 'round its center - Compulsion; And at a rich Earth without o'er-arching vault and no specific location, the Secret concealed... I courted a Secret which existence did not alter; for it was asked of me: 'Has Thought enchanted you? ' - To which I replied: 'I have no power over that; I counsel you: Be patient with it while you live. But, truly, if Thought becomes established in my mind, the embers kindle into flame, And everything is given up to fire the like of which was never seen before!' And it was said to me: 'He does not pluck a flower who calls himself with courtesy 'Freeborn'.' 'He who woos the belle femme in her boudoir, love-beguiled, will never deem the bridal-price too high!' I gave her the dower and was given her in marriage throughout the night until the break of Dawn - But other than Myself I did not find. - Rather, that One whom I married - may his affair be known: For added to the Sun's measure of light are the radiant New Moon and shining Stars; Like Time, dispraised - though the Prophet (Blessings on him!) had once declared of your Lord that He is Time. ~ Ibn Arabi, An Ocean Without Shore ,

165:Exile These hills are sandy. Trees are dwarfed here. Crows Caw dismally in skies of an arid brilliance, Complain in dusty pine-trees. Yellow daybreak Lights on the long brown slopes a frost-like dew, Dew as heavy as rain; the rabbit tracks Show sharply in it, as they might in snow. But it’s soon gone in the sun — what good does it do? The houses, on the slope, or among brown trees, Are grey and shrivelled. And the men who live here Are small and withered, spider-like, with large eyes. Bring water with you if you come to live here — Cold tinkling cisterns, or else wells so deep That one looks down to Ganges or Himalayas. Yes, and bring mountains with you, white, moon-bearing, Mountains of ice. You will have need of these Profundities and peaks of wet and cold. Bring also, in a cage of wire or osier, Birds of a golden colour, who will sing Of leaves that do not wither, watery fruits That heavily hang on long melodious boughs In the blue-silver forests of deep valleys. I have now been here — how many years? Years unnumbered. My hands grow clawlike. My eyes are large and starved. I brought no bird with me, I have no cistern Where I might find the moon, or river, or snow. Some day, for lack of these, I’ll spin a web Between two dusty pine-tree tops, and hang there Face downward, like a spider, blown as lightly As ghost of leaf. Crows will caw about me. Morning and evening I shall drink the dew. ~ Conrad Potter Aiken,

166:...she wanted him to feel like she did, like he'd done something forbidden, wanted to give him something he'd like and really wasn't supposed to have, something that would feel wrong, something he wanted. "Kiss me again," she whispered, reaching up, her fingers sliding through his hair. She almost didn't know herself as she moved against him. He bent helplessly toward her. She bit her tongue. Bit it hard, the pain chasing through her nerve endings and alchemizing into something close to pleasure. When her mouth opened under his, it was flooded with welling blood. He groaned at the taste of it, red eyes going wide with surprise and something like fear. His hand gripped her arms as he pushed her body back against the brick of the wall, holding her in place. He'd been careful before, but he wasn't being careful now as he licked her mouth; and it amazed her as much as it terrified her. He kissed her ferociously, savagely, their lips sliding together with bruising fervor. The pain in her tongue became a distant throbbing. Her fingers dug into the muscles of his back, their bodies pressed so close that he must have felt every hitch in her breath, every shuddering beat or her heart. And as scared of him as she had been, right then she was more frightened of herself. Gavriel reeled back from her, lips ruddy. He wiped his mouth against the back of his hand, her blood smearing over his skin. Gazing at her for a long moment with something like horror, as though he was seeing her for the first time, he spoke. "You are more dangerous than daybreak. ~ Holly Black,

167:Warriors all rose uneagerly shuffled under Earnanaes lagging with sorrow to look upon death. They found on the sand their soulless gift-lord still and wordless there who served and ruled them for fifty winters—the final life-day had come for the good one—the Geats’ hall-master dear warrior-king died a wonder-death. There they discovered that cooling fire-snake stretched upon the earth, seething no more 3040 with foul flame-death flying no longer with burning bellows, blackened with death. Fifty long feet was his full length-measure stretched on the fire-field. He flew in hate-joy seared through the nights then soared at daybreak to his grayrock den—now death stilled him ended his slumber in that stony barrow. By him were heaped bracelets and gem-cups jeweled gold-dishes great treasure-swords darkened with rust from their deep earth-home 3050 a thousand winters walled against light. Those ancient heirlooms earned much curse-power old gold-treasure gripped in a spell— no one might touch them those nameless stone-riches no good or bad man unless God himself the great Glory-King might give to someone to open that hoard that heap of treasures, a certain warrior as seemed meet to him. They found no happiness who first buried there wealth in the ground—again it was hidden 3060 by an only survivor till an angered serpent singed for a cup till swords cooled him sent him deathwards. Strange are the ways how the king of a country will come to the end of his loaned life-span when at last he vanishes gone from the meadhall his gold and his kin. So it was with Beowulf when he bore his shield to that roaring night-flyer. ~ Unknown,

168:Statue Of A Couple Your hand, my wonder, is now icy cold. The purest light of the celestial dome has burned me through. And now we are as two still plams lying in darlmess, as two black banks of a frozen stream in the chasm of the world. Our hair combed back is carved in wood, the moon walks over our ebony shoulders. A distant cockcrow, the night goes by, silent. Rich is the rime of love, withered the dowry. Where are you, living in what depths of time, love, stepping down into what waters, now, when the frost of our voiceless lips does not fend off the divine fires? In a forest of clouds, of fcam, and of silver we live, caressing lands under our And we are wielding the might of a dark scepter to earn oblivion. My love, your breast cut through by a clinel knows nothing anymore of what it was. Of clouds at dawn, of angers at daybreak, of shallows in springtime it has no remembrance. And you have led me, as once an angel led Tobias, onto the rusty mashes of Lombardy. But a day came when a sign frightened you, a stinma of golden measure. With a scream, with inunobile fear in your thin hands you fell into a pit that ashes lie over, where neither northern firs nor Italian yews could protect our andent bed of lovers. What was it. what is it, what will it be we filled the world with our cry and calling. 81 The dawn is back, the red moon set, do we know now? In a heavy ship A helmman comes, throws a silken rope and binds w tightly to eaah other, then he pours on friends, once enemies, a handful of snow. ~ Czeslaw Milosz,

169:Republic And Motherland (Written after entering New York Harbor at Daybreak) Up the vast harbor with the morning sun The ship swept in from sea; Gigantic towers arose, the night was done, And--there stood Liberty. Silent, the great torch lifted in one hand, The dawn in her proud eyes, Silent, for all the shouts that vex her land, Silent, hailing the skies; Hailing that mightier Kingdom of the Blest Our seamen sought of old, The dream that lured the nations through the West, The city of sunset gold. Saxon and Norman in one wedded soul Shook out one flag like fire; But westward, westward, moved the gleaming goal, Westward, the vast desire. Westward and ever westward ran the call, They followed the pilgrim sun, Seeking that land which should enfold them all, And weld all hearts in one. Here on this mightier continent apart, Here on these rolling plains, Swells the first throb of that immortal heart, The pulse of those huge veins. Still, at these towers, our Old-World cities jest, And neither hear nor see The brood of gods at that gigantic breast, The conquering race to be. Chosen from many--for no sluggard soul Confronts that night of stars-- 75 The trumpets of the last Republic roll Far off, an end to wars; An end, an end to that wild blood-red age, That made and keeps us blind; A mightier realm shall be her heritage, The kingdom of mankind. Chosen from many nations, and made one; But first, O Mother, from thee, When, following, following on that Pilgrim sun, Thy Mayflower crossed the sea. ~ Alfred Noyes,

170: ~ glow of the light of daybreak is in your emerald vault, the goblet of the blood of twilight is your blood-measuring bowl author class:Jalaluddin Rumi /Farsi & Turkish The glow of the light of daybreak is in your emerald vault, the goblet of the blood of twilight is your blood-measuring bowl. Mile on mile, torrent on torrent come dancing and gliding to the shore of your sea. With all the abstention and aspiration of the moon, the cap falls off the head of the moon when the moon raises its face to gaze upon your height. Every morn the nightingales lament like the heart-forlorn ones to the melodies of those attaining your verdant meadow. The spirits seek vision, the hearts all seek the Beloved; you in whose broad orchard four streams are let flow -- one stream pure water, another honey, the third fresh milk, the fourth your ruby wine. You never give me a chance, you are giving wine upon wine; where is the head, that I may describe the drinking-cup of your wine? Yet who am I? Heaven itself in the round of this heavy bumper finds not a moment's peace from your love and the craving for you. Moon of silver girdle, you have experience of love; heaven, loverhood is apparent in your features. When love is yoked to the heart it wearies of the heart's chatter; heart, be silent! How long this striving and inquiring of yours? The heart said, "I am His reed pipe, I wail as the breath inn me." I said, "Be lamenting now, the slave of whose passion is the soul." We have opened your door; do not desert your companions; in thankfulness for an all-embracing love which has seized you from head to toe. [1494.jpg] -- from Mystical Poems of Rumi: Volume 2, Translated by A. J. Arberry ,

171:In April 1977, Rivest, Shamir and Adleman spent Passover at the house of a student, and had consumed significant amounts of Manischewitz wine before returning to their respective homes some time around midnight. Rivest, unable to sleep, lay on his couch reading a mathematics textbook. He began mulling over the question that had been puzzling him for weeks—is it possible to build an asymmetric cipher? Is it possible to find a one-way function that can be reversed only if the receiver has some special information? Suddenly, the mists began to clear and he had a revelation. He spent the rest of that night formalizing his idea, effectively writing a complete scientific paper before daybreak. Rivest had made a breakthrough, but it had grown out of a yearlong collaboration with Shamir and Adleman, and it would not have been possible without them. Rivest finished off the paper by listing the authors alphabetically; Adleman, Rivest, Shamir. The next morning, Rivest handed the paper to Adleman, who went through his usual process of trying to tear it apart, but this time he could find no faults. His only criticism was with the list of authors. “I told Ron to take my name off the paper,” recalls Adleman. “I told him that it was his invention, not mine. But Ron refused and we got into a discussion about it. We agreed that I would go home and contemplate it for one night, and consider what I wanted to do. I went back the next day and suggested to Ron that I be the third author. I recall thinking that this paper would be the least interesting paper that I will ever be on.” Adleman could not have been more wrong. The system, dubbed RSA (Rivest, Shamir, Adleman) as opposed to ARS, went on to become the most influential cipher in modern cryptography. ~ Simon Singh,

172:After watching—with a twinge of satisfaction—the letters burn to ashes in the fireplace, Evie felt sleepy. She went to the master bedroom for a nap. In spite of her weariness, it was difficult to relax while she was worried about Sebastian. Her thoughts chased round and round, until her tired brain put an end to the useless fretting and she dropped off to sleep. When she awakened an hour or so later, Sebastian was sitting on the bed beside her, a lock of her bright hair clasped loosely between a thumb and forefinger. He was watching her closely, his eyes the color of heaven at daybreak. She sat up and smiled self-consciously. Gently Sebastian stroked back her tumbled hair. “You look like a little girl when you sleep,” he murmured. “It makes me want to guard you every minute.” “Did you find Mr. Bullard?” “Yes, and no. First tell me what you did while I was gone.” “I helped Cam to arrange things in the office. And I burned all your letters from lovelorn ladies. The blaze was so large, I’m surprised no one sent for a fire brigade.” His lips curved in a smile, but his gaze probed hers carefully. “Did you read any of them?” Evie lifted a shoulder in a nonchalant half shrug. “A few. There were inquiries as to whether or not you’ve yet tired of your wife.” “No.” Sebastian drew his palm along the line of her thigh. “I’m tired of countless evenings of repetitive gossip and tepid flirtation. I’m tired of meaningless encounters with women who bore me senseless. They’re all the same to me, you know. I’ve never given a damn about anyone but you.” “I don’t blame them for wanting you,” Evie said, looping her arms around his neck. “But I’m not willing to share.” “You won’t have to.” He cupped her face in his hands and pressed a swift kiss to her lips. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

173:The guard can go to the Rialto and tell the rettori. The councilmen look into crimes such as this. They could send an avogadore to investigate.” Falco spun around to face her again. “Who is she? You don’t know. Who killed her? You don’t know. Even if the guard stopped drinking and playing dice long enough to row over to tell the rettori, I doubt the magistrate will be concerned. They only care about crimes that upset the merchants or that scare away tourists. They won’t care about a robbed tomb out here on San Domenico, or about the murder of an unknown courtesan.” “Maybe you’re afraid they’ll think you killed her.” Cass lifted her chin, forcing herself to meet Falco’s eyes, searching them for signs of evil. She saw none. And yet, there had to be a reason he was so opposed to reporting a murder. Falco folded his arms. “And what will they think about you, trolling the graveyard, unchaperoned, with a stranger? A commoner, no less. What will your parents say when the soldiers drag you home? Won’t they be shocked to find out what late-night company their lovely daughter has been keeping?” “My parents are dead,” Cass said simply. She didn’t say it to make him feel guilty. It just came out of her mouth instinctively. She’d probably said it a hundred times, so often that the words themselves felt dead to her, meaningless. Falco softened. “Your guardians, then. They won’t believe that we weren’t…” He trailed off. “It’ll be the talk of the city by daybreak.” He reached out and stroked her hair. “Fun thought, though, eh? A girl like you with me?” His soft touch made Cass warm and cold at the same time. He was right. Aunt Agnese would lock Cass inside the villa if she found out where Cass had spent the evening. And if she found out Cass was consorting with a commoner? Well, that would be very bad, possibly exiled-to-a-nunnery-in-Spain bad. ~ Fiona Paul,

174:prior probability that the sun will rise, since it’s prior to seeing any evidence. It’s not based on counting the number of times the sun has risen on this planet in the past, because you weren’t there to see it; rather, it reflects your a priori beliefs about what will happen, based on your general knowledge of the universe. But now the stars start to fade, so your confidence that the sun does rise on this planet goes up, based on your experience on Earth. Your confidence is now a posterior probability, since it’s after seeing some evidence. The sky begins to lighten, and the posterior probability takes another leap. Finally, a sliver of the sun’s bright disk appears above the horizon and perhaps catches “the Sultan’s turret in a noose of light,” as in the opening verse of the Rubaiyat. Unless you’re hallucinating, it is now certain that the sun will rise. The crucial question is exactly how the posterior probability should evolve as you see more evidence. The answer is Bayes’ theorem. We can think of it in terms of cause and effect. Sunrise causes the stars to fade and the sky to lighten, but the latter is stronger evidence of daybreak, since the stars could fade in the middle of the night due to, say, fog rolling in. So the probability of sunrise should increase more after seeing the sky lighten than after seeing the stars fade. In mathematical notation, we say that P(sunrise | lightening-sky), the conditional probability of sunrise given that the sky is lightening, is greater than P(sunrise | fading-stars), its conditional probability given that the stars are fading. According to Bayes’ theorem, the more likely the effect is given the cause, the more likely the cause is given the effect: if P(lightening-sky | sunrise) is higher than P(fading-stars | sunrise), perhaps because some planets are far enough from their sun that the stars still shine after sunrise, then P(sunrise | lightening sky) is also higher than P(sunrise | fading-stars). ~ Pedro Domingos,

175:Being alone is not the most awful thing in the world. You visit your museums and cultivate your interests and remind yourself how lucky you are not to be one of those spindly Sudanese children with flies beading their mouths. You make out To Do lists - reorganise linen cupboard, learn two sonnets. You dole out little treats to yourself - slices of ice-cream cake, concerts at Wigmore Hall. And then, every once in a while, you wake up and gaze out of the window at another bloody daybreak, and think, I cannot do this anymore. I cannot pull myself together again and spend the next fifteen hours of wakefulness fending off the fact of my own misery. People like Sheba think that they know what it's like to be lonely. They cast their minds back to the time they broke up with a boyfriend in 1975 and endured a whole month before meeting someone new. Or the week they spent in a Bavarian steel town when they were fifteen years old, visiting their greasy-haired German pen pal and discovering that her hand-writing was the best thing about her. But about the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. They don't know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the laundrette. Or to sit in a darkened flat on Halloween night, because you can't bear to expose your bleak evening to a crowd of jeering trick-or-treaters. Or to have the librarian smile pityingly and say, ‘Goodness, you're a quick reader!’ when you bring back seven books, read from cover to cover, a week after taking them out. They don't know what it is to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor's hand on your shoulder sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin. I have sat on park benches and trains and schoolroom chairs, feeling the great store of unused, objectless love sitting in my belly like a stone until I was sure I would cry out and fall, flailing, to the ground. About all of this, Sheba and her like have no clue. ~ Zo Heller,

176:Ghazal for Agha Shahid Ali (1949-2001) There’s no sugar in the Promised Land. Swear by the olive in the God-kissed land. I heard your laughter in the jackal’s howl When the monks chanted in the Psalmist’s land. They knelt on the mountain top, pilgrims of the Book, Until the viper in the rod hissed, “Stand!” Prophets, oracles, and bards agree: The tyrant always plays the dumbest hand. The way you danced along the crowded bar— The saffron harvest in a star-crossed land. Our teacher, moon-tanned, slept with one eye open. He was the absence of field, the sodless strand. The faithful praying in the catacombs— 13 Do they measure what they must withstand? These orders from Iberia remain In effect: Like unto like. All others banned. They set sail without charts or compass, searching For the lost tribes, and never missed land. Lava and salt spray and your final couplet: New worlds inscribed in parchment, pumice, sand. The cemeteries above Sarajevo Extend the boundaries of a lost land. Your favorite show: General Hospital. Shall we go for a walk? No! I’ll get tanned. In Beirut, Baghdad, and Jerusalem The war photographers are in command. The heart turned terrorist when the poet died. 14 Now all the world’s a revolutionist land. If Paradise is full of stationary, write To me in your most lavish, embossed hand. Eat seven olives, my grandmother said, And you will never live in a famished land. Another war in the imperium? The poet’s warnings can be read, glossed, scanned. Unwitnessed in the night, the empty mosques And temples burn in the Belovéd’s land. The new exhibit in the war museum— Portraits commissioned in a possessed land. Ragas at daybreak, Motown at midnight: You sang for everyone, a wind-tossed band. Will this Christ-bearer find his only friend 15 In the Promised Land—in blesséd Shahid’s land? ~ Christopher Merrill,

177:Advent This Advent moon shines cold and clear, These Advent nights are long; Our lamps have burned year after year And still their flame is strong. 'Watchman, what of the night?' we cry, Heart-sick with hope deferred: 'No speaking signs are in the sky,' Is still the watchman's word. The Porter watches at the gate, The servants watch within; The watch is long betimes and late, The prize is slow to win. 'Watchman, what of the night?' But still His answer sounds the same: 'No daybreak tops the utmost hill, Nor pale our lamps of flame.' One to another hear them speak The patient virgins wise: 'Surely He is not far to seek'— 'All night we watch and rise.' 'The days are evil looking back, The coming days are dim; Yet count we not His promise slack, But watch and wait for Him.' One with another, soul with soul, They kindle fire from fire: 'Friends watch us who have touched the goal.' 'They urge us, come up higher.' 'With them shall rest our waysore feet, With them is built our home, With Christ.'—'They sweet, but He most sweet, Sweeter than honeycomb.' There no more parting, no more pain, The distant ones brought near, The lost so long are found again, 64 Long lost but longer dear: Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, Nor heart conceived that rest, With them our good things long deferred, With Jesus Christ our Best. We weep because the night is long, We laugh for day shall rise, We sing a slow contented song And knock at Paradise. Weeping we hold Him fast, Who wept For us, we hold Him fast; And will not let Him go except He bless us first or last. Weeping we hold Him fast to-night; We will not let Him go Till daybreak smite our wearied sight And summer smite the snow: Then figs shall bud, and dove with dove Shall coo the livelong day; Then He shall say, 'Arise, My love, My fair one, come away.' ~ Christina Georgina Rossetti,

178:Noble Sisters 'Now did you mark a falcon, Sister dear, sister dear, Flying toward my window In the morning cool and clear? With jingling bells about her neck, But what beneath her wing? It may have been a ribbon, Or it may have been a ring.'— 'I marked a falcon swooping At the break of day; And for your love, my sister dove, I 'frayed the thief away.'— 'Or did you spy a ruddy hound, Sister fair and tall, Went snuffing round my garden bound, Or crouched by my bower wall? With a silken leash about his neck; But in his mouth may be A chain of gold and silver links, Or a letter writ to me.'— 'I heard a hound, highborn sister, Stood baying at the moon; I rose and drove him from your wall Lest you should wake too soon.'— 'Or did you meet a pretty page Sat swinging on the gate; Sat whistling whistling like a bird, Or may be slept too late; With eaglets broidered on his cap, And eaglets on his glove? If you had turned his pockets out, You had found some pledge of love.'— 'I met him at this daybreak, Scarce the east was red: Lest the creaking gate should anger you, I packed him home to bed.'— 296 'Oh patience, sister. Did you see A young man tall and strong, Swift-footed to uphold the right And to uproot the wrong, Come home across the desolate sea To woo me for his wife? And in his heart my heart is locked, And in his life my life.'— 'I met a nameless man, sister, Hard by your chamber door: I said: Her husband loves her much. And yet she loves him more.'— 'Fie, sister, fie, a wicked lie, A lie, a wicked lie, I have none other love but him, Nor will have till I die. And you have turned him from our door, And stabbed him with a lie: I will go seek him thro' the world In sorrow till I die.'— 'Go seek in sorrow, sister, And find in sorrow too: If thus you shame our father's name My curse go forth with you.' ~ Christina Georgina Rossetti,

179:When You Are Not Surprised When you are not surprised, not surprised, nor leap in imagination from sunlight into shadow or from shadow into sunlight suiting the color of fright or delight to the bewildering circumstance when you are no longer surprised by the quiet or fury of daybreak the stormy uprush of the sun’s rage over the edges of torn trees torrents of living and dying flung upward and outward inward and downward to space or else peace peace peace peace the wood-thrush speaking his holy holy far hidden in the forest of the mind while slowly the limbs of light unwind and the world’s surface dreams again of night as the center dreams of light when you are not surprised by breath and breath and breath the first unconscious morning breath the tap of the bird’s beak on the pane and do not cry out come again blest blest that you are come again o light o sound o voice of bird o light and memory too o memory blest and curst with the debts of yesterday that would not stay, or stay when you are not surprised by death and death and death death of the bee in the daffodil death of color in the child’s cheek on the young mother’s breast death of sense of touch of sight death of delight and the inward death the inward turning night 332 when the heart hardens itself with hate and indifference for hated self and beloved not-self when you are not surprised by wheel’s turn or turn of season the winged and orbed chariot tilt of time the halcyon pause, the blue caesura of spring and solar rhyme woven into the divinely remembered nest by the dark-eyed love in the oriole’s breast and the tides of space that ring the heart while still, while still, the wave of the invisible world breaks into consciousness in the mind of god then welcome death and be by death benignly welcomed and join again in the ceaseless know-nothing from which you awoke to the first surprise. ~ Conrad Potter Aiken,

180:Because I am mad about women I am mad about the hills,' Said that wild old wicked man Who travels where God wills. "Not to die on the straw at home. Those hands to close these eyes, That is all I ask, my dear, From the old man in the skies.   Daybreak and a candle-end. "Kind are all your words, my dear, Do not the rest withhold. Who can know the year, my dear, when an old man's blood grows cold? ' I have what no young man can have Because he loves too much. Words I have that can pierce the heart, But what can he do but touch?'   Daybreak and a candle-end. Then Said she to that wild old man, His stout stick under his hand, "Love to give or to withhold Is not at my command. I gave it all to an older man: That old man in the skies. Hands that are busy with His beads Can never close those eyes.' Daybreak and a candle-end. "Go your ways, O go your ways, I choose another mark, Girls down on the seashore Who understand the dark; Bawdy talk for the fishermen; A dance for the fisher-lads; When dark hangs upon the water They turn down their beds.   Daybreak and a candle-end. "A young man in the dark am I, But a wild old man in the light, That can make a cat laugh, or Can touch by mother wit Things hid in their marrow-bones From time long passed away, Hid from all those warty lads That by their bodies lay.    Daybreak and a candle-end. "All men live in suffering, I know as few can know, Whether they take the upper road Or stay content on the low, Rower bent in his row-boat Or weaver bent at his loom, Horseman erect upon horseback Or child hid in the womb.   Daybreak and a candle-end. "That some stream of lightning From the old man in the skies Can burn out that suffering No right-taught man denies. But a coarse old man am I, I choose the second-best, I forget it all awhile Upon a woman's breast.'    Daybreak and a candle-end.    ~ William Butler Yeats, The Wild Old Wicked Man ,

181:Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night we drink and we drink it we dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents he writes he writes when dusk falls to Germany your golden hair Margarete he writes it and steps out of doors and the stars are flashing he whistles his pack out he whistles his Jews out in earth has them dig for a grave he commands us strike up for the dance Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night we drink in the morning at noon we drink you at sundown we drink and we drink you A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents he writes he writes when dusk falls to Germany your golden hair Margarete your ashen hair Shulamith we dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined He calls out jab deeper into the earth you lot you others sing now and play he grabs at the iron in his belt he waves it his eyes are blue jab deeper you lot with your spades you others play on for the dance Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night we drink you at noon in the morning we drink you at sundown we drink and we drink you A man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete your ashen hair Shulamith he plays with the serpents He calls out more sweetly play death death is a master from Germany he calls out more darkly now stroke your strings then as smoke you will rise into air then a grave you will have in the clouds there one lies unconfined Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night we drink you at noon death is a master from Germany we drink you at sundown and in the morning we drink and we drink you death is a master from Germany his eyes are blue he strikes you with leaden bullets his aim is true a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete he sets his pack on to us he grants us a grave in the air he plays with the serpents and daydreams death is a master from Germany your golden hair Margarete your ashen hair Shulamith ("Death Fugue") ~ Paul Celan,

182:- The Azan story - The five daily ritual prayers were regularly performed in congregation, and when the time for each prayer came the people would assemble at the site where the Mosque was being built. Everyone judged of the time by the position of the sun in the sky, or by the first signs of its light on the eastern horizon or by the dimming of its glow in the west after sunset; but opinions could differ, and the Prophet felt the need for a means of summoning the people to prayer when the right time had come. At first he thought of appointing a man to blow a horn like that of the Jews, but later he decided on a wooden clapper, ndqiis, such as the Oriental Christians used at that time, and two pieces of wood were fashioned together for that purpose. But they were never destined to be used; for one night a man of Khazraj, 'Abd Allah ibn Zayd, who had been at the Second 'Aqabah, had a dream whieh the next day he recounted to the Prophet: "There passed by me a man wearing two green garments and he carried in his hand a ndqiis, so I said unto him: "0 slave of God, wilt thou sell me that naqusi" "What wilt thou do with it?" he said. "We will summon the people to prayer with it," I answered. "Shall I not show thee a better way?" he said. "What way is that?" I asked, and he answered: "That thou shouldst say: God is most Great, Alldhu Akbar." The man in green repeated this magnification four times, then each of the following twice: I testify that there is no god but God; I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God; come unto the prayer; come unto salvation; God is most Great; and then once again there is no god but God. The Prophet said that this was a true vision, and he told him to go to Bilal, who had an excellent voice, and teach him the words exactly as he had heard them in his sleep. The highest house in the neighbourhood of the Mosque belonged to a woman of the clan of Najjar, and Bilal would come there before every dawn and would sit on the roof waiting for the daybreak. When he saw the first faint light in the east he would stretch out his arms and say in supplication: "0 God I praise Thee, and I ask Thy Help for Quraysh, that they may accept Thy religion." Then he would stand and utter the call to prayer. ~ Martin Lings,

183:Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who was admired by all, but no one dared to ask for her hand in marriage. In despair, the king consulted the god Apollo. He told him that Psyche should be dressed in mourning and left alone on top of a mountain. Before daybreak, a serpent would come to meet and marry her. The king obeyed, and all night the princess waited for her husband to appear, deathly afraid and freezing cold. Finally, she slept. When she awoke, she found herself crowned a queen in a beautiful palace. Every night her husband came to her and they made love, but he had imposed one condition: Psyche could have all she desired, but she had to trust him completely and could never see his face.” How awful, I think, but I don’t dare interrupt him. “The young woman lived happily for a long time. She had comfort, affection, joy, and she was in love with the man who visited her every night. However, occasionally she was afraid that she was married to a hideous serpent. Early one morning, while her husband slept, she lit a lantern and saw Eros, a man of incredible beauty, lying by her side. The light woke him, and seeing that the woman he loved was unable to fulfill his one request, Eros vanished. Desperate to get her lover back, Psyche submitted to a series of tasks given to her by Aphrodite, Eros’s mother. Needless to say, her mother-in-law was incredibly jealous of Psyche’s beauty and she did everything she could to thwart the couple’s reconciliation. In one of the tasks, Psyche opened a box that makes her fall into a deep sleep.” I grow anxious to find out how the story will end. “Eros was also in love and regretted not having been more lenient toward his wife. He managed to enter the castle and wake her with the tip of his arrow. ‘You nearly died because of your curiosity,’ he told her. ‘You sought security in knowledge and destroyed our relationship.’ But in love, nothing is destroyed forever. Imbued with this conviction, they go to Zeus, the god of gods, and beg that their union never be undone. Zeus passionately pleaded the cause of the lovers with strong arguments and threats until he gained Aphrodite’s support. From that day on, Psyche (our unconscious, but logical, side) and Eros (love) were together forever.” I pour another glass of wine. I rest my head on his shoulder. “Those who cannot accept this, and who always try to find an explanation for magical and mysterious human relationships, will miss the best part of life. ~ Paulo Coelho,

184:Ceremony After A Fire Raid Myselves The grievers Grieve Among the street burned to tireless death A child of a few hours With its kneading mouth Charred on the black breast of the grave The mother dug, and its arms full of fires. Begin With singing Sing Darkness kindled back into beginning When the caught tongue nodded blind, A star was broken Into the centuries of the child Myselves grieve now, and miracles cannot atone. Forgive Us forgive Us your death that myselves the believers May hold it in a great flood Till the blood shall spurt, And the dust shall sing like a bird As the grains blow, as your death grows, through our heart. Crying Your dying Cry, Child beyond cockcrow, by the fire-dwarfed Street we chant the flying sea In the body bereft. Love is the last light spoken. Oh Seed of sons in the loin of the black husk left. II 50 I know not whether Adam or Eve, the adorned holy bullock Or the white ewe lamb Or the chosen virgin Laid in her snow On the altar of London, Was the first to die In the cinder of the little skull, O bride and bride groom O Adam and Eve together Lying in the lull Under the sad breast of the head stone White as the skeleton Of the garden of Eden. I know the legend Of Adam and Eve is never for a second Silent in my service Over the dead infants Over the one Child who was priest and servants, Word, singers, and tongue In the cinder of the little skull, Who was the serpent's Night fall and the fruit like a sun, Man and woman undone, Beginning crumbled back to darkness Bare as nurseries Of the garden of wilderness. III Into the organpipes and steeples Of the luminous cathedrals, Into the weathercocks' molten mouths Rippling in twelve-winded circles, Into the dead clock burning the hour Over the urn of sabbaths Over the whirling ditch of daybreak Over the sun's hovel and the slum of fire 51 And the golden pavements laid in requiems, Into the bread in a wheatfield of flames, Into the wine burning like brandy, The masses of the sea The masses of the sea under The masses of the infant-bearing sea Erupt, fountain, and enter to utter for ever Glory glory glory The sundering ultimate kingdom of genesis' thunder. ~ Dylan Thomas,

185:Morning Song Of Senlin It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning When the light drips through the shutters like the dew, I arise, I face the sunrise, And do the things my fathers learned to do. Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die, And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet Stand before a glass and tie my tie. Vine leaves tap my window, Dew-drops sing to the garden stones, The robin chips in the chinaberry tree Repeating three clear tones. It is morning. I stand by the mirror And tie my tie once more. While waves far off in a pale rose twilight Crash on a white sand shore. I stand by a mirror and comb my hair: How small and white my face!— The green earth tilts through a sphere of air And bathes in a flame of space. There are houses hanging above the stars And stars hung under a sea. . . And a sun far off in a shell of silence Dapples my walls for me. . . It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning Should I not pause in the light to remember God? Upright and firm I stand on a star unstable, He is immense and lonely as a cloud. I will dedicate this moment before my mirror To him alone, and for him I will comb my hair. Accept these humble offerings, cloud of silence! I will think of you as I descend the stair. Vine leaves tap my window, The snail-track shines on the stones, Dew-drops flash from the chinaberry tree Repeating two clear tones. It is morning, I awake from a bed of silence, Shining I rise from the starless waters of sleep. The walls are about me still as in the evening, 89 I am the same, and the same name still I keep. The earth revolves with me, yet makes no motion, The stars pale silently in a coral sky. In a whistling void I stand before my mirror, Unconcerned, I tie my tie. There are horses neighing on far-off hills Tossing their long white manes, And mountains flash in the rose-white dusk, Their shoulders black with rains. . . It is morning. I stand by the mirror And surprise my soul once more; The blue air rushes above my ceiling, There are suns beneath my floor. . . . . . It is morning, Senlin says, I ascend from darkness And depart on the winds of space for I know not where, My watch is wound, a key is in my pocket, And the sky is darkened as I descend the stair. There are shadows across the windows, clouds in heaven, And a god among the stars; and I will go Thinking of him as I might think of daybreak And humming a tune I know. . . Vine-leaves tap at the window, Dew-drops sing to the garden stones, The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree Repeating three clear tones. ~ Conrad Potter Aiken,

186:This war's a waste of slurry, and its atmosphere is mud, All is bog from here to sunset. Wadin' through We're the victims of a thicker sort of universal flood, With discomforts that old Noah never knew. We have dubbed our trench The Cecil. There's a brass-plate and a dome, And a quagmire where the doormat used to be, If you're calling, second Tuesday is our reg'lar day at home, So delighted if you'll toddle in to tea! There is mud along the corridors enough to bog a cow; In the air there hangs a musty kind of woof; There's a frog-pond in the parlour, and the kitchen is a slough. She has neither doors nor windows, nor a roof. When they post our bald somnambulist as missing from his flat We take soundings for the digger with a prop. By the day the board is gratis, by the week it's half of that; For the season there's a corresponding drop. Opening off the spacious hallway is my natty little suite, A commodious and accessible abode. By judicious disposition, with exclusion of my feet, There is sleeping room for Oliver the toad. 76 Though the ventilation's gusty, and in gobs the ceiling falls— Which with oral respiration disagrees— Though there comes a certain quantity of seepage from the walls, There are some I knew in diggings worse than these. On my right is Cobber Carkeek. There's a spring above his head, And his mattress is a special kind of clay. He's a most punctilious bloke about the fashion of his bed, And he makes it with a shovel every day. Man is dust. If so, the Cobber has been puddled up a treat. On domestic sanitation he's a toff, For he lights a fire on Sunday, bakes his surface in the heat, Then he takes a little maul, and cracks it off. After hanging out a winter in this Cimmerian hole We're forgetting sheets, and baths, and tidy skins. In the dark and deadly calm last night they took us on patrol. Seven, little fellows, thinking of their sins. It was ours like blinded snails to prowl the soggy, slimy night, With a feeler pricking out at every pore For the death that stalks in darkness, or the blinking stab of light, And the other trifling matters that are war. That's the stuff to get your liver, that's the acid on a man, For it tries his hones, and seeks his marrow 77 throngh. You have got the thought to comfort you that life is but a span, If Fritz squirts his loathly limelight over you. We got back again at daybreak. Cobber ducked to doss and said, From the soft, embracing mud: “No more I'll roam. “Oh, thank Heaven, blokes,” he murmured, “for the comforts of a bed! Gorstruth, but ain't it good to have a home!” ~ Edward George Dyson,

187:On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand; I saw a woman in Inverness whom I shall never forget; I saw her tangled hair, her tall figure, I saw the cancer in her breast; I saw a ring of baked mud in a sidewalk, where before there had been a tree; I saw a summer house in Adrogué and a copy of the first English translation of Pliny -- Philemon Holland's -- and all at the same time saw each letter on each page (as a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight); I saw a sunset in Querétaro that seemed to reflect the colour of a rose in Bengal; I saw my empty bedroom; I saw in a closet in Alkmaar a terrestrial globe between two mirrors that multiplied it endlessly; I saw horses with flowing manes on a shore of the Caspian Sea at dawn; I saw the delicate bone structure of a hand; I saw the survivors of a battle sending out picture postcards; I saw in a showcase in Mirzapur a pack of Spanish playing cards; I saw the slanting shadows of ferns on a greenhouse floor; I saw tigers, pistons, bison, tides, and armies; I saw all the ants on the planet; I saw a Persian astrolabe; I saw in the drawer of a writing table (and the handwriting made me tremble) unbelievable, obscene, detailed letters, which Beatriz had written to Carlos Argentino; I saw a monument I worshipped in the Chacarita cemetery; I saw the rotted dust and bones that had once deliciously been Beatriz Viterbo; I saw the circulation of my own dark blood; I saw the coupling of love and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon -- the unimaginable universe. I felt infinite wonder, infinite pity. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,

188:Autumn If seasons, like the human race, had souls, Then two artistic spirits live within The Chameleon mind of Autumn-these, The Poet's mentor and the Painter's guide. The myriad-thoughted phases of the mind Are truly represented by the hues That thrill the forests with prophetic fire. And what could painter's skill compared to these? What palette ever held the flaming tints That on these leafy hieroglyphs foretell How set the ebbing currents of the year? What poet's page was ever like to this, Or told the lesson of life's waning days More forcibly, with more of natural truth, Than yon red maples, or these poplars, white As the pale shroud that wraps some human corse? And then, again, the spirit of a King, Clothed with that majesty most monarchs lack, Might fit old Autumn for his royal rule: For here is kingly ermine, cloth of gold, And purple robes well worthy to be worn By the best monarch that e'er donned a crown. Proclaim him Royal Autumn! Poet King! The Laureate of the Seasons, whose rare songs Are such as lyrist never hoped to fling On the fine ear of an admiring world. Autumn, the Poet, Painter, and true King! His gorgeous Ideality speaks forth From the rare colors of the changing leaves; And the ripe blood that swells his purple veins Is as the glowing of a sacred fire. He walks with Shelley's spirit on the cliffs Of the Ethereal Caucasus, and o'er The summits of the Euganean hills; And meets the soul of Wordsworth, in profound And philosophic meditation, rapt In some great dream of love towards The human race. The cheery Spring may come, 13 And touch the dreaming flowers into life, Summer expand her leafy sea of green, And wake the joyful wilderness to song, As a fair hand strikes music from a lyre: But Autumn, from its daybreak to its close, Setting in florid beauty, like the sun, Robed with rare brightness and ethereal flame, Holds all the year's ripe fruitage in its hands, And dies with songs of praise upon its lips. And then, the Indian Summer, bland as June: Some Tuscarora King, Algonquin Seer, Or Huron Chief, returned to smoke the Pipe Of Peace upon the ancient hunting grounds; The mighty shade in spirit walking forth To feel the beauty of his native woods, Flashing in Autumn vestures, or to mark The scanty remnants of the scattered tribes Wending towards their graves. Few Braves are left; Few mighty Hunters; fewer stately Chiefs, Like great Tecumseth fit to take the field, And lead the tribes to certain victory, Choosing annihilation to defeat: But having run thy gauntlet of their days, This Autumn remnant of some unknown race, Nearing the Winter of their sad decay, Fall like dry leaves into the lap of Time; Their old trunks sapless, their tough branches bare, And Fate's shrill war-whoop thund'ring at their heels. ~ Charles Sangster,

189:Walt Whitman, a cosmos, of Manhattan the son, Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, No more modest than immodest. Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs! Whoever degrades another degrades me, And whatever is done or said returns at last to me. Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the current and index. I speak the password primeval, I give the sign of democracy, By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms. Through me may long dumb voices, Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves, Voices of the diseased and despairing and of thieves ad dwarfs, Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion, And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father stuff, And of the rights of them the others are down upon, Of the deformed, trivial, flat, foolish, despised, Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung. Through me forbidden voices, Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veiled and I remove the veil, Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigured. I do not press my fingers across my mouth, I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart, Copulation is no more rank to me than death is. I believe in the flesh and the appetites, Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from, The scent of these armpits aroma finer than prayer, This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds. If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it, Translucent mold of me it shall be you! Shaded ledges and rests it shall be you! Firm masculine colter it shall be you! Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you! You my rich blood! you milky stream pale strippings of my life! Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you! My brain it shall be your occult convolutions! Root of washed sweet flag! timorous pond snipe! next of guarded duplicate eggs! it shall be you! Mixed tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you! Trickling sap of maple, fiber of manly wheat, it shall be you! Sun so generous it shall be you! Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you! You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you! Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you! Broad muscular fields, branches of live oak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall be you! Hands I have taken, face I have kissed, mortal I have ever touched, it shall be you. I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious, Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy, I cannot tell how my angles bend, nor whence the cause of my faintest wish, Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the friendship I take again. That I walk up my stoop, I pause to consider if it really be, A morning glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. To behold the daybreak! The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows, The air tastes good to my palate. Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols silently rising, freshly exuding, Scooting obliquely high and low. Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs, Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven. The earth by the sky stayed with, the daily close of their junction, The heaved challenge from the east that moment over my head, The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master! [2333.jpg] -- from Song of Myself, by Walt Whitman ~ Walt Whitman, 24 - Walt Whitman, a cosmos, of Manhattan the son ,

190:AMANECER En la honda noche universal que apenas contradicen los macilentos faroles una racha perdida ha ofendido las calles taciturnas como presentimiento tembloroso del amanecer horrible que ronda igual que una mentira los arrabales desmantelados del mundo. Curioso de la descansada tiniebla y acobardado por la amenaza del alba resent la tremenda conjetura de Schopenhauer y de Berkeley que declara que el mundo es una actividad de la mente, un sueo de las almas, sin base ni propsito ni volumen. Y ya que las ideas no son eternas como el mrmol sino inmortales como una selva o un ro, la especulacin anterior asumi otra forma en el alba y la supersticin de esa hora cuando la luz como una enredadera va a implicar las paredes de la sombra, dobleg mi razn y traz el capricho siguiente: Si estn ajenas de sustancia las cosas y si esta numerosa Buenos Aires equiparable en complicacin a un ejrcito, no es ms que un sueo que logran en compartida magia las almas, hay un instante en que peligra desaforadamente su ser y es el instante estremecido del alba, cuando son pocos los que suean el mundo y slo algunos trasnochadores conservan cenicienta y apenas bosquejada la visin de las calles que definirn despus con los otros. Hora en que el sueo pertinaz de la vida est en peligro de quebranto, hora en que le sera fcil a Dios matar del todo su obra! Pero otra vez el mundo se ha salvado. La luz discurre inventando sucios colores y con algn remordimiento de mi complicidad en la resurreccin cotidiana solicito mi casa, atnita y glacial en la luz blanca, mientras un pjaro detiene el silencio y la noche gastada se ha quedado en los ojos de los ciegos. DAYBREAK In the deep universal night scarcely dispelled by the flickering gaslamps a gust of wind coming out of nowhere stirs the silent streets with a trembling presentiment of the hideous dawn that haunts like some he the tumbledown outskirts of cities all over the world. Under the spell of the refreshing darkness and intimidated by the threat of dawn, I felt again that tremendous conjecture of Schopenhauer and Berkeley which declares the world an activity of the mind, a dream of souls, without foundation or purpose or volume. And since ideas are not like marble, everlasting, but ever-renewing like a forest or a river, the previous speculation took another form in the dawn, and the superstition of the hour, when the light like a vine begins twining itself to walls still in shadow, dominated my reason and projected the following whim: If all things are devoid of matter and if this populous Buenos Aires comparable to an army in complexity is no more than a dream arrived at in magic by souls working together, theres a moment in which the citys existence is at the brink of danger and disorder and that is the trembling moment of dawn when those who are dreaming the world are few and only a handful of night owls preserve ashen and sketchy a vision of the streets which they will afterward define for others. The hour in which the persistent dream of life is in danger of breaking down, the hour in which God might easily destroy all his work! But once more the world comes to its own rescue. The light streaks in inventing dirty colors and with a tremor of remorse for my complicity in the daily rebirth I seek my house, amazed and icelike in the white glare, while a songbird holds the silence back and the spent night lives on in the eyes of the blind. [Norman Thomas di Giovanni] ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Daybreak ,

191:Senlin: His Cloudy Destiny Senlin sat before us and we heard him. He smoked his pipe before us and we saw him. Was he small, with reddish hair, Did he light his pipe with a meditative stare And a twinkling flame reflected in blue eyes? 'I am alone': said Senlin; 'in a forest of leaves The single leaf that creeps and falls. The single blade of grass in a desert of grass That none foresaw and none recalls. The single shell that a green wave shatters In tiny specks of whiteness on brown sands . . . How shall you understand me with your hearts, Who cannot reach me with your hands? . . .' The city dissolves about us, and its walls Are the sands beside a sea. We plunge in a chaos of dunes, white waves before us Crash on kelp tumultuously, Gulls wheel over foam, the clouds blow tattered, The sun is swallowed . . . Has Senlin become a shore? Is Senlin a grain of sand beneath our footsteps, A speck of shell upon which waves will roar? . . . Senlin! we cry . . . Senlin! again . . . no answer, Only the crash of sea on a shell-white shore. Yet, we would say, this is no shore at all, But a small bright room with lamplight on the wall; And the familiar chair Where Senlin sat, with lamplight on his hair. Senlin, alone before us, played a music. Was it himself he played? . . . We sat and listened, Perplexed and pleased and tired. 'Listen!' he said, 'and you will learn a secret-Though it is not the secret you desired. 115 I have not found a meaning that will praise you! Out of the heart of silence comes this music, Quietly speaks and dies. Look! there is one white star above black houses! And a tiny man who climbs toward the skies! Where does he walk to? What does he leave behind him? What was his foolish name? What did he stop to say, before he left you As simply as he came? "Death?" did it sound like, "love and god, and laughter, Sunlight, and work, and pain . . .?" No--it appears to me that these were symbols Of simple truths he found no way to explain. He spoke, but found you could not understand him-You were alone, and he was alone. "He sought to touch you, and found he could not reach you,-He sought to understand you, and could not hear you. And so this music, which I play before you,-Does it mean only what it seems to mean? Or is it a dance of foolish waves in sunlight Above a desperate depth of things unseen? Listen! Do you not hear the singing voices Out of the darkness of this sea? But no: you cannot hear them; for if you heard them You would have heard and captured me. Yet I am here, talking of laughter. Laughter and love and work and god; As I shall talk of these same things hereafter In wave and sod. Walk on a hill and call me: "Senlin! . . . Senlin! . . ." Will I not answer you as clearly as now? Listen to rain, and you will hear me speaking. Look for my heart in the breaking of a bough . . .' Senlin stood before us in the sunlight, And laughed, and walked away. Did no one see him leaving the doors of the city, Looking behind him, as if he wished to stay? Has no one, in the forests of the evening, 116 Heard the sad horn of Senlin slowly blown? For somewhere, in the worlds-in-worlds about us, He changes still, unfriended and alone. Is he the star on which we walk at daybreak, The light that blinds our eyes? 'Senlin!' we cry. 'Senlin!' again . . . no answer: Only the soulless brilliance of blue skies. Yet we would say, this was no man at all, But a dream we dreamed, and vividly recall; And we are mad to walk in wind and rain Hoping to find, somewhere, that dream again. ~ Conrad Potter Aiken,

192:Our Lady Of The Mine The Blue Horizon wuz a mine us fellers all thought well uv, And there befell the episode I now perpose to tell uv; 'T wuz in the year uv sixty-nine,--somewhere along in summer,-There hove in sight one afternoon a new and curious comer; His name wuz Silas Pettibone,--a' artist by perfession,-With a kit of tools and a big mustache and a pipe in his possession. He told us, by our leave, he 'd kind uv like to make some sketches Uv the snowy peaks, 'nd the foamin' crick, 'nd the distant mountain stretches; "You're welkim, sir," sez we, although this scenery dodge seemed to us A waste uv time where scenery wuz already sooper-floo-us. All through the summer Pettibone kep' busy at his sketchin',-At daybreak off for Eagle Pass, and home at nightfall, fetchin' That everlastin' book uv his with spider-lines all through it; Three-Fingered Hoover used to say there warn't no meanin' to it. "Gol durn a man," sez he to him, "whose shif'less hand is sot at A-drawin' hills that's full uv quartz that's pinin' to be got at!" "Go on," sez Pettibone, "go on, if joshin' gratifies ye; But one uv these fine times I'll show ye sumthin' will surprise ye!" The which remark led us to think--although he didn't say it-That Pettibone wuz owin' us a gredge 'nd meant to pay it. One evenin' as we sat around the Restauraw de Casey, A-singin' songs 'nd tellin' yarns the which wuz sumwhat racy, In come that feller Pettibone, 'nd sez, "With your permission, I'd like to put a picture I have made on exhibition." He sot the picture on the bar 'nd drew aside its curtain, Sayin', "I reckon you'll allow as how that's art, f'r certain!" And then we looked, with jaws agape, but nary word wuz spoken, And f'r a likely spell the charm uv silence wuz unbroken-Till presently, as in a dream, remarked Three-Fingered Hoover: "Onless I am mistaken, this is Pettibone's shef doover!" It wuz a face--a human face--a woman's, fair 'nd tender-Sot gracefully upon a neck white as a swan's, and slender; The hair wuz kind uv sunny, 'nd the eyes wuz sort uv dreamy, The mouth wuz half a-smilin', 'nd the cheeks wuz soft 'nd creamy; It seemed like she wuz lookin' off into the west out yonder, 246 And seemed like, while she looked, we saw her eyes grow softer, fonder,-Like, lookin' off into the west, where mountain mists wuz fallin', She saw the face she longed to see and heerd his voice a-callin'; "Hooray!" we cried,--"a woman in the camp uv Blue Horizon! Step right up, Colonel Pettibone, 'nd nominate your pizen!" A curious situation,--one deservin' uv your pity,-No human, livin', female thing this side of Denver City! But jest a lot uv husky men that lived on sand 'nd bitters,-Do you wonder that that woman's face consoled the lonesome critters? And not a one but what it served in some way to remind him Of a mother or a sister or a sweetheart left behind him; And some looked back on happier days, and saw the old-time faces And heerd the dear familiar sounds in old familiar places,-A gracious touch of home. "Look here," sez Hoover, "ever'body Quit thinkin' 'nd perceed at oncet to name his favorite toddy!" It wuzn't long afore the news had spread the country over, And miners come a-flockin' in like honey-bees to clover; It kind uv did 'em good, they said, to feast their hungry eyes on That picture uv Our Lady in the camp uv Blue Horizon. But one mean cuss from Nigger Crick passed criticisms on 'er,-Leastwise we overheerd him call her Pettibone's madonner, The which we did not take to be respectful to a lady, So we hung him in a quiet spot that wuz cool 'nd dry 'nd shady; Which same might not have been good law, but it wuz the right manoeuvre To give the critics due respect for Pettibone's shef doover. Gone is the camp,--yes, years ago the Blue Horizon busted, And every mother's son uv us got up one day 'nd dusted, While Pettibone perceeded East with wealth in his possession, And went to Yurrup, as I heerd, to study his perfession; So, like as not, you'll find him now a-paintin' heads 'nd faces At Venus, Billy Florence, and the like I-talyun places. But no sech face he'll paint again as at old Blue Horizon, For I'll allow no sweeter face no human soul sot eyes on; And when the critics talk so grand uv Paris 'nd the Loover, I say, "Oh, but you orter seen the Pettibone shef doover!" ~ Eugene Field,

193:A CURSING rogue with a merry face, A bundle of rags upon a crutch, Stumbled upon that windy place Called Cruachan, and it was as much As the one sturdy leg could do To keep him upright while he cursed. He had counted, where long years ago Queen Maeve's nine Maines had been nursed, A pair of lapwings, one old sheep, And not a house to the plain's edge, When close to his right hand a heap Of grey stones and a rocky ledge Reminded him that he could make. If he but shifted a few stones, A shelter till the daylight broke. But while he fumbled with the stones They toppled over; "Were it not I have a lucky wooden shin I had been hurt'; and toppling brought Before his eyes, where stones had been, A dark deep hollow in the rock. He gave a gasp and thought to have fled, Being certain it was no right rock Because an ancient history said Hell Mouth lay open near that place, And yet stood still, because inside A great lad with a beery face Had tucked himself away beside A ladle and a tub of beer, And snored, no phantom by his look. So with a laugh at his own fear He crawled into that pleasant nook. "Night grows uneasy near the dawn Till even I sleep light; but who Has tired of his own company? What one of Maeve's nine brawling sons Sick of his grave has wakened me? But let him keep his grave for once That I may find the sleep I have lost." What care I if you sleep or wake? But I'Il have no man call me ghost." Say what you please, but from daybreak I'll sleep another century." And I will talk before I sleep And drink before I talk.' And he Had dipped the wooden ladle deep Into the sleeper's tub of beer Had not the sleeper started up. Before you have dipped it in the beer I dragged from Goban's mountain-top I'll have assurance that you are able To value beer; no half-legged fool Shall dip his nose into my ladle Merely for stumbling on this hole In the bad hour before the dawn." Why beer is only beer.' "But say ""I'll sleep until the winter's gone, Or maybe to Midsummer Day,'' And drink and you will sleep that length. "I'd like to sleep till winter's gone Or till the sun is in his strength. This blast has chilled me to the bone.' "I had no better plan at first. I thought to wait for that or this; Maybe the weather was accursed Or I had no woman there to kiss; So slept for half a year or so; But year by year I found that less Gave me such pleasure I'd forgo Even a half-hour's nothingness, And when at one year's end I found I had not waked a single minute, I chose this burrow under ground. I'll sleep away all time within it: My sleep were now nine centuries But for those mornings when I find The lapwing at their foolish dies And the sheep bleating at the wind As when I also played the fool.' The beggar in a rage began Upon his hunkers in the hole, "It's plain that you are no right man To mock at everything I love As if it were not worth, the doing. I'd have a merry life enough If a good Easter wind were blowing, And though the winter wind is bad I should not be too down in the mouth For anything you did or said If but this wind were in the south.' "You cry aloud, O would 'twere spring Or that the wind would shift a point, And do not know that you would bring, If time were suppler in the joint, Neither the spring nor the south wind But the hour when you shall pass away And leave no smoking wick behind, For all life longs for the Last Day And there's no man but cocks his ear To know when Michael's trumpet cries "That flesh and bone may disappear, And souls as if they were but sighs, And there be nothing but God left; But, I alone being blessed keep Like some old rabbit to my cleft And wait Him in a drunken sleep.' He dipped his ladle in the tub And drank and yawned and stretched him out, The other shouted, "You would rob My life of every pleasant thought And every comfortable thing, And so take that and that." Thereon He gave him a great pummelling, But might have pummelled at a stone For all the sleeper knew or cared; And after heaped up stone on stone, And then, grown weary, prayed and cursed And heaped up stone on stone again, And prayed and cursed and cursed and bed From Maeve and all that juggling plain, Nor gave God thanks till overhead The clouds were brightening with the dawn. ~ William Butler Yeats, The Hour Before Dawn ,

194:The Rescue THERE’S a sudden, fierce clang of the knocker, then the sound of a voice in the shaft, Shrieking words that drum hard on the centres, and the braceman goes suddenly daft: ‘Set the whistle a-blowing like blazes! Billy, run, give old Mackie a call— Run, you fool! Number Two’s gone to pieces, and Fred Baker is caught in the fall! Say, hello! there below—any hope, boys, any chances of saving his life? ‘Heave away!’ says the knocker. ‘They’ve started. God be praised, he’s no youngsters or wife!’ Screams the whistle in fearful entreaty, and the wild echo raves on the spur, And the night, that was still as a sleeper in soft, charmed sleep, is astir With the fluttering of wings in the wattles, and the vague frightened murmur of birds, With far cooeys that carry the warning, running feet, inarticulate words. From the black belt of bush come the miners, and they gather by Mack on the brace, Out of breath, barely clad, and half-wakened, with a question in every face. ‘Who’s below?’ ‘Where’s the fall?’ Didn’t I tell you?—Didn’t I say that them sets wasn’t sound?’ ‘Is it Fred? He was reckless was Baker; now he’s seen his last shift underground.’ ‘And his mate? Where is Sandy M‘Fadyn?’ ’Sandy’s snoring at home on his bunk.’ ‘Not at work! Name o’ God! a foreboding?’ ‘A foreboding be hanged! He is drunk!’ Take it steady there, lads!’ the boss orders. He is white to the roots of his hair. We may get him alive before daybreak if he’s close to the face and has air.’ In the dim drive with ardour heroic two facemen are pegging away. Long and Coots in the rise heard her thunder, and they fled without word or delay Down the drive, and they rushed for the ladders, and they went up the shaft with a run, For they knew the weak spot in the workings, and they guessed there was graft to be done. Number Two was pitch dark, and they scrambled to the plat and they made for the face, But the roof bad come down fifty yards in, and the reef was all over the place. Fresher men from the surface replace them, and they’re hauled up on top for a 150 blow; When a life and death job is in doing there’s room only for workers below. Bare-armed, and bare-chested, and brawny, with a grim, meaning set of the jaw, The relay hurries in to the rescue, caring not for the danger a straw; ’Tis not toil, but a battle, they’re called to, and like Trojans the miners respond, For a dead man lies crushed ’neath the timbers, or a live man is choking beyond. By the faint, yellow glow of the candles, where the dank drive is hot with their breath, On the verge of the Land of the Shadow, waging war breast to bosom with Death, How they struggle, these giants! and slowly, as the trucks rattle into the gloom, Inch by inch they advance to the conquest of a prison—or is it a tomb? And the working’s re-echo a volley as the timbers are driven in place; Then a whisper is borne to the toilers ‘Boys, his mother is there on the brace!’ Like veterans late into action, fierce with longing to hew and to hack, Riordan’s shift rushes in to relieve them, and the toil-stricken men stagger back. ‘Stow the stuff, mates, wherever there’s stowage! Run the man on the brace till he drops! There’s no time to think on this billet! Bark the heels of the trucker who stops! Keep the props well in front, and be careful. He’s in there, and alive, never fret.’ But the grey dawn is softening the ridges, and the word has not come to us yet. Still the knocker rings out, and the engine shrieks and strains like a creature in pain As the cage rushes up to the surface and drops back into darkness again. By the capstan a woman is crouching. In her eyes neither hope nor despair; But a yearning that glowers like frenzy bids those who’d speak pity forbear. Like a figure in stone she is seated till the labour of rescue be done. For the father was killed in the Phoenix, and the son—Lord of pity! the son? ‘Hello! there on top!’ they are calling. ‘They are through! He is seen in the drive!’ ‘They have got him—thank Heaven! they’ve got him, and oh, blessed be God, he’s alive!’ ‘Man on! heave away!’ ‘Step aside, lads; let his mother be first when he lands.’ She was silent and strong in her anguish; now she babbles and weeps where she stands, And the stern men, grown gentle, support her at the mouth of the shaft, till at last With a rush the cage springs to the landing, and her son’s arms encircle her fast. 151 She has cursed the old mine for its murders, for the victims its drives have ensnared, Now she cries a great blessing upon it for the one precious life it has spared. ~ Edward George Dyson,

195:I FATHER AND CHILD SHE hears me strike the board and say That she is under ban Of all good men and women, Being mentioned with a man That has the worst of all bad names; And thereupon replies That his hair is beautiful, Cold as the March wind his eyes. II BEFORE THE WORLD WAS MADE IF I make the lashes dark And the eyes more bright And the lips more scarlet, Or ask if all be right From mirror after mirror, No vanity's displayed: I'm looking for the face I had Before the world was made. What if I look upon a man As though on my beloved, And my blood be cold the while And my heart unmoved? Why should he think me cruel Or that he is betrayed? I'd have him love the thing that was Before the world was made. III A FIRST CONFESSION I ADMIT the briar Entangled in my hair Did not injure me; My blenching and trembling, Nothing but dissembling, Nothing but coquetry. I long for truth, and yet I cannot stay from that My better self disowns, For a man's attention Brings such satisfaction To the craving in my bones. Brightness that I pull back From the Zodiac, Why those questioning eyes That are fixed upon me? What can they do but shun me If empty night replies? IV HER TRIUMPH I DID the dragon's will until you came Because I had fancied love a casual Improvisation, or a settled game That followed if I let the kerchief fall: Those deeds were best that gave the minute wings And heavenly music if they gave it wit; And then you stood among the dragon-rings. I mocked, being crazy, but you mastered it And broke the chain and set my ankles free, Saint George or else a pagan Perseus; And now we stare astonished at the sea, And a miraculous strange bird shrieks at us. V CONSOLATION O BUT there is wisdom In what the sages said; But stretch that body for a while And lay down that head Till I have told the sages Where man is comforted. How could passion run so deep Had I never thought That the crime of being born Blackens all our lot? But where the crime's committed The crime can be forgot. VI CHOSEN THE lot of love is chosen. I learnt that much Struggling for an image on the track Of the whirling Zodiac. Scarce did he my body touch, Scarce sank he from the west Or found a subtetranean rest On the maternal midnight of my breast Before I had marked him on his northern way, And seemed to stand although in bed I lay. I struggled with the horror of daybreak, I chose it for my lot! If questioned on My utmost pleasure with a man By some new-married bride, I take That stillness for a theme Where his heart my heart did seem And both adrift on the miraculous stream Where wrote a learned astrologer The Zodiac is changed into a sphere. VII PARTING i{He.} Dear, I must be gone While night Shuts the eyes Of the household spies; That song announces dawn. She. No, night's bird and love's Bids all true lovers rest, While his loud song reproves The murderous stealth of day. He. Daylight already flies From mountain crest to crest She. That light is from the moon. He. That bird She. Let him sing on, I offer to love's play My dark declivities. VIII HER VISION IN THE WOOD DRY timber under that rich foliage, At wine-dark midnight in the sacred wood, Too old for a man's love I stood in rage Imagining men. Imagining that I could A greater with a lesser pang assuage Or but to find if withered vein ran blood, I tore my body that its wine might cover Whatever could recall the lip of lover. And after that I held my fingers up, Stared at the wine-dark nail, or dark that ran Down every withered finger from the top; But the dark changed to red, and torches shone, And deafening music shook the leaves; a troop Shouldered a litter with a wounded man, Or smote upon the string and to the sound Sang of the beast that gave the fatal wound. All stately women moving to a song With loosened hair or foreheads grief-distraught, It seemed a Quattrocento painter's throng, A thoughtless image of Mantegna's thought Why should they think that are for ever young? Till suddenly in grief's contagion caught, I stared upon his blood-bedabbled breast And sang my malediction with the rest. That thing all blood and mire, that beast-torn wreck, Half turned and fixed a glazing eye on mine, And, though love's bitter-sweet had all come back, Those bodies from a picture or a coin Nor saw my body fall nor heard it shriek, Nor knew, drunken with singing as with wine, That they had brought no fabulous symbol there But my heart's victim and its torturer. IX A LAST CONFESSION WHAT lively lad most pleasured me Of all that with me lay? I answer that I gave my soul And loved in misery, But had great pleasure with a lad That I loved bodily. Flinging from his arms I laughed To think his passion such He fancied that I gave a soul Did but our bodies touch, And laughed upon his breast to think Beast gave beast as much. I gave what other women gave "That stepped out of their clothes. But when this soul, its body off, Naked to naked goes, He it has found shall find therein What none other knows, And give his own and take his own And rule in his own right; And though it loved in misery Close and cling so tight, There's not a bird of day that dare Extinguish that delight. X MEETING HIDDEN by old age awhile In masker's cloak and hood, Each hating what the other loved, Face to face we stood: "That I have met with such,' said he, "Bodes me little good.' "Let others boast their fill,' said I, "But never dare to boast That such as I had such a man For lover in the past; Say that of living men I hate Such a man the most.' 'A loony'd boast of such a love,' He in his rage declared: But such as he for such as me Could we both discard This beggarly habiliment Had found a sweeter word. XI FROM THE 'ANTIGONE' OVERCOME O bitter sweetness, Inhabitant of the soft cheek of a girl The rich man and his affairs, The fat flocks and the fields' fatness, Mariners, rough harvesters; Overcome Gods upon Parnassus; Overcome the Empyrean; hurl Heaven and Earth out of their places, That in the Same calamity Brother and brother, friend and friend, Family and family, City and city may contend, By that great glory driven wild. Pray I will and sing I must, And yet I weep Oedipus' child Descends into the loveless dust. ~ William Butler Yeats, A Woman Young And Old ,

196:From The Wreck 'Turn out, boys'—'What's up with our super. to-night ? The man's mad—Two hours to daybreak I'd swear— Stark mad—why, there isn't a glimmer of light.' 'Take Bolingbroke, Alec, give Jack the young mare ; Look sharp. A large vessel lies jamm'd on the reef, And many on board still, and some wash'd on shore. Ride straight with the news—they may send some relief From the township ; and we—we can do little more. You, Alec, you know the near cuts ; you can cross 'The Sugarloaf' ford with a scramble, I think ; Don't spare the blood filly, nor yet the black horse ; Should the wind rise, God help them ! the ship will soon sink. Old Peter's away down the paddock, to drive The nags to the stockyard as fast as he can— A life and death matter ; so, lads, look alive.' Half-dressed, in the dark to the stockyard we ran. There was bridling with hurry, and saddling with haste, Confusion and cursing for lack of a moon ; 'Be quick with these buckles, we've no time to waste ;' 'Mind the mare, she can use her hind legs to some tune.' 'Make sure of the crossing-place ; strike the old track, They've fenced off the new one ; look out for the holes On the wombat hills.' 'Down with the slip rails ; stand back.' 'And ride, boys, the pair of you, ride for your souls.' In the low branches heavily laden with dew, In the long grasses spoiling with deadwood that day, Where the blackwood, the box, and the bastard oak grew, Between the tall gum-trees we gallop'd away— We crashed through a brush fence, we splash'd through a swamp— We steered for the north near 'The Eaglehawk's Nest'— We bore to the left, just beyond 'The Red Camp', And round the black tea-tree belt wheel'd to the west— We cross'd a low range sickly scented with musk From wattle-tree blossom—we skirted a marsh— Then the dawn faintly dappled with orange the dusk, 168 And peal'd overhead the jay's laughter note harsh, And shot the first sunstreak behind us, and soon The dim dewy uplands were dreamy with light ; And full on our left flash'd 'The Reedy Lagoon,' And sharply 'The Sugarloaf' rear'd on our right. A smother'd curse broke through the bushman's brown beard, He turn'd in his saddle, his brick-colour'd cheek Flush'd feebly with sundawn, said, 'Just what I fear'd ; Last fortnight's late rainfall has flooded the creek.' Black Bolingbroke snorted, and stood on the brink One instant, then deep in the dark sluggish swirl Plunged headlong. I saw the horse suddenly sink, Till round the man's armpits the waves seemed to curl. We follow'd,—one cold shock, and deeper we sank Than they did, and twice tried the landing in vain ; The third struggle won it ; straight up the steep bank We stagger'd, then out on the skirts of the plain. The stockrider, Alec, at starting had got The lead, and had kept it throughout ; 'twas his boast That through thickest of scrub he could steer like a shot, And the black horse was counted the best on the coast. The mare had been awkward enough in the dark, She was eager and headstrong, and barely half broke ; She had had me too close to a big stringy-bark, And had made a near thing of a crooked sheoak. But now on the open, lit up by the morn, She flung the white foam-flakes from nostril to neck, And chased him—I hatless, with shirt sleeves all torn (For he may ride ragged who rides from a wreck)— And faster and faster across the wide heath We rode till we raced. Then I gave her her head, And she—stretching out with the bit in her teeth— She caught him, outpaced him, and passed him, and led. We neared the new fence, we were wide of the track; I look'd right and left—she had never been tried At a stiff leap ; 'twas little he cared on the black. 'You're more than a mile from the gateway,' he cried. I hung to her head, touched her flank with the spurs (In the red streak of rail not the ghost of a gap) ; 169 She shortened her long stroke, she pricked her sharp ears, She flung it behind her with hardly a rap— I saw the post quiver where Bolingbroke struck, And guessed that the pace we had come the last mile Had blown him a bit (he could jump like a buck). We galloped more steadily then for a while. The heath was soon pass'd, in the dim distance lay The mountain. The sun was just clearing the tips Of the ranges to eastward. The mare—could she stay? She was bred very nearly as clean as Eclipse ; She led, and as oft as he came to her side, She took the bit free and untiring as yet ; Her neck was arched double, her nostrils were wide, And the tips of her tapering ears nearly met— 'You're lighter than I am,' said Alec at last ; 'The horse is dead beat and the mare isn't blown. She must be a good one—ride on and ride fast, You know your way now.' So I rode on alone. Still galloping forward we pass'd the two flocks At M'Intyre's hut and M'Allister's hill— She was galloping strong at the Warrigal Rocks— On the Wallaby Range she was galloping still— And over the wasteland and under the wood, By down and by dale, and by fell and by flat, She gallop'd, and here in the stirrups I stood To ease her, and there in the saddle I sat To steer her. We suddenly struck the red loam Of the track near the troughs—then she reeled on the rise— From her crest to her croup covered over with foam, And blood-red her nostrils, and bloodshot her eyes, A dip in the dell where the wattle fire bloomed— A bend round a bank that had shut out the view— Large framed in the mild light the mountain had loomed, With a tall, purple peak bursting out from the blue. I pull'd her together, I press'd her, and she Shot down the decline to the Company's yard, And on by the paddocks, yet under my knee I could feel her heart thumping the saddle-flaps hard. Yet a mile and another, and now we were near 170 The goal, and the fields and the farms flitted past ; And ‘twixt the two fences I turned with a cheer, For a green grass-fed mare 'twas a far thing and fast ; And labourers, roused by her galloping hoofs, Saw bare-headed rider and foam-sheeted steed; And shone the white walls and the slate-coloured roofs Of the township. I steadied her then—I had need— Where stood the old chapel (where stands the new church— Since chapels to churches have changed in that town). A short, sidelong stagger, a long, forward lurch, A slight, choking sob, and the mare had gone down. I slipp'd off the bridle, I slacken'd the girth, I ran on and left her and told them my news ; I saw her soon afterwards. What was she worth ? How much for her hide ? She had never worn shoes. ~ Adam Lindsay Gordon,

197: XIX - NIGHT STREET BEFORE MARGARET'S DOOR VALENTINE (a soldier, MARGARET'S brother) When I have sat at some carouse. Where each to each his brag allows, And many a comrade praised to me His pink of girls right lustily, With brimming glass that spilled the toast, And elbows planted as in boast: I sat in unconcerned repose, And heard the swagger as it rose. And stroking then my beard, I'd say, Smiling, the bumper in my hand: "Each well enough in her own way. But is there one in all the land Like sister Margaret, good as gold, One that to her can a candle hold?" Cling! clang! "Here's to her!" went around The board: "He speaks the truth!" cried some; "In her the flower o' the sex is found!" And all the swaggerers were dumb. And now!I could tear my hair with vexation. And dash out my brains in desperation! With turned-up nose each scamp may face me, With sneers and stinging taunts disgrace me, And, like a bankrupt debtor sitting, A chance-dropped word may set me sweating! Yet, though I thresh them all together, I cannot call them liars, either. But what comes sneaking, there, to view? If I mistake not, there are two. If he's one, let me at him drive! He shall not leave the spot alive. FAUST MEPHISTOPHELES FAUST How from the window of the sacristy Upward th'eternal lamp sends forth a glimmer, That, lessening side-wards, fainter grows and dimmer, Till darkness closes from the sky! The shadows thus within my bosom gather. MEPHISTOPHELES I'm like a sentimental tom-cat, rather, That round the tall fire-ladders sweeps, And stealthy, then, along the coping creeps: Quite virtuous, withal, I come, A little thievish and a little frolicsome. I feel in every limb the presage Forerunning the grand Walpurgis-Night: Day after to-morrow brings its message, And one keeps watch then with delight. FAUST Meanwhile, may not the treasure risen be, Which there, behind, I glimmering see? MEPHISTOPHELES Shalt soon experience the pleasure, To lift the kettle with its treasure. I lately gave therein a squint Saw splendid lion-dollars in 't. FAUST Not even a jewel, not a ring, To deck therewith my darling girl? MEPHISTOPHELES I saw, among the rest, a thing That seemed to be a chain of pearl. FAUST That's well, indeed! For painful is it To bring no gift when her I visit. MEPHISTOPHELES Thou shouldst not find it so annoying, Without return to be enjoying. Now, while the sky leads forth its starry throng, Thou'lt hear a masterpiece, no work completer: I'll sing her, first, a moral song, The surer, afterwards, to cheat her. (Sings to the cither.) What dost thou here In daybreak clear, Kathrina dear, Before thy lover's door? Beware! the blade Lets in a maid. That out a maid Departeth nevermore! The coaxing shun Of such an one! When once 'tis done Good-night to thee, poor thing! Love's time is brief: Unto no thief Be warm and lief, But with the wedding-ring! VALENTINE (comes forward) Whom wilt thou lure? God's-element! Rat-catching piper, thou!perdition! To the Devil, first, the instrument! To the Devil, then, the curst musician! MEPHISTOPHELES The cither's smashed! For nothing more 'tis fitting. VALENTINE There's yet a skull I must be splitting! MEPHISTOPHELES (to FAUST) Sir Doctor, don't retreat, I pray! Stand by: I'll lead, if you'll but tarry: Out with your spit, without delay! You've but to lunge, and I will parry. VALENTINE Then parry that! MEPHISTOPHELES Why not? 'tis light. VALENTINE That, too! MEPHISTOPHELES Of course. VALENTINE I think the Devil must fight! How is it, then? my hand's already lame: MEPHISTOPHELES (to FAUST) Thrust home! VALENTINE (jails) O God! MEPHISTOPHELES Now is the lubber tame! But come, away! 'Tis time for us to fly; For there arises now a murderous cry. With the police 'twere easy to compound it, But here the penal court will sift and sound it. [Exit with FAUST. MARTHA (at the window) Come out! Come out! MARGARET (at the window) Quick, bring a light! MARTHA (as above) They swear and storm, they yell and fight! PEOPLE Here lies one dead alreadysee! MARTHA (coming from the house) The murderers, whither have they run? MARGARET (coming out) Who lies here? PEOPLE 'Tis thy mother's son! MARGARET Almighty God! what misery! VALENTINE I'm dying! That is quickly said, And quicker yet 'tis done. Why howl, you women there? Instead, Come here and listen, every one! (All gather around him) My Margaret, see! still young thou art, But not the least bit shrewd or smart, Thy business thus to slight: So this advice I bid thee heed Now that thou art a whore indeed, Why, be one then, outright! MARGARET My brother! God! such words to me? VALENTINE In this game let our Lord God be! What's done's already done, alas! What follows it, must come to pass. With one begin'st thou secretly, Then soon will others come to thee, And when a dozen thee have known, Thou'rt also free to all the town. When Shame is born and first appears, She is in secret brought to light, And then they draw the veil of night Over her head and ears; Her life, in fact, they're loath to spare her. But let her growth and strength display, She walks abroad unveiled by day, Yet is not grown a whit the fairer. The uglier she is to sight, The more she seeks the day's broad light. The time I verily can discern When all the honest folk will turn From thee, thou jade! and seek protection As from a corpse that breeds infection. Thy guilty heart shall then dismay thee. When they but look thee in the face: Shalt not in a golden chain array thee, Nor at the altar take thy place! Shalt not, in lace and ribbons flowing, Make merry when the dance is going! But in some corner, woe betide thee! Among the beggars and cripples hide thee; And so, though even God forgive, On earth a damned existence live! MARTHA Commend your soul to God for pardon, That you your heart with slander harden! VALENTINE Thou pimp most infamous, be still! Could I thy withered body kill, 'Twould bring, for all my sinful pleasure, Forgiveness in the richest measure. MARGARET My brother! This is Hell's own pain! VALENTINE I tell thee, from thy tears refrain! When thou from honor didst depart It stabbed me to the very heart. Now through the slumber of the grave I go to God as a soldier brave. (Dies.) Faust Cathedral ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, NIGHT ,

198:From House To House The first was like a dream through summer heat, The second like a tedious numbing swoon, While the half-frozen pulses lagged to beat Beneath a winter moon. 'But,' says my friend, 'what was this thing and where?' It was a pleasure-place within my soul; An earthly paradise supremely fair That lured me from the goal. The first part was a tissue of hugged lies; The second was its ruin fraught with pain: Why raise the fair delusion to the skies But to be dashed again? My castle stood of white transparent glass Glittering and frail with many a fretted spire, But when the summer sunset came to pass It kindled into fire. My pleasaunce was an undulating green, Stately with trees whose shadows slept below, With glimpses of smooth garden-beds between Like flame or sky or snow. Swift squirrels on the pastures took their ease, With leaping lambs safe from the unfeared knife; All singing-birds rejoicing in those trees Fulfilled their careless life. Woodpigeons cooed there, stockdoves nestled there; My trees were full of songs and flowers and fruit, Their branches spread a city to the air And mice lodged in their root. My heath lay farther off, where lizards lived In strange metallic mail, just spied and gone; Like darted lightnings here and there perceived But nowhere dwelt upon. 158 Frogs and fat toads were there to hop or plod And propagate in peace, an uncouth crew, Where velvet-headed rushes rustling nod And spill the morning dew. All caterpillars throve beneath my rule, With snails and slugs in corners out of sight; I never marred the curious sudden stool That perfects in a night. Safe in his excavated gallery The burrowing mole groped on from year to year; No harmless hedgehog curled because of me His prickly back for fear. Oft times one like an angel walked with me, With spirit-discerning eyes like flames of fire, But deep as the unfathomed endless sea, Fulfilling my desire: And sometimes like a snowdrift he was fair, And sometimes like a sunset glorious red, And sometimes he had wings to scale the air With aureole round his head. We sang our songs together by the way, Calls and recalls and echoes of delight; So communed we together all the day, And so in dreams by night. I have no words to tell what way we walked. What unforgotten path now closed and sealed; I have no words to tell all things we talked, All things that he revealed: This only can I tell: that hour by hour I waxed more feastful, lifted up and glad; I felt no thorn-prick when I plucked a flower, Felt not my friend was sad. 'To-morrow,' once I said to him with smiles: 159 'To-night,' he answered gravely and was dumb, But pointed out the stones that numbered miles And miles to come. 'Not so,' I said: 'to-morrow shall be sweet; To-night is not so sweet as coming days.' Then first I saw that he had turned his feet, Had turned from me his face: Running and flying miles and miles he went, But once looked back to beckon with his hand And cry: 'Come home, O love, from banishment: Come to the distant land.' That night destroyed me like an avalanche; One night turned all my summer back to snow: Next morning not a bird upon my branch, Not a lamb woke below,— No bird, no lamb, no living breathing thing; No squirrel scampered on my breezy lawn, No mouse lodged by his hoard: all joys took wing And fled before that dawn. Azure and sun were starved from heaven above, No dew had fallen, but biting frost lay hoar: O love, I knew that I should meet my love, Should find my love no more. 'My love no more,' I muttered stunned with pain: I shed no tear, I wrung no passionate hand, Till something whispered: 'You shall meet again, Meet in a distant land.' Then with a cry like famine I arose, I lit my candle, searched from room to room, Searched up and down; a war of winds that froze Swept through the blank of gloom. I searched day after day, night after night; Scant change there came to me of night or day: 'No more,' I wailed, 'no more:' and trimmed my light, 160 And gnashed but did not pray, Until my heart broke and my spirit broke: Upon the frost-bound floor I stumbled, fell, And moaned: 'It is enough: withhold the stroke. Farewell, O love, farewell.' Then life swooned from me. And I heard the song Of spheres and spirits rejoicing over me: One cried: 'Our sister, she hath suffered long.'— One answered: 'Make her see.'— One cried: 'Oh blessed she who no more pain, Who no more disappointment shall receive.'— One answered: 'Not so: she must live again; Strengthen thou her to live.' So while I lay entranced a curtain seemed To shrivel with crackling from before my face; Across mine eyes a waxing radiance beamed And showed a certain place. I saw a vision of a woman, where Night and new morning strive for domination; Incomparably pale, and almost fair, And sad beyond expression. Her eyes were like some fire-enshrining gem, Were stately like the stars, and yet were tender; Her figure charmed me like a windy stem Quivering and drooped and slender. I stood upon the outer barren ground, She stood on inner ground that budded flowers; While circling in their never-slackening round Danced by the mystic hours. But every flower was lifted on a thorn, And every thorn shot upright from its sands To gall her feet; hoarse laughter pealed in scorn With cruel clapping hands. 161 She bled and wept, yet did not shrink; her strength Was strung up until daybreak of delight: She measured measureless sorrow toward its length, And breadth, and depth, and height. Then marked I how a chain sustained her form, A chain of living links not made nor riven: It stretched sheer up through lighting, wind, and storm, And anchored fast in heaven. One cried: 'How long? yet founded on the Rock She shall do battle, suffer, and attain.'— One answered: 'Faith quakes in the tempest shock: Strengthen her soul again.' I saw a cup sent down and come to her Brimfull of loathing and of bitterness: She drank with livid lips that seemed to stir The depth, not make it less. But as she drank I spied a hand distil New wine and virgin honey; making it First bitter-sweet, then sweet indeed, until She tasted only sweet. Her lips and cheeks waxed rosy-fresh and young; Drinking she sang: 'My soul shall nothing want;' And drank anew: while soft a song was sung, A mystical slow chant. One cried: 'The wounds are faithful of a friend: The wilderness shall blossom as a rose.'— One answered: 'Rend the veil, declare the end, Strengthen her ere she goes.' Then earth and heaven were rolled up like a scroll; Time and space, change and death, had passed away; Weight, number, measure, each had reached its whole; The day had come, that day. Multitudes—multitudes—stood up in bliss, Made equal to the angels, glorious, fair; 162 With harps, palms, wedding-garments, kiss of peace And crowned and haloed hair. They sang a song, a new song in the height, Harping with harps to Him Who is Strong and True: They drank new wine, their eyes saw with new light, Lo, all things were made new. Tier beyond tier they rose and rose and rose So high that it was dreadful, flames with flames: No man could number them, no tongue disclose Their secret sacred names. As though one pulse stirred all, one rush of blood Fed all, one breath swept through them myriad-voiced, They struck their harps, cast down their crowns, they stood And worshipped and rejoiced. Each face looked one way like a moon new-lit, Each face looked one way towards its Sun of Love; Drank love and bathed in love and mirrored it And knew no end thereof. Glory touched glory on each blessed head, Hands locked dear hands never to sunder more: These were the new-begotten from the dead Whom the great birthday bore. Heart answered heart, soul answered soul at rest, Double against each other, filled, sufficed: All loving, loved of all; but loving best And best beloved of Christ. I saw that one who lost her love in pain, Who trod on thorns, who drank the loathsome cup; The lost in night, in day was found again; The fallen was lifted up. They stood together in the blessed noon, They sang together through the length of days; Each loving face bent Sunwards like a moon New-lit with love and praise. 163 Therefore, O friend, I would not if I might Rebuild my house of lies, wherein I joyed One time to dwell: my soul shall walk in white, Cast down but not destroyed. Therefore in patience I possess my soul; Yea, therefore as a flint I set my face, To pluck down, to build up again the whole— But in a distant place. These thorns are sharp, yet I can tread on them; This cup is loathsome, yet He makes it sweet: My face is steadfast toward Jerusalem, My heart remembers it. I lift the hanging hands, the feeble knees— I, precious more than seven times molten gold— Until the day when from his storehouses God shall bring new and old; Beauty for ashes, oil of joy for grief, Garment of praise for spirit of heaviness: Although to-day I fade as doth a leaf, I languish and grow less. Although to-day He prunes my twigs with pain, Yet doth His blood nourish and warm my root: To-morrow I shall put forth buds again And clothe myself with fruit. Although to-day I walk in tedious ways, To-day His staff is turned into a rod, Yet will I wait for Him the appointed days And stay upon my God. ~ Christina Georgina Rossetti,

199:Hurry Up Please It's Time What is death, I ask. What is life, you ask. I give them both my buttocks, my two wheels rolling off toward Nirvana. They are neat as a wallet, opening and closing on their coins, the quarters, the nickels, straight into the crapper. Why shouldn't I pull down my pants and moon the executioner as well as paste raisins on my breasts? Why shouldn't I pull down my pants and show my little cunny to Tom and Albert? They wee-wee funny. I wee-wee like a squaw. I have ink but no pen, still I dream that I can piss in God's eye. I dream I'm a boy with a zipper. It's so practical, la de dah. The trouble with being a woman, Skeezix, is being a little girl in the first place. Not all the books of the world will change that. I have swallowed an orange, being woman. You have swallowed a ruler, being man. Yet waiting to die we are the same thing. Jehovah pleasures himself with his axe before we are both overthrown. Skeezix, you are me. La de dah. You grow a beard but our drool is identical. Forgive us, Father, for we know not. Today is November 14th, 1972. I live in Weston, Mass., Middlesex County, U.S.A., and it rains steadily in the pond like white puppy eyes. The pond is waiting for its skin. the pond is waiting for its leather. The pond is waiting for December and its Novocain. 97 It begins: Interrogator: What can you say of your last seven days? Anne: They were tired. Interrogator: One day is enough to perfect a man. Anne: I watered and fed the plant. My undertaker waits for me. he is probably twenty-three now, learning his trade. He'll stitch up the gren, he'll fasten the bones down lest they fly away. I am flying today. I am not tired today. I am a motor. I am cramming in the sugar. I am running up the hallways. I am squeezing out the milk. I am dissecting the dictionary. I am God, la de dah. Peanut butter is the American food. We all eat it, being patriotic. Ms. Dog is out fighting the dollars, rolling in a field of bucks. You've got it made if you take the wafer, take some wine, take some bucks, the green papery song of the office. What a jello she could make with it, the fives, the tens, the twenties, 98 all in a goo to feed the baby. Andrew Jackson as an hors d'oeuvre, la de dah. I wish I were the U.S. Mint, turning it all out, turtle green and monk black. Who's that at the podium in black and white, blurting into the mike? Ms. Dog. Is she spilling her guts? You bet. Otherwise they cough… The day is slipping away, why am I out here, what do they want? I am sorrowful in November… (no they don't want that, they want bee stings). Toot, toot, tootsy don't cry. Toot, toot, tootsy good-bye. If you don't get a letter then you'll know I'm in jail… Remember that, Skeezix, our first song? Who's thinking those things? Ms. Dog! She's out fighting the dollars. Milk is the American drink. Oh queens of sorrows, oh water lady, place me in your cup and pull over the clouds so no one can see. She don't want no dollars. She done want a mama. The white of the white. Anne says: This is the rainy season. I am sorrowful in November. The kettle is whistling. 99 I must butter the toast. And give it jam too. My kitchen is a heart. I must feed it oxygen once in a while and mother the mother. Say the woman is forty-four. Say she is five seven-and-a-half. Say her hair is stick color. Say her eyes are chameleon. Would you put her in a sack and bury her, suck her down into the dumb dirt? Some would. If not, time will. Ms. Dog, how much time you got left? Ms. Dog, when you gonna feel that cold nose? You better get straight with the Maker cuz it's coming, it's a coming! The cup of coffee is growing and growing and they're gonna stick your little doll's head into it and your lungs a gonna get paid and your clothes a gonna melt. Hear that, Ms. Dog! You of the songs, you of the classroom, you of the pocketa-pocketa, you hungry mother, you spleen baby! Them angels gonna be cut down like wheat. Them songs gonna be sliced with a razor. Them kitchens gonna get a boulder in the belly. Them phones gonna be torn out at the root. There's power in the Lord, baby, and he's gonna turn off the moon. He's gonna nail you up in a closet and there'll be no more Atlantic, no more dreams, no more seeds. One noon as you walk out to the mailbox He'll snatch you up a wopman beside the road like a red mitten. 100 There's a sack over my head. I can't see. I'm blind. The sea collapses. The sun is a bone. Hi-ho the derry-o, we all fall down. If I were a fisherman I could comprehend. They fish right through the door and pull eyes from the fire. They rock upon the daybreak and amputate the waters. They are beating the sea, they are hurting it, delving down into the inscrutable salt. When mother left the room and left me in the big black and sent away my kitty to be fried in the camps and took away my blanket to wash the me out of it I lay in the soiled cold and prayed. It was a little jail in which I was never slapped with kisses. I was the engine that couldn't. Cold wigs blew on the trees outside and car lights flew like roosters on the ceiling. Cradle, you are a grave place. Interrogator: What color is the devil? Anne: Black and blue. Interrogator: What goes up the chimney? 101 Anne: Fat Lazarus in his red suit. Forgive us, Father, for we know not. Ms. Dog prefers to sunbathe nude. Let the indifferent sky look on. So what! Let Mrs. Sewal pull the curtain back, from her second story. So what! Let United Parcel Service see my parcel. La de dah. Sun, you hammer of yellow, you hat on fire, you honeysuckle mama, pour your blonde on me! Let me laugh for an entire hour at your supreme being, your Cadillac stuff, because I've come a long way from Brussels sprouts. I've come a long way to peel off my clothes and lay me down in the grass. Once only my palms showed. Once I hung around in my woolly tank suit, drying my hair in those little meatball curls. Now I am clothed in gold air with one dozen halos glistening on my skin. I am a fortunate lady. I've gotten out of my pouch and my teeth are glad and my heart, that witness, beats well at the thought. Oh body, be glad. You are good goods. Middle-class lady, you make me smile. You dig a hole 102 and come out with a sunburn. If someone hands you a glass of water you start constructing a sailboat. If someone hands you a candy wrapper, you take it to the book binder. Pocketa-pocketa. Once upon a time Ms. Dog was sixty-six. She had white hair and wrinkles deep as splinters. her portrait was nailed up like Christ and she said of it: That's when I was forty-two, down in Rockport with a hat on for the sun, and Barbara drew a line drawing. We were, at that moment, drinking vodka and ginger beer and there was a chill in the air, although it was July, and she gave me her sweater to bundle up in. The next summer Skeezix tied strings in that hat when we were fishing in Maine. (It had gone into the lake twice.) Of such moments is happiness made. Forgive us, Father, for we know not. Once upon a time we were all born, popped out like jelly rolls forgetting our fishdom, the pleasuring seas, the country of comfort, spanked into the oxygens of death, Good morning life, we say when we wake, hail mary coffee toast and we Americans take juice, a liquid sun going down. Good morning life. To wake up is to be born. To brush your teeth is to be alive. To make a bowel movement is also desireable. La de dah, it's all routine. Often there are wars yet the shops keep open 103 and sausages are still fried. People rub someone. People copulate entering each other's blood, tying each other's tendons in knots, transplanting their lives into the bed. It doesn't matter if there are wars, the business of life continues unless you're the one that gets it. Mama, they say, as their intestines leak out. Even without wars life is dangerous. Boats spring leaks. Cigarettes explode. The snow could be radioactive. Cancer could ooze out of the radio. Who knows? Ms. Dog stands on the shore and the sea keeps rocking in and she wants to talk to God. Interrogator: Why talk to God? Anne: It's better than playing bridge. Learning to talk is a complex business. My daughter's first word was utta, meaning button. Before there are words do you dream? In utero do you dream? Who taught you to suck? And how come? You don't need to be taught to cry. The soul presses a button. Is the cry saying something? Does it mean help? 104 Or hello? The cry of a gull is beautiful and the cry of a crow is ugly but what I want to know is whether they mean the same thing. Somewhere a man sits with indigestion and he doesn't care. A woman is buying bracelets and earrings and she doesn't care. La de dah. Forgive us, Father, for we know not. There are stars and faces. There is ketchup and guitars. There is the hand of a small child when you're crossing the street. There is the old man's last words: More light! More light! Ms. Dog wouldn't give them her buttocks. She wouldn't moon at them. Just at the killers of the dream. The bus boys of the soul. Or at death who wants to make her a mummy. And you too! Wants to stuf her in a cold shoe and then amputate the foot. And you too! La de dah. What's the point of fighting the dollars when all you need is a warm bed? When the dog barks you let him in. All we need is someone to let us in. And one other thing: to consider the lilies in the field. Of course earth is a stranger, we pull at its arms and still it won't speak. The sea is worse. It comes in, falling to its knees but we can't translate the language. It is only known that they are here to worship, 105 to worship the terror of the rain, the mud and all its people, the body itself, working like a city, the night and its slow blood the autumn sky, mary blue. but more than that, to worship the question itself, though the buildings burn and the big people topple over in a faint. Bring a flashlight, Ms. Dog, and look in every corner of the brain and ask and ask and ask until the kingdom, however queer, will come. ~ Anne Sexton,

200:The Bounty [for Alix Walcott] Between the vision of the Tourist Board and the true Paradise lies the desert where Isaiah's elations force a rose from the sand. The thirty-third canto cores the dawn clouds with concentric radiance, the breadfruit opens its palms in praise of the bounty, bois-pain, tree of bread, slave food, the bliss of John Clare, torn, wandering Tom, stoat-stroker in his county of reeds and stalk-crickets, fiddling the dank air, lacing his boots with vines, steering glazed beetles with the tenderest prods, knight of the cockchafer, wrapped in the mists of shires, their snail-horned steeples palms opening to the cupped pool—but his soul safer than ours, though iron streams fetter his ankles. Frost whitening his stubble, he stands in the ford of a brook like the Baptist lifting his branches to bless cathedrals and snails, the breaking of this new day, and the shadows of the beach road near which my mother lies, with the traffic of insects going to work anyway. The lizard on the white wall fixed on the hieroglyph of its stone shadow, the palms' rustling archery, the souls and sails of circling gulls rhyme with: "In la sua volont è nostra pace," In His will is our peace. Peace in white harbours, in marinas whose masts agree, in crescent melons left all night in the fridge, in the Egyptian labours of ants moving boulders of sugar, words in this sentence, shadow and light, who live next door like neighbours, 57 and in sardines with pepper sauce. My mother lies near the white beach stones, John Clare near the sea-almonds, yet the bounty returns each daybreak, to my surprise, to my surprise and betrayal, yes, both at once. I am moved like you, mad Tom, by a line of ants; I behold their industry and they are giants. ii There on the beach, in the desert, lies the dark well where the rose of my life was lowered, near the shaken plants, near a pool of fresh tears, tolled by the golden bell of allamanda, thorns of the bougainvillea, and that is their bounty! They shine with defiance from weed and flower, even those that flourish elsewhere, vetch, ivy, clematis, on whom the sun now rises with all its power, not for the Tourist Board or for Dante Alighieri, but because there is no other path for its wheel to take except to make the ruts of the beach road an allegory of this poem's career, of yours, that she died for the sake of a crowning wreath of false laurel; so, John Clare, forgive me, for this morning's sake, forgive me, coffee, and pardon me, milk with two packets of artificial sugar, as I watch these lines grow and the art of poetry harden me into sorrow as measured as this, to draw the veiled figure of Mamma entering the standard elegiac. No, there is grief, there will always be, but it must not madden, like Clare, who wept for a beetle's loss, for the weight of the world in a bead of dew on clematis or vetch, and the fire in these tinder-dry lines of this poem I hate as much as I love her, poor rain-beaten wretch, redeemer of mice, earl of the doomed protectorate of cavalry under your cloak; come on now, enough! 58 iii Bounty! In the bells of tree-frogs with their steady clamour in the indigo dark before dawn, the fading morse of fireflies and crickets, then light on the beetle's armour, and the toad's too-late presages, nettles of remorse that shall spring from her grave from the spade's heartbreak. And yet not to have loved her enough is to love more, if I confess it, and I confess it. The trickle of underground springs, the babble of swollen gulches under drenched ferns, loosening the grip of their roots, till their hairy clods like unclenching fists swirl wherever the gulch turns them, and the shuddering aftermath bends the rods of wild cane. Bounty in the ant's waking fury, in the snail's chapel stirring under wild yams, praise in decay and process, awe in the ordinary in wind that reads the lines of the breadfruit's palms in the sun contained in a globe of the crystal dew, bounty in the ants' continuing a line of raw flour, mercy on the mongoose scuttling past my door, in the light's parallelogram laid on the kitchen floor, for Thine is the Kingdom, the Glory, and the Power, the bells of Saint Clement's in the marigolds on the altar, in the bougainvillea's thorns, in the imperial lilac and the feathery palms that nodded at the entry into Jerusalem, the weight of the world on the back of an ass; dismounting, He left His cross there for sentry and sneering centurion; then I believed in His Word, in a widow's immaculate husband, in pews of brown wood, when the cattle-bell of the chapel summoned our herd 59 into the varnished stalls, in whose rustling hymnals I heard the fresh Jacobean springs, the murmur Clare heard of bounty abiding, the clear language she taught us, "as the hart panteth," at this, her keen ears pronged while her three fawns nibbled the soul-freshening waters, "as the hart panteth for the water-brooks" that belonged to the language in which I mourn her now, or when I showed her my first elegy, her husband's, and then her own. iv But can she or can she not read this? Can you read this, Mamma, or hear it? If I took the pulpit, lay-preacher like tender Clare, like poor Tom, so that look, Miss! the ants come to you like children, their beloved teacher Alix, but unlike the silent recitation of the infants, the choir that Clare and Tom heard in their rainy county, we have no solace but utterance, hence this wild cry. Snails move into harbour, the breadfruit plants on the Bounty will be heaved aboard, and the white God is Captain Bligh. Across white feathery grave-grass the shadow of the soul passes, the canvas cracks open on the cross-trees of the Bounty, and the Trades lift the shrouds of the resurrected sail. All move in their passage to the same mother-country, the dirt-clawing weasel, the blank owl or sunning seal. Faith grows mutinous. The ribbed body with its cargo stalls in its doldrums, the God-captain is cast adrift by a mutinous Christian, in the wake of the turning Argo plants bob in the ocean's furrows, their shoots dip and lift, and the soul's Australia is like the New Testament after the Old World, the code of an eye for an eye; the horizon spins slowly and Authority's argument 60 diminishes in power, in the longboat with Captain Bligh. This was one of your earliest lessons, how the Christ-Son questions the Father, to settle on another island, haunted by Him, by the speck of a raging deity on the ruled horizon, diminishing in meaning and distance, growing more dim: all these predictable passages that we first disobey before we become what we challenged; but you never altered your voice, either sighing or sewing, you would pray to your husband aloud, pedalling the hymns we all heard in the varnished pew: "There Is a Green Hill Far Away," "Jerusalem the Golden." Your melody faltered but never your faith in the bounty which is His Word. All of these waves crepitate from the culture of Ovid, its sibilants and consonants; a universal metre piles up these signatures like inscriptions of seaweed that dry in the pungent sun, lines ruled by mitre and laurel, or spray swiftly garlanding the forehead of an outcrop (and I hope this settles the matter of presences). No soul was ever invented, yet every presence is transparent; if I met her (in her nightdress ankling barefoot, crooning to the shallows), should I call her shadow that of a pattern invented by Graeco-Roman design, columns of shadows cast by the Forum, Augustan perspectives— poplars, casuarina-colonnades, the in-and-out light of almonds made from original Latin, no leaf but the olive's? Questions of pitch. Faced with seraphic radiance (don't interrupt!), mortals rub their skeptical eyes that hell is a beach-fire at night where embers dance, with temporal fireflies like thoughts of Paradise; 61 but there are inexplicable instincts that keep recurring not from hope or fear only, that are real as stones, the faces of the dead we wait for as ants are transferring their cities, though we no longer believe in the shining ones. I half-expect to see you no longer, then more than half, almost never, or never then—there I have said it— but felt something less than final at the edge of your grave, some other something somewhere, equally dreaded, since the fear of the infinite is the same as death, unendurable brightness, the substantial dreading its own substance, dissolving to gases and vapours, like our dread of distance; we need a horizon, a dividing line that turns the stars into neighbours though infinity separates them, we can think of only one sun: all I am saying is that the dread of death is in the faces we love, the dread of our dying, or theirs; therefore we see in the glint of immeasurable spaces not stars or falling embers, not meteors, but tears. vi The mango trees serenely rust when they are in flower, nobody knows the name for that voluble cedar whose bell-flowers fall, the pomme-arac purples its floor. The blue hills in late afternoon always look sadder. The country night waiting to come in outside the door; the firefly keeps striking matches, and the hillside fumes with a bluish signal of charcoal, then the smoke burns into a larger question, one that forms and unforms, then loses itself in a cloud, till the question returns. Buckets clatter under pipes, villages begin at corners. A man and his trotting dog come back from their garden. 62 The sea blazes beyond the rust roofs, dark is on us before we know it. The earth smells of what's done, small yards brighten, day dies and its mourners begin, the first wreath of gnats; this was when we sat down on bright verandahs watching the hills die. Nothing is trite once the beloved have vanished; empty clothes in a row, but perhaps our sadness tires them who cherished delight; not only are they relieved of our customary sorrow, they are without hunger, without any appetite, but are part of earth's vegetal fury; their veins grow with the wild mammy-apple, the open-handed breadfruit, their heart in the open pomegranate, in the sliced avocado; ground-doves pick from their palms; ants carry the freight of their sweetness, their absence in all that we eat, their savour that sweetens all of our multiple juices, their faith that we break and chew in a wedge of cassava, and here at first is the astonishment: that earth rejoices in the middle of our agony, earth that will have her for good: wind shines white stones and the shallows' voices. vii In spring, after the bear's self-burial, the stuttering crocuses open and choir, glaciers shelve and thaw, frozen ponds crack into maps, green lances spring from the melting fields, flags of rooks rise and tatter the pierced light, the crumbling quiet avalanches of an unsteady sky; the vole uncoils and the otter worries his sleek head through the verge's branches; crannies, culverts, and creeks roar with wrist-numbing water. Deer vault invisible hurdles and sniff the sharp air, squirrels spring up like questions, berries easily redden, 63 edges delight in their own shapes (whoever their shaper). But here there is one season, our viridian Eden is that of the primal garden that engendered decay, from the seed of a beetle's shard or a dead hare white and forgotten as winter with spring on its way. There is no change now, no cycles of spring, autumn, winter, nor an island's perpetual summer; she took time with her; no climate, no calendar except for this bountiful day. As poor Tom fed his last crust to trembling birds, as by reeds and cold pools John Clare blest these thin musicians, let the ants teach me again with the long lines of words, my business and duty, the lesson you taught your sons, to write of the light's bounty on familiar things that stand on the verge of translating themselves into news: the crab, the frigate that floats on cruciform wings, and that nailed and thorn riddled tree that opens its pews to the blackbird that hasn't forgotten her because it sings. ~ Derek Walcott,

201:A Story At Dusk An evening all aglow with summer light And autumn colour—fairest of the year. The wheat-fields, crowned with shocks of tawny gold, All interspersed with rough sowthistle roots, And interlaced with white convolvulus, Lay, flecked with purple shadows, in the sun. The shouts of little children, gleaning there The scattered ears and wild blue-bottle flowers— Mixed with the corn-crake's crying, and the song Of lone wood birds whose mother-cares were o'er, And with the whispering rustle of red leaves— Scarce stirred the stillness. And the gossamer sheen Was spread on upland meadows, silver bright In low red sunshine and soft kissing wind— Showing where angels in the night had trailed Their garments on the turf. Tall arrow-heads, With flag and rush and fringing grasses, dropped Their seeds and blossoms in the sleepy pool. The water-lily lay on her green leaf, White, fair, and stately; while an amorous branch Of silver willow, drooping in the stream, Sent soft, low-babbling ripples towards her: And oh, the woods!—erst haunted with the song Of nightingales and tender coo of doves— They stood all flushed and kindling 'neath the touch Of death—kind death!—fair, fond, reluctant death!— A dappled mass of glory! Harvest-time; With russet wood-fruit thick upon the ground, 'Mid crumpled ferns and delicate blue harebells. The orchard-apples rolled in seedy grass— Apples of gold, and violet-velvet plums; And all the tangled hedgerows bore a crop Of scarlet hips, blue sloes, and blackberries, And orange clusters of the mountain ash. The crimson fungus and soft mosses clung To old decaying trunks; the summer bine Drooped, shivering, in the glossy ivy's grasp. 23 By day the blue air bore upon its wings Wide-wandering seeds, pale drifts of thistle-down; By night the fog crept low upon the earth, All white and cool, and calmed its feverishness, And veiled it over with a veil of tears. The curlew and the plover were come back To still, bleak shores; the little summer birds Were gone—to Persian gardens, and the groves Of Greece and Italy, and the palmy lands. A Norman tower, with moss and lichen clothed, Wherein old bells, on old worm-eaten frames And rusty wheels, had swung for centuries, Chiming the same soft chime—the lullaby Of cradled rooks and blinking bats and owls; Setting the same sweet tune, from year to year, For generations of true hearts to sing. A wide churchyard, with grassy slopes and nooks, And shady corners and meandering paths; With glimpses of dim windows and grey walls Just caught at here and there amongst the green Of flowering shrubs and sweet lime-avenues. An old house standing near—a parsonage-house— With broad thatched roof and overhanging eaves, O'errun with banksia roses,—a low house, With ivied windows and a latticed porch, Shut in a tiny Paradise, all sweet With hum of bees and scent of mignonette. We lay our lazy length upon the grass In that same Paradise, my friend and I. And, as we lay, we talked of college days— Wild, racing, hunting, steeple-chasing days; Of river reaches, fishing-grounds, and weirs, Bats, gloves, debates, and in-humanities: And then of boon-companions of those days, How lost and scattered, married, changed, and dead; Until he flung his arm across his face, And feigned to slumber. He was changed, my friend; Not like the man—the leader of his set— 24 The favourite of the college—that I knew. And more than time had changed him. He had been “A little wild,” the Lady Alice said; “A little gay, as all young men will be At first, before they settle down to life— While they have money, health, and no restraint, Nor any work to do,” Ah, yes! But this Was mystery unexplained—that he was sad And still and thoughtful, like an aged man; And scarcely thirty. With a winsome flash, The old bright heart would shine out here and there; But aye to be o'ershadowed and hushed down, As he had hushed it now. His dog lay near, With long, sharp muzzle resting on his paws, And wistful eyes, half shut,—but watching him; A deerhound of illustrious race, all grey And grizzled, with soft, wrinkled, velvet ears; A gaunt, gigantic, wolfish-looking brute, And worth his weight in gold. “There, there,” said he, And raised him on his elbow, “you have looked Enough at me; now look at some one else.” “You could not see him, surely, with your arm Across your face?” “No, but I felt his eyes; They are such sharp, wise eyes—persistent eyes— Perpetually reproachful. Look at them; Had ever dog such eyes?” “Oh yes,” I thought; But, wondering, turned my talk upon his breed. And was he of the famed Glengarry stock? And in what season was he entered? Where, Pray, did he pick him up? He moved himself At that last question, with a little writhe Of sudden pain or restlessness; and sighed. And then he slowly rose, pushed back the hair From his broad brows; and, whistling softly, said, “Come here, old dog, and we will tell him. Come.” 25 “On such a day, and such a time, as this, Old Tom and I were stalking on the hills, Near seven years ago. Bad luck was ours; For we had searched up corrie, glen, and burn, From earliest daybreak—wading to the waist Peat-rift and purple heather—all in vain! We struck a track nigh every hour, to lose A noble quarry by ignoble chance— The crowing of a grouse-cock, or the flight Of startled mallards from a reedy pool, Or subtle, hair's breadth veering of the wind. And now 'twas waning sunset—rosy soft On far grey peaks, and the green valley spread Beneath us. We had climbed a ridge, and lay Debating in low whispers of our plans For night and morning. Golden eagles sailed Above our heads; the wild ducks swam about Amid the reeds and rushes of the pools; A lonely heron stood on one long leg In shallow water, watching for a meal; And there, to windward, couching in the grass That fringed the blue edge of a sleeping loch— Waiting for dusk to feed and drink—there lay A herd of deer. “And as we looked and planned, A mountain storm of sweeping mist and rain Came down upon us. It passed by, and left The burnies swollen that we had to cross; And left us barely light enough to see The broad, black, branching antlers, clustering still Amid the long grass in the valley. “‘Sir,’ Said Tom, ‘there is a shealing down below, To leeward. We might bivouac there to-night, And come again at dawn.’ “And so we crept Adown the glen, and stumbled in the dark Against the doorway of the keeper's home, 26 And over two big deerhounds—ancestors Of this our old companion. There was light And warmth, a welcome and a heather bed, At Colin's cottage; with a meal of eggs And fresh trout, broiled by dainty little hands, And sweetest milk and oatcake. There were songs And Gaelic legends, and long talk of deer— Mixt with a sweet, low laughter, and the whir Of spinning-wheel. “The dogs lay at her feet— The feet of Colin's daughter—with their soft Dark velvet ears pricked up for every sound And movement that she made. Right royal brutes, Whereon I gazed with envy. “ ‘What,’ I asked, ‘Would Colin take for these?’ “ ‘Eh, sir,’ said he, And shook his head, ‘I cannot sell the dogs. They're priceless, they, and—Jeanie's favourites. But there's a litter in the shed—five pups, As like as peas to this one. You may choose Amongst them, sir—take any that you like. Get us the lantern, Jeanie. You shall show The gentleman.’ “Ah, she was fair, that girl! Not like the other lassies—cottage folk; For there was subtle trace of gentle blood Through all her beauty and in all her ways. (The mother's race was ‘poor and proud,’ they said). Ay, she was fair, my darling! with her shy, Brown, innocent face and delicate-shapen limbs. She had the tenderest mouth you ever saw, And grey, dark eyes, and broad, straight-pencill'd brows; Dark hair, sun-dappled with a sheeny gold; Dark chestnut braids that knotted up the light, As soft as satin. You could scarcely hear Her step, or hear the rustling of her gown, Or the soft hovering motion of her hands At household work. She seemed to bring a spell Of tender calm and silence where she came. You felt her presence—and not by its stir, 27 But by its restfulness. She was a sight To be remembered—standing in the straw; A sleepy pup soft-cradled in her arms Like any Christian baby; standing still, The while I handled his ungainly limbs. And Colin blustered of the sport—of hounds, Roe, ptarmigan, and trout, and ducal deer— Ne'er lifting up that sweet, unconscious face, To see why I was silent. Oh, I would You could have seen her then. She was so fair, And oh, so young!—scarce seventeen at most— So ignorant and so young! “Tell them, my friend— Your flock—the restless-hearted—they who scorn The ordered fashion fitted to our race, And scoff at laws they may not understand— Tell them that they are fools. They cannot mate With other than their kind, but woe will come In some shape—mostly shame, but always grief And disappointment. Ah, my love! my love! But she was different from the common sort; A peasant, ignorant, simple, undefiled; The child of rugged peasant-parents, taught In all their thoughts and ways; yet with that touch Of tender grace about her, softening all The rougher evidence of her lowly state— That undefined, unconscious dignity— That delicate instinct for the reading right The riddles of less simple minds than hers— That sharper, finer, subtler sense of life— That something which does not possess a name, Which made her beauty beautiful to me— The long-lost legacy of forgotten knights. “I chose amongst the five fat creeping things This rare old dog. And Jeanie promised kind And gentle nurture for its infant days; And promised she would keep it till I came Another year. And so we went to rest. And in the morning, ere the sun was up, We left our rifles, and went out to run 28 The browsing red-deer with old Colin's hounds. Through glen and bog, through brawling mountain streams, Grey, lichened boulders, furze, and juniper, And purple wilderness of moor, we toiled, Ere yet the distant snow-peak was alight. We chased a hart to water; saw him stand At bay, with sweeping antlers, in the burn. His large, wild, wistful eyes despairingly Turned to the deeper eddies; and we saw The choking struggle and the bitter end, And cut his gallant throat upon the grass, And left him. Then we followed a fresh track— A dozen tracks—and hunted till the noon; Shot cormorants and wild cats in the cliffs, And snipe and blackcock on the ferny hills; And set our floating night-lines at the loch;— And then came back to Jeanie. “Well, you know What follows such commencement:—how I found The woods and corries round about her home Fruitful of roe and red-deer; how I found The grouse lay thickest on adjacent moors; Discovered ptarmigan on rocky peaks, And rare small game on birch-besprinkled hills, O'ershadowing that rude shealing; how the pools Were full of wild-fowl, and the loch of trout; How vermin harboured in the underwood, And rocks, and reedy marshes; how I found The sport aye best in this charmed neighbourhood. And then I e'en must wander to the door, To leave a bird for Colin, or to ask A lodging for some stormy night, or see How fared my infant deerhound. “And I saw The creeping dawn unfolding; saw the doubt, And faith, and longing swaying her sweet heart; And every flow just distancing the ebb. I saw her try to bar the golden gates Whence love demanded egress,—calm her eyes, And still the tender, sensitive, tell-tale lips, And steal away to corners; saw her face 29 Grow graver and more wistful, day by day; And felt the gradual strengthening of my hold. I did not stay to think of it—to ask What I was doing! “In the early time, She used to slip away to household work When I was there, and would not talk to me; But when I came not, she would climb the glen In secret, and look out, with shaded brow, Across the valley. Ay, I caught her once— Like some young helpless doe, amongst the fern— I caught her, and I kissed her mouth and eyes; And with those kisses signed and sealed our fate For evermore. Then came our happy days— The bright, brief, shining days without a cloud! In ferny hollows and deep, rustling woods, That shut us in and shut out all the world— The far, forgotten world—we met, and kissed, And parted, silent, in the balmy dusk. We haunted still roe-coverts, hand in hand, And murmured, under our breath, of love and faith, And swore great oaths for one of us to keep. We sat for hours, with sealèd lips, and heard The crossbill chattering in the larches—heard The sweet wind whispering as it passed us by— And heard our own hearts' music in the hush. Ah, blessed days! ah, happy, innocent days!— I would I had them back. “Then came the Duke, And Lady Alice, with her worldly grace And artificial beauty—with the gleam Of jewels, and the dainty shine of silk, And perfumed softness of white lace and lawn; With all the glamour of her courtly ways, Her talk of art and fashion, and the world We both belonged to. Ah, she hardened me! I lost the sweetness of the heathery moors And hills and quiet woodlands, in that scent Of London clubs and royal drawing-rooms; I lost the tender chivalry of my love, The keen sense of its sacredness, the clear Perception of mine honour, by degrees, 30 Brought face to face with customs of my kind. I was no more a “man;” nor she, my love, A delicate lily of womanhood—ah, no! I was the heir of an illustrious house, And she a simple, homespun cottage-girl. “And now I stole at rarer intervals To those dim trysting woods; and when I came I brought my cunning worldly wisdom—talked Of empty forms and marriages in heaven— To stain that simple soul, God pardon me! And she would shiver in the stillness, scared And shocked, with her pathetic eyes—aye proof Against the fatal, false philosophy. But my will was the strongest, and my love The weakest; and she knew it. “Well, well, well, I need not talk of that. There came the day Of our last parting in the ferny glen— A bitter parting, parting from my life, Its light and peace for ever! And I turned To balls and billiards, politics and wine; Was wooed by Lady Alice, and half won; And passed a feverous winter in the world. Ah, do not frown! You do not understand. You never knew that hopeless thirst for peace— That gnawing hunger, gnawing at your life; The passion, born too late! I tell you, friend, The ruth, and love, and longing for my child, It broke my heart at last. “In the hot days Of August, I went back; I went alone. And on old garrulous Margery—relict she Of some departed seneschal—I rained My eager questions. ‘Had the poaching been As ruinous and as audacious as of old? Were the dogs well? and had she felt the heat? And—I supposed the keeper, Colin, still Was somewhere on the place?’ “ ‘Nay, sir,’; said she, ‘But he has left the neighbourhood. He ne'er 31 Has held his head up since he lost his child, Poor soul, a month ago.’ “I heard—I heard! His child—he had but one—my little one, Whom I had meant to marry in a week! “ ‘Ah, sir, she turned out badly after all, The girl we thought a pattern for all girls. We know not how it happened, for she named No names. And, sir, it preyed upon her mind, And weakened it; and she forgot us all, And seemed as one aye walking in her sleep She noticed no one—no one but the dog, A young deerhound that followed her about; Though him she hugged and kissed in a strange way When none was by. And Colin, he was hard Upon the girl; and when she sat so still, And pale and passive, while he raved and stormed, Looking beyond him, as it were, he grew The harder and more harsh. He did not know That she was not herself. Men are so blind! But when he saw her floating in the loch, The moonlight on her face, and her long hair All tangled in the rushes; saw the hound Whining and crying, tugging at her plaid— Ah, sir, it was a death-stroke!’ “This was all. This was the end of her sweet life—the end Of all worth having of mine own! At night I crept across the moors to find her grave, And kiss the wet earth covering it—and found The deerhound lying there asleep. Ay me! It was the bitterest darkness,—nevermore To break out into dawn and day again! “And Lady Alice shakes her dainty head, Lifts her arch eyebrows, smiles, and whispers, “Once He was a little wild!’ ” With that he laughed; Then suddenly flung his face upon the grass, Crying, “Leave me for a little—let me be!” And in the dusky stillness hugged his woe, 32 And wept away his passion by himself. ~ Ada Cambridge,

202:Senlin: His Futile Preoccupations I am a house, says Senlin, locked and darkened, Sealed from the sun with wall and door and blind. Summon me loudly, and you'll hear slow footsteps Ring far and faint in the galleries of my mind. You'll hear soft steps on an old and dusty stairway; Peer darkly through some corner of a pane, You'll see me with a faint light coming slowly, Pausing above some gallery of the brain . . . I am a city . . . In the blue light of evening Wind wanders among my streets and makes them fair; I am a room of rock . . . a maiden dances Lifting her hands, tossing her golden hair. She combs her hair, the room of rock is darkened, She extends herself in me, and I am sleep. It is my pride that starlight is above me; I dream amid waves of air, my walls are deep. I am a door . . . before me roils the darkness, Behind me ring clear waves of sound and light. Stand in the shadowy street outside, and listen-The crying of violins assails the night . . . My walls are deep, but the cries of music pierce them; They shake with the sound of drums . . . yet it is strange That I should know so little what means this music, Hearing it always within me change and change. Knock on the door,--and you shall have an answer. Open the heavy walls to set me free, And blow a horn to call me into the sunlight,-And startled, then, what a strange thing you will see! Nuns, murderers, and drunkards, saints and sinners, Lover and dancing girl and sage and clown Will laugh upon you, and you will find me nowhere. I am a room, a house, a street, a town. 127 It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning When the light drips through the shutters like the dew, I arise, I face the sunrise, And do the things my fathers learned to do. Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die, And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet Stand before a glass and tie my tie. Vine leaves tap my window, Dew-drops sing to the garden stones, The robin chips in the chinaberry tree Repeating three clear tones. It is morning. I stand by the mirror And tie my tie once more. While waves far off in a pale rose twilight Crash on a white sand shore. I stand by a mirror and comb my hair: How small and white my face!-The green earth tilts through a sphere of air And bathes in a flame of space. There are houses hanging above the stars And stars hung under a sea . . . And a sun far off in a shell of silence Dapples my walls for me . . . It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning Should I not pause in the light to remember God? Upright and firm I stand on a star unstable, He is immense and lonely as a cloud. I will dedicate this moment before my mirror To him alone, and for him I will comb my hair. Accept these humble offerings, cloud of silence! I will think of you as I descend the stair. Vine leaves tap my window, The snail-track shines on the stones, Dew-drops flash from the chinaberry tree Repeating two clear tones. 128 It is morning, I awake from a bed of silence, Shining I rise from the starless waters of sleep. The walls are about me still as in the evening, I am the same, and the same name still I keep. The earth revolves with me, yet makes no motion, The stars pale silently in a coral sky. In a whistling void I stand before my mirror, Unconcerned, I tie my tie. There are horses neighing on far-off hills Tossing their long white manes, And mountains flash in the rose-white dusk, Their shoulders black with rains . . . It is morning. I stand by the mirror And surprise my soul once more; The blue air rushes above my ceiling, There are suns beneath my floor . . . . . . It is morning, Senlin says, I ascend from darkness And depart on the winds of space for I know not where, My watch is wound, a key is in my pocket, And the sky is darkened as I descend the stair. There are shadows across the windows, clouds in heaven, And a god among the stars; and I will go Thinking of him as I might think of daybreak And humming a tune I know . . . Vine-leaves tap at the window, Dew-drops sing to the garden stones, The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree Repeating three clear tones. I walk to my work, says Senlin, along a street Superbly hung in space. I lift these mortal stones, and with my trowel I tap them into place. But is god, perhaps, a giant who ties his tie Grimacing before a colossal glass of sky? 129 These stones are heavy, these stones decay, These stones are wet with rain, I build them into a wall today, Tomorrow they fall again. Does god arise from a chaos of starless sleep, Rise from the dark and stretch his arms and yawn; And drowsily look from the window at his garden; And rejoice at the dewdrop sparkeling on his lawn? Does he remember, suddenly, with amazement, The yesterday he left in sleep,--his name,-Or the glittering street superbly hung in wind Along which, in the dusk, he slowly came? I devise new patterns for laying stones And build a stronger wall. One drop of rain astonishes me And I let my trowel fall. The flashing of leaves delights my eyes, Blue air delights my face; I will dedicate this stone to god And tap it into its place. That woman--did she try to attract my attention? Is it true I saw her smile and nod? She turned her head and smiled . . . was it for me? It is better to think of work or god. The clouds pile coldly above the houses Slow wind revolves the leaves: It begins to rain, and the first long drops Are slantingly blown from eaves. But it is true she tried to attract my attention! She pressed a rose to her chin and smiled. Her hand was white by the richness of her hair, Her eyes were those of a child. It is true she looked at me as if she liked me. And turned away, afraid to look too long! 130 She watched me out of the corners of her eyes; And, tapping time with fingers, hummed a song. . . . Nevertheless, I will think of work, With a trowel in my hands; Or the vague god who blows like clouds Above these dripping lands . . . But . . . is it sure she tried to attract my attention? She leaned her elbow in a peculiar way There in the crowded room . . . she touched my hand . . . She must have known, and yet,--she let it stay. Music of flesh! Music of root and sod! Leaf touching leaf in the rain! Impalpable clouds of red ascend, Red clouds blow over my brain. Did she await from me some sign of acceptance? I smoothed my hair with a faltering hand. I started a feeble smile, but the smile was frozen: Perhaps, I thought, I misunderstood. Is it to be conceived that I could attract her-This dull and futile flesh attract such fire? I,--with a trowel's dullness in hand and brain!-Take on some godlike aspect, rouse desire? Incredible! . . . delicious! . . . I will wear A brighter color of tie, arranged with care, I will delight in god as I comb my hair. And the conquests of my bolder past return Like strains of music, some lost tune Recalled from youth and a happier time. I take my sweetheart's arm in the dusk once more; One more we climb Up the forbidden stairway, Under the flickering light, along the railing: I catch her hand in the dark, we laugh once more, I hear the rustle of silk, and follow swiftly, And softly at last we close the door. Yes, it is true that woman tried to attract me: 131 It is true she came out of time for me, Came from the swirling and savage forest of earth, The cruel eternity of the sea. She parted the leaves of waves and rose from silence Shining with secrets she did not know. Music of dust! Music of web and web! And I, bewildered, let her go. I light my pipe. The flame is yellow, Edged underneath with blue. These thoughts are truer of god, perhaps, Than thoughts of god are true. It is noontime, Senlin says, and a street piano Strikes sharply against the sunshine a harsh chord, And the universe is suddenly agitated, And pain to my heart goes glittering like a sword. Do I imagine it? The dust is shaken, The sunlight quivers, the brittle oak-leaves tremble. The world, disturbed, conceals its agitation; And I, too, will dissemble. Yet it is sorrow has found my heart, Sorrow for beauty, sorrow for death; And pain twirls slowly among the trees. The street-piano revolves its glittering music, The sharp notes flash and dazzle and turn, Memory's knives are in this sunlit silence, They ripple and lazily burn. The star on which my shadow falls is frightened,-It does not move; my trowel taps a stone, The sweet note wavers amid derisive music; And I, in horror of sunlight, stand alone. Do not recall my weakness, savage music! Let the knives rest! Impersonal, harsh, the music revolves and glitters, And the notes like poniards pierce my breast. And I remember the shadows of webs on stones, 132 And the sound or rain on withered grass, And a sorrowful face that looked without illusions At its image in the glass. Do not recall my childhood, pitiless music! The green blades flicker and gleam, The red bee bends the clover, deeply humming; In the blue sea above me lazily stream Cloud upon thin-brown cloud, revolving, scattering; The mulberry tree rakes heaven and drops its fruit; Amazing sunlight sings in the opened vault On dust and bones, and I am mute. It is noon; the bells let fall soft flowers of sound. They turn on the air, they shrink in the flare of noon. It is night; and I lie alone, and watch through the window The terrible ice-white emptiness of the moon. Small bells, far off, spill jewels of sound like rain, A long wind hurries them whirled and far, A cloud creeps over the moon, my bed is darkened, I hold my breath and watch a star. Do not disturb my memories, heartless music! I stand once more by a vine-dark moonlit wall, The sound of my footsteps dies in a void of moonlight, And I watch white jasmine fall. Is it my heart that falls? Does earth itself Drift, a white petal, down the sky? One bell-note goes to the stars in the blue-white silence, Solitary and mournful, a somnolent cry. Death himself in the rain . . . death himself . . . Death in the savage sunlight . . . skeletal death . . . I hear the clack of his feet, Clearly on stones, softly in dust; He hurries among the trees Whirling the leaves, tossing he hands from waves. Listen! the immortal footsteps beat. Death himself in the grass, death himself, 133 Gyrating invisibly in the sun, Scatters the grass-blades, whips the wind, Tears at boughs with malignant laughter: On the long echoing air I hear him run. Death himself in the dusk, gathering lilacs, Breaking a white-fleshed bough, Strewing purple on a cobwebbed lawn, Dancing, dancing, The long red sun-rays glancing On flailing arms, skipping with hideous knees Cavorting grotesque ecstasies: I do not see him, but I see the lilacs fall, I hear the scrape of knuckles against the wall, The leaves are tossed and tremble where he plunges among them, And I hear the sound of his breath, Sharp and whistling, the rythm of death. It is evening: the lights on a long street balance and sway. In the purple ether they swing and silently sing, The street is a gossamer swung in space, And death himself in the wind comes dancing along it, And the lights, like raindrops, tremble and swing. Hurry, spider, and spread your glistening web, For death approaches! Hurry, rose, and open your heart to the bee, For death approaches! Maiden, let down your hair for the hands of your lover, Comb it with moonlight and wreathe it with leaves, For death approaches! Death, huge in the star; small in the sand-grain; Death himself in the rain, Drawing the rain about him like a garment of jewels: I hear the sound of his feet On the stairs of the wind, in the sun, In the forests of the sea . . . Listen! the immortal footsteps beat! It is noontime, Senlin says. The sky is brilliant 134 Above a green and dreaming hill. I lay my trowel down. The pool is cloudless, The grass, the wall, the peach-tree, all are still. It appears to me that I am one with these: A hill, upon whose back are a wall and trees. It is noontime: all seems still Upon this green and flowering hill. Yet suddenly out of nowhere in the sky, A cloud comes whirling, and flings A lazily coiled vortex of shade on the hill. It crosses the hill, and a bird in the peach-tree sings. Amazing! Is there a change? The hill seems somehow strange. It is noontime. And in the tree The leaves are delicately disturbed Where the bird descends invisibly. It is noontime. And in the pool The sky is blue and cool. Yet suddenly out of nowhere, Something flings itself at the hill, Tears with claws at the earth, Lunges and hisses and softly recoils, Crashing against the green. The peach-tree braces itself, the pool is frightened, The grass-blades quiver, the bird is still; The wall silently struggles against the sunlight; A terror stiffens the hill. The trees turn rigidly, to face Something that circles with slow pace: The blue pool seems to shrink From something that slides above its brink. What struggle is this, ferocious and still-What war in sunlight on this hill? What is it creeping to dart Like a knife-blade at my heart? It is noontime, Senlin says, and all is tranquil: The brilliant sky burns over a greenbright earth. The peach-tree dreams in the sun, the wall is contented. 135 A bird in the peach-leaves, moving from sun to shadow, Phrases again his unremembering mirth, His lazily beautiful, foolish, mechanical mirth. The pale blue gloom of evening comes Among the phantom forests and walls With a mournful and rythmic sound of drums. My heart is disturbed with a sound of myriad throbbing, Persuasive and sinister, near and far: In the blue evening of my heart I hear the thrum of the evening star. My work is uncompleted; and yet I hurry,-Hearing the whispered pulsing of those drums,-To enter the luminous walls and woods of night. It is the eternal mistress of the world Who shakes these drums for my delight. Listen! the drums of the leaves, the drums of the dust, The delicious quivering of this air! I will leave my work unfinished, and I will go With ringing and certain step through the laughter of chaos To the one small room in the void I know. Yesterday it was there,-Will I find it tonight once more when I climb the stair? The drums of the street beat swift and soft: In the blue evening of my heart I hear the throb of the bridal star. It weaves deliciously in my brain A tyrannous melody of her: Hands in sunlight, threads of rain Against a weeping face that fades, Snow on a blackened window-pane; Fire, in a dusk of hair entangled; Flesh, more delicate than fruit; And a voice that searches quivering nerves For a string to mute. My life is uncompleted: and yet I hurry Among the tinkling forests and walls of evening 136 To a certain fragrant room. Who is it that dances there, to a beating of drums, While stars on a grey sea bud and bloom? She stands at the top of the stair, With the lamplight on her hair. I will walk through the snarling of streams of space And climb the long steps carved from wind And rise once more towards her face. Listen! the drums of the drowsy trees Beating our nuptial ecstasies! Music spins from the heart of silence And twirls me softly upon the air: It takes my hand and whispers to me: It draws the web of the moonlight down. There are hands, it says, as cool as snow, The hands of the Venus of the sea; There are waves of sound in a mermaid-cave;-Come--then--come with me! The flesh of the sea-rose new and cool, The wavering image of her who comes At dusk by a blue sea-pool. Whispers upon the haunted air-Whisper of foam-white arm and thigh; And a shower of delicate lights blown down Fro the laughing sky! . . . Music spins from a far-off room. Do you remember,--it seems to say,-The mouth that smiled, beneath your mouth, And kissed you . . . yesterday? It is your own flesh waits for you. Come! you are incomplete! . . . The drums of the universe once more Morosely beat. It is the harlot of the world Who clashes the leaves like ghostly drums And disturbs the solitude of my heart As evening comes! I leave my work once more and walk Along a street that sways in the wind. 137 I leave these stones, and walk once more Along infinity's shore. I climb the golden-laddered stair; Among the stars in the void I climb: I ascend the golden-laddered hair Of the harlot-queen of time: She laughs from a window in the sky, Her white arms downward reach to me! We are the universe that spins In a dim ethereal sea. It is evening, Senlin says, and in the evening The throbbing of drums has languidly died away. Forest and sea are still. We breathe in silence And strive to say the things flesh cannot say. The soulless wind falls slowly about the earth And finds no rest. The lover stares at the setting star,--the wakeful lover Who finds no peace on his lover's breast. The snare of desire that bound us in is broken; Softly, in sorrow, we draw apart, and see, Far off, the beauty we thought our flesh had captured,-The star we longed to be but could not be. Come back! We will laugh once more at the words we said! We say them slowly again, but the words are dead. Come back beloved! . . . The blue void falls between, We cry to each other: alone; unknown; unseen. We are the grains of sand that run and rustle In the dry wind, We are the grains of sand who thought ourselves Immortal. You touch my hand, time bears you away,-An alien star for whom I have no word. What are the meaningless things you say? I answer you, but am not heard. It is evening, Senlin says; And a dream in ruin falls. Once more we turn in pain, bewildered, 138 Among our finite walls: The walls we built ourselves with patient hands; For the god who sealed a question in our flesh. 10 It is moonlight. Alone in the silence I ascend my stairs once more, While waves, remote in a pale blue starlight, Crash on a white sand shore. It is moonlight. The garden is silent. I stand in my room alone. Across my wall, from the far-off moon, A rain of fire is thrown . . . There are houses hanging above the stars, And stars hung under a sea: And a wind from the long blue vault of time Waves my curtain for me . . . I wait in the dark once more, Swung between space and space: Before my mirror I lift my hands And face my remembered face. Is it I who stand in a question here, Asking to know my name? . . . It is I, yet I know not whither I go, Nor why, nor whence I came. It is I, who awoke at dawn And arose and descended the stair, Conceiving a god in the eye of the sun,-In a woman's hands and hair. It is I whose flesh is gray with the stones I builded into a wall: With a mournful melody in my brain Of a tune I cannot recall . . . There are roses to kiss: and mouths to kiss; And the sharp-pained shadow of death. I remember a rain-drop on my cheek,-- 139 A wind like a fragrant breath . . . And the star I laugh on tilts through heaven; And the heavens are dark and steep . . . I will forget these things once more In the silence of sleep. ~ Conrad Potter Aiken,

203:A Last Confession Our Lombard country-girls along the coast Wear daggers in their garters: for they know That they might hate another girl to death Or meet a German lover. Such a knife I bought her, with a hilt of horn and pearl. Father, you cannot know of all my thoughts That day in going to meet her,—that last day For the last time, she said;—of all the love And all the hopeless hope that she might change And go back with me. Ah! and everywhere, At places we both knew along the road, Some fresh shape of herself as once she was Grew present at my side; until it seemed— So close they gathered round me—they would all Be with me when I reached the spot at last, To plead my cause with her against herself So changed. O Father, if you knew all this You cannot know, then you would know too, Father, And only then, if God can pardon me. What can be told I'll tell, if you will hear. I passed a village-fair upon my road, And thought, being empty-handed, I would take Some little present: such might prove, I said, Either a pledge between us, or (God help me!) A parting gift. And there it was I bought The knife I spoke of, such as women wear. That day, some three hours afterwards, I found For certain, it must be a parting gift. And, standing silent now at last, I looked Into her scornful face; and heard the sea Still trying hard to din into my ears Some speech it knew which still might change her heart, If only it could make me understand. One moment thus. Another, and her face Seemed further off than the last line of sea, So that I thought, if now she were to speak I could not hear her. Then again I knew All, as we stood together on the sand At Iglio, in the first thin shade o' the hills. “Take it,” I said, and held it out to her, While the hilt glanced within my trembling hold; “Take it and keep it for my sake,” I said. Her neck unbent not, neither did her eyes Move, nor her foot left beating of the sand; Only she put it by from her and laughed. Father, you hear my speech and not her laugh; But God heard that. Will God remember all? It was another laugh than the sweet sound Which rose from her sweet childish heart, that day Eleven years before, when first I found her Alone upon the hill-side; and her curls Shook down in the warm grass as she looked up Out of her curls in my eyes bent to hers. She might have served a painter to pourtray That heavenly child which in the latter days Shall walk between the lion and the lamb. I had been for nights in hiding, worn and sick And hardly fed; and so her words at first Seemed fiftul like the talking of the trees And voices in the air that knew my name. And I remember that I sat me down Upon the slope with her, and thought the world Must be all over or had never been, We seemed there so alone. And soon she told me Her parents both were gone away from her. I thought perhaps she meant that they had died; But when I asked her this, she looked again Into my face and said that yestereve They kissed her long, and wept and made her weep, And gave her all the bread they had with them, And then had gone together up the hill Where we were sitting now, and had walked on Into the great red light; “and so,” she said, “I have come up here too; and when this evening They step out of the light as they stepped in, I shall be here to kiss them.” And she laughed. Then I bethought me suddenly of the famine; And how the church-steps throughout all the town, When last I had been there a month ago, Swarmed with starved folk; and how the bread was weighed By Austrians armed; and women that I knew 10 For wives and mothers walked the public street, Saying aloud that if their husbands feared To snatch the children's food, themselves would stay Till they had earned it there. So then this child Was piteous to me; for all told me then Her parents must have left her to God's chance, To man's or to the Church's charity, Because of the great famine, rather than To watch her growing thin between their knees. With that, God took my mother's voice and spoke, And sights and sounds came back and things long since, And all my childhood found me on the hills; And so I took her with me. I was young. Scarce man then, Father: but the cause which gave The wounds I die of now had brought me then Some wounds already; and I lived alone, As any hiding hunted man must live. It was no easy thing to keep a child In safety; for herself it was not safe, And doubled my own danger: but I knew That God would help me. Yet a little while Pardon me, Father, if I pause. I think I have been speaking to you of some matters There was no need to speak of, have I not? You do not know how clearly those things stood Within my mind, which I have spoken of, Nor how they strove for utterance. Life all past Is like the sky when the sun sets in it, Clearest where furthest off. I told you how She scorned my parting gift and laughed. And yet A woman's laugh's another thing sometimes: I think they laugh in Heaven. I know last night I dreamed I saw into the garden of God, Where women walked whose painted images I have seen with candles round them in the church. They bent this way and that, one to another, Playing: and over the long golden hair Of each there floated like a ring of fire Which when she stooped stooped with her, and when she rose 11 Rose with her. Then a breeze flew in among them, As if a window had been opened in heaven For God to give His blessing from, before This world of ours should set; (for in my dream I thought our world was setting, and the sun Flared, a spent taper; ) and beneath that gust The rings of light quivered like forest-leaves. Then all the blessed maidens who were there Stood up together, as it were a voice That called them; and they threw their tresses back, And smote their palms, and all laughed up at once, For the strong heavenly joy they had in them To hear God bless the world. Wherewith I woke: And looking round, I saw as usual That she was standing there with her long locks Pressed to her side; and her laugh ended theirs. For always when I see her now, she laughs. And yet her childish laughter haunts me too, The life of this dead terror; as in days When she, a child, dwelt with me. I must tell Something of those days yet before the end. I brought her from the city—one such day When she was still a merry loving child,— The earliest gift I mind my giving her; A little image of a flying Love Made of our coloured glass-ware, in his hands A dart of gilded metal and a torch. And him she kissed and me, and fain would know Why were his poor eyes blindfold, why the wings And why the arrow. What I knew I told Of Venus and of Cupid,—strange old tales. And when she heard that he could rule the loves Of men and women, still she shook her head And wondered; and, “Nay, nay,” she murmured still, “So strong, and he a younger child than I!” And then she'd have me fix him on the wall Fronting her little bed; and then again She needs must fix him there herself, because I gave him to her and she loved him so, And he should make her love me better yet, If women loved the more, the more they grew. But the fit place upon the wall was high 12 For her, and so I held her in my arms: And each time that the heavy pruning-hook I gave her for a hammer slipped away As it would often, still she laughed and laughed And kissed and kissed me. But amid her mirth, Just as she hung the image on the nail, It slipped and all its fragments strewed the ground: And as it fell she screamed, for in her hand The dart had entered deeply and drawn blood. And so her laughter turned to tears: and “Oh!” I said, the while I bandaged the small hand,— “That I should be the first to make you bleed, Who love and love and love you!”—kissing still The fingers till I got her safe to bed. And still she sobbed,—“not for the pain at all,” She said, “but for the Love, the poor good Love You gave me.” So she cried herself to sleep. Another later thing comes back to me. 'Twas in those hardest foulest days of all, When still from his shut palace, sitting clean Above the splash of blood, old Metternich (May his soul die, and never-dying worms Feast on its pain for ever! ) used to thin His year's doomed hundreds daintily, each month Thirties and fifties. This time, as I think, Was when his thrift forbad the poor to take That evil brackish salt which the dry rocks Keep all through winter when the sea draws in. The first I heard of it was a chance shot In the street here and there, and on the stones A stumbling clatter as of horse hemmed round. Then, when she saw me hurry out of doors, My gun slung at my shoulder and my knife Stuck in my girdle, she smoothed down my hair And laughed to see me look so brave, and leaped Up to my neck and kissed me. She was still A child; and yet that kiss was on my lips So hot all day where the smoke shut us in. For now, being always with her, the first love I had—the father's, brother's love—was changed, I think, in somewise; like a holy thought Which is a prayer before one knows of it. 13 The first time I perceived this, I remember, Was once when after hunting I came home Weary, and she brought food and fruit for me, And sat down at my feet upon the floor Leaning against my side. But when I felt Her sweet head reach from that low seat of hers So high as to be laid upon my heart, I turned and looked upon my darling there And marked for the first time how tall she was; And my heart beat with so much violence Under her cheek, I thought she could not choose But wonder at it soon and ask me why; And so I bade her rise and eat with me. And when, remembering all and counting back The time, I made out fourteen years for her And told her so, she gazed at me with eyes As of the sky and sea on a grey day, And drew her long hands through her hair, and asked me If she was not a woman; and then laughed: And as she stooped in laughing, I could see Beneath the growing throat the breasts half-globed Like folded lilies deepset in the stream. Yes, let me think of her as then; for so Her image, Father, is not like the sights Which come when you are gone. She had a mouth Made to bring death to life,—the underlip Sucked in, as if it strove to kiss itself. Her face was pearly pale, as when one stoops Over wan water; and the dark crisped hair And the hair's shadow made it paler still:— Deep-serried locks, the dimness of the cloud Where the moon's gaze is set in eddying gloom. Her body bore her neck as the tree's stem Bears the top branch; and as the branch sustains The flower of the year's pride, her high neck bore That face made wonderful with night and day. Her voice was swift, yet ever the last words Fell lingeringly; and rounded finger-tips She had, that clung a little where they touched And then were gone o' the instant. Her great eyes, That sometimes turned half dizzily beneath The passionate lids, as faint, when she would speak, 14 Had also in them hidden springs of mirth, Which under the dark lashes evermore Shook to her laugh, as when a bird flies low Between the water and the willow-leaves, And the shade quivers till he wins the light. I was a moody comrade to her then, For all the love I bore her. Italy, The weeping desolate mother, long has claimed Her sons' strong arms to lean on, and their hands To lop the poisonous thicket from her path, Cleaving her way to light. And from her need Had grown the fashion of my whole poor life Which I was proud to yield her, as my father Had yielded his. And this had come to be A game to play, a love to clasp, a hate To wreak, all things together that a man Needs for his blood to ripen; till at times All else seemed shadows, and I wondered still To see such life pass muster and be deemed Time's bodily substance. In those hours, no doubt, To the young girl my eyes were like my soul,— Dark wells of death-in-life that yearned for day. Sig. And though she ruled me always, I remember That once when I was thus and she still kept Leaping about the place and laughing, I Did almost chide her; whereupon she knelt And putting her two hands into my breast Sang me a song. Are these tears in my eyes? 'Tis long since I have wept for anything. I thought that song forgotten out of mind; And now, just as I spoke of it, it came All back. It is but a rude thing, ill rhymed, Such as a blind man chaunts and his dog hears Holding the platter, when the children run To merrier sport and leave him. Thus it goes:— La bella donna* Piangendo disse: “Come son fisse Le stelle in cielo! Quel fiato anelo Dello stanco sole, 15 Quanto m' assonna! E la luna, macchiata Come uno specchio Logoro e vecchio,— Faccia affannata, Che cosa vuole? “Chè stelle, luna, e sole, Ciascun m' annoja E m' annojano insieme; Non me ne preme Nè ci prendo gioja. E veramente, Che le spalle sien franche E la braccia bianche She wept, sweet lady, And said in weeping: “What spell is keeping The stars so steady? Why does the power Of the sun's noon-hour To sleep so move me? And the moon in heaven, Stained where she passes As a worn-out glass is,— Wearily driven, Why walks she above me? “Stars, moon, and sun too, I'm tired of either And all together! Whom speak they unto That I should listen? For very surely, Though my arms and shoulders Dazzle beholders, And my eyes glisten, All's nothing purely! What are words said for At all about them, If he they are made for Can do without them?” She laughed, sweet lady, And said in laughing: 16 “His hand clings half in My own already! Oh! do you love me? Oh! speak of passion In no new fashion, No loud inveighings, But the old sayings You once said of me. “You said: ‘As summer, Through boughs grown brittle, Comes back a little Ere frosts benumb her,— So bring'st thou to me All leaves and flowers, Though autumn's gloomy To-day in the bowers.’ “Oh! does he love me, When my voice teaches The very speeches He then spoke of me? Alas! what flavour Still with me lingers?” (But she laughed as my kisses Glowed in her fingers With love's old blisses.) “Oh! what one favour Remains to woo him, Whose whole poor savour Belongs not to him?” E il seno caldo e tondo, Non mi fa niente. Che cosa al mondo Posso più far di questi Se non piacciono a te, come dicesti?” La donna rise E riprese ridendo:— “Questa mano che prendo È dunque mia? Tu m' ami dunque? Dimmelo ancora, Non in modo qualunque, Ma le parole 17 Belle e precise Che dicesti pria. ‘Siccome suole La state talora (Dicesti) un qualche istante Tornare innanzi inverno, Così tu fai ch' io scerno Le foglie tutte quante, Ben ch' io certo tenessi Per passato l' autunno.’ “Eccolo il mio alunno! Io debbo insegnargli Quei cari detti istessi Ch' ei mi disse una volta! Oimè! Che cosa dargli,” (Ma ridea piano piano Dei baci in sulla mano,) “Ch' ei non m'abbia da lungo tempo tolta?” That I should sing upon this bed!—with you To listen, and such words still left to say! Yet was it I that sang? The voice seemed hers, As on the very day she sang to me; When, having done, she took out of my hand Something that I had played with all the while And laid it down beyond my reach; and so Turning my face round till it fronted hers,— “Weeping or laughing, which was best?” she said. But these are foolish tales. How should I show The heart that glowed then with love's heat, each day More and more brightly?—when for long years now The very flame that flew about the heart, And gave it fiery wings, has come to be The lapping blaze of hell's environment Whose tongues all bid the molten heart despair. Yet one more thing comes back on me to-night Which I may tell you: for it bore my soul Dread firstlings of the brood that rend it now. It chanced that in our last year's wanderings We dwelt at Monza, far away from home, If home we had: and in the Duomo there I sometimes entered with her when she prayed. An image of Our Lady stands there, wrought 18 In marble by some great Italian hand In the great days when she and Italy Sat on one throne together: and to her And to none else my loved one told her heart. She was a woman then; and as she knelt,— Her sweet brow in the sweet brow's shadow there,— They seemed two kindred forms whereby our land (Whose work still serves the world for miracle) Made manifest herself in womanhood. Father, the day I speak of was the first For weeks that I had borne her company Into the Duomo; and those weeks had been Much troubled, for then first the glimpses came Of some impenetrable restlessness Growing in her to make her changed and cold. And as we entered there that day, I bent My eyes on the fair Image, and I said Within my heart, “Oh turn her heart to me!” And so I left her to her prayers, and went To gaze upon the pride of Monza's shrine, Where in the sacristy the light still falls Upon the Iron Crown of Italy, On whose crowned heads the day has closed, nor yet The daybreak gilds another head to crown. But coming back, I wondered when I saw That the sweet Lady of her prayers now stood Alone without her; until further off, Before some new Madonna gaily decked, Tinselled and gewgawed, a slight German toy, I saw her kneel, still praying. At my step She rose, and side by side we left the church. I was much moved, and sharply questioned her Of her transferred devotion; but she seemed Stubborn and heedless; till she lightly laughed And said: “The old Madonna? Aye indeed, She had my old thoughts,—this one has my new.” Then silent to the soul I held my way: And from the fountains of the public place Unto the pigeon-haunted pinnacles, Bright wings and water winnowed the bright air; And stately with her laugh's subsiding smile She went, with clear-swayed waist and towering neck 19 And hands held light before her; and the face Which long had made a day in my life's night Was night in day to me; as all men's eyes Turned on her beauty, and she seemed to tread Beyond my heart to the world made for her. Ah there! my wounds will snatch my sense again: The pain comes billowing on like a full cloud Of thunder, and the flash that breaks from it Leaves my brain burning. That's the wound he gave, The Austrian whose white coat I still made match With his white face, only the two grew red As suits his trade. The devil makes them wear White for a livery, that the blood may show Braver that brings them to him. So he looks Sheer o'er the field and knows his own at once. Give me a draught of water in that cup; My voice feels thick; perhaps you do not hear; But you must hear. If you mistake my words And so absolve me, I am sure the blessing Will burn my soul. If you mistake my words And so absolve me, Father, the great sin Is yours, not mine: mark this: your soul shall burn With mine for it. I have seen pictures where Souls burned with Latin shriekings in their mouths: Shall my end be as theirs? Nay, but I know 'Tis you shall shriek in Latin. Some bell rings, Rings through my brain: it strikes the hour in hell. You see I cannot, Father; I have tried, But cannot, as you see. These twenty times Beginning, I have come to the same point And stopped. Beyond, there are but broken words Which will not let you understand my tale. It is that then we have her with us here, As when she wrung her hair out in my dream To-night, till all the darkness reeked of it. Her hair is always wet, for she has kept Its tresses wrapped about her side for years; And when she wrung them round over the floor, I heard the blood between her fingers hiss; So that I sat up in my bed and screamed Once and again; and once to once, she laughed. Look that you turn not now,—she's at your back: 20 Gather your robe up, Father, and keep close, Or she'll sit down on it and send you mad. At Iglio in the first thin shade o' the hills The sand is black and red. The black was black When what was spilt that day sank into it, And the red scarcely darkened. There I stood This night with her, and saw the sand the same. What would you have me tell you? Father, father, How shall I make you know? You have not known The dreadful soul of woman, who one day Forgets the old and takes the new to heart, Forgets what man remembers, and therewith Forgets the man. Nor can I clearly tell How the change happened between her and me. Her eyes looked on me from an emptied heart When most my heart was full of her; and still In every corner of myself I sought To find what service failed her; and no less Than in the good time past, there all was hers. What do you love? Your Heaven? Conceive it spread For one first year of all eternity All round you with all joys and gifts of God; And then when most your soul is blent with it And all yields song together,—then it stands O' the sudden like a pool that once gave back Your image, but now drowns it and is clear Again,—or like a sun bewitched, that burns Your shadow from you, and still shines in sight. How could you bear it? Would you not cry out, Among those eyes grown blind to you, those ears That hear no more your voice you hear the same,— “God! what is left but hell for company, But hell, hell, hell?”—until the name so breathed Whirled with hot wind and sucked you down in fire? Even so I stood the day her empty heart Left her place empty in our home, while yet I knew not why she went nor where she went Nor how to reach her: so I stood the day When to my prayers at last one sight of her Was granted, and I looked on heaven made pale With scorn, and heard heaven mock me in that laugh. O sweet, long sweet! Was that some ghost of you, 21 Even as your ghost that haunts me now,—twin shapes Of fear and hatred? May I find you yet Mine when death wakes? Ah! be it even in flame, We may have sweetness yet, if you but say As once in childish sorrow: “Not my pain, My pain was nothing: oh your poor poor love, Your broken love!” My Father, have I not Yet told you the last things of that last day On which I went to meet her by the sea? O God, O God! but I must tell you all. Midway upon my journey, when I stopped To buy the dagger at the village fair, I saw two cursed rats about the place I knew for spies—blood-sellers both. That day Was not yet over; for three hours to come I prized my life: and so I looked around For safety. A poor painted mountebank Was playing tricks and shouting in a crowd. I knew he must have heard my name, so I Pushed past and whispered to him who I was, And of my danger. Straight he hustled me Into his booth, as it were in the trick, And brought me out next minute with my face All smeared in patches and a zany's gown; And there I handed him his cups and balls And swung the sand-bags round to clear the ring For half an hour. The spies came once and looked; And while they stopped, and made all sights and sounds Sharp to my startled senses, I remember A woman laughed above me. I looked up And saw where a brown-shouldered harlot leaned Half through a tavern window thick with vine. Some man had come behind her in the room And caught her by her arms, and she had turned With that coarse empty laugh on him, as now He munched her neck with kisses, while the vine Crawled in her back. And three hours afterwards, When she that I had run all risks to meet Laughed as I told you, my life burned to death Within me, for I thought it like the laugh 22 Heard at the fair. She had not left me long; But all she might have changed to, or might change to, (I know nought since—she never speaks a word—) Seemed in that laugh. Have I not told you yet, Not told you all this time what happened, Father, When I had offered her the little knife, And bade her keep it for my sake that loved her, And she had laughed? Have I not told you yet? “Take it,” I said to her the second time, “Take it and keep it.” And then came a fire That burnt my hand; and then the fire was blood, And sea and sky were blood and fire, and all The day was one red blindness; till it seemed, Within the whirling brain's eclipse, that she Or I or all things bled or burned to death. And then I found her laid against my feet And knew that I had stabbed her, and saw still Her look in falling. For she took the knife Deep in her heart, even as I bade her then, And fell; and her stiff bodice scooped the sand Into her bosom. And she keeps it, see, Do you not see she keeps it?—there, beneath Wet fingers and wet tresses, in her heart. For look you, when she stirs her hand, it shows The little hilt of horn and pearl,—even such A dagger as our women of the coast Twist in their garters. Father, I have done: And from her side now she unwinds the thick Dark hair; all round her side it is wet through, But, like the sand at Iglio, does not change. Now you may see the dagger clearly. Father, I have told all: tell me at once what hope Can reach me still. For now she draws it out Slowly, and only smiles as yet: look, Father, She scarcely smiles: but I shall hear her laugh Soon, when she shows the crimson steel to God. ~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,

204:Scene. Colmar in Alsatia: an Inn. 1528. Paracelsus, Festus. Paracelsus [to Johannes Oporinus, his Secretary]. Sic itur ad astra! Dear Von Visenburg Is scandalized, and poor Torinus paralysed, And every honest soul that Basil holds Aghast; and yet we live, as one may say, Just as though Liechtenfels had never set So true a value on his sorry carcass, And learned Ptter had not frowned us dumb. We live; and shall as surely start to morrow For Nuremberg, as we drink speedy scathe To Basil in this mantling wine, suffused A delicate blush, no fainter tinge is born I' the shut heart of a bud. Pledge me, good John "Basil; a hot plague ravage it, and Ptter "Oppose the plague!" Even so? Do you too share Their panic, the reptiles? Ha, ha; faint through these, Desist for these! They manage matters so At Basil, 't is like: but others may find means To bring the stoutest braggart of the tribe Once more to crouch in silencemeans to breed A stupid wonder in each fool again, Now big with admiration at the skill Which stript a vain pretender of his plumes: And, that done,means to brand each slavish brow So deeply, surely, ineffaceably, That henceforth flattery shall not pucker it Out of the furrow; there that stamp shall stay To show the next they fawn on, what they are, This Basil with its magnates,fill my cup, Whom I curse soul and limb. And now despatch, Despatch, my trusty John; and what remains To do, whate'er arrangements for our trip Are yet to be completed, see you hasten This night; we'll weather the storm at least: to-morrow For Nuremberg! Now leave us; this grave clerk Has divers weighty matters for my ear: [Oporinus goes out. And spare my lungs. At last, my gallant Festus, I am rid of this arch-knave that dogs my heels As a gaunt crow a gasping sheep; at last May give a loose to my delight. How kind, How very kind, my first best only friend! Why, this looks like fidelity. Embrace me! Not a hair silvered yet? Right! you shall live Till I am worth your love; you shall be pround, And Ibut let time show! Did you not wonder? I sent to you because our compact weighed Upon my conscience(you recall the night At Basil, which the gods confound!)because Once more I aspire. I call you to my side: You come. You thought my message strange? Festus.                       So strange That I must hope, indeed, your messenger Has mingled his own fancies with the words Purporting to be yours. Paracelsus.             He said no more, 'T is probable, than the precious folk I leave Said fiftyfold more roughly. Well-a-day, 'T is true! poor Paracelsus is exposed At last; a most egregious quack he proves: And those he overreached must spit their hate On one who, utterly beneath contempt, Could yet deceive their topping wits. You heard Bare truth; and at my bidding you come here To speed me on my enterprise, as once Your lavish wishes sped me, my own friend! Festus. What is your purpose, Aureole? Paracelsus.                 Oh, for purpose, There is no lack of precedents in a case Like mine; at least, if not precisely mine, The case of men cast off by those they sought To benefit. Festus.      They really cast you off? I only heard a vague tale of some priest, Cured by your skill, who wrangled at your claim, Knowing his life's worth best; and how the judge The matter was referred to, saw no cause To interfere, nor you to hide your full Contempt of him; nor he, again, to smother His wrath thereat, which raised so fierce a flame That Basil soon was made no place for you. Paracelsus. The affair of Liechtenfels? the shallowest fable, The last and silliest outragemere pretence! I knew it, I foretold it from the first, How soon the stupid wonder you mistook For genuine loyaltya cheering promise Of better things to comewould pall and pass; And every word comes true. Saul is among The prophets! Just so long as I was pleased To play off the mere antics of my art, Fantastic gambols leading to no end, I got huge praise: but one can ne'er keep down Our foolish nature's weakness. There they flocked, Poor devils, jostling, swearing and perspiring, Till the walls rang again; and all for me! I had a kindness for them, which was right; But then I stopped not till I tacked to that A trust in them and a respecta sort Of sympathy for them; I must needs begin To teach them, not amaze them, "to impart "The spirit which should instigate the search "Of truth," just what you bade me! I spoke out. Forthwith a mighty squadron, in disgust, Filed off"the sifted chaff of the sack," I said, Redoubling my endeavours to secure The rest. When lo! one man had tarried so long Only to ascertain if I supported This tenet of his, or that; another loved To hear impartially before he judged, And having heard, now judged; this bland disciple Passed for my dupe, but all along, it seems, Spied error where his neighbours marvelled most; That fiery doctor who had hailed me friend, Did it because my by-paths, once proved wrong And beaconed properly, would commend again The good old ways our sires jogged safely o'er, Though not their squeamish sons; the other worthy Discovered divers verses of St. John, Which, read successively, refreshed the soul, But, muttered backwards, cured the gout, the stone, The colic and what not. Quid multa? The end Was a clear class-room, and a quiet leer From grave folk, and a sour reproachful glance From those in chief who, cap in hand, installed The new professor scarce a year before; And a vast flourish about patient merit Obscured awhile by flashy tricks, but sure Sooner or later to emerge in splendour Of which the example was some luckless wight Whom my arrival had discomfited, But now, it seems, the general voice recalled To fill my chair and so efface the stain Basil had long incurred. I sought no better, Only a quiet dismissal from my post, And from my heart I wished them better suited And better served. Good night to Basil, then! But fast as I proposed to rid the tribe Of my obnoxious back, I could not spare them The pleasure of a parting kick. Festus.                  You smile: Despise them as they merit! Paracelsus.                If I smile, 'T is with as very contempt as ever turned Flesh into stone. This courteous recompense, This grateful . . . Festus, were your nature fit To be defiled, your eyes the eyes to ache At gangrene-blotches, eating poison-blains, The ulcerous barky scurf of leprosy Which findsa man, and leavesa hideous thing That cannot but be mended by hell fire, I would lay bare to you the human heart Which God cursed long ago, and devils make since Their pet nest and their never-tiring home. Oh, sages have discovered we are born For various endsto love, to know: has ever One stumbled, in his search, on any signs Of a nature in us formed to hate? To hate? If that be our true object which evokes Our powers in fullest strength, be sure 't is hate! Yet men have doubted if the best and bravest Of spirits can nourish him with hate alone. I had not the monopoly of fools, It seems, at Basil. Festus.           But your plans, your plans! I have yet to learn your purpose, Aureole! Paracelsus. Whether to sink beneath such ponderous shame, To shrink up like a crushed snail, undergo In silence and desist from further toil, and so subside into a monument Of one their censure blasted? or to bow Cheerfully as submissively, to lower My old pretensions even as Basil dictates, To drop into the rank her wits assign me And live as they prescribe, and make that use Of my poor knowledge which their rules allow, Proud to be patted now and then, and careful To practise the true posture for receiving The amplest benefit from their hoofs' appliance When they shall condescend to tutor me? Then, one may feel resentment like a flame Within, and deck false systems in truth's garb, And tangle and entwine mankind with error, And give them darkness for a dower and falsehood For a possession, ages: or one may mope Into a shade through thinking, or else drowse Into a dreamless sleep and so die off. But I,now Festus shall divine!but I Am merely setting out once more, embracing My earliest aims again! What thinks he now? Festus. Your aims? the aims?to Know? and where is found The early trust . . . Paracelsus.            Nay, not so fast; I say, The aimsnot the old means. You know they made me A laughing-stock; I was a fool; you know The when and the how: hardly those means again! Not but they had their beauty; who should know Their passing beauty, if not I? Still, dreams They were, so let them vanish, yet in beauty If that may be. Stay: thus they pass in song! [He sings. Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes Of labdanum, and aloe-balls, Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes From out her hair: such balsam falls Down sea-side mountain pedestals, From tree-tops where tired winds are fain, Spent with the vast and howling main, To treasure half their island-gain. And strew faint sweetness from some old Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud Which breaks to dust when once unrolled; Or shredded perfume, like a cloud From closet long to quiet vowed, With mothed and dropping arras hung, Mouldering her lute and books among, As when a queen, long dead, was young. Mine, every word! And on such pile shall die My lovely fancies, with fair perished things, Themselves fair and forgotten; yes, forgotten, Or why abjure them? So, I made this rhyme That fitting dignity might be preserved; No little proud was I; though the list of drugs Smacks of my old vocation, and the verse Halts like the best of Luther's psalms. Festus.                      But, Aureole, Talk not thus wildly and madly. I am here Did you know all! I have travelled far, indeed, To learn your wishes. Be yourself again! For in this mood I recognize you less Than in the horrible despondency I witnessed last. You may account this, joy; But rather let me gaze on that despair Than hear these incoherent words and see This flushed cheek and intensely-sparkling eye. Paracelsus. Why, man, I was light-hearted in my prime I am light-hearted now; what would you have? Aprile was a poet, I make songs 'T is the very augury of success I want! Why should I not be joyous now as then? Festus. Joyous! and how? and what remains for joy? You have declared the ends (which I am sick Of naming) are impracticable. Paracelsus.                Ay, Pursued as I pursued themthe arch-fool! Listen: my plan will please you not, 't is like, But you are little versed in the world's ways. This is my plan(first drinking its good luck) I will accept all helps; all I despised So rashly at the outset, equally With early impulses, late years have quenched: I have tried each way singly: now for both! All helps! no one sort shall exclude the rest. I seek to know and to enjoy at once, Not one without the other as before. Suppose my labour should seem God's own cause Once more, as first I dreamed,it shall not baulk me Of the meanest earthliest sensualest delight That may be snatched; for every joy is gain, And gain is gain, however small. My soul Can die then, nor be taunted"what was gained?" Nor, on the other hand, should pleasure follow As though I had not spurned her hitherto, Shall she o'ercloud my spirit's rapt communion With the tumultuous past, the teeming future, Glorious with visions of a full success. Festus. Success! Paracelsus.     And wherefore not? Why not prefer Results obtained in my best state of being, To those derived alone from seasons dark As the thoughts they bred? When I was best, my youth Unwasted, seemed success not surest too? It is the nature of darkness to obscure. I am a wanderer: I remember well One journey, how I feared the track was missed, So long the city I desired to reach Lay hid; when suddenly its spires afar Flashed through the circling clouds; you may conceive My transport. Soon the vapours closed again, But I had seen the city, and one such glance No darkness could obscure: nor shall the present A few dull hours, a passing shame or two, Destroy the vivid memories of the past. I will fight the battle out; a little spent Perhaps, but still an able combatant. You look at my grey hair and furrowed brow? But I can turn even weakness to account: Of many tricks I know, 't is not the least To push the ruins of my frame, whereon The fire of vigour trembles scarce alive, Into a heap, and send the flame aloft. What should I do with age? So, sickness lends An aid; it being, I fear, the source of all We boast of: mind is nothing but disease, And natural health is ignorance. Festus.                  I see But one good symptom in this notable scheme. I feared your sudden journey had in view To wreak immediate vengeance on your foes 'T is not so: I am glad. Paracelsus.              And if I please To spit on them, to trample them, what then? 'T is sorry warfare truly, but the fools Provoke it. I would spare their self-conceit But if they must provoke me, cannot suffer Forbearance on my part, if I may keep No quality in the shade, must needs put forth Power to match power, my strength against their strength, And teach them their own game with their own arms Why, be it so and let them take their chance! I am above them like a god, there's no Hiding the fact: what idle scruples, then, Were those that ever bade me soften it, Communicate it gently to the world, Instead of proving my supremacy, Taking my natural station o'er their head, Then owning all the glory was a man's! And in my elevation man's would be. But live and learn, though life's short, learning, hard! And therefore, though the wreck of my past self, I fear, dear Ptter, that your lecture-room Must wait awhile for its best ornament, The penitent empiric, who set up For somebody, but soon was taught his place; Now, but too happy to be let confess His error, snuff the candles, and illustrate (Fiat experientia corpore vili) Your medicine's soundness in his person. Wait, Good Ptter! Festus.       He who sneers thus, is a god!       Paracelsus. Ay, ay, laugh at me! I am very glad You are not gulled by all this swaggering; you Can see the root of the matter!how I strive To put a good face on the overthrow I have experienced, and to bury and hide My degradation in its length and breadth; How the mean motives I would make you think Just mingle as is due with nobler aims, The appetites I modestly allow May influence me as being mortal still Do goad me, drive me on, and fast supplant My youth's desires. You are no stupid dupe: You find me out! Yes, I had sent for you To palm these childish lies upon you, Festus! Laughyou shall laugh at me! Festus.                The past, then, Aureole, Proves nothing? Is our interchange of love Yet to begin? Have I to swear I mean No flattery in this speech or that? For you, Whate'er you say, there is no degradation; These low thoughts are no inmates of your mind, Or wherefore this disorder? You are vexed As much by the intrusion of base views, Familiar to your adversaries, as they Were troubled should your qualities alight Amid their murky souls; not otherwise, A stray wolf which the winter forces down From our bleak hills, suffices to affright A village in the valeswhile foresters Sleep calm, though all night long the famished troop Snuff round and scratch against their crazy huts. These evil thoughts are monsters, and will flee. Paracelsus. May you be happy, Festus, my own friend! Festus. Nay, further; the delights you fain would think The superseders of your nobler aims, Though ordinary and harmless stimulants, Will ne'er content you. . . . Paracelsus.                Hush! I once despised them, But that soon passes. We are high at first In our demand, nor will abate a jot Of toil's strict value; but time passes o'er, And humbler spirits accept what we refuse: In short, when some such comfort is doled out As these delights, we cannot long retain Bitter contempt which urges us at first To hurl it back, but hug it to our breast And thankfully retire. This life of mine Must be lived out and a grave thoroughly earned: I am just fit for that and nought beside. I told you once, I cannot now enjoy, Unless I deem my knowledge gains through joy; Nor can I know, but straight warm tears reveal My need of linking also joy to knowledge: So, on I drive, enjoying all I can, And knowing all I can. I speak, of course, Confusedly; this will better explainfeel here! Quick beating, is it not?a fire of the heart To work off some way, this as well as any. So, Festus sees me fairly launched; his calm Compassionate look might have disturbed me once, But now, far from rejecting, I invite What bids me press the closer, lay myself Open before him, and be soothed with pity; I hope, if he command hope, and believe As he directs mesatiating myself With his enduring love. And Festus quits me To give place to some credulous disciple Who holds that God is wise, but Paracelsus Has his peculiar merits: I suck in That homage, chuckle o'er that admiration, And then dismiss the fool; for night is come. And I betake myself to study again, Till patient searchings after hidden lore Half wring some bright truth from its prison; my frame Trembles, my forehead's veins swell out, my hair Tingles for triumph. Slow and sure the morn Shall break on my pent room and dwindling lamp And furnace dead, and scattered earths and ores; When, with a failing heart and throbbing brow, I must review my captured truth, sum up Its value, trace what ends to what begins, Its present power with its eventual bearings, Latent affinities, the views it opens, And its full length in perfecting my scheme. I view it sternly circumscribed, cast down From the high place my fond hopes yielded it, Proved worthlesswhich, in getting, yet had cost Another wrench to this fast-falling frame. Then, quick, the cup to quaff, that chases sorrow! I lapse back into youth, and take again My fluttering pulse for evidence that God Means good to me, will make my cause his own. See! I have cast off this remorseless care Which clogged a spirit born to soar so free, And my dim chamber has become a tent, Festus is sitting by me, and his Michal . . . Why do you start? I say, she listening here, (For yonderWrzburg through the orchard-bough!) Motions as though such ardent words should find No echo in a maiden's quiet soul, But her pure bosom heaves, her eyes fill fast With tears, her sweet lips tremble all the while! Ha, ha! Festus.    It seems, then, you expect to reap No unreal joy from this your present course, But rather . . . Paracelsus.          Death! To die! I owe that much To what, at least, I was. I should be sad To live contented after such a fall, To thrive and fatten after such reverse! The whole plan is a makeshift, but will last My time. Festus.     And you have never mused and said, "I had a noble purpose, and the strength "To compass it; but I have stopped half-way, "And wrongly given the first-fruits of my toil "To objects little worthy of the gift. "Why linger round them still? why clench my fault? "Why seek for consolation in defeat, "In vain endeavours to derive a beauty "From ugliness? why seek to make the most "Of what no power can change, nor strive instead "With mighty effort to redeem the past "And, gathering up the treasures thus cast down, "To hold a steadfast course till I arrive "At their fit destination and my own?" You have never pondered thus? Paracelsus.                Have I, you ask? Often at midnight, when most fancies come, Would some such airy project visit me: But ever at the end . . . or will you hear The same thing in a tale, a parable? You and I, wandering over the world wide, Chance to set foot upon a desert coast. Just as we cry, "No human voice before "Broke the inveterate silence of these rocks!" Their querulous echo startles us; we turn: What ravaged structure still looks o'er the sea? Some characters remain, too! While we read, The sharp salt wind, impatient for the last Of even this record, wistfully comes and goes, Or sings what we recover, mocking it. This is the record; and my voice, the wind's. [He sings. Over the sea our galleys went, With cleaving prows in order brave To a speeding wind and a bounding wave, A gallant armament: Each bark built out of a forest-tree Left leafy and rough as first it grew, And nailed all over the gaping sides, Within and without, with black bull-hides, Seethed in fat and suppled in flame, To bear the playful billows' game: So, each good ship was rude to see, Rude and bare to the outward view, But each upbore a stately tent Where cedar pales in scented row Kept out the flakes of the dancing brine, And an awning drooped the mast below, In fold on fold of the purple fine, That neither noontide nor starshine Nor moonlight cold which maketh mad, Might pierce the regal tenement. When the sun dawned, oh, gay and glad We set the sail and plied the oar; But when the night-wind blew like breath, For joy of one day's voyage more, We sang together on the wide sea, Like men at peace on a peaceful shore; Each sail was loosed to the wind so free, Each helm made sure by the twilight star, And in a sleep as calm as death, We, the voyagers from afar, Lay stretched along, each weary crew In a circle round its wondrous tent Whence gleamed soft light and curled rich scent, And with light and perfume, music too: So the stars wheeled round, and the darkness past, And at morn we started beside the mast, And still each ship was sailing fast. Now, one morn, land appeareda speck Dim trembling betwixt sea and sky: "Avoid it," cried our pilot, "check "The shout, restrain the eager eye!" But the heaving sea was black behind For many a night and many a day, And land, though but a rock, drew nigh; So, we broke the cedar pales away, Let the purple awning flap in the wind, And a statute bright was on every deck! We shouted, every man of us, And steered right into the harbour thus, With pomp and pan glorious. A hundred shapes of lucid stone! All day we built its shrine for each, A shrine of rock for every one, Nor paused till in the westering sun We sat together on the beach To sing because our task was done. When lo! what shouts and merry songs! What laughter all the distance stirs! A loaded raft with happy throngs Of gentle islanders! "Our isles are just at hand," they cried, "Like cloudlets faint in even sleeping "Our temple-gates are opened wide, "Our olive-groves thick shade are keeping "For these majestic forms"they cried. Oh, then we awoke with sudden start From our deep dream, and knew, too late, How bare the rock, how desolate, Which had received our precious freight: Yet we called out"Depart! "Our gifts, once given, must here abide. "Our work is done; we have no heart "To mar our work,"we cried. Festus. In truth? Paracelsus.      Nay, wait: all this in tracings faint On rugged stones strewn here and there, but piled In order once: then followsmark what follows! "The sad rhyme of the men who proudly clung "To their first fault, and withered in their pride." Festus. Come back then, Aureole; as you fear God, come! This is foul sin; come back! Renounce the past, Forswear the future; look for joy no more, But wait death's summons amid holy sights, And trust me for the eventpeace, if not joy. Return with me to Einsiedeln, dear Aureole! Paracelsus. No way, no way! it would not turn to good. A spotless child sleeps on the flowering moss 'T is well for him; but when a sinful man, Envying such slumber, may desire to put His guilt away, shall he return at once To rest by lying there? Our sires knew well (Spite of the grave discoveries of their sons) The fitting course for such: dark cells, dim lamps, A stone floor one may writhe on like a worm: No mossy pillow blue with violets! Festus. I see no symptom of these absolute And tyrannous passions. You are calmer now. This verse-making can purge you well enough Without the terrible penance you describe. You love me still: the lusts you fear will never Outrage your friend. To Einsiedeln, once more! Say but the word! Paracelsus.          No, no; those lusts forbid: They crouch, I know, cowering with half-shut eye Beside you; 't is their nature. Thrust yourself Between them and their prey; let some fool style me Or king or quack, it matters notthen try Your wisdom, urge them to forego their treat! No, no; learn better and look deeper, Festus! If you knew how a devil sneers within me While you are talking now of this, now that, As though we differed scarcely save in trifles! Festus. Do we so differ? True, change must proceed, Whether for good or ill; keep from me, which! Do not confide all secrets: I was born To hope, and you . . . Paracelsus.            To trust: you know the fruits!            Festus. Listen: I do believe, what you call trust Was self-delusion at the best: for, see! So long as God would kindly pioneer A path for you, and screen you from the world, Procure you full exemption from man's lot, Man's common hopes and fears, on the mere pretext Of your engagement in his serviceyield you A limitless licence, make you God, in fact, And turn your slaveyou were content to say Most courtly praises! What is it, at last, But selfishness without example? None Could trace God's will so plain as you, while yours Remained implied in it; but now you fail, And we, who prate about that will, are fools! In short, God's service is established here As he determines fit, and not your way, And this you cannot brook. Such discontent Is weak. Renounce all creatureship at once! Affirm an absolute right to have and use Your energies; as though the rivers should say "We rush to the ocean; what have we to do "With feeding streamlets, lingering in the vales, "Sleeping in lazy pools?" Set up that plea, That will be bold at least! Paracelsus.                'T is like enough. The serviceable spirits are those, no doubt, The East produces: lo, the master bids, They wake, raise terraces and garden-grounds In one night's space; and, this done, straight begin Another century's sleep, to the great praise Of him that framed them wise and beautiful, Till a lamp's rubbing, or some chance akin, Wake them again. I am of different mould. I would have soothed my lord, and slaved for him And done him service past my narrow bond, And thus I get rewarded for my pains! Beside, 't is vain to talk of forwarding God's glory otherwise; this is alone The sphere of its increase, as far as men Increase it; why, then, look beyond this sphere? We are his glory; and if we be glorious, Is not the thing achieved? Festus.               Shall one like me Judge hearts like yours? Though years have changed you much, And you have left your first love, and retain Its empty shade to veil your crooked ways, Yet I still hold that you have honoured God. And who shall call your course without reward? For, wherefore this repining at defeat Had triumph ne'er inured you to high hopes? I urge you to forsake the life you curse, And what success attends me?simply talk Of passion, weakness and remorse; in short, Anything but the naked truthyou choose This so-despised career, and cheaply hold My happiness, or rather other men's. Once more, return! Paracelsus.          And quickly. John the thief Has pilfered half my secrets by this time: And we depart by daybreak. I am weary, I know not how; not even the wine-cup soothes My brain to-night . . . Do you not thoroughly despise me, Festus? No flattery! One like you needs not be told We live and breathe deceiving and deceived. Do you not scorn me from your heart of hearts, Me and my cant, each petty subterfuge, My rhymes and all this frothy shower of words, My glozing self-deceit, my outward crust Of lies which wrap, as tetter, morphew, furfair Wrapt the sound flesh?so, see you flatter not! Even God flatters: but my friend, at least, Is true. I would depart, secure henceforth Against all further insult, hate and wrong From puny foes; my one friend's scorn shall brand me: No fear of sinking deeper! Festus.               No, dear Aureole! No, no; I came to counsel faithfully. There are old rules, made long ere we were born, By which I judge you. I, so fallible, So infinitely low beside your mighty Majestic spirit!even I can see You own some higher law than ours which call Sin, what is no sinweakness, what is strength. But I have only these, such as they are, To guide me; and I blame you where they bid, Only so long as blaming promises To win peace for your soul: the more, that sorrow Has fallen on me of late, and they have helped me So that I faint not under my distress. But wherefore should I scruple to avow In spite of all, as brother judging brother, Your fate is most inexplicable to me? And should you perish without recompense And satisfaction yettoo hastily I have relied on love: you may have sinned, But you have loved. As a mere human matter As I would have God deal with fragile men In the endI say that you will triumph yet! Paracelsus. Have you felt sorrow, Festus?'t is because You love me. Sorrow, and sweet Michal yours! Well thought on: never let her know this last Dull winding-up of all: these miscreants dared Insult meme she loved:so, grieve her not! Festus. Your ill success can little grieve her now. Paracelsus. Michal is dead! pray Christ we do not craze! Festus. Aureole, dear Aureole, look not on me thus! Fool, fool! this is the heart grown sorrow-proof I cannot bear those eyes. Paracelsus.              Nay, really dead?              Festus. 'T is scarce a month. Paracelsus.            Stone dead!then you have laid her Among the flowers ere this. Now, do you know, I can reveal a secret which shall comfort Even you. I have no julep, as men think, To cheat the grave; but a far better secret. Know, then, you did not ill to trust your love To the cold earth: I have thought much of it: For I believe we do not wholly die. Festus. Aureole! Paracelsus.     Nay, do not laugh; there is a reason For what I say: I think the soul can never Taste death. I am, just now, as you may see, Very unfit to put so strange a thought In an intelligible dress of words; But take it as my trust, she is not dead. Festus. But not on this account alone? you surely, Aureole, you have believed this all along? Paracelsus. And Michal sleeps among the roots and dews, While I am moved at Basil, and full of schemes For Nuremberg, and hoping and despairing, As though it mattered how the farce plays out, So it be quickly played. Away, away! Have your will, rabble! while we fight the prize, Troop you in safety to the snug back-seats And leave a clear arena for the brave About to perish for your sport!Behold! ~ Robert Browning, Paracelsus - Part IV - Paracelsus Aspires ,

205:Is it the same Sordello in the dusk As at the dawn?merely a perished husk Now, that arose a power fit to build Up Rome again? The proud conception chilled So soon? Ay, watch that latest dream of thine A Rome indebted to no Palatine Drop arch by arch, Sordello! Art possessed Of thy wish now, rewarded for thy quest To-day among Ferrara's squalid sons? Are this and this and this the shining ones Meet for the Shining City? Sooth to say, Your favoured tenantry pursue their way After a fashion! This companion slips On the smooth causey, t' other blinkard trips At his mooned sandal. "Leave to lead the brawls "Here i' the atria?" No, friend! He that sprawls On aught but a stibadium . . . what his dues Who puts the lustral vase to such an use? Oh, huddle up the day's disasters! March, Ye runagates, and drop thou, arch by arch, Rome!    Yet before they quite disbanda whim Study mere shelter, now, for him, and him, Nay, even the worst,just house them! Any cave Suffices: throw out earth! A loophole? Brave! They ask to feel the sun shine, see the grass Grow, hear the larks sing? Dead art thou, alas, And I am dead! But here's our son excels At hurdle-weaving any Scythian, fells Oak and devises rafters, dreams and shapes His dream into a door-post, just escapes The mystery of hinges. Lie we both Perdue another age. The goodly growth Of brick and stone! Our building-pelt was rough, But that descendant's garb suits well enough A portico-contriver. Speed the years What 's time to us? At last, a city rears Itself! nay, enterwhat's the grave to us? Lo, our forlorn acquaintance carry thus The head! Successively sewer, forum, cirque Last age, an aqueduct was counted work, But now they tire the artificer upon Blank alabaster, black obsidion, Careful, Jove's face be duly fulgurant, And mother Venus' kiss-creased nipples pant Back into pristine pulpiness, ere fixed Above the baths. What difference betwixt This Rome and oursresemblance what, between That scurvy dumb-show and this pageant sheen These Romans and our rabble? Use thy wit! The work marched: step by step,a workman fit Took each, nor too fit,to one task, one time, No leaping o'er the petty to the prime, When just the substituting osier lithe For brittle bulrush, sound wood for soft withe, To further loam-and-roughcast-work a stage, Exacts an architect, exacts an age: No tables of the Mauritanian tree For men whose maple log 's their luxury! That way was Rome built. "Better" (say you) "merge "At once all workmen in the demiurge, "All epochs in a lifetime, every task "In one!" So should the sudden city bask I' the daywhile those we 'd feast there, want the knack Of keeping fresh-chalked gowns from speck and brack, Distinguish not rare peacock from vile swan, Nor Mareotic juice from Ccuban. "Enough of Rome! 'T was happy to conceive "Rome on a sudden, nor shall fate bereave "Me of that credit: for the rest, her spite "Is an old storyserves my folly right "By adding yet another to the dull "List of abortionsthings proved beautiful "Could they be done, Sordello cannot do." He sat upon the terrace, plucked and threw The powdery aloe-cusps away, saw shift Rome's walls, and drop arch after arch, and drift Mist-like afar those pillars of all stripe, Mounds of all majesty. "Thou archetype, "Last of my dreams and loveliest, depart!" And then a low voice wound into his heart: "Sordello!" (low as some old Pythoness Conceding to a Lydian King's distress The cause of his long errorone mistake Of her past oracle) "Sordello, wake! "God has conceded two sights to a man "One, of men's whole work, time's completed plan, "The other, of the minute's work, man's first "Step to the plan's completeness: what's dispersed "Save hope of that supreme step which, descried "Earliest, was meant still to remain untried "Only to give you heart to take your own "Step, and there stay, leaving the rest alone? "Where is the vanity? Why count as one "The first step, with the last step? What is gone "Except Rome's ary magnificence, "That last step you 'd take first?an evidence "You were God: be man now! Let those glances fall! "The basis, the beginning step of all, "Which proves you just a manis that gone too? "Pity to disconcert one versed as you "In fate's ill-nature! but its full extent "Eludes Sordello, even: the veil rent, "Read the black writingthat collective man "Outstrips the individual. Who began "The acknowledged greatnesses? Ay, your own art "Shall serve us: put the poet's mimes apart "Close with the poet's self, and lo, a dim "Yet too plain form divides itself from him! "Alcamo's song enmeshes the lulled Isle, "Woven into the echoes left erewhile "By Nina, one soft web of song: no more "Turning his name, then, flower-like o'er and o'er! "An elder poet in the younger's place; "Nina's the strength, but Alcamo's the grace: "Each neutralizes each then! Search your fill; "You get no whole and perfect Poetstill "New Ninas, Alcamos, till time's mid-night "Shrouds allor better say, the shutting light "Of a forgotten yesterday. Dissect "Every ideal workman(to reject "In favour of your fearful ignorance "The thousand phantasms eager to advance, "And point you but to those within your reach) "Were you the first who brought(in modern speech) "The Multitude to be materialized? "That loose eternal unrestwho devised "An apparition i' the midst? The rout "Was checked, a breathless ring was formed about "That sudden flower: get round at any risk "The gold-rough pointel, silver-blazing disk "O' the lily! Swords across it! Reign thy reign "And serve thy frolic service, Charlemagne! "The very child of over-joyousness, "Unfeeling thence, strong therefore: Strength by stress "Of Strength comes of that forehead confident, "Those widened eyes expecting heart's content, "A calm as out of just-quelled noise; nor swerves "For doubt, the ample cheek in gracious curves "Abutting on the upthrust nether lip: "He wills, how should he doubt then? Ages slip: "Was it Sordello pried into the work "So far accomplished, and discovered lurk "A company amid the other clans, "Only distinct in priests for castellans "And popes for suzerains (their rule confessed "Its rule, their interest its interest, "Living for sake of livingthere an end, "Wrapt in itself, no energy to spend "In making adversaries or allies) "Dived you into its capabilities "And dared create, out of that sect, a soul "Should turn a multitude, already whole, "Into its body? Speak plainer! Is 't so sure "God's church lives by a King's investiture? "Look to last step! A staggeringa shock "What 's mere sand is demolished, while the rock "Endures: a column of black fiery dust "Blots heaventhat help was prematurely thrust "Aside, perchance!but air clears, nought 's erased "Of the true outline. Thus much being firm based, "The other was a scaffold. See him stand "Buttressed upon his mattock, Hildebrand "Of the huge brain-mask welded ply o'er ply "As in a forge; it buries either eye "White and extinct, that stupid brow; teeth clenched, "The neck tight-corded, too, the chin deep-trenched, "As if a cloud enveloped him while fought "Under its shade, grim prizers, thought with thought "At dead-lock, agonizing he, until "The victor thought leap radiant up, and Will, "The slave with folded arms and drooping lids "They fought for, lean forth flame-like as it bids. "Call him no flowera mandrake of the earth, "Thwarted and dwarfed and blasted in its birth, "Rather,a fruit of suffering's excess, "Thence feeling, therefore stronger: still by stress "Of Strength, work Knowledge! Full three hundred years "Have men to wear away in smiles and tears "Between the two that nearly seemed to touch, "Observe you! quit one workman and you clutch "Another, letting both their trains go by "The actors-out of either's policy, "Heinrich, on this hand, Otho, Barbaross, "Carry the three Imperial crowns across, "Aix' Iron, Milan's Silver, and Rome's Gold "While Alexander, Innocent uphold "On that, each Papal keybut, link on link, "Why is it neither chain betrays a chink? "How coalesce the small and great? Alack, "For one thrust forward, fifty such fall back! "Do the popes coupled there help Gregory "Alone? Harkfrom the hermit Peter's cry "At Claremont, down to the first serf that says "Friedrich 's no liege of his while he delays "Getting the Pope's curse off him! The Crusade "Or trick of breeding Strength by other aid "Than Strength, is safe. Harkfrom the wild harangue "Of Vimmercato, to the carroch's clang "Yonder! The Leagueor trick of turning Strength "Against Pernicious Strength, is safe at length. "Yet harkfrom Mantuan Albert making cease "The fierce ones, to Saint Francis preaching peace "Yonder! God's Truceor trick to supersede "The very Use of Strength, is safe. Indeed "We trench upon the future. Who is found "To take next step, next agetrail o'er the ground "Shall I say, gourd-like?not the flower's display "Nor the root's prowess, but the plenteous way "O' the plantproduced by joy and sorrow, whence "Unfeeling and yet feeling, strongest thence? "Knowledge by stress of merely Knowledge? No "E'en were Sordello ready to forego "His life for this, 't were overleaping work "Some one has first to do, howe'er it irk, "Nor stray a foot's breadth from the beaten road. "Who means to help must still support the load "Hildebrand lifted'why hast Thou,' he groaned, "`Imposed on me a burthen, Paul had moaned, "'And Moses dropped beneath?' Much doneand yet "Doubtless that grandest task God ever set "On man, left much to do: at his arm's wrench, "Charlemagne's scaffold fell; but pillars blench "Merely, start back againperchance have been "Taken for buttresses: crash every screen, "Hammer the tenons better, and engage "A gang about your work, for the next age "Or two, of Knowledge, part by Strength and part "By Knowledge! Then, indeed, perchance may start "Sordello on his racewould time divulge "Such secrets! If one step's awry, one bulge "Calls for correction by a step we thought "Got over long since, why, till that is wrought, "No progress! And the scaffold in its turn "Becomes, its service o'er, a thing to spurn. "Meanwhile, if your half-dozen years of life "In store dispose you to forego the strife, "Who takes exception? Only bear in mind "Ferrara 's reached, Goito 's left behind: "As you then were, as half yourself, desist! "The warrior-part of you may, an it list, "Finding real faulchions difficult to poise, "Fling them afar and taste the cream of joys "By wielding such in fancy,what is bard "Of you may spurn the vehicle that marred "Elys so much, and in free fancy glut "His sense, yet write no versesyou have but "To please yourself for law, and once could please "What once appeared yourself, by dreaming these "Rather than doing these, in days gone by. "But all is changed the moment you descry "Mankind as half yourself,then, fancy's trade "Ends once and always: how may half evade "The other half? men are found half of you. "Out of a thousand helps, just one or two "Can be accomplished presently: but flinch "From these (as from the faulchion, raised an inch, "Elys, described a couplet) and make proof "Of fancy,then, while one half lolls aloof "I' the vines, completing Rome to the tip-top "See if, for that, your other half will stop "A tear, begin a smile! The rabble's woes, "Ludicrous in their patience as they chose "To sit about their town and quietly "Be slaughtered,the poor reckless soldiery, "With their ignoble rhymes on Richard, how "'Polt-foot,' sang they, 'was in a pitfall now,' "Cheering each other from the engine-mounts, "That crippled spawling idiot who recounts "How, lopped of limbs, he lay, stupid as stone, "Till the pains crept from out him one by one, "And wriggles round the archers on his head "To earn a morsel of their chestnut bread, "And Cino, always in the self-same place "Weeping; beside that other wretch's case, "Eyepits to ear, one gangrene since he plied "The engine in his coat of raw sheep's hide "A double watch in the noon sun; and see "Lucchino, beauty, with the favours free, "Trim hacqueton, spruce beard and scented hair, "Campaigning it for the first timecut there "In two already, boy enough to crawl "For latter orpine round the southern wall, "Tom, where Richard 's kept, because that **** "Marfisa, the fool never saw before, "Sickened for flowers this wearisomest siege: "And Tiso's wifemen liked their pretty liege, "Cared for her least of whims once,Berta, wed "A twelvemonth gone, and, now poor Tiso's dead, "Delivering herself of his first child "On that chance heap of wet filth, reconciled "To fifty gazers!"(Here a wind below Made moody music augural of woe From the pine barrier)"What if, now the scene "Draws to a close, yourself have really been "You, plucking purples in Goito's moss "Like edges of a trabea (not to cross "Your consul-humour) or dry aloe-shafts "For fasces, at Ferrarahe, fate wafts, "This very age, her whole inheritance `Of opportunities? Yet you advance "Upon the last! Since talking is your trade, "There 's Salinguerra left you to persuade: "Fail! then"        "Nonowhich latest chance secure!" Leaped up and cried Sordello: "this made sure, "The past were yet redeemable; its work "Washelp the Guelfs, whom I, howe'er it irk, "Thus help!" He shook the foolish aloe-haulm Out of his doublet, paused, proceeded calm To the appointed presence. The large head Turned on its socket; "And your spokesman," said The large voice, "is Elcorte's happy sprout? "Few such"(so finishing a speech no doubt Addressed to Palma, silent at his side) "My sober councils have diversified. "Elcorte's son! good: forward as you may, "Our lady's minstrel with so much to say!" The hesitating sunset floated back, Rosily traversed in the wonted track The chamber, from the lattice o'er the girth Of pines, to the huge eagle blacked in earth Opposite,outlined sudden, spur to crest, That solid Salinguerra, and caressed Palma's contour; 't was day looped back night's pall; Sordello had a chance left spite of all. And much he made of the convincing speech Meant to compensate for the past and reach Through his youth's daybreak of unprofit, quite To his noon's labour, so proceed till night Leisurely! The great argument to bind Taurello with the Guelf Cause, body and mind, Came the consummate rhetoric to that? Yet most Sordello's argument dropped flat Through his accustomed fault of breaking yoke, Disjoining him who felt from him who spoke. Was 't not a touching incidentso prompt A rendering the world its just accompt, Once proved its debtor? Who 'd suppose, before This proof, that he, Goito's god of yore, At duty's instance could demean himself So memorably, dwindle to a Guelf? Be sure, in such delicious flattery steeped, His inmost self at the out-portion peeped, Thus occupied; then stole a glance at those Appealed to, curious if her colour rose Or his lip moved, while he discreetly urged The need of Lombardy becoming purged At soonest of her barons; the poor part Abandoned thus, missing the blood at heart And spirit in brain, unseasonably off Elsewhere! But, though his speech was worthy scoff, Good-humoured Salinguerra, famed for tact And tongue, who, careless of his phrase, ne'er lacked The right phrase, and harangued Honorius dumb At his accession,looked as all fell plumb To purpose and himself found interest In every point his new instructor pressed Left playing with the rescript's white wax seal To scrutinize Sordello head and heel. He means to yield assent sure? No, alas! All he replied was, "What, it comes to pass "That poesy, sooner than politics, "Makes fade young hair?" To think such speech could fix Taurello!      Then a flash of bitter truth: So fantasies could break and fritter youth That he had long ago lost earnestness, Lost will to work, lost power to even express The need of working! Earth was turned a grave: No more occasions now, though he should crave Just one, in right of superhuman toil, To do what was undone, repair such spoil, Alter the pastnothing would give the chance! Not that he was to die; he saw askance Protract the ignominious years beyond To dream intime to hope and time despond, Remember and forget, be sad, rejoice As saved a trouble; he might, at his choice, One way or other, idle life out, drop No few smooth verses by the wayfor prop, A thyrsus, these sad people, all the same, Should pick up, and set store by,far from blame, Plant o'er his hearse, convinced his better part Survived him. "Rather tear men out the heart "O' the truth!"Sordello muttered, and renewed His propositions for the Multitude. But Salinguerra, who at this attack Had thrown great breast and ruffling corslet back To hear the better, smilingly resumed His task; beneath, the carroch's warning boomed; He must decide with Tito; courteously He turned then, even seeming to agree With his admonisher"Assist the Pope, "Extend Guelf domination, fill the scope "O' the Church, thus based on All, by All, for All "Change Secular to Evangelical" Echoing his very sentence: all seemed lost, When suddenly he looked up, laughingly almost, To Palma: "This opinion of your friend's "For instance, would it answer Palma's ends? "Best, were it not, turn Guelf, submit our Strength" (Here he drew out his baldric to its length) "To the Pope's Knowledgelet our captive slip, "Wide to the walls throw ope our gates, equip "Azzo with . . . what I hold here! Who 'll subscribe "To a trite censure of the minstrel tribe "Henceforward? or pronounce, as Heinrich used, "'Spear-heads for battle, burr-heads for the joust!' "When Constance, for his couplets, would promote "Alcamo, from a parti-coloured coat, "To holding her lord's stirrup in the wars. "Not that I see where couplet-making jars "With common sense: at Mantua I had borne "This chanted, better than their most forlorn "Of bull-baits,that 's indisputable!"                      Brave! Whom vanity nigh slew, contempt shall save! All 's at an end: a Troubadour suppose Mankind will class him with their friends or foes? A puny uncouth ailing vassal think The world and him bound in some special link? Abrupt the visionary tether burst. What were rewarded here, or what amerced If a poor drudge, solicitous to dream Deservingly, got tangled by his theme So far as to conceit the knack or gift Or whatsoe'er it be, of verse, might lift The globe, a lever like the hand and head Of"Men of Action," as the Jongleurs said, "The Great Men," in the people's dialect? And not a moment did this scorn affect Sordello: scorn the poet? They, for once, Asking "what was," obtained a full response. Bid Naddo think at Mantuahe had but To look into his promptuary, put Finger on a set thought in a set speech: But was Sordello fitted thus for each Conjecture? Nowise; since within his soul, Perception brooded unexpressed and whole. A healthy spirit like a healthy frame Craves aliment in plentyall the same, Changes, assimilates its aliment. Perceived Sordello, on a truth intent? Next day no formularies more you saw Than figs or olives in a sated maw. 'T is Knowledge, whither such perceptions tend; They lose themselves in that, means to an end, The many old producing some one new, A last unlike the first. If lies are true, The Caliph's wheel-work man of brass receives A meal, munched millet grains and lettuce leaves Together in his stomach rattle loose; You find them perfect next day to produce: But ne'er expect the man, on strength of that, Can roll an iron camel-collar flat Like Haroun's self! I tell you, what was stored Bit by bit through Sordello's life, outpoured That eve, was, for that age, a novel thing: And round those three the People formed a ring, Of visionary judges whose award He recognised in fullfaces that barred Henceforth return to the old careless life, In whose great presence, therefore, his first strife For their sake must not be ignobly fought; All these, for once, approved of him, he thought, Suspended their own vengeance, chose await The issue of this strife to reinstate Them in the right of taking itin fact He must be proved king ere they could exact Vengeance for such king's defalcation. Last, A reason why the phrases flowed so fast Was in his quite forgetting for a time Himself in his amazement that the rhyme Disguised the royalty so much: he there And Salinguerra yet all-unaware Who was the lord, who liegeman!                  "Thus I lay "On thine my spirit and compel obey "His lord,my liegeman,impotent to build "Another Rome, but hardly so unskilled "In what such builder should have been, as brook "One shame beyond the charge that I forsook "His function! Free me from that shame, I bend "A brow before, suppose new years to spend, "Allow each chance, nor fruitlessly, recur "Measure thee with the Minstrel, then, demur "At any crowd he claims! That I must cede "Shamed now, my right to my especial meed "Confess thee fitter help the world than I "Ordained its champion from eternity, "Is much: but to behold thee scorn the post "I quit in thy behalfto hear thee boast "What makes my own despair!" And while he rung The changes on this theme, the roof up-sprung, The sad walls of the presence-chamber died Into the distance, or embowering vied With far-away Goito's vine-frontier; And crowds of faces(only keeping clear The rose-light in the midst, his vantage-ground To fight their battle from)deep clustered round Sordello, with good wishes no mere breath, Kind prayers for him no vapour, since, come death Come life, he was fresh-sinewed every joint, Each bone new-marrowed as whom gods anoint Though mortal to their rescue. Now let sprawl The snaky volumes hither! Is Typhon all For Hercules to tramplegood report From Salinguerra only to extort? "So was I" (closed he his inculcating A poet must be earth's essential king) "So was I, royal so, and if I fail, "'T is not the royalty, ye witness quail, "But one deposed who, caring not exert "Its proper essence, trifled malapert "With accidents insteadgood things assigned "As heralds of a better thing behind "And, worthy through display of these, put forth "Never the inmost all-surpassing worth "That constitutes him king precisely since "As yet no other spirit may evince "Its like: the power he took most pride to test, "Whereby all forms of life had been professed "At pleasure, forms already on the earth, "Was but a means to power beyond, whose birth "Should, in its novelty, be kingship's proof. "Now, whether he came near or kept aloof "The several forms he longed to imitate, "Not there the kingship lay, he sees too late. "Those forms, unalterable first as last, "Proved him her copier, not the protoplast "Of nature: what would come of being free, "By action to exhibit tree for tree, "Bird, beast, for beast and bird, or prove earth bore "One veritable man or woman more? "Means to an end, such proofs are: what the end? "Let essence, whatsoe'er it be, extend "Never contract. Already you include "The multitude; then let the multitude "Include yourself; and the result were new: "Themselves before, the multitude turn you. "This were to live and move and have, in them, "Your being, and secure a diadem "You should transmit (because no cycle yearns "Beyond itself, but on itself returns) "When, the full sphere in wane, the world o'erlaid "Long since with you, shall have in turn obeyed "Some orb still prouder, some displayer, still "More potent than the last, of human will, "And some new king depose the old. Of such "Am Iwhom pride of this elates too much? "Safe, rather say, 'mid troops of peers again; "I, with my words, hailed brother of the train "Deeds once sufficed: for, let the world roll back, "Who fails, through deeds howe'er diverse, retrack "My purpose still, my task? A teeming crust "Air, flame, earth, wave at conflict! Then, needs must "Emerge some Calm embodied, these refer "The brawl toyellow-bearded Jupiter? "No! Saturn; some existence like a pact "And protest against Chaos, some first fact "I' the faint of time. My deep of life, I know "Is unavailing e'en to poorly show" . . . (For here the Chief immeasurably yawned) . . . "Deeds in their due gradation till Song dawned "The fullest effluence of the finest mind, "All in degree, no way diverse in kind "From minds about it, minds which, more or less, "Lofty or low, move seeking to impress "Themselves on somewhat; but one mind has climbed "Step after step, by just ascent sublimed. "Thought is the soul of act, and, stage by stage, "Soul is from body still to disengage "As tending to a freedom which rejects "Such help and incorporeally affects "The world, producing deeds but not by deeds, "Swaying, in others, frames itself exceeds, "Assigning them the simpler tasks it used "To patiently perform till Song produced "Acts, by thoughts only, for the mind: divest "Mind of e'en Thought, and, lo, God's unexpressed "Will draws above us! All then is to win "Save that. How much for me, then? where begin "My work? About me, faces! and they flock, "The earnest faces. What shall I unlock "By song? behold me prompt, whate'er it be, "To minister: how much can mortals see "Of Life? No more than so? I take the task "And marshal you Life's elemental masque, "Show Men, on evil or on good lay stress, "This light, this shade make prominent, suppress "All ordinary hues that softening blend "Such natures with the level. Apprehend "Which sinner is, which saint, if I allot "Hell, Purgatory, Heaven, a blaze or blot, "To those you doubt concerning! I enwomb "Some wretched Friedrich with his red-hot tomb; "Some dubious spirit, Lombard Agilulph "With the black chastening river I engulph! "Some unapproached Matilda I enshrine "With languors of the planet of decline "These, fail to recognize, to arbitrate "Between henceforth, to rightly estimate "Thus marshalled in the masque! Myself, the while, "As one of you, am witness, shrink or smile "At my own showing! Next agewhat 's to do? "The men and women stationed hitherto "Will I unstation, good and bad, conduct "Each nature to its farthest, or obstruct "At soonest, in the world: light, thwarted, breaks "A limpid purity to rainbow flakes, "Or shadow, massed, freezes to gloom: behold "How such, with fit assistance to unfold, "Or obstacles to crush them, disengage "Their forms, love, hate, hope, fear, peace make, war wage, "In presence of you all! Myself, implied "Superior now, as, by the platform's side, "I bade them do and suffer,would last content "The world . . . nothat 's too far! I circumvent "A few, my masque contented, and to these "Offer unveil the last of mysteries "Man's inmost life shall have yet freer play: "Once more I cast external things away, "And natures composite, so decompose "That" . . . Why, he writes Sordello!                     "How I rose, "And how have you advanced! since evermore "Yourselves effect what I was fain before "Effect, what I supplied yourselves suggest, "What I leave bare yourselves can now invest. "How we attain to talk as brothers talk, "In half-words, call things by half-names, no balk "From discontinuing old aids. To-day "Takes in account the work of Yesterday: "Has not the world a Past now, its adept "Consults ere he dispense with or accept "New aids? a single touch more may enhance, "A touch less turn to insignificance "Those structures' symmetry the past has strewed "The world with, once so bare. Leave the mere rude "Explicit details! 't is but brother's speech "We need, speech where an accent's change gives each "The other's soulno speech to understand "By former audience: need was then to expand, "Expatiatehardly were we brothers! true "Nor I lament my small remove from you, "Nor reconstruct what stands already. Ends "Accomplished turn to means: my art intends "New structure from the ancient: as they changed "The spoils of every clime at Venice, ranged "The horned and snouted Libyan god, upright "As in his desert, by some simple bright "Clay cinerary pitcherThebes as Rome, "Athens as Byzant rifled, till their Dome "From earth's reputed consummations razed "A seal, the all-transmuting Triad blazed "Above. Ah, whose that fortune? Ne'ertheless "E'en he must stoop contented to express "No tithe of what 's to saythe vehicle "Never sufficient: but his work is still "For faces like the faces that select "The single service I am bound effect, "That bid me cast aside such fancies, bow "Taurello to the Guelf cause, disallow "The Kaiser's comingwhich with heart, soul, strength, "I labour for, this eve, who feel at length "My past career's outrageous vanity, "And would, as its amends, die, even die "Now I first estimate the boon of life, "If death might win compliancesure, this strife "Is right for oncethe People my support." My poor Sordello! what may we extort By this, I wonder? Palma's lighted eyes Turned to Taurello who, long past surprise, Began, "You love himwhat you 'd say at large "Let me say briefly. First, your father's charge "To me, his friend, peruse: I guessed indeed "You were no stranger to the course decreed. "He bids me leave his children to the saints: "As for a certain project, he acquaints "The Pope with that, and offers him the best "Of your possessions to permit the rest "Go peaceablyto Ecelin, a stripe "Of soil the cursed Vicentines will gripe, "To Alberic, a patch the Trevisan "Clutches already; extricate, who can, "Treville, Villarazzi, Puissolo, "Loria and Cartiglione!all must go, "And with them go my hopes. 'T is lost, then! Lost "This eve, our crisis, and some pains it cost "Procuring; thirty yearsas good I'd spent "Like our admonisher! But each his bent "Pursues: no question, one might live absurd "Oneself this while, by deed as he by word "Persisting to obtrude an influence where "'T is made account of, much as . . . nay, you fare "With twice the fortune, youngster!I submit, "Happy to parallel my waste of wit "With the renowned Sordello's: you decide "A course for me. Romano may abide "Romano,Bacchus! After all, what dearth "Of Ecelins and Alberics on earth? "Say there 's a prize in prospect, must disgrace "Betide competitors, unless they style "Themselves Romano? Were it worth my while "To try my own luck! But an obscure place "Suits methere wants a youth to bustle, stalk "And attitudinizesome fight, more talk, "Most flaunting badgeshow, I might make clear "Since Friedrich's very purposes lie here "Here, pity they are like to lie! For me, "With station fixed unceremoniously "Long since, small use contesting; I am but "The liegemanyou are born the lieges: shut "That gentle mouth now! or resume your kin "In your sweet self; were Palma Ecelin "For me to work with! Could that neck endure "This bauble for a cumbrous garniture, "She should . . . or might one bear it for her? Stay "I have not been so flattered many a day "As by your pale friendBacchus! The least help "Would lick the hind's fawn to a lion's whelp: "His neck is broad enougha ready tongue "Beside: too writhledbut, the main thing, young "I could . . . why, look ye!"                And the badge was thrown Across Sordello's neck: "This badge alone "Makes you Romano's Headbecomes superb "On your bare neck, which would, on mine, disturb "The pauldron," said Taurello. A mad act, Nor even dreamed about beforein fact, Not when his sportive arm rose for the nonce But he had dallied overmuch, this once, With power: the thing was done, and he, aware The thing was done, proceeded to declare (So like a nature made to serve, excel In serving, only feel by service well!) That he would make Sordello that and more. "As good a scheme as any. What 's to pore "At in my face?" he asked"ponder instead "This piece of news; you are Romano's Head! "One cannot slacken pace so near the goal, "Suffer my Azzo to escape heart-whole "This time! For you there 's Palma to espouse "For me, one crowning trouble ere I house "Like my compeer."          On which ensued a strange And solemn visitation; there came change O'er every one of them; each looked on each: Up in the midst a truth grew, without speech. And when the giddiness sank and the haze Subsided, they were sitting, no amaze, Sordello with the baldric on, his sire Silent, though his proportions seemed aspire Momently; and, interpreting the thrill, Night at its ebb,Palma was found there still Relating somewhat Adelaide confessed A year ago, while dying on her breast, Of a contrivance, that Vicenza night When Ecelin had birth. "Their convoy's flight, "Cut off a moment, coiled inside the flame "That wallowed like a dragon at his game "The toppling city throughSan Biagio rocks! "And wounded lies in her delicious locks "Retrude, the frail mother, on her face, "None of her wasted, just in one embrace "Covering her child: when, as they lifted her, "Cleaving the tumult, mighty, mightier "And mightiest Taurello's cry outbroke, "Leapt like a tongue of fire that cleaves the smoke, "Midmost to cheer his Mantuans onwarddrown "His colleague Ecelin's clamour, up and down "The disarray: failed Adelaide see then "Who was the natural chief, the man of men? "Outstripping time, her infant there burst swathe, "Stood up with eyes haggard beyond the scathe "From wandering after his heritage "Lost once and lost for aye: and why that rage, "That deprecating glance? A new shape leant "On a familiar shapegloatingly bent "O'er his discomfiture; 'mid wreaths it wore, "Still one outflamed the resther child's before "'T was Salinguerra's for his child: scorn, hate, "Rage now might startle her when all too late! "Then was the moment!rival's foot had spurned "Never that House to earth else! Sense returned "The act conceived, adventured and complete, "They bore away to an obscure retreat "Mother and childRetrude's self not slain" (Nor even here Taurello moved) "though pain "Was fled; and what assured them most 't was fled, "All pain, was, if they raised the pale hushed head "'T would turn this way and that, waver awhile, "And only settle into its old smile "(Graceful as the disquieted water-flag "Steadying itself, remarked they, in the quag "On either side their path)when suffered look "Down on her child. They marched: no sign once shook "The company's close litter of crossed spears "Till, as they reached Goito, a few tears "Slipped in the sunset from her long black lash, "And she was gone. So far the action rash; "No crime. They laid Retrude in the font, "Taurello's very gift, her child was wont "To sit beneathconstant as eve he came "To sit by its attendant girls the same "As one of them. For Palma, she would blend "With this magnific spirit to the end, "That ruled her first; but scarcely had she dared "To disobey the Adelaide who scared "Her into vowing never to disclose "A secret to her husband, which so froze "His blood at half-recital, she contrived "To hide from him Taurello's infant lived, "Lest, by revealing that, himself should mar "Romano's fortunes. And, a crime so far, "Palma received that action: she was told "Of Salinguerra's nature, of his cold "Calm acquiescence in his lot! But free "To impart the secret to Romano, she "Engaged to repossess Sordello of "His heritage, and hers, and that way doff "The mask, but after years, long years: while now, "Was not Romano's sign-mark on that brow?" Across Taurello's heart his arms were locked: And when he did speak 't was as if he mocked The minstrel, "who had not to move," he said, "Nor stirshould fate defraud him of a shred "Of his son's infancy? much less his youth!" (Laughingly all this)"which to aid, in truth, "Himself, reserved on purpose, had not grown "Old, not too old't was best they kept alone "Till now, and never idly met till now;" Then, in the same breath, told Sordello how All intimations of this eve's event Were lies, for Friedrich must advance to Trent, Thence to Verona, then to Rome, there stop, Tumble the Church down, institute a-top The Alps a Prefecture of Lombardy: "That 's now!no prophesying what may be "Anon, with a new monarch of the clime, "Native of Gesi, passing his youth's prime "At Naples. Tito bids my choice decide "On whom . . ."         "Embrace him, madman!" Palma cried, Who through the laugh saw sweat-drops burst apace, And his lips blanching: he did not embrace Sordello, but he laid Sordello's hand On his own eyes, mouth, forehead.                  Understand, This while Sordello was becoming flushed Out of his whiteness; thoughts rushed, fancies rushed; He pressed his hand upon his head and signed Both should forbear him. "Nay, the best 's behind!" Taurello laughednot quite with the same laugh: "The truth is, thus we scatter, ay, like chaff "These Guelfs, a despicable monk recoils "From: nor expect a fickle Kaiser spoils "Our triumph!Friedrich? Think you, I intend "Friedrich shall reap the fruits of blood I spend "And brain I waste? Think you, the people clap "Their hands at my out-hewing this wild gap "For any Friedrich to fill up? 'T is mine "That 's yours: I tell you, towards some such design "Have I worked blindly, yes, and idly, yes, "And for another, yesbut worked no less "With instinct at my heart; I else had swerved, "While nowlook round! My cunning has preserved "Samminiatothat 's a central place "Secures us Florence, boy,in Pisa's case. "By land as she by sea; with Pisa ours, "And Florence, and Pistoia, one devours "The land at leisure! Gloriously dispersed "Brescia, observe, Milan, Piacenza first "That flanked us (ah, you know not!) in the March; "On these we pile, as keystone of our arch, "Romagna and Bologna, whose first span "Covered the Trentine and the Valsugan; "Sofia's Egna by Bolgiano 's sure!" . . . So he proceeded: half of all this, pure Delusion, doubtless, nor the rest too true, But what was undone he felt sure to do, As ring by ring he wrung off, flung away The pauldron-rings to give his sword-arm play Need of the sword now! That would soon adjust Aught wrong at present; to the sword intrust Sordello's whiteness, undersize: 't was plain He hardly rendered right to his own brain Like a brave hound, men educate to pride Himself on speed or scent nor aught beside, As though he could not, gift by gift, match men! Palma had listened patiently: but when 'T was time expostulate, attempt withdraw Taurello from his child, she, without awe Took off his iron arms from, one by one, Sordello's shrinking shoulders, and, that done, Made him avert his visage and relieve Sordello (you might see his corslet heave The while) who, loose, rosetried to speak, then sank: They left him in the chamber. All was blank. And even reeling down the narrow stair Taurello kept up, as though unaware Palma was by to guide him, the old device Something of Milan"how we muster thrice "The Torriani's strength there; all along "Our own Visconti cowed them"thus the song Continued even while she bade him stoop, Thrid somehow, by some glimpse of arrow-loop, The turnings to the gallery below, Where he stopped short as Palma let him go. When he had sat in silence long enough Splintering the stone bench, braving a rebuff She stopped the truncheon; only to commence One of Sordello's poems, a pretence For speaking, some poor rhyme of "Elys' hair "And head that 's sharp and perfect like a pear, "So smooth and close are laid the few fine locks "Stained like pale honey oozed from topmost rocks "Sun-blanched the livelong summer"from his worst Performance, the Goito, as his first: And that at end, conceiving from the brow And open mouth no silence would serve now, Went on to say the whole world loved that man And, for that matter, thought his face, tho' wan, Eclipsed the Count'she sucking in each phrase As if an angel spoke. The foolish praise Ended, he drew her on his mailed knees, made Her face a framework with his hands, a shade, A crown, an aureole: there must she remain (Her little mouth compressed with smiling pain As in his gloves she felt her tresses twitch) To get the best look at, in fittest niche Dispose his saint. That done, he kissed her brow, "Lauded her father for his treason now," He told her, "only, how could one suspect "The wit in him?whose clansman, recollect, `Was ever Salinguerrashe, the same, "Romano and his ladyso, might claim "To know all, as she should"and thus begun Schemes with a vengeance, schemes on schemes, "not one "Fit to be told that foolish boy," he said, "But only let Sordello Palma wed, "Then!"      'T was a dim long narrow place at best: Midway a sole grate showed the fiery West, As shows its corpse the world's end some split tomb A gloom, a rift of fire, another gloom, Faced Palmabut at length Taurello set Her free; the grating held one ragged jet Of fierce gold fire: he lifted her within The hollow underneathhow else begin Fate's second marvellous cycle, else renew The ages than with Palma plain in view? Then paced the passage, hands clenched, head erect, Pursuing his discourse; a grand unchecked Monotony made out from his quick talk And the recurring noises of his walk; Somewhat too much like the o'ercharged assent Of two resolved friends in one danger blent, Who hearten each the other against heart; Boasting there 's nought to care for, when, apart The boaster, all 's to care for. He, beside Some shape not visible, in power and pride Approached, out of the dark, ginglingly near, Nearer, passed close in the broad light, his ear Crimson, eyeballs suffused, temples full-fraught, Just a snatch of the rapid speech you caught, And on he strode into the opposite dark, Till presently the harsh heel's turn, a spark I' the stone, and whirl of some loose embossed throng That crashed against the angle aye so long After the last, punctual to an amount Of mailed great paces you could not but count, Prepared you for the pacing back again. And by the snatches you might ascertain That, Friedrich's Prefecture surmounted, left By this alone in Italy, they cleft Asunder, crushed together, at command Of none, were free to break up Hildebrand, Rebuild, he and Sordello, Charlemagne But garnished, Strength with Knowledge, "if we deign "Accept that compromise and stoop to give "Rome law, the Csar's Representative." Enough, that the illimitable flood Of triumphs after triumphs, understood In its faint reflux (you shall hear) sufficed Young Ecelin for appanage, enticed Him on till, these long quiet in their graves, He found 't was looked for that a whole life's braves Should somehow be made good; so, weak and worn, Must stagger up at Milan, one grey morn Of the to-come, and fight his latest fight. But, Salinguerra's prophecy at height He voluble with a raised arm and stiff, A blaring voice, a blazing eye, as if He had our very Italy to keep Or cast away, or gather in a heap To garrison the betteray, his word Was, "run the cucumber into a gourd, "Drive Trent upon Apulia"at their pitch Who spied the continents and islands which Grew mulberry leaves and sickles, in the map (Strange that three such confessions so should hap To Palma, Dante spoke with in the clear Amorous silence of the Swooning-sphere, Cunizza, as he called her! Never ask Of Palma more! She sat, knowing her task Was done, the labour of it,for, success Concerned not Palma, passion's votaress.) Triumph at neight, and thus Sordello crowned Above the passage suddenly a sound Stops speech, stops walk: back shrinks Taurello, bids With large involuntary asking lids, Palma interpret. "'T is his own foot-stamp "Your hand! His summons! Nay, this idle damp "Befits not!" Out they two reeled dizzily. "Visconti 's strong at Milan," resumed he, In the old, somewhat insignificant way (Was Palma wont, years afterward, to say) As though the spirit's flight, sustained thus far, Dropped at that very instant.                Gone they are Palma, Taurello; Eglamor anon, Ecelin,only Naddo 's never gone! Labours, this moonrise, what the Master meant: "Is Squarcialupo speckled?purulent, "I 'd say, but when was Providence put out? "He carries somehow handily about "His spite nor fouls himself!" Goito's vines Stand like a cheat detectedstark rough lines, The moon breaks through, a grey mean scale against The vault where, this eve's Maiden, thou remain'st Like some fresh martyr, eyes fixedwho can tell? As Heaven, now all 's at end, did not so well, Spite of the faith and victory, to leave Its virgin quite to death in the lone eve. While the persisting hermit-bee . . . ha! wait No longer: these in compass, forward fate! ~ Robert Browning, Sordello - Book the Fifth ,

206: Ilion Book I: The Book of the Herald Dawn in her journey eternal compelling the labour of mortals, Dawn the beginner of things with the night for their rest or their ending, Pallid and bright-lipped arrived from the mists and the chill of the Euxine. Earth in the dawn-fire delivered from starry and shadowy vastness Woke to the wonder of life and its passion and sorrow and beauty, All on her bosom sustaining, the patient compassionate Mother. Out of the formless vision of Night with its look on things hidden Given to the gaze of the azure she lay in her garment of greenness, Wearing light on her brow. In the dawn-ray lofty and voiceless Ida climbed with her god-haunted peaks into diamond lustres, Ida first of the hills with the ranges silent beyond her Watching the dawn in their giant companies, as since the ages First began they had watched her, upbearing Time on their summits. Troas cold on her plain awaited the boon of the sunshine. There, like a hope through an emerald dream sole-pacing for ever, Stealing to wideness beyond, crept Simois lame in his currents, Guiding his argent thread mid the green of the reeds and the grasses. Headlong, impatient of Space and its boundaries, Time and its slowness, Xanthus clamoured aloud as he ran to the far-surging waters, Joining his call to the many-voiced roar of the mighty Aegean, Answering Oceans limitless cry like a whelp to its parent. Forests looked up through their rifts, the ravines grew aware of their shadows. Closer now gliding glimmered the golden feet of the goddess. Over the hills and the headlands spreading her garment of splendour, Fateful she came with her eyes impartial looking on all things, Bringer to man of the day of his fortune and day of his downfall. Full of her luminous errand, careless of eve and its weeping, Fateful she paused unconcerned above Ilions mysteried greatness, Domes like shimmering tongues of the crystal flames of the morning, Opalesque rhythm-line of tower-tops, notes of the lyre of the sungod. High over all that a nation had built and its love and its laughter, Lighting the last time highway and homestead, market and temple, Looking on men who must die and women destined to sorrow, Looking on beauty fire must lay low and the sickle of slaughter, Fateful she lifted the doom-scroll red with the script of the Immortals, Deep in the invisible air that folds in the race and its morrows Fixed it, and passed on smiling the smile of the griefless and deathless, Dealers of death though death they know not, who in the morning Scatter the seed of the event for the reaping ready at nightfall. Over the brooding of plains and the agelong trance of the summits Out of the sun and its spaces she came, pausing tranquil and fatal, And, at a distance followed by the golden herds of the sungod, Carried the burden of Light and its riddle and danger to Hellas. Even as fleets on a chariot divine through the gold streets of ether, Swiftly when Life fleets, invisibly changing the arc of the soul-drift, And, with the choice that has chanced or the fate man has called and now suffers Weighted, the moment travels driving the past towards the future, Only its face and its feet are seen, not the burden it carries. Weight of the event and its surface we bear, but the meaning is hidden. Earth sees not; lifes clamour deafens the ear of the spirit: Man knows not; least knows the messenger chosen for the summons. Only he listens to the voice of his thoughts, his hearts ignorant whisper, Whistle of winds in the tree-tops of Time and the rustle of Nature. Now too the messenger hastened driving the car of the errand: Even while dawn was a gleam in the east, he had cried to his coursers. Half yet awake in lights turrets started the scouts of the morning Hearing the jar of the wheels and the throb of the hooves exultation, Hooves of the horses of Greece as they galloped to Phrygian Troya. Proudly they trampled through Xanthus thwarting the foam of his anger, Whinnying high as in scorn crossed Simois tangled currents, Xanthus reed-girdled twin, the gentle and sluggard river. One and unarmed in the car was the driver; grey was he, shrunken, Worn with his decades. To Pergama cinctured with strength Cyclopean Old and alone he arrived, insignificant, feeblest of mortals, Carrying Fate in his helpless hands and the doom of an empire. Ilion, couchant, saw him arrive from the sea and the darkness. Heard mid the faint slow stirrings of life in the sleep of the city, Rapid there neared a running of feet, and the cry of the summons Beat round the doors that guarded the domes of the splendour of Priam. Wardens charged with the night, ye who stand in Laomedons gateway, Waken the Ilian kings. Talthybius, herald of Argos, Parleying stands at the portals of Troy in the grey of the dawning. High and insistent the call. In the dimness and hush of his chamber Charioted far in his dreams amid visions of glory and terror, Scenes of a vivider world,though blurred and deformed in the brain-cells, Vague and inconsequent, there full of colour and beauty and greatness, Suddenly drawn by the pull of the conscious thread of the earth-bond And of the needs of Time and the travail assigned in the transience Warned by his body, Deiphobus, reached in that splendid remoteness, Touched through the nerve-ways of life that branch to the brain of the dreamer, Heard the terrestrial call and slumber startled receded Sliding like dew from the mane of a lion. Reluctant he travelled Back from the light of the fields beyond death, from the wonderful kingdoms Where he had wandered a soul among souls in the countries beyond us, Free from the toil and incertitude, free from the struggle and danger: Now, compelled, he returned from the respite given to the time-born, Called to the strife and the wounds of the earth and the burden of daylight. He from the carven couch upreared his giant stature. Haste-spurred he laved his eyes and regained earths memories, haste-spurred Donning apparel and armour strode through the town of his fathers, Watched by her gods on his way to his fate, towards Pergamas portals. Nine long years had passed and the tenth now was wearily ending, Years of the wrath of the gods, and the leaguer still threatened the ramparts Since through a tranquil morn the ships came past Tenedos sailing And the first Argive fell slain as he leaped on the Phrygian beaches; Still the assailants attacked, still fought back the stubborn defenders. When the reward is withheld and endlessly leng thens the labour, Weary of fruitless toil grows the transient heart of the mortal. Weary of battle the invaders warring hearthless and homeless Prayed to the gods for release and return to the land of their fathers: Weary of battle the Phrygians beset in their beautiful city Prayed to the gods for an end of the danger and mortal encounter. Long had the high-beached ships forgotten their measureless ocean. Greece seemed old and strange to her children camped on the beaches, Old like a life long past one remembers hardly believing But as a dream that has happened, but as the tale of another. Time with his tardy touch and Nature changing our substance Slowly had dimmed the faces loved and the scenes once cherished: Yet was the dream still dear to them longing for wife and for children, Longing for hearth and glebe in the far-off valleys of Hellas. Always like waves that swallow the shingles, lapsing, returning, Tide of the battle, race of the onset relentlessly thundered Over the Phrygian corn-fields. Trojan wrestled with Argive, Caria, Lycia, Thrace and the war-lord mighty Achaia Joined in the clasp of the fight. Death, panic and wounds and disaster, Glory of conquest and glory of fall, and the empty hearth-side, Weeping and fortitude, terror and hope and the pang of remembrance, Anguish of hearts, the lives of the warriors, the strength of the nations Thrown were like weights into Destinys scales, but the balance wavered Pressed by invisible hands. For not only the mortal fighters, Heroes half divine whose names are like stars in remoteness, Triumphed and failed and were winds or were weeds on the dance of the surges, But from the peaks of Olympus and shimmering summits of Ida Gleaming and clanging the gods of the antique ages descended. Hidden from human knowledge the brilliant shapes of Immortals Mingled unseen in the mellay, or sometimes, marvellous, maskless, Forms of undying beauty and power that made tremble the heart-strings Parting their deathless secrecy crossed through the borders of vision, Plain as of old to the demigods out of their glory emerging, Heard by mortal ears and seen by the eyeballs that perish. Mighty they came from their spaces of freedom and sorrowless splendour. Sea-vast, trailing the azure hem of his clamorous waters, Blue-lidded, maned with the Night, Poseidon smote for the future, Earth-shaker who with his trident releases the coils of the Dragon, Freeing the forces unborn that are locked in the caverns of Nature. Calm and unmoved, upholding the Word that is Fate and the order Fixed in the sight of a Will foreknowing and silent and changeless, Hera sent by Zeus and Athene lifting his aegis Guarded the hidden decree. But for Ilion, loud as the surges, Ares impetuous called to the fire in mens hearts, and his passion Woke in the shadowy depths the forms of the Titan and demon; Dumb and coerced by the grip of the gods in the abyss of the being, Formidable, veiled they sit in the grey subconscient darkness Watching the sleep of the snake-haired Erinnys. Miracled, haloed, Seer and magician and prophet who beholds what the thought cannot witness, Lifting the godhead within us to more than a human endeavour, Slayer and saviour, thinker and mystic, leaped from his sun-peaks Guarding in Ilion the wall of his mysteries Delphic Apollo. Heavens strengths divided swayed in the whirl of the Earth-force. All that is born and destroyed is reborn in the sweep of the ages; Life like a decimal ever recurring repeats the old figure; Goal seems there none for the ball that is chased throughout Time by the Fate-teams; Evil once ended renews and no issue comes out of living: Only an Eye unseen can distinguish the thread of its workings. Such seemed the rule of the pastime of Fate on the plains of the Troad; All went backwards and forwards tossed in the swing of the death-game. Vain was the toil of the heroes, the blood of the mighty was squandered, Spray as of surf on the cliffs when it moans unappeased, unrequited Age after fruitless age. Day hunted the steps of the nightfall; Joy succeeded to grief; defeat only greatened the vanquished, Victory offered an empty delight without guerdon or profit. End there was none of the effort and end there was none of the failure. Triumph and agony changing hands in a desperate measure Faced and turned as a man and a maiden trampling the grasses Face and turn and they laugh in their joy of the dance and each other. These were gods and they trampled lives. But though Time is immortal, Mortal his works are and ways and the anguish ends like the rapture. Artists of Nature content with their work in the plan of the transience, Beautiful, deathless, august, the Olympians turned from the carnage, Leaving the battle already decided, leaving the heroes Slain in their minds, Troy burned, Greece left to her glory and downfall. Into their heavens they rose up mighty like eagles ascending Fanning the world with their wings. As the great to their luminous mansions Turn from the cry and the strife, forgetting the wounded and fallen, Calm they repose from their toil and incline to the joy of the banquet, Watching the feet of the wine-bearers rosily placed on the marble, Filling their hearts with ease, so they to their sorrowless ether Passed from the wounded earth and its air that is ploughed with mens anguish; Calm they reposed and their hearts inclined to the joy and the silence. Lifted was the burden laid on our wills by their starry presence: Man was restored to his smallness, the world to its inconscient labour. Life felt a respite from height, the winds breathed freer delivered; Light was released from their blaze and the earth was released from their greatness. But their immortal content from the struggle titanic departed. Vacant the noise of the battle roared like the sea on the shingles; Wearily hunted the spears their quarry; strength was disheartened; Silence increased with the march of the months on the tents of the leaguer. But not alone on the Achaians the steps of the moments fell heavy; Slowly the shadow deepened on Ilion mighty and scornful: Dragging her days went by; in the rear of the hearts of her people Something that knew what they dared not know and the mind would not utter, Something that smote at her soul of defiance and beauty and laughter, Darkened the hours. For Doom in her sombre and giant uprising Neared, assailing the skies: the sense of her lived in all pastimes; Time was pursued by unease and a terror woke in the midnight: Even the ramparts felt her, stones that the gods had erected. Now no longer she dallied and played, but bounded and hastened, Seeing before her the end and, imagining massacre calmly, Laughed and admired the flames and rejoiced in the cry of the captives. Under her, dead to the watching immortals, Deiphobus hastened Clanging in arms through the streets of the beautiful insolent city, Brilliant, a gleaming husk but empty and left by the daemon. Even as a star long extinguished whose light still travels the spaces, Seen in its form by men, but itself goes phantom-like fleeting Void and null and dark through the uncaring infinite vastness, So now he seemed to the sight that sees all things from the Real. Timeless its vision of Time creates the hour by things coming. Borne on a force from the past and no more by a power for the future Mighty and bright was his body, but shadowy the shape of his spirit Only an eidolon seemed of the being that had lived in him, fleeting Vague like a phantom seen by the dim Acherontian waters. But to the guardian towers that watched over Pergamas gateway Out of the waking city Deiphobus swiftly arriving Called, and swinging back the huge gates slowly, reluctant, Flung Troy wide to the entering Argive. Ilions portals Parted admitting her destiny, then with a sullen and iron Cry they closed. Mute, staring, grey like a wolf descended Old Talthybius, propping his steps on the staff of his errand; Feeble his body, but fierce still his glance with the fire within him; Speechless and brooding he gazed on the hated and coveted city. Suddenly, seeking heaven with her buildings hewn as for Titans, Marvellous, rhythmic, a child of the gods with marble for raiment, Smiting the vision with harmony, splendid and mighty and golden, Ilion stood up around him entrenched in her giant defences. Strength was uplifted on strength and grandeur supported by grandeur; Beauty lay in her lap. Remote, hieratic and changeless, Filled with her deeds and her dreams her gods looked out on the Argive, Helpless and dumb with his hate as he gazed on her, they too like mortals Knowing their centuries past, not knowing the morrow before them. Dire were his eyes upon Troya the beautiful, his face like a doom-mask: All Greece gazed in them, hated, admired, grew afraid, grew relentless. But to the Greek Deiphobus cried and he turned from his passion Fixing his ominous eyes with the god in them straight on the Trojan: Messenger, voice of Achaia, wherefore confronting the daybreak Comest thou driving thy car from the sleep of the tents that besiege us? Fateful, I deem, was the thought that, conceived in the silence of midnight, Raised up thy aged limbs from the couch of their rest in the stillness, Thoughts of a mortal but forged by the Will that uses our members And of its promptings our speech and our acts are the tools and the image. Oft from the veil and the shadow they leap out like stars in their brightness, Lights that we think our own, yet they are but tokens and counters, Signs of the Forces that flow through us serving a Power that is secret. What in the dawning bringst thou to Troya the mighty and dateless Now in the ending of Time when the gods are weary of struggle? Sends Agamemnon challenge or courtesy, Greek, to the Trojans? High like the northwind answered the voice of the doom from Achaia: Trojan Deiphobus, daybreak, silence of night and the evening Sink and arise and even the strong sun rests from his splendour. Not for the servant is rest nor Time is his, only his death-pyre. I have not come from the monarch of men or the armoured assembly Held on the wind-swept marge of the thunder and laughter of ocean. One in his singleness greater than kings and multitudes sends me. I am a voice out of Phthia, I am the will of the Hellene. Peace in my right I bring to you, death in my left hand. Trojan, Proudly receive them, honour the gifts of the mighty Achilles. Death accept, if Ate deceives you and Doom is your lover, Peace if your fate can turn and the god in you chooses to hearken. Full is my heart and my lips are impatient of speech undelivered. It was not made for the streets or the market, nor to be uttered Meanly to common ears, but where counsel and majesty harbour Far from the crowd in the halls of the great and to wisdom and foresight Secrecy whispers, there I will speak among Ilions princes. Envoy, answered the Laomedontian, voice of Achilles, Vain is the offer of peace that sets out with a threat for its prelude. Yet will we hear thee. Arise who are fleetest of foot in the gateway, Thou, Thrasymachus, haste. Let the domes of the mansion of Ilus Wake to the bruit of the Hellene challenge. Summon Aeneas. Even as the word sank back into stillness, doffing his mantle Started to run at the bidding a swift-footed youth of the Trojans First in the race and the battle, Thrasymachus son of Aretes. He in the dawn disappeared into swiftness. Deiphobus slowly, Measuring Fate with his thoughts in the troubled vasts of his spirit, Back through the stir of the city returned to the house of his fathers, Taming his mighty stride to the pace infirm of the Argive. But with the god in his feet Thrasymachus rapidly running Came to the halls in the youth of the wonderful city by Ilus Built for the joy of the eye; for he rested from war and, triumphant, Reigned adored by the prostrate nations. Now when all ended, Last of its mortal possessors to walk in its flowering gardens, Great Anchises lay in that luminous house of the ancients Soothing his restful age, the far-warring victor Anchises, High Bucoleons son and the father of Rome by a goddess; Lonely and vagrant once in his boyhood divine upon Ida White Aphrodite ensnared him and she loosed her ambrosial girdle Seeking a mortals love. On the threshold Thrasymachus halted Looking for servant or guard, but felt only a loneness of slumber Drawing the souls sight within away from its life and things human; Soundless, unheeding, the vacant corridors fled into darkness. He to the shades of the house and the dreams of the echoing rafters Trusted his high-voiced call, and from chambers still dim in their twilight Strong Aeneas armoured and mantled, leonine striding, Came, Anchises son; for the dawn had not found him reposing, But in the night he had left his couch and the clasp of Cresa, Rising from sleep at the call of his spirit that turned to the waters Prompted by Fate and his mother who guided him, white Aphrodite. Still with the impulse of speed Thrasymachus greeted Aeneas: Hero Aeneas, swift be thy stride to the Ilian hill-top. Dardanid, haste! for the gods are at work; they have risen with the morning, Each from his starry couch, and they labour. Doom, we can see it, Glows on their anvils of destiny, clang we can hear of their hammers. Something they forge there sitting unknown in the silence eternal, Whether of evil or good it is they who shall choose who are masters Calm, unopposed; they are gods and they work out their iron caprices. Troy is their stage and Argos their background; we are their puppets. Always our voices are prompted to speech for an end that we know not, Always we think that we drive, but are driven. Action and impulse, Yearning and thought are their engines, our will is their shadow and helper. Now too, deeming he comes with a purpose framed by a mortal, Shaft of their will they have shot from the bow of the Grecian leaguer, Lashing themselves at his steeds, Talthybius sent by Achilles. Busy the gods are always, Thrasymachus son of Aretes, Weaving Fate on their looms, and yesterday, now and tomorrow Are but the stands they have made with Space and Time for their timber, Frame but the dance of their shuttle. What eye unamazed by their workings Ever can pierce where they dwell and uncover their far-stretching purpose? Silent they toil, they are hid in the clouds, they are wrapped with the midnight. Yet to Apollo I pray, the Archer friendly to mortals, Yet to the rider on Fate I abase myself, wielder of thunder, Evil and doom to avert from my fatherland. All night Morpheus, He who with shadowy hands heaps error and truth upon mortals, Stood at my pillow with images. Dreaming I erred like a phantom Helpless in Ilions streets with the fire and the foeman around me. Red was the smoke as it mounted triumphant the house-top of Priam, Clang of the arms of the Greeks was in Troya, and thwarting the clangour Voices were crying and calling me over the violent Ocean Borne by the winds of the West from a land where Hesperus harbours. Brooding they ceased, for their thoughts grew heavy upon them and voiceless. Then, in a farewell brief and unthought and unconscious of meaning, Parting they turned to their tasks and their lives now close but soon severed: Destined to perish even before his perishing nation, Back to his watch at the gate sped Thrasymachus rapidly running; Large of pace and swift, but with eyes absorbed and unseeing, Driven like a car of the gods by the whip of his thoughts through the highways, Turned to his mighty future the hero born of a goddess. One was he chosen to ascend into greatness through fall and disaster, Loser of his world by the will of a heaven that seemed ruthless and adverse, Founder of a newer and greater world by daring adventure. Now, from the citadels rise with the townships crowding below it High towards a pondering of domes and the mystic Palladium climbing, Fronted with the morning ray and joined by the winds of the ocean, Fate-weighed up Troys slope strode musing strong Aeneas. Under him silent the slumbering roofs of the city of Ilus Dreamed in the light of the dawn; above watched the citadel, sleepless Lonely and strong like a goddess white-limbed and bright on a hill-top, Looking far out at the sea and the foe and the prowling of danger. Over the brow he mounted and saw the palace of Priam, Home of the gods of the earth, Laomedons marvellous vision Held in the thought that accustomed his will to unearthly achievement And in the blaze of his spirit compelling heaven with its greatness, Dreamed by the harp of Apollo, a melody caught into marble. Out of his mind it arose like an epic canto by canto; Each of its halls was a strophe, its chambers lines of an epode, Victor chant of Ilions destiny. Absent he entered, Voiceless with thought, the brilliant megaron crowded with paintings, Paved with a splendour of marble, and saw Deiphobus seated, Son of the ancient house by the opulent hearth of his fathers, And at his side like a shadow the grey and ominous Argive. Happy of light like a lustrous star when it welcomes the morning, Brilliant, beautiful, glamoured with gold and a fillet of gem-fire, Paris, plucked from the song and the lyre by the Grecian challenge, Came with the joy in his face and his eyes that Fate could not alter. Ever a child of the dawn at play near a turn of the sun-roads, Facing destinys look with the careless laugh of a comrade, He with his vision of delight and beauty brightening the earth-field Passed through its peril and grief on his way to the ambiguous Shadow. Last from her chamber of sleep where she lay in the Ilian mansion Far in the heart of the house with the deep-bosomed daughters of Priam, Noble and tall and erect in a nimbus of youth and of glory, Claiming the world and life as a fief of her strength and her courage, Dawned through a doorway that opened to distant murmurs and laughter, Capturing the eye like a smile or a sunbeam, Penthesilea. She from the threshold cried to the herald, crossing the marble, Regal and fleet, with her voice that was mighty and dire in its sweetness. What with such speed has impelled from the wind-haunted beaches of Troas, Herald, thy car though the sun yet hesitates under the mountains? Comest thou humbler to Troy, Talthybius, now than thou camest Once when the streams of my East sang low to my ear, not this Ocean Loud, and I roamed in my mountains uncalled by the voice of Apollo? Bringest thou dulcet-eyed peace or, sweeter to Penthesilea, Challenge of war when the spears fall thick on the shields of the fighters, Lightly the wheels leap onward chanting the anthem of Ares, Death is at work in his fields and the heart is enamoured of danger? What says Odysseus, the baffled Ithacan? what Agamemnon? Are they then weary of war who were rapid and bold and triumphant, Now that their gods are reluctant, now victory darts not from heaven Down from the clouds above Ida directing the luminous legions Armed by Fate, now Pallas forgets, now Poseidon slumbers? Bronze were their throats to the battle like bugles blaring in chorus; Mercy they knew not, but shouted and ravened and ran to the slaughter Eager as hounds when they chase, till a woman met them and stayed them, Loud my war-shout rang by Scamander. Herald of Argos, What say the vaunters of Greece to the virgin Penthesilea? High was the Argives answer confronting the mighty in Troya. Princes of Pergama, whelps of the lion who roar for the mellay, Suffer my speech! It shall ring like a spear on the hearts of the mighty. Blame not the herald; his voice is an impulse, an echo, a channel Now for the timbrels of peace and now for the drums of the battle. And I have come from no cautious strength, from no half-hearted speaker, But from the Phthian. All know him! Proud is his soul as his fortunes, Swift as his sword and his spear are the speech and the wrath from his bosom. I am his envoy, herald am I of the conquering Argives. Has not one heard in the night when the breezes whisper and shudder, Dire, the voice of a lion unsatisfied, gnawed by his hunger, Seeking his prey from the gods? For he prowls through the glens of the mountains, Errs a dangerous gleam in the woodlands, fatal and silent. So for a while he endures, for a while he seeks and he suffers Patient yet in his terrible grace as assured of his banquet; But he has lacked too long and he lifts his head and to heaven Roars in his wonder, incensed, impatiently. Startled the valleys Shrink from the dreadful alarum, the cattle gallop to shelter. Arming the herdsmen cry to each other for comfort and courage. So Talthybius spoke, as a harper voicing his prelude Touches his strings to a varied music, seeks for a concord; Long his strain he prepares. But one broke in on the speaker, Sweet was his voice like a harps though heard in the front of the onset, One of the sons of Fate by the people loved whom he ruined, Leader in counsel and battle, the Priamid, he in his beauty Carelessly walking who scattered the seeds of Titanic disaster. Surely thou dreamedst at night and awaking thy dreams have not left thee! Hast thou not woven thy words to intimidate children in Argos Sitting alarmed in the shadows who listen pale to their nurses? Greek, thou art standing in Ilion now and thou facest her princes. Use not thy words but thy kings. If friendship their honey-breathed burden, Friendship we clasp from Achilles, but challenge outpace with our challenge Meeting the foe ere he moves in his will to the clash of encounter. Such is the way of the Trojans since Phryx by the Hellespont halting Seated Troy on her hill with the Ocean for comrade and sister. Shaking in wrath his filleted head Talthybius answered: Princes, ye speak their words who drive you! Thus said Achilles: Rise, Talthybius, meet in her spaces the car of the morning; Challenge her coursers divine as they bound through the plains of the Troad. Hasten, let not the day wear gold ere thou stand in her ramparts. Herald charged with my will to a haughty and obstinate nation, Speak in the palace of Priam the word of the Phthian Achilles. Freely and not as his vassal who leads, Agamemnon, the Argive, But as a ruler in Hellas I send thee, king of my nations. Long I have walked apart from the mellay of gods in the Troad, Long has my listless spear leaned back on the peace of my tent-side, Deaf to the talk of the trumpets, the whine of the chariots speeding; Sole with my heart I have lived, unheeding the Hellene murmur, Chid when it roared for the hunt the lion pack of the war-god, Day after day I walked at dawn and in blush of the sunset, Far by the call of the seas and alone with the gods and my dreaming, Leaned to the unsatisfied chant of my heart and the rhythms of ocean, Sung to by hopes that were sweet-lipped and vain. For Polyxenas brothers Still are the brood of the Titan Laomedon slain in his greatness, Engines of God unable to bear all the might that they harbour. Awe they have chid from their hearts, nor our common humanity binds them, Stay have they none in the gods who approve, giving calmness to mortals: But like the Titans of old they have hugged to them grandeur and ruin. Seek then the race self-doomed, the leaders blinded by heaven Not in the agora swept by the winds of debate and the shoutings Lion-voiced, huge of the people! In Troyas high-crested mansion Speak out my word to the hero Deiphobus, head of the mellay, Paris the racer of doom and the stubborn strength of Aeneas. Herald of Greece, when thy feet shall be pressed on the gold and the marble, Rise in the Ilian megaron, curb not the cry of the challenge. Thus shalt thou say to them striking the ground with the staff of defiance, Fronting the tempests of war, the insensate, the gamblers with downfall. Princes of Troy, I have sat in your halls, I have slept in your chambers; Not in the battle alone as a warrior glad of his foemen, Glad of the strength that mates with his own, in peace we encountered. Marvelling I sat in the halls of my enemies, close to the bosoms Scarred by the dints of my sword and the eyes I had seen through the battle, Ate rejoicing the food of the East at the tables of Priam Served by the delicatest hands in the world, by Hecubas daughter, Or with our souls reconciled in some careless and rapturous midnight Drank of the sweetness of Phrygian wine, admiring your bodies Shaped by the gods indeed, and my spirit revolted from hatred, Softening it yearned in its strings to the beauty and joy of its foemen, Yearned from the death that oertakes and the flame that cries and desires Even at the end to save and even on the verge to deliver Troy and her wonderful works and her sons and her deep-bosomed daughters. Warned by the gods who reveal to the heart what the mind cannot hearken Deaf with its thoughts, I offered you friendship, I offered you bridal, Hellas for comrade, Achilles for brother, the world for enjoyment Won by my spear. And one heard my call and one turned to my seeking. Why is it then that the war-cry sinks not to rest by the Xanthus? We are not voices from Argolis, Lacedaemonian tricksters, Splendid and subtle and false; we are speakers of truth, we are Hellenes, Men of the northl and faithful in friendship and noble in anger, Strong like our fathers of old. But you answered my truth with evasion Hoping to seize what I will not yield and you flattered your people. Long have I waited for wisdom to dawn on your violent natures. Lonely I paced oer the sands by the thousand-throated waters Praying to Pallas the wise that the doom might turn from your mansions, Buildings delightful, gracious as rhythms, lyrics in marble, Works of the transient gods, and I yearned for the end of the war-din Hoping that Death might relent to the beautiful sons of the Trojans. Far from the cry of the spears, from the speed and the laughter of axles, Heavy upon me like iron the intolerable yoke of inaction Weighed like a load on a runner. The war-cry rose by Scamander; Xanthus was crossed on a bridge of the fallen, not by Achilles. Often I stretched out my hand to the spear, for the Trojan beaches Rang with the voice of Deiphobus shouting and slaying the Argives; Often my heart like an anxious mother for Greece and her children Leaped, for the air was full of the leonine roar of Aeneas. Always the evening fell or the gods protected the Argives. Then by the moat of the ships, on the hither plain of the Xanthus New was the voice that climbed through the din and sailed on the breezes, High, insistent, clear, and it shouted an unknown war-cry Threatening doom to the peoples. A woman had come in to aid you, Regal and insolent, fair as the morning and fell as the northwind, Freed from the distaff who grasps at the sword and she spurns at subjection Breaking the rule of the gods. She is turbulent, swift in the battle. Clanging her voice of the swan as a summons to death and disaster, Fleet-footed, happy and pitiless, laughing she runs to the slaughter; Strong with the gait that allures she leaps from her car to the slaying, Dabbles in blood smooth hands like lilies. Europe astonished Reels from her shock to the Ocean. She is the panic and mellay, War is her paean, the chariots thunder of Penthesilea. Doom was her coming, it seems, to the men of the West and their legions; Ajax sleeps for ever, Meriones lies on the beaches. One by one they are falling before you, the great in Achaia. Ever the wounded are borne like the stream of the ants when they forage Past my ships, and they hush their moans as they near and in silence Gaze at the legions inactive accusing the fame of Achilles. Still have I borne with you, waited a little, looked for a summons, Longing for bridal torches, not flame on the Ilian housetops, Blood in the chambers of sweetness, the golden amorous city Swallowed by doom. Not broken I turned from the wrestle Titanic, Hopeless, weary of toil in the ebb of my glorious spirit, But from my stress of compassion for doom of the kindred nations, But for her sake whom my soul desires, for the daughter of Priam. And for Polyxenas sake I will speak to you yet as your lover Once ere the Fury, abrupt from Erebus, deaf to your crying, Mad with the joy of the massacre, seizes on wealth and on women Calling to Fire as it strides and Ilion sinks into ashes. Yield; for your doom is impatient. No longer your helpers hasten, Legions swift to your call; the yoke of your pride and your splendour Lies not now on the nations of earth as when Fortune desired you, Strength was your slave and Troya the lioness hungrily roaring Threatened the western world from her ramparts built by Apollo. Gladly released from the thraldom they hated, the insolent shackles Curbing their manhood the peoples arise and they pray for your ruin; Piled are their altars with gifts; their blessings help the Achaians. Memnon came, but he sleeps, and the faces swart of his nation Darken no more like a cloud over thunder and surge of the onset. Wearily Lycia fights; far fled are the Carian levies. Thrace retreats to her plains preferring the whistle of stormwinds Or on the banks of the Strymon to wheel in her Orphean measure, Not in the revel of swords and fronting the spears of the Hellenes. Princes of Pergama, open your gates to our Peace who would enter, Life in her gracious clasp and forgetfulness, grave of earths passions, Healer of wounds and the past. In a comity equal, Hellenic, Asia join with Greece, one world from the frozen rivers Trod by the hooves of the Scythian to farthest undulant Ganges. Tyndarid Helen resign, the desirable cause of your danger, Back to Greece that is empty long of her smile and her movements. Broider with riches her coming, pomp of her slaves and the waggons Endlessly groaning with gold that arrive with the ransom of nations. So shall the Fury be pacified, she who exultant from Sparta Breathed in the sails of the Trojan ravisher helping his oarsmen. So shall the gods be appeased and the thoughts of their wrath shall be cancelled, Justice contented trace back her steps and for brands of the burning Torches delightful shall break into Troy with the swords of the bridal. I like a bridegroom will seize on your city and clasp and defend her Safe from the envy of Argos, from Lacedaemonian hatred, Safe from the hunger of Crete and the Locrians violent rapine. But if you turn from my voice and you hearken only to Ares Crying for battle within you deluded by Hera and Pallas, Swiftly the fierce deaths surges shall close over Troy and her ramparts Built by the gods shall be stubble and earth to the tread of the Hellene. For to my tents I return not, I swear it by Zeus and Apollo, Master of Truth who sits within Delphi fathomless brooding Sole in the caverns of Nature and hearkens her underground murmur, Giving my oath to his keeping mute and stern who forgets not, Not from the panting of Ares toil to repose, from the wrestle Locked of hope and death in the ruthless clasp of the mellay Leaving again the Trojan ramparts unmounted, leaving Greece unavenged, the Aegean a lake and Europe a province. Choosing from Hellas exile, from Peleus and Deidamia, Choosing the field for my chamber of sleep and the battle for hearthside I shall go warring on till Asia enslaved to my footsteps Feels the tread of the God in my sandal pressed on her bosom. Rest shall I then when the borders of Greece are fringed with the Ganges; Thus shall the past pay its Titan ransom and, Fate her balance Changing, a continent ravished suffer the fortune of Helen. This I have sworn allying my will to Zeus and Ananke. So was it spoken, the Phthian challenge. Silent the heroes Looked back amazed on their past and into the night of their future. Silent their hearts felt a grasp from gods and had hints of the heavens. Hush was awhile in the room, as if Fate were trying her balance Poised on the thoughts of her mortals. At length with a musical laughter Sweet as the jangling of bells upon anklets leaping in measure Answered aloud to the gods the virgin Penthesilea. Long I had heard in my distant realms of the fame of Achilles, Ignorant still while I played with the ball and ran in the dances Thinking not ever to war; but I dreamed of the shock of the hero. So might a poet inland who imagines the rumour of Ocean, Yearn with his lust for the giant upheaval, the dance as of hill-tops, Toss of the yellow mane and the tawny march and the voices Lionlike claiming earth as a prey for the clamorous waters. So have I longed as I came for the cry and the speed of Achilles. But he has lurked in his ships, he has sulked like a boy that is angry. Glad am I now of his soul that arises hungry for battle, Glad, whether victor I live or defeated travel the shadows. Once shall my spear have rung on the shield of the Phthian Achilles. Peace I desire not. I came to a haughty and resolute nation, Honour and fame they cherish, not life by the gift of a foeman. Sons of the ancient house on whom Ilion looks as on Titans, Chiefs whom the world admires, do you fear then the shock of the Phthian? Gods, it is said, have decided your doom. Are you less in your greatness? Are you not gods to reverse their decrees or unshaken to suffer? Memnon is dead and the Carians leave you? Lycia lingers? But from the streams of my East I have come to you, Penthesilea. Virgin of Asia, answered Talthybius, doom of a nation Brought thee to Troy and her haters Olympian shielded thy coming, Vainly who feedest mens hearts with a hope that the gods have rejected. Doom in thy sweet voice utters her counsels robed like a woman. Answered the virgin disdainfully, wroth at the words of the Argive: Hast thou not ended the errand they gave thee, envoy of Hellas? Not, do I think, as our counsellor camst thou elected from Argos, Nor as a lover to Troy hast thou hastened with amorous footing Hurting thy heart with her frowardness. Hatred and rapine sent thee, Greed of the Ilian gold and lust of the Phrygian women, Voice of Achaian aggression! Doom am I truly; let Gnossus Witness it, Salamis speak of my fatal arrival and Argos Silent remember her wounds. But the Argive answered the virgin: Hearken then to the words of the Hellene, Penthesilea. Virgin to whom earths strongest are corn in the sweep of thy sickle, Lioness vain of thy bruit who besiegest the paths of the battle! Art thou not satiate yet? hast thou drunk then so little of slaughter? Death has ascended thy car; he has chosen thy hand for his harvest. But I have heard of thy pride and disdain, how thou scornest the Argives And of thy fate thou complainest that ever averse to thy wishes Cloisters the Phthian and matches with weaklings Penthesilea. Not of the Ithacan boar nor the wild-cat littered in Locris Nor of the sleek-coat Argive wild-bulls sates me the hunting; So hast thou said, I would bury my spear in the lion of Hellas. Blind and infatuate, art thou not beautiful, bright as the lightning? Were not thy limbs made cunningly linking sweetness to sweetness? Is not thy laughter an arrow surprising hearts imprudent? Charm is the seal of the gods upon woman. Distaff and girdle, Work of the jar at the well and the hush of our innermost chambers, These were appointed thee, but thou hast scorned them, O Titaness, grasping Rather the shield and the spear. Thou, obeying thy turbulent nature, Tramplest oer laws that are old to the pleasure thy heart has demanded. Rather bow to the ancient Gods who are seated and constant. But for thyself thou passest and what hast thou gained for the aeons Mingled with men in their works and depriving the age of thy beauty? Fair art thou, woman, but fair with a bitter and opposite sweetness Clanging in war when thou matchest thy voice with the shout of assemblies. Not to this end was thy sweetness made and the joy of thy members, Not to this rhythm Heaven tuned its pipe in thy throat of enchantment, Armoured like men to go warring forth and with hardness and fierceness Mix in the strife and the hate while the varied meaning of Nature Perishes hurt in its heart and life is emptied of music. Long have I marked in your world a madness. Monarchs descending Court the imperious mob of their slaves and their suppliant gesture Shameless and venal offends the majestic tradition of ages: Princes plead in the agora; spurred by the tongue of a coward, Heroes march to an impious war at a priestly bidding. Gold is sought by the great with the chaffering heart of the trader. Asia fails and the Gods are abandoning Ida for Hellas. Why must thou come here to perish, O noble and exquisite virgin, Here in a cause not thine, in a quarrel remote from thy beauty, Leaving a land that is lovely and far to be slain among strangers? Girl, to thy rivers go back and thy hills where the grapes are aspirant. Trust not a fate that indulges; for all things, Penthesilea, Break with excess and he is the wisest who walks by a measure. Yet, if thou wilt, thou shalt meet me today in the shock of the battle: There will I give thee the fame thou desirest; captive in Hellas, Men shall point to thee always, smiling and whispering, saying, This is the woman who fought with the Greeks, overthrowing their heroes; This is the slayer of Ajax, this is the slave of Achilles. Then with her musical laughter the fearless Penthesilea: Well do I hope that Achilles enslaved shall taste of that glory Or on the Phrygian fields lie slain by the spear of a woman. But to the herald Achaian the Priamid, leader of Troya: Rest in the halls of thy foes and ease thy fatigue and thy winters. Herald, abide till the people have heard and reply to Achilles. Not as the kings of the West are Ilions princes and archons, Monarchs of men who drive their nations dumb to the battle. Not in the palace of Priam and not in the halls of the mighty Whispered councils prevail and the few dispose of the millions; But with their nation consulting, feeling the hearts of the commons Ilions princes march to the war or give peace to their foemen. Lightning departs from her kings and the thunder returns from her people Met in the ancient assembly where Ilus founded his columns And since her famous centuries, names that the ages remember Leading her, Troya proclaims her decrees to obedient nations. Ceasing he cried to the thralls of his house and they tended the Argive. Brought to a chamber of rest in the luminous peace of the mansion, Grey he sat and endured the food and the wine of his foemen, Chiding his spirit that murmured within him and gazed undelighted, Vexed with the endless pomps of Laomedon. Far from those glories Memory winged it back to a sward half-forgotten, a village Nestling in leaves and low hills watching it crowned with the sunset. So for his hour he abode in earths palace of lordliest beauty, But in its caverns his heart was weary and, hurt by the splendours, Longed for Greece and the smoke-darkened roof of a cottage in Argos, Eyes of a woman faded and children crowding the hearthside. Joyless he rose and eastward expected the sunrise on Ida. *** ~ Sri Aurobindo, 1 - The Book of the Herald ,

207:MANTIS EIM ESQLWN AGWNWN --Oedip. Colon. TO HIS EXCELLENCY PRINCE ALEXANDER MAVROCORDATO LATE SECRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS TO THE HOSPODAR OF WALLACHIA THE DRAMA OF HELLAS IS INSCRIBED AS AN IMPERFECT TOKEN OF THE ADMIRATION, SYMPATHY, AND FRIENDSHIP OF THE AUTHOR. PROLOGUE TO HELLAS Herald of Eternity. It is the day when all the sons of God Wait in the roofless senate-house, whose floor Is Chaos, and the immovable abyss Frozen by His steadfast word to hyaline... The shadow of God, and delegate Of that before whose breath the universe Is as a print of dew.            Hierarchs and kings Who from your thrones pinnacled on the past Sway the reluctant present, ye who sit Pavilioned on the radiance or the gloom Of mortal thought, which like an exhalation Steaming from earth, conceals the...of heaven Which gave it birth,...assemble here Before your Father's throne; the swift decree Yet hovers, and the fiery incarnation Is yet withheld, clothd in which it shall ...annul The fairest of those wandering isles that gem The sapphire space of interstellar air, That green and azure sphere, that earth enwrapped Less in the beauty of its tender light Than in an atmosphere of living spirit Which interpenetrating all the... ...it rolls from realm to realm And age to age, and in its ebb and flow Impels the generations To their appointed place, Whilst the high Arbiter Beholds the strife, and at the appointed time Sends His decrees veiled in eternal... Within the circuit of this pendent orb There lies an antique region, on which fell The dews of thought in the world's golden dawn Earliest and most benign, and from it sprung Temples and cities and immortal forms And harmonies of wisdom and of song, And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair. And when the sun of its dominion failed, And when the winter of its glory came, The winds that stripped it bare blew on and swept That dew into the utmost wildernesses In wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed The unmaternal bosom of the North. Haste, sons of God,...for ye beheld, Reluctant, or consenting, or astonished, The stern decrees go forth, which heaped on Greece Ruin and degradation and despair. A fourth now waits: assemble, sons of God, To speed or to prevent or to suspend, If, as ye dream, such power be not withheld, The unaccomplished destiny... Chorus. The curtain of the Universe Is rent and shattered, The splendour-wingd worlds disperse Like wild doves scattered.   Space is roofless and bare, And in the midst a cloudy shrine, Dark amid thrones of light. In the blue glow of hyaline Golden worlds revolve and shine. In...flight From every point of the Infinite, Like a thousand dawns on a single night The splendours rise and spread; And through thunder and darkness dread Light and music are radiated, And in their pavilioned chariots led By living wings high overhead The giant Powers move, Gloomy or bright as the thrones they fill... A chaos of light and motion Upon that glassy ocean... The senate of the Gods is met, Each in his rank and station set;   There is silence in the spaces Lo! Satan, Christ, and Mahomet Start from their places! Christ.              Almighty Father! Low-kneeling at the feet of Destiny. . . There are two fountains in which spirits weep When mortals err, Discord and Slavery named, And with their bitter dew two Destinies Filled each their irrevocable urns; the third, Fiercest and mightiest, mingled both, and added Chaos and Death, and slow Oblivion's lymph, And hate and terror, and the poisoned rain. . . The Aurora of the nations. By this brow Whose pores wept tears of blood, by these wide wounds, By this imperial crown of agony, By infamy and solitude and death, For this I underwent, and by the pain Of pity for those who would...for me The unremembered joy of a revenge, For this I feltby Plato's sacred light, Of which my spirit was a burning morrow By Greece and all she cannot cease to be, Her quenchless words, sparks of immortal truth, Stars of all nighther harmonies and forms, Echoes and shadows of what Love adores In thee, I do compel thee, send forth Fate, Thy irrevocable child: let her descend, A seraph-wingd Victory [arrayed] In tempest of the omnipotence of God Which sweeps through all things. From hollow leagues, from Tyranny which arms Adverse miscreeds and emulous anarchies To stamp, as on a wingd serpent's seed, Upon the name of Freedom; from the storm Of faction, which like earthquake shakes and sickens The solid heart of enterprise; from all By which the holiest dreams of highest spirits Are stars beneath the dawn...                  She shall arise Victorious as the world arose from Chaos! And as the Heavens and the Earth arrayed Their presence in the beauty and the light Of Thy first smile, O Father,as they gather The spirit of Thy love which paves for them Their path o'er the abyss, till every sphere Shall be one living Spirit,-- so shall Greece-- Satan. Be as all things beneath the empyrean, Mine! Art thou eyeless like old Destiny, Thou mockery-king, crowned with a wreath of thorns? Whose sceptre is a reed, the broken reed Which pierces thee! whose throne a chair of scorn; For seest thou not beneath this crystal floor The innumerable worlds of golden light Which are my empire, and the least of them ...which thou wouldst redeem from me? Know'st thou not them my portion? Or wouldst rekindle the...strife Which our great Father then did arbitrate Which he assigned to his competing sons Each his apportioned realm?                Thou Destiny, Thou who art mailed in the omnipotence Of Him who sends thee forth, whate'er thy task, Speed, spare not to accomplish, and be mine Thy trophies, whether Greece again become The fountain in the desert whence the earth Shall drink of freedom, which shall give it strength To suffer, or a gulf of hollow death To swallow all delight, all life, all hope. Go, thou Vicegerent of my will, no less Than of the Father's; but lest thou shouldst faint, The wingd hounds, Famine and Pestilence, Shall wait on thee, the hundred-forkd snake Insatiate Superstition still shall... The earth behind thy steps, and War shall hover Above, and Fraud shall gape below, and Change Shall flit before thee on her dragon wings, Convulsing and consuming, and I add Three vials of the tears which daemons weep When virtuous spirits through the gate of Death Pass triumphing over the thorns of life, Sceptres and crowns, mitres and swords and snares, Trampling in scorn, like Him and Socrates. The first is Anarchy; when Power and Pleasure, Glory and science and security, On Freedom hang like fruit on the green tree, Then pour it forth, and men shall gather ashes. The second Tyranny-- Christ.            Obdurate spirit! Thou seest but the Past in the To-come. Pride is thy error and thy punishment. Boast not thine empire, dream not that thy worlds Are more than furnace-sparks or rainbow-drops Before the Power that wields and kindles them. True greatness asks not space, true excellence Lives in the Spirit of all things that live, Which lends it to the worlds thou callest thine... Mahomet. Haste thou and fill the waning crescent With beams as keen as those which pierced the shadow Of Christian night rolled back upon the West, When the orient moon of Islam rode in triumph From Tmolus to the Acroceraunian snow...                        Wake, thou Word Of God, and from the throne of Destiny Even to the utmost limit of thy way May Triumph........... Be thou a curse on them whose creed Divides and multiplies the most high God. HELLAS DRAMATIS PERSONAE Mahmud. Hassan. Daood. Ahasuerus, a Jew. Chorus of Greek Captive Women. The Phantom of Mahomet II. Messengers, Slaves, and Attendants. Scene, Constantinople. Time, Sunset. Scene--A Terrace on the Seraglio. Mahmud sleeping, an Indian Slave sitting beside his Couch. Chorus of Greek Captive Women. We strew these opiate flowers   On thy restless pillow, They were stripped from Orient bowers,   By the Indian billow.    Be thy sleep    Calm and deep, Like theirs who fellnot ours who weep! Indian. Away, unlovely dreams!   Away, false shapes of sleep! Be his, as Heaven seems,   Clear, and bright, and deep! Soft as love, and calm as death, Sweet as a summer night without a breath. Chorus. Sleep, sleep! our song is laden   With the soul of slumber; It was sung by a Samian maiden,   Whose lover was of the number    Who now keep    That calm sleep Whence none may wake, where none shall weep. Indian. I touch thy temples pale!   I breathe my soul on thee! And could my prayers avail,   All my joy should be Dead, and I would live to weep, So thou mightst win one hour of quiet sleep. Chorus.   Breathe low, low The spell of the mighty mistress now! When Conscience lulls her sated snake, And Tyrants sleep, let Freedom wake.   Breathe lowlow The words which, like secret fire, shall flow Through the veins of the frozen earthlow, low! Semichorus I. Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed,but it returneth! Semichorus II. Yet were life a charnel where Hope lay coffined with Despair; Yet were truth a sacred lie, Love were lust Semichorus I.          If Liberty Lent not life its soul of light, Hope its iris of delight, Truth its prophet's robe to wear, Love its power to give and bear. Chorus. In the great morning of the world, The Spirit of God with might unfurled The flag of Freedom over Chaos, And all its banded anarchs fled, Like vultures frighted from Imaus, Before an earthquake's tread. So from Time's tempestuous dawn Freedom's splendour burst and shone: Thermopylae and Marathon Caught, like mountains beacon-lighted, The springing Fire.The wingd glory On Philippi half-alighted, Like an eagle on a promontory. Its unwearied wings could fan The quenchless ashes of Milan.[1] From age to age, from man to man, It lived; and lit from land to land Florence, Albion, Switzerland. Then night fell; and, as from night, Reassuming fiery flight, From the West swift Freedom came, Against the course of Heaven and doom, A second sun arrayed in flame, To burn, to kindle, to illume. From far Atlantis its young beams Chased the shadows and the dreams. France, with all her sanguine steams, Hid, but quenched it not; again Through clouds its shafts of glory rain From utmost Germany to Spain. As an eagle fed with morning Scorns the embattled tempest's warning, When she seeks her aerie hanging In the mountain-cedar's hair, And her brood expect the clanging Of her wings through the wild air, Sick with famine:Freedom, so To what of Greece remaineth now Returns; her hoary ruins glow Like Orient mountains lost in day; Beneath the safety of her wings Her renovated nurslings prey, And in the naked lightenings Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes. Let Freedom leavewhere'er she flies, A Desert, or a Paradise: Let the beautiful and the brave Share her glory, or a grave. Semichorus I. With the gifts of gladness Greece did thy cradle strew; Semichorus II. With the tears of sadness Greece did thy shroud bedew! Semichorus I. With an orphan's affection She followed thy bier through Time; Semichorus II. And at thy resurrection Reappeareth, like thou, sublime! Semichorus I. If Heaven should resume thee, To Heaven shall her spirit ascend; Semichorus II. If Hell should entomb thee, To Hell shall her high hearts bend. Semichorus I. If Annihilation Semichorus II. Dust let her glories be! And a name and a nation Be forgotten, Freedom, with thee! Indian. His brow grows darkerbreathe notmove not! He startshe shuddersye that love not, With your panting loud and fast, Have awakened him at last. Mahmud (starting from his sleep). Man the Seraglio-guard! make fast the gate! What! from a cannonade of three short hours? 'Tis false! that breach towards the Bosphorus Cannot be practicable yetwho stirs? Stand to the match; that when the foe prevails One spark may mix in reconciling ruin The conqueror and the conquered! Heave the tower Into the gapwrench off the roof! (Enter Hassan.)                   Ha! what! The truth of day lightens upon my dream And I am Mahmud still. Hassan.             Your Sublime Highness Is strangely moved. Mahmud.           The times do cast strange shadows On those who watch and who must rule their course, Lest they, being first in peril as in glory, Be whelmed in the fierce ebb:and these are of them. Thrice has a gloomy vision hunted me As thus from sleep into the troubled day; It shakes me as the tempest shakes the sea, Leaving no figure upon memory's glass. Would thatno matter. Thou didst say thou knewest A Jew, whose spirit is a chronicle Of strange and secret and forgotten things. I bade thee summon him:'tis said his tribe Dream, and are wise interpreters of dreams. Hassan. The Jew of whom I spake is old,so old He seems to have outlived a world's decay; The hoary mountains and the wrinkled ocean Seem younger still than he;his hair and beard Are whiter than the tempest-sifted snow; His cold pale limbs and pulseless arteries Are like the fibres of a cloud instinct With light, and to the soul that quickens them Are as the atoms of the mountain-drift To the winter wind:but from his eye looks forth A life of unconsumd thought which pierces The Present, and the Past, and the To-come. Some say that this is he whom the great prophet Jesus, the son of Joseph, for his mockery, Mocked with the curse of immortality. Some feign that he is Enoch: others dream He was pre-adamite and has survived Cycles of generation and of ruin. The sage, in truth, by dreadful abstinence And conquering penance of the mutinous flesh, Deep contemplation, and unwearied study, In years outstretched beyond the date of man, May have attained to sovereignty and science Over those strong and secret things and thoughts Which others fear and know not. Mahmud.                  I would talk With this old Jew. Hassan.           Thy will is even now Made known to him, where he dwells in a sea-cavern 'Mid the Demonesi, less accessible Than thou or God! He who would question him Must sail alone at sunset, where the stream Of Ocean sleeps around those foamless isles, When the young moon is westering as now, And evening airs wander upon the wave; And when the pines of that bee-pasturing isle, Green Erebinthus, quench the fiery shadow Of his gilt prow within the sapphire water, Then must the lonely helmsman cry aloud 'Ahasuerus!' and the caverns round Will answer 'Ahasuerus!' If his prayer Be granted, a faint meteor will arise Lighting him over Marmora, and a wind Will rush out of the sighing pine-forest, And with the wind a storm of harmony Unutterably sweet, and pilot him Through the soft twilight to the Bosphorus: Thence at the hour and place and circumstance Fit for the matter of their conference The Jew appears. Few dare, and few who dare Win the desired communionbut that shout Bodes [A shout within. Mahmud.     Evil, doubtless; like all human sounds. Let me converse with spirits. Hassan.                 That shout again.                 Mahmud. This Jew whom thou hast summoned Hassan.                   Will be here                   Mahmud. When the omnipotent hour to which are yoked He, I, and all things shall compelenough! Silence those mutineersthat drunken crew, That crowd about the pilot in the storm. Ay! strike the foremost shorter by a head! They weary me, and I have need of rest. Kings are like starsthey rise and set, they have The worship of the world, but no repose. [Exeunt severally. Chorus[2]. Worlds on worlds are rolling ever From creation to decay, Like the bubbles on a river Sparkling, bursting, borne away.   But they are still immortal   Who, through birth's orient portal And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro,   Clothe their unceasing flight   In the brief dust and light Gathered around their chariots as they go;   New shapes they still may weave,   New gods, new laws receive, Bright or dim are they as the robes they last   On Death's bare ribs had cast.    A power from the unknown God,   A Promethean conqueror, came; Like a triumphal path he trod   The thorns of death and shame.   A mortal shape to him   Was like the vapour dim Which the orient planet animates with light;   Hell, Sin, and Slavery came,   Like bloodhounds mild and tame, Nor preyed, until their Lord had taken flight;   The moon of Mahomet   Arose, and it shall set: While blazoned as on Heaven's immortal noon The cross leads generations on.   Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep   From one whose dreams are Paradise Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep,   And Day peers forth with her blank eyes;   So fleet, so faint, so fair,   The Powers of earth and air Fled from the folding-star of Bethlehem:   Apollo, Pan, and Love,   And even Olympian Jove Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them;   Our hills and seas and streams,   Dispeopled of their dreams, Their watrs turned to blood, their dew to tears,   Wailed for the golden years.   Enter Mahmud, Hassan, Daood, and others. Mahmud. More gold? our ancestors bought gold with victory, And shall I sell it for defeat? Daood.                  The Janizars Clamour for pay. Mahmud.          Go! bid them pay themselves With Christian blood! Are there no Grecian virgins Whose shrieks and spasms and tears they may enjoy? No infidel children to impale on spears? No hoary priests after that Patriarch[3] Who bent the curse against his country's heart, Which clove his own at last? Go! bid them kill, Blood is the seed of gold. Daood.               It has been sown, And yet the harvest to the sicklemen Is as a grain to each. Mahmud.             Then, take this signet, Unlock the seventh chamber in which lie The treasures of victorious Solyman, An empire's spoil stored for a day of ruin. O spirit of my sires! is it not come? The prey-birds and the wolves are gorged and sleep; But these, who spread their feast on the red earth, Hunger for gold, which fills not.See them fed; Then, lead them to the rivers of fresh death. [Exit Daood. O miserable dawn, after a night More glorious than the day which it usurped! O faith in God! O power on earth! O word Of the great prophet, whose o'ershadowing wings Darkened the thrones and idols of the West, Now bright!For thy sake cursd be the hour, Even as a father by an evil child, When the orient moon of Islam rolled in triumph From Caucasus to White Ceraunia! Ruin above, and anarchy below; Terror without, and treachery within; The Chalice of destruction full, and all Thirsting to drink; and who among us dares To dash it from his lips? and where is Hope? Hassan. The lamp of our dominion still rides high; One God is GodMahomet is His prophet. Four hundred thousand Moslems, from the limits Of utmost Asia, irresistibly Throng, like full clouds at the Sirocco's cry; But not like them to weep their strength in tears: They bear destroying lightning, and their step Wakes earthquake to consume and overwhelm, And reign in ruin. Phrygian Olympus, Tmolus, and Latmos, and Mycale, roughen With horrent arms; and lofty ships even now, Like vapours anchored to a mountain's edge, Freighted with fire and whirlwind, wait at Scala The convoy of the ever-veering wind. Samos is drunk with blood;the Greek has paid Brief victory with swift loss and long despair. The false Moldavian serfs fled fast and far, When the fierce shout of 'Allah-illa-Allah!' Rose like the war-cry of the northern wind Which kills the sluggish clouds, and leaves a flock Of wild swans struggling with the naked storm. So were the lost Greeks on the Danube's day! If night is mute, yet the returning sun Kindles the voices of the morning birds; Nor at thy bidding less exultingly Than birds rejoicing in the golden day, The Anarchies of Africa unleash Their tempest-wingd cities of the sea, To speak in thunder to the rebel world. Like sulphurous clouds, half-shattered by the storm, They sweep the pale Aegean, while the Queen Of Ocean, bound upon her island-throne, Far in the West, sits mourning that her sons Who frown on Freedom spare a smile for thee: Russia still hovers, as an eagle might Within a cloud, near which a kite and crane Hang tangled in inextricable fight, To stoop upon the victor;for she fears The name of Freedom, even as she hates thine. But recreant Austria loves thee as the Grave Loves Pestilence, and her slow dogs of war Fleshed with the chase, come up from Italy, And howl upon their limits; for they see The panther, Freedom, fled to her old cover, Amid seas and mountains, and a mightier brood Crouch round. What Anarch wears a crown or mitre, Or bears the sword, or grasps the key of gold, Whose friends are not thy friends, whose foes thy foes? Our arsenals and our armouries are full; Our forts defy assault; ten thousand cannon Lie ranged upon the beach, and hour by hour Their earth-convulsing wheels affright the city; The galloping of fiery steeds makes pale The Christian merchant; and the yellow Jew Hides his hoard deeper in the faithless earth. Like clouds, and like the shadows of the clouds, Over the hills of Anatolia, Swift in wide troops the Tartar chivalry Sweep;the far flashing of their starry lances Reverberates the dying light of day. We have one God, one King, one Hope, one Law; But many-headed Insurrection stands Divided in itself, and soon must fall. Mahmud. Proud words, when deeds come short, are seasonable: Look, Hassan, on yon crescent moon, emblazoned Upon that shattered flag of fiery cloud Which leads the rear of the departing day; Wan emblem of an empire fading now! See how it trembles in the blood-red air, And like a mighty lamp whose oil is spent Shrinks on the horizon's edge, while, from above, One star with insolent and victorious light Hovers above its fall, and with keen beams, Like arrows through a fainting antelope, Strikes its weak from to death. Hassan.                  Even as that moon Renews itself Mahmud.         Shall we be not renewed! Far other bark than ours were needed now To stem the torrent of descending time: The Spirit that lifts the slave before his lord Stalks through the capitals of armd kings, And spreads his ensign in the wilderness: Exults in chains; and, when the rebel falls, Cries like the blood of Abel from the dust; And the inheritors of the earth, like beasts When earthquake is unleashed, with idiot fear Cower in their kingly densas I do now. What were Defeat when Victory must appal? Or Danger, when Security looks pale? How said the messengerwho, from the fort Islanded in the Danube, saw the battle Of Bucharest?that Hassan.            Ibrahim's scimitar Drew with its gleam swift victory from Heaven, To burn before him in the night of battle A light and a destruction. Mahmud.               Ay! the day Was ours: but how? Hassan.            The light Wallachians, The Arnaut, Servian, and Albanian allies Fled from the glance of our artillery Almost before the thunderstone alit. One half the Grecian army made a bridge Of safe and slow retreat, with Moslem dead; The other Mahmud.       Speaktremble not.       Hassan.                  Islanded By victor myriads, formed in hollow square With rough and steadfast front, and thrice flung back The deluge of our foaming cavalry; Thrice their keen wedge of battle pierced our lines. Our baffled army trembled like one man Before a host, and gave them space; but soon, From the surrounding hills, the batteries blazed, Kneading them down with fire and iron rain: Yet none approached; till, like a field of corn Under the hook of the swart sickleman, The band, intrenched in mounds of Turkish dead, Grew weak and few.Then said the Pacha, 'Slaves, Render yourselvesthey have abandoned you What hope of refuge, or retreat, or aid? We grant your lives.' 'Grant that which is thine own!' Cried one, and fell upon his sword and died! Another'God, and man, and hope abandon me; But I to them, and to myself, remain Constant:'he bowed his head, and his heart burst. A third exclaimed, 'There is a refuge, tyrant, Where thou darest not pursue, and canst not harm Shouldst thou pursue; there we shall meet again.' Then held his breath, and, after a brief spasm, The indignant spirit cast its mortal garment Among the slaindead earth upon the earth! So these survivors, each by different ways, Some strange, all sudden, none dishonourable, Met in triumphant death; and when our army Closed in, while yet wonder, and awe, and shame Held back the base hyaenas of the battle That feed upon the dead and fly the living, One rose out of the chaos of the slain: And if it were a corpse which some dread spirit Of the old saviours of the land we rule Had lifted in its anger, wandering by; Or if there burned within the dying man Unquenchable disdain of death, and faith Creating what it feigned;I cannot tell But he cried, 'Phantoms of the free, we come! Armies of the Eternal, ye who strike To dust the citadels of sanguine kings, And shake the souls throned on their stony hearts, And thaw their frostwork diadems like dew; O ye who float around this clime, and weave The garment of the glory which it wears, Whose fame, though earth betray the dust it clasped, Lies sepulchred in monumental thought; Progenitors of all that yet is great, Ascribe to your bright senate, O accept In your high ministrations, us, your sons Us first, and the more glorious yet to come! And ye, weak conquerors! giants who look pale When the crushed worm rebels beneath your tread, The vultures and the dogs, your pensioners tame, Are overgorged; but, like oppressors, still They crave the relic of Destruction's feast. The exhalations and the thirsty winds Are sick with blood; the dew is foul with death; Heaven's light is quenched in slaughter: thus, where'er Upon your camps, cities, or towers, or fleets, The obscene birds the reeking remnants cast Of these dead limbs,upon your streams and mountains, Upon your fields, your gardens, and your housetops, Where'er the winds shall creep, or the clouds fly, Or the dews fall, or the angry sun look down With poisoned lightFamine, and Pestilence, And Panic, shall wage war upon our side! Nature from all her boundaries is moved Against ye: Time has found ye light as foam. The Earth rebels; and Good and Evil stake Their empire o'er the unborn world of men On this one cast;but ere the die be thrown, The renovated genius of our race, Proud umpire of the impious game, descends, A seraph-wingd Victory, bestriding The tempest of the Omnipotence of God, Which sweeps all things to their appointed doom, And you to oblivion!'More he would have said, But Mahmud.    Diedas thou shouldst ere thy lips had painted Their ruin in the hues of our success. A rebel's crime, gilt with a rebel's tongue! Your heart is Greek, Hassan. Hassan.                It may be so: A spirit not my own wrenched me within, And I have spoken words I fear and hate; Yet would I die for Mahmud.            Live! oh live! outlive Me and this sinking empire. But the fleet Hassan. Alas! Mahmud.     The fleet which, like a flock of clouds Chased by the wind, flies the insurgent banner! Our wingd castles from their merchant ships! Our myriads before their weak pirate bands! Our arms before their chains! our years of empire Before their centuries of servile fear! Death is awake! Repulse is on the waters! They own no more the thunder-bearing banner Of Mahmud; but, like hounds of a base breed, Gorge from a stranger's hand, and rend their master. Hassan. Latmos, and Ampelos, and Phanae saw The wreck Mahmud.       The caves of the Icarian isles Told each to the other in loud mockery, And with the tongue as of a thousand echoes, First of the sea-convulsing fightand, then, Thou darest to speaksenseless are the mountains: Interpret thou their voice! Hassan.                My presence bore A part in that day's shame. The Grecian fleet Bore down at daybreak from the North, and hung As multitudinous on the ocean line, As cranes upon the cloudless Thracian wind. Our squadron, convoying ten thousand men, Was stretching towards Nauplia when the battle Was kindled. First through the hail of our artillery The agile Hydriote barks with press of sail Dashed:ship to ship, cannon to cannon, man To man were grappled in the embrace of war, Inextricable but by death or victory. The tempest of the raging fight convulsed To its crystlline depths that stainless sea, And shook Heaven's roof of golden morning clouds, Poised on an hundred azure mountain-isles. In the brief trances of the artillery One cry from the destroyed and the destroyer Rose, and a cloud of desolation wrapped The unforeseen event, till the north wind Sprung from the sea, lifting the heavy veil Of battle-smokethen victoryvictory! For, as we thought, three frigates from Algiers Bore down from Naxos to our aid, but soon The abhorrd cross glimmered behind, before, Among, around us; and that fatal sign Dried with its beams the strength in Moslem hearts, As the sun drinks the dew.What more? We fled! Our noonday path over the sanguine foam Was beaconed,and the glare struck the sun pale, By our consuming transports: the fierce light Made all the shadows of our sails blood-red, And every countenance blank. Some ships lay feeding The ravening fire, even to the water's level; Some were blown up; some, settling heavily, Sunk; and the shrieks of our companions died Upon the wind, that bore us fast and far, Even after they were dead. Nine thousand perished! We met the vultures legioned in the air Stemming the torrent of the tainted wind; They, screaming from their cloudy mountain-peaks, Stooped through the sulphurous battle-smoke and perched Each on the weltering carcase that we loved, Like its ill angel or its damnd soul, Riding upon the bosom of the sea. We saw the dog-fish hastening to their feast. Joy waked the voiceless people of the sea, And ravening Famine left his ocean cave To dwell with War, with us, and with Despair. We met night three hours to the west of Patmos, And with night, tempest Mahmud.               Cease!               Enter a Messenger. Messenger.                  Your Sublime Highness, That Christian hound, the Muscovite Ambassador, Has left the city.If the rebel fleet Had anchored in the port, had victory Crowned the Greek legions in the Hippodrome, Panic were tamer.Obedience and Mutiny, Like giants in contention planet-struck, Stand gazing on each other.There is peace In Stamboul. Mahmud.        Is the grave not calmer still? Its ruins shall be mine. Hassan.              Fear not the Russian: The tiger leagues not with the stag at bay Against the hunter.Cunning, base, and cruel, He crouches, watching till the spoil be won, And must be paid for his reserve in blood. After the war is fought, yield the sleek Russian That which thou canst not keep, his deserved portion Of blood, which shall not flow through streets and fields, Rivers and seas, like that which we may win, But stagnate in the veins of Christian slaves! Enter second Messenger. Second Messenger. Nauplia, Tripolizza, Mothon, Athens, Navarin, Artas, Monembasia, Corinth, and Thebes are carried by assault, And every Islamite who made his dogs Fat with the flesh of Galilean slaves Passed at the edge of the sword: the lust of blood, Which made our warriors drunk, is quenched in death; But like a fiery plague breaks out anew In deeds which make the Christian cause look pale In its own light. The garrison of Patras Has store but for ten days, nor is there hope But from the Briton: at once slave and tyrant, His wishes still are weaker than his fears, Or he would sell what faith may yet remain From the oaths broke in Genoa and in Norway; And if you buy him not, your treasury Is empty even of promiseshis own coin. The freedman of a western poet-chief[4] Holds Attica with seven thousand rebels, And has beat back the Pacha of Negropont: The agd Ali sits in Yanina A crownless metaphor of empire: His name, that shadow of his withered might, Holds our besieging army like a spell In prey to famine, pest, and mutiny; He, bastioned in his citadel, looks forth Joyless upon the sapphire lake that mirrors The ruins of the city where he reigned Childless and sceptreless. The Greek has reaped The costly harvest his own blood matured, Not the sower, Aliwho has bought a truce From Ypsilanti with ten camel-loads Of Indian gold. Enter a third Messenger. Mahmud.         What more?         Third Messenger.               The Christian tribes Of Lebanon and the Syrian wilderness Are in revolt;Damascus, Hems, Aleppo Tremble;the Arab menaces Medina, The Aethiop has intrenched himself in Sennaar, And keeps the Egyptian rebel well employed, Who denies homage, claims investiture As price of tardy aid. Persia demands The cities on the Tigris, and the Georgians Refuse their living tribute. Crete and Cyprus, Like mountain-twins that from each other's veins Catch the volcano-fire and earthquake-spasm, Shake in the general fever. Through the city, Like birds before a storm, the Santons shriek, And prophesyings horrible and new Are heard among the crowd: that sea of men Sleeps on the wrecks it made, breathless and still. A Dervise, learnd in the Koran, preaches That it is written how the sins of Islam Must raise up a destroyer even now. The Greeks expect a Saviour from the West[5], Who shall not come, men say, in clouds and glory, But in the omnipresence of that Spirit In which all live and are. Ominous signs Are blazoned broadly on the noonday sky: One saw a red cross stamped upon the sun; It has rained blood; and monstrous births declare The secret wrath of Nature and her Lord. The army encamped upon the Cydaris Was roused last night by the alarm of battle, And saw two hosts conflicting in the air, The shadows doubtless of the unborn time Cast on the mirror of the night. While yet The fight hung balanced, there arose a storm Which swept the phantoms from among the stars. At the third watch the Spirit of the Plague Was heard abroad flapping among the tents; Those who relieved watch found the sentinels dead. The last news from the camp is, that a thousand Have sickened, and Enter a fourth Messenger. Mahmud.            And thou, pale ghost, dim shadow Of some untimely rumour, speak! Fourth Messenger.                  One comes Fainting with toil, covered with foam and blood: He stood, he says, on Chelonites' Promontory, which o'erlooks the isles that groan Under the Briton's frown, and all their waters Then trembling in the splendour of the moon, When as the wandering clouds unveiled or hid Her boundless light, he saw two adverse fleets Stalk through the night in the horizon's glimmer, Mingling fierce thunders and sulphureous gleams, And smoke which strangled every infant wind That soothed the silver clouds through the deep air. At length the battle slept, but the Sirocco Awoke, and drove his flock of thunder-clouds Over the sea-horizon, blotting out All objectssave that in the faint moon-glimpse He saw, or dreamed he saw, the Turkish admiral And two the loftiest of our ships of war, With the bright image of that Queen of Heaven, Who hid, perhaps, her face for grief, reversed; And the abhorrd cross Enter an Attendant. Attendant.              Your Sublime Highness, The Jew, who Mahmud.        Could not come more seasonably: Bid him attend. I'll hear no more! too long We gaze on danger through the mist of fear, And multiply upon our shattered hopes The images of ruin. Come what will! To-morrow and to-morrow are as lamps Set in our path to light us to the edge Through rough and smooth, nor can we suffer aught Which He inflicts not in whose hand we are. [Exeunt. Semichorus I. Would I were the wingd cloud Of a tempest swift and loud!   I would scorn   The smile of morn And the wave where the moonrise is born!   I would leave   The spirits of eve A shroud for the corpse of the day to weave From other threads than mine! Bask in the deep blue noon divine.    Who would? Not I.    Semichorus II. Whither to fly? Semichorus I. Where the rocks that gird th'Aegean Echo to the battle paean   Of the free   I would flee A tempestuous herald of victory!   My golden rain   For the Grecian slain Should mingle in tears with the bloody main, And my solemn thunder-knell Should ring to the world the passing-bell   Of Tyranny!   Semichorus II. Ah king! wilt thou chain The rack and the rain? Wilt thou fetter the lightning and hurricane? The storms are free,   But we   Chorus. O Slavery! thou frost of the world's prime, Killing its flowers and leaving its thorns bare! Thy touch has stamped these limbs with crime, These brows thy branding garland bear,   But the free heart, the impassive soul    Scorn thy control!    Semichorus I. Let there be light! said Liberty, And like sunrise from the sea, Athens arose!Around her born, Shone like mountains in the morn Glorious states;and are they now Ashes, wrecks, oblivion? Semichorus II.              Go, Where Thermae and Asopus swallowed Persia, as the sand does foam; Deluge upon deluge followed, Discord, Macedon, and Rome: And lastly thou! Semichorus I.          Temples and towers, Citadels and marts, and they Who live and die there, have been ours, And may be thine, and must decay; But Greece and her foundations are Built below the tide of war, Based on the crystlline sea Of thought and its eternity; Her citizens, imperial spirits, Rule the present from the past, On all this world of men inherits Their seal is set. Semichorus II.            Hear ye the blast, Whose Orphic thunder thrilling calls From ruin her Titanian walls? Whose spirit shakes the sapless bones Of Slavery? Argos, Corinth, Crete Hear, and from their mountain thrones The daemons and the nymphs repeat The harmony. Semichorus I.       I hear! I hear!       Semichorus II. The world's eyeless charioteer,   Destiny, is hurrying by! What faith is crushed, what empire bleeds Beneath her earthquake-footed steeds? What eagle-wingd victory sits At her right hand? what shadow flits Before? what splendour rolls behind?   Ruin and renovation cry 'Who but We?' Semichorus I.        I hear! I hear! The hiss as of a rushing wind, The roar as of an ocean foaming, The thunder as of earthquake coming.   I hear! I hear! The crash as of an empire falling, The shrieks as of a people calling 'Mercy! mercy!'How they thrill! Then a shout of 'kill! kill! kill!' And then a small still voice, thus Semichorus II.                     For Revenge and Wrong bring forth their kind, The foul cubs like their parents are, Their den is in the guilty mind, And Conscience feeds them with despair. Semichorus I. In sacred Athens, near the fane Of Wisdom, Pity's altar stood: Serve not the unknown God in vain, But pay that broken shrine again, Love for hate and tears for blood. Enter Mahmud and Ahasuerus. Mahmud. Thou art a man, thou sayest, even as we. Ahasuerus. No more! Mahmud.     But raised above thy fellow-men By thought, as I by power. Ahasuerus.               Thou sayest so.               Mahmud. Thou art an adept in the difficult lore Of Greek and Frank philosophy; thou numberest The flowers, and thou measurest the stars; Thou severest element from element; Thy spirit is present in the Past, and sees The birth of this old world through all its cycles Of desolation and of loveliness, And when man was not, and how man became The monarch and the slave of this low sphere, And all its narrow circlesit is much I honour thee, and would be what thou art Were I not what I am; but the unborn hour, Cradled in fear and hope, conflicting storms, Who shall unveil? Nor thou, nor I, nor any Mighty or wise. I apprehended not What thou hast taught me, but I now perceive That thou art no interpreter of dreams; Thou dost not own that art, device, or God, Can make the Future presentlet it come! Moreover thou disdainest us and ours; Thou art as God, whom thou contemplatest. Ahasuerus. Disdain thee?not the worm beneath thy feet! The Fathomless has care for meaner things Than thou canst dream, and has made pride for those Who would be what they may not, or would seem That which they are not. Sultan! talk no more Of thee and me, the Future and the Past; But look on that which cannot changethe One, The unborn and the undying. Earth and ocean, Space, and the isles of life or light that gem The sapphire floods of interstellar air, This firmament pavilioned upon chaos, With all its cressets of immortal fire, Whose outwall, bastioned impregnably Against the escape of boldest thoughts, repels them As Calpe the Atlantic cloudsthis Whole Of suns, and worlds, and men, and beasts, and flowers, With all the silent or tempestuous workings By which they have been, are, or cease to be, Is but a vision;all that it inherits Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles and dreams; Thought is its cradle and its grave, nor less The Future and the Past are idle shadows Of thought's eternal flightthey have no being: Nought is but that which feels itself to be. Mahmud. What meanest thou? Thy words stream like a tempest Of dazzling mist within my brainthey shake The earth on which I stand, and hang like night On Heaven above me. What can they avail? They cast on all things surest, brightest, best, Doubt, insecurity, astonishment. Ahasuerus. Mistake me not! All is contained in each. Dodona's forest to an acorn's cup Is that which has been, or will be, to that Which isthe absent to the present. Thought Alone, and its quick elements, Will, Passion, Reason, Imagination, cannot die; They are, what that which they regard appears, The stuff whence mutability can weave All that it hath dominion o'er, worlds, worms, Empires, and superstitions. What has thought To do with time, or place, or circumstance? Wouldst thou behold the Future?ask and have! Knock and it shall be openedlook, and lo! The coming age is shadowed on the Past As on a glass. Mahmud.        Wild, wilder thoughts convulse My spiritDid not Mahomet the Second Win Stamboul? Ahasuerus.        Thou wouldst ask that giant spirit The written fortunes of thy house and faith. Thou wouldst cite one out of the grave to tell How what was born in blood must die. Mahmud.                     Thy words Have power on me! I see Ahasuerus.               What hearest thou?               Mahmud. A far whisper Terrible silence. Ahasuerus.          What succeeds?          Mahmud.                  The sound As of the assault of an imperial city[6], The hiss of inextinguishable fire, The roar of giant cannon; the earthquaking Fall of vast bastions and precipitous towers, The shock of crags shot from strange enginery, The clash of wheels, and clang of armd hoofs, And crash of brazen mail as of the wreck Of adamantine mountainsthe mad blast Of trumpets, and the neigh of raging steeds, The shrieks of women whose thrill jars the blood, And one sweet laugh, most horrible to hear, As of a joyous infant waked and playing With its dead mother's breast, and now more loud The mingled battle-cry,ha! hear I not 'En toutwi nikh!' 'Allah-illa-Allah!'? Ahasuerus. The sulphurous mist is raisedthou seest Mahmud.                        A chasm, As of two mountains, in the wall of Stamboul; And in that ghastly breach the Islamites, Like giants on the ruins of a world, Stand in the light of sunrise. In the dust Glimmers a kingless diadem, and one Of regal port has cast himself beneath The stream of war. Another proudly clad In golden arms spurs a Tartarian barb Into the gap, and with his iron mace Directs the torrent of that tide of men, And seemshe isMahomet! Ahasuerus.               What thou seest Is but the ghost of thy forgotten dream. A dream itself, yet less, perhaps, than that Thou call'st reality. Thou mayst behold How cities, on which Empire sleeps enthroned, Bow their towered crests to mutability. Poised by the flood, e'en on the height thou holdest, Thou mayst now learn how the full tide of power Ebbs to its depths.Inheritor of glory, Conceived in darkness, born in blood, and nourished With tears and toil, thou seest the mortal throes Of that whose birth was but the same. The Past Now stands before thee like an Incarnation Of the To-come; yet wouldst thou commune with That portion of thyself which was ere thou Didst start for this brief race whose crown is death, Dissolve with that strong faith and fervent passion Which called it from the uncreated deep, Yon cloud of war, with its tempestuous phantoms Of raging death; and draw with mighty will The imperial shade hither. [Exit Ahasuerus. The Phantom of Mahomet the Second appears. Mahmud.               Approach!               Phantom.                    I come Thence whither thou must go! The grave is fitter To take the living than give up the dead; Yet has thy faith prevailed, and I am here. The heavy fragments of the power which fell When I arose, like shapeless crags and clouds, Hang round my throne on the abyss, and voices Of strange lament soothe my supreme repose, Wailing for glory never to return. A later Empire nods in its decay: The autumn of a greener faith is come, And wolfish change, like winter, howls to strip The foliage in which Fame, the eagle, built Her aerie, while Dominion whelped below. The storm is in its branches, and the frost Is on its leaves, and the blank deep expects Oblivion on oblivion, spoil on spoil, Ruin on ruin:Thou art slow, my son; The Anarchs of the world of darkness keep A throne for thee, round which thine empire lies Boundless and mute; and for thy subjects thou, Like us, shalt rule the ghosts of murdered life, The phantoms of the powers who rule thee now Mutinous passions, and conflicting fears, And hopes that sate themselves on dust, and die! Stripped of their mortal strength, as thou of thine. Islam must fall, but we will reign together Over its ruins in the world of death: And if the trunk be dry, yet shall the seed Unfold itself even in the shape of that Which gathers birth in its decay. Woe! woe! To the weak people tangled in the grasp Of its last spasms. Mahmud.           Spirit, woe to all! Woe to the wronged and the avenger! Woe To the destroyer, woe to the destroyed! Woe to the dupe, and woe to the deceiver! Woe to the oppressed, and woe to the oppressor! Woe both to those that suffer and inflict; Those who are born and those who die! but say, Imperial shadow of the thing I am, When, how, by whom, Destruction must accomplish Her consummation! Phantom.          Ask the cold pale Hour, Rich in reversion of impending death, When he shall fall upon whose ripe gray hairs Sit Care, and Sorrow, and Infirmity The weight which Crime, whose wings are plumed with years, Leaves in his flight from ravaged heart to heart Over the heads of men, under which burthen They bow themselves unto the grave: fond wretch! He leans upon his crutch, and talks of years To come, and how in hours of youth renewed He will renew lost joys, and Voice without.                 Victory! Victory!                 [The Phantom vanishes. Mahmud. What sound of the importunate earth has broken My mighty trance? Voice without.          Victory! Victory!          Mahmud. Weak lightning before darkness! poor faint smile Of dying Islam! Voice which art the response Of hollow weakness! Do I wake and live? Were there such things, or may the unquiet brain, Vexed by the wise mad talk of the old Jew, Have shaped itself these shadows of its fear? It matters not!for nought we see or dream, Possess, or lose, or grasp at, can be worth More than it gives or teaches: Come what may, The Future must become the Past, and I As they were to whom once this present hour, This gloomy crag of time to which I cling, Seemed an Elysian isle of peace and joy Never to be attained.I must rebuke This drunkenness of triumph ere it die, And dying, bring despair. Victory! poor slaves! Exit Mahmud. Voice without. Shout in the jubilee of death! The Greeks Are as a brood of lions in the net Round which the kingly hunters of the earth Stand smiling. Anarchs, ye whose daily food Are curses, groans, and gold, the fruit of death, From Thule to the girdle of the world, Come, feast! the board groans with the flesh of men; The cup is foaming with a nation's blood, Famine and Thirst await! eat, drink, and die! Semichorus I. Victorious Wrong, with vulture scream, Salutes the rising sun, pursues the flying day! I saw her, ghastly as a tyrant's dream, Perch on the trembling pyramid of night, Beneath which earth and all her realms pavilioned lay In visions of the dawning undelight.   Who shall impede her flight?   Who rob her of her prey?   Voice without. Victory! Victory! Russia's famished eagles Dare not to prey beneath the crescent's light. Impale the remnant of the Greeks! despoil! Violate! make their flesh cheaper than dust! Semichorus II. Thou voice which art The herald of the ill in splendour hid! Thou echo of the hollow heart Of monarchy, bear me to thine abode When desolation flashes o'er a world destroyed: Oh, bear me to those isles of jaggd cloud Which float like mountains on the earthquake, mid The momentary oceans of the lightning, Or to some toppling promontory proud Of solid tempest whose black pyramid, Riven, overhangs the founts intensely bright'ning Of those dawn-tinted deluges of fire Before their waves expire, When heaven and earth are light, and only light   In the thunder-night!   Voice without. Victory! Victory! Austria, Russia, England, And that tame serpent, that poor shadow, France, Cry peace, and that means death when monarchs speak. Ho, there! bring torches, sharpen those red stakes, These chains are light, fitter for slaves and poisoners Than Greeks. Kill! plunder! burn! let none remain. Semichorus I.    Alas! for Liberty! If numbers, wealth, or unfulfilling years, Or fate, can quell the free!    Alas! for Virtue, when Torments, or contumely, or the sneers    Of erring judging men   Can break the heart where it abides. Alas! if Love, whose smile makes this obscure world splendid,   Can change with its false times and tides,    Like hope and terror,     Alas for Love! And Truth, who wanderest lone and unbefriended, If thou canst veil thy lie-consuming mirror Before the dazzled eyes of Error, Alas for thee! Image of the Above. Semichorus II.   Repulse, with plumes from conquest torn, Led the ten thousand from the limits of the morn   Through many an hostile Anarchy! At length they wept aloud, and cried, 'The Sea! the Sea!'   Through exile, persecution, and despair,    Rome was, and young Atlantis shall become    The wonder, or the terror, or the tomb Of all whose step wakes Power lulled in her savage lair: But Greece was as a hermit-child,   Whose fairest thoughts and limbs were built To woman's growth, by dreams so mild,   She knew not pain or guilt; And now, O Victory, blush! and Empire, tremble    When ye desert the free    If Greece must be A wreck, yet shall its fragments reassemble, And build themselves again impregnably    In a diviner clime, To Amphionic music on some Cape sublime, Which frowns above the idle foam of Time. Semichorus I. Let the tyrants rule the desert they have made; Let the free possess the Paradise they claim; Be the fortune of our fierce oppressors weighed With our ruin, our resistance, and our name! Semichorus II. Our dead shall be the seed of their decay, Our survivors be the shadow of their pride, Our adversity a dream to pass away Their dishonour a remembrance to abide! Voice without. Victory! Victory! The bought Briton sends The keys of ocean to the Islamite. Now shall the blazon of the cross be veiled, And British skill directing Othman might, Thunder-strike rebel victory. Oh, keep holy This jubilee of unrevengd blood! Kill! crush! despoil! Let not a Greek escape! Semichorus I. Darkness has dawned in the East On the noon of time: The death-birds descend to their feast From the hungry clime. Let Freedom and Peace flee far To a sunnier strand, And follow Love's folding-star To the Evening land! Semichorus II.     The young moon has fed      Her exhausted horn       With the sunset's fire:     The weak day is dead,      But the night is not born; And, like loveliness panting with wild desire While it trembles with fear and delight, Hesperus flies from awakening night, And pants in its beauty and speed with light Fast-flashing, soft, and bright. Thou beacon of love! thou lamp of the free!    Guide us far, far away, To climes where now veiled by the ardour of day     Thou art hidden   From waves on which weary Noon   Faints in her summer swoon,   Between kingless continents sinless as Eden,   Around mountains and islands inviolably     Pranked on the sapphire sea.     Semichorus I. Through the sunset of hope, Like the shapes of a dream, What Paradise islands of glory gleam!   Beneath Heaven's cope, Their shadows more clear float by The sound of their oceans, the light of their sky, The music and fragrance their solitudes breathe Burst, like morning on dream, or like Heaven on death,   Through the walls of our prison; And Greece, which was dead, is arisen! Chorus[7]. The world's great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn: Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. A brighter Hellas rears its mountains From waves serener far; A new Peneus rolls his fountains Against the morning star. Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep. A loftier Argo cleaves the main, Fraught with a later prize; Another Orpheus sings again, And loves, and weeps, and dies. A new Ulysses leaves once more Calypso for his native shore. Oh, write no more the tale of Troy, If earth Death's scroll must be! Nor mix with Laian rage the joy Which dawns upon the free: Although a subtler Sphinx renew Riddles of death Thebes never knew. Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, The splendour of its prime; And leave, if nought so bright may live, All earth can take or Heaven can give. Saturn and Love their long repose Shall burst[8], more bright and good Than all who fell, than One who rose, Than many unsubdued: Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers, But votive tears and symbol flowers. Oh, cease! must hate and death return? Cease! must men kill and die? Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn Of bitter prophecy. The world is weary of the past, Oh, might it die or rest at last! Hellas was composed at Pisa in the autumn of 1821, and dispatched to London, November 11. It was published, with the author's name, by C. & J. Ollier in the spring of 1822. A transcript of the poem by Edward Williams is in the Rowfant Library. Note by Mrs. Shelley: 'Hellas was among the last of his compositions, and is among the most beautiful. The choruses are singularly imaginative, and melodious in their versification. There are some stanzas that beautifully exemplify Shelley's peculiar style; as, for instance, the assertion of the intellectual empire which must be for ever the inheritance of the country of Homer, Sophocles, and Plato:-- ''But Greece and her foundations are Built below the tide of war, Based on the crystalline sea Of thought and its eternity.''' ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Hellas - A Lyrical Drama ,

208:Ashtaroth: A Dramatic Lyric Dramatis Personae HUGO, a Norman Baron and a Scholar. ERIC, a friend of Hugo's. THURSTON, | EUSTACE, | RALPH, | Followers of Hugo. HENRY, a Page. LUKE, | HUBERT, | Monks living in a Norman Chapel. BASIL, Abbot of a Convent on the Rhine. CYRIL, a Monk of the same Convent. OSRIC, a Norwegian Adventurer, and formerly a Corsair. RUDOLPH, an Outlawed Count, and the Captain of a Band of Robbers. DAGOBERT, the Captain of some predatory Soldiers called "Free Lances". HAROLD, a Danish Knight. ORION. THORA, AGATHA, ELSPETH, a Nurse of Thora's, URSULA, Abbess of the Convent on the Rhine, | NUNS, etc. | Women. Men-at-arms, Soldiers, and Robbers; Monks, Friars, and Churchmen, Spirits, etc. SCENE — A Castle in Normandy. A Study in a Tower; HUGO seated at a table covered with maps and charts of the heavens, astronomical instruments, books, manuscripts, Enter HENRY, a Page. Hugo: Well, boy, what is it? 27 Henry: The feast is spread. Hugo: Why tarry the guests for me? Let Eric sit at the table's head; Alone I desire to be. [Henry goes out.] What share have I at their festive board? Their mirth I can only mar; To me no pleasure their cups afford, Their songs on my silence jar. With an aching eye and a throbbing brain, And yet with a hopeful heart, I must toil and strain with the planets again When the rays of the sun depart; He who must needs with the topers tope, And the feasters feast in the hall, How can he hope with a matter to cope That is immaterial? Orion: He who his appetite stints and curbs, Shut up in the northern wing, With his rye-bread flavoured with bitter herbs, And his draught from the tasteless spring, Good sooth, he is but a sorry clown. There are some good things upon earth — Pleasure and power and fair renown, And wisdom of worldly worth! There is wisdom in follies that charm the sense, In follies that light the eyes, But the folly to wisdom that makes pretence Is alone by the fool termed wise. Hugo: Thy speech, Orion, is somewhat rude; Perchance, having jeer'd and scoff'd To thy fill, thou wilt curb thy jeering mood; I wot thou hast served me oft. This plan of the skies seems fairly traced; What errors canst thou detect? 28 Orion: Nay, the constellations are misplaced, And the satellites incorrect; Leave the plan to me; you have time to seek An hour of needful rest, The night is young and the planets are weak; See, the sun still reddens the west. Hugo: I fear I shall sleep too long. Orion: If you do It matters not much; the sky Is cloudy, the stars will be faint and few; Now, list to my lullaby. [Hugo reclines on a couch.] (Sings.) Still the darkling skies are red, Though the day-god's course is run; Heavenly night-lamps overhead Flash and twinkle one by one. Idle dreamer — earth-born elf! Vainly grasping heavenly things, Wherefore weariest thou thyself With thy vain imaginings? From the tree of knowledge first, Since his parents pluck'd the fruit, Man, with partial knowledge curs'd, Of the tree still seeks the root; Musty volumes crowd thy shelf — Which of these true knowledge brings? Wherefore weariest thou thyself With thy vain imaginings? Will the stars from heaven descend? Can the earth-worm soar and rise? Can the mortal comprehend Heaven's own hallow'd mysteries? Greed and glory, power and pelf — These are won by clowns and kings; Wherefore weariest thou thyself 29 With thy vain imaginings? Sow and reap, and toil and spin; Eat and drink, and dream and die; Man may strive, yet never win, And I laugh the while and cry — Idle dreamer, earth-born elf! Vainly grasping heavenly things, Wherefore weariest thou thyself With thy vain imaginings? He sleeps, and his sleep appears serene, Whatever dreams it has brought him — [Looks at the plans.] If he knows what those hieroglyphics mean, He's wiser than one who taught him. Why does he number the Pole-star thus? Or the Pleiades why combine? And what is he doing with Sirius, In the devil's name or in mine? Man thinks, discarding the beaten track, That the sins of his youth are slain, When he seeks fresh sins, but he soon comes back To his old pet sins again. SCENE — The Same. HUGO waking, ORION seated near him. Daybreak. Hugo: Oh, weary spirit! oh, cloudy eyes! Oh, heavy and misty brain! Yon riddle that lies 'twixt earth and skies, Ye seek to explore in vain! See, the east is grey; put those scrolls away, And hide them far from my sight; I will toil and study no more by day, I will watch no longer by night; I have labour'd and long'd, and now I seem No nearer the mystic goal; 30 Orion, I fain would devise some scheme To quiet this restless soul; To distant climes I would fain depart — I would travel by sea or land. Orion: Nay, I warn'd you of this, "Short life, long art", The proverb, though stale, will stand; Full many a sage from youth to age Has toil'd to obtain what you Would master at once. In a pilgrimage, Forsooth, there is nothing new; Though virtue, I ween, in change of scene, And vigour in change of air, Will always be, and has always been, And travel is a tonic rare. Still, the restless, discontented mood For the time alone is eased; It will soon return with hunger renew'd, And appetite unappeased. Nathless I could teach a shorter plan To win that wisdom you crave, That lore that is seldom attain'd by man From the cradle down to the grave. Hugo: Such lore I had rather do without, It hath nothing mystic nor awful In my eye. Nay, I despise and doubt The arts that are term'd unlawful; 'Twixt science and magic the line lies plain, I shall never wittingly pass it; There is now no compact between us twain. Orion: But an understanding tacit. You have prospered much since the day we met; You were then a landless knight; You now have honour and wealth, and yet I never can serve you right. Hugo: Enough; we will start this very day, 31 Thurston, Eric, and I, And the baffled visions will pass away, And the restless fires will die. Orion: Till the fuel expires that feeds those fires They smoulder and live unspent; Give a mortal all that his heart desires, He is less than ever content. SCENE — A Cliff on the Breton Coast, Overhanging the Sea. HUGO. Hugo: Down drops the red sun; through the gloaming They burst — raging waves of the sea, Foaming out their own shame — ever foaming Their leprosy up with fierce glee; Flung back from the stone, snowy fountains Of feathery flakes, scarcely flag Where, shock after shock, the green mountains Explode on the iron-grey crag. The salt spray with ceaseless commotion Leaps round me. I sit on the verge Of the cliff — 'twixt the earth and the ocean — With feet overhanging the surge. In thy grandeur, oh, sea! we acknowledge, In thy fairness, oh, earth! we confess, Hidden truths that are taught in no college, Hidden songs that no parchments express. Were they wise in their own generations, Those sages and sagas of old? They have pass'd; o'er their names and their nations Time's billows have silently roll'd; They have pass'd, leaving little to their children, Save histories of a truth far from strict; Or theories more vague and bewildering, 32 Since three out of four contradict. Lost labour! vain bookworms have sat in The halls of dull pedants who teach Strange tongues, the dead lore of the Latin, The scroll that is god-like and Greek: Have wasted life's springtide in learning Things long ago learnt all in vain; They are slow, very slow, in discerning That book lore and wisdom are twain. Pale shades of a creed that was mythic, By time or by truth overcome, Your Delphian temples and Pythic Are ruins deserted and dumb; Your Muses are hush'd, and your Graces Are bruised and defaced; and your gods, Enshrin'd and enthron'd in high places No longer, are powerless as clods; By forest and streamlet, where glisten'd Fair feet of the Naiads that skimm'd The shallows; where the Oreads listen'd, Rose-lipp'd, amber-hair'd, marble-limb'd, No lithe forms disport in the river, No sweet faces peer through the boughs, Elms and beeches wave silent for ever, Ever silent the bright water flows. (Were they duller or wiser than we are, Those heathens of old? Who shall say? Worse or better? Thy wisdom, O "Thea Glaucopis", was wise in thy day; And the false gods alluring to evil, That sway'd reckless votaries then, Were slain to no purpose; they revel Re-crowned in the hearts of us men.) Dead priests of Osiris and Isis, And Apis! that mystical lore, Like a nightmare, conceived in a crisis Of fever, is studied no more; 33 Dead Magian! yon star-troop that spangles The arch of yon firmament vast Looks calm, like a host of white angels, On dry dust of votaries past. On seas unexplored can the ship shun Sunk rocks? Can man fathom life's links, Past or future, unsolved by Egyptian Or Theban, unspoken by Sphinx? The riddle remains still unravell'd By students consuming night oil. Oh, earth! we have toil'd, we have travail'd, How long shall we travail and toil? How long? The short life that fools reckon So sweet, by how much is it higher Than brute life? — the false gods still beckon, And man, through the dust and the mire, Toils onward, as toils the dull bullock, Unreasoning, brutish, and blind, With Ashtaroth, Mammon, and Moloch In front, and Alecto behind. The wise one of earth, the Chaldean, Serves folly in wisdom's disguise; And the sensual Epicurean, Though grosser, is hardly less wise; 'Twixt the former, half pedant, half pagan, And the latter, half sow and half sloth, We halt, choose Astarte or Dagon, Or sacrifice freely to both. With our reason that seeks to disparage, Brute instinct it fails to subdue; With our false illegitimate courage, Our sophistry, vain and untrue; Our hopes that ascend so and fall so, Our passions, fierce hates and hot loves, We are wise (aye, the snake is wise also) — Wise as serpents, NOT harmless as doves. Some flashes, like faint sparks from heaven, 34 Come rarely with rushing of wings; We are conscious at times we have striven, Though seldom, to grasp better things; These pass, leaving hearts that have falter'd, Good angels with faces estranged, And the skin of the Ethiop unalter'd, And the spots of the leopard unchanged. Oh, earth! pleasant earth! have we hanker'd To gather thy flowers and thy fruits? The roses are wither'd, and canker'd The lilies, and barren the roots Of the fig-tree, the vine, the wild olive, Sharp thorns and sad thistles that yield Fierce harvest — so WE live, and SO live The perishing beasts of the field. And withal we are conscious of evil And good — of the spirit and the clod, Of the power in our hearts of a devil, Of the power in our souls of a God, Whose commandments are graven in no cypher, But clear as His sun — from our youth One at least we have cherished — "An eye for An eye, and a tooth for a tooth." Oh, man! of thy Maker the image; To passion, to pride, or to wealth, Sworn bondsman, from dull youth to dim age, Thy portion the fire or the filth, Dross seeking, dead pleasure's death rattle Thy memories' happiest song, And thy highest hope — scarce a drawn battle With dark desperation. How long? Roar louder! leap higher! ye surf-beds, And sprinkle your foam on the furze; Bring the dreams that brought sleep to our turf-beds, To camps of our long ago years, With the flashing and sparkling of broadswords, 35 With the tossing of banners and spears, With the trampling of hard hoofs on hard swards, With the mingling of trumpets and cheers. The gale has gone down; yet outlasting The gale, raging waves of the sea, Casting up their own foam, ever casting Their leprosy up with wild glee, Still storm; so in rashness and rudeness Man storms through the days of his grace; Yet man cannot fathom God's goodness, Exceeding God's infinite space. And coldly and calmly and purely Grey rock and green hillock lie white In star-shine dream-laden — so surely Night cometh — so cometh the night When we, too, at peace with our neighbour, May sleep where God's hillocks are piled, Thanking HIM for a rest from day's labour, And a sleep like the sleep of a child! SCENE — The Castle in Normandy. THORA working at embroidery, ELSPETH spinning. Thora (sings): We severed in autumn early, Ere the earth was torn by the plough; The wheat and the oats and the barley Are ripe for the harvest now. We sunder'd one misty morning, Ere the hills were dimm'd by the rain, Through the flowers those hills adorning — Thou comest not back again. My heart is heavy and weary With the weight of a weary soul; 36 The mid-day glare grows dreary, And dreary the midnight scroll. The corn-stalks sigh for the sickle, 'Neath the load of the golden grain; I sigh for a mate more fickle — Thou comest not back again. The warm sun riseth and setteth, The night bringeth moistening dew, But the soul that longeth forgetteth The warmth and the moisture too; In the hot sun rising and setting There is naught save feverish pain; There are tears in the night-dews wetting — Thou comest not back again. Thy voice in mine ear still mingles With the voices of whisp'ring trees; Thy kiss on my cheek still tingles At each kiss of the summer breeze; While dreams of the past are thronging For substance of shades in vain, I am waiting, watching, and longing — Thou comest not back again. Waiting and watching ever, Longing and lingering yet, Leaves rustle and corn-stalks quiver, Winds murmur and waters fret; No answer they bring, no greeting, No speech save that sad refrain, Nor voice, save an echo repeating — He cometh not back again. Elspeth: Thine eldest sister is wedded to Max; With Biorn, Hilda hath cast her lot. If the husbands vanish'd, and left no tracks, Would the wives have cause for sorrow, I wot? Thora: How well I remember that dreary ride; 37 How I sigh'd for the lands of ice and snow, In the trackless wastes of the desert wide, With the sun o'erhead and the sand below; 'Neath the scanty shades of the feathery palms, How I sigh'd for the forest of sheltering firs, Whose shadows environ'd the Danish farms, Where I sang and sported in childish years. On the fourteenth day of our pilgrimage We stayed at the foot of a sandhill high; Our fever'd thirst we could scarce assuage At the brackish well that was nearly dry, And the hot sun rose, and the hot sun set, And we rode all the day through a desert land, And we camp'd where the lake and the river met, On sedge and shingle and shining sand: Enfolded in Hugo's cloak I slept, Or watch'd the stars while I lay awake; And close to our feet the staghound crept, And the horses were grazing beside the lake; Now we own castles and serving men, Lands and revenues. What of that? Hugo the Norman was kinder then, And happier was Thora of Armorat. Elspeth: Nay, I warn'd thee, with Norman sails unfurl'd Above our heads, when we wished thee joy, That men are the same all over the world, They will worship only the newest toy; Yet Hugo is kind and constant too, Though somewhat given to studies of late; Biorn is sottish, and Max untrue, And worse than thine is thy sisters' fate. But a shadow darkens the chamber door. Enter THURSTON. Thurston: 'Tis I, Lady Thora; our lord is near. My horse being fresher, I rode before; Both he and Eric will soon be here. 38 Thora: Good Thurston, give me your hand. You are Most welcome. What has delayed you thus? Thurston: Both by sea and land we have travell'd far, Yet little of note has happened to us — We were wreck'd on the shores of Brittany, Near the coast of Morbihan iron-bound; The rocks were steep and the surf ran high, Thy kinsman, Eric, was well-nigh drown'd. By a swarm of knaves we were next beset, Who took us for corsairs; then released By a Breton count, whose name I forget. Now I go, by your leave, to tend my beast. [He goes out.] Elspeth: That man is rude and froward of speech: My ears are good, though my sight grows dim. Thora: Thurston is faithful. Thou canst not teach Courtly nor servile manners to him. SCENE — The Castle Hall. THURSTON, RALPH, EUSTACE, and other followers of HUGO, seated at a long table. HAROLD seated apart. Thurston: Who is that stranger, dark and tall, On the wooden settle next to the wall — Mountebank, pilgrim, or wandering bard? Eustace: To define his calling is somewhat hard; Lady Thora has taken him by the hand Because he has come from the Holy Land. 39 Pilgrims and palmers are all the rage With her, since she shared in that pilgrimage With Hugo. The stranger came yesterday, And would have gone on, but she bade him stay. Besides, he sings in the Danish tongue The songs she has heard in her childhood sung. That's all I know of him, good or bad; In my own opinion he's somewhat mad. You must raise your voice if you speak with him, And he answers as though his senses were dim. Thurston (to Harold): Good-morrow, sir stranger. Harold: Good-morrow, friend. Thurston: Where do you come from? and whither wend? Harold: I have travelled of late with the setting sun At my back; and as soon as my task is done I purpose to turn my face to the north — Yet we know not what a day may bring forth. Thurston: Indeed we don't. (To Eustace, aside): Nay, I know him now By that ugly scar that crosses his brow; And the less we say to him the better. Your judgment is right to the very letter — The man is mad. Eustace: But harmless, I think; He eats but little, eschews strong drink, And only speaks when spoken to first. Thurston: Harmless or not, he was once the worst And bitterest foe Lord Hugo had; And yet his story is somewhat sad. 40 Eustace: May I hear it? Thurston: Nay, I never reveal What concerns me not. Our lord may conceal Or divulge at pleasure his own affairs, — Not even his comrade Eric shares His secrets; though Eric thinks him wise, Which is more than I do, for I despise That foolish science he learnt in Rome. He dreams and mopes when he sits at home, And now he's not much better abroad; 'Tis hard to follow so tame a lord. 'Twixt us two, he won't be worth a rush If he will persist in his studies —— Eustace: Hush! Ralph has persuaded our guest to sing. Thurston: I have known the day when his voice would ring Till the rafters echoed. Eustace: 'Tis pleasant still, Though far too feeble this hall to fill. Harold (sings): On the current, where the wide Windings of the river Eddy to the North Sea tide, Shall I in my shallop glide, As I have done at her side? Never! never! never! In the forest, where the firs, Pines, and larches quiver To the northern breeze that stirs, Shall my lips be press'd to hers, As they were in by-gone years? Never! never! never! 41 In the battle on the plain, Where the lance-shafts shiver, And the sword-strokes fall like rain, Shall I bear her scarf again As I have done — not in vain? Never! never! never! In a fairer, brighter land, Where the saints rest ever, Shall I once more see her stand, White, amidst a white-robed band, Harp and palm-branch in her hand? Never! never! never! SCENE — The Same. EUSTACE, THURSTON, and followers of HUGO. HAROLD. Enter, by the hall door, HUGO, ERIC, and THORA. Eustace (and others standing up): Welcome, Lord Hugo! Hugo: Welcome or not, Thanks for your greeting all. Ha, Eustace! what complaints hast thou got? What grievances to recall? Eustace: Count William came with a numerous band, Ere the snows began to fall, And slew a buck on your lordship's land, Within a league of the wall. Hugo: Count William has done to us no more Than we to him. In his vineyard Last summer, or later, maybe, a boar Was slaughter'd by Thurston's whinyard. 42 Thurston: Aye, Hugo! But William kept the buck, I will wager marks a score, Though the tale is new to me; and, worse luck, You made me give back the boar. Harold (advancing): Lord Hugo! Hugo: What! Art thou living yet? I scarcely knew thee, Sir Dane! And 'tis not so very long since we met. Harold: 'Twill be long ere we meet again. (gives a letter) This letter was traced by one now dead In the Holy Land; and I Must wait till his dying request is read, And in his name ask the reply. Thora (aside): Who is that stranger, Hugo? Hugo: By birth He is a countryman of thine, Thora. What writing is this on earth? I can scarce decipher a line. Harold: The pen in the clutch of death works ill. Hugo: Nay, I read now; the letters run More clearly. Harold: Wilt grant the request? Hugo: I will. Harold: Enough! Then my task is done. (He holds out his hand.) Hugo, I go to a far-off land, 43 Wilt thou say, "God speed thee!" now? Hugo: Sir Harold, I cannot take thy hand, Because of my ancient vow. Harold: Farewell, then. Thora: Friend, till the morning wait. On so wild a night as this Thou shalt not go from my husband's gate; The path thou wilt surely miss. Harold: I go. Kind lady, some future day Thy care will requited be. Thora: Speak, Hugo, speak. Hugo: He may go or stay, It matters little to me. [Harold goes out.] Thora: Husband, that man is ill and weak; On foot he goes and alone Through a barren moor in a night-storm bleak. Eric: Now I wonder where he has gone! Hugo: Indeed, I have not the least idea; The man is certainly mad. He wedded my sister, Dorothea, And used her cruelly bad. He was once my firmest and surest friend, And once my deadliest foe; But hate and friendship both find their end — Now I heed not where he may go. 44 SCENE — A Chamber in the Castle. HUGO, THORA, and ERIC. Hugo: That letter that came from Palestine, By the hands of yon wandering Dane, Will cost me a pilgrimage to the Rhine. Thora: Wilt thou travel so soon again? Hugo: I can scarce refuse the dying request Of my comrade, Baldwin, now; His bones are dust. May his soul find rest He once made a foolish vow, That at Englemehr, 'neath the watchful care Of the Abbess, his child should stay, For a season at least. To escort her there I must start at the break of day. Thora: Is it Agatha that goes, or Clare? Hugo: Nay, Clare is dwelling in Spain With her spouse. Thora: 'Tis Agatha. She is fair, I am told; but giddy and vain. Eric: Some musty tales on my memory grow Concerning Count Baldwin's vow; Thou knew'st his daughter? Hugo: Aye, years ago. I should scarcely know her now. 45 It seems, when her father's vow was made, She was taken sorely ill; Then he travell'd, and on his return was stay'd; He could never his oath fulfil. Eric: If rightly I've heard, 'twas Agatha That fled with some Danish knight — I forget the name. Hugo: Nay, she fled not far; She returned again that night. Thora: For a nun, I fear, she is too self-willed. Hugo: That is no affair of mine. My task is over, my word fulfilled, Should I bring her safe to the Rhine. Come, Thora, sing. Thora: Nay, I cannot sing, Nor would I now if I could. Sing thou. Hugo: I will, though my voice should bring No sound save a discord rude. (Sings.) Where the storm in its wrath hath lighted, The pine lies low in the dust; And the corn is withered and blighted, Where the fields are red with the rust; Falls the black frost, nipping and killing, Where its petals the violet rears, And the wind, though tempered, is chilling To the lamb despoiled by the shears. The strong in their strength are shaken, The wise in their wisdom fall; And the bloom of beauty is taken — Strength, wisdom, beauty, and all, 46 They vanish, their lot fulfilling, Their doom approaches and nears, But the wind, though tempered, is chilling To the lamb despoiled by the shears. 'Tis the will of a Great Creator, He is wise, His will must be done, And it cometh sooner or later; And one shall be taken, and one Shall be left here, toiling and tilling, In this vale of sorrows and tears, Where the wind, though tempered, is chilling To the lamb despoiled by the shears. Tell me, mine own one, tell me, The shadows of life and the fears Shall neither daunt me nor quell me, While I can avert thy tears: Dost thou shrink, as I shrink, unwilling To realise lonely years? Since the wind, though tempered, is chilling To the lamb despoiled by the shears. Enter HENRY. Henry: My lord, Father Luke craves audience straight, He has come on foot from the chapel; Some stranger perished beside his gate When the dawn began to dapple. SCENE — A Chapel Not Very Far from Hugo's Castle. HUGO, ERIC, and two Monks (LUKE and HUBERT). The dead body of HAROLD. Luke: When the dawn was breaking, Came a faint sound, waking Hubert and myself; we hurried to the door, Found the stranger lying 47 At the threshold, dying. Somewhere have I seen a face like his before. Hugo: Harold he is hight. Only yester-night From our gates he wander'd, in the driving hail; Well his face I know, Both as friend and foe; Of my followers only Thurston knows his tale. Luke: Few the words he said, Faint the signs he made, Twice or thrice he groaned; quoth Hubert, "Thou hast sinn'd. This is retribution, Seek for absolution; Answer me — then cast thy sorrows to the wind. Do their voices reach thee, Friends who failed to teach thee, In thine earlier days, to sunder right from wrong? Charges 'gainst thee cited, Cares all unrequited, Counsels spurned and slighted — do they press and throng?" But he shook his head. "'Tis not so," he said; "They will scarce reproach me who reproached of yore. If their counsels good, Rashly I withstood; Having suffered longer, I have suffered more." "Do their curses stun thee? Foes who failed to shun thee, Stricken by rash vengeance, in some wild career, As the barbed arrow Cleaveth bone and marrow, From those chambers narrow — do they pierce thine ear?" And he made reply, Laughing bitterly, "Did I fear them living — shall I fear them dead? Blood that I have spilt Leaveth little guilt; 48 On the hand it resteth, scarcely on the head." "Is there one whom thou May'st have wronged ere now, Since remorse so sorely weigheth down thine heart? By some saint in heaven, Sanctified and shriven, Would'st thou be forgiven ere thy soul depart?" Not a word he said, But he bowed his head Till his temples rested on the chilly sods And we heard him groan — "Ah! mine own, mine own! If I had thy pardon I might ask for God's." Hubert raised him slowly, Sunrise, faint and holy, Lit the dead face, placid as a child's might be. May the troubled spirit, Through Christ's saving merit, Peace and rest inherit. Thus we sent for thee. Hugo: God o'erruleth fate. I had cause for hate; In this very chapel, years back, proud and strong, Joined by priestly vows, He became the spouse Of my youngest sister, to her bitter wrong. And he wrought her woe, Making me his foe; Not alone unfaithful — brutal, too, was he. She had scarce been dead Three months, ere he fled With Count Baldwin's daughter, then betrothed to me. Fortune straight forsook him, Vengeance overtook him; Heavy crimes will bring down heavy punishment. All his strength was shatter'd, Even his wits were scatter'd, Half-deranged, half-crippled, wandering he went. We are unforgiving 49 While our foes are living; Yet his retribution weigh'd so heavily That I feel remorse, Gazing on his corpse, For my rudeness when he left our gates to die. And his grave shall be 'Neath the chestnut tree, Where he met my sister many years ago; Leave that tress of hair On his bosom there — Wrap the cerecloth round him! Eric, let us go. SCENE — A Room in the Castle. HUGO and ERIC. Early morning. Hugo: The morn is fair, the weary miles Will shorten 'neath the summer's wiles; Pomona in the orchard smiles, And in the meadow, Flora! And I have roused a chosen band For escort through the troubled land; And shaken Elspeth by the hand, And said farewell to Thora. Comrade and kinsman — for thou art Comrade and kin to me — we part Ere nightfall, if at once we start, We gain the dead Count's castle. The roads are fair, the days are fine, Ere long I hope to reach the Rhine. Forsooth, no friend to me or mine Is that same Abbot Basil; I thought he wronged us by his greed. My father sign'd a foolish deed For lack of gold in time of need, And thus our lands went by us; Yet wrong on our side may have been: As far as my will goes, I ween, 'Tis past, the grudge that lay between 50 Us twain. Men call him pious — And I have prosper'd much since then, And gain'd for one lost acre ten; And even the ancient house and glen Rebought with purchase-money. He, too, is wealthy; he has got By churchly rights a fertile spot, A land of corn and wine, I wot, A land of milk and honey. Now, Eric, change thy plans and ride With us; thou hast no ties, no bride. Eric: Nay, ties I have, and time and tide, Thou knowest, wait for no man; And I go north; God's blessing shuns The dwellings of forgetful sons, That proverb he may read who runs, In Christian lore or Roman. My good old mother she hath heard, For twelve long months, from me no word; At thought of her my heart is stirr'd, And even mine eyes grow moister. Greet Ursula from me; her fame Is known to all. A nobler dame, Since days of Clovis, ne'er became The inmate of a cloister. Our paths diverge, yet we may go Together for a league or so; I, too, will join thy band below When thou thy bugle windest. [Eric goes out.] Hugo: From weaknesses we stand afar, On us unpleasantly they jar; And yet the stoutest-hearted are The gentlest and the kindest. My mother loved me tenderly; Alas! her only son was I. I shudder'd, but my lids were dry, By death made orphan newly. 51 A braver man than me, I swear, Who never comprehended fear, Scarce names his mother, and the tear, Unbidden, springs unruly. SCENE — A Road on the Norman Frontiers. HUGO, AGATHA, ORION, THURSTON, and armed attendants, riding slowly. Agatha: Sir Knight, what makes you so grave and glum? At times I fear you are deaf or dumb, Or both. Hugo: And yet, should I speak the truth, There is little in common 'twixt us, forsooth; You would think me duller, and still more vain, If I uttered the thoughts that fill my brain; Since the matters with which my mind is laden Would scarcely serve to amuse a maiden. Agatha: I am so foolish and you are so wise, 'Tis the meaning your words so ill disguise. Alas! my prospects are sad enough: I had rather listen to speeches rough Than muse and meditate silently On the coming loss of my liberty. Sad hope to me can my future bring, Yet, while I may, I would prattle and sing, Though it only were to try and assuage The dreariness of my pilgrimage. Hugo: Prattle and sing to your heart's content, And none will offer impediment. Agatha (sings): We were playmates in childhood, my sister and I, Whose playtime with childhood is done; 52 Through thickets where briar and bramble grew high, Barefooted I've oft seen her run. I've known her, when mists on the moorland hung white, Bareheaded past nightfall remain; She has followed a landless and penniless knight Through battles and sieges in Spain. But I pulled the flower, and shrank from the thorn, Sought the sunshine, and fled from the mist; My sister was born to face hardship with scorn — I was born to be fondled and kiss'd. Hugo (aside): She has a sweet voice. Orion: And a sweet face, too — Be candid for once, and give her her due. Agatha: Your face grows longer, and still more long, Sir Scholar! how did you like my song? Hugo: I thought it rather a silly one. Agatha: You are far from a pleasant companion. SCENE — An Apartment in a Wayside Inn. HUGO and AGATHA. Evening. Hugo: I will leave you now — we have talked enough, And for one so tenderly reared and nursed This journey is wearisome, perhaps, and rough. Agatha: Will you not finish your story first? 53 Hugo: I repent me that I began it now, 'Tis a dismal tale for a maiden's ears; Your cheek is pale already, your brow Is sad, and your eyes are moist with tears. Agatha: It may be thus, I am lightly vexed, But the tears will lightly come and go; I can cry one moment and laugh the next, Yet I have seen terrors, as well you know. I remember that flight through moss and fern, The moonlit shadows, the hoofs that rolled In fierce pursuit, and the ending stern, And the hawk that left his prey on the wold. Hugo: I have sorrowed since that I left you there: Your friends were close behind on the heath, Though not so close as I thought they were. (Aside.) Now I will not tell her of Harold's death. Agatha: 'Tis true, I was justly punished, and men, As a rule, of pity have little share; Had I died you had cared but little then. Hugo: But little then, yet now I should care More than you think for. Now, good-night. Tears still? Ere I leave you, child, alone, Must I dry your cheeks? Agatha: Nay, I am not quite Such a child but what I can dry my own. [Hugo goes out. Agatha retires.] Orion (singing outside the window of Agatha's chamber): 'Neath the stems with blossoms laden, 'Neath the tendrils curling, I, thy servant, sing, oh, maiden! I, thy slave, oh, darling! 54 Lo! the shaft that slew the red deer, At the elk may fly too. Spare them not! The dead are dead, dear, Let the living die too. Where the wiles of serpent mingle, And the looks of dove lie, Where small hands in strong hands tingle, Loving eyes meet lovely: Where the harder natures soften, And the softer harden — Certes! such things have been often Since we left Eve's garden. Sweeter follies herald sadder Sins — look not too closely; Tongue of asp and tooth of adder Under leaf of rose lie. Warned, advised in vain, abandon Warning and advice too, Let the child lay wilful hand on Den of cockatrice too. I, thy servant, or thy master, One or both — no matter; If the former — firmer, faster, Surer still the latter — Lull thee, soothe thee with my singing, Bid thee sleep, and ponder On my lullabies still ringing Through thy dreamland yonder. SCENE — A Wooded Rising Ground, Near the Rhine. HUGO and AGATHA resting under the trees. THURSTON, EUSTACE, and followers a little apart. ORION. (Noonday.) The Towers of the Convent in the distance. Agatha: I sit on the greensward, and hear the bird sing, 55 'Mid the thickets where scarlet and white blossoms cling; And beyond the sweet uplands all golden with flower, It looms in the distance, the grey convent tower. And the emerald earth and the sapphire-hued sky Keep telling me ever my spring has gone by; Ah! spring premature, they are tolling thy knell, In the wind's soft adieu, in the bird's sweet farewell. Oh! why is the greensward with garlands so gay, That I quail at the sight of my prison-house grey? Oh! why is the bird's note so joyous and clear? The caged bird must pine in a cage doubly drear. Hugo: May the lances of Dagobert harry their house, If they coax or intimidate thee to take vows; May the freebooters pillage their shrines, should they dare Touch with their scissors thy glittering hair. Our short and sweet journey now draws to an end, And homeward my sorrowful way I must wend; Oh, fair one! oh, loved one! I would I were free, To squander my life in the greenwood with thee. Orion (aside): Ho! seeker of knowledge, so grave and so wise, Touch her soft curl again — look again in her eyes; Forget for the nonce musty parchments, and learn How the slow pulse may quicken — the cold blood may burn. Ho! fair, fickle maiden, so blooming and shy! The old love is dead, let the old promise die! Thou dost well, thou dost wise, take the word of Orion, "A living dog always before a dead lion!" Thurston: Ye varlets, I would I knew which of ye burst Our wine-skin — what, ho! must I perish with thirst! Go, Henry, thou hast a glib tongue, go and ask Thy lord to send Ralph to yon inn for a flask. Henry: Nay, Thurston, not so; I decline to disturb 56 Our lord for the present; go thou, or else curb Thy thirst, or drink water, as I do. Thurston: Thou knave Of a page, dost thou wish me the colic to have? Orion (aside): That clown is a thoroughbred Saxon. He thinks With pleasure on naught save hard blows and strong drinks; In hell he will scarce go athirst if once given An inkling of any good liquors in heaven. Hugo: Our Pontiff to manhood at Englemehr grew, The priests there are many, the nuns are but few. I love not the Abbot — 'tis needless to tell My reason; but all of the Abbess speak well. Agatha: Through vineyards and cornfields beneath us, the Rhine Spreads and winds, silver-white, in the merry sunshine; And the air, overcharged with a subtle perfume, Grows faint from the essence of manifold bloom. Hugo: And the tinkling of bells, and the bleating of sheep, And the chaunt from the fields, where the labourers reap The earlier harvest, comes faint on the breeze, That whispers so faintly in hedgerows and trees. Orion: And a waggon wends slow to those turrets and spires, To feed the fat monks and the corpulent friars; It carries the corn, and the oil, and the wine, The honey and milk from the shores of the Rhine. The oxen are weary and spent with their load, They pause, but the driver doth recklessly goad; Up yon steep, flinty rise they have staggered and reeled, Even devils may pity dumb beasts of the field. 57 Agatha (sings): Oh! days and years departed, Vain hopes, vain fears that smarted, I turn to you sad-hearted — I turn to you in tears! Your daily sun shone brightly, Your happy dreams came nightly, Flowers bloomed and birds sang lightly, Through all your hopes and fears! You halted not, nor tarried, Your hopes have all miscarried, And even your fears are buried, Since fear with hope must die. You halted not, but hasted, And flew past, childhood wasted, And girlhood scarcely tasted, Now womanhood is nigh. Yet I forgive your wronging, Dead seasons round me thronging, With yearning and with longing, I call your bitters sweet. Vain longing, and vain yearning, There now is no returning; Oh! beating heart and burning, Forget to burn and beat! Oh! childish suns and showers, Oh! girlish thorns and flowers, Oh! fruitless days and hours, Oh! groundless hopes and fears: The birds still chirp and twitter, And still the sunbeams glitter: Oh! barren years and bitter, Oh! bitter, barren years! SCENE — The Summit of a Burning Mountain. Night. A terrific storm. ORION (undisguised). 58 Orion (sings): From fathomless depths of abysses, Where fires unquenchable burst, From the blackness of darkness, where hisses The brood of the serpent accurs'd; From shrines where the hymns are the weeping And wailing and gnashing of teeth, Where the palm is the pang never sleeping, Where the worm never dying is the wreath; Where all fruits save wickedness wither, Whence naught save despair can be gleaned — Come hither! come hither! come hither! Fall'n angel, fell sprite, and foul fiend. Come hither! the bands are all broken, And loosed in hell's innermost womb, When the spell unpronounceable spoken Divides the unspeakable gloom. Evil Spirits approach. The storm increases. Evil Spirits (singing): We hear thee, we seek thee, on pinions That darken the shades of the shade; Oh! Prince of the Air, with dominions Encompass'd, with powers array'd, With majesty cloth'd as a garment, Begirt with a shadowy shine, Whose feet scorch the hill-tops that are meant As footstools for thee and for thine. Orion (sings): How it swells through each pause of the thunder, And mounts through each lull of the gust, Through the crashing of crags torn asunder, And the hurtling of trees in the dust; With a chorus of loud lamentations, With its dreary and hopeless refrain! 'Tis the cry of all tongues and all nations, That suffer and shudder in vain. 59 Evil Spirits (singing): 'Tis the cry of all tongues and all nations; Our song shall chime in with their strain; Lost spirits blend their wild exultations With the sighing of mortals in pain. Orion (sings): With just light enough to see sorrows In this world, and terrors beyond, 'Twixt the day's bitter pangs and the morrow's Dread doubts, to despair and despond, Man lingers through toils unavailing For blessings that baffle his grasp; To his cradle he comes with a wailing, He goes to his grave with a gasp. Evil Spirits (singing): His birth is a weeping and wailing, His death is a groan and a gasp; O'er the seed of the woman prevailing, Thus triumphs the seed of the asp. SCENE — Chamber of a Wayside Inn. HUGO sitting alone. Evening. Hugo: And now the parting is over, The parting should end the pain; And the restless heart may recover, And so may the troubled brain. I am sitting within the chamber Whose windows look on the porch, Where the roses cluster and clamber; We halted here on our march With her to the convent going, And now I go back alone: Ye roses, budding and blowing, Ye heed not though she is flown. 60 I remember the girlish gesture, The sportive and childlike grace, With which she crumpled and pressed your Rose leaves to her rose-hued face. Shall I think on her ways hereafter — On those flashes of mirth and grief, On that April of tears and laughter, On our parting, bitterly brief? I remember the bell at sunrise, That sounded so solemnly, Bidding monk, and prelate, and nun rise; I rose ere the sun was high. Down the long, dark, dismal passage, To the door of her resting-place I went, on a farewell message, I trod with a stealthy pace. There was no one there to see us When she opened her chamber door. "Miserere, mei Deus", Rang faint from the convent choir. I remember the dark and narrow And scantily-furnished room; And the gleam, like a golden arrow — The gleam that lighted the gloom. One couch, one seat, and one table, One window, and only one — It stands in the eastern gable, It faces the rising sun; One ray shot through it, and one light On doorway and threshold played. She stood within in the sunlight, I stood without in the shade. I remember that bright form under The sheen of that slanting ray. I spoke — "For life we must sunder, Let us sunder without delay. Let us sever without preamble, As brother and sister part, For the sake of one pleasant ramble, 61 That will live in at least one heart." Still the choir in my ears rang faintly, In the distance dying away, Sweetly and sadly and saintly, Through arch and corridor grey! And thus we parted for ever, Between the shade and the shine; Not as brother and sister sever — I fondled her hands in mine. Still the choir in my ears rang deaden'd And dull'd, though audible yet; And she redden'd, and paled, and redden'd — Her lashes and lids grew wet. Not as brother severs from sister, My lips clung fast to her lips; She shivered and shrank when I kissed her. On the sunbeam drooped the eclipse. I remember little of the parting With the Abbot, down by the gate, My men were eager for starting; I think he pressed me to wait. From the lands where convent and glebe lie, From manors, and Church's right, Where I fought temptation so feebly, I, too, felt eager for flight. Alas! the parting is over — The parting, but not the pain — Oh! sweet was the purple clover, And sweet was the yellow grain; And sweet were the woody hollows On the summery Rhineward track; But a winter untimely swallows All sweets as I travel back. Yet I feel assured, in some fashion, Ere the hedges are crisp with rime, I shall conquer this senseless passion, 'Twill yield to toil and to time. I will fetter these fancies roaming; Already the sun has dipped; 62 I will trim the lamps in the gloaming, I will finish my manuscript. Through the nightwatch unflagging study Shall banish regrets perforce; As soon as the east is ruddy Our bugle shall sound "To Horse!" SCENE — Another Wayside House, Near the Norman Frontier. HUGO and ORION in a chamber. Evening. Orion: Your eyes are hollow, your step is slow, And your cheek is pallid as though from toil, Watching or fasting, by which I know That you have been burning the midnight oil. Hugo: Aye, three nights running. Orion: 'Twill never do To travel all day, and study all night; Will you join in a gallop through mist and dew, In a flight that may vie with the eagle's flight? Hugo: With all my heart. Shall we saddle "Rollo"? Orion: Nay, leave him undisturb'd in his stall; I have steeds he would hardly care to follow. Hugo: Follow, forsooth! he can lead them all. Orion: Touching his merits we will not quarrel; But let me mount you for once; enough Of work may await your favourite sorrel, And the paths we must traverse to-night are rough. 63 But first let me mix you a beverage, To invigorate your enfeebled frame. [He mixes a draught and hands it to Hugo.] All human ills this draught can assuage. Hugo: It hisses and glows like liquid flame; Say, what quack nostrum is this thou'st brewed? Speak out; I am learned in the chemist's lore. Orion: There is nothing but what will do you good; And the drugs are simples; 'tis hellebore, Nepenthe, upas, and dragon's blood, Absinthe, and mandrake, and mandragore. Hugo: I will drink it, although, by mass and rood, I am just as wise as I was before. SCENE — A Rough, Hilly Country. HUGO and ORION riding at speed on black horses. Mountains in the distance. Night. Hugo: See! the sparks that fly from our hoof-strokes make A fiery track that gleams in our wake; Like a dream the dim landscape past us shoots, Our horses fly. Orion: They are useful brutes, Though somewhat skittish; the foam is whit'ning The crest and rein of my courser "Lightning"; He pulls to-night, being short of work, And takes his head with a sudden jerk; Still heel and steady hand on the bit, For that is "Tempest" on which you sit. Hugo: 64 'Tis the bravest steed that ever I back'd; Did'st mark how he crossed yon cataract? From hoof to hoof I should like to measure The space he clear'd. Orion: He can clear at leisure A greater distance. Observe the chasm We are nearing. Ha! did you feel a spasm As we flew over it? Hugo: Not at all. Orion: Nathless 'twas an ugly place for a fall. Hugo: Let us try a race to yon mountain high, That rears its dusky peak 'gainst the sky. Orion: I won't disparage your horsemanship, But your steed will stand neither spur nor whip, And is hasty and hard to steer at times. We must travel far ere the midnight chimes; We must travel back ere the east is grey. Ho! "Lightning"! "Tempest"! Away! Away! [They ride on faster.] SCENE — A Peak in a Mountainous Country Overhanging a Rocky Pass. HUGO and ORION on black horses. Midnight. Hugo: These steeds are sprung from no common race, Their vigour seems to annihilate space; What hast thou brought me here to see? Orion: No boisterous scene of unhallow'd glee, No sabbat of witches coarse and rude, 65 But a mystic and musical interlude; You have long'd to explore the scrolls of Fate, Dismount, as I do, and listen and wait. [They dismount.] Orion (chanting): Spirits of earth, and air, and sea, Spirits unclean, and spirits untrue, By the symbols three that shall nameless be, One of your masters calls on you. Spirits (chanting in the distance): From the bowels of earth, where gleams the gold; From the air where the powers of darkness hold Their court; from the white sea-foam, Whence the white rose-tinted goddess sprung, Whom poets of every age have sung, Ever we come! we come! Hugo: How close to our ears the thunder peals! How the earth beneath us shudders and reels! A Voice (chanting): Woe to the earth! Where men give death! And women give birth! To the sons of Adam, by Cain or Seth! Plenty and dearth! To the daughters of Eve, who toil and spin, Barren of worth! Let them sigh, and sicken, and suffer sin! Woe to the earth! Hugo: What is yon phantom large and dim That over the mountain seems to swim? Orion: 'Tis the scarlet woman of Babylon! Hugo: Whence does she come? Where has she gone? 66 And who is she? Orion: You would know too much; These are subjects on which I dare not touch; And if I were to try and enlighten you, I should probably fail, and possibly frighten you. You had better ask some learned divine, Whose opinion is p'rhaps worth as much as mine, In his own conceit; and who, besides, Could tell you the brand of the beast she rides. What can you see in the valley yonder? Speak out; I can hear you, for all the thunder. Hugo: I see four shadowy altars rise, They seem to swell and dilate in size; Larger and clearer now they loom, Now fires are lighting them through the gloom. A Voice (chanting): The first a golden-hued fire shows, A blood-red flame on the second glows, The blaze on the third is tinged like the rose, From the fourth a column of black smoke goes. Orion: Can you see all this? Hugo: I see and hear; The lights and hues are vivid and clear. Spirits (sing at the first altar): Hail, Mammon! while man buys and barters, Thy kingdom in this world is sure; Thy prophets thou hast and thy martyrs, Great things in thy name they endure; Thy fetters of gold crush the miser, The usurer bends at thy shrine, And the wealthier nations and the wiser Bow with us at this altar of thine. Spirits (sing at the second altar): 67 Hail, Moloch! whose banner floats blood-red, From pole to equator unfurl'd, Whose laws redly written have stood red, And shall stand while standeth this world; Clad in purple, with thy diadem gory, Thy sceptre the blood-dripping steel, Thy subjects with us give thee glory, With us at thine altar they kneel. Spirits (sing at the third altar): Hail, Sovereign! whose fires are kindled By sparks from the bottomless pit, Has thy worship diminish'd or dwindled? Do the yokes of thy slaves lightly sit? Nay, the men of all climes and all races Are stirr'd by the flames that now stir us; Then (as we do) they fall on their faces, Crying, "Hear us! Oh! Ashtaroth, hear us!" Spirits (all in chorus): The vulture her carrion swallows, Returns to his vomit the dog. In the slough of uncleanliness wallows The he-goat, and revels the hog. Men are wise with their schools and their teachers, Men are just with their creeds and their priests; Yet, in spite of their pedants and preachers, They backslide in footprints of beasts! Hugo: From the smoky altar there seems to come A stifled murmur, a droning hum. Orion: With that we have nothing at all to do, Or, at least, not now, neither I nor you; Though some day or other, possibly We may see it closer, both you and I; Let us visit the nearest altar first, Whence the yellow fires flicker and burst, Like the flames from molten ore that spring; We may stand in the pale of the outer ring, 68 But forbear to trespass within the inner, Lest the sins of the past should find out the sinner. [They approach the first altar, and stand within the outer circle which surrounds it, and near the inner.] Spirits (sing): Beneath us it flashes, The glittering gold, Though it turneth to ashes And dross in the hold; Yet man will endeavour, By fraud or by strife, To grasp it and never To yield it with life. Orion: What can you see? Hugo: Some decrepit shapes, That are neither dwarfs, nor demons, nor apes; In the hollow earth they appear to store And rake together great heaps of ore. Orion: These are the gnomes, coarse sprites and rough; Come on, of these we have seen enough. [They approach second altar and stand as before.] Spirits (singing): Above us it flashes, The glittering steel, Though the red blood splashes Where its victims reel; Yet man will endeavour To grapple the hilt, And to wield the blade ever Till his life be spilt. Orion: What see you now? Hugo: A rocky glen, 69 A horrid jumble of fighting men, And a face that somewhere I've seen before. Orion: Come on; there is naught worth seeing more, Except the altar of Ashtaroth. Hugo: To visit that altar I am loth. Orion: Why so? Hugo: Nay, I cannot fathom why, But I feel no curiosity. Orion: Come on. Stand close to the inner ring, And hear how sweetly these spirits sing. [They approach third altar.] Spirits (sing): Around us it flashes, The cestus of one Born of white foam, that dashes Beneath the white sun; Let the mortal take heart, he Has nothing to dare; She is fair, Queen Astarte, Her subjects are fair! Orion: What see you now, friend? Hugo: Wood and wold, And forms that look like the nymphs of old. There is nothing here worth looking at twice. I have seen enough. Orion: You are far too nice; Nevertheless, you must look again. Those forms will fade. 70 Hugo: They are growing less plain. They vanish. I see a door that seems To open; a ray of sunlight gleams From a window behind; a vision as fair As the flush of dawn is standing there. [He gazes earnestly.] Orion (sings): Higher and hotter the white flames glow, And the adamant may be thaw'd like snow, And the life for a single chance may go, And the soul for a certainty. Oh! vain and shallow philosopher, Dost feel them quicken, dost feel them stir, The thoughts that have stray'd again to HER From whom thou hast sought to fly? Lo! the furnace is heated till sevenfold; Is thy brain still calm? Is thy blood still cold To the curls that wander in ripples of gold, On the shoulders of ivory? Do the large, dark eyes, and the small, red mouth, Consume thine heart with a fiery drouth, Like the fierce sirocco that sweeps from the south, When the deserts are parch'd and dry? Aye, start and shiver and catch thy breath, The sting is certain, the venom is death, And the scales are flashing the fruit beneath, And the fang striketh suddenly. At the core the ashes are bitter and dead, But the rind is fair and the rind is red, It has ever been pluck'd since the serpent said, Thou shalt NOT SURELY die. [Hugo tries to enter the inner ring; Orion holds him back; they struggle.] Hugo: Unhand me, slave! or quail to the rod! Agatha! Speak! in the name of God! 71 [The vision disappears; the altars vanish. Hugo falls insensible.] SCENE — The Wayside House. HUGO waking in his chamber. ORION unseen at first. Morning. Hugo: Vanish, fair and fatal vision! Fleeting shade of fever'd sleep, Chiding one whose indecision Waking substance failed to keep; Picture into life half starting, As in life once seen before, Parting somewhat sadly, parting Slowly at the chamber door. Were my waking senses duller? Have I seen with mental eye Light and shade, and warmth and colour, Plainer than reality? Sunlight that on tangled tresses Every ripple gilds and tips; Balm and bloom, and breath of kisses, Warm on dewy, scarlet lips. Dark eyes veiling half their splendour 'Neath their lashes' darker fringe, Dusky, dreamy, deep and tender, Passing smile and passing tinge; Dimpling fast and flushing faster, Ivory chin and coral cheek, Pearly strings, by alabaster Neck and arms made faint and weak; Drooping, downcast lids enduring Gaze of man unwillingly; Sudden, sidelong gleams alluring, Partly arch and partly shy. 72 Do I bless or curse that beauty? Am I longing, am I loth? Is it passion, is it duty That I strive with, one or both? Round about one fiery centre Wayward thoughts like moths revolve. [He sees Orion.] Ha! Orion, thou didst enter Unperceived. I pray thee solve These two questions: Firstly, tell me, Must I strive for wrong or right? Secondly, what things befell me — Facts, or phantasies — last night? Orion: First, your strife is all a sham, you Know as well as I which wins; Second, waking sins will damn you, Never mind your sleeping sins; Both your questions thus I answer; Listen, ere you seek or shun: I at least am no romancer, What you long for may be won. Turn again and travel Rhineward, Tread once more the flowery path. Hugo: Aye, the flowery path that, sinward Pointing, ends in sin and wrath. Orion: Songs by love-birds lightly caroll'd, Even the just man may allure. Hugo: To his shame; in this wise Harold Sinn'd, his punishment was sure. Orion: Nay, the Dane was worse than you are, Base and pitiless to boot; 73 Doubtless all are bad, yet few are Cruel, false, and dissolute. Hugo: Some sins foreign to our nature Seem; we take no credit when We escape them. Orion: Yet the creature, Sin-created, lives to sin. Hugo: Be it so; come good, come evil, Ride we to the Rhine again! Orion (aside): 'Gainst the logic of the devil Human logic strives in vain. SCENE — A Camp Near the Black Forest. RUDOLPH, OSRIC, DAGOBERT, and followers. ORION disguised as one of the Free-lances. Mid-day. Osric: Now, by axe of Odin, and hammer of Thor, And by all the gods of the Viking's war, I swear we have quitted our homes in vain: We have nothing to look to, glory nor gain. Will our galley return to Norway's shore With heavier gold, or with costlier store? Will our exploits furnish the scald with a song? We have travell'd too far, we have tarried too long. Say, captains all, is there ever a village For miles around that is worth the pillage? Will it pay the costs of my men or yours To harry the homesteads of German boors? Have we cause for pride in our feats of arms When we plunder the peasants or sack the farms? I tell thee, Rudolph of Rothenstein, 74 That were thy soldiers willing as mine, And I sole leader of this array, I would give Prince Otto battle this day. Dost thou call thy followers men of war? Oh, Dagobert! thou whose ancestor On the neck of the Caesar's offspring trod, Who was justly surnamed "The Scourge of God". Yet in flight lies safety. Skirmish and run To forest and fastness, Teuton and Hun, From the banks of the Rhine to the Danube's shore, And back to the banks of the Rhine once more; Retreat from the face of an armed foe, Robbing garden and hen-roost where'er you go. Let the short alliance betwixt us cease, I and my Norsemen will go in peace! I wot it never will suit with us, Such existence, tame and inglorious; I could live no worse, living single-handed, And better with half my men disbanded. Rudolph: Jarl Osric, what would'st thou have me do? 'Gainst Otto's army our men count few; With one chance of victory, fight, say I! But not when defeat is a certainty. If Rudiger joins us with his free-lances, Our chance will be equal to many chances; For Rudiger is both prompt and wary; And his men are gallant though mercenary; But the knave refuses to send a lance Till half the money is paid in advance. Dagobert: May his avarice wither him like a curse! I guess he has heard of our late reverse; But, Rudolph, whether he goes or stays, There is reason in what Jarl Osric says; Of provisions we need a fresh supply, And our butts and flasks are shallow or dry; My men are beginning to grumble sadly, 'Tis no wonder, since they must fare so badly. 75 Rudolph: We have plenty of foragers out, and still We have plenty of hungry mouths to fill; And, moreover, by some means, foul or fair, We must raise money; 'tis little I care, So long as we raise it, whence it comes. Osric: Shall we sit till nightfall biting our thumbs? The shortest plan is ever the best; Has anyone here got aught to suggest? Orion: The cornfields are golden that skirt the Rhine, Fat are the oxen, strong is the wine, In those pleasant pastures, those cellars deep, That o'erflow with the tears that those vineyards weep; Is it silver you stand in need of, or gold? Ingot or coin? There is wealth untold In the ancient convent of Englemehr; That is not so very far from here. The Abbot, esteem'd a holy man, Will hold what he has and grasp what he can; The cream of the soil he loves to skim, Why not levy a contribution on him? Dagobert: The stranger speaks well; not far away That convent lies; and one summer's day Will suffice for a horseman to reach the gate; The garrison soon would capitulate, Since the armed retainers are next to none, And the walls, I wot, may be quickly won. Rudolph: I kept those walls for two months or more, When they feared the riders of Melchior! That was little over three years ago. Their Abbot is thrifty, as well I know; He haggled sorely about the price Of our service. 76 Dagobert: Rudolph, he paid thee twice. Rudolph: Well, what of that? Since then I've tried To borrow from him; now I know he lied When he told me he could not spare the sum I asked. If we to his gates should come, He could spare it though it were doubled; and still, This war with the Church I like it ill. Osric: The creed of our fathers is well-nigh dead, And the creed of the Christian reigns in its stead But the creed of the Christian, too, may die, For your creeds or your churches what care I! If there be plunder at Englemehr, Let us strike our tents and thitherward steer. SCENE — A Farm-house on the Rhine (About a mile from the Convent). HUGO in chamber alone. Enter ERIC. Eric: What, Hugo, still at the Rhine! I thought You were home. You have travell'd by stages short. Hugo (with hesitation): Our homeward march was labour in vain, We had to retrace our steps again; It was here or hereabouts that I lost Some papers of value; at any cost I must find them; and which way lies your course? Eric: I go to recruit Prince Otto's force. I cannot study as you do; I Am wearied with inactivity; So I carry a blade engrim'd with rust (That a hand sloth-slacken'd has, I trust, Not quite forgotten the way to wield), 77 To strike once more on the tented field. Hugo: Fighting is all a mistake, friend Eric, And has been so since the age Homeric, When Greece was shaken and Troy undone, Ten thousand lives for a worthless one. Yet I blame you not; you might well do worse; Better fight and perish than live to curse The day you were born; and such has been The lot of many, and shall, I ween, Be the lot of more. If Thurston chooses He may go with you. The blockhead abuses Me and the life I lead. Enter ORION. Orion: Great news! The Englemehr monks will shake in their shoes; In the soles of their callous feet will shake The barefooted friars. The nuns will quake. Hugo: Wherefore? Orion: The outlaw of Rothenstein Has come with his soldiers to the Rhine, Back'd by those hardy adventurers From the northern forests of pines and firs, And Dagobert's horse. They march as straight As the eagle swoops to the convent gate. Hugo: We must do something to save the place. Orion: They are sure to take it in any case, Unless the sum that they ask is paid. Eric: Some effort on our part must be made. Hugo: 78 'Tis not so much for the monks I care. Eric: Nor I; but the Abbess and nuns are there. Orion: 'Tis not our business; what can we do? They are too many, and we are too few; And yet, I suppose, you will save, if you can, That lady, your ward, or your kinswoman. Hugo: She is no kinswoman of mine; How far is Otto's camp from the Rhine? Orion: Too far for help in such time of need To be brought, though you used your utmost speed. Eric: Nay, that I doubt. Hugo: And how many men Have they? Orion: To your one they could muster ten. Eric: I know Count Rudolph, and terms may be made With him, I fancy; for though his trade Is a rough one now, gainsay it who can, He was once a knight and a gentleman. And Dagobert, the chief of the Huns, Bad as he is, will spare the nuns; Though neither he nor the Count could check Those lawless men, should they storm and sack The convent. Jarl Osric, too, I know; He is rather a formidable foe, And will likely enough be troublesome; But the others, I trust, to terms will come. Hugo: 79 Eric, how many men have you? I can count a score. Eric: I have only two. Hugo: At every hazard we must try to save The nuns. Eric: Count Rudolph shall think we have A force that almost equals his own, If I can confer with him alone. Orion: He is close at hand; by this time he waits The Abbot's reply at the convent gates. Hugo: We had better send him a herald. Eric: Nay, I will go myself. [Eric goes out.] Hugo: Orion, stay! So this is the reed on which I've leaned, These are the hopes thou hast fostered, these The flames thou hast fanned. Oh, lying fiend! Is it thus thou dost keep thy promises? Orion: Strong language, Hugo, and most unjust; You will cry out before you are hurt — You will live to recall your words, I trust. Fear nothing from Osric or Dagobert, These are your friends, if you only knew it, And would take the advice of a friend sincere; Neglect his counsels and you must rue it, For I know by a sign the crisis is near. Accept the terms of these outlaws all, And be thankful that things have fallen out Exactly as you would have had them fall — You may save the one that you care about; 80 Otherwise, how did you hope to gain Access to her — on what pretence? What were the schemes that worried your brain To tempt her there or to lure her thence? You must have bungled, and raised a scandal About your ears, that might well have shamed The rudest Hun, the veriest Vandal, Long or ever the bird was tamed. Hugo: The convent is scarce surrounded yet, We might reach and hold it against their force Till another sun has risen and set; And should I despatch my fleetest horse To Otto —— Orion: For Abbot, or Monk, or Friar, Between ourselves, 'tis little you care If their halls are harried by steel and fire: Their avarice left your heritage bare. Forsake them! Mitres, and cowls, and hoods Will cover vices while earth endures; Through the green and gold of the summer woods Ride out with that pretty bird of yours. If again you fail to improve your chance, Why, then, my friend, I can only say You are duller far than the dullest lance That rides in Dagobert's troop this day. "Faemina semper", frown not thus, The girl was always giddy and wild, Vain, and foolish, and frivolous, Since she fled from her father's halls, a child. I sought to initiate you once In the mystic lore of the old Chaldean; But I found you far too stubborn a dunce, And your tastes are coarser and more plebeian. Yet mark my words, for I read the stars, And trace the future in yonder sky; To the right are wars and rumours of wars, To the left are peace and prosperity. Fear naught. The world shall never detect The cloven hoof, so carefully hid 81 By the scholar so staid and circumspect, So wise for once to do as he's bid. Remember what pangs come year by year For opportunity that has fled; And Thora in ignorance. Hugo: Name not her! I am sorely tempted to strike thee dead! Orion: Nay, I hardly think you will take my life, The angel Michael was once my foe; He had a little the best of our strife, Yet he never could deal so stark a blow. SCENE — A Chamber in the Nuns' Apartments of the Convent. AGATHA and URSULA. Agatha: My sire in my childhood pledged my hand To Hugo — I know not why — They were comrades then, 'neath the Duke's command, In the wars of Lombardy. I thought, ere my summers had turned sixteen, That mine was a grievous case; Save once, for an hour, I had never seen My intended bridegroom's face; And maidens vows of their own will plight. Unknown to my kinsfolk all My love was vowed to a Danish knight, A guest in my father's hall. His foot fell lightest in merry dance, His shaft never missed the deer; He could fly a hawk, he could wield a lance, Our wildest colt he could steer. His deep voice ringing through hall or glen Had never its match in song; And little was known of his past life then, Or of Dorothea's wrong. 82 I loved him — Lady Abbess, I know That my love was foolish now; I was but a child five years ago, And thoughtless as bird on bough. One evening Hugo the Norman came, And, to shorten a weary tale, I fled that night (let me bear the blame) With Harold by down and dale. He had mounted me on a dappled steed, And another of coal-black hue He rode himself; and away at speed We fled through mist and dew. Of miles we had ridden some half a score, We had halted beside a spring, When the breeze to our ears through the still night bore A distant trample and ring; We listen'd one breathing space, and caught The clatter of mounted men, With vigour renewed by their respite short Our horses dash'd through the glen. Another league, and we listen'd in vain; The breeze to our ears came mute; But we heard them again on the spacious plain, Faint tidings of hot pursuit. In the misty light of a moon half hid By the dark or fleecy rack, Our shadows over the moorland slid, Still listening and looking back. So we fled (with a cheering word to say At times as we hurried on), From sounds that at intervals died away, And at intervals came anon. Another league, and my lips grew dumb, And I felt my spirit quailing, For closer those sounds began to come, And the speed of my horse was failing. "The grey is weary and lame to boot," Quoth Harold; "the black is strong, And their steeds are blown with their fierce pursuit, What wonder! our start was long. Now, lady, behind me mount the black, 83 The double load he can bear; We are safe when we reach the forest track, Fresh horses and friends wait there." Then I sat behind him and held his waist, And faster we seemed to go By moss and moor; but for all our haste Came the tramp of the nearing foe. A dyke through the mist before us hover'd, And, quicken'd by voice and heel, The black overleap'd it, stagger'd, recover'd; Still nearer that muffled peal. And louder on sward the hoof-strokes grew, And duller, though not less nigh, On deader sand; and a dark speck drew On my vision suddenly, And a single horseman in fleet career, Like a shadow appear'd to glide To within six lances' lengths of our rear, And there for a space to bide. Quoth Harold, "Speak, has the moon reveal'd His face?" I replied, "Not so! Yet 'tis none of my kinsfolk." Then he wheel'd In the saddle and scanned the foe, And mutter'd, still gazing in our wake, "'Tis he; now I will not fight The brother again, for the sister's sake, While I can escape by flight." "Who, Harold?" I asked; but he never spoke. By the cry of the bittern harsh, And the bull-frog's dull, discordant croak, I guess'd that we near'd the marsh; And the moonbeam flash'd on watery sedge As it broke from a strip of cloud, Ragged and jagged about the edge, And shaped like a dead man's shroud. And flagg'd and falter'd our gallant steed, 'Neath the weight of his double burden, As we splash'd through water and crash'd through reed; Then the soil began to harden, And again we gain'd, or we seem'd to gain, With our foe in the deep morass; But those fleet hoofs thunder'd, and gain'd again, 84 When they trampled the firmer grass, And I cried, and Harold again look'd back, And bade me fasten mine eyes on The forest, that loom'd like a patch of black Standing out from the faint horizon. "Courage, sweetheart! we are saved," he said; "With the moorland our danger ends, And close to the borders of yonder glade They tarry, our trusty friends." Where the mossy uplands rise and dip On the edge of the leafy dell, With a lurch, like the lurch of a sinking ship, The black horse toppled and fell. Unharm'd we lit on the velvet sward, And even as I lit I lay, But Harold uprose, unsheath'd his sword, And toss'd the scabbard away. And spake through his teeth, "Good brother-in-law, Forbearance, at last, is spent; The strife that thy soul hath lusted for Thou shalt have to thy soul's content!" While he spoke, our pursuer past us swept, Ere he rein'd his war-horse proud, To his haunches flung, then to the earth he leapt, And my lover's voice rang loud: "Thrice welcome! Hugo of Normandy, Thou hast come at our time of need, This lady will thank thee, and so will I, For the loan of thy sorrel steed!" And never a word Lord Hugo said, They clos'd 'twixt the wood and the wold, And the white steel flickered over my head In the moonlight calm and cold; 'Mid the feathery grasses crouching low, With face bow'd down to the dust, I heard the clash of each warded blow, The click of each parried thrust, And the shuffling feet that bruis'd the lawn, As they traversed here and there, And the breath through the clench'd teeth heavily drawn When breath there was none to spare; 85 Sharp ringing sword play, dull, trampling heel, Short pause, spent force to regain, Quick muffled footfall, harsh grating steel, Sharp ringing rally again; They seem'd long hours, those moments fleet, As I counted them one by one, Till a dead weight toppled across my feet, And I knew that the strife was done. When I looked up, after a little space, As though from a fearful dream, The moon was flinging on Harold's face A white and a weird-like gleam; And I felt mine ankles moist and warm With the blood that trickled slow From a spot on the doublet beneath his arm, From a ghastly gash on his brow; I heard the tread of the sorrel's hoof As he bore his lord away; They passed me slowly, keeping aloof, Like spectres, misty and grey. I thought Lord Hugo had left me there To die, but it was not so; Yet then for death I had little care, My soul seem'd numb'd by the blow; A faintness follow'd, a sickly swoon, A long and a dreamless sleep, And I woke to the light of a sultry noon In my father's castled keep. And thus, Lady Abbess, it came to pass That my father vow'd his vow; Must his daughter espouse the Church? Alas! Is she better or wiser now? For some are feeble and others strong, And feeble am I and frail. Mother! 'tis not that I love the wrong, 'Tis not that I loathe the veil, But with heart still ready to go astray, If assail'd by a fresh temptation, I could sin again as I sinned that day, For a girl's infatuation. 86 See! Harold, the Dane, thou say'st is dead, Yet I weep NOT BITTERLY; As I fled with the Dane, so I might have fled With Hugo of Normandy. Ursula: My child, I advise no hasty vows, Yet I pray that in life's brief span Thou may'st learn that our Church is a fairer spouse Than fickle and erring man; Though fenced for a time by the Church's pale, When that time expires thou'rt free; And we cannot force thee to take the veil, Nay, we scarce can counsel thee. Enter the ABBOT hastily. Basil (the Abbot): I am sorely stricken with shame and grief, It has come by the self-same sign, A summons brief from the outlaw'd chief, Count Rudolph of Rothenstein. Lady Abbess, ere worse things come to pass, I would speak with thee alone; Alack and alas! for by the rood and mass I fear we are all undone. SCENE — A Farm-house Near the Convent. A Chamber furnished with writing materials. HUGO, ERIC, and THURSTON on one side; on the other OSRIC, RUDOLPH, and DAGOBERT. Osric: We have granted too much, ye ask for more; I am not skill'd in your clerkly lore, I scorn your logic; I had rather die Than live like Hugo of Normandy: I am a Norseman, frank and plain; Ye must read the parchment over again. 87 Eric: Jarl Osric, twice we have read this scroll. Osric: Thou hast read a part. Eric: I have read the whole. Osric: Aye, since I attached my signature! Eric: Before and since! Rudolph: Nay, of this be sure, Thou hast signed; in fairness now let it rest. Osric: I had rather have sign'd upon Hugo's crest; He has argued the question mouth to mouth With the wordy lore of the subtle south; Let him or any one of his band Come and argue the question hand to hand. With the aid of my battle-axe I will show That a score of words are not worth one blow. Thurston: To the devil with thee and thy battle-axe; I would send the pair of ye back in your tracks, With an answer that even to thy boorish brain Would scarce need repetition again. Osric: Thou Saxon slave to a milksop knight, I will give thy body to raven and kite. Thurston: Thou liest; I am a freeborn man, And thy huge carcase — in cubit and span Like the giant's of Gath — 'neath Saxon steel, Shall furnish the kites with a fatter meal. 88 Osric: Now, by Odin! Rudolph: Jarl Osric, curb thy wrath; Our names are sign'd, our words have gone forth. Hugo: I blame thee, Thurston. Thurston: And I, too, blame Myself, since I follow a knight so tame! [Thurston goes out.] Osric: The Saxon hound, he said I lied! Rudolph: I pray thee, good Viking, be pacified. Osric: Why do we grant the terms they ask? To crush them all were an easy task. Dagobert: That know'st thou not; if it come to war, They are stronger, perhaps, than we bargain for. Eric: Jarl Osric, thou may'st recall thy words — Should we meet again. Osric: Should we meet with swords, Thou, too, may'st recall them to thy sorrow. Hugo: Eric! we dally. Sir Count, good-morrow. SCENE — The Guest Chamber of the Convent. HUGO, ERIC, and ORION. 89 Eric: Hugo, their siege we might have tried; This place would be easier fortified Than I thought at first; it is now too late, They have cut off our access to the gate. Hugo: I have weigh'd the chances and counted the cost, And I know by the stars that all is lost If we take up this quarrel. Eric: So let it be! I yield to one who is wiser than me. (Aside.) Nevertheless, I have seen the day When the stars would scarcely have bade us stay. Enter the ABBOT, CYRIL, and other Monks. Hugo: Lord Abbot, we greet thee. Good fathers all, We bring you greeting. Orion (aside): And comfort small. Abbot: God's benediction on you, my sons. Hugo: May He save you, too, from Norsemen and Huns! Since the gates are beleaguer'd and walls begirt By the forces of Osric and Dagobert; 'Tis a heavy price that the knaves demand. Abbot: Were we to mortgage the Church's land We never could raise what they would extort. Orion (aside): The price is too long and the notice too short. Eric: 90 And you know the stern alternative. Abbot: If we die we die, if we live we live; God's will be done; and our trust is sure In Him, though His chast'nings we endure. Two messengers rode from here last night, To Otto they carry news of our plight; On my swiftest horses I saw them go. Orion (aside): Then his swiftest horses are wondrous slow. Eric: One of these is captive and badly hurt; By the reckless riders of Dagobert He was overtaken and well-nigh slain, Not a league from here on the open plain. Abbot: But the other escap'd. Eric: It may be so; We had no word of him, but we know That unless you can keep these walls for a day At least, the Prince is too far away To afford relief. Abbot: Then a hopeless case Is ours, and with death we are face to face. Eric: You have arm'd retainers. Cyril (a Monk): Aye, some half score; And some few of the brethren, less or more, Have in youth the brunt of the battle bided, Yet our armoury is but ill provided. Hugo: We have terms of truce from the robbers in chief, Though the terms are partial, the truce but brief; 91 To Abbess, to nuns, and novices all, And to every woman within your wall, We can offer escort, and they shall ride From hence in safety whate'er betide. Abbot: What escort, Hugo, canst thou afford? Hugo: Some score of riders who call me lord Bide at the farm not a mile from here, Till we rejoin them they will not stir; My page and armourer wait below, And all our movements are watch'd by the foe. Strict stipulation was made, of course, That, except ourselves, neither man nor horse Should enter your gates — they were keen to shun The chance of increasing your garrison. Eric: I hold safe conduct here in my hand, Signed by the chiefs of that lawless band; See Rudolph's name, no disgrace to a clerk, And Dagobert's scrawl, and Osric's mark; Jarl signed sorely against his will, With a scratch like the print of a raven's bill; But the foe have muster'd in sight of the gate. For another hour they will scarcely wait; Bid Abbess and dame prepare with haste. Hugo: Lord Abbot, I tell thee candidly There is no great love between thou and I, As well thou know'st; but, nevertheless, I would we were more, or thy foes were less. Abbot: I will summon the Lady Abbess straight. [The Abbot and Monks go out.] Eric: 'Tis hard to leave these men to their fate, 92 Norsemen and Hun will never relent; Their day of grace upon earth is spent. [Hugo goes out, followed by Orion.] SCENE — The Corridor Outside the Guest Chamber. HUGO pacing up and down. ORION leaning against the wall. Hugo: My day of grace with theirs is past. I might have saved them; 'tis too late — Too late for both. The die is cast, And I resign me to my fate. God's vengeance I await. Orion: The boundary 'twixt right and wrong Is not so easy to discern; And man is weak, and fate is strong, And destiny man's hopes will spurn, Man's schemes will overturn. Hugo: Thou liest, thou fiend! Not unawares The sinner swallows Satan's bait, Nor pits conceal'd nor hidden snares Seeks blindly; wherefore dost thou prate Of destiny and fate? Orion: Who first named fate? But never mind, Let that pass by — to Adam's fall And Adam's curse look back, and find Iniquity the lot of all, And sin original. Hugo: But I have sinn'd, repented, sinn'd, Till seven times that sin may be By seventy multiplied; the wind 93 Is constant when compared with me, And stable is the sea! My hopes are sacrificed, for what? For days of folly, less or more, For years to see those dead hopes rot, Like dead weeds scatter'd on the shore, Beyond the surfs that roar! Orion: The wiles of Eve are swift to smite; Aye, swift to smite and not to spare — Red lips and round limbs sweet and white, Dark eyes and sunny, silken hair, Thy betters may ensnare. Hugo: Not so; the strife 'twixt hell and heaven I felt last night, and well I knew The crisis; but my aid was given To hell. Thou'st known the crisis too, For once thou'st spoken true. Having foretold it, there remains For grace no time, for hope no room; Even now I seem to feel the pains Of hell, that wait beyond the gloom Of my dishonour'd tomb. Thou who hast lived and died to save, Us sinners, Christ of Galilee! Thy great love pardon'd and forgave The dying thief upon the tree, Thou canst not pardon me! Dear Lord! hear Thou my latest prayer, For prayer must die since hope is dead; Thy Father's vengeance let me bear, Nor let my guilt be visited Upon a guiltless head! Ah! God is just! Full sure I am 94 He never did predestinate Our souls to hell. Ourselves we damn — [To Orion, with sudden passion] Serpent! I know thee now, too late; Curse thee! Work out thy hate! Orion: I hate thee not; thy grievous plight Would move my pity, but I bear A curse to which thy curse seems light! Thy wrong is better than my right, My day is darker than thy night; Beside the whitest hope I share How white is thy despair! SCENE — The Chapel of the Convent. URSULA, AGATHA, Nuns and Novices. (Hymn of the Nuns): Jehovah! we bless Thee, All works of Thine hand Extol Thee, confess Thee; By sea and by land, By mountain and river, By forest and glen, They praise Thee for ever! And ever! Amen! The heathen are raging Against Thee, O Lord! The ungodly are waging Rash war against God! Arise, and deliver Us, sheep of Thy pen, Who praise Thee for ever! And ever! Amen! Thou Shepherd of Zion! 95 Thy firstlings didst tear From jaws of the lion, From teeth of the bear; Thy strength to deliver Is strong now as then. We praise Thee for ever! And ever! Amen! Thine arm hath delivered Thy servants of old, Hath scatter'd and shiver'd The spears of the bold, Hath emptied the quiver Of bloodthirsty men. We praise Thee for ever! And ever! Amen! Nathless shall Thy right hand Those counsels fulfil Most wise in Thy sight, and We bow to Thy will; Thy children quail never For dungeon or den, They praise Thee for ever! And ever! Amen! Though fierce tribulation Endure for a space, Yet God! our salvation! We gain by Thy grace, At end of life's fever, Bliss passing man's ken; There to praise Thee for ever! And ever! Amen! SCENE — The Guest Room of the Convent. HUGO, ERIC, and ORION. Enter URSULA, AGATHA, and Nuns. Ursula: 96 Hugo, we reject thine offers, Not that we can buy Safety from the Church's coffers, Neither can we fly. Far too great the price they seek is, Let their lawless throng Come, we wait their coming; weak is Man, but God is strong. Eric: Think again on our proposals: It will be too late When the robbers hold carousals On this side the gate. Ursula: For myself I speak and others Weak and frail as I; We will not desert our brothers In adversity. Hugo (to the Nuns): Does the Abbess thus advance her Will before ye all? A Nun: We will stay. Hugo: Is this thine answer, Agatha? The wall Is a poor protection truly, And the gates are weak, And the Norsemen most unruly. Come, then. A Nun (to Agatha): Sister, speak! Orion (aside to Hugo): Press her! She her fears dissembling, Stands irresolute; She will yield — her limbs are trembling, Though her lips are mute. 97 [A trumpet is heard without.] Eric: Hark! their savage war-horn blowing Chafes at our delay. Hugo: Agatha, we must be going. Come, girl! Agatha (clinging to Ursula): Must I stay? Ursula: Nay, my child, thou shalt not make me Judge; I cannot give Orders to a novice. Agatha: Take me, Hugo! Let me live! Eric (to Nuns): Foolish women! will ye tarry, Spite of all we say? Hugo: Must we use our strength and carry You by force away? Ursula: Bad enough thou art, Sir Norman, Yet thou wilt not do This thing. Shame! — on men make war, man, Not on women few. Eric: Heed her not — her life she barters, Of her free accord, For her faith; and, doubtless, martyrs Have their own reward. Ursula: In the Church's cause thy father 98 Never grudged his blade — Hugo, did he rue it? Orion: Rather! He was poorly paid. Hugo: Abbess, this is not my doing; I have said my say; How can I avert the ruin, Even for a day, Since they count two hundred fairly, While we count a score; And thine own retainers barely Count a dozen more? Agatha (kneeling to Ursula): Ah! forgive me, Lady Abbess, Bless me ere I go; She who under sod and slab is Lying, cold and low, Scarce would turn away in anger From a child so frail; Not dear life, but deadly danger, Makes her daughter quail. Hugo: Eric, will those faces tearful To God's judgment seat Haunt us? Eric: Death is not so fearful. Hugo: No, but life is sweet — Sweet for once, to me, though sinful. Orion (to Hugo): Earth is scant of bliss; Wisest he who takes his skinful When the chance is his. (To Ursula): Lady Abbess! stay and welcome 99 Osric's savage crew; Yet when pains of death and hell come, Thou thy choice may'st rue. Ursula (to Orion): What dost thou 'neath roof-trees sacred? Man or fiend, depart! Orion: Dame, thy tongue is sharp and acrid, Yet I bear the smart. Ursula (advancing and raising up a crucifix): I conjure thee by this symbol Leave us! [Orion goes out hastily.] Hugo: Ha! the knave, He has made an exit nimble; Abbess! thou art brave. Yet once gone, we're past recalling, Let no blame be mine. See, thy sisters' tears are falling Fast, and so are thine. Ursula: Fare you well! The teardrop splashes Vainly on the ice. Ye will sorrow o'er our ashes And your cowardice. Eric: Sorry am I, yet my sorrow Cannot alter fate; Should Prince Otto come to-morrow, He will come too late. Hugo: Nay, old comrade, she hath spoken Words we must not hear; Shall we pause for sign or token — Taunted twice with fear? 100 Yonder, hilt to hilt adjusted, Stand the swords in which we trusted Years ago. Their blades have rusted, So, perchance, have we. Ursula! thy words may shame us, Yet we once were counted famous, Morituri, salutamus, Aut victuri, te! [They go out.] SCENE — The Outskirts of Rudolph's Camp. RUDOLPH, OSRIC, and DAGOBERT. HUGO. Rudolph: Lord Hugo! thy speech is madness; Thou hast tax'd our patience too far; We offer'd thee peace — with gladness, We gladly accept thy war. Dagobert: And the clemency we extended To thee and thine we recall; And the treaty 'twixt us is ended — We are ready to storm the wall. Osric: Now tear yon parchment to tatters; Thou shalt make no further use Of our safeguard; the wind that scatters The scroll shall scatter the truce. Hugo: Jarl Osric, to save the spilling Of blood, and the waste of life, I am willing, if thou art willing, With thee to decide this strife; Let thy comrades draw their force back; I defy thee to single fight, I will meet thee on foot or horseback, And God shall defend the right. 101 Rudolph: No single combat shall settle This strife; thou art overbold — Thou hast put us all on our mettle, Now the game in our hands we hold. Dagobert: Our lances round thee have hover'd, Have seen where thy fellows bide; Thy weakness we have discover'd, Thy nakedness we have spied. Osric: And hearken, knight, to my story — When sack'd are the convent shrines, When the convent thresholds are gory, And quaff'd are the convent wines: When our beasts with pillage are laden, And the clouds of our black smoke rise From yon tower, one fair-haired maiden Is singled as Osric's prize. I will fit her with chain and collar Of red gold, studded with pearls; With bracelet of gold, Sir Scholar, The queen of my captive girls. Hugo (savagely): May the Most High God of battles The Lord and Ruler of fights, Who breaketh the shield that rattles, Who snappeth the sword that smites, In whose hands are footmen and horsemen, At whose breath they conquer or flee, Never show me His mercy, Norseman! If I show mercy to thee. Osric: What, ho! art thou drunk, Sir Norman? Has the wine made thy pale cheek red? Now, I swear by Odin and Thor, man, Already I count thee dead. 102 Rudolph: I crave thy pardon for baulking The flood of thine eloquence, But thou canst not scare us with talking, I therefore pray thee go hence. Osric: Though I may not take up thy gauntlet, Should we meet where the steel strikes fire, 'Twixt thy casque and thy charger's frontlet The choice will perplex thy squire. Hugo: When the Norman rowels are goading, When glitters the Norman glaive, Thou shalt call upon Thor and Odin: They shall not hear thee nor save. "Should we meet!" Aye, the chance may fall so, In the furious battle drive, So may God deal with me — more, also! If we separate, both alive! SCENE — The Court-yard of the Old Farm. EUSTACE and other followers of HUGO and ERIC lounging about. Enter THURSTON hastily, with swords under his arm. Thurston: Now saddle your horses and girth them tight, And see that your weapons are sharp and bright. Come, lads, get ready as fast as you can. Eustace: Why, what's this bustle about, old man? Thurston: Well, it seems Lord Hugo has changed his mind, As the weathercock veers with the shifting wind; He has gone in person to Osric's camp, 103 To tell him to pack up his tents and tramp! But I guess he won't. Eustace: Then I hope he will, They are plenty to eat us, as well as to kill. Ralph: And I hope he won't — I begin to feel A longing to moisten my thirsty steel. [They begin to saddle and make preparations for a skirmish.] Thurston: I've a couple of blades to look to here. In their scabbards I scarcely could make them stir At first, but I'll sharpen them both ere long. A Man-at-arms: Hurrah for a skirmish! Who'll give us a song? Thurston (sings, cleaning and sharpening): Hurrah! for the sword! I hold one here, And I scour at the rust and say, 'Tis the umpire this, and the arbiter, That settles in the fairest way; For it stays false tongues and it cools hot blood, And it lowers the proud one's crest; And the law of the land is sometimes good, But the law of the sword is best. In all disputes 'tis the shortest plan, The surest and best appeal; — What else can decide between man and man? (Chorus of all): Hurrah! for the bright blue steel! Thurston (sings): Hurrah! for the sword of Hugo, our lord! 'Tis a trusty friend and a true; It has held its own on a grassy sward, When its blade shone bright and blue, Though it never has stricken in anger hard, 104 And has scarcely been cleansed from rust, Since the day when it broke through Harold's guard With our favourite cut and thrust; Yet Osric's crown will look somewhat red, And his brain will be apt to reel, Should the trenchant blade come down on his head — (Chorus of all): Hurrah! for the bright blue steel! Thurston (sings): Hurrah! for the sword of our ally bold, It has done good service to him; It has held its own on an open wold, When its edge was in keener trim. It may baffle the plots of the wisest skull, It may slacken the strongest limb, Make the brains full of forethought void and null, And the eyes full of far-sight dim; And the hasty hands are content to wait, And the knees are compelled to kneel, Where it falls with the weight of a downstroke straight — (Chorus of all): Hurrah! for the bright blue steel! Thurston (sings): Hurrah! for the sword — I've one of my own; And I think I may safely say, Give my enemy his, let us stand alone, And our quarrel shall end one way; One way or the other — it matters not much, So the question be fairly tried. Oh! peacemaker good, bringing peace with a touch, Thy clients will be satisfied. As a judge, thou dost judge — as a witness, attest, And thou settest thy hand and seal, And the winner is blest, and the loser at rest — (Chorus of all): Hurrah! for the bright blue steel! [Hugo and Eric enter during the last verse 105 of the song.] Hugo: Boot and saddle, old friend, Their defiance they send; Time is short — make an end Of thy song. Let the sword in this fight Strike as hard for the right As it once struck for might Leagued with wrong. Ha! Rollo, thou champest Thy bridle and stampest, For the rush of the tempest Dost long? Ho! the kites will grow fatter On the corpses we scatter, In the paths where we shatter Their throng. Where Osric, the craven, Hath reared the black raven 'Gainst monks that are shaven And cowl'd: Where the Teuton and Hun sit, In the track of our onset, Will the wolves, ere the sunset, Have howl'd. Retribution is good, They have revell'd in blood, Like the wolves of the wood They have prowl'd. Birds of prey they have been, And of carrion unclean, And their own nests (I ween) They have foul'd. Eric: Two messengers since Yestermorn have gone hence, 106 And ere long will the Prince Bring relief. Shall we pause? — they are ten To our one, but their men Are ill-arm'd, and scarce ken Their own chief; And for this we give thanks: Their disorderly ranks, If assail'd in the flanks, Will as lief Run as fight — loons and lords. Hugo: Mount your steeds! draw your swords! Take your places! My words Shall be brief: Ride round by the valley, Through pass and gorge sally — The linden trees rally Beneath. Then, Eric and Thurston, Their ranks while we burst on, Try which will be first on The heath. (Aside) Look again, mother mine, Through the happy starshine, For my sins dost thou pine? With my breath, See! thy pangs are all done, For the life of thy son: Thou shalt never feel one For his death. [They all go out but Hugo, who lingers to tighten his girths. Orion appears suddenly in the gateway.] Orion: Stay, friend! I keep guard on Thy soul's gates; hold hard on Thy horse. Hope of pardon 107 Hath fled! Bethink once, I crave thee, Can recklessness save thee? Hell sooner will have thee Instead. Hugo: Back! My soul, tempest-toss'd, Hath her Rubicon cross'd, She shall fly — saved or lost! Void of dread! Sharper pang than the steel, Thou, oh, serpent! shalt feel, Should I set the bruised heel On thy head. [He rides out.] SCENE — A Room in the Convent Tower Overlooking the Gate. URSULA at the window. AGATHA and Nuns crouching or kneeling in a corner. Ursula: See, Ellinor! Agatha! Anna! While yet for the ladders they wait, Jarl Osric hath rear'd the black banner Within a few yards of the gate; It faces our window, the raven, The badge of the cruel sea-kings, That has carried to harbour and haven Destruction and death on its wings. Beneath us they throng, the fierce Norsemen, The pikemen of Rudolph behind Are mustered, and Dagobert's horsemen With faces to rearward inclined; Come last, on their coursers broad-chested, Rough-coated, short-pastern'd and strong, Their casques with white plumes thickly crested, Their lances barb-headed and long: They come through the shades of the linden, Fleet riders and war-horses hot: 108 The Normans, our friends — we have sinn'd in Our selfishness, sisters, I wot — They come to add slaughter to slaughter, Their handful can ne'er stem the tide Of our foes, and our fate were but shorter Without them. How fiercely they ride! And "Hugo of Normandy!" "Hugo!" "A rescue! a rescue!" rings loud, And right on the many the few go! A sway and a swerve of the crowd! A springing and sparkling of sword-blades! A crashing and 'countering of steeds! And the white feathers fly 'neath their broad blades Like foam-flakes! the spear-shafts like reeds! A Nun (to Agatha): Pray, sister! Agatha: Alas! I have striven To pray, but the lips move in vain When the heart with such terror is riven. Look again, Lady Abbess! Look again! Ursula: As leaves fall by wintry gusts scatter'd, As fall by the sickle ripe ears, As the pines by the whirlwind fall shatter'd, As shatter'd by bolt fall the firs — To the right hand they fall, to the left hand They yield! They go down! they give back! And their ranks are divided and cleft, and Dispers'd and destroy'd in the track! Where, stirrup to stirrup, and bridle To bridle, down-trampling the slain! Our friends, wielding swords never idle, Hew bloody and desperate lane Through pikemen, so crowded together They scarce for their pikes can find room, Led by Hugo's gilt crest, the tall feather Of Thurston, and Eric's black plume! A Nun (to Agatha): 109 Pray, sister! Agatha: First pray thou that heaven Will lift this dull weight from my brain, That crushes like crime unforgiven. Look again, Lady Abbess! Look again! Ursula: Close under the gates men are fighting On foot where the raven is rear'd! 'Neath that sword-stroke, through helm and skull smiting, Jarl Osric falls, cloven to the beard! And Hugo, the hilt firmly grasping, His heel on the throat of his foe, Wrenches back. I can hear the dull rasping, The steel through the bone grating low! And the raven rocks! Thurston has landed Two strokes, well directed and hard, On the standard pole, wielding, two-handed, A blade crimson'd up to the guard. Like the mast cut in two by the lightning, The black banner topples and falls! Bewildering! back-scattering! affright'ning! It clears a wide space next the walls. A Nun (to Agatha): Pray, sister! Agatha: Does the sinner unshriven, With naught beyond this life to gain, Pray for mercy on earth or in heaven? Look again, Lady Abbess! Look again! Ursula: The gates are flung open, and straightway, By Ambrose and Cyril led on, Our own men rush out through the gateway; One charge, and the entrance is won! No! our foes block the gate and endeavour To force their way in! Oath and yell, Shout and war-cry wax wilder than ever! Those children of Odin fight well; 110 And my ears are confused by the crashing, The jarring, the discord, the din; And mine eyes are perplex'd by the flashing Of fierce lights that ceaselessly spin; So when thunder to thunder is calling, Quick flash follows flash in the shade, So leaping and flashing and falling, Blade flashes and follows on blade! While the sward, newly plough'd, freshly painted, Grows purple with blood of the slain, And slippery! Has Agatha fainted? Agatha: Not so, Lady Abbess! Look again! Ursula: No more from the window; in the old years I have look'd upon strife. Now I go To the court-yard to rally our soldiers As I may — face to face with the foe. [She goes out.] SCENE — A Room in the Convent. THURSTON seated near a small fire. Enter EUSTACE. Eustace: We have come through this skirmish with hardly a scratch. Thurston: And without us, I fancy, they have a full batch Of sick men to look to. Those robbers accurs'd Will soon put our soundest on terms with our worst. Nathless I'd have bartered, with never a frown, Ten years for those seconds when Osric went down. Where's Ethelwolf? Eustace: Dying. 111 Thurston: And Reginald? Eustace: Dead. And Ralph is disabled, and Rudolph is sped. He may last till midnight — not longer. Nor Tyrrel, Nor Brian will ever see sunrise. Thurston: That Cyril, The monk, is a very respectable fighter. Eustace: Not bad for a monk. Yet our loss had been lighter Had he and his fellows thrown open the gate A little more quickly. And now, spite of fate, With thirty picked soldiers their siege we might weather, But the Abbess is worth all the rest put together. [Enter Ursula.] Thurston: Here she comes. Ursula: Can I speak with your lord? Eustace: 'Tis too late, He was dead when we carried him in at the gate. Thurston: Nay, he spoke after that, for I heard him myself; But he won't speak again, he must lie on his shelf. Ursula: Alas! is he dead, then? Thurston: As dead as St. Paul. And what then? to-morrow we, too, one and all, Die, to fatten these ravenous carrion birds. I knelt down by Hugo and heard his last words: "How heavy the night hangs — how wild the waves dash; Say a mass for my soul — and give Rollo a mash." Ursula: 112 Nay, Thurston, thou jestest. Thurston: Ask Eric. I swear We listened and caught every syllable clear. Eustace: Why, his horse was slain, too. Thurston: 'Neath the linden trees grey, Ere the onset, young Henry rode Rollo away; He will hasten the Prince, and they may reach your gate To-morrow — though to-morrow for us is too late. Hugo rode the boy's mare, and she's dead — if you like — Disembowel'd by the thrust of a freebooter's pike. Eustace: Neither Henry nor Rollo we ever shall see. Ursula: But we may hold the walls till to-morrow. Thurston: Not we. In an hour or less, having rallied their force, They'll storm your old building — and take it, of course, Since of us, who alone in war's science are skill'd, One-third are disabled, and two-thirds are kill'd. Ursula: Art thou hurt? Thurston: At present I feel well enough, But your water is brackish, unwholesome and rough; Bring a flask of your wine, dame, for Eustace and I, Let us gaily give battle and merrily die. [Enter Eric, with arm in sling.] Eric: Thou art safe, Lady Abbess! The convent is safe! To be robbed of their prey how the ravens will chafe! The vanguard of Otto is looming in sight! At the sheen of their spears, see! thy foemen take flight, Their foremost are scarce half a mile from the wall. 113 Thurston: Bring the wine, lest those Germans should swallow it all. SCENE — The Chapel of the Convent. Dirge of the Monks: Earth to earth, and dust to dust, Ashes unto ashes go. Judge not. He who judgeth just, Judgeth merciful also. Earthly penitence hath fled, Earthly sin hath ceased to be; Pile the sods on heart and head, Miserere Domine! Hominum et angelorum, Domine! precamur te Ut immemor sis malorum — Miserere Domine! (Miserere!) Will the fruits of life brought forth, Pride and greed, and wrath and lust, Profit in the day of wrath, When the dust returns to dust? Evil flower and thorny fruit Load the wild and worthless tree. Lo! the axe is at the root, Miserere Domine! Spes, fidesque, caritasque, Frustra fatigant per se, Frustra virtus, forsque, fasque, Miserere Domine! (Miserere!) Fair without and foul within, When the honey'd husks are reft From the bitter sweets of sin, 114 Bitterness alone is left; Yet the wayward soul hath striven Mostly hell's ally to be, In the strife 'twixt hell and heaven, Miserere Domine! Heu! heu! herba latet anguis — Caro herba — carni vae — Solum purgat, Christi sanguis, Miserere Domine! (Miserere!) Pray that in the doubtful fight Man may win through sore distress, By His goodness infinite, And His mercy fathomless. Pray for one more of the weary, Head bow'd down and bended knee, Swell the requiem, Miserere! Miserere Domine! Bonum, malum, qui fecisti Mali imploramus te, Salve fratrem, causa Christi, Miserere Domine! (Miserere!) [End of Ashtaroth.] ~ Adam Lindsay Gordon,