SCENE I.
A Study, with Books, MSS. and Statues. A Window looks over a Country Valley to the neighbouring Mountains. A Door in the Study communicates with an adjoining Room.
Balder
(musing).
To-morrow I count thirty years, save one.
Ye grey stones
Of this old tower gloomy and ruinous,
Wherein I make mine eyrie as an eagle
Among the rocks; stones, valley, mountains, trees,
In which I dwell content as in a nest
Of Beauty,—comprehended less by more—
Or above which I rise, as a great ghost
Out of its mortal hull; vale, mountains, trees,
And stones of home, which, as in some old tale
O' the east keep interchange of prodigies
With me, and now contain me and anon
Are stomached by mine hunger, unappeased
That sucks Creation down, and o'er the void
Still gapes for more; ye whom I love and fear
And worship, or i' the hollow of my hand
Throw like a grain of incense up to Heaven,
Tell me your secrets! That ye have a heart
I know; but can it beat for such as I?
Or do I unbeheld behold the fair
And answering mystery of your countenance
Passionate with rains and sunshine, and, unheard,
Have audience of your voices, but as one
Who in a temple passes unrespect
Between the kneeling suppliant and the saint,
Meeting the uplifted face and the rapt eyes
That look beyond? Am I but as a fly
Touching the vestal beauties of a maid
Unchidden; intimate but by how much
Inferior? Do ye speak over my head
Even as we pray aloud before a child?
You trees that I have loved so well, ye flowers
Unto whom, by so much as ye are more
In beauty, hath befallen a better love
Than mine, being her chosen who to me
Is as your airy fragrance and mere hues
To your unblushed substantial; thou sweet vale
In which my soul, calm lying like a lake,
Reflects the stars, or, stirred, upon the shores
Of mountains maketh music, or more loud,
Rising in sudden flood, and breaking up
That firmament to heaped and scattered stars,
Chaotic to and fro from hill to hill
Defiesthe rounding elements, and rolls
Reverberating thunder; have I lived
Not unbeloved, and shall I pass away
Not all unwept?
You floors, in whose black oak
The straitened hamadryad lives and groans,
Ye creaking dark and antiquated floors,
Who know so well in what sad note to join
The weary lullaby what time she rocks
Her babe, and murmurs music sad and low,
So sad and low as if this tower did keep
The murmur of the years as a sea-shell
The sea, or in these legendary halls
The mere air stirred, and with some old unknown
Sufficient conscience moved upon itself,
Whispering and sighing; ruined castle-wall
Whereby she groweth like some delicate flower
In a deserted garden, thou grim wall
Hemming her in with thine unmannered rock
Wherein I set her as a wandering clown
Who, in a fairy-ring, by night doth seize
Some elfin taper, and would have it burn
In his gaunt lanthorn wrought by human hands
Uncouth, yet art so passing bright with her—
So fragrant! little window in the wall,
Eye-lashed with balmy sprays of honeysuckle,
Sweet jessamine, and ivy ever sad,
Wherein like a most melancholy eye,
All day she sits and looks forth on a world
Less fair than she, and as a living soul
Informs the rugged face of the old tower
With beauty; when the soul hath left the face
The sad eye looks no longer from the lid,
The sweet light is put out in the long rain,
The flower is withered on the wall, the voice
Will never murmur any more, and ye,
Ye, that both spake and saw, are dumb and blind,
—Blind save when midnight bolt from your death's-head
Starts like a bloody eyeball, or your rot
Glimmers in corse-lights on the shuddering dark——
And dumb, but for such noise as dumb men make,
When winds are moaning in your empty jaws—
Will there be aught to tell of what has been?
Where for so many nights and days she wept,
Shall not sweet colours in the slanting sun
Cross and recross, and floor the empty space
With rainbows? Will the lingering swallow stay
Within, as conscious of an influence
Like summer? Will an earlier primrose shine
On a peculiar season whereabout
The winds beat idly? Shall the winter thrush
Alight upon your dreary round and sing
As to a nestling? Shall the village school
Know the low turret where all stricken birds
Do shelter? Or the curious traveller note
The lonely tower where evermore the dew
Hangs on the herbs of ruin?
Sun and moon
Rising and setting, but now face to face
In equal Heaven, remember us! O ye
Celestial lovers, you at least should make
A love immortal! On this final eve
Methinks that ye look down on me with eyes
Of human contemplation. Lady Moon,
Casting as yet no shade, thy shade dissolved
In daylight of thy lord, O royal Sun,
Who though at last thou sink beneath the tides
She raiseth, unsubdued shalt glorify
The fatal waters, and still shine on her
With undiminished love, to you I leave
Our memories. Oh consecrate these stones
And point with mindful shadow day and night,
Where we lie dust below.
SCENE II.
The same. From the adjoining Room, through the half-opened Door, are heard the Rocking of a Cradle and the Voice of Amy.
Amy.
The years they come, and the years they go
Like winds that blow from sea to sea;
From dark to dark they come and go,
All in the dew-fall and the rain.
Down by the stream there be two sweet willows,
—Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,—
One hale, one blighted, two wedded willows
All in the dew-fall and the rain.
She is blighted, the fair young willow,
—Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,—
She hears the spring-blood beat in the bark;
She hears the spring-leaf bud on the bough;
But she bends blighted, the wan weeping willow,
All in the dew-fall and the rain.
The stream runs sparkling under the willow,
—Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,—
The summer rose-leaves drop in the stream;
The winter oak-leaves drop in the stream;
But she bends blighted, the wan weeping willow,
All in the dew-fall and the rain.
Sometimes the wind lifts the bright stream to her,
—Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,—
The false stream sinks, and her tears fall faster;
Because she touched it her tears fall faster;
Over the stream her tears fall faster,
All in the sunshine or the rain.
The years they come, and the years they go;
Sing well-away, sing well-away!
And under mine eyes shines the bright life-river;
Sing well away, sing well-away!
Sweet sounds the spring in the hale green willow,
The goodly green willow, the green waving willow;
Sweet in the willow, the wind-whispering willow;
Sing well-away, sing well-away!
But I bend blighted, the wan weeping willow,
All in the sun, and the dew, and the rain.
SCENE III.
The same. A Table covered with MSS. and Books.
Balder,
solus.
Balder.
Looking upon the lives of other men,
I see them move in apt and duteous signs,
That look like cause and consequent, through type
And antitype, day after equal day,
Year after answering year, from sire to son.
But life hath been to me a strange wild dream,
Wherein the prodigies that haunt and home
Within a human bosom have been brought
Marvel by marvel, as to Adam once
The monsters of the Earth, that I might name them,
And know them, and be friends with them.
A youth
In years, I hold the weft and woof of age,
And wheresoever Time may cut the web,
Can find no novel texture. One sole thread
Thou owest me, Lachesis! but I will trust thee,
Oh thou unfailing debtor! Upon Earth
All sights I have beheld but one; all sorrows
Either in type or kind endured but one.
Death, careful of my learning, hath withstayed
His final presence, lest his shade allay
My wounds, and, as before the King of Beasts,
The lesser horrors of the wilderness
Flee at his great approach. I have not seen him,
In cause or in effect. But he will come!
For till he come my perfect manhood lacks,
And this that I was born to do is done
By nothing less than man.
That I should do it,
And be the King of men, and on the inform
And perishable substance of the Time
Beget a better world, I have believed
Up thro' my mystic years, since in that hour
Of young and unforgotten exstacy
I put my question to the universe,
And overhead the beech-trees murmured 'Yes.'
Therefore I grew up calm like a young god,
Having in well-assured serenity
No haste to reach and no surprise to wear
The inevitable stature; nor thought strange
To feel me not as others, to pursue
Amid the crowd a solitary way,
And take my own in the o'er-peopled world,
And find it no man's else. When at the first,
Because I was no higher than mankind,
All men went past, and no man looked on me,
I felt no humbler. When this ample frame
Expanded into majesty, and they
Who saw fell back admiring, I beheld
Their change, not mine; for the unconscious child,
Tho' for his childhead he be special child,
Is universal man, and in his thoughts
Doth glass the future. The thin sapling oak,
Hid in the annual herbage of the field,
Hath oaken members, and can boast no more
When they defy the storms of heaven, and roost
The weary-winged Ages. One alone,
Early and late,—faithful as she who knows
And keeps the secret of the foundling heir—
Did bear me witness. Nature from my birth
Confessed me, as who in a multitude
Confesseth her beloved and makes no sign;
Or as one all unzoned in her deep haunts,
If her true-love come on her unaware,
Hastes not to hide her breast, nor is afraid;
Or as a mother 'mid her sons displays
The arms their glorious father wore, and, kind,
In silence with discerning love commits
Some lesser danger to each younger hand,
But to the conscious eldest of the house
The naked sword; or as a sage amid
His pupils in the peopled portico,
Where all stand equal, gives no precedence,
But by intercalated look and word
Of equal seeming, wise but to the wise,
Denotes the favoured scholar from the crowd;
Or as the keeper of the palace gate
Denies the gorgeous stranger and his pomp
Of gold, but at a glance, although he come
In fashion as a commoner, unstarred,
Lets the prince pass.
I think my hour is nigh.
I am almost equipped; and earth and air
Are full of signs. The uncommanded host
Of living nations, swaying to and fro
Like waves of a great sea that in mid-shock
Confound each other, white with foam and fear,
Roar for a leader. All this last strange year
The clouds seemed higher, and each bird of wing
Doubled his usual flight, and the blue arch
Opened above, expansive; even as tho'
The labouring world drew in a deeper breath,
And raised her swelling bosom nearer Heaven
With expectation. My prophetic heart
Confirmed the omen, and, as ere the crash
Of earthquake the dull sun stands clothed upon
With sackcloth, and as to his golden head
Shorn, I am troubled with the fate not yet
Accomplished; an unreasoning melancholy
Directs me; I have lingered by the Past
As by a death-bed, with unwonted love
And such forgiveness as we bring to those
Who can offend no more. The very stones
Of old memorial have been dear to me,
Sitting long days on ancient stiles worm-worn,
And gazing thro' green trees o'er grassy graves
Upon the living village and the dead,
The early and the latter tryst that all
Have kept so long and well; or to the pile
Reared by those English whose ancestral feet
Trod the same path their children's children keep
Still hallowed, where the beauty of the vale,
The blushing girl of yonder bridal train,
Walks in her love and joy, and passing slow
Salutes unconscious with her wedding skirt
The gable end, no greyer than of yore,
When by the same dark yew for ever old,
The same grey Time did hold his scythe above
Her grandame's head, whose silk of long ago
So rustled on the wall when she went by
A happy bride, and heard perchance that day
Tales from wan lips of the far morning when
Her mother's mother passed as fair as she.
Or on the leafy and live-long repose
Of country labour, and the unhasted life
That plods with equal step the wonted way,
A-field at morn and homeward slow at eve,
And slow with eve and morn through drowsy day
Doth toil and feed and sleep and feed and toil.
Or on lone homesteads and the untrespassed rest
Of immemorial pastures, and the tread
Of dreamful herds in verdant peace unvexed
And taskless thro' the round of sauntering day,
And all the dewy leisure of the meads.
As though the coming din of war should scare
The tenants of the field, and wildered fear
Distract the rural motion, and repeat
In bleating folds and trampled harvests loud
With dread, the desperate and delirious pulse
Of man; and knowing I did look my last
Of pastoral quiet, and the passive gait
Of ease that is the step of all their world,
Their world at pace with solemn things above,
With tardy-footed twilight, and all powers
Eterne that tread time with celestial wont
Immortal, with the seasons of the earth,
And with the calm procession of the stars.
'Tis well that on the landmark of to-day
I lean awhile, and with clear eyes look back
Upon the way I came, ere once again
I set forth on my journey to the goal
Which I have sworn to win.
That bard who lies
Like the old knight i' the picture, at the root
Of our hereditary tree, (first sire
Of the long line where Shakspeare is not last)
And by his posture measures height with none,
Beheld a 'House of Fame.' For me, I seek
A sterner architecture and a dome
More like the heavens, upon that hill which he
Who climbs is strongest among living men,
The seat of templed Power. Not Fame but Power.
Or Fame but as the noise of Power, a voice
That in the face is wind, but in the ear
Truth, Knowledge, Wisdom, Question, Speculation,
Hope, Fear, Love, Hate, Belief, Doubt, Faith, Despair,
Every strong gust that shifts the sails of man,
And so far worth the utterance; Fame the paid
Muezzin on the minaret of Power,
Calling the world to worship; Fame the pied
And gilded following of the royal house,
Whose function is without, to spread the awe
Of Power among the common herd, and hand
External homage to the chaste convoy
Of them who serve in presence; or at best,
An argent herald running on before,
Nor daring once to turn his menial mouth
To tell me what I know, and whose great trump
Tho' it blow Regnarok and wake the graves,
Is but a sounding brass. Not Fame but Power.
Power like a god's and wielded as a god!
I would have been the wind, and unbeheld
Rase the tall roaring forest, not the flash
That cannot move unseen; the influence
Unnamed that finds a city and leaves a tomb,
But not the conflagration to flame wide
A rabble holiday, round which the Town
Gapes, and whereof all men have leave to speak,
Cried in the civic streets and parodied
In pictures; and for which, at last put out,
No hand so base but had availed to do
The final deed, nor urchin but hath spat
Enough extinction. Whatsoe'er attains
In solitude, and out of sight doth sling
The stone of practice where no vulgar tongue
May cry unskilled applause on the wide throw
Of strong attempt, nor ever in men's eyes
Hath eminence so young that the kind hand
Of popular approval dare be laid
Upon its head, I love. The Victory
Which hath no mortal opposite to try
Conclusions and assess my over-match,
I covet. I could wish that the good Powers,
Which watched over my making had denied
The gifts that quell mankind. I would have gone
Into the wilderness, and in some cell
Of task severe and exercise divine,
Grown god-like till perforce the vigilant gods
Seeing me there made me their deputy
As being next to them. I would have sat
And blessed creation, seeing in calm joy
The thankless welfare, and content to know,
That from their far thrones, Potentates of Heaven,
When a new glory flushed this planet earth
Did look to me on mine. Whatever rules
By its mere nature and that native place
Holding of nought below it, from below
Receives nor of accession or decess,
Nay by its sovereign essence, is beyond
The praise and subject homage of the ruled,
I would have been; up from the viewless air
That feeds the unconscious world, or this rare life
Full in these throbbing veins that moves unfelt
The beating heart I feel, to the supreme
And central force that sways the universe
Unknown, and, being absolute, well pleased
Resigns the weight of glory, and permits
To shining suns and stars the gorgeous crown,
And golden signs of empire.
I do think
My throne is set. If this next year might bring
My one delayed experience! And, that past,
End, as with harvest, in some genial close
Of happier fortunes! For the fruit of sorrow,
Tho' it do grow in the shade ere it be ripe,
Asks light and heat, and I am now as when
Oblivious Nature holds the time o' year,
Brimfull in a dead level of dull days,
Till, reaching forth a hand, the sudden sun
Touches the cup, and spills upon the earth
The mantling season.
(Taking up a Manuscript.)
Oh thou first, last, work!
Thou tardy-growing oak that art to be
My club of war, my staff, my sceptre! Thou
Hast well nigh gained thine height. My early planned,
Long meditate, and slowly-written epic!
Turning thy leaves, dear labour of my life,
Almost I seem to turn my life in thee.
Thy many books my many votive years,
And thy full pages numbered with my days.
I could look back on all that I have built
As on some Memphian monument wherein
The kings do lie in glory, every one
Each in his house, and forward to thy blank
Fair future, as one gazes into depths
Of necromantic crystal, and beholds
The heavens come down.
I think I have struck off
One from the weary score of human tasks.
Having so told my story in a tongue
So common to the ages, that no man
In after times shall tell it, but the fact
To which I have given voice shall be laid by,
And this my sterling with mine image on,
Present the ponderous bulk; and I shall leave
This history my autograph, wherein
The hand that writes is part of what is writ,
And I, like the steeped roses of the east,
Become the necessary element
Of that which doth preserve me.
Howsoe'er
This be, and whether I attain or fail
To add another to those lights of heaven
That rule our day and night,—to set a sun
Of joy above us, or some saddest moon
Whose pale reflected rays, from their first aim
And primal course bent back and contravert
Like some Apollo's golden shaft returned
From an opposing bow, shall still bespeak
The splendour of their quiver—I do feel
I have deserved to win. Thought, Labour, Patience,
And a strong Will, that being set to boil
The broth of Hecate would shred his flesh
Into the cauldron, and stir deep with arms
Flayed to the seething bone ere there default
One tittle from the spell—these should not strive
In vain! No. I have lived what I have sung,
And it shall live. The flashes of the fire
Are fire, that which was soul is spirit still,
And shall not die. I sat above my work
As God above the new unpeopled world
Sat and foresaw our days, and sun and cloud
Of good and ill passed o'er the countenance
Ineffable, and filled the plains below;
Smiled all a floral kingdom thro' the world,
Or frowned a race of lions.
With the year
That ended yesterday, I close the book
Of mortal contest, and begin to sing
Record of the aërial tournaments
Whereof we are but shadows, on the fields
Where spirit meets with spirit, and god with god.
And first thee, Death,——
Enter Servant, with post-bag.
Letters!
(Opens and reads.)
Balder
(after a long pause).
Oh men, oh men,
What are ye that I yearn to you, and ye
To me, but that no grasp of mortal love
Against the strong enribbed heart can break
The mystic band that limits each from each,
Nor sternest edifice of separate life
Can wholly shut ye out? If nought can make
Us one, why can we not be twain in peace?
Why do you touch me, why do your kind eyes,
Unasked, look into mine? Why does your breath
Fall warm upon me, and infect my veins
With strange commotion? Is it to be borne,
That ye will neither enter into me,
Nor leave me? that men look upon my face,
And take me for another; that I know
Your wants before you tell them, feel the pains
You feel; give language to your secret bliss
Better than you who know it? That ye cure
My bodily ailments with the selfsame drug
That heals the fool; that he who should cut off
This right hand with nice science, that foreknows
Each sequent vein and muscle, learned his skill
Upon a felon? That my last death-sob
Will be much like what any hangman hears,
And that the very meanest lips alive
Do speak some word of mine?
Thou happy God,
That hast no likeness, wherefore hast Thou made
Me thus? Have I not gone into unknown
Unentered lands, and heard in alien tongue
Strange man unto strange man unload his heart,
And started in my soul, and said, 'Eh ghost!
Art thou I?'
Am I one and every one,
Either and all? The innumerable race,
My Past; these myriad-faced men my hours?
What! have I filled the earth, and knew it not?
Why not? How other? Am I not immortal?
And if immortal now, immortal then;
And if immortal then, existent now;
But where? Thou living moving neighbour, Man,
Art thou my former self—me and not me?
Did I begin, and shall I end? Was I
The first, and shall I one day, as the last,
Stand in the front of the long file of man,
And looking back, behold it winding out,
Far thro' the unsearched void, and measuring time
Upon eternity, and know myself
Sufficient, and, that like a comet, I
Passed thro' my heaven, and fill'd it?
[Through the door are heard the rocking of a cradle, and the voice of Amy.]
Amy
(singing)
The cuckoo-lamb is merry on the lea,
The daisied lea; I would I were the lamb!
While that the lark will pipe, the lamb will dance,
And when the lark is mute he danceth still;
Up springs the lark, and pipes again for joy!
He, more by birth, than we by toil and skill,
Is happy with no labour but to live;
He leapeth early, and he leapeth late;
He leapeth in the sunshine and the rain,
Nor fears the hour that will not find him blest,
And milky plenty sauntering by his side.
Also the lamb that doth not toil nor spin,
Lies where he will, and where he lieth sleeps.
Sleeps on the hill-top like a cloud o' the hill,
Sleeps where the trembling Lily of the Vale,
Albeit she is so spotless, sleepeth not,
But like a naked fairy fears all night
The wind that for her beauty cannot sleep.
Sleeps on the nettle or the violet:
Or where the sun doth warm his trance with light,
Or where the runnel murmureth cool dreams,
Or where the eglantine not yet in bloom,
Like a sweet girl full of her sweeter thought,
Reveals unheard the sweetness still to be.
Or where the darnel nods, and, as they tell
Of beauty nursed upon a savage dug,
Sucks grace from the harsh bosom of the waste.
Sleeps in the meadow buttercups at noon,
—A babe a-slumber in a golden crib—
Or like a daisy by the way-side white,
And like a daisy quieteth the way.
The lamb, the lamb, I would I were the lamb!
Balder
(musing).
Thou most pure
And guileless voice. I never breathed thee! No,
Thou meek misfortune, thou art not my past.
My Amy, my own Amy, whom of old
I found as a wild sailor of the sea
Comes on some happy isle of Love and Peace,
Some isle where joys that in all other climes,
Sweet flying thro' the night of his dark way,
A moment rest upon his sail, pass on,
And are beheld no more, in equal haunts
And bright assured communion ever dwell,
Day without night, and native, brood and sing!
Thou who thro' the stern ordeal of this life
Didst cling beside me, while I showed my power,
And turned the dust and ashes where I stood,
To gold and ruby, so that the great throng
Cried out for envy, and with murderous shout
Demanded the pure jewel I had not,
And when I trembled, knowing that mine art
Was ended, and the clamorous people saw,
Unseen didst slide thy wealth into my hand
And save me, so that I, serene, unclosed
My palm before the Judge, and lo! a pearl;
My first Love and my last, so far so near,
So strong, so weak, so comprehensible
In these encircling arms, so undescribed
In any thought that shapes thee; so divine,
So softly human that to either stretch,
Extreme and farthest tether of desire
It finds thee still; my ministering saint,
Attendant sprite, enshrined Egeria!
My ornament, my crown, my Indian gem
And incommunicable amulet
Upon my breast, not me but warm with me!
(pauses.)
You heavens! how far a little breath may blow
The unstable bubble of inflated thought!
O voice, O little voice, what power of thine
Disbands my hosts, which, as a crowd of shades
That scatter at a word, in sudden rout
Like the four winds unloosed have sprung apart
And vanished into distance, until I,
Whose royal and innumerable train
Out-trooped the legioned gods, am left alone
As one uncounted? How those charmèd walls,
And airy castles, that we rear to hold
The powers that plague us, and do well contain
Imprisoned fiends, are pervious to the touch
Of any human hand! That we should build them,
And a mere child should put his vital finger
Thro' the main bulwark! That the head should write,
And, with a gush of living blood, the heart
Should blot it! As one proves there is no God
And falls upon his knees. Right sapient sage!
Supreme intelligence! Sole substantive!
Lord of the empty dark! True Prince of Nil
And Nihilo! a royal argument;
But ere thou sign triumphant demonstration
Be blest and let a benefit refute thee!
My little Amy!
[Exit.
SCENE IV.
The Empty Study.
Through the half-open Door is heard the voice of Amy.
Amy.
My lord, that walkest thro' the universe,
Did I not go beside thee, as a child,
With humble step and looking to thy face?
My king, who reignest wheresoe'er thou art!
All do thy hest, my King! but who as I?
Hast thou not all thy subjects here in me?
My husband, who hast loved me like a god,
And blessed me, surely I did well to love
Thee as a god?—but can a god forget?
Wherein have I offended? Nay, thy brow
Is sweet and cloudless—I have done no ill.
My husband, have I not been still thy bird,
Thy dove, thy snow-white dove, upon thy wrist,
Or in thy breast, or feeding from thy lips,
Or round thine head, or fluttering with fond feint
Before thy footsteps—with mine eyes on thee?
Was I not as a lamb around thy feet,
That loved thee? For my neck thou didst entwine
Sweet garlands and I followed thee, nor knew
The inexorable sadness, till a door
Opened, and thou art among men, and I
Am but a lamb, and bleat about the gate.
My husband, I have been an orphan fawn
That ran beside the cubless lioness;
Who spared her, and did make with her what sport
Befits the offspring of the forest king.
And the poor fawn still gambolled in her blood.
Have I not been a moth about thy light
Scorched, scorched; but, husband! when the wound was worst,
Winging with madder passion still to thee!
Wert thou not always as a crescent moon,
And I thy star within thee, till the time
Came, and the lengthening distance, and I knew
My rising and my setting were not thine.
Oh was I not a floweret in thine hand
When thou didst stand upon the peak of thought
Gazing to heaven, which with a thunder-shock
Rolled back, and angels came to thee, and thou
Didst stretch to them thine open hands uplift
In welcome, and I fell to where I am.
I think they touched thine eyes, and that thenceforth
Thou seest all things clearly, and me here,
Nor knowest it is very far from thee.
Oh husband! it is night here in the vale,
And I lie on the rugged earth who had
Thy bosom; moreover I cannot hear
Thy voice, nor tho' thou seest me can I see
Thy face. It is not with me as with thee;
The shadows here are always long and deep,
Also the night comes sooner than to thee.
SCENE V.
The Study.
Balder, at his writing-table.
Balder.
Death, thou must stand aside! The mood is not
Upon me, and my gold is only dug
I'the vein. The microcosmos, like its twin,
Hath climates and their seasonable fruits.
My brain is warm, and I behold the sun;
Clear as a pulsing wave of hyaline,
And I cry 'Light;' tender and beautiful
As the west waiting for the evening star,
And loveliness, like a fair girl, comes forth
Into the dewy silence. As I throb
The sense responds, and, like a courtier's eyes,
Finds for each royal folly of my soul
Portentous reason. The disordered fact
Outruns its antecedent, and so much
Eternity within doth set at nought
The wont of time, that I am stirred yet ere
Disturbance, and do suffer by the ill
Not yet admitted to the sum of things.
I will await what figure now unseen
Is to rise up and lay his charmed hand
Upon this inner harp, from string to string
Already trembling, and arrive, tho' late,
To give a name to that foredone effect
Which else had lacked a father.
[He meditates, writes, and reads aloud.
'Then saw I Genius, blind, with upturned face,
As one who hears, and to the struggling sense
(Tottering beneath accomplishment, and faint
In touch of the inestimable prize)
Each from his office brings her conscript powers
Auxiliar, and in strained conflux sustains
The sole perception; happy so to gain
The one sufficient knowledge, and therein
Utterly blessed. Like a listening saint
Lifting her wrapt brow to the audible Heaven.
Nor sightless by defect, but that her lids
Closed o'er the needless eyes. Her moving lips
Perfunctory incessant murmur made,
And thus she held her unrespective way,
Following the upper sound which no man heard,
Summer and winter, day and night; but more
Like a sweet madness in those dearer times
Where?n the hornèd seasons fill and wane,
Spring, autumn. morn, and eve; o'er hill and alp,
Forest and city, steep and battlement,
Or wrought or native; through vales, gulphs, and ca
And midnight solitudes, and martial plains,
And sun, and storm, and frost, and flood, and fire.'
Bah, is this Genius who should rule the world
And be incarnate God? Rather, methinks,
Some maimed celestial, feeling back her way
To the lost heavens, or that fair Eve whom once
Genius, what time she 'listened to the voice,'
Caught in his arms in Eden.
(Turning to a statue.)
Listening Eve!
What marvel that my spell-bound fancy drew
The captive, not the captor? As the earth
Revolves, and we behold the vanished stars
Of yesterday, that, being fixed, remain
To gladden lands beyond us, so in thee,
Immortal! this our Present, wondering, comes
Round to the sight of long lost Paradise,
And all the primal act. And we go down
To death, but thou, fast held, remainest to rise
On other times, and, orient by our fall,
Shalt light the orb of ages.
Thou rare power.
Sluggard, ungrateful, wayward, false, and vain,
Whom men call Muse! I cannot fetter thee,
But I can punish. Back into the void,
And bring me what I seek?
[He writes.
Now what art thou,
Genius? (reads.)
'There came a chariot o'er the earth,
Swift on strange wheels, such as eye hath not seen,
Nor can see, in the speed of their great course
Viewless, but leaving tracks which nations ran
To wonder at. Whether o'er rugged rocks
Passing, and turning all their streams to tears
Sad down the channelled visage of the hills;
Or o'er the level sea, whirling strange dews
And rainbows to a luminous mist, wherein
Mermaids in sportive companies made play
Beneath their dark hair, till the heaving sea
Blushed like a cloudy morn, and dolphins leaped,
And Triton mounted on a foaming wave
Sounded pursuit; or o'er the beaten road
Of daily use raising a dust that fell
Upon the things that were, and made them new.
(The clime cleared, and on either hand the path
Arcadian did spontaneous holiday
Prankt with its herbs of grace. Fair sun and moon,
From signs of fortune with consenting stars
In sweet succession, or conjunctions rare
Shone festal round the car, while Time himself
Grew young, and ran before. Fierce beasts that shun
The common sunshine, rose, and each subdued,
Moved to the genial light, from his dark den
Approaching tame by every forest glade,
Where Una led the lion. Nor rude race
Of daily men, that like a city flood,
Came headlong heedless mixed in civic din,
Escaped the spell; nor touched the enchanted ground
But sudden as to music in the air,
Grave measured step and custom of the gods
O'ertook them—Salian and OEnoplian dance
Heroic, and the front of golden days.)
Or whether over Alpine solitudes
Ploughing such record as nor mountain storms
That rage midway, nor high above the thunder
The ceaseless snows of silent centuries
Efface; or crossing immemorial plains
Indentured where the furrows fill with flowers
As with a Tyrian rain; where'er on earth
It found the barren wilderness, and left
Eden—if Eden was the rosy prime,
The master passion, and first ecstasy
Of this our world. Nor drawn by steed, nor steered
By human hand, it came an empty car
To the embattled people as of will,
And took its martial station in the van,
And post of honour. Then the mighty men
Climbed, venturous, its crystal sides wherein
The changing tumult of the mirrored field
Shone, like opposing armies. But behold
A marvel! for the empty car was full,
And none could enter. Therefore moved with fear
And jealous doubt, they called the legions round
To thrust it forth, which passive in the midst
Stood stirless—tho' still wheeled the wheeling wheels
Invisible with motion. But when spears
Were couched and charging, sudden from the ground
Wingless it rose! and all the baffled host
Fell with deceived expectance. As it rose
Slow thro' the day, the wondrous wheels being still
Hung in the air, and the great multitude
With upturned eyes amazed at once cried out
Their likeness, and of countless voices each
Belied its neighbour. But the car sublime
Above the round horizons, each on each
Widening like circles in the stagnant sea
Of space disturbed, showed like a lesser world
Dyed with the coloured earth, and as it went
Heavenward, and we astonished still beheld,
Lo! we were ware as of a countenance
Unspeakable, and as of burning hands
Waving farewells, and somewhat of a form
Sitting within the brightness. Then convulsed
With shame, both of their tardy eyes obscure
And lost revenge, from instant bows and slings,
Artillery and every loud offence,
Sudden the universal host upsent
Impotent rage. As tho' the earth that lay
A sleeping beast, sprang up, and with a roar
Shaking his shaggy hide, with thickest dust
Darkened the air.
Then the mysterious wheels
Whirled in the sky; the burning hands uplift
Pointed to Heaven; and the tremendous car
Launched thro' the seas of light, and passed the noon
As the mere yellow strand whence it set sail
To sea; careering as to reach the goal
Of all things, and come back. And, as it passed,
He whom we saw threw out a golden chain,
And linked the sun, and led him from his lair
Obedient, while night fell on earth; and He
Shot thro' the darkness and was lost. But soon,
—Himself unseen—I knew his viewless way,
Thro' the stirred Heavens where I saw the stars
Leaving their spheres, till as it were a host
Of meteors shone across the streaming sky.
Nor him victorious long the toil delayed,
But on a time thro' all the flaming air
Rose the large dawn of his far-off return,
And as it rose and rose embraced the earth
Into a breast of glory; such great day
Began the morning as if life had changed
Its metre, heaving nature had attained
To grander issues, and a rounded year
Came up the ampler east. And Him I saw
Rushing upon the Orient; in his train,
Fierce as reluctant lions dragged at speed
Behind a victor,—all their forest-brood
Roaring around and leaping—captive suns
Attend him, and their wild and scattered moons
Whiten the air. Then the pale nations cast
Dust on their heads, and hid their dazzled eyes,
And over all a great sound, full of death,
Shrieked like a plague-wind from a battle-field,
Noisome with mortal horror thro' the land.
"Woe, woe, we cast him from us in his day,
And now he will return to take the world
And burn it in his fury!"'
(Throws the MS. to the ground.)
Lie thou there!
Genius is yet unwritten.
[Through the door is heard the voice of Amy.
Happy eve, happy eve!
But the mavis singing in the eve,
Singeth for the silence of the eve.
Happy flower, happy flower,
But the golden secret of the flower,
Hidden honey sweeter than the flower.
Happy moon, happy moon,
But the loving moonlight of the moon,
Tender wonder fairer than the moon.
Little child, little child,
As the evening mavis unto me,
As the twilight mavis unto me.
Little child, little child,
As the hidden honey unto me,
As the golden honey unto me.
Little child, little child,
As the wondrous moonlight unto me,
As the better moonlight unto me.
SCENE VI.
The Vacant Study.
Through the open Door the voice of Amy.
Amy.
Sleep thee, my child, altho' when thou didst sleep
And shut thine eyes methought the world was blind.
Sleep thee, my child, altho' thy mother wakes,
Sleep, happy babe, upon a woeful breast.
Oh, babe, I can endure to live; oh babe,
I see thee thro' the anguish of my years
Like a star rising thro' the smoke of hell.
Oh babe, I have escaped to thee beyond,
Beyond the present torture, calm and sweet;
A moment, and I reck not of the fiends.
And I am bathed in dews, and in thy sphere
Thou bearest me naked of all my woes
Which burn upon me, babe, but are not me.
My vesture is on fire; all all in vain,
In vain I tear it, knotted strong and deep
With chains more cruel than the flames, in vain
I run and fan them in the wind of life.
A moment I am free beyond the years!
Thou risest, oh my star, and I to thee!
A moment, and the flesh must needs be here,
And the fierce anguish knotted to the flesh,
And I am like a spirit in thine urn,
Cool thro' the balmy shades of painless heaven.
Sleep, sleep, my babe, thou shalt not cry me nay;
Sleep, sleep, my babe, my babe, while it is night,
Ah, who shall say the morn may not be fair?
Sleep, little babe, and let my terror sleep!
Oh sleep awhile, and stop the wheels of fate.
I think that there is privilege in woe,
And sorrow may not seize us everywhere,
And havoc doth not hunt where'er he list,
And sleep is halcyon time when griefs are still.
Sleep, sleep, my babe, and let me clasp thee fast
And know a little space thou canst not die,
Nor earth nor heaven or plots or works thine ill.
Sleep, sleep, my babe, my babe, and let me hold
My destiny a moment in mine arms,
Nor find it heavier than can rise and fall
Harmless as thou upon my heaving breast.
Alas! alas! the vision of my youth!
When that I lifted not mine eyes to pray,
But I beheld HIM thro' the cloudless air,
Walking as on a morning mountain-top
Transfigured, with the azure clothed about,
Nor on a higher earth, but lower heaven!
Sleep, sleep, my babe, and dream thy mother's dream,
That all her joy may be contained in thee.
He stood in light, he stood in blinding light!
I loved, I climbed to reach him where he stood,
I the weak woman, I the child of clay!
I fell; to see him, from the beetling brink,
Stretching for ever unavailing arms
To her who, as in dreams, for ever falls.
Oh hapless, hapless heart, too proud to fall!
Oh hapless, hapless limbs, too frail to climb!
Heart of these limbs, how couldst thou be so proud?
Oh limbs, how could ye mate so proud a heart?
Sleep, sleep, my babe, and dream thy mother's dream,
And if to wake like her, oh wake no more!
If thou couldst grow what once I prayed to be,
If I could see a daughter at his side,
And he might look upon himself more fair,
And all her mother with a kinder fate!
Tho' I have failed and fallen in the race,
Thou shalt redeem me, and with better limbs
Contend. And I will kneel and shew my scars,
And make too memorable with my tears
Each treacherous fortune where thy mother fell.
And break with mine own hands her image fair,
And show her to thine eyes so wan and weak,
Crazed with waste life and unavailing days.
And stir thee, blushing with her penitence,
And in the fire of a great love and woe
Become as nought before thee, that thou, Babe,
Inherit from her ashes, and arise
Triumphant from the pyre, and so in death
I load thee with my hopes, and win in thee!
Awake, awake, my babe, my only babe,
Sleep not too deeply, babe, thou art my heart,
And only by its pulse I know I live.
SCENE VII.
The Study.
Balder, writing.
Balder
(reads).
'I stood and did not dream.
Before me was the great plain, and behind
The long dark mountains over which the sun
Held noon; and as I stood the earth till now
All summer trembled, and beyond the ridge
A pulsing murmur as of coming seas
On echoing shores from out a further void,
Grew in the far dim distance, as once more
Old ocean made invasion, and advanced
With all his waves. And as a dreamer hears
What sounding on her fleeing track pursues
The frantic soul that in the panic dies,
In louder progress, strepitous, so came
The great approach. Whereat the agued earth
With deadly fear did shiver to her core.
And the sound rose, and her great dread became
Convulsion, and the rampant uproar beat
Wilder alarum on the battered ear,
Swift waxing to the tumult of a host
Charging to battle all on serried steeds
That stepped as one. I strained to the event
With eye-balled sight as to a cry i' the dark,
And all the unseen pursuit more near enraged,
—The panting terror and the throbbing chase,—
Wilder as if the beating heart o' the world
In palpitation mad and moribund
Huge in its quaking tenement did shake
Th' enribbed rocks. And—as me, utterless,
Strong tumult choked, and sick expectance pale,
And horror of the end—a louder blast
Rush'd o'er, and sudden at a thunder peal,
As tho' the loaded sound did with a roar
Discharge its cause, while the great herd that grazed
The summits parted like a scattered flock
Beneath a lion, somewhat leaped the hills,
The awful hills, and on the shattered plain
Came like the crash of doom! Riderless he,
Who can bestride him? Tho' his reeking flanks
Sonorous clang with loud caparison
Of sounding war. A moment, and he stands
Heightened with pride, dilate at haughty gaze,
His swelling frame to half the horizon round
Breathing defiance; fierce his levelled head
Equals the clouds; his eye is as a hot
And bloody star; his nostrils as the red
Round throat of fiery ordnance, and his snort
Ten thousand clarions. Such a steed, so wild,
Left, in some ancient battle of the gods,
Great Mars unhorsed.
And now as one who sees
His foe beyond the river, with a plunge
Divides the waters, he with sudden spring
From the recoiling fields that reeled and broke,
Breasted the big spent clouds that, faint with flight,
Each upon each lay cumulous, and thro'
That sundered sea, tremendous, a mile hence,
Swift as a bolt and heavy as a hill,
Shocked the rent plain, and in as wild rebound,
Leaped in mere strength a thousand fathoms high,
Lashing new winds, and, wanton in descent,
Spurning far heaven with upslung vehemence
Of impious heels; and gnashing rooted oaks,
Wilful did fling them into either sky
Like loathed grass. Then sudden in career
He stretched across the flats. His mighty limbs
Resulting in the plunge from rest to speed
Caverned whereon he stood, and left his place
Mixed in tumultuous ruin. As he went
His hot hoofs thundering filled the fatal air
Recalcitrant, and scattered rocks and stones,
Crushed hall and hamlet, trampled tower and town,
Aye peaceful earth, and sods that nursed the lamb,
Red with the trodden flocks, in hurtled death
Swept the disastrous land. As when some mine,
Dark filled with sulphurous slaughter, at a nod
Belching its storm, o'er whelms in sudden wreck
The startled siege. O'er all the wide expanse
The wondrous swift concussion of his course
Sped desolation; far and near I saw
How dust-clouds, hovering like the pestilence,
Marked fallen cities, that on either hand
Confessed the unseen commotion where he passed.
And round the extremest verge dim rocks were rent,
And him in distance lost a sound betrayed,
The loud world groaned within as the great cry
Of crushed mankind proclaimed the track of "War."'
SCENE VIII.
The Vacant Study.
Through the open door the voice of Amy.
Amy.
Is there no hostel by the way of life?
My wayfare was from far as I can see;
As far my toil is hot and white before;
I stagger with my load, and halt midway,
And trembling turn beseeching eyes and vain
Backward and forward from my pitiless place.
The weary miles lie infinite beyond,
And each might be the future and the past.
I would lay down my burden lest I die.
Is there no hostel by the way of life?
SCENE IX.
The Study.
Balder, at his writing-table.
Balder.
This very morn
Thro' her green island home the laughing spring
Drove, flinging joy, her blossom-laden car.
Forth from the polar cavern of the snows,
Dripping with winter, leaped a northern storm,
And shook himself; and she lay buried white
Beneath an avalanche. At that dread sight
Up rose the West, and such a wind went by
As stunned the isle with voices, like a chief
Rushing to battle with a sounding host
In shouting ranks wide on the echoing hills.
At first a roar of warning, 'to the north!'
Then like the shriek of all a ravished land,
'O Europe, Europe, Europe, Europe, Europe!'
And then like the world's trumpet blown to war,
'The North, the North, the North, the North, the North!'
Enter, under the window, wandering Sailors, singing.
Sailors.
'How many?' said our good Captain.
'Twenty sail and more.'
We were homeward bound,
Scudding in a gale with our jib towards the Nore.
Right athwart our tack,
The foe came thick and black, Like Hell-birds and foul weather—you might count them by the score.
The Betsy Jane did slack
To see the game in view.
They knew the Union-Jack,
And the tyrant's flag we knew! Our Captain shouted 'clear the decks!' and the Bo'sun's whistle blew.
Then our gallant Captain,
With his hand he seized the wheel,
And pointed with his stump to the middle of the foe.
'Hurrah, lads, in we go!'
(You should hear the British cheer,
Fore and aft.)
'There are twenty sail,' sang he,
'But little Betsy Jane bobs to nothing on the sea!'
(You should hear the British cheer,
Fore and aft.)
'See yon ugly craft
With the pennon at her main!
Hurrah, my merry boys,
There goes the Betsy Jane!'
(You should hear the British cheer,
Fore and aft.)
The foe, he beats to quarters, and the Russian bugles sound;
And the little Betsy Jane she leaps upon the sea.
'Port and starboard!' cried our Captain;
'Pay it in, my hearts!' sang he.
'We're old England's sons,
And we'll fight for her to-day!'
(You should hear the British cheer,
Fore and aft.)
'Fire away!'
In she runs,
And her guns
Thunder round.
[Exeunt Sailors.
Balder.
As he who turns
From the full-shining and white orb of noon
Sees a black sun in air, this chant of Freedom
Leaves in my soul its hideous contrary.
[Pauses.
Be patient, Death, for if not thee I paint,
None but thine immemorial minister,
Thy dear abortion whom thy craft sent here
That by his side thou mayst look good and fair,
Prevents thine honours.
My poor goosequill! Bah!
Had I a pen plucked where Celæno flies
Uncleanest!
My old ink-horn!—why thou drop
Of rheum! thou milk-pot!—
[Writes and then reads.
Lo Tyranny! a Juggernaut than he
Who makes an Indian Bacchanal blush blood
At his unuttered hideousness more foul.
Nor on a car of India, but upborne
Upon a monstrous shape for which the brood
Of creeping reptiles, or the noisome plagues
Egyptian found no type, nor Hydra old,
Nor fell Chimæra. High the idol sat,
Gore-stained, nor arm to seize, nor leg to stand
Had he, but from his beast his branchless trunk
Rose festerous thro' the morning. What he rode
Headless came onward, manifold and one
As a dishevelled legion, and far off
Showed like a galley of ten thousand oars
In numberless commotion, nor in stroke
Ordered, but with division infinite
Beating the air; for round its dreadful length
Such moving arms innumerous like a fry
Of twining fiery Pythons plied the earth
Incessant, and, alternate feet and hands,
Bore the black bulk, or with contentious haste
Incredible, before, beside, behind,
In manifold appearance all too slow
To feed consumption, filled the ghastly maw
Of him who sat above, and eyes had none,
Nor human front, nor but a mouth obscene,
Abominable, that for ever yawned
Insatiate, drivelling from its carrion sides
Infernal ichor. Wide the cavern gaped,
Still straining wider, and thro' gurgling weight
Of seething full corruption night and day
His craving bowels, famished in his fill,
Bellowed for more. Which, when the creature heard
That bore him, dread, like a great shock of life,
Convulsed it, and the myriad frantic hands
Sprang like the dances of a madman's dream.
And so he came; and o'er his head a sweat
Hung like a sulphurous vapour, and beneath
Fetid and thunderous as from belching hell,
The hot and hideous torrent of his dung
Roared down explosive, and the earth, befouled
And blackened by the stercorous pestilence,
Wasted below him, and where'er he passed
The people stank.
SCENE X.
The Vacant Study.
Through the open door the voice of Amy.
Amy.
Neither gold nor silver, oh ye heavens!
Only a little sunshine and sweet air,
The sunshine and the air of the old days!
Only to be a feather on the stream,
A thistle-plume upon the changing wind
Hither and thither; to go to and fro
And up and down the joyance of the world,
The happy world, and be a part of all.
Ye are now unto me, oh ye bright heavens,
As one who should misuse the deaf and blind
In secret, but full loud when men are by
Speaketh rich words of love into the ears
That hear not, and before the sightless eyes
Makes vain ado of all they cannot see.
I pray ye ope the lattice of my soul
And let the wind blow on me ere I die,
And let me hold my forehead to the light,
And let me feel the falling of the dews,
And know the holy blessing of the rain!
SCENE XI.
The Vacant Study.
Through the open door the voice of Amy.
Amy.
My babe, my babe, when thou art grown to age,
What will thy speech avail thee among men?
Thy father-land speaks not thy mother-tongue.
For loving me, and thou wilt love me, babe,
I shall be still thy book, and all thy words
Of love and gladness thou shalt spell in me.
And loving me—and thou wilt love me, babe,
Shall I not be thy beauty and thy good?
And thou wilt seek mine image in the earth,
And make thy world of all things likest me.
Thou wilt not make day night, nor night thy day,
But dwell in the unvalued parts of day.
Shadow shall be thy light, and light thy shade.
What men forget, thou wilt remember well,
And all they know and love thou wilt forget.
Also, poor babe, thou wilt not hear the birds
Of morning, but if any night fowl wail
Far in the lonely hills, thou wilt awake,
And I shall see thee listen in my breast!
Nor shall thine eye pursue the butterflies,
Nor joy in shining beetle, nor humming bee;
But thou wilt clap thine hands to feel the bat
Stirring the twilight; and at hoot of owl
Shalt laugh and leap as at a mother's voice.
Also when thou shalt go upon thy feet,
Thy tiny feet beside me, well I know
Thou wilt not bring me daisies, nor sweet cups
Of gold and pearl, nor ever-ringing bells.
But we shall pass the flowery banks and braes,
Unheeded as a winter—thou and I.
Thy little footstep will be old and staid,
And thou wilt gaze upon the ground like me.
And I shall see thee stoop for withered straws,
And every joyless waif the wind lets fall.
I think thou wilt not pass a blighted leaf
Dead in the dust: and I shall lead thee by
The churchyard yew with lingering gaze and long
Reluctant; I shall sit me down and weep,
And thou wilt climb my lap, and deck my head
With garlands, till I tremble at thy glee,
And lift my hands to find—hemlock and rue.
Also, poor babe, these walks that once I loved
And tended shall have nought for thee in spring
Or summer, but thy childish eye shall light
With knowledge when in any plot unseen
December brings the thorn that flowers in vain,
Or hellebore, like a girl-murderess,
Green-eyed and sick with jealousy, and white
With wintry thoughts of poison. All the year
Thou wilt be doleful in the planted beds
And bowers, but a strange sense shall draw thee where
Whatever nook that never saw the sun
Is dark and cold, with undescended dews
And saddest moss, and mildew of the wood
And wall, and livelong orpine that cannot die.
Moist ivy, and inglorious moschatel
Like a blind beggar 'neath a upas-tree
Sickening below the nightshade. And thine heart
Shall fill thee, and thou shalt be rich and glad
As at a garden!
Oh my babe, my babe,
That wert to be his glory and his joy,
The flower of women and the star of men.
Latest of mortal daughters, and the best.
The final Eve to sum up once for all
The loveliness of woman, and touch lips
With her who first began us; the born theme
Of all the poets since the world was new,
Who singing as they could still sang of her,
And knowing only she must be, knew not
Or when or where. She, she, that was to come
In the whole image of the Beautiful,
Between the attending Loves, and bear aloft
Wisdom and knowledge as a wreathèd lyre
That sounds but with her going, trembling sweet
In trembling garlands; or with bolder hand
Run o'er all noble arts as one runs o'er
A nine-stringed harp, and at her changing will,
Equal in each, be every Muse in turn,
And multiply the Graces as she moved!
His words are on my lips, my babe, my babe,
He sang them to me, child, in olden days,
Till I sprang up before him, full of pride,
And reeled, and fell, and mourned until thou camest,
And ever since have sung his song to thee.
And thou wilt grow like me, my babe, my babe,
And he shall seek and seek thro' all the earth,
Nor see his heart's desire until he die!
Will no one snatch thee from my bosom, babe,
And save thee from thy mother? Do not love me,
No, do not love me, no, no, do not love me,
No, do not love me; 'tis the lullaby
I'll sing all day. No, do not love me, no,
No, do not love me.
Dost thou waken, babe?
Hush, hush, rebellious! Is my breast so hard
A pillow? Nay, what ails thy mother's milk?
Ah, dost thou turn from me, my little babe?
Does the spell work already? Love me, love me!
Love me, my babe, lest I go mad with fear!
SCENE XII.
The Study.
Balder, at his writing-table.
Balder.
The great array is marshalled; on the right
Freedom, Truth, Justice, Mercy, Love, and Peace
Captained by Genius, stand under the broad
Standard of day held by the east and west
With sanguine hands and high.
In horrid rank
Sinister, front to hostile front opposed
Beneath a banner dark as if black winds
Of chaos rose in tempest and did blow
The billowy verge of everlasting night
O'er the celestial border, glare the host
That follow the blind Power whose headless beast
Some evil god directs. Above his crest
Driven in the inevitable storm behind,
Like lambent flames of darkness licking far
The middle air, his terrible ensign
Roars to the coming war.
They stand at gaze,
Expecting till the equal voice of Death
Midway between the fierce and serried vans
Give signal of advance. But his great place
Is empty, and the crowded action waits.
Through the door comes the voice of Amy.
Amy
(sings).
Up went the jaunty jay,
Bough by bough, bough by bough,
Up went the jaunty jay,
Up the tall tree.
Up the tall tree where a happy bird was singing,
By his mossy home was singing,
To his callow brood was singing
In the green tree;
In the tall tree-top, in the merry tree-top,
—Alas, so merry!
In the brave tree-top,
Waving to and fro.
As a gay gallant up the stairs of pleasure,
By leaps the jaunty jay went up the tree.
Thou knowest, O mother bird! for thou wert by,
O mother-bird, thy young, thy callow young!
When he stood o'er them as one stands at meat,
Did they not lift their heads up as to thee?
And like a fruit he plucked them one by one,
—The jay, the shining jay, the jocund jay;—
In the tall tree-top, in the merry tree-top,
—Alas, so merry!—
In the brave tree-top,
Waving to and fro.
Like a gay gallant from a ruined maiden,
The painted jay came smirking down the tree.
Oh bird, oh crying bird, oh mother bird,
Oh childless bird, could I not die for thee?
Yes, I could die for thee!
SCENE XIII.
The Study.
Balder, at his writing-table.
Balder.
Had it been my portion here
With these obedient limbs and iron aid
Of some unconscious instrument to dig
The unquestionable soil, so that this hand
Thus armed should with no further cost than throes
Of definite volition—as to grasp,
To sink, to raise,—complete the stated dues
Of daily labour!
Were I born to plough,
While the lark drops upon his meal, the long
Material black and measurable furrow,
Whereof the brute sense of returning steer,
Treading the line, observant, testifies
That it is made indeed, and grossest clown
Who holds two eyes in use is a critic
Superfluously endowed!
Happier to drive
The patient ass along the beaten way,
Laden with humble fruits to the set mart
Of fixed reward, and back to certain rest,
And sweet assured possession, than like me
Bound helpless on the fury of the winds,
To scour the plains I seek not, scale the height
Where my brain swims, and leap, as in a dream,
Down into the unfathomable void,
While from the fall—like my back-streaming hair—
Fear-blown in all my veins the blood streams back,
And faints with horror.
I that am called proud,
Lying most humbly weary and abject
On the immoveable earth that doth so please
This mortal frame, and seeing my dull race
Doing their easy pleasures to and fro,
Self-ordinate, could sometimes sell my birth-right
For any pottage that would feed the flesh
Of other men upon me.
Death, Death, Death!
I have seen every face but thine to-day!
And to behold thee, from sunrise till now, How have I strained these eyeballs!
[Exit.
Through the open door comes the voice of Amy.
Amy.
A pool in a deep valley at dead noon,
Lidless and shadeless like a burning eye,
Low lieth looking at the summer sun:
So in my bosom, oh my babe, my babe,
Thou liest low, and lookest up to me.
SCENE XIV.
The Study.
Balder (solus) at his writing-table.
Balder.
My heart is heavy. This it is to speak
On Alpine heights, and with the profane breath
Of innocent words, to bring the avalanche
Upon my human head. I might have known
That he who treads these altitudes must walk
As from the mansions of eternal snow
I have beheld two customary stars
Go forth in sovereign converse, like to gods,
But seen to speak, not heard.
A dread is on me
As in a mortal illness, when the flesh
Knows in the air the coming dart, and shakes
With terror. I have called so loud and long
Into the twilight cave of Mystery;
And now at length, when thro' the cavernous dark
I hear far answering feet, my stout heart sinks.
That Dream! As some wild legendary rhyme
Heard on a grandame's knee, that being at end
Is still again begun, while at each turn
O' the winding tale the listener, cowering low,
Whispers the wonted question, to receive
More cold and pale the expected old reply
That lifts another hair, I ponder o'er
My strange adventure, and do press and wring
The mirk and husk of memory. Once again
I'll fill the cup to the enchanted brim
And drink it slowly. Yesterday I sat
From early morn till dark and strove in vain
To see the face of Death. And in the night
I dreamed. Methought I stood within this room,
As on the day when first I saw it grey
And empty; o'er my head a single branch
Of ivy threaded the high wall and hung
In green possession. And medreamed I stood
Robed like a necromancer, and with spells
Called on the name of Death. The wizard's store
Hung at my girdle, and on this last prize
I spent it sternly with the desperate hand
Of him who will be Prince or Beggar—each
New spell was more tremendous than the last.
At first there was great silence thro' the cell,
And then the cell was moved, tho' nothing stirred,
But under the gross visible I knew
An inner perturbation, as the crowd
Before the curtain feel the viewless scene
Inscrutable which heaves the swaying folds
That roll the mystery from stage to roof,
And roof to stage. And then a hush like death;
And thro' the hush a somewhat in the air
Twisting and falling; and I looked and saw
The ivy-branch, and all the branch was bare,
And the broad leaves lay shrivelled on the ground.
The fourth time the strong silence in the cell
Was as the straining silence of the rack,
When the still-tightening torture wrenches him
Who will not speak. The great veins in my brow
Throbbed with suppression, and such consciousness
I had of coming uproar, rising up
Thro' the containing stillness—as the fire
Of Ætna swells under her dark blind hill
And bursts in desolation—that my lips
Cried out. As if the sudden whip of Hell
Flashed on a pack of demons caught asleep,
The place brake silence, and a naked shriek
Came thro' the right-hand wall and, shrieking, passed
Out on the left, and when I called, returned,
Still shrieking, and so out upon the right,
And to and fro until my deafened brain
Reeled, and I fell down flat and slept as dead.
Then to me, sleeping, in my ear, these words,
Not as from outer nature, yet in voice
Not mine, tho' nearer to me than the ear
That heard it, as if in my head the blood
Along the intricate deep veins did hiss
A whisper and fled shivering to the heart.
'Bring me the inflated skin thou callest Life,
And I will turn the wind-bag inside out
And clothe me.'
I am not the fool of dreams,
Yet hold it not incredible that things
Are seen before their time, and,—as to-night
In this strange vision, where, while all was still
I felt the undelivered silence swell—
Somewhat to be lies in the womb of Now,
And eyes unstayed by mortal obscuration
Behold at once the Mother and the Child.
A white skin and the sweet fair-seeming flesh
Shut back the common eye-sight; but there be
Who looking fast on the unblushed repose
Of Beauty—where she lieth bright and still
As some spent angel, dead-asleep in light
On the most heavenward top of all this world,
Wing-weary—seized with sudden trance and strong
Thro' the decorous continent and all
The charmed defence of Nature can behold
The circling health beneath them, the red haste
Of the quick heart, and of her heaving breast
The cavernous and windy mysteries;
Yea, all the creeping secrets of her maw,
The busy rot within her, and the worm
That preys upon her vitals. So perchance
I see the Future in the Present. Or
If in the smoothest hour of patent nature
That overhanging weight of Destiny
Which loads the heavy air do brood on us,
What wonder that our tenderer substance take
Impress divine, and show the awful stamp
And parody of Fate?
One can be brave
At noon, and with triumphant logic clear
The demonstrable air, but ne'ertheless,
Sometimes at Hallowe'en when, legends say,
The things that stir among the rustling trees
Are not all mortal, and the sick white moon
Wanes o'er the season of the sheeted dead,
We grow unreasonable and do quake
With more than the cold wind. The very soul,
Sick as the moon, suspects her sentinels,
And thro' her fortress of the body peers
Shivering abroad; our heart-strings over-strung,
Scare us with strange involuntary notes
Quivering and quaking, and the creeping flesh
Knows all the starting horrors of surprise
But that which makes them, and for that, half-wild,
Quickens the winking lids, and glances out
From side to side, as if some sudden chance
Of vision, some unused slant of the eye,
Some accidental focus of the sight
O' th' instant might reveal a peopled world
Crowding about us, and the empty light
Alive with phantoms. Doubtless there are no ghosts;
Yet somehow it is better not to move
Lest cold hands seize upon us from behind,
Or forward thro' the dim uncertain time
Face close with paly face. My ominous Dream
Leaves me in shuddering incredulity
As logically white.
SCENE XV.
The Vacant Study.
Through the door the voice of Amy.
Amy.
Out of the dungeon comes the captive's cry,
Whose no man knoweth, nor shall ever know.
The cry! the cry! out of the sealèd cell
That no man may look into, comes a cry!
Up thro' the dumb sod of a churchyard green,
One of the undistinguishable dead
Below the many many graves complains.
The Beloved and Unbeloved are lying there,
The stifling earth on them. The cry is dull,
Whose no man knoweth, nor shall ever know.
Thy cry, thy feeble cry, my little babe!
All the long day and all the weary night!
I bend me down over the sealèd cell,
And strain my ears against the sodden grave,
And weep and know not, nor shall ever know.
SCENE XVI.
The Study.
Balder (solus) at his writing-table.
Balder.
Yesterday I said
That as the lion at the water-brooks
Prints his dread feet, to-morrow's great event
Fording our sleep to his appointed place
Beyond that Rubicon perchance may leave
His footsteps in the sand.
'Twas but a fancy,
But in a sleepless night seeking those steps
Thro' all the inner wilderness, I came
On other scars and traces, real as rock,
Familiar too, and terribly historic
As the carved walls whereon a martyr leaves
His storied wrongs.
I see the Poet's heart
Is but a gem whereon his woe doth cut
Her image, and he turns upon the world
And sets his signet there in high wild shapes
The necessary convex of a wound
As miserably deep.
I cannot stamp
The face of Death upon the universe
Till Death hath graven the seal. I wait that one
Last dreadful blazon to fulfil a shield
Persèan; that being held up to the day
Shall make mankind my marble.
Yet how long?
Proud Death, thou keepest not the company
Of lowlier pains and griefs. It may require
A greater light than I have known to cast
Thine awful shadow. Whom thou visitest
With thy best pomp, and all the circumstance
Of special love, are not of those who house
The common brood of sorrow; but they seem
Set up in shine of great prosperity
Upon the dial of Time, with one sole shade
To point the final hour. Yet peradventure
We who stand out of the sweet sun perceive
No shadow, not because the shade is less
But more. Aye, in this twilight atmosphere
Thou mayest approach unseen as air in air,
And strike me unaware. But near or far
I need thee, and in all the strange sad past
Of my predestined life to say 'I need,'
Hath been to move the universal wheels
In answering motion, which in act I knew
When the concluding cause and last result
Of thousands dropped into my open want
The supplementary fruit. Whether my will
Hath power on nature, or this heart of mine
Is so compacted in the frame and work
Of all things that in various kind they keep
Attuned performance, I know not. Perhaps
There comes to each man in his day some word
Whereto the tacit Visible without
Is the foregone conclusion. As amid
The silent summer eve of violet air
That which thou seest hath no superscription
Or title written; when we speak of it
'Tis with a finger pointed to the sky,
'Behold!' as in despair of human speech.
But lo, if in that moment and the hap
Of other descant one say 'Holiness,'
A pulse of sweet emotions thro' the dark,
As tho' that somewhat in the mystery
Responded to a name!
Such moments make
My hours, such hours my days, such days my years.
(A long pause.)
Who is to die? It is not credible
That this I have begun should come to end
For lack of human lives, or that a pang
Not mortal should fly wide of me; of me
Who had I the round earth within my hand
O'er-populous as a green water-drop,
Would swallow it to taste a novel savour.
(Another pause.)
If I could give up
This seasoned body to the advance of death,
And from my vantage-post within survey
The slow assault, and mark the victor, held
In view before the garrisoned approach
And each well-fought obstruction, and so write
The story of the siege—ay, while he climbed
The mound I sat on, till the pen fell, struck
Fron mine untrembling hand! But who shall bear
To the externe and living world, that last
Convicting record? What strong sign convey
Safe thro' the taken barriers, and the close
Opposing ranks of Death the lineaments
Which end his long disguise? No. The same key
Which let him thro' the circle of the sense
Would close the gate behind him, and secure
The first last secret all men hear, and none
Betray.
If but to me the privilege
To know and to declare! To suffer all
That in our common nature doth fulfil
And end perception, with a sense exempt
From that benign conclusion! In the arms
Of health to hold each form of mortal ill,
Till death should die upon my conscious breast,
And I by superhuman strength complete
The sum of human sorrow—God to see,
And man to suffer! The unchanged gold
On the charred bones of the Pompeian bride,
Tho' it survive the murderous fire, hath felt
A deadly heat. If I could seize a soul
And part to part adjust my qualities
Upon it, so that like to like consort
Might form a whole whereof the half could die
And the remainder watch it!
(Starting up.)
You just gods,
Is it not thus already—you good gods—
[He walks in great agitation.
(Sits again.)
A thought stood at the threshold of my heart
And shut the light out. It has past, and I
Have not yet half beheld it. But I know
That as its shadow came along the way
I looked up, and the valley and the hills
A moment swerved and failed, and as a smoke
Rolled over in a wind of coming death.
Through the door is heard the voice of Amy.
Amy.
If thou wouldst sleep, my babe, if thou wouldst sleep
And weary of the never-ending day!
Thou hast not milked me of my sorrow, babe,
Why must thou moan and watch and wake like me?
My babe, my babe, is it not well with thee?
And if not well, the end is come indeed.
My place was dark, and o'er a darker place
A great hand held me that I could not see.
Below us the dark gulph, for ever deep,
Above us, thro' the dark, a light of day,
And thou wert as a jewel on my breast,
Sweet shining in the light that lit not me.
The hand is weary with upholding me!
If ill hath touched thee, babe, we are given o'er,
Given o'er and dropt, a pillage and a prey!
Ah! in the dark gulph what shall not seize thee!
If thou wouldst sleep, my babe, if thou wouldst sleep,
Nor scare me with the mystery of thine eyes.
Alas, thy parted lips, my babe, my babe!
Alas, the hot breath from the cankered rose!
Alas, the little limbs! Alas, the heart
That beateth like a wounded butterfly!
My babe, my babe, what hath befallen thee?
I see it all; I see, I see it all!
How couldst thou lie upon my breast and live?
The doom has run its date, the hour is here!
Not enough, babe, oh! not enough, my babe,
That I who was the favourite and the flower,
Bruised and beaten by a thousand ills,
As to the utter shelter and mere shed
Of this great gilded palace-world did creep
With thee, not wholly lost since thou wert not,
Nor in my desolation desolate,
Because the glory could not give thee more
Than me, or the bare walls of sorrow less.
My babe, it was too good for thee and me.
God hath abandoned us, and from His home
Is driving forth the mother and her child.
My child, my child, the wolf is in the way,
And what if he doth choose the suckling lamb?
Hush babe, my little babe, my only babe,
That I might die for thee, my babe, my babe.
Balder
(sinking his head into his hands).
So soon, so soon! My lamb, my lily-bud,
My little babe! My daughter, oh my daughter!
(A long pause.)
(Looking up.)
Yes, I redeem the mother with the child!
Fate, take thy price! If this hand shakes to pay it,
'Tis with the trembling eagerness of him
Who buys an Indian kingdom with a bead.
'Tis past. I rise up childless, but no less
Than I. There was one bolt in all the heavens
Which falling on my head had with a touch
Rent me in twain. This bursting water-spout
Hath left me whole, but naked. Better so
Than to be cloven in king's raiment. Ay,
My treasure-house is broken, and I lose
What nothing can restore, and poorer men
Had held to the last drop of desperate blood.
But I, who know the secrets of the place,
Breathe freely when I learn the worst, and find
The felon sought no further.
Yet my babe!
My tiny babe!—
SCENE XVII.
The Study.
Balder, solus. Through the door comes a sound of weeping.
Balder.
My heart doth beat,
But I am calm, calm as a winter tree
Whereon one dead leaf flutters in the wind.
The waters of my soul that swelled so high,
Broke up my deeps and filled my universe,
Have sunk to such a mirror as reflects
The heaven and earth, and makes whatever face
Bends anew o'er them out of the unknown
A part of all things. Now I cannot weep.
I have climbed out o' the thunder, and most cold
Upon the heights of everlasting snow
Stand with cherubic knowledge.
This hot breast
Seems valley deep, and what the wind of Fate
Strikes on that harp strung there to bursting, I,
Descending, mean to catch as one unmoved
In stern notation. A strange sense of sight,
Fearless that lightning-like finds easiest way
Self-warranted where way is none, makes wide
Mine eyes that could look thro' into the depths
Behind the face of God.
'Tis well. Even so
Would I meet Death.
[Exit through the door of the adjoining room.
SCENE XVIII.
The Study.
Balder, solus.
Balder.
If to the long mysterious trance of death
There be immortal waking, he who lifts
His head from the clay pillow, and doth stretch
Eternal life thro' all his quickening limbs,
And conscious on his opening orbs receives
Remembered light, and rises to be sure
He hath revived indeed, tastes in that first
Best moment what the infinite beyond
Can never give again.
I should awake
On some such resurrection, having lived
Thro' what I feared was mortal, and endured
That most malignant hour which must or close
The perilous adventure, or, being forced,
Admit to happier times.
The ground grows firm
Beneath; the elfin atmosphere of spells
That smit these limbs with palsy, has given place
To vital air. I smell the native world.
The fortress of the last enchanter yields;
My life is free before me. I am strong;
I shall survive, subdue, surmount, attain!
Thou mystery, which dost attend my voice
Like a tame beast, and goest in and out
Whene'er I will, and liest at my feet,
Come let me paint the picture I have bought
So dearly, but, being painted, will hold cheap,
Ay, tho' I rent it at the yearly cost
Of such an annual tribute! Here! Be here!
He comes. Even now this black environment
Grows cold with his approach; and as on one
Benighted in the forest dreadful eyes
Shine thro' the dark, and Somewhat unbeheld
Draws nigh, thro' the thick darkness of my night
I see thine eyes, oh Death!
[Takes pen and paper, in attitude to write. The voice of Amy comes through the door.
Amy.
That I might die and be at rest, oh God!
That I might die and sleep the sleep of peace;
That I might die and close these eyes within
That shut not when the outer lids are sealed;
That I might die and know the balm of death
Cool thro' my loosened limbs; that I might die,
That I might die and stretch me out unracked,
And feel but as I died what is not pain.
It is dead midnight, and the time to sleep.—
My light has gone out in the dead midnight;
All things are equal in the utter dark;
I cannot see my way upon the world.
All in the dark a tempest beateth me,
Black waves out of the north and of the south,
Black waves out of the east and of the west,
Black falling waves that drench me from the sky!
On every side the waters lash me round,
And lift me till I know not where I stood,
And wist not where is earth or where is heaven!
[Listening, he falls into a reverie.
Balder.
Little babe,
Who wentest out from us two days ago
Not to return, what has become of thee
In this great universe? That thou art changed
I know; for whereas thou hadst lain since birth
On the warm breast that fed thee in a dream
Of peace, and, like a flower, wert given and ta'en
Unconscious, on a morn thou didst awake,
And while we weeping strove to keep thee, thou,
As at some awful voice that called thee hence
On high behest, becamest a man in will,
And ceasing thy babe's cry didst go in haste!
We also went a little way with thee,
As they whose best-beloved doth cross the seas
Attend him to the shore—even to the brink
Of the great deep, and stretch along the sands
Wringing vain hands of sorrow; yet none saith
'Why goest thou?' nor with naked sword of love
Denies; and none doth leap into his fate,
Crying 'I also,' and with desperate clasp
Hang on his neck till breakers far behind
Forbid return. Spell-bound they stand and dry
On the sea-line, and not a quivering lip
Murmureth 'To-morrow;' but his sire doth seize
The prow that would recede, and with stern will
Holds it, rebellious, to the task, and she
Who bore him, with her tears and trembling hands
Constrains and hastes him lest he lose the tide.
So also in a dream as one who walks
Asleep, and with her sunk eye on a star,
Rising doth take her slumbering babe, and o'er
The snows of midnight to the precipice
Paceth with silent purpose, doubting nought,
And turneth on the brink, with empty hands,
And to her bed unconscious, nor till morn
Beholds the vacant pillow—and, well-known,
Her foot-prints,—passionate; we went with thee,
And did return alone. My babe, my babe,
What have we done? At whose sufficient pledge,
Upon whose testimony, and well-sworn
Assurance have we left thee, and believed?
Did I go down before thee? Did I try
The unventured way? With which hand did I smooth
Thy pillow? Or with what nice care explore
The grave which in my trance I called thy bed?
Thy bed? wert thou so cradled? Doth the boor
Upon the hungry common save his hide
By such a lodging as thou in thy pomp
Didst enter, while the sable priest gave thanks,
And praised the long home where he would not chain
His dog? Thy home, poor babe? Bah! the stone den
Of murder is more human; the dank keep
Of felon anguish built to house despair
Hath not a cell so rude!
[Muses.
Was it a door
From this most ordered world into the waste
Of all things? Have we shut thee forth, poor child,
And wist not of thy journey, nor the end
And exit of that gloomy subterrene
Which thou didst enter, and whose unknown mouth
May be in Chaos? This, the upper gate,
Was fair, and, hanging o'er, the flowers looked down
After thee going, shedding many dews
That went as falling stars into the gulph,
A moment bright like thee. But, oh thou babe,
What of the nether port, which thou hast reached
Who wert so swift to go? We shut thee in
As to a chamber of rest, and did confirm
The outer bars, and on the adit set
The seal of Hermes, and o'er all dispread
The cheerful turf, and sowed it round with spring.
Mad faith!—false father!—customary fool!—
Tool of low instinct and obsequious use!—
Curse thee, blind slave! why didst thou leave her thus
In her worst need? Who, who shall certify
Her rest? And thou, oh mother, that didst plunge
So boldly into the vexed flood of life,
Holding thy babe aloft, with thy right hand,
Braving the billows; what unseen sea-scourge
Had struck thee, that thou too didst bow thine head
A-sudden succourless, and hast gone down
As others? Doth no voice out of the ground,
Up thro' the music of the grasshoppers
Smite thee? Whence, mother, had thy nursling child
This gift to sleep alone? Whence knowest thou,
O mother, who in its long dying swoon
Didst warm it in thy bosom, and forfend
The summer wind, and kiss the tenderness
Of years upon its momentary brow,
And with the wild haste of thy maddened eyes
Course heaven and earth, as to glean anywhere
One help forgotten; and at the last breath
Distraught and bending over it didst break
Thy life upon it, if perchance that balm
Might heal; and ere it died wert as one dead
With dread of ill, whence knowest thou what change
Absolves thy care? What thunder or what bush
Of burning spake to thee when thou didst rise
And veil thy face, and, unresisting, feel
The child go from thee out into the rains
And dews, and didst kneel silent while we threw
Cold earth upon it, and piled up that wall
Which late compunction and awakening throes,
Pangs of reproach and passion of despair,
And starting eyes mocked by the empty world,
And famished breasts convulsed when nights are chill,
And stretched-forth arms that waste with vacancy,
And all the tumult of the desperate heart
That leaps to the impossible desire
And unsurrendered bliss, can pass no more.
SCENE XIX.
The Study.
Balder, at his writing-table, preparing to write, when the voice of Amy comes through the open door.
Amy.
My heart is shivered as a fallen cup
And all the golden wine is in the earth.
My heart is stricken, and it cannot heal.
Tho' thou art but a little grave I know,
O little grave, it will bleed into thee
For evermore, and thou wilt not be filled.
The fountains of my fate are dry; my soul
Is dying in the famine of my lot.
I am a dead leaf in a wintry wind;
My stem is broken from the tree of life,
I wither in the sun and in the air,
I wither in the rain and in the dews.
And though the wind doth throw me on the tree,
Oh wind! thou canst not bind what thou didst break;
I wither in the verdure of the leaves.—
Beneath my window built the nightingale;
Ah cruel, who despoiled her happy nest!
And in his wanton gripe he crushed her egg,
Her one lone egg;—so doth Fate crush my heart.
The spring returns unto the nightingale,
The nightingale shall find a happier tree;
The ravished nest must drift upon the day,
The wind shall toss it as an idle straw,
The rain shall tread its ruins to the earth,
And I am all despoiled for evermore.
[He rises sorrowfully, and shuts the door.
Balder.
How often our twin passions do exchange
Fraternal uses, and alike in face
But opposite in sex, confound the eye
That reckons on their valour, or makes bold
Upon presumptive weakness, nor descries
The pious counterfeit when manly strength
Presents meek maidenhead, or female parts
Complete the heroic brow, and she who lacks
So much of manhood plights her faith as man,
Or strong Sebastian's virile arm redeems
The gage of virgin Viola. To-day
My grief—like one who crossed in hapless love
Betakes him to the wars, and tells in blows
His bitter need of kisses—speaks with voice
Of fiery wrath.
Writes and then reads.
Lo, Justice! and led in
By History, as by a little child.
She, moving as a goddess, slow drew nigh
Three adverse forms and human to behold,
Each a Colossus; Insolence, and Fraud,
And Malice. These approaching her, advanced
A step, and drew their several weapons. One
With voice like a cracked trumpet, and too loud
For that he said; and one with whisper dire,
Like the great ghost of a great sound, as large
But bodiless; the third as still as death.
They came: then Justice, lifting up her hand,
'Back to your shapes!' The three fell down headlong.
The first a Cur deformed, of monstrous birth,
With head that Parthian-like still looked behind
And fled from what he hurt; the next a Spider,
Gaunt black and lean, full of unnatural eyes
Detestable; the third a reeking Toad.
Bare in the day, these, or with horrid whine
Slunk to the earth, or crouched in dark and foul
Discovery, or swat a cancerous pool
Of poison, and lay hid. But Justice spake:
'Because ye did your will upon the weak,
Because ye had no pity on the poor,
Because your hands were quick to stab the fallen,
Because ye made your pillage of the slain,
Because ye lay in ambush for the brave,
Because ye stole by night upon the good,
Because ye dug a pitfall for the true,
Because ye overcried the voice of Right,
Because ye clapped your hands when strong men lied,
Because ye smote the cheek of innocence,
And spat your fetid spume in Wisdom's face;
Because being bestial, ye bewitched men's eyes
To see my sons as beasts, and ye as men,
Because in all your sins ye knew your sin,
And saw me while ye sware that I was not,
And heard me thro' the clamour of your tongues,
And shouted more lest men should see ye shake;
Because my sons have spoken in mine ears,
And all ye did to them of old I know;
Because, accursed! they shall not defile
Their hands to slay you, since with such as ye
'Twere equal shame to be at peace or war;
Because outcast from heaven, and earth, and hell,
Detect, disowned, detested, and despised,
There is no power to which ye can be true,
And Satan cannot trust ye more than God,
I come!' She wrenched the bandage from her eyes,
And looked on them:—and—as the summer bolt
Falls in the forest on the gathered leaves
Of winter, and they start into a flame
Out of their empty place,—a kindling fire
Consumed them, and a sudden rolling smoke
Showed they had been. And lo! from out the smoke
I saw the grim and clanking skeleton
Of the dead dog, licked bare to the white bones,
Run as alive. With skull revert, and jaws
That may not cease to move, but make no sound,
He flees for ever o'er the startled earth,
A terror and a sign.
SCENE XX.
The Vacant Study.
Through the door the voice of Amy.
Amy.
Oh wounded dove, oh dove with broken wing,
Oh dying dove, wert thou not beautiful?
Why didst thou hide thee, trembler, from the day,
And strain into the crevice of the cliff,
And press thy beating breast against the hill,
As if the rock should ope and let thee in?
I took thee to my heart, oh snow-white dove,
I would have kissed and kissed thee o'er and o'er,
But thou wert fierce with fear, and with wild eyes
Didst turn upon me like a frantic maid
That struggles with a lover in the dark,
Bruising the hands that would have cherished her,
And gnashing on the lips that seek her own
Oh dove, I also fall with broken wing,
I also strive and turn upon my fate,
And strike the inevitable hands in vain.
I also strain my bosom to the earth,
The earth that will not ope and let me in.
SCENE XXI.
The Vacant Study.
Through the door the voice of Amy.
Amy.
That I might only die and be at rest,
That I might die and sleep the sleep of peace,
That I might die and close these eyes within,
These eyes that start and stare so hot with life,
And mad-wide while the outer lids are sealed!
That I might die and know the balm of death,
And feel but as I died what is not pain.
The summer is a load upon my sense,
A pile of durance builded over head;
The battening shadow, and the fattening earth,
And all the thick abundance of the trees!
Fall, Summer! rend the cerements of my tomb!
If I might know that aught that binds can break!
If I might struggle thro' my choking banks,
And cheat me with the transport that I rise!
Alas, thou fallest, and I am not free!
Alas, alas, thou canst not let me forth!
Alas, alas, the grave-clothes, not the grave!
Alas, alas, the vaulted adamant,
And dolour of inexorable things!
SCENE XXII.
The Vacant Study.
Through the door the voice of Amy.
Amy.
Swallow, that yearly art blown round the world,
What seekest thou that never may be found?
Whither for ever sailing and to sail?
I think the gulphs have sucked thine haven down,
And thou still steerest for the vanished strand.
What cheer, what cheer, oh fairy marinere
Of windy billows, sea-mew of the air?
The viewless oceans wash thee to and fro,
Spout thee to Heaven, and dive thee to the deep.
Swallow! I also seek and do not find.
SCENE XXIII.
The Court-yard of the Tower.
Balder, solus.
Enter Dr. Paul.
Balder.
Doctor!
Doctor.
You're well? My patient?
Balder.
Only now
She went to sit beside the little grave.
Prithee, friend, wait awhile. It were ill-done
So soon to follow.
Doctor.
Is this pilgrimage
A manner with her?
Balder.
Thou may'st even trace
The path her feet have worn across the mead
Straight from our threshold. Many times a day
She rises up as who should hear a sound
Far off. I have gone with her hour by hour,
And still she hath the step of expectation,
Kneels by the woful mound and leans her ear
Upon the earth, lifts her wan cheek with flush
And gesture of surprise, feels one by one
The gaps and junctures of the ungrown sod
As 'twere new broken, and anon doth shake
Her piteous head, and look into my face
As if I wronged her; and so home in haste
Unresting. But she watcheth night and day
To steal unnoticed forth, and then she stays
Till someone lead her homeward. Drawing nigh
Beneath the twilight I perceive she sits
Upon a neighbouring stone, and by her lips
I think she sings, slow swaying to and fro,
As one who rocks a child. I give her way,
For fancy,—like the image that our boors
Set by their kine,—doth milk her of her tears,
And loose the terrible unsolved distress
Of tumid Nature. Under observance
She hath been silent since that mortal hour;
Lying close like a toiled bird, that with wide eyes
Is mute and strange, but, being alone, lets forth
Its sad wild cry.
Paul, I have heard that cry
Twice lately in the dark, here, where we sit!
How I have been so long both deaf and blind
Confounds invention, but my sense at last
Is opened, and I do perceive this ill
Is not a growth of yesterday. They tell
In sea tales of deaf men made whole amid
The roar of battle, who go forthwith mad,
Wild with the naked torment of the bruised
Unseasoned function. I do think my case
Is such a thunderous healing. What I hear
Strikes through the feeble garment of the flesh,
And stuns the very soul. My book stands still.
I am no carpet knight, and in my time
Have known hard knocks, but, callous as I am,
This breaks endurance.
Since the malady
That racked her, three short summers since, I held
Her sorrows to be no more than the toys
And creatures of a tender melancholy,
The honey-droppings of an atmosphere
So delicate that every mist and whiff
Which sails a grosser sky came down in rain.
But this is hell, and the infernal fall
Of burning snow.
Doctor.
Poor thing, poor thing, poor thing!
How long think you?
Balder.
An hour?
Doctor.
If it must be.
We men of drug and scalpel still are men
And have our feelings. I call us the gnomes
Of science, miners who scarce see the light
Working within the bowels of the world
Of beauty.
Balder.
But your toil, like theirs, gives wealth
And warmth, and glory, to a fairer sphere,
Brings forth the golden wonder, which in hand
Of prince or clown, of poet or of fool,
Is standard still; lights up the common hearth
Of household joy familiar, and makes bright
The jewelled front of kings.
Doctor.
Ah, my good friend,
I was a poet once, and thought strange things,
Very strange things. How I would walk alone
And mutter in my going, dare the heavens
As thus! clap sudden hand upon my brow,
Hold up a finger and cry hist! to the air,
Walk you a mile bareheaded in the rain,
Stop, gaze the ground, stamp like a bull, and sigh,
Sigh like a painted Boreas! or, in fierce
Obstetric frenzy of the labouring Muse,
Collar the astonished wayfarer with 'Sir,
Your tablets!' scare the woodman's hut with calls
For pen and paper, or make eloquent
The graphic bark of beech. Ah, those days when
I courted Sophonisba, long ago,
And we two loved the moonlight and wrote verses!
It melts my very heart to think on't!
Balder.
Love
Makes us all poets. Each man in his turn,
At culmination of one happy hour
Consummate of some sole and topmost day
Hath his apotheosis. Nature thus,
Ere she send forth her mintage to the world
Assays it for eternity, and sets
The stamp of sterling manhood. From the mount
Of high transfiguration you come down
Into your common life-time, as the diver
Breathes upper air a moment ere he plunge,
And, by mere virtue of that moment, lives
In breathless deeps and dark. We poets dwell
Upon the height, saying, as one of old,
'Let us make tabernacles: it is good
To be here.'
Doctor.
Out of mortal sight! Ay, you
Live to posterity.
Balder.
Your pardon; no!
Doctor.
To the mere present?
Balder.
No. I do not scorn
Fame, and those wide and calmer after days
Where Time's thick flood grows quiet, letting down
Its golden grains to be the jealous wealth
Of nations; but I choose to say, 'I live
To God and to myself.' Of God I know
Little to satisfy a human heart
So fashioned to adore Him; of myself
Still less, yet somewhat; of posterity
This only,—that in circling cycles, come
What will come on the ever-rolling years,
The Ages will not outlive a true man
And his Divine Creator.
Doctor.
Well, well, poet,
If love makes heroes it makes fools. And Nature,
If, as you say, fresh from that crucible,
She marks us current, full as often signs
The cap of Momus as the bay of Cæsar.
Were you but where I am, and with my eyes
Saw as I see to what this love can bring
Men down.
Balder.
Not love, but passion, the mere dance
Of this gross body to the soul's sweet singing,
Which you mistake for love, because sometimes
The singer, high and pale, descends to join
(With haughtier step as consciously a god)
The Paphian measure of his mortal twin.
And strange reflection of the glowing flesh
Doth flush the soul.
Doctor.
I have walked far.
Balder.
We'll enter—
From the high window in the turret there,
I see the churchyard in the dale.
Doctor.
Dost spend
The day in watching?
Balder.
I keep vigil on her
As any star behind his golden face
Spends his great gifts upon his proper world,
And lights us with an idle faculty.
[They enter the Tower, and mount to the Study.
Doctor
A poet's studio! I have often passed
The lintel of your home, but ne'er before
The threshold of its penetralia. I
Long to behold your gods.
Balder.
Expect none, Paul.
Doctor.
How?
Balder.
Expect none, my friend, if seeing me
Thou hast seen none. My word on it Æneas
Is godless, or 'Penatiger Æneas.'
Doctor.
Thou Pagan! why the room is an Olympus!
Balder.
Olympus' top is a long way from heaven.
Doctor.
From heaven say you? The mason, by my count,
Is greater than the house, and I perceive
That old Italian, whose Uranian pride
When his great prince had forfeited the skies,
Built him another heaven, and filled the dome
With angels, like the first.
Balder.
Ay, dauntless Michael,
Who drew the Judgment, in some daring hope
That, seeing it, the gods could not depart
From so divine a pattern.
Doctor.
Ah! thou, too,
Sad Alighieri, like a waning moon
Setting in storm behind a grove of bays!
Balder.
Yes, the great Florentine, who wove his web
And thrust it into hell, and drew it forth
Immortal, having burned all that could burn,
And leaving only what shall still be found
Untouched, nor with the smell of fire upon it,
Under the final ashes of this world.
Doctor.
Shakspeare and Milton!
Balder.
Switzerland and home.
I ne'er see Milton, but I see the Alps,
As once sole standing on a peak supreme,
To the extremest verge summit and gulph
I saw, height after depth, Alp beyond Alp,
O'er which the rising and the sinking soul
Sails into distance, heaving as a ship
O'er a great sea that sets to strands unseen.
And as the mounting and descending bark
Borne on exulting by the under deep,
Gains of the wild wave something not the wave,
Catches a joy of going, and a will
Resistless, and upon the last lee foam
Leaps into air beyond it, so the soul
Upon the Alpine ocean mountain-tost,
Incessant carried up to heaven, and plunged
To darkness, and still wet with drops of death
Held into light eternal, and again
Cast down, to be again uplift in vast
And infinite succession, cannot stay
The mad momentum, but in frenzied sight
Of horizontal clouds and mists and skies
And the untried Inane, springs on the surge
Of things, and passing matter by a force
Material, thro' vacuity careers,
Rising and falling.
Doctor.
And my Shakspeare! Call
Milton your Alps, and which is he among
The tops of Andes? Keep your Paradise,
And Eves, and Adams, but give me the Earth
That Shakspeare drew, and make it grave and gay
With Shakspeare's men and women; let me laugh
Or weep with them, and you—a wager,—ay,
A wager by my faith—either his muse
Was the recording angel, or that hand
Cherubic which fills up the Book of Life,
Caught what the last relaxing gripe let fall
By a death-bed at Stratford, and henceforth
Holds Shakspeare's pen. Now strain your sinews, poet,
And top your Pelion,—Milton Switzerland,
And English Shakspeare—
Balder.
This dear English land!
This happy England, loud with brooks and birds,
Shining with harvests, cool with dewy trees,
And bloomed from hill to dell; but whose best flowers
Are daughters, and Ophelia still more fair
Than any rose she weaves; whose noblest floods
The pulsing torrent of a nation's heart;
Whose forests stronger than her native oaks
Are living men; and whose unfathomed lakes
For ever calm the unforgotten dead
In quiet graveyards willowed seemly round,
O'er which To-day bends sad, and sees his face.
Whose rocks are rights, consolidate of old
Thro' unremembered years, around whose base
The ever-surging peoples roll and roar
Perpetual, as around her cliffs the seas
That only wash them whiter; and whose mountains,
Souls that from this mere footing of the earth
Lift their great virtues thro' all clouds of Fate
Up to the very heavens, and make them rise
To keep the gods above us!
Doctor.
Your hand on it!
Balder.
The wicket swings, how now?
Doctor.
A tattered man.
Balder.
I must go down—
Doctor.
An aged peasant woman,
A chubby child beside her; by my soul
The rosy blossom and the withered crab,
Both on one bough? who are they?
Balder.
Pensioners.
Doctor.
Your's?
Balder.
Her's.
Doctor.
Some say the illumining sun is dark;
But poor as you are—
Balder.
Is this blossom sweet?
Doctor.
Most fragrant!
Balder.
Yet I plucked it on a rock
Where common grass had died. Learn this, my friend,
The secret that doth make a flower a flower,
So frames it that to bloom is to be sweet,
And to receive to give. The flower can die,
But cannot change its nature; though the earth
Starve it, and the reluctant air defraud,
No soil so sterile and no living lot
So poor but it hath somewhat still to spare
In bounteous odours. Charitable they
Who, be their having more or less, so have
That less is more than need, and more is less
Than the great heart's goodwill.
Here are books, here
A picture, still unpacked, from the great city,
Sent by an early college friend, who vows
A pilgrimage to these old hills; and there
(Arrived this morning from the muse knows where)
That strange sweet mystery, the early scrawl
Of young Ambition. Genius is born blind;
See how the nursling fumbles for the dug,
Lipping each barren likeness; now distent
As limpet on a rock, and sucking hard
The east-wind, and now drawing with a touch
Nectar for gods; 'twill help the hour on—
(Going.)
Stay!
Paul, thou art somewhat of an antiquary;
Let these walls entertain thee; at thy leisure
Spell out these parchments, which my chamberlain,
The spider, deems too bare for such a presence,
And with his orfrays and embroidery
Decks an' I will or no. To my heart, Paul,
The mouldering stones of this old tottering tower
Are not more ancient; this, for all I feel,
Might be the dust of centuries!
Doctor.
What are they?
Balder.
Listen: when we came here, a bridal pair,
Joyous and young and poor, I took this room
For mine, the forge in which to beat my gifts
To the white heat that lights and warms the world;
And so I left it bare. We had small store,
And that I spent on her's. But still she came,
And sat beside me at her daily tasks
In happy silence; then I said 'not here!'
But she said 'here!' and kissed me; oh those days!
She was so fair——
Doctor.
She was?
Balder.
She is; she was
So fair, so delicately bred; I saw
Her there, and all the strong unseemly place
Disturbed me. 'Oh for cloth of gold,' I cried,
'To make a palace for thee!' But she smiled.
When she came in I felt the cold grey air
Strike her like a stone, and when she walked methought,
Oft as she passed between me and the wall,
The rudeness of the unhewn and jagged rock,
Albeit that bodily it touched her not,
Harried her beauty; and, whene'er she sat
Looking her sweet content, stern histories
Sank from the dark roof thro' the dungeon day,
And fell upon her face like grinding dust
Upon the apple of mine eye. She knew
My trouble, saying, 'Where thou art, to me
Heaven arches o'er thee, and I dwell in tents
Of azure; but, my husband! as thou wilt.
Nevertheless, not silver and not gold,
Silver and gold are not for me or thee;
But oh, my poet husband! what thou hast
Give me.' And so I hung the room with Thought.
Morning and noon, and eve and night, and all
The changing seasons; scenes, or new or old,
Strange faces and familiar; forms of men
Or gods in valleys deep, or mountains high; And how she loved them! Tarry till I come.
[Goes.
Doctor
(unfolding a scroll).
What's here? sad heart! some withered primroses!
(Reads.)
'Spring, who did scatter all her wealth last year,
Had gone to heaven for more; and coming back
Flower-laden after three full seasons, found
The Earth, her mother, dead.
Far off, appalled
With the unwonted pallor of her face,
She flung her garlands down, and caught, distract,
The skirts of passing tempests, and thro' wilds
Of frozen air fled to her, all uncrowned
With haste,—a bunch of snowdrops in her breast,
Her charms dishevelled, and her cheeks as white
As winter with her woe. She fell upon
The corse, and warmed it. The maternal earth,
Which was not dead, but slept, unclosed her eyes.
Then Spring, o'erawed at her own miracle,
Fell on her knees; and then she smiled and wept.
Meanwhile the attendant birds her haste outstripped,
Chasing her voice, crowd round and fill the air
With jocund loyalty; and eager winds
Her suitors, at full speed with Love and wild,
Hie by her in the lusty cheer of March,
Crying her name. Laughed Spring to see them pass,
—Laughing in tears. Then it repented her
To see the old parental limbs of Earth
Lie stark as death; and fared she forth alone
To where she left her burden in the void
Beyond the south horizon; her fair hair
Streaming spring clouds among the vernal stars.
Returning, slow with flowers, she dressed the Earth,
Which had sat up, and, being naked, blushed,
And stretched her conscious arms to meet the Spring,
Who breathed upon her face, and made her young.
Then did her mother Earth rejoice in her;
And she with filial love and joy admired,
Weeping and trembling in the wont of maids.
Meantime her pious fame had filled the skies;
He that begat her, the almighty Sun,
Passing in regal state, did call her "child,"
And blessed her and her mother where they sat—
Her by the imposition of bright hands,
The Earth with kisses. Then the Spring would go,
Abashed with bliss, decorous in the face
Of love parental. But the Earth stood up,
And held her there; and, them encircling, came
All kind of happy shapes that wander space,
Brightening the air. And they two sang like gods
Under the answering heavens.'
Doctor
(unrolling another scroll).
Here Summer,(reads.)
'Summer,
Mother of gods and men, with equal face
Unchangeable, and such wide eyes divine
As on the Athenian hill-top Phidian Jove
Inherited; whose universal sense
Seems made with ampler vision to behold
A larger world than ours. She leans in light
On rose-leaves, as a long and lazy cloud
Leans on the broad bed of the blushing west.
In her right hand a horn of plenty, red
With fragrant fruits exuberant; in her left
The early harvest; crowned with oak and ash,
Her hot feet slippered in the calid seas.
Her voice is like the murmur of the floods
Sluggard with noon, or the thick-leaved response
Of sultry forests to the languid winds
Dull with the dog-days.'
Nay, no more; one knows
This bett