Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series
Page 106
In darkness, and above them roar’d the pine.
So Leolin went; and as we task ourselves
To learn a language known but smatteringly
In phrases here and there at random, toil’d
Mastering the lawless science of our law,
That codeless myriad of precedent,
That wilderness of single instances,
Thro’ which a few, by wit or fortune led,
May beat a pathway out to wealth and fame.
The jests, that flash’d about the pleader’s room,
Lightning of the hour, the pun, the scurrilous tale, —
Old scandals buried now seven decads deep
In other scandals that have lived and died,
And left the living scandal that shall die —
Were dead to him already; bent as he was
To make disproof of scorn, and strong in hopes,
And prodigal of all brain-labor he,
Charier of sleep, and wine and exercise,
Except when for a breathing-while at eve,
Some niggard fraction of an hour, he ran
Beside the river-bank: and then indeed
Harder the times were, and the hands of power
Were bloodier, and the according hearts of men
Seem’d harder too; but the soft river-breeze,
Which fann’d the gardens of that rival rose
Yet fragrant in a heart remembering
His former talks with Edith, on him breathed
Far purelier in his rushings to and fro,
After his books, to flush his blood with air,
Then to his books again. My lady’s cousin,
Half-sickening of his pension’d afternoon,
Drove in upon the student once or twice,
Ran a Malayan muck against the times,
Had golden hopes for France and all mankind,
Answer’d all queries touching those at home
With a heaved shoulder and a saucy smile,
And fain had haled him out into the world,
And air’d him there: his nearer friend would say
‘Screw not the chord too sharply lest it snap.’
Then left alone he pluck’d her dagger forth
From where his worldless heart had kept it warm,
Kissing his vows upon it like a knight.
And wrinkled benchers often talk’d of him
Approvingly, and prophesied his rise:
For heart, I think, help’d head: her letters too,
Tho’ far between, and coming fitfully
Like broken music, written as she found
Or made occasion, being strictly watch’d,
Charm’d him thro’ every labyrinth till he saw
An end, a hope, a light breaking upon him.
But they that cast her spirit into flesh,
Her worldy-wise begetters, plagued themselves
To sell her, those good parents, for her good.
Whatever eldest-born of rank or wealth
Might lie within their compass, him they lured
Into their net made pleasant by the baits
Of gold and beauty, wooing him to woo.
So month by month the noise about their doors,
And distant blaze of those dull banquets, made
The nightly wirer of their innocent hare
Falter before he took it. All in vain.
Sullen, defiant, pitying, wroth, return’d
Leolin’s rejected rivals from their suit
So often, that the folly taking wings
Slipt o’er those lazy limits down the wind
With rumor, and became in other fields
A mockery to the yeomen over ale,
And laughter to their lords: but those at home,
As hunters round a hunted creature draw
The cordon close and closer toward the death,
Narrow’d her goings out and comings in;
Forbad her first the house of Averill,
Then closed her access to the wealthiest farms,
Last from her own home-circle of the poor
They barr’d her: yet she bore it: yet her cheek
Kept color: wondrous! but, O mystery!
What amulet drew her down to that old oak,
So old, that twenty years before, a part
Falling had let appear the brand of John —
Once grovelike, each huge arm a tree, but now
The broken base of a black tower, a cave
Of touchwood, with a single flourishing spray.
There the manorial lord too curiously
Raking in that millenial touchwood-dust
Found for himself a bitter treasure-trove;
Burst his own wyvern on the seal, and read
Writhing a letter from his child, for which
Came at the moment Leolin’s emissary,
A crippled lad, and coming turn’d to fly,
But scared with threats of jail and halter gave
To him that fluster’d his poor parish wits
The letter which he brought, and swore besides
To play their go-between as heretofore
Nor let them know themselves betray’d, and then,
Soul-stricken at their kindness to him, went
Hating his own lean heart and miserable.
Thenceforward oft from out a despot dream
Panting he woke, and oft as early as dawn
Aroused the black republic on his elms,
Sweeping the frothfly from the fescue, brush’d
Thro’ the dim meadow toward his treasure-trove,
Seized it, took home, and to my lady, who made
A downward crescent of her minion mouth,
Listless in all despondence, read; and tore,
As if the living passion symbol’d there
Were living nerves to feel the rent; and burnt,
Now chafing at his own great self defied,
Now striking on huge stumbling-blocks of scorn
In babyisms, and dear diminutives
Scatter’d all over the vocabulary
Of such a love as like a chidden babe,
After much wailing, hush’d itself at last
Hopeless of answer: then tho’ Averill wrote
And bad him with good heart sustain himself —
All would be well — the lover heeded not,
But passionately restless came and went,
And rustling once at night about the place,
There by a keeper shot at, slightly hurt,
Raging return’d: nor was it well for her
Kept to the garden now, and grove of pines,
Watch’d even there; and one was set to watch
The watcher, and Sir Aylmer watch’d them all,
Yet bitterer from his readings: once indeed,
Warm’d with his wines, or taking pride in her,
She look’d so sweet, he kiss’d her tenderly
Not knowing what possess’d him: that one kiss
Was Leolin’s one strong rival upon earth;
Seconded, for my lady follow’d suit,
Seem’d hope’s returning rose: and then ensued
A Martin’s summer of his faded love,
Or ordeal by kindness; after this
He seldom crost his child without a sneer;
The mother flow’d in shallower acrimonies:
Never one kindly smile, one kindly word:
So that the gentle creature shut from all
Her charitable use, and face to face
With twenty months of silence, slowly lost
Nor greatly cared to lose, her hold on life.
Last, some low fever ranging round to spy
The weakness of a people or a house,
Like flies that haunt a wound, or deer, or men,
Or almost all that is, hurting the hurt —
Save Christ as we believe him — found the girl
And flung her down upon a couch of
fire,
Where careless of the household faces near,
And crying upon the name of Leolin,
She, and with her the race of Aylmer, past.
Star to star vibrates light: may soul to soul
Strike thro’ a finer element of her own?
So, — from afar, — touch as at once? or why
That night, that moment, when she named his name,
Did the keen shriek ‘yes love, yes Edith, yes,’
Shrill, till the comrade of his chambers woke,
And came upon him half-arisen from sleep,
With a weird bright eye, sweating and trembling,
His hair as it were crackling into flames,
His body half flung forward in pursuit,
And his long arms stretch’d as to grasp a flyer:
Nor knew he wherefore he had made the cry;
And being much befool’d and idioted
By the rough amity of the other, sank
As into sleep again. The second day,
My lady’s Indian kinsman rushing in,
A breaker of the bitter news from home,
Found a dead man, a letter edged with death
Beside him, and the dagger which himself
Gave Edith, reddn’d with no bandit’s blood:
‘From Edith’ was engraven on the blade.
Then Averill went and gazed upon his death.
And when he came again, his flock believed —
Beholding how the years which are not Time’s
Had blasted him — that many thousand days
Were clipt by horror from his term of life.
Yet the sad mother, for the second death
Scarce touch’d her thro’ that nearness of the first,
And being used to find her pastor texts,
Sent to the harrow’d brother, praying him
To speak before the people of her child,
And fixt the Sabbath. Darkly that day rose:
Autumn’s mock sunshine of the faded woods
Was all the life of it; for hard on these,
A breathless burthen of low-folded heavens
Stifled and chill’d at once: but every roof
Sent out a listener: many too had known
Edith among the hamlets round, and since
The parents’ harshness and the hapless loves
And double death were widely murmur’d, left
Their own gray tower, or plain-faced tabernacle,
To hear him; all in mourning these, and those
With blots of it about them, ribbon, glove
Or kerchief; while the church, — one night, except
For greenish glimmerings thro’ the lancets, — made
Still paler the pale head of him, who tower’d
Above them, with his hopes in either grave.
Long o’er his bent brows linger’d Averill,
His face magnetic to the hand from which
Livid he pluck’d it forth, and labor’d thro’
His brief prayer-prelude, gave the verse ‘Behold,
Your house is left unto you desolate!’
But lapsed into so long a pause again
As half amazed half frighted all his flock:
Then from his height and loneliness of grief
Bore down in flood, and dash’d his angry heart
Against the desolations of the world.
Never since our bad earth became one sea,
Which rolling o’er the palaces of the proud,
And all but those who knew the living God —
Eight that were left to make a purer world —
When since had flood, fire, earthquake, thunder wrought
Such waste and havoc as the idolatries,
Which from the low light of mortality
Shot up their shadows to the Heaven of Heavens,
And worshipt their own darkness as the Highest?
‘Gash thyself, priest, and honor thy brute Baal,
And to thy worst self sacrifice thyself,
For with thy worst self hast thou clothed thy God.’
Then came a Lord in no wise like to Baal.
The babe shall lead the lion. Surely now
The wilderness shall blossom as the rose.
Crown thyself, worm, and worship thine own lusts! —
No coarse and blockish God of acreage
Stands at thy gate for thee to grovel to —
Thy God is far diffused in noble groves
And princely halls, and farms, and flowing lawns,
And heaps of living gold that daily grow,
And title-scrolls and gorgeous heraldries.
In such a shape dost thou behold thy God.
Thou wilt not gash thy flesh for him; for thine
Fares richly, in fine linen, not a hair
Ruffled upon the scarfskin, even while
The deathless ruler of thy dying house
Is wounded to the death that cannot die;
And tho’ thou numberest with the followers
Of One who cried ‘leave all and follow me.’
Thee therefore with His light about thy feet,
Thee with His message ringing in thine ears,
Thee shall thy brother man, the Lord from Heaven,
Born of a village girl, carpenter’s son,
Wonderful, Prince of peace, the Mighty God,
Count the more base idolater of the two;
Crueller: as not passing thro’ the fire
Bodies, but souls — thy children’s — thro’ the smoke,
The blight of low desires — darkening thine own
To thine own likeness; or if one of these,
Thy better born unhappily from thee,
Should, as by miracle, grow straight and fair —
Friends, I was bid to speak of such a one
By those who most have cause to sorrow for her —
Fairer than Rachel by the palmy well,
Fairer than Ruth among the fields of corn,
Fair as the Angel that said ‘hail’ she seem’d,
Who entering fill’d the house with sudden light.
For so mine own was brighten’d: where indeed
The roof so lowly but that beam of Heaven
Dawn’d sometime thro’ the doorway? whose the babe
Too ragged to be fondled on her lap,
Warm’d at her bosom? The poor child of shame,
The common care whom no one cared for, leapt
To greet her, wasting his forgotten heart,
As with the mother he had never known,
In gambols; for her fresh and innocent eyes
Had such a star of morning in their blue,
That all neglected places of the field
Broke into nature’s music when they saw her.
Low was her voice, but won mysterious way
Thro’ the seal’d ear to which a louder one
Was all but silence — free of alms her hand —
The hand that robed your cottage-walls with flowers
Has often toil’d to clothe your little ones;
How often placed upon the sick man’s brow
Cool’d it, or laid his feverous pillow smooth!
Had you one sorrow and she shared it not?
One burthen and she would not lighten it?
One spiritual doubt she did not soothe?
Or when some heat of difference sparkled out,
How sweetly would she glide between your wraths,
And steal you from each other! for she walk’d
Wearing the light yoke of that Lord of love,
Who still’d the rolling wave of Galilee!
And one — of him I was not bid to speak —
Was always with her, whom you also knew.
Him too you loved, for he was worthy love.
And these had been together from the first;
They might have been together till the last.
Friends, this frail bark of ours, when
sorely tried,
May wreck itself without the pilot’s guilt,
Without the captain’s knowledge: hope with me.
Whose shame is that, if he went hence with shame?
Nor mine the fault, if losing both of these
I cry to vacant chairs and widow’d walls,
“My house is left unto me desolate.”
While thus he spoke, his hearers wept; but some,
Sons of the glebe, with other frowns than those
That knit themselves for summer shadow, scowl’d
At their great lord. He, when it seem’d he saw
No pale sheet-lightnings from afar, but fork’d
Of the near storm, and aiming at his head,
Sat anger-charm’d from sorrow, soldierlike,
Erect: but when the preacher’s cadence flow’d
Softening thro’ all the gentle attributes
Of his lost child, the wife, who watch’d his face,
Paled at a sudden twitch of his iron mouth;
And ‘O pray God that he hold up’ she thought
‘Or surely I shall shame myself and him.’
‘Nor yours the blame — for who beside your hearths
Can take her place — if echoing me you cry
“Our house is left unto us desolate?”
But thou, O thou that killest, hadst thou known,
O thou that stonest, hadst thou understood
The things belonging to thy peace and ours!
Is there no prophet but the voice that calls
Doom upon kings, or in the waste ‘Repent’?
Is not our own child on the narrow way,
Who down to those that saunter in the broad
Cries ‘come up hither,’ as a prophet to us?
Is there no stoning save with flint and rock?
Yes, as the dead we weep for testify —
No desolation but by sword and fire?
Yes, as your moanings witness, and myself
Am lonelier, darker, earthlier for my loss.
Give me your prayers, for he is past your prayers,
Not past the living fount of pity in Heaven.
But I that thought myself long-suffering, meek,
Exceeding “poor in spirit” — how the words
Have twisted back upon themselves, and mean
Vileness, we are grown so proud — I wish’d my voice
A rushing tempest of the wrath of God
To blow these sacrifices thro’ the world —
Sent like the twelve-divided concubine
To inflame the tribes: but there — out yonder — earth
Lightens from her own central Hell — O there
The red fruit of an old idolatry —
The heads of chiefs and princes fall so fast,
They cling together in the ghastly sack —
The land all shambles — naked marriages
Flash from the bridge, and ever-murder’d France,