by Dinah Roe
65 Strove not her steps to reach my side
Down all the echoing stair?)
‘I wish that he were come to me,
For he will come,’ she said.
‘Have I not prayed in Heaven? – on earth,
70 Lord, Lord, has he not pray’d?
Are not two prayers a perfect strength?
And shall I feel afraid?
‘When round his head the aureole clings,
And he is clothed in white,
75 I’ll take his hand and go with him
To the deep wells of light;
As unto a stream we will step down,
And bathe there in God’s sight.
‘We two will stand beside that shrine,
80 Occult, withheld, untrod,
Whose lamps are stirred continually
With prayer sent up to God;
And see our old prayers, granted, melt
Each like a little cloud.
85 ‘We two will lie i’ the shadow of
That living mystic tree
Within whose secret growth the Dove
Is sometimes felt to be,
While every leaf that His plumes touch
90 Saith His Name audibly.
And I myself will teach to him,
I myself, lying so,
The songs I sing here; which his voice
Shall pause in, hushed and slow,
95 And find some knowledge at each pause,
Or some new thing to know.’
(Alas! We two, we two, thou say’st!
Yea, one wast thou with me
That once of old. But shall God lift
100 To endless unity
The soul whose likeness with thy soul
Was but its love for thee?)
‘We two,’ she said, ‘will seek the groves
Where the lady Mary is,
105 With her five handmaidens, whose names
Are five sweet symphonies,
Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,
Margaret and Rosalys.
‘Circlewise sit they, with bound locks
110 And foreheads garlanded;
Into the fine cloth white like flame
Weaving the golden thread,
To fashion the birth-robes for them
Who are just born, being dead.
115 ‘He shall fear, haply, and be dumb:
Then will I lay my cheek
To his, and tell about our love,
Not once abashed or weak:
And the dear Mother will approve
120 My pride, and let me speak.
‘Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,
To him round whom all souls
Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads
Bowed with their aureoles:
125 And angels meeting us shall sing
To their citherns and citoles.
‘There will I ask of Christ the Lord
Thus much for him and me: –
Only to live as once on earth
130 With Love, – only to be,
As then awhile, for ever now
Together, I and he.’
She gazed and listened and then said,
Less sad of speech than mild, –
135 ‘All this is when he comes.’ She ceased.
The light thrilled towards her, fill’d
With angels in strong level flight.
Her eyes prayed, and she smil’d.
(I saw her smile.) But soon their path
140 Was vague in distant spheres:
And then she cast her arms along
The golden barriers,
And laid her face between her hands,
And wept. (I heard her tears.)
The Card-Dealer
Could you not drink her gaze like wine?
Yet though its splendour swoon
Into the silence languidly
As a tune into a tune,
5 Those eyes unravel the coiled night
And know the stars at noon.
The gold that’s heaped beside her hand,
In truth rich prize it were;
And rich the dreams that wreathe her brows
10 With magic stillness there;
And he were rich who should unwind
That woven golden hair.
Around her, where she sits, the dance
Now breathes its eager heat;
15 And not more lightly or more true
Fall there the dancers’ feet
Than fall her cards on the bright board
As ’twere an heart that beat.
Her fingers let them softly through,
20 Smooth polished silent things;
And each one as it falls reflects
In swift light-shadowings,
Blood-red and purple, green and blue,
The great eyes of her rings.
25 Whom plays she with? With thee, who lov’st
Those gems upon her hand;
With me, who search her secret brows;
With all men, bless’d or bann’d.
We play together, she and we,
30 Within a vain strange land:
A land without any order, –
Day even as night, (one saith,) –
Where who lieth down ariseth not
Nor the sleeper awakeneth;
35 A land of darkness as darkness itself
And of the shadow of death.
What be her cards, you ask? Even these: –
The heart, that doth but crave
More, having fed; the diamond,
40 Skilled to make base seem brave;
The club, for smiting in the dark;
The spade, to dig a grave.
And do you ask what game she plays?
With me ’tis lost or won;
45 With thee it is playing still; with him
It is not well begun;
But ’tis a game she plays with all
Beneath the sway o’ the sun.
Thou seest the card that falls, – she knows
50 The card that followeth:
Her game in thy tongue is called Life,
As ebbs thy daily breath:
When she shall speak, thou’lt learn her tongue
And know she calls it Death.
The Burden of Nineveh
In our Museum galleries
To-day I lingered o’er the prize
Dead Greece vouchsafes to living eyes, –
Her Art for ever in fresh wise
5 From hour to hour rejoicing me.
Sighing I turned at last to win
Once more the London dirt and din;
And as I made the swing-door spin
And issued, they were hoisting in
10 A wingèd beast from Nineveh.
A human face the creature wore,
And hoofs behind and hoofs before,
And flanks with dark runes fretted o’er.
’Twas bull, ’twas mitred Minotaur,
15 A dead disbowelled mystery:
The mummy of a buried faith
Stark from the charnel without scathe,
Its wings stood for the light to bathe, –
Such fossil cerements as might swathe
20 The very corpse of Nineveh.
The print of its first rush-wrapping,
Wound ere it dried, still ribbed the thing.
What song did the brown maidens sing,
From purple mouths alternating,
25 When that was woven languidly?
What vows, what rites, what prayers preferr’d,
What songs has the strange image heard?
In what blind vigil stood interr’d
For ages, till an English word
30 Broke silence first at Nineveh?
Oh when upon each sculptured court,
Where even the wind might not resort, –
O’er which Time passed, of like import
With the wild Arab boys at sport, –
35 A living fac
e looked in to see: –
O seemed it not – the spell once broke –
As though the carven warriors woke,
As though the shaft the string forsook,
The cymbals clashed, the chariots shook,
40 And there was life in Nineveh?
On London stones our sun anew
The beast’s recovered shadow threw.
(No shade that plague of darkness knew,
No light, no shade, while older grew
45 By ages the old earth and sea.)
Lo thou! could all thy priests have shown
Such proof to make thy godhead known?
From their dead Past thou liv’st alone;
And still thy shadow is thine own,
50 Even as of yore in Nineveh.
That day whereof we keep record,
When near thy city-gates the Lord
Sheltered His Jonah with a gourd,
This sun, (I said) here present, pour’d
55 Even thus this shadow that I see.
This shadow has been shed the same
From sun and moon, – from lamps which came
For prayer, – from fifteen days of flame,
The last, while smouldered to a name
60 Sardanapalus’ Nineveh.
Within thy shadow, haply, once
Sennacherib has knelt, whose sons
Smote him between the altar-stones:
Or pale Semiramis her zones
65 Of gold, her incense brought to thee,
In love for grace, in war for aid: …
Ay, and who else? … till ’neath thy shade
Within his trenches newly made
Last year the Christian knelt and pray’d –
70 Not to thy strength – in Nineveh.*
Now, thou poor god, within this hall
Where the blank windows blind the wall
From pedestal to pedestal,
The kind of light shall on thee fall
75 Which London takes the day to be:
While school-foundations in the act
Of holiday, three files compact,
Shall learn to view thee as a fact
Connected with that zealous tract:
80 ‘ROME, – Babylon and Nineveh.’
Deemed they of this, those worshippers,
When, in some mythic chain of verse
Which man shall not again rehearse,
The faces of thy ministers
85 Yearned pale with bitter ecstasy?
Greece, Egypt, Rome, – did any god
Before whose feet men knelt unshod
Deem that in this unblest abode
Another scarce more unknown god
90 Should house with him, from Nineveh?
Ah! in what quarries lay the stone
From which this pillared pile has grown,
Unto man’s need how long unknown,
Since those thy temples, court and cone
95 Rose far in desert history?
Ah! what is here that does not lie
All strange to thine awakened eye?
Ah! what is here can testify
(Save that dumb presence of the sky)
100 Unto thy day and Nineveh?
Why, of those mummies in the room
Above, there might indeed have come
One out of Egypt to thy home,
An alien. Nay, but were not some
105 Of these thine own ‘antiquity?’
And now, – they and their gods and thou
All relics here together, – now
Whose profit? whether bull or cow,
Isis or Ibis, who or how,
110 Whether of Thebes or Nineveh?
The consecrated metals found,
And ivory tablets, underground,
Winged teraphim and creatures crown’d,
When air and daylight filled the mound,
115 Fell into dust immediately.
And even as these, the images
Of awe and worship, – even as these, –
So, smitten with the sun’s increase,
Her glory mouldered and did cease
120 From immemorial Nineveh.
The day her builders made their halt,
Those cities of the lake of salt
Stood firmly ’stablished without fault,
Made proud with pillars of basalt,
125 With sardonyx and porphyry.
The day that Jonah bore abroad
To Nineveh the voice of God,
A brackish lake lay in his road,
Where erst Pride fixed her sure abode,
130 As then in royal Nineveh.
The day when he, Pride’s lord and Man’s,
Showed all the kingdoms at a glance
To Him before whose countenance
The years recede, the years advance,
135 And said, Fall down and worship me: –
’Mid all the pomp beneath that look,
Then stirred there, haply, some rebuke,
Where to the wind the Salt Pools shook,
And in those tracts, of life forsook,
140 That knew thee not, O Nineveh!
Delicate harlot! On thy throne
Thou with a world beneath thee prone
In state for ages sat’st alone;
And needs were years and lustres flown
145 Ere strength of man could vanquish thee:
Whom even thy victor foes must bring,
Still royal, among maids that sing
As with doves’ voices, taboring
Upon their breasts, unto the King, –
150 A kingly conquest, Nineveh!
… Here woke my thought. The wind’s slow sway
Had waxed; and like the human play
Of scorn that smiling spreads away,
The sunshine shivered off the day:
155 The callous wind, it seemed to me,
Swept up the shadow from the ground:
And pale as whom the Fates astound,
The god forlorn stood winged and crown’d:
Within I knew the cry lay bound.
160 Of the dumb soul of Nineveh.
And as I turned, my sense half shut
Still saw the crowds of kerb and rut
Go past as marshalled to the strut
Of ranks in gypsum quaintly cut.
165 It seemed in one same pageantry
They followed forms which had been erst;
To pass, till on my sight should burst
That future of the best or worst
When some may question which was first,
170 Of London or of Nineveh.
For as that Bull-god once did stand
And watched the burial-clouds of sand,
Till these at last without a hand
Rose o’er his eyes, another land,
175 And blinded him with destiny: –
So may he stand again; till now,
In ships of unknown sail and prow,
Some tribe of the Australian plough
Bear him afar, – a relic now
180 Of London, not of Nineveh!
Or it may chance indeed that when
Man’s age is hoary among men, –
His centuries threescore and ten, –
His furthest childhood shall seem then
185 More clear than later times may be:
Who, finding in this desert place
This form, shall hold us for some race
That walked not in Christ’s lowly ways,
But bowed its pride and vowed its praise
190 Unto the God of Nineveh.
The smile rose first, – anon drew nigh
The thought: … Those heavy wings spread high
So sure of flight, which do not fly;
That set gaze never on the sky;
195 Those scriptured flanks it cannot see;
Its crown, a brow-contracting load;
Its planted feet which trust the sod: …
&n
bsp; (So grew the image as I trod:)
O Nineveh, was this thy God, –
200 Thine also, mighty Nineveh?
Jenny
‘Vengeance of Jenny’s case! Fie on her! Never name her, child!’ – Mrs Quickly
Lazy laughing languid Jenny,
Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea,
Whose head upon my knee to-night
Rests for a while, as if grown light
5 With all our dances and the sound
To which the wild tunes spun you round:
Fair Jenny mine, the thoughtless queen
Of kisses which the blush between
Could hardly make much daintier;
10 Whose eyes are as blue skies, whose hair
Is countless gold incomparable:
Fresh flower, scarce touched with signs that tell
Of Love’s exuberant hotbed: – Nay,
Poor flower left torn since yesterday
15 Until to-morrow leave you bare;
Poor handful of bright spring-water
Flung in the whirlpool’s shrieking face;
Poor shameful Jenny, full of grace
Thus with your head upon my knee; –
20 Whose person or whose purse may be
The lodestar of your reverie?
This room of yours, my Jenny, looks
A change from mine so full of books,
Whose serried ranks hold fast, forsooth,
25 So many captive hours of youth, –
The hours they thieve from day and night
To make one’s cherished work come right,
And leave it wrong for all their theft,
Even as to-night my work was left:
30 Until I vowed that since my brain
And eyes of dancing seemed so fain,
My feet should have some dancing too: –
And thus it was I met with you.
Well, I suppose ’twas hard to part,
35 For here I am. And now, sweetheart,
You seem too tired to get to bed.
It was a careless life I led
When rooms like this were scarce so strange
Not long ago. What breeds the change, –
40 The many aims or the few years?
Because to-night it all appears
Something I do not know again.
The cloud’s not danced out of my brain, –
The cloud that made it turn and swim
45 While hour by hour the books grew dim.
Why, Jenny, as I watch you there, –
For all your wealth of loosened hair,
Your silk ungirdled and unlac’d
And warm sweets open to the waist,
50 All golden in the lamplight’s gleam, –