Wrench'd from the heathen's hand, one moment bow'd90In the bright Christian's grasp the gonfanon;Then from a dumb amaze the countless crowdSwept,—and the night as with a sudden sunFlash'd with avenging steel; life gain'd its goal,And calm from lips proud-smiling went the soul!Leapt from his selle, the king-born Lancelot;91Leapt from the selle each paladin and knight;In one mute sign that where upon that spotThe foot was planted, God forbade the flight:There shall the Father-land avenge the son,Or heap all Cymri round the grave of one.Then, well-nigh side by side—broad floated forth92The Cymrian Dragon and the Teuton Steed,The rival Powers that struggle for the North;The gory Idol—the chivalric Creed;Odin's and Christ's confronting flags unfurl'd,As which should save and which destroy a world!Then fought those Cymrian men, as if on each93All Cymri set its last undaunted hope;Through the steel bulwarks round them yawns the breach;Vistas to freedom bright'ning onwards ope;Crida in vain leads band on slaughter'd band,In vain revived falls Harold's ruthless hand;As on the bull the pard will fearless bound,94But if the horn that meets the spring should gore,Awed with fierce pain, slinks snarling from the ground;—So baffled in their midmost rush, beforeThe abrupt assault, the savage hosts give way;—Yet will not own that man could thus dismay."Some God more mighty than Walhalla's king,95Strikes in yon arms"—the sullen murmurs run,And fast and faster drives the Dragon wing—And shrinks and cowers the ghastly gonfanon;They flag—they falter—lo, the Saxons fly!—Lone rests the Dragon in the dawning sky!Lone rests the Dragon with its wings outspread,96Where the pale hoofs one holy ground had trod,There the hush'd victors round the martyr'd dead,As round an altar, lift their hearts to God.Calm is that brow as when a host it braved,And smiles that lip as on the land it saved!Pardon, ye shrouded and mysterious Powers,97Ye far-off shadows from the spirit-clime,If for that realm untrodden by the Hours,Awhile we leave this lazar-house of Time;With Song remounting to those native airsOf which, though exiled, still we are the heirs.Up from the clay and towards the Seraphim,98The Immortal, men called Caradoc, arose.Round the freed captive whose melodious hymnHad hail'd each glimmer earth, the dungeon, knows,Spread all the aisles by angel worship trod;Blazed every altar, conscious of the God.All the illumed creation one calm shrine;99All space one rapt adoring ecstasy;All the sweet stars with their untroubled shine,Near and more near, enlarging through the sky;All opening gradual on the eternal sight,Joy after joy, the depths of their delight.Paused on the marge, Heaven's beautiful New-born,100Paused on the marge of that wide happiness;And as a lark that, poised amid the morn,Shakes from its wing the dews—the plumes of bliss,Sunn'd in the dawn of the diviner birth,Shook every sorrow memory bore from earth:Knowledge (that on the troubled waves of sense101Breaks into sparkles)—pour'd upon the soulIts lambent, clear, translucent affluence,And cold-eyed Reason loosed its hard control;Each godlike guess beheld the truth it sought;And Inspiration flash'd from what was Thought.Still'd evermore the old familiar train102That fill the frail Proscenium of our deeds,The unquiet actors on that stage, the brain,Which, in the spangles of their tinsell'd weeds,Mime the true soul's majestic royalties,And strut august in Wonder's credulous eyes;—Ambition's madness in the vain desires,103Which seek a goddess but to clasp a cloud;And human Passion that with fatal firesConsumes the shrine to which its faith is vow'd;And even Hope, that fairest nurse of Grief,Crown'd with young flowers,—a blight in every leaf;All these are still—abandon'd to the worm,104Their loud breath jars not on the calm above!Only survived, as if the single germOf the new life's ambrosian being,—love.Ah, if the bud can give such bloom to Time,What is the flower when in its native clime?Love to the radiant Stranger left alone105Of all the vanish'd hosts of memory;While broadening round, on splendour splendour shone,To earth soft-pitying dropt the veilless eye,And saw the shape, that love remember'd still,Couch'd 'mid the ruins on the moonlit hill.And, with the new-born vision, piercing all106Things past and future, view'd the fates ordain'd;The fame achieved amidst the Coral Hall;From war and winter Freedom's symbol gain'd,What rests?—the Spirit from its realm of bliss,Shot, loving down,—the guide to Happiness!Pale to the Cymrian King the Shadow came,107Its glory left it as the earth it near'd,In livid likeness as its corpse the same,Wan with its wounds the awful ghost appear'd.Life heard the voice of unembodied breath,And Sleep stood trembling side by side with Death."Come," said the Voice, "Before the Iron Gate108Which hath no egress, waiting thee, beholdUnder the shadow of the brows of Fate,The childlike playmate with the locks of gold."Then rose the mortal, following, and, before,Moved the pale shape the angel's comrade wore.Where, in the centre of those ruins grey,109Immense with blind walls columnless, a tombFor earlier kings, whose names had pass'd away,Chill'd the chill moonlight with its mass of gloom,Through doors ajar to every prying blastBy which to rot imperial dust had past.The Vision went, and went the living King;110Then strange and hard to human hear to tellBy language moulded but by thoughts that bringMaterial images, what there befel!The mortal enter'd Eld's dumb burial place,And at the threshold, vanish'd Time and Space.Yea, the hard sense of time was from the mind111Rased and annihilate;—yea, space to eyeAnd soul was presenceless? What rest behind?Thought and the Infinite! the eternal I,And its true realm the Limitless, whose brinkThought ever nears: What bounds us when we think?Yea, as the dupe in tales Arabian,112Dipp'd but his brow beneath the beaker's brim,And in that instant all the life of manFrom youth to age roll'd its slow years on him,And while the foot stood motionless—the soulSwept with deliberate wing from pole to pole,So when the man the Grave's still portals pass'd,113Closed on the substances or cheats of earth,The Immaterial, for the things it glass'd,Shaped a new vision from the matter's dearth:Before the sight that saw not through the clay,The undefined Immeasurable lay.A realm not land, nor sea, nor earth, nor sky,114Like air impalpable, and yet not air;—"Where am I led?" ask'd Life with hollow sigh."To Death, that dim phantasmalEvery where,"The Ghost replied. "Nature's circumfluent robe,Girding all life—the globule or the globe.""Yet," said the Mortal, "if indeed this breath115Profane the world that lies beyond the tomb;Where is the Spirit-race that peoples death?My soul surveys but unsubstantial gloom,A void—a blank—where none preside or dwell,Nor woe nor bliss is here, nor heaven nor hell.""And what is death?—a name for nothingness,"[8]116Replied the Dead; "the shadow of a shade;Death can retain no spirit!—woe and bliss,And heaven and hell, are for the living made;An instant flits between life's latest sighAnd life's renewal;—that it is to die!"From the brief Here to the eternal There117We can but see the swift flash of the goal;Less than the space between two waves of air,The void between existence and a soul;Wherefore, look forth; and with calm sight endureThe vague, impalpable, inane Obscure:"Lo, by the Iron Gate a giant cloud118From which emerge (the form itself unseen)Vast adamantine brows sublimely bow'dOver the dark,—relentlessly serene;Thou canst not view the hand beneath the fold,The work it weaveth none but God behold."Yet ever from this Nothingness of Death,119That hand shapes out the myriad pomps of life;Receives the matter when resign'd the breath,Calms into Law the elemental strife;On each still'd atom forms afresh bestows(No atom lost since first Creation rose)."Thus seen, what men call Nature, thou surveyest,120But matter boundeth not the still one's power;In every deed its presence thou displayest.It prompts each impulse, guides each wingèd hour,It spells the Valkyrs to their gory loom,It calls the blessing from the bane they doom:"It rides the steed, it saileth with the bark,121Wafts the first corn-seed to the herbless wild,Alike directing through the doom of dark,The age-long nation and the new-born child;Here the dread Power, yet loftier tasks await,AndNature, twofold, takes the name ofFate."Nature or Fate, Matter's material life.122Or to all spirit the spiritual guide,Alike with one harmonious being rife,Form but the whole which only names divide;Fate's crushing power, or Nature's gentle skill,Alike one Good—from one all-loving Will."While thus the Shade benign instructs the King,123Near the dark cloud the still brows bended o'er,They come: a soft wind with continuous wingSighs through the gloom and trembles through the door,"Hark to that air," the gentle Phantom said,"In each faint murmur flit unseen the dead,—"Pass through the gate, from life the life resume,124As the old impulse flies to heaven or hell."While spoke the Ghost, stood forth amidst the gloom,A lucent Image, crown'd with asphodel,The left hand bore a mirror crystal-bright,A wand star-pointed glitter'd in the right."Dost thou not know me?—me, thy second soul?"125Said the bright Image, with its low sweet voice,"I who have led thee to each noble goal,Mirror'd thy heart, and starward led thy choice?To teach thee wisdom won in Labour's school,I lured thy footsteps to the forest pool,"Show'd all the woes which wait inebriate power,126And woke the man from youth's voluptuous dream;Glass'd on the crystal—let each stainless hourObey the wand I lift unto the beam;And at the last, when yonder gates expand,Pass with thine angel, Conscience, hand in hand."Spoke the sweet Splendour, and as music dies127Into the heart that hears, subsides away;Then Arthur lifted his serenest eyesTowards the pale Shade from the celestial day,And said, "O thou in life belov'd so well,Dream I or wake?—As those last accents fell,"So fears that, spite of thy mild words, dismay'd,128Fears not of death, but that which death conceals,Vanish;—my soul that trembled at thy shade,Yearns to the far light which the shade reveals,And sees how human is the dismal errorThad hideth God, when veiling death with terror."Ev'n thus some infant, in the early spring,129Under the pale buds of the almond-tree,Shrinks from the wind that with an icy wingShakes showering down white flakes that seem to beWinter's wan sleet,—till the quick sunbeam showsThat those were blossoms which he took for snows."Thou to this last and sovran mystery130Of my mysterious travail guiding sent,Dear as thou wert, I will not mourn for thee,Thou wert not shaped for earth's hard element—Our ends, our aims, our pleasure, and our woe,Thou knew'st them all, but thine we could not know."Forgive that none were worthy of thy worth!131That none took heed, upon the plodding way,What diamond dew was on the flowers of earth,Till in thy soul drawn upward to the day.But now, why gape the wounds upon thy breast?What guilty hand dismiss'd thee to the Blest?"For blest thou art, beloved and lost? Oh, speak,132Say thou art with the Angels?"—As at nightFar off the pharos on the mountain-peakSends o'er dim ocean one pale path of light,Lost in the wideness of the weltering Sea,So, that one gleam along eternityVouchsafed, the radiant guide (its mission closed)133Fled, and the mortal stood amidst the cloud!All dark above, lo at his feet reposedBeneath the Brow's still terror o'er it bow'd,With eyes that lit the gloom through which they smiled,A Virgin shape, half woman and half child!There, bright before the iron gates of Death,134Bright in the shadow of the awful PowerWhich did as Nature give the human breath,As Fate mature the germ and nurse the flowerOf earth for heaven,—Toil's last and sweetest prize,The destined Soother lifts her fearless eyes!Through all the mortal's fame enraptured thrills135A subtler tide, a life ambrosial,Bright as the fabled element which fillsThe veins of Gods to whom in Ida's hallFlush'd Hebe brims the urn. The transport brokeThe charm that gave it—and the Dreamer woke.Was it in truth a Dream? He gazed around,136And saw the granite of sepulchral walls;Through open doors, along the desolate ground,O'er coffin dust—the morning sunbeam falls;On mouldering relics life its splendour flings,The arms of warriors and the bones of kings.—He stood within that Golgotha of old,137Whither the Phantom first had led the soul.It was no dream! lo, round those locks of goldRest the young sunbeams like an auriole;Lo, where the day, night's mystic promise keeps,And in the tomb a life of beauty sleeps!Slow to his eyes, those lids reveal their own,138And, the lips smiling even in their sigh,The Virgin woke! Oh, never yet was known,In bower or plaisaunce under summer sky,Life so enrich'd with nature's happiest bloomAs thine, thou young Aurora of the tomb!Words cannot paint thee, gentlest cynosure139Of all things lovely in that loveliest form,Souls wear—the youth of woman! brows as pureAs Memphian skies that never knew a storm;Lips with such sweetness in their honey'd deepsAs fills the rose in which a fairy sleeps;Eyes on whose tenderest azure aching hearts140Might look as to a heaven, and cease to grieve;The very blush,—as day, when it departs,Haloes in flushing, the mild cheek of eve,—Taking soft warmth in light from earth afar,Heralds no thought less holy than a star.And Arthur spoke! O ye, all noble souls,141Divine how knighthood speaks to maiden fear!Yet, is it fear which that young heart controulsAnd leaves its music voiceless on the ear?—Ye, who have felt what words can ne'er express,Say then, is fear as still as happiness?By the mute pathos of an eloquent sign,142Her rosy finger on her lip, the maidSeem'd to denote that on that coral shrineSpeech was to silence vow'd. Then from the shadeGliding—she stood beneath the golden skies,Fair as the dawn that brighten'd Paradise.And Arthur look'd, and saw the Dove no more;143Yet, by some wild and wondrous glamoury,Changed to the shape the new companion wore,His soul the missing Angel seem'd to see;And, soft and silent as the earlier guide,The soft eyes thrill, the silent footsteps glide.Through paths his yester steps had fail'd to find,144Adown the woodland slope she leads the king,—And pausing oft, she turns to look behind,As oft had turn'd the Dove upon the wing;And oft he question'd, still to find replyMute on the lip, yet struggling to the eye.Far briefer now the way, and open more145To heaven, than those his whilom steps had won;And sudden, lo! his galley's brazen proreBeams from the greenwood burnish'd in the sun;Up from the sward his watchful cruisers spring,And loud-lipp'd welcome girds with joy the King.Now plies the rapid oar, now swells the sail;146All day, and deep into the heart of night,Flies the glad bark before the favouring gale;Now Sabra's virgin waters dance in lightUnder the large full moon, on margents green,Lone with charr'd wrecks where Saxon fires have been.Here furls the sail, here rests awhile the oar,147And from the crews the Cymrians and the maidPass with mute breath upon the mournful shore;For, where yon groves the gradual hillock shade,A convent stood when Arthur left the land.God grant the shrine hath 'scaped the heathen's hand!Landing, on lifeless hearths, through roofless walls148And casement gaps, the ghost-like starbeams peer;Welcomed by night and ruin, hollow fallsThe footstep of a King!—Upon the earThe inexpressible hush of murder lay,—Wide yawn'd the doors, and not a watch dog's bay!They pass the groves, they gain the holt, and lo!149Rests of the sacred pile but one grey tower,A fort for luxury in the long-agoOf gentile gods, and Rome's voluptuous power.But far on walls yet spared, the moonbeams fell,—Far on the golden domes of Carduel!"Joy," cried the King, "behold, the land lives still!"150Then Gawaine pointed, where in lengthening lineThe Saxon watch-fires from the haunted hill(Shorn of its forest old) their blood-red shineFling over Isca, and with wrathful flushGild the vast storm-cloud of the armèd hush."Ay," said the King, "in that lull'd Massacre151Doth no ghost whisper Crida—'Sleep no more!'"Hark, where I stand, dark murder-chief, on theeI launch the doom! ye airs, that wander o'erRuins and graveless bones, to Crida's sleepBear Cymri's promise, which her king shall keep!"As thus he spoke, upon his outstretch'd arm152A light touch trembled,—turning he beheldThe maiden of the tomb; a wild alarmShone from her eyes; his own their terror spell'd.Struggling for speech, the pale lips writhed apart,And, as she clung, he heard her beating heart;While Arthur marvelling soothed the agony153Which, comprehending not, he still could share,Sudden sprang Gawaine—hark! a timorous cryPierced yon dim shadows! Arthur look'd, and whereOn artful valves revolved the stony door,A kneeling nun his knight is bending o'er.Ere the nun's fears the knightly words dispel,154As towards the spot the maid and monarch came,On Arthur's brow the slanted moonbeams fell,And the nun knew the King, and call'd his name,And clasp'd his knees, and sobb'd through joyous tears,"Once more; once more! our God his people hears!"Kin to his blood—the welcome face of one155Known as a saint throughout the Christian land,Arthur recall'd, and as a pious sonHonouring a mother—on that sacred handBent low, in murmuring—"Say, what mercy savesThee, blest survivor in this shrine of graves?"Then the nun led them through the artful door,156Mask'd in the masonry, adown a stairThat coil'd its windings to the grottoed floorOf vaulted chambers desolately fair;Wrought in the green hill, like an Oread's home,For summer heats by some soft lord of Rome,On shells, which nymphs from silver sands might cull,157On paved mosaics, and long-silenced fount,On marble waifs of the far BeautifulBy graceful spoiler garner'd from the mountOf vocal Delphi, or the Elean town,Or Sparta's rival of the violet-crown—Shone the rude cresset from the homely shrine158Of that new Power, upon whose Syrian CrossPerish'd the antique Jove! And the grave signOf the glad faith (which, for the lovely lossOf poet-gods, their own Olympus freesTo men!—our souls the new Uranides),High from the base on which of old reposed159Grape-crown'd Iacchus, spoke the Saving Woe!The place itself the sister's tale disclosed.Here, while, amidst the hamlet doom'd below,Raged the fierce Saxon—was retreat secured;Nor gnaw'd the flame where those deep vaults immured.To peasants, scatter'd through the neighbouring plains,160The secret known;—kind hands with pious careSupply such humble nurture as sustainsLives most with fast familiar; thus and thereThe patient sisters in their faith sublime,Felt God was good, and waited for His time.Yet ever when the crimes of earth and day161Slept in the starry peace, to the lone towerThe sainted abbess won her nightly way,And gazed on Carduel!—'Twas the wonted hourWhen from the opening door the Cymrian knightSaw the pale shadow steal along the light.Musing, the King the safe retreat survey'd,162And smooth'd his brow from times most anxious care;Here—from the strife secure, might rest the maidNot meet the tasks that morn must bring to share;She, while he mused, the nun's mild aspect eyed,And crept with woman's trust to woman's side."King," said the gentle saint, "from what far clime163Comes this fair stranger, that her eyes aloneAnswer our mountain tongue?"—"May happier time,"Replied the King, "her tale, her land, make known!Meanwhile, O kind recluse, receive the guestTo whom these altars seem the native rest."The sister smiled, "In sooth those looks," she said,164"Do speak a soul pure with celestial air;And in the morrow's awful hour of dreadHer heart methinks will echo to our prayer,And breathe responsive to the hymns that swellThe Christian's curse upon the infidel."But say, if truth from rumour vague and wild165To this still world the friendly peasants bring,'That grief and wrath for some lost heathen child,Urge to yon walls the Mercian's direful king?'"—"Nay," said the Cymrian, "doth ambition failWhen force needs falsehood, of the glozing tale?"And—but behold she droops, she faints, outworn166By the long wandering and the scorch of day!"Pale as a lily when the dewless morn,Parch'd in the fiery dog-star, wanes awayInto the glare of noon without a cloud,O'er the nun's breast that flower of beauty bow'd.Yet still the clasp retain'd the hand that press'd,167And breath came still, though heaved in sobbing sighs."Leave her," the sister said, "to needful rest,And to such care as woman best supplies;And may this charge a conqueror soon recall,And change the refuge to a monarch's hall!"Though found the asylum sought, with boding mind168The crowning guerdon of his mystic toilTo the kind nun the unwilling King resign'd;Nor till his step was on his mountain soilDid his large heart its lion calm regain,And o'er his soul no thought but Cymri reign.As towards the bark the friends resume their way,169Quick they resolve the conflict's hardy scheme;With half the Northmen, at the break of dayShall Gawaine sail where Sabra's broadening streamAdmits a reeded creek, and, landing there,Elude the fleet the neighbouring waters bear;Through secret paths with bush and bosk o'ergrown,170Wind round the tented hill, and win the wall;With Arthur's name arouse the leaguer'd town,Give the pent stream the cataract's rushing fall,Sweep to the camp, and on the Pagan hordeUrge all of man that yet survives the sword.Meanwhile on foot the king shall guide his band171Round to the rearward of the vast arrayWhere yet large fragments of the forest standTo shroud with darkness the avenger's way;—Thence, when least look'd for, burst upon the foe,On war's own heart direct the sudden blow;Thus, front and rear assail'd, their numbers less172(Perplex'd, distraught) avail the heathen's power.Dire was the peril, and the sole successIn the nice seizure of the season'd hour;The high-soul'd rashness of the bold emprise;The fear that smites the fiercest in surprise;Whatever worth the enchanted boons may bear,173The hero heart by which those boons were won;The stubborn strength of that supreme despair,When victory lost is all a land undone;In the Man's cause, and in the Christian's zeal,And the just God that sanctions Freedom's steel.Meanwhile, along a cavelike corridor174The stranger guest the gentle abbess led;Where the voluptuous hypocaust of yoreLeft cells for vestal dreams saint-hallowèd.Her own, austerely rude, affords the restTo which her parting kiss consigns the guest.But welcome not for rest that loneliness!175The iron lamp the imaged cross displays;And to that guide for souls, what mute distressLifts the imploring passion of its gaze?Fear like remorse—and sorrow dark as sin?Enter that mystic heart and look within!What broken gleams of memory come and go176Along the dark!—a silent starry loveLighting young Fancy's virgin waves below,But shed from thoughts that rest ensphered above!Oh, flowers whose bloom had perfumed Carmel, weaveWreathes for such love as lived in Genevieve!A May noon resteth on the forest hill;177A May noon resteth over ruins hoar;A maiden muses on the forest hill,A tomb's vast pile o'ershades the ruins hoar,With doors now open to each prying blast,Where once to rot imperial dust had pass'd;Through those dark portals glides the musing maid,178And slumber drags her down its airy deep.O wondrous trance! in Druid robes array'd,What form benignant charms the life-like sleep?What spells low-chaunted, holy-sweet, like prayerPlume the light soul, and waft it through the air?Comes a dim sense as of an angel's being,179Bathed in ambrosial dews and liquid day;Of floating wings, like heavenward instincts, freeingThrough azure solitudes a spirit's way.—An absence of all earthly thought, desire,Aim—hope, save those which love and which aspire;Each harder sense of the mere human mind180Merged into some protective prescience;Calm gladness, conscious of a charge consign'dTo the pure ward of guardian innocence;And the felt presence, in that charge, of oneWhose smile to life is as to flowers the sun.
Wrench'd from the heathen's hand, one moment bow'd90In the bright Christian's grasp the gonfanon;Then from a dumb amaze the countless crowdSwept,—and the night as with a sudden sunFlash'd with avenging steel; life gain'd its goal,And calm from lips proud-smiling went the soul!
Leapt from his selle, the king-born Lancelot;91Leapt from the selle each paladin and knight;In one mute sign that where upon that spotThe foot was planted, God forbade the flight:There shall the Father-land avenge the son,Or heap all Cymri round the grave of one.
Then, well-nigh side by side—broad floated forth92The Cymrian Dragon and the Teuton Steed,The rival Powers that struggle for the North;The gory Idol—the chivalric Creed;Odin's and Christ's confronting flags unfurl'd,As which should save and which destroy a world!
Then fought those Cymrian men, as if on each93All Cymri set its last undaunted hope;Through the steel bulwarks round them yawns the breach;Vistas to freedom bright'ning onwards ope;Crida in vain leads band on slaughter'd band,In vain revived falls Harold's ruthless hand;
As on the bull the pard will fearless bound,94But if the horn that meets the spring should gore,Awed with fierce pain, slinks snarling from the ground;—So baffled in their midmost rush, beforeThe abrupt assault, the savage hosts give way;—Yet will not own that man could thus dismay.
"Some God more mighty than Walhalla's king,95Strikes in yon arms"—the sullen murmurs run,And fast and faster drives the Dragon wing—And shrinks and cowers the ghastly gonfanon;They flag—they falter—lo, the Saxons fly!—Lone rests the Dragon in the dawning sky!
Lone rests the Dragon with its wings outspread,96Where the pale hoofs one holy ground had trod,There the hush'd victors round the martyr'd dead,As round an altar, lift their hearts to God.Calm is that brow as when a host it braved,And smiles that lip as on the land it saved!
Pardon, ye shrouded and mysterious Powers,97Ye far-off shadows from the spirit-clime,If for that realm untrodden by the Hours,Awhile we leave this lazar-house of Time;With Song remounting to those native airsOf which, though exiled, still we are the heirs.
Up from the clay and towards the Seraphim,98The Immortal, men called Caradoc, arose.Round the freed captive whose melodious hymnHad hail'd each glimmer earth, the dungeon, knows,Spread all the aisles by angel worship trod;Blazed every altar, conscious of the God.
All the illumed creation one calm shrine;99All space one rapt adoring ecstasy;All the sweet stars with their untroubled shine,Near and more near, enlarging through the sky;All opening gradual on the eternal sight,Joy after joy, the depths of their delight.
Paused on the marge, Heaven's beautiful New-born,100Paused on the marge of that wide happiness;And as a lark that, poised amid the morn,Shakes from its wing the dews—the plumes of bliss,Sunn'd in the dawn of the diviner birth,Shook every sorrow memory bore from earth:
Knowledge (that on the troubled waves of sense101Breaks into sparkles)—pour'd upon the soulIts lambent, clear, translucent affluence,And cold-eyed Reason loosed its hard control;Each godlike guess beheld the truth it sought;And Inspiration flash'd from what was Thought.
Still'd evermore the old familiar train102That fill the frail Proscenium of our deeds,The unquiet actors on that stage, the brain,Which, in the spangles of their tinsell'd weeds,Mime the true soul's majestic royalties,And strut august in Wonder's credulous eyes;—
Ambition's madness in the vain desires,103Which seek a goddess but to clasp a cloud;And human Passion that with fatal firesConsumes the shrine to which its faith is vow'd;And even Hope, that fairest nurse of Grief,Crown'd with young flowers,—a blight in every leaf;
All these are still—abandon'd to the worm,104Their loud breath jars not on the calm above!Only survived, as if the single germOf the new life's ambrosian being,—love.Ah, if the bud can give such bloom to Time,What is the flower when in its native clime?
Love to the radiant Stranger left alone105Of all the vanish'd hosts of memory;While broadening round, on splendour splendour shone,To earth soft-pitying dropt the veilless eye,And saw the shape, that love remember'd still,Couch'd 'mid the ruins on the moonlit hill.
And, with the new-born vision, piercing all106Things past and future, view'd the fates ordain'd;The fame achieved amidst the Coral Hall;From war and winter Freedom's symbol gain'd,What rests?—the Spirit from its realm of bliss,Shot, loving down,—the guide to Happiness!
Pale to the Cymrian King the Shadow came,107Its glory left it as the earth it near'd,In livid likeness as its corpse the same,Wan with its wounds the awful ghost appear'd.Life heard the voice of unembodied breath,And Sleep stood trembling side by side with Death.
"Come," said the Voice, "Before the Iron Gate108Which hath no egress, waiting thee, beholdUnder the shadow of the brows of Fate,The childlike playmate with the locks of gold."Then rose the mortal, following, and, before,Moved the pale shape the angel's comrade wore.
Where, in the centre of those ruins grey,109Immense with blind walls columnless, a tombFor earlier kings, whose names had pass'd away,Chill'd the chill moonlight with its mass of gloom,Through doors ajar to every prying blastBy which to rot imperial dust had past.
The Vision went, and went the living King;110Then strange and hard to human hear to tellBy language moulded but by thoughts that bringMaterial images, what there befel!The mortal enter'd Eld's dumb burial place,And at the threshold, vanish'd Time and Space.
Yea, the hard sense of time was from the mind111Rased and annihilate;—yea, space to eyeAnd soul was presenceless? What rest behind?Thought and the Infinite! the eternal I,And its true realm the Limitless, whose brinkThought ever nears: What bounds us when we think?
Yea, as the dupe in tales Arabian,112Dipp'd but his brow beneath the beaker's brim,And in that instant all the life of manFrom youth to age roll'd its slow years on him,And while the foot stood motionless—the soulSwept with deliberate wing from pole to pole,
So when the man the Grave's still portals pass'd,113Closed on the substances or cheats of earth,The Immaterial, for the things it glass'd,Shaped a new vision from the matter's dearth:Before the sight that saw not through the clay,The undefined Immeasurable lay.
A realm not land, nor sea, nor earth, nor sky,114Like air impalpable, and yet not air;—"Where am I led?" ask'd Life with hollow sigh."To Death, that dim phantasmalEvery where,"The Ghost replied. "Nature's circumfluent robe,Girding all life—the globule or the globe."
"Yet," said the Mortal, "if indeed this breath115Profane the world that lies beyond the tomb;Where is the Spirit-race that peoples death?My soul surveys but unsubstantial gloom,A void—a blank—where none preside or dwell,Nor woe nor bliss is here, nor heaven nor hell."
"And what is death?—a name for nothingness,"[8]116Replied the Dead; "the shadow of a shade;Death can retain no spirit!—woe and bliss,And heaven and hell, are for the living made;An instant flits between life's latest sighAnd life's renewal;—that it is to die!
"From the brief Here to the eternal There117We can but see the swift flash of the goal;Less than the space between two waves of air,The void between existence and a soul;Wherefore, look forth; and with calm sight endureThe vague, impalpable, inane Obscure:
"Lo, by the Iron Gate a giant cloud118From which emerge (the form itself unseen)Vast adamantine brows sublimely bow'dOver the dark,—relentlessly serene;Thou canst not view the hand beneath the fold,The work it weaveth none but God behold.
"Yet ever from this Nothingness of Death,119That hand shapes out the myriad pomps of life;Receives the matter when resign'd the breath,Calms into Law the elemental strife;On each still'd atom forms afresh bestows(No atom lost since first Creation rose).
"Thus seen, what men call Nature, thou surveyest,120But matter boundeth not the still one's power;In every deed its presence thou displayest.It prompts each impulse, guides each wingèd hour,It spells the Valkyrs to their gory loom,It calls the blessing from the bane they doom:
"It rides the steed, it saileth with the bark,121Wafts the first corn-seed to the herbless wild,Alike directing through the doom of dark,The age-long nation and the new-born child;Here the dread Power, yet loftier tasks await,AndNature, twofold, takes the name ofFate.
"Nature or Fate, Matter's material life.122Or to all spirit the spiritual guide,Alike with one harmonious being rife,Form but the whole which only names divide;Fate's crushing power, or Nature's gentle skill,Alike one Good—from one all-loving Will."
While thus the Shade benign instructs the King,123Near the dark cloud the still brows bended o'er,They come: a soft wind with continuous wingSighs through the gloom and trembles through the door,"Hark to that air," the gentle Phantom said,"In each faint murmur flit unseen the dead,—
"Pass through the gate, from life the life resume,124As the old impulse flies to heaven or hell."While spoke the Ghost, stood forth amidst the gloom,A lucent Image, crown'd with asphodel,The left hand bore a mirror crystal-bright,A wand star-pointed glitter'd in the right.
"Dost thou not know me?—me, thy second soul?"125Said the bright Image, with its low sweet voice,"I who have led thee to each noble goal,Mirror'd thy heart, and starward led thy choice?To teach thee wisdom won in Labour's school,I lured thy footsteps to the forest pool,
"Show'd all the woes which wait inebriate power,126And woke the man from youth's voluptuous dream;Glass'd on the crystal—let each stainless hourObey the wand I lift unto the beam;And at the last, when yonder gates expand,Pass with thine angel, Conscience, hand in hand."
Spoke the sweet Splendour, and as music dies127Into the heart that hears, subsides away;Then Arthur lifted his serenest eyesTowards the pale Shade from the celestial day,And said, "O thou in life belov'd so well,Dream I or wake?—As those last accents fell,
"So fears that, spite of thy mild words, dismay'd,128Fears not of death, but that which death conceals,Vanish;—my soul that trembled at thy shade,Yearns to the far light which the shade reveals,And sees how human is the dismal errorThad hideth God, when veiling death with terror.
"Ev'n thus some infant, in the early spring,129Under the pale buds of the almond-tree,Shrinks from the wind that with an icy wingShakes showering down white flakes that seem to beWinter's wan sleet,—till the quick sunbeam showsThat those were blossoms which he took for snows.
"Thou to this last and sovran mystery130Of my mysterious travail guiding sent,Dear as thou wert, I will not mourn for thee,Thou wert not shaped for earth's hard element—Our ends, our aims, our pleasure, and our woe,Thou knew'st them all, but thine we could not know.
"Forgive that none were worthy of thy worth!131That none took heed, upon the plodding way,What diamond dew was on the flowers of earth,Till in thy soul drawn upward to the day.But now, why gape the wounds upon thy breast?What guilty hand dismiss'd thee to the Blest?
"For blest thou art, beloved and lost? Oh, speak,132Say thou art with the Angels?"—As at nightFar off the pharos on the mountain-peakSends o'er dim ocean one pale path of light,Lost in the wideness of the weltering Sea,So, that one gleam along eternity
Vouchsafed, the radiant guide (its mission closed)133Fled, and the mortal stood amidst the cloud!All dark above, lo at his feet reposedBeneath the Brow's still terror o'er it bow'd,With eyes that lit the gloom through which they smiled,A Virgin shape, half woman and half child!
There, bright before the iron gates of Death,134Bright in the shadow of the awful PowerWhich did as Nature give the human breath,As Fate mature the germ and nurse the flowerOf earth for heaven,—Toil's last and sweetest prize,The destined Soother lifts her fearless eyes!
Through all the mortal's fame enraptured thrills135A subtler tide, a life ambrosial,Bright as the fabled element which fillsThe veins of Gods to whom in Ida's hallFlush'd Hebe brims the urn. The transport brokeThe charm that gave it—and the Dreamer woke.
Was it in truth a Dream? He gazed around,136And saw the granite of sepulchral walls;Through open doors, along the desolate ground,O'er coffin dust—the morning sunbeam falls;On mouldering relics life its splendour flings,The arms of warriors and the bones of kings.—
He stood within that Golgotha of old,137Whither the Phantom first had led the soul.It was no dream! lo, round those locks of goldRest the young sunbeams like an auriole;Lo, where the day, night's mystic promise keeps,And in the tomb a life of beauty sleeps!
Slow to his eyes, those lids reveal their own,138And, the lips smiling even in their sigh,The Virgin woke! Oh, never yet was known,In bower or plaisaunce under summer sky,Life so enrich'd with nature's happiest bloomAs thine, thou young Aurora of the tomb!
Words cannot paint thee, gentlest cynosure139Of all things lovely in that loveliest form,Souls wear—the youth of woman! brows as pureAs Memphian skies that never knew a storm;Lips with such sweetness in their honey'd deepsAs fills the rose in which a fairy sleeps;
Eyes on whose tenderest azure aching hearts140Might look as to a heaven, and cease to grieve;The very blush,—as day, when it departs,Haloes in flushing, the mild cheek of eve,—Taking soft warmth in light from earth afar,Heralds no thought less holy than a star.
And Arthur spoke! O ye, all noble souls,141Divine how knighthood speaks to maiden fear!Yet, is it fear which that young heart controulsAnd leaves its music voiceless on the ear?—Ye, who have felt what words can ne'er express,Say then, is fear as still as happiness?
By the mute pathos of an eloquent sign,142Her rosy finger on her lip, the maidSeem'd to denote that on that coral shrineSpeech was to silence vow'd. Then from the shadeGliding—she stood beneath the golden skies,Fair as the dawn that brighten'd Paradise.
And Arthur look'd, and saw the Dove no more;143Yet, by some wild and wondrous glamoury,Changed to the shape the new companion wore,His soul the missing Angel seem'd to see;And, soft and silent as the earlier guide,The soft eyes thrill, the silent footsteps glide.
Through paths his yester steps had fail'd to find,144Adown the woodland slope she leads the king,—And pausing oft, she turns to look behind,As oft had turn'd the Dove upon the wing;And oft he question'd, still to find replyMute on the lip, yet struggling to the eye.
Far briefer now the way, and open more145To heaven, than those his whilom steps had won;And sudden, lo! his galley's brazen proreBeams from the greenwood burnish'd in the sun;Up from the sward his watchful cruisers spring,And loud-lipp'd welcome girds with joy the King.
Now plies the rapid oar, now swells the sail;146All day, and deep into the heart of night,Flies the glad bark before the favouring gale;Now Sabra's virgin waters dance in lightUnder the large full moon, on margents green,Lone with charr'd wrecks where Saxon fires have been.
Here furls the sail, here rests awhile the oar,147And from the crews the Cymrians and the maidPass with mute breath upon the mournful shore;For, where yon groves the gradual hillock shade,A convent stood when Arthur left the land.God grant the shrine hath 'scaped the heathen's hand!
Landing, on lifeless hearths, through roofless walls148And casement gaps, the ghost-like starbeams peer;Welcomed by night and ruin, hollow fallsThe footstep of a King!—Upon the earThe inexpressible hush of murder lay,—Wide yawn'd the doors, and not a watch dog's bay!
They pass the groves, they gain the holt, and lo!149Rests of the sacred pile but one grey tower,A fort for luxury in the long-agoOf gentile gods, and Rome's voluptuous power.But far on walls yet spared, the moonbeams fell,—Far on the golden domes of Carduel!
"Joy," cried the King, "behold, the land lives still!"150Then Gawaine pointed, where in lengthening lineThe Saxon watch-fires from the haunted hill(Shorn of its forest old) their blood-red shineFling over Isca, and with wrathful flushGild the vast storm-cloud of the armèd hush.
"Ay," said the King, "in that lull'd Massacre151Doth no ghost whisper Crida—'Sleep no more!'"Hark, where I stand, dark murder-chief, on theeI launch the doom! ye airs, that wander o'erRuins and graveless bones, to Crida's sleepBear Cymri's promise, which her king shall keep!"
As thus he spoke, upon his outstretch'd arm152A light touch trembled,—turning he beheldThe maiden of the tomb; a wild alarmShone from her eyes; his own their terror spell'd.Struggling for speech, the pale lips writhed apart,And, as she clung, he heard her beating heart;
While Arthur marvelling soothed the agony153Which, comprehending not, he still could share,Sudden sprang Gawaine—hark! a timorous cryPierced yon dim shadows! Arthur look'd, and whereOn artful valves revolved the stony door,A kneeling nun his knight is bending o'er.
Ere the nun's fears the knightly words dispel,154As towards the spot the maid and monarch came,On Arthur's brow the slanted moonbeams fell,And the nun knew the King, and call'd his name,And clasp'd his knees, and sobb'd through joyous tears,"Once more; once more! our God his people hears!"
Kin to his blood—the welcome face of one155Known as a saint throughout the Christian land,Arthur recall'd, and as a pious sonHonouring a mother—on that sacred handBent low, in murmuring—"Say, what mercy savesThee, blest survivor in this shrine of graves?"
Then the nun led them through the artful door,156Mask'd in the masonry, adown a stairThat coil'd its windings to the grottoed floorOf vaulted chambers desolately fair;Wrought in the green hill, like an Oread's home,For summer heats by some soft lord of Rome,
On shells, which nymphs from silver sands might cull,157On paved mosaics, and long-silenced fount,On marble waifs of the far BeautifulBy graceful spoiler garner'd from the mountOf vocal Delphi, or the Elean town,Or Sparta's rival of the violet-crown—
Shone the rude cresset from the homely shrine158Of that new Power, upon whose Syrian CrossPerish'd the antique Jove! And the grave signOf the glad faith (which, for the lovely lossOf poet-gods, their own Olympus freesTo men!—our souls the new Uranides),
High from the base on which of old reposed159Grape-crown'd Iacchus, spoke the Saving Woe!The place itself the sister's tale disclosed.Here, while, amidst the hamlet doom'd below,Raged the fierce Saxon—was retreat secured;Nor gnaw'd the flame where those deep vaults immured.
To peasants, scatter'd through the neighbouring plains,160The secret known;—kind hands with pious careSupply such humble nurture as sustainsLives most with fast familiar; thus and thereThe patient sisters in their faith sublime,Felt God was good, and waited for His time.
Yet ever when the crimes of earth and day161Slept in the starry peace, to the lone towerThe sainted abbess won her nightly way,And gazed on Carduel!—'Twas the wonted hourWhen from the opening door the Cymrian knightSaw the pale shadow steal along the light.
Musing, the King the safe retreat survey'd,162And smooth'd his brow from times most anxious care;Here—from the strife secure, might rest the maidNot meet the tasks that morn must bring to share;She, while he mused, the nun's mild aspect eyed,And crept with woman's trust to woman's side.
"King," said the gentle saint, "from what far clime163Comes this fair stranger, that her eyes aloneAnswer our mountain tongue?"—"May happier time,"Replied the King, "her tale, her land, make known!Meanwhile, O kind recluse, receive the guestTo whom these altars seem the native rest."
The sister smiled, "In sooth those looks," she said,164"Do speak a soul pure with celestial air;And in the morrow's awful hour of dreadHer heart methinks will echo to our prayer,And breathe responsive to the hymns that swellThe Christian's curse upon the infidel.
"But say, if truth from rumour vague and wild165To this still world the friendly peasants bring,'That grief and wrath for some lost heathen child,Urge to yon walls the Mercian's direful king?'"—"Nay," said the Cymrian, "doth ambition failWhen force needs falsehood, of the glozing tale?
"And—but behold she droops, she faints, outworn166By the long wandering and the scorch of day!"Pale as a lily when the dewless morn,Parch'd in the fiery dog-star, wanes awayInto the glare of noon without a cloud,O'er the nun's breast that flower of beauty bow'd.
Yet still the clasp retain'd the hand that press'd,167And breath came still, though heaved in sobbing sighs."Leave her," the sister said, "to needful rest,And to such care as woman best supplies;And may this charge a conqueror soon recall,And change the refuge to a monarch's hall!"
Though found the asylum sought, with boding mind168The crowning guerdon of his mystic toilTo the kind nun the unwilling King resign'd;Nor till his step was on his mountain soilDid his large heart its lion calm regain,And o'er his soul no thought but Cymri reign.
As towards the bark the friends resume their way,169Quick they resolve the conflict's hardy scheme;With half the Northmen, at the break of dayShall Gawaine sail where Sabra's broadening streamAdmits a reeded creek, and, landing there,Elude the fleet the neighbouring waters bear;
Through secret paths with bush and bosk o'ergrown,170Wind round the tented hill, and win the wall;With Arthur's name arouse the leaguer'd town,Give the pent stream the cataract's rushing fall,Sweep to the camp, and on the Pagan hordeUrge all of man that yet survives the sword.
Meanwhile on foot the king shall guide his band171Round to the rearward of the vast arrayWhere yet large fragments of the forest standTo shroud with darkness the avenger's way;—Thence, when least look'd for, burst upon the foe,On war's own heart direct the sudden blow;
Thus, front and rear assail'd, their numbers less172(Perplex'd, distraught) avail the heathen's power.Dire was the peril, and the sole successIn the nice seizure of the season'd hour;The high-soul'd rashness of the bold emprise;The fear that smites the fiercest in surprise;
Whatever worth the enchanted boons may bear,173The hero heart by which those boons were won;The stubborn strength of that supreme despair,When victory lost is all a land undone;In the Man's cause, and in the Christian's zeal,And the just God that sanctions Freedom's steel.
Meanwhile, along a cavelike corridor174The stranger guest the gentle abbess led;Where the voluptuous hypocaust of yoreLeft cells for vestal dreams saint-hallowèd.Her own, austerely rude, affords the restTo which her parting kiss consigns the guest.
But welcome not for rest that loneliness!175The iron lamp the imaged cross displays;And to that guide for souls, what mute distressLifts the imploring passion of its gaze?Fear like remorse—and sorrow dark as sin?Enter that mystic heart and look within!
What broken gleams of memory come and go176Along the dark!—a silent starry loveLighting young Fancy's virgin waves below,But shed from thoughts that rest ensphered above!Oh, flowers whose bloom had perfumed Carmel, weaveWreathes for such love as lived in Genevieve!
A May noon resteth on the forest hill;177A May noon resteth over ruins hoar;A maiden muses on the forest hill,A tomb's vast pile o'ershades the ruins hoar,With doors now open to each prying blast,Where once to rot imperial dust had pass'd;
Through those dark portals glides the musing maid,178And slumber drags her down its airy deep.O wondrous trance! in Druid robes array'd,What form benignant charms the life-like sleep?What spells low-chaunted, holy-sweet, like prayerPlume the light soul, and waft it through the air?
Comes a dim sense as of an angel's being,179Bathed in ambrosial dews and liquid day;Of floating wings, like heavenward instincts, freeingThrough azure solitudes a spirit's way.—An absence of all earthly thought, desire,Aim—hope, save those which love and which aspire;
Each harder sense of the mere human mind180Merged into some protective prescience;Calm gladness, conscious of a charge consign'dTo the pure ward of guardian innocence;And the felt presence, in that charge, of oneWhose smile to life is as to flowers the sun.