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Red Cotton Night-Cap Country 
 
 OR 
 
 (L/urf mitr Sofocts 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 LONDON 
 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 1873 
 
 [The right of Translation is reserved} 
 
To 
 
 Miss Thackeray 
 
> 
 
 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 I 
 And so, here happily we meet, fair friend ! 
 Again once more, as if the years rolled back 
 And this our meeting-place were just that Rome 
 Out in the champaign, say, o'er-rioted 
 By verdure, ravage, and gay winds that war 
 Against strong sunshine settled to his sleep ; 
 
 B 
 
RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 OR 
 
 TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 I 
 
 And so, here happily we meet, fair friend ! 
 Again once more, as if the years rolled back 
 And this our meeting-place were just that Rome 
 Out in the champaign, say, o'er-rioted 
 By verdure, ravage, and gay winds that war 
 Against strong sunshine settled to his sleep ; 
 
 B 
 
2 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Or on the Paris Boulevard, might it prove, 
 
 You and I came together saunteringly, 
 
 Bound for some shop-front in the Place Vendome — 
 
 Gold-smithy and Golconda mine, that makes 
 
 " The Firm-Miranda " blazed about the world — 
 
 Or, what if it were London, where my toe 
 
 Trespassed upon your flounce ? " Small blame," you smile, 
 
 Seeing the Stair-case Party in the Square 
 
 Was Small and Early, and you broke no rib. 
 
 Even as we met where we have met so oft, 
 Now meet we on this unpretending beach 
 Below the little village : little, ay ! 
 But pleasant, may my gratitude subjoin ? 
 Meek, hitherto un-Murrayed bathing-place, 
 
 Best loved of sea-coast-nook-ful Normandy ! 
 
 ■ 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 That, just behind you, is mine own hired house : 
 
 With right of path-way through the field in front, 
 
 No prejudice to all its growth unsheaved 
 
 Of emerald luzern bursting into blue. 
 
 Be sure I keep the path that hugs the wall,. 
 
 Of mornings, as I pad from door to gate ! 
 
 Yon yellow — what if not wild-mustard flower ?— 
 
 Of that, my naked sole makes lawful prize, 
 
 Bruising the acrid aromatics out, 
 
 Till, what they preface, good salt savours sting 
 
 From, first, the sifted sands, then sands in slab, 
 
 Smooth save for pipy wreath-work of the worm : 
 
 (Granite and muscle-shell are ground alike 
 
 To glittering paste, — the live worm troubles yet.) 
 
 Then, dry and moist, the varech limit-line, 
 
 Burnt cinder-black, with brown uncrumpled swathe 
 
RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Of berried softness, sea-swoln thrice its size ; 
 
 And, lo, the wave protrudes a lip at last, 
 
 And flecks my foot with froth, nor tempts in vain. 
 
 Such is Saint-Rambert, wilder very much 
 Than Joyeux, that famed Joyous-Gard of yours, 
 Some five miles farther down ; much homelier too- 
 Right for me, — right for you the fine and fair ! 
 Only, I could endure a transfer — wrought 
 By angels famed still, through our countryside, 
 For weights they fetched and carried in old time 
 When nothing like the need was — transfer, just 
 Of Joyeux church, exchanged for yonder prig, 
 Our brand-new stone cream-coloured masterpiece. 
 
 Well — and you know, and not since this one year, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 The quiet seaside country ? So do I : 
 
 And like it, in a manner, just because 
 
 Nothing is prominently likeable 
 
 To vulgar eye without a soul behind, 
 
 Which, breaking surface, brings before the ball 
 
 Of sight, a beauty buried everywhere.' 
 
 If we have souls, know how to see and use, 
 
 One place performs, like any other place, 
 
 The proper service every place on earth 
 
 Was framed to furnish man with : serves alike 
 
 To give him note that, through the place he sees, 
 
 A place is signified he never saw, 
 
 But, if he lack not soul, may learn to know. 
 
 Earth's ugliest walled and ceiled imprisonment 
 
 May suffer, through its single rent in roof, 
 
 Admittance of a cataract of light 
 
RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Beyond attainment through earth's palace-panes 
 
 Pinholed athwart their windowed filagree 
 
 By twinklings sobered from the sun outside. 
 
 Doubtless the High Street of our village here 
 
 Imposes hardly as Rome's Corso could : 
 
 And our projected race for sailing-boats 
 
 Next Sunday, when we celebrate our Saint, 
 
 Falls very short of that attractiveness, 
 
 That artistry in festive spectacle, 
 
 Paris ensures you when she welcomes back 
 
 (When shall it be ?) the Assembly from Versailles ; 
 
 While the best fashion and intelligence 
 
 Collected at the counter of our Mayor 
 
 (Dry goods he deals in, grocery beside) 
 
 What time the post-bag brings the news from Vire,— 
 
 I fear me much, it scarce would hold its own, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 That circle, that assorted sense and wit, 
 With Five o'clock Tea in a house we know. 
 
 Still, 'tis the check that gives the leap its lift. 
 The nullity of cultivated souls, 
 Even advantaged by their news from Vire, 
 Only conduces to enforce the truth 
 That, thirty paces off, this natural blue 
 Broods o'er a bag of secrets, all unbroached, 
 Beneath the bosom of the placid deep, 
 Since first the Post Director sealed them safe ; 
 And formidable I perceive this fact — 
 Little Saint-Rambert touches the great sea. 
 From London, Paris, Rome, where men are men, 
 Not mice, and mice not Mayors presumably, 
 Thought scarce may leap so fast, alight so far. 
 
RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 But this is a pretence, you understand, 
 
 Disparagement in play, to parry thrust 
 
 Of possible objector : nullity 
 
 And ugliness, the taunt be his, not mine 
 
 Nor yours, — I think we know the world too well ! 
 
 Did you walk hither, jog it by the plain, 
 
 Or jaunt it by the highway, braving bruise 
 
 From springless and uncushioned vehicle ? 
 
 Much, was there not, in place and people both, 
 
 To lend an eye to ? and what eye like yours — 
 
 The learned eye is still the loving one ! 
 
 Our land ; its quietude, productiveness, 
 
 Its length and breadth of grain-crop, meadow-ground, 
 
 Its orchards in the pasture, farms a-field 
 
 And hamlets on the road-edge, nought you missed 
 
 Of one and all the sweet rusticities ! 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 From stalwart strider by the waggon -side, 
 Brightening the acre with his purple blouse, 
 To those dark-featured comely women-folk, 
 Healthy and tall, at work, and work indeed, 
 On every cottage door- step, plying brisk 
 Bobbins that bob you ladies out such lace ! 
 Oh, you observed ! and how that nimble play 
 Of finger formed the sole exception, bobbed 
 The one disturbance to the peace of things, 
 Where nobody esteems it worth his while, 
 If time upon the clock-face goes asleep, 
 To give the rusted hands a helpful push. 
 Nobody lifts an energetic thumb 
 And index to remove some dead and gone 
 Notice which, posted on the barn, repeats 
 For truth what two years' passage made a lie, 
 
RED COTTON NIGHTCAP COUNTRY 
 
 Still is for sale, next June, that same chateau 
 With all its immobilities, — were sold 
 Duly next June behind the last but last ; 
 And, woe's me, still placards the Emperor 
 His confidence in war he means to wage, 
 God aiding and the rural populace. 
 No : rain and wind must rub the rags away 
 And let the lazy land untroubled snore. 
 
 Ah, in good truth ? and did the drowsihead 
 So suit, so soothe the learned loving eye, 
 That you were minded to confer a crown, 
 (Does not the poppy boast such?) call the land 
 By one slow hither-thither stretching, fast 
 Subsiding-into-slumber sort of name, 
 Symbolic of the place and people too, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS u 
 
 " White Cotton Night-cap Country ? " Excellent ! 
 
 For they do, all, dear women young and old, 
 
 Upon the heads of them bear notably 
 
 This badge of soul and body in repose ; 
 
 Nor its fine thimble fits the acorn-top, 
 
 Keeps woolly ward above that oval brown, 
 
 Its placid feature, more than muffier makes 
 
 A safeguard, circumvents intelligence 
 
 In — what shall evermore be named and famed, 
 
 If happy nomenclature aught avail, 
 
 " White Cotton Night-cap Country" 
 
 Do I hear — 
 Oh, better, very best of all the news — 
 You mean to catch and cage the winged word, 
 And make it breed and multiply at home 
 
12 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Till Norman idlesse stock our England too ? 
 
 Normandy shown minute yet magnified 
 
 In one of those small books, the truly great, 
 
 We never know enough, yet know so well ? 
 
 How I foresee the cursive diamond-dints, — 
 
 Composite pen that plays the pencil too, — 
 
 As, touch the page and up the glamour goes, 
 
 And filmily o'er grain-crop, meadow-ground, 
 
 O'er orchard in the pasture, farm a-field 
 
 And hamlet on the road-edge, floats and forms 
 
 And falls, at lazy last of all, the Cap 
 
 That crowns the country ! we, awake outside, 
 
 Farther than ever from the imminence 
 
 Of what cool comfort, what close coverture 
 
 Your magic, deftly weaving, shall surround 
 
 The unconscious captives with. Be theirs to drowse 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 13 
 
 Trammeled, and ours to watch the trammel-trick! 
 Ours be it, as we con the book of books, 
 To wonder how is winking possible ! 
 
 All hail, " White Cotton Night-cap Country," then ! 
 And yet, as on the beach you promise book, — 
 On beach, mere razor-edge 'twixt earth and sea, 
 I stand at such a distance from the world 
 That 'tis the whole world which obtains regard, 
 Rather than any part, though part presumed 
 A perfect little province in itself, 
 When wayfare made acquaintance first therewith. 
 So standing, therefore, on this edge of things, 
 What if the backward glance I gave, return 
 Loaded with other spoils of vagrancy 
 Than I despatched it for, till I propose 
 
i 4 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 The question — puzzled by the sudden store 
 Officious fancy plumps beneath my nose — 
 " Which sort of Night-cap have you glorified ? " 
 
 You would be gracious to my ignorance : 
 
 "What other. Night- cap than the normal one?— 
 
 Old honest guardian of man's head and hair 
 
 In its elastic yet continuous, soft, 
 
 No less persisting, circumambient gripe, 
 
 Night's notice, life is respited from day ! 
 
 Its form and fashion vary, suiting so 
 
 Each seasonable want of youth and age. 
 
 In infancy, the rosy naked ball 
 
 Of brain, and that faint golden fluff it bears, 
 
 Are smothered from disaster, — nurses know 
 
 By what foam-fabric ; but when youth succeeds, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS ' 
 
 The sterling value of the article 
 Discards adornment, cap is cap henceforth 
 Unfeathered by the futile row on row. 
 Manhood strains hard a sturdy stocking-stuff 
 O'er well-deserving head and ears : the cone 
 Is tassel-tipt, commendably takes pride, 
 Announcing workday done and wages pouched, 
 And liberty obtained to sleep, nay, snore. 
 Unwise, he peradventure shall essay 
 The sweets of independency for once — 
 Waive its advantage on his wedding-night : * 
 Fool, only to resume it, night the next, 
 And never part companionship again. 
 Since, with advancing years, night's solace soon 
 Intrudes upon the daybreak dubious life, 
 Persuades it to appear the thing it is, 
 
16 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Half-sleep ; and so, encroaching more and more, 
 
 It lingers long past the abstemious meal 
 
 Of morning, and, as prompt to serve, precedes 
 
 The supper-summons, gruel grown a feast. 
 
 Finally, when the last sleep finds the eye 
 
 So tired it cannot even shut itself, 
 
 Does not a kind domestic hand unite 
 
 Friend to friend, lid from lid to part no more, 
 
 Consigned alike to that receptacle 
 
 So bleak without, so warm and white within ? 
 
 " Night-caps, night comfort of the human race : 
 
 Their usage may be growing obsolete, 
 
 Still, in the main, the institution stays. 
 
 And though yourself may possibly have lived, 
 
 And probably will die, undignified — 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 17 
 
 The Never-night-capped — more experienced folk 
 Laugh you back answer — What should Night-cap be 
 Save Night-cap pure and simple ? Sorts of such ? 
 Take cotton for the medium, cast an eye 
 This side to comfort, lambswool or the like, 
 That side to frilly cambric costliness, 
 And all between proves Night-cap proper." Add 
 " Fiddle ! " and I confess the argument. 
 
 Only, your ignoramus here again 
 Proceeds as tardily to recognise 
 Distinctions : ask him what a fiddle means, 
 And " Just a fiddle " seems the apt reply. 
 Yet, is not there, while we two pace the beach, 
 This blessed moment, at your Kensington, 
 A special Fiddle- Show and rare array 
 c 
 
RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Of all the sorts were ever set to cheek, 
 
 'Stablished on clavicle, sawn bow-hand-wise, 
 
 Or touched lute-fashion and fore-finger-plucked? 
 
 I doubt not there be duly catalogued 
 
 Achievements all and some of Italy, 
 
 Guarnerius, Straduarius, — old and new, 
 
 Augustly rude, refined to finicking, 
 
 This mammoth with his belly full of blare, 
 
 That mouse of music — inch-long silvery wheeze. 
 
 And here a specimen has effloresced 
 
 Into the scroll-head, there subsides supreme, 
 
 And with the tail-piece satisfies mankind. 
 
 Why should I speak of woods, grains, stains 
 
 and streaks, 
 The topaz varnish or the ruby gum ? 
 We preferably pause where tickets teach 
 
OR TURF AND 10WERS 19 
 
 "Over this sample would Corelli croon, 
 Grieving, by minors, like the cushat-dove, 
 Most dulcet Giga, dreamiest Saraband." 
 " From this did Paganini comb the fierce 
 Electric sparks, or to tenuity- 
 Pull forth the inmost wailing of the wire — 
 No cat-gut could swoon out so much of soul ! " 
 
 Three hundred violin-varieties 
 Exposed to public view ! And dare I doubt 
 Some future enterprise shall give the world 
 Quite as remarkable a Night-cap-show ? 
 Methinks, we, arm-in-arm, that festal day, 
 Pace the long range of relics shrined aright, 
 Framed, glazed, each cushioned curiosity, 
 And so begin to smile and to inspect : 
 
o RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 " Pope's sickly head-sustainment, damped with dews 
 
 Wrung from die all-unfair fight — such a frame — 
 
 Though doctor and the devil helped their best — 
 
 Fought such a world that, waiving doctor's help, 
 
 Had the mean devil at its service too ! 
 
 Voltaire's imperial velvet ! Hogarth eyed 
 
 The thumb-nail record of some alley-phiz, 
 
 Then chucklingly clapped yonder cosiness 
 
 On pate, and painted with true flesh and blood ! 
 
 Poor hectic Cowper's soothing sarsnet-stripe ! " 
 
 And so we profit by the catalogue, 
 
 Somehow our smile subsiding more and more, 
 
 Till we decline into . . but no ! shut eyes 
 
 And hurry past the shame uncoffined here, 
 
 The hangman's toilet ! If we needs must trench, 
 
 For science' sake which craves completeness still, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 21 
 
 On the sad confine, not the district's self, 
 
 The object that shall close review may be . . . 
 
 Well, it is French, and here are we in France : 
 
 It is historic, and we live to learn, 
 
 And try to karn by reading story-books. 
 
 It is an incident of 'Ninety-two, 
 
 And, twelve months since, the Commune had the sway. 
 
 Therefore resolve that, after all the Whites 
 
 Presented you, a solitary Red 
 
 Shall pain us both, a minute and no more ! 
 
 Do not you see poor Louis pushed to front 
 
 Of palace-window, in persuasion's name, 
 
 A spectacle above the howling mob 
 
 Who tasted, as it were, with tiger-smack, 
 
 The outstart, the first spirt of blood on brow, 
 
RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 The Phrygian symbol, the new crown of thorns, 
 The Cap of Freedom ? See the feeble mirth 
 At odds with that half-purpose to be strong 
 And merely patient under misery ! 
 And note the ejaculation, ground so hard 
 Between his teeth, that only God could hear, 
 As the lean pale proud insignificance 
 With the sharp-featured liver-worried stare 
 Out of the two grey points that did him stead 
 And passed their eagle-owner to the front 
 Better than his mob-elbowed undersize, — 
 The Corsican lieutenant commented 
 " Had I but one good regiment of my own, 
 How soon should vollies to the due amount 
 Lay stiff upon the street-flags this canaille ! 
 As for the droll there, he that plays the king 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 23 
 
 And screws out smile with a Red night-cap on, 
 He's done for ! somebody must take his place." 
 White Cotton Night-cap Country: excellent ! 
 Why not Red Cotton Night-cap Country too ? 
 
 " Why not say swans are black and blackbirds white, 
 
 Because the instances exist ? " you ask. 
 
 " Enough that white, not red, predominates, 
 
 Is normal, typical, in cleric phrase 
 
 Quod semely semper, et ubique." Here, 
 
 Applying such a name to such a land, 
 
 Especially you find inopportune, 
 
 Impertinent, my scruple whether white 
 
 Or red describes the local colour best. 
 
 " Let be," (you say) " the universe at large 
 
 Supplied us with exceptions to the rule, 
 
24 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 So manifold, they bore no passing-by, — 
 Little Saint- Rambert has conserved at least 
 The pure tradition : white from head to heel, 
 Where is a hint of the ungracious hue ? 
 See, we have traversed with hop, step and jump, 
 From heel to head, the main-street in a trice, 
 Measured the garment (help my metaphor !) 
 Not merely criticised the cap, forsooth ; 
 And were you pricked by that collecting-itch, 
 That pruriency for writing o'er your reds 
 ' Rare, rarer, rarest, not rare but unique,' — 
 The shelf, Saint- Rambert, of your cabinet, 
 Unlabelled, — virginal, no Rahab-thread 
 For blushing token of the spy's success, — 
 Would taunt with vacancy, I undertake ! 
 What, yonder is your best apology, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 25 
 
 Pretence at most approach to naughtiness, 
 Impingement of the ruddy on the blank ? 
 This is the criminal Saint- Rambertese 
 Who smuggled in tobacco, half-a-pound ! 
 The Octroi found it out and fined the wretch. 
 This other is the culprit who dispatched 
 A hare, he thought a hedgehog, (clods obstruct) 
 Unfurnished with Permission for the Chase ! 
 As to the womankind — renounce from those 
 The hope of .getting a companion-tinge, 
 First faint 'touch promising romantic fault ! " 
 
 Enough : there stands Red Cotton Night- cap shelf — 
 A cavern's ostentatious vacancy — 
 My contribution to the show ; while yours — 
 White, heaps your row of pegs from every hedge 
 
26 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Outside, and house inside Saint- Rambert here — 
 We soon have come to end of. See, the church 
 With its white steeple gives your challenge point, 
 Perks as it were the night- cap of the town, 
 Starchedly warrants all beneath is matched 
 By all above, one snowy innocence ! 
 
 You put me on my mettle. British maid 
 And British man, suppose we have it out 
 Here in the fields, decide the question so ? 
 Then, British fashion, shake hands hard again, 
 Go home together, friends the more confirmed 
 That one of us — assuredly myself — 
 Looks puffy about eye, and pink at nose ? 
 Which " pink " reminds me that the arduousness 
 We both acknowledge in the enterprise, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 27 
 
 Claims, counts upon a large and liberal 
 
 Acceptance of as good as victory 
 
 In whatsoever just escapes defeat. 
 
 You must be generous, strain point, and call 
 
 Victory, any the least flush of pink 
 
 Made prize of, labelled scarlet for the nonce — 
 
 Faintest pretension to be wrong and red 
 
 And picturesque, that varies by a splotch 
 
 The righteous flat of insipidity. 
 
 Quick to the quest, then — forward, the firm foot ! 
 
 Onward, the quarry-overtaking eye ! 
 
 For what is this, by way of march-tune, makes 
 
 The musicalest buzzing at my ear 
 
 By reassurance of that promise old 
 
 Though sins are scarlet they shall be as wool ? 
 
28 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Whence — what fantastic hope do I deduce ? 
 I am no Liebig : when the dyer dyes 
 A texture, can the red dye prime the white ? 
 And if we washed well, wrung the texture hard, 
 Would we arrive, here, there and everywhere, 
 At a fierce ground beneath the surface meek ? 
 
 I take the first chance, rub to threads what rag 
 
 Shall flutter snowily in sight. For see ! 
 
 Already these few yards upon the rise, 
 
 Our back to brave Saint-Rambert, how we reach 
 
 The open, at a dozen steps or strides ! 
 
 Turn round and look about, a breathing-while ! 
 
 There lie, out-spread at equidistance, thorpes 
 
 And villages and towns along the coast, 
 
 Distinguishable, each and all alike, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 29 
 
 By white persistent Night-cap, spire on spire. 
 
 Take the left : yonder town is — what say you 
 
 If I say " Londres "? Ay, the mother-mouse \ 
 
 (Reversing fable, as truth can and will) 
 
 Which gave our mountain of a London birth ! 
 
 This is the Conqueror's country, bear in mind, 
 
 And Londres-district blooms with London-pride. 
 
 Turn round : La Roche, to right, where oysters thrive : 
 
 Monlieu — the lighthouse is a telegraph; 
 
 This, full in front, Saint-Rambert ; then succeeds 
 
 Villeneuve, and Pons the Young with Pons the Old, 
 
 And — ere faith points to Joyeux, out of sight, 
 
 A little nearer — oh, La Ravissante ! 
 
 There now is something like a Night-cap spire, 
 Donned by no ordinary Notre-Dame ! 
 
30 RED COTTON NIGHTCAP COUNTRY 
 
 For, one of the three safety-guards of France, 
 
 You front now, lady ! Nothing intercepts 
 
 The privilege, by crow-flight, two miles far. 
 
 She and her sisters Lourdes and La Salette" 
 
 Are at this moment hailed the cynosure 
 
 Of poor dear France, such waves have buffeted 
 
 Since she eschewed infallibility 
 
 And chose to steer by the vague compass-box. 
 
 This same midsummer month, a week ago, 
 
 Was not the memorable day observed 
 
 For reinstatement of the misused Three 
 
 In old supremacy for evermore ? 
 
 Did not the faithful flock in pilgrimage 
 
 By railway, diligence and steamer — nay 
 
 On foot with staff and scrip, to see the sights 
 
 Assured them ? And I say best sight was here : 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 31 
 
 And nothing justified the rival Two 
 
 In their pretension to equality; 
 
 Our folk laid out their ticket-money best, 
 
 And wiseliest, if they walked, wore shoe away; 
 
 Not who went farther only to fare worse. 
 
 For, what was seen at Lourdes and La Salette 
 
 Except a couple of the common cures 
 
 Such as all three can boast of, any day ? 
 
 While here it was, here and by no means there, 
 
 That the Pope's self sent two great real gold crowns 
 
 As thick with jewelry as thick could stick, 
 
 His present to the Virgin and her Babe — 
 
 Provided for — who knows not ? — by that fund, 
 
 Count Alessandro Sforza's legacy, 
 
 Which goes to crown some Virgin every year. 
 
 But this year, Pope was in the prison-house, 
 
32 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 And money had to go for something else ; 
 
 And therefore, though their present seemed the Pope's, 
 
 The faithful of our province raised the sum 
 
 Preached and prayed out of — nowise purse alone. 
 
 Gentle and simple paid in kind, not cash, 
 
 The most part : the great lady gave her brooch, 
 
 The peasant-girl, her hair-pin ; 'twas the rough 
 
 Bluff farmer mainly who, — admonished well 
 
 By wife to care lest his new colewort-crop 
 
 Stray sorrowfully sparse like last year's seed, — 
 
 Lugged from reluctant pouch the fifty-franc, 
 
 And had the Cure's hope that rain would cease. 
 
 And so, the sum in evidence at length, 
 
 Next step was to obtain the donative 
 
 By the spontaneous bounty of the Pope — 
 
 No easy matter, since his Holiness 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 33 
 
 Had turned a deaf ear, long and long ago, 
 To much entreaty on our Bishop's part, 
 Commendably we boast. " But no," quoth he, 
 " Image and image needs must take their turn : 
 Here stand a dozen as importunate." 
 Well, we were patient; but the cup ran o'er 
 When — who was it pressed in and took the prize 
 But our own offset, set far off indeed 
 To grow by help of our especial name, 
 She of the Ravissante — in Martinique ! 
 " What ? " cried our patience at the boiling-point, 
 " The daughter crowned, the mother's head goes bare ? 
 Bishop of Raimbaux ! " — that's our diocese — 
 " Thou hast a summons to repair to Rome, 
 Be efficacious at the Council there : 
 Now is the time or never ! Right our wrong ! 
 u 
 
34 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Hie thee away, thou valued Morillon, 
 
 And have the promise, thou who hast the vote ! " 
 
 So said, so done, so followed in due course 
 
 (To cut the story short) this festival, 
 
 This famous Twenty-second, seven days since. 
 
 Oh, but you heard at Joyeux ! Pilgrimage, 
 Concourse, procession with, to head the host, 
 Cardinal Mirecourt, quenching lesser lights : 
 The leafy street-length through, decked end to end 
 With August-strippage, and adorned with flags, 
 That would have waved right well but that it rained 
 Just this picked day, by some perversity. 
 And so were placed, on Mother and on Babe, 
 The pair of crowns : the Mother's, you must see ! 
 Miranda, the great Paris goldsmith, made 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 35 
 
 The marvel, — he's a neighbour : that's his park 
 Before you, tree-topped wall we walk toward. 
 His shop it was, turned out the masterpiece, 
 Probably at his own expenditure ; 
 Anyhow, his was the munificence 
 Contributed the central and supreme 
 Splendor that crowns the crown itself, The Stone. 
 Not even Paris, ransacked, could supply 
 That gem : he had to forage in New- York, 
 This jeweller, and country-gentleman, 
 And most undoubted devotee beside ! 
 Worthily wived, too : since his wife it was 
 Bestowed " with friendly hand " — befitting phrase ! 
 The lace which trims the coronation-robe — 
 Stiff wear — a mint of wealth on the brocade. 
 
36 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Do go and see what I saw yesterday ! 
 And, for that matter, see in fancy still, 
 Since . . 
 
 There now ! Even for unthankful me, 
 Who stuck to my devotions at high-tide 
 That festal morning, never had a mind 
 To trudge the little league and join the crowd — 
 Even for me is miracle vouchsafed ! 
 How pointless proves the sneer at miracles ! 
 As if, contrariwise to all we want 
 And reasonably look to find, they graced 
 Merely those graced-before, grace helps no whit, 
 Unless, made whole, they need physician still. 
 I — sceptical in every inch of me — 
 Did I deserve that, from the liquid name 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 37 
 
 " Miranda," — faceted as lovelily 
 
 As his own gift, the gem, — a shaft should shine, 
 
 Bear me along, another Abaris, 
 
 Nor let me light till, lo, the Red is reached, 
 
 And yonder lies in luminosity ! 
 
 Look, lady ! where I bade you glance, but now ! 
 Next habitation, though two miles away, — 
 No tenement for man or beast between, — 
 That, park and domicile, is country-seat 
 Of this same good Miranda ! I accept 
 The augury. Or there, or nowhere else, 
 Will I establish that a Night-cap gleams 
 Of visionary Red, not White for once ! 
 " Heaven " saith the sage " is with us, here 
 inside 
 
38 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Each man :" " Hell also," simpleness subjoins, 
 By White and Red describing human flesh. 
 
 And yet as we continue, quicken pace, 
 
 Approach the object which determines me 
 
 Victorious or defeated, more forlorn 
 
 My chance seems, — that is certainty at least. 
 
 Halt midway, reconnoitre ! Either side 
 
 The path we traverse (turn and see) stretch fields 
 
 Without a hedge : one level, scallop-striped 
 
 With bands of beet and turnip and luzern, 
 
 Limited only by each colour's end, 
 
 Shelves down, — we stand upon an eminence, — 
 
 To where the earth-shell scallops out the sea, 
 
 A sweep of semicircle ; and at edge — 
 
 Just as the milk-white incrustations stud 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 39 
 
 At intervals some shell- extremity, 
 
 So do the little growths attract us here, 
 
 Towns with each name I told you : say, they touch 
 
 The sea, and the sea them, and all is said, 
 
 So sleeps and sets to slumber thaf broad blue ! 
 
 The people are as peaceful as the place. 
 
 This, that I call " the path " is road, highway ; 
 
 But has there passed us by a market-cart, 
 
 Man, woman, child, or dog to wag a tail ? 
 
 True, I saw weeders stooping in a field ; 
 
 But — formidably white the Cap's extent ! 
 
 Round again ! Come, appearance promises ! 
 The boundary, the park-wall, ancient brick, 
 Upholds a second wall of tree-heads high 
 Which overlean its top, a solid green. 
 
4 o RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 That surely ought to shut in mysteries ! 
 
 A jeweller — no unsuggestive craft! 
 
 Trade that admits of much romance, indeed. 
 
 For, whom but goldsmiths used old monarchs pledge 
 
 Regalia to, or seek a ransom from, 
 
 Or pray to furnish dowry, at a pinch, 
 
 According to authentic story-books ? 
 
 Why, such have revolutionized this land 
 
 With diamond-necklace-dealing ! not to speak 
 
 Of families turned upside-down, because 
 
 The gay wives went and pawned clandestinely 
 
 Jewels, and figured, till found out, with paste, 
 
 Or else redeemed them — how, is horrible ! 
 
 Then there are those enormous criminals 
 
 That love their ware and cannot lose their love, 
 
 And murder you to get your purchase back. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 41 
 
 Others go courting after such a stone, 
 
 Make it their mistress, marry for their wife, 
 
 And find out, some day, it was false the while, 
 
 As ever wife or mistress, man too fond 
 
 Has named his Pilgrim, Hermit, Ace of Hearts. 
 
 Beside — what style of edifice begins 
 To grow in sight at last and top the scene ? 
 That grey roof, with the range of lucarnes, four 
 I count, and that erection in the midst — 
 Clock-house, or chapel-spire, or what, above ? 
 Conventual, that, beyond manorial, sure ! 
 And, reason good; for Clairvaux, such its name, 
 Was built of old to be a Priory, 
 Dependence on that Abbey-for-the-Males 
 Our Conqueror founded in world-famous Caen, 
 
42 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 And where his body sought the sepulture, 
 It was not to retain : you know the tale. 
 Such Priory was Clairvaux, prosperous 
 Hundreds of years ; but nothing lasts below, 
 And when the Red Cap pushed the Crown aside, 
 The Priory became, like all its peers, 
 A National Domain : which, bought and sold 
 And resold, needs must change, with ownership, 
 Both outside show and inside use ; at length 
 The messuage, three-and-twenty years ago, 
 Became the purchase of rewarded worth 
 Impersonate in Father — I must stoop 
 To French phrase for precision's sake, I fear — 
 Father Miranda, goldsmith of renown : 
 By birth, a Madrilene, by domicile 
 And sojourning, accepted French at last. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 43 
 
 His energy it was which, trade transferred 
 To Paris, throve as with a golden thumb, 
 Established in the Place Vendome. He bought 
 Not building only, but belongings far 
 And wide, at Gonthier there, Monlieu, Villeneuve, 
 A plentiful estate : which, twelve years since, 
 Passed, at the good man's natural demise, 
 To Son and Heir Miranda — Clairvaux here, 
 The Paris shop, the mansion — not to say 
 Palatial residence on Quai Rousseau, 
 With money, moveables, a mine of wealth — 
 And young Leonce Miranda got it all. 
 
 Ah, but — whose might the transformation be ? 
 Were you prepared for this, now ? As we talked, 
 We walked, we entered the half-privacy, 
 
44 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 The partly-guarded precinct : passed beside 
 The little paled-off islet, trees and turf, 
 Then found us in the main ash-avenue 
 Under the blessing of its branchage-roof. 
 Till, on emergence, what affronts our gaze ? 
 Priory — Conqueror — Abbey-for-the-Males — 
 Hey, presto, pass, who conjured all away ? 
 Look through the railwork of the gate : a park 
 — Yes, but a TAnglaise, as they compliment ! 
 Grass like green velvet, gravel-walks like gold, 
 Bosses of shrubs, embosomings of flowers, 
 Wind you — through sprinkled trees of tiny breed 
 Disporting, within reach of coverture, 
 By some habitual acquiescent oak 
 Or elm, that thinks, and lets the youngsters laugh- 
 Wind, waft at last your soul that walks the air, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 45 
 
 Up to the house-front, or its back perhaps — 
 Whether facade or no, one coquetry 
 Of coloured brick and carved stone ! Stucco ? Well, 
 The daintiness is cheery, that I know, 
 And all the sportive floral framework fits 
 The lightsome purpose of the architect. 
 Those lucarnes which I called conventual, late, 
 Those are the outlets in the mansard-roof; 
 And, underneath, what long light elegance 
 Of windows here suggests how brave inside 
 Lurk eyeballed gems they play the eyelids to ! 
 Festive arrangements look through such, be sure ! 
 And now the tower a-top, I took for clock's 
 Or bell's abode, turns out a quaint device, 
 Pillared and temple-treated Belvedere — 
 Pavilion safe within its railed-about 
 
46 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Sublimity of area — whence what stretch, 
 Of sea and land, throughout the seasons' change, 
 Must greet the solitary ! Or suppose, 
 — If what the husband likes, the wife likes too — 
 The happy pair of students cloistered high, 
 Alone in April when the Spring arrives ! 
 Or no, he mounts there by himself to meet 
 Winds, welcome wafts of sea-smell, first white bird 
 That flaps thus far to taste the land again, 
 And all the promise of the youthful year ; 
 Then he descends, unbosoms straight his store 
 Of blessings in the bud, and both embrace, 
 Husband and wife, since earth is Paradise, 
 And man at peace with God. You see it all ? 
 
 Let us complete our survey, go right round 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 47 
 
 The place : for here, it may be, we surprise 
 
 The Priory, — these solid walls, big barns, 
 
 Grey orchard-grounds, huge four-square stores for stock, 
 
 Betoken where the Church was busy once. 
 
 Soon must we come upon the Chapel's self. 
 
 No doubt next turn will treat us to . . Aha, 
 
 Again our expectation proves at fault ! 
 
 Still the bright graceful modern — not to say 
 
 Modish adornment, meets us : Pare Anglais, 
 
 Tree-sprinkle, shrub-embossment as before. 
 
 See, the sun splits on yonder bauble world 
 
 Of silvered glass concentring, every side, 
 
 All the adjacent wonder, made minute 
 
 And touched grotesque by ball-convexity ! 
 
 Just so, a sense that something is amiss, 
 
 Something is out of sorts in the display, 
 
48 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Affects us, past denial, everywhere. 
 The right erection for the Fields, the Wood, 
 (Fields — but Ely sees, wood — but de Boulogne) 
 Is peradventure wrong for wood and fields 
 When Vire, not Paris, plays the Capital. 
 
 So may a good man have deficient taste ; 
 
 Since Son and Heir Miranda, he it was 
 
 Who, six years now elapsed, achieved the work 
 
 And truly made a wilderness to smile. 
 
 Here did their domesticity reside, 
 
 A happy husband and as happy wife, 
 
 Till . . how can I in conscience longer keep 
 
 My little secret that the man is dead 
 
 I, for artistic purpose, talk about 
 
 As if he lived still ? No, these two years now, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 49 
 
 Has he been dead. You ought to sympathise- 
 Not mock the sturdy effort to redeem 
 My pledge, and wring you out some tragedy 
 From even such a perfect common-place ! 
 Suppose I boast the death of such desert 
 My tragic bit of Red ? Who contravenes 
 Assertion that a tragedy exists 
 In any stoppage of benevolence. 
 Utility, devotion above all ? 
 Benevolent ? There never was his like : 
 For poverty, he had an open hand 
 . . Or stop— I use the wrong expression here — 
 An open purse, then, ever at appeal ; 
 So that the unreflecting rather taxed 
 Profusion than penuriousness in alms. 
 One, in his day and generation, deemed 
 
 E 
 
50 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Of use to the community ? I trust 
 
 Clairvaux thus renovate and regalised, 
 
 Paris expounded thus to Normandy, 
 
 Answers that question. Was the man devout ? 
 
 After a life — one mere munificence 
 
 To Church and all things churchly, men or mice,- 
 
 Dying, his last bequeathment gave, land, goods, 
 
 Cash, every stick and stiver, to the Church, 
 
 And notably to that church yonder, that 
 
 Beloved of his soul, La Ravissante — 
 
 Wherefrom, the latest of his gifts, the Stone 
 
 Gratefully bore me as on arrow-flash 
 
 To Clairvaux, as I told you. 
 
 " Ay, to find 
 Your Red desiderated article, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 51 
 
 Where every scratch and scrape provokes my White 
 
 To all the more superb a prominence ! 
 
 Why, 'tis the story served up fresh again — 
 
 How it befell the restive prophet old 
 
 Who came and tried to curse but blessed the 
 
 land. 
 Come, your last chance ! he disinherited 
 Children : he made his widow mourn too much 
 By this endowment of the other Bride — 
 Nor understood that gold and jewelry 
 Adorn her in a figure, not a fact. 
 You make the White I want, so very white, 
 'Tis I say now — some trace of Red should be 
 Somewhere in this Miranda- sanctitude ! " 
 
 Not here, at all events, sweet mocking friend ! 
 
52 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 For he was childless ; and what heirs he had 
 Were an uncertain sort of Cousinry 
 Scarce claiming kindred so as to withhold 
 The donor's purpose though fantastical : 
 Heirs, for that matter, wanting no increase 
 Of wealth, since rich already as himself; 
 Heirs that had taken trouble off his hands, 
 Bought that productive goldsmith-business, he, 
 With abnegation wise as rare, renounced 
 Precisely at a time of life when youth, 
 Nigh on departure, bids mid-age discard 
 Life's other loves and likings in a pack, 
 To keep, in lucre, comfort worth them all. 
 This Cousinry are they who boast the shop 
 Of " Firm- Miranda, London and New- York." 
 Cousins are an unconscionable kind ; 
 
OR TURF AND TOWER o 53 
 
 But these — pretension surely on their part 
 To share inheritance were too absurd ! 
 
 " Remains then, he dealt wrongly by his wife, 
 
 Despoiled her somehow by such testament ? " 
 
 Farther than ever from the mark, fair friend ! 
 
 The man's love for his wife exceeded bounds 
 
 Rather than failed the limit. 'Twas to live 
 
 Hers and hers only, to abolish earth 
 
 Outside — since Paris holds the pick of earth — 
 
 He turned his back, shut eyes, stopped ears to all 
 
 Delicious Paris tempts her children with, 
 
 And fled away to this far solitude — 
 
 She peopled solitude sufficiently ! 
 
 She, partner in each heavenward flight sublime, 
 
 Was, with each condescension to the ground, 
 
54 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Duly associate also : hand in hand, 
 
 . . Or side by side, I say by preference— 
 
 On every good work sidlingly they went 
 
 Hers was the instigation — none but she 
 
 Willed that, if death should summon first her lord, 
 
 Though she, sad relict, must drag residue 
 
 Of days encumbered by this load of wealth — 
 
 (Submitted to with something of a grace 
 
 So long as her surviving vigilance 
 
 Might worthily administer, convert 
 
 Wealth to God's glory and the good of man, 
 
 Give, as in life, so now in death, effect 
 
 To cherished purpose) — yet she begged and prayed 
 
 That, when no longer she could supervise 
 
 The House, it should become a Hospital : 
 
 For the support whereof, lands, goods and cash 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 55 
 
 Alike will go, in happy guardianship, 
 
 To yonder church, La Ravissante : who debt 
 
 To God and man undoubtedly will pay. 
 
 " Not of the world, your heroine ! " 
 
 Do you know 
 I saw her yesterday — set eyes upon 
 The veritable personage, no dream ? 
 I in the morning strolled this way, as oft, 
 And stood at entry of the avenue. 
 When, out from that first garden-gate, we gazed 
 Upon and through, a small procession swept — 
 Madame Miranda with attendants five. 
 First, of herself : she wore a soft and white 
 Engaging dress, with velvet stripes and squares 
 
56 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Severely black, yet scarce discouraging : 
 
 Fresh Paris-manufacture ! (Vire's would do ? 
 
 I doubt it, but confess my ignorance.) 
 
 Her figure ? somewhat small and darlinglike, 
 
 Her face ? well, singularly colourless, 
 
 For first thing : which scarce suits a blonde, you know. 
 
 Pretty you would not call her : though perhaps 
 
 Attaining to the ends of prettiness 
 
 And somewhat more, suppose enough of soul. 
 
 Then she is forty full : you cannot judge 
 
 What beauty was her portion at eighteen, 
 
 The age she married at. So, colourless 
 
 I stick to, and if featureless I add, 
 
 Your notion grows completer : for, although 
 
 I noticed that her nose was aquiline, 
 
 The whole effect amounts with me to — blank ! 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 57 
 
 I never saw what I could less describe. 
 The eyes, for instance, unforgettable 
 Which ought to be, are out of mind as sight. 
 
 Yet is there not conceivably a face, 
 
 A set of wax-like features, blank at first, 
 
 Which, as you bendingly grow warm above, 
 
 Begins to take impressment from your breath ? 
 
 Which, as your will itself were plastic here 
 
 Nor needed exercise of handicraft, 
 
 From formless moulds itself to correspond 
 
 With all you think and feel and are — in fine 
 
 Grows a new revelation of yourself, 
 
 Who know now for the first time what you want ? 
 
 Here has been something that could wait awhile, 
 
 Learn your requirement, nor take shape before, 
 
58 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 But, by adopting it, make palpable 
 
 Your right to an importance of your own, 
 
 Companions somehow were so slow to see ! 
 
 — Far delicater solace to conceit 
 
 Than should some absolute and final face, 
 
 Fit representative of soul inside, 
 
 Summon you to surrender — in no way 
 
 Your breath's impressment, nor, in stranger's guise, 
 
 Yourself — or why of force to challenge you ? 
 
 Why should your soul's reflexion rule your soul ? 
 
 (" You " means not you, nor me, nor anyone 
 
 Framed, for a reason I shall keep suppressed, 
 
 To rather want a master than a slave : 
 
 The slavish still aspires to dominate !) 
 
 So, all I say is, that the face, to me 
 
 One blurr of blank, might flash significance 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 59 
 
 To who had seen his soul reflected there 
 
 By that symmetric silvery phantom-like 
 
 Figure, with other five processional. 
 
 The first, a black-dressed matron — may be, maid 
 
 Mature, and dragonish of aspect, — marched ; 
 
 Then four came tripping in a joyous flock, 
 
 Two giant goats and two prodigious sheep 
 
 Pure as the arctic fox that suits the snow, 
 
 Tripped, trotted, turned the march to merriment, 
 
 But ambled at their mistress' heel — for why ? 
 
 A rod of guidance marked the Chatelaine, 
 
 And ever and anon would sceptre wave, 
 
 And silky subject leave meandering. 
 
 Nay, one great naked sheep-face stopped to ask 
 
 Who was the stranger, snuffed inquisitive 
 
 My hand that made acquaintance with its nose, 
 
60 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Examined why the hand — of man at least — 
 
 Patted so lightly, warmly, so like life ! 
 
 Are they such silly natures after all ? 
 
 And thus accompanied, the paled-off space, 
 
 Isleted shrubs and verdure, gained the group ; 
 
 Till, as I gave a furtive glance, and saw 
 
 Her back-hair was a block of solid gold, 
 
 The gate shut out my harmless question — Hair 
 
 So young and yellow, crowning sanctity, 
 
 And claiming solitude . . can hair be false ? 
 
 " Shut in the hair and with it your last hope 
 Yellow might on inspection pass for Red ! — 
 Red, Red, where is the tinge of promised Red 
 In this old tale of town and country life, 
 This rise and progress of a family ? 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 61 
 
 First comes the bustling man of enterprise, 
 The fortune-founding father, rightly rough, 
 As who must grub and grab, play pioneer. 
 Then, with a light and airy step, succeeds 
 The son, surveys the fabric of his sire, 
 And enters home, unsmirched from top to toe. 
 Polish and education qualify 
 Their fortunate possessor to confine 
 His occupancy to the first-floor suite 
 Rather than keep exploring needlessly 
 Where dwelt his sire content with cellarage : 
 Industry bustles underneath, no doubt ; 
 The supervisor should not sit too close. 
 Next, rooms built, there's the furniture to buy, 
 And what adornment like a worthy wife ? 
 In comes she like some foreign cabinet, 
 
62 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Purchased indeed, but purifying quick 
 
 What space receives her, from its traffic-taint. 
 
 She tells of other habits, palace-life ; 
 
 Royalty may have pried into those depths 
 
 Of sandal-wooded drawer, and set a-creak 
 
 That pygmy portal pranked with lazuli. 
 
 More fit by far, the ignoble were replaced 
 
 By objects suited to such visitant, 
 
 Than that her dignity be desecrate 
 
 By neighbourhood of vulgar table, chair, 
 
 Which haply helped old age to smoke and doze. 
 
 The end is, an exchange of city stir 
 
 And too intrusive burgess-fellowship, 
 
 For rural isolated elegance, 
 
 Careless simplicity, how preferable ! 
 
 There one may fairly throw behind one's back 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 63 
 
 The used-up worn-out past, we want away, 
 
 And make a fresh beginning of stale life. 
 
 1 In just the place —does anyone object? — 
 
 ' Where aboriginal gentility 
 
 Will scout the upstart, twit him with each trick 
 
 Of town, trade-mark that stamps each word and deed, 
 
 And most of all resent that here the dirt 
 
 Is daubed with money-colour to deceive ! ' 
 
 Rashly objected! Is there not the Church 
 
 To intercede and bring benefic truce 
 
 At outset ? She it is shall equalise 
 
 The labourers in the vineyard, last as first. 
 
 Pay court to her, she stops impertinence. 
 
 ' Duke, once your sires crusaded it, we know : 
 
 Our friend the newcomer observes, no less, • 
 
 Your chapel, rich with their emblazonry, 
 
64 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Wants roofing — might he but supply the means ! 
 
 Marquise, you gave the honour of your name, 
 
 Titular patronage, abundant will 
 
 To what should be an Orphan Institute : 
 
 Gave everything but funds, in brief; and these, 
 
 Our friend, the lady newly resident, 
 
 Proposes to contribute, by your leave ! ' 
 
 Brothers and sisters lie they in thy lap, 
 
 Thou none-excluding all-collecting Church ! 
 
 Sure, one has half a foot i' the hierarchy 
 
 Of birth, when ' Nay, my dear,' laughs out the Duke, 
 
 ' 1 may be cushion-carrier, but the crown — 
 
 Who gave its central glory, I or you?' 
 
 When Marquise jokes ' My quest, forsooth ? Each doit 
 
 I scrape together goes for Peter-pence 
 
 To purvey bread and water in his bonds 
 
OR TURF AND, TOWERS 65 
 
 For Peter's self imprisoned — Lord, how long ? 
 
 Yours, yours alone the bounty, dear my dame, 
 
 You plumped the purse which, poured into the plate, 
 
 Made the Archbishop open brows so broad ! 
 
 And if you really mean to give that length 
 
 Of lovely lace to edge the robe ! ' . . Ah, friends, 
 
 Gem better serves so, than by calling crowd 
 
 Round shop-front to admire the million's-worth ! 
 
 Lace gets more homage than from lorgnette- stare, 
 
 And comment coarse to match, (should one display 
 
 One's robe a trifle o'er the baignoire-edge,) 
 
 ' Well may she line her slippers with the like, 
 
 If minded so ! their shop it was, produced 
 
 That wonderful fiarure, the other day, 
 
 Whereof the Baron said, it beggared him.' 
 
 And so the paired Mirandas built their house, 
 
 F 
 
66 RED COTTON NIGHTCAP COUNTRY 
 
 Enjoyed their fortune, sighed for family, 
 
 Found friends would serve their purpose quite as well, 
 
 And come, at need, from Paris — anyhow, 
 
 With evident alacrity, from Vire — 
 
 Endeavour at the chase, at least succeed 
 
 In smoking, eating, drinking, laughing, and 
 
 Preferring country, oh so much to town ! 
 
 Thus lived the husband ; though his wife would sigh 
 
 In confidence, when Countesses were kind, 
 
 ' Cut off from Paris and society ! ' 
 
 White, White, I once more round you in the ears ! 
 
 Though you have marked it, in a corner, yours 
 
 Henceforth, — red-lettered i Failure ' very plain, 
 
 I shall acknowledge, on the snowy hem 
 
 Of ordinary Night-cap ! Come, enough ! 
 
 We have gone round its cotton vastitude, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 67 
 
 Or half-round, for the end 's consistent still, 
 A cul-de-sac with stoppage at the sea. 
 Here we return upon our steps. One look 
 May bid good morning — properly good night — 
 To civic bliss, Miranda and his mate ! 
 Are we to rise and go ? " 
 
 No, sit and stay ! 
 Now comes my moment, with the thrilling throw 
 Of curtain from each side a shrouded case. 
 Don't the rings shriek an ominous " Ha ! ha ! 
 So you take Human Nature upon trust ? " 
 List but with like trust to an incident 
 Which speedily shall make quite Red enough 
 Burn out of yonder spotless napery ! 
 
68 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Sit on the little mound here, whence you seize 
 
 The whole of the gay front sun-satisfied, 
 
 One laugh of colour and embellishment ! 
 
 Because it was there, — past those laurustines, 
 
 On that smooth gravel-sweep 'twixt flowers and sward,- 
 
 There tragic death befell \ and not one grace 
 
 Outspread before you but is registered 
 
 In that sinistrous coil, these last two years 
 
 Were occupied in winding smooth again. 
 
 " True ? " Well, at least it was concluded so, 
 Sworn to be truth, allowed by Law as such, 
 (With my concurrence, if it matter here) 
 A month ago : at Vire they tried the case. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 69 
 
 II 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda, then, . . but stay ! 
 
 Permit me a preliminary word, 
 
 And, after, all shall go so straight to end ! 
 
 Have you, the travelled lady, found yourself 
 
 Inside a ruin, fane or bath or cirque, 
 
 Renowned in story, dear through youthful dream ? 
 
 If not, — imagination serves as well. 
 
 Try fancy-land, go back a thousand years, 
 
 Or forward, half the number, and confront 
 
 Some work of art gnawn hollow by Time's tooth, — 
 
7o RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Hellenic temple, Roman theatre, 
 
 Gothic cathedral, Gallic Tuileries, 
 
 But ruined, one and whichsoe'er you like. 
 
 Obstructions choke what still remains intact, 
 
 Yet proffer change that's picturesque in turn ; 
 
 Since little life begins where great life ends, 
 
 And vegetation soon amalgamates, 
 
 Smooths novel shape from out the shapeless old, 
 
 Till broken column, battered cornice block 
 
 The centre with a bulk half weeds and flowers, 
 
 Half relics you devoutly recognise. 
 
 Devoutly recognising, — hark, a voice 
 
 Not to be disregarded ! " Man worked here 
 
 Once on a time ; here needs again to work ; 
 
 Ruins obstruct, which man must remedy." 
 
 Would you demur " Let Time fulfil his task, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 71 
 
 And, till the scythe-sweep find no obstacle, 
 Let man be patient ? " 
 
 The reply were prompt : 
 " Glisteningly beneath the May-night moon, 
 Herbage and floral coverture bedeck 
 Yon splintered mass amidst the solitude : 
 Wolves occupy the background, or some snake 
 Glides by at distance : picturesque enough ! 
 Therefore, preserve it ? Nay, pour daylight in, — 
 The mound proves swarming with humanity. 
 There never was a thorough solitude, 
 Now you look nearer : mortal busy life 
 First of all brought the crumblings down on pate, 
 Which trip man's foot still, plague his passage much, 
 And prove — what seems to you so picturesque 
 
72 RED COTTON- NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 To him is . . but experiment yourself 
 
 On how conducive to a happy home 
 
 Will be the circumstance, your bed for base 
 
 Boasts tessellated pavement, — equally 
 
 Affected by the scorpion for his nest, — 
 
 While what o'erroofs bed is an architrave, 
 
 Marble, and not unlikely to crush man 
 
 To mummy, should its venerable prop, 
 
 Some fig-tree-stump, play traitor underneath. 
 
 Be wise ! Decide ! For conservation's sake, 
 
 Clear the arena forthwith ! lest the tread 
 
 Of too-much-tried impatience trample out 
 
 Solid and unsubstantial to one blank 
 
 Mud-mixture, picturesque to nobody, — 
 
 And, task done, quarrel with the parts intact 
 
 Whence came the filtered fine dust, whence the crash 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 73 
 
 Bides but its time to follow. Quick conclude 
 
 Removal, time effects so tardily, 
 
 Of what is plain obstruction ; rubbish cleared, 
 
 Let partial-ruin stand while ruin may, 
 
 And serve world's use, since use is manifold. 
 
 Repair wreck, stancheon wall to heart's content, 
 
 But never think of renovation, pure 
 
 And simple, which involves creation too : 
 
 Transform and welcome ! Yon tall tower may help 
 
 (Though built to be a belfry and nought else) 
 
 Some Father Secchi, to tick Venus off 
 
 In transit : never bring there bell again, 
 
 To damage him aloft, brain us below, 
 
 When new vibrations bury both in brick ! 
 
 Monsieur Le'once Miranda, furnishing 
 
74 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 The application at his cost, poor soul ! 
 
 Was instance how, — because the world lay strewn 
 
 With ravage of opinions in his path, 
 
 And neither he, nor any friendly wit, 
 
 Knew and could teach him which was firm, which frail, 
 
 In his adventure to walk straight through life 
 
 The partial-ruin, — in such enterprise, 
 
 He straggled into rubbish, struggled on, 
 
 And stumbled out again observably. 
 
 " Yon buttress still can back me up," he judged : 
 
 And at a touch down came both he and it. 
 
 " A certain statue, I was warned against, 
 
 Now, by good fortune, lies well under foot, 
 
 And cannot tempt to folly any more : " 
 
 So, lifting eye, aloft since safety lay, 
 
 What did he light on ? the Idalian shape, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 75 
 
 The undeposed, erectly Victrix still ! 
 
 " These steps ascend the labyrinthine stair 
 
 Whence, darkling and on all-fours, out I stand 
 
 Exalt and safe, and bid low earth adieu — 
 
 For so instructs ' Advice to who would climb : ' " 
 
 And all at once the climbing landed him 
 
 — Where, is my story. 
 
 Take its moral first. 
 Do you advise a climber ? Have respect 
 To the poor head, with more or less of brains ■ 
 To spill, should breakage follow your advice ! 
 Head-break to him will be heart-break to you 
 For having preached " Disturb no ruins here ! 
 Are not they crumbling of their own accord ? 
 Meantime, let poets, painters keep a prize ! 
 
76 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Beside, a sage pedestrian picks his way." 
 A sage pedestrian — such as you and I ! 
 What if there trip, in merry carelessness, 
 And come to grief, a weak and foolish child ? 
 Be cautious how you counsel climbing, then ! 
 
 Are you adventurous and climb yourself? 
 Plant the foot warily, accept a staff, 
 Stamp only where you probe the standing-point, 
 Move forward, well assured that move you may : 
 Where you mistrust advance, stop short and stick ! 
 This makes advancing slow and difficult ? 
 Hear what came of endeavour of brisk youth 
 To foot it fast and easy ! Keep this same 
 Notion of outside mound and inside mash, 
 Towers yet intact round turfy rottenness, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 77 
 
 Symbolic partial-ravage, — keep in mind ! 
 
 Here fortune placed his feet who first of all 
 
 Found no incumbrance, till head found . . But hear ! 
 
 This son and heir then of the jeweller, 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda, at his birth, 
 Mixed the Castilian passionate blind blood 
 With answerable gush, his mother's gift, 
 Of spirit, French and critical and cold. 
 Such mixture makes a battle in the brain, 
 Ending as faith or doubt gets uppermost ; 
 Then will has way a moment, but no more, 
 So nicely-balanced are the adverse strengths, 
 And victory entails reverse next time. 
 The tactics of the two are different 
 And equalize the odds : for blood comes first, 
 
78 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Surrounding life with undisputed faith. 
 
 But presently, a new antagonist, 
 
 By scarce-suspected passage in the dark, 
 
 Steals spirit, fingers at each crevice found 
 
 Athwart faith's stronghold, fronts the astonished man 
 
 "Such pains to keep me far, yet here stand I, 
 
 Your doubt inside the faith-defence of you ! " 
 
 With faith it was friends bulwarked him about 
 
 From infancy to boyhood ; so, by youth, 
 
 Faith stood the impenetrable circuit, high 
 
 As heaven and low as hell : what lacked he there, 
 
 Guarded against aggression, storm or sap ? 
 
 What foe would dare approach ? Historic Doubt ? 
 
 Ay, were there some half-knowledge to attack ! 
 
 Batter doubt's best, sheer ignorance will beat. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 79 
 
 Acumen metaphysic ? —drills its way- 
 Through what, I wonder ! A thick feather-bed 
 Of thoughtlessness, no operating tool — 
 Framed to transpierce the flint- stone — fumbles at, 
 With chance of finding an impediment ! 
 This Ravissante, now : when he saw the church 
 For the first time, and to his dying-day, 
 His firm belief was that the name fell fit 
 From the Delivering Virgin, niched and known ; 
 As if there wanted records to attest 
 The appellation was a pleasantry, 
 A pious rendering of Rare Vissante, 
 The proper name which erst our province bore. 
 He would have told you that Saint Aldabert 
 Founded the church, (Heaven early favoured France,) 
 About the second century from Christ ; 
 
8o RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Though the true man was Bishop of Raimbaux, 
 Eleventh in succession, Eldobert, 
 Who flourished after some six hundred years. 
 He it was brought the image " from afar," 
 (Made out of stone the place produces still) 
 " Infantine Art divinely artless," (Art 
 In the decrepitude of Decadence) 
 And set it up a-working miracles 
 Until the Northmen's fury laid it low, 
 Not long, however : an egregious sheep, 
 Zealous with scratching hoof and routing horn, 
 Unearthed the image in good Mailleville's time, 
 Count of the country. " If the tale be false, 
 Why stands it carved above the portal plain ? " 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda used to ask. 
 To Londres went the prize in solemn pomp, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 81. 
 
 But, liking old abode and loathing new, 
 
 Was borne — this time, by angels — back again. 
 
 And, reinaugurated, miracle 
 
 Succeeded miracle, a lengthy list, 
 
 Until indeed the culmination came — 
 
 Archbishop Chaumont prayed a prayer and vowed 
 
 A vow — gained prayer and paid vow properly — 
 
 For the conversion of Prince Vertgalant. 
 
 These facts, sucked in along with mother's-milk, 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda would dispute 
 
 As soon as that his hands were flesh and bone, 
 
 Milk-nourished two-and-twenty years before. 
 
 So fortified by blind Castilian blood, 
 
 What say you to the chances of French cold 
 
 Critical spirit, should Voltaire besiege 
 
82 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 "Alp, Apennine, and fortified redoubt?" 
 
 Ay, would such spirit please to play faith's game 
 
 Faith's way, attack where faith defends so well ! 
 
 But then it shifts, tries other strategy. 
 
 Coldness grows warmth, the critical becomes 
 
 Unquestioning acceptance. " Share and share 
 
 Alike in facts, to truth add other truth ! 
 
 Why with old truth needs new truth disagree ? " 
 
 Thus doubt was found invading faith, this time, 
 By help of not the spirit but the flesh : 
 Fat Rabelais chuckled, where faith lay in wait 
 For lean Voltaire's grimace — French, either foe. 
 Accordingly, while round about our friend 
 Ran faith without a break which learned eye 
 Could find at two-and-twenty years of age, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 83 
 
 The twenty-two-years-old frank footstep soon 
 
 Assured itself there spread a standing-space 
 
 Flowery and comfortable, nowise rock 
 
 Nor pebble-pavement roughed for champion's tread 
 
 Who scorns discomfort, pacing at his post. 
 
 Tall, long-limbed, shoulder right and shoulder left, 
 
 And 'twixt acromia such a latitude, 
 
 Black heaps of hair on head, and blacker bush 
 
 O'er-rioting chin, cheek and throat and chest, — 
 
 His brown meridional temperament 
 
 Told him — or rather pricked into his sense 
 
 Plainer than language — " Pleasant station here ! 
 
 Youth, strength, and lustihood can sleep on turf 
 
 Yet pace the stony platform afterward : 
 
 First signal of a foe and up they start ! 
 
 Saint Eldobert, at all such vanity, 
 
84 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Nay — sinfulness, had shaken head austere. 
 
 Had he ! But did Prince Vertgalant ? And yet, 
 
 After how long a slumber, of what sort, 
 
 Was it, he stretched octogenary joints 
 
 And, nigh on Day-of-Judgment trumpet-blast, 
 
 Jumped up and manned wall, brisk as any bee ? " 
 
 Nor Rabelais nor Voltaire, but Sganarelle, 
 
 You comprehend, was pushing through the chink ! 
 
 That stager in the saint's correct costume, 
 
 Who ever has his speech in readiness 
 
 For thick-head juvenility at fault : 
 
 " Go pace yon platform and play sentinel ! 
 
 You won't ? The worse ! but still a worse might hap. 
 
 Stay then, provided that you keep in sight 
 
 The battlement, one bold leap lands you by ! 
 
 Resolve not desperately ' Wall or turf, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 85 
 
 Choose this, choose that, but no alternative ! ' 
 No ! Earth left once were left for good and all : 
 ' With Heaven you may accommodate yourself.' " 
 
 Saint Eldobert — I much approve his mode j 
 With sinner Vertgalant I sympathize ; 
 But histrionic Sganarelle, who prompts 
 While pulling back, refuses yet concedes, — 
 Whether he preach in chair, or print in book, 
 Or whisper due sustainment to weak flesh, 
 Counting his sham beads threaded on a lie — 
 Surely, one should bid pack that mountebank ! 
 Surely, he must have momentary fits 
 Of self-sufficient stage-forgetfulness, 
 Escapings of the actor-lassitude 
 When he allows the grace to show the grin, 
 Which ought to let even thickheads recognize 
 
RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 (Through all the busy and benefic part, — 
 
 Bridge-building, or rock-riving, or good clean 
 
 Transport of church and congregation both 
 
 From this to that place with no harm at all,) 
 
 The Devil, that old stager, at his trick 
 
 Of general utility, who leads 
 
 Down- ward, perhaps, but fiddles all the way ! 
 
 Therefore, no sooner does our candidate 
 For saintship spotlessly emerge soul-cleansed 
 From First Communion to mount guard at post, 
 Paris-proof, top to toe, than up there starts 
 The Spirit of the Boulevard — you know Who — 
 With jocund " So, a structure fixed as fate, 
 Faith's tower joins on to tower, no ring more round, 
 Full fifty years at distance, too, from youth ! 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 87 
 
 Once reach that precinct and there fight yonr 
 
 best, 
 As looking back you wonder what has come 
 Of daisy-dappled turf you danced across ! 
 Few flowers that played with youth shall pester age, 
 However age esteem the courtesy \ 
 And Eldobert was something past his prime, 
 Stocked Caen with churches ere he tried hand here. 
 Saint-Sauveur, Notre- Dame, Saint- Pierre, Saint- Jean 
 Attest, his handiwork commenced betimes. 
 He probably would preach that turf is mud. 
 Suppose it mud, through mud one picks a way, 
 And when, clay-clogged, the struggler steps to stone, 
 He uncakes shoe, arrives in manlier guise 
 Than carried pick-a-back by Eldobert 
 Big-baby-fashion, lest his leathers leak I 
 
SS RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 All that parade about Prince Vertgalant 
 Amounts to — your Castilian helps enough — 
 Invent ovem qucz perierat. 
 But ask the pretty votive statue-thing 
 What the lost sheep's meantime amusements were 
 Till the Archbishop found him ! That stays blank : 
 They washed the fleece well and forgot the rest. 
 Make haste, since time flies, to determine, though !" 
 
 Thus opportunely took up parable, — 
 
 Admonishing Miranda just emerged 
 
 Pure from The Ravissante and Paris-proof, — 
 
 Saint Sganarelle : then slipped aside, changed mask, 
 
 And made re-entry as a gentleman 
 
 Born of the Boulevard, with another speech, 
 
 I spare you. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 89 
 
 So, the year or two revolved, 
 And ever the young man was dutiful 
 To altar and to hearth : had confidence 
 In the whole Ravissantish history. 
 Voltaire ? Who ought to know so much of him, — 
 Old sciolist, whom only boys think sage, — 
 As one whose father's house upon the Quai 
 Neighboured the' very house where that Voltaire 
 Died mad and raving, not without a burst 
 Of squibs and crackers, too significant ? 
 Father and mother hailed their best of sons, 
 Type of obedience, domesticity, 
 Never such an example inside doors ! 
 Outside, as well not keep too close a watch ; 
 Youth must be left to some discretion there. 
 And what discretion proved, I find deposed 
 
90 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 At Vire, confirmed by his own words : to wit, 
 How, with the spriteliness of twenty-five, 
 Five — and not twenty, for he gave their names 
 With laudable precision — were the few 
 Appointed by him unto mistress-ship ; 
 While, meritoriously the whole long week 
 A votary of commerce only, week 
 Ended, " at shut of shop on Saturday, 
 Do, I, as is my wont, get drunk," he writes 
 In airy record to a confidant. 
 " Bragging and lies ! " replied the apologist : 
 "And do I lose by that?" laughed Somebody, 
 At the Court-edge a-tiptoe, mid the crowd, 
 In his own clothes, a-listening to men's Law. 
 
 Thus while, prospectively a combatant, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 91 
 
 The volunteer bent brows, clenched jaws, and fierce 
 
 Whistled the march-tune " Warrior to the wall !" 
 
 Something like flowery laughters round his feet 
 
 Tangled him of a sudden with " Sleep first !" 
 
 And fairly flat upon the turf sprawled he 
 
 And let strange creatures make his mouth their home. 
 
 Anyhow, 'tis the nature of the soul 
 
 To seek a show of durability, 
 
 Nor, changing, plainly be the slave of change. 
 
 Outside the turf, the towers : but, round the turf, 
 
 A tent may rise, a temporary shroud, 
 
 Mock-faith to suit a mimic dwelling-place : 
 
 Tent which, while screening jollity inside 
 
 From the external circuit — evermore 
 
 A menace to who lags when he should march — 
 
92 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Yet stands a-tremble, ready to collapse 
 
 At touch of foot : turf is acknowledged grass, 
 
 And grass, though pillowy, held contemptible 
 
 Compared with solid rock, the rampired ridge. 
 
 To truth, a pretty homage thus we pay 
 
 By testifying — what we dally with, 
 
 Falsehood, (which, never fear we take for truth ! ) 
 
 We may enjoy, but then — how we despise ! 
 
 Accordingly, on weighty business bound, 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda stooped to play, 
 But, with experience, soon reduced the game 
 To principles, and thenceforth played by rule : 
 Rule, dignifying sport as sport, proclaimed 
 No less that sport was sport and nothing more. 
 He understood the worth of womankind, — 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 93 
 
 To furnish man — provisionally — sport : 
 
 Sport transitive — such earth's amusements are : 
 
 But, seeing that amusements pall by use, 
 
 Variety therein is requisite. 
 
 And since the serious work of life were wronged 
 
 Should we bestow importance on our play, 
 
 It follows, in such womankind-pursuit, 
 
 Cheating is lawful chase. We have to spend 
 
 An hour — they want a lifetime thrown away : 
 
 We seek to tickle sense — they ask for soul, 
 
 As if soul had no higher ends to serve ! 
 
 A stag-hunt gives the royal creature law : 
 
 Bat-fowling is all fair with birds at roost, 
 
 The lantern and the clapnet suit the hedge. 
 
 Which must explain why, bent on Boulevard game, 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda decently 
 
94 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Was prudent in his pleasure — passed himself 
 
 Off on the fragile fair about his path 
 
 As the gay devil rich in mere good looks, 
 
 Youth, hope — what matter though the purse be void ? 
 
 " If I were only young Miranda, now, 
 
 Instead of a poor clerkly drudge at desk 
 
 All day, poor artist vainly bruising brush 
 
 On palette, poor musician scraping gut 
 
 With horsehair teazed that no harmonics come ! 
 
 Then would I love with liberality, 
 
 Then would I pay ! — who now shall be repaid, 
 
 Repaid alike for present pain and past, 
 
 If Mademoiselle permit the contre-danse, 
 
 Sing * Gay in garret youth at twenty lives/ 
 
 And afterward accept a lemonade !" 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 95 
 
 Such sweet facilities of intercourse 
 
 Afford the Winter-Garden and Mabille ! 
 
 " Oh, I unite" — runs on the confidence, 
 
 Poor fellow, that was read in open Court, 
 
 — " Amusement with discretion : never fear 
 
 My escapades cost more than market-price ! 
 
 No durably-attached Miranda-dupe, 
 
 Sucked dry of substance by two clinging lips, 
 
 Promising marriage, and performing it ! 
 
 Trust me, I know the world, and know myself, 
 
 And know where duty takes me — in good time ! " 
 
 Thus fortified and realistic, then, 
 At all points thus against illusion armed, 
 He wisely did New Year inaugurate 
 By playing truant to the favoured five : 
 
96 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 And sat installed at " The Varieties," — 
 Playhouse appropriately named, — to note 
 (Prying amid the turf that 's flowery there) 
 What primrose, firstling of the year, might push 
 The snows aside to deck his button-hole — 
 Unnoticed by that outline sad, severe, 
 (Though fifty good long years removed from youth) 
 That tower and tower, — our image, bear in mind ! 
 
 No sooner was he seated than, behold, 
 
 Out burst a polyanthus ! He was 'ware 
 
 Of a young woman niched in neighbourhood ; 
 
 And ere one moment flitted, fast was he 
 
 Found bondslave to the beauty evermore, 
 
 For life, for death, for heaven, for hell, her own. 
 
 Philosophy, bewail thy fate ! Adieu, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 97 
 
 Youth realistic and illusion-proof ! 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda, — hero late 
 Who "understood the worth of womankind," 
 " Who found therein — provisionally — sport," — 
 Felt, in the flitting of a moment, fool 
 Was he, and folly all that seemed so wise, 
 And the best proof of wisdom's birth would be 
 That he made all endeavour, body, soul, 
 By any means, at any sacrifice 
 Of labour, wealth, repute, and ( — well, the time 
 For choosing between heaven on earth, and heaven 
 In heaven, was not at hand immediately — ) 
 Made all endeavour, without loss incurred 
 Of one least minute, to obtain her love. 
 " Sport transitive ? " " Variety required ?" 
 " In loving were a lifetime thrown away?" 
 h 
 
98 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 How singularly may young men mistake ! 
 The fault must be repaired with energy. 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda ate her up 
 
 With eye-devouring ; when the unconscious fair 
 
 Passed from the close-packed hall, he pressed behind ; 
 
 She mounted vehicle, he did the same, 
 
 Coach stopped, and cab fast followed, at one door — 
 
 Good house in unexceptionable street. 
 
 Out stepped the lady, — never think, alone ! 
 
 A mother was not wanting to the maid, 
 
 Or, may be, wife, or widow, might one say ? 
 
 Out stepped and properly down flung himself 
 
 Monsieur Le'once Miranda at her feet — 
 
 And never left them after, so to speak, 
 
 For twenty years, till his last hour of life, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 99 
 
 When he released them, as precipitate. 
 Love proffered and accepted then and there ! 
 Such potency in word and look has truth. 
 
 Truth I say, truth I mean : this love was true, 
 And the rest happened by due consequence. 
 By which we are to learn that there exists 
 A falsish false, for truth 's inside the same, 
 And truth that 's only half true, falsish truth. 
 The better for both parties ! folks may taunt 
 That half your rock-built wall is rubble-heap : 
 Answer them, half their flowery turf is stones ! 
 Our friend had hitherto been decking coat 
 If not with stones, with weeds that stones befit, 
 With dandelions — " primrose-buds," smirked he ; 
 This proved a polyanthus on his breast, 
 
RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Prize-lawful or prize-lawless, flower the same. 
 So with his other instance of mistake : 
 Was Christianity the Ravissante ? 
 
 And what a flower of flowers he chanced on 
 
 now! 
 To primrose, polyanthus I prefer 
 As illustration, from the fancy-fact 
 That out of simple came the composite 
 By culture : that the florist bedded thick 
 His primrose-root in ruddle, bullock's blood, 
 Ochre and devils'-dung, for aught I know, 
 Until the pale and pure grew fiery-fine, 
 Ruby and topaz, rightly named anew. 
 This lady was no product of the plain ; 
 Social manure had raised a rarity. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 10 
 
 Clara de Millefleurs (note the happy name) 
 Blazed in the full-blown glory of her Spring. 
 Peerlessly perfect, form and face : for both — 
 " Imagine, what, at seventeen, may have proved 
 Miss Pages, the actress : Pages herself, my dear ! " 
 Noble she was, the name denotes : and rich ? 
 " The apartment in this Coliseum Street, 
 Furnished, my dear, with such an elegance, 
 Testifies wealth, my dear, sufficiently ! 
 What quality, what style and title, eh ? 
 Well now, waive nonsense, you and I are boys 
 No longer : somewhere must a screw be slack ! 
 Don't fancy, Duchesses descend at door 
 From carriage-step to stranger prostrate stretched, 
 And bid him take heart, and deliver mind, 
 March in and make himself at ease forthwith, — 
 
RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 However broad his chest and black his beard, 
 And comely his belongings, — all through love 
 Protested in a world of ways save one 
 Hinting at marriage!" — marriage which yet means 
 Only the obvious method, easiest help 
 To satisfaction of love's first demand, 
 That love endure eternally: "my dear, 
 Somewhere or other must a screw be slack ! " 
 
 Truth is the proper policy : from truth — 
 Whate'er the force wherewith you fling your 
 
 speech, — 
 Be sure that speech will lift you, by rebound, 
 Somewhere above the lowness of a lie ! 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda heard too true 
 A tale — perhaps I may subjoin, too trite ! 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 103 
 
 As the meek martyr takes her statued stand 
 Above our pity, claims our worship just 
 Because of what she puts in evidence, 
 Signal of suffering, badge of torture borne 
 In days gone by, shame then but glory now, 
 Barb in the breast, turned aureole for the front ! 
 So, half timidity, composure half, 
 Clara de Millefleurs told her martyrdom. 
 
 Of poor though noble parentage, deprived 
 Too early of a father's guardianship, 
 What wonder if the prodigality 
 Of nature in the girl, whose mental gifts 
 Matched her external dowry, form and face — 
 If these suggested a too prompt resource 
 To the resourceless mother ? " Try the Stage 
 
104 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 And so escape starvation ! Prejudice 
 Defames Mimetic Art : be yours to prove 
 That gold and dross may meet and never mix, 
 Purity plunge in pitch yet soil no plume \" 
 
 All was prepared in London — (you conceive 
 
 The natural shrinking from publicity 
 
 In Paris, where the name excites remark) 
 
 London was ready for the grand debut ; 
 
 When some perverse ill fortune, incident 
 
 To art mimetic, some malicious thrust 
 
 Of Jealousy who sidles 'twixt the scenes 
 
 Or pops up sudden from the prompter's hole, — 
 
 Somehow the brilliant bubble burst in suds. 
 
 Want followed : in a foreign land, the pair ! 
 
 O hurry over the catastrophe — 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 105 
 
 Mother too sorely tempted, daughter tried 
 Scarcely so much as circumvented, say ! 
 Caged unsuspecting artless innocence ! 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda tell the rest ! — 
 
 The rather that he told it in a style 
 
 To puzzle Court Guide students, much more me. 
 
 " Brief, she became the favourite of Lord N., 
 
 An aged but illustrious Duke, thereby 
 
 Breaking the heart of his competitor 
 
 The Prince of O. Behold her palaced straight 
 
 In splendor, clothed in diamonds," (phrase how fit !) 
 
 " Giving tone to the City by the Thames ! 
 
 Lord N., the aged but illustrious Duke, 
 
 Was even on the point of wedding her — 
 
 Giving his name to her " (why not to us ?) 
 
106 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 " But that her better angel interposed. 
 
 She fled from such a fate to Paris back, 
 
 A fortnight since : conceive Lord N.'s despair ! 
 
 Duke as he is, there's no invading France. 
 
 He must restrict pursuit to postal plague 
 
 Of writing letters daily, duly read 
 
 As darlingly she hands them to myself, 
 
 The privileged supplanter, who therewith 
 
 Light a cigar and see abundant blue " — 
 
 (Either of heaven or else Havanna-smoke.) 
 
 " Think ! she, who helped herself to diamonds late, 
 
 In passion of disinterestedness 
 
 Now — will accept no tribute of my love 
 
 Beyond a paltry ring, three Louis'-worth ! 
 
 Little she knows I have the rummaging 
 
 Of old Papa's shop in the Place Vendome ! " 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 107 
 
 So wrote entrancedly to confidant, 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda. Surely now, 
 If Heaven, that sees all, understands no less, 
 It finds temptation pardonable here, 
 It mitigates the promised punishment, 
 It recognizes that to tarry just 
 An April hour amid such dainty turf 
 Means no rebellion against task imposed 
 Of journey to the distant wall one day ! 
 Monsieur Le'once Miranda puts the case ! 
 Love, he is purposed to renounce, abjure ; 
 But meanwhile, is the case a common one ? 
 Is it the vulgar sin, none hates as he ? 
 
 Which question, put directly to "his dear" 
 (His brother — I will tell you in a trice) 
 
108 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Was doubtless meant, by due meandering, 
 To reach, to fall not unobserved before 
 The auditory cavern 'neath the cope 
 Of Her, the placable, the Ravissante. 
 But here's the drawback, that the image smiles, 
 Smiles on, smiles ever, says to supplicant 
 " Ay, ay, ay " — like some kindly weathercock 
 Which, stuck fast at Set Fair, Favonian Breeze, 
 Still warrants you from rain, though Auster's lead 
 Bring down the sky above your cloakless mirth. 
 Had he proposed this question to, nor " dear " 
 Nor Ravissante, but prompt to the Police, 
 The Commissary of his Quarter, now — 
 There had been shaggy eyebrows elevate 
 With twinkling apprehension in each orb 
 Beneath, and when the sudden shut of mouth 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 109 
 
 Relaxed, — lip pressing lip, lest out should plump 
 The pride of knowledge in too frank a flow, — 
 Then, fact on fact forthcoming, dose were dealt 
 Of truth remedial, in sufficiency 
 To save a chicken threatened with the pip, 
 Head-staggers and a tumble from its perch. 
 
 Alack, it was the lady's self that made 
 The revelation, after certain days 
 — Nor so unwisely ! As the haschisch-man 
 Prepares a novice to receive his drug, 
 Adroitly hides the soil with sudden spread 
 Of carpet ere he seats his customer : 
 Then shows him how to smoke himself about 
 With Paradise; and only when, at puff 
 Of pipe, the Houri dances round the brain 
 
RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Of dreamer, does he judge no need is now 
 For circumspection and punctiliousness; 
 He may resume the serviceable scrap 
 That made the votary unaware of muck. 
 Just thus the lady, when her brewage — love — 
 Was well a- fume about the novice-brain, 
 Saw she might boldly pluck, from underneath 
 Her lover, the preliminary lie. 
 
 Clara de Millefleurs, of the noble race, 
 Was Lucie Steiner, child to Dominique 
 And Magdalen Commercy ; born at Sierck, 
 About the bottom of the Social Couch. 
 The father having come and gone again, 
 The mother and the daughter found their way 
 To Paris, and professed mode-merchandize, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS i 
 
 Were milliners, we English roughlier say \ 
 
 And soon a fellow-lodger in the house, 
 
 Monsieur Ulysse Muhlhausen young and smart, 
 
 Tailor by trade, perceived his house-mate's youth, 
 
 Smartness, and beauty over and above. 
 
 Courtship was brief, and marriage followed quick, 
 
 And quicklier — impecuniosity. 
 
 The young pair quitted Paris to reside 
 
 At London : which repaid the compliment 
 
 But scurvily, since not a whit the more 
 
 Trade prospered by the Thames than by the Seine. 
 
 Failing all other, as a last resource, 
 
 " He would have trafficked in his wife," — she said. 
 
 If for that cause they quarrelled, ' twas, I fear, 
 
 Rather from reclamation of her rights 
 
 To wifely independence, than as wronged 
 
RED COTTON NIGHTCAP COUNTRY 
 
 Otherwise by the course of life proposed : 
 Since, on escape to Paris back again, 
 From horror and the husband, — ill-exchanged 
 For safe maternal home recovered thus, — 
 I find her domiciled and dominant 
 In that apartment, Coliseum Street, 
 Where all the splendid magic met and mazed 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda's venturous eye. 
 Only, the same was furnished at the cost 
 Of someone notable in days long since, 
 Carlino Centofanti : he it was, 
 Found entertaining unawares — if not 
 An angel, yet a youth in search of one. 
 
 Why this revealment after reticence ? 
 Wherefore, beginning " Millefleurs," end at all 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 113 
 
 Steiner, Muhlhausen, and the ugly rest ? 
 Because the unsocial purse-comptrolling wight, 
 Carlino Centofanti, made aware 
 By misadventure that his bounty — crumbs 
 From table — comforted a visitant, 
 Took churlish leave, and left, too, debts to pay. 
 Loaded with debts, the lady needs must bring 
 Her soul to bear assistance from a friend 
 Beside that paltry ring, three Louis'-worth \ 
 And therefore might the little circumstance 
 That Monsieur Leonce had the rummaging 
 Of old Papa's shop in the Place Vendome, 
 Pass, perhaps, not so unobservably. 
 
 Frail shadow of a woman in the flesh, 
 These very eyes of mine saw yesterday, 
 1 
 
ii 4 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Would I re-tell this story of your woes, 
 Would I have heart to do you detriment 
 . By pinning all this shame and sorrow plain 
 To that poor chignon, — staying with me still, 
 Though form and face have well nigh faded now,- 
 But that men read it, rough in brutal print, 
 As two years since some functionary's voice 
 Rattled all this— and more by very much — 
 Into the ear of vulgar Court and crowd, 
 Whence, by reverberation, rumblings grew 
 To what had proved a week-long roar in France, 
 Had not the dreadful cannonry drowned all. 
 Was, now, the answer of your advocate 
 More than just this ? " The shame fell long ago, 
 The sorrow keeps increasing : God forbid 
 We judge man, by the faults of youth, in age ! " 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 115 
 
 Permit me the expression of a hope 
 Your youth proceeded like your avenue, 
 Stepping by bush, and tree, and taller tree, 
 Until, columnar, at the house they end. 
 So might your creeping youth, columnar rise 
 And reach, by year and year, symmetrical, 
 To where all shade stops short, shade's service done, 
 Bushes on either side, and boughs above, 
 Darken, deform the path, else sun would streak ; 
 And, cornered halfway somewhere, I suspect 
 Stagnation and a horse-pond : hurry past! 
 For here 's the house, the happy half-and-half 
 Existence — such as stands for happiness 
 True and entire, howe'er the squeamish talk ! 
 Twenty years long, you may have loved this man ; 
 He must have loved you ; that's a happy life, 
 
u6 RED COTTON NIGHT -CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Whatever was your right to lead the same. 
 The white domestic pigeon pairs secure, 
 Nay, does mere duty by bestowing egg 
 In authorized compartment, warm and safe, 
 Boarding about, and gilded spire above, 
 Hoisted on pole, to dogs' and cats' despair ! 
 But I have spied a veriest trap of twigs 
 On tree-top, every straw a thievery, 
 Where the wild dove — despite the fowler's snare, 
 The sportsman's shot, the urchin's stone, — crooned gay, 
 And solely gave her heart to what she hatched, 
 Nor minded a malignant world below. 
 / throw first stone forsooth ? 'Tis mere assault 
 Of playful sugarplum against your cheek, 
 Which, if it makes cheek tingle, wipes off rouge ! 
 You, my worst woman ? Ah, that touches pride, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS u 
 
 Puts on his mettle the exhibitor 
 
 Of Night-caps, if you taunt him " This, no doubt, — 
 
 Now we have got to Female-garniture, — 
 
 Crowns your collection, Reddest of the row ! " 
 
 O unimaginative ignorance 
 
 Of what dye's depth keeps best apart from worst 
 
 In womankind ! — how heaven's own pure may seem 
 
 To blush aurorally beside such blanched 
 
 Divineness as the women-wreaths named White: 
 
 While hell, eruptive and fuliginous, 
 
 Sickens to very pallor as I point 
 
 Her place to a Red clout called woman too ! 
 
 Hail, heads that ever had such glory once 
 
 Touch you a moment, like God's cloven tongues 
 
 Of fire, your lambent aureoles lost, that leave 
 
 You marked yet, dear beyond all diadems ! 
 
RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 And hold, each foot, nor spurn, to man's disgrace, 
 What other twist of fetid rag may fall ! 
 Let slink into the sewer the cupping-cloth ! 
 
 Lucie, much solaced, I re-finger you, 
 The medium article ; if ruddy-marked 
 With iron-mould, your cambric, — clean at least 
 From poison-speck of rot and purulence ! 
 Lucie Muhlhausen said — " Such thing am I : 
 Love me, or love me not ! " Miranda said 
 " I do love, more than ever, most for this." 
 The revelation of the very truth, 
 Proved the concluding necessary shake 
 That bids the tardy mixture crystalize 
 Or else stay ever liquid : shoot up shaft, 
 Durably diamond, or evaporate — 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 119 
 
 Sluggish solution through a minute's slip. 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda took his soul 
 
 In both his hands, as if it were a vase, 
 
 To see what came of the convulsion there, 
 
 And found, amid subsidence, love new-born 
 
 So sparklingly resplendent, old was new. 
 
 " Whatever be my lady's present, past, 
 
 Or future, this is certain of my soul, 
 
 I love her ! in despite of all I know, 
 
 Defiance of the much I have to fear, 
 
 I venture happiness on what I hope, 
 
 And love her from this day for evermore ! 
 
 No prejudice to old profound respect 
 
 For certain Powers ! I trust they bear in mind 
 
 A most peculiar case, and straighten out 
 
 What's crooked there, before we close accounts. 
 
RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Renounce the world for them — some day I will 
 Meantime, to me let her become the world !" 
 
 Thus, mutely might our friend soliloquize 
 Over the tradesmen's bills, his Clara's gift — 
 In the apartment, Coliseum Street, 
 Carlino Centofanti's legacy, 
 Provided rent and taxes were discharged — 
 In face of Stein er now, De Millefleurs once, 
 The tailor's wife and runaway confessed. 
 
 On such a lady if election light, 
 (According to a social prejudice) 
 If henceforth " all the world " she constitute 
 For any lover, — needs must he renounce 
 Our world in ordinary, walked about 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 By couples loving as our laws prescribe, — 
 
 Renunciation sometimes difficult. 
 
 But, in this instance, time and place and thing 
 
 Combined to simplify experiment, 
 
 And make Miranda, in the current phrase, 
 
 Master the situation passably. 
 
 For first facility, his brother died — 
 
 Who was, I should have told you, confidant, 
 
 Adviser, referee and substitute, 
 
 All from a distance : but I knew how soon 
 
 This younger brother, lost in Portugal, 
 
 Had to depart and leave our friend at large. 
 
 Cut off abruptly from companionship 
 
 With brother-soul of bulk about as big, 
 
 (Obvious recipient — by intelligence 
 
122 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 And sympathy, poor little pair of souls — 
 Of much affection and some foolishness) 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda, meant to lean 
 By nature, needs must shift the leaning-place 
 To his love's bosom from his brother's neck, 
 Or fall flat unrelieved of freight sublime. 
 
 Next died the lord of the Aladdin's cave, 
 Master o' the mint and keeper of the keys 
 Of chests choakful with gold and silver changed 
 By Art to forms where wealth forgot itself, 
 And caskets where reposed each pullet-egg 
 Of diamond, slipping flame from fifty slants. 
 In short, the father of the family 
 Took his departure also from our scene, 
 Leaving a fat succession to his heir 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 123 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda, — " fortunate 
 
 If ever man was, in a father's death," 
 
 (So commented the world, — not he, too kind, 
 
 Could that be, rather than scarce kind enough) 
 
 Indisputably fortunate so far, 
 
 That little of incumbrance in his path, 
 
 Which money kicks aside, would lie there long. 
 
 And finally, a rough but wholesome shock, 
 
 An accident which comes to kill or cure, 
 
 A jerk which mends a dislocated joint ! 
 
 Such happy chance, at cost of twinge, no doubt, 
 
 Into the socket back again put truth, 
 
 And stopped the limb from longer dragging lie. 
 
 For love suggested " Better shamble on, 
 
 •And bear your lameness with what grace you may !" 
 
124 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 And but for this rude wholesome accident, 
 
 Continuance of disguise and subterfuge, 
 
 Retention of first falsehood as to name 
 
 And nature in the lady, might have proved 
 
 Too necessary for abandonment. 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda probably 
 
 Had else been loath to cast the mask aside, 
 
 So politic, so self-preservative, 
 
 Therefore so pardonable — though so wrong ! 
 
 For see the bugbear in the background ! Breathe 
 
 But ugly name, and wind is sure to waft 
 
 The husband news of the wife's whereabout : 
 
 From where he lies perdue in London town, 
 
 Forth steps the needy tailor on the stage, 
 
 Deity-like from dusk machine of fog, 
 
 And claims his consort, or his consort's worth 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 125 
 
 In rubies which her price is far above. 
 Hard to propitiate, harder to oppose, — 
 Who but the man's self came to banish fear, 
 A pleasant apparition, such as shocks 
 A moment, tells a tale, then goes for good! 
 
 Monsieur Ulysse Muhlhausen proved no less 
 
 Nor more than " Gustave," lodging opposite 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda's diamond-cave 
 
 And ruby-mine, and lacking little thence 
 
 Save that its gnome would keep the captive safe, 
 
 Never return his Clara to his arms. 
 
 For why ? . He was become the man in vogue, 
 
 The indispensable to who went clothed 
 
 Nor cared encounter Paris fashion's blame, — 
 
 Such miracle could London absence work. 
 
126 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Rolling in riches — so translate " the vogue " — 
 
 Rather his object was to keep off claw 
 
 Should griffin scent the gold, should wife lay claim 
 
 To lawful portion* at a future day, 
 
 Than tempt his partner from her private spoils. 
 
 Best forage each for each, nor coupled hunt ! 
 
 Pursuantly, one morning, — knock at door 
 
 With knuckle, dry authoritative cough, 
 
 And easy stamp of foot, broke startlingly 
 
 On household slumber, Coliseum Street : 
 
 " Admittance in the name of Law !" In marched 
 
 The Commissary and subordinate. 
 
 One glance sufficed them. " A marital pair : 
 
 We certify, and bid good morning, sir ! 
 
 Madame, a thousand pardons !" Whereupon 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 127 
 
 Monsieur Ulysse Muhlhausen otherwise 
 
 Called " Gustave " for conveniency of trade, 
 
 Deposing in due form complaint of wrong, 
 
 Made his demand of remedy — divorce 
 
 From bed, board, share of name, and part in goods. 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda owned his fault, 
 
 Protested his pure ignorance, from first 
 
 To last, of rights infringed in " Gustave's " case : 
 
 Submitted him to judgment. Law decreed 
 
 " Body and goods be henceforth separate ! " 
 
 And thereupon each party took its way, 
 
 This right, this left, rejoicing, to abide 
 
 Estranged yet amicable, opposites 
 
 In life as in respective dwelling-place. 
 
 Still does one read on his establishment 
 
 Huge-lettered " Gustave," — gold out-*glittering 
 
128 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 11 Miranda, goldsmith," just across the street — 
 
 " A first-rate hand at riding-habits " — say 
 
 The instructed — " special cut of chamber-robes." 
 
 Thus by a rude in seeming — rightlier judged 
 Beneficent surprise, publicity 
 Stopped further fear and trembling, and what tale 
 Cowardice thinks a covert : one bold splash 
 Into the mid-shame, and the shiver ends, 
 Though cramp and drowning may begin perhaps. 
 
 To cite just one more point which crowned success 
 
 Madame, Miranda's mother, most of all 
 
 An obstacle to his projected life 
 
 In licence, as a daughter of the Church, 
 
 Duteous, exemplary, severe by right — 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 129 
 
 Moreover one most thoroughly beloved 
 
 Without a rival till the other sort 
 
 Possessed her son, — first storm of anger spent, 
 
 Seemed, grumblingly and grudgingly no doubt, 
 
 To acquiesce, let be what needs must be. 
 
 "With Heaven — accommodation possible !" 
 
 Saint Sganarelle had preached with such effect, 
 
 She saw now mitigating circumstance. 
 
 " The erring one was most unfortunate, 
 
 No question : but worse Magdalens repent. 
 
 Were Clara free, did only Law allow, 
 
 What fitter choice in marriage could have made 
 
 Leonce or anybody ? " 'Tis alleged 
 
 And evidenced, I find, by advocate 
 
 " Never did she consider such a tie 
 
 As baleful, springe to snap whate'er the cost." 
 
 K 
 
130 RED COTTON NIGHTCAP COUNTRY 
 
 And when the couple were in safety once 
 
 At Clairvaux, motherly, considerate, 
 
 She shrank not from advice. "Since safe you be, 
 
 Safely abide ! for Winter, I know well, 
 
 Is troublesome in a cold country-house. 
 
 I recommend the south room, that we styled, 
 
 Your sire and I, the Winter-chamber." 
 
 Chance 
 Or purpose, — who can read the mystery ? — 
 Combined, I say, to bid " Entrench yourself, 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda, on this turf, 
 About this flower, so firmly that, as tent 
 Rises on every side around you both, 
 The question shall become, — Which arrogates 
 Stability, the tent or towers afar ? 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 \ 
 
 May not the temporary structure suit 
 
 The stable circuit, co-exist in peace ? — 
 
 Always until the proper time, no fear ! 
 
 ' Lay flat your tent ! ' is easier said than done." 
 
 So, with the best of auspices, betook 
 Themselves Leonce Miranda and his bride — 
 Pro visionary — to their Clairvaux house, 
 Never to leave it — till the proper time. 
 
 I told you what was Clairvaux- Priory 
 Ere the improper time : an old demesne 
 With memories, — relic, half, and ruin, whole, — 
 The very place, then, to repair the wits 
 Worn out with Paris- traffic, when its lord, 
 Miranda's father took his month of ease 
 
132 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Purchased by industry. What contrast here ! 
 
 Repose, and solitude, and healthy ways ! 
 
 That ticking at the back of head, he took 
 
 For motion of an inmate, stopped at once, 
 
 Proved nothing but the pavement's rattle left 
 
 Behind at Paris : here was holiday ! 
 
 Welcome the quaint succeeding to the spruce, 
 
 The large and lumbersome and — might he breathe 
 
 In whisper to his own ear — dignified 
 
 And gentry-fashioned old-style haunts of sleep ! 
 
 Palatial gloomy chambers for parade, 
 
 And passage-lengths of lost significance, 
 
 Never constructed as receptacle, 
 
 At his odd hours, for him their actual lord 
 
 By dint of diamond-dealing, goldsmithry. 
 
 Therefore Miranda's father chopped and changed 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 133 
 
 Nor roof-tile nor yet floor-brick, undismayed 
 
 By rains a-top or rats at bottom there. 
 
 Such contrast is so piquant for a month ! 
 
 But now arrived quite other occupants 
 
 Whose cry was " Permanency, — life and death 
 
 Here, here, not elsewhere, change is all we dread !" 
 
 Their dwelling-place must be adapted, then, 
 
 To inmates, no mere truants from the town, 
 
 No temporary sojourners, forsooth, 
 
 At Clairvaux : change it into Paradise ! 
 
 Fair friend, — who listen and let talk, alas ! — 
 You would, in even such a state of things, 
 Pronounce, — or am I wrong ? — for bidding stay 
 The old-world inconvenience, fresh as found. 
 All folks of individuality 
 
134 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Prefer to be reminded, now and then, 
 Though at the cost of vulgar cosiness, 
 That the shell-outside only harbours man 
 The vital and progressive, meant to build, 
 When build he may, with quite a difference, 
 Some time, in that far land we dream about, 
 Where every man is his own architect. 
 But then the couple here in question, each 
 At one in project for a happy life, 
 Were by no acceptation of the word 
 So individual that they must aspire 
 To architecture all-appropriate 
 And, therefore, in this world impossible : 
 They needed house to suit the circumstance, 
 Proprietors, not tenants for a term. 
 Despite a certain marking, here and there, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 135 
 
 Of fleecy black or white distinguishment, 
 These vulgar sheep wore the flock's uniform. 
 They love the country, they renounce the town ? 
 They gave a kick, as our Italians say, 
 To Paris ere it turned and kicked themselves ! 
 Acquaintances might prove too hard to seek, 
 Or the reverse of hard to find, perchance, 
 Since Monsieur Gustave's apparition there. 
 And let me call remark upon the list 
 Of notabilities invoked, in Court 
 At Vire, to witness, by their phrases culled 
 From correspondence, what was the esteem 
 Of those we pay respect to, for " the pair 
 Whereof they knew the inner life," 'tis said. 
 Three, and three only, answered the appeal. 
 First, Monsieur Vaillant, music-publisher, 
 
136 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 " Begs Madame will accept civilities." 
 
 Next, Alexandre Dumas, — sire, not son, — 
 
 " Sends compliments to Madame and to you." 
 
 And last — but now prepare for England's voice ! 
 
 I will not mar nor make — here's word for word — 
 
 " A rich proprietor of Paris, he 
 
 To whom belonged that beauteous Bagatelle 
 
 Close to the wood of Boulogne, Hertford hight, 
 
 Assures of homages and compliments 
 
 Affectionate " — not now Miranda but 
 
 " Madame Muhlhausen." (Was this friend, the Duke 
 
 Redoubtable in rivalry before ?) 
 
 Such was the evidence when evidence 
 
 Was wanted, then if ever, to the worth 
 
 Whereat acquaintances in Paris prized 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda's household charm. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 137 
 
 No wonder, then, his impulse was to live, 
 In Norman solitude, the Paris life : 
 Surround himself with Art transported thence, 
 And nature like those famed Elysian Fields : 
 Then, warm up the right colour out of both, 
 By Boulevard friendships tempted to come taste 
 How Paris lived again in little there. 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda practised Art. 
 Do let a man for once live as man likes ! 
 Politics ? Spend your life, to spare the world's : 
 Improve each unit by some particle 
 Of joy the more, deteriorate the orb 
 Entire, your own : poor profit, dismal loss ! 
 Write books, paint pictures, or make music — since 
 Your nature leans to such life-exercise ! 
 
138 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Ay, but such exercise begins too soon, 
 
 Concludes too late, demands life whole and sole, 
 
 Artistry being battle with the age 
 
 It lives in! Half life, — silence, while you learn 
 
 What has been done; the other half,— attempt 
 
 At speech, amid world's wail of wonderment — 
 
 " Here's something done, was never done before ! " 
 
 To be the very breath that moves the age, 
 
 Means not, to have breath drive you bubble-like 
 
 Before it— but yourself to blow : that's strain \ 
 
 Strain 's worry through the life-time, till there's peace; 
 
 We know where peace expects the artist-soul. 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda knew as much. 
 Therefore in Art he, nowise cared to be 
 Creative ; but creation, that had birth 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 139 
 
 In storm iness long years before was born 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda, — Art, enjoyed 
 Like fleshly objects of the chace that tempt 
 In cookery, not capture — these might feast 
 The dilettante, furnish tavern-fare 
 Open to all with purses open too. 
 To sit free and take tribute seigneur-like — 
 Now, not too lavish of acknowledgment, 
 Now, self-indulgently profuse of pay, 
 Always Art's seigneur, not Art's serving-man, 
 Whate'er the style and title and degree, — 
 That is the quiet life and easy death 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda would approve 
 Wholly — provided (back I go again 
 To the first simile) that while glasses clink, 
 And viands steam, and banqueting laughs high, 
 
140 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 All that's outside the temporary tent, 
 The dim grim outline of the circuit-wall, 
 Forgets to menace " Soon or late will drop 
 Pavilion, soon or late you needs must march, 
 And laggards will be sorry they were slack ! 
 Always — unless excuse sound plausible ! " 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda knew as much : 
 Whence his determination just to paint 
 So creditably as might help the eye 
 To comprehend how painter's eye grew dim 
 Ere it produced LTngegno's piece of work- 
 So to become musician that his ear 
 Should judge, by its own tickling and turmoil, 
 Who made the Solemn Mass might well die deaf- 
 So cultivate a literary knack 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 141 
 
 That, by experience how it wiles the time, 
 
 He might imagine how a poet, rapt 
 
 In rhyming wholly, grew so poor at last 
 
 By carelessness about his bankers-book, 
 
 That the Sieur Boileau (to provoke our smile) 
 
 Began abruptly, — when he paid devoir 
 
 To Louis Quatorze as he dined in state, — 
 
 " Sire, send a drop of broth to Pierre Corneille 
 
 Now dying and in want of sustenance ! " 
 
 — I say, these half-hour playings at life's toil, 
 
 Diversified by billiards, riding, sport — 
 
 With now and then a visitor — Dumas, 
 
 Hertford — to check no aspiration's flight — 
 
 While Clara, like a diamond in the dark, 
 
 Should extract shining from what else were shade. 
 
 And multiply chance rays a million-fold, — 
 
142 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 How could he doubt that all offence outside, — 
 Wrong to the towers, which, pillowed on the turf, 
 He thus shut eyes to, — were as good as gone ? 
 
 So, down went C lair vaux- Priory to dust, 
 And up there rose, in lieu, yon structure gay 
 Above the Norman ghosts : and where the stretch 
 Of barren country girdled house about, 
 Behold the Park, the English preference ! 
 Thus made undoubtedly a desert smile, 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda. 
 
 Ay, but she ? 
 One should not so merge soul in soul, you think ? 
 And I think : only, let us wait, nor want 
 Two things at once — her turn will come in time. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 143 
 
 A cork-float danced upon the tide, we saw, 
 
 This morning, blinding-bright with briny dews : 
 
 There was no disengaging soaked from sound, 
 
 Earth-product from the sister-elemerft. 
 
 But when Ave turn, the tide will turn, I think, 
 
 And bare on beach will lie exposed the buoy : 
 
 A very proper time to try, with foot 
 
 And even finger, which was buoying wave, 
 
 Which merely buoyant substance, — power to lift, 
 
 And power to be sent skyward passively. 
 
 Meanwhile, no separation of the pair ! 
 
144 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 III 
 
 And so slipt pleasantly away five years 
 
 Of Paradisiac dream; till, as there flit 
 
 Premonitory symptoms, pricks of pain, 
 
 Because the dreamer has to start awake 
 
 And find disease dwelt active all the while 
 
 In head or stomach through his night-long sleep,- 
 
 So happened here disturbance to content. 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda's last of cares, 
 Ere he composed himself, had been to make 
 Provision that, while sleeping safe he lay, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 145 
 
 Somebody else should, dragon-like, let fall 
 Never a lid, coiled round the apple-stem, 
 But watch the precious fruitage. Somebody 
 Kept shop, in short, played Paris substitute. 
 Himself, shrewd, well-trained, early-exercised, 
 Could take in, at an eye-glance, luck or loss — 
 Know commerce throve, though lazily uplift 
 On elbow merely : leave his bed, forsooth ? 
 Such active service was the substitute's. 
 
 But one October morning, at first drop 
 Of appled gold, first summons to be grave 
 Because rough Autumn's play turns earnest now, 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda was required 
 In Paris to take counsel, face to face, 
 With Madame-mother : and be rated, too, 
 
 L 
 
146 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Roundly at certain items of expense 
 
 Whereat the government provisional, 
 
 The Paris substitute and shopkeeper, 
 
 Shook head, and talked of funds inadequate : 
 
 Oh, in the long run, — not if remedy 
 
 Occurred betimes ! Else, — tap the generous bole 
 
 Too near the quick, — it withers to the root — 
 
 Leafy, prolific, golden apple-tree, 
 
 " Miranda," sturdy in the Place Vendome ! 
 
 " What is this reckless life you. lead ?" began 
 Madame Miranda, — whom he feared and loved, — 
 Her greeting. " Luxury, extravagance 
 Sardanapalus' self might emulate, — 
 Did your good father's money go for this ? 
 Where are the fruits of education, where 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 147 
 
 The morals which at first distinguished you, 
 
 The faith which promised to adorn your age ? 
 
 And why such wastefulness outbreaking now, 
 
 When heretofore you loved economy ? 
 
 Explain this pulling-down and building up 
 
 Of Clairvaux, which your father bought because 
 
 Clairvaux he found it, and so left to you, 
 
 Not a gilt gingerbread big baby-house ! 
 
 True, we could somehow shake head and shut eye 
 
 To what was past prevention on our part — 
 
 This reprehensible illicit bond : 
 
 We, in a manner, winking, watched consort 
 
 Our modest well-conducted pious son 
 
 With Dalilah : we thought the smoking flax 
 
 Would smoulder soon away and end in snuff ! 
 
 Is spark to strengthen, prove consuming fire? 
 
148 RED COTTON NIGHT- CAP COUNTRY 
 
 No lawful family calls Clairvaux l home ' — 
 
 Why play the fool of Scripture that the voice 
 
 Admonished ' Whose shall be those things to-night, 
 
 Provided for thy morning jollity ? ' 
 
 To take one specimen of pure caprice 
 
 Out of the heap conspicuous in this plan, — 
 
 Puzzle of change, I call it, — titled big 
 
 ' Clairvaux Restored :' what means this Belvedere? 
 
 This Tower, stuck like a fools'-cap on the roof — 
 
 Do you intend to soar to heaven from thence ? 
 
 Tower, truly ! Better had you planted turf — 
 
 More fitly would you dig yourself a hole 
 
 Beneath it, for the final journey's help ! 
 
 O we poor parents — could we prophesy!" 
 
 Le'once was found affectionate enough 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 149 
 
 To man, to woman, child, bird, beast, alike ; 
 
 But all affection, all one fire of heart 
 
 Flaming toward Madame-mother. Had she posed 
 
 The question plainly at the outset " Choose ! 
 
 Cut clean in half your all-the-world of love, 
 
 The mother and the mistress: then resolve, 
 
 Take me or take her, throw away the one ! " — 
 
 He might have made the choice and marred my tale. 
 
 But, much I apprehend, the problem put 
 
 Was " Keep both halves, yet do no detriment 
 
 To either ! Prize each opposite in turn ! " 
 
 Hence, while he prized at worth the Clairvaux-life 
 
 With all its tolerated naughtiness, 
 
 He, visiting in fancy Quai Rousseau, 
 
 Saw, cornered in the cosiest nook of all 
 
 That range of rooms through number Thirty-three, 
 
150 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 The lady-mother bent o'er her Bezique; 
 
 While Monsieur Cure This, and Sister That, — 
 
 Superior of no matter what good House — 
 
 Did duty for Duke Hertford and Dumas, 
 
 Nay, — at his mother's age, — for Clara's self. 
 
 At Quai Rousseau, things comfortable thus, 
 
 Why should poor Clairvaux be so troublesome ? 
 
 She played at cards, he built a Belvedere. 
 
 But here's the difference : she had reached the Towers 
 
 And there took pastime : he was still on Turf — 
 
 Though fully minded that, when once he marched, 
 
 No sportive fancy should distract him more. 
 
 In brief, the man was angry with himself, 
 With her, with all the world and much beside : 
 And so the unseemly words were interchanged 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 Which crystalize what else evaporates, 
 
 And make mere misty petulance grow hard 
 
 And sharp inside each softness, heart and soul. 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda flung at last 
 
 Out of doors, fever-flushed : and there the Seine 
 
 Rolled at his feet, obsequious remedy 
 
 For fever, in a cold Autumnal flow. 
 
 " Go and be rid of memory in a bath ! " 
 
 Craftily whispered Who besets the ear 
 
 On such occasions. 
 
 Done as soon as dreamed. 
 Back shivers poor Leonce to bed — where else ? 
 And there he lies a month 'twixt life and death, 
 Raving. "Remorse of conscience!" friends 
 opine. 
 
152 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 " Sirs, it may partly prove so," represents 
 
 Beaumont — (the family physician, he 
 
 Whom last year's Commune murdered, do you mind ?) 
 
 Beaumont reports " There is some active cause, 
 
 More than mere pungency of quarrel past, — 
 
 Cause that keeps adding other food to fire. 
 
 I hear the words and know the signs, I say ! 
 
 Dear Madame, you have read the Book of Saints, 
 
 How Antony was tempted ? As for me, 
 
 Poor heathen, 'tis by pictures I am taught. 
 
 I say then, I see standing here, — between 
 
 Me and my patient, and that crucifix 
 
 You very properly would interpose, — 
 
 A certain woman-shape, one white appeal 
 
 1 Will you leave me, then, me, me, me for her ? ' 
 
 Since cold Seine could not quench this flame, since flare 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 153 
 
 Of fever does not redden it away, — 
 Be rational, indulgent, mute — should chance 
 Come to the rescue — Providence, I mean — 
 The while I blister and phlebotomize ! " 
 
 Well, somehow rescued by whatever power, 
 
 At month's end, back again conveyed himself 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda, worn to rags, 
 
 Nay, tinder: stuff irreparably spoiled, 
 
 Though kindly hand should stitch and patch its 
 
 best. 
 Clairvaux in Autumn is restorative. 
 A friend stitched on, patched ever. All the same, 
 Clairvaux looked greyer than a month ago. 
 Unglossed was shrubbery, unglorified 
 Each copse, so wealthy once \ the garden-plots, 
 
154 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 The orchard-walks showed dearth and dreariness. 
 The sea lay out at distance crammed by cloud 
 Into a leaden wedge ; and sorrowful 
 Sulked field and pasture with persistent rain. 
 Nobody came so far from Paris now : 
 Friends did their duty by an invalid 
 Whose convalescence claimed entire repose. 
 Only a single ministrant was staunch 
 At quiet reparation of the stuff — 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda, worn to rags : 
 But she was Clara and the world beside. 
 
 Another month, the year packed up his plagues 
 And sullenly departed, pedlar-like, 
 As apprehensive old-world ware might show 
 To disadvantage when the new-comer, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 155 
 
 Merchant of novelties, young 'Sixty-eight, 
 With bran-new bargains, whistled o'er the lea. 
 Things brightened somewhat o'er the Christmas hearth, 
 As Clara plied assiduously her task. 
 
 " Words are but words and wind. Why let the wind 
 Sing in your ear, bite, sounding, to your brain ? 
 Old folk and young folk, still at odds, of course ! 
 Age quarrels because Spring puts forth a leaf 
 While Winter has a mind that boughs stay bare ; 
 Or rather — worse than quarrel — age descries 
 Propriety in preaching life to death. 
 ' Enjoy nor youth, nor Clairvaux, nor poor me ? ' 
 Dear Madame, you enjoy your age, 'tis thought ! 
 Your number Thirty-three on Quai Rousseau 
 Cost fifty times the price of Clairvaux, tipped 
 
156 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Even with our prodigious Belvedere j 
 
 You entertain the Cure, — we, Dumas : 
 
 We play charades, while you prefer Bezique : 
 
 Do lead your own life and let ours alone ! 
 
 Cross Old Year shall have done his worst, my 
 
 friend ! 
 Here comes gay New Year with a gift, no doubt ! 
 Look up and let in light that longs to shine — 
 One flash of light, and where will darkness hide ? 
 Your cold makes me too cold, love ! Keep me warm ! " 
 
 Whereat Leonce Miranda raised his head 
 From his two white thin hands, and forced a smile, 
 And spoke : " I do look up, and see your light 
 Above me ! Let New Year contribute warmth — 
 I shall refuse no fuel that may blaze." 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 157 
 
 Nor did he. Three days after, just a spark 
 From Paris, answered by a snap at Caen 
 Or whither reached the telegraphic wire : 
 " Quickly to Paris ! On arrival, learn 
 Why you are wanted ! " Curt and critical ! 
 
 Off starts Leonce, one fear from head to foot ; 
 Caen, Rouen, Paris, as the railway helps ; 
 Then come the Quai and Number Thirty-three. 
 " What is the matter, concierge?" — a grimace ! 
 He mounts the staircase, makes for the main seat 
 Of dreadful mystery which draws him there — 
 Bursts in upon a bedroom known too well — 
 There lies all left now of the mother once. 
 Tapers define the stretch of rigid white, 
 Nor want there ghastly velvets of the grave. 
 
158 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 A blackness sits on either side at watch, 
 
 Sisters, good souls but frightful all the same, 
 
 Silent : a priest is spokesman for his corpse. 
 
 " Dead, through Leonce Miranda ! stricken down 
 
 Without a minute's warning, yesterday ! 
 
 What did she say to you, and you to her, 
 
 Two months ago ? This is the consequence ! 
 
 The doctors have their name for the disease ; 
 
 I, you, and God say — heart-break, nothing more ! " 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda, like a stone 
 
 Fell at the bedfoot and found respite so, 
 
 While the priest went to tell the company. 
 
 What follows you are free to disbelieve. 
 
 It may be true or false that this good priest 
 
 Had taken his instructions, — who shall blame ? — 
 
 From quite another quarter than, perchance, 
 
OR TURF kND TOWERS 159 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda might suppose 
 
 Would offer solace in such pressing need. 
 
 All he remembered of his kith and kin 
 
 Was, they were worthily his substitutes 
 
 In commerce, did their work and drew their pay. 
 
 But they remembered, in addition, this — 
 
 They fairly might expect inheritance, 
 
 As nearest kin, called Family by law 
 
 And gospel both. Now, since Miranda's life 
 
 Showed nothing like abatement of distaste 
 
 For conjugality, but preference 
 
 Continued and confirmed of that smooth chain 
 
 Which slips and leaves no knot behind, no heir — 
 
 Presumption was, the man, become mature, 
 
 Would at a calculable day, discard 
 
 His old and outworn . . what we blush to name, 
 
160 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 And make society the just amends ; 
 
 Scarce by a new attachment — Heaven forbid ! 
 
 Still less by lawful marriage : that's reserved 
 
 For those who make a proper choice at first — 
 
 Not try both courses and would grasp in age 
 
 The very treasure, youth preferred to spurn ! 
 
 No ! putting decently such thought aside, 
 
 The penitent must rather give his powers 
 
 To such a reparation of the past 
 
 As, edifying kindred, makes them rich. 
 
 Now, how would it enrich prospectively 
 
 The Cousins, if he lavished such expense 
 
 On Clairvaux ? — pretty as a toy, but then 
 
 As toy, so much productive, and no more ! 
 
 If all the outcome of the goldsmith's shop 
 
 Went to gild Clairvaux, where remained the funds 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 161 
 
 For Cousinry to spread out lap and take ? 
 
 This must be thought of and provided for ! 
 
 I give it you as mere conjecture, mind ! 
 
 To help explain the wholesome unannounced 
 
 Intelligence, the shock that startled guilt, 
 
 The scenic show, much yellow, black and white 
 
 By taper-shine, the nuns — portentous pair, 
 
 And, more than all, the priest's admonishment — 
 
 " No flattery of self! You murdered her! 
 
 The grey lips, silent now, reprove by mine. 
 
 You wasted all your living, rioted 
 
 In harlotry — she warned and I repeat ! 
 
 No warning had she, for she needed none : 
 
 If this should be the last yourself receive ? " 
 
 Done for the best, no doubt, though clumsily, — 
 
 Such, and so startling, the reception here, 
 
 M 
 
1 62 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 You hardly wonder if down fell at once 
 The tawdry tent, pictorial, musical, 
 Poetical, besprent with hearts and darts ; 
 Its cobweb-work, betinseled stitchery, 
 Lay dust about our sleeper on the turf, 
 And showed an outer wall distinct and dread. 
 
 Senseless he fell, and long he lay, and much 
 Seemed salutary in his punishment 
 To planners and performers of the piece. 
 When pain ends, pardon prompt may operate. 
 There was a good attendance close at hand, 
 Waiting the issue in the great saloon, 
 Cousins with consolation and advice. 
 
 All things thus happily performed to point, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 163 
 
 No wonder at success commensurate. 
 
 Once swooning stopped, once anguish subsequent 
 
 Raved out, — a sudden resolution chilled 
 
 His blood and changed his swimming eyes to stone, 
 
 As the poor fellow raised himself upright, 
 
 Collected strength, looked, once for all, his look, 
 
 Then, turning, put officious help aside 
 
 And passed from out the chamber. " For affairs ! " 
 
 So he announced himself to the saloon : 
 
 " We owe a duty to the living too ! " — 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda tried to smile. 
 
 How did the hearts of Cousinry rejoice 
 At their stray sheep returning thus to fold, 
 As, with a dignity, precision, sense, 
 All unsuspected in the man before, 
 
RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Monsieur Le'once Miranda made minute 
 Detail of his intended scheme of life 
 Thenceforward and for ever. " Vanity 
 Was ended : its redemption must begin — 
 And, certain, would continue ; but since life 
 Was awfully uncertain — witness here ! — 
 Behoved him lose no moment, but discharge 
 Immediate burthen of the world's affairs 
 On backs that kindly volunteered to crouch. 
 Cousins, with easier conscience, blamelessly 
 Might carry on the goldsmith's trade, in brief, 
 Uninterfered with by its lord who late 
 Was used to supervise and take due tithe. 
 A stipend now sufficed his natural need : 
 Themselves should fix what sum allows man live. 
 But half a dozen words concisely plain 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 165 
 
 Might, first of all, make sure that, on demise, 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda's property- 
 Passed by bequeathment, every particle, 
 To the right heirs, the cousins of his heart. 
 As for that woman — they would understand ! 
 This was a step would take her by surprise ! 
 It were too cruel did he snatch away 
 Decent subsistence. She was young, and fair, 
 And . . and attractive ! Means must be supplied 
 To save her from herself, and from the world, 
 And . . from anxieties, might haunt him else 
 When he were fain have other thoughts in mind." 
 
 It was a sight to melt a stone, that thaw 
 
 Of rigid disapproval into dew 
 
 Of sympathy, as each extended palm 
 
166 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Of cousin hasted to enclose those five 
 
 Cold fingers, tendered so mistrustfully, 
 
 Despairingly of condonation now ! 
 
 One would have thought, — at every fervent shake, 
 
 In reassurance of those timid tips, — 
 
 The penitent had squeezed, considerate, 
 
 By way of fee into physician's hand 
 
 For physicking his soul, some diamond knob. 
 
 And now let pass a week. Once more behold 
 The same assemblage in the same saloon — 
 Waiting the entry of protagonist 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda. " Just a week 
 Since the death-day, — was ever man transformed 
 like this man ? " questioned cousin of his mate. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 167 
 
 Last seal to the repentance had been set 
 Three days before, at Sceaux in neighbourhood 
 Of Paris, where they laid with funeral pomp 
 Mother by father. Let me spare the rest : 
 How the poor fellow, in his misery, 
 Buried hot face and bosom, where heaped snow 
 Offered assistance, at the grave's black edge, 
 And there lay, till uprooted by main force 
 From where he prayed to grow and ne'er again 
 Walk earth unworthily as heretofore. 
 It is not with impunity priests teach 
 The doctrine he was dosed with from his youth — 
 " Pain to the body — profit to the soul; 
 Corporeal pleasure — so much woe to pay 
 When disembodied spirit gives account." 
 
1 68 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 However, woe had done its worst, this time. 
 Three days allow subsidence of much grief. 
 Already, regular and equable, 
 Forward went purpose to effect. At once 
 The testament was written, signed and sealed. 
 Disposure of the commerce — that took time, 
 And would not suffer by a week's delay ; 
 But the immediate, the imperious need, 
 The call demanding of the Cousinry 
 Co-operation, what convened them thus, 
 Was — how and when should deputation march 
 To Coliseum Street, the old abode 
 Of wickedness, and there acquaint — oh, shame ! 
 Her, its old inmate, who had followed up 
 And lay in wait in the old haunt for prey — 
 That they had rescued, they possessed Leonce, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 169 
 
 Whose loathing at re-capture equalled theirs — 
 Upbraid that sinner with her sinfulness, 
 Impart the fellow-sinner's firm resolve 
 Never to set eyes on her face again : 
 Then, after stipulations strict but just, 
 Hand her the first instalment, — moderate 
 Enough, no question, — of her salary : 
 Admonish for the future, and so end. — 
 All which good purposes, decided on 
 Sufficiently, were waiting full effect 
 When presently the culprit should appear. 
 
 Somehow appearance was delayed too long ; 
 Chatting and chirping sunk inconsciously 
 To silence, nay, uneasiness, at length 
 Alarm, till — anything for certitude ! — 
 
i;o RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 A peeper was commissioned to explore, 
 
 At keyhole, what the laggard's task might be — 
 
 What caused so palpable a disrespect ! 
 
 Back came the tiptoe cousin from his quest. 
 " Monsieur Leonce was busy," he believed, 
 " Contemplating — those love-letters, perhaps, 
 He always carried, as if precious stones, 
 About with him. He read, one after one, 
 Some sort of letters. But his back was turned. 
 The empty coffer open at his side, 
 He leant on elbow by the mantelpiece 
 Before the hearth-fire \ big and blazing too." 
 
 " Better he shovelled them all in at once, 
 And burned the rubbish! " was a cousin's quip, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 171 
 
 Warming his own hands at the fire the while. 
 I told you, snow had fallen outside, I think. 
 
 When suddenly a cry, a host of cries, 
 Screams, hubbub and confusion thrilled the room. 
 All by a common impulse rushed thence, reached 
 The late death- chamber, tricked with trappings still, 
 Skulls, cross-bones, and such moral broidery. 
 Madame Muhlhausen might have played the witch, 
 Dropped down the chimney and appalled Leonce 
 By some proposal " Parting touch of hand ! n 
 If she but touched his foolish hand, you know ! ! 
 
 Something had happened quite contrariwise. 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda, one by one, 
 Had read the letters and the love they held, 
 
172 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 And that task finished, had required his soul 
 To answer frankly what the prospect seemed 
 Of his own love's departure — pledged to part ! 
 Then, answer being unmistakable, 
 He had replaced the letters quietly, 
 Shut coffer, and so, grasping either side 
 By its convenient handle, plunged the whole — 
 Letters and coffer and both hands to boot, 
 Into the burning grate and held them there. 
 " Burn, burn and purify my past ! " said he, 
 Calmly, as if he felt no pain at all. 
 
 In vain they pulled him from the torture-place : 
 The strong man, with the soul of tenfold strength, 
 Broke from their clutch : and there again smiled he, 
 The miserable hands re-bathed in fire — 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 173 
 
 Constant to that ejaculation " Burn, 
 Burn, purify ! " And when, combining force, 
 They fairly dragged the victim out of reach 
 Of further harm, he had no hands to hurt — 
 Two horrible remains of right and left, 
 " Whereof the bones, phalanges formerly, 
 Carbonised, were still crackling with the flame," 
 Said Beaumont. And he fought them all the while : 
 " Why am I hindered when I would be pure ? 
 Why leave the sacrifice still incomplete ? 
 She holds me, I must have more hands to burn ! " 
 They were the stronger, though, and bound him 
 fast. 
 
 Beaumont was in attendance presently. 
 
 " What did I tell you ? Preachment to the deaf ! 
 
174 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 I wish he had been deafer when they preached, 
 Those priests ! But wait till next Republic comes ! " 
 
 As for Leonce, a single sentiment 
 
 Possessed his soul and occupied his tongue — 
 
 Absolute satisfaction at the deed. 
 
 Never he varied, 'tis observable, 
 
 Nor in the stage of agonies (which proved 
 
 Absent without leave, — science seemed to think) 
 
 Nor yet in those three months' febricity 
 
 Which followed, — never did he vary tale — 
 
 Remaining happy beyond utterance. 
 
 " Ineffable beatitude " — I quote 
 
 The words, I cannot give the smile — " such bliss 
 
 Abolished pain ! Pain might or might not be : 
 
 He felt in heaven, where flesh desists to fret. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 17 S 
 
 Purified now and henceforth, all the past 
 
 Reduced to ashes with the flesh defiled ! 
 
 Why all those anxious faces round his bed ? 
 
 What was to#pity in their patient, pray, 
 
 When doctor came and went, and Cousins watched ? 
 
 — Kindness, but in pure waste ! " he said and smiled. 
 
 And if a trouble would at times disturb 
 
 The ambrosial mood, it came from other source 
 
 Than the corporeal transitory pang. 
 
 " If sacrifice be incomplete ! " cried he — 
 
 " If ashes have not sunk reduced to dust, 
 
 To nullity! If atoms coalesce 
 
 Till something grow, grow, get to be a shape 
 
 I hate, I hoped to burn away from me ! 
 
 She is my body, she and I are one, 
 
 Yet, all the same, there, there at bed-foot stands 
 
176 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 The woman wound about my flesh and blood, 
 There, the arms open, the more wonderful, 
 The whiter for the burning . . Vanish thou! 
 Avaunt, fiend's self found in the form I wore ! " 
 
 " Whereat," said Beaumont, " since his hands were gone, 
 
 The patient in a frenzy kicked and kicked 
 
 To keep off some imagined visitant. 
 
 So will it prove as long as priests may preach 
 
 Spiritual terrors !" groaned the evidence 
 
 Of Beaumont that his patient w r as stark mad — 
 
 Produced in time and place : of which anon. 
 
 " Mad, or why thus insensible to pain ? 
 
 Body and soul are one thing, with two names 
 
 For more or less elaborated stuff." 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 177 
 
 Such is the new Religio Medici. 
 
 Though antiquated faith held otherwise, 
 
 Explained that body is not soul, but just 
 
 Soul's servant : that, if soul be satisfied, 
 
 Possess already joy or pain enough, 
 
 It uses to ignore, as master may, 
 
 What increase, joy or pain, its servant brings — 
 
 Superfluous contribution : soul, once served, 
 
 Has nought to do with body's service more. 
 
 Each, speculated on exclusively, 
 
 As if its office were the only one, 
 
 Body or soul, shows either, service paid 
 
 In joy and pain, that's blind and objectless — 
 
 A servant toiling for no master's good — 
 
 Or else shows good received and put to use. 
 
 As if within soul's self grew joy and pain, 
 
 N 
 
178 • RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Nor needed body for a ministrant. 
 
 I note these old unscientific ways : 
 
 Poor Beaumont cannot : for the Commune ruled 
 
 Next year, and ere they shot his priests, shot him. 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda raved himself 
 
 To rest ; lay three long months in bliss or bale, 
 
 Inactive, anyhow : more need that heirs, 
 
 His natural protectors, should assume 
 
 The management, bestir their cousinship, 
 
 And carry out that purpose of reform 
 
 Such tragic work now made imperative. 
 
 A deputation, with austerity, 
 
 Nay, sternness, bore her sentence to the fiend 
 
 Aforesaid, — she at watch for turn of wheel 
 
 And fortune's favour, Street — you know the name. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 179 
 
 A certain roughness seemed appropriate : " You — 
 Steiner, Muhlhausen, whatsoe'er your name, 
 Cause whole and sole of this catastrophe ! " — 
 And so forth, introduced the embassage. 
 
 " Monsieur Leonce Miranda was divorced 
 Once and for ever from his — ugly word. 
 Himself had gone for good to Portugal : 
 They came empowered to act and stipulate. 
 Hold ! no discussion ! Terms were settled now : 
 So much of present and prospective pay, 
 But also — good engagement in plain terms 
 She never seek renewal of the past ! " 
 
 This little harmless tale produced effect. 
 Madame Muhlhausen owned her sentence just, 
 
180 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Its execution gentle. " Stern their phrase, 
 These kinsfolk with a right she recognised — 
 But kind its import probably, which now 
 Her agitation, her bewilderment, 
 Rendered too hard to understand, perhaps. 
 Let them accord the natural delay, 
 And she would ponder and decide. Meantime, 
 So far was she from wish to follow friend 
 Who fled her, that she would not budge from place- 
 Now that her friend was fled to Portugal, — 
 Never ! She leave this Coliseum Street ? 
 No, not a footstep ! " she assured them. 
 
 So— 
 They saw they might have left that tale untold 
 When, after some weeks more were gone to waste, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 181 
 
 Recovery seemed incontestable, 
 
 And the poor mutilated figure, once 
 
 The gay and glancing fortunate young spark, 
 
 Miranda, humble and obedient took 
 
 The doctor's counsel, issued sad and slow 
 
 From precincts of the sick-room, tottered down, 
 
 And out, and into carriage for fresh air, 
 
 And so drove straight to Coliseum Street, 
 
 And tottered upstairs, knocked, and in a trice 
 
 Was clasped in the embrace of whom you know— 
 
 With much asseveration, I omit, 
 
 Of constancy henceforth till life should end. 
 
 When all this happened, — " What reward," cried she, 
 
 " For judging her Miranda by herself ! 
 
 For never having entertained a thought 
 
 Of breaking promise, leaving home forsooth, 
 
i82 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 To follow who was fled to Portugal ! 
 As if she thought they spoke a word of truth I 
 She knew what love was, knew that he loved her ; 
 The Cousinry knew nothing of the kind." 
 
 I will not scandalize you and recount 
 
 How matters made the morning pass away. 
 
 Not one reproach, not one acknowledgment, 
 
 One explanation : all was understood ! 
 
 Matters at end, the home-uneasiness 
 
 Cousins were feeling at this jaunt prolonged 
 
 Was ended also by the entry of — 
 
 Not simply him whose exit had been made 
 
 By mild command of doctor " Out with you ! 
 
 I warrant we receive another man ! " 
 
 But — would that I could say, the married pair ! 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 183 
 
 And, quite another man assuredly, 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda took on him 
 
 Forthwith to bid the trio, priest and nuns, 
 
 Constant in their attendance all this while, 
 
 Take his thanks and their own departure too ; 
 
 Politely but emphatically. Next, 
 
 The Cousins were dismissed : " No protest, pray ! 
 
 Whatever I engaged to do is done, 
 
 Or shall be — I but follow your advice : 
 
 Love I abjure : the lady, you behold, 
 
 Is changed as I myself; her sex is changed : 
 
 This is my Brother — He will tend me now, 
 
 Be all my world henceforth as brother should. 
 
 Gentlemen, of a kinship I revere, 
 
 Your interest in trade is laudable ; 
 
 I purpose to indulge it : manage mine, 
 
1 84 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 My goldsmith-business in the Place Vendome, 
 
 Wholly — through purchase at the price adjudged 
 
 By experts I shall have assistance from. 
 
 If, in conformity with sage advice, 
 
 I leave a busy world of interests 
 
 I own myself unfit for — yours the care 
 
 That any world of other aims, wherein 
 
 I hope to dwell, be easy of access 
 
 Through ministration of the moneys due, 
 
 As we determine, with all proper speed, 
 
 Since I leave Paris to repair my health. 
 
 Say farewell to our Cousins, Brother mine ! " 
 
 And, all submissiveness, as brother might, 
 The lady curtseyed gracefully, and dropt 
 More than mere curtsey, a concluding phrase 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 185 
 
 So silver-soft, yet penetrative too, 
 
 That none of it escaped the favoured ears : 
 
 " Had I but credited one syllable, 
 
 I should to-day be lying stretched on straw, 
 
 The produce of your miserable rente \ 
 
 Whereas, I hold him — do you comprehend ? " 
 
 Cousin regarded cousin, turned up eye, 
 
 And took departure, as our Tuscans laugh, 
 
 Each with his added palm-breadth of long nose, — 
 
 Curtailed but imperceptibly, next week, 
 
 When transfer was accomplished, and the trade 
 
 In Paris did indeed become their own, 
 
 But bought by them and sold by him on terms 
 
 'Twixt man and man, — might serve 'twixt wolf and wolf, 
 
 Substitute " bit and clawed " for " signed and sealed " — 
 
 Our ordinary business-terms, in short. 
 
186 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Another week, and Clairvaux broke in bloom 
 At end of April, to receive again 
 Monsieur Ldonce Miranda, gentleman, 
 Ex-jeweller and goldsmith : never more, — 
 According to the purpose he professed, — 
 To quit this paradise, his property, 
 This Clara, his companion: so it proved. 
 
 The Cousins, each with elongated nose, 
 Discussed their bargain, reconciled them soon 
 To hard necessity, disbursed the cash, 
 And hastened to subjoin, wherever type 
 Proclaimed " Miranda " to the public, " Called 
 Now Firm-Miranda". There, a colony, 
 They flourish underneath the name that still 
 Maintains the old repute, I understand. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 187 
 
 They built their Clairvaux, dream-Chateau, in Spain, 
 
 Perhaps — but Place Vendome is waking worth : 
 
 Oh, they lost little! — only, man and man 
 
 Hardly conclude transactions of the kind 
 
 As cousin should with cousin, — cousins think. 
 
 For the rest, all was honorably done, 
 
 So, ere buds break to blossom, let us breathe ! 
 
 Never suppose there was one particle 
 
 Of recrudescence — wound, half-healed before, 
 
 Set freshly running-7-sin, repressed as such, 
 
 New loosened as necessity of life ! 
 
 In all this revocation and resolve, 
 
 Far be sin's self-indulgence from your thought ! 
 
 The man had simply made discovery, 
 
 By process I respect if not admire. 
 
 That what was, was : — that turf, his feet had touched, 
 
RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Felt solid just as much as yonder wall 
 He saw with eyes, but did not stand upon, 
 And could not, if he would, reach in a leap. 
 People had told him flowery turf was false 
 To footstep, tired the traveller soon, beside : 
 That was untrue. They told him " One fair stride 
 Plants on safe platform and secures man rest." 
 That was untrue. Some varied the advice : 
 " Neither was solid, towers no more than turf" 
 Double assertion, therefore twice as false. 
 " I like these amateurs " — our friend had laughed 
 Could he turn what he felt to what he thought, 
 And, that again, to what he put in words : 
 11 1 like their pretty trial, proof of paste 
 Or precious stone, by delicate approach 
 Of eye askance, fine feel of finger-tip, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 189 
 
 Or touch of tongue inquisitive for cold. 
 
 I tried my jewels in a crucible: 
 
 Fierce fire has felt them, licked them, left them sound. 
 
 Don't tell me that my earthly love is sham, 
 
 My heavenly fear a clever counterfeit ! 
 
 Each may oppose each, yet be true alike ! " 
 
 To build up, independent of the towers, 
 
 A durable pavilion o'er the turf, 
 
 Had issued in disaster. " What remained 
 
 Except, by tunnel, or else gallery, 
 
 To keep communication 'twixt the two, 
 
 Unite the opposites, both near and far, 
 
 And never try complete abandonment 
 
 Of one or other ? " so he thought, not said. 
 
190 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 And to such engineering feat, I say, 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda saw the means 
 Precisely in this revocation prompt 
 Of just those benefits of worldly wealth 
 Conferred upon his Cousinry — all but ! 
 
 This Clairvaux — you would know, were you at top 
 
 Of yonder crowning grace, its Belvedere — 
 
 Is situate in one angle-niche of three, 
 
 At equidistance from Saint-Rambert — there 
 
 Behind you, and The Ravissante, beside — 
 
 There : steeple, steeple, and this Clairvaux-top, 
 
 (A sort of steeple) constitute a trine, 
 
 With not a tenement to break each side, 
 
 Two miles or so in length, if eye can judge. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 191 
 
 Now, this is native land of miracle. 
 
 O why, why, why, from all recorded time, 
 
 Was miracle not wrought, but only once, 
 
 To help whoever wanted help indeed ? 
 
 If on the day when Spring's green girlishness 
 
 Grew nubile and she trembled into May, 
 
 And our Miranda climbed to clasp the Spring 
 
 A-tiptoe o'er the sea, those wafts of warmth, 
 
 Those cloudlets scudding under the bare blue, 
 
 And all that new sun, that fresh hope about 
 
 His airy place of observation, — friend, 
 
 Feel with me that if just then, just for once, 
 
 Some angel, — such as the authentic pen 
 
 Yonder records a daily visitant 
 
 Of ploughman Claude, rheumatic in the joints, 
 
 And spinster Jeanne,"with megrim troubled much, — 
 
192 RED COTTON NIGHT- CAP COUNTRY 
 
 If such an angel, with nought else to do, 
 
 Had taken station on the pinnacle 
 
 And simply said " Leonce, look straight before ! 
 
 Neither to right hand nor to left : for why ? 
 
 Being a stupid soul, you want a guide 
 
 To turn the goodness in you to account 
 
 And make stupidity submit itself. 
 
 Go to Saint-Rambert ! Straightway get such guide ! 
 
 There stands a man of men. You, jeweller, 
 
 Must needs have heard how once the biggest block 
 
 Of diamond now in Europe lay exposed 
 
 Mid specimens of stone and earth and ore, 
 
 On huckster's stall, — Navona names the Square, 
 
 And Rome the city for the incident, — 
 
 Labelled * quartz-crystal, price one halfpenny.' 
 
 Haste and secure that ha'p'worth, on your life ! 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 193 
 
 That man will read you rightly head to foot, 
 Mark the brown face of you, the bushy beard, 
 The breadth 'twixt shoulderblades, and through each black 
 Castilian orbit, see into your soul. 
 Talk to him for five minutes — nonsense, sense, 
 No matter what — describe your horse, your hound, — 
 Give your opinion of the policy 
 Of Monsieur Rouher, — will he succour Rome ? 
 Your estimate of what may outcome be 
 From (Ecumenical Assemblage there ! 
 After which samples of intelligence, 
 Rapidly run through those events you call 
 Your past life, tell what once you tried to do, 
 What you intend on doing this next May ! 
 There he stands, reads an English newspaper, 
 Stock-still, and now, again upon the move, 
 
 o 
 
194 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Paces the beach to taste the Spring, like you, 
 Since both are human beings in God's eye. 
 He will have understood you, I engage. 
 Endeavour, for your part, to understand 
 He knows more, and loves better, than the world 
 That never heard his name, and never may. 
 He will have recognised, ere breath be spent 
 And speech at end, how much that's good in man, 
 And generous, and self-devoting, makes 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda worth his help ; 
 While sounding to the bottom ignorance 
 Historical and philosophical 
 And moral and religious, all one couch 
 Of crassitude, a portent of its kind. 
 Then, just as he would pityingly teach 
 Your body to repair maltreatment, give 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 195 
 
 Advice that you should make those stumps to stir 
 
 With artificial hands of caoutchouc, 
 
 So would he soon supply your crippled soul 
 
 With crutches, from his own intelligence, 
 
 Able to help you onward in the path 
 
 Of rectitude whereto your face is set, 
 
 And counsel justice — to yourself, the first, 
 
 To your associate, very like a wife 
 
 Or something better, — to the world at large, 
 
 Friends, strangers, horses, hounds and Cousinry — 
 
 All which amount of justice will include 
 
 Justice to God. Go and consult his voice ! " 
 
 Since angel would not say this simple truth, 
 
 What hinders that my heart relieve itself, 
 
 O friend, who makest warm my wintry world, 
 
 And wise my heaven, if there we consort too ? 
 
196 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda turned, alas, 
 Or was turned, by no angel, t'other way, 
 And got him guidance of The Ravissante. 
 
 Now, into the originals of faith, 
 
 Yours, mine, Miranda's, no enquiry here ! 
 
 Of faith, as apprehended by mankind, 
 
 The causes, were they caught and catalogued, 
 
 Would too distract, too desperately foil 
 
 Enquirer. How may analyst reduce 
 
 Quantities to exact their opposites, 
 
 Value to zero, then bring zero back 
 
 To value of supreme preponderance ? 
 
 How substitute thing meant for thing expressed ? 
 
 Detect the wire-thread through that fluffy silk 
 
 Men call their rope, their real compulsive power ? 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 197 
 
 Suppose effected such anatomy, 
 And demonstration made of what belief 
 Has moved believer — were the consequence 
 Reward at all ? would each man straight deduce, 
 From proved reality of cause, effect 
 Conformable ? believe and unbelieve 
 According to your True thus disengaged 
 From all his heap of False called reason first ? 
 
 No : hand once used to hold a soft thick twist, 
 
 Cannot now grope its way by wire alone : 
 
 Childhood may catch the knack, scarce Youth, not Age ! 
 
 That's the reply rewards you. Just as well 
 
 Remonstrate to yon peasant in the blouse 
 
 That, had he justified the true intent 
 
 Of Nature who composed him thus and thus, 
 
198 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Weakly or strongly, here he would not stand 
 Struggling with uncongenial earth and sky, 
 But elsewhere tread the surface of the globe, 
 Since one meridian suits the faulty lungs, 
 Another bids the sluggish liver work. 
 " Here I was born, for better or for worse : 
 I did not choose a climate for myself; 
 Admit, my life were healthy, led elsewhere," 
 (He answers) " how am I to migrate, pray?" 
 
 Therefore the course to take is — spare your pains, 
 
 And trouble uselessly with discontent 
 
 Nor soul nor body, by parading proof 
 
 That neither haply had known ailment, placed 
 
 Precisely where the circumstance forbade 
 
 Their lot should fall to either of the pair. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 199 
 
 But try and, what you find wrong, remedy, 
 
 Accepting the conditions : never ask 
 
 " How came you to be born here with those 
 
 lungs, 
 That liver ? " But bid asthma smoke a pipe, 
 Stramonium, just as if no Tropics were, 
 And ply with calomel the sluggish duct, 
 Nor taunt " The born Norwegian breeds no bile ! " 
 And as with body, so proceed with soul : 
 Nor less discerningly, where faith you found. 
 However foolish and fantastic, grudge 
 To play the doctor and amend mistake, 
 Because a wisdom were conceivable 
 Whence faith had sprung robust above disease. 
 Far beyond human help, that source of things ! 
 Since, in the first stage, so to speak, — first stare 
 
RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Of apprehension at the invisible, 
 
 Begins divergency of mind from mind, 
 
 Superior from inferior : leave this first ! 
 
 Little you change there ! What comes afterward — 
 
 From apprehended thing, each inference 
 
 With practicality concerning life, 
 
 This you may test and try, confirm the right 
 
 Or contravene the wrong which reasons there. 
 
 The offspring of the sickly faith must prove 
 
 Sickly act also : stop a monster-birth ! 
 
 When water 's in the cup and not the cloud, 
 
 Then is the proper time for chemic test : 
 
 Belief permits your skill to operate 
 
 When, drop by drop condensed from misty heaven, 
 
 'Tis wrung out, lies a bowl-full in the fleece. 
 
 How dew came down to earth, let Gideon say : 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS i 
 
 What purpose water serves, your word or two 
 May teach him, should he fancy it lights fire. 
 
 Concerning, then, our vaporous Ravissante — 
 How fable first precipitated faith — 
 Silence you get upon such point from me. 
 But when I see come posting to the pair 
 At Clairvaux, for the cure of soul-disease, 
 This Father of the Mission, Parish-priest, 
 This Mother of the Convent, Nun I know — 
 They practise in that second stage of things ; 
 They boast no fresh distillery of faith ; 
 Tis dogma in the bottle, bright and old, 
 They bring ; and I pretend to pharmacy. 
 They undertake the cure with all my heart ! 
 He trusts them, and they surely trust themselves. 
 
RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 I ask no better. Never mind the cause, 
 
 Fons et origo of the malady, 
 
 Apply the drug with courage ! Here's our 
 
 case. 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda asks of God, 
 — May a man, living in illicit tie, 
 Continue, by connivance of the Church, 
 No matter what amends he please to make 
 Short of forthwith relinquishing the sin ? 
 Physicians, what do you propose for cure ? 
 
 Father and Mother of the Ravissante, 
 Read your own records, and you find prescribed 
 As follows, when a couple out of sorts 
 Rather than gravely suffering, sought your skill 
 And thereby got their health again. Perpend ! 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 20 
 
 Two and a half good centuries ago, 
 Luc de la Maison Rouge, a nobleman 
 Of Claise, (the river gives this country name) 
 And, just as noblewoman, Maude his wife, 
 Having been married many happy years 
 Spent in God's honor and man's service too, 
 Conceived, while yet in flower of youth and hope, 
 The project of departing each from each 
 Forever, and dissolving marriage-bonds 
 That both might enter a religious life. 
 Needing, before they came to such resolve, 
 Divine illumination, — course was clear, — 
 They visited your church in pilgrimage. 
 On Christmas morn, communicating straight, 
 They heard three Masses proper for the day, 
 "It is incredible with what effect " — 
 
204 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Quoth the Cistercian monk I copy from — 
 And, next day, came, again communicants, 
 Again heard Masses manifold, but now 
 With added thanks to Christ for special grace 
 And consolation granted : in the night, 
 Had been divorce from marriage, manifest 
 By signs and tokens. So, they made great gifts, 
 Left money for more Masses, and returned 
 Homeward rejoicing — he, to take the rules, 
 As Brother Dionysius, Capucin, 
 She, to become first postulant, then nun 
 According to the rules of Benedict, 
 Sister Scolastica : so ended they, 
 And so do I — not end nor yet commence 
 One note or comment. What was done was 
 done. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 205 
 
 Now, Father of the Mission, here's your case ! 
 
 And, Mother of the Convent, here 's its cure ! 
 
 If separation was permissible, 
 
 And that decree of Christ " What God hath joined 
 
 Let no man put asunder " nullified 
 
 Because a couple, blameless in the world, 
 
 Had the conceit that, still more blamelessly, 
 
 Out of the world, by breach of marriage-vow, 
 
 Their life was like to pass, — you oracles 
 
 Of God, — since holy Paul says such you are, — 
 
 Hesitate, not one moment, to pronounce 
 
 When questioned by the pair now needing help 
 
 " Each from the other go, you guilty ones, 
 
 Preliminary to your least approach 
 
 Nearer the Power that thus could strain a point 
 
 In favour of a pair of innocents 
 
2o6 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Who thought their wedded hands not clean enough 
 To touch and leave unsullied their souls' snow ! 
 Are not your hands found filthy by the world, 
 Mere human law and custom ? Not a step 
 Nearer till hands be washed and purified ! " 
 
 What they did say is immaterial, since 
 
 Certainly it was nothing of the kind. 
 
 There was no washing hands of him (alack, 
 
 You take me ? — in the figurative sense !) 
 
 But, somehow, gloves were drawn o'er dirt and all, 
 
 And practice with the Church procured thereby. 
 
 Seeing that, — all remonstrance proved in vain, 
 
 Persuasives tried and terrors put to use, 
 
 I nowise question, — when the guilty pair 
 
 Only embraced the closelier, obstinate, — 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 207 
 
 Father and Mother went from Clairvaux back 
 
 Their weary way, with heaviness of heart, 
 
 I grant you, but each palm well crossed with coin, 
 
 And nothing like a smutch perceptible. 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda might compound 
 
 For sin ? — no, surely ! but by gifts — prepare 
 
 His soul the better for contrition, say ! 
 
 Gift followed upon gift, at all events. 
 
 Good counsel was rejected, on one part : 
 
 Hard money, on the other — may we hope 
 
 Was unreflectingly consigned to purse ? 
 
 Two years did this experiment engage 
 Monsieur Le'once Miranda : how by gifts 
 To God and to God's poor, a man might stay 
 In sin and yet stave off sin's punishment. 
 
208 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 No salve could be conceived more nicely mixed 
 
 For this man's nature : generosity, — 
 
 Susceptibility to human ills, 
 
 Corporeal, mental, — self-devotedness 
 
 Made up Miranda — whether strong or weak 
 
 Elsewhere, may be enquired another time. 
 
 In mercy, he was strong, at all events. 
 
 Enough ! he could not see a beast in pain, 
 
 Much less a man, without the will to aid ; 
 
 And where the will was, there the means were too, 
 
 Since that good bargain with the Cousinry. 
 
 The news flew fast about the countryside 
 That, with the kind man, it was ask and have ; 
 And ask and have they did. To instance you : — 
 A mob of beggars at The Ravissante 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 209 
 
 Clung to his skirts one day, and cried " We thirst ! " 
 Forthwith he bade a cask of wine be broached 
 To satisfy all comers, till, dead-drunk 
 And satisfied, they strewed the holy place. 
 For this was grown religious and a rite : 
 Such slips of judgment, gifts irregular, 
 Showed but as spillings of the golden grist 
 On either side the hopper, through blind zeal; 
 Steadily the main stream went pouring on 
 From mill to mouth of sack — held wide and close 
 By Father of the Mission, Parish-priest, 
 And Mother of the Convent, Nun I know, 
 With such effect that, in the sequel, proof 
 Was tendered to the Court at Vire, last month, 
 That in these same two years, expenditure 
 At quiet Clairvaux rose to the amount 
 p 
 
RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Of Forty Thousand English pounds : whereof 
 A trifle went, no inappropriate close 
 Of bounty, to supply the Virgin's crown 
 With that stupendous jewel from New-York, 
 Now blazing as befits the Star of Sea. 
 
 Such signs of grace, outward and visible, 
 
 I rather give you, for your sake and mine, 
 
 Than put in evidence the inward strife, 
 
 Spiritual effort to compound for fault 
 
 By payment of devotion — thank the phrase ! 
 
 That payment was as punctual, do not doubt, 
 
 As its far easier fellow. Yesterday 
 
 I trudged the distance from The Ravissante 
 
 To Clairvaux, with my two feet : but our friend, 
 
 The more to edify the country-folk, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 Was wont to make that journey on both knees. 
 
 " Maliciously perverted incident ! " 
 
 Snarled the retort, when this was told at Vire : 
 
 " The man paid mere devotion as he passed, 
 
 Knelt decently at just each wayside shrine ! " 
 
 Alas, my lawyer, I trudged yesterday — 
 
 On my two feet, and with both eyes wide ope,— 
 
 The distance, and could find no shrine at all ! 
 
 According to his lights, I praise the man. 
 
 Enough ! incessant was devotion, say — 
 
 With her, you know of, praying at his side. 
 
 Still, there be relaxations of the tense : 
 
 Or life indemnifies itself for strain, 
 
 Or finds its very strain grow feebleness. 
 
 Monsieur Le'once Miranda's days were passed 
 
 Much as of old, in simple work and play. 
 
RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 His first endeavour, on recovery 
 From that sad ineffectual sacrifice, 
 Had been to set about repairing loss : 
 Never admitting, loss was to repair. 
 No word at any time escaped his lips 
 — Betrayed a lurking presence, in his heart, 
 Of sorrow ; no regret for mischief done — 
 Punishment suffered, he would rather say. 
 Good-tempered school-boy-fashion, he preferred 
 To laugh away his flogging, fair price paid 
 For pleasure out of bounds : if needs must be, 
 Get pleasure and get flogged a second time ! 
 A sullen subject would have nursed the scars 
 And made excuse, for throwing grammar by, 
 That bench was grown uneasy to the seat. 
 No : this poor fellow cheerfully got hands 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 213 
 
 Fit for his stumps, and what hands failed to do, 
 
 The other members did in their degree — 
 
 Unwonted service. With his mouth alone 
 
 He wrote, nay, painted pictures — think of that ! 
 
 He played on a piano pedal-keyed, 
 
 Kicked out — if it was Bach's — good music thence. 
 
 He rode, that's readily conceivable, 
 
 But then he shot and never missed his bird, 
 
 With other feats as dexterous : I infer 
 
 He was not ignorant what hands are worth, 
 
 When he resolved on ruining his own. 
 
 So the two years passed somehow — who shall 
 
 say 
 Foolishly, — as one estimates mankind, 
 The work they do, the play they leave undone ? — 
 
214 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Two whole years spent in that experiment 
 I told you of, at Clairvaux all the time. 
 From April on to April : why that month 
 More than another, notable in life ? 
 Does the awakening of the year arouse 
 Man to new projects, nerve him for fresh feats 
 Of what proves, for the most part of mankind 
 Playing or working, novel folly too ? 
 At any rate, I see no slightest sign 
 Of folly (let me tell you in advance) 
 Nothing but wisdom meets me manifest 
 In the procedure of the Twentieth Day 
 Of April, 'Seventy, — folly's year in France. 
 
 It was delightful Spring, and out of doors 
 Temptation to adventure. Walk or ride ? 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 There was a wild young horse to exercise, 
 And teach the way to go and pace to keep : 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda chose to ride. 
 So, while they clapped soft saddle straight on 
 
 back, 
 And bitted jaw to satisfaction, — since 
 The partner of his days must stay at home, 
 Teazed by some trifling legacy of March 
 To throat or shoulder, — visit duly paid 
 And " farewell " given and received again, — 
 As chamber-door considerately closed 
 Behind him, still five minutes were to spend. 
 How better, than by clearing, two and two, 
 The staircase-steps and coming out aloft 
 Upon the platform yonder (raise your eyes !) 
 And tasting, just as those two years before, 
 
216 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Spring's bright advance upon the tower a-top, 
 The feature of the front, the Belvedere ? 
 
 Look at it for a moment while I breathe. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 217 
 
 IV 
 Ready to hear the rest ? How good you are ! 
 
 Now for this Twentieth splendid day of Spring, 
 
 All in a tale, — sun, wind, sky, earth and sea, — 
 
 To bid man, " Up, be doing ! " Mount the stair, 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda mounts so brisk, 
 
 And look — ere his elastic foot arrive — 
 
 Your longest, far and wide, o'er fronting space. 
 
 Yon white streak — Havre lighthouse ! Name and name, 
 
 How the mind runs from each to each relay, 
 
 Town after town, till Paris' self be touched/ 
 
 Superlatively big with life and death 
 
218 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 To all the world, that very day perhaps ! 
 But who stepped out upon the platform here, 
 Pinnacled over the expanse, gave thought 
 Neither to Rouher nor Ollivier, Roon 
 Nor Bismarck, Emperor nor King, but just 
 To steeple, church, and shrine, The Ravissante! 
 
 He saw Her, whom myself saw, but when Spring 
 Was passing into Fall : not robed and crowned 
 As, thanks to him, and her you know about, 
 She stands at present ; but She smiled the same. 
 Thither he turned — to never turn away. 
 
 He thought . . 
 
 (Suppose I should prefer "He said?" 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 219 
 
 Along with every act — and speech is act — 
 
 There go, a multitude impalpable 
 
 To ordinary human faculty, 
 
 The thoughts which give the act significance. 
 
 Who is a poet needs must apprehend 
 
 Alike both speech and thoughts which prompt to speak. 
 
 Part these, and thought withdraws to poetry : 
 
 Speech is reported in the newspaper.) 
 
 He said, then, probably no word at all, 
 
 But thought as follows — in a minute's space — 
 
 One particle of ore beats out such leaf ! 
 
 " This Spring-morn, I am forty-three years old : 
 In prime of life, perfection of estate 
 Bodily, mental,, nay, material too, — 
 
RED COTTON NIGHT- CAP COUNTRY 
 
 My very worldly fortunes reach their height. 
 
 Body and soul alike on eminence : 
 
 It is not probable I ever raise 
 
 Soul above standard by increase of worth, 
 
 Nor reasonably may expect to lift 
 
 Body beyond the present altitude. 
 
 "Behold me, Lady called The Ravissante! 
 Such as I am, I — gave myself to you 
 So long since, that I cannot say ' I give.' 
 All my belongings, what is summed in life, 
 I have submitted wholly — as man might, 
 At least, as /might, who am weak, not strong,— 
 Wholly, then, to your rule and governance, 
 So far as I had strength. My weakness was — 
 I felt a fascination, at each point 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 221 
 
 And pore of me, a Power as absolute 
 Claiming, my soul should recognise her sway. 
 
 you were no whit clearlier Queen, I see, 
 Throughout the life that rolls out ribbon-like 
 Its shot-silk length behind me, than the strange 
 Mystery — how shall I denominate 
 
 The unrobed One ? Robed you go and crowned as well, 
 Named by the nations : she is hard to name, 
 Though you have spelt out certain characters 
 Obscure upon what fillet binds her brow, 
 Lust of the flesh, lust of the eye, life's pride. 
 
 1 So call her, and contemn the enchantress ! ' — ' Crush 
 The despot, and recover liberty ! ' 
 
 Cry despot and enchantress at each ear. 
 You were conspicuous and pre-eminent, 
 Authoritative and imperial, — you 
 
>2 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Spoke first, claimed homage : did I hesitate ? 
 
 Born for no mastery, but servitude, 
 
 I cannot serve two masters, says the Book \ 
 
 Master should measure strength with master, then, 
 
 Before the servant be imposed a task. 
 
 You spoke first, promised best, and threatened most : 
 
 The other never threatened, promised, spoke 
 
 A single word, but, when your part was done, 
 
 Lifted a finger, and I, prostrate, knew 
 
 Films were about me, though you stood aloof 
 
 Smiling or frowning ' Where is power like mine 
 
 To punish or reward thee ? Rise, thou fool ! 
 
 Will to be free, and, lo, I lift thee loose V 
 
 Did I not will, and could I rise a whit ? 
 
 Lay I, at any time, content to lie ? 
 
 6 To lie, at all events, brings pleasure : make 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 223 
 
 Amends by undemanded pain !' I said. 
 
 Did not you prompt me ? ' Purchase now by pain 
 
 Pleasure hereafter in the world to come ! ? 
 
 I could not pluck my heart out, as you bade : 
 
 Unbidden, I burned off my hands at least. 
 
 My soul retained its treasure ; but my purse 
 
 Lightened itself with much alacrity. 
 
 Well, where is the reward ? what promised fruit 
 
 Of sacrifice in peace, content ? what sense 
 
 Of added strength to bear or to forbear ? 
 
 What influx of new light assists me now 
 
 Even to guess you recognise a gain 
 
 In what was loss enough to mortal me ? 
 
 But she, the less authoritative voice, 
 
 Oh, how distinct enunciating, how 
 
 Plain dealing ! Gain she gave was gain indeed ! 
 
24 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 That, you deny : that, you contemptuous call 
 
 Acorns, swine's food not man's meat ! ' Spurn the draff !' 
 
 Ay, but those life-tree apples I prefer, 
 
 Am I to die of hunger till they drop ? 
 
 Husks keep flesh from starvation, anyhow. 
 
 Give those life-apples ! — one, worth woods of oak, 
 
 Worth acorns by the waggon-load, — one shoot 
 
 Through heart and brain, assurance bright and brief 
 
 That you, my Lady, my own Ravissante, 
 
 Feel, through my famine, served and satisfied, ■ 
 
 Own me, your starveling, soldier of a sort ! 
 
 Your soldier ! do I read my title clear 
 
 Even to call myself your friend, not foe ? 
 
 What is the pact between us but a truce ? 
 
 At best I shall have staved off enmity, 
 
 Obtained a respite, ransomed me from wrath. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 225 
 
 I pay, instalment by instalment, life, 
 
 Earth's tribute-money, pleasures great and small, 
 
 Whereof should at the last one penny piece 
 
 Fall short, the whole heap becomes forfeiture. 
 
 You find in me deficient soldiership : 
 
 Want the whole life or none. I grudge that whole, 
 
 Because I am not sure of recompense : 
 
 Because I want faith. Whose the fault ? I ask. 
 
 If insufficient faith have done thus much, 
 
 Contributed thus much of sacrifice, 
 
 More would move mountains, you are warrant. Well, 
 
 Grant, you, the grace, I give the gratitude ! 
 
 And what were easier ? c Ask and have - folk call 
 
 Miranda's method: ' Have, nor need to ask !' 
 
 So do they formulate your quality 
 
 Superlative beyond my human grace. 
 Q 
 
226 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 The Ravissante, you ravish men away 
 From puny aches and petty pains, assuaged 
 By man's own art with small expenditure 
 Of pill or potion, unless, put to shame, 
 Nature is roused and sets things right herself. 
 Your miracles are grown our common-place ; 
 No day but pilgrim hobbles his last mile, 
 Kneels down and rises up, flings crutch away, 
 Or else appends it to the reverend heap 
 Beneath you, votive cripple-carpentry. 
 Some few meet failure — oh, they wanted faith, 
 And may betake themselves to La Salette, 
 Or seek Lourdes, so that hence the scandal limp ! 
 The many get their grace and go their way 
 Rejoicing, with a tale to tell, — most like, 
 A staff to borrow, since the crutch is gone, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 227 
 
 Should the first telling happen at my house, 
 
 And teller wet his whistle with my wine. 
 
 / tell this to a doctor and he laughs : 
 
 ' Give me permission to cry — Out of bed, 
 
 You loth rheumatic sluggard ! Cheat yon chair 
 
 Of laziness, its gouty occupant ! — 
 
 You should see miracles performed ! But now, 
 
 I give advice, and take as fee ten francs, 
 
 And do as much as does your Ravissante. 
 
 Send her that case of cancer to be cured, 
 
 I have refused to treat for any fee, 
 
 Bring back my would-be patient sound and whole, 
 
 And see me laugh on t' other side my mouth ! ' 
 
 Can he be right, and are you hampered thus ? 
 
 Such pettiness restricts a miracle 
 
 Wrought by the Great Physician, who hears prayer, 
 
228 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Visibly seated in your mother-lap ? 
 He, out of nothing, made sky, earth, and sea, 
 And all that in them is, man, beast, bird, fish, 
 Down to this insect on my parapet. 
 Look how the marvel of a minim crawls ! 
 Were I to kneel among the halt and maimed, 
 And pray * Who mad'st the insect with ten legs, 
 Make me one finger grow where ten were once ! ' 
 The very priests would thrust me out of church. 
 1 What folly does the madman dare expect ? 
 No faith obtains — in this late age, at least — 
 Such cure as that ! We ease rheumatics, though ! 7 
 
 " Ay, bring the early ages back again, 
 
 What prodigy were unattainable ? 
 
 I read your annals. Here came Louis Onze, 
 
OR TURF AAD TOWERS 229 
 
 Gave thrice the sum he ever gave before 
 
 At one time, some three hundred crowns, to wit — 
 
 On pilgrimage to pray for — health, he found ? 
 
 Did he? I do not read it in Commines. 
 
 Here sent poor joyous Marie- Antoinette 
 
 To thank you that a Dauphin dignifiedj 
 
 Her motherhood — since Duke of Normandy 
 
 And Martyr of the Temple, much the same 
 
 As if no robe of hers had dressed you rich, 
 
 No silver lamps, she gave, illumed your shrine ! 
 
 Here, following example, fifty years 
 
 Ago, in gratitude for birth again 
 
 Of yet another destined King of France, 
 
 Did not the Duchess fashion with her hands, 
 
 And frame in gold and crystal, and present 
 
 A bouquet made of artificial flowers ? 
 
2 3 o RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 And was he King of France, and is not he 
 Still Count of Chambord? 
 
 " Such the days of faith, 
 And such their produce to encourage mine ! 
 What now, if I too count without my host ? 
 I too have given money, ornament, 
 And i artificial flowers ' — which, when I plucked, 
 Seemed rooting at my heart and real enough : 
 What if I gain thereby nor health of mind, 
 Nor youth renewed which perished in its prime, 
 Burnt to a cinder 'twixt the red-hot bars, 
 Nor gain to see my second baby-hope 
 Of managing to live on terms with both 
 Opposing potentates, the Power and you, 
 Crowned with success, but dawdle out my days 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 2; 
 
 In exile here at Clairvaux, with mock love, 
 
 That gives, while whispering ' Would I dared refuse ! - 
 
 What the loud voice declares my heart's free gift ! 
 
 Mock worship, mock superiority 
 
 O'er those I style the world's benighted ones, 
 
 That irreligious sort I pity so, 
 
 Dumas and even Hertford, who is Duke ? 
 
 " Impiety? Not if I know myself ! 
 
 Not if you know the heart and soul, I bare, 
 
 I bid you cut, hack, slash, anatomize, 
 
 Till peccant part be found and flung away ! 
 
 Demonstrate where I need more faith ! Describe 
 
 What act shall evidence sufficiency 
 
 Of faith, your warrant for such exercise 
 
 Of power, in my behalf, as all the world 
 
232 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Except poor praying me, declares profuse ? 
 
 Poor me ? It is that world, not me alone, 
 
 That world which prates of fixed laws and the like, 
 
 I fain would save, poor world so ignorant ! 
 
 And your part were — what easy miracle ? 
 
 Oh, Lady, could I make your want like mine ! " 
 
 Then his face grew one luminosity. 
 
 "Simple, sufficient ! Happiness at height ! 
 
 I solve the riddle, I persuade mankind. 
 
 I have been just the simpleton who stands — 
 
 Summoned to claim his patrimonial rights, — 
 
 At shilly-shally, may he knock or no 
 
 At his own door in his own house and home 
 
 Whereof he holds the very title-deeds ! 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 233 
 
 Here is my title to this property, 
 
 This power you hold for profit of myself 
 
 And all the world at need — which need is now ! 
 
 " My tide — let me hear who controverts ! 
 
 Count Mailleville built yon church. Why did he so ? 
 
 Because he found your image. How came that ? 
 
 His shepherd told him that a certain sheep 
 
 Was wont to scratch with hoof and scrape with horn 
 
 At ground where once the Danes had razed a church. 
 
 Thither he went, and there he dug, and thence 
 
 He disinterred the image he conveyed 
 
 In pomp to Londres yonder, his domain. 
 
 You liked the old place better than the new. 
 
 The Count might surely have divined as much : 
 
 He did not ; someone might have spoke a word : 
 
234 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 No one did. A mere dream had warned enough, 
 That back again in pomp you best were borne : 
 No dream warned, and no need of convoy was ; 
 An angel caught you up and clapped you down — 
 No mighty task, you stand one metre high, 
 And people carry you about at times. 
 Why, then, did you despise the simple course ? 
 Because you are the Queen of Angels : when 
 You front us in a picture, there flock they, 
 Angels around you, here and everywhere. 
 
 " Therefore, to prove indubitable faith, 
 Those angels that acknowledge you their queen, 
 I summon them to bear me to your feet 
 From Clairvaux through the air, an easy trip ! 
 Faith without flaw ! I trust your potency, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 235 
 
 Benevolence, your will to save the world — 
 
 By such a simplest of procedures, too ! 
 
 Not even by affording angel-help, 
 
 Unless it please you : there's a simpler mode : 
 
 Only suspend the law of gravity, 
 
 And, while at back, permitted to propel, 
 
 The air helps onward, let the air in front 
 
 Cease to oppose my passage through the midst! 
 
 " Thus I bestride the railing, leg o'er leg, 
 Thus, lo, I stand, a single inch away, 
 At dizzy edge of death, — no touch of fear, 
 As safe on tower above as turf below ! 
 Your smile enswathes me in beatitude, 
 You lift along the votary — who vaults, 
 Who, in the twinkling of an eye, revives, 
 
236 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Dropt safely in the space before the church — 
 
 How crowded, since this morn is market-day ! 
 
 I shall not need to speak. The news will run 
 
 Like wild-fire. i Thousands saw Miranda's flight ! ' 
 
 'Tis telegraphed to Paris in a trice. 
 
 The Boulevard is one buzz ' Do you believe ? 
 
 Well, this time, thousands saw Miranda's flight : 
 
 You know him, goldsmith in the Place Vendome.' 
 
 In goes the Empress to the Emperor 
 
 1 Now — will you hesitate to make disgorge 
 
 Your wicked King of Italy his gains, 
 
 Give the Legations to the Pope once more ? ' 
 
 Which done, — why, grace goes back to operate, 
 
 They themselves set a good example first, 
 
 Resign the empire twenty years usurped, 
 
 And Henry, the Desired One, reigns o'er France ! 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 237 
 
 Regenerated France makes all things new ! 
 My house no longer stands on Quai Rousseau 
 But Quai rechristened Alacoque : a quai 
 Where Renan burns his book, and Veuillot burns 
 Renan beside, since Veuillot rules the roast, 
 Re-edits now indeed ' The Universe/ 
 O blessing, O superlatively big 
 With blessedness beyond all blessing dreamed 
 By man! for just that promise has effect, 
 ' Old things shall pass away and all be new ! ' 
 Then, for a culminating mercy-feat, 
 Wherefore should I dare dream impossible 
 That I too have my portion in the change ? 
 My past with all its sorrow, sin and shame, 
 Becomes a blank, a nothing ! There she stands, 
 Clara de Millefleurs, all deodorized, 
 
238 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Twenty years' stain wiped off her innocence ! 
 There never was Muhlhausen, nor at all 
 Duke Hertford: nought that was, remains, except 
 The beauty, — yes, the beauty is unchanged ! 
 Well, and the soul too, that must keep the same ! 
 And so the trembling little virgin hand 
 Melts into mine, that's back again, of course ! 
 — Think not I care about my poor old self ! 
 I only want my hand for that one use, 
 To take her hand, and say ' I marry you — 
 Men, women, angels, you behold my wife ! 
 There is no secret, nothing wicked here, 
 Nothing she does not wish the world to know ! ' 
 None of your married women have the right 
 To mutter * Yes, indeed, she beats us all 
 In beauty, — but our lives are pure at least !' 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 239 
 
 Bear witness, for our marriage is no thing 
 Done in a corner ! Tis The Ravissante 
 Repairs the wrong of Paris. See, She smiles, 
 She beckons, She bids ' Hither, both of you ! ■ 
 And may we kneel ? And will you bless us both ? 
 And may I worship you, and yet love her ? 
 Then !"— 
 
 A sublime spring from the balustrade 
 About the tower so often talked about, 
 A flash in middle air, and stone-dead lay 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda on the turf. 
 
 A gardener who watched, at work the while 
 
 Dibbling a flower-bed for geranium-shoots, 
 
 Saw the catastrophe, and, straitening back, 
 
 Stood up and shook his brows. " Poor soul, poor soul 
 
2 4 o RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Just what I prophesied the end would be ! 
 
 Ugh — the Red Night-cap ! " (as he raised the head) 
 
 " This must be what he meant by those strange words 
 
 While I was weeding larkspurs, yesterday, 
 
 1 Angels would take him ! ' Mad ! " 
 
 No ! sane, I say. 
 Such being the conditions of his life, 
 Such end of life was not irrational. 
 Hold a belief, you only half-believe, 
 With all-momentous issues either way, — 
 And I advise you imitate this leap, 
 Put faith to proof, be cured or killed at once ! 
 Call you man, killed through cutting cancer out, 
 The worse for such an act of bravery ? 
 That's more than / know. In my estimate, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 241 
 
 Belter lie prostrate on his turf at peace, 
 Than, wistful, eye, from out the tent, the tower, 
 Racked with a doubt " Will going on bare knees 
 All the way to The Ravissante and back, 
 Saying my Ave Mary all the time, 
 Somewhat excuse if I postpone my march ? 
 — Make due amends for that one kiss I gave 
 In gratitude to her who held me out 
 Superior Fricquot's sermon, hot from press, 
 A-spread with hands so sinful yet so smooth ? ' ' 
 
 And now, sincerely do I pray she stand, 
 Clara, with interposing sweep of robe, 
 Between us and this horror ! Any screen 
 Turns white by contrast with the tragic pall ; 
 And her dubiety distracts at least, 
 
 R 
 
242 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 As well as snow, from such decided black. 
 With womanhood, at least, we have to do : 
 Ending with Clara — is the word too kind ? 
 
 Let pass the shock ! There's poignancy enough 
 When what one parted with, a minute since, 
 Alive and happy, is returned a wreck — 
 All that was, all that seemed about to be, 
 Razed out and ruined now for evermore, 
 Because a straw descended on this scale 
 Rather than that, made death o'er-balance life. 
 But think of cage-mates in captivity, 
 Inured to day-long, night-long vigilance 
 Each of the other's tread and angry turn 
 When, bolt on prison-bars, a captive came 
 These two, society shut out, and thus 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 243 
 
 Penned in, to settle down and regulate 
 By the strange law, the solitary life — 
 When death divorces such a fellowship, 
 This may pair off with that prodigious woe 
 Imagined of a ghastly brotherhood — 
 One watcher left in lighthouse out at sea, 
 With leagues of surf between the land and him, 
 Alive with his dead partner on the rock ; 
 One galley-slave, whom curse and blow compel 
 To labour on at oar — beside his chain, 
 Encumbered with his corpse-companion now. 
 Such these : although, no prisoners, self-entrenched, 
 They kept the world off from their barricade. 
 
 Memory, gratitude was poignant, sure, 
 Though pride brought consolation of a kind. 
 
244 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUATKY 
 
 Twenty years long, had Clara been — of whom 
 The rival, nay, the victor, past dispute ? 
 What if in turn The Ravissante at length 
 Proved victor — which was doubtful — any how, 
 Here lay the inconstant with, conspicuous too, 
 The fruit of his good fortune ! 
 
 " Has he gained 
 By leaving me ? " she might soliloquize : 
 " All love could do, I did for him. I learned 
 By heart his nature, what he loved and loathed, 
 Leaned to with liking, turned from with distaste. 
 No matter what his least velleity, 
 I was determined he should want no wish, 
 And in conformity administered 
 To his requirement j most of joy I mixed 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 245 
 
 With least of sorrow in life's daily draught, 
 
 Twenty years long, life's proper average. 
 
 And when he got to quarrel with my cup, 
 
 Would needs out-sweeten honey, and discard 
 
 That gall- drop we require lest nectar cloy, — 
 
 I did not call him fool, and vex my friend, 
 
 But quietly allowed experiment, 
 
 Encouraged him to dust his drink, and now 
 
 Grate lig?iu?n vita, now bruise so-called grains 
 
 Of Paradise, and now, for perfume, pour 
 
 Distilment rare, the rose of Jericho, 
 
 Holy-thorn, passion-flower, and what know I ? 
 
 Till beverage obtained the fancied smack. 
 
 'Twas wild-flower-wine that neither helped nor harmed 
 
 Who sipped and held it for restorative — 
 
 What harm ? But here has he been through the hedge 
 
246 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Straying in search of simples, while my back 
 Was turned a minute, and he finds a prize, 
 Monkshood and belladonna ! O my child, 
 My truant little boy, despite the beard, 
 The body two feet broad and six feet long, 
 And what the" calendar counts middle age — 
 You wanted, did you, to enjoy a flight? 
 Why not have taken into confidence 
 Me, that was mother to you ? — never mind 
 What mock disguise of mistress held you mine ! 
 Had you come laughing, crying, with request, 
 1 Make me fly, mother ! ' I had run upstairs 
 And held you tight the while I danced you high 
 In air from tower-top, singing ' Off we go 
 (On pilgrimage to Lourdes some day next month) 
 And swift we soar (to Rome with Peter-pence) 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 247 
 
 And low we light (at Paris where we pick 
 Another jewel from our store of stones 
 And send it for a present to the Pope) ! ' 
 So, dropt indeed you were, but on my knees, 
 Rolling and crowing, not a bit the worse 
 For journey to your Ravissante and back. 
 Now, no more Clairvaux — which I made you 
 
 build, 
 And think an inspiration of your own — 
 No more fine house, trim garden, pretty park, 
 Nothing I used to busy you about, 
 And make believe you worked for my surprise 
 What weariness to me will work become 
 Now that I need not seem surprised again ! 
 This boudoir, for example, with the doves 
 (My stupid maid has damaged, dusting one) 
 
248 RED COTTON NIGHT- CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Embossed in stucco o'er the looking-glass 
 Beside the toilet- table ! dear — dear me ! " 
 
 Here she looked up from her absorbing grief, 
 
 And round her, crow-like grouped, the Cousinry, 
 
 (She grew aware) sat witnesses at watch. 
 
 For, two days had elapsed since fate befell 
 
 The courser in the meadow, stretched so stark. 
 
 They did not cluster on the tree-tops, close 
 
 Their sooty ranks, caw and confabulate 
 
 For nothing : but, like calm determined crows, 
 
 They came to take possession of their corpse. 
 
 And who shall blame them? Had not they the right? 
 
 One spoke. " They would be gentle, not austere. 
 They understood, and were compassionate. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 249 
 
 Madame Muhlhausen lay too abject now 
 
 For aught but the sincerest pity ; still, 
 
 Since plain speech salves the wound it seems to make, 
 
 They must speak plainly — circumstances spoke ! 
 
 Sin had conceived and brought forth death indeed. 
 
 As the commencement, so the close of things : 
 
 Just what might be expected all along ! 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda launched his youth 
 
 Into a cesspool of debauchery, 
 
 And, if he thence emerged all dripping slime, 
 
 — " Where was the change except from thin to thick. 
 
 One warm rich mud-bath, Madame ? — you, in place 
 
 Of Paris-drainage and distilment, you ■ 
 
 He never needed budge from, boiled to rags ! 
 
 True, some good instinct left the natural man, 
 
 Some touch of that deep dye wherewith imbued 
 
250 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 By education, in his happier day, 
 
 The hopeful offspring of high parentage 
 
 Was fleece-marked moral and religious sheep, — 
 
 Some ruddle, faint remainder, (we admit) 
 
 Stuck to Miranda, rubbed he ne'er so rude 
 
 Against the goatly coarseness : to the last, 
 
 Moral he styled himself, religious too ! 
 
 Which means — what ineradicable good, 
 
 You found, you never left till good's self proved 
 
 Perversion and distortion, nursed to growth 
 
 So monstrous, that the tree-stock, dead and dry, 
 
 Were seemlier far than such a heap grotesque 
 
 Of fungous flourishing excrescence. Here, 
 
 Sap-like affection, meant for family, 
 
 Stole off to feed one sucker fat — yourself; 
 
 While branchage, trained religiously aloft 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS . 251 
 
 To rear its head in reverence to the sun, 
 
 Was pulled down earthward, pegged and picketed, 
 
 By topiary contrivance, till the tree 
 
 Became an arbour where, at vulgar ease, 
 
 Sat superstition grinning through the loops. 
 
 Still, nature is too strong or else too weak 
 
 For cockney treatment : either, tree springs back 
 
 To pristine shape, or else degraded droops, 
 
 And turns to touchwood at the heart. So here — 
 
 Body and mind, at last the man gave way. 
 
 His body — there it lies, what part was left 
 
 Unmutilated ! for, the strife commenced 
 
 Two years ago, when, both hands burnt to ash, 
 
 A branch broke loose, by loss of what choice twigs ! 
 
 As for his mind — behold our register 
 
 Of all its moods, from the incipient mad, 
 
\2 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Nay, mere erratic, to the stark insane, 
 Absolute idiocy or what is worse ! 
 All have we catalogued — extravagance 
 In worldly matters, luxury absurd, 
 And zeal as crazed in its expenditure 
 Of nonsense called devotion. Don't we know 
 — We Cousins, bound in duty to our kin, — 
 What mummeries were practised by you two 
 At Clairvaux ? Not a servant got discharge 
 But came and told his grievance, testified 
 To acts which turn religion to a farce. 
 And as the private mock, so patent — see — 
 The public scandal ! Ask the neighbourhood — 
 ( )r rather, since we asked them long ago, 
 Read what they answer, depositions down, 
 Signed, sealed and sworn to ! Brief, the man was mad. 
 We are his heirs and claim our heritage 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 253 
 
 Madame Muhlhausen, — whom good taste forbids 
 
 We qualify as do these documents, — 
 
 Fear not lest justice stifle mercy's prayer ! 
 
 True, had you lent a willing ear at first, 
 
 Had you obeyed our call two years ago, 
 
 Restrained a certain insolence of eye, 
 
 A volubility of tongue, that time, 
 
 Your prospects had been none the worse, perhaps. 
 
 Still, fear not but a decent competence 
 
 Shall smooth the way for your declining age ! 
 
 What we propose, then . ." 
 
 Clara dried her eyes, 
 Sat up, surveyed the consistory, spoke, 
 After due pause, with something of a smile. 
 
 " Gentlemen, kinsfolk of my friend defunct, 
 
254 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 In thus addressing me — of all the world ! — 
 
 You much misapprehend what part I play. 
 
 I claim no property you speak about. 
 
 You might as well address the park-keeper, 
 
 Harangue him on some plan advisable 
 
 For covering the park with cottage-plots. 
 
 He is the servant, no proprietor, 
 
 His business is to see the sward kept trim, 
 
 Untrespassed over by the indiscreet : 
 
 Beyond that, he refers you to myself — 
 
 Another servant of another kind — 
 
 Who again — quite as limited in act — 
 
 Refer you, with your projects, — can I else ? 
 
 To who in mastery is ultimate, 
 
 The Church. The Church is sole administrant, 
 
 Since sole possessor of what worldly wealth 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 255 
 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda late possessed. \ 
 Often enough has he attempted, nay, 
 Forced me, well-nigh, to occupy the post 
 You seemingly suppose I fill, — receive 
 As gift the wealth entrusted me as grace. 
 This — for quite other reasons than appear 
 So cogent to your perspicacity, — 
 This I refused ; and, firm as you could wish, 
 Still was my answer ' We two understand 
 Each one the other. I am intimate 
 — As how can be mere fools and knaves— or, say, 
 Even your Cousins ? — with your love to me, 
 Devotion to the Church. Would Providence 
 Appoint, and make me certain of the same, 
 That I survive you (which is little like, 
 Seeing you hardly overpass my age 
 
256 RED COTTON NIGHT- CAP COUNTRY 
 
 And more than match me in abundant health) 
 In such case, certainly I would accept 
 Your bounty : better I than alien hearts 
 Should execute your planned benevolence 
 To man, your proposed largess to the Church. 
 But though I be survivor, — weakly frame, 
 With only woman's wit to make amends, — 
 When I shall die, or while I am alive, 
 Cannot you figure me an easy mark 
 For hypocritical rapacity, 
 Kith, kin and generation, couching low, 
 Ever on the alert to pounce on prey? 
 Far be it I should say they profited 
 By that first frenzy-fit themselves induced, — 
 Cold-blooded scenical buffoons at sport 
 With horror and damnation o'er a grave : 
 That were too shocking — I absolve them there ! 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 257 
 
 Nor did they seize the moment of your swoon 
 
 To rifle pocket, wring a paper thence, 
 
 Their Cousinly dictation, and enrich 
 
 Thereby each mother's son as heart could wish, 
 
 Had nobody supplied a codicil. 
 
 But when the pain, poor friend ! had prostrated 
 
 Your body, though your soul was right again, 
 
 I fear they turned your weakness to account ! 
 
 Why else to me, who agonizing watched, 
 
 Sneak, cap in hand, now bribe me to forsake 
 
 My maimed Leonce, now bully, cap on head, 
 
 The impudent pretension to assuage 
 
 Such sorrows as demanded Cousin's care ? — 
 
 For you rejected, hated, tied me, far 
 
 In foreign lands yon laughed at me ! — they judged, 
 
 And, think you, will the unkind ones hesitate 
 
258 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 To try conclusions with my helplessness, — 
 
 To pounce on, misuse me, your derelict, 
 
 Helped by advantage that bereavement lends 
 
 Folks, who, while yet you lived, played tricks like these ? 
 
 You only have to die, and they detect, 
 
 In all you said and did, insanity ! 
 
 Your faith was fetish-worship, your regard 
 
 For Christ's prime precept which endows the poor 
 
 And strips the rich, a craze from first to last ! 
 
 They so would limn your likeness, paint your life, 
 
 That if it ended by some accident, — 
 
 For instance, if, attempting to arrange 
 
 The plants below that dangerous Belvedere 
 
 I cannot warn you from sufficiently, 
 
 You lost your balance and fell headlong — fine 
 
 Occasion, such, for crying Suicide ! 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 259 
 
 Non compos mentis, naturally next, 
 Hands over Clairvaux to a Cousin-tribe 
 Who nor like me nor love The Ravissante, 
 Therefore be ruled by both ! Life-interest 
 In Clairvaux, — conservation, guardianship 
 Of earthly good for heavenly purpose, — give 
 Such and no other proof of confidence ! 
 Let Clara represent the Ravissante ! ' 
 — To whom accordingly, he then and there 
 Bequeathed each stick and stone, by testament 
 In holograph, mouth managing the quill : 
 Go, see the same in Londres, if you doubt ! " 
 
 Then smile grew laugh, as sudden up she stood 
 And out she spoke : intemperate the speech ! 
 
260 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 " And now, sirs, for your special courtesy, 
 
 Your candle held up to the character 
 
 Of Lucie Steiner, whom you qualify 
 
 As coming short of perfect womanhood. 
 
 Yes, kindly critics, truth for once you tell ! 
 
 True is it that through childhood, poverty, 
 
 Sloth, pressure of temptation, I succumbed, 
 
 And, ere I found what honor meant, lost mine. 
 
 So was the sheep Jost, which the Shepherd found 
 
 And never lost again. My friend found me; 
 
 Or better say, the Shepherd found us both — 
 
 Since he, my friend, was much in the same mire 
 
 When first we made acquaintance. Each helped each,- 
 
 A two-fold extrication from the slough ; 
 
 And, saving me, he saved himself. Since then, 
 
 Unsmirched we kept our cleanliness of coat. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 261 
 
 It is his perfect constancy, you call; 
 My friend's main fault — he never left his love! 
 While as for me, I dare your worst, impute 
 One breach of loving bond, these twenty years, 
 To me whom only cobwebs bound, you count ! 
 4 He was religiously disposed in youth ! ' 
 That may be, though we did not meet at church. 
 Did he become Voltairian like your scamps, 
 Under my teaching, fools who mock his faith ? 
 4 Infirm of body ! ' I am silent there : 
 Even yourselves acknowledge service done, 
 Whatever motive your own souls supply 
 As inspiration. Love made labour light." 
 
 Then laugh grewfrown, and frown grew terrible. 
 Do recollect what sort oi person shrieked — 
 
262 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 " Such was I, saint or sinner, what you please: 
 
 And who is it casts stone at me but you ? 
 
 By your own showing, sirs, you bought and 
 
 sold, 
 Took what advantage bargain promised bag, 
 Abundantly did business, and with whom ? 
 Miranda ! — you pronounce imbecile, push 
 Indignantly aside if he presume 
 To settle his affairs like other folk ! 
 How is it you have stepped into his shoes, 
 And stand there, bold as brass, ' Miranda, late 
 Now, Firm-Miranda?' Sane, he signed away 
 That little birthright, did he ? Hence to trade ! 
 I know you, and he knew who dipped and ducked, 
 Truckled and played the parasite in vain, 
 As now one, now the other, here you cringed, 
 Were feasted, took our presents, you — those drops, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 263 
 
 Ji&t for your wife's adornment ! you — that spray 
 Exactly suiting, as most diamonds do, 
 Your daughter on her marriage ! No word then 
 Of somebody the wanton ! Hence, I say, 
 Subscribers to the * Siecle/ every snob — 
 For here the post brings me the ' Univers '! 
 Home and make money in the Place Vendome, 
 Sully yourselves no longer by my sight, 
 And, when next Schneider wants a new panire, 
 Be careful lest you stick there by mischance 
 That stone beyond compare entrusted you 
 To kindle faith with, when, Miranda's gift, 
 Crowning the very crown, the Ravissante 
 Shall claim it ! As to Clair vaux — talk to Her ! 
 She answers by the Chapter of Raimbaux ! " 
 Vituperative, truly ! All this wrath 
 Because the man's relations thought him mad ! 
 
264 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Whereat, I hope you see the Cousinry 
 Turn each to other, blankly dolorous, 
 Consult a moment, more by shrug and shrug 
 Than mere man's language, — finally conclude 
 To leave the reprobate untroubled now 
 In her unholy triumph, till the Law 
 Shall right the injured ones ; for gentlemen 
 Allow the female sex, this sort at least, 
 Its privilege. So, simply " Cockatrice ! " — 
 "Jezebel !"—" Queen of the Camellias ! "—cried 
 Cousin to cousin, as yon hinge a-creak 
 Shut out the party, and the gate returned 
 To custody of Clairvaux. " Pretty place ! 
 What say you, when it proves our property, 
 To trying a concurrence with La Roche, 
 And laying down a rival oyster-bed ? 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 265 
 
 Where the park ends, the sea begins, you know." 
 So took they comfort till they came to Vire. 
 
 But I would linger, fain to snatch a look 
 
 At Clara as she stands in pride of place, 
 
 Somewhat more satisfying than my glance 
 
 So furtive, so near futile, yesterday, 
 
 Because one must be courteous. Ot the masks 
 
 That figure in this little history, 
 
 She only has a claim to my respect, 
 
 And one-eyed, in her French phrase, rules the blind. 
 
 Miranda hardly did his best with life : 
 
 He might have opened eye, exerted brain, 
 
 Attained conception as to right and law 
 
 In certain points respecting intercourse 
 
 Of man with woman — love, one likes to say; 
 
266 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Which knowledge had dealt rudely with the claim 
 Of Clara to play representative 
 And from perdition rescue soul, forsooth ! 
 Also, the sense of him should have sufficed 
 For building up some better theory 
 Of how God operates in heaven and earth, 
 Than would establish Him participant 
 In doings yonder at the Ravissante. 
 The heart was wise according to its lights 
 And limits; but the head refused more sun, 
 And shrank into its mew and craved less space. 
 Clara, I hold the happier specimen, — 
 It may be, through that artist-preference 
 For work complete, inferiorly proposed, 
 To incompletion, though it aim aright. 
 Morally, no ! Aspire, break bounds ! I say, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 267 
 
 Endeavour to be good, and better still, 
 
 And best ! Success is nought, endeavour ? s all. 
 
 But intellect adjusts the means to ends, 
 
 Tries the low thing, and leaves it done, at least ; 
 
 No prejudice to high thing, intellect 
 
 Would do and will do, only give the means. 
 
 Miranda, in my picture-gallery, 
 
 Presents a Blake ; be Clara — Meissonnier ! 
 
 Merely considered so, by artist, mind ! 
 
 For, break through Art and rise to poetry, 
 
 Bring Art to tremble nearer, touch enough 
 
 The verge of vastness to inform our soul 
 
 What orb makes transit through the dark above, 
 
 And there 's the triumph ! — there the incomplete, 
 
 More than completion, matches the immense, — 
 
 Then, Michelagnolo against the world ! 
 
268 RED COTTON NIGHT- CAP COUNTRY 
 
 With this proviso, let me study her 
 
 Approvingly, the finished little piece ! 
 
 Born, bred, with just one instinct, — that of growth : 
 
 Her quality was, caterpillar-like, 
 
 To ail-unerringly select a leaf 
 
 And without intermission feed her fill, 
 
 Become the Painted Peacock, or belike 
 
 The Brimstone-wing, when time of year should suit ; 
 
 And 'tis a sign (say entomologists) 
 
 Of sickness, when the creature stops its meal 
 
 One minute, either to look up at heaven, 
 
 Or turn aside for change of aliment. 
 
 No doubt there was a certain ugliness 
 
 In the beginning, as the grub grew worm : 
 
 She could not find the proper plant at once, 
 
 But crawled and fumbled through a whole parterre. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 269 
 
 Husband Muhlhausen served for stuff not long : 
 
 Then came confusion of the slimy track 
 
 From London, " where she gave the tone awhile," 
 
 To Paris : let the stalks start up again, 
 
 Now she is off them, all the greener they ! 
 
 But, settled on Miranda, how she sucked, 
 
 Assimilated juices, took the tint, 
 
 Mimicked the form and texture of her food ! 
 
 Was he for pastime ? Who so frolic-fond 
 
 As Clara ? Had he a devotion-fit ? 
 
 Clara grew serious with like qualm, be sure ! 
 
 In health and strength he, — healthy too and strong, 
 
 She danced, rode, drove, took pistol-practice, fished, 
 
 Nay, " managed sea-skiff with consummate skill." 
 
 In pain and weakness, he, — she patient watched 
 
 And wiled the slow drip-dropping hours away 
 
270 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 She bound again the broken self-respect, 
 She picked out the true meaning from mistake, 
 Praised effort in each stumble, laughed " Well-climbed ! " 
 When others groaned "None ever grovelled so I" 
 " Rise, you have gained experience ! " was her word : 
 " Lie satisfied, the ground is just your place ! " 
 They thought appropriate counsel. " Live, not die, 
 And take my full life to eke out your own : 
 That shall repay me and with interest ! 
 Write ! — is your mouth not clever as my hand ? 
 Paint ! — the last Exposition warrants me, 
 Plenty of people must ply brush with toes. 
 And as for music — look, what folks nickname 
 A lyre, those ancients played to ravishment, — 
 Over the pendule, see, Apollo grasps 
 A three-stringed gimcrack which no Liszt could 
 coax 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 271 
 
 Such music from as jews-harp makes to-day! 
 Do your endeavour like a man, and leave 
 The rest to ' fortune who assists the bold ' — 
 Learn, you, the Latin which you taught me first, 
 You clever creature — clever, yes, I say ! " 
 
 If he smiled " Let us love, love's wrong comes right, 
 Shows reason last of all ! Necessity 
 Must meanwhile serve for plea — so, mind not much 
 Old Fricquot's menace ! " — back she smiled " Who 
 
 minds ?" 
 If he sighed " Ah, but She is strict, they say, 
 For all Her mercy at the Ravissante, 
 She scarce will be put off so ! " — straight a sigh 
 Returned " My lace must go to trim Her gown ! " 
 I nowise doubt she inwardly believed 
 Smiling and sighing had the same effect 
 
272 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Upon the venerated image. What \ 
 
 She did believe in, I as little doubt, 
 
 Was — Clara, and her birthright to sustain 
 
 Existence, grow from grub to butterfly, 
 
 Upon unlimited Miranda-leaf; 
 
 In which prime article of faith confirmed, 
 
 According to capacity, she fed 
 
 On and on till the leaf was eaten up, 
 
 That April morning. Even then, I praise 
 
 Her forethought which prevented leafless stalk 
 
 Bestowing any hoarded succulence 
 
 On earwig and blackbeetle squat beneath ; — 
 
 Clairvaux, that stalk whereto her hermitage 
 
 She tacked by golden throw of silk, so fine, 
 
 So anything but feeble, that her sleep 
 
 Inside it, through last winter, two years long, 
 
 Recked little of the storm and strife without. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 273 
 
 " But — loved him?" Friend, I do not praise her love ! 
 
 True love works never for the loved one so, 
 
 Nor spares skin-surface, smoothening truth away. 
 
 Love bids touch truth, endure truth, and embrace 
 
 Truth, though, embracing truth, love crush itself. 
 
 " Worship not me, but God ! " the angels urge : 
 
 That is love's grandeur : still, in pettier love 
 
 The nice eye can distinguish grade and grade. 
 
 Shall mine degrade the velvet green and puce 
 
 Of caterpillar, palmer- worm — or what — 
 
 Ball in and out of ball, each ball with brush 
 
 Of Venus' eye-fringe round the turquoise egg 
 
 That nestles soft, — compare such paragon 
 
 With any scarabaeus of the brood 
 
 That, born to fly, keeps wing in wing-case, walks 
 
 Persistently a-trundling dung on earth ? 
 
274 RED COTTON NIGHT- CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Egypt may venerate such hierophants, 
 
 Not I — the couple yonder, Father Priest 
 
 And Mother Nun, who came and went and came, 
 
 Beset this Clairvaux, trunclled money-muck 
 
 To midden and the main heap oft enough, 
 
 But never bade unshut from sheath the gauze, 
 
 Nor showed that, who would fly, should let fall filth, 
 
 Warning " Your jewel, brother, is a blotch: 
 
 Sister, your lace trails ordure. Leave your sins, 
 
 And so best gift the Crown and grace the Robe ! " 
 
 The superstition is extinct, you hope ? 
 
 It were, with my good will ! Suppose it so, 
 
 Bethink you likewise of the latest use 
 
 Whereto a Night-cap is convertible, 
 
 And draw your very thickest, thread and thrum, 
 
 O'er such a decomposing face of things, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 2^5 
 
 Once so alive, it seemed immortal too ! 
 
 This happened two years since. The Cousinry 
 Returned to Paris, called in help from Law, 
 And in due form proceeded to dispute 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda's competence, 
 Being insane, to make a valid Will. 
 
 Much testimony volunteered itself; 
 
 The issue hardly could be doubtful — but 
 
 For that sad 'Seventy which must intervene, 
 
 Provide poor France with other work to mind 
 
 Than settling lawsuits, even for the sake 
 
 Of such a party as the Ravissante. 
 
 It only was this Summer that the case 
 
 Could come and be disposed of, two weeks since, 
 
276 RED COTTON NIGHTCAP COUNTRY 
 
 At Vire — Tribunal Civil — Chamber First. 
 
 Here, issued with all regularity, 
 
 I hold the judgment — just, inevitable, 
 
 Nowise to be contested by what few 
 
 Can judge the judges ; sum and substance, thus- 
 
 " Inasmuch as we find, the Cousinry, 
 During that very period when they take 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda for stark mad, 
 Considered him to be quite sane enough 
 For doing much important business with — 
 Nor showed suspicion of his competence 
 Until, by turning of the tables, loss 
 Instead of gain accrued to them thereby, — 
 Plea of incompetence we set aside. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 277 
 
 — " The rather, that the dispositions, sought 
 
 To be impugned, are natural and right, 
 
 Nor jar with any reasonable claim 
 
 Of kindred, friendship or acquaintance here. 
 
 Nobody is despoiled, none overlooked; 
 
 Since the testator leaves his property 
 
 To just that person whom, of all the world, 
 
 He counted he was most indebted to. 
 
 In mere discharge, then, of conspicuous debt, 
 
 Madame Muhlhausen has priority, 
 
 Enjoys the usufruct of Clairvaux. 
 
 " Next, 
 Such debt discharged, such life determining, 
 Such earthly interest provided for, 
 Monsieur Leonce Miranda may bequeath, 
 
27S RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 In absence of more fit recipient, fund 
 And usufruct together to the Church 
 Whereof he was a special devotee. 
 
 " — Which disposition, being consonant 
 With a long series of such acts and deeds 
 Notorious in his life-time, needs must stand, 
 Unprejudiced by eccentricity 
 Nowise amounting to distemper : since, 
 In every instance signalized as such, 
 We recognise no over-leaping bounds, 
 No straying out of the permissible : 
 Duty to the Religion of the Land, — 
 Neither excessive nor inordinate. 
 
 " The minor accusations are dismissed ; 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 279 
 
 They prove mere freak and fancy, boyish mood 
 
 In age mature of simple kindly man. 
 
 Exuberant in generosities 
 
 To all the world : no fact confirms the fear 
 
 He meditated mischief to himself 
 
 That morning when he met the accident 
 
 Which ended fatally. The case is closed." 
 
 How otherwise ? So, when I grazed the skirts, 
 And had the glimpse of who made, yesterday, — 
 Woman and retinue of goats and sheep, — 
 The sombre path one whiteness, vision-like, 
 As out of gate, and in at gate again, 
 They wavered, — she was lady there for life : 
 And, after life — I hope, a white success 
 Of some sort, wheresoever life resume 
 
28o RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 School interrupted by vacation — death ; 
 Seeing that home she goes with prize in hand, 
 Confirmed the Chatelaine of Clairvaux. 
 
 True, 
 Such prize fades soon to insignificance. 
 Though she have eaten her Miranda up, 
 And spun a cradle-cone through which she pricks 
 Her passage, and proves peacock-butterfly, 
 This Autumn — wait a little week of cold ! 
 Peacock and death's-head-moth end much the same. 
 And could she still continue spinning, — sure, 
 Cradle would soon crave shroud for substitute, 
 And o'er this life of her's distaste would drop 
 Red cotton-Night-cap- wise. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 281 
 
 How say you, friend ? 
 Have I redeemed my promise ? Smile assent 
 Through the dark Winter-gloom between us both \ 
 Already, months ago and miles away, 
 I just as good as told you, in a flash, 
 The while we paced the sands before my house, 
 All this poor story — truth and nothing else. 
 Accept that moment's flashing, amplified, 
 Impalpability reduced to speech, 
 Conception proved by birth,— no other change ! 
 Can what Saint-Rambert flashed me in a thought, 
 Good gloomy London make a poem of? 
 Such ought to be whatever dares precede, 
 Play ruddy herald-star to your white blaze 
 About to bring us day. How fail imbibe 
 Some foretaste of effulgence ? Sun shall wax, 
 
2&s RED COTTON NIGHT- CAP COUNTRY 
 
 And star shall wane : what matter, so star tell 
 The drowsy world to start awake, rub eyes, 
 And stand all ready for morn's joy a-blush ? 
 
 January 23, 1873. 
 
 LONDON: PRINTED DY 
 
 SPOTTISWOODR AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 
 
 AND PARLIAMENT STREET 
 
\B73 
 
joy