LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
THE WRITINGS OF 
 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 
 
 IN NINE VOLUMES 
 
 VOLUME 
 
 I 
 
Or THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY ; 
 
 CF 
 
^\ 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1883, 1886, 1889, 1890, 1893, 1894, 1896, 1897, 19!| AND 1904, 
 
 BY THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 
 COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 ^LIFORJ^ 
 
 PUBLISHERS 1 NOTE 
 
 To the poems collected by Mr. Aldrich for the 
 Riverside Edition of his works the publishers 
 have now added "Judith of Bethulia" and 
 "Longfellow." The former is in part a drama 
 tization of the author s narrative poem " Judith 
 and Holofernes," but though it contains lines 
 and passages from the story, the drama deals 
 with characters, incidents, and situations not 
 to be found in the poem or in the apocryphal 
 episode upon which both pieces were based, 
 and was regarded by its author as essentially a 
 distinct work. The play was produced at the 
 Tremont Theatre, Boston, October 13, 1904, 
 and was published in book form the next month, 
 but certain changes were made in the two 
 scenes constituting Act III before the second 
 edition was printed in 1905. The poem entitled 
 "Longfellow" was written for the Longfellow 
 centennial celebration, and was read at Sanders 
 Theatre, Harvard University, February 27, 
 1907. It was also read at the funeral of its 
 author less than a month later. 
 
 195010 
 
NOTE 
 
 THESE two volumes include all the lyrics and 
 poems that the author desires associated with his 
 name so long as there may be any interest in his 
 verse. It should be stated that the collection em 
 braces several pieces which he would willingly have 
 cancelled had they not passed beyond his control 
 into various anthologies. Here, at least, the pieces 
 in question are correctly printed. Of his strictly 
 juvenile verse, the author has retained nothing with 
 the exception of the poem of Baby Bell, written in 
 his nineteenth year. The poems in the first volume, 
 being for the most part grouped in accordance with 
 their subject, represent both his earlier and later 
 work. In volume second the poems are arranged 
 in nearly the sequence of their publication in book- 
 form. 
 
 Boston, 1897. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xii 
 
 FLOWER AND THORN i 
 
 BABY BELL AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 BABY BELL 3 
 
 PISCATAQUA RIVER 7 
 
 PAMPINA 9 
 
 INVOCATION TO SLEEP 12 
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE GODDESS 14 
 
 AN OLD CASTLE l6 
 
 LOST AT SEA ... IQ 
 
 THE QUEEN S RIDE 21 
 
 DIRGE 23 
 
 ON LYNN TERRACE 25 
 
 SEADRIFT 27 
 
 THE PIAZZA OF ST. MARK AT MIDNIGHT . . 2Q 
 
 THE METEMPSYCHOSIS 3<3 
 
 BAYARD TAYLOR 34 
 
 INTERLUDES 
 
 HESPERIDES 35 
 
 BEFORE THE RAIN 36 
 
 AFTER THE RAIN ... ... 36 
 
 A SNOWFLAKE 37 
 
 FROST-WORK 37 
 
 THE ONE WHITE ROSE 38 
 
 LANDSCAPE 38 
 
 NOCTURNE 39 
 
 APPRECIATION 4O 
 
* CONTENTS 
 
 PALABRAS CARINOSAS ...... 41 
 
 APPARITIONS 42 
 
 UNSUNG 
 
 AN UNTIMELY THOUGHT 
 
 ONE WOMAN 
 
 REALISM 
 
 DISCIPLINE 4 - 
 
 DESTINY g 
 
 NAMELESS PAIN . * 47 
 
 HEREDITY 
 
 IDENTITY g 
 
 LYRICS AND EPICS 
 
 A WINTER PIECE .g 
 
 KRISS KRINGLE C Q 
 
 RENCONTRE - r 
 
 LOVE S CALENDAR -j 
 
 LOST ART 
 
 CLOTH OF GOLD 
 
 PROEM 
 
 AN ARAB WELCOME ~. 
 
 A TURKISH LEGEND 54 
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS .... 55 
 
 THE UNFORGIVEN 5 g 
 
 DRESSING THE BRIDE eg 
 
 TWO SONGS FROM THE PERSIAN eg 
 
 TIGER-LILIES fo 
 
 THE SULTANA g x 
 
 THE WORLD S WAY g 2 
 
 LATAKIA g~ 
 
 WHEN THE SULTAN GOES TO ISPAHAN . . 65 
 
 A PRELUDE g- 
 
 TO HAFIZ gg 
 
 AT NIJNII-NOVGOROD 6g 
 
 THE LAMENT OF EL MOULOK .... 70 
 NOURMADEE 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 FRIAR JEROME S BEAUTIFUL BOOK ETC. 
 FRIAR JEROME S BEAUTIFUL BOOK . . . 81 
 90 
 
 MIANTOWONA 
 
 THE GUERDON ....... g8 
 
 TITA S TEARS ........ IOI 
 
 A BALLAD ........ Io -, 
 
 THE LEGEND OF ARA-CCELI ..... IO7 
 
 BAGATELLE 
 
 CORYDON A PASTORAL ...... I2 ^ 
 
 ON AN INTAGLIO HEAD OF MINERVA . . .126 
 
 THE MENU ........ I2 3 
 
 COMEDY I2 n 
 
 IN AN ATELIER 
 AT A READING 
 
 I 3 
 
 33 
 
 135 
 
 AMONTILLADO 
 
 CARPE DIEM iyj 
 
 DANS LA BOHEME j-^S 
 
 THE LUNCH I4I 
 
 IMP OF DREAMS 1^1 
 
 AN ELECTIVE COURSE ! 4 2 
 
 PEPITA I4 ^ 
 
 L EAU DORM ANTE I4 g 
 
 ECHO SONG I4 p 
 
 THALIA JCQ 
 
 PALINODE j^ 
 
 MERCEDES ! 55 
 
 FOOTNOTES A BOOK OF QUATRAINS ... 195 
 JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 
 
 BOOK I. JUDITH IN THE TOWER .... 205 
 
 BOOK II. THE CAMP OF ASSHUR . . . . 217 
 
 BOOK III. THE FLIGHT 230 
 
 The frontispiece is from a recent photograph of Mr. Aldrich taken 
 by G. C. Cox, of New York. 
 
xvi BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 after the manner of their kind, had appeared in the 
 Poets Corner of a local newspaper. Even during 
 the three years he remained in his uncle s office he 
 became known as a not infrequent contributor to 
 journals and magazines, and in 1855 ne definitely 
 connected himself with the " New York Evening 
 Mirror." From 1856 to 1859 he was assistant ed 
 itor of the " Home Journal," then under the charge 
 of Mr. N. P. Willis, who gave to the work of his 
 youthful associate a kindly appreciation and en 
 couragement that the latter always held in grateful 
 remembrance. In the early part of the Civil War 
 he was for a time attached to Blenker s Division of 
 the Army of the Potomac as a newspaper corre 
 spondent. 
 
 He brought out several volumes of verse during 
 these years, the earliest, " The Ballad of Baby Bell, 
 and Other Poems," having been issued when its 
 author was but twenty. Always his own severest 
 critic, he was peculiarly merciless in dealing with 
 his juvenile poems ; and in an examination of this 
 little book and its immediate successors but few 
 verses will be found that have reappeared in later 
 collections. 
 
 In 1865 Mr. Aldrich married, and removed to 
 Boston to take charge of " Every Saturday," a new 
 weekly established by Ticknor & Fields, of which 
 he remained editor until 1874. In the year first 
 named an edition of his poems was brought out by 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xvii 
 
 the same publishers, in one of their little blue and 
 gold volumes, a guise in which for a season nearly 
 all American poets of repute were presented to the 
 public, and it was no mean distinction for so young 
 an author to appear thus in company with the best 
 writers of the best period of American literature. 
 Several of the poems in this volume, including 
 " Friar Jerome s Beautiful Book," were first printed 
 in the "Atlantic Monthly," to which Mr. Aldrich 
 had been a contributor since 1860. 
 
 In 1869 " The Story of a Bad Boy " appeared as 
 a serial in "Our Young Folks," a juvenile maga 
 zine published by Ticknor & Fields. To the vital 
 ity and truthfulness of this portrait of a healthy, 
 happy, unspoiled boy, enthusiastic readers, old as 
 well as young, have always been eager to testify. 
 The genuine naturalness of the story, its pleasant 
 humor, and its fine literary quality give it a peren 
 nial freshness, and have made it popular in many 
 lands remote from its native New England. 
 
 Up to this time Mr. Aldrich may be said to have 
 been known only as a poet, but during the suc 
 ceeding ten years he was to win wide recognition 
 as a story-writer and novelist. It was then that 
 much began to be said and written about the excel 
 lence of the American short story, praises which 
 must have been in no small part inspired by the 
 publication of such little masterpieces as " Miss 
 Mehetabel s Son," " A Rivermouth Romance," and 
 
xviii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 " Marjorie Daw," the last in especial, by its po 
 tent if elusive charm, gaining an instant popularity, 
 exceptional in its extent and, it may be added, in its 
 enduring quality. " Marjorie Daw " gave name to 
 & collection of stories and sketches published in 
 1873 ; and in the same year appeared a new volume 
 of verse, "Cloth of Gold," followed three years 
 later by " Flower and Thorn." " Prudence Pal 
 frey," its author s first novel, was issued in 1874. 
 The others are " The Queen of Sheba " (1877) and 
 " The Stillwater Tragedy " (1880). A later volume 
 of short stories, " Two Bites at a Cherry, and Other 
 Tales," was brought out in 1893, and another, " A 
 Sea Turn, and Other Matters," appeared in 1902. 
 In these works, whether novel, story, or sketch, we 
 find that easy readableness which comes only from 
 infinite pains on the part of the writer, a lucid 
 style, free alike from mannerisms and affectations 
 and with a quite individual charm, naturalness of 
 movement, and, above all, a quiet but pervasive 
 and spontaneous humor, with touches of simple 
 and unforced pathos. 
 
 In 1881, as successor to Mr. W. D. Howells, Mr. 
 Aldrich became editor of the " Atlantic Monthly," 
 in which so much of his best work had first ap 
 peared, and he held this chair until 1890. In the 
 early years of his Boston residence he had estab 
 lished a country home at Ponkapog, a village whose 
 rural charms are pleasantly touched upon in " Our 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xix 
 
 New Neighbors." For two years, during an ab 
 sence of Mr. Lowell, he had been the tenant of 
 Elmwood. In 1875 he had made a somewhat 
 extensive European tour, destined to be the first 
 of many similar wanderings and sojourns. It was 
 from the earlier vivid impressions of certain places, 
 which use had not yet made over-familiar, that the 
 agreeable travel-sketches collected in " From Pon- 
 kapog to Pesth" (1883) were written. Later jour 
 neys were of still larger scope, including two visits 
 to Russia, of which traces may be found in his 
 poems. Freedom from his editorial charge brought 
 larger opportunities for travel, and in 1894-95 he 
 made a journey round the world. 
 
 Always loyal to his birthplace, in " An Old Town 
 by the Sea " (1893) he gives a picturesque descrip 
 tion of the Portsmouth of history and tradition, as 
 well as his own reminiscences of such survivals of its 
 old life as still remained in his boyhood. The latest 
 volumes of poems are "Mercedes" and "Later 
 Lyrics" (1883), "Mercedes" being a play in two 
 acts, genuinely dramatic in form and spirit, which, 
 with Miss Julia Arthur in the title role, was given 
 at Palmer s Theatre, New York, in the season of 
 1895 ; " Wyndham Towers " (1889), an Elizabethan 
 story in verse, full of the atmosphere of the time, 
 and containing passages of rare beauty, one of 
 which, the sor,g, " Sweetheart, Sigh no More," is as 
 charming a reproduction of the lyric of England s 
 
xx BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 lyric age as these latter days are likely to give 
 us; "The Sisters Tragedy" (1890) ; "Unguarded 
 Gates" (1895); "Judith and Holofernes" (1896); 
 and " Judith of Bethulia," a tragedy in four acts 
 (1904). The last, Mr. Aldrich s second piece of 
 stage-work, was produced at the Tremont Theatre, 
 Boston, by Miss Nance O Neil in 1904, and sub 
 sequently performed in our principal cities. His 
 last prose volume was " Ponkapog Papers," a col 
 lection of short essays and sketches published in 
 1903. 
 
 The degree of Master of Arts was conferred 
 upon Mr. Aldrich by Yale College (1881) and by 
 Harvard University (1896), and that of Doctor of 
 Letters by Yale (1901) and by the University of 
 Pennsylvania (1905). 
 
 We may confidently predict that it is as a poet, 
 and especially as a lyric poet, that Mr. Aldrich 
 will be longest remembered. Some of his briefer 
 poems, in which the beauty of the thought is 
 equaled by the exquisite form of the verse which 
 gives it life, lines which once read linger always in 
 the memory, must be among the things which re 
 main. Thoroughly of New England as he was, he 
 had the French feeling for literary form, the French 
 grace and lightness of touch, qualities which have 
 helped to make his mrs de societi easily the best in 
 our literature. Having the true artist s reverence 
 for his craft, he had little tolerance for careless, ill- 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 considered work, least of all for any of his own 
 work that he found wanting, and he never allowed 
 popular favor to save such delinquents from sup 
 pression. 
 
 Mr. Aldrich died at his home on Mt. Vernon 
 Street, Boston, March 19, 1907. The fine poem 
 on Longfellow, which he had just written for the 
 centenary of the poet s birth, was, very appropri 
 ately, read at his own funeral. 
 
FLOWER AND THORN 
 
 TO L. A. 
 
 AT Shiraz, in a sultan s garden, stood 
 A tree whereon a curious apple grew, 
 One side like honey, and one side like rue. 
 
 Thus sweet and bitter is the life of man, 
 The sultan said, for thus together grow 
 Bitter and sweet, but wherefore none may know. 
 
 Herewith together you have flower and thorn, 
 Both rose and brier, for thus together grow 
 Bitter and sweet, but wherefore none may know. 
 
 ii 
 
 Take them and keep them, 
 Silvery thorn and flower, 
 Plucked just at random 
 In the rosy weather 
 Snowdrops and pansies, 
 Sprigs of wayside heather, 
 
FLOWER AND THORN 
 
 And five-leafed wild-rose 
 Dead within an hour. 
 
 Take them and keep them : 
 Who can tell ? some day, dear, 
 (Though they be withered, 
 Flower and thorn and blossom,) 
 Held for an instant 
 Up against thy bosom, 
 They might make December 
 Seem to thee like May, dear ! 
 
BABY BELL AND OTHER 
 POEMS 
 
 BABY BELL 
 
 HAVE you not heard the poets tell 
 How came the dainty Baby Bell 
 Into this world of ours ? 
 The gates of heaven were left ajar : 
 With folded hands and dreamy eyes, 
 Wandering out of Paradise, 
 She saw this planet, like a star, 
 Hung in the glistening depths of even 
 Its bridges, running to and fro, 
 O er which the white-winged Angels go, 
 Bearing the holy Dead to heaven. 
 She touched a bridge of flowers those feet, 
 So light they did not bend the bells 
 Of the celestial asphodels, 
 They fell like dew upon the flowers : 
 Then all the air grew strangely sweet. 
 And thus came dainty Baby Bell 
 Into this world of ours. 
 3 
 
FLOWER AND THORN 
 
 And five-leafed wild-rose 
 Dead within an hour. 
 
 Take them and keep them : 
 Who can tell ? some day, dear, 
 (Though they be withered, 
 Flower and thorn and blossom,) 
 Held for an instant 
 Up against thy bosom, 
 They might make December 
 Seem to thee like May, dear ! 
 
BABY BELL AND OTHER 
 POEMS 
 
 BABY BELL 
 
 HAVE you not heard the poets tell 
 How came the dainty Baby Bell 
 Into this world of ours ? 
 The gates of heaven were left ajar : 
 With folded hands and dreamy eyes, 
 Wandering out of Paradise, 
 She saw this planet, like a star, 
 Hung in the glistening depths of even 
 Its bridges, running to and fro, 
 O er which the white-winged Angels go, 
 Bearing the holy Dead to heaven. 
 She touched a bridge of flowers those feet, 
 So light they did not bend the bells 
 Of the celestial asphodels, 
 They fell like dew upon the flowers : 
 Then all the air grew strangely sweet. 
 And thus came dainty Baby Bell 
 Into this world of ours. 
 3 
 
BABY BELL 
 II 
 
 She came and brought delicious May ; 
 The swallows built beneath the eaves ; 
 Like sunlight, in and out the leaves 
 The robins went, the livelong day ; 
 The lily swung its noiseless bell ; 
 And on the porch the slender vine 
 Held out its cups of fairy wine. 
 How tenderly the twilights fell ! 
 Oh, earth was full of singing-birds 
 And opening springtide flowers, 
 When the dainty Baby Bell 
 Came to this world of ours. 
 
 in 
 
 O Baby, dainty Baby Bell, 
 How fair she grew from day to day ! 
 What woman-nature filled her eyes, 
 What poetry within them lay 
 Those deep and tender twilight eyes, 
 So full of meaning, pure and bright 
 As if she yet stood in the light 
 Of those oped gates of Paradise. 
 And so we loved her more and more : 
 Ah, never in our hearts before 
 Was love so lovely born. 
 We felt we had a link between 
 
BABY BELL 5 
 
 This real world and that unseen 
 
 The land beyond the morn ; 
 
 And for the love of those dear eyes, 
 
 For love of her whom God led forth, 
 
 (The mother s being ceased on earth 
 
 When Baby came from Paradise,) 
 
 For love of Him who smote our lives, 
 
 And woke the chords of joy and pain, 
 
 We said, Dear Christ ! our hearts bowed down 
 
 Like violets after rain. 
 
 IV 
 
 And now the orchards, which were white 
 
 And pink with blossoms when she came, 
 
 Were rich in autumn s mellow prime ; 
 
 The clustered apples burnt like flame, 
 
 The folded chestnut burst its shell, 
 
 The grapes hung purpling, range on range 
 
 And time wrought just as rich a change 
 
 In little Baby Bell. 
 
 Her lissome form more perfect grew, 
 
 And in her features we could trace, 
 
 In softened curves, her mother s face. 
 
 Her angel-nature ripened too : 
 
 We thought her lovely when she came, 
 
 But she was holy, saintly now . . . 
 
 Around her pale angelic brow 
 
 We saw a slender ring of flame. 
 
BABY BELL 
 
 God s hand had taken away the seal 
 That held the portals of her speech ; 
 And oft she said a few strange words 
 Whose meaning lay beyond our reach, 
 She never was a child to us, 
 We never held her being s key ; 
 We could not teach her holy things 
 Who was Christ s self in purity. 
 
 VI 
 
 It came upon us by degrees, 
 We saw its shadow ere it fell 
 The knowledge that our God had sent 
 His messenger for Baby Bell. 
 We shuddered with unlanguaged pain, 
 And all our hopes were changed to fears, 
 And all our thoughts ran into tears 
 Like sunshine into rain. 
 We cried aloud in our belief, 
 " Oh, smite us gently, gently, God ! 
 Teach us to bend and kiss the rod, 
 And perfect grow through grief." 
 Ah ! how we loved her, God can tell ; 
 Her heart was folded deep in ours. 
 Our hearts are broken, Baby Bell ! 
 
PISCATAQUA RIVER 
 
 VII 
 
 At last he came, the messenger, 
 The messenger from unseen lands : 
 And what did dainty Baby Bell ? 
 She only crossed her little hands, 
 She only looked more meek and fair ! 
 We parted back her silken hair, 
 We wove the roses round her brow 
 White buds, the summer s drifted snow 
 Wrapt her from head to foot in flowers 
 And thus went dainty Baby Bell 
 Out of this world of ours. 
 
 PISCATAQUA RIVER 
 
 THOU singest by the gleaming isles, 
 By woods, and fields of corn, 
 Thou singest, and the sunlight smiles 
 Upon my birthday morn. 
 
 But I within a city, I, 
 So full of vague unrest, 
 Would almost give my life to lie 
 An hour upon thy breast ! 
 
 To let the wherry listless go, 
 And, wrapt in dreamy joy, 
 
io PAMPINA 
 
 My mantle by an almond-tree, 
 And "Here, beneath the rose," I said, 
 " I 11 hear thy Tuscan melody." 
 I heard a tale that was not told 
 In those ten dreamy days of old, 
 When Heaven, for some divine offence, 
 Smote Florence with the pestilence ; 
 And in that garden s odorous shade 
 The dames of the Decameron, 
 With each a loyal lover, strayed, 
 To laugh and sing, at sorest need, 
 To lie in the lilies in the sun 
 With glint of plume and silver brede. 
 And while she whispers in my ear, 
 The pleasant Arno murmurs near, 
 The timid, slim chameleons run 
 Through twenty colors in the sun ; 
 The breezes blur the fountain s glass, 
 And wake aeolian melodies, 
 And scatter from the scented trees 
 The lemon-blossoms on the grass. 
 
 The tale ? I have forgot the tale 
 A Lady all for love forlorn, 
 A rose tree, and a nightingale 
 That bruised his bosom on the thorn ; 
 A jar of rubies buried deep, 
 A glen, a corpse, a child asleep, 
 A Monk, that was no monk at all, 
 In the moonlight by a castle-wall. 
 
PAMPINA ii 
 
 Now while the dark-eyed Tuscan wove 
 The gilded thread of her romance 
 Which I have lost by grievous chance 
 The one dear woman that I love, 
 Beside me in our seaside nook, 
 Closed a white finger in her book, 
 Half vext that she should read, and weep 
 For Petrarch, to a man asleep. 
 And scorning one so tame and cold, 
 She rose, and wandered down the shore, 
 Her wind-swept drapery, fold in fold, 
 Imprisoned by a snowy hand ; 
 And on a bowlder, half in sand, 
 She stood, and looked at Appledore. 
 
 And waking, I beheld her there 
 Sea-dreaming in the moted air, 
 A siren lithe and debonair, 
 With wristlets woven of scarlet weeds, 
 And strings of lucent amber beads 
 Of sea-kelp shining in her hair. 
 And as I thought of dreams, and how 
 The something in us never sleeps, 
 But laughs, or sings, or moans, or weeps, 
 She turned and on her breast and brow 
 I saw the tint that seemed not won 
 From touches of New England sun ; 
 I saw on brow and breast and hand 
 The olive of a sunnier land. 
 
12 INVOCATION TO SLEEP 
 
 She turned and, lo ! within her eyes 
 There lay the starlight of Italian skies. 
 
 Most dreams are dark, beyond the range 
 Of reason ; oft we cannot tell 
 If they are born of heaven or hell : 
 But to my thought it seems not strange 
 That, lying by the summer sea, 
 With that dark woman watching me, 
 I slept and dreamed of Italy. 
 
 INVOCATION TO SLEEP 
 
 THERE is a rest for all things. On still nights 
 There is a folding of a world of wings 
 
 The bees in unknown woods, 
 The painted dragonflies, and downy broods 
 
 In dizzy poplar heights 
 Rest for innumerable nameless things, 
 Rest for the creatures underneath the sea, 
 And in the earth, and in the starry air. 
 It comes to heavier sorrow than I bear, 
 To pain, and want, and crime, and dark despair 
 
 And yet comes not to me ! 
 
INVOCATION TO SLEEP 13 
 
 II 
 
 One that has fared a long and toilsome way 
 And sinks beneath the burden of the day, 
 
 O delicate Sleep, 
 
 Brings thee a soul that he would have thee keep 
 A captive in thy shadowy domain 
 With Puck and Ariel and the happy train 
 That people dreamland. Give unto his sight 
 Immortal shapes, and fetch to him again 
 His Psyche that went out into the night 1 
 
 in 
 
 Thou that dost hold the priceless gift of rest, 
 Strew lotus leaf and poppy on his breast ; 
 
 Reach forth thy hand 
 And lead him to thy castle in the land 
 
 All vainly sought 
 To those hushed chambers lead him, where the 
 
 thought 
 
 Wanders at will upon enchanted ground, 
 And never human footfall makes a sound 
 
 Along the corridors. 
 
 The bell sleeps in the belfry from its tongue 
 A drowsy murmur floats into the air 
 Like thistle-down. There is no bough but seems 
 Weighted with slumber slumber everywhere ! 
 
I 4 THE FLIGHT OF THE GODDESS 
 
 Couched on her leaf, the lily sways and dips ; 
 In the green dusk where joyous birds have sung 
 Sits Silence with her finger on her lips ; 
 Shy woodland folk and sprites that haunt the 
 
 streams 
 
 Are pillowed now in grottoes cool and deep ; 
 But I in chilling twilight stand and wait 
 At the portcullis of thy castle gate, 
 Longing to see the charmed door of dreams 
 Turn on its noiseless hinges, delicate Sleep ! 
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE GODDESS 
 
 A MAN should live in a garret aloof, 
 And have few friends, and go poorly clad, 
 With an old hat stopping the chink in the roof, 
 To keep the Goddess constant and glad. 
 
 Of old, when I walked on a rugged way, 
 And gave much work for but little bread, 
 The Goddess dwelt with me night and day, 
 Sat at my table, haunted my bed. 
 
 The narrow, mean attic, I see it now ! 
 Its window o erlooking the city s tiles, 
 The sunset s fires, and the clouds of snow, 
 And the river wandering miles and miles. 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE GODDESS 15 
 
 Just one picture hung in the room, 
 The saddest story that Art can tell 
 Dante and Virgil in lurid gloom 
 Watching the Lovers float through Hell. 
 
 Wretched enough was I sometimes, 
 Pinched, and harassed with vain desires ; 
 But thicker than clover sprung the rhymes 
 As I dwelt like a sparrow among the spires. 
 
 Midnight filled my slumbers with song ; 
 Music haunted my dreams by day. 
 Now I listen and wait and long, 
 But the Delphian airs have died away. 
 
 I wonder and wonder how it befell : 
 Suddenly I had friends in crowds j 
 I bade the house-tops a long farewell ; 
 " Good-by," I cried, " to the stars and clouds ! 
 
 " But thou, rare soul, thou hast dwelt with me, 
 Spirit of Poesy ! thou divine 
 Breath of the morning, thou shalt be, 
 Goddess ! for ever and ever mine." 
 
 And the woman I loved was now my bride, 
 And the house I wanted was my own ; 
 I turned to the Goddess satisfied 
 But the Goddess had somehow flown. 
 
16 AN OLD CASTLE 
 
 Flown, and I fear she will never return ; 
 I am much too sleek and happy for her, 
 Whose lovers must hunger and waste and burn, 
 Ere the beautiful heathen heart will stir. 
 
 I call but she does not stoop to my cry ; 
 I wait but she lingers, and ah ! so long ! 
 It was not so in the years gone by, 
 When she touched my lips with chrism of song. 
 
 I swear I will get me a garret again, 
 And adore, like a Parsee, the sunset s fires, 
 And lure the Goddess, by vigil and pain, 
 Up with the sparrows among the spires. 
 
 For a man should live in a garret aloof, 
 And have few friends, and go poorly clad, 
 With an old hat stopping the chink in the roof, 
 To keep the Goddess constant and glad. 
 
 AN OLD CASTLE 
 
 THE gray arch crumbles, 
 And totters and tumbles ; 
 The bat has built in the banquet hall 
 
AN OLD CASTLE 17 
 
 In the donjon-keep 
 Sly mosses creep ; 
 
 The ivy has scaled the southern wall. 
 No man-at-arms 
 Sounds quick alarms 
 A-top of the cracked martello tower ; 
 The drawbridge-chain 
 Is broken in twain 
 The bridge will neither rise nor lower. 
 Not any manner 
 Of broidered banner 
 Flaunts at a blazoned herald s call. 
 Lilies float 
 
 In the stagnant moat ; 
 And fair they are, and tall. 
 i 
 
 ii 
 
 Here, in the old 
 
 Forgotten springs, 
 
 Was wassail held by queens and kings ; 
 
 Here at the board 
 
 Sat clown and lord, 
 
 Maiden fair and lover bold, 
 
 Baron fat and minstrel lean, 
 
 The prince with his stars, 
 
 The knight with his scars, 
 
 The priest in his gabardine. 
 
18 AN OLD CASTLE 
 
 ill 
 
 Where is she 
 
 Of the fleur-de-lys, 
 
 And that true knight who wore her gages ? 
 
 Where are the glances 
 
 That bred wild fancies 
 
 In curly heads of my lady s pages ? 
 
 Where are those 
 
 Who, in steel or hose, 
 
 Held revel here, and made them gay ? 
 
 Where is the laughter 
 
 That shook the rafter 
 
 Where is the rafter, by the way ? 
 
 Gone is the roof, 
 
 And perched aloof 
 
 Is an owl, like a friar of Orders Gray. 
 
 (Perhaps t is the priest 
 
 Come back to feast 
 
 He had ever a tooth for capon, he ! 
 
 But the capon s cold, 
 
 And the steward s old, 
 
 And the butler s lost the larder-key !) 
 
 The doughty lords 
 
 Sleep the sleep of swords ; 
 
 Dead are the dames and damozels ; 
 
 The King in his crown 
 
 Hath laid him down, 
 
 And the Jester with his bells. 
 
LOST AT SEA 19 
 
 IV 
 
 All is dead here : 
 
 Poppies are red here, 
 
 Vines in my lady s chamber grow 
 
 If t was her chamber 
 
 Where they clamber 
 
 Up from the poisonous weeds below. 
 
 All is dead here, 
 
 Joy is fled here ; 
 
 Let us hence. T is the end of all 
 
 The gray arch crumbles, 
 
 And totters, and tumbles, 
 
 And Silence sits in the banquet hall. 
 
 LOST AT SEA 
 
 THE face that Carlo Dolci drew 
 Looks down from out its leafy hood 
 The holly berries, gleaming through 
 The pointed leaves, seem drops of blood. 
 
 Above the cornice, round the hearth, 
 Are evergreens and spruce-tree boughs ; 
 Tis Christmas morning: Christmas mirth 
 And joyous voices fill the house. 
 
20 LOST AT SEA 
 
 I pause, and know not what to do ; 
 I feel reproach that I am glad : 
 Until to-day, no thought of you, 
 
 Comrade ! ever made me sad. 
 
 But now the thought of your blithe heart, 
 Your ringing laugh, can give me pain, 
 Knowing that we are worlds apart, 
 Not knowing we shall meet again. 
 
 For all is dark that lies in store : 
 Though they may preach, the brotherhood, 
 We know just this, and nothing more, 
 That we are dust, and God is good. 
 
 What life begins when death makes end ? 
 Sleek gownsmen, is t so very clear ? 
 How fares it with us ? O my Friend, 
 
 1 only know you are not here ! 
 
 That I am in a warm, light room, 
 With life and love to comfort me, 
 While you are drifting through the gloom, 
 Beneath the sea, beneath the sea ! 
 
 O wild green waves that lash the sands 
 Of Santiago and beyond, 
 Lift him, I pray, with gentle hands, 
 And bear him on true heart and fond ! 
 
OF 
 
 THE QUEEN S RIDE 21 
 
 To some still grotto far below 
 The washings of the warm Gulf Stream 
 Bear him, and let the winds that blow 
 About the world not break his dream ! 
 
 I smooth my brow. Upon the stair 
 I hear my children shout in glee, 
 With sparkling eyes and floating hair, 
 Bringing a Christmas wreath for me. 
 
 Their joy, like sunshine deep and broad, 
 Falls on my heart, and makes me glad : 
 I think the face of our dear Lord 
 Looks down on them, and seems not sad. 
 
 THE QUEEN S RIDE 
 
 AN INVITATION 
 
 J T is that fair time of year, 
 When stately Guinevere, 
 In her sea-green robe and hood, 
 Went a-riding through the wood. 
 
 And as the Queen did ride, 
 Sir Launcelot at her side 
 Laughed and chatted, bending over, 
 Half her friend and all her lever. 
 
22 THE QUEEN S RIDE 
 
 And as they rode along, 
 
 The throstle gave them song, 
 
 And the buds peeped through the grass 
 
 To see youth and beauty pass. 
 
 And on, through deathless time, 
 
 These lovers in their prime 
 
 (Two fairy ghosts together !) 
 
 Ride, with sea-green robe, and feather ! 
 
 And so we two will ride, 
 At your pleasure, side by side, 
 Laugh and chat ; I bending over, 
 Half your friend, and all your lover. 
 
 But if you like not this, 
 And take my love amiss, 
 Then I 11 ride unto the end, 
 Half your lover, all your friend. 
 
 So, come which way you will. 
 Valley, upland, plain, and hill 
 Wait your coming. For one day 
 Loose the bridle, and away 1 
 
DIRGE 23 
 
 DIRGE 
 
 LET us keep him warm, 
 Stir the dying fire : 
 Upon his tired arm 
 Slumbers young Desire. 
 
 Soon, ah, very soon 
 We too shall not know 
 Either sun or moon, 
 Either grass or snow. 
 
 Others in our place 
 Come to laugh and weep, 
 Win or lose the race, 
 And to fall asleep. 
 
 Let us keep him warm, 
 Stir the dying fire : 
 Upon his tired arm 
 Slumbers young Desire. 
 
 What does all avail 
 Love, or power, or gold I 
 Life is like a tale 
 Ended ere t is told. 
 
DIRGE 
 
 Much is left unsaid, 
 Much is said in vain 
 Shall the broken thread 
 Be taken up again ? 
 
 Let us keep him warm, 
 Stir the dying fire : 
 Upon his tired arm 
 Slumbers young Desire. 
 
 Kisses one or two 
 On his eyelids set, 
 That, when all is through, 
 He may not forget. 
 
 He has far to go 
 Is it East or West ? 
 Whither ? Who may know I 
 Let him take his rest. 
 
 Wind, and snow, and sleet 
 So the long night dies. 
 Draw the winding-sheet, 
 Cover up his eyes. 
 
 Let us keep him warm, 
 Stir the dying fire : 
 Upon his tired arm 
 Slumbers young Desire. 
 
ON LYNN TERRACE 25 
 
 ON LYNN TERRACE 
 
 ALL day to watch the blue wave curl and break, 
 
 All night to hear it plunging on the shore 
 In this sea-dream such draughts of life I take, 
 I cannot ask for more. 
 
 Behind me lie the idle life and vain, 
 
 The task unfinished, and the weary hours ; 
 
 That long wave softly bears me back to Spain 
 
 And the Alhambra s towers ! 
 
 Once more I halt in Andalusian Pass, 
 
 To list the mule-bells jingling on the height ; 
 Below, against the dull esparto grass, 
 The almonds glimmer white. 
 
 Huge gateways, wrinkled, with rich grays and 
 
 browns, 
 
 Invite my fancy, and I wander through 
 The gable-shadowed, zigzag streets of towns 
 The world s first sailors knew. 
 
 Or, if I will, from out this thin sea-haze 
 Low-lying cliffs of lovely Calais rise ; 
 Or yonder, with the pomp of olden days, 
 Venice salutes my eyes. 
 
26 ON LYNN TERRACE 
 
 Or some gaunt castle lures me up its stair ; 
 I see, far off, the red-tiled hamlets shine, 
 And catch, through slits of windows here and there, 
 Blue glimpses of the Rhine. 
 
 Again I pass Norwegian fjord and fell, 
 
 And through bleak wastes to where the sunset s 
 
 fires 
 
 Light up the white-walled Russian citadel, 
 The Kremlin s domes and spires. 
 
 And now I linger in green English lanes, 
 By garden-plots of rose and heliotrope ; 
 And now I face the sudden pelting rains 
 On some lone Alpine slope. 
 
 Now at Tangier, among the packed bazaars, 
 I saunter, and the merchants at the doors 
 Smile, and entice me : here are jewels like stars, 
 And curved knives of the Moors ; 
 
 Cloths of Damascus, strings of amber dates ; 
 
 What would Howadji silver, gold, or stone? 
 Prone on the sun-scorched plain outside the gates 
 The camels make their moan. 
 
 All this is mine, as I lie dreaming here, 
 
 High on the windy terrace, day by day ; 
 And mine the children s laughter, sweet and clear, 
 Ringing across the bay. 
 
SEADRIFT 27 
 
 For me the clouds ; the ships sail by for me ; 
 
 For me the petulant sea-gull takes its flight ; 
 And mine the tender moonrise on the sea, 
 And hollow caves of night. 
 
 SEADRIFT 
 
 SEE where she stands, on the wet sea-sands, 
 
 Looking across the water : 
 Wild is the night, but wilder still 
 
 The face of the fisher s daughter. 
 
 What does she there, in the lightning s glare, 
 
 What does she there, I wonder ? 
 What dread demon drags her forth 
 
 In the night and wind and thunder ? 
 
 Is it the ghost that haunts this coast ? 
 
 The cruel waves mount higher, 
 And the beacon pierces the stormy dark 
 
 With its javelin of fire. 
 
 Beyond the light of the beacon bright 
 
 A merchantman is tacking ; 
 The hoarse wind whistling through the shrouds, 
 
 And the brittle topmasts cracking. 
 
28 SEADRIFT 
 
 The sea it moans over dead men s bones, 
 
 The sea turns white in anger ; 
 The curlews sweep through the resonant air 
 
 With a warning cry of danger. 
 
 The star-fish clings to the sea-weed s rings 
 
 In a vague, dumb sense of peril ; 
 And the spray, with its phantom-fingers, grasps 
 
 At the mullein dry and sterile. 
 
 Oh, who is she that stands by the sea, 
 In the lightning s glare, undaunted ? 
 
 Seems this now like the coast of hell 
 By one white spirit haunted ! 
 
 The night drags by ; and the breakers die 
 
 Along the ragged ledges ; 
 The robin stirs in his drenched nest, 
 
 The wild-rose droops on the hedges. 
 
 In shimmering lines, through the dripping pines, 
 
 The stealthy morn advances j 
 And the heavy sea-fog straggles back 
 
 Before those bristling lances. 
 
 Still she stands on the wet sea-sands; 
 
 The morning breaks above her, 
 And the corpse of a sailor gleams on the rocks 
 
 What if it were her lover ? 
 
THE PIAZZA OF ST. MARK 29 
 
 THE PIAZZA OF ST. MARK AT 
 MIDNIGHT 
 
 HUSHED is the music, hushed the hum of voices ; 
 Gone is the crowd of dusky promenaders, 
 Slender-waisted, almond-eyed Venetians, 
 Princes and paupers. Not a single footfall 
 Sounds in the arches of the Procuratie. 
 One after one, like sparks in cindered paper, 
 Faded the lights out in the goldsmiths windows. 
 Drenched with the moonlight lies the still Piazza. 
 
 Fair as the palace builded for Aladdin, 
 Yonder St. Mark uplifts its sculptured splendo/ 
 Intricate fretwork, Byzantine mosaic, 
 Color on color, column upon column, 
 Barbaric, wonderful, a thing to kneel to ! 
 Over the portal stand the four gilt horses, 
 Gilt hoof in air, and wide distended nostril, 
 Fiery, untamed, as in the days of Nero. 
 Skyward, a cloud of domes and spires and crosses ; 
 Earthward, black shadows flung from jutting stone 
 work. 
 
 High over all the slender Campanile 
 Quivers, and seems a falling shaft of silver. 
 
 Hushed is the music, hushed the hum of voices. 
 Listen from cornice and fantastic gargoyle, 
 
30 THE METEMPSYCHOSIS 
 
 Now and again the moan of dove or pigeon, 
 Fairily faint, floats off into the moonlight. 
 This, and the murmur of the Adriatic, 
 Lazily restless, lapping the mossed marble, 
 Staircase or buttress, scarcely break the stillness. 
 Deeper each moment seems to grow the silence, 
 Denser the moonlight in the still Piazza. 
 Hark ! on the Tower above the ancient gateway, 
 The twin bronze Vulcans, with their ponderous 
 
 hammers, 
 Hammer the midnight on their brazen bell there ! 
 
 THE METEMPSYCHOSIS 
 
 THE thing I am, and not the thing Man is, 
 Fills my deep dreaming. Let him moan and die ; 
 I know my own creation was divine. 
 I brood on all the shapes I must attain 
 Before I reach the Perfect, which is God, 
 And dream my dream, and let the rabble go ; 
 For I am of the mountains and the sea, 
 The deserts, and the caverns in the earth, 
 The catacombs and fragments of old worlds, 
 
 I was a spirit on the mountain-tops, 
 A perfume in the valleys, a simoom 
 On arid deserts, a nomadic wind 
 Roaming the universe, a tireless voice. 
 
THE METEMPSYCHOSIS 31 
 
 I was ere Romulus and Remus were ; 
 I was ere Nineveh and Babylon ; 
 I was, and am, and evermore shall be, 
 Progressing, never reaching to the end. 
 
 A hundred years I trembled in the grass, 
 The delicate trefoil that muffled warm 
 A slope on Ida ; for a hundred years 
 Moved in the purple gyre of those dark flowers 
 The Grecian women strew upon the dead. 
 Under the earth, in fragrant glooms, I dwelt ; 
 Then in the veins and sinews of a pine 
 On a lone isle, where, from the Cyclades, 
 A mighty wind, like a leviathan, 
 Ploughed through the brine, and from those soli 
 tudes 
 
 Sent Silence, frightened. To and fro I swayed, 
 Drawing the sunshine from the stooping clouds. 
 Suns came and went, and many a mystic moon, 
 Orbing and waning, and fierce meteors, 
 Leaving their lurid ghosts to haunt the night. 
 I heard loud voices by the sounding shore, 
 The stormy sea-gods, and from fluted conchs 
 Wild music, and strange shadows floated by, 
 Some moaning and some singing. So the years 
 Clustered about me, till the hand of God 
 Let down the lightning from a sultry sky, 
 Splintered the pine and split the iron rock ; 
 And from my odorous prison-house a bird, 
 I in its bosom, darted ; so we fled, 
 
32 THE METEMPSYCHOSIS 
 
 Turning the brittle edge of one high wave, 
 Island and tree and sea-gods left behind ! 
 
 Free as the air from zone to zone I flew, 
 Far from the tumult to the quiet gates 
 Of daybreak ; and beneath me I beheld 
 Vineyards, and rivers that like silver threads 
 Ran through the green and gold of pasture-lands, 
 And here and there a convent on a hill, 
 And here and there a city in a plain ; 
 I saw huge navies battling with a storm 
 By hidden reefs along the desolate coasts, 
 And lazy merchantmen, that crawled, like flies, 
 Over the blue enamel of the sea 
 To India or the icy Labradors. 
 
 A century was as a single day. 
 What is a day to an immortal soul ? 
 A breath, no more. And yet I hold one hour 
 Beyond all price that hour when from the sky 
 I circled near and nearer to the earth, 
 Nearer and nearer, till I brushed my wings 
 Against the pointed chestnuts, where a stream, 
 That foamed and chattered over pebbly shoals, 
 Fled through the briony, and with a shout 
 Leapt headlong down a precipice ; and there, 
 Gathering wild-flowers in the cool ravine, 
 Wandered a woman more divinely shaped 
 Than any of the creatures of the air, 
 Or river-goddesses, or restless shades 
 Of noble matrons marvellous in their time 
 
THE METEMPSYCHOSIS 33 
 
 For beauty and great suffering ; and I sung, 
 
 I charmed her thought, I gave her dreams, and then 
 
 Down from the dewy atmosphere I stole 
 
 And nestled in her bosom. There I slept 
 
 From moon to moon, while in her eyes a thought 
 
 Grew sweet and sweeter, deepening like dawn 
 
 A mystical forewarning ! When the stream, 
 
 Breaking through leafless brambles and dead leaves, 
 
 Piped shriller treble, and from chestnut boughs 
 
 The fruit dropt noiseless through the autumn night, 
 
 I gave a quick, low cry, as infants do : 
 
 We weep when we are born, not when we die ! 
 
 So was it destined ; and thus came I here, 
 
 To walk the earth and wear the form of Man, 
 
 To suffer bravely as becomes my state, 
 
 One step, one grade, one cycle nearer God. 
 
 And knowing these things, can I stoop to fret, 
 And lie, and haggle in the market-place, 
 Give dross for dross, or everything for naught ? 
 No ! let me sit above the crowd, and sing, 
 Waiting with hope for that miraculous change 
 Which seems like sleep; and though I waiting 
 
 starve, 
 
 I cannot kiss the idols that are set 
 By every gate, in every street and park ; 
 I cannot fawn, I cannot soil my soul ; 
 For I am of the mountains and the sea, 
 The deserts, and the caverns in the earth, 
 The catacombs and fragments of old worlds. 
 
34 BAYARD TAYLOR 
 
 BAYARD TAYLOR 
 
 IN other years lost youth s enchanted years, 
 
 Seen now, and evermore, through blinding tears 
 
 And empty longing for what may not be 
 
 The Desert gave him back to us ; the Sea 
 
 Yielded him up j the icy Norland strand 
 
 Lured him not long, nor that soft German air 
 
 He loved could keep him. Ever his own land 
 
 Fettered his heart and brought him back again. 
 
 What sounds are these of farewell and despair 
 
 Borne on the winds across the wintry main ! 
 
 What unknown way is this that he has gone, 
 
 Our Bayard, in such silence and alone ? 
 
 What dark new quest has tempted him once more 
 
 To leave us ? Vainly, standing by the shore, 
 
 We strain our eyes. But patience ! When the soft 
 
 Spring gales are blowing over Cedarcroft, 
 
 Whitening the hawthorn ; when the violets bloom 
 
 Along the Brandywine, and overhead 
 
 The sky is blue as Italy s, he will come . . . 
 
 In the wind s whisper, in the swaying pine, 
 
 In song of bird and blossoming of vine, 
 
 And all fair things he loved ere he was dead ! 
 
INTERLUDES 
 
 HESPERIDES 
 
 IF thy soul, Herrick, dwelt with me, 
 This is what my songs would be : 
 Hints of our sea-breezes, blent 
 With odors from the Orient ; 
 Indian vessels deep with spice ; 
 Star-showers from the Norland ice ; 
 Wine-red jewels that seem to hold 
 Fire, but only burn with cold ; 
 Antique goblets, strangely wrought, 
 Filled with the wine of happy thought, 
 Bridal measures, vain regrets, 
 Laburnum buds and violets ; 
 Hopeful as the break of day ; 
 Clear as crystal ; new as May ; 
 Musical as brooks that run 
 O er yellow shallows in the sun ; 
 Soft as the satin fringe that shades 
 The eyelids of thy Devon maids ; 
 Brief as thy lyrics, Herrick, are, 
 And polished as the bosom of a star 
 35 
 
36 INTERLUDES 
 
 BEFORE THE RAIN 
 
 WE knew it would rain, for all the morn, 
 A spirit on slender ropes of mist 
 
 Was lowering its golden buckets down 
 Into the vapory amethyst 
 
 Of marshes and swamps and dismal fens 
 Scooping the dew that lay in the flowers, 
 
 Dipping the jewels out of the sea, 
 To scatter them over the land in showers. 
 
 We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed 
 The white of their leaves, the amber grain 
 
 Shrunk in the wind and the lightning now 
 Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain ! 
 
 AFTER THE RAIN 
 
 THE rain has ceased, and in my room 
 The sunshine pours an airy flood ; 
 And on the church s dizzy vane 
 The ancient Cross is bathed in blood. 
 
 From out the dripping ivy-leaves, 
 Antiquely carven, gray and high, 
 
INTERLUDES 37 
 
 A dormer, facing westward, looks 
 Upon the village like an eye. 
 
 And now it glimmers in the sun, 
 A square of gold, a disk, a speck : 
 And in the belfry sits a Dove 
 With purple ripples on her neck. 
 
 A SNOWFLAKE 
 
 ONCE he sang of summer, 
 Nothing but the summer ; 
 Now he sings of winter, 
 Of winter bleak and drear : 
 Just because there s fallen 
 A snowflake on his forehead 
 He must go and fancy 
 T is winter all the year ! 
 
 FROST-WORK 
 
 THESE winter nights, against my window-pane 
 Nature with busy pencil draws designs 
 Of ferns and blossoms and fine spray of pines, 
 Oak-leaf and acorn and fantastic vines, 
 
38 INTERLUDES 
 
 Which she will shape when summer comes again 
 Quaint arabesques in argent, flat and cold, 
 Like curious Chinese etchings. ... By and by 
 (I in my leafy garden as of old) 
 These frosty fantasies shall charm my eye 
 In azure, damask, emerald, and gold. 
 
 THE ONE WHITE ROSE 
 
 A SORROWFUL woman said to me, 
 " Come in and look on our child." 
 I saw an Angel at shut of day, 
 And it never spoke but smiled. 
 
 I think of it in the city s streets, 
 I dream of it when I rest 
 The violet eyes, the waxen hands, 
 And the one white rose on the breast ! 
 
 LANDSCAPE 
 
 GAUNT shadows stretch along the hill ; 
 Cold clouds drift slowly west ; 
 Soft flocks of vagrant snowflakes fill 
 The redwing s frozen nest. 
 
INTERLUDES 39 
 
 By sunken reefs the hoarse sea roars ; 
 Above the shelving sands, 
 Like skeletons the sycamores 
 Uplift their wasted hands. 
 
 The air is full of hints of grief, 
 Faint voices touched with pain 
 The pathos of the falling leaf 
 And rustling of the rain. 
 
 In yonder cottage shines a light, 
 Far-gleaming like a gem 
 Not fairer to the Rabbins sight 
 Was star of Bethlehem ! 
 
 NOCTURNE 
 
 UP to her chamber window 
 A slight wire trellis goes, 
 And up this Romeo s ladder 
 Clambers a bold white rose. 
 
 I lounge in the ilex shadows, 
 I see the lady lean, 
 Unclasping her silken girdle, 
 The curtain s folds between. 
 
40 INTERLUDES 
 
 She smiles on her white-rose lover, 
 She reaches out her hand 
 And helps him in at the window 
 I see it where I stand ! 
 
 To her scarlet lip she holds him, 
 And kisses him many a time 
 Ah, me ! it was he that won her 
 Because he dared to climb ! 
 
 APPRECIATION 
 
 To the sea-shell s spiral round 
 Tis your heart that brings the sound 
 The soft sea-murmurs that you hear 
 Within, are captured from your ear. 
 
 You do poets and their song 
 
 A grievous wrong, 
 
 If your own soul does not bring 
 
 To their high imagining 
 
 As much beauty as they sing. 
 
INTERLUDES 41 
 
 PALABRAS CARlSfoSAS 
 
 (SPANISH AIR) 
 
 GOOD-NIGHT ! I have to say good-night 
 To such a host of peerless things ! 
 Good-night unto the slender hand 
 AH queenly with its weight of rings ; 
 Good-night to fond, uplifted eyes, 
 Good-night to chestnut braids of hair, 
 Good-night unto the perfect mouth, 
 And all the sweetness nestled there 
 The snowy hand detains me, then 
 I 11 have to say Good-night again ! 
 
 But there will come a time, my love, 
 
 When, if I read our stars aright, 
 
 I shall not linger by this porch 
 
 With my farewells. Till then, good-night ! 
 
 You wish the time were now ? And I. 
 
 You do not blush to wish it so ? 
 
 You would have blushed yourself to death 
 
 To own so much a year ago 
 
 What, both these snowy hands ! ah, then 
 I 11 have to say Good-night again ! 
 
42 INTERLUDES 
 
 APPARITIONS 
 
 AT noon of night, and at the night s pale end,. 
 Such things have chanced to me 
 
 As one, by day, would scarcely tell a friend 
 For fear of mockery. 
 
 Shadows, you say, mirages of the brain ! 
 
 I know not, faith, not I. 
 Is it more strange the dead should walk again 
 
 Than that the quick should die ? 
 
 UNSUNG 
 
 As sweet as the breath that goes 
 From the lips of the blown rose, 
 As weird as the elfin lights 
 That glimmer of frosty nights, 
 As wild as the winds that tear 
 The curled red leaf in the air, 
 Is the song I have never sung. 
 
 In slumber, a hundred times 
 I have said the mystic rhymes, 
 
INTERLUDES 43 
 
 But ere I open my eyes 
 
 This ghost of a poem flies ; 
 
 Of the interfluent strains 
 
 Not even a note remains : 
 
 I know by my pulses beat 
 
 It was something wild and sweet, 
 
 And my heart is deeply stirred 
 
 By an unremembered word ! 
 
 I strive, but I strive in vain, 
 To recall the lost refrain. 
 On some miraculous day 
 Perhaps it will come and stay ; 
 In some unimagined Spring 
 I may find my voice, and sing 
 The song I have never sung. 
 
 AN UNTIMELY THOUGHT 
 
 I WONDER what day of the week, 
 I wonder what month of the year 
 Will it be midnight, or morning, 
 And who will bend over my bier ? . , 
 
 What a hideous fancy to come 
 As I wait at the foot of the stair, 
 
44 INTERLUDES 
 
 While she gives the last touch to her robe, 
 Or sets the white rose in her hair. 
 
 As the carriage rolls down the dark street 
 The little wife laughs and makes cheer 
 But ... I wonder what day of the week, 
 I wonder what month of the year. 
 
 ONE WOMAN 
 
 THOU listenest to us with unheeding ear ; 
 Alike to thee our censure and our praise : 
 Thou hearest voices that we may not hear ; 
 Thou livest only in thy yesterdays. 
 
 We see thee move, erect and pale and brave ; 
 Soft words are thine, sweet deeds, and gracious 
 
 will; 
 
 Yet thou art dead as any in the grave 
 Only thy presence lingers with us still. 
 
 With others, joy and sorrow seem to slip 
 Like light and shade, and laughter kills regret ; 
 But thou the fugitive tremor of thy lip 
 Lays bare thy secret thou canst not forget ! 
 
INTERLUDES 45 
 
 REALISM 
 
 ROMANCE beside his unstrung lute 
 
 Lies stricken mute. 
 The old-time fire, the antique grace, 
 You will not find them anywhere. 
 To-day we breathe a commonplace, 
 Polemic, scientific air : 
 We strip Illusion of her veil ; 
 We vivisect the nightingale 
 To probe the secret of his note. 
 The Muse in alien ways remote 
 
 Goes wandering. 
 
 DISCIPLINE 
 
 IN the crypt at the foot of the stairs 
 They lay there, a score of the Dead : 
 They could hear the priest at his prayers, 
 And the litany overhead. 
 
 They knew when the great crowd stirred 
 As the Host was lifted on high ; 
 And they smiled in the dark when they heard 
 Some light-footed nun trip by. 
 
46 INTERLUDES 
 
 Side by side on their shelves 
 
 For years and years they lay ; 
 
 And those who misbehaved themselves 
 
 Had their coffin-plates taken away. 
 
 Thus is the legend told 
 In black-letter monkish rhyme, 
 Explaining those plaques of gold 
 That vanished from time to time ! 
 
 DESTINY 
 
 THREE roses, wan as moonlight and weighed 
 
 down 
 
 Each with its loveliness as with a crown, 
 Drooped in a florist s window in a town. 
 
 The first a lover bought. It lay at rest, 
 Like flower on flower, that night, on Beauty s 
 breast. 
 
 The second rose, as virginal and fair, 
 Shrunk in the tangles of a harlot s hair. 
 
 The third, a widow, with new grief made wild, 
 Shut in the icy palm of her dead child. 
 
INTERLUDES 47 
 
 NAMELESS PAIN 
 
 IN my nostrils the summer wind 
 Blows the exquisite scent of the rose : 
 Oh for the golden, golden wind, 
 Breaking the buds as it goes ! 
 Breaking the buds and bending the grass, 
 And spilling the scent of the rose. 
 
 wind of the summer morn, 
 Tearing the petals in twain, 
 Wafting the fragrant soul 
 
 Of the rose through valley and plain, 
 
 1 would you could tear my heart to-day 
 And scatter its nameless pain ! 
 
 HEREDITY 
 
 A SOLDIER of the Cromwell stamp, 
 With sword and psalm-book by his side, 
 At home alike in church and camp : 
 Austere he lived, and smileless died. 
 
 But she, a creature soft and fine 
 
 From Spain, some say, some say from France ; 
 
48 INTERLUDES 
 
 Within her veins leapt blood like wine 
 She led her Roundhead lord a dance ! 
 
 In Grantham church they lie asleep ; 
 Just where, the verger may not know. 
 Strange that two hundred years should keep 
 The old ancestral fires aglow ! 
 
 In me these two have met again ; 
 To each my nature owes a part : 
 To one, the cool and reasoning brain, 
 To one, the quick, unreasoning heart. 
 
 IDENTITY 
 
 SOMEWHERE in desolate wind-swept space 
 In Twilight-land in No-man s-land 
 
 Two hurrying Shapes met face to face, 
 And bade each other stand. 
 
 " And who are you ? " cried one a-gape, 
 Shuddering in the gloaming light. 
 
 " I know not," said the second Shape, 
 " I only died last night ! " 
 
INTERLUDES 49 
 
 LYRICS AND EPICS 
 
 I WOULD be the Lyric 
 Ever on the lip, 
 Rather than the Epic 
 Memory lets slip. 
 I would be the diamond 
 At my lady s ear, 
 Rather than the June-rose 
 Worn but once a year. 
 
 A WINTER PIECE 
 
 Sous le voile qui vous protege, 
 Defiant les regards jaloux, 
 Si vous sortez par cette neige, 
 Redoutez vos pieds andalous. 
 
 TH^OPHILB GAUTIER 
 
 BENEATH the heavy veil you wear, 
 Shielded from jealous eyes you go ; 
 But of your pretty feet have care 
 If you should venture through the snow. 
 
 Howe er you tread, a tiny mould 
 Betrays that light foot all the same ; 
 
5 o INTERLUDES 
 
 Upon this glistening, snowy fold 
 At every step it signs your name. 
 
 Thus guided, one might come too close 
 Upon the slyly-hidden nest 
 Where Psyche, with her cheek s cold rose, 
 On Love s warm bosom lies at rest. 
 
 KRISS KRINGLE 
 
 (Written in a child s album) 
 
 JUST as the moon was fading amid her misty rings, 
 And every stocking was stuffed with childhood s 
 
 precious things, 
 Old Kriss Kringle looked round, and saw on the 
 
 elm-tree bough, 
 
 High-hung, an oriole s nest, silent and empty now. 
 "Quite like a stocking," he laughed, "pinned up 
 
 there on the tree ! 
 Little I thought the birds expected a present from 
 
 me!" 
 Then old Kriss Kringle, who loves a joke as well 
 
 as the best, 
 Dropped a handful of flakes in the oriole s empty 
 
 nest. 
 
INTERLUDES 51 
 
 RENCONTRE 
 
 TOILING across the Mer de Glace, 
 
 I thought of, longed for thee ; 
 
 What miles between us stretched, alas ! 
 
 What miles of land and sea ! 
 
 My foe, undreamed of, at my side 
 Stood suddenly, like Fate. 
 For those who love, the world is wide, 
 But not for those who hate. 
 
 LOVE S CALENDAR 
 
 THE Summer comes and the Summer goes ; 
 Wild-flowers are fringing the dusty lanes, 
 The swallows go darting through fragrant rains, 
 
 Then, all of a sudden it snows. 
 
 Dear Heart, our lives so happily flow, 
 So lightly we heed the flying hours, 
 We only know Winter is gone by the flowers, 
 
 We only know Winter is come by the snow. 
 
INTERLUDES 
 LOST ART 
 
 WHEN I was young and light of heart 
 I made sad songs with easy art : 
 Now I am sad, and no more young, 
 My sorrow cannot find a tongue. 
 
 ii 
 
 Pray, Muses, since I may not sing 
 Of Death or any grievous thing, 
 Teach me some joyous strain, that I 
 May mock my youth s hypocrisy ! 
 
CLOTH OF GOLD 
 
 PROEM 
 
 You ask us if by rule or no 
 Our many-colored songs are wrought : 
 Upon the cunning loom of thought 
 We weave our fancies, so and so. 
 
 ii 
 
 The busy shuttle comes and goes 
 Across the rhymes, and deftly weaves 
 A tissue out of autumn leaves, 
 With here a thistle, there a rose. 
 
 in 
 
 With art and patience thus is made 
 The poet s perfect Cloth of Gold : 
 When woven so, nor moth nor mould 
 Nor time can make its colors fade. 
 53 
 
54 CLOTH OF GOLD 
 
 AN ARAB WELCOME 
 
 BECAUSE thou corn s!, a weary guest, 
 Unto my tent, I bid thee rest. 
 This cruse of oil, this skin of wine, 
 These tamarinds and dates are thine ; 
 And while thou eatest, Medjid, there, 
 Shall bathe the heated nostrils of thy mare. 
 
 Illah IP Allah ! Even so 
 An Arab chieftain treats a foe, 
 Holds him as one without a fault 
 Who breaks his bread and tastes his salt ; 
 And, in fair battle, strikes him dead 
 With the same pleasure that he gives him bread. 
 
 A TURKISH LEGEND 
 
 A CERTAIN Pasha, dead these thousand years, 
 Once from his harem fled in sudden tears, 
 
 And had this sentence on the city s gate 
 Deeply engraven, Only God is great. 
 
 So those four words above the city s noise 
 Hung like the accents of an angel s voice, 
 
CLOTH OF GOLD 55 
 
 And evermore, from the high barbacan, 
 Saluted each returning caravan. 
 
 Lost is that city s glory. Every gust 
 Lifts, with dead leaves, the unknown Pasha s 
 dust. 
 
 And all is ruin save one wrinkled gate 
 Whereon is written, Only God is great. 
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 
 
 KIND was my friend who, in the Eastern land, 
 Remembered me with such a gracious hand, 
 And sent this Moorish Crescent which has been 
 Worn on the haughty bosom of a queen. 
 No more it sinks and rises in unrest 
 To the soft music of her heathen breast ; 
 No barbarous chief shall bow before it more, 
 No turbaned slave shall envy and adore. 
 
 I place beside this relic of the Sun 
 
 A Cross of Cedar brought from Lebanon, 
 
 Once borne, perchance, by some pale monk who 
 
 trod 
 
 The desert to Jerusalem and his God. 
 Here do they lie, two symbols of two creeds, 
 
56 CLOTH OF GOLD 
 
 Each with deep meaning to our human needs, 
 
 Both stained with blood, and sacred made by faith, 
 
 By tears, and prayers, and martyrdom, and death. 
 
 That for the Moslem is, but this for me. 
 
 The waning Crescent lacks divinity : 
 
 It gives me dreams of battles, and the woes 
 
 Of women shut in dim seraglios. 
 
 But when this Cross of simple wood I see, 
 
 The Star of Bethlehem shines again for me, 
 
 And glorious visions break upon my gloom 
 
 The patient Christ, and Mary at the Tomb. 
 
 THE UNFORGIVEN 
 
 NEAR my bed, there, hangs the picture jewels could 
 not buy from me : 
 
 Tis a Siren, a brown Siren, in her sea-weed dra 
 pery, 
 
 Playing on a lute of amber, by the margin of a 
 sea. 
 
 In the east, the rose of morning seems as if t would 
 
 blossom soon, 
 But it never, never blossoms, in this picture ; and 
 
 the moon 
 Never ceases to be crescent, and the June is always 
 
 Tune. 
 
CLOTH OF GOLD 57 
 
 And the heavy-branched banana never yields its 
 
 creamy fruit ; 
 In the citron-trees are nightingales forever stricken 
 
 mute; 
 And the Siren sits, her fingers on the pulses of the 
 
 lute. 
 
 In the hushes of the midnight, when the heliotropes 
 grow strong 
 
 With the dampness, I hear music hear a quiet, 
 plaintive song 
 
 A most sad, melodious utterance, as of some im 
 mortal wrong ; 
 
 Like the pleading, oft repeated, of a Soul that 
 
 pleads in vain, 
 Of a damned Soul repentant, that would fain be 
 
 pure again ! 
 And I lie awake and listen to the music of her 
 
 pain. 
 
 And whence comes this mournful music ? whence, 
 
 unless it chance to be 
 From the Siren, the brown Siren, in her sea-weed 
 
 drapery, 
 Playing on a lute of amber, by the margin of a 
 
 sea. 
 
5 8 CLOTH OF GOLD 
 
 DRESSING THE BRIDE 
 
 A FRAGMENT 
 
 So, after bath, the slave-girls brought 
 The broidered raiment for her wear, 
 The misty izar from Mosul, 
 The pearls and opals for her hair, 
 The slippers for her supple feet, 
 (Two radiant crescent moons they were,) 
 And lavender, and spikenard sweet, 
 And attars, nedd, and richest musk. 
 When they had finished dressing her, 
 (The Eye of Dawn, the Heart s Desire !) 
 Like one pale star against the dusk, 
 A single diamond on her brow 
 Trembled with its imprisoned fire. 
 
 TWO SONGS FROM THE PERSIAN 
 
 i 
 
 O CEASE, sweet music, let us rest ! 
 Too soon the hateful light is born ; 
 Henceforth let day be counted night, 
 And midnight called the morn. 
 
CLOTH OF GOLD 59 
 
 O cease, sweet music, let us rest ! 
 A tearful, languid spirit lies, 
 Like the dim scent in violets, 
 In beauty s gentle eyes. 
 
 There is a sadness in sweet sound 
 That quickens tears. O music, lest 
 We weep with thy strange sorrow, cease ! 
 Be still, and let us rest. 
 
 ii 
 
 Ah ! sad are they who know not love, 
 But, far from passion s tears and smiles, 
 Drift down a moonless sea, beyond 
 The silvery coasts of fairy isles. 
 
 And sadder they whose longing lips 
 Kiss empty air, and never touch 
 The dear warm mouth of those they love 
 Waiting, wasting, suffering much. 
 
 But clear as amber, fine as musk, 
 Is life to those who, pilgrim-wise, 
 Move hand in hand from dawn to dusk, 
 Each morning nearer Paradise. 
 
 Oh, not for them shall angels pray! 
 They stand in everlasting light, 
 
60 CLOTH OF GOLD 
 
 They walk in Allah s smile by day, 
 And slumber in his heart by night. 
 
 TIGER-LILIES 
 
 I LIKE not lady-slippers, 
 Nor yet the sweet-pea blossoms, 
 Nor yet the flaky roses, 
 Red, or white as snow ; 
 I like the chaliced lilies, 
 The heavy Eastern lilies, 
 The gorgeous tiger-lilies, 
 That in our garden grow. 
 
 For they are tall and slender ; 
 
 Their mouths are dashed with carmine ; 
 
 And when the wind sweeps by them, 
 
 On their emerald stalks 
 
 They bend so proud and graceful 
 
 They are Circassian women, 
 
 The favorites of the Sultan, 
 
 Adown our garden walks. 
 
 And when the rain is falling, 
 I sit beside the window 
 And watch them glow and glisten, 
 How they burn and glow I 
 
CLOTH OF GOLD 61 
 
 Oh for the burning lilies, 
 The tender Eastern lilies, 
 The gorgeous tiger-lilies, 
 That in our garden grow ! 
 
 THE SULTANA 
 
 IN the draperies purple gloom, 
 In the gilded chamber she stands, 
 I catch a glimpse of her bosom s bloom, 
 And the white of her jewelled hands. 
 
 Each wandering wind that blows 
 
 By the lattice, seems to bear 
 
 From her parted lips the scent of the rose, 
 
 And the jasmine from her hair. 
 
 Her dark-browed odalisques lean 
 
 To the fountain s feathery rain, 
 
 And a paroquet, by the broidered screen, 
 
 Dangles its silvery chain. 
 
 But pallid, luminous, cold, 
 Like a phantom she fills the place, 
 Sick to the heart, in that cage of gold, 
 With her sumptuous disgrace. 
 
62 CLOTH OF GOLD 
 
 THE WORLD S WAY 
 
 AT Haroun s court it chanced, upon a time, 
 An Arab poet made this pleasant rhyme : 
 
 "The new moon is a horseshoe, wrought of 
 
 God, 
 Wherewith the Sultan s stallion shall be shod." 
 
 On hearing this, the Sultan smiled, and gave 
 The man a gold-piece. Sing again, O slave ! 
 
 Above his lute the happy singer bent, 
 And turned another gracious compliment. 
 
 And, as before, the smiling Sultan gave 
 The man a sekkah. Sing again, O slave! 
 
 Again the verse came, fluent as a rill 
 That wanders, silver-footed, down a hill. 
 
 The Sultan, listening, nodded as before, 
 Still gave the gold, and still demanded more* 
 
 The nimble fancy that had climbed so high 
 Grew weary with its climbing by and by : 
 
CLOTH OF GOLD 63 
 
 Strange discords rose; the sense went quite 
 
 amiss ; 
 The singer s rhymes refused to meet and kiss : 
 
 Invention flagged, the lute had got unstrung, 
 And twice he sang the song already sung. 
 
 The Sultan, furious, called a mute, and said, 
 O Musta, straightway whip me off his head! 
 
 Poets ! not in Arabia alone 
 
 You get beheaded when your skill is gone. 
 
 LATAKIA 
 
 WHEN all the panes are hung with frost, 
 Wild wizard-work of silver lace, 
 I draw my sofa on the rug 
 Before the ancient chimney-place. 
 Upon the painted tiles are mosques 
 And minarets, and here and there 
 A blind muezzin lifts his hands 
 And calls the faithful unto prayer. 
 Folded in idle, twilight dreams, 
 
CLOTH OF GOLD 
 
 I hear the hemlock chirp and sing 
 
 As if within its ruddy core 
 
 It held the happy heart of Spring. 
 
 Ferdousi never sang like that, 
 
 Nor Saadi grave, nor Hafiz gay : 
 
 I lounge, and blow white rings of smoke, 
 
 And watch them rise and float away. 
 
 The curling wreaths like turbans seem 
 Of silent slaves that come and go 
 Or Viziers, packed with craft and crime, 
 Whom I behead from time to time, 
 With pipe-stem, at a single blow. 
 
 And now and then a lingering cloud 
 Takes gracious form at my desire, 
 And at my side my lady stands, 
 Unwinds her veil with snowy hands 
 A shadowy shape, a breath of fire ! 
 
 O Love, if you were only here 
 Beside me in this mellow light, 
 Though all the bitter winds should blow, 
 And all the ways be choked with snow, 
 T would be a true Arabian night ! 
 
CLOTH OF GOLD 65 
 
 WHEN THE SULTAN GOES TO ISPAHAN 
 
 WHEN the Sultan Shah-Zaman 
 
 Goes to the city Ispahan, 
 
 Even before lie gets so far 
 
 As the place where the clustered palm-trees 
 
 are, 
 
 At the last of the thirty palace-gates, 
 The flower of the harem, Rose-in-Bloom, 
 Orders a feast in his favorite room 
 Glittering squares of colored ice, 
 Sweetened with syrop, tinctured with spice, 
 Creams, and cordials, and sugared dates, 
 Syrian apples, Othmanee quinces, 
 Limes, and citrons, and apricots, 
 And wines that are known to Eastern princes ; 
 And Nubian slaves, with smoking pots 
 Of spiced meats and costliest fish 
 And all that the curious palate could wish, 
 Pass in and out of the cedarn doors ; 
 Scattered over mosaic floors 
 Are anemones, myrtles, and violets, 
 And a musical fountain throws its jets 
 Of a hundred colors into the air. 
 The dusk Sultana loosens her hair, 
 And stains with the henna-plant the tips 
 Of her pointed nails, and bites her lips 
 
66 CLOTH OF GOLD 
 
 Till they bloom again ; but, alas, that rose 
 Not for the Sultan buds and blows, 
 Not for the Sultan Shah-Zaman 
 When he goes to the city Ispahan. 
 
 Then at a wave of her sunny hand 
 The dancing-girls of Samarcand 
 Glide in like shapes from fairy-land, 
 Making a sudden mist in air 
 Of fleecy veils and floating hair 
 And white arms lifted. Orient blood 
 Runs in their veins, shines in their eyes. 
 And there, in this Eastern Paradise, 
 Filled with the breath of sandal-wood, 
 And Khoten musk, and aloes and myrrh, 
 Sits Rose-in-Bloom on a silk divan, 
 Sipping the wines of Astrakhan ; 
 And her Arab lover sits with her. 
 That s when the Sultan Shah-Zaman 
 Goes to the city Ispahan. 
 
 Now, when I see an extra light, 
 Flaming, flickering on the night 
 From my neighbor s casement opposite, 
 I know as well as I know to pray, 
 I know as well as a tongue can say, 
 That the innocent Sultan Shah-Zaman 
 Has gone to the city Ispahan. 
 
CLOTH OF GOLD 67 
 
 A PRELUDE 
 
 HASSAN BEN ABDUL at the Ivory Gate 
 
 Of Bagdad sat and chattered in the sun, 
 
 Like any magpie chattered to himself 
 
 And four lank, swarthy Arab boys that stopped 
 
 A gambling game with peach-pits, and drew near. 
 
 Then Iman Khan, the friend of thirsty souls, 
 
 The seller of pure water, ceased his cry, 
 
 And placed his water-skins against the gate 
 
 They looked so like him, with their sallow cheeks 
 
 Puffed out like Iman s. Then a eunuch came 
 
 And swung a pack of sweetmeats from his head, 
 
 And stood a hideous pagan cut in jet. 
 
 And then a Jew, whose sandal-straps were red 
 
 With desert-dust, limped, cringing, to the crowd : 
 
 He, too, would listen ; and close after him 
 
 A jeweller that glittered like his shop. 
 
 Then two blind mendicants, who wished to go 
 
 Six diverse ways at once, came stumbling by, 
 
 But hearing Hassan chatter, sat them down. 
 
 And if the Khalif had been riding near, 
 
 He would have paused to listen like the rest, 
 
 For Hassan s fame was ripe in all the East. 
 
 From white-walled Cairo to far Ispahan, 
 
 From Mecca to Damascus, he was known, 
 
 Hassan, the Arab with the Singing Heart. 
 
68 CLOTH OF GOLD 
 
 His songs were sung by boatmen on the Nile, 
 By Beddowee maidens, and in Tartar camps, 
 While all men loved him as they loved their eyes ; 
 And when he spake, the wisest, next to him, 
 Was he who listened. And thus Hassan sung. 
 And I, a stranger lingering in Bagdad, 
 Half English and half Arab, by my beard ! 
 Caught at the gilded epic as it grew, 
 And for my Christian brothers wrote it down. 
 
 TO HAFIZ 
 
 THOUGH gifts like thine the fates gave not to 
 
 me, 
 
 One thing, O Hafiz, we both hold in fee 
 Nay, it holds us ; for when the June wind blows 
 We both are slaves and lovers to the rose. 
 In vain the pale Circassian lily shows 
 Her face at her green lattice, and in vain 
 The violet beckons, with unveiled face 
 The bosom s white, the lip s light purple stain, 
 These touch our liking, yet no passion stir. 
 But when the rose comes, Hafiz in that place 
 Where she stands smiling, we kneel down to 
 
 her! 
 
CLOTH OF GOLD 69 
 
 AT NIJNII-NOVGOROD 
 
 " A CRAFTY Persian set this stone ; 
 
 A dusk Sultana wore it ; 
 And from her slender finger, sir, 
 A ruthless Arab tore it. 
 
 " A ruby, like a drop of blood 
 That deep-in tint that lingers 
 And seems to melt, perchance was caught 
 From those poor mangled ringers ! 
 
 " A spendthrift got it from the knave, 
 
 And tossed it, like a blossom, 
 That night into a dancing-girl s 
 Accurst and balmy bosom. 
 
 " And so it went. One day a Jew 
 
 At Cairo chanced to spy it 
 Amid a one-eyed peddler s pack, 
 And did not care to buy it 
 
 * Yet bought it all the same. You see, 
 
 The Jew he knew a jewel. 
 He bought it cheap to sell it dear : 
 The ways of trade are cruel. 
 
70 CLOTH OF GOLD 
 
 " But I be Allah s all the praise ! 
 
 Such avarice, I scoff it ! 
 If I buy cheap, why, I sell cheap, 
 Content with modest profit. 
 
 "This ring such chasing! look, milord, 
 
 What workmanship ! By Heaven, 
 The price I name you makes the thing 
 As if the thing were given ! 
 
 " A stone without a flaw ! A queen 
 
 Might not disdain to wear it. 
 Three hundred roubles buys the stone ; 
 No kopeck less, I swear it ! " 
 
 Thus Hassan, holding up the ring 
 
 To me, no eager buyer. 
 A hundred roubles was not much 
 
 To pay so sweet a liar ! 
 
 THE LAMENT OF EL MOULOK 
 
 WITHIN the sacred precincts of the mosque, 
 Even on the very steps of St. Sophia, 
 He lifted up his voice and spoke these words, 
 El Moulok, who sang naught but love-songs once, 
 And now was crazed because his son was dead : 
 
CLOTH OF GOLD 71 
 
 O ye who leave 
 
 Your slippers at the portal, as is meet, 
 
 Give heed an instant ere ye bow in prayer. 
 
 Ages ago, 
 
 Allah, grown weary of His myriad worlds, 
 
 Would one star more to hang against the blue. 
 
 Then of merfs bones, 
 
 Millions on millions, did He build the earth ; 
 
 Of women s tears, 
 
 Down falling through the night, He made the sea ; 
 
 Of sighs and sobs 
 
 He made the winds that surge about the globe. 
 
 Where er ye tread, 
 
 Ye tread on dust that once was living man. 
 
 The mist and rain 
 
 Are tears that first from human eyelids fell. 
 
 The unseen winds 
 
 Breathe endless lamentation for the dead. 
 
 Not so the ancient tablets told the tale, 
 Not so the Koran ! This was blasphemy, 
 
72 CLOTH OF GOLD 
 
 And they that heard El Moulok dragged him thence, 
 Even from the very steps of St. Sophia, 
 And loaded him with triple chains of steel, 
 And cast him in a dungeon. 
 
 None the less 
 
 Do women s tears fall ceaseless day and night, 
 And none the less do mortals faint and die 
 And turn to dust ; and every wind that blows 
 About the globe seems heavy with the grief 
 Of those who sorrow, or have sorrowed, here. 
 Yet none the less is Allah the Most High, 
 The Clement, the Compassionate. He sees 
 Where we are blind, and hallowed be His Name ! 
 
 NOURMADEE 
 
 THE POET MIRTZY MOHAMMED-ALI TO HIS FRIEND 
 ABOU-HASSEM IN ALGEZIRAS 
 
 O HASSEM, greeting ! Peace be thine ! 
 With thee and thine be all things well ! 
 Give refuge to these words of mine. 
 The strange mischance which late befell 
 Thy servant must have reached thine ear ; 
 Rumor has flung it far and wide, 
 With dark additions, as I hear. 
 
CLOTH OF GOLD 73 
 
 When They-Say speaks, what ills betide ! 
 So lend no credence, O my Friend, 
 To scandals, fattening as they fly. 
 Love signs and seals the roll I send : 
 Read thou the truth with lenient eye. 
 
 IN Yiissuf s garden at Tangier 
 This happened. In his cool kiosk 
 We sat partaking of his cheer 
 Thou know st that garden by the Mosque 
 Of Irma ; stately palms are there, 
 And silver fish in marble tanks, 
 And scents of jasmine in the air 
 We sat and feasted, with due thanks 
 To Allah, till the pipes were brought ; 
 And no one spoke, for Pleasure laid 
 Her finger on the lips of Thought. 
 Then, on a sudden, came a maid, 
 With tambourine, to dance for us 
 Allah iP Allah ! it was she, 
 The slave-girl from the Bosphorus 
 That Yiissuf purchased recently. 
 
 Long narrow eyes, as black as black ! 
 And melting, like the stars in June j 
 Tresses of night drawn smoothly back 
 From eyebrows like the crescent moon. 
 She paused an instant with bowed head, 
 
74 CLOTH OF GOLD 
 
 Then, at a motion of her wrist, 
 
 A veil of gossamer outspread 
 
 And wrapped her in a silver mist. 
 
 Her tunic was of Tiflis green 
 
 Shot through with many a starry speck ; 
 
 The zone that clasped it might have been 
 
 A collar for a cygnet s neck. 
 
 None of the thirty charms she lacked 
 
 Demanded for perfection s grace ; 
 
 Charm upon charm in her was packed 
 
 Like rose leaves in a costly vase. 
 
 Full in the lanterns colored light 
 
 She seemed a thing of Paradise. 
 
 I knew not if I saw aright, 
 
 Or if my vision told me lies. 
 
 Those lanterns spread a cheating glare ; 
 
 Such stains they threw from bough and vine 
 
 As if the slave-boys, here and there, 
 
 Had spilled a jar of brilliant wine. 
 
 And then the fountain s drowsy fall, 
 
 The burning aloes heavy scent, 
 
 The night, the place, the hour they all 
 
 Were full of subtle blandishment. 
 
 Much had I heard of Nourmadee 
 The name of this fair slenderness 
 Whom Yiissuf kept with lock and key 
 Because her beauty wrought distress 
 In all men s hearts that gazed on it ; 
 
CLOTH OF GOLD 75 
 
 And much I marvelled why, this night, 
 
 Yiissuf should have the little wit 
 
 To lift her veil for our delight. 
 
 For though the other guests were old 
 
 Grave, worthy merchants, three from Fez 
 
 (These mostly dealt in dyes and gold), 
 
 Cloth merchants two, from Mekinez 
 
 Though they were old and gray and dry, 
 
 Forgetful of their youth s desires, 
 
 My case was different, for I 
 
 Still knew the touch of springtime fires. 
 
 And straightway as I looked on her 
 
 I bit my lip, grew ill at ease, 
 
 And in my veins was that strange stir 
 
 Which clothes with bloom the almond-trees. 
 
 O Shape of blended fire and snow ! 
 Each clime to her some spell had lent 
 The North her cold, the South her glow, 
 Her languors all the Orient. 
 Her scarf was as the cloudy fleece 
 The moon draws round its loveliness, 
 That so its beauty may increase 
 The more in being seen the less. 
 And as she moved, and seemed to float 
 So floats a swan ! in sweet unrest, 
 A string of sequins at her throat 
 Went clink and clink against her breast. 
 And what did some birth-fairy do 
 
7 6 CLOTH OF GOLD 
 
 But set a mole, a golden dot, 
 
 Close to her lip to pierce men through ! 
 
 How could I look and love her not ? 
 
 Yet heavy was my heart as stone, 
 For well I knew that love was vain ; 
 To love the thing one may not own ! 
 I saw how all my peace was slain. 
 Coffers of ingots Yiissuf had, 
 Houses on land, and ships at sea, 
 And I alas ! was I gone mad, 
 To cast my eyes on Nourmadee ! 
 I strove to thrust her from my mind, 
 I bent my brows, and turned away, 
 And wished that Fate had struck me blind 
 Ere I had come to know that day. 
 I fixed my thoughts on this and that ; 
 Assessed the worth of Yiissuf s ring ; 
 Counted the colors in the mat 
 And then a bird began to sing, 
 A bulbul hidden in a bough. 
 From time to time it loosed a strain 
 Of moonlit magic that, somehow, 
 Brought solace to my troubled brain. 
 
 But when the girl once, creeping close, 
 Half stooped, and looked me in the face, 
 My reason fled, and I arose 
 And cried to Yiissuf, from my place : 
 
CLOTH OF GOLD 77 
 
 " O Yiissuf, give to me this girl ! 
 You are so rich and I so poor ! 
 You would not miss one little pearl 
 Like that from out your countless store ! " 
 
 " This girl ? What girl ? No girl is here ! " 
 Cried Yussuf with his eyes agleam ; 
 
 " Now, by the Prophet, it is clear 
 Our friend has had a pleasant dream ! " 
 (And then it seems that I awoke, 
 And stared around, no little dazed 
 At finding naught of what I spoke : 
 Each guest sat silent and amazed.) 
 
 Then Yussuf of all mortal men 
 This Yussuf has a mocking tongue ! 
 Stood at my side, and spoke again : 
 " O Mirtzy, I too once was young. 
 With mandolin or dulcimer 
 I Ve waited many a midnight through, 
 Content to catch one glimpse of Her, 
 And have my turban drenched with dew. 
 By Her I mean some slim Malay, 
 Some Andalusian with her fan 
 (For I have travelled in my day), 
 Or some swart beauty of Soudan. 
 No Barmecide was I to fare 
 On fancy s shadowy wine and meat ; 
 No phantom moulded out of air 
 Had spells to lure me to her feet. 
 
78 CLOTH OF GOLD 
 
 Mirtzy, be it understood 
 
 1 blame you not. Your sin is slight ! 
 You fled the world of flesh and blood, 
 And loved a vision of the night ! 
 Sweeter than musk such visions be 
 As come to poets when they sleep ! 
 You dreamed you saw fair Nourmadee ? 
 Go to ! it is a pearl I keep ! " 
 
 By Allah, but his touch was true ! 
 And I was humbled to the dust 
 That I in those grave merchants view 
 Should seem a thing no man might trust. 
 For he of creeping things is least 
 Who, while he breaks of friendship s bread p 
 Betrays the giver of the feast. 
 
 " Good friends, I m not that man ! " I said. 
 
 " O Yiissuf, shut not Pardon s gate ! 
 The words I spake I no wise meant. 
 Who holds the threads of Time and Fate 
 Sends dreams. I dreamt the dream he sent, 
 I am as one that from a trance 
 Awakes confused, and reasons ill ; 
 The world of men invites his glance, 
 The world of shadows claims him still. 
 I see those lights among the leaves, 
 Yourselves I see, sedate and wise, 
 And yet some finer sense perceives 
 A presence that eludes the eyes. 
 
CLOTH OF GOLD 79 
 
 Of what is gone there seems to stay 
 Some subtlety, to mock my pains : 
 So, when a rose is borne away, 
 The fragrance of the rose remains ! " 
 Then Yiissuf laughed, Abdallah leered, 
 And Melik coughed behind his hand, 
 And lean Ben-Auda stroked his beard 
 As who should say, " We understand ! " 
 And though the fault was none of mine, 
 As I explained and made appear, 
 Since then I ve not been asked to dine 
 In Yiissuf s garden at Tangier. 
 
 FAREWELL, O Hassem ! Peace be thine ! 
 With thee and thine be always Peace ! 
 To virtue let thy steps incline, 
 And may thy shadow not decrease ! 
 Get wealth wealth makes the dullard s jest 
 Seem witty where true wit falls flat ; 
 Do good, for goodness still is best 
 But then the Koran tells thee that. 
 Know Patience here, and later Bliss ; 
 Grow wise, trust woman, doubt not man ; 
 And when thou dinest out mark this 
 Beware of wines from Ispahan 1 
 
FRIAR JEROME S BEAUTIFUL 
 BOOK ETC. 
 
 FRIAR JEROME S BEAUTIFUL BOOK 
 
 A. D. I2OO 
 
 THE Friar Jerome, for some slight sin, 
 
 Done in his youth, was struck with woe. 
 " When I am dead," quoth Friar Jerome, 
 " Surely, I think my soul will go 
 
 Shuddering through the darkened spheres, 
 
 Down to eternal fires below ! 
 
 I shall not dare from that dread place 
 
 To lift mine eyes to Jesus face, 
 
 Nor Mary s, as she sits adored 
 
 At the feet of Christ the Lord. 
 
 Alas ! December s all too brief 
 
 For me to hope to wipe away 
 
 The memory of my sinful May ! " 
 
 And Friar Jerome was full of grief 
 
 That April evening, as he lay 
 
 On the straw pallet in his cell. 
 
 He scarcely heard the curfew-bell 
 81 
 
82 FRIAR JEROME S BEAUTIFUL BOOK 
 
 Calling the brotherhood to prayer ; 
 But he arose, for t was his care 
 Nightly to feed the hungry poor 
 That crowded to the Convent door. 
 
 His choicest duty it had been : 
 But this one night it weighed him down. 
 " What work for an immortal soul, 
 To feed and clothe some lazy clown ? 
 Is there no action worth my mood, 
 No deed of daring, high and pure, 
 That shall, when I am dead, endure, 
 A well-spring of perpetual good ? " 
 
 And straight he thought of those great tomes 
 With clamps of gold the Convent s boast 
 How they endured, while kings and realms 
 Passed into darkness and were lost ; 
 How they had stood from age to age, 
 Clad in their yellow vellum-mail, 
 Gainst which the Paynim s godless rage, 
 The Vandal s fire, could naught avail : 
 Though heathen sword-blows fell like hail, 
 Though cities ran with Christian blood, 
 Imperishable they had stood ! 
 They did not seem like books to him, 
 But Heroes, Martyrs, Saints themselves 
 The things they told of, not mere books 
 Ranged grimly on the oaken shelves. 
 
FRIAR JEROME S BEAUTIFUL BOOK 83 
 
 To those dim alcoves, far withdrawn, 
 He turned with measured steps and slow, 
 Trimming his lantern as he went ; 
 And there, among the shadows, bent 
 Above one ponderous folio, 
 With whose miraculous text were blent 
 Seraphic faces : Angels, crowned 
 With rings of melting amethyst ; 
 Mute, patient Martyrs, cruelly bound 
 To blazing fagots ; here and there, 
 Some bold, serene Evangelist, 
 Or Mary in her sunny hair ; 
 And here and there from out the words 
 A brilliant tropic bird took flight ; 
 And through the margins many a vine 
 Went wandering roses, red and white, 
 Tulip, wind-flower, and columbine 
 Blossomed. To his believing mind 
 These things were real, and the wind, 
 Blown through the mullioned window, took 
 Scent from the lilies in the book. 
 
 " Santa Maria ! " cried Friar Jerome, 
 "Whatever man illumined this, 
 Though he were steeped heart-deep in sin, 
 Was worthy of unending bliss, 
 And no doubt hath it ! Ah ! dear Lord, 
 Might I so beautify Thy Word ! 
 What sacristan, the convents through, 
 
84 FRIAR JEROME S BEAUTIFUL BOOK 
 
 Transcribes with such precision ? who 
 Does such initials as I do ? 
 Lo ! I will gird me to this work, 
 And save me, ere the one chance slips. 
 On smooth, clean parchment I 11 engross 
 The Prophet s fell Apocalypse ; 
 And as I write from day to day, 
 Perchance my sins will pass away." 
 
 So Friar Jerome began his Book. 
 From break of dawn till curfew-chime 
 He bent above the lengthening page, 
 Like some rapt poet o er his rhyme. 
 He scarcely paused to tell his beads, 
 Except at night ; and then he lay 
 And tossed, unrestful, on the straw, 
 Impatient for the coming day 
 Working like one who feels, perchance, 
 That, ere the longed-for goal be won, 
 Ere Beauty bare her perfect breast, 
 Black Death may pluck him from the sun. 
 At intervals the busy brook, 
 Turning the mill-wheel, caught his ear ; 
 And through the grating of the cell 
 He saw the honeysuckles peer, 
 And knew t was summer, that the sheep 
 In fragrant pastures lay asleep, 
 And felt, that, somehow, God was near. 
 In his green pulpit on the elm, 
 
FRIAR JEROME S BEAUTIFUL BOOK 85 
 
 The robin, abbot of that wood, 
 
 Held forth by times ; and Friar Jerome 
 
 Listened, and smiled, and understood. 
 
 While summer wrapped the blissful land 
 What joy it was to labor so, 
 To see the long-tressed Angels grow 
 Beneath the cunning of his hand, 
 Vignette and tail-piece subtly wrought ! 
 And little recked he of the poor 
 That missed him at the Convent door ; 
 Or, thinking of them, put the thought 
 Aside. " I feed the souls of men 
 Henceforth, and not their bodies ! " yet 
 Their sharp, pinched features, now and then, 
 Stole in between him and his Book, 
 And filled him with a vague regret. 
 
 Now on that region fell a blight : 
 The grain grew cankered in its sheath ; 
 And from the verdurous uplands rolled 
 A sultry vapor fraught with death 
 A poisonous mist, that, like a pall, 
 Hung black and stagnant over all. 
 Then came the sickness the malign, 
 Green-spotted terror called the Pest, 
 That took the light from loving eyes, 
 And made the young bride s gentle breast 
 A fatal pillow. Ah ! the woe, 
 
 OF" THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
86 FRIAR JEROME S BEAUTIFUL BOOK 
 
 The crime, the madness that befell ! 
 In one short night that vale became 
 More foul than Dante s inmost hell. 
 Men cursed their wives ; and mothers left 
 Their nursing babes alone to die, 
 And wantoned, singing, through the streets, 
 With shameless brow and frenzied eye ; 
 And senseless clowns, not fearing God 
 Such power the spotted fever had 
 Razed Cragwood Castle on the hill, 
 Pillaged the wine-bins, and went mad. 
 And evermore that dreadful pall 
 Of mist hung stagnant over all : 
 By day, a sickly light broke through 
 The heated fog, on town and field ; 
 By night, the moon, in anger, turned 
 Against the earth its mottled shield. 
 
 Then from the Convent, two and two, 
 The Prior chanting at their head, 
 The monks went forth to shrive the sick, 
 And give the hungry grave its dead 
 Only Jerome, he went not forth, 
 But muttered in his dusty nook, 
 " Let come what will, I must illume 
 The last ten pages of my Book ! " 
 He drew his stool before the desk, 
 And sat him down, distraught and wan, 
 To paint his daring masterpiece, 
 The stately figure of Saint John. 
 
FRIAR JEROME S BEAUTIFUL BOOK 87 
 
 He sketched the head with pious care, 
 Laid in the tint, when, powers of Grace ! 
 He found a grinning Death s-head there, 
 And not the grand Apostle s face ! 
 
 Then up he rose with one long cry : 
 " T is Satan s self does this," cried he, 
 " Because I shut and barred my heart 
 When Thou didst loudest call to me ! 
 
 Lord, Thou know st the thoughts of men, 
 Thou know st that I did yearn to make 
 Thy Word more lovely to the eyes 
 
 Of sinful souls, for Christ his sake ! 
 Nathless, I leave the task undone : 
 
 1 give up all to follow Thee 
 Even like him who gave his nets 
 To winds and waves by Galilee ! " 
 
 Which said, he closed the precious Book 
 In silence, with a reverent hand ; 
 And drawing his cowl about his face 
 Went forth into the stricken land. 
 And there was joy in Heaven that day 
 More joy o er this forlorn old friar 
 Than over fifty sinless men 
 Who never struggled with desire ! 
 
 What deeds he did in that dark town, 
 What hearts he soothed with anguish torn, 
 
88 FRIAR JEROME S BEAUTIFUL BOOK 
 
 What weary ways of woe he trod, 
 Are written in the Book of God, 
 And shall be read at Judgment Morn. 
 The weeks crept on, when, one still day. 
 God s awful presence rilled the sky, 
 And that black vapor floated by, 
 And lo ! the sickness passed away. 
 With silvery clang, by thorp and town, 
 The bells made merry in their spires : 
 O God ! to think the Pest is flown ! 
 Men kissed each other on the street, 
 And music piped to dancing feet 
 The livelong night, by roaring fires ! 
 
 Then Friar Jerome, a wasted shape 
 For he had taken the Plague at last 
 Rose up, and through the happy town, 
 And through the wintry woodlands, passed 
 Into the Convent. What a gloom 
 Sat brooding in each desolate room ! 
 What silence in the corridor ! 
 For of that long, in numerous train 
 Which issued forth a month before 
 Scarce twenty had come back again ! 
 
 Counting his rosary step by step, 
 With a forlorn and vacant air, 
 Like some unshriven churchyard thing, 
 The Friar crawled up the mouldy stair 
 
FRIAR JEROME S BEAUTIFUL BOOK 89 
 
 To his damp cell, that he might look 
 Once more on his beloved Book. 
 
 And there it lay upon the stand, 
 Open ! he had not left it so. 
 He grasped it, with a cry ; for, lo ! 
 He saw that some angelic hand, 
 While he was gone, had finished it ! 
 There t was complete, as he had planned ; 
 There, at the end, stood jFintfi, writ 
 And gilded as no man could do 
 Not even that pious anchoret, 
 Bilfrid, the wonderful, nor yet 
 The miniatore Ethelwold, 
 Nor Durham s Bishop, who of old 
 (England still hoards the priceless leaves) 
 Did the Four Gospels all in gold. 
 And Friar Jerome nor spoke nor stirred, 
 But, with his eyes fixed on that word, 
 He passed from sin and want and scorn ; 
 And suddenly the chapel-bells 
 Rang in the holy Christmas-Morn. 
 
 In those wild wars which racked the land 
 Since then, and kingdoms rent in twain, 
 The Friar s Beautiful Book was lost 
 That miracle of hand and brain : 
 Yet, though its leaves were torn and tossed, 
 The volume was not writ in vain ! 
 
MIANTOWONA 
 MIANTOWONA 
 
 LONG ere the Pale Face 
 
 Crossed the Great Water, 
 
 Miantowona 
 
 Passed, with her beauty, 
 
 Into a legend 
 
 Pure as a wild-flower 
 
 Found in a broken 
 
 Ledge by the seaside. 
 
 Let us revere them 
 These wildwood legends, 
 Born of the camp-fire. 
 Let them be handed 
 Down to our children 
 Richest of heirlooms. 
 No land may claim them : 
 They are ours only, 
 Like our grand rivers, 
 Like our vast prairies, 
 Like our dead heroes. 
 
 ii 
 
 In the pine-forest, 
 Guarded by shadows, 
 
MIANTOWONA 91 
 
 Lieth the haunted 
 Pond of the Red Men. 
 Ringed by the emerald 
 Mountains, it lies there 
 Like an untarnished 
 Buckler of silver, 
 Dropped in that valley 
 By the Great Spirit ! 
 Weird are the figures 
 Traced on its margins 
 Vine-work and leaf-work, 
 Down-drooping fuchsias, 
 Knots of sword-grasses, 
 Moonlight and starlight, 
 Clouds scudding northward. 
 Sometimes an eagle 
 Flutters across it ; 
 Sometimes a single 
 Star on its bosom 
 Nestles till morning. 
 
 Far in the ages, 
 
 Miantowona, 
 
 Rose of the Hurons, 
 
 Came to these waters. 
 
 Where the dank greensward 
 
 Slopes to the pebbles, 
 
 Miantowona 
 
 Sat in her anguish. 
 
92 MIANTOWONA 
 
 Ice to her maidens, 
 Ice to the chieftains, 
 Fire to her lover ! 
 Here he had won her, 
 Here they had parted, 
 Here could her tears flow. 
 With unwet eyelash, 
 Miantowona 
 Nursed her old father, 
 Gray-eyed Tawanda, 
 Oldest of Hurons, 
 Soothed his complainings, 
 Smiled when he chid her 
 Vaguely for nothing 
 He was so weak now, 
 Like a shrunk cedar 
 White with the hoar-frost. 
 Sometimes she gently 
 Linked arms with maidens, 
 Joined in their dances : 
 Not with her people, 
 Not in the wigwam, 
 Wept for her lover. 
 
 Ah ! who was like him ? 
 Fleet as an arrow, 
 Strong as a bison, 
 Lithe as a panther, 
 Soft as the south-wind, 
 
MIANTOWONA 93 
 
 Who was like Wawah? 
 There is one other 
 Stronger and fleeter, 
 Bearing no wampum, 
 Wearing no war-paint, 
 Ruler of councils, 
 Chief of the war-path 
 Who can gainsay him, 
 Who can defy him ? 
 His is the lightning, 
 His is the whirlwind, 
 Let us be humble, 
 We are but ashes 
 T is the Great Spirit ! 
 
 Ever at nightfall 
 Miantowona 
 Strayed from the lodges, 
 Passed through the shadows 
 Into the forest : 
 There by the pond-side 
 Spread her black tresses 
 Over her forehead. 
 Sad is the loon s cry 
 Heard in the twilight j 
 Sad is the night-wind, 
 Moaning and moaning; 
 Sadder the stifled 
 Sob of a widow. 
 
94 MIANTOWONA 
 
 Low on the pebbles 
 Murmured the water : 
 Often she fancied 
 It was young Wawah 
 Playing the reed-flute. 
 Sometimes a dry branch 
 Snapped in the forest : 
 Then she rose, startled, 
 Ruddy as sunrise, 
 Warm for his coming ! 
 But when he came not, 
 Back through the darkness, 
 Half broken-hearted, 
 Miantowona 
 Went to her people. 
 
 When an old oak dies, 
 First t is the tree-tops, 
 Then the low branches, 
 Then the gaunt stem goes : 
 So fell Tawanda, 
 Oldest of Hurons, 
 Chief of the chieftains. 
 
 Miantowona 
 Wept not, but softly 
 Closed the sad eyelids ; 
 With her own fingers 
 
MIANTOWONA 95 
 
 Fastened the deer-skin 
 Over his shoulders ; 
 Then laid beside him 
 Ash-bow and arrows, 
 Pipe-bowl and wampum, 
 Dried corn and bear-meat 
 All that was needful 
 On the long journey. 
 Thus old Tawanda 
 Went to the hunting 
 Grounds of the Red Man. 
 Then, as the dirges 
 Rose from the village, 
 Miantowona 
 
 Stole from the mourners, 
 Stole through the cornfields, 
 Passed like a phantom 
 Into the shadows 
 Through the pine forest. 
 
 One who had watched her 
 It was Nahoho, 
 Loving her vainly 
 Saw, as she passed him, 
 That in her features 
 Made his stout heart quail. 
 He could but follow. 
 Quick were her footsteps, 
 
96 MIANTOWONA 
 
 Light as a snowflake, 
 Leaving no traces 
 On the white clover. 
 
 Like a trained runner, 
 Winner of prizes, 
 Into the woodlands 
 Plunged the young chieftain. 
 Once he abruptly 
 Halted, and listened ; 
 Then he sped forward 
 Faster and faster 
 Toward the bright water. 
 Breathless he reached it. 
 Why did he crouch then, 
 Stark as a statue ? 
 What did he see there 
 Could so appall him ? 
 Only a circle 
 Swiftly expanding, 
 Fading before him ; 
 But, as he watched it, 
 Up from the centre, 
 Slowly, superbly, 
 Rose a Pond-Lily. 
 
 One cry of wonder, 
 Shrill as the loon s call, 
 Rang through the forest, 
 
MIANTOWONA 97 
 
 Startling the silence, 
 Startling the mourners 
 Chanting the death-song. 
 Forth from the village, 
 Flocking together 
 Came all the Hurons 
 Striplings and warriors, 
 Maidens and old men, 
 Squaws with pappooses. 
 No word was spoken : 
 There stood the Hurons 
 On the dank greensward, 
 With their swart faces 
 Bowed in the twilight. 
 What did they see there ? 
 Only a Lily 
 Rocked on the azure 
 Breast of the water. 
 
 Then they turned sadly 
 
 One to another, 
 
 Tenderly murmuring, 
 " Miantowona ! " 
 
 Soft as the dew falls 
 
 Down through the midnight, 
 
 Cleaving the starlight, 
 
 Echo repeated, 
 " Miantowona ! " 
 
98 THE GUERDON 
 
 THE GUERDON 
 
 Vedder, this legend, if it had its due, 
 Would not be sung by me, but told by you 
 In colors such as Tintoretto knew. 
 
 SOOTHED by the fountain s drowsy murmuring 
 Or was it by the west-wind s indolent wing ? 
 The grim court-poet fell asleep one day 
 In the lords chamber, when chance brought that 
 
 way 
 
 The Princess Margaret with a merry train 
 Of damozels and ladies flippant, vain 
 Court-butterflies midst whom fair Margaret 
 Swayed like a rathe and slender lily set 
 In rustling leaves, for all her drapery 
 Was green and gold, and lovely as could be. 
 
 Midway in hall the fountain rose and fell, 
 Filling a listless Naiad s outstretched shell 
 And weaving rainbows in the shifting light. 
 Upon the carven friezes, left and right, 
 Was pictured Pan asleep beside his reed. 
 In this place all things seemed asleep, indeed 
 The hook-billed parrot on his pendent ring, 
 Sitting high-shouldered, half forgot to swing; 
 The wind scarce stirred the hangings at the door, 
 And from the silken arras evermore 
 Yawned drowsy dwarfs with satyr s face and hoof. 
 
THE GUERDON 99 
 
 A forest of gold pillars propped the roof, 
 And like one slim gold pillar overthrown, 
 The sunlight through a great stained window shone 
 And lay across the body of Alain. 
 You would have thought, perchance, the man was 
 
 slain : 
 
 As if the checkered column in its fall 
 Had caught and crushed him, he lay dead to all. 
 The parrot s gray bead eye as good as said, 
 Unclosing viciously, "The clown is dead." 
 A dragon-fly in narrowing circles neared, 
 And lit, secure, upon the dead man s beard, 
 Then spread its iris vans in quick dismay, 
 And into the blue summer sped away ! 
 
 Little was his of outward grace to win 
 The eyes of maids, but white the soul within. 
 Misshaped, and hideous to look upon 
 Was this man, dreaming in the noontide sun, 
 With sunken eyes and winter-whitened hair 
 And sallow cheeks deep seamed with thought and 
 
 care. 
 
 And so the laughing ladies of the court, 
 Coming upon him suddenly, stopped short, 
 And shrunk together with a nameless dread : 
 Some, but fear held them, would have turned and 
 
 fled, 
 
 Seeing the uncouth figure lying there. 
 But Princess Margaret, with her heavy hair 
 
loo THE GUERDON 
 
 From out its diamond fillet rippling down, 
 Slipped from the group, and plucking back hei 
 
 gown 
 
 With white left hand, stole softly to his side 
 The fair court gossips staring, curious-eyed, 
 Half mockingly. A little while she stood, 
 Finger on lip ; then, with the agile blood 
 Climbing her cheek, and silken lashes wet 
 She scarce knew what vague pity or regret 
 Wet them she stooped, and for a moment s space 
 Her golden tresses touched the sleeper s face. 
 Then she stood straight, as lily on its stem, 
 But hearing her ladies titter, turned on them 
 Her great queen s eyes, grown black with scornful 
 
 frown 
 
 Great eyes that looked the shallow women down. 
 " Nay, not for love " one rosy palm she laid 
 Softly against her bosom " as I m a maid ! 
 Full well I know what cruel things you say 
 Of this and that, but hold your peace to-day. 
 I pray you think no evil thing of this. 
 Nay, not for love s sake did I give the kiss, 
 Not for his beauty who s nor fair nor young, 
 But for the songs which those mute lips have 
 
 sung." 
 
 That was a right brave princess, one, I hold, 
 Worthy to wear a crown of beaten gold. 
 
TITA S TEARS 101 
 
 TITA S TEARS 
 
 A FANTASY 
 
 A CERTAIN man of Ischia it is thus 
 The story runs one Lydus Claudius, 
 After a life of threescore years and ten, 
 Passed suddenly from out the sphere of men 
 Into the sphere of phantoms. 
 
 In a vale 
 
 Where shoals of spirits against the moonlight pale 
 Surged ever upward, in a wan-lit place 
 Near heaven, he met a Presence face to face 
 A figure like a carving on a spire, 
 Shrouded in wings and with a fillet of fire 
 About the brows who stayed him there, and said : 
 " This the gods grant to thee, O newly dead ! 
 Whatever thing on earth thou holdest dear 
 Shall, at thy bidding, be transported here, 
 Save wife or child, or any living thing." 
 Then straightway Claudius fell to wondering 
 What he should wish for. Having heaven at hand, 
 His wants were few, as you can understand ; 
 Riches and titles, matters dear to us, 
 To him, of course, were now superfluous. 
 But Tita, small brown Tita, his young wife, 
 A two weeks bride when he took leave of life, 
 What would become of her without his care ? 
 
102 TITA S TEARS 
 
 Tita, so rich, so thoughtless, and so fair ! 
 
 At present crushed with sorrow, to be sure 
 
 But by and by ? What earthly griefs endure ? 
 
 They pass like joys. A year, three years at most, 
 
 And would she mourn her lord, so quickly lost ? 
 
 With fine, prophetic ear, he heard afar 
 
 The tinkling of some horrible guitar 
 
 Under her balcony. " Such thing could be," 
 
 Sighed Claudius ; " I would she were with me, 
 
 Safe from all harm." But as that wish was vain, 
 
 He let it drift from out his troubled brain 
 
 (His highly trained austerity was such 
 
 That self-denial never cost him much), 
 
 And strove to think what object he might name 
 
 Most closely linked with the bereaved dame. 
 
 Her wedding ring ? t would be too small to 
 
 wear; 
 
 Perhaps a ringlet of her raven hair ? 
 If not, her portrait, done in cameo, 
 Or on a background of pale gold ? But no, 
 Such trifles jarred with his severity. 
 At last he thought : " The thing most meet for me 
 Would be that antique flask wherein my bride 
 Let fall her heavy tears the night I died." 
 (It was a custom of that simple day 
 To have one s tears sealed up and laid away, 
 As everlasting tokens of regret 
 They find the bottles in Greek ruins yet.) 
 For this he wished, then. 
 
A BALLAD 103 
 
 Swifter than a thought 
 
 The Presence vanished, and the flask was brought 
 Slender, bell-mouthed, and painted all around 
 With jet-black tulips on a saffron ground ; 
 A tiny jar, of porcelain if you will, 
 Which twenty tears would rather more than fill. 
 With careful fingers Claudius broke the seal 
 When, suddenly, a well-known merry peal 
 Of laughter leapt from out the vial s throat, 
 And died, as dies the wood-bird s distant note. 
 Claudius stared ; then, struck with strangest fears, 
 Reversed the flask 
 
 Alas, for Tita s tears ! 
 
 A BALLAD 
 
 A. D. 1700 
 
 BRETAGNE had not her peer. In the Province far 
 or near 
 
 There were never such brown tresses, such a fault 
 less hand ; 
 
 She had youth, and she had gold, she had jewels 
 all untold, 
 
 And many a lover bold wooed the Lady of the 
 Land. 
 
104 A BALLAD 
 
 But she, with queenliest grace, bent low her pallid 
 
 face, 
 And " Woo me not, for Jesus sake, fair gentlemen," 
 
 she said. 
 If they wooed, then with a frown she would strike 
 
 their passion down : 
 She might have wed a crown to the ringlets on her 
 
 head. 
 
 From the dizzy castle-tips, hour by hour she watched 
 the ships, 
 
 Like sheeted phantoms coming and going ever 
 more, 
 
 While the twilight settled down on the sleepy sea 
 port town, 
 
 On the gables peaked and brown, that had sheltered 
 kings of yore. 
 
 Dusky belts of cedar-wood partly clasped the widen 
 ing flood ; 
 
 Like a knot of daisies lay the hamlets on the hill ; 
 
 In the hostelry below sparks of light would come 
 and go, 
 
 And faint voices, strangely low, from the garrulous 
 old mill. 
 
 Here the land in grassy swells gently broke ; there 
 
 sunk in dells 
 With mosses green and purple, and prongs of rock 
 
 and peat ; 
 
A BALLAD 105 
 
 Here, in statue-like repose, an old wrinkled moun 
 tain rose, 
 
 With its hoary head in snows, and wild roses at its 
 feet. 
 
 And so oft she sat alone in the turret of gray stone, 
 And looked across the moorland, so woful, to the 
 
 sea, 
 That there grew a village-cry, how her cheek did 
 
 lose its dye, 
 As a ship, once, sailing by, faded on the sapphire 
 
 lea. 
 
 Her few walks led all one way, and all ended at 
 
 the gray 
 And ragged, jagged rocks that fringe the lonely 
 
 beach ; 
 There she would stand, the Sweet ! with the white 
 
 surf at her feet, 
 While above her wheeled the fleet sparrow-hawk 
 
 with startling screech. 
 
 And she ever loved the sea, with its haunting mys 
 tery, 
 
 Its whispering weird voices, its never-ceasing roar : 
 
 And t was well that, when she died, they made her 
 a grave beside 
 
 The blue pulses of the tide, by the towers of Cas- 
 telnore. 
 
106 A BALLAD 
 
 Now, one chill November dawn, many russet au 
 tumns gone, 
 
 A strange ship with folded wings lay idly off the 
 lea; 
 
 It had lain throughout the night with its wings of 
 murky white 
 
 Folded, after weary flight the worn nursling of 
 the sea. 
 
 Crowds of peasants flocked the sands ; there were 
 
 tears and clasping hands ; 
 And a sailor from the ship stalked through the 
 
 church-yard gate. 
 Then amid the grass that crept, fading, over her 
 
 who slept, 
 How he hid his face and wept, crying, Late, too 
 
 late! too late! 
 
 And they called her cold. God knows. . . . Under 
 neath the winter snows 
 
 The invisible hearts of flowers grow ripe for blos 
 soming ! 
 
 And the lives that look so cold, if their stories 
 could be told, 
 
 Would seem cast in gentler mould, would seem full 
 of love and spring. 
 
THE LEGEND OF ARA-CCELI 107 
 
 THE LEGEND OF ARA-CCELI 
 
 LOOKING at Fra Gervasio, 
 Wrinkled and withered and old and gray, 
 A dry Franciscan from crown to toe, 
 You would never imagine, by any chance, 
 That, in the convent garden one day, 
 He spun this thread of golden romance. 
 
 Romance to me, but to him, indeed, 
 T was a matter that did not hold a doubt ; 
 A miracle, nothing more nor less. 
 Did I think it strange that, in our need, 
 Leaning from Heaven to our distress, 
 The Virgin brought such things about 
 Gave mute things speech, made dead things 
 
 move ? 
 
 Mother of Mercy, Lady of Love ! 
 Besides, I might, if I wished, behold 
 The Bambino s self in his cloth of gold 
 And silver tissue, lying in state 
 In the Sacristy. Would the signor wait ? 
 
 Whoever will go to Rome may see, 
 In the chapel of the Sacristy 
 Of Ara-Cceli, the Sainted Child 
 
io8 THE LEGEND OF ARA-CCELI 
 
 Garnished from throat to foot with rings 
 
 And brooches and precious offerings, 
 
 And its little nose kissed quite away 
 
 By dying lips. At Epiphany, 
 
 If the holy winter day prove mild, 
 
 It is shown to the wondering, gaping crowd 
 
 On the church s steps held high aloft 
 
 While every sinful head is bowed, 
 
 And the music plays, and the censers soft 
 
 White breath ascends like silent prayer. 
 
 Many a beggar kneeling there, 
 Tattered and hungry, without a home, 
 Would not envy the Pope of Rome, 
 If he, the beggar, had half the care 
 Bestowed on him that falls to the share 
 Of yonder Image for you must know 
 It has its minions to come and go, 
 Its perfumed chamber, remote and still, 
 Its silken couch, and its jewelled throne, 
 And a special carriage of its own 
 To take the air in, when it will ; 
 And though it may neither drink nor eat, 
 By a nod to its ghostly seneschal 
 It could have of the choicest wine and meat. 
 Often some princess, brown and tall, 
 Comes, and unclasping from her arm 
 The glittering bracelet, leaves it, warm 
 With her throbbing pulse, at the Baby s feet. 
 
THE LEGEND OF ARA-OELI 109 
 
 Ah, he is loved by high and low, 
 
 Adored alike by simple and wise. 
 
 The people kneel to him in the street. 
 
 What a felicitous lot is his 
 
 To lie in the light of ladies eyes, 
 
 Petted and pampered, and never to know 
 
 The want of a dozen soldi or so ! 
 
 And what does he do for all of this ? 
 
 What does the little Bambino do ? 
 
 It cures the sick, and, in fact, t is said 
 
 Can almost bring life back to the dead. 
 
 Who doubts it ? Not Fra Gervasio. 
 
 When one falls ill, it is left alone 
 
 For a while with one and the fever s gone ! 
 
 At least, t was once so ; but to-day 
 It is never permitted, unattended 
 By monk or priest, to work its lure 
 At sick folks beds all that was ended 
 By one poor soul whose feeble clay 
 Satan tempted and made secure. 
 
 It was touching this very point the friar 
 Told me the legend, that afternoon, 
 In the cloisteral garden all on fire 
 With scarlet poppies and golden stalks. 
 Here and there on the sunny walks, 
 Startled by some slight sound we made, 
 A lizard, awaking from its swoon, 
 
iro THE LEGEND OF ARA-CCELI 
 
 Shot like an arrow into the shade. 
 
 I can hear the fountain s languorous tune, 
 
 (How it comes back, that hour in June 
 
 When just to exist was joy enough !) 
 
 I can see the olives, silvery-gray, 
 
 The carven masonry rich with stains, 
 
 The gothic windows with lead-set panes, 
 
 The flag-paved cortile, the convent grates, 
 
 And Fra Gervasio holding his snuff 
 
 In a squirrel-like meditative way 
 
 Twixt finger and thumb. But the Legend waits. 
 
 ii 
 
 It was long ago (so long ago 
 
 That Fra Gervasio did not know 
 
 What year of our Lord), there came to Rome 
 
 Across the Campagna s flaming red, 
 
 A certain Filippo and his wife 
 
 Peasants, and very newly wed. 
 
 In the happy spring and blossom of life, 
 
 When the light heart chirrups to lovers calls, 
 
 These two, like a pair of birds, had come 
 
 And built their nest gainst the city s walls. 
 
 He, with his scanty garden-plots, 
 Raised flowers and fruit for the market-place, 
 Where she, with her pensile, flower-like face 
 Own sister to her forget-me-nots 
 
THE LEGEND OF ARA-OELI in 
 
 Played merchant : and so they thrived apace, 
 In humble content, with humble cares, 
 And modest longings, till, unawares, 
 Sorrow crept on them ; for to their nest 
 Had come no little ones, and at last 
 When six or seven summers had passed, 
 Seeing no baby at her breast, 
 The husband brooded, and then grew cold; 
 Scolded and fretted over this 
 Who would tend them when they were old, 
 And palsied, may be, sitting alone, 
 Hungry, beside the cold hearth-stone ? 
 Not to have children, like the rest ! 
 It cankered the very heart of bliss. 
 
 Then he fell into indolent ways, 
 Neglecting the garden for days and days, 
 Playing at mora, drinking wine, 
 With this and that one letting the vine 
 Run riot and die for want of care, 
 And the choke-weeds gather ; for it was spring, 
 When everything needed nurturing. 
 But he would drowse for hours in the sun, 
 Or sit on the broken step by the shed, 
 Like a man whose honest toil is done, 
 Sullen, with never a word to spare, 
 Or a word that were better all unsaid. 
 And Nina, so light of thought before, 
 Singing about the cottage door 
 
ii2 THE LEGEND OF ARA-CCELI 
 
 In her mountain dialect sang no more ; 
 
 But came and went, sad-faced and shy, 
 
 Wishing, at times, that she might die, 
 
 Brooding and fretting in her turn. 
 
 Often, in passing along the street, 
 
 Her basket of flowers poised, peasant-wise, 
 
 On a lustrous braided coil of her hair, 
 
 She would halt, and her dusky cheek would burn 
 
 Like a poppy, beholding at her feet 
 
 Some stray little urchin, dirty and bare. 
 
 And sudden tears would spring to her eyes 
 
 That the tiny waif was not her own, 
 
 To fondle, and kiss, and teach to pray. 
 
 Then she passed onward, making moan. 
 
 Sometimes she would stand in the sunny square, 
 
 Like a slim bronze statue of Despair, 
 
 Watching the children at their play. 
 
 In the broad piazza was a shrine, 
 With Our Lady holding on her knee 
 A small nude waxen effigy. 
 Nina passed by it every day, 
 And morn and even, in rain or shine, 
 Repeated an ave there. " Divine 
 Mother," she d cry, as she turned away, 
 " Sitting in paradise, undefined, 
 Oh, have pity on my distress ! " 
 Then glancing back at the rosy Child, 
 
THE LEGEND OF ARA-CCELI 113 
 
 She would cry to it, in her helplessness, 
 " Pray her to send the like to me ! " 
 
 Now once as she knelt before the saint, 
 Lifting her hands in silent pain, 
 She paled, and her heavy heart grew faint 
 At a thought which flashed across her brain 
 The blinding thought that, perhaps if she 
 Had lived in the world s miraculous morn 
 God might have chosen her to be 
 The mother Oh, heavenly ecstasy ! 
 Of the little babe in the manger born ! 
 She, too, was a peasant girl, like her, 
 The wife of the lowly carpenter ! 
 Like Joseph s wife, a peasant girl ! 
 
 Her strange little head was in a whirl 
 As she rose from her knees to wander home, 
 Leaving her basket at the shrine ; 
 So dazed was she, she scarcely knew 
 The old familiar streets of Rome, 
 Nor whither she wished to go, in fine ; 
 But wandered on, now crept, now flew, 
 In the gathering twilight, till she came 
 Breathless, bereft of sense and sight, 
 To the gloomy Arch of Constantine, 
 And there they found her, late that night, 
 With her cheeks like snow and her lips like flame ! 
 
ii4 THE LEGEND OF ARA-CCELI 
 
 Many a time from day to day, 
 She heard, as if in a troubled dream, 
 Footsteps around her, and some one saying - 
 Was it Filippo ? " Is she dead ? " 
 Then it was some one near her praying, 
 And she was drifting drifting away 
 From saints and martyrs in endless glory ! 
 She seemed to be floating down a stream, 
 Yet knew she was lying in her bed. 
 The fancy held her that she had died, 
 And this was her soul in purgatory, 
 Until, one morning, two holy men 
 From the convent came, and laid at her side 
 The Bambino. Blessed Virgin ! then 
 Nina looked up, and laughed, and wept, 
 And folded it close to her heart, and slept. 
 
 Slept such a soft, refreshing sleep, 
 That when she awoke her eyes had taken 
 The hyaline lustre, dewy, deep, 
 Of violets when they first awaken ; 
 And the half-unravelled, fragile thread 
 Of life was knitted together again. 
 But she shrunk with sudden, speechless pain, 
 And seemed to droop like a flower, the day 
 The Capuchins came, with solemn tread, 
 To carry the Miracle Child away 1 
 
THE LEGEND OF ARA-CCELI 115 
 
 III 
 
 Ere spring in the heart of pansies burned, 
 
 Or the buttercup had loosed its gold, 
 
 Nina was busy as ever of old 
 
 With fireside cares ; but was not the same, 
 
 For from the hour when she had turned 
 
 To clasp the Image the fathers brought 
 
 To her dying-bed, a single thought 
 
 Had taken possession of her brain : 
 
 A purpose, as steady as the flame 
 
 Of a lamp in some cathedral crypt, 
 
 Had lighted her on her bed of pain ; 
 
 The thirst and the fever, they had slipped 
 
 Away like visions, but this had stayed 
 
 To have the Bambino brought again, 
 
 To have it, and keep it for her own ! 
 
 That was the secret dream which made 
 
 Life for her now in the streets, alone, 
 
 At night, and morning, and when she prayed. 
 
 How should she wrest it from the hand 
 Of the jealous Church ? How keep the Child ? 
 Flee with it into some distant land 
 Like mother Mary from Herod s ire ? 
 Ah, well, she knew not ; she only knew 
 It was written down in the Book of Fate 
 
Ii6 THE LEGEND OF ARA-CCELI 
 
 That she should have her heart s desire, 
 And very soon now, for of late, 
 In a dream, the little thing had smiled 
 Up in her face, with one eye s blue 
 Peering from underneath her breast, 
 Which the baby ringers had softly pressed 
 Aside, to look at her ! Holy one ! 
 But that should happen ere all was done. 
 
 Lying dark in the woman s mind 
 Unknown, like a seed in fallow ground 
 Was the germ of a plan, confused and blind 
 At first, but which, as the weeks rolled round, 
 Reached light, and flowered a subtile flower, 
 Deadly as nightshade. In that same hour 
 She sought the husband and said to him, 
 With crafty tenderness in her eyes 
 And treacherous archings of her brows, 
 " Filippo mio, thou lov st me well ? 
 Truly ? Then get thee to the house 
 Of the long-haired Jew Ben Raphaim 
 Seller of curious tapestries, 
 (Ah, he hath everything to sell !) 
 The cunning carver of images 
 And bid him to carve thee to the life 
 A bambinetto like that they gave 
 In my arms, to hold me from the grave 
 When the fever pierced me like a knife. 
 Perhaps, if we set the image there 
 
THE LEGEND OF ARA-CCELI 117 
 
 By the Cross, the saints would hear the prayer 
 Which in all these years they have not heard." 
 
 Then the husband went, without a word, 
 To the crowded Ghetto ; for since the days 
 Of Nina s illness the man had been 
 A tender husband with lover s ways 
 Striving, as best he might, to wean 
 The wife from her sadness, and to bring 
 Back to the home whence it had fled 
 The happiness of that laughing spring 
 When they, like a pair of birds, had wed. 
 
 The image ! It was a woman s whim 
 They were full of whims. But what to him 
 Were a dozen pieces of silver spent, 
 If it made her happy? And so he went 
 To the house of the Jew Ben Raphaim. 
 And the carver heard, and bowed, and smiled, 
 And fell to work as if he had known 
 The thought that lay in the woman s brain, 
 And somehow taken it for his own : 
 For even before the month was flown 
 He had carved a figure so like the Child 
 Of Ara-Cceli, you d not have told, 
 Had both been decked with jewel and chain 
 And dressed alike in a dress of gold, 
 Which was the true one of the twain. 
 
ii8 THE LEGEND OF ARA-CCELI 
 
 When Nina beheld it first, her heart 
 Stood still with wonder. The skilful Jew 
 Had given the eyes the tender blue, 
 And the cheeks the delicate olive hue, 
 And the form almost the curve and line 
 Of the Image the good Apostle made 
 Immortal with his miraculous art, 
 What time the sculptor l dreamed in the shade 
 Under the skies of Palestine. 
 The bright new coins that clinked in the palm 
 Of the carver in wood were blurred and dim 
 Compared with the eyes that looked at him 
 From the low sweet brows, so seeming calm ; 
 Then he went his way, and her joy broke free, 
 And Filippo smiled to hear Nina sing 
 In the old, old fashion carolling 
 Like a very thrush, with many a trill 
 And long-drawn, flute-like, honeyed note, 
 Till the birds in the farthest mulberry, 
 Each outstretching its amber bill, 
 Answered her with melodious throat. 
 
 Thus sped two days ; but on the third 
 Her singing ceased, and there came a change 
 As of death on Nina ; her talk grew strange, 
 
 1 According to a monastic legend, the Santissimo Bambino was 
 carved by a pilgrim, out of a tree which grew on the Mount of 
 Olives, and painted by St. Luke while the pilgrim was sleeping over 
 his work. 
 
THE LEGEND OF ARA-CCELI 119 
 
 Then she sunk in a trance, nor spoke nor stirred ; 
 
 And the husband, wringing his hands dismayed, 
 
 Watched by the bed ; but she breathed no word 
 
 That night, nor until the morning broke, 
 
 When she roused from the spell, and feebly laid 
 
 Her hand on Filippo s arm, and spoke : 
 
 " Quickly, Filippo ! get thee gone 
 
 To the holy fathers, and beg them send 
 
 The Bambino hither " her cheeks were wan 
 
 And her eyes like coals " Oh, go, my friend, 
 
 Or all is said ! " Through the morning s gray 
 
 Filippo hurried, like one distraught, 
 
 To the monks, and told his tale ; and they, 
 
 Straight after matins, came and brought 
 
 The Miracle Child, and went their way. 
 
 Once more in her arms was the Infant laid, 
 After these weary months, once more ! 
 Yet the woman seemed like a thing of stone 
 While the dark-robed fathers knelt and prayed ; 
 But the instant the holy friars were gone 
 She arose, and took the broidered gown 
 From the Baby Christ, and the yellow crown 
 And the votive brooches and rings it wore, 
 Till the little figure, so gay before 
 In its princely apparel, stood as bare 
 As your ungloved hand. With tenderest care, 
 At her feet, twixt blanket and counterpane, 
 She hid the Babe ; and then, reaching down 
 
120 THE LEGEND OF ARA-CGELI 
 
 To the coffer wherein the thing had lain, 
 Drew forth Ben Raphaim s manikin 
 In haste, and dressed it in robe and crown, 
 With lace and bauble and diamond-pin. 
 This finished, she turned to stone again, 
 And lay as one would have thought quite dead 
 If it had not been for a spot of red 
 Upon either cheek. At the close of day 
 The Capuchins came, with solemn tread, 
 And carried the false bambino away ! 
 
 Over the vast Campagna s plain, 
 At sunset, a wind began to blow 
 (From the Apennines it came, they say), 
 Softly at first, and then to grow 
 As the twilight gathered and hurried by 
 To a gale, with sudden tumultuous rain 
 And thunder muttering far away. 
 When the night was come, from the blackened 
 
 sky 
 
 The spear-tongued lightning slipped like a snake, 
 And the great clouds clashed, and seemed to shake 
 The earth to its centre. Then swept down 
 Such a storm as was never seen in Rome 
 By any one living in that day. 
 Not a soul dared venture from his home, 
 Not a soul in all the crowded town. 
 Dumb beasts dropped dead, with terror, in stall ; 
 Great chimney-stacks were overthrown, 
 
THE LEGEND OF ARA-CCELI 121 
 
 And about the streets the tiles were blown 
 Like leaves in autumn. A fearful night, 
 With ominous voices in the air ! 
 Indeed, it seemed like the end of all. 
 In the convent, the monks for very fright 
 Went not to bed, but each in his cell 
 Counted his beads by the taper s light, 
 Quaking to hear the dreadful sounds, 
 And shrivelling in the lightning s glare. 
 It was as if the rivers of Hell 
 Had risen, and overleaped their bounds. 
 
 In the midst of this, at the convent door, 
 Above the tempest s raving and roar 
 Came a sudden knocking ! Mother of Grace, 
 What desperate wretch was forced to face 
 Such a night as that was out-of-doors ? 
 Across the echoless, stony floors 
 Into the windy corridors 
 
 The monks came flocking, and down the stair, 
 Silently, glancing each at each, 
 As if they had lost the power of speech. 
 Yes it was some one knocking there ! 
 And then strange thing! untouched by a soul 
 The bell of the convent gan to toll ! 
 It curdled the blood beneath their hair. 
 Reaching the court, the brothers stood 
 Huddled together, pallid and mute, 
 By the massive door of iron-clamped wood, 
 
122 THE LEGEND OF ARA-CCELI 
 
 Till one old monk, more resolute 
 
 Than the others a man of pious will 
 
 Stepped forth, and letting his lantern rest 
 
 On the pavement, crouched upon his breast 
 
 And peeped through a chink there was between 
 
 The cedar door and the sunken sill. 
 
 At the instant a flash of lightning came, 
 
 Seeming to wrap the world in flame. 
 
 He gave but a glance, and straight arose 
 
 With his face like a corpse s. What had he seen ? 
 
 Two dripping, little pink-white toes ! 
 
 Then, like a man gone suddenly wild, 
 
 He tugged at the bolts, flung down the chain, 
 
 And there, in the night and wind and rain 
 
 Shivering, piteous, and forlorn, 
 
 And naked as ever it was born 
 
 On the threshold stood the SAINTED CHILD ! 
 
 " Since then," said Fra Gervasio, 
 " We have never let the Bambino go 
 Unwatched no, not by a prince s bed. 
 Ah, signor, it made a dreadful stir." 
 " And the woman Nina what of her ? 
 Had she no story? " He bowed his head, 
 And knitting his meagre fingers, so 
 " In that night of wind and wrath," said he, 
 " There was wrought in Rome a mystery. 
 What know I, signor ? They found her dead ! " 
 
BAGATELLE 
 
 CORYDON 
 
 A PASTORAL 
 
 SCENE: A roadside in Arcady 
 SHEPHERD 
 
 GOOD sir, have you seen pass this wa> 
 A mischief straight from market-day r 
 You d know her at a glance, I think ; 
 Her eyes are blue, her lips are pink ; 
 She has a way of looking back 
 Over her shoulder, and, alack ! 
 Who gets that look one time, good sir, 
 Has naught to do but follow her. 
 
 PILGRIM 
 
 I have not seen this maid, methinks, 
 Though she that passed had lips like pinks, 
 
 SHEPHERD 
 
 Or like two strawberries made one 
 By some sly trick of dew and sun. 
 123 
 
124 BAGATELLE 
 
 PILGRIM 
 
 A poet ! 
 
 SHEPHERD 
 
 Nay, a simple swain 
 That tends his flock on yonder plain, 
 Naught else, I swear by book and bell. 
 But she that passed you marked her well. 
 Was she not smooth as any be 
 That dwell herein in Arcady ? 
 
 PILGRIM 
 
 Her skin was as the satin bark 
 Of birches, 
 
 SHEPHERD 
 
 Light or dark ? 
 
 PILGRIM 
 
 Quite dark. 
 
 SHEPHERD 
 
 Then t was not she. 
 
 PILGRIM 
 
 The peach s side 
 That gets the sun is not so dyed 
 As was her cheek. Her hair hung down 
 
BAGATELLE 125 
 
 Like summer twilight falling brown ; 
 And when the breeze swept by, I wist 
 Her face was in a sombre mist. 
 
 SHEPHERD 
 
 No, that is not the maid I seek. 
 
 Her hair lies gold against the cheek ; 
 
 Her yellow tresses take the morn 
 
 Like silken tassels of the corn. 
 
 And yet brown locks are far from bad. 
 
 PILGRIM 
 
 Now I bethink me, this one had 
 
 A figure like the willow-tree 
 
 Which, slight and supple, wondrously 
 
 Inclines to droop with pensive grace, 
 
 And still retains its proper place ; 
 
 A foot so arched and very small 
 
 The marvel was she walked at all ; 
 
 Her hand in sooth I lack for words 
 
 Her hand, five slender snow-white birds ; 
 
 Her voice though she but said "God- 
 
 speed " 
 
 Was melody blown through a reed ; 
 The girl Pan changed into a pipe 
 Had not a note so full and ripe. 
 And then her eye my lad, her eye I 
 Discreet, inviting, candid, shy, 
 
126 BAGATELLE 
 
 An outward ice, an inward fire, 
 And lashes to the heart s desire 
 Soft fringes blacker than the sloe. 
 
 SHEPHERD, thoughtfully 
 
 Good sir, which way did this one go ? 
 
 PILGRIM, solus 
 
 So, he is off ! The silly youth 
 Knoweth not Love in sober sooth. 
 He loves thus lads at first are blind 
 No woman, only Womankind. 
 
 ON AN INTAGLIO HEAD OF MINERVA 
 
 BENEATH the warrior s helm, behold 
 The flowing tresses of the woman ! 
 
 Minerva, Pallas, what you will 
 
 A winsome creature, Greek or Roman. 
 
 Minerva ? No ! t is some sly minx 
 In cousin s helmet masquerading; 
 
 If not then Wisdom was a dame 
 For sonnets and for serenading ! 
 
BAGATELLE 127 
 
 I thought the goddess cold, austere, 
 
 Not made for love s despairs and blisses : 
 
 Did Pallas wear her hair like that ? 
 
 Was Wisdom s mouth so shaped for kisses ? 
 
 The Nightingale should be her bird, 
 And not the Owl, big-eyed and solemn : 
 
 How very fresh she looks, and yet 
 
 She s older far than Trajan s Column ! 
 
 The magic hand that carved this face, 
 And set this vine-work round it running, 
 
 Perhaps ere mighty Phidias wrought 
 Had lost its subtle skill and cunning. 
 
 Who was he ? Was he glad or sad, 
 Who knew to carve in such a fashion ? 
 
 Perchance he graved the dainty head 
 
 For some brown girl that scorned his passion. 
 
 Perchance, in some still garden-place, 
 Where neither fount nor tree to-day is, 
 
 He flung the jewel at the feet 
 
 Of Phryne, or perhaps t was Lai s. 
 
 But he is dust ; we may not know 
 
 His happy or unhappy story : 
 Nameless, and dead these centuries, 
 
 His work outlives him there s his glory ! 
 
128 BAGATELLE 
 
 Both man and jewel lay in earth 
 Beneath a lava-buried city ; 
 
 The countless summers came and went 
 With neither haste, nor hate, nor pity. 
 
 Years blotted out the man, but left 
 The jewel fresh as any blossom, 
 
 Till some Visconti dug it up 
 
 To rise and fall on Mabel s bosom ! 
 
 O nameless brother ! see how Time 
 Your gracious handiwork has guarded 
 
 See how your loving, patient art 
 Has come, at last, to be rewarded. 
 
 Who would not suffer slights of men, 
 And pangs of hopeless passion also, 
 
 To have his carven agate-stone 
 On such a bosom rise and fall so ! 
 
 THE MENU 
 
 I BEG you come to-night and dine. 
 A welcome waits you, and sound wine 
 The Roederer chilly to a charm, 
 As Juno s breath the claret warm, 
 The sherry of an ancient brand. 
 
BAGATELLE 129 
 
 No Persian pomp, you understand 
 A soup, a fish, two meats, and then 
 A salad fit for aldermen 
 (When aldermen, alas the days ! 
 Were really worth their mayonnaise) ; 
 A dish of grapes whose clusters won 
 Their bronze in Carolinian sun ; 
 Next, cheese for you the Neufchitel, 
 A bit of Cheshire likes me well ; 
 Cafe au lait or coffee black, 
 With Kirsch or Kiimmel or Cognac 
 (The German band in Irving Place 
 By this time purple in the face) ; 
 Cigars and pipes. These being through, 
 Friends shall drop in, a very few 
 Shakespeare and Milton, and no more. 
 When these are guests I bolt the door, 
 With Not at Home to any one 
 Excepting Alfred Tennyson. 
 
 COMEDY 
 
 THEY parted, with clasps of hand, 
 And kisses, and burning tears. 
 They met, in a foreign land, 
 After some twenty years : 
 
130 BAGATELLE 
 
 Met as acquaintances meet, 
 Smilingly, tranquil-eyed 
 Not even the least little beat 
 Of the heart, upon either side ! 
 
 They chatted of this and that, 
 The nothings that make up life ; 
 She in a Gainsborough hat, 
 And he in black for his wife. 
 
 IN AN ATELIER 
 
 I PRAY you, do not turn your head ; 
 And let your hands lie folded, so. 
 It was a dress like this, wine-red, 
 That troubled Dante, long ago. 
 You don t know Dante ? Never mind. 
 He loved a lady wondrous fair 
 His model ? Something of the kind. 
 I wonder if she had your hair ! 
 
 I wonder if she looked so meek, 
 And was not meek at all (my dear, 
 I want that side light on your cheek). 
 He loved her, it is very clear, 
 And painted her, as I paint you, 
 But rather better, on the whole 
 
BAGATELLE 
 
 (Depress your chin ; yes, that will do) : 
 He was a painter of the soul ! 
 
 (And painted portraits, too, I think, 
 In the INFERNO devilish good ! 
 I d make some certain critics blink 
 Had I his method and his mood.) 
 Her name was (Fanny, let your glance 
 Rest there, by that majolica tray) 
 Was Beatrice ; they met by chance 
 They met by chance, the usual way. 
 
 (As you and I met, months ago, 
 Do you remember ? How your feet 
 Went crinkle-crinkle on the snow 
 Along the bleak gas-lighted street ! 
 An instant in the drug-store s glare 
 You stood as in a golden frame, 
 And then I swore it, then and there, 
 To hand your sweetness down to fame.) 
 
 They met, and loved, and never wed 
 (All this was long before our time), 
 And though they died, they are not dead 
 Such endless youth gives mortal rhyme ! 
 Still walks the earth, with haughty mien, 
 Pale Dante, in his soul s distress ; 
 And still the lovely Florentine 
 Goes lovely in her wine-red dress. 
 
132 BAGATELLE 
 
 You do not understand at all ? 
 
 He was a poet ; on his page 
 
 He drew her ; and, though kingdoms fall, 
 
 This lady lives from age to age. 
 
 A poet that means painter too, 
 
 For words are colors, rightly laid ; 
 
 And they outlast our brightest hue, 
 
 For varnish cracks and crimsons fade. 
 
 The poets they are lucky ones ! 
 When we are thrust upon the shelves, 
 Our works turn into skeletons 
 Almost as quickly as ourselves ; 
 For our poor canvas peels at length, 
 At length is prized when all is bare : 
 " What grace ! " the critics cry, " what strength ! * 
 When neither strength nor grace is there. 
 
 Ah, Fanny, I am sick at heart, 
 It is so little one can do ; 
 We talk our jargon live for Art ! 
 I d much prefer to live for you. 
 How dull and lifeless colors are ! 
 You smile, and all my picture lies : 
 I wish that I could crush a star 
 To make a pigment for your eyes. 
 
 Yes, child, I know, I m out of tune ; 
 The light is bad ; the sky is gray : 
 
BAGATELLE 133 
 
 I paint no more this afternoon, 
 
 So lay your royal gear away. 
 
 Besides, you re moody chin on hand 
 
 I know not what not in the vein 
 
 Not like Anne Bullen, sweet and bland : 
 
 You sit there smiling in disdain. 
 
 Not like the Tudor s radiant Queen, 
 Unconscious of the coming woe, 
 But rather as she might have been, 
 Preparing for the headsman s blow. 
 So, I have put you in a miff 
 Sitting bolt-upright, wrist on wrist. 
 How should you look ? Why, dear, as if 
 Somehow as if you d just been kissed ! 
 
 AT A READING 
 
 THE spare Professor, grave and bald, 
 Began his paper. It was called, 
 I think, " A brief Historic Glance 
 At Russia, Germany, and France." 
 A glance, but to my best belief 
 Twas almost anything but brief 
 A wide survey, in which the earth 
 Was seen before mankind had birth; 
 
134 BAGATELLE 
 
 Strange monsters basked them in the sun, 
 Behemoth, armored glyptodon, 
 And in the dawn s unpractised ray 
 The transient dodo winged its way ; 
 Then, by degrees, through silt and slough, 
 We reached Berlin I don t know how. 
 The good Professor s monotone 
 Had turned me into senseless stone 
 Instanter, but that near me sat 
 Hypatia in her new spring hat, 
 Blue-eyed, intent, with lips whose bloom 
 Lighted the heavy-curtained room. 
 Hypatia ah, what lovely things 
 Are fashioned out of eighteen springs ! 
 At first, in sums of this amount, 
 The blighting winters do not count. 
 Just as my eyes were growing dim 
 With heaviness, I saw that slim, 
 Erect, elastic figure there, 
 Like a pond-lily taking air. 
 She looked so fresh, so wise, so neat, 
 So altogether crisp and sweet, 
 I quite forgot what Bismarck said, 
 And why the Emperor shook his head, 
 And how it was Von Moltke s frown 
 Cost France another frontier town. 
 The only facts I took away 
 From the Professor s theme that day 
 
BAGATELLE 135 
 
 Were these : a forehead broad and low, 
 Such as the antique sculptures show ; 
 A chin to Greek perfection true ; 
 Eyes of Astarte s tender blue ; 
 A high complexion without fleck 
 Or flaw, and curls about her neck. 
 
 AMONTILLADO 
 
 (In a rhythm of Mr. Thackeray) 
 
 RAFTERS black with smoke, 
 
 White with sand the floor is, 
 Twenty whiskered Dons 
 
 Calling to Dolores 
 Tawny flower of Spain, 
 
 Wild rose of Granada, 
 Keeper of the wines 
 
 In this old posada. 
 
 Hither, light-of-foot, 
 
 Dolores Juno Circe ! 
 
 Pretty Spanish girl 
 
 Without a grain of mercy I 
 
 Here I m travel-worn, 
 Sad, and thirsty very, 
 
136 BAGATELLE 
 
 And she does not fetch 
 The Amontillado sherry ! 
 
 Thank you, breath of June ! 
 
 Now my heart beats free ; ah, 
 Kisses for your hand, 
 
 Mariquita mia. 
 You shall live in song, 
 
 Warm and ripe and cheery, 
 Mellowing with years 
 
 Like Amontillado sherry. 
 
 While the earth spins round 
 
 And the stars lean over, 
 May this amber sprite 
 
 Never lack a lover. 
 Blessed be the man 
 
 Who lured her from the berry, 
 And blest the girl that brings 
 
 The Amontillado sherry ! 
 
 Sorrow, get thee hence ! 
 
 Care, be gone, blue dragon ! 
 Only shapes of joy 
 
 Are sculptured on the flagon. 
 Kisses repartees 
 
 Lyrics all that s merry 
 Rise to touch the lip 
 
 In Amontillado sherry. 
 
BAGATELLE 137 
 
 Here be wit and mirth, 
 
 And love, the arch enchanter ; 
 Here the golden blood 
 
 Of saints in this decanter. 
 When pale Charon comes 
 
 To row me o er his ferry, 
 I 11 fee him with a case 
 
 Of Amontillado sherry ! 
 
 What ! the flagon s dry ? 
 
 Hark, old Time s confession 
 Both hands crossed at XII, 
 
 Owning his transgression ! 
 Pray, old monk, for all 
 
 Generous souls and merry ; 
 May they have their share 
 
 Of Amontillado sherry ! 
 
 CARPE DIEM 
 
 BY studying my lady s eyes 
 I Ve grown so learned day by day, 
 So Machiavelian in this wise, 
 That when I send her flowers, I say 
 
 To each small flower (no matter what, 
 Geranium, pink, or tuberose, 
 
738 BAGATELLE 
 
 Syringa, or forget-me-not, 
 Or violet) before it goes : 
 
 " Be not triumphant, little flower, 
 When on her haughty heart you lie, 
 But modestly enjoy your hour: 
 She 11 weary of you by and by." 
 
 DANS LA BOHfeME 
 
 THE leafless branches snap with cold ; 
 The night is still, the winds are laid ; 
 And you are sitting, as of old, 
 Beside my hearth-stone, heavenly maid ! 
 What would have chanced me all these years, 
 As boy and man, had you not come 
 And brought me gifts of smiles and tears 
 From your Olympian home ? 
 
 Dear Muse, t is twenty years or more 
 Since that enchanted, fairy time 
 When you came tapping at my door, 
 Your reticule stuffed full of rhyme. 
 What strange things have befallen, indeed, 
 Since then ! Who has the time to say 
 What bards have flowered (and gone to seed) 
 Immortal for a day ! 
 
BAGATELLE 139 
 
 We Ve seen Pretence with cross and crown, 
 And Folly caught in self-spun toils ; 
 Merit content to pass unknown, 
 And Honor scorning public spoils 
 Seen Bottom wield the critic s pen 
 While Ariel sang in sunlit cloud : 
 Sometimes we wept, and now and then 
 We could but laugh aloud. 
 
 With pilgrim staff and sandal-shoon, 
 
 One time we sought the Old- World shrines : 
 
 Saw Venice lying in the moon, 
 
 The Jungfrau and the Apennines ; 
 
 Beheld the Tiber rolling dark, 
 
 Rent temples, fanes, and gods austere ; 
 
 In English meadows heard the lark 
 
 That charmed her Shakespeare s ear. 
 
 What dreams and visions we have had, 
 What tempests we have weathered through ! 
 Been rich and poor, and gay and sad, 
 But never hopeless thanks to you. 
 A draught of water from the brook, 
 Or alt Hochheimer it was one ; 
 Whatever fortune fell we took, 
 
 Children of shade and sun. 
 
 Though lacking gold, we never stooped 
 To pick it up in all our days ; 
 
140 BAGATELLE 
 
 Though lacking praise we sometimes drooped, 
 
 We never asked a soul for praise. 
 
 The exquisite reward of song 
 
 Was song the self-same thrill and glow 
 
 That to unfolding flowers belong 
 
 And woodland thrushes know ! 
 
 What gilt-winged hopes have taken flight, 
 And dropped, like Icarus, in mid-sky ! 
 What cloudy days have turned to bright ! 
 What fateful years have glided by ! 
 What lips we loved vain memory seeks ! 
 What hands are cold that once pressed ours ! 
 What lashes rest upon the cheeks 
 
 Beneath the snows and flowers ! 
 
 We would not wish them back again ; 
 The way is rude from here to there : 
 For us, the short-lived joy and pain, 
 For them, the endless rest from care, 
 The crown, the palm, the deathless youth : 
 We would not wish them back ah, no ! 
 And as for us, dear Muse, in truth, 
 We Ve but half way to go. 
 
BAGATELLE 141 
 
 THE LUNCH 
 
 A GOTHIC window, where a damask curtain 
 Made the blank daylight shadowy and uncertain ; 
 A slab of rosewood on four eagle-talons 
 Held trimly up and neatly taught to balance ; 
 A porcelain dish, o er which in many a cluster 
 Black grapes hung down, dead-ripe and without 
 
 lustre ; 
 
 A melon cut in thin, delicious slices ; 
 A cake that seemed mosaic-work in spices j 
 Two China cups with golden tulips sunny, 
 And rich inside with chocolate like honey ; 
 And she and I the banquet-scene completing 
 With dreamy words, and fingers shyly meetingc 
 
 IMP OF DREAMS 
 
 IMP of Dreams, when she s asleep, 
 To her snowy chamber creep, 
 And straight whisper in her ear 
 What, awake, she will not hear 
 
 Imp of Dreams, when she s asleep. 
 
I 4 2 BAGATELLE 
 
 II 
 
 Tell her, so she may repent, 
 That no rose withholds its scent, 
 That no bird that has a song 
 Hoards the music summer-long 
 Tell her, so she may repent. 
 
 in 
 
 Tell her there s naught else to do, 
 If to-morrow s skies be blue, 
 But to come, with civil speech, 
 And walk with me to Hampton Beach 
 Tell her there s naught else to do ! 
 Tell her, so she may repent 
 
 Imp of Dreams, when she s asleep ! 
 
 AN ELECTIVE COURSE 
 
 LINES FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF A HARVARD 
 UNDERGRADUATE 
 
 THE bloom that lies on Hilda s cheek 
 
 Is all my Latin, all my Greek ; 
 
 The only sciences I know 
 
 Are frowns that gloom and smiles that glow ; 
 
BAGATELLE 143 
 
 Siberia and Italy 
 Lie in her sweet geography ; 
 No scholarship have I but such 
 As teaches me to love her much. 
 
 Why should I strive to read the skies, 
 Who know the midnight of her eyes ? 
 Why should I go so very far 
 To learn what heavenly bodies are ? 
 Not Berenice s starry hair 
 With Hilda s tresses can compare ; 
 Not Venus on a cloudless night, 
 Enslaving Science with her light, 
 Ever reveals so much as when 
 She stares and droops her lids again. 
 
 If Nature s secrets are forbidden 
 To mortals, she may keep them hidden. 
 ^Eons and aeons we progressed 
 And did not let that break our rest ; 
 Little we cared if Mars o erhead 
 Were or were not inhabited ; 
 Without the aid of Saturn s rings 
 Fair girls were wived in those far springs ; 
 Warm lips met ours and conquered us 
 Or ere thou wert, Copernicus ! 
 
 Graybeards, who seek to bridge the chasm 
 Twixt man to-day and protoplasm, 
 
144 BAGATELLE 
 
 Who theorize and probe and gape, 
 And finally evolve an ape 
 Yours is a harmless sort of cult, 
 If you are pleased with the result. 
 Some folks admit, with cynic grace, 
 That you have rather proved your case. 
 These dogmatists are so severe ! 
 Enough for me that Hilda s here, 
 Enough that, having long survived 
 Pre-Eveic forms, she has arrived 
 An illustration the completest 
 Of the survival of the sweetest. 
 
 Linnaeus, avaunt ! I only care 
 To know what flower she wants to wear. 
 I leave it to the addle-pated 
 To guess how pinks originated, 
 As if it mattered ! The chief thing 
 Is that we have them in the Spring, 
 And Hilda likes them. When they come, 
 I straightway send and purchase some. 
 The Origin of Plants go to ! 
 Their proper end /have in view. 
 
 The loveliest book that ever man 
 Looked into since the world began 
 Is Woman ! As I turn those pages, 
 As fresh as in the primal ages, 
 As day by day I scan, perplexed, 
 
BAGATELLE MS 
 
 The ever subtly changing text, 
 
 I feel that I am slowly growing 
 
 To think no other work worth knowing. 
 
 And in my copy there is none 
 
 So perfect as the one I own 
 
 I find no thing set down but such 
 
 As teaches me to love it much. 
 
 PEPITA 
 
 SCARCELY sixteen years old 
 Is Pepita. (You understand, 
 A breath of this sunny land 
 
 Turns green fruit into gold : 
 
 A maiden s conscious blood 
 
 In the cheek of girlhood glows 3 
 A bud slips into a rose 
 
 Before it is quite a bud.) 
 
 And I in Seville sedate, 
 An American, with an eye 
 For that strip of indigo sky 
 
 Half-glimpsed through a Moorish gate 
 
146 BAGATELLE 
 
 I see her, sitting up there, 
 
 With tortoise-shell comb and fan ; 
 Red-lipped, but a trifle wan, 
 
 Because of her coal-black hair ; 
 
 And the hair a trifle dull, 
 Because of the eyes beneath, 
 And the radiance of her teeth 
 
 When her smile is at its full ! 
 
 Against the balcony rail 
 
 She leans, and looks on the street ; 
 
 Her lashes, long and discreet, 
 Shading her eyes like a veil. 
 
 Held by a silver dart, 
 The mantilla s delicate lace 
 Falls each side of her face 
 
 And crosswise over her heart. 
 
 This is Pepita this 
 
 Her hour for taking her ease : 
 
 A lover under the trees 
 In the calk were not amiss ! 
 
 Well, I must needs pass by, 
 
 With a furtive glance, be it said, 
 At the dusk Murillo head 
 
 And the Andalusian eye. 
 
BAGATELLE 14? 
 
 In the Plaza I hear the sounds 
 
 Of guitar and Castanet ; 
 
 Although it is early yet, 
 The dancers are on their rounds. 
 
 Softly the sunlight falls 
 
 On the slim Giralda tower, 
 
 That now peals forth the hour 
 O er broken ramparts and walls. 
 
 Ah, what glory and gloom 
 
 In this Arab-Spanish town ! 
 
 What masonry, golden-brown, 
 And hung with tendril and bloom ! 
 
 Place of forgotten kings ! 
 With fountains that never play, 
 And gardens where day by day 
 
 The lonely cicada sings. 
 
 Traces are everywhere 
 
 Of the dusky race that came, 
 And passed, like a sudden flame, 
 
 Leaving their sighs in the air ! 
 
 Taken with things like these, 
 
 Pepita fades out of my mind: 
 
 Pleasure enough I find 
 In Moorish column and frieze. 
 
I4 8 BAGATELLE 
 
 And yet I have my fears, 
 If this had been long ago, 
 I might . . . well, I do not know . , 
 
 She with her sixteen years ! 
 
 L EAU DORMANTE 
 
 CURLED up and sitting on her feet, 
 
 Within the window s deep embrasure, 
 Is Lydia ; and across the street, 
 
 A lad, with eyes of roguish azure, 
 Watches her buried in her book. 
 In vain he tries to win a look, 
 And from the trellis over there 
 Blows sundry kisses through the air, 
 Which miss the mark, and fall unseen, 
 Uncared for. Lydia is thirteen. 
 
 My lad, if you, without abuse, 
 
 Will take advice from one who s wiser, 
 And put his wisdom to more use 
 
 Than ever yet did your adviser ; 
 If you will let, as none will do, 
 Another s heartbreak serve for two, 
 You 11 have a care, some four years hence, 
 
BAGATELLE 149 
 
 How you lounge there by yonder fence 
 
 And blow those kisses through that screen 
 
 For Lydia will be seventeen. 
 
 ECHO SONG 
 
 WHO can say where Echo dwells ? 
 In some mountain-cave, methinks, 
 Where the white owl sits and blinks 
 Or in deep sequestered dells, 
 Where the foxglove hangs its bells, 
 Echo dwells. 
 Echo! 
 
 Echo! 
 
 Phantom of the crystal Air, 
 Daughter of sweet Mystery ! 
 Here is one has need of thee ; 
 Lead him to thy secret lair, 
 Myrtle brings he for thy hair 
 Hear his prayer, 
 Echo! 
 Echo 
 
 Echo, lift thy drowsy head, 
 And repeat each charmed word 
 
(50 BAGATELLE 
 
 Thou must needs have overheard 
 Yestere en, ere, rosy-red, 
 Daphne down the valley fled 
 Words unsaid, 
 Echo! 
 
 Echo! 
 
 Breathe the vows she since denies ! 
 She hath broken every vow ; 
 What she would she would not now 
 Thou didst hear her perjuries. 
 Whisper, whilst I shut my eyes, 
 Those sweet lies, 
 Echo ! 
 
 Echo ! 
 
 THALIA 
 
 A middle-aged lyrical poet is supposed to be taking final leave of 
 the Muse of Comedy. She has brought him his hat and gloves, and 
 is abstractedly picking a thread of gold hair from his coat sleeve as 
 he begins to speak : 
 
 I SAY it under the rose 
 
 oh, thanks ! yes, under the laurel, 
 We part lovers, not foes j 
 
 we are not going to quarrel. 
 
BAGATELLE 151 
 
 We have too long been friends 
 
 on foot and in gilded coaches, 
 
 Now that the whole thing ends, 
 
 to spoil our kiss with reproaches. 
 
 I leave you ; my soul is wrung ; 
 
 I pause, look back from the portal 
 Ah, I no more am young, 
 
 and you, child, you are immortal ! 
 
 Mine is the glacier s way, 
 
 yours is the blossom s weather 
 When were December and May 
 
 known to be happy together ? 
 
 Before my kisses grow tame, 
 
 before my moodiness grieve you, 
 
 While yet my heart is flame, 
 and I all lover, I leave you. 
 
 So, in the coming time, 
 
 when you count the rich years over, 
 Think of me in my prime, 
 
 and not as a white-haired lover, 
 
 Fretful, pierced with regret, 
 
 the wraith of a dead Desire 
 Thrumming a cracked spinet 
 
 by a slowly dying fire. 
 
152 BAGATELLE 
 
 When, at last, I am cold 
 
 years hence, if the gods so will it * 
 Say, " He was true as gold," 
 
 and wear a rose in your fillet ! 
 
 Others, tender as I, 
 
 will come and sue for caresses, 
 Woo you, win you, and die 
 
 mind you, a rose in your tresses ! 
 
 Some Melpomene woo, 
 
 some hold Clio the nearest ; 
 
 You, sweet Comedy you 
 
 were ever sweetest and dearest ! 
 
 Nay, it is time to go. 
 
 When writing your tragic sister 
 Say to that child of woe 
 
 how sorry I was I missed her. 
 
 Really, I cannot stay, 
 
 though " parting is such sweet sorrow " 
 Perhaps I will, on my way 
 
 down-town, look in to-morrow I 
 
BAGATELLE 153 
 
 PALINODE 
 
 WHO is Lydia, pray, and who 
 Is Hypatia ? Softly, dear, 
 Let me breathe it in your ear 
 They are you, and only you. 
 And those other nameless two 
 Walking in Arcadian air 
 She that was so very fair ? 
 She that had the twilight hair? 
 They were you, dear, only you. 
 If I speak of night or day, 
 Grace of fern or bloom of grape, 
 Hanging cloud or fountain spray, 
 Gem or star or glistening dew, 
 Or of mythologic shape, 
 Psyche, Pyrrha, Daphne, say 
 I mean you, dear, you, just you. 
 
MERCEDES 
 
 CHARACTERS 
 
 ACHILLE LOUVOIS MERCEDES 
 
 LABOISSIERE URSULA 
 
 PADRE JOSEF SERGEANT and SOLDIERS 
 
 Scene, SPAIN Period, 1810 
 
 ACT I 
 
 A detachment of French troops bivouacked on the edge of the forest 
 of Covelleda A sentinel is seen on the cliffs overhanging the 
 camp The guard is relieved in dumb show as the dialogue pro 
 gresses Louvois and Laboissiere, wrapped in greatcoats, are 
 seated by a smouldering fire of brushwood in the foreground 
 Starlight. 
 
 SCENE I 
 Louvois, LABOISSIERE 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 Louvois ! 
 
 LOUVOIS, starting from a reverie 
 
 Eh ? What is it ? I must have slept. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 With eyes staring at nothing, like an Egyptian 
 idol ! This is not amusing. You are as gloomy 
 to-night as an undertaker out of employment. 
 155 
 
156 MERCEDES 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 Say, rather, an executioner who loathes his trade. 
 No, I was not asleep. I cannot sleep with this 
 business on my conscience. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 In affairs like this, conscience goes to the rear 
 with the sick and wounded. 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 One may be forgiven, or can forgive himself, 
 many a cruel thing done in the heat of battle ; but 
 to steal upon a defenceless village, and in cold 
 blood sabre old men, women, and children that 
 revolts me. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 What must be, must be. 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 Yes the poor wretches. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 The orders are 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 Every soul ! 
 
MERCEDES 157 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 They have brought it upon themselves, if that 
 comforts them. Every defile in these infernal 
 mountains bristles with carabines; every village 
 gives shelter or warning to the guerrillas. The 
 army is being decimated by assassination. It is 
 the same ghastly story throughout Castile and 
 Estremadura. After we have taken a town we 
 lose more men than it cost us to storm it. I would 
 rather look into the throat of a battery at forty 
 paces than attempt to pass through certain streets 
 in Madrid or Burgos after nightfall. You go in at 
 one end, but, diantre ! you don t come out at the 
 other. 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 What would you have ? It is life or death with 
 these people. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 I would have them fight like Christians. Poison 
 ing wells and water-courses is not fighting, and 
 assassination is not war. Some such blow as we 
 are about to strike is the sort of rude surgery the 
 case demands. 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 Certainly the French army on the Peninsula is in 
 a desperate strait. The men are worn out contend- 
 
158 MERCEDES 
 
 ing against shadows, and disheartened by victories 
 that prove more disastrous than defeats in other 
 lands. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 It is the devil s own country. The very birds 
 here have no song. 1 Even the cigars are damna 
 ble. Will you have one ? 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 Thanks, no. 
 
 LABOISSIERE, after a pause 
 
 This village of Arguano which we are to disci 
 pline, as the brave Junot would say, is it much of 
 a village ? 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 No ; an insignificant hamlet one wide calle with 
 a zigzag line of stucco houses on each side ; a po- 
 sada> and a forlorn chapel standing like an over 
 grown tombstone in the middle of the cemetery. 
 In the market-place, three withered olive-trees. 
 On a hilltop overlooking all, a windmill of the 
 time of Don Quixote. In brief, the regulation 
 Spanish village. 
 
 1 Except in a few provinces, singing-birds are rare in Spain, 
 owing to the absence of woodland. 
 
MERCEDES 159 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 You have been there, then ? with your three 
 withered olive-trees ! 
 
 LOUVOIS, slowly 
 
 Yes, I have been there . . . 
 
 LABOISSIERE, aside 
 
 He has that same odd look in his eyes which 
 has puzzled me these two days. (Aloud) If I have 
 touched a wrong chord, pardon ! You have un 
 pleasant associations with the place. 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 I ? Oh no ; on the contrary I have none but 
 agreeable memories of Arguano. I was quartered 
 there, or rather, in the neighborhood, for several 
 weeks a year or two ago. I was recovering from 
 a wound at the time, and the air of that valley 
 did me better service than a platoon of surgeons. 
 Then the villagers were simple, honest folk for 
 Spaniards. Indeed, they were kindly folk. I re 
 member the old padre j he was not half a bad fel 
 low, though I have no love for the long-gowns. 
 With his scant black soutane, and his thin white 
 hair brushed behind his ears under a skull-cap, he 
 somehow reminded me of my old mother in Lan- 
 guedoc, and we were good comrades. We used 
 now and then to empty a bottle of Valdepenas to- 
 
160 MERCEDES 
 
 gather in the shady posada garden. The native 
 wine here, when you get it pure, is better than it 
 promises. 
 
 LABOISSlfeRE 
 
 Why, that was consorting with the enemy ! The 
 Church is our deadliest foe now. Since the bull 
 of Pius VII., excommunicating the Emperor, we all 
 are heretical dogs in Spanish eyes. His Holiness 
 has made murder a short cut to heaven. 1 By pon 
 iarding or poisoning a Frenchman, these fanatics 
 fancy that they insure their infinitesimal souls. 
 
 LOUVOIS rises 
 
 Yes, they believe that; yet when all is said, I 
 have no great thirst for this poor padre s blood. 
 If the marechal had only turned over to me some 
 other village ! No I do not mean what I say. 
 
 1 In Andalusia, and in fact throughout Spain at that period, 
 the priests taught the children a catechism of which this is a 
 specimen : " How many Emperors of the French are there ? " 
 "One actually, in three deceiving persons." "What are 
 they called ? " " Napoleon, Murat, and Manuel Godoy, 
 Prince of the Peace." " Which is the most wicked ? " " They 
 are all equally so." " What are the French ? " " Apostate 
 Christians turned heretics." "What punishment does a 
 Spaniard deserve who fails in his duty?" "The death and 
 infamy of a traitor." " Is it a sin to kill a Frenchman ? " 
 "No, my father; heaven is gained by killing one of these 
 heretical dogs." 
 
MERCEDES 161 
 
 Since the work was to be done, it was better I 
 should do it. There s a fatality in sending me to 
 Arguano. Remember that. From the moment the 
 order came from headquarters I have had such a 
 heaviness here. (Pauses) Awhile ago, in a half doze, 
 I dreamed of cutting down this harmless old priest 
 who had come to me to beg mercy for the women 
 and children. I cut him across the face, Labois- 
 siere ! I saw him still smiling, with his lip slashed 
 in two. The irony of it ! When I think of that 
 smile I am tempted to break my sword over my 
 knee, and throw myself into the ravine yonder. 
 
 LABOISSlfeRE, aside 
 
 This is the man who got the cross for sabring 
 three gunners in the trench at Saragossa ! It is 
 droll he should be so moved by the idea of killing 
 a beggarly old Jesuit more or less. (Aloud) Bah ! 
 it was only a dream, voila tout one of those 
 villainous nightmares which run wild over these 
 hills. I have been kicked by them myself many a 
 time. What, the devil ! dreams always go by con 
 traries ; in which case you will have the satisfaction 
 of being knocked on the head by the venerable 
 padre and so quits. It may come to that. Who 
 knows? We are surrounded by spies; I would 
 wager a week s rations that Arguano is prepared 
 for us. 
 
l6z MERCEDES 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 If I thought that! An assault with resistance 
 would cover all. Yes, yes the spies. They must 
 be aware of our destination and purpose. A move 
 ment such as this could not have been made unob 
 served. (Abruptly) Laboissiere ! 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 Well? 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 There was a certain girl at Arguano, a niece or 
 god-daughter to the old padre a brave girl. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 Ah so? Come now, confess, my captain, it 
 was the sobrina, and not the old priest, you struck 
 down in your dream. 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 Yes, that was it. How did you know ? 
 
 LABOISSltRE 
 
 By instinct and observation. There is always a 
 woman at the bottom of everything. You have 
 only to go deep enough. 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 This girl troubles me. I was ordered from Ar- 
 
MERCEDES 163 
 
 guano without an instant s warning at midnight 
 between two breaths, as it were. Then commu 
 nication with the place was cut off. ... I have 
 never heard word of her since. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 So ? Did you love her ? 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 I have not said that. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 Speak your thought, and say it. I ever loved a 
 love-story, when it ran as clear as a trout-brook and 
 had the right heart-leaps in it. With this wind 
 sighing in the tree-tops, and these heavy stars 
 drooping over us, it is the very place and hour for 
 a bit of romance. Come, now. 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 It was all of a romance. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 I knew it ! I will begin for you : You loved her. 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 Yes, I loved her. It was the good God that sent 
 her to my bedside. She nursed me day and night. 
 She brought me back to life. ... I know not how 
 
164 MERCEDES 
 
 it happened ; the events have no sequence in my 
 memory. I had been wounded ; I dropped from 
 the saddle as we entered the village, and was car 
 ried for dead into one of the huts. Then the fever 
 took me. . . . Day after day I plunged from one 
 black abyss into another, my wits quite gone. At 
 odd intervals I was conscious of some one bending 
 over me. Now it seemed to be a demon, and now 
 a white-hooded sister of the Sacred Heart at Paris. 
 Oftener it was that madonna above the altar in the 
 old mosque at Cordova. Such strange fancies take 
 men with gunshot wounds. One night I awoke in 
 my senses, and there she sat, with her fathomless 
 eyes fixed upon my face, like a statue of Pity. You 
 know those narrow, melting eyes these women have, 
 with a dash of Arab fire in them . . . 
 
 LABOISSI&RE 
 
 Know them ? Sacrebleu ! 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 The first time I walked out, she led me by the 
 hand, I was so very weak, like a little child learn 
 ing to walk. It was spring, the skies were blue, 
 the almonds were in blossom, the air was like wine. 
 Great heaven ! how beautiful and fresh the world 
 was, as if God had just made it ! From time to 
 time I leaned upon her shoulder, not thinking 
 of her. . . Later I came to know her a saint 
 
MERCEDES 165 
 
 in disguise, a peasant-girl with the instincts of a 
 duchess. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 They are always like that, saints and duchesses 
 by brevet ! I fell in with her own sister at Bar 
 celona. Look you braids of purple-black hair 
 and the complexion of a newly-minted napoleon. 
 I forget her name. (Knitting his brows) Paquita . . . 
 Mariquita ? It was something-quita, but no matter. 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 How it all comes back to me ! The wild foot 
 paths in the haunted forest of Covelleda ; the 
 broken Moorish water-tank, in the plaza, against 
 which we leaned to watch the gypsy dances ; the 
 worn stone step of the cottage, where we sat of 
 evenings with guitar and cigarette. What simple 
 things make a man forget that his grave lies in 
 front of him ! (Pauses) There was a lover, a contra- 
 bandista, or something a fellow who might have 
 played the spadassin in one of Lope de Vega s 
 cloak-and-dagger comedies. The gloom of the lad, 
 fingering his stiletto-hilt ! Presently she sent him 
 to the right-about, him and his scowls the poor 
 devil. A certain Pedro Mendez. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 Oh, a very bad case ! 
 
166 MERCEDES 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 I would not have any hurt befall that girl, Labois- 
 siere ! 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 Surely. 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 And there s no human way to warn her of her 
 danger ! 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 To warn her would be to warn the village and 
 defeat our end. However, no French messenger 
 could reach the place alive. 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 And no other is possible. Now you understand 
 my misery. I am ready to go mad. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 You take the thing too seriously. Nothing ever 
 is so bad as it looks, except a Spanish ragofit. 
 After all, it is not likely that a single soul is left in 
 Arguano. The very leaves of this dismal forest are 
 lips that whisper of our movements. The villagers 
 have doubtless made off with that fine store of grain 
 and aguardiente we so sorely stand in need of, and 
 a score or two of the brigands are probably lying 
 in wait for us in some narrow canon. 
 
MERCEDES 167 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 God will it so ! 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 Louvois, if the girl is at Arguano, not a hair of 
 her head shall be harmed, though I am shot for it 
 when we get back to Burgos ! 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 You are a brave soul, Laboissiere ! Your words 
 have lifted a weight from my bosom. Without 
 your aid I should be powerless to save her. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 Are we not comrades, we who have fought side 
 by side these six months, and lain together night 
 after night with this blue arch for our tent-roof? 
 Dismiss your anxiety. What is that Gascogne 
 proverb ? " We suffer most from the ills that 
 never happen." Let us get some rest; we have 
 had a rude day. . . . See, the stars have doubled 
 their pickets out there to the westward. 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 You are right ; we should sleep. We march at 
 daybreak. Good-night. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 Good-night, and vive la France / 
 
168 MERCEDES 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 Vive r Emp ereur ! 
 
 LABOISSI&RE walks away humming 
 
 " Reposez-vous, bans chevaliers ! " 
 
 LOUVOIS, looking after him 
 
 There goes a light heart. But mine . mine is 
 as heavy as lead. 
 
 SCENE II 
 
 LYRICAL INTERLUDE 
 
 Soldiers* Song 
 
 While this is being sung behind the scenes the guard is relieved on 
 the cliffs. Louvois wraps his cloak around him and falls into a 
 troubled sleep. 
 
 The camp is hushed ; the fires burn low j 
 Like ghosts the sentries come and go : 
 Now seen, now lost, upon the height 
 A keen drawn sabre glimmers white. 
 Swiftly the midnight steals away 
 Reposez-vous, bons chevaliers ! 
 
 Perchance into your dream shall come 
 Visions of love or thoughts of home ; 
 
MERCEDES 169 
 
 The furtive night wind, hurrying by, 
 Shall kiss away the half-breathed sigh, 
 And softly whispering, seem to say, 
 Reposez-vous, bans chevaliers ! 
 
 Through star-lit dusk and shimmering dew 
 It is your lady comes to you ! 
 Delphine, Lisette, Annette who knows 
 By what sweet wayward name she goes ? 
 Wrapped in white arms till break of day, 
 Reposez-vous, bans chevaliers ! 
 
 In the course of the song the stage is gradually darkened and 
 the scene changed. 
 
ACT II 
 
 Morning The interior of a stone hut in Arguano Through the 
 door opening upon the calle are seen piles of Indian corn, sheaves 
 of wheat, and loaves of bread partly consumed Empty wine-skins 
 are scattered here and there among the cinders In one corner 
 of the chamber, which is low-studded but spacious, an old woman 
 is sitting in an arm-chair and crooning to herself At the left, a 
 settle stands against the wall In the centre of the room a child 
 lies asleep in a cradle Mercedes Padre Jos6f entering ab 
 ruptly. 
 
 SCENE I 
 MERCEDES, PADRE JOSEF, then URSULA 
 
 PADRE JOSEF 
 
 Mercedes ! daughter ! are you mad to linger so ? 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Nay, father, it is you who are mad to come back. 
 
 PADRE JOSE> 
 
 We were nearly a mile from the village when I 
 missed you and the child. I had stopped at your 
 cottage and found no one. I thought you were 
 with those who had started at sunrise. 
 
MERCEDES 171 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Nay, I brought Chiquita here last night when I 
 heard the French were coming. 
 
 PADRE JOSEF 
 
 Quick, Mercedes ! there is not an instant to waste. 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Then hasten, Padre Jose f, while there is yet 
 
 time. [Pushes him towards the door 
 
 PADRE JOS^F 
 
 And you, child ? 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 I shall stay. 
 
 PADRE JOSEF 
 
 Listen to her, Sainted Virgin ! she will stay, and 
 the French bloodhounds at our very heels ! 
 
 MERCEDES, glancing at Ursula 
 
 Could I leave old Ursula, and she not able to 
 climb the mountain ? Think you my own flesh 
 and blood ! 
 
 PADRE JOSEF 
 
 Ah, cielo ! true. They have forgotten her, the 
 cowards! and now it is too late. God willed it 
 
172 MERCEDES 
 
 santificado sea tu nombre f (Hesitates) Mercedes, Ur 
 sula is old very old ; the better part of her is 
 already dead. See how she laughs and mumbles 
 to herself, and knows naught of what is passing. 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 The poor grandmother ! she thinks it is a saint s 
 
 day. [Seats herself on the settle 
 
 PADRE JOSEF 
 
 What is life or death to her whose soul is other 
 where ? What is a second more or less to the leaf 
 that clings to a shrunken bough ? But you, Mer 
 cedes, the long summer smiles for such as you. 
 Think of yourself, think of Chiquita. Come with 
 me, child, come ! 
 
 URSULA 
 
 Ay, ay, go with the good padre, dear. There is 
 dancing on the plaza. The gitanos are there, may 
 hap. I hear the music. I had ever an ear for tam 
 bourines and castanets. When I was a slip of a 
 girl, I used to foot it with the best in the cachuca 
 and the bolera. I was a merry jade, Mercedes 
 a merry jade. Wear your broidered garters, dear. 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 She hears music. (Listens) No. Her mind wan 
 ders strangely to-day, now here, now there. The 
 
MERCEDES 173 
 
 gray spirits are with her. (TO Ursula gently) No, 
 grandmother, I came to stay with you, I and Chi- 
 
 [Crosses over to Ursula 
 
 PADRE JOSEF 
 
 You are mad, Mercedes. They will murder you 
 all. 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 They will not have the heart to harm Chiquita, 
 nor me, perchance, for her sake. 
 
 PADRE JOSEF 
 
 They have no hearts, these Frenchmen. Ah, 
 Mercedes, do you not know better than most that 
 a Frenchman has no heart ? {Points to the cradle 
 
 MERCEDES, hastily 
 
 I know nothing. I shall stay. Is life so sweet 
 to me ? Go, Padre Jose f. What could save you 
 if they found you here ? Not your priest s gown. 
 
 PADRE JOSEF 
 
 You will follow, my daughter ? 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 No. 
 
 PADRE JOSE> 
 
 I beseech you ! 
 
, 74 MERCEDES 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 No. 
 
 PADRE JOS&F 
 
 Then you are lost ! 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Nay, padrino, God is everywhere. Have you not 
 yourself said it ? Lay your hands for a moment 
 on my head, as you used to do when I was a little 
 child, and go go! &** 
 
 PADRE JOSEF 
 
 Thou wert ever a wilful girl, Mercedes. 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Oh, say not so ; but quick your blessing, quick ! 
 
 PADRE JOSEF 
 
 A Dios. . . . 
 
 He makes the sign of the cross on Mercedes forehead, and 
 slowly turns away. Mercedes rises, follows him to the 
 door, and looks after him with tears in her eyes. Then 
 she returns to the middle of the room, and sits on a low 
 stool beside the cradle. 
 
MERCEDES 175 
 
 SCENE II 
 MERCEDES, URSULA 
 
 URSULA, after a silence 
 
 Has he gone, the good padre ? 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Yes, dear soul. 
 
 URSULA, reflectively 
 
 He was your uncle once. 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Once ? Yes, and always. How you speak ! 
 
 URSULA 
 
 He is not gay any more, the good padre. He is 
 getting old ... getting old. 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 To hear her! and she eighty years last San 
 Miguel s day ! 
 
 URSULA 
 
 What day is it ? 
 
 MERCEDES, laying one finger on htr lifts 
 
 Hist ! Chiquita is waking. 
 
i?6 MERCEDES 
 
 URSULA, qtterulously 
 
 Hist? Nay, I will say my say in spite of all. 
 Hist ? God save us ! who taught thee to say hist 
 to thy elders? Ay, ay, who taught thee? . . . 
 What day is it ? 
 
 MERCEDES, aside 
 
 How sharp she is awhiles ! (Aloud) Pardon, 
 pardon! Here is little Chiquita, with both eyes 
 wide open, to help me beg thy forgiveness. (Bends 
 over the cradle) See, she has a smile for grandmother. 
 . . . Ah, no, little one, I have no milk for thee; 
 the trouble has taken it all. Nay, cry not, dainty, 
 or that will break my heart. 
 
 URSULA 
 
 Sing to her, nieta. What is it you sing that 
 always hushes her ? T is gone from me. 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 I know not. 
 
 URSULA 
 
 Bethink thee. 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 I cannot. Ah the rhyme of The Three Little 
 White Teeth? 
 
MERCEDES 177 
 
 URSULA, clapping her hands 
 
 Ay, ay, that is it ! 
 
 MERCEDES rocks the child, and sings 
 
 Who is it opens her blue bright eye, 
 Bright as the sea and blue as the sky ? 
 
 Chiquita ! 
 
 Who has the smile that comes and goes 
 Like sunshine over her mouth s red rose ? 
 
 Muchachita / 
 
 What is the softest laughter heard, 
 Gurgle of brook or trill of bird, 
 
 Chiquita ? 
 
 Nay, t is thy laughter makes the rill 
 Hush its voice and the bird be still, 
 
 Muchachita ! 
 
 Ah, little flower-hand on my breast, 
 How it soothes me and gives me rest ! 
 
 Chiquita ! 
 
 What is the sweetest sight I know ? 
 Three little white teeth in a row, 
 Three little white teeth in a row, 
 
 Muchachita ! 
 
 As Mercedes finishes the song, a roll of drums is heard in the 
 calle. At the first tap she starts and listens intently, then 
 assumes a stolid air. The sound approaches the door and 
 suddenly ceases. 
 
1 78 MERCEDES 
 
 SCENE III 
 LABOISSIERE, MERCEDES, then SOLDIERS 
 
 LABOISSIERE, outside 
 
 A sergeant and two men to follow me ! (Mutters} 
 Curse me if there is so much as a mouse left in the 
 whole village. Not a drop of wine, and the bread 
 
 burnt tO a Crisp the sdtiratS ! (Appears at the threshold} 
 
 Hulloa ! what is this ? An old woman and a young 
 one an Andalusian by the arch of her instep and 
 the length of her eyelashes ! (in Spanish) Girl, what 
 are you doing here ? 
 
 MERCEDES, in French 
 
 Where should I be, monsieur ? 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 You speak French ? 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Caramba ! since you speak Spanish. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 It was out of politeness. But talk your own jar 
 gon it is a language that turns to honey on the 
 tongue of a pretty woman. (Aside) It was my luck 
 to unearth the only woman in the place ! The cap 
 tain s white blackbird has flown, bag and baggage, 
 
MERCEDES 179 
 
 thank Heaven ! Poor Louvois, what a grim face 
 he made over the empty nest ! (Aloud) Your neigh 
 bors have gone. Why are you not with them ? 
 
 MERCEDES, pointing to Ursula 
 
 It is my grandmother, senor ; she is very old. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 So ? You could not carry her off, and you re 
 mained ? 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Precisely. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 That was like a brave girl. (Touching his cap) I sa 
 lute valor whenever I meet it. Why have all the 
 villagers fled ? 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Did they wish to be massacred ? 
 
 LABOISSIERE, shrugging his shoulders 
 
 And you ? 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 It would be too much glory for a hundred and 
 eighty French soldiers to kill one poor peasant girl. 
 And then to come so far ! 
 
i8o MERCEDES 
 
 LABOISSIERE, aside 
 
 She knows our very numbers, the fox! How 
 she shows her teeth ! 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Besides, senor, one can die but once. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 That is often enough. Why did your people 
 waste the bread and wine ? 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 That yours might neither eat the one nor drink 
 the other. We do not store food for our ene 
 mies. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 They could not take away the provisions, so they 
 destroyed them ? 
 
 MERCEDES, mockingly 
 
 Nothing escapes you ! 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 Is that your child ? 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Yes, the hi/a is mine. 
 
MERCEDES 181 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 Where is your husband with the brigands yon 
 der? 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 My husband ? 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 Your lover, then. 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 I have no lover. My husband is dead. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 I think you are lying now. He s a guerrilla. 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 If he were, I should not deny it. What Spanish 
 woman would rest her cheek upon the bosom that 
 has not a carabine pressed against it this day ? It 
 were better to be a soldier s widow than a coward s 
 wife. 
 
 LABOISSIERE, aside 
 
 The little demon ! But she is ravishing ! She 
 would have upset St. Anthony, this one if he had 
 belonged to the Second Chasseurs ! What is to 
 be done ? Theoretically, I am to pass my sword 
 through her body; practically, I shall make love 
 
182 MERCEDES 
 
 to her in ten minutes more, though her readiness to 
 become a widow is not altogether pleasing. (Aloud) 
 Here, sergeant, go report this matter to the cap 
 tain. He is in the posada at the farther end of the 
 square. 
 
 Exit sergeant. Shouts of exultation and laughter are heard 
 outside, and presently three or four soldiers enter, bearing 
 hams and a skin of wine. Mercedes gives a start. 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER 
 
 Voila, lieutenant ! 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 Where did you get that ? 
 
 SECOND SOLDIER 
 
 In a cellar hard by, hidden under some rushes. 
 
 THIRD SOLDIER 
 
 There are five more skins of wine like this jolly 
 fellow in his leather jacket. Pray order a division 
 of the booty, my lieutenant, for we are as dry as 
 herrings in a box. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 A moment, my braves. (.Looks at Mercedes significantly} 
 
 Woman, is that wine good ? 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 The vintage was poor this year, senor. 
 
MERCEDES 183 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 I mean is that wine good for a Frenchman to 
 drink ? 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Why not, sefior ? 
 
 LABOISSIERE, sternly 
 
 Yes or no ? 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Yes. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 Why was it not served like the rest, then ? 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 They hid a few skins, thinking to come back for 
 it when you were gone. An ill thing does not last 
 forever. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 Open it, some one, and fetch me a glass. (TO 
 Mercedes) You will drink this. 
 
 MERCEDES, coldly 
 
 When I am thirsty I drink. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 Pardieu ! this time you shall drink because /am 
 thirsty. 
 
184 MERCEDES 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 As you will. (Empties the glass) To the King. 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 That was an impudent toast. I would have pre 
 ferred the Emperor or even Godoy ; but no matter 
 each after his kind. To whom will the small- 
 bones drink ? 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 The child, senor ? 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 Yes, the child ; she is pale and sickly-looking ; a 
 draught will do her no harm. All the same, she 
 will grow up and make some man wretched. 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 But, senor 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 Do you hear ? 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 But Chiquita, senor she is so little, only thir 
 teen months old, and the wine is strong ! 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 She shall drink. 
 
MERCEDES 185 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 No, no ! 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 I have said it, sacrd nom 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Give it me, then . ( Takes the glass and holds it to the child** 
 lips} 
 
 LABOISSIERE, watching her closely 
 
 Woman ! your hand trembles. 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Nay, it is Chiquita swallows so fast. See ! she 
 has taken it all. Ah, sefior, it is a sad thing to 
 have no milk for the little one. Are you content ? 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 Yes ; I now see that the men may quench their 
 thirst without fear. One cannot be too cautious in 
 this hospitable country ! Fall to, my children ; but 
 first, a glass for your lieutenant. [Drinks 
 
 URSULA 
 
 Ay, ay, the young forget the old ... forget the 
 old. 
 
 LABOISSIERE, laughing 
 
 Why, the depraved old sorceress ! But she is 
 
186 MERCEDES 
 
 right. She should have her share. Place aux 
 dames! A cup, somebody, for Madame la Dia- 
 blesse ! 
 
 MERCEDES, aside 
 
 Jose-Maria ! 
 
 One of the men carries wine to Ursula. Mercedes sits on 
 the stool beside the cradle, resting her forehead on her 
 palms. Laboissiere stretches himself on the settle. Sev 
 eral soldiers come in, and fill their canteens from the wine 
 skin. They stand in groups, talking in undertones among 
 themselves. 
 
 URSULA rises from her chair 
 
 The drink has warmed me to the heart, Mer 
 cedes ! Said I not there was dancing on the plaza ? 
 T is but a step from here. T would do these old 
 eyes good to look once more upon the dancers. 
 The music drags me yonder ! (Wander ingiy) Nay, 
 take away your hands, Mercedes a plague upon 
 
 ye ! {Goes out 
 
 LABOISSIERE suddenly starts to his feet and dashes his glass on the floor 
 
 The child! look at the child! What is the 
 matter with it ? It turns livid it is dying ! Com 
 rades, we are poisoned ! 
 
 MERCEDES rises hastily and throws her mantilla over the cradle 
 
 Yes, you are poisoned! Al fuego al fuego 
 todos al fuego 7 1 You to perdition, we to heaven ! 
 
 [ The soldiers advance towards Mercedes 
 
 1 To the flames to the flames all of you to the flames ! 
 
MERCEDES 187 
 
 LABOISSIERE, interposing 
 
 Leave her to me ! Quick, some of you, go warn 
 the others ! (Unsheathes his sword) I end where I ought 
 to have begun. 
 
 MERCEDES, tearing aside her neckerchief 
 
 Strike here, senor. . . . 
 
 LOUVOIS enters, and halts between the two with a dazed expression , he 
 glances from Laboissiere to the woman, and catches his breath 
 
 Mercedes ! 
 
 LABOISSIERE 
 
 Louvois, we are dead men ! Beware of her, she 
 is a fiend ! Kill her without a word ! The drink 
 already throttles me I I cannot breathe here. 
 
 {Staggers out, followed wildly by the soldiers 
 
 SCENE IV 
 
 Louvois, MERCEDES 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 What does he say ? 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 You heard him. 
 
1 88 MERCEDES 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 HlS WOrds have no Sense. (Advancing towards ker^. 
 
 Oh, why are you in this place, Mercedes ? 
 
 MERCEDES, recoiling 
 
 I am here, sefior 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 You call me sefior you shrink from me 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Because we Spaniards do not desert those who 
 depend upon us. 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 Is that a reproach ? Ah, cruel ! Have you for 
 gotten 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 I have forgotten nothing. I have had cause to 
 remember all. I remember, among the rest, that 
 a certain wounded French officer was cared for in 
 this village as if he had been one of our own people 
 and now he returns to massacre us. 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 Mercedes ! 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 I remember the morning, nearly two years ago, 
 
MERCEDES 189 
 
 when Padre Jose f brought me your letter. You 
 had stolen away in the night like a deserter! 
 Ah, that letter how it pierced my heart, and yet 
 bade me live ! Because it was full of those smooth 
 oaths which women love, I carried it in my bosom 
 for a twelvemonth ; then for another twelvemonth 
 I carried it because I hoped to give it back to you. 
 
 (Takes a paper from her bosom) See, Sefior, what slight 
 things Words are ! (Tears the paper into small pieces^ which she 
 scatters at his feet) 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 Ah! 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Sometimes it comforted me to think that you 
 were dead. Senor, t is better to be dead than false 
 and you were false ! 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 Not I, by all your saints and mine ! It is you 
 who have broken faith. I should be the last of 
 men if I had deserted you. Why, even a dog has 
 gratitude. How could I now look you in the face ? 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 T was an ill day you first did so I 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 Listen to me J 
 
190 MERCEDES 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Too many times I have listened. Nay, speak 
 not ; I might believe you ! 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 If I do not speak the truth, despise me ! Since 
 I left Arguano I have been at Lisbon, Irun, Aran- 
 juez, among the mountains I know not where ; 
 but ever in some spot whence it was impossible to 
 send you tidings. A wall of fire and steel shut me 
 from you. Thrice I have had my letters brought 
 back to me with the bearers blood upon them ; 
 thrice I have trusted to messengers whose treachery 
 I now discover. For a chance bit of worthless gold 
 they broke the seals, and wrecked our lives ! Ah, 
 Mercedes, when my silence troubled you, why did 
 you not read the old letter again ! If the words you 
 had of mine lost their value, it was because they 
 were like those jewels in the padre s story, which 
 changed their color when the wearer proved un 
 faithful. 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Aquilles ! 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 Though I could not come to you nor send to 
 you, I never dreamed I was forgotten. I used to 
 say to myself : " A week, a month, a year what 
 
MERCEDES 191 
 
 does it matter? That brown girl is as true as 
 steel ! " I think I bore a charmed life in those 
 days; I grew to believe that neither sword nor 
 bullet could touch me until I held you in my arms 
 
 again. ( The girl stands with her hands crossed upon her bosom, and 
 looks at hint "with a growing light in her eyes) It Was the day 
 
 before yesterday that our brigade returned to 
 Burgos at last ! at last ! O love, my eyes were 
 hungry for you ! Then that dreadful order came. 
 Arguano had been to me what Mecca is to the Mo 
 hammedan a shrine to be reached through toil 
 and thirst and death. Oh, what a grim freak it 
 was of fate, that I should lead a column against 
 Arguano my shrine, my Holy Land ! 
 
 Mercedes moves swiftly across the room, and kneeling on the 
 flag-stones near Louvois s feet begins to pick up the frag 
 ments of the letter. He suddenly stoops and takes her by 
 the wrists. 
 
 Mercedes ! 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Ah, but I was so unhappy! Was I unhappy? 
 
 I forget. (Looks up in his face and laughs) It is SO Very 
 
 long ago ! An instant of heaven would make one 
 forget a century of hell ! When I hear your voice, 
 two years are as yesterday. It was not I, but some 
 poor girl I used to know who was like to die for 
 you. It was not I I have never been anything 
 but happy. Nay, I needs must weep a little for 
 
192 MERCEDES 
 
 her, the days were so heavy to that poor girl. And 
 when you go away again, as go you must 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 I shall take you with me, Mercedes. Do you 
 understand? You are to go with me to Burgos. 
 (Aside) What a blank look she wears ! She does 
 not seem to understand. 
 
 MERCEDES, abstractedly 
 
 With you to Burgos ? I was there once, in the 
 great cathedral, and saw the bishops in their golden 
 robes, and all the jewelled windows ablaze in the 
 sunset. But with you ? Am I dreaming this ? The 
 very room has grown unfamiliar to me. The cru 
 cifix yonder, at which I have knelt a hundred times, 
 was it always there ? My head is full of unwonted 
 visions. I think I hear music and the sounds of 
 castanets, like poor old Ursula. Those cries in 
 the calle is it a merry-meeting ? Ah ! what a 
 pain struck my heart then ! O God ! I had for 
 gotten ! (Clutches his arm and pushes hint from her) Have 
 
 you drunk wine this day ? 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 Why, Mercedes, how strange you are ! 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 No, no ! have you drunk wine ? 
 
MERCEDES 193 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 
 Well, yes, a cup without. What then ? How 
 white you are ! 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 Quick ! let me look you in the face. I wish to 
 tell you something. You loved me once ... it was 
 in May . . . your wound is quite well now ? No, no, 
 not that ! All things slip from me. Chiquita nay, 
 hold me closer, I do not see you. Into the sun 
 light into the sunlight ! 
 
 LOUVOIS 
 She is fainting ! 
 
 MERCEDES 
 
 I am dying I am poisoned. The wine was 
 drugged for the French. T was Pedro Mendez did 
 it, who hated all Frenchmen because of you. I 
 was desperate. Chiquita there in the cradle 
 
 She is dead and I [Sinks down at his feet 
 
 LOUVOIS, stooping over her 
 
 Mercedes ! Mercedes ! 
 
 After an interval a measured tramp is heard outside. A ser 
 geant with a file of soldiers in disorder enters the hut. 
 
194 MERCEDES 
 
 SCENE V 
 SERGEANT and SOLDIERS 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER 
 
 Behold ! he has killed the murderess. 
 
 SECOND SOLDIER 
 
 If she had but twenty lives now ! 
 
 THIRD SOLDIER 
 
 That would not bring back the brave Laboissiere 
 and the rest. 
 
 SECOND SOLDIER 
 
 Sapristi, no ! but it would give us life for life. 
 
 FOURTH SOLDIER 
 
 Misericorde ! are twenty 
 
 SERGEANT . 
 
 Hold your peace, all Of yOU ! (Advances and salutes 
 Louvois, who is half kneeling beside the body of the woman) My 
 
 captain! (Aside) He does not answer me. (Lays his 
 
 hand hurriedly on Louvois s shoulder and starts) SilcnCC, there ! 
 
 and stand uncovered. He is dying ! 
 
 Curtain 
 
FOOTNOTES 
 
 A BOOK OF QUATRAINS 
 
 TO THE READER 
 
 READER, you must take this verse 
 As you take to wife a maiden 
 With her faults and virtues laden - 
 Both for better and for worse. 
 
 DAY AND NIGHT 
 
 DAY is a snow-white Dove of heaven 
 That from the East glad message brings : 
 Night is a stealthy, evil Raven, 
 Wrapped to the eyes in his black wings. 
 
 MAPLE LEAVES 
 
 OCTOBER turned my maple s leaves to gold ; 
 The most are gone now ; here and there one lingers : 
 Soon these will slip from out the twigs weak hold, 
 Like coins between a dying miser s fingers. 
 195 
 
I9 6 FOOTNOTES 
 
 A CHILD S GRAVE 
 
 A LITTLE mound with chipped headstone.. 
 The grass, ah me ! uncut about the sward, 
 
 Summer by summer left alone 
 With one white lily keeping watch and ward. 
 
 PESSIMIST AND OPTIMIST 
 
 THIS one sits shivering in Fortune s smile, 
 
 Taking his joy with bated, doubtful breath. 
 This other, gnawed by hunger, all the while 
 Laughs in the teeth of Death. 
 
 GRACE AND STRENGTH 
 
 MANOAH S son, in his blind rage malign 
 Tumbling the temple down upon his foes, 
 Did no such feat as yonder delicate vine 
 That day by day untired holds up a rose. 
 
 FROM THE SPANISH 
 
 To him that hath, we are told, 
 Shall be given. Yes, by the Cross ! 
 To the rich man fate sends gold, 
 To the poor man loss on loss. 
 
OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 Cr 
 
 FOOTNOTES 197 
 
 MASKS 
 
 BLACK Tragedy lets slip her grim disguise 
 And shows you laughing lips and roguish eyes ; 
 But when, unmasked, gay Comedy appears, 
 How wan her cheeks are, and what heavy tears ! 
 
 COQUETTE 
 
 OR light or dark, or short or tall, 
 She sets a springe to snare them all ; 
 All s one to her above her fan 
 She d make sweet eyes at Caliban. 
 
 EPITAPHS 
 
 Honest lago. When his breath was fled 
 Doubtless these words were carven at his head. 
 Such lying epitaphs are like a rose 
 That in unlovely earth takes root and grows. 
 
 POPULARITY 
 
 SUCH kings of shreds have wooed and won her, 
 
 Such crafty knaves her laurel owned, 
 It has become almost an honor 
 Not to be crowned. 
 
198 FOOTNOTES 
 
 CIRCUMSTANCE 
 
 LINKED to a clod, harassed, and sad 
 With sordid cares, she knew not life was sweet 
 Who should have moved in marble halls, and had 
 
 Kings and crown-princes at her feet. 
 
 SPENDTHRIFT 
 
 THE fault s not mine, you understand : 
 
 God shaped my palm so I can hold 
 But little water in my hand 
 And not much gold. 
 
 THE TWO MASKS 
 
 I GAVE my heart its freedom to be gay 
 Or grave at will, when life was in its May ; 
 So I have gone, a pilgrim through the years, 
 With more of laughter in my scrip than tears, 
 
 MYRTILLA 
 
 THIS is the difference, neither more nor less, 
 
 Between Medusa s and Myrtilla s face : 
 The former slays us with its awfulness, 
 The latter with its grace. 
 
FOOTNOTES 199 
 
 ON HER BLUSHING 
 
 Now the red wins upon her cheek ; 
 
 Now white with crimson closes 
 In desperate struggle so to speak, 
 A War of Roses. 
 
 ON A VOLUME OF ANONYMOUS POEMS 
 ENTITLED "A MASQUE OF POETS" 
 
 VAIN is the mask. Who cannot at desire 
 Name every Singer in the hidden choir ? 
 That is a thin disguise which veils with care 
 The face, but lets the changeless heart lie bare. 
 
 THE DIFFERENCE 
 
 SOME weep because they part, 
 And languish broken-hearted, 
 And others O my heart ! 
 Because they never parted. 
 
 ON READING 
 
 GREAT thoughts in crude, unshapely verse set forth, 
 Lose half their preciousness, and ever must. 
 Unless the diamond with its own rich dust 
 Be cut and polished, it seems little worth. 
 
200 FOOTNOTES 
 
 THE ROSE 
 
 FIXED to her necklace, like another gem, 
 A rose she wore the flower June made for her; 
 Fairer it looked than when upon the stem, 
 And must, indeed, have been much happier. 
 
 MOONRISE AT SEA 
 
 UP from the dark the moon begins to creep ; 
 And now a pallid, haggard face lifts she 
 Above the water-line : thus from the deep 
 A drowned body rises solemnly. 
 
 ROMEO AND JULIET 
 
 FROM mask to mask, amid the masquerade, 
 Young Passion went with challenging, soft breath : 
 Art Love ? he whispered ; art thou Love, sweet maid ? 
 Then Love, with glittering eyelids, I am Death. 
 
 HOSPITALITY 
 
 WHEN friends are at your hearthside met, 
 Sweet courtesy has done its most 
 If you have made each guest forget 
 That he himself is not the host. 
 
FOOTNOTES 201 
 
 HUMAN IGNORANCE 
 
 WHAT mortal knows 
 Whence come the tint and odor of the rose ? 
 
 What probing deep 
 Has ever solved the mystery of sleep ? 
 
 FROM EASTERN SOURCES 
 
 i 
 
 IN youth my hair was black as night, 
 My life as white as driven snow : 
 As white as snow my hair is now, 
 And that is black which once was white. 
 
 ii 
 
 No wonder Hafiz wrote such verses, when 
 He had the bill of nightingale for pen ; 
 Nor that his lyrics were divine 
 Whose only ink was tears and wine. 
 
 in 
 
 A poor dwarf s figure, looming through the dense 
 Mists of a mountain, seemed a shape immense, 
 On seeing which, a giant, in dismay, 
 Took to his heels and ran away. 
 
202 FOOTNOTES 
 
 MEMORIES 
 
 Two things there are with Memory will abide, 
 Whatever else befall, while life flows by : 
 That soft cold hand-touch at the altar side ; 
 The thrill that shook you at your child s first cry 
 
 EVIL EASIER THAN GOOD 
 
 ERE half the good I planned to do 
 Was done, the short-breathed day was through. 
 Had my intents been dark instead of fair 
 I had done all, and still had time to spare. 
 
 FIREFLIES 
 
 SEE where at intervals the firefly s spark 
 Glimmers, and melts into the fragrant dark : 
 Gilds a leaf s edge one happy instant, then 
 Leaves darkness all a mystery again ! 
 
 PROBLEM 
 
 So closely knit are mind and brain, 
 Such web and woof are soul and clay, 
 How is it, being rent in twain, 
 One part shall live, and one decay ? 
 
FOOTNOTES 203 
 
 ORIGINALITY 
 
 No bird has ever uttered note 
 That was not in some first bird s throat ; 
 Since Eden s freshness and man s fall 
 No rose has been original. 
 
 KISMET 
 
 A GLANCE, a word and joy or pain 
 Befalls ; what was no more shall be. 
 How slight the links are in the chain 
 That binds us to our destiny ! 
 
 A HINT FROM HERRICK 
 
 No slightest golden rhyme he wrote 
 That held not something men must quote s 
 Thus by design or chance did he 
 Drop anchors to posterity. 
 
 PESSIMISTIC POETS 
 
 I LITTLE read those poets who have made 
 A noble art a pessimistic trade, 
 And trained their Pegasus to draw a hearse 
 Through endless avenues of drooping verse. 
 
204 FOOTNOTES 
 
 POINTS OF VIEW 
 
 BONNET in hand, obsequious and discreet, 
 
 The butcher that served Shakespeare with his meat 
 
 Doubtless esteemed him little, as a man 
 
 Who knew not how the market prices ran. 
 
 THE GRAVE OF EDWIN BOOTH 
 
 IN narrow space, with Booth, lie housed in, death 
 
 lago, Hamlet, Shy lock, Lear, Macbeth. 
 
 If still they seem to walk the painted scene, 
 
 T is but the ghosts of those that once have been. 
 
 QUITS 
 
 IF my best wines mislike thy taste, 
 And my best service win thy frown, 
 Then tarry not, I bid thee haste ; 
 There s many another Inn in town. 
 
JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 
 
 BOOK I 
 JUDITH IN THE TOWER 
 
 UNHERALDED, like some tornado loosed 
 Out of the brooding hills, it came to pass 
 That Holofernes, the Assyrian, 
 With horse and foot a mighty multitude, 
 Crossed the Euphrates, ravaging the land 
 To Esdraelon, and then hawk-like swooped 
 On Bethulia : there his trenches drew, 
 There his grim engines of destruction set 
 And stormed the place ; and gave them little rest 
 Within, till sad their plight was ; for at last 
 The wells ran low, the stores of barley failed, 
 And famine crept on them. A wheaten loaf 
 Was put in this scale and the gold in that, 
 So scarce was bread. Now were the city streets 
 Grown loud with lamentation, women s moans 
 And cries of children ; and one night there came 
 The plague, with breath as hot as the simoom 
 That blows the desert sand to flakes of fire. 
 205 
 
206 JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 
 
 Yet Holofernes could not batter down 
 The gates of bronze, nor decent entrance make 
 With beam or catapult in those tough walls, 
 Nor with his lighted arrows fire the roofs. 
 Gnawing his lip, among the tents he strode 
 Woe to the slave that stumbled in his path ! 
 And cursed the doting gods, who gave no aid, 
 But slumbered somewhere in their house of cloud. 
 Still wan-cheeked Famine and red-spotted Pest 
 Did their fell work ; these twain were his allies. 
 So he withdrew his men a little way 
 Into the hill-land, where good water was, 
 And shade of trees that spread their forked boughs 
 Like a stag s antlers. There he pitched his tents 
 On the steep slope, and counted the slow hours, 
 Teaching his heart such patience as he knew. 
 
 At midnight, in that second month of siege, 
 Judith had climbed into a mouldered tower 
 That looked out on the vile Assyrian camp 
 Stretched on the slopes beyond an open plain. 
 Here did she come, of late, to think and pray. 
 Below her, where the spiral vapors rose, 
 The army like a witch s caldron seethed. 
 At times she heard the camels gurgling moan, 
 The murmur of men s tongues, and clank of arms 
 Muffled by distance. Through the tree-stems shone 
 The scattered watchfires, lurid fiends of night 
 
JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 207 
 
 That with red hands reached up and clutched the 
 
 dark ; 
 
 And now and then as some mailed warrior strode 
 Into the light, she saw his armor gleam. 
 The city, with its pestilential breath, 
 A hive of woes, lay close beneath her feet ; 
 Above her leaned the sleepless Pleiades. 
 
 That night she held long vigil in the tower, 
 Merari s daughter, dead Manasseh s wife, 
 Who, since the barley harvest when he died, 
 Had dwelt three years a widow in her house, 
 And looked on no man : where Manasseh slept 
 In his strait sepulchre, there slept her heart. 
 Yet dear to her, and for his memory dear, 
 Was Israel, the chosen people, now 
 How shorn of glory ! Hither had she come 
 To pray in the still starlight, far from those 
 Who watched or wept in the sad world below ; 
 And in the midnight, in the tower alone, 
 She knelt and prayed as one that doubted not : 
 
 " Oh, are we not Thy children who of old 
 Trod the Chaldean idols in the dust, 
 And built our altars only unto Thee ? 
 
 " Didst Thou not lead us into Canaan 
 For love of us, because we spurned the gods ? 
 Didst Thou not shield us that we worshipped Thee ? 
 
2oS JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 
 
 " And when a famine covered all the land, 
 And drove us into Egypt, where the King 
 Did persecute Thy chosen to the death 
 
 " Didst Thou not smite the swart Egyptians then, 
 And guide us through the bowels of the deep 
 That swallowed up their horsemen and their King ? 
 
 " For saw we not, as in a wondrous dream, 
 The up-tossed javelins, the plunging steeds, 
 The chariots sinking in the wild Red Sea ? 
 
 " O Lord, Thou hast been with us in our woe, 
 And from Thy bosom Thou hast cast us forth, 
 And to Thy bosom taken us again : 
 
 " For we have built our temples in the hills 
 By Sinai, and on Jordan s sacred banks, 
 And in Jerusalem we worship Thee. 
 
 " O Lord, look down and help us. Stretch Thy 
 
 hand 
 
 And free Thy people. Make our faith as steel, 
 And draw us nearer, nearer unto Thee." 
 
 Then Judith loosed the hair about her brows, 
 About her brows the long black tresses loosed, 
 And bent her head, and wept for Israel. 
 And while she wept, bowed like a lotus flower 
 
JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 209 
 
 That leans to its own shadow in the Nile, 
 
 A strangest silence fell upon the land j 
 
 Like to a sea-mist spreading east and west 
 
 It spread, and close on this there came a sound 
 
 Of snow-soft plumage rustling in the dark, 
 
 And voices that such magic whisperings made 
 
 As the sea makes at twilight on a strip 
 
 Of sand and pebble. Slowly from her knees 
 
 Judith arose, but dared not lift her eyes, 
 
 Awed with the sense that now beside her stood 
 
 A God s white Angel, though she saw him not, 
 
 While round the tower a winged retinue 
 
 In the wind s eddies drifted ; then the world 
 
 Crumbled and vanished, and nought else she knew, 
 
 The Angel stooped, and from his luminous brow 
 
 And from the branch of amaranth he bore 
 
 A gleam fell on her, touching eyes and lips 
 
 With light ineffable, and she became 
 
 Fairer than morning in Arabia. 
 
 On cheek and brow and bosom lay such tint 
 
 As in the golden process of mid-June 
 
 Creeps up the slender stem to dye the rose. 
 
 Then silently the Presence spread his vans. 
 
 Like one that from a lethargy awakes 
 
 The Hebrew woman started : in the tower 
 
 No winged thing was, save on a crossbeam 
 
 A twittering sparrow ; from the underworld 
 
 Came sounds of pawing hoof, and clink of steel ; 
 
 And where the black horizon blackest lay 
 
2io JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 
 
 A moment gone, a thread of purple ran 
 
 That changed to rose, and then to sudden gold. 
 
 And Judith stood bewildered, with flushed cheek 
 Pressed to the stone-work. When she knelt to 
 
 pray 
 
 It was dead night, and now t was break of dawn ; 
 Yet had not sleep upon her eyelids set 
 Its purple seal. In this strange interval 
 Of void or trance, or slumber-mocking death, 
 What had befallen ? As a skein of flax, 
 Dropped by a weaver seated at his loom, 
 Lies in a tangle, and but knots the more, 
 And slips the fingers seeking for the clue : 
 So all her thought lay tangled in her brain, 
 And what had chanced eluded memory. 
 
 Now was day risen ; on the green foothills 
 Men were in motion, and such life as was 
 In the sad city dragged itself to light. 
 Then Judith turned, and slowly down the stair 
 Descended to the court. Outside the gate, 
 In the broad sun, lounged Achior, lately fled 
 From Holofernes ; as she passed she spoke : 
 " The Lord be with thee, Achior, all thy days." 
 And Achior captain of the Ammonites, 
 In exile, but befriended of the Jews 
 Paused, and looked after her with pensive eyes. 
 Unknown of any one, these many months 
 
JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 211 
 
 His corselet held a hopeless tender heart 
 
 For dead Manasseh s wife too fair she was, 
 
 And rich this day how wonderfully fair ! 
 
 But she, unheedful, crossed the tile-paved court, 
 
 And passing through an archway reached the place 
 
 Where underneath an ancient aloe-tree 
 
 Sat Chabris with Ozias and his friend 
 
 Charmis, patriarchs of the leaguered town. 
 
 There Judith halted, and obeisance made 
 With hands crossed on her breast, as was most 
 
 meet, 
 
 They being aged men and governors. 
 And as she bent before them where they sate, 
 They marvelled much that in that stricken town 
 Was one face left not hunger-pinched, or wan, 
 With grief s acquaintance : such was Judith s face. 
 And white-haired Charmis looked on her, and 
 
 said: 
 " This woman walketh in the light of God." 
 
 "Would it were so!" said Judith. "I know 
 
 not ; 
 
 But this I know, that where faith is, is light. 
 Let us not doubt Him ! If we doubt we die. 
 Oh, is it true, Ozias, thou hast mind 
 To yield the city to our enemies 
 After five days, unless the Lord shall stoop 
 From heaven to save us ? " 
 
212 JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 
 
 And Ozias said : 
 
 " Our young men perish on the battlements ; 
 Our wives and children by the empty wells 
 Lie down and perish." 
 
 " If we doubt we die. 
 But whoso trusts in God, as Isaac did, 
 Though suffering greatly even to the end, 
 Dwells in a citadel upon a rock j 
 Wave shall not reach it, nor fire topple down." 
 
 " Our young men perish on the battlements," 
 Answered Ozias ; " by the dusty tanks, 
 Our wives and children." 
 
 " They shall go and dwell 
 With Seers and Prophets in eternal life. 
 Is there no God ? " 
 
 " One only," Chabris spoke, 
 " But now His face is turned aside from us. 
 He sees not Israel." 
 
 " Is His mercy less 
 
 Than Holofernes ? Shall we place our trust 
 In this fierce bull of Asshur ? " 
 
 " Five days more," 
 Said old Ozias, " we shall trust in God." 
 
JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 213 
 
 " Ah ! His time is not man s time," Judith cried, 
 " And why should we, the dust beneath His feet, 
 Decide the hour of our deliverance, 
 Saying to Him : Thus shalt Thou do, and so ? 
 Ozias, thou to whom the heart of man 
 Is as a scroll illegible, dost thou 
 Pretend to read the mystery of God ? " 
 
 Then gray Ozias bowed his head, abashed, 
 And spoke not; but the white-haired Charmis 
 
 spoke : 
 
 " The woman sayeth wisely. We are wrong 
 That in our anguish mock the Lord our God, 
 Staff that we rest on, stream whereat we drink ! " 
 And then to Judith: "Child, what wouldst thou 
 have?" 
 
 " I cannot answer thee, nor make it plain 
 In my own thought. This night I had a dream 
 Not born of sleep, for both my eyes were wide, 
 My sense alive a vision, if thou wilt, 
 Of which the scattered fragments in my mind 
 Are as the fragments of a crystal vase 
 That, slipping from the slave-girl s careless hand, 
 Falls on the marble. No most cunning skill 
 Shall join the pieces and make whole the vase. 
 So with my vision. I seem still to hear 
 Strange voices round me, inarticulate 
 Words shaped and uttered by invisible lips ; 
 
214 JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 
 
 At whiles there seems a palm close pressed to mine 
 
 That fain would lead me somewhere. I know not 
 
 What all portends. Some great event is near. 
 
 Last night celestial spirits were on wing 
 
 Over the city. As I sat alone 
 
 Within the tower, upon the stroke of twelve 
 
 Look, look, Ozias ! Charmis, Chabris, look ! 
 
 See ye not, yonder, a white mailed hand 
 
 That with its levelled finger points through air ! " 
 
 The three old men, with lifted, startled eyes, 
 Turned, and beheld on the transparent void 
 A phantom hand in silver gauntlet clad 
 With stretched forefinger ; and they spake no word, 
 But in the loose folds of their saffron robes 
 Their wan and meagre faces muffled up, 
 And sat there, like those statues which the wind 
 Near some old city on a desert s edge 
 Wraps to the brow in cerements of red dust. 
 
 After a silence Judith softly said : 
 * T is gone ! Fear not ; it was a sign to me, 
 To me alone. Ozias, didst thou mark 
 The way it pointed ? to the Eastern Gate ! 
 Send the guard orders not to stay me there. 
 
 question not ! I but obey the sign. 
 
 1 must go hence. Before the shadows fall 
 Upon the courtyard thrice, I shall return, 
 Else shall men s eyes not look upon me more. 
 What darkness lies between this hour and that 
 
JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 215 
 
 Tongue may not say. The thing I can I will, 
 Leaning on God, remembering what befell 
 Jacob in Syria when he fed the flocks 
 Of Laban, and how Isaac in his day, 
 And Abraham, were chastened by the Lord. 
 Wait thou in patience ; till I come, keep thou 
 The sanctuaries." And the three gave oath 
 To hold the town ; and if they held it not, 
 Then should she find them in the synagogue 
 Dead near the sacred ark ; the spearmen dead 
 At the four gates ; upon the battlements 
 The archers bleaching. " Be it so," she said, 
 " Yet be it not so ! Shield me with thy prayers ! " 
 
 Then Judith made obeisance as before, 
 Passed on, and left them pondering her words 
 And that weird spectre hand in silver mail, 
 Which, vanishing, had left a moth-like glow 
 Against the empty, unsubstantial air. 
 Still were their eyes fixed on it in mute awe. 
 
 When Judith gained her room in the dull court, 
 Where all the houses in the shadow lay 
 Of the great synagogue, she threw aside 
 The livery of grief, and in her hair 
 Braided a thread of opals, on her breasts 
 Poured precious ointment, and put on the robe 
 That in a chest of camphor-wood had lain 
 Unworn since she was wed the rustling robe, 
 Heavy with vine-work, delicate flower and star, 
 
2i6 JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 
 
 And looped at the brown shoulder with a pearl 
 To ransom princes. Had he seen her then, 
 The sad young captain of the Ammonites, 
 Had he by chance but seen her as she stood 
 Clasping her girdle, it had been despair ! 
 
 Then Judith veiled her face, and took her scarf, 
 And wrapped the scarf about her, and went forth 
 Into the street with Marah, the handmaid. 
 It was the hour when all the wretched folk 
 Haunted the market-stalls to get such scraps 
 As famine left j the rich bazaars were closed, 
 Those of the cloth-merchants and jewellers ; 
 But to the booths where aught to eat was had, 
 The starving crowds converged, vociferous. 
 Thus at that hour the narrow streets were thronged. 
 And as in summer when the bearded wheat, 
 With single impulse leaning all one way, 
 Follows the convolutions of the wind, 
 And parts to left or right, as the wind veers : 
 So went men s eyes with Judith, so the crowd 
 Parted to give her passage. On she pressed 
 Through noisome lanes where poverty made lair, 
 By stately marble porticos pressed on 
 To the East Gate, a grille of triple bronze, 
 That lifted at her word, and then shut down 
 With horrid clangor. The crude daylight there 
 Dazed her an instant ; then she set her face 
 Towards Holofernes camp in the hill-land. 
 
BOOK II 
 THE CAMP OF ASSHUR 
 
 O SADDENED Muse, sing not of that rough way 
 Her light feet trod among the flints and thorns, 
 Where some chance arrow might have stained her 
 
 breast, 
 
 And death lay coiled in the slim viper s haunt ; 
 Nor how the hot sun tracked them till they reached, 
 She and her maid, a place of drooping boughs 
 Cooled by a spring set in a cup of moss, 
 And bathed their cheeks, and gathered mulberries, 
 And at the sudden crackling of a twig 
 Were wellnigh dead with fear : sing, rather, now 
 Of Holofernes, stretched before his tent 
 Upon the spotted hide of that wild beast 
 He slew beside the Ganges, he alone 
 With just his dagger ; from the jungle there 
 The creature leapt on him, and tore his throat, 
 In the dim starlight : that same leopard skin 
 Went with him to all wars. This day he held 
 A council of the chiefs. Close at his feet 
 His iron helmet trailed on the sere grass 
 Its horsehair plume a Hindu maiden s hair, 
 217 
 
218 JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 
 
 Men whispered under breath and from his lance, 
 The spear set firmly in the sun-scorched earth 
 Where he had thrust it, hung his massive shield. 
 Upon the shield a dragon was, with eyes 
 Of sea-green emeralds, which caught the light 
 And flashed it back, and seemed a thing that lived. 
 
 There lay the Prince of Asshur, with his chin 
 Propped on one hand, and the gaunt captains ranged 
 In groups about him ; men from Kurdistan, 
 Men from the Indus, and the salt-sea dunes, 
 And those bleak snow-lands that to northward lie 
 A motley conclave, now in hot debate 
 Whether to press the siege or wait the end. 
 And one said : " Lo ! the fruit is ripe to fall, 
 Let us go pluck it ; better to lie dead, 
 Each on his shield, than stay here with no grain 
 To feed the mares, and no bread left." " The moat 
 Is wide," said one, " and many are the spears, 
 And stout the gates. Have we not tried our men 
 Against the well-set edges of those spears ? 
 Note how the ravens wheel in hungry files 
 Above the trenches, and straight disappear. 
 See where they rise, red-beaked and surfeited ! 
 Has it availed ? The city stands. Within 
 There s that shall gnaw its heart out, if we wait, 
 And bide the sovran will of the wise gods." 
 Some of the younger captains made assent, 
 But others scowled, and mocked them, and one 
 cried : 
 
JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 219 
 
 " Ye should have tarried by the river s bank 
 At home, and decked your hair with butterflies 
 Like the king s harlots. Little use are ye." 
 " Nay," cried another, "they did well to come; 
 They have their uses. When our meat is gone 
 We 11 even feed upon the tender flesh 
 Of these tame girls, who, though they dress in steel, 
 Like more the tremor of a cithern string 
 Than the shrill whistle of an arrowhead." 
 
 Death lay in lighter spoken words than these, 
 And quick hands sought the hilt, and spears were 
 
 poised, 
 
 And they had one another slain outright, 
 These fiery lords, when suddenly each blade 
 Slipped back to sheath, and the pale captains stood 
 Transfixed, beholding in their very midst 
 A woman whose exceeding radiance 
 Of brow and bosom made her garments seem 
 Threadbare and lustreless, yet whose attire 
 Outshone the purples of a Persian queen 
 That decks her for some feast, or makes her rich 
 To welcome back from war her lord the king. 
 
 For Judith, who knew all the hillside paths 
 As one may know the delicate azure veins 
 That branch and cross on his beloved s wrist, 
 Had passed the Tartar guards in the thick wood, 
 And gained the camp s edge, and there stayed her 
 steps, 
 
220 JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 
 
 Appalled at sight of all those angry lords, 
 But taking heart, had noiselessly approached, 
 And stood among them, unperceived till then. 
 Now on the air arose such murmurous sound 
 As when a swarm of honey-bees in June 
 Rises, and hangs mist-like above the hives, 
 And fills the air with its sweet monotone. 
 The Prince of Asshur knew not what it meant, 
 And springing to his feet, thrust back the chiefs 
 That hampered him, and cried in a loud voice : 
 " Who breaks upon our councils ? " Then his eyes 
 Discovered Judith. As in a wild stretch 
 Of silt and barren rock, a gracious flower, 
 Born of the seed some bird of passage dropped, 
 Leans from the stem and with its beauty lights 
 The lonely waste, so Judith, standing there, 
 Seemed to illumine all the dismal camp, 
 And Holof ernes voice took softer tone : 
 "Whence comest thou thy station, and thy 
 name ? " 
 
 " Merari s daughter, dead Manasseh s wife, 
 Judith. I come from yonder hapless town." 
 
 "Methought the phantom of some murdered 
 
 queen 
 
 From the dead years had risen at my feet ! 
 If these Samarian women are thus shaped, 
 O my brave Captains, let not one be slain ! - 
 
JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 221 
 
 What seekest thou within the hostile lines 
 Of Asshur?" 
 
 " Holofernes." 
 
 " This is he." 
 
 " O good my Lord," cried Judith, "if indeed 
 Thou art that Holofernes whom I seek, 
 And dread, in truth, to find, low at thy feet 
 Behold thy handmaid who in fear has flown 
 From a doomed people." 
 
 " If this thing be so, 
 
 Thou shalt have shelter of our tents, and food, 
 And meet observance, though our enemy. 
 Touching thy people, they with tears of blood, 
 And ashes on their heads, shall rue the hour 
 They brought not tribute to the lord of all, 
 The king at Nineveh. But thou shalt live." 
 
 " O good my lord," said Judith, "as thou wilt 
 So would thy servant. And I pray thee now 
 Let them that listen stand awhile aside, 
 For I have that for thine especial ear 
 Of import to thee." 
 
 Then the chiefs fell back 
 Under the trees, and leaned on their huge shields, 
 
222 JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 
 
 Eyeing the Hebrew woman whose sweet looks 
 Brought them home-thoughts and visions of their 
 
 wives 
 
 In that far land they might not see again. 
 And Judith spoke, and they strained ear to catch 
 Her words ; but only the soft voice was theirs : 
 
 " My lord, if yet thou holdest in thy thought 
 The words which Achior the Ammonite 
 Once spake to thee concerning Israel, 
 O treasure them ; no guile was in those words. 
 True is it, master, that our people kneel 
 To an unseen but not an unknown God : 
 By day and night He watches over us, 
 And while we worship Him we cannot fall, 
 Our tabernacles shall be unprofaned, 
 Our spears invincible ; but if we sin, 
 If we transgress the law by which we live, 
 Our sanctuaries shall be desecrate, 
 Our tribes thrust forth into the wilderness, 
 Scourged and accursed. Therefore, O my lord, 
 Seeing this nation wander from the faith 
 Taught of the Prophets, I have fled dismayed. 
 Heed, Holofernes, what I speak this day, 
 And if the thing I tell thee prove not true, 
 Let not thy falchion tarry in its sheath, 
 But seek my heart. Why should thy handmaid 
 
 live, 
 Having deceived thee, thou the crown of men ? " 
 
JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 223 
 
 She spoke, and paused ; and sweeter on his ear 
 Was Judith s voice than ever to him seemed 
 The silver laughter of the Assyrian girls 
 In the bazaars, or when in the cool night, 
 After the sultry heat of the long day, 
 They came down to the river with their lutes. 
 The ceaseless hum that rose from the near tents, 
 The neighing of the awful battle-steeds, 
 The winds that sifted through the fronded palms 
 He heard not ; only Judith s voice he heard. 
 
 " O listen, Holofernes, my sweet lord, 
 And thou shalt rule not only Bethulia, 
 Rich with its hundred altars crusted gold, 
 But Cades-Barne and Jerusalem, 
 And all the vast hill-land to the blue sea. 
 For I am come to give into thy hand 
 The key of Israel Israel now no more, 
 Since she disowns the Prophets and her God." 
 
 " Speak, for I needs must listen to these things." 
 
 " Know then, O prince, it is our yearly use 
 To lay aside the first fruits of the grain, 
 And so much oil, so many skins of wine, 
 Which, being sanctified, are held intact 
 For the High Priests who serve before our Lord 
 In the great temple at Jerusalem. 
 This holy food which even to touch is death 
 
224 JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 
 
 The rulers, sliding from their ancient faith, 
 Fain would lay hands on, being wellnigh starved ; 
 And they have sent a runner to the Priests 
 (The Jew Abijah, who, at dead of night, 
 Shot like a javelin between thy guards), 
 Bearing a parchment begging that the Church 
 Yield them permit to eat the sacred corn. 
 But t is not lawful they should do this thing, 
 Yet will they do it. Then shalt thou behold 
 The archers tumbling headlong from the walls, 
 Their strength gone from them ; thou shalt see the 
 
 spears 
 
 Splitting like reeds within the spearmen s hands, 
 And the strong captains tottering like old men 
 Stricken with palsy. Then, O mighty prince, 
 Then with thy trumpets blaring doleful dooms, 
 And thy proud banners waving in the wind, 
 With squares of men and eager clouds of horse 
 Thou shalt sweep down on them, and strike them 
 
 dead! 
 
 But now, my lord, before this come to pass, 
 Three days must wane, for they touch not the food 
 Until the Jew Abijah shall return 
 With the Priests message. Here among thy hosts, 
 O Holofernes, would I dwell the while, 
 Asking but this, that I and my handmaid 
 Each night, at the sixth hour, may egress have re 
 Unto the valley, there to weep and pray 
 That God forsake this nation in its sin. 
 
JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 225 
 
 And as my prophecy prove true or false, 
 So be it with me." 
 
 Judith ceased, and stood 
 
 With hands crossed on her breast, and face up 
 raised. 
 
 And Holofernes answered not at first, 
 But bent his eyes on the uplifted face, 
 And mused, and then made answer : " Be it so. 
 Thou shalt be free to go and come, and none 
 Shall stay thee, nor molest thee, these three days. 
 And if, O pearl of women, the event 
 Prove not a dwarf beside the prophecy, 
 Then hath the sun not looked upon thy like ; 
 Thy name shall be as honey on men s lips, 
 And in their memory fragrant as a spice. 
 Music shall wait on thee ; crowns shalt thou have, 
 And jewel chests of costly sandal-wood, 
 And robes in texture like the ring-dove s throat, 
 And milk-white mares, and slaves, and chariots 
 And thou shalt dwell with me in Nineveh, 
 In Nineveh, the City of the Gods." 
 
 Then on her cheek the ripe blood of her race 
 Faltered an instant. " Even as thou wilt 
 So would thy servant." Thereupon the slaves 
 Brought meat and wine, and placed them in a 
 
 tent, 
 A green pavilion standing separate 
 
226 JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 
 
 Hard by the brook, for Judith and her maid. 
 But Judith ate not, saying : " Master, no. 
 It is not lawful that we taste of these ; 
 My maid has brought a pouch of parched corn, 
 And bread and figs and wine of our own land, 
 Which shall not fail us." Holofernes said, 
 " So let it be," and pushing back the screen 
 Passed out, and left them sitting in the tent. 
 
 And when they were alone within the tent, 
 "O Marah," cried the mistress, "do I dream? 
 Is this the dread Assyrian rumor paints, 
 He who upon the plains of Ragau smote 
 The hosts of King Arphaxad, and despoiled 
 Sidon and Tyrus, and left none unslain ? 
 Gentle is he we thought so terrible, 
 Whose name we stilled unruly children with 
 At bedtime See ! the Bull of Asshur comes / 
 And all the little ones would straight to bed. 
 Is he not statured as should be a king ? 
 Beside our tallest captain this grave prince 
 Towers like the palm above the olive-tree. 
 A gentle prince, with gracious words and ways." 
 And Marah said : " A gentle prince he is 
 To look on ; I misdoubt his ways and words." 
 " And I, O Marah, I would trust him not ! " 
 And Judith laid her cheek upon her arm 
 With a quick laugh, and like to diamonds 
 Her white teeth shone between the parted lips. 
 
JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 227 
 
 Now Holofernes held himself aloof 
 That day, spoke little with his chiefs, nor cared 
 To watch the athletes at their games of strength 
 Under the cedars, as his custom was, 
 But in a grove of clustered tamarisk trees 
 On the camp s outer limit walked alone, 
 Save for one face that haunted the blue air, 
 Save for one voice that murmured at his ear. 
 There, till the twilight flooded the low lands 
 And the stars came, these kept him company. 
 
 The word of Judith s beauty had spread wide 
 Through the gray city that stretched up the slope ; 
 And as the slow dusk gathered many came 
 From far encampments, on some vain pretext, 
 To pass the green pavilion long-haired men 
 That dwelt by the Hydaspes, and the sons 
 Of the Elymeans, and slim Tartar youths, 
 And folk that stained their teeth with betel-nut 
 And wore rough goatskin, herdsmen of the hills; 
 But saw not Judith, who from common air 
 Was shut, and none might gaze upon her face. 
 
 But when the night fell, and the camps were 
 
 still, 
 
 And nothing moved beneath the icy stars 
 In their blue bourns, save some tall Kurdish guard 
 That stalked among the cedars, Judith called 
 And wakened Marah, and the sentinel 
 
228 JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 
 
 Drew back, and let them pass beyond the lines 
 
 Into the plain ; and Judith s heart was full 
 
 Seeing the watchfires burning on the towers 
 
 Of her own city. As a hundred years 
 
 The hours seemed since she stood within its walls, 
 
 Her heart so yearned to it. Here on the sand 
 
 The two knelt down in prayer, and Marah thought : 
 
 " How is it we should come so far to pray ? " 
 
 Not knowing Judith s cunning that had gained 
 
 By this device free passage to and fro 
 
 Between the guards. When they had prayed, they 
 
 rose 
 And went through the black shadows back to camp. 
 
 One cresset twinkled dimly in the tent 
 Of Holofernes, and Bagoas, his slave, 
 Lay on a strip of matting at the door, 
 Drunk with the wine of sleep. Not so his lord 
 On the soft leopard skin ; a fitful sleep 
 Was his this night, tormented by a dream 
 That ever waked him. Through the curtained 
 
 air 
 
 A tall and regal figure came and went ; 
 At times a queen s bright diadem pressed down 
 The bands of perfumed hair, and gold -wrought 
 
 stuffs 
 
 Rustled ; at times the apparition stood 
 Draped only in a woven mist of veils, 
 Like the king s dancing-girls at Nineveh. 
 
JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 229 
 
 And once it stole to his couch side, and stooped 
 And touched his brow with tantalizing lip, 
 Undoing all the marvel of the dream ; 
 For Holofernes turned then on the couch, 
 Sleep fled his eyelids, and would come no more. 
 
BOOK III 
 THE FLIGHT 
 
 ON the horizon, as the prow of Dawn 
 
 Ploughed through the huddled clouds, a wave of 
 
 gold 
 
 Went surging up the dark, and breaking there 
 Dashed its red spray against the cliffs and spurs, 
 But left the valley in deep shadow still. 
 And still the mist above the Asshur camp 
 Hung in white folds, and on the pendent boughs 
 The white dew hung. While yet no bird had 
 
 moved 
 
 A wing in its dim nest, the wakeful prince 
 Rose from the couch, and wrapped in his long 
 
 cloak 
 
 Stepped over the curved body of the slave, 
 And thridding moodily the street of tents 
 Came to the grove of clustered tamarisk trees 
 Where he had walked and mused the bygone 
 
 day. 
 
 Here on a broken ledge he sat him down, 
 Soothed by the morning scent of flower and herb 
 230 
 
JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 231 
 
 And the cool vintage of the unbreathed air ; 
 And presently the sleep that night denied 
 The gray dawn brought him; and he slept and 
 dreamed. 
 
 Before him rose the pinnacles and domes 
 Of Nineveh ; he walked the streets, and heard 
 The chatter of the merchants in the booths 
 Pricing their wares, the water-seller s cry, 
 The flower-girl s laugh a festival it seemed, 
 In honor of some conqueror or god, 
 For cloths of gold and purple tissues hung 
 From frieze and peristyle, and cymbals clashed, 
 And the long trumpets sounded : now he breathed 
 The airs of a great river sweeping down 
 Past ruined temples and the tombs of kings, 
 And heard the wash of waves on a vague coast. 
 Then, in the swift transition of a dream, 
 He found himself in a damp catacomb 
 Searching by torchlight for his own carved name 
 On a sarcophagus ; and as he searched 
 A group of wailing shapes drew slowly near 
 The hates and cruel passions of his youth 
 Become incorporate and immortal things, 
 With tongue to blazon his eternal guilt ; 
 And on him fell strange terror, who had known 
 Neither remorse nor terror, and he sprang 
 Upon his feet, and broke from out the spell, 
 Clutching his sword-hilt ; and before him stood 
 
232 JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 
 
 Bagoas, the eunuch, bearing on his head 
 An urn just filled at the clear brook hard by. 
 
 Then Holofernes could have struck the slave 
 Dead in his path what man had ever seen 
 The Prince of Asshur tremble ? But he turned 
 Back to the camp, and the slave followed on 
 At heel, grown sullen also, like a hound 
 That takes each color of his master s mood. 
 And when the two had reached the tent, the prince 
 Halted, and went not in at once, but said : 
 " Go, fetch me wine, and let my soul make cheer, 
 For I am sick with visions of the night." 
 
 Within the tent alone, he sat and mused : 
 " What thing is this hath so unstrung my heart 
 A foolish dream appalls me ? what dark spell ? 
 Is it an omen that the end draws nigh ? 
 Such things foretell the doom of fateful men 
 Stars, comets, apparitions hint their doom. 
 The night before my grandsire got his wound 
 In front of Memphis, and therewith was dead, 
 He dreamt a lying Ethiop he had slain 
 Was strangling him ; and, later, my own sire 
 Saw death in a red writing on a leaf. 
 And I, too " Here Bagoas brought the wine 
 And set it by him ; but he pushed it back. 
 " Nay, I 11 not drink it, take away the cup ; 
 And this day let none vex me with affairs, 
 
JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 233 
 
 For I am ill and troubled in my thought. 
 Go no, come hither ! these are my commands : 
 Search thou the camp for choicest flesh and fruit, 
 And spread to-night a feast in this same tent, 
 And hang the place with fragrant-smelling boughs 
 Or such wild flowers as hide in the ravine ; 
 Then bid the Hebrew woman that she come 
 To banquet with us. As thou lovest life, 
 Bring her ! What matters, when the strong gods 
 
 call, 
 Whether they find a man at feast or prayer ? " 
 
 Bagoas bowed him to his master s foot 
 With hidden cynic smile, and went his way 
 To spoil the camp of such poor food as was, 
 And gather fragrant boughs to dress the tent, 
 Sprigs of the clove and sprays of lavender ; 
 And meeting Marah with her water jar 
 At the brookside, delivered his lord s word. 
 Then Judith sent him answer in this wise : 
 " O what am I that should gainsay my lord ? " 
 And Holofernes found the answer well. 
 " Were this not so," he mused, " would not my name 
 Be as a jest and gibe mong womankind ? 
 Maidens would laugh behind their unloosed hair. " 
 
 " O Marah, see ! my lord keeps not his word. 
 He is as those false jewellers who change 
 Some rich stone for a poorer, when none looks. 
 
234 JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 
 
 Three days he promised, and not two are gone ! 
 Thus Judith said, and smiled, but in her heart : 
 " O save me, Lord, from this dark cruel prince, 
 And from mine own self save me ; for this man, 
 A worshipper of fire and senseless stone, 
 Slayer of babes upon the mother s breast, 
 He, even he, hath by some conjurer s trick, 
 Or by his heathen beauty, in me stirred 
 Such pity as stays anger s lifted hand. 
 O let not my hand falter, in Thy name ! " 
 And thrice that day, by hazard left alone, 
 Judith bowed down, upon the broidered mats 
 Bowed down in shame and wretchedness, and 
 
 prayed : 
 "Since Thou hast sent the burden, send the 
 
 strength ! 
 
 O Thou who lovest Israel, give me strength 
 And cunning such as never woman had, 
 That my deceit may be his stripe and scar, 
 My kiss his swift destruction. This for thee, 
 My city, Bethulia, this for thee ! " 
 
 Now the one star that ruled the night-time then, 
 Against the deep blue-blackness of the sky 
 Took shape, and shone ; and Judith at the door 
 Of the pavilion waited for Bagoas ; 
 She stood there lovelier than the night s one star. 
 But Marah, looking on her, could have wept, 
 For Marah s soul was troubled, knowing all 
 
JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 235 
 
 That had been hidden from her till this hour. 
 The deadly embassy that brought them there, 
 And the dark moment s peril, now she knew. 
 But Judith smiled, and whispered, " It is well ; " 
 And later, paling, whispered, " Fail me not ! " 
 
 Then came Bagoas, and led her to the tent 
 Of Holofernes, and she entered in 
 And knelt before him in the cressets light 
 Demurely like a slave-girl at the feet 
 Of her new master, whom she fain would please, 
 He having paid a helmetful of gold 
 That day for her upon the market-place, 
 And would have paid a hundred pieces more. 
 So Judith knelt ; and the dark prince inclined 
 Above her graciously, and bade her rise 
 And sit with him on the spread leopard skin. 
 Yet she would not, but rose, and let her scarf 
 Drift to her feet, and stood withdrawn a space, 
 Bright in her jewels ; and so stood, and seemed 
 Like some rich idol that a conqueror, 
 Sacking a town, finds in a marble niche 
 And sets among the pillage in his tent. 
 
 " Nay, as thou wilt, O fair Samarian ! " 
 Thus Holofernes, " thou art empress here." 
 
 " Not queen, not empress would I be, O prince," 
 Judith gave answer, " only thy handmaid, 
 
236 JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 
 
 And one not well content to share her charge." 
 Then Judith came to his couch side, and said : 
 " This night, O prince, no other slave than I 
 Shall wait on thee with meat and fruit and wine, 
 And bring the scented water for thy hands, 
 And spread the silvered napkin on thy knee. 
 So subtle am I, I shall know thy thought 
 Before thou thinkest, and thy spoken word 
 Ere thou canst speak it. Let Bagoas go 
 This night among his people, save he fear 
 To lose his place and wage, through some one 
 
 else 
 More trained and skilful showing his defect ! " 
 
 Prince Holofernes smiled upon her mirth, 
 Finding it pleasant. " O Bagoas," he cried, 
 " Another hath usurped thee. Get thee gone, 
 Son of the midnight ! But stray not from camp, 
 Lest the lean tiger-whelps should break their fast. 
 And thou forget I must be waked at dawn." 
 
 So when Bagoas had gone into the night, 
 Judith set forth the viands for the prince ; 
 Upon a stand at the low couch s side 
 Laid grapes and apricots, and poured the wine, 
 And while he ate she held the jewelled cup, 
 Nor failed to fill it to the silver s edge 
 Each time he drank ; and the red vintage seemed 
 More rich to him because of her light hands 
 
JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 237 
 
 And the gold bangle that slipped down her wrist. 
 Now, in the compass of his thirty years 
 In no one day had he so drank of wine. 
 
 The opiate breath of the half-wilted flowers 
 And the gray smoke that from the cressets curled 
 Made the air dim and heavy in the tent ; 
 And the prince drowsed, and through the curtained 
 
 mist, 
 
 As in his last night s vision, came and went 
 The tall and regal figure : now he saw, 
 Outlined against the light, a naked arm 
 Bound near the shoulder by a hoop of gold, 
 And now a sandal flashed, with jewels set. 
 Through half-shut lids he watched her come and 
 
 go, 
 
 This Jewish queen that was somehow his slave ; 
 And once he leaned to her, and felt her breath 
 Upon his cheek like a perfumed air 
 Blown from a far-off grove of cinnamon ; 
 Then at the touch shrank back, but knew not why, 
 Moved by some instinct deeper than his sense. 
 At last all things lost sequence in his mind ; 
 And in a dream he saw her take the lute 
 And hold it to her bosom while she sang ; 
 And in a dream he listened to the song 
 A folklore legend of an ancient king, 
 The first on earth that ever tasted wine, 
 Who drank, and from him cast the grief called life 
 
2 3 JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 
 
 As t were a faded mantle. Like a mist 
 The music drifted from the silvery strings : 
 
 " The small green grapes in heavy clusters grew, 
 Feeding on mystic moonlight and white dew 
 And amber sunshine, the long summer through ; 
 
 " Till, with faint tremor in her veins, the Vine 
 Felt the delicious pulses of the wine ; 
 And the grapes ripened in the year s decline. 
 
 "And day by day the Virgins watched their 
 
 charge j 
 
 And when, at last, beyond the horizon s marge, 
 The harvest-moon drooped beautiful and large, 
 
 " The subtle spirit in the grape was caught, 
 And to the slowly dying monarch brought 
 In a great cup fantastically wrought. 
 
 " Of this he drank ; then forthwith from his brain 
 Went the weird malady, and once again 
 He walked the palace, free of scar or pain 
 
 " But strangely changed, for somehow he had 
 
 lost 
 
 Body and voice : the courtiers, as he crossed 
 The royal chambers, whispered - The King s 
 ghost!" 
 
JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 239 
 
 The ceasing of the music broke the drowse, 
 Half broke the drowse, of the dazed prince, who 
 
 cried : 
 
 " Give me the drink ! and thou, take thou the cup ! 
 Fair Judith, t is a medicine that cures ; 
 Grief will it cure and every ill, save love," 
 And as he spoke, he stooped to kiss the hand 
 That held the chalice ; but the cressets swam 
 In front of him, and all within the tent 
 Grew strange and blurred, and from the place he sat 
 He sank, and fell upon the camel-skins, 
 Supine, inert, bound fast in bands of wine. 
 
 And Judith looked on him, and pity crept 
 Into her bosom. The ignoble sleep 
 Robbed not his pallid brow of majesty 
 Nor from the curved lip took away the scorn ; 
 These rested still. Like some Chaldean god 
 Thrown from its fane, he lay there at her feet. 
 O broken sword of proof ! O prince betrayed ! 
 Her he had trusted, he who trusted none. 
 The sharp thought pierced her, and her breast was 
 
 torn, 
 
 And half she longed to bid her purpose die, 
 To stay, to weep, to kneel down at his side 
 And let her long hair trail upon his face. 
 
 .Then Judith dared not look upon him more, 
 Lest she should lose her reason through her eyes ; 
 
2 4 o JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 
 
 And with her palms she covered up her eyes 
 
 To shut him out ; but from that subtler sight 
 
 Within, she could not shut him, and so stood. 
 
 Then suddenly there fell upon her ear 
 
 The moan of children gathered in the streets, 
 
 And throngs of famished women swept her by, 
 
 Wringing their wasted hands, and all the woes 
 
 Of the doomed city pleaded at her heart. 
 
 As if she were within the very walls 
 
 These things she heard and saw. With hurried 
 
 breath 
 
 Judith blew out the lights, all lights save one, 
 And from its nail the heavy falchion took, 
 And with both hands tight clasped upon the hilt 
 Thrice smote the Prince of Asshur as he lay, 
 Thrice on his neck she smote him as he lay, 
 And from the brawny shoulders rolled the head 
 Blinking and ghastly in the cresset s light. 
 
 Outside stood Marah, waiting, as was planned, 
 And Judith whispered : " It is done. Do thou ! " 
 Then Marah turned, and went into the tent, 
 And pulled the hangings down about the corse, 
 And in her mantle wrapped the brazen head, 
 And brought it with her. Somewhere a huge gong 
 With sullen throbs proclaimed the midnight hour 
 As the two women passed the silent guard ; 
 With measured footstep passed, as if to prayer. 
 But on the camp s lone edge fear gave them wing, 
 
JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 241 
 
 And glancing not behind, they fled like wraiths 
 Through the hushed night into the solemn woods, 
 Where, from gnarled roots and palsied trees, black 
 
 shapes 
 
 Rose up, and seemed to follow them ; and once 
 Some creature startled in the underbrush 
 Made cry, and froze the blood about their hearts. 
 Across the plain, with backward-streaming hair 
 And death-white face, they fled, until at last 
 They reached the rocky steep upon whose crest 
 The gray walls loomed through vapor. This they 
 
 clomb, 
 
 Wild with the pregnant horrors of the night, 
 And flung themselves against the city gates. 
 
 Hushed as the grave lay all the Asshur camp, 
 Bound in that sleep which seals the eyes at dawn 
 With double seals, when from the outer waste 
 An Arab scout rushed on the morning watch 
 With a strange story of a head that hung, 
 Newly impaled there, on the city wall. 
 He had crept close upon it through the fog, 
 And seen it plainly, set on a long lance 
 Over the gate a face with snake-like curls, 
 That seemed a countenance that he had known 
 Somewhere, sometime, and now he knew it not, 
 To give it name ; but him it straightway knew, 
 And turned, and stared with dumb recognizance 
 Till it was not in mortal man to stay 
 
242 JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 
 
 Confronting those dead orbs that mimicked life. 
 On this he fled, and he could swear the thing, 
 Disjoined by magic from the lance s point, 
 Came rolling through the stubble at his heel. 
 Thus ran the Arab s tale ; and some that heard 
 Laughed at the man, and muttered : " O thou 
 
 fool ! " 
 
 Others were troubled, and withdrew apart 
 Upon a knoll that overlooked the town, 
 Which now loomed dimly out of the thick haze. 
 
 Bagoas passing, caught the Arab s words, 
 Halted a moment, and then hurried on, 
 Alert to bear these tidings to his lord, 
 Whom he was bid to waken at that hour ; 
 Last night his lord so bade him. At the tent, 
 Which stood alone in a small plot of ground, 
 Bagoas paused, and called : " My lord, awake ! 
 I come to wake thee as thou badest me." 
 But only silence answered ; and again 
 He called : " My lord, sleep not ! the dawn is here, 
 And stranger matter ! " Still no answer came. 
 Then black Bagoas, smiling in his beard 
 To think in what soft chains his master lay, 
 Love s captive, drew the leather screen aside 
 And marvelled, finding no one in the tent 
 Save Holofernes buried at full length 
 In the torn canopy. Bagoas stooped, 
 
JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 243 
 
 And softly lifting up the damask cloth 
 Beheld the Prince of Asshur lying dead. 
 
 As in some breathless wilderness at night 
 A leopard, pinioned by a falling tree 
 That takes him unaware curled up in sleep, 
 Shrieks, and the ghostly echo in her cave 
 Mimics the cry in every awful key 
 And sends it flying through her solitudes : 
 So shrieked Bagoas, so his cry was caught 
 And voiced from camp to camp, from peak to peak. 
 Then a great silence fell upon the camps, 
 And all the people stood like blocks of stone 
 In a deserted quarry ; then a voice 
 Blown through a trumpet clamored : He is dead ! 
 The Prince is dead ! The Hebrew witch hath slain 
 Prince Holof ernes ! Fly, Assyrians, fly ! 
 
 Upon the sounding of that baleful voice 
 A panic seized the silent multitude. 
 In white dismay from their strong mountain-hold 
 They broke, and fled. As when the high snows 
 
 melt, 
 
 And down the steep hill-flanks in torrents flow, 
 Not in one flood, but in a hundred streams : 
 So to the four winds spread the Asshur hosts, 
 Leaving their camels tethered at the stake, 
 Their brave tents standing, and their scattered 
 
 arms. 
 
244 JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES 
 
 As the pent whirlwind, breaking from its leash, 
 
 Seizes upon the yellow desert sand 
 
 And hurls it in dark masses, cloud on cloud, 
 
 So from the gates of the embattled town * 
 
 Leapt armed men upon the flying foe, 
 
 And hemmed them in, now on a river s marge, 
 
 Now on the brink of some sheer precipice, 
 
 Now in the fens, and pierced them with their spears. 
 
 Six days, six nights, at point of those red spears 
 
 The cohorts fled ; then such as knew not death 
 
 Found safety in Damascus, or beyond 
 
 Sought refuge, harried only by their fears. 
 
 Thus through God s grace, that nerved a gentle 
 
 hand 
 
 Not shaped to wield the deadly blade of war, 
 The tombs and temples of Judea were saved. 
 And love and honor waited from that hour 
 Upon the steps of Judith. And the years 
 Came to her lightly, dwelling in her house 
 In her own city ; lightly came the years, 
 Touching the raven tresses with their snow. 
 Many desired her, but she put them by 
 With sweet denial : where Manasseh slept 
 In his strait sepulchre, there slept her heart 
 And there beside him, in the barley-field 
 Nigh unto Dothaim, they buried her. 
 
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
 U . S . A 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 BERKELEY 
 
 Return to desk from which borrowed. 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 &PR171953 
 
 
 
 LD 21-100m-7, 52(A2528sl6)476 
 
195010