Time's Laughingstocks and Other verses Read Online

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We sang the Ninetieth Psalm to her – set to Saint Stephen's tune.

The Dead Quire

I

Beside the Mead of Memories,

Where Church-way mounts to Moaning Hill,

The sad man sighed his phantasies:

He seems to sigh them still.

II

»'Twas the Birth-tide Eve, and the hamleteers

Made merry with ancient Mellstock zest,

But the Mellstock quire of former years

Had entered into rest.

III

Old Dewy lay by the gaunt yew tree,

And Reuben and Michael a pace behind,

And Bowman with his family

By the wall that the ivies bind.

IV

The singers had followed one by one,

Treble, and tenor, and thorough-bass;

And the worm that wasteth had begun

To mine their mouldering place.

V

For two-score years, ere Christ-day light,

Mellstock had throbbed to strains from these;

But now there echoed on the night

No Christmas harmonies.

VI

Three meadows off, at a dormered inn,

The youth had gathered in high carouse,

And, ranged on settles, some therein

Had drunk them to a drowse.

VII

Loud, lively, reckless, some had grown,

Each dandling on his jigging knee

Eliza, Dolly, Nance, or Joan –

Livers in levity.

VIII

The taper flames and hearthfire shine

Grew smoke-hazed to a lurid light,

And songs on subjects not divine

Were warbled forth that night.

IX

Yet many were sons and grandsons here

Of those who, on such eves gone by,

At that still hour had throated clear

Their anthems to the sky,

X

The clock belled midnight; and ere long«

One shouted, »Now 'tis Christmas morn;

Here's to our women old and young,

And to John Barleycorn!«

XI

They drink the toast and shout again:

The pewter-ware rings back the boom,

And for a breath-while follows then

A silence in the room.

XII

»When nigh without, as in old days,

The ancient quire of voice and string

Seemed singing words of prayer and praise

As they had used to sing:

XIII

While shepherds watch'd their flocks by night, –

Thus swells die long familiar sound

In many a quaint symphonic flight –

To, Glory shone around.

XIV

The sons defined their fathers' tones,

The widow his whom she had wed,

And others in the minor moans

The viols of the dead.

XV

Something supernal has the sound

As verse by verse the strain proceeds,

And stilly staring on the ground

Each roysterer holds and heeds.

XVI

Towards its chorded closing bar

Plaintively, thinly, waned the hymn,

Yet lingered, like the notes afar

Of banded seraphim.

XVII

With brows abashed, and reverent tread,

The hearkeners sought the tavern door:

But nothing, save wan moonlight, spread

The empty highway o'er.

XVIII

While on their hearing fixed and tense

The aerial music seemed to sink,

As it were gently moving thence

Along the river brink.

XIX

Then did the Quick pursue the Dead

By crystal Froom that crinkles there;

And still the viewless quire ahead

Voiced the old holy air.

XX

By Bank-walk wicket, brightly bleached,

It passed, and 'twixt the hedges twain,

Dogged by the living; till it reached

The bottom of Church Lane.

XXI

There, at the turning, it was heard

Drawing to where the churchyard lay:

But when they followed thitherward

It smalled, and died away.

XXII

Each headstone of the quire, each mound,

Confronted them beneath the moon;

But no more floated therearound

That ancient Birth-night tune.

XXIII

There Dewy lay by the gaunt yew tree,

There Reuben and Michael, a pace behind,

And Bowman with his family

By the wall that the ivies bind. ...

XXIV

As from a dream each sobered son

Awoke, and musing reached his door:

'Twas said that of them all, not one

Sat in a tavern more.«

XXV

– The sad man ceased; and ceased to heed

His listener, and crossed the leaze

From Moaning Hill towards the mead –

The Mead of Memories.

The Christening

Whose child is this they bring

Into the aisle? –

At so superb a thing

The congregation smile

And turn their heads awhile.

Its eyes are blue and bright,

Its cheeks like rose;

Its simple robes unite

Whitest of calicoes

With lawn, and satin bows.

A pride in the human race

At this paragon

Of mortals, lights each face

While the old rite goes on;

But ah, they are shocked anon.

What girl is she who peeps

From the gallery stair,

Smiles palely, redly weeps,

With feverish furtive air

As though not fitly there?

»I am the baby's mother;

This gem of the race

The decent fain would smother,

And for my deep disgrace

I am bidden to leave the place.«

»Where is the baby's father?« –

»In the woods afar.

He says there is none he'd rather

Meet under moon or star

Than me, of all that are.

To clasp me in lovelike weather,

Wish fixing when,

He says: To be together

At will, just now and then,

Makes him the blest of men;

But chained and doomed for life

To slovening

As vulgar man and wife,

He says, is another thing:

Yea: sweet Love's sepulchring!«

A Dream Question

»It shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine.« –

Micah, III 6

I asked the Lord: »Sire, is this true

Which hosts of theologians hold,

That when we creatures censure you

For shaping griefs and ails untold

(Deeming them punishments undue)

You rage, as Moses wrote of old?

When we exclaim: ›Beneficent

He is not, for he orders pain,

Or, if so, not omnipotent:

To a mere child the thing is plain!‹

Those who profess to represent

You, cry out: ›Impious and profane!‹«

He: »Save me from my friends, who deem

That I care what my creatures say!

Mouth as you list: sneer, rail, blaspheme,

O manikin, the livelong day,

Not one grief-groan or pleasure-gleam

Will you increase or take away.

Why things are thus, whoso derides,

May well remain my secret still. ...

A fourth dimension, say the guides,

To matter is conceivable.

Think some such mystery resides

Within the ethic of my will.«

By the Barrows

Not far from Mellstock – so tradition saith –

Where barrows, bulging as they bosoms were

Of Multimammia stretched supinely there,

Catch night and noon the tempest's wanton breath,

A battle, desperate doubtless unto death,

Was one time fought. The outlook, lone and bare,

The towering hawk and passing raven share,

And all the upland round is called ›The He'th‹.

Here once a woman, in our modern age,

Fought singlehandedly to shield a child –

One not her own – from a man's senseless rage.

And to my mind no patriots' bones there piled

So consecrate the silence as her deed

Of stoic and devoted self-unheed.

A Wife and Another

»War ends, and he's returning

Early; yea,

The evening next to-morrow's!« –

– This I say

To her, whom I suspiciously survey,

Holding my husband's letter

To her view. –

She glanced at it but lightly,

And I knew

That one from him that day had reached her too.

There was no time for scruple;

Secretly

I filched her missive, conned it,

Learnt that he

Would lodge with her ere he came home to me.

To reach the port before her,

And, unscanned,

There wait to intercept them

Soon I planned:

That, in her stead, I might before him stand.

So purposed, so effected;

At the inn

Assigned, I found her hidden: –

O that sin

Should bear what she bore when I entered in!

Her heavy lids grew laden

With despairs,

Her lips made soundless movements

Unawares,

While I peered at the chamber hired as theirs.

And as beside its doorway,

Deadly hued,

One inside, one withoutside

We two stood,

He came – my husband – as she knew he would.

No pleasurable triumph

Was that sight!

The ghastly disappointment

Broke them quite.

What love was theirs, to move them with such might!

»Madam, forgive me!« said she,

Sorrow bent,

»A child – I soon shall bear him. ...

Yes – I meant

To tell you – that he won me ere he went.«

Then, as it were, within me

Something snapped,

As if my soul had largened:

Conscience-capped,

I saw myself the snarer – them the trapped.

»My hate dies, and I promise,

Grace-beguiled,«

I said, »to care for you, be

Reconciled;

And cherish, and take interest in the child.«

Without more words I pressed him

Through the door

Within which she stood, powerless

To say more,

And closed it on them, and downstairward bore.

»He joins his wife – my sister,«

I, below,

Remarked in going – lightly –

Even as though

All had come right, and we had arranged it so..

As I, my road retracing,

Left them free,

The night alone embracing

Childless me,

I held I had not stirred God wrothfully.

The Roman Road

The Roman Road runs straight and bare

As the pale parting-line in hair

Across the heath. And thoughtful men

Contrast its days of Now and Then,

And delve, and measure, and compare;

Visioning on the vacant air

Helmed legionaries, who proudly rear

The Eagle, as they pace again

The Roman Road.

But no tall brass-helmed legionnaire

Haunts it for me. Uprises there

A mother's form upon my ken,

Guiding my infant steps, as when

We walked that ancient thoroughfare,

The Roman Road.

The Vampirine Fair

Gilbert had sailed to India's shore,

And I was all alone:

My lord came in at my open door

And said, »O fairest one!«

He leant upon the slant bureau,

And sighed, »I am sick for thee!«

»My Lord,« said I, »pray speak not so,

Since wedded wife I be.«

Leaning upon the slant bureau,

Bitter his next words came:

»So much I know; and likewise know

My love burns on the same!

But since you thrust my love away,

And since it knows no cure,

I must live out as best I may

The ache that I endure.«

When Michaelmas browned the nether Coomb,

And Wingreen Hill above,

And made the hollyhocks rags of bloom,

My lord grew ill of love.

My lord grew ill with love for me;

Gilbert was far from port;

And – so it was – that time did see

Me housed at Manor Court.

About the bowers of Manor Court

The primrose pushed its head

When, on a day at last, report

Arrived of him I had wed.

»Gilbert, my Lord, is homeward bound,

His sloop is drawing near,

What shall I do when I am found

Not in his house but here?«

»O I will heal the injuries

I've done to him and thee.

I'll give him means to live at ease

Afar from Shastonb'ry.«

When Gilbert came we both took thought:

»Since comfort and good cheer,«

Said he, »so readily are bought,

He's welcome to thee, Dear.«

So when my lord flung liberally

His gold in Gilbert's hands,

I coaxed and got my brothers three

Made stewards of his lands.

And then I coaxed him to install

My other kith and kin,

With aim to benefit them all

Before his love ran thin.

And next I craved to be possessed

Of plate and jewels rare.

He groaned: »You give me, Love, no rest,

Take all the law will spare!«

And so in course of years my wealth

Became a goodly hoard,

My steward brethren, too, by stealth

Had each a fortune stored.

Thereafter in the gloom he'd walk,

And by and by began

To say aloud in absent talk,

»I am a ruined man! –

I hardly could have thought,« he said,

»When first I looked on thee,

That one so soft, so rosy red,

Could thus have beggared me!«

Seeing his fair estates in pawn,

And him in such decline,

I knew that his domain had gone

To lift up me and mine.

Next month upon a Sunday morn

A gunshot sounded nigh:

By his own hand my lordly born

Had doomed himself to die.

»Live, my dear Lord, and much of thine

Shall be restored to thee!«

He smiled, and said 'twixt word and sign,

»Alas – that cannot be!«

And while I searched his cabinet

For letters, keys, or will,

'Twas touching that his gaze was set

With love upon me still.

And when I burnt each document

Before his dying eyes,

'Twas sweet that he did not resent

My fear of compromise.

The steeple-cock gleamed golden when

I watched his spirit go:

And I became repentant then

That I had wrecked him so.

Three weeks at least had come and gone,

With many a saddened word,

Before I wrote to Gilbert on

The stroke that so had stirred.

And having worn a mournful gown,

I joined, in decent while,

My husband at a dashing town

To live in dashing style.

Yet though I now enjoy my fling,

And dine and dance and drive,

I'd give my prettiest emerald ring

To see my lord alive.

And when the meet on hunting-days

Is near his churchyard home,

I leave my bantering beaux to place

A flower upon his tomb;

And sometimes say: »Perhaps too late

The saints in Heaven deplore

That tender time when, moved by Fate,

He darked my cottage door.«

The Reminder

While I watch the Christmas blaze

Paint the room with ruddy rays,

Something makes my vision glide

To the frosty scene outside.

There, to reach a rotting berry,

Toils a thrush, – constrained to very

Dregs of food by sharp distress,

Taking such with thankfulness.

Why, O starving bird, when I

One day's joy would justify,

And put misery out of view,

Do you make me notice you!

The Rambler

I do not see the hills around,

Nor mark the tints the copses wear;

I do not note the grassy ground

And constellated daisies there.

I hear not the contralto note

Of cuckoos hid on either hand,

The whirr that shakes the nighthawk's throat

When eve's brown awning hoods the land.

Some say each songster, tree, and mead –

All eloquent of love divine –

Receives their constant careful heed:

Such keen appraisement is not mine.

The tones around me that I hear,

The aspects, meanings, shapes I see,

Are those far back ones missed when near,

And now perceived too late by me!

Night in the Old Home

When the wasting embers redden the chimney-breast,

And Life's bare pathway looms like a desert track to me,

And from hall and parlour the living have gone to their rest,

My perished people who housed them here come back to me.

They come and seat them around in their mouldy places,

Now and then bending towards me a glance of wistfulness,

A strange upbraiding smile upon all their faces,

And in the bearing of each a passive tristfulness.

»Do you uphold me, lingering and languishing here,

A pale late plant of your once strong stock?« I say to them;

»A thinker of crooked thoughts upon Life in the sere,

And on That which consigns men to night after showing the day to them?«

»– O let be the Wherefore! We fevered our years not thus:

Take of Life what it grants, without question!« they answer me seemingly.

»Enjoy, suffer, wait: spread the table here freely like us,

And, satisfied, placid, unfretting, watch Time away beamingly!«

After the Last Breath

(J.H. 1813-1904)

There's no more to be done, or feared, or hoped;

None now need watch, speak low, and list, and tire;

No irksome crease outsmoothed, no pillow sloped

Does she require.

Blankly we gaze. We are free to go or stay;

Our morrow's anxious plans have missed their aim;

Whether we leave to-night or wait till day

Counts as the same.

The lettered vessels of medicaments

Seem asking wherefore we have set them here;

Each palliative its silly face presents

As useless gear.

And yet we feel that something savours well;

We note a numb relief withheld before;

Our well-beloved is prisoner in the cell

Of Time no more.

We see by littles now the deft achievement

Whereby she has escaped the Wrongers all,

In view of which our momentary bereavement

Outshapes but small.

In Childbed

In the middle of the night

Mother's spirit came and spoke to me,

Looking weariful and white –

As 'twere untimely news she broke to me.

»O my daughter, joyed are you

To own the weetless child you mother there;

›Men may search the wide world through,‹

You think, ›nor find so fair another there!‹

Dear, this midnight time unwombs

Thousands just as rare and beautiful;

Thousands whom High Heaven foredooms

To be as bright, as good, as dutiful.

Source of ecstatic hopes and fears

And innocent maternal vanity,

Your fond exploit but shapes for tears

New thoroughfares in sad humanity.

Yet as you dream, so dreamt I

When Life stretched forth its morning ray to me;

Other views for by and by!«. ...

Such strange things did mother say to me.

The Pine Planters

(Marty South's Reverie)

I

We work here together

In blast and breeze;

He fills the earth in,

I hold the trees.

He does not notice

That what I do

Keeps me from moving

And chills me through.

He has seen one fairer

I feel by his eye,

Which skims me as though

I were not by.

And since she passed here

He scarce has known

But that the woodland

Holds him alone.

I have worked here with him

Since morning shine,

He busy with his thoughts

And I with mine.

I have helped him so many,

So many days,

But never win any

Small word of praise!

Shall I not sigh to him

That I work on

Glad to be nigh to him

Though hope is gone?

Nay, though he never

Knew love like mine,

I'll bear it ever

And make no sign!

II

From the bundle at hand here

I take each tree,

And set it to stand, here

Always to be;

When, in a second,

As if from fear

Of Life unreckoned

Beginning here,

It starts a sighing

Through day and night,

Though while there lying

'Twas voiceless quite.

It will sigh in the morning,

Will sigh at noon,

At the winter's warning,

In wafts of June;

Grieving that never

Kind Fate decreed

It should for ever

Remain a seed,

And shun the welter

Of things without,

Unneeding shelter

From storm and drought.

Thus, all unknowing

For whom or what

We set it growing

In this bleak spot,

It still will grieve here

Throughout its time,

Unable to leave here,

Or change its clime;

Or tell the story

Of us to-day

When, halt and hoary,

We pass away.

The Dear

I plodded to Fairmile Hill-top, where

A maiden one fain would guard

From every hazard and every care

Advanced on the roadside sward.

I wondered how succeeding suns

Would shape her wayfarings,

And wished some Power might take such ones

Under Its warding wings.

The busy breeze came up the hill

And smartened her cheek to red,

And frizzled her hair to a haze. With a will

»Good-morning, my Dear!« I said.

She glanced from me to the far-off gray,

And, with proud severity,

»Good-morning to you – though I may say

I am not your Dear,« quoth she:

»For I am the Dear of one not here –

One far from his native land!« –

And she passed me by; and I did not try

To make her understand.

One We Knew

(M.H. 1772-1857)

She told how they used to form for the country dances –

›The Triumph‹, ›The New-rigged Ship‹ –

To the light of the guttering wax in the panelled manses,

And in cots to the blink of a dip.

She spoke of the wild ›poussetting‹ and ›allemanding‹

On carpet, on oak, and on sod;

And the two long rows of ladies and gentlemen standing,

And the figures the couples trod.

She showed us the spot where the maypole was yearly planted,

And where the bandsmen stood

While breeched and kerchiefed partners whirled, and panted

To choose each other for good.

She told of that far-back day when they learnt astounded

Of the death of the King of France:

Of the Terror; and then of Bonaparte's unbounded

Ambition and arrogance.

Of how his threats woke warlike preparations

Along the southern strand,

And how each night brought tremors and trepidations

Lest morning should see him land.

She said she had often heard the gibbet creaking

As it swayed in the lightning flash,

Had caught from the neighbouring town a small child's shrieking

At the cart-tail under the lash. ...

With cap-framed face and long gaze into the embers –

We seated around her knees –

She would dwell on such dead themes, not as one who remembers,

But rather as one who sees.

She seemed one left behind of a band gone distant

So far that no tongue could hail:

Past things retold were to her as things existent,

Things present but as a tale.

She Hears the Storm

There was a time in former years –

While my roof-tree was his –

When I should have been distressed by fears

At such a night as this!

I should have murmured anxiously,

»The pricking rain strikes cold;

His road is bare of hedge or tree,

And he is getting old.«

But now the fitful chimney-roar,

The drone of Thorncombe trees,

The Froom in flood upon the moor,

The mud of Mellstock Leaze,

The candle slanting sooty-wick'd,

The thuds upon the thatch,

The eaves-drops on the window flicked,

The clacking garden-hatch,

And what they mean to wayfarers,

I scarcely heed or mind;

He has won that storm-tight roof of hers

Which Earth grants all her kind.

A Wet Night

I pace along, the rain-shafts riddling me,

Mile after mile out by the moorland way,

And up the hill, and through the ewe-leaze gray

Into the lane, and round the corner tree;

Where, as my clothing clams me, mire-bestarred,

And the enfeebled light dies out of day,

Leaving the liquid shades to reign, I say,

»This is a hardship to be calendared!«

Yet sires of mine now perished and forgot,

When worse beset, ere roads were shapen here,

And night and storm were foes indeed to fear,

Times numberless have trudged across this spot

In sturdy muteness on their strenuous lot,

And taking all such toils as trifles mere.

Before Life and After

A time there was – as one may guess

And as, indeed, earth's testimonies tell –

Before the birth of consciousness,

When all went well.

None suffered sickness, love, or loss,

None knew regret, starved hope, or heart-burnings;

None cared whatever crash or cross

Brought wrack to things.

If something ceased, no tongue bewailed,

If something winced and waned, no heart was wrung;

If brightness dimmed, and dark prevailed,

No sense was stung.

But the disease of feeling germed,

And primal rightness took the tinct of wrong;

Ere nescience shall be reaffirmed

How long, how long?

New Year's Eve

»I have finished another year,« said God,

»In grey, green, white, and brown;

I have strewn the leaf upon the sod,

Sealed up the worm within the clod,

And let the last sun down.«

»And what's the good of it?« I said,

»What reasons made you call

From formless void this earth we tread,

When nine-and-ninety can be read

Why nought should be at all?

Yea, Sire; why shaped you us, ›who in

This tabernacle groan‹ –

If ever a joy be found herein,

Such joy no man had wished to win

If he had never known!«

Then he: »My labours – logicless –

You may explain; not I:

Sense-sealed I have wrought, without a guess

That I evolved a Consciousness

To ask for reasons why.

Strange that ephemeral creatures who

By my own ordering are,

Should see the shortness of my view,

Use ethic tests I never knew,

Or made provision for!«

He sank to raptness as of yore,

And opening New Year's Day

Wove it by rote as theretofore,

And went on working evermore

In his unweeting way.

God's Education

I saw him steal the light away

That haunted in her eye:

It went so gently none could say

More than that it was there one day

And missing by-and-by.

I watched her longer, and he stole

Her lily tincts and rose;

All her young sprightliness of soul

Next fell beneath his cold control,

And disappeared like those.

I asked: »Why do you serve her so?

Do you, for some glad day,

Hoard these her sweets –?« He said, »O no,

They charm not me; I bid Time throw

Them carelessly away.«

Said I: »We call that cruelty –

We, your poor mortal kind.«

He mused. »The thought is new to me.

Forsooth, though I men's master be,

Theirs is the teaching mind!«

To Sincerity

O sweet sincerity! –

Where modern methods be

What scope for thine and thee?

Life may be sad past saying,

Its greens for ever graying,

Its faiths to dust decaying;

And youth may have foreknown it,

And riper seasons shown it,

But custom cries: »Disown it:

Say ye rejoice, though grieving,

Believe, while unbelieving,

Behold, without perceiving!«

– Yet, would men look at true things,

And unilluded view things,

And count to bear undue things,

The real might mend the seeming,

Facts better their foredeeming,

And Life its disesteeming.

Panthera

(For other forms of this legend – first met with in the second century – see Origen contra Celsum; the Talmud; Sepher Toldoth Jeschu; quoted fragments of lost Apocryphal gospels; Strauss, Haeckel; etc.)

Yea, as I sit here, crutched, and cricked, and bent,

I think of Panthera, who underwent

Much from insidious aches in his decline;

But his aches were not radical like mine;

They were the twinges of old wounds – the feel

Of the hand he had lost, shorn by barbarian steel,

Which came back, so he said, at a change in the air,

Fingers and all, as if it still were there.

My pains are otherwise: upclosing cramps

And stiffened tendons from this country's damps,

Where Panthera was never commandant. –

The Fates sent him by way of the Levant.

He had been blithe in his young manhood's time,

And as centurion carried well his prime.

In Ethiop, Araby, climes fair and fell,

He had seen service and had borne him well.

Nought shook him then: he was serene as brave;

Yet later knew some shocks, and would grow grave

When pondering them; shocks less of corporal kind

Than phantom-like, that disarranged his mind;

And it was in the way of warning me

(By much his junior) against levity

That he recounted them; and one in chief

Panthera loved to set in bold relief.

This was a tragedy of his Eastern days,

Personal in touch – though I have sometimes thought

That touch a possible delusion – wrought

Of half-conviction carried to a craze –

His mind at last being stressed by ails and age: –

Yet his good faith thereon I well could wage.

I had said it long had been a wish with me

That I might leave a scion – some small tree

As channel for my sap, if not my name –

Ay, offspring even of no legitimate claim,

In whose advance I secretly could joy.

Thereat he warmed.

»Cancel such wishes, boy!

A son may be a comfort or a curse,

A seer, a doer, a coward, a fool; yea, worse –

A criminal. ... That I could testify!« ...

»Panthera has no guilty son!« cried I

All unbelieving. »Friend, you do not know,«

He darkly dropt: »True, I've none now to show,

For the law took him. Ay, in sooth, Jove shaped it so!«

»This noon is not unlike,« he again began,

»The noon these pricking memories print on me –

Yea, that day, when the sun grew copper-red,

And I served in Judæa. ... 'Twas a date

Of rest for arms. The Pax Romana ruled,

To the chagrin of frontier legionaries!

Palestine was annexed – though sullen yet, –

I, being in age some two-score years and ten,

And having the garrison in Jerusalem

Part in my hands as acting officer

Under the Governor. A tedious time

I found it, of routine, amid a folk

Restless, contentless, and irascible. –

Quelling some riot, sentrying court and hall,

Sending men forth on public meeting-days

To maintain order, were my duties there.

Then came a morn in spring, and the cheerful sun

Whitened the city and the hills around,

And every mountain-road that clambered them,

Tincturing the greyness of the olives warm,

And the rank cacti round the valley's sides.

The day was one whereon death-penalties

Were put in force, and here and there were set

The soldiery for order, as I said,

Since one of the condemned had raised some heat,

And crowds surged passionately to see him slain.

I, mounted on a Cappadocian horse,

With some half-company of auxiliaries,

Had captained the procession through the streets

When it came streaming from the judgment-hall

After the verdicts of the Governor.

It drew to the great gate of the northern way

That bears towards Damascus; and to a knoll

Upon the common, just beyond the walls –

Whence could be swept a wide horizon round

Over the housetops to the remotest heights.

Here was the public execution-ground

For city crimes, called then and doubtless now

Golgotha, Kranion, or Calvaria.

The usual dooms were duly meted out;

Some three or four were stript, transfixed, and nailed,

And no great stir occurred. A day of wont

It was to me, so far, and would have slid

Clean from my memory at its squalid close

But for an incident that followed these.

Among the tag-rag rabble of either sex

That hung around the wretches as they writhed,

Till thrust back by our spears, one held my eye –

A weeping woman, whose strained countenance,

Sharpened against a looming livid cloud,

Was mocked by the crude rays of afternoon –

The mother of one of those who suffered there

I had heard her called when spoken roughly to

By my ranged men for pressing forward so.

It stole upon me hers was a face I knew;

Yet when, or how, I had known it, for a while

Eluded me. And then at once it came.

Some thirty years or more before that noon

I was sub-captain of a company

Drawn from the legion of Calabria,

That marched up from Judæa north to Tyre.

We had pierced the old flat country of Jezreel,

The great Esdraelon Plain and fighting-floor

Of Jew with Canaanite, and with the host

Of Pharaoh-Necho, king of Egypt, met

While crossing there to strike the Assyrian pride.

We left behind Gilboa; passed by Nain;

Till bulging Tabor rose, embossed to the top

With arbute, terebinth, and locust growths.

Encumbering me were sundry sick, so fallen

Through drinking from a swamp beside the way;

But we pressed on, till, bearing over a ridge,

We dipt into a world of pleasantness –

A vale, the fairest I had gazed upon –

Which lapped a village on its furthest slopes

Called Nazareth, brimmed round by uplands nigh.

In the midst thereof a fountain bubbled, where,

Lime-dry from marching, our glad halt we made

To rest our sick ones, and refresh us all.

Here a day onward, towards the eventide,

Our men were piping to a Pyrrhic dance

Trod by their comrades, when the young women came

To fill their pitchers, as their custom was.

I proffered help to one – a slim girl, coy

Even as a fawn, meek, and as innocent.

Her long blue gown, the string of silver coins

That hung down by her banded beautiful hair,

Symboled in full immaculate modesty.

Well, I was young, and hot, and readily stirred

To quick desire. 'Twas tedious timing out

The convalescence of the soldiery;

And I beguiled the long and empty days

By blissful yieldance to her sweet allure,

Who had no arts, but what out-arted all,

The tremulous tender charm of trustfulness.

We met, and met, and under the winking stars

That passed which peoples earth – true union, yea,

To the pure eye of her simplicity.

Meanwhile the sick found health; and we pricked on.

I made her no rash promise of return,

As some do use; I was sincere in that;

I said we sundered never to meet again –

And yet I spoke untruth unknowingly! –

For meet again we did. Now, guess you aught?

The weeping mother on Calvaria

Was she I had known – albeit that time and tears

Had wasted rudely her once flowerlike form,

And her soft eyes, now swollen with sorrowing.

Though I betrayed some qualms, she marked me not;

And I was scarce of mood to comrade her

And close the silence of so wide a time

To claim a malefactor as my son –

(For so I guessed him). And inquiry made

Brought rumour how at Nazareth long before

An old man wedded her for pity's sake

On finding she had grown pregnant, none knew how,

Cared for her child, and loved her till he died.

Well; there it ended; save that then I learnt

That he – the man whose ardent blood was mine –

Had waked sedition long among the Jews,

And hurled insulting parlance at their god,

Whose temple bulked upon the adjoining hill,

Vowing that he would raze it, that himself

Was god as great as he whom they adored,

And by descent, moreover, was their king;

With sundry other incitements to misrule.

The impalements done, and done the soldiers' game

Of raffling for the clothes, a legionary,

Longinus, pierced the young man with his lance

At signs from me, moved by his agonies

Through naysaying the drug they had offered him.

It brought the end.