ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)

{The Drama of Kings 1871}

                                                                                                                                                               [note]

CHORUS.

Blue arc of heaven whose lattices
     Are throng’d with starry eyes;
Vast dome that over land and seas,
     Dost luminously rise,
With mystic characters enwrought
More strange than all poetic thought!

Hear, Heaven, if thou canst hear! and see,
     O stars, if see ye can!
Mark, while your speechless mystery
     Flows to a voice in man:
He stands erect this solemn hour
In reverent insolence of power.

Order divine, whose awful show                                               316
     Dazzles all guess or dream;
Sequence unseen, whose mystic flow
     Fulfils the immortal scheme;
Thou law whereby all stand or stir,—
Here breathes your last interpreter!

Because one foolish King hath slain
     Another foolish King;
Because a half-born nation’s brain
     With dizzy joy doth ring;
Because at the false shepherd’s cry
The silly sheep still throng to die;

Because purblind philosophy
     Out of her cobweb’d cave
Croaks in a voice of senile glee
     While empty patriots rave;
Because humanity is still
The gull of any daring will;

Because the tinsel order stands
     A little longer yet;
Because in each crown’d puppet’s hands
     A laurel-sprig is set,
While the old lame device controls                                           317
The draff of miserable souls;

Because man’s blood again bathes bright
     The purple and the throne,
And gray fools gladden at the sight,
     And maiden choirs intone;
Because once more the puppet Kings
Dance, while Death’s lean hand pulls the strings;

Because these things have been and are,
     And oft again may be,
Doth this man swear by sun and star,
     And oh our God by Thee,
Framing to cheat his own shrewd eyes
His fair cosmogony of lies.

O Lord our God whose praise we sing,
     Behold he deemeth Thee
A little nobler than the King,
     And greater in degree,
Set just above the monarch’s mind,
Greater in sphere but like in kind!

O calm Intelligence divine,
     Transcending life and death,
He deems these bursting bubbles Thine,
     Blown earthward by Thy breath,—
He marks Thee sitting well content,
Like some old King at tournament.

The lists are set; upon the sod
     The gleaming columns range;
The sign is given by Thee, O God,
     From Thy pavilion strange:
The trumpets blow, the champions meet,
One screams—Thou smilest on Thy seat.

Behold, O God, the Order blest
     Of Thy great chivalry!
See tinsel crown and glittering crest,
     Cold heart and empty eye!
The living shout, the dying groan,
All reddens underneath Thy throne!

Accept Thy chosen! great and good,
     Vouchsafe them all they seek!
Deepen their purple in man’s blood!
     Trumpet them with man’s shriek!
Paint their escutcheons fresh, O Sire;                                       319
With heart’s blood bright and crimson fire!

And further, from the fire they light
     Protect them with Thy hand,
Beyond the bright hill of the fight
     Let them in safety stand;
For ’twere not well a random blow
Should strike thy next-of-kin below.

O God! O Father! Lord of All!
     Spare us, for we blaspheme,
See,—for upon our knees we fall,
     And hush our mocking scream—
Let us pray low; let us pray low;
Thy will be done; thy Kingdom grow!

Blue arc of heaven whose lattices
     Are throng’d with starry eyes,
Still dome that over earth and seas
     Doth luminously rise;
Fair Order mystically wrought,
More strange than all poetic thought.

He fears ye all, this son of man,                                                320
     To his own soul he lies,
Lo! trembling at his own dark plan
     He contemplates the prize:
He has won all, and lo! he stands
Clutching the glory in his hands!

To one, to all, on life’s dark way,
     Sooner or late is brought
The silent solemnizing ray
     Illuminating thought;
It shines, they stand on some lone spot,
Its light is strange, they know it not.

Sleeps like a mirror in the dark
     The conscience of the soul,
Unknown, where never eye may mark,
     While days and seasons roll;
But late or soon the walls of clay
Are loosening to admit the day.

Light comes—a touch—a streak—a beam—
     Child of the unknown sky—
And lo! the mirror with a gleam                                                321
     Flashes its first reply:
Light brighteneth; and all things fair
Flow to the glass and tremble there.

O Lord our God, Thou art the Light,
     We shine by Thee alone;
Tho’ thou hast made us mirrors bright,
     The gleam is not our own;
Until thy ray shines sweet and plain
All shall be dark as this man’s brain.

Thro’ human thought as thro’ a cave
     Creep gently, Lord, this hour;                                            [l.xii]
Tho’ now ’tis darker than the grave
     There lies the shining power;
Come! let the soul flash back to Thee
The million lights of Deity!

[Notes:
Page 315: This Chorus is retitled ‘The Reply’ and immediately follows ‘The Teuton Monologue’ in ‘Political Mystics’.
Alterations in the 1884 edition of The Poetical Works of Robert Buchanan:
Page 321, l. xii: Creep gently, Light, this hour; ]

                                                                                                                                                               [note]

CHORUS. A DESERTER.

DESERTER.

O I am spent! My heart fails, and my limbs
Are palsied. Would to God that I were dead!                                  [l.xviii]

                                                                                                                                                                 322

CHORUS.

Stand! What art thou, who like a guilty thing
Creepest along the shadow, stooping low?

DESERTER.

A man. Now stand aside and let me pass.

CHORUS.

Not yet. Whence fleest thou? Whither dost thou go?

DESERTER.

From Famine and Fire. From Horror. From Frost and Death.

CHORUS.

O coward! traitor to unhappy France!
Stand forward in the moon, that it may light
The blush of shame upon thy guilty cheek!
Lo, we are women, yet we shiver cold
To look upon so infamous a thing.

                                                                                                                                                                 323

DESERTER.

Nay, look your fill—I care not—stand and see.

CHORUS.

O horror! horror! who hath done this deed?

DESERTER.

What say ye? am I fair to look upon?

CHORUS.

The dead are fairer. O unhappy one!

DESERTER.

Why do ye shudder? Am I then so foul?

CHORUS.

There is no living flesh upon thy bones.

DESERTER.

Famine hath fed upon my limbs too long.

                                                                                                                                                                 324

CHORUS.

And thou art rent as by the teeth of hounds.

DESERTER.

Fire tore me, and what blood I have I bleed.

CHORUS.

Thine eyes stare like the blank eyes of a corpse.

DESERTER.

They have look’d so close on horror and so long
I cannot shut them from it till I die.

CHORUS.

Thou crawlest like a man whose sick limbs fail.

DESERTER.

Ha, Frost is there, and numbs me like a snake.

                                                                                                                                                                 325

CHORUS.

God help thee, miserable one; and yet,
Better if thou hadst perish’d in thy place
Than live inglorious tainted with thy shame.

DESERTER.

Shame? I am long past shame. I know her not.

CHORUS.

Is there no sense of honour in thy soul?

DESERTER.

Honour? Why see, she hath me fast enough:
These are her other names, Fire, Famine, and Frost,—
Soon I shall hear her last and sweetest,—Death.

CHORUS.

Hast thou no care for France, thy martyr’d land?

                                                                                                                                                                 326

DESERTER.

What hath she given me? Curses and blows.

CHORUS.

O miserable one, remember God!

DESERTER.

God? Who hath look’d on God? Where doth He dwell?
O fools, with what vain words and empty names
Ye sicken me. Honour, France, God! All these—
Hear me—I curse. Why, look you, there’s the sky,
Here the white earth, there, with its bleeding heart,
The butcher’d City; here half dead stand I,
A murder’d man, grown grey before my time,
Forty years old—a husband, and a father—
An outcast flying out of Hell. Who talks
To me of “honour?” The first tears I wept                                          327
When standing at my wretched mother’s knee,
Because her face was white, and she wore black,
That day the bells rang out for victory.
Then, look you, after that my mother sat
Weeping and weary in an empty house,
And they who look’d upon her shrunken cheeks
Fed her with “honour.” ’Twas too gentle fare,—
She died. Nay, hearken! Left to seek for bread,
I like a wild thing haunted human doors
Searching the ash for food. I ate and lived.
I grew. Then, wretched as I was, I felt
Strange stirs of manhood in my flesh and bones,
Dim yearnings, fierce desires, and one pale face
Could still them as the white moon charms the sea.
Oh, but I was a low and unclean thing,
And yet she loved me, and I stretch’d these hands                              328
To God, and blest Him for His charity.
Mark that:—I blest Him, I. Even as I stood,
Bright in new manhood, the drums beat,—a hand
Fell on my shoulder, and, “in France’s name,”
A voice cried, “Follow.” To my heart they held
Cold steel:—I followed; following saw her face
Fade to a bitter cry—hurl’d on with blows,
Curs’d, jeer’d at, scorn’d, went forth as in a dream,
And, driven into the bloody flash of war,
Struck like a blinded beast I knew not whom
Blows for I knew not what. The fierce years came
Like ulcers on my heart, and heal’d, and went.
Then I crept back, a broken sickly man,
To seek her, and I found her—dead! She had died,
Poor worm, of hunger. She had ask’d for bread,                               329
And “France” had given her stones. She had pray’d to “God;”
He had given her a grave. The day she died,
The bells rang for another victory.

CHORUS.

O do not weep! Yet we are weeping too.

DESERTER.

Now mark, I was too poor a worm to grieve
Too long and deeply. The years passed. My heart
Heal’d, and as wounds heal, harden’d. Once again
I join’d the wolves that up and down the earth
Rush tearing at men’s lives and women’s hearts.
That passed, and I was free. One morn I saw
Another woman, and I hunger’d to her,
And we were wedded. Hard days follow’d that;                                 330
And children—she was fruitful—all your worms
Are fruitful, mark—that is God’s blessing too!
Well, but we throve, and farm’d a bit of land
Out yonder by the City. I learn’d to love
The mother of my little ones. Time sped;
And then I heard a cry across the fields,
The old cry, “Honour,” the old cry, “To Arms!”                                 [l.viii]
And like a wolf caught in his lair I shrunk
And shudder’d. It grew louder, that curst cry!
Day follow’d day, no bells rung victory,
But there were funeral faces everywhere;
And then I heard the far feet of the foe
Trampling the fields of France and coming nearer
To that poor field I sow’d. I would have fled,
But that they thrust a weapon in mine hands
And bade me stand and strike “for France.” I laugh’d!
But the wolves had me, and we screaming drew                                 331
Into the City. Shall I gorge your souls
With horror? Shall I croak into your ears
What I have suffer’d there, what I have seen?
I was a worm, ever a worm, and starved
While the plump coward cram’d. Look at me, women!
Fire, Famine, and Frost have got me; yet I crawl,
And shall crawl on; for hark you, yesternight,
Standing within the City, sick at heart,
I gazed up eastward, thinking of my home
And of the woman and children desolate,
And lo! out of the darkness where I knew
Our hamlet lay there shot up flames and cast
A bloody light along the arc of heaven;
And all my heart was sicken’d unaware
With hunger such as any wild thing feels
To crawl again in secret to the place
Whence the fierce hunter drove it, and to see
If its young live; and thither indeed I fare;                                            332
And yonder flame still flareth, and I crawl,
And I shall crawl unto it though I die;
And I shall only smile if they be dead,
If I may merely see them once again,—
For come what may, my cup of life is full,
And I am broken from all use and will.

CHORUS.

Pass on, unhappy one; God help thee now!

DESERTER.

If ye have any pity, give me bread.

CHORUS.

Lean on us! O thou lost one, come this way.                                      [l.x]

DESERTER.

And whither do ye lead me, O ye women?

                                                                                                                                                                 333

CHORUS.

Look yonder where the light gleams from a door,
There shalt thou eat thy fill and warm thy limbs.

DESERTER.

’Tis well; there is some pity in your hearts.

CHORUS.

We pity thee and bless thee, praying God.

DESERTER.

Nay, let “God” be—In truth I know Him not.

[Notes:
Page 321: The dialogue between the Chorus and the Deserter is included as ‘A Dialogue in the Snow, (Before Paris, December 1870.)’ in the ‘Songs of the Terrible Year’ section in Volume II of the 1874 H. S. King version of The Poetical Works, and the subsequent 1884 Chatto & Windus edition, with the following alterations:
Page 321, l. xviii: Are palsied. Would to God I were dead!
Page 330, l. viii: The old cry, “Honour,” the old cry, “For France!”
Page 332, l. x: This is the final line of ‘A Dialogue in the Snow’, the rest of the original dialogue is omitted. ]

                                                                                                                                                               [note]

CHORUS.

Stars in heaven with gentle faces,
Can ye see and keep your places?
Flowers that on the old earth blossom,
Can ye hang on such a bosom?
Canst thou wander on for ever
Through a world so sad, O River?
O ye fair things ’neath the sun,                                                           334
Can ye bear what Man hath done?

This is Earth. Heaven glimmers yonder.
Pause a little space and ponder!

Day by day the fair world turneth
Dewy eyes to heaven and yearneth,
Day by day the mighty mother
Sees her children smite each other:
She moans, she pleads, they do not hear her—
She prays—the skies seem gathering near her—
Yearning down diviner, bluer,
Baring every star unto her,—
Each strange light with swinging censer
Sweeter seeming and intenser,—
Yet she ceaseth not her cry,
Seeing how her children die.

On her bosom they are lying,
Clinging to her, dead and dying—
Dead eyes frozen in imploring
Yonder heaven they died adoring,
Dying eyes that upward glimmer                                                         335
Ever growing darker, dimmer;
And her eyes, too, thither turning,
Asking, praying, weeping, yearning,
Search the blue abysses, whither
He who made her, brought her hither,
Gave her children, bade them grow,
Vanish’d from her long ago.

Ah, what children! Father, see them!
Never word of hers may free them—
Never word of love may win them,
For there burneth fierce within them
Fire of thine; soul-sick and sinning,
As they were in the beginning,
Here they wander. Father, see!
Generations born of thee!

Blest was Earth when on her bosom
First she saw the double blossom,
Double sweetness, man and woman,
One in twain divine and human,
Leaping, laughing, crying, clinging,
To the sound of her sweet singing—
Flesh like lily and rose together,                                                         336
Eyes as blue as April weather,
Golden hair with golden shadows,
In the face the light of meadows,
In the eyes the dim soul peeping
Like the sky in water sleeping.
“Guard them well!” the Father said,
Set them in her arms,—and fled.

Countless worlds around Him yearning,
Vanish’d He from her discerning;—
Then she drooped her fair face, seeing
On her breast each gentle being;
And unto her heart she prest them,
Raised her look to heaven and blest them;
And the fountains leapt around her,
Leaves and flowers shot up and crown’d her,
Flowers bloom’d and streams ran gleaming,
Till with bliss she sank to dreaming;—
And the darkness for a cover
Gently drew its veil above her,
And the new-born smiled reposing,
And a million eyes unclosing
Yearn’d through all the veil to see                                                      337
That new fruit of mystery.

Father! come from the abysses;
Come, Thou light the mother misses;
Come, while hungry generations
Pass away, she sits in patience.
Of the children Thou didst leave her,
Millions have been born to grieve her.
See! they gather, living, dying,
Coming, going, multiplying;
And the mother for the Father,
Though like waves they rise and gather,
Though they blossom thick as grasses,
Misses every one that passes,
Flashes on them peace and light
Of a love grown infinite.

Father, see them! hath each creature
Something in him of Thy nature?
Born of Thee and of no other,
Born to Thee by a sweet mother,
Man strikes man, and brother brother.
Hearts of men from Thy heart fashioned                                             338
Bleed and anguish bloody-passion’d,
Beast-like roar the generations,
Tiger-nations spring on nations;
Though the stars yearn downward nightly,
Though the days come ever brightly,
Though to gentle holy couches
Death in angel’s guise approaches,
Though they name Thee, though they woo Thee,
Though they dream and yearn unto Thee,                                           [l.x]
Ill they guess the guise thou bearest,
Ill they picture Thee, Thou Fairest;—
Come again, O Father wise,
Awe them with those loving eyes!

Stars in heaven with tender faces,
Can ye see and keep your places?
Flowers that on the earth will blossom,
Can ye deck so sad a bosom?
Canst thou singing flow for ever
Through a world so dark, O River?
Father, canst Thou calmly scan
All that Man hath made of Man?

[Notes:
Page 333: This Chorus is included as ‘The Prayer in the Night’ in the ‘Songs of the Terrible Year’ section in Volume II of the 1874 H. S. King version of The Poetical Works, and the subsequent 1884 Chatto & Windus edition, with the following alteration:
Page 338, l. x: Though they dream of, yearn unto Thee, ]

                                                                                                                                                                 339

The CHANCELLOR. A DEPUTY FROM THE CITY.

CHANCELLOR.

Yield up again those stolen provinces!
Take council! be the prince of peacemakers!
For, let me say it in thy private ear,
As one who knows thee nobler than thy cause,
There is no other hope for France than this
We proffer. We have bought this thing with blood—
Be wise and yield it—lest with bitterer blood
We buy the dearest flesh and blood of Gaul,
And welding it as clay unto our will
Pour into it a new and Teuton soul.

DEPUTY.

That threat is empty, for the soul is God’s;
These souls are French, they have thriven on French air;
Rather than swell your triumph with their lives                                    340
They would return to Him from whom they came.

CHANCELLOR.

Why, let them go!—The way to Him is short,
Nor very tedious—though it seems a way
Ye French love little, loving so much more
The windy breath with which ye flout your foe.—
Why, friend, we are no word-mongers, we twain:
Yet here, like market-women cheapening fish,
We wrangle at each other to no end.
I tell thee (shall I swear by anything?
I know thy nation loveth a round oath!)
I tell thee we are fixed as adamant,
Inexorable as the sea, and strong
To exact our wish as is the thunderbolt
That for a moment in the rain-cloud burns
Before it strikes the affrighted herdsman down.
Two powers have wrestled—one is overthrown—                            341
How should the thrown man with his broken back
Clutch to his heart the prize of victory?
There is a victory in being vanquish’d
Ye little understand. Did ever schoolboy
Howl so when whipt? The world scream’d not as loud
When like a swarm of locusts, like a cloud
Of fiery pestilence, from the West to the East
Ye overran the bleeding continents,
And sowed in one Man’s miserable name
The crop all living men are reaping now.

DEPUTY.

If I conceive thee, ’tis no sin of ours
That ye avenge on the fair head of France,
No crime of yesterday or yesteryear,
No deeds of live men walking in the sun,
But wrongs long buried with the scourge of God                                 342
In that forsaken island where he sleeps.

CHANCELLOR.

They would not lie, man!—from that lonely grave
They have arisen again and yet again,—
Até-like, not to be laid by any charm
But blood of sacrifice sent up to God
From France the altar in whose name he slew.

DEPUTY.

Yet Cæsar’s triumphs were avenged on Cæsar;
Remember Katzbach! Leipsic! Waterloo!

CHANCELLOR.

O we remember! The Colossus fell,
And from the throne of every living King
A shadow passed; yet still with hungry eyes                                        343
The hordes he had led glared hate across the Rhine,
Till from the charnel-house of that great name
Uprose in his due time the wordy “Man
Of Silence;” round his feet the brute hosts leapt;
And smiling a smooth smile he glanced the way
They hunger’d. We were scattered, and we crouch’d
Under the Austrian eagle. Then, one day,
A plain man, a deep fellow with a will,
Rose saying, “Craft for craft! The bird of prey
Hovers too much above the German Rhine—
’Ware hawk! till he is trapt there is no sleep
For any of us poor creatures who love peace!”
When lo! the Vulture cried, “I am a Dove!”
And croak’d the hoarse cry of Democracy;
And as the soul of Italy arose,
The Vulture struck the Austrian Eagle down,
While all earth’s kingdoms shook; then, stretching claws,
He hovered o’er the imperial walls of Rome                                       344
To warn the victor back. Now, that same man
I spake of, looking very humbly on,
Thought, “Craft for craft! The Frenchman wins by craft—
Not boldly, as the old French Eagle won.
What Marshall Vorwärts to Napoleon was,
Let me become to this the Man of Lies;
With his own weapons let me vanquish him;
First in the secret chamber, then with steel
Out in the light of the world.” So said, so done.
Close to the dotard Austrian for a time
We crouch’d; but we were gathering strength and ire;
And one by one with the new Teuton soul
We fill’d the scattered people of the Rhine.
Then came the time to cast the Austrian off.
’Twas done, we struck; your foul bird scream’d in vain;
And lo! with that one blow we felt our strength
Flow from the soul and grow invincible.
There was a pause. We saw the enemy                                              345
Hovering afar and ever gathering
And darkening the mighty River’s bank;
And year by year we waited for the storm
We knew must break upon our heads at last.
It came—no bigger than the prophet’s hand—
Then the tornado blowing from the West,—
So that the world cried, “God help Germany!”
And lo! God sent a wind out of the East;
And all the storm and wrack and thunder-rheum
Gathered in groaning tumult o’er the Rhine.
One from the East, the other from the West,
Tornado met tornado. One huge crash—
’Twas o’er! The West recoil’d in blood and fire,
Leaving the poor sing’d Vulture on the ground,
Struck by the lightning, screaming broken-wing’d,
Flapping to rise in vain. On goes the storm,
Driven less by sheer volition than the wind
God sent to drive it West; and still it sweeps—
Still the earth groans and darkens under it,
And still, as Canute cried unto the sea,                                               346
Thou criest “Pause!” How, like a summer cloud
Recoil, and leave ye fresher for our rain!
True, we have slain the evil-omen’d Bird,
And in so far have blest not punish’d France,
Who followed his stale cry;—but mark me, friend,
The sworn foe of the Teuton is the Celt,
Not the mere instrument your evil hands
Could find whene’er they itch’d for butchery;—
For birds of prey abound,—and it is easy
To fashion leaders for such hosts as yours.
But this time we will place ye in a pen
High as the Vosges, deeper than the Rhine,
So that though all the birds of earth should call,
Though all the wild free beasts should roar their best,
France, pent within the prison of her own fields,
Shall like a tame thing only roar again.

DEPUTY.

Yet think of mercy.

                                                                                                                                                                 347

CHANCELLOR.

                                 We are merciful.

DEPUTY.

Take pity.

CHANCELLOR.

                   We are very pitiful.
Our women wail and weep in every house,
Our babes are fatherless, our maiden flowers
Wither unpluckt on every village way.
Who says we are not pitiful?

DEPUTY.

                                           The head
That wrong’d ye is a serpent’s head, and bruised
Is writhing underneath your armëd heel.
The blood of both the Teuton and the Celt
Be on that head,—but we are innocent.
Uplift thy knife from the poor lambs of France;
Spare them for Christ’s sake; let me shepherd them                           348
To some sad fold of peace!

CHANCELLOR.

                                       How call ye them?
Lambs? Lambs man-tooth’d, and most omnivorous!
Lambs? We shall draw the teeth of these same lambs,
Lest in a little season they may find
Another wolf to lead them.

DEPUTY.

                                             My tongue fails,
And my heart sickens. Courtesy is rank,
When I must listen to such words as these,
And pick my feeble speech for France’s sake.

CHANCELLOR.

Pick nothing; speak thy thought as man to man.
And criticise. I adore criticism.

                                                                                                                                                                 349

DEPUTY.

It is all in vain. Ye are too fiercely bent
On blood and most unhallowëd revenge.

CHANCELLOR.

How now? Why, these are words for women. True,
I am a bugbear to the ancient dames
Of Europe, and the nations in their dread
Picture me cloven-footed; but do not thou,
A wise man in thy generation, echo
The stale flat talk of fools. Am I a vampire
That I should love this blood? I love mine ease—
My wine, my mistress—all earth’s tasty things
In moderation—though I never suffer
The cup to cloud my reason and my soul,
Nor sell my manhood for a strumpet’s kiss,
As ye have done in France. Yet I believe
There are worse hues than that of blood, and Life
More pitiful than Death; and I, indeed,                                                350
Am your physician, though ye know me not.
Sick, body and soul, ye have polluted earth,
Ye have sown abroad that beauteous leprosy
Whereof your artists and your poets die,
But now in one supremer nobler hour
Your revellers, from the lupanar called,
Instead of sickening of a long disease
And rotting in the arms of harlotry,
Have passed in bloody martyrdom to God.
In truth the bitterest tears your eyes can weep
Will not too freely purge your heated orbs
Of their adulterous mist of lust and lies.
These are worse things than dying! things I deem
More pitiful than Death! Instead of these
We give ye sudden Conscience flasht from grief,
Fire for your Phrynes, and a naked Sword!

DEPUTY.

Then I, in France’s name, for France’s sake,
Reject the shallow puritanic lie,
And calling God to witness hurl ye back                                            351
The taunt and smile. The stale flat talk of fools
Offends thy sense, yet how thou echoest it!—
While ye ride rough-shod through the beauteous world,
Like Cromwell’s English troopers singing hymns,
Not that your hearts are full of God at all,
But that it helps your feet to march in time,
While to the God of David ye intone,
Seeking the grimmest ever even in God,—
We, Frenchmen, subtly, delicately wrought,
Feel Him so keenly in the sense and soul,
Catch with so swift a sense of fragrancy
The divine truths of being, that our lives
Become too rich for your harsh utterance.
Fairer of spirit and more exquisite,
Subtler of sense, more sensual if thou wilt,
We tremble in the beautiful world God made;
Yea, loving Beauty for her own fair sake,
Perceiving her so marvellously fair,
In her we find an impulse and an end
Beyond your stale and flat morality.
Wherefore we seek to shape our very lives                                        352
To beauty and to music, which ye deem
The harlot’s privilege and stock-in-trade;
We plant within our simplest daily needs
Spiritual sweetness and divine desire;
We stir to every wind of ecstasy;
We love no truth that is not beautiful,
Since Beauty is the highest truth of all,
The sum and end of human destiny.

CHANCELLOR.

The glory of a strong man is his strength;
But ye—why ye are triflers; though I own
I like your novels; they are pleasant reading,
Most toothsome to the after-dinner taste.

DEPUTY.

O hear me! if a sneer could kill a race,
Then had ye Teutons died of Europe’s sneer!
As ye abide, so shall the Frank abide.
To ye no delicate line of law divides
Beauty from harlotry; for ye are dull,
And turn your hard-grain’d Gretchens to their use                              353
As tamely as ye sow and reap your corn;
And unto ye all rapturous sights and sounds,
All married interchange of sense and soul,
Are perilous, for ye dread the very Sun
May come upon your kitchen Danaës
And breed ye bastards in your own despite.
Nay, ye fear Beauty as some witch whose eyes
May hold ye like Tannhauser in the hills.
While ye have trumpeted God’s wrath abroad,
While ye have driven His strength into men’s hearts
As did the kings of ancient Israel,
We, we whom ye despised, have whispered low
God’s secret; we have made the hand of Art
More reverent, human voice and instrument
More delicate, all sense of sight and sound
More cunning; one by one we have laid bare
The slender links that bind the soul of man
To all fair things whence it has grown and blown;
And we have gain’d ye in your own despite:                                       354
For if ye sing, ye sing more tenderly,
And if ye dream, ye dream more beautifully,
And if ye pray, perchance unconsciously
Ye blend into your prayer some beauteous sense
That till we Frenchmen cull’d it blew unguess’d.
All this we have done and more for Beauty’s sake,
And this forsooth ye christen “harlotry.”
Ye are as Israël, and ye know no God
Unless He thunders; ye perceive no strength
Save when ye look upon a hurricane;
Your dry blood turns all beauty back to use,
By a coarse huswife’s sampler fashioning
All gentle woofs of loveliness and youth,
Forgetting beauty blossoms out of use,
Not use from beauty, but from perfect use
The perfect flower of beauty crowning all.
Ye walk within a garden, and with care
Water your shrubs of hardy sentiment,                                                355
And train your creeping virtues; but ye frown
If the birds sing too loud, the blossoms scent
Too richly; ye speak, think, act, live, walk, fight
As if the beauteous world wherein ye dwell
Were leagued against ye and confederate
To seize ye as the woman in the Book
The man of strength and rob ye of your hair;
And in the very light of woman’s eyes
Ye Werthers see no grade between the stare
Of lawful women sadly giving suck,
And what forsooth ye christen “harlotry.”

CHANCELLOR.

A Jeremiad out of Babylon!
Let us return—yield the Rhine provinces.

DEPUTY.

What more?

                                                                                                                                                                 356

CHANCELLOR.

             The rest is easy. These come first.

DEPUTY.

And I have answer’d. It can never be.

CHANCELLOR.

Never? Why they are ours to have and hold.

DEPUTY.

To take is not to give. We give them not.
We will appeal to Europe, to the world;
We will call out with one imploring voice,
Waking the sleeping Conscience of the earth!

CHANCELLOR.

Call. Scream. Have ye not call’d and screamed? As loud
As underneath your sallow Corsican
We called of old.

                                                                                                                                                                 357

DEPUTY.

                               Ye did not call in vain.

CHANCELLOR.

No; for our cause was righteous!—furthermore,
All backs like ours had felt that scourge of God.
But now ’tis otherwise; for ours indeed
Hath been a peaceful hand, and not a gauge,
A grim reminder and a daily threat,
A mailëd glove lying from day to day
Unlifted on the council-board of Kings;
We play no tyrant, but iconoclast;
And further, let me whisper in thine ear,
That were we thrice as bloody as ye deem,
The nations are too wise to risk the touch
Of that strong hand which like Bellerophon’s
Hath slain the hugest Monster of the time.

DEPUTY.

They will not tamely see so foul a wrong.
We will call England.

                                                                                                                                                                 358

CHANCELLOR.

                             Do not waste your breath:
England hath pined away into a voice.

DEPUTY.

Italy! Austria! Russia! Shall not God
Conjure a soul in one or all of these?

CHANCELLOR.

Too late. The days of chivalry are o’er.
On this side Time there is no hope for France
Save swift submission to her certain doom,—
Confinement in her mighty prison-house
West of the Vosges, o’er whose jagged walls
Let her glare thirsty at the flowing Rhine;—
Thither indeed she comes not any more
In pomp of war or smile of amity.
Call? Let her call till thunder echoes her!
But verily, friend, that thunder will be ours,
Such as now beats at yonder City’s gates
Startling the timid eyelids of the dawn.
See! Fire and Death fill all the dreadful air.                                         359
Hearken! Our guns are serenading now
Her who was late the Mistress of the world.
Speak; save her; save her miserable sons,
Fighting in vain against the hurricane.
No longer dally idly with your doom
As ye were wont to do with women’s hair;
Speak, and speak quickly, lest ye wholly die!

CHORUS.

A DISTANT VOICE.

God! God! God!

CHORUS.

Hearken, O hearken!
The heavens darken,
The storm is growing,
The skies are snowing,
Whiter and whiter
Grows the ground, and brighter
The wild fires glisten,                                                                360
As we moan and listen;
Wind-blown unto us
     A voice from the City
Thrills faintly through us.

VOICE.

     Lord God, have pity!

CHORUS.

Gather in silence!
From mile on mile hence
Drearly is driven
Their cry to heaven;
Like the faint intoning
Of the ocean moaning,
Like the murmur creeping
     Most faint and weak
From a dark cloud sleeping
     On a mountain peak.
’Tis the feeble crying
Of the sick and dying,
     The famine-stricken;                                                            361
     They sink and sicken,
They thirst, and creeping
     Together moan,
In the damp dew sleeping
     Piliow’d on stone—
And Sorrow above them
     With her frozen cheek
Stoops—but to move them
     Her breath is weak,—
Till with blank eyes glazing,
     And their faint breath fled,
They sit there gazing,
     Frozen and dead.

A VOICE.

Prepare!

CHORUS.

Like the opening of eyes
     In a horrible dream,
Like the flash in the skies
When the thunder-cloud -flies,
     Comes the gleam.                                                                362
It comes, and is gone;
The dark roars; and anon,
From fort to fort gleaming,
     It burns in the night,
Till the long line is streaming
     One glimmer of light—
Like the black swell that dashes
Round a headland and flashes
     Foam-white!

A VOICE WITHIN THE CITY.

Woe! woe!

CHORUS.

’Tis begun, and they cry in the street,
As lambs rush together and bleat!
And the Horror above and around
Springs to a serpentine sound.
Lo! where the fiery spheres curve
Up through the air without swerve;
See how the bolts one by one
Speed to the flash of the gun!
Now, strain your eyes thro’ the dark;                                                363
Look on the City, and mark
How they strike on the roofs, and in thunder
Crash, and in flame rend asunder
To the groan of stone turret and column,
To the scream of the slain, to the solemn
Deep toll of the bell in the spire!

VOICES WITHIN.

     Fire! Fire!

CHORUS.

See! where it springs in the air,
With a scream and a rush and a glare,
Out of the roofs, while beneath
Blacker flames wrestle and seethe;
Brighter and brighter! behold,
Wrapping the street in its fold,
Streaming and gleaming and burning,
Sinking, upspringing, returning,
Fierce, unappeasable, glowing
     Red-shadow’d on turret and vane—
While black shades are coming and going,
     Seeking to slake it in vain!

                                                                                                                                                                 364

VOICE FROM WITHOUT.

Steady! make ready! aim higher—
Into the heart of the fire!

CHORUS.

See! how the fiery guns gleam,
Flashing like eyes in a dream!
Hark—how the air and the skies
Groan, and the City replies—

VOICES WITHIN.

God! God! God!

CHORUS.

Where the flame is growing,
Leaping and blowing,
Where the people are calling,
See black rain falling,
Black rain, lead-rain,
Flashing to red rain,
Showering and flashing,
To the crumbling and crashing
     Of column and steeple—                                                    365
Striking and gleaming,
To the hollow screaming
     Of the stricken people,—
To the hollow thunder
     Of the cannon call,
To the rending asunder
     Of roof and wall!
And see! O Pity!
     Answering,
Over the City
     Fires upspring:
First dim, then lighter,
Then lighter, brighter,
     Fire upon fire:
Till the air is glowing
And a red flame flowing
     On every spire—
And dome and column
Gleam,—to the solemn
     Incessant tolling
     From street to street,
And hark, far under,
     While we watch and wonder,
With a muffling rolling,                                                             366
     The deep drums beat! 

                                                                                       [Day-break.

A VOICE.

Forward for France!
Gather together! Advance!

CHORUS.

See! like a black snake there crawls,
Under the fire of the walls,
A dark mass, and over the snow
Speeds for the camp of the foe:
River-like, silent and still,
It rolleth under the hill,
And out on the plain white and bare
Spreads silent and strange.

A SENTINEL.

                                       Who goes there?

A VOICE.

Forward, for France!

_____

The Drama of Kings continued

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