PART ONE

A.D. 1670

AGLÄE, a widow.
MURIEL, her unmarried sister.

IT happened once, in that brave land that lies

For half the twelvemonth wrapt in sombre skies,

Two sisters loved one man. He being dead,

Grief loosed the lips of her he had not wed,

And all the passion that through heavy years

Had masked in smiles unmasked itself in tears.

No purer love may mortals know than this,

The hidden love that guards another's bliss.

High in a turret's westward-facing room,

Whose painted window held the sunset's bloom,

The two together grieving, each to each

Unveiled her soul with sobs and broken speech.

Both were young, in life's rich summer yet;

And one was dark, with tints of violet

In hair and eyes, and one was blond as she

Who rose--a second daybreak--from the sea,

Gold-tressed and azure-eyed. In that lone place,

Like dusk and dawn, they sat there face to face.

She spoke the first whose strangely silvering hair

No wreath had worn, nor widow's weed might wear,

And told her blameless love, and knew no shame--

Her holy love that, like a vestal flame

Beside the body of some queen

Within a guarded crypt, had burned unseen

From weary year to year. And she who heard

Smiled proudly through her tears and said no word,

But, drawing closer, on the troubled brow

Laid one long kiss, and that was words enow!

MURIEL.

Be still, my heart! Grown patient with thine ache,

Thou shouldst be dumb, yet needs must speak, or break.

The world is empty now that he is gone.

AGLÄE.

Ay, sweetheart!

MURIEL.

                           None was like him, no, not one.

From other men he stood apart, alone

In honor spotless as unfallen snow.

Nothing all evil was it his to know;

His charity still found some germ, some spark

Of light in natures that seemed wholly dark.

He read men's souls; the lowly and the high

Moved on the self-same level in his eye.

Gracious to all, to none subservient,

Without offence he spake the word he meant--

His word no trick of tact or courtly art,

But the white flowering of the noble heart.

Careless he was of much the world counts gain,

Careless of self, too simple to be vain,

Yet strung so finely that for conscience-sake

He would have gone like Cranmer to the stake.

I saw--how could I help but love? And you--

AGLÄE.

At this perfection did I worship too . . .

'T was this that stabbed me. Heed not what I say!

I meant it not, my wits are gone astray,

With all that is and has been. No, I lie--

Had he been less perfection, happier I!

MURIEL.

Strange words and wild! 'T is the distracted mind

Breathes them, not you, and I no meaning find.

AGLÄE.

Yet 't were as plain as writing on a scroll

had you but eyes to read within my soul.--

How a grief hidden feeds on its own mood,

Poison's the healthful currents of the blood

With bitterness, and turns the heart to stone!

I think, in truth, 't were better to make moan,

And so be done with it. This many a year,

Sweetheart, have I laughed lightly and made cheer,

Pierced through with sorrow!

                                            Then the widowed one

With sorrowfullest eyes beneath the sun,

Faltered, irresolute, and bending low

Her head, half whispered,

                                         Dear, how could you know?

What masks are faces!--yours, unread by me

These seven long summers; mine, so placidly

Shielding my woe! No tremble of the lip,

No cheek's quick pallor let our secret slip!

Mere players we, and she that played the queen,

Now in her homespun, looks how poor and mean!

How shall I say it, how find words to tell

What thing it was for me made earth a hell

That else had been my heaven! 'T would blanch your cheek

Were I to speak it. Nay, but I will speak,

Since like two souls at compt we seem to stand,

Where nothing may be hidden. Hold my hand,

But look not at me! Noble 't was, and meet,

To hide your heart, nor fling it at his feet

To lie despised there. Thus saved you our pride

And that white honor for which earls have died.

You were not all unhappy, loving so!

I with a difference wore my weight of woe.

My lord was he. It was my cruel lot,

My hell, to love him--for he loved me not!

Then came a silence. Suddenly like death

The truth flashed on them, and each held her breath--

A flash of light whereby they both were slain,

She that was loved and she that loved in vain!

THE LAST CÆSAR

1851 - 1870

I

NOW there was one who came in later days

To play at Emperor: in the dead of night

Stole crown and sceptre, and stood forth to light

In sudden purple. The dawn's straggling rays

Showed Paris fettered, murmuring in amaze,

With red hands at her throat--a piteous sight.

Then the new Cæsar, stricken with affright

At his own daring, shrunk from public gaze

In the Elysée, and had lost the day

But that around him flocked his birds of prey,

Sharp-beaked, voracious, hungry for the deed.

'Twixt hope and fear beheld great Cæsar hang!

Meanwhile, methinks, a ghostly laughter rang

Through the rotunda of the Invalides.

II

What if the boulevards, at set of sun,

Reddened, but not with the sunset's kindly glow?

What if from quai and square the murmured woe

Swept heavenward, pleadingly? The prize was won,

A kingling made and Liberty undone.

No Emperor, this, like him awhile ago,

But his Name's shadow; that one struck the blow

Himself, the street-sweeping gun!

This was a man of tortuous heart and brain,

So warped he knew not his own point of view--

The master of a dark, mysterious smile.

And there he plotted, by the storied Seine

And in the fairy gardens of St. Cloud,

The Sphinx that puzzled Europe, for awhile.

III

I see him as men saw him once--a face

Of true Napoleon pallor; round the eyes

The wrinkled care; mustache spread pinion-wise,

Pointing his smile with odd sardonic grace

As wearily he turns him in his place,

And bends before the hoarse Parisian cries--

Then vanishes, with glitter of gold-lace

And trumpets blaring to the patient skies.

Not thus he vanished later! On his path

The Furies waited for the hour and man,

Foreknowing that they waited not in vain.

Then fell the day, o day of dreadful wrath!

Bow-down in shame, O crimson-girt Sedan!

Weep fair Alsace! weep, loveliest Lorainne!

So mused I, sitting underneath the trees

In that old garden of the Tuileries,

Watching the dust of twilight sifting down

Through chestnut boughs just touched with autumn's brown--

Not twilight yet, but that illusive bloom

Which holds before the deep-edged shadows come;

For still the garden stood in golden mist,

Still, like a river of golden amethyst,

The Seine slipt through its pans of fretted stone,

And, near the grille that once fenced in a throne,

The fountains still unbraided to the day

The unsubstantial silver of their spray.

A spot to dream in, love in, waste one's hours!

Temples and palaces, and gilded towers,

And fairy terraces!--and yet, and yet

Here in her woe came Marie Antoinette,

Came sweet Corday, Du Barry with shrill cry,

Not learning from her betters how to die!

Here, while the nations watched with bated breath,

Was held the saturnalia of Red Death!

For where that slim Egyptian shaft uplifts

Its point to catch the dawn's and sunset's drifts

Of various gold, the busy Headsman stood. . . .

Place de la Concorde--no, the Place of Blood!

And all so peaceful now, one cannot bring

Imagination to accept the thing.

Lies, all of it! some dreamer's wild romance--

High-hearted, witty, laughter-loving France!

In whose brain was it that the legend grew

Of Mænads shrieking in this avenue,

Of watch-fires burning, Famine standing guard,

Of long-speared Uhlans in that palace-yard!

What ruder sound this soft air ever smote

Than a bird's twitter, or a bugle's note?

What darker crimson ever splashed these walks

Than that of rose-leaves dropping from the stalks?

And yet--what means that charred and broken wall,

That sculptured marble, splintered, like to fall,

Looming among the trees there? . . . And you say

This happened, as it were, but yesterday?

And here the commune stretched a barricade,

And there the final desperate stand was made?

Such things have been? How all things change and fade!

How little lasts in this brave world below!

Love dies; hate cools; the Cæsars come and go;

Gaunt Hunger fattens, and the weak grow strong.

Even Republics are not here for long!

Ah, who can tell what hour may bring the doom,

The lighted torch, the tocsin's heavy boom!

IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY

"The Southern Transept, hardly known by any other name but Poets' Corner"
DEAN STANLEY

TREAD softly here; the sacredest of tombs

Are those that hold your poets. Kings and queens

Are facile accidents of Time and Chance.

Chance sets them on the heights, they climb not there!

But he who from the darkling mass of men

Is on the wing of heavenly thought upborne

To finer ether, and becomes a voice

For all the voiceless, God annointed him:

His name shall be a star, his grave a shrine.

Tread softly here, in silent reverence tread.

Beneath those marble cenotaphs and urns

Lies richer dust than ever nature hid

Packed in the mountain's adamantine heart,

Or slyly wrapt in unsuspected sand--

The dross men toil for, and oft stain the soul.

How vain and all ignoble seems that greed

To him who stands in this dim claustral air

With these most sacred ashes at his feet!

This dust was Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden this--

The spark that once illumed it lingers still.

O ever-hallowed spot of English earth!

If the unleashed and unhappy spirit of man

Have option to visit our dull globe,

What august Shades at midnight here convene

In the miraculous sessions of the moon,

When the great pulse of London faintly throbs,

And one by one the stars in heaven pale!

ALEC YEATON'S SON

GLOUCESTER, AUGUST, 1720

THE wind it wailed, the wind it moaned,

And the white caps flecked the sea;

"An' I would to God," the skipper groaned,

"I had not my boy with me!

Snug in the stern-sheets, little John

Laughed as the scud swept by;

But the skipper's sunburnt cheeks grew wan

As he watched the wicked sky.

"Would he were at his mother's side!"

And the skipper's eyes were dim.

"Good Lord in heaven, if ill betide,

What would become of him!

"For me--my muscles are as steel,

For me let hap what may;

I might make shift upon the keel

Until the break o' day.

"But he, he is so weak and small,

So young, scarce learned to stand--

O pitying Father of us all,

I trust him in Thy hand!

"For Thou, who makest from on high

A sparrow's fall--each one!--

Surely, O Lord, thou'lt have an eye

On Alec Yeaton's son!"

Then, helm hard-port; right straight he sailed

Towards the headland light:

The wind it moaned, the wind it wailed,

And black, black fell the night.

Then burst a storm to make one quail

Though housed from winds and waves--

They who could tell about that gale

Must rise from watery graves!

Sudden it came, as sudden went;

Ere half the night was sped,

The winds were hushed, the waves were spent,

And the stars shone overhead.

Now, as the morning mist grew thin,

The folk on Gloucester shore

Saw a little figure floating in

Secure, on a broken oar!

Up rose the cry, "A wreck! a wreck!

Pull, mates, and waste no breath!"--

They knew it, though 't was but a speck

Upon the edge of death!

Long did they marvel in the town

At God his strange decree,

That let the stalwart skipper drown

And the little child go free!

AT THE FUNERAL OF A MINOR POET

[One of the Bearers Soliloquizes:]

. . . ROOM in your heart for him, O Mother Earth,

Who loved each flower and leaf that made you fair,

And sang your praises in verses manifold

And delicate, with here and there a line

From end to end in blossom like a bough

The May breathes on, so rich it was. Some thought

The workmanship more costly than the thing

Moulded or carved, as in those ornaments

Found at Mycæne. And yet Nature's self

Works in this wise; upon a blade of grass,

Or what small note she lends the woodland thrush,

Lavishing endless patience. He was born

Artist, not artisan, which some few saw

And many dreamed not. As he wrote no odes

When Croesus wedded or Mæcenas died,

And gave no breath to civic feasts and shows,

He missed the glare that gilds more facile men--

A twilight poet, groping quite alone,

Belated, in a sphere where every nest

Is emptied of its music and its wings.

Not great his gift; yet we can poorly spare

Even his slight perfection in an age

Of limping triolets and tame rondeaux.

He had at least ideals, though unreached,

And heard, far off, immortal harmonies,

Such as fall coldly on our ear to-day.

The mighty Zolastic Movement now

Engrosses us--a miasmatic breath

Blown from the slums. We paint life as it is,

The hideous side of it, with careful pains,

Making a god of the dull Commonplace.

For have we not the old gods overthrown

And set up strangest idols? We would clip

Imagination's wing and kill delight,

Our sole art being to leave nothing out

That renders art offensive. Not for us

Madonnas leaning from their starry thrones

Ineffable, nor any heaven-wrought dream

Of sculptor or of poet; we prefer

Such nightmare visions as in morbid brains

Take shape and substance, thoughts that taint the air

And make all life unlovely. Will it last?

Beauty alone endures from age to age,

From age to age endures, handmaid of God.

Poets who walk with her on earth go hence

Bearing a talisman. You bury one,

With his hushed music, in some Potter's Field;

The snows and rains blot out his very name,

As he from life seems blotted; through Time's glass

Slip the invisible and magic sands

That mark the century, then falls a day

The world is suddenly conscious of a flower,

Imperishable, ever to be prized,

Sprung from the mould of a forgotten grave.

'T is said the seeds wrapt up among the balms

And hieroglyphics of Egyptian kings

old strange vitality, and, planted, grow

After the lapse of thrice a thousand years.

Some day, perchance, some unregarded note

Of our poor friend here--some sweet minor chord

That failed to lure our more accustomed ear--

Way witch the fancy of an unborn age.

Who knows, since seeds have such tenacity?

Meanwhile he's dead, with scantiest laurel won

And little of our Ninteenth Century gold.

So, take him, Earth, and this his mortal part,

With that shrewd alchemy thou hast, transmute

To flower and leaf in thine unending springs!