Deeply the Abbot of Waltham sighed
When he heard the news of woe:
How King Harold had come to a pitiful end,
And on Hastings field lay low.
Asgod and Ailrik, two of his monks,
On the mission drear he sped
To search for the corse on the battle-plain
Among the bloody dead.
The monks arose and went sadly forth,
And returned as heavy-hearted.
"O Father, the world's a bitter world,
And evil days have started.
"For fallen, alack! is the better man;
The Bastard has won, and knaves
And scutcheoned thieves divide the land,
And make the freemen slaves.
"The veriest rascals from Normandy,
In Britain are lords and sirs.
I saw a tailor from Bayeux ride
With a pair of golden spurs.
"O woe to all who are Saxon born!
Ye Saxon saints, beware!
For high in heaven though ye dwell,
Shame yet may be your share.
"Ah, now we know what the comet meant
That rode, blood-red and dire,
Across the midnight firmament
This year on a broom of fire.
"'Twas an evil star, and Hastings' field
Has fulfilled the omen dread.
We went upon the battle-plain,
And sought among the dead.
"While still there lingered any hope
We sought, but sought in vain;
King Harold's corse we could not find
Among the bloody slain."
Asgod and Ailrik spake and ceased.
The Abbot wrung his hands.
Awhile he pondered, then he sighed,
"Now mark ye my commands.
"By the stone of the bard at Grendelfield,
Just midway through the wood,
One, Edith of the Swan's Neck, dwells
In a hovel poor and rude.
"They named her thus, because her neck
Was once as slim and white
As any swan's—when, long ago,
She was the king's delight.
"He loved and kissed, forsook, forgot,
For such is the way of men.
Time runs his course with a rapid foot;
It is sixteen years since then.
"To this woman, brethren, ye shall go,
And she will follow you fain
To the battle-field; the woman's eye
Will not seek the king in vain.
"Thereafter to Waltham Abbey here
His body ye shall bring,
That Christian burial he may have,
While for his soul we sing."
The messengers reached the hut in the wood
At the hour of midnight drear.
"Wake, Edith of the Swan's Neck, rise
And follow without fear.
"The Duke of Normandy has won
The battle, to our bane.
On the field of Hastings, where he fought,
The king is lying slain.
"Arise and come with us; we seek
His body among the dead.
To Waltham Abbey it shall be borne.
'Twas thus our Abbot said."
The woman arose and girded her gown,
And silently went behind
The hurrying monks. Her grizzly hair
Streamed wildly on the wind.
Barefoot through bog and bush and briar
She followed and did not stay,
Till Hastings and the cliffs of chalk
They saw at dawn of day.
The mist, that like a sheet of white
The field of battle cloaked,
Melted anon; with hideous din
The daws flew up and croaked.
In thousands on the bloody plain
Lay strewn the piteous corses,
Wounded and torn and maimed and stripped,
Among the fallen horses.
The woman stopped not for the blood;
She waded barefoot through,
And from her fixed and staring eyes
The arrowy glances flew.
Long, with the panting monks behind,
And pausing but to scare
The greedy ravens from their food,
She searched with eager care.
She searched and toiled the livelong day,
Until the night was nigh;
Then sudden from her breast there burst
A shrill and awful cry.
For on the battle-field at last
His body she had found.
She kissed, without a tear or word,
The wan face on the ground.
She kissed his brow, she kissed his mouth,
She clasped him close, and pressed
Her poor lips to the bloody wounds
That gaped upon his breast.
His shoulder stark she kisses too,
When, searching, she discovers
Three little scars her teeth had made
When they were happy lovers.
The monks had been and gotten boughs,
And of these boughs they made
A simple bier, whereon the corse
Of the fallen king was laid.
To Waltham Abbey to his tomb
The king was thus removed;
And Edith of the Swan's Neck walked
By the body that she loved.
She chanted litanies for his soul
With a childish, weird lament
That shuddered through the night. The monks
Prayed softly as they went.
Every evening in the twilight,
To and fro beside the fountain
Where the waters whitely murmured,
Walked the Sultan's lovely daughter.
And a youth, a slave, was standing
Every evening by the fountain
Where the waters whitely murmured;
And his cheek grew pale and paler.
Till one eve the lovely princess
Paused and asked him on a sudden:
"I would know thy name and country;
I would know thy home and kindred."
And the slave replied, "Mohammed
Is my name; my home is Yemen;
And my people are the Asras;
When they love, they love and die."
I dreamt that once upon a summer night
Beneath the pallid moonlight's eerie glimmer
I saw where, wrought in marble dimly bright,
A ruin of the Renaissance did shimmer.
Yet here and there, in simple Doric form,
A pillar like some solitary giant
Rose from the mass, and, fearless of the storm,
Reared toward the firmament its head defiant.
O'er all that place a heap of wreckage lay,
Triglyphs and pediments and carven portals,
With centaur, sphinx, chimera, satyrs gay—
Figures of fabled monsters and of mortals.
A marble-wrought sarcophagus reposed
Unharmed 'mid fragments of these fabled creatures;
Its lidless depth a dead man's form inclosed,
The pain-wrung face now calm with softened features.
A group of straining caryatides
With steadfast neck the casket's weight supported,
Along both sides whereof there ran a frieze
Of chiseled figures, wondrous ill-assorted.
First one might see where, decked in bright array,
A train of lewd Olympians proudly glided,
Then Adam and Dame Eve, not far away,
With fig-leaf aprons modestly provided.
Next came the people of the Trojan war—
Paris, Achilles, Helen, aged Nestor;
Moses and Aaron, too, with many more—
As Judith, Holofernes, Haman, Esther.
Such forms as Cupid's one could likewise see,
Phoebus Apollo, Vulcan, Lady Venus,
Pluto and Proserpine and Mercury,
God Bacchus and Priapus and Silenus.
Among the rest of these stood Balaam's ass—
A speaking likeness (if you will, a braying)—
And Abraham's sacrifice, and there, alas!
Lot's daughters, too, their drunken sire betraying.
Near by them danced the wanton Salome,
To whom John's head was carried in a charger;
Then followed Satan, writhing horribly,
And Peter with his keys—none e'er seemed larger
Changing once more, the sculptor's cunning skill
Showed lustful Jove misusing his high power,
When as a swan he won fair Leda's will,
And conquered Danaë in a golden shower.
Here was Diana, leading to the chase
Her kilted nymphs, her hounds with eyeballs burning;
And here was Hercules in woman's dress,
His warlike hand the peaceful distaff turning.
Not far from them frowned Sinai, bleak and wild,
Along whose slope lay Israel's nomad nation;
Next, one might see our Savior as a child
Amid the elders holding disputation.
Thus were these opposites absurdly blent—
The Grecian joy of living with the godly
Judean cast of thought!—while round them bent
The ivy's tendrils, intertwining oddly.
But—wonderful to say!—while dreamily
I gazed thereon with glance returning often,
Sudden methought that I myself was he,
The dead man in the splendid marble coffin.
Above the coffin by my head there grew
A flower for a symbol sweet and tragic,
Violet and sulphur-yellow was its hue,
It seemed to throb with love's mysterious magic.
Tradition says, when Christ was crucified
On Calvary, that in that very hour
These petals with the Savior's blood were dyed,
And therefore is it named the passion-flower.
The hue of blood, they say, its blossom wears,
And all the instruments of human malice
Used at the crucifixion still it bears
In miniature within its tiny chalice.
Whatever to the Passion's rite belongs,
Each tool of torture here is represented
The crown of thorns, cup, nails and hammer, thongs,
The cross on which our Master was tormented.
'Twas such a flower at my tomb did stand,
Above my lifeless form in sorrow bending,
And, like a mourning woman, kissed my hand,
My brow and eyes, with silent grief contending.
And then—O witchery of dreams most strange!—
By some occult and sudden transformation
This flower to a woman's shape did change—
'Twas she I loved with soul-deep adoration!
'Twas thou in truth, my dearest, only thou;
I knew thee by thy kisses warm and tender.
No flower-lips thus softly touched my brow,
Such burning tears no flower's cup might render!
Mine eyes were shut, and yet my soul could see
Thy steadfast countenance divinely beaming,
As, calm with rapture, thou didst gaze on me,
Thy features in the spectral moonlight gleaming.
We did not speak, and yet my heart could tell
The hidden thoughts that thrilled within thy bosom.
No chaste reserve in spoken words may dwell—
With silence Love puts forth its purest blossom.
A voiceless dialogue! one scarce might deem,
While mute we thus communed in tender fashion,
How time slipped by like some seraphic dream
Of night, all woven of joy and fear-sweet passion.
Ah, never ask of us what then we said;
Ask what the glow-worm glimmers to the grasses,
Or what the wavelet murmurs in its bed,
Or what the west wind whispers as it passes.
Ask what rich lights from carbuncles outstream,
What perfumed thoughts o'er rose and violet hover—
But never ask what, in the moonlight's beam,
The sacred flower breathed to her dead lover.
I cannot tell how long a time I lay,
Dreaming the ecstasy of joys Elysian,
Within my marble shrine. It fled away—
The rapture of that calm untroubled vision.
Death, with thy grave-deep stillness, thou art best,
Delight's full cup thy hand alone can proffer;
The war of passions, pleasure without rest—
Such boons are all that vulgar life can offer.
Alas! a sudden clamor put to flight
My bliss, and all my comfort rudely banished;
'Twas such a screaming, ramping, raging fight
That mid the uproar straight my flower vanished.
Then on all sides began a savage war
Of argument, with scolding and with jangling.
Some voices surely I had heard before—
Why, 'twas my bas-reliefs had fall'n a-wrangling!
Do old delusions haunt these marbles here,
And urge them on to frantic disputations?
The terror-striking shout of Pan rings clear,
While Moses hurls his stern denunciations.
Alack! the wordy strife will have no end,
Beauty and Truth will ever be at variance,
A schism still the ranks of man will rend
Into two camps, the Hellenes and Barbarians.
Both parties thus reviled and cursed away,
And none who heard could tell the why or whether,
Till Balaam's ass at last began to bray
And soon outbawled both gods and saints together.
With strident-sobbing hee-haw, hee-haw there—
His unremitting discords without number—
That beast so nearly brought me to despair
That I cried out—and wakened from my slumber.
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