Dinned in darkness. Down thence they hauled
Many an ancient oak. The orb’d splendour
Shone on their shoulders as they sweat naked
Under moon’s mildness. Magic helped them,
The boat was built in the blink of an eye,
Long and limber, of line stately,
Fair in fashion. Out of the forest came
Spiders for spinning, speedily they footed,700
Shooting like shuttles on the shadowy grass,
Backward and forward, brisk upon their spindle shanks,
And made for the mast a marvellous sail
Of shimmering web. That ship full soon
Over grass gliding, glorious stallions
With Heave! and Ho! hauled to the sea’s rim,
A throng, dancing. They thrust her out
Into deep water. There was din of hoofs
In salt shallows and the spray cast up
Under moon, glancing. The maiden soon,710
The elf also, I then, the third,
Were on board in the boat. Breathing mildly
Off the island,—it arched our sail—
The breeze blew then, blest the fragrance16
Of flower and fruit, floating seaward,
Land-laden air. I long even now
To remember more of that mixed sweetness.
But fast and fair into the foamless bay
Onward and outward, under the orb’d splendour,
Our boat was borne. Back oft I gazed17720720
As the land lessened, lo!, all that folk
Burned on the beaches as they were bright angels,
Light and lovely, and the long ridges
With their folds fleecy under the flame of moon
Swam in silver of swathing mist,
Elf-fair that isle. But on apace
We went on the wave. That winged boy
Held firm the helm. Ahead, far on,
Like floor unflawed, the flood, moon-bright,
Stretched forth the twinkling streets of ocean730
To the rim of the world. No ripple at all
Nor foam was found, save the furrow we made,
The stir at our stern, and the strong cleaving
Of the throbbing prow. We thrust so swift,
Moved with magic, that a mighty curve
Upward arching from either bow
Rose, all rainbowed; as a rampart stood
Bright about us. As the book tells us,
Walls of water, and a way between,
Were reared and rose at the Red Sea ford,740
On either hand, when Israel came
Out of Egypt to their own country.
THE QUEEN OF DRUM
A Story in Five Cantos
CANTO I
1
(Quick! The last chance! The dawn will find us.
Look back! How luminous that place
—We have come from there. The doors behind us
Swing close and closer, the last trace
Vanishes. Quick! Let no awaking
Wash out this memory. Mark my face,
Know me again—join hands—it’s breaking—
Remember—wait!—know me . . . )
Remember whom?
Who is there? Who answered? Empty, the cold gloom10
Before the daybreak, when the moon has set.
It’s over. It was a dream. They will forget.
2
To the King of Drum,1 at last, beyond pretence
Of sleep, the day returned, the inevitable sense
Of well-known things around him: on the ceiling
The plaster-gilt rosettes crumbling, the lilies peeling.
Gentlemen, pages, lords, and flunkey things
In lace who act the nurse to lonely kings,
Tumbled his poor old bones somehow from bed.
Swallowing their yawns, whispering with louted head,20
Passed him from hand to hand, tousled and grey
And blinking like an owl surprised by day,
Rubbing his bleary eyes, muttering between dry gums
‘Gi’ me my teeth . . . dead tired . . . my lords—’t all comes
From living in the valley. Too much wood.
Sleep the clock round in Drum and get no good.’
3
Now half they had dressed the King, half made him dress.
And day’s long steeplechase one jump the less
Unrolled ahead (night’s pillows and the star
Of night no more immeasurably far).30
Now the long passage2 where the walls are thick
As in the Egyptian tombs, echoes his stick
Tapping the cold, grey floor. There, at his side,
With sharp, unlooked for sound, a door flung wide
As from impatient hands, and tall, between
The swing of the flung curtains, stepped the Queen.
—‘So fast, Madam? Young limbs are supple, eh?
And easily get their rest. I’ll dare to say
You have been abroad by night—not known your bed
More than an hour. Is it true?’40
And when she said
Nothing at all, he tapped the ground, and nearing,
Knowingly, his big grey face to hers, and peering,
Screwed home the question, snarling. And she stood
And never spoke. She too was tired, the blood
Drained from her quiet cheek. Wind-broken skies
Had havocked in her hair, and in her eyes
Printed their reckless image. Coldest grey
Those eyes, and sharp3 of sight from far away:
More bright a little, something steadier than50
Man cares to meet with in the face of man
Or woman; alien eyes. For one unbroken
Big moment’s silence, swift as rain, unspoken
Questions went to and fro, and edged replies
Flitting like motes from their embattled eyes
—(Out of the neighbouring past, an unlaid fear
Signals its fellows, calls ‘I am here. I am here.’
Whispers the King, ‘Touch not, lest it should wake
The enormous tooth that once has ceased to ache.’)
Till with a shrug, turning, he first withdrew60
His gaze, yet softly breathed, ‘You . . . Maenad, you!’
4
That heavy day the servants had been late
Setting to rights the carven room of state
Where council met. Bucket and mop were there
Still, and the smell of soot was in the air,
And half-awakened, chilly footmen cursed
And justled yet, as, one by one, the first
And youngest of the Notables of Drum
Came straggling in;4 spiritless all, all dumb,
As men who with their first awakening yawn70
Had sipped an added loathing for the dawn,
Thinking ‘The Council sits to-day.’
And then,
—Long intervals between—the older men,
With more important frowns that seemed to claim
Business of state for pretext, drifting came
Down the long floor like arctic bergs afloat,
With rustling gowns, with clearing of the throat,
Bark of defiant cough, official sound
Of papers spread, and testy glance around.80
5
Now at the long green board they are seated all
In the very old carved room, so thick of wall,
So narrow-windowed, here, an hour from noon,
Men work by lamplight in the month of June.
The oldest of them all play noughts and crosses,
A gambler reckons up his evening losses.
One trims his nails, one spreads his hands and lays
A bright, bald head between them on the baize.
The General, his big lips distanced wide,
Fumbles with half a hand concealed inside,90
Picking a tooth. The Chancellor, with head
Close to the paper and quick-moving lead,
Sketches and strokes all out and draws again
Angular pigs, straight trees, and armless men.
More peaceful far beside him in his place
The Lord Archbishop nods: a rosy face
Cherubically dimpled, settling down
Each moment further into beard and gown
—Into foamed, silvery beard and snowy bands;
Folded, on quiet breast, his baby hands100
—Smooth, never-laboured hands, calm, happy heart,
Like sculptures monumentally at rest
On some cathedral tomb.
Then suddenly a5 stir runs down the room,
—The crumbling of scrawled paper, and the shake
Hurriedly given to jog a friend awake,
Scraping of chairs, quick gabbled finishing
Of whispered tales. Men rise to meet the King.
6
Heavily the hours, like laden barges passed
—Motion, amendment, order, motion. Now at last110
The trickling current of the slow debate
Sets towards that ocean sea, where soon or late
Time out of mind their consultations come,
—The everlasting theme ‘What’s wrong with Drum?’
When, marvellous to dull’d ears, elf-bright between
Two droning wastes of talk, one name—‘The Queen’
Broke startling. And the scribbler dropped the pen
And sleepers rubbed their eyes and whispering men
Drew heads apart watching.
Yes. Sure enough.120
The Chancellor’s on his feet and taking snuff
And writhing and grimacing with a bow
In the article of deprecation. . . . Now,
Listen!
. . . ‘and also seen by vulgar eyes
In her most virtuous, yet, perhaps, unwise
Occasions’ . . . ‘a King’s house contains the weal
Of all. He is the axle of the wheel,
The root of the politic tree, the fountain’s spring.’ . . .
‘Nothing is wholly private in a King.130
For what more private to each man alone
Than health, my lords? Yet, if the monarch groan,
The duteous subject.’ . . . 6
. . . ‘dutifully rude,
Without offence, offending, must intrude’
And ‘Kings to their own majesty resign
The privacy, my lords, that yours and mine’ . . .
(Hist! Now it’s coming)
. . . ‘in a private woman
’Twere not convenient: for a queen, inhuman.140
Thus to expose a teeming nation’s care
And princes yet unborn, to the damp air
Of middle night, and fogs—the common curse
Of our low land—besides, my lords, what worse
May haunt such place and time. As well, you have heard,
All of you, how injuriously the word
Of these things runs abroad. The people know!
Always some chattering dame has seen her go
Past midnight, and on foot, beyond the gates
Out hill-wards, when the frost upon the slates150
Winked to the moon . . . then, the same week, another
Has gossipped with a country girl, whose brother,
—Some forester—by night, in wind and rain,
Past three o’clock of the morn, time and again,
Plodding his homeward journey in the jaws
Of darkness, where the gust in dripping shaws
Blows out his lantern, swears he has often seen
Straight in his path, and like a ghost, the Queen,
—Scaring him: as he kneeled to kiss her hand
Brushing him by, so soft.160
Cloud in the land
Nature has given enough: but this is cloud
Deeper than darkness, cold as death’s own shroud,
Poisoning the people’s thought. You must command
Where counsel fails. You, Sire, with sceptred hand,
With royal brow—stamp out the infected thing
. . . And merge, at least, the husband in the King.’
But as he ended, from the lowest place
At the board’s end, a screeching raw-boned boy
Jumps up, with hair like flax, and freckled face,170
And knuckley fingers working with the joy
Of having found his tongue—‘My lords, they say
Far more than this . . . and worse . . . they say . . . the sounds
And lights along the mountains far away
At night . . . and then she’s on her hunting grounds
With all of those . . . they . . . you—you have fobbed them off
And lied to them . . .’
—but babble and loud cough,
Laughter and plucking hands and stare and frown
Had covered the boy’s speech and pulled him down,180
While lowly boomed the General, ‘Odds my life.
Damn nonsense. Have a wife and rule a wife.
Woman—they say—and dog—and walnut tree—
More you beat’m—better they be—’
When, gradually, a stir about the door,
A sense of things amiss, then more and more
A patch of silence, dimly felt,7 that spread
In widening circles from the table’s head,
Turned thither all their eyes, all ears to wait
The word of the King: who from his chair of state190
Half rising (in his hand a paper shook)
Laboured, faltering, to speech, with shifty look
Settling towards blank dismay. ‘My lords—she’s here—
My lords, the Queen—has something for your ear—
Craves entry.’
And across those champions all
Change passed, as when the sunlight leaves the wall.
7
And all at once the Queen was there,
A flash of eyes, a flash of hair,
Omens of her breathing, and
Robe caught breastward in one hand,
Tall mid their seated shapes: a hush
Of moments:8 then the torrent rush
Of her speaking.
‘What? All dumb
Conspirators? Now is your time. Now come,
You searchers of the truth, you diggers up
Of secrets, now come all of you, the cup9
Is full and brimming over and shall be poured210
—You shall drink now. What? You—or you, my lord,
Forbid my wandering nights? Are you content
To lose your own? Will you, my lord, be pent
A prisoner every night within the wall,
You, General? Does one fetter bind us all?’
‘Content?’ he growled, ‘Why, Madam, who that’s sane
And ’s slept in starlight many a long campaign,
Would leave his bed by nights? What should I seek
Beyond my pillow, then?’—‘Aye, Thus you speak,
Thus now you speak,’ she said, ‘When woods put on220
Their daytime stillness, when the voice is gone
From rivers, and the cats of night lie curled
In sleep, and the moon moves beneath the world.
Fie! As if all that hear you did not know
The password, as yourself. Five hours ago
Where were you?—and with whom?—how far away?
Borrowing what wings of speed when break of day
Recalled you, to be ready, here, to rise
In the nick of time, and with your formal eyes
And grave talk, to belie that other face230
And voice you’ve shown us in a different place?
What, mum as ever? Does the waking voice
So scare you on that t
heme? It is your choice
Not mine, to grub and drag the secret thence,
Where I’ve played fair . . . tho’, faith, your long pretence
Has been my wonder: how you could return
Each morning to the mask and take concern,
Or seem to take concern, with toys—who’s dead,
Who’s suit is gone awry and whose is sped,
Who’s beautiful, and who grows past her prime—240
As if it were there your heart lay! All the time
That flame to which your waking hours are ash,
Shining so near . . . one syllable too rash,
One glance unveiled, had let the secret out;
But always you slipped past and went about,
Skilfully—like conspirators who meet
Out of their lodge, and pass, and do not greet.
Oh fools! . . . if all the plotting brethren turn
Informers against one, shall that one burn
Or hang defenceless? All to keep his vow250
Of silence? I have a tongue, and freedom now
To use it. The pact’s off. I’ll force you yet
To throw down all the cards: and where we met,
By night, and what we were, you shall recall.
Tho’ limp as a dead man’s your tongues should crawl
Unwilling to the word,—I’ll make them speak,
Up, from your graves! You’re shamming. You shall shriek
To split the clouds with truth, you shall proclaim
On housetops what your muttering dared not name
In corners. Or, as Lazarus’ ghost, beneath260
The cloths, back to its shrunk and emptied sheath
Wormed its way home, I’ll force again to grow,
Under these masks you wear for daylight show,
The selves you are at night . . .
What? Nothing yet?
No answer? . . . can it be you do forget?
Did the gates shut so quickly? Could you not bear
One small grain back to light and upper air?
Must I go down like Orpheus and retrace
The interdicted ford—out of that place,270
Step by step, hand in hand, hale up what lies
Buried in you, and teach your waking eyes
To acknowledge it? I thought we had all known
What spends us in the dark, and why we groan
To feel the light return and the limbs ache,
Even in our slumber fighting not to wake . . .
I thought that you, being but the husks of men
All the drab day, remembered where and when
The ripe ear grows—where are the golden hills
It waves on, and the granaries it fills.280
Call it again. Dive for it. Strain your sight,
Crack all your sinews, heaving up to light
What’s under you. Thou sunken wreck, arise!,
Sea-gold, sea-gems that fill the hollow eyes