That face but late in slumber took?
Had he but dreamed it? It was gone.
But other thoughts were stirring soon,
To such good purpose, that the saint
Through promptings scarce by him divined,
Anew led Clarel thro’ constraint
Of inner bye-ways, yet inclined
Away from his peculiar haunt,
And came upon a little close,
One wall whereof a creeper won.
On casement sills, small pots in rows
Showed herb and flower, the shade and sun—
Surprise how blest in town but sere.
Low breathed the guide, “They harbor here—
Agar, and my young raven, Ruth.
And, see, there’s Nathan, nothing loath,
Just in from Sharon, ’tis his day;
And, yes—the Rabbi in delay.”—
The group showed just within the door
Swung open where the creeper led.
In lap the petting mother bore
The half reclining maiden’s head—
The stool drawn neighboring the chair;
In front, erect, the father there,
Hollow in cheek, but rugged, brown—
Sharon’s red soil upon his shoon—
With zealot gesture urged some plea
Which brought small joy to Agar’s eyes,
Whereto turned Ruth’s. In scrutiny
Impassive, wrinkled, and how wise
(If wisdom be but craft profound)
Sat the hoar Rabbi. This his guise:
In plaits a head-dress agate-bound,
A sable robe with mystic hem—
Clasps silver, locked in monogram.
An unextinguished lamp they view
Whose flame scarce visibly did sway,
Which having burned till morning dew
Might not be quenched on Saturday
The unaltered sabbath of the Jew.
Struck by the attitudes, the scene,
And loath, a stranger, to advance
Obtrusive, coming so between;
While, in emotion new and strange,
Ruth thrilled him with life’s first romance;
Clarel abashed and faltering stood,
With cheek that knew a novel change.
But Nehemiah with air subdued
Made known their presence; and Ruth turned,
And Agar also, and discerned
The stranger, and a settle placed:
Matron and maid with welcome graced
Both visitors, and seemed to find
In travel-talk which here ensued
Relief to burdens of the mind.
But by the sage was Clarel viewed
With stony and unfriendly look—
Fixed inquisition, hard to brook.
And that embarrassment he raised
The Rabbi marked, and colder gazed.
But in redemption from his glance—
For a benign deliverance—
On Clarel fell the virgin’s eyes,
Pure home of all we seek and prize,
And crossing with their humid ray
The Levite’s arid eyes of gray—
But skill is none to word the rest:
To Clarel’s heart there came a swell
Like the first tide that ever pressed
Inland, and of a deep did tell.
Thereafter, little speech was had
Save syllables which do but skim;
Even in these, the zealot—made
A slave to one tyrannic whim—
Was scant; while still the sage unkind
Sat a torpedo-fish, with mind
Intent to paralyze, and so
Perchance, make Clarel straight forego
Acquaintance with his flock, at least
With two, whose yearnings—he the priest
More than conjectured—oft did flow
Averse from Salem. None the less
A talismanic gentleness
Maternal welled from Agar faint;
Thro’ the sad circle’s ill constraint
Her woman’s way could yet instill
Her prepossession, her good will;
And when at last they bade good-bye—
The visitors—another eye
Spake at the least of amity.
24. THE GIBE
In the south wall, where low it creeps
Crossing the hollow down between
Moriah and Zion, by dust-heaps
Of rubbish in a lonely scene,
A little door there is, and mean—
Such as a stable may befit;
’Tis locked, nor do they open it
Except when days of drought begin,
To let the water-donkeys in
From Rogel. ’Tis in site the gate
Of Scripture named the dung-gate—that
Also (the legends this instill)
Through which from over Kedron’s rill—
In fear of rescue should they try
The way less roundabout and shy—
By torch the tipstaves Jesus led,
And so thro’ back-street hustling sped
To Pilate. Odor bad it has
This gate in story, and alas,
In fact as well, and is in fine
Like ancient Rome’s port Esquiline
Wherefrom the scum was cast.—
Next day
Ascending Zion’s rear, without
The wall, the saint and Clarel stay
Their feet, being hailed, and by a shout
From one who nigh the small gate stood:
“Ho, ho there, worthy pilgrims, ho!
Acquainted in this neighborhood?
What city’s this? town beautiful
Of David? I’m a stranger, know.
’Tis heavy prices here must rule;
Choice house-lot now, what were it worth?
How goes the market?” and more mirth.
Down there into the place unclean
They peer, they see the man therein,
An iron-gray, short, rugged one,
Round shouldered, and of knotty bone;
A hammer swinging in his hand,
And pouch at side, by the ill door.
Him had they chanced upon before
Or rather at a distance seen
Upon the hills, with curious mien
And eyes that—scarce in pious dream
Or sad humility, ’twould seem—
Still earthward bent, would pry and pore.
Perceiving that he shocked the twain,
His head he wagged, and called again,
“What city’s this? town beautiful——”
No more they heard; but to annul
The cry, here Clarel quick as thought
Turned with the saint and refuge sought
Passing an angle of the wall.
When now at slower pace they went
Clarel observed the sinless one
Turning his Bible-leaves content;
And presently he paused: “Dear son,
The Scripture is fulfilled this day;
Note what these Lamentations say;
The doom the prophet doth rehearse
In chapter second, fifteenth verse:
‘All that pass by clap their hands
At thee; they hiss, and wag the head,
Saying, Is this the city’—read,
Thyself here read it where it stands.”
Inquisitive he quick obeyed
,
Then dull relapsed, and nothing said,
Tho’ more he mused, still laboring there
Upward, by arid gullies bare:—
What object sensible to touch
Or quoted fact may faith rely on,
If faith confideth overmuch
That here’s a monument in Zion:
Its substance ebbs—see, day and night
The sands subsiding from the height;
In time, absorbed, these grains may help
To form new sea-bed, slug and kelp.
“The gate,” cried Nehemiah, “the gate
Of David!” Wending thro’ the strait,
And marking that, in common drought,
’Twas yellow waste within as out,
The student mused: The desert, see,
It parts not here, but silently,
Even like a leopard by our side,
It seems to enter in with us—
At home amid men’s homes would glide.
But hark! that wail how dolorous:
So grieve the souls in endless dearth;
Yet sounds it human—of the earth!
25. HUTS
The stone huts face the stony wall
Inside—the city’s towering screen—
Leaving a reptile lane between;
And streetward not a window small,
Cranny nor loophole least is seen:
Through excess of biting sympathies
So hateful to the people’s eyes
Those lepers and their evil nook,
No outlook from it will they brook:
None enter; condolence is none.
That lava glen in Luna’s sphere,
More lone than any earthly one—
Whereto they Tycho’s name have given—
Not more from visitant is riven
Than this stone lane.
But who crouch here?
Have these been men? these did men greet
As fellows once? It is a scene—
Illusion of time’s mirage fleet:
On dry shard-heaps, and things which rot—
Scarce into weeds, for weeds are green—
Backs turned upon their den, they squat,
Some gossips of that tribe unclean.
Time was when Holy Church did take,
Over lands then held by Baldwin’s crown,
True care for such for Jesu’s sake,
Who (so they read in ages gone)
Even as a leper was foreshown;
And, tho’ apart their lot she set,
It was with solemn service yet,
And forms judicial lent their tone:
The sick-mass offered, next was shed
Upon the afflicted human one
The holy water. He was led
Unto the house aloof, his home
Thenceforth. And here, for type of doom,
Some cemetery dust was thrown
Over his head: “Die to the world:
Her wings of hope and fear be furled:
Brother, live now to God alone.”
And from the people came the chant:
“My soul is troubled, joy is curbed,
All my bones they are disturbed;
God, thy strength and mercy grant!”
And next, in order due, the priest
Each habit and utensil blessed—
Hair-cloth and barrel, clapper, glove;
And one by one as these were given,
With law’s dread charge pronounced in love,
So, link by link, life’s chain was riven—
The leper faded in remove.
The dell of isolation here
To match, console, and (could man prove
More than a man) in part endear,
How well had come that smothered text
Which Julian’s pagan mind hath vexed—
And ah, for soul that finds it clear:
“He lives forbid;
From him our faces have we hid;
No heart desires him, none redress,
He hath nor form nor comeliness;
For a transgressor he’s suspected,
Behold, he is a thing infected,
Smitten of God, by men rejected.”
But otherwise the ordinance flows.
For, moving toward the allotted cell,
Beside the priest the leper goes:
“I’ve chosen it, here will I dwell.”
He’s left. At gate the priest puts up
A cross, a can; therein doth drop
The first small alms, which laymen swell.
To aisles returned, the people kneel;
Heart-piercing suppliance—appeal.
But not the austere maternal care
When closed the ritual, ended there
With benediction. Yet to heal,
Rome did not falter, could not faint;
She prompted many a tender saint,
Widow or virgin ministrant.
But chiefly may Sybella here
In chance citation fitly show,
Countess who under Zion’s brow
In house of St. John Almoner
Tended the cripples many a year.
Tho’ long from Europe’s clime be gone
That pest which in the perished age
Could tendance such in love engage,
Still in the East the rot eats on.
Natheless the Syrian leper goes
Unfriended, save that man bestows
(His eye averting) chanceful pence
Then turns, and shares disgust of sense.
Bonds sympathetic bind these three—
Faith, Reverence, and Charity.
If Faith once fail, the faltering mood
Affects—needs must—the sisterhood.
26. THE GATE OF ZION
As Clarel entered with the guide,
Beset they were by that sad crew—
And faces, yet defacements too,
Appealed to them; but could not give
Expression. There, still sensitive,
Our human nature, deep inurned
In voiceless visagelessness, yearned.
Behold, proud worm (if such can be),
What yet may come, yea, even to thee.
Who knoweth? canst forecast the fate
In infinite ages? Probe thy state:
Sinless art thou? Then these sinned not.
These, these are men; and thou art—what?
For Clarel, turning in affright,
Fain would his eyes renounce the light.
But Nehemiah held on his path
Mild and unmoved—scarce seemed to heed
The suitors, or deplore the scath—
His soul pre-occupied and freed
From actual objects thro’ the sway
Of visionary scenes intense—
The wonders of a mystic day
And Zion’s old magnificence.
Nor hither had he come to show
The leper-huts, but only so
To visit once again the hill
And gate Davidic.
In ascent
They win the port’s high battlement,
And thence in sweep they view at will
That theatre of heights which hold
As in a Coliseum’s fold
The guarded Zion. They command
The Mount of Solomon’s Offense,
The Crag of Evil Council, and
Is
cariot’s gallows-eminence.
Pit too they mark where long ago
Dull fires of refuse, shot below,
The city’s litter, smouldering burned,
Clouding the glen with smoke impure,
And griming the foul shapes obscure
Of dismal chain-gangs in their shame
Raking the garbage thither spurned:
Tophet the place—transferred, in name,
To penal Hell.
But shows there naught
To win here a redeeming thought?
Yes: welcome in its nearer seat
The white Cœnaculum they greet,
Where still an upper room is shown—
In dream avouched the very one
Wherein the Supper first was made
And Christ those words of parting said,
Those words of love by loved St. John
So tenderly recorded. Ah,
They be above us like a star,
Those Paschal words.
But they descend;
And as within the wall they wend,
A Horror hobbling on low crutch
Draws near, but still refrains from touch.
Before the saint in low estate
He fawns, who with considerate
Mild glance regards him. Clarel shrank:
And he, is he of human rank?—
“Knowest thou him?” he asked.— “Yea, yea,”
And beamed on that disfeatured clay:
“Toulib, to me? to Him are due
These thanks—the God of me and you
And all; to whom His own shall go
In Paradise and be re-clad,
Transfigured like the morning glad.—
Yea, friend in Christ, this man I know,
This fellow-man.” —And afterward
The student from true sources heard
How Nehemiah had proved his friend,
Sole friend even of that trunk of woe,
When sisters failed him in the end.
27. MATRON AND MAID
Days fleet. No vain enticements lure
Clarel to Agar’s roof. Her tact
Prevailed: the Rabbi might not act
His will austere. And more and more
A prey to one devouring whim,
Nathan yet more absented him.
Welcome the matron ever had
For Clarel. Was the youth not one
New from the clime she doated on?
And if indeed an exile sad
By daisy in a letter laid
Reminded be of home-delight,
Tho’ there first greeted by the sight
Of that transmitted flower—how then