Water he craves, where rain is none—
Water within the parching zone,
Where only dews of midnight fall
And dribbling lodge in chinks of stone.
For meat the bitter tree is all—
The cactus, whose nipped fruit is shed
On those bleached skull-like hulks below,
Which, when by life inhabited,
Crept hither in last journey slow
After a hundred years of pain
And pilgrimage here to and fro,
For other hundred years to reign
In hollow of white armor so—
Then perish piecemeal. You advance:
Instant, more rapid than a glance,
Long neck and four legs are drawn in,
Letting the shell down with report
Upon the stone; so falls in court
The clattering buckler with a din.
There leave him, since for hours he’ll keep
That feint of death.—But for the isle——
Much seems it like this barren steep:
As here, few there would think to smile.”
So, paraphrased in lines sincere
Which still similitude would win,
The sketch ran of that timoneer.
He ended, and how passive sate:
Nature’s own look, which might recall
Dumb patience of mere animal,
Which better may abide life’s fate
Than comprehend.
What may man know?
(Here pondered Clarel;) let him rule—
Pull down, build up, creed, system, school,
And reason’s endless battle wage,
Make and remake his verbiage—
But solve the world! Scarce that he’ll do:
Too wild it is, too wonderful.
Since this world, then, can baffle so—
Our natural harbor—it were strange
If that alleged, which is afar,
Should not confound us when we range
In revery where its problems are.—
Such thoughts! and can they e’en be mine
In fount? Did Derwent true divine
Upon the tower of Saba—yes,
Hinting I too much felt the stress
Of Rolfe—or whom? Green and unsure,
And in attendance on a mind
Poised at self-center and mature,
Do I but lacquey it behind?
Yea, here in frame of thought and word
But wear the cast clothes of my lord?
4. AN INTRUDER
Quiet Agath, with a start, just then
Shrieked out, abhorrent or in fright.
Disturbed in its pernicious den
Amid dry flints and shards of blight,
A crabbed scorpion, dingy brown,
With nervous tail slant upward thrown
(Like to a snake’s wroth neck and head
Dilating when the coil’s unmade
Before the poor affrighted clown
Whose foot offends it unbeknown)
Writhing, faint crackling, like wire spring,
With anguish of the poisonous bile
Inflaming the slim duct, the while
In act of shooting toward the sting;
This, the unblest, small, evil thing,
’Tis this they mark, wriggling in range,
Fearless, and with ill menace, strange
In such a minim.
Derwent rose,
And Clarel; Vine and Rolfe remained
At gaze; the soldier too and Druze.
Cried Rolfe, while thus they stood enchained:
“O small epitome of devil,
Wert thou an ox couldst thou thus sway?
No, disproportionate is evil
In influence. Evil do I say?
But speak not evil of the evil:
Evil and good they braided play
Into one cord.”
While they delay,
The object vanished. Turning head
Toward the salt one, Derwent said:
“The thing’s not sweet; but why start so,
My good man, you that frequent know
The wonders of the deep?” He flushed,
And in embarrassment kept dumb.
But Rolfe here to the rescue pushed:
“Men not deemed craven will succumb
To such an apparition. Why,
Soldiers, that into battle marching
Elastic pace with instep arching—
Sailors (and he’s a sailor nigh)
Who out upon the jib-boom hie,
At world’s end, in the midnight gale,
And wrestle with the thrashing sail,
The while the speared spar like a javelin flies
Slant up from thundering seas to skies
Electric:—these—l’ve known one start
Seeing a spider run athwart!”
In common-place here lightly blew
Across them through the desert air
A whiff from pipe that Belex smoked:
The Druze his sleek mare smooth bestroked,
Then gave a sign. One parting view
At Zion blurred, and on they fare.
5. OF THE STRANGER
While Agath was his story telling
(Ere yet the ill thing worked surprise)
The officer with forest eyes
Still kept them dwelling, somber dwelling
On that mild merman gray. His mien
In part was that of one who tries
Something outside his own routine
Of memories, all too profuse
In personal pain monotonous.
And yet derived he little here,
As seemed, to soothe his mind—austere
With deep impressions uneffaced.
At chance allusion—at the hint
That the dragged tortoise bore the print
Of something mystic and debased,
How glowed the comment in his eyes:
No cynic fire sarcastic; nay,
But deeper in the startled sway
Of illustrations to surmise.
Ever on him they turned the look,
While yet the hearing not forsook
The salt seer while narration ran.
The desert march resumed, in thought
They dwell, till Rolfe the Druze besought
If he before had met this man—
So distant, though a countryman
By birth. Why, yes—had met him: see,
Drilling some tawny infantry
In shadow of a Memphian wall,
White-robed young conscripts up the Nile;
And, afterward, on Jaffa beach,
With Turkish captains holding speech
Over some cannon in a pile
Late landed—with the conic ball.
No more? No more the Druze let fall,
If more he knew.
Thought Rolfe: Ay me,
Ay me, poor Freedom, can it be
A countryman’s a refugee?
What maketh him abroad to roam,
Sharing with infidels a home?
Is it the immense charred solitudes
Once farms? and chimney-stacks that reign
War-burnt upon the houseless plain
Of hearthstones without neighborhoods?
Is it the wilds whose memories own
More specters than the woods bestrown
With Varus’ legions mossy grown?
&nbs
p; Is’t misrule after strife? and dust
From victor heels? Is it disgust
For times when honor’s out of date
And serveth but to alienate?
The usurping altar doth he scout—
The Parsee of a sun gone out?
And this, may all this mar his state?
His very virtues, in the blench
And violence of fortune’s wrench,
Alas, serve but to vitiate?
Strong natures have a strong recoil
Whose shock may wreck them or despoil.
Oh, but it yields a thought that smarts,
To note this man. Our New World bold
Had fain improved upon the Old;
But the hemispheres are counterparts.
So inly Rolfe; and did incline
In briefer question there to Vine,
Who could but answer him with eyes
Opulent in withheld replies.
And here—without a thought to chide—
Feeling the tremor of the ground—
Reluctant touching on the wound
Unhealed yet in our mother’s side;
Behooveth it to hint in brief
The rankling thing in Ungar’s grief;
For bravest grieve.—That evil day,
Black in the New World’s calendar—
The dolorous winter ere the war;
True Bridge of Sighs—so yet ’twill be
Sad arch between contrasted eras;
The span of fate; that evil day
When the cadets from rival zones,
Tradition’s generous adherers,
Their country’s pick and flower of sons,
Abrupt were called upon to act—
For life or death, nor brook delay—
Touching construction of a pact,
A paper pact, with points abstruse
As theologic ones—profuse
In matter for an honest doubt;
And which, in end, a stubborn knot
Some cut but with the sword; that day
With its decision, yet could sway
Ungar, and plunging thoughts excite.
Reading and revery imped his pain,
Confirmed, and made it take a flight
Beyond experience and the reign
Of self; till, in a sort, the man
Grew much like that Pamphylian
Who, dying (as the fable goes)
In walks of Hades met with those
Which, though he was a sage of worth,
Did such new pregnancies implant,
Hadean lore, he did recant
All science he had brought from earth.
Herewith in Ungar, though, ensued
A bias, bitterness—a strain
Much like an Indian’s hopeless feud
Under the white’s aggressive reign.
Indian’s the word; nor it impeach
For over-pointedness of speech;
No, let the story rearward run
And its propriety be shown:
Up Chesapeake in days of old,
By winding banks whose curves unfold
Cape after cape in bright remove,
Steered the ship Ark with her attendant Dove.
From the non-conformists’ zeal or bile
Which urged, inflamed the civil check
Upon the dreaded Popish guile,
The New World’s fairer flowers and dews
Welcomed the English Catholic:
Like sheltering arms the shores expand
To embrace and take to heart the crews.
Care-worn, sea-worn, and tempest-tanned,
Devout they hail that harbor green;
And, mindful of heaven’s gracious Queen
And Britain’s princess, name it Mary-Land.
It was from one of Calvert’s friends
The exile of the verse descends;
And gifts, brave gifts, and martial fame
Won under Tilly’s great command
That sire of after-sires might claim.
But heedless, in the Indian glade
He wedded with a wigwam maid,
Transmitting through his line, far down,
Along with touch in lineaments,
A latent nature, which events
Developed in this distant son,
And overrode the genial part—
An Anglo brain, but Indian heart.
And yet not so but Ungar knew
(In freak, his forest name alone
Retained he now) that instinct true
Which tempered him in years bygone,
When, spite the prejudice of kin
And custom, he with friends could be
Outspoken in his heart’s belief
That holding slaves was aye a grief—
The system an iniquity
In those who plant it and begin;
While for inheritors—alas,
Who knows? and let the problem pass.
But now all that was over—gone;
Now was he the self-exiled one.
Too steadfast! Wherefore should be lent
The profitless high sentiment?
Renounce conviction in defeat:
Pass over, share the spoiler’s seat
And thrive. Behooves thee else turn cheek
To fate with wisdom of the meek.
Wilt not? Unblest then with the store
Of heaven, and spurning worldly lore
Astute, eat thou thy cake of pride,
And henceforth live on unallied.—
His passion, that—mused, never said;
And his own pride did him upbraid.
The habit of his mind, and tone
Tenacious touching issues gone,
Expression found, nor all amiss,
In thing he’d murmur: it was this:
“Who abideth by the dead
Steadfast who, when all have fled
Tree and corse abhorred?
Who drives off the wolf, the kite—
Bird by day, and beast by night,
And keeps the hill through all?
It is Rizpah: true is one
Unto death; nor then will shun
The Seven throttled and undone,
To glut the foes of Saul.”
That for the past; and for the surge
Reactionary, which years urge:
“Elating and elate,
Do they mount them in their pride?
Let them wait a little, wait,
For the brimming of the flood
Brings the turning of the tide.”
His lyric. Yet in heart of hearts
Perchance its vanity he knew,
At least suspected. What to do?
Time cares not to avenge your smarts,
But presses on, impatient of review.
6. BETHLEHEM
Over uplands now toward eve they pass
By higher uplands tinged with grass.
Lower it crept as they went on—
Grew in advance, and rugged the ground;
Yea, seemed before these pilgrims thrown
To carpet them to royal bound.
Each rider here in saddle-seat
Lounges relaxed, and glads his sight;
Solomon whinnies; those small feet
Of Zar tread lightly and more light:
Even Agath’s ass the awakened head
Turns for a nibble. So they sped,
Till now Djalea turns short aside,
Ascends, and by a happy brink
Makes halt, and beckons them to ride
And there with him at pleasure drink
A prospect good.
Below, serene
In oliveyards and vineyards fair,
They view a theater pale green
Of terraces, which stair by stair
Rise toward most venerable walls
On summits twin, and one squared heap
Of buttressed masonry based deep
Adown the crag on lasting pedestals.
Though on that mount but towers convene,
And hamlet none nor cot they see,
They cannot choose but know the scene;
And Derwent’s eyes show humidly:
“What other hill? We view it here:
Blessed in story, and heart-cheer,
Hail to thee, Bethlehem of Judæa!
Oh, look: as if with conscious sense
Here nature shows meet reverence:
See, at the sacred mountain’s feet
How kneels she with her fragrance sweet,
And swathes them with her grasses fair:
So Mary with the spikenard shed
A lowly love, and bowed her head
And made a napkin of her trailing hair.”
He turned, but met no answering eyes;
The animation of surprise
Had vanished; strange, but they were dumb:
What wayward afterthought had come?
Those dim recurrings in the mind,
Sad visitations ill defined,
Which led the trio erst that met
Upon the crown of Olivet
Nehemiah’s proffer to decline
When he invited them away
To Bethany—might such things sway
Even these by Bethlehem? The sign
Derwent respected, and he said
No more. And so, with spirits shrunk
Over the placid hills they tread
And win the stronghold of the monk.
7. AT TABLE
As shipwrecked men adrift, whose boat
In war-time on the houseless seas
Draws nigh to some embattled hull
With pinnacles and traceries—
Grim abbey on the wave afloat;
And mark her bulwarks sorrowful
With briny stains, and answering mien
And cenobite dumb discipline,
And homely uniform of crew
Peering from ports where cannon lean,
Or pacing in deep galleries far,