Dramatic Romances Part 17

It grew, when the hangman entered our bounds, Yelled, p.r.i.c.ked us out to his church like hounds: It got to a pitch, when the hand indeed Which gutted my purse would throttle my creed: And it overflows when, to even the odd, Men I helped to their sins help me to their G.o.d. 60

XI

But now, while the scapegoats leave our flock, And the rest sit silent and count the clock, Since forced to muse the appointed time On these precious facts and truths sublime, Let us fitly employ it, under our breath, In saying Ben Ezra's Song of Death.

XII

For Rabbi Ben Ezra, the night he died, Called sons and sons' sons to his side, And spoke, "This world has been harsh and strange; Something is wrong: there needeth change. 70 But what, or where? at the last or first?

In one point only we sinned, at worst.

XIII

"The Lord will have mercy on Jacob yet, And again in his border see Israel set.

When Judah beholds Jerusalem, The stranger-seed shall be joined to them: To Jacob's House shall the Gentiles cleave.

So the Prophet saith and his sons believe.

XIV

"Ay, the children of the chosen race Shall carry and bring them to their place: 80 In the land of the Lord shall lead the same Bondsmen and handmaids. Who shall blame, When the slaves enslave, the oppressed ones o'er The oppressor triumph for evermore?

XV

"G.o.d spoke, and gave us the word to keep, Bade never fold the hands nor sleep 'Mid a faithless world, at watch and ward, Till Christ at the end relieve our guard.

By His servant Moses the watch was set: Though near upon c.o.c.k-crow, we keep it yet. 90

XVI

"Thou! if thou wast He, who at mid-watch came, By the starlight, naming a dubious name!

And if, too heavy with sleep--too rash With fear--O Thou, if that martyr-gash Fell on Thee coming to take thine own, And we gave the Cross, when we owed the Throne--

XVII

"Thou art the Judge. We are bruised thus.

But, the Judgment over, join sides with us!

Thine too is the cause! and not more thine Than ours, is the work of these dogs and swine, 100 Whose life laughs through and spits at their creed!

Who maintain Thee in word, and defy Thee in deed!

XVIII

"We withstood Christ then? Be mindful how At least we withstand Barabbas now!

Was our outrage sore? But the worst we spared, To have called these--Christians, had we dared!

Let defiance to them pay mistrust of Thee, And Rome make amends for Calvary!

XIX

"By the torture, prolonged from age to age, By the infamy, Israel's heritage, 110 By the Ghetto's plague, by the garb's disgrace, By the badge of shame, by the felon's place, By the branding-tool, the b.l.o.o.d.y whip, And the summons to Christian fellowship,--

XX

"We boast our proof that at least the Jew Would wrest Christ's name from the Devil's crew.

Thy face took never so deep a shade But we fought them in it, G.o.d our aid!

A trophy to bear, as we march, thy band, South, East, and on to the Pleasant Land!" 120

[Pope Gregory XVI abolished this bad business of the Sermon.

--R. B.]

NOTES: "Holy-Cross Day" reflects the att.i.tude of the corrupt mediaeval Christians and Jews toward each other. The prose preceding the poem gives the point of view of an imaginary Bishop's Secretary, who congratulates himself upon the good work the Church is doing in forcing its doctrine on the Jews in the Holy-Cross Day sermon, and effecting many conversions. The poem shows that the Jews regard this solicitude on the part of the Christians with hatred and scorn, and that their conversions are in derision of their would-be converters. The sarcasm of the speaker reaches a pinnacle of bitterness when he accuses the Christian bishops of being men he had helped to their sins and who now help him to their G.o.d. From scorn toward such followers of Christ, he pa.s.ses, in the contemplation of Rabbi Ben Ezra's death song, to a defence of Christ against these followers who profess but do not act his precepts, and a hope that if the Jews were mistaken in not accepting Christ, the tortures they now suffer will be received as expiation for their sin.

Holy-Cross Day is September 14. The discovery of the true cross by Saint Helen inaugurated the festival, celebrated both by Latins and Greeks as early as the fifth or sixth century, under the t.i.tle of the Exaltation of the Cross and later in commemoration of the alleged miraculous appearance of the Cross to Constantine in the sky at midday. Though the particular incidents of the poem are not historical, it is a fact (see Milman's "History of the Jews'') that, by a Papal Bull issued by Gregory XIII in 1584, all Jews above the age of twelve years were compelled to listen every week to a sermon from a Christian priest.

52. Corso: a street in Rome

67. Rabbi Ben Ezra: or Ibn Ezra, a mediaeval Jewish writer and thinker, born in Toledo, near the end of the eleventh century.

III. Ghetto: the Jew's quarter. Pope Paul IV first shut the Jews up in the Ghetto, and prohibited them from leaving it after sunset.

PROTUS

Among these latter busts we count by scores, Half-emperors and quarter-emperors, Each with his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest, Loric and low-browed Gorgon on the breast, One loves a baby face, with violets there, Violets instead of laurel in the hair, As those were all the little locks could bear.

Now, read here. "Protus ends a period Of empery beginning with a G.o.d; Born in the porphyry chamber at Byzant, 10 Queens by his cradle, proud and ministrant: And if he quickened breath there, 'twould like fire Pantingly through the dim vast realm transpire.

A fame that he was missing spread afar: The world from its four corners, rose in war, Till he was borne out on a balcony To pacify the world when it should see.

The captains ranged before him, one, his hand Made baby points at, gained the chief command.

And day by day more beautiful he grew 20 In shape, all said, in feature and in hue, While young Greek sculptors, gazing on the child, Became with old Greek sculpture reconciled.

Already sages laboured to condense In easy tomes a life's experience: And artists took grave counsel to impart In one breath and one hand-sweep, all their art, To make his graces prompt as blossoming Of plentifully-watered palms in spring: Since well beseems it, whoso mounts the throne, 30 For beauty, knowledge, strength, should stand alone, And mortals love the letters of his name."

--Stop! Have you turned two pages? Still the same.

New reign, same date. The scribe goes on to say How that same year, on such a month and day, "John the Pannonian, groundedly believed A blacksmith's b.a.s.t.a.r.d, whose hard hand reprieved The Empire from its fate the year before, Came, had a mind to take the crown, and wore The same for six years (during which the Huns 40 Kept off their fingers from us), till his sons Put something in his liquor"--and so forth.

Then a new reign. Stay--"Take at its just worth"

(Subjoins an annotator) "what I give As hearsay. Some think, John let Protus live And slip away. 'Tis said, he reached man's age At some blind northern court; made, first a page, Then tutor to the children; last, of use About the hunting-stables. I deduce He wrote the little tract 'On worming dogs,' 50 Whereof the name in sundry catalogues Is extant yet. A Protus of the race Is rumoured to have died a monk in Thrace, And if the same, he reached senility."

Here's John the Smith's rough-hammered head. Great eye, Gross jaw and griped lips do what granite can To give you the crown-grasper. What a man!

NOTES: "Protus" sets in contrast the representations by artist and annalist of the two busts and the two lives of Protus, the baby emperor of Byzantium, born in the purple, gently nurtured and cherished, yet fated to obscurity, and of John, the blacksmith's b.a.s.t.a.r.d, predestined to usurp his throne and save the empire with his harder hand.

THE STATUE AND THE BUST

There's a palace in Florence, the world knows well, And a statue watches it from the square, And this story of both do our townsmen tell.

Ages ago, a lady there, At the farthest window facing the East Asked, "Who rides by with the royal air?"