The Poetical Works of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Bart. M.P Part 76

Alike the loftiest knight and meanest man, 89 All the roused host, but now so panic-chill'd, All Cymri once more as one Cymrian, With the last light of that grand spirit fill'd, Through rank on rank, mow'd down, down trampled, sped, And reach'd the standard--to defend the dead.

Wrench'd from the heathen's hand, one moment bow'd 90 In the bright Christian's grasp the gonfanon; Then from a dumb amaze the countless crowd Swept,--and the night as with a sudden sun Flash'd with avenging steel; life gain'd its goal, And calm from lips proud-smiling went the soul!

Leapt from his selle, the king-born Lancelot; 91 Leapt from the selle each paladin and knight; In one mute sign that where upon that spot The foot was planted, G.o.d forbade the flight: There shall the Father-land avenge the son, Or heap all Cymri round the grave of one.

Then, well-nigh side by side--broad floated forth 92 The Cymrian Dragon and the Teuton Steed, The rival Powers that struggle for the North; The gory Idol--the chivalric Creed; Odin's and Christ's confronting flags unfurl'd, As which should save and which destroy a world!

Then fought those Cymrian men, as if on each 93 All Cymri set its last undaunted hope; Through the steel bulwarks round them yawns the breach; Vistas to freedom bright'ning onwards ope; Crida in vain leads band on slaughter'd band, In vain revived falls Harold's ruthless hand;

As on the bull the pard will fearless bound, 94 But if the horn that meets the spring should gore, Awed with fierce pain, slinks snarling from the ground;-- So baffled in their midmost rush, before The abrupt a.s.sault, the savage hosts give way;-- Yet will not own that man could thus dismay.

"Some G.o.d more mighty than Walhalla's king, 95 Strikes in yon arms"--the sullen murmurs run, And fast and faster drives the Dragon wing-- And shrinks and cowers the ghastly gonfanon; They flag--they falter--lo, the Saxons fly!-- Lone rests the Dragon in the dawning sky!

Lone rests the Dragon with its wings outspread, 96 Where the pale hoofs one holy ground had trod, There the hush'd victors round the martyr'd dead, As round an altar, lift their hearts to G.o.d.

Calm is that brow as when a host it braved, And smiles that lip as on the land it saved!

Pardon, ye shrouded and mysterious Powers, 97 Ye far-off shadows from the spirit-clime, If for that realm untrodden by the Hours, Awhile we leave this lazar-house of Time; With Song remounting to those native airs Of which, though exiled, still we are the heirs.

Up from the clay and towards the Seraphim, 98 The Immortal, men called Caradoc, arose.

Round the freed captive whose melodious hymn Had hail'd each glimmer earth, the dungeon, knows, Spread all the aisles by angel worship trod; Blazed every altar, conscious of the G.o.d.

All the illumed creation one calm shrine; 99 All s.p.a.ce one rapt adoring ecstasy; All the sweet stars with their untroubled shine, Near and more near, enlarging through the sky; All opening gradual on the eternal sight, Joy after joy, the depths of their delight.

Paused on the marge, Heaven's beautiful New-born, 100 Paused on the marge of that wide happiness; And as a lark that, poised amid the morn, Shakes from its wing the dews--the plumes of bliss, Sunn'd in the dawn of the diviner birth, Shook every sorrow memory bore from earth:

Knowledge (that on the troubled waves of sense 101 Breaks into sparkles)--pour'd upon the soul Its lambent, clear, translucent affluence, And cold-eyed Reason loosed its hard control; Each G.o.dlike guess beheld the truth it sought; And Inspiration flash'd from what was Thought.

Still'd evermore the old familiar train 102 That fill the frail Proscenium of our deeds, The unquiet actors on that stage, the brain, Which, in the spangles of their tinsell'd weeds, Mime the true soul's majestic royalties, And strut august in Wonder's credulous eyes;--

Ambition's madness in the vain desires, 103 Which seek a G.o.ddess but to clasp a cloud; And human Pa.s.sion that with fatal fires Consumes the shrine to which its faith is vow'd; And even Hope, that fairest nurse of Grief, Crown'd with young flowers,--a blight in every leaf;

All these are still--abandon'd to the worm, 104 Their loud breath jars not on the calm above!

Only survived, as if the single germ Of the new life's ambrosian being,--LOVE.

Ah, if the bud can give such bloom to Time, What is the flower when in its native clime?

Love to the radiant Stranger left alone 105 Of all the vanish'd hosts of memory; While broadening round, on splendour splendour shone, To earth soft-pitying dropt the veilless eye, And saw the shape, that love remember'd still, Couch'd 'mid the ruins on the moonlit hill.

And, with the new-born vision, piercing all 106 Things past and future, view'd the fates ordain'd; The fame achieved amidst the Coral Hall; From war and winter Freedom's symbol gain'd, What rests?--the Spirit from its realm of bliss, Shot, loving down,--the guide to Happiness!

Pale to the Cymrian King the Shadow came, 107 Its glory left it as the earth it near'd, In livid likeness as its corpse the same, Wan with its wounds the awful ghost appear'd.

Life heard the voice of unembodied breath, And Sleep stood trembling side by side with Death.

"Come," said the Voice, "Before the Iron Gate 108 Which hath no egress, waiting thee, behold Under the shadow of the brows of Fate, The childlike playmate with the locks of gold."

Then rose the mortal, following, and, before, Moved the pale shape the angel's comrade wore.

Where, in the centre of those ruins grey, 109 Immense with blind walls columnless, a tomb For earlier kings, whose names had pa.s.s'd away, Chill'd the chill moonlight with its ma.s.s of gloom, Through doors ajar to every prying blast By which to rot imperial dust had past.

The Vision went, and went the living King; 110 Then strange and hard to human hear to tell By language moulded but by thoughts that bring Material images, what there befel!

The mortal enter'd Eld's dumb burial place, And at the threshold, vanish'd Time and s.p.a.ce.

Yea, the hard sense of time was from the mind 111 Rased and annihilate;--yea, s.p.a.ce to eye And soul was presenceless? What rest behind?

Thought and the Infinite! the eternal I, And its true realm the Limitless, whose brink Thought ever nears: What bounds us when we think?

Yea, as the dupe in tales Arabian, 112 Dipp'd but his brow beneath the beaker's brim, And in that instant all the life of man From youth to age roll'd its slow years on him, And while the foot stood motionless--the soul Swept with deliberate wing from pole to pole,

So when the man the Grave's still portals pa.s.s'd, 113 Closed on the substances or cheats of earth, The Immaterial, for the things it gla.s.s'd, Shaped a new vision from the matter's dearth: Before the sight that saw not through the clay, The undefined Immeasurable lay.

A realm not land, nor sea, nor earth, nor sky, 114 Like air impalpable, and yet not air;-- "Where am I led?" ask'd Life with hollow sigh.

"To Death, that dim phantasmal EVERY WHERE,"

The Ghost replied. "Nature's circ.u.mfluent robe, Girding all life--the globule or the globe."

"Yet," said the Mortal, "if indeed this breath 115 Profane the world that lies beyond the tomb; Where is the Spirit-race that peoples death?

My soul surveys but unsubstantial gloom, A void--a blank--where none preside or dwell, Nor woe nor bliss is here, nor heaven nor h.e.l.l."

"And what is death?--a name for nothingness,"[8] 116 Replied the Dead; "the shadow of a shade; Death can retain no spirit!--woe and bliss, And heaven and h.e.l.l, are for the living made; An instant flits between life's latest sigh And life's renewal;--that it is to die!

"From the brief Here to the eternal There 117 We can but see the swift flash of the goal; Less than the s.p.a.ce between two waves of air, The void between existence and a soul; Wherefore, look forth; and with calm sight endure The vague, impalpable, inane Obscure:

"Lo, by the Iron Gate a giant cloud 118 From which emerge (the form itself unseen) Vast adamantine brows sublimely bow'd Over the dark,--relentlessly serene; Thou canst not view the hand beneath the fold, The work it weaveth none but G.o.d behold.

"Yet ever from this Nothingness of Death, 119 That hand shapes out the myriad pomps of life; Receives the matter when resign'd the breath, Calms into Law the elemental strife; On each still'd atom forms afresh bestows (No atom lost since first Creation rose).

"Thus seen, what men call Nature, thou surveyest, 120 But matter boundeth not the still one's power; In every deed its presence thou displayest.

It prompts each impulse, guides each winged hour, It spells the Valkyrs to their gory loom, It calls the blessing from the bane they doom:

"It rides the steed, it saileth with the bark, 121 Wafts the first corn-seed to the herbless wild, Alike directing through the doom of dark, The age-long nation and the new-born child; Here the dread Power, yet loftier tasks await, And NATURE, twofold, takes the name of FATE.

"Nature or Fate, Matter's material life. 122 Or to all spirit the spiritual guide, Alike with one harmonious being rife, Form but the whole which only names divide; Fate's crushing power, or Nature's gentle skill, Alike one Good--from one all-loving Will."

While thus the Shade benign instructs the King, 123 Near the dark cloud the still brows bended o'er, They come: a soft wind with continuous wing Sighs through the gloom and trembles through the door, "Hark to that air," the gentle Phantom said, "In each faint murmur flit unseen the dead,--

"Pa.s.s through the gate, from life the life resume, 124 As the old impulse flies to heaven or h.e.l.l."

While spoke the Ghost, stood forth amidst the gloom, A lucent Image, crown'd with asphodel, The left hand bore a mirror crystal-bright, A wand star-pointed glitter'd in the right.

"Dost thou not know me?--me, thy second soul?" 125 Said the bright Image, with its low sweet voice, "I who have led thee to each n.o.ble goal, Mirror'd thy heart, and starward led thy choice?

To teach thee wisdom won in Labour's school, I lured thy footsteps to the forest pool,

"Show'd all the woes which wait inebriate power, 126 And woke the man from youth's voluptuous dream; Gla.s.s'd on the crystal--let each stainless hour Obey the wand I lift unto the beam; And at the last, when yonder gates expand, Pa.s.s with thine angel, Conscience, hand in hand."

Spoke the sweet Splendour, and as music dies 127 Into the heart that hears, subsides away; Then Arthur lifted his serenest eyes Towards the pale Shade from the celestial day, And said, "O thou in life belov'd so well, Dream I or wake?--As those last accents fell,

"So fears that, spite of thy mild words, dismay'd, 128 Fears not of death, but that which death conceals, Vanish;--my soul that trembled at thy shade, Yearns to the far light which the shade reveals, And sees how human is the dismal error Thad hideth G.o.d, when veiling death with terror.

"Ev'n thus some infant, in the early spring, 129 Under the pale buds of the almond-tree, Shrinks from the wind that with an icy wing Shakes showering down white flakes that seem to be Winter's wan sleet,--till the quick sunbeam shows That those were blossoms which he took for snows.

"Thou to this last and sovran mystery 130 Of my mysterious travail guiding sent, Dear as thou wert, I will not mourn for thee, Thou wert not shaped for earth's hard element-- Our ends, our aims, our pleasure, and our woe, Thou knew'st them all, but thine we could not know.

"Forgive that none were worthy of thy worth! 131 That none took heed, upon the plodding way, What diamond dew was on the flowers of earth, Till in thy soul drawn upward to the day.