Legends of the Saxon Saints
by Aubrey De Vere · English · Gutenberg #29121 · 524,957 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Legends of the Saxon Saints
Author: Aubrey De Vere
Release date: June 14, 2009 [eBook #29121]
Most recently updated: January 5, 2021
Language: English
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THE SAXON SAINTS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
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London: C. KEGAN PAUL & CO., 1 Paternoster Square.
* * * * *
BY THE LATE SIR AUBREY DE VERE, BART.
=Mary Tudor:= an Historical Drama.
=Julian the Apostate and the Duke of Mercia.=
=A Song of Faith=, Devout Exercises and Sonnets.
B. M. PICKERING.
LEGENDS
OF THE
SAXON SAINTS
BY
AUBREY DE VERE
Hic sunt in fossa Bedæ Venerabilis ossa
(_Old Inscription_)
LONDON
C. KEGAN PAUL & CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1879
(_The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved_)
_TO THE VENERABLE BEDE_
'Mid quiet vale or city lulled by night
Well-pleased the wanderer, wakeful on his bed,
Hears from far Alps on fitful breeze the sound
Of torrents murmuring down their rocky glens,
Strange voice from distant regions, alien climes:--
Should these far echoes from thy legend-roll
Delight of loftier years, these echoes faint,
Thus waken, thus make calm, one restless heart
In our distempered day, to thee the praise,
Voice of past times, O Venerable Bede!
PREFACE.
Many years ago a friend remarked to me on the strangeness of the
circumstance that the greatest event in the history of a nation, its
conversion to Christianity, largely as it is often recorded in national
legends, has never been selected as a theme for poetry. That event may
indeed not supply the materials necessary for an Epic or a Drama, yet it
can hardly fail to abound in details significant and pathetic, which
especially invite poetic illustration. With the primary interest of that
great crisis, many others, philosophical, social, and political,
generally connect themselves. Antecedent to a nation's conversion, the
events of centuries have commonly either conduced to it, or thrown
obstacles in its way; while the history as well as the character of that
nation in the subsequent ages is certain to have been in a principal
measure modified by that event. Looking back consequently on that period
in which the moral influences of ages, early and late, are imaged, a
people recognises its own features as in a mirror, but sees them such as
they were when their expression was still undetermined; and it may well
be struck by the resemblance at once to what now exists, and also by the
dissimilitude. Many countries have unhappily lost almost all authentic
records connected with their conversion. Such would have been the fate
of England also, had it not been for a single book, 'Bede's
Ecclesiastical History.' In the following poems I have endeavoured to
walk in the footsteps of that great master. Their scope will best be
indicated by some remarks upon the character of that wonderful age which
he records.
St. Augustine landed in the Isle of Thanet A.D. 597, and Bede died A.D.
735. The intervening period, that of his chronicle, is the golden age of
Anglo-Saxon sanctity. Notwithstanding some twenty or thirty years of
pagan reaction, it was a time of rapid though not uninterrupted
progress, and one of an interest the more touching when contrasted with
the calamities which followed so soon. Between the death of Bede and the
first Danish invasion, were eighty years, largely years of decline,
moral and religious. Then followed eighty years of retribution, those of
the earlier Danish wars, till, with the triumph of Alfred, England's
greatest king, came the Christian restoration. Once more periods of
relaxed morals and sacrilegious princes alternated with intervals of
reform; again and again the Northmen over-swept the land. The 460 years
of Anglo-Saxon Christianity constituted a period of memorable
achievements and sad vicissitudes; but that period included more than a
hundred years of high sanctity, belonging for the most part to the
seventh century, a century to England as glorious as was the thirteenth
to Mediæval Europe.
Within that century the kingdoms of the Heptarchy successively became
Christian, and those among them which had relapsed returned to the
Faith. Sovereigns, many of whom had boasted a descent from Odin himself,
stood as interpreters beside the missionaries when they preached, and
rivalled each other in the zeal with which they built churches, some of
which were founded on the sites of ancient temples, though, in other
cases, with a charitable prudence, the existing fanes were spared,
purified, and adapted to Christian worship. At Canterbury and York,
cathedrals rose, and on many a site besides; and when the earlier had
been destroyed by fire, or had fallen through decay, fabrics on a vaster
scale rose above their ruins, and maintained a succession which lasts to
this day. Monasteries unnumbered lifted their towers above the forests
of a land in which the streams still ran unstained and the air of which
had not yet been dimmed by smoke, imparting a dignity to fen and flat
morass. Round them ere long cities gathered, as at St. Albans,
Malmesbury, Sherborne, and Wimborne; the most memorable of those
monasteries being that at Canterbury, and that at Westminister,
dedicated to St. Peter, as the cathedral church near it had been
dedicated to St. Paul. In the North they were at least as numerous. The
University of Oxford is also associated with that early age. It was
beside the Isis that St. Frideswida raised her convent, occupied at a
later date by canons regular, and ultimately transformed into Christ
Church by Cardinal Wolsey--becoming thus the chief, as it had been the
earliest, among the schools in that great seat of learning which within
our own days has exercised a religious influence over England not less
remarkable than that which belonged to its most palmy preceding period.
During that century England produced most of those saintly kings and
queens whose names still enrich the calendar of the Anglo-Saxon Church,
sovereigns who ruled their kingdoms with justice, lived in
mortification, went on pilgrimages, died in cloisters. The great
missionary work had also begun. Within a century from the death of St.
Augustine, apostles from England had converted multitudes in Germany,
and St. Wilfrid had preached to the inhabitants of Friesland. Something,
moreover, had been done to retrieve the past. The Saxon kings made
amends for the wrongs inflicted by their ancestors upon the British
Celts, endowing with English lands the churches and convents founded by
them in Brittany. King Kenwalk of Wessex showed thus also a royal
munificence to the Celtic monastery of Glastonbury, only stipulating in
return that the British monks there, condoning past injuries, should
offer a prayer for him when they knelt at the tomb of King Arthur.
The England of the seventh century had been very gradually prepared for
that drama of many ages which had then its first rehearsal. In it three
races had a part. They were those of the native Britons, the Saxons who
had over-run the land, and the Irish missionaries. Rome, the last and
greatest of the old-world empires, had exercised more of an enfeebling
and less of an elevating influence among the British than among her
other subject races; but her great military roads still remained the
witnesses of her military genius; and many a city, some in ruin, were
records of her wealth and her arts. The Teutonic race in England, which
for centuries had maintained its independence against Rome, could not
forgive the Britons for having submitted to their hated foe, and
trampled on them the more ruthlessly because they despised them. Yet
they at least might well have learned to respect that race. It has been
well remarked that if the Britons submitted easily to Rome, yet of all
her subject races they made far the most memorable fight against that
barbaric irruption which swept over the ruins of her empire. For two
centuries that race had fought on. It still retained the whole of
Western Britain, Cornwall, Wales, and Strathclyde; while in other parts
of England it possessed large settlements. On the other hand, in matters
of spiritual concern the British race contrasted unfavourably with the
other races subjected by the barbarians. In France, Spain, and Italy,
the conquered had avenged a military defeat by a spiritual victory,
bringing over their conquerors to Christianity; and, as a consequence,
they had often risen to equality with them. In those parts of England,
on the contrary, where the British had submitted to the Pagan
conquerors, they by degrees abandoned their Christian faith;[1] and
where they retained their independence, they hated the Saxon conquerors
too much to share their Christianity with them. Far from desiring their
conversion, they resisted all the overtures made to them by the Roman
missionaries who ardently desired their aid; and as a consequence of
that refusal, they eventually lost their country. The chief cause of
that refusal was hatred of the invader. The Irish as well as the British
had a passionate devotion to their own local traditions in a few matters
not connected with doctrine; but they notwithstanding worked cordially
with the Benedictines from St. Gregory's convent for the spread of the
Christian Faith. Had the Britons converted the Anglo-Saxon race they
would probably have blended with them, as at a later time that race
blended with their Norman conquerors. Three successive waves of the
Teuton-Scandinavian race swept over their ancient land, the Anglo-Saxon,
the Danish, and the Norman: against them all the British Celts fought
on. They fell back toward their country's western coasts, like the Irish
of a later day; and within their Cambrian mountains they maintained
their independence for eight centuries.
Yet the Anglo-Saxons' victory was not an unmixed one. Everywhere
throughout England they maintained during the seventh century two
different battles, a material and a spiritual one, and with opposite
results. Year by year that race pushed further its military dominion;
but yearly the Christian Faith effected new triumphs over that of Odin.
For this there were traceable causes. The character of the Teutonic
invader included two very different elements, and the nobler of these
had its affinities with Christianity. If, on the one hand, that
character was fierce, reckless, and remorseless, and so far in natural
sympathy with a religion which mocked at suffering and till the ninth
century offered up human sacrifices, it was marked no less by
robustness, simplicity, honesty, sincerity, an unexcitable energy and an
invincible endurance. It possessed also that characteristic which
essentially contradistinguishes the _ordo equestris_ from the _ordo
pedestris_ in human character, viz., the spirit of reverence. It had
aspirations; and, as a background to all its musings and all its hopes
there remained ever the idea of the Infinite. As a consequence, it
retained a large measure of self-respect, purity, and that veneration
for household ties attributed to it by the Roman historian[2] at a time
when that virtue was no longer a Roman one. Such a character could not
but have its leanings toward Christianity; and, when brought under its
influences, it put forth at once new qualities, like a wild flower
which, on cultivation, acquires for the first time a perfume. Its spirit
of reverence developed into humility, and its natural fortitude into a
saintly patience; while its fierceness changed into a loyal fervour; and
the crimes to which its passions still occasionally hurried it were
voluntarily expiated by penances as terrible. Even King Penda, the hater
of Christianity, hated an insincere faith more. 'Of all men,' he said,
'he that I have ever most despised is the man who professes belief in
some God and yet does not obey his laws.' Such was that character
destined to produce under the influences of faith such noble specimens
of Christian honour and spiritual heroism. From the beginning its
greatness was one
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home;
and in later ages it became yet more eminently domestic, combining
household ties with the pursuit of letters and science in colleges which
still preserved a family life. Its monks had no vocation to the life of
the desert; in this unlike the Irish saints, who, like those of Eastern
lands, delighted in the forest hermitage and the sea-beat rock.
The Anglo-Saxon race was but a branch of that great Teuton-Scandinavian
race, generically one whether it remained in the German forests or
wandered on to the remoter coasts of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. It was
the race which the Romans called 'the Barbarians,' but which they could
never conquer. A stern history had trained it for a wonderful destiny.
Christianity in mastering the Greek had possessed itself of the
intellect of the world, and in mastering Rome had found access to all
those vast regions conquered by Roman arms, opened out by Roman roads,
governed by Roman law, and by it helped to the conception of a higher
law. But the Greek and the Roman civilisations had, each of them,
corrupted its way, and yielded to the seductions of pride, sense, and
material prosperity; and, as a consequence, both had become incapable
of rendering full justice to much that is highest in Christianity. That
which they lacked the 'Barbaric' race alone was capable of supplying. In
its wanderings under darkened skies and amid pitiless climates it had
preserved an innocence and simplicity elsewhere lost. Enriched by the
union of the new element, thus introduced, with what it had previously
derived from Greek thought and Roman law, that authentic Religion which
had been prospectively sown within the narrow precinct of Judea extended
its branches over the world. Had the Barbaric race shared in the Greek
sciences and arts, and clothed itself in the Roman civilisation, it must
have learned their corruptions. The larger destiny of man could thus,
humanly speaking, never have been accomplished, and neither the mediæval
world, the modern world, nor that yet higher order of human society
which doubtless lies beyond both, could have existed. It was necessary
that in some region, exacting, yet beneficent, civilisation should be
retarded, that a remedy might be found for the abuses of civilisation;
and races whose present backward condition we are accustomed to deplore
may likewise be intended for a similar purpose. Plants are thus kept in
the dark in order to reserve their fruitage for a fitter season.
But what had been the earlier history of a race before which such
destinies lay? What training had prepared it for its work--the last that
might have been expected from it? On this subject there remains a
tradition, the profoundly significant character of which ought to have
made it more widely known. Mallet, in his 'Northern Antiquities,'
translated by Bishop Percy, to whom our ballad literature is so deeply
indebted, records it thus:--'A celebrated tradition, confirmed by the
poems of all the northern nations, by their chronicles, by institutions
and customs, some of which subsist to this day, informs us that an
extraordinary person named Odin formerly reigned in the north.... All
their testimonies are comprised in that of Snorri, the ancient historian
of Norway, and in the commentaries and explications which Torphæus added
to his narrative. The Roman Commonwealth was arrived at the highest
pitch of power, and saw all the then known world subject to its laws,
when an unforeseen event raised up enemies against it from the very
bosom of the forests of Scythia and on the banks of the Tanais.
Mithridates by flying had drawn Pompey after him into those deserts. The
King of Pontus sought there for refuge and new means of vengeance. He
hoped to arm against the ambition of Rome all the barbarous nations his
neighbours, whose liberty she threatened. He succeeded in this at first,
but all those peoples, ill united as allies, ill armed as soldiers, and
still worse disciplined, were forced to yield to the superior genius of
Pompey. Odin is said to have been of their number.... Odin commanded the
Æsir, whose country must have been situated between the Pontus Euxinus
and the Caspian Sea. Their principal city was Asgard. The worship there
paid to their supreme God was famous throughout the circumjacent
countries. Odin, having united under his banners the youth of the
neighbouring nations, marched towards the north and west of Europe,
subduing, as we are told, all the people he found in his passage, and
giving them to one or other of his sons for subjects. Many sovereign
families of the North are said to be descended from these princes. Thus
Horsa and Hengist, the chiefs of those Saxons who conquered Britain in
the fifth century, counted Odin or Wodin in the number of their
ancestors; it was the same with the other Anglo-Saxon princes as well as
the greatest part of those of lower Germany and the North.'[3]
Gibbon refers to this ancient tradition, though not as accepting it for
a part of ascertained history, yet in a spirit less sceptical than was
usual to him. He writes thus: 'It is supposed that Odin was chief of a
tribe of barbarians which dwelt on the banks of the lake Moeotis, till
the fall of Mithridates and the arms of Pompey menaced the north with
servitude. That Odin, yielding with indignant fury to a power which he
was unable to resist, conducted his tribe from the frontiers of the
Asiatic Sarmatia into Sweden, with the great design of forming, in that
inaccessible retreat of freedom, a religion and a people which, in some
remote age, might be subservient to his immortal revenge; when his
invincible Goths, armed with martial fanaticism, should issue in
numerous swarms from the neighbourhood of the Polar circle to chastise
the oppressors of mankind.... Notwithstanding the mysterious obscurity
of the Edda, we can easily distinguish two persons confounded under the
name of Odin; the god of war, and the great legislator of Scandinavia.
The latter, the Mahomet of the north, instituted a religion adapted to
the climate and to the people. Numerous tribes on either side of the
Baltic were subdued by the invincible valour of Odin, by his persuasive
eloquence, and by the fame which he acquired of a most skilful magician.
The faith that he had propagated during a long and prosperous life he
confirmed by a voluntary death. Apprehensive of the ignominious approach
of disease and infirmity, he resolved to expire as became a warrior. In
a solemn assembly of the Swedes and Goths he wounded himself in nine
mortal places, hastening away (as he asserted with his dying voice) to
prepare the feast of heroes in the palace of the great god of war.'[4]
In a note Gibbon adds, referring to the Roman and Oriental part of the
legend: 'This wonderful expedition of Odin, which, by deducing the
enmity of the Goths and Romans from so memorable a cause, might supply
the noble groundwork of an epic poem, cannot safely be received as
authentic history. According to the obvious sense of the Edda, and the
interpretation of the most skilful critics, Asgard, instead of denoting
a real city of the Asiatic Sarmatia, is the fictitious appellation of
the mystic abode of the gods, the Olympus of Scandinavia.' Whether the
emigration of the Barbaric race from the East be or be not historical,
certainly the grounds upon which Gibbon bases his distrust of it are
slender. He forgot that there might well have been both an earthly
Asgard and also, according to the religion of the north, an Asgard in
heaven, the destined abode of warriors faithful to Odin. Those who after
his death changed their king into a god would, by necessity, have
provided him with a celestial mansion; nor could they have assigned to
it a name more acceptable to a race which blended so closely their
religion with their patriotic love than that of their ancient capital,
from which their great deliverer and prophet had led them forth in
pilgrimage. Let us hope that Gibbon's remark as to the fitness of this
grand legend for the purposes of epic poetry may yet prove prophecy. It
has had one chance already: for we learn from the first book of _The
Prelude_ that the theme was one of those on which the imagination of
Wordsworth rested in youth, when he was seeking a fit subject for epic
song.
It is difficult to imagine a historical legend invested with a greater
moral weight or dignity than belongs to this one. The mighty Republic
was soon to pass into an Empire mightier and more ruthless still, the
heir of all those ancient empires which from the earliest had
represented a dominion founded on the pride of this world, and had
trampled upon human right. A race is selected to work the retribution.
It is qualified for its work by centuries of adversity, only to be
paralleled by the prosperity of its rival. Yet when at last that
retribution comes, it descends more in mercy than in judgment! Great
changes had prepared the world for a new order of things. The centre of
empire had moved eastward from Rome to Constantinople: the spiritual
centre had moved westward from Jerusalem to Rome. The empire had herself
become Christian, and was allowed after that event nearly a century more
of gradual decline. The judgment was not thus averted; but it was
ennobled. Her children were enabled to become the spiritual instructors
of those wild races by which the '_State_ Universal' had been
overwhelmed. That empire indeed, was not so much destroyed as
transformed and extended, a grace rendered possible by her having
submitted to the yoke of Christ; the new kingdoms which constituted the
Christian '_Orbis Terrarum_' being, for the most part, fragments of it,
while its laws made way into regions wider far, and exercised over them
a vast though modified authority not yet extinct. Here, if anywhere, we
catch glimpses of a hand flashing forth between the clouds, pointing
their way to the nations, and conducting Humanity forward along its
arduous and ascending road. There is a Providence or there could be no
Progress.
For the fulfilment of that part assigned to the 'Barbarians' in this
marvellous drama of the ages, it was necessary that many things should
combine; an exemption from the temptations which had materialised the
races of the south; the severe life that perfects strength; a race
endowed with the physical strength needed to render such sufferings
endurable; and lastly, an original spiritual elevation inherent in that
race, and capable of making them understand the lesson, and accept their
high destiny. The last and greatest of these qualifications had not been
wanting. Much as the religion of the Barbaric race had degenerated by
the time when it deified its great deliverer, it had inherited the
highest traditions of the early world. Mallet thus describes their
religion in its purity: 'It taught the being of a "Supreme God, master
of the universe, to whom all things are submissive and obedient." Such,
according to Tacitus, was the supreme God of the Germans. The ancient
Icelandic mythology calls him "the Author of everything that existeth;
the eternal, the ancient, the living and awful Being, the searcher into
concealed things, the Being that never changeth." This religion
attributed to the Supreme Deity "an infinite power, a boundless
knowledge, an incorruptible justice," and forbade its followers to
represent Him under any corporeal form. They were not even to think of
confining Him within the enclosure of walls, but were taught that it
was within woods and consecrated forests that they could serve Him
properly. There He seemed to reign in silence, and to make Himself felt
by the respect which He inspired.[5] ... From this Supreme God were
sprung (as it were emanations from His divinity) an infinite number of
subaltern deities and genii, of which every part of the visible world
was the seat and the temple.... To serve this divinity with sacrifices
and prayers, to do no wrong to others, and to be brave and intrepid in
themselves, were all the moral consequences they derived from these
doctrines. Lastly, the belief of a future state cemented and completed
the whole building.[6] ... Perhaps no religion ever attributed so much
to a Divine Providence as that of the northern nations.'[7]
It was not among the Scandinavians only that the religion of the North
retained long these vestiges of its original purity, and elevation. 'All
the Teutonic nations held the same opinions, and it was upon these that
they founded the obligation of serving the gods, and of being valiant
in battle.... One ought to regard in this respect the Icelandic
mythology as a precious monument, without which we can know but very
imperfectly this important part of the religion of _our fathers_.'[8]
The earlier and purer doctrine seems to have long survived the
incrustations of later times in the case of a select few. Harold
Harfraga, the first king of all Norway, thus addressed an assembly of
his people: 'I swear and protest in the most sacred manner that I will
never offer sacrifice to any of the gods adored by the people, but to
Him only who hath formed this world, and everything we behold in it.' A
belief in the divine Love, as well as the divine power, knowledge and
justice, though probably not held by the many at a later day, is yet
distinctly expressed, as well as the kindred belief in an endless reign
of peace, by the earliest and most sacred document of the Northern
religion, viz. the 'Völuspá Prophecy.' That prophecy, after foretelling
the destruction of all things, including the Odin gods themselves, by
the Supreme God and His ministers, proceeds: 'There will arise out of
the sea, another earth most lovely and verdant with pleasant fields
where the grain shall grow unsown. Vidar and Vali, shall survive;
neither the flood nor Surtur's fire shall harm them. They shall dwell on
the plain of Ida _where Asgard formerly stood_.... Baldur and Hödur
shall also repair thither from the abode of death. There they shall sit
and converse together, and call to mind their former knowledge and the
perils they underwent.'[9]
The similarity between the higher doctrines of the northern faith and
the religion of ancient Persia is at once accounted for by the tradition
of the Odin migration from the East. A writer the reverse of credulous
expresses himself thus on that subject: 'We know that the Scandinavians
came from some country of Asia.... This doctrine was in many respects
the same with that of the Magi. Zoroaster had taught that the conflict
between Ormuzd and Ahriman (_i.e._ light and darkness, the Good and Evil
Principle) should continue to the last day; and that then the Good
Principle should be reunited to the Supreme God, from whom it had first
issued; the Evil should be overcome and subdued; darkness should be
destroyed; and the world, purified by a universal conflagration, should
become a luminous and shining abode, into which evil should never be
permitted to enter.'[10] The same writer continues thus: 'Odin and the
Æsir may be compared to Ormuzd and the Amshaspands; Loki and his evil
progeny, the Wolf Fenrir and the Midgard Serpent, together with the
giants and monsters of Jötunheim and Hvergelmir, to Ahriman and the
Devs.[11] ... We will not deny that some of these doctrines may have
been handed down by oral tradition to the pontiff-chieftains of the
Scandinavian tribes, and that the Skalds who composed the mythic poems
of the elder Edda may have had an obscure and imperfect knowledge of
them. Be this as it may, we must not forget that the higher doctrines of
the Scandinavian system were confined to the few, whereas those of the
Zendavesta were the religious belief of the whole nation.[12] ... The
Persian system was calculated to form an energetic, intellectual and
highly moral people; the Scandinavian a semi-barbarous troop of crafty
and remorseless warriors.... Yet, such as they were, these
Scandinavians seemed to have been destined by the inscrutable designs of
Providence to invigorate at least one of the nations of which they were
for centuries the scourge, in order, as we previously had occasion to
observe, that the genial blending of cognate tribes might form a people
the most capable of carrying on the great work of civilisation, which in
some far distant age may finally render this world that abode of peace
and intellectual enjoyment dimly shadowed forth in ancient myths as only
to be found in a renovated and fresh emerging universe.'[13]
The inferiority of the later Scandinavian to the earlier Persian
religion may be sufficiently accounted for by the common process of
gradual degeneration. That degeneration was not confined to the great
emigrant race. Centuries before Odin had left the East, the Persian
religion had degenerated upon its native soil. Its Magi retained a pure
doctrine, which led them later to the Bethlehem crib; but its vulgar had
in part yielded to the seduction of Greek poets, and worshipped in
temples like theirs. It is remarkable that that 'one of the nations'
with which the hopes of the future are so singularly connected is that
one upon which the discipline of adversity had fallen with double force.
When the ancient enemy of the 'Barbaric races,' Rome, had passed away, a
new enemy, and one to it more formidable, rose up against England in her
own kinsfolk, the Scandinavian branch of the same stock. The Danish
invaders expected to set kingdom against kingdom throughout the
Heptarchy, and subject them all to the sceptre of Odin. On the contrary,
it united them in one; and that union was facilitated by the bond of a
common Christianity.[14]
That the belief of the Anglo-Saxons, though less developed by poetry and
romance, was substantially the same as that recorded in the Scandinavian
Edda, appears to be certain. It is thus that Mr. Kemble speaks:
'On the Continent as well as in England, it is only by the collection of
minute and isolated facts--often preserved to us in popular
superstitions, legends, and even nursery tales--that we can render
probable the prevalence of a religious belief identical in its most
characteristic features with that which we know to have been entertained
in Scandinavia. Yet whatsoever we can thus recover proves that, in all
main points, the faith of the Island Saxons was that of their
Continental brethren.' 'The early period at which Christianity triumphed
in England, adds to the difficulties which naturally beset the subject.
Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, had entered into public relations with the
rest of Europe long before the downfall of their ancient creed; here the
fall of heathendom, and the commencement of history were
contemporaneous. We too had no Iceland to offer a refuge to those who
fled from the violent course of a conversion.'[15]
Among the proofs of identity between the Anglo-Saxon and the
Scandinavian religion, Mr. Kemble refers to the fact that 'genealogies
of the Anglo-Saxon kings contain a multitude of the ancient gods,
reduced indeed into the family relations, but still capable of
identification with the deities of the North, and of Germany. In this
relation we find Odin, Boeldoeg, Géat, Wig, and Frea. The days of
the week, also dedicated to gods, supply us further with the names of
Tiw, Dunor, Friege, and Soetere; and the names of places in all parts
of England attest the wide dispersion of the worship.[16]
Mr. Kemble shows also that among the Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians
there existed a common belief respecting monsters, especially the wolf
Fenrir, the Midgard snake, evil spirits and giants; respecting Loki, the
accursed spirit, and Hela, the queen of Hades. To the same effect Mr.
Sharon Turner speaks: 'The Voluspá and the Edda are the two great
repositories of the oldest and most venerated traditions of pagan
Scandinavia. The Voluspá opens abruptly, and most probably represents
many of the ancient _Saxon_ traditions or imaginations.'[17] The
authority of these eminent writers accounts for and justifies the
frequent references to the Scandinavian mythology in the following
'Saxon Legends.'
We have thus seen that in the religion of the 'Barbaric' race there were
blended two different elements: a higher one derived from its eastern
origin, and a lower one the result of gradual degeneration. We had
previously seen that a remarkable duality was to be found in the
character of that race; and without understanding this duality and its
root in their religion, no just conception can be formed of the
relations of that race with Christianity. Had the 'Barbarians' possessed
nothing deeper than is indicated by their fiercer traits, the history of
the seventh century in England must have been very different. It was
characterised by rapid conversions to Christianity on a large scale, and
often, after the lapse of a few years, by sanguinary revolts against the
Faith. The chief reason of such fluctuation seems to have been this,
viz. because all that was profound, and of venerable antiquity in the
Northern religion, was in sympathy with Christianity, as the religion of
sanctity and self-sacrifice; while all that was savage in it opposed
itself to a religion of humility and of charity. The Northern religion
was an endless warfare, and so was that early Persian religion from
which its higher element was derived; but by degrees that warfare had,
for the many, ceased to be the warfare between light and darkness,
between Good and Evil. To the speculative it had become a conflict
between all the wild and illimitable forces of Nature and some unknown
higher Law; but to the common herd it meant only an endless feud between
race and race. Thus understood it could have no affinities with
Christianity, either in her militant character, or as the religion of
peace.
In explanation of the frequent outbreaks against Christianity on the
part of the Anglo-Saxons, after their conversion, Montalembert assigns
another cause, viz. that the Roman missionaries had sometimes relied too
much upon the converted kings, and their authority over their subjects.
The work had in such cases to be done again; and it was largely done by
Irish missionaries, who had left Iona only to seek as lonely a retreat
in Lindisfarne. They shunned cities, drew the people to them, and worked
upwards through that people to the great.
The Irish mission in England during the seventh century was one among
the great things of history, and has met with an inadequate
appreciation. The ancient name of the Irish, 'Scoti,' commemorative of
their supposed Scythian origin, the name by which Bede always
designates them, had been frequently translated 'Scottish' by modern
historians; and those who did not know that an Irish immigrant body had
entered Scotland, then called Alba, about the close of the second
century, had conquered its earlier inhabitants, the Picts, after a war
of centuries, and had eventually given to that heroic land, never since
subdued, its own name and its royal house, naturally remained ignorant
that those 'Scottish' missionaries were Irish. A glance at Bede,[18] or
such well known recent works as Sir W. Scott's 'History of
Scotland,'[19] makes this matter plain; yet the amount of work done in
England by those Irish missionaries is still known to few.
They came from a country the fortunes, the character, and the
institutions of which were singularly unlike those of England; one in
which ancient Rome had had no part; which, in the form of clan-life,
retained as its social type the patriarchal customs of its native East,
all authority being an expansion of domestic authority, and the idea of
a family, rather than that of a state, ruling over the hearts of men.
About two centuries previously, Ireland had become Christian; and an
image of its immemorial clan-system was reproduced in the vast convents
which ere long covered the land, and sent forth their missionaries over
a large part of Europe. It might well have been thought doubtful
whether these were likely to work successfully among a race so
dissimilar as the Anglo-Saxon; but the event proved that in this
instance dissimilar qualities meant qualities complemental to each
other, and that sympathy was attracted by unlikeness.
The Irish mission in England began at a critical time, just when the
reaction against the earlier successes of the Roman mission had set in.
At York, under Paulinus, Christianity had triumphed; but eight years
after that event Edwin, the Christian king of Dëira, perished in battle,
and northern England was forced back by king Penda into paganism.
Southern England, with the exception of Canterbury and a considerable
part of Kent, had also lost the Gospel, after possessing it for thirty
years. Nearly at the same time East Anglia and Essex, at the command of
pagan-kings, had discarded it likewise. It was then that Oswald, on
recovering his kingdom of Northumbria, besought the Irish monks of Iona
to reconvert it, or rather to complete a conversion which had been but
begun. Their work prospered; by degrees the largest kingdom of the
Heptarchy became solidly and permanently Christian, its See being fixed
in the Island of Lindisfarne, whence the huge diocese of the north was
ruled successively by three of St. Columba's order, Aidan, Finan, and
Colman. But the labours of St. Columba's sons were not confined to the
north. In East Anglia an Irish monk, St. Fursey, founded on the coast of
Suffolk the monastery of Burghcastle, in which King Sigebert became a
monk. An Irish priest, Maidulphus, built that of Malmesbury in Wessex.
Glastonbury was an older Celtic monastery inhabited partly by Irish
monks, and partly by British. Peada, king of Mercia, son of the terrible
Penda, was baptized by St. Finan close to the Roman Wall, as was also
Sigebert, king of the East Saxons. Diama, an Irish monk, was first
bishop of all Mercia, its second, Céolach, being Irish also, and also
its fourth.
Montalembert, in his _Moines d'Occident_, has given us the most
delightful history that exists of the conversion of Anglo-Saxon England,
a work combining the depth of a Christian philosopher with the sagacity
of a statesman, and a dramatist's appreciation of character, while in it
we miss nothing of that picturesque vividness and engaging simplicity
which belong to our early chroniclers; thus conferring upon England a
boon if possible greater than that bestowed upon Ireland in his lives of
St. Columba, St. Columbanus and other saints. It is thus that he
apportions the share which the Irish missionaries and the Roman had in
that great enterprise.
'En résumant l'histoire des efforts tentés pendant les soixante ans
écoulés depuis le débarquement d'Augustin jusqu'à la mort de Penda, pour
introduire le Christianisme en Angleterre, on constate les résultats que
voici. Des huit royaumes de la confédération Anglo-Saxonne, celui de
Kent fut seul exclusivement conquis et conservé par les moines romains,
dont les premières tentatives, chez les Est-Saxons et les Northumbriens,
se terminèrent par un échec. En Wessex et en Est-Anglie les Saxons à
l'ouest et les Angles à l'est furent convertis par l'action combinée de
missionnaires continentaux et de moines celtiques. Quant aux deux
royaumes Northumbriens' (Dëira and Bernicia), 'à l'Essex et à la Mercie,
comprenant à eux seuls plus de deux tiers du territoire occupé par les
conquérants germains, ces quatre pays durent leur conversion définitive
exclusivement à l'invasion pacifique des moines celtiques, qui
n'avaient pas seulement rivalisé de zèle avec les moines romains, mais
qui, une fois les premiers obstacles surmontés, avaient montré bien plus
de persévérance et obtenu bien plus de succès.'[20] The only effort made
at that early period to introduce Christianity into the kingdom of the
South-Saxons was that of an Irish monk, Dicul, who founded a small
monastery at Bosham. It did not however prove successful.
There is something profoundly touching in the religious ties which
subsisted between England and Ireland during the seventh century, when
compared with the troubled relations of those two countries during many
a later age. If the memory of benefits received produces a kindly
feeling on the part of the recipient, that of benefits conferred should
exert the same influence on the heart of the bestower. To remember the
past, however disastrous or convulsed, is a nation's instinct, and its
duty no less, since a tribute justly due is thus paid to great actions
and to great sufferings in times gone by; nor among the wise and the
generous can the discharge of that patriotic duty ever engender an
enmity against the living: but there is a special satisfaction in
turning to those recollections with which no human infirmity can connect
any feeling save that of good will; and it is scarcely possible to
recall them in this instance without a hope that the sacred bonds which
united those two countries at that remote period may be a pledge for
reciprocated benefits in the ages yet before us. For both countries that
early time was a time of wonderful spiritual greatness. In noble rivalry
with Ireland England also sent her missionaries to far lands; and a
child of Wessex, St. Boniface, brought the Faith to Germany, by which it
was eventually diffused over Scandinavia, thus, by anticipation,
bestowing the highest of all gifts on that terrible race the Northmen,
in later centuries the scourge of his native land.
At home both islands were filled with saints whose names have ever since
resounded throughout Christendom. Both islands, as a great writer[21]
has told us, 'had been the refuge of Christianity, for a time almost
exterminated in Christendom, and the centres of its propagation in
countries still heathen. Secluded from the rest of Europe by the stormy
waters in which they lay, they were converted just in time to be put in
charge with the sacred treasures of Revelation, and with the learning of
the old world, in that dreary time which intervened between Gregory and
Charlemagne. They formed schools, collected libraries, and supplied the
Continent with preachers and teachers.' He remarks also that 'There was
a fitness in the course of things that the two peoples who had rejoiced
in one prosperity should drink together the same cup of suffering:
_Amabiles, et decori in vitâ suâ, in morte non divisi_;' and he proceeds
to remind us that, immediately after their participation in that common
religious greatness, they partook also a tragic inheritance. In England
for two centuries and a half, in Ireland for a longer period, the
Northmen were repulsed but to reappear. Again and again the sons of Odin
blackened the river-mouths of each land with their fleets; wherever they
marched they left behind them the ashes of burned churches and
monasteries, till, in large parts of both, Christianity and learning had
well nigh perished, and barbarism had all but returned. In both
countries domestic dissensions had favoured the invader; eventually in
both the Danish power broke down; but in both and in each case claiming
a spiritual sanction--another branch of the same Scandinavian stock
succeeded to the Dane, viz. the only one then Christianised, the Norman.
In that seventh century how little could Saxon convert or Irish
missionary have foreseen that the destinies of their respective
countries should be at once so unlike yet so like, so antagonistic yet
so interwoven!
The aim of the 'Legends of Saxon Saints,' as the reader will perhaps
have inferred from the preceding remarks, is to illustrate England, her
different races and predominant characteristics, during the century of
her conversion to Christianity, and in doing this to indicate what
circumstances had proved favourable or unfavourable to the reception of
the Faith. It became desirable thus to revert to the early emigration of
that 'Barbaric' race of which the Anglo-Saxon was a scion, making the
shadow of Odin pass in succession over the background of the several
pictures presented (the Heroic being thus the unconscious precursor of
the Spiritual), and to show how the religion which bore his name was
fitted at once to predispose its nobler votaries to Christianity and to
infuriate against it those who but valued their faith for what it
contained of degenerate. It seemed also expedient to select for
treatment not only those records most abounding in the picturesque and
poetic, but likewise others useful as illustrating the chief
representatives of a many-sided society; the pagan king and the British
warrior, the bard of Odin and the prophetess of Odin, the Gaelic
missionary and the Roman missionary, the poet and the historian of
Anglo-Saxon Christianity. In a few instances, as in the tales of Oswald
and of Oswy, where the early chronicle was copious in detail, it has
been followed somewhat closely; but more often, where the original
record was brief, all except the fundamental facts had to be supplied.
On these occasions I found encouragement in the remark of a writer at
once deep and refined. 'Stories to be versified should not be already
nearly complete, having the beauty in themselves, and gaining from the
poet but a garb. They should be rough, and with but a latent beauty. The
poet should have to supply the features and limbs as well as the
dress.'[22]
Bede has been my guide. His records are, indeed, often 'rough,' as rough
as the crab-tree, but, at the same time, as fresh as its blossom. Their
brief touches reveal all the passions of the Barbaric races; but the
chief human affections, things far deeper than the passions, are yet
more abundantly illustrated by them.[23] It was a time when those
affections were not frozen by conventionalities and forced to conceal
themselves until they forgot to exist. In the narrative of Bede we find
also invaluable illustrations of a higher but not less real range of
human affections, viz. the affections of 'Christianised Humanity,'
affections grounded on divine truths and heavenly hopes, and yet in
entire harmony with affections of a merely human order, which lie
beneath them in a parallel plane. Occasionally the two classes enter
into conflict, as in the case of the monks of Bardeney who found it so
difficult to reconcile their reverence for a Saint with their patriotic
hatred of a foreign invader; but almost invariably the earthly and the
heavenly emotions are mutually supplemental, as in those tender
friendships of monk with monk, of king and bishop, grounded upon
religious sympathy and co-operation; so that the lower sentiment without
the higher would present, compared with the pictures now bequeathed to
us, but an unfinished and truncated image of Humanity. Here, again, the
semi-barbaric age described by Bede rendered the delineation more vivid.
In ages of effeminate civilisation the Christian emotions, even more
than those inherent in unassisted human nature, lose that ardour which
belongs to them when in a healthy condition--an ardour which especially
reveals itself during that great crisis, a nation's conversion, when,
beside a throng of new feelings and new hopes, a host of new Truths has
descended upon the intelligence of a whole people, and when a sense of
new knowledge and endless progress is thus communicated to it, far
exceeding that which is the boast of nations devoted chiefly to physical
science. The sense of progress, indeed, when such a period reaches its
highest, is a rapture. It is as though the motion of the planet which
carries us through space, a motion of which we are cognisant but which
we yet cannot feel, could suddenly become, like the speed of a
racehorse, a thing brought home to our consciousness.
Such ardours are scarcely imaginable in the later ages of a nation; but
in Bede's day a people accepting the 'glad tidings' was glad; and,
unambitious as his style is of the ornamental or the figurative, it is
brightened by that which it so faithfully describes. His chronicle is
often poetry, little as he intended it to be such; nay, it is poetry in
her 'humanities' yet more than in her distinctively spiritual province,
and better poetry than is to be found in the professed poetry of a
materialistic age, when the poet is tempted to take refuge from the
monotony of routine life, either amid the sensational accidents to be
found on the byeways, not the highways, of life, or in some sickly
dreamland that does not dare to deal with life, and belongs neither to
the real nor to the ideal. In nothing is Bede's history of that great
age, to which our own owes all that it possesses of real greatness,
more striking than in that spirit of unconscious elevation and
joyousness which belongs to the Christian life it records, a joyousness
often so strikingly contrasted with the sadness--sometimes a heroic
sadness--to be found in portions of his work describing pagan manners.
With all its violences and inconsistencies, the seventh century was a
noble age--an age of strong hearts which were gentle as well as strong,
of a childhood that survived in manhood, of natures that had not lost
their moral unity, of holy lives and of happy deaths. Bede's picture of
it is a true one; and for that reason it comes home to us.
To some it may seem a profaneness to turn those old legends into verse.
I should not have attempted the enterprise if they were much read in
prose. The verse may at least help to direct the attention of a few
readers to them. From them the thoughtful will learn how to complete a
'half-truth' often reiterated. Those who have declared that 'the wars of
the Heptarchy are as dull as the battles of kites and crows,' have not
always known that the true interest of her turbulent days belonged to
peace, not to war, and is to be found in the spiritual development of
the Anglo-Saxon race.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
ODIN THE MAN 1
KING ETHELBERT OF KENT AND ST. AUGUSTINE 13
THE CONSECRATION OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY 32
THE PENANCE OF ST. LAURENCE 47
KING SIGEBERT OF EAST ANGLIA, AND HEIDA THE PROPHETESS 66
KING SIGEBERT OF ESSEX, OR A FRIEND AT NEED 84
KING OSWALD OF NORTHUMBRIA, OR THE BRITON'S REVENGE 100
CEADMON THE COWHERD, THE FIRST ENGLISH POET 117
KING OSWY OF NORTHUMBRIA, OR THE WIFE'S VICTORY 142
THE VENGEANCE OF THE MONKS OF BARDENEY 162
HOW SAINT CUTHBERT KEPT HIS PENTECOST AT CARLISLE 176
SAINT FRIDESWIDA, OR THE FOUNDATIONS OF OXFORD 208
THE BANQUET HALL OF WESSEX, OR THE KING WHO COULD SEE 223
EPILOGUE: BEDE'S LAST MAY 259
NOTES 283
PROLOGUE.
_ODIN, THE MAN_.
Odin, a Prince who reigned near the Caspian Sea, after a vain
resistance to the Roman arms, leads forth his people to the forests
north of the Danube, that, serving God in freedom on the limits of
the Roman Empire, and being strengthened by an adverse climate,
they may one day descend upon that empire in just revenge; which
destiny was fulfilled by the sack of Rome, under Alaric, Christian
King of the Goths, a race derived, like the Saxon, from that
Eastern people.
Forth with those missives, Chiron, to the Invader!
Hence, and make speed: they scathe mine eyes like fire:
Pompeius, thou hast conquered! What remains?
Vengeance! Man's race has never dreamed of such;
So slow, so sure. Pompeius, I depart:
I might have held these mountains yet four days:
The fifth had seen them thine--
I look beyond the limit of this night:
Four centuries I need; then comes mine hour.
What saith the Accursed One of the Western World?
I hear even now her trumpet! Thus she saith:
'I have enlarged my borders: iron reaped
Earth's field all golden. Strenuous fight we fought:
I left some sweat-drops on that Carthage shore,
Some blood on Gallic javelins. That is past!
My pleasant days are come: my couch is spread
Beside all waters of the Midland Sea;
By whispers lulled of nations kneeling round;
Illumed by light of balmiest climes; refreshed
By winds from Atlas and the Olympian snows:
Henceforth my foot is in delicious ways;
Bathe it, ye Persian fountains! Syrian vales,
All roses, make me sleepy with perfumes!
Caucasian cliffs, with martial echoes faint
Flatter light slumbers; charm a Roman dream!
I send you my Pompeius; let him lead
Odin in chains to Rome!' Odin in chains!
Were Odin chained, or dead, that God he serves
Could raise a thousand Odins--
Rome's Founder-King beside his Augur standing
Noted twelve ravens borne in sequent flight
O'er Alba's crags. They emblem'd centuries twelve,
The term to Rome conceded. Eight are flown;
Remain but four. Hail, sacred brood of night!
Hencefore my standards bear the Raven Sign,
The bird that hoarsely haunts the ruined tower;
The bird sagacious of the field of blood
Albeit far off. Four centuries I need:
Then comes my day. My race and I are one.
O Race beloved and holy! From my youth
Where'er a hungry heart impelled my feet,
Whate'er I found of glorious, have I not
Claimed it for thee, deep-musing? Ignorant, first,
For thee I wished the golden ingots piled
In Susa and Ecbatana:--ah fool!
At Athens next, treading where Plato trod,
For thee all triumphs of the mind of man,
And Phidian hand inspired! Ah fool, that hour
Athens lay bound, a slave! Later to Rome
In secrecy by Mithridates sent
To search the inmost of his hated foe,
For thee I claimed that discipline of Law
Which made her State one camp. Fool, fool once more!
Soon learned I what a heart-pollution lurked
Beneath that mask of Law. As Persia fell,
By softness sapped, so Rome. Behold, this day,
Following the Pole Star of my just revenge,
I lead my people forth to clearer fates
Through cloudier fortunes. They are brave and strong:
'Tis but the rose-breath of their vale that rots
Their destiny's bud unblown. I lead them forth,
A race war-vanquished, not a race of slaves;
Lead them, not southward to Euphrates' bank,
Not Eastward to the realms of rising suns,
Not West to Rome and bondage. Hail, thou North!
Hail, boundless woods, by nameless oceans girt,
And snow-robed mountain islets, founts of fire!
Four hundred years! I know that awful North:
I sought it when the one flower of my life
Fell to my foot. That anguish set me free:
It dashed me on the iron side of life:
I woke, a man. My people too shall wake:
They shall have icy crags for myrtle banks,
Sharp rocks for couches. Strength! I must have strength;
Not splenetic sallies of a woman's courage,
But hearts to which self-pity is unknown:
Hard life to them must be as mighty wine
Gladdening the strong: the death on battle fields
Must seem the natural, honest close of life;
Their fear must be to die without a wound
And miss Life's after-banquet. Wooden shield
Whole winter nights shall lie their covering sole:
Thereon the boy shall stem the ocean wave;
Thereon the youth shall slide with speed of winds
Loud-laughing down the snowy mountain-slope:
To him the Sire shall whisper as he bleeds,
'Remember the revenge? Thy son must prove
More strong, more hard than thou!'
Four hundred years!
Increase is tardy in that icy clime,
For Death is there the awful nurse of Life:
Death rocks the cot. Why meet we there no wolf
Save those huge-limbed? Because weak wolf-cubs die.
'Tis thus with man; 'tis thus with all things strong:--
Rise higher on thy northern hills, my Pine!
That Southern Palm shall dwindle.
House stone-walled--
Ye shall not have it! Temples cedar-roofed--
Ye shall not build them! Where the Temple stands
The City gathers. Cities ye shall spurn:
Live in the woods; live singly, winning each,
Hunter or fisher by blue lakes, his prey:
Abhor the gilded shrine: the God Unknown
In such abides not. On the mountain's top
Great Persia sought Him in her day of strength:
With her ye share the kingly breed of Truths,
The noblest inspirations man hath known,
Or can know--ay, unless the Lord of all
Should come, Man's Teacher. Pray as Persia prayed;
And see ye pray for Vengeance! Leave till then
To Rome her Idol fanes and pilfered Gods.
I see you, O my People, year by year
Strengthened by sufferings; pains that crush the weak,
Your helpers. Men have been that, poison-fed,
Grew poison-proof: on pain and wrong feed ye!
The wild-beast rage against you! frost and fire
Rack you in turn! I'll have no gold among you;
With gold come wants; and wants mean servitude.
Edge, each, his spear with fish-bone or with flint,
Leaning for prop on none. I want no Nations!
A Race I fashion, playing not at States:
I take the race of Man, the breed that lifts
Alone its brow to heaven: I change that race
From clay to stone, from stone to adamant
Through slow abrasion, such as leaves sea-shelves
Lustrous at last and smooth. To _be_, not _have_,
A man to be; no heritage to clasp
Save that which simple manhood, at its will,
Or conquers or re-conquers, held meanwhile
In trust for Virtue; this alone is greatness.
Remain ye Tribes, not Nations; led by Kings,
Great onward-striding Kings, above the rest
High towering, like the keel-compelling sail
That takes the topmost tempest. Let them die,
Each for his people! I will die for mine
Then when my work is finished; not before.
That Bandit King who founded Rome, the Accursed,
Vanished in storm. My sons shall see me die,
Die, strong to lead them till my latest breath,
Which shall not be a sigh; shall see and say,
'This Man far-marching through the mountainous world,
No God, but yet God's Prophet of the North,
Gave many crowns to others: for himself
His people were his crown.'
Four hundred years--
Ye shall find savage races in your path:
Be ye barbaric, ay, but savage not:
Hew down the baser lest they drag you down;
Ye cannot raise them: they fulfil their fates:
Be terrible to foes, be kind to friend:
Be just; be true. Revere the Household Hearth;
This knowing, that beside it dwells a God:
Revere the Priest, the King, the Bard, the Maid,
The Mother of the heroic race--five strings
Sounding God's Lyre. Drive out with lance for goad
That idiot God by Rome called Terminus,
Who standing sleeps, and holds his reign o'er fools.
The earth is God's, not Man's: that Man from Him
Holds it whose valour earns it. Time shall come,
It may be, when the warfare shall be past,
The reign triumphant of the brave and just
In peace consolidated. Time may come
When that long winter of the Northern Land
Shall find its spring. Where spreads the black morass
Harvest all gold may glitter; cities rise
Where roamed the elk; and nations set their thrones;
Nations not like those empires known till now,
But wise and pure. Let such their temples build
And worship Truth, if Truth should e'er to Man
Show her full face. Let such ordain them laws
If Justice e'er should mate with laws of men.
Above the mountain summits of Man's hope
There spreads, I know, a land illimitable,
The table land of Virtue trial-proved,
Whereon one day the nations of the world
Shall race like emulous Gods. A greater God
Served by our sires, a God unknown to Rome,
Above that shining level sits, high-towered:
Millions of Spirits wing His flaming light,
And fiery winds among His tresses play:
When comes that hour which judges Gods and men,
That God shall plague the Gods that filched His name,
And cleanse the Peoples.
When ye hear, my sons,
That God uprising in His judgment robes
And see their dreadful crimson in the West,
Then know ye that the knell of Rome is nigh;
Then stand, and listen! When His Trumpet sounds
Forth from your forests and your snows, my sons,
Forth over Ister, Rhenus, Rhodonus,
To Moesia forth, to Thrace, Illyricum,
Iberia, Gaul; but, most of all, to Rome!
Who leads you thither leads you not for spoil:
A mission hath he, fair though terrible;--
He makes a pure hand purer, washed in blood:
On, Scourge of God! the Vengeance Hour is come.
I know that hour, and wait it. Odin's work
Stands then consummate. Odin's name thenceforth
Goes down to darkness.
Farewell, Ararat!
How many an evening, still and bright as this,
In childhood, youth, or manhood's sorrowing years,
Have I not watched the sunset hanging red
Upon thy hoary brow! Farewell for ever!
A legend haunts thee that the race of man
In earliest days, a sad and storm-tossed few,
From thy wan heights descended, making way
Into a ruined world. A storm-tossed race,
But not self-pitying, once again thou seest
Into a world all ruin making way
Whither they know not, yet without a fear.
This hour--lo, there, they pass yon valley's verge!--
In sable weeds that pilgrimage moves on,
Moves slowly like thy shadow, Ararat,
That eastward creeps. Phantom of glory dead!
Image of greatness that disdains to die!
Move Northward thou! Whate'er thy fates decreed,
At least that shadow shall be shadow of man,
And not of beast gold-weighted! On, thou Night
Cast by my heart! Thou too shalt meet thy morn!
LEGENDS
_KING ETHELBERT OF KENT AND SAINT AUGUSTINE._
Ethelbert, King of Kent, converses first with his Pagan Thanes, and
next with Saint Augustine, newly landed on the shores of Thanet
Island. The Saint, coming in sight of Canterbury, rejoices greatly,
and predicts the future greatness of that city.
Far through the forest depths of Thanet Isle,
That never yet had heard the woodman's axe,
Rang the glad clarion on the May-day morn,
Blent with the cry of hounds. The rising sun
Flamed on the forests' dewy jewelry,
While, under rising mists, a host with plumes
Rode down a broad oak alley t'wards the sea.
King Ethelbert rode first: he reigned in Kent,
Least kingdom of the Seven yet Head of all
Through his desert. That morn the royal train,
While sang the invisible lark her song in heaven,
Pursued the flying stag. At times the creature,
As though he too had pleasure in the sport,
Vaulted at ease through sunshine and through shade,
Then changed his mood, and left the best behind him.
Five hours they chased him; last, upon a rock
High up in scorn he held his antlered front,
Then took the wave and vanished.
Many a frown
Darkened that hour on many a heated brow;
And many a spur afflicted that poor flank
Which panted hard and smoked. The King alone
Laughed at mischance. 'The stag, with God to aid,
Has left our labour fruitless! Give him joy!
He lives to yield us sport some later morn:
So be it! Waits our feast, and not far off:
On to the left, 'twixt yonder ash and birch!'
He spake, and anger passed: they praised their sport;
And many an outblown nostril seemed to snuff
That promised feast. They rode through golden furze
So high the horsemen only were descried;
And glades whose centuried oaks their branches laid
O'er violet banks; and fruit trees, some snow-veiled
Like bridesmaid, others like the bride herself
Behind her white veil blushing. Glad, the thrush
Carolled; more glad, the wood-dove moaned; close by
A warbling runnel led them to the bay:
Two chestnuts stood beside it snowy-coned:
The banquet lay beneath them.
Feasting o'er,
The song succeeded. Boastful was the strain,
Each Thane his deeds extolling, or his sire's;
But one, an aged man, among them scoffed:
'When I was young; when Sigbert on my right
To battle rode, and Sefred on my left;
That time men stood not worsted by a stag!
Not then our horses swerved from azure strait
Scared by the ridged sea-wave!' Next spake a chief,
Pirate from Denmark late returned: 'Our skies,
Good friends, are all too soft to build the man!
We fight for fame: the Northman fights for sport;
Their annals boast they fled but once:--'twas thus:
In days of old, when Rome was in her pride,
Huge hosts of hers had fallen on theirs, surprised,
And way-worn: long they fought: a remnant spent,
Fled to their camp. Upon its walls their wives
Stood up, black-garbed, with axes heaved aloft,
And fell upon the fugitives, and slew them;
Slew next their little ones; slew last themselves,
Cheating the Roman Triumph. Never since then
Hath Northman fled the foemen.'
Egfrid rose:
'Who saith our kinsfolk of the frozen North
One stock with us, one faith, one ancient tongue,
Pass us in valour? Three days since I saw
Crossing the East Saxon's border and our own
Two boys that strove. The Kentish wounded fell;
The East Saxon on him knelt; then made demand:
"My victim art thou by the laws of war!
Yonder my dagger lies;--till I return
Wilt thou abide?" The vanquished answered, "Yea!"
A minute more, and o'er that dagger's edge
His life-blood rushed.' The pirate chief demurred;
'A gallant boy! Not less I wager this,
The glitter of that dagger ere it smote
Made his eye blink. Attend! Three years gone by,
Sailing with Hakon on Norwegian fiords
We fought the Jomsburg Rovers, at their head
Sidroc, oath-pledged to marry Hakon's child
Despite her father's best. In mist we met:
Instant each navy at the other dashed
Like wild beast, instinct-taught, that knows its foe;
Chained ship to ship, and clashed their clubs all day,
Till sank the sun: then laughed the white peaks forth,
And reeled, methought, above the reeling waves!
The victory was with us. Hakon, next morn,
Bade slay his prisoners. Thirty on one bench
Waited their doom: their leader died the first;
He winked not as the sword upon him closed!
No, nor the second! Hakon asked the third,
"What think'st thou, friend, of Death?" He tossed his head:
"My Father perished; I fulfil my turn."
The fourth, "Strike quickly, Chief! An hour this morn
We held contention if, when heads are off,
The hand can hold its dagger: I would learn."
The dagger and the head together fell.
The fifth, "One fear is mine--lest yonder slave
Finger a Prince's hair! Command some chief,
Thy best beloved, to lift it in his hands;
Then strike and spare not!" Hakon struck. That youth,
Sigurd by name, his forehead forward twitched,
Laughing, so deftly that the downward sword
Shore off those luckless hands that raised his hair.
All laughed; and Hakon's son besought his sire
To loosen Sigurd's bonds: but Sigurd cried,
"Unless the rest be loosed I will not live!"
Thus all escaped save four.'
In graver mood
That chief resumed: 'A Norland King dies well!
His bier is raised upon his stateliest ship;
Piled with his arms; his lovers and his friends
Rush to their monarch's pyre, resolved with him
To share in death, and with becoming pomp
Attend his footsteps to Valhalla's Hall.
The torch is lit: forth sails the ship, black-winged,
Facing the midnight seas. From beach and cliff
Men watch all night that slowly lessening flame:
Yet no man sheds a tear.'
Earconwald,
An aged chief, made answer, 'Tears there be
Of divers sorts: a wise and valiant king
Deserves that tear which praises, not bewails,
Greatness gone by.' The pirate shouted loud,
'A land it is of laughter, not of tears!'
Know ye the tale of Harald? He had sailed
Round southern coasts and eastern--sacked or burned
A hundred Christian cities. One he found
So girt with giant walls and brazen gates
His sea-kings vainly dashed themselves thereon,
And died beneath them, frustrate. Harald sent
A herald to that city proffering terms:
"Harald is dead: Christian was he in youth:
He sends you spoils from many a city burnt,
And craves interment in your chiefest church."
Next day the masked procession wound in black
Through streets defenceless. When the church was reached
They laid their chief before the altar-lights:
Anon to heaven rang out the priestly dirge,
And incense-smoke upcurled. Forth from its cloud
Sudden upleaped the dead man, club in hand,
Spurning his coffin's gilded walls, and smote
The hoary pontiff down, and brake his neck;
And all those maskers doffed their weeds of woe
And showed the mail beneath, and raised their swords,
And drowned that pavement in a sea of blood,
While raging rushed their mates through portals wide,
And, since that city seemed but scant of spoil,
Fired it and sailed. Ofttimes old Harald laughed
That tale recounting,'
Many a Kentish chief
Re-echoed Harald's laugh;--not Ethelbert:
The war-scar reddening on his brow he rose
And spake: 'My Thanes, ye laugh at deeds accurst!
An old King I, and make my prophecy
One day that northern race which smites and laughs,
Our kith and kin albeit, shall smite our coasts:
That day ye will not laugh!' Earconwald,
Not rising, likewise answer made, heart-grieved:
'Six sons had I: all these are slain in war;
Yet I, an unrejoicing man forlorn,
Find solace ofttimes thinking of their deeds:
They laughed not when they smote. No God, be sure,
Smiles on the jest red-handed.' Egfrid rose,
And three times cried with lifted sword unsheathed,
'Behold my God! No God save him I serve!'
While thus they held discourse, where blue waves danced
Not far from land, behold, there hove in sight,
Seen 'twixt a great beech silky yet with Spring
And pine broad-crested, round whose head old storms
Had wov'n a garland of his own green boughs,
A bark both fair and large; and hymn was heard.
Then laughed the King, 'The stag-hunt and our songs
So drugged my memory, I had nigh forgotten
Why for our feast I chose this heaven-roofed hall:
Missives I late received from friends in France;
They make report of strangers from the South
Who, tarrying in their coasts have learned our tongue,
And northward wend with tidings strange and new
Of some celestial Kingdom by their God
Founded for men of Faith. Nor churl am I
To frown on kind intent, nor child to trust
This sceptre of Seven Realms to magic snare
That puissance hath--who knows not?--greater thrice
In house than open field. I therefore chose
For audience hall this precinct.'
Muttered low
Murdark, the scoffer with the cave-like mouth
And sidelong eyes, 'Queen Bertha's voice was that!
A woman's man! Since first from Gallic shores
That dainty daughter of King Charibert
Pressed her small foot on England's honest shore
The whole land dwindles!'
In seraphic hymns
Ere long that serpent hiss was lost: for soon,
In raiment white, circling a rocky point,
O'er sands still glistening with a tide far-ebbed,
On drew, preceded by a silver Cross,
A long procession. Music, as it moved,
Floated on sea-winds inland, deadened now
By thickets, echoed now from cliff or cave:
Ere long before them that procession stood.
The King addressed them: 'Welcome, Heralds sage!
And if from God I welcome you the more,
Since great is God, and therefore great His gifts:
God grant He send them daily, heaped and huge!
Speak without fear, for him alone I hate
Who brings ill news, or makes inept demand
Unmeet for Kings. I know that Cross ye bear;
And in my palace sits a Christian wife,
Bertha, the sweetest lady in this land;
Most gracious in her ways, in heart most leal.
I knew her yet a child: she knelt whene'er
The Queen, her mother, entered: then I said,
A maid so reverent will be reverent wife,
And wedded her betimes. Morning and eve
She in her wood-girt chapel sings her prayer,
Which wins us kindlier harvest, and, some think,
Success in war. She strives not with our Gods:
Confusion never wrought she in my house,
Nor minished Hengist's glory. Had her voice,
Clangorous or strident, drawn upon my throne
Deserved opprobrium'--here the monarch's brows
Flushed at the thought, and fire was in his eyes--
'The hand that clasps this sceptre had not spared
To hunt her forth, an outcast in the woods,
Thenceforth with beasts to herd! More lief were I
To take the lioness to my bed and board
Than house a rebel wife.' Remembering then
The mildness of his Queen, King Ethelbert
Resumed, appeased, for placable his heart;
'But she no rebel is, and this I deem
Fair auspice for her Faith.'
A little breeze
Warm from the sea that moment softly waved
The standard from its staff, and showed thereon
The Child Divine. Upon His mother's knee
Sublime He stood. His left hand clasped a globe
Crowned with a golden Cross; and with His right,
Two fingers heavenward raised, o'er all the earth
He sent His Blessing.
Of that band snow-stoled
One taller by the head than all the rest
Obeisance made; then, pointing to the Cross,
And forward moving t'ward the monarch's seat,
Opened the great commission of the Faith:--
'Behold the Eternal Maker of the worlds!
That Hand which shaped the earth and blesses earth
Must rule the race of man!'
Majestic then
As when, far winding from its mountain springs,
City and palm-grove far behind it left,
Some Indian river rolls, while mists dissolved
Leave it in native brightness unobscured,
And kingly navies share its sea-ward sweep,
Forward on-flowed in Apostolic might
Augustine's strong discourse. With God beginning,
He showed the Almighty All-compassionate,
Down drawn from distance infinite to man
By the Infinite of Love. Lo, Bethlehem's crib!
There lay the Illimitable in narrow bound:
Thence rose that triumph of a world redeemed!
Last, to the standard pointing, thus he spake:
'Yon Standard tells the tale! Six hundred years
Westward it speeds from subject realm to realm:
First from the bosom of God's Race Elect,
His People, till they slew Him, mild it soared:
Rejected, it returned. Above their walls
While ruin rocked them, and the Roman fire,
Dreadful it hung. When Rome had shared that guilt,
Mocking that Saviour's Brethren, and His Bride,
Above the conquered conqueror of all lands
In turn this Standard flew. Who raised it high?
A son of this your island, Constantine!
In these, thine English oakwoods, Helena,
'Twas thine to nurse thy warrior. He had seen
Star-writ in heaven the words this Standard bears,
"Through Me is victory." Victory won, he raised
High as his empire's queenly head, and higher,
This Standard of the Eternal Dove thenceforth
To fly where eagle standard never flew,
God's glory in its track, goodwill to man.
Advance for aye, great Emblem! Light as now
Famed Asian headlands, and Hellenic isles!
O'er snow-crowned Alp and citied Apennine
Send forth a breeze of healing! Keep thy throne
For ever on those western peaks that watch
The setting sun descend the Hesperean wave,
Atlas and Calpe! These, the old Roman bound,
Build but the gateway of the Rome to be;
Till Christ returns, thou Standard, hold them fast:
But never till the North, that, age by age,
Dashed back the Pagan Rome, with Christian Rome
Partakes the spiritual crown of man restored,
From thy strong flight above the world surcease,
And fold thy wings in rest!'
Upon the sod
He knelt, and on that Standard gazed, and spake,
Calm-voiced, with hand to heaven: 'I promise thee,
Thou Sign, another victory, and thy best--
This island shall be thine!'
Augustine rose
And took the right hand of King Ethelbert,
And placed therein the Standard's staff, and laid
His own above the monarch's, speaking thus:
'King of this land, I bid thee know from God
That kings have higher privilege than they know,
The standard-bearers of the King of kings.'
Long time he clasped that royal hand; long time
The King, that patriarch's hand at last withdrawn,
His own withdrew not from that Standard's staff
Committed to his charge. His hand he deemed
Thenceforth its servant vowed. With large, meek eyes
Fixed on that Maid and Babe, he stood as child
That, gazing on some reverent stranger's face,
Nor loosening from that stranger's hold his palm,
Listens his words attent.
The man of God
Meantime as silent gazed on Thanet's shore
Gold-tinged, with sunset spray to crimson turned
In league-long crescent. Love was in his face,
That love which rests on Faith. He spake: 'Fair land,
I know thee what thou art, and what thou lack'st!
The Master saith, "I give to him that hath:"
Thy harvest shall be great.' Again he mused,
And shadow o'er him crept. Again he spake:
'That harvest won, when centuries have gone by,
What countenance wilt thou wear? How oft on brows
Brightened by Baptism's splendour, sin more late
Drags down its cloud! The time may come when thou
This day, though darkling, yet so innocent,
Barbaric, not depraved, on greater heights
May'st sin in malice--sin the great offence,
Changing thy light to darkness, knowing God,
Yet honouring God no more; that time may come
When, rich as Carthage, great in arms as Rome,
Keen-eyed as Greece, this isle, to sensuous gaze
A sun all gold, to angels may present
Aspect no nobler than a desert waste,
Some blind and blinding waste of sun-scorched sands,
Trod by a race of pigmies not of men,
Pigmies by passions ruled!'
Once more he mused;
Then o'er his countenance passed a second change;
And from it flashed the light of one who sees,
Some hill-top gained, beyond the incumbent night
The instant foot of morn. With regal step,
Martial yet measured, to the King he strode,
And laid a strong hand on him, speaking thus:
'Rejoice, my son, for God hath sent thy land
This day Good Tidings of exceeding joy,
And planted in her breast a Tree divine
Whose leaves shall heal far nations. Know besides,
Should sickness blight that Tree, or tempest mar,
The strong root shall survive: the winter past,
Heavenward once more shall rush both branch and bough,
And over-vault the stars.'
He spake, and took
The sacred Standard from that monarch's hand,
And held it in his own, and fixed its point
Deep in the earth, and by it stood. Then lo!
Like one disburthened of some ponderous charge,
King Ethelbert became himself again,
And round him gazed well pleased. Throughout his train
Sudden a movement thrilled: remembrance had
Of those around, his warriors and his thanes,
That ever on his wisdom waiting hung,
Thus he replied discreet: 'Stranger and friend,
Thou bear'st good tidings! That thou camest thus far
To fool us, knave and witling may believe:
I walk not with their sort; yet, guest revered,
Kings are not as the common race of men;
Counsel they take, lest honour heaped on one
Dishonour others. Odin holds on us
Prescriptive right, and special claims on me,
The son of Hengist's grandson. Preach your Faith!
The man who wills I suffer to believe:
The man who wills not, let him moor his skiff
Where anchorage likes him best. The day declines:
This night with us you harbour, and our Queen
Shall lovingly receive you.'
Staid and slow
The King rode homewards, while behind him paced
Augustine and his Monks. The ebb had left
'Twixt Thanet and the mainland narrow space
Marsh-land more late: beyond the ford there wound
A path through flowery meads; and, as they passed,
Not herdsmen only, but the broad-browed kine
Fixed on them long their meditative gaze;
And oft some blue-eyed boy with flaxen locks
Ran, fearless, forth, and plucked them by the sleeve,
Some boy clear-browed as those Saint Gregory marked,
Poor slaves, new-landed on the quays of Rome,
That drew from him that saying, '"Angli"--nay,
Call them henceforward "Angels"!'
From a wood
Issuing, before them lustrous they beheld
King Ethelbert's chief city, Canterbury,
Strong-walled, with winding street, and airy roofs,
And high o'er all the monarch's palace pile
Thick-set with towers. Then fire from God there fell
Upon Augustine's heart; and thus he sang
Advancing; and the brethren sang 'Amen':
'Hail, City loved of God, for on thy brow
Great Fates are writ. Thou cumberest not His earth
For petty traffic reared, or petty sway;
I see a heavenly choir descend, thy crown
Henceforth to bind thy brow. Forever hail!
'I see the basis of a kingly throne
In thee ascending! High it soars and higher,
Like some great pyramid o'er Nilus kenned
When vapours melt--the Apostolic Chair!
Doctrine and Discipline thence shall hold their course,
Like Tigris and Euphrates, through all lands
That face the Northern Star. Forever hail!
'Where stands yon royal keep, a church shall rise
Like Incorruption clothing the Corrupt
On the resurrection morn! Strong House of God,
To Him exalt thy walls, and nothing doubt,
For lo! from thee like lions from their lair
Abroad shall pace the Primates of this land:--
They shall not lick the hand that gives and smites,
Doglike, nor snakelike on their bellies creep
In indirectness base. They shall not fear
The people's madness, nor the rage of kings
Reddening the temple's pavement. They shall lift
The strong brow mitred, and the crosiered hand
Before their presence sending Love and Fear
To pave their steps with greatness. From their fronts
Stubborned with marble from Saint Peter's Rock
The sunrise of far centuries forth shall flame:
He that hath eyes shall see it, and shall say,
"Blessed who cometh in the name of God!"'
Thus sang the Saint, advancing; and, behold,
At every pause the brethren sang 'Amen!'
While down from window and from roof the throng
Eyed them in silence. As their anthem ceased,
Before them stood the palace clustered round
By many a stalwart form. Midway the gate
On the first step, like angel newly lit,
Queen Bertha stood. Back from her forehead meek,
The meeker for its crown, a veil descended,
While streamed the red robe to the foot snow-white
Sandalled in gold. The morn was on her face,
The star of morn within those eyes upraised
That flashed all dewy with the grateful light
Of many a granted prayer. O'er that sweet shape
Augustine signed the Venerable Sign;
The lovely vision sinking, hand to breast,
Received it; while, by sympathy surprised,
Or taught of God, the monarch and his thanes
Knelt as she knelt, and bent like her their heads,
Sharing her blessing. Like a palm the Faith
Thenceforth o'er England rose, those saintly men
Preaching by life severe, not words alone,
The doctrine of the Cross. Some Power divine,
Stronger than patriot love, more sweet than Spring,
Made way from heart to heart, and daily God
Joined to His Church the souls that should be saved,
Thousands, where Medway mingles with the Thames,
Rushing to Baptism. In his palace cell
High-nested on that Vaticanian Hill
Which o'er the Martyr-gardens kens the world,
Gregory, that news receiving, or from men,
Or haply from that God with whom he walked,
The Spirit's whisper ever in his ear,
Rejoiced that hour, and cried aloud, 'Rejoice,
Thou Earth! that North which from its cloud but flung
The wild beasts' cry of anger or of pain,
Redeemed from wrath, its Hallelujahs sings;
Its waves by Roman galleys feared, this day
Kiss the bare feet of Christ's Evangelists;
That race whose oak-clubs brake our Roman swords
Glories now first in bonds--the bond of Truth:
At last it fears;--but fears alone to sin,
Striving through faith for Virtue's heavenly crown.
_THE CONSECRATION OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY._
Sebert, King of the East Saxons, having built the great church of
Saint Peter at Westminster, Mellitus the Bishop prepares to
consecrate it, but is warned in a vision that it has already been
consecrated by one greater than he.
As morning brake, Sebert, East Saxon king,
Stood on the winding shores of Thames alone,
And fixed a sparkling eye upon Saint Paul's:
The sun new-risen had touched its roofs that laughed
Their answer back. Beyond it London spread;
But all between the river and that church
Was slope of grass and blossoming orchard copse
Glittering with dews dawn-reddened. Bertha here,
That church begun, had thus besought her Lord,
'Spare me this bank which God has made so fair!
Here let the little birds have leave to sing,
The bud to blossom! Here, the vespers o'er,
Lovers shall sit; and here, in later days,
Children shall question, "Who was he--Saint Paul?
What taught, what wrought he that his name should shine
Thus like the stars in heaven?"'
As Sebert stood,
The sweetness of the morning more and more
Made way into his heart. The pale blue smoke,
Rising from hearths by woodland branches fed,
Dimmed not the crystal matin air; not yet
From clammy couch had risen the mist sun-warmed:
All things distinctly showed; the rushing tide,
The barge, the trees, the long bridge many-arched,
And countless huddled gables, far away,
Lessening, yet still descried.
A voice benign
Dispersed the Prince's trance: 'I marked, my King,
Your face in yonder church; you took, I saw,
A blessing thence; and Nature's here you find:
The same God sends them both.' The man who spake,
Though silver-tressed, was countenanced like a child;
Smooth-browed, clear-eyed. That still and luminous mien
Predicted realms where Time shall be no more;
Where gladness, like some honey-dew divine,
Freshens an endless present. Mellitus,
From Rome late missioned and the Coelian Hill,
Made thus his greeting.
Westward by the Thames
The King and Bishop paced, and held discourse
Of him whose name that huge Cathedral bore,
Israel's great son, the man of mighty heart,
The man for her redemption zealous more
Than for his proper crown. Not task for her
God gave him: to the Gentiles still he preached,
And won them to the Cross. 'That Faith once spurned,'
Thus cried the Bishop with a kindling eye,
'Lo, how it raised him as on eagle's wings,
And past the starry gates! The Spirit's Sword
He wielded well! Save him who bears the Keys,
Save him who made confession, "Thou art Christ,"
Saint Paul had equal none! Hail, Brethren crowned!
Hail, happy Rome, that guard'st their mingled dust!'
Next spake the Roman of those churches twain
By Constantine beside the Tyber built
To glorify their names. With sudden turn,
Sebert, the crimson mounting to his brow,
Made question, 'Is your Tyber of the South
Ampler than this, our Thames?' The old man smiled;
'Tyber to Thames is as that willow-stock
To yonder oak.' The Saxon cried with joy:
'How true thy judgment is! how just thy tongue!
What hinders, O my Father, but that Thames,
Huge river from the forests rolled by God,
Should image, like that Tyber, churches twain,
Honouring those Princes of the Apostles' Band?
King Ethelbert, my uncle, built Saint Paul's;
Saint Peter's Church be mine!'
An hour's advance
Left them in thickets tangled. Low the ground,
Well-nigh by waters clipt, a savage haunt
With briar and bramble thick, and 'Thorny Isle'
For that cause named. Sebert around him gazed,
A maiden blush upon him thus he spake:
'I know this spot; I stood here once, a boy:
'Twas winter then: the swoll'n and turbid flood
Rustled the sallows. Far I fled from men:
A youth had done me wrong, and vengeful thoughts
Burned in my heart: I warred with them in vain:
I prayed against them; yet they still returned:
O'erspent at last, I cast me on my knees
And cried, "Just God, if Thou despise my prayer,
Faithless, thence weak, not less remember well
How many a man in this East Saxon land
Stands up this hour, in wood, or field, or farm,
Like me sore tempted, but with loftier heart:
To these be helpful--yea, to one of these!"
And lo, the wrathful thoughts, like routed fiends,
Left me, and came no more!'
Discoursing thus,
The friends a moment halted in a space
Where stood a flowering thorn. Adown it trailed
In zigzag curves erratic here and there
Long lines of milky bloom, like rills of foam
Furrowing the green back of some huge sea wave
Refluent from cliffs. Ecstatic minstrelsy
Swelled from its branches. Birds as thick as leaves
Thronged them; and whether joy was theirs that hour
Because the May had come, or joy of love,
Or tenderer gladness for their young new-fledged,
So piercing was that harmony, the place
Eden to Sebert looked, while brake and bower
Shone like the Tree of Life. 'What minster choir,'
The Bishop cried, 'could better chant God's praise?
Here shall your church ascend:--its altar rise
Where yonder thorn tree stands!' The old man spake;
Yet in him lived a thought unbreathed: 'How oft
Have trophies risen to blazon deeds accursed!
Angels this church o'er-winging, age on age
Shall see that boy at prayer!'
In peace, in war,
Daily the work advanced. The youthful King
Kneeling, himself had raised the earliest sod,
Made firm the corner stone. Whate'er of gold
Sun-ripened harvests of the royal lands
Yielded from Thames to Stour, or tax and toll
From quays mast-thronged to loud-resounding sea,
Save what his realm required by famine vexed
At times, or ravage of the Mercian sword,
Went to the work. His Queen her jewels brought,
Smiling, huge gift in slenderest hands up-piled;
His thanes their store; the poor their labour free.
Some clave the quarry's ledges: from its depths
Some haled the blocks; from distant forests some
Dragged home the oak-beam on the creaking wain:
Alas, that arms in noble tasks so strong
Should e'er have sunk in dust! Ere ten years passed
Saint Peter's towers above the high-roofed streets
Smiled on Saint Paul's. That earlier church had risen
Where stood, in Roman days, Apollo's fane:
Upon a site to Dian dedicate
Now rose its sister. Erring Faith had reached
In those twin Powers that ruled the Day and Night,
To Wisdom witnessing and Chastity,
Her loftiest height, and perished. Phoenix-like,
From ashes of dead rites and truths abused
Now soared unstained Religion.
What remained?
The Consecration. On its eve, the King
Held revel in its honour, solemn feast,
And wisely-woven dance, where beauty and youth,
Through loveliest measures moving, music-winged,
And winged not less by gladness, interwreathed
Brightness with brightness, glance turned back on glance,
And smile on smile--a courtseying graciousness
Of stateliest forms that, winding, sank or rose
As if on heaving seas. In groups apart
Old warriors clustered. Eadbald discussed
And Snorr, that truce with Wessex signed, and said,
'Fear nought: it cannot last!' A shadow sat
That joyous night upon one brow alone,
Redwald's, East Anglia's King. In generous youth
He, guest that time with royal Ethelbert,
Had gladly bowed to Christ. From shallowest soil
Faith springs apace, but springs to die. Returned
To plains of Ely, all that sweetness past
Seemed but a dream while scornful spake his wife,
Upon whose brow beauty from love divorced
Made beauty's self unbeauteous: 'Lose--why not?--
Thwarting your liegeful subjects, lose at will
Your Kingdom; you that might have reigned ere now
Bretwalda of the Seven!' In hour accursed
The weak man with his Faith equivocated:
Fraudful, beneath the self-same roofs he raised
Altars to Christ and idols. By degrees
That Truth he mocked forsook him. Year by year
His face grew dark, and barbed his tongue though smooth,
Manner and mind like grass-fields after thaw,
Silk-soft above, yet iron-hard below:
Spleenful that night at Sebert's blithe discourse
He answered thus, with seeming-careless eye
Wandering from wall to roof:
'I like your Church:
Would it had rested upon firmer ground,
Adorned some airier height: its towers are good,
Though dark the stone: three quarries white have I;
You might have used them gratis had you willed:
At Ely, Elmham, and beside the Cam
Where Felix rears even now his cloistral Schools,
I trust to build three churches soon: my Queen,
That seconds still my wishes, says, "Beware
Lest overhaste, your people still averse,
Frustrate your high intent." A woman's wit--
Yet here my wife is wiser than her wont.
I miss your Bishop: grandly countenanced he,
Save for that mole. He shuns our revel:--ay!
Monastic virtue never feels secure
Save when it skulks in corners!' As he spake,
Despite that varnish on his brow clear-cut,
Stung by remembrance, from the tutored eye
Forth flashed the fire barbaric: race and heart
A moment stood confessed.
Old Mellitus,
That night how fared he? In a fragile tent
Facing that church expectant, low he knelt
On the damp ground. More late, like youthful knight
In chapel small watching his arms untried,
He kept his consecration vigil still,
With hoary hands screening a hoary head,
And thus made prayer: 'Thou God to Whom all worlds
Form one vast temple: Thou Who with Thyself,
Ritual eterne, dost consecrate _that_ Church,
For aye creating, hallowing it forever;
Thou Who in narrowest heart of man or child
Makest not less Thy dwelling, turn Thine eyes
To-morrow on our rite. The work we work
Work it Thyself! Thy storm shall try it well;
Consummate first its strength in righteousness;
So shall beginning just, whate'er befall,
Or guard it, or restore.'
So prayed the man,
Nor ever raised his head--saw nought--heard nought--
Nor knew that on the night had come a change,
Ill Spirits, belike, whose empire is the air,
Grudging its glories to that pile new raised,
And, while they might, assailing. Through the clouds
A panic-stricken moon stumbled and fled,
And wildly on the waters blast on blast
Ridged their dark floor. A spring-tide from the sea
Breasted the flood descending. Woods of Shene
And Hampton's groves had heard that flood all day,
No more a whisperer soft; and meadow banks,
Not yet o'er-gazed by Windsor's crested steep
Or Reading's tower, had yielded to its wave
Blossom and bud. More high, near Oxenford,
Isis and Cherwell with precipitate stream
Had swelled the current. Gathering thus its strength
Far off and near, allies and tributaries,
That night by London onward rolled the Thames
Beauteous and threatening both.
Its southern bank
Fronting the church had borne a hamlet long
Where fishers dwelt. Upon its verge that night
Perplexed the eldest stood: his hand was laid
Upon the gunwale of a stranded boat;
His knee was crooked against it. Shrinking still
And sad, his eye pursued that racing flood,
Here black like night, dazzled with eddies there,
Eddies by moonshine glazed. In doubt he mused:
Sudden a Stranger by him stood and spake:
'Launch forth, and have no fear.' The fisher gazed
Once on his face; and launched. Beside the helm
That Stranger sat. Then lo! a watery lane
Before them opening, through the billows curved,
Level, like meadow-path. As when a weed
Drifts with the tide, so softly o'er that lane
Oarless the boat advanced, and instant reached
The northern shore, dark with that minster's shade;--
Before them close it frowned.
'Where now thou stand'st
Abide thou:' thus the Stranger spake: anon
Before the church's southern gate he stood:--
Then lo! a marvel. Inward as he passed,
Its threshold crossed, a splendour as of God
Forth from the bosom of that dusky pile
Through all its kindling windows streamed, and blazed
From wave to wave, and spanned that downward tide
With many a fiery bridge. The moon was quenched;
But all the edges of the headlong clouds
Caught up the splendour till the midnight vault
Shone like the noon. The fisher knew, that hour,
That with vast concourse of the Sons of God
That church was thronged; for in it many a head
Sun-bright, and hands lifted like hands in prayer,
High up he saw: meantime harmonic strain,
As though whatever moves in earth or skies,
Winds, waters, stars, had joined in one their song,
Above him floated like a breeze from God
And heaven-born incense. Louder swelled that strain;
And still the Bride of God, that church late dark,
Glad of her saintly spousals, laughed and shone
In radiance ever freshening. By degrees
That vision waned. At last the fisher turned:
The matin star shook on the umbered wave;
Along the East there lay a pallid streak,
That streak which preludes dawn.
Beside the man
Once more that Stranger stood:--'Seest thou yon tent?
My Brother kneels within it. Thither speed
And bid him know I sent thee, speaking thus,
"He whom the Christians name 'the Rock' am I:
My Master heard thy prayer: I sought thy church,
And sang myself her Consecration rite:
Close thou that service with thanksgiving psalm."'
Thus spake the Stranger, and was seen no more:
But whether o'er the waters, as of old
Footing that Galilean Sea, with faith
Not now infirm he reached the southern shore,
Or passed from sight as one whom crowds conceal,
The fisher knew not. At the tent arrived,
Before its little door he bent, and lo!
Within, there knelt a venerable man
With hoary hands screening a hoary head,
Who prayed, and prayed. His tale the fisher told:
With countenance unamazed, yet well content,
That kneeler answered, 'Son, thy speech is true!
Hence, and announce thy tidings to the King,
Who leaves his couch but now.'
'How beautiful'--
That old man sang, as down the Thames at morn
In multitudinous pomp the barges dropped,
Following those twain that side by side advanced,
One royal, one pontific, bearing each
The Cross in silver blazoned or in gold--
'How beautiful, O Sion, are thy courts!
Lo, on thy brow thy Maker's name is writ:
Fair is this place and awful; porch of heaven:
Behold, God's Church is founded on a rock:
It stands, and shall not fall: the gates of Hell
Shall not prevail against it.'
From the barge
Of Sebert and his Queen, antiphonal
Rapturous response was wafted: 'I beheld
Jerusalem, the City sage and blest;
From heaven I saw it to the earth descending
In sanctity gold-vested, as a Bride
Decked for her Lord. I heard a voice which sang,
Behold the House where God will dwell with men:
And God shall wipe the tears from off their face;
And death shall be no more.'
Old Thames that day
Brightened with banners of a thousand boats
Winnowed by winds flower-scented. Countless hands
Tossed on the brimming river chaplets wov'n
On mead or hill, or branches lopped in woods
With fruit-bloom red, or white with clustering cone,
Changing clear stream to garden. Mile on mile
Now song was heard, now bugle horn that died
Gradual 'mid sedge and reed. Alone the swan
High on the western waters kept aloof;
Remote she eyed the scene with neck thrown back,
Her ancient calm preferring, and her haunt
Crystalline still. Alone the Julian Tower
Far down the eastern stream, though tap'stries waved
From every window, every roof o'er-swarmed
With anthem-echoing throngs, maintained, unmoved,
Roman and Stoic, her Cæsarean pride:
On Saxon feasts she fixed a cold, grey gaze;
'Mid Christian hymns heard but the old acclaim--
'Consul Romanus.'
When the sun had reached
Its noonday height, a people and its king
Around their minster pressed. With measured tread
And Introit chanted, up the pillared nave
Reverent they moved: then knelt. Between their ranks
Their Bishop last advanced with mitred brow
And in his hand the Cross, at every step
Signing the benediction of his Lord.
The altar steps he mounted. Turning then
Westward his face to that innumerous host,
Thus spake he unastonished: 'Sirs, ere now
This church's Consecration rite was sung:--
Be ours to sing thanksgiving to our God,
"Ter-Sanctus," and "Te Deum."'
_THE PENANCE OF SAINT LAURENCE._
Eadbald, King of Kent, persecuting the Church, Laurence the Bishop
deems himself the chief of sinners because he has consented, like
the neighbouring bishops, to depart; but, being consoled by a
wonderful reprimand, faces the King, and offers himself up to
death. The King reproves them that gave him evil counsel.
The day was dying on the Kentish downs
And in the oakwoods by the Stour was dead,
While sadly shone o'er snowy plains of March
Her comfortless, cold star. The daffodil
That year was past its time. The leaden stream
Had waited long that lamp of river-beds
Which, when the lights of Candlemas are quenched,
Looks forth through February mists. A film
Of ice lay brittle on the shallows: dark
And swift the central current rushed: the wind
Sighed through the tawny sedge.
'So fleets our life--
Like yonder gloomy stream; so sighs our age--
Like yonder sapless sedge!' Thus Laurence mused
Standing on that sad margin all alone,
His twenty years of gladsome English toil
Ending at last abortive. 'Stream well-loved,
Here on thy margin standing saw I first,
My head by chance uplifting from my book,
King Ethelbert's strong countenance; he is dead;
And, next him, riding through the April gleams,
Bertha, his Queen, with face so lit by love
Its lustre smote the beggar as she passed
And changed his sigh to song. She too is dead;
And half their thanes that chased the stag that day,
Like echoes of their own glad bugle-horn,
Have passed and are not. Why must I abide?
And why must age, querulous and coward both,
Past days lamenting, fear not less that stroke
Which makes an end of grief? Base life of man!
How sinks thy slow infection through our bones;
Then when you fawned upon us, high-souled youth
Heroic in its gladness, spurned your gifts,
Yearning for noble death. In age, in age
We kiss the hand that nothing holds but dust,
Murmuring, "Not yet!"'
A tear, ere long ice-glazed,
Hung on the old man's cheek. 'What now remains?'
Some minutes passed; then, lifting high his head,
He answered, 'God remains.' His faith, his heart,
Were unsubverted. 'Twas the weight of grief,
The exhausted nerve, the warmthless blood of age,
That pressed him down like sin, where sin was none--
Not sin, but weakness only. Long he mused,
Then slowly walked, and feebly, through the woods
Towards his house monastic. Vast it loomed
Through ground-fog seen; and vaster, close beside,
That convent's church by great Augustine reared
Where once old woodlands clasped a temple old,
Vaunt of false Gods. To Peter and to Paul
That church was dedicate, albeit so long
High o'er the cloudy rack of fleeting years
It bore, and bears, its founder's name, not theirs.
Therein that holy founder slept in Christ,
And Ethelbert, and Bertha. All was changed:
King Eadbald, new-crowned and bad of life,
Who still, whate'er was named of great or good,
Made answer, 'Dreams! I say the flesh rules all!'
Hated the Cross. His Queen, that portent crowned,
She that with name of wife was yet no wife,
Abhorred that Cross and feared. A Baptist new
In that Herodian court had Laurence stood,
Commanding, 'Put the evil thing away!'
Since then the woman's to the monarch's hate
Had added strength--the serpent's poison-bag
Venoming the serpent's fang. 'Depart the realm!'
With voice scarce human thus the tyrant cried,
'Depart or die;' and gave the Church's goods
To clown and boor.
Upon the bank of Thames
Settled like ruin. Holy Sebert dead,
In that East Saxon kingdom monarch long,
Three sons unrighteous now their riot held.
Frowning into the Christian Church they strode,
Full-armed, and each, with far-stretched foot firm set
Watching the Christian rite. 'Give us,' they cried,
While knelt God's children at their Paschal Feast,
'Give us those circlets of your sacred bread:
Ye feed therewith your beggars; kings are we!'
The Bishop answered, 'Be, like them, baptized,
Sons of God's Church, His Sacrament with man,
For that cause Mother of Christ's Sacraments,
So shall ye share her Feast.' With lightning speed
Their swords leaped forth; contemptuous next they cried,
'For once we spare to sweep a witless head
From worthless shoulders. Ere to-morrow's dawn
Hence, nor return!' He sped to Rochester:
Her bishop, like himself, was under ban:
The twain to Canterbury passed, and there
Resolved to let the tempest waste its wrath,
And crossed the seas. By urgency outworn,
'Gainst that high judgment of his holier will
Laurence to theirs deferred, but tarried yet
For one day more to cast a last regard
On regions loved so long.
As compline ceased
He reached the abbey gates, and entered in:
Sadly the brethren looked him in the face,
Yet no one said, 'Take comfort!' Sad and sole
He passed to the Scriptorium: round he gazed,
And thought of happy days, when Gregory,
One time their Abbot, next their Pope, would send
Some precious volume to his exiled sons,
While they in reverence knelt, and kissed its edge,
And, kissing, heard once more, as if in dream,
Gregorian chants through Roman palm trees borne
With echoes from the Coliseum's wall
Adown that Coelian Hill; and saw God's poor
At feast around that humble board which graced
That palace senatorial once. He stood:
He raised a casket from an open chest,
And from that casket drew a blazoned scroll,
And placed it on the window-sill up-sloped
Breast-high, and faintly warmed by sinking sun;
Then o'er it bent a space.
With sudden hands
The old man raised that scroll; aloud he read:
'I, Ethelbert the King, and all my Thanes,
Honouring the Apostle Peter, cede to God
This Abbey and its lands. If heir of mine
Cancel that gift, when Christ with angels girt
Makes way to judge the Nations of this world,
His name be cancelled from the Book of Life.'
The old man paused; then read the signatures,
'I, Ethelbert, of Kent the King.' Who next?
'I, Eadbald, his son;' to these succeeding,
'I, Hennigisil, Duke;' 'I, Hocca, Earl.'--
'Can such things be?' Around the old man's brow
The veins swelled out; dilated nostril, mouth
Working as mouth of him that tasteth death,
With what beside is wiselier unrevealed,
Witnessed that agony which spake no more;
He dashed the charter on the pavement down;
Then on it gazed a space.
Remembering soon
Whose name stood first on that dishonoured list,
Contrite he raised that charter to his breast,
And pressed it there in silence. Hours went by;
Then dark was all that room, and dark around
The windy corridors and courts stone-paved;
And bitter blew the blast: his unlooped cloak
Fell loose: the cold he noted not. At last
A brother passed the door with lamp in hand:
Dazzled, he started first: then meekly spake,
'Beseech the brethren that they strew my bed
Within the church. Until the second watch
There must I fast, and pray,'
The brethren heard,
And strewed his couch within the vast, void nave,
A mat and deer-skin, and, more high, that stone
The old head's nightly pillow. Echoes faint
Ere long of their receding footsteps died
While from the dark fringe of a rainy cloud
An ice-cold moon, ascending, streaked the church
With gleam and gloom alternate. On his knees
Meantime that aged priest was creeping slow
From stone to stone, as when on battle-plain,
The battle lost, some warrior wounded sore,
By all forsaken, or some war-horse maimed,
Drags a blind bulk along the field in search
Of thirst-assuaging spring. Glittered serene
That light before the Sacrament of Love:
Thither he bent his way, and long time prayed:
Thence onward crept to where King Ethelbert
Slept, marble-shrined--his ashes, not the King,
Yet ashes kingly since God's temple once,
And waiting God's great day. Before that tomb,
Himself as rigid, with lean arms outspread,
Thus made the man his moan:
'King Ethelbert!
Hear'st thou in glory? Ofttimes on thy knees
Thou mad'st confession of thine earthly sins
To me, a wounded worm this day on earth:
Now comforted art thou, and I brought low:
Yet, though I see no more that beaming front,
And haply for my sins may see it never,
Yet inwardly I gladden, knowing this
That thou art glad. Perchance thou hear'st me not,
For thou wert still a heedless man of mirth,
Though sage as strong at need. If this were so,
Not less thy God would hear my prayer to thee,
And grant it in thy reverence. Ethelbert!
Thou hadst thy trial time, since, many a year
All shepherdless thy well-loved people strayed
What time thyself, their shepherd, knew'st not Christ,
Sole shepherd of man's race. King Ethelbert!
Rememberest thou that day in Thanet Isle?
That day the Bride of God on English shores
Set her pure foot; and thou didst kneel to kiss it:
Thou gav'st her meat and drink in kingly wise;
Gav'st her thy palace for her bridal bower;
This Abbey build'dst--her fortress! O those days
Crowned with such glories, with such sweetness winged!
Thou saw'st thy realm made one with Christ's: thou saw'st
Thy race like angels ranging courts of Heaven:
This day, behold, thou seest the things thou seest!
If there be any hope, King Ethelbert,
Help us this day with God!'
Upon his knees
Then crept that exile old to Bertha's tomb,
And there made moan: 'Thou tenderest Queen and sweetest,
Whom no man ever gazed on save with joy,
Or spake of, dead, save weeping! Well I know
That on thee in thy cradle Mary flung
A lily whiter from her hand, a rose
Warm from her breath and breast, for all thy life
Was made of Chastities and Charities--
This hour thine eyes are on that Vision bent
Whereof the radiance, ere by thee beheld,
Gave thee thine earthly brightness. Mirrored there,
Seest thou, like moat in sunbeam well-nigh lost,
Our world of temporal anguish? See it not!
For He alone, the essential Peace Eterne,
Could see it unperturbed. In Him rejoice!
Yet, 'mid thy heavenly triumph, plead, O plead
For hearts that break below!'
Upon the ground
Awhile that man sore tried his forehead bowed;
Then raised it till the frore and foggy beam
Mixed with his wintry hair. Once more he crept
Upon his knees through shadow; reached at length
His toilsome travel's last and dearest bourn,
The grave of Saint Augustine. O'er it lay
The Patriarch's statued semblance as in sleep:
He knew it well, and found it, though to him
In darkness lost and veil beside of tears,
With level hands grazing those upward feet
Oft kissed, yet ne'er as now.
'Farewell forever!
Farewell, my Master, and farewell, my friend!
Since ever thou in heaven abid'st--and I----
Gregory the Pontiff from that Roman Hill
Sent thee to work a man's work far away,
And manlike didst thou work it. Prince, yet child,
Men saw thee, and obeyed thee. O'er the earth
Thy step was regal, meekness of thy Christ
Weighted with weight of conquerors and of kings:
Men saw a man who toiled not for himself,
Yet never ceased from toil; who warred on Sin;
Had peace with all beside. In happy hour
God laid His holy hand upon thine eyes:
I knelt beside thy bed: I leaned mine ear
Down to thy lips to catch their last; in vain:
Yet thou perchance wert murmuring in thy heart:
"I leave my staff within no hireling's hand;
Therefore my work shall last," Ah me! Ah me!
There was a Laurence once on Afric's shore:
He with his Cyprian died. I too, methinks,
Had shared--how gladly shared--my Bishop's doom.
Father, with Gregory pray this night! That God
Who promised, "for my servant David's sake,"
Even yet may hear thy prayer.'
Thus wept the man,
Till o'er him fell half slumber. Soon he woke,
And, from between that statue's marble feet
Lifting a marble face, in silence crept
To where far off his bed was strewn, and drew
The deer-skin covering o'er him. With its warmth
Deep sleep, that solace of lamenting hearts
Which makes the waking bitterer, o'er him sank,
Nor wholly left him, though in sleep he moaned
When from the neighbouring farm, an hour ere dawn,
The second time rang out that clarion voice
Which bids the Christian watch.
As thus he lay
T'wards him there moved in visions of the Lord
A Venerable Shape, compact of light,
And loftier than our mortal. Near arrived,
That mild, compassionate Splendour shrank his beam,
Or healed with strengthening touch the gazer's eyes
Made worthier of such grace; and Laurence saw
Princedom not less than his, the Apostles' Chief,
To whom the Saviour answered, 'Rock art thou,'
And later--crowning Love, not less than Faith--
'Feed thou My Sheep, My Lambs!' He knew that shape,
For oft, a child 'mid catacombs of Rome,
And winding ways girt by the martyred dead,
His eyes had seen it. Pictured on those vaults
Stood Peter, Moses of the Christian Law,
Figured in one that by the Burning Bush
Unsandalled knelt, or drew with lifted hand
The torrent from the rock, yet wore not less
In aureole round his head the Apostle's name
'Petros,' and in his hand sustained the Keys--
Such shape once more he saw.
'And comest thou then
Long-waited, or with sceptre-wielding hand
Earthward to smite the unworthiest head on earth,
Or with the darker of those Keys thou bearest
Him from the synod of the Saints to shut
Who fled as flies the hireling? Let it be!
Not less in that bright City by whose gate
Warder thou sitt'st, my Master thou shalt see
Pacing the diamond terraces of God
And bastions jacinth-veined, my great Augustine,
When all who wrought the ill have passed to doom,
And all who missed the good. Nor walks he sole:
By him forever and forever pace
My Ethelbert, my Bertha! Who can tell
But in the on-sweeping centuries thrice or twice
These three may name my name?' He spake and wept.
To whom the Apostolic Splendour thus:
'Live, and be strong: for those thou lovest in Christ
Not only in far years shall name thy name;
This day be sure that name they name in Christ:
Else wherefore am I here? Not thou alone,
Much more in grief's bewilderment than fear,
Hast from the right way swerved. Was I not strong?
I, from the first Elect, and named anew?
I who received, at first, divine command
The Brother-band to strengthen; last to rule?
I who to Hebrew and to Gentile both
Flung wide the portals of the heavenly realm?
Was I not strong? Behold, thou know'st my fall!
A second fall was near. At Rome the sword
Against me raged. Forth by the Appian Way
I fled; and, past the gateway, face to face,
Him met, Who up the steep of Calvary, bare
For man's behoof the Cross. "Where goest thou, Lord?"
I spake; then He: "I go to Rome, once more
To die for him who fears for me to die."
To Rome returned I; and my end was peace.
Return thou too. Thy brethren have not sinned:
They fled, consentient with the Will Supreme:
Their names are written in the Book of Life:
Enough that He Who gives to each his part
Hath sealed thy sons and thee to loftier fates;
Therefore more sternly tries. Be strong; be glad:
For strength from joyance comes.'
The Vision passed:
The old man, seated on his narrow bed,
Rolled thrice his eyes around the vast, dim church,
Desiring to retain it. Vain the quest!
Yet still within his heart that Radiance lived:
The sweetness of that countenance fresh from God
Would not be dispossessed, but kindled there
Memorial dawn of brightness, more and more
Growing to perfect day: inviolate peace,
Such peace as heavenly visitants bequeath,
O'er-spread his spirit, gradual, like a sea:
Forth from the bosom of that peace upsoared
Hope, starry-crowned, and winged, that liberates oft
Faith, unextinct, though bound by Powers accursed
That o'er her plant the foot, and hold the chain--
Terror and Sloth. To noble spirits set free
Delight means gratitude. Thus Laurence joyed:
But soon, remembering that unworthy past,
Remorse succeeded, sorrow born of love,
Consoled by love alone. 'Ah! slave,' he cried,
That, serving such a God, could'st dream of flight:
How many a babe, too weak to lift his head,
Is strong enough to die!' While thus he mused
The day-dawn reaching to his pallet showed
That Discipline, wire-woven, in ancient days
Guest of monastic bed. He snatched it thence:
Around his bending neck and shoulders lean
In dire revenge he hurled it. Spent at last,
Though late, those bleeding hands down dropped: the cheek
Sank on the stony pillow. Little birds,
Low-chirping ere their songs began, attuned
Slumber unbroken. In a single hour
He slept a long night's sleep.
The rising sun
Woke him: but in his heart another sun,
New-risen serene with healing on its wings,
Outshone that sun in brightness. 'Mid the choir
His voice was loudest while they chanted lauds:
Brother to brother whispered, issuing forth,
'He walks in stature higher by a head
Than in the month gone by!'
That day at noon
King Eadwald, intent to whiten theft
And sacrilege with sanctitudes of law,
Girt by his warriors and his Witena,
Enthronèd sat. 'What boots it?' laughed a thane;
'Laurence has fled! we battle with dead men!'
'Ay, ay,' the King replied, 'I told you oft
Sages can brag; your dreamer weaves his dream:
But honest flesh rules all!' While thus they spake
Confusion filled the hall: through guarded gates
A priest advanced with mitre and with Cross,
A monk that seemed not monk, but prince disguised:
It was Saint Laurence. As he neared the throne
The fashion of the tyrant's face was changed:
'Dar'st thou?' he cried, 'I deemed thee fled the realm--
What seek'st thou here?' The Saint made answer, 'Death.'
Calmly he told his tale; then ended thus:
'To me that sinful past is sin of one
Buried in years gone by. All else is dream
Save that last look the Apostle on me bent
Ere from my sight he ceased. I saw therein
The reflex of that wondrous last Regard
Cast by the sentenced Saviour of mankind
On one who had denied Him, standing cold
Beside the High Priest's gate. Like him, I wept;
His countenance wrought my penance, not his hand:
I scarcely felt the scourge.'
King Eadbald
Drave back the sword half drawn, and round him stared;
Then sat as one amazed. He rose; he cried,
'Ulf! Kathnar! Strip his shoulders bare! If true
His tale, the brand remains!'
Two chiefs stepped forth:
They dragged with trembling hand, and many a pause,
The external garb pontific first removed,
Dark, blood-stained garment from the bleeding flesh,
The old man kneeling. Once, and only once,
The monarch gazed on that disastrous sight,
Muttering, 'and yet he lives!' A time it was
Of swift transitions. Hearts, how proud soe'er,
Made not that boast--consistency in sin,
Though dark and rough accessible to Grace
As earth to vernal showers. With hands hard-clenched
The King upstarted: thus his voice rang out:
'Beware, who gave ill counsel to their King!
The royal countenance is against them set,
Ill merchants trafficking with his lesser moods!
Does any say the King wrought well of late,
Warring on Christ, and chasing hence his priests?
The man that lies shall die! This day, once more
I ratify my Father's oath, and mine,
To keep the Church in peace: and though I sware
To push God's monks from yonder monastery
And lodge therein the horses of the Queen,
Those horses, and the ill-persuading Queen,
Shall flee my kingdom, and the monks abide!
Brave work ye worked, my loose-kneed Witena,
This day, Christ's portion yielding to my wrath!
See how I prize your labours!' With his sword
He clave the red seal from their statute scroll
And stamped it under foot. Once more he spake,
Gazing with lion gaze from man to man:
'The man that, since my Father, Ethelbert,
Though monarch, stooped to common doom of men,
Hath filched from Holy Church fee-farm, or grange,
Sepulchral brass, gold chalice, bell or book,
See he restore it ere the sun goes down;
If not, he dies! Not always winter reigns;
May-breeze returns, and bud-releasing breath,
When hoped the least:--'tis thus with royal minds!'
He spake: from that day forth in Canterbury
Till reigned the Norman, crowned on Hastings' field,
God's Church had rest. In many a Saxon realm
Convulsion rocked her cradle: altars raised
By earlier kings by later were o'erthrown:
One half the mighty Roman work, and more,
Fell to the ground: Columba's Irish monks
The ruin raised. From Canterbury's towers,
'Rome of the North' long named, from them alone
Above sea-surge still shone that vestal fire
By tempest fanned, not quenched; and at her breast
For centuries six were nursed that Coelian race,
The Benedictine Primates of the Land.
_KING SIGEBERT OF EAST ANGLIA, AND HEIDA THE PROPHETESS._
Sigebert, King of East Anglia, moved by what he has heard from a
Christian priest, consults the Prophetess Heida. In the doctrine he
reports Heida recognises certain sacred traditions from the East,
originally included in the Northern religion, and affirms that the
new Faith is the fulfilment of the great Voluspà prophecy, the
earliest record of that religion, which foretold the destruction
both of the Odin-Gods and the Giant race, the restoration of all
things, and the reign of Love.
Long time upon the late-closed door the King
Kept his eyes fixed. The wondrous guest was gone;
Yet, seeing that his words were great and sage,
Compassionate for the sorrowful state of man,
Yet sparing not man's sin, their echoes lived
Thrilling large chambers in the monarch's breast
Silent for many a year. Exiled in France
The mystery of the Faith had reached his ear
In word but not in power. The westering sun
Lengthened upon the palace floor its beam,
Yet the strong hand which propped that thoughtful head
Sank not, nor moved. Sudden, King Sigebert
Arose and spake: 'I go to Heida's Tower:
Await ye my return.'
The woods ere long
Around him closed. Upon the wintry boughs
An iron shadow pressed; and as the wind
Increased beneath their roofs, an iron sound
Clangoured funereal. Down their gloomiest aisle,
With snow flakes white, the monarch strode, till now
Before him, and not distant, Heida's Tower,
The Prophetess by all men feared yet loved,
Smit by a cold beam from the yellowing west,
Shone like a tower of brass. Her ravens twain
Crested the turrets of its frowning gate,
Unwatched by warder. Sigebert passed in:
Beneath the stony vault the queenly Seer
Sat on her ebon throne.
With pallid lips
The King rehearsed his tale; how one with brow
Lordlier than man's, and visionary eyes
Which, wander where they might, saw Spirits still,
Had told him many marvels of some God
Mightier than Odin thrice. He paused awhile:
A warning shadow came to Heida's brow:
Nathless she nothing spake. The King resumed:
'He spake--that stranger--of the things he saw:
For he, his body tranced, it may be dead,
In spirit oft hath walked the Spirit-Land:
Thence, downward gazing, once he saw our earth,
A little vale obscure, and, o'er it hung,
Those four great Fires that desolate mankind:
The Fire of Falsehood first; the Fire of Lust,
Ravening for weeds and scum; the Fire of Hate,
Hurling, on war-fields, brother-man 'gainst man;
The Fire of tyrannous Pride. While yet he gazed,
Behold, those Fires, widening, commixed, then soared
Threatening the skies. A Spirit near him cried,
"Fear nought; for breeze-like pass the flames o'er him
In whom they won no mastery there below:
But woe to those who, charioted therein,
Rode forth triumphant o'er the necks of men,
And had their day on earth. Proportioned flames
Of other edge shall try their work and them!"
Thus spake my guest: the frost wind smote his brows,
While on that moonlit crag we sat, ice-cold,
Yet down them, like the reaper's sweat at noon,
The drops of anguish streamed. Till then, methinks,
That thing Sin is I knew not.
Calm of voice
Again he spake. He told me of his God:
That God, like Odin, is a God of War:
Who serve Him wear His armour day and night:
The maiden, nay, the child, must wield the sword;
Yet none may hate his neighbour. Thus he spake,
That Prophet from far regions: "Wherefore wreck
Thy brother man? upon his innocent babes
Drag down the ruinous roof? Seek manlier tasks!
The death in battle is the easiest death:
Be yours the daily dying; lifelong death;
Death of the body that the soul may live:--
War on the Spirits unnumbered and accurst
Which, rulers of the darkness of this world,
Drive, hour by hour, their lances through man's soul
That wits not of the wounding!"'
Heida turned
A keen eye on the King: 'Whence came your guest?
Not from those sun-bright southern shores, I ween?'
He answered, 'Nay, from western isle remote
That Prophet came.' Then Heida's countenance fell:
'The West! the West! it should have been the East!
Conclude your tale: what saith your guest of God?'
The King replied: 'His God so loved mankind
That, God remaining, he became a man;
So hated sin that, sin to slay, He died.
One tear of His had paid the dreadful debt:--
Not so He willed it: thus He willed, to wake
In man, His lost one, quenchless hate of sin,
Proportioned to the death-pang of a God;
Nor chose He lonely majesty of death:
'Twixt sinners paired He died.'
In Heida's eye
Trembled a tear. 'A dream was mine in youth,
When first the rose of girlhood warmed my cheek,
A dream of some great Sacrifice that claimed
Not praise--not praise--it only yearned to die
Helping the Loved. A maid alone, I thought,
Such sacrifice could offer.' As she spake,
She pressed upon the pale cheek, warmed once more,
Her cold, thin hand a moment.
'Maiden-born
Was He, my guest revealed,' the King replied:
'Then from that Angel's "Hail," and her response,
"So be it unto me," when sinless doubt
Vanished in world-renewing, free consent,
He told the tale;--the Infant in the crib;
The shepherds o'er him bowed;' (with widening eyes
Heida, bent forward, saw like them that Child)
'The Star that led the Magians from the East----'
'The East, the East! It should have been the East!'
Once more she cried; 'our race is from the East:
The Persian worshipped t'ward the rising sun:
You said, but now, the West.' The King resumed:
'God's priest was from the West; but in the East
The great Deliverer sprang.' Next, step by step,
Like herald panting forth in leaguered town
Tidings unhoped for of deliverance strange
Through victory on some battle field remote,
The King rehearsed his theme, from that first Word,
'The Woman's Seed shall bruise the Serpent's head,'
Prime Gospel, ne'er forgotten in the East,
To Calvary's Cross, the Resurrection morn,
Lastly the great Ascension into heaven:
And ever as he spake on Heida's cheek
The red spot, deepening, spread; within her eyes
An unastonished gladness waxed more large:
Back to the marble woman came her youth:
Once more within her heaving breast it lived,
Once more upon her forehead shone, as when
The after-glow returns to Alpine snows
Left death-like by dead day. Question at times
She made, yet seemed the answer to foreknow.
That tale complete, low-toned at last she spake:
'Unhappy they to whom these things are hard!'
Then silent sat, and by degrees became
Once more that dreaded prophet, stern and cold.
The silence deeper grew: the sun, not set,
Had sunk beneath the forest's western ridge;
And jagged shadows tinged that stony floor
Whereon the monarch knelt. Slowly therefrom
He raised his head; then slowly made demand:
'Is he apostate who discards old Faith?'
Long time in musings Heida sat, then spake:
'Yea, if that Faith discarded be the Truth:
Not so, if it be falsehood. God is Truth;
God-taught, true hearts discern that Truth, and guard:
Whom God forsakes forsake it. O thou North,
That beat'st thy brand so loud against thy shield,
Hearing nought else, what Truth one day was thine!
Behold within corruption's charnel vaults
It sleeps this day. What God shall lift its head?
We came from regions of the rising sun:
Scorning the temples built by mortal hand,
We worshipp'd God--one God--the Immense, All-Just:
That worship was the worship of great hearts:
Duty was worship then: that God received it:
I know not if benignly He received;
If God be Love I know not. This I know,
God loves not priest that under roofs of gold
Lifts, in his right hand held, the Sacrifice;
The left, behind him, fingering for the dole.
King of East Anglia's realm, the primal Truths
Are vanished from our Faith: the ensanguined rite,
The insane carouse survive!'
Thus Heida spake,
Heida, the strong one by the strong ones feared;
Heida, the sad one by the mourners loved;
Heida, the brooder on the sacred Past,
The nursling of a Prophet House, the child
Of old traditions sage!
She paused, and then
Milder, resumed: 'What moved thee to believe?'
And Sigebert made answer thus: 'The Sword:
For as a sword that Truth the stranger preached
Ran down into my heart.' Heida to him,
'Well saidst thou "as a Sword:" a Sword is Truth;--
As sharp a sword is Love: and many a time
In youth, but not the earliest, happiest youth,
When first I found that grief was in the world,
Had learned how deep its root, an infant's wail
Went through me like a sword. Man's cry it seemed,
The blindfold, crownèd creature's cry for Truth,
His spirit's sole deliverer.'
Once again
She mused, and then continued, 'Truth and Love
Are gifts too great to give themselves for nought;
Exacting Gods. Within man's bleeding heart,
If e'er to man conceded, both shall lie
Crossed, like two swords--
Behold thine image, crowned Humanity!
Better such dower than life exempt from woe:
Our Fathers knew to suffer; joyed in pain;
They knew not this--how deep its root!'
Once more
The Prophetess was mute: again she spake:
'How named thy guest his God?' The King replied:
'The Warrior God, Who comes to judge the world;
The Lord of Love; the God Who wars on Sin,
And ceases not to war.' 'Ay, militant,'
Heida rejoined, with eyes that shone like stars:
'The Persian knew Him. Ormuzd was His name:
Unpitying Light against the darkness warred;
Against the Light the Darkness. Could the Light
Remit, one moment's length, to pierce that gloom,
Himself in gloom were swallowed.'
Yet again
In silence Heida sat; then cried aloud,
'Odin, and all his radiant Æsir Gods
Forth thronging daily from the golden gates
Of Asgard City, their supernal house,
War on that giant brood of Jotünheim,
Lodged 'mid their mountains of eternal ice
Which circles still that sea surrounding earth,
Man's narrow home. I know that mystery now!
That warfare means the war of Good on Ill:
We shared that warfare once! This day, depraved,
Warring, we war alone for rage and hate;
Men fight as fight the lion and the pard:
For them the sanctity of war is lost,
Lost like the kindred sanctity of Love,
Our household boast of old. The Father-God
Vowed us to battle but as Virtue's proof,
High test of softness scorned. His warrior knew
'Twas Odin o'er the battle field who sent
Pure-handed maiden Goddesses, the Norns,
Not vulture-like, but dove-like, mild as dawn,
To seal the foreheads of his sons elect,
Seal them to death, the bravest with a kiss:
His warrior, arming, cried aloud, "This day
I speed five Heroes to Valhalla's Hall:
To-morrow night in love I share their Feast!"
He honoured whom he slew.'
To her the King:
'That Stranger with severer speech than thine,
Sharp flail and stigma, charged the world with sin,
The vast, wide world, and not one race alone:
Each nation, he proclaimed, from Man's great stem
Issuing, had with it borne one Word divine
Rapt from God's starry volume in the skies,
Each word a separate Truth, that, angel-like,
Before them winging, on their faces flung
Splendour of destined morn, and led man's race
Triumphant long on virtue's road. Themselves
Had changed that True to False. The Judge had come;
That Power Who both beginning is and end
Had stooped to earth to judge the earth with fire;
A fire of Love, He came to cleanse the just;
A fire of Vengeance, to consume the impure:
His fan is in His hand: the chaff shall burn;
The grain be garnered. "Fall, high palace roofs,"
He cried, "for ye have sheltered dens of sin:
Fall, he that, impious, scorned the First and Last;
Fall, he that bowed not to the hoary head;
Fall, he that loosed by fraud the maiden zone;
Fall, he that lusted for the poor man's field;
Fall, rebel Peoples; fall, disloyal Kings;
And fall"--dread Mother, is the word offence?--
"False Gods, long served; for God Himself is nigh."'
The monarch ceased: on Heida's face that hour
He feared to look; but when she spake, her voice
Betrayed no passion of a soul perturbed:
Austere it was; not wrathful; these her words:
'Son, as I hearkened to thy tale this day,
Memory returned to me of visions three
That lighted three great junctures of my life:
And thrice thy words were echoes strange of words
That shook my tender childhood, slumbering half,
Half-waked by matin beams--"The Gods must die."
Three times that awful sound was in mine ear:
Later I learned that voice was nothing new.
My Son, the earliest record of our Faith,
So sacred that on Runic stave or stone
None dared to grave it, lore from age to age
Transmitted by white lips of trembling seers,
Spared not to wing, like arrow sped from God,
That word to man, "Valhalla's Gods must die!"
The Gods and Giant Race that strove so long,
Met in their last and mightiest battle field,
Must die, and die one death. That prophet-voice
The Gods have heard. Therefore they daily swell
Valhalla's Hall with heroes rapt from earth
To aid them in that fight.'
On Heida's face
At last the King, his head uplifting, gazed:--
There where the inviolate calm had dwelt alone
A million thoughts, each following each, on swept,
That calm beneath them still, as when some grove,
O'er-run by sudden gust of summer storm,
With inly-working panic thrills at first,
Then springs to meet the gale, while o'er it rush
Shadows with splendours mixed. Upon her breast
Came down the fire divine. With lifted hands
She stood: she sang a death-song centuries old,
The dirge prophetic both of Gods and men:
'The iron age shall make an iron end:
The men who lived in hate, or impious love,
Shall meet in one red battle field. That day
The forests of the earth, blackening, shall die;
The stars down-fall; the Wingèd Hound of Heaven,
That chased the Sun from age to age, shall close
O'er it at last; the Ash Tree, Ygdrasil,
Whose boughs o'er-roof the skies, whose roots descend
To Hell, whose leaves are lives of men, whose boughs
The destined empires that o'er-awe the world,
Shall drop its fruit unripe. The Midgard Snake,
Circling that sea which girds the orb of earth,
Shall wake, and turn, and ocean in one wave
O'er-sweep all lands. Thereon shall Naglfar ride,
The skeleton ship all ribbed with bones of men,
Whose sails are woven of night, and by whose helm
Stand the Three Fates. When heaves that ship in sight,
Then know the end draws nigh.'
She ceased; then spake:
'If any doubt, the Voluspà tells all,
The song the mystic maiden, Vola, sang;
Our first of prophets she, as I the last:
She sang that song no Prophet dared to write.'
But Sigebert made answer where he knelt,
Old Faith back rushing blindly on his heart:
'Though man's last nation lay a wreath of dust,
Though earth were sea, not less in heaven the Gods
Would hold their revels still; Valhalla's Halls
Resound the heroes' triumph!'
Once again
Heida arose: once more her pallid face
Shone lightning-like, wan cheeks and flashing eyes;
Once more she sang: 'The Warder of the Gods,
Soundeth the Gjallar Trumpet, never heard
Before by Gods or mortals: from their feast
The everlasting synod of the Gods
Rush forth, gold-armed, with chariot and with horse:
First rides the Father of the flock divine,
Odin, our King, and, at his right hand, Thor
Whose thunder hammer splits the mountain crags
And level lays the summits of the world;
Heimdall and Bragi, Uller, Njord, and Tyr,
Behind them throng; with these the concourse huge
Of lesser Gods, and Heroes snatched from earth,
Since man's first battle, part to bear with Gods
In this their greatest. From their halls of ice
To meet them stride the mighty Giant-Brood,
The moving mountains of old Jötunheim,
Strong with all strengths of Nature, flood or fire,
Glacier, or stream volcanic from red hills
Cutting through grass-green billows;--on they throng
Topping the clouds, and, leagues before them, flinging
Huge shade, like shade of mountains cast o'er wastes
When sets the sun.' A little time she ceased;
Then fiercelier sang: 'Flanking that Giant-Brood
I see two Portents, terrible as Sin:--
The Midgard Snake primeval at the right,
With demon-crest as haughtily upheaved
As though all ocean curled into one wave:--
A million rainbows braid that glooming arch;
And Death therein is mirrored. At the left,
On moves that brother Terror, wolf in shape,
Which, bound till now by craft of prescient Gods,
Weltered in Hell's abyss. Till came the hour
A single hair inwoven by heavenly hand
Sufficed to chain that monster to his rock;--
His fast is over now; his dusky jaws
At last the Eternal Hunger lifts distent
As far as heaven from earth.'
The Prophetess
One moment pressed her palms upon her eyes,
Then flung them wide. 'The Father of the Gods,
Our Odin, at that Portent hurls his lance;
And Thor, though bleeding fast, with hammer raised
Deals with that Serpent's scales.'
'The Gods shall win,'
Shouted the King, forgetting at that hour
All save the strife, while on his brow there burned
Hue of the battle at the battle's height
When no man staunches wound. With voice serene
(The storm had left her) Heida made reply:
'If any doubt, the Voluspà tells all.
Ere yet Valhalla's lower heaven was shaped
Muspell, the great Third Heaven immeasurable,
Above it towered, throne of that God Supreme,
Who knew beginning none, and knows no end:
High on its southern cliff that dread One sits,
Nor ever from the South withdraws His gaze,
Nor ever drops that bright, sky-pointing Sword
Whose splendour dims the noontide sun. That God--
He, and the Spirit-Host that wing His light,
When shines the Judgment Sign, shall stand on earth,
And judge the earth with fire. Nor men nor Gods
Shall face that fire and live.'
As Heida spake
The broad full moon above the forest soared,
And changed her form to light. With hands out-stretched
She sang her last of songs: 'The Hour is come:
Bifrost, the rainbow-bridge 'twixt heaven and earth
Shatters; the crystal walls of heaven roll in:
Above the ruins ride the Sons of Light.
That dread One first--
Forth from His helm the intolerable beam
Strikes to the battle-field; the Giant-Brood
Die in that flame; and Odin, and his Gods:
Valhalla falls, and with it Jötunheim,
Its ice-piled mountains melting into waves:
In fire are all things lost!'
Then wept the King:
'Alas for Odin and his brethren Gods
That in their great hands stayed the northern land!
Alas for man!' But Heida, with fixed face
Whereon there sat its ancient calm, replied:
'Nothing that lived but shall again have life,
Such life as virtue claims. Ill-working men
With Loki and with Hela, evil Gods,
Shall dwell far down in Náströnd's death-black pile
Compact of serpent scales, whose thousand gates
Face to the North, blinded by endless storm:
But from the sea shall rise a happier earth,
Holier and happier. There the good and true
Secure shall gladden, and the fiery flame
Harm them no more. Another Asgard there
Where stood that earlier, ere our fathers left
Their native East, shall lift sublimer towers
Dawn-lighted by a loftier Ararat:
Just men and pure shall pace its palmy steeps
With him of race divine yet human heart,
Baldur, upon whose beaming front the Gods
Gazing, exulted; from whose lips mankind
Shall gather counsel. Hand in hand with him
Shall stand the blind God, Hödur, now not blind,
That, witless, slew him with the mistletoe,
Yet loved him well. Others, both men and Gods,
That dread Third Heaven attained, shall make abode
With Him Who ever is, and ever was,
Enthroned like Him upon its southern cliff,
Drinking the light immortal. From beneath,
Like winds from flowery wildernesses borne,
The breath of all good deeds and virtuous thoughts,
Their own, or others', since the worlds were made,
All generous sufferings, o'er their hearts shall hang,
Fragrance perpetual; and, where'er they gaze,
The Vision of their God shall on them shine.'
Thus Heida spake, and ceased; then added, 'Son,
Our Faith shall never suffer wreck: fear nought!
Fulfilment, not Destruction, is its end.
But thou return, and bid thy herald guest
Who sought thee, wandering from his westward Isle,
Approach my gates at dawn, and in mine ear
Divulge his message to this land. Farewell!'
Then from his knees the monarch rose, and took
Through the huge moonlit woods his homeward way.
_KING SIGEBERT OF ESSEX, OR A FRIEND AT NEED._
Sigebert, King of Essex, labours with Cedd the Bishop for the
conversion of his people; but he feasts with a certain impious
kinsman; and it is foretold to him that for that sin, though
pardoned, he shall die by that kinsman's hand. This prophecy having
been accomplished, Cedd betakes himself to Lastingham, there to
pray with his three brothers for the king's soul. His prayer is
heard, and in a few days he dies. Thirty of Cedd's monks, issuing
from Essex to pray at his grave, die also, and are buried in a
circle round it.
'At last resolve, my brother, and my friend!
Fling from you, as I fling this cloak, your Gods,
And cleave to Him, the Eternal, One and Sole,
The All-Wise, All-Righteous and Illimitable,
Who made us, and will judge.' Thus Oswy spake
To Sigebert, his friend, of Essex King,
Essex once Christian. Royal Sebert dead,
The Church of God had sorrow by the Thames:
Three Pagan brothers in his place held sway:
They warred upon God's people; for which cause
God warred on them, and by the Wessex sword
In one day hewed them down. King Sigebert,
Throned in their place, to Oswy thus replied:
'O friend, I saw the Truth, yet saw it not!
'Twas like the light forth flashed from distant oar,
Now vivid, vanished now. Not less, methinks,
Thy Christ ere now had won me save for this;
I feared that in my bosom love for thee,
Not Truth alone, prevailed. I left thy court;
I counselled with my wisest; by degrees,
Though grieving thus to outrage loyal hearts,
Reached my resolve: henceforth I serve thy God:
My kingdom may renounce me if it will.'
Then came the Bishop old, and nigh that Wall
Which spans the northern land from sea to sea
Baptized him to the God Triune. At night
The King addressed him thus: 'My task is hard;
Yield me four priests of thine from Holy Isle
To shape my courses.' Finan gazed around
And made election--Cedd and others three;
He consecrated Cedd with staff and ring;
And by the morning's sunrise Sigebert
Rode with them, face to south.
The Spring, long checked,
Fell, like God's Grace, or fire, or flood, at once
O'er all the land: it swathed the hills in green;
It fringed with violets cleft and rock; illumed
The stream with primrose tufts: but mightier far
That Spring which triumphed in the monarch's breast,
All doubt dispelled. That smile which knew not cause
Looked like his angel's mirrored on his face:
At times he seemed with utter gladness dazed;
At times he laughed aloud. 'Father,' he cried,
'That darkness from my spirit is raised at last:
Ah fool! ah fool! to wait for proof so long!
Unseal thine eyes, and all things speak of God:
The snows on yonder thorn His pureness show;
Yon golden iris bank His love. But now
I marked a child that by its father ran:
Some mystery they seemed of love in heaven
Imaged in earthly love. 'With sad, sweet smile
The old man answered: 'Pain there is on earth--
Bereavement, sickness, death.' The King replied:
'It was by suffering, not by deed, or word,
God's Son redeemed mankind.' Then answered Cedd:
'God hath thee in His net; and well art thou!
That Truth thou seest this day, and feelest, live!
So shall it live within thee. If, more late,
Rebuke should come, or age, remember then
This day-spring of thy strength, and answer thus,
"With me God feasted in my day of youth:
So feast He now with others!"'
Years went by,
And Cedd in work and word was mighty still,
And throve with God. The strong East Saxon race
Grew gentle in his presence: they were brave,
And faith is courage in the things divine,
Courage with meekness blent. The heroic heart
Beats to the spiritual cognate, paltering not
Fraudulent with truth once known. Like winds from God
God's message on them fell. Old bonds of sin,
Snapt by the vastness of the growing soul,
Burst of themselves; and in the heart late bound
Virtue had room to breathe. As when that Voice
Primeval o'er the formless chaos rolled,
And, straight, confusions ceased, the greater orb
Ruling the day, the lesser, night; even so,
Born of that Bethlehem Mystery, order lived:
Divine commandments fixed a firmament
Betwixt man's lower instincts and his mind:
From unsuspected summits of his spirit
The morning shone. The nation with the man
Partook the joy: from duty freedom flowed;
And there where tribes had roved a people lived.
A pathos of strange beauty hung thenceforth
O'er humblest hamlet: he who passed it prayed
'May never sword come here!' Bishop and King
Together laboured: well that Bishop's love
Repaid that royal zeal. If random speech
Censured the King, though justly, sudden red
Circling the old man's silver-tressèd brow
Showed, though he spake not, that in saintly breast
The human heart lived on.
In Ithancester
He dwelt, and toiled: not less to Lindisfarne,
His ancient home, in spirit oft he yearned,
Longing for converse with his God alone;
And made retreat there often, not to shun
Labour allotted, but to draw from heaven
Strength for his task. One year, returning thence,
Dëira's King addressed him as they rode:
'My father, choose the richest of my lands
And build thereon a holy monastery;
So shall my realm be blessed, and I, and mine.'
He answered: 'Son, no wealthy lands for us!
Spake not the prophet: "There where dragons roamed,
In later days the grass shall grow--the reed"?
I choose those rocky hills that, on our left,
Drag down the skiey waters to the woods:
Such loved I from my youth: to me they said,
"Bandits this hour usurp our heights, and beasts
Cumber our caves: expel the seed accurst,
And yield us back to God!"'
The King gave ear;
And Cedd within those mountains passed his Lent,
Driving with prayer and fast the spirits accurst
With ignominy forth. Foundations next
He laid with sacred pomp. Fair rose the walls:
All day the March sea blew its thunder blasts
Through wide-mouthed trumpets of ravine or rift
On winding far to where in wooden cell
The old man prayed, while o'er him rushed the cloud
Storm-borne from crag to crag. Serener breeze,
With alternation soft in Nature's course,
Following ere long, great Easter's harbinger,
Thus spake he: 'I must keep the Feast at home;
My children there expect me.' Parting thence,
He left his brothers three to consummate
His work begun, Celin, and Cynabil,
And Chad, at Lichfield Bishop ere he died.
Thus Lastingham had birth.
Beside the Thames
Meantime dark deeds were done. There dwelt two thanes,
The kinsmen of the King, his friends in youth,
Of meanest friend unworthy. Far and wide
They ravined, and the laws of God and man
Despised alike. Three times, in days gone by,
A warning hand their Bishop o'er them raised;
The fourth like bolt from heaven on them it fell,
And clave them from God's Church. They heeded not;
And now the elder kept his birthday feast,
Summoning his friends around him, first the King.
Doubtful and sad, the o'er-gentle monarch mused:
'To feast with sinners is to sanction sin,
A deed abhorred; the alternative is hard:
Must then their sovereign shame with open scorn
Kinsman and friend? I think they mourn the past,
And, were our Bishop here, would pardon sue.'
Boding, yet self-deceived, he joined that feast:
Thereat he saw scant sign of penitence:
Ere long he bade farewell.
That self-same hour
Cedd from his northern pilgrimage returned;
The monarch met him at the offenders' gate,
And, instant when he saw that reverend face,
His sin before him stood. Down from his horse
Leaping, he told him all, and penance prayed.
Long time the old man on that royal front
Fixed a sad eye. 'Thy sin was great, my son,
Shaming thy God to spare a sinner's shame:
That sin thy God forgives, and I remit:
But those whom God forgives He chastens oft:
My son, I see a sign upon thy brow!
Ere yonder lessening moon completes her wane
Behold, the blood-stained hand late clasped in thine
Shall drag thee to thy death.' The King replied:
'A Sigebert there lived, East Anglia's King,
Whose death was glorious to his realm. May mine,
Dark and inglorious, strengthen hearts infirm,
And profit thus my land.'
A time it was
When Christian mercy, judged by Pagan hearts,
Not virtue seemed but sin. That sin's reproach
The King had long sustained. Ere long it chanced
That, near the stronghold of that impious feast,
A vanquished rebel, long in forests hid,
Drew near, and knelt to Sigebert for grace,
And won his suit. The monarch's kinsmen twain,
Those men of blood, forth-gazing from a tower,
Saw all; heard all. Upon them fury fell,
As when through cloudless skies there comes a blast
From site unknown, that, instant, finds its prey,
Circling some white-sailed bark, or towering tree,
And, with a touch, down-wrenching; all things else
Unharmed, though near. They snatched their daggers up,
And rushed upon their prey, and, shouting thus,
'White-livered slave, that mak'st thy throne a jest,
And mock'st great Odin's self, and us, thy kin,
To please thy shaveling,' struck him through the heart;
Then, spurring through the woodlands to the sea,
Were never heard of more.
Throughout the land
Lament was made; lament in every house,
As though in each its eldest-born lay dead;
Lament far off and near. The others wept:
Cedd, in long vigils of the lonely night,
Not wept alone, but lifted strength of prayer
And, morn by morn, that Sacrifice Eterne,
Mightier tenfold in impetrative power
Than prayers of all man's race, from Adam's first
To his who latest on the Judgment Day
Shall raise his hands to God. Four years went by:
That mourner's wound they staunched not. Oft in sleep
He murmured low, 'Would I had died for thee!'
And once, half-waked by rush of morning rains,
'Why saw I on his brow that fatal sign?--
He might have lived till now!' Within his heart
At last there rose a cry, 'To Lastingham!
Pray with thy brothers three, for saints are they:
So shall thy friend, who resteth in the Lord
With perfect will submiss, the waiting passed,
Gaze on God's Vision with an eye unscaled,
In glory everlasting.' At that thought
Peace on the old man settled. Staff in hand
Forth on his way he fared. Nor horse he rode
Nor sandals wore. He walked with feet that bled,
Paying, well pleased, that penance for his King;
And murmured ofttimes, 'Not my blood alone!--
Nay, but my life, my life!'
Yet penance pain,
Like pain of suffering Souls at peace with God,
Quelled not that gladness which, from secret source
Rising, o'erflowed his heart. Old times returned:
Once more beside him rode his King in youth
Southward to where his realm--his duty--lay,
Exulting captive of the Saviour Lord,
With face love-lit. As then, the vernal prime
Hourly with ampler respiration drew
Delight of purer green from balmier airs:
As then the sunshine glittered. By their path
Now hung the woodbine; now the hare-bell waved;
Rivulets new-swoll'n by melted snows, and birds
'Mid echoing boughs with rival rapture sang:
At times the monks forgat their Christian hymns,
By humbler anthems charmed. They gladdened more
Beholding oft in cottage doors cross-crowned
Angelic faces, or in lonely ways;
Once as they passed there stood a little maid,
Some ten years old, alone 'mid lonely pines,
With violets crowned and primrose. Who were those,
The forest's white-robed guests, she nothing knew;
Not less she knelt. With hand uplifted Cedd
Signed her his blessing. Hand she kissed in turn;
Then waved, yet ceased not from her song, 'Alone
'Two lovers sat at sunset.'
Every eve
Some village gave the wanderers food and rest,
Or half-built convent with its church thick-walled
And polished shafts, great names in after times,
Ely, and Croyland, Southwell, Medeshamstede,
Adding to sylvan sweetness holier grace,
Or rising lonely o'er morass and mere
With bowery thickets isled, where dogwood brake
Retained, though late, its red. To Boston near,
Where Ouse, and Aire, and Derwent join with Trent,
And salt sea waters mingle with the fresh,
They met a band of youths that o'er the sands
Advanced with psalm, cross-led. The monks rejoiced,
Save one from Ireland--Dicul. He, quick-eared,
Had caught that morn a war-cry on the wind,
And, sideway glancing from his Office-book,
Descried the cause. From Mercia's realm a host
Had crossed Northumbria's bound. His thin, worn face
O'er-flamed with sudden anger, thus he cried:
'In this, your land, men say, "Who worketh prays;"
In mine we say, "Well prays who fighteth well:"
A Pagan race treads down your homesteads! Slaves,
That close not with their throats!'
Advancing thus,
On the tenth eve they came to Lastingham:
Forth rushed the brethren, watching long far off,
To meet them, first the brothers three of Cedd,
Who kissed him, cheek and mouth. Gladly that night
Those foot-worn travellers laid them down, and slept,
Save one alone. Old Cedd his vigil made,
And, kneeling by the tabernacle's lamp,
Prayed for the man he mourned for, ending thus:
'Thou Lord of Souls, to Thee the Souls are dear!
Thou yearn'st toward them as they yearn to Thee;
Behold, not prayer alone for him I raise:
I offer Thee my life.' When morning's light
In that great church commingled with its gloom,
The monks, slow-pacing, by that kneeler knelt,
And prayed for Sigebert, beloved of God;
And lastly offered Mass: and it befell
That when, the Offering offered, and the Dead
Rightly remembered, he who sang that Mass
Had reached the 'Nobis quoque famulis,'
There came to Cedd an answer from the Lord
Heard in his heart; and he beheld his King
Throned 'mid the Saints Elect of God who keep
Perpetual triumph, and behold that Face
Which to its likeness hourly more compels
Those faces t'ward It turned. That function o'er,
Thus spake the Bishop: 'Brethren, sing "Te Deum;"'
They sang it; while within him he replied,
'Lord, let Thy servant now depart in peace.'
A week went by with gladness winged and prayer.
In wonder Cedd beheld those structures new
From small beginnings reared, though many a gift,
Sent for that work's behoof, had fed the poor
In famine time laid low. Moorlands he saw
By cornfields vanquished; marked the all-beauteous siege
Of pasture yearly threatening loftier crags
Loud with the bleat of lambs. Their shepherd once
Had roved a bandit; next had toiled a slave;
Now with both hands he poured his weekly wage
Down on his young wife's lap, his pretty babes
Gambolling around for joy. A hospital
Stood by the convent's gate. With moistened eye,
Musing on Him Who suffers in His sick,
The Bishop paced it. There he found his death:
That year a plague had wasted all the land:
It reached him. Late that night he said, ''Tis well!'
In three days more he lay with hands death cold
Crossed on a peaceful breast.
Like winter cloud
Borne through dark air, that portent feared of man,
Ill tidings, making way with mystic speed,
Shadowed ere long the troubled bank of Thames,
And spread a wailing round its Minsters twain,
Saint Peter's and Saint Paul's. Saint Alban's caught
That cry, and northward echoed. Southward soon
Forlorn it rang 'mid towers of Rochester;
Then seaward died. But in that convent pile,
Wherein so long the Saint had made abode,
A different grief there lived, a deeper grief,
That grief which part hath none in sobs or tears--
Which needs must act. There thirty monks arose,
And, taking each his staff, made vow thenceforth
To serve God's altar where their father died,
Or share his grave. Through Ithancestor's gate
As forth they paced between two kneeling crowds,
A little homeless boy, who heard their dirge
(Late orphaned, at its grief he marvelled not),
So loved them that he followed, shorter steps
Doubling 'gainst theirs. At first the orphan went
That mood relaxed: before them now he ran
To pluck a flower; as oft he lagged behind,
The wild bird's song so aptly imitating
That, by his music drawn, or by his looks,
That bird at times forgat her fears, and perched
Pleased on his arm. As flower and bird to him
Such to those monks the child. Better each day
He loved them; yet, revering, still he mocked,
And though he mocked, he kissed. The westering sun
On the eighth eve from towers of Lastingham
Welcomed those strangers. In another hour,
Well-nigh arrived, they saw that grave they sought
Sole on the church's northern slope. As when,
Some father, absent long, returns at last,
His children rush loud-voiced from field to house,
And cling about his knees; and they that mark--
Old reaper, bent no more, with hook in hand,
Or ploughman, leaning 'gainst the old blind horse--
Beholding wonder not; so to that grave
Rushed they; so clung. Around that grave ere long
Their own were ranged. That plague which smote the sire
Spared not his sons. With ministering hand
From pallet still to pallet passed the boy,
Now from the dark spring wafting colder draught,
Now moistening fevered lips, or on the brow
Spreading the new-bathed cincture. Him alone
The infection reached not. When the last was gone
He felt as though the earth, man's race--yea, God
Himself--were dead. Around he gazed, and spake,
'Why then do I remain?'
From hill to hill
(The monks on reverend offices intent)
All solitary oft that boy repaired,
From each in turn forth gazing, fain to learn
If friend were t'wards him nighing. Many a hearth
More late, bereavement's earlier anguish healed,
Welcomed the creature: many a mother held
The milk-bowl to his mouth, in both hands stayed,
With smile the deeper for the draught prolonged,
And lodged, as he departed, in his hand
Her latest crust. With children of his age
Seldom he played. That convent gave him rest;
Nor lost he aught, surviving thus his friends,
Since childhood's sacred innocence he kept,
While life remained, unspotted. When mature
Five years he lived there monk, and reverence drew
To that high convent through his saintly ways;
Then died. Within that cirque of thirty graves
They laid him, close to Cedd. In later years,
Because they ne'er could learn his name or race,
Nor yet forget his gentle looks, the name
Of Deodatus graved they on his tomb.
_KING OSWALD OF NORTHUMBRIA, OR THE BRITON'S REVENGE._
Northumbria having been subdued by Pagan Mercia, Oswald raises
there again the Christian standard. Penda wages war against him, in
alliance with Cadwallon, a Cambrian prince who hates the Saxon
conquerors the more bitterly when become Christians. Encouraged by
St. Columba in a vision, Oswald with a small force vanquishes the
hosts of Cadwallon, who is slain. He sends to Iona for monks of St.
Columba's order, converts his country to the Faith, and dies for
her. The earlier British race expiates its evil revenge.
The agony was over which but late
Had shook to death Northumbrian realm new-raised
By Edwin, dear to God. The agony
At last was over; but the tear flowed on:
The Faith of Christ had fallen once more to dust,
That Faith which spoused with golden marriage ring
The land to God, when Coiffi, horsed and mailed,
Chief Priest himself, hurled at the Temple's wall
His lance, and quivering left it lodged therein.
The agony had ceased; yet Rachael's cry
Still pierced the childless region. Penda's sword
Had swept it, Mercia's Christian-hating King;
Fiercelier Cadwallon's, Cambria's Christian Prince,
Christian in vain. The British wrong like fire
Burned in his heart. Well-nigh two hundred years
That British race, they only of the tribes
By Rome subdued, sustained unceasing war
'Gainst those barbaric hordes that, nursed long since
'Mid Teuton woods, when Rome her death-wound felt,
And '_Habet_' shrilled from every trampled realm,
Rushed forth in ruin o'er her old domain:--
That race against the Saxon still made head;
Large remnant yet survived. The Western coast
Was theirs; old sea-beat Cornwall's granite cliffs,
And purple hills of Cambria; northward thence
Strathclyde, from towered Carnegia's winding Dee
To Morecombe's shining sands, and those fair vales,
Since loved by every muse, where silver meres
Slept in the embrace of yew-clad mountain walls;
With tracts of midland Britain and the East.
Remained the memory of the greatness lost;
The Druid circles of the olden age;
The ash-strewn cities radiant late with arts
Extinct this day; bath, circus, theatre
Mosaic-paved; the Roman halls defaced;
The Christian altars crushed. That last of wrongs
The vanquished punished with malign revenge:
Never had British priest to Saxon preached;
And when that cry was heard, 'The Saxon King
Edwin hath bowed to Christ,' on Cambrian hills
Nor man nor woman smiled.
They had not lacked
The timely warning. From his Kentish shores
Augustine stretched to them paternal hands:
Later, he sought them out in synod met,
Their custom, under open roof of heaven.
'The Mother of the Churches,' thus he spake,
'Commands--implores you! Seek from her, and win
The Sacrament of Unity Divine!
Thus strengthened, be her strength! With her conjoined,
Subdue your foe to Christ!' He sued in vain.
The British bishops hurled defiance stern
Against his head, while Cambrian peaks far off
Darkened, and thunder muttered. From his seat,
Slowly and sadly as the sun declined
At last, though late, that Roman rose and stretched
A lean hand t'ward that circle, speaking thus:
'Hear then the sentence of your God on sin!
Because ye willed not peace, behold the sword!
Because ye grudged your foe the Faith of Christ,
Nor holp to lead him on the ways of life,
For that cause from you by the Saxon hand
Your country shall be taken!'
Edwin slain,
Far off in exile dwelt his nephews long,
Oswald and Oswy. Alba gave them rest,
Alba, not yet called Scotland. Ireland's sons,
Then Scoti named, had warred on Alba's Picts:
Columba's Gospel vanquished either race;
Won both to God. It won not less those youths,
In boyhood Oswald, Oswy still a child.
That child was wild and hot, and had his moods,
Despotic now, now mirthful. Mild as Spring
Was Oswald's soul, majestic and benign;
Thoughtful his azure eyes, serene his front;
He of his ravished sceptre little recked;
The shepherds were his friends; the mountain deer
Would pluck the ivy fearless from his hand:
In gladness walked he till Northumbria's cry
Smote on his heart. 'Why rest I here in peace,'
Thus mused he, 'while my brethren groan afar?'
By night he fled with twelve companion youths,
Christians like him, and reached his native land.
Too fallen it seemed to aid him. On he passed;
The ways were desolate, yet evermore
A slender band around his footsteps drew,
Less seeking victory than an honest death.
Oft gazed their King upon them; murmured oft,
'Few hands--true hearts!' Sudden aloud he cried,
'Plant here the royal Standard, friends, and hence
Let sound the royal trumpet.'
Stern response
Reached him ere long: not Mercia's realm alone;
Cambria that heard the challenge joined the war:
Cambria, upon whose heart the ancestral woe,
For ever with the years, like letters graved
On growing pines, grew larger and more large;--
To Penda forth she stretched a hand blood-red;
Christian with Pagan joined, an unblest bond,
A league accursed. The indomitable hate
Compelled that league. Still from his cave the Seer
Admonished, 'Set the foe against the foe;
Slay last the conqueror!' and from rock and hill
The Bard cried, 'Vengeance!' In the bardic clan
That hatred of their country's ancient bane
Lived like a faith. One night it chanced a tarn,
Secreted high 'mid cold and moonless hills,
Bursting its bank down burst. That valley's Bard
Clomb to the church-roof from his buried house:
Thence rang his song,--'twas 'Vengeance!--Vengeance' still!
That torrent reached the roof: he clomb the tower:
The torrent mounted: on the bleak hill-side
All night the dalesmen, wailing o'er their drowned,
Amid the roar of winds and downward rocks,
Still heard that war-song, 'Vengeance! Blood for blood!'
At last the tower fell flat, and winter morn
Shone on the waters only.
Three short weeks
Dinned with alarums passed; in Mercia still
Lay Penda, sickness-struck, when, face to face,
The Cambrian host and Oswald's little band
Exulting met at sunset near a height
Then 'Heaven-Field' named, but later 'Oswald's Field,'
Backed by that Wall the Roman built of old
His fence from sea to sea. There Oswald stood:
There raised with hands outstretched a mighty Cross,
Strong-based, and deep in earth: his comrades twelve
Around it heaped the soil, while priests white-stoled
Chanted 'Vexilla Regis.' Work and rite
Complete, the King knelt down and made his prayer:
'True God Eternal, look upon this Cross,
The sole now standing on Northumbria's breast,
And help Thine own, though few, who trust in Thee!'
That night before his tent the wanderer sate
Listening the circling sentinel, or bay
Of wakeful hound remote, or downward course
Of streams from moorland hills. Before his view
His whole life rose: his father's angry brow;
The eyes all-wondrous, and all-tender hand
Of her, his mother, striving evermore
To keep betwixt her husband and her sire
Unbroken bond: his exiled days returned,
The kind that pitied them, the rude that jeered;
Lastly, that monk whose boast was evermore
Columba of Iona, Columkille;
That monk who made him Christian. 'Come what may,'
Thus Oswald mused, 'I have not lived in vain:
Lose I or win, a kingdom there remains;
Though not on earth!' A tear the vision dimmed
As thus he closed, 'My mother will be there!'
Then sank his lids in slumber.
On his sleep--
Was this indeed but dream?--a glory brake:
Columba, dear to Oswald from his youth,
Columba, clad in glory as the sun,
Beside him stood, and spake: 'Be strong! On earth
There lives not who can guess the might of prayer:
What then is prayer on high?' The saintly Shape
Heavenward his hands upraised, while rose to heaven
His stature, towering ever high and higher,
Warlike and priestly both. As morning cloud
Blown by a mighty wind his robe ran forth,
Then stood, a golden wall that severance made
'Twixt Oswald's band and that unnumbered host.
Again he spake, 'Put on thee heart of man
And fight: though few, thy warriors shall not die
In darkness of an unbelieving land,
But live, and live to God.' The vision passed:
By Oswald's seat his warriors stood and cried,
'The Bull-horn! Hark!' The monarch told them all:
They answered, 'Let thy God sustain thy throne:--
Thenceforth our God is He.'
The sun uprose:
Ere long the battle joined. Three dreadful hours
Doubtful the issue hung. Fierce Cambria's sons
With chief and clan, with harper and with harp,
Though terrible yet mirthful in their mood,
Rushed to their sport. Who mocked their hope that day?
Did Angels help the just? Their falling blood,
Say, leaped it up once more, each drop a man
Their phalanx to replenish? Backward driven,
Again that multitudinous foe returned
With clangour dire; futile, again fell back
Down dashed, like hailstone showers from palace halls
Where princes feast secure. Astonishment
Smote them at last. Through all those serried ranks,
Compact so late, sudden confusions ran
Like lines divergent through a film of ice
Stamped on by armèd heel, or rifts on plains
Prescient of earthquake underground. Their chiefs
Sounded the charge;--in vain: Distrust, Dismay,
Ill Gods, the darkness lorded of that hour:
Panic to madness turned. Cadwallon sole
From squadron on to squadron speeding still
As on a wingèd steed--his snow-white hair
Behind him blown--a mace in either hand--
Stayed while he might the inevitable rout;
Then sought his death, and found. Some fated Power
Mightier than man's that hour dragged back his hosts
Against their will and his; as when the moon,
Shrouded herself, drags back the great sea-tides
That needs must follow her receding wheels
Though wind and wave gainsay them, breakers wan
Thundering indignant down nocturnal shores,
And city-brimming floods against their will
Down drawn to river-mouths.
In after days
Who scaped made oath that in the midmost fight
The green earth sickened with a brazen glare
While darkness held the skies. They saw besides
On Heaven-Field height a Cross, and, at its foot,
A sworded warrior vested like a priest,
Who still in stature high and higher towered
As raged the battle. Higher far that Cross
Above him rose, barring with black the stars
That bickered through the eclipse's noonday night,
And ever from its bleeding arms sent forth
Thick-volleyed lightnings, azure fork and flame,
Through all that headlong host.
At eventide,
Where thickest fight had mingled, Oswald stood
With raiment red as his who treads alone
The wine-vat when the grapes are all pressed out,
Yet scathless and untouched. His mother's smile
Was radiant on his pure and youthful face,
Joyous, but not exulting. At his foot
Cadwallon lay, with four-score winters white,
A threatening corse: not death itself could shake
The mace from either rigid hand close-clenched,
Or smooth his brow. Above him Oswald bent,
Then spake: 'He also loved his native land:
Bear him with honour hence to hills of Wales,
And lay him with his Fathers.'
Thus was raised
In righteousness King Oswald's throne. But he,
Mindful in victory of Columba's word,
Thus mused, 'The Master is as he that serves:
How shall I serve this people?' O'er the waves
Then sent he of his Twelve the eldest three:
They to Iona sailed, and standing there
In full assembly of Iona's saints
Addressed them: 'To Columba Oswald thus:
Let him that propped the King on Heaven-Field's height,
That held the battle-balance high that day,
Unite my realm to Christ!' The monks replied,
'Such mission should be Aidan's.' Aidan went.
With gladness Oswald met him, and with gifts:
But Aidan said, 'Entreat me not to dwell
There where Paulinus dwelt, the man of God,
In thy chief city, York. Thy race is fierce;
And meekness only can subdue the proud:
Thy people first I want;--through them the great.
Grant me some island 'mid the raging main,
Humble and low, not cheered by smiling meads,
Where with my brethren I may watch with God,
Henceforth my only aid.' Oswald replied,
'Let Lindisfarne be thine. That rock-based keep
Built by my grandsire Ida o'er it peers:
I shall be near thee though I see thee not.'
Then Aidan on the Isle of Lindisfarne
Upreared that monastery which ruled in Christ
So long the Northern realm. A plain rock-girt
Level it lies and low: nor flower nor fruit
Gladdens its margin: thin its sod, and bleak:
Twice, day by day, the salt sea hems it round:
And twice a day the melancholy sands,
O'er-wailed by sea-bird, and with sea-weed strewn,
Replace the lonely ocean. Sacred Isles
That westward, eastward, guard the imperial realm,
Iona! Lindisfarne! With you compared
How poor that lilied Delos of old Greece,
For all its laurel bowers and nightingales!
England's great hands were ye to God forth stretched
Through adverse climes, beneath the Boreal star,
That took His Stigmata. In sanctity
Were her foundations laid. Her later crowns
Of Freedom first, of Science, and of Song
She owes them all to you!
In Lindisfarne
Aidan, and his, rejoicing dwelt with God:
Amid the winter storm their anthems rose;
And from their sanctuary lamp the gleam
Far shone from wave to wave. On starless nights
From Bamborough's turret Oswald watched it long,
Before his casement kneeling--first alone,
Companioned later. Kineburga there
Beside him knelt ere long, his tender bride,
Young, beauteous, modest, noble. 'Not for them,'
Thus spake the newly wedded, 'not for them,
For man's sake severed from the world of men,
In ceaseless vigil warring upon sin,
Ah, not for them the flower of life, the harp,
High feast, or bridal torch!' Purer perchance
_Their_ bridal torch burned on because from far
That sacred lamp had met its earliest beam!
There Aidan lived, and wafted, issuing thence,
O'er wilds Bernician and fierce battle-fields
The strength majestic of his still retreat,
The puissance of a soul whose home was God.
'What man is this,' the warriors asked, 'that moves
Unarmed among us; lifts his crucifix,
And says, "Ye swords, lie prone"?' The revelling crew
Rose from their cups: 'He preaches abstinence:
Behold, the man is mortified himself:
The moonlight of his watchings and his fasts
He carries on his face.' When Princes forced
Largess upon him, he replied, 'I want
Not yours but you;' and with their gifts redeemed
The orphan slave. The poor were as his children:
He to the beggar stinted not his hand
Nor, giving, said 'Be brief.' Such seed bare fruit:--
God in the dark, primeval woods had reared
A race whose fierceness had its touch of ruth;
Brave, cordial, chaste, and simple. Reverence
That race preserved: Reverence advanced to Love:
The ties of life it honoured: lit from heaven
They wore a meaning new. The Faith of Christ
Banished the bestial from the heart of man;
Restored the Hope divine.
In all his toils
Oswald with Aidan walked. Impartial law,
Not licence, not despotic favour, stands
To Truth auxiliar true. Such laws were his:
Yet not through such alone he worked for Truth;
Function he claimed more high. When Aidan preached;
In forest depths when thousands girt him round;
When countless eyes, a clinging weight, were bent
Upon his lips--all knew they spake from God,--
The King, with monks from Ireland knit of old,
Beside the Bishop stood; each word he spake
Changed to the Saxon tongue.
Earth were not earth,
If reign like Oswald's lasted. Penda lived;
Nor e'er from Oswald turned for eight long years
An eye like some swart planet feared of man,
Omen of wars or plague. Cadwallon's fate,
Ally ill-starred, that fought without his aid,
O'er-flushed old hatred with a fiery shame:
Cadwallon nightly frowned above his dreams.
The tyrant watched his time. At Maserfield
The armies met. There on Northumbria's day
Settled what seemed, yet was not, endless night
There Faith and Virtue, deathless, seemed to die:
There holy Oswald fell. For God he fought,
Fought for his country. Walled with lances round,
A sheaf of arrows quivering in his breast,
One moment yet he stood. 'Preserve,' he cried,
'My country, God!' then added, gazing round,
'And these my soldiers: make their spirits thine!'
Thus perished good King Oswald, King and Saint;
Saint by acclaim of nations canonised
Ere yet the Church had spoken. Year by year
The Hexham monks to Heaven-Field, where of old
Had stood that 'Cross which conquered,' made repair,
With chanted psalm; and pilgrims daily prayed
Where died the just and true. Not vain their vows:
In righteousness foundations had been laid:
The earthquake reached them not. The Dane passed by
High up the Norman glittered: but beneath,
On Faith profounder based, and gentler Law
The Saxon realm lived on.
But never more
From Heaven-Field's wreck the Briton raised his head
Britain thenceforth was England. His the right;
The land was his of old; and in God's House
His of the island races stood first-born:
Not less he sinned through hate, esteeming more
Memories of wrong than forward-looking hopes
And triumphs of the Truth. For that cause God
His face in blessing to the younger turned,
More honouring Pagans who in ignorance erred,
Than those who, taught of God, concealed their gift,
Divorcing Faith from Love. Natheless they clung,
That remnant spared, to rocky hills of Wales
With eagle clutch, whoe'er in England ruled,
From Horsa's day to Edward's. Centuries eight
In gorge or vale sea-lulled they held their own,
By native monarchs swayed, while native harps
Rang out from native cliffs defiant song
Wild as their singing pines. Heroic Land!
Freedom was thine; the torrent's plunge; the peak;
The pale mist past it borne! Heroic Race!
Caractacus was thine, and Galgacus,
And Boadicea, greater by her wrongs
Than by her lineage. Battle-axe of thine
Rang loud and long on Roman helms ere yet
Hengist had trod the island. Thine that King
World-famed, who led to fifty war-fields forth
'Gainst Saxon hosts his sinewy, long-haired race
Unmailed, yet victory-crowned; that King who left
Tintagel, Camelot, and Lyonnesse,
Immortal names, though wild as elfin notes
From phantom rocks echoed in fairy land--
Great Arthur! Year by year his deeds were sung,
While he in Glastonbury's cloister slept,
First by the race he died for, next by those
Their children, exiles in Armoric Gaul,
By Europe's minstrels then, from age to age;
But ne'er by ampler voice, or richlier toned
Than England lists to-day. Race once of Saints!
Thine were they, Ninian thine and Kentigern,
Iltud and Beino, yea and David's self,
Thy crown of Saints, and Winifred, their flower,
Who fills her well with healing virtue still.
Cadoc was thine, who to his Cambrian throne
Preferred that western convent at Lismore,
Yet taught the British Princes thus to sing:
'None loveth Song that loves not Light and Truth:
None loveth Light and Truth that loves not Justice:
None loveth Justice if he loves not God:
None loveth God that lives not blest and great.'
_CEADMON THE COWHERD, THE FIRST ENGLISH POET._
Ceadmon, a cowherd, being at a feast, declares when the harp
reaches him, that he cannot sing. As he sleeps, a divine Voice
commands him to sing. He obeys, and the gift of song is imparted to
him. Hilda, Abbess of Whitby, enrolls him among her monks; and in
later years he sings the revolt of the Fallen Angels, and many
Christian mysteries, thus becoming the first English poet.
Alone upon the pleasant bank of Esk
Ceadmon the Cowherd stood. The sinking sun
Reddened the bay, and fired the river-bank,
And flamed upon the ruddy herds that strayed
Along the marge, clear-imaged. None was nigh:
For that cause spake the Cowherd, 'Praise to God!
He made the worlds; and now, by Hilda's hand
Planteth a crown on Whitby's holy crest:
Daily her convent towers more high aspire:
Daily ascend her Vespers. Hark that strain!
He stood and listened. Soon the flame-touched herds
Sent forth their lowings, and the cliffs replied,
And Ceadmon thus resumed: 'The music note
Rings through their lowings dull, though heard by few!
Poor kine, ye do your best! Ye know not God,
Yet man, his likeness, unto you is God,
And him ye worship with obedience sage,
A grateful, sober, much-enduring race
That o'er the vernal clover sigh for joy,
With winter snows contend not. Patient kine,
What thought is yours, deep-musing? Haply this,
"God's help! how narrow are our thoughts, and few!
Not so the thoughts of that slight human child
Who daily drives us with her blossomed rod
From lowland valleys to the pails long-ranged!"
Take comfort, kine! God also made your race!
If praise from man surceased, from your broad chests
That God would perfect praise, and, when ye died,
Resound it from yon rocks that gird the bay:
God knoweth all things. Let that thought suffice!'
Thus spake the ruler of the deep-mouthed kine:
They were not his; the man and they alike
A neighbour's wealth. He was contented thus:
Humble he was in station, meek of soul,
Unlettered, yet heart-wise. His face was pale;
Stately his frame, though slightly bent by age:
Slow were his eyes, and slow his speech, and slow
His musing step; and slow his hand to wrath;
A massive hand, but soft, that many a time
Had succoured man and woman, child and beast,
And yet could fiercely grasp the sword. At times
As mightily it clutched his ashen goad
When like an eagle on him swooped some thought:
Then stood he as in dream, his pallid front
Brightening like eastern sea-cliffs when a moon
Unrisen is near its rising.
Round the bay
Meantime, as twilight deepened, many a fire
Up-sprang, and horns were heard. Around the steep
With bannered pomp and many a tossing plume
Advancing slow a cavalcade made way.
Oswy, Northumbria's king, the foremost rode,
Oswy triumphant o'er the Mercian host,
Invoking favour on his sceptre new;
With him an Anglian prince, student long time
In Bangor of the Irish, and a monk
Of Frankish race far wandering from the Marne:
They came to look on Hilda, hear her words
Of far-famed wisdom on the Interior Life;
For Hilda thus discoursed: 'True life of man
Is life within: inward immeasurably
The being winds of all who walk the earth;
But he whom sense hath blinded nothing knows
Of that wide greatness: like a boy is he,
A boy that clambers round some castle's wall
In search of nests, the outward wall of seven,
Yet nothing knows of those great courts within,
The hall where princes banquet, or the bower
Where royal maids discourse with lyre and lute,
Much less its central church, and sacred shrine
Wherein God dwells alone.' Thus Hilda spake;
And they that gazed upon her widening eyes
Low whispered, each to each, 'She speaks of things
Which she hath seen and known.'
On Whitby's height
The royal feast was holden: far below,
A noisier revel dinned the shore; therein
The humbler guests made banquet. Many a tent
Gleamed on the yellow sands by ripples kissed;
And many a savoury dish sent up its steam;
The farmer from the field had brought his calf;
Fishers that increase scaled which green-gulfed seas
From womb crystalline, teeming, yield to man;
And Jock, the woodsman, from his oaken glades
The tall stag, arrow-pierced. In gay attire
Now green, now crimson, matron sat and maid:
Each had her due: the elder, reverence most,
The lovelier that and love. Beside the board
The beggar lacked not place.
When hunger's rage,
Sharpened by fresh sea-air, was quelled, the jest
Succeeded, and the tale of foreign lands;
Yet, boast who might of distant chief renowned,
His battle-axe, or fist that felled an ox,
The Anglian's answer was 'our Hilda' still:
'Is not her prayer trenchant as sworded hosts?
Her insight more than wisdom of the seers?
What birth like hers illustrious? Edwin's self,
Dëira's exile, next Northumbria's king,
Her kinsman was. Together bowed they not
When he of holy hand, missioned from Rome,
Paulinus, o'er them poured the absolving wave
And joined to Christ? Kingliest was she, that maid
Who spurned earth-crowns!' More late the miller rose--
He ruled the feast, the miller old, yet blithe--
And cried, 'A song!' So song succeeded song,
For each man knew that time to chant his stave,
But no man yet sang nobly. Last the harp
Made way to Ceadmon, lowest at the board:
He pushed it back, answering, 'I cannot sing:'
The rest around him flocked with clamour, 'Sing!'
And one among them, voluble and small,
Shot out a splenetic speech: 'This lord of kine,
Our herdsman, grows to ox! Behold, his eyes
Move slow, like eyes of oxen!'
Slowly rose
Ceadmon, and spake: 'I note full oft young men
Quick-eyed, but small-eyed, darting glances round
Now here, now there, like glance of some poor bird,
That light on all things and can rest on none:
As ready are they with their tongues as eyes;
But all their songs are chirpings backward blown
On winds that sing God's song, by them unheard:
My oxen wait my service: I depart.'
Then strode he to his cow-house in the mead,
Displeased though meek, and muttered, 'Slow of eye!
My kine are slow: if rapid I, my hand
Might tend them worse.' Hearing his step, the kine
Turned round their hornèd fronts; and angry thoughts
Went from him as a vapour. Straw he brought,
And strewed their beds; and they, contented well,
Laid down ere long their great bulks, breathing deep
Amid the glimmering moonlight. He, with head
Propped on a favourite heifer's snowy flank,
Rested, his deer-skin o'er him drawn. Hard days
Bring slumber soon. His latest thought was this:
'Though witless things we are, my kine and I,
Yet God it was who made us.'
As he slept,
Beside him stood a Man Divine, and spake:
'Ceadmon, arise, and sing,' Ceadmon replied,
'My Lord, I cannot sing, and for that cause
Forth from the revel came I. Once, in youth,
I willed to sing the bright face of a maid,
And failed, and once a gold-faced harvest-field,
And failed, and once the flame-eyed face of war,
And failed again.' To him the Man Divine,
'Those themes were earthly. Sing!' And Ceadmon said,
'What shall I sing, my Lord?' Then answer came,
'Ceadmon, stand up, and sing thy song of God.'
At once obedient, Ceadmon rose, and sang;
And help was with him from great thoughts of old
Yearly within his silent nature stored,
That swelled, collecting like a flood which bursts
In spring its icy bar. The Lord of all
He sang; that God beneath whose hand eterne,
Then when He willed forth-stretched athwart the abyss,
Creation like a fiery chariot ran,
Forth-borne on wheels of ever-living stars:
Him first he sang. The builder, here below,
From fair foundations rears at last the roof;
But Song, a child of heaven, begins with heaven,
The archetype divine, and end of all;
More late descends to earth. He sang that hymn,
'Let there be light, and there was light;' and lo!
On the void deep came down the seal of God
And stamped immortal form. Clear laughed the skies;
From circumambient deeps the strong earth brake,
Both continent and isle; while downward rolled
The sea-surge summoned to his home remote.
Then came a second vision to the man
There standing 'mid his oxen. Darkness sweet,
He sang, of pleasant frondage clothed the vales,
And purple glooms ambrosial cast from hills
Now by the sun deserted, which the moon,
A glory new-created in her place,
Silvered with virgin beam, while sang the bird
Her first of love-songs on the branch first-flower'd--
Not yet the lion stalked. And Ceadmon sang
O'er-awed, the Father of all humankind
Standing in garden planted by God's hand,
And girt by murmurs of the rivers four,
Between the trees of Knowledge and of Life,
With eastward face. In worship mute of God,
Eden's Contemplative he stood that hour,
Not her Ascetic, since, where sin is none,
No need for spirit severe.
And Ceadmon sang
God's Daughter, Adam's Si
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