A Cluster of Grapes Part 12

Where was the fount of our dishonour?

Was it a father's buried sin?

Brought his mother a curse upon her?

I trow not.

So pretty Body and soul, the child began.

He carolled and kissed and laughed and ran, A glad creature of Earth and Heaven, And the knowledge of love and the secret of pity, That need our learning, G.o.d to him at his birth had given.

One remembers Trifles indeed--the backward-turning Way he would smile from the field at play.

Sometimes the Thing that sits by the embers Smiles at me--devil!--the selfsame way.

If only early enough one had guessed, Known, suspected, watched him at rest, Noted the Master's sign and fas.h.i.+on, And unbefooled by the heart's compa.s.sion, Undeterred by form and feature, Caught the creature, Tried by the test of water and fire, Pierced and pinioned with silver wire, Circled with signs that could control, Battered with spells that tame and torture The demon nature, Till he writhed in his shape, a fiend confest, And vanished-- Then had come back, the poor soul banished, Then had come back the little soul.

But now there is nothing to do or to say.

Will no one grip him and tear him away, The Thing of Blood that gnaws at my breast?

Perhaps he called me and I was dumb.

Unconcerned I sat and heard Little things, Ivy tendrils, a bird's wings, A frightened bird-- Or faint hands at the window-pane?

And now he will never come again, The little soul. He is quite lost.

I have summoned him back with incantations Of heart-deep sobs and whispering cries, Of anguished love and travail of prayer, Nothing has answered my despair But long sighs Of pitiful wind in the fir-plantations.

Poor little soul! He cannot come.

Perchance on a night when trees were tost, The Changeling rode with his cavalcade Among the clouds, that were tossing too, And made the little soul afraid.

They hunted him madly, the howling crew, Into the Limbo of the lost, Into the Limbo of the others Who wander crying and calling their mothers.

Now I know The creatures that come to harry and raid How they ride in the airy regions, Dance their rounds on meadow and moor, Gallop under the earth in legions, Hunt and holloa and run their races Over tombs in burial-places.

In the common roads where people go, Masked and mingled with human traces, I have marked, I who know, In the common dust a devil's spoor.

To somebody's gate A Thing is footing it, cares not much Whether he creep through an Emperor's portal And steal the fate Of a Prince, or into a poor man's hutch-- For the grief will be everywhere as great And he'll everywhere spread the smirch of sin-- So long as a taste of our blood he may win, So long as he may become a mortal.

I beseech you, Prince and poor man, to watch the gate.

The heart is poisoned where he has fed, The house is ruined that lets him in.

Yet I know I shall never teach you.

With the voice of the dear and the eyes of the dead He will come to the door, and you'll let him in.

If I could forget Only that ever I had a child, If only upon some mirk midnight, When he stands at the door, all wet and wild, With his owl's feather and dripping hair, I could lie warm and not care, I should rid myself of this Changeling yet.

I carried my woe to the Wise Man yonder, "You sell forgetfulness, they say.

How much to pay To forget a son who is my sorrow?"

The Wise Man began to ponder.

"Charms have I, many a one, To make a woman forget her lover, A man his wife or a fortune fled, To make the day forget the morrow, The doer forget the deed he has done, But a mighty spell must I borrow To make a woman forget her son, For this I will take a royal fee.

Your house," said he, "The storied hangings richly cover, On your banquet table there were six Golden branched candlesticks, And of n.o.ble dishes you had a score.

The crown you wore I remember, the sparkling crown.

All of these, Madam, you shall pay me down.

Also the day I give you ease Of golden guineas you pay a hundred."

Laughing I left the Wise Man's door.

Has he found such things where a Changeling sits?

The home is darkened from roof to floor, The house is naked and ravaged and plundered Where a Changling sits On the hearthstone, warming his s.h.i.+vering fits.

He sits at his ease, for he knows well He can keep his post.

He has left me nothing to pay the cost Of s.n.a.t.c.hing my heart from his private h.e.l.l.

Yet when all is done and told I am glad the Wise Man in the City Had no pity For me, and for him I had no gold.

Because if I did not remember him, My little child--Ah! What should we have, He and I? Not even a grave With a name of his own by the river's brim.

Because if among the poppies gay, On the hill-side, now my eyes are dim, I could not fancy a child at play, And if I should pa.s.s by the pool in the quarry And never see him, a darling ghost, Sailing a boat there, I should be sorry-- If in the firelit, lone December I never heard him come scampering post Haste down the stair--if the soul that is lost Came back, and I did not remember.

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