Browning and the Dramatic Monologue Part 32

And Duhl was wise at the word, and Muleykeh as prompt perceived Who was urging redoubled pace, and to hear him was to obey, And a leap indeed gave she, and evanished for evermore.

And Hoseyn looked one long last look as who, all bereaved, Looks, fain to follow the dead so far as the living may: Then he turned Buheyseh's neck slow homeward, weeping sore.

And lo, in the sunrise, still sat Hoseyn upon the ground Weeping: and neighbors came, the tribesmen of Benu-Asad In the vale of green Er-Ra.s.s, and they questioned him of his grief; And he told from first to last how, serpent-like, Duhl had wound His way to the nest, and how Duhl rode like an ape, so bad!

And how Buheyseh did wonders, yet Pearl remained with the thief.

And they jeered him, one and all: "Poor Hoseyn is crazed past hope!

How else had he wrought himself his ruin, in fortune's spite?

To have simply held the tongue were a task for a boy or girl, And here were Muleykeh again, the eyed like an antelope, The child of his heart by day, the wife of his breast by night!"-- "And the beaten in speed!" wept Hoseyn: "You never have loved my Pearl."

COUNT GISMOND[2]

AIX IN PROVENCE

Christ G.o.d who savest man, save most of men Count Gismond who saved me!

Count Gauthier, when he chose his post, chose time and place and company to suit it; when he struck at length my honor, 'twas with all his strength. And doubtlessly ere he could draw all points to one, he must have schemed! That miserable morning saw few half so happy as I seemed, while being dressed in queen's array to give our tourney prize away. I thought they loved me, did me grace to please themselves; 'twas all their deed; G.o.d makes, or fair or foul, our face; if showing mine so caused to bleed my cousins' hearts, they should have dropped a word, and straight the play had stopped. They, too, so beauteous! Each a queen by virtue of her brow and breast; not needing to be crowned, I mean, as I do. E'en when I was dressed, had either of them spoke, instead of glancing sideways with still head! But no: they let me laugh, and sing my birthday song quite through, adjust the last rose in my garland, fling a last look on the mirror, trust my arms to each an arm of theirs, and so descend the castle-stairs--and come out on the morning troop of merry friends who kissed my cheek, and called me queen, and made me stoop under the canopy--(a streak that pierced it, of the outside sun, powdered with gold its gloom's soft dun)--and they could let me take my state and foolish throne amid applause of all come there to celebrate my queen's-day--Oh I think the cause of much was, they forgot no crowd makes up for parents in their shroud! However that be, all eyes were bent upon me, when my cousins cast theirs down; 'twas time I should present the victor's crown, but ...

there, 'twill last no long time ... the old mist again blinds me as then it did. How vain! See! Gismond's at the gate, in talk with his two boys: I can proceed. Well, at that moment, who should stalk forth boldly--to my face, indeed--but Gauthier? and he thundered "Stay!" and all stayed.

"Bring no crowns, I say! bring torches! Wind the penance-sheet about her!

Let her shun the chaste, or lay herself before their feet! Shall she, whose body I embraced a night long, queen it in the day? For honour's sake no crowns, I say!" I? What I answered? As I live I never fancied such a thing as answer possible to give. What says the body when they spring some monstrous torture-engine's whole strength on it? No more says the soul.

Till out strode Gismond; then I knew that I was saved. I never met his face before, but, at first view, I felt quite sure that G.o.d had set Himself to Satan; who would spend a minute's mistrust on the end? He strode to Gauthier, in his throat gave him the lie, then struck his mouth with one back-handed blow that wrote in blood men's verdict there. North, South, East, West, I looked. The lie was dead, and d.a.m.ned, and truth stood up instead. This glads me most, that I enjoyed the heart of the joy, with my content in watching Gismond unalloyed by any doubt of the event: G.o.d took that on him--I was bid watch Gismond for my part: I did. Did I not watch him while he let his armourer just brace his greaves, rivet his hauberk, on the fret the while! His foot ... my memory leaves no least stamp out, nor how anon he pulled his ringing gauntlets on. And e'en before the trumpet's sound was finished, p.r.o.ne lay the false knight, p.r.o.ne as his lie, upon the ground: Gismond flew at him, used no sleight o' the sword, but open-breasted drove, cleaving till out the truth he clove.

Which done, he dragged him to my feet and said "Here die, but end thy breath in full confession, lest thou fleet from my first, to G.o.d's second death! Say, hast thou lied?" And, "I have lied to G.o.d and her," he said, and died. Then Gismond, kneeling to me, asked--What safe my heart holds, though no word could I repeat now, if I tasked my powers forever, to a third dear even as you are. Pa.s.s the rest until I sank upon his breast.

Over my head his arm he flung against the world; and scarce I felt his sword (that dripped by me and swung) a little s.h.i.+fted in its belt: for he began to say the while how South our home lay many a mile. So, 'mid the shouting mult.i.tude we two walked forth to never more return. My cousins have pursued their life, untroubled as before I vexed them. Gauthier's dwelling-place G.o.d lighten! May his soul find grace! Our elder boy has got the clear great brow; tho' when his brother's black full eye shows scorn, it ... Gismond here? And have you brought my tercel back? I was just telling Adela how many birds it struck since May.

BY THE FIRESIDE

How well I know what I mean to do when the long dark autumn evenings come: and where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue? with the music of all thy voices, dumb in life's November too! I shall be found by the fire, suppose, o'er a great wise book, as beseemeth age; while the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows, and I turn the page, and I turn the page, not verse now, only prose! Till the young ones whisper, finger on lip, "There he is at it, deep in Greek: now then, or never, out we slip to cut from the hazels by the creek a mainmast for our s.h.i.+p!" I shall be at it indeed, my friends! Greek puts already on either side such a branch-work forth as soon extends to a vista opening far and wide, and I pa.s.s out where it ends. The outside-frame, like your hazel-trees--but the inside-archway widens fast, and a rarer sort succeeds to these, and we slope to Italy at last and youth, by green degrees. I follow wherever I am led, knowing so well the leader's hand: oh woman-country, wooed not wed, loved all the more by earth's male-lands, laid to their hearts instead! Look at the ruined chapel again half-way up in the Alpine gorge! Is that a tower, I point you plain, or is it a mill, or an iron-forge breaks solitude in vain? A turn, and we stand in the heart of things; the woods are round us, heaped and dim; from slab to slab how it slips and springs, the thread of water single and slim, thro' the ravage some torrent brings! Does it feed the little lake below? That speck of white just on its marge is Pella; see, in the evening-glow, how sharp the silver spear-heads charge when Alp meets heaven in snow! On our other side is the straight-up rock; and a path is kept 'twixt the gorge and it by boulder-stones where lichens mock the marks on a moth, and small ferns fit their teeth to the polished block. Oh the sense of the yellow mountain-flowers, and th.o.r.n.y b.a.l.l.s, each three in one, the chestnuts throw on our path in showers! for the drop of the woodland fruit's begun, these early November hours, that crimson the creeper's leaf across like a splash of blood, intense, abrupt, o'er a s.h.i.+eld else gold from rim to boss, and lay it for show on the fairy-cupped elf-needled mat of moss, by the rose-flesh mushrooms, undivulged last evening--nay, in to-day's first dew yon sudden coral nipple bulged, where a freaked fawn-colored flaky crew of toadstools peep indulged. And yonder, at foot of the fronting ridge that takes the turn to a range beyond, is the chapel reached by the one-arched bridge, where the water is stopped in a stagnant pond danced over by the midge. The chapel and bridge are of stone alike, blackish-gray and mostly wet; cut hemp-stalks steep in the narrow d.y.k.e. See here again, how the lichens fret and the roots of the ivy strike! Poor little place, where its one priest comes on a festa-day, if he comes at all, to the dozen folk from their scattered homes, gathered within that precinct small by the dozen ways one roams--to drop from the charcoal-burners' huts, or climb from the hemp-dressers' low shed, leave the grange where the woodman stores his nuts, or the wattled cote where the fowlers spread their gear on the rock's bare juts. It has some pretension too, this front, with its bit of fresco half-moon-wise set over the porch, Art's early wont: 'tis John in the Desert, I surmise, but has borne the weather's brunt--not from the fault of the builder, though, for a pent-house properly projects where three carved beams make a certain show, dating--good thought of our architect's--'five, six, nine, he lets you know. And all day long a bird sings there, and a stray sheep drinks at the pond at times; the place is silent and aware; it has had its scenes, its joys and crimes, but that is its own affair. My perfect wife, my Leonor, oh heart, my own, oh eyes, mine too, Whom else could I dare look backward for, with whom besides should I dare pursue the path gray heads abhor? For it leads to a crag's sheer edge with them; youth, flowery all the way, there stops--not they; age threatens and they contemn, till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops, one inch from life's safe hem! With me, youth led ... I will speak now, no longer watch you as you sit reading by firelight, that great brow and the spirit-small hand propping it, mutely, my heart knows how--when, if I think but deep enough, you are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme; and you, too, find without rebuff response your soul seeks many a time, piercing its fine flesh-stuff. My own, confirm me! If I tread this path back, is it not in pride to think how little I dreamed it led to an age so blest that, by its side, youth seems the waste instead? My own, see where the years conduct! At first, 'twas something our two souls should mix as mists do; each is sucked in each now: on, the new stream rolls, whatever rocks obstruct. Think, when our one soul understands the great Word which makes all things new, when earth breaks up and heaven expands, how will the change strike me and you in the house not made with hands? Oh I must feel your brain prompt mine, your heart antic.i.p.ate my heart, you must be just before, in fine, see and make me see, for your part, new depths of the divine! But who could have expected this when we two drew together first just for the obvious human bliss to satisfy life's daily thirst with a thing men seldom miss? Come back with me to the first of all, let us lean and love it over again, let us now forget and now recall, break the rosary in a pearly rain, and gather what we let fall! What did I say?--that a small bird sings all day long, save when a brown pair of hawks from the wood float with wide wings strained to a bell: 'gainst noon-day glare you count the streaks and rings. But at afternoon or almost eve 'tis better; then the silence grows to that degree, you half believe it must get rid of what it knows, its bosom does so heave. Hither we walked then, side by side, arm in arm and cheek to cheek, and still I questioned or replied, while my heart, convulsed to really speak, lay choking in its pride. Silent the crumbling bridge we cross, and pity and praise the chapel sweet, and care about the fresco's loss, and wish for our souls a like retreat, and wonder at the moss. Stoop and kneel on the settle under, look through the window's grated square: nothing to see! For fear of plunder, the cross is down and the altar bare, as if thieves don't fear thunder. We stoop and look in through the grate, see the little porch and rustic door, read duly the dead builder's date; then cross the bridge that we crossed before, take the path again--but wait! Oh moment one and infinite! the water slips o'er stock and stone; the West is tender, hardly bright: how gray at once is the evening grown--one star, its chrysolite! We two stood there with never a third, but each by each, as each knew well: the sights we saw and the sounds we heard, the lights and the shades made up a spell till the trouble grew and stirred. Oh, the little more, and how much it is! and the little less, and what worlds away! How a sound shall quicken content to bliss, or a breath suspend the blood's best play, and life be a proof of this! Had she willed it, still had stood the screen so slight, so sure, 'twixt my love and her: I could fix her face with a guard between, and find her soul as when friends confer, friends--lovers that might have been. For my heart had a touch of the woodland time, wanting to sleep now over its best. Shake the whole tree in the summer-prime, but bring to the last leaf no such test! "Hold the last fact!" runs the rhyme. For a chance to make your little much, to gain a lover and lose a friend, venture the tree and a myriad such, when nothing you mar but the year can mend: but a last leaf--fear to touch! Yet should it unfasten itself and fall eddying down till it find your face at some slight wind--best chance of all! be your heart henceforth its dwelling-place you trembled to forestall! Worth how well, those dark gray eyes, that hair so dark and dear, how worth that a man should strive and agonize, and taste a veriest h.e.l.l on earth for the hope of such a prize! You might have turned and tried a man, set him a s.p.a.ce to weary and wear, and prove which suited more your plan, his best of hope or his worst despair, yet end as he began. But you spared me this, like the heart you are, and filled my empty heart at a word. If two lives join, there is oft a scar, they are one and one, with a shadowy third; one near one is too far. A moment after, and hands unseen were hanging the night around us fast; but we knew that a bar was broken between life and life: we were mixed at last in spite of the mortal screen. The forests had done it; there they stood; we caught for a moment the powers at play: they had mingled us so, for once and good, their work was done--we might go or stay, they relapsed to their ancient mood. How the world is made for each of us! how all we perceive and know in it tends to some moment's product thus, when a soul declares itself--to wit, by its fruit, the thing it does! Be hate that fruit or love that fruit, it forwards the general deed of man: and each of the Many helps to recruit the life of the race by a general plan; each living his own, to boot. I am named and known by that moment's feat; there took my station and degree; so grew my own small life complete, as nature obtained her best of me--one born to love you, sweet!

And to watch you sink by the fireside now back again, as you mutely sit musing by firelight, that great brow and the spirit-small hand propping it, yonder, my heart knows how! So, earth has gained by one man the more, and the gain of earth must be heaven's gain too; and the whole is well worth thinking o'er when autumn comes: which I mean to do one day, as I said before.

PHEIDIPPIDES

[Greek: chairete, nikomen]

First I salute this soil of the blessed, river and rock!

G.o.ds of my birthplace, daemons and heroes, honor to all!

Then I name thee, claim thee for our patron, co-equal in praise --Ay, with Zeus the Defender, with Her of the aegis and spear!

Also, ye of the bow and the buskin, praised be your peer, Now, henceforth and forever,--O latest to whom I upraise Hand and heart and voice! For Athens, leave pasture and flock!

Present to help, potent to save, Pan--patron I call!

Archons of Athens, topped by the tettix, see, I return!

See, 'tis myself here standing alive, no spectre that speaks!

Crowned with the myrtle, did you command me, Athens and you, "Run, Pheidippides, run and race, reach Sparta for aid!

Persia has come, we are here, where is She?" Your command I obeyed, Ran and raced: like stubble, some field which a fire runs through, Was the s.p.a.ce between city and city: two days, two nights did I burn Over the hills, under the dales, down pits and up peaks.

Into their midst I broke: breath served but for "Persia has come.

Persia bids Athens proffer slaves'-tribute, water and earth; Razed to the ground is Eretria--but Athens, shall Athens sink, Drop into dust and die--the flower of h.e.l.las utterly die, Die with the wide world spitting at Sparta, the stupid, the stander-by?

Answer me quick, what help, what hand do you stretch o'er destruction's brink?

How,--when? No care for my limbs!--there's lightning in all and some-- Fresh and fit your message to bear, once lips give it birth!"

O my Athens--Sparta love thee? Did Sparta respond?

Every face of her leered in a furrow of envy, mistrust, Malice,--each eye of her gave me its glitter of gratified hate!

Gravely they turned to take counsel, to cast for excuses. I stood Quivering,--the limbs of me fretting as fire frets, an inch from dry wood: "Persia has come, Athens asks aid, and still they debate?

Thunder, thou Zeus! Athene, are Spartans a quarry beyond Swing of thy spear? Phoibos and Artemis, clang them 'Ye must'!"

No bolt launched from Olumpos! Lo, their answer at last!

"Has Persia come,--does Athens ask aid,--may Sparta befriend?

Nowise precipitate judgment--too weighty the issue at stake!

Count we no time lost time which lags thro' respect to the G.o.ds!

Ponder that precept of old, 'No warfare, whatever the odds In your favor, so long as the moon, half-orbed, is unable to take Full-circle her state in the sky!' Already she rounds to it fast: Athens must wait, patient as we--who judgment suspend."

Athens,--except for that sparkle,--thy name, I had mouldered to as.h.!.+

That sent a blaze thro' my blood; off, off and away was I back, --Not one word to waste, one look to lose on the false and the vile!

Yet "O G.o.ds of my land!" I cried, as each hillock and plain, Wood and stream, I knew, I named, rus.h.i.+ng past them again, "Have ye kept faith, proved mindful of honors we paid you erewhile?

Vain was the filleted victim, the fulsome libation! Too rash Love in its choice, paid you so largely service so slack!

"Oak and olive and bay,--I bid you cease to enwreathe Brows made bold by your leaf! Fade at the Persian's foot, You that, our patrons were pledged, should never adorn a slave!

Rather I hail thee, Parnes,--trust to thy wild waste tract!

Treeless, herbless, lifeless mountain! What matter if slacked My speed may hardly be, for homage to crag and to cave No deity deigns to drape with verdure?--at least I can breathe, Fear in thee no fraud from the blind, no lie from the mute!"

Such my cry as, rapid, I ran over Parnes' ridge; Gully and gap I clambered and cleared till, sudden, a bar Jutted, a stoppage of stone against me, blocking the way.

Right! for I minded the hollow to traverse, the fissure across: "Where I could enter, there I depart by! Night in the fosse?

Athens to aid? Tho' the dive were thro' Erebos, thus I obey-- Out of the day dive, into the day as bravely arise! No bridge Better!"--when--ha! what was it I came on, of wonders that are?

There, in the cool of a cleft, sat he--majestical Pan!

Ivy drooped wanton, kissed his head, moss cus.h.i.+oned his hoof; All the great G.o.d was good in the eyes grave-kindly--the curl Carved on the bearded cheek, amused at a mortal's awe, As, under the human trunk, the goat-thighs grand I saw.

"Halt, Pheidippides!"--halt I did, my brain of a whirl: "Hither to me! Why pale in my presence?" he gracious began: "How is it,--Athens, only in h.e.l.las, holds me aloof?

"Athens, she only, rears me no fane, makes me no feast!

Wherefore? Than I what G.o.ds.h.i.+p to Athens more helpful of old?

Ay, and still, and forever her friend! Test Pan, trust me!

Go, bid Athens take heart, laugh Persia to scorn, have faith In the temples and tombs! Go, say to Athens, 'The Goat-G.o.d saith: When Persia--so much as strews not the soil--is cast in the sea, Then praise Pan who fought in the ranks with your most and least, Goat-thigh to greaved-thigh, made one cause with the free and the bold!'

"Say Pan saith: 'Let this, foreshowing the place, be the pledge!'"

(Gay, the liberal hand held out this herbage I bear --Fennel,--I grasped it a-tremble with dew--whatever it bode), "While, as for thee ..." But enough! He was gone. If I ran hitherto-- Be sure that, the rest of my journey, I ran no longer, but flew.

Parnes to Athens--earth no more, the air was my road; Here am I back. Praise Pan, we stand no more on the razor's edge!

Pan for Athens, Pan for me! I too have a guerdon rare!

Then spoke Miltiades. "And thee, best runner of Greece, Whose limbs did duty indeed,--what gift is promised thyself?

Tell it us straightway,--Athens the mother demands of her son!"

Rosily blushed the youth: he paused: but, lifting at length His eyes from the ground, it seemed as he gathered the rest of his strength Into the utterance--"Pan spoke thus: 'For what thou hast done Count on a worthy reward! Henceforth be allowed thee release From the racer's toil, no vulgar reward in praise or in pelf!'

"I am bold to believe, Pan means reward the most to my mind!

Fight I shall, with our foremost, wherever this fennel may grow,-- Pound--Pan helping us--Persia to dust, and, under the deep, Whelm her away forever; and then,--no Athens to save,-- Marry a certain maid, I know keeps faith to the brave,-- Hie to my house and home: and, when my children shall creep Close to my knees,--recount how the G.o.d was awful yet kind, Promised their sire reward to the full--rewarding him--so!"