The Story of Saville/Part 1
SAVILLE
Crouched like a moribund lion, wounded, alone in his lair,
Bowed ’neath unbreakable fetters, choked with an iron despair,
Wearily, heavily ’ware of the clock's dull ponderous rune
Telling how hideous morn gives birth to misshapen foul noon,
Who yet wears a loveliness regal, a beauty transcendent and bright,
Compared to her utterless offspring, the Ethiop horror of night,
Kyrle sat, scarce caring to keep account of the hours and the days,
As a rock-spitted ship need reck never more of the wind and its ways—
Sat in his isolate chamber, lost in the clamant strange town
Where he had crept in the dark when his sun forever went down,
Broken winged crept to be free of the well-meant pity of friends
Rough as a blundering touch on a burn that solace intends,
Free of condolences oily, felicitous, falser than hell,
From men who at last might eclipse him, who still rode safe on the swell,
Free of the bitter black sense—the shock—that no one of them all
Vitally cared if he starved in his garret, a rat in the wall.
Oh! if a merciful God, my friend, hath guerdoned and blest you so,
Hath out of a million languid hearts, faint pulsing, feeble and slow,
Singled one scarlet treasure, that beats as strongly and true
As the passionate powerful ocean-throb, for you and only you,
That hushes its lilt to a lullaby, soothing you while you sleep,
And bursts to blossom under your smile, and bleeds if ever you weep,
Trample it not, nor esteem it a pebble paltry and cheap,—
Think not twice in a life to find such a rose-ruby to keep!
Ah! they were saying carelessly, back in his wonted place,
“Wonder where he has slipped to? Poor devil, he’s out of the race—
Nothing remains, as the French say, but drawing the sheet o’er the face,”—
And ever he mused of his village home and the graves on the churchyard hill,
Where the only hearts that had beat for him were crumbling, cruelly still,
And his useless eyes brimmed over with tears, and slowly his blood grew chill.
Then sudden he rose and flung off his mood, and called with a bitter laugh
For raiment against the javelin cold, for a guide and his brand new staff,
And donning the garments doubtfully, with timid questioning touch,
Now sharply chiding his helper, now thanking him over much,
And groping his way before him in spite of the lad’s firm clutch,
He reached the street and onward dragged, commanding to be led where
The city’s din was heard no more, and all the world was fair,
For he thought that mayhap in a purer air a Gilead-grace might be,
And God might somehow permit him to breathe the beauty he could not see.
When he had forced his hesitant feet to traverse a mile or so
Of street that merged in a country road, its ruts all softened with snow,
They came to a widely sloping space and lofty ancestral trees
That bowed in a stately welcome under a gentle breeze,
And the lad pushed open a high arched gate and boldly leading him through
Guided the man to a rustic bench screened by a sturdy yew.
“Leave me here for an hour,” said Kyrle, and when he was quite alone
Sat in a hopeless silence with a face like a carven stone,
Though once he smiled at a thought, and the smile more pitiful was than a groan,
For scarce was it matter for mirth, how his mind would circling rehearse
The iterant rankling venom of an inquisitorial curse,
A special and general ban; and he deemed it better had been for him
To have undergone impossible pangs and tortures fiendish grim,
That one by one they had ravished forth each keen particular hair,
That redhot pincers had nipped his flesh and torn his nerve-cells bare,
That a thousand needles had stung his flesh with delicate devilish care.
If so they had spared his eyes,—his eyes, that were worth more then
To the wretched groveling world than the eyes of his fellow-men,
For Oh! in this visionless later day was any so quick as he
To snare and pinion the beauty that floats on turret and crag and tree,
That is as the sand on the beaches, the blossoms of foam on the sea,—
Yet he had perceived not alone this fairness out ward and free,
The heritage common to all mankind, that children or clowns may prize,
But the deeper intent, the message occult, the truth esoteric that lies
Hidden from all but a poet’s soul and heaven anointed eyes.
And now he had come to regret the fierce fanged physical pain
That for long, long weeks had maddened, had seethed and swirled in his brain,
Whose pressure was past enduring, whose passing was blest relief,
Yet whose worst throes seemed now more kind than this unbearable grief,
This travail and sweat of spirit, where the universe seemed to swim
In hatefullest frantic chaos, a lunatic’s furious whim.
Strange! that because of a trifling loss, scarce more in creation’s scheme
Than a gnat in a summer woodland, a leaf afloat on a stream,
Because two vials were shattered, God’s purposes high should seem
Only an idiot babble heard in a horrible dream.
But as he impotent girded and railed, and longed to stifle his care
In the dull narcotic round of his room, and counted the winter air
Harsh, unbreathable, nettle-rough, suddenly was he aware
Of a footstep light yet resolute, a beautiful woman’s tread,
He knew by the keen unwonted thrill that over his senses sped,
The silken swish, the odor sweet, and stricken he bowed his head
Lest he be known for a sightless clod and all of his sorrow be read.
And so she passed, but again did turn, he knew though he could not see,
And drifted by as antelope-swift as downiest snow-flakes be,
And laid with an instant timorous touch some roses upon his knee,
And butterfly light and daintily still she fluttered upon her way,
“A rifle smoke blown through the woods for a moment,—a moment, but never to stay!”
And he snatched the clustered loveliness up, and sudden it seemed a part
Of his wretched life, like a dream of love in an old man’s withered heart,
A rosary dearer than beads of olive were ever to kneeling nun,
And sweet it was to remember that faithfully soil and sun
Had labored together in his behalf and these fragrant globes had spun,—
And over his hand the petals curled, like a baby’s fingers weak,
And dewily kissed like a maiden’s lips his sallow and sunken cheek,
And all that night by his wakeful bed they flooded the comfortless spot
With spice, and he mixed again in his mind the crimson he had forgot,
And turning and tossing as needs he must, it all but soothed him to know
That the utterly perfect queenly things, beautiful, all aglow,
Were close beside him, shaking out with each waft of their rich perfume
A message of pity and tenderness across the midnight gloom.
