The Story of Saville/Part 3
III.
Not amid volleying thunder, ’mid smoke-wreaths murkily dim,
Not in the fury of battle one writeth a battle hymn,
Nor chanteth of garlanded Autumn’s purple and golden store,
Foison of fruit and grain and nut, till harvesting days be o’er,
And not of the glorious tempest’s rage while yet the shuddering ship
Is laboring through the surges with headlong hurricane dip,
And black the skyline swings and swirls to a tremble of silver foam,
Not of the creamy blossomy death one singeth till safe at home—
Yet oft a mariner, rugged and bronzed, who joys in the tales he tells
Of plumy palm trees, brown bright maids, pink corals, and filagreed shells,
And perils of rocks, and wondrous ’scapes from famine and fever hells,
Will mark his listeners’ starting eyes, happy to hold them thrall,
Yet murmurs, “Well, thank God I am here, safe sheltered among you all—
But Oh! to be back at sea, half starved, and of drenched in a sudden squall!”
Alas! for any who come to be post-graduates in the art
Of subtle and sympathetic search in the deeps of the human heart,
For Oh! they not so ravishing high, so thrillingly, tenderly low
Could sing had they not outlived the theme some dozen of years ago—
Alas! for them who clasp no hand, but an empty shrivelling glove,
And remember how sweet it was last year, how piercingly sweet to love—
And alas for the desolate souls who feel that the rosy boy lies hid,
Quiver and dimples and wandering wings, under a coffin lid!
But to my story. Kyrle, poor Kyrle, crept out of his smothering mood,
The vile cocoon the worms had spun of anguish and solitude,
And weak as an insect crawled about and struggled to find a light
Of hope or of faith or of anything sweet let into the fathomless night.
Ah me! it had been but a struggle all through, a moiling and rigorous life
From the early days on the niggard farm, the petty ignoble strife
’Gainst narrow prejudice, ignorance, greed, to wrest for himself a chance
For study and travel, for buffeting fate and conquering circumstance;
Then years in the studios foreign and quaint, when salient and eager his mind
Grasped and garnered all manner of truths—except that he had not dined;
But that’s a detail, a mere trifle—the worshipping student will find
Diviner delight, a more rapturous joy in an intellectual stride,
A tint, or a chord, or a line in an ode, than in aught under heaven beside;
And then the homecoming, the hopeful return to the generous land of his birth,
The vehement passion for art, the desire to show what he was worth,
Kaleidoscope pageants of fancies circling and swift in his thought,
Tissues of gossamer golden freaked, with pearls and emeralds wrought,
A bright panoramic succession, like raindrops of April clear,
Thicker than jewels of August dew, so that his only fear
Was that the phantom embryos, tiny as stars of snow,
Might melt and slip away into naught, and he never see them go—
And often he rose in the dead of night and dashed off a virile sketch
To lull into quiet some clamoring shape that had kept his mind at a stretch;
Then followed his masterpiece, “Rupert’s Trust,”—God! how he sweated and slaved,
Denying his body forgotten the nurture and slumber it craved;
Ah! that was well worthy the doing, worthy a continent’s praise—
Men for a slighter achievement than this had been crowned with eternal bays—
He had dropped his palette and brushes, had sent his soul in the gaze
He bent on his picture completed, his beautiful darling,—had smiled
To think that his wedlock devoted had bloomed in an exquisite child,—
What! could it be that men cherished their children born but of the flesh
As he cherished this holier offspring snared in a mystical mesh,
The child of himself and of Love,—deep love for his race and his art,
And for whatsoever of good and pure in this our being hath part,—
And then, while he gazed exalted and rapt, perceiving the glory-rays
Stream meteor-like from the picture and merge in an opaline haze,
Sudden the haze was a thunder-cloud, all gashed and fretted with fire,
And the wind shrieked loud through his chamber, bellowing higher and higher,
And a knell as of death everlasting was knolled from a neighboring spire.
And the cloud rolled sulphurous into his brain, and the fire gnawed into his eyes,
And the tigerish wind whirled round and round, spiralling dervish-wise,
And tore into tatters the visual nerve, in its terrible fiery grind,—
And the steeple carillon lost its chime and tolled but the one word,—“Blind!”
Well, it had happened ages ago, in the days that preceeded the flood,
So it seemed to Kyrle, with his strong hand lax and sluggish his galloping blood,
And over and over he cursed his fate and bitterly marvelled to find
What a wretched contemptible thing is a man, whether death-dumb and resigned,
Ox-like patient, stolidly mute, he draggeth his weariful load,
Or furious snarls at the bloody lash and passion ate writhes at the goad,—
Bah! the unstable frail spirit, more weak than the wing of a dove
To soar and attain the empyreal heights,—strong only to suffer and love!
Love,—to my story of love again, the wonderful story we told
Or heard in the dim sweet cycles afar in the Age of Gold,
When the pendulum pulse in the soft young cheek swings tremulous to and fro
From the pearly pallor of cherry blooms to the rose’s crimson glow,
When a few faint syllables, English-plain, are richer than wisdom’s years,
And one dear voice holds deeper tones than the music of all the spheres.
Scarce could one call it an interview between these shadowy folk,
Whereof the one saw the other not and neither the silence broke,
But at the third strange meeting-time, Kyrle gathered courage and spoke,
For e’en as she laid her tribute down and would have fled hurrying by,
He caught her hand in a deathful grip, unheeding her startled cry,
Too wrapped in his infinite harrowing need, too wholly absorbed to feel
The crusted wealth of her priceless rings, the elegant sleeve of seal,
And he poured out his thanks in a sudden rush as a brook doth in March overswell,
Entreating that she who had been but a fragrance should now be a voice as well.
Long she stood hesitant, statue-still, her lilies and fingers withdrawn,
And at last he sighed in a shuddering breath, deeming she must have gone,
But then she answered and all the peace and healing and balm that dwell
In a country lane on a Sabbath morn, blest by a distant bell,
Hallowed her voice, and the words thereof were sweeter than asphodel,
For pity, if pity she felt, was veiled under a sprightly essay
To twist a shimmering strand of gold into the hodden gray.
“Alas, poor knight! thou art lorn and lost, and cast forever away
In this enchanted and fearsome land, where witches and ogres hold sway,—
Thou hast suffered the ban of my sister Fate; but I am a tenderer fay,
And so that thou servest me early and late, owning no queen beside,
Never presuming to question my will, loyal whatever betide,
I dare avouch thou again shalt feel that warmly the sun doth shine,
Thou shalt once more breathe Heliconian air, and drink of Falernian wine,
And haply at last the scales shall fall from those dark sad eyes of thine!”
Then pressing the lilies close into his hand, while Kyrle stood blockish and still,
She murmured “Farewell, farewell, poor knight! Remember the Fairy Saville!”
☙