Verses (Baughan)/Hill Dutiful

by Blanche Edith Baughan

HILL DUTIFUL

[“ . . . Since it is the will of God that thou shouldst learn to hear tribulation without consolation. . . .” Imitation of Christ.]

There was a Traveller I beheld one day;
Down in a valley, wrapt in dreams, he lay.
Before his closéd eyelids, sheer and sharp,
Torn into peak and chasm and jagged scarp,
A mighty mountain from the vale uprose.

He slept; but from that sleep of scant repose,
Broken by frequent start and fitful sigh,
Woke, as I watch’d, with a most bitter cry:
“Rest! Rest! O thou wild brain, and beating breast,
What will assuage this torment? O for rest!”
(I heard the mountain-echo answer: “Rest!”)
Then, on the mountain fixing dazéd eyes
All pale with pain, and groping with maim’d hand
Upon the unhelpful earth, half did he rise,
Half dragg’d himself to where the first rocks stand,
The mountain-foot, firm-fixt amid the sand;
Groaning: “No rest for me! So sore bestead,
Surely some little rest might have been mine?
Poor wretch! these limbs to battle up yon dread
Shelterless road, and yon star-piercing line
O’erstep, and not one moment’s anodyne?—
Lo! I but craved one meagre moment’s sleep,
And rent it was to visions wild and vague,
Spectres and shades of yon unending steep!
Ay, slumber’s self for me is turn’d a plague;
Dim are mine eyes with watching; my hands bleed,
Dull languor loads my feet and weary brain;
And I have none to cry to in my need,
None with whose help I might take heart again.
Would Death were come! since Life is nought but pain.”

⁠He ceas’d. Throughout the great plain, far and wide,
Silence. Throughout the sky and lonely air,
Silence. There was not any that replied;
And Death, for all his ranging, came not there.

⁠. . . What stirred him? For at length his hands laid hold
Upon the toothed rock. His nerveless feet
Trail’d on the scorching sand, dizzily roll’d
His head aside, and all that heavy heat
Of valley-mist hung on him—none the less
He grasp’d the rock, groaning for pain, and drew
His body slowly up with hard distress.
That day the barren rock drank blood for dew.

On, on, and ever upward! Till I thought:
“The man, poor fool, so weak he is, and blind,
Must fall, in chilly Vertigo’s clutches caught—
Meet fate," I said, “for such a maniac mind!”
Yet he climb’d on, and fell not; high and higher
He climb’d, and sealed the first peak’s slippery spire.
⁠Then I, far down the valley, heard his cry
Come strongly piercing thro’ the lazy air,
And heard it in amaze: “Happy am I,
That am escaped out of the subtle snare!”
The shuddering valley-vapour shrank in fear
And fled, before that voice-elate and clear;
His every word came sharply to mine ear.

“Blessed be this keen wind, that frees my brain
From torturing phantoms! Blessed each rough crag
That lets me feel thro’ every tingling vein
Life strongly throb! No more my footsteps flag,
They dread no more their journey—’tis begun!
And plain the path, ’neath this unsoften’d sun!

“Blessed am I, with none that may console,
No stalwart friend to travel at my side!
So have I learn’d mine own steps to control,
Myself is made unto myself a guide.
On! on! with living limbs, and eyes that see;
Out of my weakness, strength is come to me!”

Then rose he from his resting-place and went,
Still climbing; not, ’tis certain, without fears,
Not without woe and black bewilderment.
That steep must still grow steeper as it nears
The far-off summit, and the end appears.

“Yea, at the end of all, what found he?” Friend,
I know not; I have never seen the end.