THE VIGIL OF
BRUNHILD
A NARRATIVE POEM

BY FREDERIC MANNING

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1907

PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.

INTRODUCTION

Brunhild, died A.D. 613

The intervention of women in the course of the world’s history has nearly always been attended by those events upon which poets delight to meditate: events of sinister and tragic significance, the chief value of which is to show in rude collision the ideals and the realities of life; the common humanity of the central figures in direct conflict with the inhuman march of circumstance; and the processes through which these central figures, like Lady Macbeth or Cleopatra, are made to transcend all conventional morality, and, though completely evil in the ordinary sense, to redeem themselves and win our sympathy by a moment of heroic fortitude, or of supreme and consuming anguish. Such events and processes, however, belong properly to dramatic art; narrative poetry, being of a smoother and easier texture allowing more scope to the subjective play of ideas: in short, it is more spiritual than real. The Queen of Austrasia and Burgundy, whom I have made the subject of my poem, is essentially a figure of tragedy. Perhaps it might have been better to treat her as a subject of dramatic action; but in order to do so it would have been necessary to limit her personality, to define her character, to treat only a part of her various and complex psychology. I preferred to show her at the moment of complete renunciation, a prisoner in her own castle of Orbe on the banks of the lake of Neuchâtel, after she had been betrayed by her own army, and had become the prey of her own rebellious nobles; and the poem is but a series of visions that come to her in the stress of her final degradation, while she is awaiting the brutal death which the victors reserved for her. Indeed, so entirely spiritual was my intention, I have scarcely thought it worth while to enumerate the ironies of her situation. The squalor of her cell, the triumph of her foes, the prospect of her own immediate death become entirely insignificant beside the pageantry, the splendour, the romance of a past which her memories evoke and clothe with faint, reflected glories. She hears, in the charming phrase of Renan, “les cloches d’une ville d’Is.”

In a note at the end of the volume I have given some extracts from the Histoire de France, edited by M. Ernest Lavisse, which show the principal events of her life.

F. M.

THE VIGIL OF BRUNHILD

Brunhild, with worn face framed in withered hands,

Sate in her wounded royalty; and seemed

Like an old eagle, taken in the toils,

And fallen from the wide extended sway

Of her dominion, whence the eye looks down

On mountains shrunk to nothing, and the sea

Fretting in vain against its boundaries.

She sate, with chin thrust forward, listening

To the loud shouting and the ring of swords

On shields, that sounded from the crowded hall;

Where all her ancient bards were emulous

In praise, now, of her foes who feasted there.

Her humid cell was strown with rotten straw,

A roost of owls, and haunt of bats; the wind

Blew the cold rain in, and made tremulous

The smoking flame, on which her eyes were set;

Her raiment was all torn, and stained with blood;

Her hair had fallen, and she heeded not:

She was alone and friendless, but her eyes

Held something kingly that could outfrown Fate.

Gray, haggard, wan, and yet with dignity,

Which had been beauty once, and now was age,

She sate in that foul cellar, as one sits

To whom life owes no further injury,

Whom no hopes cheat, and no despairs make pale;

Though in her heart, and on her rigid face,

Despair was throned in gaunt magnificence.

A sound disturbed her thought; she turned her head,

Waiting, while a strong hand unbarred the door,

With hatred burning in her tearless eyes,

Ready to front her foes. The huge door gave

Creaking, unwillingly, to close again

Behind a priest, whose melancholy eyes

Were dropped before the anger of her own.

“A priest!” she cried; “they send to me a priest!

Mocking me, that my hand first helped these priests

Till a priest’s hand was strong to strike me down.”

He bent before her, swayed by grief and shame;

Then spoke: “Brunhild, they sent me not to thee;

But I came willingly, nor feared their wrath.

Arnulf and Pippin feast their warriors

In the high-raftered hall, and cheer the bards,

Who sing of how they smote thee: so I crept

Forth from the tumult. At the height of noon

To-morrow they will tie thee to a horse

That never has known bridle, to be dragged

Over the stony ways till thou art dead;

And I am come to shrive thee”: and he stayed

His tongue; but sorrow filled his frightened eyes.

“Go from me,” then she said; “thou knowest how

My life has been as angry as a flame,

Consumed with its own passions. Go from me:

Thou couldst not bear the weight of all my sins.

Yea, go. I will not call upon thy God;

He is too far from me: could I again

Have my old strength and beauty, I should waste

Again the earth with my delight in war,

And vex my body with the restless loves

That my youth knew. A life of war and love;

Passions that shake the soul; bright, ruddy flames

Devouring speedily this fretful flesh:

A life of clamour, shouting, dust and heat,

The tumult of the battle, ringing shields,

The hiss of sudden arrows through the air,

And drumming hoofs of horses in the mad

Thunderous fury of the charge, that breaks

Baffled, like waves upon a wall of steel:

Give me again that life of ecstasy

And I shall leave your heaven to its sleep.”

She wrapped her cloak about her, close; and frowned

Once more upon the flame. He spoke again:

“When I was long-haired, too, the windy joys

Of battle wrought a madness in my blood;

Yet never night came but mine eyes would close

On sleep, that seemed a mother to my soul,

In trustfulness as quiet as a child’s.

Hast thou no need of quiet, of a sleep

That stretches out its wings and shrouds thee close,

Healing thee of all wounds, and wards the day

Off from thine eyelids? There is peace in God,

If we might find him; but the way is far

And difficult of travel for our feet,

Leading through all the sounding ways of life

And silent ways of death, through whose domain

Each blind soul voyages in loneliness:

Nor ever has a man with undimmed eyes,

Save he whom ravens fed, and he whose voice

Sounded the note of triumph, even in Hell,

While the dead flocked unto him, and the gates

Were lifted up for gladness, travelled it.

Wide regions filled with spirits numberless——”

But Brunhild turned on him: “I see them now,

Though Death has not yet claimed me, in that flame;

And wouldst thou have me go to them in fear,

With loosened knees and face untaught to frown?

Would they for all my weeping pity me?

Yea, there is Fredegonde with mocking eyes:

I seem to see my life through smoking blood

That she and I have spilt in quarrelling.

Shall we too fill, with greater clamour, Hell;

Battling like eagles through the gloomy air,

That trembles at the passion of our wings?

Go from me: I repent not anything.”

“Nay, yet I shall not go; but rest and hear

Thy story in the form it leaves thy lips;

Nor question thee, but bless thee and depart.

For surely all thy soul yearns backward now

To half remembered days, that fill the flame,

Even as you say, with floating memories,

Purged of the dross, that was a part of them,

Nought now but soft gold of thy plastic dreams,

Wrought to what shape you will: so have I heard

That we judge others and judge not ourselves

By a stern measure; and therefore we fail

Of perfect justice, which is charity.”

“Ye, who are sheltered from the world, O priest,”

Spake Brunhild, mocking him, “have time to pause

Ere your minds fix the measure of pure truth

And perfect justice; but our windy life

Loses no time on niceties: for me,

I gave such justice as I look for now;

I swung a hammer on mine enemies,

To forge the world anew unto my mind;

My cause was justice in mine eyes, and those

Who stood against me, enemies of God.

Lo! I have failed of all my purposes,

And age has come upon me like a cloud;

And these old shoulders groan beneath the shame,

The bitterness, the burden of defeat:

Yet I have seen the star, where others saw

Only the froth and spume of angry storms.”

He gazed on her with patient, gentle eyes;

Bowed, sate she, with her hands clasped round her knees,

Incarnate sorrow: then her lion’s head

She lifted; and spake once again to him:

“When I came out of Spain to Sigebert

The rude Franks wondered at my company,

My Moorish falconers and deep-voiced hounds,

My swift light-horsemen, harpers, lutanists;

And prophesied my days would fly, like gold

Out of the loose hands of a prodigal,

With the delight of hunting and the glad

Singing of minstrels in the crowded hall,

Where the red torches mirror on the shields

And burnished helmets their tempestuous lights:

Ominous fires of slaughter, flickering,

To flash out suddenly in angry flame.

“But, for a while, my house was filled with smiles;

And Love sate as a guest beside my hearth.

Each morning heard the horns call to the chase

The loud, glad music of the eager hounds,

While huntsmen cheered them onward, and the rides

Through woodlands, down the shadow-dappled ways,

Woke, in the answering April of my youth,

A pleasure that was one thing with the dawn.

“So passed my days, in courtly wise, until

Some whisper promised me another Spring

Thrilling within my body, and I felt

The first strange wakenings of motherhood,

The pledge, and prophecy, of future Kings.

And I went roaming through the woods no more;

Intent on quiet business with my maids,

Spinning new wool, or standing by the loom,

Or broidering toy baldricks, with gold thread,

Bright, to please baby eyes, that love bright things;

Dreaming on all the promise, that I held,

And all the storm and stress life held for him.

“Then first I saw the doom that Nature laid

On women, to be careful harvesters;

To plan, and toil, and build for unborn sons,

To shape the future out of their own time.

These turbulent loud nobles with their feuds

Carousing nightly, or in companies

Changing their hunting-grounds from place to place,

Vexed me with their unthrift and wantonness:

I saw them as a hindrance to my son,

And pitted craft against their stubborn strength,

Fighting each step. They were dark, brooding days,

Heavy with sullen menace of a storm;

Yet found I friendly faces, in despite

Of much unbodied anger, for mine eyes

Held the soft light that tames the hearts of men.

Yea, and I roused them up with angry words

To ride with me for vengeance to the Court

Of Hilperik and Fredegonde, who slew

Galswith, the white-armed sister whom I loved,

The slim, fair sister with deep, dreaming eyes

As blue as harebells or calm waters are.

“Ah! I remember that frost-silver dawn,

Clouded with curtains of deep-billowing mist

That rose to hide the first bright beams of day,

In a white froth, out of the wooded plains—

Delicate, wreathing, spiral broideries;

And how the hoofs rang loud upon the road,

Galloping o’er the drawbridge as if foes

Pressed close behind; the trembling messenger

Spent with hard riding, cold, and white with fear;

The steaming flanks and withers of the horse;

The soldiers pressing close to hear the news;

Sigebert, with his knotted veins, and hands

Fast-clenched, and anger flaming in his eyes,

As Galswith’s servant cried aloud to us:

‘Galswith is slain; Galswith, the Queen, is slain!’

And then, confusedly, as of a dream

Disordered, all the terror of the act

He built out of his words before mine eyes:

The sharp-cut shadows and the frosty light

Showing each angle of my battlements

And buttresses; and the light snow, that clung,

Frozen, against the cloister’s slender shafts,

Hanging them with light-splintering icicles:

How clearly can I see it! and the gleam

Of scarlet and of steel against the snow;

And Galswith’s page, wild-eyed and tremulous,

Telling us how, as soft as evil dreams,

Hilperik and his harlot crept, by night,

Into the shadowy chamber where she lay,

Her sweet, frail body nestled close in sleep:

Sleep, that alone drove sorrow from her soul;

And he, the hairy hound, leaped on her bed,

Kneeling on those twin breasts of ivory,

And crushed the slender throat in his huge hands!

“I think I swayed a little; and I know

That something seemed to burn up all desire,

Leaving me rigid, filled with winter frosts:

For I remembered how, when we were young,

And shared one chamber in the donjon keep,

When she awoke, and felt the darkness, thick

And fearful, on her sunshine-loving eyes,

First she would call to me, and then, grown brave

At her own tongue’s sweet music, cross the floor

To creep into my bed, and cling to me,

Telling me how she dreamed that she was dead.

Think of that black and lustful ravening beast

Spoiling the slim white body! Sigebert

Would have lit up the land with war that day;

But wisdom counselled patience. Bitterly

I waited. But my hate was like a hound

That, from afar, marks down his prey at dawn;

Though the chase last till evening, he keeps

His way through shadows, and the blazing noon,

Following, tireless, till his throat has blood.

Six years I waited, ere in armoured strength

I came to reap their harvests with my sword;

And hate to me was sweeter far than love.

O priest, was that hate sin?” He answered not

At once; but met her gaze with level eyes,

Then answered: “Brunhild, thou must ask thy soul.”

Perhaps she sought there, but no answer breathed

Her unmoved lips, close shut with a strange smile;

Then with a gesture, grave, magnificent,

She spoke again: “What fools have done to me,

Or enemies have planned; what shames and wounds

Arnulf and Pippin keep for me, or gave:

All that I do forgive. But answer, priest:

I, who wrought wisely through long weary years

To build a kingdom, where was turbulence,

And mould a civil state out of this strife,

Come at the last unto a shameful death;

While Fredegonde, who wrought for her own lust,

Died peacefully: has God been just to us?

Bow not thy head; bear with my bitterness:

Though God desert me in mine hour of need,

Yet shall I carry a firm heart to death;

Nor blame him, nor blame other than myself,

Who never trusted other. These six years

Of waiting over, Fredegonde and I

Began our war; she, breaking out of bounds,

And ravaging some parts of Aquitaine,

Till some barbarians from Germany

Came at the call of Sigebert, and slew

And pillaged all the people up to Chartres,

Turning aside to waste and burn the crops,

Ploughing the fertile land with war, until

Triumphant trumpets, through the startled night

Carried our menaces, upon the wind,

To Paris, safe among its flooded fields

Of reeds, and purple irises, and gold

Marsh-mallows, splendid in the light of noon.

“Three years our storm of vengeance shook the land

Ere Paris fell, and Sigebert in pomp

Rode through the gateways, proudly triumphing,

And bade me with our children follow him.

Hilperik fled to Tournai; and his host