THE LOST CHIMES

And Other Poems
GUSTAV MELBY

BOSTON
RICHARD G. BADGER
THE GORHAM PRESS

Copyright, 1918, by Gustav Melby
All Rights Reserved
The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A.

To the Memory of My Friend
Dr. Frank J. Cressy
Whose Skill as a Physician Saved My
Child’s Life, and Whose Kindness as
a Friend Lent Inspiration to Life’s
Pursuits

CONTENTS

THE LOST CHIMES

“Count not the cost, a thousand more or less
Is not the question, but a perfect tone,
A clang as clear as the Italian sky,
As strong and joyful as the victor’s cry,
As deep and mellow as the ocean’s moan,
And tender as a mother’s fond caress.”

“And let there be no stint of pure alloy,
Of bronze and silver, no, not even of gold,
Yea, let this be thy very master-piece,
In all its making,—if it doth me please,
Half of my fortune shall to thee be told,
And to its praise my life I shall employ.”

Thus spake Sordino, noble Florentine,
To one who was renowned for casting bells,
Who now was asked to make a set of chimes,
A task he had accomplished many times,
But this, he thought, the highest skill compels,
And yet the work he promised to begin.

But first for thoughts and dreams he leisure found,
For consecration to the work at hand,
Since this the glory of his life should be,
A grand creation, a sweet symphony
Of human life, which all might understand,
Their souls re-echoed in the liquid sound.

II

He was a man of many changing moods,
Impetuous, like mighty Angelo,
And kindly, like the saintly Raphael,
His patience, like Palissy’s, nought could quell,
In worship, like the good Angelico,
And yet the “fickled Fame” his name excludes.

He nature loved, and wandered oft alone
Mid deep recesses of some shady wood,
And listened to the many varied sounds,
From notes of birds to noise of baying hounds,
And oftentimes as if enraptured stood,
Held by the music of the undertone.

Once had he loved a maiden, in whose eyes
He read the happiness of human life,
And mystery of the immortal soul,
A love to which he gave himself and all,
With but one aim, to win her as his wife,
And realize his dream of Paradise.

But death did also mark her for his own,
With hectic flushes on the pallid cheek,
And growing languor in the sprightly limbs;
And as the day before night’s darkness dims,
So did her youthful buoyancy grow weak,
And like a vision fair, she soon was gone.

And sorrow, with its wintry blast did chill
His manly nature to the very core,
And many months he spent in utter woe;
But, like the flow’r which grows beneath the snow,
A life which he had never known before
Rose from submission to the Higher Will.

These elements did pass into his work,
His love and grief, his dreams and changing moods,
And all he was seemed mingle in the mold
Of molten metal, and was subtly told
By silver tonguéd bells in solitudes
Of monastery, or of country kirk.

III

As one who summons all the latent pow’r
Within his soul, for one last great attempt
To reach an aim of lifelong beckoning,
Thus did he give himself to this one thing,
Began his task in spotless white, and kempt,
Emerging from the sacramental hour.

He days and nights upon his labor fixed,
Forgetful both of hunger and of sleep,—
His soul reflected in the fiery glow;
And some did say, he let his life-blood flow,
And others, that he sometimes stopped to weep,
And with his blood and tears the metal mixed.

And when at last the chimes were cast, there came
A great collapse of utter weariness
Upon him, and he slept for many days;
The finishing, with all artistic ways,
Was patience’s work, more like a fond caress
Of something born of inspiration’s flame.

The day of testing came, the final test;
Sordino coming early in the morn,
Since eager was his soul to know for sooth,
If its ideal of the highest truth—
Of harmony—incarnate can be born,
And with the works of man itself invest.

And when two skilful hands intoned a hymn,
And gave the chimes a chance for utterance,—
As shining on a scaffold high they hung,—
It seemed to him, it was by angels sung,
So pure, so sweet, it did his soul entrance,
And with the tears of joy his eyes make dim.

The task was done, a work of perfect art;
And handsome was the price Sordino paid,
A fortune to the maker of those bells,
Of whom, henceforth, tradition nothing tells,
We know not where his future course was laid,
Nor when or where from life he did depart.

IV

The chimes found their exalted place within
A high cathedral tow’r, Sordino’s gift
To a beloved fane of Italy,
And that their melodies might always be
Within his hearing, he his home did shift
From country silence to the city’s din.

Where, like some voices from an unseen realm
Their music did announce each fleeting hour
To all the throngs which moved in streets below,
And as their harmonies upon the air did flow,
They seemed to have a superhuman pow’r
O’er listening hearts, yea, even to overwhelm
The meditative mind with such a joy
Of loveliness and beauty, that a tear
Would glisten in the upward look of pray’r;
And they would lift the heavy loads of care
From souls oppressed, and banish carking fear,
And grief and black remorse which life destroy.

And thus they day and night gripped human souls
With hope and cheer mid life’s divers pursuits;
But on the Sabbath and the sacred days,
When man is called to think of better ways,
They seemed so jubliant with heavenly truths,
That none did doubt that God His children calls.

They had a gladness which at sundry times
Was almost riotous, like children’s play,
And seemed to send out peals of laughter sweet,
When they a merry bridal train did greet,
As to the church it gaily made its way,
Transported with the rapture of the chimes.

But when the dead were carried to their rest,
Its dirges were of all most wonderful,
A depth of sadness—such as none can tell—
A sadness which the gayest did compel
To see a shadow of the ghastly skull,
And yet to feel that even the grave is blest.

V

In all these cadences Sordino found
A true delight, but most in solemn dirge,
For melancholy was his common mood,
Though sometimes he was in an altitude
Of such hilarity, that it did verge
Upon the wildness of a mind unsound.

Indeed, the whisper passed, he was insane,
Since only one with shattered reason could
Half of his fortune spend for such a thing:
To hear a set of golden churchbells ring,
And none of his few friends quite understood
His pleasure in a funeral refrain.

He loved to walk ’mongst tombs and ancient graves,
And read the epitaphs on crumbling stones,
Or muse beside some gloomy cypress tree,
While list’ning to a mournful melody,
Mark how the harmony of all the tones
Did vanish far away o’er sunlit waves.

He was a seeker after harmony,
Such harmony in which all life shall blend,
In perfect peace and concord, this he heard
Expressed in those deep tones which moved and stirred
His brooding mind, and seemed an answer lend
To all its questions of life’s destiny.

Unhappiness had marred his early life;
His marriage to a girl who loved him not,
And yet who lived within his childless home,
For binding was the tie once made by Rome,
Until at last her ways became a blot,
And by her sins she ceased to be his wife.

Since then he lived a recluse more or less,
Except when boon-companions with him met,
To dine, or rather to a revelry,
When wine and music set his spirit free,
When he life’s disappointments could forget,
And when some transient bliss he did caress.

But feasts, of such a nature, yearly grew
Less frequent, for his real self was good,
And governed him, as he in age advanced;
And now the chimes his being so entranced,
That all the hunger of his heart found food
In their sweet intonations, ever new.

They fed his innate philosophic bent,
And made him delve into the subtlest lore
Of Metaphysics and Theology,
That he through these, perchance, might clearer see
The truth which echoed from another shore,
Each time their sovereign voice the silence rent.

And he waxed confident, the human cry
Is wafted somewhere to a higher sphere,
Where it is answered with a perfect peace,—
That not a soul from earth does find release,
Release from darkness and the night of fear,
Without a morn of better hope on high.

VI

The grave has, after all, the truest peace;
The graveyard is the greatest moralist;
And it was wisdom that in days of eld,
The living with the dead communion held,
For they did worship in their very midst,
A custom which in our good times must cease.

No longer can we lay our dead within
The shadow of the church, but far away,
In some secluded spot where seldom seen
Is their last resting-place, beneath the green,
Where some good farmer makes his loads of hay,
And murmurs that it is in places thin.

We do not, in this shallow age, endure
To think of death, such thoughts do not amuse,
But mock the things which we are striving after;
It tickles not our vein of silly laughter,
The subject is unpleasant and obtruse,
Of which the preachers even are not sure.

The graveyard, ne’ertheless, is preaching more
To thinking minds than many homilies,—
It tells in no uncertain language of
The vanity in all which here we love,—
That all our restless seeking after bliss
Is but the drifting to another shore.

That men and empires have their little day,
Then turn to dust, as others have before,
That death is still the monarch of the world,
Before whose feet all things at last are hurled,
Before whose realm there is no closing door,
And has for all but one sad, darksome way.

VII

Of all the seasons of the year there’s none
To melancholy people, like the fall,
That is, to persons of poetic mind,
For in this season they a beauty find
In earth and sky, which is transcending all
The wondrous glory of the summer gone.

For all its mellow beauty has a sadness,
Twixt tears and smiles, a sadness seen and heard
In nature’s varied aspects and its notes,
Upon the air’s dim haziness it floats:
The shrill cry of the migratory bird,
And tunes of vintage-reapers in their gladness.

’Tis in the fatal drooping of the flower,
’Tis in the stubble of the fields and meads,
Where crickets hold a concert day and night,
’Tis in the stormcloud’s shadow and its flight
Across the waters and the sighing reeds,
’Tis in the gold and crimson of the bower.

’Tis in the rain that strikes against the pane
And leaves its diamonds on the bending straw,
’Tis in the mist which follows nightly shower,
A floating mantle of the Morning Hour,
’Tis in the swelling brooks which onward go,
With mystic songs to the majestic main.

And Melancholy is the Truth, said one,
Whose genius pierced through the life of man,
Who hated cant, deriding the Tartuffe,
And saw beneath the robe the devil’s hoof,
A wandering exile from his native land,
The fascinating bard, the great Byron.

Forgive, O, lustrous name, that I should use
Thy music for a lyre so poorly strung!
But I did often in my youth, even now,
Admire the glory of his laurelled brow,
And felt that truth and freedom ne’er was sung,
As by this suff’ring highpriest of the Muse.

O, all ye learned critics of his art,
Who analyze by a mechanic rule,
Ye fail to see the grandeur of his soul,
That soared above the petty and the small,
Indifferent to the existing school,
Preferring Pegasus to any cart.

With the sublime he ever was in tune,
’Mid Alpen heights, or on “the boundless deep,”
Or ’mid the storm and deaf’ning thunders crash,
In darkest night, lit by the lightning’s flash,
Or on the plains where vanished empires sleep,
Time’s desolation ’neath a waning moon.

His harp did catch the minor music’s flow
From nature’s heart and human tragedy,
And when he laughed it was the cynic’s smile,
Though he at heart was tender as a child,
But death to him had sweeter harmony,
Than life’s brief dream with its relentless woe.

Likewise Sordino, after years of thinking,
Found in the dirge the acme of his search,
The home-call to a truer life’s beginning,
When man shall cease from sorrow and from sinning,
The great, the final welcome of the church,
The note of peace which heav’n to earth is linking.

VIII

At length there came upon Sordino’s city
An enemy with armies great and strong,
And laid a siege about its buttressed walls,
And since the strongest bulwark sometime falls
Before a cannonading fierce, and long,
So did its self-defences, without pity.

The conqueror did loot and kill and ravage,
While o’er it all the chimes sang forth the hour,
In notes which shamed the horror of that day,
And as he listened said: “Take them away,
Their music hath upon my men a pow’r,
Which makes a saint out of a bloody savage!”

Then from the lofty tow’r they were removed,
Against Sordino’s pleadings, these to spare,
And carried hence, none but the victor knew—
And captive toilers whom at last he slew,—
Their value he surmised and used such care,
As for their preservation it behooved.

IX

O, heinous War, Hell’s very incarnation!
Whose countenance is black with darkest hate,
Whose eyes have serpent’s gleam of greed and lust,
And fiendish satisfaction, when the dust
Of God’s fair earth with precious blood is sate,
Who laughs at the destruction of a nation.

Whose breath is pois’nous fumes and dire disease,
And darting flames, devouring man’s abodes,
Whose voice with terror fills all living things,
And nought attracts except the vulture’s wings,
Its rending roar the very heaven goads
Until the dark’ning cloud a-weeping flees.

Whose brutish hands, with gore and grime polluted,
Are strangling innocents and ripping wombs,
And gagging Virtue’s cry, and sundering
The maiden from her mother; plundering
The aged and the sick, yea, even the tombs
Of those “at rest” are by this monster looted.

It rules the empires, and it rules the seas,
It is the prince of power in the air,
And kings and nations worship it with fear,
But drunk with blood they loud and wildly cheer,
And think its glory great beyond compare,
Yea, worth all loss and human miseries.

O, Christ, who stood on storm-tossed Galilee,
Reproaching evil, saying: “Peace be still!”
So all the fury of the storm and wave
Abated, and the struggling ship was safe,
Speak thou again that word divine, until
The world shall hear, and war shall cease to be!

O, may the day-spring from on High appear,
When this foul monster shall be chained in Hell,
When man, freed from its tyranny, shall be
The blessed of the Lord, in harmony
With every race which under heaven dwell,
And all his life be like a golden year!

X

Sordino from the fated city fled,
When he beheld destruction’s hand engaged
In Vandalism on the house of God;
It seemed to him an awful chastening-rod,
Because of sin which heaven had enraged,
For which the blood of thousands now was shed.

When he perceived resistance was in vain,
The city’s doom declared in blood and fire,
He left it under cover of the night,
With thousand others. Pausing in his flight
He saw the flames from the cathedral spire
Leap ’gainst the angry clouds of storm and rain.

He first sought safety at his country-seat,
A villa rich in orchard and in field,
Where he did shelter homeless refugees,
And here, for many days they lived in peace,
Until the country, too, itself must yield,
And valiant men before the foe retreat.

We will not here relate the conflict’s trend,
Sufficient that at last the enemy
Was driven from the land by armies strong,
And as in days of the heroic song,
With plunder rich, across the stormy sea,
They to their home-land shores the course did wend.

Deep sadness fell upon Sordino’s heart
For all the sorrow of his countrymen,
For all the ravages wrought by the foe,
But most of all his cup seemed overflow
With grief beyond the measure of our ken,
Because he from his chimes did have to part.

He restless grew, no place found him content,
No pleasure could his spirit satisfy,
His former love of study him forsook,
And e’en on nature he did cease to look
With that true, heartfelt joy of years gone by,—
His days in gloom and ennui were spent.

At last he in his heart resolved to go
Upon a journey—he knew hardly where—
In quest of his beloved bells, though none
For certain seemed to know where they had gone,
Still he would travel over land and mere,—
With this resolve his soul was soon aglow.

XI

To France he first of all did make his way,—
Enduring hardship on the boistrous sea,
And dangers on the shores of sullen foes,
But since to hearts of purpose strong no woes
Insufferable seem, thus agony,
Of any kind, could not his zeal allay.

He reached the wondrous city of the Seine,
The metropole of Europe’s art and modes,
Where ever dazzling Show and Pleasure sweet,
Like youths in Daphne’s grove alaughing meet,
Where Grecian deities have their abodes,
And genius hath reared a matchless fane.[A]

[A] The Louvre.

Where stands the armless Venus, unto whom
Poor Heine cried for help, but none received,
Since pagan culture is quite impotent
To save a soul in doubt and error spent,
Though for poor Heine none needs to be grieved,
Whose glory mingles with the maid of foam.

Great Paris, scene of most momentous deeds,
Far reaching consequences to the race;
Where monarchs died like vilest criminals,
While Anarchy did sing her bacchanals,
And trampled in the mire, what once did grace,
The highest places and most hallowed creeds.

Where great Napoleon, a demigod,
Ascended to the pinnacle of fame
And pow’r most dread, who made the monarchs quail
Before his genius, until a wail
Of anguish rose mid ruin and the shame
Of empires, struck by heav’n’s avenging rod.

But even his greatness could not have its sway
O’er equilibriums by ages fixed;
His life was like the wierd and dazzling light
Of some stray star in its erratic flight,
Or like the image where the metals mixed,
The gold and silver with ignoble clay.

The head of gold, the feet of clay, and so
The little stone of Fate the giant felled,
The star erratic into exile sent,
Its lustre in ignominy misspent,
Still it had closed an age—whose doom was spelled,
The slave is free, the tyrant, too, must go.

But this was not the France Sordino knew,
Long time before the Corsican he lived,
Ere France had lost her faith in monks and nuns,
While chiming bells were more than roaring guns,
And in their potency the land believed,
Rejoicing that their fathers’ faith was true.

His life fell in the days of Charles the Great,
When wars were pleasant pastime for the kings,
Who fought for many reasons quite terrestrial,
But sometimes, as they thought, for things celestial,
And nothing like the latter valor brings,
Inspired by bigotry and hellish hate.

When France was warring for her very life,
And Guise, the mighty lion, held at bay,
When Florence beat her foe at Marciano,
And poor Sordino lost his sweet campana,
’Twas in that age he lived and made his way
To Paris, weary from the worldly strife.

He traveled like a scholar, incognito,
And sought the company of learned men,
Disputing with them in the classic lore;
This helped him churchly places to explore,
Where might have been, perchance, a robber’s den,
Since that of old has ever had a ditto.

“My Father’s house ye made a den of thieves,”
Said Christ to priests who wrought for Him a cross,
But afterwards, full often, in His name
The priesthood has been guilty of the same:
What was a sister nation’s grievous loss,
They proudly stored in dusky sacristies.

Such was the plunder of the noble art,
Which Philip from the Netherlands did take,
Such, too, the treasures which Napoleon
With ruthless warfare from the nations won;
Thus ever, where the priest his sign doth make
Upon the sin which pierced the sacred heart.

Such guilt may, even in Sordino’s times,
Have rested upon some Parisian church,
Or abbey in its strange seclusiveness,
But everywhere he found but weariness,
Resulting from his all persistent search,
And nowhere did he see nor hear his chimes.

XII

Why should a soul consume its power and peace
In quest of that which useless seems and vague,
In following mirages of ideals,
And pass through many harassing ordeals,
Endure the cruel sneer of mobs that plague,
When one may dwell ’mongst them in mental ease?

Why follow, like a fettered slave, one’s longing
Which sometimes leads through dun and dreary wilds,
O’er pathless hills and mountain tops afar,
And then points to a dim and distant star,
With faith a-smiling, like a little child’s,
While spectral shadows round one’s soul is thronging?

Because a gleam—as from a fiery globe—
Illumined souls before their incarnation,
And bound them with love’s chain eternally,
That Beauty’s face for ever they might see,
And ne’er be happy in their earthly station,
Unless their life in heav’n’s pure light they robe.

This gleam was ever glowing in the heart
Of him whom men might say was “lacking sense,”
The light of beauty and a smould’ring love.—
Since strait-laced folk may now his acts reprove,
And fearing this, we shall the tale condense,
Of what took place, before he did depart.

One day he met a scholar from Vienna,
Whose home was on the banks of that fair stream,
Renowned in history and minstrel’s song,
O’er whose blue waters, as they flow along,
Some olden romance hovers like a dream,
In saffron hues of terra di Sienna.

There traveled with this scholar a young woman
Whose beauty smote Sordino at first sight,
And made him captive unaware; how strange!
Since he had thought himself outside the range,
Now two score ten, ev’n of the wildest flight
Of any arrow from the little bow-man.

But such is man, who thinks, he knows himself,
And—like Sordino—very much besides,
Quite fortified by wisdom’s splendid armor,
Who thinks his heart is dead to any charmer,
Will suddenly discover that there hides
Within its chambers still a little elf.

She was a coy, elusive little creature,
Uncaptured yet by suitors manifold,
Her father’s only child, and motherless,
Whose cheerfulness his saddened heart did bless,
Whose eyes of Danube blue and hair of gold,
Commingled with her Mother’s Grecian feature.

She was proficient in the classic learning,
Read Greek and Latin like her native tongue,
Italian, too, and did on Dante dote,
And metaphysics studied, but by rote,
For mental subtleties she was too young,
And was to Hella’s songs too often turning.

Anacreon she knew by heart and set
His lyric and erotic odes to tunes,
And most of all she did with fondness love
His ἐραςμίη πέλεια—the dove
Of Venus, odorous with sweet perfumes,
Her payment for the poet’s canzonet.

And like an Amathusia she seemed,
To fond Sordino, who had ne’er beheld
Such loveliness of mind and body wed,
And then he knew that ’mid the past and dead
Of his own life, no being had compelled
His love like she whom he a goddess deemed.

But when he saw her father’s jealous care,
He did not dare his hand to tender her,
But first of all sought to ingratiate
Himself to both, but most to the sedate,
Pedantic scholar, ready to concur
In all his views, though fallacy lay bare.

Thus suavity did win the learned man,
And he became Sordino’s ardent friend,
And asked him to return with them to Wien,
Another thing he failed not to agree in,
And when their stay in Paris had an end,
He gladly journeyed with this Austrian.

XIII

On Danube’s shores, ’mid wooded hills, a villa
Was smiling welcome to its lord and guest,
But most of all to her—whose name was Stella,
(Her father called her “pulchra me’ puella”)
For whom the servants ready had ein Fest,
Where once encamped the hosts of Attila.

A Florentine among Teutonic scenes,
Led thither by a love, yet unexpressed,
Forgot his sorrows, yea, forgot his bells,
Since nought like love its victim so compels
To full submission to a sweet behest,
The looks and smiles of one still in her teens.

Her beauty was the centre of all scenes,
Her voice the only music of each sound,
Her presence, sole embodiment of bliss,
And heaven itself it would have been, a kiss,
For which the Shibboleth he had not found,
Behind the garden-trees and flow’ry screens.

On horseback did they sometimes ride along
The winding roads, and most in early morn,
While yet the dew was trembling on the blade,
And all the minstrelsy of dreamy glade
Was like a stream Elysian to them borne,
With pure delight, estranged to earthly wrong.

And sometimes on the noble river’s breast
They sailed, below the stately castle walls,
Or hoary ruins on o’erhanging cliffs,
Of ancient lore the sacred hieroglyphs,
Upon whose mystery the moonlight falls,
With fairy-charm which age of knighthood blessed.

’Mongst such are those of famous Dürrenstein
Which once imprisoned Richard Lionhearted,—
Returning from a holy pilgrimage,—
The English lion in an unknown cage,—
For ev’n his minstrel, from whom he had parted,
Knew not what walls his good lord did confine.

But he, the faithful Blondel, sought him long,
And traveled in disguise through Germany,
Until he learned of some great personage,
On whom king Leopold had wreaked his rage,
And now he sought this place most eagerly,
Without an aid or weapon, but a song.

A song which he, together with the king,
Had made one night among Judean hills,
A ballad full of stirring battle-scenes,
Of Crusaders in strife with Saracens,
Of victories, defeats and untold ills,
And this below the tow’r he now did sing.

And in the stillness of the summer night
His voice rose clear up to the battlement,
But none did deem it but a common lay,
Except the one who watched a flick’ring ray
Of one bright star, to him the song’s ascent
Came like God’s angels on the gleam of light.

He reached the middle of his song and ceased,
Then harkened for an answer from the tow’r,
When all at once he heard his master’s voice
Conclude the lay, it made his heart rejoice.
He homeward sped, and soon a ransom’s power
The monarch from captivity released.

This story Stella told the Florentine,
Who found it charming in her quaint Italian,
But would have substituted some fair lady
For doughty Richard, though perhaps more shady,
If held a ransom by a noble villain,
Found by her lover while she did repine.

A thing she disagreed with very strongly,
Since heroes she preferred to amorettes,
And poets, singing monarchs out of prison,
To luting minstrels whose life’s mission
Is sentimental ditties and regrets,
Though she in heart felt this was stated wrongly.

And such is, after all, a maiden’s heart,
Unknown to her, unsearchable to man,
It quotes one thing, while feeling quite another,
Though guileless like a sister to her brother,
Her head and heart are like a sprightly span
Of untrained colts which ever pull apart.

But we must shun continuous digression,
And turn to him, the hero of our tale,
Who made the rather sad discovery,
That Stella ne’ertheless did worship Chivalry,
But not in men of fifty, though all hale,
For he received a “No” to his confession.

Her heart cleaved to a youth in far off land,
A youth of prowess in her country’s cause,
Though not bethrothed, she hoped the day would come,
When that should be, ev’n in her father’s home,
This to Sordino a great sorrow was,
Since he had hoped to win her heart and hand.

He said adieu to these his friends, by chance,
And drew away, he cared but little whither,
Since wounded love has lost its grip on life,
And sees it like a night with horror rife,
Until the victim on some morning blither,
Does damn such meetings as that one in France.

For men at fifty may as truly love,
As boys of fifteen, and a little truer,
And, disappointed, feel the keenest pang,
But yet I have not heard a suitor hang
Himself, because he flatly failed to woo her,
Nor worth the while with rivals, have a row.

For wisdom grows with years, and manly reason
Becomes the load-star of the wanderer,
And man doth cease to be a woman’s slave,
For which she may despise him as a knave;
The “superman” she made, doth ponder her,
And knows, beneath her love is sometimes treason.

XIV

Vienna has a noble shrine; ev’n then
It vied in glory with all Europe’s fanes,
St. Stephen;—thither did he go one day,
To see its beauty, more perchance, to pray,
For he would fain seek solace ’mongst the manes
Of the departed than the crowds of men.

There in the dimness of the lofty nave
He tarried long and mused upon the past,
On visored knights who thither came to find
Forgiveness, and assurance to their mind,
That God did sanction that their lot was cast
With them who fought for the Redeemer’s grave.

Their sacred task he almost envied them,
To have a noble aim and be assured
That heaven its benediction on it smiles,
And loving hearts are with the weary miles,
For such a quest all things might be endured,
And death itself be life’s great diadem.

A mission and a woman’s love is all
A man should crave for earthly happiness,
Sordino thought, while absently his gaze
Did fall upon the sweet Madonna’s face,
And he had none of these to lift and bless
His aimless, dark and love-tormented soul.

He humbly knelt before the ancient altar,
A stranger mid the holy solitude,
But what he said in pray’r must not be told
To all the world, whose cynic smile is cold;
Sufficient that the Saviour on the Rood
Imparted strength to him who seemed to falter.

Just then a clear-tongued bell rang from the tower,
With notes akin to one of his lost chimes,
Reminding him of his neglected quest;
He rose as if by a new zeal possest,
As when a mountaineer, who upward climbs,
Is fascinated by the vision’s power.

XV

That night he had a dream, in which he heard
The music of his bells across the seas,
Whose notes came clearly from a purple haze,
And wandered with the breeze from place to place,
A-dancing with the billows’ wild caprice,
And mingled with the cries of many a bird.

And floated round a many-colored sail,
Half-hoisted, flapping, listening between,
And eager to depart for that fair land,
Whence came the music, on whose purple strand
The ocean shifted from the dazzling sheen,
To emerald and amethystine pale.

And in the stern the smiling Stella stood,
A-beckoning to come with her away,
And he did hasten to the rocky shore,
But as he reached it, she was there no more,
The ship had carried her far out the bay,
And in its wake the waves were red as blood.

Then did he weep, until a gentle hand
Was laid upon his head, now bending low,
And looking up, a stranger met his eye,
Who said: “Why art thou here, why dost thou cry?
The melodies which o’er the waters go,
Proceed from chimes made in thy native land;
Thy own they are, go seek them till thou findest,
Then is thy journey ended, and the strife,
Then shalt thou know the joy which heaven will give,
So overwhelming that thou canst not live;
Now, henceforth thou must sacrifice thy life,
To those who bear the cross our God is kindest.”

When from his dream he woke, he pondered long
Its meaning, and at last waxed confident,
It was an angel that had spoken thus;
For calling in distress, God heareth us,
His unseen ministers to us are sent,
To give us light, and weeping change to song.

He also felt assured, his chimes had found
A place across the seas, though not in France,
May be in England or some British isle,—
This thought provoked a melancholy smile,
For Richard’s fame and knightly lance,
And Blondel’s song were with it bound.

And he determined to depart full soon,
Yet one thing did his heart desire to see,—
The face of Stella, which both night and day
Did follow him, where-e’er he turned his way,
Her beck’ning in his dream might mean to be
A change of mind, before another moon.

Yea, might he but behold those eyes once more,
Receive again one look of kindliness,
And feast his famished heart upon her beauty,
And hear her speak, as once, forgetting duty,
And give him one adieu of hope to bless,
Then would he seek his chimes on any shore.

XVI

How man is ever living by illusions!
The more the better, why then shatter them?
Why kill the birds of Paradise with science?
Why meet old Superstition with defiance,
Since in the past her very garments’ hem
Gave from life’s guiltiness sweet absolution?

Why not let lore of Middle Ages reign,
The lore of fairy—and of elfin-land?
A world of strange, imaginary things,
Which gave to human mind its soaring wings,
And bore the simplest to a golden strand,
Where he forgot his poverty and pain.

What are your knowledge and inventions worth,
If they destroy man’s fleeting happiness,—
Illusion’s chiefest offspring, and life’s goal?
Far better then the hut and back-log coal
Than mansions lighted by the magic press,
But without fairies and a glowing hearth.

Sordino’s age was not like ours—of engines;
No Kipling to bid romance a farewell,
No wonders in the realm of rods and wheels,
No squeaking phonographs and Chaplin reels,
No railroads, autos, and, what was as well,
No Zeppelins, no bombs and submarines.

His was the vanished day of simple living,
Of child-like faith in man, and things unseen,
When next God’s footstool poet, prophet stood,
And told that all which makes man glad is good,
That ever Eden’s Tree of Life is green,
And to the world its leaves of healing giving.

And such a leaf was any happy dream,—
An omen or a message from beyond,
As truly as in good Hellenic days,
When at the Sibyl’s cave men found their ways,—
And to Sordino its illusion fond
Became a prophecy, a guiding gleam.

XVII

A Catholic he was and had his passport,
And did not fear to take a ship for London,
Though rumor owned it, things were lively there,
And travellers had better take a care,
Where “Bloody Mary” ruled with fierce abandon,
Suspecting strangers to be of the base sort.

The base sort being chiefly protestant,
Or sympathizers with the cause of Cranmer;
And since he was not either, he might venture
To see the city without fearing censure,
And so, at last, he started out to wander
Through Germany, whose scenes did him enchant.

At last he reached the port of old Calais,
And bought a passage ’cross the English Channel,
According as the angel had him bidden,
Believing that his chimes were used or hidden
In London town, where back of pane or panel
He’d seek and find them on some happy day.

Now as the wind bore gently ’gainst the sail,
And slowly eked their distance from the shore,
The western sun lay ruddy on the wave,
His dream thereby made real, all things, save
The one whose face his heart did still adore,
She was not there this pilgrim strange to hail.

Upon him fell a sadness, which alone
The homeless, longing traveller doth know,
Augmented by a disappointed love,
And standing musing at the vessel’s prow,
The only thing his wistful vision saw,
Was that red glow which on the water shone.

He stood there when the evening shadows fell,
And darkening storm-clouds rose o’er England’s coast,
He stood there when the night closed from his view
The shores of France, within the deepest blue,
Through which a glim’ring light, the uttermost,
Was smiling him a dubious farewell.

He stood there when the waves began to roll,
The wind to sigh and whine in sail and rope,
And night closed round him with forebodings dark
Of dangers for the rocking little bark,
On which full many souls now stayed their hope,
That it would bear them to their journey’s goal.

But he feared not, no, rather pleasure found
In the arising fury of the deep,
Since it expressed the sorrow of his soul,
And he did hear its wild alluring call,
Into its mystic rest at once to leap,
A rest beneath the billows’ angry sound.

And now the elements did more and more
Unstop their many-voiced organ-keys:
The thunder’s loud diapason, the shriek
Of wailing wind, the flopping and the creak
Of rigging; and the rain upon the seas,
The lightning’s hiss and surging water’s roar.

But all of this his heart enjoyed with glee,
And he refused to leave his lonely post,
Though drenched, and clinging to the vessel’s railing,
A good old ship, though sorely tried, yet sailing,
It was her sturdy captain’s boast,
That she could weather even the roughest sea.

Sordino heard in all the symphony
Of nature’s stormy mood, the misery
And rage pent up in her great heart, like his,
Thus all its terror was to him a bliss,
He heard in it majestic melody,
Since all God’s universe is harmony.

The wind grew chilly and at last him drove
Into the hold, where slumber soon him claimed;
And when the morning dawned, the ship was near
The cliffs of England; this a grateful tear
Brought from the anxious hearts, which almost shamed
Sordino whom this sight left quite unmoved.

XVIII

Fair England, long by God elect and blessed,
His chosen land, as Palestine of old,
From which His light to all the world has shone,
Where Freedom sits with monarchs on their throne,
Where truth, more precious than the ruddy gold,
Is by her wise men fearlessly professed.

Where he, the many-minded genius
Arose to make her name and tongue immortal,
With never dying characters and song,
Who knew the soul among the vulgar throng,
As well as that of kings in castle portal,
And made them all so much akin to us.

Great Shakespeare, harbinger of Britain’s glory,
The child of ages, product of a race,
Born in the fulness of the time,—the world awaking
To a new day, its rusty fetters breaking,—
He with his torch showed it the better ways,
And linked the new with ancient fairy-story.

Sordino’s times were all with forces seething,
The new and old at war for mastery,
But through its hope and fear, its love and hating,
The nation with its rulers vacillating,
There came the age when light gained victory,
And Freedom through the songs of Shakespear breathing.

That Freedom then, as ever, bathed in blood,
And tried by fiery fagot and the stake,
The Freedom of the soul to trow and live,
As Christ commanded, ev’n that men should give—
Like He—their lives for His own Kingdom’s sake,
For none was free as He, upon the rood.

The voice of Freedom whispered through the world—
Like quick’ning breezes of advancing Spring,
Which wake the modest crocus ’mongst the hills,
And violets along the laughing rills,
And bid returning songster’s music ring
Through budding woodlands by the mist impearled.

Thus Freedom’s voice did wake the souls of men,
The lowly and the mighty felt its power,
But most the pure in heart who saw their God,
Their hearts rejoiced ev’n ’neath the scourging rod;
Alone they stood in suffering’s dark hour,
But in a strength which heaven did grant them then.

XIX

Sordino came to London just in time
To view a drama, not unseldom seen
By Englishmen in Mary Tudor’s reign,
Who left upon her country’s page a stain
So dark and bloody that scarce any queen
Has ever steeped her rule in fouler crime.

From Newgate prison, in the early morn,
An old decrepit man was rudely led,
Amid the gibes and scoffings of a mob,
Which drowned the words of pity and the sob;
Abuses fell upon his hoary head;
But for his Master they were gladly borne.

They brought him to an open square, where stood
An upright stake with iron rings and chains,
Awaiting his frail body to entwine,
And round about were twigs of birch and pine,
Piled up in bundles, groaning with the pains,
They should inflict on one whose life was good.

The rising sun cast on the earth a soft,
Warm, trembling light, God’s Cherubim who told
To all whose soul had vision: “He is Love;”
At least one marked it, smiled and looked above,
Into infinity of blue and gold,
And as his eyes were lifted thus aloft,

He said: “What profit hath a man, if he
Should gain the entire world and lose his soul?
What can he give for it in true exchange?
This is the truth which saves or doth avenge,
And now as I am here to give my all,
I thank thee Father for the Victory.”

A pray’r which followed was by clamor drowned,
The torch applied set loose the crackling flame,
Which leaped about his limbs and to his face,
Extinguishing the glory of his gaze,
And silencing the lisping of His name
Who hath with immortality him crowned.

XX

I said, Sordino was a Catholic,
But more than that, a true philosopher,
And at this sight within himself he mused:
“How is the Gospel of the Christ abused
By those who should its saving love confer,
Upon a world with sin and hatred sick!”

“The light of love changed into flames of hell,
The praise of joy to wails of agony,
The cross into a fetish of dark fear,
Around the which the fiendish demons leer,
While erring souls are shackled to the tree,
And fagots blaze amid the rabble’s yell.”

“How terrible is zeal without true knowledge;
How awful bigotry, born by religion!
How black is priestcraft, bred by selfishness,
Before whose judgment-seat there’s no redress
For any sympathizer with rebellion
Against the schemes of Jesuitic college!”

His tender-heartedness aroused such thought;—
He paused, and crossed himself, perhaps he sinned,—
In thinking thus, and carried thus away
By that sad spectacle, and then did say,
Within himself: “May be the fellow grinned,
Because his faith a glory to him brought.”

“Was that the motive which led him to suffer?
Then was he despicable more than they
Who brazed themselves his dirty flesh to fry,
Then was his smoke a stench beneath the sky,
His ashes unfit for his country’s clay,
He, not a martyr, but a worthless duffer.”

“If pride, quite obstinate, of fancied light,
Diviner, truer than of mother church,
Did actuate the Protestants to die,
Then there is justice in the people’s cry,
For such an arrogance the truth will smirch,
And rob its scepter of celestial right.”

Thus did philosopher and churchman speak,
And now the poet whispered: “Peace be still!
Where are thy chimes? All England needs their tone
Of harmony to make the people one;
Thy golden chimes! At last their music will
Interpret all which men through suff’ring seek.”

XXI

Pained and disgusted with the sight, he passed
Out of the city—’twas not very far
Before he struck the open country-road—
Which led to Shoreditch church, and meadows broad,
And fields of golden grain, where nought did mar
The peace of all that was with nature classed.

Amid a field, below a hillock’s slope,
He saw a man at work, also a lad,
With sickles in their hands, a-cutting grain,
He stopped and looked at them, the boy with pain
Seemed, raise himself, when he a bundle had
Completed, trying with his sire to cope.

And while he stretched his aching, weary back,
He gazed across the field with longing look,
A-measuring how many days ’twould take
To reach the end—the field’s dividing stake,
Then spit into his hands and firmly took
His place behind his father’s cleancut track.

This incident Sordino much impressed,
He read at once the feelings of the boy,
That not alone in body, but in mind
He suffered, sought deliverance to find,
And so he said: “I will the lad employ,
I need a guide whom heav’n with dreams hath blessed.”

The father would not listen to Sordino,
Whose English he but scarcely understood,
And half afraid of this so swarthy stranger,
In times, like those, so full of lurking danger,
But when he saw his gold, it seemed quite good,
And gave consent to let his helper go.

But not before his mother had been seen,
Her sanction gained, for what he felt some fears,
And so they left the sheaves of ripened wheat,
And sought their humble dwelling’s blithe retreat,—
A little cottage, thatched, and gray with years,
Amid the trees and garden-beds still green.

And here they tarried till the close of day,
Till Vesper-bells proclaimed its toil should cease,
Yea, tarried over night, for mother’s heart
Is more reluctant with the child to part,
But in the morn she said: “Do as ye please,”
And gave her blessing, and they went away.

And as they left, the peals from Shoreditch tow’r
Came on the crispéd morning air like streams
Of living water from the Holy Mount,—
Where priests with silver basins at its fount
Oblation brought to golden Cherubims,
Amid rejoicing of the festive hour.

Their cleansing tones, refreshing to the mind,
And nature, smiling, drank their harmony,
The crystal dew vibrating with delight,
A veil of mist, the garment of the night,
Hung o’er the deepest valley, seemed to flee
Before their dancing with a timid wind.

Sordino felt their rapture like a flow
Of scented warmth, which crept through limbs and brain,
And to his heart, where lotus-like it stayed,
Until each chilling sorrow was allayed,
And joy of other years returned again,
Enkindling in his face a new life’s glow.

The silent, wond’ring lad, who followed him,
Had often heard this gladsome melody,
It was a part of him from infancy,
It cast upon his soul a witchery,
From which no mood or attitude was free,
And claimed him for a realm remote and dim.

It was the springtime of the golden age
Of England’s minstrelsy, and here and there
A youth did feel its heart-throb ’mid the flowers,
And saw sweet, flitting forms amongst the bowers,
And heard transporting voices in the air,
Which captured him and did his life engage.

And though, perhaps, he never won a name,
And though it spoiled his life for “useful things,”
And Fate endowed him, as she did a Greene,
With wretched penury and squalor mean,—
Still he who sees and hears and gladly sings
Hath recompense, transcending gold and fame.

Woe, unto him around whose cradle danced
The fairies on the golden morning ray,
Anointing him with essence of the rose,
Into whose soul the magic music flows,
To shape itself into a deathless lay,
Who all denies, by earthliness entranced.

To him no smiling faces shall appear,
When comes the eve of life with lowering sky,
But voices chiding him with cowardice,
Because he chose the lucre and the ease,
And did his calling wilfully deny,—
To him no light shall be,—but darkness drear.

XXII

’Twas here that from the church and nature rose
The English stage, when he, the stable-groom,
Should write the Drama of Humanity,—
The greatest poet of all history,
Who mingled laughter with the deepest gloom,
Life’s music with its sterner prose.

The modern drama,—modern Ishmael,
Begotten of religion; like a youth,
Fair, myrtle-crowned, and slender, innocent,
With dancing measures upon pleasure bent;
Then cast away by “guardians of the truth,”
And, homeless, nourished at the secret well.

And when his great Emancipator came,
He dared to dance and frisk on country lanes,
But not in London town (his mother’s there);
Until the king of poesy laid bare
His ancient birthright, lost ’mongst Grecian manes,
Then waxed he strong and daily gained in fame,

And found a home within the city wall,
Where still he dwells, and ever will abide,
In his duplicity, since life is very double,
A-laughing, crying, at its fleeting bubble,
Appearing on the restless ocean-tide,
In morning splendor, or dusk even-fall.

Still Ishmael, to Sarah’s first begotten,
Still preached against by heaven’s best elect,
And he returns, at times, with taunts and gibes;
But if they put away some modern scribes,
And did great Shakespeare’s drama resurrect,
Our modern stage would not be half as rotten.

Regenerated, cleansed, what ally this
To all that’s true and noble under heaven!
A mirror of ourselves? Much more! A vision
Of life’s ideal, and its highest mission,
And though the weary heart must mirth be given,
The thrill of truth’s clear gleam is better bliss.

So, let the true born help the quondam alien,
They need each other in their common quest
For happiness, the rainbow’s pot of gold,
And let the secret of the quest be told
By each, in love, that each may do his best
To lift and cheer, where life is low and failing.

XXIII

Into the city on the Thames they walked,
And to the inn, where he had rented rooms,
An hospitable inn, by no means small,
Of quaint designs, o’ershadowed by some tall,
Outspreading elm trees, in whose pleasant glooms
The thievish rooks to one another talked.

And there were gardens in its rear, where fruit
Of cherries and of pears were sweetly ripe,
For London still had nature in its heart,
Long since ejected by a soul-less mart;
Though knowing statesmen may its grandeur pipe,
Another Shakespeare it makes ever mute.

Here did Sordino hope to respite find
From journeys which accounted seemed but vain;
He would his simple country-lad engage
In spying bells, and in the work of page,
For such a boy he easily could train:
He had an honest heart and ready mind.

This tavern was, however, seldom quiet,
But oft for merry souls a rendezvous,—
For wits and poets, chiefly for the latter,
To whom the outside of the social platter
Was less important than the inside true,
Whose highest law was their own spirit’s fiat.

When God makes poets He’s misunderstood,
The mixture is too much for common folk;
The blending of all things in earth and heaven,
Of light and darkness, unto them is given,
An angel and a fiend in common yoke,
The great extremes of evil and of good.

As in time’s morn the light from darkness sprang,
And cosmic beauty out of Chaos rose,
Thus out of reeking stews and taverns came
A Marlow’s strong, illuminating flame,
And stars of magnitudes did follow close,—
The morning stars which rapt together sang.

XXIV

The sights of London were but meagre then,
Compared with all its wonders of to-day;—
Still each age thinks his own the grandest, best,
A truth, may be, why else the ceaseless quest?
Though it is left to Wisdom yet to say,
If things are worse or better among men.

The Tow’r knew greater anguish in those days,
The bridge gave terror with its ghastliness
Of hoary heads uplifted high on spits;
The palaces had dungeons, vermin-pits
Of heartless cruelties and grim distress;
And halls of splendor had dark, hidden ways.

But there was sunlight on the crimson tile,
And there was blueness in the open sky,
And breezes bore the scent of rose and thyme,
As in the morn they met St. Mary’s chime,
No cloud of smoke, as now, oppressed the eye,
And made the gentle breath of heaven vile.

And men were frank and honest with their friends,
And also frank and honest with their foes,
And either loved with nakedness of soul,
Or fought until one of the two did fall,
Strong was the love, and hard the hater’s blows,
While now his love and hate man subtly blends.

Sordino loitered much in lane and street,
And listened well to every swinging bell,
And searched the city for his treasure lost,
But not a sound was from a steeple tost,
Of its abiding-place his ear to tell,
Nor did a single clue his vision meet.

He daily searched, until the winter fog
Began to close about the sightly town,
Then melancholy claimed him for her own,
And lest he should be lost in grief and groan,
He sought the company of those who drown
The sorrows of their hearts with ale and grog.

XXV

Once poets tuned their lyres in praise of Bacchus,—
Forsooth he was a mirth-inspiring god—
All garlanded with leaves of blooming vine,—
Adored by Aphrodite and the Nine,—
Bacchant and Satyr at his worship trod
Fantastic measures, such as now would wrack us.

Bards have turned preachers, which is for the better,
And no more should their songs extol his name,
But rather sound the anguish and the woe
Brought upon man by this relentless foe,
Take up the note of poverty and shame,
And ills of drunkenness which man enfetter.

Until his pow’r, in human nature seated,
As on a throne, shall no more have its sway,—
When man shall cease forgetfulness to borrow,—
Of failures, disappointments and dark sorrow,—
From his delusions, which no ills allay,—
Until—until—his reign shall be defeated!

But judge not harshly those who suffer most,
The victims of the cup, the self-condemned,
Who fight a hopeless battle and go down;
Show love and pity, rather than a frown,
For though the sot by men may be contemned,—
Still there is One who came to save the lost.

We know but little why he gave himself
An abject slave to appetite and lust,
What passions of past generations found
In him their culmination, held him bound,
And though he struggled hard, it seems he must
Into the depths of sin and darkness delv.

Perchance ambition was his Waterloo,
And having lost the last and strongest trench,
He spends a starless night mid weeping gloom,
Abandoning life’s dreams to their dark tomb,
He seeks, at last, his soul’s remorse to quench
With what he knows his manhood will undo.

Perhaps the fire of love has been extinguished,
And left but cooling ashes on the hearth,
And one, whose face was radiant with light,
Moves ’round him like a shadow of the night,
And since his life has lost its highest worth,
He turns to Rum, and soon is all relinquished.

XXVI

When men are drunk, they often babble things,
They scarce would whisper to a bosom-friend,
But when the wine has loosened sense and tongue,
The hidden secret to the crowd is flung,
And with an oath its owner will defend
A truth exaggerated, till the ring

Of brawlers doth declare it is a lie,
For which he ought to buy a round of drinks;
Thus in that tavern, on a foggy night,
A group was sitting in the candle-light,
Around a table, drinking, till their blinks
Did tell that Reason was about to fly.

And one, a bearded, lion-voiced sailor,
Began to tell of escapades at sea,—
Of war in foreign lands, of victory,
In such a loud and boasting way, that three
Out of the five did laugh derisively,
And said, he was a bandy-legged tailor.

At which he swore and drained his tankard dry,
And called them all a motley lubber-gang,
And rose to go, but then his friends cried “no,”
“You must not leave us yet, for dontcher know,
The best is coming? Say how did ye hang
Those tinklers in the tow’r?—Let’s have a rye!”

Sordino being witness to this scene,
Approached the table and said: “Gentlemen,
Allow me to provide a drink for all,”
A sentence which upon their ears did fall
With some surprise, since he a stranger; then
A grin of acceptation in their mien.

And he sat down with them, and freely drank,
And paid for all the drinks, the barmaid poured,
Thus made them almost feel, he was their host,
And when he ordered for their midnight lunch a roast,
They sang his praise; the grizzly sailor roared:
“Say, fellow, have you robbed the Venice bank?”

They revelled, and caroused, and stories told,
The most of which were tavern-coarse and smutty,—
The sailor being richest in his stores
Of drunken bouts and fights on foreign shores,
But as the chemist in the chimney-sut finds tutty,
Thus sought Sordino in this slag the gold.

For he had thought at first to see a glint
Of something in the “tinklers and the tower,”
And now he tried to draw the sailor out
On this allusion in his fellow’s flout;—
An instant’s hesitation and a lower,
And then the old tar understood the hint.

“The tinklers, aye, ha! ha! those merry bells,
We carried up from France to Limerick,—
And nearly lost in a confounded gale,—
Aye, aye, old top, by these there hangs a tale,—
I heard from one who wounded lay and sick,—
A soldier who had seen a hundred hells.”

“Those bells were taken in a bloody war
Sir,—what is that to thee?—another drink!”
Sordino forced a laugh, and ordered wine,—
A bottle of old port—none did decline,
But drank, until the weak began to wink,
And Silence made encroachment round the bar.

The sailor bibbed the longest, ate his roast,
And told Sordino, how the bells were sold
To a great churchman in the Irish isle,
That they are ringing daily from a pile
Most venerable, whence no price of gold
Can e’er return them to their native coast.

Sordino knew, they were his own, and smiled
To learn the place where strangely they had landed,
And when the sailor swore it all was true,
Sordino from the company withdrew,
But not before it was of him demanded,
That what he heard for ever must be “tiled.”

XXVII

Sordino looking for his boy that night,
Found him departed, whither, none could tell;
They sought him in the tavern and the street,
But all in vain; the watchman on his beat
Was queried, as he passed and cried: “All’s well!”
And laughingly replied: “He’s out of sight!”

The boy had weary grown and sick for home,
When he his master saw with drunkards douce,
And dared the denseness of the fog, to find
That place which daily occupied his mind,—
The little cottage ’mongst the trees, recluse,
Seemed grander than the city’s pillard dome.

A dog might find its way, but not a child,
Through such a maze, bewildering and weird;
He thought, he surely knew the homeward road,
And eagerly, for hours, he onward strode,
But only to discover, what he feared:
He was as lost as ’mid a forest wild.

The Thames was like a spectral realm of sound
And shapes: The masts of many ships at tow
Were dimly visible, and larger seemed,—
Like mighty giants, as the moonlight beamed
Into the woolly fog. The sounds below:—
The river’s song, and baying of a hound.

All else was silent till a sailor coughed
And damned the dog which thus disturbed his sleep;
And now the wand’ring lad called out in fear:
“I’m lost, oh, help me, who-soe’er is near!”
To which a voice arose, as from the deep:
“It is a lubber straying from his croft.”

But then, ere long, there was a splash of oar,
And muffled talking twixt two drowsy tars,
The boy took heart, since rescue was at hand;
But when he found himself pushed out from land,
And lifted to a deck of lofty spars,
He kind of wished himself back to the shore.

The sailors showed him to a bunk for rest.
“Yea, in the morn the fog may lifted be,
So you can find your way,” thus cheered they him;
But as of old the halfbaked Ephraim
Howled on his bed, so would now even he,
Had not submission been for him the best.

XXVIII

The fog grew lighter with the dawn of day,
As did the boy’s heart after night of weeping,
He early ’rose, and would have left the ship,
But since for boatswain he possessed no tip,
He dared not rouse him from his pleasant sleeping,
And distance from the shore compelled his stay.

At last both crew and passengers awoke,
And all gazed at the lad, some with a smile,
When of his rescue told, some poked their fun;
But ’mongst the passengers his eye met one,
Who read the trouble of a homesick child,
And in strange accents kindly to him spoke.

She seemed to him the fairest he had seen,
A spirit, from the silv’ry mist emerged,
A gleam of light, strayed from the hidden sun,
Enlivening the sodden scene and dun,
A Venus from the foam where billows surged,
Born to be worshiped, or to be a queen.

But what she said to him was quite Egyptian,
It mattered not, since he could understand
The sympathy and goodness of her heart,
A thing much better than linguistic art
In any woman, yea, in any man,—
Though speech is fine, the deed is much more Christian.

She gave him food and wine and cheered his soul,
Then left him to himself, an hour or so,
When came the captain and thus to him spake:
“Art thou a stranger here, or canst thou make
Thy way alone and knowest where to go,
When lifted is the fog’s distressing pall?”

To which the lad replied: “I know the town,
When I can see its street and thoroughfare,
And now can find my way up to the inn,
Where dwells my master; oh, it was a sin,
That I deserted him, since he may care!
I will return to him;—please let me down!”

To which the captain said: “We have on board
Two passengers who wish an inn to find,
And canst thou guide them to such place, my son?
That lovely lady, whom you met, is one,
The other is her father, noble, kind,
A foreign scholar, and methinks, a lord.”

The boy responded readily to this,
As mid-day drew on clear, became their guide,
Up to that quite pretentious hostelry,
Half glad, half ’fraid his master there to see,
But ignorant how fate strode by his side,
And how it seldom seems to go amiss.

XXIX

That afternoon Sordino sought his place
Among the garden-trees, a rustic seat,
Which during gloomy days had stood alone,
But now again the sun so brightly shone,
Inviting him to this belov’d retreat,
Though it had lost the summer’s tender grace.

And whom should here his pensive eyes behold,
But one of whom he at that moment thought,
And as he met her quite astonished gaze,
Surprise brought strong emotions to his face,
He knew not what strange magic this had wrought,
His heart beat fast, his hands grew clammy cold.

She smiled, and greeted him in his own tongue,
Then wist he that it was no mere illusion,
But Stella, yea, the Stella of his dreams,
So strange, so sweetly strange, it ever seems
To lonely lovers such a rapt confusion,
When that which separates aside is flung.

And yet it did not give to him the joy
Of one who knows why his beloved came;
He wondered much, but did not dare to ask,
His self-control became a subtle mask,
Which hid the raging of the inward flame,
That might again a newborn hope destroy.

A woman’s eye can look through lover’s feint,
Behind his mask she sees the naked soul,
And laughs with mingled sympathy and scorn,
She suffers not because he is forlorn,
And rather likes to see him prostrate fall
Before her feet, as if she were a saint.

And Stella knew, it racked Sordino’s mind
Why she was there, but only this she told:
“My father and myself last night arrived
In London harbor, but the fog contrived
To keep us captives in the vessel’s hold,
Until this morn, when we this place did find.”

“How found ye it?” Sordino dared to question.
“A lad who said his master’s lodging here,
Did guide us, and, methinks I see him there.”
Sordino turned and saw the boy’s despair,
And called him in a tone that felled his fear,
He came, and was forgiv’n without confession.

And Stella took his hand and stroked his head,
Sordino wishing that he was the lad,
He found a coin and told him to be gone,
And like the earth from which the fog was blown,
The boy felt in his heart relieved and glad,
And brushed his master’s clothes and made his bed.

Alone, the conversation of the two
Was chiefly about trifles and the weather,
With many pauses, since so much did press
Sordino’s heart, so much he would confess,
And since it was so strange to be together
With her whom he adored, yet did not know.

Soon Stella, pleading cold, arose to go,
Without a promise of another meeting,
Sordino feeling chills about his heart,
And as they from the garden did depart,
That little hour so full, and yet so fleeting,
Seemed to him fatal, and mal á propos.

XXX

Love’s like a great musician, whose deft fingers
Control the hidden pow’r of organ-keys;
He plays upon the soul with mastery,
And uses all the stops of melody,
Of deepest sorrow, highest ecstacies,
Of stormy fugues, or tune that softly lingers.

Thus did he play upon Sordino’s heart,
When to himself he suddenly was left;
A flood of passion overwhelmed his soul,
In which he heard himself her name to call,
And spent, did leave him painfully bereft,
Yea, caused unmanly, bitter tears to start.

He wiped away the furtive tear, and went
Into the bar-room, where he called for wine,
And freely drank, then entering the street,
The sailor of last night he chanced to meet,
Who told him, for a drink he sore did pine,
And had, alas! his very farthings spent.

Sordino handed him sufficient coin
To make him happy for another night;
He thanked him most profusely, and betook
Himself into the tavern’s pleasant nook,
Where he did find his life’s supreme delight,—
A cup of sack and others it to join.

Sordino sauntered carelessly along,
And with no aim but to assuage his mind,
Which wandered twixt a ray of hope and fear,
When all at once he saw her drawing near,
In company with one whose eye did find
Her smile surcharged with an affection strong.

A moment’s glance told of his manly cast;
Well-knit and tall, in military suit,
But with a face so much unlike her mien;
And what Sordino could instantly glean,
It had a strength, but not of thought and truth,
But rather courage, stemming any blast.

Correctly he surmised, this very man
Was Stella’s fiancé; and Jealousy,
That “greeneyed monster,” held him by the throat,
Or, as in modern parlance “had his goat,”
A phrase suggestive of the purity
Of English, even among a college clan.

The jealousy of outraged marriage bonds,
Real, or imagined as Othello’s,
Oft finds expression in a dark revenge,
The faithless spouse is treated as a wench,
The vile seducer suffers every loss,
Unless, perchance, he with his prize absconds.

With hapless suitors has she gentler ways,
When pledgeless smiles is all they have obtained,
Though none may fully know what she may do,
(For even of such full many ones she slew),
But in this case, Sordino, deeply pained,
She led about as in a dreamy haze.

He wandered on the banks of wimpling Thames,
And on the anchored ships did idly stare,
But had no mind for all the life and mirth
Beneath the languid sails upon the firth,
Since nought he saw but that one happy pair,
And but two eyes, more glorious than gems.

With night’s approach his feelings took the hue
Of creeping shadows and the purple dark,
And sadness grew to an oppressive load,—
Then Jealousy to anger did him goad,
And to its fouler plots he once did hark,
Which with a frenzy did his blood imbue.

Then came the music of St. Mary’s bell,
Commingling with St. Paul’s of deeper tongue,
And oped his prison of unhappiness,
They had a solace that could calm and bless,
And when the last vibrating note was rung,
He homeward turned, and whispered: “All is well.”

XXXI

As a philosopher Sordino tried
To make himself believe that all was well,
Howe’er something opposed his wise decree,—
He sought to sup, but found each dish to be
Devoid of savor both in taste and smell,
His spleen the head’s philosophy defied.

He sought his couch and courted gentle sleep,
And stoically scorned his love-affair,
But Somnus was so far away, unheeding,
And thoughts in solitude were slowly feeding
Upon his heart, like lions in their lair,
Instead of rest, his misery grew deep.

The clock struck ten, he rose and left his room;
The bar was lively, and he chose its folly;
There was the sailor, garrulous and drunk,
In company with one, a quondam monk,
From Henry’s reign, when monks, unduly jolly,
Were driven from pretended cloister-gloom.

But if the ruby brightness of his nose
Was then acquired, or in his homeless state,
Is not for me to say, but it surpassed
Even his who years had sailed before the mast,
And with the aid of gin and stormy fate
Had made it blossom like an Irish rose.