Ride to the Lady
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Helen Gray Cone >> Ride to the Lady
THE RIDE TO THE LADY
And Other Poems
BY
HELEN GRAY CONE
1891
CONTENTS
The Ride to the Lady
The First Guest
Silence
Arraignment
The Going Out of the Tide
King Raedwald
Ivo of Chartres
Madonna Pia
Two Moods of Failure
The Story of the "Orient"
A Resurrection
The Glorious Company
The Trumpeter
Comrades
The House of Hate
The Arrowmaker
A Nest in a Lyre
Thisbe
The Spring Beauties
Kinship
Compensation
When Willows Green
At the Parting of the Ways
The Fair Gray Lady
The Encounter.
Summer Hours
Love Unsung
The Wish for a Chaplet
Sonnets:
The Torch Race
To Sleep
Sister Snow
The Contrast
A Mystery
Triumph
In Winter, with the Book we had in Spring
Sere Wisdom
Isolation
The Lost Dryad
The Gifts of the Oak
The Strayed Singer
The Immortal Word
THE RIDE TO THE LADY
"Now since mine even is come at last,--
For I have been the sport of steel,
And hot life ebbeth from me fast,
And I in saddle roll and reel,--
Come bind me, bind me on my steed!
Of fingering leech I have no need!"
The chaplain clasped his mailed knee.
"Nor need I more thy whine and thee!
No time is left my sins to tell;
But look ye bind me, bind me well!"
They bound him strong with leathern thong,
For the ride to the lady should be long.
Day was dying; the poplars fled,
Thin as ghosts, on a sky blood-red;
Out of the sky the fierce hue fell,
And made the streams as the streams of hell.
All his thoughts as a river flowed,
Flowed aflame as fleet he rode,
Onward flowed to her abode,
Ceased at her feet, mirrored her face.
(Viewless Death apace, apace,
Rode behind him in that race.)
"Face, mine own, mine alone,
Trembling lips my lips have known,
Birdlike stir of the dove-soft eyne
Under the kisses that make them mine!
Only of thee, of thee, my need!
Only to thee, to thee, I speed!"
The Cross flashed by at the highway's turn;
In a beam of the moon the Face shone stern.
Far behind had the fight's din died;
The shuddering stars in the welkin wide
Crowded, crowded, to see him ride.
The beating hearts of the stars aloof
kept time to the beat of the horse's hoof,
"What is the throb that thrills so sweet?
Heart of my lady, I feel it beat!"
But his own strong pulse the fainter fell,
Like the failing tongue of a hushing bell.
The flank of the great-limbed steed was wet
Not alone with the started sweat.
Fast, and fast, and the thick black wood
Arched its cowl like a black friar's hood;
Fast, and fast, and they plunged therein,--
But the viewless rider rode to win,
Out of the wood to the highway's light
Galloped the great-limbed steed in fright;
The mail clashed cold, and the sad owl cried,
And the weight of the dead oppressed his side.
Fast, and fast, by the road he knew;
And slow, and slow, the stars withdrew;
And the waiting heaven turned weirdly blue,
As a garment worn of a wizard grim.
He neighed at the gate in the morning dim.
She heard no sound before her gate,
Though very quiet was her bower.
All was as her hand had left it late:
The needle slept on the broidered vine,
Where the hammer and spikes of the passion-flower
Her fashioning did wait.
On the couch lay something fair,
With steadfast lips and veiled eyne;
But the lady was not there,
On the wings of shrift and prayer,
Pure as winds that winnow snow,
Her soul had risen twelve hours ago.
The burdened steed at the barred gate stood,
No whit the nearer to his goal.
Now God's great grace assoil the soul
That went out in the wood!
THE FIRST GUEST
When the house is finished, Death enters.
_Eastern Proverb_
Life's House being ready all,
Each chamber fair and dumb,
Ere life, the Lord, is come
With pomp into his hall,--
Ere Toil has trod the floors,
Ere Love has lit the fires,
Or young great-eyed Desires
Have, timid, tried the doors;
Or from east-window leaned
One Hope, to greet the sun,
Or one gray Sorrow screened
Her sight against the west,--
Then enters the first guest,
The House of life being done.
He waits there in the shade.
I deem he is Life's twin,
For whom the house was made.
Whatever his true name,
Be sure, to enter in
He has both key and claim.
The daybeams, free of fear,
Creep drowsy toward his feet;
His heart were heard to beat,
Were any there to hear;
Ah, not for ends malign,
Like wild thing crouched in lair,
Or watcher of a snare,
But with a friend's design
He lurks in shadow there!
He goes not to the gates
To welcome any other,
Nay, not Lord Life, his brother;
But still his hour awaits
Each several guest to find
Alone, yea, quite alone;
Pacing with pensive mind
The cloister's echoing stone,
Or singing, unaware,
At the turning of the stair
Tis truth, though we forget,
In Life's House enters none
Who shall that seeker shun,
Who shall not so be met.
"Is this mine hour?" each saith.
"So be it, gentle Death!"
Each has his way to end,
Encountering this friend.
Griefs die to memories mild;
Hope turns a weanèd child;
Love shines a spirit white,
With eyes of deepened light.
When many a guest has passed,
Some day 'tis Life's at last
To front the face of Death.
Then, casements closed, men say:
"Lord Life is gone away;
He went, we trust and pray,
To God, who gave him breath."
Beginning, End, He is:
Are not these sons both His?
Lo, these with Him are one!
To phrase it so were best:
God's self is that first Guest,
The House of Life being done!
SILENCE
Why should I sing of earth or heaven? not rather rest,
Powerless to speak of that which hath my soul possessed,--
For full possession dumb? Yea, Silence, that were best.
And though for what it failed to sound I brake the string,
And dashed the sweet lute down, a too much fingered thing,
And found a wild new voice,--oh, still, why should I sing?
An earth-song could I make, strange as the breath of earth,
Filled with the great calm joy of life and death and birth?
Yet, were it less than this, the song were little worth.
For this the fields caress; brown clods tell each to each;
Sad-colored leaves have sense whereto I cannot reach;
Spiced everlasting-flowers outstrip my range of speech.
A heaven-song could I make, all fire that yet was peace,
And tenderness not lost, though glory did increase?
But were it less than this, 't were well the song should cease.
For this the still west saith, with plumy flames bestrewn;
Heaven's body sapphire-clear, at stirless height of noon;
The cloud where lightnings pulse, beside the untroubled moon.
I will not sing of earth or heaven, but rather rest,
Rapt by the face of heaven, and hold on earth's warm breast.
Hushed lips, a beating heart, yea, Silence, that were best.
ARRAIGNMENT
"Not ye who have stoned, not ye who have smitten us," cry
The sad, great souls, as they go out hence into dark,
"Not ye we accuse, though for you was our passion borne;
And ye we reproach not, who silently passed us by.
We forgive blind eyes and the ears that would not hark,
The careless and causeless hate and the shallow scorn.
"But ye, who have seemed to know us, have seen and heard;
Who have set us at feasts and have crowned with the costly rose;
Who have spread us the purple of praises beneath our feet;
Yet guessed not the word that we spake was a living word,
Applauding the sound,--we account you as worse than foes!
We sobbed you our message; ye said, 'It is song, and sweet!'"
THE GOING OUT OF THE TIDE
The eastern heaven was all faint amethyst,
Whereon the moon hung dreaming in the mist;
To north yet drifted one long delicate plume
Of roseate cloud; like snow the ocean-spume.
Now when the first foreboding swiftly ran
Through the loud-glorying sea that it began
To lose its late gained lordship of the land,
Uprose the billow like an angered man,
And flung its prone strength far along the sand;
Almost, almost to the old bound, the dark
And taunting triumph-mark.
But no, no, no! and slow, and slow, and slow,
Like a heart losing hold, this wave must go,--
Must go, must go,--dragged heavily back, back,
Beneath the next wave plunging on its track,
Charging, with thunderous and defiant shout,
To fore-determined rout.
Again, again the unexhausted main
Renews fierce effort, drawing force unguessed
From awful deeps of its mysterious breast:
Like arms of passionate protest, tossed in vain,
The spray upflings above the billow's crest.
Again the appulse, again the backward strain--
Till ocean must have rest.
With one abandoned movement, swift and wild,--
As though bowed head and outstretched arms it laid
On the earth's lap, soft sobbing,--hushed and stayed,
The great sea quiets, like a soothed child.
Ha! what sharp memory clove the calm, and drave
This last fleet furious wave?
On, on, endures the struggle into night,
Ancient as Time, yet fresh as the fresh hour;
As oft repeated since the birth of light
As the strong agony and mortal fight
Of human souls, blind-reaching, with the Power
Aloof, unmoved, impossible to cross,
Whose law is seeming loss.
Low-sunken from the longed-for triumph-mark;
The spent sea sighs as one that grieves in sleep.
The unveiled moon along the rippling plain
Casts many a keen, cold, shifting silvery spark,
Wild as the pulses of strange joy, that leap
Even in the quick of pain.
And she compelling, she that stands for law,--
As law for Will eternal,--perfect, clear,
And uncompassionate shines: to her appear
Vast sequences close-linked without a flaw.
All past despairs of ocean unforgot,
All raptures past, serene her light she gives,
The moon too high for pity, since she lives
Aware that loss is not.
KING RAEDWALD
Will you hear now the speech of King Raedwald,--heathen Raedwald,
the simple yet wise?
He, the ruler of North-folk and South-folk, a man open-browed
as the skies,
Held the eyes of the eager Italians with his blue, bold,
Englishman's eyes.
In his hall, on his throne, so he sat, with the light of the fire
on him full:
Colored bright as the ring of red gold on his hand, fit to buffet
a bull,
Was the mane that grew down on his neck, was the beard he would
pondering pull.
To the priests, to the eager Italians, thus fearless less he poured
his free speech;
"O my honey-tongued fathers, I turn not away from the faith that ye
teach!
Not the less hath a man many moods, and may ask a religion for each.
"Grant that all things are well with the realm on a delicate day
of the spring,
Easter month, time of hopes and of swallows!
The praises, the psalms that ye sing,
As in pleasant accord they float heavenward, are good in the ears
of the king.
"Then the heart bubbles forth with clear waters, to the time
of this wonder-word Peace,
From the chanting and preaching whereof ye who serve the
white Christ never cease;
And your curly, soft incense ascending enwraps my content
like a fleece.
"But a churl comes adrip from the rivers, pants me out, fallen
spent on the floor,
'O King Raedwald, Northumberland marches, and to-morrow knocks
hard at thy door,
Hot for melting thy crown on the hearth!'
Then commend me to Woden and Thor!
"Could I sit then and listen to preachments on turning the cheek
to the blow,
And saying a prayer for the smiter, and holding my seen treasure low
For the sake of a treasure unseen? By the sledge of the Thunderer, no!
"For my thought flashes out as a sword, cleaving counsel as
clottage of cream;
And your incense and chanting are but as the smoke of burnt
towns and the scream;
And I quaff me the thick mead of triumph from enemies' skulls
in my dream!
"And 'tis therefore this day I resolve me,--for King Raedwald
will cringe not, nor lie!--
I will bring back the altar of Woden; in the temple will have it,
hard by
The new altar of this your white Christ. As my mood may decide,
worship I!"
So he spake in his large self-reliance,--he, a man open-browed
as the skies;
Would not measure his soul by a standard that was womanish-weak
to his eyes,
Smite his breast and go on with his sinning,--savage Raedwald,
the simple yet wise!
And the centuries bloom o'er his barrow. But for us,--have we
mastered it quite,
The old riddle, that sweet is strong's outcome, the old marvel,
that meekness is might,
That the child is the leader of lions, that forgiveness is force
at its height?
When we summon the shade of rude Raedwald, in his candor how
king-like he towers!
Have the centuries, over his slumber, only borne sterile falsehoods
for flowers?
Pray you, what if Christ found him the nobler, having weighed his
frank manhood with ours?
IVO OF CHARTRES
Now may it please my lord, Louis the king,
Lily of Christ and France! riding his quest,
I, Bishop Ivo, saw a wondrous thing.
There was no light of sun left in the west,
And slowly did the moon's new light increase.
Heaven, without cloud, above the near hill's crest,
Lay passion purple in a breathless peace.
Stars started like still tears, in rapture shed,
Which without consciousness the lids release.
All steadily, one little sparkle red,
Afar, drew close. A woman's form grew up
Out of the dimness, tall, with queen-like head,
And in one hand was fire; in one, a cup.
Of aspect grave she was, with eyes upraised,
As one whose thoughts perpetually did sup
At the Lord's table.
While the cresset blazed,
Her I regarded. "Daughter, whither bent,
And wherefore?" As by speech of man amazed,
One moment her deep look to me she lent;
Then, in a voice of hymn-like, solemn fall,
Calm, as by role, she spake out her intent:
"I in my cruse bear water, wherewithal
To quench the flames of Hell; and with my fire
I Paradise would burn: that hence no small
Fear shall impel, and no mean hope shall hire,
Men to serve God as they have served of yore;
But to his will shall set their whole desire,
For love, love, love alone, forevermore!"
And "love, love, love," rang round her as she passed
From sight, with mystic murmurs o'er and o'er
Reverbed from hollow heaven, as from some vast,
Deep-colored, vaulted, ocean-answering shell.
I, Ivo, had no power to ban or bless,
But was as one withholden by a spell.
Forward she fared in lofty loneliness,
Urged on by an imperious inward stress,
To waste fair Eden, and to drown fierce Hell.
MADONNA PIA
Ricordati di me, che son la Pia.
Siena mi fe; disfecomi Maremma;
Salsi colui, che, inanellata pria,
Disposato m'avea colla sua gemma.
_Purgatorio_, Canto V.
To westward lies the unseen sea,
Blue sea the live winds wander o'er.
The many-colored sails can flee,
And leave the dead, low-lying shore.
Her longing does not seek the main,
Her face turns northward first at morn;
There, crowning all the wide champaign,
Siena stood, where she was born.
Siena stands, and still shall stand;
She ne'er shall see or town or tower.
Warm life and beauty, hand in hand,
Steal farther from her hour by hour.
Yet forth she leans, with trembling knees,
And northward will she stare and stare
Through that thick wall of cypress-trees,
And sigh adown the stirless air:
"Shall no remembrance in Siena linger
Of me, once fair, whom slow Maremma slays?
As well he knows, whose ring upon my finger
Hath sealed for his alone mine earthly days!"
From wilds where shudders through the weeds
The dull, mean-headed, silent snake,
Like voiceless doubt that creeps and breeds;
From swamps where sluggish waters take,
As lives unblest a passing love,
The flag-flower's image in the spring,
Or seem, when flits the bird above,
To stir within with shadowed wing,
A Presence mounts in pallid mist
To fold her close: she breathes its breath;
She waxes wan, by Fever kissed,
Who weds her for his master, Death,
Aside are set her dimmed hopes all,
She counts no more the uncurrent hoard;
On gray Death's neck she fain would fall,
To own him for her proper lord.
She minds the journey here by night:
When some red sudden torch would blaze,
She saw by fits, with childish fright,
The cork-trees twist beside the ways.
Like dancing demon shapes they showed,
With malice drunk; the bat beat by,
The owlet sobbed; on, on they rode,
She knew not where, she knows not why.
For Nello--when in piteous wise
She lifted up her look to ask,
Except the ever-burning eyes
His face was like a marble mask.
And so it always meets her now;
The tomb wherein at last he lies
Shall bear such carven lips and brow,
All save the ever-burning eyes.
Perchance it is his form alone
Doth stroke his hound, at meat doth sit,
And, for the soul that was his own,
A fiend awhile inhabits it;
While he sinks through the fiery throng,
Down, to fill an evil bond,
Since false conceit of others' wrong
Hath wrought him to a sin beyond.
But she--if when her years were glad
Vain fluttering thoughts were hers, that hid
Behind that gracious fame she had;
If e'er observance hard she did
That sinful men might call her saint,--
White-handed Pia, dovelike-eyed,--
The sick blank hours shall yet acquaint
Her heart with all her blameful pride.
And Death shall find her kneeling low,
And lift her to the porphyry stair,
And she from ledge to ledge shall go,
Stayed by the staff of that last prayer,
Until the high, sweet-singing wood
Whence folk are rapt to heaven, she win;
Therein the unpardoned never stood,
Nor may one Sorrow nest therein.
But through the Tuscan land shall beat
Her Sorrow, like a wounded bird;
And if her suit at Mary's feet
Avail, its moan shall yet be heard
By some just poet, who shall shed,
Whate'er the theme that leads his rhyme
Bright words like tears above her, dead,
Entreating of the after time:
"Among you let her mournful memory linger!
Siena bare her, whom Maremma slew;
And this dark lord, who gave her maiden finger
His ancient gem, the secret only knew."
TWO MOODS OF FAILURE
I
THE LAST CUP OF CANARY
Sir Harry Lovelock, 1645
So, the powder's low, and the larder's clean,
And surrender drapes, with its black impending,
All the stage for a sorry and sullen scene:
Yet indulge me my whim of a madcap ending!
Let us once more fill, ere the final chill,
Every vein with the glow of the rich canary!
Since the sweet hot liquor of life's to spill,
Of the last of the cellar what boots be chary?
Then hear the conclusion: I'll yield my breath,
But my leal old house and my good blade never!
Better one bitter kiss on the lips of Death
Than despoiled Defeat as a wife forever!
Let the faithful fire hold the walls in ward
Till the roof-tree crash! Be the smoke once riven
While we flash from the gate like a single sword,
True steel to the hilt, though in dull earth driven!
Do you frown, Sir Richard, above your ruff,
In the Holbein yonder? My deed ensures you!
For the flame like a fencer shall give rebuff
To your blades that blunder, you Roundhead boors, you!
And my ladies, a-row on the gallery wall,
Not a sing-song sergeant or corporal sainted
Shall pierce their breasts with his Puritan ball,
To annul the charms of the flesh, though painted!
I have worn like a jewel the life they gave;
As the ring in mine ear I can lightly lose it,
If my days be done, why, my days were brave!
If the end arrive, I as master choose it!
Then fill to the brim, and a health, I say,
To our liege King Charles, and I pray God bless him!
'T would amend worse vintage to drink dismay
To the clamorous mongrel pack that press him!
And a health to the fair women, past recall,
That like birds astray through the heart's hall flitted;
To the lean devil Failure last of all,
And the lees in his beard for a fiend outwitted!
II
THE YOUNG MAN CHARLES STUART REVIEWETH THE TROOPS ON BLACKHEATH
(Private Constant-in-Tribulation Joyce, _May_, 1660)
We were still as a wood without wind; as 't were set by a spell
Stayed the gleam on the steel cap, the glint on the slant petronel.
He to left of me drew down his grim grizzled lip with his teeth,--
I remember his look; so we grew like dumb trees on the heath.
But the people,--the people were mad as with store of new wine;
Oh, they cheered him, they capped him, they roared as he rode
down the line:
He that fled us at Worcester, the boy, the green brier-shoot, the son
Of the Stuart on whom for his sin the great judgment was done!
Swam before us the field of our shame, and our souls walked afar;
Saw the glory, the blaze of the sun bursting over Dunbar;
Saw the faces of friends, in the morn riding jocund to fight;
Saw the stern pallid faces again, as we saw them at night!
"O ye blessed, who died in the Lord! would to God that we too
Had so passed, only sad that we ceased his high justice to do,
With the words of the psalm on our lips that from Israel's once came,
How the Lord is a strong man of war; yea, the Lord is his name!
"Not for us, not for us! who have served for his kingdom seven years,
Yea, and yet other seven have we served, sweating blood, bleeding
tears,
For the kingdom of God and the saints! Rachel's beauty made bold,
Yet we bear but a Leah at last to a hearth that is cold!"
Burned the fire while I mused, while I gloomed; in the end came a call;
Settled o'er me a calm like a cloud, spake a voice still and small:
"Take thou Leah to bride, take thou Failure to bed and to board!
Thou shalt rear up new strengths at her knees; she is given
of the Lord!
"If with weight of his right hand, with power, he denieth to deal,
And the smoke clouds, and thunders of guns, and the lightnings
of steel,
Shall the cool silent dews of his grace, in a season of peace,
Not descend on the land, as of old, for a sign, on the fleece?
"Hath he cleft not the rock, to the yield of a stream that is sweet?
Hath he set in the ribs of the lion no honey for meat?
Can he bring not delight to the desert, and buds to the rod?
He will shine, he will visit his vine; he hath sworn, he is God!"
Then I thought of the gate I rode through on the roan that's
long dead,--
I remember the dawn was but pale, and the stars overhead;
Of the babe that is grown to a maid, and of Martha, my wife,
And the spring on the wolds far away, and gave thanks for my life!
THE STORY OF THE "ORIENT"
'T was a pleasant Sunday morning while the spring was in its glory,
English spring of gentle glory; smoking by his cottage door,
Florid-faced, the man-o'-war's-man told his white-head boy the story,
Noble story of Aboukir, told a hundred times before.
"Here, the _Theseus_--here, the _Vanguard_;" as he spoke
each name sonorous,--
_Minotaur, Defence, Majestic_, stanch old comrades of the brine,
That against the ships of Brucys made their broadsides roar
in chorus,--
Ranging daisies on his doorstone, deft he mapped the battle-line.
Mapped the curve of tall three-deckers, deft as might
a man left-handed,
Who had given an arm to England later on at Trafalgar.
While he poured the praise of Nelson to the child with eyes expanded,
Bright athwart his honest forehead blushed the scarlet cutlass-scar.
For he served aboard the _Vanguard_, saw the Admiral blind and bleeding
Borne below by silent sailors, borne to die as then they deemed.
Every stout heart sick but stubborn, fought the sea-dogs on unheeding,
Guns were cleared and manned and cleared, the battle thundered,
flashed, and screamed.
Till a cry swelled loud and louder,--towered on fire the
_Orient_ stately,
Brucys' flag-ship, she that carried guns a hundred and a score;
Then came groping up the hatchway he they counted dead but lately,
Came the little one-armed Admiral to guide the fight once more.
"'Lower the boats!' was Nelson's order."--
But the listening boy beside him,
Who had followed all his motions with an eager wide blue eye,
Nursed upon the name of Nelson till he half had deified him,
Here, with childhood's crude consistence, broke the tale
to question "Why?"
For by children facts go streaming in a throng that never pauses,
Noted not, till, of a sudden, thought, a sunbeam, gilds the motes,
All at once the known words quicken, and the child would deal
with causes.
Since to kill the French was righteous, why bade Nelson lower
the boats?
Quick the man put by the question. "But the _Orient_, none
could save her;
We could see the ships, the ensigns, clear as daylight by the flare;
And a many leaped and left her; but, God rest 'em! some were braver;
Some held by her, firing steady till she blew to God knows where."
At the shock, he said, the _Vanguard_ shook through all
her timbers oaken;
It was like the shock of Doomsday,--not a tar but shuddered hard.
All was hushed for one strange moment; then that awful calm was broken
By the heavy plash that answered the descent of mast and yard.
So, her cannon still defying, and her colors flaming, flying,
In her pit her wounded helpless, on her deck her Admiral dead,
Soared the _Orient_ into darkness with her living and her dying:
"Yet our lads made shift to rescue three-score souls," the seaman said.
Long the boy with knit brows wondered o'er that friending
of the foeman;
Long the man with shut lips pondered; powerless he to tell the cause
Why the brother in his bosom that desired the death of no man,
In the crash of battle wakened, snapped the bonds of hate like straws.