Alone, and when the day’s declined—
So that the shadow from the stone
Whereon the angel sat is thrown
To distance more, and sigh or sound
Echoes from place of Mary’s moan,
Or cavern where the cross was found;
Or mouse-stir steals upon the ear
From where the soldier reached the spear—
Shrink, much like Ludovico erst
Within the haunted chamber. Thou,
Less sensitive, yet haply versed
In everything above, below—
In all but thy deep human heart;
Thyself perchance mayst nervous start
At thine own fancy’s final range
Who here wouldst mock: with mystic smart
The subtile Eld can slight avenge.
But gibe—gibe on, until there crawl
About thee in the scorners’ seat,
Reactions; and pride’s Smyrna shawl
Plague-strike the wearer. Ah, retreat!
But how of some which still deplore
Yet share the doubt? Here evermore
’Tis good for such to turn afar
From the Skull’s place, even Golgotha,
And view the cedarn dome in sun
Pierced like the marble Pantheon:
No blurring pane, but open sky:
In there day peeps, there stars go by,
And, in still hours which these illume,
Heaven’s dews drop tears upon the Tomb.
Nor lack there dreams romance can thrill:
In hush when tides and towns are still,
Godfrey and Baldwin from their graves
(Made meetly near the rescued Stone)
Rise, and in arms. With beaming glaives
They watch and ward the urn they won.
So fancy deals, a light achiever:
Imagination, earnest ever,
Recalls the Friday far away,
Re-lives the crucifixion day—
The passion and its sequel proves,
Sharing the three pale Marys’ frame;
Thro’ the eclipse with these she moves
Back to the house from which they came
To Golgotha. O empty room,
O leaden heaviness of doom—
O cowering hearts, which sore beset
Deem vain the promise now, and yet
Invoke him who returns no call;
And fears for more that may befall.
O terror linked with love which cried
“Art gone? is’t o’er? and crucified?”
Who might foretell from such dismay
Of blank recoilings, all the blest
Lilies and anthems which attest
The floral Easter holiday?
4. OF THE CRUSADERS
When sighting first the towers afar
Which girt the object of the war
And votive march—the Saviour’s Tomb,
What made the red-cross knights so shy?
And wherefore did they doff the plume
And baldrick, kneel in dust, and sigh?
Hardly it serves to quote Voltaire
And say they were freebooters—hence,
Incapable of awe or sense
Pathetic; no, for man is heir
To complex moods; and in that age
Belief devout and bandit rage
Frequent were joined; and e’en to-day
At shrines on the Calabrian steep—
Not insincere while feelings sway—
The brigand halts to adore, to weep.
Grant then the worst—is all romance
Which claims that the crusader’s glance
Was blurred by tears?
But if that round
Of disillusions which accrue
In this our day, imply a ground
For more concern than Tancred knew,
Thinking, yet not as in despair,
Of Christ who suffered for him there
Upon the crag; then, own it true,
Cause graver much than his is ours
At least to check the hilarious heart
Before these memorable towers.
But wherefore this? such theme why start?
Because if here in many a place
The rhyme—much like the knight indeed—
Abjure brave ornament, ’twill plead
Just reason, and appeal for grace.
5. CLAREL
Clarel is up, and seeks the Urn.
Advancing towards the fane’s old arch
Of entrance—curved in sculptured stone,
Dim and defaced, he saw thereon
From rural Bethany the march
Of Christ into another gate—
The golden and triumphal one,
Upon Palm Morn. For porch to shrine
On such a site, how fortunate
That adaptation of design.
Well might it please.
He entered then.
Strangers were there, of each degree,
From Asian shores, with island men,
Mild guests of the Epiphany.
As when to win the Paschal joy
And Nisan’s festal month renew,
The Nazarenes to temple drew,
Even Joseph, Mary, and the BOY,
Whose hand the mother’s held; so here
To later rites and altars dear,
Domestic in devotion’s flame
Husbands with wives and children came.
But he, the student, under dome
Pauses; he stands before the Tomb.
Through open door he sees the wicks
Alight within, where six and six
For Christ’s apostles, night and day,
Lamps, olden lamps do burn. In smoke
Befogged they shed no vivid ray,
But heat the cell and seem to choke.
He marked, and revery took flight:
“These burn not like those aspects bright
Of starry watchers when they kept
Vigil at napkined feet and head
Of Him their Lord.—Nay, is He fled?
Or tranced lies, tranced nor unbewept
With Dorian gods? or, fresh and clear,
A charm diffused throughout the sphere,
Streams in the ray through yonder dome?
Not hearsed He is. But hath ghost home
Dispersed in soil, in sea, in air?
False Pantheism, false though fair!”
So he; and slack and aimless went,
Nor might untwine the ravelment
Of doubts perplexed. For easement there
Halting awhile in pillared shade,
A friar he marked, in robe of blue
And round Greek cap of sable hue:
Poor men he led; much haste he made,
Nor sequence kept, but dragged them so
Hither and thither, to and fro,
To random places. Might it be
That Clarel, who recoil did here,
Shared but that shock of novelty
Which makes some Protestants unglad
First viewing the mysterious cheer
In Peter’s fane? Beheld he had,
In Rome beneath the Lateran wall,
The Scala Santa—watched the knees
Of those ascending devotees,
Who, absolution so to reap,
Breathe a low prayer at every step.
Nay, ’twas no novelty at all.
Nor was it that his nature shrunk
But from the curtness of the monk:
Another influence made swerve
And touched him in profounder nerve.
He turned, and passing on enthralled,
Won a still chapel; and one spake
The name. Brief Scripture, here recalled,
The context less obscure may make:
’Tis writ that in a garden’s bound
Our Lord was urned. On that green ground
He reappeared, by Mary claimed.
The place, or place alleged, is shown—
Arbors congealed to vaults of stone—
The Apparition’s chapel named.
This was the spot where now, in frame
Hard to depict, the student came—
The spot where in the dawning gray,
His pallor with night’s tears bedewed,
Restored the Second Adam stood—
Not as in Eden stood the First
All ruddy. Yet, in leaves immersed
And twilight of imperfect day,
Christ seemed the gardener unto her
Misjudging, who in womanhood
Had sought him late in sepulchre
Embowered, nor found.
Here, votive here—
Here by the shrine that Clarel won—
A wreath shed odors. Scarce that cheer
Warmed some poor Greeks recumbent thrown,
Sore from late journeying far and near,
To hallowed haunts without the town;
So wearied, that no more they kneeled,
But over night here laid them down,
Matrons and children, yet unhealed
Of ache. And each face was a book
Of disappointment. “Why weep’st thou?
Whom seekest?”—words, which chanceful now
Recalled by Clarel, he applied
To these before him; and he took,
In way but little modified,
Part to himself; then stood in dream
Of all which yet might hap to them.
He saw them spent, provided ill—
Pale, huddled in the pilgrim fleet,
Back voyaging now to homes afar.
Midnight, and rising tempests beat—
Such as St. Paul knew—furious war,
To meet which, slender is the skill.
The lamp that burnt upon the prow
In wonted shrine, extinct is now—
Drowned out with Heaven’s last feeble star.
Panic ensues; their course is turned;
Toward Tyre they drive—Tyre undiscerned:
A coast of wrecks which warping bleach
On wrecks of piers where eagles screech.
How hopeful from their isles serene
They sailed, and on such tender quest;
Then, after toils that came between,
They re-embarked; and, tho’ distressed,
Grieved not, for Zion had been seen;
Each wearing next the heart for charm
Some priestly scrip in leaf of palm.
But these, ah, these in Dawn’s pale reign
Asleep upon beach Tyrian!
Or is it sleep? no, rest—that rest
Which naught shall ruffle or molest.
In gliding turn of dreams which mate
He saw from forth Damascus’ gate
Tall Islam in her Mahmal go—
Elected camel, king of all,
In mystic housings draped in flow,
Silk-fringed, with many a silver ball,
Worked ciphers on the Koran’s car
And Sultan’s cloth. He hears the jar
Of janizaries armed, a throng
Which drum barbaric, shout and gong
Invest. And camels—robe and shawl
Of riders which they bear along—
Each sheik a pagod on his tower,
Cross-legged and dusky. Therewithal,
In affluence of the opal hour,
Curveting troops of Moslem peers
And flash of scimeters and spears
In groves of grass-green pennons fair,
(Like Feiran’s palms in fanning air,)
Wherefrom the crescent silvery soars.
Then crowds pell-mell, a concourse wild,
Convergings from Levantine shores;
On foot, on donkeys; litters rare—
Whole families; twin panniers piled;
Rich men and beggars—all beguiled
To cheerful trust in Allah’s care;
Allah, toward whose prophet’s urn
And Holy City, fond they turn
As forth in pilgrimage they fare.
But long the way. And when they note,
Ere yet they pass wide suburbs green,
Some camp in field, nor far remote,
Inviting, pastoral in scene;
Some child shall leap, and trill in glee
“Mecca, ’tis Mecca, mother—see!”
Then first she thinks upon the waste
Whither the Simoom maketh haste;
Where baskets of the white-ribbed dead
Sift the fine sand, while dim ahead
In long, long line, their way to tell,
The bones of camels bleaching dwell,
With skeletons but part interred—
Relics of men which friendless fell;
Whose own hands, in last office, scooped
Over their limbs the sand, but drooped:
Worse than the desert of the Word,
El Tih, the great, the terrible.
Ere town and tomb shall greet the eye
Many shall fall, nor few shall die
Which, punctual at set of sun,
Spread the worn prayer-cloth on the sand,
Turning them toward the Mecca stone,
Their shadows ominously thrown
Oblique against the mummy land.
These pass; they fade. What next comes near?
The tawny peasants—human wave
Which rolls over India year by year,
India, the spawning place and grave.
The turbaned billow floods the plains,
Rolling toward Brahma’s rarer fanes—
His Compostel or brown Loret
Where sin absolved, may grief forget.
But numbers, plague-struck, faint and sore,
Drop livid on the flowery shore—
Arrested, with the locusts sleep,
Or pass to muster where no man may peep.
That vision waned. And, far afloat,
From eras gone he caught the sound
Of hordes from China’s furthest moat,
Crossing the Himalayan mound,
To kneel at shrine or relic so
Of Buddha, the Mongolian Fo
Or Indian Saviour. What profound
Impulsion makes these tribes to range?
Stable in time’s incessant change
Now first he marks, now awed he heeds
The intersympathy of creeds,
Alien or hostile tho’ they seem—
Exalted thought or groveling dream.
The worn Greek matrons mark him there:
Ah, young, our lassitude dost share?
Home do thy pilgrim reveries stray?
Art thou too, weary of the way?—
Yes, sympathies of Eve awake;
Yet do but err. For how might break
Upon those simple natures true,
The complex passion? might they view
The appre
hension tempest-tossed,
The spirit in gulf of dizzying fable lost?
6. TRIBES AND SECTS
He turned to go; he turned, but stood:
In many notes of varying keys,
From shrines like coves in Jordan’s wood
Hark to the rival liturgies,
Which, rolling underneath the dome,
Resound about the patient Tomb
And penetrate the aisles. The rite
Of Georgian and Maronite,
Armenian and fervid Greek,
The Latin organ, and wild clash
Of cymbals smitten cheek to cheek
Which the dark Abyssinian sways;
These like to tides together dash
And question of their purport raise.
If little of the words he knew,
Might Clarel’s fancy forge a clue?
A malediction seemed each strain—
Himself the mark: O heart profane,
O pilgrim-infidel, begone!
Nor here the sites of Faith pollute,
Thou who misgivest we enthrone
A God untrue, in myth absurd
As monstrous figments blabbed of Jove,
Or, worse, rank lies of Islam’s herd:
We know thee, thou there standing mute.
Out, out—begone! try Nature’s reign
Who deem’st the super-nature vain:
To Lot’s Wave by black Kedron rove;
On, by Mount Seir, through Edom move;
There crouch thee with the jackall down—
Crave solace of the scorpion!
’Twas fancy, troubled fancy weaved
Those imputations half believed.
The porch he neared; the chorus swelled;
He went forth like a thing expelled.
Yet, going, he could but recall
The wrangles here which oft befall:
Contentions for each holy place,
And jealousies how far from grace:
O, bickering family bereft,
Was feud the heritage He left?
7. BEYOND THE WALLS
In street at hand a silence reigns
Which Nature’s hush of loneness feigns.
Few casements, few, and latticed deep,
High raised above the head below,
That none might listen, pry, or peep,
Or any hint or inkling know
Of that strange innocence or sin
Which locked itself so close within.
The doors, recessed in massy walls,
And far apart, as dingy were
As Bastile gates. No shape astir
Except at whiles a shadow falls