Athwart the way, and key in hand
Noiseless applies it, enters so
And vanishes. By dry airs fanned,
The languid hyssop waveth slow,
Dusty, on stones by ruin rent.
’Twould seem indeed the accomplishment
Whereof the greater prophet tells
In truth’s forecasting canticles
Where voice of bridegroom, groom and bride
Is hushed.
Each silent wall and lane—
The city’s towers in barren pride
Which still a stifling air detain,
So irked him, with his burden fraught,
Timely the Jaffa Gate he sought,
Thence issued, and at venture went
Along a vague and houseless road
Save narrow houses where abode
The Turk in man’s last tenement
Inearthed. But them he heeded not,
Such trance his reveries begot:
“Christ lived a Jew: and in Judæa
May linger any breath of Him?
If nay, yet surely it is here
One best may learn if all be dim.”
Sudden it came in random play
“Here to Emmaus is the way;”
And Luke’s narration straight recurred,
How the two falterers’ hearts were stirred
Meeting the Arisen (then unknown)
And listening to his lucid word
As here in place they traveled on.
That scene, in Clarel’s temper, bred
A novel sympathy, which said—
I too, I too; could I but meet
Some stranger of a lore replete,
Who, marking how my looks betray
The dumb thoughts clogging here my feet,
Would question me, expound and prove,
And make my heart to burn with love—
Emmaus were no dream to-day!
He lifts his eyes, and, outlined there,
Saw, as in answer to the prayer,
A man who silent came and slow
Just over the intervening brow
Of a nigh slope. Nearer he drew
Revealed against clear skies of blue;
And—in that Syrian air of charm—
He seemed, illusion such was given,
Emerging from the level heaven,
And vested with its liquid calm.
Scarce aged like time’s wrinkled sons,
But touched by chastenings of Eld,
Which halloweth life’s simpler ones;
In wasted strength he seemed upheld
Invisibly by faith serene—
Paul’s evidence of things not seen.
No staff he carried; but one hand
A solitary Book retained.
Meeting the student’s, his mild eyes
Fair greeting gave, in faint surprise.
But, noting that untranquil face,
Concern and anxiousness found place
Beyond the occasion and surmise:
“Young friend in Christ, what thoughts molest
That here ye droop so? Wanderest
Without a guide where guide should be?
Receive one, friend: the book—take ye.”
From man to book in startled way
The youth his eyes bent. Book how gray
And weather-stained in woeful plight—
Much like that scroll left bare to blight,
Which poet pale, when hope was low,
Bade one who into Libya went,
Fling to the wasteful element,
Yes, leave it there, let wither so.
Ere Clarel ventured on reply
Anew the stranger proffered it,
And in such mode he might espy
It was the page of—Holy Writ.
Then unto him drew Clarel nigher:
“Thou art?” “The sinner Nehemiah.”
8. THE VOTARY
Sinner?—So spake the saint, a man
Long tarrying in Jewry’s court.
With him the faith so well could sort
His home he’d left, nor turned again,
His home by Narraganset’s marge,
Giving those years on death which verge
Fondly to that enthusiast part
Oft coming of a stricken heart
Unselfish, which finds solace so.
Though none in sooth might hope to know,
And few surmise his forepast bane,
Lone liver was, or wanderer met,
Except he closeted some pain
Or memory thereof. But thence,
May be, was given him deeper sense
Of all that travail life can lend,
Which man may scarce articulate
Better than herds which share. What end?
How hope? turn whither? where was gate
For expectation, save the one
Of beryl, pointed by St. John?
That gate would open, yea, and Christ
Thence issue, come unto His own,
And earth be re-imparadised.
Passages, presages he knew:
Zion restore, convert the Jew,
Reseat him here, the waste bedew;
Then Christ returneth: so it ran.
No founded mission chartered him;
Single in person as in plan,
Absorbed he ranged, in method dim,
A flitting tract-dispensing man:
Tracts in each text scribe ever proved
In East which he of Tarsus roved.
Though well such heart might sainthood claim,
Unjust alloy to reverence came.
In Smyrna’s mart (sojourning there
Waiting a ship for Joppa’s stair)
Pestered he passed thro’ Gentile throngs
Teased by an eddying urchin host,
His tracts all fluttering like tongues
The fire-flakes of the Pentecost.
Deep read he was in seers devout,
The which forecast Christ’s second prime,
And on his slate would cipher out
The mystic days and dates sublime,
And “Time and times and half a time”
Expound he could; and more reveal;
Yet frequent would he feebly steal
Close to one’s side, asking, in way
Of weary age—the hour of day.
But how he lived, and what his fare,
Ravens and angels, few beside,
Dreamed or divined. His garments spare
True marvel seemed, nor unallied
To clothes worn by that wandering band
Which ranged and ranged the desert sand
With Moses; and for forty years,
Which two-score times re-clad the spheres
In green, and plumed the birds anew,
One vesture wore. From home he brought
The garb which still met sun and dew,
Ashen in shade, by rustics wrought.
Latin, Armenian, Greek, and Jew
Full well the harmless vagrant kenned,
The small meek face, the habit gray:
In him they owned our human clay.
The Turk went further: let him wend;
Him Allah cares for, holy one:
A Santon held him; and was none
Bigot enough scorn’s shaft to send.
For, say what cynic will or can,
Man sinless is revered by man
Thro’ all the forms
which creeds may lend.
And so, secure, nor pointed at,
Among brave Turbans freely roamed the Hat.
9. SAINT AND STUDENT
“Nay, take it, friend in Christ,” and held
The book in proffer new; the while
His absent eyes of dreamy Eld
Some floating vision did beguile
(Of heaven perchance the wafted hem),
As if in place of earthly wight
A haze of spirits met his sight,
And Clarel were but one of them.
“Consult it, heart; wayfarer you,
And this a friendly guide, the best;
No ground there is that faith would view
But here ’tis rendered with the rest;
The way to fields of Beulah dear
And New Jerusalem is here.”
“I know that guide,” said Clarel, “yes;”
And mused awhile in bitterness;
Then turned and studied him again,
Doubting and marveling. A strain
Of trouble seamed the elder brow:
“A pilgrim art thou? pilgrim thou?”
Words simple, which in Clarel bred
More than the simple saint divined;
And, thinking of vocation fled,
Himself he asked: or do I rave,
Or have I left now far behind
The student of the sacred lore?
“I am a traveler—no more.”
“Come then with me, in peace we’ll go;
These ways of Salem well I know;
Me let be guide whose guide is this,”
And held the Book in witness so,
As ’twere a guide that could not miss:
“Heart, come with me; all times I roam,
Yea, everywhere my work I ply,
In Salem’s lanes, or down in gloom
Of narrow glens which outer lie:
Ever I find some passer-by.
But thee I’m sent to; share and rove,
With me divide the scrip of love.”
Despite the old man’s shattered ray,
Won by his mystic saintly way,
Revering too his primal faith,
And grateful for the human claim;
And deeming he must know each path,
And help him so in languid frame—
The student gave assent, and caught
Dim solacement to previous thought.
10. RAMBLES
Days fleet. They rove the storied ground—
Tread many a site that rues the ban
Where serial wrecks on wrecks confound
Era and monument and man;
Or rather, in stratifying way
Bed and impact and overlay.
The Hospitalers’ cloisters shamed
Crumble in ruin unreclaimed
On shivered Fatimite palaces
Reared upon crash of Herod’s sway—
In turn built on the Maccabees,
And on King David’s glory, they;
And David on antiquities
Of Jebusites and Ornan’s floor,
And hunters’ camps of ages long before.
So Glenroy’s tiers of beaches be—
Abandoned margins of the Glacial Sea.
Amid that waste from joy debarred,
How few the islets fresh and green;
Yet on Moriah, tree and sward
In Allah’s courts park-like were seen
From roof near by; below, fierce ward
Being kept by Mauritanian guard
Of bigot blacks. But of the reign
Of Christ did no memento live
Save soil and ruin? Negative
Seemed yielded in that crumbling fane,
Erst gem to Baldwin’s sacred fief,
The chapel of our Dame of Grief.
But hard by Ophel’s winding base,
Well watered by the runnel led,
A spot they found, not lacking grace,
Named Garden of King Solomon,
Tho’ now a cauliflower-bed
To serve the kitchens of the town.
One day as here they came from far,
The saint repeated with low breath,
“Adonijah, Adonijah—
The stumbling-stone of Zoheleth.”
He wanders, Clarel thought—but no,
For text and chapter did he show
Narrating how the prince in glade,
This very one, the banquet made,
The plotters’ banquet, long ago,
Even by the stone named Zoheleth;
But startled by the trump that blew,
Proclaiming Solomon, pale grew
With all his guests.
From lower glen
They slanted up the steep, and there
Attained a higher terraced den,
Or small and silent field, quite bare.
The mentor breathed: “Come early here
A sign thou’lt see.” —Clarel drew near;
“What sign?” he asked. Whereto with sighs:
“Abashed by morning’s holy eyes
This field will crimson, and for shame.”
Struck by his fantasy and frame,
Clarel regarded him for time,
Then noted that dull reddish soil,
And caught sight of a thing of grime
Whose aspect made him to recoil—
A rotting charnel-house forlorn
Midway inearthed, caved in and torn.
And Clarel knew—one scarce might err—
The field of blood, the bad Aceldama.
By Olivet in waning day
The saint in fond illusion went,
Dream mixed with legend and event;
And as with reminiscence fraught,
Narrated in his rambling way
How here at eve was Christ’s resort,
The last low sheep-bell tinkling lone—
Christ and the dear disciple—John.
Oft by the Golden Gate that looks
On Shaveh down, and far across
Toward Bethany’s secluded nooks—
That gate which sculptures rare emboss
In arches twin; the same where rode
Christ entering with secret load—
Same gate, or on or near the site—
When palms were spread to left and right
Before him, and with sweet acclaim
Were waved by damsels under sway
Of trees wherefrom those branches came—
Over and under palms He went
Unto that crown how different!
The port walled up by Moslem hands
In dread of that predicted day
When pealing hymns, armed Christian bands—
So Islam seers despondent vouch—
Shall storm it, wreathed in Mary’s May:
By that sealed gate, in languor’s slouch,
How listless in the golden day,
Clarel the mentor frequent heard
The time for Christ’s return allot:
A dream, and like a dream it blurred
The sense—faded, and was forgot.
Moved by some mystic impulse, far
From motive known or regular,
The saint would thus his lore unfold,
Though inconclusive; yes, half told
The theme he’d leave, then nod, droop, doze—
Start up and prattle—sigh, and close.
11. LOWER GIHON
Well for the student, might it last,
This dreamful frame which Lethe bred:
Events obtruded, and it passed.
For on a time the twain were led
From Gihon’s upper pool and glade
Down to the deeper gulf. They strayed
Along by many silent cells
Cut in the rock, void citadels
Of death. In porch of one was seen
A mat of tender turf, faint green;
And quiet standing on that sward
A stranger whom they overheard
Low murmuring—“Equivocal!
Woo’st thou the weary to thee—tell,
Thou tomb, so winsome in thy grace?
To me no reassuring place.”
He saw them not; and they, to shun
Disturbing him, passed, and anon
Met three demoniacs, sad three
Ranging those wasteful limits o’er
As in old time. That look they wore
Which in the moody mad bids flee;
’Tis—What have I to do with thee?
Two shunned approach. But one did sit
Lost in some reminiscence sore
Of private wrong outrageous. He,
As at the larger orb of it,
Looming through mists of mind, would bound,
Or cease to pore upon the ground
As late; and so be inly riven
By arrows of indignant pain:
Convulsed in face, he glared at heaven
Then lapsed in sullenness again.
Dire thoughts the pilgrim’s mind beset:
“And did Christ come? in such a scene
Encounter the poor Gadarene
Long centuries ago? and yet—
Behold!”
But here came in review—
Though of their nearness unaware—
The stranger, downward wending there,
Who marking Clarel, instant knew—
At least so might his start declare—
A brother that he well might own
In tie of spirit. Young he was,
With crescent forehead—but alas,
Of frame mis-shaped. Word spake he none,
But vaguely hovered, as may one
Not first who would accost, but deep
Under reserve the wish may keep.
Ere Clarel, here embarrassed grown,
Made recognition, the Unknown
Compressed his lips, turned and was gone.
Mutely for moment, face met face:
But more perchance between the two
Was interchanged than e’en may pass
In many a worded interview.