Collected Poems (11 page)

(D
AVID
,
with a terrible cry, flings himself on
H
UGO
,
hurls him to the floor, strangles him
. G
UIDO
with difficulty pulls him off
.)

G
UIDO
.    Which is his cell?

D
AVID
.    To the right, the last.

(D
AVID
lies sobbing on the floor, while
G
UIDO
takes
H
UGO
out and returns
.)

G
UIDO
.    There is some wickedness I had not guessed.

D
AVID
    (
beside himself
). I was one! I was one!

G
UIDO
.    What do you mean?

D
AVID
.    I was a child-crusader! The dog! The dog!

    Then they, too, failed. No man had heard their fate.

    I thought they sailed and reached the Sepulchre!

    There is no justice and no right,

    No pity and no kindness in the world!

    Only the vile things prosper and live on.

    Where is your God?

G
UIDO
.    I know not. I know nothing … But you —

    Were you a child-crusader there in France?

D
AVID
.    Oh, no. Listen, Guido! Here’s my life!

(D
AVID
pauses to control himself, then proceeds with suppressed passion
.)

    I was a shepherd boy beyond the Rhine.

    A hilltop was my home. All summer there

    I’d watch my flocks about me pasturing.

    I could throw a stone and hit the road below me;

    It was the road that led out to the world.

    All day I’d lie and watch from the deep grass

    The marvelous people passing — troubadours

    With viol da gambas on their backs and singing;

    Fat priests and friars, sometimes a cardinal,

    And green and scarlet pages, little like me, —

    I’d halloa down to them — and then the knights,

    Always the noble knights with flashing mail

    And retinues of stalwart men-at-arms.

    The proudest-seeming always journeyed south,

    Seeking Christ’s Sepulchre, they said. They said

    The infidels had made it theirs somehow,

    
Ruined and fouled and desecrated it;

    And if God’s knights could capture it again,

    The sins o’ the world would pass, and every sorrow,

    And likely Christ would come again unto His own,

    And somehow there were wings through all the air

    In those first days. In the deep silence when

    The sun stood still at noon and the flocks slept,

    I’d hear, I thought, the angels all about me;

    They walked among my sheep upon my hill.

    And something always was about to break

    Between another world and me.

    I waited and was sure, some day, quite soon,

    A glory would come true and I would kneel

    I’ the grass and see the Lord before me, close,

    Yes, close enough to touch and talk to. Then one day

    I found what I’d been wishing for so long.

    Down on the road, far off, behind the hill,

    I heard a hundred voices singing, not

    Gleemen or pages, but like seraphim.

    I knelt and waited, and the sheep were still.

    Louder the singing grew and louder, then

    Around the hillside into the sun they burst,

    A host of children, a heavenly host,

    With crosses in their hands and on their breasts.

    They called to me and I came down and left my flock

    And went with them, a soldier of the Christ.…

    Guido, Guido, Guido, it was not fair!

    We were so sure of God, we meant so well!

    He let us starve and rot among the fields,

    He lost us in the snow and ice of mountains,

    We died, and died, and died, but still pushed on,

    
For we were only children and believed.

G
UIDO
.    And those that did not die?

D
AVID
.                                                  Half-frozen, starved,

    We staggered from the dreadful mountain pass

    And saw beneath us in the sunlight Italy.

    We thought it was the Promised Land. In tears,

    With arms around the weaker ones, we hurried

    Down the great mountain side to meet the Christ.

G
UIDO
.    If only this could be a lie or dream!

D
AVID
.    We knew the end was surely near. We wove

    Garlands and wreaths to lay upon His Tomb.

    Our leader was a lad named Nicholas —

    When souls are sacreder than his they will

    Not take the flesh! … One night he called us round

    And climbed upon a gateway in our midst

    And spoke to us.

    His face shone in the dark.

    He said, a final test the Lord had laid —

    Across our path He’d stretched the mighty sea.

    The children, terrified, broke into sobs;

    But Nicholas called, not loudly, but the way he had,

    “In olden times a children’s army marched

    Across the sea dry-shod; and they, indeed,

    Were children but of one named Israel,

    While we are Christ’s!

    The sea will hedge itself on either side

    And leave a path for us to walk between.”

    So we believed and sang beneath the stars.

    The next day, verily, we saw the sea

    And Genoa, beneath whose walls we camped.

    Nicholas named the following dawn as hour

    
When we should march dry-shod across the sea.

    How happy we who had been faithful to the end!

    Our labors all were done. We could not sleep.

    Long before dawn I went to Nicholas

    And knelt and begged that I might be

    Among the first of them that walked into the sea.

    He flung his arms around me and cried out,

    “David, we two shall lead the lambs of God.”

    After a long, long time the dawn began:

    The army knelt and prayed together the last time,

    And rose, and with their flowers and their roods

    Marched solemnly unto the water’s edge;

    And first of all went Nicholas and I.

    The water touched my shoes and did not part;

    But yet I knew it would and kept right on.

    Deeper and deeper — my knees — my waist — the cold

    Stole to my heart — the prayers died out within me.

    But I kept on. And I was blind before

    The water reached my eyes and smothered me.

G
UIDO
.    And then?

D
AVID
.    I lay on the beach in the sun,

    People laughing and shouting around …

G
UIDO
.    That was the end?

D
AVID
.    The end. The lambs were scattered.

    In time they hid themselves about the world.

G
UIDO
.    And you?

D
AVID
.    A little band that still could not believe

    God would so fool and trap them, went to Rome

    To tell Christ’s shepherd there, the Pope.

    I went along, not knowing where to go.

G
UIDO
.    The Holy Father said?

D
AVID
.    That we were disobedient, pert children,

    That we should go with speed back to our homes,

    That we might win forgiveness if, when grown,

    We took the sword to win Christ’s Sepulchre.

    So I knew that the world was bad, and one

    Must live in it awhile like any beast.

    I stole away, came here, and — here I am.

    That is my life!

    You say the world is beautiful, the spring

    Is God’s, that road is lately trod by Christ —

    Lies! lies! God is not here! I don’t believe!

(
It has grown dusk. The old man suddenly rises and strides forward to
D
AVID
.
He seems tall and fearful; his voice is terrible
.)

S
ERLE DE
L
ANLARAZON
. He is! Thou
dost
believe! Naught else so plain!

    Dost think this marvelous, shining soul of thine,

    That will not shatter into common vileness,

    Though tested with the blows of agony,

    Can be a cup for aught but heavenly wine?

    Lo, thou dost brim with God!

G
UIDO
.    Who art thou, strange and terrible old man?

S
ERLE
.    Serle de Lanlarazon, the heretic!

    I, too, was once a soldier of the Lord,

    O shepherd boy, and I, too, met defeat.

    They that were noblest of the sons of men

    I have seen butchered, and the land of all

    Lands peacefulest ravished and soaked in blood!

    Mine eyes beheld five hundred women burned

    At Carcassonne — they walked into the flames

    As into lovers’ arms! When Béziers fell,

    
They that were burned, women and boys and babes,

    Escaped such tortures and abominations

    As made the flames seem tenderer than sleep.

    Yet, blinded by injustice too clear seen,

    Shall I denial make of Him that steels

    This vile and coward soul of ours

    To unendurable and gainless agonies?

    Yea, verily, His acts, seen singly, take

    The cast of madness, and but momently

    We see what is as wisdom. Yet behold,

    Nothing can goad the bleeding soul of man

    Unto sublimity that tops the stars,

    Like undeservèd wrong and mad injustice!

    These women that died horribly for faith,

    Your children urged to folly by a dream,

    The broken spirits of the world that are

    Its torches — these are the testament of fire

    Struck from the flint! What hand but His

    Could draw from this poor stuff of ours — Light!

    Who sees the flame hath seen divinity!

G
UIDO
.    What was the evil that your people wrought

    There in Provence to earn such punishment?

S
ERLE
.    They saw the truth and dared to speak it loud!

    Against them stood the Church of Rome, once pure,

    But now become as foul as leprosy!

                                        (D
AVID
and
G
UIDO
are horrified
.)

    We fearlessly cried out, “Unclean, unclean!

    Beseech the healing hands of Christ, proud Rome.”

G
UIDO
    (
aside to
D
AVID
). He does not know!

S
ERLE
.    But she that called herself the church of Christ,

    Hearing the truth, slew them that dared to speak.

G
UIDO
.    What need was there to speak? In Sicily,

    We see her faults, as you, but let them be.

S
ERLE
.    Then ye are cowards!

    My people have a more heroic heart.

    Wilt call it life to see the truth struck down

    And not unsheathe thy sword in her defense?

    Wilt call it life to hear the voice of God

    But cravenly to hide and mute the tidings?

    Life, life —

    Is’t not the test of all we know as good

    Embattled ‘gainst the all we know as evil,

    The Eternal Right against the Eternal Wrong?

    O child, the perfume and the bloom of life,

    Youth’s song of yearning underneath the moon,

    These fade. But there’s a splendor never fades;

    And he enlisting as God’s knight-at-arms

    Wages a fight that has not any end,

    Whose prize more sacred is than Palestine,

    Whose gain’s no tomb, but an eternal life.

D
AVID
.    Then thou’dst not counsel us to cross the sea

    And go crusading to Jerusalem?

S
ERLE
.    His fight is not across the seas, but here!

G
UIDO
.    Then were the battles that my heroes fought —

    Richard and Godfrey and the rest — all wrong?

S
ERLE
.    Nay, nay. Somehow, it is God’s deep desire

    That stirs the hearts of men to that adventure.

    But ’tis a fool’s adventure! To you, to me,

    How could His Tomb more potent be to save

    Than any field of earth where flowers grow?

    The noble striving’s everything, and Christ

    In kindness let them fail! …

    
Yet, fairer far the quest for that poor Tomb

    Than all the wars that men have waged before

    For hate or gain or merely idleness.…

    The world grows better.… Thou sayest Simon’s dead?

D
AVID
.    Ay.

S
ERLE
.    And Innocent that preached the war?

D
AVID
.    Dead, too.

S
ERLE
.    And there is peace ’twixt heretic and Church?

D
AVID
.    The wars have ceased.

G
UIDO
.    And there’s for emperor

    A friend of truth, no matter how bedight —

    A host to all the wisdom of the world

    Though hailing from Provence or India.

    Arab and Jew, Mohammedan and Greek,

    Find courtesy and hearing in Palermo.

S
ERLE
.    Have I not heard the coming of the Lord?

    The darkness giveth forth much inner light

    And loneliness lets in diviner guests.

    The years of my captivity have brought

    Much wisdom I had missed. Even, I trace

    Nobility in them that tortured us!

    Simon and Innocent worked for a God

    That is my God, although their work was mad

    And evil only. We who swore that Evil was

    Itself eternal and not born of Good,

    Who died for that belief, we were not wholly wise.

    It is a truth, but one forgetting which

    Need vary not one whit the lives of men.

    All know that good and evil are at war,

    And in that war all lordly souls enlist,

    
Roman or heretic or infidel.

    What matter the first cause? For battle-cry

    To all the gallantry beneath the stars,

    Two words suffice: “He is!” …

    I long for but one thing before I die —

    Not to incite my people ’gainst the Pope,

    Nor bear the southern standard in the strife,

    But to assure them of the living God.…

    Across the edges of the world there blows a wind

    Mysterious with perfume of a spring;

    A spring that is not of the kindling earth,

    That’s more than scent of bloom or gleam of bud;

    The spring of God in flower!

    Down there where neither sun nor air came through,

    I felt it blow across my dungeon walls —

    The wind before the footsteps of the Lord!

    It bloweth now across the world;

    It strangely stirs the hearts of men; wars cease;

    Rare deeds familiar grow; fastings and prayers,

    Forgiveness, poverty; temples are built

    On visioned impulses, and children march

    On journeys with no end.

    Far off, far off He comes,

    And we are swept upon our knees

    As meadow grasses kneeling to the wind.

G
UIDO
.    Thou man of God!