And scarce would wait such deeds to be done:
God send their snares be the worst to shun.’ 220
‘Still the road winds ever anew
As it hastens on towards Holycleugh;
And ever the great walls loom more near,
Till the castle-shadow, steep and sheer,
Drifts like a cloud, and the sky is clear.’ 225
‘Enough, my daughter,’ the mother said,
And took to her breast the bending head;
‘Rest, poor head, with my heart below,
While love still lulls you as long ago:
For all is learnt that we need to know. 230
‘Long the miles and many the hours
From the castle-height to the abbey-towers;
But here the journey has no more dread;
Too thick with life is the whole road spread
For murder’s trembling foot to tread.’ 235
She gazed on the Beryl-stone full fain
Ere she wrapped it close in her robe again:
The flickering shades were dusk and dun,
And the lights throbbed faint in unison,
Like a high heart when a race is run. 240
As the globe slid to its silken gloom,
Once more a music rained through the room;
Low it splashed like a sweet star-spray,
And sobbed like tears at the heart of May,
And died as laughter dies away. 245
The lady held her breath for a space,
And then she looked in her daughter’s face:
But wan Rose Mary had never heard;
Deep asleep like a sheltered bird
She lay with the long spell minister’d. 250
‘Ah! and yet I must leave you, dear,
For what you have seen your knight must hear.
Within four days, by the help of God
He comes back safe to his heart’s abode:
Be sure he shall shun the valley-road.’ 255
Rose Mary sank with a broken moan,
And lay in the chair and slept alone,
Weary, lifeless, heavy as lead:
Long it was ere she raised her head
And rose up all discomforted. 260
She searched her brain for a vanished thing,
And clasped her brows, remembering;
Then knelt and lifted her eyes in awe,
And sighed with a long sigh sweet to draw: -
‘Thank God, thank God, thank God I saw!’ 265
The lady had left her as she lay
To seek the Knight of Heronhaye.
But first she clomb by a secret stair,
And knelt at a carven altar fair,
And laid the precious Beryl there. 270
Its girth was graved with a mystic rune
In a tongue long dead ‘neath sun and moon:
A priest of the Holy Sepulchre
Read that writing and did not err;
And her lord had told its sense to her. 275
She breathed the words in an undertone: -
‘None sees here but the pure alone.’
‘And oh!’ she said, ‘what rose may be
In Mary’s bower more pure to see
Than my own sweet maiden Rose Mary?’ 280
BERYL-SONG
We whose home is the Beryl,
Fire-spirits of dread desire,
Who entered in
By a secret sin,
‘Gainst whom all powers that strive with ours are sterile, - 285
We cry, Woe to thee, mother!
What hast thou taught her, the girl thy daughter,
That she and none other
Should this dark morrow to her deadly sorrow imperil?
What were her eyes 290
But the fiend’s own spies,
O mother,
And shall We not fee her, our proper prophet and seër?
Go to her, mother,
Even thou, yea thou and none other, 295
Thou, from the Beryl:
Her fee must thou take her,
Her fee that We send, and make her,
Even in this hour, her sin’s unsheltered avower.
Whose steed did neigh, 300
Riderless, bridleless,
At her gate before it was day?
Lo! where doth hover
The soul of her lover?
She sealed his doom, she, she was the sworn approver, - 305
Whose eyes were so wondrous wise,
Yet blind, ah! blind to his peril!
For stole not We in
Through a love-linked sin,
‘Gainst whom all powers at war with ours are sterile, - 310
Fire-spirits of dread desire,
We whose home is the Beryl?
ROSE MARY: PART II
‘Pale Rose Mary, what shall be done
With a rose that Mary weeps upon?’
‘Mother, let it fall from the tree, 315
And never walk where the strewn leaves be
Till winds have passed and the path is free.’
‘Sad Rose Mary, what shall be done
With a cankered flower beneath the sun?’
‘Mother, let it wait for the night; 320
Be sure its shame shall be out of sight
Ere the moon pale or the east grow light.’
‘Lost Rose Mary, what shall be done
With a heart that is but a broken one?’
‘Mother, let it lie where it must; 325
The blood was drained with the bitter thrust,
And dust is all that sinks in the dust.’
‘Poor Rose Mary, what shall I do,’ -
I, your mother, that lovèd you?’
‘O my mother, and is love gone? 330
Then seek you another love anon:
Who cares what shame shall lean upon?’
Low drooped trembling Rose Mary,
Then up as though in a dream stood she.
‘Come, my heart, it is time to go; 335
This is the hour that has whispered low
When thy pulse quailed in the nights we know.
‘Yet O my heart, thy shame has a mate
Who will not leave thee desolate.
Shame for shame, yea and sin for sin: 340
Yet peace at length may our poor souls win
If love for love be found therein.
‘O thou who seek’st our shrift to-day,’
She cried, ‘O James of Heronhaye -
Thy sin and mine was for love alone; 345
And oh! in the sight of God ’tis known
How the heart has since made heavy moan.
‘Three days yet!’ she said to her heart;
‘But then he comes, and we will not part.
God, God be thanked that I still could see! 350
Oh! he shall come back assuredly,
But where, alas! must he seek for me?
‘O my heart, what road shall we roam
Till my wedding-music fetch me home?
For love’s shut from us and bides afar, 355
And scorn leans over the bitter bar
And knows us now for the thing we are.’
Tall she stood with a cheek flushed high
And a gaze to burn the heart-strings by.
’Twas the lightning-flash o’er sky and plain 360
Ere labouring thunders heave the chain
From the floodgates of the drowning rain.
The mother looked on the daughter still
As on a hurt thing that’s yet to kill.
Then wildly at length the pent tears came; 365
The love swelled high with the swollen shame,
And their hearts’ tempest burst on them.
Closely locked, they clung without speech,
And the mirrored souls shook each to each,
As the cloud-moon and the water-moon 370
Shake face to face when the dim stars swoon
In stormy bowers of th
e night’s mid-noon.
They swayed together, shuddering sore,
Till the mother’s heart could bear no more.
’Twas death to feel her own breast shake 375
Even to the very throb and ache
Of the burdened heart she still must break.
All her sobs ceased suddenly,
And she sat straight up but scarce could see.
‘O daughter, where should my speech begin? 380
Your heart held fast its secret sin:
How think you, child, that I read therein?’
‘Ah me! but I thought not how it came
When your words showed that you knew my shame:
And now that you call me still your own, 385
I half forget you have ever known,
Did you read my heart in the Beryl-stone?’
The lady answered her mournfully: -
‘The Beryl-stone has no voice for me:
But when you charged its power to show 390
The truth which none but the pure may know,
Did naught speak once of a coming woe?’
Her hand was close to her daughter’s heart,
And it felt the life-blood’s sudden start:
A quick deep breath did the damsel draw, 395
Like the struck fawn in the oakenshaw:
‘O mother,’ she cried, ‘but still I saw!’
‘O child, my child, why held you apart
From my great love your hidden heart?
Said I not that all sin must chase 400
From the spell’s sphere the spirits of grace,
And yield their rule to the evil race?
‘Ah! would to God I had clearly told
How strong those powers, accurst of old:
Their heart is the ruined house of lies; 405
O girl, they can seal the sinful eyes,
Or show the truth by contraries!’
The daughter sat as cold as a stone,
And spoke no word but gazed alone,
Nor moved, though her mother strove a space 410
To clasp her round in a close embrace,
Because she dared not see her face.
Oh!’ at last did the mother cry,
‘Be sure, as he loved you, so will I!
Ah! still and dumb is the bride, I trow; 415
But cold and stark as the winter snow
Is the bridegroom’s heart, laid dead below!
‘Daughter, daughter, remember you
That cloud in the hills by Holycleugh?
’Twas a Hell-screen, hiding truth away: 420
There, not i’ the vale, the ambush lay,
And thence was the dead borne home to-day.’
Deep the flood and heavy the shock
When sea meets sea in the riven rock:
But calm is the pulse that shakes the sea 425
To the prisoned tide of doom set free
In the breaking heart of Rose Mary.
Once she sprang as the heifer springs
With the wolf’s teeth at its red heart-strings.
First ’twas fire in her breast and brain, 430
And then scarce hers but the whole world’s pain,
As she gave one shriek and sank again.
In the hair dark-waved the face lay white
As the moon lies in the lap of night;
And as night through which no moon may dart 435
Lies on a pool in the woods apart,
So lay the swoon on the weary heart.
The lady felt for the bosom’s stir,
And wildly kissed and called on her;
Then turned away with a quick footfall, 440
And slid the secret door in the wall
And clomb the strait stair’s interval.
There above in the altar-cell
A little fountain rose and fell:
She set a flask to the water’s flow, 445
And, backward hurrying, sprinkled now
The still cold breast and the pallid brow.
Scarce cheek that warmed or breath on the air,
Yet something told that life was there.
‘Ah! not with the heart the body dies! 450
The lady moaned in a bitter wise;
Then wrung her hands and hid her eyes.
‘Alas! and how may I meet again
In the same poor eyes the selfsame pain?
What help can I seek, such grief to guide? 455
Ah! one alone might avail,’ she cried,-
‘The priest who prays at the dead man’s side.’
The lady arose, and sped down all
The winding stairs to the castle-hall.
Long-known valley and wood and stream, 460
As the loopholes passed, naught else did seem
Than the torn threads of a broken dream.
The hall was full of the castle-folk;
The women wept, but the men scarce spoke.
As the lady crossed the rush-strewn floor, 465
The throng fell backward, murmuring sore,
And pressed outside round the open door.
A stranger shadow hung on the hall
Than the dark pomp of a funeral.
‘Mid common sights that were there alway, 470
As ‘twere a chance of the passing day,
On the ingle-bench the dead man lay.
A priest who passed by Holycleugh
The tidings brought when the day was new.
He guided them who had fetched the dead; 475
And since that hour, unweari èd,
He knelt in prayer at the lowbier’s head.
Word had gone to his own domain
That in evil wise the knight was slain:
Soon the spears must gather apace 480
And the hunt be hard on the hunters’ trace;
But all things yet lay still for a space.
As the lady’s hurried step drew near,
The kneeling priest looked up to her.
‘Father, death is a grievous thing; 485
But oh! the woe has a sharper sting
That craves by me your ministering.
‘Alas for the child that should have wed
This noble knight here lying dead!
Dead in hope, with all blessed boon 490
Of love thus rent from her heart ere noon,
I left her laid in a heavy swoon.
‘O haste to the open bower-chamber
That’s topmost as you mount the stair:
Seek her, father, ere yet she wake; 495
Your words, not mine, be the first to slake
This poor heart’s fire, for Christ’s sweet sake!
‘God speed!’ she said as the priest passed through,
‘And I ere long will be with you.’
Then low on the hearth her knees sank prone; 500
She signed all folk from the threshold-stone,
And gazed in the dead man’s face alone.
The fight for life found record yet
In the clenched lips and the teeth hard-set;
The wrath from the bent brow was not gone, 505
And stark in the eyes the hate still shone
Of that they last had looked upon.
The blazoned coat was rent on his breast
Where the golden field was goodliest;
But the shivered sword, close-gripped, could tell 510
That the blood shed round him where he fell
Was not all his in the distant dell.
The lady recked of the corpse no whit,
But saw the soul and spoke to it:
A light there was in her steadfast eyes,- 515
The fire of mortal tears and sighs
That pity and love immortalize.
‘By thy death have I learnt to-day
Thy deed, O James of Heronhaye!
Great wrong thou hast done to me and mine; 520
And haply God hath wrought for a sign
By our blind deed this doom of thi
ne.
‘Thy shrift, alas! thou wast not to win;
But may death shrive thy soul herein!
Full well do I know thy love should be 525
Even yet - had life but stayed with thee -
Our honour’s strong security.’
She stooped, and said with a sob’s low stir, -
‘Peace be thine, - but what peace for her?’
But ere to the brow her lips were press’d, 530
She marked, half-hid in the riven vest,
A packet close to the dead man’s breast.
‘Neath surcoat pierced and broken mail
It lay on the blood-stained bosom pale.
The clot clung round it, dull and dense, 535
And a faintness seized her mortal sense
As she reached her hand and drew it thence.
’Twas steeped in the heart’s flood welling high
From the heart it there had rested by:
’Twas glued to a broidered fragment gay, - 540
A shred by spear-thrust rent away
From the heron-wings of Heronhaye.
She gazed on the thing with piteous eyne: -
‘Alas, poor child, some pledge of thine!
Ah me! in this troth the hearts were twain, 545
And one hath ebbed to this crimson stain,
And when shall the other throb again?’
She opened the packet heedfully;
The blood was stiff, and it scarce might be.
She found but a folded paper there, 550
And round it, twined with tenderest care,
A long bright tress of golden hair.
Even as she looked, she saw again
That dark-haired face in its swoon of pain:
It seemed a snake with a golden sheath 555
Crept near, as a slow flame flickereth,
And stung her daughter’s heart to death.
She loosed the tress, but her hand did shake
As though indeed she had touched a snake;
And next she undid the paper’s fold, 560
But that too trembled in her hold,
And the sense scarce grasped the tale it told.
‘My heart’s sweet lord,’ (’twas thus she read,)
‘At length our love is garlanded.
At Holy Cross, within eight days’ space, 565
I seek my shrift; and the time and place
Shall fit thee too for thy soul’s good grace.
‘From Holycleugh on the seventh day
My brother rides, and bides away:
And long or e’er he is back, mine own, 570
Afar where the face of fear’s unknown
We shall be safe with our love alone.
‘Ere yet at the shrine my knees I bow,
I shear one tress for our holy vow.
As round these words these threads I wind, 575
So, eight days hence, shall our loves be twined
Says my lord’s poor lady, JOCELIND.’
She read it twice, with a brain in thrall,
Complete Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti Page 20
