Narrative Poems
Page 5
19
‘Then one by one at random (no word spoken)
We slipt out to the sunlight and away.
We felt the empty sense of something broken
And comfortless adventure all that day.
Men loitered at their work and could not say
What trembled at their lips or what new light
Was in girls’ eyes. Yet we endured till night.
20
‘Then . . . I was lying awake in bed,
Shot through with tremulous thought, lame hopes, and sweet
Desire of reckless days—with burning head.
And then there came a clamour from the street,
Came nearer, nearer, nearer—stamping feet
And screaming song and curses and a shout
Of “Who’s for Dymer, Dymer?—Up and out!”
21
‘We looked out from our window. Thronging there
A thousand of our people, girls and men,
Raved and reviled and shouted by the glare
Of torches and of bonfire blaze. And then
Came tumult from the street beyond: again
“Dymer!” they cried. And farther off there came
The sound of gun-fire and the gleam of flame.
22
‘I rushed down with the rest. Oh, we were mad!
After this, it’s all nightmare. The black sky
Between the housetops framed was all we had
To tell us that the old world could not die
And that we were no gods. The flood ran high
When first I came, but after was the worse,
Oh, to recall . . . ! On Dymer rest the curse!
23
‘Our leader was a hunchback with red hair
—Bran was his name. He had that kind of force
About him that will hold your eyes fast there
As in ten miles of green one patch of gorse
Will hold them—do you know? His lips were coarse,
But his eyes like a prophet’s—seemed to fill
The whole face. And his tongue was never still.
24
‘He cried: “As Dymer broke, we’ll break the chain.
The world is free. They taught you to be chaste
And labour and bear orders and refrain.
Refrain? From what? All’s good enough. We’ll taste
Whatever is. Life murmurs from the waste
Beneath the mind . . . who made the reasoning part
The jailer of the wild gods in the heart?”
25
‘We were a ragtail crew—wild-haired, half-dressed,
All shouting, “Up, for Dymer! Up away!”
Yet each one always watching all the rest
And looking to his back. And some were gay
Like drunk men, some were cringing, pinched and grey
With terror dry on the lip. (The older ones
Had had the sense enough to bring their guns.)
26
‘The wave where I was swallowed swelled and broke,
After long surge, into the open square.
And here there was more light: new clamour woke.
Here first I heard the bullets sting the air
And went hot round the heart. Our lords were there
In barricade with all their loyal men.
For every one man loyal Bran led ten.
27
‘Then charge and cheer and bubbling sobs of death,
We hovered on their front. Like swarming bees
Their spraying bullets came—no time for breath.
I saw men’s stomachs fall out on their knees;
And shouting faces, while they shouted, freeze
Into black, bony masks. Before we knew
We’re into them . . . “Swine!”—“Die, then!”—“That’s for you!”
28
‘The next that I remember was a lull
And sated pause. I saw an old, old man
Lying before my feet with shattered skull,
And both my arms dripped red. And then came Bran
And at his heels a hundred murderers ran,
With prisoners now, clamouring to take and try them
And burn them, wedge their nails up, crucify them.
29
‘God! . . . Once the lying spirit of a cause
With maddening words dethrones the mind of men,
They’re past the reach of prayer. The eternal laws
Hate them. Their eyes will not come clean again,
But doom and strong delusion drive them then
Without ruth, without rest . . . the iron laughter
Of the immortal mouths goes hooting after.
30
‘And we had firebrands too. Tower after tower
Fell sheathed in thundering flame. The street was like
A furnace mouth. We had them in our power!
Then was the time to mock them and to strike,
To flay men and spit women on the pike,
Bidding them dance. Wherever the most shame
Was done the doer called on Dymer’s name.
31
‘Faces of men in torture . . . from my mind
They will not go away. The East lay still
In darkness when we left the town behind
Flaming to light the fields. We’d had our will:
We sang, “Oh, we will make the frost distil
From Time’s grey forehead into living dew
And break whatever has been and build new.”
32
‘Day found us on the border of this wood,
Blear-eyed and pale. Then the most part began
To murmur and to lag, crying for food
And shelter. But we dared not answer Bran.
Wherever in the ranks the murmur ran
He’d find it—“You, there, whispering. Up, you sneak,
Reactionary, eh? Come out and speak.”
33
‘Then there’d be shrieks, a pistol shot, a cry,
And someone down. I was the third he caught.
The others pushed me out beneath his eye,
Saying, “He’s here; here, Captain.” Who’d have thought—
My old friends? But I know now. I’ve been taught . . .
They cut away my two hands and my feet
And laughed and left me for the birds to eat.
34
‘Oh, God’s name! If I had my hands again
And Dymer here . . . it would not be my blood.
I am stronger now than he is, old with pain,
One grip would make him mine. But it’s no good,
I’m dying fast. Look stranger, where the wood
Grows lighter. It’s the morning. Stranger dear,
Don’t leave me. Talk a little while. Come near.’
35
But Dymer, sitting hunched with knee to chin,
Close to the dying man, answered no word.
His face was stone. There was no meaning in
His wakeful eyes. Sometimes the other stirred
And fretted, near his death; and Dymer heard,
Yet sat like one that neither hears nor sees.
And the cold East whitened beyond the trees.
CANTO V
1
Through bearded cliffs a valley has driven thus deep
Its wedge into the mountain and no more.
The faint track of the farthest-wandering sheep
Ends here, and the grey hollows at their core
Of silence feel the dulled continuous roar
Of higher streams. At every step the skies
Grow less and in their place black ridges rise.
2
Hither, long after noon, with plodding tread
And eyes on earth, grown dogged, Dymer came,
Who all the long day in the woods had fled
From the horror of those lips that screamed his name
And cursed him. Bu
sy wonder and keen shame
Were driving him, and little thoughts like bees
Followed and pricked him on and left no ease.
3
Now, when he looked and saw this emptiness
Seven times enfolded in the idle hills,
There came a chilly pause to his distress,
A cloud of the deep world-despair that fills
A man’s heart like the incoming tide and kills
All pains except its own. In that broad sea
No hope, no change, and no regret can be.
4
He felt the eternal strength of the silly earth,
The unhastening circuit of the stars and sea,
The business of perpetual death and birth,
The meaningless precision. All must be
The same and still the same in each degree—
Who cared now? And he smiled and could forgive,
Believing that for sure he would not live.
5
Then, where he saw a little water run
Beneath a bush, he slept. The chills of May
Came dropping and the stars peered one by one
Out of the deepening blue, while far away
The western brightness dulled to bars of grey.
Half-way to midnight, suddenly, from dreaming
He woke wide into present horror, screaming.
6
For he had dreamt of being in the arms
Of his beloved and in quiet places;
But all at once it filled with night alarms
And rapping guns: and men with splintered faces,
—No eyes, no nose, all red—were running races
With worms along the floor. And he ran out
To find the girl and shouted: and that shout
7
Had carried him into the waking world.
There stood the concave, vast, unfriendly night,
And over him the scroll of stars unfurled.
Then wailing like a child he rose upright,
Heart-sick with desolation. The new blight
Of loss had nipt him sore, and sad self-pity
Thinking of her—then thinking of the City.
8
For, in each moment’s thought, the deeds of Bran,
The burning and the blood and his own shame,
Would tease him into madness till he ran
For refuge to the thought of her; whence came
Utter and endless loss—no, not a name,
Not a word, nothing left—himself alone
Crying amid that valley of old stone:
9
‘How soon it all ran out! And I suppose
They, they up there, the old contriving powers,
They knew it all the time—for someone knows
And waits and watches till we pluck the flowers,
Then leaps. So soon—my store of happy hours
All gone before I knew. I have expended
My whole wealth in a day. It’s finished, ended.
10
‘And nothing left. Can it be possible
That joy flows through and, when the course is run,
It leaves no change, no mark on us to tell
Its passing? And as poor as we’ve begun
We end the richest day? What we have won,
Can it all die like this? . . . Joy flickers on
The razor-edge of the present and is gone.
11
‘What have I done to bear upon my name
The curse of Bran? I was not of his crew,
Nor any man’s. And Dymer has the blame—
What have I done? Wronged whom? I never knew.
What’s Bran to me? I had my deed to do
And ran out by myself, alone and free.
—Why should earth sing with joy and not for me?
12
‘Ah, but the earth never did sing for joy . . .
There is a glamour on the leaf and flower
And April comes and whistles to a boy
Over white fields: and, beauty has such power
Upon us, he believes her in that hour,
For who could not believe? Can it be false,
All that the blackbird says and the wind calls?
13
‘What have I done? No living thing I made
Nor wished to suffer harm. I sought my good
Because the spring was gloriously arrayed
And the blue eyebright misted all the wood.
Yet to obey that springtime and my blood,
This was to be unarmed and off my guard
And gave God time to hit once and hit hard.
14
‘The men built right who made that City of ours,
They knew their world. A man must crouch to face
Infinite malice, watching at all hours,
Shut Nature out—give her no moment’s space
For entry. The first needs of all our race
Are walls, a den, a cover. Traitor I
Who first ran out beneath the open sky.
15
‘Our fortress and fenced place I made to fall,
I slipt the sentries and let in the foe.
I have lost my brothers and my love and all.
Nothing is left but me. Now let me go.
I have seen the world stripped naked and I know.
Great God, take back your world. I will have none
Of all your glittering gauds but death alone.’
16
Meanwhile the earth swung round in hollow night.
Souls without number in all nations slept
Snug on her back, safe speeding towards the light;
Hours tolled, and in damp woods the night beast crept,
And over the long seas the watch was kept
In black ships, twinkling onward, green and red:
Always the ordered stars moved overhead.
17
And no one knew that Dymer in his scales
Had weighed all these and found them nothing worth.
Indifferently the dawn that never fails
Troubled the east of night with gradual birth,
Whispering a change of colours on cold earth,
And a bird woke, then two. The sunlight ran
Along the hills and yellow day began.
18
But stagnant gloom clung in the valley yet;
Hills crowded out a third part of the sky,
Black-looking, and the boulders dripped with wet:
No bird sang. Dymer, shivering, heaved a sigh
And yawned and said: ‘It’s cruel work to die
Of hunger’; and again, with cloudy breath
Blown between chattering teeth, ‘It’s a bad death.’
19
He crouched and clasped his hands about his knees
And hugged his own limbs for the pitiful sense
Of homeliness they had—familiars these,
This body, at least, his own, his last defence.
But soon his morning misery drove him thence,
Eating his heart, to wander as chance led
On, upward, to the narrowing gully’s head.
20
The cloud lay on the nearest mountain-top
As from a giant’s chimney smoking there,
But Dymer took no heed. Sometimes he’d stop,
Sometimes he hurried faster, as despair
Pricked deeper, and cried out: ‘Even now, somewhere,
Bran with his crew’s at work. They rack, they burn,
And there’s no help in me. I’ve served their turn.’
21
Meanwhile the furrowed fog rolled down ahead,
Long tatters of its vanguard smearing round
The bases of the crags. Like cobweb shed
Down the deep combes it dulled the tinkling sound
Of water on the hills. The spongy ground
Faded three yards ahead: then nearer yet
&nbs
p; Fell the cold wreaths, the white depth gleaming wet.
22
Then after a long time the path he trod
Led downward. Then all suddenly it dipped
Far steeper, and yet steeper, with smooth sod.
He was half running now. A stone that slipped
Beneath him, rattled headlong down: he tripped,
Stumbled and clutched—then panic, and no hope
To stop himself, once lost upon that slope.
23
And faster, ever faster, and his eye
Caught tree-tops far below. The nightmare feeling
Had gripped him. He was screaming: and the sky
Seemed hanging upside down. Then struggling, reeling,
With effort beyond thought he hung half kneeling,
Halted one saving moment. With wild will
He clawed into the hillside and lay still,
24
Half hanging on both arms. His idle feet
Dangled and found no hold. The moor lay wet
Against him and he sweated with the heat
Of terror, all alive. His teeth were set.
‘By God, I will not die,’ said he; ‘not yet.’
Then slowly, slowly, with enormous strain,
He heaved himself an inch: then heaved again,
25
Till saved and spent he lay. He felt indeed
It was the big, round world beneath his breast,
The mother planet proven at his need.
The shame of glad surrender stood confessed,
He cared not for his boasts. This, this was best,
This giving up of all. He need not strive;
He panted, he lay still, he was alive.
26
And now his eyes were closed. Perhaps he slept,
Lapt in unearthly quiet—never knew
How bit by bit the fog’s white rearguard crept
Over the crest and faded, and the blue
First brightening at the zenith trembled through,
And deepening shadows took a sharper form
Each moment, and the sandy earth grew warm.
27
Yet, dreaming of blue skies, in dream he heard
The pure voice of a lark that seemed to send
Its song from heights beyond all height. That bird
Sang out of heaven, ‘The world will never end,’
Sang from the gates of heaven, ‘Will never end.’
Sang till it seemed there was no other thing
But bright space and one voice set there to sing.
28
It seemed to be the murmur and the voice
Of beings beyond number, each and all
Singing I AM. Each of itself made choice
And was: whence flows the justice that men call
Divine. She keeps the great worlds lest they fall
From hour to hour, and makes the hills renew
Their ancient youth and sweetens all things through.
29
It seemed to be the low voice of the world