Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

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Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 1146

by William Dean Howells


  THE ROYAL PORTRAITS.

  (AT LUDWIGSHOF.)

  I.

  Confronting each other the pictures stare

  Into each other’s sleepless eyes;

  And the daylight into the darkness dies,

  From year to year in the palace there:

  But they watch and guard that no device

  Take either one of them unaware.

  Their majesties the king and the queen,

  The parents of the reigning prince:

  Both put off royalty many years since,

  With life and the gifts that have always been

  Given to kings from God, to evince

  His sense of the mighty over the mean.

  I cannot say that I like the face

  Of the king; it is something fat and red;

  And the neck that lifts the royal head

  Is thick and coarse; and a scanty grace

  Dwells in the dull blue eyes that are laid

  Sullenly on the queen in her place.

  He must have been a king in his day

  ‘Twere well to pleasure in work and sport:

  One of the heaven-anointed sort

  Who ruled his people with iron sway,

  And knew that, through good and evil report,

  God meant him to rule and them to obey.

  There are many other likenesses

  Of the king in his royal palace there;

  You find him depicted everywhere, —

  In his robes of state, in his hunting-dress,

  In his flowing wig, in his powdered hair, —

  A king in all of them, none the less;

  But most himself in this on the wall

  Over against his consort, whose

  Laces, and hoops, and high-heeled shoes

  Make her the finest lady of all

  The queens or courtly dames you choose,

  In the ancestral portrait hall.

  A glorious blonde: a luxury

  Of luring blue and wanton gold,

  Of blanchéd rose and crimson bold,

  Of lines that flow voluptuously

  In tender, languorous curves to fold

  Her form in perfect symmetry.

  She might have been false. Of her withered dust

  There scarcely would be enough to write

  Her guilt in now; and the dead have a right

  To our lenient doubt if not to our trust:

  So if the truth cannot make her white,

  Let us be as merciful as we — must.

  II.

  The queen died first, the queen died young,

  But the king was very old when he died,

  Rotten with license, and lust, and pride;

  And the usual Virtues came and hung

  Their cypress wreaths on his tomb, and wide

  Throughout his kingdom his praise was sung.

  How the queen died is not certainly known,

  And faithful subjects are all forbid

  To speak of the murder which some one did

  One night while she slept in the dark alone:

  History keeps the story hid,

  And Fear only tells it in undertone.

  Up from your startled feet aloof,

  In the famous Echo-Room, with a bound

  Leaps the echo, and round and round

  Beating itself against the roof, —

  A horrible, gasping, shuddering sound, —

  Dies ere its terror can utter proof

  Of that it knows. A door is fast,

  And none is suffered to enter there.

  His sacred majesty could not bear

  To look at it toward the last,

  As he grew very old. It opened where

  The queen died young so many years past.

  III.

  How the queen died is not certainly known;

  But in the palace’s solitude

  A harking dread and horror brood,

  And a silence, as if a mortal groan

  Had been hushed the moment before, and would

  Break forth again when you were gone.

  The present king has never dwelt

  In the desolate palace. From year to year

  In the wide and stately garden drear

  The snows and the snowy blossoms melt

  Unheeded, and a ghastly fear

  Through all the shivering leaves is felt.

  By night the gathering shadows creep

  Along the dusk and hollow halls,

  And the slumber-broken palace calls

  With stifled moans from its nightmare sleep;

  And then the ghostly moonlight falls

  Athwart the darkness brown and deep.

  At early dawn the light wind sighs,

  And through the desert garden blows

  The wasted sweetness of the rose;

  At noon the feverish sunshine lies

  Sick in the walks. But at evening’s close,

  When the last, long rays to the windows rise,

  And with many a blood-red, wrathful streak

  Pierce through the twilight glooms that blur

  His cruel vigilance and her

  Regard, they light fierce looks that wreak

  A hopeless hate that cannot stir,

  A voiceless hate that cannot speak

  In the awful calm of the sleepless eyes;

  And as if she saw her murderer glare

  On her face, and he the white despair

  Of his victim kindle in wild surmise,

  Confronted the conscious pictures stare, —

  And their secret back into darkness dies.

  THE FAITHFUL OF THE GONZAGA.

  I.

  Federigo, the son of the Marquis,

  Downcast, through the garden goes:

  He is hurt with the grace of the lily,

  And the beauty of the rose.

  For what is the grace of the lily

  But her own slender grace?

  And what is the rose’s beauty

  But the beauty of her face? —

  Who sits beside her window

  Waiting to welcome him,

  That comes so lothly toward her

  With his visage sick and dim.

  “Ah! lily, I come to break thee!

  Ah! rose, a bitter rain

  Of tears shall beat thy light out

  That thou never burn again!”

  II.

  Federigo, the son of the Marquis,

  Takes the lady by the hand:

  “Thou must bid me God-speed on a journey,

  For I leave my native land.

  “From Mantua to-morrow

  I go, a banished man;

  Make me glad for truth and love’s sake

  Of my father’s curse and ban.

  “Our quarrel has left my mother

  Like death upon the floor;

  And I come from a furious presence

  I never shall enter more.

  “I would not wed the woman

  He had chosen for my bride,

  For my heart had been before him,

  With his statecraft and his pride.

  “I swore to him by my princehood

  In my love I would be free;

  And I swear to thee by my manhood,

  I love no one but thee.

  “Let the Duke of Bavaria marry

  His daughter to whom he will:

  There where my love was given

  My word shall be faithful still.

  “There are six true hearts will follow

  My truth wherever I go,

  And thou equal truth wilt keep me

  In welfare and in woe.”

  The maiden answered him nothing

  Of herself, but his words again

  Came back through her lips like an echo

  From an abyss of pain;

  And vacantly repeating

  “In welfare and in woe,”

  Like a dream from the heart of fever

  From
her arms she felt him go.

  III.

  Out of Mantua’s gate at daybreak

  Seven comrades wander forth

  On a path that leads at their humor,

  East, west, or south, or north.

  The prince’s laugh rings lightly,

  “What road shall we take from home?”

  And they answer, “We never shall lose it

  If we take the road to Rome.”

  And with many a jest and banter

  The comrades keep their way,

  Journeying out of the twilight

  Forward into the day,

  When they are aware beside them

  Goes a pretty minstrel lad,

  With a shy and downward aspect,

  That is neither sad nor glad.

  Over his slender shoulder,

  His mandolin was slung,

  And around its chords the treasure

  Of his golden tresses hung.

  Spoke one of the seven companions,

  “Little minstrel, whither away?” —

  “With seven true-hearted comrades

  On their journey, if I may.”

  Spoke one of the seven companions,

  “If our way be hard and long?” —

  “I will lighten it with my music

  And shorten it with my song.”

  Spoke one of the seven companions,

  “But what are the songs thou know’st?” —

  “O, I know many a ditty,

  But this I sing the most:

  “How once was an humble maiden

  Beloved of a great lord’s son,

  That for her sake and his troth’s sake

  Was banished and undone.

  “And forth of his father’s city

  He went at break of day,

  And the maiden softly followed

  Behind him on the way

  “In the figure of a minstrel,

  And prayed him of his love,

  ‘Let me go with thee and serve thee

  Wherever thou may’st rove.

  “‘For if thou goest in exile

  I rest banished at home,

  And where thou wanderest with thee

  My fears in anguish roam,

  “‘Besetting thy path with perils,

  Making thee hungry and cold,

  Filling thy heart with trouble

  And heaviness untold.

  “‘But let me go beside thee,

  And banishment shall be

  Honor, and riches, and country,

  And home to thee and me!’”

  Down falls the minstrel-maiden

  Before the Marquis’ son,

  And the six true-hearted comrades

  Bow round them every one.

  Federigo, the son of the Marquis,

  From its scabbard draws his sword:

  “Now swear by the honor and fealty

  Ye bear your friend and lord,

  “That whenever, and wherever,

  As long as ye have life,

  Ye will honor and serve this lady

  As ye would your prince’s wife!”

  IV.

  Over the broad expanses

  Of garlanded Lombardy,

  Where the gentle vines are swinging

  In the orchards from tree to tree;

  Through Padua from Verona,

  From the sculptured gothic town,

  Carved from ruin upon ruin,

  And ancienter than renown;

  Through Padua from Verona

  To fair Venice, where she stands

  With her feet on subject waters,

  Lady of many lands;

  From Venice by sea to Ancona;

  From Ancona to the west;

  Climbing many a gardened hillside

  And many a castled crest;

  Through valleys dim with the twilight

  Of their gray olive trees;

  Over plains that swim with harvests

  Like golden noonday seas;

  Whence the lofty campanili

  Like the masts of ships arise,

  And like a fleet at anchor

  Under them, the village lies;

  To Florence beside her Arno,

  In her many-marbled pride,

  Crowned with infamy and glory

  By the sons she has denied;

  To pitiless Pisa, where never

  Since the anguish of Ugolin

  The moon in the Tower of Famine

  Fate so dread as his hath seen;

  Out through the gates of Pisa

  To Livorno on her bay,

  To Genoa and to Naples

  The comrades hold their way,

  Past the Guelph in his town beleaguered,

  Past the fortressed Ghibelline,

  Through lands that reek with slaughter,

  Treason, and shame, and sin;

  By desert, by sea, by city,

  High hill-cope and temple-dome,

  Through pestilence, hunger, and horror,

  Upon the road to Rome;

  While every land behind them

  Forgets them as they go,

  And in Mantua they are remembered

  As is the last year’s snow;

  But the Marchioness goes to her chamber

  Day after day to weep, —

  For the changeless heart of a mother

  The love of a son must keep.

  The Marchioness weeps in her chamber

  Over tidings that come to her

  Of the exiles she seeks, by letter

  And by lips of messenger,

  Broken hints of their sojourn and absence,

  Comfortless, vague, and slight, —

  Like feathers wafted backwards

  From passage birds in flight.

  The tale of a drunken sailor,

  In whose ship they went to sea;

  A traveller’s evening story

  At a village hostelry,

  Of certain comrades sent him

  By our Lady, of her grace,

  To save his life from robbers

  In a lonely desert place;

  Word from the monks of a convent

  Of gentle comrades that lay

  One stormy night at their convent,

  And passed with the storm at day;

  The long parley of a peasant

  That sold them wine and food,

  The gossip of a shepherd

  That guided them through a wood;

  A boatman’s talk at the ferry

  Of a river where they crossed,

  And as if they had sunk in the current

  All trace of them was lost;

  And so is an end of tidings

  But never an end of tears,

  Of secret and friendless sorrow

  Through blank and silent years.

  V.

  To the Marchioness in her chamber

  Sends word a messenger,

  Newly come from the land of Naples,

  Praying for speech with her.

  The messenger stands before her,

  A minstrel slender and wan:

  “In a village of my country

  Lies a Mantuan gentleman,

  “Sick of a smouldering fever,

  Of sorrow and poverty;

  And no one in all that country

  Knows his title or degree.

  “But six true Mantuan peasants,

  Or nobles, as some men say,

  Watch by the sick man’s bedside,

  And toil for him, night and day,

  “Hewing, digging, reaping, sowing,

  Bearing burdens, and far and nigh

  Begging for him on the highway

  Of the strangers that pass by;

  “And they look whenever you meet them

  Like broken-hearted men,

  And I heard that the sick man would not

  If he could, be well again;

  “For they say that he for love’s sake

  Was gladly ba
nishèd,

  But she for whom he was banished

  Is worse to him, now, than dead, —

  “A recreant to his sorrow,

  A traitress to his woe.”

  From her place the Marchioness rises,

  The minstrel turns to go.

  But fast by the hand she takes him, —

  His hand in her clasp is cold, —

  “If gold may be thy guerdon

  Thou shalt not lack for gold;

  “And if the love of a mother

  Can bless thee for that thou hast done,

  Thou shalt stay and be his brother,

  Thou shalt stay and be my son.”

  “Nay, my lady,” answered the minstrel,

  And his face is deadly pale,

  “Nay, this must not be, sweet lady,

  But let my words prevail.

  “Let me go now from your presence,

  And I will come again,

  When you stand with your son beside you,

  And be your servant then.”

  VI.

  At the feet of the Marquis Gonzaga

  Kneels his lady on the floor;

  “Lord, grant me before I ask it

  The thing that I implore.”

  “So it be not of that ingrate.” —

  “Nay, lord, it is of him.”

  ‘Neath the stormy brows of the Marquis

  His eyes are tender and dim.

  “He lies sick of a fever in Naples,

  Near unto death, as they tell,

  In his need and pain forsaken

  By the wanton he loved so well.

  “Now send for him and forgive him,

  If ever thou loved’st me,

  Now send for him and forgive him

  As God shall be good to thee.”

  “Well so, — if he turn in repentance

  And bow himself to my will;

  That the high-born lady I chose him

  May be my daughter still.”

  VII.

  In Mantua there is feasting

  For the Marquis’ grace to his son;

  In Mantua there is rejoicing

  For the prince come back to his own.

  The pomp of a wedding procession

  Pauses under the pillared porch,

  With silken rustle and whisper,

  Before the door of the church.

  In the midst, Federigo the bridegroom

  Stands with his high-born bride;

  The six true-hearted comrades

  Are three on either side.

  The bridegroom is gray as his father,

  Where they stand face to face,

  And the six true-hearted comrades

  Are like old men in their place.

  The Marquis takes the comrades

  And kisses them one by one:

  “That ye were fast and faithful

  And better than I to my son,

  “Ye shall be called forever,

  In the sign that ye were so true,

  The Faithful of the Gonzaga,

  And your sons after you.”

  VIII.

  To the Marchioness comes a courtier:

  “I am prayed to bring you word

  That the minstrel keeps his promise

 

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