Wilfrid Scawen Blunt: Verses about Faith

Here therefore ends my sad soul's pilgrimage,
In tears for sin and half--redeemed desire.
She was unworthy her high martyr's rage,
Or to be wholly purified by fire.
O Rome, thy ways are narrow and aspire
Too straitly for the knees of this halt age,
And, with the multitude, her forces tire,
Even while she holds thee fast, her heritage.
Path of sublime perfection upon Earth!
Your's is it in the clamour of vain days
To guard the calm eternal of Man's birth
And like an eagle to renew his days.
Give me your blessing, angels, ere I go,
Angels that guard the bridge of Angelo.

At last I kneel in Rome, the bourne, the goal
Of what a multitude of laden hearts!
No pilgrim of them all a wearier soul
Brought ever here, no master of dark arts
A spirit vexed with more discordant parts,
No beggar a scrip barer of all dole;
No son, alas, steps sorer with the darts
Of that rebellious sorrow, his sin's toll.
I kneel and make an offering of my care
And folly, and hurt reason. Who would not
In this fair city be the fool of prayer?
Who would not kneel, if only for the lot
Of being born again--a soul forgiven,
Clothed in new childhood and the light of Heaven?

A prison is a convent without God.
Poverty, Chastity, Obedience
Its precepts are. In this austere abode
None gather wealth of pleasure or of pence.
Woman's light wit, the heart's concupiscence
Are banished here. At the least warder's nod
Thy neck shall bend in mute subservience.
Nor yet for virtue--rather for the rod.

Here a base turnkey novice--master is,
Teaching humility. The matin bell
Calls thee to toil, but little comforteth.
None heed thy prayers or give the kiss of peace.
Nathless, my soul, be valiant. Even in Hell
Wisdom shall preach to thee of life and death.

If I have since done evil in my life,
I was not born for evil. This I know.
My soul was a thing pure from sensual strife.
No vice of the blood foredoomed me to this woe.
I did not love corruption. Beauty, truth,
Justice, compassion, peace with God and man,
These were my laws, the instincts of my youth,
And hold me still, conceal it as I can.
I did not love corruption, nor do love.
I find it ill to hate and ill to grieve.
Nature designed me for a life above
The mere discordant dreams in which I live.
If I now go a beggar on the Earth,
I was a saint of Heaven by right of birth.

Nor later, when with her my childhood died,
Was life less sealed to me. The Church became
My guardian next and mother deified,
Who lit within me a more subtle flame
Of constancy, and clothed me in her mood.
No sound, no voice within that sanctuary
Told me of common evil. Unsubdued
And vast and strange, a thing from which to flee,
The world lay there without us. We within,
Fenced in and folded safe in our strong home,
Knew nothing of the sorrow and the sin.
'Tis no small matter to have lived in Rome,
In the Church's very bosom and abode,
Cloistered and cradled there, a child of God.

I will release my soul of argument.
He that would love must follow with shut eyes.
My reason of the years was discontent,
My treasure for all hope a vain surmise.
I will have done with wisdom's sophistries,
Her insolence of wit. What man shall say
He comfort takes in the short hour that dies,
Because he knew it mortal yesterday?
The tree of knowledge bears a bitter fruit.
This is that other tree, whose branches hold
Fair store of faith, peace, pity absolute,
And deeds of virtue for a world grown cold.
If by its fruits the tree of life be known,
Here is a truth undreamed of Solomon.

The majesty of Rome to me is nought;
The imperial story of her conquering car
Touches me only with compassionate thought
For the doomed nations faded by her star.
Her palaces of Caesars tombstones are
For a whole world of freedoms vainly caught
In her high fortune. Throned was she in war;
By war she perished. So is justice wrought.
A nobler Rome is here, which shall not die.
She rose from the dead ashes of men's lust,
And robed herself anew in chastity,
And half redeemed man's heritage of dust.
This Rome I fain would love, though darkly hid
In mists of passion and desires scarce dead.

O fool! O false! I have abandoned Heaven,
And sold my wealth for metal of base kind.
O frail disciple of a fair creed given
For human hope when all the world was blind!
What was my profit? Freedom of the mind,
A little pleasure of the years, some scars
Of lusty youth, and some few thoughts enshrined
In worthier record of my manhood's years.
All else is loss, and unredeemed distress;
The voiceful seasons uninvited come,
And bring their tribute of new flowers, and pass:
Only the reason of the world is dumb;
Nor does God any more by word or sign
Speak to our rebel hearts of things divine.

Behold the deed is done. Here endeth all
That bound my grief to its ancestral ways.
I have passed out, as from a funeral,
From my dead home, and in the great world's gaze
Henceforth I stand, a pilgrim of new days,
On the high road of life. Where I was thrall,
See, I am master, being passionless;
And, having nothing now, am lord of all.
How glorious is the world! Its infinite grace
Surprises me--and not as erst with fear,
But as one meets a woman face to face,
Loved once and unforgotten and still dear
In certain moods and seasons. So to me
The fair world smiles to--day, yet leaves me free.

To Switzerland, the land of lakes and snow,
And ancient freedom of ancestral type,
And modern innkeepers, who cringe and bow,
And venal echoes, and Pans paid to pipe!
See, I am come. And here in vineyards, ripe
With sweet white grapes, I will sit down and read
Once more the loves of Rousseau, till I wipe
My eyes in tenderness for names long dead.
This is the birthplace of all sentiment,
The fount of modern tears. These hills in me
Stir what still lives of fancy reverent
For Mother Nature. Here Time's minstrelsy
Awoke, some century since, one sunny morn,
To find Earth fortunate, and Man forlorn.

Yes, Italy is wise, a cultured prude,
Stored with all maxims of a statelier age;
These are her lessons for our northern blood,
With its dark Saxon madness and Norse rage.
With these she tempers us and renders sage,
As long ago she stayed the barbarous flood
Surging against her, and her heritage
Snatched from the feet of that brute multitude.
Calmly she waits us. What to her shall be
Our fevers of to--day, who erewhile knew
Caesar's ambitions? What our pruriency,
Who saw Rome sacked by the lewd Vandal crew?
What our despair, who, while a world stood mute,
Saw Henry kneel in tears at Peter's foot?

To--day there is no cloud upon thy face,
Paris, fair city of romance and doom!
Thy memories do not grieve thee, and no trace
Lives of their tears for us who after come.
All is forgotten--thy high martyrdom,
Thy rage, thy vows, thy vauntings, thy disgrace,
With those who died for thee to beat of drum,
And those who lived to see thee kingdomless.
Indeed thou art a woman in thy mirths,
A woman in thy griefs which leave thee young,
A prudent virgin still, despite the births
Of these sad prodigies thy bards have sung.
What to thy whoredoms is a vanished throne?
A chair where a fool sat, and he is gone!

Away from sorrow! Yes, indeed, away!
Who said that care behind the horseman sits?
The train to Paris, as it flies to--day,
Whirls its bold rider clear of ague fits.
Who stops for sorrows? Who for his lost wits,
His vanished gold, his loves of yesterday,
His vexed ambitions? See, the landscape flits
Bright in his face, and fleeter far than they.
Away! away! Our mother Earth is wide;
And our poor lives and loves of what avail?
All life is here; and here we sit astride
On her broad back, with Hope's white wings for sail,
In search of fortune and that glorious goal,
Paris, the golden city of our soul.

But, when the church was hushed in the night wind,
And all were gone who might his zeal disclaim,
Or hinder the firm purpose of his mind,
A silent man among the tombs he came,
Stooping to listen if so be some sound
Of living thing with speech or power to breathe
Should issuant be from the dark underground,--
And last to hers. There on that home of death
He kneeled him down and called aloud to her,
``Natalia, O Natalia, my beloved,
Am I not here thy soul's petitioner
Whom thou so lovedst?'' And around him moved
The phantoms of the night. And the wind's sigh
Answered his prayer, ``Beloved, it is I.''

Ah, Paris, Paris! What an echo rings
Still in those syllables of vain delight!
What voice of what dead pleasures on what wings
Of Maenad laughters pulsing through the night!
How bravely her streets smile on me! How bright
Her shops, her houses, fair sepulchral things,
Stored with the sins of men forgotten quite,
The loves of mountebanks, the lusts of kings!
What message has she to me on this day
Of my new life? Shall I, a pilgrim wan,
Sit at her board and revel at her play,
As in the days of old? Nay, this is done.
It cannot be; and yet I love her well
With her broad roads and pleasant paths to Hell.

ON READING CERTAIN LETTERS
Reading these lines, this record of lost days
Where I am not, and yet where love has been,
This tale of passions consecrate to men
Other than me, unwitting of my ways,
I seem to hear some pagan chaunt of praise
Hymned to an idol shrine in gardens green,
Some wild soft worship of a god obscene,
Some idle homage to an idol face.
I shut my ears, yet hear it still. My eyes
See not, yet see the unchaste the unlawful fire;
I scent the odour of the sacrifice,
And feel the victim's shriek. Then in my ire
I rise up, as on Horeb, and I cry,
``There is none other god, but only I!''

For thus it is. You flout at kings to--day.
To--morrow in your pride you shall stoop low
To a new tyrant who shall come your way,
And serve him meekly with mock--serious brow,
While the world laughs. I shall not laugh at you.
Your Bourbon, Bonaparte or Boulanger
Are foils to your own part of ingénue
Which moves me most, the moral of your play.
You have a mission in the world, to teach
All pride its level. Poet, prince and clown,
Each in your amorous arms has scaled the breach
Of his own pleasure and the world's renown.
Till with a yawn you turn, and from your bed
Kick out your hero with his ass's head.

Where is the pride for which I once was blamed,
My vanity which held its head so high?
Who would believe them, seeing me thus tamed,
Thus subject, here as at thy feet I lie,
Pleading for love which now is all my life,
Craving a word for memory's rage to keep,
Asking a sign to still my inward strife,
Petitioning a touch to soothe my sleep?
Who would now guess them, as I kiss the ground
On which the feet of him I love have trod,
And bow before his voice whose least sweet sound
Speaks louder to me than the voice of God;
And knowing all the while that one dark day,
Spite of my worship, thou wilt turn away?

Gods, what a moral! Yet in vain I jest.
The France which has been, and shall be again,
Is the most serious, and perhaps the best,
Of all the nations which have power with men.
France only of the nations has this plain
Thought in the world, to scorn hypocrisy,
And by this token she shall purge the stain
Of her sins yet, though these as scarlet be.
Let her put off her folly! 'Tis a cloak
Which hides her virtue. Let her foremost stand,
The champion of all necks which feel the yoke,
As once she stood sublime in every land.
Let her forgo her Tonquins, and make good
Her boast to man, of man's high brotherhood!

Yet it is pitiful how friendships die,
Spite of our oaths eternal and high vows.
Some fall through blight of tongues wagged secretly,
Some through strifes loud in empty honour's house.
Some vanish with fame got too glorious,
And rapt to heaven in fiery chariots fly;
And some are drowned in sloth and the carouse
Of wedded joys and long love's tyranny.
O ye, who with high--hearted valliance
Deem truth eternal and youth's dreams divine,
Keep ye from love and fame and the mischance
Of other worship than the Muses nine.
So haply shall you tread life's latest strand
With a true brother still, and hand in hand.

So I, I am ashamed of my old life,
Here in this saintly presence of days gone,
Ashamed of my weak heart's unmeaning strife,
Its loves, its lusts, its battles lost and won,
And its long search of pleasure 'neath the sun,
And its scant courage to endure the knife,
And its vain longing for good deeds undone,
Ending in bitter words with railing rife.
I am unworthy, yet am comforted,
As one who driving o'er long trackless roads
Of brake and rock and briar with footsore steed
And springless chariot, searching for vain gods,
Finds the high--road before him, where at ease
The old world plods the rut of centuries.

And what strange sights have these threewindows seen,
Mid bonnes and children, in the Tuileries!
What flights of hero, Emperor and Queen,
Since first I looked down from them, one of these!
Here, with his Mornys and his Persignys,
Louis Napoleon, the Prince President,
Rode one December past us, on the breeze
Of his new glory, bloodstained and intent.
Later, I too my love's diplomacies
Played at Eugenia's court,--blest Empress! Then
How did men curse her with their Marseillaise,
When the foe's horse was watered in her Seine,
And the flames, lit for her last festival,
Licked out her palace and its glories all.

Dear royal France! I fix the happy year
At forty--seven, because that Christmas--tide
There passed through Pau the Duke of Montpensier,
Fresh from his nuptials with his Spanish bride;
And because I, unwilling, shared their pride,
As youngest of the English children there,
By offering flowers to the fair glorified
Daughter of Bourbon standing on the stair--
A point in history. When we came at last
To this gay Paris I was doomed to love,
There were already rumours of the blast
That swept the Orleans songsters from their grove
In flight to London, after Polignac
And the true king, at their King Bourgeois' back.

God knows, 'twas not with a fore--reasoned plan
I left the easeful dwellings of my peace,
And sought this combat with ungodly Man,
And ceaseless still through years that do not cease
Have warred with Powers and Principalities.
My natural soul, e'er yet these strifes began,
Was as a sister diligent to please
And loving all, and most the human clan.

God knows it. And he knows how the world's tear
Touched me. And He is witness of my wrath,
How it was kindled against murderers
Who slew for gold, and how upon their path
I met them. Since which day the World in arms
Strikes at my life with angers and alarms.

'Tis time I stepped from Horeb to the plain.
Mountains, farewell. I need a heavier air.
Youth's memories are not good for souls in pain,
And each new age has its own meed of care.
Farewell, sad Alps, you are my barrier
Now to the North, and hold my passions slain
For all life's vultures, as I downward fare
To a new land of love which is not vain.
How staid is Italy! No gardened rose
Scattering its leaves is chaster than she is.
No cloister stiller, no retreat more close.
There is a tameness even in her seas
On which white towns look down, as who should say,
``Here wise men long have lived, and live to--day.''

For lo! the nations, the imperial nations
Of Europe, all imagine a vain thing,
Sitting thus blindly in their generations,
Serving an idol for their God and King.
Blindly they rage together, worshipping
Their lusts of cunning, and their lusts of gold;
Trampling the hearts of all too weak to bring
Alms to their Baal which is bought and sold.
And lo! there is no refuge, none but Baal
For man's best help, and the mute recreant earth
Drinks in its children's blood, and hears their wail,
And deals no vengeance on its last foul birth;
And there is found no hand to ward or keep
The weak from wrong, and Pity is asleep.

The physical world itself is a fair thing
For who has eyes to see or ears to hear.
To--day I fled on my new freedom's wind,
With the first swallows of the parting year,
Southwards from England. At the Folkestone pier
I left the burden of my sins behind,
Noting how gay the noon was, and how clear
The tide's fresh laughter rising to no wind.
A hundred souls of men there with my own
Smiled in that sunshine. 'Tis a little measure
Makes glad the heart at sea, and not alone
Do wise men kindle to its pulse of pleasure
Here all alike, peers, pedlars, squires, and dames
Forswore their griefs fog--born of Father Thames.

Whence is our pleasure in things beautiful?
We are not born with it, we do not know,
By instinct of the eye or natural rule,
That naked rocks are fairest, or flowers blow
Best in their clefts, or that the world of snow
Has other glory than of cold and ice.
From our mother's hand we viewed these things below
Senseless as goats which browse a precipice,
Till we were taught to know them. With what tears
I con the lessons now I learned so well,
Of mountain shapes, from those dead lips of hers;
And as she spoke, behold, a miracle
Proving her words,--for at our feet there grew,
Beauty's last prodigy, a gentian blue.

And what brave life it was we lived that tide,
Lived, or essayed to live--for who shall say
Youth garners aught but its own dreams denied,
Or handles what it hoped for yesterday?
High prophets were we of the uncultured lay,
Supremely scorning all that to our pride
Seemed less than truth. Be truth the thing it may,
Our Goddess she, deformed but deified.
Prophets and poets of the Earth's last birth
Revealed in ugliness, a blind despair,
Only that we were young and of such worth
As still can thrive upon life's leanest fare,
And find in the world's turmoil its full quittance
Of joy denied, however poor the pittance.

Rather I hold with those that tell it thus,
That they, who had made proof of their great faith,
Were joined no less with honour in love's house
By Holy Church, which binding looseneth,
Since it is written that 'twixt maid and man
The wedded contract joining hand and heart
For this life is and passeth not the span
Of victor death which all our bonds doth part.
And it were grievous one should suffer all,
Even death's last pang and an untimely grave,
If overcoming he again should fall
Prisoner to penance and to sorrow slave.
Ah, no! They lived the life their love had given,
And we too all, so grant it kindly Heaven!

Voltaire and Rousseau, these were thy twin priests,
Proud Mother Nature, on thy opening day.
The first with bitter gibes perplexed the feasts
Of thy high rival, and prepared the way;
The other built thy shrine. 'Twas here, men say,
De Warens lived, whose pleasure was the text
Of the new gospel of the sons of clay,
The latest born of time, by faith unvexed.
Here for a century with reverent feet
Pilgrims, oppressed with barrenness of soul,
Toiled in their tears as to a Paraclete.
On these white hills they heard Earth's thunders roll
In sneers outpreaching the lost voice of God,
And shouted ``Ichabod, ay, Ichabod!''

How shall I ransom me? The world without,
Where once I lived in vain expense and noise,
Say, shall it welcome me in this last rout,
Back to its bosom of forgotten joys?
Sometimes I hear it whispering with strange voice,
Asking, ``Are we forever then cast out,
The things that helped thee once in thy annoys,
That thou despairest? Nay, away with doubt!
Take courage to thy heart to heal its woes.
It still shall beat as wildly as a boy's.''
This tempts me in the night--time, and I loose
My soul to dalliance with youth's broken toys.
Ay, wherefore suffer? In this question lies
More than my soul can answer, and be wise.

And here too I, the latest fool of Time,
Sad child of doubt and passionate desires,
Touched with all pity, yet in league with crime,
Watched the red sunsets from the Alpine spires,
And lit my poet's lamp with kindred fires,
And dared to snatch my share of the sublime.
There was one with me, master of the choirs
Of eloquent thought, who listening to my rhyme,
And seeing in me a soul set on things
Not wholly base, although my need was sore,
Bade me take courage and essay new wings.
And thus it was I first beheld this shore,
Mourning the loss yet half consoled of gain,
The passionate pleader of youth's creed of pain.

Ancient of days! What word is thy command
To one befooled of wit and his own way?
What counsel hast thou, and what chastening hand
For a lost soul grown old in its dismay?
What penance shall he do, what ransom pay,
Of blood poured out for faith in a far land,
What mute knee--service, weeping here to--day,
In words of prayer no ear shall understand?
Let him thy servant be, the least of all
In the Lord's Courts, but near thy mysteries,
To touch the crumbs which from thy table fall,
Let him--. But lo, thou speakest: ``Not with these
Is God delighted. Get thee homeward hence.
They need thee more who wait deliverance!''

I will break through my bondage. Let me be
Homeless once more, a wanderer on the Earth,
Marked with my soul's sole care for company,
Like Cain, lest I do murder on my hearth.
I ask not others' goods, nor wealth nor worth,
Nor the world's kindness, which should comfort me,
But to forget the story of my birth,
And go forth naked of all name, but free.
Where the flowers blow, there let me sit and dream.
Where the rain falls, ah! leave my tears their way.
Where men laugh loud, I too will join the hymn,
And in God's congregation let me pray.
Only alone--I ask this thing--alone,
Where none may know me, or have ever known.

I had been an hour at Lyons. My breath comes
Fast when I think of it. An hour, no more,
I trod those streets and listened to the drums,
The mirth, the music, and the city's roar,
And found no sermon for me in her stones.
It was the evening of St. Martin's fair,
And all the world, its working bees and drones,
Had gone out to the quays in the sweet air,
To taste that thing more sweet to human breath,
Its own mad laughter at its own mad kind.
``An hour of prayer,'' I mused, ``for men of faith.''
Yet all these worshippers were only blind.
And I, no whit less blind, among them went
In search of pleasure for my punishment.

COLD COMFORT
There is no comfort underneath the sun.
Youth turns to age; riches are quickly spent;
Pride breeds us pain, our pleasures punishment.
The very courage which we count upon
A single night of fever shall break down,
And love is slain by fear. Death last of all
Spreads out his nets and watches for our fall.
There is no comfort underneath the sun!
--When thou art old, O man, if thou wert proud
Be humble; pride will here avail thee not.
There is no courage which can conquer death.
Forget that thou wert wise. Nay, keep thy breath
For prayer, that so thy wisdom be forgot
And thou perhaps get pity of thy God.

The poets, every one, have sung of passion.
But which has sung of friendship, man with man?
Love seeks its price, but friendship has a fashion
Larger to give, and of less selfish plan.
The world grows old. From Beersheba to Dan
We find all barren, ruby lips grown ashen,
Hearts hard with years--and only Jonathan
Weeping with David o'er a ruined nation.
Then in the depth of days and our despair,
We count our treasures, if so be remain
Some loving letters, rings and locks of hair.
Nay, mourn not love. These only are not vain,
Your manlier wounds, when in the front you stood,
For a friend's sake and your sworn Brotherhood.

Alas, that words like these should be but folly!
Behold, the Boulevard mocks, and I mock too.
Let us away and purge our melancholy
With the last laughter at the Ambigu!
Here all is real. Here glory's self is true
Through each regime to its own mission holy
Of plying still the world with something new
To cure its ache, or nobly souled or lowly.
One title Paris holds above the rest
Untouched by time or fortune's change or frown,
One temple of high fame, where she sits dressed
In youth eternal, and mirth's myrtle crown,
And where she writes, each night, with deathless hands,
``To all the glories--of the stage--of France.''

A LATER DEDICATION

To her the sweetest, fairest, worthiest one,
Who the inspirer is of my new praise,
Whom lately once, one Autumn afternoon,
I walked with nor told aught a lover says,
And yet who knows I love her in all ways
A maiden dreams: the suppliant at her throne,
The counsellor of strength, the lord of lays
Loyal to chastity and her alone,
These rhymes I dedicate. Oh, if there be
Still in this world of vanished creeds and kings
Some faith in royal blood and right divine,
Some lingering reverence paid to majesty,
Here seek it and here find it, for it clings
To each hushed verse like incense to a shrine.