So to the journey's end. The Gulf was there
Steaming and soundless, and the weary feet
Were stayed at last from following the Queen.
The great dhow nosed the creek; slow water lapped
About her burnished; burnished in her sat
Unmoving bronze, her oarsmen. Then they rose:
"Hail, Bringers of the Queen!" "Hail, ship! you bear
What cargo hence?" "We carry on your charge."
"But leave us nothing—nothing in exchange?"
"Only the ancient story of a slave.
There lies a secret buried none too deep."
Thus the chief rower. This the far-off tale.
I dwelled beside the impulsive Rhone, a child that loved to be alone.
The forest was my nursery. My happiness was all my own.
I knew by name each cloud that lowers the sunshine through in liquid showers.
Deep in the tangled undergrowth I caught the singing of the flowers.
[Pg 104]
Our minstrels sang of rape and arson, all the joys of private wars.
The forest wall was calm and tall. My tutor laughed, and drank to Mars.
Bald, vulture-like upon its perch, our crag-born castle seemed to search
The gorge for prey, its shade to still the bells a-twitter in the church
Where, cheek by jowl with fearsome fowl and gargoyle, ghostly men, in foul
Incense that tried to stifle me, recited magic formulæ.
At home clanked metal psalm and spur; but, oh the woods ...! I tried to tame
A wolf-cub that the gardener called Life. He knew. The preacher came.
I see him yet, his visage wet with hot emotion, tears, and sweat.
Contorted in the market-place he shrieked that all must pay a debt
To one Jehovah and His Son, by bursting eastward as the Hun
Had scourged the West. In unison we all replied 'twere nobly done,
[Pg 105]
For he explained that heaven was gained more featly—wrenching Saint Jerome—
From Palestine than Christendom. That night no peasant durst go home.
His words were like a wind that fanned a grass-fire: God would lend His hand
To purge away the infidel whose breath profaned the Holy Land.
He showered indulgences, and kissed the brows of those who would enlist
To take a chance of martyrdom or give the devil's tail a twist.
He promised we should see the light, that cursèd Arabs could not fight,
Counted them dead since we were "led by General Jesus," said the pope.
Moreover we must win and use Christ, His true Cross, the Widow's cruse,
All talismans that found no scope for miracles among the Jews.
Upon the walls the veriest dolt and clown, arow like birds that moult,
Chattered with one accord—or some small priestly prompting:—"Diex el volt."
[Pg 106]
No wonder that our heartstrings glowed within us like a smelted lode
Whence Kobolds welded Durandal; and like one man we ran or rode
Forth. Were we not enchanted? This was first among God's certainties.
Even our steeds were like Shabdíz, the pride of King Khusraw Parvíz.
We saw our path made plain, the hills removed by faith, whose foaming course
Flooded the continents like flats. We saw the world made one—by force.
In ecstasy our spirits soared. With beatific face toward
My cloudland all the crowd shed tears, and vowed to serve and save the Lord.
But cloudland, seeming to disdain such warmth, replied with slapping rain.
Conjuring such black augury the monks recited formulæ.
Besides, lest women, priests and traders should tempt the appetite of raiders,
The Church proclaimed the Truce of God. Not all our barons were crusaders.
[Pg 107]
Those who were frightened not to go sold all they had to make a show,
Land, tool and ware to pay a fare. The panic made sly kings its heir.
So much was sold by young and old, by fond, ambitious, hot and cold,
That steel took sudden silver wings, then flew beyond the reach of gold.
In such a gust my tender age availed not with the preaching sage,
For I was born of fighting men; and one of them took me for page,
Though I was loth to go, and prayed for mercy and a little maid
Whose hair was shining sunflower brown. I thought of all the games we played
All day with hay and idle mowers. She dubbed me knight in pixy bowers,
Where in the hindering undergrowth I caught the singing of the flowers,
Ah me, how distant!... I was blest in my young lord who shared the test,
Being sent upon this pilgrimage, his snow-white love still unpossessed.
[Pg 108]
He, too, was paler than a ghost, as though already all were lost.
She dreamed of empery for him. He taught me this to show the cost:
My heart was mine.
Ambition kept it whole.
I gained the world,
And so I lost my soul.
Then you were mine,
But only mine in part.
You loved the world,
And so I lost my heart.
Only my tutor lay abed, calling us savages, and read
His pagan books. The fever would abate, he sneered, when we were bled.
He chilled me. His head was like a block of ice, so clear. He tried to shock
Me with his whispered flings that saints and monarchs came of laughing-stock,
Or boasted some loud organ, Reason, which doctors had confused with treason,
Looked round lest walls should hear, then wept that he was one born out of season.
[Pg 109]
Our preaching-man pronounced a ban upon him, cried good riddance: he
Was like to lead young men astray because he knew geography,
(And sciences, as medicine, reduce the value of a shrine).
My tutor passed for riding gnomes through space upon a pack of tomes.
But at the water-parting I waved to the castle green and dun,
A tapestry where liquid sun—or tears—had made the colours run.
I looked my last on every stone and tree to whom my face was known.
The warriors smiled and called me child. They had not understood the Rhone,
Nor that I loved the birchwood's skin, the pansy's face, the sheep-dog's grin,
That sleep with Nature in a field was sweet to me as mortal sin.
For love so fierce I stole: I gave my summer holidays to save
Lambs from the butcher, built for them sanctuary at my wolf-cub's grave.
[Pg 110]
I stroked the landscape like a lute. No scentless words, no colours mute,
Could paint its music. Henceforth I had only heaven for substitute.
Sling, crossbow, bludgeon, axe and spud, cilice and vials of sacred blood,
On such equipment we relied. Our foes were misery and mud.
Each Norman keep, each Frankish hold, each corner of the Christian fold
Sent forth its sheep to sound of bells. Our prophets might have had them tolled.
Prince, abbot, squire, felt the desire of bliss that swept stews, taverns, farms.
Soft damosels ploughed through the mire with babe at breast and men-at-arms;
And, since this journey was the price of entrance into Paradise,
The gaols belched out their criminals and beggars all alive with lice.
We took no food, for God is good; besides we heard that convents strewed
Converted Hungary for us. We never dared mistrust His mood.
[Pg 111]
Heading the mass far up the pass, that led us straight to Calvary,
The preaching-man upon an ass recited magic formulæ.
Soon we were joined by northern lords; no few among their folk had swords.
(Walter the Pennyless his rout had gone before and died in hordes,
While Gotschalk's dupes, with geese and goats upon their flags, had found the boats
To pass beyond the Bosphorus, where Kilidj Arslan cut their throats.)
Our force could not await the Turk, but in its ardour got to work
That was not mentioned in the breves. It murdered all the Jews in Treves.
And I was sad a Christian lad should march with myrmidons so mad.
They made our Holy War appear too near a Musulman Jehad.
We plodded on for many weeks through mazes where the Austrian ekes
A bare existence on the slips of alp below the granite peaks,
[Pg 112]
And all those weeks did naught betide us palmers save that many died.
Our gaol-birds eyed the preaching-man, and scholars spoke of vaticide;
But I was happy when our stout commander sent me on to scout.
I cried for little Sunflower-tress, and made strange faces at the trout.
Because I was a fighting-man I trained myself to nettle-stings,
And copied oaths and made up things my tutor would have tried to scan:
Briar and bramble,
Don't be so dense.
You scratch and you scramble
Like things without sense.
Why grudge me a ramble?
You can't want my hose,
White-coated bramble,
Pink briar-rose.
Bramble and briar,
Leave me alone.
Cling to the friar,
Make him your own.
[Pg 113]
Kiss him, the liar
Who brought us all here,
Gentle sweet-briar,
Bramble my dear.
Thus through the months of slapping rain we plunged into the Hungarian plain,
And paid its mounted bowmen dear for wretched stocks of fruit and grain,
Or shelter in a reed-built town. They asked for hostages. We gave
Our leaders to these dirty-brown mongrels, who brought us to the Save
With loss. My tutor's Damocles perhaps had lived in times like these;
For whoso straggled from the main body was never seen again.
Ere this my rhyme had spread, and swelled into a marching-song. I blushed
To witness how the spearmen held their sides with laughter, as they yelled
"Bramble and briar." 'Twas the first faint mutiny. These men of Gaul
Bantered the sterner pilgrims so I wondered why they came at all.
[Pg 114]
Yea, often now that I am old and hear how zealous scribes have told
The zeal that made the first crusade, well—history is eaten cold.
My lord could think of nothing but the lady who had bidden him cut
His way to her by such detours. Aye, this was true romance—the slut.
We called her secretly The Burr—whereof was plenty in our beds—
For night by night he crooned of her, nor even named the Sepulchre:
I waited, and the hours were loth to close.
They scarcely stirred till evening leapt to sight
Between the shadows that all substance throws
As bridges for its passage to the night.
You never came. Life dozes at the touch
Of those not wholly resolute to live,
Who let themselves mistrust her overmuch
To take the only thing she has to give.
Amid the rags there caracoled fop-penitents whose panders lolled
With human baggage in the rear, and hound and hawk. So chaos rolled
[Pg 115]
Adown the Danube rolling east. Beyond Semlin the pinewoods filled
With Celt and Saxon, man and beast inspired to leave the west untilled.
The locust-swarms were better drilled than we, the owls were not so blind.
At every stage we left behind poor simpletons that moaned and shrilled,
Thinking each swamp Gethsemane. It seemed that at their agony
The doctors scoffed with cross aloft, reciting magic formulæ.
Alone the princes lightly pranced, as if the pilgrimage enhanced
Their right to weigh upon the world thereafter. So the doom advanced
To dervish cries and jester's japes. Hermit and boor and jackanapes,
I and my ghost-pale master threw a trail of shadows, motley shapes,
Where Rhodopé's wine-purples mix snow with the moonlight. Oh, 'twas gall
Amid the horror of it all that Bulgars thought us lunatics,
[Pg 116]
Or worse; for ever at our flank a stream, that in my nostrils stank,
Seethed; and amid the best of her the scum of Europe wenched and drank.
At last we halted where Constantinople's grandeur puts to scorn
The villaged west, and challenges the Orient on her Golden Horn.
Ah, brazen, were your heart as strong as looked your square-chinned ramparts.... Long
We waited at the gates in dust knee-deep. The Emperor did not trust
The help that he had craved. He swore he had not asked so many ... more
Would ruin him.... He let the heat suck out our strength at every pore.
But we were told great noblemen, Godfrey of Bouillon in Ardennes,
Robert of Flanders, "Sword and Lance of Christians," all the flower of France
Were on our side, Hugh Vermandois, Stephen of Chartres and Troyes and Blois,
Baldwin and Raymond of Toulouse. The preacher said we could not lose.
[Pg 117]
Moreover he had spoken with angel-reserves behind us, sith
They sent assurance (Saracens we mocked, but had our own Hadith)
That we should root the heathen out, and blight as with a ten years' drought
Their fields. Jehovah willed that we should leave no seed of theirs to sprout.
Our mates streamed in from lands beyond the Adriatic, Bohemond
With Tancred; strait Dalmatian bays, Epirus, Scodra, devious ways
Bore them with boastful tales of sport and plunder, and a vague report
That this was nothing to the spoil that beckoned from the Moslem court.
Henceforth impatient ups and downs possessed us. Asiatic towns
Flamed to the general vision. We heard less perhaps of heavenly crowns
Than flowers and peacocks made of gems, the Caliph's crusted diadems
That crushed the head like Guthlac's bell, and trees with solid emerald stems.
[Pg 118]
And I confess Christ counted less to us than tales of leash and gess,
Or Hárún-el-Rashíd's largesse that sent the clock to Charlemagne.
We practised sums, and tried to train our cavalry in loss and gain.
Upon the misty wizard-world rose like a star the money-brain.
Even monks planned theft of saintly scalps; stray hairs and chips of nail and chine,
Divinely shielded through the Alps, would make the fortune of the Rhine.
I often tried to hide myself from this besetting spook of pelf.
In olive-groves I called in vain to simple faun and acorn-elf.
I pictured kine that kissed their own reflections on the impulsive Rhone,
A little maid with sunflower hair, a nest we found ... the birds had flown.
I think Alexius was wise to keep us out. Our hungry eyes
Fixed on his capital. Why go farther when here were rich supplies?
[Pg 119]
The Pope that cursed our tastes had laid the hand of blessing on this raid.
Blest chance indeed—as though a man should drink his fill and then be paid!
Each set to whet his falchion-pet that only friends had tasted yet.
We dressed our hopes in purple silk, wallowed in dreamland's wine and milk.
Yet more than any Sultan's spoil fair women should repay our toil.
Already some were filled with thoughts that our red cross was meant to foil.
The notion twinged us. We compared our prospects with the way we fared
On these lean suburbs and the flats about Barbyses. We were snared!
The very Greeks, whose prayers had lured us into this adventure, lodged
Their saviours in a baited trap. Lord, how these foxes turned and dodged.
There lay our army like a log; our camp, our tenets, turned to bog.
We sank. Disorder brought disease that stalked us spectral through the fog.
[Pg 120]
The Greeks we came to bolster up against their weakness filled our cup
With turpitude; the Byzantine put Circe's poison in our wine.
Our aspirations all became mean as our hosts; the inner flame
Went out. From many a starting-point we found a common ground in shame;
For here no soul can keep its health, but cat-like honour creeps by stealth
Down side streets where the children breathe an atmosphere of rotting wealth.
Between our fellow-churches rose the hate that heaven had meant for foes....
The infidel might well have laughed. Perhaps he did. We came to blows.
And I was sad that Christians had nothing in common, saving bad
Blood, that our highest dizziest heads could all divide but none could add.
But when spring lit the Judas-trees our chieftains kissed the Emperor's knees.
We crossed to Asia sick at heart. Alexius kept us well apart,
[Pg 121]
Shuffling us o'er the Bosphorus. The number and the rank of us
Exceeded those who went to Troy for Helen the Adulterous.
On the Bithynian plain our force drew up: an hundred thousand horse
With foot and monks and womankind in crowds that none can call to mind.
Fear stuffed the empty space ahead with devils and the shapes of dread
That decked our church. A ghastly rush of loneliness made every head
Feel like a pinpoint. Discontent ran through the score of nations blent
In cries. Their ribald spokesman forced a drunkard's way to Godfrey's tent:
You that have led us through the many tests
Of Hungary, King Caloman, and Thrace,
Who think of kingdoms as of palimpsests
And human nature as a carapace,
Go up and prosper in your lofty chase!
We cannot live on barren mountain-crests.
Our wildest dreams are prisoners that pace
The little space between a woman's breasts.
[Pg 122]
Here lies the stronghold that our zeal invests,
This infidel alone we long to face.
This hollow, where our constant fancy nests,
Is more to us than pedestal and dais.
Nay, we will go no farther in the race
For gain, respond no more to mean behests.
We know our cause, and reverently embrace
The little space between a woman's breasts.
It is our holy land, and we, the guests
Of passion, brand all other hosts as base.
The bees have led us to their treasure-chests,
A foxglove-sceptre and an hyacinth-mace,
The meadow's fleeting broidery and lace.
Their heaven like ours is nigh to vulgar jests.
A blossom's goal and glory is to grace
The little space between a woman's breasts.
Prince, be content and choose your resting-place,
Ere we be all forgotten with our quests,
And this thin earth go crumbling into space,
The little space between a woman's breasts.
Thereat was scandal, and a priest exclaimed that man was half a beast.
I could have told him that before. Man was the half I like the least.
[Pg 123]
To obviate a sinful fate the monks laid on us many weeks
Of penance, wasting us the more with these inventions of the Greeks.
Some paid in cash, some chose the lash—their backs were pitiful to see—
While Bishop Adhémar of Puy recited magic formulæ
That lurched us forward to our doom. We cleft the sultanate of Roum,
Calling for bread. The peasants fled. We swept the country like a broom.
Our armed migration choked the road. It ran ahead, a stream that flowed
Uphill to glory, so it seemed; and so imagination strode—
O Jack o' lantern!—into the unknown. The Virgin on a silver throne,
Our leaders swore, went on before us. I saw nothing but the Rhone,
The impulsive Rhone that tumbles down, and breaks clean through the grey-walled town.
I heard it rustle in its bed where others heard the Virgin's gown.
[Pg 124]
I blamed the foeman for my thirst, for sandstorm, flies, heat, scurvy—cursed
Them. Piles of grievance fumed until the red fire kindled. Madness burst
All bounds, and capered in the glare that wrapped us round like Nessus' shirt.
Each day 'twas there with yards to spare, and would not tear. How blue can hurt!
In my delirium I smelt a mirage, heard the swallows skim
Above the reeds where angels knelt with envious eyes to watch me swim.
The preacher said Jehovah's cloud and pillar would go with us. Yea,
The sky was on our heads alway. The sun rose up and cried aloud,
And stood immobilized at noon. We wondered if at Ajalon
The Jews thanked Joshua for the boon of this divine phenomenon.
We came to Nice and formed a siege with tortoise, belfry, catapult,
And curse that brought even less result. Each lordling quarrelled with his liege,
[Pg 125]
Layman with priest, until the place surrendered, and again we lurched
Forward. I heard our name was made. I only saw how it was smirched.
My master clasped a small, soiled glove, and promised deeds for love's sweet sake
That took my breath, as though his death would please The Burr. I lay awake
All night afraid to cry for fright. I tried my best to be full-grown,
A child now loth to be alone. My misery was all my own.
I well recall our knights' first charge. It was as though a loaded barge
Should seek to crush a dancing skiff. The foe was small, the plain was large.
Our men returned with horses spent. It seemed the Turkish cowards meant
To harry, not oppose. Sometimes we caught them full, and down they went.
Strange that within so short a space I felt the strong effects of grace!
The preaching man upon his ass called it a miracle. It was.
[Pg 126]
I, polishing my master's helmet, also longed to overwhelm
The miscreants, to hew in bits the devil and his earthly realm.
A boy's high spirits, weariness, a heart impulsive as the Rhone,
The wish to get this business done, the thought of little Sunflower-tress—
A flower beside The Burr, and "Why, if knights sing rubbish, should not I?"—
The preaching man's persistence, these stirred me to action by degrees.
We had our fill at Dorylæum. Our rogues were Paladins. We won,
And weighed our booty by the ton. That night we chanted a Te Deum,
A myriad voices in the dark; they rose like one colossal lark
Ere dawn. My soul flew up with them to see the new Jerusalem
And spite my tutor. I was mad to be a fighting-man, would pad
My arms like muscles. So my lord took me to foray. I was glad.
[Pg 127]
I had one thought: my hands were wet. That angered me: my mouth was dry.
I had one fear: I might forget my master's silly battle-cry.
Belike 'twas well no foe would stand—our cavaliers were out of hand—
So I was baulked. With scarce a blow we filed across the wasted land
For leagues, till Baldwin turned aside, and out of Peradventure carved
His slice, Edessa. We were plied to march on Antioch half-starved.
For seven months sheer courage toiled to take the town. Its ramparts foiled
Our engines. Sulkiness sat down within us, and temptation coiled
Tight round our bodies; every vice was lurking like a cockatrice.
Ah, flesh can never quite repel the sinuous things which thoughts entice.
You honey-coloured Syrian girls, whose voices turned our knights to thirls,
I looked away and stopped my ears by thinking of the glossier merles
[Pg 128]
At home. The arm upheld by Hur had not sufficed him to deter
The dissipation of our force, alas. My lord deceived The Burr.
'Twas worse when treachery let us in. Blood, lechery, pillage, fire and din
Burned an impression on my mind: the sexual ugliness of sin.
Cool Bohemond called Antioch his. Ere we had killed our mutineers,
We the besiegers were besieged by Kurbugha and his Amírs.
Alternate famine and carouse brought plague; but doubtless God allows
Expensive trials of faith that we might learn the magic formulæ.
We melted, melted; kites were fed upon us, dogs ran dripping red
From piles of nameless carrion, the race that Europe might have bred.
Throughout our ranks desertion raged by daily sermons unassuaged.
The preaching man was first in this "rope-dancing." Disillusion aged
[Pg 129]
My youth by years. My master stayed. If he had erred he promptly paid.
The pestilence ran after him. Despite the fervour I displayed
He died of sores, this prince of tilt, though guarded by ten hallowed charms,
This subject of all trouvère-lilt, lord in an hundred ladies' arms.
Oh, how I struggled to be brave when the Pope's legate, grey and grim,
Said simply this beside the grave: "Christ died for you. You died for Him."
Only his jester seemed to care, and ceased awhile to swear and daff.
"Who," he repeated in despair, "will pay me for his epitaph?"
Poor friend, this alien hungry land
Has closed her lips upon her prey.
The tree is spoiled into her hand;
She sucks the brook's thin veins away.
A sterner voice than bade you come
To reap the tears that exiles sow
Has called you to her longer home,
That neither bids nor lets you go.
[Pg 130]
Seven times you baulked her lawless laws,
And foiled the customs of the year;
But Death defends the tyrant's cause,
And makes the silent court his lair.
The lease of life, that none can own,
Is written on her agent's roll;
And from the desert and the sown
He takes a harsh and equal toll,
High-handed, scorning code or text.
No hope the debtor's gaol unlocks.
A friend appeals? He is the next
To occupy the narrow box.
The witness cowers, pale with fear,
When Death the stalker passes by;
And only prays he may not hear
That ugly sound—a victim's cry.
One weeps; his eyes are wet as long
As on Death's hand the blood is wet.
He says: "The King can do no wrong!"
And craves permission to forget.
How briefly to an echo clings
The memory of these solemn days,
The thought of those tremendous things
That Death implies but never says.
[Pg 131]
An hour ago we laid you down.
The tender, tardy autumn rain
Is dried within the dusty town,
And we are at our rounds again.
With every round our spirits sank in bodies lean and members lank.
I saw the soul of man, a cave, a wick that smouldered and smelled rank.
Men's fluid facts may wash the grime from pictures of a distant time,
But I can paint the truth in one small touch: our poets ceased to rhyme.
Such was the army's hopelessness. I understood, who once had seen
Our fading gardener rouse himself to kick and curse the wolf-cub, Life.
I would not let my feet desert, but oh the woods—the woods of home
That bent and beckoned in the damp zephyr in vain! I could not stoop
To play false in an enterprise however mad, if once begun.
Besides another miracle was wrought in me. I was in love.
[Pg 132]
I was enamoured of dear Christ; His utter beauty struck me dumb,
His face alone could compensate for scenes that almost made me long
For blindness. Yea, to Him I turned from all this heartache, nightly kissed
His hand with passion. I at least would not betray the children's Friend.
Haply His strength has always lain in contrast. I found strength to press
Toward the mark. Not so the host: we could not kick it to its feet.
Then heaven inspired us to devise a pious fraud—The Holy Lance.
We hid it in Saint Peter's crypt, and dug it up. The people wept
With rapture at this talisman, and sang the Psalm "Let God arise."
Also our chiefs—they knew my zeal—bade me complete the heartening sign.
White-plumed, white-horsed, with golden shield and halo, I contrived to appear
On the horizon, waved my sword while Adhémar proclaimed Saint George.
[Pg 133]
Our men responded with a shout. Through the five gates they tumbled out,
An headlong torrent. In a trice the infidel was put to rout,
And I joined in to hack and prod. Pure Tancred praised me with a nod.
Ascetic Godfrey even spoke to me: "Lad, you belong to God."
I won my spurs. They made me proud. Before my sword the wizards bowed,
Though me they washed. In vigil and fast I joined the perfect order, vowed
To hold my manhood chaste, to gird on might with right and courtesy,
To speak the truth, and so to be at variance with the common herd.
Such loftiness a man can feel once in a flash: strong arms, clean hands
That forged us into iron bands to unify the world with steel.
But as I left the altar daft with the ambition I had quaffed—
A word can kill a century—one of my perfect brothers laughed:
[Pg 134]
I took the vow of virtue
As others take to vice.
I could not break my heart of you.
Men call that sacrifice.
The priests applauded nature.
Poor devil, she was loth
Enough. The love of God and you
Has made me hate you both.
And I was sad that Christians, clad in robes so dazzling, were not glad
To keep them spotless from the world, and give the Virgin all they had.
Yet I was racked by continence of all we rightly rank as sense.
I hungered for the Sunflower-tress that now my lips would never press.
I wrenched and wrestled to believe that God had sent us here to grieve
Our bodies with this fruitlessness, that only fakirs could achieve
His purpose. Then in blind revolt my soul like an unbroken colt
Ran round and round an empty field. The hedge was thick. I could not bolt,
[Pg 135]
Though one poor knight on stiffened knee revealed beneath his breath to me
His thoughts on women while the monks recited magic formulæ.
I sought for solace in renown. Men watched me swagger through the town
The youngest knight in Christendom. When women passed I tried to frown.
A year I suffered in this way before the wreck of our array
Would undertake the final march. My soul was saved by movement. May
Was with us, when my tutor closed his wintry Juvenal and posed
Mid nightingales to quote and kiss the Pervigilium Veneris.
I drove his authors from my head, and read Augustin hard instead;
But sap was mounting in my veins and western groves where finches wed.
To these no sound of sapphire seas, no stunted firs of Lebanon,
Not Tyrian dyes nor Tripoli's loud yellows deafened. We ran on
[Pg 136]
Through landmarks famed in Holy Writ, Emmaus, Bethlehem ... at last
We saw the walls of Zion lit blood-red by sunset and the past.
The conquest of another world unfurled beneath our feet, the land
Of miracle and mystery lay as a bauble in our hand.
Men flung their caps up, feigned a swoon. With prostrate lines of us the moon
Drew silver circles round the site. A cock crowed—many hours too soon.
We thought to prise the gates ajar. My tutor wrote their private Lar
Or else—with Tacitus—their folk designed them for eternal war.
The moat was wide; we feebly tried to stop its gape with pebbles, cried
"Fall, Jericho!" The blessèd wall stood firm; but Christ was on our side.
The Church had saved Him from His wan repute and thrust Him in our van,
Bronzed, scarred. Alas, the first crusade had made Him out a fighting man!
[Pg 137]
He taught the Turks to mock Giaours!... sent timely Genoese to build
Wheeled wooden turrets. These we filled brimful. Jerusalem was ours.
We entered reverent, barefoot; slew three livelong nights and mornings through,
Then paused to sing a thanksgiving. We massacred the morrow too.
And I was glad a Christian lad could boast of some small suffering ad
Majorem Dei gloriam. I only longed to burn Baghdad.
Nay, I can say I never hid to chamber as my fellows did.
I felt my conscience clear as frost, and touched no woman—God forbid.
I set my contrite soul apart with mass, procession, penance, rites
That took me out to see the sights, brushing ecstatic lanes athwart
The quiddering mob with tears of joy—my tutor's phrase was οἱ πολλοὶ [Greek: hoi polloi]—
Though few were left. Some Greeks of ours confused Jerusalem with Troy.
[Pg 138]
But most the bestial German louts made even their hardest allies sick;
They ran to mutilate the quick and sniff the dead with joyous snouts.
Shriven, forgiven, we embraced each stone that Christ had touched, and placed
Such relics under treble guard. One note in our rejoicings jarred.
It seemed some types of Jewish dog escaped the flaming synagogue,
And their ingratitude was base. They joined to form a wailing-place.
I heard them as I roamed among blind alleys dark and overhung
By one-eyed dens. With whining nose against the wall the pack gave tongue:
Behold Thy people, Lord, a race of mourners.
Through this Thy sacred dwelling-place they creep
Like strangers. Hearken, Lord, in holes and corners
We sit alone and weep.
For Thy decree, most terrible and holy,
That as the fathers sow the sons shall reap,
For all Thy just affliction of the lowly,
We sit alone and weep.
[Pg 139]
For all the glory that is now departed,
For all the stones that Thou hast made an heap,
Yea, for the city of the broken-hearted,
We sit alone and weep.
For all the wealth wherewith Thou hadst endowed her,
For all our shepherds gone astray like sheep,
For all Thy temple's jewels ground to powder,
We sit alone and weep.
Because our soul is chastened as with lashes,
Because Thine anger like a stormy deep
Goes over us, in sackcloth and in ashes
We sit alone and weep.
Nobody gave them heed; indeed each man was thinking how to speed
His interests, and if the prey would satisfy ambition or need.
To honest minds with zeal imbued the Pope's indulgence, their own merit
Bestowed some licence to be lewd, and take—their preachers said "inherit."
Even I who was in love with Christ, I with the conscience clean and cold
That hankered not for lands or gold, was wondering how to clinch my hold
[Pg 140]
On reputation, while our chiefs, before we could consolidate,
Rode a great wallop round the State and split it into petty fiefs.
Their overlords revolted me. Alas, for our brief unity!
Edessa snarled at Antioch, Jerusalem at Tripoli.
Poor Godfrey, who would not accept a crown where his Redeemer wore
Thorns, nor be strong where Jesus wept! From the beginning weakness crept
Into our councils. Worse, we watched the bulk of our brave lads disperse
Well-pleased. At most we raised the ghost of needful power to hold their post.
Franks and Provincials, German brutes that bullied babes and prostitutes,
Lombards and Flemings, made for home with clapping and the sound of flutes.
It flowed away, the unstable stuff, to whom a cause was but a noun.
They stood to sea. Thank heaven 'twas rough! My place was here with my renown.
[Pg 141]
They vanished ... home ... to Sunflower-tress ... home, where a man may die obscure!
Far off a carle of Albemarle trolled chanties like a Siren's lure.
East, are you calling still,
Who tried your strength of will
For naught on brown Ulysses long ago?
We have an island too,
And haul away from you
To cleaner kin that bend a stronger bow.
Your caravans string out
On many a golden route
The turbaned Magi's offerings; but we
Steer forth on loner trails
Through rough wind-scented vales
To England, the oasis of the sea.
Child Jesus chose you, East,
Not that He loved us least,
But just because His Father had foreseen
The dear and only Son
Might dwell too long upon
Our swinging greys and many-coloured green.
[Pg 142]
So we were left alone. The spring broke out in buds of bickering.
Each summer brought contentious fruit. Strife waxed with every waning king.
And I waxed also, better known, resolved to reap what I had sown.
My childless manhood fixed my heart. The Holy Land was all my own.
I grew in grace with man—I hoped with God; from Beersheba to Dan
I went about my Father's work. Faith could not shirk what Faith began.
Sometimes qualms came. I looked askance on Bishop Daimbert's schemes to enhance
His seat. The native Christians sighed they missed the Caliph's tolerance.
Not that had hurt me, but the void which love will make if unemployed.
I spent my strength to keep him quiet, and free the thoughts that he decoyed,
Till woods and Rhone were out of range. I often wondered at the change
In nature's child, in me. The formulæ were there. "God's ways are strange."
[Pg 143]
Yet in my struggle with the powers of darkness I recalled the showers
Of light that fought the undergrowth to catch the singing of the flowers.
Time passed, and no one seemed to reck of Zenghi, the first Atabek,
Though every year we failed to act the Saracens grew more compact.
In vain I urged that we might fall, so slender was our human wall,
So numberless the foe beside the Templars and the Hospital.
The answer was that dyke and fosse were useless when we had the Cross,
With other relics by the score, to guard against defeat or loss.
My prophecies of coming ills fell on deaf ears and weakly wills.
I did my best. You know I did, who saw me peer beyond the hills
Where Karak like a lighthouse loomed at waves of sand that never spumed,
The tideless main, an ocean-plain bare, petrified. Its silence boomed.
[Pg 144]
I saw in all that vastitude, the one, the drab, the many-hued,
No sign of life, no moving speck; and yet I knew that trouble brewed.
I tortured every hour to find material things to prop behind—
Forgive me, God!—Your earthly realm. The need was great, for it was blind.
The mathematics of Abul Hassan, three hundred years at school
In Arabic philosophy, showed that the West was still a fool.
Nay, gently, call her still a babe. How should she know that I, the Great,
Had learned from savages to prate of compass and of astrolabe.
Our miracles were not so sure to heal as Rhazes' simplest cure.
His friends the moon and stars obeyed the rules that Abul Wafa made.
My stolen lore raised me above my fellows. Everything but love
Was mine, respect, authority. The jealous Churchmen dared not move.
[Pg 145]
Our infant realm could not dispense with me, its shield and main defence.
I knew the Damascene recipe for making steel, and made it cheap.
My mind was fertile in resorts. I spent the pilgrims' fees on forts,
And settled, for their skill in trade, Venetian slavers at our ports.
Howbeit I trembled lest our main enthusiasm should be for gain.
I stripped myself to work against the working of the money-brain.
And I was glad I passed for mad and single-eyed as Galahad.
I sacrificed in saving Christ the profit that I might have had.
Nothing that I could do availed. My tongue grew bitter, girded, railed.
My labour only builded Me, but not the kingdom. So I failed.
Our Viscounts could but show their gums, while from Aleppo, Hama, Homs,
The foe crept onward like the months, culling our conquests like ripe plums.
[Pg 146]
For all response in Chastel Blanc and towering Markab-of-the-Sea
Some clerkly knight in red-crossed white recited magic formulæ;
Then darkly hinted science, hell and I were leagued, because their spell
Would not or could not stave the blow that I foresaw. Edessa fell.
Curse our degenerate Poullains! The breed had need of spurs not reins.
To stand an empty sack upright was easier than to warm their veins
Save with amours. One night I knelt to pray; but on the battlement
Hard by a lordling twanged a harp. I smelt the bastard's eastern scent.
He thought his leman lay behind my casement, where the jasmin twined
And almost jingled.... Oh the woods at home and whitethroats calling blind!
Suppose you left that window and came down
To meet me. Do not turn away.
Also you need not frown.
I only say:
"Suppose."
[Pg 147]
Suppose—you are a woman of resource—
The fastenings of your door undone.
No! They are not.... Of course!
But, just for fun,
Suppose.
Suppose that—safe among the trees below
The terraces—you chanced to find ...
Impossible!... I know,
But never mind.
Suppose.
Suppose that—being there—an eager arm
Drew you towards the little dell....
Why redden? Where's the harm?
You might as well
Suppose....
Suppose that, bending over you, a man
Breathed words of which you knew the gist.
Suppose it!... Yes, you can....
No, I insist....
Suppose!
Suppose you shut the window? Now? Pray do,
And take a lonely night to learn
This tune shut in with you.
Till I return,
Suppose....
[Pg 148]
Then I peeped out. Some breath divine had made his face, compared with mine,
An angel's. Love with all its faults had set there our Creator's sign.
That shook me. One of us was wrong. Which? He or I? His soul was vexed
Neither by this world nor the next, but floated in a bubble of song.
It haunted me, as he had said; it chimed and rhymed about my bed.
It filled my head with Sunflower-tress; but she—I writhed—was old or dead.
Was all my suffering a waste? Had superstition wed me chaste
To Its effect? Was this my Cause? My tutor in the dark grimaced.
I saw him snug at home, and how he would have chuckled at my vow!
Well, who laughs last.... I pictured him a dotard or in hell by now.
I prayed for help all night; and, warned by lost Edessa, Baldwin made
Great efforts to placate our God. The answer was a fresh crusade.
[Pg 149]
This was an answer none could doubt. We heard a preacher more devout
Than ours was quartering the west, and pulling true believers out.
He hight Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, the home of light and miracles.
The wives and mothers trembled so before his spirit's tentacles,
They hid their males—in vain. He swept the Emperor Conrad with him, kept
The collar of his pale adept, emasculated Louis Sept.
He cured King's Evils, raised the dead, he cast out devils by the gross.
'Twas said he promised us twelve legions of angels.... From the darkest regions
Men flocked to Metz and Ratisbon. News came of more than half a million,
Not counting those that rode apillion. Our battle was as good as won.
Such glorious news might well inflame our hopes. We waited. Nothing came,
Not even light Turcopuli nor Conrad's Golden-footed Dame.
[Pg 150]
Our Poullains first began to whine; the fainthearts said the fault was mine.
Saint Bernard was the oracle of Europe, I of Palestine.
And nothing came ... no troops.... The Greek misled, starved, poisoned, murdered them,
Betrayed them to the Turk, whose bleak deserts went over them. Week by week
We waited. Nothing. Cadmus saw them cut to bits, Attalia's maw
Could not be sated with their ruck. King Louis' mind had just one flaw:
He would not hear of strategy, staked all on supernatural help.
And nothing came, and nothing came. Our half-bred curs began to yelp
"Good God, if truly God is good!" They kissed the Cross. Gems hid the wood.
Had He forgotten? Was He deaf? Could such things be? Who understood?
Not I, though I had kept my word to save the Lamb by fire and sword.
And after twelve long lustra spent in service this was my reward.
[Pg 151]
Louis and Conrad struggled through one day with some small retinue.
I watched. Almost I could foretell what they and Providence would do.
And I remember, as we fared, a Sufi—so the sect is named—
Sat by the road as though he cared no jot for us, while he declaimed:
Her home is in the heart of spaciousness,
In the mid-city of ideals. The site
Is harmony, the walls are made of light.
There with the mother-thoughts she stands to bless
The godlike sons sent forth with her caress
To make new worlds. I see them all unite
Into the whole that our most starry flight
Of worship knew far off, and strove to express.
What can we do for her? We run to ask
As restless children for a grown-up task,
While wisdom in the porch, their kind old host,
Smiles at nurse nature, and replies: The most,
The least that we can do for Beauty is
To love for love's sake and serve God for His.
But Conrad drove his lance in jest right through the ragamuffin's chest,
Because his creed was not as ours; and on we rode. I lost my zest.
[Pg 152]
To take Damascus was our plan, relying on a talisman.
I knew that this would not suffice, for I was still a fighting man.
It ended in repulse and shame. Saint Bernard proved we were to blame
For want of faith. Ah, some of us had had too much. We said the same
Of him. At our return thick mobs of women filled the church with bobs
And bows, poor puppets, trying hard to sing between their stifled sobs:
God, whose Son has fathomed sorrow,
Give a mother strength to say:
Mine has faced and found To-morrow.
I will try to face To-day.
They turned to me. They thought me wise because I had been led by lies
To blind myself to them; and now I saw things through a woman's eyes,
And I went out. Not yet the end. Since innocence alone could save,
Saints hit on infant infantry, and fifty thousand found the grave.
[Pg 153]
My gorge rose, yet I stopped my ears. I had no hope, but I was tarred
With fame too much to show my fears. My duty lay in dying hard.
Oh irony! That fame increased the more its robes were patched and pieced.
My whole ambition was fulfilled when power and confidence had ceased.
The women kissed my feet, my horse; they clung to me like my remorse.
I that set out to make the world had made myself believe by force.
Nay, I that knew we were reprieved at best, had I in truth believed?
My youth came back. I seemed to meet my tutor's sneer in every street.
Fate cursed us with three minor kings, a leper then. Against these Things
Salah-ad-Din combined the entire orient. I wished our fate had wings
Instead of feet to end our dumb, keen, futile questionings, to numb
The brain that binds us with the chain of kingdom go and kingdom come.
[Pg 154]
One of our knights for plunder's sake undid us, roused the foe who brake
In through the pass of Banias, cutting our lands in two like cake.
The hour was here, but not the man. That murderer Guy de Lusignan
Was sent to head our fight for life. The craven took for talisman
Me and my hundred years, alas, a relic of the man I was.
I toiled to still our private feuds. We marched upon Tiberias,
For none would listen when I urged our leaders to await attack.
We marched across the waterless inferno. Summer burnt us black.
The Moslems scorched us with Greek fire. As rain upon a funeral pyre
Their arrows hissed in sheets upon the smoking scrub. "Go on!" "Retire!"
Our rabble cried, starting aside like broken bows; they tried to hide,
Split, fled for refuge to a hill, did nothing while the Templars died.
[Pg 155]
When all was lost I cut my way out through the thicket of the fray,
And galloped for Jerusalem to adjure Guy's Queen to stand at bay.
In this last desperate passage each proud noble still opposed his friend.
A little while and we were penned, and yet a little while a breach
Was made. Jehovah's chosen seat was tottering, but no Paraclete
Came down to comfort us. I made some sallies. Then the Queen would treat.
Perhaps in our appeal for ruth my wording stumbled on the truth,
"One God that went by many names," or else I knew Him in my youth,
Or else that Sufi haunted me with something that I could not see,
Something that only had not been because we would not let it be.
And when the foe marched in, I own that I was thinking of the Rhone
Long, long ago, and wondering—a child once more—if it had grown.
[Pg 156]
Yet there remained the sharpest cup to drain: the moan of us went up,
When from the topmost dome was hurled the Sign that should have ruled the world.
Down, down it rumbled with our grand designs. All we had built or planned,
Toiled, bled for, crumbled at a touch, was ruined like a house of sand.
So soon we pass. The wind knows why. The efforts of a century,
Three generations' handiwork failed in the twinkling of an eye.
And I was sad to think that shadows occupy us all. I had
No hope of earth. What boots a toy that thinks its maker raving mad?
My soul had passed through every phase and, counting forty thousand days,
Was farther off than at the start from comprehending heaven's ways
Or bowing to them. I came nearest when I pressed my childish ear
Earthward through briar and bramble bowers to catch the singing of the flowers.
[Pg 157]
The last remains of faith were shaken when I, the oracle, was taken.
My pride was made to sleep in chains. I prayed that I might never waken,
But woke. They gave me to a rais who wanted cattle, not advice.
He flogged me down to Damietta. I was old and fetched no price.
Nathless my battling heart was brave enough to work me till I dropped.
I passed for twopence to a Copt who sold me as a galley-slave
To Muscat. In the rhythmic stroke, old, undefeated, gnarled as oak
I creaked and strained against my fate, until that Sufi-something broke.
'Twas not my heart. An inner morn put the dark age in me to scorn,
And in the light I found myself, a child at play with worlds unborn,
For all that I had thought and read, and fought and watched the world be led
By any who contrived to cut a knot with that blunt tool, the head.
[Pg 158]
I laughed to think how sparrows might look down upon our highest flight,
While each succeeding age would have its oracle or stagyrite,
Would trace the good we never did, the evil that we never saw,
And out of our blind pyramid extract a stepping-stone to Law.
Here, where ambition had to cease in servitude, I tasted peace,
Free of illusion stretched and yawned. A fool would clamour for release.
I make the rowers' bench a throne to think, and thought implies Alone,
Of changing woods and endless streams. My happiness is all my own.
And often, when my mates deplore a brother who shall row no more,
I talk about my wolf-cub, Life. They think I speak in metaphor.
They gather round me all agog, they think a chronicle and log
Of Progress lies in withered hands. Their cry is for an epilogue.
[Pg 159]
Has aught been drafted yet? A blot, an echo void and polyglot.
Each century is written off as preface. Yes, most true.... Of what?
My gathered weight had held me bound to find for every fog a ground,
For every riddle a reply, an end to Being that goes round.
Now I can say, I do not know if there will be a book at all,
Or if the deepest chapters go beyond some writing on the wall,
Though wiser worlds will yet embark, sworn to eclipse our sorry trades,
Succeed, and leave their little mark: a dynasty of thought that fades,
Fresh undergrowths of formulæ. Through these no human eye can see
The open glade—the last crusade, in which Jerusalem might be
The symbol of all peopled space, and Time an emblem of the day
On which the nations march as one to liberate and not to slay.
[Pg 160]
A story has no finish when it leads to nowhere out of ken?
O friend, the lack of knowledge brings wisdom within the reach of men;
For whether hope can ever fit the future matters not a whit.
My duty is to tug my oar—so long as I am chained to it.