Mirèio/Canto XI
CANTO XI.
THE SAINTS.
"THE cross was looming yet, Mirèio,
Aloft on the Judæan mount of woe,
Wet with the blood of God; and all the time
Seemed crying to the city of the crime,
'What hast thou done, thou lost and slumbering,—
What hast thou done, I say, with Bethlehem's King?'
"The angry clamors of the streets were stayed;
Cedron alone a low lamenting made
Afar; and Jordan rolled a gloomy tide,
Hasting into the desert, there to hide
The overflowings of his grief and rage
'Mid terebinth and lentisk foliage.
"And all the poorer folk were heavy-hearted,
Knowing it was the Christ who had departed,
First having opened his own prison-door,
On friends and followers to look once more,
The sacred keys unto St. Peter given,
And, like an eagle, soared away to heaven.
"Oh! then in Jewry woe and weeping were
For the fair Galilean carpenter,—
Him who his honeyed parables distilled
Over their hearts, and fanting thousands filled
Upon the hillsides with unleavened bread,
And healed the leper and revived the dead.
"But scribes and kings and priests, and all the horde
Of sacrilegious vendors whom the Lord
Had driven from his house, their hatred uttered,
'And who the people will restrain,' they muttered,
'Unless in all the region round about
The glory of this cross be soon put out?'
"So raged they, and the martyrs testified:
Stephen the first was stoned until he died,
James with the sword was slain, and many a one
Cruelly crushed beneath a weight of stone.
Yet, dying, all bear record undismayed:
'Christ Jesus is the Son of God!' they said.
"Then us, brothers and sisters of the slain,
Who him had followed in a loving train,
They thrust into a crazy bark; and we,
Oarless and sailless, drifted out to sea.
We women sorely wept, the men their eyes
Anxiously lifted to the lowering skies.
"Palaces, temples, olive-trees, we saw—
Swiftly, oh swiftly!—from oar gaze withdraw,
All saving Carmel's rugged crests, and those
But as a wave on the horizon rose.
When suddenly a sharp cry toward us drifted.
We turned, and saw a maid with arms uplifted.
"'Oh, take me with you!' cried she in distress;
'Oh, take me in the bark, my mistresses,
With you! I, too, must die for Jesus' sake!'
It was our handmaid Sarah thus who spake.
Up there in heaven, whither she is gone,
She shineth sweetly as an April dawn!
"Seaward before the wind our vessel drave.
Then God a thought unto Salome gave:
Her veil upon the foamy deep she threw,—
Oh, wondrous faith!—and on the water, blue
And white commingling wildly, it sustained
The maid until our fragile craft she gained,
"To her as well the strong breeze lending aid.
Now saw we in the hazy distance fade,
Hilltop by hilltop, our dear native land;
The sea encompassed as on every hand;
And a sharp home-sickness upon us fell,
The pangs whereof he who hath felt may tell.
"So must we say farewell, O sacred shore!
O doomed Judæa, farewell evermore!
Thy just are banished, thy God crucified!
Henceforth let serpents in thy halls abide;
And wandering lions, tawny, terrible,
Feed on thy vines and dates. Farewell! farewell!
"The gale had grown into a tempest now:
The vessel fled before it. On the prow
Martial was kneeling, and Saturnius:
While, in his mantle folded, Tropbimus
The aged saint silently meditated;
And Maximin the bishop near him waited.
"High on the main-deck Lazarus held his place.
There was an awful pallor on his face,—
Hues of the winding-sheet and of the grave.
He seemed to face the anger of the wave.
Martha his sister to his side had crept,
And Magdalene behind them cowered and wept.
"The slender bark, pursued of demons thus,
Contained, beside, Cléon, Eutropius,
Marcellus, Joseph of Arimathea,
Sidonius. And sweet it was to hear
The psalms they sang on the blue waste of sea,
Leaned o'er the tholes. Te Deum, too, said we.
"How rushed the boat the sparkling billows by!
E'en yet that sea seems present to the eye.
The breeze, careering, on the waters hurled,
Whereby the snowy spray was tossed and whirled,
And lifted in light wreaths into the air,
That soared like souls aloft, and vanished there.
"Out of the waves at morning rose the Sun,
And set therein when his day's course was run.
Mere waifs were we upon the briny plain,
The sport of all the winds that scour the main;
Yet of our God withheld from all mischance,
That we might bear His gospel to Provence.
"At last there came a morning still and bright.
We noted how, with lamp in hand, the night
Most like an anxious widow from us fled,
Risen betimes to turn her household bread
Within the oven. Ocean seemed as napping,
The languid waves the boatside barely tapping.
"Till a dull, bellowing noise assailed the ear.
Unknown before, it chilled our blood to hear.
And next we marked a strange, upheaving motion
Upon the utmost limit of the ocean,
And, stricken speechless by the gathering roar,
Helplessly gazed the troubled waters o'er.
"Then saw we all the deep with horror lower,
As the swift squall descended in its power;
The waves drop dead still,—'twas a portent fell;
The bark hang motionless, as by a spell
Entranced; and far away, against the skies,
A mountain of black water seemed to rise,
"And all the heaped-up sea, with vapor crested,
To burst upon our vessel, thus arrested.
God, 'twas an awful hour! One monster wave
Seemed thrusting us into a watery grave,
Fluting to death. Or ever it closed o'er us,
The next upon a dizzy height upbore us.
"The lightning cleft the gloom with blades of fire;
Peal followed peal of thunder, deafening, dire.
It was as if all hell had been unchained
Upon our tiny craft, which groaned and strained
So hunted, and seemed rushing on her wreck,
And smote our foreheads with her heaving deck.
"Now rode we on the shoulders of the main;
Now sank into its inky gulfs again,
Where the seal dwelleth and the mighty shark,
And the sea-peacook; and we seemed to hark
To the sad cry, lifted unceasingly,
By the unresting victims of the sea.
"A great wave brake above us, and hope died.
Then Lazarus prayed: 'O Lord, be thou our guide,
Who me ere now out of the tomb didst bring!
Succor the bark, for she is foundering!'
Like a wood-pigeon's wing, this outcry clove
The tempest, and went up to realms above.
"And Jesus, looking from the palace fair
Where he sat throned, beheld his friend's despair,
And the fierce deep yawning to swallow him.
Straightway the Master's gentle eyes grew dim,
His heart yearned over us with pity warm,
And one long sun-ray leaped athwart the storm.
"Now God be praised! For, though we yet were tost
Right roughly up and down, and sank almost
With bitter sea-sickness, our fears were stayed:
The haughty waves began to be allayed;
Clouds brake afar, then vanished altogether,
And a green shore gleamed through the bright'ning weather.
"Long was it yet ere the shocks quite subsided
Of the tempestuous waves; and our boat glided,
Our crazy boat, nearer that welcome shore
All tranquilly, a dying breeze before.
Smooth as a grebe our keel the breakers clomb,
Furrowing into great flakes the snowy foam.
"Until—once more all glory be to God!—
Upon a rockless beach we safely trod,
And knelt on the wet sand, crying, 'O Thou
Who saved from sword and tempest, hear our vow!
Each one of us is an evangelist
Thy law to preach. We swear it, O Lord Christ!'
"At that great name, that cry till then unheard,
Noble Provence, wert thou not deeply stirred?
Thy woods and fields, in all their fair extent,
Thrilled with the rapture of a sweet content;
As a dog scents his master's coming feet,
And flies with bounding welcome him to meet.
"Thou, Heavenly Father, also didst provide
A feast of shell-fish, stranded by the tide,
To stay our hunger; and, to quench our thirst,
Madest among the salicornes outburst
The same clear, healing spring, which flows alway
Inude the church where our dust sleeps to-day.
"Glowing with zeal, we track the shingly Rhone
From moor to moor. In faith we travel on
Until right gladly we discern the traces
Of human husbandry in those wild places,
And soon, afar, the tall Arlesian towers,
Crowned by the standard of the emperors.
"To-day, fair Arles, a harvester thou seemest,
Who sleepest on thy threshing-floor, and dreamest
Of glories past; but a queen wert thou then,
And mother of so brave sea-faring men,
The noisy winds themselves aye lost their way
In the great harbor where thy shipping lay.
"Rome had arrayed thee in white marble newly,
As an imperial princess decked thee duly.
Thy brow a crown of stately columns wore;
The gates of thy arenas were sixscore;
Thou hadst thy theatre and hippodrome,
So to make mirth in thy resplendent home!
"We pass within the gates. A crowd advances
Toward the theatre, with songs and dances.
We join them; and the eager thousands press
Through the cool colonnades of palaces;
As thou, mayhap, a mighty flood hast seen
Rush through a maple-shaded, deep ravine.
"Arrived,—oh, shame and sorrow!—we saw there
On the proscenium, with bosoms bare,
Young maidens waltzing to a languid lyre,
And high refrain sung by a shrill-voiced choir.
They in the mazes of their dance surrounded
A marble shape, whose name like 'Venus' sounded.
"The frenzied populace its clamor adds
Unto the cries of lasses and of lads,
Who shout their idol's praises o'er and o'er,—
'Hail to the Venus, of joy the bestower!
Hail to thee, Venus, goddess of all grace!
Mother of earth and of the Arlesian race!'
"The statue, myrtle-crowned, with nostrils wide
And head high-borne, appears to swell with pride
Amid the incense-clouds; when suddenly,
In horror of so great audacity,
Leaps Trophimus amid the maddened wretches,
And o'er the bewildered throng his arms outstretches.
"'People of Arles!' in mighty tones he cried,
'Hear me, even for the sake of Christ who died!'
No more. But, smitten by his shaggy frown,
The idol groaned and staggered, and fell down,
Headlong, from off its marble pedestal.
Fell, too, the awe-struck dancers, one and all.
"Therewith went up, as 'twere, a single howl;
Choked were the gateways with a rabble foul,
Who through all Arles spread terror and dismay,
So that patricians tore their crowns away;
And all the enragèd youth closed round us there,
While flashed a thousand poniards in the air.
"Yet they recoiled;—whether it were the sight
Of us, in our salt-crusted robes bedight;
Or Trophimus' calm brow which beamed on them,
As wreathed with a celestial diadem;
Or tear-veiled Magdalene, who stood between us,—
How tenfold fairer than their sculptured Venus!
"And the old saint resumed: 'Arlesian men,
Hear ye my message first; and slay me then,
If need be. Ye have seen your goddess famed
Shiver like glass when my God was but named:
Deem not, Arlesians, that the thing was wrought
By my poor, feeble voice; for we are naught.
"'The God who laid, erewhile, your idol low
No lofty temple hath on the hill's brow;
But Day and Night see him alone up there!
And stern to sin, but generous to prayer,
Is he; and he hath made, with his own hand,
The sky, the sea, the mountains, and the land.
"'One day he saw, from his high dwelling-place,
All his good things devoured by vermin base;
Slaves who drank hatred with their tears, and had
No comforter; and Evil, priestly clad,
At altars keeping school; and, in the street,
Maids who ran out the libertines to meet.
"'Wherefore, to purge this vileness, and to end
Man's torment and our pilloried race befriend,
He sent his own Son out of heaven down.
Naked and poor, wearing no golden crown,
He came, was of a virgin born, and saw
The daylight first pillowed on stable-straw.
"'People of Arles, turn to this lowly One.
Ourselves can show the wonders he hath done,
Who were his comrades; and, in that far land
Where rolls the yellow Jordan, saw him stand,
In his white linen robe, amid the crowd,
Who him assailed with maledictions loud.
"'Full gentle was his message: for he showed
That men should love each other, and that God
Is both almighty and all merciful;
And that the kingdom where he beareth rule
Descendeth not to tyrants, cheats, and scorners,
But to the poor, the lowly, and the mourners.
"'These were his teachings: and he them attested
By walking on the waters; and arrested
Sickness most bitter by a glance, a word.
The dead, by the grim rampart undeterred,
Came back to earth. This Lazarus whom you see
Once rotted in the grave. But jealousy
"'Inflamed the bad hearts of the Jewish kings.
They led him to a mountain for these things,
And cruelly onto a tree-trunk nailed,
Spat on the sacred face, and coarsely railed
And lifted him on high.' Here all the throng
Brake into loud lament and sobbing strong.
"'Mercy,' they cried, 'for our iniquities!
What shall we do the Father to appease?
Answer us, man of God! If blood must flow,
He shall have hecatombs.'—'Ah, no! ah, no!'
Replied the saint; 'but slay before the Father
Your vices and your evil passions rather!'
"So knelt, and prayed: 'Lord, thou dost not desire
Odor of slaying, sacrificial fire,
Or stately temples! Dearer far to thee
Is the bread given to those who fainting be;
Or sweet girl's timid coming, who doth bring
Her pure heart, like a May-flower, to her king.'
"As o'er the Apostle's lips, like sacred oil,
The word of God was flowing, 'gan recoil
The idols everywhere, and plunged at last
Adown the temple stairs; while tears dropped fast,
And rich and poor and working-men all ran
To kiss the garment of the holy man.
"Then bare Sidonius witness. In his night—
He was born blind—he led to the true light
The men of Arles. And Maximin, beside,
The resurrection of the Crucified
Set forth, and bade them turn from sin away.
Arles was baptized upon that very day.
"The Spirit of the Lord hurried us on,
Like wind upon a fire of shavings blown.
Then, as we turned of these to take farewell,
Came messengers, before our feet who fell,
And passionately cried, 'O god-sent strangers!
Hear yet the story of our cruel dangers.
"'To our unhappy city came the sound
Of marvels wrought and oracles new found.
She sends us hither. We are dead who stand
Before you! Such a monster wastes our land!
A scourge of God, greedy of human gore,
It haunts our woods and gorges. We implore
"'Your pity. The beast hath a dragon's tail;
Bristles its back with many a horrid scale.
It hath six human feet, and fleet they are;
A lion's jaw; eyes red like cinnabar.
Its prey it hideth in a cavern lone,
Under a rock that beetles o'er the Rhone.
"'Now day by day our fishermen grow few
And fewer.' Saying this, they wept anew
And bitterly,—the men of Tarascon.
Then mdden Martha said, serene and strong,
'Ready am I, and my heart yearns with pity.
Marcellus, haste: we two will save the city!'
"For the last time on earth we did embrace,
With hope of meeting in a happy place,
And parted. Martial did Limoges choose;
Saturnius was wedded to Toulouse;
Entropius was first this cause to plead,
And sow in stately Orange the good seed.
"And thou, sweet virgin, whither goest thou?
With step unfaltering and untroubled brow,
Martha her cross and holy-water carried
Against the dragon dire, and never tarried.
The wild men clomb the pine-trees round about,
The fray to witness and the maiden's rout.
"Startled from slumber in his darksome cave,
Thou shouldst have seen the leap the monster gave!
Yet vainly writhed he 'neath the holy dew,
And growled and hissed as Martha near him drew,
Bound with a frail moss-halter, and forth led
Snorting. Then all the people worshippèd.
"'Huntress Diana art thou?' prostrate falling
Before the Christian maid, began they calling;
'Or yet Minerva, the all-wise and chaste?'
'Nay, nay!' the damsel answered in all haste:
'I am God's handmaid only.' And the crowd
She taught until with her to Him they bowed.
"Then by the power of her young voice alone,
She smote Avignon's rock; and from the stone
Welled faith in so pellucid stream, that, later,
Clements and Gregories in that fair water
Dipped holy chalices their thirst to slake,
And Rome long years did for her glory quake.
"And all Provence, regenerate, sang so clear
A hymn of praise, that God was glad to hear.
Hast thou not marked, when rain begins to fall,
How spring the drooping trees and grasses all,
How soon the foliage with joy will quiver?
So fevered souls drank of this cooling river!
"Thou fair Marseilles, who openest on the sea
Thy haughty eyes and gazest languidly,
As though naught else were worthy to behold,
And, though the winds rage, dreamest but of gold,
When Lazarus preached to thee, thou didst begin
Those eyes to close, and see the night within,
"And to the fountain of l'Huveaune1 speeding,
The source whereof Magdalene's tears were feeding,
Didst wash thy sins away: and in this hour
Art proud once more; but other storms may lower.
Forget not, then, amid thy revelries,
Whose tears they are that bathe thine olive-trees!
"Dark cedars that on Mount Sambuco2 grew,
Sheer ledges of the hills of Aix, and you,
Tall pines, clothing the flanks of Esterel,3
And junipers of Trevaresso,4 telt
How thrilled your vales with joy, when, his cross bearing,
The bishop Maximin was through them faring.
"Seest thou one with while arms on her breast,
Who kneels and prays in yonder grotto, dressed
In the bright garment of her floating hair?
Poor sufferer! Her tender knees are bare,
And cruelly by the sharp flints are torn.
The moon, with pale torch, watches the forlorn
"And sad recluse. The woods in silence bow.
The angels hush their very heart-throbs now,
As, gazing through a crevice, they espy
A pearly tear fall from the lifted eye,
And haste the precious gem to gather up,
And keep for ever in a golden cup.
"Enough, O Magdalene! Thirty years ago,
The wind that in the foreat whispers low
Bare thee the pardon of the Man divine!
The tears that the rock weeps are tears of thine.
These, like a snowfall softly sprinkled o'er,
Shall whiten woman's love for ever more!
"But naught can stay the mourner's gnawing grief.
Even the little birds bring not relief,
That flock around her, building many a nest
On Saint Pilon; nor spirits of the blest,
Who lift and rock her in their arms of love,
And soar, seven times a day, the vales above.
"O Lord, be thine the glory! And may we
In thy full brightness and reality
Behold thee ever! Poor and fugitive,
We women did of thy great grace receive.
We, even we, touched by thy love supernal,
Shed some feint reflex of the light eternal.
"Ye, Alpine peaks and all blue hills of Baux,
Unto the latest hour of time will show
The traces of our teaching carved in stone!5
And so Death found us on the marshes lone,
Deep in Camargue, encircled by the sea,
And from our day's long labor set us free.
"And as, on earth, haste all things to decay,
Faded the memory of our tombs away.
While sang Provence her songs, and time rolled on,
Till, as Durance is blended with the Rhone,
Ended the merry kingdom of Provence,
And fell asleep upon the breast of France.
"'France, take thy sister by the hand!' So saith
Our land's last king, he drawing near to death.
'On the great work the future hath in store,
Together counsel take! Thou art the more
Strong; she, the more fair: and rebel night
Before your wedded glory shall take flight.'
"This did Renè. Therefore we sought the king,
As on his feathers he lay slumbering,
And showed the spot where long our bones had lain;
And he, with bishops twelve and courtly train,
Came down into this waste of sand and waves,
And found, among the salicornes, our graves.
"Adieu, dear Mirèio! The hour flies;
And, like a taper's flame before it dies,
We see life's light within thy body flicker.
Yet, ere the soul is loosed,—come quick, oh quicker,
My sisters!—we the hills of heaven must scale
Or ever she arrive within the veil.
"Roses and a white robe we must prepare!
She is love's martyr and a virgin fair
Who dies to-day! With sweetest flowers blow,
Celestial paths! and on Mirèio
Shine saintly splendors of the heavenly host!
Glory to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!"