Poems (Shore)/King Baldwin
KING BALDWIN
This last fragment of all was written seven years after "Olga," from whose more modern theme she thus reverted to a medieval story of purely romantic interest. This was the history of Baldwin IV., King of Jerusalem (1173-1185), a youth of noble and brilliant qualities, who died early a victim to leprosy, which fate she substituted an unfortunate love and subsequent insanity. It seems to have been meant rather for a series of pictorial scenes than for a drama; and all that we have of it is a narrative of the first meeting of the lovers told by a friend and follower of King Baldwin. Maria of Antioch (betrothed in this story to the King of Hungary, though in point of fact she eventually married the Emperor Manuel of Constantinople) has been travelling from Antioch to Jerusalem, and is met half-way by Baldwin, who, as liege lord of Bohemund, Prince of Antioch, was to deliver up the Princess to her future husband. The author's purpose was to represent Maria as dying tragically, and Baldwin's consequent grief and lunacy being cured by the illusion of her restoration to life in the person of a beautiful girl who extraordinarily resembled her.
The date of this poem is ascertained by that of a letter across which the rough draft of a passage in it is scrawled in pencil—"30 April 1888," just seven years before she died. It is her last known work.
Of a young King, . . . .
Whose spirit, poised upon aërial heights,
And bathed in golden dawnlights, fell from heaven
Down, down to darkest gloom, and lingers yet
A prisoner in that might? Oh, how I've hoped—
What hoped not? from our beautiful St. George,
Sword of Jerusalem and Christendom.
Say, will you hear his story?
Tell me all.
It chanced, when summer brooded on the land,
In gay procession southward rode a bride
From Antioch, sister to its baby prince,
By proxy to an unseen husband wed,
The far-off King of Hungary, to whom
She hastened with a joyous ignorance,
A queen and spouse already bound for ever.
To meet her with due honour, our young King
(Antioch's liege lord) a half-day's journey rode,
Dreaming, it may be, of the bride his own
High fancy sought, but still despaired to find.
The sultry heat still pressed with leaden weight
On all things; the baked earth cracked as for breath,
When from below I heard the tramp of steeds
With a wild Syrian music; then, just then,
A blackness fell upon the skies, and, bright
Against the storm-cloud, with gay banners shone
The advancing troop, and in their midst the bride
A picture on the purple shadow traced
In youthful sunbeams, and my heart turned cold;
For with his eyes I saw her, saw his fate,
His dream made real, but too late, too late.
They met—he greeted, her young silver voice
Rang sweet and clear in answer; one short moment
And then the storm-cloud burst!
And that white world of lightning sheeted us
All round with horror; women shrieked, and steed
Reared upwards, when the rushing floods of heaven
Stunned all our senses. Scarce I seemed to heed
Yet saw the King, checking his half-mad steed
One 1nstant, snatch the bridle of Yolande;
Then off they flew, like spirits of the storm:
Flew like two destinies, linked hand in hand.
I caught a lightning glimpse of either form,
I heard like fairy bells a girl's laugh ring;
And in the darkness vanished bride and King.
Our routed troops dispersed by twos and threes
Hither and thither; on the plain some left
Their smitten horses rolling while they sought,
As did the King, a refuge in the hills,
And found it where he found it—at the gate
Of a half-ruined convent, desolate,
Dwelt in by aged monks. The doors flew wide,
And through them passed the King, and that fair bride,
Whose hair streamed back upon the wind that day;
Ah me, that wild young queen, the tempest o'er,
Like a tired child after her short hour's play,
Sleeps in her marble tomb for evermore!
In time these gloomy walls received us all;
And by the bright hearth of the convent hall,
Darkness without and ceaseless thunder rolls,
This young impetuous pair of happy souls
Talked all that eve in beautiful extremes,
And high heroic harmony of dreams.
Nothing too high, too low, too great, too small,
But with heaven's golden light they touched it all.
The reader may perhaps find some monotony in the recurrence of familiar situations, types of character, and periods of history in several of the above fragments. It is explained by the fact that the author was in constant search of one all-sufficient subject for the ideal drama which ever haunted her thoughts, and that she tried one after another, laying by each as another more perfect realisation of her aim presented itself. She sought her subjects always in the same region of historical romance, partly from her own passion for, and minute acquaintance with, history; partly because the distant and obscure gave greater scope to her fancy, and allowed those glimpses of the supernatural which had such a charm for her. But her aim was ever to portray some strong human feeling, some situation which should develop unwonted emotion and tragic action of an exceptional yet not unnatural kind; heroic goodness, and despairing guilt, bitter reaction, disenchantment, all the mystery and grandeur of human life and will, in its struggles with destiny.
Some, it is hoped, will be able to imagine with what a conflict of pleasure and pain these unguessed-of relics were disentombed, too late to pour forth to their author the manifold feelings they had awakened. The reader will perhaps be as much surprised as the survivor was, and as others who have seen them have been, that such work should have been cast aside by the writer as unworthy of completion.
No doubt the indifference with which she grew to regard her own verses was strengthened by her belief in their former failure to make a mark in the world. Though they had received eulogistic notices, and had interested private friends, they had not made for her such a name as to stimulate her to further efforts. "I have long known that there is no public for us," she once said calmly, in almost her last days, to her disappointed fellow-worker, who hoped and strove still, after she had ceased to do so. But she was always quite resigned and, silent and all unnoted, continued her life in a poetical fairy-land, imagining and even composing what she had wholly ceased to write down.
It may prove a dream as unrealised as her earlier modest expectations were, but that these utterances are worthy of a general hearing, and may gain it, now that her gentle spirit can no longer feel pleasure or pain in the result, is the hope and belief in which the survivor now offers them to the world.