The poetical works of Matthew Arnold/Saint Brandan
SAINT BRANDAN.
Saint Brandan sails the northern main;
The brotherhoods of saints are glad.
He greets them once, he sails again;
So late! such storms! The saint is mad!
He heard, across the howling seas,
Chime convent-bells on wintry nights;
He saw, on spray-swept Hebrides,
Twinkle the monastery-lights;
But north, still north, Saint Brandan steered;
And now no bells, no convents more!
The hurtling Polar lights are neared,
The sea without a human shore.
At last (it was the Christmas-night;
Stars shone after a day of storm)
He sees float past an iceberg white,
And on it—Christ!—a living form.
That furtive mien, that scowling eye,
Of hair that red and tufted fell,
It is oh, where shall Brandan fly?—
The traitor Judas, out of hell!
Palsied with terror, Brandan sate;
The moon was bright, the iceberg near.
He hears a voice sigh humbly, "Wait!
By high permission I am here.
"One moment wait, thou holy man!
On earth my crime, my death, they knew;
My name is under all men's ban:
Ah! tell them of my respite too.
"Tell them, one blessed Christmas-night
(It was the first after I came,
Breathing self-murder, frenzy, spite,
To rue my guilt in endless flame),—
"I felt, as I in torment lay
'Mid the souls plagued by heavenly power,
An angel touch mine arm, and say,—
Go hence, and cool thyself an hour!
"'Ah! whence this mercy, Lord?' I said.
The leper recollect, said he,
Who asked the passers-by for aid,
In Joppa, and thy charity.
"Then I remembered how I went,
In Joppa, through the public street,
One morn when the sirocco spent
Its storms of dust with burning heat;
"And in the street a leper sate,
Shivering with fever, naked, old;
Sand raked his sores from heel to pate,
The hot wind fevered him fivefold.
"He gazed upon me as I passed,
And murmured, Help me, or I die!
To the poor wretch my cloak I cast,
Saw him look eased, and hurried by.
"O Brandan! think what grace divine,
What blessing must full goodness shower,
When fragment of it small, like mine,
Hath such inestimable power!
"Well-fed, well-clothed, well-friended, I
Did that chance act of good, that one!
Then went my way to kill and lie,
Forgot my good as soon as done.
"That germ of kindness, in the womb
Of mercy caught, did not expire;
Outlives my guilt, outlives my doom,
And friends me in the pit of fire.
"Once every year, when carols wake,
On earth, the Christmas-night's repose,
Arising from the sinner's lake,
I journey to these healing snows.
"I stanch with ice my burning breast,
With silence balm my whirling brain.
O Brandan! to this hour of rest,
That Joppan leper's ease was pain."
Tears started to Saint Brandan's eyes;
He bowed his head, he breathed a prayer,
Then looked—and lo, the frosty skies!
The iceberg, and no Judas there!