Classic Poem

CAPUTXV

Rocky boulders, huge, misshapen,
Grimly twisted and gigantic,
Gaze and frown on me like monsters
Turned to stone in times primeval.

And how strange! The clouds above them,
Grey and weary, drift like wraiths:
Flimsy counterfeit presentments
Of those savage, stony figures.

From afar the torrent rages;
Winds are roaring through the pine-wood —
Sounds implacable and cruel,
And as fatal as despair.

Dreary solitudes and awful!
On the firs decayed and rotten
Throng the sable-suited jackdaws,
Flapping languid wings and feeble.

And Lascaro walks beside me
Pale and silent. A beholder
Might imagine I was Madness
In the company of Death.

'Tis a hateful, barren region.
Does it lie beneath some ban?
Yonder stunted tree is surely
Red and bloody round the root.

And the hut beneath its shadow,
In the earth for shame half hidden,
Has a roof of straw that gazes,
As in abject prayer, upward.

The inhabitants are Cagots:
Wretched folk — the sorry remnant
Of a race engulfed in darkness,
Lingering on, though trodden under.

For the hearts of the Biscayans
Still are gnawed by secret horror
Of those Cagots: gloomy relic
Of the days of superstition.

In the Minster of Bagneres
Lurks a narrow, grated portal
Which, the Sacristan informed us,
Was the door reserved for Cagots.

Other access to the building
Was aforetime interdicted;
Furtive-footed they must enter
Even the temple of their Maker.

On a lowly footstool yonder
Sat the Cagot at his prayers,
From the other folk who worshipped
Set apart, as if infected.

But the consecrated tapers
Of our century burn brightly,
And have chased away the terror
Of the mediaeval shadows! —

At the door Lascaro waited
While I slipped into the hovel
Of the Cagots: to a brother
Gave my hand in friendly greeting.

And I kissed the tiny baby
That was sucking at the bosom
Of his wife, and clinging closely
Like a sickly little spider.