Classic Poem

CANTO FIFTH

I

 Denmark's sage courtier to her princely youth,
 Granting his cloud an ousel or a whale,
 Spoke, though unwittingly, a partial truth;
 For Fantasy embroiders Nature's veil.
 The tints of ruddy eve or dawning pale,
 Of the swart thunder-cloud or silver haze,
 Are but the ground-work of the rich detail
 Which Fantasy with pencil wild portrays,
Blending what seems and is in the wrapt muser's gaze.

 Nor are the stubborn forms of earth and stone
 Less to the Sorceress's empire given;
 For not with unsubstantial hues alone,
 Caught from the varying surge of vacant heaven,
 From bursting sunbeam or from flashing levin,
 She limus her pictures: on the earth, as air,
 Arise her castles and her car is driven;
 And never gazed the eye on scene so fair,
But of its boasted charms gave Fancy half the share.

II

 Up a wild pass went Harold, bent to prove,
 Hugh Meneville, the adventure of thy lay;
 Gunnar pursued his steps in faith and love,
 Ever companion of his master's way.
 Midward their path, a rock of granite gray
 From the adjoining cliff had made descent,—
 A barren mass—yet with her drooping spray
 Had a young birch—tree crowned its battlement,
Twisting her fibrous roots through cranny, flaw, and rent.

 This rock and tree could Gunnar's thought engage
 Till Fancy brought the tear-drop to his eye,
 And at his master asked the timid page,
 ‘What is the emblem that a bard should spy
 In that rude rock and its green canopy?’
 And Harold said, ‘Like to the helmet brave
 Of warrior slain in fight it seems to lie,
 And these same drooping boughs do o'er it wave
Not all unlike the plume his lady's favor gave.’
 ‘Ah, no!’ replied the page; ‘the ill-starred love
 Of some poor maid is in the emblem shown,
 Whose fates are with some hero's interwove,
 And rooted on a heart to love unknown:
 And as the gentle dews of heaven alone
 Nourish those drooping boughs, and as the scathe
 Of the red lightning rends both tree and stone,
 So fares it with her unrequited faith,—
Her sole relief is tears—her only refuge death.’

III

‘Thou art a fond fantastic boy,’
Harold replied, ‘to females coy,
 Yet prating still of love;
Even so amid the clash of war
I know thou lov'st to keep afar,
Though destined by thy evil star
 With one like me to rove,
Whose business and whose joys are found
Upon the bloody battle-ground.
Yet, foolish trembler as thou art,
Thou hast a nook of my rude heart,
And thou and I will never part;—
Harold would wrap the world in flame
Ere injury on Gunnar came.’

IV

The grateful page made no reply,
But turned to heaven his gentle eye,
And clasped his hands, as one who said,
‘My toils—my wanderings are o'erpaid!’
Then in a gayer, lighter strain,
Compelled himself to speech again;
 And, as they flowed along,
His words took cadence soft and slow,
And liquid, like dissolving snow,
 They melted into song.

V

‘What though through fields of carnage wide
I may not follow Harold's stride,
Yet who with faithful Gunnar's pride
 Lord Harold's feats can see?
And dearer than the couch of pride
He loves the bed of gray wolf's hide,
When slumbering by Lord Harold's side
 In forest, field, or lea.’

VI

‘Break off!’ said Harold, in a tone
Where hurry and surprise were shown,
 With some slight touch of fear,
‘Break off, we are not here alone;
A palmer form comes slowly on!
By cowl and staff and mantle known,
 My monitor is near.
Now mark him, Gunnar, heedfully;
He pauses by the blighted tree—
Dost see him, youth?—Thou couldst not see
When in the vale of Galilee
 I first beheld his form,
Nor when we met that other while
In Cephalonia's rocky isle
 Before the fearful storm,—
Dost see him now?’—The page, distraught
With terror, answered, ‘I see nought,
 And there is nought to see,
Save that the oak's scathed boughs fling down
Upon the path a shadow brown
That, like a pilgrim's dusky gown,
 Waves with the waving tree.’

VII

Count Harold gazed upon the oak
As if his eyestrings would have broke,
 And then resolvedly said,
‘Be what it will yon phantom gray—
Nor heaven nor hell shall ever say
That for their shadows from his way
 Count Harold turned dismayed:
I 'll speak him, though his accents fill
My heart with that unwonted thrill
 Which vulgar minds call fear.
I will subdue it!’ Forth he strode,
Paused where the blighted oak-tree showed
Its sable shadow on the road,
And, folding on his bosom broad
 His arms, said, ‘Speak—I hear.’

VIII

The Deep Voice said, ‘O wild of will,
Furious thy purpose to fulfil—
Heart-seared and unrepentant still,
How long, O Harold, shall thy tread
Disturb the slumbers of the dead?
Each step in thy wild way thou makest,
The ashes of the dead thou wakest;
And shout in triumph o'er thy path
The fiends of bloodshed and of wrath.
In this thine hour, yet turn and hear!
For life is brief and judgment near.’

IX

Then ceased the Voice.—The Dane replied
In tones where awe and inborn pride
For mastery strove, ‘In vain ye chide
The wolf for ravaging the flock,
Or with its hardness taunt the rock,—
I am as they—my Danish strain
Sends streams of fire through every vein.
Amid thy realms of goule and ghost,
Say, is the fame of Eric lost,
Or Witikind's the Waster, known
Where fame or spoil was to be won;
Whose galleys ne'er bore off a shore
 They left not black with flame?—
He was my sire,—and, sprung of him,
That rover merciless and grim,
 Can I be soft and tame?
Part hence and with my crimes no more upbraid me,
I am that Waster's son and am but what he made me.’

X

The Phantom groaned;—the mountain shook around,
The fawn and wild-doe started at the sound,
The gorse and fern did wildly round them wave,
As if some sudden storm the impulse gave.
‘All thou hast said is truth—yet on the head
Of that bad sire let not the charge be laid
That he, like thee, with unrelenting pace
From grave to cradle ran the evil race:—
Relentless in his avarice and ire,
Churches and towns he gave to sword and fire;
Shed blood like water, wasted every land,
Like the destroying angel's burning brand;
Fulfilled whate'er of ill might be invented,
Yes,—all these things he did—he did, but he REPENTED !
Perchance it is part of his punishment still
That his offspring pursues his example of ill.
But thou, when thy tempest of wrath shall next shake thee,
Gird thy loins for resistance, my son, and awake thee;
If thou yield'st to thy fury, how tempted soever,
The gate of repentance shall ope for thee NEVER !’

XI

‘He is gone,’ said Lord Harold and gazed as he spoke;
‘There is nought on the path but the shade of the oak.
He is gone whose strange presence my feeling oppressed,
Like the night-hag that sits on the slumberer's breast.
My heart beats as thick as a fugitive's tread,
And cold dews drop from my brow and my head.—
Ho! Gunnar, the flasket yon almoner gave;
He said that three drops would recall from the grave.
For the first time Count Harold owns leechcraft has power,
Or, his courage to aid, lacks the juice of a flower!’
The page gave the flasket, which Walwayn had filled
With the juice of wild roots that his heart bad distilled—
So baneful their influence on all that had breath,
One drop had been frenzy and two had been death.
Harold took it, but drank not; for jubilee shrill
And music and clamor were heard on the hill,
And down the steep pathway o'er stock and o'er stone
The train of a bridal came blithesomely on;
There was song, there was pipe, there was timbrel, and still
The burden was, ‘Joy to the fair Metelill!’

XII

Harold might see from his high stance
Himself unseen, that train advance,
 With mirth and melody;—
On horse and foot a mingled throng,
Measuring their steps to bridal song
 And bridal minstrelsy;
And ever when the blithesome rout
Lent to the song their choral shout,
Redoubling echoes rolled about,
While echoing cave and cliff sent out
 The answering symphony
Of all those mimic notes which dwell
In hollow rock and sounding dell.

XIII

Joy shook his torch above the band,
By many a various passion fanned;—
As elemental sparks can feed
On essence pure and coarsest weed,
Gentle or stormy or refined,
Joy takes the colors of the mind.
Lightsome and pure but unrepressed,
He fired the bridegroom's gallant breast;
More feebly strove with maiden fear,
Yet still joy glimmered through the tear
On the bride's blushing cheek that shows
Like dew-drop on the budding rose;
While Wulfstane's gloomy smile declared
The glee that selfish avarice shared,
And pleased revenge and malice high
Joy's semblance took in Jutta's eye.
On dangerous adventure sped,
The witch deemed Harold with the dead,
For thus that morn her demon said:—
‘If, ere the set of sun, be tied
The knot 'twixt bridegroom and his bride,
The Dane shall have no power of ill
O'er William and o'er Metelill.’
And the pleased witch made answer, ‘Then
Must Harold have passed from the paths of men!
Evil repose may his spirit have,—
May hemlock and mandrake find root in his grave,—
May his death-sleep be dogged by dreams of dismay,
And his waking be worse at the answering day!’

XIV

Such was their various mood of glee
Blent in one shout of ecstasy.
But still when Joy is brimming highest,
Of sorrow and misfortune nighest,
Of Terror with her ague cheek,
And lurking Danger, sages speak:—
These haunt each path, but chief they lay
Their snares beside the primrose way.—
Thus found that bridal band their path
Beset by Harold in his wrath.
Trembling beneath his maddening mood,
High on a rock the giant stood;
His shout was like the doom of death
Spoke o'er their heads that passed beneath.
His destined victims might not spy
The reddening terrors of his eye,
The frown of rage that writhed his face,
The lip that foamed like boar's in chase;
But all could see—and, seeing, all
Bore back to shun the threatened fall—
The fragment which their giant foe
Rent from the cliff and heaved to throw.

XV

Backward they bore—yet are there two
 For battle who prepare:
No pause of dread Lord William knew
 Ere his good blade was bare;
And Wulfstane bent his fatal yew,
But ere the silken cord he drew,
As hurled from Hecla's thunder flew
 That ruin through the air!
Full on the outlaw's front it came,
And all that late had human name,
And human face, and human frame,
That lived and moved and had free will
To choose the path of good or ill,
 Is to its reckoning gone;
And nought of Wulfstane rests behind
 Save that beneath that stone,
Half-buried in the dinted clay,
A red and shapeless mass there lay
 Of mingled flesh and bone!

XVI

As from the bosom of the sky
 The eagle darts amain,
Three bounds from yonder summit high
 Placed Harold on the plain.
As the scared wild-fowl scream and fly,
 So fled the bridal train;
As 'gainst the eagle's peerless might
The noble falcon dares the fight,
 But dares the fight in vain,
So fought the bridegroom; from his hand
The Dane's rude mace has struck his brand,
Its glittering fragments strew the sand,
 Its lord lies on the plain.
Now, Heaven! take noble William's part,
And melt that yet unmelted heart,
Or, ere his bridal hour depart,
 The hapless bridegroom 's slain!

XVII

 Count Harold's frenzied rage is high,
 There is a death-fire in his eye,
 Deep furrows on his brow are trenched,
 His teeth are set, his hand is clenched,
 The foam upon his lip is white,
 His deadly arm is up to smite!
 But, as the mace aloft he swung,
 To stop the blow young Gunnar sprung,
 Around his master's knees he clung,
  And cried, ‘In mercy spare!
 O, think upon the words of fear
 Spoke by that visionary Seer,
 The crisis he foretold is here,—
  Grant mercy,—or despair!’
 This word suspended Harold's mood,
 Yet still with arm upraised he stood,
 And visage like the headsman's rude
  That pauses for the sign.
 ‘O mark thee with the blessed rood,’
 The page implored: ‘Speak word of good,
 Resist the fiend or be subdued!’
  He signed the cross divine—
 Instant his eye hath human light,
 Less red, less keen, less fiercely bright;
 His brow relaxed the obdurate frown,
 The fatal mace sinks gently down,
  He turns and strides away;
 Yet oft, like revellers who leave
 Unfinished feast, looks back to grieve,
 As if repenting the reprieve
  He granted to his prey.
Yet still of forbearance one sign hath he given,
And fierce Witikind's son made one step towards heaven.

XVIII

But though his dreaded footsteps part,
Death is behind and shakes his dart;
Lord William on the plain is lying,
Beside him Metelill seems dying!—
Bring odors—essences in haste—
And lo! a flasket richly chased,—
But Jutta the elixir proves
Ere pouring it for those she loves—
Then Walwaya's potion was not wasted,
For when three drops the hag had tasted
 So dismal was her yell,
Each bird of evil omen woke,
The raven gave his fatal croak,
And shrieked the night-crow from the oak,
The screech-owl from the thicket broke,
 And fluttered down the dell!
So fearful was the sound and stern,
The slumbers of the full-gorged erne
Were startled, and from furze and fern
 Of forest and of fell
The fox and famished wolf replied—
For wolves then prowled the Cheviot side—
From mountain head to mountain head
The unhallowed sounds around were sped;
But when their latest echo fled
The sorceress on the ground lay dead.

XIX

Such was the scene of blood and woes
With which the bridal morn arose
 Of William and of Metelill;
But oft, when dawning 'gins to spread,
The summer morn peeps dim and red
 Above the eastern hill,
Ere, bright and fair, upon his road
The king of splendor walks abroad;
So, when this cloud had passed away,
Bright was the noontide of their day
And all serene its setting ray.