{The Earthquake 1885}

79

He ceased, to a chorus from the Priory walls
Of daws thick-throated. Straightway Douglas cried,
“It is the caws, my soul, it is the caws!
Hark how the dusky rascals echo her!
They vaunt the merriment of cakes and ale,
And other succulent sweets they loved when monks,
Above all kneeling and praying in the dark
That make the stony heart and horny knee!”
But no one laughed, for on our souls the tale
Fell with a touch of sweet solemnity;
And we were silent, till a quiet voice,
Low like a woman’s, murmured: “Oftentimes
I have dreamed a dream like that (if dream it were),
And seen, instead of Cytherea’s eyes,
The orbs of Dian, passionately pure,
Witching the world to worship!”
                                                            He who spoke—                          [1:17]
A man with heavily hanging under lip,
Man’s brow above a maiden’s moist blue eyes—                                         80
Was Verity, the gentle priest of Art,
A vestal spirit, not too masculine
To avoid those seizures epileptiform
Which virgins have when yielding oracles.
He, by the affinity of sex which draws
The ivy to the oak-tree, long had loved
Not wisely but too well, though reverently,
The Scottish prophet, Thomas Ercildoune,
Who, thundering for the nations seventy years,
Found in the end that he had merely soured
The small beer and the milk of his own dwelling.
He, Verity, though all his soul was love,
Had from his master learned the scolding trick,
And so was somewhat shrewish out o’ doors.
Inside the temple where he ministered
His soul was solemnised to perfect speech,
And many a storm-toss’d wanderer, listening to him,
Had worshipt and been saved.
                                                   “How sweet it were,”                                81
He added, “in this godless age of Fact,
When hideous monsters of machinery
Are fashioned unto largess-giving gods,
To uprear on some green mountain-side a shrine
To Artemis, the goddess of the pure!
For if, as Heine held, the gentler gods
Whom Christ drave forth from heaven with whip of cords
Survive, but banish’d into lonely lands
Do gloomy task work for their bitter bread,
Somewhere on this sad earth the heaven-eyed Maid
Wears homespun, turns the wheel, and is a slave.
Upbuild her temple, make it beautiful
With shapes of marble wonderfully wrought,
Strew it with flowers of antique witchery,
And on the altar let the lunar beam
Sleep like the white and sacrificial Lamb;
And thither on some peaceful summer night
Perchance the weary one will come, and shed
Peace on the eyelids of her worshippers!”

     We listen’d wondering, some with pitying smiles,                                82 [2:1]
And others credulous of the fantasy.
I answered, “Who shall find her? We, who dwell
In cities vast and foul as Babylon,
Have seen, or seemed to see, the baser gods,
Her sisters and her brethren, busy yet
As spirits of the orgy and the dance.
Smooth Hermes, full of craft as when he filch’d
Apollo’s horses, wears a modern coat,
And helps the citizen to cheat on ’Change;
And Jupiter, though feeble and rheumatic,
Leading his moulting eagle on the chain,
Still creeps about the distant villages
And prompts the silly preacher as he throws
His Calvinistic lightnings at the boors;
And who that ever walk’d down Regent Street
At midnight, or some garish summer day
At Paris saw the Grand Prix lost and won,
Has failed to note the pink divinity,
In rags or silk and sealskin, still the same
As when she tript Adonis long ago!                                                              83
But for the other, Dian, Artemis,
Athenian or Ephesian, who shall say
The pure thing lives, where nought that lives is pure?
The sunshine knows her not, and the sweet moon,
Which used to shine upon her ivory limbs
Bright and pellucid in her dusky bath,
Now lights the pale street-walker at her trade,
And there’s an end.”
                                    Buller from Brazenose,
Another priest of Art, who holds that Art
Is lost if clothed or draped, and in whose eyes
The very fig-leaf is a priest’s device
To mar the fair and archetypal Eve,
Broke in with mincing speech and courteous sneer—
“I have heard that when that good man George the Third
Reign’d o’er his farm, this England, Artemis
Was noticed raining happy influences
Over the national pig-sty! Later still,
Arm’d with the British matron’s household broom,                                        84
She drove our Byron out and bang’d the door.
Since then, thank God!—or say, since Wordsworth died
[Poor man, he came to physic a sick world
That wanted wine, and gave it curds and whey!]—
Your goddess has been seldom heard or seen.
Doubtless she drudges in some parson’s house
As far as Lapland, where the temperature
Is like her bosom, virginal and cold.
We want her not in England! Heaven forbid!
We need the sun of love to warm our blood,
Apollo’s blaze and Cytherea’s breath
To thaw our lives and prove us men indeed!”

While thus he spake, I noticed in our midst
A pale young man who had come into the world
White-hair’d, and so looked old before his time;
His eye was burning, and his delicate hand
Was thrust into his bosom, touching there
Some secret treasure. Listening he stood,
Eager to speak, yet dumb through diffidence.                                                85
To him the pythoness Miranda Jones
Exclaimed, “What secret are you hiding there,
Close to your heart, or shirt-front, Cousin Fred?
I’ll swear—a poem!” Turning with a laugh
To Barbara, she added, “Speak to him!
My cousin Frederick is a poet too,
And fain I know would win a poet’s praise
From this fair company and you, its Queen.”

Then blushing like a girl, and glancing up
To encounter Barbara’s smile of kind command,
The young man answered, “Nay, indeed ’tis naught—
The merest trifle—not a tale at all;
Yet strangely enough, it touches rhyme by rhyme
Upon the very quest of which they speak;—
I too,” he added, blushing still more deep,
“Have chased that same Diana, in a song!”

“Then prithee read it,” cried Queen Barbara,
And other voices clamour’d echoing her;
And drawing a paper from his breast, the youth                                             86
Glanced timidly around the company,
And then with eye that kindled like a coal
Blown with the breath, he eagerly began.

 

[Notes:
Alterations in the 1901 edition of ‘The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Buchanan’:
v. 1, l. 17: [verse break]
v. 2, l. 1: [no verse break]

_____

87

PAN AT HAMPTON COURT.

“O who will worship the great god Pan
     Out in the woods with me,
Now the chestnut spreadeth its seven-leaved fan
     Over the hive of the bee?
Now the cushat cries, and the fallow deer
     Creep on the woodland way,
O who will hearken, and try to hear
     The voice of the god to-day?”

 

One May morning as I woke
Thus the sweet Muse smiling spoke,
Resting pure and radiant-eyed
On the pillow at my side,—
Sweetest Muse that ever drew
Light from sunlight, earth, and dew,
Sweeter Muse and more divine                                                          88
Than the faded spinsters Nine!
Up I sprang and cried aloud,
“May-day morn, and not a cloud!
Out beyond the City dark
Spring awakes in Bushey Park;
There the royal chestnuts break
Into golden foam and make
Waxlike flowers like honeycomb,
Whither humming wild bees roam;
While upon the lakes, whereon
Tritons blow through trumps of stone,
The great water-lily weaves
Milk-white cups and oilèd leaves.
Phillis dear, at last ’tis May!
Take my hand and come away!”

Out of town by train we went,
Poor but merrily content,
Phillis in her new spring dress,                                                            89
     Dainty bonnet lily-white,
Warm with youth and loveliness,
     Full of love and love’s delight;
I, the lonely outcast man,
Happy and Bohemian,
Loving all and hating none
Of my brethren ’neath the sun.
Soon, a dozen miles away,
     From the train we lightly leapt,
Saw the gardens glancing gay
     Where the royal fountains leapt,
Heard the muffled voices cry
In the deep green Maze hard by,
Heard the happy fiddler’s din
From the gardens of the inn;
Saw the ’prentice lads and lasses,
     Pale with dreary days of town,
Shuffling feet and jingling glasses;
While, like flies around molasses,                                                       90
     Gipsies gathered dusky brown!
O the merry, merry May!
O the happy golden day!
Pan was there, and Faunus too,
All the romping sylvan crew,
Nature’s Mænads flocking mad
From the City dark and sad,
Finding once again the free
Sunshine and its jollity!
Phillis smiled and leapt for joy,
I was gamesome as a boy;
Gaily twang’d the fiddle-string,
Men and maids played kiss-in-ring,
Fountains leapt against the sun,
     Roses bloom’d and children played,
All the world was full of fun,
     Lovers cuddled in the shade!
What though God was proved to be
Paradox and fantasy?
What though Christ had ceased to stir                                                 91
From his lonely selpulchre?
“If the Trinity be dead,
     Pagan gods are still alive!
Fast they come to-day,” I said,
     “Thick as bees from out a hive!
Pan is here, with all his train
     Flocking out of street and lane;
Flora in a cotton gown
     Ties her garter stooping down;
Town bred Sylvan plump and fat
Weareth lilac in his hat;
Faun and satyr laughing pass,
     Hither and thither Venus roams,
Gay Bacchantes on the grass
     Laughingly adjust their combs!—
Phillis, all the world is gay
In the merry, merry May!”

“O who will worship the great god Pan
     At Hampton Court with me?”
She cried, and unto the Maze we ran                                               92
     Laughing so merrily.
“The sun is bright, and the music plays,
     And all is May,” sang she:
And I caught my love in the heart of the Maze
     With kisses three times three.

Down the chestnut colonnades
Full of freckled light and shades,
Soon we saw the dappled deer,
Pricking hairy tail and ear,
Stand like Fauns with still brown eyes
     Looking on us as we came.
Faint behind us grew the cries,
     Merry music and acclaim,
Till we found beneath a tree
All the peace of Arcady.
Lying there, where green boughs spread
     Curtains soft against the sky,
While the stock-dove far o’erhead
     Pass’d with solitary cry,
Now and then we look’d around                                                        93
     Listening, till distinct and clear
Came the cuckoo’s call profound
     From some happy Dreamland near!
Happy as a heart of gold
     Shook the sunshine everywhere,
Throbbing pulses manifold
     Through the warmly panting air;
On the leaves and o’er the grass
     Living things were thronging bright,
’Neath a sky as clear as glass
     Flashing rays of life and light.
All things gladden’d ’neath the blue,
While we kiss’d and gladden’d too.
“Praised be golden Pan,” I said,
“All the duller gods are dead;
But the wood-god wakes to-day
In the merry, merry May!”

“O who will worship the great god Pan?”
     I cried as I clasped you, dear;
“Form of a faun and soul of a man,                                               94
     He plays for the world to hear;
Sweetly he pipeth beneath the skies,
     For a brave old god is he!”
O I kissed my love on the lips and eyes!
     And O my love kissed me!

Slowly, softly, westward flew
Day on wings of gold and blue;
As she faded out of sight
Dark and balmy fell the night.
Silent ’neath the azure cope,
Earth, a naked Ethiope
Reach’d black arms up through the air,
     Dragging down the branches bright
Of the flowering heavens, where
     Starry fruitage glimmer’d white!
As he drew them gently near,
Dewdrops dim and crystal clear
     Rain’d upon his face and eyes!
Listening, watching, we could hear                                                      95
     His deep breathing ’neath the skies;—
Suddenly, far down the glade,
Startled from some place of shade,
Like an antelope the dim
Moon upsprang, and looked at him!
Panting, trembling, in the dark,
Paused to listen and to mark,
Then with shimmer dimly fair
     On from shade to shade did spring,
Gain’d the fields of heaven, and there
     Wander’d, calmly pasturing!

“O who will worship the great god Pan
     Out in the woods with me?
Maker and lover of woman and man,
     Under the stars sings he;
And Dian the huntress with all her train
     Awakes to the wood-notes wild!”
O I kissed my love on the lips again,
     And Dian looked down and smiled.

Hand in hand without a care                                                               96
Following the Huntress fair,
Wheresoe’er we went we found
Silver footprints on the ground:
Grass and flowers kept the shine
Of the naked feet divine.
Now and then our eyes could see,
     As we softly crept along
Through the dusky greenery,
     Glimmers of the vestal throng—
Locks of gold and limbs of snow
     Fading on as we came near,
Faint soft cries and laughter low
     Ceasing as we paused to hear!
O the night more sweet than day!
O the merry, merry May!
O the rapture dark and deep
Of the woodlands hush’d to sleep!
O the old sweet human tune
Pan is piping to the moon!
“Though the systems wax and wane,                                                   97
Thou and I,” he sings, “remain—
Both by night and one by day
Witch a world the old warm way!
Foot it, foot it! Where you tread
Woods are greenly carpeted.
Foot it round me as I sing
Nymphs and satyrs in a ring!

“Gnarled and old sits the great god Pan—
     (Peep through the boughs, and see!)—
He plays on his pipes Arcadian
     Under the dark oak-tree.
But the boughs are dark round his sightless eyes—
     And Dian, where is she?
O follow, follow, and where she flies
     Follow her flight with me!”

Slowly, dreamily, we crept
     From the silent sleeping park,
Join’d the merry throng that swept                                                      98
     Townward through the summer dark.
Shining round our path again,
Dian flash’d before the train,
In upon our comrades shone,
Smiled and beckon’d, bounding on!
Satyrs brown in corduroys
     Smoked their pipes and join’d in song                                       [11:10]
Gamesome girls and merry boys
     Fondled as we swept along;
Here a flush’d Bacchante prest
     Heavy head and crumpled bonnet
On her drowsy lover’s breast,
     Sprawling drowsily upon it;
Flush’d from dancing sports of Pan
Sat the little artizan,
With his wife and children three,
And the baby on his knee;
Here a little milliner,
     Smart in silk and shape-improver,
All the happy Spring astir                                                                    99
     In her veins, sat by her lover;
Mounted somewhere on the train,
     Pan on the accordion played!
Rough feet shuffled to the strain,
     Happy hearts the spell obeyed;
While fair Dian, looking in,
Saw the throng and heard the din,
Touch’d the young heads and the grey
With the magic of the May!

“O who will worship the great god Pan,
     Where life runs wild and free?
Form of a faun and soul of a man,
     He playeth eternallie.
And Dian is out on the azure waste
     As bright as bright can be!”
O my arm embraced my love’s small waist,
     And my love crept close to me!

When we reached the streets of stone                                               100
     Dian there was bright before us,
Wading naked and alone
     In the pools of heaven o’er us!
Fainter came the wood-god’s sound
     As we crossed the Bridge, and there
Saw the City splendour-crown’d
     Sleeping dark in silver air;
Saw the river dark beneath
Rippling dim to Dian’s breath.
Phillis nestling to my side
     Watch’d the sad street-walker pass,
Hollow-voiced and weary-eyed,
     Painted underneath the gas.
Paler, sadder, looked the moon,
Sadder grew the old sweet tune;
Shapes of sorrow and despair
Flitted ghostwise in the air,
And among them, wan and slow,
Stalked the spectral Shape of Woe—
Piercèd hands and piercèd feet                                                          101
Passing on from street to street;
Silently behind Him crept
Pallid Magdalens who wept!
All the world at His footfall
     Darken’d, and the music ceased—
Dark and sacrificial
     Loom’d the altars of the priest,
All the magic died away
And the music of the May.

“O who will worship the great god Pan
     Here in the streets with me?
Sad and tearful and weary and wan
     Is the god who died on the Tree;
But Pan is under and Dian above,
     Though the dead god cannot see,
And the merry music of youth and love
     Returns eternallie!”

Homeward went my love and I                                                         102
To our lodging near the sky;
There beside the snow-white bed
     Dian stood with radiant eyes!
Smiled a moment ere she fled—
Then, with halo round her head,
     Hung above us in the skies!
By the casement open wide
Long we watch’d her side by side;
While from the dark streets around
Came again the sylvan sound—
Pan was softly piping there
     As he pipes in field and grove,
Conquering sorrow and despair
     With the strains of life and love!
Phillis in her bedgown white
     Kissed me, standing in the moon;
Louder, sweeter, through the night
     Rang the olden antique tune;
Gently on my knee I drew her                                                           103
     Smiling as I heard her say,
All her warm life kindling through her,
     “Dearest, what a happy day!”
“’Tis a happy world,” I said;
“Pan still pipes, though Christ is dead!”

 

[Notes:
Alterations in the 1901 edition of ‘The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Buchanan’:
v. 11, l. 10: Smoked their pipes and join’d in song;

Pan At Hampton Court was also included in ‘The New Rome’ (1898), with only one major change, the omission of the lines in the third verse:
               Loving all and hating none
               Of my brethren ’neath the sun.]

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104

BLUSHING he ceased, and folded up the scroll,
While Sappho Syntax through her spectacles
Looked grave as Pallas, and the Graces hung
Their pink-white cheeks and titter’d among their curls.
Dan Paumanok the Yankee pantheist
Was first to speak; quoth he, “I like that song!
It suits me, it tastes pleasant in the mouth;
But Christ is just as much alive as Pan,
Not less or more; and for the Magdalen,
I guess she suits me too. I beckon her
To an appointment, and she smiling comes:
The paint upon her lips is just as good
As roses, and her loose wild dress surpasses
The lily’s raiment——”
                                        He was talking on,                                              105
When Douglas interposed—“May I suggest
The moral of the ditty? It is here:
The joys of costermongers and their wenches,
Of poets and their sweethearts, vindicate
Nature’s loose morals and the primal Fall.
Eat, drink, be merry—carpe diem—since
Man is a Satyr; half a beast at best,
When wholly so, most happy! Am I right,
Madonna?” This to Lady Barbara,
Who sat with pensive cheek upon her hand,
Her bright eyes tender with some summer dream.
“Nay, Fool!” she sighed; and “Nay,” cried Verity,
With delicate nostril breathing vestal fire,
“The passionate eternal purity,
Bright Artemis, who walks the fields of night
And trims with lustrous hands the lamps of heaven,
Rebukes the eternal riot of the sense!
Woe to the land wherein the Satyr reigns,
And Pan usurps Apollo’s ivory throne!
Thank God we Englishmen at last have heard,                                             106
Amidst the pagan orgy and the shame
Of yonder City, Nature’s warning voice
Of Earthquake,—with the wine-cup raised to drink,
Have read the handwriting on the riven wall
In characters of His eternal fire!”

“Superfluous was the warning,” interposed
Wormwood, the pessimist philosopher;
“Man needs no miracle to attest the law
Which made him and preserves him miserable!
Like fabled Tantalus in the poet’s song,
In aquis quoerit aquas, and pursues
The ever-flying apple. Let him gladden
A little in the sunshine if he can—
To-morrow he must die!”
                                           “Man cannot die!”
Shrill’d the sleek pantheist, Spinoza Smith;
“For though the individual perishes,
The sum Divine, cipher of which Man is,
Abides imperishable. Thought alone                                                             107
Is God, and is the only Absolute;
And Thought remains though men and systems fade.
The music lasts, the instrument is changed:
Thought was, is, and shall be; Thought has at last
Become material in Humanity.
The consciousness of the Eternal flames
Upon the mirror of thy consciousness,
And for a moment while the splendour lasts
Thou knowest and perceivest. Die, and lo!
The light that was and is thy consciousness
Abides divine and indestructible,—
Invisible, with power to re-emerge
In forms material, other instruments,
In forms and hues which figure Thought divine;
Yea, even letters, which like hieroglyphs
Preserve the eternal attributes of Soul.
Thus man is God, and therefore cannot die.”

Quoth Paumanok dryly, “What you say is true,
But with interpretations! Man emerges                                                         108
From the Divine Idea, to gain, not lose,
Identity, and once identified
I guess he cannot once again retire
Impersonal; having become as God
By knowing and perceiving, he remains
Godlike, immortal, and has vanquish’d Death!”

“We wander,” said Queen Barbara with a smile,
“Far from our starting-place. Great Rome still stands
Upon the solid ground, the mighty rock;
Philosophy with heavy and weary wing
Still seeks to rise, but flaps along the ground;
And poets’ dreams of fairyland and gods
Are fantasies too faint for flesh and blood.”

Then Cuthbert spoke, our Modern Abelard—
The Church’s outcast, foe of all the creeds,
But most at war with his own unbelief,
A priest at heart, yet scorning every form
Of priesthood, dim-eyed through excess of light,                                          109
Believing nought, believing everything,
And groping through his doubts he knew not whither.
“Rome conquer’d where she crown’d the hopes of man
With a celestial promise, but she failed
Where the old pagan triumphed—in a joy
Material, archetypal, quick not dead,
That met the happy needs of human life.
We are mortal and immortal; mortal first,
Women and men, although eternal souls;
And warring with the laws of life and love,
Rejecting flesh which symbolises God,
Blind to the law of Nature, seeing not
Thought and material are but woof and web,
Scorning the animal instinct and its pleas
For sunshine and free light, free exercise
Of life and breath, Rome turned the world she ruled
Into a lazar-den and sepulchre.
She proved Man cannot die, but failed to prove
That Man is fit to live; she comforted
The grief of Man, but caused the tears she dried;                                         110
She slew the idolatries of heathendom,
But made an image of the living God,
And lapsed, as all idolaters must lapse,
To darkness and despair. Yet she endures,—
The blind old Mother, grovelling on the ground
In purple sad as sackcloth, and the world
Still sees the sceptre that is but a reed
Shake in her palsied hand. Too weary and old
To learn the lesson that the infant Man
Is prattling at her knee, she lieth prone,
And measures—her own grave!”
                                                    So saying, he turned
To one who stood and listened at his side—
Sparkle, Professor of the Institute,—
A tall lithe man, brown as a mountaineer,
Who through a glittering eyeglass, the bright pane
Fix’d in his intellectual dwelling-house,
Half study, half observatory, gazed
Serenely on the follies of the world.
“Right, right, dear Cuthbert,” answering his look,                                          111
Sparkle replied; “and yet, and yet—who knows?
I have often thought with Comte that fallen Rome
Might yet arise, if she would cast aside
Her supernatural fancies and baptize
Us wandering priests of Science, fashioning
A truly nobler order of the Wise
To rule the world and spread the solemn creed
Of Nature and the Law. She wastes her life
Mourning her Eldest Born, that beauteous soul
Who ere He perish’d, centuries ago,
Promised so wonderfully that the world
Is haunted by His memory even now!
Well, that is o’er, the golden bowl is broken,
The fair head still, within its Eastern grave;
But we who have come upon a stormier time,
The apostles of a sterner, saner creed,
Would gladly wake the Mother from her dream
And seat her on the throne of human thought.
Man craves a creed—we bring it; seeks a rule
Imperial,—she might wield it as of old;                                                        112
Demands a priesthood,—we who follow Truth,
Far as the limits of the Knowable,
Would form that priesthood,—ay, and cheerfully
Elect our Pope and give him ample power,
Scarce stopping at infallibility!
’Tis sad so perfect a machinery
Should rust away dishonoured and disused
For lack of all it needs—a Hierarchy
Which might restore it for the use of men!”

Two priests of Rome, outcast, yet still of Rome,
(Since he who once hath ta’en the priestly garb
Is ever a priest), were in that company:
Both smiled, but neither answer’d; silent men,
With eyes that seem’d to suffer from the light
They shed on others, even there, amid
That throng of shallow or rebellious souls,
They both were busy sowing subtle seeds
That sprout by midnight. Well they knew, in sooth,
How oft the pathos of a creed forlorn                                                          113
Acts magnet-like on sympathetic clay
Sighing without a foothold. What had grown
In pain and persecution still (they prayed),
After long centuries of pomp and pride
Might, under persecution, rise again.
Their patient faces touch’d a piteous chord
Within me: and as wistfully they watched
The sunset fading like a blackening brand,
Both speechless, faintly flush’d with that sad light,
While Lady Barbara stirred upon her seat,
Signing dismissal to her wearied court
Whose yawns proclaim’d the dinner-hour at hand,
I craved again the singer’s privilege
And sang of Roman Rizpah’s last despair:

 

O Rizpah, Mother of Nations, the days of whose glory are done,
Moaning alone in the darkness, thou countest—the bones of thy Son!

The Cross is vacant above thee, and He is no longer thereon—
A wind came out of the night, and He fell like a leaf, and was gone.

But wearily through the ages, searching the sands of the years,                               114
Thou didst gather His bones together, and wash them, Madonna, with tears.

They have taken thy crown, O Rizpah, and driven thee forth with the swine,
But the bones of thy Son they have left thee; yea, kiss them and clasp—they are thine!

Thou canst not piece them together, or hang them up yonder afresh,
The skull hath no eye within it, the feet and the hands are not flesh.

Thou moanest an old incantation, thou troublest the world with thy cries—
Ah God, if the bones should hear thee, and join once again, and arise!

In the night of the seven-hill’d City, discrown’d and disrobed and undone,
Thou waitest a sign, O Madonna, and countest the bones of thy Son!

______________________________

The Earthquake continued

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The Earthquake Contents