The book of earth

by Alfred Noyes

III—MOVING EASTWARD

I
Farabi and Avicenna

Grey mists enfolded Europe; and I heard

Sounds of bewildered warfare in the gloom.

Yet, like a misty star, one lampad moved

Eastward, beyond the mountains where of old

Prometheus, in whose hand the fire first shone,

Was chained in agony. His undying ghost

Beheld the fire returning on its course

Unquenched, and smiled from his dark crag in peace,

Implacable peace, at heaven.

Eastward, the fire

Followed the road Pythagoras trod, to meet

The great new morning.

The grey mists dissolved.

And was it I—or Shadow-of-a-Leaf—that saw

And heard, and lived through all he showed me then?

I saw a desert blazing in the sun,

Tufts of tall palm; and then—that City of dreams.

As though an age went past me in an hour

I saw the silken Khalifs and their court

Flowing like orient clouds along the streets

Of Bagdad. In great Mahmoun’s train I saw

Nazzam, who from the Stagirite caught his fire.

Long had he pondered on the Eternal Power

Who, in the dark palm of His timeless hand

Rolls the whole cosmos like one gleaming pearl.

Had he not made, in one pure timeless thought,

All things at once, the last things with the first,

The first life with the last; so that mankind,

Through all its generations, co-exists

For His eternal eyes? Yet, from our own

Who in the time-sphere move, the Maker hides

The full revolving glory, and unfolds

The glimmering miracles of its loveliness

Each at its destined moment, one by one,

In an æonian pageant that returns

For ever to the night whence it began.

Thus Nazzam bowed before the inscrutable Power,

Yet found Him in his own time-conquering soul.

I saw the hundred scribes of El Mansour

Making their radiant versions from the Greek.

I saw Farabi, moving through the throng

Like a gaunt chieftain. His world-ranging eyes

Beheld the Cause of causes.

In his mind,

Lucid and deep, the reasoning of the Greeks

Flooded the world with new celestial light,

Golden interpretations that made clear

To mighty shades the thing they strove to say.

He carried on their fire, with five-score books

In Arabic, where the thoughts of Athens, fledged

With orient colours, towered to the pure realm

Of Plato; but, returning earthward still,

Would wheel around his Aristotle’s mind

Like doves around the cote where they were born.

Then the dark mists that round the vision flowed

Like incense-clouds, dividing scene from scene,

Rolled back from a wide prospect, and I saw,

As one that mounts upon an eagle’s wing,

A savage range of mountains, peaked with snow,

To northward.

They glowed faintly, for the day

Was ending, and the shadows of the rocks

Were stretched out to the very feet of night.

Yet, far away, to southward, I could see

The swollen Oxus, like a vanishing snake

That slid away in slippery streaks and gleams

Through his grey reed-beds to the setting sun.

Earthward we moved; and, in the tawny plain,

Before me, like a lanthorn of dark fire

Bokhara shone, a city of shadowy towers

Crimsoned with sunset. In its turreted walls

I saw eleven gates, and all were closed

Against the onrushing night.

Then, at my side,

My soul’s companion whispered, “You shall see

The Gates of Knowledge opening here anew.

Here Avicenna dwelt in his first youth.”

At once, as on the very wings of night,

We entered. In the rustling musky gloom

Of those hot streets, thousands of falcon eyes

Were round us; but our shadows passed unseen

Into the glimmering palace of the Prince

Whom Avicenna, when all others failed,

Restored to life, and claimed for all reward

Freedom to use the Sultan’s library,

The pride of El Mansour; a wasted joy

To the new Sultan. Radiances were there

Imprisoned like the innumerable slaves

Of one too wealthy even to know their names;

Beautiful Grecian captives, bought with gold

From tawny traffickers in the Ionian sea.

A shadow, with a shadow at my side,

I saw him reading there, intent and still,

Under a silver lamp; his dusky brow

Wreathed with white silk, a goblet close at hand

Brimmed with a subtle wine that could uncloud

The closing eyes of Sleep.

Along each wall

Great carven chests of fragrant cedar-wood

Released the imprisoned magic,—radiant scrolls,

Inscribed with wisdom’s earliest wonder-cry;

Dark lore; the secrets of the Asclepiads;

History wild as legend; legends true

As history, all being shadows of one light;

Philosophies of earth and heaven; and rhymes

That murmured still of their celestial springs.

He thrust his book aside, as in despair.

Our shadows followed him through the swarming streets

Into the glimmering mosque. I saw him bowed

Prostrate in prayer for light, light on a page

Of subtle-minded Greek which many a day

Had baffled him, when he sought therein the mind

Of his forerunner.

I saw him as he rose;

And, as by chance, at the outer gates he met

A wandering vendor of old tattered books

Who, for three dirhems, offered him a prize.

He bought it, out of gentle heart, and found

A wonder on every page,—Farabi’s work,

Flooding his Greek with light.

He could not see

What intricate law had swept it into his hand;

But, having more than knowledge, he returned

Through the dark gates of prayer; and, pouring out

His alms upon the poor, lifted his heart

In silent thanks to God.

II
Avicenna’s Dream

But all these books—for him—were living thoughts,

Clues to the darker Book of Nature’s law;

For, when he climbed, a goat-foot boy, in Spring

Up through the savage Hissar range, he saw

A hundred gorges thundering at his feet

With snow-fed cataracts; torrents whose fierce flight

Uprooted forests, tore great boulders down,

Ground the huge rocks together; and every year

Channelled raw gullies and swept old scars away;

So that the wildered eagle beating up

To seek his last year’s eyry, found that all

Was new and strange; and even the tuft of pines

That used to guide him to his last year’s nest

Had vanished from the crags he knew no more.

There, pondering on the changes of the world,

Young Avicenna, with a kinglier eye,

Saw in the lapse of ages the great hills

Melting away like waves; and, from the sea,

New lands arising; and the whole dark earth

Dissolving, and reshaping all its realms

Around him, like a dream.

Thus of his hills

And of their high snows flowing through his thoughts

Was born the tale that afterwards was told

By golden-tongued Kazwini, and wafted thence

Through many lands, from Tartary to Pameer.

For, cross-legged, in the shadow of a palm,

The hawk-eyed teller of tales, in years unborn

Holding his wild clan spell-bound, would intone

The deep melodious legend, flowing thus,

As all the world flows, through the eternal mind.

I came one day upon an ancient City.

I saw the long white crescent of its wall

Stained with thin peach-blood, blistered by the sun.

I saw beyond it, clustering in the sky,

Ethereal throngs of ivory minarets,

Tall slender towers, each crowned with one bright pearl.

It was no desert phantom; for it grew

And sharpened as I neared it, till I saw,

Under the slim carved windows in the towers,

The clean-cut shadows, forked and black and small

Like clinging swallows.

In the midst up-swam

The Sultan’s palace with its faint blue domes,

The moons of morning.

Wreaths of frankincense

Floated around me as I entered in.

A thousand thousand warrior faces thronged

The glimmering streets. Blood-rubies burned like stars

In shadowy silks and turbans of all hues.

The markets glowed with costly merchandise.

I saw proud stallions, pacing to and fro

Before the rulers of a hundred kings.

I saw, unrolled beneath the slender feet

Of slave-girls, white as April’s breathing snow,

Soft prayer-rugs of a subtler drift of bloom

Than flows with sunset over the blue and grey

And opal of the drifting desert sand.

Princes and thieves, philosophers and fools

Jostled together, among hot scents of musk.

Dark eyes were flashing. Blood throbbed darker yet.

Lean dusky fingers groped for hilts of jade.

Then, with a roll of drums, through Eastern gates,

Out of the dawn, and softer than its clouds,

Tall camels, long tumultuous caravans,

Like stately ships came slowly stepping in,

Loaded with shining plunder from Cathay.

I turned and asked my neighbour in the throng

Who built that city, and how long ago.

He stared at me in wonder. “It is old,

Older than any memory,” he replied.

“Nor can our fathers’ oldest legend tell

Who built so great a city.”

I went my way.

And in a thousand ages I returned,

And found not even a stone of that great City,

Not even a shadow of all that lust and pride.

But only an old peasant gathering herbs

Where once it stood, upon the naked plain.

“What wars destroyed it, and how long ago?”

I asked him. Slowly lifting his grey head,

He stared at me in wonder.

“This bleak land

Was always thus. Our bread was always black

And our wine harsh. It is a bitter wind

That scourges us. But where these nettles grew

Nettles have always grown. Nothing has changed

In mortal memory here.”

“Was there not, once,

A mighty City?” I said, “with shining streets,

Here, on this ground?” I spoke with bated breath.

He shook his head and smiled, the pitying smile

That wise men use to poets and to fools.—

“Our fathers never told us of that City.

Doubtless it was a dream.”

I went my way.

And in a thousand ages I returned;

And, where the plain was, I beheld the sea.

The sea-gulls mewed and pounced upon their prey.

The brown-legged fishermen crouched upon the shore,

Mending their tarry nets.

I asked how long

That country had been drowned beneath the waves.

They mocked at me. “His wits are drowned in wine.

Tides ebb and flow, and fishes leap ashore;

But all our harvest, since the first wind blew,

Swam in deep waters. Are not wrecks washed up

With coins that none can use, because they bear

The blind old images of forgotten kings?

The waves have shaped these cliffs, dug out these caves,

Rounded each agate on this battered beach.

How long? Ask earth, ask heaven. Nothing has changed.

The sea was always here.”—

I went my way.

And in a thousand ages I returned.

The sea had vanished. Where the ships had sailed

Warm vineyards basked, among the enfolding hills.

I saw, below me, on the winding road,

Two milk-white oxen, under a wooden yoke,

Drawing a waggon, loaded black with grapes.

Beside them walked a slim brown-ankled girl.

I stood beneath a shadowy wayside oak

To watch them. They drew near.

It was no dream.

Blood of the grape upon the wrinkled throats

And smoking flanks of the oxen told me this.

I saw the branching veins and satin skin

Twitch at the flickering touch of a fly. I saw

The knobs of brass that sheathed their curling horns,

The moist black muzzles.

Like many whose coats are white,

Their big dark eyes had mists of blue.

Their breath

Was meadows newly mown.

By all the gods

That ever wrung man’s heart out in the grave

I did not dream this life into the world.—

Blood of the grape upon the girl’s brown arms

And lean, young, bird-like fingers told me this.

Her smooth feet powdered by the warm grey dust;

The grape-stalk that she held in her white teeth;

Her mouth a redder rose than Omar knew;

Her eyes, dark pools where stars could shine by day;

These were no dream. And yet,—

“How long ago,”

I asked her, “did the bitter sea withdraw

Its foam from all your happy sun-burnt hills?”

She looked at me in fear. Then, with a smile,

She answered, “Nothing here has ever changed.

My father’s father, in his childhood, played

Among these vines. That oak-tree where you stand

Had lived a century, then. The parent oak

From which its acorn dropped had long been dead.

But hills are hills. I never saw the sea.

Nothing has ever changed.”

I went my way.

Last, in a thousand ages I returned,

And found, once more, a City, thronged and tall,

More rich, more marvellous even than the first;

A City of pride and lust and gold and grime,

A City of clustering domes and stately towers,

And temples where the great new gods might dwell.

But, turning to a citizen in the gates,

I asked who built it and how long ago.

He stared at me as wise men stare at fools;

Then, pitying the afflicted, he replied

Gently, as to a child:

“The City is old,

Older than all our histories. Its birth

Is lost among the impenetrable mists

That shroud the most remote antiquity.

None knows, nor can our oldest legends tell

Who built so great a City.”

I went my way.

IV—THE TORCH IN ITALY
Leonardo Da Vinci

I
HILLS AND THE SEA

The mists rolled back. I saw the City of Flowers

Far down, upon the plain; and, on the slope

Beside us—we were shadows and unseen,—

Giulio, the painter, sketching rocks and trees.

We watched him working, till a pine-cone crackled

On the dark ridge beyond us, and we saw,

Descending from the summits like a god,

A deep-eyed stranger with a rose-red cloak

Fluttering against the blue of the distant hills.

He stood awhile, above a raw ravine,

Studying the furrows that the rains had made

Last winter. Then he searched among the rocks

As though for buried gold.

As he drew near

Giulio looked up and spoke, and he replied.

Their voices rose upon the mountain air

Like a deep river answering a brook,

While each pursued his work in his own way.

Giulio.

What are you seeking? Something you have lost?

The Stranger.

Something I hope to find.

Giulio.

You dropped it here?

Was it of value? Not your purse, I hope.

The Stranger.

More precious than my purse.

Giulio.

Your lady’s ring?

A jewel, perhaps?

The Stranger.

A jewel of a sort;

But it may take a thousand years to trace it

Back to its rightful owner.

Giulio (laughing).

O, you are bitten

By the prevailing fashion. Since the plough

Upturned those broken statues, all the world

Is relic-hunting; but, my friend, you’ll find

No Aphrodite here.

The Stranger (picking up a fossil).

And yet I think

It was the sea, from which she rose alive,

That shaped these rocks and left these twisted shells

Locked up, like stone in stone. They must have lived

Once, in the sea.

Giulio.

Ah, now I understand.

You’re a philosopher,—one of those who tread

The dusty road to Nowhere, which they call

Science.

The Stranger.

All roads to truth are one to me.

Giulio.

Sir, you deceive yourself. Your road can lead

Only to error. The Adriatic lies

How many miles away? We stand up here

On these unchanging hills; and yet, to fit

Your theory, you would roll the seas above

The peaks of Monte Rosa.

The Stranger.

But these shells?

How did they come here?

Giulio.

Obviously enough,

The sea being where it is, it was the Flood

That left them here.

The Stranger.

Then Noah must have dropped them

Out of his Ark. They never crept so far;

And Noah must have dumped his ballast, too,

Among our hills; for all those rippled rocks

Up yonder were composed of blue sea-clay.

I have found sea-weed in them, turned to stone,

The claws of crabs, the skeletons of fish.

Think you that, if your Adriatic lay

Where it now lies, its little sidling crabs

Could scuttle through the Deluge to the hills?

Your Deluge must have risen above the tops

Of all the mountains. If it rose so high,

Then it embraced the globe, and made our earth

One smooth blue round of water. When it sank

What chasm received those monstrous cataracts?

Or was the sun so hot it sucked them up

And turned them into a mist?

Is not that tale

A racial memory, lingering in our blood,

Of realms that now lie buried in the sea,

Or isles that heaved up shining from the deep

In old volcanic throes?

Giulio.

I must confess

I always feel a pang, sir, when I see

A man of talent wasting his fine powers

On this blind road.

The Stranger.

Show me a better way.

Giulio.

The way of Art, sir.

The Stranger.

Yes. That is a road

I have wished that I might travel. But are you sure

Our paths are not eventually the same?

Why have you climbed up here? To paint the truth,

As you perceive it, in those rocks and trees.

Suppose that, with your skill of hand, you saw

The truth more clearly, saw the lines of growth,

The bones and structure of the world you paint,

And the great rhythm of law that runs through all,

Might you not paint them better even than now?

Might you not even approach the final cause

Of all our art and science,—the pure truth

Which also is pure beauty?

Giulio.

Genius leaps

Like lightning to that mark, sir, and can waive

These pains and labours.

The Stranger.

O, I have no doubt

That you are right. I speak with diffidence,

And as a mere spectator; one who likes

To know, and seizes on this happy chance

Of learning what an artist really thinks.

Giulio.

We artists, sir, are not concerned with laws,

Except to break them. Genius is a law

Unto itself.

The Stranger.

And that is why you’ve made

Your wood-smoke blue against that shining cloud?

Against the darker background of the hill

It is blue in nature also; but it turns

To grey against the sky.

Giulio.

I am not concerned

With trivial points.

The Stranger.

But if they point to truth

Beyond themselves, and through that change of colour

Reveal its cause, and knit your scheme in law;

Nay, as a single point of light will speak

To seamen of the land that they desire,

Transfiguring all the darkness with one spark,

Would this be trivial? Sir, a touch will do it.

Lend me your brush a moment. Had you drawn

Your rocks here in the foreground, thus and thus,

Following the ribbed lines of those beds of clay

As the sea laid them, and the fire upheaved

And cracked them, you’ll forgive me if I say

That they’d not only indicate the law

Of their creation; but they’d look like rocks

Instead of——

Giulio.

Pray don’t hesitate.

The Stranger.

I speak

As a spectator only; but to me—

Sponges or clouds perhaps——

Giulio.

We artists, sir,

Aim at this very effect. To us, the fact

Is nothing. There is a kingdom of the mind,

Where all things turn to dreams. Nothing is true

In that great kingdom; and our subtlest work

Is that which has no basis.

The Stranger.

Then I fear

My thoughts are all astray; for I believed

That kingdom to be more substantial far

Than anything we see; and that the road

Into that kingdom is the road of law

Which we discover here,—the Word made Flesh.

Giulio.

I do not understand you—quite. I fear

Yours is the popular view—that art requires

Purposes, meanings, even moralities

With which we artists, sir, are not concerned.

The Stranger.

O, no. I merely inquire. I wish to hear

From one who knows. I am a little puzzled.

You have dismissed so much—this outer world

And all its laws; and now this other, too.

I am no moralist; but I must confess

That, in the greatest Art, I have always found

A certain probity, a certain splendour

Of inner and outer constancy to law.

Giulio.

All genius is capricious. You’ll admit

That men who lived like beasts have painted well.

The Stranger.

Yes; but not greatly, except when their own souls

Have gripped the beast within them by the throat,

And risen again to reassert the law.

Giulio.

Art lives by its technique, a fact the herd

Will never understand. A noble soul

Is useless, if it cannot wield a brush.

The Stranger.

May not technique include control and judgment?

Alone, they are not enough; but, for the heights,

More is required, not less. I’d even add

Some factors you despise.

Giulio.

Your shells, for instance?

And that mysterious and invisible sea?

The Stranger.

The sea whence Beauty rose.

Giulio.

You have an eye

For Beauty, too. You are a lover of art

And you are rich. What opportunities

You throw away! Was it not you I saw

Yesterday, in the market-place at Florence,

Buying caged birds and tossing them into the air?

The Stranger.

It may have been. I like to see them fly.

The structure of the wing,—I think that men

Will fly one day.

Giulio.

It was not pity, then?

The Stranger.

I’d not exclude it. As I said before,

I would include much.

Giulio.

You were speaking, sir,

Of Art. There are so few, so very few

Who understand what Art is.

The Stranger.

Fewer still

Who know the few to choose.

Giulio.

Perhaps you’d care

To see some work of mine. I do not live

In Florence; but I’d like to set your feet

On the right way. We are a little group

Known to the few that know. You’d find our works

Far better worth your buying than caged birds.

Pray let me know your name, sir.

The Stranger.

Leonardo.

II
AT FLORENCE

I saw the house at Florence, cool and white

With violet shadows, drowsing in the sun.

The fountain splashed and bubbled in the court.

Beside it, in a space of softened light,

Under a linen awning, ten feet high,

Roofing a half-enclosure, where three walls

Were tinted to a pine-wood’s blue-black shade,

I saw a woman seated on a throne,

And Leonardo, with his radiant eyes,

Glancing from his wet canvas to her face.

Her face was filled with music. Music swelled

Above them, from a gallery out of sight;

And as the soft pulsation of the strings

Died into infinite distances, he spoke.

His voice was more than music. It was thought

Ebbing and flowing, like a strange dark sea.

“Listen to me; for I have things to say

That I can only tell the world through you.

Were you not just a little afraid of me

At first? You know by popular report

I dabble in Black Arts, and so I would

To keep you here, an hour or two each day,

Until the mystery we have conjured up

Between us—there again, it came and went—

Smiles at the centuries in their masquerade

As you smiled, then, at me.

Not mockery—quite—

Not irony either; something we evoked

That seems to have caught the ironist off his guard,

And slyly observes the mocker’s naked heel.

So we’ll defend humanity, you and I,

Against the worst of tyrannies,—the blind sneer

Of intellectual pride. The subtle fool

And cunning sham at least shall meet one gaze

More subtle, more secure; not yours or mine,

But Nature’s own—that calm, inscrutable smile

Whereby each erring atomy is restored

To its true place, taught its true worth at last,

And heaven’s divine simplicity renewed.

Not yours or mine, Madonna. Could I trust

To brush and palette or my skill of hand

For this? Oh, no! We need Black Arts, I think,

Black Arts and incantations, or you’d grow

Weary of sitting here.

Last night I made

Five bubbles of glass—you blow them with a pipe

Over a flame,—and set them there to dance

Upon the fountain’s feathery crest of spray.

Piero thought it waste of time. He jeers

At these mechanical arts of mine. I watched

That dance and learned a little of the machine

We call the world. I left them leaping there

To catch your eyes this morning, and learned more.

So one thing leads to another. A device,

Mechanical as the spinning of the stars

In the Arch-Mechanic’s Cosmos, woke a gleam

Of wonder; and I lay these Black Arts bare

To make you wonder more.

Black Arts, Madonna;

For even such trifles may discover depths

Dark as the pit of death; as when I laid

Dice on a drum, and by their trembling showed

Where underneath our armoured city walls

The enemy dug his mines.

And now—you smile,

To think how wars are won.

Catgut and wood

Have served our wizardry. Yes; that’s why I set

Musicians in the gallery overhead,

To pluck their strings; and, while you listened, so

Painted the living spirit that they bound

With their bright spells before me, in your face.

Black Arts, Madonna, and cold-blooded, too.

O, sheer mechanical, playing upon your mind

And senses, as they too were instruments,

Or colours to be ground and mixed and used

For purposes that were not yours at all,

Until the living Power that uses me

Breathes on this fabric, also made by hands,

The inscrutable face that smiles all arts away.

How many tales I have told you sitting here

To make you see, according to my need,

The comedy of the world, its lights and shades:

The sensual feast; the mockery of renown;

Youth and his innocent boastings, unaware

How swiftly run the sands; Youth that believes

His own bright scorn for others’ aching faults

Has crowned him conqueror; Youth so nobly sure

That plans are all achievements; quite, quite sure

Of his own victory where all others failed;

Age, with blind eyes, or staring at defeat,

Dishonoured; Age, in honour, with a wreath

Of fading leaves in one old trembling hand,

And at his feet the dark all-gulfing grave;

Envy, the lean and wizened witch behind him,

Riding on death, like his own crooked shadow,

Snapping at heaven with one contemptuous hand,

As though she hated God; and, on her face,

A mask of fairness; Envy, with those barbs

Of wicked lightning darting from her flesh;

Envy, whose eyes the palm and olive wound;

Whose ears the laurel and myrtle pierce with pain;

A fiery serpent eating at her heart;

A quiver on her back with tongues for arrows.

Each of these pictures left its little shadow,

A little memory in your spellbound face,

And so your picture smiles at all of these,

And at one secret never breathed aloud,

Because I think we knew it all too well.

Once only, in a riddle, I made you smile

At our own secret also, when I said

‘If liberty be dear to you, Madonna,

Never discover that your painter’s face

Is Love’s dark prison.’

Sailing to the south

From our Cilicia, you and I have seen

Beautiful Cyprus, rising from the wave;

Cyprus, that island where Queen Venus reigned.

The blood of men was drawn to that rough coast

As tides, on other shores, obey the moon.

Glens of wild dittany, winding through the hills

From Paphos, her lost harbour, to the peak

Of old Olympus, where she tamed the gods,

Enticed how many a wanderer,

Odorous winds

Welcomed us, ruffling, crumpling the smooth brine

Into a sea of violets. We drew near.

We heard the muffled thunder of the surf!

What ships, what fleets, had broken among those rocks!

We saw a dreadful host of shattered hulls,

Great splintered masts, innumerable keels

With naked ribs, like skeletons of whales

All weltering there, half-buried in the sand.

The foam rushed through them. On their rotted prows

And weed-grown poops the sea-gulls perched and screamed;

And all around them with an eerie cry

An icy wind was blowing.

It would seem

Like the Last Judgment, should there ever be

A resurrection of the ships we saw

Lying there dead. These things we saw and live.

And now your picture smiles at all of these.

The secret still evades me everywhere;

And everywhere I feel it, close at hand.

Do you remember when Vesuvius flamed

And the earth shivered and cracked beneath our feet?

Ten villages were engulfed. I wandered out

Among the smoking fragments of earth’s crust

To see if, in that breaking-up of things,

Nature herself had now perhaps unsealed

Some of her hidden wonders.

On that day,

I found a monstrous cavern in the hills,

A rift so black and terrible that it dazed me.

I stood there, with my back bent to an arch,

My left hand clutching at my knee, my right

Shading contracted eyes. I strained to see

Into that blackness, till the strong desire

To know what marvellous thing might lurk within

Conquered my fear. I took a ball of thread

And tied one end to a lightning-blasted tree.

I made myself a torch of resinous pine

And entered, running the thread through my left hand,

On, on, into the entrails of the world.

O, not Odysseus, when his halting steps

Crept through that monstrous hollow to the dead,

Felt such a fearful loneliness as I;

For there were voices echoing through his night,

And shadows of lost friends to welcome him;

But my fierce road to knowledge clove its way

Into a silence deeper than the grave,

Into a darkness where not even a ghost

Could stretch its hands out, even in farewell.

And all that I could see around me there

Was my own smoking torchlight, walls of rock

And awful rifts where other caverns yawned.

And all that I could hear was my own steps

Echoing through endless darkness, on and on.

My thread ran out. My torch was burning low,

When, through the darkness, I became aware

Of something darker, looming up in front;

Solid as rock, and yet more strange and wild

Than any shadow. My flesh and blood turned cold

Before that awful Presence in the dark.

I left the thread behind me, and crept on;

Held up the guttering torch; and there, O there,

I saw it, and I live.

A monstrous thing

With jaws that might have crushed a ship, and bones

That might upheave a mountain; a Minotaur,

A dreadful god of beasts, now turned to stone,

Like a great smoke-bleared idol. The wild light

Smeared it with blood; a thing that once had lived;

A thing that once might turn the sea to mist

With its huge flounderings, and would make a spoil

For kingdoms with the ships it drove ashore.

The torchlight flared against it, and went out;

And I groped back, in darkness....

And you smile.

O, what a marvel of enginery was there!

What giant thews and sinews once controlled

The enormous hinges of the rock-bound bones

I saw in my dark cavern. Yet it perished,

And all its monstrous race has perished, too.

Was it all waste? Did it prepare the way

For lordlier races? Even, perhaps, for men?

Only one life to track these wonders home,

So many roads to follow. Never the light

Till all be travelled.

We will not despise

Mechanical arts, Madonna, while we use

These marvellous living instruments of ours.

Rather we’ll seek to master for ourselves

The Master’s own devices. Birds can fly,

And so shall men, when they have learned the law

Revealed in every wing. Far off, I have seen

Men flying like eagles over the highest clouds;

Men that in ships like long grey swordfish glide

Under the sea; men that in distant lands

Will speak to men in Italy; men that bring

The distant near, and bind all worlds in one.

And yet—I shall not see it. I have explored

This human instrument, traced its delicate tree

Of nerves, discovering how the life-blood flows

Out of the heart, through every branching vein;

And how, in age, the thickening arteries close

And the red streams no longer feed this frame,

And the parched body starves at last and dies.

I have built bridges. Armies tread them now.

The rains will come. The torrents will roll down

And sweep them headlong to the sea, one day.

I have painted pictures. Let cicalas chirrup

Of their brief immortality. I know

How soon these colours fade.

And yet, and yet,

I do not think the Master of us all

Would set us in His outer courts at night

As the Magnificent, once, in the flush of wine,

Set Angelo, to flatter an idle whim

And sculpture him a godhead out of snow.

The work’s not wasted. In my youth I thought

That I was learning how to live, and now

I see that I was learning how to die.

Then comes the crowning wonder. We strip off

The scaffolding; for the law is learned at last;

And our reality, Parian then, not snow,

Dares the full sun of morning, fronts the gaze

Of its divine Pygmalion; lives and breathes;

And knows, then, why it passed through all those pains.

Now—the last touch of all! And, as this face

Begins to breathe against those ancient rocks,

Let music breathe these arts of mine away.”

Music awoke. It throbbed like hidden wings

Above them. Then a minstrel’s golden voice,

As from a distance, on those wings arose

And poured the Master’s passion into song:

Burn, Phœnix, burn;

And, in thy burning, take

All that love taught me, all I strove to learn,

All that I made, and all I failed to make.

If it be true

That from the fire thou rise

In splendour, as men say dead worlds renew

Their light from their own embers in the skies,

In thy fierce nest

I’d share that death with thee,

To make one shining feather on thy breast

Of all I am, and all I strove to be.

The worthless bough

May kindle a rich coal;

And in our mingling ashes, how wilt thou

Know mine from thine, ere both reclothe thy soul?

Now—as thy wings

Arise from this proud fire,

My dust in thy assumption mounts and sings;

And, being a part of thee, I still aspire.

V—IN FRANCE
Jean Guettard

I
THE ROCK OF THE GOOD VIRGIN

Who knows the name of Jean Guettard to-day?

I wrestled with oblivion all night long.

At times a curtain on a lighted stage

Would lift a moment, and fall back again.

Once, in the dark, a sunlit row of vines

Gleamed through grey mists on his invisible hill.

The mists rolled down. Then, like a miser, Night

Caught the brief glory in her blind cloak anew.

At dawn I heard the voice of Shadow-of-a-Leaf

Breathing a quiet song. It seemed remote

And yet was near, as when the listener’s heart

Fills a cold shell with its remembered waves.

“When I was young,” said Jean Guettard,

“My comrades and myself would hide

Beneath a tall and shadowy Rock

In summer, on the mountain-side.

The wind and rain had sculptured it—

Such tricks the rain and wind will play,—

To likeness of a Mother and Child;

But wind and rain,” said Jean Guettard,

“Have worn the rocks for many a day.”

“The peasants in that quiet valley,

Among their vineyards bending there,

Called it the Rock of the Good Virgin,

And breathed it many an evening prayer.

When I grew up I left my home

For dark Auvergne, to seek and know

How all this wondrous world was made;

And I have learned,” said Jean Guettard,

“How rains can beat, and winds can blow.”

“When I came home,” said Jean Guettard,

“Not fifty years had fleeted by.

I looked to see the Form I loved

With arms outstretched against the sky.

Flesh and blood as a wraith might go.

This, at least, was enduring stone.

I lifted heart and eyes aglow,

Over the vines,” said Jean Guettard....

“The rain had beaten, the wind had blown,

The hill was bare as the sky that day.

Mother and Child from the height had gone.

The wind and rain,” said Jean Guettard,

“Had crumbled even the Rock away.”

“Shadow-of-a-Leaf,” I whispered, for I saw

The crosier of a fern against the grey;

And, as the voice died, he stood dark before me.

“You sang as though you loved him. Let the mists

Unfold.”

He smiled. “See, first, that Rock,” he said,

“Dividing them.”

At once, through drifting wreaths

I saw a hill emerging, a green hill

Clothed with the dying rainbow of those tears

The mist had left there. From the rugged crest

Slowly the last thin veils dissolved away.

I saw the Rock upstanding on the height

So closely, and so near me, that I knew

Its kinship with the rocks of Fontainebleau;

The sandstone whose red grains for many an age

Had been laid down, under a vanished sea;

A Rock, upthrust from darkness into light,

By buried powers, as power upthrust it now

In the strong soul, with those remembering hills,

Till, graven by frost and beaten by wind and rain,

It slowly assumed the semblance of that Form

Of Love, the Mother, holding in her arms

The Child of Earth and Heaven; a shape of stone;

An image; but it was not made by hands.

Footsteps drew near. I heard an eager voice

Naming a flower in Latin.

Up they came—

Each with a bunch of wild flowers in his hand,—

A lean old man, with snowy wind-blown hair,

Panting a little; and, lightly at his side,

Offering a strong young arm, a sun-burnt boy,

Of eighteen years, with darkly shining eyes.

It was those eyes, deep, scornful, tender, gay,

Dark fires at which all falsehood must consume,

That told me who they were—the young Guettard,

And his old grandsire.

Under the Rock they stood.

“Good-bye. I’ll leave you here,” the old man said.

“We’ve had good luck. These are fine specimens.

The last, perhaps, that we shall find together;

For when you leave your home to-morrow, Jean,

I think you are going on a longer journey

Even than you know. Perhaps, when you are famous,

You will not be so proud as I should be,

Were I still living, to recall the days

When even I, the old apothecary,

Could teach you something.”

Jean caught a wrinkled hand,

Held it between his own, and laughed away

That shadow, but old Descurain looked at him,

Proudly and sadly. “It will not rest with you,

Or your affection, Jean. The world will see to it.

The world that knows as much of you and me,

As you and I of how that creeper grew

Around your bedroom window.”

As he spoke,

Along the lower slopes the mists began

To blow away like smoke. The patch of vines

Crept out again; and, far below I saw,

Sparkling with sun, the valley of the Juine,

The shining river, and the small clear town

Étampes, the grey old church, the clustering roofs,

The cobbled square, the gardens, wet and bright

With blots of colour.

“I have lived my life

Out of the world, down there,” Descurain said,

“Compounding simples out of herbs and flowers;

Reading my Virgil in the quiet evenings,

Alone, for all those years; and, then, with you.

O fortunatos—Do we ever know

Our happiness till we lose it? You’ll remember

Those Georgics—the great praise of Science, Jean!

And that immortal picture of the bees!

No doubt you have chosen rightly. For myself,

I know, at least, where healing dittany grows,

And where earth’s beauty hides in its dark heart

An anodyne, at last, for all our pain.

And one thing more I have learned, and see with awe

On every side, more clearly, that on earth

There’s not one stone, one leaf, one creeping thing,

No; nor one act or thought, but plays its part

In the universal drama.

You’ll look back

One day on this lost bee-like life of mine;

And find, perhaps, in its obscurest hour

And lowliest task, the moment when a light

Began to dawn upon a child’s dark mind.

The old pestle and mortar, and the shining jars,

The smell of the grey bunches of dried herbs,

The little bedroom over the market-square,

The thrifty little house where you were born,

The life that all earth’s great ones would despise—

All these, perhaps, were needed, as the hand

That led you, first, in childhood to the hills.

You’ll see strange links, threads of effect and cause,

In complicated patterns, growing clear

And binding all these memories, each to each,

And all in one; how one thing led to another,

My simples to your love of plants and flowers,

And this to your new interest in the haunts

That please them best—the kinds of earth, the rocks,

And minerals that determine where they grow,

Foster them, or reject them. You’ll discover

That all these indirections are not ruled

By chance, but by dark predetermined laws.

You’ll grope to find what Power, what Thought, what Will,

Determined them; till, after many a year,

At one swift clue, one new-found link, one touch,

They are flooded with a new transfiguring light,

Deep as the light our kneeling peasants know

When, dumbly, at the ringing of a bell

They adore the sacred elements; a light

That shows all Nature, of which your life is part,

Bound to that harmony which alone sets free;

And every grain of dust upon its way

As punctual to its purpose as a star.

This Rock has played its part in many a life.

We know it, for we see it every day.

No angelus ever rang, but some one’s eyes

Were lifted to it; and, returning home,

The wanderer strains to see it from the road.

What is it, then? It plays no greater part

Than any grain of dust beneath our feet,

Could we discern it. A dumb block of stone,

A shadow in the mind, a thought of God,

A little fragment of the eternal order,

That postulates the whole.

If we could see

The universal Temple in which it stands

We, too, should bow our heads; for if this Form

Were shaped by Chance, it was the selfsame Chance

That gave us love and death. In this the fool

Descries a reason for denying all

To which our peasants kneel. The years to come

(And you will speed them, Jean) will rather make

This dust the floor of heaven.”

The old man laid

His bunch of herbs and flowers below the Rock,

Smiled, nodded, and went his way.

“Was it by chance,”

Thought Jean Guettard, “that grandad laid them so;

Or by design; or by some vaster art

Transcending, yet including, all our thoughts,

And memories, with those flowers and that dumb stone,

As chords in its world-music? Why should flowers

Laid thus”—he laid his own at the feet of the Rock—

“Transfigure it with such beauty that it stood

Blessing him, from its arch of soft blue sky

Above him, like a Figure in a shrine?”

He touched its glistening grains. “I think that Ray

Was right,” he murmured. “This was surely made

Under the sea; sifted and drifted down

From vanished hills and spread in level beds,

Under deep waters; compressed by the sea’s weight;

Upheaved again by fire; and now, once more,

Wears down by way of the rain and brook and river,

Back to the sea; but all by roads of law.”

Then, looking round him furtively, to make sure

No one was near, he dropped upon his knees.

The mist closed over him. Rock and hill were lost

In greyness once again.

II
MALESHERBES AND THE BLACK MILESTONES

Moments were years,

Till, at the quiet whisper of Shadow-of-a-Leaf,

Those veils withdrew, and showed another scene.

I saw two dusty travellers, blithely walking

With staffs and knapsacks, on a straight white road

Lined with tall sentinel poplars as to await

A king’s return; but scarce a bird took heed

Of those two travel-stained wanderers—Jean Guettard

And Malesherbes, his old school-friend.

Larks might see

Two wingless dots that crept along the road.

The Duke rode by and saw two vagabonds

With keenly searching eyes, as they jogged on

To Moulins. Birds and Duke and horse could see,

Against the sky, that old square prison-tower,

The tall cathedral, the dark gabled roofs,

Thronging together behind its moated wall;

But not one eye in all that wide green land

Saw what those two could see; and not one soul

Espied the pilgrim thought upon its way

To change the world for man.

The pilgrim thought!

Say rather the swift hunter, tracking down

More subtly than an Indian the dark spoor

Of his gigantic prey.

I saw them halt

Where, at the white road’s edge, a milestone rose

Out of the long grass, like a strange black gnome,

A gnome that had been dragged from his dark cave

Under the mountains, and now stood there dumb,

Striving to speak. But what?

“There! There! Again!”

Cried Jean Guettard. They stood and stared at it,

But not to read as other travellers use

How far themselves must journey.

They knelt down

And looked at it, and felt it with their hands.

A farmer passed, and wondered were they mad.

For, when they hailed him, and his tongue prepared

To talk of that short cut across the fields

Beside the mill-stream, they desired to know

Whence the black milestone came. It was the fourth

That they had passed since noon.

He grinned at them.

“Black stones?” he said, “you’ll find them all the way

To Volvic now!”

“To Volvic,” cried Guettard,

“Volcani vicus!”

They seized their staffs again;

Halted at Moulins, only to break a crust

Of bread and cheese, and drink one bottle of wine,

Then hastened on, following the giant trail,

Milestone by milestone, till the scent grew hot;

For now they saw, in the wayside cottages,

The black stone under the jasmine’s clustering stars;

And children, at the half-doors, wondered why

Those two strange travellers pushed the leaves away

And tapped upon their walls.

At last they saw,

Black as a thundercloud anchored to its hill,

Above the golden orchards of Limagne,

The town of Riom. All its walls were black.

Its turreted heights with leering gargoyles crawled

Above them, like that fortress of old Night

To which Childe Roland came.

No slughorn’s note

Challenged it, and they set no lance in rest,

But dusty and lame, with strangely burning eyes,

Those footpads, quietly as the ancient Word,

Stole into that dark lair and sought their prey.

Surely, they thought, the secret must be known

To some that live, eat, sleep, in this grim den.

Have they not guessed what monster lurks behind

This blackness?

In the chattering streets they saw

The throng around the fruit-stalls, and the priest

Entering the Sainte Chapelle. With eyes of stone

The statue of that lover of liberty

The chancellor, L’Hôpital, from his great dark throne

Gazed, and saw less than the indifferent sparrow

That perched upon his hand. Barefooted boys

Ran shouting round the fountain in the square.

It was no dream. Along the cobbled street,

Clattering like ponies in their wooden shoes,

Three girls went by with baskets full of apples.

The princely butcher, standing at his door,

Rosily breathing sawdust and fresh blood,

Sleeked his moustache and rolled an amorous eye.

It was no dream. They lived their light-winged lives

In this prodigious fabric of black stone,

Slept between walls of lava, drank their wine

In taverns whose black walls had risen in fire;

Prayed on the slag of the furnace; roofed their tombs

With slabs of that slaked wrath; and saw no more

Than any flock of birds that nightly roost

On the still quivering Etna.

It was late,

Ere the two travellers found a wise old host

Who knew the quarries where that stone was hewn;

Too far for them that night. His inn could lodge them.

A young roast fowl? Also he had a wine,

The Duc de Berry, once.... Enough! they supped

And talked. Gods, how they talked and questioned him,—

The strangest guests his inn had ever seen.

They wished to know the shape of all the hills

Around those quarries. “There were many,” he said,

“Shaped at the top like this.” He lifted up

An old round-bellied wine-cup.

At the word

He wellnigh lost his guests. They leapt to their feet.

They wished to pay their quittance and press on

To see those hills. But, while they raved, the fowl

Was laid before them, luscious, fragrant, brown.

He pointed, speechless, to the gathering dusk,

And poured their wine, and conquered.

“The Bon Dieu

Who made the sensual part of man be praised,”

He said to his wife; “for if He had made a world

Of pure philosophers, every tavern in France

Might close its shutters, and take down its sign.”

So Jean Guettard and Malesherbes stayed and supped;

And, ere they slept, being restless, they went out

And rambled through the sombre streets again.

They passed that haunted palace of Auvergne,

Brooding on its wild memories and grim birth;

And from the Sainte Chapelle, uplifting all

That monstrous darkness in one lean black spire

To heaven, they heard an organ muttering low

As though the stones once more were stirred to life

By the deep soul within. Then, arched and tall,

In the sheer blackness of that lava, shone

One rich stained window, where the Mother stood,

In gold and blue and crimson, with the Child.

They looked at it as men who see the life

And light of heaven through the Plutonian walls

Of this material universe. They heard

The young-voiced choir, in silver-throated peals,

Filling the night with ecstasy. They stood

Bareheaded in the dark deserted street,

Outcasts from all that innocence within,

And silent; till the last celestial cry,

Like one great flight of angels, ebbed away.

III
THE SHADOW OF PASCAL

At daybreak they pressed on. Strange hills arose

Clustering before them, hills whose fragrant turf,

Softer than velvet, hid what savage hearts!

At noon they saw, beside the road, a gash

Rending the sunlit skin of that green peace;

An old abandoned quarry, half overgrown

With ferns, and masked by boughs.

They left the road

And looked at it. Volcanic rock! A flood

Of frozen lava!

They marked its glossy blackness, the rough cords

And wrinkles where, as the fiery waves congealed,

It had crept on a little; and strangely there

New beauty, like the smile on truth’s hard face,

Gleamed on them. Never did bracken and hart’s tongue ferns

Whisper a tale like those whose dauntless roots

Were creviced in that grim rock. They tracked it up

Through heather and thyme. They saw what human eyes

Had seen for ages, yet had never seen,—

The tall green hill, a great truncated cone,

Robed in wild summer and haunted by the bee,

But shaped like grey engravings that they knew

Of Etna and Vesuvius.

Near its crest

They saw the sunlight on a shepherd’s crook,

Bright as a star. A flock of nibbling sheep

Flowed round it like a cloud, a rambling cloud

With drifting edges that broke and formed again

Before one small black barking speck that flew

Swift as a bird about a cloud in heaven.

Thyme underfoot, wild honey in the thyme;

But, under the thyme and honey, if eyes could see,

In every runnel and crevice and slip and patch,

A powdery rubble of pumice, black and red,

Flakes of cooled lava and stones congealed from fire.

It was no dream. A butterfly spread its fans

White, veined with green, on a rock of sunlit slag,

Slag of the seething furnaces below.

They reached the summit; and, under them, beheld

The hollow cup, the crater, whence that flood

Out of the dreadful molten heart of the earth

Poured in red fury to create Auvergne.

But now, instead of smoke and fire, they saw

Red of the heather in that deep grassy hollow,

And heard, instead of the hissing of the abyss,

The small grey locust, stridulent in the sun.

They came to Clermont. All its dark old streets

Were built of lava. By the Place de Jaude,

O, strangely in their own swift race for truth,

They met the phantom of an earlier fire!

They found the house where Pascal first beheld

The sunlight, through a window in lava-stone;

And many a time had passed, a brooding child,

With all his deep celestial thoughts to come,

Through that volcanic porch, but never saw

The wonder of the walls wherein he slept.

They saw, through mists, as I through mists discerned

Their own strange drama, that scene within the scene.

They climbed the very hill that Pascal made

A beacon-height of truth—the Puy de Dôme,

Where Florin Périer, at his bidding, took

His tubes of soft quicksilver; and, at the base,

And, at the summit, tested, proved, and weighed

The pressure of that lovely body of light,

Our globe-engirdling air. On one swift hint,

One flash of truth that Torricelli caught

From Galileo, and Pascal caught in turn,

He weighed that glory.

Ever the drama grew.

The vital fire, in yet more intricate ways

(As life itself, enkindling point by point

In the dark formless embryo, grows to power),

Coursed on, from mind to mind, each working out

Its separate purpose, yet all linked in one.

For those two pilgrims, on the cone-shaped hill

That Pascal knew, and yet had never known,

Met his great spirit among the scoriac flakes,

And found themselves, in vision, on that pure height

Where all the paths to truth shall one day meet.

They met his brooding spirit as they climbed.

They passed the dead man’s words from mouth to mouth,

With new significance, deeper and more strange

Even than they knew. “We are on fire to explore

The universe, and build our tower of truth

Into the Infinite. Then the firm earth laughs,

Opens, under its cracked walls, an abyss.”—

Lavoisier! Malesherbes! Friends of Jean Guettard.

Was it only the whisper of Shadow-of-a-Leaf that showed me

Gleams of the Terror approaching, a wild storm

Of fiercer, hell-hot lava, and that far sound

Of tumbrils.... The Republic has no need

Of savants!

This dream went by, with the dead man’s words.

They reached the highest crest. Before their eyes

The hill-scape opened like a mighty vision

That, quietly, has come true.

They stood there, dumb,

To see what they foresaw, the invisible thought

Grown firm as granite; for, as a man might die

In faith, yet wake amazed in his new world,

They saw those chains of dead volcanoes rise,

Cone behind cone, with green truncated crowns,

And smokeless craters, on the dazzling blue.

There, in the very sunlit heart of France,

They saw what human eyes had daily seen

Yet never seen till now. They stood and gazed,

More lonely in that loneliness of thought

Than wingèd men, alighting on the moon.

Old as the moon’s own craters were those hills;

And all their wrath had cooled so long ago

That as the explorers on their downward path

Passed by a cup-shaped crater, smooth and green,

Three hundred feet in depth and breadth, they saw,

Within it, an old shepherd and his flock

Quietly wandering over its gentle slopes

Of short sweet grass, through clumps of saffron broom.

They asked him by what name that hill was known.

He answered, The Hen’s Nest!

“Hen’s Nest,” cried Jean Guettard, “the good God grant

This fowl be not a phœnix and renew

Its feathers in Auvergne.”

They chuckled aloud,

And left the shepherd wondering, many a day,

What secret knowledge in the stranger’s eye

Cast that uncanny light upon the hill,

A moment, and no more; and yet enough

To make him feel, even when the north wind blew,

Less at his ease in that green windless cup;

And, once or twice, although he knew not why,

He turned, and drove his flock another way.

IV
AT PARIS

“Few know the name of Jean Guettard to-day,”

Said Shadow-of-a-Leaf; for now the mists concealed

All that clear vision. “I often visited him,

Between the lights, in after years. He lived

Alone at Paris then, in two lean rooms,

A sad old prisoner, at the Palais Royal;

And many a time, beside a dying fire,

We talked together. I was only a shadow,

A creature flickering on the fire-lit wall;

But, while he bowed his head upon his hands

And gazed into the flame with misted eyes,

I could steal nearer and whisper time away.

And sometimes he would breathe his thoughts aloud;

And when at night his faithful servant, Claire,

Stole into the room to lay his frugal meal,

She’d glance at him with big brown troubled eyes

To find him talking to himself alone.

And sometimes when the masters of the hour

Won easy victories in the light world’s fashion,

With fables, easily spun in light quick minds,

He’d leave the Academy thundering its applause,

And there, in his bare room, with none to see

But Shadow-of-a-Leaf, he would unfold again

—Smiling a little grimly to himself—

Those curious beautiful tinted maps he drew,

The very first that any man had made

To show, beneath the kingdoms made by man,

The truth, that hidden structure, ribbed with rock,

And track the vanished ages by the lives

And deaths imprinted there.

They had made him rich

In nothing but the truth.

He had mapped the rocks.

“The time is not yet come,” he used to say,

“When we can clothe them with a radiant Spring

Of happy meanings. I have never made

A theory. That’s for happier men to come;

It will be time to answer the great riddle

When we have read the question.

Here and there

Already, I note, they use this work of mine

And shuffle the old forerunner out of sight.

No matter. Let the truth live. I shall watch

Its progress, proudly, from the outer dark;

More happily, I believe, thus free from self,

Than if my soul went whoring after fame.

One thing alone I’ll claim. It is not good

To let all lies go dancing by on flowers.

This—what’s his name?—who claims to be the first

To find a dead volcano in Auvergne,

And sees, in that, only an easy road

To glory for himself, shall find, ere long,

One live volcano in old Jean Guettard.

The fool has forced me to it; for he thinks

That I’ll claim nothing. I prefer my peace;

But truth compels me here. I’ll set my heel

On him, at least. Malesherbes will bear me out.

As for the rest—no theory of the earth

Can live without these rock-ribbed facts of mine,

The facts that I first mapped, I claim no more.

These rocks, these bones, these fossil ferns and shells,

Of which the grinning moon-calf makes a jest,

A byword for all dotage and decay,

Shall yet be touched with beauty, and reveal

The secrets of the book of earth to man.”

“He made no theory,” whispered Shadow-of-a-Leaf,

“And yet, I think, he looked on all these things

Devoutly; on a sea-shell turned to stone

As on a sacred relic, at whose touch

Time opened like a gate, and let him pass

Out of this mocking and ephemeral world

Through the eternal ages, home to God.

And so I watched him, growing old and grey,

In seeking truth; a man with enemies,

Ten enemies for every truth he told;

And friends that still, despite his caustic tongue,

Loved him for his true heart.

Yet even these

Never quite reached it; never quite discerned

That even his gruffest words were but the pledge

Of his own passionate truth; the harsh pained cry

For truth, for truth, of one who saw the throng

Bewildered and astray, the ways of love

Grown tortuous, and the path to heaven grown dim

Through man’s unheed for truth.

I saw him greet

Condorcet, at the Academy. “We have lost

Two members. I condole with you, my friend.

It is their last éloges you’ll speak to-day!

How will you bury their false theories?

In irony, or in academic robes?

No matter. There’ll be only one or two

Who really know; and I shall not be there

To vex you, from my corner, with one smile.

Lord, what a pack of lies you’ll have to tell!

It is the custom. When my turn arrives—

’Twill not be long,—remember, please, I want

Truth, the whole truth, or nothing.”

I saw one night

A member walking home with him—to thank him

For his support that morning. Jean Guettard

Turned on his threshold, growling like a bear.

“You owe me nothing. I believed my vote

Was right, or else you never should have had it.

Pray do not think I liked you.”

A grim door

Opened and closed like iron in the face

Of his late friend and now indignant foe;

To whom no less, if he had needed it,

Guettard would still have given his own last sou.

He came into his lonely room that night,

And sat and stared into the fluttering fire.

I, Shadow-of-a-Leaf, was there; and I could see

More in his eyes than even Condorcet saw,

Condorcet, who of all his friends remained

Most faithful to the end.

But, at the hour

When Claire would lay his supper, a light hand tapped

Timidly on his door. He sat upright

And turned with startled eyes.

“Enter,” he called.

A wide-eyed, pale-faced child came creeping in.

“What! Little Claire!” he cried.

“Your mother is not better!”

She stood before him,

The fire-light faintly colouring her thin face,—

“M’sieur, she is very ill. You are a doctor.

Come, quickly.”

Through the narrow, ill-lighted streets

Old Jean Guettard went hobbling, a small hand

Clutching his own, and two small wooden shoes

Clattering beside him, till the child began

To droop. He lifted her gently in his arms

And hobbled on. The thin, white, tear-stained face,

Pressing against his old grey-bristled cheek,

Directed him, now to left and now to right.

“O, quick, M’sieur!” Then, into an alley, dark

As pitch, they plunged. The third door on the right!

Into the small sad house they went, and saw

By the faint guttering candle-light—the mother,

Shivering and burning on her tattered bed.

Two smaller children knelt on either side

Worn out with fear and weeping.

All that night

Guettard, of all true kings of science then,

Obscure, yet first in France and all the world,

Watched, laboured, bathed the brow and raised the head,

Moistened the thirsting lips, and knew it vain;

Knew, as I knew, that in a hundred years

Knowledge might conquer this; but he must fight

A losing battle, and fight it in the dark

No better armed than Galen.

He closed her eyes

At dawn. He took the children to his house;

Prayed with them; dried their tears; and, while they slept,

Shed tears himself, remembering—a green hill,

A Rock against the sky.

He cared for them, as though they were his own.

Guettard, the founder of two worlds of thought,

Taught them their letters. “None can tell,” he said,

“What harvests are enfolded for the world

In one small grain of this immortal wheat.

But I, who owe so much to little things

In childhood; and have seen, among the rocks,

What vast results may wait upon the path

Of one blind life, under a vanished sea,

Bow down in awe before this human life.”

V
THE RETURN

Ever, as he grew older, life became

More sacred to him.

“In a thousand years

Man will look back with horror on this world

Where men could babble about the Lamb of God,

Then turn and kill for food one living thing

That looks through two great eyes, so like their own.

I have had living creatures killed for me;

But I will have no more.”

“Though Nature laughed

His mood to scorn,” said Shadow-of-a-Leaf, “the day

Will come (I have seen it come a myriad times)

When, through one mood like this, Nature will climb

Out of its nature, and make all things new.

Who prophesied cities, when the first blind life

Crawled from the sea, to breathe that strange bright air,

And conquer its own past?”—

“I have no theory of this wild strange world,”

Said Jean Guettard,

“But, if the God that made it dies with us

Into immortal life....”

“There, there’s the meaning,” whispered Shadow-of-a-Leaf,

“Could we but grasp it. There’s the harmony

Of life, and death, and all our mortal pain.”

I heard that old man whispering in the dark,

“O, little human life, so lost to sight

Among the eternal ages, I, at least,

Find in this very darkness the one Fact

That bows my soul before you.”

Once again

The mists began to roll away like smoke.

I saw a patch of vines upon the hill

Above Étampes; and through the mists I saw

Old Jean Guettard, with snowy wind-blown hair,

Nearing the shrouded summit. As he climbed,

Slowly the last thin veils dissolved away.

He lifted up his eyes to see the Rock.

The hill was bare. His facts were well confirmed.

Sun, wind, and rain, and the sharp chisels of frost

Had broken it down. The Rock was on its way

In brook and river, with all the drifting hills,

And all his life, to the remembering sea.

He looked around him, furtively. None was near.

Down, on his knees,

Among the weather-worn shards of his lost youth,

Dropt Jean Guettard.

The mist closed over him.

The world dissolved away. The vision died,

Leaving me only a voice within the heart,

Far off, yet near, the whisper of Shadow-of-a-Leaf.

The rain had beaten. The wind had blown.

The hill was bare as the sky that day.

Mother and Child from the height had gone.

The wind and rain, said Jean Guettard,

Had crumbled even the Rock away.