“In that pure wave from Adam’s sin
The blind priest cleansed the Babe with awe;
Then, reverently, he washed therein
His old, unseeing face, and saw!
“He saw the earth; he saw the skies,
And that all-wondrous Child decreed
A pagan nation to baptise,
To give the Gentiles light indeed.”
Thus Secknall sang. Far off and nigh
The clansmen shouted loud and long;
While every mother tossed more high
Her babe, and glorying joined the song.
THE DISBELIEF OF MILCHO,
OR, SAINT PATRICK’S ONE FAILURE.
ARGUMENT.
Fame of St. Patrick goes ever before him, and men of goodwill believe gladly; but Milcho, a mighty merchant, and one given wholly to pride and greed, wills to disbelieve. St. Patrick sends him greeting and gifts; but he, discovering that the prophet welcomed by all had once been his slave, hates him the more. Notwithstanding, he fears that when that prophet arrives, he, too, may be forced to believe, though against his will. He resolves to set fire to his castle and all his wealth, and make new fortunes in far lands. The doom of Milcho, who willed to disbelieve.
When now at Imber Dea that precious bark
Freighted with Erin’s future, touched the sands
Just where a river, through a woody vale
Curving, with duskier current clave the sea,
Patrick, the Island’s great inheritor,
His perilous voyage past, stept forth and knelt
And blessed his God. The peace of those green meads
Cradled ’twixt purple hills and purple deep,
Seemed as the peace of heaven. The sun had set;
But still those summits twinned, the “Golden Spears,”
Laughed with his latest beam. The hours went by:
The brethren paced the shore or musing sat,
But still their Patriarch knelt and still gave thanks
For all the marvellous chances of his life
Since those his earlier years when, slave new-trapped,
He comforted on hills of Dalaraide
His hungry heart with God, and, cleansed by pain,
In exile found the spirit’s native land.
Eve deepened into night, and still he prayed:
The clear cold stars had crowned the azure vault;
And, risen at midnight from dark seas, the moon
Had quenched those stars, yet Patrick still prayed on:
Till from the river murmuring in the vale,
Far off, and from the morning airs close by
That shook the alders by the river’s mouth,
And from his own deep heart a voice there came,
“Ere yet thou fling’st God’s bounty on this land
There is a debt to cancel. Where is he,
Thy five years’ lord that scourged thee for his swine?
Alas that wintry face! Alas that heart
Joyless since earliest youth! To him reveal it!
To him declare that God who Man became
To raise man’s fall’n estate, as though a man,
All faculties of man unmerged, undimmed,
Had changed to worm and died the prey of worms,
That so the mole might see!”
Thus Patrick mused
Not ignorant that from low beginnings rise
Oftenest the works of greatness; yet of this
Unweeting, that his failure, one and sole
Through all his more than mortal course, even now
Before that low beginning’s threshold lay,
Betwixt it and that Promised Land beyond
A bar of scandal stretched. Not otherwise
Might whatsoe’er was mortal in his strength
Dying, put on the immortal.
With the morn
Deep sleep descended on him. Waking soon,
He rose a man of might, and in that might
Laboured; and God His servant’s toil revered;
And gladly on that coast Erin to Christ
Paid her firstfruits. Three days he preached his Lord:
The fourth embarking, cape succeeding cape
They passed, and heard the lowing herds remote
In hollow glens, and smelt the balmy breath
Of gorse on golden hillsides; till at eve,
The Imber Domnand reached, on silver sands
Grated their keel. Around them flocked at dawn
Warriors with hunters mixed, and shepherd youths
And maids with lips as red as mountain berries
And eyes like sloes, or keener eyes, dark-fringed
And gleaming like the blue-black spear. They came
With milk-pail, and with kid, and kindled fire
And spread the genial board. Upon that shore
Full many knelt and gave themselves to Christ,
Strong men, and men at midmost of their hopes
By sickness felled; old chiefs, at life’s dim close
That oft had asked, “Beyond the grave what hope?”
Worn sailors weary of the toilsome seas,
And craving rest; they, too, that sex which wears
The blended crowns of Chastity and Love;
Wondering, they hailed the Maiden-Motherhood;
And listening children praised the Babe Divine,
And passed Him, each to each.
Ere long, once more
Their sails were spread. Again by grassy marge
They rowed, and sylvan glades. The branching deer
Like flying gleams went by them. Oft the cry
Of fighting clans rang out: but oftener yet
Clamour of rural dance, or mart confused
With many-coloured garb and movements swift,
Pageant sun-bright: or on the sands a throng
Girdled with circle glad some bard whose song
Shook the wild clan as tempest shakes the woods.
Still north the wanderers sailed: at evening, mists
Cumbered the shore and on them leaned the blast,
And fierce rain flashed mingling with dim-lit sea.
All night they toiled; next day at noon they kenned
A seaward stream that shone like golden tress
Severed and random-thrown. That river’s mouth
Ere long attained was all with lilies white
As April field with daisies. Entering there
They reached a wood, and disembarked with joy:
There, after thanks to God, silent they sat
In thought, and watched the ripples, dusk yet bright,
That lived and died like things that laughed at time,
On gliding ’neath those many-centuried boughs.
But, midmost, Patrick slept. Then through the trees,
Shy as a fawn half-tamed now stole, now fled
A boy of such bright aspect faëry child
He seemed, or babe exposed of royal race:
At last assured beside the Saint he stood,
And dropped on him a flower, and disappeared:
Thus flower on flower from the great wood he brought
And hid them in the bosom of the Saint.
The monks forbade him, saying, “Lest thou wake
The master from his sleep.” But Patrick woke,
And saw the boy, and said, “Forbid him not;
The heir of all my kingdom is this child.”
Then spake the brethren, “Wilt thou walk with us?”
And he, “I will:” and so for his sweet face
They called his name Benignus: and the boy
Thenceforth was Christ’s. Beneath his parent’s roof
At night they housed. Nowhere that child would sleep
Except at Patrick’s feet. Till Patrick’s death
Unchanged to him he clave, and after reigned
The second at Ardmacha.