He spake; and Milcho heard, and without speech
Departed from that house.
A later day
When the wild March sunset, gone almost ere come,
By glacial shower was hustled out of life,
Under a blighted ash tree, near his house,
Thus mused the man: “Believe, or Disbelieve!
The will does both; Then idiot who would be
For profitless belief to sell himself?
Yet disbelief not less might work our bane!
For, I remember, once a sickly slave
Ill shepherded my flock: I spake him plain;
‘When next, through fault of thine, the midnight wolf
Worries my sheep, on yonder tree you hang:’
The blear-eyed idiot looked into my face,
And smiled his disbelief. On that day week
Two lambs lay dead. I hanged him on a tree.
What tree? this tree! Why, this is passing strange!
For, three nights since, I saw him in a dream:
Weakling as wont he stood beside my bed,
And, clutching at his wrenched and livid throat,
Spake thus, ‘Belief is safest.’”
Ceased the hail
To rattle on the ever barren boughs,
And friendlier sound was heard. Beside his door
Wayworn the messengers of Patrick stood,
And showed the gifts, and held his missive forth.
Then learned that lost one all the truth. That sage
Confessed by miracles, that prophet vouched
By warnings old, that seer by words of might
Subduing all things to himself—that priest,
None other was than the uncomplaining boy
Five years his slave and swineherd! In him rage
Burst forth, with fear commixed, as when a beast
Strains in the toils. “Can I alone stand firm?”
He mused; and next, “Shall I, in mine old age,
Byword become—the vassal of my slave?
Shall I not rather drive him from my door
With wolf hounds and a curse?” As thus he stood
He marked the gifts, and bade men bare them in,
And homeward signed the messengers unfed.
But Milcho slept not all that night for thought,
And, forth ere sunrise issuing, paced a moor
Stone-roughened like the graveyard of dead hosts,
Till noontide. Sudden then he stopt, and thus
Discoursed within: “A plot from first to last,
The fraudulent bondage, flight, and late return;
For now I mind me of a foolish dream
Chance-sent, yet drawn by him awry. One night
Methought that boy from far hills drenched in rain
Dashed through my halls, all fire. From hands and head,
From hair and mouth, forth rushed a flaming fire
White, like white light, and still that mighty flame
Into itself took all. With hands outstretched
I spurned it. On my cradled daughters twain
It turned, and they were ashes. Then in burst
The south wind through the portals of the house,
Tempest rose-sweet, and blew those ashes forth
Wide as the realm. At dawn I sought the knave;
He glossed my vision thus: ‘That fire is Faith—
Faith in the God Triune, the God made Man,
Sole light wherein I walk, and walking burn;
And they that walk with me shall burn like me
By Faith. But thou that radiance wilt repel,
Housed through ill-will, in Error’s endless night.
Not less thy little daughters shall believe
With glory and great joy; and, when they die,
Report of them, like ashes blown abroad,
Shall light far lands, and health to men of Faith
Stream from their dust.’ I drave the impostor forth:
Perjured ere long he fled, and now returns
To reap a harvest from his master’s dream”—
Thus mused he, while black shadow swept the moor.
So day by day darker was Milcho’s heart,
Till, with the endless brooding on one thought,
Began a little flaw within that brain
Whose strength was still his boast. Was no friend nigh?
Alas! what friend had he? All men he scorned;
Knew truly none. In each, the best and sweetest
Near him had ever pined, like stunted growth
Dwarfed by some glacier nigh. The fifth day dawned:
And inly thus he muttered, darkly pale:
“Five days; in three the messengers returned:
In three—in two—the Accursèd will be here,
Or blacken yonder Sleemish with his crew
Descending. Then those idiots, kerne and slave—
The mighty flame into itself takes all—
Full swarm will fly to meet him! Fool! fool! fool!
The man hath snared me with those gifts he sent;
Else had I barred the mountains: now ’twere late,
My people in revolt. Whole weeks his horde
Will throng my courts, demanding board and bed,
With hosts by Dichu sent to flout my pang,
And sorer make my charge. My granaries sacked,
My larder lean as ship six months ice-bound,
The man I hate will rise, and open shake
The invincible banner of his mad new Faith,
Till all that hear him shout, like winds or waves,
Belief; and I be left sole recusant;
Or else perhaps that Fury who prevails
At times o’er knee-joints of reluctant men,
By magic imped, may crumble into dust
By force my disbelief.”
He raised his head,
And lo, before him lay the sea far ebbed
Sad with a sunset all but gone: the reeds
Sighed in the wind, and sighed a sweeter voice
Oft heard in childhood—now the last time heard:
“Believe!” it whispered. Vain the voice! That hour,
Stirred from the abyss, the sins of all his life
Around him rose like night—not one, but all—
That earliest sin which, like a dagger, pierced
His mother’s heart; that worst, when summer drouth
Parched the brown vales, and infants thirsting died,
While from full pail he gorged his swine with milk
And flung the rest away. Sin-walled he stood:
God’s Angels could not pierce that cincture dread,
Nor he look through it. Yet he dreamed he saw:
His life he saw; its labours, and its gains
Hard won, long-waited, wonder of his foes;
The manifold conquests of a Will oft tried;
Victory, Defeat, Retrieval; last, that scene
Around him spread: the wan sea and grey rocks;
And he was ’ware that on that self-same ledge
He, Milcho, thirty years gone by, had stood,
While pirates pushed to sea, leaving forlorn
On that wild shore a scared and weeping boy,
(His price two yearling kids and half a sheep)
Thenceforth his slave.
Not sole he mused that hour.
The Demon of his House beside him stood
Upon that iron coast, and whispered thus:
“Masterful man art thou for wit and strength;
Yet girl-like standst thou brooding! Weave a snare!
He comes for gold, this prophet. All thou hast
Heap in thy house; then fire it! In far lands
Build thee new fortunes. Frustrate thus shall he
Stare but on stones, his destined vassal scaped.”
So fell the whisper; and as one who hears
And does, the stiff-necked man obsequious bent
His strong will to a stronger, and returned,
And gave command to heap within his house
His stored up wealth—yea, all things that were his—
Borne from his ships and granaries. It was done.
Then filled he his huge hall with resinous beams
Seasoned for far sea-voyage, and the ribs
Of ocean-sundering vessels deep in sea;
Which ended, to his topmost tower he clomb,
And therein sat two days, with face to south,
Clutching a brand; and oft through clenched teeth hissed,
Hissed long, “Because I will to disbelieve.”
But ere the second sunset two brief hours,
Where comfortless leaned forth that western ridge
Long patched with whiteness by half melted snows,
There crept a gradual shadow. Soon the man
Discerned its import. There they hung—he saw them—
That company detested; hung as when
Storm-boding cloud on mountain hangs half way
Scarce moving, and in fear the shepherd cries,
“Would that the worse were come!” So dread to him
Those Heralds of fair Peace! He gazed upon them
With blood-shot eyes; a moment passed: he stood
Sole in his never festal hall, and flung
His lighted brand into that pile far forth,
And smiled that smile men feared to see, and turned,
And issuing faced the circle of his serfs
That wondering gathered round in thickening mass,
Eyeing that unloved House.
His place he chose
Beside that blighted ash, fronting those towers
Palled with red smoke, and muttered low, “So be it!
Worse to be vassal to the man I hate,”
With hueless lips. His whole white face that hour
Was scorched; and blistered was the dead tree’s bark;
Yet there he stood; and in that fiery light
His life, no more triumphant, passed once more
In underthought before him, while on spread
The swift, contagious madness of that fire,
And muttered thus, not knowing it, the man,
“The mighty flame into itself takes all,”
Mechanic iteration. Not alone
Stood he that hour. The Demon of his House
By him once more and closer than of old,
Stood, whispering thus, “Thy game is now played out;
Henceforth a byword art thou—rich in youth—
Self-beggared in old age.” And as the wind
Of that shrill whisper cut his listening soul,
The blazing roof fell in on all his wealth,
Hard-won, long-waited, wonder of his foes;
And, loud as laughter from ten thousand fiends,
Up rushed the fire. With arms outstretched he stood;
Stood firm; then forward with a wild beast’s cry
He dashed himself into that terrible flame,
And vanished as a leaf.
Upon a spur
Of Sleemish, eastward on its northern slope,
Stood Patrick and his brethren, travel-worn,
When distant o’er the brown and billowy moor
Rose the white smoke, that changed ere long to flame,
From site unknown; for by the seaward crest
That keep lay hidden. Hands to forehead raised,
Wondering they watched it. One to other spake:
“The huge Dalriad forest is afire
Ere melted are the winter’s snows!” Another,
“In vengeance o’er the ocean Creithe or Pict,
Favoured by magic, or by mist, have crossed,
And fired old Milcho’s ships.” But Patrick leaned
Upon his crosier, pale as the ashes wan
Left by a burned out city. Long he stood
Silent, till, sudden, fiercelier soared the flame
Reddening the edges of a cloud low hung;
And, after pause, vibration slow and stern
Troubling the burthened bosom of the air,
Upon a long surge of the northern wind
Came up—a murmur as of wintry seas
Far borne at night. All heard that sound; all felt it;
One only know its import. Patrick turned;
“The deed is done: the man I would have saved
Is dead, because he willed to disbelieve.”
Yet Patrick grieved for Milcho, nor that hour
Passed further north. Three days on Sleemish hill
He dwelt in prayer. To Tara’s royal halls
Then turned he, and subdued the royal house
And host to Christ, save Erin’s king, Laeghaire.
But Milcho’s daughters twain to Christ were born
In baptism, and each Emeria named:
Like rose-trees in the garden of the Lord
Grew they and flourished. Dying young, one grave
Received them at Cluanbrain. Healing thence
To many from their relics passed; to more
The spirit’s happier healing, Love and Faith.