Your words would tax the heart's belief. I thought
That here along these shores when, at the close
Of a week of storm, the gull alone remained
Upon the waters, and the blinds were drawn
Within a hundred homes, that there was left
On earth nothing that might out-range the winds.
THADDEUS.
Death—Death stalked everywhere on land and sea,
In clouds that banked the sun, in mists that hid
The stars, or half disclosed the swollen moon.
No cavern sunk beneath the earth but bore
His foot-prints. Deep below the waters' rim
Great fish had trailed his scent. Earth's myriad forms
Had felt the plague-spot of his rampant touch.
From the small field-mouse, caught within the fumes
Of sulphurous air that crept from knoll to knoll,
Withering the grass blades, to the giant fighter
Of storm and wave that, ribbed and sheathed with steel,
Felt the swift scorpion in her sides, then rocked
And plunged with bellowing nostrils till she sank
In a wild litany of guns, with wind,
And night, and flame. But busier was his hand
With subtler workmanship. On eye and brow
And cheek were delved the traces of his passing—
Blindness, that like a thunder-clap at noon.
Closed on the sight; furrows that struck the veins,
Turning the red sap from its wonted course;
Sharp lines of pain and fury and quick hate
That on the instant changed to graven stone,
Callous and motionless. And deadlier still,
With flying leap he strode a continent,
Or the wide prairies of a sea, and snatched
The cup from the wan fingers of a life
That slaked its thirst upon the wine of hope;
So sure his hand—light, as with finger-tips,
He touched the hair and wove the grey and white
Within the brown, or hard, with rough-spurred heel,
He mauled the bosom till its heavings ceased.
JULIAN.
Where ever in its course was this wide world
So plunged in an unmeasured desolation?
What tenders offered, save in a fool's faith,
Would gamble on the chance of raising it
From the complete involvement of its ruin?
THADDEUS.
Many there were who, clutching at a straw
Of some dark saying of the past, some tone,
Or flash of eye carrying strange emphasis,
Sought for the battered remnants of their faith
An anchorage; and around a clay-damp grave
That buried hope with dust would stoop to tie
Their heartstrings to a pansy, murmuring thus:
"Who bade this flower renew its own fair lease
Of youth perennial? Springs it not this year
From the same soil and root, with that same pride
With which a year ago it lifted up
Its face before the sun? Does not each year
Declare its trumpet-pledges at the spring?"
JULIAN.
Think they so to convince the heart with words
Like those, to mesh it with a logic meet
For bloodless ends? What though the winds of May
Call to the springing rootlets, lure the bud
From the rose-stem, and chase the resinous sap
From the pine's trunk to branch and topmost twig—
Who yields to such delusion? Does the spring
Forget November's hecatombs, the last
Convulsion of the leaf, the gale-torn limbs
Of trees scarred to the death, the flowers that danced
Upon the fields scythed by the autumn's hands.
The writhen spectres of earth's quick decay
Flashed out upon the winds? All these as dust
Around the season's tombs—dust-heaps, no more;
As sands that eddy in the desert, these:
For these no resurrection. What amends
Does summer make for winter's numbing stroke?
It's death he gives, not slumber. His pale forms
Breathe not again, and eyelids that have closed
On the congealing air reflect no more
The warm glance of the sun. The swallows build
Their nests once more within the eaves; the thrush,
The red-breast and the lark cover again
Their young in bush and tree and meadow-grain—
They have not died. But weak ones that, impaled
Upon the thorn, screamed out their notes of pain,
Or dashed, wing-broken, by the wildering blast,
Fell when their strength had failed them on far plains,
On treeless hills, or dazed in homeward flight,
Fluttered and sank in furrows of the sea—
Their song has ended; they return no more.
THADDEUS.