O God!
I gave a strangled shout
And fell, dragged backwards by a noose about
My throat. Three men were kneeling on my chest
Binding me tight with cords, while others pressed
All round about me, uttering no sound
As if all dumb. When I was firmly bound
All save my feet, which, purposely let loose
To let me walk, were in a running noose,
One of the men addressed me: “Listen well
To what I say,” he said. “If you rebel
We take your life; and none can help you now.
We have no wish to harm you; but we know
That you have found a treasure, and have got
The clue. Lead on.”
“I understand you not,”
I said.
He took a pistol from his sash
And held it at my ear. “Come, be not rash,”
He said, “but lead the way.” Oh, would to God
That he had fired! But though like a mere clod
I still moved not, he did not fire, but placed
Once more the gleaming pistol in his waist,
And whispered with the others; then they drew
The cords still tighter round my limbs, and threw
My unresisting body on the bed
In my own hut hard by. “Mark well,” they said,
“Ere dawn we come. Thy blood be on thy head!”
At first I had no thoughts, nought but the sense
Of cramped and swelling limbs, and an intense
Desire to burst my bonds. But by-and-by
A sense of infinite calamity
Began to weigh upon me; and at last,
The sense came home that time was slipping fast,
That I was there to make an awful choice
’Twixt Life and Death; and then an inner voice
Began to state the argument each way,
Not clearly, coldly, as I may to-day
Do in this letter, but confused, close-pressed,
Repeated and repeated in my breast
In every shape, until my weary brain,
Exhausted by the conflict and the pain,
Yielded to sleep. And even in my sleep
The struggle still went on; I felt it keep
Possession of my dreams, and take the shape
Of shifting nightmare, leaving no escape.
I saw the glorious Pallas, calm no more,
But threatening and terrific, kneeling o’er
My prostrate body, with red eyes that gleamed
So fiery in the darkness, that it seemed
As if one of the Furies had put on
Her golden panoply. Then, wild and wan,
I saw the face of Strongclyffe looming out
From a black whirling gulf; and heard him shout
Like some spent swimmer half sucked down.
And there
I think I woke, and with a vague despair
Resumed the pleadings of each adverse side;
While, ever louder, something in me cried:
“Choose death, choose death! in fifty years from this,
When thou art swallowed in the dark abyss
Of Time, what will it be to thee or thine
Whether thou diedst to-day at twenty-nine,
Or knew’st old age? But man whom Time devours
Not, and who lives by centuries, not hours,
Will be possessed of one transcendent gift,
To add to his small store of things that lift
The soul to higher spheres—a gift from which
Will flow perennial charm for poor and rich,
For young and old. If but mankind could know
That some great treasure lost long, long ago—
A famed Greek play, for instance—had been lost
Because a certain man had grudged the cost
Of his brief life to save it, that man’s name,
For ever handed down in scorn and shame,
Would be all nations’ by-word. Who can say
That some great work which man enjoys to-day—
The Melos statue, Hamlet or Macbeth,
Or the Gioconda—was not saved from death,
In some great unknown peril that it ran,
By some unknown, unthanked and nameless man
Who gave his life instead? And then, in place
Of something rarer yet, wouldst have the face
To give the world thy mean half-wasted life
With which it can do nought? Thou hast no wife,
No child to need thy care. Choose death, choose death,
While yet ’tis time!”
But oh the pleasant breath
Of life; the strong, strong stream of youth and health
That bounds along the veins; the unused wealth
Of what we call the Future, with its schemes,
Emotions, friendships, loves, surprises, dreams;
The thing we call Identity, the I
To which the wretched cling, they know not why,
And which no evils press me to destroy;
The simple pleasures which I now enjoy—
What, give up all? What right has Fate, what right,
To thrust me from Life’s hearth into the night,
The darkness and the cold? What right or need
Has Fate to come, and while I sit and read
Life’s pleasant page, to summon me to shut
The open book, and leave two thirds uncut?
Who dares to tell me that a living man
Whom God has made, who feels the cool winds fan
His heated brow, is not in God’s sight worth
A thing that is man’s work, upon this earth?
My life is mended now; each passing day
Now rolls, though idly, harmlessly away.
The bright green fields, the flowers and the trees,
The rippling streams, the sun, the passing breeze,
The million things that in their life rejoice
And gladden mine, call out with mighty voice,
“Choose life, choose life!”
And when at dawn they came,
And bade me show the spot—O shame! O shame!
I nodded an assent. Oh let me now,
With shame’s familiar brand upon my brow,
For once spare my base self, and hurry by
Those monstrous minutes! Slowly, silently,
I led them to the spot. I saw their eyes
With excusable rapture scan the prize
To which their souls were dead. I saw them take
Their hatchets in their impious hands, and break
Into small fragments hideous to behold,
And shapeless dust of ivory and of gold,
The beauty which the world would have despaired
To match, and twenty centuries had spared
In vain—in vain! Awhile, I think, I heard
Ferocious wrangling, oath and threatening word
Over the booty; but my sickened brain
Took little note. And when I sought again
To see and hear and think, all sounds had ceased;
I was alone, and free.
And—O mean beast,
Mean coward that I was!—I dared not face
The sight of Strongclyffe; but I fled the place,
Leaving a letter; and in guilt and fear,
Just like a thief, stole back to England here,
Alone with my incomparable debt.
He never saw me more; although we met
In these o’er-crowded London streets one day,
And oh how changed he was—how old and grey
He had become, though scarce two years had passed
Over his head since I had seen him last!
He saw me not, but passed with vacant eye;
While I, as if to vanish bodily
Into the solid stones, shrank to the wall.
He now is dead—and I? Oh, does not all
Compel me too to die? What have I done,
In these ten years of anguish, to atone
For having chosen life? What use—what good
Have I been to mankind since first I stood
So fatally and wholly in its debt?
What drops of compensation have I yet
Wrung out of my weak worthless self, and cast
Into the deep abyss? Oh, I have passed
A cruel, cruel time! And year by year
I feel less wish to live, less strength to bear
The weight of my immense insolvency.
And in the street as each man passes by
I mutter to myself, “If he but knew
What he has lost, would he not stop and sue
For what can ne’er be paid, and cry, ‘Come forth!
And show thyself to men, what thou art worth!
Thou art the thing which men have got instead
Of the Incomparable: raise thy head!’”
IPSISSIMUS.
Thou Priest that art behind the screen
Of this confessional, give ear:
I need God’s help, for I have seen
What turns my vitals limp with fear.
O Christ, O Christ, I must have done
More mortal sin than anyone
Who says his prayers in Venice here!
And yet by stealth I only tried
To kill my enemy, God knows;
And who on earth has e’er denied
A man the right to kill his foes?
He won the race of the Gondoliers;
I hate him and the skin he wears—
I hate him and the shade he throws.