Kathrina—A Poem

by J. G. Holland

What boots it here
To tell with careful chronicle the life
Of my novitiate? Up the graded months
My feet rose slowly, but with steady step,
To tall and stalwart manliness of frame,
And ever rising and expanding reach
Of intellection and the power to call
Forth from the pregnant nothingness of words
The sphered creations of my chosen art.
What boots it to recount my victories
Over my fellows, or to tell how all,
Contemptuous at first, became at length
Confessed inferiors in every strife
When brain or brawn contended? Victories
Were won too easily to bring me pride,
And only bred contempt of the low pitch
And lower purpose of the power which strove
So feebly and so clumsily. When won,
They fed my mother's passion, and she praised;
And her delight was all the boon they brought.
My fierce ambition, ever reaching up
To higher fields and nobler combatants,
Trampled its triumphs underneath its feet;
And in my heart of hearts I pitied her
To whose deep hunger of maternal pride
They bore ambrosial ministry.

In all
These years of doing and development,
My heart was haunted by a bitter pain.
In every scene of pleasure, every hour
That lacked employment, every moment's lull
Of toil or study, its familiar hand
Was raised aloft, to smite me with its pang.
From month to month, from year to year, I saw
That she who bore me, and to whom I owed
The meek and loyal reverence of a child,
Was changing places with me, and that she—
Dependent, trustful and subordinate—
Deferred to me in all things, and in all
Gave me the parent's place and took the child's.
She waited for my coming like a child;
She ran to meet and greet me like a child;
She leaned on me for guidance and defence,
And lived in me, and by me, like a child.
If I were absent long beyond my wont,
She yielded to distresses and to tears;
And when I came, she flew into my arms
With childish impulse of delight, or chid
With weak complainings my delay.

By these,
And by a thousand other childish ways,
I knew disease was busy with her life,
Working distempers in her heart and brain,
And driving her for succor to my strength.
The change was great in her, though slowly wrought,—
Though wrought so slowly that my thought and life
Had been adjusted to it, but for this:—
One dismal night, a trivial accident
Had kept me from my home beyond the hour
At which my promise stood for my return.
Arriving at the garden gate, I paused
To catch a glimpse of the accustomed light,
Through the cold mist that wrapped me, but in vain.
Only one window glimmered through the gloom,
Through whose uncurtained panes I dimly saw
My mother in her chamber. She was clad
In the white robe of rest; but to and fro
She crossed the light, sometimes with hands pressed close
Upon her brow, sometimes raised up toward heaven,
As if in deprecation or despair;
And through the strident soughing of the elm
I heard her voice, still musical in woe,
Wailing and calling.

With a noiseless step
I reached the door, and, with a noiseless key,
Turned back the bolt, and stood within. I could
Have called her to my arms, and quelled her fears
By one dear word, and yet, I spoke it not.
I longed to learn her secret, and to know
In what recess of history or heart
It hid, and wrought her awful malady.

Not long I waited, when I heard her voice
Wail out again in wild, beseeching prayer,—
Her voice so sweet and soulful, that it seemed
As if a listening fiend could not refuse
Such help as in him lay, although her tongue
Should falter to articulate her pain.

I heard her voice—O God! I heard her words!
Not bolts of burning from the vengeful sky
Had scathed or stunned me more. I shook like one
Powerless within the toils of some great sin,
Or some o'ermastering passion; or like one
Whose veins turn ice at onset of the plague.
"O God," she said, "my Father and my Friend!
Spare him to me, and save me from myself!
O! if thou help me not—if thou forsake—
This hand which thou hast made, will take the life
Thou mad'st the hand to feed. I cling to him,
My son,—my boy. If danger come to him,
No one is left to save me from this crime.
Thou knowest, O! my God, how I have striven
To quench the awful impulse; how, in vain,
My prayers have gone before thee, for release
From the foul demon who would drive my soul
To crime that leaves no space for penitence.
O! Father! Father! Hear me when I call!
Hast thou not made me? Am I not thy child?
Why, why this mad, mysterious desire
To follow him I loved, by the dark door
Through which he forced his passage to the realm
That death throws wide to all? O why must I,
A poor, weak woman—"

I could hear no more,
But dropped my dripping cloak, and, with a voice,
Toned to its tenderest cadence, I pronounced
The sweet word, "mother!"

Her excess of joy
Burst in a cry, and in a moment's space
I sat within her room, and she, my child,
Was sobbing in my arms. I spoke no word,
But sat distracted with my tenderness
For her who threw herself upon my heart
In perfect trust, and bitter thoughts of Him
Whose succor, though importunately sought
In piteous pleadings by a gentle saint,
Was grudgingly withheld. Her closing words:
"O why must I, a poor, weak woman—" rang
Through every chamber of my tortured soul,
And called to conclave and rebellion all
The black-browed passions thitherto restrained.

Ay, why should she, who only sought for God,
Be given to a devil? Why should she
Who begged for bread be answered with a stone?
Ay, why should she whose soul recoiled from sin
As from a fiend, find in her heart a fiend
To urge the sin she hated?—questions all
The fiends within me answered as they would.
O God! O Father! How I hated thee!
Nay, how within my angry soul I dared
To curse thy sacred name!

Then other thoughts—
Thoughts of myself and of my destiny—
Succeeded. Who and what was I? A youth,
Doomed by hereditary taint to crime,
A youth whose every artery and vein
Was doubly charged with suicidal blood.
When the full consciousness of what I was
Possessed my thought, and I gazed down the abyss
God had prepared for me, I shrank aghast;
And there in silence, with an awful oath
I dare not write, I swore my will was mine,
And mine my hand; and that, though all the fiends
That cumber hell and overrun the earth
Should spur the deadly impulse of my blood,
And heaven withhold the aid I would not ask;
Though woes unnumbered should beset my life,
And reason fall, and uttermost despair
Hold me a hopeless prisoner in its glooms,
I would resist and conquer, and live out
My complement of years. My bosom burned
With fierce defiance, and the angry blood
Leaped from my heart, and boomed within my brain
With throbs that stunned me, though each fiery thrill
Was charged with tenderness for her whose head
Was pillowed on its riot.