Out of the wood I wandered, but paused upon the heath
To watch, beyond the tree-tops, the wrinkled sea beneath;
Its blueness and its stillness were trembling as it lay
In the old un-autumned beauty that never goes away.
And the beauty of the water brought my love into my mind,
Because all sweet love is beauty, and the loved thing turns to kind;
And I thought, “It is a beauty spread for setting of your grace,
O white violet of a woman with the April in your face.”
So I gathered the white violets where young men pick them still,
And I turned to cross the woodland to her house beneath the hill,
And I thought of her delight in the flowers that I brought her,
Bright like sunlight, sweet like singing, cool like running of the water.
* * * *
THE KHALIF’S JUDGMENT.
They took us to a palace, to a chamber
Smelling of bruisèd spice and burning amber.
There slaves were sent to fetch the newly risen
Servants and warders of the woman’s prison.
The white of death was on them when they came.
* * * *
The Khalif lightened on them with quick flame.
Harsh though she was, I sorrowed for the crone,
For she was old, a woman, and alone,
And came, in age, upon disgrace through me;
I know not what disgrace, I did not see
Those crones again, I doubt not they were whipt
For letting us escape them while they slept.
Perhaps they killed the sentry. Who can tell?
The devil ever keeps the laws in hell.
* * * *
They dragged them out to justice one by one.
However bitter was the justice done,
I doubt not they were thankful to be quit
(At cost of some few pangs) the fear of it.
Then our turn came.
The Khalif’s fury raged
Because our eyes had seen those women caged,
Because our Christian presence had defiled
The Women’s House, and somehow had beguiled
A woman-slave, his victim, out of it,
Against all Moorish law and Holy Writ.
If we had killed his son it had been less.
* * * *
He rose up in his place and rent his dress.
“Let them be ganched upon the hooks,” he cried,
“Throughout to-day, but not till they have died.
Then gather all the slaves, and flay these three
Alive, before them, that the slaves may see
What comes to dogs who try to get away.
So, ganch the three.”
* * * *
Then Gerard answered: “Stay.
Before you fling us to the hooks, hear this.
There are two laws, and men may go amiss
Either by breaking or by keeping one.
There is man’s law by which man’s work is done.
Your galleys rowed, your palace kept in state,
Your victims ganched or headed on the gate,
And accident has bent us to its yoke.
* * * *
“We break it: death; but it is better broke.
* * * *
“You know, you Khalif, by what death you reign,
What force of fraud, what cruelty of pain,
What spies and prostitutes support your power,
And help your law to run its little hour:
We, who are but ourselves, defy it all.
* * * *
“We were free people till you made us thrall.
I was a sailor whom you took at sea
While sailing home. This woman that you see
You broke upon with murder in the night,
To drag her here to die for your delight.
This young man is her lover.
When he knew
That she was taken by your pirate crew,
He followed her to save her, or at least
Be near her in her grief. Man is a beast,
And women are his pasture by your law.
This young man was in safety, and he saw
His darling taken to the slave-girls’ pen
Of weeping in the night and beasts of men.
He gave up everything, risked everything,
Came to your galley, took the iron ring,
Rowed at the bitter oar-loom as a slave,
Only for love of her, for hope to save
Her from one bruise of all the many bruises
That fall upon a woman when she loses
Those whom your gang of bloodhounds made her lose.
* * * *
“Knowing another law, we could not choose
But stamp your law beneath our feet as dust,
Its bloodshed and its rapine and its lust,
For one clean hour of struggle to be free;
She for her passionate pride of chastity,
He for his love of her, and I because
I’m not too old to glory in the cause
Of generous souls who have harsh measure meted.
* * * *
“We did the generous thing and are defeated.
Boast, then, to-night, when you have drunken deep,
Between the singing woman’s song and sleep,
That you have tortured to the death three slaves
Who spat upon your law and found their graves
Helping each other in the generous thing.
No mighty triumph for a boast, O King.”
* * * *
Then he was silent while the Khalif stared.
Never before had any being dared
To speak thus to him. All the courtiers paled.
We, who had died, expected to be haled
To torture there and then before the crowd.
It was so silent that the wind seemed loud
Clicking a loose slat in the open shutter.
I heard the distant breakers at their mutter
Upon the Mole, I saw my darling’s face
Steady and proud; a breathing filled the place,
Men drawing breath until the Khalif spoke.
* * * *
His torn dress hung upon him like a cloak.
He spoke at last. “You speak of law,” he said.
“By climates and by soils the laws are made.
Ours is a hawk-law suited to the land,
This rock of hawks or eyrie among sand;
I am a hawk, the hawk-law pleases me.
* * * *
“But I am man, and, being man, can be
Moved, sometimes, Christian, by the law which makes
Men who are suffering from man’s mistakes
Brothers sometimes.
I had not heard this tale
Of you, the lover, following to jail
The woman whom you loved. You bowed your neck
Into the iron fettered to the deck,
And followed her to prison, all for love?
* * * *
“Allah, who gives men courage from above,
Has surely blessed you, boy.
* * * *
“And you, his queen;
Without your love his courage had not been.
Your beauty and your truth prevailed on him.
Allah has blessed you, too.
* * * *
“And you, the grim
Killer of men at midnight, you who speak
To Kings as peers with colour in your cheek,
Allah made you a man who helps his friends.
* * * *
“God made you all. I will not thwart his ends.
You shall be free.
Hear all. These folks are free.
You, Emir, fit a xebec for the sea
To let them sail at noon.
Go where you will.
And lest my rovers should molest you still,
Here is my seal that they shall let you pass.”
* * * *
Throughout the room a sudden murmur was,
A gasp of indrawn breath and shifting feet.
So life was given back, the thing so sweet,
The undrunk cup that we were longing for.
* * * *
My darling spoke: “O Khalif, one gift more.
After this bounty that our hearts shall praise
At all our praying-times by nights and days,
I ask yet more, O raiser from the dead.
There in your woman’s prison as we fled
A hopeless woman blessed us. It is said
That blessings from the broken truly bless.
Khalif, we would not leave in hopelessness
One whose great heart could bless us even then,
Even as we left her in the prison pen.
She wished us fortune from a broken heart:
Let her come with us, Khalif, when we start.”
“Go, you,” the Khalif said, “and choose her forth.”
* * * *
At noon the wind was blowing to the north;
A swift felucca with a scarlet sail
Was ready for us, deep with many a bale
Of gold and spice and silk, the great King’s gifts.
The banners of the King were on her lifts.
The King and all his court rode down to see
Us four glad souls put seawards from Saffee.
* * * *
In the last glowing of the sunset’s gold
We looked our last upon that pirate hold;
The palace gilding shone awhile like fire,
We were at sea with all our heart’s desire,
Beauty and friendship and the dream fulfilled:
The golden answer to the deeply willed,
The purely longed-for, hardly tried-for thing.
Into the dark our sea-boat dipped her wing;
Polaris climbed out of the dark and shone,
Then came the moon, and now Saffee was gone,
With all hell’s darkness hidden by the sea.
* * * *
Oh, beautiful is love, and to be free
Is beautiful, and beautiful are friends.
Love, freedom, comrades, surely make amends
For all these thorns through which we walk to death!
God let us breathe your beauty with our breath.
* * * *
All early in the Maytime, when daylight comes at four,
We blessed the hawthorn blossom that welcomed us ashore.
Oh, beautiful in this living that passes like the foam,
It is to go with sorrow, yet come with beauty home!
* * * *
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
About the crowing of the cock,
When the shepherds feel the cold,
A horse’s hoofs went clip-a-clock
Along the hangman’s wold.
The horse-hoofs trotted on the stone,
The hoof-sparks glittered by,
And then a hunting horn was blown
And hounds broke into cry.
There was a strangeness in the horn,
A wildness in the cry,
A power of devilry forlorn
Exulting bloodily.
A power of night that ran a prey
Along the hangman’s hill.
The shepherds heard the spent buck bray
And the horn blow for the kill.