Pre-Raphaelite and other Poets

by Lafcadio Hearn

Flat as to an eagle's eye,
Earth hung under Attila,
Sign for carnage gave he none.
In the peace of his disdain,
Sun and rain, and rain and sun,
Cherished men to wax again,
Crawl, and in their manner die.
On his people stood a frost.
Like the charger cut in stone,
Rearing stiff, the warrior host,
Which had life from him alone,
Craved the trumpet's eager note,
As the bridled earth the Spring.
Rusty was the trumpet's throat.
He let chief and prophet rave;
Venturous earth around him string
Threads of grass and slender rye,
Wave them, and untrampled wave.
O for the time when God did cry,
Eye and have, my Attila!

You must remember that Attila was called the Scourge of God. So terrible was the destruction that he wrought, that the Western world of the fifth century thought that he had been sent by God to destroy them as a punishment for sin. He himself accepted this name, and also called himself the Hammer of the World. His own words, translated into Latin, are said to have been "Stella cadit, tellus fremit, en ego Malleus Orbis" (the star falls, the earth shudders; lo! I am the hammer of the world). But why this peace? Why does not Attila continue to destroy?

Scorn of conquest filled like sleep
Him that drank of havoc deep
When the Green Cat pawed the globe:
When his horsemen from his bow
Shot in sheaves.

This scorn of conquest was only induced by Attila's sudden love for a woman. Perhaps the girl Ildico would rather have died than have been given to Attila; but she had to obey the will and words of the master, and there was no opportunity given her to express her likes or dislikes—no opportunity even to kill herself, for she was well watched. White as death she appeared in her wedding robes upon the night of her awful marriage, and the wedding guests did not like to see her looking so white. Why should she not have been glad? Why should she not have blushed as a bride blushes? Some said that she loved another man; some said that she was frightened; but nobody knew and nobody was pleased, and the wedding ceremony went on. It was a strange banquet that she had to attend, for these terrible men lived upon horse-back, drank upon horse-back, ate upon horse-back. The wedding guests entered the hall in all the panoply of war, all mounted upon their battle steeds—not to sit down, but to ride furiously round the table.

Round the banquet-table's load
Scores of iron horsemen rode;
Chosen warriors, keen and hard;
Grain of threshing battle-dints;
Attila's fierce body-guard,
Smelling war like fire in flints.
Grant them peace be fugitive!
Iron-capped and iron-heeled
Each against his fellow's shield
Smote the spear-head, shouting, Live
Attila! my Attila!
Eagle, eagle of our breed,
Eagle, beak the lamb, and feed!
Have her, and unleash us! live!
Attila! my Attila!

Now to understand how fearful a scene this must have appeared to the bride, you must understand that Ildico was a German girl of noble family representing the highest refinement and delicacy of the old civilisation. To have given her to these savage people was, of course, a monstrous cruelty. She did not enjoy the wonderful displays of power and barbaric luxury about her; she must have felt as one seated alone in the midst of an earth-quake.

Fair she seemed surpassingly;
Soft, yet vivid as the stream
Danube rolls in the moonbeam
Through rock barriers; but she smiled
Never, she sat cold as salt:
Open-mouthed as a young child
Wondering with a mind at fault.
Make the bed for Attila!
Under the thin hoop of gold
Whence in waves her hair outrolled,
'Twixt her brows the women saw
Shadows of a vulture's claw
Gript in flight; strange knots that sped
Closing and dissolving aye;
Such as wicked dreams betray
When pale dawn creeps o'er the bed.
They might show the common pang
Known to virgins, in whom dread
Hunts their bliss like famished hounds;
While the chiefs with roaring rounds
Tossed her to her lord, and sang
Praise of him whose hand was large,
Cheers for beauty brought to yield,
Chirrups of the trot afield,
Hurrahs of the battle-charge.

Here we suffer with her, so plainly does the figure of the girl appear before us, silent and white with little shadows of pain coming and going upon her young forehead, while all about her shakes the ground under the hoofs of the battle-horses, under the thunder roar of the songs and the clashing of steel on steel. These roaring horsemen are singing of other things than the past and the present; they are clamouring for the future, for more war, more slaughter, more destruction; they are shouting that even their horses are hungry for war.

Whisper it (the war signal), you sound a horn
To the grey beast in the stall!
Yea, he whinnies at a nod.
O, for sound of the trumpet-notes!
O, for the time when thunder-shod,
He that scarce can munch his oats,
Hung on the peaks, brooded aloof,
Champed the grain of the wrath of God,
Pressed a cloud on the cowering roof,
Snorted out of the blackness fire!
Scarlet broke the sky, and down,
Hammering West with print of his hoof,
He burst out of the bosom of ire,
Sharp as eyelight under thy frown,
Attila! my Attila!
Ravaged cities rolling smoke
Thick on cornfields dry and black,
Wave his banners, bear his yoke.
Track the lightning, and you track
Attila. They moan: 'tis he!
Bleed: 'tis he! Beneath his foot
Leagues are deserts charred and mute;
Where he passed, there passed a sea.
Attila! my Attila!

The splendid and terrible description of the war horse, the Tartar horse, descending over the mountains into Europe, not frightened by things of flesh and bone, but like a thunder-cloud descending upon the cities below—reminds one of the description of Death in the Apocalypse—"I saw a pale horse; and he that sat upon him was called Death, and all hell followed after him." In the fifth century this scriptural text was not forgotten; Attila was often compared, with very good reason, to the rider of the pale horse. Where he conquered, there was nothing left; the ground became a desert, a waste of death, dry like the bed of a vanished sea. It is for another devastation, such another ride, that the warriors are clamouring at the wedding feast. But suddenly these men observe that Ildico never smiles, that she is terribly white like a ghost, and they do not like this.