IX. TOLLING BELL.

“Weak, but her spirits good,” the letter said:

A bell was tolling, while these words I read,

A dull sepulchral summons for the dead.

Fear grew in every pace I strode

Hurrying on that endless road.

And when I reached the house a terror came

That wrought in me a hidden sense of blame,

And entering I scarce dared to speak her name,

Who lay, sweet singer, warbling low

Rhymes I made her long ago.

“The sun exhales the morning dew,

The dew returns again

At eve refreshing rain:

The forest flowers bloom bravely new,

They drooping fade and die,

The seeds that in them lie

Will blossom as the others blew.”

“And ever rove among the flowers

Bright children who ere long

Are men and women strong:

When on they pass through sun and showers,

And glancing sideways watch

Their children run to catch

A rainbow with the laughing Hours.”

I watched in awkward wonder for a time

As there she listless lay and sang my rhyme,

Wrapped up in fabrics of an Indian clime

She seemed a Bird of Paradise

Languid from the traversed skies.

A dawn-bright snowy peak her smile... Strange I

Should dawdle near her grace admiringly,

When love alarmed and challenged sympathy,

Announced in chills of creeping fear

Danger surely threatening near.

I shrank from searching the abyss I felt

Yawned by; whose verge voluptuous blossoms belt

With dazzling hues:— she speaks! I fall and melt,

One sacred moment drawn to rest,

Deeply weeping in her breast:

Within the throbbing treasure wept? But brief

Those loosening tears of blessed deep relief,

That won triumphant ransom from my grief,

While loving words and comfort she

Breathed in angel tones to me.

Our visions met, when pityingly she flung

Her passionate arms about me, kissing clung,

Close kisses, stifling kisses; till each wrung,

With welded mouths, the other's bliss

Out in one long sighing kiss.

Love-flower that burst in kisses and sweet tears,

Scattering its roseate dreamflakes, disappears

Into cold truth: for, loud with brazen jeers,

That bell's toll, clanging in my brain,

Beat me, loth, to earth again:

Where, looking on my Love's endangered state,

Wrought by keen anguish mad, I struck at fate,

Prostrating mockingly in sport or hate

The aspirations, darkling, we

Cherish and resolve to be.

She spoke, but sharply checked; then as her zone

A lady's hands would clasp, My Lady's own

Pressed at her yielding side; her solemn tone

And forward eager face implored

Me to kneel where she adored.

Despite her pain, with tender woman's phrase

She solaced me, whose part it was to raise

Anew the gladness to her weakened gaze,

And wisely in man's firmness be

To my drooping vine a tree.

But no; sunk, dwindled, dwarfed, and mean, beside

Her couch I sitting saw her eyes grow wide

With awe, and heard her voice move as the tide

Of steady music rich and calm

In some high cathedral psalm.

Then, as that high cathedral psalm o'erflows

The dusky, vaulted aisles, and slowly grows

A burst of harmony the hearer knows,

Her voice assailed by rage, and I

Took its purport wonderingly.

“Ah, pause for dread, before you charge in haste

The ways of fate; for how can those be traced

That in the life Omnipotent lie based?

Or earth-grown atom's bounded soul

Grasp the universal whole?

“The more he chafes, the worse his fetter galls

The luckless captive closed in dungeon walls,

And fighting chains and stones, he fighting falls.

Nor will that wasteful immolation

Touch his lofty victor's station.

“Woe be to him perverse, who, weak and blind,

In pride refusing to behold, shall find

The ponderous roll of circumstance will grind

His steps; and if he turn not, must

Bruise and crush him into dust.

“We are the Lord's, not ours, His angels sing;

So you, mine own, bow meekly to your King,

And striving hard and long His grace will bring:

His voice shall through the battle cry,

When the strife is raging high.”

She fluttering paused: awhile her surging zeal

All utterance overwhelmed to mute appeal:

I felt as men who fallen in battle feel,

When far their chief's sword, like a gem,

Points to glory not for them.

“When naked heaven is azure to your eyes,

And light shines everywhere, you can be wise;

But, when its storms in common course arise,

To you the wind but sobs and grieves

Wailing with the streaming leaves.

“Rust eats the steel, and moths corrupt the cloth,

And peevish doubts destroy the soul that's loth

To strive for duty, merged in shameful sloth,

And lolls a weary wretch forlorn,

While men reap the mellow corn.

“It is not man's to dream in sweet repose;

He toils and murmurs, as he wondering goes,

Poor changeful glitter on the stream that flows

In lapses huge and solemn roar,

Ever on without a shore.

“The plantlet grown in darkness puts forth spray;

Through loaded gloom yearns feebly toward some ray

Of bounty golden from the outer day

That shines eternally sublime

On the dancing motes of time.”

The music stopped, and passed into a smile

Of tenderness, which she impressed to guile

Her pain from me: I gazed as one awhile

Escaped, who sees twin rainbows shine

O'er his wrecked ship gulfed in brine.

My lost soul sank adown in soundless seas

To ruined heaps besprent with ancient lees

Of wealth: by soft stupendous ocean-trees;

By anchors forged in early time,

Changed to trails of rusted slime:

To where, what seemed a tomb, in this deep hell

Of night, bore a dim name I dread to tell:

And there I heard sound some gigantic bell,

Whose thunder laughing through my brain

Mocked me back to flesh again.

Here all was emptier than the empty shade

Of mist before a midnight moon decayed:

Here life was strange as death, and more dismayed

My spirit, now scarce conscious she

Urged entreaty yet to me.

“‘ Tis life in life to know the King is just,

And will not animate his helpless dust

With fire unquenchable whose ardour must

Achieve majestic deeds that raise

Universal shouts of praise:

“Shouts of acclaim that gather into story,

Chanted by one on some high promontory

Who glowing in the dawn's advancing glory,

Far down upon the listening crowd

Shines through swathes of lingering cloud:

“And fires, by what he sings, to noble feud

With grosser instincts, the charged multitude,

That grow in temper and similitude

To those great souls whose victories

Triumph still in melodies:

“This fire will not be granted to distress,

To fail in cold dead ash and bitterness:

He will not grant true love that yearns to bless

The world, that it may only sigh

Back into itself and die.”

The words here faltering sank to undertone:

Her soul was murmuring to itself alone

On some wide desolation, dark, unknown;

Whose limits, stretched from mortal sight

Touch the happy hills of light.

“I, toiling at the task assigned to me,

Am summoned from my labour suddenly:

The King recalls his handmaiden; and she

Submissively herself anoints,

Going whither He appoints.

“The sheaves are garnered now, her work is done,

The day is waning, and she must be gone,

To bend herself before the Holy One,

And strictly her appointed meed

There accept in very deed.”

Dead silence, more than if a thunder-stroke

Had crashed the summer air, my sense awoke

To sudden apprehension: hard the yoke

Of misery was mine to bear;

Wrath-befooled, in my despair

I went, and, leaning from the lattice, mused

On my immeasurable woe; accused

Heaven's King, that, like an earthly king, abused

His power omnipotent, and hurled

Curses broadcast on the world.

Then glancing toward her danger thought, “A cell

Of noxious vapours this dull life; as well

She should escape: so pure! she scarce could dwell

With sinful creatures who alway

Stumbling take the stain of clay

“But I unworthy! How in conscience I —

How could I hazard guidance in her high

Cold path of duty leading to the sky!

As well hold torch to light a star

Shining, mystic, nebular.

“She yearns to bless the world: just love for all

Best shows in love for one; love cannot fall

Like sunshine over half this wondrous ball,

But her impulses yearn to bless

All the world. Strange tenderness!”

This shameful mockery of myself alone

Was interrupted by a sobbing moan

That brought me to her coach, where low mine own

Sweet Love lay swooning ashy white,

Eyelids closing from the light.

Ah, coarse, hard, bitter, brutal self! A beast

In passion, nay far worse than such, to feast

On baseless anger against her whose least

Stray word was kind; her daily food

Interest in another's good.

My passion then, like an unruly horse

Checked by a master's hand, fell slack; its force

Unnerved, and stifling me with hot remorse;

Frightened, despairing, “Love,” I cried,

Wildly busy at her side;

And kissed and chafed her brow; I chafed her hand;

Audacious grown with fear, released the band

That clasped her tender waist, and keenly scanned

Each feature, till her opening eyes

Met my own in bright surprise

“Ah you! I had from you passed and the world

Through endless nothing rudely was I hurled

While you there hung above, your proud lip curled,

Regarding me with piercing hate

Crying I deserved my fate.”

We met each other, as when waters meet

In long continued shock, and muttering, sweet

Confusion mixed in unity complete

That changing time may not dissever;

One in love and one for ever.

Purged by remorse, love knit my strength; and now

Came gracious power to still upon her brow

Those troubled waves of some dark underflow;

Her soul victorious over pain

Spoke in golden smiles again.

We sat and read how Prospero closed his strife

With evil, wrought his charm, and crowned his life

In making two fair beings man and wife:

Of brave Count Gismond's happy lot;

And the Lady of Shalott.

We ceased; for eve had come by dusky stealth.

I saw, while lifting her, like crimson health

Burn in her cheeks, holding the weighted wealth

Of all the worlds in heaven to me;

Held her long, long, lingeringly:

And laying down more than my life, her weight;

Scarce kissed her pallid hands, then moved with great

Reluctance, bodeful, from her placid state;

But, ere my slow feet reached the door,

Turned and caught one last look more,

And awe-struck stood to see portentous loom

From her large eyes full gazing through the gloom

Love darkly wedded to eternal doom,

As she were gazing from the dead:

Falling at her feet I said,

“Bless me, dear Love, bless me before I go;

With love divine a beam of comfort throw,

For guidance and support, that I through woe

Be raised and purified in grace

Worthy to behold your face.”

She bowed her head in stately tenderness

Low whispering as her hands my brow did press,

“I pray that He will your lone spirit bless,

And if to leave you be my fate,

Pray you for me while I wait.”

A useless pang in her no more to wake,

I forced myself away, nor dared to take

Another look for her beloved sake;

My face had told of the distressed

Swollen heart labouring in my breast.

When in the outer air, I felt as one

Fresh startled from a dream, wherein the sun

Had dying left the earth a dingy, dun

Annihilation. The nightjar

Only thrilled the air afar:

No other sound was there: a muffled breeze

Crept in the shrubs, and shuddered up the trees,

Then sought the ghost-white vapour of the leas,

Where one long sheet of dismal cloud

Swathed the distance in a shroud.

A solitary eye of cold stern light

Stared threateningly beyond the Western height,

Wrapped in the closing shadows of the night;

And all the peaceful earth had slept

But that eye stern vigil kept.

I wandered wearily I knew not where;

Up windy downs far-stretching, bleak and bare;

Through swamps that soddened under stagnant air;

In blackest woods and brambled mesh,

Thorny bushes tore my flesh:

Amid the ripening corn I heard it sigh,

Hollow and sad, as night crawled sluggishly:

Hollow and sadly sighed the corn while I

Moved darkly in the midst, a blight

Darkening more the hateful night.

My soul its hoarded secrets emptied on

The vaulted gloom of night: old fancies shone,

And consecrated ancient hopes long gone;

Old hopes that long had ceased to burn,

Gone, and never to return.

No starlight pierced the dense vault over head,

And all I loved was passing or had fled:

So on I wandered where the pathway led;

And wandered till my own abode

Spectral pale rose from the road.

What time I gained my home I saw the morn

Made dimly on the sullen East. Wayworn

I went into the echoing house forlorn,

Heartsick and weary sought my room,

Better had it been my tomb.

I lay, and ever as my lids would close

In dull forgetfulness to slumberous doze,

Lone sounds of phantom tolling scared repose;

Till wearied nature, sore oppressed,

Slowly sank and dropped to rest.