ramparts.... Long
We waited at the gates in dust knee-deep. The Emperor did not trust
The help that he had craved. He swore he had not asked so many ...
more
Would ruin him.... He let the heat suck out our strength at every
pore.
But we were told great noblemen, Godfrey of Bouillon in Ardennes,
Robert of Flanders, "Sword and Lance of Christians," all the flower
of France
Were on our side, Hugh Vermandois, Stephen of Chartres and Troyes
and Blois,
Baldwin and Raymond of Toulouse. The preacher said we could not
lose.
Moreover he had spoken with angel-reserves behind us, sith
They sent assurance (Saracens we mocked, but had our own _Hadith_)
That we should root the heathen out, and blight as with a ten
years' drought
Their fields. Jehovah willed that we should leave no seed of theirs
to sprout.
Our mates streamed in from lands beyond the Adriatic, Bohemond
With Tancred; strait Dalmatian bays, Epirus, Scodra, devious ways
Bore them with boastful tales of sport and plunder, and a vague
report
That this was nothing to the spoil that beckoned from the Moslem
court.
Henceforth impatient ups and downs possessed us. Asiatic towns
Flamed to the general vision. We heard less perhaps of heavenly
crowns
Than flowers and peacocks made of gems, the Caliph's crusted
diadems
That crushed the head like Guthlac's bell, and trees with solid
emerald stems.
And I confess Christ counted less to us than tales of leash and
gess,
Or Hárún-el-Rashíd's largesse that sent the clock to Charlemagne.
We practised sums, and tried to train our cavalry in loss and gain.
Upon the misty wizard-world rose like a star the money-brain.
Even monks planned theft of saintly scalps; stray hairs and chips
of nail and chine,
Divinely shielded through the Alps, would make the fortune of the
Rhine.
I often tried to hide myself from this besetting spook of pelf.
In olive-groves I called in vain to simple faun and acorn-elf.
I pictured kine that kissed their own reflections on the impulsive
Rhone,
A little maid with sunflower hair, a nest we found ... the birds
had flown.
I think Alexius was wise to keep us out. Our hungry eyes
Fixed on his capital. Why go farther when here were rich supplies?
The Pope that cursed our tastes had laid the hand of blessing on
this raid.
Blest chance indeed--as though a man should drink his fill and then
be paid!
Each set to whet his falchion-pet that only friends had tasted yet.
We dressed our hopes in purple silk, wallowed in dreamland's wine
and milk.
Yet more than any Sultan's spoil fair women should repay our toil.
Already some were filled with thoughts that our red cross was meant
to foil.
The notion twinged us. We compared our prospects with the way we
fared
On these lean suburbs and the flats about Barbyses. We were snared!
The very Greeks, whose prayers had lured us into this adventure,
lodged
Their saviours in a baited trap. Lord, how these foxes turned and
dodged.
There lay our army like a log; our camp, our tenets, turned to bog.
We sank. Disorder brought disease that stalked us spectral through
the fog.
The Greeks we came to bolster up against their weakness filled our
cup
With turpitude; the Byzantine put Circe's poison in our wine.
Our aspirations all became mean as our hosts; the inner flame
Went out. From many a starting-point we found a common ground in
shame;
For here no soul can keep its health, but cat-like honour creeps by
stealth
Down side streets where the children breathe an atmosphere of
rotting wealth.
Between our fellow-churches rose the hate that heaven had meant for
foes....
The infidel might well have laughed. Perhaps he did. We came to
blows.
And I was sad that Christians had nothing in common, saving bad
Blood, that our highest dizziest heads could all divide but none
could add.
But when spring lit the Judas-trees our chieftains kissed the
Emperor's knees.
We crossed to Asia sick at heart. Alexius kept us well apart,
Shuffling us o'er the Bosphorus. The number and the rank of us
Exceeded those who went to Troy for Helen the Adulterous.
On the Bithynian plain our force drew up: an hundred thousand horse
With foot and monks and womankind in crowds that none can call to
mind.
Fear stuffed the empty space ahead with devils and the shapes of
dread
That decked our church. A ghastly rush of loneliness made every
head
Feel like a pinpoint. Discontent ran through the score of nations
blent
In cries. Their ribald spokesman forced a drunkard's way to
Godfrey's tent:
_You that have led us through the many tests
Of Hungary, King Caloman, and Thrace,
Who think of kingdoms as of palimpsests
And human nature as a carapace,
Go up and prosper in your lofty chase!
We cannot live on barren mountain-crests.
Our wildest dreams are prisoners that pace
The little space between a woman's breasts._
_Here lies the stronghold that our zeal invests,
This infidel alone we long to face.
This hollow, where our constant fancy nests,
Is more to us than pedestal and dais.
Nay, we will go no farther in the race
For gain, respond no more to mean behests.
We know our cause, and reverently embrace
The little space between a woman's breasts._
_It is our holy land, and we, the guests
Of passion, brand all other hosts as base.
The bees have led us to their treasure-chests,
A foxglove-sceptre and an hyacinth-mace,
The meadow's fleeting broidery and lace.
Their heaven like ours is nigh to vulgar jests.
A blossom's goal and glory is to grace
The little space between a woman's breasts._
_Prince, be content and choose your resting-place,
Ere we be all forgotten with our quests,
And this thin earth go crumbling into space,
The little space between a woman's breasts._
Thereat was scandal, and a priest exclaimed that man was half a
beast.
I could have told him that before. Man was the half I like the
least.
To obviate a sinful fate the monks laid on us many weeks
Of penance, wasting us the more with these inventions of the
Greeks.
Some paid in cash, some chose the lash--their backs were pitiful to
see--
While Bishop Adhémar of Puy recited magic formulæ
That lurched us forward to our doom. We cleft the sultanate of
Roum,
Calling for bread. The peasants fled. We swept the country like a
broom.
Our armed migration choked the road. It ran ahead, a stream that
flowed
Uphill to glory, so it seemed; and so imagination strode--
O Jack o' lantern!--into the unknown. The Virgin on a silver
throne,
Our leaders swore, went on before us. I saw nothing but the Rhone,
The impulsive Rhone that tumbles down, and breaks clean through the
grey-walled town.
I heard it rustle in its bed where others heard the Virgin's gown.
I blamed the foeman for my thirst, for sandstorm, flies, heat,
scurvy--cursed
Them. Piles of grievance fumed until the red fire kindled. Madness
burst
All bounds, and capered in the glare that wrapped us round like
Nessus' shirt.
Each day 'twas there with yards to spare, and would not tear. How
blue can hurt!
In my delirium I smelt a mirage, heard the swallows skim
Above the reeds where angels knelt with envious eyes to watch me
swim.
The preacher said Jehovah's cloud and pillar would go with us. Yea,
The sky was on our heads alway. The sun rose up and cried aloud,
And stood immobilized at noon. We wondered if at Ajalon
The Jews thanked Joshua for the boon of this divine phenomenon.
We came to Nice and formed a siege with tortoise, belfry, catapult,
And curse that brought even less result. Each lordling quarrelled
with his liege,
Layman with priest, until the place surrendered, and again we
lurched
Forward. I heard our name was made. I only saw how it was smirched.
My master clasped a small, soiled glove, and promised deeds for
love's sweet sake
That took my breath, as though his death would please The Burr. I
lay awake
All night afraid to cry for fright. I tried my best to be
full-grown,
A child now loth to be alone. My misery was all my own.
I well recall our knights' first charge. It was as though a loaded
barge
Should seek to crush a dancing skiff. The foe was small, the plain
was large.
Our men returned with horses spent. It seemed the Turkish cowards
meant
To harry, not oppose. Sometimes we caught them full, and down they
went.
Strange that within so short a space I felt the strong effects of
grace!
The preaching man upon his ass called it a miracle. It was.
I, polishing my master's helmet, also longed to overwhelm
The miscreants, to hew in bits the devil and his earthly realm.
A boy's high spirits, weariness, a heart impulsive as the Rhone,
The wish to get this business done, the thought of little
Sunflower-tress--
A flower beside The Burr, and "Why, if knights sing rubbish, should
not I?"--
The preaching man's persistence, these stirred me to action by
degrees.
We had our fill at Dorylæum. Our rogues were Paladins. We won,
And weighed our booty by the ton. That night we chanted a Te Deum,
A myriad voices in the dark; they rose like one colossal lark
Ere dawn. My soul flew up with them to see the new Jerusalem
And spite my tutor. I was mad to be a fighting-man, would pad
My arms like muscles. So my lord took me to foray. I was glad.
I had one thought: my hands were wet. That angered me: my mouth was
dry.
I had one fear: I might forget my master's silly battle-cry.
Belike 'twas well no foe would stand--our cavaliers were out of
hand--
So I was baulked. With scarce a blow we filed across the wasted
land
For leagues, till Baldwin turned aside, and out of Peradventure
carved
His slice, Edessa. We were plied to march on Antioch half-starved.
For seven months sheer courage toiled to take the town. Its
ramparts foiled
Our engines. Sulkiness sat down within us, and temptation coiled
Tight round our bodies; every vice was lurking like a cockatrice.
Ah, flesh can never quite repel the sinuous things which thoughts
entice.
You honey-coloured Syrian girls, whose voices turned our knights to
thirls,
I looked away and stopped my ears by thinking of the glossier
merles
At home. The arm upheld by Hur had not sufficed him to deter
The dissipation of our force, alas. My lord deceived The Burr.
'Twas worse when treachery let us in. Blood, lechery, pillage, fire
and din
Burned an impression on my mind: the sexual ugliness of sin.
Cool Bohemond called Antioch his. Ere we had killed our mutineers,
We the besiegers were besieged by Kurbugha and his Amírs.
Alternate famine and carouse brought plague; but doubtless God
allows
Expensive trials of faith that we might learn the magic formulæ.
We melted, melted; kites were fed upon us, dogs ran dripping red
From piles of nameless carrion, the race that Europe might have
bred.
Throughout our ranks desertion raged by daily sermons unassuaged.
The preaching man was first in this "rope-dancing." Disillusion
aged
My youth by years. My master stayed. If he had erred he promptly
paid.
The pestilence ran after him. Despite the fervour I displayed
He died of sores, this prince of tilt, though guarded by ten
hallowed charms,
This subject of all _trouvère_-lilt, lord in an hundred ladies'
arms.
Oh, how I struggled to be brave when the Pope's legate, grey and
grim,
Said simply this beside the grave: "Christ died for you. You died
for Him."
Only his jester seemed to care, and ceased awhile to swear and
daff.
"Who," he repeated in despair, "will pay me for his epitaph?"
_Poor friend, this alien hungry land
Has closed her lips upon her prey.
The tree is spoiled into her hand;
She sucks the brook's thin veins away._
_A sterner voice than bade you come
To reap the tears that exiles sow
Has called you to her longer home,
That neither bids nor lets you go._
_Seven times you baulked her lawless laws,
And foiled the customs of the year;
But Death defends the tyrant's cause,
And makes the silent court his lair._
_The lease of life, that none can own,
Is written on her agent's roll;
And from the desert and the sown
He takes a harsh and equal toll,_
_High-handed, scorning code or text.
No hope the debtor's gaol unlocks.
A friend appeals? He is the next
To occupy the narrow box._
_The witness cowers, pale with fear,
When Death the stalker passes by;
And only prays he may not hear
That ugly sound--a victim's cry._
_One weeps; his eyes are wet as long
As on Death's hand the blood is wet.
He says: "The King can do no wrong!"
And craves permission to forget._
_How briefly to an echo clings
The memory of these solemn days,
The thought of those tremendous things
That Death implies but never says._
_An hour ago we laid you down.
The tender, tardy autumn rain
Is dried within the dusty town,
And we are at our rounds again._
With every round our spirits sank in bodies lean and members lank.
I saw the soul of man, a cave, a wick that smouldered and smelled
rank.
Men's fluid facts may wash the grime from pictures of a distant
time,
But I can paint the truth in one small touch: our poets ceased to
rhyme.
Such was the army's hopelessness. I understood, who once had seen
Our fading gardener rouse himself to kick and curse the wolf-cub,
Life.
I would not let my feet desert, but oh the woods--the woods of home
That bent and beckoned in the damp zephyr in vain! I could not
stoop
To play false in an enterprise however mad, if once begun.
Besides another miracle was wrought in me. I was in love.
I was enamoured of dear Christ; His utter beauty struck me dumb,
His face alone could compensate for scenes that almost made me long
For blindness. Yea, to Him I turned from all this heartache,
nightly kissed
His hand with passion. I at least would not betray the children's
Friend.
Haply His strength has always lain in contrast. I found strength to
press
Toward the mark. Not so the host: we could not kick it to its feet.
Then heaven inspired us to devise a pious fraud--The Holy Lance.
We hid it in Saint Peter's crypt, and dug it up. The people wept
With rapture at this talisman, and sang the Psalm "Let God arise."
Also our chiefs--they knew my zeal--bade me complete the heartening
sign.
White-plumed, white-horsed, with golden shield and halo, I
contrived to appear
On the horizon, waved my sword while Adhémar proclaimed Saint
George.
Our men responded with a shout. Through the five gates they tumbled
out,
An headlong torrent. In a trice the infidel was put to rout,
And I joined in to hack and prod. Pure Tancred praised me with a
nod.
Ascetic Godfrey even spoke to me: "Lad, you belong to God."
I won my spurs. They _made_ me proud. Before my sword the wizards
bowed,
Though me they washed. In vigil and fast I joined the perfect
order, vowed
To hold my manhood chaste, to gird on might with right and
courtesy,
To speak the truth, and so to be at variance with the common herd.
Such loftiness a man can feel once in a flash: strong arms, clean
hands
That forged us into iron bands to unify the world with steel.
But as I left the altar daft with the ambition I had quaffed--
A word can kill a century--one of my perfect brothers laughed:
_I took the vow of virtue
As others take to vice.
I could not break my heart of you.
Men call that sacrifice._
_The priests applauded nature.
Poor devil, she was loth
Enough. The love of God and you
Has made me hate you both._
And I was sad that Christians, clad in robes so dazzling, were not
glad
To keep them spotless from the world, and give the Virgin all they
had.
Yet I was racked by continence of all we rightly rank as sense.
I hungered for the Sunflower-tress that now my lips would never
press.
I wrenched and wrestled to believe that God had sent us here to
grieve
Our bodies with this fruitlessness, that only fakirs could achieve
His purpose. Then in blind revolt my soul like an unbroken colt
Ran round and round an empty field. The hedge was thick. I could
not bolt,
Though one poor knight on stiffened knee revealed beneath his
breath to me
His thoughts on women while the monks recited magic formulæ.
I sought for solace in renown. Men watched me swagger through the
town
The youngest knight in Christendom. When women passed I tried to
frown.
A year I suffered in this way before the wreck of our array
Would undertake the final march. My soul was saved by movement. May
Was with us, when my tutor closed his wintry Juvenal and posed
Mid nightingales to quote and kiss the _Pervigilium Veneris_.
I drove his authors from my head, and read Augustin hard instead;
But sap was mounting in my veins and western groves where finches
wed.
To these no sound of sapphire seas, no stunted firs of Lebanon,
Not Tyrian dyes nor Tripoli's loud yellows deafened. We ran on
Through landmarks famed in Holy Writ, Emmaus, Bethlehem ... at last
We saw the walls of Zion lit blood-red by sunset and the past.
The conquest of another world unfurled beneath our feet, the land
Of miracle and mystery lay as a bauble in our hand.
Men flung their caps up, feigned a swoon. With prostrate lines of
us the moon
Drew silver circles round the site. A cock crowed--many hours too
soon.
We thought to prise the gates ajar. My tutor wrote their private
Lar
Or else--with Tacitus--their folk designed them for eternal war.
The moat was wide; we feebly tried to stop its gape with pebbles,
cried
"Fall, Jericho!" The blessèd wall stood firm; but Christ was on our
side.
The Church had saved Him from His wan repute and thrust Him in our
van,
Bronzed, scarred. Alas, the first crusade had made Him out a
fighting man!
He taught the Turks to mock Giaours!... sent timely Genoese to
build
Wheeled wooden turrets. These we filled brimful. Jerusalem was
ours.
We entered reverent, barefoot; slew three livelong nights and
mornings through,
Then paused to sing a thanksgiving. We massacred the morrow too.
And I was glad a Christian lad could boast of some small
suffering _ad
Majorem Dei gloriam_. I only longed to burn Baghdad.
Nay, I can say I never hid to chamber as my fellows did.
I felt my conscience clear as frost, and touched no woman--God
forbid.
I set my contrite soul apart with mass, procession, penance, rites
That took me out to see the sights, brushing ecstatic lanes athwart
The quiddering mob with tears of joy--my tutor's phrase was hoi
polloi--
Though few were left. Some Greeks of ours confused Jerusalem with
Troy.
But most the bestial German louts made even their hardest allies
sick;
They ran to mutilate the quick and sniff the dead with joyous
snouts.
Shriven, forgiven, we embraced each stone that Christ had touched,
and placed
Such relics under treble guard. One note in our rejoicings jarred.
It seemed some types of Jewish dog escaped the flaming synagogue,
And their ingratitude was base. They joined to form a
wailing-place.
I heard them as I roamed among blind alleys dark and overhung
By one-eyed dens. With whining nose against the wall the pack gave
tongue:
_Behold Thy people, Lord, a race of mourners.
Through this Thy sacred dwelling-place they creep
Like strangers. Hearken, Lord, in holes and corners
We sit alone and weep._
_For Thy decree, most terrible and holy,
That as the fathers sow the sons shall reap,
For all Thy just affliction of the lowly,
We sit alone and weep._
_For all the glory that is now departed,
For all the stones that Thou hast made an heap,
Yea, for the city of the broken-hearted,
We sit alone and weep._
_For all the wealth wherewith Thou hadst endowed her,
For all our shepherds gone astray like sheep,
For all Thy temple's jewels ground to powder,
We sit alone and weep._
_Because our soul is chastened as with lashes,
Because Thine anger like a stormy deep
Goes over us, in sackcloth and in ashes
We sit alone and weep._
Nobody gave them heed; indeed each man was thinking how to speed
His interests, and if the prey would satisfy ambition or need.
To honest minds with zeal imbued the Pope's indulgence, their own
merit
Bestowed some licence to be lewd, and take--their preachers said
"inherit."
Even I who was in love with Christ, I with the conscience clean and
cold
That hankered not for lands or gold, was wondering how to clinch my
hold
On reputation, while our chiefs, before we could consolidate,
Rode a great wallop round the State and split it into petty fiefs.
Their overlords revolted me. Alas, for our brief unity!
Edessa snarled at Antioch, Jerusalem at Tripoli.
Poor Godfrey, who would not accept a crown where his Redeemer wore
Thorns, nor be strong where Jesus wept! From the beginning weakness
crept
Into our councils. Worse, we watched the bulk of our brave lads
disperse
Well-pleased. At most we raised the ghost of needful power to hold
their post.
Franks and Provincials, German brutes that bullied babes and
prostitutes,
Lombards and Flemings, made for home with clapping and the sound of
flutes.
It flowed away, the unstable stuff, to whom a cause was but a noun.
They stood to sea. Thank heaven 'twas rough! My place was here with
my renown.
They vanished ... home ... to Sunflower-tress ... home, where a man
may die obscure!
Far off a carle of Albemarle trolled chanties like a Siren's lure.
_East, are you calling still,
Who tried your strength of will
For naught on brown Ulysses long ago?
We have an island too,
And haul away from you
To cleaner kin that bend a stronger bow._
_Your caravans string out
On many a golden route
The turbaned Magi's offerings; but we
Steer forth on loner trails
Through rough wind-scented vales
To England, the oasis of the sea._
_Child Jesus chose you, East,
Not that He loved us least,
But just because His Father had foreseen
The dear and only Son
Might dwell too long upon
Our swinging greys and many-coloured green._
So we were left alone. The spring broke out in buds of bickering.
Each summer brought contentious fruit. Strife waxed with every
waning king.
And I waxed also, better known, resolved to reap what I had sown.
My childless manhood fixed my heart. The Holy Land was all my own.
I grew in grace with man--I hoped with God; from Beersheba to Dan
I went about my Father's work. Faith could not shirk what Faith
began.
Sometimes qualms came. I looked askance on Bishop Daimbert's
schemes to enhance
His seat. The native Christians sighed they missed the Caliph's
tolerance.
Not that had hurt me, but the void which love will make if
unemployed.
I spent my strength to keep him quiet, and free the thoughts that
he decoyed,
Till woods and Rhone were out of range. I often wondered at the
change
In nature's child, in me. The formulæ were there. "God's ways are
strange."
Yet in my struggle with the powers of darkness I recalled the
showers
Of light that fought the undergrowth to catch the singing of the
flowers.
Time passed, and no one seemed to reck of Zenghi, the first Atabek,
Though every year we failed to act the Saracens grew more compact.
In vain I urged that we might fall, so slender was our human wall,
So numberless the foe beside the Templars and the Hospital.
The answer was that dyke and fosse were useless when we had the
Cross,
With other relics by the score, to guard against defeat or loss.
My prophecies of coming ills fell on deaf ears and weakly wills.
I did my best. You know I did, who saw me peer beyond the hills
Where Karak like a lighthouse loomed at waves of sand that never
spumed,
The tideless main, an ocean-plain bare, petrified. Its silence
boomed.
I saw in all that vastitude, the one, the drab, the many-hued,
No sign of life, no moving speck; and yet I knew that trouble
brewed.
I tortured every hour to find material things to prop behind--
Forgive me, God!--Your earthly realm. The need was great, for it
was blind.
The mathematics of Abul Hassan, three hundred years at school
In Arabic philosophy, showed that the West was still a fool.
Nay, gently, call her still a babe. How should she know that I, the
Great,
Had learned from savages to prate of compass and of astrolabe.
Our miracles were not so sure to heal as Rhazes' simplest cure.
His friends the moon and stars obeyed the rules that Abul Wafa
made.
My stolen lore raised me above my fellows. Everything but love
Was mine, respect, authority. The jealous Churchmen dared not move.
Our infant realm could not dispense with me, its shield and main
defence.
I knew the Damascene recipe for making steel, and made it cheap.
My mind was fertile in resorts. I spent the pilgrims' fees on
forts,
And settled, for their skill in trade, Venetian slavers at our
ports.
Howbeit I trembled lest our main enthusiasm should be for gain.
I stripped myself to work against the working of the money-brain.
And I was glad I passed for mad and single-eyed as Galahad.
I sacrificed in saving Christ the profit that I might have had.