To K. L.
He heard the bell of the Badia sound hour after hour, and still sleep
refused its solace. He got up and looked through the narrow window. The
sky in the East was soft with that luminous intensity, as of a melted
sapphire, that comes just before the dawn. One large star was shining
next to the paling moon. He watched the sky as it grew more and more
transparent, and a fresh breeze blew from the hills. It was the second
night that he had spent without sleeping, but the weariness of his body
was as nothing compared with the aching emptiness which possessed his
spirit. Only three days ago the world had seemed to him starred and
gemmed like the Celestial City--an enchanted kingdom, waiting like a
sleeping Princess for the kiss of the adventurous conqueror; and now the
colours had faded, the dream had vanished, the sun seemed to be deprived
of his glory, and the summer had lost its sweetness.
His eye fell upon some papers which were lying loose upon his table.
There was an unfinished sonnet which he had begun three days ago. The
octet was finished and the first two lines of the sestet. He would never
finish it now. It had no longer any reason to be; for it was a cry
to ears which were now deaf, a question, an appeal, which demanded an
answering smile, a consenting echo; and the lips, the only lips which
could frame that answer, were dumb. He remembered that Casella, the
musician, had asked him a week ago for the text of a _canzone_ which
he had repeated to him one day. He had promised to let him have it.
The promise had entirely gone out of his mind. Then he reflected that
because the ship of his hopes and dreams had been wrecked there was no
reason why he should neglect his obligations to his fellow-travellers on
the uncertain sea.
He sat down and transcribed by the light of the dawn in his exquisite
handwriting the stanzas which had been the fruit of a brighter day. And
the memory of this dead joy was exceedingly bitter to him, so that he
sat musing for some time on the unutterable sadness which the ghosts of
perished joys bring to man in his misery, and a line of Virgil buzzed
in his brain; but not, as of yore, did it afford him the luxury of
causeless melancholy, but like a cruel finger it touched his open wound.
The ancients, he thought, knew how to bear misfortune.
Levius fit patientia
Quidquid corrigere est nefas.
As the words occurred to him he thought how much better equipped he was
for the bitter trial, since had he not the certain hope of another life,
and of meeting his beloved in the spaces of endless felicity? Surely
then he should be able to bear his sorrow with as great a fortitude as
the pagan poets, who looked forward to nothing but the dust; to whom the
fabled dim country beyond the Styx was a cheerless dream, and to whom a
living dog upon the earth was more worthy of envy than the King of all
Elysium. He must learn of the ancients.
The magic of the lemon-coloured dawn had vanished now before the swift
daylight. Many bells were ringing in the city, and the first signs of
life were stirring in the streets. He searched for a little book,
and read of the consolation which Cicero gave to Laelius in the _De
Amicitia_. But he had not read many lines before he closed the book. His
wound was too fresh for the balm of reason and philosophy.
“Later,” he thought, “this will strengthen and help me, but not
to-day; to-day my wound must bleed and be allowed to bleed, for all the
philosophy in the world cannot lessen the fact that yesterday she was
and to-day she is not.”
He felt a desire to escape from his room, which had been the chapel of
such holy prayers, the shrine where so many fervent tapers of hope had
burnt, where so sweet an incense of dream had risen. He left his room
and hurried down the narrow stone stairs into the street. As he left
the house he turned to his right and walked on till he reached Or San
Michele; there he turned to his right again and walked straight on till
he reached the churches of Santa Reparata and San Giovanni. He entered
San Giovanni and said a brief prayer; then he took the nearest street,
east of Santa Reparata, to the Porta a ballo, and found himself beyond
the walls of the city. He walked towards Fiesole.
The glory of the sunrise was still in the sky, the fragrance of the
dawning summer (it was the 11th of June) was in the air. He walked
towards the East. The corn on the hills was green, and pink wild roses
fringed every plot of wheat. The grass was wet with dew. The city
glittered in the plain beneath, clean and fresh in the dazzling air;
it seemed a part of the pageant of summer, an unreal piece of imagery,
distinct and clear-cut, yet miraculous, like a mirage seen in mid-ocean.
“Truly,” he thought, “this is the city of the flower, and the lily is
its fitting emblem.”
But while his heart went out towards his native town he felt a sharp
pang as he remembered that the flower of flowers, the queen of the
lilies, had been mowed down by the scythe, and the city which to him had
heretofore been an altar was now a tomb. The lovely Virgilian dirge,
Manibus date lilia plenis . . .
His saltem accumulem donis et fungar inani
Munere,
rang in his ears, and he thought that he too must bring a gift and
scatter lilies on her grave; handfuls of lilies; but they must be
unfading flowers, wet with immortal tears. He pondered on this gift.
It must be a gift of song, a temple built in verse. But he was still
unsatisfied. No dirge, however tender and solemn; no elegy, however soft
and majestic; no song, however piteous, could be a sufficient offering
for the glorious being who had died in her youth and beauty. But what
could he fashion or build? He thought with envy of Arnolfo and of
Giotto: the one with his bricks could have built a tomb which would
prove to be one of the wonders of the world, and the other with his
brush could have fixed her features for ever, for the wonder of future
generations. And yet was not his instrument the most potent of all, his
vehicle the most enduring? Stones decayed, and colours faded, but verse
remained, outliving bronze and marble. Yes, his monument should be more
lasting than all the masterpieces of Giotto, than all the proud designs
of Arnolfo; but how should it be?
He had reached a narrow lane at the foot of a steep hill covered with
corn and dotted with olives. He lay down under a hedge in the shade.
The sun was shining on two large bramble bushes which grew on the hedge
opposite him. Above him, on his right, was a tall cypress tree standing
by itself, and the corn plots stretched up behind him till they reached
the rocky summits tufted with firs. Between the two bramble bushes
a spider had spun a large web, and he was sitting in the midst of it
awaiting his prey. But the bramble and the web were still wet with the
morning dew, whose little drops glistened in the sunshine like diamonds.
Every tiny thread and filament of the web was dewy and lit by the
newly-awakened sun. He lay on his back in the shade and pondered on the
shape and nature of his gift of song, and on the deathless flowers that
he must grow and gather and lay upon her tomb.
The spider’s web caught his eye, and from where he lay the sight was
marvellous. The spider seemed like a small globe of fire in the midst of
a number of concentric silvery lines studded with dewy gems; it was like
a miniature sun in the midst of a system of gleaming stars. The delicate
web with its shining films and dewdrops seemed to him as he lay there
to be a vision of the whole universe, with all its worlds and stars
revolving around the central orb of light. It was as though a veil had
been torn away and he were looking on the naked glory of the spheres,
the heart of Heaven, the very home of God.
He looked and looked, his whole spirit filled with ineffable awe and
breathless humility. He lay gazing on the chance miracle of nature till
a passing cloud obscured the sun, and the spider’s web wore once more
its ordinary appearance. Then he arose with tears in his eyes and gave a
great sigh of thankfulness.
“I have found it,” he thought, “I will say of her what has never yet
been said of any woman. I will paint all Hell, all Purgatory, and all
that is in them, to make more glorious the glory of her abode, and I
will reveal to man that glory. I will show her in the circle of spotless
flame, among the rivers and rings of eternal light, which revolve around
the inmost heart, the fiery rose, and move obedient to the Love which
moves the sun.” And his thought shaped itself into verse and he murmured
to himself:
L’amor che muove il sole e l’altre stelle.
EDWARD II. AT BERKELEY CASTLE BY AN EYE-WITNESS (With apologies to Mr.
H. Belloc)
The King had not slept for three nights. He looked at his face in the
muddy pool of water which had settled in the worn flagstones of his
prison floor, and noticed that his beard was of a week’s growth. Beads
of sweat stood on his forehead, and his eyes were bloodshot. In the room
next door, which was the canteen, the soldiers were playing on a drum.
Over the tall hills the dawn was ruffling the clouds. There was a faint
glimmer on the waters of the river. The footsteps of the gaolers were
heard on the outer rampart. At seven o’clock they brought the King a
good dinner: they allowed him burgundy from France, and yellow mead, and
white bread baked in the ovens of the Abbey, although he was constrained
to drink out of pewter, and plates were forbidden him. Eustace, his
page, timidly offered him music. The King bade him sing the “Lay of the
Sussex Lass,” which begins thus:
Triumphant, oh! triumphant now she stands,
Above my Sussex, and above my sea!
She stretches out her thin ulterior hands
Across the morning . . .
But the King, to whom memories were portentous, called for another song
and Eustace sang a stave of that ballad which was made on the Pyrenees,
and which is still unfinished (for the modern world has no need of
these things), telling of how Lord Raymond drank in a little tent with
Charlemagne:
Enormous through the morning the tall battalions run:
The men who fought with Charlemagne are very dearly done;
The wine is dark beneath the night, the stars are in the sky,
The hammer’s in the blacksmith’s hand in case he wants to try.
We’ll ride to Fontarabia, we’ll storm the stubborn wall,
And I call.
And Uriel and his Seraphim are hammering a shield;
And twice along the valley has the horn of Roland pealed;
And Cleopatra on the Nile, Iseult in Brittany,
And Lancelot in Camelot, and Drake upon the sea;
And behind the young Republic are the fellows with the flag,
And I brag!
The King listlessly opened his eyes and said that he had no stomach for
such song, and from the next door came the mutter of the drums. For on
that night--which was Candlemas--Thursday, or as we should now call it
“Friday”--the gaolers were keeping holiday, and drinking English beer
brewed in Sussex; for the beer of West England was not to their liking,
as any one who has walked down the old Roman Road through Daglingworth,
Brimpsfield, and Birdlip towards Cardigan on a warm summer’s day can
know. For a man may tramp that road and stop and ask for drink at an
inn, and receive nothing but Imperialist whisky, and drinks that annoy
rather than satisfy the great thirst of a Christian.
Outside, a little breeze had crept out of the West. The morning star was
paling over the Quantock Hills, and the King was mortally weary. “This
day three years ago,” he thought, “I was spurred and harnessed for the
lists in a tunic of mail, with an emerald on my shoulder-strap, and I
was tilting with my lord of Cleremont before Queen Isabella of France.
The birds were singing in Touraine, and the sun was beating on the
lists; and the minstrels of Val-es-Dunes were chanting the song of the
men who died for the Faith when they stormed Jerusalem. What is the lilt
of that song,” said the King, “which the singers of Val-es-Dunes sang?”
And Eustace pondered, for his memory was weak and he was overwrought by
nights of watching and days of vigilance; but presently he touched his
strings and sang:
The captains came from Normandy
In clamorous ships across the sea;
And from the trees in Gascony
The masts were cloven, tall and free.
And Turpin swung the helm and sang;
And stars like all the bells at Brie
From cloudy steeples rang.
The rotten leaves are whirling down
Dishevelled from September’s crown;
The Emperors have left the town;
The Weald of Sussex, burnt and brown,
Is trampled by the kings.
And Harmuth gallops up the Down,
And, as he rides, he sings.
He sings of battles and of wine,
Of boats that leap the bellowing brine,
Of April eyes that smile and shine,
Of Raymond and Lord Catiline
And Carthage by the sea,
Of saints, and of the Muses Nine
That dwell in Gascony.
And to the King, as he heard this stave, came visions of his youth; of
how he had galloped from Woodstock to Stonesfield on a night of June
within eleven hours, with a company of minstrels, and of how during that
long feast at Arundel he made a song in the vernacular in praise of St.
Anselm. And he remembered that he owed a candle to that saint. For
he had vowed that if the wife of Westermain should meet him after the
tournament he would burn a tall candle at Canterbury before Michaelmas.
But this had escaped his mind, for it had been tossed hither and thither
during days of conflict which had come later, and he was not loth to
believe that the neglect of this service and the idle vow had been
corner-stone of his misfortunes, and had helped to bring about his
miserable plight.
While these threads of memory glimmered in his mind the small tallow
rush-light which lit the dungeon flickered and went out. The chapel
clock struck six. The King made a gesture which meant that the time of
music was over, and Eustace went back to the canteen, where the men of
the guard were playing at dice by the light of smoky rush-lights. The
King lay down on his wooden pallet, whose linen was delicate and of
lawn, embroidered with his own cipher and crown. The pillow, which was
stuffed with scented rushes, was delicious to the cheek, and yielding.
* * * * *
All that night in London Queen Isabella had been waiting for the news
from France. A storm was blowing across the Channel, and the ships
(their pilots were Germans, and bungled in reading the stars) making for
the port turned back towards Dunquerque. It was a storm such as, if you
are in a small boat, turns you back from Broughty Ferry to the Goodwin
Sands. The Queen, who took counsel of no one, was in two minds as to her
daring deed, and her hostage trembled in an uncertain grasp. In Saxony
the banished favourites talked wildly, cursing the counsels of London;
but Saxony was heedless and unmoved. And Piers Gaveston spoke heated
words in vain.
The King, who was in that lethargic state of slumber, between sleep and
waking, heard a shuffle of steps beyond the door; a cold sweat broke
once more on his forehead, and he waved his left hand listlessly.
Outside the sun had risen, and a broad daylight flooded the wet meadows
and the brimming tide of the Severn, catching the sails of the boats
that were heeling and trembling on the ripple of the water, which was
stirred by the South wind. The King looked towards the window with
weariness, expecting, as far as his lethargy allowed, the advent of
another monotonous day.
The door opened. The faces he saw by the gaoler’s torch were not
those he expected. The King, I say, looked towards them, and his hands
trembled, and the moisture on them glistened. They were dark, and one of
them was concealed by a silken mask.
Three men entered the dungeon. In the hands of the foremost of the three
glowed a red-hot iron, which was to be the manner of his doom.