[Sidenote: In his youth the king heard a hermit's bell and in the
ineffable peace of its sound realized the deepest longing of his
heart.]
Once in his youth,
While his new ears could yet distinguish truth,
He heard a listless bell clang langorously,
A liquid, languid clamor,
The talking tone of iron struck by the hammer,
A sound that blew like smoke across the sea,
Low, slow and trembling dreamfully
From the high, horn-shaped cape;
For there a hermit lived
And tended the wild grape,
Where white, campaniform, small lilies teem,
And there he died beside his cell,
Lost in his dream of heaven and of hell;
And the bell was the voice of that old dream.
One Lusitanian summer, long ago,
Upon a hot and azure afternoon,
While the oars trailed
And with the tide they sailed,
And tenor zithers an ivory tune--
Along cerulean coasts,
With islands like blue ghosts,
Rang the lone hermit's bell,
"_Alone-lin-lang-alone_,"
Clear as a wounded angel's voice,
Soft as a death spell that old women croon--
The harbor gulf lay placid,
And in the west there hung a half a moon.
[Sidenote: Through all his life the bell never ceases to lure him.
Weak from wounds, he sees a vision of the peace of death in life in
the hermit's garden on the cape.]
Never again in laughter or in tears,
Or in titantic days of crashing shields,
In triumphs with blue light upon the spears,
Or when he rivaled God upon his throne
Never had the bell's voice died;
In all his purple, blood-bought pride
It seemed to toll for him an overtone,
After the battle with his veins' blood spent,
Disheartened by the metal light of day,
Between the crisscross threads that made his tent,
The fear of life came on him as he lay;
"Outside the world is garish," thought the king,
And then--and then he heard the lone bell ring
And saw the peace and green light of a wood;
It was a very vision of escape,
A high-walled garden on the crescent cape,
Fair as an evil thing but good.
The cape is luniform
Whereon the hermit's form
Lies bony white and still
Beside the chapel on the hill;
The long grass waves as if he breathes
At every breeze that weaves;
The birds have nests among old votive wreaths
And there the snake sheds in the rustling leaves.
There are faint flower sounds
Around, for spider hands have rung
The lily with its yellow clapper tongue,
All day the mists take shape
And the high hawks slant drifting down the cape--
By night the heavenly hunter leads his hounds,
Wandering the zodiacal bounds,
And all the white stars march,
Flaming in the unalterable arch,
While the wind swings the listless bell
That rings the hermit's knell--
_Sleep well, sleep well!_