Is there no stoning save with flint and rock? Yes, as the dead we weep for testify – No desolation but by sword and fire? Yes, as your moanings witness, and myself Am lonelier, darker, earthlier for my loss. Give me your prayers, for he is past your prayers, Not past the living fount of pity in Heaven. But I that thought myself long-suffering, meek, Exceeding "poor in spirit"--how the words Have twisted back upon themselves, and mean Vileness, we are grown so proud A rushing tempest of the wrath of God To blow these sacrifices thro' the world- Sent like the twelve-divided concubine To inflame the tribes: but there out yonder — earth Lightens from her own central Hell-O there The red fruit of an old idolatry
The heads of chiefs and princes fall so fast, They cling together in the ghastly sack — The land all shambles · naked marriages Flash from the bridge, and ever-murder'd France, By shores that darken with the gathering wolf, Runs in a river of blood to the sick sea. Is this a time to madden madness then? Was this a time for these to flaunt their pride? May Pharaoh's darkness, folds as dense as those Which hid the Holiest from the people's eyes Ere the great death, shroud this great sin from all: Doubtless our narrow world must canvass it: O rather pray for those and pity them, Who thro' their own desire accomplish'd bring Their own gray hairs with sorrow to the grave Who broke the bond which they desired to break, - Which else had link'd their race with times to come
Who wove coarse webs to snare her purity, Grossly contriving their dear daughter's good Poor souls, and knew not what they did, but sat Ignorant, devising their own daughter's death! May not that earthly chastisement suffice? Have not our love and reverence left them bare? Will not another take their heritage?
Will there be children's laughter in their hall For ever and for ever, or one stone
Left on another, or is it a light thing
That I their guest, their host, their ancient friend,
I made by these the last of all my race
Must cry to these the last of theirs, as cried Christ ere His agony to those that swore
Not by the temple but the gold, and made Their own traditions God, and slew the Lord, And left their memories a world's curse 66 Behold, Your house is left unto you desolate?"
Ended he had not, but she brook'd no more : Long since her heart had beat remorselessly, Her crampt-up sorrow pain'd her, and a sense Of meanness in her unresisting life.
Then their eyes vext her; for on entering He had cast the curtains of their seat aside Black velvet of the costliest she herself
Had seen to that: fain had she closed them now, Yet dared not stir to do it, only near'd Her husband inch by inch, but when she laid, Wifelike, her hand in one of his, he veil'd His face with the other, and at once, as falls A creeper when the prop is broken, fell The woman shrieking at his feet, and swoon'd. Then her own people bore along the nave
Her pendent hands, and narrow meagre face Seam'd with the shallow cares of fifty years: And her the Lord of all the landscape round Ev'n to its last horizon, and of all Who peer'd at him so keenly, follow'd out Tall and erect, but in the middle aisle Reel'd, as a footsore ox in crowded ways Stumbling across the market to his death, Unpitied; for he groped as blind, and seem'd Always about to fall, grasping the pews And oaken finials till he touch'd the door; Yet to the lychgate, where his chariot stood, Strode from the porch, tall and erect again.
But nevermore did either pass the gate Save under pall with bearers. In one month, Thro' weary and yet ever wearier hours, The childless mother went to seek her child; And when he felt the silence of his house About him, and the change and not the change, And those fixt eyes of painted ancestors Staring for ever from their gilded walls
On him their last descendant, his own head Began to droop, to fall; the man became Imbecile; his one word was 'desolate '; Dead for two years before his death was he ; But when the second Christmas came, escaped His keepers, and the silence which he felt, To find a deeper in the narrow gloom By wife and child; nor wanted at his end The dark retinue reverencing death
At golden thresholds; nor from tender hearts, And those who sorrow'd o'er a vanish'd race, Pity, the violet on the tyrant's grave.
Then the great Hall was wholly broken down, And the broad woodland parcell'd into farms; And where the two contrived their daughter's good, Lies the hawk's cast, the mole has made his run, The hedgehog underneath the plaintain bores, The rabbit fondles his own harmless face, The slow-worm creeps, and the thin weasel there Follows the mouse, and all is open field.
CITY clerk, but gently born and bred ;
His wife, an unknown artist's orphan child
One babe was theirs, a Margaret, three years old: They, thinking that her clear germander eye Droopt in the giant-factoried city-gloom,
Came, with a month's leave given them, to the sea : For which his gains were dock'd, however small : Small were his gains, and hard his work; besides, Their slender household fortunes (for the man Had risk'd his little) like the little thrift, Trembled in perilous places o'er a deep :
And oft, when sitting all alone, his face
Would darken, as he cursed his credulousness,
And that one unctuous mouth which lured him, rogue, To buy strange shares in some Peruvian mine. Now seaward-bound for health they gain'd a coast, All sand and cliff and deep-inrunning cave, At close of day; slept, woke, and went the next,
The Sabbath, pious variers from the church, To chapel; where a heated pulpiteer, Not preaching simple Christ to simple men, Announced the coming doom, and fulminated Against the scarlet woman and her creed : For sideways up he swung his arms, and shriek'd 'Thus, thus with violence,' ev'n as if he held The Apocalyptic millstone, and himself Were that great Angel; 'Thus with violence Shall Babylon be cast into the sea;
Then comes the close.' The gentle-hearted wife Sat shuddering at the ruin of a world ; He at his own: but when the wordy storm Had ended, forth they came and paced the shore, Ran in and out the long sea-framing caves, Drank the large air, and saw, but scarce believed (The sootflake of so many a summer still Clung to their fancies) that they saw, the sea. So now on sand they walk'd, and now on cliff, Lingering about the thymy promontories,
Till all the sails were darken'd in the west,
And rosed in the east: then homeward and to bed: Where she, who kept a tender Christian hope Haunting a holy text, and still to that
Returning, as the bird returns, at night,
'Let not the sun go down upon your wrath,' Said, 'Love, forgive him :' but he did not speak; And silenced by that silence lay the wife, Remembering her dear Lord who died for all,
And musing on the little lives of men, And how they mar this little by their feuds.
But while the two were sleeping, a full tide Rose with ground-swell, which, on the foremost rocks
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