{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_58692/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_58692","id":"gutenberg_58692","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58692","summary":null,"tags":["Brunehaut, Queen, consort of Sigebert, King of Austrasia, 534-613 -- Poetry","Category: History - Medieval/Middle Ages","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Poetry"],"text":"Produced by D A Alexander and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was\nproduced from images generously made available by The\nInternet Archive/American Libraries.)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n                              THE VIGIL OF\n                                BRUNHILD\n\n                            A NARRATIVE POEM\n\n                           BY FREDERIC MANNING\n\n                                 LONDON\n                    JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.\n                                  1907\n\n                               PRINTED BY\n                     HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,\n                          LONDON AND AYLESBURY.\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\nBRUNHILD, died A.D. 613\n\n\nThe intervention of women in the course of the world\u2019s history has\nnearly always been attended by those events upon which poets delight to\nmeditate: events of sinister and tragic significance, the chief value\nof which is to show in rude collision the ideals and the realities of\nlife; the common humanity of the central figures in direct conflict\nwith the inhuman march of circumstance; and the processes through which\nthese central figures, like Lady Macbeth or Cleopatra, are made to\ntranscend all conventional morality, and, though completely evil in the\nordinary sense, to redeem themselves and win our sympathy by a moment\nof heroic fortitude, or of supreme and consuming anguish. Such events\nand processes, however, belong properly to dramatic art; narrative\npoetry, being of a smoother and easier texture allowing more scope to the\nsubjective play of ideas: in short, it is more spiritual than real. The\nQueen of Austrasia and Burgundy, whom I have made the subject of my poem,\nis essentially a figure of tragedy. Perhaps it might have been better to\ntreat her as a subject of dramatic action; but in order to do so it would\nhave been necessary to limit her personality, to define her character, to\ntreat only a part of her various and complex psychology. I preferred to\nshow her at the moment of complete renunciation, a prisoner in her own\ncastle of Orbe on the banks of the lake of Neuch\u00e2tel, after she had been\nbetrayed by her own army, and had become the prey of her own rebellious\nnobles; and the poem is but a series of visions that come to her in\nthe stress of her final degradation, while she is awaiting the brutal\ndeath which the victors reserved for her. Indeed, so entirely spiritual\nwas my intention, I have scarcely thought it worth while to enumerate\nthe ironies of her situation. The squalor of her cell, the triumph\nof her foes, the prospect of her own immediate death become entirely\ninsignificant beside the pageantry, the splendour, the romance of a past\nwhich her memories evoke and clothe with faint, reflected glories. She\nhears, in the charming phrase of Renan, \u201cles cloches d\u2019une ville d\u2019Is.\u201d\n\nIn a note at the end of the volume I have given some extracts from\nthe _Histoire de France_, edited by M. Ernest Lavisse, which show the\nprincipal events of her life.\n\n                                                                  F. M.\n\n\n\n\nTHE VIGIL OF BRUNHILD\n\n\n    Brunhild, with worn face framed in withered hands,\n    Sate in her wounded royalty; and seemed\n    Like an old eagle, taken in the toils,\n    And fallen from the wide extended sway\n    Of her dominion, whence the eye looks down\n    On mountains shrunk to nothing, and the sea\n    Fretting in vain against its boundaries.\n      She sate, with chin thrust forward, listening\n    To the loud shouting and the ring of swords\n    On shields, that sounded from the crowded hall;\n    Where all her ancient bards were emulous\n    In praise, now, of her foes who feasted there.\n    Her humid cell was strown with rotten straw,\n    A roost of owls, and haunt of bats; the wind\n    Blew the cold rain in, and made tremulous\n    The smoking flame, on which her eyes were set;\n    Her raiment was all torn, and stained with blood;\n    Her hair had fallen, and she heeded not:\n    She was alone and friendless, but her eyes\n    Held something kingly that could outfrown Fate.\n    Gray, haggard, wan, and yet with dignity,\n    Which had been beauty once, and now was age,\n    She sate in that foul cellar, as one sits\n    To whom life owes no further injury,\n    Whom no hopes cheat, and no despairs make pale;\n    Though in her heart, and on her rigid face,\n    Despair was throned in gaunt magnificence.\n      A sound disturbed her thought; she turned her head,\n    Waiting, while a strong hand unbarred the door,\n    With hatred burning in her tearless eyes,\n    Ready to front her foes. The huge door gave\n    Creaking, unwillingly, to close again\n    Behind a priest, whose melancholy eyes\n    Were dropped before the anger of her own.\n      \u201cA priest!\u201d she cried; \u201cthey send to me a priest!\n    Mocking me, that my hand first helped these priests\n    Till a priest\u2019s hand was strong to strike me down.\u201d\n      He bent before her, swayed by grief and shame;\n    Then spoke: \u201cBrunhild, they sent me not to thee;\n    But I came willingly, nor feared their wrath.\n    Arnulf and Pippin feast their warriors\n    In the high-raftered hall, and cheer the bards,\n    Who sing of how they smote thee: so I crept\n    Forth from the tumult. At the height of noon\n    To-morrow they will tie thee to a horse\n    That never has known bridle, to be dragged\n    Over the stony ways till thou art dead;\n    And I am come to shrive thee\u201d: and he stayed\n    His tongue; but sorrow filled his frightened eyes.\n      \u201cGo from me,\u201d then she said; \u201cthou knowest how\n    My life has been as angry as a flame,\n    Consumed with its own passions. Go from me:\n    Thou couldst not bear the weight of all my sins.\n    Yea, go. I will not call upon thy God;\n    He is too far from me: could I again\n    Have my old strength and beauty, I should waste\n    Again the earth with my delight in war,\n    And vex my body with the restless loves\n    That my youth knew. A life of war and love;\n    Passions that shake the soul; bright, ruddy flames\n    Devouring speedily this fretful flesh:\n    A life of clamour, shouting, dust and heat,\n    The tumult of the battle, ringing shields,\n    The hiss of sudden arrows through the air,\n    And drumming hoofs of horses in the mad\n    Thunderous fury of the charge, that breaks\n    Baffled, like waves upon a wall of steel:\n    Give me again that life of ecstasy\n    And I shall leave your heaven to its sleep.\u201d\n      She wrapped her cloak about her, close; and frowned\n    Once more upon the flame. He spoke again:\n      \u201cWhen I was long-haired, too, the windy joys\n    Of battle wrought a madness in my blood;\n    Yet never night came but mine eyes would close\n    On sleep, that seemed a mother to my soul,\n    In trustfulness as quiet as a child\u2019s.\n    Hast thou no need of quiet, of a sleep\n    That stretches out its wings and shrouds thee close,\n    Healing thee of all wounds, and wards the day\n    Off from thine eyelids? There is peace in God,\n    If we might find him; but the way is far\n    And difficult of travel for our feet,\n    Leading through all the sounding ways of life\n    And silent ways of death, through whose domain\n    Each blind soul voyages in loneliness:\n    Nor ever has a man with undimmed eyes,\n    Save he whom ravens fed, and he whose voice\n    Sounded the note of triumph, even in Hell,\n    While the dead flocked unto him, and the gates\n    Were lifted up for gladness, travelled it.\n    Wide regions filled with spirits numberless\u2014\u2014\u201d\n      But Brunhild turned on him: \u201cI see them now,\n    Though Death has not yet claimed me, in that flame;\n    And wouldst thou have me go to them in fear,\n    With loosened knees and face untaught to frown?\n    Would they for all my weeping pity me?\n    Yea, there is Fredegonde with mocking eyes:\n    I seem to see my life through smoking blood\n    That she and I have spilt in quarrelling.\n    Shall we too fill, with greater clamour, Hell;\n    Battling like eagles through the gloomy air,\n    That trembles at the passion of our wings?\n    Go from me: I repent not anything.\u201d\n      \u201cNay, yet I shall not go; but rest and hear\n    Thy story in the form it leaves thy lips;\n    Nor question thee, but bless thee and depart.\n    For surely all thy soul yearns backward now\n    To half remembered days, that fill the flame,\n    Even as you say, with floating memories,\n    Purged of the dross, that was a part of them,\n    Nought now but soft gold of thy plastic dreams,\n    Wrought to what shape you will: so have I heard\n    That we judge others and judge not ourselves\n    By a stern measure; and therefore we fail\n    Of perfect justice, which is charity.\u201d\n      \u201cYe, who are sheltered from the world, O priest,\u201d\n    Spake Brunhild, mocking him, \u201chave time to pause\n    Ere your minds fix the measure of pure truth\n    And perfect justice; but our windy life\n    Loses no time on niceties: for me,\n    I gave such justice as I look for now;\n    I swung a hammer on mine enemies,\n    To forge the world anew unto my mind;\n    My cause was justice in mine eyes, and those\n    Who stood against me, enemies of God.\n    Lo! I have failed of all my purposes,\n    And age has come upon me like a cloud;\n    And these old shoulders groan beneath the shame,\n    The bitterness, the burden of defeat:\n    Yet I have seen the star, where others saw\n    Only the froth and spume of angry storms.\u201d\n      He gazed on her with patient, gentle eyes;\n    Bowed, sate she, with her hands clasped round her knees,\n    Incarnate sorrow: then her lion\u2019s head\n    She lifted; and spake once again to him:\n\n      \u201cWhen I came out of Spain to Sigebert\n    The rude Franks wondered at my company,\n    My Moorish falconers and deep-voiced hounds,\n    My swift light-horsemen, harpers, lutanists;\n    And prophesied my days would fly, like gold\n    Out of the loose hands of a prodigal,\n    With the delight of hunting and the glad\n    Singing of minstrels in the crowded hall,\n    Where the red torches mirror on the shields\n    And burnished helmets their tempestuous lights:\n    Ominous fires of slaughter, flickering,\n    To flash out suddenly in angry flame.\n      \u201cBut, for a while, my house was filled with smiles;\n    And Love sate as a guest beside my hearth.\n    Each morning heard the horns call to the chase\n    The loud, glad music of the eager hounds,\n    While huntsmen cheered them onward, and the rides\n    Through woodlands, down the shadow-dappled ways,\n    Woke, in the answering April of my youth,\n    A pleasure that was one thing with the dawn.\n      \u201cSo passed my days, in courtly wise, until\n    Some whisper promised me another Spring\n    Thrilling within my body, and I felt\n    The first strange wakenings of motherhood,\n    The pledge, and prophecy, of future Kings.\n    And I went roaming through the woods no more;\n    Intent on quiet business with my maids,\n    Spinning new wool, or standing by the loom,\n    Or broidering toy baldricks, with gold thread,\n    Bright, to please baby eyes, that love bright things;\n    Dreaming on all the promise, that I held,\n    And all the storm and stress life held for him.\n      \u201cThen first I saw the doom that Nature laid\n    On women, to be careful harvesters;\n    To plan, and toil, and build for unborn sons,\n    To shape the future out of their own time.\n    These turbulent loud nobles with their feuds\n    Carousing nightly, or in companies\n    Changing their hunting-grounds from place to place,\n    Vexed me with their unthrift and wantonness:\n    I saw them as a hindrance to my son,\n    And pitted craft against their stubborn strength,\n    Fighting each step. They were dark, brooding days,\n    Heavy with sullen menace of a storm;\n    Yet found I friendly faces, in despite\n    Of much unbodied anger, for mine eyes\n    Held the soft light that tames the hearts of men.\n    Yea, and I roused them up with angry words\n    To ride with me for vengeance to the Court\n    Of Hilperik and Fredegonde, who slew\n    Galswith, the white-armed sister whom I loved,\n    The slim, fair sister with deep, dreaming eyes\n    As blue as harebells or calm waters are.\n      \u201cAh! I remember that frost-silver dawn,\n    Clouded with curtains of deep-billowing mist\n    That rose to hide the first bright beams of day,\n    In a white froth, out of the wooded plains\u2014\n    Delicate, wreathing, spiral broideries;\n    And how the hoofs rang loud upon the road,\n    Galloping o\u2019er the drawbridge as if foes\n    Pressed close behind; the trembling messenger\n    Spent with hard riding, cold, and white with fear;\n    The steaming flanks and withers of the horse;\n    The soldiers pressing close to hear the news;\n    Sigebert, with his knotted veins, and hands\n    Fast-clenched, and anger flaming in his eyes,\n    As Galswith\u2019s servant cried aloud to us:\n    \u2018Galswith is slain; Galswith, the Queen, is slain!\u2019\n    And then, confusedly, as of a dream\n    Disordered, all the terror of the act\n    He built out of his words before mine eyes:\n    The sharp-cut shadows and the frosty light\n    Showing each angle of my battlements\n    And buttresses; and the light snow, that clung,\n    Frozen, against the cloister\u2019s slender shafts,\n    Hanging them with light-splintering icicles:\n    How clearly can I see it! and the gleam\n    Of scarlet and of steel against the snow;\n    And Galswith\u2019s page, wild-eyed and tremulous,\n    Telling us how, as soft as evil dreams,\n    Hilperik and his harlot crept, by night,\n    Into the shadowy chamber where she lay,\n    Her sweet, frail body nestled close in sleep:\n    Sleep, that alone drove sorrow from her soul;\n    And he, the hairy hound, leaped on her bed,\n    Kneeling on those twin breasts of ivory,\n    And crushed the slender throat in his huge hands!\n      \u201cI think I swayed a little; and I know\n    That something seemed to burn up all desire,\n    Leaving me rigid, filled with winter frosts:\n    For I remembered how, when we were young,\n    And shared one chamber in the donjon keep,\n    When she awoke, and felt the darkness, thick\n    And fearful, on her sunshine-loving eyes,\n    First she would call to me, and then, grown brave\n    At her own tongue\u2019s sweet music, cross the floor\n    To creep into my bed, and cling to me,\n    Telling me how she dreamed that she was dead.\n    Think of that black and lustful ravening beast\n    Spoiling the slim white body! Sigebert\n    Would have lit up the land with war that day;\n    But wisdom counselled patience. Bitterly\n    I waited. But my hate was like a hound\n    That, from afar, marks down his prey at dawn;\n    Though the chase last till evening, he keeps\n    His way through shadows, and the blazing noon,\n    Following, tireless, till his throat has blood.\n    Six years I waited, ere in armoured strength\n    I came to reap their harvests with my sword;\n    And hate to me was sweeter far than love.\n    O priest, was that hate sin?\u201d He answered not\n    At once; but met her gaze with level eyes,\n    Then answered: \u201cBrunhild, thou must ask thy soul.\u201d\n      Perhaps she sought there, but no answer breathed\n    Her unmoved lips, close shut with a strange smile;\n    Then with a gesture, grave, magnificent,\n    She spoke again: \u201cWhat fools have done to me,\n    Or enemies have planned; what shames and wounds\n    Arnulf and Pippin keep for me, or gave:\n    All that I do forgive. But answer, priest:\n    I, who wrought wisely through long weary years\n    To build a kingdom, where was turbulence,\n    And mould a civil state out of this strife,\n    Come at the last unto a shameful death;\n    While Fredegonde, who wrought for her own lust,\n    Died peacefully: has God been just to us?\n    Bow not thy head; bear with my bitterness:\n    Though God desert me in mine hour of need,\n    Yet shall I carry a firm heart to death;\n    Nor blame him, nor blame other than myself,\n    Who never trusted other. These six years\n    Of waiting over, Fredegonde and I\n    Began our war; she, breaking out of bounds,\n    And ravaging some parts of Aquitaine,\n    Till some barbarians from Germany\n    Came at the call of Sigebert, and slew\n    And pillaged all the people up to Chartres,\n    Turning aside to waste and burn the crops,\n    Ploughing the fertile land with war, until\n    Triumphant trumpets, through the startled night\n    Carried our menaces, upon the wind,\n    To Paris, safe among its flooded fields\n    Of reeds, and purple irises, and gold\n    Marsh-mallows, splendid in the light of noon.\n      \u201cThree years our storm of vengeance shook the land\n    Ere Paris fell, and Sigebert in pomp\n    Rode through the gateways, proudly triumphing,\n    And bade me with our children follow him.\n    Hilperik fled to Tournai; and his host\n    Melted as snow in our sweet summer time.\n    How like a bride I felt again that day!\n    My little son beside me on his horse,\n    Carrying high that royal head of his\n    That the sun made more golden, smiled to see\n    Crowding about us all my husband\u2019s men,\n    Who shouted as a welcome in mine ears:\n    \u2018Is Galswith now avenged? Have we done well?\u2019\n    And the cry rippled on through all the ranks\n    While I smiled gladly on them; but my heart\n    Tormented me that Hilperik was fled,\n    And Fredegonde in sanctuary safe,\n    The church of God\u2019s own mother sheltering her.\n      \u201cHow thick the people pressed to gaze on me\n    With sullen brows, or angry, wondering!\n    Till suddenly a voice cried musical\u2014\n    _Lo, what a pearl Spain gave unto the world!_\n    Then, turning at the well-remembered words,\n    I saw, above the shifting, changing crowd,\n    The poet Fortunatus wave to me\n    From a high window, and his maddened eyes,\n    Before the bending street hid him again.\n      \u201cThere is a doom on poets; their fond thought\n    Builds an ambitious phantasy, and calls\n    The frail thing Life; this gossamer of dreams\n    Each strong wind shatters. Priest, perchance it was\n    My beauty, like a wind, had wrecked his web,\n    So that his life became quite purposeless,\n    The whole world being alien to him,\n    And only I seemed to him like a star,\n    Beckoning him. Alas! his errant brain\n    Had clothed me, too, with grace that I had not,\n    And then misjudged me. Yea, I know the world\n    Imputes to me adultery and lust;\n    There is a doom on queens as well, it seems,\n    To have each action weighed by vulgar minds,\n    Criticized by the multitude; their names,\n    Toys, with which fools have grown familiar:\n    Yet who would waste denial on this mob\n    Of idle chatterers whose souls are slime.\n    But, riding through this crowd, there came to me\n    A moment when I saw the hopelessness\n    In him, the hopelessness in all the world,\n    Whose praises are as crowns corruptible,\n    Born, as their worthless blame, of ignorance.\n      \u201cI paused not long upon this wintry thought.\n    The world that I had won, before mine eyes\n    Broke into colour, motion, victory,\n    With banners breaking gay, and flashing steel\n    In serried ranks, as Sigebert rode close\n    To kiss me on the cheek, then drew our son\n    From the huge horse that proudly carried him,\n    To his own saddle-bow; and so they rode\n    Through all the army while I followed them.\u201d\n      The grave voice slackened from its pitch, and fell\n    Quavering, and the silence held them both.\n    Then Brunhild raised again her head and spoke\n    In a deep, even voice and passionless:\n    \u201cThe swallows of our summer soon were fled.\n    Sigebert left me with a slender guard\n    In Paris, and left Hildebert with me:\n    Then pressed on Tournai, after Hilperik,\n    Who fled before him on to Vitry, where\n    His nobles left him, laying down their arms,\n    Crying aloud: \u2018Lo, we are spent with wars,\n    Let Sigebert be King of all the Franks.\u2019\n    So the news came to me one warm eve when,\n    As the sun dropped behind the western hills,\n    I watched the bright stars one by one grow clear\n    In the green lingering of the faded light,\n    While swans came floating to me on the tide\n    Of the strong Seine, which royally they rode\n    With ruffled snowy plumage and arched necks\n    Out of the distance sailing, like a fleet,\n    And turned their course toward a reedy isle\n    Where each one preened its plumage till soft eve\n    With shuttered eyelids lulled them into sleep.\n    So, even as this isle unto the swans,\n    Peace seemed to me a welcome harbourage;\n    I counted now each step beyond clear gain\n    In the slow progress from our lawless state\n    To an imperial dominion set\n    Over the wreck of that old Roman power;\n    And all my thoughts were eagles carrying\n    The thunder of mine edicts through the world.\n    The folk of Paris, too, had heard the news\n    And gathered by the palace gate that night\n    To see me pass them; as I entered in\n    I thought their frowns had faded. Then I took\n    My way toward the room where Galswith died\n    Suddenly, in that terror-stricken night,\n    To tell her that her kingdom now was mine,\n    If haply her pure spirit still might haunt\n    That mildewed chamber, stained and sanctified\n    By her own blood: but by the arras paused,\n    And through my tears looked on the little room\n    Where she had housed so meanly; and it was\n    To me the temple of her shame and wrongs.\n    Then that old lust for blood, unsatisfied,\n    Dried up the gentle sources of my tears,\n    And I turned back; nor thought to enter in\n    While Hilperik still lived, or Fredegonde.\n    Sleep fell upon mine eyes that night, as soft\n    As snow in April on half-opened buds\n    That usher in the many-coloured months,\n    Unvext by dim anxieties and fears\n    Of misadventures, which had troubled sleep\n    These many nights; and Hildebert, my son,\n    Slept the calm sleep of children by my side,\n    His sweet, warm body nestled close to mine,\n    Sharing the same enchanted realm of dreams.\n      \u201cThen seemed it as if rude and angry sounds\n    Rippled our visions, as a pebble thrown\n    In water blurs the cool reflections there,\n    Till growing louder, more tumultuous,\n    A rumour rose above the huddled roofs\n    That clustered round the palace, shattering\n    The crystal of our dreams, and then a voice\n    Shouted to me: \u2018Brunhild, awake and fly!\n    For Sigebert is slain by treachery.\n    Even as we raised him on the kingly shield,\n    Fredegonde\u2019s pages smote on either side\n    With poisoned daggers: all our strength dissolves\n    Into small companies of plunderers\n    Laden with spoil, their horses homeward turned.\u2019\n      \u201cThe harsh voice shuddered through the darkened room\n    Ere torches came, and in their ruddy light\n    I saw the angry eyes of Gondovald\n    Blazing before me with their baffled hate.\n    I trembled by the bed, but mine eyes too\n    Mirrored the angry torches. \u2018Take the boy,\u2019\n    I said to him: \u2018I should but hinder you;\n    But leave me in the refuge of the church.\u2019\n    There by the sleeping saints I sat and watched,\n    Fearing the dawn. So all my work was hurled\n    By ruinous chance to nothing in an hour.\u201d\n      \u201cBrunhild, not chance it was, but punishment:\n    The retribution followed on thy pride;\n    And on thy lust, and hunger for revenge.\u201d\n      But Brunhild turned on him: \u201cWould God destroy\n    A nation newly wakened into life,\n    Because of my one sin; and give the palm\n    Of victory to Fredegonde, whose life\n    Was sin in all its many changing forms?\n    How poor and futile are the sophistries\n    Of schools when one is drawing close to death,\n    That lies before us, silent, shadowy,\n    With veiled horizons and no guiding stars,\n    A vast, unfathomable, empty sea,\n    Broken by no white gleam of friendly sails,\n    Untravelled, claiming all our company,\n    More secret than our wisdom may explore;\n    Into which darkness all of us must go.\n    I go untrammelled by mere selfishness,\n    Conscious that many hopes converged on me,\n    Till I became a symbol in men\u2019s eyes;\n    And still more conscious of the silent strife\n    In mine own spirit when two courses lay\n    Before me, and a voice cried: \u2018Choose the best!\u2019\n    By what I choose now let my soul abide.\n      \u201cOne thing I learned, which is a part of hope\n    With me: God knows how willing is man\u2019s soul,\n    Yet how his life is clouded o\u2019er with doom,\n    And hindered by innumerable things;\n    So he will never judge by what I did,\n    But read my soul, and know thence what I was,\n    As no man knows me. Yet with tears I go;\n    For I have loved the green lap of the earth,\n    Its snowy toppling peaks with golden plumes\n    Of sunset, or with sullen clouds of storm;\n    Yea, I have loved the green fields of the earth,\n    And the gray fields of the eternal sea,\n    And night with its wide heavens, garlanded\n    With the innumerable stars, the moon,\n    Who sometimes like a blown sail in the sky,\n    Voyages, or enchants with gentle beams\n    Woodlands, and winding rivers, and still lakes.\n      \u201cAnd I have loved the seasons in their turn:\n    Spring with her fragile flowers, virginal,\n    Laughing beneath her coverlet of snow;\n    Green Summer with her flocks of singing-birds,\n    Cuckoos, and nightingales, and shrill-voiced lark,\n    And swallows clamorous in crowded nests;\n    Wild Autumn with his wind-swept avenues\n    And fluttering of tawny golden leaves,\n    His late warm ripeness in the apple-trees,\n    The vagueness of his mourning, purple mists;\n    And Winter, finally, with amber lights,\n    His black boughs bare against the azure sky,\n    Or on a gentle, rounded slope of woods,\n    Clouded with purple bloom, his ivied trunks\n    From which the lone owl calls with his deep voice,\n    And, as the rooks pass homeward, overhead\n    The multitudinous murmuring of wings.\n      \u201cAll this I leave, and ways wherein my feet\n    Have grown familiar, to voyage out\n    Upon the darkness, void of any star.\n    But in this little moment which is mine,\n    While all my foes are sleeping, drunkenly,\n    Among the dying lights, the broken meats,\n    Which the dogs tear upon the rush-strewn floor\n    While even the moonlight sleeps upon the hills,\n    I build again, out of my memories,\n    The storm and splendour of my troubled life.\n    Even the narrow frontiers of this cell\n    May in the crystal vision of the mind\n    Hold my remembered royalty, and keep\n    Dim memories of old magnificence,\n    Pomp, courtly festivals, and crowded days,\n    Of lovers who bent yearningly to me,\n    Of poets, who made music at my touch\n    As Memnon at the morning\u2019s, of old kings\n    Grave with their wisdom, and young warriors\n    Whose wisdom was the lightness of their hearts;\n    These haunt my solitude, and pay me court,\n    Nor heed misfortune: but of all this state\n    Only one face is there which fills my soul\n    With some strong healing effluence, a grace\n    Of twilight reveries when all things seem\n    Merged in the peace of God, and we become\n    Part of the clear, intense, eternal flame\n    Whose motion is like music, and we lose\n    Sense of ourselves in drawing close to God.\n    Love, that has cleansed the heart of pettiness,\n    Shows me the face of Merow in my dreams.\u201d\n    And, as she spoke, the face of Brunhild lit\n    With radiance from that old love, her face\n    Softened, and age was as a grace to her.\n      \u201cYea, I loved Sigebert; but all that love\n    Was but my childish wonder at the ways\n    Of men; and I clung close unto his strength.\n    Our friendship might have ripened slow like wine,\n    To be a cheer and comfort to our age,\n    Mellow with wisdom, tranquil, tolerant;\n    Yet is it but a shadow. Happiness\n    Is not the nurture of a steadfast soul;\n    But sorrow binds us with the bonds of love.\n    Love is a suffering, a sacrifice;\n    A hand put out toward all human pain;\n    A fellowship, through danger and the dark:\n    So was the love that Merow taught to me.\n      \u201cThe days of my delight had passed like wind\n    Over the water, and had died away;\n    My lutanists and falconers were far;\n    And I sat lonely and a prisoner,\n    With Praetextatus, guarded carefully,\n    When Merow came to Rouen with a troop\n    Of young, light-hearted warriors, the close\n    Friends of his venturous youth and confidence.\n    How could he look on me with gentle eyes\n    Who had pursued his people like a hawk?\n    Yet then his mind turned back to Andovere,\n    Whom convent walls enclosed, and Fredegonde\n    Seemed now so hateful in his sight, he found\n    Companionship with me in hating her.\n    He, with his friends, all day would hunt the boar,\n    And the wild aurochs, but at night would sit\n    Close to the blazing logs, and there I served\n    The warm, spiced ale to them, or ruddy wine\n    From Macon, till I moved them, every one,\n    So that their eyes grew bright at my approach\n    And faded when I left them; thus it was.\n    But I and Merow had not yet drawn close\n    To one another; for when one advanced\n    The other tarried, so we vexed ourselves\n    With sudden heats, and sudden coldnesses,\n    Making each other sensitive and quick\n    In our resentment. Then one evening\n    There came a messenger from Fredegonde\n    To Merow, and he left our company,\n    So that I saw him not again that night;\n    And in the morning back to Fredegonde\n    Returned the messenger, but Merow went\n    Alone, and brooded much in solitude,\n    Nor heeded me, nor sought to speak with me,\n    As he was wont to on the least pretence.\n      \u201cOne morning to my room there came a page\n    Of Merow\u2019s, who, when I would talk to him\n    At our chance meetings, blushed and hung his head,\n    But, when I heeded not his presence, gazed\n    Long on my face and fed his dreamings there.\n    He came to me by stealth, in secrecy,\n    And laid his hand upon my hand, and spake:\n    \u2018Brunhild, beware of Merow, for he thinks\n    To poison thee, and so to make his peace\n    With Fredegonde, who thus has tempted him.\n    And she has sent him poisons, which the art\n    Of Lapland sorcerers distilled for her,\n    From herbs accurs\u00e9d, in the moon\u2019s eclipse,\n    Bidding him mix the draught into thy wine.\n    So, if he bids thee drink, drink not, but rest\n    Thy lips upon the rim, lest thou shouldst die.\u2019\n      \u201cAh! how the sky seemed barren of all light\n    When the soft voice had finished whispering;\n    And my soul questioned me in weariness:\n    What plan or purpose was there left in life,\n    If my belov\u00e9d plotted death for me?\n    But yet I thanked the page, and let him kiss\n    My hand, and gave him a thick ring of gold,\n    And sent him from me ere I turned to weep.\n      \u201cGreat bitterness was mine for many days:\n    Then one day in the cheerful, fire-lit hall,\n    When Merow and his company had come\n    Home from the chase, and feasted joyfully\n    While his hounds couched beside the glowing fire,\n    Merow, who had been sitting watching me,\n    Called for his horn, ringed several times with gold,\n    And filled it with the warm, spiced, foaming ale\n    From the great bowl; and filled a golden cup\n    Which Praetextatus out of Italy\n    Had brought, and given him, with the red wine;\n    Wrought all of gold this fair cup was, wherein\n    Were Dana\u00eb in the brazen tower shown,\n    And sweet Europa clinging to her Bull,\n    And Leda on a pleasant river-side\n    Crushing the lilies with her silver flank\n    While the Swan kissed her lips and fast-shut eyes;\n    This was the cup that Merow filled, and then\n    He came, and put it in my hands, and spoke:\n      \u201c\u2018Thou fairest among women, whose bright eyes\n    Have lit for us these sunless winter days,\n    With radiant kindliness and gracious smiles\n    Cheering our weariness, though in thy heart\n    Sorrow for Sigebert still weeping lies:\n    How shall we render thanks for courtesy\n    When all our thanks would not outweigh one smile\n    That kindles in thine eyes, and curves thy lips\n    Upward, and lingers there deliciously,\n    Though the deep eyes have once again turned grave\n    With sorrow half remembered? O fair Queen,\n    Sprung of a kingly race, and not like her\n    Whose rule has been a curse unto this land,\n    A bastard peasant, spawned in infamy,\n    We pledge thee in our beakers: pledge thou us\n    And if perchance, O Queen, thy widowed days\n    Pass wearily and sorrow sleep with thee\n    Ere youth has even ripened with the sun\n    In thy clear cheeks, then choose among us men;\n    For we are young, and hardy in the chase,\n    And foremost in the battle, and our limbs\n    Are straight and comely, and our eyes are bright\n    With health, and we have riches, all of us,\n    And all are noble, for our fathers rule\n    Over wide tracts of land and many folk,\n    In their strong castles; but this company\n    Have left the Court where sin and crime are crowned\n    To wander with me through this pleasant land,\n    Delighting in our minstrels and the chase:\n    Or if thou wilt not choose among us here,\n    Then pledge us in the cup, and so shall we\n    Depart hence, for thy beauty troubles us;\n    Yet shall we help thee into thine own land.\u2019\n      \u201cHe spoke, and they applauded; and I took\n    Out of his hand the curious wrought cup,\n    And looked toward the page, even he who came\n    That day to warn me, and he dropped his eyes\n    And shuddered; but I shuddered not. \u2018O Prince,\u2019\n    I answered him, \u2018could all my words avail\n    To thank thee for thy kindliness to me,\n    Yet there would still remain within my heart\n    Thoughts too divine to rise in utterance,\n    Which even lovers\u2019 tongues may never tell,\n    Though their hearts feel them, fluttering with wings.\n    I would some sleight of thine had filled the cup\n    With a love-potion, such as Iseult gave\n    To Tristram, while they journeyed to King Marc\n    In their beaked ship across the glooming sea,\n    And thou hadst tasted of it, ere my lips\n    Drank of the potent venom. But, O Prince,\n    No potion is there to increase my love:\n    Stronger it is than death, and deeper far\n    Than the blue depths of the untravelled sea.\n    Love fills me utterly, and is my blood;\n    So that, belov\u00e9d, hadst thou bade me drink\n    Of some death-working potion Fredegonde\n    Had learned from Lapland sorcerers to brew,\n    Thus would I drink it!\u2019 and I drained the cup,\n    Then spoke once more: \u2018Yea, even if one came\n    To warn me of the snare which she had laid,\n    And that thy heart consented to the deed,\n    As one did come to me.\u2019 \u2018Brunhild!\u2019 he cried;\n    And a loud cry arose from all his friends,\n    A sudden turmoil, suddenly to cease,\n    Leaving them mute, amazed. Then Merow spake:\n      \u201c\u2018Queen, to thine hosts impute no treachery,\n    For Praetextatus and myself are free\n    From guilt in this though Fredegonde conspired:\n    Who said my heart consented lied to thee!\n    O Queen of the white hands and smiling eyes,\n    My heart is not a traitor to its love\n    To harbour evil thoughts against thy peace;\n    And ever since mine eyes first looked on thee\n    To see the wind lift from thy placid brows\n    A tendril of thine aureate, sunlit hair;\n    And ever since mine ears first heard thy voice\n    Fall through the darkness like a gleam of light,\n    Enchanting them with its swift wizardry;\n    And ever since I felt the gentle touch\n    Of thy hand laid upon my hand, which woke\n    And troubled the deep waters of my soul,\u2014\n    My heart has been thy captive. O, my Queen,\n    Life was before me like a mystery\n    Filled with innumerable tongues of fear;\n    But at thy touch I saw the world and life\n    Green with the promise of delightful days,\n    And like a harp of many twisted strings\n    My heart was, on which your white hand did play\u2014\n    Or was it but the wind?\u2014a melody\n    Awakening strange hopes and strong desires\n    And that old dream of beauty, triumphing\n    Within my soul, of how the world might come,\n    In time, to be a garden, such as was\n    Eden upon the hills, which first the dawn\n    Silvers, and broiders with her rosy veils:\n    Eden, where you and I were left, alone!\n    Ah, love, perchance our love might recreate\n    Again that garden walled from our desire!\u2019\n      \u201cWhen he had ended, his strong hand was laid\n    On my slim hand, his fingers twined with mine,\n    His eyes fed on mine eyes; and thus we stood\n    Silent before his friends. As first one bough\n    Whispers unto his fellow, in the wind,\n    Who, soft, repeats to those who neighbour him\n    Until the wood is filled with whisperings,\n    So they unto each other whispered there.\n    But Merow led me silent from the hall\n    Into the night, the company of stars\n    Innumerable, and of fragrant winds\n    Sweet with our secrets, murmuring delight....\n    How softly come these visions of the past!\n    Softly as shadows, or as glimmering sails\n    Upon the moonlit sea, or like shy fish\n    Through green translucent waters, to depart\n    In sudden swirls, while silver bubbles rise.\n      \u201cNext morning Praetextatus said a mass,\n    And laid my hand in Merow\u2019s, his in mine,\n    Making us one.\u201d She paused in sudden pain,\n    Bending her eyes down to the rotten straw,\n    While the priest watched her silent agony.\n    Then once again raised up her head and spake:\n    \u201cWhat canst thou know of love, O loveless priest?\n    How comfort me for all which I have lost?\n    Nay then, bend not nor blush; my bitterness\n    Has made my tongue a whip, I see, to score\n    The poor weak body which is consecrate,\n    Yet sometimes turns from heaven, desiring earth.\u201d\n      She ended, and the priest spake unto her,\n    Turning on her his melancholy eyes:\n    \u201cBrunhild, I blame thee not for bitterness,\n    Nor that thy words have vexed my quiet soul\n    With passions that I thought asleep at last.\n    Suffering is a part of my desire;\n    It is a part of knowledge, and a part\n    Of that great human heart which calls on God\n    Because it is so comfortless on earth.\n    Rather I thank thee for awakening\n    Something within my soul that thrills with love\n    For that sweet human love which promises\n    The fluttering caress of children\u2019s hands,\n    Their flute-like voices waking with the dawn,\n    The gaiety and laughter of their day.\n    But all these fleeting voices of our life,\n    The loves and sensual desires of earth,\n    Our joy in childhood, are but memories\n    Of innocence in sheltered Paradise,\n    Where in one music, flowering like flames,\n    They mix together, swelling symphonies\n    Celestial beyond our mortal ears.\n    So to me once there came a dream more fair\n    Of love unhindered by mortality\n    That veils us from each other, but which flowed,\n    Two souls in unison, as when two flames\n    Meet, and are one, and have a common life.\n    Yea, my desire at last is one with God:\n    And children are his messengers on earth.\u201d\n      Then Brunhild answered him: \u201cIn the frail light,\n    I see so many children whom I bore:\n    But there are none of Merow\u2019s children there;\n    Our marriage was a moment: and our sons\n    Were dreams we saw in one another\u2019s eyes.\n    Yet if I speak of him my spirit feels,\n    Through the thin veils of flesh, the gentle touch\n    Of ghostly hands put out to comfort me:\n    Hands that were Merow\u2019s, tremulous with love.\n    Ah! shall I speak to you of that calm dawn,\n    When we two rode together toward Tours,\n    Through woods but newly wakened into life?\n    The spring was laughing with her April eyes,\n    Her fingers decked each bough with tender bloom\n    Of bud and blossom, and her feet awoke\n    The daisies, primroses, and violets,\n    While many birds, her swift-winged messengers,\n    Shrilled, from each dripping bough, her hymns of love,\n    In notes that chimed as sweet as rain on leaves;\n    And swallows hawked for flies above each pool,\n    That mirrored their light motion glassily.\n      \u201cMile upon mile we rode, through wood and field,\n    High pastures where the shepherds tended sheep,\n    Counting the new-dropped lambs, and valleys green\n    Where hamlets sheltered, smoke-wreaths from each house\n    Curled upward slowly in the windless air,\n    And sparrows quarrelled on the well-thatched roofs,\n    Until at noon we found a sheltered spring,\n    In a small hollow under aspen trees.\n    Margined by reeds this mirror was, and gold\n    With mallows in the reeds, and smooth grass lay\n    About it, and the water bubbled clear\n    Out of a fissure where grew many ferns.\n    There, while the horses cropped the tender grass,\n    We sate together, and no word was said.\n    But on a sudden Merow took my hand\n    In his, and looked at me with pleading eyes.\n    I dropped my gaze, and silent plucked a flower.\n    But ever closer drew that yearning face;\n    And his hand grew more amorous, his mouth\n    Closed upon mine; nor was I hard to win,\n    Wearied with my desire and love for him.\n    So the woods saw our wedlock, while the bees\n    Went murmuring about the white-starred grass,\n    At their sweet business, as we at ours;\n    Till Merow spake: \u2018Dear heart, the night creeps on,\n    Hanging the distance with her silver mists,\n    And the swift-darting swallows leave the pool\n    Unrippled by their wings, while the quick bat\n    Haunts their deserted ways in flickering haste:\n    Come, let us journey onward now to Tours.\n    Is the way weary that is urged by love,\n    Love, who has shown us so delightful things?\u2019\n      \u201cHe raised me to the saddle, kissed the foot\n    He placed within the stirrup, and we rode,\n    Regretting that green harbourage of joy\n    Strown with its fragrant herbs. The moonlight played\n    Between the branches swaying overhead,\n    To throw fantastic shadows on the ground,\n    And the shy horses restive grew with fright\n    When a wolf howled, and fear pursued our feet.\n    Quietly rode we down the dusky ways;\n    Till Merow paused and listened, and we heard\n    Behind us, muffled, or ringing on the stones,\n    The beat of many hoofs. Ah! then we rode\n    With the keen sense of danger that is joy,\n    Galloping down the steep and stony path,\n    Abreast, where a false step would ruin all,\n    As if we played a game of chance with Fate;\n    And Merow smiled at me and I at him.\n      \u201cSoon the woods thinned where many trees lay felled,\n    And slopes of pasture rolled toward the Loire,\n    Enchanted with the moonlight; and we saw,\n    Black on the silver sky, the new-built tower\n    Of Tours unfinished, with its beacon fire.\n    But ever closer drew our enemies,\n    Till, on the level road toward the ford,\n    Merow and I gave our brave horses rein\n    And heard grow fainter the hoarse threats of those\n    Hired murderers, and won the goal at last,\n    Secure for night with wise old Gregory.\n      \u201cLong after matins, in the carven choir,\n    Sweet with the scent of cedar, and the breath\n    Of incense lingering like a ghost of prayer,\n    Came Gregory, and spoke reproving me:\n    \u2018Brunhild, I know not whether temperate\n    The heart of woman ever is, but thine\n    Is all too quick, too passionate, untamed,\n    Too rash in the pursuit of its desire,\n    Too heedless of the motion of thy friends.\n    Fredegonde feared and hated thee, but force\n    Constrained her unto patience for a time:\n    Since Gondovald had threatened her with war\n    If she should harm thee, and her forces were\n    Disheartened, and the land weighed down with dearth,\n    Threatening famine if the harvest fail.\n    She saw her throne secure and \u2019stablished firm\n    As a sure heritage for her own son,\n    Contemptuous of Merow, whose light heart,\n    Unversed in intricate state subtilty,\n    Was pleasured most in roaming through the woods,\n    Or in an idle courtly dalliance\n    With lute-players and poets of his train;\n    Yet did she not intend that he should live\n    Longer than those ephemeral, fair things,\n    To whom the warmth of one delightful day,\n    And fragrance of the flowers, are all life:\n    When the time came she would be as a hawk\n    To rend the singing-bird she so despised.\n    Thou shouldst have fled alone to Gondovald,\n    And Merow, then, have followed thee by stealth;\n    But now the way is lost: thy passions ride\n    Full-armoured through restraint, though careful hands\n    And cunning might have lifted up the nets.\n    Thy flight with Merow fans into a flame\n    Passions of fear, dynastic jealousies.\n    Merow alone were nothing, but with thee\n    He is a danger in her path, a sword\n    To be encountered ere Lothair may sit\n    Throned above France.\u2019 I rose and answered him:\n      \u201c\u2018I have been blinded by the tears of Love,\n    Lulled into heavy slumber with his wine,\n    Till life slipped by me, fugitive as dreams,\n    While I lay drowned in an excess of joy,\n    Fed but unsated, and insatiable.\n    Ah! this interminable stress of life\n    Intruding on the splendid pageantry,\n    Wherein is decked the gaudy press of dreams,\n    That flatter love, as if another sense,\n    Imagination, showed us the true world.\n    I am but half a dreamer, and can shut\n    My purpose close unto the narrow view,\n    To seize the nearest opportunity,\n    Weaving it into this strange web of life,\n    As now I make the fate of Merow mine.\n    Yet am I compact of so many moods,\n    That a great yearning comes on me at times\n    For an illimitable night of stars,\n    Jewelling with their fire the purple vault\n    Of Heaven, wherein my soul would hang, alone,\n    Unconscious of this striving purposeless,\n    That vexes all our being; and anon\n    Comes, soft as flutes on an enchanted night,\n    The murmur of Life\u2019s magic in mine ears.\n    The old cajoler and her henchman Love\n    Lure me into their arms again with spells,\n    That veil the infinite in warm desires,\n    Cloaks and dissimulations of her aim.\n      \u201c\u2018So have I fed on dreams this month or more.\n    But a new motive quickens in my mind,\n    And all my old ambitions are astir;\n    Fredegonde day and night may toil and spin,\n    I am the fresher for that I have slept\n    If Gondovald may threaten her from Metz\n    With armies of my followers and friends,\n    Sworn to my service, may not I from here\n    Threaten as well and equally be heard?\n    And when her fear of armies is aroused,\n    May I not lull to sleep those other fears\n    Born of my love for Merow, telling her\n    That he was but a means to my escape.\n    Love never hindered her in the pursuit\n    Of her ambition; lovers are her dupes:\n    So let her judge of me. Merow will stay\n    In Tours with you, hiding his yellow hair\n    And simulated sorrow in a cowl,\n    Till I am firmly seated by my son.\n    Then let him come to me, and we shall weld\n    The kingdoms of the Franks into one crown\n    Imperial, whose might will shake the world,\n    And roll Mahomet back to his own place\n    Before our banners blazoned with the Cross.\n    Lend me thy help in this, and I shall bless\n    Thy church and Rome with many precious gifts,\n    Spoiled of the conquered.\u2019 And he answered me:\n      \u201c\u2018Thou art a woman such as deserts breed:\n    A prophetess among the elect of God,\n    Who lays his mission on thee, with his hand,\n    As even once on Judith, and on Jael,\n    On Miriam, and Esther; such an one\n    As burns with all the strength and wrath of God,\n    Consumed with zeal, devoted unto death,\n    A sword of hatred to the impious.\n    Plough up this land again with bloody war;\n    And I shall bless thy work. A Herod sits\n    Supreme above us: reach to pluck him down,\n    This Nero of our time, this hangman king,\n    Who spoils our abbeys and the Church\u2019s land:\n    Let him be as the quarry to thy hounds.\n    What matter if the ruin of the rain\n    Cumber our garden-paths with fallen leaves\n    Or ever autumn come, when nourished Earth\n    But grows more fecund at its fertile touch,\n    And germinates with new luxuriance?\n    Let us not waste this night, but seek a means\n    To freedom for thee. Merow stays with me\n    Waiting until their vigilance be dulled,\n    And rusted by slow time; till idleness\n    Become a hunger after wanton sports;\n    Till I have lured them into vain delights\n    Of banqueting, and music, and the chase\n    After such game, or fierce or amorous,\n    As their lust shows them, perilously keen.\n    But, meanwhile, I shall send to Fredegonde\n    Two counsellors of subtile wit, to weave\n    Light snares about her so she feel them not,\n    Till, multiplied, they hold as fast as steel.\u2019\n      \u201cSo planned we in the shadowy dim aisles,\n    In confidence of time, as if it brought\n    Ever expected gifts and no defeat:\n    And ere another morn I fled, alone,\n    By unfrequented ways: and many years\n    Passed ere I looked on Gregory again.\u201d\n\n    No motion made the priest as Brunhild paused;\n    His eyes avoided hers. She was as one\n    Towering over the departed years,\n    The sea of years her memory like a shell\n    Held echoes of, and reminiscent sounds.\n    And above all her insults and disgrace,\n    The burden of her age, the bitter wrongs,\n    She rose into a calm, majestic realm,\n    That eagles might inhabit, with her mind\n    Intent upon the spectacle of life,\n    Yet heedless of her fate; no shame could touch\n    The soul that breathed in so serene an air,\n    Superior to mortal accidents.\n    But the priest felt that effluence from her\n    Shed a strange glory round the humid cell\n    And fill him with a fearful sense of fate:\n    The blind, remorseless progress of the world.\n    Sombre and threatening, her figure cut\n    Prow-like, and loomed through huge, tempestuous night,\n    Toward a doom obscure and imminent.\n      She spoke again in slow and weary words:\n    \u201cMerow remained with Gregory; but time\n    Brought no release for his imprisoned feet\n    Or the wild soul pent in that cloistral peace\n    Among the gilt and painted images\n    Of the dead saints, the effigies of stone,\n    The prisoned light, the windless, silent air\n    That came not fresh from out the heart of dawn,\n    But hung upon him heavily as death,\n    Damp with its charnels; and the solemn chants\n    Filled him with longing for the loud-voiced larks,\n    And he was eager for my lips again.\n      \u201cAh, God! what ruin lurked within his love.\n    He fled by night from that safe harbourage,\n    On foot, into the woods, and careless roamed\n    Through unknown ways, and couched with herds of deer\n    In brakes and bowery hollows, that the sound\n    Of their swift flight when wolves drew close at night,\n    Warned and awakened him; or he would creep\n    At evening to some lone sequestered farm,\n    Hid in a fold of hills, and win his food,\n    His place beside the fire, with merry songs\n    Tuned to a rustic harp, deluding hosts\n    With tales of how he lived by minstrelsy:\n    Yet never rested longer than the night,\n    But with the dawn departed, ere the birds\n    Woke to their song, and man from healing sleep\n    To his laborious struggle with the earth;\n    Silent he slipped from them, that none might know\n    The path he travelled, and next night would lie\n    On some lone upland underneath the stars.\n    While, as he wandered, drawing close to me,\n    I dreamed him still at Tours, and had no hope\n    To see him, for my lords were turbulent,\n    Grown headstrong in mine absence, and my son\n    Had not yet learned the art of governance:\n    To play on rival jealousies, and split\n    Alliances in factions; to dissolve\n    Confederacies, as an acid eats\n    Through base alloy of idols composite,\n    Till the whole crumble; to lead many weak\n    Against one strong, and win the name of Right,\n    Come in full arms to succour the distressed,\n    And break the bonds of tyranny; to pay\n    The world with phrases; lead the ductile mob,\n    Swayed by a momentary need, to ends\n    Imperial, that crown our finished work.\n    So wrought I with my proud rebellious lords,\n    Rousing the populace against their strength,\n    Sowing among them mutual distrust,\n    And fear, and drove them out with ruthless hands,\n    To herd with their own fellows, the lean wolves\n    Of winter, famishing, who bay in pack,\n    When the full moon hangs low, and golden grows,\n    Over the rim of the Atlantic waste.\n      \u201cSo swept I out my house and garnished it,\n    In preparation for the perfect guest,\n    Who comes on dove\u2019s wings silently, nor thought\n    That one on sable wings, more silently,\n    Would enter in and take the seat of Love.\n    Rumour, that travels on each wanton wind,\n    Swifter than birds may fly, from tongue to tongue\n    Came laden with the news of violence wrought\n    In Rouen, by command of Fredegonde\n    On Praetextatus, the poor kindly priest,\n    Who took the ring from Merow for my hand,\n    And blessed the union that had been so brief.\n    Then there awoke in me that sense which feels\n    Strange intuitions of approaching doom,\n    And Fear crept through my dreams on stealthy feet,\n    Or crouched beside me, and the darkness seemed\n    Alive with evil; but I steeled my heart\n    To wait on time and all that time might bring\n    Of good or evil. Then from Gregory\n    Came messengers, who told of Merow\u2019s flight,\n    And that the hounds of Fredegonde pursued\n    The fugitive through all frequented ways,\n    And forests, and waste places, and the lone\n    Bare mountains, sterile underneath the stars,\n    Yea, every valley, every hidden place,\n    Lest they should lose him, and the harlot queen\n    Avenge on them her seat grown insecure,\n    Through lack of vigilance. God, how the days\n    Lengthened their minutes into weary hours,\n    And weary hours to days! as if the time\n    Were frozen with the fear that gripped my heart,\n    And moved not onward to the destined end,\n    Ordained ere time. I could but send some men\n    Toward the frontier of her land and mine;\n    Yet some I trusted knew that to my love\n    There were no frontiers but that boundary\n    Between the quick and dead. They went in quest;\n    I waited. And one night was borne to me,\n    Upon a litter, bloody and befouled,\n    The corpse of Merow carried shoulder-high\n    By mourning bearers; and I sat like stone,\n    Dumb, tearless, stricken by excess of tears\n    That would not weep, but lay congealed within\n    Mine overburdened heart. All night I sat\n    In silence, weeping not, until the stars\n    Were lost in dawn, until the silver dawn\n    Blossomed with splendour to a golden day;\n    Yet knew I not that day had come, for clouds\n    Covered the light of morning from mine eyes,\n    Hid me in wells of darkness and thick night,\n    A Niobe of stone, but lacking tears\n    Which else had melted stone; till, fearfully,\n    My son came to me and put out his hand\n    And touched me gently; and, as in deep pools\n    One sees obscurely through the broken lights\n    And rippling shadows, so upon my sight,\n    Though faint and blurred, a vision of my son\n    Came to me, and I saw a shadowy crowd\n    Of crouching beings far behind my son,\n    As vague as ghosts, who filled the silent room;\n    And then I heard my voice as from afar,\n    Muffled in gloom, a voice that seemed not mine,\n    Bidding them leave me; and like ghosts they went:\n    All but my son, who knelt beside my chair\n    Sobbing out bitterly some broken words,\n    That held less comfort than his trembling hands.\n      \u201cSlowly there came to me the governance\n    Of limbs again, and from my chair I rose,\n    And went toward the litter where he lay,\n    The spoil of death, in ruined loveliness;\n    Breathless, whose breath had once made amorous\n    The night with music. And I touched his eyes,\n    Which kindliness had closed with piteous hands\n    Before they brought him me, and knelt beside\n    The bier, and spoke to him. He heard me not:\n    For he had gone the irremeable way,\n    Into which darkness may not penetrate\n    The voice of love, nor yearning nor desire\n    Pass its grim boundaries, but brooding wings\n    Of silence cover its eternal sleep.\n    Lost utterly! Yet still I spoke to him,\n    As if, perchance, some whisper of my voice\n    Might stir the pools of silence where he lay,\n    And tremble lightly on the veils of sleep,\n    Waking some consciousness of me. Alas!\n    He was not there with me, but on the wind,\n    In every tree, his soul went wandering,\n    Through all the world dispersed. Yet still I spoke\n    Gently to him, and kissed him; till my son\n    Wept piteously by me, until tears\n    Gathered in mine own eyes and I too wept\n    In silence, by the body of my love.\u201d\n\n      \u201cA sudden chill has struck me: do I shake?\n    I would not have this trembling of old age\n    Imputed to me as a show of fear;\n    Only the wind of dawn has chilled my blood,\n    Grown sluggish now. Death will be kind to me.\n    Does the dawn lighten? Nay, I thought the stars\n    Grew paler, but a mist was on mine eyes.\n    So long are these few hours I have to live,\n    Ere death come: yet it seems a little while\n    To those who smell the odorous warm earth,\n    Steaming in heat, and have the cattle\u2019s breath,\n    And scent of bean-fields wafted, and the choir\n    Of birds, and distant bleating of the sheep,\n    Coming from some dew-laden mountain-slope\n    Of pasture o\u2019er the corn-lands: those, who look\n    On life, have merry hours, that fly too swift,\n    To dancing measures, but our dying eyes\n    See stretched before us all eternity,\n    That passes never. Voices come to me\n    Out of the deep, insurgent spirits throng\n    The gloomy portals, through which I must pass,\n    Blown like autumnal leaves, in whirling flight,\n    Above the dim untenanted abyss.\n    Some have their faces darkened, as they fade\n    Into that darkness; others, issuing thence,\n    Have caught the light of morning in their eyes,\n    And rise toward the sunny warmth of life,\n    To take Fate\u2019s spindle from our failing hands:\n    They ride in golden panoply, a pomp\n    Of kings, to reap the harvest we have sown,\n    And do the things we dreamed, but failed to do.\n    What man of them shall sit where C\u00e6sar sate,\n    Who sent his missionary eagles forth\n    Into strange countries, bearers of the light,\n    Makers of laws; who from the utmost bounds\n    Of Euxine to where Gades lifts its prow\n    Above the thunder of the surge and fronts\n    The unexplored Atlantic, questioning\n    The secret hid by separating seas,\n    Held tributary peoples numberless\n    In fee; and through whose subjugated lands\n    Glided the Nile between its reedy flats\n    Where Memnon sits; and the broad-bosomed flow\n    Of dark Euphrates by the ruined towers\n    Of Babylon, from whence of old was seen\n    By wise Chald\u00e6an sorcerers, the light,\n    Majestic, of the new-born Syrian star;\n    Yea, and our Rhine fed by its cataracts,\n    Whose forests keep the night, and Danube full\n    Where Ovid mourned the loss of all his loves,\n    And in the hollow land Eurotas clear,\n    Cold with the streaming snows of Taygetus,\n    The nurse and mother of that austere brood\n    Sprung from the loins of Heracles, and those\n    Twin sons of Leda, for whom Helen\u2019s eyes\n    Yearned from the walls of Troy and yearned in vain:\n    Through all these lands triumphant eagles led\n    Rome\u2019s legions, and peace followed after them\n    With civil order and restraint of laws.\n    But Rome herself, circled by seven hills,\n    Astride the Tiber\u2019s fluctuating gold,\n    Though less of girth was greater than all these,\n    Not through dominion over them, but in\n    The civic sense, which quickened in her sons\n    Grave dignity, and reticence, and care:\n    Rome never bred but rulers; Rome, whose womb\n    Gave to the earth this Europe which is ours!\n    Her progress was the progress of the world,\n    Which fell with her, and now disjected lies\n    Prone in the dust, a prey to savage strife.\n      \u201cTo build it up again! I dreamed to raise\n    An empire on the ruins of the old,\n    Whose seat should be the Rhine. I was a voice\n    Crying within the wilderness. Alas!\n    The vision is for the appointed time.\n    These eyes shall see it not. But even now\n    There moves among the people a desire\n    For some firm order. Like the blind they grope,\n    Or those who walk in darkness, stretching out\n    Their hands, whose sense may take the part of sight\n    And feel the unseen; yet many times they fall,\n    Or wander from the object of their quest\n    For lack of eyes. Mine eyes were for the blind,\n    My sight was for a lamp unto their feet,\n    My hands to guide them; but they trusted not,\n    Seeking, each one, an individual path,\n    By divers ways, unto the common end.\n    Not in these nobles, insubordinate,\n    Who wanton through our fertile land of France,\n    Is my assurance fixed; but in the mass\n    Of common folk, who feel the crowning need\n    For a co-ordinate and civic zeal\n    That buildeth slowly, but whose work endures.\n    There, where that people is, is Rome renewed;\n    And where is Rome is C\u00e6sar. Lo! the dawn\n    Uplifts, unto the stars, her silver spear\n    And parts the darkness. Shall I give thee thanks,\n    O priest, for this long vigil thou hast kept\n    With me through all the darkness and despair?\n    But take this ring as a memorial;\n    These many nights it has lain by my heart,\n    Secreted from the spoilers. When they robbed\n    All else of worth from me, they did not look\n    For love between my breasts, and there it lay,\n    This emerald, which Merow gave to me,\n    Wedding me with it. Hide it in thy cowl.\n    Now go from me, for now I am content\n    To die, nor fear the little hour of pain,\n    That comes ere all pain ceases in a sleep.\u201d\n\n      Alone, she closed her eyes, and wearily\n    Her head sank from its old imperious poise,\n    Slackening to the shoulder, and her arms\n    Hung listless by her with the hands unnerved,\n    Turned upward from the bench on which she sat;\n    And numbness fell upon her, and thick sleep\n    Covered her soul and senses with the calm\n    And healing of oblivion; while the bats\n    Came fluttering on quick and noiseless wings\n    Down the pale shaft of silver light that streamed\n    Through the short rounded arches high above.\n    Twittering came they from their native night,\n    And hung themselves in huddled companies\n    From the rude blackened rafters overhead,\n    Far up where darkness lingers through the day;\n    Then were they silent. But, outside, the dawn\n    Quickened with golden fire the Alpine peaks,\n    Plumed with their sombre pines, and crowned with snow,\n    In frozen brilliance, sparkling: lesser hills\n    Rose gradually, shouldering aloft,\n    Abrupt and cyclopean monuments\n    Of elemental anger, and beyond\n    Rose dome on dome of everlasting snow,\n    Blue glaciers, that broke the sharp white fire\n    Of dawn into a myriad flaming swords,\n    Invading the ethereal, azure sky\n    Like sudden lightning, or the wonder seen\n    By Laplanders, through the long Arctic night,\n    Illuminating, with its splendid flames,\n    The level stretches of the tideless sea.\n\n\n\n\nNOTE TO THE VIGIL OF BRUNHILD\n\n\nBrunhild was the daughter of Athanagilde, King of the Spanish Wisigoths.\nThe following passages from the \u201cHistoire de France\u201d edited by M. Ernest\nLavisse have served as the basis of the poem.\n\n\u201cL\u2019ann\u00e9e m\u00eame o\u00f9 mourut Caribert apparaissent les deux femmes dont le nom\nremplit l\u2019histoire de cette p\u00e9riode. Le roi Sigebert avait des m\u0153urs plus\ndouces que ses fr\u00e8res; il n\u2019avait point contract\u00e9 comme eux d\u2019union avec\ndes servantes; il r\u00eavait de se marier avec une fille de roi. La cour des\nWisigoths d\u2019Espagne jetait \u00e0 ce moment un vif \u00e9clat.... Sigebert envoya\nune ambassade aupr\u00e8s du roi Athanagilde et demanda la main de sa fille\nBrunehaut. Elle lui fut accord\u00e9e.... Le manage fut c\u00e9l\u00e9br\u00e9 dans la ville\nde Metz.... Ce mariage valut \u00e0 Sigebert un grand renom, et Chilp\u00e9ric\nfut jaloux de son fr\u00e8re. Il avait \u00e9pous\u00e9 Andov\u00e8re, dont il avait eu\ntrois fils: Th\u00e9odebert, M\u00e9rov\u00e9e et Clovis; puis il l\u2019avait r\u00e9pudi\u00e9e et\nvivait dans la d\u00e9bauche, soumis \u00e0 l\u2019empire d\u2019une servante, Fr\u00e9d\u00e9gonde.\nMais apr\u00e8s le mariage de Sigebert, il renvoya la servante, et demanda \u00e0\nAthanagilde la main de sa fille a\u00een\u00e9e, Galswinthe. Le roi de Wisigoths\nconsentit.\n\n\u201cUn matin, on trouva Galswinthe \u00e9trangl\u00e9e dans son lit. Peu de jours\napr\u00e8s le roi \u00e9pousa Fr\u00e9d\u00e9gonde.... Sigebert, pour venger sa belle-s\u0153ur,\npr\u00e9para la guerre. Mais Gontran imposa sa m\u00e9diation et l\u2019on traita....\nChilp\u00e9ric renon\u00e7a \u00e0 la possession des territoires qui formaient le\ndouaire de Galswinthe et les livra \u00e0 Sigebert. La guerre civile fut ainsi\n\u00e9vit\u00e9e; elle n\u2019\u00e9clatera que six ann\u00e9es plus tard, en 573.\n\n\u201cSigebert finit par \u00eatre victorieux. Il entre \u00e0 Paris au m\u00e9pris de la\nconvention de 567 et y fait venir sa femme Brunehaut, ses filles et\nson jeune fils Childebert; puis il poursuit Chilp\u00e9ric jusqu\u2019\u00e0 Tournai.\nChilp\u00e9ric est abandonn\u00e9 par les grands qui proclament Sigebert leur roi\net l\u2019\u00e9l\u00e8vent sur le pavois dans la _villa_ de Vitry. Mais, pendant la\nc\u00e9r\u00e9monie, deux esclaves r\u00e9ussissent \u00e0 s\u2019approcher du triomphateur et\nle frappent de deux coups de _scramasax_; dans la rainure des poignards\nFr\u00e9d\u00e9gonde avait fait couler du poison (575).\n\n\u201c\u00c0 la mort de son rival, Chilp\u00e9ric retourna vers Paris.... Le duc\nGondovald r\u00e9ussit \u00e0 sauver le fils de Sigebert, un enfant de cinq ans: il\nle conduisit \u00e0 Metz, o\u00f9 il le fit reconna\u00eetre roi le jour de No\u00ebl; mais\nBrunehaut, et ses filles demeur\u00e8rent prisonni\u00e8res; les filles furent\nd\u00e9tenues \u00e0 Meaux, Brunehaut emmen\u00e9e a Rouen.\n\n\u201cSa beaut\u00e9 avait vivement frapp\u00e9e le fils de Chilp\u00e9ric, M\u00e9rov\u00e9e; celui-ci\nl\u2019avait \u00e9pous\u00e9e en secret et avait favoris\u00e9 sa fuite. Poursuivi par la\nhaine implacable de Fr\u00e9d\u00e9gonde, M\u00e9rov\u00e9e dut se faire consacrer clerc,\npuis chercher un asile \u00e0 Saint-Martin de Tours; finalement il fut tu\u00e9 par\nles sicaires de la mar\u00e2tre.\u201d\n\nDefeated and taken by her rebellious nobles under Pippin and Arnulf in\n613, \u201cBrunehaut fut tortur\u00e9e pendant trois jours. On l\u2019assit en signe\nd\u2019opprobre sur un chameau et on la livra aux outrages de l\u2019arm\u00e9e. Enfin\non l\u2019attacha par les cheveux, un bras et un pied \u00e0 la queue d\u2019un cheval,\nque des coups de fouet entra\u00een\u00e8rent en une course rapide, et bient\u00f4t son\ncorps ne fut plus qu\u2019 \u2018une loque informe.\u2019\u201d Her age, according to Guizot,\nwas eighty.\n\n\u201cBrunehaut en somme a \u00e9t\u00e9 conduite toute sa vie par une id\u00e9e, et non\npas exclusivement, comme la plupart des barbares m\u00e9rovingiens, par des\ncaprices et des passions. Elle a voulu maintenir, avec l\u2019absolutisme\nroyal, les principes d\u2019ordre et de bonne administration.\u201d\n\nModifications in this story have been suggested by A. Thierry\u2019s \u201cR\u00e9cits\ndes Temps M\u00e9rovingiens,\u201d and by Dean Kitchin\u2019s \u201cHistory of France.\u201d\nThe various accounts given by these authorities will justify me for\nan imaginative treatment of the story; and, though I lay claim to no\nhistorical accuracy, the story as I present it is, probably, as near to\nthe truth as any other version. History is not a science: it is prophecy\nlooking backward, and no doubt is often as far from scientific truth as\nthe more conventional mode of prophecy.\n\n\n_Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._","title":"The Vigil of Brunhild: A Narrative Poem","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":11029}