Rose Mary - Part 1

PART I

" Mary mine that art Mary's Rose,
Come in to me from the garden-close.
The sun sinks fast with the rising dew,
And we marked not how the faint moon grew;
But the hidden stars are calling you.

" Tall Rose Mary, come to my side,
And read the stars if you'd be a bride.
In hours whose need was not your own,
While you were a young maid yet ungrown,
You've read the stars in the Beryl-stone.

" Daughter, once more I bid you read;
But now let it be for your own need:
Because to-morrow, at break of day,
To Holy Cross he rides on his way,
Your knight Sir James of Heronhaye.

" Ere he wed you, flower of mine,
For a heavy shrift he seeks the shrine.
Now hark to my words and do not fear;
Ill news next I have for your ear;
But be you strong, and our help is here.

" On his road, as the rumour's rife,
An ambush waits to take his life.
He needs will go, and will go alone;
Where the peril lurks may not be known;
But in this glass all things are shown."

Pale Rose Mary sank to the floor: —
" The night will come if the day is o'er!"
" Nay, heaven takes counsel, star with star,
And help shall reach your heart from afar:
A bride you'll be, as a maid you are."

The lady unbound her jewelled zone
And drew from her robe the Beryl-stone.
Shaped it was to a shadowy sphere, —
World of our world, the sun's compeer,
That bears and buries the toiling year.

With shuddering light 'twas stirred and strewn
Like the cloud-nest of the wading moon:
Freaked it was as the bubble's ball,
Rainbow-hued through a misty pall
Like the middle light of the waterfall.

Shadows dwelt in its teeming girth
Of the known and unknown things of earth;
The cloud above and the wave around, —
The central fire at the sphere's heart bound,
Like doomsday prisoned underground.

A thousand years it lay in the sea
With a treasure wrecked from Thessaly;
Deep it lay 'mid the coiled sea-wrack,
But the ocean-spirits found the track:
A soul was lost to win it back.

The lady upheld the wondrous thing: —
" Ill fare" (she said) " with a fiend's-fairing:
But Moslem blood poured forth like wine
Can hallow Hell, 'neath the Sacred Sign;
And my lord brought this from Palestine.

" Spirits who fear the Blessed Rood
Drove forth the accursed multitude
That heathen worship housed herein, —
Never again such home to win,
Save only by a Christian's sin.

" All last night at an altar fair
I burnt strange fires and strove with prayer;
Till the flame paled to the red sunrise,
All rites I then did solemnize;
And the spell lacks nothing but your eyes."

Low spake maiden Rose Mary: —
" O mother mine, if I should not see!"
" Nay, daughter, cover your face no more,
But bend love's heart to the hidden lore,
And you shall see now as heretofore."

Paler yet were the pale cheeks grown
As the grey eyes sought the Beryl-stone:
Then over her mother's lap leaned she,
And stretched her thrilled throat passionately,
And sighed from her soul, and said, " I see."

Even as she spoke, they two were 'ware
Of music-notes that fell through the air;
A chiming shower of strange device,
Drop echoing drop, once twice and thrice,
As rain may fall in Paradise.

An instant come, in an instant gone,
No time there was to think thereon.
The mother held the sphere on her knee: —
" Lean this way and speak low to me,
And take no note but of what you see."

" I see a man with a besom grey
That sweeps the flying dust away."
" Ay, that comes first in the mystic sphere;
But now that the way is swept and clear,
Heed well what next you look on there."

" Stretched aloft and adown I see
Two roads that part in waste-country:
The glen lies deep and the ridge stands tall;
What's great below is above seen small,
And the hill-side is the valley-wall."

" Stream-bank, daughter, or moor and moss,
Both roads will take to Holy Cross.
The hills are a weary waste to wage;
But what of the valley-road's presage?
That way must tend his pilgrimage."

" As 'twere the turning leaves of a book,
The road runs past me as I look;
Or it is even as though mine eye
Should watch calm waters filled with sky
While lights and clouds and wings went by."

" In every covert seek a spear;
They'll scarce lie close till he draws near."
" The stream has spread to a river now;
The stiff blue sedge is deep in the slough,
But the banks are bare of shrub or bough."

" Is there any roof that near at hand
Might shelter yield to a hidden band?"
" On the further bank I see but one,
And a herdsman now in the sinking sun
Unyokes his team at the threshold-stone."

" Keep heedful watch by the water's edge, —
Some boat might lurk 'neath the shadowed sedge."
" One slid but now 'twixt the winding shores,
But a peasant woman bent to the oars
And only a young child steered its course.

" Mother, something flashed to my sight! —
Nay, it is but the lapwing's flight. —
What glints there like a lance that flees? —
Nay, the flags are stirred in the breeze,
And the water's bright through the dart-rushes.

" Ah! vainly I search from side to side: —
Woe's me! and where do the foemen hide?
Woe's me! and perchance I pass them by,
And under the new dawn's blood-red sky
Even where I gaze the dead shall lie."

Said the mother: " For dear love's sake,
Speak more low, lest the spell should break."
Said the daughter: " By love's control,
My eyes, my words, are strained to the goal;
But oh! the voice that cries in my soul!"

" Hush, sweet, hush! be calm and behold."
" I see two floodgates broken and old:
The grasses wave o'er the ruined weir,
But the bridge still leads to the breakwater:
And — mother, mother, O mother dear!"

The damsel clung to her mother's knee,
And dared not let the shriek go free;
Low she crouched by the lady's chair,
And shrank blindfold in her fallen hair,
And whispering said, " The spears are there!"

The lady stooped aghast from her place,
And cleared the locks from her daughter's face.
" More's to see, and she swoons, alas!
Look, look again, ere the moment pass!
One shadow comes but once to the glass.

" See you there what you saw but now?"
" I see eight men 'neath the willow bough.
All over the weir a wild growth's spread:
Ah me! it will hide a living head
As well as the water hides the dead.

" They lie by the broken water-gate
As men who have a while to wait.
The chief's high lance has a blazoned scroll,
He seems some lord of tithe and toll
With seven squires to his bannerole.

" The little pennon quakes in the air,
I cannot trace the blazon there: —
Ah! now I can see the field of blue,
The spurs and the merlins two and two; —
It is the Warden of Holycleugh!"

" God be thanked for the thing we know!
You have named your good knight's mortal foe.
Last Shrovetide in the tourney-game
He sought his life by treasonous shame;
And this way now doth he seek the same.

" So, fair lord, such a thing you are!
But we too watch till the morning star.
Well, June is kind and the moon is clear:
Saint Judas send you a merry cheer
For the night you lie at Warisweir!

" Now, sweet daughter, but one more sight,
And you may lie soft and sleep to-night.
We know in the vale what perils be:
Now look once more in the glass, and see
If over the hills the road lies free."

Rose Mary pressed to her mother's cheek,
And almost smiled but did not speak;
Then turned again to the saving spell,
With eyes to search and with lips to tell
The heart of things invisible.

" Again the shape with the besom grey
Comes back to sweep the clouds away.
Again I stand where the roads divide;
But now all's near on the steep hillside,
And a thread far down is the rivertide."

" Ay, child, your road is o'er moor and moss,
Past Holycleugh to Holy Cross.
Our hunters lurk in the valley's wake,
As they knew which way the chase would take:
Yet search the hills for your true love's sake."

" Swift and swifter the waste runs by,
And nought I see but the heath and the sky;
No brake is there that could hide a spear,
And the gaps to a horseman's sight lie clear;
Still past it goes, and there's nought to fear."

" Fear no trap that you cannot see, —
They'd not lurk yet too warily.
Below by the weir they lie in sight,
And take no heed how they pass the night
Till close they crouch with the morning light."

" The road shifts ever and brings in view
Now first the heights of Holycleugh:
Dark they stand o'er the vale below,
And hide that heaven which yet shall show
The thing their master's heart doth know.

" Where the road looks to the castle steep,
There are seven hill-clefts wide and deep:
Six mine eyes can search as they list,
But the seventh hollow is brimmed with mist:
If aught were there, it might not be wist."

" Small hope, my girl, for a helm to hide
In mists that cling to a wild moorside:
Soon they melt with the wind and sun,
And scarce would wait such deeds to be done:
God send their snares be the worst to shun."

" Still the road winds ever anew
As it hastens on towards Holycleugh;
And ever the great walls loom more near,
Till the castle-shadow, steep and sheer,
Drifts like a cloud, and the sky is clear."

" Enough, my daughter," the mother said,
And took to her breast the bending head;
" Rest, poor head, with my heart below,
While love still lulls you as long ago:
For all is learnt that we need to know.

" Long the miles and many the hours
From the castle-height to the abbey-towers;
But here the journey has no more dread;
Too thick with life is the whole road spread
For murder's trembling foot to tread."

She gazed on the Beryl-stone full fain
Ere she wrapped it close in her robe again:
The flickering shades were dusk and dun,
And the lights throbbed faint in unison,
Like a high heart when a race is run.

As the globe slid to its silken gloom,
Once more a music rained through the room;
Low it splashed like a sweet star-spray,
And sobbed like tears at the heart of May,
And died as laughter dies away.

The lady held her breath for a space,
And then she looked in her daughter's face:
But wan Rose Mary had never heard;
Deep asleep like a sheltered bird
She lay with the long spell minister'd.

" Ah! and yet I must leave you, dear,
For what you have seen your knight must hear.
Within four days, by the help of God
He comes back safe to his heart's abode:
Be sure he shall shun the valley-road."

Rose Mary sank with a broken moan,
And lay in the chair and slept alone,
Weary, lifeless, heavy as lead:
Long it was ere she raised her head
And rose up all discomforted.

She searched her brain for a vanished thing,
And clasped her brows, remembering;
Then knelt and lifted her eyes in awe,
And sighed with a long sigh sweet to draw: —
" Thank God, thank God, thank God I saw!"

The lady had left her as she lay
To seek the Knight of Heronhaye.
But first she clomb by a secret stair,
And knelt at a carven altar fair,
And laid the precious Beryl there.

Its girth was graved with a mystic rune
In a tongue long dead 'neath sun and moon:
A priest of the Holy Sepulchre
Read that writing and did not err;
And her lord had told its sense to her.

She breathed the words in an undertone: —
" None sees here but the pure alone."
" And oh!" she said, " what rose may be
In Mary's bower more pure to see
Than my own sweet maiden Rose Mary?"

BERYL-SONG

We whose home is the Beryl ,
Fire-spirits of dread desire ,
Who entered in
By a secret sin ,
'Gainst whom all powers that strive with ours are sterile, —
We cry, Woe to thee, mother!
What hast thou taught her, the girl thy daughter,
That she and none other
Should this dark morrow to her deadly sorrow imperil?
What were her eyes
But the fiend's own spies ,
O mother ,
And shall We not fee her, our proper prophet and seir?
Go to her, mother ,
Even thou, yea thou and none other ,
Thou, from the Beryl:
Her fee must thou take her ,
Her fee that We send, and make her ,
Even in this hour, her sin's unsheltered avower.
Whose steed did neigh ,
Riderless, bridleless ,
At her gate before it was day?
Lo! where doth hover
The soul of her lover?
She sealed his doom, she, she was the sworn approver, —
Whose eyes were so wondrous wise ,
Yet blind, ah! blind to his peril!
For stole not We in
Through a love-linked sin ,
'Gainst whom all powers at war with ours are sterile, —
Fire-spirits of dread desire ,
We whose home is the Beryl?
Translation: 
Language: 
Rate this poem: 

Reviews

No reviews yet.