Spina Christi

PART I.

THE city walls of Avignon are built of stone, and high
The houses stand, with balconies above the streets that lie
Around the old cathedral, whose sweet bells were ringing clear
A merry tune, one day in June
Of seventeen hundred year,
And half a hundred years beside, while crowding far and near,
Beneath the flags and tapestries, the people loudly cheer ;
The regiment of Rousillon is ordered to the war,
A thousand strong, the pick among
The mountaineers of Var.

The great Church portals open wide, the crowd goes surging in,
The soldiers tramp with measured tread — the services begin,
A blessing is invoked upon the King's Canadian war ;
Beyond the seas there is no ease,
And all things are ajar.

The English in America do boldly break and mar
The peace they made ; but we will keep the treaties as they are !

And now the Royal Rousillon take up the route with joy,
And march away while bugles play —
Mid shouts of " Vive le Roy ! "
There lives a lady beautiful as any Provence rose,
The chatelaine of Bois le Grand, who weepeth as she goes —
For sleep has left her eyelids on the banks of rapid Rhone :
" But three months wed ! alas," she said,
" To live my life alone !

Pining for my dear husband, in his old chateau of stone,
While he goes with his regiment, and I am left to moan ;
That his dear head, so often laid at rest upon my knee,
No pillow kind, but stones, shall find —
No shelter but a tree ! "
"Weep not, dear wife!" replied the count, and took her in his arms,
And kissed her lovingly, and smiled to quiet her alarms ;
They stood beneath the holy thorn of the old Celestine,
Pope Clement brought with blessing fraught
And planted it between
The wall and wall beside the cross, where he was daily seen
To kneel before it reverently. It came from Palestine,
A plant from that which cruelly the crown of thorns supplied,
Christ wore for me, when mocked was He,
And scourged and crucified.

" I'll take a branch of it," he said, " across the stormy sea
That roars between New France and Old, and plant it solemnly
In that far country where I go campaigning for the King ;
It will remind and teach mankind
Of pains that blessing bring."

Above his head he plucked a spray acute with many a sting,
And placed it on his plumed chapeau, in token of the thing
Alone can turn the sinful man — the piercing of the thorn —
The healing smart — the contrite heart —
Of penitence new born.

Despairingly she kissed his lips : " O welcome sharpest pain,
That cuts the heart to bleeding, and bids hope revive again !
Spina Christi ! to my heart I press thee wet with tears —
If love outlast as in the past
Each parting that endears !
Our sky has been so bright and filled with music of the spheres,
So gloomy now in sad eclipse it suddenly appears !
For joy dies out in silence like sweet singing that is done,
If men forget their sacred debt
To women they have won."

PART II.

Atlantic gales come winged with clouds and voices of the sea,
The misty Capes uncap to hear the ocean melody ;
In broad St Lawrence rise and fall the everlasting tides,
Which come and go with ebb and flow —
While every ship that rides
At anchor swings, and east or west the passing flood divides,
Or westward ho ! mid seamen's shouts still onward gently glides,
Tasting the waters sweet from lakes, of boundless solitude,
Where thousand isles break into smiles
Of nature's gladdest mood.

A hundred leagues and many more towards the glowing west,
Amid the forests' silences, Ontario lay at rest —
Keel rarely ploughed or paddle dipt its wilderness of blue ;
Where day by day life passed away
In peace that irksome grew.
In old Niagara fort, a cross stood loftily in view,
And Regnat. Vinrit. Imperat. Christus the words did show
Carved on it, when the Rousillon came up in early spring
To close the port, and guard the fort,
And keep it for the King.

O ! fair in summer time it is, Niagara plain to see,
Half belted round with oaken woods and green as grass can be!
Its levels broad in sunshine lie, with flowerets gemmed and set
With daisy stars, and red as Mars
The tiny sanguinet,
The trefoil with its drops of gold, white clover heads, and yet
The sweet grass, commonest of all God's goodnesses we get !
The dent-de-lions, downy globes a puff will blow away,
Which children pluck to try good luck,
Or tell the time of day.

Count Bois le Grand sought out a spot of loveliness, was full
Of sandworts, silvered leaf and stem, with down of fairy wool;
Hard by the sheltering grove of oak he set the holy thorn,
Where still it grows and ever shows
How sharp the crown of scorn
Christ wore for man, reminding him what pain for sin was borne,
And warning him he must repent before his sheaf is shorn,
When comes the reaper, Death, and his last hour of life is scored,
Of all bereft, and only left
The mercy of the Lord.

The thorn was planted, leafed and bloomed, as if its sap were blood
That stained its berries crimson which fell dropping where it stood,
And seeded others like it, — as on Golgotha befell,
An awful sight, if seen aright,
The trees that root in hell !

Contorted, twisted, writhing, as with human pain to tell
Of cruel spines and agonies that God alone can quell.
A cluster like them Dante saw, and never after smiled;
A grove of doom, amid whose gloom
Were wicked souls exiled.

Niagara fort was bravely built with bulwarks strong and high,
A tower of stone, and pallisades with ditches deep and dry ;
And best of all, behind them lay Guienne and Rousillon,
La Sarre and Béarn, 'neath Pouchot stern —
A wall of men like stone —
De, Villiers and Bois le Grand of old Avignon ;
And over all, the flag of France waved proudly in the sun.
Prepared for it, they met the war with gaiety and zest —
And every day barred up the way
That opened to the west.

Discord was rampant now and hate, and peace lay like a yoke,
That galled the necks of both of them ; and French and English broke,
With mutual wrath and rivalry, the treaty they had made ;
Too proud to live and each one give
Sunshine as well as shade.

From Louisburg to Illinois they stood as foes arrayed,
And east and west war's thunder rolled, — the soldier's polished blade
Flashed 'mid the savage tomahawks that struck and never spared,
While fort and field alternate yield
The bloody laurels shared.

The clouds of war rolled redder from the north, and English pride
Was stung to desperation at the turning of the tide,
When Montcalm the heroic, wise in council, struck the blow,
Won Chouaguen, and conquered then
At Carillon the foe.

But with his very victories his armies melted slow.
No help from France obtained he — and his heart sank very low;
He knew that England's courage flames the fiercest in defeat,
And in the day she stands at bay
Most dangerous to meet,
" Help us, O France ! to save thy fair dominion in the west,
Which for thy sake we planted, and have carved thy royal crest
Of golden lilies on the rocks beside the streams that flow
From mountain rills and past the hills
Of far off Ohio ;
Then down leagues by the hundred, where bayous meander slow,
Though orange groves and sugar canes, and flowers that ever blow,
In fair Louisiana. We will take and hold the land
For Francia's crown of old renown,
If she will by us stand."

So spake Montcalm, and message sent : " My armies melt away
With victories — my beaten foes grow stronger every day ;
In vain Monongahela and Carillon piled with slain,
If France forget to pay the debt
Of honour without stain,
She owes her sons who willingly are bleeding every vein
For sake of her white flag and crown, on fortress and on plain.

If we can keep Niagara safe that guards the western door,
Then in the east Quebec may feast
In quiet evermore."

Vain were Montcalm's appeals for aid, Voltaire's cold spirit , ruled
The Court — while noisy doctrinaires a gallant nation schooled
In selfishness and unbelief, and cowardice and ease,
Which manhood daunt, while women flaunt
Their idle hours to please.

Degenerately they drank the wine of life mixed with the lees ;
The Spartan virtues, that make nations free and famous, these
Were mocked, derided, set at nought, while fatuous statesmen stand,
Whose feeble will, potent for ill,
Yields where it should command.

PART III.

Remote amid the trackless woods and waters of the west,
No enemy had broken yet Niagara's quiet rest.

The fifth year of the war came in — a change was nigh at hand;
The order ran to raise the ban
And make a final stand.
Prideaux and Johnson honoured were with new and high command,
From Albany a hundred leagues to march across the land,
While Wolfe besieged Quebec, and its defences battered in;
So they elate took bond of fate
Niagara to win.

But not before June's leafy days, when all the woods are green,
And skies are warm and waters clear, the English scouts were seen.

A lull before the tempest fell with weeks of steady calm,
Of golden hours when blooming flowers
Filled all the air with balm.

The garrison were now prepared to struggle for the palm,
To win the wreath of victory or die without a qualm ;
So passed their time in jollity and ease, as if the day
Of bloody strife with life for life
Was continents away.

A fleet of swift canoes came up, all vocal with the song
Of voyageurs, whose cadences kept even time among
The dipping paddles, as they flashed along Ontario's shore,
Past headlands high and coasts that lie
In mistiness, and bore
A bevy of fair wives who loved their husbands more and more,
Who could not bear their absence, and defiant of the roar
Of forests and of waters, came to comfort and caress,
As women may — and only they —
Man's solitariness.

In these Capuan days they basked in pleasure's sunny beams,
The Provence home of Bois le Grand was rarer in his dreams,
The chatelaine of his chateau fast by the rapid Rhone,
A memory dim became to him —
Nor loved he her alone.

A dame of charms most radiant — the cynosure that shone
Amid the constellations of Quebec's magnetic zone,
Drew him with force and held him fast, a captive with her eyes,
Which, dark and bright as tropic night,
Loved him without disguise.

And he remembered not the thorn he planted by the grove
Of Paradise, where he forgot, in his forbidden love,
The chatelaine of Bois le Grand, the purest wife and best
Of womankind he left behind,
And ventured, like the rest,
To sport with woman's loveliness — as for a passing jest.
His heart was very lonely, too, while all beside were blest ;
Like Samson in Delilah's lap, his lock of strength was shorn ;
He loved again, despite the pain
And stinging of the thorn.

One day when he a-hunting went in the Norman Marsh, and she
The dame he loved rode with him, as Diana fair to see
In green and silver habited, and silken bandoleer,
With dainty gun — by it undone !

And bugle horn so clear ;
While riding gaily up and down to turn the timid deer
And meet the joyance of his glance, when she should re-appear,
She vanished in the thicket, where a pretty stag had flown —
Saw something stir — alas for her!

She shot her lover down !

Bleeding he fell — " O, Madelaine ! " his cry turned her to stone,
"What have you done unwittingly?" he uttered with a groan,
As she knelt over him with shrieks sky-rending, such as rise
From women's lips on sinking ships,
With death before their eyes.

She beat her breast despairingly ; her hair dishevelled flies ;
She kissed him madly, and in vain to stanch the blood she tries,
Till falling by him in a swoon they both lay as the dead —
A piteous sight ! love's saddest plight !
With garments dabbled red.

Their servants ran, and hunters pale, and raised them from the ground ;
Restored the dame to consciousness, and searched his fatal wound.

They pitched for him a spacious tent the river bank above,
With boundless care for ease and air
And tenderness of love.
She waited on him night and day ; plucked off her silken glove
With self-accusing grief and tears — lamenting, as a dove
Bewails her wounded mate — so she — and in her bosom wore
A spike of thorn which every morn
She gathered — nothing more.

She cast her jewels off and dressed in robe of blackest hue,
Her face was pale as look the dead, and paler ever grew.
Smiles lit no more her rosy lips where sunbeams used to dance ;
A withering blight that kills outright
Fell on her like a trance ;
For Bois le Grand was dying, and it pierced her like a lance
To hear him vainly calling on his chatelaine in France,
And not for her who knelt by him, and lived but in his breath —
Remorse and grief without relief
Were hastening her death.

Far, far away in Avignon, beneath the holy thorn,
The chatelaine of Bois le Grand knelt down at eve and morn ;
And prayed for him in hope and trust long witless of his fate;
But never knew he was untrue
And had repented late.

As caught between two seas his bark was in a rocky strait,
And with his life went down the lives of those two women.

Fate
Bedrugged the love, betrayed them both — and one by Laura's shrine
Took her last rest — the other best,
Drank death with him like wine.

Niagara's doom long threatened came — the roll of English drums
Was heard deep in the forest as Prideaux's stout army comes.
They sap and trench from day to day, the cannon fierce roar,
The hot attack when beaten back
Again comes to the fore.
The pallisades are red with fire, the ramparts red with gore,
Its brave defenders on the walls die thickly more and more,
Mid rack and ruin overwhelmed — no help above — below,
The few remain — not of the slain—-
Surrender to the foe.

But not before all hope had fled, when gathered far and wide
From prairie, forest, fort, and field — with every tribe allied
To France, throughout the west they came, the fatal siege to raise,
And marched along, a mingled throng,
Amid the forest maze.
They halted in the meadows, where they stood like stags at gaze,
The English and the Iroquois confronting them for days,
Till Brant and Butler, wary chiefs, with stratagem of war
Broke up their host, and captured most,
While fled the rest afar.

The last day came, and Bois le Grand beheld with misty eyes
The flag of France run down the staff, and that of England rise.

It was the sharpest thorn of all that 'neath his pillow lay —
" O, Madelaine ! " he cried, " my men !
My Rousillon so gay !

Fill graves of honour, — while I live to see this fatal day !
But not another ! No ! " he cried, and turned as cold as clay.

She kissed his mouth the last long kiss the dying get alone —
" O, Spina ! " cried — fell by his side,
And both lay dead as stone.