Book V, Canto II: Misfortune; Advocatus Diaboli; Mad Mother

" How the sunlights quiver
Upon the river.
Flash out, are lost,
On wavelets tost !
Trees in ranks
On verdant banks
Trail their leaves
Where water heaves ;
A boat is n earing
A mossy strand,
Young voices cheering
Are heard from land ;
Musical bells
Of a village steeple
Flood hills and dells;
And a village people
In bright array
Await the young,
This morning gay.
Whose happy throng,
All pure and white.
With smiles of light.
In happy union.
For a first communion
Sail over the river.
Where sunlights quiver.
From vineyard-nested,
Calm, hill-crested
Hamlets fair
In bloomy air.
On the other side
Of the rippling tide.
The saintly father,
While they gather
Before the altar,
Well-nigh will falter
From fond emotion,
And heart's devotion ;
Will give the feast
To elder and least,
The while they falter
Before the altar,
Fair heads bent low,
Young hearts aglow ;
To the gentle Saviour
All life's behaviour
Commending humbly.
And praying dumbly
That lie will guide
O'er life's wild tide
To the other side.
They are singing glees, they
Merrily dally,
Songs on the breeze
Float into the valley.
While bells are ringing
Musically,
White sail winging
Over the wave,
They laugh at the grave
Boatman wan.
Or a doubled swan ;
At a fleck of froth.
Or a drowning moth.
Their mirth flows on ;
Youth's fount of mirth
Hath a holy birth
From naught, from all,
From great and small,
Perennial ! . . .
" But one who watched the bark that brought
Her child athwart the flood
Bent eyes a moment, while she sought
A favourite flower or bud,
To adorn the bosom of her daughter
Against the holy rite ;
And when she raised them to the water,
No vessel was in sight ! . .
Only a weltering dark mass
Upon the blaze abhorrent ;
The youth that played on summer glass,
Death-gript now in the current !
Whether a sudden squall had caught
The bellying full sail,
Or crowding to one side had wrought
Collapse, and that wild wail,
I know not, but their joy became
One agony and terror !
While we may lay no more the blame
On human crime and error !
A moment since, their beauty dallied,
The dew of youth upon them ;
Then gasping, panic-struck, and pallid,
A cruel Fate fell on them !
The shadow of holy mysteries
Within the temple nigh,
Mellowing joy within their eyes ;
And yet they were to die !
Shrieking for mercy, help, they drown
In anguished Love's full sight ;
So Heaven sends the blessing down,
Our pleading prayers invite ! . . .

" And now I hear the chuckling hiss,
' This is their first communion — this !
See the pretty white young faces !
These the All-Father's fond embraces!
Will you arraign mankind if these succumb,
Or old Dame Nature, who is blind and dumb? . . .

" ' Visit again with me the London garret !
Two parents, and five children have to share it :
Virtue, shame, modesty, may seldom come
To those who litter in this pleasant home ;
But slow starvation always ; trade is dull ;
Work hard to find ; live skeleton and skull.
With sallow skin stretched over, youth is here ;
Old sacks for bedding, and how soon the bier !
One friend insidious in the squalid stye
Leers — the gin-flask! What other friend is nigh?
i;ut if to alleviate their want you fret,
Be sure grim Doom will circumvent you yet !

" ' Or come and note small children at the show,
Who watch intent the mummers to and fro! . .
"Fire! fire!" we yell! See, see how panic flies,
Until the ways are choked with mad atrocities,
Well-nigh more murderous even than the human,
Almost too cynical for very man or woman !
Heaped and piled.
With agonies contorted wild,
Of many an innocent little child ! '

" Then did they show me other dreadful scenes —
The dull blind tyrant, with his myrmidons,
Who stalks, and slays his nobler brother beast,
Warning off man, child, woman, blest with vision,
From God's fair mountainside, His gift to all.
Let him beware ! red Revolution waits !
Ah ! fertile lands depopulate for game,
The charred and ruined hamlet on the waste !
Where once throve happy families there skulks
Tyrannous Murder's blackened face ; there struts
Decorous Infamy, close-masked in Law,
The gentleman evictor, who evicts
The dying babe, and its heart-broken mother.
With choked sob praying shelter for her child !
He spurns her, hres the sheltering hut ; they wander,
Aimlessly wander up the bleak hillside,
Some wailing, some with vacant stare, and some
A silent curse in their wrecked hearts. . . .
Behold !
Upon the torrid sands of Africa
Innumerable bones of spent black slave,
Starved, buried quick, knifed, mutilated.
goaded
By callous driver, women, children, men ! . . .

" ' I hope you like our pretty magic slides ;
Earth is, in sooth, a very lively scene !
A water-drop beneath the microscope.
Where loathsome animalcules gorge and war ;
One huge disordered order, shrewdly planned
For subtlest ingenuities of pain !
Well, and so we laugh one long laugh the more !
Grim Chance runs riot, drunken conqueror ;
He reels athwart the world's dim battle-fields ;
Purple his robe ; a dripping sword he wields,
While his pale horse's flanks are splashed with blood,
Gorged vultures flapping round him ; earth is one red flood.
And for what priests tell of a wrathful God,
Avenging ancient guilt, bale-fires like this
Accumulate more gloom in the abyss ! ' . . .

" (Anon was changed the dark dreamimagery.)

Mad Mother

" After moonrise in autumn.
By a wandering water.
When a half-muffled moon,
Dazed in a cloudland
Of wandering grey.
Looked pale from the cloud.
Dim branches uncoloured,
In a line with the moon.
Under, over the moon,
Faintly repeated.
A dark woven lacework
In the wan wave . . .
I heard a low singing,
Thin, shadowy singing,
Unwordable woe,
A wail from the ruin
Of a heart desolated.
A mind out of tune,
As a wail from the wind :
A thin faded form by the pale flying moon,
A face with the youth faded out from the eyes.
From the wan, weary eyes ;
Save for her, not a soul !
Save for her, and a child.
Whom she held by the hand.
In the shadowy silence ;
But she ceaseth her singing.
Low saith to the child —
' Come along, dear, with mammy
Under the water,
The soft flying water,
The sheltering water,
The kind, hiding water ;
You are going with me ! '
Then they went from the shelving
Low shore together
Into the water :
And the child little knew
Where he was going,
Only clung to the mother.
Deeming her wise.
Was she not ever
Wise for her little one.
Love for her little one ?
Yea, Love is wise !
Ah ! she was true ;
But the woes of the world.
Driven home by the devil,
Had maddened her mind,
And the child little knew,
Knew not the mother
Herself little knew,
Even she, even she
Herself little knew !
So they went in together,
Mother and child,
Awaking the cloudland
In the wan water.
Awaking the moon.
' O mammy, how cold it is ! '
' Yea, very cold, dear !
Only 'tis colder
Yonder on earth, love.
Yonder on land ! '
A gurgle, a silence,
Low wind in the rushes,
Never note more of song now ;
Nor mother, nor child knew ;
Ah ! none of us know !