the size,
The old, old matriarchal dreadfulness,
Immovable, intolerable … the eyes
Hidden, the hidden head, the winding dress,
Corpselike … The weight of the brute that seemed to press
Upon his heart and breathing. Then he heard
His own voice, strange and humble, take the word.
“Good Mother, let me pass. I have a friend
To look for in this house. I slept the night
And feasted here—it was my journey’s end,
—I found it by the music and the light,
And no one kept the doors, and I did right
To enter—did I not? Now, Mother, pray,
Let me pass in … good Mother, give me way.”
The woman answered nothing: but he saw
The hands, like crabs, still wandering on her knee.
“Mother, if I have broken any law,
I’ll ask a pardon once: then let it be,
—Once is enough—and leave the passage free.
I am in haste. And though it were a sin
By all the laws you have, I must go in.”
Courage was rising in him now. He said,
“Out of my path, old woman. For this cause
I am new born, new freed, and here new wed,
That I might be the breaker of bad laws.
The frost of old forbiddings breaks and thaws
Wherever my feet fall. I bring to birth
Under its crust the green, ungrudging earth.”
He had started, bowing low: but now he stood
Stretched to his height. His own voice in his breast
Made misery pompous, firing all his blood.
“Enough,” he cried, “Give place. You shall not wrest
My love from me. I journey on quest
You cannot understand, whose strength shall bear me
Through fire and earth. A body will not scare me.
“I am the sword of spring; I am the truth.
Old night, put out your stars, the dawn is here,
The sleeper’s wakening, and the wings of youth.
With crumbling veneration and cowed fear
I make no truce. My loved one, live and dear,
Waits for me. Let me in! I fled the City,
Shall I fear you or … Mother, ah, for pity.”
For his high mood fell shattered. Like a man
Unnerved, in bayonet-fighting, in the thick,
—Full of red rum and cheers when he began,
Now, in a dream, muttering: “I’ve not the trick.
It’s no good. I’m no good. They’re all too quick.
There! Look there! Look at that!”—so Dymer stood,
Suddenly drained of hope. It was no good.
He pleaded then. Shame beneath Shame. “Forgive.
It may be there are powers I cannot break.
If you are of them, speak. Speak. Let me live.
I ask so small a thing. I beg. I make
My body a living prayer whose force would shake
The mountains. I’ll recant—confess my sin—
But this once let me pass. I must go in.”
“Yield but one inch, once only from your law;
Set any price—I will give all, obey
All else but this, hold your least word in awe,
Give you no cause for anger from this day.
Answer! The least things living when they pray
As I pray now bear witness. They speak true
Against God. Answer! Mother, let me through.”
Then when he heard no answer, mad with fear
And with desire, too strained with both to know
What he desired or feared, yet staggering near,
He forced himself towards her and bent low
For grappling. Then came darkness. Then a blow
Fell on his heart, he thought. There came a blank
Of all things. As the dead sink, down he sank.
The first big drops are rattling on the trees,
The sky is copper dark, low thunder pealing.
See Dymer with drooped head and knocking knees
Comes from the porch. Then slowly, drunkly reeling,
Blind, beaten, broken, past desire of healing,
Past knowledge of his misery, he goes on
Under the first dark trees and now is gone.
Canto IV
First came the peal that split the heavens apart
Straight overhead. Then silence. Then the rain;
Twelve miles of downward water like one dart,
And in one leap were launched along the plain,
To break the budding flower and flood the grain,
And keep with dripping sound an undersong
Amid the wheeling thunder all might long.
He put his hands before his face. He stooped,
Blind with his hair. The loud drops’ grim tattoo
Beat him to earth. Like summer grass he drooped,
Amazed, while sheeted lightning large and blue
Blinked wide and pricked and quivering eyeball through.
Then, scrambling to his feet, with downward head
He fought into the tempest as chance led.
The wood was mad. Soughing of branch and straining
Was there: drumming of water. Light was none,
Nor knowledge of himself. The trees’ complaining
And his own throbbing heart seemed mixed in one,
One sense of bitter loss and beauty undone;
All else was blur and chaos and rain-stream
And noise and the confusion of a dream.
Aha! … Earth hates a miserable man:
Against him even the clouds and winds conspire.
Heaven’s voice smote Dymer’s ear-drum as he ran,
Its red throat plagued the dark with corded fire
—Barbed flame, coiled flame that ran like living wire
Charged with disastrous current, left and right
About his path, hell-blue or staring white.
Stab! Stab! Blast all at once. What’s he to fear?
Look there—that cedar shrivelling in swift blight
Even where he stood! And there—ah, that came near!
Oh, if some shaft would break his soul outright,
What ease so to unload and scatter quite
On the darkness this wild beating in his skull
Too burning to endure, too tense and full.
All lost: and driven away: even her name
Unknown. O fool, to have wasted for a kiss
Time when they could have talked! An angry shame
Was in him. He had worshipt earth, and this
—The venomed clouds fire spitting from the abyss,
This was the truth indeed, the world’s intent
Unmasked and naked now, the thing it meant.
The storm lay on the forest a great time
—Wheeled in its thundery circuit, turned, returned.
Still through the dead-leaved darkness, through the slime
Of standing pools and slots of clay storm-churned
Went Dymer. Still the knotty lightning burned
Along black air. He heard the unbroken sound
Of water rising in the hollower ground.
He cursed it in his madness, flung it back,
Sorrow as wild as young men’s sorrows are,
Till, after midnight, when the tempest’s track
Drew off, between two clouds appeared one star.
Then his mood changed. And this was heavier far,
When bit by bit, rarer and still more rare,
The weakening thunder ceased from the cleansed air;
When the leaves began to drip
