A Memorial

    (F.T.)


    The cord broke, and the tent
    Slipped, and the silken roof
    Lay prone beneath the viewless hoof
    Of the deliberate firmament.
    Yet cared we not; how should we care?
    Knowing that labourless now he breathes
    A golden paradisal air
    Where with more certain craft he wreathes
    Bright braids of words more wise and fair
    Than ever his earthly fabrics were,
    That his unwavering eyes made fresh,
    Purged and regarbed in fadeless flesh,
    What he then darkly guessed behold,
    And watch with an abiding joy
        The eternal mysteries unfold
    Which do his now transfigured songs evermore employ.

        Brother, yet great thy power;
        Thou stood'st as on a tower
    Small 'neath the stars yet high above the fields;
        In thy alembic song
        Imagination strong
    Distilled what essences the quest to mortals yields.
        This thy reward well-won,
        For every morning's sun
    Found thy heart's firm allegiance still unshaken;
        No temporal ache or smart
        Drave Beauty from thy heart,
    And by thy mighty mistress never wast forsaken.

        Yes; for though stringent was the test,
        When that thy trial was bitterest,
    Steadfast thou did'st remain; unshod
    The harrows of Pain thy feet once trod,
    Humiliate as thy sad song tells
    Before the vault's white sentinels.
    Friendless and faint thou sojourned'st there,
    A bowed, brave, timid wanderer,
    A lonely nomad of the spirit,
    Who did a triple curse inherit,
    Hunger, regret and memory.
    Yet never did they vanquish thee;
    When nighest broken, most alone,
    Thy unassuagèd thoughts could clamber
    To beauty on her ageless throne;
    Thou wert as one in torture chamber
    Who sees the blue through an open casement
    And hammers his soul to endure the time
    Of his corporeal abasement;
    Nor writhed'st at thine or others' fault,
        But with grim tenderness did salt
        Thy cicatrices with a rhyme.
        Not the most sable flame of gloom
        Could penetrate thy inmost room;
        But through the walls thy spirit sucked
        Into that cloistral hermitage
        Stray lovely things, moonbeams and snows
        The far sky shed into thy cage,
        And, from the very gutter plucked,
        A lost and mired campestral rose.

    Ended that purgatorial period,
    Filled was thy wallet and thy feet were shod,
    The leaden weights were moved, the rack withdrawn,
    Thou didst traverse the dewy fields of dawn,
    Watch sunsets blazoning over upland turf,
    Pull poppies from the frontiers of the surf,
        Dwelled'st with love and human eyes
        Vigilant, calm and wise.
        But still as when thy bark did ride
        Derelict on the city's tide,
        As then for penury now for pride
        Thy bodily senses were denied;
        Though they cried out and would not sleep,
        Ascetic thou didst armour them
    Lest acid pleasure should eat thine art's pure gem.
        Hourly the tempter's ambuscades
        But thou didst guard the gates and keep
        Thy senses' hungry colonnades
    Accessible but to Beauty's ministers,
    Unlit by any ruby flame but hers.
        Immuring so thy spirit eager
        Within a body frail and meagre,
    Far from the meads of earthly milk and honey,
    Yet franchised of more wondrous territories,
    Like those poor Bedouin of Arabia the Stony
    Who roam spare-fed and hollow-eyed but free
    By day to wander and by night to camp
        In vast serenity,
        Compassed by God's great silent glories
    The sun's gold splendour and the moon's white lamp,
        Folded and safe from harm
    Beneath the mighty sky's protecting arm.

        Ha! but the Titan's ardour
        Wherewith thou scour'dst the vast,
        To spoil the starry larder
        Of fruits of heavenly taste!
        Urania's fiercest servant,
        With thirst as furnace fervent
        And serene burning brow,
        Worthy of thy great lineage, thou
        Drankest without a shudder
        In proud humility
        Milk from that vast primæval udder
        That swells for such as thee,
    Milk from the fountains of the Universe
    That cowards deem infected with a curse,
        That flushes him who drinks
            Nor shrinks
    The exalted anguish of diurnal draughts
    To a clear vision, more intolerable
    In its blissful pain, than love's most ardent shafts,
        Of the seats where she doth dwell,
        She, whom thou didst confess
            Enticed
        Thee hot to her throne to press
        For the greater glory of Christ
    To uplift the curtains of her closed eyes.

        Not all was for thy learning
        Nor any mortal's else;
        Only for thy discerning
        Sporadic syllables
        Of those supernal glances
    Coffer of which her marble countenance is,
        Yet vain was not the adventure,
        Reluctant though the prize,
        Thou gainedst a debenture
        On the fringe of Beauty's eyes;
        Such fragmentary trophy
        As some cross-tunic'd knight
        From Saladin or Sophy
        May have won in sword's despite,
        Not the dear polar shrines
        Held captive by the Paynim
        But still as fruit of wars
        Some stone from Sion's lines,
        Some relic that might sain him
        Of life's uncounted scars.

        Self-dedicated anchorite,
        Never disdainful of the dust,
    But conscious of the overcoming night
    That must engulph the blooms and berries of lust,
    And unforgetful of the enveloping day beyond;
    Though a sweet show was spread for thy delight
    Resolved not to be so fond
    As, in ephemeral gauds caparisoned,
    To station feet upon a world of vapour
    Soft as a dream and fleeting as a taper;
    Thou thoughtest nevertheless that thou shouldst occupy
    Thyself, as it seemed to thee, most worthily
    Until the rapid hour when thou shouldst die;
        So, in a world of seemings,
        Of shadows and of dreamings,
    Busied thyself to fashion and record
    Unto the greater glory of thy Lord,
        For thy proud lady Beauty His
    Most excellent and humble handmaid is.
    Says one thy service was too ceremonial,
    Thy vestments irised overmuch, thy ritual
    Too elaborate and thy rubric too obscure,
    Therefore thy gift of chant and orison
    Beneath the perfect service men have done.
        O but thy notes were pure,
    And in a day like this we now endure
    No fault it was in thee to set thy camp
        Remote, aloof, aloof,
        In a far fastness proof
    'Gainst the mephitic odours of the swamp.
        Which being so, no gain
        'Twere to explain
    An exquisiteness too meticulous;
        Let us but say it pleased thee thus,
    Dowered with imagination heavy-fruited,
    To raise a column garlanded and fluted
        For Him thy heavenly abacus.
        This was thine offering thou didst make
        In founded hope that He
        The craftsman's best would take
    Well knowing its unobscure sincerity.

        The cord broke and the tent
        Slipped and the silken roof
        Lay prone beneath the viewless hoof
        Of the deliberate firmament.
        We still in this terrene abode
        Forlorn must tread the difficult road,
        And all meek thanks and all belief
        Hardly suffice to rampart grief.
    For gone is Beauty's votary apostolic
    And are her temples now delivered over
    To blindworms and libidinous goats that frolic
    In places hallowed by that celestial lover.
        Save only two or three
        With undivided minds like thee,
        None now remains that girds
        The peregrinal loin,
    None reverent of Beauty's holy tongue,
    But counterfeiters of her imaged coin,
    Iconoclasts, breakers of carven words,
    Seekers of worthless treasure in the dung,
    Mock mages and cacophonous charlatans,
        And pismire artisans
        Labouring to make
    Such mirrored replicas of Nature's face
    As might the surface of a stagnant lake.

        Yet we should anger not,
        Nor let that be forgot,
        The testament of stateliest worth
        He left us when he fled the earth.
        The mausoleum made of rhyme,
        Fair in its unfrequented field,
        Which shall invulnerably shield
        His memory to the end of Time;
        The house with curtain-flaming halls
        And roof of gold and jewelled walls
        For which the fisher sank his net
        Into the deepest pools of speech,
        Scooping rich conchs and ribbons wet
        That a less venturous could not reach,
        The hunter tracked the metaphor
        On many a foamy silver coast
        A hundred leagues beyond the most
        Fabulous Tellurian shore.

        Magnificent he was and mild,
        Glad to be still and glad to speak,
        Daring yet delicate as a child,
        Faithful, compassionate and holy,
        And, being human, strong and weak,
        And full of hope and melancholy.
        No more than we, able to shed
        Man's nature he inherited,
        Neither sin's garrison to kill,
    Yet at the last with constancy so great
    As the world's vanities to abnegate,
    Sternly to will the sacrifice of will
    Upon the altars of the Uncreate,
        So that he lived before he died
    As one who hourly to himself denied
        All joys save those that cannot pall,
    Who having nothing yet had all.