The Sisters' Tragedy, with Other Poems, Lyrical and Dramatic

THE SISTERS' TRAGEDY

A. D. 1670

 
  AGLAE, a widow
  MURIEL, her unmarried sister.
 
 
  IT happened once, in that brave land that lies
  For half the twelvemonth wrapt in sombre skies,
  Two sisters loved one man. He being dead,
  Grief loosed the lips of her he had not wed,
  And all the passion that through heavy years
  Had masked in smiles unmasked itself in tears.
  No purer love may mortals know than this,
  The hidden love that guards another's bliss.
  High in a turret's westward-facing room,
  Whose painted window held the sunset's bloom,
  The two together grieving, each to each
  Unveiled her soul with sobs and broken speech.
 
 
  Both still were young, in life's rich summer yet;
  And one was dark, with tints of violet
  In hair and eyes, and one was blond as she
  Who rose—a second daybreak—from the sea,
  Gold-tressed and azure-eyed. In that lone place,
  Like dusk and dawn, they sat there face to face.
 
 
  She spoke the first whose strangely silvering hair
  No wreath had worn, nor widow's weed might wear,
  And told her blameless love, and knew no shame—
  Her holy love that, like a vestal flame
  Beside the sacred body of some queen
  Within a guarded crypt had burned unseen
  From weary year to year. And she who heard
  Smiled proudly through her tears and said no word,
  But, drawing closer, on the troubled brow
  Laid one long kiss, and that was words enow!
 

MURIEL.

 
  Be still, my heart! Grown patient with thine ache,
  Thou shouldst be dumb, yet needs must speak, or break.
  The world is empty now that he is gone.
 

AGLAE.

 
Ay, sweetheart!
 

MURIEL.

 
                  None was like him, no, not one.
  From other men he stood apart, alone
  In honor spotless as unfallen snow.
  Nothing all evil was it his to know;
  His charity still found some germ, some spark
  Of light in natures that seemed wholly dark.
  He read men's souls; the lowly and the high
  Moved on the self-same level in his eye.
  Gracious to all, to none subservient,
  Without offence he spake the word he meant—
  His word no trick of tact or courtly art,
  But the white flowering of the noble heart.
  Careless he was of much the world counts gain,
  Careless of self, too simple to be vain,
  Yet strung so finely that for conscience-sake
  He would have gone like Cranmer to the stake.
  I saw—how could I help but love? And you—
 

AGLAE.

 
  At this perfection did I worship too . . .
  'Twas this that stabbed me. Heed not what I say!
  I meant it not, my wits are gone astray,
  With all that is and has been. No, I lie—
  Had he been less perfection, happier I!
 

MURIEL.

 
  Strange words and wild! 'Tis the distracted mind
  Breathes them, not you, and I no meaning find.
 

AGLAE.

 
  Yet 'twere as plain as writing on a scroll
  Had you but eyes to read within my soul.—
  How a grief hidden feeds on its own mood,
  Poisons the healthful currents of the blood
  With bitterness, and turns the heart to stone!
  I think, in truth, 'twere better to make moan,
  And so be done with it. This many a year,
  Sweetheart, have I laughed lightly and made cheer,
  Pierced through with sorrow!
 
 
                                Then the widowed one
  With sorrowfullest eyes beneath the sun,
  Faltered, irresolute, and bending low
  Her head, half whispered,
 
 
                            Dear, how could you know?
  What masks are faces!—yours, unread by me
  These seven long summers; mine, so placidly
  Shielding my woe! No tremble of the lip,
  No cheek's quick pallor let our secret slip!
  Mere players we, and she that played the queen,
  Now in her homespun, looks how poor and mean!
  How shall I say it, how find words to tell
  What thing it was for me made earth a hell
  That else had been my heaven! 'Twould blanch your cheek
  Were I to speak it. Nay, but I will speak,
  Since like two souls at compt we seem to stand,
  Where nothing may be hidden. Hold my hand,
  But look not at me! Noble 'twas, and meet,
  To hide your heart, nor fling it at his feet
  To lie despised there. Thus saved you our pride
  And that white honor for which earls have died.
  You were not all unhappy, loving so!
  I with a difference wore my weight of woe.
  My lord was he. It was my cruel lot,
  My hell, to love him—for he loved me not!
 
 
  Then came a silence. Suddenly like death
  The truth flashed on them, and each held her breath—
  A flash of light whereby they both were slain,
  She that was loved and she that loved in vain!
 

THE LAST CAESAR

1851-1870

I

 
  Now there was one who came in later days
  To play at Emperor: in the dead of night
  Stole crown and sceptre, and stood forth to light
  In sudden purple. The dawn's straggling rays
  Showed Paris fettered, murmuring in amaze,
  With red hands at her throat—a piteous sight.
  Then the new Caesar, stricken with affright
  At his own daring, shrunk from public gaze
 
 
  In the Elysee, and had lost the day
  But that around him flocked his birds of prey,
  Sharp-beaked, voracious, hungry for the deed.
  'Twixt hope and fear behold great Caesar hang!
  Meanwhile, methinks, a ghostly laughter rang
  Through the rotunda of the Invalides.
 

II

 
  What if the boulevards, at set of sun,
  Reddened, but not with sunset's kindly glow?
  What if from quai and square the murmured woe
  Swept heavenward, pleadingly? The prize was won,
  A kingling made and Liberty undone.
  No Emperor, this, like him awhile ago,
  But his Name's shadow; that one struck the blow
  Himself, and sighted the street-sweeping gun!
 
 
  This was a man of tortuous heart and brain,
  So warped he knew not his own point of view—
  The master of a dark, mysterious smile.
 
 
  And there he plotted, by the storied Seine
  And in the fairy gardens of St. Cloud,
  The Sphinx that puzzled Europe, for awhile.
 

III

 
  I see him as men saw him once—a face
  Of true Napoleon pallor; round the eyes
  The wrinkled care; mustache spread pinion-wise,
  Pointing his smile with odd sardonic grace
  As wearily he turns him in his place,
  And bends before the hoarse Parisian cries—
  Then vanishes, with glitter of gold-lace
  And trumpets blaring to the patient skies.
 
 
  Not thus he vanished later! On his path
  The Furies waited for the hour and man,
  Foreknowing that they waited not in vain.
 
 
  Then fell the day, O day of dreadful wrath!
  Bow down in shame, O crimson-girt Sedan!
  Weep, fair Alsace! weep, loveliest Lorraine!
 
 
  So mused I, sitting underneath the trees
  In that old garden of the Tuileries,
  Watching the dust of twilight sifting down
  Through chestnut boughs just toucht with autumn's brown—
  Not twilight yet, but that illusive bloom
  Which holds before the deep-etched shadows come;
  For still the garden stood in golden mist,
  Still, like a river of molten amethyst,
  The Seine slipt through its spans of fretted stone,
  And, near the grille that once fenced in a throne,
  The fountains still unbraided to the day
  The unsubstantial silver of their spray.
 
 
  A spot to dream in, love in, waste one's hours!
  Temples and palaces, and gilded towers,
  And fairy terraces!—and yet, and yet
  Here in her woe came Marie Antoinette,
  Came sweet Corday, Du Barry with shrill cry,
  Not learning from her betters how to die!
  Here, while the Nations watched with bated breath,
  Was held the saturnalia of Red Death!
  For where that slim Egyptian shaft uplifts
  Its point to catch the dawn's and sunset's drifts
  Of various gold, the busy Headsman stood. . . .
  Place de la Concorde—no, the Place of Blood!
 
 
  And all so peaceful now! One cannot bring
  Imagination to accept the thing.
  Lies, all of it! some dreamer's wild romance—
  High-hearted, witty, laughter-loving France!
  In whose brain was it that the legend grew
  Of Maenads shrieking in this avenue,
  Of watch-fires burning, Famine standing guard,
  Of long-speared Uhlans in that palace-yard!
  What ruder sound this soft air ever smote
  Than a bird's twitter or a bugle's note?
  What darker crimson ever splashed these walks
  Than that of rose-leaves dropping from the stalks?
  And yet—what means that charred and broken wall,
  That sculptured marble, splintered, like to fall,
  Looming among the trees there? . . . And you say
  This happened, as it were, but yesterday?
  And here the Commune stretched a barricade,
  And there the final desperate stand was made?
  Such things have been? How all things change and fade!
  How little lasts in this brave world below!
  Love dies; hate cools; the Caesars come and go;
  Gaunt Hunter fattens, and the weak grow strong.
  Even Republics are not here for long!
 
 
  Ah, who can tell what hour may bring the doom,
  The lighted torch, the tocsin's heavy boom!