CRISPUS.
A POETIC ROMANCE.
ET us away to softer scenes that grace
The acts of love. Who has not found a face
To cherish by the day and by the night?
Who has not fallen a victim to the light
Of beauty's eyes? and dreamt of them, and stored
Together all fond words for his adored?
It should be so and is, and who can give
His soul to love has learnt betimes to live.
Hast ever seen betrothed couple walk
In close embrace, and overheard them talk
And never loved? Or seen their meeting lips
Take nectar and ambrosia in warm sips
And never loved? or hast thou ever seen
A group of laughing damsels on a green
And never loved? Hast ever strayed
With gentle friends, or ever prayed,
And never loved? In bed hast ever sighed,
And watched the moon, and lingered open-eyed,
And never loved? No, no, it cannot be.
We all have loved, therefore your sympathy
For one who worshipped at Venus' shrine
Shall for a little time be linked with mine.
In that same wood where in a deadly swound
The luckless Crispus, bleeding, sank to ground
A cottage crusted with the rime of age
Stood 'neath a covering of foliage
So thickly-clustered that the boughs could rest
Their heads upon the bushes' pillowy breast,
And suck the honeyed breath of eglantine,
Or shade the amorous linnets drinking wine
From petalled goblets hung on juicy stems,
Besprinkled with minutest shiny gems,
From whence the butterfly at morning brings
The pearly powdering to dust his wings
Before he goes a wooing in the glade.
The velvet verdure a full umbrage made,
And kept the quiet dwelling place unseen
By graceless wayfarers, and formed a screen
To hold aloof the scorching noonday blaze.
It were a pity that on healthy days
Of summertime a lover should be wed
To sickness and be forced to lie abed.
Inside the shaded cot, with eyes half closed,
On smoothest couch lay one who gently dozed.
He slept a little, then would wake again
To smile and doze once more: he felt no pain,
There was no agony, no touch of strife
In his wan face; he seemed too pale for life;
Yet this was rosy health to what had been
Long days before when his deep wound was green-
For it was Crispus; he had cheated death,
And ev'ry morning breathed with stronger breath.
Beside him watched the maid who ran away
In dread from Delon ere the deadly fray.
She guarded him in sleep, and when awake
She was beside his couch to cheer or make
His pillow softer still; so she had caught
Her soul in him : her heart with his had grown,
For in his nature she had found her own.
When he was sad no comfort did she know,
When he was glad she felt the joy also.
She shared his health, she pined when he was ill,
If he grew cold of hope she felt the chill.
Sure I shall fail in telling of a maid
So beautiful, and I am half afraid
To venture more in telling of the sight,
Or of the tender feelings of delight
That stole enchantingly into his mind,
And to his own misfortunes made him blind.
He'd read of maidens in romantic books
All gentleness, of beauteous make and looks
Divinely sweet, and who were deemed too fair
To live on earth and breathe the common air
With uncouth mortals, and he had read
Of maids too pure for any man to wed.
But beauties of the fancy cannot vie
With beauties nature gives unto the eye;
For who can maidens find, in prose or rhyme,
To match a real maiden in her prime :
One who can charm to ecstasy and burn
With passion for the wooer in return?
And Crispus gained in health and sober blood:
He rose betimes and wandered in the wood,
Bathing his forehead in the shaded wind,
With health at heart and love upon his mind,
Thinking upon the chances of his days,
The villain Delon, and the happy ways
That he had come to through the door of death;
That he had saved the daughter of the man
That split his flesh, that, faint and wan,
He had been cared for: and, strange the end,
His enemy was fatherlike and friend.
That he had been as is a younger brother,
That neither knew in deed or name the other;
That he had saved a maid from canker breath,
That she had saved him from the touch of death;
That ev'ry coming morrow saw him grow
Deep in new life and in new love also.
Thinking upon his innermost desire,
He lifted up his eyes, and saw the sire
Of her he loved: they met, and at the meeting.
Joined in a mutual warm-hearted greeting.
It were too long a story to relate
Long friendly speeches of a long debate
On the strange present, and the stranger past.
They were as friends. Occasion came at last
For each to know the story of each other.
Crispus confessed him to his elder brother:
"Know I am not the beggar youth I look ;
These poor habiliments from choice I took,
For I have been at Court, and seen the shine
Upon the palace-walls of Constantine.
We two have sat together drinking wine
From the one cup, and he has called me son,
And I have called him sire; I am the one
Named Crispus."
The old man took him in embrace
With admiration lighting up his face,
He blessed him for his prowess shown in fight,
He blessed him for his goodness and his might
Over nobility: "I will be plain
And call you Crispus. You are long time slain,
According to the rumour of the city,
And they who love you there do pine for pity."
"Who feed their saucy jowls on meat and wine And keep their colour can afford to pine, But if another pine they give a sigh
Which cannot feed, so he perforce must die.
Then I am dead to all but this dear spot,
This covert of caress, this plenty plot
Of greenest growth and natural hue and tinge,
Embosomed in a bed of leafy fringe.
I cannot tell my happiness to you—
Delight has pierced my spirit through and through.
The past has been a vision.
Of friends and folly. Pray let me be
A forester for evermore with thee;
Let me be dead, I would not have my life
To go again into that stew of strife.
I'll carry burdens if I may be free
To walk these woods and dwell alone with thee.
And when I go take you this ring of mine,
And go again into the city shine
If you have any love for me, and tell
My sire he had a son who loved him well.
Give him my tale aright, and tell him too
Not Delon, nor no single man e'er slew
Crispus."
"Call me Marcus; I too have drunk
I too have sunk
With Roman emperors.
Upon imperial sofas pearly white,
Even I have been among the men of might.
I am no offspring of Egyptian slave,
Nor had I ever wealth enough to lave
My limbs in baths aglistering with gold.
Yet I have sat a senator and been
A proud prince 'mong the proudest, and have seen
An emperor wink and smile and did not swerve;
But there grew emperors more than one might serve
With safety and good conscience, and so I
Went unto none knew whither, none knew why-
I left the search for argosies of wealth,
And came to Nature, and she gave me health,
And such a harvest of content that I
Do love to live, and do not fear to die.
I have grown grey outside the city's noise,
Consoling me in conquering the joys
That would have left me withered to repine,
Without the heavenly peace that now is mine.
I do not envy kings, though I'll be true
Unto the law, unto myself, and you.
No bridle nor no curb an emperor knows,
No ballast saves him when a tempest blows;
A little storm of danger throws him down,
And gives unto another robe and crown.
I love you much in that you love this wood,
You could not love it if you were not good:
Nature affords fine laws to punish crime,
Around the sinner's heart she puts a slime,
And o'er his eyes a film; he cannot feel
From her sweet works the thrilling joys that steal
Into the good man's soul, nor can he see
Creation's charm or hear its poetry;
His being in a murky pool is hurled,
And he can only rail against the world.
Disease without and discontent within
Are but confessions of ill ways and sin."
"I do believe, my friend, what you have said:
I, too, believe what many men have said,
That this big world wherein we live is strange.
We cannot keep our good because of change;
If we do well to-day, change comes to-morrow,
And turns prosperity to sorrow.
Change grows a fear to me, for well I wot
"Twill rob me of your counsel and your cot."
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