Joan of Arc Narrative Poem
By George Henry Calvert
Book 1
Domremy
Man's earthly being darksome rolls
In atmospheres of latent light,
Whence on his toil, through gospel souls,
Outstreams the supervisive might.
Before his footstep, straining higher.
Illumined pillars alway shine,
The flaming of great souls on fire.
Pillars half human half divine.
The Eternal Spirit breathes upon
Its filial race in all degrees:
But warms Egyptian Grecian sun
One Moses and one Socrates.
The like of these reverberate
Upon the finer senses speech
High whispered in their ears, elate
To be within such holy reach;
Which seldom are the ears by din
Of power besieged, grown deaf thereby
Against the notes which then begin
When silent is the grosser cry.
Thence mostly bide the great aloof
From inspiration's breath, which stirs
Beneath the lowly toilsome roof
Of miners and of carpenters.
II.
BLIND was the time with hates and greeds,
With crimeful wars and ruffian raids,
Decrepit old the manful needs
Whence grew and throve the first crusades.
The Pope sold heaven for carnal cash;
The Kings had earned no right of trust;
The People was a thing to lash;
And learning lent itself to lust.
The ear of France was faint with sounds
Of wail and woe, her will amort
With lavish losses and the wounds
Of Crecy and of Agincourt.
So shrunk her arm it nothing dared,
Her cities foul with mutiny,
The very soil will soon be shared
'Twixt England and false Burgundy.
III.
ALREADY kindled is the flame
To purge this peril clean away,
And glow around a woman's name
A marvel and a joy for aye.
In lone Domremy, on the marches
Of France, of Lorraine, and of Bar,
Her cottage cowered near the arches
Of hoary oak-woods, glooming far
In space and time; for gaping Thought
Roamed their dusk centuries, in search
Of nests for winged traditions, wrought
Into the brain ere yet the church
Was consecrated, whose slow shade
Hallowed her window in its fall;
Then, touching calm the forest, made
Evanish elves and fairies all.
Here, 'twixt the past and future rockt,
The meditative Maiden leaned
Upon her peasant childhood, stockt
With radiant reaching thoughts unweaned, -
Great thoughts, too great for utterance,
Till, in the glow of visionary act
Full nursed to ripeness, hopeful France
Shall bless them with her rescue backt, —
Thoughts born of goodness, which doth breed
The broadest and the boldest bred
In heaven or earth, the liveliest seed
In warm Creation's womby bed.
IV.
GREAT Joan at first was only good:
She gave herself, she gave her tears
To friend and friendless, and did brood,
So young, on France's deepening fears.
That wild birds fed them from her hands,
Was token of her innocence,
Needed, ere Heaven its choice commands
Will lay upon the inner
sense.
Only the great can do great things:
The greatness was ere they were done;
And long before Fame's belfry rings
For victory, 'twas inly won.
High chosen are the messengers
Through whom religious lightnings flash,
To illumine, when too blindly stirs,
Man's will in storms that madly crash.
Sway oft is lent to men of guilt,
But guilt heaps no creative gains;
The fast foundations aye are built
By Alfreds and by Charlemagnes.
V.
MORE subtile than belief can gauge
The lines that link our life to His;
But stronger than the whirlwind's rage
The finest of these subtilties.
In thicker throng than brain can breed
'Twixt heaven and earth the unbodied ply,
And, viewless, soundless to the unfreed,
They flash and hymn to the inner eye.
The advent of large thought the mind
Enwrapeth oft in terror, like
First flames from deep volcano's rind,
That rashly on the darkness strike.
When first foreshowing ravisheth
The vision of elected seers,
They trembling hope, as when through death
Man onward glides to higher spheres.
The shivering change is like the break
Of flowers through frost in spring, when veers
Upward the sun his warmth to make,
And they are freed in flood of tears.
The tender, pious Maid of Arc,
Who nursed the sick, whose thought was prayer,
Saw lights that made the noon seem dark,
So sun-surpassing was the glare.
And voices heard she, heavenly speech,
That came from angels 'rayed in white,
That came her fateful life to teach
In flashes of prophetic light.
At first she fell upon the ground,
Bewildered, bathed in timorous tears;
But faith the coils of fear unwound,
And she grew greater with the years.
Grew greater as her brain absorbed
And throve upon the holy fire,
That to one end her being orbed,
Sublimed her life to one desire.
And must she forth to war and roam,
So weeping loth to conflict she!
She loved her comrades, loved her home,
Her mother, father, tenderly.
But newly fledged was bolder love,
To country, right, and to her King:
Unpractised maid, unventuring
dove,
She pitched her flight with eagle's wing.
VI.
SHE fled to neighboring Vaucouleur,
To loyal Captain Baudricour.
At first he chid, then mocked at her,
So mad she seemed, so peasant-poor.
“I am commissioned by our Lord
France and the King and crown to save :
That I am coming send him word.”
Sir Baudricour looked scornful grave.
This told, the King, — as one who waits
Upon the scaffold for reprieve,
And grasps at nothings in his straits, –
Commanded him to give her leave.
At Vaucouleur her saintly mien,
And words, and beauty, and the shower
Of light about her forehead sheen,
Had made the people know her power.
They flocked to front her eyes, and play
With prodigal hope returned; and blades
Of knights outgleamed, to light her way
Through passes dim and scowling glades.
Good steed and armor they bestowed,
A sword and spurs and trooper's gear;
And she, who horse had ne'er bestrode,
Sat like a Captain Cavalier.
The sky was glad and bells did ring,
And old and young bowed low to her,
As forth to meet and li?t the King
She sallied from full Vaucouleur.
The gentle, trustful Maid of Arc
Rode fearless forward joyously:
Her comrades’ bosoms soon grew dark
With dreads, and thoughts of sorcery.
“Be of good heart and cheer,” she said;
“Our guides are friends in Paradise.”
And they were boldened by the Maid,
Their bad thoughts chastened by her eyes.
Nor English nor Burgundian swords,
'Nor fraudful Frankish ambuscades
Could compass her: she cleared the fords
And fens and brakes and scowling glades.
VII.
Twice fifty torches shook their life
In arrowy showerings on the Hall, -
Like thoughts of genius, glistening rife,
That glow creative where they fall.
These fell on gold and gem and steel,
That flushed beneath the welcome dart,
And made three hundred courtiers feel
The pomp whereof each one was part.
The King he thought to dazzle so
The timid, rustic Maid of Arc;
But that she brought to which all glow
Of earth-lights is a vanished spark, -
Inward illumination, fired
By selfless longings, in a breast
So heavenly strung, in it are quired
The harmonies of courses blest.
Prizing the pomp as 't should be prized,
Erect, unblenching, angel-led,
She walked right to the King disguised,
And bent her knee and bowed her head.
“My King, the King thy King wills me
His instrument to have thee crowned
At holy Rheims, that France be free
Of foemen who profane her ground.”
Her instinct's eye that knew the King,
Her voice that tuned the listener's ear,
A spell that did her face enring,
Balked the glib courtiers’ couchéd jeer.
The unointed King drew her aside,
And lowly speaking to the Maid,
His brow upheaved with wonder wide
At what the whispering Joan said.
A sceptred secret, pale with doubt,
Had harrowed long the royal breast:
The unworded torment she spake out
And put the rankling doubt at rest.
And issuing forth, with ribald breath
A soldier sought her ear to wound:—
“Blaspheming, and so near to death !”
A moment after, he was drowned.
VIII.
OUR boldest thinking strives to hit
Beyond a finite circle's range;
For law comes out of th’ infinite,
And is to deepest insight strange.
And so far we have now been taught,
Slow climbing on from law to law, -
There’s no new wonder but 'tis wrought
By rule that has nor breach nor flaw.
There cannot be of law a breach,
And what so seems is but a link
In chains that hang beyond the reach
Of present reason's furthest brink.
These seeming miracles, – where leaps
In startling flash the eternal fire,
That thrills the bravest pulse and creeps
Through faintest fibre of desire, —
Had never warmed the credent crowd:
'Tis only life that life can melt:
Herself, to holiest living vowed,
Made others throb with what she felt.
She wearied not of doing good,
And through her simple words and creed
Ran ruddy streams of Wisdom's blood,
Whose fountain-heart was daily deed.
IX.
LIKE misty mirror wiped by rays
Which then it gladly echoes round,
Are bosoms cleansed by goodness’ blaze,
Reblazing it with health's rebound.
Befouled so long men's hearts had been,
That on them fell those holy streaks,
As the first morning's wakening sheen
On rescued night-doomed mountain-peaks.
But here the highest were not first :
The bruiséd many, earthly bare,
Were tenderer to a light that burst
From heaven, – Faith fathered by Despair.
And women's flashing instincts leapt
Into the truth of Joan's look:
With her they prayed and warmly wept,
And sweet heart-incense on her shook.
The King convoked judicial priests
And doctors on the maiden youth, –
One of those supersubtle feasts
Where sophistries benibble truth.
She foiled her greedy questioners,
And beacon-bishops took her side,
Pronouncing that the right was hers,
And she a heaven-enabled guide.
The people's faith, true Orleans' need,
The Council's voice, the wide alarms,
So wrought, the wavering King decreed
Her Captain o'er his men of arms.
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS Continue to BOOK 2 of Joan of Arc Narrative Poem
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