Joan of Arc Narrative Poem
By George Henry Calvert
Book 2
Orleans
ON that new morning rose in France,
Flusht with a high expectancy,
An April sun, his swayful glance
Darting hot life from sea to sea.
More festive shone the blue than wont,
The birds prophetic joy did pipe,
And waters leapt in stillest font,
And blossoms burst that were not ripe.
The sunbeams on embattled steel
Clashed like the stroke of myriad swords,
And the glad clarion's muster-peal
Rang vauntful with sonorous words,
As in pure argent armor dight,
On martial courser glossy dark,
With sainted sword and banner white,
Came forth the warrior Maid of Arc.
Men's blood was wildly moved, to see,
With squire and heralds battle-'rayed,
In chieftain's pluméd panoply,
Ride forth the pious, prayerful Maid.
Erect she sat and vivid calm,
As one long schooled to leadership;
And so she had been, through the balm
Breathed on her from unearthly lip.
She rode enguarded by her worth,
By ministries of subtile hands
Invisible, and by the new birth
Of love and courage in the bands, –
The shrivelled roots in desert breasts,
(By war laid waste and misery,)
Rewarmed, as fledglings on their nests,
By pulse of feminine sympathy.
II.
THE crowd heaved towards her on the tide
Of hope and faith and joy reflown,
And Captains hearkened at her side;
Yet she amid them rode alone.
For none could see what she could see, –
Dear France's fetters wrestled loose;
And none could feel and know as she
The means awaiting her high use.
But with her rode the powers that rule
In heaven and earth, and baffle hell,—
The judgment that events doth school,
The feeling that the self doth quell.
No princely promptings wily threw
Upon the ear of inward sense
Insidious baits, that suasive drew
Her thoughts to gilded recompense.
Within that vestal brain, whence shot
A mystic light the crowd that spelled,
Could sprout no seed of self, to spot
The brilliancies her bosom held.
III.
FROM royal Chinon rode she forth
Towards leaguered Orleans, where winged fame
Had with mere prologues of her worth
Fanned fainting hope to sturdy flame.
The haughtiest Chieftains brooked her power, —
Uplifted scorn chastised by awe, –
And feudal masters learnt to cower
Before a shepherd-maiden's law.
And still they gathered far and near,
Men who could sup on raid and wrack,
Saintrailles, Gaucourt, Coaraze, la Hire,
And the rough Lords of Armagnac.
And more than Fame's hoarse cry can call;
None spirit-gifted, and not one
Had gained the mastering summit tall
Only by blest obedience won.
They scaled it never. Even the King
Chief over chief could scarce advance;
And hence in part this conquest's ring,
Harmful to England as to France.
But she bore sway above the King's,
Of genius hers the right divine,
Whose lightning-loaded sceptre swings
High over Kingship's earthen line.
IV.
A SEA surged round her foamed with joy,
A vocal, vaulting, soul-lit sea
Of tremulous hearts, each face a buoy
Swayed by the swell of ecstasy.
They felt deliverance in her look;
Those grateful hearts, they read her right,
And long despair and anguish shook
Themselves away in tears of light.
Majestic meek she rode along,
With glad Dunois and tamed la Hire;
Behind them, twice one hundred strong,
A line of horsemen armed with spear.
Thought flamed his glory 'bout her head,
And from her lids Love poured his gifts,
As Silence locked the lips that sped
The generous promise that uplifts.
With awed delight the people gazed
In eyes where they saw heaven glassed,
And mothers gaunt their children raised
To catch a blessing as she passed.
And when with speech her visage burned,
It seemed descended sounds did break;
And wild submitted faces turned
As warm religious words she spake.
She alighted at the house of prayer, —
To keep unslacked the cord that bound
Her life to God's, the foremost care
Her thought on daily duty wound.
When came the hour to interrupt
And brace the day with tables heaped,
She passed the dainties by and supped
On bread in watered wine ensteeped.
And then to sleep she laid her down
In Orleans, where high guard she kept;
For knowing her within their town
Fearless the rescued burghers slept.
V.
BUT Fear and Hate were hatching then
In mirksome deeps their ghastly brood,
That brave unvanquished stalwart men
Be caged by new fright-haunted mood.
For that same hour on English dreams
Of Joan fierce lurid spectres cast,
As on still night-cloud fiery seams
Forewrite the shattering thunder-blast.
And Talbot, Suffolk, Glansdale, – chiefs
With whom success had grown to fate, –
Cursed the base craven blind beliefs,
That mixed so much of fear with hate.
Their soldiers’ creed was sullied faith, –
Spring-currents drooping in a ditch:
Their pulse was seized as by a wraith, –
The inspired girl, they damned her witch.
For men are minions of belief,
Be it high or low; and being low,
They crucify beside a thief
The holiest that the earth can know.
In bodeful awe this churlish creed
Enfolded Joan: she came to sweep
From Gallic soil their English breed,
All who escape sepulchral sleep.
VI.
THE shadows cast on the orient gate
Of Orleans from beleaguering towers,
No longer fell with gloomy weight:
The Morn that sent them blazed his showers
On one who rose, the first of May
Of fourteen hundred twenty-nine,
With robust dawn, herself a day
That dawned, release on France to shine.
The eyes of Orleans, flush with strength
Of pious, tempering martial, glee,
Drew her through all the city's length, –
A second day of jubilee.
Then mounting on the rampart tall, -
So near the foremost English fort
That tongue could bridge from wall to wall, -
She hailed them with a queenly port.
“Lords Suffolk, Talbot, valiant chiefs,
Ye war against the right, and fill
England as France with daily griefs:
Depart ye hence—’tis Heaven's will.”
Thus venting words of wisdom's truth,
Her voice's cadence music-fraught,
The sinuous grace and glistening youth
Of her mailed pluméd figure wrought
On the azure of the approving sky,
She looked alighted from above,
One missioned by the unearthly high,
A herald less of war than love.
But Glansdale, unacclaimed by trumpet,
With accents steeped in rancor's pitch,
Answered and called her cow-herd, strumpet,
Crying, “Avaunt! accurscd witch!”
The prophet-Maiden quick replied:
“Spite of yourselves hence will you flee,
All who this week shall not have died.
But, liar, this thou wilt not see.”
VII.
HER task she would at once begin;
But others deemed, and Dunois chief,
'T were best, the ranks being yet so thin,
To wait from Blois the sure relief.
They chafed her with delays;
for she Had the true leader's gift, to know
The worth of calm celerity,
That springs to clutch the deeds which grow
Just o'er the magic line that parts
The future from the now, where bells
Ring only for respondent hearts,
And drown with life Time's funeral knells,
She would not have old Time command her,
She the sure mistress of the young,
Whom she bade bide her will and squander
On her the tribute to him flung.
At last, their coming far espied,
She rode to meet them, passing near
To the English bastions, whence was tried
No sally on her escort's rear.
Again she marched with succors close
Under their bulwarks' heavy brows;
Again, unstruck his wonted blows,
The lion could not him arouse.
'Twas no familiar fear that held
From the brave shock those warriors grim;
But manful breasts were partly spelled,
And partly Suffolk reined them in.
Like famished tiger who in sleep
Nears the fat herd and whets his jaws,
But dream-imprisoned cannot leap,
And maddened bleeds from clenchéd claws,
With armless anger inly bled
Those haughty chiefs, to see the prey
Go scathless by, mysterious led
By a girl in broad defiant day.
VIII.
O’ERSPENT with toil, in the afternoon
To rest she couched her weary cheek;
But not unguarded slept, for soon
She started with a tender shriek, -
“My arms! My horse! Blood flows, French blood–
I see it dripping on the ground.”
Snatching her mail and helmet-hood
And flag, and mounting with a bound,
Away to the Burgundian gate
She sped, unguided, undismayed.
Less haste and she had come too late:
The French were flying disarrayed.
She stayed their flight, she rallied them :
They clung reheartened to her side,
Beneath that banner stanch to stem
And refluent make the stormy tide.
Those Englishmen, they battled well,—
When did they not?—and Talbot stout
Sought from his western fort to quell
Part of the foe; but they swarmed out
So valorous eager, he withdrew
Tristful within his towered hold.
Into the French their leader blew
Her soul, and they were angel-bold.
Hot and more hot the war was waged,
The English from their forted coop
Resallying, with despair enraged,
Till came the last ensanguined swoop,
Led by the Maid, whose banner white
Flamed o'er the field a quickening Sun,
And following which with frantic fight
The fort St. Loup by assault was won.
Swift now were spent the fondled hoards
Of hate, revenge, and all that wreaks
Itself in death, the victors' swords
Choking with blood the vanquished shrieks.
Not one was spared, save those who fled
Befrocked as priests, whom she concealed,
The victor-chief, whose great heart bled,
So many dying unaneled.
IX.
As, maddened by the trampling rain,
Mud-freighted mountain-torrents pour
Into a lake, its lustre stain
And blot heaven's image from its floor,
On Joan's unstained pellucid soul
That deathful rage so darkening swept,
Her eyes grew sick at slaughter's scroll
And through their triumph anguish wept.
She smote not with her sword, and spared
Blood-currents when she could, the hests
Divine fulfilling meek, nor dared
To fathom them with reason's tests.
The ascending law of sacrifice
To compass she was yet too crude,
Nor could forefeel the boundless price
Herself must pay for France's good.
Life springs from death and thrives on death:
We grow upon a charnel-heap,
Where rottenness breeds sweetest breath,
And light wakes livelier from a sleep.
X.
THEY could not for they would not see
(So wilful is self-dazzled sight)
That hers was that first victory,
From her the new resistless might.
Those jealous chieftains, woman-shent,
Would shun her wishes, pass her by ;
She read their thought, and to them sent, —
“Follow your counsels–mine will I.”
And well for Orleans that she did;
For they beyond the river led
A corps (from her the movement hid)
Where panic-struck their squadrons fled;
When she, quick crossing with la Hire,
Took the fierce forward foe in flank,
Whereat the French, uncoiling fear,
Drove the besiegers from the bank
Behind their screen of palisades
And parapets, o'er which with flood
Rage-crested rolling, thirsty blades
They slaked once more in English blood.
They forced her quit the field, where they
Would lie companions of the night;
For she had fasted all the day, -
The holiest of the long year's flight.
XI.
BEFORE she laid her down to rest, —
“Come early, much will be to do:
I shall be wounded in the breast,”—
To her chaplain thus she gave the clue
Of the great morrow, at whose dawn
She hurried with a martial crowd
To the eastern portal, where was drawn
Afront the bolted gate, by proud
Gaucourt, a line to bar the way.
“With or without thy will I pass.”
The Chieftain's own would not obey,
But hand in hand with her hot mass
Efforced the gate, whence all in boats
Sped glibly to the southern shore,
To assail the fortress, fenced by moats,
A strong redoubt and cannon's roar.
So stoutly did the English fend,
The French lost heart. A ladder snatched,
Into the fosse she leapt to ascend
The rampart wall, when, sure despatched,
An arrow found her, and she fell.
Out sprang the foe to clutch the prize;
But she on a swift-rallying swell
Was borne away amid their cries.
When trickling warm she saw the blood,
The woman from her eyelids gushed, –
The warrior quelled by maidenhood, -
But for a moment—then back rushed
The hero to her heart. She drew
That arrow from a shoulder fair
With untrained hand, (it had pierced through,)
Then rose and, self discharged, all care
She lavished on her comrades worn,
So faint with battle and defeat,
That Dunois, seeing them o'erborne,
Already sounded a retreat.
She bade him pause, his fear dismiss, –
“Let them an hour rest and feed :
Our foemen's fall is doomed, and this
The day that Orleans will be freed.”
Awaiting summer's liberal noons,
Close by a vineyard trustful lay;
Here, deeply craving instant boons,
The constant Maiden knelt to pray.
That silent solitary prayer
Was clean and clear as bluest sky
That climbs Mont Blanc's white topmost stair,
And warm as breath that heaved him high.
So luminous her visage grew
From inward light, that when she rose
And leapt into her seat, she drew
Men's eyes as when a wonder glows.
Now quailed the foe, who thought her dead,
And the joyed French upsent a shout,
On whose wild gale the wings were spread
That drove them on the stormed redoubt.
Thence Glansdale fleeing on a plank
The bridge was shot beneath, and he
Steel-cased, with other Captains, sank, -
And the death-bubbles all could see.
Like spring's young tide Atlantic-rolled,
Her warriors poured themselves upon
Their battlements with surge so bold,
That in a trice the work was done. —
That night in Orleans sleep was shook
Out of all eyes by joy, and clang
Of boastful bells, that would not brook
A transient cheer, but pauseless sang.
From soul to lip, from tongue to tongue
With awe was thrown her simple name,
And there by raptured hearts was sung
The prelude to a deathless fame.
XIII.
THOSE midnight revels sank in ears
Whereon the jocund pealings fell
Dismal as the last toll that sears
The sentenced culprit in his cell.
They sat around the council-board,
Talbot and Suffolk and their mates,
Scowling, that they must sheathe the sword
Or draw upon enangered fates. –
Night still perplexed Day's forward brink,
When vengeful eyes were on the strain
West towards the single uncrushed link
Of their besiegers' fortress-chain.
Ere sun could smite their dinted steel
The silent English bands were seen
To issue from the fort and wheel
Into close line with sullen mien.
This told to Joan, – who wounded lay
Unarmed, -donning a light loose mail,
She galloped with the broadening day,
And as the French were about to assail
The foe, her voice cleft through them, -"Hold !
Bestain not with a bootless blood
The Sabbath day. This front so bold
Means no attack: ’tis but the flood
“Of brave men's will ere ebb their feet.”
Lo! while she spake they turned, and forth,
In order rankt, to slow drum-beat,
Grimly they marched into the North.
She led her comrades to their rear,
And on the plain whence Talbot trod,
In his unwilling waning ear
A loud thanksgiving sang to God.
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS Continue to BOOK 3 of Joan of Arc Narrative Poem
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