Joan of Arc Narrative Poem
By George Henry Calvert
Book 4
Rouen
HOT were the spurs that sped the news
Of that day's deed to Bedford's ear;
And England's yeomen stretched theur thews,
Freed from the cramping links of fear.
As for won battles they rejoiced;
Big bonfires pranced on flimsy piles,
And high te Deums loud were voiced
In crowded broad cathedral aisles.
Becrowned and mitred princes fling
To silent heaven quick joyful cries, –
The joy of tigers ere they spring,
While hells are leaping through their eyes.
The Church's claim to interpret whole
God's will, bred angry jealousies
Towards Joan, thence concord with the soul
Of England's aim and enmities.
Priesthoods were then, as now, a school
Of power and pride, and level ran
With the strong world, serving to rule,
Rule the chief test of every plan.
Swayed too was England by a priest,
There as elsewhere a sway accurst,
Of public guidances the least
Divine, and thence of all the worst.
The true priest's function is to obey,
And thus avouch, the voice that calls
To pious self-renouncement: they
Who rule, or long to rule, are false.
II.
ENGLAND must prove the Maid a witch;
Else on the crowning of King Charles
Heaven's seal is set, in power so rich,
Whether the lion leaps or snarls:
Good Burgundy sues England's aid,
Would trade his bales, would Brabant gain:
Lean recreant Anjou would be paid
By Burgundy with fat Lorraine:
The Duke de Ligny holds the Maid,
For purchase, tightly prisoner:
And Bishop Beauvais higher grade
Would compass through bad Winchester.
Around the Maid this web of lusts
Was grossly spun with spider-speed,
Not by short passion's fitful gusts,
But the monsoon of gainful greed.
England held all these hungry hounds
In leash to her revenge and hate,
She so through pride abased, her wounds
She sought to heal with Joan's fate.
III.
WHERE was the King whom she had crowned?
When those fell tidings struck his side,
Did he not pale — then red rebound
With heart of bridegroom for his bride?
Did noons not lighten with the swords
Outflashed to vows ten-myriad-tongued,
And earth shake, trampled by the hordes
That galloped to her tempest-lunged,
Led on by France's chivalry,
The Maid to save who all had saved,
From wrong to wrest the greatest she
Whom Fame on Story's front hath graved ?
That generous thought should draw but blanks!
Alas, were lofty baseness less!
In this wide scene of glow and thanks
All is a cold waste wilderness.
Burrowing in trains of lust and pelf,
The vauntful Frankish chivalry
Was drunk with fulsome draughts of self;
And for King Charles — sooner than he
Would burn with nobleness, will howl
Young kids. Among ignoblest things
His then inaction sinks, as foul
As aught on the foul page of kings.
IV.
Could bolts imprison prayer and thought,
And fence the fields of memory,
A deadlier ravage had been wrought,
And quenched an infinite liberty.
As lightly black cyclopean walls
Around her closed with sigh-strained bars,
As on the earth Night's shadow falls
That opens wide the world of stars.
They could not bar the empyrean friends
But they her bosom's brood would greet,
And parley hold for saintly ends
With thoughts unblushing, memories sweet.
Of angel-guests the seemly mate,
Within the ruthless grated stone
She sat, in cloistered queenly state,
Upon her high interior throne;
Too high for self to climb, and wear
And soil the steps, whence momently
Blest messengers went forth, to bear
Good-will and love to all that be.
But still she had despondent cares,–
Cares for Compiegne, whither she sent
Her heart's whole crop with daily prayers,
And would for that her bonds have rent.
V.
To England sold for kingly price,
The Maid was dragged to Rouen's tower,
To be there tortured in the vice
Of lawless, godless, rageful power.
A lonely dream of innocence,
Lost in a murderer's tangled brains,
A ray whose fleeting flash indents
The dark of snaky cavern's stains,
Benighted lamb's lorn bleat, that stirs
The blood of wolves in hungry den,
Was Joan amid her purchasers,–
High priests and chiefs and learned men.
Lord Cardinal Winchester, the Duke
Of Bedford, Warwick's puissant Earl
Were there, — lest Beauvais should be luke,—
To bait, rack, butcher one poor girl.
Their ruffians watched her when she slept,
They hung big irons on her legs,
Let none weep with her when she wept,—
To drug her with Despair's dull dregs.
VI.
CAUCHON, Bishop of Beauvais, his,
A Frenchman's, was the tiger's paw
To push their inhumanities
'Gainst duty, manhood, justice, law.
He, Beauvais, and the Inquisitor's
Pale vicar, sat sole judges, backt
By lay and spiritual counsellors,–
A court for death and murder packt.
They forged gilt nooses for the mind,
With crafty clasps equipt and springs,
With these about her life to wind,-
Keen, subtle, covert questionings.
Though dim to her their worst intents,
She snapped the slimy tortuous chains,
With answers of wise innocence
Confounding their insidious pains.
They asked—“Does God the English hate?”—
“Whom God doth hate or love, from me
Is hid; but this I know and state,
Outdriven from France they all will be.”
— “That you are in a state of grace
Do you believe?”—“If I am not,
I pray God bring me so apace:
If so, may I keep such blessed lot!”
One tongue there was, but one, so base
To ask—“St. Michael, was he drest?”—
“Think you our Lord”— with childlike face—
“Hath not wherewith to clothe his best?”
And more than once her plaintive tongue
Chastised their shameless rank abuse
Of judge's speech, which from her wrung–
“Would you make me myself accuse?”
VII.
SHE smote them with her simple words;
And not at Orleans or Patay
Were stouter battles won with swords
Than here with speech from day to day.
And she had humbled haughtiest hearts,
Had other Talbots captive ta'en,
So edged with truth her worded darts,
Her holiness so whitely plain;
Had they not rallied from defeat
On fresh reserves of malice, pride,
And for each sophism that was beat
Two marshalled that as deeply lied.—
Then over the profound great face
Of Mercy shadows swept, and she
Reascending to her hallowed place
To weep alone, all suddenly
New darkness rushed upon the soul
Of that high crew, already dark,
But now so beamless black there stole,–
As from a devil-delivered ark,-
And crept into their pitchy breasts,
Monsters that cannot live in day,
Nor brook of sense or thought the tests,
Who there had quenched all human ray,
Had not been flushed that hideous night,—
As on mad storm-clouds tender lie
The promises of rainbow-light
From sun that sinks and seems to die,—
By radiance from the martyr-Maid,
A glow by spirit-beauty nurst,
With vestal fire so warmly rayed,
It for a moment warmed the worst.
VIII.
DEATH wooed her from his halcyon heights,
Sent inmates of his palaces
To whisper of their chaste delights,–
Veracious unbought embassies
Of livers from beyond our sky,
Large affluent heirs of lavish Death,
Whose presence teaches, that to die
Is but to breathe a livelier breath.
To win so great a guest, they broke
Their law of silence on her ear,
And in earth's accents plainly spoke
Of sure deliverance glistening near.
At first the senses pried for sound
Of scaling squadrons, and a ring
Of Frankish swords sad Rouen round,
Her shackles loosened by the King.
As noontide brilliance whets the eye,
The light wherein her longings dwelt
Gave them so fine a mastery,
That soon a subtler hearing felt
The upward pointing of the tones;
Then soared they on as blameless wings
As waft the swarm of infant ones
That daily up to heaven swings.
IX.
BUT nether life entwineth roots
So close about the seedful heart,
That till full ripened fall the fruits
A rending 't is for them to part.
Young blood holds hidden in its streams
The spawn of giant plans and wants:
To spill it, wastes high germs and gleams,
As when a murdered embryo pants.
The soldier-Maiden knew no fear;
But life was young in her, and she
Had many loves, and much was dear
That held her earth-tied tenderly.
And so, when to the sense were hushed
Her angel-voices, on the stones,
Where she lay cold and chained uncrushed,
Would creep those loves to warm her moans.
Domremy came, and from its spring
Outgushed far childhood on her brain,
And saddened there, pale wandering,
Like moonlight on a desert main.
Her mother's voice dropt in her ear,
As chimes of first familiar bells
The home-returning seaman cheer
Through deathful Storm's insatiate swells.
Swift as the viewless harnessed fire
That speeds a thought o'er continents,
Across her soul's homesick desire
Ran strange, as through a magic lens,
Her vast career to Rheims the proud
From meek Domremy; nor with pride
Was she upheaved, but humble bowed
Before her greatness’ rapid tide.
And then, – as in a harp uphung
A warm wind waketh tender tones,–
A yearning for loved legions flung
Sweet tremors through those stable stones.
Then visions of new victories played
Becrowned before a martial mood,
And in bright prophecies arrayed
The grandeur of her solitude.—
The agony of sleeping child
Who starts, entoiled in serpent-coils,
Was hers, – in vision's sea inisled,–
Waking to chains, and the worse toils
By tortive cunning wove with threads
Of vengeance in that court, whose gloom
Was ghastlier than the maiden-dreads
Of her rude dangerous prison-room.
They could but kill, they could not tame
Or conquer her, or wilt her bloom,
Heaping upon her higher fame
By that which doomed themselves,—her doom.
X.
THE palsied air in Rouen's streets
So scantly furnished food for breath,
The life that plies the pulse's heats
Was chill with pallid hints of death.
All joys, all griefs, all fears, all hopes,
What dimmeth, what illumineth,
The thought that mounts, the need that gropes,
That day were shadowed all with Death.
Men saw him in each other's eyes,
And women felt him fill their own,
And children hushed their playful cries,
And let grave silence reign alone.
He scowled below each shiny casque
Of twice four hundred troopers grim,
Who joyed in helping do his task,
And on their heartstrings dandled him.
Beyond, ten thousand gloating looks
Watched him already, ere he came,
Peering presentient through the nooks
Of pitiless fagots piled for flame.—
She comes—she comes — the Maid of Arc,
From Orleans and from Rheims she comes
Enwreathed, she whom freed France shall mark
The highest who hath roused her drums:—
She comes for holy sacrifice,
To win her greatest victory,
Warding, at costliest earthly price,
Her soul's full truth and purity:—
She comes to die for France, and lift
Man's thought forever to the height
Of love's unselfishness, – a gift
More precious than her conquering might.
“O ! Rouen | Must I die then here!”
Outgush of wonder and of awe:
Can wrong its crest unsmitten rear—
Hiss impious at His heaven of law"
A pang, quick smothered by the smoke
That suaged the bites of gnashing flame,
Through whose red roaring, prayerful broke
A voice that sounded Jesus' name.—
Fresh loosened then a tender breath
Came whispering to that sated hell;
And thence, where they had willed a death,
Forgiveness with a blessing fell.
THE END.
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