Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (621 page)

Then bursting like some shield-broad lily red,

Sudden and near the trumpet’s notes out-spread,

And soon his eyes could see the metal flower,

Shining upturned, out on the morning pour

Its incense audible; could see a train

From out the street slow-winding on the plain

With lyres and cymbals, flutes and psalteries,

While men, youths, maids, in concert sang to these

With various throat, or in succession poured,

Or in full volume mingled. But one word

Ruled each recurrent rise and answering fall,

As when the multitudes adoring call

On some great name divine, their common soul,

The common need, love, joy, that knits them in one whole.

The word was “Jubal!”.. “Jubal” filled the air,

And seemed to ride aloft, a spirit there,

Creator of the choir, the full-fraught strain

That grateful rolled itself to him again.

The aged man adust upon the bank--

Whom no eye saw--at first with rapture drank

The bliss of music, then, with swelling heart,

Felt, this was his own being’s greater part,

The universal joy once born in him.

But when the train, with living face and limb

And vocal breath, came nearer and more near,

The longing grew that they should hold him dear;

Him, Lamech’s son, whom all their fathers knew,

The breathing Jubal--him, to whom their love was due.

All was forgotten but the burning need

To claim his fuller self, to claim the deed

That lived away from him, and grew apart,

While he as from a tomb, with lonely heart,

Warmed by no meeting glance, no hand that pressed,

Lay chill amid the life his life had blessed.

What though his song should spread from man’s small race

Out through the myriad worlds that people space,

And make the heavens one joy-diffusing quire?--

Still ‘mid that vast would throb the keen desire

Of this poor aged flesh, this eventide,

This twilight soon in darkness to subside,

This little pulse of self, that, having glowed

Through thrice three centuries, and divinely strewed

The light of music through the vague of sound,

Ached smallness still in good that had no bound.

For no eye saw him, while with loving pride--

Each voice with each in praise of Jubal vied.

Must he in conscious trance, dumb, helpless lie

While all that ardent kindred passed him by?

His flesh cried out to live with living men,

And join that soul which to the inward ken

Of all the hymning train was present there.

Strong passion’s daring sees not aught to dare:

The frost-locked starkness of his frame low-bent,

His voice’s penury of tones long spent,

He felt not; all his being leaped in flame

To meet his kindred as they onward came

Slackening and wheeling toward the temple’s face:

He rushed before them to the glittering space,

And, with a strength that was but strong desire,

Cried, “I am Jubal, I! . . . I made the lyre!”

The tones amid a lake of silence fell

Broken and strained, as if a feeble bell

Had tuneless pealed the triumph of a land

To listening crowds in expectation spanned.

Sudden came showers of laughter on that lake;

They spread along the train from front to wake

In one great storm of merriment, while he

Shrank doubting whether he could Jubal be,

And not a dream of Jubal, whose rich vein

Of passionate music came with that dream-pain,

Wherein the sense slips off from each loved thing,

And all appearance is mere vanishing.

But ere the laughter died from out the rear,

Anger in front saw profanation near;

Jubal was but a name in each man’s faith

For glorious power untouched by that slow death

Which creeps with creeping time; this too, the spot,

And this the day, it must be crime to blot,

Even with scoffing at a madman’s lie:

Jubal was not a name to wed with mockery.

Two rushed upon him: two, the most devout

In honor of great Jubal, thrust him out,

And beat him with their flutes. ‘Twas little need;

He strove not, cried not, but with tottering speed,

As if the scorn and howls were driving wind

That urged his body, serving so the mind

Which could but shrink and yearn, he sought the screen

Of thorny thickets, and there fell unseen.

The immortal name of Jubal filled the sky,

While Jubal lonely laid him down to die.

He said within his soul, “This is the end:

O’er all the earth to where the heavens bend

And hem men’s travel, I have breathed my soul:

I lie here now the remnant of that whole,

The embers of a life, a lonely pain;

As far-off rivers to my thirst were vain,

So of my mighty years nought comes to me again.

“Is the day sinking? Softest coolness springs

From something round me: dewy shadowy wings

Enclose me all around--no, not above--

Is moonlight there? I see a face of love,

Fair as sweet music when my heart was strong:

Yea--art thou come again to me, great Song?”

The face bent over him like silver night

In long-remembered summers; that calm light

Of days which shine in firmaments of thought,

That past unchangeable, from change still wrought.

And there were tones that with the vision blent:

He knew not if that gaze the music sent,

Or music that calm gaze: to hear, to see,

Was but one undivided ecstasy:

The raptured senses melted into one,

And parting life a moment’s freedom won

From in and outer, as a little child

Sits on a bank and sees blue heavens mild

Down in the water, and forgets its limbs,

And knoweth nought save the blue heaven that swims.

“Jubal,” the face said, “ I am thy loved Past,

The soul that makes thee one from first to last.

I am the angel of thy life and death,

Thy outbreathed being drawing its last breath.

Am I not thine alone, a dear dead bride

Who blest thy lot above all men’s beside?

Thy bride whom thou wouldst never change, nor take

Any bride living, for that dead one’s sake?

Was I not all thy yearning and delight,

Thy chosen search, thy senses’ beauteous Right,

Which still had been the hunger of thy frame

In central heaven, hadst thou been still the same?

Wouldst thou have asked aught else from any god

Whether with gleaming feet on earth he trod

Or thundered through the skies--aught else for share

Of mortal good, than in thy soul to bear

The growth of song, and feel the sweet unrest

Of the world’s spring-tide in thy conscious breast?

No, thou hadst grasped thy lot with all its pain,

Nor loosed it any painless lot to gain

Where music’s voice was silent; for thy fate

Was human music’s self incorporate:

Thy senses’ keenness and thy passionate strife

Were flesh of her flesh and her womb of life.

And greatly hast thou lived, for not alone

With hidden raptures were her secrets shown,

Buried within thee, as the purple light

Of gems may sleep in solitary night;

But thy expanding joy was still to give,

And with the generous air in song to live

Feeding the wave of ever-widening bliss

Where fellowship means equal perfectness.

And on the mountains in thy wandering

Thy feet were beautiful as blossomed spring,

That turns the leafless wood to love’s glad home,

For with thy coming Melody was come.

This was thy lot, to feel, create, bestow,

And that immeasurable life to know