Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (622 page)

From which the fleshly self falls shrivelled, dead,

A seed primeval that has forests bred.

It is the glory of the heritage

Thy life has left, that makes thy outcast age:

Thy limbs shall lie dark, tombless on this sod,

Because thou shinest in man’s soul, a god,

Who found and gave new passion and new joy

That nought but Earth’s destruction can destroy.

Thy gifts to give was thine of men alone:

‘Twas but in giving that thou couldst atone

For too much wealth amid their poverty.”--

The words seemed melting into symphony,

The wings upbore him, and the gazing song

Was floating him the heavenly space along,

Where mighty harmonies all gently fell

Through veiling vastness, like the far-off bell,

Till, ever onward through the choral blue,

He heard more faintly and more faintly knew,

Quitting mortality, a quenched sun-wave,

The All-creating Presence for his grave.

AGATHA
.

Come with me to the mountain, not where rocks

Soar harsh above the troops of hurrying pines,

But where the earth spreads soft and rounded breasts

To feed her children ; where the generous hills

Lift a green isle betwixt the sky and plain

To keep some Old World things aloof from change.

Here too ‘t is hill and hollow : new-born streams

With sweet enforcement, joyously compelled

Like laughing children, hurry down the steeps,

And make a dimpled chase athwart the stones ;

Pine woods are black upon the heights, the slopes

Are green with pasture, and the bearded corn

Fringes the blue above the sudden ridge :

A little world whose round horizon cuts

This isle of hills with heaven for a sea,

Save in clear moments when south westward gleams

France by the Rhine, melting anon to haze.

The monks of old chose here their still retreat,

And called it by the Blessed Virgin’s name,

Sancta Maria, which the peasant’s tongue,

Speaking from out the parent’s heart that turns

All loved things into little things, has made

Sanct Margen — Holy little Mary, dear

As all the sweet home things she smiles upon,

The children and the cows, the apple-trees,

The cart, the plough, all named with that caress

Which feigns them little, easy to be held,

Familiar to the eyes and hand and heart.

What though a Queen? She puts her crown away

And with her little Boy wears common clothes,

Caring for common wants, remembering

That day when good Saint Joseph left his work

To marry her with humble trust sublime.

The monks are gone, their shadows fall no more

Tall-frocked and cowled athwart the evening fields

At milking-time ; their silent corridors

Are turned to homes of bare-armed, aproned men,

Who toil for wife and children. But the bells,

Pealing on high from two quaint convent towers,

Still ring the Catholic signals, summoning

To grave remembrance of the larger life

That bears our own, like perishable fruit

Upon its heaven-wide branches. At their sound

The shepherd boy far off upon the hill,

The workers with the saw and at the forge,

The triple generation round the hearth —

Grandames and mothers and the flute-voiced girls —

Fall on their knees, and send forth prayerful cries

To the kind Mother with the little Boy,

Who pleads for helpless men against the storm,

Lightning and plagues and all terrific shapes

Of power supreme.

Within the prettiest hollow of these hills,

Just as you enter it, upon the slope

Stands a low cottage neighboured cheerily

By running water, which, at farthest end

Of the same hollow, turns a heavy mill,

And feeds the pasture for the miller’s cows,

Blanchi and Nageli, Veilchen and the rest,

Matrons with faces as Griselda mild,

Coming at call. And on the farthest height

A little tower looks out above the pines

Where mounting you will find a sanctuary

Open and still ; without, the silent crowd

Of heaven-planted, incense-mingling flowers ;

Within, the altar where the Mother sits

‘Mid votive tablets hung from far-off years

By peasants succored in the peril of fire,

Fever, or floods who thought that Mary’s love,

Willing but not omnipotent, had stood

Between their lives and that dread power which slew

Their neighbor at their side. The chapel bell

Will melt to gentlest music ere it reach

That cottage on the slope, whose garden gate

Has caught the rose-tree boughs and stands ajar ;

So does the door, to let the sunbeams in ;

For in the slanting sunbeams angels come

And visit Agatha who dwells within —

Old Agatha, whose cousins Kate and Nell

Are housed by her in Love and Duty’s name,

They being feeble, with small withered wits,

And she believing that the higher gift

Was given to be shared. So Agatha

Shares her one room, all neat on afternoons,

As if same memory were sacred there

And everything within the-four low waIls

An honored relic.

One long summer’s day

An angel entered at the rose-hung gate,

With skirts pale blue, a brow to quench the pearl,

Hair soft and blonde as infants’, plenteous

As hers who made the wavy lengths once speak

The grateful worship of a rescued soul.

The angel paused before the open door

To give good day. “ Come in, “ said Agatha.

I followed close, and watched and listened there.

The angel was a lady, noble, young,

Taught in all the seemliness that fits the court,

All lore that shapes the mind to delicate use,

Yet quiet, lowly, as a meek white dove

That with its presence teaches gentleness.

Men called her Countess Linda ; little girls

In Freiburg town, orphans whom she caressed,

Said Mamma Linda : yet her years were few,

Her outward beauties all in budding time,

Her virtues the aroma of the plant

That dwells in all its being, root, stem, leaf.

And waits not ripeness.

“ Sit, “ said Agatha.

Her cousins were at work in neighboring homes

But yet she was not lonely ; all things round

Seemed filled with noiseless yet responsive life,

As of a child at breast that gently clings :

Not sunlight only or the breathing flowers

Or the swift shadows of the birds and bees,

But all the household goods, which, polished fair

By hands that cherished them for service done,

Shone as with glad content. The wooden beams

Dark and yet friendly, easy to be reached,

Bore three white crosses for a speaking sign ;

The walls had little pictures hung a-row,

Telling the stories of Saint Ursula,

And Saint Elizabeth, the lowly queen ;

And on the bench that served for table too,

Skirting the wall to save the narrow space,

There lay the Catholic books, inherited

From those old times when printing still was young

With stout-limbed promise, like a sturdy boy.

And in the farthest corner stood the bed

Where o’er the pillow hung two pictures wreathed

With fresh-plucked ivy : one the Virgin’s death.

And one her flowering tomb, while high above

She smiling bends and lets her girdle down

For ladder to the soul that cannot trust

In life which outlasts burial. Agatha

Sat at her knitting, aged, upright, slim.

And spoke her welcome with mild dignity.

She kept the company of kings and queens

And mitred saints who sat below the feet

Of Francis with the ragged frock and wounds ;

And Rank for her meant Duty, various,

Yet equal in its worth, done worthily.

Command was service ; humblest service done

By willing and discerning soul was glory.

Fair Countess Linda sat upon the bench,

Close fronting the old knitter, and they talked

With sweet antiphony of young and old.

AGATHA.

You like our valley, lady ? I am glad

You thought it well to come again. But rest —

The walk is long from Master Michael’s inn.

COUNTESS LINDA.

Yes, but no walk is prettier.

AGATHA.

It is true:

There lacks no blessing here, the waters all

Have virtues like the garments of the Lord,

And heal much sickness ; then, the crops and cows

Flourish past speaking, and the garden flowers,

Pink, blue, and purple, ‘t is a joy to see