The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie.
So Reverie, as he had promised, rode
out with me a few miles to see me on my way.
Above the gloom and stillness of the valley the scene
began to change again. I was glad as I could
be to view once more the tossing cornfields and the
wind at play with shadow. Near and far, woods
and pastures smoked beneath the sun. I know not
through how many arches of the elms and green folds
of the meadows I kept watch on the chimneys of a farmhouse
above its trees.
But Reverie, the further we journeyed,
the less he said. I almost chafed to see his
heedless eyes turned upon some inward dream, while
here, like life itself, stood cloud and oak, warbled
bird and brook beneath the burning sun. I saw
again in memory the silver twilight of the moon, and
the crazy face of Love’s Warrior, haunter of
shade. Let him but venture into the open, I thought,
hear again the distant lowing of the oxen, the rooks
cawing in the elms, see again the flocks upon the
hillside!
I suppose this was her home my heart
had turned to. This was my dust; night’s
was his. For me the wild rose and the fields of
harvest; for him closed petals, the chantry of the
night wind, phantom lutes and voices. And, as
if he had overheard my thoughts, Reverie turned at
the cross-ways.
“You will come back again,”
he said. “They tell me in distant lands
men worship Time, set up a shrine to him in every street,
and treasure his emblem next their hearts. There,
they say, even the lover babbles of hours, and the
dreamer measures sleep with a pendulum. Well,
my house is secluded, and the world is far; and to
me Time is naught. Return, sir, then, when it
pleases you. Besides,” he added, smiling
faintly, “there is always company at the World’s
End.”
The crisp sunbeams rained upon his
pale and delicate horse, its equal-plaited mane, on
the darkness of his cloak, that dream-delighted face.
Here smouldered gold, here flushed crimson, and here
the curved damaskening of his bridle glistened and
gleamed. He was a strange visitant to the open
day, between the green hedges, beneath the enormous
branching of the elms. And there I bade him farewell.
Some day, perhaps, I shall return
as he has foretold, for it is ever easy to find again
the house of Reverie to them who have learned
the way.
On I journeyed, then, following as
I had been directed the main road to Vanity Fair.
But whether it is that the Fair is more difficult to
arrive at than to depart from, or is really a hard
day’s journey even from the gay parlour of the
World’s End, it already began to be evening,
and yet no sign of bunting or booth or clamour or smoke.
And it was at length to a noiseless
Fair, far from all vanity, that I came at sunset the
cypresses of a solitary graveyard. I was tired
out and desired only rest; so dismounting and leading
Rosinante, I turned aside willingly into its peace.
It seemed I had entered a new earth.
The lane above had wandered on in the gloaming of
its hedges and over-arching trees. Here, all the
clouds of sunset stood, caught up in burning gold.
Even as I paused, dazzled a moment by the sudden radiance,
from height to height the wild bright rose of evening
ran. Not a tottering stone, black, well-nigh
shapeless with age, not a green bush, but seemed to
dwell unconsumed in its own fire above this desolate
ground. The trees that grew around me willow
and yew, thorn and poplar were but flaming
cages for the wild birds that perched in their branches.
Above these sound-dulled mansions
trod lightly, as if of thought, Rosinante’s
gilded shoes. I wandered on in a strange elation
of mind, filled with a desperate desire ever to remember
how flamed this rose between earth and sky, how throbbed
this jargon of delight. And turning as if in
hope to share my enthusiasm, a childish peal of laughter
showed me I was not alone.
Beneath a canopy of holly branches
and yew two children sat playing. The nearer
child’s hair was golden, glistening round his
face of roses, and he it was who had laughed, tumbling
on the sward. But the face of the further child
was white almost as crystal, and the dark hair that
encircled his head with its curved lines seemed as
it were the shadow of the gold it showed beside.
These children, it was plain, had been running and
playing across the tombs; but now they were stooping
together at some earnest sport. To me, even if
they had seen me, they as yet paid no heed.
I passed slowly towards them, deeming
them at first of solitude’s creation, my eyes
dazzled so with the sun. But as I approached,
so the branches beneath which they played gradually
disparted, and I saw not far distant from them one
sitting who evidently had these jocund boys in charge.
I could not but hesitate awhile as
I surveyed them. These were no mortal children
playing naked amid the rose of evening: nor she
who sat veiled and beautiful beneath the ruinous tombs.
I turned with sudden dismay to depart from their presence
unobserved as I had entered; but the children had
now espied me, and came running, filled with wonder
of Rosinante and the stranger beside her.
They stayed at a little distance from
us with dwelling eyes and parted lips. Then the
fairer and, as it seemed to me, elder of the brothers
stooped and plucked a few blades of grass and proffered
them, half fearfully, to the beast that amazed him.
But the other gave less heed to Rosinante, fixed the
filmy lustre of his eyes on me, his wonderful young
face veiled with that wisdom which is in all children,
and of an immutable gravity.
But by this time, she who it seemed
had the charge of these children had followed them
with her eyes. To her then, leaving Rosinante
in an ecstasy of timidity before such god-like boys,
I addressed myself.
So might a traveller lost beneath
strange stars address unanswering Night. She,
however, raised a compassionate face to me and listened
with happy seriousness as to a child returned in safety
at evening from some foolhardy venture. Yet there
seemed only a deeper youthfulness in her face for
all its eternity of brooding on her beauteous children.
Narrow leaves of olive formed her chaplet. The
darker wine-colours of the sea changed in her eyes.
There was no sense of gloom or sorrowfulness in her
company. I began to see how the same still breast
might bear celestial children so diverse as these,
whose names, she told me presently, were Sleep and
Death.
I looked at the two children at play,
“Ah! now,” I said, almost involuntarily
“the golden boy who has caught my horse’s
bridle in his hand, is not he Sleep? and he who considers
his brother’s boldness that one is
Death?”
She smiled with lovely vanity, and
told me how strange of heart young children are.
How they will alter and vary, never the same for long
together, but led by indiscoverable caprices and
obedient to some further will. She smiled and
said how that sometimes, when the birds hush suddenly
from song, Sleep would creep tenderly and sadly to
her knees, and Death clasp her roguishly, as if in
some secret with the beams of morning. So would
they change, one to the likeness of the other.
But Sleep was, perhaps, of the gentler disposition;
a little obstinate and headstrong; at times, indeed,
beyond all cajolery; yet very sweet of impulse and
ardent to make amends. But Death’s caprices
baffled even her. He seemed now so pitiless and
unlovely of heart; and now, as if possessed, passionate
and swift; and now would break away burning from her
arms in an infinite tenderness.
But best she loved them when there
came a transient peace to both; and looking upon them
laid embraced in the shadow-casting moonbeam, not
even she could undoubtingly touch the brow of each
beneath their likened hair, and say this is the elder,
and this the dreamless younger of the boys.
Seeing, too, my eyes cast upon the
undecipherable letters of the tomb by which we sat,
she told me how that once, near before dawn, she had
awoke in the twilight to find their places empty where
the children had lain at her side, and had sought
on, at last to find them even here, weeping and quarrelling,
and red with anger. Little by little, and with
many tears, she had gleaned the cause of their quarrel how
that, like very children, they had run a race at cockcrow,
and all these stones and the slender bones and ashes
beneath to be the prize; and how that, running, both
had come together to the goal set, and both had claimed
the victory.
“Yet both seem happy now to
share it,” I said, “or how else were they
comforted?” Nor did I consider before she told
me that they will run again when they be grown men,
Sleep and Death, in just such a thick darkness before
dawn; and one called Love will then run with them,
who is very vehement and fleet of foot, and never
turns aside, nor falters. He who then shall win
may ask a different prize. For truth to tell,
she said, only children can find delight for long in
dust and ruin.
At that moment Death himself came
hastening to his mother, and, taking her hand, turned
to the enormous picture of the skies as if in some
faint apprehension. But Sleep saw nothing amiss,
lay at full length among the “cool-rooted flowers,”
while Rosinante grazed beside him.
I told her also, in turn, of my journey;
and that although transient, or everlasting, solace
of all restlessness and sorrow and too-wild happiness
may be found in them, yet men think not often on these
divine children.
“As for this one,” I said,
looking down into the pathless beauty of Death’s
grey eyes, “some fear, some mock, some despise
him; some violently, some without complaint pursue;
most men would altogether dismiss, and forget him.
He is but a child, no older than the sea, no stranger
than the mountains, pure and cold as the water-springs.
Yet to the bolster of fever his vision flits; and
pain drags a heavy net to snare him; and silence is
his echoing gallery; and the gold of Sleep his final
veil. They shall play on; and see, lady, flame
has left the clouds; the birds are at rest. The
earth breathes in, and it is day; and exhales her
breath, and it is night. Let them then play secret
and innocent between her breasts, comfort her with
silence above the tempest of her heart.... But
I! what am I? a traveller, footsore
and far.”
And then it was that I became conscious
of a warm, sly, youthful hand in mine, and turned,
half in dread, to see only happy Sleep laughing under
his glistening hair into my eyes. I strove in
vain against his sorcery; rolled foolish orbs on that
pure, starry face; and then I smelled as it were rain,
and heard as it were tempestuous forest-trees fell
asleep among the tombs.