Toward the Gulf Part 25

FRIAR YVES

Said Friar Yves: "G.o.d will bless Saint Louis' other-worldliness.

Whatever the fate be, still I fare To fight for the Holy Sepulcher.

If I survive, I shall return With precious things from Palestine-- Gold for my purse, spices and wine, Glory to wear among my kin.

Fame as a warrior I shall win.

But, otherwise, if I am slain In Jesus' cause, my soul shall earn Immortal life washed white from sin."

Said Friar Yves: "Come what will-- Riches and glory, death and woe-- At dawn to Palestine I go.

Whether I live or die, I gain To fly the tepid good and ill Of daily living in Champagne, Where those who reach salvation lose The treasures, raptures of the earth, Captured, possessed, and made to serve The gospel love of Jesus' birth, Sacrifice, death; where even those Pa.s.sing from pious works and prayer To paradise are not received As those who battled, strove, and lived, And periled bodies, as I choose To peril mine, and thus to use Body and soul to build the throne Of Louis the Saint, where Joseph's care Lay Jesus under a granite stone."

Then Friar Yves buckled on His breastplate, and, at break of dawn, With crossboy, halberd took his way, Walked without resting, without pause, Till the sun hovered at midday Over a tree of glistening leaves, Where a spring gurgled. "Hunger gnaws My stomach," whispered Friar Yves.

"If I," he sighed, "could only gain, Like yonder spring, an inner source Of life, and need not dew or rain Of human love, or human friends, And thus accomplish my soul's ends Within myself! No," said the friar; "There is one water and one fire; There is one Spirit, which is G.o.d.

And what are we but streams and springs Through which He takes His wanderings?

Lord, I am weak, I am afraid; Show me the way!" the friar prayed.

"Where do I flow and to what end?

Am I of Thee, or do I blend Hereafter with Thee?"

Yves heard, While praying, sounds as when the sod Teems with a swarm of insect things.

He dropped his halberd to look down, And then his waking vision blurred, As one before a light will frown.

His inner ear was caught and stirred By voices; then the chestnut tree Became a step beside a throne.

Breathless he lay and fearfully, While on his brain a vision shone.

Said a Great Voice of sweetest tone: "The time has come when I must take The form of man for mankind's sake.

This drama is played long enough By creatures who have naught of me, Save what comes up from foam of the sea To crawling moss or swimming weeds, At last to man. From heaven in flame, Pure, whole, and vital, down I fly, And take a mortal's form and name, And labor for the race's needs."

Then Friar Yves dreamed the sky Flushed like a bride's face rosily, And shot to lightning from its bloom.

The world leaped like a babe in the womb, And choral voices from heaven's cope Circled the earth like singing stars: "O wondrous hope, O sweetest hope, O pa.s.sion realized at last; O end of hunger, fear, and wars, O victory over the bottomless, vast Valley of Death!"

A silence fell, Broke by the voice of Gabriel: "Music may follow this, O Lord!

Music I hear; I hear discord Through ages yet to be, as well.

There will be wars because of this, And wars will come in its despite.

It's noon on the world now; blackest night Will follow soon. And men will miss The meaning, Lord! There will be strife 'Twixt Montanist and Ebionite, Gnostic, Mithraist, Manichean, 'Twixt Christian and the Saracen.

There will be war to win the place Where you bend death to sovereign life.

Armed kings will battle for the grace Of rulers.h.i.+p, for power and gold In the name of Jesus. Men will hold Conclaves of swords to win surcease Of doctrines of the Prince of Peace.

The seed is good, Lord, make the ground Good for the seed you scatter round!"

Said the Great Voice of sweetest tone: "The gardener sprays his plants and trees To drive out lice and stop disease.

After the spraying, fruit is grown Ruddy and plump. The shortened eyes Of men can see this end, although Leaves wither or a whole tree dies From what the gardener does to grow Apples and plums of sweeter flesh.

The gardener lives outside the tree; The gardener knows the tree can see What cure is needed, plans afresh An end foreseen, and there's the will Wherewith the gardener may fulfil The orchard's destiny."

So He spake.

And Friar Yves seemed to wake, But did not wake, and only sunk Into another dreaming state, Wherein he saw a woman's form Leaning against the chestnut's trunk.

Her body was virginal, white, and straight, And glowed like a dawning, golden, warm, Behind a robe of writhing green: As when a rock's wall makes a screen Whereon the crisscross reflect moves Of circling water under the rays Of April sunlight through the sprays Of budding branches in willow groves-- A liquid mosaic of green and gold-- Thus was her robe.

But to behold Her face was to forget the youth Of her white bosom. All her hair Was tangled serpents; she did wear A single eye in the middle brow.

Her cheeks were shriveled, and one tooth Stuck from shrunken gums. A bough O'ershadowed her the while she gripped A pail in either hand. One dripped Clear water; one, ethereal fire.

Then to the Graia spoke the friar: "Have mercy! Tell me your desire And what you are?"

Then the Graia said: "My body is Nature and my head Is Man, and G.o.d has given me A seeing spirit, strong and free, Though by a single eye, as even Man has one vision at a time.

I lift my pails up; mark them well.

With this fire I will burn up heaven, And with this water I will quench The flames of h.e.l.l's remotest trench, That men may work in righteousness.

Not for the fears of an after h.e.l.l, Nor for the rewards which heaven will bless The soul with when the mountains nod And the sun darkens, but for love Of Man and Life, and love of G.o.d.

Now look!"

She dashed the pail of fire Against the vault of heaven. It fell As would a canopy of blue Burned by a soldier's careless torch.

She dashed the water into h.e.l.l, And a great steam rose up with the smell Of gaseous coals, which seemed to scorch All things which on the good earth grew.

"Now," said the Graia, "loiterer, Awake from slumber, rise and speed To fight for the Holy Sepulcher-- Nothing is left but Life, indeed-- I have burned heaven! I have quenched h.e.l.l."

Friar Yves no longer slept; Friar Yves awoke and wept.

THE EIGHTH CRUSADE

June, but we kept the fire place piled with logs, And every day it rained. And every morning I heard the wind and rain among the leaves.

Try as I would my spirits grew no better.

What was it? Was I ill or sick in mind?

I spent the whole day working with my hands, For there was brush to clear and corn to plant Between the gusts of rain; and there at night I sat about the room and hugged the fire.

And the rain dripped and the wind blew, we s.h.i.+vered For cold and it was June. I ached all through For my hard labor, why did muscles grow not To hardness and cure body, if 'twere body, Or soul if it were soul?

But there at night As I sat aching, worn, before the hour Of sleep, and restless in this interval Of nothingness, the silence out-of-doors, Timed by the dripping rain, and by the slap Of cards upon a table by a boarder Who pa.s.sed the time in playing solitaire, Sometimes my ancient host would fill his pipe, And sc.r.a.pe away the dust of long past years To show me what had happened in his life.

And as he smoked and talked his aged wife Would parallel his theme, as a brooks' branches Formed by a slender island, flow together.

Or yet again she'd intercalate a touch, An episode or version. And sometimes He'd make her hush; or sometimes he'd suspend While she went on to what she wished to finish, When he'd resume. They talked together thus.

He found the story and began to tell it, And she hung on his story, told it too.

This night the rain came down in buckets full, And Claude who brought the logs in showed his breath Between the opening of the outer door And the swift on-rush of the room's warm air.

And my host who had hoed the whole day long, Hearty at eighty years, sat with his pipe Reading the organ of the Adventists, His wife beside him knitting.

On the table Are several magazines with their monthly grist Of stories and of pictures. O such stories!

Who writes these stories? How does it happen people Are born into the world to read these stories?

But anyway the lamp is very bad, And every bone in me aches--and why always Must one be either reading, knitting, talking?

Why not sit quietly and think?

At last Between the clicking needles and the slap Of cards upon the table and the swish Of rain upon the window my host speaks: "It says here when the Germans are defeated, And that means when the Turks are beaten too, The Christian world will take back Palestine, And drive the Turks out. G.o.d be praised, I hope so."

"Amen" breaks in the wife. "May we both live To see the day. Perhaps you'll get your trunk back From Jaffa if the Allies win."

To me The wife turns and goes on, "He has a trunk, At least his trunk went on to Jaffa, and It never came back. The bishop's trunk came back, But his trunk never came."

And then the husband: "What are you saying, mother, you go on As if our friend here knew the story too.

And then you talk as if our hope of the war Was centered on recovering that trunk."

"Oh, not at all But if the Allies win, and the trunk is there In Jaffa you might get it back. You know You'll never get it back while infidels Rule Palestine."

The husband says to me: "It looks as if she thought that trunk of mine, Which went to Jaffa fifty years ago, Is in existence yet, when chances are They kept it for awhile, and sold it off, Or threw it away."

"They never threw it away.