Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse

Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused
     With rain, where thick the crocus blows,
     Past the dark forges long disused,
     The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes.
     The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride,
     Through forest, up the mountain-side.

     The autumnal evening darkens round,
     The wind is up, and drives the rain;
     While, hark! far down, with strangled sound
   Doth the Dead Guier's stream complain,
   Where that wet smoke, among the woods,
   Over his boiling cauldron broods.

   Swift rush the spectral vapours white
   Past limestone scars with ragged pines,
   Showing--then blotting from our sight!--
   Halt--through the cloud-drift something shines!
   High in the valley, wet and drear,
   The huts of Courrerie appear.

   Strike leftward! cries our guide; and higher
   Mounts up the stony forest-way.
   At last the encircling trees retire;
   Look! through the showery twilight grey
   What pointed roofs are these advance?--
   A palace of the Kings of France?

   Approach, for what we seek is here!
   Alight, and sparely sup, and wait
   For rest in this outbuilding near;
   Then cross the sward and reach that gate.
   Knock; pass the wicket! Thou art come
   To the Carthusians' world-famed home.

   The silent courts, where night and day
   Into their stone-carved basins cold
   The splashing icy fountains play--
   The humid corridors behold!
   Where, ghostlike in the deepening night,
   Cowl'd forms brush by in gleaming white.

   The chapel, where no organ's peal
   Invests the stern and naked prayer--
   With penitential cries they kneel
   And wrestle; rising then, with bare
   And white uplifted faces stand,
   Passing the Host from hand to hand;

   Each takes, and then his visage wan
   Is buried in his cowl once more.
   The cells!--the suffering Son of Man
   Upon the wall--the knee-worn floor--
   And where they sleep, that wooden bed,
   Which shall their coffin be, when dead!

   The library, where tract and tome
   Not to feed priestly pride are there,
   To hymn the conquering march of Rome,
   Nor yet to amuse, as ours are!
   They paint of souls the inner strife,
   Their drops of blood, their death in life.

   The garden, overgrown--yet mild,
   See, fragrant herbs are flowering there!
   Strong children of the Alpine wild
   Whose culture is the brethren's care;
   Of human tasks their only one,
     And cheerful works beneath the sun.

   Those halls, too, destined to contain
   Each its own pilgrim-host of old,
   From England, Germany, or Spain--
   All are before me! I behold
   The House, the Brotherhood austere!
   --And what am I, that I am here?

   For rigorous teachers seized my youth,
   And purged its faith, and trimm'd its fire,
   Show'd me the high, white star of Truth,
   There bade me gaze, and there aspire.

   Even now their whispers pierce the gloom:
   What dost thou in this living tomb?

   Forgive me, masters of the mind!
   At whose behest I long ago
   So much unlearnt, so much resign'd--
   I come not here to be your foe!
   I seek these anchorites, not in ruth,
   To curse and to deny your truth;

   Not as their friend, or child, I speak!
   But as, on some far northern strand,
   Thinking of his own Gods, a Greek
   In pity and mournful awe might stand
   Before some fallen Runic stone--
   For both were faiths, and both are gone.

   Wandering between two worlds, one dead,
   The other powerless to be born,
   With nowhere yet to rest my head,
   Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.
   Their faith, my tears, the world deride--
  I come to shed them at their side.

   Oh, hide me in your gloom profound,
   Ye solemn seats of holy pain!
   Take me, cowl'd forms, and fence me round,
   Till I possess my soul again;
Till free my thoughts before me roll,
Not chafed by hourly false control!

For the world cries your faith is now
But a dead time's exploded dream;
My melancholy, sciolists say,
Is a pass'd mode, an outworn theme--
As if the world had ever had
A faith, or sciolists been sad!

Ah, if it be pass'd, take away,
At least, the restlessness, the pain;
Be man henceforth no more a prey
To these out-dated stings again!
The nobleness of grief is gone
Ah, leave us not the fret alone!

But--if you cannot give us ease--
Last of the race of them who grieve
Here leave us to die out