The Idyl of the Anchorite

The great firs moaned in the valleys below;

But high up in the pass, in the wastes of snow,

'Mid the great lone rocks where no live thing stirred,

All was mute, for the torrents had ceased to flow.

Save at times when the cry of some travel-spent bird,

Or the long, low howl of a wolf was heard;

For the wolves in great numbers had traversed the Rhine

On the ice that winter, by hunger stirred.

The wintry light in its rapid decline

Illumined the rocks with a sickly shine;

All was stone and was snow; all was dumb and was wan:

Of plants no vestige, of man no sign.

And yet one human life upon

Those crags (if life you could call it) went on,

Where even in summer no herb was gleaned,

The life of the anchorite, John of Avonne.

A lair, half cave, half cabin, screened,

Up there where nature had never greened,

The man who daily at dawn resumed

This long, lone war with himself and the Fiend.

His frame, by vigil and fast consumed,

Was bent ere age, and his face had assumed

A colour more sallow than baker's paste,

A look more haggard than corpse exhumed.

Six years had he lived on that mountain waste,

Which the very stones that his foot displaced,

The very waters that bubbled there.

Deserted with loathing and headlong haste.

Six years had he borne in shirt of hair

In summer the sun's terrific glare,

In winter great frost, to be nearer to God

In a mixture of rapture and dull despair.

And not God, but the Fiend on his footsteps trod

And tempted him, spite of his scourging rod

And his long, long prayer, and his hearth without fire,

And the tasteless herb, and the hard wild pod.

And whispering devils inflamed his desire

For all that men care for, and do and admire;

And murmured of riches and pleasure and ease,

And made him regret mother, sister, and sire.

And others, whose task was to plague and to tease,

Took in summer the shape of uncatchable fleas,

As he knelt at his prayers, and made his thoughts stray,

And in winter they made him to cough and to sneeze.

And they stole his dry herbs and made him mislay

His beads, and confused him till scarce he could pray,

And they sent him to sleep when he still had to kneel,

And they left not unplayed any trick they could play.

And devils in semblance of women would steal

To the side of his bed, till he thought he could feel

Their breath on his cheek, and their hot kiss feared,

Which should forfeit for ever his heavenly weal.

And from under the mat of his cell they peered,

And tempted and tickled and beckoned and leered;

While their round, rosy limbs to his horror peeped out,

And their laughter-filled eyes at his chastity jeered.

And they circled him nearer and nearer about,

While he trembled with horror with lust and with doubt;

And brought him so near the eternal abyss,

That all panting he woke with an amorous shout.

II

It was winter now, and so cold as this

It had never yet been in his cell, I wiss;

The night wind had risen, and ceased not to sweep

The slopes of snow with an angry kiss.

He had lit a fire at last, to keep

His soul with his body; and, half asleep,

Was telling his beads as he crouched on his mat

By the flickering light of the blazing heap.

Had you watched him there, as he silent sat,

And the work he was sluggishly busy at,

You might have felt wonder that God should have made

So bloodless and listless a thing as that.

It was more than a month since the devils had played

Any tricks, and untroubled the anchorite prayed,

While sense and sensation began to depart,

In numb beatitude unafraid.

But all of a sudden he gave a start,

The stagnant blood seemed to flow to his heart

And he listened awhile to some outer noise

With brow contracted and lips apart.

For more than six years no woman's voice

Had dropped on his ear by his own fierce choice,

And now he could hear one imploring outside,

And faith made him fear, and nature rejoice.

" Let me in! let me in! " the suppliant cried,

" Whoever thou art whose blest light I have spied;

For love of God give me shelter and food,

I have strayed from the path, and have well-nigh died. "

In doubt one moment the anchorite stood

Between mercy, and fear, of womanhood;

But what conquered was dread of the flesh and its snares,

And he stopped his ears with his coarse brown hood.

And he knelt once more and resumed his prayer,

And placed himself well in the Virgin's care,

And, like one who his heart with a strong hand locks,

He thanked God that no woman might enter there.

But louder and louder resounded the knocks,

While she cried in a tone to move stones and stocks

" Let me in! let me in! the wolves are near:

I can hear them: they've tracked me since dusk on the rocks. "

And he listened, and thought he could distantly hear

The howl of a wolf; and in spite of chaste fear

He opened the door, and he let her rush by

With the icy blast of the night in rear.

In a strange, wild way, with a strange, wild cry,

She rushed to the fire that still blazed high;

And she crouched by the flame as if she would hold

The logs and their heat to her bosom more nigh.

Her face was so pinched and so warped by the cold

That you scarcely could say she was young or old,

And her long black hair, which hid partly her cheek,

On her shoulders fell loose, by the wind unrolled.

He pushed her some food and bade her not speak,

But leave him to prayer; and, like those who seek

Both shadow and peace, dragged his matting of straw

To a corner, and watched her with glance oblique.

And, little by little, with terror he saw,

As the cold relaxed the icy claw

With which it was holding so tightly her frame,

And the blood in her veins began to thaw,

That from minute to minute she younger became

By the steadier light of the higher fed flame,

And her form became rounded, her cheek increased,

And, from minute to minute, she seemed not the same.

And she seemed as her roundness and colour increased,

In his eyes, unaccustomed to beauty, at least,

To be terribly lovely; his blood quicker ran,

And the prayers he was muttering gradually ceased.

And a frightful trial of strength began

In the breast of the savage and lonely man,

Between fear for his soul and the pent up lust,

Whose fire her presence had come to fan.

He thought how for years, in ashes and dust,

He had hungered on herbs of the waste and on crust,

And had chastened with scourge and with shirt of hair

The flesh that may not, the flesh that must.

And had climbed half way up Heaven's desolate stair,

Where each step that he took was beset with a snare,

And would soon reach the top where he could not fail

To be paid for the ills he had chosen to bear.

He tried to do like the bloodless snail,

Which gathers up body and horns and tail,

And to shrink in his cowl, and escape from her view;

But his cowl was no shell, nor would shrinking avail.

For an awful force like a magnet drew

His senses out, and more terrible grew

The more he resisted and tried to be

A feelingless thing, and to pray anew.

And already he crept on hand and knew,

(For still in the posture of prayer was he)

When a sudden thought made Austerity win

And roused all his fury, while setting him free.

He remembered the Fiend had once been let in,

In the shape of a girl, by Saint Victorin,

And had prayed for a shelter from wolves in his cell,

And had tempted him sorely and made him sin.

It was he! it was he! Oh, he now knew him well,

It was he! it was he! He had come out of hell

To make him do sin which no prayer could purge,

But, thank God, 'twas still time to refrain and expel.

And he sprang from his mat, and he seized his scourge,

And, like one whom invisible spirits urge,

He let the lash fall on the neck soft and round,

Which had brought him so near to destruction's verge.

She started and shrank, with no other sound

Than a loud, inarticulate cry, like a hound

Who feels on his back sudden lashes alight,

But understands nought, and lies still on the ground.

Then, as faster and faster he ceased not to smite,

And bade her avaunt, and begone from his sight,

All bewildered with terror, she fled to the door

And sought peace in the cold and the darkness of night.

III

He fastened the bolt and, alone once more,

He knelt on his mat, and repeated a score

Of monotonous prayers, while the sobs outside

Grew faint in the wind which howled as before.

The night was advanced; and the sleep he defied

Was numbing his brain, and though hard he still tried

To mutter more prayers, his eyelids fell,

But his lips their mechanical task still plied.

At last his lips stopped, and he dreamt of hell,

Which seemed to be somehow encircling his cell,

And he heard the damned at his door knock loud

With wild entreaty and dreadful yell.

They seemed to his fancy a numberless crowd,

Whose voice was with infinite horror endowed,

While above them the fiends, still more countless than they,

Fast scourging and rending them, hung like a cloud.

And they shrieked in so urgent and frightful a way

That he woke, with a forehead as clammy as clay,

And listened in fear; but the wind howled alone,

And he turned on his side, and he slept till day.

And the bleak light of morning lividly shone

On the dreary desert of snow and stone;

The clouds hung low, like a great lid of lead,

Though the wind still blew with a fitful moan.

And the anchorite rose from his hard, mean bed,

And he thought, as his long, long prayers he said,

How well he had treated the Fiend with his whip

Last night, and how quickly the Fiend had fled.

And a dull contempt curled faintly his lip

As he thought how Saint Victorin let the Fiend slip

After letting him tempt him to do what none should,

While he had belaboured him, shoulder and hip.

And he covered his head with his coarse brown hood,

And taking his pail on his threshold stood,

And looked out on the waste, ere he went to the spring,

But he stared, for the snow was all stained as with blood;

And remnants that seemed of a human thing,

To which fluttering tatters appeared to cling,

On the paw-printed snow had been dragged here and there,

While the carrion birds rose with a flapping of wings.

And the anchorite gave it a long dull stare;

Then he thought: this thing is some new-laid snare

Of the wily old Fiend; but he wastes his pains,

For I am as cunning, and take good care.

And he passed on his way; and the strange remains

Were borne off by the birds; while the dark red stains

Were effaced next day by the thick-flaked snow,

Which for many a week seemed, on mountains and plains,

As if it would never cease deeper to grow.