The Hermitage of bells

AD RAMA OF S OUND .

I.

The king has built a hermitage of bells
Beyond the city walls upon a hill,
Save when the bells are ringing for the king,
His garden by the sea is forest still.
Set on a cape curved like a hunter's horn,
Rock terraced like the temples of Cathay,
It overlooks the town and fields of corn
And glimpses topsail-ships at break of day.
And there a deep spring flows called Blanchefontaine
That sings a deathlike monody of rest,
All night the sick moon totters on its alban waters —
It drips a sound like summer rain,
When the sun opens up his eye,
Until he stares like Cyclops from the west.
It slips through oak groves with an easy motion,
Twinkling like starlight from its shady source,
Three times it curves before it meets the ocean
Across the tide rip hoarse.

Farther up
The oak groves end abrupt,
But down that narrow valley
Like a darkened alley,
The water falls and calls
And seeps and leaps
And speaks by waterfalls;
Till the wanderer believes
There are voices in the leaves,
Whispering like thirsty lips,
Calling like muffled bells from misty ships,
Gurgling like pigeons from the eaves —
It is a demon din
Of subterranean voices old and thin,
An elfin carillon the water rings
As it sweeps on.
Halfway in that night
Of oak twilight,
Where the stream dashes down a verge,
The sound of ocean and of river merge.
And it is strange to see
The leaves whirl eerily,
When like an icy kiss,
Comes the long withering hiss
Of the tormented sea.

The king is melancholy mad, I guess,
To dwell in such a dim and rustling place,
Perhaps he has a sin beyond redress,
Perhaps he sees him visions of a face.
Some say it is a bell
Has lured him to the garden by a spell,
And that the spell is holy;
Holy or not, it's melancholy!
For when the queen rides to him from the town,
With two maids posting, one on either side,
Her face is veiled with black when she rides down —
Like mourners by a hearse her two maids ride —
Her face is veiled with black,
The reins hang slack;
Some say she weeps,
But who can tell?
Why should the queen weep when she hears a bell?
She stops by the gate blind-walled;
Mary! What called?
Did something die?
What answered back?
Did the queen shriek behind her veil of black?
Something said, — O, — — O, — — o —
With the voice of the queen's own woe!
Was it demon or echo?
It had an — O — -shaped mouth
And a voice like the wind in the south.
It mocked her like a child,
Each time less loud
And much more mild.

The king, I guess, has lost his wits;
It must be so!
All day he sits
Where mast-straight poplars grow,
Four here, four there, foursquare,
Like columns in a row,
Still as the shadow on a mountain,
And in the middle is a fountain,
Held by two marble boys,
Whence the water falls with a sleepy noise.
It is a madman's choice
To listen to that fountain's voice.
It must be so!

For never comes to that enchanted place
A sound but of the water, sea, and bells;
The shadows lie like tattered lace.
One mood is fixed there and forever,
Like a look on a dead man's face,
Like a week of summer weather,
I would that I might lay my head on such a bed,
Where dreams make spells —
So must the king think when he hears the bells.

II.

Once in his youth,
While his new ears could yet distinguish truth,
He heard a listless bell clang langorously,
A liquid, languid clamor,
The talking tone of iron struck by the hammer,
A sound that blew like smoke across the sea,
Low, slow and trembling dreamfully
From the high, horn-shaped cape;
For there a hermit lived
And tended the wild grape,
Where white, campaniform, small lilies teem,
And there he died beside his cell,
Lost in his dream of heaven and of hell;
And the bell was the voice of that old dream.
One Lusitanian summer, long ago,
Upon a hot and azure afternoon,
While the oars trailed
And with the tide they sailed,
And tenor zithers sang an ivory tune —
Along cerulean coasts,
With islands like blue ghosts,
Rang the lone hermit's bell,
— Alone-lin-lang-alone, —
Clear as a wounded angel's voice,
Soft as a death spell that old women croon —
The harbor gulf lay placid,
And in the west there hung a half a moon.

Never again in laughter or in tears,
Or in titantic days of crashing shields,
In triumphs with blue light upon the spears,
Or when he rivaled God upon his throne,
Never had the bell's voice died;
In all his purple, blood-bought pride
It seemed to toll for him an overtone.
After the battle with his veins' blood spent,
Disheartened by the metal light of day,
Between the crisscross threads that made his tent,
The fear of life came on him as he lay;
— Outside the world is garish, — thought the king,
And then — and then he heard the lone bell ring
And saw the peace and green light of a wood;
It was a very vision of escape,
A high-walled garden on the crescent cape,
Fair as an evil thing but good.

The cape is luniform
Whereon the hermit's form
Lies bony white and still
Beside the chapel on the hill;
The long grass waves as if he breathes
At every breeze that weaves;
The birds have nests among old votive wreaths
And there the snake sheds in the rustling leaves.
There are faint flower sounds
Around, for spider hands have rung
The lily with its yellow clapper tongue,
All day the mists take shape
And the high hawks slant drifting down the cape —
By night the heavenly hunter leads his hounds,
Wandering the zodiacal bounds,
And all the white stars march,
Flaming in the unalterable arch,
While the wind swings the listless bell
That rings the hermit's knell —
Sleep well, sleep well!

III.

Three years the king has dwelt within a cell
That he might dream his garden first to build it well,
His ministers are black with wrath
And the stone floor is hollowed to a path,
But still he hears the bell,
A frozen sound clear as a cold, deep well.
The king is melancholy mad, I guess.
At nights
The tower windows flash with lights
And many an artisan
Comes after midnight with the garden's plan
Of walls and towers
And terraces and flowers,
And spreads them wondering upon the floor;
The queen comes seldom now and least
Of all the priest;
There is no priest alive
That can the king's soul shrive;
The dead hermit from his cell
Has lured him close to heaven with his bell,
A strange, a mad, a melancholy spell.

The master of campanology
Has cast four lovely voices for the king,
Four godlike metal throats that sing
In towers at the corners of the wall;
And all the garden hears them call,
Four miracles of tone,
Of sound that flows to nothingness
Like water lines upon a river stone.

Gracious as a good gift given freely,
Comes from each campanile
At each corner of the wall,
The keen voice of a bell,
— Lan-up, lan-up , — they ring,
And call and call the king
With the voice of the old spell
That they inherit from the hermit's bell —
Five times as strong, —
The king must go ere long —
He has the key to the garden gates,
He only waits
In courtesy to say the queen farewell.

Alas! Alas! The king is mad!
The people throng to see him pass,
And he has heard a mass.
It was an eery thing to see
The king go merrily
And all the world forgo —
At dawn when little birds sing charmingly,
There was a ringing sound of horses' feet
And lovers in their upper rooms stopped clinging,
To hear go down the street
The minstrelsy
And little foolscap bells a-ringing.

IV.

Down at the river ford
Beside the ferry,
Dances a little wherry,
To every wave that blows in from the sea
It dances merrily;
To every wave it dips it
And to the wind it tips it.
This merry little boat the king will take,
The pale queen waits with outstretched hands,
And now he bends above the oars,
And now before the garden gates he stands —
It was an eery thing to see
Him leave so merrily —
The music played him to the shore
Where he will walk no more.
The king is mad to be so lonely glad,
And mad to throw the key into the sea.

And now he dwells within his hermitage of bells
Upon the cape shaped like a hunter's horn,
The five bells strike a unitone,
The wind comes fooling like an ape
And the strange boy-breasted sea things mourn.
The rock pools seep and creep,
Laugh like a mad child in a moonstruck sleep,
And then flow onward like an easy dream,
Talking among the rocks,
Into one valley stream,
That ticks and drips and strikes like distant clocks
Till with a snaky motion
It curves three times
And glides into the ocean.
Marry! The king now is a lover!
The bridegroom of his mother earth, no other,
It goes unholily that he should be
Enamored of the earth that gave him birth
And of the sea,
But now he has his will
And he is husband to the sea and hill
And to the wind a brother.

At sunset all the garden swoons with bells,
Rolling across the sea and fells,
The demon sound stumbles along the ground,
Withering for miles around
And then is still —
All but one bell that dins on from the hill,
That strikes to ten,
While all the peasants pray
And cross themselves and say,
— Christ pity us!
It is the mad king's angelus,
Amen. —