The Saint's Tragedy

Lastly, the many miraculous stories which the biographer of Elizabeth relates of her, I had no right, for the sake of truth, to interweave in the plot, while it was necessary to indicate at least their existence.  I have, therefore, put such of them as seemed least absurd into the mouth of Conrad, to whom, in fact, they owe their original publication, and have done so, as I hope, not without a just ethical purpose.

Such was my idea: of the inconsistencies and short-comings of this its realisation, no one can ever be so painfully sensible as I am already myself.  If, however, this book shall cause one Englishman honestly to ask himself, ‘I, as a Protestant, have been accustomed to assert the purity and dignity of the offices of husband, wife, and parent.  Have I ever examined the grounds of my own assertion?  Do I believe them to be as callings from God, spiritual, sacramental, divine, eternal?  Or am I at heart regarding and using them, like the Papist, merely as heaven’s indulgences to the infirmities of fallen man?’—then will my book have done its work.

If, again, it shall deter one young man from the example of those miserable dilettanti, who in books and sermons are whimpering meagre second-hand praises of celibacy—depreciating as carnal and degrading those family ties to which they owe their own existence, and in the enjoyment of which they themselves all the while unblushingly indulge—insulting thus their own wives and mothers—nibbling ignorantly at the very root of that household purity which constitutes the distinctive superiority of Protestant over Popish nations—again my book will have done its work.

If, lastly, it shall awaken one pious Protestant to recognise, in some, at least, of the Saints of the Middle Age, beings not only of the same passions, but of the same Lord, the same faith, the same baptism, as themselves, Protestants, not the less deep and true, because utterly unconscious and practical—mighty witnesses against the two antichrists of their age—the tyranny of feudal caste, and the phantoms which Popery substitutes for the living Christ—then also will my little book indeed have done its work.  C. K.

1848.

CHARACTERS

Elizabeth, daughter of the King of Hungary,

Lewis, Landgrave of Thuringia, betrothed to her in childhood.

Henry, brother of Lewis.

Walter of Varila, }

Rudolf the Cupbearer, }

Leutolf of Erlstetten, }

Hartwig of Erba, } Vassals of Lewis.

Count Hugo, }

Count of Saym, etc. }

Conrad of Marpurg, a Monk, the Pope’s Commissioner for the suppression of heresy.

Gerard, his Chaplain.

Bishop of Bamberg, uncle of Elizabeth, etc. etc.

Sophia, Dowager Landgravine.

Agnes, her daughter, sister of Lewis.

Isentrudis, Elizabeth’s nurse.

Guta, her favourite maiden.

Etc. etc. etc

The Scene lies principally in Eisenach, and the Wartburg; changing afterwards to Bamberg, and finally to Marpurg.

PROEM

(EPIMETHEUS)IWake again, Teutonic Father-ages,   Speak again, beloved primæval creeds;Flash ancestral spirit from your pages,   Wake the greedy age to noble deeds.IITell us, how of old our saintly mothers   Schooled themselves by vigil, fast, and prayer,Learnt to love as Jesus loved before them,   While they bore the cross which poor men bear.IIITell us how our stout crusading fathers   Fought and died for God, and not for gold;Let their love, their faith, their boyish daring,   Distance-mellowed, gild the days of old.IVTell us how the sexless workers, thronging,   Angel-tended, round the convent doors,Wrought to Christian faith and holy order   Savage hearts alike and barren moors.VYe who built the churches where we worship,   Ye who framed the laws by which we move,Fathers, long belied, and long forsaken,   Oh! forgive the children of your love!(PROMETHEUS)ISpeak! but ask us not to be as ye were!   All but God is changing day by day.He who breathes on man the plastic spirit   Bids us mould ourselves its robe of clay.IIOld anarchic floods of revolution,   Drowning ill and good alike in night,Sink, and bare the wrecks of ancient labour,   Fossil-teeming, to the searching light.IIIThere will we find laws, which shall interpret,   Through the simpler past, existing life;Delving up from mines and fairy caverns   Charmed blades, to cut the age’s strife.IVWhat though fogs may stream from draining waters?   We will till the clays to mellow loam;Wake the graveyard of our fathers’ spirits;   Clothe its crumbling mounds with blade and bloom.VOld decays but foster new creations;   Bones and ashes feed the golden corn;Fresh elixirs wander every moment,   Down the veins through which the live past feeds its child, the live unborn.

ACT I

SCENE I.  A.D. 1220

The Doorway of a closed Chapel in the Wartburg.  Elizabeth sitting on the Steps.

Eliz.  Baby Jesus, who dost lieFar above that stormy sky,In Thy mother’s pure caress,Stoop and save the motherless.Happy birds! whom Jesus leavesUnderneath His sheltering eaves;There they go to play and sleep,May not I go in to weep?All without is mean and small,All within is vast and tall;All without is harsh and shrill,All within is hushed and still.Jesus, let me enter in,Wrap me safe from noise and sin.Let me list the angels’ songs,See the picture of Thy wrongs;Let me kiss Thy wounded feet,Drink Thine incense, faint and sweet,While the clear bells call Thee downFrom Thine everlasting throne.At thy door-step low I bend,Who have neither kin nor friend;Let me here a shelter find,Shield the shorn lamb from the wind.Jesu, Lord, my heart will break:Save me for Thy great love’s sake!

[Enter Isentrudis.]

Isen.  Aha!  I had missed my little bird from the nest,And judged that she was here.  What’s this? fie, tears?Eliz.  Go! you despise me like the rest.Isen.  Despise you?What’s here?  King Andrew’s child?  St. John’s sworn maid?Who dares despise you?  Out upon these Saxons!They sang another note when I was younger,When from the rich East came my queenly pearl,Lapt on this fluttering heart, while mighty heroesRode by her side, and far behind us stretchedThe barbs and sumpter mules, a royal train,Laden with silks and furs, and priceless gems,Wedges of gold, and furniture of silver,Fit for my princess.Eliz.  Hush now, I’ve heard all, nurse,A thousand times.Isen.  Oh, how their hungry mouthsDid water at the booty!  Such a prize,Since the three Kings came wandering into Cöln,They ne’er saw, nor their fathers;—well they knew it!Oh, how they fawned on us!  ‘Great Isentrudis!’‘Sweet babe!’  The Landgravine did thank her saintsAs if you, or your silks, had fallen from heaven;And now she wears your furs, and calls us gipsies.Come tell your nurse your griefs; we’ll weep together,Strangers in this strange land.Eliz.  I am most friendless.The Landgravine and Agnes—you may see themBegrudge the food I eat, and call me friendOf knaves and serving-maids; the burly knightsFreeze me with cold blue eyes: no saucy pageBut points and whispers, ‘There goes our pet nun;Would but her saintship leave her gold behind,We’d give herself her furlough.’  Save me! save me!All here are ghastly dreams; dead masks of stone,And you and I, and Guta, only live:Your eyes alone have souls.  I shall go mad!Oh that they would but leave me all aloneTo teach poor girls, and work within my chamber,With mine own thoughts, and all the gentle angelsWhich glance about my dreams at morning-tide!Then I should be as happy as the birdsWhich sing at my bower window.  Once I longedTo be beloved,—now would they but forget me!Most vile I must be, or they could not hate me!Isen.  They are of this world, thou art not, poor child,Therefore they hate thee, as they did thy betters.Eliz.  But, Lewis, nurse?Isen.  He, child? he is thy knight;Espoused from childhood: thou hast a claim upon him.One that thou’lt need, alas!—though, I remember—’Tis fifteen years agone—when in one cradleWe laid two fair babes for a marriage token;And when your lips met, then you smiled, and twinedYour little limbs together.—Pray the SaintsThat token stand!—He calls thee love and sister,And brings thee gew-gaws from the wars: that’s much!At least he’s thine if thou love him.Eliz.  If I love him?What is this love?  Why, is he not my brotherAnd I his sister?  Till these weary wars,The one of us without the other neverDid weep or laugh: what is’t should change us now?You shake your head and smile.Isen.  Go to; the chafeComes not by wearing chains, but feeling them.Eliz.  Alas! here comes a knight across the court;Oh, hide me, nurse!  What’s here? this door is fast.Isen.  Nay, ’tis a friend: he brought my princess hither,Walter of Varila; I feared him once—He used to mock our state, and say, good wineShould want no bush, and that the cage was gay,But that the bird must sing before he praised it.Yet he’s a kind heart, while his bitter tongueAwes these court popinjays at times to manners.He will smile sadly too, when he meets my maiden;And once he said, he was your liegeman sworn,Since my lost mistress, weeping, to his chargeTrusted the babe she saw no more.—God help us!Eliz.  How did my mother die, nurse?Isen.  She died, my child.Eliz.  But how?  Why turn away?Too long I’ve guessed at some dread mysteryI may not hear: and in my restless dreams,Night after night, sweeps by a frantic routOf grinning fiends, fierce horses, bodiless hands,Which clutch at one to whom my spirit yearnsAs to a mother.  There’s some fearful tieBetween me and that spirit-world, which GodBrands with his terrors on my troubled mind.Speak! tell me, nurse! is she in heaven or hell?Isen.  God knows, my child: there are masses for her soulEach day in every Zingar minster sung.Eliz.  But was she holy?—Died she in the Lord?Isen [weeps].  O God! my child!  And if I told thee all,How couldst thou mend it?Eliz.  Mend it?  O my Saviour!I’d die a saint!Win heaven for her by prayers, and build great minsters,Chantries, and hospitals for her; wipe outBy mighty deeds our race’s guilt and shame—But thus, poor witless orphan!  [Weeps.]

[Count Walter enters.]

Wal.  Ah! my princess! accept your liegeman’s knee;Down, down, rheumatic flesh!Eliz.  Ah!  Count Walter! you are too tall to kneel to little girls.

Wal.  What? shall two hundredweight of hypocrisy bow down to his four-inch wooden saint, and the same weight of honesty not worship his four-foot live one?  And I have a jest for you, shall make my small queen merry and wise.

Isen.  You shall jest long before she’s merry.

Wal.  Ah! dowers and dowagers again!  The money—root of all evil.

What comes here?  [A Page enters.]

A long-winged grasshopper, all gold, green, and gauze?  How these young pea-chicks must needs ape the grown peacock’s frippery!  Prithee, now, how many such butterflies as you suck here together on the thistle-head of royalty?

Page.  Some twelve gentlemen of us, Sir—apostles of the blind archer, Love—owning no divinity but almighty beauty—no faith, no hope, no charity, but those which are kindled at her eyes.

Wal.  Saints! what’s all this?

Page.  Ah, Sir! none but countrymen swear by the saints nowadays: no oaths but allegorical ones, Sir, at the high table; as thus,—‘By the sleeve of beauty, Madam;’ or again, ‘By Love his martyrdoms, Sir Count;’ or to a potentate, ‘As Jove’s imperial mercy shall hear my vows, High Mightiness.’

Wal.  Where did the evil one set you on finding all this heathenry?

Page.  Oh, we are all barristers of Love’s court, Sir; we have Ovid’s gay science conned, Sir, ad unguentum, as they say, out of the French book.

Wal.  So?  There are those come from Rome then will whip you and Ovid out with the same rod which the dandies of Provence felt lately to their sorrow.  Oh, what blinkards are we gentlemen, to train any dumb beasts more carefully than we do Christians! that a man shall keep his dog-breakers, and his horse-breakers, and his hawk-breakers, and never hire him a boy-breaker or two! that we should live without a qualm at dangling such a flock of mimicking parroquets at our heels a while, and then, when they are well infected, well perfumed with the wind of our vices, dropping them off, as tadpoles do their tails, joint by joint into the mud! to strain at such gnats as an ill-mouthed colt or a riotous puppy, and swallow that camel of camels, a page!

Page.  Do you call me a camel, Sir?Wal.  What’s your business?Page.  My errand is to the Princess here.Eliz.  To me?

Page.  Yes; the Landgravine expects you at high mass; so go in, and mind you clean yourself; for every one is not as fond as you of beggars’ brats, and what their clothes leave behind them.

Isen [strikes him].  Monkey!  To whom are you speaking?Eliz.  Oh, peace, peace, peace!  I’ll go with him.

Page.  Then be quick, my music-master’s waiting.  Corpo di Bacco! as if our elders did not teach us to whom we ought to be rude!  [Ex. Eliz. and Page.]

Isen.  See here, Sir Saxon, how this pearl of priceIs faring in your hands!  The peerless image,To whom this court is but the tawdry frame,—The speck of light amid its murky baseness,—The salt which keeps it all from rotting,—castTo be the common fool,—the laughing stockFor every beardless knave to whet his wit on!Tar-blooded Germans!—Here’s another of them.

[A young Knight enters.]

Knight.  Heigh!  Count!  What? learning to sing psalms?  They are waiting

For you in the manage-school, to give your judgment

On that new Norman mare.

Wal.  Tell them I’m busy.Knight.  Busy?  St. Martin!  Knitting stockings, eh?To clothe the poor withal?  Is that your business?I passed that canting baby on the stairs;Would heaven that she had tripped, and broke her goose-neck,And left us heirs de facto.  So, farewell.  [Exit.]Wal.  A very pretty quarrel! matter enoughTo spoil a waggon-load of ash-staves on,And break a dozen fools’ backs across their cantlets.What’s Lewis doing?Isen.  Oh—befooled,—Bewitched with dogs and horses, like an idiotClutching his bauble, while a priceless jewelSticks at his miry heels.Wal.  The boy’s no fool,—As good a heart as hers, but somewhat givenTo hunt the nearest butterfly, and lightThe fire of fancy without hanging o’er itThe porridge-pot of practice.  He shall hear or—Isen.  And quickly, for there’s treason in the wind.They’ll keep her dower, and send her home with shameBefore the year’s out.Wal.  Humph!  Some are rogues enough for’t.As it falls out, I ride with him to-day.Isen.  Upon what business?

Wal.  Some shaveling has been telling him that there are heretics on his land: Stadings, worshippers of black cats, baby-eaters, and such like.  He consulted me; I told him it would be time enough to see to the heretics when all the good Christians had been well looked after.  I suppose the novelty of the thing smit him, for now nothing will serve but I must ride with him round half a dozen hamlets, where, with God’s help, I will show him a mansty or two, that shall astonish his delicate chivalry.

Isen.  Oh, here’s your time!  Speak to him, noble Walter.Stun his dull ears with praises of her grace;Prick his dull heart with shame at his own coldness.Oh right us, Count.Wal.  I will, I will: go inAnd dry your eyes.  [Exeunt separately.]

SCENE II

A Landscape in Thuringia.  Lewis and Walter riding.

Lewis.  So all these lands are mine; these yellow meads—These village greens, and forest-fretted hills,With dizzy castles crowned.  Mine!  Why that wordIs rich in promise, in the action bankrupt.What faculty of mine, save dream-fed pride,Can these things fatten?  Mass!  I had forgot:I have a right to bark at trespassers.Rare privilege!  While every fowl and bush,According to its destiny and nature(Which were they truly mine, my power could alter),Will live, and grow, and take no thought of me.Those firs, before whose stealthy-marching ranksThe world-old oaks still dwindle and retreat,If I could stay their poisoned frown, which cowsThe pale shrunk underwood, and nestled seedsInto an age of sleep, ’twere something: and those menO’er whom that one word ‘ownership’ uprears me—If I could make them lift a finger upBut of their own free will, I’d own my seizin.But now—when if I sold them, life and limb,There’s not a sow would litter one pig lessThan when men called her mine.—Possession’s naught;A parchment ghost; a word I am ashamedTo claim even here, lest all the forest spirits,And bees who drain unasked the free-born flowers,Should mock, and cry, ‘Vain man, not thine, but ours.’Wal.  Possession’s naught?  Possession’s beef and ale—Soft bed, fair wife, gay horse, good steel.—Are they naught?Possession means to sit astride of the world,Instead of having it astride of you;Is that naught?  ’Tis the easiest trade of all too;For he that’s fit for nothing else, is fitTo own good land, and on the slowest doltHis state sits easiest, while his serfs thrive best.Lewis.  How now?  What need then of long discipline,Not to mere feats of arms, but feats of soul;To courtesies and high self-sacrifice,To order and obedience, and the graceWhich makes commands, requests, and service, favour?To faith and prayer, and pure thoughts, ever turnedTo that Valhalla, where the virgin saintsAnd stainless heroes tend the Queen of heaven?Why these, if I but need, like stalled oxTo chew the grass cut for me?Wal.  Why?  BecauseI have trained thee for a knight, boy, not a ruler.All callings want their proper ’prentice timeBut this of ruling; it comes by mother-wit;And if the wit be not exceeding great,’Tis best the wit be most exceeding small;And he that holds the reins should let the horseRange on, feed where he will, live and let live.Custom and selfishness will keep all steadyFor half a life.—Six months before you dieYou may begin to think of interfering.Lewis.  Alas! while each day blackens with fresh clouds,Complaints of ague, fever, crumbling huts,Of land thrown out to the forest, game and keepers,Bailiffs and barons, plundering all alike;Need, greed, stupidity: To clear such ruinWould task the rich prime of some noble hero—But can I nothing do?Wal.  Oh! plenty, Sir;Which no man yet has done or e’er will do.It rests with you, whether the priest be honoured;It rests with you, whether the knight be knightly;It rests with you, whether those fields grow corn;It rests with you, whether those toiling peasantsLift to their masters free and loyal eyes,Or crawl, like jaded hacks, to welcome graves.It rests with you—and will rest.Lewis.  I’ll crowd my court and dais with men of God,As doth my peerless namesake, King of France.Wal.  Priests, Sir?  The Frenchman keeps two counsellorsWorth any drove of priests.Lewis.  And who are they?Wal.  God and his lady-love, [aside]  He’ll open at that—Lewis.  I could be that man’s squire.Wal [aside]  Again run riot—Now for another cast, [aloud]  If you’d sleep sound, Sir,You’ll let priests pray for you, but school you never.Lewis.  Mass! who more fitted?Wal.  None, if you could trust them;But they are the people’s creatures; poor men give themTheir power at the church, and take it back at the ale-house:Then what’s the friar to the starving peasant?Just what the abbot is to the greedy noble—A scarecrow to lear wolves.  Go ask the church plate,Safe in knights’ cellars, how these priests are feared.Bruised reeds when you most need them.—No, my Lord;Copy them, trust them never.Lewis.  Copy? wherein?Wal.  In letting every manDo what he likes, and only seeing he does itAs you do your work—well.  That’s the Church secretFor breeding towns, as fast as you breed roe-deer;Example, but not meddling.  See that hollow—I knew it once all heath, and deep peat-bog—I drowned a black mare in that self-same spotHunting with your good father: Well, he gaveOne jovial night, to six poor Erfurt monks—Six picked-visaged, wan, bird-fingered wights—All in their rough hair shirts, like hedgehogs starved—I told them, six weeks’ work would break their hearts:They answered, Christ would help, and Christ’s great mother,And make them strong when weakest: So they settled:And starved and froze.Lewis.  And dug and built, it seems.Wal.  Faith, that’s true.  See—as garden walls draw snails,They have drawn a hamlet round; the slopes are blue,Knee-deep with flax, the orchard boughs are breakingWith strange outlandish fruits.  See those young roguesMarching to school; no poachers here, Lord Landgrave,—Too much to be done at home; there’s not a villageOf yours, now, thrives like this.  By God’s good helpThese men have made their ownership worth something.Here comes one of them.Lewis.  I would speak to him—And learn his secret.—We’ll await him here.

[Enter Conrad.]

Con.  Peace to you, reverend and war-worn knight,And you, fair youth, upon whose swarthy lipBlooms the rich promise of a noble manhood.Methinks, if simple monks may read your thoughts,That with no envious or distasteful eyesYe watch the labours of God’s poor elect.Wal.  Why—we were saying, how you cunning rooksPitch as by instinct on the fattest fallows.Con.  For He who feeds the ravens, promisethOur bread and water sure, and leads us onBy peaceful streams in pastures green to lie,Beneath our Shepherd’s eye.Lewis.  In such a nook, now,To nestle from this noisy world—Con.  And dropThe burden of thyself upon the threshold.Lewis.  Think what rich dreams may haunt those lowly roofs!Con.  Rich dreams,—and more; their dreams will find fulfilment—Their discipline breeds strength—’Tis we aloneCan join the patience of the labouring oxUnto the eagle’s foresight,—not a fancyOf ours, but grows in time to mighty deeds;Victories in heavenly warfare: but yours, yours, Sir,Oh, choke them, choke the panting hopes of youth,Ere they be born, and wither in slow pains,Cast by for the next bauble!Lewis.  ’Tis too true!I dread no toil; toil is the true knight’s pastime—Faith fails, the will intense and fixed, so easyTo thee, cut off from life and love, whose powersIn one close channel must condense their stream:But I, to whom this life blooms rich and busy,Whose heart goes out a-Maying all the yearIn this new Eden—in my fitful thoughtWhat skill is there, to turn my faith to sight—To pierce blank Heaven, like some trained falconerAfter his game, beyond all human ken?Wal.  And walk into the bog beneath your feet.Con.  And change it to firm land by magic step!Build there cloud-cleaving spires, beneath whose shadeGreat cities rise for vassals; to call forthFrom plough and loom the rank unlettered hinds,And make them saints and heroes—send them forthTo sway with heavenly craft the spirit of princes;Change nations’ destinies, and conquer worldsWith love, more mighty than the sword; what, Count?Art thou ambitious? practical? we monksCan teach you somewhat there too.Lewis.  Be it so;But love you have forsworn; and what were lifeWithout that chivalry, which bends man’s kneesBefore God’s image and his glory, bestRevealed in woman’s beauty?Con.  Ah! poor worldlings!Little you dream what maddening ecstasies,What rich ideals haunt, by day and night,Alone, and in the crowd, even to the death,The servitors of that celestial courtWhere peerless Mary, sun-enthroned, reigns,In whom all Eden dreams of womanhood,All grace of form, hue, sound, all beauty strewnLike pearls unstrung, about this ruined world,Have their fulfilment and their archetype.Why hath the rose its scent, the lily grace?To mirror forth her loveliness, from whom,Primeval fount of grace, their livery came:Pattern of Seraphs! only worthy arkTo bear her God athwart the floods of time!Lewis.  Who dare aspire to her?  Alas, not I!To me she is a doctrine, and a picture:—I cannot live on dreams.Con.  She hath her train:—There thou may’st choose thy love: If world-wide loreShall please thee, and the Cherub’s glance of fire,Let Catharine lift thy soul, and rapt with herQuestion the mighty dead, until thou floatTranced on the ethereal ocean of her spirit.If pity father passion in thee, hangAbove Eulalia’s tortured loveliness;And for her sake, and in her strength, go forthTo do and suffer greatly.  Dost thou longFor some rich heart, as deep in love as weakness,Whose wild simplicity sweet heaven-born instinctsAlone keep sane?Lewis.  I do, I do.  I’d liveAnd die for each and all the three.Con.  Then go—Entangled in the Magdalen’s tresses lie;Dream hours before her picture, till thy lipsDare to approach her feet, and thou shalt startTo find the canvas warm with life, and matterA moment transubstantiate to heaven.Wal.  Ay, catch his fever, Sir, and learn to takeAn indigestion for a troop of angels.Come, tell him, monk, about your magic gardens,Where not a stringy head of kale is cutBut breeds a vision or a revelation.

Lewis.  Hush, hush, Count!  Speak, strange monk, strange words, and waken