Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CHARLEMAGNE, AND THE HYMN OF CHRIST, by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CHARLEMAGNE, AND THE HYMN OF CHRIST, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: The great king karl sat in his secret room
Last Line: Was his devout desire.
Alternate Author Name(s): Houghton, 1st Baron; Houghton, Lord
Subject(s): Charlemagne (742-814); Legends


THE great King Karl sat in his secret room, --
He had sat there all day;
He had not called on minstrel knight or groom
To wile one hour away.

Of arms or royal toil he had no care,
Nor e'en of royal mirth;
As if a poor lone monk he rather were,
Than lord of half the earth.

But chance he had some pleasant company,
Dear wife, familiar friend,
With whom to let the quiet hours slip by,
As if they had no end.

The learned Alcuin, that large-browed clerk,
Was there within, and none beside;
A book they read, and, where the sense was dark,
He was a trusty guide.

What book had worth so long to occupy
The thought of such a king,
To make the weight of all that sovereignty
Be a forgotten thing?

Surely it were no other than the one,
Whose every line is fraught
With what a mightier King than He had done,
Conquered, endured, and taught.

There his great soul, drawn onward by the eye,
Saw in plain chronicle portrayed
The slow unfolding of the mystery
On which its life was stayed.

There read he how when Jesus, our dear Lord,
To men of sin and dust had given,
By the transforming magic of his word,
The bread of very Heaven;

So that our race, by Adam's fatal food
Reduced to base decline,
Partaking of that body and that blood,
Might be again divine, --

After this wondrous largess, and before
The unimagined pain,
Which, in Gethsemane, the Saviour bore
Within his heart and brain, --

He read, how these two acts of Love between,
Ere that prolific day was dim,
Christ and his Saints, like men with minds serene,
Together sung a hymn.

These things he read in childly faith sincere,
Then paused and fixed his eye,
And said with kingly utterance -- "I must hear
That Hymn before I die.

"I will send forth through sea and sun and snows
To lands of every tongue,
To try if there be not some one which knows
The music Jesus sung.

"For I have found delight in songs profane
Trolled by a foolish boy,
And when the monks intone a pious strain,
My heart is strong in joy;

"How blessed then to hear those harmonies,
Which Christ's own voice divine engaged!
'Twould be as if a wind from Paradise
A woulded soul assuaged."

Within the Emperor's mind that anxious thought
Lay travailing all night long,
He dreamed that Magi to his hand had brought
The burthen of the Song;

And when to his grave offices he rose,
He kept his earnest will,
To offer untold guerdons unto those
Who should that dream fulfil.

But first he called to counsel in the hall
Wise priests of reverend name,
And with an open countenance to them all
Declared his hope and aim.

He said, "It is God's pleasure, that my will
Is made the natural law
Of many nations, so that out of ill
All good things I may draw.

"Therefore this holy mission I decree,
Sparing no pains or cost,
That thus those sounds of dearest memory
Be not for ever lost."

They spake. "Tradition streameth thro' our race,
Most like the gentle whistling air,
To which of old Elias veiled his face,
Conscious that God was there:

"Not in the storm, the earthquake, and the flame,
That troubled Horeb's brow,
The splendour and the power of God then came,
Nor thus he cometh now.

"The silent water filtereth through earth,
One day to bless the summer land;
The Word of God in Man slow bubbleth forth,
Touched by a worthy hand.

"Thus, in the memory of some careful Jew
May lurk the record of a tune
Wont to be sung in ceremonial due
After the Paschal noon;

"And thy deep yearning for this mystic song
May give mankind at last
Some charm and blessing that has slept full long
The slumber of the Past."

The King rejoiced, and, at this high behest,
Men, to all toil and change inured,
Passed out to search the World if East or West
That legend still endured.

What good or ill those venturous hearts befell,
What glory or what shame, --
How far they wandered, I have not to tell;
Each has his separate fame.

I only know, that when the weight of hours
The prime of mortal heads had bowed,
He, slowly letting go his outward powers,
Spoke from his couch aloud: --

"My soul has waited many a lingering year
To taste that one delight,
And now I know at last that I shall hear
The hymn of Christ to-night.

"Look out, good friends! be prompt to welcome home,
Straight to my presence bring,
My messengers, who hither furnished come
The Song of Christ to sing."

Dark sank that night, but darker rose the morn,
That found the western earth
Of the divinest presence stripped and shorn
It ever woke to birth.

It seemed beyond the common lawful sway
Of Death and Nature o'er our kind,
That such a one as He should pass away.
And aught be left behind.

In Aachen Abbey's consecrated ground,
Within the hollowed stone,
They placed the imperial body, robed and crowned,
Seated as on a throne.

While the blest spirit holds communion free
With that eternal quire,
Of which on earth to trace the memory
Was his devout desire.




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