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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE ROTHERS by AGNES MARY F. ROBINSON

First Line: AS FAR AS YOU CAN SEE, THE MOOR
Last Line: TOUCH PITCH AND BE DEFILED, I SAY.
AS far as you can see, the moor
Spreads on and on for many a mile,
And hill and dale are covered o'er
With many a fragrant splash and isle
Of vivid heather, purple still,
Though bracken is yellow on dingle and hill.

The heather bells are stiff and dry,
Yet honey is sweet in the inmost cell;
The bracken's withered that stands so high,
But sleeping cattle love it well.
Thorny fern and honeyless heather,
A friend who chills with the blighting weather.

A mile towards the western sun
The Rothers have their wooded park;
Never another so fair an one
Sees from his poise the singing lark.
When Rother of Rother first began
Recks not the memory of man.

It stands there still, a red old house,
Rother, set round with branchy pines;
The heather is red beneath the boughs,
And red are the trunks where the slant sun shines,
And the earth is ruddy on hollow and height:
But the blood of a Rother's heart is white.

Right royal faces, none the less,
And gracious ways when the world is kind;
But trust a Rother in your distress, --
A hollow hemlock stem you find,
Where you looked for a sapling to cling to and save
You yet from the chasm below like a grave.

And now they are ended -- the faithless race;
Sir Thomas was never a Rother born,
He took the name when he took the place,
With the childless wife he laughs to scorn:
And his life is a cruel and evil life --
But let none pity his craven wife.

She -- oh marvel of wonder and awe --
O angered patience of God! -- I say
God sees our sins; for a sign I saw
Set in the western skies one day --
White, over Rother, white and pale
For many a mile over hill and dale....

Now let me make the marvel clear.
When Edward, last o' the Rothers, died
He left two orphan daughters here:
Little children who scarce could ride,
Clutching the mane with baby hands,
O'er half an acre of their lands.

I think I see the sorrel mare,
Staid, old; and, tumbled on her neck,
Flushed faces, dimpled arms, and hair
Of crimpy flax with a golden fleck;
As by the side, with timid graces,
Well to the fore, the prim nurse paces.

A pretty cavalcade! Ah well,
The Rothers ever loved a horse!
And so one day Sir Edward fell,
Out hunting; dragged along the gorse
For yards, one foot i' the stirrup still,
The hunters found him upon the hill.

They brought him home as cold as stone,
Into his house they bore him in;
Nor at his burial any one
Was there to mourn him, of his kin,
Save those two babies, grave and grand
In black, who could not understand.

Poor wondering children, clad in crape,
Who knew not what they had to mourn,
Careful their sash should keep its shape
That papa, when he should return,
Might praise each little stiff new gown --
All day they never would sit down.

Poor, childish mutes, they stood all day
With outspread skirts and outspread hair,
And baby lips, less pink than grey
(So pale they were), and solemn stare;
They watched our mourning, pained and dumb,
Wondering when papa would come,

And give them each a ride on his horse,
And toss them both in the air, and say
"A Rother is sure in the saddle, of course,
But never a Rother rode better than they,"
And sent them up to bed at last
To sleep till morning, sound and fast.

At last each whitish-flaxen head
Drooped heavily, each baby-cheek
Its pallid shadow-roses shed --
The straight black legs grew soft and weak --
Father and frocks alike forgot
They fell asleep, and sorrowed not,

Yet pitiable they were, alone
They were, twin heiresses of five,
With lands and houses of their own,
And never a friend in the world alive
Save one old great-aunt, over in France,
Who knew them not, nor cared, perchance.

We little fancied she would come --
Quit palms, and sun, and table d'hote
For two unknown small girls at home;
But soon there came a scented note
With half the phrases underscored,
And French at every second word.

And soon she followed. She would sigh,
And clasp her hands, and swear "by God;"
Her black wig ever slipped awry,
And quavered with a trembling nod;
Her face was powdered very white,
Her black eyes danced under brows of night.

Such paint! Yet were I ever to feel
Utterly lost, no saint I'd pray,
But, crooked of ringlets and high of heel,
I'd call to the rescue old Miss May;
No haloed angel sweet and slender,
Were half so kind, so staunch, so tender.

She loved the children well, but most
The girl who least was like herself --
Maudie, at worst a plaintive ghost,
Maudie, at best a laughing elf,
With eyes deep flowering under dew,
Such tender looks of lazy blue.

Florence was stronger, commonplace
No doubt, but good, sincere, and kind;
There was no Rother in her face.
There was no Rother I could find
Within her nature; but who knows?
My son shall not marry a daughter of Flo's.

You see I hate the Rothers, I!
Unjust, perhaps; all are not vile
It may be -- but I cannot try,
When I think of a Rother now, to smile.
You hate the Jews, perhaps? the Turks?
In every heart some hatred lurks.

But these two girls I never hated,
I thought them better than their race;
Who would not think a curse out-dated
When from so fresh and young a face
The Rother eyes looked frankly out,
In the Rother smile no Rother's doubt?

Well, they were young, and wealthy, and fair;
It seemed not long since they were born,
When Florence married Lawrence Dare,
Then Maud, alas! Sir Thomas Thorn --
A bitter, dark, bad, cruel man --
Sir Thomas, now, of the Rother clan.

For now we come to the very root
Of the passionate rancour I keep at heart
Flowering in words (but the bitter fruit
Is still unripe for its sterner part)
Well, Maud, too, married. Miss May was free
To go wherever she wished to be.

Homeless, after sixteen years
Of sacrifice! Where could she go?
But she, she smiled, choked back her tears,
"Of course," she said, "it must be so,
So kind, her girls, to let her come
Three months to each in her married home!"

And first at Rother with the Thorns
In her old home she stayed a guest;

But must I think of all the scorns
That made your age a bitter jest, --
Whose memory like a star appears
Thro' the violent dark of that House of tears?

Your Maud was changed; -- a craven slave
To her unloving husband now;
The bitter words she could not brave,
The silent hate of eyes and brow
Estranged her not; and oh, 'tis true!
To gain his favour she slighted you.

And yet you stayed! And yet you stayed --
Hoping to win your dear one back --
Thinking through pain, not sin, she strayed
From the old, good, well-known heavenly track.
Alas, your lamb had gone too far --
Farther from you than the farthest star.

At last the three months ended; then
I heard Miss May was very ill;
It was the first of autumn, when
Our roads are bad, so I chose the hill
And the brow of the moor, as I rode away
To Rother, where my good friend lay.

Now for my sunset? Is 't not strange
That heaven, which sees a million woes
Unmoved, should pale, and faint, and change
At one more murder that it knows?
And yet I think I could declare
A horror in that sunset's glare.

As I was riding over the moor
My back was turned to the blazing white
O' the western sun, but all around
The country caught the brilliant light;
The tufts of trees were yellow, not green;
Grey shadows hung like nets between.

Such yellow hues on bush and tree!
Such sharp-cut shade and light I saw!
The white gates white as a star may be:
But every scarlet hip and haw,
Cluster of poppies, roof of red,
Had lost its colour, wan and dead!

So strange the east, that soon I turned
To watch the shining west appear:
Under a billow of smoke there burned
A belt of blinding silver, -- sheer
White length of light, -- wherefrom there shone
A round, white, dazzling, rayless sun.

There mirror-like it hung and blazed,
And all the earth below was strange,
And all the scene whereon I gazed
Even to the view-line's farthest range,
Hill, steeple, moor, all, near and far,
Was flat as shifting side-scenes are.

Lifeless, a country in the moon
It seemed, that white and vague expanse,
So substanceless and thin, that soon
I fell to wonder, by some chance
Of a sketcher's fancy -- how would fare
The tones of flesh in that white glare?

A scruple of the painter's eye
Which notes all possible effect --
I scarcely daub, but I love to try.
Full of the whim, I recollect,
I stretched my own right arm and gazed:
The hand showed black where the sunlight blazed.

Too near, too near! I smiled and turned,
I shook the reins and rode away,
Glanced where the eastern forest burned
With its gold-green oaks. But who were they
In the phaeton, there, beneath the trees?
Let 'em prove my fancy! A grip of the knees,

I reached them. Why, the Thorns they were!
The Thorns, livid and clear and plain
In the ugly light. Nor could I dare
Enquire if my friend were at ease or in pain,
So bitter-sour looked Maudie's mouth,
The whole face dried like grass in a drouth.

But what's the figure bent and weak
Set up beside them, rolled in wraps?
I saw it sway; I could not speak.
I looked, let one long minute lapse
Then looked again ... I stopped them. Saw --
Oh, is there then on earth no law?

No thunder in Heaven? As before,
It was indeed an old grey head
That jerked from side to side; no more,
Only an old grey woman, dead,
That drives beside them, shawled and dressed...
They could not let her die at rest!

Wail, Maudie, wail your best! I know
You had not thought her dead; enough
You thought her dying, merely, and though
The air was cold, the road was rough,
Could say "Her three months' stay is o'er,
She is our promised guest no more.

"Now let her go to Florence Dare,
No need for us to nurse her now.
The drive will do her good, the air
Strike freshly on her fevered brow,
And, in the carriage, rugs are spread" --
Where, as you know, I found her dead,

Because they cast her away, my friend!
Because her nursling murdered her.
There, my long story has an end
At last. I leave you to infer
The moral, old enough to be true:
"Do good, and it is done to you."

But bid me not forgive and forget;
Forget my friend, forget a crime,
Because the county neighbours fret
That I'll not meet at dinner-time
Ingratitude and murder? Nay,
Touch pitch and be defiled, I say.



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