Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO ZURBARAN, by THEOPHILE GAUTIER


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO ZURBARAN, by             Poem Explanation         Poet's Biography
First Line: Monks of zurbaran, ye carthusians white
Last Line: What you have done, say, would you do again?
Alternate Author Name(s): Theo, Le Bon


MONKS of Zurbaran, ye Carthusians white,
Who silent glide o'er many a burial stone,
Paters and Aves muttering day and night,

What crime can you by such vast pangs atone?
Cowled ghosts! why looks of haggard wrath displayed?
Thus to be racked, what have your bodies done?

Your bodies, which by God's own hand were made,
And which His Son, Christ Jesus, deigned to wear,
You have no right with curses to upbraid.

Martyrs I wot for faith might tortures bear,
Of molten lead or boiling pitch the tide,
The lion's jaws agape their flesh to tear,

The whips of steel which flesh and bones divide;
Crimes which to Rome's eternal shame redound.
Still I deem vain your ruthless suicide.

Why for yourselves alone remorseless found,
With scourges nightly are your shoulders torn
Till streams of blood flow to the very ground?

Why gird for ever on the crown of thorn
Which Jesus wore but when about to die?
Why ever strike your breasts with fasting worn?

Think you God loves to see your agony?
That your slow murder, sufferings wan and cold,
Can easier make your entrance to the sky?

That death's head which your yellow fingers hold,
O let it henceforth in the charnel lie,
And for your grave let others dig the mould.

That souls immortal are, this none deny;
But to declare like you that flesh is vile
Is, 'gainst the heavenly Sculptor, calumny.

And yet what strength, what fortitude, the while
Had these Carthusians 'neath their winding sheet,
Who lived without wife, friend, or children's smile!

Young, yet with age's frost for youth's glad heat,
Their only view the cloister's dim arcade,
Their one same thought, how they their God shall meet.

Compared with these, Lesueur! your friars fade.
Seville's Zurbaran could more truly show
Th' ecstatic gaze, the head that sufferings shade.

That faith-born maze, celestial vertigo,
Which makes them rays emit of feverish light,
Their aspect which strange terror scems to know.

How his hard brush, furrows, with savage might
Digs, for repentant tears along their face
To course, now fill their eyes remorse, affright!

Their long, wan garb, how doth he stiffly trace!
How gives it the sad aspect of a shroud,
As if its foldings did a corpse embrace!

How paints them spell-bound at the altar bowed,
Kissing the dead Christ's blood-stained feet divine,
Scourging their quivering backs with lashes ploughed,

Treading as tranced the cloister's dreary line,
Or scated with their scanty fare outlaid;
All true to nature does his art design.

Two hues alone, wan light and darkest shade;
Two gestures, one erect, one on bent knees;
Their history thus and life in full displayed.

Shapes, colours, sunlight, nature--none of these
To your inverted sight their charms present;
Heaven and the cross your raptured senses seize.

You live in silence o'er your breviary bent,
Thinking the roof above will gape and stare
By the dread sound of the last trumpet rent.

O Monks! meanwhile, with carpet fresh and fair
Above the mounds you for yourselves have wrought,
Grass grows. What do you to the worms declare?

What do you dream? what occupies your thought?
Regret you your lone days consumed in pain
'Twixt narrow walls, with dull, cold suffering fraught?

What you have done, say, would you do again?





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net