Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AMMERGAU, by FREDERICK WILLIAM HENRY MYERS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AMMERGAU, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Where is he gone?' o men and maidens where
Last Line: Bare witness to the fatherhood of god.
Alternate Author Name(s): Myers, Frederic
Subject(s): Oberammergau Passion-play


I

"WHERE is he gone? O men and maidens, where
Is gone the fairest amid all the fair?
Mine eyes desire him, and with dawning day
My heart goes forth to find him on the way."

Ah, how that music lingers, and again
Returns the dying sweetness of the strain!
How clearly on my inner sense is borne
The fair fresh beauty of the mountain morn,
And cries of flocks afar, and mixed with these
The green delightful tumult of the trees,—
The birds that o'er us from the upper day
Threw flitting shade, and went their airy way,—
The bright-robed chorus and the silent throng,
And that first burst and sanctity of song!

In such a place with eager faces fair
Sat men of old in bright Athenian air,
Heard in such wise the folk of Theseus sing
Their welcome to the world-forsaken king,—
Awaited thus between the murmuring trees
The whisper of appeased Eumenides,
Till breath came thick and eyes no more could see
For sweet prevision of the end to be.

But ah, how hard a task to set again
The living Christ among the homes of men!
Have we not grown too faithless or too wise
For this old tale of many mysteries?
Will not this passion of the peasants seem
Like children's tears for terror of a dream?—

"Hosanna! whoso in the Highest Name,
Hosanna! cometh as Elias came,
Him Israel hails and honours, Israel showers
Before him all her hopes and all her flowers."—

O Son of God! O blessed vision, stay!
O be my whole life centred in to-day!
Ah, let me dream that this indeed is He,
Mine eyes desired Him, and at last they see!
Then as some loving wife, whose lord has come
Wounded but safe from a far battle home,
Yet must before the day's declining go
On a like quest against another foe,—
With throbbing breast his kingly voice she hears
Her eager gaze is dazzled with her tears,
Nor clearly can she place his tales apart
For the overwhelming passion of her heart,
For joy and love, for pity and for pain,
For thinking "He is come, he goes again!"—
In such confusion of the soul I saw
Their mighty pictures of the vanished Law,
Which, as they held, that Law to Gospel bound
With mystic meaning and design profound:—
Joseph by Dothan and the shepherd's well,
Tobias in the hand of Raphael,—
The crowding people who with joy descry
The food of angels fluttering from the sky;—
Ah, sweet that still upon this earth should be
So many simple souls in holy glee,
Such maids and men, unknowing shame or guile,
Whose whole bright nature beams into a smile!

Thro' all these scenes the fateful story ran,
And the grave presence of the Son of Man:
There was the evening feast, remembered long,
The mystic act and sacramental song;
There was the dreadful garden, rock and tree,
Waker and sleepers in Gethsemane;—
The selfsame forms that I so oft had seen
Shrined the portcullis and the rose between,
When heaven's cold light in cheerless afternoon
Changed while we knelt from sun to ghostly moon.

And one there was who on his deeds could draw
A gaze that half was horror, half was awe,
Who when the supper of the Lord was spread
Drank of the cup and ate the broken bread,
And then, with night without him and within,
Went forth and sinned the unutterable sin.
Better if never on his ways had shone
The Light which is men's life to look upon;
If he had worn a torpid age away
In the poor gains and pleasures of the day,
From toil to toil had been content to go,
Nor ever aim so high or fall so low!
But, when he saw the Christ, he thought to fly
His own base self and selfish misery;
He trusted that before those heavenly eyes
All shameful thoughts were as a dream that dies,
And new life opened on him, great and free,
And love on earth and paradise to be.
But ah! thro' all men some base impulse runs,
(The brute the father and the men the sons,)
Which if one harshly sets him to subdue,
With fiercer insolence it boils anew:
He ends the worst who with best hope began:
How hard is this! how like the lot of man!
When this man's best desire and highest aim
Had ended in the deed of traitorous shame,
When to his bloodshot eyes grew wild and dim
The stony faces of the Sanhedrim,—
When in his rage he could no longer bear
Men's voices nor the sunlight nor the air,
Nor sleep, nor waking, nor his own quick breath,
Nor God in heaven, nor anything but death,—
I bowed my head, and through my fingers ran
Tears for the end of that Iscariot man,
Lost in the hopeless struggle of the soul
To make the done undone, the broken whole.

O brother! howsoever, wheresoe'er
Thou hidest now the hell of thy despair,
Hear that one heart can pity, one can know
With thee thy hopeless solitary woe.

But when the treacherous deed was planned and done,
The soldiers gathered, and the shame begun,
Thereat the indignant heavens in fierce disdain
Blew down a rushing and uproarious rain;
The tall trees wailed; ill-heard and scarcely seen
Were Jew and Roman those rough gusts between,
Only unmoved one still and towering form
Made, as of old, a silence in the storm.
Then was the cross uplifted; strange to see
That final sign of sad humanity;
For men in childhood for their worship chose
The primal force by which as men they rose;
Then round their homes they bade with boyish grace
The hanging Bacchus swing his comely face;
And now, grown old, they can no more disdain
To look full-front upon the eyes of Pain,
But must all corners of the champaign fill
With bleeding images of this last ill,
Must on yon mountain's pinnacle enshrine
A crucifix, the dead for the divine.

Yet never picture, wonderfully well
By hands of Dürer drawn or Raphael,
Nor wood by shepherds that one art who know
Carved in long nights behind the drifted snow,
Could with such holy sorrows flood and fill
The eyes made glimmering and the heart made still,
As that pale form whose outstretched limbs so long
Made kingship of the infamy of wrong,
O'er whose thorn-twined majestic brows ran down
Blood for anointing from the bitter crown.
Then from the lips of David's Son there brake
Such phrase as David in the Spirit spake,—
Ay, and four words with such a meaning fraught
As seemed an answer to my inmost thought;—
O dreadful cry, and by no seer foreshewn,
"My God, my God, I die and am alone!"

Where is he gone? O men and maidens, where
Is gone the fairest amid all the fair?
Mine eyes desire him, and with dawning day
My heart goes forth to find him on the way.

II

I, having seen, for certain days apart
Fared with a silent memory at my heart,
And in me great compassion grew for them
Who looked upon that feigned Jerusalem,
For I and all those thousands seemed to be
Like other thousands once in Galilee,
Save that no miracle's divine surprise
Met in the desert our expectant eyes,
No answer calmed our eager hearts enticed
By the mere name and very look of Christ.

So fondly in all ages man will cling
To the least shadow of a Friend and King,
To the faint hope of one to share, to know
The aspiration and the inner woe,—
Forgetting that the several souls of men
Are not like parted drops which meet again
When the tree shakes and to each other run
The kindred crystals glittering into one,—
But like those twin revolving stars which bear
A double solitude thro' the utmost air;
For these, albeit their lit immingled rays
Be living beryl, living chrysoprase,
Tho' burning orb on orb shall whirl and throw
Her amethystine and her golden glow,
Yet must they still their separate pathways keep
And sad procession thro' the eternal deep,
Apart, together, must for ever roll
Round a void centre to an unknown goal.

And thus I mused, and as men's musings will
Come round at last to their own sorrows still,
So mine, who in such words as these began
To mourn the solitary fate of man.

"Thou, Virgil, too, wouldst gladly have been laid
In forest-arches of Thessalian shade,
Or on Laconian lawns have watched all day
The fleet and fair Laconian maidens play,
Till from the rustling of the leaves was shed
Deep sleep upon thy limbs and kingly head,
And Mother Earth diffused with calm control
Peace on her sweetest and her saddest soul.
There 'mid the peasants thou hadst dwelt with joy
The goatherd or the reaper or the boy,
Hadst changed thy fate for theirs, if change could be,
And given for love thy sad supremacy.

"Wert thou not wise, my Master? better far
To live with them and be as these men are;
Better 'mid Phyllis and Lycoris set,—
Their soft eyes darker than the violet,—
With them to smile and sing, for them to bear
The lover's anguish and the fond despair,
Than thus to feel, for ever and forlorn,
The passions set new-risen and die newborn.

"For some men linger in their loves, but I
So soon have finished and so fast go by;
Nay, nor in answering gaze of friends can find
The one soul looking through the double mind:
I love them, but beneath their tenderest tone
This lonely heart is not the less alone;
I love them, but betwixt their souls and me
Are shadowy mountains and a sounding sea.

"Oh heart that oftentimes wouldst gladly win
The whole world's love thy narrow walls within,
Wouldst answer speech with silence, sighs with sighs,
Tears with the effluence of enchanted eyes,—
Then oftentimes in bitterness art fain
To cast that love to the four winds again,
For indignation at the gulfs that bar
For ever soul from soul as star from star!
Sweet are the looks and words, the sigh and kiss,
But can the live soul live by these or this?—
From her sad temple she beholds in vain
The close caresses and the yearning strain;—
Who reaches, who attains her? who has known
Her queenly presence and her tender tone?
What brush has painted, or what song has sung
Her unbetrothèd beauty ever-young?
Only when strange musicians softly play
The ears are glad, and she an hour as they;—
To them the noise is heaven, and to her
A shadowy sweetness and a dying stir.
Ay and sometimes, to such as seek her well,
She in a momentary look can tell
Somewhat of lonely longings, and confess
A fragment of her passion's tenderness.
Ah, best to rest ere love with worship dies,
Pause at the first encounter of the eyes,
Pass on and dream while yet both souls are free,
'That soul I could have loved, if love could be.' "

Thus I lamented, and upon me fell
A sense of solitude more sad than hell,
As one forgot, forsaken, and exiled
Of God and man, from woman and from child:—
Hush, hush, my soul, nor let thy speech draw near
That last and incommunicable fear;
All else shall poets sing, but this alone
The man who tells it never can have known.

Thank God! this dizzying and extreme despair
Not one short hour the human heart can bear,
For with that woe the o'erburdened spirit soon
Faints in the dark and falls into a swoon,
The body sickens with the slackening breath,
And the man dies, for this indeed is death.

Lo for each separate soul the Eternal King
Hath separate ways for peace and comforting;
Then pardon if with such intent I tell
The bliss which in my low estate befell:—
For June midnight became the May midmorn,
In that enchanting home where I was born,
When first the child-heart woke, the child-eyes knew
The bud blush-roses and the sparkling dew.
There gleamed the lake where lone St. Herbert saw
The solemn mornings and the soundless awe,—
There were the ferns that shake, the becks that foam,
The Derwent river and the Cumbrian home,—
And there, as once, upon my infant head
His blameless hands the Priest of Nature spread,
Spake fitting words, and gave in great old age
The patriarch's blessing and the bard's presage.
Ah, with what sweet rebuke that vision came!
With how pure hope I called on Words-worth's name!
O if on earth's green bosom one could lay,
Like him, tired limbs and trustful head, and say,
"To thee, to thee, my mother, I resign
All of my life that still is only mine;
I want no separate pleasures, make me one
With springing seasons in the rain and sun:
To thy great heart our hearts for ever yearn;
Thy children wander, let thy child return!"

To such a man, by self-surrender wise,
With the one soul of all things in his eyes,
To such a life, embosomed and enfurled
In the old unspoken beauty of the world,
Might Nature with a sweet relenting show
More of herself than men by knowledge know;
Till, if he caught the soundless sighing breath
Wherewith the whole creation travaileth,—
If once to human ears revealed could be
The immemorial secret of the sea,—
By such great lessons might that man attain
A life which is not pleasure, is not pain,—
A life collected, elemental, strong,
A sacrosanct tranquillity of song,
Fed by the word unheard, the sight unseen,
The breath that passes man and God between,
When ere the end comes is the end begun,
And the One Soul has flown into the One.

Hereat my soul, which cannot spread for long
Her tethered pinions in the heaven of song,
To her poor home descending with a sigh
Looked through her windows on the earth and sky:
Where she had left the limbs she found them still,
In the same blackness, on the silent hill,
Yet for a while was her return sublime
With dying echoes of the cosmic chime,
And through the parted gloom there fell with her
Some ray from Sire or Son or Comforter;
For in mine ears the silence made a tune,
And to mine eyes the dark was plenilune,
And mountain airs and streams and stones and sod
Bare witness to the Fatherhood of God.





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