Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, COLUMBUS AT SEVILLE, by ARTHUR THOMAS QUILLER-COUCH


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

COLUMBUS AT SEVILLE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Dear son, diego, I am old and deaf
Last Line: The date, 1571
Alternate Author Name(s): Q; Quiller-couch, A. T.
Subject(s): Columbus, Christopher (1451-1506); Courts & Courtiers; Death; Explorers; Spain; Dead, The; Exploring; Discovery; Discoverers


DEAR son, Diego, I am old and deaf:
Here to my room in Seville some one came
—To-day or yesterday, who knows? The blinds
Are closed, and no sun moves upon the floor—
Here to my room in Seville some one came
And muttered that the Queen is dead. I trust
She rests in glory, far from all the cares
Of this rough world she made less penible
For two much-travelled feet that here inert
Wait by the ripple of the Blessèd Ford,
Yet may not to its running cool unlace
Until my Master give the happy word.

I have been loyal: flouted for a fool,
I have been loyal: lifted above lords,
I have been loyal: once again abased,
Beggared and led a prisoner in chains,
I have been loyal still. But I believe
God sets on kings His sigil for a test,
And only they who bear it to His bourne
By widows' tears uncancelled, without scratch
Of fetters wrongfully imposed, undimmed
By sighs of just petitioners, may claim
To hear their charter yonder reconfirmed.
Who fails—his province shall another take,
One chosen from the spirits of just men
Made perfect. And his own debt shall every one
Here or hereafter, soon or late, redeem.
Who plights his dignity against a debt,
As Ferdinand; who thus evades a debt,
As Ferdinand, and forfeits faith of man;
Shall find that faith confront him by the Throne
In angels' blushes, and his honours melt
For payment in their slow celestial scorn.
But she, my Mistress, diadem of all
His dignity, was never Ferdinand's.
Born of that royal few who ride abroad
And see their humbler, happier sisters throw
Free glances from their windows on the street;
Or by the bridge or by the bathing-pool
Passing with nun-like faces, catch a hint
And bear it home and wonder all the night
Stretched by their lords, listing the serenades
That well by distant balconies passionate;
She—though her priestess' body she abased
Coldly to public need—lent it to wed
Castille with Aragon—was devotee
To none but duty. On this earth she knew
No passion but a friendship purified,
Unspotted of the flesh, prophetical
Of that sublimer passion of the saints
Her innocence now inherits.—Not for me!
As not for Ferdinand! But this I hope—
To meet her walking 'neath the boughs of Life,
To touch her hand without servility,
And in the salutation of her eyes
Read resolution of the musing care
That clouded them aforetime, half with doubt
And half with pitiful knowledge.

Oh, they swept
Down from the daïs eloquent, wave on wave!
In every wave brooded a starry thought;
In every thought brooded a litten tongue,
Holy, with comfortable words. And yet
I have looked into them as a mother looks,
And in the iris of her week-old babe
Reads now but natal innocence, and now
The absorbèd wisdom of an age-worn past
Blinking its own new dawn. They did allow
The wonder of man's weakness, even while
They pierced unto his greatness and the hope.
Natheless at first I did believe her cold
—Jesu! She cold!—cold as the icèd rim
'Engaged my hot heart there by Pinos bridge.
Tight-corded as my holster was the bale,
The slender bale of hope I carried then,
If somewhere I might find the world so wide
As to contain one courage bold to mate
With me to push it wider—wide enough
To satisfy the more adventurous clans
Yet in the womb waiting the moment's call.
For Portugal had cheated, England sent
No word, and of Bartholomew no report
Came on the wandermost tales of them who drew
Forth from the northern fogs in caravel
Galley or barque or pinnace. Day by day
For two long years, seated among my books,
Maps, charts, and cross-staves, in the little shop
By Seville bridge, incessant I had watched
The Guadalquiver through a dusty pane;
Had watched the thin mast creep around the point;
Had watched the slow hull warp across the tide,
And the long flank fall lazy to the quay
—Levantine traders bringing Tyrian wine,
Malmsey from Crete, fine lawn of Cyprus, silk
Of Egypt and of India; Genovese,
Whose sheer I conned and knew the shipwright's name
—Feluccas, with a world of eastern spice
Bartered of Caspian merchants on the bar
Of Poti, or of Emosaïd clans
Down the Red Sea and south to Mozambique:
True aloes of Socotra, galbanum,
Myrrh, cassia, rhubarb, scented calamus,
Sweet storax, cinnamon, attars of the rose
And jasmine. And of some the skippers wore
Skin purses belted underneath their knives
—Spoilers of Ormuz or of Serendib,
Who sought the jeweller's offices ere they slept
Or drank ashore. These from the sunrise all:
But others from the dark and narrow seas
By England and by Flanders. Tin they brought
In blocks and bars, and lead and pewter-ware
Shipped at Southampton; Lace and napery
Of Ypres and of Malines; Frankish wools
In bulk from Calais' warehouses; or spun
By English hands, grey kersey, fustian, cloth,
From Guildford, Norwich, London.—

Ay, but none
Brought tidings of Bartholomew. One and all,
Still to my questioning the shipmen stared
And shook their silver earrings: not a word!
Oft—as the Orcadian watcher from his rock
Scans the grey tide-race eddying by his line—
In tavern corner by an empty cup
I have heard the reboant captains boast and swell;
Alert, if haply, on vainglorious tale
Or outland lie reported, there might drift
Some flotsam of the dim West unexplored.
Bird of my hope! How long ye beat a wing
In yon unfathomable fogs, and still
Of green no sign!—the waters ever void,
No token, no retrieve of Noë's dove!

At Salamanca then they tested us;
Churchmen and schoolmen and cosmogoners
In council. 'Hey!' and 'What?' 'The earth a sphere?
And two ways to Cathaia?' 'Tut and tush!'
'Feared the Cathaians then no blood in the head
From walking upside-down?' 'Pray did I know
Of a ship 'would sail up-hill?' 'Had I not heard
Perchance of latitudes where the wheel of the sun
Kept the sea boiling? Of the tropic point
Where white men turned hop-skip to blackamoors?'
'And hark ye, sir, to what Augustine says,
And here is Cosmas' map. "God built the world
As a tabernacle: sky for roof and sides,
And earth for flooring...Made all men to dwell
Upon the face of it"—the face, you hear,
Not several faces—"On foundations laid
The earth abides"—foundations, if you please,
Not mid-air. Soothly, sir, at your conceits
We smile, but warn you that they lie not far
On this side heresy. "Antipodes," hey?
Our Mother Church annuls the Antipodes.'

Fools, fools, Diego! Ay, but folly makes
More orphans than malevolence.
There I stood
Rejected, and the good Queen looked on me.
She did not smile. Thank God she did not smile!
She did not speak. I saw the mute lips move
Compassionate, and took defeat, went forth.

Nay, no compassion now! With scorn of men
I bound my wound, and nursed it while I rode.
France now, or England? Still the wound complained,
And still I closed the purple lips with scorn;
Till there on Pinos bridge my horses hoof
Rang, and the vaulted echo halloa'd 'Scorn!'
And so-
I do remember, on a time,
Off Cape St. Vincent in a general fight,
How that one master of a sinking hull
—An Antwerp captain—danced about his deck
Like paper in a gale, and cursed and bawled,
And cursed again and shook his fist and bawled,
Belabouring his gunners—fat and fierce
As a fool's bladder, wholly ludicrous;
Till running to the bulwarks, all aflush
To hurl some late-remembered oath, he leaned,
Collapsed in bloody vomit, and so died.

So with the bridge's echo welled afresh
My wound above its bandages. I lit
Down from my horse and o'er the parapet bowed
In sickness of surrender; let my hopes
Unhusk in tears upon the silly stream
That ran ecstatic, with a babbling lip
A-flush for the salt tide, and knew not yet
The smart of that embrace. 'Run, happy fool!
Aspire to make impression on the main,
'Will swallow thee with all thy freshet wave
As kings digest the tributary zeal
Of private men, and so spit forth their names.'

So leaned I, listless to a gallop of hoofs
'Woke distant on the north-east road and swept
Down in a smother of dust. I sprang to the bit,
And backed to let the posting rider past.
But he reined sudden and wheeled. 'Why this will be
—Steady, thou sprawler!—this will be the man,
The Genovese himself! Sir, I have ridden—
The Queen commands you back to Santa Fé.
Plague o' this dust!' I looked him up and down:
A little dapper gentleman of the camp,
Flicking with scented kerchief at his coat
Of velvet laced with amber, like a bee's,
And condescending with a silly smile.
And still he smiled; and still I pondered him,
As a father, listening in his closet, hears
The first cry of his first-born child, and turns
To watch an idle bee upon the pane,
And still in the midwife's message hears it buzz.
'The Queen commands—' 'So—I believe you, sir':
Then slowlier: 'And I will trust the Queen.'
With eyebrows lifted, and a brisk salute,
He shook his rein, dug spur, and started back
A-trot with the answer.
Haste, O bobbing bee!
Be minister of marriage 'twixt two minds,
Two flowers that twine the challenge of their gaze
And know no fleshlier union. Soar, O bee!
Hence from the moat up, up to the lady-flower
Swaying in sunlight high on the palace wall;
Creep in her leaning languid bosom, and there
Do thy close work, whisper, impregnate her
With a secret such as lowlier blossoms breathe
At twilight, one to another, nodding anigh
With petalled nightcaps, while th' eaves-dropping breeze
Steals by the lily-bordered garden beds.
Nay; 'tis a chaster deed thou hast in hand
—To marry mind with mind. Stand but afar
And speak: thou hast a word that not alone
Will breed conception of a queenly thought,
But wake the generations of the world.
Dame of the castle! Leman of the road!
Leap with the quickening babe and press your side!
He hath the resurrection in his heel,
Treads underfoot the doom of all his sires,
And springs upon the tight cords wherewithal
In turn they bound each other to the pit.
Dame of the castle! Leman of the road!
Enlarge your girdles!—for this conquering babe
Shall westward launch and draw with silver wake
An honourable girdle round the waist
Of Mother Earth, beneath her swelling breasts—
The Old World and the New. O moons of man!
A Spirit moves upon the middle deeps,
And all their odic tides acclaim the Babe!

Back then I rode: but coolly Reason came
With sight of Santa Fé, and plucked my rein—
'Be temperate: for kings have many cares
And thou one vision only. See these walls,
These tented lines; and yonder on the cliff,
At her last gasp, Granada! Tranquilly,
As 'twere on oilèd hinge, the sentinel
Paces her terrace. Evening for her wounds
Hath golden ointment, were they curable.
But at their meat the dusky councillors
Mutter "To-morrow!" and upon the wall
The whisperers surmise. "To-morrow? Ay—
There dawns one only morrow for the Moor!"
But O, what blood! O man, what hammer-blows
Have built that morrow! Christendom redeems
The debt, attains the dream. O give her space,
A kindly space before she dream again!'

Soberly then I cleansed me of the dust
Of travel; stood within the royal tent
With brow composed. And she with brow composed
Questioned my hope as 'twere i' the level round
Of a Queen's audience. Cold? I did not know
She had sought to pledge her jewels for that hope!
Only her tone took up the challenge flung
By my obeisance, challenging in turn
Her Court, as who should say, 'Behold this man,
He offers a new heaven, a new earth;
And claims to hold them for us, taking tithe
As Governor, and for his share one-eighth
Of his adventure's profit, with the style
Of Admiral of the Ocean, privilege
As high as our High Admiral's of Castile:
Well worth it, an his promises bear fruit.
I test him at the furthest of his claim—
Go, sir—so much an unbelieving world
Concedes its Queen: derisive lets her launch
Fresh hopes forlorn upon its unbelief—
Go, sir, and prove the courage of thy faith.'

And Faith, my son, the substance is of things
Hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
The substance? ay, I trod it!—not the deck,
The barren deck whereon my comrades cursed
The wind, the smooth sea running like a stream
Still westward, westward through an empty world.
Nay, while they cursed, my feet already pressed
The yellow sands, waded the rivulets
And long cool grasses of those isles afar.
The evidence? I saw it!—not the weed,
The crab, the berried branch, the emperor-fish,
The tropic birds that sang about the mast
As 'twere a sweet-briar bursting into bud
In Seville, in the Andalusian spring.
—Signs and a sursum corda for the faint
And faithless. Sudden then a few would crowd
Forward, and point, and hail the dull blue smear
Far on the sky-line. 'News, Lord Admiral!
A land-fall, ho! and luck be with the news!'
—So watch it fade, and curse more bitterly.
Me neither hope nor omen, true or false,
Elated or depressed. Always I bore
The certainty within me, and the seal
Of God upon it, and the face imposed
Of her, my Mistress. Always on the poop,
A man apart, I stood and steered a course
Unerring, by the magnet of my doom.
Others might watch, all eager for the prize—
The thirty annual crowns and velvet coat—
For veritable sight and news of land.
The Pinta might outsail, the Nina balk
Their Admiral. But still for him reserved
The hour, and for his eyes the blessed light,
The light on Guanahani! Musing there,
Through the first watch, beside the cabin top,
I heard between me and the hornèd moon
A frigate-bird go whistling, and a wind
Caught in the rigging like a woman's sigh:
Whereat I turned—O face! O flash of eyes!
O star of my devotion! all dissolved
Into a spark that danced and disappeared,
And dancing glowed again, as 'twere a torch
Moved in a village street from door to door!
I called the watch. They had not seen: but ran,
Stared, saw—'Land! land!' and 'Praise the Admiral!
Who found us light in darkness? Who but he?'
—More proof? Then rede thee of that bitter gale
Off the Azores, on the homeward road.
The Nina drove alone in seas that drowned
Hope and the very heaven. There we cast
Lots who should carry—barefoot, in his sark—
A candle to Our Lady of Guadelupe.
Who drew the lot but I? Again we cast.
And who but I the pilgrim to Moguer,
To Santa Clara? Yea, yet once again
A night of anguish off the Tagus mouth;
Again the lot; again the Admiral!
Me must Our Lady of La Cinta choose:
There was none other. Proofs? I tell thee, son,
There was none other! These men handled ropes,
Starved, hoped, shed tears—mechanical, for me
Their master. As I meted them, they moved.
But Pinzon—who betrayed me once and twice
At Cuba—thought us foundered in the gale,
Nor stayed to search; but made his hope, his shame,
Both doubled by desertion—who, with sail
Piled high as both, let drive the Pinta home
To bear the first report and snatch the prize—
I swear I pitied him. How like to mine
His hope, if mine had lacked the single grace
Made his contention impotent! lacking which,
He smote upon a consecrated shield
That on the stroke rang God's authentic 'No!'

Thou knowest how upon a mid-day tide
We drew unto that port of our desire;
To Palos, little Palos, left so long,
After what wonders found! and all the roofs
Rocked, and the mist of faces on the quay
Heaved, and the anchor dropped, and home was home.
Thou knowest how, that moment looking back,
We saw a lean hull creeping past the bar—
The Pinta!—never spoken since the Azores!
And Pinzon—traitor, by an hour too late!
Always I pitied him. He had designed
To post to Barcelona with the news:
Now heard the royal mandate, 'Never come
But with the Admiral thou shouldst have served.'
Whereat he turned him to his native town,
To his own house; there on the threshold pushed
By wife and children, mounted to his room,
And turned the key, and knew his hour, and died.

But my reward, how came it?
Proud enough
That hour in Barcelona; the April sky
Shaken with bells and cannon and flame of flags;
The cheers, the craning heads, the blossoms thrown
And kerchiefs from the windows fluttering,
Flock after flock, like doves let forth to greet
The dusty golden pageant—Juan first,
The Pilot, with the Standard of Castile:
The slow brown Indians in their feather cloaks
And paint: the seamen bearing fruit and palms,
Parrots and gold-fish, conchs and turtle-shells,
Lizards on poles, lign-aloes, trays of spice,
And gold in calabashes: last of all
The Admiral. So, they led me to the throne,
Where she and Ferdinand rose, as to a prince,
And hardly would permit me kiss their hands:
But seated me beside them, bade me tell
All our adventures—rarely smiled the Queen—
'Yea, all,' she said. In the great circle's hush,
Beneath the canopy of cloth-of-gold,
I found my voice and spake—'Most Catholic King,
And thou, Star-regent of our enterprise,
Sooner than half were told, this April night
Would shake the planets from her dusky wings
Down-hovering. Yet an hour shall tell enough
To tune all tongues to anthems praising God.'
So for an hour I told the tale; and twice
Paused: but insistent she commanded 'More!'
Leaning with parted lip and kindling cheek,
As might the Carthaginian, had no drought
Of passion parched her throat, have leaned to drink
Of Troy's immortal wanderer. Was it then
Came my reward?

Not then, nor ever so.
But long years after, when that dream was grey,
And the heart wise, and fellowship was none
(For 'tis the curse of greatness, to outgrow
All friends and from the lone height long for friends,
And falling, find the friends it left all gone),
—Years afterward, when black was favour's torch
And faith took bribes; when Ferdinand betrayed,
And Bobadilla, High Commissioner,
Foamed at his lunatic height, raged like a beast,
Cast us in chains, shipped us like beeves to Spain—
Then, from the pit of that most brutal fall
A voice commanded 'Break his chains! He shall
In person stand before us, plead his cause.'
Carefully then I dressed me as became
The Admiral of the Ocean. Squire and page
And retinue—I did abate no jot
While the purse bled. A prince, and all a prince,
I passed between the sneering chamber crowd,
The whispering abjects of the ante-rooms,
Into the presence: stood there, cold, erect.
'I am Columbus. I have left my chains
Nailed at my bed's head by the crucifix:
And come to know what further, O my King?'
Then Ferdinand—I saw him bite his lip—
Sat with pink face averted. But the Queen
Rose from her throne, silent—I would have knelt;
Too late! She stretched her hands and, silent yet,
Gazed, and the world fell from us, and we wept—
We two, together...
Ah, blessed hands! Ah, blessed woman's hands—
Stretched to undo irreparable wrong!
Yea, the more blest being all impotent!
A Queen's I had not touched: but hers met mine
In humbleness across man's common doom,
In sadness and in wisdom beyond pride.
They are cold beside her now, and cannot stir.
Further than I have travelled she hath fared:
But I shall follow. Soon will come the call:
And I shall grip the tiller once again.
The purple night shall heave upon the floor
Mile after mile; the dawn invade the stars,
The stars the dawn—how long? And following down
The moon's long ripple, I shall hear again
The frigate-bird go whistling—see the flash—
The light on Guanahani! Salvador!
Let thy Cross flame upon me in that star,
And from that Cross outstretch her sainted hands!

My son, they tell me that the Queen is gone...
I trust she rests in glory, free from all
The cares of this rough world. She was my friend:
And I shall find it harder now to treat
With Ferdinand. He fends me off with words.
I thought that last petition ill prepared;
And have an ampler one; drawn up and signed
To-day, or yesterday—who knows? The blinds
Are closed, and no sun moves upon the floor.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

CARL'ANTONIO, Duke of Adria
TONINO, his young son
LUCIO, Count of Vallescura, brother to the Duchess
CESARIO, Captain of the Guard
GAMBA, a Fool

OTTILIA, Duchess and Regent of Adria
LUCETTA, a Lady-in-Waiting
FULVIA, a Lady of the Court

Courtiers, Priests, Choristers, Soldiers, Mariners,
Townsfolk, etc.

The Scene is the Ducal Palace of Adria, in the N. Adriatic

The Date, 1571





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