Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE YELLOW RAYS, by CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE YELLOW RAYS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: On summer sabbath eves when six draws near
Last Line: All night I hear them howl!
Subject(s): Death; God; Grief; Love; Dead, The; Sorrow; Sadness


ON summer Sabbath eves when six draws near
And citizens wash off the dull week's smear
And seek the shining meadows,
A stay-at-home behind the slotted blind,
Upstairs I watch the glad procession wind
Into the happy shadows.

A pageant of the universe streams there;
And, seated in the watch-tower of my chair,
I read, yet do not read,
A subtler saffron stains the curtain's white
Than that distilled on any week-day night
As if God knew Man's need.

Rays filter through the laddered blind and pane
In shafts of light transmuted by my brain
To floods of stars in spate;
Then, passing through the casements of my soul,
A thousand thoughts therein they aureole
Till mind is aureate.

Sometimes when from my cloying work I turn
I see again my natal Eden burn,
Sweet as fulfilled desire.
And I recall (Ah, there's the Angelus!)
At vespers, at this hour, they folded us
All in the chapel's choir.

The lamp and tapers shone like yellow suns
Upon the veiled white foreheads of the nuns
And tinctured them with gold.
The vestured priest bowed down a yellow brow
Above his snowy stole, as wheat-ears bow
When by the scythe down-rolled.

Who has not in some quiet church, alone,
At even prayed and knelt upon the stone,
Offering his pure oblation?
Who has not kissed the cross's yellow glory
And in a yellow missal read the story
Of God and His salvation?

When lost, where shall that humble faith be found,
Which, as a palm, was by an angel bound
About our cradle's head,
Fed with our mother's milk and not by creeds
And tended by a priest who washed its seeds
By streams from heaven sped?

Can it survive when by the storm o'erthrown?
Or for our pride of heart can aught atone?
Razed is the sacred portal!
In nights of pain no precious balm it gives;
But in the hour of death. . . . Ah, then it lives
-- We all would be immortal!

Alas, and I know Death. Last year it was
I saw my aunt in Age's beggary pass
To where no hands bestead.
She agonised three days, then comfort found.
Three times I saw the winding-sheet go round
Her sere and veined head.

The coffin came, of seasoned wood and mellow;
They measured it -- the rushlights flickered yellow;
The praying priests bent low;
Too dry my throat to sing the parting hymn;
I said no prayer, nor did the iris dim,
For faith I did not know.

This being loved me, and I have the love
Of a saintly mother till Death's hand remove
And the yellow shroud be sewn
About her shrivelled form. . . . And when they toll
I shall have buried with her my own soul.
Then I shall be . . . alone!

Alone, with neither mother, spouse, nor wife,
Sister or brother. . . . Ah, this empty life!
What hand would thrill to mine? . . .
But even now the shadows drown the sun,
The yellow rays that darken one by one
Foretoken my decline.

Nay, never will a sweetheart blush for me
Or in her golden dreams my visage see,
Or wait for me. Alas,
Ne'er by two children, innocent and young,
O'er me the golden awning will be hung
When someone says the mass.

Nay, no one when I die will quench my drouth
Nor shall I feel the kiss of any mouth
Nor shall my eyes unfold
To catch a glimpse of lips made tremulous!
No yellow rose on my sarcophagus
Shall bloom, nor marigold!

Thus ends my musing, and the night is long.
I leave my house and join the unknown throng,
And in it drown my sorrow.
They hustle me; they enter shining bars;
They sally forth. One of the Regulars
Trills all the world: "Good-morrow!"

I hear lewd songs, loud outcries, drunken brawls;
See brazen love, unscreened by roofs or walls,
Brute lust without its cowl.
I seek my home -- they rush on tipsy feet
And, staggering down the pavement of my street,
All night I hear them howl!





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