THE BROKEN CHAIN: PART SECOND by JOHN RUSKIN

I.

The bell from Saint Cecilia's shrine
Had tolled the evening hour of prayer;
With tremulation, far and fine,
It waked the purple air:
The peasant heard its distant beat,
And crossed his brow with reverence meet:
The maiden heard it sinking sweet
Within her jasmine bower,
And treading down, with silver feet,
Each pale and passioned flower:
The weary pilgrim, lowly lying
By Saint Cecilia's fountain grey,
Smiled to hear that curfew dying
Down the darkening day:
And where the white waves move and glisten
Along the river's reedy shore,
The lonely boatman stood to listen,
Leaning on his lazy oar.

II.

On Saint Cecilia's vocal spire
The sun had cast his latest fire,
And flecked the west with many a fold
Of purple clouds o'er bars of gold.
That vocal spire is all alone,
Albeit its many winding tone
Floats waste away—oh! far away,
Where bowers are bright and fields are gay;
That vocal spire is all alone,
Amidst a secret wilderness,
With deep free forest overgrown;
And purple mountains, which the kiss
Of pale-lipped clouds doth fill with love
Of the bright heaven that burns above,
The woods around are wild and wide,
And interwove with breezy motion;
Their bend before the tempest tide
Is like the surge of shoreless ocean;
Their summer voice is like the tread
Of trooping steeds to battle bred;
Their autumn voice is like the cry
Of a nation clothed with misery;
And the stillness of the winter's wood
Is as the hush of a multitude.

III.

The banks beneath are flecked with light,
All through the clear and crystal night,
For as the blue heaven, rolling on,
Doth lift the stars up one by one;
Each, like a bright eye through its gates
Of silken lashes dark and long,
With lustre fills, and penetrates
Those branches close and strong;
And nets of tangled radiance weaves
Between the many twinkling leaves,
And through each small and verdant chasm
Lets fall a flake of fire,
Till every leaf, with voiceful spasm,
Wakes like a golden lyre.
Swift, though still, the fiery thrill
Creeps along from spray to spray,
Light and music, mingled, fill
Every pulse of passioned breath;
Which, o'er the incense—sickened death
Of the faint flowers, that live by day,
Floats like a soul' above the clay,
Whose beauty hath not passed away.

IV.

Hark! hark! along the twisted roof
Of bough and leafage, tempest-proof,
There whispers, hushed and hollow,
The beating of a horse's hoof,
Which low, faint echoes follow,
Down the deeply-swarded floor
Of a forest aisle, the muffled tread,
Hissing where the leaves are dead,
Increases more and more;
And lo! between the leaves and light,
Up the avenue's narrow span,
There moves a blackness, shaped like
The shadow of a man.
Nearer now, where through the maze
Cleave close the horizontal rays:
It moves—a solitary knight,
Borne with undulation light
As is the windless walk of ocean,
On a black steed's Arabian grace,
Mighty of mien, and proud of pace,
But modulate of motion.
O'er breast and limb, from head to heel,
Fall flexile folds of sable steel;
Little the lightning of war could avail,
If it glanced on the strength of the folded mail.
The beaver bars his vizage mask,
By outward bearings unrevealed:
He bears no crest upon his casque,
No symbol on his shield.
Slowly and with slackened rein,
Either in sorrow, or in pain,
Through the forest he paces on,
As our life does in a desolate dream,
When the heart and the limbs are as heavy as stone,
And the remembered tone and moony gleam
Of hushed voices and dead eyes
Draw us on the dim path of shadowy destinies.

V.

The vesper chime hath ceased to beat,
And the hill echoes to repeat
The trembling of the argent bell.
What second sounding—dead and deep,
And cold of cadence, stirs the sleep
Of twilight with its sullen swell?
The knight drew bridle, as he heard
Its voice creep through his beaver barred,
Just where a cross of marble stood,
Grey in the shadow of the wood.
Whose youngest coppice, twined and torn,
Concealed its access worship-worn:
It might be chance—it might be art,
Or opportune, or unconfessed,
But from this cross there did depart
A pathway to the west;
By which a narrow glance was given,
To the high hills and highest heaven,
To the blue river's bended line,
And Saint Cecilia's lonely shrine.

VI.

Blue, and baseless, and beautiful
Did the boundless mountains bear
Their folded shadows into the golden air.
The comfortlessness of their chasms was full
Of orient cloud and undulating mist,
Which, where their silver cataracts hissed,
Quivered with panting colour. Far above
A lightning pulse of soundless fire did move
In the blue heaven itself, and, snake-like slid
Round peak and precipice, and pyramid;
White lines of light along their crags alit,
And the cold lips of their chasms were wreathed with it,
Until they smiled with passionate fire; the sky
Hung over them with answering eestasy;
Through its pale veins of cloud, like blushing blood,
From south to north the swift pulsation glowed
With infinite emotion; but it ceased
In the far chambers of the dewy west.
There the weak day stood withering, like a spirit
Which, in its dim departure, turns to bless
Their sorrow whom it leaveth, to inherit
Their lonely lot of night and nothingness.
Keen in its edge, against the farthest light,
The cold calm earth its black horizon lifted,
Though a faint vapour, which the winds had sifted
Like thin sea-sand, in undulations white
And multitudinous, veiled the lower stars.
And over this there hung successive bars
Of crimson mist, which had no visible ending
But in the eastern gloom; voiceless and still,
Illimitable in their arched extending,
They kept their dwelling place in heaven; the chill
Of the passing night-wind stirred them not; the ascending
Of the keen summer moon was marked by them
Into successive steps; the plenitude
Of pensive light was kindled and subdued
Alternate, as her crescent keel did stem
Those waves of currentless cloud, the diadem
Of her companion planet near her, shed
Keen quenchless splendor down the drowsy air;
Glowed as she glowed, and followed where she led,
High up the hill of the night heaven, where
Thin threads of darkness, braided like black hair,
Where in long trembling tresses interwoven,
The soft blue eyes of the superior deep
Looked through them, with the glance of those who cannot weep
For sorrow. Here and there the veil was cloven,
By crossing of faint winds, whose wings did keep
Such cadence as the breath of dreamless sleep
Among the stars, and soothed with strange delight
The vain vacuity of the Infinite.

VII.

Stiff as stone, and still as death,
Stood the knight like one amazed,
And dropped his rein, and held his breath,
So anxiously he gazed.
Oh! well might such a scene and sun
Surprise the sudden sight,
And yet his mien was more of one
In dread than in delight.
His glance was not on heaven or hill,
On cloud or lightning, swift or still,
azure earth or orient air;
But long his fixed look did lie
On one bright line of western sky,—
What saw he there?

VIII.

On the brow of a lordly line
Of chasm-divided crag, there stood
The walls of Saint Cecilia's shrine.
Above the undulating wood
Broad basalt bulwarks, stern and stiff,
Ribbed, like black bones, the grisly cliff.
On the torn summit stretched away
The convent walls, tall, old, and grey;
So strong their ancient size did seem,
So stern their mountain seat,
Well might the passing pilgrim deem
Such desperate dwelling place more meet
For soldier true, or baron bold,
For army's guard or bandit's hold,
Than for the rest, deep, calm, and cold,
Of those whose tale of troublous life is told.

IX.

The topmost tower rose, narrow and tall,
O'er the broad mass of crag and wall;
Against the streak of western light
It raised its solitary height.
Just above, nor far aloof,
From the cross upon its roof,
Sat a silver star.
The low clouds drifting fast and far,
Gave, by their own mocking loss,
Motion to the star and cross.
Even the black tower was stirred below
To join the dim, mysterious march,
The march so strangely slow.
Near its top an opening arch
Let through a passage of pale sky
Enclosed with stern captivity;
And in its hollow height there hung,
From a black bar, a brazen bell:
Its hugeness was traced clear and well
The slanting rays among.
Ever and anon it swung
Halfway round its whirling wheel;
Back again, with rocking reel,
Lazily its length was flung,
Till brazen lip and beating tongue.
Met once, with unrepeated peal,
Then paused;—until the winds could feel
The weight of the wide sound that clung
To their inmost spirit, like the appeal
Of startling memories, strangely strung,
That point to pain, and yet conceal.
Again with single sway it rung,
And the black tower beneath could feel
The undulating tremor steal
Through its old stones, with long shiver,
The wild woods felt it creep and quiver
Through their thick leaves and hushed air,
As fear creeps through a murderer's hair.
And the gray reeds beside the river,
In the moonlight meek and mild,
Moved like spears when war is wild.

X.

And still the knight like statue stood,
In the arched opening of the wood.
Slowly still the brazen bell
Marked its modulated knell;
Heavily, heavily, one by one,
The dull strokes gave their thunder tone.
So long the pause between was led,
Ere one rose the last was dead—
Dead and lost by hollow and hill.
Again, again, it gathered still;
Ye who hear, peasant or peer,
By all you hope and all you fear,
Lowly now be heart and knee,
Meekly be your orison said
For the body in its agony,
And the spirit in its dread.

XI.

Reverent as a cowlèd monk
The knight before the cross had sunk;
Just as he bowed his helmless head,
Twice the bell struck faint and dead,
And ceased. Hill, valley, and winding shore
The rising roll received no more.
His lips were weak, his words were low,
A paleness came across his brow;
He started to his feet, in fear
Of something that he seemed to hear.
Was it the west wind that did feign
Articulation strange and vain?
Vainly with thine ear thou warrest:
Lo! it comes, it comes again!
Through the dimly woven forest
Comes the cry of one in pain—
"May the faith thou hast forgotten
Bind thee with its broken chain."

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