Clarel/Part 1/Canto 31

31. Rolfe
The hill above the garden here They rove; and chance ere long to meet A second stranger, keeping cheer

Apart. Trapper or pioneer He looked, astray in Judah's seat-- Or one who might his business ply On waters under tropic sky. Perceiving them as they drew near, He rose, removed his hat to greet, Disclosing so in shapely sphere A marble brow over face embrowned: So Sunium by her fane is crowned. One read his superscription clear-- A genial heart, a brain austerc And further, deemed that such a man Though given to study, as might seem, Was no scholastic partisan Or euphonist of Academe, But supplemented Plato's theme With daedal life in boats and tents, A messmate of the elements; And yet, more bronzed in face than mind, Sensitive still and frankly kind-- Too frank, too unreserved, may be, And indiscreet in honesty. But what implies the tinge of soil-- Like tarnish on Pizarro's spoil, Precious in substance rudely wrought, Peruvian plate--which here is caught? What means this touch of the untoward In aspect hinting nothing froward?

From Baalbec, for a new sojourn, To Jewry Rolfe had made return; To Jewry's inexhausted shore Of barrenness, where evermore Some lurking thing he hoped to gdill-- Slip quite behind the parrot-lore Conventional, and what attain? Struck by each clear or latent sign Expressive in the stranger's air, The student glanced from him to Vine:

Peers, peers--yes, needs that these must pair. Clarel was young. In promise fine, To him here first were brought together Exceptional natures, of a weather Strange as the tropics with strange trees, Strange birds, strange fishes, skies and seas, To one who in some meager land His bread wins by the horny hand. What now may hap? what outcome new Elicited by contact true-- Frank, cordial contact of the twain? Crude wonderment, and proved but vain. If average mortals social be, And yet but seldom truly meet, Closing like halves of apple sweet-- How with the rarer in degree? The informal salutation done, Vine into his dumb castle went-- Not as all parley he would shun, But looking down from battlement, Ready, if need were, to accord Reception to the other's word,-- Nay, far from wishing to decline, And neutral not without design, May be.-- "Look, by Christ's belfry set,

Appears the Moslem minaret!" So--to fill trying pause alone-- Cried Rolfe; and o'er the deep defile Of Kedron, pointed toward the Town Where, thronged about by many a pile Monastic, but no vernal bower, The Saracen shaft and Norman tower In truce stand guard beside that Dome Which canopies the Holy's home: "The tower looks lopped; it shows forlorn-- A stunted oak whose crown is shorn But see, palm-like the minaret stands Superior, and the tower commands."

"Yon shaft," said Clarel, "seems ill-placed." "Ay, seems; but 'tis for memory based. The story's known: how Omar there After the town's surrender meek-- Hallowed to him, as dear to Greek-- Clad in his clouts of camel's hair, And with the Patriarch robed and fine Walking beneath the dome divine, When came the Islam hour for prayer Declined to use the carpet good Spread for him in the church, but stood Without, even yonder where is set The monumental minaret; And, earnest in true suppliance cried, Smiting his chest: 'Me overrule! Allah, to me be merciful!' 'Twas little shared he victor-pride Though victor. So the church he saved Of purpose from that law engraved Which prompt transferred to Allah sole Each fane where once his rite might roll. Long afterward, the town being stormed By Christian knights, how ill conformed The butchery then to Omar's prayer And heart magnanimous. But spare."

Response they looked; and thence he warmed: "Yon gray Cathedral of the Tomb, Who reared it first? a woman weak, A second Mary, first to seek In pagan darkness which had come, The place where they had laid the Lord: Queen Helena, she traced the site, And cleared the ground, and made it bright With all that zeal could then afford. But Constantinc--there falls the blight! The mother's warm emotional heart, Subserved it still the son's cold part? Even he who, timing well the tide,

Laced not the Cross upon Rome's flag Supreme, till Jove began to lag Behind the new religion's stride. And Helena--ah, may it be The saint herself not quite was free From that which in the years bygone, Made certain stately dames of France, Such as the fair De Maintenon, To string their rosaries of pearl, And found brave chapels--sweet romance: Coquetry of the borrowed curl?-- You let me prate."                 "Nay, nay--go on," Cried Clarel, yet in such a tone It showed disturbance.--                      "Laud the dame: Her church, admit, no doom it fears. Unquelled by force of battering years-- Years, years and sieges, sword and flame; Fallen--rebuilt, to fall anew; By armies shaken, earthquake too; Lo, it abides--if not the same, In self-same spot. Last time 'twas burnt The Rationalist a lesson learnt. But you know all."--                  "Nay, not the end,"

Said Vine. And Clarel, "We attend." "Well, on the morrow never shrunk From wonted rite the steadfast monk, Though hurt and even maimed were some By crash of the ignited dome. Staunch stood the walls. As friars profess (And not in fraud) the central cell-- Christ's tomb and faith's last citadel-- The flames did tenderly caress, Nor harm; while smoking, smouldering beams, Fallen across, lent livid gleams To Golgotha. But none the less In robed procession of his God

The mitred one the cinders trod; Before the calcined altar there The host he raised; and hymn and prayer Went up from ashes. These, ere chill, Away were brushed; and trowel shrill And hod and hammer came in place. 'Tis now some three score years ago. "In Lima's first convulsion so, When shock on shock had left slim trace Of hundred temples; and--in mood Of malice dwelling on the face Itself has tortured and subdued To uncomplaint--the cloud pitch-black Lowered o'er the rubbish; and the land Not less than sea, did countermand Her buried corses--heave them back; And flocks and men fled on the track Which wins the Andes; then went forth The prelate with intrepid train Rolling the anthem 'mid the rain Of ashes white. In rocking plain New boundaries staked they, south and north, For ampler piles. These stand. In cheer The priest reclaimed the quaking sphere. Hold it he shall, so long as spins This star of tragedies, this orb of sins." "That," Clarel said, "is not my mind. Rome's priest forever rule the world?" "The priest, I said. Though some be hurled From anchor, nor a haven find; Not less religion's ancient port, Till the crack of doom, shall be resort In stress of weather for mankind. Yea, long as children feel affright In darkness, men shall fear a God; And long as daisies yield delight Shall see His footprints in the sod. Is't ignorance? This ignorant state Science doth but elucidate--

Deepen, enlarge. But though 'twere made Demonstrable that God is not-- What then? it would not change this lot: The ghost would haunt, nor could be laid."  Intense he spake, his eyes of blue Altering, and to eerie hue, Like Tyrrhene seas when overcast; The which Vine noted, nor in joy, Inferring thence an ocean-waste Of earnestness without a buoy: An inference which afterward Acquaintance led him to discard Or modify, or not employ.  Clarel ill-relished.                    Rolfe, in tone Half elegiac, thus went on: "Phyla, upon thy sacred ground Osiris' broken tomb is found: A god how good, whose good proved vain-- In strife with bullying Python slain. For long the ritual chant or moan Of pilgrims by that mystic stone Went up, even much as now ascend The liturgies of yearning prayer To one who met a kindred end-- Christ, tombed in turn, and worshiped there,"

And pointed.--"Hint you," here asked Vine, "In Christ Osiris met decline Anew?"--"Nay, nay; and yet, past doubt, Strange is that text St. Matthew won From gray Hosea in sentence: Out Of Egypt have I called my son. " Here Clarel spake, and with a stir Not all assured in eager plight: "But does not Matthew there refer Only to the return from flight, Flight into Egypt?"--"May be so," Said Rolfe; "but then Hosea?--Nay, We'll let it pass."--And fell delay

Of talk; they mused.-- "To Cicero," Rolfe sudden said, "is a long way From Matthew; yet somehow he comes To mind here--he and his fine tomes, Which (change the gods) would serve to read For modern essays. And indeed His age was much like ours: doubt ran, Faith flagged; negations which sufficed Lawyer, priest, statesman, gentleman, Not yet being popularly prized, The augurs hence retained some state-- Which served for the illiterate. Still, the decline so swiftly ran From stage to stage, that To Believe, Except for slave or artisan, Seemed heresy. Even doubts which met Horror at first, grew obsolete, And in a decade. To bereave Of founded trust in Sire Supreme, Was a vocation. Sophists throve-- Each weaving his thin thread of dream Into the shroud for Numa's Jove. Caesar his atheism avowed Before the Senate. But why crowd Examples here: the gods were gone. Tully scarce dreamed they could be won Back into credence; less that earth Ever could know yet mightier birth Of deity. He died. Christ came. And, in due hour, that impious Rome, Emerging from vast wreck and shame, Held the fore front of Christendom. The inference? the lesson?--come: Let fools count on faith's closing knell-- Time, God, are inexhaustible.-- But what? so earnest? ay, again." "Hard for a fountain to refrain," Breathed Vine. Was that but irony?

At least no envy in the strain. Rolfe scarce remarked, or let go by. For Clarel--when ye, meeting, scan In waste the Bagdad caravan, And solitude puts on the stir, Clamor, dust, din of Nineveh, As horsemen, camels, footmen all, Soldier and merchant, free and thrall, Pour by in tide processional; So to the novice streamed along Rolfe's filing thoughts, a wildering throng. Their sway he owned. And yet how Vine-- Who breathed few words, or gave dumb sign-- Him more allured, suggestive more Of choicer treasure, rarer store Reserved, like Kidd's doubloons long sought Without the wand. The ball of thought And chain yet dragging, on they strained Oblique along the upland--slow And mute, until a point they gained Where devotees will pause, and know A tenderness, may be. Here then, While tarry now these pilgrim men, The interval let be assigned A niche for image of a novel mind.