The Jacquerie. A Fragment/Chapter II

Chapter II
Franciscan friar John de Rochetaillade With gentle gesture lifted up his hand And poised it high above the steady eyes Of a great crowd that thronged the market-place In fair Clermont to hear him prophesy. Midst of the crowd old Gris Grillon, the maimed, —A wretched wreck that fate had floated out From the drear storm of battle at Poictiers. A living man whose larger moiety Was dead and buried on the battle-field— A grisly trunk, without or arms or legs, And scarred with hoof-cuts over cheek and brow, Lay in his wicker-cradle, smiling. “Jacques,” Quoth he, “My son, I would behold this priest That is not fat, and loves not wine, and fasts, And stills the folk with waving of his hand, And threats the knights and thunders at the Pope. Make way for Gris, ye who are whole of limb! Set me on yonder ledge, that I may see.” Forthwith a dozen horny hands reached out And lifted Gris Grillon upon the ledge, Whereon he lay and overlooked the crowd, And from the gray-grown hedges of his brows Shot forth a glance against the friar’s eye That struck him like an arrow. Then the friar, With voice as low as if a maiden hummed Love-songs of Provence in a mild day-dream: “And when he broke the second seal, I heard The second beast say, Come and see. And then Went out another horse, and he was red. And unto him that sat thereon was given To take the peace of earth away, and set Men killing one another: and they gave To him a mighty sword.” The friar paused And pointed round the circle of sad eyes. “There is no face of man or woman here But showeth print of the hard hoof of war. Ah, yonder leaneth limbless Gris Grillon. Friends, Gris Grillon is France. Good France; my France, Wilt never walk on glory’s hills again? Wilt never work among thy vines again? Art footless and art handless evermore? —Thou felon, War, I do arraign thee now Of mayhem of the four main limbs of France! Thou old red criminal, stand forth; I charge —But O, I am too utter sorrowful To urge large accusation now. Nathless, My work to-day, is still more grievous. Hear! The stains that war hath wrought upon the land Show but as faint white flecks, if seen o’ the side Of those blood-covered images that stalk Through yon cold chambers of the future, as The prophet-mood, now stealing on my soul, Reveals them, marching, marching, marching. See! There go the kings of France, in piteous file. The deadly diamonds shining in their crowns Do wound the foreheads of their Majesties And glitter through a setting of blood-gouts As if they smiled to think how men are slain By the sharp facets of the gem of power, And how the kings of men are slaves of stones. But look! The long procession of the kings Wavers and stops; the world is full of noise, The ragged peoples storm the palaces, They rave, they laugh, they thirst, they lap the stream That trickles from the regal vestments down, And, lapping, smack their heated chaps for more, And ply their daggers for it, till the kings All die and lie in a crooked sprawl of death, Ungainly, foul, and stiff as any heap Of villeins rotting on a battle-field. ‘Tis true, that when these things have come to pass Then never a king shall rule again in France, For every villein shall be king in France: And who hath lordship in him, whether born In hedge or silken bed, shall be a lord: And queens shall be as thick i’ the land as wives, And all the maids shall maids of honor be: And high and low shall commune solemnly: And stars and stones shall have free interview. But woe is me, ‘tis also piteous true That ere this gracious time shall visit France, Your graves, Beloved, shall be some centuries old, And so your children’s, and their children’s graves And many generations’. Ye, O ye Shall grieve, and ye shall grieve, and ye shall grieve. Your Life shall bend and o’er his shuttle toil, A weaver weaving at the loom of grief. Your Life shall sweat ‘twixt anvil and hot forge, An armorer working at the sword of grief. Your Life shall moil i’ the ground, and plant his seed, A farmer foisoning a huge crop of grief. Your Life shall chaffer in the market-place, A merchant trading in the goods of grief. Your Life shall go to battle with his bow, A soldier fighting in defence of grief. By every rudder that divides the seas, Tall Grief shall stand, the helmsman of the ship. By every wain that jolts along the roads, Stout Grief shall walk, the driver of the team. Midst every herd of cattle on the hills, Dull Grief shall lie, the herdsman of the drove. Oh Grief shall grind your bread and play your lutes And marry you and bury you. —How else? Who’s here in France, can win her people’s faith And stand in front and lead the people on? Where is the Church? The Church is far too fat. Not, mark, by robust swelling of the thews, But puffed and flabby large with gross increase Of wine-fat, plague-fat, dropsy-fat. O shame, Thou Pope that cheatest God at Avignon, Thou that shouldst be the Father of the world And Regent of it whilst our God is gone; Thou that shouldst blaze with conferred majesty And smite old Lust-o’-the-Flesh so as by flame; Thou that canst turn thy key and lock Grief up Or turn thy key and unlock Heaven’s Gate, Thou that shouldst be the veritable hand That Christ down-stretcheth out of heaven yet To draw up him that fainteth to His heart, Thou that shouldst bear thy fruit, yet virgin live, As she that bore a man yet sinned not, Thou that shouldst challenge the most special eyes Of Heaven and Earth and Hell to mark thee, since Thou shouldst be Heaven’s best captain, Earth’s best friend, And Hell’s best enemy—false Pope, false Pope, The world, thy child, is sick and like to die, But thou art dinner-drowsy and cannot come: And Life is sore beset and crieth ‘help!’ But thou brook’st not disturbance at thy wine: And France is wild for one to lead her souls; But thou art huge and fat and laggest back Among the remnants of forsaken camps. Thou’rt not God’s Pope, thou art the Devil’s Pope. Thou art first Squire to that most puissant knight, Lord Satan, who thy faithful squireship long Hath watched and well shall guerdon. Ye sad souls, So faint with work ye love not, so thin-worn With miseries ye wrought not, so outraged By strokes of ill that pass th’ ill-doers’ heads And cleave the innocent, so desperate tired Of insult that doth day by day abuse The humblest dignity of humblest men, Ye cannot call toward the Church for help. The Church already is o’erworked with care Of its dyspeptic stomach. Ha, the Church Forgets about eternity. I had A vision of forgetfulness. O Dream Born of a dream, as yonder cloud is born Of water which is born of cloud! I thought I saw the moonlight lying large and calm Upon the unthrobbing bosom of the earth, As a great diamond glittering on a shroud. A sense of breathlessness stilled all the world. Motion stood dreaming he was changed to Rest, And Life asleep did fancy he was Death. A quick small shadow spotted the white world; Then instantly ’twas huge, and huger grew By instants till it did o’ergloom all space. I lifted up mine eyes—O thou just God! I saw a spectre with a million heads Come frantic downward through the universe, And all the mouths of it were uttering cries, Wherein was a sharp agony, and yet The cries were much like laughs: as if Pain laughed. Its myriad lips were blue, and sometimes they Closed fast and only moaned dim sounds that shaped Themselves to one word, ‘Homeless’, and the stars Did utter back the moan, and the great hills Did bellow it, and then the stars and hills Bandied the grief o’ the ghost ’twixt heaven and earth. The spectre sank, and lay upon the air, And brooded, level, close upon the earth, With all the myriad heads just over me. I glanced in all the eyes and marked that some Did glitter with a flame of lunacy, And some were soft and false as feigning love, And some were blinking with hypocrisy, And some were overfilmed by sense, and some Blazed with ambition’s wild, unsteady fire, And some were burnt i’ the sockets black, and some Were dead as embers when the fire is out. A curious zone circled the Spectre’s waist, Which seemed with strange device to symbol Time. It was a silver-gleaming thread of day Spiral about a jet-black band of night. This zone seemed ever to contract and all The frame with momentary spasms heaved In the strangling traction which did never cease. I cried unto the spectre, ‘Time hath bound Thy body with the fibre of his hours.’ Then rose a multitude of mocking sounds, And some mouths spat at me and cried ‘thou fool’, And some, ‘thou liest’, and some, ‘he dreams’: and then Some hands uplifted certain bowls they bore To lips that writhed but drank with eagerness. And some played curious viols, shaped like hearts And stringed with loves, to light and ribald tunes, And other hands slit throats with knives, And others patted all the painted cheeks In reach, and others stole what others had Unseen, or boldly snatched at alien rights, And some o’ the heads did vie in a foolish game Of which could hold itself the highest, and Of which one’s neck was stiff the longest time. And then the sea in silence wove a veil Of mist, and breathed it upward and about, And waved and wound it softly round the world, And meshed my dream i’ the vague and endless folds, And a light wind arose and blew these off, And I awoke. The many heads are priests That have forgot eternity: and Time Hath caught and bound them with a withe Into a fagot huge, to burn in hell. —Now if the priesthood put such shame upon Your cry for leadership, can better help Come out of knighthood? Lo! you smile, you boors? You villeins smile at knighthood? Now, thou France That wert the mother of fair chivalry, Unclose thine eyes, unclose thine eyes, here, see, Here stand a herd of knaves that laugh to scorn Thy gentlemen! O contumely hard, O bitterness of last disgrace, O sting That stings the coward knights of lost Poictiers! I would—” but now a murmur rose i’ the crowd Of angry voices, and the friar leapt From where he stood to preach and pressed a path Betwixt the mass that way the voices came.