EASTER
EVE
Hear me,
Brother, gently met;
Just a little, turn, not yet,
Thou shalt laugh, and soon forget:
Now the midnight draweth near.
I have little more to tell;
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Soon with hallow stroke and knell,
Thou shalt count the palace bell,
Calling that the hour is here.
Burdens black
and strange to bear,
I must tell, and thou must share,
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Listening with that stony stare,
Even as many a man before.
Years have lightly come and gone
In their jocund unison,
But the tides of life roll on—
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They remember now no more.
Once upon
a night of glee,
In an hour of revelry,
As I wandered restlessly,
I beheld with burning eye,
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How a pale procession rolled
Through a quarter quaint and old,
With its banners and its gold,
And the crucifix went by.
Well I knew
that body brave
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That was pierced and hung to save,
But my flesh was now a grave
For the soul that gnashed within.
He that they were bearing by,
With their banners white and high,
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He was pure, and foul was I,
And his whiteness mocked my
sin.
Ah, meseemed
that even he,
Would not wait to look on me,
In my years and misery,
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Things that he alone could heal.
In mine eyes I felt the flame
Of a rage that naught could tame,
And I cried and cursed his name,
Till my brain began to reel.
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In a moment
I was ’ware,
How that many watching there,
Fearfully with blanch and stare,
Crossed themselves and shrank
away;
Then upon my reeling mind,
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Like a sharp blow from behind,
Fell the truth, and left me blind,
Hopeless now and all astray.
O’er the
city wandering wide,
Seeking but some place to hide,
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Where the sounds of mirth had died,
Through the shaken night I stole;
From the ever-eddying stream
Of the crowds that did but seem
Like the processions in a dream
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To my empty echoing soul.
Till I came
at last alone
To a hidden street of stone,
Where the city’s monotone
On the silence fell no more.
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Then I saw how one in white
With a footstep mute and light,
Through the shadow of the night
Like a spirit paced before.
And a sudden
stillness came
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Through my spirit and my frame,
And a spell without a name
Held me in his mystic track.
Though his presence seemed so mild,
Yet he led me like a child,
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With a yearning strange and wild,
That I dared not turn me back.
Oh, I could
not see his face,
Nor behold his utmost grace,
Yet I might not change my pace
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Fastened by a strange belief;
For his steps were sad and slow,
And his hands hung straight below,
And his head was bowed, as though
Pressed by some immortal grief.
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So I followed,
yet not I
Held alone that company:
Every silent passer-by
Paled and turned and joined
with me;
So we followed still and fleet,
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While the city street by street,
Fell behind our rustling feet
Like a deadened memory.
Where the
sound of sin and riot
Broke upon the night’s dim quiet,
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And the solemn bells hung nigh it
Echoed from their looming towers;
Where the mourners wept alway,
Watching for the morning grey;
Where the weary toiler lay,
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Husbanding the niggard hours;
By the gates
where all night long
Guests in many a joyous throng,
With the sound of dance and song,
Dreamed in golden palaces;
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Still he passed, and door by door
Opened with a pale outpour,
And the revel rose no more
Hushed in deeper phantasies.
As we passed,
the talk and stir
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Of the quiet wayfarer
And the noisy banqueter
Died upon the midnight dim.
They that reeled in drunken glee
Shrank upon the trembling knee,
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And their jests died pallidly,
As they rose and followed him.
From the
street and from the hall,
From the flare of festival
None that saw him stayed, but all
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Followed where his wonder would:
And our feet at first so few
Gathered as those white feet drew
To a pallid multitude;
And the hushed
and awful beat
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Of our pale unnumbered feet
Made a murmur strange and sweet,
As we followed evermore.
Now the night was almost passed,
And the dawn was overcast,
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When the stranger stayed at last
At a great cathedral door.
Never word
the stranger said,
But he slowly raised his head,
And the vast door openèd
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By an unseen hand withdrawn;
And in silence wave on wave,
Like an army from the grave,
Up the aisles and up the nave,
All that spectral crowd rolled
on.
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As I followed
close behind,
Knowledge like an awful wind
Seemed to blow my naked mind
Into darkness black and bare;
Yet with longing wild and dim,
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And a terror vast and grim,
Nearer still I pressed to him,
Till I almost touched his hair.
From the
gloom so strange and eery,
From the organ low and dreary,
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Rose the wailing miserere,
By mysterious voices sung;
And a dim light shone, none knew,
How it came, or whence it grew,
From the dusky roof and through
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All the solemn spaces flung.
But the stranger
still passed on,
Till he reached the alter stone,
And with body white and prone
Sunk his forehead to the floor;
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And I saw in my despair,
Standing like a spirit there,
How his head was bruised and bare,
And his hand were clenched before,
How his hair
was fouled and knit
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With the blood that clotted it,
Where the prickled thorns had bit
In his crownèd agony;
In his hands so wan and blue,
Leaning out, I saw the two
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Marks of where the nails pierced through,
Once on gloomy Calvary.
Then with
trembling throat I owned
All my dark sin unatoned,
Telling it with lips that moaned,
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And methought an echo came
From the bended crowd below,
Each one breathing faint and low,
Sins that none but he might know:
"Master I did curse thy
name."
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And I saw
him slowly rise
With his sad unearthly eyes,
Meeting mine with meek surprise,
And a voice came solemnly.
"Never more on mortal ground
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For they soul shall rest be found,
But when bells at midnight sound
Thou must rise and come with
me."
Then my forehead
smote the floor,
Swooning, and I knew no more,
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Till I heard the chancel door
Open for the choristers:
But the stranger’s form was gone,
And the church was dim and lone:
Through the silence, one by one
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Stole the early worshippers.
I an ageing
now I know;
That was many years ago,
Yet or I shall rest below
In the grave where none intrude,
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Night by night I roam the street,
And that awful form I meet,
And I follow pale and fleet,
With a ghostly multitude.
Every night
I see his face,
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With its sad and burdened grace,
And the torn and bloody trace,
That in hands and feet he has.
Once my life was dark and bad;
Now its days are strange and sad,
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And the people call me mad:
See, they whisper as they pass.
Even now
the echoes roll
From the swinging bells that toll;
It is midnight, now my soul
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Hasten, for he glideth by.
Stranger, ’tis no phantasie:
Look! my master waits for me
Mutely, but thou canst not see
With the mortal blinded eye.
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