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I. IN the market-place of Ypres, three hundred years ago, | |
| A crumbling statue, old, and rent by many a lightning blow, | |
| Stood—sad and stern, and grim and blank—upon its mossy base; | |
| The woes of many centuries were frozen in its face. | |
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| It was a Cæsar some men said, and some said Charlemagne, | 5 |
| Yet no one knew when he it aped began or ceased to reign, | |
| Nor who it was, nor what it was, could any rightly say, | |
| For the date upon its pedestal was fretted quite away. | |
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| When blue and ghastly moonshine fell, severing the shadows dark, | |
| And stars above were shining out with many a diamond spark, | 10 |
| It used to cast its giant shade across the market square, | |
| And through the darkness and the shine it fixed its stony stare. | |
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| ’T was said that where its shadow fell on a certain day and year, | |
| An hour at least past midnight, when the moon was up and clear, | |
| Near to that statue’s mouldy base, deep hid beneath the ground, | 15 |
| A treasure vast of royal wealth was certain to be found. | |
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| Slow round, as round a dial-plate, its sharp dark shadow passed, | |
| On fountain and cathedral roof by turns eclipse it cast; | |
| Before it fled the pale blue light, chased as man’s life by death, | |
| And deep you heard the great clock tick, like a sleeping giant’s breath. | 20 |
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II. In that same market-place there lived an alchemist of fame, | |
| A lean and yellow dark-eyed man, Hans Memling was his name; | |
| In scarlet hood and blood-red robe, in crimson vest and gown, | |
| For twenty years, the moonlight through, he ’d sat and watched the town. | |
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| Like one flame-lit he used to peer between the mullions there, | 25 |
| As yonder stars shot blessed light through the clear midnight air; | |
| When chessboard-checkered, black and white, part silver and part jet, | |
| The city lay in light and shade, barred with the moonbeams’ net. | |
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| When gable-ends and pinnacles and twisted chimney-stalks | |
| Rose thick around the market square and its old cloistered walks, | 30 |
| When gurgoyles on the Minster tower made faces at the moon, | |
| The convent gardens were as bright as if it had been noon,— | |
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| Memling—the miser alchemist—then left his crimson vials, | |
| His Arab books, his bottled toads, his sulphurous fiery trials, | |
| His red-hot crucibles, and dyes that turned from white to blue, | 35 |
| His silver trees that starry rose the crystal vases through. | |
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| The room was piled with ponderous tomes, thick ribbed and silver clasped, | |
| The letters twined with crimson flowers, the covers golden hasped, | |
| With dripping stills and furnaces, whose doors were smouldered black, | |
| With maps of stars and charts of seas lined with untraversed track. * * * * * | 40 |
| Slow round, as round a dial-plate, the statue’s shadow passed, | |
| On fountain and cathedral roof by turns eclipse it cast, | |
| Before it fled the pale blue light, chased as man’s life by death, | |
| Deep, low you heard the great clock tick, like a sleeping giant’s breath. | |
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III. The moonbeams in cascades of light poured from the poplar’s crown, | 45 |
| Rippling in silvery lustre the leafy columns down, | |
| They roofed the town-hall fair and bright with bonny silver slates, | |
| They even turned to argent pure the bars of the prison gates. | |
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| The maiden slumbering in her bed awoke that blessed night, | |
| And thought her angel sisters three had come all veiled in light; | 50 |
| The wild-beast felon in his cell started and thought it day, | |
| Cursing the torturer who, he dreamt, had chid him for delay. | |
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| The angel host of King and Saint, o’er the Minster’s western door, | |
| Shone radiant in the blessed light—so radiant ne’er before, | |
| As now began the airy chimes in the cathedral tower | 55 |
| To chant, as with a lingering grief, the dirges of the hour. | |
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| That day at sunset there had come a voice unto this man, | |
| And said as plain as Devil-voice or friendly spirit can, | |
| “Go, Memling, dig beneath the base of the statue in the square, | |
| The Secret of all Secrets ’s hid beneath the earth-heaps there.” | 60 |
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| He shook his land at stars and moon, then shut his furnace up, | |
| First draining off a magic draught from an Egyptian cup, | |
| For he dreamt he saw his room piled full of solid bars of gold, | |
| Great bags of jewels, diamond-blocks, spoil of the kings of old. | |
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| The fitting hour was just at hand, the alchemist arose; | 65 |
| Upon the eaves the rain-drop tears in ice-jags shining froze; | |
| His starry lantern duly lit, with cold he crept and shook, | |
| As with his pickaxe and his spade his stealthy way he took. | |
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| The shadow marked the fitting place, King Saturn ruled the hour, | |
| The Devil, floating o’er his slave, smiled at his puny power; | 70 |
| Hans Memling plied his crowbar fast,—the thirteenth blow he gave, | |
| The ponderous statue fell, and crushed the brains out of the knave. | |
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| Then clear and still the moonshine pure upon the lone square lay,— | |
| No shadow left to sully it, it spread as bright as day; | |
| At dawn they found Hans Memling, crushed, dead-cold beneath the stone, | 75 |
| But what he saw and what he found has never yet been known. | |
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