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[A Fragment]
I WHAT is this I read in history, | |
| Full of marvel, full of mystery, | |
| Difficult to understand? | |
| Is it fiction, is it truth? | |
| Children in the flower of youth, | 5 |
| Heart in heart, and hand in hand, | |
| Ignorant of what helps or harms, | |
| Without armor, without arms, | |
| Journeying to the Holy Land! | |
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| Who shall answer or divine? | 10 |
| Never since the world was made | |
| Such a wonderful crusade | |
| Started forth for Palestine. | |
| Never while the world shall last | |
| Will it reproduce the past; | 15 |
| Never will it see again | |
| Such an army, such a band, | |
| Over mountain, over main, | |
| Journeying to the Holy Land. | |
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| Like a shower of blossoms blown | 20 |
| From the parent trees were they; | |
| Like a flock of birds that fly | |
| Through the unfrequented sky, | |
| Holding nothing as their own, | |
| Passed they into lands unknown, | 25 |
| Passed to suffer and to die. | |
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| O the simple, child-like trust! | |
| O the faith that could believe | |
| What the harnessed, iron-mailed | |
| Knights of Christendom had failed, | 30 |
| By their prowess, to achieve, | |
| They, the children, could and must! | |
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| Little thought the Hermit, preaching | |
| Holy Wars to knight and baron, | |
| That the words dropped in his teaching, | 35 |
| His entreaty, his beseeching, | |
| Would by children’s hands be gleaned, | |
| And the staff on which he leaned | |
| Blossom like the rod of Aaron. | |
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| As a summer wind upheaves | 40 |
| The innumerable leaves | |
| In the bosom of a wood,— | |
| Not as separate leaves, but massed | |
| All together by the blast,— | |
| So for evil or for good | 45 |
| His resistless breath upheaved | |
| All at once the many-leaved, | |
| Many-thoughted multitude. | |
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| In the tumult of the air | |
| Rock the boughs with all the nests | 50 |
| Cradled on their tossing crests; | |
| By the fervor of his prayer | |
| Troubled hearts were everywhere | |
| Rocked and tossed in human breasts. | |
| For a century, at least, | 55 |
| His prophetic voice had ceased; | |
| But the air was heated still | |
| By his lurid words and will, | |
| As from fires in far-off woods, | |
| In the autumn of the year, | 60 |
| An unwonted fever broods | |
| In the sultry atmosphere. | |
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II In Cologne the bells were ringing, | |
| In Cologne the nuns were singing | |
| Hymns and canticles divine; | 65 |
| Loud the monks sang in their stalls, | |
| And the thronging streets were loud | |
| With the voices of the crowd;— | |
| Underneath the city walls | |
| Silent flowed the river Rhine. | 70 |
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| From the gates, that summer day, | |
| Clad in robes of hodden gray, | |
| With the red cross on the breast, | |
| Azure-eyed and golden-haired, | |
| Forth the young crusaders fared; | 75 |
| While above the band devoted | |
| Consecrated banners floated, | |
| Fluttered many a flag and streamer, | |
| And the cross o’er all the rest! | |
| Singing lowly, meekly, slowly, | 80 |
| “Give us, give us back the holy | |
| Sepulchre of the Redeemer!” | |
| On the vast procession pressed, | |
| Youths and maidens.… | |
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III Ah! what master hand shall paint | 85 |
| How they journeyed on their way, | |
| How the days grew long and dreary, | |
| How their little feet grew weary, | |
| How their little hearts grew faint! | |
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| Ever swifter day by day | 90 |
| Flowed the homeward river; ever | |
| More and more its whitening current | |
| Broke and scattered into spray, | |
| Till the calmly-flowing river | |
| Changed into a mountain torrent, | 95 |
| Rushing from its glacier green | |
| Down through chasm and black ravine. | |
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| Like a phœnix in its nest, | |
| Burned the red sun in the West, | |
| Sinking in an ashen cloud; | 100 |
| In the East, above the crest | |
| Of the sea-like mountain chain, | |
| Like a phœnix from its shroud, | |
| Came the red sun back again. | |
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| Now around them, white with snow, | 105 |
| Closed the mountain peaks. Below, | |
| Headlong from the precipice | |
| Down into the dark abyss, | |
| Plunged the cataract, white with foam; | |
| And it said, or seemed to say: | 110 |
| “Oh return, while yet you may, | |
| Foolish children, to your home, | |
| There the Holy City is!” | |
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| But the dauntless leader said: | |
| “Faint not, though your bleeding feet | 115 |
| O’er these slippery paths of sleet | |
| Move but painfully and slowly; | |
| Other feet than yours have bled; | |
| Other tears than yours been shed. | |
| Courage! lose not heart or hope; | 120 |
| On the mountains’ southern slope | |
| Lies Jerusalem the Holy!” | |
| As a white rose in its pride, | |
| By the wind in summer-tide | |
| Tossed and loosened from the branch, | 125 |
| Showers its petals o’er the ground, | |
| From the distant mountain’s side, | |
| Scattering all its snows around, | |
| With mysterious, muffled sound, | |
| Loosened, fell the avalanche. | 130 |
| Voices, echoes far and near, | |
| Roar of winds and waters blending, | |
| Mists uprising, clouds impending, | |
| Filled them with a sense of fear, | |
| Formless, nameless, never ending. * * * * * | 135 |
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