The Rhyme Of The Lady Of The Rock. Poem by Emily Pfeiffer

The Rhyme Of The Lady Of The Rock.



Two shapes passed over the sobbing sea
To land at Dunolly Bay;
One passed at sunrise, one at noon
Of the new-created day.
The first was a work of God undone;
The second, a devil's but ill begun.
And both were silent as outer space,
Both white as the upper air;
As one mask lay to the rising sun,
And one to the noon-day bare,
Broke from the first a gasping breath,
Shone on the second the beads of death.
So the first was laid on the yellow sands
To catch the coming of day,
And the second was covered up close as night
To hide from the noon away;
And light of life came into the first,
But the second sweltered, a thing accurst.
Through the standing floods, by the lonely ways,
In the tracks which the sheep had worn,
By Shamesh, he of the bloody hands,
That spotless lady is borne;
But her sleeping sense of his care is fain,
And his bloody hands leave never a stain.
He had sighted her soul when it rose and sued
To his chief at her wild wide eyes;
And the sea and the shore through the livelong night
Had been ringing as with her cries;
And they drew him whether he would or no
With the cords of a man, and he had to go.
So he found her there where the sea had laid
And left her, but not a sound
There breathed from her body, as mournfully
The waves fell sobbing round;
Then a stainless lily, alive or dead,
He gathered her up in his hands, and fled.
Then as bloody Shamesh was making the shore,
And laying that white ladye
In the sun's warm bed on the yellow sands,
Maclean was putting to sea
With the waxen shape that in hate of hell
His limmer had molten and made so well.
But or ever the seeming widower
Had come with the seeming dead
To Dunolly Bay, that first true twain
Were well on their journey sped,—
Ben Cruachan behind them, frowning above
And blocking the way of the foes of love.
Then they hail the ferry, and lightly go
Where heavily erst she came,
And the jubilant song of Glenara fall
Sets her frozen blood aflame,
And she lights at the gate, and she seems to win
Her way like a chartered ghost within.
And she glides to her place by the arras screen,
And faces her kinsmen all,
For a wandering breath that told of her death
Had called them together in hall:
'You must open your hearts as of yore to me,
For you get me back at the gift of the sea!'

They opened their hearts, and they lent their ears
To her tale, but on every dirk
A hand was locked in a fast embrace
And with promise of wilder work
Than ever had been in the age-long reign
Of hate 'twixt Clan Campbell and Clan Maclean.
Then the women swarmed round her and bore her away,
As a leaf on a stream at flood,
They shrieked wild curses, but eased their hearts
With tears, while they talked of blood;
And my lady who heard was resolving it all
In the call of the cuckoo, the song of the fall.
But when, brave and sweet, from her maiden bower
She issued again, they had done;
And the whole clan rose to the queen of the feast,
And she faced them, and saw but one,
Till her thought was drawn to that vanished shore
By the ghost of the dirge of Macrimmon Môr.
Faint as a travelling spirit of sound
It came and went on the breeze,
Now low in the valley, now high on the hill,
Now lost in the leaves of the trees;
But ever emerging, and ever more near,
As the men clutched their dirks and bent forward to hear,
For they knew of the thing that was like to appear.
A lie will be loud in its own defence,
As a fearsome heart will be bold;
And in every clachan the thing went through,
The lie had been told and told,
And the dool of the lady lamented o'er
In the wild death-song of Macrimmon Môr.
Now it wails, it shrieks, it is passing the cross,
It has entered the gate, and the beat
Grows loud and louder, the steady ground-tone
Of an army of tramping feet;
Then the great hall fills with a funeral train,
And in weeds of mourning the false Maclean
Steps warily close to an open bier,
With one downward fiery eye
That has found a way through his folded plaid
Fast fixed on the waxen lie;
Then he lifts his hand and he stops the march
Of the train in the favouring gloom of an arch.
And one clan halts in the cavernous shade,
One stands in a bright half ring
By the torch-lit board, each man in his place,
But alert, and ready to spring
If damnable treason for once overbore
The bloodless craft of MacCallum Môr.
Then from out of the darkness a hollow voice
Comes deep as the gloom and dull,
And the Campbells are fretting like hounds in leash,
While the tortuous lord of Mull
Pours the tale of his loss and his dole in their ears
While his false eyes verily shed false tears.
'Abide, my brothers!' MacCallum Môr
Has taken his sister's hand,
And adown the hall in their Campbell pride
They pace together, and stand
In a halo of light by the open bier,
He waving a burning brand
In the false dead face which wears flat in the flare,
As the falser living shrinks back from the glare.
But the lady has fronted the men of Argyle,
And though never a sign gave she,
Her heart on another's made silent call,
And the twain were suddenly three,
She holding in ward with her maiden might
The armed right hand of her own true knight.
The mourner has turned in his ghastly rear
From that deadlier image than death,—
And lo, on the topmost stair, as of life,
Sees the Lady Elizabeth,
And the radiant vision had all but slain,
As with effluent being, that caitiff Maclean.
His lieges are thronging in hall and court,
And many bold men and true,
But in view of that lady who dazzles their eyes
They cower and tremble too:
'Tis an unkenned sight, and a weird, to see
A spirit stand clear of its own bodie.
Now Maclean lies bleeding and overthrown
In his recreant haste to fly;
But MacCallum Môr had foreseen his gain
In the life of his false ally,
Though his fiercer namesmen had all but broke
From his cautious hold, when his sister spoke.
She spoke in her tolerant scorn: 'This chief
Has suffered some wrong of me,
Which failing to right, he went near to avenge
In the strength of his fere the Sea.
I stand here victor: let no man dare
To take from the vanquished the life I spare!'

She seized the brand, and tossed it alive.
On the waxen shape where it lay,
And the light full-fed leaped up to the roof,
And the night was a brighter day.
Then the red Maclean, who, dabbled with gore,
And abject with terror, fled out of the door,
To his whilom lady became no more.
And she spoke again to her own true love,
None hearing but only he:
'Forgive that a traitor in love's despite
Once dared in sight of the sea—
But only once—high God He knows—
To touch the lips of me,
Sith the great white wave that broke from above
Hath made them meet now for death or for love.'
Then she turned in her pride to her feudal lord,
Said, 'Brother, now give me shrift;
I was offered to shame, I was offered to death;
As I hold at the sea's free gift
My life and love, I will hold them fast,
Or find me a grave with the true at last.'
But her brother has taken and joined their hands,
And so soothfast was the kiss—

So dear love's due to her lips so true—
She had like to have died of bliss;
Then over her cheek as she drooped her head,
Love's banner at last rose red, rose red.

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