MAUD

I

I

I HATE the dreadful hollow behind the little wood, Its lips in the field above are dabbled with bloodred heath,

The red-ribb'd ledges drip with a silent horror of blood,

And Echo there, whatever is ask'd her, answers "Death." 1

2

For there in the ghastly pit long since a body was found,

His who had given me life-O father! O God! was it well?

Mangled, and flatten'd, and crush'd, and dinted into the ground:

There yet lies the rock that fell with him when he fell.

1 Echo... answers "Death."] Cp. Paradise Lost, bk. ii.:

"I fled, and cried out, Death!

Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed
From all her caves, and back resounded, Death!"

3

Did he fling himself down? who knows? for a vast speculation1 had fail'd,

And ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever wann'd 2 with despair,

And out he walk'd when the wind like a broken worldling wail'd,

And the flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands drove thro' the air.

4

I remember the time, for the roots of my hair were stirr'd

By a shuffled step, by a dead weight trail'd, by a whisper'd fright,

And my pulses closed their gates with a shock on my heart as I heard

The shrill-edged shriek of a mother divide the shuddering night.

5

Villainy somewhere! whose? One says, we are villains all.

Not he his honest fame should at least by me be maintain❜d:

But that old man, now lord of the broad estate and the Hall,

Dropt off gorged from a scheme that had left us flaccid and drain'd.

1 Vast speculation.] 1st edition reads “ great speculation."

2 Wann'd.] Grew wan. Unusual. Notice the alliterations here and in verse 6. Also the appropriateness of the "flying gold," etc.

6

Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace? we have made them a curse,

Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not

its own;

And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better

or worse

Than the heart of the citizen hissing 1 in war on his own hearthstone?

7

But these are the days of advance, the works of the men of mind,

When who but a fool would have faith in a tradesman's ware or his word?

Is it peace or war?

that of a kind

Civil war, as I think, and

The viler, as underhand, not openly bearing the sword.

8

Sooner or later I too may passively take the print Of the golden age-why not? I have neither hope nor trust;

May make my heart as a millstone, set my face as a flint,

Cheat and be cheated, and die: who knows? we are ashes and dust.

1 Hissing.] The hot hearthstone causing the flesh thrown on it to hiss-a very gruesome image.

9

Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by,

When the poor are hovell'd and hustled 1 together, each sex, like swine,

When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie;

Peace in her vineyard-yes!—but a company forges the wine.

ΙΟ

And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffian's ( head,

Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled wife,

While chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread,

And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life.

I I

And Sleep must lie down arm'd, for the villainous centre-bits 2

Grind on the wakeful ear in the hush of the moonless nights,

While another is cheating the sick of a few last gasps, as he sits

To pestle a poison'd poison behind his crimson lights.

1 Hustled.] See the evidence in the Blue Books of that day.

2 Centre-bits.] Instruments for boring circular holes.

3 Poison'd poison.] The drug which in small quantities would have cured, now rendered baneful.

12

When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a burial fee,

And Timour-Mammon1 grins on a pile of children's bones,

Is it peace or war? better, war! loud war by land and by sea,

War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones.

13

For I trust if an enemy's fleet came yonder round by the hill,

And the rushing battle-bolt sang from the threedecker out of the foam,

1 Timour-Mammon.] Timour, or Tamerlane the Tartar, the great Mongolian conqueror, born in 1336, and crowned by his own hands under the title of "Master of the World" (Saheb-keran) in 1370. He made Samarcand his capital, but his conquests spread to Persia, Mesopotamia, a large portion of Russia, Georgia, Astrakhan, and India. His march to Delhi (1399) was marked by hideous cruelties, including the massacre of one hundred thousand slaves. His treatment of the Georgians who would not embrace Islamism, and whom he murdered by setting fire to the entrance of the caves where they had taken refuge, was only one of a long list of horrors. The reference in the text may be to his cruelty during the siege of Siwas to some children, about a thousand in number, who came to entreat his mercy, carrying the Koran on their heads and crying and groaning, "Allah, Allah!" He made his horsemen take respectful possession of the sacred books, and then crush the children under their horses' feet. He afterwards burnt the town, and buried alive the four thousand men who composed the garrison. The towers of human heads which it was his amusement to compose may also be alluded to in the text. This monster of barbarity died of fever at the age of seventy-one, displaying much piety in his last moments, and giving good advice to his family-a singular illustration of what excesses the religious fanaticism of the followers of the Prophet may lead to. He left a name which has become proverbial for cruelty. Christopher Marlowe's play of Tamburlaine the Great; or, The Scythian Shepherd, will be familiar to some readers.