Poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich / [by Thomas Bailey Aldrich] [electronic text]

I.
JUDITH IN THE TOWER.

NOW Holofernes with his barbarous hordes Crost the Euphrates, laying waste the land To Esdraelon, and, falling on the town Of Bethulîa, stormed it night and day Incessant, till within the leaguered walls The boldest captains faltered; for at length The wells gave out, and then the barley failed, And Famine, like a murderer masked and cloaked, Stole in among the garrison. The air Was filled with lamentations, women's moans And cries of children; and at night there came A fever, parching as a fierce simoom. Yet Holofernes could not batter down The brazen gates, nor make a single breach With beam or catapult in those tough walls: And white with rage among the tents he strode, Among the squalid Tartar tents he strode, And curst the gods that gave him not his will,

And curst his captains, curst himself, and all; Then, seeing in what strait the city was, Withdrew his men hard by the fated town Amid the hills, and with a grim-set smile Waited, aloof, until the place should fall. All day the house-top lay in sweltering heat, All night the watch-fires flared upon the towers; And day and night with Israelitish spears The ramparts bristled.

In a tall square Tower, Full-fronting on the vile Assyrian camp, Sat Judith, pallid as the cloudy moon That hung half-faded in the dreary sky; And ever and anon she turned her eyes To where, between two vapor-haunted hills, The dreadful army liked a caldron seethed. She heard, far off, the camels' gurgling groan, The clank of arms, the stir and buzz of camps; Beheld the camp-fires, flaming fiends of night That leapt, and with red hands clutched at the dark; And now and then, as some mailed warrior stalked Athwart the fires, she saw his armor gleam. Beneath her stretched the temples and the tombs, The city sickening of its own thick breath, And over all the sleepless Pleiades.

A star-like face, with floating clouds of hair— Merari's daughter, dead Manasses' wife,

Who (since the barley-harvest when he died),By holy charities, and prayers, and fasts, And kept her pure in honor of the dead. But dearer to her bosom than the dead Was Israel, its Prophets and its God: And that dread midnight in the Tower alone,Believing He would hear her from afar, She lifted up the voices of her soul Above the wrangling voices of the world:

"Oh, are we not Thy children who of old Trod the Chaldean idols in the dust, And built our altars only unto Thee? Didst Thou not lead us unto Canaan For love of us, because we spurned the gods? Didst Thou not bless us that we worshipped Thee? And when a famine covered a!l the land, And drove us unto Egypt, where the King Did persecute Thy chosen to the death— Didst Thou not smite the swart Egyptians then, And guide us through the bowels of the deep That swallowed up their horsemen and their King? For saw we not, as in a wondrous dream, The up-tost javelins, the plunging steeds The chariots sinking in the wild Red Sea? O Lord, Thou hast been with us in our woe, And from Thy bosom Thou hast cast us forth, And to Thy bosom taken us again: For we have built our temples in the hills

By Sinai, and on Jordan's flowery banks, And in Jerusalem we worship Thee. O Lord, look down and help us. Stretch Thy hand And free Thy people. Make us pure in faith, And draw us nearer, nearer unto Thee."

As when a harp-string trembles at a touch, And music runs through all its quivering length,And does not die, but seems to float away, A silvery mist uprising from the string— So Judith's prayer rose tremulous in the night, And floated upward unto other spheres; And Judith loosed the hair about her brows, And bent her head, and wept for Israel.

Now while she wept, bowed like a lotus-flower That watches its own shadow in the Nile, A stillness seemed to fall upon the land, As if from out the calyx of a cloud, That blossomed suddenly 'twixt the earth and moon, It fell—and presently there came a sound Of many pinions rustling in the dark, And voices mingling, far and near, and strange As sea-sounds on some melancholy coast When first the equinox unchains the Storm. And Judith started, and with one quick hand Brushed back the plenteous tresses from a cheek That whitened like a lily and so stood, Nor breathed nor moved, but listened with her soul;

And at her side, invisible, there leaned An Angel mantled in his folded wings— To her invisible, but other eyes Beheld the saintly countenance; for, lo! Great clouds of spirits swoopt about the Tower And drifted in the eddies of the wind. The Angel stoopt, and from his radiant brow, And from the gleaming amaranth in his hair, A splendor fell on Judith, and she grew, From her black tresses to her archéd feet, Fairer than morning in Arabia. Then silently the Presence spread his vans, And rose —a luminous shadow in the air— And through the zodiac, a white star, shot.

As one that wakens from a trance, she turned And heard the twilight twitterings of birds, The wind in the turret, and from far below;Camp-sounds of pawing hoof and clinking steel;And in the East she saw the early dawn Breaking the night's enchantment; saw the Moon, Like some wan sorceress, vanish in mid-heaven, Leaving a moth-like glimmer where she died.

And Judith rose, and down the spiral stairs Descended to the garden of the Tower, Where, at the gate, lounged Achior, lately fled From Holofernes; as she past she spoke: "The Lord be with thee, Achior, all thy days." And Achior saw the Spirit of the Lord

Had been with her, and, in a single night, Worked such a miracle of form and face As left her lovelier than all womankind Who was before the fairest in Judæa. But she, unconscious of God's miracle, Moved swiftly on among a frozen group Of statues that with empty, slim-necked urns Taunted the thirsty Seneschal, until She came to where, beneath the spreading palms, Sat Chabris with Ozias and his friend Charmis, governors of the leaguered town. They saw a glory shining on her face Like daybreak, and they marvelled as she stood Bending before them with humility. And wrinkled Charmis murmured through his beard: "This woman walketh in the smile of God."

"So walk we all," spoke Judith. "Evermore His light envelops us, and only those Who turn aside their faces droop and die In utter midnight. If we faint we die, O, is it true, Ozias, thou hast swornTo yield our people to their enemies After five days, unless the Lord shall stoop From heaven to help us?"

And Ozias said: "Our young men die upon the battlements; Our wives and children by the empty tanks Lie down and perish."

"If we faint we die.The weak heart builds its palace on the sand, The flood-tide eats the palace of a fool: But whoso trusts in God, as Jacob did, Though suffering greatly even to the end, Dwells in a citadel upon a rock That wind nor wave nor fire shall topple down."

"Our young men die upon the battlements," Answered Ozias; "by the dusty wells Our wives and children."

"They shall go and dwell With Seers and Prophets in eternal joy! Is there no God?"

"One only," Chabris spoke "But now His face is darkened in a cloud. He sees not Israel."

"Is His mercy less Than Holofernes'? Shall we place our faith In this fierce bull of Assur? are we mad That we so tear our throats with our own hands?" And Judith's eyes flashed Battle on the three, Though all the woman quivered at her lip Struggling with tears.

"In God we place our trust Said old Ozias, "yet for five days more."

"Ah! His time is not man's time," Judith cried, "And why should we, the dust about His feet, Decide the hour of our deliverance, Saying to Him, Thus shalt Thou do, and so?"

Then gray Ozias bowed his head, abashed That eighty winters had not made him wise, For all the drifted snow of his long beard: "This woman speaketh wisely. We were wrong That in our anguish mocked the Lord our God, The staff, the scrip, the stream whereat we drink." And then to Judith: "Child, what wouldst thou have?"

"I know and know not. Something I know not Makes music in my bosom; as I move A presence goes before me, and I hear New voices mingling in the upper air; Within my hand there seems another hand Close-prest, that leads me to yon dreadful camp; While in my brain the fragments of a dream Lie like a broken string of diamonds, The choicest missing. Ask no more. I know And know not....See! the very air is white With fingers pointing. Where they point I go."

She spoke and paused: the three old men looked up And saw a sudden motion in the air Of white hands waving; and they dared not speak, But muffled their thin faces in their robes,

And sat like those grim statues which the windNear some unpeopled city in the East From foot to forehead wraps in desert dust.

"Ere thrice the shadow of the temple slants Across the fountain, I shall come again." Thus Judith softly: then a gleam of light Played through the silken lashes of her eyes, As lightning through the purple of a cloud On some still tropic evening, when the breeze Lifts not a single blossom from the bough: "What lies in that unfolded flower of time No man may know. The thing I can I will, Leaning on God, remembering how He loved Jacob in Syria when he fed the flocks Of Laban, and what miracles He did For Abraham and for Isaac at their need. Wait thou the end; and, till I come, keep thou The sanctuaries." And Ozias swore By those weird fingers pointing in the air, And by the soul of Abraham gone to rest, To keep the sanctuaries, though she came And found the bat sole tenant of the Tower, And all the people bleaching on the walls, And no voice left. Then Judith moved away, Her head bowed on her bosom, like to one That moulds some subtle purpose in a dream, And in his passion rises up and walks Through labyrinths of slumber to the dawn.

"JUDITH." Page 173.

When she had gained her chamber she threw off The livery of sorrow for her lord, The cruel sackcloth that begirt her limbs, And from those ashen colors issuing forth, Seemed like a golden butterfly new-slipt From its dull chrysalis. Then, after bath, She braided in the darkness of her hair A thread of opals; on her rounded breast Spilt precious ointment; and put on the robes Whose rustling made her pause, half-garmented, To dream a moment of her bridal morn. Of snow-white silk stuff were the robes, and rich With delicate branch-work, silver-frosted star, And many a broidered lily-of-the-vale. These things became her as the scent the rose, For fairest things are beauty's natural dower. The sun that through the jealous casement stole Fawned on the Hebrew woman as she stood, Toyed with the oval pendant at her ear, And, like a lover, stealing to her lips Taught them a deeper crimson; then slipt down The tremulous lilies to the sandal straps That bound her snowy ankles.

Forth she went, A glittering wonder, through the crowded streets, Her handmaid, like a shadow, following on. And as in summer when the beaded wheat Leans all one way, and with a longing look Marks the quick convolutions of the wind,

So all eyes went with Judith as she moved,All hearts leaned to her with a weight of love. A starving woman lifted ghostly hands And blest her for old charities; a child Smiled on her through its tears; and one gaunt chief Threw down his battle-axe and doffed his helm, As if some bright Immortal swept him by.

So forth she fared, the only thing of light In that dark city, thridding tortuous ways By gloomy arch and frowning barbacan, Until she reached a gate of triple brass That opened at her coming, and swung to With horrid clangor and a ring of bolts. And there, outside the city of her love, The warm blood at her pulses, Judith paused And drank the morning; then with silent prayers Moved on through flakes of sunlight, through wood To Holofernes and his barbarous hordes.