Guy of the Temple

Down the dim west slowly fails the stricken sun,And from his hot face fades the crimson flushVeiled in death's herald-shadows sick and grey.Silent and dark the sombre valley liesForgotten; happy in the late fond beamsGlimmer the constant waves of Galilee.Afar, below, in airy music ringThe bugles of my host; the column halts,A wearied serpent glittering in the vale,Where rising mist-like gleam the tented camps.

Pitch my pavilion here, where its high crossMay catch the last light lingering on the hill.The savage shadows, struggling by the shore,Have conquered in the valley; inch by inchThe vanquished light fights bravely to these cragsTo perish glorious in the sunset fire;Even as our hunted Cause so pressed and tornIn Syrian valleys, and the trampled margeOf consecrated streams, displays at lastIts narrowing glories from these steadfast walls.Here in God's name we stand, and brighter farShines the stern virtue of my martyr-hostThrough these invidious fortunes, than of old,When the still sunshine glinted on their helms,And dallying breezes woke their bridle-bellsTo tinkling music by the reedy shoreOf calm Tiberias, where our angry Lord,Wroth at the deadly sin that cursed our camp,Denied and blinded us, and gave us upTo the avenging sword of Saladin.Yet would He not permit His truth to sinkTo utter loss amid that foundering fight,But led us, scarred and shattered from the spoilOf Paynim rage, the desert's thirsty death,To where beneath the sheltering crags we prayedAnd rested and grew strong. Heroes and saintsTo alien peoples shall they be, my braveAnd patient warriors; for in their stout heartsGod's Spirit dwells for ever, and their handsAre swift to do His service on His foes.The swelling music of their vesper-hymnIs rising fragrant from the shadowed valeFamiliar to the welcoming gates of heaven.

Mother of God! as evening fallsUpon the silent sea,And shadows veil the mountain walls,We lift our souls to thee!From lurking perils of the night,The desert's hidden harms,From plagues that waste, from blasts that smite,Defend thy men-at-arms!

Ay! Heaven keep them! and ye angel-hostsThat wait with fluttering plumes around the greatWhite throne of God, guard them from scath and harm!For in your starry records never shoneThe memory of desert so great as theirs.I hold not first, though peerless else on earth,That knightly valour, born of gentle bloodAnd war's long tutelage, which hath made their nameBlaze like a baleful planet o'er these lands;Firm seat in saddle, lance unmoved, a handWedding the hilt with death's persistent grasp;One-minded rush in fight that naught can stay.Not these the highest, though I scorn not these,But rather offer Heaven with humble heartThe deeds that Heaven hath given us arms to do.For when God's smile was with us we were strongTo go like sudden lightning to our mark:As on that summer day when Saladin--Passing in scorn our host at Antioch,Who spent the days in revel, and shamed the starsWith nightly scandal--came with all his host,Its gay battalia brave with saffron silks,Flaunting the banners of the CaliphateBeneath the walls of fair Jerusalem:And white and shaking came the Leper-King,Great Baldwin's blasted scion, and TripoliAnd I, and twenty score of Temple Knights,To meet the myriads marshalled by the brightUntarnished flower of Eastern chivalry;A moment paused with level-fronting spearsAnd moveless helms before that shining host,Whose gay attire abashed the morning light,And then struck spur and charged, while from the massOf rushing terror burst the awful cry,GOD AND THE TEMPLE! As the avalanche slidesDown Alpine slopes, precipitous, cold and dark,Unpitying and unwrathful, grinds and crushesThe mountain violets and the valley weeds,And drags behind a trail of chaos and death;So burst we on that field, and through and throughThe gay battalia brave with saffron silks,Crushed and abolished every grace and gleam,And dragged where'er we rode a sinuous trackOf chaos and death, till all the plain was filledWith battered armour, turbaned trunkless heads,With silken mantles blushing angry gulesAnd Bagdad's banners trampled and forlorn.And Saladin, stunned and bewildered sore,--The greatest prince, save in the grace of God,That now wears sword,--mounted his brother's barb,And, followed by a half-score followers,Sped to his castle Shaubec, over againstThe cliffs by Ascalon, and there abode:And sullenly made order that no moreThe royal nouba should be played for himUntil he should erase the rusting stainUpon his knightly honour; and no moreThe nouba sounded by the Sultan's tent,Morning nor evening by the silent tent,Until the headlong greed of ChatillonSpread ruin on our cause from Montreale.But greatest are my warriors, as I deem,In that their hearts, nearer than any else,Keep true the pledge of perfect purityThey pledged upon their sword-hilts long ago.For all is possible to the pure in heart.

Mother of God! thy starry smileStill bless us from above!Keep pure our souls from passion's guile,Our hearts from earthly love!Still save each soul from guilt apartAs stainless as each sword,And guard undimmed in every heartThe image of our Lord!

O goodliest fellowship that the world has known,True hearts and stalwart arms! above your breastsGlitters no flash of wreathen amuletForged against sword-stroke by the chanted rhythmOf charms accurst; but in each steadfast heartBlazes the light of cloudless purity,That like a splendid jewel glorifiesWith restless fire the gold that spheres it round,And marks you children of our God, whose livesHe guards with the awful jealousy of love.And even me that generous love has spared,--Me, trustless knight and miserable man,--Sad prey of dark and mutinous thoughts that temptMy sick soul into perjury and death--Since His great love had pity on my pain,Has spared to lead these blameless warriors safeInto the desert from the blazing towns,Out of the desert to the inviolate hillsWhere God has roofed them with His hollow shield.Through all these days of tempest and eclipseHis hand has led me and His wrath has flashedIts lightnings in the pathway of my sword.And so I hope, and so my crescent faithGains daily power, that all my prayers and tearsAnd toils and blood and anguish borne for HimMay blot the accusing of my deadly sinFrom heavens high compt, and give me rest in death;And lay the pallid ghost of mortal love,That fills with banned and mournful loveliness,Unblest, the haunted chambers of my soul.My misery will atone,--my misery,--Dear God, will surely atone! for not the stingOf lacerating thongs, nor the slow horrorOf crowns of thorny iron maddening the brows,Nor all that else pale hermits have devisedTo scourge the rebel senses in their shadeOf caverned desolation, have the powerTo smart and goad and lash and mortifyLike the great love that binds my ruined heartRelentless, as the insidious ivy bindsThe shattered bulk of some deserted tower,Enlacing slow and riving with strong handsOf pitiless verdure every seam and jut,Till none may tear it forth and save the tower.So binds and masters me my hopeless love.So through the desert, in the silent hills,I' the current of the battle's storm and stress,One thought has driven me,--that though men may callMe stainless Paladin, Knight leal and trueTo Christ and Our Lady, still I know myselfA knight not after God's own heart, a soulRecreant, and whelmed in the forbidden sin.For dearer to my sad heart than the crossI give my heart's best blood for are the eyesThat long ago, when youth and hope were mine,I loved in thy still valleys, far Provence!And sweeter to my spirit than the bellsOf rescued Salem are the loving tonesOf her dear voice, soft echoing o'er the years.They haunt me in the stillness and the glareOf desert noontide when the horizon's lineSwims faintly throbbing, and my shadow hidesSkulking beneath me from the brassy sky.And when night comes to soothe with breath of balmAnd pomp of stars the worn and weary world,Her eyes rise in my soul and make its day.And even into the battle comes my love,Snatching the duty that I offer Heaven.At closing of El-Majed's awful day,When the last quivering sunbeams, choked with dustAnd fume of blood, failed on the level plain,In the last charge, when gathered all our knightsThe precious handful who from morn had stemmedThe fury of the multitudinous hostsOf Islam, where in youth's hot fire and prideRamped the young lion-whelp, Ben-Saladin;As down the slope we rode at eventide,The dying sunlight faintly smiled to greetOur tattered guidons and our dinted helmsAnd lance-heads blooming with the battle's rose.Into the vale, dusk with the shadow of death,With silent lips and ringing mail we rode.And something in the spirit of the hour,Or fate, or memory, or sorrow, or sin,Or love, which unto me is all of these,Possessed and bound me; for when dashed our troopIn stormy clangour on the Paynim linesThe soul of my dead youth came into me;Faded away my oath; the woes of Zion,God was forgot; blazed in my leaping heart,With instant flash, life's inextinguished fires;Plunging along each tense limb poured the bloodHot with its years of sleeping-smothered flame.And in a dream I charged, and in a dreamI smote resistless; foemen in my pathFell unregarded, like the wayside flowersClipped by the truant's staff in daisied lanes.For over me burned lustrous the dear eyesOf my beloved; I strove as at a joustTo gain at end the guerdon of her smile.And ever, as in the dense melee I dashed,Her name burst from my lips, as lightning breaksOut of the plunging wrack of summer storms.

O my lost love! Bright o'er the waste of years--That bliss and beauty shines upon my soul;As far beyond yon desert hangs the sun,Gilding with tender beam the barren stretchOf sands that intervene. In this still lightThe old sweet memories glimmer back to me,Fair summers of my youth,--the idle daysI wandered in the bosky coverts hidIn the dim woods that girt my ancient home;The blue young eyes I met and worshipped there;The love that growing turned those gloomy wildsTo faery dells, and filled the vernal airWith light that bathed the hills of Paradise;The warm, long days of rapturous summer-time,When through the forests thick and lush we strayed,And love made our own sunshine in the shades.And all things fair and graceful in the woodsI loved with liberal heart; the violetsWere dear for her dear eyes, the quiring birdsThat caught the musical tremble of her voice.O happy twilights in the leafy glooms!When in the glowing dusk the winsome artsAnd maiden graces that all day had keptUs twain and separate melted awayIn blushing silence, and my love was mineUtterly, utterly, with clinging armsAnd quick, caressing fingers, warm red lips,Where vows, half uttered, drowned in kisses, died;Mine, with the starlight in her passionate eyes;The wild wind of the woodland breathing lowTo wake the elfin music of the leaves,And free the prisoned odours of the flowers,In honour of young Love come to his throne!While we under the stars, with twining armsAnd mutual lips insatiate, gave our souls--Madly forgetting earth and heaven--to love!

In desert march or battle flame,In fortress and in field,Our war-cry is thy holy name,Thy love our joy and shield!And if we falter, let thy powerThy stern avenger be,And God forget us in the hourWe cease to think of thee!

Curse me not, God of Justice and of Love!Pitiful God, let my long woe atone!

I cannot deem but God has pitied me;Else why with painful care have I been saved,Whenever tossed and drenched in the fierce tideOf Saladin's victories by the walls profanedOf Jaffa, on the sands of far Daroum,Or in the battle thundering on the downsOf Ramlah, or the bloody day that shedRed horrors on high Gaza's parapets?For never a storm of fatal fight has ragedIn Islam's track of rout and ruin sweptFrom Egypt to Gebail, but when the ebbOf battle came I and my host have lain,Scarred, scorched, safe somewhere on its fiery shore.At Marcab's lingering siege, where day by dayWe told the Moslem legions toiling slow,Planting their engines, delving in their minesTo quench in our destruction this last lightOf Christendom, our fortress in the crags,God's beacon swung defiant from the stars;One thunderous night I knew their miners gropedBelow, and thought ere morn to die, in crushAnd tumult of the falling citadel.And pondering of my fate--the broken stormSobbing its life away--I was awareThere grew between me and the quieting skiesA face and form I knew,--not as in dreams,The sad dishevelled loveliness of earth,But lighter than the thin air where she swayed,--Gold hair flame-fluttered, eyes and mouth aglowWith lambent light of spiritual joy.With sweet command she beckoned me awayAnd led me vaguely dreaming, till I sawWhere the wild flood in sudden fury had burstA passage through the rocks: and thence I ledMy host unharmed, following her luminous eyes,Until the east was grey, and with a smileWooing me heavenward still she passed awayInto the rosy trouble of the dawn.

And I believe my love is shrived in heaven,And I believe that I shall soon be free.

For ever, as I journey on, to meWaking or sleeping come faint whisperingsAnd fancies not of earth, as if the gatesOf near eternity stood for me ajar,And ghostly gales come blowing o'er my soulFraught with the amaranth odours of the skies.I go to join the Lion-Heart at Acre,And there, after due homage to my liege,And after patient penance of the Church,And after final devoir in the fight,If that my God be gracious, I shall die.And so I pray--Lord, pardon if I sin!--That I may lose in death's embittered waveThe stain of sinful loving, and may findIn glory again the love I lost below,With all of fair and bright and unattained,Beautiful in the cherishing smile of God,By the glad waters of the River of Life!

Night hangs above the valley; dies the dayIn peace, casting his last glance on my cross,And warns me to my prayers. Ave Maria!

Mother of God! the evening fadesOn wave and hill and lea,And in the twilight's deepening shadesWe lift our souls to thee!In passion's stress--the battle's strife,The desert's lurking harms,Maid-Mother of the Lord of LifeProtect thy men-at-arms!