Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
France: Vols. IX–X. 1876–79.
The Church of Brou
By Matthew Arnold (18221888)THE CASTLE
D
Echoing round this castle old,
Mid the distant mountain chalets,
Hark! what bell for church is tolled?
Savoy’s Duke had left his bride,
From the castle, past the drawbridge,
Flowed the hunters’ merry tide.
Gay, her smiling lord to greet,
From her mullioned chamber casement
Smiles the Duchess Marguerite.
Here she came, a bride, in spring.
Now the autumn crisps the forest;
Hunters gather, bugles ring.
Horses fret, and boar-spears glance;
Off! they sweep the marshy forests,
Westward, on the side of France.
Down the forest ridings lone,
Furious, single horsemen gallop.
Hark! a shout,—a crash,—a groan!
On the turf dead lies the boar:
God! the Duke lies stretched beside him,—
Senseless, weltering in his gore.
In the dull October evening,
Down the leaf-strewn forest road,
To the castle, past the drawbridge,
Came the hunters with their load.
Ladies waiting round her seat,
Clothed in smiles, beneath the dais
Sate the Duchess Marguerite.
Tramp of men and quick commands!
“’T is my lord come back from hunting,”
And the Duchess claps her hands.
Stopped in darkness in the court;
“Ho, this way, ye laggard hunters!
To the hall! what sport, what sport?”
In the hall they laid him down.
On his coat were leaves and blood-stains;
On his brow an angry frown.
Lay before his youthful wife;
Bloody, ’neath the flaring sconces:
And the sight froze all her life.
Kings hold revel, gallants meet;
Gay of old amid the gayest
Was the Duchess Marguerite.
Feast and dance her youth beguiled;
Till that hour she never sorrowed;
But from then she never smiled.
Far from town or haunt of man,
Stands a lonely church, unfinished,
Which the Duchess Maud began:
In gray age, with palsied hands;
But she died as it was building,
And the church unfinished stands;
When she sunk into her grave.
Mountain greensward paves the chancel,
Harebells flower in the nave.
Said the Duchess Marguerite then;
“Guide me, vassals, to the mountains!
We will build the church again.”
Austrian knights from Syria came;
“Austrian wanderers bring, O warders,
Homage to your Austrian dame.”
“Gone, O knights, is she you knew;
Dead our Duke, and gone his Duchess;
Seek her at the Church of Brou.”
Climb the winding mountain way,
Reach the valley, where the fabric
Rises higher day by day.
On the work the bright sun shines:
In the Savoy mountain meadows,
By the stream, below the pines.
Sate and watched her working train;
Flemish carvers, Lombard gilders,
German masons, smiths from Spain.
Her old architect beside,—
There they found her in the mountains,
Morn and noon and eventide.
Till the church was roofed and done;
Last of all the builders reared her
In the nave a tomb of stone.
Lifelike in the marble pale;
One, the Duke in helm and armor;
One, the Duchess in her veil.
Was at Eastertide put on;
Then the Duchess closed her labors;
And she died at the St. John.
THE CHURCH
U
Of the new pile the sunlight shines,
The stream goes leaping by.
The hills are clothed with pines sun-proof;
Mid bright green fields, below the pines,
Stands the church on high.
What church is this, from men aloof?
’T is the Church of Brou.
Crossing the stream, the kine are seen
Round the wall to stray;
The churchyard wall that clips the square
Of shaven hill-sward trim and green
Where last year they lay.
But all things now are ordered fair
Round the Church of Brou.
The Alpine peasants, two and three,
Climb up here to pray.
Burghers and dames, at summer’s prime,
Ride out to church from Chambery,
Dight with mantles gay.
But else it is a lonely time
Round the Church of Brou.
From the walled town beyond the pass,
Down the mountain way;
And then you hear the organ’s hum,
You hear the white-robed priest say mass,
And the people pray.
But else the woods and fields are dumb
Round the Church of Brou.
The people to the nave repair
Round the tomb to stray,
And marvel at the forms of stone,
And praise the chiselled broideries rare;
Then they drop away.
The princely pair are left alone
In the Church of Brou.
THE TOMB
S
In your high church, mid the still mountain air,
Where horn and hound and vassals never come.
Only the blessed saints are smiling dumb
From the rich painted windows of the nave
On aisle and transept and your marble grave;
Where thou, young Prince, shalt nevermore arise
From the fringed mattress where thy Duchess lies,
On autumn mornings, when the bugle sounds,
And ride across the drawbridge with thy hounds
To hunt the boar in the crisp woods till eve.
And thou, O Princess, shalt no more receive,
Thou and thy ladies, in the hall of state,
The jaded hunters, with their bloody freight,
Coming benighted to the castle gate.
So sleep, forever sleep, O marble pair!
And if ye wake, let it be then, when fair
On the carved western front a flood of light
Streams from the setting sun, and colors bright
Prophets, transfigured saints, and martyrs brave,
In the vast western window of the nave;
And on the pavement round the tomb there glints
A checker-work of glowing sapphire tints,
And amethyst, and ruby;—then unclose
Your eyelids on the stone where ye repose,
And from your broidered pillows lift your heads,
And rise upon your cold white marble beds,
And looking down on the warm rosy tints
That checker, at your feet, the illumined flints,
Say, “What is this? we are in bliss,—forgiven,—
Behold the pavement of the courts of Heaven!”—
Or let it be on autumn nights, when rain
Doth rustlingly above your heads complain
On the smooth leaden roof, and on the walls
Shedding her pensive light at intervals
The moon through the clere-story windows shines,
And the wind washes in the mountain pines.
Then, gazing up through the dim pillars high,
The foliaged marble forest where ye lie,
“Hush,” ye will say, “it is eternity.
This is the glimmering verge of heaven, and these
The columns of the heavenly palaces.”
And in the sweeping of the wind your ear
The passage of the angels’ wings will hear,
And on the lichen-crusted leads above
The rustle of the eternal rain of love.