Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke

Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall (1835–1911)

Theology in Extremis

“They would have spared life to any of their English prisoners who should consent to profess Mahometanism, by repeating the usual short formula; but only one half-caste cared to save himself in that way.”

—Extract from an Indian newspaper.

OFT in the pleasant summer years,

Reading the tales of days bygone,

I have mused on the story of human tears,

All that man unto man has done,

Massacre, torture, and black despair;

Reading it all in my easy-chair.

Passionate prayer for a minute’s life;

Tortured crying for death as rest;

Husband pleading for child or wife,

Pitiless stroke upon tender breast.

Was it all real as that I lay there

Lazily stretched on my easy-chair?

Could I believe in those hard old times,

Here in this safe luxurious age?

Were the horrors invented to season rhymes,

Or truly is man so fierce in his rage?

What could I suffer, and what could I dare?

I, who was bred to that easy-chair.

They were my fathers, the men of yore,

Little they recked of a cruel death;

They would dip their hands in a heretic’s gore,

They stood and burnt for a rule of faith.

What would I burn for, and whom not spare?

I, who had faith in an easy-chair.

Now do I see old tales are true,

Here in the clutch of a savage foe;

Now shall I know what my fathers knew,

Bodily anguish and bitter woe,

Naked and bound in the strong sun’s glare,

Far from my civilized easy-chair.

Now have I tasted and understood

That old world feeling of mortal hate;

For the eyes all round us are hot with blood;

They will kill us coolly—they do but wait;

While I, I would sell ten lives, at least,

For one fair stroke at that devilish priest

Just in return for the kick he gave,

Bidding me call on the prophet’s name;

Even a dog by this may save

Skin from the knife and soul from the flame;

My soul! if he can let the prophet burn it;

But life is sweet if a word may earn it.

A bullock’s death, and at thirty years!

Just one phrase, and a man gets off it;

Look at that mongrel clerk in his tears

Whining aloud the name of the prophet;

Only a formula easy to patter,

And, God Almighty, what can it matter?

“Matter enough,” will my comrade say

Praying aloud here close at my side,

“Whether you mourn in despair alway,

Cursed for ever by Christ denied;

Or whether you suffer a minute’s pain

All the reward of Heaven to gain.”

Not for a moment faltereth he,

Sure of the promise and pardon of sin;

Thus did the martyrs die, I see,

Little to lose and muckle to win;

Death means Heaven, he longs to receive it,

But what shall I do if I don’t believe it?

Life is pleasant, and friends may be nigh,

Fain would I speak one word and be spared;

Yet I could be silent and cheerfully die,

If I were only sure God cared;

If I had faith, and were only certain

That light is behind that terrible curtain.

But what if He listeth nothing at all

Of words a poor wretch in his terror may say?

That mighty God who created all

To labour and live their appointed day;

Who stoops not either to bless or ban,

Weaving the woof of an endless plan.

He is the Reaper, and binds the sheaf,

Shall not the season its order keep?

Can it be changed by a man’s belief?

Millions of harvests still to reap;

Will God reward, if I die for a creed,

Or will He but pity, and sow more seed?

Surely He pities who made the brain,

When breaks that mirror of memories sweet,

When the hard blow falleth, and never again

Nerve shall quiver nor pulse shall beat;

Bitter the vision of vanishing joys;

Surely He pities when man destroys.

Here stand I on the ocean’s brink,

Who hath brought news of the further shore?

How shall I cross it? Sail or sink,

One thing is sure, I return no more;

Shall I find haven, or aye shall I be

Tossed in the depths of a shoreless sea?

They tell fair tales of a far-off land,

Of love rekindled, of forms renewed;

There may I only touch one hand

Here life’s ruin will little be rued;

But the hand I have pressed and the voice I have heard,

To lose them for ever, and all for a word!

Now do I feel that my heart must break

All for one glimpse of a woman’s face;

Swiftly the slumbering memories wake

Odour and shadow of hour and place;

One bright ray through the darkening past

Leaps from the lamp as it brightens last,

Showing me summer in western land

Now, as the cool breeze murmureth

In leaf and flower—And here I stand

In this plain all bare save the shadow of death;

Leaving my life in its full noonday,

And no one to know why I flung it away.

Why? Am I bidding for glory’s roll?

I shall be murdered and clean forgot;

Is it a bargain to save my soul?

God, whom I trust in, bargains not;

Yet for the honour of English race,

May I not live or endure disgrace.

Ay, but the word, if I could have said it,

I by no terrors of hell perplext;

Hard to be silent and have no credit

From man in this world, or reward in the next;

None to bear witness and reckon the cost

Of the name that is saved by the life that is lost.

I must be gone to the crowd untold

Of men by the cause which they served unknown,

Who moulder in myriad graves of old;

Never a story and never a stone

Tells of the martyrs who die like me,

Just for the pride of the old countree.