Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BRETON FAITH by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES

Poet Analysis

First Line: A SUMMER NIGHTFALL ON A SUMMER SEA!
Last Line: THE DULL SAND-HILLOCKS OF THE MORBIHAN.
A SUMMER nightfall on a summer sea!
From sandy ridges wildering o'er the deep,
The wind's familiar under-song recalls
The fishermen to duty, though that eve
To unversed eyes their embarkation seem'd
Rather a work of festival than toil.
Women were there in gay precise attire,
Girls at their skirts, and boys before at play,
And many an infant sweet asleep on arm.
Emulous which the first shall set his boat
Free-floating from the clutches of deep sand,
Men lean and strive, till one and two and all,
Poised in descent, receive the leaping crews;
And following close where leads the ripply way
One craft of heavier freight and larger sail,
Serene and silent as the horizon moon,
That fair flotilla seeks the open main.

Some little room of waters sever'd now
Those seeming sons of peaceful industry
From their diseased and desperate fatherland,
That France, where reign'd and raged for many a year
Madness, (the fearful reservoir of strength
Which God will open, at his own high will,
In men and nations,) so that very babes
Would tear the mother-breast of ancient Faith
To suck the bloody milk of Liberty.
The Christian name was outcast there and then;
For Power and Passion were the people's gods,
And every one that worshipped not must die.

The shore extended one thin glittering line,
When, at the watched-for tinkling of a bell,
Fast fall the sails, and round their captain-boat,
Which rested steady as the waters would,
Each other bent its own obedient prow,
Making imperfect rays about a sun:
Nor paused they long before great change of form
Came o'er that centre. From the uncouth deck
Rose a tall altar, 'broider'd curiously,
With clear-outcarven crucifix i' the midst
Of tapers, lambent in the gentle gale:
Before it stood the reverend-robed Priest,
Late a rude fisherman, -- an awful head,
Veteran in griefs and dangers more than years,
Perchance not finely moulded, but as seen
There upright to the illuminating moon,
With silver halo rather than white hair,
Beauteous exceedingly!

So seem'd to feel
The tender eyes then fixed on him, while slow
And quiet, as when he perform'd the rites
Of his old village church on Sabbath morn,
He set all things in order and began
That Litany, which, gathering voice on voice,
Made vocal with the names of God and Christ,
And the communion of the blest in heaven,
Space that had lain long silent of all sound
Save the chance greetings of some parting ships,
And elemental utterances confused.

Oh! never in high Roman basilic,
Prime dome of Art, or elder Lateran,
Mother of churches! never at the shrine
That sprang the freshest from pure martyr-blood,
Or held within its clasp a nation's heart
By San Iago or Saint Denys blest, --
Never in that least earthly place of earth,
The Tomb where Death himself lay down and died,
The Temple of Man's new Jerusalem, --
Descended effluence more indeed divine,
More total energy of Faith and Hope,
And Charity for wrongs unspeakable,
Than on that humble scantling of the flock,
That midnight congregation of the Sea!

Rise not, good Sun! hold back unwelcome Light,
That shall but veil the nations in new crime!
Or hide thy coming; yet some little while
Prolong the stupor of exhausted sin,
Nor with thy tainted rays disturb this peace,
These hard-won fragmentary hours of peace,
That soon must sink before the warring world!

He hears them not; beneath his splendour fades
That darkness luminous of Love and Joy;
Quickly its aspect of base daily life
The little fleet recovering plied in haste
Its usual labour, lest suspicious foes
Might catch some secret in those empty nets;
But every one there toiling in his heart
Was liken'd to those other Fishermen,
Who on their inland waters saw the form
Of Jesus toward them walking, firm and free.

* * * * * *

One moment yet, ere the religious Muse
Fold up these earnest memories in her breast,
Nor leave unutter'd that one Breton name
Which is itself a History -- Quiberon!
Was it not heinous? was it not a shame
Which goes beyond its actors, that those men,
Simply adventuring to redeem their own --
Their ravished homes, and shrines, and fathers' graves,
Meeting that rampant and adulterous power
On its own level of brute force, that they,
Crushed by sheer numbers, should be made exempt
From each humane and generous privilege,
With which the civil use of later times
Has smooth'd the bristling fierceness of old war,
And perish armless, -- one by one laid low
By the cold sanction'd executioner!

Nor this alone; for fervid love may say,
That death to them, beneath the foulest hood,
Would wear an aureole crown; and martyr-palms
Have grown as freely from dry felon dust,
As e'er from field enriched with fame and song,
But when they asked the only boon brave men
Could from inclement conquerors humbly pray --
To die as men, and not fall blankly down
Into steep death like butcher'd animals,
But to receive from consecrated hands
Those seals and sureties which the Christian soul
Demands as covenants of eternal bliss, --
They were encounter'd by contemptuous hate,
And mockery, bitter as the crown of thorns.

Thus passed that night, their farewell night to earth,
Grave, even sad, -- that should have been so full
Of faith nigh realised, of young and old
Met hand in hand, indifferent of all time,
On the bright shores of immortality!
Till 'mid the throng about their prison-door,
In the grey dawn, a rustic voice conveyed
Some broken message to a captive's ear,
Low, and by cruel gaolers unperceived;
Which whisper, flitting fast from man to man
Was like a current of electric joy,
Awakening smiles, and radiant upward looks,
And interchange of symbols spiritual,
Leaving unearthly peace.

So when soon came
The hour of doom, and through the palsied crowd
Passed the long file without a word or sound,
The image, gait, and bearing of each man,
In those his bonds, in that his sorry dress,
Defiled with dust and blood, perchance his own,
A squalid shape of famine and unrest,
Were that of some full-sail'd, magnificent ship,
That takes the whole expanse of sea and air
For its own service, dignifying both
As accessories of its single pride.

To read the sense and secret of this change,
Look where beside the winding path that leads
These noble warriors to ignoble death,
Rises a knoll of white, grass-tufted, sand,
Upon whose top, against the brightening sky,
Stands a mean peasant, tending with one hand
A heifer browsing on that scanty food.
To the slow-moving line below he turns
An indistinct, almost incurious, gaze,
While with a long right arm upraised in air
He makes strange gestures, source of ribald mirth
To some, but unregarded by the most.
-- Yet could a mortal vision penetrate
Each motion of that scene, it might perceive
How every prisoner, filing by that spot,
Bows his bold head, and walks with lighter steps
Onward to rest but once and move no more:
For in that peasant stands the yearned-for Priest,
Perilling life by this last act of love,
And in those gestures are the absolving signs,
Which send the heroes to their morning graves
Happy as parents' kisses duly speed
Day-weary children to their careless beds.

Such are memorials, and a hundred more,
Which, by the pious traveller haply caught,
Falling from lowly lips and lofty hearts,
Regenerate outward nature, and adorn
With blossoms brighter than the Orient rose,
And verdure fresher than an English spring,
The dull sand-hillocks of the Morbihan.



Home: PoetryExplorer.net