A FRAGMENT [@3A mountain pasture above a ravine. A valley below with bright green pastures and scattered houses and fruit-trees. The Mad Shepherdess sits on a stone, turning a distaff. She is small and old, and wears a black mantle over her head. Heteros, her familiar spirit, sits at her feet.@1] MAD SHEPHERDESS I AM the Mad Shepherdess, cold, so cold. Poor little feet, frozen and blue, Never a stocking and a wooden shoe! HETEROS No matter! Put 'em down, measure 'em from side to side. How many inches in a world how wide? Ha, ha, ha! MAD SHEPHERDESS I am the Mad Shepherdess, lonely and old. When I was young, when I was twenty, Would I be sad, pity was plenty; But now, but now I may go sorrow. Yet to be fair and fade to-morrow, Yet to be young so short a season, Were there not reason That one should sorrow? HETEROS Yet to be old, be sick and lone, Lastly, to die! Was ever known Grief so uncommon? Ha, ha, ha! MAD SHEPHERDESS Terrible Are common things, dreadful and strange Beyond all else are Man and Woman, Death and Birth and Time and Change And that which is unchanged. HETEROS So when at last the Great Inventor Marvellous Man had consummated, Man, the ingenious toy, He found, after all, He had ill created. "Nothing I give may Man enjoy," He said, and was vexed. "With Pain at the root, Life the blossom, and Death the fruit, This work of mine is flawed at the centre. I made it and will destroy." "Why?" asked the Spirit who contemplates. "Because on his perilous good there waits— And Man must perceive it—the shadow, Ill? I know a remedy. Grant him still Another gift after many given— The body its Earth and the mind her Heaven. Give him a power which is mighty above Courage and Wisdom, Beauty and Love, A gift from the gods for ever hid, A charm to baffle the hounding Fates, Yea, from himself to set him free: Give him, O Maker, Stupidity!" This the Maker did. And Man complete went forth to climb Bravely the giddy stair of Time. MAD SHEPHERDESS I am the Mad Shepherdess, quite mad, Since I behold that which is here And should not be seen. No matter! Heteros, Heteros is my dear, And together we dance on the white and the green. (@3They dance and sing@1) @3Hey nonny nonny no! There's a music in my head Will keep my feet a-dancing Long after you are dead. Ha, ha, ha! Hey nonny nonny no! Who would go repining While the stars are shining And the fiddle has its bow?@1 (@3Jessamine, a young girl, climbs up from the ravine and stands among the bushes@1) JESSAMINE Don't, Shepherdess! Please, don't—you frighten me, MAD SHEPHERDESS Frighten you? Why, Jessamine, flower o' the stars? JESSAMINE Dancing alone there. Do you dance alone? I can see nothing, nothing with my eyes. MAD SHEPHERDESS Nay, for I dance alone. JESSAMINE Hush! hush! You do not. Something is here. O, it whirls giddily! No, not near me! Away, mad thing! MAD SHEPHERDESS Young sweet Jessamine, Flower o' the stars, Why do you come to visit me? I am dangerous. JESSAMINE No, Shepherdess. The untaught villagers Believe so. I am sorry for you, Shepherdess. MAD SHEPHEDRESS (@3singing and dancing@1) @3Come along stupids, don't be afraid, Numskull man and clumping maid! I can change your awkward prances Into fleet and foamy dances. You whose precious world encloses Hardly what's beneath your noses, Come! I'll give you sudden seeing, Till you laugh with joy of being.@1 (@3Ceases to dance@1) But you, Jessamine, have seen too much already. JESSAMINE I, Shepherdess? I have seen nothing, Except the convent schoolroom and my home there, In the broad fields of the valley. O, to see! To wander air-borne, invisible, About the world! To pass as the wind passes over great cities And watch how under The packed street flows full of the pride of Life! To know how, streaming, storming, the passion of Life Breaks and beats, encountering wave with wave, Round a million roofs, magnificent, like the sea! MAD SHEPHERDESS Are you so ordinary As to imagine the World merely the City? The World is everywhere, 'tis every one; We two and the watching mountains are the World As much, ay more, than twenty men in the street Passing a borrowed phrase from mouth to mouth, Like the tooth of the three Grey Women. HETEROS (@3invisible@1) Where is the use of travelling? You want to see? Just buy my magic glass. My magic mirror's imagings Show you the other side of things. Though all the various earth you see, Her scenes without my glass and me Are flat as drawing on a slate; But with it, from the garden gate I'll show you more than many a man Can see 'twixt Rome and Yucatan. JESSAMINE What did you say, Shepherdess? MAD SHEPHERDESS I? O, nothing, For I am mad; you, maiden, were as mad To ask of me a counsel. Go home, Jessamine. Already in the gully, Hollow and chill and hoarse the torrent roars. Why did you visit me, Flower o' the stars? JESSAMINE Do you not know the stories That else were unremembered? Know the songs, The old plain tunes with hidden harmonies Enriched of many souls That have loved, laughed, sighed through them Hundreds of years? MAD SHEPHERDESS A song I know for you, a new song Of an old tale never told. (@3Sings@1) @3Go not alone, alone among the mountains If thou dost love the stars, For it might be alone among the mountains A star would love thee too. Swift star out of heaven riding, Bridle of silver, mane of fire, Star out of heaven riding, Why dost thou rush to earth?@1 And the star answers: @3A lonely maiden waits me yonder, Young as a flower at morn, Yet have I loved her for a thousand years, And all too long she waits me yonder. Suddenly, as the flowers come after snow, She came, and she will go. Therefore from heaven riding, See how I rush to earth!@1 And so the star was never seen again. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DOMESDAY BOOK: WIDOW FORTELKA by EDGAR LEE MASTERS BABY BELL by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH DEATH AND DOCTOR HORNBOOK; A TRUE STORY by ROBERT BURNS TO THE VIRGINIAN VOYAGE [1611] by MICHAEL DRAYTON THREE KINGS OF ORIENT by JOHN HENRY HOPKINS JR. IN MEMORIAM A.H.H.: 101 by ALFRED TENNYSON |