CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY.
MOUNT ZION CHAPEL AT LOVE-LANE.
OUT of the little chapel I burst
Into the fresh night air again.
I had waited a good five minutes first In the doorway, to escape the rain
That drove in gusts down the common's centre, At the edge of which the chapel stands, Before I plucked up heart to enter: Heaven knows how many sorts of hands Reached past me, groping for the latch Of the inner door that hung on catch, More obstinate the more they fumbled, Till, giving way at last with a scold Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled One sheep more to the rest in fold, And left me irresolute, standing sentry In the sheepfold's lath-and-plaster entry, Four feet long by two feet wide, Partitioned off from the vast inside- I blocked up half of it at least. No remedy; the rain kept driving: They eyed me much as some wild beast, That congregation, still arriving, Some of them by the mainroad, white A long way past me into the night,
Skirting the common, then diverging;
Not a few suddenly emerging
From the common's self through the paling-gaps,
-They house in the gravel-pits perhaps,
Where the road stops short with its safeguard border
Of lamps, as tired of such disorder ;
But the most turned in yet more abruptly
From a certain squalid knot of alleys,
Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly,
Which now the little chapel rallies
And leads into day again,-its priestliness Lending itself to hide their beastliness So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason), And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on Those neophytes too much in lack of it, That, where you cross the common as I did, And meet the party thus presided,
Mount Zion, with Love-lane at the back of it, They front you as little disconcerted
As, bound for the hills, her fate averted,
And her wicked people made to mind him,
Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him. Well, from the road, the lanes or the common, In came the flock: the fat weary woman, Panting and bewildered, down-clapping Her umbrella with a mighty report, Grounded it by me, wry and flapping, A wreck of whalebones; then, with a snort Like a startled horse, at the interloper Who humbly knew himself improper, But could not shrink up small enough, Round to the door, and in,—the gruff Hinge's invariable scold
Making my very blood run cold.
Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered On broken clogs, the many-tattered
Little old-faced, peaking sister-turned-mother Of the sickly babe she tried to smother
Somehow up, with its spotted face,
From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place;
She too must stop, wring the poor ends dry Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby Her tribute to the door-mat, sopping Already from my own clothes' dropping,
Which yet she seemed to grudge I should stand on ;
Then stooping down to take off her pattens, She bore them defiantly, in each hand one, Planted together before her breast And its babe, as good as a lance in rest. Close on her heels, the dingy satins Of a female something, past me flitted, With lips as much too white, as a streak Lay far too red on each hollow cheek; And it seemed the very door-hinge pitied All that was left of a woman once,
Holding at least its tongue for the nonce.
Then a tall yellow man, like the Penitent Thief, With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief,
And eyelids screwed together tight,
Led himself in by some inner light.
And, except from him, from each that entered,
I got the same interrogation
What, you, the alien, you have ventured
To take, with us elect, your station?
A carer for none of it, a Gallio ?- Thus, plain as print, I read the glance
At a common prey, in each countenance,
As of huntsman giving his hounds the tallyho. And, when the door's cry drowned their wonder, The draught it always sent in shutting,
Made the flame of the single tallow candle
In the cracked square lanthorn I stood under, Shoot its blue lip at me, rebutting,
As it were, the luckless cause of scandal: I verily thought the zealous light (In the chapel's secret, too!) for spite, Would shudder itself clean off the wick, With the airs of a St. John's Candlestick. There was no standing it much longer. "Good folks," thought I, as resolve grew stronger, "This way you perform the Grand-Inquisitor When the weather sends you a chance visitor? You are the men, and wisdom shall die with you, And none of the old Seven Churches vie with you! But still, despite the pretty perfection
To which you carry your trick of exclusiveness, And, taking God's word under wise protection, Correct its tendency to diffusiveness,
Bidding one reach it over hot ploughshares,— Still, as I say, though you've found salvation, If I should choose to cry-as now-'Shares !'. See if the best of you bars me my ration! Because I prefer for my expounder
Of the laws of the feast, the feast's own Founder: Mine's the same right with your poorest and sickliest, Supposing I don the marriage-vestiment;
So, shut your mouth and open your Testament, And carve me my portion at your quickliest !" Accordingly, as a shoemaker's lad
With wizened face in want of soap,
And wet apron wound round his waist like a rope, After stopping outside, for his cough was bad, To get the fit over, poor gentle creature, And so avoid disturbing the preacher,- Passed in, I sent my elbow spikewise
At the shutting door, and entered likewise, Received the hinge's accustomed greeting, Crossed the threshold's magic pentacle, And found myself in full conventicle, -To wit, in Zion Chapel Meeting, On the Christmas-Eve of 'Forty-nine, Which, calling its flock to their special clover, Found all assembled and one sheep over, Whose lot, as the weather pleased, was mine. I very soon had enough of it.
The hot smell and the human noises,
And my neighbour's coat, the greasy cuff of it, Were a pebble-stone that a child's hand poises, Compared with the pig-of-lead-like pressure Of the preaching-man's immense stupidity, As he poured his doctrine forth, full measure, To meet his audience's avidity.
You needed not the wit of the Sibyl
To guess the cause of it all, in a twinkling— No sooner had our friend got inkling Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible, (Whenever it was the thought first struck him How Death, at unawares, might duck him Deeper than the grave and quench The gin-shop's light in Hell's grim drench) Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence, As to hug the Book of books to pieces:
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