Читать книгу John Brown's Body - Stephen Vincent Benét - Страница 7

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Jack Ellyat had been out all day alone, Except for his new gun and Ned, the setter, The old wise dog with Autumn in his eyes, Who stepped the fallen leaves so delicately They barely rustled. Ellyat trampled them down Crackling, like cast-off skins of fairy snakes. He'd meant to hunt, but he had let the gun Rest on his shoulder. It was enough to feel The cool air of the last of Indian summer Blowing continually across his cheek And watch the light distill its water of gold As the sun dropped. Here was October, here Was ruddy October, the old harvester, Wrapped like a beggared sachem in a coat Of tattered tanager and partridge feathers, Scattering jack-o-lanterns everywhere To give the field-mice pumpkin-colored moons. His red clay pipe had trailed across the land Staining the trees with colors of the sumach: East, West, South, North, the ceremonial fume Blue and enchanted as the soul of air Drifted its incense. Incense of the wild, Incense of earth fulfilled, ready to sleep The stupefied dark slumber of the bear All winter, underneath a frozen star. Jack Ellyat felt that turning of the year Stir in his blood like drowsy fiddle-music And knew he was glad to be Connecticut-born And young enough to find Connecticut winter Was a black pond to cut with silver skates And not a scalping-knife against the throat. He thought the thoughts of youth, idle and proud. Since I was begotten My father's grown wise But he has forgotten The wind in the skies. I shall not grow wise. Since I have been growing My uncle's got rich. He spends his time sowing A bottomless ditch. I will not grow rich. For money is sullen And wisdom is sly, But youth is the pollen That blows through the sky And does not ask why. O wisdom and money How can you requite The honey of honey That flies in that flight? The useless delight? So, with his back against a tree, he stared At the pure, golden feathers in the West Until the sunset flowed into his heart Like a slow wave of honey-dropping dew Murmuring from the other side of Sleep. There was a fairy hush Everywhere. Even the setter at his feet Lay there as if the twilight had bewitched His russet paws into two russet leaves, A dog of russet leaves who did not stir a hair. Then something broke the peace. Like wind it was, the flutter of rising wind, But then it grew until it was the rushing Of winged stallions, distant and terrible, Trampling beyond the sky. The hissing charge Of lightless armies of angelic horse Galloping down the stars. There were no words In that implacable and feathery thunder, And yet there must have been, or Ellyat's mind Caught them like broken arrows out of the air. Thirteen sisters beside the sea, (Have a care, my son.) Builded a house called Liberty And locked the doors with a stately key. None should enter it but the free. (Have a care, my son.) The walls are solid as Plymouth Rock. (Rock can crumble, my son.) The door of seasoned New England stock. Before it a Yankee fighting-cock. Pecks redcoat kings away from the lock. (Fighters can die, my son.) The hearth is a corner where sages sit. (Sages pass, my son.) Washington's heart lies under it. And the long roof-beams are chiseled and split From hickory tough as Jackson's wit. (Bones in the dust, my son.) The trees in the garden are fair and fine. (Trees blow down, my son.) Connecticut elm and Georgia pine. The warehouse groans with cotton and swine. The cellar is full of scuppernong-wine. (Wine turns sour, my son.) Surely a house so strong and bold, (The wind is rising, my son,) Will last till Time is a pinch of mould! There is a ghost, when the night is old. There is a ghost who walks in the cold. (The trees are shaking, my son.) The sisters sleep on Liberty's breast, (The thunder thunders, my son,) Like thirteen swans in a single nest. But the ghost is naked and will not rest Until the sun rise out of the West. (The lightning lightens, my son.) All night long like a moving stain, (The trees are breaking, my son,) The black ghost wanders his house of pain. There is blood where his hand has lain. It is wrong he should wear a chain. (The sky is falling, my son.) The warning beat at his mind like a bird and passed. Ellyat roused. He thought: they are going South. He stared at the sky, confused. It was empty and bleak. But still he felt the shock of the hooves on his heart. --The riderless horses never bridled or tamed-- He heard them screaming like eagles loosed from a cloud As they drove South to trample the indolent sun, And darkness set in his mind like a shadow enthroned. He could not read the riddle their flight had set But he felt wretched, and glad for the dog's cold nose That now came nuzzling his hand. Who has set you free? Who has driven you out in the sky with an iron whip Like blind, old thunders stubbornly marching abreast To carry a portent high on shoulders of stone The length and breadth of the Union? The North and South are at peace and the East and West, The tomahawk is buried in prairie-sod. The great frontier rolls westward with the sun, And the new States are crowding at the door, The buckskin-States, the buffalo-horned, the wild Mustangs with coats the color of crude gold. Their bodies, naked as the hunter's moon, Smell of new grass and the sweet milk of the corn. Defiant virgins, fiercely unpossessed As the bird-stars that walk the night untrodden. They drag their skies and sunsets after them Like calico ponies on a rawhide rope, And who would ride them must have iron thighs And a lean heart, bright as a bowie-knife. Were they not foaled with treasure in their eyes Between the rattlesnake and the painted rock? Are they not matches for vaquero gods? Are they not occupation for the strength Of a whole ruffian world of pioneers? And must they wait like spayed mares in the rain, While Carolina and Connecticut Fight an old quarrel out before a ghost? So Ellyat talked to his young indignation, Walking back home with the October moon. But, even as he mused, he tried to picture The South, that languorous land where Uncle Toms Groaned Biblically underneath the lash, And grinning Topsies mopped and mowed behind Each honeysuckle vine. They called them niggers And cut their ears off when they ran away, But then they loved their mammies--there was that-- Although they sometimes sold them down the river-- And when the niggers were not getting licked Or quoting Scripture, they sang funny songs, By the Swanee river, on the old plantation. The girls were always beautiful. The men Wore varnished boots, raced horses and played cards And drank mint-juleps till the time came round For fighting duels with their second cousins Or tar-and-feathering some God-damn Yankee. . . . The South . . . the honeysuckle . . . the hot sun . . . The taste of ripe persimmons and sugar-cane . . . The cloyed and waxy sweetness of magnolias . . . White cotton, blowing like a fallen cloud, And foxhounds belling the Virginia hills . . . And then the fugitive slave he'd seen in Boston, The black man with the eyes of a tortured horse. . . . He whistled Ned. What do you think of it, Ned? We're abolitionists, I suppose, and Father Talks about Wendell Phillips and John Brown But, even so, that doesn't have to mean We'll break the Union up for abolition, And they can't want to break it up for slavery-- It won't come to real fighting, will it, Ned? But Ned was busy with a rabbit-track. There was the town--the yellow window of home. Meanwhile, in Concord, Emerson and Thoreau Talked of an ideal state, so purely framed It never could exist. Meanwhile, in Boston Minister Higginson and Dr. Howe Waited for news about a certain project That had to do with pikes and Harper's Ferry. Meanwhile, in Georgia, Clay Wingate dreamed. ----------- Settled more than a hundred year By the river and county of St. Savier, The Wingate held their ancestry As high as Taliaferro or Huger, Maryland Carroll, Virginia Lee. They had ill-spelt letters of Albemarle's And their first grant ran from the second Charles, Clerkly inscribed upon parchmentries "To our well-beloved John Wingate, these," Though envy hinted the royal mood Held more of humor than gratitude And the well-beloved had less applied To honest John than his tall young bride, At least their eldest to John's surprise, Was very like Monmouth about the eyes, Till his father wondered if every loyalty Was always so richly repaid by royalty, But, having long found that the principal question In a happy life is a good digestion And the worst stomachic of all is jealousy He gave up the riddle, and settled zealously To farming his acres, begetting daughters, And making a study of cordial waters Till he died at ninety of pure senility And was greatly mourned by the local gentility. John the Second was different cloth. He had wings--but the wings of the moth. Courtly, unlucky, clever and wise, There was a Stuart in his eyes, A gambler that played against loaded dice. He could harrow the water and plough the sand, But he could not do the thing at hand. A fencing-foil too supple for use, A racing colt that must run at loose. And the Wingate acres had slipped away If it had not been for Elspeth Mackay. She was his wife, and her heart was bold As a broad, bright guinea of Border gold. Her wit was a tartan of colored weather. Her walk was gallant as Highland heather. And whatever she had, she held together. It was she who established on Georgia soil Wingate honor and Wingate toil When John and his father's neighbors stood At swords' points over a county feud And only ill-fortune and he were friends. --They prophesied her a dozen ends, Seeking new ground for a broken man Where only the deer and the rabbit ran And the Indian arrow harried both, But she held her word and she kept her troth, Cleared the forest and tamed the wild And gave the breast to the new-born child While the painted Death went whooping by --To die at last as she wished to die In the fief built out of her blood and bone With her heart for the Hall's foundation-stone. Deep in her sons, and the Wingate blood, She stamped her sigil of fortitude. Thrift and love for the house and the chief And a scone on the hob for the son of grief. But a knife in the ribs for the pleasant thief. And deep in her sons, when she was gone, Her words took root, and her ghost lived on. The slow voice haunting the ocean-shell To counsel the sons of her sons as well. And it was well for the Wingate line To have that stiffening set in its spine. For once in each breeding of Wingate kin There came a child with an olive skin And the mouth of Charles, the merry and sad, And the bright, spoilt charm that Monmouth had. Luckily seldom the oldest born To sow the nettle in Wingate corn And let the cotton blight on its stalk While he wasted his time in witty talk, Or worse, in love with no minister handy, Or feeding a spaniel on nuts and brandy And taking a melancholy pride In never choosing the winning side. Clay Wingate was the last to feel The prick of that spur of tarnished steel, Gilt, but crossed with the dubious bar Of arms won under the bastard's star, Rowel his mind, at that time or this, With thoughts and visions that were not his. A sorrow of laughter, a mournful glamor And the ghostly stroke of an airy hammer Shaking his heart with pity and pride That had nothing to do with the things he eyed. He was happy and young, he was strong and stout, His body was hard to weary out. When he thought of life, he thought of a shout. But--there was a sword in a blackened sheath, There was a shape with a mourning wreath: And a place in his mind was a wrestling-ring Where the crownless form of an outlawed king Fought with a shadow too like his own, And, late or early, was overthrown. It is not lucky to dream such stuff-- Dreaming men are haunted men. Though Wingate's face looked lucky enough To any eye that had seen him then, Riding back through the Georgia Fall To the white-pillared porch of Wingate Hall. Fall of the possum, fall of the 'coon, And the lop-eared hound-dog baying the moon. Fall that is neither bitter nor swift But a brown girl bearing an idle gift, A brown seed-kernel that splits apart And shows the Summer yet in its heart, A smokiness so vague in the air You feel it rather than see it there, A brief, white rime on the red clay road And slow mules creaking a lazy load Through endless acres of afternoon, A pine-cone fire and a banjo-tune, And a julep mixed with a silver spoon. Your noons are hot, your nights deep-starred, There is honeysuckle still in the yard, Fall of the quail and the firefly-glows And the pot-pourri of the rambler-rose, Fall that brings no promise of snows . . . Wingate checked on his horse's rein With a hand as light as a butterfly And drank content in body and brain As he gazed for a moment at the sky. This was his Georgia, this his share Of pine and river and sleepy air, Of summer thunder and winter rain That spills bright tears on the window-pane With the slight, fierce passion of young men's grief, Of the mockingbird and the mulberry-leaf. For, wherever the winds of Georgia run, It smells of peaches long in the sun, And the white wolf-winter, hungry and frore, Can prowl the North by a frozen door But here we have fed him on bacon-fat And he sleeps by the stove like a lazy cat. Here Christmas stops at everyone's house With a jug of molasses and green, young boughs, And the little New Year, the weakling one, Can lie outdoors in the noonday sun, Blowing the fluff from a turkey-wing At skies already haunted with Spring-- Oh Georgia . . . Georgia . . . the careless yield! The watermelons ripe in the field! The mist in the bottoms that tastes of fever And the yellow river rolling forever. . . ! So Wingate saw it, vision or truth, Through the colored window of his own youth, Building an image out of his mind To live or die for, as Fate inclined. He drank his fill of the air, and then, Was just about to ride on again When--what was that noise beyond the sky, That harry of unseen cavalry Riding the wind? His own horse stirred, Neighing. He listened. There was a word. He could not hear it--and yet he heard. It was an arrow from ambush flung, It was a bell with a leaden tongue Striking an hour. He was young No longer. He and his horse were old, And both were bound with an iron band. He slipped from the saddle and tried to stand. He struck one hand with the other hand. But both were cold. ------------ The horses, burning-hooved, drove on toward the sea, But, where they had passed, the air was troubled and sick Like earth that the shoulder of earthquake heavily stirs. There was a whisper moving that air all night, A whisper that cried and whimpered about the house Where John Brown prayed to his God, by his narrow bed. ------------