Читать книгу John Brown's Body - Stephen Vincent Benét - Страница 9

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I have, may it please the Court, a few words to say. In the first place I deny everything but what I have all along admitted: of a design on my part to free slaves. . . . Had I interfered in the matter which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly proved . . . had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, or the so-called great . . . and suffered and sacrificed, what I have in this interference, it would have been all right. Every man in this Court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment. I see a book kissed which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do unto me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me further to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them. I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely admitted I have done in behalf of His despised poor, I did no wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust enactments, I say, let it be done. Let me say one word further. I feel entirely satisfied with the treatment I have received on my trial. Considering all the circumstances, it has been more generous than I expected. But I feel no consciousness of guilt. I have stated from the first what was my intention and what was not. I never had any design against the liberty of any person, nor any disposition to commit treason or incite slaves to rebel or make any general insurrection. I never encouraged any man to do so but always discouraged any idea of that kind. Let me say also, in regard to the statements made by some of those connected with me, I hear it has been stated by some of them that I have induced them to join with me. But the contrary is true. I do not say this to injure them, but as regretting their weakness. Not one but joined me of his own accord, and the greater part at their own expense. A number of them I never saw, and never had a word of conversation with, till the day they came to me, and that was for the purpose I have stated. Now I have done. ------------ The voice ceased. There was a deep, brief pause. The judge pronounced the formal words of death. One man, a stranger, tried to clap his hands. The foolish sound was stopped. There was nothing but silence then. No cries in the court, No roar, no slightest murmur from the thronged street, As Brown went back to jail between his guards. The heavy door shut behind them. There was a noise of chairs scraped back in the court-room, And that huge sigh of a crowd turning back into men. ------------ A month between the sentence and the hanging. A month of endless visitors, endless letters. A Mrs. Russell came to clean his coat. A sculptor sketched him. In the anxious North, The anxious Dr. Howe most anxiously Denied all godly connection with the raid, And Gerrit Smith conveniently went mad For long enough to sponge his mind of all Memory of such an unsuccessful deed. Only the tough, swart-minded Higginson Kept a grim decency, would not deny. Pity the portly men, pity the pious, Pity the fool who lights the powder-mine, They need your counterfeit penny, they will live long. In Charlestown meanwhile, there were whispers of rescue. Brown told them, "I am worth now infinitely more to die than to live." And lived his month so, busily. A month of trifles building up a legend And letters in a pinched, firm handwriting Courageous, scriptural, misspelt and terse, Sowing a fable everywhere they fell While the town filled with troops. The Governor came, Enemies, friends, militia-cavaliers, Old Border Foes. The month ebbed into days, The wife and husband met for the last time, The last letter was written: "To be inscribed on the old family Monument at North Elba. Oliver Brown born 1839 was killed at Harpers Ferry, Va. Nov. 17th 1859 Watson Brown born 1835 was wounded at Harpers Ferry Nov. 17th and died Nov. 19th 1859 (My Wife can) supply blank dates to above John Brown born May 9th 1800 was executed at Charlestown Va. December 2nd 1859." At last the clear warm day, so slow to come. The North that had already now begun To mold his body into crucified Christ's, Hung fables about those hours--saw him move Symbolically, kiss a negro child, Do this and that, say things he never said, To swell the sparse, hard outlines of the event With sentimental omen. It was not so. He stood on the jail-porch in carpet-slippers, Clad in a loose ill-fitting suit of black, Tired farmer waiting for his team to come. He left one last written message: "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land: will never be purged away: but with Blood. I had as I now think: vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed; it might be done." They did not hang him in the jail or the Square. The two white horses dragged the rattling cart Out of the town. Brown sat upon his coffin. Beyond the soldiers lay the open fields Earth-colored, sleepy with unfallen frost. The farmer's eye took in the bountiful land. "This is a beautiful country," said John Brown. The gallows-stairs were climbed, the death-cap fitted. Behind the gallows, Before a line of red-and-grey cadets, A certain odd Professor T. J. Jackson Watched disapprovingly the ragged militia Deploy for twelve long minutes ere they reached Their destined places. The Presbyterian sabre of his soul Was moved by a fey breath. He saw John Brown, A tiny blackened scrap of paper-soul Fluttering above the Pit that Calvin barred With bolts of iron on the unelect; He heard the just, implacable Voice speak out "Depart ye wicked to eternal fire." And sternly prayed that God might yet be moved To save the predestined cinder from the flame. Brown did not hear the prayer. The rough black cloth Of the death-cap hid his eyes now. He had seen The Blue Ridge Mountains couched in their blue haze. Perhaps he saw them still, behind his eyes-- Perhaps just cloth, perhaps nothing any more. "I shall look unto the hills from whence cometh my help." The hatchet cut the cord. The greased trap fell. Colonel Preston: "So perish all such enemies of Virginia, All such enemies of the Union, All such foes of the human race." ------------ John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave. He will not come again with foolish pikes And a pack of desperate boys to shadow the sun. He has gone back North. The slaves have forgotten his eyes. John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave. John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave. Already the corpse is changed, under the stone, The strong flesh rotten, the bones dropping away. Cotton will grow next year, in spite of the skull. Slaves will be slaves next year, in spite of the bones. Nothing is changed, John Brown, nothing is changed. "There is a song in my bones. There is a song In my white bones." I hear no song. I hear Only the blunt seeds growing secretly In the dark entrails of the preparate earth, The rustle of the cricket under the leaf, The creaking of the cold wheel of the stars. "Bind my white bones together--hollow them To skeleton pipes of music. When the wind Blows from the budded Spring, the song will blow." I hear no song. I only hear the roar Of the Spring freshets, and the gushing voice Of mountain-brooks that overflow their banks, Swollen with melting ice and crumbled earth. "That is my song. It is made of water and wind. It marches on." No, John Brown's body lies a-mouldering, A-mouldering. "My bones have been washed clean And God blows through them with a hollow sound, And God has shut his wildfire in my dead heart." I hear it now, Faint, faint as the first droning flies of March, Faint as the multitudinous, tiny sigh Of grasses underneath a windy scythe. "It will grow stronger." It has grown stronger. It is marching on. It is a throbbing pulse, a pouring surf, It is the rainy gong of the Spring sky Echoing, John Brown's body, John Brown's body. But still it is not fierce. I find it still More sorrowful than fierce. "You have not heard it yet. You have not heard The ghosts that walk in it, the shaking sound." Strong medicine, Bitter medicine of the dead, I drink you now. I hear the unloosed thing, The anger of the ripe wheat--the ripened earth Sullenly quaking like a beaten drum From Kansas to Vermont. I hear the stamp Of the ghost-feet. I hear the ascending sea. "Glory, Glory Hallelujah, Glory, Glory, Hallelujah, Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!" What is this agony of the marching dust? What are these years ground into hatchet blades? "Ask the tide why it rises with the moon, My bones and I have risen like that tide And an immortal anguish plucks us up And will not hide us till our song is done." The phantom drum diminishes--the year Rolls back. It is only winter still, not spring, The snow still flings its white on the new grave, Nothing is changed, John Brown, nothing is changed John . . . Brown . . .