Basil Moss

Sing, mountain-wind, thy strong, superior song     Thy haughty alpine anthem, over tracts     Whose passes and whose swift, rock-straitened streams     Catch mighty life and voice from thee, and make     A lordly harmony on sea-chafed heights.     Sing, mountain-wind, and take thine ancient tone,     The grand, austere, imperial utterance.     Which drives my soul before it back to days     In one dark hour of which, when Storm rode high     Past broken hills, and when the polar gale     Roared round the Otway with the bitter breath     That speaks for ever of the White South Land     Alone with God and Silence in the cold,     I heard the touching tale of Basil Moss,     A story shining with a womans love!     And who that knows that love can ever doubt     How dear, divine, sublime a thing it is;     For while the tale of Basil Moss was one     Not blackened with those stark, satanic sins     Which call for superhuman sacrifice,     Still, from the records of the worlds sad life,     This great, sweet, gladdening fact at length weve learned,     Theres not a depth to which a man can fall,     No slough of crime in which such one can lie     Stoned with the scorn and curses of his kind,     But that some tender woman can be found     To love and shield him still.     What was the fate     Of Basil Moss who, thirty years ago,     A brave, high-minded, but impetuous youth,     Left happy homesteads in the sweetest isle     That wears the sober light of Northern suns?     What happened him, the man who crossed far, fierce     Sea-circles of the hoarse Atlantic who,     Without a friend to help him in the world,     Commenced his battle in this fair young land,     A Levite in the Temple Beautiful     Of Art, who struggled hard, but found that here     Both Bard and Painter learn, by bitter ways,     That they are aliens in the working world,     And that all Heavens templed clouds at morn     And sunset do not weigh one loaf of bread!     This was his tale. For years he kept himself     Erect, and looked his troubles in the face     And grappled them; and, being helped at last     By one who found she loved him, who became     The patient sharer of his lot austere,     He beat them bravely back; but like the heads     Of Lernas fabled hydra, they returned     From day to day in numbers multiplied;     And so it came to pass that Basil Moss     (Who was, though brave, no mental Hercules,     Who hid beneath a calmness forced, the keen     Heart-breaking sensibility which is     The awful, wild, specific curse that clings     Forever to the Poets twofold life)     Gave way at last; but not before the hand     Of sickness fell upon him not before     The drooping form and sad averted eyes     Of hectic Hope, that figure far and faint,     Had given all his later thoughts a tongue     It is too late too late!     There is no need     To tell the elders of the English world     What followed this. From step to step, the man     Now fairly gripped by fierce Intemperance     Descended in the social scale; and though     He struggled hard at times to break away,     And take the old free, dauntless stand again,     He came to be as helpless as a child,     And Darkness settled on the face of things,     And Hope fell dead, and Will was paralysed.     Yet sometimes, in the gloomy breaks between     Each fit of madness issuing from his sin,     He used to wander through familiar woods     With Gods glad breezes blowing in his face,     And try to feel as he was wont to feel     In other years; but never could he find     Again his old enthusiastic sense     Of Beauty; never could he exorcize     The evil spell which seemed to shackle down     The fine, keen, subtle faculty that used     To see into the heart of loveliness;     And therefore Basil learned to shun the haunts     Where Nature holds her chiefest courts, because     They forced upon him in the saddest light     The fact of what he was, and once had been.     So fared the drunkard for five awful years     The last of which, while lighting singing dells,     With many a flame of flowers, found Basil Moss     Cooped with his wife in one small wretched room;     And there, one night, the man, when ill and weak     A sufferer from his latest bout of sin     Moaned, stricken sorely with a fourfold sense     Of all the degradation he had brought     Upon himself, and on his patient wife;     And while he wrestled with his strong remorse     He looked upon a sweet but pallid face,     And cried, My God! is this the trusting girl     I swore to love, to shield, to cherish so     But ten years back? O, what a liar I am!     She, shivering in a thin and faded dress     Beside a handful of pale, smouldering fire,     On hearing Basils words, moved on her chair,     And turning to him blue, beseeching eyes,     And pinched, pathetic features, faintly said     O, Basil, love! now that you seem to feel     And understand how much Ive suffered since     You first gave way now that you comprehend     The bitter heart-wear, darling, that has brought     The swift, sad silver to this hair of mine     Which should have come with Age which came with Pain,     Do make one more attempt to free yourself     From what is slowly killing both of us;     And if you do the thing I ask of you,     If you but try this once, we may indeed     We may be happy yet.     Then Basil Moss,     Remembering in his marvellous agony     How often he had found her in the dead     Of icy nights with uncomplaining eyes,     A watcher in a cheerless room for him;     And thinking, too, that often, while he threw     His scanty earnings over reeking bars,     The darling that he really loved through all     Was left without enough to eat then Moss,     I say, sprang to his feet with sinews set     And knotted brows, and throat that gasped for air,     And cried aloud My poor, poor girl, I will.     And so he did; and fought this time the fight     Out to the bitter end; and with the help     Of prayers and unremitting tenderness     He gained the victory at last; but not     No, not before the agony and sweat     Of fierce Gethsemanes had come to him;     And not before the awful nightly trials,     When, set in mental furnaces of flame,     With eyes that ached and wooed in vain for sleep,     He had to fight the devil holding out     The cup of Lethe to his fevered lips.     But still he conquered; and the end was this,     That though he often had to face the eyes     Of that bleak Virtue which is not of Christ     (Because the gracious Lord of Love was one with Him     Who blessed the dying thief upon the cross),     He held his way with no unfaltering steps,     And gathered hope and light, and never missed     To do a thing for the sake of good.     And every day that glided through the world     Saw some fine instance of his bright reform,     And some assurance he would never fall     Into the pits and traps of hell again.     And thus it came to pass that Basils name     Grew sweet with men; and, when he died, his end     Was calm was evening-like, and beautiful.     Here ends the tale of Basil Moss. To wives     Who suffer as the Painters darling did,     I dedicate these lines; and hope theyll bear     In mind those efforts of her lovely life,     Which saved her husbands soul; and proved that while     A man who sins can entertain remorse,     He is not wholly lost. If such as they     But follow her, they may be sure of this,     That Love, that sweet authentic messenger     From God, can never fail while there is left     Within the fallen one a single pulse     Of what the angels call humanity.