Why isn’t anything going on in the senate? Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today. What’s the point of senators making laws now? Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.
Why did our emperor get up so early, and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate, in state, wearing the crown?
Because the barbarians are coming today and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader. He’s even got a scroll to give him, loaded with titles, with imposing names.
Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas? Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts, rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds? Why are they carrying elegant canes beautifully worked in silver and gold?
Because the barbarians are coming today and things like that dazzle the barbarians.
Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual to make their speeches, say what they have to say?
Because the barbarians are coming today and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.
Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion? (How serious people’s faces have become.) Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly, everyone going home lost in thought?
Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come. And some of our men just in from the border say there are no barbarians any longer.
Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution.
The vision of the ancient Rock, —of the Acropolis, seat of Perfection, white and golden beneath Attica’s cloudless sky— lived in my memory. And along with it, I adored the beauty of the manly virtues of heroes like unto the Gods —whether of those who stormed immortal Troy, three thousand years ago, or of those no less great, and no less godlike, who, merely a century before the present day, struggled for Hellas’ freedom, in mountain fastnesses and on the sea, under the banner of the Cross.
And along with it, I worshipped the beauty of the holy North in by-gone days, before its racial pride had yielded to the foreign god of meekness; the beauty of the conquering men —my mother’s ancestors— who, when in a deafening roar, an outburst of monstrous glee, the sky and the Sea challenged each other’s might, the tempest howled, the thunder growled, and lightning tore the crumbling clouds, stood in their ships, erect, and beat their shields in cadence, and answering the furious Voice of elemental Godhead sang warrior-like hymns to Odin and Thor.
Where were they now, those supermen? Where was the spirit of my race, which lived in me? Where was I now to find men at the hearing of whose songs my heart would beat? Men in whose words I would detect the spell of pride and power? Whose voice I gladly would obey? Men whom I could admire?
All round me I beheld nothing but credulous and kindly ape, or—which is worse—pedantic apes, well-read, but without faith, without the urge to fight for Something greater than themselves and than their narrow “happiness”; something for which men fight along their way to supermanhood.
And only in the scattered lines of a few dreamers did I find an echo of my yearning.
“Come, O thou exile of the far-gone times”; said one of these. “The axe has felled the sacred trees; where swords once clattered, now, the slave doth crawl and pray. And all the Gods have gone away. Come to them in the gleaming Walhall, where They await thee!”
His country’s trail that wandered wearily aimless in air, sans wit, sans enterprise, was swept in rapture as a flame that flies by that swift-soaring heart, captive and free. Out of the dust where it had lain so long the pure heroic vein he disinterred, weaving its live connection with the Word of history and hope, pulsating strong.
Captive in love he led the swordblades gleam, rearmed the chilled and homeless souls of men gave thirst anew where waters lay forlorn, roots to the star and to the ear of corn, and, that his span of days might earth redeem, died, yielding up his beauty in her again.
White founts falling in the courts of the sun, And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run; There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared, It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard, It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips, For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships. They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy, They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea, And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss, And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross, The cold queen of England is looking in the glass; The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass; From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun, And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard, Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred, Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall, The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall, The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung, That once went singing southward when all the world was young, In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid, Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade. Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far, Don John of Austria is going to the war, Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold, Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums, Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes. Don John laughing in the brave beard curled, Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world, Holding his head up for a flag of all the free. Love-light of Spain—hurrah! Death-light of Africa! Don John of Austria Is riding to the sea.
Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star, (Don John of Austria is going to the war.) He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees, His turban that is woven of the sunset and the seas. He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease, And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees, And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing. Giants and the Genii, Multiplex of wing and eye, Whose strong obedience broke the sky When Solomon was king.
They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn, From temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn; They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be; On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl, Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl; They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,— They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound. And he saith, “Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide, And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide, And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest, For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west. We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun, Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done, But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago: It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate ; It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate! It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth, Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth.” For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar, (Don John of Austria is going to the war.) Sudden and still—hurrah! Bolt from Iberia! Don John of Austria Is gone by Alcalar.
St. Michael’s on his mountain in the sea-roads of the north (Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.) Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift And the sea folk labour and the red sails lift. He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone; The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone; The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise, And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room, And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom, And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee, But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea. Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips, Trumpet that sayeth ha! Domino gloria! Don John of Austria Is shouting to the ships.
King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck (Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.) The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin, And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in. He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon, He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon, And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day, And death is in the phial, and the end of noble work, But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk. Don John’s hunting, and his hounds have bayed— Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid Gun upon gun, ha! ha! Gun upon gun, hurrah! Don John of Austria Has loosed the cannonade.
The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke, (Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.) The hidden room in man’s house where God sits all the year, The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear. He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery; They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark, They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark; And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs, And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs, Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines. They are lost like slaves that sweat, and in the skies of morning hung The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young. They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon. And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell, And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign— (But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!) Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop, Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop, Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds, Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds, Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty. Vivat Hispania! Domino Gloria! Don John of Austria Has set his people free!
Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath (Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.) And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain, Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain, And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade…. (But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)
