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Home  »  Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century  »  George Eliot (Mary Ann Cross) (1819–1880)

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By The Legend of Jubal (1869) (A Selection)

George Eliot (Mary Ann Cross) (1819–1880)

THUS glorying as a god beneficent,

Forth from his solitary joy he went

To bless mankind. It was at evening,

When shadows lengthen from each westward thing,

When imminence of change makes sense more fine

And light seems holier in its grand decline.

The fruit-trees wore their studded coronal,

Earth and her children were at festival,

Glowing as with one heart and one consent—

Thought, love, trees, rocks, in sweet warm radiance blent.

The tribe of Cain was resting on the ground,

The various ages wreathed in one broad round.

Here lay, while children peeped o’er his huge thighs,

The sinewy man embrowned by centuries;

Here the broad-bosomed mother of the strong

Looked, like Demeter, placid o’er the throng

Of young lithe forms whose rest was movement too—

Tricks, prattle, nods, and laughs that lightly flew.

And swayings as of flower-beds where Love blew.

For all had feasted well upon the flesh

Of juicy fruits, on nuts, and honey fresh,

And now their wine was health-bred merriment,

Which through the generations circling went,

Leaving none sad, for even father Cain

Smiled as a Titan might, despising pain.

Jabal sat climbed on by a playful ring

Of children, lambs and whelps, whose gambolling,

With tiny hoofs, paws, hands, and dimpled feet,

Made barks, bleats, laughs, in pretty hubbub meet.

But Tubal’s hammer rang from far away

Tubal alone would keep no holiday,

His furnace must not slack for any feast,

For of all hardship work he counted least;

He scorned all rest but sleep, where every dream

Made his repose more potent action seem.

Yet with health’s nectar some strange thirst was blent,

The fateful growth, the unnamed discontent,

The inward shaping toward some unborn power,

Some deeper-breathing act, the being’s flower.

After all gestures, words, and speech of eyes,

The soul had more to tell, and broke in sighs.

Then from the east, with glory on his head

Such as low-slanting beams on corn-waves spread,

Came Jubal with his lyre: there ’mid the throng,

Where the blank space was, poured a solemn song,

Touching his lyre to full harmonic throb

And measured pulse, with cadences that sob,

Exult and cry, and search the inmost deep

Where the dark sources of new passion sleep.

Joy took the air, and took each breathing soul,

Embracing them in one entrancèd whole,

Yet thrilled each varying frame to various ends,

As Spring new-waking through the creature sends

Or rage or tenderness; more plenteous life

Here breeding dread, and there a fiercer strife.

He who had lived through twice three centuries,

Whose months monotonous, like trees on trees

In hoary forests, stretched a backward maze,

Dreamed himself dimly through the travelled days

Till in clear light he paused, and felt the sun

That warmed him when he was a little one;

Felt that true heaven, the recovered past,

The dear small Known amid the Unknown vast,

And in that heaven wept. But younger limbs

Thrilled toward the future, that bright land which swims

In western glory, isles and streams and bays,

Where hidden pleasures float in golden haze.

And in all these the rhythmic influence,

Sweetly o’ercharging the delighted sense,

Flowed out in movements, little waves that spread

Enlarging, till in tidal union led

The youths and maidens both alike long-tressed,

By grace-inspiring melody possessed,

Rose in slow dance, with beauteous floating swerve

Of limbs and hair, and many a melting curve

Of ringèd feet swayed by each close-linked palm:

Then Jubal poured more rapture in his psalm,

The dance fired music, music fired the dance,

The glow diffusive lit each countenance,

Till all the gazing elders rose and stood

With glad yet awful shock of that mysterious good.

Even Tubal caught the sound, and wondering came,

Urging his sooty bulk like smoke-wrapt flame

Till he could see his brother with the lyre,

The work for which he lent his furnace-fire

And diligent hammer, witting nought of this—

This power in metal shape which made strange bliss,

Entering within him like a dream full-fraught

With new creations finished in a thought.

The sun had sunk, but music still was there,

And when this ceased, still triumph filled the air:

It seemed the stars were shining with delight

And that no night was ever like this night.

All clung with praise to Jubal: some besought

That he would teach them his new skill; some caught,

Swiftly as smiles are caught in looks that meet,

The tone’s melodic change and rhythmic beat:

’Twas easy following where invention trod—

All eyes can see when light flows out from God.

And thus did Jubal to his race reveal

Music their larger soul, where woe and weal

Filling the resonant chords, the song, the dance

Moved with a wider-wingèd utterance.

Now many a lyre was fashioned, many a song

Raised echoes new, old echoes to prolong,

Till things of Jubal’s making were so rife,

“Hearing myself,” he said, “hems in my life,

And I will get me to some far-off land,

Where higher mountains under heaven stand

And touch the blue at rising of the stars,

Whose song they hear where no rough mingling mars

The great clear voices. Such lands there must be,

Where varying forms make varying symphony—

Where other thunders roll amid the hills,

Some mightier wind a mightier forest fills

With other strains through other-shapen boughs;

Where bees and birds and beasts that hunt or browse

Will teach me songs I know not. Listening there,

My life shall grow like trees both tall and fair

That rise and spread and bloom toward fuller fruit each year.”

He took a raft, and travelled with the stream

Southward for many a league, till he might deem

He saw at last the pillars of the sky,

Beholding mountains whose white majesty

Rushed through him as new awe, and made new song

That swept with fuller wave the chords along,

Weighting his voice with deep religious chime,

The iteration of slow chant sublime.

It was the region long inhabited

By all the race of Seth; and Jubal said:

“Here have I found my thirsty soul’s desire,

Eastward the hills touch heaven, and evening’s fire

Flames through deep waters; I will take my rest,

And feed anew from my great mother’s breast,

The sky-clasped Earth, whose voices nurture me

As the flowers’ sweetness doth the honey-bee.”

He lingered wandering for many an age,

And, sowing music, made high heritage

For generations far beyond the Flood—

For the poor late-begotten human brood

Bom to life’s weary brevity and perilous good.

And ever as he travelled he would climb

The farthest mountain, yet the heavenly chime,

The mighty tolling of the far-off spheres

Beating their pathway, never touched his ears.

But wheresoe’er he rose the heavens rose,

And the far-gazing mountain could disclose

Nought but a wider earth; until one height

Showed him the ocean stretched in liquid light

And he could hear its multitudinous roar,

Its plunge and hiss upon the pebbled shore:

Then Jubal silent sat, and touched his lyre no more.

He thought, “The world is great, but I am weak,

And where the sky bends is no solid peak

To give me footing, but instead, this main—

Myriads of maddened horses thundering o’er the plain.

“New voices come to me where’er I roam,

My heart too widens with its widening home:

But song grows weaker, and the heart must break

For lack of voice, or fingers that can wake

The lyre’s full answer; nay, its chords were all

Too few to meet the growing spirit’s call.

The former songs seem little, yet no more

Can soul, hand, voice, with interchanging lore

Tell what the earth is saying unto me:

The secret is too great, I hear confusedly.

“No farther will I travel: once again

My brethren I will see, and that fair plain

Where I and Song were born. There fresh-voiced youth

Will pour my strains with all the early truth

Which now abides not in my voice and hands,

But only in the soul, the will that stands

Helpless to move. My tribe remembering

Will cry ‘’Tis he!’ and run to greet me, welcoming.”

The way was weary. Many a date-palm grew,

And shook out clustered gold against the blue,

While Jubal, guided by the steadfast spheres,

Sought the dear home of those first eager years,

When, with fresh vision fed, the fuller will

Took living outward shape in pliant skill;

For still he hoped to find the former things,

And the warm gladness recognition brings.

His footsteps erred among the mazy woods

And long illusive sameness of the floods,

Winding and wandering. Through far regions, strange

With Gentile homes and faces, did he range,

And left his music in their memory,

And left at last, when nought besides would free

His homeward steps from clinging hands and cries,

The ancient lyre. And now in ignorant eyes

No sign remained of Jubal, Lamech’s son,

That mortal frame wherein was first begun

The immortal life of song. His withered brow

Pressed over eyes that held no lightning now,

His locks streamed whiteness on the hurrying air,

The unresting soul had worn itself quite bare

Of beauteous token, as the outworn might

Of oaks slow dying, gaunt in summer’s light.

His full deep voice toward thinnest treble ran:

He was the rune-writ story of a man.

And so at last he neared the well-known land,

Could see the hills in ancient order stand

With friendly faces whose familiar gaze

Looked through the sunshine of his childish days;

Knew the deep-shadowed folds of hanging woods,

And seemed to see the self-same insect broods

Whirling and quivering o’er the flowers—to hear

The self-same cuckoo making distance near.

Yea, the dear Earth, with mother’s constancy,

Met and embraced him, and said, “Thou art he!

This was thy cradle, here my breast was thine,

Where feeding, thou didst all thy life entwine

With my sky-wedded life in heritage divine.”

But wending ever through the watered plain,

Firm not to rest save in the home of Cain,

He saw dread Change, with dubious face and cold

That never kept a welcome for the old,

Like some strange heir upon the hearth, arise

Saying “This home is mine.” He thought his eyes

Mocked all deep memories, as things new made,

Usurping sense, make old things shrink and fade

And seem ashamed to meet the staring day.

His memory saw a small foot-trodden way,

His eyes a broad far-stretching paven road

Bordered with many a tomb and fair abode;

The little city that once nestled low

As buzzing groups about some central glow,

Spread like a murmuring crowd o’er plain and steep,

Or monster huge in heavy-breathing sleep.

His heart grew faint, and tremblingly he sank

Close by the wayside on a weed-grown bank,

Not far from where a new-raised temple stood,

Sky-roofed, and fragrant with wrought cedar wood.

The morning sun was high; his rays fell hot

On this hap-chosen, dusty, common spot,

On the dry-withered grass and withered man:

That wondrous frame where melody began

Lay as a tomb defaced that no eye cared to scan.

But while he sank far music reached his ear.

He listened until wonder silenced fear

And gladness wonder; for the broadening stream

Of sound advancing was his early dream,

Brought like fulfilment of forgotten prayer;

As if his soul, breathed out upon the air,

Had held the invisible seeds of harmony

Quick with the various strains of life to be.

He listened: the sweet mingled difference

With charm alternate took the meeting sense;

Then bursting like some shield-broad lily red,

Sudden and near the trumpet’s notes out-spread,

And soon his eyes could see the metal flower,

Shining upturned, out on the morning pour

Its incense audible; could see a train

From out the street slow-winding on the plain

With lyres and cymbals, flutes and psalteries,

While men, youths, maids, in concert sang to these

With various throat, or in succession poured,

Or in full volume mingled. But one word

Ruled each recurrent rise and answering fall,

As when the multitudes adoring call

On some great name divine, their common soul,

The common need, love, joy, that knits them in one whole.

The word was “Jubal!”… “Jubal” filled the air

And seemed to ride aloft, a spirit there,

Creator of the quire, the full-fraught strain

That grateful rolled itself to him again.

The aged man adust upon the bank—

Whom no eye saw—at first with rapture drank

The bliss of music, then, with swelling heart,

Felt, this was his own being’s greater part,

The universal joy once born in him.

But when the train, with living face and limb

And vocal breath, came nearer and more near,

The longing grew that they should hold him dear;

Him, Lamech’s son, whom all their fathers knew,

The breathing Jubal—him, to whom their love was due.

All was forgotten but the burning need

To claim his fuller self, to claim the deed

That lived away from him, and grew apart,

While he as from a tomb, with lonely heart,

Warmed by no meeting glance, no hand that pressed,

Lay chill amid the life his life had blessed.

What though his song should spread from man’s small race

Out through the myriad worlds that people space,

And make the heavens one joy-diffusing quire?—

Still ’mid that vast would throb the keen desire

Of this poor aged flesh, this eventide,

This twilight soon in darkness to subside,

This little pulse of self that, having glowed

Through thrice three centuries, and divinely strowed

The light of music through the vague of sound,

Ached with its smallness still in good that had no bound.

For no eye saw him, while with loving pride

Each voice with each in praise of Jubal vied.

Must he in conscious trance, dumb, helpless lie

While all that ardent kindred passed him by?

His flesh cried out to live with living men

And join that soul which to the inward ken

Of all the hymning train was present there.

Strong passion’s daring sees not aught to dare:

The frost-locked starkness of his frame low-bent,

His voice’s penury of tones long spent,

He felt not; all his being leaped in flame

To meet his kindred as they onward came

Slackening and wheeling toward the temple’s face:

He rushed before them to the glittering space,

And, with a strength that was but strong desire,

Cried, “I am Jubal, I!… I made the lyre!”

The tones amid a lake of silence fell

Broken and strained, as if a feeble bell

Had tuneless pealed the triumph of a land

To listening crowds in expectation spanned.

Sudden came showers of laughter on that lake;

They spread along the train from front to wake

In one great storm of merriment, while he

Shrank doubting whether he could Jubal be,

And not a dream of Jubal, whose rich vein

Of passionate music came with that dream-pain

Wherein the sense slips off from each loved thing

And all appearance is mere vanishing.

But ere the laughter died from out the rear,

Anger in front saw profanation near;

Jubal was but a name in each man’s faith

For glorious power untouched by that slow death

Which creeps with creeping time; this too, the spot,

And this the day, it must be crime to blot,

Even with scoffing at a madman’s lie:

Jubal was not a name to wed with mockery.

Two rushed upon him: two, the most devout

In honour of great Jubal, thrust him out,

And beat him with their flutes. ’Twas little need;

He strove not, cried not, but with tottering speed,

As if the scorn and howls were driving wind

That urged his body, serving so the mind

Which could but shrink and yearn, he sought the screen

Of thorny thickets, and there fell unseen.

The immortal name of Jubal filled the sky,

While Jubal lonely laid him down to die.

He said within his soul, “This is the end:

O’er all the earth to where the heavens bend

And hem men’s travel, I have breathed my soul:

I lie here now the remnant of that whole,

The embers of a life, a lonely pain;

As far-off rivers to my thirst were vain,

So of my mighty years nought comes to me again.

“Is the day sinking? Softest coolness springs

From something round me: dewy shadowy wings

Enclose me all around—no, not above—

Is moonlight there? I see a face of love,

Fair as sweet music when my heart was strong:

Yea—art thou come again to me, great Song?”

The face bent over him like silver night

In long-remembered summers; that calm light

Of days which shine in firmaments of thought,

That past unchangeable, from change still wrought.

And gentlest tones were with the vision blent:

He knew not if that gaze the music sent.

Or music that calm gaze: to hear, to see,

Was but one undivided ecstasy:

The raptured senses melted into one,

And parting life a moment’s freedom won

From in and outer, as a little child

Sits on a bank and sees blue heavens mild

Down in the water, and forgets its limbs,

And knoweth nought save the blue heaven that swims.

“Jubal,” the face said, “I am thy loved Past,

The soul that makes thee one from first to last.

I am the angel of thy life and death,

Thy outbreathed being drawing its last breath.

Am I not thine alone, a dear dead bride

Who blest thy lot above all men’s beside?

Thy bride whom thou wouldst never change, nor take

Any bride living, for that dead one’s sake?

Was I not all thy yearning and delight,

Thy chosen search, thy senses’ beauteous Right,

Which still had been the hunger of thy frame

In central heaven, hadst thou been still the same?

Wouldst thou have asked aught else from any god—

Whether with gleaming feet on earth he trod

Or thundered through the skies—aught else for share

Of mortal good, than in thy soul to bear

The growth of song, and feel the sweet unrest

Of the world’s spring-tide in thy conscious breast?

No, thou hadst grasped thy lot with all its pain,

Nor loosed it any painless lot to gain

Where music’s voice was silent; for thy fate

Was human music’s self incorporate:

Thy senses’ keenness and thy passionate strife

Were flesh of her flesh and her womb of life.

And greatly hast thou lived, for not alone

With hidden raptures were her secrets shown,

Buried within thee, as the purple light

Of gems may sleep in solitary night;

But thy expanding joy was still to give,

And with the generous air in song to live,

Feeding the wave of ever-widening bliss

Where fellowship means equal perfectness.

And on the mountains in thy wandering

Thy feet were beautiful as blossomed spring,

That turns the leafless wood to love’s glad home,

For with thy coming Melody was come.

This was thy lot, to feel, create, bestow,

And that immeasurable life to know

From which the fleshly self falls shrivelled, dead,

A seed primeval that has forests bred.

It is the glory of the heritage

Thy life has left, that makes thy outcast age:

Thy limbs shall lie dark, tombless on this sod,

Because thou shinest in man’s soul, a god,

Who found and gave new passion and new joy

That nought but Earth’s destruction can destroy

Thy gifts to give was thine of men alone:

’Twas but in giving that thou couldst atone

For too much wealth amid their poverty.”—

The words seemed melting into symphony,

The wings upbore him, and the gazing song

Was floating him the heavenly space along,

Where mighty harmonies all gently fell

Through veiling vastness, like the far-off bell,

Till, ever onward through the choral blue,

He heard more faintly and more faintly knew,

Quitting mortality, a quenched sun-wave,

The All-creating Presence for his grave.