Basil Moss
Sing, mountain-wind, thy strong, superior song—Thy haughty alpine anthem, over tractsWhose passes and whose swift, rock-straitened streamsCatch mighty life and voice from thee, and makeA 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 daysIn one dark hour of which, when Storm rode highPast broken hills, and when the polar galeRoared round the Otway with the bitter breathThat speaks for ever of the White South LandAlone with God and Silence in the cold,I heard the touching tale of Basil Moss,
A story shining with a woman’s love!And who that knows that love can ever doubtHow dear, divine, sublime a thing it is;For while the tale of Basil Moss was oneNot blackened with those stark, satanic sinsWhich call for superhuman sacrifice,Still, from the records of the world’s sad life,This great, sweet, gladdening fact at length we’ve learned,There’s not a depth to which a man can fall,No slough of crime in which such one can lieStoned with the scorn and curses of his kind,But that some tender woman can be foundTo love and shield him still.
What was the fateOf Basil Moss who, thirty years ago,A brave, high-minded, but impetuous youth,Left happy homesteads in the sweetest isleThat wears the sober light of Northern suns?What happened him, the man who crossed far, fierceSea-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 BeautifulOf Art, who struggled hard, but found that hereBoth Bard and Painter learn, by bitter ways,That they are aliens in the working world,And that all Heaven’s templed clouds at mornAnd sunset do not weigh one loaf of bread!
This was his tale. For years he kept himselfErect, and looked his troubles in the faceAnd grappled them; and, being helped at lastBy one who found she loved him, who becameThe patient sharer of his lot austere,He beat them bravely back; but like the headsOf Lerna’s fabled hydra, they returnedFrom 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 keenHeart-breaking sensibility—which isThe awful, wild, specific curse that clingsForever to the Poet’s twofold life)Gave way at last; but not before the handOf sickness fell upon him—not beforeThe drooping form and sad averted eyesOf hectic Hope, that figure far and faint,Had given all his later thoughts a tongue—“It is too late—too late!”
There is no needTo tell the elders of the English worldWhat followed this. From step to step, the man—Now fairly gripped by fierce Intemperance—Descended in the social scale; and thoughHe 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 betweenEach fit of madness issuing from his sin,He used to wander through familiar woodsWith God’s glad breezes blowing in his face,And try to feel as he was wont to feelIn other years; but never could he findAgain his old enthusiastic senseOf Beauty; never could he exorcizeThe evil spell which seemed to shackle downThe fine, keen, subtle faculty that usedTo see into the heart of loveliness;And therefore Basil learned to shun the hauntsWhere Nature holds her chiefest courts, becauseThey forced upon him in the saddest lightThe 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 MossCooped 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 senseOf all the degradation he had broughtUpon himself, and on his patient wife;And while he wrestled with his strong remorseHe looked upon a sweet but pallid face,And cried, “My God! is this the trusting girlI swore to love, to shield, to cherish soBut ten years back? O, what a liar I am!”She, shivering in a thin and faded dressBeside a handful of pale, smouldering fire,On hearing Basil’s 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 feelAnd understand how much I’ve suffered sinceYou first gave way—now that you comprehendThe bitter heart-wear, darling, that has broughtThe swift, sad silver to this hair of mineWhich should have come with Age—which came with Pain,Do make one more attempt to free yourselfFrom 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 agonyHow often he had found her in the deadOf icy nights with uncomplaining eyes,A watcher in a cheerless room for him;And thinking, too, that often, while he threwHis scanty earnings over reeking bars,The darling that he really loved through allWas left without enough to eat—then Moss,I say, sprang to his feet with sinews setAnd 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 fightOut to the bitter end; and with the helpOf prayers and unremitting tendernessHe gained the victory at last; but not—No, not before the agony and sweatOf 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 outThe cup of Lethe to his fevered lips.But still he conquered; and the end was this,That though he often had to face the eyesOf that bleak Virtue which is not of Christ(Because the gracious Lord of Love was one with HimWho blessed the dying thief upon the cross),He held his way with no unfaltering steps,And gathered hope and light, and never missedTo do a thing for the sake of good.And every day that glided through the worldSaw some fine instance of his bright reform,And some assurance he would never fallInto the pits and traps of hell again.And thus it came to pass that Basil’s nameGrew sweet with men; and, when he died, his endWas calm—was evening-like, and beautiful.
Here ends the tale of Basil Moss. To wivesWho suffer as the Painter’s darling did,I dedicate these lines; and hope they’ll bearIn mind those efforts of her lovely life,Which saved her husband’s soul; and proved that whileA man who sins can entertain remorse,He is not wholly lost. If such as theyBut follow her, they may be sure of this,That Love, that sweet authentic messengerFrom God, can never fail while there is leftWithin the fallen one a single pulseOf what the angels call humanity.