Panthera

    Yea, as I sit here, crutched, and cricked, and bent,
    I think of Panthera, who underwent
    Much from insidious aches in his decline;
    But his aches were not radical like mine;
    They were the twinges of old wounds – the feel
    Of the hand he had lost, shorn by barbarian steel,
    Which came back, so he said, at a change in the air,
    Fingers and all, as if it still were there.
    My pains are otherwise: upclosing cramps
    And stiffened tendons from this country’s damps,
    Where Panthera was never commandant. —
    The Fates sent him by way of the Levant.
     He had been blithe in his young manhood’s time,
    And as centurion carried well his prime.
    In Ethiop, Araby, climes fair and fell,
    He had seen service and had borne him well.
    Nought shook him then: he was serene as brave;
    Yet later knew some shocks, and would grow grave
    When pondering them; shocks less of corporal kind
    Than phantom-like, that disarranged his mind;
    And it was in the way of warning me
    (By much his junior) against levity
    That he recounted them; and one in chief
    Panthera loved to set in bold relief.

     This was a tragedy of his Eastern days,
    Personal in touch – though I have sometimes thought
    That touch a possible delusion — wrought
    Of half-conviction carried to a craze —
    His mind at last being stressed by ails and age:—
    Yet his good faith thereon I well could wage.

     I had said it long had been a wish with me
    That I might leave a scion — some small tree
    As channel for my sap, if not my name —
    Ay, offspring even of no legitimate claim,
    In whose advance I secretly could joy.
    Thereat he warned.
     “Cancel such wishes, boy!
    A son may be a comfort or a curse,
    A seer, a doer, a coward, a fool; yea, worse —
    A criminal . . . That I could testify!”
    “Panthera has no guilty son!” cried I
    All unbelieving. “Friend, you do not know,”
    He darkly dropt: “True, I’ve none now to show,
    For THE LAW TOOK HIM. Ay, in sooth, Jove shaped it so!”

     “This noon is not unlike,” he again began,
    “The noon these pricking memories print on me —
    Yea, that day, when the sun grew copper-red,
    And I served in Judaea . . . ‘Twas a date
    Of rest for arms. The Pax Romana ruled,
    To the chagrin of frontier legionaries!
    Palestine was annexed — though sullen yet, —
    I, being in age some two-score years and ten
    And having the garrison in Jerusalem
    Part in my hands as acting officer
    Under the Governor. A tedious time
    I found it, of routine, amid a folk
    Restless, contentless, and irascible. —
    Quelling some riot, sentrying court and hall,
    Sending men forth on public meeting-days
    To maintain order, were my duties there.

     “Then came a morn in spring, and the cheerful sun
    Whitened the city and the hills around,
    And every mountain-road that clambered them,
    Tincturing the greyness of the olives warm,
    And the rank cacti round the valley’s sides.
    The day was one whereon death-penalties
    Were put in force, and here and there were set
    The soldiery for order, as I said,
    Since one of the condemned had raised some heat,
    And crowds surged passionately to see him slain.
    I, mounted on a Cappadocian horse,
    With some half-company of auxiliaries,
    Had captained the procession through the streets
    When it came streaming from the judgment-hall
    After the verdicts of the Governor.
    It drew to the great gate of the northern way
    That bears towards Damascus; and to a knoll
    Upon the common, just beyond the walls —
    Whence could be swept a wide horizon round
    Over the housetops to the remotest heights.
    Here was the public execution-ground
    For city crimes, called then and doubtless now
    Golgotha, Kranion, or Calvaria.

     “The usual dooms were duly meted out;
    Some three or four were stript, transfixed, and nailed,
    And no great stir occurred. A day of wont
    It was to me, so far, and would have slid
    Clean from my memory at its squalid close
    But for an incident that followed these.

     “Among the tag-rag rabble of either sex
    That hung around the wretches as they writhed,
    Till thrust back by our spears, one held my eye —
    A weeping woman, whose strained countenance,
    Sharpened against a looming livid cloud,
    Was mocked by the crude rays of afternoon —
    The mother of one of those who suffered there
    I had heard her called when spoken roughly to
    By my ranged men for pressing forward so.
    It stole upon me hers was a face I knew;
    Yet when, or how, I had known it, for a while
    Eluded me. And then at once it came.

     “Some thirty years or more before that noon
    I was sub-captain of a company
    Drawn from the legion of Calabria,
    That marched up from Judaea north to Tyre.
    We had pierced the old flat country of Jezreel,
    The great Esdraelon Plain and fighting-floor
    Of Jew with Canaanite, and with the host
    Of Pharaoh-Necho, king of Egypt, met
    While crossing there to strike the Assyrian pride.
    We left behind Gilboa; passed by Nain;
    Till bulging Tabor rose, embossed to the top
    With arbute, terabinth, and locust growths.

     “Encumbering me were sundry sick, so fallen
    Through drinking from a swamp beside the way;
    But we pressed on, till, bearing over a ridge,
    We dipt into a world of pleasantness —
    A vale, the fairest I had gazed upon —
    Which lapped a village on its furthest slopes
    Called Nazareth, brimmed round by uplands nigh.
    In the midst thereof a fountain bubbled, where,
    Lime-dry from marching, our glad halt we made
    To rest our sick ones, and refresh us all.

     “Here a day onward, towards the eventide,
    Our men were piping to a Pyrrhic dance
    Trod by their comrades, when the young women came
    To fill their pitchers, as their custom was.
    I proffered help to one — a slim girl, coy
    Even as a fawn, meek, and as innocent.
    Her long blue gown, the string of silver coins
    That hung down by her banded beautiful hair,
    Symboled in full immaculate modesty.

     “Well, I was young, and hot, and readily stirred
    To quick desire. ‘Twas tedious timing out
    The convalescence of the soldiery;
    And I beguiled the long and empty days
    By blissful yieldance to her sweet allure,
    Who had no arts, but what out-arted all,
    The tremulous tender charm of trustfulness.
    We met, and met, and under the winking stars
    That passed which peoples earth — true union, yea,
    To the pure eye of her simplicity.

     “Meanwhile the sick found health; and we pricked on.
    I made her no rash promise of return,
    As some do use; I was sincere in that;
    I said we sundered never to meet again —
    And yet I spoke untruth unknowingly! —
    For meet again we did. Now, guess you aught?
    The weeping mother on Calvaria
    Was she I had known — albeit that time and tears
    Had wasted rudely her once flowerlike form,
    And her soft eyes, now swollen with sorrowing.

     “Though I betrayed some qualms, she marked me not;
    And I was scarce of mood to comrade her
    And close the silence of so wide a time
    To claim a malefactor as my son —
    (For so I guessed him). And inquiry made
    Brought rumour how at Nazareth long before
    An old man wedded her for pity’s sake
    On finding she had grown pregnant, none knew how,
    Cared for her child, and loved her till he died.

     “Well; there it ended; save that then I learnt
    That he – the man whose ardent blood was mine —
    Had waked sedition long among the Jews,
    And hurled insulting parlance at their god,
    Whose temple bulked upon the adjoining hill,
    Vowing that he would raze it, that himself
    Was god as great as he whom they adored,
    And by descent, moreover, was their king;
    With sundry other incitements to misrule.

     “The impalements done, and done the soldiers’ game
    Of raffling for the clothes, a legionary,
    Longinus, pierced the young man with his lance
    At signs from me, moved by his agonies
    Through naysaying the drug they had offered him.
    It brought the end. And when he had breathed his last
    The woman went. I saw her never again . . .
    Now glares my moody meaning on you, friend? —
    That when you talk of offspring as sheer joy
    So trustingly, you blink contingencies.
    Fors Fortuna! He who goes fathering
    Gives frightful hostages to hazardry!”

     Thus Panthera’s tale. ‘Twas one he seldom told,
    But yet it got abroad. He would unfold,
    At other times, a story of less gloom,
    Though his was not a heart where jests had room.
    He would regret discovery of the truth
    Was made too late to influence to ruth
    The Procurator who had condemned his son —
    Or rather him so deemed. For there was none
    To prove that Panthera erred not: and indeed,
    When vagueness of identity I would plead,
    Panther himself would sometimes own as much —
    Yet lothly. But, assuming fact was such,
    That the said woman did not recognize
    Her lover’s face, is matter for surprise.
    However, there’s his tale, fantasy or otherwise.

     Thereafter shone not men of Panthera’s kind:
    The indolent heads at home were ill-inclined
    To press campaigning that would hoist the star
    Of their lieutenants valorous afar.
    Jealousies kept him irked abroad, controlled
    And stinted by an Empire no more bold.
    Yet in some actions southward he had share —
    In Mauretania and Numidia; there
    With eagle eye, and sword and steed and spur,
    Quelling uprisings promptly. Some small stir
    In Parthia next engaged him, until maimed,
    As I have said; and cynic Time proclaimed
    His noble spirit broken. What a waste
    Of such a Roman! — one in youth-time graced
    With indescribable charm, so I have heard,
    Yea, magnetism impossible to word
    When faltering as I saw him. What a fame,
    O Son of Saturn, had adorned his name,
    Might the Three so have urged Thee! — Hour by hour
    His own disorders hampered Panthera’s power
    To brood upon the fate of those he had known,
    Even of that one he always called his own —
    Either in morbid dream or memory . . .
    He died at no great age, untroublously,
    An exit rare for ardent soldiers such as he.