Lascelles Abercrombie

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The Sale of Saint Thomas

A quay with vessels moored

Thomas

To India! Yea, here I may take ship;

From here the courses go over the seas,

Along which the intent prows wonderfully

Nose like lean hounds, and tack their journeys out,

Making for harbours as some sleuth was laid

For them to follow on their shifting road.

Again I front my appointed ministry. --

But why the Indian lot to me? Why mine

Such fearful gospelling? For the Lord knew

What a frail soul He gave me, and a heart

Lame and unlikely for the large events. --

And this is worse than Baghdad! though that was

A fearful brink of travel. But if the lots,

That gave to me the Indian duty, were

Shuffled by the unseen skill of Heaven, surely

That fear of mine in Baghdad was the same

Marvellous Hand working again, to guard

The landward gate of India from me. There

I stood, waiting in the weak early dawn

To start my journey; the great caravan's

Strange cattle with their snoring breaths made steam

Upon the air, and (as I thought) sadly

The beasts at market-booths and awnings gay

Of shops, the city's comfortable trade,

Lookt, and then into months of plodding lookt.

And swiftly on my brain there came a wind

Of vision; and I saw the road mapt out

Along the desert with a chalk of bones;

I saw a famine and the Afghan greed

Waiting for us, spears at our throats, all we

Made women by our hunger; and I saw

Gigantic thirst grieving our mouths with dust,

Scattering up against our breathing salt

Of blown dried dung, till the taste eat like fires

Of a wild vinegar into our sheathèd marrows;

And a sudden decay thicken'd all our bloods

As rotten leaves in fall will baulk a stream;

Then my kill'd life the muncht food of jackals. --

The wind of vision died in my brain; and lo,

The jangling of the caravan's long gait

Was small as the luting of a breeze in grass

Upon my ears. Into the waiting thirst

Camels and merchants all were gone, while I

Had been in my amazement. Was this not

A sign? God with a vision tript me, lest

Those tall fiends that ken for my approach

In middle Asia, Thirst and his grisly band

Of plagues, should with their brigand fingers stop

His message in my mouth. Therefore I said,

If India is the place where I must preach,

I am to go by ship, not overland.

And here my ship is berthed. But worse, far worse

Than Baghdad, is this roadstead, the brown sails,

All the enginery of going on sea,

The tackle and the rigging, tholes and sweeps,

The prows built to put by the waves, the masts

Stayed for a hurricane; and lo, that line

Of gilded water there! the sun has drawn

In a long narrow band of shining oil

His light over the sea; how evilly move

Ripples along that golden skin! -- the gleam

Works like a muscular thing! like the half-gorged

Sleepy swallowing of a serpent's neck.

The sea lives, surely! My eyes swear to it;

And, like a murderous smile that glimpses through

A villain's courtesy, that twitching dazzle

Parts the kind mood of weather to bewray

The feasted waters of the sea, stretched out

In lazy gluttony, expecting prey.

How fearful is this trade of sailing! Worse

Than all land-evils is the water-way

Before me now. -- What, cowardice? Nay, why

Trouble myself with ugly words? 'Tis prudence,

And prudence is an admirable thing.

Yet here's much cost -- these packages piled up,

Ivory doubless, emeralds, gums, and silks,

All these they trust on shipboard? Ah, but I,

I who have seen God, I to put myself

Amid the heathen outrage of the sea

In a deal-wood box! It were plain folly.

There is naught more precious in the world than I:

I carry God in me, to give to men.

And when has the sea been friendly unto man?

Let it but guess my errand, it will call

The dangers of the air to wreak upon me,

Winds to juggle the puny boat and pinch

The water into unbelievable creases.

And shall my soul, and God in my soul, drown?

Or venture drowning? -- But no, no; I am safe.

Smooth as believing souls over their deaths

And over agonies shall slide henceforth

To God, so shall my way be blest amid

The quiet crouching terrors of the sea,

Like panthers when a fire weakens their hearts;

Ay, this huge sin of nature, the salt sea,

Shall be afraid of me, and of the mind

Within me, that with gesture, speech and eyes

Of the Messiah flames. What element

Dare snarl against my going, what incubus dare

Remember to be fiendish, when I light

My whole being with memory of Him?

The malice of the sea will slink from me,

And the air be harmless as a muzzled wolf;

For I am a torch, and the flame of me is God.

A Ship's Captain

You are my man, my passenger?

Thomas                                I am.

I go to India with you.

Captain                         Well, I hope so.

There's threatening in the weather. Have you a mind

To hug your belly to the slanted deck,

Like a louse on a whip-top, when the boat

Spins on an axle in the hissing gales?

Thomas

Fear not. 'Tis likely indeed that storms are now

Plotting against our voyage; ay, no doubt

The very bottom of the sea prepares

To stand up mountainous or reach a limb

Out of his night of water and huge shingles,

That he and the waves may break our keel. Fear not;

Like those who manage horses, I've a word

Will fasten up within their evil natures

The meanings of the winds and waves and reefs.

Captain

You have a talisman? I have one too;

I know not if the storms think much of it.

I may be shark's meat yet. And would your spell

Be daunting to a cuttle, think you now?

We had a bout with one on our way here;

It had green lidless eyes like lanterns, arms

As many as the branches of a tree,

But limber, and each one of them wise as a snake.

It laid hold of our bulwarks, and with three

Long knowing arms, slimy, and of a flesh

So tough they'ld fool a hatchet, searcht the ship,

And stole out of the midst of us all a man;

Yes, and he the proudest man upon the seas

For the rare powerful talisman he'd got.

And would yours have done better?

Thomas                             I am one

Not easily frightened. I'm for India.

You will not put me from my way with talk.

Captain

My heart, I never thought of frightening you. --

Well, here's both tide and wind, and we may not start.

Thomas

Not start? I pray you, do.

Captain                    It's no use praying;

I dare not. I've not half my cargo yet.

Thomas

What do you wait for, then?

Captain                          A carpenter.

Thomas

You are talking strangely.

Captain                          But not idly.

I might as well broach all my blood at once,

Here as I stand, as sail to India back

Without a carpenter on board; -- O strangely

Wise are our kings in the killing of men!

Thomas

But does your king then need a carpenter?

Captain

Yes, for he dreamed a dream; and like a man

Who, having eaten poison, and with all

Force of his life turned out the crazing drug,

Has only a weak and wrestled nature left

That gives in foolishly to some bad desire

A healthy man would laught at; so our king

Is left desiring by his venomous dream.

But, being a king, the whole land aches with him.

Thomas

What dream was that?

Captain                    A palace made of souls; --

Ay, there's a folly for a man to dream!

He saw a palace covering all the land,

Big as the day itself, made of a stone

That answered with a better gleam than glass

To the sun's greeting, fashioned like the sound

Of laughter copied into shining shape:

So the king said. And with him in the dream

There was a voice that fleered upon the king:

'This is the man who makes much of himself

For filling the common eyes with palaces

Gorgeously bragging out his royalty:

Whereas he hath not one that seemeth not

In work, in height, in posture on the ground,

A hut, a peasant's dingy shed, to mine.

And all his excellent woods, metals, and stones,

The things he's filched out of the earth's old pockets

And hoisted up into walls and domes; the gold,

Ebony, agate stairs, wainscots of jade,

The windows of jargoon, and heavenly lofts

Of marble, all the stuff he takes to be wealth,

Reckons like savage mud and wattle against

The matter of my building.' -- And the king,

Gloating upon the white sheen of that palace,

And weeping like a girl ashamed, inquired

'What is that stone?' And the voice answered him,

'Soul.' 'But in my palaces too,' said he,

'There should be soul built: I have driven nations,

What with quarrying, what with craning, down

To death, and sure their souls stay in my work.'

And 'Mud and wattle' sneered the voice again;

But added, 'In the west there is a man,

A slave, a carpenter, whose heart has been

Apprenticed to the skill that built my reign,

This beauty; and were he master of your gangs,

He'ld build you a palace that would look like mine.' --

So now no ship may sail from India,

Since the king's scornful dream, unless it bring

A carpenter among its homeward lading:

And carpenters are getting hard to find.

Thomas

And have none made for the king his desire?

Captain

Many have tried, with roasting living men

In queer huge kilns, and other sleights, to found

A glass of human souls; and others seek

With marvellous stone to please our desperate king.

Always at last their own tormented bodies

Delight the cruelty of the king's heart.

Thomas

Well then, I hope you'll find your carpenter,

And soon. I would not that we wait too long;

I loathe a dallying journey. -- I should suppose

We'ld have good sailing at this season, now?

Captain

Why, you were looking, a few minutes gone,

For rare wild storms: I hope we'll have them too;

I want to see you work that talisman

You boast about: I've a great love for spells.

Thomas

Let it be storm or calm, so we be sailing.

I long have wished to voyage into mid sea,

To give my senses rest from wondering

On this preplexèd grammar of the land

Written in men and women, the strange trees,

Herbs, and those things so like to souls, the beasts.

My wilful senses will keep perilously

Employed with these my brain, and weary it

Still to be asking. But on the high seas

Such throng'd reality is left behind, --

Only vast air and water, and the hue

That always seems like special news of God.

Surely 'tis half way to eternity

To go where only size and colour live;

And I could purify my mind from all

Worldly amazement by imagining

Beyond my senses into God's great Heaven,

If I were in mid sea. I have dreamed of this.

Wondrous too, I think, to sail at night

While shoals of moonlight flickers dance beside,

Like swimming glee of fishes scaled in gold,

Curvetting in thwart bounds over the swell;

The perceiving flesh, in bliss of such a beauty,

Must sure feel fine as spiritual sight. --

Moods have been on me, too, when I would be

Sailing recklessly through wild darkness, where

Gigantic whispers of a harassed sea

Fill the whole world of air, and I stand up

To breast the danger of the loosen'd sky,

And feel my immortality like music, --

Yea, I alone in the broken world, firm things

All gone to monstrous flurry, knowing myself

An indestructible word spoken by God. --

This is a small, small boat?

Captain                  Small is nothing,

A bucket will do, so it know how to ride

Top upward: cleverness is the thing in boats.

And I wish this were cleverer: she goes crank

At times just when she should go sober.

But what? Boats are but girls for whimsies: men

Must let them have their freaks.

Thomas                      Have you good skill

In seamanship?

Captain            Well, I am not drowned yet,

Though I'm a grey man and have been at sea

Longer than you've been walking. My old sight

Can tell Mizar from Alcor still.

Thomas                            Ay, so;

Doubtless you'll bring me safe to India.

But being there -- tell me now of the land:

How use they strangers there?

Captain                      Queerly, sometimes

If the king's moody, and tired of feeling nerves

Mildly made happy with soft jewels of silk,

Odours and wines and slim lascivious girls,

And yearns for sharper thrills to pierce his brain,

He often finds a stranger handy then.

Thomas

Why, what do you mean?

Captain                There was a merchant came

To Travancore, and could not speak our talk;

And, it chanced, he was brought before the throne

Just when the king was weary of sweet pleasures.

So, to better his tongue, a rope was bent

Beneath his oxters, up he was hauled, and fire

Let singe the soles of his feet, until his legs

Wriggled like frying eels; then the king's dogs

Were set to hunt the hirpling man. The king

Laught greatly and cried, 'But give the dogs words they know,

And they'll be tame.' -- Have you the Indian speech?

Thomas

Not yet: it will be given me, I trust.

Captain

You'd best make sure of the gift. Another stranger,

Who swore he knew of better gods than ours,

Seemed to the king troubled with fleas, and slaves

Were told to groom him smartly, which they did

Thoroughly with steel combs, until at last

They curried the living flesh from his bones

And stript his face of gristle, till he was

Skull and half skeleton and yet alive.

You're not for dealing in new gods?

Thomas                            Not I.

Was the man killed?

Captain                  He lived a little while;

But the flies killed him.

Thomas                      Flies? I hope India

Is not a fly-plagued land? I abhor flies.

Captain

You will see strange ones, for our Indian life

Hath wonderful fierce breeding. Common earth

With us quickens to buzzing flights of wings

As readily as a week-old carcase here

Thrown in a sunny marsh. Why, we have wasps

That make your hornets seem like pretty midges;

And there be flies in India will drink

Not only blood of bulls, tigers, and bears,

But pierce the river-horses' creasy leather,

Ay, worry crocodiles through their cuirasses

And prick the metal fishes when they bask.

You'll feel them soon, with beaks like sturdy pins,

Treating their stinging thirsts with your best blood.

A man can't walk a mile in India

Without being the business of a throng'd

And moving town of flies; they hawk at a man

As bold as little eagles, and as wild.

And, I suppose, only a fool will blame them.

Flies have the right to sink wells in our skin

All as men to bore parcht earth for water.

But I must do a job on board, and then

Search the town afresh for a carpenter.

Thomas (alone)

Ay, loose tongue, I know how thou art prompted.

Satan's cunning device thou art, to sap

My heart with chatter'd fears. How easy it is

For a stiff mind to hold itself upright

Against the cords of devilish suggestion

Tackled about it, though kept downward strained

With sly, masterful winches made of fear.

Yea, when the mind is warned what engines mean

To ply it into grovelling, and thought set firm,

The tugging strings fail like a cobweb-stuff.

Not as in Baghdad is it with me now;

Nor canst thou, Satan, by a prating mouth,

Fell my tall purpose to a flatlong scorn.

I can divide the check of God's own hand

From tempting such as this: India is mine! --

Ay, fiend, and if thou utter thy storming heart

Into the ocean sea, as into mob

A rebel utters turbulence and rage,

And raise before my path swelling barriers

Of hatred soul'd in water, yet will I strike

My purpose, and God's purpose, clean through all

The ridges of thy power. And I will show

This mask that the devil wears, this old shipman,

A thing to make his proud heart of evil

Writhe like a trodden snake; yea, he shall see

How godly faith can go upon the huge Fury of forces bursting out of law,

Easily as a boy goes on windy grass. --

O marvel! that my little life of mind

Can by mere thinking the unsizeable

Creatures of sea enslave! I must believe it.

The mind hath many powers beyond name

Deep womb'd within it, and can shoot strange vigours:

Men there have been who could so grimly look

That soldiers' hearts went out like candle flames

Before their eyes, and the blood perisht in them. --

But I -- could I do that? Would I not feel

The power in me if 'twas there? And yet

'Twere a child's game to what I have to do,

For days and days with sleepless faith oppress

And terrorise the demon sea. I think

A man might, as I saw my Master once,

Pass unharmed through a storm of men, yet fail

At this that lies before me: men are mind,

And mind can conquer mind; but how can it quell

The unappointed purpose of great waters? --

Well, say the sea is past: why, then, I have

My feet but on the threshold of my task,

To gospel India, -- my single heart

To seize into the order of its beat

All the strange blood of India, my brain

To lord the dark thought of that tann'd mankind! --

O, horrible those sweltry places are,

Where the sun comes so close, it makes the earth

Burn in a frenzy of breeding, -- smoke and flame

Of lives burning up from agoniz'd loam!

Those monstrous sappy jungles of clutcht growth,

What can such fearful increase have to do

With prospering bounty? A rage works in the ground,

Incurably, like frantic lechery,

Pouring its passion out in crops and spawns.

'Tis as the mighty spirit of life, that here

Walketh beautifully praising, glad of God,

Should, stepping on the poison'd Indian shore,

Breathing the Indian air of fire snd steams,

Fling herself into a craze of hideous dancing,

The green gown whipping her swift limbs, all her body

Writhen to speak inutterable desire,

Tormented by a glee of hating God.

Nay, it must be, to visit India,

That frantic pomp and hurrying forth of life,

As if a man should enter at unawares

The dreaming mind of Satan, gorgeously

Imagining his eternal hell of lust. --

They say the land is full of apes, which have

Their own gods and worship: how ghastly, this! --

That demons (for it must be so) should build,

In mockery of man's upward faith, the souls

Of monkeys, those lewd mammets of mankind,

Into a dreadful farce of adoration!

And flies! a land of flies! where the hot soil

Foul with ceaseless decay steams into flies!

So thick they pile themselves in the air above

Their meal of filth, they seem like breathing heaps

Of formless life mounded upon the earth;

And buzzing always like the pipes and strings

Of solemn music made for sorcerers. --

I abhor flies, -- to see them stare upon me

Out of their little faces of gibbous eyes;

To feel the dry cool skin of their bodies alight

Perching upon my lips! -- O yea, a dream,

A dream of impious obscene Satan, this

Monstrous frenzy of life, the Indian being!

And there are men in the dream! What men are they?

I've heard, naught relishes their brains so much

As to tie down a man and tease his flesh

Infamously, until a hundred pains

Hound the desiring life out of his body,

Filling his nerves with such a fearful zest

That the soul overstrained shatters beneath it.

Must I preach God to these murderous hearts?

I would my lot had fallen to go and dare

Death from the silent dealing of Northern cold! --

O, but I would face all these Indian fears,

The horror of the huge power of life,

The beasts all fierce and venomous, the men

With cruel souls, learned to invent pain,

All these and more, if I had any hope

That, braving them, Lord Christ prosper'd through me.

If Christ desired India, He had sent

The band of us, solder'd in one great purpose,

To strike His message through those dark vast tribes.

But one man! -- O surely it is folly,

And we misread the lot! One man, to thrust,

Even though in his soul the lamp was kindled

At God's own hands, one man's lit soul to thrust

The immense Indian darkness out of the world!

For human flesh there breeds as furiously

As the green things and the cattle; and it is all,

All this enormity of measureless folk,

Penn'd in a land so close to the devil's reign

The very apes have faith in him. -- No, no;

Impetuous brains mistake the signs of God

Too easily. God would not have me waste

My zeal for Him in this wild enterprise,

Of going alone to swarming India; -- one man,

One mortal voice, to charm those myriad ears

Away from the fiendish clamour of Indian gods,

One man preaching the truth against the huge

Bray of the gongs and horns of the Indian priests!

A cup of wine poured in the sea were not

More surely lost in the green and brackish depths,

Than the fire and fragrance of my doctrine poured

Into that multitudinous pond of men,

India. -- Shipman! Master of the ship! --

I have thought better of this journey; now

I find I am not meant to go.

Captain                          Not meant?

Thomas

I would say, I had forgotten Indian air

Is full of fevers; and my health is bad

For holding out against fever.

Captain                     As you please.

I keep your fare, though.

Thomas                O, 'tis yours. -- Good sailing!

As he makes to depart, a Noble Stranger is seen approaching along the quay.

Captain

Well, here's a marvel: 'Tis a king, for sure!

'Twould take the taxes of a world to dress

A man in that silken gold, and all those gems.

What a flash the light makes of him, nay, he burns;

And he's here on the quay all by himself,

Not even a slave to fan him! -- Man, you're ailing!

You look like death; is it the falling sickness?

Or has the mere thought of the Indian journey

Made your marrow quail with a cold fever?

The Stranger (to the Captain)

You are the master of this ship?

Captain                           I am.

Stranger

This huddled man belongs to me: a slave

Escaped my service.

Captain                  Lord, I knew not that.

But you are in good time.

Stranger                    And was the slave

For putting out with you? Where are your bound?

Captain

To India. First he would sail, and then

Again he would not. But, my Lord, I swear

I never guesst he was a runaway.

Stranger

Well, he shall have his mind and go with you

To India: a good slave he is, but bears

A restless thought. He has slipt off before,

And vexes me still to be watching him.

We'll make a bargain of him.

Captain                          I, my Lord?

I have no need of slaves: I am too poor.

Stranger

For twenty silver pieces he is yours.

Captain

That's cheap, if he has a skill. Yes, there might be

Profit in him at that. Has he a trade?

Stranger

He is a carpenter.

Captain                          A carpenter!

Why, for a good one I'ld give all my purse.

Stranger

No, twenty silver pieces is the price;

Though 'tis a slave a king might joy to own.

I've taught him to imagine palaces

So high, and tower'd so nobly, they might seem

The marvelling of a God-delighted heart

Escaping into ecstasy; he knows,

Moreover, of a stuff so rare it makes

Smaragdus and the dragon-stone despised;

And yet the quarries whereof he is wise

Would yield enough to house the tribes of the world

In palaces of beautiful shining work.

Captain

Lo there! why, that is it: the carpenter

I am to bring is needed for to build

The king's new palace.

Stranger                      Yea? He is your man.

Captain

Come on, my man. I'll put your cunning heels

Where they'll not budge more than a shuffled inch.

My lord, if you'll bide with the rascal here

I'll get the irons ready. Here's your sum. --

Stranger

Now, Thomas, know thy sin. It was not fear;

Easily may a man crouch down for fear,

And yet rise up on firmer knees, and face

The hailing storm of the world with graver courage.

But prudence, prudence is the deadly sin,

And one that groweth deep into a life,

With hardening roots that clutch about the breast.

For this refuses faith in the unknown powers

Within man's nature; shrewdly bringeth all

Their inspiration of strange eagerness

To a judgment bought by safe experience;

Narrows desire into the scope of thought.

But it is written in the heart of man,

Thou shalt no larger be than thy desire.

Thou must not therefore stoop thy spirit's sight

To pore only within the candle-gleam

Of conscious wit and reasonable brain;

But search into the sacred darkness lying

Outside thy knowledge of thyself, the vast

Measureless fate, full of the power of stars,

The outer noiseless heavens of thy soul.

Keep thy desire closed in the room of light

The labouring fires of thy mind have made,

And thou shalt find the vision of thy spirit

Pitifully dazzled to so shrunk a ken,

There are no spacious puissances about it.

But send desire often forth to scan

The immense night which is thy greater soul;

Knowing the possible, see thou try beyond it

Into impossible things, unlikely ends;

And thou shalt find thy knowledgeable desire

Grow large as all the regions of thy soul,

Whose firmament doth cover the whole of Being,

And of created purpose reach the ends.

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