Poems. Howells William Dean

great pyres that were placed there to light the encampment,

      High on platforms raised above the people, were kindled.

      Flaming aloof, as it were the pillar by night in the Desert

      Fell their crimson light on the lifted orbs of the preachers,

      Fell on the withered brows of the old men, and Israel’s mothers,

      Fell on the bloom of youth, and the earnest devotion of manhood,

      Fell on the anguish and hope in the tearful eyes of the mourners.

      Flaming aloof, it stirred the sleep of the luminous maples

      With warm summer-dreams, and faint, luxurious languor.

      Near the four great pyres the people closed in a circle,

      In their midst the mourners, and, praying with them, the exhorters,

      And on the skirts of the circle the unrepentant and scorners,–

      Ever fewer and sadder, and drawn to the place of the mourners,

      One after one, by the prayers and tears of the brethren and sisters,

      And by the Spirit of God, that was mightily striving within them,

      Till at the last alone stood Louis Lebeau, unconverted.

      Louis Lebeau, the boatman, the trapper, the hunter, the fighter,

      From the unlucky French of Gallipolis he descended,

      Heir to Old World want and New World love of adventure.

      Vague was the life he led, and vague and grotesque were the rumors

      Through which he loomed on the people,–the hero of mythical hearsay,

      Quick of hand and of heart, impatient, generous, Western,

      Taking the thought of the young in secret love and in envy.

      Not less the elders shook their heads and held him for outcast,

      Reprobate, roving, ungodly, infidel, worse than a Papist,

      With his whispered fame of lawless exploits at St. Louis,

      Wild affrays and loves with the half-breeds out on the Osage,

      Brawls at New Orleans, and all the towns on the rivers,

      All the godless towns of the many-ruffianed rivers.

      Only she who loved him the best of all, in her loving

      Knew him the best of all, and other than that of the rumors.

      Daily she prayed for him, with conscious and tender effusion,

      That the Lord would convert him. But when her father forbade him

      Unto her thought, she denied him, and likewise held him for outcast,

      Turned her eyes when they met, and would not speak, though her heart broke.

      Bitter and brief his logic that reasoned from wrong unto error:

      “This is their praying and singing,” he said, “that makes you reject me,–

      You that were kind to me once. But I think my fathers’ religion,

      With a light heart in the breast and a friendly priest to absolve one,

      Better than all these conversions that only bewilder and vex me,

      And that have made men so hard and women fickle and cruel.

      Well, then, pray for my soul, since you would not have spoken to save me,–

      Yes; for I go from these saints to my brethren and sisters, the sinners.”

      Spoke and went, while her faint lips fashioned unuttered entreaties,–

      Went, and came again in a year at the time of the meeting,

      Haggard and wan of face, and wasted with passion and sorrow.

      Dead in his eyes was the careless smile of old, and its phantom

      Haunted his lips in a sneer of restless, incredulous mocking.

      Day by day he came to the outer skirts of the circle,

      Dwelling on her, where she knelt by the white-haired exhorter, her father,

      With his hollow looks, and never moved from his silence.

      Now, where he stood alone, the last of impenitent sinners,

      Weeping, old friends and comrades came to him out of the circle,

      And with their tears besought him to hear what the Lord had done for them.

      Ever he shook them off, not roughly, nor smiled at their transports.

      Then the preachers spoke and painted the terrors of Judgment,

      And of the bottomless pit, and the flames of hell everlasting.

      Still and dark he stood, and neither listened nor heeded;

      But when the fervent voice of the white-haired exhorter was lifted,

      Fell his brows in a scowl of fierce and scornful rejection.

      “Lord, let this soul be saved!” cried the fervent voice of the old man;

      “For that the Shepherd rejoiceth more truly for one that hath wandered,

      And hath been found again, than for all the others that strayed not.”

      Out of the midst of the people, a woman old and decrepit,

      Tremulous through the light, and tremulous into the shadow,

      Wavered toward him with slow, uncertain paces of palsy,

      Laid her quivering hand on his arm and brokenly prayed him:

      “Louis Lebeau, I closed in death the eyes of your mother.

      On my breast she died, in prayer for her fatherless children,

      That they might know the Lord, and follow him always, and serve him.

      O, I conjure you, my son, by the name of your mother in glory,

      Scorn not the grace of the Lord!” As when a summer-noon’s tempest

      Breaks in one swift gush of rain, then ceases and gathers

      Darker and gloomier yet on the lowering front of the heavens,

      So broke his mood in tears, as he soothed her, and stilled her entreaties,

      And so he turned again with his clouded looks to the people.

      Vibrated then from the hush the accents of mournfullest pity,–

      His who was gifted in speech, and the glow of the fires illumined

      All his pallid aspect with sudden and marvellous splendor:

      “Louis Lebeau,” he spake, “I have known you and loved you from childhood;

      Still, when the others blamed you, I took your part, for I knew you.

      Louis Lebeau, my brother, I thought to meet you in heaven,

      Hand in hand with her who is gone to heaven before us,

      Brothers through her dear love! I trusted to greet you and lead you

      Up from the brink of the River unto the gates of the City.

      Lo! my years shall be few on the earth. O my brother,

      If I should die before you had known the mercy of Jesus,

      Yea, I think it would sadden the hope of glory within me!”

      Neither yet had the will of the sinner yielded an answer;

      But from his lips there broke a cry of unspeakable anguish,

      Wild and fierce and shrill, as if some demon within him

      Bent his soul with the ultimate pangs of fiendish possession;

      And with the outstretched arms of bewildered imploring toward them,

      Death-white unto the people he turned his face