Which, Being Interpreted, is as may be, or Otherwise

Underneath the dim, criss-crossing beamsGrown edgeless with the litter of decay,Where spiders hung their everlasting websTo wave, tier upon tier, across the gloomWherever any little cranny windWhined in on them and tumbled up the dustUpon the flaking beams and on the floorStartling the nosing rats to sudden cold,Old Neron sat, cuddling his withered bones.Above his head, the great Cathedral bellsScattered their hallelujahs round the skyOn Sundays, holy days, and festivals;But Neron took no note of them, his earsWere inadvertent to such happeningsAs cry themselves with bells. He sat unmoved,Scuffing his naked feet in the thick dustPoured from the mouldering beams by the bells' jar,Sorting his pleasure from old heaps of thoughts.Below his garret, stairs and stairs below,Men skinned their fingers tugging at the ropesThat swung the clappers of the chiming bells.No kith nor kin to Neron, these; his bonesWere liker to the shafts and traceriesAnd gargoyled gutters shining on the townIn twitched and twisted angles. Neron paidNo least attention to them, nor the churchWhich harboured him; and yet it was a jewel,A very rose of Gothic merriment,Blooming symbolic beasts on every archAnd sprouting columns like a Summer wood.All up and down were flights of spiral stairs,Contrived within the hollow core of walls,Leading to chambers of hewn stone, and loftsWhere slits for windows pierced the granite blocksMore than an arm's length to reach open air,And distant so far down that sums of stepsRan into figures to affright the mind,God lived upon an altar bright with lightsWhere snivelling priests might wish him well-a-day.Now Neron was a man preoccupiedWith the huge spectacle of impotenceSwarming upon an ether-floating planetWhich only people called astronomersPaused to take any heed of. Other menHurried and worried over this and that,And passed from birth to death in one short eye-winkOf aching agitation. Fools, parlous fools,To aged Neron, but a stupendous jestFit for the crumpling of old bones in laughter.Sneering was a capable sort of sportIf one had learnt the trick of balancingOn an impalpable circumferenceTo whirl a quite detached and sharpened visionOver inanities a decent planetMight be ashamed to carry. Neron tookHis younger self as motto; every phaseWhich others linger in had once been his,But in the end he had flung clear of all.They served him in the way of illustration.He built them up like blocks to knock them downAnd chuckle at the noise they made in falling.These visions of himself were warlock dreamsConjured up with a wand-stroke from the airAnd swept away as easily uponThe imperious order of another gesture.This pastime lifted Neron to a god,Or something similar, if only languageHad found a word for it. But superstitionHeld words too rigid in a certain grooveFor any purpose Neron had for them;Giving a thing no name exacts obedienceTo any chasing colour or humour oneMay need to clap to it, and he, at least,Swam high above convention in his thoughtsUnder the criss-cross beams and chiming bellsOld Neron sat, cheating himself with dreams,Spreading them out before him, one by one,As dowagers tap down their playing cardsWith claw-like hands in games of solitaire.His frozen eyes gleamed at them as they cameOut of the darkness from an eldritch pastWhich seemed no longer his, yet tasted sweetIn far-off recollection. Childhood first—But what was childhood? A small, fragile thingOf gay mishaps, and silly, bootless joys,An eagerness of folly over tops,Or kites which tugged and sharply broke their stringsLeaving a heartache Neron chirped to thinkNo greatest misery could give him now.Youth bettered this. His jellied blood becameLess solid pondering upon the heatWhich burns youth into powder; his old bonesWere brittle, maybe, but not to that fire,And yet its simulacrum was most fitTo muse upon and glow vicariously,Warming safe fingers at a painted flame.And Neron felt a queasy sort of prideIn mocking his old wounds with jibes that prickedTo a delicious flood of memory.The hurt outgrown was tonic to his years.He plied his ridicule so lustilyHis body shook and rattled where he sat.But manhood, flattering itself with windy praise,Hugging the spiky guerdon of a nameWith letters to it, gratified beyondDesire by the cheap grace of epithet—What monument of satire was this!What exquisite lampooning!—O, the mirthOf stars and ribbons viewed from the vast heightOf Neron's imperturbability!To chip a quondam purpose to a grinWas sport to make him hug his pointed kneesAnd rock for very glee, until his thighsWere bruised with teetering upon the floorWhose only cushion was the heaped-up dust.How good to lick the sauce from all those yearsAnd leave them icy bare and shivering,With no illusion for their nakedness,Turned playthings for a man of doting ageWho had no other joy but these, and sleep.

A little sift of daylight wandered inWhere one of the roof-tiles had blown awayAnd rain and sun had rotted through the wood.This wisp of light was company to Neron.He watched the floor-boards change from dark to glare,Saw the glow creep upon a cock of dustAnd leave it flat in shadow, traced its courseTo where the hole's edge snapped it swiftly off,Striking him blind to the accustomed dusk.Now Neron had a friend he never met,A verger who winked at his being thereIn the sky-loft where no one ever came,And left him scraps of broken meat and breadUpon a step of the third stairway down.The light was Neron's clock; it lit a crackJagged and strange, not like another crack,So Neron knew the time. With many a curseAnd groan he twitched his shaking bones uprightAnd tottered down the stair to get his meat,For he must eat to live and dream his dreams.He hated it, the aching journey downAnd up again, he hated even his bonesWhose insolence in so demanding foodSent him to get it whatever costTo old, unable feet and quaking knees;He loathed the verger's charitable dole,The need of it became an injury.But Neron still must eat, and so he wentWearily down the stair to get his food.It was not easy eating with the ratsSwarming upon him, but Neron long agoHad crawled about his loft and gathered inSuch bits of bars, and bolts, and wooden blocksAs workmen leave, and sitting there he shiedThese craftily into the horde of ratsAnd kept them from him while he eat his meat.And afterwards, filled for more cursing, heWould fumble round and pick his weapons up,Treasuring them with canny, careful countLest one among the number might be missed,To serve him for another meal to-morrow.So the days went, one pea-like to another,The seasons unremarked, the years a loss.No Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday were, for Neron,Just when the light was there and when 'twas not,With dreams and slumber as each chose to come—This, he would think, was sure philosophy,Proper to please the minds of dry old menOutgrown of creeds and fallals, seeing farBeyond the hazards itching younger folkWith livelier arteries, whose dumb-bell headsWere crowned with donkeys' ears. Old bones are wiseAnd undisturbed by any hum of flesh;He knew this with a wizened irony.Weighing the world and life against his bones,He tipped the scales down heavily, he thought,And so was satisfied. His cackling laughPiped to the rats and hanging spiders' websAnd smothered in the muffle of decay.The wine of his conceit was very oldAnd heady; like a drug, it ran beneathHis skin and flushed his veins so that they stoodOut on him like blue worms. A queer old man,Building content with each new creaking thoughtThat jarred across his draughty, shrivelled brain.

One day as he was groping in the dusk,The dusty dusk through which the light-streak cloveAnd showed it such for some few broomstick lengths,His startled fingers closed about a foot,Two feet, in fact, a pair of human feet,Palpable to his touch, but cold as snow.Old Neron cringed from them and hid his eyes.For might he not be gong mad? Yes, mad!That last cold horror haunting vacant age?His toothless jaws chattered and slabbered nowFor one pale moment, then he looked and sawTwo wooden statues in the golden dusk:A king with orb and sceptre, and a beardAs black as ink, beside him was his queen,And both were crowned. The beard held Neron's eyes.Waist-long and vast, its heaviness of hairStamped the king's sullen masculinityWith something of grave terror. Neron feltAn instant loathing, tingled with shrewd fear;And yet, although he shuddered, a sly sparkOf admiration twinged him like a pain.This was a terrible and virile king.But for the queen—old Neron gasped beforeHer sudden loveliness. A slender plantSwung in a wind, crowned by a pyramidOf fragile, jostling bells, was not more likeItself than she to it. Her eyes were kind,But wise withal, and hooded with fatigue.She drooped in standing, yet remained uprightWistfully conscious of an effort so.Her pleated robe of green, or blue, or green,Pushed out or hollowed as her body pressedUpon it or withdrew within its folds;She stood as naked to old Neron's eyesAs though no robe were there. Her small white handsHeld a red fox-glove, charming in its poise;Her feet, which caught the sliding spray of light,Appeared to tread on gold. Neron beheldThem, bitter bearded king, mighty in power,And gentle queen all weariful repose.The light moved on and Neron saw no more.Who pees they? Neron plagued his memoryFor some stray fact he might have heard of them.But nothing came. He probed a curious mindInto the reason for their banishmentTo this lost corner whence no one had climbedFor desert lengths of years; he did not knowHow long he had himself been there, death-longHe thought, and tallied up his distant dreamsAs glittering from the other side of life.Day after day he pondered why so lateHe had encountered them. His wisp of lightFell always to a line; but this was factWhich baffled speculation. His own dreamsFogged to a hueless essence, here was moreTo work upon; with such a king and queenThings had moved gaudily—if that were all.He guessed the word ill-chosen, half a truth,And seeking the other half, he wrought them bothInto a tale of tragic circumstance,Of bargained marriage hurried on through lust,Of desolate surrender where no hopeOf moving iron wills could have a place,Of girlhood torn upon the state of queen.With scraps of ancient myths, and fairy-tales,And half-remembered tags of history,Neron made up a story his old dreamsCould nowise counter with. He let them be,Forsaking his life to consider theirs:The terrible and unrelenting king,The queen with a red fox-glove in her hands.So Neron changed the order of his dreamsAnd irony became magnificence.The queen, composed and cool, bent to his will,Moving with stately graciousness withinThe frame of his imaginings. She fringedHis dream with filigrees of excellence,A lace of buds and scarcely opened flowersJust touched with morning hoar-frost. But the kingHad his own dreams and would not enter Neron's,Black dreams peculiar to a bearded king.They injured Neron in his own esteem,Chafing him to achieve a greater thingThan he had yet conceived. His ardour grewTo match himself against the king, and crackThe shell of high omnipotence in twoAnd gloat upon the scattered empty halvesLolling lopsided on the dusty floor.So gradually he wrought a miracle,Merging himself into the royal dream—But not as ancient Neron, that old manHad plumped himself with visions of the queenInto a proper youth whose sap tan hotOver his gusty body, ripe for love,Fresh with the bursting agony of love,And she a very distant, youthful queen.As long as he could see them, Neron satBefore the statues, while the light-streak crawledFrom king to queen and left them in the dark.Bit after bit he added to his dream.He found the castle where they lived, aboveA meadow of fair trees, whose flickering leavesChequered the placid water of a moat,Weed-spotted, sound asleep, beneath the walls,Except when the portcullis, clanging down,Shattered its sky and trees to sliding planesOf colour tipping with the tilt of waves.Above the angry walls was gleam of grassShuttled with gold and white, for on a terraceA peacock strutted between carven shieldsFlanking the angles of a balustrade.Sometimes, at night, Neron would climb the hill,And crouching down beside the brooding moatGaze at the silent glisten of the roofAnd ivy-twinkling walls, and speculateWhich hollow window opened on the roomWhere the queen slept, and curse the bearded kingWith full-mouthed curses. Then, as dreaming grew,He saw the queen at work within her bowerSurrounded by her ladies, stitching onA blue-green tapestry where hunters ran,And spotted dogs plunged into a blue streamAfter an otter. Neron boldly steppedInto the bower and nodded to the ladiesWho crept away and left him with the queen.But nothing happened, for that night the king came;Though Neron luckily escaped before.He wrenched his wits to find some casual wayWhen he might urge himself upon her thoughtWhose numb inconsequence was salt and flameSet to the green wound of his smarting flesh.But the dream halted at this very spot,He could not push it to a consummation.He heaved upon it with his new-found strength,Fully persuaded that he served her causeBy this he had in mind. The dream gave way,The queen surrendered on the very terraceWhere the white peacock strutted. She whispered NeronWhere she would be at sunset, gave him the keyOf a small turret-chamber. He found her there,Her slender shadow stretching to the doorTo welcome him; and she, beyond her shadow,Stood waiting in the crimson sunset light,A slender silver fox-glove flushed with rose.There was no sound except the golden boomOf bees among the honeysuckle flowersStirring against the wall. For neither spoke,Being removed past any reach of speechInto that silent space of holinessWhere flesh creates the everlasting world.But there the bearded king broke in upon them,The king whose dream would never enter Neron's.When Neron saw that thorny face, he leaptTo hide it from the queen. Calling his dream,He strode upon the king, and the dream followedInch by inch after him, close as a shadow.But Neron's dream was mighty with fulfilment,It strove with the king's dream, and he and NeronStood each beside his dream and urged it forwardWith shouts and cries. The battle roared between them.The king's dream crowded down on Neron's dreamTo smother it. But Neron's dream arose,Flinging the king's dream off, and towered upTremendous in its brilliance. Then the king,To save his dream, threw his black beard upon it,The heaviness of hair shut out the brilliance,At which his dream, revived to fearful fury,Came on at Neron's dream, and the two clashedWith a great noise together, and their bodiesRang each on each like cymbals in the gloomSprung suddenly about them. With the dark,The king's dream waxed monstrous in shape and stature,Behemoth treading on a puny earth,So did it stand and move, a ponderous bulk,The nimbleness of Neron's dream was nothing.The king's dream lifted like a rock and droveThe air snarling before it to a heightPast vision, thence it fell on Neron's dream,Splitting its back from end to end, and NeronWaggled his palsied hands about and wept.

The verger, coming up with Neron's food,Found what was left the day before untouched.But being somewhat slow of wit, indeedA person of marked unagilityWhere thinking was concerned, what speculationsAnother might have had, he was without.So laying the second dole beside the firstHe stumped downstairs to dust the chancel rail.But when, next day, two baskets greeted him,Both full, he felt enough perplexityTo risk a whistle on it; and the thirdEncounter with the baskets, all of them,Induced such lively wonder that he climbedThe three long flights of curling stairs to seeWhat ailed old Neron. Scratching match on matchHe came at last upon him, crushed beneathA fallen wooden statue, dead as nails."The poor old beggar was dead as last year's fly,"He told his mates, and later told the Dean,And also mentioned something of a figureOf painted wood. And there were two of them,A king and queen, so wondrously preservedThey looked quite new, although the architectPronounced them very early specimensOf thirteenth century work, at which the DeanAnd Chapter all said "Ah!" and spent a weekSearching old records for a hint of them.The local antiquaries blew the dustFrom ancient chronicles and seared their eyesWith cryptic script to learn what historyMade mention of an inky-bearded kingWhose iron mien portended fearful things,And who the queen, so obviously mismated?But not a dusty chronicle gave tongue.Baffled, they placed them in the town museumCautiously labelled, "Ancient King and Queen,Fine specimens of Thirteenth Century Carving."And what of Neron? Neron was a pauper,They buried him, of course, in Potter's Field,Where you can see him turned to purple thistlesPurveying exquisite delight to donkeysOn Sundays, holidays, and festivals,When the white sky is filled with hallelujahsProfusely scattered by Cathedral bells.