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                              THE VIGIL OF
                                BRUNHILD

                            A NARRATIVE POEM

                           BY FREDERIC MANNING

                                 LONDON
                    JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
                                  1907

                               PRINTED BY
                     HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
                          LONDON AND AYLESBURY.




INTRODUCTION

BRUNHILD, died A.D. 613


The intervention of women in the course of the world’s history has
nearly always been attended by those events upon which poets delight to
meditate: events of sinister and tragic significance, the chief value
of which is to show in rude collision the ideals and the realities of
life; the common humanity of the central figures in direct conflict
with the inhuman march of circumstance; and the processes through which
these central figures, like Lady Macbeth or Cleopatra, are made to
transcend all conventional morality, and, though completely evil in the
ordinary sense, to redeem themselves and win our sympathy by a moment
of heroic fortitude, or of supreme and consuming anguish. Such events
and processes, however, belong properly to dramatic art; narrative
poetry, being of a smoother and easier texture allowing more scope to the
subjective play of ideas: in short, it is more spiritual than real. The
Queen of Austrasia and Burgundy, whom I have made the subject of my poem,
is essentially a figure of tragedy. Perhaps it might have been better to
treat her as a subject of dramatic action; but in order to do so it would
have been necessary to limit her personality, to define her character, to
treat only a part of her various and complex psychology. I preferred to
show her at the moment of complete renunciation, a prisoner in her own
castle of Orbe on the banks of the lake of Neuchâtel, after she had been
betrayed by her own army, and had become the prey of her own rebellious
nobles; and the poem is but a series of visions that come to her in
the stress of her final degradation, while she is awaiting the brutal
death which the victors reserved for her. Indeed, so entirely spiritual
was my intention, I have scarcely thought it worth while to enumerate
the ironies of her situation. The squalor of her cell, the triumph
of her foes, the prospect of her own immediate death become entirely
insignificant beside the pageantry, the splendour, the romance of a past
which her memories evoke and clothe with faint, reflected glories. She
hears, in the charming phrase of Renan, “les cloches d’une ville d’Is.”

In a note at the end of the volume I have given some extracts from
the _Histoire de France_, edited by M. Ernest Lavisse, which show the
principal events of her life.

                                                                  F. M.




THE VIGIL OF BRUNHILD


    Brunhild, with worn face framed in withered hands,
    Sate in her wounded royalty; and seemed
    Like an old eagle, taken in the toils,
    And fallen from the wide extended sway
    Of her dominion, whence the eye looks down
    On mountains shrunk to nothing, and the sea
    Fretting in vain against its boundaries.
      She sate, with chin thrust forward, listening
    To the loud shouting and the ring of swords
    On shields, that sounded from the crowded hall;
    Where all her ancient bards were emulous
    In praise, now, of her foes who feasted there.
    Her humid cell was strown with rotten straw,
    A roost of owls, and haunt of bats; the wind
    Blew the cold rain in, and made tremulous
    The smoking flame, on which her eyes were set;
    Her raiment was all torn, and stained with blood;
    Her hair had fallen, and she heeded not:
    She was alone and friendless, but her eyes
    Held something kingly that could outfrown Fate.
    Gray, haggard, wan, and yet with dignity,
    Which had been beauty once, and now was age,
    She sate in that foul cellar, as one sits
    To whom life owes no further injury,
    Whom no hopes cheat, and no despairs make pale;
    Though in her heart, and on her rigid face,
    Despair was throned in gaunt magnificence.
      A sound disturbed her thought; she turned her head,
    Waiting, while a strong hand unbarred the door,
    With hatred burning in her tearless eyes,
    Ready to front her