The Childrens Crusade - [A Fragment.]

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    I

    What is this I read in history,
    Full of marvel, full of mystery,
    Difficult to understand?
    Is it fiction, is it truth?
    Children in the flower of youth,
    Heart in heart, and hand in hand,
    Ignorant of what helps or harms,
    Without armor, without arms,
    Journeying to the Holy Land!

    Who shall answer or divine?
    Never since the world was made
    Such a wonderful crusade
    Started forth for Palestine.
    Never while the world shall last
    Will it reproduce the past;
    Never will it see again
    Such an army, such a band,
    Over mountain, over main,
    Journeying to the Holy Land.

    Like a shower of blossoms blown
    From the parent trees were they;
    Like a flock of birds that fly
    Through the unfrequented sky,
    Holding nothing as their own,
    Passed they into lands unknown,
    Passed to suffer and to die.

    O the simple, child-like trust!
    O the faith that could believe
    What the harnessed, iron-mailed
    Knights of Christendom had failed,
    By their prowess, to achieve,
    They the children, could and must?

    Little thought the Hermit, preaching
    Holy Wars to knight and baron,
    That the words dropped in his teaching,
    His entreaty, his beseeching,
    Would by children's hands be gleaned,
    And the staff on which he leaned
    Blossom like the rod of Aaron.

    As a summer wind upheaves
    The innumerable leaves
    In the bosom of a wood,--
    Not as separate leaves, but massed
    All together by the blast,--
    So for evil or for good
    His resistless breath upheaved
    All at once the many-leaved,
    Many-thoughted multitude.

    In the tumult of the air
    Rock the boughs with all the nests
    Cradled on their tossing crests;
    By the fervor of his prayer
    Troubled hearts were everywhere
    Rocked and tossed in human breasts.

    For a century, at least,
    His prophetic voice had ceased;
    But the air was heated still
    By his lurid words and will,
    As from fires in far-off woods,
    In the autumn of the year,
    An unwonted fever broods
    In the sultry atmosphere.


    II

    In Cologne the bells were ringing,
    In Cologne the nuns were singing
    Hymns and canticles divine;
    Loud the monks sang in their stalls,
    And the thronging streets were loud
    With the voices of the crowd;--
    Underneath the city walls
    Silent flowed the river Rhine.

    From the gates, that summer day,
    Clad in robes of hodden gray,
    With the red cross on the breast,
    Azure-eyed and golden-haired,
    Forth the young crusaders fared;
    While above the band devoted
    Consecrated banners floated,
    Fluttered many a flag and streamer,
    And the cross o'er all the rest!
    Singing lowly, meekly, slowly,
    "Give us, give us back the holy
    Sepulchre of the Redeemer!"
    On the vast procession pressed,
    Youths and maidens. . . .


    III

    Ah! what master hand shall paint
    How they journeyed on their way,
    How the days grew long and dreary,
    How their little feet grew weary,
    How their little hearts grew faint!

    Ever swifter day by day
    Flowed the homeward river; ever
    More and more its whitening current
    Broke and scattered into spray,
    Till the calmly-flowing river
    Changed into a mountain torrent,
    Rushing from its glacier green
    Down through chasm and black ravine.
    Like a phoenix in its nest,
    Burned the red sun in the West,
    Sinking in an ashen cloud;
    In the East, above the crest
    Of the sea-like mountain chain,
    Like a phoenix from its shroud,
    Came the red sun back again.

    Now around them, white with snow,
    Closed the mountain peaks.    Below,
    Headlong from the precipice
    Down into the dark abyss,
    Plunged the cataract, white with foam;
    And it said, or seemed to say:
    "Oh return, while yet you may,
    Foolish children, to your home,
    There the Holy City is!"

    But the dauntless leader said:
    "Faint not, though your bleeding feet
    O'er these slippery paths of sleet
    Move but painfully and slowly;
    Other feet than yours have bled;
    Other tears than yours been shed
    Courage! lose not heart or hope;
    On the mountains' southern slope
    Lies Jerusalem the Holy!"

    As a white rose in its pride,
    By the wind in summer-tide
    Tossed and loosened from the branch,
    Showers its petals o'er the ground,
    From the distant mountain's side,
    Scattering all its snows around,
    With mysterious, muffled sound,
    Loosened, fell the avalanche.
    Voices, echoes far and near,
    Roar of winds and waters blending,
    Mists uprising, clouds impending,
    Filled them with a sense of fear,
    Formless, nameless, never ending.