One night, The night he raised the mists from that wild world, He talked with Chapman in the Mermaid Inn Of Marlowe's poem that was left half-sung, His _Hero and Leander_.
"Kit desired, If he died first, that you should finish it," Said Nash.
A loaded silence filled the room As with the imminent spirit of the dead Listening. And long that picture haunted me: Nash, like a lithe young Mephistopheles Leaning between the silver candle-sticks, Across the oak table, with his keen white face, Dark smouldering eyes, and black, dishevelled hair; Chapman, with something of the steady strength That helms our ships, and something of the Greek, The cool clear passion of Platonic thought Behind the fringe of his Olympian beard And broad Homeric brows, confronting him Gravely.
There was a burden of mystery Brooding on all that night; and, when at last Chapman replied, I knew he felt it, too. The curious pedantry of his wonted speech Was charged with living undertones, like truths Too strange and too tremendous to be breathed Save thro' a mask. And though, in lines that flamed Once with strange rivalry, Shakespeare himself defied Chapman, that spirit "by spirits taught to write Above a mortal pitch," Will's nimbler sense Was quick to breathings from beyond our world And could not hold them lightly.
"Ah, then Kit," Said Chapman, "had some prescience of his end, Like many another dreamer. What strange hints Of things past, present, and to come, there lie Sealed in the magic pages of that music Which, laying strong hold on universal laws, Ranges beyond these mud-walls of the flesh, Though dull wits fail to follow. It was this That made men find an oracle in the books Of Vergil, and an everlasting fount Of science in the prophets."
Once again That haunted silence filled the shadowy room; And, far away up Bread Street, we could hear The crowder, piping of black Wormall still:--
"_He had a friend, once gay and green, Who died of want alone, In whose black fate he might have seen The warning of his own._"
"Strange he should ask a hod-man like myself To crown that miracle of his April age," Said Chapman, murmuring softly under breath, "_Amorous Leander, beautiful and young_ ... Why, Nash, had I been only charged to raise Out of its grave in the green Hellespont The body of that boy, To make him sparkle and leap thro' the cold waves And fold young Hero to his heart again, The task were scarce as hard. But ... stranger still,"-- And his next words, although I hardly knew All that he meant, went tingling through my flesh-- "Before you spoke, before I knew his wish, I had begun to write! I knew and loved His work. Himself I hardly knew at all; And yet--I know him now! I have heard him now And, since he pledged me in so rare a cup, I'll lift and drink to him, though lightnings fall From envious gods to scourge me. I will lift This cup in darkness to the soul that reigns In light on Helicon. Who knows how near? For I have thought, sometimes, when I have tried To work his will, the hand that moved my pen Was mine, and yet--not mine. The bodily mask Is mine, and sometimes, dull as clay, it sleeps With old Musæus. Then strange flashes come, Oracular glories, visionary gleams, And the mask moves, not of itself, and sings."