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    The Vigil of Brunhild: A Narrative Poem
    The Vigil of Brunhild: A Narrative Poem
    The Vigil of Brunhild: A Narrative Poem
    Ebook54 pages39 minutes

    The Vigil of Brunhild: A Narrative Poem

    By Frederic Manning

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    About this ebook

    "The Vigil of Brunhild" is a poem by an Australian poet and novelist, Frederic Manning. According to the author, the history of humanity was greatly influenced by great women like Lady Macbeth or Cleopatra, which had incredible strength to go against inhuman circumstances. The image of the Queen of Austrasia and Burgundy, Brunhild, was one example. Her extraordinary and tragic fate and power to overcome obstacles inspired the author to create this poem.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGood Press
    Release dateDec 16, 2019
    ISBN4064066166335
    The Vigil of Brunhild: A Narrative Poem
    Author

    Frederic Manning

    Frederic Manning was born in Sydney, Australia in 1882. He moved to England in 1903 where he pursued a literary career, reviewing and writing poetry. He enlisted in 1915 in the Shropshire Light Infantry and went to France in 1916 as 'Private 19022.' The Shropshires saw heavy fighting on the Somme and Manning's four months there provided the background to Her Privates We. He died in 1935.

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      Book preview

      The Vigil of Brunhild - Frederic Manning

      Frederic Manning

      The Vigil of Brunhild

      A Narrative Poem

      Published by Good Press, 2022

      goodpress@okpublishing.info

      EAN 4064066166335

      Table of Contents

      Cover

      Titlepage

      Text

      INTRODUCTION

      Table of Contents

      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

      Table of Contents

      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

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