Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated)
Page 866
gunwale.)
CHORUS.
In a line both straight and long,
Shadowy boat and boatman dart,
With strokes as quivering, swift and strong
As ever shook a maniac’s heart.
Ghostly boatman, fleetly soaring
Over Adria’s inky swell,
Like the Stygian spectre oaring
Fiercely through the mirk of hell;
Sudden stopped he in the dark,
Stood to watch and stooped to hark.
Thro’ the black and soundless hollow,
Listened to a fear that spoke not,
Scanned pursuit that did not follow.
On his deed the lightning broke not,
To her shrieks the thunder woke not;
Shadowy sea and shadowy sky
But her shroud and canopy.
Nought he saw and nothing heard,
Not a sound and not a word,
Not the skimming of a bird;
Breathless still, with crouching stride,
Scowled he, searching far and wide.
Black and still, above and under,
Nature seemed to gather thought,
All things giving pause to ponder
On the deed that he had wrought.
Till headlong through the midnight flying,
He sees a pallor flash before him,
Like a halo in the air;
Two eyes, not dead, but ever dying,
Back in piteous wonder stare.
He headlong through the darkness flying,
With sparry pinion smites the wave.
“Bah! I saw her in the flood
Sinking to her crystal grave,
Like a sculptured maiden lying,
Like a marble splashed with blood,
Stretched and walled beneath the flood.”
Yet haunting look and haunting cry!
Tho’ a moment sped you by,
In his tortured ear and eye
Ye shall live eternally.
Gliding onward, now he neared
The voiceless buildings of the town,
Rising shadows that appeared
Like a black navy bearing down,
By demons darkly steered.
Swart against a sky of lead
The outline of the houses gloom,
Like damned ones in the day of doom,
When sun and moon are dead.
As the sea doth grope its way
Thro’ the windings of a cave,
Black as ink the lazy wave
Up that street so dark and sly
Lapped its way with crook and croon;
While the breeze through carvings high
Went humming like a faint bassoon —
Till he has backed his weary oar
And stepped beneath his stooping door.
SCENE.
A rich chamber in the Palazzo of NEROEA.
(Late on the evening following, one small lamp burning; JULIO having, by means of a bribe, learned from GIACOPO, whom he knew to be one of the Society of Venetian bravos, and who craftily undertook, by means of his opportunities, to unravel the mystery of her fate, what had befallen BEATRICE, and who had procured her death, resolving to avenge it, visits NEROEA. NEROEA discovered alone. Enter , JULIO.)
NEROEA. Oh! Julio (rising with extended arms).
JULIO. There — good e’en — stop there! sit down.
NEROEA. Oh! thou art pale; thou’rt tired?
JULIO. Ay, very tired.
NEROEA. Oh! dearest, art thou ill?
JULIO. Ill? Sick to death!
NEROEA. Nay, noble Julio, thou art pale!
JULIO. What! pale?
I am not pale. There’s another very pale.
No, ’tis the crimson that thine eye hath dazzled.
NEROEA. What crimson?
JULIO (waving his arms towards the draperies) —
This, and this — hast eyes? and all.
Thou art a Catholic, and wouldst not have
A poor girl buried without bell or dirge.
There is no dirge like that the wind doth pipe;
The hoarse waves wake an honest lamentation.
A captain in my galley, when a slave
Was drown’d— ’twas near the Lido, where the Doge
Sinks his ring deep; they’re never found again —
Told me the ears of drowning men are filled
With peals of sweet bells till they hear no more.
’Tis thou art pale.
NEROEA. Pale, Julio! I?
JULIO Ay, pale
As funeral flames in sunshine. I am sick.
Were I a girl, I’d choose a time —
NEROEA. For what?
JULIO. To die in.
NEROEA. Die!
JULIO. Ay, die. I’d have you drop
In your first summer, blooming, fragrant — all;
For with what measure thou dost mete withal,
To thee again it shall be measured. When
The first small wrinkle, like the worm of death,
Creeps on thy beauty — then all’s blasted.
Faugh! Thou shalt not slay for that. I am a beast.
Neroea. A beast! Ah, Julio (she laughs).
JULIO. Ay — viribus editior —
By strength I took thee; thou cam’st not to me.
Dost love me?
NEROEA. Love? Oh, Julio! love and fear,
So near, and yet so strange; so loved, so awful!
Thy smile means even more than I can read,
And on thy laughter waits an echo faint
From a far place of pain and scorn. Alas!
JULIO. Dost love me?
NEROEA. Julio, to death!
JULIO. Love whom?
NEROEA. Oh, whom but Julio — thee — my Emperor!
JULIO. My Caesar’s image, wench, and superscription —
Gold, gold!
NEROEA. My Julio, him alone I love.
JULIO. Thou liest! Why dost thou stare? Thou liest!
What is to stare at? Yet I do believe
Thou lov’st thy Julio, ev’n as he loves thee. Ha!
NEROEA. What’s the matter?
JULIO. Lies.
NEROEA. Oh! cruel, cruel!
JULIO. Cruel — as cats that toy with mice; and yet
I’ll do the kindest deed tonight that e’er
The stars wept over.
NEROEA. Thou wert always kind.
JULIO. And I’ll be kinder. What is life? What’s good in’t?
Love bleeding lies; fair truth sunk, never more
So silver clear to speak, how many fathoms
Canst tell, beneath the grass-green sea?
NEROEA. Thou’rt ill,
Oh, Julio, very ill.
JULIO. No, only kind.
There, sit you still. What’s life?
NEROEA. Julio, don’t talk of life.
JULIO. Of t’other thing
Mayhap. If I cried Death, and stamped my foot,
‘Twould bring up — what? Ha! seest thou nothing?
NEROEA. No.
Why wilt thou talk so wildly, Julio?
JULIO Ha!
Thou’rt frightened, silly bird, because ’tis dark.
It will be darker.
NEROEA. Let me call for lights.
JULIO. Not now; I’ll have them by-and-by; not now.
We hear, methinks, the clearer for the dark.
There was an old man cried —
NEROEA. When?
JULIO. In the night —
Last night, they say — and plucked his silver locks out,
And beat his wrinkled numbskull with his fists,
And howled as shrill and hollow as the caves
Of Æolus above the cold, wild sea.
NEROEA. Would they brought lights!
JULIO — What’s that? Ay, time enough —
Ay, lights and hands — I’ll warrant them by-and-by
There’s something in this
room to carry out.
I’m sick.
NEROEA. I told thee thou wert ill, my Julio
JULIO. And by a serpent wounded. I’ve been mad.
Held to my lips an adder’s tongue, and woo’d
The coils of slimy death. Thou pretty witch,
I am no longer mad, but know thee, cold,
And dead, and damned. Thou serpent, lift thy neck,
And hiss thy last at me. Dust shalt thou eat.
Thy sides are painted with the blood of her
Thou’st crushed and swallowed. Murderous
cannibal!
(NEROEA cries wildly, and rushes towards him.)
Off, Beldame! Judgment — ho!
NEROEA. Mercy! Oh God. —
CHORUS.
Lo where the guileless blood she planned to shed;
Her own is gliding on the polished floor;
The ambition and the zealous hate are dead,
The story of the humbler true love o’er.
The last oak of a noble forest towers —
The old Faliero, silent and alone,
Disdaining, through his brief and darkening hours,
Like feebler miseries, to bend or moan.
Now by a stranger hand the lamp is placed,
And little Beatrice no longer lights
The star he steered by on the moonless nights;
And when, like spirits lost, the sea-bird shrieks,
And when close-reefed across the roaring waste,
O’er breakers thundering in the shrilly winds;
His starless boat his wild home darkly seeks,
His eye at last the soulless beacon finds,
Thrills to his heart the ray of other years
Starred dimly in the dark by gathering tears.
In summer evenings, when the isles grow dim,
And seas float silvery round the darkened shore,
Never again awakes the distant hymn,
The laughing, sweet-voiced welcome in the door,
The loving prattle and the glad surprise,
When down the rocky stair the true step flies
To meet him at the gunwale by the shore.
That laughing, loving welcome as of yore,
That dancing step will wake again no more.
The cold sea breaks along the pebbles there,
The door is dark — the stair is but a stair —
And through the straggling roses, weeds wave high,
And summer breezes wildering rock and sigh.
DUAN NA CLAEV — THE LEGEND OF THE GLAIVE
GAESA — THE EXPLOIT IMPOSED.
Fair-shoulder, Fionula fair,
The wondrous child of Lir’s old race,
Answered the hero of the raven hair,
Of the strong hand and princely grace,
The great Cathair.
“Five leagues hence doth the Norseman lie
Beneath his cromlech gray;
Three miles round no soul draws nigh
From eve till dawn of day.
Nor friend of man, nor horse, nor hound,
Nought that hath life must cross that ground;
And in that cromlech, side by side,
The dead man and his sword abide.
And if thou lovest me as thou swarest,
And for my love thou greatly darest,
Alone tonight thou’lt seize for me
The giant glaive of the King of the Sea.
And so, for aye, his fame and thine,
And, with thy fame more humbly mine —
Like three harps sounding in the hall
To the same high story,
Of hero glory,
Shall ring for ever in the ears of all.”
Oh! who’d have dreamed that beneath the grace
Of that rich and wondrous form and face,
In the midnight blue of her dewy eye,
As she dropt her gaze with a blush and sigh,
Alas! could lie
Such cruelty?
Or who could deem
That beauty’s talisman should gleam —
A spell to blast him, not to bless —
From the white brow of the sorceress?
THE HERO DEVOTES HIMSELF
Her little sandalled foot before,
Flushed with the wildering light of beauty,
He kneeled and swore —
, Lady, this moment overpays,
The long eclipse of future days —
’Tis my joy to dare, to die my duty,
If only from my endless night
One lingering star ascends of light
Worthy of thine auroral crown,
And of true love’s forlorn renown.
The story of my adoration,
Like a jewel from the sea
Where I am lost, returned shall be,
A relic and a decoration;
And minstrels mingle, in the Feats of Fame,
My requiem with thy living beauty’s flame.”
With those words Cathair is gone,
And Fionula is alone.
The hero’s hair blew back and showed
His gleaming eyes and forehead broad;
His marble face and haughty head,
In resolve already dead.
On to the altar and the knife.
Like one renunciant of his life,
Who nears the sacrificial goal
Holding in his hand his soul —
On, on he paces, mute, alone,
By mossgrown cairn and druid stone,
Broad fields of corn and sloping meadow,
And level light and lengthening shadow,
By purpling hills and yellow woods,
And blazonry of western clouds
That o’er pale green and amber sky,
Weltering in cold and crimson, lie.
Bathed in the evening’s spirit tender,
A brown bird sitting on a spray
Whistles its happy soul away,
And thrills with life the silent splendour.
The glorious moment wanes and dies,
And Night rides up the Eastern skies —
Line behind line, and hand in hand,
In sable cloaked, the aerial band,
From pole to pole, ascending far,
In every helm a blinking star;
While their voiceless march before
Like dust the white mist rises hoar.
So darkness and the dew and hush
Of night came down on slope and bush,
And every glen and blue ravine
Was filmed with smoky haze
And autumn’s glow and russet green
Grew blurred and waste before the gaze
Of Cathair as he went by,
And beetling mountain, stark and high,
And fringe of hedgerow ‘gainst the sky,
And wild flowers ‘neath his foot that lay,
Together melted into gray,
Together in gloom were lost.
As through the Lisses three he crossed,
He knows that unseen shapes are near,
And tittered words are in his ear,
Now here and now there,
Faint harping and singing
And fairy spurs ringing,
And the whirr of their coursers’ shrill tremble in air,
And hovering glee and hovering pain
Their fearful burthen o’er his brain,
Their dreadful fancies shedding;
As swiftly o’er the throbbing sward,
Through haunted vapours treading,
He sees loom black before his tranced regard
Morrua’s forest, nobly wild,
Afar in billowy verdure piled.
THE SONG OF THE SPIRITS
Far behind him crept blackness and flickering glimmer,
To the northward, slow mounting, the tempest was rising,
While luridly glaring all earth lay expecting,
Voiceless and breathless, the yell of the t
yrant.
Thus he entered the high, vacant halls of the forest:
No bird in its branches, no antler beneath them,
Nor boom of the beetle, nor bay of the wild dog.
Only, Priestess of Mystery, glides a White Shadow,
On he’r lip her forefinger — and faithful he followed,
Well knowing his fate led him on to the combat,
Well knowing a mandate of silence upon him.
The trunks of the great trees like time-furrowed castles, —
Gray glimmered through darkness impassive and awful,
Broad at base and at battlement broader the oak boles.
And a canopy dusky, snake-twisted, of branches,
Like crypts of cathedrals, low-groined and broadpillared,
Stretched mazily this way and that in perspective.
As sweet the evening glories faded
O’er Fionula’s bower,
A lone sad voice the maid upbraided,
Charming the twilight hour.
With parted lips and hand to ear
She hearkened to the melody
So wildly and so faintly clear,
At the open casement dreamily.
The lonely splendour of a star
Lay trembling in her virgin tear;
And with the music, nigh or far,
There fell upon her heart a fear;
Swift round her ivory throat she drew
The cloak that doth in crimson fold her —
Swift round her shoulder, veined with blue,
And polished as a statue’s shoulder;
Then snapped the jewel in her cloak,
Still through the casement wildly gazing,
Like one whom spirit-songs have woke
From earthly sleep to sights amazing.
The Princess to the postern hied,
Upon her throat the jewel’s spark;
Her hand her pearly ear beside,