planets; whose meek handmaiden is the moon, whose mediate sovereign
is the sun; whose life is eternity, whose thought is that of a God;
whose enjoyment is knowledge; whose destinies are lost in immensity,
whose cognizance of ourselves is akin with our own cognizance of the
animalculae which infest the brain -- a being which we, in
consequence, regard as purely inanimate and material much in the same
manner as these animalculae must thus regard us.
Our telescopes and our mathematical investigations assure us on every
hand -- notwithstanding the cant of the more ignorant of the
priesthood -- that space, and therefore that bulk, is an important
consideration in the eyes of the Almighty. The cycles in which the
stars move are those best adapted for the evolution, without
collision, of the greatest possible number of bodies. The forms of
those bodies are accurately such as, within a given surface, to
include the greatest possible amount of matter; -- while the surfaces
themselves are so disposed as to accommodate a denser population than
could be accommodated on the same surfaces otherwise arranged. Nor is
it any argument against bulk being an object with God, that space
itself is infinite; for there may be an infinity of matter to fill
it. And since we see clearly that the endowment of matter with
vitality is a principle -- indeed, as far as our judgments extend,
the leading principle in the operations of Deity, -- it is scarcely
logical to imagine it confined to the regions of the minute, where we
daily trace it, and not extending to those of the august. As we find
cycle within cycle without end, -- yet all revolving around one
far-distant centre which is the God-head, may we not analogically
suppose in the same manner, life within life, the less within the
greater, and all within the Spirit Divine? In short, we are madly
erring, through self-esteem, in believing man, in either his temporal
or future destinies, to be of more moment in the universe than that
vast "clod of the valley" which he tills and contemns, and to which
he denies a soul for no more profound reason than that he does not
behold it in operation. {*2}
These fancies, and such as these, have always given to my meditations
among the mountains and the forests, by the rivers and the ocean, a
tinge of what the everyday world would not fail to term fantastic. My
wanderings amid such scenes have been many, and far-searching, and
often solitary; and the interest with which I have strayed through
many a dim, deep valley, or gazed into the reflected Heaven of many a
bright lake, has been an interest greatly deepened by the thought
that I have strayed and gazed alone. What flippant Frenchman was it
who said in allusion to the well-known work of Zimmerman, that, "la
solitude est une belle chose; mais il faut quelqu'un pour vous dire
que la solitude est une belle chose?" The epigram cannot be
gainsayed; but the necessity is a thing that does not exist.
It was during one of my lonely journeyings, amid a far distant region
of mountain locked within mountain, and sad rivers and melancholy
tarn writhing or sleeping within all -- that I chanced upon a certain
rivulet and island. I came upon them suddenly in the leafy June, and
threw myself upon the turf, beneath the branches of an unknown
odorous shrub, that I might doze as I contemplated the scene. I felt
that thus only should I look upon it -- such was the character of
phantasm which it wore.
On all sides -- save to the west, where the sun was about sinking --
arose the verdant walls of the forest. The little river which turned
sharply in its course, and was thus immediately lost to sight, seemed
to have no exit from its prison, but to be absorbed by the deep green
foliage of the trees to the east -- while in the opposite quarter (so
it appeared to me as I lay at length and glanced upward) there poured
down noiselessly and continuously into the valley, a rich golden and
crimson waterfall from the sunset fountains of the sky.
About midway in the short vista which my dreamy vision took in, one
small circular island, profusely verdured, reposed upon the bosom of
the stream.
So blended bank and shadow there
That each seemed pendulous in air -- so mirror-like was the glassy
water, that it was scarcely possible to say at what point upon the
slope of the emerald turf its crystal dominion began.
My position enabled me to include in a single view both the eastern
and western extremities of the islet; and I observed a
singularly-marked difference in their aspects. The latter was all one
radiant harem of garden beauties. It glowed and blushed beneath the
eyes of the slant sunlight, and fairly laughed with flowers. The
grass was short, springy, sweet-scented, and Asphodel-interspersed.
The trees were lithe, mirthful, erect -- bright, slender, and
graceful, -- of eastern figure and foliage, with bark smooth, glossy,
and parti-colored. There seemed a deep sense of life and joy about
all; and although no airs blew from out the heavens, yet every thing
had motion through the gentle sweepings to and fro of innumerable
butterflies, that might have been mistaken for tulips with wings.
{*4}
The other or eastern end of the isle was whelmed in the blackest
shade. A sombre, yet beautiful and peaceful gloom here pervaded all
things. The trees were dark in color, and mournful in form and
attitude, wreathing themselves into sad, solemn, and spectral shapes
that conveyed ideas of mortal sorrow and untimely death. The grass
wore the deep tint of the cypress, and the heads of its blades hung
droopingly, and hither and thither among it were many small unsightly
hillocks, low and narrow, and not very long, that had the aspect of
graves, but were not; although over and all about them the rue and
the rosemary clambered. The shade of the trees fell heavily upon the
water, and seemed to bury itself therein, impregnating the depths of
the element with darkness. I fancied that each shadow, as the sun
descended lower and lower, separated itself sullenly from the trunk
that gave it birth, and thus became absorbed by the stream; while
other shadows issued momently from the trees, taking the place of
their predecessors thus entombed.
This idea, having once seized upon my fancy, greatly excited it, and
I lost myself forthwith in revery. "If ever island were enchanted,"
said I to myself, "this is it. This is the haunt of the few gentle
Fays who remain from the wreck of the race. Are these green tombs
theirs? -- or do they yield up their sweet lives as mankind yield up
their own? In dying, do they not rather waste away mournfully,
rendering unto God, little by little, their existence, as these trees
render up shadow after shadow, exhausting their substance unto
dissolution? What the wasting tree is to the water that imbibes its
shade, growing thus blacker by what it preys upon, may not the life
of the Fay be to the death which engulfs it?"
As
I thus mused, with half-shut eyes, while the sun sank rapidly to
rest, and eddying currents careered round and round the island,
bearing upon their bosom large, dazzling, white flakes of the bark of
the sycamore-flakes which, in their multiform positions upon the
water, a quick imagination might have converted into any thing it
pleased, while I thus mused, it appeared to me that the form of one
of those very Fays about whom I had been pondering made its way
slowly into the darkness from out the light at the western end of the
island. She stood erect in a singularly fragile canoe, and urged it
with the mere phantom of an oar. While within the influence of the
lingering sunbeams, her attitude seemed indicative of joy -- but
sorrow deformed it as she passed within the shade. Slowly she glided
along, and at length rounded the islet and re-entered the region of
light. "The revolution which has just been made by the Fay,"
continued I, musingly, "is the cycle of the brief year of her life.
She has floated through her winter and through her summer. She is a
year nearer unto Death; for I did not fail to see that, as she came
into the shade, her shadow fell from her, and was swallowed up in the
dark water, making its blackness more black."
And again the boat appeared and the Fay, but about the attitude of
the latter there was more of care and uncertainty and less of elastic
joy. She floated again from out the light and into the gloom (which
deepened momently) and again her shadow fell from her into the ebony
water, and became absorbed into its blackness. And again and again
she made the circuit of the island, (while the sun rushed down to his
slumbers), and at each issuing into the light there was more sorrow
about her person, while it grew feebler and far fainter and more
indistinct, and at each passage into the gloom there fell from her a
darker shade, which became whelmed in a shadow more black. But at
length when the sun had utterly departed, the Fay, now the mere ghost
of her former self, went disconsolately with her boat into the region
of the ebony flood, and that she issued thence at all I cannot say,
for darkness fell over an things and I beheld her magical figure no
more.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
======
THE ASSIGNATION
Stay for me there ! I will not fail.
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
[_Exequy on the death of his wife, by Henry King, Bishop of
Chichester_.]
ILL-FATED and mysterious man ! - bewildered in the brilliancy of
thine own imagination, and fallen in the flames of thine own youth !
Again in fancy I behold thee ! Once more thy form hath risen before
me ! - not - oh not as thou art - in the cold valley and shadow -
but as thou _shouldst be_ - squandering away a life of magnificent
meditation in that city of dim visions, thine own Venice - which is a
star-beloved Elysium of the sea, and the wide windows of whose
Palladian palaces look down with a deep and bitter meaning upon the
secrets of her silent waters. Yes ! I repeat it - as thou _shouldst
be_. There are surely other worlds than this - other thoughts than
the thoughts of the multitude - other speculations than the
speculations of the sophist. Who then shall call thy conduct into
question ? who blame thee for thy visionary hours, or denounce
those occupations as a wasting away of life, which were but the
overflowings of thine everlasting energies ?
It was at Venice, beneath the covered archway there called the
_Ponte di Sospiri_, that I met for the third or fourth time the
person of whom I speak. It is with a confused recollection that I
bring to mind the circumstances of that meeting. Yet I remember - ah
! how should I forget ? - the deep midnight, the Bridge of Sighs,
the beauty of woman, and the Genius of Romance that stalked up and
down the narrow canal.
It was a night of unusual gloom. The great clock of the Piazza
had sounded the fifth hour of the Italian evening. The square of the
Campanile lay silent and deserted, and the lights in the old Ducal
Palace were dying fast away. I was returning home from the Piazetta,
by way of the Grand Canal. But as my gondola arrived opposite the
mouth of the canal San Marco, a female voice from its recesses broke
suddenly upon the night, in one wild, hysterical, and long continued
shriek. Startled at the sound, I sprang upon my feet : while the
gondolier, letting slip his single oar, lost it in the pitchy
darkness beyond a chance of recovery, and we were consequently left
to the guidance of the current which here sets from the greater into
the smaller channel. Like some huge and sable-feathered condor, we
were slowly drifting down towards the Bridge of Sighs, when a
thousand flambeaux flashing from the windows, and down the staircases
of the Ducal Palace, turned all at once that deep gloom into a livid
and preternatural day.
A child, slipping from the arms of its own mother, had fallen from
an upper window of the lofty structure into the deep and dim canal.
The quiet waters had closed placidly over their victim ; and,
although my own gondola was the only one in sight, many a stout
swimmer, already in the stream, was seeking in vain upon the surface,
the treasure which was to be found, alas ! only within the abyss.
Upon the broad black marble flagstones at the entrance of the palace,
and a few steps above the water, stood a figure which none who then
saw can have ever since forgotten. It was the Marchesa Aphrodite -
the adoration of all Venice - the gayest of the gay - the most lovely
where all were beautiful - but still the young wife of the old and
intriguing Mentoni, and the mother of that fair child, her first and
only one, who now, deep beneath the murky water, was thinking in
bitterness of heart upon her sweet caresses, and exhausting its
little life in struggles to call upon her name.
She stood alone. Her small, bare, and silvery feet gleamed in the
black mirror of marble beneath her. Her hair, not as yet more than
half loosened for the night from its ball-room array, clustered, amid
a shower of diamonds, round and round her classical head, in curls
like those of the young hyacinth. A snowy-white and gauze-like
drapery seemed to be nearly the sole covering to her delicate form ;
Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe Page 56