Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock
Page 136
Lone Echo from her tangled brake,
On Pan, or Sylvan Genius, calling,
Naiad or Nymph, in suppliant song:
No more by living fountain, falling
The poplar’s circling bower among,
Where pious hands have carved of yore
Bude bason for its lucid store
And reared the grassy altar nigh,
The traveller, when the sun rides high,
For cool refreshment lingering there,
Pours to the Sister Nymphs his prayer.
Yet still the green vales smile: the springs
Gush forth in light: the forest weaves
Its own wild bowers; the breeze’s wings
Make music in their rustling leaves;
But ’tis no spirit’s breath that sighs
Among their tangled canopies:
In ocean’s caves no Nereid dwells:
No Oread walks the mountain-dells:
The streams no sedge-crowned Genii roll
Prom bounteous urn: great Pan is dead:
The life, the intellectual soul
Of vale, and grove, and stream, has fled
For ever with the creed sublime
That nursed the Muse of earlier time.
The broad moon rose o’er Thespia’s walls,
And on the light wind’s swells and falls
Came to Anthemion’s ear the sounds
Of dance, and song, and festal pleasure,
As slowly tow’rds the city’s bounds
He turned, his backward steps to measure.
But with such sounds his heart confessed
No sympathy: his mind was pressed
With thoughts too heavy to endure
The contrast of a scene so gay;
And from the walls he turned away,
To where, in distant moonlight pure,
Mount Helicon’s conspicuous height
Bose in the dark-blue vault of night.
Along the solitary road
Alone he went; for who but he
On that fair night would absent be
Prom Thespia’s joyous revelry?
The sounds that on the soft air flowed
By slow degrees in distance died:
And now he climbed the rock’s steep side.
Where frowned o’er sterile regions wide
Neptunian Ascra’s ruined tower:
Memorial of gigantic power:
But thoughts more dear and more refined
Awakening, in the pensive mind,
Of him, the Muses’ gentlest son,
The shepherd-hard of Helicon,
Whose song, to peace and wisdom dear,
The Aonian Dryads loved to hear.
By Aganippe’s fountain-wave
Anthemion passed: the moonbeams fell
Pale on the darkness of the cave,
Within whose mossy rock-hewn cell
The sculptured form of Linus stood,
Primæval bard. The Nymphs for him
Through every spring, and mountain flood,
Green vale, and twilight woodland dim,
Long wept: all living nature wept
For Linus; when, in minstrel strife,
Apollo’s wrath from love and life
The child of music swept.
The Muses’ grove is nigh. He treads
Its sacred precincts. O’er him spreads
The palm’s aërial canopy,
That, nurtured by perennial springs,
Around its summit broad and high
Its light and branchy foliage flings,
Arching in graceful symmetry.
Among the tall stems jagg’d and bare
Luxuriant laurel interweaves
An undershade of myriad leaves,
Here black in rayless masses, there
In partial moonlight glittering fair;
And wheresoe’er the barren rock
Peers through the grassy soil, its roots
The sweet andrachne strikes, to mock
Sterility, and profusely shoots
Its light boughs, rich with ripening fruits.
The moonbeams, through the chequering shade,
Upon the silent temple played,
The Muses’ fane. The nightingale,
Those consecrated bowers among,
Poured on the air a warbled tale,
So sweet, that scarcely from her nest,
Where Orpheus’ hallowed relics rest,
She breathes a sweeter song.
A scene, whose power the maniac sense
Of passion’s wildest mood might own!
Anthemion felt its influence:
His fancy drank the soothing tone
Of all that tranquil loveliness;
And health and bloom returned to bless
His dear Calliroë, and the groves
And rocks where pastoral Ladon roves
Bore record of their blissful loves.
List! there is music on the wind!
Sweet music! seldom mortal ear
On sounds so tender, so refined,
Has dwelt. Perchance some Muse is near,
Buterpe, or Polymnia bright,
Or Erato, whose gentle lyre
Responds to love and young desire!
It is the central hour of night:
The time is holy, lone, severe,
And mortals may not linger here!
Still on the air those wild notes fling
Their airy spells of voice and string,
In sweet accordance, sweeter made
By response soft from caverned shade.
He turns to where a lovely glade
Sleeps in the open moonlight’s smile,
A natural fane, whose ample bound
The palm’s columnar stems surround,
A wild and stately peristyle;
Save where their interrupted ring
Bends on the consecrated cave,
From whose dark arch, with tuneful wave,
Libethrus issues, sacred spring.
Beside its gentle murmuring,
A maiden, on a mossy stone,
Full in the moonlight, sits alone:
Her eyes, with humid radiance bright,
As if a tear had dimmed their light,
Are fixed upon the moon; her hair
Flows long and loose in the light soft air;
A golden lyre her white hands bear;
Its chords, beneath her fingers fleet,
To such wild symphonies awake,
Her sweet lips breathe a song so sweet,
That the echoes of the cave repeat
Its closes with as soft a sigh,
As if they almost feared to break
The magic of its harmony.
Oh! there was passion in the sound,
Intensest passion, strange and deep;
Wild breathings of a soul, around
Whose every pulse one hope had bound,
One burning hope, which might not sleep.
But hark! that wild and solemn swell!
And was there in those tones a spell,
Which none may disobey
For lo!
Anthemion from the sylvan shade
Moves with reluctant steps and slow,
And in the lonely moonlight glade
He stands before the radiant maid.
She ceased her song, and with a smile
She welcomed him, but nothing said:
And silently he stood the while, —
And tow’rds the ground he drooped his head,
As if he shrunk beneath the light
Of those dark eyes so dazzling bright.
At length she spoke:—” The flower was fair
I bade thee till its fading wear:
And didst thou scorn the boon,
Or died the flower so soon?” —
— “It did not fade,
Oh radiant maid!
But Thespia’s rites its use forbade,
&n
bsp; To Love’s vindictive power profane:
If soothly spoke the reverend seer,
Whose voice rebuked, with words severe,
Its beauty’s secret bane.” —
— “The world, oh youth! deems many wise,
Who dream at noon with waking eyes,
While spectral fancy round them flings
Phantoms of unexisting things;
Whose truth is lies, whose paths are error,
Whose gods are fiends, whose heaven is terror;
And such a slave has been with thee,
And thou, in thy simplicity,
Hast deemed his idle sayings truth.
The flower I gave thee, thankless youth! —
The harmless flower thy hand rejected,
Was fair: my native river sees
Its verdure and its bloom reflected
Wave in the eddies and the breeze.
My mother felt its beauty’s claim,
And gave, in sportive fondness wild,
Its name to me, her only child.” —
— “Then RHODODAPHNE is thy name?” —
Amthemion said: the maiden bent
Her head in token of assent.
— “Say once again, if sooth I deem,
Penëus is thy native stream?” —
— “Down Pindus’ steep Penëus fells,
And swift and clear through hill and dale
It flows, and by Larissa’s walls,
And through wild Tempe, loveliest vale;
And on its banks the cypress gloom
Waves round my father’s lonely tomb.
My mother’s only child am I:
‘Mid Tempe’s sylvan rocks we dwell;
And from my earliest infancy,
The darling of our cottage-dell
For its bright leaves and clusters fair,
My namesake flower has bound my hair.
With costly gift and flattering song,
Youths, rich and valiant, sought my love.
They moved me not. I shunned the throng
Of suitors, for the mountain-grove
Where Sylvan Gods and Oreads rove.
The Muses, whom I worship here,
Had breathed their influence on my being,
Keeping my youthful spirit clear
From all corrupting thoughts, and freeing
My footsteps from the crowd, to tread
Beside the torrent’s echoing bed,
‘Mid wind-tost pines, on steeps aerial,
Where elemental Genii throw
Effluence of natures more ethereal
Than vulgar minds can feel or know.
Oft on those steeps, at earliest dawn,
The world in mist beneath me lay,
Whose vapoury curtains, half withdrawn,
Revealed the flow of Thermal bay,
Red with the nascent light of day;
Till full from Athos’ distant height
The sun poured down his golden beams
Scattering the mists like morning dreams,
And rocks and lakes and isles and streams
Burst, like creation, into light.
In noontide bowers the bubbling springs,
In evening vales the winds that sigh
To eddying rivers murmuring by,
Have heard to these symphonious strings
The rocks and caverned glens reply.
Spirits that love the moonlight hour
Have met me on the shadowy hill:
Dream’st thou of Magic? of the power
That makes the blood of life run chill,
And shakes the world with daemon skill?
Beauty is Magic; grace and song;
Fair form, light motion, airy sound:
Frail webs! and yet a chain more strong
They weave the strongest hearts around,
Than e’er Abides’ arm unbound:
And such a chain I weave round thee,
Though but with mortal witchery.” —
His eyes and ears had drank the charm.
The damsel rose, and on his arm
She laid her hand. Through all his frame
The soft touch thrilled like liquid flame; —
But on his mind Calliroë came
All pale and sad, her sweet eyes dim
With tears which for herself and him
Fell: by that modest image mild
Recalled, inspired, Anthemion strove
Against the charm that now beguiled
His sense, and cried, in accents wild,
— “Oh maid! I have another love!” —
But still she held his arm, and spoke
Again in accents thrilling sweet:
— “In Tempe’s vale a lonely oak
Has felt the storms of ages beat:
Blasted by the lightning-stroke,
A hollow, leafless, branchless trunk
It stands; but in its giant cell
A mighty sylvan power doth dwell,
An old and holy oracle.
Kneeling by that ancient tree,
I sought the voice of destiny,
And in my ear these accents sunk:
‘Waste not in loneliness thy bloom:
With flowers the Thespian altar dress:
The youth whom Love’s mysterious doom
Assigns to thee, thy sight shall bless
With no ambiguous loveliness;
And thou, amid the joyous scene,
Shalt know him, by his mournful mien,
And by the paleness of his cheek,
And by the sadness of his eye,
And by his withered flowers, and by
The language thy own heart shall speak.’
And I did know thee, youth! and thou
Art mine, and I thy bride must be.
Another love! the gods allow
No other love to thee or me!”
She gathered up her glittering hair,
And round his neck its tresses threw,
And twined her arms of beauty rare
Around him, and the light curls drew
In closer bands: ethereal dew
Of love and young desire was swimming
In her bright eyes, albeit not dimming
Their starry radiance, rather brightning
Their beams with passion’s liquid lightning.
She clasped him to her throbbing breast,
And on his lips her lips she prest,
And cried the while
With joyous smile:
— “These lips are mine; the spells have won them,
Which round and round thy soul I twine;
And be the kiss I print upon them
Poison to all lips but mine!” —
Dizzy awhile Anthemion stood,
With thirst-parched lips and fevered blood,
In those enchanting ringlets twined:
The fane, the cave, the moonlight wood,
The world, and all the world enshrined,
Seemed melting from his troubled mind:
But those last words the thought recalled
Of his Calliroë, and appalled
His mind with many a nameless fear
For her, so good, so mild, so dear.
With sudden start of gentle force
From Rhododaphne’s arms he sprung,
And swifter than the torrent’s course
From rock to rock in tumult flung,
Adown the steeps of Helicon,
By spring, and cave, and tower, he fled,
But turned from Thespia’s walls, and on
Along the rocky way, that led
Tow’rds the Corinthian Isthmus, sped,
Impatient to behold again
His cottage-home by Ladon’s side,
And her, for whose dear sake his brain
Was giddy with foreboding pain,
Fairest of Ladon’s virgin train,
His own long-destined bride.
CANTO IV.
MAGIC and m
ystery, spells Circæan,
The Siren voice, that calmed the sea,
And steeped the soul in dews Lethæan;
The enchanted chalice, sparkling free
With wine, amid whose ruby glow
Love couched, with madness linked and woe;
Mantle and zone, whose woof beneath
Lurked wily grace, in subtle wreath
With blandishment and young desire
And soft persuasion intertwined,
Whose touch, with sympathetic fire,
Could melt at once the sternest mind;
Have passed away: for vestal Truth
Young Fancy’s foe, and Reason chill,
Have chased the dreams that charmed the youth
Of nature and the world, which still,
Amid that vestal light severe,
Our colder spirits leap to hear
Like echoes from a fairy hill.
Yet deem not so. The Power of Spells
Still lingers on the earth, but dwells
In deeper folds of close disguise,
That baffle Reason’s searching eyes:
Nor shall that mystic Power resign
To Truth’s cold sway his webs of guile,
Till woman’s eyes have ceased to shine,
And woman’s lips have ceased to smile,
And woman’s voice has ceased to be
The earthly soul of melody.
A night and day had passed away:
A second night. A second day
Had risen. The noon on vale and hill
Was glowing, and the pensive herds
In rocky pool and sylvan rill
The shadowy coolness sought. The birds
Among their leafy bowers were still,
Save where the red-breast on the pine,
In thickest ivy’s sheltering nest,
Attuned a lonely song divine,
To soothe old Pan’s meridian rest.
The stream’s eternal eddies played
In light and music; on its edge
The soft light air scarce moved the sedge:
The bees a pleasant murmuring made
On thymy bank and flowery hedge:
From field to field the grasshopper
Kept up his joyous descant shrill;
When once again the wanderer,
With arduous travel faint and pale,
Beheld his own Arcadian vale.
From Oryx, down the sylvan way,
With hurried pace the youth proceeds.
Sweet Ladon’s waves beside him stray
In dear companionship: the reeds
Seem, whispering on the margin clear,
The doom of Syrinx to rehearse,
Ladonian Syrinx, name most dear
To music and Mænalian verse.
It is the Aphrodisian grove.
Anthemion’s home is near. He sees
The light smoke rising from the trees
That shade the dwelling of his love.
Sad bodings, shadowy fears of ill,
Pressed heavier on him, in wild strife
With many-wandering hope, that still
Leaves on the darkest clouds of life