Some vestige of her radiant way:
But soon those torturing struggles end;
For where the poplar silver-gray
And dark associate cedar blend
Their hospitable shade, before
One human dwelling’s well-known door,
Old Pheidon sits, and by his side
His only child, his age’s pride,
Herself, Anthemion’s destined bride.
She hears his coming tread. She flies
To meet him. Health is on her cheeks,
And pleasure sparkles in her eyes,
And their soft light a welcome speaks
More eloquent than words. Oh, joy!
The maid he left so fast consuming,
Whom death, impatient to destroy,
Had marked his prey, now rosy-blooming,
And beaming like the morning star
With loveliness and love, has flown
To welcome him: his cares fly far,
Like clouds when storms are overblown;
For where such perfect transports reign
Even memory has no place for pain.
The poet’s task were passing sweet,
If, when he tells how lovers meet,
One half the flow of joy, that flings
Its magic on that blissful hour,
Could touch, with sympathetic power,
His lyre’s accordant strings.
It may not be. The lyre is mute,
When venturous minstrelsy would suit
Its numbers to so dear a theme:
But many a gentle maid, I deem,
Whose heart has known and felt the like,
Can hear, in fancy’s kinder dream,
The chords I dare not strike.
They spread a banquet in the shade
Of those old trees. The friendly board
Calliroë’s beauteous hands arrayed,
With self-requiting toil, and poured
In fair-carved bowl the sparkling wine.
In order due Anthemion made
Libation, to Olympian Jove,
Arcadian Pan, and Thespian Love,
And Bacchus, giver of the vine.
The generous draught dispelled the sense
Of weariness. His limbs were light:
His heart was free: Love banished thence
All forms but one most dear, most bright:
And ever with insatiate sight
He gazed upon the maid, and listened,
Absorbed in ever new delight
To that dear voice, whose balmy sighing
To his full joy blest response gave,
like music doubly-sweet replying
From twilight echo’s sylvan cave;
And her mild eyes with soft rays glistened,
Imparting and reflecting pleasure;
For this is Love’s terrestrial treasure,
That in participation lives,
And evermore, the more it gives,
Itself abounds in fuller measure.
Old Pheidon felt his heart expand
With joy that from their joy had birth,
And said: “Anthemion! Love’s own hand
Is here, and mighty on the earth
Is he, the primogenial power,
Whose sacred grove and antique fane
Thy prompted footsteps, not in vain,
Have sought; for, on the day and hour
Of his incipient rite, most strange
And sudden was Calliroë’s change.
The sickness under which she bowed,
Swiftly, as though it ne’er had been,
Passed, like the shadow of a cloud
From. April’s hills of green.
And bliss once more is yours: and mine
In seeing yours, and more than this;
For ever, in our children’s bliss,
The sun of our past youth doth shine
Upon our age anew. Divine
No less than our own Pan must be
To us Love’s bounteous deity;
And round our old and hallowed pine
The myrtle and the rose must twine,
Memorial of the Thespian shrine.” —
’Twas strange indeed, Anthemion thought,
That, in the hour when omens dread
Most tortured him, such change was wrought;
But love and hope their lustre shed
On all his visions now, and led
His memory from the mystic train
Of fears which that strange damsel wove
Around him in the Thespian fane
And in the Heliconian grove.
Eve came, and twilight’s balmy hour:
Alone, beneath the cedar bower,
The lovers sate, in converse dear
Betracing many a backward year,
Their infant sports in field and grove,
Their mutual tasks, their dawning love,
Their mingled tears of past distress,
Now all absorbed in happiness;
And oft would Fancy intervene
To throw, on many a pictured scene
Of life’s untrodden path, such gleams
Of golden light, such blissful dreams,
As in young Love’s enraptured eye
Hope almost made reality.
So in that dear accustomed shade,
With Ladon flowing at their feet,
Together sate the youth and maid,
In that uncertain shadowy light
When day and darkness mingling meet.
Her bright eyes ne’er had seemed so bright,
Her sweet voice ne’er had seemed so sweet,
As then they seemed. Upon his neck
Her head was resting, and her eyes
Were raised to his, for no disguise
Her feelings knew; untaught to check,
As in these days more worldly wise,
The heart’s best purest sympathies.
Fond youth! her lips are near to thine:
The ringlets of her temples twine
Against thy cheek: oh! more or less
Than mortal wert thou not to press
Those ruby lips! Or does it dwell
Upon thy mind, that fervid spell
Which Rhododaphne breathed upon
Thy lips ere while in Helicon?
Ah! pause, rash boy! bethink thee yet:
And canst thou then the charm forget?
Or dost thou scorn its import vain
As vision of a fevered brain?
Oh! he has kissed Calliroë’s lips!
And with the touch the maid grew pale,
And sudden shade of strange eclipse
Drew o’er her eyes its dusky veil.
As droops the meadow-pink its head,
By the rude scythe in summer’s prime
Cleft from its parent stem, and spread
On earth to wither ere its time,
Even so the flower of Ladon faded,
Swifter than, when the sun had shaded
In the young storm his setting ray,
The western radiance dies away.
He pressed her heart: no pulse was there.
Before her lips his hand he placed:
No breath was in them. Wild despair.
Came on him, as, with sudden waste,
When snows dissolve in vernal rain,
The mountain-torrent on the plain
Descends; and with that fearful swell
Of passionate grief, the midnight spell
Of the Thessalian maid recurred,
Distinct in every fatal word:
— “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!” —
— “Oh, thou art dead, my love!” — he cried —
“Art dead, and I have murdered thee!” —
He started up in agony.
The be
auteous maiden from his side
Sunk down on earth. Like one who slept
She lay, still, cold, and pale of hue;
And her long hair all loosely swept
The thin grass, wet with evening dew.
He could not weep; but anguish burned
Within him like consuming flame.
He shrieked: the distant rocks returned
The voice of woe. Old Pheidon came
In terror forth: he saw; and wild
With misery fell upon his child,
And cried aloud, and rent his hair.
Stung by the voice of his despair,
And by the intolerable thought
That he, how innocent soe’er,
Had all this grief and ruin wrought,
And urged perchance by secret might
Of magic spells, that drew their chain
More closely round his phrenzied brain,
Beneath the swiftly-closing night
Anthemion sprang away, and fled
O’er plain and steep, with frantic tread,
As Passion’s aimless impulse led.
CANTO V.
THOUGH Pity’s self has made thy breast
Its earthly shrine, oh gentle maid!
Shed not thy tears, where Love’s last rest
Is sweet beneath the cypress shade;
Whence never voice of tyrant power,
Nor trumpet-blast from rending skies,
Nor winds that howl, nor storms that lower,
Shall bid the sleeping sufferer rise.
But mourn for them, who live to keep
Sad strife with fortune’s tempests rude;
For them, who live to toil and weep
In loveless, joyless solitude;
Whose days consume in hope, that flies
Like clouds of gold that fading float,
Still watched with fondlier lingering eyes
As still more dim and more remote.
Oh? wisely, truly, sadly sung
The bard by old Cephisus’ side,
(While not with sadder, sweeter tongue,
His own loved nightingale replied:)
“Man’s happiest lot is NOT TO BE;
And when we tread life’s thorny steep,
Most blest are they, who, earliest free,
Descend to death’s eternal sleep.” —
Long, wide, and far, the youth has strayed,
Forlorn, and pale, and wild with woe,
And found no rest. His loved, lost maid,
A beauteous, sadly-smiling shade,
Is ever in his thoughts, and slow
Roll on the hopeless, aimless hours.
Sunshine, and grass, and woods, and flowers,
Rivers, and vales, and glittering homes
Of busy men, where’er he roams,
Torment his sense with contrast keen,
Of that which is, and might have been.
The mist that on the mountains high
Its transient wreath light-hovering flings,
The clouds and changes of the sky,
The forms of unsubstantial things,
The voice of the tempestuous gale,
The rain-swoln torrent’s turbid moan,
And every sound that seems to wail
For beauty past and hope o’erthrown,
Attemper with his wild despair;
But scarce his restless eye can bear
The hills, and rocks, and summer streams,
The things that still are what they were
When life and love were more than dreams.
It chanced, along the rugged shore,
Where giant Pelion’s piny steep
O’erlooks the wide Ægean deep,
He shunned the steps of humankind,
Soothed by the multitudinous roar
Of ocean, and the ceaseless shock
Of spray, high-scattering from the rock
In the wail of the many-wandering wind.
A crew, on lawless venture bound,
Such men as roam the seas around,
Hearts to fear and pity strangers,
Seeking gold through crimes and dangers,
Sailing near, the wanderer spied.
Sudden, through the foaming tide,
They drove to land, and on the shore
Springing, they seized the youth, and bore
To their black ship, and spread again
Their sails, and ploughed the billowy main.
Dark Ossa on their watery way
Looks from his robe of mist; and, gray
With many a deep and shadowy fold,
The sacred mount, Olympus old,
Appears: but where with Therma’s sea
Penëus mingles tranquilly,
They anchor with the closing light
Of day, and through the moonless night
Propitious to their lawless toil,
In silent bands they prowl for spoil.
Ere morning dawns, they crowd on board,
And to their vessel’s secret hoard
With many a costly robe they pass,
And vase of silver, gold, and brass.
A young maid too their hands have torn
From her maternal home, to mourn
Afar, to some rude master sold,
The crimes and woes that spring from gold.
— “There sit!” — cried one in rugged tone, —
“Beside that boy. A well-matched pair
Ye seem, and will, I doubt not, bear,
In our good port, a value rare.
There sit, but not to wail and moan:
The lyre, which in those fingers fair
We leave, whose sound through night’s thick shade
To unwished ears thy haunt bewrayed,
Strike: for the lyre, by beauty played,
To glad the hearts of men was made.” —
The damsel by Anthemion’s side
Sate down upon the deck. The tide
Blushed with the deepening light of morn.
A pitying look the youth forlorn
Turned on the maiden. Can it be?
Or does his sense play false? Too well
He knows that radiant form. ’Tis she,
The magic maid of Thessaly,
’Tis Rhododaphne! By the spell,
That ever round him dwelt, opprest,
He bowed his head upon his breast,
And o’er his eyes his hand he drew,
That fatal beauty’s sight to shun.
Now from the orient heaven the sun
Had clothed the eastward waves with fire:
Right from the west the fair breeze blew:
The full sails swelled, and sparkling through
The sounding sea, the vessel flew:
With wine and copious cheer, the crew
Caroused: the damsel o’er the lyre
Her rapid fingers lightly flung,
And thus, with feigned obedience, sung.
— “The Nereid’s home is calm and bright,
The ocean-depths below,
Where liquid streams of emerald light
Through caves of coral flow.
She has a lyre of silver strings
Framed on a pearly shell,
And sweetly to that lyre she sings
The shipwrecked seaman’s knell.
“The ocean-snake in sleep she hinds;
The dolphins round her play:
His purple conch the Triton winds
Responsive to the lay:
Proteus and Phorcys, sea-gods old,
Watch by her choral cell,
To hear, on watery echoes rolled,
The shipwrecked seaman’s knell.”
— “Cease!” cried the chief, in accents rude —
“From songs like these mishap may rise.
Thus far have we our course pursued
With smiling seas and cloudless skies.
From wreck and tempest, omens ill,
Forbear; and
sing, for well I deem
Those pretty lips possess the skilly
Some ancient tale of happier theme;
Some legend of imperial Jove
In uncouth shapes disguised by love;
Or Hercules, and his hard toils;
Or Mercury, friend of craft and spoils;
Or Jove-born Bacchus, whom we prize
O’er all the Olympian deities.” —
He said, and drained the bowl. The crew
With long coarse laugh applauded. Fast
With sparkling keel the vessel flew,
For there was magic in the breeze
That urged her through the sounding seas.
By Chanastræum’s point they past,
Aid Ampelos. Gray Athos, vast
With woods far-stretching to the sea,
Was full before them, while the maid
Again her lyre’s wild strings essayed,
In notes of bolder melody:
“Bacchus by the lonely ocean
Stood in youthful semblance fair:
Summer winds, with gentle motion,
Waved his black and curling hair.
Streaming from his manly shoulders
Robes of gold and purple dye
Told of spoil to fierce beholders
In their black ship sailing by.
On the vessel’s deck they placed him
Strongly bound in triple bands;
But the iron rings that braced him
Melted, wax-like from his hands.
Then the pilot spake in terror:
““Tis a god in mortal form!
Seek the land; repair your error
Ere his wrath invoke the storm.’
“‘Silence!’ cried the frowning master,
‘Mind the helm, the breeze is fair:
Coward! cease to bode disaster:
Leave to men the captive’s care.’
While he speaks, and fiercely tightens
In the full free breeze the sail,
From the deck wine bubbling lightens,
Winy fragrance fills the gale.
Gurgling in ambrosial lustre
Flows the purple-eddying wine:
O’er the yard-arms trail and cluster
Tendrils of the mantling vine:
Grapes, beneath the broad leaves springing,
Blushing as in vintage-hours,
Droop, while round the tall mast clinging
Ivy twines its buds and flowers,
Fast with graceful berries blackening: —
Garlands hang on every oar:
Then in fear the cordage slackening,
One and all, they cry, ‘To shore!’
Bacchus changed his shape, and glaring
With a lion’s eye-balls wide,
Roared: the pirate-crew, despairing,
Plunged amid the foaming tide.
Through the azure depths they flitted
Dolphins by transforming fate:
But the god the pilot pitied,
Saved, and made him rich and great.”
The crew laid by their cups and frowned.
A stem rebuke their leader gave.
Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock Page 137