The Plague, Pestilence & Apocalypse MEGAPACK™

by Robert Reed

  say, that words could not express our long drawn agony; yet how

  can words image sensations, whose tormenting keenness throw us

  back, as it were, on the deep roots and hidden foundations of our na-

  ture, which shake our being with earth-quake-throe, so that we leave

  to confide in accustomed feelings which like mother-earth support

  us, and cling to some vain imagination or deceitful hope, which will

  soon be buried in the ruins occasioned by the final shock. I have

  called that period a fortnight, which we passed watching the changes

  of the sweet child’s malady—and such it might have been—at night,

  we wondered to find another day gone, while each particular hour

  seemed endless . Day and night were exchanged for one another un-

  counted; we slept hardly at all, nor did we even quit his room, except

  when a pang of grief seized us, and we retired from each other for a

  short period to conceal our sobs and tears . We endeavoured in vain

  to abstract Clara from this deplorable scene . She sat, hour after hour,

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  looking at him, now softly arranging his pillow, and, while he had

  power to swallow, administered his drink . At length the moment of

  his death came: the blood paused in its flow —his eyes opened, and

  then closed again: without convulsion or sigh, the frail tenement

  was left vacant of its spiritual inhabitant .

  I have heard that the sight of the dead has confirmed materialists

  in their belief . I ever felt otherwise . Was that my child—that move-

  less decaying inanimation? My child was enraptured by my caress-

  es; his dear voice cloathed with meaning articulations his thoughts,

  otherwise inaccessible; his smile was a ray of the soul, and the same

  soul sat upon its throne in his eyes . I turn from this mockery of what

  he was . Take, O earth, thy debt! freely and for ever I consign to

  thee the garb thou didst afford . But thou, sweet child, amiable and

  beloved boy, either thy spirit has sought a fitter dwelling, or, shrined

  in my heart, thou livest while it lives .

  We placed his remains under a cypress, the upright mountain be-

  ing scooped out to receive them . And then Clara said, “If you wish

  me to live, take me from hence . There is something in this scene of

  transcendent beauty, in these trees, and hills and waves, that for ever

  whisper to me, leave thy cumbrous flesh, and make a part of us. I

  earnestly entreat you to take me away .”

  So on the fifteenth of August we bade adieu to our villa, and the

  embowering shades of this abode of beauty; to calm bay and noisy

  waterfall; to Evelyn’s little grave we bade farewell! and then, with

  heavy hearts, we departed on our pilgrimage towards Rome .

  CHAPTER IX.

  Now—soft awhile—have I arrived so near the end? Yes! it is

  all over now—a step or two over those new made graves, and the

  wearisome way is done . Can I accomplish my task? Can I streak my

  paper with words capacious of the grand conclusion? Arise, black

  Melancholy! quit thy Cimmerian solitude! Bring with thee murky

  fogs from hell, which may drink up the day; bring blight and pestif-

  erous exhalations, which, entering the hollow caverns and breathing

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  places of earth, may fill her stony veins with corruption, so that not

  only herbage may no longer flourish, the trees may rot, and the riv-

  ers run with gall—but the everlasting mountains be decomposed,

  and the mighty deep putrify, and the genial atmosphere which clips

  the globe, lose all powers of generation and sustenance . Do this, sad

  visaged power, while I write, while eyes read these pages .

  And who will read them? Beware, tender offspring of the re-born

  world— beware, fair being, with human heart, yet untamed by care,

  and human brow, yet unploughed by time—beware, lest the cheer-

  ful current of thy blood be checked, thy golden locks turn grey, thy

  sweet dimpling smiles be changed to fixed, harsh wrinkles! Let not

  day look on these lines, lest garish day waste, turn pale, and die .

  Seek a cypress grove, whose moaning boughs will be harmony be-

  fitting; seek some cave, deep embowered in earth’s dark entrails,

  where no light will penetrate, save that which struggles, red and

  flickering, through a single fissure, staining thy page with grimmest

  livery of death .

  There is a painful confusion in my brain, which refuses to delin-

  eate distinctly succeeding events . Sometimes the irradiation of my

  friend’s gentle smile comes before me; and methinks its light spans

  and fills eternity—then, again, I feel the gasping throes—

  We quitted Como, and in compliance with Adrian’s earnest de-

  sire, we took Venice in our way to Rome . There was something to

  the English peculiarly attractive in the idea of this wave-encircled,

  island-enthroned city . Adrian had never seen it . We went down the

  Po and the Brenta in a boat; and, the days proving intolerably hot, we

  rested in the bordering palaces during the day, travelling through the

  night, when darkness made the bordering banks indistinct, and our

  solitude less remarkable; when the wandering moon lit the waves

  that divided before our prow, and the night-wind filled our sails,

  and the murmuring stream, waving trees, and swelling canvass,

  accorded in harmonious strain . Clara, long overcome by excessive

  grief, had to a great degree cast aside her timid, cold reserve, and

  received our attentions with grateful tenderness . While Adrian with

  poetic fervour discoursed of the glorious nations of the dead, of the

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  beauteous earth and the fate of man, she crept near him, drinking in

  his speech with silent pleasure . We banished from our talk, and as

  much as possible from our thoughts, the knowledge of our desola-

  tion . And it would be incredible to an inhabitant of cities, to one

  among a busy throng, to what extent we succeeded . It was as a man

  confined in a dungeon, whose small and grated rift at first renders

  the doubtful light more sensibly obscure, till, the visual orb having

  drunk in the beam, and adapted itself to its scantiness, he finds that

  clear noon inhabits his cell . So we, a simple triad on empty earth,

  were multiplied to each other, till we became all in all . We stood

  like trees, whose roots are loosened by the wind, which support one

  another, leaning and clinging with encreased fervour while the win-

  try storms howl. Thus we floated down the widening stream of the

  Po, sleeping when the cicale sang, awake with the stars . We entered

  the narrower banks of the Brenta, and arrived at the shore of the

  Laguna at sunrise on the sixth of September . The bright orb slowly

  rose from behind its cupolas and towers, and shed its penetrating

  light upon the glassy waters . Wrecks of gondolas, and some few

  uninjured ones, were strewed on the beach at Fusina . We embarked

  in one of these for the widowed daughter of ocean, who, abandoned

  and fallen, sat forlorn on her propping isles, looking towards the

  far
mountains of Greece . We rowed lightly over the Laguna, and

  entered Canale Grande . The tide ebbed sullenly from out the broken

  portals and violated halls of Venice: sea weed and sea monsters were

  left on the blackened marble, while the salt ooze defaced the match-

  less works of art that adorned their walls, and the sea gull flew out

  from the shattered window . In the midst of this appalling ruin of the

  monuments of man’s power, nature asserted her ascendancy, and

  shone more beauteous from the contrast . The radiant waters hardly

  trembled, while the rippling waves made many sided mirrors to the

  sun; the blue immensity, seen beyond Lido, stretched far, unspecked

  by boat, so tranquil, so lovely, that it seemed to invite us to quit the

  land strewn with ruins, and to seek refuge from sorrow and fear on

  its placid extent .

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  We saw the ruins of this hapless city from the height of the tower

  of San Marco, immediately under us, and turned with sickening

  hearts to the sea, which, though it be a grave, rears no monument,

  discloses no ruin . Evening had come apace . The sun set in calm

  majesty behind the misty summits of the Apennines, and its gold-

  en and roseate hues painted the mountains of the opposite shore .

  “That land,” said Adrian, “tinged with the last glories of the day, is

  Greece .” Greece! The sound had a responsive chord in the bosom of

  Clara . She vehemently reminded us that we had promised to take her

  once again to Greece, to the tomb of her parents . Why go to Rome?

  what should we do at Rome? We might take one of the many vessels

  to be found here, embark in it, and steer right for Albania .

  I objected the dangers of ocean, and the distance of the moun-

  tains we saw, from Athens; a distance which, from the savage

  uncultivation of the country, was almost impassable . Adrian, who

  was delighted with Clara’s proposal, obviated these objections .

  The season was favourable; the north-west that blew would take

  us transversely across the gulph; and then we might find, in some

  abandoned port, a light Greek caique, adapted for such navigation,

  and run down the coast of the Morea, and, passing over the Isthmus

  of Corinth, without much land-travelling or fatigue, find ourselves

  at Athens . This appeared to me wild talk; but the sea, glowing with

  a thousand purple hues, looked so brilliant and safe; my beloved

  companions were so earnest, so determined, that, when Adrian said,

  “Well, though it is not exactly what you wish, yet consent, to please

  me”—I could no longer refuse . That evening we selected a vessel,

  whose size just seemed fitted for our enterprize; we bent the sails

  and put the rigging in order, and reposing that night in one of the

  city’s thousand palaces, agreed to embark at sunrise the following

  morning .

  When winds that move not its calm surface, sweep

  The azure sea, I love the land no more;

  The smiles of the serene and tranquil deep

  Tempt my unquiet mind—

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  Thus said Adrian, quoting a translation of Moschus’s poem, as in

  the clear morning light, we rowed over the Laguna, past Lido, into

  the open sea—I would have added in continuation,

  But when the roar

  Of ocean’s gray abyss resounds, and foam

  Gathers upon the sea, and vast waves burst—

  But my friends declared that such verses were evil augury;

  so in cheerful mood we left the shallow waters, and, when out at

  sea, unfurled our sails to catch the favourable breeze . The laugh-

  ing morning air filled them, while sun-light bathed earth, sky and

  ocean—the placid waves divided to receive our keel, and playfully

  kissed the dark sides of our little skiff, murmuring a welcome; as

  land receded, still the blue expanse, most waveless, twin sister to the

  azure empyrean, afforded smooth conduct to our bark . As the air and

  waters were tranquil and balmy, so were our minds steeped in quiet .

  In comparison with the unstained deep, funereal earth appeared a

  grave, its high rocks and stately mountains were but monuments, its

  trees the plumes of a herse, the brooks and rivers brackish with tears

  for departed man. Farewell to desolate towns —to fields with their

  savage intermixture of corn and weeds—to ever multiplying relics

  of our lost species . Ocean, we commit ourselves to thee —even as

  the patriarch of old floated above the drowned world, let us be saved,

  as thus we betake ourselves to thy perennial flood.

  Adrian sat at the helm; I attended to the rigging, the breeze right

  aft filled our swelling canvas, and we ran before it over the untrou-

  bled deep . The wind died away at noon; its idle breath just permitted

  us to hold our course . As lazy, fair-weather sailors, careless of the

  coming hour, we talked gaily of our coasting voyage, of our arrival at

  Athens . We would make our home of one of the Cyclades, and there

  in myrtle-groves, amidst perpetual spring, fanned by the wholesome

  sea-breezes—we would live long years in beatific union—Was there

  such a thing as death in the world?—

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  The sun passed its zenith, and lingered down the stainless floor of

  heaven . Lying in the boat, my face turned up to the sky, I thought I

  saw on its blue white, marbled streaks, so slight, so immaterial, that

  now I said— They are there—and now, It is a mere imagination . A

  sudden fear stung me while I gazed; and, starting up, and running

  to the prow,—as I stood, my hair was gently lifted on my brow—a

  dark line of ripples appeared to the east, gaining rapidly on us—my

  breathless remark to Adrian, was followed by the flapping of the

  canvas, as the adverse wind struck it, and our boat lurched—swift

  as speech, the web of the storm thickened over head, the sun went

  down red, the dark sea was strewed with foam, and our skiff rose

  and fell in its encreasing furrows .

  Behold us now in our frail tenement, hemmed in by hungry,

  roaring waves, buffeted by winds . In the inky east two vast clouds,

  sailing contrary ways, met; the lightning leapt forth, and the hoarse

  thunder muttered . Again in the south, the clouds replied, and the

  forked stream of fire running along the black sky, shewed us the

  appalling piles of clouds, now met and obliterated by the heaving

  waves . Great God! And we alone—we three— alone—alone—sole

  dwellers on the sea and on the earth, we three must perish! The vast

  universe, its myriad worlds, and the plains of boundless earth which

  we had left—the extent of shoreless sea around—contracted to my

  view—they and all that they contained, shrunk up to one point, even

  to our tossing bark, freighted with glorious humanity .

  A convulsion of despair crossed the love-beaming face of Adrian,

  while with set teeth he murmured, “Yet they shall be saved!” Clara,

  visited by an human pang, pale and trembling, crept near him—he

  looked on her with an encouraging smile—“Do you fear, sweet girl?

&
nbsp; O, do not fear, we shall soon be on shore!”

  The darkness prevented me from seeing the changes of her coun-

  tenance; but her voice was clear and sweet, as she replied, “Why

  should I fear? neither sea nor storm can harm us, if mighty destiny

  or the ruler of destiny does not permit . And then the stinging fear of

  surviving either of you, is not here—one death will clasp us undi-

  vided .”

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  Meanwhile we took in all our sails, save a gib; and, as soon as

  we might without danger, changed our course, running with the

  wind for the Italian shore . Dark night mixed everything; we hardly

  discerned the white crests of the murderous surges, except when

  lightning made brief noon, and drank the darkness, shewing us our

  danger, and restoring us to double night . We were all silent, except

  when Adrian, as steersman, made an encouraging observation . Our

  little shell obeyed the rudder miraculously well, and ran along on the

  top of the waves, as if she had been an offspring of the sea, and the

  angry mother sheltered her endangered child .

  I sat at the prow, watching our course; when suddenly I heard

  the waters break with redoubled fury . We were certainly near the

  shore—at the same time I cried, “About there!” and a broad light-

  ning filling the concave, shewed us for one moment the level beach

  a-head, disclosing even the sands, and stunted, ooze-sprinkled

  beds of reeds, that grew at high water mark . Again it was dark, and

  we drew in our breath with such content as one may, who, while

  fragments of volcano-hurled rock darken the air, sees a vast mass

  ploughing the ground immediately at his feet . What to do we knew

  not —the breakers here, there, everywhere, encompassed us—they

  roared, and dashed, and flung their hated spray in our faces. With

  considerable difficulty and danger we succeeded at length in altering

  our course, and stretched out from shore . I urged my companions to

  prepare for the wreck of our little skiff, and to bind themselves to

  some oar or spar which might suffice to float them. I was myself

  an excellent swimmer—the very sight of the sea was wont to raise

  in me such sensations, as a huntsman experiences, when he hears

  a pack of hounds in full cry; I loved to feel the waves wrap me

  and strive to overpower me; while I, lord of myself, moved this