With arrowy speed the ship went round
Nymphæum. To the ocean-wave
The mountain-forest sloped, and cast
O’er the white surf its massy shade.
They heard, so near the shore they past,
The hollow sound the sea-breeze made,
As those primæval trees it swayed,
“Curse on thy songs!” the leader cried,
“False tales of evil augury!”
“Well hast thou said,” the maid replied,
“They augur ill to thine and thee.”
She rose, and loosed her radiant hair,
And raised her golden lyre in air.
The lyre, beneath the breeze’s wings,
As if a spirit swept the strings,
Breathed airy music, sweet and strange,
In many a wild phantastic change.
Most like the daughter of the Sun
She stood: her eyes all radiant shone
With beams unutterably bright;
And her long tresses loose and light,
As on the playful breeze they rolled,
Flamed with rays of burning gold,
His wondering eyes Anthemion raised
Upon the maid: the seamen gazed
In fear and strange suspense, amazed.
From the forest-depths profound
Breathes a low and sullen sound:
’Tis the woodland spirit’s sigh,
Ever heard when storms are nigh.
On the shore the surf that breaks
With the rising breezes makes
More tumultuous harmony.
Louder yet the breezes sing:
Bound and round, in dizzy ring,
Sea-birds scream on restless wing:
Pine and cedar creak and swing
To the sea-blast’s murmuring.
Far and wide on sand and shingle
f Eddying breakers boil and mingle:
Beetling cliff and caverned rock
Boll around the echoing shock,
Where the spray, like snow-dust whirled,
High in vapoury wreaths is hurled.
Clouds on clouds, in volumes driven,
Curtain round the vault of heaven.
“To shore! to shore!” the seamen cry.
The damsel waved her lyre on high,
And, to the powers that rule the sea,
It whispered notes of witchery.
Swifter than the lightning-flame
The sudden breath of the whirlwind came.
Bound at once in its mighty sweep
The vessel whirled on the whirling deep.
Bight from shore the driving gale
Bends the mast and swells the sail:
Loud the foaming ocean raves:
Through the mighty waste of waves
Speeds the vessel swift and free,
like a meteor of the sea.
Day is ended. Darkness shrouds
The shoreless seas and lowering clouds.
Northward now the tempest blows:
Fast and far the vessel goes:
Crouched on deck the seamen lie;
One and all, with charmed eye,
On the magic maid they gaze:
Nor the youth with less amaze
Looks upon her radiant form
Shining by the golden beams
Of her refulgent hair that streams
like waving star-light on the storm;
And hears the vocal blast that rings
Among her lyre’s enchanted strings.
Onward, onward flies the hark,
Through the billows wild and dark.
From her brow the spray she hurls;
O’er her stem the big wave curls;
Fast before the impetuous wind
She flies: the wave bursts far behind.
Onward, onward flies the hark,
Through the raging billows: — Hark!
’Tis the stormy surge’s roar
On the Ægean’s northern shore.
Toward the rocks, through surf and surge,
The destined ship the wild winds urge.
High on one gigantic wave
She swings in air. From rock and cave
A long loud wail of fate and fear
Rings in the hopeless seaman’s ear.
Forward, with the breaker’s dash,
She plunges on the rock. The crash
Of the dividing hark, the roar
Of waters bursting on the deck,
Are in Anthemion’s ear: no more
He hears or sees: hut round his neck
Are closely twined the silken rings
Of Rhododaphne’s glittering hair,
And round him her bright arms she flings,
And cinctured thus in loveliest hands
The charmèd waves in safety bear
The youth and the enchantress fair,
And leave them on the golden sands.
CANTO VI.
HAST thou, in some safe retreat,
Waked and watched, to hear the roar
Of breakers on the wind-swept shore?
Go forth at morn. The waves, that beat
Still rough and white when blasts are o’er,
May wash, all ghastly, to thy feet
Some victim of the midnight storm.
From that drenched garb and pallid form
Shrink not: but fix thy gaze and see
Thy own congenial destiny.
For him, perhaps, an anxious wife
On some far coast o’erlooks the wave:
A child, unknowing of the strife
Of elements, to whom he gave
His last fond kiss, is at her breast:
The skies are clear, the seas at rest
Before her, and the hour is nigh
Of his return: but black the sky
To him, and fierce the hostile main,
Have been. He will not come again.
But yesterday, and life, and health,
And hope, and love, and power, and wealth,
Were his: to-day, in one brief hour,
Of all his wealth, of all his power,
He saved not, on his shattered deck,
A plank, to waft him from the wreck.
Now turn away, and dry thy tears,
And build long schemes for distant years!
Wreck is not only on the sea.
The warrior dies in victory:
The ruin of his natal roof
O’erwhelms the sleeping man: the hoof
Of his prized steed has struck with fate
The horseman in his own home gate:
The feast and mantling bowl destroy
The sensual in the hour of joy.
The bride from her paternal porch
Comes forth among her maids: the torch,
That led at mom the nuptial choir,
Kindles at night her funeral pyre.
Now turn away, indulge thy dreams,
And build for distant years thy schemes!
On Thracia’s coast the morn was gray.
Anthemion, with the opening day,
From deep enhancement on the sands
Stood up. The magic maid was there
Beside him on the shore. Her hands
Still held the golden lyre: her hair
In all its long luxuriance hung
Unringleted, and glittering bright
With briny drops of diamond light:
Her thin wet garments lightly clung
Around her form’s rare symmetry.
Like Venus risen from the sea
She seemed: so beautiful: and who
With mortal sight such form could view,
And deem that evil lurked beneath?
Who could approach those starry eyes,
Those dewy coral lips, that breathe
Ambrosial fragrance, and that smile
In which all Love’s Elysium lies,
Who this could see, and dream of guile,
&n
bsp; And brood on wrong and wrath the while
If there be one, who ne’er has felt
Resolve, and doubt, and anger melt,
Like vernal night-frosts, in one beam
Of Beauty’s sun, ‘twere vain to deem,
Between the muse and him could be.
A link of human sympathy.
Fain would the youth his lips unclose
In keen reproach for all his woes
And his Calliroe’s doom. In vain:
For closer now the magic chain
Of the inextricable spell
Involved him, and his accents fell
Perplexed, confused, inaudible.
And so awhile he stood. At length,
In painful tones, that gathered strength
With feeling’s faster flow, he said:
— “What would’st thou with me, fatal maid
That ever thus, by land and sea,
Thy dangerous beauty follows me?” —
She speaks in gentle accents low,
While dim through tears her bright eyes move:
— “Thou askest what thou well dost know
I love thee, and I seek thy love.” —
— “My love! It sleeps in dust for ever
Within my lost Calliroe’s tomb:
The smiles of living beauty never
May my soul’s darkness re-illumine.
We grew together, like twin flowers,
Whose opening buds the same dews cherish;
And one is reft, ere noon-tide hours,
Violently; one remains, to perish
By slow decay; as I remain
Even now, to move and breathe in vain.
The late, false love, that worldlings learn,
When hearts are hard, and thoughts are stern.
And feelings dull, and Custom’s rule
Omnipotent, that love may cool,
And waste, and change: but this — which flings
Bound the young soul its tendril rings,
Strengthening their growth and grasp with years,
Till habits, pleasures, hopes, smiles, tears,
All modes of thinking, feeling, seeing,
Of two congenial spirits, blend
In one inseparable being, —
Deem’st thou this love can change or end?
There is no eddy on the stream,
No bough that light winds bend and toss,
No chequering of the sunny beam
Upon the woodland moss,
No star in evening’s sky, no flower
Whose beauty odorous breezes stir,
No sweet bird singing in the bower,
Nay, not the rustling of a leaf,
That does not nurse and feed my grief
By wakening thoughts of her.
All lovely things a place possessed
Of love in my Calliroë’s breast:
And from her purer, gentler spirit,
Did mine the love and joy inherit,
Which that blest maid around her threw.
With all I saw, and felt, and knew,
The image of Calliroe grew,
Till all the beauty of the earth
Seemed as to her it owed its birth,
And did but many forms express
Of her reflected loveliness.
The sunshine and the air seemed less
The sources of my life: and how
Was she torn from me? Earth is now
A waste, where many echoes tell
Only of her I loved — how well
Words have no power to speak: — and thou —
Gather the rose-leaves from the plain
Where faded and defiled they lie,
And close them in their hud again,
And bid them to the morning sky
Spread lovely as at first they were:
Or from the oak the ivy tear,
And wreathe it round another tree
In vital growth: then turn to me,
And bid my spirit cling on thee,
As on my lost Calliroë!”
— “The Genii of the earth, and sea,
And air, and fire, my mandates hear.
Even the dread Power, thy Ladon’s fear,
Arcadian Dæmagorgon, knows
My voice: the ivy or the rose,
Though torn and trampled on the plain,
May rise, unite, and bloom again,
If on his aid I call: thy heart
Alone resists and mocks my art.” —
— “Why lov’st thou me, Thessalian maid?
Why hast thou, cruel beauty, torn
Asunder two young hearts, that played
In kindred unison so blest,
As they had filled one single breast
From life’s first opening mom?
Why lov’st thou me? The kings of earth
Might kneel to charms and power like thine:
But I, a youth of shepherd birth —
As well the stately mountain-pine
Might coil around the eglantine,
As thou thy radiant being twine
Round one so low, so lost as mine.” —
— “Sceptres and crowns, vain signs that move
The souls of slaves, to me are toys.
I need but love: I seek but love:
And long, amid the heartless noise
Of cities, and the woodland peace
Of vales, through all the scenes of Greece
I sought the fondest and the fairest
Of Grecian youths, my love to be:
And such a heart and form thou bearest,
And my soul sprang at once to thee,
Like an arrow to its destiny.
Yet shall my lips no spell repeat,
To bid thy heart responsive beat
To mine: thy love’s spontaneous smile,
Nor forced by power, nor won by guile,
I claim: but yet a little while,
And we no more may meet.
For I must find a dreary home,
And thou, where’er thou wilt, shalt roam:
But should one tender thought awake
Of Rhododaphne, seek the cell,
Where she dissolved in tears doth dwell
Of blighted hope, and she will take
The wanderer to her breast, and make
Such flowers of bliss around him blow,
As kings would yield their thrones to know.” —
— “It must not be. The air is laden
With sweetness from thy presence born:
Music and light are round thee, maiden,
As round the Virgin Power of Mom:
I feel, I shrink beneath thy beauty:
But love, truth, woe, remembrance, duty,
All point against thee, though arrayed
In charms whose power no heart could shun
That ne’er had loved another maid
Or any but that loveliest one,
Who now, within my bosom’s void,
A sad pale shade, by thee destroyed,
Forbids all other love to bind
My soul: thine least of womankind.” —
Faltering and faint his accents broke,
As those concluding words he spoke.
No more she said, but sadly smiled,
And took his hand; and like a child
He followed her. All waste and wild,
A pathless moor before them lies.
Beyond, long chains of mountains rise:
Their summits with eternal snow
Are crowned: vast forests wave below,
And stretch, with ample slope and sweep,
Down to the moorlands and the deep.
Human dwelling see they none,
Save one cottage, only one,
Mossy, mildewed, frail, and poor,
Even as human home can be,
Where the forest skirts the moor,
By the inhospitable sea.
There, in tones of melody,
&
nbsp; Sweet and clear as Dian’s voice
When the rocks and woods rejoice
In her steps the chase impelling,
Rhododaphne, pausing, calls.
Echo answers from the walls:
Mournful response, vaguely telling
Of a long-deserted dwelling.
Twice her lips the call repeat,
Tuneful summons, thrilling sweet.
Still the same sad accents follow,
Cheerless echo, faint and hollow.
Nearer now, with curious gaze,
The youth that lonely cot surveys.
Long grass chokes the path before it,
Twining ivy mantles o’er it,
On the low roof blend together
Beds of moss and stains of weather,
Flowering weeds that train and cluster,
Scaly lichen, stone-crop’s lustre,
All confused in radiance mellow,
Red, gray, green, and golden yellow.
Idle splendour! gleaming only
Over ruins rude and lonely,
When the cold hearth-stone is shattered.
When the ember-dust is scattered,
When the grass that chokes the portal
Bends not to the tread of mortal.
The maiden dropped Anthemion’s hand,
And forward, with a sudden bound,
She sprung. He saw the door expand,
And close, and all was silence round,
And loneliness, and forth again
She came not. But within this hour,
A burthen to him, and a chain,
Had been her beauty and her power:
But now, thus suddenly forsaken,
In those drear solitudes, though yet
His early love remained unshaken,
He felt within his breast awaken
A sense of something like regret. ‘
But he pursued her not: his love,
His murdered love, such step forbade.
He turned his doubtful feet, to rove
Amid that forest’s maze of shade.
Beneath the matted boughs, that made
A noonday twilight, he espied
No trace of man; and far and wide
Through fern and tangled briar he strayed,
Till toil, and thirst, and hunger weighed
His nature down, and cold and drear
Night came, and no relief was near.
But now at once his steps emerge
Upon the forest’s moorland verge,
Beside the white and sounding surge.
For in one long self-circling track,
His mazy path had led him back,
To where that cottage, old and lone,
Had stood: but now to him unknown
Was all the scene. ‘Mid gardens, fair
With trees and flowers of fragrance rare,
A rich and ample pile was there,
Glittering with myriad lights, that shone
Far-streaming through the dusky air.
With hunger, toil, and weariness,
Outworn, he cannot choose but pass
Tow’rds that fair pile. With gentle stress
Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock Page 138
