Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock
Page 139
He strikes the gate of polished brass.
Loud and long the portal rings.
As back with swift recoil it swings,
Disclosing wide a vaulted hall,
With many columns bright and tall
Encircled. Throned in order round,
Statues of daemons and of kings
Between the marble columns frowned
With seeming life: each throne beside,
Two humbler statues stood, and raised
Each one a silver lamp, that wide
With many mingling radiance blazed.
High-reared on one surpassing throne,
A brazen image sate alone,
A dwarfish shape of wrinkled brow,
With sceptred hand and crowned head.
No sooner did Anthemion’s tread
The echoes of the hall awake,
Then up that image rose, and spake,
As from a trumpet: “What wouldst thou?”
Anthemion, in amaze and dread,
Replied: “With toil and hunger worn,
I seek but food and rest till morn.”
The image spake again, and said:
“Enter: fear not: thou art free
To my best hospitality.”
Spontaneously, an inner door
Unclosed. Anthemion from the hall
Passed to a room of state, that wore
Aspect of destined festival.
Of fragrant cedar was the floor,
And round the light-pilastered wall
Curtains of crimson and of gold
Hung down in many a gorgeous fold.
Bright lamps, through that apartment gay
Adorned like Cytherëa’s bowers
With vases filled with odorous flowers,
Diffused an artificial day.
A banquet’s sumptuous order there,
In long array of viands rare,
Fruits, and ambrosial wine, was spread.
A golden boy, in semblance fair
Of actual life, came forth, and led
Anthemion to a couch, beside
That festal table, canopied
With cloth by subtlest Tyrian dyed,
And ministered the feast: the while,
Invisible harps symphonious wreathed
Wild webs of soul-dissolving sound,
And voices, alternating round,
Songs, as of choral maidens, breathed.
Now to the brim the boy filled up
With sparkling wine a crystal cup.
Anthemion took the cup, and quaffed,
With reckless thirst, the enchanted draught.
That instant came a voice divine,
A maiden voice:—” Now art thou mine!
The golden boy is gone. The song
And the symphonious harps no more
Their syren-minstrelsy prolong.
One crimson curtain waves before
His sight, and opens. From its screen,
The nymph of more than earthly mien,
The magic maid of Thessaly,
Came forth, her tresses loosely streaming,
Her eyes with dewy radiance beaming,
Her form all grace and symmetry,
In silken vesture light and free
As if the woof were air, she came,
And took his hand, and called his name.
— “Now art thou mine!” again she cried,
“My love’s indissoluble chain
Has found thee in that goblet’s tide,
And thou shalt wear my flower again!”
She said, and in Anthemion’s breast
She placed the laurel-rose: her arms
She twined around him, and imprest
Her lips on his, and fixed on him
Fond looks of passionate love: her charms
With tenfold radiance on his sense
Shone through the studied negligence
Of her light vesture. His eyes swim ‘
With dizziness. The lamps grow dim,
And tremble, and expire. No more.
Darkness is there, and Mystery:
And silence keeps the golden key
Of Beauty’s bridal door.
CANTO VII.
FIRST, fairest, best, of powers supernal,
Love waved in heaven his wings of gold,
And from the depths of Night eternal,
Black Erebus, and Chaos old,
Bade light, and life, and beauty rise
Harmonious from the dark disguise
Of elemental discord wild,
Which he had charmed and reconciled.
Love first in social bonds combined
The scattered tribes of humankind,
And bade the wild race cease to roam,
And learn the endearing name of home.
From Love the sister arts began,
That charm, adorn, and soften man.
To Love, the feast, the dance belong,
The temple-rite, the choral song;
All feelings that refine and bless,
All kindness, sweetness, gentleness.
Him men adore, and gods admire,
Of delicacy, grace, desire,
Persuasion, bliss, the bounteous sire
In hopes, and toils, and pains, and fears,
Sole dryer of our human tears;
Chief ornament of heaven, and king
Of earth, to whom the world doth sing
One chorus of accordant pleasure,
Of which he taught and leads the measure.
He kindles in the inmost mind
One lonely flame — for once — for one —
A vestal fire, which, there enshrined,
Lives on, till life itself be done.
All other fires are of the earth,
And transient: but of heavenly birth
Is Love’s first flame, which howsoever
Fraud, power, woe, chance, or fate, may sever
From its congenial source, must burn
Unquenched, but in the funeral urn.
And thus Anthemion knew and felt,
As in that palace on the wild,
By daemon art adorned, he dwelt
With that bright nymph, who ever smiled
Refulgent as the summer mom
On eastern ocean newly born.
Though oft, in Rhododaphne’s sight,
A phrensied feeling of delight,
With painful admiration mixed
Of her surpassing beauty, came
Upon him, yet of earthly flame
That passion was. Even as betwixt
The night-clouds transient lightnings play,
Those feelings came and passed away,
And left him lorn. Calliroë ever
Pursued him like a bleeding shade,
Nor all the magic nymph’s endeavour
Could from his constant memory sever
The image of that dearer maid.
Yet all that love and art could do
The enchantress did. The pirate-crew
Her power had snatched from death, and pent
A while in ocean’s bordering caves,
To be her ministers and slaves:
And there, by murmured spells, she sent
On all their shapes phantastic change.
In many an uncouth form and strange,
Grim dwarf, or bony Æthiop tall,
They plied, throughout the enchanted hall,
Their servile ministries, or sate
Gigantic mastitis in the gate,
Or stalked around the garden-dells
In lion-guise, gaunt sentinels.
And many blooming youths and maids,
A joyous Bacchanalian train,
(That ‘mid the rocks and piny shades
Of mountains, through whose wild domain
Œagrian Hebrus, swift and cold,
Impels his waves o’er sands of gold,
Their orgies led) by secret force
Of her far-scattered spells compe
lled,
With song, and dance, and shout, their course
Tow’rds that enchanted dwelling held.
Oft, ‘mid those palace-gardens fair
The beauteous nymph (her radiant hair
With mingled oak and vine-leaves crowned)
Would grasp the thyrsus ivy-bound,
And fold, her festal vest around,
The Bacchic nebris, leading thus
The swift and dizzy thiasus:
And as she moves, in all her charms,
With springing feet and flowing arms,
’Tis strange in one fair shape to see
How many forms of grace can be.
The youths and maids, her beauteous train,
Follow fast in sportive ring,
Some the torch and mystic cane,
Some the vine-bough brandishing;
Some in giddy circlets fleeting,
The Corybantic timbrel beating:
Maids, with silver flasks advancing,
Pour the wine’s red-sparkling tide,
Which youths, with heads recumbent dancing,
Catch in goblets as they glide:
All upon the odorous air
Lightly toss their leafy hair,
Ever singing, as they move,
— “Io Bacchus! son of Jove!” —
And oft, the Bacchic fervour ending,
Among these garden-bowers they stray,
Dispersed, where fragrant branches blending
Exdude the sun’s meridian ray,
Or on some thy my bank repose,
By which a tingling rivulet flows,
Where birds, on each o’ershadowing spray,
Make music through the live-long day.
The while, in one sequestered cave,
Where roses round the entrance wave,
And jasmin sweet and clustering vine
With flowers and grapes the arch o’ertwine,
Anthemion and the nymph recline,
While in the sunny space, before
The cave, a fountain’s lucid store
Its crystal column shoots on high,
And bursts, like showery diamonds flashing,
So falls, and with melodious dashing
Shakes the small pool. A youth stands by,
A tuneful rhapsodist, and sings,
Accordant to his changeful strings,
High strains of ancient poesy.
And oft her golden lyre she takes,
And such transcendent strains awakes,
Such floods of melody as steep
Anthemion’s sense in bondage deep
Of passionate admiration: still
Combining with intenser skill
The charm that holds him now, whose bands
May ne’er be loosed by mortal hands.
And oft they rouse with clamorous chase
The forest, urging wide and far
Through glades and dells the sylvan war.
Satyrs and fauns would start around,
And through their ferny dingles bound,
To see that nymph, all life and grace
And radiance, like the huntress-queen,
With sandaled feet and vest of green,
In her soft fingers grasp the spear,
Hang on the track of flying deer,
Shout to the dogs as fast they sweep
Tumultuous down the woodland steep,
And hurl along the tainted air,
The javelin from her streaming hair.
The bath, the dance, the feast’s array,
And sweetest rest, conclude the day.
And ‘twere most witching to disclose,
Were there such power in mortal numbers,
How she would charm him to repose,
And gaze upon his troubled slumbers,
With looks of fonder love, than ever
Pale Cynthia on Endymion cast,
While her forsaken chariot passed
O’er Caria’s many-winding river.
The love she bore him was a flame
So strong, so total, so intense,
That no desire beside might claim
Dominion in her thought or sense.
The world had nothing to bestow
On her: for wealth and power were hers:
The daemons of the earth (that know
The beds of gems and fountain-springs
Of undiscovered gold, and where,
In subterranean sepulchres,
The memory of whose place doth bear
No vestige, long-forgotten kings
Sit gaunt on monumental thrones,
With massy pearls and costly stones
Hanging on their half-mouldered bones)
Were slaves to her. The fears and cares
Of feebler mortals — Want, and Woe
His daughter, and their mutual child
Remorseless Crime, — keen Wrath, that tears
The breast of Hate unreconciled, —
Ambition’s spectral goad, — Revenge,
That finds consummation food
To nurse anew her hydra brood, —
Shame, Misery’s sister, — dread of change,
The bane of wealth and worldly might, —
She knew not: Love alone, like ocean,
Pilled up with one unshared emotion
Her soul’s capacity: but right
And wrong she recked not of, nor owned
A law beyond her soul’s desire;
And from the hour that first enthroned
Anthemion in her heart, the fire,
That burned within her, like the force
Of floods swept with it in its course
All feelings that might barriers prove
To her illimitable love.
Thus wreathed with ever-varying flowers,
Went by the purple-pinioned hours;
Till once, returning from the wood
And woodland chase, at evening-fall,
Anthemion and the enchantress stood
Within the many-columned hall,
Alone. They looked around them. Where
Are all those youths and maidens fair,
Who followed them but now? On high
She waves her lyre. Its murmurs die
Tremulous. They come not whom she calls.
Why starts she? Wherefore does she throw
Around the youth her arms of snow,
With passion so intense, and weep?
What mean those murmurs, sad and low,
That like sepulchral echoes creep
Along the marble walls?
Her breath is short and quick! and, dim
With tears, her eyes are fixed on him:
Her lips are quivering and apart:
He feels the fluttering of her heart:
Her face is pale. He cannot shun
Her fear’s contagion. Tenderly
He kissed her lips in sympathy,
And said:—” What ails thee, lovely one?” —
Low, trembling, faint, her accents fall:
— “Look round: what seest thou in the hall?” —
Anthemion looked, and made return:
— “The statues, and the lamps that burn:
No more.”—” Yet look again, where late
The solitary image sate,
The monarch-dwarf. Dost thou not see
An image there which should not be?”-Even as she bade he looked again:
From his high throne the dwarf was gone.
Lo! there, as in the Thespian fane,
Uranian Love! His bow was bent:
The arrow to its head was drawn:
His frowning brow was fixed intent
On Rhododaphne. Scarce did rest
Upon that form Anthemion’s view,
When, sounding shrill, the arrow flew,
And lodged in Rhododaphne’s breast.
It was not Love’s own shaft, the giver
Of life and joy and tender flame;
Ru
t, borrowed from Apollo’s quiver,
The death-directed arrow came.
Long, slow, distinct in each stem word,
A sweet deep-thrilling voice was heard:
— “With impious spells hast thou profaned
My altars; and all-ruling Jove,
Though late, yet certain, has unchained
The vengeance of Uranian Love!” —
The marble palace burst asunder,
Riven by subterranean thunder.
Sudden clouds around them rolled,
Lucid vapour, fold on fold.
Then Rhododaphne closer prest
Anthemion to her bleeding breast,
As, in his arms upheld, her head
All languid on his neck reclined;
And in the curls that overspread
His cheek, her temple ringlets twined:
Her dim eyes drew, with fading sight,
From his their last reflected light,
And on his lips, as nature failed,
Her lips their last sweet sighs exhaled.
— “Farewell!” — she said—” another bride
The partner of thy days must be:
Rut do not hate my memory:
And build a tomb by Ladon’s tide,
To her, who, false in all beside,
Was but too true in loving thee!” —
The quivering earth beneath them stirred.
In dizzy trance upon her bosom
He fell, as falls a wounded bird
Upon a broken rose’s blossom.
What sounds are in Anthemion’s earl
It is the lark that carols clear,
And gentle waters murmuring near.
He lifts his head: the new-born day
Is round him, and the sun-beams play
On silver eddies. Can it be?
The stream he loved in infancy?
The hills? the Aphrodisian grove?
The fields that knew Calliroë’s love?
And those two sister trees, are they
The cedar and the poplar gray,
That shade old Pheidon’s door? Alas!
Sad vision now! Does Phantasy
Play with his troubled sense, made dull
By many griefs? He does not dream:
It is his own Arcadian stream,
The fields, the hills: and on the grass,
The dewy grass of Ladon’s vale,
lies Rhododaphne, cold and pale,
But even in death most beautiful;
And there, in mournful silence by her,
lies on the ground her golden lyre.
He knelt beside her on the ground:
On her pale face and radiant hair
He fixed his eyes, in sorrow drowned.
That one so gifted and so fair,
All light and music, thus should be
Quenched like a night-star suddenly,
Might move a stranger’s tears; but he
Had known her love; such love as yet
Never could heart that knew forget!
He thought not of his wrongs. Alone
Her love and loveliness possest
His memory, and her fond cares, shown