Fables in Song :: :: University of Virginia Library

Low natures cannot even forgive the good
Another's greatness on their fate entails.
'Twixt sea and land a granite Mountain stood,
No further than a wounded bittern trails
His broken wing, beyond a Swampy Flood
Foul with green ooze. The inland-blowing gales
That died upon his summit did bequeath
A quiet climate to the land beneath.

2.

The gracious image of this Mountain slept
Unruffled in the dark of that dull Meer;
Where rarely even a lazy ripple crept
To bid the bulrush shake his languid spear

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O'er livid streaks of stagnant scum, that kept
The calm contour, with every outline clear,
And all the colours of the portraiture,
Tho' painted on a filthy surface, pure.

3.

But daily ever, when the sun was low,
And, in a rosy reflex aureole,
The guardian Mount's grey head began to glow,
From out his marble-breasted body stole,
And sidled, lingering to the lowland slow,
What seem'd the Mountain's disembodied soul:
A stealthy, shy, and solitary elf,
The insubstantial semblance of himself.

4.

Over the fens it fared, where dreamy rows
Of cattle farmward moved their wandering camp;
But scarce had reach'd the rivage, ere there rose
Resentful challenge from that churlish Swamp;
Hoarse as the choral croak that overflows
In gleaming eves of Spring the shallows damp,
And reedy brinks, of their spawn-mantled bogs,
From many thousand throats of querulous frogs:

“Halt, vagabond! halt where thou art!
Nor insult with thy presence abhorr'd
The floor of my palace. Depart,
Silly slave of an insolent lord!

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“And thou, broad braggart, I pray
Invade not my virginal bed.
Let the earth to thy foot give way,
And the heaven to thy horrible head:

“Parade thine imperial mantle,
Which this lackey behind thee doth bear,
Till it leaves not uncover'd a cantle
Of the subject world—elsewhere:

“But sully not with it my fountain!
Queen am I in my realm: and thine,
Tho' it prison the sun, proud mountain,
I allow not alliance with mine.”

5.

The gracious Mount, aware of his wrong'd worth,
Made generous answer in grave tones and sweet;
Around him gazing, east, west, south, and north,
With kingly calm that claim'd attention meet;
While that sick shrew spat her foul spittle forth
And in her own filth wallow'd at his feet.
His voice was as the sighing of a breeze
Born on the bosom of the boundless seas:

“Friend, leave to the human race
The inhuman habit of war!
To each in the world his place,
And we are whatever we are.
To each his good and his ill:
And the ill of the good made mine
Is that, doom'd to forever be still,
I must ever for motion pine.
The bees and the butterflies
Hover over the blossom bells;
And the birds in the balmy skies,

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And the feathery-sail'd seed-cells,
They wander about; and I,
As I watch them, wish that I were
A bee, or a butterfly,
Or a little bird of the air!
But to each in the world his place,
And to every ill some good.
Unto me my granite base,
And to thee thy shelter'd flood.
Yet O, how the spirit in me
Is troubled when bound, alas,
To this granite base, I see
(As the pure winds over me pass)
The leaflet leap on the tree,
And the flow'ret nod in the grass,
And the long grass wave on the lea,
And the reed in the wan morass!
And thou, too? Dost thou not feel
(When the sedge to the low wind sighs)
Sweet tremors over thee steal,
And a rapture of ripples arise?
Say, wouldst thou not follow the wind
In a wave of wonder away,
Were thy waters unconfined
By their osier cradle grey?
The hungry ocean, hidden
By me from the heedless land;
Which it leaps to devour, and, chidden,
Falls back at my mute command:
Fares it better than thou who, rockt
By low-breathing winds, and fann'd
To sleep, liest safely lockt
In the hollow of earth's huge hand?
No! it suffers the same effect,
Only all on a vaster scale.
And if thy small fleets unwreckt
Are but blown by a baby gale,
(Dead leaflets gaily speckt,
With a spider's web for a sail)
Whilst yonder (a floating fort)
The battle-ship huge, that mocks

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The enemy's bellowing port,
Sinks shatter'd on surfy rocks.
Who shelters thee, thankless Queen,
Secure in thy small domain?
I, the friend of whose shade serene
Thy churlish lips complain!
I, the giant who stand between
Thy rest and the roaring main!”

6.

The brave old Mount, by wounding weathers scarr'd,
O'er the low-sunken, safely-shelter'd lea,
Which his grey head from howling gusts did guard,
And o'er the rolling ridges of the sea,
Sent far his grave, calm, satisfied regard;
Then glanced athwart that gloomy Swamp, but she
Sigh'd only, sullen, from her sedgy beach,
As, smiling, he resumed, in mountain-speech:

“O rapturous, wandering wings,
O rivulets, running for ever,
O winds, clouds, waves, happy things!
I, that never may follow you, never
Taste with you a traveller's bliss,
As ye roam over moorland and meadow,
I, at least (and who grudges me this?)
Send forth on his travels my Shadow.
'Tis a gentle and timorous sprite,
That never, except when night
Is falling, ventures far;
And, albeit inquisitive, most
Discreet; not given to boast,
As other travellers are;
Pure, tho' it sleep in the slime;
Shy as a young bird thrown
Unfledged from its nest sublime;
Yet with secret joys of its own;

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And by only two at a time
Is its intimate sweetness known.
But of any two lovers, I pray,
Be it ask'd if they love not the shade:
And the happy ones, boy and maid,
Will blush as they turn away
Sighing and smiling, afraid
Its secret bliss to betray;
Whilst the others, whose hearts be cleft
For the grave of a lost love, laid
Dead in its birthplace,—'reft
Of the hopes that with shadows have play'd,
Will sigh ‘Our sole happiness left
Is to wander and weep in the shade.’
Why is it? They know not why.
'Tis an antique mystery.
This nursling of Night's lone heart
Hath known sorrow, and learn'd to be still
But it cherisheth, pure and apart,
In its own chaste silence chill,
A memory, mighty, immense
Of passionate love and pain;
A memory mixt with a sense
Of deep desire and disdain;
A memory made intense
By a love that was loved in vain!”

7.

Here, soughing in the sedge, the Water made
A restless moan of weary resignation;
As who should say ‘I heed not what is said,
Altho' I hear it.’ And a dull pulsation
Darken'd the melancholy moonbeam laid
To listless rest along the late stagnation
Of the now rippled liquid in her lone
Low reedy creeks. The musing Mount went on:

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“Ere Love was acquainted with Sorrow,
Ere Eve was a wife or a mother,
Ere the even was 'ware of the morrow,
Or yet either had banisht the other,
In Eden the Night and the Morn
Were dissever'd as soon as born.
The Fiat Lux thunders thro' heaven!
And, awakening Creation, hath riven
The resonant portals of Light.
All gushing with glorious surprises
The Sun, in his royalty, rises,
And bursts on the realm of the Night.
He comes! and the Silence profound,
That hath watch'd with droopt wings spread afar
Over Night's maiden dreams, at the sound
Of the steps of the conquering star,
Is smitten and scatter'd in flight.
And he comes: lifts the veil from her breast,
And sees naked the beautiful Night.
Venit, vidit . . . . who knows not the rest?
O what an awakening was there!
What rapture! and O what despair!
One moment hath ruin'd forever
Love and power. Alas, he, and she?
Light and Darkness? Impossible! Never,
O never, such union can be!
Such, of old, was the destiny vain
Of that incompatible twain:
And such is the endless condition
Of Passion, the child of disdain
And desire,—life and death in transition!
Hope snatcht from the breast of despair
Is hers, and a life that is death;
For she breathes in the deadliest air,
And she dies of but one quiet breath.
Her food is the fruit that's forbidden:
Her pleasure a prayer never granted:
Her strength is a wish that is chidden:
And her weakness the thing that she wanted!”

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8.

High winds, that vex'd not the still earth, began
To smite the upmost heaven. With fitful light
The stricken moon thro' fleecy cloudlets ran.
The Mountain, from that drift of dark and bright
Which o'er him glimpsed in alternation wan,
Caught mystic motion; and, in spectral flight
Hovering above the melancholy plain,
The spirit that was in him spake again:

“And the Sun, never-resting, forsaken,
And fierce in his anguish of light,
Cries thro' heaven ‘Where art thou? awaken,
And return to me, fugitive Night!’
But she, whose unsatisfied lover
Thus renews his importunate flame,
Where hides she? with what does she cover
Her beauty, her babe, and her shame?
Ask yon quivering splendours, that swim
The blue dark in bright shoals overspread,
If they know in what solitude dim
Night is hiding her desolate head:
And those liveried lackeys of Light
(In the cause of Light's glory enlisted)
Will answer ‘What is it, the Night?
'Tis a myth that has never existed!’
Ask the planet whose golden urn
Flows over with flaming amber
As he, courtier-like, taketh his turn
In the sun's bright antechamber:
He laugheth ‘The Sun is my king:
The fallen are soon forgot:
I follow the conquering:
And the Night? . . . I know her not.’
And the sliding meteor will say,
As he falls in a fiery drop,

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‘Who cares? I have miss'd my way,
And can neither retrace it nor stop.’
And, blushing, the Dawn will sigh
‘I awaked ere my dreams were done.
They were fair; but I know not, I,
If I dream'd of the Night . . . or the Sun?’
And, if all things else deny her,
Renounce the Night or ignore,
Go, ask of the ghostly fire
That hovers on that pale shore,
Where, embark'd in its phantom comet,
The wandering embryon waits
God's finger to fashion from it
A world of yet unknown fates:
It will mutter ‘I mark'd her creeping,
By the light of a latent moon,
Between two worlds and weeping,
Like a beggar that asks a boon
At the gates of a rich man's place,
With a shamed and sorrowful mien:
And I think it was to embrace
Her sleeping babe unseen.’

“That babe, is it Bliss? But aloud
Breathe the name of it never! At best
'Tis a treasure that, risk'd if avow'd,
Is in fear and in peril possest:
Whose possessor, as one that encroacheth
Upon ground that's forbidden, by night,
All atremble his treasure approacheth
But to bury it deep out of sight.
And, O thou to whom never before
Hath been utter'd this antique story,
Insult not the shade (tho' no more
Than a shadow it be) of lost glory.
For what it must be at the last
The Present doth ill to scorn.
And the Present shall be the Past
Ere the Future it boasts be born.”

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9.

Never before that venerable Mount
Had spoken at such length: nor ever met
A listener in whose ear he could recount
Without ungracious interruption, yet,
The fancies vague that, like a vented fount
Whose struggling waters sudden outlet get,
Upwell'd within him, and pour'd wide and free
His secret thoughts in wandering reverie.

10.

But ah! the old story-teller's pride received
A sharp rebuff—not loud, but, certes, deep!
When, pausing for an answer, he perceived
The Water had been all this while asleep.
Sleep thou, too, good old Mount! with heart ungrieved,
Tho' heedless ears thy long discourse hold cheap.
Sleep, and good dreams be thine! There are sins worse
Than too much talk in unregarded verse.

11.

And, if men miss the moral of thy strain,
Tell them 'tis in themselves, and tell them why.
Wherever croaking commonwealths complain
Of their old mountain bulwarks and deny
Even the shadow of greatness, where in vain
Is heard the voice of hoar Authority,
There, lost among the morals of the time,
May haply lurk the moral of thy rhyme.