Fables in Song :: :: University of Virginia Library

Lost in a silent land of winter wild,
Where, warming nothing, yet on all things smiled
The eternal snows that lit that lonesome land,
Two weary travellers wander'd, staff in hand,
Over the frozen hills. Fast friends, together
They two had fared thro' fortune's changing weather;
And each had loved; and each life's common chance
Had curst with war 'twixt love and circumstance.
But in that conflict, one to love, that claim'd,
Had yielded, all: whilst one life's fate had freed

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From love's embrace; and, struggling forward, maim'd
In every feeling, saved, not all, indeed,
But all mere life hath left when love is dead,
And dead, with love, life's sense of lovely things.
Now, as they wander'd weary, round them spread
(To make more weary still their wanderings)
Endless tranquillity. And all the while
Above them, and about them, everywhere
Along the land and in the leafless air,
Throughout that region of unblest repose
They felt the fixt unsympathising smile
Of the eternal snows.

It was the smile of Eternity,
That smileth, whether men live or die.
Every sorrow, and every joy,
Every pleasure, and every pain,
Hath something—it may be, all—to dread.
But, with nothing to lose, and nothing to gain,
Eternity smileth the smile of the dead.

“I have seen the Sphynx in the Desert” said
To his fellow-pilgrim one of the twain,
“And the smile upon Nature's face, methinks,
Is as the smile on the face of the Sphynx:
The smile of indifference! Death smiles so,
And so smiles Love—on the loss and woe
That waste the hearts of his human prey
When, having o'erwhelm'd them, he passeth away

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As they sink in dust, to smile down for ever
From his unattainable heaven so high
On the generations, whose foil'd endeavour
Cannot interpret, however it try,
Nor answer, save by a feverish sigh,
That inscrutable smile, with its unsad Never!
For Love is Love, for aye, as of old:
And, Spring by Spring, as the leaves unfold,
Lives shall blossom in Love's strong sun
That beameth for all, and abideth for none.
But Life is mortal, tho' Love be not,
And Death is, was, and shall be.
And Nature heeds not her children's lot,
A wanton mother is she!
Friend, I am tired, and can no further fare.
Here will I rest.”—“Ah, madman!” cried the other,
“Here is but Ruin with Rest's face. Beware!
Shake off this fatal lethargy, my brother!
'Tis Death that woos, and not Repose,
The weary and unwise
To his cold couch in these deep snows.
Poor wretch, arouse! arise!
Some succour, sure, must be at hand,
Some issue from this dreadful land.
For lo! where leans yon woodland high
Along the windless air,
Some woodman's hut methinks I spy,
Or charcoal-burner's rude repair,
A smoke is in the frosty sky.
Deliverance must be near!”

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“Ah, brother, prithee let me be.”
His comrade answer'd. “Whither flee?
Deliverance! ... dost thou seek it? See,
'Tis at our feet—’tis here!”

And, as he spake, he sank. With a shrill cry
The other turn'd, and fled: from peak to peak
Springing, and clinging, dizzily, foot and hand.
The upland forest, heavy, huge, and high,
Seem'd slipping o'er him from its icy shelves.
And, wildly mocking the man's human shriek,
With most inhuman revelry,
Outleapt the echoes of that lonesome land,
Like mad malignant elves.

O'er the giddy steeps he climbs, he leaps,
And his breath is salt with blood.
And there's blood in the skies—or blood in his eyes—
As, with reeling steps, and choking cries,
And broken strength, he reaches, at length,
The Woodman's hut in the wood.
And his voice doth seem like a voice in a dream
When he shouts and beats at the Woodman's door,
Faint and blind as a wasted wind
That beats its life out, trying to find
Its lost way over a moor.

“Ope, Woodman! ope
For charity!

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Help! help! a rope,
A hand! Hard by
On the nether slope
Doth my comrade lie,
Lost, if no hope
Of help be nigh,
For I can no more.
Wake, Woodman! wake,
And open the door
For Jesu's sake!”

“Come hither! come hither!” the Woodman cried
To his four sons, “and bear him inside,
And pile him a bearskin bed,
And cut the boots from his swollen feet.
These famisht pulses feebly beat,
But the poor wretch is not dead.”
So the Foresters chafed him, limb by limb,
Till, feebly, again, in each frozen vein
The life-blood ran; and the rescued man
Felt Death's fingers releasing him.
His lips they bathed in the cordial cup,
And, alive at last, they lifted him up;
But leaving in Death's grip, lost and gone
Life's ransom—claim'd by the hungry cold,
Which had bitten his flesh to the very bone,
So that what remain'd of the man thus saved
Was a ruin—horrible to behold,
On whose living flesh Death's mark was graved.

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Then this living half of the half-saved man
The search after his lost friend began,
Whom he, and the Foresters, found at last
Sunk in the drifted snow, beneath
That desolate upland vague and vast,
Dead—but beautiful in death.
And over the dead man's face was cast
The smile of the Sphynx: that smile which is
The smile of indifference. Seeing this,
He that saw it recall'd the past.

When, long since, they twain were young,
And, as together they journey'd along
Life's unknown, and yet untried, way
Love o'ertook them, and seized his prey,
The dead man there, now calm, and fair,
With a mighty effort had broken Love's snare,
Giving to him, the survivor now,
The self-same counsel, to struggle on,
He, himself, had refused, when he sank in the snow,
And gave up the ghost ere the goal was won.
Not so of yore! when, with tears, he tore
His tortured spirit from Love's control,
But thus left for ever behind him, lost,
The finest and fairest parts of his soul,
Saving the rest of himself at their cost.

Now, he lay dead, with the smile on his face.
Dead, but unblemisht, and fair in death,

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And, over his features calm, the grace
Of a peace unbroken by mortal breath.
Maim'd in feature, and crippled in limb,
The living man look'd down upon him;
And, fair, in the dead man's face (with awe
Because of its careless beauty) he saw
The image serene of his own dead soul.
Dead—but in death still beautiful!