The Works of Thomas Love Peacock

Magic and mystery, spells Circæan,
The Siren voice, that calmed the sea,
And steeped the soul in dews Lethæan;
The enchanted chalice, sparkling free
With wine, amid whose ruby glow
Love couched, with madness linked and woe;
Mantle and zone, whose woof beneath
Lurked wily grace, in subtle wreath
With blandishment and young desire
And soft persuasion intertwined,
Whose touch, with sympathetic fire,
Could melt at once the sternest mind;
Have passed away: for vestal Truth
Young Fancy's foe, and Reason chill,
Have chased the dreams that charmed the youth
Of nature and the world, which still,
Amid that vestal light severe,
Our colder spirits leap to hear
Like echoes from a fairy hill.
Yet deem not so. The Power of Spells
Still lingers on the earth, but dwells
In deeper folds of close disguise,
That baffle Reason's searching eyes:

Nor shall that mystic Power resign
To Truth's cold sway his webs of guile,
Till woman's eyes have ceased to shine,
And woman's lips have ceased to smile,
And woman's voice has ceased to be
The earthly soul of melody.

A night and day had passed away:
A second night. A second day
Had risen. The noon on vale and hill
Was glowing, and the pensive herds
In rocky pool and sylvan rill
The shadowy coolness sought. The birds
Among their leafy bowers were still,
Save where the red-breast on the pine,
In thickest ivy's sheltering nest,
Attuned a lonely song divine,
To soothe old Pan's meridian rest.

It was the custom of Pan to repose from the chace at noon. Theocritus, Id. I.

The stream's eternal eddies played
In light and music; on its edge
The soft light air scarce moved the sedge:
The bees a pleasant murmuring made
On thymy bank and flowery hedge:
From field to field the grasshopper
Kept up his joyous descant shrill;
When once again the wanderer,
With arduous travel faint and pale,
Beheld his own Arcadian vale.

From Oryx, down the sylvan way,
With hurried pace the youth proceeds.
Sweet Ladon's waves beside him stray

In dear companionship: the reeds
Seem, whispering on the margin clear,
The doom of Syrinx to rehearse,
Ladonian Syrinx, name most dear
To music and Mænalian verse.

It is the Aphrodisian grove.
Anthemion's home is near. He sees
The light smoke rising from the trees
That shade the dwelling of his love.
Sad bodings, shadowy fears of ill,
Pressed heavier on him, in wild strife
With many-wandering hope, that still
Leaves on the darkest clouds of life
Some vestige of her radiant way:
But soon those torturing struggles end;
For where the poplar silver-grey
And dark associate cedar blend
Their hospitable shade, before
One human dwelling's well-known door,
Old Pheidon sits, and by his side
His only child, his age's pride,
Herself, Anthemion's destined bride.

She hears his coming tread. She flies
To meet him. Health is on her cheeks,
And pleasure sparkles in her eyes,
And their soft light a welcome speaks
More eloquent than words. Oh, joy!
The maid he left so fast consuming,
Whom death, impatient to destroy,
Had marked his prey, now rosy-blooming,
And beaming like the morning star

With loveliness and love, has flown
To welcome him: his cares fly far,
Like clouds when storms are overblown;
For where such perfect transports reign
Even memory has no place for pain.

The poet's task were passing sweet,
If, when he tells how lovers meet,
One half the flow of joy, that flings
Its magic on that blissful hour,
Could touch, with sympathetic power,
His lyre's accordant strings.
It may not be. The lyre is mute,
When venturous minstrelsy would suit
Its numbers to so dear a theme:
But many a gentle maid, I deem,
Whose heart has known and felt the like,
Can hear, in fancy's kinder dream,
The chords I dare not strike.

They spread a banquet in the shade
Of those old trees. The friendly board
Calliroë's beauteous hands arrayed,
With self-requiting toil, and poured
In fair-carved bowl the sparkling wine.
In order due Anthemion made
Libation, to Olympian Jove,
Arcadian Pan, and Thespian Love,
And Bacchus, giver of the vine.
The generous draught dispelled the sense
Of weariness. His limbs were light:
His heart was free: Love banished thence
All forms but one most dear, most bright:
And ever with insatiate sight

He gazed upon the maid, and listened,
Absorbed in ever new delight,
To that dear voice, whose balmy sighing
To his full joy blest response gave,
Like music doubly-sweet replying
From twilight echo's sylvan cave;
And her mild eyes with soft rays glistened,
Imparting and reflecting pleasure;
For this is Love's terrestrial treasure,
That in participation lives,
And evermore, the more it gives,
Itself abounds in fuller measure.

Old Pheidon felt his heart expand
With joy that from their joy had birth,
And said:—“Anthemion! Love's own hand
Is here, and mighty on the earth
Is he, the primogenial power,
Whose sacred grove and antique fane
Thy prompted footsteps, not in vain,
Have sought; for, on the day and hour
Of his incipient rite, most strange
And sudden was Calliroë's change.
The sickness under which she bowed,
Swiftly, as though it ne'er had been,
Passed, like the shadow of a cloud
From April's hills of green.
And bliss once more is yours; and mine
In seeing yours, and more than this;
For ever, in our children's bliss,
The sun of our past youth doth shine
Upon our age anew. Divine

No less than our own Pan must be
To us Love's bounteous deity;
And round our old and hallowed pine
The myrtle and the rose must twine,
Memorial of the Thespian shrine.”—

'Twas strange indeed, Anthemion thought,
That, in the hour when omens dread
Most tortured him, such change was wrought;
But love and hope their lustre shed
On all his visions now, and led
His memory from the mystic train
Of fears which that strange damsel wove
Around him in the Thespian fane
And in the Heliconian grove.

Eve came, and twilight's balmy hour:
Alone, beneath the cedar bower,
The lovers sate, in converse dear
Retracing many a backward year,
Their infant sports in field and grove,
Their mutual tasks, their dawning love,
Their mingled tears of past distress,
Now all absorbed in happiness;
And oft would Fancy intervene,
To throw, on many a pictured scene
Of life's untrodden path, such gleams
Of golden light, such blissful dreams,
As in young Love's enraptured eye
Hope almost made reality.

So in that dear accustomed shade,
With Ladon flowing at their feet,
Together sate the youth and maid,

In that uncertain shadowy light
When day and darkness mingling meet.
Her bright eyes ne'er had seemed so bright,
Her sweet voice ne'er had seemed so sweet,
As then they seemed. Upon his neck
Her head was resting, and her eyes
Were raised to his, for no disguise
Her feelings knew; untaught to check,
As in these days more worldly wise,
The heart's best purest sympathies.

Fond youth! her lips are near to thine:
The ringlets of her temples twine
Against thy cheek: oh! more or less
Than mortal wert thou not to press
Those ruby lips! Or does it dwell
Upon thy mind, that fervid spell
Which Rhododaphne breathed upon
Thy lips erewhile in Helicon?
Ah! pause, rash boy! bethink thee yet:
And canst thou then the charm forget?
Or dost thou scorn its import vain
As vision of a fevered brain?

Oh! he has kissed Calliroë's lips!
And with the touch the maid grew pale,
And sudden shade of strange eclipse
Drew o'er her eyes its dusky veil.
As droops the meadow-pink its head,
By the rude scythe in summer's prime
Cleft from its parent stem, and spread
On earth to wither ere its time,
Even so the flower of Ladon faded,

Swifter than, when the sun hath shaded
In the young storm his setting ray,
The western radiance dies away.

He pressed her heart: no pulse was there.
Before her lips his hand he placed:
No breath was in them. Wild despair
Came on him, as, with sudden waste,
When snows dissolve in vernal rain,
The mountain-torrent on the plain
Descends; and with that fearful swell
Of passionate grief, the midnight spell
Of the Thessalian maid recurred,
Distinct in every fatal word:
—“These lips are mine; the spells have won them,
Which round and round thy soul I twine;
And be the kiss I print upon them
Poison to all lips but mine!”—

—“Oh, thou art dead, my love!”—he cried—
“Art dead, and I have murdered thee!”—
He started up in agony.
The beauteous maiden from his side
Sunk down on earth. Like one who slept
She lay, still, cold, and pale of hue;
And her long hair all loosely swept
The thin grass, wet with evening dew.

He could not weep; but anguish burned
Within him like consuming flame.
He shrieked: the distant rocks returned
The voice of woe. Old Pheidon came
In terror forth: he saw; and wild
With misery fell upon his child,

And cried aloud, and rent his hair.
Stung by the voice of his despair,
And by the intolerable thought
That he, how innocent soe'er,
Had all this grief and ruin wrought,
And urged perchance by secret might
Of magic spells, that drew their chain
More closely round his phrensied brain,
Beneath the swiftly-closing night
Anthemion sprang away, and fled
O'er plain and steep, with frantic tread,
As Passion's aimless impulse led.

University of Virginia Library

Canto IV