IV.
But Love has more to do with his own possible and probable
posterities, than with the once living but now impossible ancestries
in the past. So Pierre's glow of family pride quickly gave
place to a deeper hue, when Lucy bade love's banner blush out
from his cheek.
That morning was the choicest drop that Time had in his
vase. Ineffable distillations of a soft delight were wafted from
the fields and hills. Fatal morning that, to all lovers unbetrothed;
“Come to your confessional,” it cried. “Behold our
airy loves,” the birds chirped from the trees; far out at sea, no
more the sailors tied their bowline-knots; their hands had lost
their cunning; will they, nill they, Love tied love-knots on
every spangled spar.
Oh, praised be the beauty of this earth, the beauty, and the
bloom, and the mirthfulness thereof! The first worlds made
were winter worlds; the second made, were vernal worlds; the
third, and last, and perfectest, was this summer world of ours.
In the cold and nether spheres, preachers preach of earth, as
we of Paradise above. Oh, there, my friends, they say, they
have a season, in their language known as summer. Then
their fields spin themselves green carpets; snow and ice are
not in all the land; then a million strange, bright, fragnant
things powder that sward with perfumes; and high, majestic
beings, dumb and grand, stand up with outstretched arms, and
hold their green canopies over merry angels—men and women
—who love and wed, and sleep and dream, beneath the approving
glances of thier visible god and goddess, glad-hearted
sun, and pensive moon!
Oh, praised be the beauty of this earth; the beauty, and the
bloom, and the mirthfulness thereof. We lived before, and
shall live again; and as we hope for a fairer world than this
to come; so we came from one less fine. From each successive
world, the demon Principle is more and more dislodged;
he is the accursed clog from chaos, and thither, by every new
translation, we drive him further and further back again. Hosannahs
to this world! so beautiful itself, and the vestibule to
more. Out of some past Egypt, we have come to this new
Canaan; and from this new Canaan, we press on to some Circassia.
Though still the villains, Want and Woe, followed us
out of Egypt, and now beg in Canaan's streets: yet Circassia's
gates shall not admit them; they, with their sire, the demon
Principle, must back to chaos, whence they came.
Love was first begot by Mirth and Peace, in Eden, when the
world was young. The man oppressed with cares, he can not
love; the man of gloom finds not the god. So, as youth, for
the most part, has no cares, and knows no gloom, therefore,
ever since time did begin, youth belongs to love. Love may
end in grief and age, and pain and need, and all other mode
s of human mournfulness; but love begins in joy. Love's first
sigh is never breathed, till after love hath laughed. Love
laughs first, and then sighs after. Love has not hands, but
cymbals; Love's mouth is chambered like a bugle, and the
instinctive breathings of his life breathe jubilee notes of joy!
That morning, two bay horses drew two Laughs along the
road that led to the hills from Saddle Meadows. Apt time
they kept; Pierre Glendinning's young, manly tenor, to Lucy
Tartan's girlish treble.
Wondrous fair of face, blue-eyed, and golden-haired, the
bright blonde, Lucy, was arrayed in colors harmonious with the
heavens. Light blue be thy perpetual color, Lucy; light blue
becomes thee best—such the repeated azure counsel of Lucy
Tartan's mother. On both sides, from the hedges, came to
Pierre the clover bloom of Saddle Meadows, and from Lucy's
mouth and cheek came the fresh fragrance of her violet young
being.
“Smell I the flowers, or thee?” cried Pierre.
“See I lakes, or eyes?” cried Lucy, her own gazing down
into his soul, as two stars gaze down into a tarn.
No Cornwall miner ever sunk so deep a shaft beneath the
sea, as Love will sink beneath the floatings of the eyes. Love
sees ten million fathoms down, till dazzled by the floor of pearls.
The eye is Love's own magic glass, where all things that are
not of earth, glide in supernatural light. There are not so
many fishes in the sea, as there are sweet images in lovers' eyes.
In those miraculous translucencies swim the strange eye-fish
with wings, that sometimes leap out, instinct with joy; moist
fish-wings wet the lover's cheek. Love's eyes are holy things;
therein the mysteries of life are lodged; looking in each other's
eyes, lovers see the ultimate secret of the worlds; and with
thrills eternally untranslatable, feel that Love is god of all.
Man or woman who has never loved, nor once looked deep
down into their own lover's eyes, they know not the sweetest
and the loftiest religion of this earth. Love is both Creator's
and Saviour's gospel to mankind; a volume bound in roseleaves,
clasped with violets, and by the beaks of humming-birds
printed with peach-juice on the leaves of lilies.
Endless is the account of Love. Time and space can not contain
Love's story. All things that are sweet to see, or taste, or
feel, or hear, all these things were made by Love; and none
other things were made by Love. Love made not the Arctic
zones, but Love is ever reclaiming them. Say, are not the
fierce things of this earth daily, hourly going out? Where
now are your wolves of Britain? Where in Virginia now, find
you the panther and the pard? Oh, love is busy everywhere.
Everywhere Love hath Moravian missionaries. No Propagandist
like to love. The south wind wooes the barbarous north;
on many a distant shore the gentler west wind persuades the
arid east.
All this Earth is Love's affianced; vainly the demon Principle
howls to stay the banns. Why round her middle wears
this world so rich a zone of torrid verdure, if she be not dressing
for the final rites? And why provides she orange blossoms
and lilies of the valley, if she would not that all men and maids
should love and marry? For every wedding where true lovers
wed, helps on the march of universal Love. Who are brides
here shall be Love's bridemaids in the marriage world to
come. So on all sides Love allures; can contain himself what
youth who views the wonders of the beauteous woman-world?
Where a beautiful woman is, there is all Asia and her Bazars.
Italy hath not a sight before the beauty of a Yankee girl; nor
heaven a blessing beyond her earthly love. Did not the angelical
Lotharios come down to earth, that they might taste of
mortal woman's Love and Beauty? even while her own silly
brothers were pining after the self-same Paradise they left?
Yes, those envying angels did come down; did emigrate; and
who emigrates except to be better off?
Love is this world's great redeemer and reformer; and as all
beautiful women are her selectest emissaries, so hath Love
gifted them with a magnetical persuasiveness, that no youth
can possibly repel. The own heart's choice of every youth,
seems ever as an inscrutable witch to him; and by ten thousand
concentric spells and circling incantations, glides round
and round him, as he turns: murmuring meanings of unearthly
import; and summoning up to him all the subterranean
sprites and gnomes; and unpeopling all the sea for naiads to
swim round him; so that mysteries are evoked as in exhalations
by this Love;—what wonder then that Love was aye a
mystic?
