The Works of Thomas Love Peacock :: :: University of Virginia Library

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 dæmon art adorned, he dwelt
With that bright nymph, who ever smiled
Refulgent as the summer morn
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
Awhile 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 mastiffs in the gate,
Or stalked around the garden-dells
In lion-guise, gaunt centinels.

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 compelled,
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 fervors ending,
Among those garden-bowers they stray,
Dispersed, where fragrant branches blending
Exclude the sun's meridian ray,
Or on some thymy bank repose,
By which a tinkling 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 chace
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 dæmons 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 in 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,
Filled 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 chace, 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;
But, borrowed from Apollo's quiver,
The death-directed arrow came.

Long, slow, distinct in each stern 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 late but certain vengeance of the gods, occurs in many forms as a sentence among the classical writers; and is the subject of an interesting dialogue, among the moral works of Plutarch, which concludes with the fable of Thespesius, a very remarkable prototype of the Inferno of Dante.

”—

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:
But 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 ear?
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 grey,
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, shewn
In seeking, nature's empire through,
Devices ever rare and new,
To make him calm and blest.
Two maids had loved him; one, the light
Of his young soul, the morning star
Of life and love; the other, bright
As are the noon-tide skies, when far
The vertic sun's fierce radiance burns:
The world had been too brief to prove
The measure of each single love:
Yet, from this hour, forlorn, bereft,
Companionless, where'er he turns,
Of all that love on earth is left
No trace but their cinereal urns.

But Pheidon's door unfolds; and who
Comes forth in beauty? Oh! 'tis she,
Herself, his own Calliroë!
And in that burst of blest surprise,
Like Lethe's self upon his brain
Oblivion of all grief and pain
Descends, and tow'rds her path he flies.
The maiden knew
Her love, and flew
To meet him, and her dear arms threw

Around his neck, and wept for bliss,
And on his lips impressed a kiss
He had not dared to give. The spell
Was broken now, that gave before
Not death, but magic slumber. More
The closing measure needs not tell.
Love, wonder, transport wild and high,
Question that waited not reply,
And answer unrequired, and smiles
Through such sweet tears as bliss beguiles,
Fixed, mutual looks of long delight,
Soft chiding for o'erhasty flight,
And promise never more to roam,
Were theirs. Old Pheidon from his home
Came forth, to share their joy, and bless
Their love, and all was happiness.

But when the maid Anthemion led
To where her beauteous rival slept
The long last sleep, on earth dispread,
And told her tale, Calliroë wept
Sweet tears for Rhododaphne's doom;
For in her heart a voice was heard:
—“'Twas for Anthemion's love she erred!”—
They built by Ladon's banks a tomb;
And, when the funeral pyre had burned,
With seemly rites they there inurned
The ashes of the enchantress fair;
And sad sweet verse they traced, to show
That youth, love, beauty, slept below;
And bade the votive marble bear
The name of Rhododaphne. There

The laurel-rose luxuriant sprung,
And in its boughs her lyre they hung,
And often, when, at evening hours,
They decked the tomb with mournful flowers,
The lyre upon the twilight breeze
Would pour mysterious symphonies.