Canto the Third. Love and Nature luxuriant.
1. The happy Lover. 2. Love's young dream. 3. A Latter-day Eden. 4. A suitable home for the fascinating dread Deity. 5. Rest in the Forest. The beautiful Palm. 6. Expressions of trees—suggest more than the ‘pathetic fallacy.’ 7. Forest luxuriance.
I.
A king—a God—a little Child
Your happy Lover is; a Saint
With all the Eternal Powers at one—
Serene—confiding—reconciled:
He thinks no ill—believes in none;
There is for him no sin, no taint,
No room for doubt, disgust, complaint,
Misgiving or despondence faint:
Life's mystery flies, her secret won,
Like morning frost before the sun;
How should its cobweb ties arrest
The triumph of his bounding breast!
How should he feel, with actual heaven
In measureless fruition given,
The mounting spirit's mortal load?
Feel, steeped in empyrean day
And rapture without stint bestowed,
The Mind too big for its abode,
The Soul's discomfort in its clay?
Why look to some seraphic sphere
For light, for love, so lavish here?
In this our gorgeous Paradise
Why bend to grief—why stoop to vice?
Ah why distrest and sorrow-prest—
Why not be right and brave and blest?
How easy, in a world so bright
To be, to live, blest, brave and right!—
He breathes Elysium—walks on wings;
His own unbounded bliss he flings
O'er all deformed, unhappy things:
Transfigured are they—glorified;
Or vanish and cannot abide
The flood of splendour, the full tide
Of joy that from his heart so wide
Wells over all the world beside.
O Melodist unequalled—Pride
Of Nature's self-taught songsters he!
Inspired—unconscious—mute too soon—
Who sets and sings his lyric Life-song free
To glad Creation's high triumphant tune!
II.
So for herself and most for her beloved
All anxious cares and fears removed,
So upon Amohia now unclouded beams—
In rounded fulness of possession streams
Once more the dream of dreams—
The dear divine delirium! say
Once to all by fate allowed;
Though from its shy crescent small,
That finest silver eyelash, fall
Only its earliest rising ray;
Clothing them ever with a luminous cloud
Wherein they may a sweet while stray,
In the thronging whisper-play
Of Angel-wings, on life's highway;
Monomaniacs, in the charge
Of Beauty,—blissfully at large
'Mid the sadly saner crowd.
III.
—But we pause—we pale before it,
Fairest reader—that soft splendour!
And your pardon we implore it,
If in sight of scene so tender
Heart and voice we haply harden,
And with faltering step pass o'er it,
That sequestered Eden-garden;
Painting in evasive fashion
Two young lovers, wildly loving,
Through a lovely region roving,
Free as Nature—free as birds are,
Free as infants' thoughts and words are!
Ah! too rich for our rude treating,
Too exalted for our story
That intense absorbing passion—
That fine fever of young Love;
Which though cheating, swiftly fleeting,
Oft it seem to mock and flout us,
Comes so innocent, undesigning,
Comes into our darkness shining,
Comes and wraps the mystic glory
Of the golden Heavens about us!
And though pining or declining,
Buried—pent here—without vent here—
Lone—a stranger, wild, erratic;
Soon returning to the burning
Blisses of its home above—
Leaves a bud elsewhere to blossom,
Leaves a light in every bosom;—
Just revealing ere off-stealing,
One brief glimpse of soul-enjoyment,
To endure a memory sure—
Pure—a secret life-refiner
And great lure to realms diviner,
Where abandonment ecstatic
To the infinite of feeling—
Loftier love than aught existent,
Ever by indulgence growing
Deeper, fonder, and more glowing—
Tide at flooding still new flowing,
Flower fresh-budding while full-blowing—
Is consistent—is persistent,
Is our normal, true employment!
IV.
But say, in any Age of Gold
Or song-lit classic clime of old,
Where the amorous azure zephyr-fanned
Caressing kissed with murmur bland
Some finely-pebbled Paphian strand;
Where Cyprian seawinds whispering made
Love-plaint in hot Idalian glade
And marble-templed mulberry-shade;
Or where with wanton freaks and frets
Sang rough Cythera's sparkling jets
And silvery-laughing rivulets;
Or out of sight and sunshine slipped,
And lone in limestone cave and crypt,
Slow heavy tears in silence dripped;—
Were ever loveliest scenes in sooth
So typically fit to be
A birthplace and a home for thee,
Impassioned Love! as these that see
Our sylvan Maid, our sailor Youth
Love-linked go loitering where they list,
Love-led through Love's own mighty Mist?
A wondrous realm indeed beguiled
The pair amidst its charms to roam.
O'er scenes more fair, serenely wild,
Not often summer's glory smiled;
When flecks of cloud, transparent, bright,
No alabaster half so white,
Hung lightly in a luminous dome
Of sapphire, seemed to float and sleep
Far in the front of its blue steep;
And almost awful, none the less
For its liquescent loveliness,
Behind them sunk, just o'er the hill,
The deep Abyss profound and still,
The so immediate Infinite!
That yet emerged the same, it seemed,
In hue divine and melting balm,
In many a Lake whose crystal calm
Uncrisped, unwrinkled, scarcely gleamed;
Where Sky above and Lake below
Would like one sphere of azure show,
Save for the circling belt alone,
The softly-painted purple zone
Of mountains—bathed where nearer seen
In sunny tints of sober green
With velvet dark of woods between,
All glossy glooms and shifting sheen;
While here and there, some peak of snow
Would o'er their tenderer violet lean.
And yet within this region, fair
With wealth of waving woods—these glades
And glens and lustre-smitten shades,
Where trees of tropic beauty rare
With graceful spread and ample swell
Uprose; and that strange asphodel
On tufts of stiff green bayonet-blades,
Great bunches of white bloom upbore,
Like blocks of seawashed madrepore,
That steeped the noon in fragrance wide,
Till by the exceeding sweet opprest
The stately tree-fern leaned aside
For languor, with its starry crown
Of radiating fretted fans,
And proudly-springing beauteous crest
Of shoots all brown with glistening down,
Curved like the lyre-bird's tail half-spread,
Or necks opposed of wrangling swans,
Red bill to bill—black breast to breast;—
Aye! in this realm of seeming rest,
What sights you met and sounds of dread!
Calcareous caldrons, deep and large
With geysers hissing to their marge;
Sulphureous fumes that spout and blow;
Columns and cones of boiling snow;
And sable lazy-bubbling pools
Of sputtering mud that never cools;
With jets of steam through narrow vents
Uproaring, maddening to the sky,
Like cannon-mouths that shoot on high
In unremitting loud discharge
Their inexhaustible contents:
While oft beneath the trembling ground
Rumbles a drear persistent sound
Like ponderous engines infinite, working
At some tremendous task below!—
Such are the signs and symptoms—lurking
Or launching forth in dread display—
Of hidden fires, internal strife,
Amid that leafy, lush array
Of rank luxuriant verdurous life:
Glad haunts above where blissful love
Might revel, rove, enraptured dwell;
But through them pierce such tokens fierce
Of rage beneath and frenzies fell;
As if, to quench and stifle it,
Green Paradise were flung o'er Hell—
Flung fresh with all her bowers close-knit,
Her dewy vales and dimpled streams;
Yet could not so its fury quell
But that the old red realm accurst
Would still recalcitrate, rebel,
Still struggle upward and outburst
In scalding fumes, sulphureous steams.
It struck you as you paused to trace
The sunny scenery's strange extremes,
As if in some divinest face,
All heavenly smiles, angelic grace,
Your eye at times discerned, despite
Sweet looks with innocence elate,
Some wan wild spasm of blank affright
Or demon-scowl of pent-up hate;
Or some convulsive writhe confest,
For all that bloom of beauty bright,
An anguish not to be represt!
You look,—a moment bask in, bless,
Its laughing light of happiness;
But look again—what startling throes
And fiery pangs of fierce distress
The lovely lineaments disclose;—
How o'er the fascinating features flit
The genuine passions of the nether pit!—
But whatsoe'er of dark and dread
May be in Love's wild bosom bred,
Now on his ardent votaries shone
His bright and beauteous moods alone.
V.
Amo and Ranolf slowly journeying home,
Had to a pleasant place for camping come
Inside a glorious forest; and although
The atmosphere was still aglow
With heat—the sun still shining high,
Resolved that day they would no further go:
Why should they haste—what seek or fly?
Each rocky niche or woody nook
Of most retired romantic look,
There they could make their home, their rest,
And choose next day as fair a nest:—
'Twas such a joy to journey so,
How could their journey be too slow!
So long as not compelled to sever,
They cared not should it last for ever.
The youth, with hands beneath his head,
Against a great titóki's base,
Where less compact and tangled spread
The underbrush a little space,
Lay watching, now the forest scene,
Now Amo, as with accents gay
And lovely looks and lively mien
Directions to the lad she gave
How best and where the stones to lay
When heated well, and neatly pave
The little hollow cleared away
To make his oven in, and cook—
In leaves close-folded, lightly sprinkled
With water from the fretting brook
O'er rocky bed that near them tinkled—
The savoury palm-tree's pithy heart,
By Ranolf just cut down—but not,—
(Though many grew about the spot)
Without—be sure—a little smart—
Some slight compunction, for a meal
To strike with his destructive steel,
A thing so fair, a woodland treasure
You could not look at without pleasure!
A slim smooth pillar, ribbed and round,
With drooping crimson chaplet crowned;
O'er that,—erect, symmetric, chaste,
A green Greek vase of perfect taste,
With narrow neck and swelling side,
Smooth-shining, sinuous; whence in pride
Of beauty issued, spreading wide,
A fan-like tuft of feathers free—
All in artistic harmony!
Nor this alone employed the lad;
Intent upon a forest feast,
A more attractive task he had—
To raise and fix his three forked sticks,
The little iron pot to sling
He would on that excursion bring:
Its use of all the white man's ways
Had won his most decided praise;
In Ranolf's service he at least
Had learnt what pleasant things were made
With its inestimable aid;
And now with ducks and pigeons shot
By Ranolf, he designed a stew,
Should all his former stews outdo,
Since he had shared a traveller's lot.
VI.
But watching thus the wood, or these,
As Ranolf lay, his facile eye
Ran o'er the shapes of plants and trees
Exuberant round him, known or new.
And while once more, as oft before,
He marked with pleasure deep and true,
What varied charms in form and hue
Dear Nature's forest-children wore,
It so did chance his curious glance
Fell on a slender shrub hard by,
All trace-work of transparent gold,
Or gold and emerald blended,—neither,
Yet far more beautiful than either!
Against a ground of shadow black
And soft as velvet at its back,—
So delicately pencilled in green splendour,
Stem branch and twig and leaflet tender
So saturate with sunshine—such a flood
Of light,—the exquisite creation stood!—
Then out at once at that sweet sight,
Outbroke in words his pure delight
And admiration uncontrolled:
“O the ineffable loveliness
Of the green works of—Chance!!—how strange
Their perfect power to mock each one some dress
Our many-masquing Spirits wear;
Mute, yet expert, like Music, to express
In forms as it in sounds what mood soe'er
The Soul may take through feeling's varied range!
Look at that star-crowned beauty how she stoops,
With what meek pride her plumy crest is bent!
See that fair wanton's figure forward leant
With open arms and every spreading spray
In trustful, loving, frank abandonment;
Mark that small spire, stiff—upright—almost pert,
School-girl in class—or sentry all alert!
What shrinking tenderness does one display,
Another languidly despondent droops:
Here, some advanced in bold defiance stand,
While others crouch in shy reserve behind;
There innocent grace, or full contentment bland,
Or swelling pomp their fit exponents find:
And see! how that dismantled forest-king
Does his contorted silver branches fling,
All bare to heaven, in wild despair,
Or writhing agony of speechless prayer!—
Surely that first formative Spirit unknown
That to these innocent woodland things supplied
Shapes with our inmost feelings so allied,
By such foreshadowing evolution showed
Its prescience of those feelings ere they rose;
Nay, to the Finite stooping,—in a mode
So beautiful and subtle and serene,
Haply designed, if dimly, to disclose,
To every sentiment within us sown
Some mystical relation of its own
Not all unsympathetic though unseen!
VII.
“But O their rich luxuriance! What a load
That sturdy giant lifts in air!
His mighty arms are strong and broad,
But all with alien growths are furred,
A shaggy hide of creepers rare;
Their forks are all blocked up and blurred
With tufts of clogging parasites
That crowd till not a spot left bare
Might offer footing for a bird!—
And such her boundless vigour, see,
Above, below, and everywhere,
Exulting Nature so delights,
So riots in profusion, she
Twice over does her work for glee!
A tangled intricacy first she weaves,
Under and upper growth of bush and tree
In rampant wrestle for ascendancy;
Then round it all a richer overflow
Of reckless vegetation flings,
That here, close-moulding on the shrubs below
A matted coat of delicate leaves,
Mantles the muffled life whereon it clings
Into a solid mass of greenery;
There, mounting to the tree-tops, down again
Comes wildly wantoning in a perfect rain
Of trailers—self-encircling living strings
Unravellable! see how all about
The hundred-stranded creeper-cordage swings!
And when the breeze, so loud without,
Now tamed and awe-struck, gliding in, has found
Amid the stately trees a stealthy way—
How gently to-and-fro just o'er the ground
The low-depending woody ringlets sway,
Like panting creatures on the watch for play!”
