Canto the Seventh. English Maidens.
1. Return to the great Terraces. Amo asks about English maidens;
2. Their dress and jewels. 3. Amo mortified. Ranolf's idea of
her. 4. Hers of him. The Parthenon. 5. The boiling pool; its
blue surface colouring the mist-cloud above it. 6. The singing Islet
again.
I.
Now to the Fountain-Stair beside the pass,
The great white Fount, the pair their footsteps turning
Paused to admire the baths, whose sheets of glass,
Warm azure, with the blushing west were burning;
And Amo when her simple phrase had told
The simple triumph that illumed
Her features at her friend's delight
Which seemed to say her country had one sight
At least, as lovely, it must be avowed,
As any in his native land so proud—
The talk where it had broken off resumed:
“Atuas or not—you must be wise and bold
To work the wonders you unfold;
Too ignorant, alas! or dull
Am I, O friend, to comprehend
Such things, I fear. But let me hear—”
She said, in somewhat faltering tone
As shy, lest what she asked make known
More feelings than she cared to own:
“Are not your Maidens beautiful?”
“More so than well my tongue can tell.”
“But not more beautiful than you—”
“Than I!” with laughter loud, he cried:
“As much more as the graceful crane
In dainty plumes without a stain
Than her brown-mottled brother harsh,
The booming bittern of the marsh;
As much more as the fragrant strings
Of milky stars I've seen you tear
From some great forest-galaxy
With their sweet snows to double-dye
The sable splendour of your hair,
Than that vile twine of prickles fine
Which if it touch you cuts and clings
Whene'er you push through briar and bush.”
“But O, describe them, dearest, do!”
“Nay, how portray, how paint or say
What deep enchantment round them lies—
Great Nature's last felicities,
Her happiest strokes of genius! some of whom—
Heart, mind and body, in the May
And melody of perfect bloom
The coldest sceptic must assume
The mighty Master fashioned to display
In one consummate work how he
Could make its outward form a shrine,
A visible symbol and a sign
Of what was throned within—divine!
Aye! spite of Man's idolatry,
For ever pardonably prone
To worship more the shrine than Saint,
And feel from love of that alone
His beauty-burthened Spirit grow
With too much adoration faint—
Resolved in that rare Form to show
For what the rarer Soul was given,—
To be to Man a living light
And lure of spiritual beauty bright,
To lead him on from height to height
Of self-denying Love to heaven!—
But who that outward Shrine can paint,
Whose mortal scarce can its immortal shroud!
What lofty-passioned words and tones
Can picture forth those loveliest ones!
So blossom-cheeked, so heavenly-browed,
With dowry of divinest eyes,
Twin fragments of the azure skies
Beaming celestial blessing through
Pure chastened lids whose perfect white,
And the transparent temples too,
Are stained with streaks of delicate blue
As tender as thick-fallen snow
Deep down in crack and crevice makes
With its own shadow, when the weight
Of piled-up frail congealment breaks.—
Their hair! O take when Morning wakes
Her beams and twine them! pleach and plait
The Moon-sparks shrinking, leaping, linking,
On yonder Lake at midnight—spin them
With all the liquid gold within them
Into fine skeins of splendour! so
You best may guess how tress on tress
In long luxuriant glossiness
Its gleaming undulations flow!—
But you should see—I cannot tell—
What they resemble who so well
Attest what truth of fancy nurst
Your native myth how Woman first
Was fashioned from comminglings sweet
Of brilliant tremors of the noontide heat
That shimmering near you, still retreat,
And airy Echoes, sprites so shy
Yet quick with answering sympathy,
That ever haunting ever hide
Near cliff abrupt and mountain-side;—
With just enough of added Earth
To temper charms of such ethereal birth,
Which else e'en Rapture's self would miss—
Which else its fond embrace would fly—
To something lovelier it can clasp and kiss!”—
II.
“And have they flaxen mantles fair
As this—with broidered border rare?
And do their greenest jewels shine
Like this pellucid jade of mine?”
“For dress they rob the sunset—take
Its gorgeous glisterings from the Lake,
Or swathe their forms in gauzy mist
The Moon might envy them at night,
Pavilioned with pure amethyst,
In pearliest virgin vesture dight!
And as for gems!—they wreathe about
Their arms that dazzle you without,
And necks, that when your eyes you shut,
Leave shapes of sinuous snowy bloom
In vivid loveliness clear cut
And floating on the purple gloom—
Such trails of richest radiance set
In linked array of flower and fret,
As if they strung the beaded clusters,
The little lamping flame-hued lustres,
Sapphires winking, rubies blinking,
Trembling emerald-sparks, adorning
The mist-besilvered meads of morning
When first the Sun new-fires them! Aye
And always had that Sun hard by
To keep them, as his only duty,
Still bristling with all hues of beauty!”—
III.
But while he spoke there stole unseen
O'er Amohia's frank bright face
A shadow—as a slow white cloud
Grows over all the blue sky-space
Left by an opening in the green
O'er-roofing forest thick-emboughed,
And sheds soft gloom where light but now was shining.
He marked the mournful drooping head,
The cheek where sadly-pensive spread
The long-curled lashes low-declining:
“Yet,” said he quickly, “few of those
Have such a faultless form as you,
Whose every facile movement shows
What perfect grace on perfect limbs
The perfect freedom from restraint bestows;
Few such a blithe bright bearing; few
Could bound as is your wont
Up the great mountain-side and chase
The shadow of the cloud that skims
Scarce fleeter in its flying race;
Or at the summit could confront
The bland magnificence of Nature's brow
With such superb and regal innocence
And look and mien so kindred! few have eyes
Of such a brilliant power
They take away your breath and burn
Right through your heart whene'er they turn
Their melting flashes on you! few could shower
Such silky breadths of darkness down as now
I hold between me and their gaze,
To see if still their brightness will
Come breaking through in spurry rays
Like evening sunbeams through a thicket dense!
Yes! howsoe'er those beings fair
With Art to aid and Culture's care
From human almost to divine may rise,
For charms like these, not many there
Could with my Wonder of the Wilds compare!”
IV.
The sunny look at once returned,
And through the clear warm brown discerned,
The blush of artless triumph burned.
Then round his neck her arms she threw
And gazed, with love how fond and true
As upon something to adore,
Upon the face above her; in that vein
When parted lips and anxious sigh confess
Content is at its highest, and the excess
Of pleasure trembles on the brink of pain;
With simplest admiration too
Reading his features o'er and o'er,
As if her eyes could never feed
Enough, nor sate her heart's impassioned greed
For what to her was beautiful indeed:
‘Kai-máta’—‘face-devouring gaze’
Her country's own poetic phrase
Had called the glance that so much love displays.
But how conceive her feeling? how
The picture fond her fancy drew,
The halo round his form she threw!
To that enamoured fancy, quite
Unused to the fair-tinted faces
Of our Caucasian northern races,
This Stranger, with his eyes of sparkling blue
That shone through shadows of a thoughtful brow
Embossed with Intellect, and full and white,
With clustered gold about it curled,
Seemed some high Being from another World!
August and beautiful and bright
To her he well might seem,
As you perchance would deem
Some Phidian Temple must have looked of old;
Where architrave and pediment arise,
With metope-squares of dauntless proud emprise,
And friezes full of life!—serenely bold
Broadly confronting the broad skies,
And throwing deep majestic shade
(As human brow o'er human eyes)
Into the interspaces made
By many a stately colonnade;—
As such a Temple must have looked when bare
Its snowy grace and lovely grandeur first
Upon the shouting people burst!
Its solemn charm that would have awed, almost
In the mere splendour of material lost;
Because so brilliant fresh and new,
So delicately tinted here and there
With rainbow colours pure and fair,
The sculptured Marvel stood in view;
The matchless groups around it rife
In stirring trance of pomp or strife,
Sharp from some famous chisel, every one;
The marble dust of recent working
In glittering specks about them lurking;
All just uncovered to the morning Sun!
V.
But fair as Phidian Temple tinged so purely,
That pure untinged white-terraced Fount corálline
Showed, with its baths cerulean and crystálline,
Whereon they gazed when not upon each other
Their lover-gaze delightedly was dwelling;
When looks, where Love was seated so securely,
To answering looks ceased passionately telling
The tide of tenderness each bosom swelling.
Then, as they watched the huge Steam-cloud that whitely
O'er the main pool, like some nest-brooding mother,
Spread swanlike wings the brilliant water shading,—
Enveloped and imparadised more brightly
In a Love-cloud as fervid and unfading,
They saw how richly, though from surface duller,
That still, suspended Mist reflected duly
The bubbling basin's amethystine colour;
Returning tint for lovely tint as truly
As in their mirrored eyes, fond, deep, untroubled,
They marked, upwelling ever freshly, newly,
Their mutual Love reflected and redoubled!
VI.
Then to the glen that fronts the islets twain
And to their isle itself they come—
That ever-singing isle—through all the train
Of water-birds that swarm the simmering plain,
Thick as the sower's air-scattered grain.
And then their bower of mánuka they gain
Already soothing with a sense of home.
The grateful viands follow, fountain-drest;
And then that churme monotonous, ne'er represt,
Lulls them again entranced to Love's Elysian rest.
