King Poppy By the Earl of Lytton |
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| I. |
| II. |
| III. |
| IV. |
| V. |
| VI. |
| VII. |
| VIII. |
| IX. |
| X. |
| XI. | XI.
THE CORONATION. |
| XII. |
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 | King Poppy |  |
245
XI. THE CORONATION.
Alone, as she had never been before,
Alone and conscious of her loneliness,
And by that consciousness from head to foot
Fill'd with a freezing fear, the maiden stood.
Pilgram was gone, and gone her father: gone
Her childhood's old glad careless confidence
In life's untested welcomes: gone the time
When round her, like a rich land's prodigal soil
In a soft clime, the world with promise teem'd;
When all things said “Thou may'st!” and none “Thou must!”
When every song-bird caroll'd, “Life is love,
And love is joy!” when all the hopeful air
Was glowing with benignant prophecies,
And every leaf and blossom laugh'd, “Rejoice!”
When even tears were sweet as summer rains,
And melancholy's sorrowfullest mood
Only a kind of shadowy happiness.
All these were gone: and, taking to itself
Usurp'd possession of their empty place,
Her crown remain'd. The loveliness of youth,
Itself so loving, yearns to be beloved
Ere yet it finds the loved one, and youth's dreams
Are all dim-throng'd with amorous presences
That smile and beckon. But, while fervid steps
Their smiles pursue, Fate's labyrinth unperceived
Round the lured victim, coiling, shuts. And then,
When happiness hath grown a habit, hope
A faith, and love the element of both,
Out of the heart of the maze her oracle speaks
The Inevitable No; that, whether breathed
Light as the whispers of a sleeping child,
Or loud as thunder peal'd, all promise turns
To prohibition, puckers to a frown
Earth's smile, strikes sunless the bright vault of heaven,
And famine-smites the fruitful tracts of time.
The loved one's coming tears, not kisses, greet;
And the poor heart's forbidden welcome faints
Unutter'd upon lips that wail “Farewell!”
Voices that laugh'd, “Rejoice!” exclaim, “Renounce!”
Along the desert air, where no bird sings,
A pining wind laments, “Life is not love,
But duty, and love is not joy, but pain!”
And all things say, “Thou must!” and none, “Thou may'st!”
Change comes with age: but it is we that change,
And not the world's conditions. Our desires
Dwindle: our will deliberately shifts
Its chosen mark, exerting none the less
Its liberty of choice: the shorten'd aim
Requites the slacken'd effort: from without
No enigmatic mandate disallows
Their free selection of the mark itself
To faculties retaining all their force:
And the slow years along the downward slope
Of compensated loss so softly lead
Life's gradual descent that, looking back,
Never at any time can age recall
The date of youth's departure. But this change
Comes otherwise, comes wholly unprepared,
Suddenly in the heyday of youth's heats,
When every pulse is fullest, every nerve
Most sensitive to pleasure and to pain.
It comes with the intolerable shock
Of the soul's first discovery of Fate's strength
And her own impotence: leaves all within
Unchanged, unweaken'd, and unreconciled
To the drear change of all without—the same
Wild energy of will, the same strong need
Of life and love, the same capacity
To feel, the same simplicity of faith
In pre-establisht harmonies between
Feeling and fact; but all at once no more
The same fair, welcoming, wide-open world
Of high and happy possibilities
Awaiting their possession. Chill eclipse
Descends on all. The reassuring smile
Of a benignant Providence departs,
And, in its stead, hangs everywhere the frown
Of some grim barbarous Demon Power that wills
And loves not, claiming for its dismal rites
The victim and the sacrifice. Even then,
Born brave, and nurtur'd upon nobleness,
The young heart (still too young to guess the worst
That Fate intends it), like a king dethroned,
Whose kingliness, even when unkingdom'd, clothes
Calamity itself with grace august,
Would fain devote its proud sublimities
Of feeling to the adornment of despair;
Feasting its famine upon sacrifice,
Slaking its fervid thirst of joys forbid
On torrents of inebriating tears,
Converting desolation to a dower,
Pain to an appanage, and wringing thus
The rapture of a high enthusiasm
Even from the cold grey helplessness of grief.
In vain! The Inevitable No denies
To unhappiness no less than happiness
The luxury of passion: and again
Out of the heart of the maze the oracle speaks:
“Not all at once, impulsive Child of Earth,
Nor once for all, thy sacrifice shall be!
But thou shalt mortify and mutilate
Thyself, piecemeal, on altars many and mean,
Little by little, to the end of life.
And when the equivalence of littleness
In suffering and enjoyment, good and ill,
Hath re-establisht life's lost harmonies
Of fact and feeling in a lower tone,
When the subservient spirit no longer craves
Aught that the common and convenient course
Of circumstance denies it, death shall loose
With sudden hand a bond grown tolerable,
Remove a burden lighten'd by long use,
And to the crippled pinions, that have lost
Their power to soar, set wide the narrow cage
Which shelter'd Custom's creature from the vague,
Wild, fearful, unfamiliar Infinite.”
Alone and conscious of her loneliness,
And by that consciousness from head to foot
Fill'd with a freezing fear, the maiden stood.
Pilgram was gone, and gone her father: gone
Her childhood's old glad careless confidence
In life's untested welcomes: gone the time
When round her, like a rich land's prodigal soil
In a soft clime, the world with promise teem'd;
When all things said “Thou may'st!” and none “Thou must!”
When every song-bird caroll'd, “Life is love,
246
Was glowing with benignant prophecies,
And every leaf and blossom laugh'd, “Rejoice!”
When even tears were sweet as summer rains,
And melancholy's sorrowfullest mood
Only a kind of shadowy happiness.
All these were gone: and, taking to itself
Usurp'd possession of their empty place,
Her crown remain'd. The loveliness of youth,
Itself so loving, yearns to be beloved
Ere yet it finds the loved one, and youth's dreams
Are all dim-throng'd with amorous presences
That smile and beckon. But, while fervid steps
Their smiles pursue, Fate's labyrinth unperceived
Round the lured victim, coiling, shuts. And then,
When happiness hath grown a habit, hope
A faith, and love the element of both,
Out of the heart of the maze her oracle speaks
247
Prohibition is coeval with Paradise; where all said “Yes” till Prohibition spoke. The voice of it followed man's footsteps into the wilderness, which then became his world: a world filled with the terrors of that voice. But of its many mandates one only is inevitable. All prohibitions upon Sin man has evaded. The prohibition upon Happiness he cannot evade. This is the Inevitable No; which transfers Freedom, with all its felicities, from the realm of Reality to that of the Ideal.
Light as the whispers of a sleeping child,
Or loud as thunder peal'd, all promise turns
To prohibition, puckers to a frown
Earth's smile, strikes sunless the bright vault of heaven,
And famine-smites the fruitful tracts of time.
The loved one's coming tears, not kisses, greet;
And the poor heart's forbidden welcome faints
Unutter'd upon lips that wail “Farewell!”
Voices that laugh'd, “Rejoice!” exclaim, “Renounce!”
Along the desert air, where no bird sings,
A pining wind laments, “Life is not love,
But duty, and love is not joy, but pain!”
And all things say, “Thou must!” and none, “Thou may'st!”
Change comes with age: but it is we that change,
And not the world's conditions. Our desires
Dwindle: our will deliberately shifts
Its chosen mark, exerting none the less
248
Requites the slacken'd effort: from without
No enigmatic mandate disallows
Their free selection of the mark itself
To faculties retaining all their force:
And the slow years along the downward slope
Of compensated loss so softly lead
Life's gradual descent that, looking back,
Never at any time can age recall
The date of youth's departure. But this change
Comes otherwise, comes wholly unprepared,
Suddenly in the heyday of youth's heats,
When every pulse is fullest, every nerve
Most sensitive to pleasure and to pain.
It comes with the intolerable shock
Of the soul's first discovery of Fate's strength
And her own impotence: leaves all within
Unchanged, unweaken'd, and unreconciled
To the drear change of all without—the same
249
Of life and love, the same capacity
To feel, the same simplicity of faith
In pre-establisht harmonies between
Feeling and fact; but all at once no more
The same fair, welcoming, wide-open world
Of high and happy possibilities
Awaiting their possession. Chill eclipse
Descends on all. The reassuring smile
Of a benignant Providence departs,
And, in its stead, hangs everywhere the frown
Of some grim barbarous Demon Power that wills
And loves not, claiming for its dismal rites
The victim and the sacrifice. Even then,
Born brave, and nurtur'd upon nobleness,
The young heart (still too young to guess the worst
That Fate intends it), like a king dethroned,
Whose kingliness, even when unkingdom'd, clothes
Calamity itself with grace august,
250
Of feeling to the adornment of despair;
Feasting its famine upon sacrifice,
Slaking its fervid thirst of joys forbid
On torrents of inebriating tears,
Converting desolation to a dower,
Pain to an appanage, and wringing thus
The rapture of a high enthusiasm
Even from the cold grey helplessness of grief.
In vain! The Inevitable No denies
To unhappiness no less than happiness
The luxury of passion: and again
Out of the heart of the maze the oracle speaks:
“Not all at once, impulsive Child of Earth,
Nor once for all, thy sacrifice shall be!
But thou shalt mortify and mutilate
Thyself, piecemeal, on altars many and mean,
Little by little, to the end of life.
And when the equivalence of littleness
251
Hath re-establisht life's lost harmonies
Of fact and feeling in a lower tone,
When the subservient spirit no longer craves
Aught that the common and convenient course
Of circumstance denies it, death shall loose
With sudden hand a bond grown tolerable,
Remove a burden lighten'd by long use,
And to the crippled pinions, that have lost
Their power to soar, set wide the narrow cage
Which shelter'd Custom's creature from the vague,
Wild, fearful, unfamiliar Infinite.”
To Diadema in that frozen trance
Fate's Oracle had spoken its first word;
And round her crown's hard hollow circlet, husht
With horror, died away in a dumb void
The faint unanswer'd voices of the past.
But, thro' the silence of all others, sweet
As Eden's nightingale when still the rose
Was thornless, one dear solitary voice
Of tenderest tone sang to her from afar,
Singing of love, and love's infinitudes
Of feeling. To a world of finite fact
Fetter'd, she heard it as a captive hears
Thro' prison grates, in some far foreign land,
A voice that calls him in his native tongue,
And at the extreme tether of his chain
Falls in vain effort to escape. A few
Short footsteps reach'd the limit of her power
To follow the sweet summons of that song.
Her crown still held in her unconscious hands,
Out thro' her chamber's unshut casement, drawn
As one that walks in dreams, she stagger'd. There,
Down in its rose-girt balcony she sank
Along her purple-pillow'd ivory couch,
Letting her crown into her listless lap
Sink unregarded also. Low, between
The moonlit blossoms of the balustrade,
Her drooping cheek on her clasp'd hands she lean'd,
And listen'd, sick at heart. A little breeze
Began to make a sighing trouble among
Those moonlit blossoms. Ever and anon
Fell o'er her, here a blossom, there a leaf;
And with the leaves and blossoms, as they fell,
Her tears fell too, thawing her frozen trance.
The distant voice sang on. But with its song
Another and a nearer voice, that breathed
Close at her ear importunate, interfused
Mysterious tones. It was the Poppy's voice,
Appealing to her for the crown he craved.
“Maiden,” it whisper'd, “give thy crown to me,
With all its cares, and I will give thee love,
With all its joys!” And, as she listen'd, her heart
Swell'd fuller, and beat faster, and she felt
The lightening and the loosening of a load
Of ponderous impossibilities.
The whisper of the Poppy, with its word
Of mystic promise, penetrating all
The music of Love's passionate psalm, became
More potent upon her spirit than the power
Of Fate's imperative oracle. A soul
Secure of happiness, in some high sphere
Of unassail'd serenity, she heard
Faint echoes of the Inevitable No
Falling far down a dim escaped abyss
Of evitable and evaded doom
That gaped beneath her, and their menace seem'd
Abortive as a dying beldam's curse.
Between her and the singer of the song
Whose music mingled with the lulling spells
Breathed by the Poppy, all distance disappear'd,
All separation ceased. The song itself,
Assuming personality, became
One with the singer, and the singer and she
One with each other; in whose oneness lived,
Reciprocally realized, the full
Felicitous actuality of all
The song but sang of—strength and tenderness,
Passion and purity, beyond the reach
Of ruinous time and rancorous circumstance,
In a transcendent everlasting dream
Of love united. From the maiden's lap
Down slid the crown the Poppy craved, and bruised
His goblin brow. Thence issued troops of dreams,
Whose giant power its weight uplifted, set
Its heavy splendours on his florid crest,
And with miraculous transmutation turn'd
Its dwindling golden hoop, and the small head
Beneath it, to a tawny capsule hard,
Encircled by the semblance of what they
Who are themselves but semblances of power
Wear for the symbol of it. From this hard
And tawny capsule leapt two lucid beads
That fell into the maiden's eyes. Her lids
Droop'd slowly, closing o'er them, and she slept.
Slept, and still sleeps: a maiden princess sleeping
For ever in a palace by the sea!
Fate's Oracle had spoken its first word;
And round her crown's hard hollow circlet, husht
With horror, died away in a dumb void
The faint unanswer'd voices of the past.
But, thro' the silence of all others, sweet
252
Was thornless, one dear solitary voice
Of tenderest tone sang to her from afar,
Singing of love, and love's infinitudes
Of feeling. To a world of finite fact
Fetter'd, she heard it as a captive hears
Thro' prison grates, in some far foreign land,
A voice that calls him in his native tongue,
And at the extreme tether of his chain
Falls in vain effort to escape. A few
Short footsteps reach'd the limit of her power
To follow the sweet summons of that song.
Her crown still held in her unconscious hands,
Out thro' her chamber's unshut casement, drawn
As one that walks in dreams, she stagger'd. There,
Down in its rose-girt balcony she sank
Along her purple-pillow'd ivory couch,
Letting her crown into her listless lap
Sink unregarded also. Low, between
253
Her drooping cheek on her clasp'd hands she lean'd,
And listen'd, sick at heart. A little breeze
Began to make a sighing trouble among
Those moonlit blossoms. Ever and anon
Fell o'er her, here a blossom, there a leaf;
And with the leaves and blossoms, as they fell,
Her tears fell too, thawing her frozen trance.
The distant voice sang on. But with its song
Another and a nearer voice, that breathed
Close at her ear importunate, interfused
Mysterious tones. It was the Poppy's voice,
Appealing to her for the crown he craved.
“Maiden,” it whisper'd, “give thy crown to me,
With all its cares, and I will give thee love,
With all its joys!” And, as she listen'd, her heart
Swell'd fuller, and beat faster, and she felt
The lightening and the loosening of a load
Of ponderous impossibilities.
254
Of mystic promise, penetrating all
The music of Love's passionate psalm, became
More potent upon her spirit than the power
Of Fate's imperative oracle. A soul
Secure of happiness, in some high sphere
Of unassail'd serenity, she heard
Faint echoes of the Inevitable No
Falling far down a dim escaped abyss
Of evitable and evaded doom
That gaped beneath her, and their menace seem'd
Abortive as a dying beldam's curse.
Between her and the singer of the song
Whose music mingled with the lulling spells
Breathed by the Poppy, all distance disappear'd,
All separation ceased. The song itself,
Assuming personality, became
One with the singer, and the singer and she
One with each other; in whose oneness lived,
255
Felicitous actuality of all
The song but sang of—strength and tenderness,
Passion and purity, beyond the reach
Of ruinous time and rancorous circumstance,
In a transcendent everlasting dream
Of love united. From the maiden's lap
Down slid the crown the Poppy craved, and bruised
His goblin brow. Thence issued troops of dreams,
Whose giant power its weight uplifted, set
Its heavy splendours on his florid crest,
And with miraculous transmutation turn'd
Its dwindling golden hoop, and the small head
Beneath it, to a tawny capsule hard,
Encircled by the semblance of what they
Who are themselves but semblances of power
Wear for the symbol of it. From this hard
And tawny capsule leapt two lucid beads
That fell into the maiden's eyes. Her lids
256
Slept, and still sleeps: a maiden princess sleeping
For ever in a palace by the sea!
Over the sleeping maiden lightly stoop'd
King Poppy. Both her lidded eyes he kiss'd,
And whisper'd to her, “King's Daughter, enter in!
Enter the happy realm whereof thy hand
Hath crown'd me monarch! Here thy home behold!
Here shalt thou dwell forever beautiful,
Forever blest; and here forever thine
Those gifts shall be, the god who gave them hid
Deep in the innocent heart my power preserves
Stainless, and still unbroken: radiant forms,
The fields of Fancy roaming, crown'd with flowers
From faëry gardens gloriously adorn'd
By all the summers of the Golden Age;
Sweet thoughts that wander, sinless as the streams
That water'd Paradise, thro' worlds as fair
And far away as Paradise itself;
Bright tendernesses ever flowing from
Unfathomable founts of sympathy;
Beauty that time hath blemish'd not, and love
That life hath not dishonour'd. Safe and pure
As dwells the starry essence of the dew
Shut in the unsullied bosom of a rose,
Sleep, maiden, sleep! To thee shall woeful eyes
And weary hearts for consolation turn,
When slumber locks eyelashes tired with tears
On cheeks still wet with weeping, and sad souls
Are guided blindfold to the Land of Dreams.
Here, as, imploring refuge from the world,
My realm and thine their weary steps approach,
Do thou life's wayworn travellers welcome home,
And lead them to the regions of their rest!”
King Poppy. Both her lidded eyes he kiss'd,
And whisper'd to her, “King's Daughter, enter in!
Enter the happy realm whereof thy hand
Hath crown'd me monarch! Here thy home behold!
Here shalt thou dwell forever beautiful,
Forever blest; and here forever thine
Those gifts shall be, the god who gave them hid
Deep in the innocent heart my power preserves
Stainless, and still unbroken: radiant forms,
The fields of Fancy roaming, crown'd with flowers
From faëry gardens gloriously adorn'd
By all the summers of the Golden Age;
Sweet thoughts that wander, sinless as the streams
257
And far away as Paradise itself;
Bright tendernesses ever flowing from
Unfathomable founts of sympathy;
Beauty that time hath blemish'd not, and love
That life hath not dishonour'd. Safe and pure
As dwells the starry essence of the dew
Shut in the unsullied bosom of a rose,
Sleep, maiden, sleep! To thee shall woeful eyes
And weary hearts for consolation turn,
When slumber locks eyelashes tired with tears
On cheeks still wet with weeping, and sad souls
Are guided blindfold to the Land of Dreams.
Here, as, imploring refuge from the world,
My realm and thine their weary steps approach,
Do thou life's wayworn travellers welcome home,
And lead them to the regions of their rest!”
The Shepherd, on a moonlit peak, his song
Unanswer'd, and his soul in wild suspense,
Stood waiting for a voice that ne'er till then
Had fail'd to answer, in a thousand tones
Of infinitely varied tenderness
For ever new, the selfsame question fond,
With the same fond assurance, “I am thou!”
Strange and uncommon seems to each in turn
His own first portion of life's common pain:
But cruellest is the pang of the surprise
When what hath been a long-familiar sense
Of undefinable felicity,
Whose beatific influence erewhile
In some young heart made hovering music heard,
And, soft as sunny haze at morning, mantled
That one poor heart's whole habitable world
In fervid veils that all harsh features hid,
And all dark hollows fill'd with golden cloud,
A single miserable moment turns
Into a definite and acute despair,
Crying aloud, “My name is Love! Secure
Within thy spirit's penetralian shrine
I lurk'd unchallenged, till at last I learn'd
Its inmost secrets. Thou, who all the while
Didst neither know thyself, nor them, nor me,
By every other name that is not mine
Hast call'd me; and in many a borrow'd form
Upon thy heart I, unforbidden, fed
Till I gain'd strength to break it. Know me now,
For what I am! Love, stronger than before,
Being full-grown, craving more nourishment.
I hunger. I am starving. I am wild.
My power is pitiless, my need immense,
And thou art at my mercy. Give me food
Give me thy heart to gnaw, thy life to rend
And ravage! In return, one gift have I
Still left to give thee, tho' all else be gone,
The dreadful gift of Knowledge-known-too-late!
Thou shalt not ever hear her voice again,
And thou dost love her. Thou shalt never hold
Her hand in thine, nor press thy lips to hers,
And thou dost love her. Never shalt thou gaze
Upon her face, save in a hopeless dream,
And thou dost love her. Thou hast loved her long,
And didst not know it. Thou hast lost her now,
And, knowing thou hast lost her, knowest too
How dearly thou didst love her, and dost love!”
258
Stood waiting for a voice that ne'er till then
Had fail'd to answer, in a thousand tones
Of infinitely varied tenderness
For ever new, the selfsame question fond,
With the same fond assurance, “I am thou!”
The soul's pursuits, whether in life or art, are preceded by an ideal possession of the object pursued. For to the soul pure perception is in the nature of undisturbed possession: nor can she seek what she does not miss, or miss what she has not known. But this state of the soul is simply receptive; and the conditions of her physical tenement render it necessarily transient. The cessation of it is followed by a state of unrest; wherein the sense of missed possession begets the need of attainment, and therewith passion, the agent of that need. The first is a state of passive enjoyment; the second, one of painful activity. Attainment, however, extinguishes passion in the possession of the object attained; and in relation to that object the soul again finds rest: what the faculties employed by her present as an act of acquisition, being to the soul herself an act of recovery. Perception, preceding desire; desire, compelling attainment; and attainment, restoring perception; these three states comprise the history of what his work is to the artist, his love to the lover, his system to the philosopher: in so far, at least, as the Imaginative Power is concerned with the development, in the individual, of art, philosophy, or love.
Strange and uncommon seems to each in turn
His own first portion of life's common pain:
But cruellest is the pang of the surprise
When what hath been a long-familiar sense
Of undefinable felicity,
Whose beatific influence erewhile
In some young heart made hovering music heard,
And, soft as sunny haze at morning, mantled
259
In fervid veils that all harsh features hid,
And all dark hollows fill'd with golden cloud,
A single miserable moment turns
Into a definite and acute despair,
Crying aloud, “My name is Love! Secure
Within thy spirit's penetralian shrine
I lurk'd unchallenged, till at last I learn'd
Its inmost secrets. Thou, who all the while
Didst neither know thyself, nor them, nor me,
By every other name that is not mine
Hast call'd me; and in many a borrow'd form
Upon thy heart I, unforbidden, fed
Till I gain'd strength to break it. Know me now,
For what I am! Love, stronger than before,
Being full-grown, craving more nourishment.
I hunger. I am starving. I am wild.
My power is pitiless, my need immense,
260
Give me thy heart to gnaw, thy life to rend
And ravage! In return, one gift have I
Still left to give thee, tho' all else be gone,
The dreadful gift of Knowledge-known-too-late!
Thou shalt not ever hear her voice again,
And thou dost love her. Thou shalt never hold
Her hand in thine, nor press thy lips to hers,
And thou dost love her. Never shalt thou gaze
Upon her face, save in a hopeless dream,
And thou dost love her. Thou hast loved her long,
And didst not know it. Thou hast lost her now,
And, knowing thou hast lost her, knowest too
How dearly thou didst love her, and dost love!”
This was the only voice the Shepherd heard.
It came to him from his own frighten'd heart,
Startling and terrible, as at dead of night,
When feasted revellers rest, and streets are still,
Thro' some soft slumbering city that hath been
Betray'd while it caroused, a trumpet sounds,
Blown by the invader, and a wild voice cries,
“Awake! The foe is in the citadel,
The gods are stolen away, and all is lost!”
And he awoke out of his broken dream
Of undefended happiness, and sat
Forlorn among the ruins of it, and felt
That something, which till then had been the soul
Of all things else, was gone; and nothing else
The loss of it had left alive in him
But a blind, voiceless, desolate desire
Far from his undone self to fly away;
Athwart the world's indifferent darkness chasing
Evasive echoes of a silenced song
Whose distant singer's inmost soul to his
Had all its secrets in that song outpour'd.
His little but upon the upland lawns
He left, and all his flocks and herds forsook.
His loins he girt, and from the stony ridge
Rush'd, like a mountain cataract sudden rains
Have swollen, upon the valleys with a cry.
Flying, his pastoral pipe he flung away,
For broken was the music of his life,
And flung away his shepherd crook, for all
His shepherdings were ended. Flint and briar
Stay'd not his flight, nor the dividing sea.
Into its moaning deeps he plunged, and swam
Dauntless as young Leander, tho' for him
No torch was kindled, and no Hero watch'd.
Strong was the violent strait that roll'd between
The mainland and the islet crags whence safe
The song he miss'd had found erewhile its way.
But to him, seeking thro' the waters wild
That lost song's hidden birthplace, way was none
Safe from the hundred thousand hands of Death,
That snatch'd, and clutch'd, and slipp'd, and snatch'd again.
Headlong at last upon a savage beach
The breaker hurl'd him senseless, but anon
Suck'd back, and toss'd from roaring ridge to ridge
Of smoky surf, till in its strenuous lap
The tide-wave's southward-streaming current caught,
And roll'd him round the rocky isle, and laid
His body, bleeding, bruised, but breathing still,
In a soft bay beneath the summer moon.
There, blowing over myrtle bowers, sweet airs
Breathed on his swoon, and waked it. He arose
As one that, having perish'd on the rack,
Revives in Paradise. Around him bloom'd
The Eden of his dreams, and o'er him smiled
The heaven of all his hopes. A giant crag,
Cleft from the rocky root of it in twain,
Loom'd imminent above him. One huge peak
(The highest but least inaccessible)
Rough with wild shrubs and pendulous parasites,
Held, poised in heaven, upon its aëry top
The large round moon. The other and lesser limb
Of that deep-riven rampart, from its base
Low-branching, pedestall'd a shadowy pile
Of masonry fantastically heap'd
In terrace upon terrace superposed.
Wall overtopping wall, and dome from dome
Emergent in a maze of pinnacles,
All unapproachable. From whose dim midst
Uprose a single supereminent tower;
And, in the highest story of it set,
A spacious lamp-lit window, balconied
Broad at the vase with golden balustrade
O'er-clamber'd by the revelling rose, shone bright.
The glory, from that window pouring, paused
Upon the rose-girt balcony, and wove
A reverential aureole round about
One image—hers, the lady of the isle,
In her lone loveliness. The Shepherd's star
Stay'd there, above the recompensing shrine
Of his wild pilgrimage: for there at last
Song's tenderest importunities were blest
With all the gladness of a granted prayer,
And love's most passionate prophecies fulfill'd.
His limbs were sore and shaken, soak'd and torn
His garments, but no pain nor weariness
Survived that vision. Deep beatitude
Bathed his delighted spirit, and a new sense
Of life, from suffering suddenly released,
Flutter'd blithe wings within him like a bird.
With nimble foot and dexterous hand he climb'd
The higher cliff, whose tangled thickets creak'd
And crackled where from branch to branch he swung
Swift as a stormy wind: beneath his foot
The mountain's stony litter, loosen'd, sprang,
And down its craggy channels roaring roll'd
Into unseen abysses: snaky roots,
Tugg'd by his snatching hand, within its grasp
Snapp'd: but safe onward sped the mountaineer;
Such salient springs of lightness in his heart,
Uplifting and upholding him, impell'd
His passionate course. The overwhelming Pan,
Whose hidden presence fill'd those shaggy heights
With sudden horrors and bewilderments,
Dismay'd him not; nor could earth's sullen power
Subordinate to its down-dragging stress
The ascendant spirit that etherealized
His earthly frame, wherein the fire of life
Burn'd with a self-consuming brightness, fann'd
To finer fervours by the breath of love.
It came to him from his own frighten'd heart,
Startling and terrible, as at dead of night,
261
Thro' some soft slumbering city that hath been
Betray'd while it caroused, a trumpet sounds,
Blown by the invader, and a wild voice cries,
“Awake! The foe is in the citadel,
The gods are stolen away, and all is lost!”
And he awoke out of his broken dream
Of undefended happiness, and sat
Forlorn among the ruins of it, and felt
That something, which till then had been the soul
Of all things else, was gone; and nothing else
The loss of it had left alive in him
But a blind, voiceless, desolate desire
Far from his undone self to fly away;
Athwart the world's indifferent darkness chasing
Evasive echoes of a silenced song
Whose distant singer's inmost soul to his
Had all its secrets in that song outpour'd.
262
He left, and all his flocks and herds forsook.
His loins he girt, and from the stony ridge
Rush'd, like a mountain cataract sudden rains
Have swollen, upon the valleys with a cry.
Flying, his pastoral pipe he flung away,
For broken was the music of his life,
And flung away his shepherd crook, for all
His shepherdings were ended. Flint and briar
Stay'd not his flight, nor the dividing sea.
Into its moaning deeps he plunged, and swam
Dauntless as young Leander, tho' for him
No torch was kindled, and no Hero watch'd.
Strong was the violent strait that roll'd between
The mainland and the islet crags whence safe
The song he miss'd had found erewhile its way.
But to him, seeking thro' the waters wild
That lost song's hidden birthplace, way was none
Safe from the hundred thousand hands of Death,
263
Headlong at last upon a savage beach
The breaker hurl'd him senseless, but anon
Suck'd back, and toss'd from roaring ridge to ridge
Of smoky surf, till in its strenuous lap
The tide-wave's southward-streaming current caught,
And roll'd him round the rocky isle, and laid
His body, bleeding, bruised, but breathing still,
In a soft bay beneath the summer moon.
There, blowing over myrtle bowers, sweet airs
Breathed on his swoon, and waked it. He arose
As one that, having perish'd on the rack,
Revives in Paradise. Around him bloom'd
The Eden of his dreams, and o'er him smiled
The heaven of all his hopes. A giant crag,
Cleft from the rocky root of it in twain,
Loom'd imminent above him. One huge peak
264
Rough with wild shrubs and pendulous parasites,
Held, poised in heaven, upon its aëry top
The large round moon. The other and lesser limb
Of that deep-riven rampart, from its base
Low-branching, pedestall'd a shadowy pile
Of masonry fantastically heap'd
In terrace upon terrace superposed.
Wall overtopping wall, and dome from dome
Emergent in a maze of pinnacles,
All unapproachable. From whose dim midst
Uprose a single supereminent tower;
And, in the highest story of it set,
A spacious lamp-lit window, balconied
Broad at the vase with golden balustrade
O'er-clamber'd by the revelling rose, shone bright.
The glory, from that window pouring, paused
Upon the rose-girt balcony, and wove
A reverential aureole round about
265
In her lone loveliness. The Shepherd's star
Stay'd there, above the recompensing shrine
Of his wild pilgrimage: for there at last
Song's tenderest importunities were blest
With all the gladness of a granted prayer,
And love's most passionate prophecies fulfill'd.
His limbs were sore and shaken, soak'd and torn
His garments, but no pain nor weariness
Survived that vision. Deep beatitude
Bathed his delighted spirit, and a new sense
Of life, from suffering suddenly released,
Flutter'd blithe wings within him like a bird.
With nimble foot and dexterous hand he climb'd
The higher cliff, whose tangled thickets creak'd
And crackled where from branch to branch he swung
Swift as a stormy wind: beneath his foot
The mountain's stony litter, loosen'd, sprang,
And down its craggy channels roaring roll'd
266
Tugg'd by his snatching hand, within its grasp
Snapp'd: but safe onward sped the mountaineer;
Such salient springs of lightness in his heart,
Uplifting and upholding him, impell'd
His passionate course. The overwhelming Pan,
Whose hidden presence fill'd those shaggy heights
With sudden horrors and bewilderments,
Dismay'd him not; nor could earth's sullen power
Subordinate to its down-dragging stress
The ascendant spirit that etherealized
His earthly frame, wherein the fire of life
Burn'd with a self-consuming brightness, fann'd
To finer fervours by the breath of love.
At last, with nought between him and the moon
Save the dark-purple ether's breathing dome,
He stood elate. Thence, gazing, he beheld
Close underneath him, nor beyond his reach
More than a few short arm-lengths—lone, as dwells
The little glow-worm in its own soft gleam
Enhalo'd,—on a lamp-lit ivory couch
Gem-crusted, purple-cushion'd, girt about
By a broad golden balcony, and embower'd
Among rose-blossoms (she, a rose in bud)
—Among profuse rose-blossoms and among
Husht leaves embower'd, where all around her throbb'd
Night's palpitant purities and poesies
Of starlight, stillness, darkness, solitude,
And summer (a poem of purity herself)
—The maiden Princess sleeping. Snowy white
Shone her soft throat and lucid shoulder bare,
And snowy white, from breast to ankle fine,
In wavy slopes her sweeping vesture flow'd
Along her faultless form. One sweet small foot
From the plain fold that hid its fellow peep'd
In jewell'd slipper, sparkling to the moon:
One slender hand above her fallen crown
Hover'd, a drooping flower: the other propp'd
Her pale cheek, pillow'd on its rosy palm.
Above the purple-cushion'd couch, and close
To the still maiden's tender ear, pale-lipp'd,
With writhing neck, in thin green garment clad,
Like a wan goblin bent beneath the weight
Of Elfland's gifts (his unawakening hand
Upon the pillow of its darling child
Must lay in haste ere morn's return) low crouch'd
A great white poppy; and from its luminous core,
As from the unseen flame of a wizard lamp,
Veil'd splendours all her slumbrous face suffused.
Her vagrant tresses, from the braided pearl
That bound them, loosen'd by low-breathing airs,
Wander'd in floating ripples upon the wave
That heaved her virgin bosom. The starr'd heavens,
Fill'd with unfathomable mystery, hung
Above her and about her, glimmering,
Trembling, and whispering, as tho' their winds
Were lull'd, their depths of lustrous darkness all
With odours laden, and their mazy stars
In myriads kindled, but to minister
To the secluded charm of her repose.
He, too, sole human witness of a sight
So wildly dream'd of and so dearly won,
Hung o'er her, almost touch'd her—and yet knew
That still 'twixt him and her was an abyss!
Save the dark-purple ether's breathing dome,
He stood elate. Thence, gazing, he beheld
Close underneath him, nor beyond his reach
267
The little glow-worm in its own soft gleam
Enhalo'd,—on a lamp-lit ivory couch
Gem-crusted, purple-cushion'd, girt about
By a broad golden balcony, and embower'd
Among rose-blossoms (she, a rose in bud)
—Among profuse rose-blossoms and among
Husht leaves embower'd, where all around her throbb'd
Night's palpitant purities and poesies
Of starlight, stillness, darkness, solitude,
And summer (a poem of purity herself)
—The maiden Princess sleeping. Snowy white
Shone her soft throat and lucid shoulder bare,
And snowy white, from breast to ankle fine,
In wavy slopes her sweeping vesture flow'd
Along her faultless form. One sweet small foot
From the plain fold that hid its fellow peep'd
In jewell'd slipper, sparkling to the moon:
268
Hover'd, a drooping flower: the other propp'd
Her pale cheek, pillow'd on its rosy palm.
Above the purple-cushion'd couch, and close
To the still maiden's tender ear, pale-lipp'd,
With writhing neck, in thin green garment clad,
Like a wan goblin bent beneath the weight
Of Elfland's gifts (his unawakening hand
Upon the pillow of its darling child
Must lay in haste ere morn's return) low crouch'd
A great white poppy; and from its luminous core,
As from the unseen flame of a wizard lamp,
Veil'd splendours all her slumbrous face suffused.
Her vagrant tresses, from the braided pearl
That bound them, loosen'd by low-breathing airs,
Wander'd in floating ripples upon the wave
That heaved her virgin bosom. The starr'd heavens,
Fill'd with unfathomable mystery, hung
Above her and about her, glimmering,
269
Were lull'd, their depths of lustrous darkness all
With odours laden, and their mazy stars
In myriads kindled, but to minister
To the secluded charm of her repose.
He, too, sole human witness of a sight
So wildly dream'd of and so dearly won,
Hung o'er her, almost touch'd her—and yet knew
That still 'twixt him and her was an abyss!
O'er that abyss, the one last hindrance left
Between love's indefatigable course
And its complete attainment, an abyss
So narrow, yet to foot of mortal man
Impassable as is the little grave
Whose gap uncross'd keeps Earth and Heaven apart,
The Shepherd stretch'd imploring arms, embraced
The bounteous vision, from his mountain ledge
Leapt desperately down; and at her feet,
Whose loveliness his life had from afar
Divined and sought, death laid him lovingly;
Suffering his wounded head to sink and rest
On her sweet bosom, folding round her close
His dying arms, and in libation pouring
(To consecrate their bridal bower) the blood
Of the brave heart whose strong life's passionate stream,
No longer pent, to its dear Naïad bore
The last fond tribute of adoring love.
Red gems it added to her royal crown,
And the pale Poppy guarding that great prize
It dyed deep crimson. So the Poppy gain'd
The kingly symbols he had coveted,
A purple mantle, and a golden crown.
But Sorrow gave him one, and Death the other.
Between love's indefatigable course
And its complete attainment, an abyss
So narrow, yet to foot of mortal man
Impassable as is the little grave
Whose gap uncross'd keeps Earth and Heaven apart,
The Shepherd stretch'd imploring arms, embraced
The bounteous vision, from his mountain ledge
Leapt desperately down; and at her feet,
270
Divined and sought, death laid him lovingly;
Suffering his wounded head to sink and rest
On her sweet bosom, folding round her close
His dying arms, and in libation pouring
(To consecrate their bridal bower) the blood
Of the brave heart whose strong life's passionate stream,
No longer pent, to its dear Naïad bore
The last fond tribute of adoring love.
Red gems it added to her royal crown,
And the pale Poppy guarding that great prize
It dyed deep crimson. So the Poppy gain'd
The kingly symbols he had coveted,
A purple mantle, and a golden crown.
But Sorrow gave him one, and Death the other.
Over the dying boy King Poppy bent,
Beneath his closing eyelids softly dropp'd
Two lucid beads, and whisper'd, “Enter in,
Poor shepherd boy who loved a monarch's child!
Enter the blissful realm whereof thy blood
Hath robed me king, and here in safety dwell,
Forever loving, and forever loved!
Here shall thy life be great and glorious, thou
Who wast on earth poor, nameless, and obscure!
Hither, my happy kingdom to adorn,
O herdsman's son, bear with thee unimpair'd
The single treasure of thy true young heart!
That love elsewhere impossible, elsewhere
Hopeless, shall here be hail'd the only love
Perfectly possible, the only one
Perfectly true, the only one that lasts
Fervid and fresh forever. King henceforth
Thou art, and bravely kingdom'd; for no less
Than kings are all my subjects, and to thee
The first and fairest of mine own wide realms
Is given in kingly guerdon. Here shall come,
Thy royal kinship claiming, the scorn'd souls
Of poets who, like thee, have nought but love
To give away, and give it all ungrudged
Tho' unrequited—save when life is o'er.
Young Shepherd King, thy maiden bride embrace!
Thy shepherd boy, young Maiden Queen, console!
Reign happy, reign together, sovereigns both
Of Dreamland's youngest province! People it
With lovelinesses rescued from a world
That loves not, solacing its paths with song
Elsewhere unheard! Call hither from afar
The loving, and the lonely, and the lost,
And lead them to the regions of their rest!”
Beneath his closing eyelids softly dropp'd
Two lucid beads, and whisper'd, “Enter in,
271
Enter the blissful realm whereof thy blood
Hath robed me king, and here in safety dwell,
Forever loving, and forever loved!
Here shall thy life be great and glorious, thou
Who wast on earth poor, nameless, and obscure!
Hither, my happy kingdom to adorn,
O herdsman's son, bear with thee unimpair'd
The single treasure of thy true young heart!
That love elsewhere impossible, elsewhere
Hopeless, shall here be hail'd the only love
Perfectly possible, the only one
Perfectly true, the only one that lasts
Fervid and fresh forever. King henceforth
Thou art, and bravely kingdom'd; for no less
Than kings are all my subjects, and to thee
The first and fairest of mine own wide realms
Is given in kingly guerdon. Here shall come,
Thy royal kinship claiming, the scorn'd souls
272
To give away, and give it all ungrudged
Tho' unrequited—save when life is o'er.
Young Shepherd King, thy maiden bride embrace!
Thy shepherd boy, young Maiden Queen, console!
Reign happy, reign together, sovereigns both
Of Dreamland's youngest province! People it
With lovelinesses rescued from a world
That loves not, solacing its paths with song
Elsewhere unheard! Call hither from afar
The loving, and the lonely, and the lost,
And lead them to the regions of their rest!”
| King Poppy | |