Ranolf and Amohia :: :: University of Virginia Library

Ranolf and Amohia

A dream of two lives. By Alfred Domett. New edition, revised

Domett, Alfred (1811-1887)

BOOK THE FIRST. THE SAILOR-STUDENT.

Canto the First. The Sea-boy.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Second. Will-o'-wisp-chasing.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Third. From Wisp to Morass.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Fourth. Terra Firma.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

Canto the Fifth. Cloud-blowing.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

Canto the Sixth. Land-Life or Sea-Life?

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Seventh. The Shipwreck.

II.

III.

IV.

BOOK THE SECOND. THE SOUTH-SEA VILLAGERS.

Canto the First. The Rescue.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Second. The ‘Sounding Sea.’

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Third. The Magician.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Fourth. A Woodland Jaunt.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Fifth. The Legend of Tawhaki.

II.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Sixth. Mythical Cosmogonies.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Seventh. The Captive.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

BOOK THE THIRD. ALL IN A SUMMER NIGHT.

Canto the First. Miroa's Tidings.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Second. The Song-cheered Swimming.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Third. The Star-lit Swimming.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Fourth. Legends of the Spirit-Land.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Fifth. Amohia at the Fountain.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Sixth. Silence and Moonlight.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Seventh. The Meeting.

II.

III.

IV.

II.

VOLUME II.

BOOK THE FOURTH. A LATTER-DAY EDEN.

Canto the First. Flight of the Lovers.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

Canto the Second. Miroa's Story.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Third. Love and Nature luxuriant.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Fourth. Trees and the Tree-God.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Fifth. The Fountain-Terraces.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Sixth. A Geyser Yoked.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Seventh. English Maidens.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

BOOK THE FIFTH. STILL IN EDEN.

Canto the First. The Haunted Mountain.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Second. Sports on the Lake.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Third. The Cicada.

II.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Fourth. A loving Questioner.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Fifth. A cheery Theorist.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Sixth. Love beats Logic.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Seventh. An airy Nest.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

BOOK THE SIXTH WAR.

Canto the First. The Beleaguered Fortress.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Second. War needs Idealizing.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Third. The grand Assault.

II.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Fourth. Fight between ‘Sounding Sea’ and ‘Angry Star.’

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Fifth. Love fed by War.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Sixth. An old wrong avenged.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

[section]

VIII.

Canto the Seventh. Death of the ‘Sounding Sea.’

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

BOOK THE SEVENTH. SELF-SACRIFICE.

Canto the First. Weariness.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Second. A sad Resolve.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Third. Death of the Magician.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Fourth. Where is Comfort?

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Fifth. A Vision.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Sixth. The Departure.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Seventh. After-Experiences.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

Collapse All | Expand All expand section

239

BOOK THE SEVENTH. SELF-SACRIFICE.

241

Canto the First. Weariness.

1. Amo's exhaustless love. 2. Ranolf pines for civilized life. 3. Her efforts to amuse him. 4. Ranolf cannot conceal their failure. 5. Can he take her away with him?

I.

Alas! that human Happiness should never
Like those fair-flowing snowy fringes be,
That down Mahana's geyser-terraced hill
Grow into permanence as they distil;
In loveliness of marble mimicry
There, in the act of falling, fixed for ever!—
Alas! that Love's best transports may—
Like rills that dance and gleam and glance,
In loveliest forms of foam and spray
Down common cataracts every day—
So swiftly cease their sparkling play;
Though Love—the River's self—below
As deep or deeper still may flow!

The days rolled on—as dark or bright they will;
And found those lovers fondly loving still.

242

Could chance or change or circumstance destroy
Fair Amo's fondness for her bright Sea-boy?
Hers was a love exhaustless as the Ocean;
Her heart unwearied—as his waves with motion—
With restless play of passionate devotion.
Her pure profound Affection could outpour
Its tender tributes from an endless store,
With lavish waste diminishing no more
Than his with rolling snow-wreaths on the shore.
Enraptured in the presence of the Lord
And Idol of her young imagination,
Her Soul seemed always in the act to bless—
Her Spirit in a posture that adored;
Each look seemed love—each gesture a caress;
And every breath a yearning aspiration!
Though half the gems with which her Idol glowed
And won her worship, she herself bestowed—
Her heart was an unworked Golconda-mine,
Unconscious as 'twas careless, what a dower—
As a volcano might its scoria-shower—
It flung of diamond-fancies on the shrine
And round the Deity it made divine.
The knowledge—courage—courtesy—whate'er
In mind or body might be found, of fair
Intelligent or brave in him she loved,
By her fresh bosom's fond illusive pride
Were all sublimed, transfigured, glorified,
Beyond the reach of her and hers removed,—
As are some landscapes' beauties you survey
With head downbent, and such new charms diffuse
That woods and plains are in transcendent hues
Of tenderest richness floated far away.

243

II.

Was she not happy then?—what shadow stole
Over her full contentedness of soul?—
It was that as the days less swiftly flew
A weariness o'er Ranolf's spirit grew;
Not of her charms or her—for none the less
He loved his Wonder of the Wilderness.
But that the Life he led of savage ease
The more it was prolonged, seemed less to please.
Perhaps his love of roving was too strong,
Too deep-engrained to be quiescent long:
But this was not a conscious need, nor would
Have been the parent of his present mood.
It was the crave for intellectual food,
For which a young enthusiast Thinker pines,
Who daringly has tasted of the Tree
Forbidden still, of Knowledge of a Good
Beyond the actual still to be pursued
In all things to all ends; an Evil still
To be assailed by Reason still more free,
By wider Love and more exalted Will.
It was the crave for Books—the mighty mines
Where all the extinguished forests of mankind
In diamond-thoughts lie crystallized—enshrined:
And 'twas the haply sadder doom to be
Excluded from the guidance—sympathy—
The fellowship or presence of the prime
Of men who towards the Light the highest climb;
And head the onslaught of the human Mind
Against the strongholds of dim Destiny.

244

Ambition—progress—all the hope and pride
Of true Existence seemed to him denied.
That land so rich in Beauty's sensuous smile
Seemed for the Soul, only a desert Isle.
If ever chance-sent rumours reached his ear
Of the great Nations in their grand career,
They seemed dim records of aerial hosts
Who struggled in the heavens—or shadowy ghosts.
All the loud wonder-throes of peace or war
Seemed melted to a murmur faint and far!
What marvel if a feeling would intrude
Of something wanting in this solitude?—
Was it a treason to almighty Love
This sense of unfulfilled desire to prove?
Could any Love in any Paradise
Howe'er impassioned, mutual, melting, true—
Alone for any lovers long suffice?—
Not poets' dreams can make it ever new—
Not even a bridling dove can always coo!

III.

And anxious Amo could not but perceive
His thoughts were often wandering far away;
Her keen-eyed love would note, and inly grieve,
The shadow on his features once so gay.
The very love that to her faithful breast
So magnified the merits he possessed—
On which to dwell and feel them all her own
Were highest bliss to be conceived or known—
Made her inclined to rate herself too low;
With timid doubt it could indeed be so,
That such a treasure was reserved for her!

245

And often to her memory would recur
With what a glow he answered her demand
To paint the Beauties of his native Land.
And when her fond eye marked—more frequent now,
His sad abstracted air and troubled brow,
She could not check the thought, how full of woe,
“Ah! he is pining for those charms, I know,
Those lovely beings all of light and snow!
O my o'erweening pride to think that he
The glorious one, could be content with me!—”

Then would she seek the saddened heart to ease,
And ply with simple craft her arts to please;
With skilful change her finest mantles choose
Of broadest purfle and the fairest hues;
Their folds around her shapely shoulders place
Or dainty waist in each remembered way
He most had praised for piquancy and grace:
Or the soft glitter of her lustrous hair—
So glossy black, the lights thrown off would play
In sharp metallic gleams of bluish gray—
In crimson flowers he loved her so to wear
Or wax-white creeper-wreaths, she would array,
With chance-taught Taste so sure—such careless Care!
Or she would set herself a serious task,
Through tangled woods and thickets dense to range
In search of plants and insects—else despised—
Because he took in them an interest strange
She knew not why and scarcely cared to ask,
Since 'twas enough they were by Ranolf prized.

Or she would summon all her Damsels gay,
To lively dance or sportive game, that best

246

Would dexterous skill or native grace display:
Or send them on a harvest-gathering quest
Of clustering purple-fringes whence they squeeze
Sweet jellies ruby-clear; because the sight
Once seemed his fancy so to strike and please
Of these wild Wood-nymphs trooping through the trees
Back with their mirth-lit eyes—teeth glittering white
With laughter—tresses floating on the breeze,
And cheeks and foreheads in their reckless mood
All dashed and splashed with crimson berry-blood;
Like nymphs that frolic reeled in Bacchic dance
In Nature's golden-aged exuberance,
Or with goat-borne Silenus loved to romp
In grape-empurpled grace and tipsy pomp!

IV.

And Ranolf would her loving purpose guess;
And chide himself that he could not repress
The weary longing that would o'er him steal;
And force a gaiety he could not feel;
And show her deeper love and double tenderness.
But how should this content her? whose sole aim
Was to light up the old gladness in his eyes;
And little cared what of herself became,
Were that secured at any sacrifice;
But gained from true love far too keen a glance
To be deceived by any simulance
Of feeling, or affectionate pretence;—
Is not true Love the Mesmerizer true—
Beyond material Nature and above;
Clear-seeing, with its supernatural sense
The sympathetic object through and through?

247

Into its inmost being swift to dart,
In strange emotion take magnetic part,
And throb with beatings of the loved one's heart?
So Ranolf fondly sought—but sought in vain
From those fond eyes to hide his inward pain.

V.

What could be done? could he then bear her hence,
A wondering Wilding to his native land,
A savage wife! Ah what a startling shock
To prejudices like a wall of rock
Sense-based or senseless—piled on every hand!
Could he find fortitude or impudence
The ridicule and censure to withstand
Wisdom and folly would alike dispense?
Could he endure to be the mark or mock
For open pity—secret insolence?
To friends and kindred such a stumbling-block
Of deep and irremediable offence?
Ah could he brave all this?—But graver care
It was, how Amo such a change could bear?
Could this bright Child of woods and waters thrive
In the hot crowding of our social hive—
Though not like its mere honey-workers tasked,
Though only for such lightsome labour asked,
Such sweet monotony of toil as there
The partner of his moderate means must share?—
This life, self-guided by her will or whim—
Could she resign it for confinement dim,
Cooped round with indoor comfort—too secure?
Give up bright careless ease and breathing pure
In azure liberty of Sun and Air,

248

To choke in some fine atmosphere of nice
Punctilios and proprieties precise?
Be drilled into the trite and tedious round
Of petty duties, poor amusements, found
In formal life by strict conventions bound?—

Or could it flourish, this wild-flowering Tree,
Transparent with the sunbeams flowing free
Through its white cloud of blossom—nailed and trained
Espalier-wise against the rigid Wall
Of civilized existence—shorn of all
Its shoots of natural beauty—every spray
Checked in its impulses of artless play—
And all its waving wanton boughs constrained
And tortured into stiff and starch array,
In straightened uniformity controlled
Like iron grate-bars regular and cold?—
Or could the Tree transplanted long endure
The chill and rigour of a rougher sky?
The beautiful Exotic would be sure
In such ungenial clime to droop and die!

Nay (for this minor matter too deserves
A moment's thought) what sacrilege 'twould seem
To bolster out, disfigure and compress
That realization of a sculptor's dream
Of pure proportion—sinuous symmetry—
So simply clad in classic drapery—
That hit the happy and harmonious mean
Between the ripe and rich voluptuousness
Of lovely Aphrodite—soft and warm—
And beauty bright with a severer charm,
The light strong grace of active Artemis:—

249

Ah! what a sin to cramp a shape like this
Into some flaunting wire-and-whalebone screen
Of beauty-blighting frippery that combines
In dull extravagance discordant lines,
Sharp angles, shooting arcs and cutting curves;
Aping—wasp-waisted, ample-skirted some—
Cathedral-lantern o'er its swelling dome;
Some hourglass-shaped, knee-hobbled, mummy-screwed
Into the—modest frankness of ‘the nude!’
Each form fantastic from true taste that swerves
In hideous freaks of fashionable dress!
No! whether for her mind's or body's weal
He most was anxious—most was bound to feel—
Whichever way he looked, it seemed too plain,
He must this longing for his home restrain.

250

Canto the Second. A sad Resolve.

1. Amohia's misery. 2, 3. Wartime and news of invasion. 4. Amo's plan to save Ranolf. 5. A letter from home. 6. Another flight.

I.

So with factitious fervour—zeal in vain
Assumed to banish thought and deaden pain,
Sad Ranolf seeks the boar-hunt's toil again;
While native mongrels, bad or good, replace
His first stanch sturdy comrade in the chase;
But none he loved so—none that so loved him—
As that good-tempered wriggling tiger—Nim!
And many a day and sometimes nights he passed
Amid the forests on the Mountains vast;
While Amo, loving still and lonely grieved,
By his affected interest undeceived
In these pursuits; and with increased distress,
Saw the sad struggle she so well could guess—
The discontent of forced contentedness.
Though he was kind—aye kinder than before,
'Twas not for kindness that she yearned alone,
But love—glad glowing love like that of yore,
Impetuous and impassioned as her own

251

That kindness might be pity—nay, it must!
What else could be more likely—natural—just!
What else could one of such exalted sphere
Her fancy lifted to a realm so clear
And high above her, from his glorious place
Feel towards a being of inferior race,
Such as her love still made herself appear?
“Did he not come, a wonder and a prize
From some far Clime mysterious as the Skies—
Stoop in his flight to steep me in excess
Of too delightful fleeting happiness—
My lowly life with strange wild joys to crown,
As Hapae in the legend once came down,
The white-winged Wanderer from blue haunts above—
And on Tawhaki lavished all that love?
Ah! what am I, or what my claim or right
To keep all to myself a thing so bright?—”

And then her anguish took another turn;
With the old pride at moments would she burn:
“Am I not something too! through all the land
Where'er on great or small the Sun would shine
What Maid could boast superior birth to mine?
Could I help hearing how on every hand
They said—not men, even women—far and wide
For beauty none with Amohia vied;
None in the dance such wavy grace displayed;
Such fair designs for rich-wrought purfles made—
Like her could tell a legend—turn a song?—
Was it all flattery then—delusive—wrong?
Is she—through her whole life so praised—so prized,
Doomed to be now neglected and despised?”—

252

In her distraction then how would she try
To hate the cause of all this agony;
Half curse him in her impotent distress—
Aye—curse him with a passion that—would bless!
The mere conception of harsh words of hate
Such instant fond revulsion would create,
The ire wrung out by woe, in utterance choked,
Itself a gush of boundless love provoked—
The rage ran off in tears of tenderness:
“Too mad! too mad!—too horrible to curse
One so beloved—so beautiful—O worse
Than Rona cursing the full Moon for light!
Is it his blame he shines at such a height?
Ah, miserable me! who can but find
Food for a curse in what I am too blind—
No—not too blind! I cannot, ne'er could be
So blind, that dear, dear glory, not to see!
And seeing it and him—to think it strange
If love like mine he only could bestow
On beings like himself in fair exchange—
Bright beings—ah—those Maids he talked of so—
All golden light and sunset-tinted snow!
In beauty, knowledge—all attractions fine
Such as perchance I never could divine,
Would they not dim these poor dark charms of mine
As he does all our native youths outshine!

But could they love like me? Ah, were they here
To show which held the dearest one most dear!
Would they were here! if deadly danger prest
His life, he soon would learn who loved him best!
Would they, like me (O would I might!) to save
Him sinking, rush into the flooded wave

253

And all the terrors of the torrent brave?
Would they, like me, dash into thickest fight,
Cling to his conquering foe about to smite,
And take the blow—Ah me! with what delight,
Aimed at that head so beautiful—so bright!
Then, then—those Wonders—none he soon would see
Could worship—doat on—die for him like me!
Ah, why can men love nothing but the skin,
So little care for all that glows within—
All that should lure their love—their praises win?
Ah why was I not made as wise—as fair—
Why should those Gods or Atuas—whatsoe'er
They be—have left me of these gifts so bare
And grudged me all but misery and despair?

And yet he said—for I remember well
When of those wondrous beauties he would tell
The greatest merit could be had or known
Was for another's good to give your own;
And those grand Creatures, born to light and bliss,
Good in so much besides were best in this.
But there at least I am their equal—I;
O could I not the best of them defy
To give all I would give his good to buy?
None—none of them like me, without a sigh,
To give him joy a thousand times would die:
O that the chance would rise—howe'er it came
That I might prove and he might learn the same!”

And so the days slid heavily for both—
Each grief grew daily with the other's growth;
And from the woods upon his sad return
The sadness in her eyes he would discern,

254

And try to cheer her, O, with words too drear—
Words meaning much—but sounding little—cheer.
And then it was her turn sad joy to feign,
Which, pressing hard her heart to check its pain
She feigned—with stiffening lips that twitched in vain;
Thinking—with anguish smiling for his sake—
“O misery! my heart will break, will break!”

II.

So matters stood. And now the Autumn's fruits—
Karaka—tarro—kumera—berries, roots—
Had all been harvested with merry lays
And rites of solemn gladness; choral praise
And pure religious feeling—grateful—true;
Though rude, benighted if you will, the due
Of the great bounteous Spirit unknown or known
Of Nature; due in every clime or zone;
They called it ‘Rongo’—God of fruits and peace;
What matter, so the gratitude was given
To Spirit—call it Nature, God or Heaven?—
The worst was, almost ere the songs could cease,
With idiot inconsistency, like—men,
The very life-preserving gifts that then
They thanked their God for, they would straight employ
As means, almost incentives, to destroy;
And seize the occasion of abundant food
As fittest for the work of war and blood.

III.

'Twas then, that tidings of invasion planned
By far more dangerous foes against their land,

255

Reached Rotorua's people; how in brief
That mighty tribe, of all the tribes the chief,
Far in the North, whom not their neighbours dread
Not even the great Waikato could withstand—
Such wealth of guns and powder could they boast,
(For with the white man's ships they trafficked most)
Were coming, an innumerable host
'Twas rumoured, by the famous Chieftain led
With whom the marriage treaty was begun
Which Amo when she swam the Lake had fled;
So much the picture of her beauty brought
By Kangapo had on his fancy wrought;
Such power had recently that rabid Priest—
(By careless Ranolf in contempt released
When after Tangi's death the warfare ceased)—
O'er the excited haughty Chieftain won;
And, mad with rancour and revengeful spite
He could not wreak on Ranolf, nor requite
That spurner of his supernatural might
Who laughed at necromantic spells and charms,
Except by tearing Amo from his arms—
Had roused the Chief's too ready sense of slight,
By representing Tangi in the light
Of an abettor of his daughter's flight;
And acquiescent in the wrong his pride
Endured from those who sought—then set aside—
The great alliance they would now deride.
So all this storm was brewing, it was plain,
And soon would ruin and destruction rain
Upon their tribe, one special end to gain,—
To force surrender of the proffered bride,
And vengeance on the Stranger so obtain.

256

IV.

Before the tidings well were told, which filled
The eager-listening crowd with blank dismay,
The prescient heart of Amohia chilled;
And through her brain there shot a gloomy ray.
That Message seemed her secret Soul to seek;
Seemed to her inner consciousness to speak
Doomlike, before the story was got through;
Almost before she heard the half, she knew
Her hour was come, and all she had to do.
To foes like these resistance would be vain,
She would be captured, Ranolf would be slain.
This was the chance that she had prayed for still;
This was the moment when her heart should thrill
With joy, not terror, for the hope it gave—
Nay, all the certainty her heart could crave—
To prove her love and her adored one save!
Yes; she, ere it burst forth, that storm would stay,
Anticipate—prevent that dreadful day
And turn its terrors from one head away!
To save that dear one, she would go alone
And give herself to that resistless Chief;
The wrong, if done by Ranolf, so atone
And buy his life, O more than with her own!—
Her life were little—better could she bear
To give a thousand lives than seem to share
Another's love; that was the pain, the smart,
That was the sacrifice that wrung her heart;
Yet, worse than death, to make his life secure
This outrage to her love would she endure!
Yet life would still be given—for O with grief

257

She soon would die, and death would be relief!
Or if it came not of itself—and here
Pale grew her solemn brow and more severe
Her eyes and firm prest lips—herself would rend
The life away that misery would not end.
But Ranolf would be saved—O he would know
How matchless, boundless was her love—and woe;
And feel, the best of those he vaunted so
Could not outdare her in devotion—make
Such sacrifice of self for his dear sake!
Then would he long for her again—and weep
Her loss, and ever in his bosom deep
His poor wild maiden's memory fondly keep!

But Ranolf, whose own cares too deeply weighed,
Not much attention to these tidings paid:
“It was their greed for marvels—nothing more;
Or if that doughty Chieftain and his men
Were bent upon invading them—what then?
They would be thrashed as Whetu was before.”
So he continued listless to explore
The forests for the footprints of the boar.
And Amo thought, “He does not know their power,
Nor half their evil deeds in victory's hour”—
And all the more determined it was right
Herself should save him in his own despite.

V.

And often had she fixed the day to start,
Yet could not bear from all life's light to part;
The project oft deferred, was still renewed
Whenever Ranolf's restlessness she viewed;

258

Until one night arrived for her and him
That filled their cup of misery to the brim.
That day a precious letter from his home—
With slanting oval postmarks blue and red,
And scrawls “Try here—try there” all overspread—
Had (passed from tribe to tribe) to Ranolf come;
And with it, news that all the Chiefs who shared
The great proposed invasion were prepared
With countless guns and piles of packed-up food
And war-canoes and crowds of warriors good
To start in sanguinary, sanguine mood.—

And Amo all that eve had sate and gazed
With tearful looks, how fond! on Ranolf's face
And eyes so seldom from the letter raised,
Or fixed in sad abstraction far away,
While on his knees the fatal missive lay;
And fancied all his thoughts she well could trace—
With maddening hopelessness how they would run
Upon the Sister—Mother—long unseen;
And what a roar of Ocean—vast—unknown—
And obstacles far greater, stood between
Those loved ones and the Brother and lost Son;
And some sweet phantom Shape still dearer, she
Would fancy in his picture there must be!
'Twas then, and there, with burning—bursting heart
And choking throat—she bound herself, alone
Come what come might—next morning to depart.

VI.

So, when day broke, while Ranolf, half the night
Awake, was sleeping sadly by her side,

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She rose up—from her prostrate grief upright—
To take a last long gaze—heart-broken bride—
Upon that sleeping face—her life—her pride!
Then, in an agony of tenderness
With those fair golden curls she toyed awhile
That seemed to mock her with their sunny smile;
And lavished many a bitter-sweet caress
Upon the brow and cheeks and fast-closed eyes
She loved so—more than ever seemed to prize,
And thought more beautiful in this distress;
And hid at last her face upon his breast,
And wept a passionate flood of bitter tears—
“O could she there end all—joys, woes and fears—
Dead—dead at once—for ever there to rest!”—
And when at those fond touches Ranolf woke
And saw her grief and words of comfort spoke
Returning her caress, and sought to know
What sudden sorrow caused these tears to flow;
With quick-recovered firmness she replied—
“'Twas nothing—he was not to mind her—she
Was foolish—was ‘porangi’—and would be
Better directly—” and her tears she dried
And smiled in utter misery—and tried
Her deep despairing eyes from his to hide;
The while with more than usual busy zeal
It seemed, she went about the morning meal;
Then set it quietly before him—made
Some light excuse why he could not persuade
Herself to touch it—quietly received
His last caress, as, bidding her be cheered,
“For he would soon return, she might be sure!”—
And kissing her, he stroked her tresses black,
And with his dogs and gun, and heart sore-grieved

260

Off to the hills, by her calm looks deceived,
As usual went; while she, with bosom seared
And brain that whirled confused upon a rack
Of thoughts and feelings she could scarce endure,
Till all that she was seeing, hearing—seemed
Something she heard not—saw not—only dreamed,
She stood there watching till he disappeared;—
Then flung herself upon her couch, and there
Gave full, wild vent to sobbings of despair.

Soon with set teeth she rises; from her eyes
Brushes the blinding tears that will arise;
And snatching up a small supply of food—
For life must last to make her purpose good—
Still in the clutch of that wild passion held
That from her tight grief-strangled bosom swelled
Up to her throbbing brow,—as if compelled
By outward force—she keeps her frenzied thought
As well as her despairing fevered glance
From resting on a single circumstance
Of past or recent happiness, or aught
About that dim—loved—lost—and torturing scene—
The hut—the room where she so blest had been!
But staggering as beneath a heavy load
Rushes straight forward on her blighted road.

261

Canto the Third. Death of the Magician.

1. Amo passes the scenes of her old happiness. 2. Her despair. 3. A contrast. 4. Kangapo attempts to stop her. 5. His death. 6. She pursues her journey. 7. Crossing a river is swept away.

I.

So all that day, as by a dream possessed—
On—on—by one idea absorbed, opprest—
For many a mile, as if herself she fled,
Shunning all human sight the Wanderer sped:
‘To save him!’ the one hope, one lure to guide
Her course—all goading sharp despair beside.

But when exhausted nature would have rest,
And, reckless where, she sank upon the ground,
She was upon the very spot, she found,
Where Ranolf and herself by rain delayed
On that first blessed journey once had stayed.
And at a little distance she espied
The cave itself where they had made their nest,—
Laughing, their happy nest!—a yellow cave
Of clayey sandstone scooped out smooth and round

262

By some long-vanished immemorial wave;
One of a row that undermined the base
Of the steep hill-side green with tangled fern—
Only a few feet high and deep—a place
Just large enough for those two lovers fond,
And over-draped with drooping bough and frond.
There lay the flattened fern-couch—brown and dry;
The impress of two forms she could descry,
Still undisturbed by winds or passers-by.
Then did the conquering tenderness return;
And she resolved (for, but a little space,
The circuit her arrival would delay
At her sad journey's end) she would repair
Once more to those dear Lakes; the district fair
Where all the bliss of her life's little day
Lay like a vanished treasure; stored up there—
Quite lost to her—gone—lost and laid away!

II.

Dim skies and heavy rain!—
And by Mahana's Lake she roams again;
Nursing her agony with insensate care,
And pampering her despair:
Has sought out every scene
Where she and Ranolf had together been:
On every sight
Of wonder once and such delight
Again has dwelt:
And in their presence felt—
Delight? Ah no! increased distress—
No wonder—worse than weariness.

263

The clouds were dark and low;
Rain falling, soft and slow;
Day closing on her woe;
As, little heeding where she went,
With trouble more than travel spent,
She wandered reckless near the weird ravine
That leads up to the Lake of waters green,
Through spectral shapes forlorn
Of rocks all torn and weather-worn;
More gaunt, distorted, grim,
Thus shadowy seen through vapours dim.
Then at the entrance of that dismal vale,
Where dense broom-thickets smothering screen
Mud-pools that boil on every side,
And pit the crust, that anywhere might fail
The footstep, with foul cauldrons deep and wide;—
There, she—with hands upon her knees that hid
Her face, unmoving sat.
And though the rain had soaked her flaxen mat,
And slowly down the silken tresses slid,
That fell neglected on the ground;
Though in the silence as they slipped,
The unkindly drops of dew
Audibly dripped and dripped—
She felt it not, nor knew.
The only sight or sound
She saw or heard around,
Was that lost voice, that vanished face
That once had glorified the place;
And now, in such a torturing maze
Of tender recollections, wound
Her burning brain, her breaking heart;

264

The past to life appeared to start
In vivid hues too beautiful to bear!
Her vanished Bliss seemed over her to glare—
A deadly-terrible Angel lovely-bright
With outspread wings ablaze
Above her hung;—till blasted by its light
Down—down—she cowered—she sank—in misery's blackest night.

III.

How the gleam iridescent and shapeless—that lies
Like the Wreck of a Rainbow flung crushed on the skies
With its hues dimly blurred—where low down there flies
The last rack of the tempest; to mariners drear
How forlornly it calls up the memory clear
Of the Arch all resplendent! the luminous Bow
In the glory of orange and purple aglow,
On the thick of the violet shadow behind
In rounded perfection so sharply defined!
When so airily tender—transparently mild,
Yet so firmly enthroned o'er the elements wild;
So softly aspiring and gracefully grand,
On the air, like a rock, it has taken its stand,
And lords it serenely o'er ocean and land!—
Even so—as she lay overwhelmed by despair
Wan, weary and haggard—crushed, cowering there,
Even so—and so sadly! her woe-begone mien
Might have roused the remembrance of what she had been
When the Maid in the maddening days that had flown
In the bloom and the pride of her happiness shone!

265

IV.

A hand upon her shoulder laid,
With sudden startling pressure stayed
Her anguish in its mid career;
Though not the slightest sound betrayed
A human being's presence near.
'Twas Kangapo! who silent crept
Upon her, thinking that she slept;
Till as he neared the weeping maid,
Her heart-wrung moans the truth conveyed.

To aid the Northern Chief's designs, and make
The conquest sure which his revenge would slake;
To spy into the schemes the people planned
To meet the invaders of their threatened land;
But most with well-feigned tale and crafty lie
To lull them into false security;
The wily Priest had ventured back once more—
Safe in the sorcerer's dread repute he bore—
To prowl about the country, gather news,
And disaffection, where he could, diffuse;
Hiding the while, and less from need than taste,
In many a well-known haunt of wood and waste.

When Amo raised in wild surprise
Her tear-bedabbled face and eyes,
And saw whose form above her hung;
Whose spiteful, cool, triumphant leer
Into her grief would pry and peer,
Indignant to her feet she sprung:
“You, Kangapo! and wherefore here?

266

“Nay, rather—” was the answering sneer,
“Say what has brought to such disgrace,
Such evil plight, so lone a place,
The Stranger's Love—the white man's bride!
Has he, whose pale and girlish face
Could win, despite her birth and race,
Her tribe's renown—her father's pride,
The Maori maiden to his side—
Has he turned false, or fled—or died?”

“Ask nought of him; no mate of thine;
Thy course pursue—leave me to mine!”

“Nay—listen, Amo! let me tell—”

“Away! I know thy wiles too well!”

V.

No longer now his darkening brow
And coldly-glittering eye instilled
The terror that whene'er he willed
Had once the Maiden's bosom chilled.
The might of one supreme despair
Would let no lesser passion share
That bosom; one absorbing care
Had left no room for terror there.
She sought not to upbraid, reply;
Too sad for scorn, she turned to fly.
He saw his words their purpose missed,
Yet would not from his aim desist:
“Not listen! so resolved to go!—

267

Think not you shall escape me so;—
Think not I've no assistance nigh!—”
With sudden grasp he seized her wrist
And shouted. Then once more her eye
Shot forth its proud indignant light;
Her form expanded to full height;
She looked almost as when she stood
A captive bound beside the wood
When first she dazzled Ranolf's sight;—
Yet now so haggard, wan and worn,
By grief of so much beauty shorn,
Not much more like that Vision bright
Of anger-flashing loveliness,
Than some too early perished Tree,
A silver skeleton portrayed
Against the mountain's violet shade,
Like its own former self would be,
In luxury clad of leafy dress;
In sunlit symmetry of frame
And every sinuous branch the same;
But all the wealth wherewith it shone
Of blossom gay and verdure—gone!—
The wrist he held—she wrenched it free,
And flung him off with all her might.
He reeled—he stumbled—staggered back;
Nor had he seen how near he stood
To that fierce cauldron, sputtering black
And baleful—ever-boiling mud—
Beneath the phantom-shapes of rock
That seemed to gibber, jeer and mock!
The treacherous bank began to crack—
Gave way—and with a sullen plash
He plumped into the viscous mash.

268

The sable filth upspurted high—
Foul steam in thicker volumes gushed;
Then back the burning batter rushed
And closed o'er that despairing face
Upturned in blue-lined agony—
Those writhing limbs—that stifled cry!
Then heavily swelled into a cone;
Sunk down; and ring on ring a space
In sluggish undulations rolled;
And thicklier rising crowds alone
Of bubbles, of that horror told;
Though just as lazily they burst,
And not more poisonous than at first
Their old sulphureous stench dispersed.

Shocked, horrified, at sight so dread
Swift through the thicket Amo sped:
So rapidly had all occurred,
Well might what she had seen and heard—
That Sorcerer's apparition—then
And there—in that secluded glen,
And his swift disappearance, seem
Illusions of a hideous dream.

VI.

Again her journey she pursues.
Her thoughts come back to their accustomed train:
“Only to save him—only make him know,
Although her joy—her life—her love she lose—
No other Maid could love him so!”—
Still fell the sad, slow, melancholy rain;

269

And though the white mist hid sky, mountain, plain,
Yet somehow seemed it, on her weary brain
The sunshine of that awful morn
When Ranolf last she saw and left—
Still lay—a solemn sombre light forlorn;—
Ever she seemed to wander woebegone
Through endless mazes of a forest lone
All stripped and bare, of every leaf bereft;
While far above her, through the treetops high
That, leafless, yet shut out the sky,
A loud monotonous wind for ever roared,
And those strange, dreary, sombre sunbeams poured;
While in the foreground only could be seen
The lover and the love-joy that had been!
And every actual outward sight and sound,
Men, women, places, voices all around,
Came faintly breaking through this muffling screen,
This sad bright curtain that would intervene;
And only for a moment, face or speech
Importunate of others, could emerge
Through that drear desolate light and murmur loud
As through an ever-circling shroud—
And her preoccupied perception reach
And on her absent mind their presence urge.

VII.

On—on! for days as by a dream oppressed—
Still on—by one idea absorbed—possessed!—
Directly in her way
A broad and swollen river lay:
Her road led through the shallows by its bank,
Where yellow waters eddying swirled

270

Through flax-tufts waving green and tall and rank;
But in the midst the raging torrent hurled
Its waters swift, direct, and deep,
Where often some uprooted tree would sweep—
A great black trunk unwieldy—hastening down
The flood surcharged with clayey silt—
And dip and heave and plunge and tilt
Half buried in the wavelets brown.
She paused—but something in her breast
Still urged her on:—she could not rest:
And then those friends whom Kangapo addrest—
Might they not still her course arrest?
What if they still should be upon her track—
Would they not meet her if she ventured back?—
She tore her mantle off in haste,
And rolled it up and tightly tied
With flax and slung it round her waist;
Then wading, struggled through the high sword-grass
And stream-bowed tortured blades—a tangled mass,
And struck into the torrent fierce and wide!

Alas! no strength of limb or will,
No stoutest heart, no swimmer's skill
Could long withstand the headlong weight and force
Of that wild tide in its tumultuous course!—
Soon was she swept away—whirled o'er and o'er—
And hurried out of conscious life
In that o'erwhelming turbulence and roar
Almost without a sense of pain or strife.

271

Canto the Fourth. Where is Comfort?

1, 2. Amo's body on the river-bank. 3. What comfort in reflections the thought of it suggests? All great souls self-sacrificed in the cause of Good, a protest against Annihilation. 4. Fate's cruelty forces belief in a future state. If Doubt needful to create Trust and Soul-excellence? 5. No theories good against Grief. 6. Yet Ranolf's buoyant nature will survive to learn how sorrow elevates, and (7) is the nurse of heroism.

I.

So was despair, in our heart-broken Bride,
Quenched, rudely quenched—in that tumultuous tide!—

But if that self-forgetting Life was passed,
To peace, it seemed, it had been lulled at last.
For one who by the river's side
Far lower down, that day by chance descried
A floating form he could not aid,
Glide swiftly by, soon after said
The Maiden lay, as past she hied,
Upon her back as on a quiet bed.
Her eyes were closed—the lashes long and sleek,
Reposing on the placid cheek;
Along the yellow waters wild

272

Her jet-black tresses softly streamed;
And though careworn, just then it seemed,
Her face was so serene and mild,
So mournful, yet with meek content so deep,—
She looked an innocent Child,
Laid on its couch asleep.

And that informant told them how they found,
Cast on the gravel by the riverside,
The body of the Maiden drowned.

II.

Alas, for Ranolf! in his passionate pain
That image ever was before his brain
In terrible distinctness night and day!
With pertinacious torture self-applied
How would he conjure up to his despair,
And paint with accurate anguish-seeking care
Its harrowing details o'er and o'er again!
How, while the river ran its calm career,
From the spent freshet's fury once more clear;
All heartless Nature, bright, alive and gay
With its accustomed, gentle, joyous stir—
How then they found—O say not her!
She could not be the form that lay
So stilly—half above and half beneath
The shallow, bright, transparent stream,
Upon the clean smooth gravel bank
From which it slowly shrank:
Such mournful meek content upon the face
That you could think it for a little space
Lit by some sadly-pleasing dream;

273

But then so marble-like and motionless—
Persistent in intensest quietness—
Too soon the moulded lineaments you know
Fixed in the dread serenity of death.
One quiet arm the peaceful head below—
While ever in its flow
The eddying current would come up and play
With the long tresses—as to coax away
And lure the floating tangles to and fro;
While others, in the sunshine dried,
The idle breeze at times would lift aside
Gently—then leave at rest,
Where curling they caressed
The cold unheaving breast;
Or revelled in the gloss and gleam of life,
As if in mockery spread
Along the form that lay as still and dead
As any of the logs of driftwood rife,
By the decreasing tide
Left near it as it fled.—
But piteous—O how piteous! there to see
The wavelets in their sunny chase
In that deserted place—
Upon the bank exposed and lone,
With such an inward-happy sound,
Familiarly and carelessly
Gurgling against and rippling round
The sad and sacred human face,
As if it were a stone.

III.

And had he any comfort in the thought,
The sight his fancy fashioned would have brought

274

A mind like his when he could calmly think?—
“That sad—sad face! as there it lay
Beside the river's brink,
So calm, neglected—helpless—meek—
Would not its silence seem to speak—
In mournful whispers seem to say,
For such a heart, for such a soul,
This cannot be the end—the whole!—

“But O! great God of heaven!
Who must be—if thou be at all
Eternal Justice both to great and small,
And Absolute Love for all beneath the Sun!
If in the poor dead face of one
Slight savage girl who thus has given
Her life's light for another's good in vain—
All her high hopes and generous aims undone!
If in its stony stillness and fixed woe,
All the more harrowing for the mournful show
Of sad resigned repose on mouth and brow—
If from that face, in very deed,
Such obstacle and protest and disdain
Arise against the desolating creed
Of soul-annihilation in the disarray
And dissolution of our worthless clay—
O what a vast Himmálayan pinnacle-chain
Of insurmountable obstruction Thou
Hast thrown in the pale spectral Conqueror's way;
And what a boundless protest has been wrung—
(Although to absolute Love's all-pitying eyes
The humblest instance would the whole comprise)
A protest myriad-voiced as Ocean's roar,
Compelled to just Omnipotence to soar,—

275

In all the baffled lives and labours flung
Ungrudgingly thy great White Throne before—
The death-requited sacrifices through all time
Made in thy cause by hero-hearts sublime!

IV.

“Yet what a thought it is, O God! that we
But by the incredible cruelty of Fate
Ordained by Thee,
Are by a strong revulsion forced to flee
To Reason's refuge in her grief,
The astounding beautiful belief
In Death reviving to some glorious state
Which all that cruelty shall compensate!—
Say, that it is so, and must ever be,
By Nature's strong necessity;—
As air plunged deep in water still must rise,
So, plunged in Life, the Soul to the Eternal flies!—
And if it be denied
That Nature—which is Thou!
Does that necessity provide,
Even Doubt must still avow
It should be so provided—must and should—
If Thou art what we must conceive Thee—good!
Or if at last Doubt will remain,
Were it too wild a fancy—to maintain,
(Till clearer light the mystery explain)
Faith has to be created—self-resigning Trust
In Thee—the all-generous and just?
And Trust like that, for aught we know,
Can but in the absence of Assurance grow;
Can but be strengthened to the due degree

276

By actual plunging in the furnace-glow
And wavering flames of forced Uncertainty:
The Soul can but be fashioned so,
Into the shape of Beauty, and substance clear
Of crystal Confidence sincere—
The form and fineness its high fates require;
As the glass-worker whirls and moulds
Into a graceful vase the glass he holds
Molten in jets intense of fierce white fire.”

V.

Ah no! but no such speculation now
Could smooth the agony on Ranolf's brow.
And so he may depart,
And bind up as he can his bleeding heart;
And moan his lovely wild-flower reft away
With unresigning anguish night and day;
And gnash his teeth and tear his hair,
Untaught to bear!
And for a time his faith in joy forswear;
And feel how vain
Are high-built theories to stifle pain;
How impotent against the ready sting
Of every trivial and inanimate thing
That seems to start up eloquent everywhere,
More poignant memories of the Lost to bring—
All leagued with Love to drive him to despair!
Not only the brief words she left to tell
The motive and the purpose of her flight,
Scratched upon shining flax-blades with a shell
And laid to meet—but not too soon—his sight;—
Ah! how it tore his heart—that simple scrawl—

277

Pothooks and hangers painfully produced—
Disjointed—childlike! yet a wonder all,
In one to symbolled language so unused,
And with such marvellous aptitude acquired—
The tenfold talent by the heart inspired—
Docility no school but one e'er knew
Whose teacher Love, has Love for learner too!
Not these alone—but every object round
Had silent power and pungency to wound:
The withered wreaths of flowers hung up with care
Which for his pleasure she so loved to wear;
The span-broad mirror on the reeded wall
That oft had imaged such a happy smile
And so much beauty on its surface small;
The broidry-staves her tedium to beguile—
Rude with still-dangling vary-coloured strands;—
Half-charred mid ashes white, the very brands
Left lying where her loving busy hands
Had laid them on that latest fire extinct—
Ah, with what torturing memories were they linked!
Ah, those dumb things—how deeply did he feel
The maddening pathos of their mute appeal!

Yes! let him wrestle with distress;
And feel how grief grown languid, though not less,
In the exhaustion of mere weariness,
Renews itself from its excess;—
Learn how the heart bereft of one beloved,
Will, self-upbraiding, self-reproved,
In bitterest grief feel bitter grief,
Because its grief seems all too slight and brief;
Because it cannot grieve enough—nor feed
The ravenous appetite for woe the sense

278

Of its immeasurable loss will breed—
Thirsting for grief more crushing—more intense;
Recoiling from the hateful thought, that e'er
The time should come when it may bear
To think upon such loss, and not despair!

VI.

Yet should he long endure
Such pangs and pains, be sure
He must escape them—being left alive;
For the old joyous temper must revive.
The clouds of Anguish o'er the blue would drive
And hide—but not annihilate the Sun:
Grief has a work to do—which must be done.
Though o'er his Soul the waves of Sorrow surge,
That buoyant joyous Nature must emerge
By animal force into a realm more bright;
And that reflective tendency would urge
His Soul—long after—into peaceful light.
And he would first experience—and then know,
How great a purger of the Soul is Woe;
A fine manipulator skilled to drain
The Spirit of the grosser atmosphere
Which can alone give life to and sustain
Prides—lusts—ambitions—passions fierce and vain;
Until the heart is a receiver clear
Exhausted of the elements they need,
And wanting which, they droop and disappear.

VII.

Aye! to our Optimist 'twould surely seem
An actual pre-arrangement in a scheme

279

By primal Mind compacted—that the seed
Of Soul best in the soil of Sorrow grows;
And that such pangs and tortures are indeed
Sharp chisel-strokes and heavy mallet-blows
Wherewith the grand Soul-Sculptor cleaves and chips
His native marble into nobler shapes:
And as the mallet swings and chisel trips,—
Out from the sluggish cold chaotic heap
Wherein as possibilities they sleep,
Out come, emerging from their long eclipse
Into vitality that kindling glows
Ever more clear, significant and deep—
Heroic white Existences serene
And lovely, which the divine Artist drapes
With qualities his great Idea must mean
Should make his glorious marbles fit to be
Shrined in high temples of Eternity!

And he would learn, like all who calmly viewed
What sad results from simple love ensued,
How foresight—prudence—cold considerate powers
We need for guidance of this life of ours:
To follow instincts—doing ill to none—
Nay—loving everything beneath the sun—
This will not do—it seems!
Alas!—for such the World with misery teems.

But this—all this would be for Time to teach;
A goal his sanguine soul not yet may reach.
All he has now to do is to depart
And bind up as he may his bleeding heart.

280

Canto the Fifth. A Vision.

1. Ranolf leaves for the sea-side. 2. Comes to a native village. 3. Remorse at his former fear of ‘the World.’ 4. Noon-stillness. 5. The vision. 6. His amazement.

I.

Depart then, Ranolf! leave to Grief and Time
The task to cleave out, in some other clime
Less fraught with frenzied thoughts, their ends sublime!
Even Sorrow could not here its fruits mature—
Not here—nor now; for Change and Time, be sure,
Are needed to assist it in its Art
Of Soul-Tuition. This by theory too,
Though spurning now the power of both, he knew;
And felt his only course was to depart.
The land seemed loathsome to his laden heart;
Sick—sick he was; aweary of the skies!
The Mountains seemed to look him in the face—
Cold—calm and sullen, conscious of his woe;
Each shrub and tree that once had charmed him so,
Turned wormwood with the thoughts it bade him trace:

281

And every River rolled before his eyes,
A Mara-flood of bitterest memories.

When the first shock of Amo's death was o'er,
And he could rouse himself to act once more,
With but one lad his light effects to bear,
He started for some Northwest harbour where
Vessels that haunt these latitudes repair.
A Ship he sought; but cared not whence it came
Or whither bound: to him it was the same
So that away, far distant, he were borne:
All lands seemed now of all attractions shorn!
Perhaps, as most deserted and forlorn,
The barren, dreary, ever-restless Sea,
Would to his desolate Soul most soothing be.

His road was nearly that which Amo chose,
In search self-ruinous of ruthless foes.
Not that he sought with conscious aim the more
To take that path because 'twas hers before:
His unresigning anguish could not crave
To see, or seek for solace at her grave;
Herself—herself! the vain demand—nought less—
His greedy grief insatiable would press;
Not any maddening circumstance or scene
To rouse remembrances of what had been—
Too prompt already, manifold and keen!
Yet haply he was guided on the whole,
By that attraction of his secret soul;
A bias, though unconsciously obeyed,
Towards even the shadow of that loved one's shade—
Towards any place her sweetest presence still
With haunting fondness sadly seemed to fill.

282

When near the coast, they told him of a Ship
Whose Master would ere long his anchor trip
For three years' chase of his gigantic game,
Run down o'er boundless Ocean hunting-grounds
With hardy boats'-crews for his well-trained hounds—
In that most venturous, gravest, grandest Sport
Which makes all others seem contracted—tame!
His Ship was now with ample produce stored,
Wood—water—fresh provisions all on board;
And he was just about to leave the Port,
Cutting his boisterous crew's rude revels short.

II.

Sad, weary, listless, and alone—
For nought companionship had cheered—
'Twas Ranolf's habit through the day
To take his solitary way,
Letting Te Manu choose his own.
Before him now the Port appeared.
There—with dim spire of masts and shrouds,
And yards across like streaky clouds,—
The Ship he sought at anchor lay.
Crowning a cliff that overstooped
The sea—whence trees o'erhanging drooped,
The village stood the Wanderer neared.
With rows of posts, unequal, high,
That level crest against the sky
Was bristling; and within them grouped,
Thick thatch-roofs nestled peacefully.

Woeworn and weary, then he went
Thoughtfully up the steep ascent;

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And passed the log, rough-hewn and laid
For bridge across the empty fosse;
And paused before the opening made
For entrance in the palisade.
He looked around; upon the spot
He saw no living being stirred:
Fast-closed was every silent cot.
The sun was shining, high and hot—
A lingering summer afternoon;
Faint insects hummed a drowsy tune
At times—no other sound was heard.

III.

In doubt what course he should pursue,
On sad and gloomy thoughts intent,
With folded arms and head downbent
Against an entrance post he leant.
Not far below, there hung in view
That immemorial red-blue gleam
Of world-embracing Ocean-fame—
The flag that long shall float supreme
(Its double-cross still side by side
With that of ‘Stars and Stripes’ allied)
Let all of English blood and name
Be to each other staunch and true!
Ah, with what sense of proud delight,
So long unseen, a short time back
That flag had flashed upon his sight!
But now it bade his memory track
The train of evils that had come
Out of that longing for his home.
Well might his heart so busied, feed

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On bitter anguish; well might bleed
Remembering why he shunned to share
That home with her! He could not bear
Nor blink the truth, the cause, to-day—
Contemptible and coward care
Of what ‘the World’ might think or say—
That blatant—brainless—soulless World!
Ah with what scorn he would have hurled
Such pitiful respect away
Had one more chance been given to prove
How much he prized that priceless love!
O but one chance—giv'n then and there
The ‘World’ and all its slaves to dare!
With measureless defiance brave
Its worthless worst rebukes and save
A heart, so simply grand beside
Its poor conventions, paltry pride,
Refined frivolities—and cant,
The natural course—or worse—the want
Of real emotions, framed to hide!—
Aye! but too late that wisdom came;
The shame too late of that mean shame;
Remorse and withering self-disdain,
Too late and impotent and vain!
There was nought left him but to rave
With voiceless, useless, inward pain.
His trust in higher things was gone—
His ‘Power Divine’—his ‘God of good,’
What faith in Him could he retain!
It seemed to his despairing mood,
Faith could not, should not, live alone
When Hope and happiness had flown!

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IV.

On such distressful thoughts intent,
Against that entrance-post he leant.
Forlorn alike to eye and ear
Seemed time and place and atmosphere!
With wearying, bright unchanging glow
The calm, regardless sunbeams shone;
With wearying faintly-changeful flow
The insects' tune went murmuring on.
No sign of living thing beside;
Not even a dog's out-wearied howl;—
Yes—once his listless eye espied
Scarce noting it, a sleepy fowl
Ruffling its feathers in the dust;
Companionless—the moping bird,
Stalking and pecking leisurely
Beneath a cottage wall, went by;
No longer were its mutterings heard.
Yes—once a rat, in open day
Stole forth, and crossed at easy pace
The silent solitary place;
Stopped often, showing no distrust
Nor any haste to slink away.
It too had vanished. Still fast-shut,
In sunshine stood each silent hut:
And dark, distinct, beside it lay
Its shadow still—no cloudlet slow
Passing to make it come or go—
Unfading—seeming changeless too
As if it neither moved nor grew,
That lingering, loitering afternoon.

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Then even the murmuring, dreamy tune,
That now would swell and now subside,
Awhile in utter silence died.

V.

Fair Reader! have you ever been
Sauntering in meditative mood,
In some sequestered sunny scene,
Some perfect solitude serene,
Where tenantless a building stood—
Old ruined Castle, if you will—
Neglected Hall of later days,
Though fit for habitation still,
Long empty;—any place almost
Where human beings once have dwelt
And ceased to dwell;—but if your gaze,
On such deserted Mansion lone
Were fixed awhile, will you not own
How strong a fancy you have felt
That some still human visage—ghost
Or not—through one blank window less
Observed—or loophole's high recess—
With eyes in vague abstraction lost,
Not marking minding you at all—
Was looking out?—Did you not feel
As if you saw or soon would see
A lonely Figure, silently,
With features haply undiscerned
Because its back towards you was turned,

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Across some empty courtyard steal—
Or glide beneath some ruined wall?—

As Ranolf leant there so distrest,
Once with a writhe of ill-represt
Impatient anguish at the tide
Of keen regrets which o'er his breast—
Remorseful, merciless, upheld
By that full moon of memory, swelled—
As wearily his head he raised,
His glance unconscious chanced to rest
Upon a distant cot—whose side
Of close-packed wisps of bulrush dried,
Stood half in brightness—half in gloom;
The sunbeam's glow still bright below—
Its upper part in clear deep shade
Beneath some palm-trees' tufts of bloom,
With a square opening in it made
For light—a window though unglazed.
Then suddenly he seemed aware
A wan pale face—how wan and fair,
Was in the square of blackness there;
With eyes unmoving—eyes all light—
So preternaturally bright—
Haggardly beautiful!—Amazed,
His very heart turned sick and faint;
Almost he could have fallen with fear—
That Spirit from the Dead—so near!—
He rallied quickly; for he knew
How fancy can send back again,
Some image from the heated brain,

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And on the retina repaint
Such apparitions, till they seem
External, actual, and no dream.
He passed his hand across his eyes;
Sprang forward; shook himself to free
His fancy from such phantasies,
His brain from this delusion. There,
Framed in the blackness of that square,
Still showed the visage, haggard, fair,
And would not vanish into air!—
And then it changed before his sight;
A sudden gleam of wild delight
Illumed it; the next moment checked,
As from the vision seemed to come
A shriek that died off in a moan—
Painful, unnatural—as the tone
Wrung from the wretched deaf and dumb
Whom sudden pangs of passion stir.
Then to the hut—for nought he recked—
“What could it be?” he thought, “but her!”
He would have rushed; but yet once more
Those earnest gestures—looks—deter;
So vehemently they implore,
So unmistakably entreat
Silence—and that he should not greet—
Heed—recognize the vision then.
For the same moment might be seen
Behind him, close upon the fence,
What stifled as it rose that keen
Great cry of joy or pain intense;—
The inmates of the village—men
And women and a merry crowd
Of children; all with laughter loud

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Returning from the plot where they
Within the woods not far away
Had been at pleasant work all day.

VI.

With lips comprest—clenched hand—knit brow—
By violent effort he restrained
Emotions nigh o'ermastering now.
He turned—accosted them—explained
In terms he scarce knew what, but brief,
To one who seemed to be their Chief
Why he had come to that seaport.
At once they knew their guest unknown
Must be, from bearing, mien and tone,
Though roughly drest and travel-stained,
A ‘Rangatira’—of the sort
Who paid for all attentions shown:
So to his use a cot assigned;
Brought food; and as he seemed inclined
For little converse, or to care
About themselves or ways; or share
The interest newer comers take
In all that might the curious wake
To wonder; but appeared to be
Absorbed in troubles of his own;
They soon with truest courtesy
Left him to his reflections lone.

And all that evening, in a maze
He seemed:—a sort of luminous haze

290

Of anxious, wondering, strange delight
Moved with him, move where'er he might:
Nor could he lie, or sit, or stand,
Or many moments keep at rest,
Howe'er he strove at self-command.
He closed his eyes—his temples pressed;—
That light, for all his efforts vain
Still hovered o'er his haunted brain:
And once, in this his feverish fret,
He checked himself in looking round
As half expectant he would yet
See, though long since the sun had set,
His shadow fall upon the ground.
And oft he tried if he could still
By strong exertion of the will
Make that fair, haggard vision rise
Again, and stand before his eyes
With such a sharp external show
Of life, and every feature so
Distinct in joy, surprise, or woe!
That face, so sweet, though so careworn,
And of its brilliant beauty shorn;
The hollow cheek; the shrunken hand;
And the too delicate finger laid
Upon the faded lips; and grand
All wonder, joy, or woe above—
That deep unfathomable love
In eyes whose brightness could not fade!
Yes! he could shape them in his mind;
But overjoyed was he to find
No yearning made the illusion dear
As real or outward reappear.

291

Canto the Sixth. The Departure.

1. Midnight. 2. A visitor. 3. Plan for escape. 4. Previous story. 5. Ranolf embarks. 6. A starry night. 7. The boat on the shore. 8. Final meeting. 9. Recovery. 10. Departure.

I.

Night came at last; at last ev'n midnight came.
How wearily the hours for Ranolf passed—
On tenterhooks of expectation cast—
Such incomplete and tantalizing joy!
But even the noisy natives sunk at last
To rest—the earlier for their day's employ.
The flittings to and fro, from hut to hut,
Ceased by degrees, and every door was shut;
The laughter loud and lazy chat were o'er;
The smouldering firesticks on each earthen floor
Had for the last time been together raked,
And blown with lips far-pouted, to a flame;
The last pipe smoked; and the consuming thirst
For gossip haply for the moment slaked.
The large-limbed lounging men upon the ground,
Naked whene'er the heat too great was found;

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And every active, restless, wrinkled dame,—
Crowded in some convenient house at first,
Had to their separate homes retired to sleep;
And all the ‘pah’ was wrapt in silence deep.

II.

Then Ranolf, with a quicker-throbbing heart,
Watched in the cot assigned to him apart;
With door ajar, and sharp attentive ear
Watched—listened for the faint delicious sound—
The footstep that he felt must now be near.
—A rustle . . . No?—'twas fancy!—then more clear
Another!—'Tis herself! with that wan face,
Locked in his almost fiercely fond embrace!—
Yes, 'tis herself! and never, come what may,
Shall she be torn from that fond heart away!
And She—into his arms herself she flung
With what a burst of passionate sobs! and hung
Upon his neck with moans of happiness;
And felt once more his vehement caress,
With what an ecstacy of soothing tears!
And revelled in the burning kiss on kiss,
With such intense relief from doubts and fears;
Such sense of infinite agony supprest,
Swallowed, like night in lightning-sheets—in this,
This full fruition of exceeding bliss—
As if upon the heaven of that breast
Her soul had reached its everlasting rest!

But when the Sea of their emotions ran
In less tumultuous billows, and began
In gentler agitation to subside,

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So that clear Thought and Speech articulate
Above the tide unwrecked could ride;
Then Ranolf, holding at arms' length awhile
His new-found treasure, his recovered bride,
Gazes with mournful gladness in his smile—
Gazes with fond and pitying tenderness
At those thin pallid features, which the weight
And anguish of despair no more depress—
Into those eyes which happy tears beteem—
As to make sure it was not all a dream!

“No Spirit then!—my own
Own Amo, loving and alive again!
O God! can such delight indeed be mine!”—

“No Spirit—no—nor dead, but with the pain
To lose thy love; and thought of that alone
Would kill me any time—”

“Then never think
The thought; the thing itself, my dearest, best,
Shall never be a grief of thine!”

“What! you will never be distrest
For want of all that sunset-tinted snow
And hair, such as the moonbeams link. . .
What was it?”

“Amo!—”

“Nay, then nay—
Not that upbraiding look to-day!
See! o'er these dear, dear features, worn with care,

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See, see! my murmuring lips must stray
With flying faint half-kisses, so
To smooth all that reproach away!
No, I will never doubt again—
Do not these features, pale with grief,
Do they not say my Stranger-Chief
My lord, my life, will never choose
His poor wild maiden's love to lose?—
But how then could you be so sad
When I was with you?”

“I was mad—
An idiot, dearest! just to shun
A small misfortune, so to run
The risk of that o'erwhelming one
By which I were indeed undone!—
But small and great shall soon be o'er,
And neither shall afflict us more,
If you will leave this land with me,
And dare to cross yon starlit sea!”

“What is to me land, sea, or sky
So that with you, I live and die!”—

III.

Then soon a plan for their escape
Was moulded into practicable shape:
Only the pressing, first, immediate need
Was that before these natives they should be
Absolute strangers, nor each other heed.
This need did Amo when she first caught sight
Of Ranolf, feel—this, somehow could foresee;

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And this perception made her first wild cry,
That sudden cry of wonder and delight
Die off in such a strange unmeaning moan.

IV.

But she had told ere this, the how and why
She had been saved, and now was here alone;
How it was true, by that wild freshet's force
She was whirled down till consciousness was gone;
And soon upon a gravel-bank was thrown.
How a chance Traveller saw the seeming corse;
Apprised these natives; and observed them bear
The breathless body home with sorrowing care,
Home to their huts hard-by; then went his way,
Thinking her dead; that nought required his stay;
And anxious by no loss of time to lose
The importance, well he knew, none would refuse
To the first bearer of such startling news.
But those good Women, in the senseless Form
They carried, saw or felt there yet might lurk
Some faintest spark of life; so set to work
Its embers to re-waken and re-warm;
Made fires; applied hot stones, and rubbed her feet
And hands and heart with toil incessant; poured
Down her unconscious throat for greater heat
Some of the white man's liquid fire; implored
With moaned and murmured incantations meet
The Water-God and Storm-God; till at length
Her feeble fluttering pulse began to beat;
And that suspended current in her veins
To run, and rack her, as it gathered strength,

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And prick with tingling tortures, pangs and pains,
Far worse than any she in drowning felt.
So with their patient patiently they dealt,
And charmed and chafed her till to life restored.
But with her life her first resolve returned;
And in her recklessness she let them know
The scheme which to accomplish still she burned,
To yield herself, ere he could strike a blow,
To save her people, to her people's foe.
How she repented soon that she had told
Her secret: for the Chief, of no great name
Or note, and doubtless of as little worth,
Who ruled this petty village, stood,
With that marauding magnate of the North,—
Though some remote connection he could claim,
So she was told, by marriage or by blood—
On terms of doubtful amity; and hence
The crafty schemer was too glad to seize
A lucky accident like this to please
The mightier potentate; so forthwith hatched
A plan—to feign he could not trust her tale;
And hold her captive, on the false pretence
He did so to secure her without fail
For the great Chief, until the last could say
What was his will about her: then despatched
A trusty messenger that will to learn;
And issued strict commands, till his return
Her every movement should be closely watched,
Nor she permitted from the ‘pah’ to stray.
And thus the great man's favour would be won;
Besides that, for such shining service done,
A splendid claim, he reckoned, would arise
For ‘utu’—compensation or reward,

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The other could not fail to recognize.
But she, determined not to be debarred
From fully working out her first intent,
To put both Chief and people off their guard,
Affected in this plan to acquiesce;
Resolved whene'er their watchfulness grew less,
As finding 'twas but trouble vainly spent,
She would escape; her lonely road resume;
Self-guided seek her self-inflicted doom;
The merit of her sacrifice retain,
And greater power o'er proud Pomarë gain.
So at the village patiently she stayed;
Till all their first suspicions were allayed;
About her ways it seemed they little cared;
And she had everything for flight prepared:
Nay, would that very night, unseen, unknown,
Upon her errand of despair have flown;
Rushed on the fate she loathed, yet would have braved
Had she not been, by gift of all she craved,
This blest return of his affection, saved.

V

So, parting ere the dawn, with life renewed,
The plan concerted, calmly they pursued.
Two days they passed, eventless and serene,
Each by the other seemingly unseen;
Or in what intercourse they chanced to hold
Making a mock indifference, forced and cold,
Their fervid interest in each other screen.
In sad regards dissembling deep delight,
Impassioned, with how passionless a mien,
They crossed each other's path! with loving slight,

298

Hidden half-glances of such dear deceit—
Unrecognizing recognition sly and sweet!

Then Ranolf to his hosts kind farewell bade;
Much to their grief—so handsomely he paid;
Nor seemed to notice Amo was not there
Just at the instant that farewell to share:
Then went on board; and found the busy Ship
With cheery noise of near departure gay;
Sails shaken loose and anchor now atrip,
Waiting the evening hour of ebbing tide;
Worked by the steadiest of the men—a few
Exceptions to the riot-wearied crew—
Who jaded with rude revel listless lay,
Nor longer to evade their duty tried,
Content at last or glad to get away.

Then down the harbour she was seen to glide,
Past the bare windy outer heads sunbright,
The glossy yellowish bluffs—into the blue;
There on the dim expanse, she lingering lay
With slowly changing attitudes, in sight,
As if her stately beauty to display;
Then, dwindling ever in the fading light,
Looked, now a column sloping softly white,
Now ruddy, blushing in the sunset's ray;
Till silently absorbed in growing grey
She vanished—wrapt in close-encircling Night.

VI.

These moving moveless Mountains and still Main,
Had nearly in their unfelt flight again

299

Slipped from beneath the funnel of deep shade
For ever shot from our Sun-circling ball,
Through which we peer into Infinity;—
Those four grand worlds tremendous which we call
A Cross—and their immensity invade
With faiths and fancies of our tiny Star,
Seemed to have turned them in their watch on high,
And changed the side from which to gaze afar
On the dark Pole—the seeming vacant Throne
Of One that Warder bright adored alone!
As in blue Syrian midnights long bygone,
Some jewel-armoured Satrap Damascene,
More from the fevered restlessness inspired
By Love, than with his tedious vigil tired,
Might oft have changed the spot where he would lean
And keep his fierce enamoured glances, keen
And glittering as his falchion, rapt and fast
Upon the lattice-screen whereat at last
His maddening matchless quest—some miracle-Queen,
In loveliness and learnedness and loftiness
Of spirit, perfect as that Palmyrene,—
But one ecstatic moment might appear,
Zenobia-like—too dazzlingly severe,—
And frown a sunrise on the love's excess
Its glory could reward but not repress!—
Beneath the myriad eyes of that still Sky
Cowering the conscious Ocean seemed to lie,
With faint soft murmuring, finely-wrinkled swell;
As if it scarcely dared to heave or sigh
Beneath the fascination of their spell;—
In brief, dear tortured Reader—it was near
The dawn; and Sea and Sky were calm and clear.

300

VII.

Not far below the Port the Ship had left,
The hills into a little cove were cleft;
The stony faces of the cliffs thus rent
Showed twisted strata, strangely earthquake-bent,
Running on each side circularly up—
A great grey hollow like a broken cup!
From crest and crevice, tortuously flung
Those monstrous iron-hearted myrtles hung—
Stiff snaky writhing trunks, and roots that clave
And crawled to any hold the ramparts gave.
Below, the level floor of sea-smoothed stone
Was all scooped out and scored by wear and tear
Of tides into round baths, and channels—bare
Or with sea-windflowers, scarlet-ringed, o'ergrown:
And big clay-coloured rocks and boulders,—dropt
From mould-like hollows in the cliffs above,
Where others like them sticking still outcropped,—
Lay scattered round the margin of the cove.

Look! in the starlit stillness, there and then,
A boat emerging from the gloom appears;
Rowed by four stalwart, darkling, silent, men,
With muffled oars and faintest plash scarce heard;
No sound beside, but the rare muttered word
Of brief command from him who mutely steers
And keenly round him through the darkness peers.
How cautiously her channelled way she feels,
And towards the rocks above the tideline steals!
There with suspended oars the boatmen wait,

301

Careful lest even their drip be heard; the Chief
Steps out and listens on the lonely reef.
No sight—no sound of anything that lives—
A ‘cooey!’ low and cautious, then he gives.
See! one of those clay-coloured rocks, descried
Dimly from where, with boathook held, the skiff,
Lies gently tilting with the lapping tide,
Seems, 'mid its dumb companions 'neath the cliff
With life and motion suddenly endowed!
It rises—swiftly running—leaping o'er
The stony-ribbed and channel-furrowed floor;
See! 'tis a female form—a graceful shape
Not even the clay-hued mats that thickly drape
The head and shoulders, all the figure shroud—
Can wholly hide; and see! as it draws near
And Ranolf ('twas none other) runs to meet
And with glad gesture greet the vision dear,
Beneath the hood—this time no doubtful dream—
Two great delighted sparkling eyes appear—
And such a wan glad face, so wan and sweet,
And kindling with triumphant love supreme!

VIII.

An ardent pressure of the hand (before
That crew) a whisper of fond cheer—no more;
And in the boat he makes her take her seat;—
“Push off, my lads—look sharp!”—and from the shore
They steal; while she, her trustful heart at last
At peace, albeit from apprehension past
Still fluttering with a somewhat quicker beat,
Crouches by that loved form; and by degrees
With his rude comrades learns to feel at ease,

302

Confiding in the rough respect she sees
They pay to his sea-knowledge—ready hand—
Firm lip—and eye accustomed to command.
The men ‘give way’ with vigorous strokes, nor fear
Nor care who now may see the boat or hear;
With hoisted sail to catch what airs there be,
She soon is gently trampling through the sea.

The Ship that in the offing, out of sight
Had with scarce flapping canvas hung all night
Becalmed, now as the breeze begins to rise
With topsails backed and filled alternate, lies
About one spot, till o'er the clearing main
The boat returning is descried again.
Then, with her yards braced round, and fair inclined,
She lets them curve out boldly to the wind,
Tacks towards the boat, and soon receives on board
The wondering Maid, to life and love restored!

How all this had been planned need we describe?
That night when Ranolf found the drowned alive;
How he had won, and hardly had to bribe
The bluff Ship-Master's soon-accorded aid;
How, unobserved, while for the Ship he stayed,
The neighbouring coast he carefully surveyed
And found a cove whence they could well embark;
How 'twas agreed that Amo should contrive
After the Ship's departure, in the dark,
When towards the morning all were sunk in sleep,
Out of the village secretly to creep,
And to the spot he pointed out repair;
There wait until she saw his boat arrive;
And do the same, as he would—'twas agreed—

303

If obstacles were met with, and need were—
Night after night, until they should succeed.

IX.

Then, as some choice and cherished plant, erewhile
A thousand-blossomed wonder and a show—
Camellia or Azalea—one great pile
Of rounded knots of lovely-moulded snow,
Starring the glistening gloom of dark-green leaves
With such luxuriance in simplicity,
A purity so lavish and so free;—
Or one unbroken broad diaphanous flush
Of delicate flow'rets, luminous and lush
As they were fashioned of the finest blush
Of light, the heart's core of soft summer-eves,
The tenderest recess of sunset, weaves;—
As such a Plant—if set in hard-bound soil
Where cutting winds could wither and despoil,
Till cankered leaves and scanty blooms declared
How ill in such environment it fared;
But then again transferred from clay and cold
To some warm nook of mellow-crumbling mould,
Reviving and re-blooming would outburst
In all the glory it could boast at first:—
Even thus did Amo, and in days as few
As this in months, her fairest charms renew;
Thus, rooted in the soil of rich Content
And breathing Love's serenest element,
Recovered fast, elastic and erect—
The sprightliness of form by sorrow checked;
Once more, its supple roundness, sinuous grace,
With slim and slender vigour chastely vied;

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Her eyes regained their dancing lights—her face
Its winning frankness—sweet and sunny pride;
Thus did she, brilliant as again a bride,
The shape and hues of happy health resume,
And all her wild magnificence of bloom!

X.

So, with its loving freight, to scenes untold—
As daybreak wrapt her in its rosy fold,
So—down and down, beneath the horizon's brink—
Hull—sails—and masts—did that lone Vessel sink,
And melt into the flood of morning gold.
The Husband-lover and the lover-Wife
Dipped down into the chequered deep of Life!
So vanished—gliding down the blue hill-slope
Of Ocean into an abyss of Hope;
Plunged deep and deeper, every day that flew
In golden gulfs of bright Expectance—new
Experience—all of glad and glowing True
Or glorious Seeming, that can soothe and bless
Youth, Fancy, fondest Love, with dreams of Happiness!

305

Canto the Seventh. After-Experiences.

1. Ranolf will learn that all Life is unsatisfying; and deem it a plan devised to win Man from over-regard for its beauty. 2. And that the Earth is a school for development of Soul, and the greatest works of Mind only students' essays. 3. Will not value Life too much. 4. Yet get his soul harmonized with it. 5. May conclude that ‘Science’ even may find a Law, in ‘Circumstance’ moulding individual lives and fortunes. 6–11. Will feel more and more the importance of the ‘Probable’; and of all creeds and philosophies (Buddhism, Hegelism, Christianity, etc.) pointing to the same great Truth or system of Truths—such, for instance, as the intelligent government of the Universe and the final welfare of spiritualized Humanity. 12. Anyhow the sanguine one will still hold to Truth— an ineffable Good Spirit, and a boundless Hope.

I.

Of Ranolf's feelings in the after-day,
His special findings by Life's varied way,
But little further—little fuller—may
This realistic record sing or say.

In that first greatest grief his youth had felt,
'Tis true his unformed Spirit had escaped
The threatened doom, the shattering blow that might
By his Soul-Sculptor's hammer have been dealt.

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Perhaps—who knows? there was no need to smite:
Perhaps the marble could with blow more slight
Or shadow of that heavy one, be shaped:
For he was of a nature that delight
Could sooner than despair, refine and melt.
Yet—never doubt it—Life and Time must teach
Him too what they enforce on all and each;
That for all Souls, however richly dowered,
With amplest gifts by fate or fortune showered,
Something, where to the full they seem possest,
Will surely seem deficient in the best;
Or those that seem complete will flit or fade
Long ere the thirst they cause can be allayed.
Their sure effect, designed or not, 'tis clear,
Is to make one, old, world-wide Truth appear—
Man ne'er shall find full satisfaction here;
Must learn while bound upon this earthly ball,
The power and practice to renounce them all.

Yes! doubt it not; he too in time will glean
A glimpse so far into the mighty Plan,
Into the working of this strange Machine
The Universe; and what mysterious ways
The Wonder-worker takes to solve
The problem he has set himself; to make
His glorious World in one rich round revolve
Of beauty and attractiveness; yet wean
By Good disguised as Evil—helpless Man
Her nursling, from her lovely breast
And bid him from the sleep awake
Wherein contented else he would for ever rest.

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II.

Then—for the tasks of Life;—whate'er the sphere
Wherein his fleeting forces may be spent
Will he not learn, herein too, Life was lent
But as one stage for our development?—
God's studio is this Earth,
And we, His pupils, for instruction sent,
Are pottering at our work of little worth
But to attain to faculties that here
Reach no perfection, or at least complete
No works that seem for such perfection meet.
How oft does mastery, even the most assured,
Moral or mental, seem in vain secured!
Our poets—artists—heroes—those
Whose ripening powers or ripened could not fail,
Their transient tools and organs lose,
Oft when their Souls seem fittest to prevail—
Most apt for thoughts or deeds sublime!
As if their lives were but a blossoming time;
They students—and the works they leave,
So far beneath what they conceive,
But tyros' crude essays to what in vain
Their fond imaginations long indeed
In this life—but in this life are in train
Only in larger—loftier to achieve;
Essaying here, but elsewhere to succeed;
(Thy favourite faith, my Poet many-souled—
All Intellect alight with Argus-eyes untold!)
Till not alone the buds of beauty left
By Nature's younger darlings soon bereft

308

Of life and lyre—too soon!—a Shelley made
All spirit—nay—frail spirit-tortured flesh
Self-fevering through false theories, griefs and heats
And phantasms, to pure Spirit; or a Keats,
In senses for a human Soul too fresh
And keen and fine, too dangerously arrayed;
Our young-eyed Cherubim, who like poor bees
Over a citron-blossom lifeless curled,
Not half their honey gathered for the world,
Died at their sweet vocation;—O not these—
Nor the rathe buds of amaranth they seize—
But roses fully blown; the gorgeous train
Of bright humanities a Shakespeare's brain
Bids into being, deathless and intense,
Reflecting God's own Life-crowd—hue for hue
And gleam for gleam—so varied—vivid—true—
The double Rainbow's second Arch, in stripe
And stain scarce dimmer than its archetype!—
Even these, to his great Spirit taken hence,
Seem left but like the drooping coronet
Of threaded anthers hanging still around
Some tiny nectarine-fruit, green, newly-set;
The poor triumphant relic that once crowned
Its flowering-time incipient, immature;
Just dropping from the fruit that must expand
To golden richness in the radiance pure
Of wider Skies and some diviner Land!

III.

And as the Will Supreme intends
Life's highest work as means, not ends:
Its joys and pleasures, coarse—refined—
Alike to be renounced—resigned;

309

Will he not feel at last, and see
The more for every misery,
The rolling seasons as they flee,
To him too, as to all mankind
Full surely will dispense—decree,—
That Life itself is meant to be
Held loosely—lightly?—as one day
When he with Amohia gay
Roamed in that earliest bliss of love,
He held upon his open palm
A slender beetle silver-bright
Beneath, all pure grass-green above;
And bade her come and look how fair
The dainty creature, 'lighted there
And running to his finger-tip
To gain a vantage-ground to slip
Off into air, its native balm;
“So should we hold this Life” he thought,
“So watch with interest, deep delight,
The flitting thing with beauty fraught,
Long as it lingers in our sight;—
So let it take, nor e'er repine,
When go it must, its mystic flight,
Into the limitless Divine!”

IV.

And he will feel—for such as he,
Of healthy frame and reason free,
Are more than most, secure to feel,
As straight he steers through rocks and shoals,
What haven rests for noble souls!
Yes, he will feel through woe and weal,

310

The power of Time to soothe and heal;
And tune the Soul to full concent
With its surrounding element.
The wear and tear of right and wrong
Less injure than befriend, the strong;
And cheerful heart and chastened will
Uplift them; and Experience still
Maturing, lends a master's skill,
Life's rich Harmonium-reeds to sound,
Once dumb, or so discordant found;
With easy stop some pain prevent;
With facile touches, lightly thrown,
Give simpler pleasures fuller tone;
And from the ebon-ivory range
Of chequered days and chance and change,
Draw symphonies serene and strange,
Melodious Music of Content.
They gain, like fruits, as ripe they grow,
More sweetness, with a sunnier glow;
Till, mellowing ever, they begin
The faith as very truth to hold—
The best of worlds is that wherein
Is much of Evil, so-called ‘Sin’;
With active wish and earnestness
To make that ‘Sin’ and Evil less.
So by degrees to Fate they mould
The Will that seemed so uncontrolled;
And patience comes—and passions cool;
And where they once were ruled, they rule;
Love's wing grows wider—Thought's more bold
The iron bonds are turned to gold;
The chafing and restraint are past;
And what were chains at first, are ornaments at last.

311

V.

And what if he one day shall see, nor dream—
Though from the Soul's own intimate emotions
It be conceded the profoundest notions
Of the unfathomable unison
Between it and the Universe be won—
What if it grow with gathering years more plain,
That the divine Developer's Life-Scheme
Might yet by Science in her own domain,
The Positive—that euphrasy and rhue,
The mental vision from the mists to purge
Of Speculation beyond Reason's verge—
Be caught a glimpse of; with no logic-strain,
Transcendent or empiric, or the twain
United, over-subtle for sound brain;
But patient observation, record true
Of all the agencies clear sight may trace
Of Circumstance, beyond its own control
That make and mould each individual Soul
Of myriad myriads of the human race;—
Of all the hints and seeming accidents,
Felicitous and opportune events,
Though slight, so often from without supplied,
The balanced Will that seems so free, to guide;
And be the fountains of a cataract wide
Involving the whole being in its tide!
All that strange Loom of Life that round us plays,
That made the grand old Greek, beyond all praise,
The wisest, bravest, best, of Ancient Days,
Paint it a guardian Angel by his side—
His prescient Diotima piteous-eyed.

312

All this shall make at last a Science grand
Of Circumstance—no sceptic shall withstand,
Wherein shall be perceived a law and laws,
Not to be gathered from a single mind,
But myriad inner histories combined;
And in the laws, clear purpose, conscious Cause.

What! shall the very Winds of heaven that rise
And sink and run their seeming reckless round,
Like Tartar cavalry scouring the wide skies
Intractable and trackless! shall all these
And every Storm that tears the limitless seas,
Ranging the Ocean's amplitude—be found
Obedient to fixed Law—to Order bound?—
Shall all that shifting swift Aurora-dance,
Those phantom revels round the secret Poles,
Be set to God-made music that controls
And bids each brilliant spasm up-leap and glance
By happy rule—harmonious governance?
Yet this—Humanity's abounding Mould,
The ever-active matrix manifold
Of Spirit, restless round Earth's millions rolled,
This vast Machinery for making Souls,
Be but chaotic Force—the child of Chance?—

A vain surmise!—but as that Law of Storms
Cannot be gathered from a single breeze
Or local gale; so must a myriad forms
Of lives and their environments be learned
And disentangled ere can be discerned
The law that flows round each, unguessed, unseen,
Like fluid wool that through the ribbed machine
Which looks so bare, so finely runs and fast

313

O'er whirling cylinders, a viewless stream,
Till in a visible flue scraped off at last:—
Even so, the presence of a Power supreme
Shall be detected as its subtle way
It works throughout the infinite whirl and play
Of ever-rolling restless Circumstance;
So from a million inmost beings scanned
With cool and scrutinizing vigilance
That marks each motive whencesoever brought,
Each faintest impulse from without them caught;
So may at last material pure be won
Whence ductile threads of reasoning may be spun,
Which all the strain of logic shall withstand;
And such a radiant raiment woven alone
By Intellect, as—warmly, widely thrown
About the shivering Soul—shall make it feel
Aglow with full assurance of eternal weal!

VI.

But in Life's starry twilight obscure, O be sure such a Wanderer as he
Will the worth of the ‘probable,’ nay, of the ‘possible’ more and more see,
As the limited rays of the gas-lamps of knowledge demonstrative press
With their narrowness more on his soul, evermore to its nobler distress!

VII.

“But to me,” he would muse, “it seems ever more possible, probable too,

314

That all Faiths and Philosophies, higher and lower, the old as the new
Are but parts of one System sublime,—have Ideas universally true!
Each that seemed an Aldebaran, Sirius once—but a fixed Sun or Star
That must pant in its lordly seclusion, alone, independent, afar,
Was or is—though by handbreadths in ages, approaching or moving around
Some vast undefinable centre, some Truth through them all to abound!
Of one Mystery all revelations, though outlets so varied they try;
Sheet-lightnings that glimmer responsive from opposite points of the Sky!
All but tones of one measureless Music revolving in symphony sweet,
Where the deep rich Eternity's bass must the chimes of Existence complete!

VIII.

“Thus more rational ever it seems that the vague transcendentalist's cloud
Of the ‘Absolute’ must, to be real, as with orient hues, be endowed
With the qualities (since without any 'twere quite inconceivable still)
Of Intelligence Infinite ever—no less than Omnipotent Will,
Whose manifold manifest tokens the visible Universe fill!

315

The identical ‘Mind’ then 'twould be, whose Idea Divine like a gleam
From itself, could for Plato illumine his shadowy groves Academe;
And anew,—by the sandy hot glare where those time-eaten monoliths brown
On the solemn inscrutable Sphinx, as the sunshine eternal, look down,
Or the date-palms of Nile, ruddy-golden, its cacao-dark overflow crown,—
Vary-starred the Mosaics of Philo,—in Christian Theosophy soared
Of Tertullians and Plato-fed Clements, who welcomed it, loved and adored
(Since their Infinite must be defined!) as their ‘Reason’—their ‘Logos,’ their Lord,
Self-existent ere all things began—ere it spoke itself forth as their ‘Word’!—

How these lofty Ideas—so essential to Man—ever shoot up and shine
O'er the dim Sea of Ages unchanged—like the spouts of the Whale o'er the brine
Far apart, yet, as true as from shots ricochetting, unswerved from one line!
Lo, the Mind over-ruling Platonic—the Logos Patristic—itself
Long before more than crudely conceived in the creed of that mystical Elf—
Hoary-headed and sixty years old at his birth—the ‘Old Boy’—Lao-tse!—

316

Philosophical rattle the reverend Babe in oracular play
O'er his senior-juniors shook, as he lisped them in long-tailed Cathay
Of the ‘Absolute’ all he could guess—as the ‘Taou’—the ‘Method’—the ‘Way’
Of the Mystery when from its lake of primordial stillness it steals
Down the Universe-River serene, and its intimate presence reveals
As a simple ‘Becoming,’—spontaneous—effortless—void of all aim,—
Yet attaining—evolving—resulting in harmonized Nature the same!—

Once again, lo! that “Method’—‘Mind’—‘Logos’;—thinly masked by a scholarly name,—
From the subtle mild East meditative—the fervid fanatical South—
Irrepressible notion! upsprings in the Northern cold sceptical drouth;—
Reappears like a vanished revolving Sea-Light slow-reviving aflame,—
As your ‘Immanent Reason’!—for this too, a Will all-püissant must claim
Like the rest; since though leaving the Good, while the Ages the issue await,
Through the Cosmos we ken of to wrestle with Evil and ravin and hate,
'Tis invested with might to o'errule the mystic and multiform fray—
Can coerce the two foes internecine—the duel æonian sway

317

Till the higher as Victor come forth in some new indescribable Day!

But the Day! what should it be and when?—when the ‘Absolute’, might we not say—
Shall flood the new skies with pure gold—shall its perfect predominance prove
In the triumph of Light without limit—the reign of unlimited Love!—
What if this were the high ‘reconciling Idea’ which all others transcends;
‘And to realize, organize which the whole Universe struggles and tends’—
If this ‘Absolute’ were but the Love which with Reason eternally blends!—
Then Philosophy were—an ally—in Religion's best colours attired;
Then the Unity Hegel the Thinker less clearly conceived than desired,
Were the ‘Notion’ the Nazarene taught, by his heart's simple grandeur inspired!

IX.

“And that other Idea Immortality (surely 'twere truthlike to say),
Should it e'er seem extinct, will survive,—take what fashion soever it may!
Will array itself yet in new robes of acceptance; new warranty find
For the favour—caresses more coy—more fastidious faith of Mankind!

318

O the grand old Belief they will keep, that the Soul to best reasoning still—
In Matter's despite—but a drop from the Ocean of Infinite Will—
But a Sun-ray from Infinite Energy—ever fate-driven to yearn
By its restlessness under the Finite, with longings that quenchlessly burn
For the Infinite—is to that Infinite destined at last to return!

How Religions reflect one another! how vital that notion was found
In the East reappearing of old as the natural human rebound
Of Cathayan and Thibetan millions Gautama's illusions unsound
Had revolted, when first on Mankind a practical trial was made
Of the Nihilist dream; and the saintly and sated Beguiler essayed,
From his half-view of Life as all Evil, to tempt men by æons of pain
Still renewed (so immortal by Nature this Life was!) to gain
Stone-stupidity—blockish no-being! to highest Morality strain
Suicidally mad to grow mortal; buy Death with all Life has of best;
Be divinest in worth to be worthy destruction! and mockingly blest,
For a million sad years' self-denial be marred with one moment of Rest!—

319

And surely our modern negation that smothers in Positive smoke
Of the senses that primal pure flame will a kindred reaction provoke!
Bid the Future repicture the ancient persuasion—some fresh way unfold
How—emerging at first from the Absolute—trailing its glory and gold,—
As the current electric, a Hermes outwinging that swift one of old,
From magnetic Abysses emerges,—the soul too, though hurried amain—
Borne along on its wire of Life, to the Absolute dipping again,
On its own individual circuit a mystical hold can retain!
Can its special electrical thread of conscious identity keep;
Or should conscious identity vanish, no less through the Infinite Deep,
In channels of new isolation, itself with new Self could array;
Never lost 'mid the myriad millions of like Life-currents that stray
In the Absolute realm multitudinous weaving their wonderful way
To what Pole—but the Highest Perfection! why, say to the Jewel sublime
In the Lotus!—though truly all figures as fastened in Space and in Time
Fail to picture the Absolute out of them,—still, as in Dantean rhyme,

320

All the Blest billion-throned make a snowy-white Rose far-horizoned, world-wide,
In its amphitheatral immensity mirrored serene in the crystal light-tide
Fed brimful from that Fount of Perfection; while bee-swarms of Angels flame-bright
Up and down ever flitting and dipping in splendours that veil It from sight,
With their golden soft-winnowing wings fetch and fan them new peace and delight,—
Why, if Nature makes Orient millions those happy foreshadowings share,
Why discard the fine witness in favour of Hope the wise heretics bear,
When they image what none can imagine—the Absolute Presence compare
To the Lotus that crowns the still waters of Infinite Life with its bloom;
And around its pure Essence of light-killing Light will assemble—illume—
All the boundlessly clustering petals, to circle its glorious Orb—
All the Spirits its Love will inform—so in bliss of its Being absorb!—
Then the future forlorn of the Soul which the saturnine Sakyan wooed
Were rekindled to harmony bright with convictions the healthier mood
Of a consciousness still more majestic, a sympathy ampler, indued;
So were peasant-meek Prince with yet princelier Peasant—Gautama the Good
With the grand Galilean at one; so the Aryan Lotus would shine

321

The Semitic high ‘House of the Father’—the home ‘many-mansioned’—divine!

X.

Nay, that Positive Science methinks (why should Truth that expectancy bar?)
Through its prison-grate peering may hail the high-peaks sky-developed afar;
Not alone, by keen insight of all that the springs of Life-streams may affect,
Like the mighty Athenian Martyr, within its own realm unsuspect,
Some unguessed under-guidance discern—a supreme Diotima detect;
But the realm may enlarge till its laws—so consummate to deal with that ‘wire’
May the Soul-current's self apprehend, and show to our dearest desire
How its circuits invisible must through the Cosmos eternally range,
Or its negative Finite recharged to an Infinite positive change!—

Then its ‘God’—that ‘Humanity’ too, no prairie on fire would be,
Ever-dying,—but rather the world-wide unwithering Igdrasil Tree
The old Norseman conceived it; therein could its nobler divinity see!
From its furthermost fibre of root to the leaf on its uttermost spray
Still informed with the sap of true being—the sunshine of shadowless Day!

322

So were worth adoration perhaps—amaranthine—transplanted on high!—

Or, advancing from system to system star-peopling the mystical Sky,
Say its myriad forms never-resting, in purer Valhallas might vie,
Of ever-new excellence emulous,—spirits that ceaselessly prove
Their prowess in rivalry finer of loftier, luminous Love!—

XI.

“How, but ends of broad rays, all these Faiths, under cloud-skirts too vast to dispel,
Though they slant up at angles opposed, to one centre yet pointing so well,
Of the great hidden Splendour—the Soul's happy destiny—solemnly tell!”—

XII.

But whatsoever he may dream or see
Of Facts acceptable in each degree
Of requisite assuredness;
Those lowlier, Logic proves yet must confess
Ne'er to be wholly fathomed—known;
Those loftier, best Emotions bid us own;
One feeling never will he cease to share,—
The cheery faith that all things, foul or fair,
For some wise purpose must be as they are;
The Evil but a scheme, half understood,
For better evolution of the Good!—
—Not cease; though ever will the sanguine-hearted,

323

With greater zeal by Time and Life imparted,
Swear fearless fealty in age as youth,
To highest Reason and all-questioning Truth!—
And ever will exclaim,
With thought as daring, earnestness the same:
“O heat of loving Heart! O light of chainless Mind!
When will conviction flash on dull mankind,
That you are One and True; to doubt you, false and blind!
And O, thou Great First Cause ineffable! O Being
In infinite ubiquitous persistence
By our conceptions inconceivable—to all our seeing
Invisible! yet forced upon us as unknown Existence
By all Existence known! O Thou
The source of Soul and Nature, Man and Brute
Whom in this sensuous deep thou dost immerse—
Thou hast ordained that deep shall still avow
Thyself—some shadow of Thyself reveal—
Potent o'er inmost consciousness to steal;
A conscious brooding Presence—through thy Universe
For ever everywhere intrusive—
For ever everywhere elusive—
Resistlessly suggestive, yet inexorably mute!—
Aye! strange the Mystery, and fathomable never,
Of everything that is—this actual Here and Now—
Impenetrable still—yet interpenetrated ever
With a divineness beaming through the dark,
Ubiquitous—unceasing!—from the highest cope
Of heaven with Astral Systems flung along its slope
To the minutest microscopic spark
Or speck of life obscure in air or earth or sea—
Some viewless animalcule—such a vivid shield

324

Of trembling rings of iridescent splendour
The very Rainbow by its side would yield
The palm—has no such glory to attend her
As we are startled to find there, unseen
By unassisted sense!—so manifest a glow
Of Beauty and Power transcendent from below
Rises to meet the Power and Beauty above
That through those star-worlds limitless expand—
And stealing through our Finite's dimmest screen,
Leavens the Universe with Light and Love!
Until we feel, we darkling men—
So darkling in our nook of narrow days
And cramping thoughts and creeping ways—
As in the midst, longing for light, between
That Infinitesimal and Infinite we stand—
Feel that the Finite's evil and its haze
Are destined to be lost, transfigured in the blaze
Of the abounding Presence, eloquent then,
Of that life-giving Beauty and Power divine—
Say rather, O Unnameable, of Thine!—
Thou—in this Mystery, starry-dark as night,
Yet beautiful and wonderful beyond the scope
Of utmost admiration—yet a pure delight,
A joy exhaustless by all thirst
For joy Thyself didst plant within us first,—
Thou hast ensured that we may rest
In one conviction not to be supprest—
For us whatever destiny
Thou dost ordain, must be the fittest—best!
Thou hast therein writ thy decree
It shall for Man for ever be
Inevitable to conclude Thee good and just;
Most rational to hold a boundless Hope;

325

Most inwardly ennobling utterly to trust
In the firm stronghold of the True and Right,
And widest Love's unconquerable might,
As best sustainment of his being's height—
Best revelation of Thy Will and Thee!—
Therefore we blench not! therefore boldly say:
‘O Man! thou momentary ray
Shot from the hidden Splendour far away—
Sheet-lightning gleam of a perceptive power
Taking wide Nature's surface for its dower;
O phantom-puppet of miraculous clay!
Thou that art launched into the infinite void
Upon thy sparkling bubble-world upbuoyed;
And—as an Insect on a floating leaf
Runs to and fro incapable of flight,
And works and waves in air its horns so slight,—
Dost ever, on thy voyage brief,
Keep stretching towards some unimagined goal
Hid in the blank abyss of Light
The feeble feelers of thy Soul!
Poor Atom on the Ocean of the All—
Hold bravely onward! faint not yet nor fall—
Some day shall come full answer to thy call!’”

Enough—the homely reel of Life we hold—
Of Amo's life and Ranolf's is unrolled;
She and her thoughtful thoughtless Wanderer bold,
Slight subjects of a lingering theme.
Faint visions of a too protracted dream,
Sink down—and like the ghosts of every-day,
The solid real flesh-phantoms—fade away!