 | Poems lyric and idyllic |  |
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THE RIME OF THE ELLE-KING.
I.
Long years ago, in idle greenwood time,When fairies tript it merrily on the toe,
With roundels gay and many a tinkling rhyme;
When wrinkled hags their sorcery muttered low,
And forms of evil flitted to and fro
In dark attendance on the magic spell;
When woods were elfin-haunted—long ago—
An aged good-wife dwelt within a dell
The loveliest of Lorraine—romantic Epinel.
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II.
Her cottage was enwreathed luxuriouslyWith flowering lilac and sweet jessamine,
And by its step there grew a linden-tree,
Deckt all about with thorny eglantine;
Two loving willows strove to intertwine
Their yellow branches—pendulous among
Its straw-thatched gables—with the fragrant vine;
A joyous brook, with gushing, wildwood song,
Flowed aye between their gnarl'd and earth-black roots along.
III.
Above the low and diamond-latticed doorAn oaken cross was hung—that whoso stept,
Howbeit by chance, upon the cottage floor,
Its silent benediction might accept;
Before it oft Ursula prayed, and wept—
Though lorn of goodman and each darling son—
In pious joy, as not yet quite bereft,
With one fair daughter, spared to soothe her moan,
And dearer to her heart than all those dear ones gone.
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IV.
For Marguerite her every want supplied,And stayed with care her tottering steps and faint;
And oft Ursula trudged along beside
The maiden, seeming little else than saint,
With silvery tresses flowing down her quaint
Provençal habit—waited on in love
By ministering seraph without taint;
Or, in some strange acquaintance interwove,
A grey, old falcon-hawk beside a mild-eyed dove.
V.
Ah, Marguerite, sweet pearl of Epinel!Fair lily of Lorraine!—how should it fade,
And vanish quite from that enamored dell!
All living creatures loved the little maid,
At her own mirrored beauty half affrayed;
To whose clear eyes the faun and satyr-kind,
And dryad wood-nymphs, rural homage paid;
And then how tunefully her eager mind
To legends old and tales of romance was inclined!
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VI.
For at Ursula's footstool would she kneel,With frequent sigh and tremulous heart's delight,
To list how royal Guinevere did steal
Away with Launcelot—her own true knight;
Anon would shudder with bewitching fright,
When of dark goblins spake the ancient dame—
Of Roncesvalles and brave Orlando's fight;
But most of all she loved to hear the fame
Of Elf and Fairy, and the Elle-King's dreaded name.
VII.
The Elle-King, who—as every wrinkled dameThroughout fair Epinel, with boding tongue,
Told the scared children, that around them came
Listening, with little hearts by terror wrung—
Held royal sway in Elfland, where were hung
Live fairy-harps on every orange bough,
Breathing wild music, and where, all among
The groves and rills and blossoms, whispering low,
Elf pledged his love to Fay in many a summer vow;
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VIII.
And who, they said, would oft in mortal guise,Down in the vale, beneath the holly-tree,
On haunted nights appear to maidens' eyes,
And woo them with unearthly melody,
Until their souls would all entrancèd be
With shadowy forms of beauty, and they sighed
In Faëry-land forever amorously
To dwell, and be the Elle-King's stately bride:—
Saint Denis aid fair damsels when thus sorely tried!
IX.
For past redemption would that maiden beWho, music-charmed, should yield her to the Fay!
Such ballads sang the dames continually,
And twirled the distaff through the live-long day;
But Marguerite strayed thoughtfully away,
And often all the legend o'er would dream,
Whene'er at night she might forget to pray
To good saint Denis, or the silvery stream
Of moonlight on her couch shone in with ominous gleam.
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X.
And so forevermore her little heartWith young romance was easily beguiled:
Sometimes throughout the forest, far apart
From the wierd cottage, in the copses wild,
She sought for elfin grottoes, and then smiled,
And curled her dainty lip in high disdain,
To see herself so like a simple child!
But ah! what longings nestled in her brain,
Like serpents twining round the Lily of Lorraine!
XI.
It is the Hallow Eve, when elves have powerAnd dark enchantments fill the haunted air;
When, through great castle-hall and ladye's bower,
White faces glimmer, dank with mildewed hair;
And sickly will-o-wisp his fiendish glare
Throws, like a murderer's candle, through the mist,
While shrouded Evil watches everywhere;
Ah! the foul fiend is busy now, I wist,
And all the goblin imps his dismal spells assist!
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XII.
What timorous damsel dares to wander throughThe elfin glen on this ill-fated eve?
Yet Margret will her venturous path pursue,
In spite of all that simple girls believe:
Though flutteringly her gentle breast may heave,
Darkling she hastens onward, while old dreams
A hundred pictures for her fancy weave,
And on her spectral form the fire-fly gleams
Through all the climbing fog, till like a ghost she seems;
XIII.
A ghost of maiden, by false lover's sinHeart-broken, and forever wandering where
The traitor did her brightest jewel win;
And why doth Marguerite alone repair,
With robe of white and little ankles bare,
Through the witch-haunted valley? Hear you not
Saint Mary's chapel bell? and see the glare
Of waxen taper, in the holy spot,
Where all but pious vow and penance is forgot.
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XIV.
Thither she turns her course mysteriously,And thither to our Lady fain would pray,
That, on this night, in great benignity,
All spells and demons she will guard away
From her dear cottage, till the breaking day
Upon Ursula and herself shall glow;
With such kind purpose, in her pure array
She hurries forth—but ah! she needs must go
Past the great holly-oak o'er-clomb with mistletoe.
XV.
Saint Mary be her guardian! for see,What sudden radiance beacons through the ferns,
Of flame intense, and colored variously
As that which in some perfumed censer burns!
Boding the antique legend, Margret yearns,
In all her terror, with a strange delight,
And slowly toward those drooping branches turns,
With half-way thrills of longing—half-affright—
As one who fears, yet pines, to view some ghostly sight.
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XVI.
What sees the maiden, that so fixed she stays?From what arch spell of elfin glamoury,
Bathed in the light of those bewildering rays,
In all her wonderment so loth to fly?
For whom those parted lips—that passionate sigh?
And see her now like Ariadne smile,
When her god-lover shone out splendidly
Before her eyes, and clasped her hand the while,
And told his love divine—in Naxos' dewy isle;
XVII.
Smile at the vision of a youthful king,With coronal of ocean-emerald crowned,
And amber hair, by many a gorgeous ring
Of wreathéd gold fantastically bound;
'Mong all her peasant lovers, that around
The village-pole on merry-makings throng,
Such stately courtesy she has not found,
And beauty, which young maidens praise in song,
Or picture to their hearts in summer day-dreams long.
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XVIII.
And ah! with pure, harmonious, dying notes,More sweetly than the nightingale's sweet tune,
Which, mystically uttered, ever floats
Along the ether to the listening moon,
He prays of Marguerite a gentle boon,
That she to bannered Faëry-land will go,
And share with him the Elle-King's pearly throne;
Soft, as on Danaë fell the golden snow,
Falls on her charmed ear the elfin music low!
Elfin Song.
1.
Far in the western ocean's breast,The summer fairies have found a nest;
The heavens ever unclouded smile
Over the breadth of their beautiful isle;
Through it a hundred streamlets flow,
In spangled paths, to the sea below,
And woo the vales, that beside them lie,
With a low and tremulous minstrelsy.
The elfin brood have homes they love
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But the haunt, which of all they love the best,
Is the palm-crowned isle, in the ocean's breast,
That mortals call Canary;
And many an Ariel, blithesome, airy,
And each laughing Fay and lithesome Fairy,
Know well the mystical way in the West
To the sweet isle of Canary.
2.
With an ever-sounding choral chant,And a clear, cerulean, wild desire
To clasp that fairy-island nigher,
The sinuous waves of ocean pant;
For here all natural things are free
To mingle in passionate harmony.
The light from their mirror turns away
With a golden splendor, in the day,
But nightly, when coronetted Even
Marshals the shining queen of heaven,
There gleams a silvery scenery,
From the rim of the great prismatic sea
Around the isle of Canary,
To the central crags of Pisgatiri,
Where the crested eagle builds his eyrie,
Scanning the shores of sweet Canary.
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3.
Lustrously sailing here and there,Afloat in the beatific air,
Birds, of purple and blue and gold,
Pour out their music manifold;
All day long in the leas they sing,
While the sun-kist flowers are blossoming;
At eve, when the dew-drop feeds the rose,
And the fragrant water-lilies close,
The marvellous-throated nightingale
With a dying music floods each vale,
Till the seaward breezes, listening, stay
To catch the harmony of his lay
And cool the air of Canary;
And thus the melodies ever vary,
In the vales of the ocean aviary,
In the blissful valleys of sweet Canary.
4.
The Elle-King's palace was builded thereBy elves of water and earth and air;
Lovingly worked each loyal sprite,
And it grew to life in a summer night;
It grew to life like a summer thought—
A fit abode for the monarch's court:
Over the sheen of its limpid moat,
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By fairy wings that fan the sails,
And eddying through enchanted vales,
Through walls of amber and crystal gates,
We come where a fairy-warder waits;
And so, by many a winding way
Where sweet bells jingle and fountains play,
To the inmost, royalest room of all—
The elfin monarch's reception-hall,
The pearl and pride of Canary!
To guard its fastness the elves are wary,
And no wierd thing, of pleasure chary,
Can enter with evil in sweet Canary!
5.
All that saddens, and care and pain,Are banished far from that fair domain;
There forever, by day and night,
Is nought but pleasance and Love's delight;
Daily, the Genii of the flowers
Shade with beauty a hundred bowers;
Nightly, the Gnomes of precious stones
Emblazon and light a hundred thrones:
And the Elves of the field, so swift and mute,
Bring wine and honey and luscious fruit;
And the Sylphs of the air, at noontide, cool
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And all are gay—from the tricksome Fay,
Who flutters in woodlands far away,
To the best-beloved attendant Elf,
And the royal heart of the King himself,
Who rules in bright Canary;
And the laboring Fairies are blithe and merry,
Who press the juice from the swollen berry
That reddens the vines of sweet Canary.
6.
What if there be a fated dayWhen the Faëry Isle shall pass away,
And its beautiful groves and fountains seem
The myths of a long, delicious dream!
A century's joys shall first repay
Our hearts, for the evil of that day;
And the Elfin-King has sworn to wed
A daughter of Earth, whose child shall be,
By cross and water hallowéd,
From the fairies' doom forever free:
What if there be a fated day!
It is far away! it is far away!
Maiden, fair Maiden: I, who sing
Of this summer isle, am the island King;
I come from its joys to make thee mine:
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Our horses of air and ocean wait—
Then hasten, and share the Elle-King's state
In the sweet isle of Canary;
And many an Ariel, blithesome, airy,
And each laughing Fay and lithesome Fairy,
Shall rovingly hover around and over thee,
And the love of a king shall evermore cover thee,
Nightly and daily in sweet Canary.
XIX.
The wizard song is dying amorously,And Marguerite, by music's wondrous spell
Enwrapt in more than mortal ecstasy,
Forgets her home, nor heeds the chapel bell
That tolls for restless souls a piteous knell,
But, open-mouthed, with pallid, suppliant hands,
Seems trembling with a longing naught may quell;
Then all amort, like carvéd marble, stands,
And pants for summer bowers and joy in faëry-lands.
XX.
Now instant let her guardian angel charm120
And kind Saint Denis, with protecting arm,
Speed to her aid—or else the linden-tree
Will never shade her more, and she will be
A prisoned bird in gilded cage forlorn!
And look! with white arms reaching languidly
Toward that perilous beauty, she has gone
Yet nearer to the Fay—the elfin charm has won!
XXI.
Good bye for aye, lost pearl of Epinel!The chill November wind, with moaning loud,
In ominous gusts bewailed through all the dell;
Ursula, though so old and ague-bowed,
Yet would her daughter seek, and wildly vowed
To find the maid—let weal or woe betide!
Her aged limbs were hallowed by no shroud,
And no sweet child stood weeping by her side,
But, anguished and alone, in the drear storm she died.
1850.
| Poems lyric and idyllic | |