University of Virginia Library

Deep in the shade of high o'er-arching trees,
Birches and beeches, elms and knotted oaks,
A fountain murmured with a pleasant sound.
Not often through those thick umbrageous leaves
Pierced the full glory of the noon-day sun;
Not often through those pendulous branches hoar
Glittered the mellow radiance of the moon.
A cool dim twilight, with perpetual haze,
Crept through the intricate byways of the wood,
And hung like vapour on the ancient trees;
The place was musical with sweetest sounds,
The fountain sang a soft monotonous song;
The leaves and branches rustled to the wind
With whispered melody; the waving grass
Answered the whisper in a softer tone;
While morn and eve, the midnight and the noon,
Were listeners to the rapturous minstrelsy
Of lark and linnet, nightingale and thrush,
And all the feathered people of the boughs.

In this calm nook, secluded from the world,
The marble statue of a nymph antique
Stood in the shadow: radiant were her limbs
With modesty; her up-turned face was bright
With mental glory and serene repose;
The full round arms and figure to the midst,
Displayed the charm of chastest nudity;
A flowing drapery round her lower limbs,
In ample folds concealed the loveliness,
The majesty, and glory of the form.
One hand was raised and pointed to the stars,
The other, resting on her snow-white breast,
Seemed as it felt the pulsing of her heart;
She stood the symbol of enraptured thought
And holy musing. At her feet an urn
Poured in a marble fount a constant stream
Of limpid water; sacred seemed the place
To philosophic and religious calm;
The very wind that stirred the upper boughs
Seemed as attuned to choral harmonies.
Upon the pedestal these words inscribed,
In Grecian character revealed her name:
“Egeria—he who seeks her here, shall find;
“Love be his light, and purity his guide.”

Thither at noon came Julian and his friend.
“Behold,” said Montague, “the nymph divine;
The visible portraiture of her whose voice
Poured healing, in the simple days of old,
To Numa's soul, when he was sad as thou.
Hast any faith in the unseen but true?
And canst thou free thy spirit from the yoke
Of things material, gross, and palpable,
And soar with mine beyond the bounds of sense?”

“I have small faith,” said Julian; “sense to me
Is the main anchor; immaterial things
Are less than shadows; yet perchance they are.”—

“Believe!” said Montague, “and thou shalt learn!
My powerful will shall work a miracle.
With mystic wave and passes of my hand,
I'll pour upon thy spirit, and thy brain,
Another sense more vigorous than sight;
And thou shalt see, what thou hast never seen,
And thou shalt hear, what thou hast never heard;
And, in the kernel of the Universe,
Behold the hidden causes at their work.”

A smile incredulous o'er Julian's face
Shot rapidly as light. “I'll try thy skill.
'T is possible that I may drop to sleep;—
Great is the magic of monotony!
If thou canst lull me in mesmeric trance,
And from thy fingers shed upon my brain
The sense additional of spiritual sight,
I'll own the truths I may have long denied,
And fix no limits to the possible.
Go on. I would behold Egeria.”

Upon the rustic bench they sat them down,
And Julian was aware of strength infused
Into his eyes—into his brain, and heart.
Deep slumber clad him like a coat-of-mail,
From which, awaking into fuller life,
He felt that from his eyes a film had dropt.
An inward light pervaded all his frame;
A tremulous feeling of ecstatic joy
Possessed his spirit:—“This is happiness.
I float—I fly—the music of the stars
Rings in mine ears; mine eyes behold the light—
The hidden things are dark to me no more.”

The statue bent her eyes upon his face,
And looked upon him with benignant smile,
And then, descending from the pedestal,
Stood at his side in maiden bashfulness.
“Julian,” she said, “thou hast desired mine aid;
He who would woo me must be pure of heart,
And look on Nature with a loving mind.
The secrets of the Universe are closed
To hatred, scorn, impurity, and guile.
A little child can see them, while the man,
A prey to passion, blinded by his pride,
His groping knowledge, and his self-conceit,
Walks in the darkness, and but dreams he sees.”

“Spirit of Nature, let me be a child!”

“Behold!” she said, and touched him on the eyes,
And he was conscious of a power divine,
Which gave him strength to feel and understand.
“Thou who art weary of the world and men.
And makest moan of misery and wrong;
Thou who complainest of the doom of toil.
The law of death, the penalty of pain,
Deeming them evil, heavy burdens borne
By man alone, the helot of the world—
Behold, and learn!” He looked, and at his feet,
Above him, and around, on every side,
He saw the tremor and the gush of life.
Leaf spoke to leaf upon the tree-tops high,
The knotted oak was comrade of the wind,
And waved in pleasure its extremest boughs;
It spread its roots in earth, its arms in heaven,
With sense of being. Daisies in the sward
Nodded their cups with joy; the hare-bells blue
Shook to the passing breezes with delight;
The very grass that nestled in the shade
Knew it existed, and enjoyed its life.
He looked again, and leaf, and blade, and flower,
Were populous with happy living things.
The hare-bell cup was spacious as a world;
The rough rind of the sheltering oak-tree branch
Supported in its tiny villages
Myriads of creatures, borne on pinions bright,
Resplendent with all colours interfused.
The cricket chirupped in his coat of mail;
The brisk cicada answered him aloud,
And rubbed the emerald armour of his thighs.
The glittering beetle trod the yielding grass,
Proud of his panoply. The buzzing gnat,
With jewelled brow and feathers in her hair,
Pealed her triumphal horn. The nimble midge
Danced as if dancing were supremest joy,
And shook her wings in gladness. Butterflies,
Conscious of beauty, sped from flower to flower,
And flaunted in the aspect of the day
Their robes of spangled tissue, fairer far
Than ever caliph for his blushing bride
Bought with the wealth of conquered provinces.
And countless hosts of scarcely visible things
Lived and were happy in each leaf and bud,
In every crinkle of the oaken bark,
In every dew-drop trembling on the flower.
To them a world. Most beautiful were all,
Whate'er their form, their structure, or their size:
And Julian blessed them for Egeria's sake.

“Behold, once more!” the radiant spirit said.
And lo! fierce war through all the woodland raged.
The emmets marched their armies to the strife,
And slew each other, as at Waterloo
Insensate men destroyed their fellow-men,
And all the ground was covered with the dead.
The hungry finch pursued the butterfly;
The hawk, down swooping from mid-air, perceived
The timid songster hidden in the boughs,
And dealt the blow of death; the spider spread
His intricate web, to snare the gnat and fly,
Proud of their finery; the beetle's jaws
Consumed whole nations for his noon-day meal;
The caterpillar crawled upon the leaf,
Among the calm, unconscious aphides,
Like Typhon 'mid the flocks of Sicily—
Gigantic horror prowled. “Complaining man,”
Whispered Egeria, “see the law of life.
The grass must wither, and the flower must fall.
The oak, whose rings mark centuries of growth,
Must perish in its season. All this life,
That sports and flutters in the breeze of heaven,
Like thee has sense of happiness and joy—
Like thee must pay the penalty of pain—
Like thee it toils to live—like thee supports
The burden of the elements, and yields
Obedience to the laws of time and space—
And is, like thee, inheritor of death.”

“And all the stars?” said Julian. “In those orbs,
That shine upon the forehead of the night
With lustre so benign, is Death the lord?
Are toil and pain the lot of all who live
In heaven, as on the earth?” Egeria smiled.
“The great condition of all life is Death.
Would'st have the bane, and not the antidote?
How couldst thou know the heat, if not for cold?
How comprehend the light, if not for dark?
How north, if not for south? How could thy sense
Interpret upwards, were it not for down?
Wouldst banish Death? Go back six thousand years,
And make a world where Death should never come,
A world without an evil or a toil,
Without the polar principle of pain,
And tell me what a hell such world would be!
Behold th' eternal and untoiling stones;—
Pain cannot touch them: Death is impotent:
O'er them the summer's heat and winter's cold
Glide harmless ever. Happy are the stones!
Wouldst lower thy humanity to them,
And fill thine earth, and the remotest stars,
With senseless minerals? Oh! fair is Life—
Life, and her sister Death—twin-born, co-reared,
And co-existent to eternity.”

“Oh, misery!—Oh, utter misery!”
Said Julian, shuddering through all his frame.
“Are great Orion and the Pleiades,
Arcturus, and the heavenly galaxy—
Is all this boundless universe of stars,
This dread Infinitude of worlds and suns,
One great pulsation of incessant pain?
Is Death indeed the universal lord?”

“And wherefore not?” the spirit made reply.
“Is Death not Life? Why wilt thou close thy sense?
Is not thy rest the offspring of thy toil?
Is not thy labour pole of thy repose?
And thine indulgence creature of thy need?”

“But pain,” said Julian, “never-ending pain?”

“There is no pain but for the ignorant—
Pain is the friend and guardian of the wise,”
Whispered the spirit. “Wouldst thou place thy hand
In the consuming and destroying fire,
And ask it not to burn? Wouldst fall from heights
Upon the stony bosom of the earth,
And ask it not to bruize? Wouldst break the laws
That govern and uphold the universe—
The modulations of harmonious heaven—
And, without knowledge of thy sacrifice,
Destroy thy being? Wise, and good, and just
Are all the laws and penalties of God.”

“But these so beauteous and resplendent things
That people littleness with various life;—
Why should destruction, rapine, war, and wrong
Engulf their myriads? Have they sinned like men?”

“Oh, blind—oh, deaf—oh, miserable soul!”
Replied Egeria. “Tell me, canst thou count
The happy multitudes before thee spread
In this one second of thine earthly time?
Wouldst fill the wholesome universe with flies,
And make the air too thick for human breath?
Death is no evil. Cease, O foolish man!
Thy querulous moaning, and consider Death
No longer as thy foe. A ministering saint,
Her hand shall guide thee, step by step, to God.
Be worthy of her, and so learn to live,
That every incarnation of thy soul,
In other worlds, and spheres, and firmaments,
Shall be more perfect. God's eternity
Is thine to live in:—on thyself depends
Whether for pain or pleasure—good or ill.”

“Spirit of Nature, let me not complain!
Mine eyes are opened. I behold a dawn.
The glimmering radiance of a heavenly world
Opens before me, infinitely good.
Death is the mother of Life, and Life of Death.
Attraction and repulsion—heat and cold—
Stagnation and progression—good and ill—
Each is a perfect square that fits with each.
And foolish man, whose small horizon ends
Ere perfect knowledge of the truth begins,
Denies the wonders that he cannot see;—
As grubs and earth-worms might deny the sun,
Or flies ephemeral ignore the year.”