MELANCHOLIA
“Jamque vale Soli cum diceret Ambrociotes,
In Stygios fertur desiluisse lacus,
Morte nihil dignum passus: sed forte Platonis
Divini eximum de nece legit opus.”
—Callimachus.
I
Now there was wind that night, wild wind, and rain;
And frantic thorns, that huddled on the wold,
Seemed withered witches met in storm again
To keep their Sabbath and to curse and scold,
With gnarled, fantastic gestures, lame and old.
Deep in a hollow, where some cabin lay,
A lamplit window, like an eye of gold,
Glared, winked and closed—or was't an Elfin ray,
A jack-o'-lanthorn gleam, lost on a wildwood way?
II
Still I held onward through the ugly night;
Breast-deep in thistles, all their ghostly heads
Kinked close with wet; through the bedraggled plight
Of brakes of bramble, tousled into shreds,
And tangled wastes of briars—tumbling beds
For winds to toss on.—Once, across a farm,
Unsteadily, a lamp towards unseen sheds,—
Like the blurred glow of some ungainly worm,—
A watery wisp of light crawled trailing through the storm.
III
Then swallowing blackness of the night; and thin
The shrewd rain beat me and the rough limbs whipped
Of dwarfed, uneasy beeches. There within
Their savage circle battered tombstones tipped
Squat lengths to weeds the fighting winds had ripped
And chopped to tatters. And I heard before,
Rounding a headland, where the gaunt trees dripped,—
A shout borne deathward from night's ghastly shore,—
Hoarse as a thousand throats the river's sullen roar.
IV
Shuddering I stopped, for, with my feet so caked
With clay, damp-dragging, safer were the graves,
Crowding that vista of the wood,—which raked
My face with burrs,—than, walking towards the waves,
To feel earth slip away; the architraves
Of darkness plunge me downward to some pit
Of wallow and of water.—Madder knaves
Than I have stood thus in a fever-fit
Of heart and brain and shuddered from the brink of it.
V
Wooingly silence whispered to me there
Through boughs of dripping darkness sad with rain;
Darkness, that met my eyeballs everywhere,
Blind-packed and vacant as a madman's brain.
And so I stood and heard the dead leaves drain,
And through the leaves the haunted wind that hissed;
Then suddenly—perhaps it was the strain
Snapped in my temples—laughter seemed to twist,
With evil, night's dead mouth that bent to mine and kissed.
VI
Insanity! two leaves that dabbled down,
Touched me with drizzle; and that laugh—ah, well,
No laugh! an owlet hooting at the frown
Night's hag-face tortures while she works her spell.
Yet I had sworn, before those kisses fell
Like winter on me, black as broken jet,
An occult blackness like the Prince of Hell,
A woman's hand had brushed my face—and yet,
A bat it might have been made mad with wind and wet.
VII
And stark I stood among the sodden stones,
Icy with fever, hearing in each gale
Strange footsteps,—while within my soul were moans
For strength,—as powerless as I was pale.
Then I remembered that within a tale
Once I had read—a chronicle of ills
Cowled monks had written—how one shall not fail
To find, unsought, the Fiend, if so he wills,
Cloak, cap, and cock's crook'd plume among the lonely hills.
VIII
Was that his laugh? and that his vulture hand?—
No! no! for in the legend it was said,
“Though moonless midnight curse the barren land
Sathanas' shadow follows him as red
As Hell's red cauldron is.”—My terror fled,
Remembering this.—How sad a fool was I
To dream Hell's wickedness would bow his head
By mine, and parley with me, lie for lie,
With cunning scrutiny of oblong eye by eye!
IX
Then, then I felt—her presence! all awake
Unto her power that could lift or sink;
And her straight eyes controlling, like an ache,
My brain that had no mastery to think,
Or to perform. And slowly, link on link,
She bound me helpless, like an inquisitor,
In vasty dungeons of the soul; no wink
Of light was there, but darkness, bar on bar,
Self-convoluted chaos strangling will's high star.
X
“I am the mother of uneaseful sleep,
The child of night and sister of dim death;
Who knoweth me, yea, he shall never weep,
Yet bless and ban me in a single breath:
Who knoweth me a coward is unneth:
And saddest hearts have sought me over glad
To find gray comfort where the preacher saith
There is no comfort. Melancholy mad,
Reach me thy hand and know me if thy heart be sad.”
XI
Thus did she speak. Her voice was like a flame
Of burning blackness. Then I felt the throb
Of her still hand in mine. And so I came
Gladly unto her. Yea, I, too, would rob
Time of his triumphs.—Who would groan and sob
Beneath his fardels, hearing sad men sigh
When here is cure?—for Life, that, like a lob,
Rides us to death; for Love, a godless lie;
And Toil and Hunger.—Yea, what fool would fear to die?
XII
Then seemed I wrapped in rolling mists, and, oh,
Her arm was round me and her kisses dear
On eyes and lips, and words that none may know—
What words of promise said she in mine ear!
Drunk with her beauty still I felt no fear,
When, past the forest, like some bounding brute,
I heard the river roaring. Drawing near,
Again she whispered, and my soul grew mute
Before her voice that lulled like music of a lute:
XIII
“Within the webs of darkness and of day
The spider Hours spin about thy world,
Who now finds time to even laugh or pray,
Cramped in a term of years that are uncurled
Like coils of some huge monster, head uphurled
To fang when the last fold falls! Slope on slope
The night environs thee with space, empearled
With hopeless stars by which men symbol Hope,
Beneath whose light they breed and curse and pray and grope.”
XIV
And so she brought me to the river's brink
To plunge me downward. All the night was mine;
And so, exulting, to Death's darker drink
I stooped and drank.—What better drink divine,
O man, hast thou? what wiser way is thine?
Who find'st me carrion on a hungry coast,
Sand in mine eyeballs, in my hair the brine,
And o'er my corpse with bitter lips dost boast—
“Poor fool! poor ghost! Alas! poor, melancholy ghost!”
