University of Virginia Library

Soul-epochs are there, when grief's pitiless storm
O'erwhelms the amazèd spirit; when the warm
Exultant heart whose hopes were brave and high,
Shrinks in the darkness withering all its sky:
Then, like a wounded bird by the rude wind
Clutched and borne onward, tortured, reckless, blind,
Too frail to struggle with that passionate blast,
We take wild, wavering courses, and at last
Are dashed, it may be, on the rocky verge,
Or hurled o'er the unknown and perilous surge
Of some dark doom, when, bruised and tempest-tost,
We sink in turbulent eddies, and are lost.

Urged by a mood thus desperate, careless what
Thenceforth befell him, from that hateful spot,
The scene of such stern anguish and despair,
Aurelian rushed, he knew not, recked not, where.
All night he wandered in the forest drear,
Till on the pale phantasmal front of morn
The first thin flickering day-gleam glanced forlorn,
Wan as the wraith of perished hopes, the ghost
Of wishes long sustained and fostered most,
Now gone for evermore. “O Christ! that I,”
He muttered hoarsely, “might unsought for lie
Here, in the dismal shadows and dank grass,
And close my heavy eyelids, and so pass
With one brief struggle from the world of men,
Never to grieve or languish,—never again!
Never to sow live seeds of expectation
And joyous promise, to reap desolation;
But as the seasons fly, snow-wreathed, or crowned
With odorous garlands, rest in the mute ground,
Peaceful, oblivious,—a Lethéan cloud
Wrapped round my faded senses like a shroud,
And all earth's turmoil and its juggling show
Dead as a dream dissolved ten thousand years ago!”

Long, long revolving his sad thoughts he stood,
When gleefully from out the lightening wood
Came the sharp ring of horn and echoing steed;
A score of huntsmen, scouring at full speed,
Flashed like a brilliant meteor o'er the scene,
In royal pomp of glimmering gold and green;
Whereat, with wrathful gestures, 'neath the dome
Of the old wood he hastened towards his home,
Where day by day he grew more woeful-pale,
Calling on Heaven unheard to ease his bale.

Among his kinsfolk, many in hot haste,
To salve an unknown wound with balms misplaced,
Came the squire's brother, Curio,—a wise scribe,
Modest withal, and nobler than his tribe;
With heart as loving as his brain was wise:
He could not see with cold, indifferent eyes
Aurelian pass to madness or the grave,
While care and wit of man perchance might save;
So, pondering o'er what seemed a desperate case,
At length there leapt into his kindling face
The flush of a bright thought. “By Heaven!” cried he.
“O brother, there may still be hope for thee;
Therefore, take heart of grace, for what I tell
Doubtless preludes a health-inspiring spell;
And thou, released from this long, sorrowful blight,
Shalt feel the stir of joy, and bless the morning light.

“Ten years—ten centuries sometimes they would seem—
Passed idly o'er me like a mystic's dream;
Ten years agone, when these dull locks of mine
Flowed round broad shoulders with a perfumed shine,
And life's clear glass o'erbrimmed with purpling wine,
I met in Orleans a shrewd clerk-at-law.
One all his comrades loved, yet viewed with awe,
To whom the deepest lore of antique ages,
The storèd secrets of old seers and sages
In Greece, or Ind, or Araby, lay bare;
From out the vacant kingdoms of the air,
He could at will call forth a hundred forms,
Hideous or lovely; the wild wrath of storms;
The zephyr's sweetness; bird, beast, wave, obeyed
The luminous signs his slender wand conveyed,
At whose weird touch men sick in flesh or brain
Became their old, bright, hopeful selves again.
Aurelian, rise! shake off this vile disease,
And ride with me to Orleans; an' it please
God and our Lady, we may chance to meet
Mine ancient comrade, who with deftest feat
Of magic skill may cut the Gordian knot
That long hath bound, and darkly binds thy lot.”

“But,” said Aurelian, with a listless turn
Of his drooped head, and wandering eyes that burn
With a quick feverish brilliance, “dost thou speak
Of thine own knowledge, when thou bid'st me seek
This rare magician? Hast thou looked on aught
Of all the mighty marvels he hath wrought?”

“Yea! I bethink me how, one summer's day,
He led me through the city gates, away
To the dark hollows 'neath a lonely hill:
So hushed the noontide, and so breathless-still
The drowsy air, the voice of one far stream
Came like thin whispers murmuring in a dream;
The blithesome grasshopper, his sense half closed
To all his verdurous luxury, reposed
Pendent upon the quivering, spearlike grain;
Steeped in the mellow sunshine's noiseless rain,
All Nature slept; alone the matron wren,
From the thick coverts of her thorny den,
Teased the hot silence with her twittering low:
My inmost soul accordant, seemed to grow
Languid and dumb within that mystic place.
At length the Wizard's hand across my face
Was waved with gentle motion; a vague mist
Flickered before me, on a sudden kissed
To warmth and glory by an influence bright;
The strangest glamour hovered o'er my sight,
Wherethrough I saw, methought, a palace proud,
Crowned by a lightning-veinèd thunder-cloud,
Whose wreaths of vapory darkness gleamed with eyes
Of multitudinous shifting fantasies;
Its pinnacles like diamond spars outshone
The starry splendors of an orient zone;
And, leading towards its lordly entrance, rose
Through slow gradations to its marbled close,
White terraces where golden sunflowers bloomed;
Above a ponderous portal archway loomed,
High-columned, quaint, majestical: we passed
Within that palace, gorgeous, wild, and vast.
Ah! blessed saints! what wonders weirdly blent
Did smite me with a hushed astonishment!
A troop of monsters couchant lined our path,
Their tawny manes and eyes of fiery wrath
Erect and blazing; an unearthly roar
Of fury, shaking vaulted roof and floor,
Burst from each savage, inarticulate throat,
In sullen echoings lost through halls and courts remote.

“At the far end of glimmering colonnades
That gleamed gigantic through the dusky shades,
Two mighty doors swept backward noiselessly:
There heaved beyond us a vast laboring sea;
Not vacant, for a stately vessel bore
Swift down the threatening tides that flashed before,
Thronged with black-bearded Titans, such as moved
In far-off times heroic, well-beloved
Of the old gods; there at his stalwart ease,
Shouldering his knotted club, great Hercules
Towered, his fierce eyes touched to dewy light,
And rapt on Hylas, who, serenely bright.
With intense gaze uplifted, tranced and mute,
Heard, in ecstatic reverie, the lute
Of Orpheus plaining to the waves that bow
And dance subsiding round the blazoned prow;
Till the rude winds blew meekly, and caressed
The mimic golden fleeces o'er the crest
Of bard and warrior, on their secret quest
Bound to the groves of Colchis; and the bark.
Round which had frowned a threatening shape and dark.
Now seemed to thrill, like some proud, sentient thing
That glories in the prowess of its wing.
The gusty billows of that turbulent sea
Their wild crests smoothed, and slowly, pantingly,
Sunk to the quiet of a charmèd calm;
What odors Hesperéan, what rich balm
Freight the fair zephyrs, as they shyly run
O'er the lulled waters dimpling in the sun!
And murmurings, hark! soft as the long-drawn kiss
Pressed by a young god-lover in his bliss
On lips immortal, when the world was new;
And, lo! across the pure, pellucid blue.
A barge, with silken sails, whose beauteous crew,
Winged fays and Cupids, curl their sportive arms
O'er one, more lovely in her noontide charms
Than youngest nymphs of Paphos; fragrant showers
Of freshening roses, all luxuriant flowers
That feed on eastern dews, their fairy bands
Scatter about her from white liberal hands;
While o'er the surface of the dazzling water,
Dark-eyed, mysterious, many an ocean daughter
Flashes a vanishing brightness on her way,
Half seen through tiny tinklings of the spray:
And music its full heart in airy falls
Outpours, like silvery cascades down the walls
Of haunted rocks, and golden cymbals ring,
And lutelike measures on voluptuous wing
Rise gently to the trancèd heavens, replying
From azure-tinted deeps in a low passionate sighing.

“Then were all climes, all ages, wildly blended
On blood-red fields, wherefrom shrill shouts ascended
Of naked warriors, huge and swart of limb,
Mixed with the mailèd Grecians' ominous hymn,
Where mighty banners starlike waved and shone
'Mid cloven bucklers grandly; and anon
Marched the stern Roman phalanx, with a ring
And clash of spears, and lusty trumpeting,
And steeds that neighed defiance unto death,
And all war's dreadful pomp and hot, devouring breath.
Last, on a sudden, the whole tumult died,
The vision disappeared; pale, leaden-eyed,
Bewildered, on the enchanted floor I sank;
When next my wakening spirit faintly drank
Life's consciousness, within my lonely room
I sat, and round me drooped the dreary twilight gloom.”

Enough, good brother! By the Holy Rood
Thy tale is medicínal! the black mood,
Which like a spiritual vulture seized and tore
My heart-strings, and imbued its beak in gore
Hot from the soul, beneath the golden spell
Of sovereign hope hath sought its native hell.
Then, ho! for Orleans!” At the word he sprung
Light to his feet; it seemed there scarcely hung
One trace of his long madness round him now,
So blithe his smile, so bright his kindling brow.
All day they rode till waning afternoon,
Through breezy copses, and the shadowy boon
Of mightier woods, when, as the latest glance
Of sunset, like a level burnished lance,
Smote their steel morions, sauntering near the town,
With thoughtful mien, robed in his scholar's gown,
They met a keen-eyed man, ruddy and tall;
O'er his grave vest a beard of wavy fall
Flowed like a rushing streamlet, rippling down:
“Welcome!” he cried in mellow accents deep;
“The stars have warned me, and my visioned sleep
Foretold your mission, gentles. Curio, what!
Thine ancient, loving comrade quite forgot?
Spur thy dull memory, gossip!”

“By St. Paul!
The learned clerk, the gracious Artevall,
Or glamour's in it,” shouted Curio; “yet
Thou look'st as hale, as young, as firmly set
In face and form, as if for thee old Time
Had stopped his flight.” A lofty glance, sublime
And swift as lightning, from the Magian's eye
Darted some latent meaning grave and high.
He spake not, but the twain he gently led
Where grassy pathways and fair meads were spread,
Skirting the city walls, till near them stood,
Fronting the gloomy boskage of a wood,
The wizard's lonely home, I need not pause
To tell how magic and the occult laws
Of sciences long dead that sage's lore
Did in the spectral midnight hours explore.
Enough, that his strange spells a marvel wrought
Beyond the utmost reach of credulous thought.
At last he said, “Sir Squire, my task is o'er;
Go when thou wilt, and view the Breton shore,
And thou shalt see a wide unwrinkled strand,
Smooth as thy lovely lady's delicate hand,
Washed by a sea o'er which the halcyon West
Broods like a happy heart whose dreams are dreams of rest.”