University of Virginia Library

Up from his crimson cushions and his couch
Broidered with gold the King rose wearily.
He flung aside his purples, and went out
Into the humming woods. Nor heeded he
The lotus in the water, nor the shine
And startled splendour of the birds that glanced
Through cinnamon groves, and boughs of orange trees,
Nor all the fruits that dangled in his way,
Sun-ripe to the very core; nor the dim cloud
Of blended incense, that, at every step,
Rose up from all the rich empurpled banks.
He passed a festal party, who, with cheeks
Glowing with health, and eyes that gleamed with glee,
Danced to the clash of cymbals, heedlessly,
And plunged into the thicker forest glooms.
His heart sang of the past; and as that lake
Whose outer verge reflects Potosi's towers
And blazing domes, all dimpled into gold,
But whose secreted waters, subterrene,
Preserve unrotting whatso'er they hold,
And sometimes, breaking through the golden bars
Wherein Peruvian miners hold them bound,
Disgorge their treasures from their caverned deeps,—
Their hoarded dead of many centuries,
With the rude bloom of health fixed on their cheeks,
No dimple worn away, no hair displaced,
Arrayed in all the quaint dress of the past,
And dancing suddenly sunned upon the waves,
Known from the living only by their garb,—
Even so his soul swarmed thick with other years,
That came up to the surface, long entombed,
Yet all undimmed and lustrous as this hour;—
Came with their parted hair, and smiling lips,
And meek-clasped hands, and moveless feet, and felt
The sun upon their white and pulseless brows.
Onward he plunged, until he reached a spot
Where the o'er-hanging branches wreathed above
A dim grot lying low, and cool, and green,
Wherein a rivulet darted darkly-bright
O'er tawny pebbles, and embrownèd sand,
And shells with lips that curled from pearl to pink.
Here, couched on yielding mosses, down he sank,
Till all his fancy into visions broke:
Chiefly of England, and the golden prime
Of Chivalry in the bright-plumèd past,
Tales told him in the sumptuous autumn nights,
Dropping with honey, by famed travellers.
He saw the stormy Viking ride the waves;
He heard the burly baron clang his steel;
He saw the beard of Merlin waving white;
And all the pageantry of Arthur's court
At joust and tournament. The mighty brand
Durandal, flashes all its magic light
Full in his face; he sees Astolpho's lance
Divide the darkness of the meeting boughs;
Sir Guy of Warwick, Lancelot of the Lake,
Sir Roland, and the Cid go by all plumed,
Jingling their golden trappings. He beholds
The towers of fabled Camelot, and sees
The silken ladies glancing up the streets;
Enchanted palaces, with blazing fronts,
Yearning towards the south, within whose rooms,
Guarded by griffins, lo! the Princess lies;
And hoary castles swarm above the woods,
Their wondrous towers all tumbling into mist,
Reeling in flame and sunset o'er his eyes.
A sleep seals all his senses; down he goes
A laden pilgrim through the world of dreams.

'Tis broad mid-day. The hunt is done. The horns,
Far off, sound the recall. He is alone.
The forest shimmers o'er him; and a sense
Of being here by some foredoomed appointment
Weighs heavy on his soul; some great event
Seems summoning its thunders in the heavens
To herald its approach. Faint on the air
The echo of the horns dies far away,
And all the world of men, and busy deeds
Falls from him in his trance; he is alone.
When lo! a wonder wrought before his eyes;
Some unseen power catches the forest up,
And all the mighty trunks and twisted boughs
Writhe groaning as in fire, and disappear
Utterly, leaving not a cloud or speck
On the gold disc of day. On he is urged
By some invisible hand, until he sees
Broadening before his steps, a valley wide,
Fragrant with spices of the sunny south,
And musical with voices of the spring,
Stretch up into the crimson-clouded east,
Where in a purple mist, a city glowed,
With gorgeous domes, and winking cupolas,
And golden spires, that in the mellow light
Shot out bewildering lances of keen fire.

In sooth a pleasant valley! full of brooks,
And the low murmurs of the well-pleased winds,
And voices rich with gladness, and sweet bursts
Of tremulous music sent from carolling hearts;—
A valley dark with dim voluptuous fruits,
And flowers that shook upon their fragrant stems,
And groves of spices bleeding odorous gums;—
But on the one side, hung a forest hoar
With tossing boughs, and branches bleak and bare,
Through whose dark solitudes went wailing winds,
And sounds of dolour, and dim shapes of woe;—
And on the other rose, with ragged peaks,
A tumbled world of grey and cruel rocks;
And mid the flowers of the valley gleamed
The deadly beauty of the gliding snake,
And, mingled with the fruits, were poisonous shrubs
That hung their crimson globes amid the vines.

On towards the shining city in the east,
Two forms were wending on the valley-path.
The one was human; but the other shone
With a meek lustre, as the harvest moon
After still rain, upon a breathless night
Hangs low and large above the dripping boughs;
And where she passed, a richer fragrance breathed
From out the cool hearts of the dewy flowers,
And to the clustering fruits, a mellower hue
Ran o'er the tan of their suffusèd cheeks;
While all the poisonous berries shrivelled up
Their shining purples to the blackened core,
And all the slimy reptiles sought their holes.

At length they reached the city; and the gate
Rolled back in muffled music on its hinge;
And a delicious clamour of loud harps
Stirred all the air to rapture, and a shout,
“Blessed for ever!” ran along the streets,
Through the long length of shining colonnades,
And stately squares and jasper cornices,
And by the golden domes and twinkling spires,—
All through the pillared splendour of the place
“Blessed for ever!” rang in jubilant tones;
And then the great gate rolled back on its hinge,
And music welled out o'er the city walls.
Again the vision changes; and behold!
Deep in the centre of the hoary woods,
Where never to the sound of timbrel danced
The swarthy maidens of his native land:
Where never human foot had pressed the grass;
Nor wild beast wandered in the quest of prey:
Where preternatural silence kept a hush
Of centuries, the trees drew back, and left
A space ringed round by broken, moss-grown walls:
Where basked no lizard, and no creeping thing
Went in and out the fissures; o'er the gate,
That stood wide open in the moonèd calm
And shadowy glamour of this silent place,
Carved in white marble, white as Polar snows,
Each tender finger trembling in the light,
All soft as water-lilies, was a hand—
A delicate lady's hand—that pointed still
Towards the old house, which, with its high-peaked roof,
And many gables, in the garden stood
White in the moonlight. Through the arch he passed,
And stepped upon the lawn, where, high in air,
A fountain played, whose feathery waters fell
Silent as shadows on the pleachèd grass,
And then wound out, through roots of flowering shrubs,
And down dim alleys where the starlight shone
Still and transparent, on its breast, as still,
Into some unseen basin far away.
Close by the fountain, on a pillar of brass,
Thrown back, up to the pitiless heavens, a face
Flecked o'er with shadows smote upon his eyes,
And thrilled his soul with horror. On a neck
No thicker than the poisonous cobra gleamed
This ghastly copper phantom:—Oh! a face
Where eld unsearchable, and hate, and scorn,
And agony, were scorched in lava-lines.
The salted fires of preternatural woe
Had washed those thin cheeks ere the Pharaohs went
Clad in asbestos to the mummied ranks
Of their forefathers. On that woman's brow,
Thick-seamed with wrinkles, blazing centuries
Had burned like bars; those dim and sunken eyes
Sought out the blue depths far beyond the moon,
Beyond the stars! beyond the universe,
With savage hate; and from those cruel lips,
Drawn up in untold agony, a cry
Of scorn, and curses, and of countless woes
Seemed ever bursting forth in blistering fire,
But came not, fixed for ever!

On he passed,
Sickened with dread, urged forward by his dream,
Through an old Gothic doorway, ribbed and rich
With tracery, into a dim-lighted hall,
Where, from the rusted armour on the wall,
Cobwebs hung stirless in the breathless hush,
And moveless shadows clung along the roof,
Save at the upper end, where, like two wings
In some infernal air, two banners black,
With motion slow and regular, flapped all
The horror of that ghastly face, picked out
In sweltering gold, upon the inner gloom.

Onward, from room to room, from door to door,
He passed with tottering knees; and in each room,
Out from some corner, o'er the painted door,
Or grinning down from the deep-groinèd-roof,
Chiselled in stone, or worked in glinting bronze,
Flamed the same hideous face before his eyes.
He ran; he strove to cry; but not a sound
Broke on the peopled stillness of the place.
Onward he darted; and his footsteps fell
Silent as feather-down from molting birds,—
From room to haunted room, striving in vain
To escape the ghastly whirl that, close behind,
Filled all the gloom with faces. On, and on,
Flying in agony, he dashed the doors
Behind him, to shut out the shapes he knew
Were coming in pursuit—up through the silence—
Up through the dark that drew close on his heels—
And, evermore, he found the pictured walls
Grow still more ghastly; evermore the face
Shuddered out more distinctly from the gloom;
The lank, thin hair almost began to move
On the long serpent neck; the dreadful eyes
Almost began to gleam; and through the lips
The long-pent cry seemed just about to break
In cataracts of curses:

When, behold!
As he smote in a cedar door, and burst
Into the last room of the ghostly range,
A silken couch, beside a window wide
Lay saintly sweet in moonlight; and no more,
Either from doorway, or from painted roof,
Or ghastly-gleaming wall, looked out the face;
But on the couch a veiled form lay in sleep,
Lifting with gentle rise and fall, the silks
That warm and white lay on her breathing breast.
Behold a hand most exquisitely fair—
Twin lily of the one that met his eyes
Brightening the outer arch—and, nestling deep
In gauze, an arm lay on the coverlet,
Daintily rounded as the milky stem
Of flowering balsams. Up he deftly stole,
And, with expectant hand, drew gently back
The veil of samite from the sleeping face:—
Horror of horrors! There, oh! there, at last,
The living hair winds round the serpent-neck;
The living eyes wink up their witcheries
Dead into his! The seamed and ghastly brow,
Like heated brass, is pressed against his own!
There is the ante-type, the living face—
The face of dateless eld—of agony—
Of hate and scorn—is there; and there, hark! hark!
Oh there, at last, the cry!

Up from the grass,
The big drops starting on his clammy brow,
The King leapt, startled from his ghastly dream.
The day was done; the stars were high in heaven;
And close beside the bank whereon he slept,
A stealthy step glode through the hush of night,
And not a sound disturbed the dreaming boughs.