Canto the Third. The Star-lit Swimming.
1. Amo swimming still. 2. The Starry Heavens. What ideas natural
to the vision she missed; 3. And what resultant feelings. Adoration
higher than Logic? 4, 5. What she did see and feel. 6.
Exhaustion. 7. Land. 8. A warm bath.
I.
Swim, Amohia, swim!—with patient toil she swims,
In solemn silence, night, and loneliness.
Steady the star-reflections, every flake
Like dropping arrows, golden, motionless,
Hang on the shadowy polish of the Lake;
Only the waving of her lithe young limbs
Sets them a little trembling, or bedims
And quenches them, as through their glittering trails she swims.
Once more the Maiden's vigour flags;
Wearily now her languid frame she drags;
So on her back to rest her arms she turns,
And with her feet alone the water slowly spurns.
II.
But when at once right o'er her swung
The whole enormous lighted dome of Heaven,
What feelings in her bosom sprung?—
Not fraught indeed for her the glorious vision
With all the myriad miracles 'tis given
Our tutored sight to marvel at therein;
Thickstarred Immensities—O what were fields Elysian—
Softswarded glooms of Paradise
Fire-streaked with glancing lovelit eyes;
Or that pure Empyrean where the bards divine—
Of Albion or the Florentine,
In world-entrancing everliving dreams,
Saw jacinth-downs and topaz-spurting streams
And uplands opaline;
Champaigns of sheeted pearl with rosy-green
Reflections shot, and mildest rainbow-sheen,
Where snowdrifts of blest Angels spread and swarm
And scatter, on the rolling grand Hosanna-storm
Uplifted—floated—borne away!
Or rounded to a snowy world-wide rose
With golden heart where God's own brilliance glows;—
What seem all these to that tremendous scene,
But tinselled stagework—transient—mean—
Poor craft of some mere mortal mechanician!
—Nor could her fancy science-guided stray—
From those bold fires that here and there
Like vanward sentinels low hovering hung,
Rejoicing in some kingly trust,—
Through an immeasurable array
Of evervarying mingling lights
Pausing in multitudinous troops
On still retiring higher heights
As on some vast celestial palace-stair;
Or poured forth infinite in scattering groups
And endlessly-recurring shoal on shoal;
With luminous depths on all sides leading
To deeper depths that evermore receding
And evermore reopening lose
Themselves in labyrinthine avenues
Of glory unspeakable! a maze
Of vistas intricate that everywhere
Away and upward roll
Into a dimness splendid with a dust
Of Suns—a gleaming haze,
A visible shining cloud
Of specks invisible—all worlds—and all avowed
Only a handbreadth of the outstanding Whole!
O not for her the eternal flood
Of worlds in bloom and worlds in bud;
The lightning-speeded cataract of Creation
Boundless and bounding on for ever;
Chaotic mass or cosmic—brood on brood
Evolving, intermitting never,
To dash and daze the strongest-winged imagination!
Full many a sun-thronged Universe that dwindles
To a tiny film of light,
So far off in the Infinite!
Full many a flying Ocean of bright Mist that kindles
At its deep core eddy-curled
And whirls and thickens to a world;
Or at its vasty margin thinning
Drops lagging vapour-belts and luminous rings
That shrink apart, like breaking strings
Of jewels, into moons and satellites,
Fresh-starting on their separate flights,
And on new centres spinning!
—The trailing spawn of Systems vapour-tangled;
And seeded masses of stargrain like roes
Of fishes, so the congregated clusters close—
Ay, golden ovaries of great globes in myriads—all
By distance inconceivable comprest
Into the semblance of a swarming ball
Of pin's-head spiders in their whitewebbed nest:—
—The swallow-swoop of Comets as they flee
In the wild race of revelry;
Each like some mad enamoured Bayadere
That darts from out the throng to where
Sits in full-diamonded pride
Her mighty Rajah awful-eyed,
As if, athirst for his caresses,
To fling herself upon his blazing breast;
But catching as she comes anear
The kingly-chilling glitter of his glance,
Swerves off abashed in full career
Again into the reeling dance!
So, down upon their Sun-God dashing
With sudden shift these couriers swift
Still scour away into Infinitude—off-flashing
With all their hundred million leagues of luminous tresses
Into the fathomless abysses
To make amid the astonished spheres
Their sportive circuit of a thousand years!
Or say, 'twere but the wake they trace
Lashing to foam-light as they race
Quiescent force asleep in space—
Still—still they spurn all resting-place!—
—Then all the sensitive Planets as they float,
In their enormous solitudes
Troubled mysteriously—the changeful moods
Reflecting of their kindred most remote;
So delicately alive to and returning
Each faint and far off sister's finest yearning;
In their elastic orbits wheeling
Eternal rounds of sympathetic feeling.—
III.
Not these—not all the vast sublimities that lurk
Within the visible sphere—the o'erpowering whole
Disclosed by the optic tube that dares to thrust
The flaming portals wide asunder
And show the great Enigma at its secret work
So silent—boundless—beautiful, it strikes the Soul
Into hushed tears of awe and ecstasy and wonder!
Yet fires it with impatient thirst to be
Knit somehow nearer,
In vision clearer,
Communion dearer
With the impenetrable mute Mystery
That flings such glories freely all around us
Unsoundable by such a mite as Man;
And yet has left them ours,
And us with partial powers
The mighty surface of the work to scan
And apprehend—not comprehend—a plan;
And feel they need not utterly confound us,
Nor lay us under ‘Matter's’ loathly ban;
Nor by ‘Necessity's’ cold confines bound us!—
For shut out from the eyes of wiser Sense
That palpable Omnipotence,
And in the flashing face of it descend
To doughtiness of reasoning—where will end
Your task—to what conviction tend?
Will not the dominance of Law all through
And prescient purpose—still accomplished too—
Pronounce in spite of analytic brawl
One Will—one conscious Mind—the cause of all?
Or call it Force, self-causing—if you will—
'Tis Force that infinitely varying, still
Through myriad myriad evolutions ranges;
Into a million simultaneous streams divides;
At once through all without confusion glides;
And keeps their mystic momentary changes
Springing in mutual fitness forth—agreeing
As each the fresh results of all foreseeing:—
What powers has Mind such Force does not possess—
What knowledge proper to self-consciousness?—
But say your reasoning never can extract
From that transcendent overwhelming revelation
Some finite supernatural spirit-fact
That bows and shrinks to petty ‘demonstration,’
And so defies all Logic's undermining,—
Take the completest human Being, combining
With Reason—Reverence and Imagination—
Of Intellect and Feeling all compact;
On him how likeliest will it ever act?—
Will it not launch on such a Soul a flood
Of irresistible uplifting inspiration
That spurns at slow deductions, wrong or right,
Too poor for consciousness so vast?—not smite
Into that ampler Soul a rapture bright
Of awe and adoration and delight,
And leave for its ecstatic mood
No outlet, no expression, no relief,
But in one grand conception in whose blaze
Poor Logic withers with her creeping ways;
And stands confessed an attribute
Lower and likelier for the brute,
For things that crawl and things that plod,—
But in one blinding Truth and chief
Of Truths—ne'er to be fathomed—ne'er defined—the feeling, God!
IV.
Well—though there rose not to the Maiden's mind
Such visions with such thoughts entwined,
She could not fail
Awestruck to mark how vast a bed
Of brilliants was above her spread,
As 'twere the sediment and golden grail
By some great Sea of upper Light deposited:
Nor all the finer showers of gems that far away
Fused into fainter light-wreaths lay
Marbling the mournful depths of solemn blue:
Nor how across it all meandering wide
Went a pale, luminous smoke that swarmed
With sparks, as from the unseen fires it rose
Of some vast spectral beings that performed
Their unimaginable rites outside:
She wondered too
At those mysterious stains of darkest hue,
Unfathomable shafts of blindest vacancy
Like scathing tracks of Demon dread
Before whose flight the myriad brilliances
Shrank blighted—marred—as shrink and close
Rock-purpling tribes of sea-anemones
Beneath the careless tread
Of one who by the side of Ocean goes.
But shunning all that glorious Company
A falling star—look! swift and furtively
Slides into light a moment, and is gone!
Of all unnoted, noting none;
In stealthy chase (she thought) or bent
On secret mission—but apart, alone—
And utterly absorbed in his unknown intent.
All was so solemn, vast, ethereal, strange—
Complete within its wondrous self—removed
So far from our dark world of chance and change,
From all she hoped, or feared, or loved,
The longer on the scene she dwelt,
More helpless still the maiden felt,
More feeble, specklike, in the gleaming dumb Immensity.
V.
What, though she had been taught to trace
Amid the million throbbing hearts of fire,
Ancestral spirits of her race
Whose fame had won them that high place,—
Those steady stars, unwinking, bold,
That well might souls of heroes be,
From them, so proud, and calm, and cold
How could she look for sympathy?
But where were they, so gentle, clear,
Sweet innocent spirits in timid lustres shrined,
Whom oft at twilight she would mark
Come trembling through the melting dark,
As then, then only confident enough
(Like fawns upon the point to turn and fly)
With fluttering heart to hesitate so nigh?—
They must be, sure, of tenderer stuff,—
Have souls that pity could inspire!
Ah, idle seemed the fond desire
Amid the thronging hosts to find
One kindred heart from whom a Maid
Might look for love or hope for any aid!
For if her glance for many moments rested
On any single group of all that sprinkled
The skies, the fancy then her brain infested,
They were tall radiant Figures downward peering
From shining strongholds, high and free
And safe above her, while behind them leering
Still more and more kept crowding in to see,
With eyes that with malicious pleasure twinkled
At her poor puny efforts. And her guide,
Her pilot star could be no more descried;
So by the glorious vision more deprest
Than strengthened by the partial rest,
She turns again,
And plies her weary shoulders with increasing pain.
Poor outworn Amohia!—world-abandoned Maid,
Thy brave strong heart is now thine only aid!
VI.
“Ah! if at last I sink—”
It blanched her cheek to think
The thought—her heart a moment ceased to beat—
“Oh might I then on that dear shore be thrown
And by Ranóro found alone!
And if he loved me with a love like mine
Ah, would not even then my bosom own
Some feeble flutter of a joy divine
When frantic he would clasp, the cold, cold form
With vain caresses warm;
No love returned, no answering heat;
Then curse the intolerable light—nor stay—
But dashing out his life in some quick way
While the loathed Universe whirled off his brain,
With fainting fervour strain
Our dead and dying hearts together—never to part again!
But if, as once I think you said,—
Laughing at what I told you of the gloom
And sordid horror of our Reinga dread—
The white man hopes a better doom
For spirits of the dead,
Oh would not mine low hovering for a while,
Linger for yours, Ranoro! Then, O bliss! to speed
Together to that happier land—
For they would rush together freed,
And wondering with a pensive happy smile
At all the maddening care and heed
That vexed the senseless forms entwined upon the strand.
Nay, live, Ranoro! live—and sometimes give
A thought to your poor—lost—” The bitter tear
Was checked before it reached her eyes;
And that throat-agony forbid to rise:
With resolute will
She bids the unnerving visions disappear;
And the brave Maiden tries
To rally her spent force with thoughts of meeting,
With the deep rapture of Ranoro's greeting.
Alas, though feebly struggling still
With patient anguish on her brow,
Poor gallant Amohia is exhausted now!
VII.
But see! upon the hillside glows,
Unmoving, bright, a sudden light!
Oh joyous sight, 'tis his, she knows!
New hope, new life, new strength she gains;
It feeds her brain with will—with warmth her veins.
And now she is aware how on the right
A mountain spur, as if in friendly guise
Has stolen forward to surprise
And catch—say rather, to embrace her!
How high the hills that darkly face her
Have grown! the darkly-branching trees
Are mingling with the stars, she sees:
A kind of gentle stir is in the air;
Faint sounds of life, though life at rest, are there.—
Like an accordion suddenly
Opened and shut by some one nigh,
Two loud harsh notes assail her ear—
The night-hawk's! harsh but yet so near!
She blest them! to her present plight
Seemed never song-bird's notes so dear,
So sweet as that melodious screech
Startling the darkness with delight!
With desperate strokes she presses forward fast—
She feels that they must be her last.
With downthrust foot she strives to reach—
O joy—O bliss!—she feels for and has found,
Can touch that deep salvation—the firm ground!
One stroke—one other yet—a moment more
She staggers, falls—upon the pumice-whitened shore.
VIII.
Cold, shivering, stiff,—with drooping eyes,
Slow-beating pulse and gasping sighs
Long prostrate on the ground she lies.
'Twas the night-chill those Lakes have, ev'n in summer,
More than the distance, that had so o'ercome her.—
But gleaming in the Moon's new-risen beam
She sees not far a little puff of steam;
She struggles towards it slowly—half-alive;
That lucky spring will soon her languid frame revive!
It was a sparry basin, smoothly lipped and fringed
With snowy stalactite, just tinged
With a faint delicate flush
Like that white rose, the ‘maiden-blush.’
The water seemed a liquid piece of heaven—so blue—
Of midmost heaven a lonely piece
Laid bare by a slight breach in the summer-fleece;
And look what sparkling crowds of bubbles through
Diaphonous azure, fast and ever
Escaping in the fountain's fever
Are trembling up with timorous haste to greet
And deck with diamond grail the beauteous guest,
As down she sinks into her lucid seat
And in transparent sapphire makes her warm and liquid nest.
