Canto the Seventh. The Meeting.
1. Venus Anadyomene. A simile. 2. Amo in the moonlit grotto.
3. Her address. 4. Ecstasy speechless. 5. Native espousals.
Ranolf's murmured Song.
I.
In days when Nature—ere discharmed—
Undeified by Science—swarmed
With bright Divinities akin
To the energies terrific
In her wilder phases working,
Or in genial ferment lurking
Mystic, magical, within,
Slumbering in her blissful breast
In daimoniac delitescence;
Till with fervour too intense
They would quicken and condense
And kindle into visible presence
And vitality specific,
Glowing on the too imprest
Keen sense in Shapes, appalling, grand
Grotesque or graceful—Phantoms haunting
And to human beauty moulding,
For quick-fancied Faith's beholding,
(Till all Earth was holy ground)
All the still-eyed Soul that broods
In wide wind-whispering solitudes—
Each cloudchase chequering sea and land—
Moon-shadows—sunny silences—
Lone mists on fire in glens profound—
Old half-lit trunks of twisted trees—
And stealthy gleams in gloomy woods;—
In those old days what dearer dreaming
Than the Vision such deep feeling,
Instantaneously revealing
Traits of rare resemblance, fashioned
Out of things so diverse-seeming,
Ocean-foam and Love impassioned,—
As it flashed in pictured splendour
On the fine Ephesian brain?—
Will devotion true and tender
Ever at that shrine be wanting?
Ever poet's heart refrain
From a chance to touch again
That wan sweet faith and form enchanting—
Sweetest myth of all the train?
Of all the mystic Shapes and mighty,
Sovran, while Love's passionate pain
Can the senses charm and chain,—
That dream divine of Aphrodite
Freshly risen from the main?
Lo! upon the amber sands,
Brilliant throbbing Apparition—
As if poised in air she stands!
Proudly conscious, frankly smiling,
Sure of homage, love, submission;
Mostly triumph—some surprise,
In the dangerous innocent eyes,
Where, what witchery world-beguiling
Lies in childlike archness hid!
Where the sense grows faint to mark
How the purple depths that glow
Like the velvet-petalled pansy, show
Dark—almost too lovely-dark—
Too like a stain almost,—amid
All that gleam of snowy brightness,
All her form's effulgent whiteness!
While the dazzling flood of tresses
Ripples like gold lines of light
In a hanging waterfall,
When you look from the curved rock-wall
Behind it, through its crystal pall;
Wavy sunbeams whence she presses
With those rosy-tipped fair fingers
Every diamond-drop that lingers
Lovingly in their bright recesses.
So was seen the Foam-born standing—
So for ever standeth she
In enamoured memory—
Darling Anadyomene!
While the leopard-sleek and fawning Sea
Round her plays caressingly,
Plays in many a broad festoon
Of foam-flowers—many a sliding sheet
Lovely-creaming, long-expanding,
Then dying off in a luxurious swoon;—
As if Poseidon love-beguiled,
To beguile, attract, adore her,
Ere he stood confest before her,
Mocked the playful gambols mild
Of some creature of the wild;
And one sweet look to deserve,
But one look so killing-sweet,
Kept the simple wile repeating,
Stealing swiftly, curve on curve,
Bounding forward and retreating,
Cowering, crouching at her feet!
II.
Like and unlike—such counterpart
And contrast to that deathless dream of Art,
As gay glad Sunrise when it breaks
In splendour-smitten mist and sparkling dew,
To all the deep-impurpled tenderness
Of soft-illumined Sunset makes,
Though both impress
Their varying glories on the self-same view:
So like and so unlike—the Vision bright
That wrapt our Wanderer now in wondering wild delight.
There, as the shy white crane, so rarely seen,
Stands proudly gentle and reserved,
Erect, but with her neck back-curved
Her breast's light-waving snow to preen—
There Amohia stood. Although downcast the rays
Of her clear-shining eyes—and on her cheek
The rosy flushings momently that broke
Through the clear olive, some distress bespoke—
Yet grandly winning and queenly-meek,
Erect the Maiden stood. About her all
Her affluent hair, unstirred by any breeze
Fell sheltering—a sable silky pall.
How like a strong ebullient swarm
Of hive-o'erflowing honey-bees
Forth issuing black and glad a hundred ways,
Still soaking wet and dripping yet,
The tendrilled tresses spread and ran and clung,
Moulding dark gloss on many a balanced charm;
And sinuously streaming
Adown her polished shoulder palely gleaming,
And rippling ebon-soft over her rounded arm,
A natural drapery hung.
O lovingly the Moonlight's sheeny whiteness
On that unmoving figure slept!
Here sweetly swelling into sudden brightness
That through rich waves of jetty tracery beamed;
There lost, as into sudden mellow shade
Caressingly they curled and crept!
Bewilderingly beautiful that chequering made
The graces of a Form wherein it seemed
A bounding spirit of young elastic Life essayed
In conscious exultation
To float and flow and wind and wander
And on itself return in many a coy meander
And subtle undulation:
And yet—as all perfection blends
Harmonious opposites for happiest ends—
Seemed ever in its wild luxuriance chained
And by a stronger spirit of proud reserve restrained,
Upholding the fine form in wingèd lightness;
As ivory serpents, held in graceful bond
Would twine of old about a silver Hermes-wand.
III.
So Amohia stood—nor longer sported;
Quite serious now, perhaps a little trembling;
Yet, though her bosom's quickened rise
And fall betrayed the anxious breathing,
By clear unconscious innocence supported,
And that sweet might of Nature when it knows
Few laws conventional that teach dissembling;
So that true Love in loving act o'erflows
As truly, artlessly, in loveliest guise,
As from the bud's moss-browned and tender sheathing,
When Spring has swollen its crumpled tissues
And filled them with its genial influence, issues
That crimson apparition—the young rose.
“Stranger—from far realms that lie
Beyond the steep slope of the sky,
Hapless Amohia, see,
Chieftain's daughter though she be,
Gives her love, her life to thee.
Amohia throws aside
Rank and chieftainship and pride;
For the lonely Stranger's sake
Every tie has dared to break;
Dared desert, with him to roam,
Father, Mother, friends and home;
All the Atuas' wrath to brave,
But to be the Stranger's slave.—
Take her—teach her—till she be
Worthy thy great race and thee!”
“Dearest—loveliest—bravest Maid,
Your true love shall be well repaid!
But whence, and how, my grand Wildflower,
Came you—and thus—at such an hour?”
“I swam the Lake—was almost gone—
Reached land and hither stole alone.”
IV.
Surprise a moment held him dumb;
And why set down the words he spoke—
Disjoined and crowded as the sum
Of mingled feelings that within him woke?—
What speech has Passion's mastering moods? what speech
Is possible to any Ecstasy?
Can finite words an infinite feeling reach,
Or the mere bounded Intellect express
The Soul's emotions in their boundlessness?
No! as the sky-drawn moisture that distils
Down from the sky-aspiring hills,
A sea-side valley slowly fills;
But, if some milder earthquake's pant
Have slightly changed its downward slant,
Suddenly bursts the marsh below
And seaward rushes in mad overflow,
Bearing before it to the mighty Main
The wrecked and flowery richness of the plain,
Till all the calm eternal blue,
About the outlet of the river new,
Is strewn with floating fragments—little isles
Where still the clinging flax-flower smiles,
Minute azolla-stains of ruddiest hue,
And many a water-loving bloom that grew
Luxuriant while the swamp its moisture could sustain:—
So Speech and all the forms of Thought,
Yea, every medium Intellect supplies,
Are shattered and distraught,
Whene'er the o'er-informing Soul doth rise
And swell and sweep in native might
On to its kindred Infinite;
And broken words and images essay
In vain the abounding current to convey,
In vain to express the inexpressible;
While blissful moans and happy murmurs tell,—
And only they,—
How the Eternal that within us sleeps,
Stirred to its inmost mystic deeps,
Is welling forth its own imperial way;
Bursting the crust where Custom's weeds are growing,
And its material marge triumphantly o'erflowing!
V.
What wonder therefore if our youth's emotion,
With no coherent flow of phrases fair,
Could answer that devotion?
If, while beneath the showering night
Of gleaming hair, dark eyes all light
Burned on him—speaking speechless tendernesses,
He could but answer, warm and wild,
With many a fervent deep ejaculation
Of pity, love and admiration;
With broken words and tones endearing,
Soothing, comforting and cheering;
And the soul-converse was sustained
With the only eloquence of passionate caresses,
Kissed eyes and lips, and fluttering breath and fondled tresses,
And throbbing hearts together strained:
Till with his cloak around her thrown
He led her to his dwelling lone;
By all the law the land supplied
So wedded and so made his bride:
And as they went in rapturous tone
Loving and low, half murmured and half sung
A playful tender ditty in her native tongue:
“Praise her—bless her—O caress her! lavish glorious gifts upon her;
Piles of woven wealth to dress her—glossy-rippling robes of honour!
O our Pride, the peerless, single,—many-vassaled Chiefs' descendant,—
Flax o' the finest, silky-tasselled—breadth o'er breadth of costly chequer,
Choicest broideries shall bedeck her! all to grace that form divinest,
And its buoyant blithe uprightness, and its lithe and sinuous lightness,
Rapture-fraught for souls supinest,—proudly, peerlessly array.—
Range for birds of beauteous feather, marsh and mountain, dell and dingle;
Stock-doves on whose necks resplendent rich reflections melt and mingle;
Black Sultana-birds blue-breasted as deep Ocean in blue weather;
Cuckoos, many a shy Sea-comer with its green dusk-golden glimmer,
Lackey of the golden Summer, Sun-attendant;—and scarce dimmer
Than that wanderer alien-nested, paraquitos crimson-crested,
Like Spring's emerald verdure vested;—parrots dyed like dying day.—
Weave their downy hues together—weave, relieve each tint transcendent;
And the mantle bride-beseeming, fair as fairy gifts in dreaming,
Round her shoulders shapely showing, wrap it fondly—fold the flowing
Feathery softness, beaming, glowing, with the rainbow's radiance gay.—
From her rounded neck dependent—where it curves so proud and stately,
Where her buoyant bosom heaves in tranquil triumph how sedately,
Precious trinkets, famous, greatly-storied from old days or lately,
Lucid as transparent leaves in sunshine, shall their green display.—
For her tresses—massy-streaming—floods of glittering gloom and brightness—
Black as pine-trunks burnt and gleaming, charred and sunlit boles and bosses!
Heron-plumes of snowy whiteness—down of sea-pure albatrosses—
Like foam-flakes on torrents raving through swart chasms night-encaving—
O'er those ebon wavelets waving,—shall the Chieftainess betray.—
Then caress her—praise her—bless her; load her with delight and honour;
Let no evil thing distress her; lavish all your love upon her!”
