 | The Works of Thomas Love Peacock |  |
Canto I
Round Thespian Love's hypæthric fane;
And there alone, with festal duty
Of joyous song and choral train,
From many a mountain, stream, and vale,
And many a city fair and free,
The sons of Greece commingling hail
Love's primogenial deity.
That venerable temple stands:
Three statues, raised by gifted hands,
Distinct with sculptured emblems fair,
His threefold influence imaged bear,
Creative, Heavenly, Earthly Love.
Primogenial, or Creative Love, in the Orphic mythology, is the first-born of Night and Chaos, the most ancient of the gods, and the parent of all things. According to Aristophanes, Night produced an egg in the bosom of Erebus, and golden-winged Love burst in due season from the shell. The Egyptians, as Plutarch informs us in his Erotic dialogue, recognised three distinct powers of Love: the Uranian, or Heavenly; the Pandemian, Vulgar or Earthly; and the Sun. That the identity of the Sun and Primogenial Love was recognised also by the Greeks, appears from the community of their epithets in mythological poetry, as in this Orphic line: Πρωτογονος Φαεθων περιμηκεος ηερος υιος. Lactantius observes that Love was called Πρωτογονος, which signifies both first-produced and first-producing, because nothing was born before him, but all things have proceeded from him. Primogenial Love is represented in antiques mounted on the back of a lion, and, being of Egyptian origin, is traced by the modern astronomical interpreters of mythology to the Leo of the Zodiac. Uranian Love, in the mythological philosophy of Plato, is the deity or genius of pure mental passion for the good and the beautiful; and Pandemian Love, of ordinary sexual attachment.
The first, of stone and sculpture rude,
From immemorial time has stood;
Not even in vague tradition known
The hand that raised that ancient stone.
Of brass the next, with holiest thought,
The skill of Sicyon's artist wrought.
The third, a marble form divine,
That seems to move, and breathe, and smile,
Fair Phryne to this holy shrine
Had forced her lover to impart
The choicest treasure of his art.
Phryne was the mistress of Praxiteles. She requested him to give her his most beautiful work, which he promised to do, but refused to tell which of his works was in his own estimation the best. One day when he was with Phryne, her servant running in announced to him that his house was on fire. Praxiteles started up in great agitation, declaring that all the fruit of his labour would be lost, if his Love should be injured by the flames. His mistress dispelled his alarm, by telling him that the report of the fire was merely a stratagem, by which she had obtained the information she desired. Phryne thus became possessed of the masterpiece of Praxiteles, and bestowed it on her native Thespia. Strabo names, instead of Phryne, Glycera, who was also a Thespian; but in addition to the testimony of Pausanias and Athenæus, Casaubon cites a Greek epigram on Phryne, which mentions her dedication of the Thespian Love.
Her, too, in sculptured beauty's pride,
His skill has placed by Venus' side;
Nor well the enraptured gaze descries
Which best might claim the Hesperian prize.
Dance the myrtle bowers among:
Harps to softest numbers trembling
Pour the impassioned strain along,
Where the poet's gifted song
Holds the intensely listening throng.
Matrons grave and sages grey
Lead the youthful train to pay
Homage on the opening day
Of Love's returning festival:
Every fruit and every flower
Sacred to his gentler power,
Twined in garlands bright and sweet,
They place before his sculptured feet,
And on his name they call:
From thousand lips, with glad acclaim,
Is breathed at once that sacred name;
And music, kindling at the sound,
Wafts holier, tenderer strains around:
The rose a richer sweet exhales;
The myrtle waves in softer gales;
Through every breast one influence flies;
All hate, all evil passion dies;
The heart of man, in that blest spell,
Where Love, and only Love, can dwell.
Sacrifices were offered at this festival for the appeasing of all public and private dissensions. Autobulus,in the beginning of Plutarch's Erotic dialogue, says, that his father and mother, when first married, went to the Thespian festival, to sacrifice to Love, on account of a quarrel between their parents.
Arcadian Ladon, loveliest tide
Of all the streams of Grecian name
Through rocks and sylvan hills that glide.
The flower of all Arcadia's youth
Was he: such form and face, in truth,
As thoughts of gentlest maidens seek
In their day-dreams: soft glossy hair
Shadowed his forehead, snowy-fair,
With many a hyacinthine cluster:
Lips, that in silence seemed to speak,
Were his, and eyes of mild blue lustre:
And even the paleness of his cheek,
The passing trace of tender care,
Still shewed how beautiful it were
If its own natural bloom were there.
The barriers of his world had been,
His cottage home, and each dear scene
His haunt from earliest infancy,
He left, to Love's fair fane to bring
His simple wild-flower offering.
She with whose life his life was twined,
His own Calliroë, long had pined
With some strange ill, and none could find
What secret cause did thus consume
That peerless maiden's roseate bloom:
The Asclepian sage's skill was vain;
And vainly have their vows been paid
Of his tall pine; and other aid
Must needs be sought to save the maid:
And hence Anthemion came, to try
In Thespia's old solemnity,
If such a lover's prayers may gain
From Love in his primæval fane.
That moved around the altar's base.
Every statue's beauteous face
Was turned towards that central altar.
Why did Anthemion's footsteps falter?
Why paused he, like a tale-struck child,
Whom darkness fills with fancies wild?
A vision strange his sense had bound:
It seemed the brazen statue frowned—
The marble statue smiled.
A moment, and the semblance fled:
And when again he lifts his head,
Each sculptured face alone presents
Its fixed and placid lineaments.
Narcissus, and the sweet-briar rose;
Vervain, and flexile thyme, that breathe
Rich fragrance; modest heath, that glows
With purple bells; the amaranth bright,
That no decay nor fading knows,
Like true love's holiest, rarest light;
And every purest flower, that blows
In that sweet time, which Love most blesses,
When spring on summer's confines presses.
And murmurs low his suppliant vow,
And now uplifts with duteous hands
The votive wild-flower wreath, and now—
At once, as when in vernal night
Comes pale frost or eastern blight,
Sweeping with destructive wing
Banks untimely blossoming,
Droops the wreath, the wild-flowers die;
One by one on earth they lie,
Blighted strangely, suddenly.
Across his wildered fancy flies:
Shall death thus seize his maiden dear?
Does Love reject his sacrifice?
He caught the arm of a damsel near,
And soft sweet accents smote his ear:
—“What ails thee, stranger? Leaves are sear,
And flowers are dead, and fields are drear,
And streams are wild, and skies are bleak,
And white with snow each mountain's peak,
When winter rules the year;
And children grieve, as if for aye
Leaves, flowers, and birds were past away:
But buds and blooms again are seen,
And fields are gay, and hills are green,
And streams are bright, and sweet birds sing;
And where is the infant's sorrowing?”—
Nor well their latent meaning drew;
But languidly he raised his head,
Was it a form of mortal mould
That did his dazzled sense impress?
Even painful from its loveliness!
Her bright hair, in the noonbeams glowing,
A rose-bud wreath above confined,
From whence, as from a fountain, flowing,
Long ringlets round her temples twined,
And fell in many a graceful fold,
Streaming in curls of feathery lightness
Around her neck's marmoreal whiteness.
Love, in the smile that round her lips,
Twin roses of persuasion, played,
—Nectaries of balmier sweets than sips
The Hymettian bee,—his ambush laid;
And his own shafts of liquid fire
Came on the soul with sweet surprise,
Through the soft dews of young desire
That trembled in her large dark eyes;
But in those eyes there seemed to move
A flame, almost too bright for love,
That shone, with intermitting flashes,
Beneath their long deep-shadowy lashes.
In tones more musically sweet
Than breath of shepherd's twilight reed,
From far to woodland echo borne,
That floats like dew o'er stream and mead,
And whispers peace to souls that mourn.
For one whose dear sake led me hither:
And seems to say: That maid divine
Like these ill-omened flowers shall wither.”—
Fruits may fall from many a tree;
Not the more for loss of them
Shall this fair world a desert be:
Thou in every grove wilt see
Fruits and flowers enough for thee.
Stranger! I with thee will share
The votive fruits and flowers I bear,
Rich in fragrance, fresh in bloom;
These may find a happier doom:
If they change not, fade not now,
Deem that Love accepts thy vow.”—
Received, and on the altar laid
The votive wreath: it did not fade;
And she on his her offering threw.
Did fancy cloud Anthemion's view?
Or did those sister garlands fair
Indeed entwine and blend again,
Wreathed into one, even as they were,
Ere she, their brilliant sweets to share,
Unwove their flowery chain?
She fixed on him her radiant eyes,
And—“Love's propitious power,”—she said,—
“Accepts thy second sacrifice.
The sun descends tow'rds ocean's bed.
Day by day the sun doth set,
And day by day the sun doth rise,
The morning radiance dries:
And what if beauty slept, where peers
That mossy grass? and lover's tears
Were mingled with that evening dew?
The morning sun would dry them too.
Many a loving heart is near,
That shall its plighted love forsake:
Many lips are breathing here
Vows a few short days will break:
Many, lone amidst mankind,
Claim from Love's unpitying power
The kindred heart they ne'er shall find:
Many, at this festal hour,
Joyless in the joyous scene,
Pass, with idle glance unmoved,
Even those whom they could best have loved,
Had means of mutual knowledge been:
Some meet for once and part for aye,
Like thee and me, and scarce a day
Shall each by each remembered be:
But take the flower I give to thee,
And till it fades remember me.”—
Was troubled with conflicting thought:
A dim and dizzy sense of pain
That maid's surpassing beauty brought;
And strangely on his fancy wrought
Her mystic moralisings, fraught
With half-prophetic sense, and breathed
In tones so sweetly wild.
And with absorbed admiring look
Gazed, as with fascinated eye
The lone bard gazes on the sky,
Who, in the bright clouds rolled and wreathed
Around the sun's descending car,
Sees shadowy rocks sublimely piled,
And phantom standards wide unfurled,
And towers of an aërial world
Embattled for unearthly war.
So stood Anthemion, till among
The mazes of the festal throng
The damsel from his sight had past:
Yet well he marked that once she cast
A backward look, perchance to see
If he watched her still so fixedly.
| The Works of Thomas Love Peacock | |