The Works of Thomas Love Peacock

Does Love so weave his subtle spell,
So closely bind his golden chain,
That only one fair form may dwell
In dear remembrance, and in vain
May other beauty seek to gain
A place that idol form beside
In feelings all pre-occupied?
Or does one radiant image, shrined
Within the inmost soul's recess,
Exalt, expand, and make the mind
A temple, to receive and bless
All forms of kindred loveliness?

Howbeit, as from those myrtle bowers,
And that bright altar crowned with flowers,
Anthemion turned, as thought's wild stream
Its interrupted course resumed,
Still, like the phantom of a dream,
Before his dazzled memory bloomed
The image of that maiden strange:
Yet not a passing thought of change
He knew, nor once his fancy strayed
From his long-loved Arcadian maid.
Vaguely his mind the scene retraced,

Image on image wildly driven,
As in his bosom's fold he placed
The flower that radiant nymph had given.
With idle steps, at random bent,
Through Thespia's crowded ways he went;
And on his troubled ear the strains
Of choral music idly smote;
And with vacant eye he saw the trains
Of youthful dancers round him float,
As the musing bard from his sylvan seat
Looks on the dance of the noontide heat,
Or the play of the watery flowers, that quiver
In the eddies of a lowland river.

Around, beside him, to and fro,
The assembled thousands hurrying go.
These the palæstric sports invite,
Where courage, strength, and skill contend;
The gentler Muses those delight,
Where throngs of silent listeners bend,
While rival bards, with lips of fire,
Attune to love the impassioned lyre;
Or where the mimic scene displays
Some solemn tale of elder days,
Despairing Phædra's vengeful doom,
Alcestis' love too dearly tried,
Or Hæmon dying on the tomb
That closes o'er his living bride.

The allusions are to the Hippolytus and Alcestis of Euripides, and to the Antigone of Sophocles.

But choral dance, and bardic strain,
Palæstric sport, and scenic tale,
Around Anthemion spread in vain
Their mixed attractions: sad and pale

He moved along, in musing sadness,
Amid all sights and sounds of gladness.

A sudden voice his musings broke.
He looked; an aged man was near,
Of rugged brow, and eye severe.
—“What evil,”—thus the stranger spoke,—
“Has this our city done to thee,
Ill-omened boy, that thou should'st be
A blot on our solemnity?
Or what Alastor bade thee wear
That laurel-rose, to Love profane,
Whose leaves, in semblance falsely fair
Of Love's maternal flower, contain
For purest fragrance deadliest bane?

Τα δε ροδα εκεινα ουκ ην ροδα αληθινα: τα δ'ην εκ της αγριας δαφνης φυομενα: ροδοδαφνην αυτην καλουσιν ανθ ρωποι: κακον αριστον ονω τουτο παντι, και ιππω: φασι γαρ τον φαγοντα αποθνησκειν αυτικα. Lucianus in Asino. —“These roses were not true roses: they were flowers of the wild laurel, which men call rhododaphne, or rose-laurel. It is a bad dinner for either horse or ass, the eating of it being attended by immediate death.” Apuleius has amplified this passage: “I observed from afar the deep shades of a leafy grove, through whose diversified and abundant verdure shone the snowy colour of refulgent roses. As my perceptions and feelings were not asinine like my shape, I judged it to be a sacred grove of Venus and the Graces, where the celestial splendor of their genial flower glittered through the dark-green shades. I invoked the propitious power of joyful Event, and sprang forward with such velocity, as if I were not indeed an ass, but the horse of an Olympic charioteer. But this splendid effort of energy could not enable me to outrun the cruelty of my fortune. For on approaching the spot, I saw, not those tender and delicate roses, the offspring of auspicious bushes, whose fragrant leaves make nectar of the morning-dew; nor yet the deep wood I had seemed to see from afar; but only a thick line of trees skirting the edge of a river. These trees, clothed with an abundant and laurel-like foliage, from which they stretch forth the cups of their pale and inodorous flowers, are called, among the unlearned rustics, by the far from rustic appellation of laurel-roses: the eating of which is mortal to all quadrupeds. Thus entangled by evil fate, and despairing of safety, I was on the point of swallowing the poison of those fictitious roses, &c.” Pliny says, that this plant, though poison to quadrupeds, is an antidote to men against the venom of serpents.

Art thou a scorner? dost thou throw
Defiance at his power? Beware!
Full soon thy impious youth may know
What pangs his shafts of anger bear;
For not the sun's descending dart,
Nor yet the lightning-brand of Jove,
Fall like the shaft that strikes the heart
Thrown by the mightier hand of Love.”—

—“Oh stranger! not with impious thought
My steps this holy rite have sought.
With pious heart and offerings due
I mingled in the votive train;
Nor did I deem this flower profane;
Nor she, I ween, its evil knew,
That radiant girl, who bade me cherish
Her memory till its bloom should perish.”—

—“Who, and what, and whence was she?”—

—“A stranger till this hour to me.”—
—“Oh youth, beware! that laurel-rose
Around Larissa's evil walls
In tufts of rank luxuriance grows,
Mid dreary valleys, by the falls
Of haunted streams; and magic knows
No herb or plant of deadlier might,
When impious footsteps wake by night
The echoes of those dismal dells,
What time the murky midnight dew
Trembles on many a leaf and blossom,
That draws from earth's polluted bosom
Mysterious virtue, to imbue
The chalice of unnatural spells.
Oft, those dreary rocks among,
The murmurs of unholy song,
Breathed by lips as fair as hers
By whose false hands that flower was given,
The solid earth's firm breast have riven,
And burst the silent sepulchres,
And called strange shapes of ghastly fear,
To hold, beneath the sickening moon,
Portentous parle, at night's deep noon,
With beauty skilled in mysteries drear.
Oh, youth! Larissa's maids are fair;
But the dæmons of the earth and air
Their spells obey, their councils share,
And wide o'er earth and ocean bear
Their mandates to the storms that tear
The rock-enrooted oak, and sweep
With whirlwind wings the labouring deep.

Their words of power can make the streams
Roll refluent on their mountain-springs,
Can torture sleep with direful dreams,
And on the shapes of earthly things,
Man, beast, bird, fish, with influence strange,
Breathe foul and fearful interchange,
And fix in marble bonds the form
Erewhile with natural being warm,
And give to senseless stones and stocks
Motion, and breath, and shape that mocks,
As far as nicest eye can scan,
The action and the life of man.
Beware! yet once again beware!
Ere round thy inexperienced mind,
With voice and semblance falsely fair,
A chain Thessalian magic bind,
Which never more, oh youth! believe,
Shall either earth or heaven unweave.”—

While yet he spoke, the morning scene,
In more portentous hues arrayed,
Dwelt on Anthemion's mind: a shade
Of deeper mystery veiled the mien
And words of that refulgent maid.
The frown, that, ere he breathed his vow,
Dwelt on the brazen statue's brow;
His votive flowers, so strangely blighted;
The wreath her beauteous hands untwined
To share with him, that, self-combined,
Its sister tendrils reunited,
Strange sympathy! as in his mind
These forms of troubled memory blended

With dreams of evil undefined,
Of magic and Thessalian guile,
Now by the warning voice portended
Of that mysterious man, awhile,
Even when the stranger's speech had ended,
He stood as if he listened still.
At length he said:—“Oh, reverend stranger!
Thy solemn words are words of fear.
Not for myself I shrink from danger;
But there is one to me more dear
Than all within this earthly sphere,
And many are the omens ill
That threaten her: to Jove's high will
We bow; but if in human skill
Be ought of aid or expiation
That may this peril turn away,
For old Experience holds his station
On that grave brow, oh stranger! say.”—

—“Oh youth! experience sad indeed
Is mine; and should I tell my tale,
Therein thou might'st too clearly read
How little may all aid avail
To him, whose hapless steps around
Thessalian spells their chains have bound:
And yet such counsel as I may
I give to thee. Ere close of day
Seek thou the planes, whose broad shades fall
On the stream that laves yon mountain's base:
There on thy Natal Genius call

The plane was sacred to the Genius, as the oak to Jupiter, the olive to Minerva, the palm to the Muses, the myrtle and rose to Venus, the laurel to Apollo, the ash to Mars, the beech to Hercules, the pine to Pan, the fir and ivy to Bacchus, the cypress to Sylvanus, the cedar to the Eumenides, the yew and poppy to Ceres, &c. “I swear to you,” says Socrates in the Phædrus of Plato, “by any one of the gods, if you will, by this plane.”

For aid, and with averted face
Give to the stream that flower, nor look

Upon the running wave again;
For, if thou should'st, the sacred plane
Has heard thy suppliant vows in vain;
Nor then thy Natal Genius can,
Nor Phœbus, nor Arcadian Pan,
Dissolve thy tenfold chain.”—

The stranger said, and turned away.
Anthemion sought the plane-grove's shade.
'Twas near the closing hour of day.
The slanting sunbeam's golden ray,
That through the massy foliage made
Scarce here and there a passage, played
Upon the silver-eddying stream,
Even on the rocky channel throwing
Through the clear flood its golden gleam.
The bright waves danced beneath the beam
To the music of their own sweet flowing.
The flowering sallows on the bank,
Beneath the o'ershadowing plane-trees wreathing
In sweet association, drank
The grateful moisture, round them breathing
Soft fragrance through the lonely wood.
There, where the mingling foliage wove
Its closest bower, two altars stood,
This to the Genius of the Grove,
That to the Naiad of the Flood.
So light a breath was on the trees,
That rather like a spirit's sigh
Than motion of an earthly breeze,
Among the summits broad and high
Of those tall planes its whispers stirred;

And save that gentlest symphony
Of air and stream, no sound was heard,
But of the solitary bird,
That aye, at summer's evening hour,
When music save her own is none,
Attunes, from her invisible bower,
Her hymn to the descending sun.

Anthemion paused upon the shore:
All thought of magic's impious lore,
All dread of evil powers, combined
Against his peace, attempered ill
With that sweet scene; and on his mind,
Fair, graceful, gentle, radiant still,
The form of that strange damsel came;
And something like a sense of shame
He felt, as if his coward thought
Foul wrong to guileless beauty wrought.
At length—“Oh radiant girl!”—he said,—
“If in the cause that bids me tread
These banks, be mixed injurious dread
Of thy fair thoughts, the fears of love
Must with thy injured kindness plead
My pardon for the wrongful deed.
Ye Nymphs and Sylvan Gods, that rove
The precincts of this sacred wood!
Thou, Achelöus' gentle daughter,
Bright Naiad of this beauteous water!
And thou, my Natal Genius good!
Lo! with pure hands the crystal flood
Collecting, on these altars blest,
Libation holiest, brightest, best,

I pour. If round my footsteps dwell
Unholy sign or evil spell,
Receive me in your guardian sway;
And thou, oh gentle Naiad! bear
With this false flower those spells away,
If such be lingering there.”—

Then from the stream he turned his view,
And o'er his back the flower he threw.
Hark! from the wave a sudden cry,
Of one in last extremity,
A voice as of a drowning maid!
The echoes of the sylvan shade
Gave response long and drear.
He starts: he does not turn. Again!
It is Calliroë's cry! In vain
Could that dear maiden's cry of pain
Strike on Anthemion's ear?
At once, forgetting all beside,
He turned to plunge into the tide,
But all again was still:
The sun upon the surface bright
Poured his last line of crimson light,
Half-sunk behind the hill:
But through the solemn plane-trees past
The pinions of a mightier blast,
And in its many-sounding sweep,
Among the foliage broad and deep,
Aërial voices seemed to sigh,
As if the spirits of the grove
Mourned, in prophetic sympathy
With some disastrous love.

This is spoken in the character of Lucius, who has been changed to an ass by a Thessalian ointment, and can be restored to his true shape only by the eating of roses.

University of Virginia Library

Canto II