Rhododaphne: or The Thessalian Spell/Canto 3
RHODODAPHNE.
CANTO III.
RHODODAPHNE.
CANTO III.
By living streams, in sylvan shades,
Where winds and waves symphonious make
Sweet melody, the youths and maids
No more with choral music wake
Lone Echo from her tangled brake,
On Pan, or Sylvan Genius, calling,
Naiad or Nymph, in suppliant song:
No more by living fountain, falling
The poplar's circling bower among,
Where pious hands have carved of yore
Rude bason for its lucid store
And reared the grassy altar nigh,
The traveller, when the sun rides high,
For cool refreshment lingering there,
Pours to the Sister Nymphs his prayer.
Yet still the green vales smile: the springs
Gush forth in light: the forest weaves
Its own wild bowers; the breeze's wings
Make music in their rustling leaves;
But 'tis no spirit's breath that sighs
Among their tangled canopies:
In ocean's caves no Nereid dwells:
No Oread walks the mountain-dells:
The streams no sedge-crowned Genii roll
From bounteous urn: great Pan is dead:
The life, the intellectual soul
Of vale, and grove, and stream, has fled
For ever with the creed sublime
That nursed the Muse of earlier time.
Where winds and waves symphonious make
Sweet melody, the youths and maids
No more with choral music wake
Lone Echo from her tangled brake,
On Pan, or Sylvan Genius, calling,
Naiad or Nymph, in suppliant song:
No more by living fountain, falling
The poplar's circling bower among,
Where pious hands have carved of yore
Rude bason for its lucid store
And reared the grassy altar nigh,
The traveller, when the sun rides high,
For cool refreshment lingering there,
Pours to the Sister Nymphs his prayer.
Yet still the green vales smile: the springs
Gush forth in light: the forest weaves
Its own wild bowers; the breeze's wings
Make music in their rustling leaves;
But 'tis no spirit's breath that sighs
Among their tangled canopies:
In ocean's caves no Nereid dwells:
No Oread walks the mountain-dells:
The streams no sedge-crowned Genii roll
From bounteous urn: great Pan is dead:
The life, the intellectual soul
Of vale, and grove, and stream, has fled
For ever with the creed sublime
That nursed the Muse of earlier time.
The broad moon rose o'er Thespia's walls,
And on the light wind's swells and falls
Came to Anthemion's ear the sounds
Of dance, and song, and festal pleasure,
As slowly tow'rds the city's bounds
He turned, his backward steps to measure.
But with such sounds his heart confessed
No sympathy: his mind was pressed
With thoughts too heavy to endure
The contrast of a scene so gay;
And from the walls he turned away,
To where, in distant moonlight pure,
Mount Helicon's conspicuous height
Rose in the dark-blue vault of night.
Along the solitary road
Alone he went; for who but he
On that fair night would absent be
From Thespia's joyous revelry?
The sounds that on the soft air flowed
By slow degrees in distance died:
And now he climbed the rock's steep side,
Where frowned o'er sterile regions wide
Neptunian Ascra's ruined tower:8
Memorial of gigantic power:
But thoughts more dear and more refined
Awakening, in the pensive mind,
Of him, the Muses' gentlest son,
The shepherd-bard of Helicon,
Whose song, to peace and wisdom dear,
The Aonian Dryads loved to hear.
By Aganippe's fountain-wave
Anthemion passed: the moonbeams fell
Pale on the darkness of the cave,
Within whose mossy rock-hewn cell
The sculptured form of Linus stood,
Primæval bard. The Nymphs for him
Through every spring, and mountain flood,
Green vale, and twilight woodland dim,
Long wept: all living nature wept
For Linus; when, in minstrel strife,
Apollo's wrath from love and life
The child of music swept.
The Muses' grove is nigh. He treads
Its sacred precincts. O'er him spreads
The palm's aërial canopy,
That, nurtured by perennial springs,
Around its summit broad and high
Its light and branchy foliage flings,
Arching in graceful symmetry.
Among the tall stems jagg'd and bare
Luxuriant laurel interweaves
An undershade of myriad leaves,
Here black in rayless masses, there
In partial moonlight glittering fair;
And wheresoe'er the barren rock
Peers through the grassy soil, its roots
The sweet andrachne strikes, to mock9
Sterility, and profusely shoots
Its light boughs, rich with ripening fruits.
The moonbeams, through the chequering shade,
Upon the silent temple played,
The Muses' fane. The nightingale,
Those consecrated bowers among,
Poured on the air a warbled tale,
So sweet, that scarcely from her nest,
Where Orpheus' hallowed relics rest,
She breathes a sweeter song.10
A scene, whose power the maniac sense
Of passion's wildest mood might own!
Anthemion felt its influence:
His fancy drank the soothing tone
Of all that tranquil loveliness;
And health and bloom returned to bless
His dear Calliroë, and the groves
And rocks where pastoral Ladon roves
Bore record of their blissful loves.
List! there is music on the wind!
Sweet music! seldom mortal ear
On sounds so tender, so refined,
Has dwelt. Perchance some Muse is near,
Euterpe, or Polymnia bright,
Or Erato, whose gentle lyre
Responds to love and young desire!
It is the central hour of night:
The time is holy, lone, severe,
And mortals may not linger here!
Still on the air those wild notes fling
Their airy spells of voice and string,
In sweet accordance, sweeter made
By response soft from caverned shade.
He turns to where a lovely glade
Sleeps in the open moonlight's smile,
A natural fane, whose ample bound
The palm's columnar stems surround,
A wild and stately peristyle;
Save where their interrupted ring
Bends on the consecrated cave,
From whose dark arch, with tuneful wave,
Libethrus issues, sacred spring.
Beside its gentle murmuring,
A maiden, on a mossy stone,
Full in the moonlight, sits alone :
Her eyes, with humid radiance bright,
As if a tear had dimmed their light,
Are fixed upon the moon; her hair
Flows long and loose in the light soft air;
A golden lyre her white hands bear;
Its chords, beneath her fingers fleet,
To such wild symphonies awake,
Her sweet lips breathe a song so sweet,
That the echoes of the cave repeat
Its closes with as soft a sigh,
As if they almost feared to break
The magic of its harmony.
Oh! there was passion in the sound,
Intensest passion, strange and deep;
Wild breathings of a soul, around
Whose every pulse one hope had bound,
One burning hope, which might not sleep.
But hark! that wild and solemn swell!
And was there in those tones a spell,
Which none may disobey? For lo!
Anthemion from the sylvan shade
Moves with reluctant steps and slow,
And in the lonely moonlight glade
He stands before the radiant maid.
She ceased her song, and with a smile
She welcomed him, but nothing said:
And silently he stood the while,
And tow'rds the ground he drooped his head,
As if he shrunk beneath the light
Of those dark eyes so dazzling bright.
At length she spoke:—"The flower was fair
"I bade thee till its fading wear:
"And didst thou scorn the boon,
"Or died the flower so soon?"—
—"It did not fade,
"Oh radiant maid!
"But Thespia's rites its use forbade,
"To Love's vindictive power profane:
"If soothly spoke the reverend seer,
"Whose voice rebuked, with words severe,
"Its beauty's secret bane."—
—"The world, oh youth! deems many wise,
"Who dream at noon with waking eyes,
"While spectral fancy round them flings
"Phantoms of unexisting things;
"Whose truth is lies, whose paths are error,
"Whose gods are fiends, whose heaven is terror;
"And such a slave has been with thee,
"And thou, in thy simplicity,
"Hast deemed his idle sayings truth.
"The flower I gave thee, thankless youth!
"The harmless flower thy hand rejected,
"Was fair: my native river sees
"Its verdure and its bloom reflected
"Wave in the eddies and the breeze.
"My mother felt its beauty's claim,
"And gave, in sportive fondness wild,
"Its name to me, her only child."—
—"Then Rhododaphne is thy name?"—
Anthemion said: the maiden bent
Her head in token of assent.
—"Say once again, if sooth I deem,
"Penëus is thy native stream?"—
Page:Rhododaphne, or the Thessalian Spell - Peacock (1818).djvu/78 Page:Rhododaphne, or the Thessalian Spell - Peacock (1818).djvu/79 Page:Rhododaphne, or the Thessalian Spell - Peacock (1818).djvu/80 Page:Rhododaphne, or the Thessalian Spell - Peacock (1818).djvu/81 Page:Rhododaphne, or the Thessalian Spell - Peacock (1818).djvu/82 Page:Rhododaphne, or the Thessalian Spell - Peacock (1818).djvu/83 Page:Rhododaphne, or the Thessalian Spell - Peacock (1818).djvu/84 Page:Rhododaphne, or the Thessalian Spell - Peacock (1818).djvu/85 Adown the steeps of Helicon,
By spring, and cave, and tower, he fled,
But turned from Thespia's walls, and on
Along the rocky way, that led
Tow'rds the Corinthian Isthmus, sped,
Impatient to behold again
His cottage-home by Ladon's side,
And her, for whose dear sake his brain
Was giddy with foreboding pain,
Fairest of Ladon's virgin train,
His own long-destined bride.
And on the light wind's swells and falls
Came to Anthemion's ear the sounds
Of dance, and song, and festal pleasure,
As slowly tow'rds the city's bounds
He turned, his backward steps to measure.
But with such sounds his heart confessed
No sympathy: his mind was pressed
With thoughts too heavy to endure
The contrast of a scene so gay;
And from the walls he turned away,
To where, in distant moonlight pure,
Mount Helicon's conspicuous height
Rose in the dark-blue vault of night.
Along the solitary road
Alone he went; for who but he
On that fair night would absent be
From Thespia's joyous revelry?
The sounds that on the soft air flowed
By slow degrees in distance died:
And now he climbed the rock's steep side,
Where frowned o'er sterile regions wide
Neptunian Ascra's ruined tower:8
Memorial of gigantic power:
But thoughts more dear and more refined
Awakening, in the pensive mind,
Of him, the Muses' gentlest son,
The shepherd-bard of Helicon,
Whose song, to peace and wisdom dear,
The Aonian Dryads loved to hear.
By Aganippe's fountain-wave
Anthemion passed: the moonbeams fell
Pale on the darkness of the cave,
Within whose mossy rock-hewn cell
The sculptured form of Linus stood,
Primæval bard. The Nymphs for him
Through every spring, and mountain flood,
Green vale, and twilight woodland dim,
Long wept: all living nature wept
For Linus; when, in minstrel strife,
Apollo's wrath from love and life
The child of music swept.
The Muses' grove is nigh. He treads
Its sacred precincts. O'er him spreads
The palm's aërial canopy,
That, nurtured by perennial springs,
Around its summit broad and high
Its light and branchy foliage flings,
Arching in graceful symmetry.
Among the tall stems jagg'd and bare
Luxuriant laurel interweaves
An undershade of myriad leaves,
Here black in rayless masses, there
In partial moonlight glittering fair;
And wheresoe'er the barren rock
Peers through the grassy soil, its roots
The sweet andrachne strikes, to mock9
Sterility, and profusely shoots
Its light boughs, rich with ripening fruits.
The moonbeams, through the chequering shade,
Upon the silent temple played,
The Muses' fane. The nightingale,
Those consecrated bowers among,
Poured on the air a warbled tale,
So sweet, that scarcely from her nest,
Where Orpheus' hallowed relics rest,
She breathes a sweeter song.10
A scene, whose power the maniac sense
Of passion's wildest mood might own!
Anthemion felt its influence:
His fancy drank the soothing tone
Of all that tranquil loveliness;
And health and bloom returned to bless
His dear Calliroë, and the groves
And rocks where pastoral Ladon roves
Bore record of their blissful loves.
List! there is music on the wind!
Sweet music! seldom mortal ear
On sounds so tender, so refined,
Has dwelt. Perchance some Muse is near,
Euterpe, or Polymnia bright,
Or Erato, whose gentle lyre
Responds to love and young desire!
It is the central hour of night:
The time is holy, lone, severe,
And mortals may not linger here!
Still on the air those wild notes fling
Their airy spells of voice and string,
In sweet accordance, sweeter made
By response soft from caverned shade.
He turns to where a lovely glade
Sleeps in the open moonlight's smile,
A natural fane, whose ample bound
The palm's columnar stems surround,
A wild and stately peristyle;
Save where their interrupted ring
Bends on the consecrated cave,
From whose dark arch, with tuneful wave,
Libethrus issues, sacred spring.
Beside its gentle murmuring,
A maiden, on a mossy stone,
Full in the moonlight, sits alone :
Her eyes, with humid radiance bright,
As if a tear had dimmed their light,
Are fixed upon the moon; her hair
Flows long and loose in the light soft air;
A golden lyre her white hands bear;
Its chords, beneath her fingers fleet,
To such wild symphonies awake,
Her sweet lips breathe a song so sweet,
That the echoes of the cave repeat
Its closes with as soft a sigh,
As if they almost feared to break
The magic of its harmony.
Oh! there was passion in the sound,
Intensest passion, strange and deep;
Wild breathings of a soul, around
Whose every pulse one hope had bound,
One burning hope, which might not sleep.
But hark! that wild and solemn swell!
And was there in those tones a spell,
Which none may disobey? For lo!
Anthemion from the sylvan shade
Moves with reluctant steps and slow,
And in the lonely moonlight glade
He stands before the radiant maid.
She ceased her song, and with a smile
She welcomed him, but nothing said:
And silently he stood the while,
And tow'rds the ground he drooped his head,
As if he shrunk beneath the light
Of those dark eyes so dazzling bright.
At length she spoke:—"The flower was fair
"I bade thee till its fading wear:
"And didst thou scorn the boon,
"Or died the flower so soon?"—
—"It did not fade,
"Oh radiant maid!
"But Thespia's rites its use forbade,
"To Love's vindictive power profane:
"If soothly spoke the reverend seer,
"Whose voice rebuked, with words severe,
"Its beauty's secret bane."—
—"The world, oh youth! deems many wise,
"Who dream at noon with waking eyes,
"While spectral fancy round them flings
"Phantoms of unexisting things;
"Whose truth is lies, whose paths are error,
"Whose gods are fiends, whose heaven is terror;
"And such a slave has been with thee,
"And thou, in thy simplicity,
"Hast deemed his idle sayings truth.
"The flower I gave thee, thankless youth!
"The harmless flower thy hand rejected,
"Was fair: my native river sees
"Its verdure and its bloom reflected
"Wave in the eddies and the breeze.
"My mother felt its beauty's claim,
"And gave, in sportive fondness wild,
"Its name to me, her only child."—
—"Then Rhododaphne is thy name?"—
Anthemion said: the maiden bent
Her head in token of assent.
—"Say once again, if sooth I deem,
"Penëus is thy native stream?"—
Page:Rhododaphne, or the Thessalian Spell - Peacock (1818).djvu/78 Page:Rhododaphne, or the Thessalian Spell - Peacock (1818).djvu/79 Page:Rhododaphne, or the Thessalian Spell - Peacock (1818).djvu/80 Page:Rhododaphne, or the Thessalian Spell - Peacock (1818).djvu/81 Page:Rhododaphne, or the Thessalian Spell - Peacock (1818).djvu/82 Page:Rhododaphne, or the Thessalian Spell - Peacock (1818).djvu/83 Page:Rhododaphne, or the Thessalian Spell - Peacock (1818).djvu/84 Page:Rhododaphne, or the Thessalian Spell - Peacock (1818).djvu/85 Adown the steeps of Helicon,
By spring, and cave, and tower, he fled,
But turned from Thespia's walls, and on
Along the rocky way, that led
Tow'rds the Corinthian Isthmus, sped,
Impatient to behold again
His cottage-home by Ladon's side,
And her, for whose dear sake his brain
Was giddy with foreboding pain,
Fairest of Ladon's virgin train,
His own long-destined bride.