HESPERIUS—A VISION.
———
BY WM. ALBERT SUTLIFFE.
———
“Whither, sweet lady, whither? the night is chill;
Weary and worn, say, whither tend thy feet?”
“Stranger! I come o’er moor and steepy hill,
To hear the beat
Of ever-toiling billows—and to sail
The midnight deep with daring canvas spread;
To seek some isle where storm may not prevail—
Where tombs are never shaped for loved ones dead—
Where palmy summits lay
Their shadows in clear fountains all the day,
Where lilies lave
Their shining tresses in the resting wave;
Thither, kind stranger, through the night at rest,
I chase the stars down-sloping to the west.”
“Lady, sweet lady, let me guard thee thither!
The wave is treacherous, shivered oft by storm,
And many an ambushed wind quick-bringeth cloudy weather,
And towering thunder-mist with secret lightnings warm;
Many unseemly rocks love human prey,
And devious currents often thrust astray;
A thousand maelstroms sing harsh Runic rhyme,
And sturdy gales beleaguer any time.
Let us be twin in hope, in weal or wo,—
Sweet lady, let me go!”
She smiled a quiet smile, and “Come,” she said—
We entered in, our scanty sail we spread;
And as thin mists that creep
Out of a dingle deep,
Where zephyrs dally,
And, wind-caught, float across the dewy lawn,
When comes the dawn;
So we before the breeze, that then did rally
Its powers to bear us on;
While she, wrapt up as from the night’s cool kiss,
Lay like a chrysalis.
Westward we bore through that propitious night—
Through the slow-creeping hours the moonshine lay
Upon her alabaster breast and tresses bright,
Like furbished silver—Houri gone astray
From Mahomet’s heaven seemed she—gloriously
Shone her deep eyes, till down the silvered west
Pale Dian hid her shield in Ocean’s breast.
And now Apollo
Sprang, golden-sandaled, from his orient bed,
And quick his upward wonted path ’gan follow
While westward still we sped.
Apollo clomb
The star-deserted dome,
And, at the zenith sat, a noontide king;
There with his outspread hands,
Flaring upon the lands,
Watched our white sail in the wind shivering.
Apollo sank
Adown the west, where many a cloudy bank
Waited his coming, as the down, a king—
While careful shades ’gan clamber,
Out of the night’s dim chamber,
Night of the many eyes and dusky wing.
“Farewell, Apollo!”
The lady sang, “we follow
Thee to thy home, thy golden-curtained West;
Amid the occident seas,
Seeking Hesperides,
Floating, we chase thee o’er the rippled breast
Of Ocean in his rest.
“Come Venus from thy lair,
Up through the stirless air,
Quivering with Love’s young heat and sweet despair;
As thou wast wont to quiver
Upon my childhood’s river,
Where all the pendulous willows thrilled to bear
The breeze, as men do, care.
“Come out ye many stars!
The liberal night unbars
Your doors impalpable, that ye may see,
And gaze a twinkling fill
On human good and ill,
Till daybreak’s irksome goad compelleth ye
Behind the azure sea.
“We come, we come,
Seeking an islet home,
Whose breezes all are balm, whose seas are calm;
Where, when the eyes grow dim,
Fair myths forever swim
About the inward vision, and no harm
E’er spreads a palsying arm.
“Here would we lie
Amid this tremulous beauty till we die;
Here would descry
Through roofing orange-boughs the pleasant sky,
And silently decay in rapturous ease,
When death so please.”
She ceased; and now we slid along a sea
Of tinted wavelets, such as ne’er before
Had blest my seeing; on one side a shore
Slipt past us backward, thickly over-bowed
With flowered shrubs and trees, all such as flee
Harsh Boreal bitings where the North blows loud.
And now a quay we neared, whence led aback
Full many a leafy-hung, nymph-haunted track.
Then, slow-ascending a white marble stair,
A grove we entered in, all carpeted
With rarest moss, and every way there led
Dim paths ’mid obelisks and fountains fair,
And sculptured graces, and some streamlets fled
All day and night down to the circling sea,
Singing fore’er in music’s earnest glee.
Up ’mid the boughs the zephyrs went a-playing,
Making the stars like swinging cressets seem;
And from the east came silver arrows straying
Of Dian at her moonrise; while a stream
Of melody, the Bulbul, rose-embowered,
Incessant through the dew-tipt leaflets showered,
Sweeter than any dream.
No earthly night,
Mantled with dismal light
This paradise; but a broad lovely moon,
Made a glad twilight here,
Unsoiled by any fear,
Or harsh intruding doubt, that comes too soon,
And lays our bright-eyed hopes upon a cypress bier.
Anon, emerging from the woody maze,
There sudden sprang upon the pleased vision,
Glimpses of far Elysian,
Green meadows glowing through a golden haze,
And far-meandering walks, that rose and fell
’Twixt bedded asphodel.
And purling brooks went leaping here and there
Over the flowered slopes all in a foam,
Pealing like vesper bells that win the prayer—
Or silver voices calling loved ones home;
And many bees enringed the fragrant thyme,
And windy melodies stirred every full-leaved lime.
Here flowers grew in circles round and round,
With broad, rich petals for queen’s gathering,
There fountains sprang up with a clear, quick sound
From vases, such as Babylonian king
Ne’er saw the like of; and their spray did fling
O’er pure white statues having marble care
Over the showered pearls and moistened air.
And ever as we past there ever grew
Wondrous variety to stir the sense,
Begetting impotence
Of fond expression, but a rapture true
Claspt all the spirit in a dreamy fold
Of ecstasy and gold.
Until, through shady ranges of tall trees,
Threaded by every breeze,
And well-determined beds of every hue,
Orange, vermeil, and blue,
A central, templed hill, was near espied,
Down-slanting to the sea on every side,
With greensward terraces and blooming meet,
Sloped even to our feet.
Over the lawns were Dryads tripping far,
And Hamadryads peeping from the wood,
And now and then a Naiad, like a star;
And all were clothed in a merry mood—
For not a care there was o’er which to solely brood.
Upon the summit, soothed with lasting ease,
Sat the Hesperides
Beneath the orchard trees—
Sipping the beakered nectar seasoned well,
And temperate hydromel;
And tasting luscious fruitage, such as fell
From boughs ’neath which the scaly dragon rolled,
Lay glaring fold in fold.
“O can we herein bide!” the lady said,
“I feel my head doth swim—
My weary eyes are dim—
With too much pleasure is the sense o’erfed;
How can we herein bide,
And not some ill betide!”
Then said a voice, “Ye may not herein stay!
But immortality
May here incloséd be;
And ye are mortals—ye must hence away,
Or ere the night unwombs the clearer day.
“And ye must wait the riving of the chain
That gives surcease of pain,
And linger lone upon the evening shore
Till ye be ferried o’er.
But now the nymphs shall cease their merriment,
Ere yet your stay be spent,
And music shall be struck—shall charm and please
You to contented ease.”
Then dropt a quiet o’er the enhancéd glee,
As when a Boreal night dusks o’er a frigid sea.
Next grew a hymning sonnet, worded well,
Up ’mid the oaken boles, whose listening green
Tented the Dryad scene,
Wavering across the silence with a spell
Worthy to sink the yesty broil of waves,
And bid huge winds creep into airless graves,
In barred Æolian caves.
“We sing, we sing,
The sweet lyre fingering
On every vibrant string;
The sisters of the sea,
Whose silken dynasty
Holds us in light, and long, and glad captivity.
“We sing, we sing,
The sweet lyre fingering
With sound like Hermes’ wing—
Of nectarous draughts and deep,
Wooing the gods asleep,
What time the crystal honey-dews of heaven weep.
“We sing, we sing,
The sweet lyre fingering
Till windless woodlands ring;
How rich the lofty chime,
When gods converse in rhyme,
And far Olympian peaks reëcho all the time.
“We sing, we sing,
The sweet lyre fingering
With notes that ever cling,
The blue and airy dome
That floors the godly home
Where thunderous Jove is throned, and Here dwells at home.
“We sing, we sing,
With silver vibrating
Of every tuneful string,
The effervescing wine,
In beakers most divine,
By Hebe overbrimmed for whom the half-gods pine.
“Ah, well! ah, well!
Our island home we tell,
Where peace for aye doth dwell;
Where, from the drowsy deep,
A gilded mist doth creep
Up all the sanded shore to shrine us in our sleep.
“Away, away!
Our fingers cease to play
For alien ears our lay;
But, by the sea’s low moan,
Sportive we go alone;
Our lyre’s notes are dead—our measured hymn is done.”
Then died the hymning sonnet, worded well,
Adown the oaken boles that pillared all the dell.
* * * * *
Then all a day and night athwart the sea—
A day and night complete we backward sped—
And as the dawn grew red—
Our half-moon prow slid upward easily
Upon the margent of the ocean foam
That murmured by our home.
THE PEDANT:
OR CHAPTERS FROM A LIFE SPENT PARTLY IN CAROLINA.
———
BY HENRY HOLM, ESQ.
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(Continued from page 24.)