Finally Julio unburies Agathè:—
“Thou must go,
My sweet betrothed, with me, but not below,
Where there is darkness, dream, and solitude,
But where is light, and life, and one to brood
Above thee, till thou wakest. Ha, I fear
Thou wilt not wake for ever, sleeping here,
Where there are none but the winds to visit thee.
And Convent fathers, and a choristry
Of sisters saying Hush! But I will sing
Rare songs to thy pure spirit, wandering
Down on the dews to hear me; I will tune
The instrument of the ethereal moon,
And all the choir of stars, to rise and fall
In harmony and beauty musical.”
Is this not melodious madness, and is this picture of the distraught priest, setting forth to sail the seas with his dead lady, not an invention that Nanteuil might have illustrated, and the clan of Bousingots approved?
The Second Chimera opens nobly:—
“A curse! a curse! [{8}] the beautiful pale wing
Of a sea-bird was worn with wandering,
And, on a sunny rock beside the shore,
It stood, the golden waters gazing o’er;
And they were nearing a brown amber flow
Of weeds, that glittered gloriously below!”
Julio appears with Agathè in his arms, and what ensues is excellent of its kind:—
“He dropt upon a rock, and by him placed,
Over a bed of sea-pinks growing waste,
The silent ladye, and he mutter’d wild,
Strange words about a mother and no child.
“And I shall wed thee, Agathè! although
Ours be no God-blest bridal—even so!”
And from the sand he took a silver shell,
That had been wasted by the fall and swell
Of many a moon-borne tide into a ring—
A rude, rude ring; it was a snow-white thing,
Where a lone hermit limpet slept and died
In ages far away. ‘Thou art a bride,
Sweet Agathè! Wake up; we must not linger!’
He press’d the ring upon her chilly finger,
And to the sea-bird on its sunny stone
Shouted, ‘Pale priest that liest all alone
Upon thy ocean altar, rise, away
To our glad bridal!’ and its wings of gray
All lazily it spread, and hover’d by
With a wild shriek—a melancholy cry!
Then, swooping slowly o’er the heaving breast
Of the blue ocean, vanished in the west.”
Julio sang a mad song of a mad priest to a dead maid:—
. . .
“A rosary of stars, love! a prayer as we glide,
And a whisper on the wind, and a murmur on the tide,
And we’ll say a fair adieu to the flowers that are seen,
With shells of silver sown in radiancy between.“A rosary of stars, love! the purest they shall be,
Like spirits of pale pearls in the bosom of the sea;
Now help thee, [{9}] Virgin Mother, with a blessing as we go,
Upon the laughing waters that are wandering below.”
One can readily believe that Poe admired this musical sad song, if, indeed, he ever saw the poem.