Cain.
Lucifer. Approach the things of earth most beautiful,
And judge their beauty near.
Cain. I have done this—
The loveliest thing I know is loveliest nearest.
Lucifer. What is that?
* * * * *
Cain. My sister Adah.—All the stars of heaven,
The deep blue noon of night, lit by an orb
Which looks a spirit, or a spirit's world—
The hues of twilight—the sun's gorgeous coming—
His setting indescribable, which fills
My eyes with pleasant tears as I behold
Him sink, and feel my heart float softly with him
Along that western paradise of clouds—
The forest shade—the green bough—the bird's voice—
The vesper bird's, which seems to sing of love,
And mingles with the song of cherubim,
As the day closes over Eden's walls:—
All these are nothing, to my eyes and heart,
Like Adah's face: I turn from earth and heaven
To gaze on it.
Even those charming children of Nature, Haidée and Dudù, in "Don Juan," and the Neuha, in "The Island," scarcely meant to represent more than the visible material part of the ideal woman he could love if he met with her—even these charming creatures possess not only the pagan beauty of form, but also Christian beauty, that of the soul: goodness, gentleness, tenderness. And it is also to be remarked, that by degrees, as time wore on, Lord Byron's female types rose in the moral scale, while still preserving their adorable charms, and their harmony with the state of civilization wherein he placed them. For instance, his Haidée, in the second canto of "Don Juan," written at Venice in 1818, is not worth, morally, the Haidée of the fourth canto, written at Ravenna in 1820. Beneath his pen at Ravenna, the adorable maiden evidently becomes spiritualized. This may be attributed to the poet's state of mind, for he was quite different at Ravenna to what he had been at Venice. The portrait of this lovely child is certainly very charming in 1818, but, while admiring her spotless Grecian brow, her beautiful hair, large Eastern eyes, and noble mouth, we can not help remarking something vague and undecided about her. And even in those fine verses where he says that Haidée's face belongs to a type inconceivable for human thought, and still more impossible of execution for mortal chisel, it is still the beauty of form that he shows you; while the Haidée of Ravenna is quite spiritualized in all her exquisite beauty.
After having described her as she appeared in her delicious Eastern costume, Lord Byron expresses himself in these terms:—
"Her hair's long auburn waves down to her heel
Flow'd like an alpine torrent, which the sun
Dyes with his morning light,—and would conceal
Her person if allow'd at large to run;
And still they seem'd resentfully to feel
The silken fillet's curb, and sought to shun
Their bonds, whene'er some Zephyr, caught, began
To offer his young pinion as her fan.
"Round her she made an atmosphere of life,
The very air seem'd lighter from her eyes,
They were so soft and beautiful, and rife
With all we can imagine of the skies,
And pure as Psyche ere she grew a wife—
Too pure even for the purest human ties;
Her overpowering presence made you feel
It would not be idolatry to kneel."
And, describing the whiteness of her skin, he says:—
"Day ne'er will break
On mountain-tops more heavenly white than her;
The eye might doubt of it were well awake,
She was so like a vision."
In the sixth canto of "Don Juan"—the hero being in the midst of a harem—all his sympathies are for Dudù, a beautiful Circassian, who unites to all the charms, all the moral qualities that a slave of the harem might possess. This is the portrait which Lord Byron draws:—
XLII.
"A kind of sleepy Venus seem'd Dudù,
Yet very fit to 'murder sleep' in those
Who gazed upon her cheek's transcendent hue,
Her Attic forehead and her Phidian nose.
* * * * *
XLIII.
"She was not violently lively, but
Stole on your spirit like a May-day breaking.
* * * * *
LII.
"Dudù, as has been said, was a sweet creature,
Not very dashing, but extremely winning,
With the most regulated charms of feature,
Which painters can not catch like faces sinning
Against proportion—the wild strokes of nature
Which they hit off at once in the beginning,
Full of expression, right or wrong, that strike,
And, pleasing or unpleasing, still are like.
LIII.
"But she was a soft landscape of mild earth,
Where all was harmony, and calm, and quiet,
Luxuriant, budding; cheerful without mirth,
Which, if not happiness, is much more nigh it
Than are your mighty passions and so forth,
Which some call 'the sublime:' I wish they'd try it:
I've seen your stormy seas and stormy women,
And pity lovers rather more than seamen.
LIV.
"But she was pensive more than melancholy,
And serious more than pensive, and serene,
It may be, more than either: not unholy
Her thoughts, at least till now, appear to have been.
The strangest thing was, beauteous, she was wholly
Unconscious, albeit turn'd of quick seventeen,
That she was fair, or dark, or short, or tall;
She never thought about herself at all.
LV.
"And therefore was she kind and gentle as
The Age of Gold (when gold was yet unknown)."
As to Neuha, the daughter of Ocean (in "The Island"), his last creation, she is, indeed, the daughter of Nature also, and no less admirable than her sister Haidée, but she is still more highly endowed in a moral sense:—
"The infant of an infant world, as pure
From nature—lovely, warm, and premature;
Dusky like night, but night with all her stars,
Or cavern sparkling with its native spars;
With eyes that were a language and a spell,
A form like Aphrodite's in her shell,
With all her loves around her on the deep,
Voluptuous as the first approach of sleep;
Yet full of life—for through her tropic cheek
The blush would make its way, and all but speak:
The sun-born blood suffused her neck, and threw
O'er her clear nut-brown skin a lucid hue,
Like coral reddening through the darken'd wave,
Which draws the diver to the crimson cave.
Such was this daughter of the southern seas,
Herself a billow in her energies,
To bear the bark of others' happiness.
Nor feel a sorrow till their joy grew less:
Her wild and warm yet faithful bosom knew
No joy like what it gave; her hopes ne'er drew
Aught from experience, that chill touchstone, whose
Sad proof reduces all things from their hues:
She fear'd no ill, because she knew it not."