Rhona, half-hidden by ‘the branches of the hawthorn tree,’ stretches up to kiss the white and green May buds overhanging the bridal tent, while Percy Aylwin stands at the tent’s mouth and looks at her:—
Can this be she, who, on that fateful day
When Romany knives leapt out at me like stings
Hurled back the men, who shrank like stricken things
From Rhona’s eyes, whose lightnings seemed to slay?
Can this be she, half-hidden in the may,
Kissing the buds for ‘luck o’ love’ it brings,
While from the dingle grass the skylark springs
And merle and mavis answer finch and jay?[He goes up to the hawthorn, pulls the branches
apart, and clasps her in his arms.Can she here, covering with her childish kisses
These pearly buds—can she so soft, so tender,
So shaped for clasping—dowered of all love-blisses—
Be my fierce girl whose love for me would send her,
An angel storming hell, through death’s abysses,
Where never a sight could fright or power could bend her?
But Rhona is haunted by forebodings, and one night when the lovers are on the river she reads the scripture of the stars. I must give here the sonnet quoted on page 29:—
The mirrored stars lit all the bulrush-spears,
And all the flags and broad-leaved lily-isles;
The ripples shook the stars to golden smiles,
Then smoothed them back to happy golden spheres.
We rowed—we sang; her voice seemed in mine ears
An angel’s, yet with woman’s dearer wiles;
But shadows fell from gathering cloudy piles
And ripples shook the stars to fiery tears.What shaped those shadows like another boat
Where Rhona sat and he Love made a liar?
There, where the Scollard sank, I saw it float,
While ripples shook the stars to symbols dire;
We wept—we kissed—while starry fingers wrote,
And ripples shook the stars to a snake of fire.
The most tragically dramatic scene in the poem is that in which Percy confronts the cosmic mystery, defying its menace. The stars write in the river:—
Falsehold can never shield her: Truth is strong.
Percy reads the rune and answers:—
I read your rune: is there no pity, then,
In Heav’n that wove this net of life for men?
Have only Hell and Falsehood heart for ruth?
Show me, ye mirrored stars, this tyrant Truth—
King that can do no wrong!
Ah! Night seems opening! There, above the skies,
Who sits upon that central sun for throne
Round which a golden sand of worlds is strown,
Stretching right onward to an endless ocean,
Far, far away, of living, dazzling motion?
Hearken, King Truth, with pictures in thine eyes
Mirrored from gates beyond the furthest portal
Of infinite light, ’tis Love that stands immortal,
The King of Kings.
The gypsies read the starry rune, and, discovering Rhona’s secret, secretly slay her. Percy, having returned to Gypsy Dell, vainly tries to find her grave. Then he flies from the dingle, lest the memory of Rhona should drive him mad, and lives alone in the Alps, where he passes into the strange ecstasy, described in the sonnet called ‘Natura Maligna,’ which has been much discussed by the critics:—
The Lady of the Hills with crimes untold
Followed my feet with azure eyes of prey;
By glacier-brink she stood—by cataract-spray—
When mists were dire, or avalanche-echoes rolled.
At night she glimmered in the death-wind cold,
And if a footprint shone at break of day,
My flesh would quail, but straight my soul would say:
‘’Tis hers whose hand God’s mightier hand doth hold.’
I trod her snow-bridge, for the moon was bright,
Her icicle-arch across the sheer crevasse,
When lo, she stood! . . . God made her let me pass,
Then felled the bridge! . . . Oh, there in sallow light,
There down the chasm, I saw her cruel, white,
And all my wondrous days as in a glass.