It seemed as if the task grew harder every week. He went without cuffs, and wore old and frayed collars, and washed his solitary necktie until it was threadbare, and lived upon prunes and crackers, and gave up the gas-stove in his room—and still he could scarcely manage to get together the weekly rent. He studied the magazines in the libraries, and racked his wits for new ideas to interest their editors. He haunted editorial-rooms until his presence became a burden, and he brought new agonies and humiliations upon himself. He would part from Corydon in the afternoon, and shut himself in his room; and sitting in bed to keep warm, he would work until midnight at some new variety of pot-boiler. After which he would go out to walk and clear his brain—and even then, exhausted as he was, his vision would come to him again, wonderful and soul-shaking. So he would walk on, and go back to write until nearly dawn at something he really loved.
Section 3. It was so that he wrote his poem, “Caradrion”. It was out of thoughts of Corydon, and of the tears which they shed in each other’s presence, that this poem was made. Thyrsis had a fondness for burrowing into strange old books, in which one found the primitive wonder of the soul of man, first awakening to the mystery of life. Such a book was Physiologus, with his tales of strange beasts and magic jewels. “There is a bird called Caradrion”, Thyrsis had read.... “And if the sick man can be healed, Caradrion goes to him, and touches him upon the mouth, and takes his sickness from him; and so the man is made well.” And out of this hint he had fashioned the legend of the two children who had grown up together in “the little cot, fringed round with tender green”; one of them Cedric, and one Eileen—for he had given the names that Corydon preferred.
They grew “unto the days of love”, so the story ran—
“And Cedric bent above her, stooping light,
To press a kiss upon her tender cheek.
And said, ‘Eileen, I love thee; yea I love,
And loved thee ever, thou my soul’s delight.’
So time sped on, until there came
“To Cedric once a strange unlovely thought,
That haunted him and would not let him be.
‘Eileen,’ he said, ‘there is a thing called death,
Of which men speak with trembling at the lips;
And I have thought how it would be with me
If I should never gaze upon thee more.’”
So Cedric went to find out about these matters; he sought a witch—“the haggard woman, held in awe.”
“He found her crouching by a caldron fire;
Far gleams of light fled through the vault away.
And tongues of darkness flickered on the wall.
Then Cedric said, ‘I seek the fate to know’.
And the witch laughed, and gazed on him and sang:
‘Fashioned in the shadow-land,
Out into darkness hurled;
Trusted to the Storm-wind’s hand,
By the Passion-tempest whirled!
Ever straining,
Never gaining,
Never keeping,
Young or old!
Whither going
Never knowing,
Wherefore weeping,
Never told!
Rising, falling, disappearing,
Seeking, calling, hating, fearing;
Blasted by the lightning shock,
Trampled in the earthquake rock;
Were I man I would not plead
In the roll of fate to read!’
“Then Cedric shuddered, but he said again,
‘I seek the fate,’ and the witch waved her hand;
And straight a peal of thunder shook the ground,
And clanged and battered on the cavern walls,
Like some huge boulder leaping down the cliff.
And blinding light flashed out, and seething fire
Shattered the seamy crags and heaving floor.”
And so in a vision of terror Cedric saw the little vale, and the cot “fringed round with tender green”; and upon the lawn he saw Eileen, lying as one dead.
“And Cedric sprang, and cried, ‘My love! Eileen!’
And on the instant came a thunder-crash
Like to the sound of old primeval days,
Of mountain-heaving shock and earthquake roar,
Of whirling planets shattered in the dark.”