LOVE AND POETRY.
| They bid me Poetry resign—the mandate I obey: Farewell, forever then farewell, to the inspiring lay. I go to other happiness—in a bright and sunny clime I'll rove amid the orange groves, the olive, and the vine. I'll sing and dance to merry strains of some Italian band— I'll dream no more of Poetry, nor of "my native land;" And as the gondolier doth guide me home from mirth and song, My thoughts shall with the gondola glide undisturbed along. I'll live for fêtes and operas—I'll haunt the masquerade, And all sweet visions of the Lyre shall from my memory fade; And Love—(for that were Poetry)—I must resign: apart The Lyre and Love can ne'er exist within the human heart. And now once more I bid adieu to all thy tender joys Sweet Muse, and fly to festive scenes—to folly, mirth and noise; But ne'er amid these labyrinths, do I expect to find A solace for the loss of Love and Poetry combined. |
A FAIRY TALE.
Down in a deep recess of the loveliest valley upon the face of the earth there was a tiny grotto cut in the solid crystal. The few rays of light that penetrated through its deep shade, fixed in its vaulted roof an unfading rainbow. Its floor was inlaid with many colored pebbles of the smallest size, which Fairy hands had brought from the neighboring stream. Its sides were hung with tapestry wrought by the same delicate fingers, and in colors more vivid than ever dyed a painter's brush, representing the benevolent deeds of the fairest and kindest of their race. Here might be seen one of those beneficent little creatures replacing, for the weary bee, the load of wax he had lost in his flight; and another busied in scattering again, on the wing of the restless butterfly, the golden dust which the gay flutterer had brushed off by a too close contact with his own favorite flower; and yet a third, unallured by beauty, but urged by kindness, exerting all the energies of her delicate frame to assist the industrious ant home with her heavy burthen. Within the grotto was a couch formed by the bright feathers of the hummingbird; and, above it, hung a canopy of film spun by Fairy hands before the first beams of the morning sun could dissolve their work, and while yet every thread was strung with pearls. But what was the beauty of the spot compared with the excelling loveliness of her that dwelt within? She belonged to the most fragile of all the race, one of those who are fabled to have sunk beneath the weight of a single grain of wheat. The pencil of no mortal artist would be delicate enough to trace her features, and human language is too imperfect to describe the surpassing loveliness of this ethereal being. The gossamer strung with tiny pearls, and floating on the herbage of an autumnal morning, surpassed not in lightness the ringlets on her shoulder; and her footstep could only be traced by its displacing the golden dust from the flower, as she tripped from petal to petal, giving them their colors with a brush steeped in the dyes of Fairy-land. For her ministry was amidst the brightest part of creation, and her happiness to do offices of love—to raise the drooping head of the thirsty flower-cup, and bring it the freshest dew-drop of the morning. To be prepared for her ministry she had been placed by Titania upon this lower earth—but she was first bathed in the fountain of Oblivion, and thus separated from her former existence. Yet there still remained in her soul some faint recollections of the land of her home, falling upon her spirit sweet as the dying strains of music sometimes wafted to the wanderer from his native shore when he is leaving it forever. Still there was a void left in the soul of this Fairy inhabitant of earth. The yearnings of her heart told her she was an exile, though she knew not the land whence she came. Her Queen, in pity to her loneliness, formed for her a being suited to her love. On awakening one morning she beheld at the door of her grotto the loveliest object upon which her eyes had ever rested. It was that brightest of flowers, the Lily of the Valley—but such a one as never before sprung from the dark bosom of the earth. The dazzling purity of its blossoms seemed to mingle like moonbeams with the twilight of the morning, and its delicate green stem bent gently towards her as if seeking her affection. When the rising rays of the sun pierced even the depths of this shadowy valley, the soft green leaves of the Lily shaded the grotto from their influence.
It would be impossible to describe the love that filled the heart of our little Fairy for the beautiful flower—for we have not yet known what it is to be alone in a strange world without a kindred tie, or any thing to which the heart can cling, and which it may claim for its own. Now this was the Fairy's flower. She had not gone to seek it, but it had sprung up on her own threshold. All the day long was now bright to her. Her first thoughts, when she awoke, were to see if her Lily still stood in its loveliness before her, and then she moistened her lips with the dew that hung ever freshly from its silvery bells. The days rolled on, and our little Fairy heeded not their course. She knew not that they were bearing with them the brightness of Spring—for her existence had known no Winter. But heeded or unheeded, the days rolled on. Spring and Summer were gone, and Autumn was fading into Winter. The dazzling brightness of the Lily deepened into an unearthly hue, and its head was bowed with more than pensive grace. It was a bright morning, towards the last of Autumn, when our Fairy, awakening, looked towards her lovely favorite. But it was gone. She arose in haste, and beheld only a little heap of dust where her flower once grew. Alas! words cannot describe the anguish of her heart. There was a darkness—a mystery—in the fate of her beloved, which she could not unravel, and it fell so coldly upon her spirit, that she believed Winter was enclosing her heart also in its frost-work, and she wept for another home, where winter should come no more. But at length the destroyer passed away, and the bright things of the earth shot up again to meet the joyous Springtime. The voice of gladness was heard once more from the lofty mountain to the humble valley. Our little Fairy felt its influence—she felt the frost-work melt from her heart, and she wondered if she could love any flower again as she had loved her departed Lily.
And again, almost in the same spot, there sprung up a Heart's Ease, so bright and glowing that it seemed the very offspring of Joy. At first our Fairy would not trust herself to love it. She remembered that Winter would come again, and she thought, too, the new flower wanted the loveliness of her Lily. But invariably her heart smiled beneath its influence, and there was Springtime once more in her soul. The recollection of Winter passed from her mind, as the ice before the sun. But again Summer ripened into Autumn, and that, in its turn, was changed into Winter, and again the little Fairy was left alone. She beheld one morning her bright little gem of a flower set in the brilliants of frost, and sparkling as gaily as if the light still came from within. She hastened to dissolve with her breath the diamond fetters of her favorite, but alas! their weight had been too heavy for the little creature, and it fell with them to rise no more.
The Fairy wept—but not so bitterly as erewhile. She knew the Spring would come again with fresh flowers; and when it did come she beheld a sweet Mignonette spring up on her threshold, but so different in beauty from her former favorites that she turned from it in disappointment. Yet when the humble flower filled her grotto with fragrance, and insensibly its sweetness stole into her heart, and possessed it with a delightful tranquillity she had never experienced before, her soul fainted within her when she remembered that Winter would snatch away from her this loved one as it had done her other loved ones before. And in truth, but a few brief months, and the blast had swept over this fragile flower, leaving no trace of its existence but the perfume it exhaled with its last breath, on the gale that bore it into eternity.