“Fit time!”—he cried with quivering brow,
Tale such as mine was uttered now;
When all the elements are stirred
To hear a spirit’s fearful word.
Let lightnings flash—let thunders roll,
What terrors have they for the soul
That flees the golden eye of day,
And hates its beams e’en more than they!
I’ve revell’d in their light before
In many a sea, on many a shore—
On many a rock—on many a deck—
Yes! challenged them amid the wreck—
When they and the remorseless sea
Seem’d smiling on my agony.
Yet! have I loved a milder glow
Than yonder lurid fires bestow:
There was a moment! glorious time!
When I, amid my native bow’rs,
Unmoved by care—unsoiled by crime—
Would watch the sunshine beam for hours;
It glowed of my own self a part,
For all was sunshine in the heart,
Which seemed an angel who had left,
He knew not how, the stainless blue,
And smiled, so long of light bereft,
To find an angel wandering, too.
But when I saw the bannered storm—
Like giant rousing from his sleep—
Uplift o’er heaven his awful form,
And from the thunder-chamber sweep
To his dread bridal with the flame
Before their altar of the cloud,
While all his minstrel-tempests came
Around the shrine, in terror bowed,—
I’ve smiled with other smile than this,
For then, I, leaping from the sod,
Saw, in their rude but meaning bliss,
The wondrous glory of a God:—
Yes! e’en when others quailed to see
The red volcano light our clime,
I’ve joyed, for in its ministry
I only saw a torch sublime,
Lighting with its tremendous glare
The glorious pages of His book,
Which men might read if they would dare
Upon those awful leaves to look.
Like thee I joyed alone to range
Amid the beautiful and bright,
A thing like them of love and light—
Like thee my spirit had its change.
The spell was wove! It thundered out
In many a wild and bitter curse—
And thenceforth I was hurl’d about
Hopeless amid the universe.
Long years! oh! how your shadows press
My brow in very weariness:
Here! here ye stretch and ever gloom
Like funeral-foliage of the tomb,
Whose leaves—the favorites of pain
Must ever life from sorrow gain.
Long years! long years! I feel again
Your star-eyed hopes around me glow
Bright as the plumage of a train
Of pilgrim-angels furled below.
We are together: Ila, see
The light of heaven’s own heraldry—
And hark!—the evening breeze is here;
His silver lips no longer mute,—
He breathes—a minstrel-worshipper—
An avè from his leafy lute:
Shall we not join him? Dearest, press
Thy lip to mine, while, as of old,
We hear with love’s sweet tenderness
That glorious vesper music rolled.
We are together in those bowers
Glad as the rosy-footed hours
And all as pure.—I see her now
A creature less of earth than skies,
With day’s pure sunshine on her brow
And heaven’s own midnight in her eyes.
And thus we trod the path of life,
Without nor cloud, nor grief, nor strife—
Like pensile stars whose golden light
Meets on the sable bridge of night
And glows with such a wedded beam
In calm or stormy weather,
That men when looking upwards deem
They are but one, for thus they seem,
So close they shine together.
Ha! whence this change? My Ila! why
That icy mien and tearful eye?
No more for me thou cullest the flow’r;—
No more with me thou seekest the bow’r;—
No more thy sweet lips press my own;—
No more thy warm hands link with mine,
When Daylight, stooping from his throne,
Has furl’d his wing by evening’s shrine.
She answered not! yet sorrow there
Has held a bridal with despair,
And pale her cheek as if with wo
Which none but she must ever know.
In vain I questioned—her reply
A sad reproachfulness of eye,
So firm yet tender in its look,
It ever, sorrowing, seemed to say
“Why torture me!”—I could not brook
Such gaze, but gladly turned away,
Leaving my Ila to her mood
In our old castle’s solitude.
Days rolled away!—And who art thou
With princely step and lofty brow?
What dost thou here within our halls,
Sir knight! unwelcome to these walls?
Days roll’d away!—I sought my sire;
He met me but with glance of ire,
And freezing mystery of air,
Which seemed to say—“Ila?—beware!”
And then he cried, “away! away!
Mad boy, she weds the knight to-day!”
I spoke not; slowly round me came
A wavering sheet of cloud and flame,
Which seem’d to sear my very brain:
How long ’twas thus I cannot say,
Nor when I woke to life again.
They called me mad: I heard the chain
Clanking around my limbs, and near
The hum of voices meet my ear,
And eyes amid the darkness shone
So bright, so angry and so lone—
Methought they were the eyes of those
Whom men have named their demon-foes,
Drawing a life from human woes.
Yes! I was mad, and in my strength
I spurned the dungeon’s hated ground,
Hurled from my limbs the chain, at length,
And thus my birth-right freedom found.
I saw the glorious stars again—
Once more I gazed upon the main
Whose billows e’en in boyhood were
My playmates, when their crested forms
Rushed up like ministers of Fear
Amid their temple of the storms.
Once more I heard the Ocean’s shock
Against the castellated rock;
And saw, oh! gallant, blessed sight!
My barque along the heaving tide,
Like lover resting through the night
Upon the bosom of his bride.
The sail’s unfurl’d! How free! How brave!
On! on my vessel, o’er the wave!
The night-winds kiss thee, as in joy
To meet once more their ocean-boy.
Oh! I had loved thee, glorious sea,
And oft thy waters laved my brow,
But never have I gazed on thee
With such a bounding heart as now.
Roll on! Roll on! thy dark blue foam
Shall henceforth be to me a home.
For days I skimmed the ocean blue,
And deeper still my gladness grew;
And oft my joy was uttered out
To heaven in that delirious shout
Which only he can swell whose life
Is passed amid the ocean’s strife.
And others soon around me came;
And men soon shook before my name.
What trophies glittered on our deck,
How foemen sank with many a wreck,
Let that old ocean’s caverns tell,—
In sooth our spirits loved them well—
They lay beneath us like a spell.
A sail! How looks she in the dark?
“Bravely! She is a royal barque!”
Give thanks! Hurrah! I ween the wave
Before the morn shall be her grave!
Out with the guns!—“Ho, sir! she veers!—
Again! again! Hurrah! she nears!”
She came so nigh, that we could see
The pilot’s lonely ministry.
Sudden as lightning from its lair
Fire glowed around her deck;—
Ha! ship, that rode so proudly there—
Thou art a very wreck!
Once more the frowning guns were out;
Their thunder told in shriek and shout!
“The barque’s on fire!”—with one wild cry!
That pierced the very wave and sky,
Her crew leaped in the tide;
But as she heavily floated by—
Oh! God what met my startled eye?
The chieftain and his bride!
Yes, he and Ila shrined in flame
Were wildly calling on my name:—
At one mad bound I cleared my deck,
And stood upon that burning wreck:
Through flame and smoke I fearless flew!
A moment—I have reached the two!
I grasped him! and the lurid wave
Revenged me well—it was his grave.
I bore her in my arms—the smoke
And flame in vain around me broke,—
I felt them curling o’er my brow,
As fierce they swept from stern to plow;—
I struggled on!—one effort more—
I leaped upon my vessel’s side!
Thank God! the final strife was o’er,
And I had won my ocean-bride!
In one dread shock the crackling mast
Came thundering down beneath the blast:—
The flaming wreck slow drives away—
Dim and more dim we marked the ray;
And now unloosing every sail—
We feel our vessel, like a steed
Gladdening to serve his rider’s need,
Dart out before the gale.
Slowly the thrill of feeling came
Along my Ila’s pallid frame;
I marked the rising crimson swell
Upon the cheek I loved too well,
And heard, how joyously! the sigh
Which told me that she could not die,
At least not then:—she rose at last;
One piercing look around she cast,
And shrieked!—her memory, ah! too soon
Had lighted up those scenes of old,
When I, beneath far different moon
Than that which brightly rose aboon,
My love so passionately told.
She spake not still; but day by day
I saw her calmly sink away
Like some sweet flower or rainbow-form
Whose life is withered by the storm.
But when I saw her pallid lips
Darkling beneath the death-eclipse,
She waved me to her side and said—
I cannot speak her words—the dead
Would stir within their very tomb
To hear such tale!—Enough! she died,
And I beheld in that sea-room
A sister in my ocean-bride.
Oh! how I blessed the God above,
That she went down unsoiled by love
Whose reckless and unholy fire
Springs from the heart of low desire.
My sire had framed a cunning tale
—To shroud his crime, and this the baal!
He brought her to our castle’s hall—
Saying she was a homeless child,
Whom he had found beneath the wall
In all her orphan-freedom wild.
Of that she told me, on the day
She died, thus much I dared to say.
And Ila sleeps within the wave,
And round her peaceful ocean-tomb
The pale flowers of the coral-grave
In all their quiet beauty bloom.
Sleep on! sleep on in that deep rest—
Thou of the stainless brow and breast,—
Oh! holy as the stars that shine
In all their seraph splendor set,
Like torches of a templed-shrine
In midnight’s azure coronet.
She was avenged! That very hour
In which the tide received her form,
The deep-blue sky began to lour
Beneath the scowling of the storm;
And soon the thunder, vast and dark,
Shook his red arm above our barque,
Whose deck deserted—sails all rent
And loose around the shivered mast,
Like reeling clouds were blindly sent
Before the fury of the blast.
“The boats! the boats!”
They’re riding well
Along that billow’s crested swell.
“Save! save yourselves,” I sternly cried,
Undaunted on the plunging deck,
“I go to seek my ocean-bride,
But comrades ye must leave the wreck!”
An instant—they were safe! and I
Alone stood challenging the sky
And rolling waves.
With fearless form
I dared the spirit of the storm:
His red lips answered me—the flame
Leaped burning through my blackened frame!—
And I was here.—
“No more! No more!”
He cried, “that agony was o’er:—
But this!”
He darkly gazed around,
Then quivering sank upon the ground;
And Lorro on his dread distress
Gazed sorrowing—mute and motionless.
The tempest with his train has fled,
And yet no moon hath lit her fire;
Nought lights the darkness, deep and dread,
Save that dim-burning Vulcan-pyre.
With its drear, wavering, ghastly light,
Still heavier than the heavy night:
Most terrible!
The task is done!
How gladly mounts the trembling soul,
Like light returning to its sun,
When Heaven’s own streams of glory roll!
Joy, spirit! joy! I’ve broke the spell;
Land of the lost! dread land, farewell.
——
Soul of that shadowy realm, where Time
Hath thrown his last-expiring wave,
When the Immortal glooms sublime
And terrible above the grave,—
Dread image o’er whose phantasm we
Have hung a shroud of mystery,
And then for countless ages shook
Before its dark, eternal look.
Bold scorner of the groan or tear—
Swaying between the star and storm—
Thou art a mighty thing of fear,
Yet glory crowns thy mystic form.
Vast, potent, melancholy, dim,
Past ruler of the cherubim,
And king-like in thy ruin still,
Thou livest despite of sleepless ill.
Oh! once all splendid in that time,
Ere thy great banners were unfurl’d
Like thunder flashes in the clime
From which the rebel hosts were hurl’d,
How art thou fallen—fallen now!—
The burning seal upon thy brow
Which towered in its own glory bright—
A mighty pyramid of light.
And battling still? Thine essence gleams
Like the dim flashing of a cloud;
Oh! how unlike its heavenly beams
Ere sin that angel-beauty bowed,
And changed thee to a giant curse
Breathed through the shuddering universe—
A deathless, hopeless agony—
An aching immortality.
* * * * *