Odo And Its Lord
Time now to enter upon some further description of the island and its
lord.
And first for Media: a gallant gentleman and king. From a goodly stock
he came. In his endless pedigree, reckoning deities by decimals,
innumerable kings, and scores of great heroes, chiefs, and priests. Nor
in person, did he belie his origin. No far-descended dwarf was he, the
least of a receding race. He stood like a palm tree; about whose
acanthus capital droops not more gracefully the silken fringes, than
Media’s locks upon his noble brow. Strong was his arm to wield the
club, or hurl the javelin; and potent, I ween, round a maiden’s waist.
Thus much here for Media. Now comes his isle.
Our pleasant ramble found it a little round world by itself; full of
beauties as a garden; chequered by charming groves; watered by roving
brooks; and fringed all round by a border of palm trees, whose roots
drew nourishment from the water. But though abounding in other quarters
of the Archipelago, not a solitary bread-fruit grew in Odo. A
noteworthy circumstance, observable in these regions, where islands
close adjoining, so differ in their soil, that certain fruits growing
genially in one, are foreign to another. But Odo was famed for its
guavas, whose flavor was likened to the flavor of new-blown lips; and
for its grapes, whose juices prompted many a laugh and many a groan.
Beside the city where Media dwelt, there were few other clusters of
habitations in Odo. The higher classes living, here and there, in
separate households; but not as eremites. Some buried themselves in the
cool, quivering bosoms of the groves. Others, fancying a marine
vicinity, dwelt hard by the beach in little cages of bamboo; whence of
mornings they sallied out with jocund cries, and went plunging into the
refreshing bath, whose frothy margin was the threshold of their
dwellings. Others still, like birds, built their nests among the sylvan
nooks of the elevated interior; whence all below, and hazy green, lay
steeped in languor the island’s throbbing heart.
Thus dwelt the chiefs and merry men of mark. The common sort, including
serfs, and Helots, war-captives held in bondage, lived in secret
places, hard to find. Whence it came, that, to a stranger, the whole
isle looked care-free and beautiful. Deep among the ravines and the
rocks, these beings lived in noisome caves, lairs for beasts, not human
homes; or built them coops of rotten boughs—living trees were banned
them—whose mouldy hearts hatched vermin. Fearing infection of some
plague, born of this filth, the chiefs of Odo seldom passed that way
and looking round within their green retreats, and pouring out their
wine, and plucking from orchards of the best, marveled how these swine
could grovel in the mire, and wear such sallow cheeks. But they offered
no sweet homes; from that mire they never sought to drag them out; they
open threw no orchard; and intermitted not the mandates that condemned
their drudges to a life of deaths. Sad sight! to see those
round-shouldered Helots, stooping in their trenches: artificial, three
in number, and concentric: the isle well nigh surrounding. And herein,
fed by oozy loam, and kindly dew from heaven, and bitter sweat from
men, grew as in hot-beds the nutritious Taro.
Toil is man’s allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief
that’s more than either, the grief and sin of idleness. But when man
toils and slays himself for masters who withhold the life he gives to
them—then, then, the soul screams out, and every sinew cracks. So with
these poor serfs. And few of them could choose but be the brutes they
seemed.
Now needs it to be said, that Odo was no land of pleasure unalloyed,
and plenty without a pause?—Odo, in whose lurking-places infants turned
from breasts, whence flowed no nourishment.—Odo, in whose inmost
haunts, dark groves were brooding, passing which you heard most dismal
cries, and voices cursing Media. There, men were scourged; their crime,
a heresy; the heresy, that Media was no demigod. For this they
shrieked. Their fathers shrieked before; their fathers, who, tormented,
said, “Happy we to groan, that our children’s children may be glad.”
But their children’s children howled. Yet these, too, echoed previous
generations, and loudly swore, “The pit that’s dug for us may prove
another’s grave.”
But let all pass. To look at, and to roam about of holidays, Odo seemed
a happy land. The palm-trees waved—though here and there you marked one
sear and palsy-smitten; the flowers bloomed—though dead ones moldered
in decay; the waves ran up the strand in glee—though, receding, they
sometimes left behind bones mixed with shells.
But else than these, no sign of death was seen throughout the isle. Did
men in Odo live for aye? Was Ponce de Leon’s fountain there? For near
and far, you saw no ranks and files of graves, no generations harvested
in winrows. In Odo, no hard-hearted nabob slept beneath a gentle
epitaph; no requiescat-in-pace mocked a sinner damned; no memento-mori
admonished men to live while yet they might. Here Death hid his skull;
and hid it in the sea, the common sepulcher of Odo. Not dust to dust,
but dust to brine; not hearses but canoes. For all who died upon that
isle were carried out beyond the outer reef, and there were buried with
their sires’ sires. Hence came the thought, that of gusty nights, when
round the isles, and high toward heaven, flew the white reef’s rack and
foam, that then and there, kept chattering watch and ward, the myriads
that were ocean-tombed.
But why these watery obsequies?
Odo was but a little isle, and must the living make way for the dead,
and Life’s small colony be dislodged by Death’s grim hosts; as the
gaunt tribes of Tamerlane o’erspread the tented pastures of the Khan?
And now, what follows, said these Islanders: “Why sow corruption in the
soil which yields us life? We would not pluck our grapes from over
graves. This earth’s an urn for flowers, not for ashes.”
They said that Oro, the supreme, had made a cemetery of the sea.
And what more glorious grave? Was Mausolus more sublimely urned? Or do
the minster-lamps that burn before the tomb of Charlemagne, show more
of pomp, than all the stars, that blaze above the shipwrecked mariner?
But no more of the dead; men shrug their shoulders, and love not their
company; though full soon we shall all have them for fellows.