A DIVERSION PLAYED ON A PENNY-WHISTLE
Away with Systems! Away with a corrupt World! Let us breathe the air
of the Enchanted Island.
Golden lie the meadows: golden run the streams; red gold is on the
pine-stems. The sun is coming down to earth, and walks the fields
and the waters.
The sun is coming down to earth, and the fields and the waters shout
to him golden shouts. He comes, and his heralds run before him, and
touch the leaves of oaks and planes and beeches lucid green, and the
pine-stems redder gold; leaving brightest footprints upon
thickly-weeded banks, where the foxglove's last upper-bells incline,
and bramble-shoots wander amid moist rich herbage. The plumes of the
woodland are alight; and beyond them, over the open, 'tis a race
with the long-thrown shadows; a race across the heaths and up the
hills, till, at the farthest bourne of mounted eastern cloud, the
heralds of the sun lay rosy fingers and rest.
Sweet are the shy recesses of the woodland. The ray treads softly
there. A film athwart the pathway quivers many-hued against purple
shade fragrant with warm pines, deep moss-beds, feathery ferns. The
little brown squirrel drops tail, and leaps; the inmost bird is
startled to a chance tuneless note. From silence into silence things
move.
Peeps of the revelling splendour above and around enliven the
conscious full heart within. The flaming West, the crimson heights,
shower their glories through voluminous leafage. But these are
bowers where deep bliss dwells, imperial joy, that owes no fealty to
yonder glories, in which the young lamb gambols and the spirits of
men are glad. Descend, great Radiance! embrace creation with
beneficent fire, and pass from us! You and the vice-regal light that
succeeds to you, and all heavenly pageants, are the ministers and
the slaves of the throbbing content within.
For this is the home of the enchantment. Here, secluded from vexed
shores, the prince and princess of the island meet: here like
darkling nightingales they sit, and into eyes and ears and hands
pour endless ever-fresh treasures of their souls.
Roll on, grinding wheels of the world: cries of ships going down in
a calm, groans of a System which will not know its rightful hour of
exultation, complain to the universe. You are not heard here.
He calls her by her name, Lucy: and she, blushing at her great
boldness, has called him by his, Richard. Those two names are the
key-notes of the wonderful harmonies the angels sing aloft.
"Lucy! my beloved!"
"O Richard!"
Out in the world there, on the skirts of the woodland, a sheep-boy
pipes to meditative eye on a penny-whistle.
Love's musical instrument is as old, and as poor: it has but two
stops; and yet, you see, the cunning musician does thus much with
it!
Other speech they have little; light foam playing upon waves of
feeling, and of feeling compact, that bursts only when the sweeping
volume is too wild, and is no more than their sigh of tenderness
spoken.
Perhaps love played his tune so well because their natures had
unblunted edges, and were keen for bliss, confiding in it as natural
food. To gentlemen and ladies he fine-draws upon the viol,
ravishingly; or blows into the mellow bassoon; or rouses the heroic
ardours of the trumpet; or, it may be, commands the whole Orchestra
for them. And they are pleased. He is still the cunning musician.
They languish, and taste ecstasy: but it is, however sonorous, an
earthly concert. For them the spheres move not to two notes. They
have lost, or forfeited and never known, the first supersensual
spring of the ripe senses into passion; when they carry the soul
with them, and have the privileges of spirits to walk disembodied,
boundlessly to feel. Or one has it, and the other is a dead body.
Ambrosia let them eat, and drink the nectar: here sit a couple to
whom Love's simple bread and water is a finer feast.
Pipe, happy sheep-boy, Love! Irradiated angels, unfold your wings
and lift your voices!
They have outflown philosophy. Their instinct has shot beyond the
ken of science. They were made for their Eden.
"And this divine gift was in store for me!"
So runs the internal outcry of each, clasping each: it is their
recurring refrain to the harmonies. How it illumined the years gone
by and suffused the living Future!
"You for me: I for you!"
"We are born for each other!"
They believe that the angels have been busy about them from their
cradles. The celestial hosts have worthily striven to bring them
together. And, O Victory! O wonder! after toil and pain, and
difficulties exceeding, the celestial hosts have succeeded!
"Here we two sit who are written above as one!"
Pipe, happy Love! pipe on to these dear innocents!
The tide of colour has ebbed from the upper sky. In the West the sea
of sunken fire draws back; and the stars leap forth, and tremble,
and retire before the advancing moon, who slips the silver train of
cloud from her shoulders, and, with her foot upon the pine-tops,
surveys heaven.
"Lucy, did you never dream of meeting me?"
"O Richard! yes; for I remembered you."
"Lucy! and did you pray that we might meet?"
"I did!"
Young as when she looked upon the lovers in Paradise, the fair
Immortal journeys onward. Fronting her, it is not night but veiled
day. Full half the sky is flushed. Not darkness, not day, but the
nuptials of the two.
"My own! my own for ever! You are pledged to me? Whisper!"
He hears the delicious music.
"And you are mine?"
A soft beam travels to the fern-covert under the pine-wood where
they sit, and for answer he has her eyes: turned to him an instant,
timidly fluttering over the depths of his, and then downcast; for
through her eyes her soul is naked to him.
"Lucy! my bride! my life!"
The night-jar spins his dark monotony on the branch of the pine. The
soft beam travels round them, and listens to their hearts. Their
lips are locked.
Pipe no more, Love, for a time! Pipe as you will you cannot express
their first kiss; nothing of its sweetness, and of the sacredness of
it nothing. St. Cecilia up aloft, before the silver organ-pipes of
Paradise, pressing fingers upon all the notes of which Love is but
one, from her you may hear it.
So Love is silent. Out in the world there, on the skirts of the
woodland, the self-satisfied sheep-boy delivers a last complacent
squint down the length of his penny-whistle, and, with a flourish
correspondingly awry, he also marches into silence, hailed by
supper. The woods are still. There is heard but the night-jar
spinning on the pine-branch, circled by moonlight.