But tell me to what saint, I pray,
What martyr, or what angel bright,
Is dedicate this holy day,
Which brings you here so gaily dight?
Dost thou not, simple Palmer, know,
What every child can tell thee here?--
Nor saint nor angel claims this show,
But the bright season of the year.
QUEEN-HOO HALL, BY STRUTT.
“The sole and beautiful inmate of the isle, though disturbed at the
appearance of her worshippers, soon recovered her tranquillity. She
could not be conscious of fear, for nothing of that world in which she
lived had ever borne a hostile appearance to her. The sun and the
shade--the flowers and foliage--the tamarinds and figs that prolonged
her delightful existence--the water that she drank, wondering at the
beautiful being who seemed to drink whenever she did--the peacocks, who
spread out their rich and radiant plumage the moment they beheld
her--and the loxia, who perched on her shoulder and hand as she walked,
and answered her sweet voice with imitative chirpings--all these were
her friends, and she knew none but these.
“The human forms that sometimes approached the island, caused her a
slight emotion; but it was rather that of curiosity than alarm; and
their gestures were so expressive of reverence and mildness, their
offerings of flowers, in which she delighted, so acceptable, and their
visits so silent and peaceful, that she saw them without reluctance, and
only wondered, as they rowed away, how they could move on the water in
safety; and how creatures so dark, and with features so unattractive,
happened to _grow_ amid the beautiful flowers they presented to her as
the productions of their abode. The elements might be supposed to have
impressed her imagination with some terrible ideas; but the periodical
regularity of these phænomena, in the climate she inhabited, divested
them of their terrors to one who had been accustomed to them, as to the
alternation of night and day--who could not remember the fearful
impression of the first, and, above all, who had never heard any terror
of them expressed _by another_,--perhaps the primitive cause of fear in
most minds. Pain she had never felt--of death she had no idea--how,
then, could she become acquainted with fear?
“When a north-wester, as it is termed, visited the island, with all its
terrific accompaniments of midnight darkness, clouds of suffocating
dust, and thunders like the trumpet of doom, she stood amid the leafy
colonnades of the banyan-tree, ignorant of her danger, watching the
cowering wings and drooping heads of the birds, and the ludicrous terror
of the monkies, as they skipt from branch to branch with their young.
When the lightning struck a tree, she gazed as a child would on a
fire-work played off for its amusement; but the next day she wept, when
she saw the leaves would no longer grow on the blasted trunk. When the
rains descended in torrents, the ruins of the pagoda afforded her a
shelter; and she sat listening to the rushing of the mighty waters, and
the murmurs of the troubled deep, till her soul took its colour from the
sombrous and magnificent imagery around her, and she believed herself
precipitated to earth with the deluge--borne downward, like a leaf, by a
cataract--engulphed in the depths of the ocean--rising again to light on
the swell of the enormous billows, as if she were heaved on the back of
a whale--deafened with the roar--giddy with the rush--till terror and
delight embraced in that fearful exercise of imagination. So she lived
like a flower amid sun and storm, blooming in the light, and bending to
the shower, and drawing the elements of her sweet and wild existence
from both. And both seemed to mingle their influences kindly for her, as
if she was a thing that nature loved, even in her angry mood, and gave a
commission to the storm to nurture her, and to the deluge to spare the
ark of her innocence, as it floated over the waters. This existence of
felicity, half physical, half imaginative, but neither intellectual or
impassioned, had continued till the seventeenth year of this beautiful
and mild being, when a circumstance occurred that changed its hue for
ever.
“On the evening of the day after the Indians had departed, Immalee, for
that was the name her votarists had given her, was standing on the
shore, when a being approached her unlike any she had ever beheld. The
colour of his face and hands resembled her own more than those she was
accustomed to see, but his garments, (which were European), from their
square uncouthness, their shapelessness, and their disfiguring
projection about the hips, (it was the fashion of the year 1680), gave
her a mixed sensation of ridicule, disgust, and wonder, which her
beautiful features could express only by a smile--that smile, a _native
of the face_ from which not even surprise could banish it.
“The stranger approached, and the beautiful vision approached also, but
not like an European female with low and graceful bendings, still less
like an Indian girl with her low salams, but like a young fawn, all
animation, timidity, confidence, and cowardice, expressed in almost a
single action. She sprung from the sands--ran to her favourite
tree;--returned again with her guard of peacocks, who expanded their
superb trains with a kind of instinctive motion, as if they felt the
danger that menaced their protectress, and, clapping her hands with
exultation, seemed to invite them to share in the delight she felt in
gazing at the _new flower that had grown in the sand_.
“The stranger advanced, and, to Immalee’s utter astonishment, addressed
her in the language which she herself had retained some words of since
her infancy, and had endeavoured in vain to make her peacocks, parrots,
and loxias, answer her in corresponding sounds. But her language, from
want of practice, had become so limited, that she was delighted to hear
its most unmeaning sounds uttered by human lips; and when he said,
according to the form of the times, “How do you, fair maid?” she
answered, “God made me,” from the words of the Christian Catechism that
had been breathed into her infant lip. “God never made a fairer
creature,” replied the stranger, grasping her hand, and fixing on her
eyes that still burn in the sockets of that arch-deceiver. “Oh yes!”
answered Immalee, “he made many things more beautiful. The rose is
redder than I am--the palm-tree is taller than I am--and the wave is
bluer than I am;--but they all change, and I never change. I have grown
taller and stronger, though the rose fades every six moons; and the rock
splits to let in the bats, when the earth shakes; and the waves fight in
their anger till they turn grey, and far different from the beautiful
colour they have when the moon comes dancing on them, and sending all
the young, broken branches of her light to kiss my feet, as I stand on
the soft sand. I have tried to gather them every night, but they all
broke in my hand the moment I dipt it into water.”--“And have you fared
better with the stars?” said the stranger smiling.--“No,” answered the
innocent being, “the stars are the flowers of heaven, and the rays of
the moon the boughs and branches; but though they are so bright, they
only blossom in the night,--and I love better the flowers that I can
gather, and twine in my hair. When I have been all night wooing a star,
and it has listened and descended, springing downwards like a peacock
from its nest, it has hid itself often afterwards playfully amid the
mangoes and tamarinds where it fell; and though I have searched for it
till the moon looked wan and weary of lighting me, I never could find
it. But where do you come from?--you are not scaly and voiceless like
those who grow in the waters, and show their strange shapes as I sit on
the shore at sun-set;--nor are you red and diminutive like those who
come over the waters to me from other worlds, in houses that can live on
the deep, and walk so swiftly, with their legs plunged in the water.
Where do you come from?--you are not so bright as the stars that live in
the blue sea above me, nor so deformed as those that toss in the darker
sea at my feet. Where did you grow, and how came you here?--there is not
a canoe on the sand; and though the shells bear the fish that live in
them so lightly over the waters, they never would bear me. When I placed
my foot on their scolloped edge of crimson and purple, they sunk into
the sand.”--“Beautiful creature,” said the stranger, “I come from a
world where there are thousands like me.”--“That is impossible,” said
Immalee, “for I live here alone, and other worlds must be like
this.”--“What I tell you is true, however,” said the stranger. Immalee
paused for a moment, as if making the first effort of reflection--an
exertion painful enough to a being whose existence was composed of
felicitous tacts and unreflecting instincts--and then exclaimed, “We
both must have grown in the world of voices, for I know what you say
better than the chirp of the loxia, or the cry of the peacock. That must
be a delightful world where they all speak--what would I give that my
roses grew in the world of answers!”
“At this moment the stranger made certain signals of hunger, which
Immalee understood in a moment, and told him to follow her to where the
tamarind and the fig were shedding their fruit--where the stream was so
clear, you could count the purple shells in its bed--and where she would
scoop for him in the cocoa-shell the cool waters that flowed beneath the
shade of the mango. As they went, she gave him all the information about
herself that she could. She told him that she was the daughter of a
palm-tree, under whose shade she had been first conscious of existence,
but that her poor father had been long withered and dead--that she was
very old, having seen many roses decay on their stalks; and though they
were succeeded by others, she did not love them so well as the first,
which were a great deal larger and brighter--that, in fact, every thing
had grown smaller latterly, for she was now able to reach to the fruit
which formerly she was compelled to wait for till it dropt on the
ground;--but that the water was grown taller, for once she was forced to
drink it on her hands and knees, and now she could scoop it in a
cocoa-shell. Finally, she added, she was much older than the moon, for
she had seen it waste away till it was dimmer than the light of a
fire-fly; and the moon that was lighting them now would decline too, and
its successor be so small, that she would never again give it the name
she had given to the first--Sun of the Night. “But,” said her companion,
“how are you able to speak a language you never learned from your loxias
and peacocks?”--“I will tell you,” said Immalee, with an air of
solemnity, which her beauty and innocence made at once ludicrous and
imposing, and in which she betrayed a slight tendency to that wish to
mystify that distinguishes her delightful sex,--“there came a spirit to
me from the world of voices, and it whispered to me sounds that I never
have forgotten, long, long before I was born.”--“Really?” said the
stranger. “Oh yes!--long before I could gather a fig, or gather the
water in my hand, and that must be before I was born. When I _was_ born,
I was not so high as the rose-bud, at which I tried to catch, now I am
as near the moon as the palm-tree--sometimes I catch her beams sooner
than he does, therefore I must be very old, and very high.” At these
words, the stranger, with an expression indescribable, leaned against a
tree. He viewed that lovely and helpless being, while he refused the
fruits and water she offered him, with a look, that, for the first time,
intimated compassion. The stranger feeling did not dwell long in a
mansion it was unused to. The expression was soon exchanged for that
half-ironical, half-diabolical glance Immalee could not understand. “And
you live here alone,” he said, “and you have lived in this beautiful
place without a companion?”--“Oh no!” said Immalee, “I have a companion
more beautiful than all the flowers in the isle. There is not a
rose-leaf that drops in the river so bright as its cheek. My friend
lives under the water, but its colours are so bright. It kisses me too,
but its lips are very cold; and when I kiss it, it seems to dance, and
its beauty is all broken into a thousand faces, that come smiling at me
like little stars. But, though my friend has a thousand faces, and I
have but one, still there is one thing that troubles me. There is but
one stream where it meets me, and that is where are no shadows from the
trees--and I never can catch it but when the sun is bright. Then when I
catch it in the stream, I kiss it on my knees; but my friend has grown
so tall, that sometimes I wish it were smaller. Its lips spread so much
wider, that I give it a thousand kisses for one that I get.” “Is your
friend male or female,” said the stranger.--“What is that?” answered
Immalee.--“I mean, of what sex is your friend?”
“But to this question he could obtain no satisfactory answer; and it was
not till his return the next day, when he revisited the isle, that he
discovered Immalee’s friend was what he suspected. He found this
innocent and lovely being bending over a stream that reflected her
image, and wooing it with a thousand wild and graceful attitudes of
joyful fondness. The stranger gazed at her for some time, and thoughts
it would be difficult for man to penetrate into, threw their varying
expression over his features for a moment. It was the first of his
intended victims he had ever beheld with compunction. The joy, too, with
which Immalee received him, almost brought back human feelings to a
heart that had long renounced them; and, for a moment, he experienced a
sensation like that of his master when he visited paradise,--pity for
the flowers he resolved to wither for ever. He looked at her as she
fluttered round him with outspread arms and dancing eyes; and sighed,
while she welcomed him in tones of such wild sweetness, as suited a
being who had hitherto conversed with nothing but the melody of birds
and the murmur of waters. With all her ignorance, however, she could not
help testifying her amazement at his arriving at the isle without any
visible means of conveyance. He evaded answering her on this point, but
said, “Immalee, I come from a world wholly unlike that you inhabit, amid
inanimate flowers, and unthinking birds. I come from a world where all,
as I do, think and speak.” Immalee was speechless with wonder and
delight for some time; at length she exclaimed, “Oh, how they must love
each other! even I love my poor birds and flowers, and the trees that
shade, and the waters that sing to me!” The stranger smiled. “In all
that world, perhaps there is not another being beautiful and innocent as
you. It is a world of suffering, guilt, and care.” It was with much
difficulty she was made to comprehend the meaning of these words, but
when she did, she exclaimed, “Oh, that I could live in that world, for I
would make every one happy!”--“But you could not, Immalee,” said the
stranger; “this world is of such extent that it would take your whole
life to traverse it, and, during your progress, you never could be
conversant with more than a small number of sufferers at a time, and the
evils they undergo are in many instances such as you or no human power
could relieve.” At these words, Immalee burst into an agony of tears.
“Weak, but lovely being,” said the stranger, “could your tears heal the
corrosions of disease?--cool the burning throb of a cancered
heart?--wash the pale slime from the clinging lips of famine?--or, more
than all, quench the fire of forbidden passion?” Immalee paused aghast
at this enumeration, and could only faulter out, that wherever she went,
she would bring her flowers and sunshine among the healthy, and they
should all sit under the shade of her own tamarind. That for disease and
death, she had long been accustomed to see flowers wither and die their
beautiful death of nature. “And perhaps,” she added, after a reflective
pause, “as I have often known them to retain their delicious odour even
after they were faded, perhaps _what thinks_ may live too after the form
has faded, and that is a thought of joy.” Of passion, she said she knew
nothing, and could propose no remedy for an evil she was unconscious of.
She had seen flowers fade with the season, but could not imagine why the
flower should destroy itself. “But did you never trace a worm in the
flower?” said the stranger, with the sophistry of corruption. “Yes,”
answered Immalee, “but the worm was not the native of the flower; its
own leaves never could have hurt it.” This led to a discussion, which
Immalee’s impregnable innocence, though combined with ardent curiosity
and quick apprehension, rendered perfectly harmless to her. Her playful
and desultory answers,--her restless eccentricity of imagination,--her
keen and piercing, though ill-poised intellectual weapons,--and, above
all, her instinctive and unfailing _tact_ in matters of right and wrong,
formed altogether an array that discomfited and baffled the tempter more
than if he had been compelled to encounter half the _wranglers_ of the
European academies of that day. In the logic of the schools he was
well-versed, but in this logic of the heart and of nature, he was
“ignorance itself.” It is said, that the “awless lion” crouches before
“a maid in the pride of her purity.” The tempter was departing gloomily,
when he saw tears start from the bright eyes of Immalee, and caught a
wild and dark omen from her innocent grief. “And you weep, Immalee?”
“Yes,” said the beautiful being, “I always weep when I see the sun set
in clouds; and will you, the sun of my heart, set in darkness too? and
will you not rise again? will you not?” and, with the graceful
confidence of pure innocence, she pressed her red delicious lip to his
hand as she spoke. “Will you not? I shall never love my roses and
peacocks if you do not return, for they cannot speak to me as you do,
nor can I give them one thought, but you can give me many. Oh, I would
like to have many thoughts about _the world that suffers_, from which
you came; and I believe you came from it, for, till I saw you, I never
felt a pain that was not pleasure; but now, it is all pain when I think
you will not return.”--“I will return,” said the stranger, “beautiful
Immalee, and will shew you, at my return, a glimpse of that world from
which I come, and in which you will soon be an inmate.”--“But shall I
see you there,” said Immalee, “otherwise how shall I _talk
thoughts_?”--“Oh yes,--oh certainly.”--“But why do you repeat the same
words twice; _your once_ would have been enough.”--“Well then,
yes.”--“Then take this rose from me, and let us inhale its odour
together, as I say to my friend in the fountain, when I bend to kiss
_it_; but my friend withdraws _its_ rose before I have tasted it, and I
leave mine on the water. Will you not take my rose,” said the beautiful
suppliant, bending towards him. “I will,” said the stranger; and he took
a flower from the cluster Immalee held out to him. It was a withered
one. He snatched it, and hid it in his breast. “And will you go without
a canoe across that dark sea?” said Immalee.--“We shall meet again, and
meet in the _world of suffering_,” said the stranger.--“Thank you,--oh,
thank you,” repeated Immalee, as she saw him plunge fearless amid the
surf. The stranger answered only, “We shall meet again.” Twice, as he
parted, he threw a glance at the beautiful and isolated being; a
lingering of humanity trembled round his heart,--but he tore the
withered rose from his bosom, and to the waved arm and angel-smile of
Immalee, he answered, “We shall meet again.”