Lucile Part 23

PART II.

CANTO I.

I.

Hail, Muse! But each Muse by this time has, I know, Been used up, and Apollo has bent his own bow All too long; so I leave una.s.saulted the portal Of Olympus, and only invoke here a mortal.

Hail, Murray!--not Lindley,--but Murray and Son.

Hail, omniscient, beneficent, great Two-in-One!

In Albermarle Street may thy temple long stand!

Long enlighten'd and led by thine erudite hand, May each novice in science nomadic unravel Statistical mazes of modernized travel!

May each inn-keeper knave long thy judgment revere, And the postboys of Europe regard thee with fear; While they feel, in the silence of baffled extortion, That knowledge is power! Long, long, like that portion Of the national soil which the Greek exile took In his baggage wherever he went, may thy book Cheer each poor British pilgrim, who trusts to thy wit Not to pay through his nose just for following it!

May'st thou long, O instructor! preside o'er his way, And teach him alike what to praise and to pay!

Thee, pursuing this pathway of song, once again I invoke, lest, unskill'd, I should wander in vain.

To my call be propitious, nor, churlish, refuse Thy great accents to lend to the lips of my Muse; For I sing of the Naiads who dwell 'mid the stems Of the green linden-trees by the waters of Ems.

Yes! thy spirit descends upon mine, O John Murray!

And I start--with thy book--for the Baths in a hurry.

II.

"At Coblentz a bridge of boats crosses the Rhine; And from thence the road, winding by Ehrenbreitstein, Pa.s.ses over the frontier of Na.s.sua.

("N. B.

No custom-house here since the Zollverein." See Murray, paragraph 30.) "The route, at each turn, Here the lover of nature allows to discern, In varying prospect, a rich wooded dale: The vine and acacia-tree mostly prevail In the foliage observable here: and, moreover, The soil is carbonic. The road, under cover Of the grape-clad and mountainous upland that hems Round this beautiful spot, brings the traveller to--"EMS.

A Schnellpost from Frankfort arrives every day.

At the Kurhaus (the old Ducal mansion) you pay Eight florins for lodgings. A Restaurateur Is attach'd to the place; but most travellers prefer (Including, indeed, many persons of note) To dine at the usual-priced table d'hote.

Through the town runs the Lahn, the steep green banks of which Two rows of white picturesque houses enrich; And between the high road and the river is laid Out a sort of a garden, call'd 'THE Promenade.'

Female visitors here, who may make up their mind To ascend to the top of these mountains, will find On the banks of the stream, saddled all the day long, Troops of donkeys--sure-footed--proverbially strong;"

And the traveller at Ems may remark, as he pa.s.ses, Here, as elsewhere, the women run after the a.s.ses.

III.

'Mid the world's weary denizens bound for these springs In the month when the merle on the maple-bough sings, Pursued to the place from dissimilar paths By a similar sickness, there came to the Baths Four sufferers--each stricken deep through the heart, Or the head, by the self-same invisible dart Of the arrow that flieth unheard in the noon, From the sickness that walketh unseen in the moon, Through this great lazaretto of life, wherein each Infects with his own sores the next within reach.

First of these were a young English husband and wife, Grown weary ere half through the journey of life.

O Nature, say where, thou gray mother of earth, Is the strength of thy youth? that thy womb brings to birth Only old men to-day! On the winds, as of old, Thy voice in its accent is joyous and bold; Thy forests are green as of yore; and thine oceans Yet move in the might of their ancient emotions: But man--thy last birth and thy best--is no more Life's free lord, that look'd up to the starlight of yore, With the faith on the brow, and the fire in the eyes, The firm foot on the earth, the high heart in the skies; But a gray-headed infant, defrauded of youth, Born too late or too early.

The lady, in truth, Was young, fair, and gentle; and never was given To more heavenly eyes the pure azure of heaven.

Never yet did the sun touch to ripples of gold Tresses brighter than those which her soft hand unroll'd From her n.o.ble and innocent brow, when she rose, An Aurora, at dawn, from her balmy repose, And into the mirror the bloom and the blush Of her beauty broke, glowing; like light in a gush From the sunrise in summer.

Love, roaming, shall meet But rarely a nature more sound or more sweet-- Eyes brighter--brows whiter--a figure more fair-- Or lovelier lengths of more radiant hair-- Than thine, Lady Alfred! And here I aver (May those that have seen thee declare if I err) That not all the oysters in Britain contain A pearl pure as thou art.

Let some one explain,-- Who may know more than I of the intimate life Of the pearl with the oyster,--why yet in his wife, In despite of her beauty--and most when he felt His soul to the sense of her loveliness melt-- Lord Alfred miss'd something he sought for: indeed, The more that he miss'd it the greater the need; Till it seem'd to himself he could willingly spare All the charms that he found for the one charm not there.

IV.

For the blessings Life lends us, it strictly demands The worth of their full usufruct at our hands.

And the value of all things exists, not indeed In themselves, but man's use of them, feeding man's need.

Alfred Vargrave, in wedding with beauty and youth, Had embraced both Ambition and Wealth. Yet in truth Unfulfill'd the ambition, and sterile the wealth (In a life paralyzed by a moral ill-health), Had remain'd, while the beauty and youth, unredeem'd From a vague disappointment at all things, but seem'd Day by day to reproach him in silence for all That lost youth in himself they had fail'd to recall.

No career had he follow'd, no object obtain'd In the world by those worldly advantages gain'd From nuptials beyond which once seem'd to appear, Lit by love, the broad path of a brilliant career.

All that glitter'd and gleam'd through the moonlight of youth With a glory so fair, now that manhood in truth Grasp'd and gather'd it, seem'd like that false fairy gold Which leaves in the hand only moss, leaves, and mould!

V.

Fairy gold! moss and leaves! and the young Fairy Bride?

Lived there yet fairy-lands in the face at his side?

Say, O friend, if at evening thou ever hast watch'd Some pale and impalpable vapor, detach'd From the dim and disconsolate earth, rise and fall O'er the light of a sweet serene star, until all The chill'd splendor reluctantly waned in the deep Of its own native heaven? Even so seem'd to creep O'er that fair and ethereal face, day by day, While the radiant vermeil, subsiding away, Hid its light in the heart, the faint gradual veil Of a sadness unconscious.

The lady grew pale As silent her lord grew: and both, as they eyed Each the other askance, turn'd, and secretly sigh'd.

Ah, wise friend, what avails all experience can give?

True, we know what life is--but, alas! do we live?

The grammar of life we have gotten by heart, But life's self we have made a dead language--an art, Not a voice. Could we speak it, but once, as 'twas spoken When the silence of pa.s.sion the first time was broken!

Cuvier knew the world better than Adam, no doubt; But the last man, at best, was but learned about What the first, without learning, ENJOYED. What art thou To the man of to-day, O Leviathan, now?

A science. What wert thou to him that from ocean First beheld thee appear? A surprise,--an emotion!

When life leaps in the veins, when it beats in the heart, When it thrills as it fills every animate part, Where lurks it? how works it?... We scarcely detect it.

But life goes: the heart dies: haste, O leech, and dissect it!

This accursed aesthetical, ethical age Hath so finger'd life's hornbook, so blurr'd every page, That the old glad romance, the gay chivalrous story With its fables of faery, its legends of glory, Is turn'd to a tedious instruction, not new To the children that read it insipidly through.

We know too much of Love ere we love. We can trace Nothing new, unexpected, or strange in his face When we see it at last. 'Tis the same little Cupid, With the same dimpled cheek, and the smile almost stupid, We have seen in our pictures, and stuck on our shelves, And copied a hundred times over, ourselves, And wherever we turn, and whatever we do, Still, that horrible sense of the deja connu!

VI.

Perchance 'twas the fault of the life that they led; Perchance 'twas the fault of the novels they read; Perchance 'twas a fault in themselves; I am bound not To say: this I know--that these two creatures found not In each other some sign they expected to find Of a something unnamed in the heart or the mind; And, missing it, each felt a right to complain Of a sadness which each found no word to explain.

Whatever it was, the world noticed not it In the light-hearted beauty, the light-hearted wit.

Still, as once with the actors in Greece, 'tis the case, Each must speak to the crowd with a mask on his face.

Praise follow'd Matilda wherever she went, She was flatter'd. Can flattery purchase content?

Yes. While to its voice for a moment she listen'd, The young cheek still bloom'd and the soft eyes still glisten'd; And her lord, when, like one of those light vivid things That glide down the gauzes of summer with wings Of rapturous radiance, unconscious she moved Through that buzz of inferior creatures, which proved Her beauty, their envy, one moment forgot, 'Mid the many charms there, the one charm that was not: And when o'er her beauty enraptured he bow'd, (As they turn'd to each other, each flush'd from the crowd,) And murmur'd those praises which yet seem'd more dear Than the praises of others had grown to her ear, She, too, ceased awhile her own fate to regret: "Yes!... he loves me," she sigh'd; "this is love, then--and YET!"

VII.

Ah, that YET! fatal word! 'tis the moral of all Thought and felt, seen or done, in this world since the Fall!

It stands at the end of each sentence we learn; It flits in the vista of all we discern; It leads us, forever and ever, away To find in to-morrow what flies with to-day.

'Twas the same little fatal and mystical word That now, like a mirage, led my lady and lord To the waters of Ems from the waters of Marah; Drooping Pilgrims in Fas.h.i.+on's blank, arid Sahara!

VIII.