I.
"The huntsman has ridden too far on the chase, And eldrich, and eerie, and strange is the place!
The castle betokens a date long gone by.
He crosses the courtyard with curious eye:
He wanders from chamber to chamber, and yet From strangeness to strangeness his footsteps are set;
And the whole place grows wilder and wilder, and less Like aught seen before. Each in obsolete dress, Strange portraits regard him with looks of surprise, Strange forms from the arras start forth to his eyes;
Strange epigraphs, blazon'd, burn out of the wall:
The spell of a wizard is over it all.
In her chamber, enchanted, the Princess is sleeping The sleep which for centuries she has been keeping.
If she smile in her sleep, it must be to some lover Whose lost golden locks the long grasses now cover:
If she moan in her dream, it must be to deplore Some grief which the world cares to hear of no more.
But how fair is her forehead, how calm seems her cheek!
And how sweet must that voice be, if once she would speak!
He looks and he loves her; but knows he (not he!)
The clew to unravel this old mystery?
And he stoops to those shut lips. The shapes on the wall, The mute men in armor around him, and all The weird figures frown, as though striving to say, 'Halt! invade not the Past, reckless child of Today!
And give not, O madman! the heart in thy breast To a phantom, the soul of whose sense is possess'd By an Age not thine own!'
"But unconscious is he, And he heeds not the warning, he cares not to see Aught but ONE form before him!
"Rash, wild words are o'er, And the vision is vanish'd from sight evermore!
And the gray morning sees, as it drearily moves O'er a land long deserted, a madman that roves Through a ruin, and seeks to recapture a dream.
Lost to life and its uses, withdrawn from the scheme Of man's waking existence, he wanders apart."
And this is an old fairy-tale of the heart.
It is told in all lands, in a different tongue;
Told with tears by the old, heard with smiles by the young.
And the tale to each heart unto which it is known Has a different sense. It has puzzled my own.
II.
Eugene de Luvois was a man who, in part From strong physical health, and that vigor of heart Which physical health gives, and partly, perchance, From a generous vanity native to France, With the heart of a hunter, whatever the quarry, Pursued it, too hotly impatient to tarry Or turn, till he took it. His trophies were trifles:
But trifler he was not. When rose-leaves it rifles, No less than when oak-trees it ruins, the wind Its pleasure pursues with impetuous mind.
Both Eugene de Luvois and Lord Alfred had been Men of pleasure: but men's pleasant vices, which, seen Floating faint in the sunshine of Alfred's soft mood, Seem'd amiable foibles, by Luvois pursued With impetuous passion, seemed semi-Satanic.
Half pleased you see brooks play with pebbles; in panic You watch them whirl'd down by the torrent.
In truth, To the sacred political creed of his youth The century which he was born to denied All realization. Its generous pride To degenerate protest on all things was sunk;
Its principles each to a prejudice shrunk.
Down the path of a life that led nowhere he trod, Where his whims were his guides, and his will was his god, And his pastime his purpose.
From boyhood possess'd Of inherited wealth, he had learned to invest Both his wealth and those passions wealth frees from the cage Which penury locks, in each vice of an age All the virtues of which, by the creed he revered, Were to him illegitimate.
Thus, he appear'd To the world what the world chose to have him appear,--
The frivolous tyrant of Fashion, a mere Reformer in coats, cards, and carriages! Still 'Twas the vigor of nature, and tension of will, That found for the first time--perhaps for the last--
In Lucile what they lacked yet to free from the Past, Force, and faith, in the Future.
And so, in his mind, To the anguish of losing the woman was join'd The terror of missing his life's destination, Which in her had its mystical representation.
III.
And truly, the thought of it, scaring him, pass'd O'er his heart, while he now through the twilight rode fast As a shade from the wing of some great bird obscene In a wide silent land may be suddenly seen, Darkening over the sands, where it startles and scares Some traveller stray'd in the waste unawares, So that thought more than once darken'd over his heart For a moment, and rapidly seem'd to depart.
Fast and furious he rode through the thickets which rose Up the shaggy hillside: and the quarrelling crows Clang'd above him, and clustering down the dim air Dropp'd into the dark woods. By fits here and there Shepherd fires faintly gleam'd from the valleys. Oh, how He envied the wings of each wild bird, as now He urged the steed over the dizzy ascent Of the mountain! Behind him a murmur was sent From the torrent--before him a sound from the tracts Of the woodlands that waved o'er the wild cataracts, And the loose earth and loose stones roll'd momently down From the hoofs of his steed to abysses unknown.
The red day had fallen beneath the black woods, And the Powers of the night through the vast solitudes Walk'd abroad and conversed with each other. The trees Were in sound and in motion, and mutter'd like seas In Elfland. The road through the forest was hollow'd.
On he sped through the darkness, as though he were follow'd Fast, fast by the Erl King!
The wild wizard-work Of the forest at last open'd sharp, o'er the fork Of a savage ravine, and behind the black stems Of the last trees, whose leaves in the light gleam'd like gems, Broke the broad moon above the voluminous Rock-chaos,--the Hecate of that Tartarus!
With his horse reeking white, he at last reach'd the door Of a small mountain inn, on the brow of a hoar Craggy promontory, o'er a fissure as grim, Through which, ever roaring, there leap'd o'er the limb Of the rent rock a torrent of water, from sight, Into pools that were feeding the roots of the night.
A balcony hung o'er the water. Above In a glimmering casement a shade seem'd to move.
