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RHODANTHE 
 
 OB 
 
 THE ROSE IN THE GARDEN OF THE 
 SOUL'S DELIGHT 
 
RHODANTHE 
 
 OR 
 
 THE ROSE IN THE GARDEN OF THE 
 SOUL'S DELIGHT 
 
 A POETIC FANTASY 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES LOUIS PALMS 
 
 THE MARION PRESS 
 
 JAMAICA QUEENSBOROUGH NEW YORK 
 
 MCMXVII 
 

 Copyright, 1917, by Charles Louis Palms 
 All rights reserved 
 
 MAY -8 1317 
 ©CU460641 
 
TO 
 
 C.C. 
 
RHODANTHE 
 
 OR 
 
 THE ROSE IN THE GARDEN OF THE 
 SOUL'S DELIGHT 
 
 Est rosa flos Veneris. 
 
 Old Latin Ode. 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 SPRING, in her flowered amice, and her wreath 
 Of Mary-buds had come to town ! Beneath 
 The rosy palms of her white feet, Love strewed 
 Aurora's tears shed for her son; and wooed 
 Was she by sweet sequestered quires of birds: 
 For she had lingered long away, and words 
 Heavened in music, from glad planes and pines, 
 Hailed her from Hiems crowned in the Apennines! 
 The morning-stars had sung her, as of yore 
 At her nativity, and Sol his floor 
 Celestial paven had with brilliancies 
 Unparagoned, to show his ecstasies 
 At her enthronement. 'Twas a day earth smiled, 
 
2 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 At last, as one will after months beguiled 
 By weary winter's rueful frowns. — And now 
 The holiday was over, and from her brow 
 Engarlanded the buds are soon untressed; 
 And lullabied with carollings, at rest 
 She lies in Nature's loving arms, — to sleep 
 The night, — and wistful flowers 'gin to weep. 
 
 Night — with what dark magic dost thou thrill 
 The universal heart! How all is still! 
 Day's motley train hath fled the cypress-gloom, 
 And guardian-silence of thy ghostly tomb; 
 Softly old Arno toward his sea-home creeps; 
 Softly the moonbeam o'er his bosom leaps; 
 Fair 'mid her Tuscan hill-crowns Florence sleeps. 
 All, all is hushed, and fairies in their rings, 
 Give way to sorceries and weird ministerings ; 
 Poets, and Singers, Sages mock pale Death, — 
 And even as if their souls stalked forth in stealth 
 To wander free, the air surcharged, teems 
 With inspiration. So, at least, it seems 
 To me, as woe-distraught, I walk alone, 
 My shadow and myself attuned as one, 
 Along Lung' Arno. 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOLUS DELIGHT 
 
 Many a time and oft, 
 Wooing Urania, in the heavenly loft 
 Pavilioned, I, in contemplation rapt, 
 Had roamed the storied streets of Florence, lapped 
 In flowers, — "The Beautiful;" — to wend my way 
 To Rosamund's garden-close, which 'long the kay 
 Of Arno trailed its glories, wreathed in bays. 
 To Rosamund I would fly, as elfish rays 
 Back to their sun return; and all the world 
 Echoed with song! But now, alas, impearled 
 In tears, the song is voiceless; and for weeks 
 The flowers hide their dew-bedabbled cheeks, 
 When I among them walk, — for my dear love 
 Is dead. Ah! now no more the sheen of dove 
 Is on the dawn; no more her sister-flowers 
 Wondrously watch her, as in beauty she towers 
 Among them: none shall succor them; instead, 
 They, too, alas, must die. Thy purple head, 
 Poor foolish Columbine, shall droop and pine; 
 Ye Gales, fond Gilliflowers, Sops-in-Wine, 
 That in my Shepherd's Calendar did mark 
 Love's seasons, — now your days shall all be dark; 
 For your fair mistress is forever gone! 
 To water you to life my tears alone 
 
4 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Shall flow! Ah, empty, dull to me life's shore! 
 The woman that I love lights now no more 
 With her effulgent radiance the earth! 
 We could not hold her spirit of heavenly birth; 
 So pink and white — so like a flower grown, 
 She faded ere the summer buds had blown: 
 And all the nightingales sat hushed and lone. 
 
 Blue as the gentians fringed were her bright eyes, 
 Mocking the azure smiles of April's skies; 
 Her lips, curled rose-buds, kissed by Summer's rain, 
 Parting, exhaled a breath of sweets Hyblaean; 
 Her tresses glowed like hearts of marigold, 
 Full-bared to heaven, Apollo to enfold; 
 Her lily-hand — how cold in mine it stole! 
 How veined blue the lids! — where once her soul 
 Enskied, shone with its pure and earthless love: — 
 They bore her beauteous body to the grove 
 Of weeping yews, and 'fore a graven pile 
 They left me mourning o'er her vanished smile; 
 To envy those on whom the crystal wells 
 Of her celestial love, where now she dwells. 
 
 Into the garden-close I wander, dreary — 
 0, ne'er had I so felt the spell of mystery 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 
 
 O'erhanging its deserted ruins! — tree 
 
 And flower trembled paly, — suddenly, 
 
 My heart benumbed is seized with fearful awe 
 
 Of ominous expectation, doubt: I saw 
 
 The earth grow dark; the moon o'ercast; the dirge 
 
 I heard of dying winds; and, then, the surge 
 
 Of air that breathed of Afric's sands, so arid, 
 
 I stifle, — stumble — helpless to have parried 
 
 My fall: but, haply, on a carved seat, 
 
 Which once in Cyprus had adorned the sweet, 
 
 Recessed temple of the flower-faced queen 
 
 Of love and beauty, — sconced now in a screen 
 
 Of her soft myrtles, — measure I my length; 
 
 My heart surceased in dreamful swoon of strength 
 
 To flutter — and I knew no more. — 
 
 How long 
 Thus prone I lay, bound in the ebon thong 
 Unconsciousness, I wot not, — ere I seemed 
 To hear the Duomo toll — perhaps I dreamed — 
 Slowly the midnight hour, the trysting-time 
 Of fairy folk; — and, then, the distant chime 
 Of an unearthly music lulled my being 
 To rhapsody, with mystic urge of seeing 
 Beyond the veil, — as though life's golden motes 
 
6 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Dissolved in crystal suns, — as though those notes 
 Of distilled sweetness, new to my poor ears, 
 Soothed all my senses with delicious fears, 
 Disquieting, yet desired. Now, by minions 
 Viewless, I 'm lifted, as on airy pinions, 
 Athwart the soft ambrosial air; then pales 
 My glooming world, as if night's starless scales 
 Had fallen from my lidded eyes; and lo! 
 In tranced amazement breathlessly I glow, 
 Before the dazzling scene unfolded: I hood 
 Mine eyes so startling is the sight! 
 
 I stood 
 Within a portico of porphyry 
 And gold, bewildering as the vistaed sky; 
 With myriad aisles of Doric colonnades, 
 And wondrous flights of stairs with balustrades 
 Of carved Pentelic, — at the river's edge 
 Ending, amid pale lily-pads and sedge. 
 Paven it was with jades, and marbles white 
 As Pindus, and in oceans bathed of light 
 Celestial; scarves and delicatest screens 
 Of Tyrian silks in melting hues, warm greens, 
 Cerulean, rose, — across the columns pendant, — 
 Seek the amorous smiles to veil of the ascendant, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 
 
 And golden-throned Phoebus, from bevies fair 
 Of lovely nymphs, and Dryads, dazzling, rare, 
 Of archful grace, that 'round me rhythmic dance; 
 Strewing crushed petals at my feet, with glance 
 Deep-reverent; while their sylph-like bodies sway 
 To music of Arcadian Pan, who, gay 
 Enwreathed his horned poll, I, now, behold 
 With 's merry crew, 'mid emblems of the wold, 
 A-piping on his reeds, as 't were a dream 
 Of sighing for poor Syrinx in the stream. 
 Where'er I look rise temple-crowned mountains; 
 While airy sunlight plays on crystal fountains 
 Of sweet Castalian springs; in peaceful hopes 
 The nestling villas gleam 'mid vine-clad slopes, 
 And hanging-gardens like the Hesperides; 
 And nymphs disporting in the groves one sees, 
 Amid the checkered shade, as if an age 
 Of old had strayed out of its Sapphic page; 
 Whilst like the lutings of a mourning-dove, — 
 As though its nature is to vainly love, — 
 A gentle river murmuringly laves 
 The cold white marbles of the wharf; its waves, 
 Its bosom, heaving for the blue Aegean, 
 Haply, — but still it faithful stays to preen, 
 
8 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 And shimmeringly mirror in its breast, 
 
 The skies, the fields — each villa's verdant nest. 
 
 And whilst I drink in wonder-draughts the scene, 
 A comely youth, his soft sweet airs I ween 
 Patrician-born, and 'tired for some feast 
 Lucullian, bows me low, as would the least 
 Plebeian, — Roman, Greek, I wot not which; 
 Then links mine arm, and saith, in accents rich 
 With human melody, more Lesbian 
 Than Latian: "All hail, good friend! upon 
 The hour thou 'rt here betimes ; I pray thee, pardon 
 Our tryst belated; those that honor thee, 
 The blessings of the foam-born Deity 
 Of Gardens and of Flowers waited. Lo! 
 They come, to wish auspicious winds will blow 
 For thee, Zephyrus, to his Flora dear." 
 In sooth, even as he spoke, from far and near, 
 Troops in a pageant, brave and beautiful: 
 Cherub-faced children, tender, fanciful 
 As Cupid looked at seven; damsels fresh 
 For merry-making, in whose smilets' mesh 
 Shy swains had fallen, but that matrons, staid 
 As Vesta, shadow them, and thus dissuade 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 9 
 
 The amorous sport; youths, fair of hair and lithe, 
 
 With sheaves of golden corn; and maidens blithe, 
 
 Loaden with osiers piled with mellowest fruits, 
 
 With nard and incense and sweet-smelling roots; 
 
 Some with the Naiad's trophy, Plenty's horn; 
 
 Shepherds with crooks, and Shepherdesses born 
 
 To featly dight a meadow's daisied lawn; 
 
 Ceres herself, in cloud-wrapt chariot drawn, 
 
 Her raven tresses pranked with scarlet poppies; 
 
 Vertumnus, god of orchards, too, his eyes 
 
 Ogling askance the luscious grapes his wife 
 
 Pomona 'fore him dangles for his strife. 
 
 But midst the crowd, of all the cynosure, 
 
 Are dainty maidens, rosy, lily-pure — 
 
 Belike a dozen — who seem from the skies 
 
 To have dropped, — else hath some god bewitched mine eyes! 
 
 Truly they sway about like lovely flowers; 
 
 Their dewy kirtles fresh from April showers; 
 
 With smiles and tears bright on their cheeks, all dimpled 
 
 Fair divine; in gold and crimson whimpled, 
 
 With azure eyes — . But flower-beings to walk, 
 
 To nod, to bow, and chirrup on their stalk, 
 
 Like magpies! — 'tis, indeed, incredulous! 
 
 And I do pinch myself half-querulous 
 
10 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 With pain — and still in wonder take the truth: 
 
 Content to think, here 's "Dian's Bud," forsooth; 
 
 "Love-in-the-Mist," and "Love-in-Idleness," 
 
 Pale Primrose, and eke "Eyebright" — in their dress 
 
 Of cerule radiance, — rose, and pink, and lily — 
 
 Flower-beings, truly, willy-nilly! 
 
 So let my seeing and belief concur. 
 
 "Is 't holiday in high Olympus, sir?" 
 I ask my Ganymede. With gentle purr, 
 He smiles, "Be patient" — so my qualms I smother. 
 The throngers greet me as they would a brother; 
 Their voices' soft susurrus lulls the breeze, 
 Like buzzing exodus of honey bees. 
 Warmly I am "All hailed!" as Caesar might be; 
 As one beloved and by the Thunderer rightly 
 High-favored; — but not knowing why or how, 
 I stammer words I scarce remember now. 
 Around me all the multitude foregathers; 
 Modelled to sons by patriarchal fathers, — 
 To mothers loom I as a future son. 
 The music waxes to its diapason; 
 Whilst in a weirder, wilder beauty has burst 
 The Corybantic dance. Now, whereas erst 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 11 
 
 No cloud appeared to mirth, a parting note 
 
 Of poignant sadness I divine afloat 
 
 Upon the air; though laugh the ruddy lips, 
 
 The eyes in tears, the heart in sorrow grips, 
 
 Whispering "Addio": as though this heavenly expanse 
 
 Of scene the crowd is loth to leave — perchance, 
 
 Fore'er, — this spot of earth supremely lovely. 
 
 Its reason I inquire, — but, hurriedly, 
 My Sphinx-like friend has gained the river-side; 
 I dog his deer-swift steps, all Argus-eyed, — 
 When, curiously, the air with pungent sweetness 
 O'erpowers me; and, with a lightning fleetness, 
 My senses whirl from Lethe-draughts drunk deep: — 
 And as in Lotus-dreams of rose-stoled sleep, 
 Visions of airy splendors rise, I see, 
 As in a magic mirror of ancientry, 
 In diamond mist of sunlight all a-quiver, 
 Loom up upon the bosom of the river, 
 An iris-lovely, fairy- vessel ! lit 
 With rippling smiles the waters herald it; 
 It glides along like Leda with a grace 
 Ineffable; ay, fancy seems apace 
 To riot, for 't now appears a Flower-ship, 
 
12 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Or some aerial garden in the slip 
 
 Of river floating, as if through some rift, 
 
 An isle of Paradise had run adrift. 
 
 Engarlanded are mast and poop and prow, 
 With blooms that had made Tempe blush and bow, 
 Her shows out-miracled, — and mine eyes confuse, 
 With tints the rainbow's iridescent hues 
 Had mocked in vain, — from vermeil dew-lipped rose, 
 To sweetest woodland violet that grows; 
 To tender, twining, scented eglantine; 
 To all earth's myriad buds, bright, hyaline, — 
 Jewels, like stars, that deck her day and night, 
 Making a heaven for man's dear delight! 
 All these blaze forth enpanoplied in glory, 
 Beyond the wildest dreams of rhyme or story: 
 The flaming creepers trellis o'er the shrouds; 
 Pale clematis, in soft purpureal clouds, 
 O'ercanopies the decks in sombre moods; 
 The benches twined with love-knots of the woods; 
 And all the dripping oars, with rare peach-blossom 
 Enwreathed, from the riches, which embosom 
 The river, filch pure gems of orient pearls 
 And opalescent drops, — the flower- whorls 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 13 
 
 Bedighting with a sweet reflected beauty. — 
 
 The dream-boat 's steered by hands invisibly; 
 
 It stops, — and, to my awful wonderment, 
 
 As if by Hermes' magic disenthralment, 
 
 The vessel with enchanted life doth seem 
 
 In multi-colored loveliness to teem: 
 
 She docks; lo, cables long of pied and streaked 
 
 Convolvulus are cast ashore, and eked 
 
 Full taut to bind her fast; the spiced air 
 
 Lulls me to poppy-slumber; dimly I hear 
 
 Faint tristful "Fare-thee-wells," and blushing kisses 
 
 Swift stolen, as, alas, all earthly blisses! 
 
 My Mentor claps my shoulder, and, ere I 
 
 Can find my wildered tongue, or even sigh 
 
 Amazement free — I 'm on the bark; then, Pan 
 
 And 's crew, still piping, follow to a man ; 
 
 Then all the nymphs, and dancing Dryads too, 
 
 Sweet lads and lassies, and the entire crew. 
 
 They jostle, jest; they laugh, they sing together; 
 Now they are off, tears stanched — they 're in fine feather! 
 So on our earth had ordinary mortals done, — 
 These, rarer spirits of a sphere Elysian, 
 Ethereal! But, where'er emotion springs, 
 
14 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 The notes of heaven or earth sweep o'er Life's strings, 
 
 With music of the self -same sweet alluring! — 
 
 A joyous shout! The vessel slips her mooring, 
 
 And as a star had fled 'fore Phaeton's fire, 
 
 It swiftly steals away. I scarce suspire, 
 
 From whelming sense of mystery and awe, 
 
 At every Nature's nice inexorable law 
 
 Ruthless sub versed: yet is there no ado 
 
 Or dissonance; the noiseless, unseen crew, 
 
 Clamber the shrouds, I trow, for sails upsoar; 
 
 With rhythmic cadence swings the impatient oar; 
 
 And languorously o'er the water's blue we ride, 
 
 The while the living Flowers strangely glide, 
 
 Like fairies through a garden fair. Commands 
 
 From wreathed conch-shells sound, and all the hands 
 
 Speed on its way the bark with soft acclaims 
 
 Of joy. Now on the air there fall sweet names, 
 
 Of Basil, Amaryllis, Asphodel, — 
 
 As though they meet and kiss 'neath love's old spell, — 
 
 Of Lotis, Rosemary and Daffodil, 
 
 Mingled with honeyed sighs that haunt me still. 
 
 "Who are these blessed beings?" from my guide 
 
 Enlightenment I seek, — "and whither ride 
 
 We now away?" Proudly the youth towers: 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 15 
 
 "Our craft is making for the Isle of Flowers, 
 
 Where Flora dwells, fair Goddess Crystalline; 
 
 And these are subjects of her realm benign," 
 
 He saith, "all happily homeward bound, you see; 
 
 They 're from a pilgrimage in Araby, 
 
 Their perfume-bearing school, — to breathe full-blown 
 
 The incense of their souls before the throne 
 
 Of Flora, in her servitude and love; 
 
 Some from the Isle to greet them hither rove: 
 
 Thou saw'st, too, gods and genii of the grove, 
 
 Of fields and gardens and the sacred fount; 
 
 Ay, deities of the high Thessalian Mount, 
 
 Come bid them long farewell upon the ways; 
 
 From Ceres to the simplest of the fays; 
 
 The dew of tears did mutely witness there, 
 
 That parting home was easier to bear, 
 
 Than longings nourished for the Flowery Isle. — " 
 
 With this, across the empurpled deep somewhile 
 
 He pointed, — for we now, unconsciously, 
 
 Had entered Neptune's wider realm the sea: 
 
 "Behold yon golden parapets, where gleam 
 
 The farewell kisses, Phoebus, in his dream 
 
 Of dying, lingeringly lavishes 
 
 Upon the closing day, and ravishes 
 
16 RHQDANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 The eye with beauty, — there doth lie the Land 
 Of Flowers, and there, the Goddess Flora's wand 
 Enchanting, Nature charms with loving yoke: 
 And when the sable Leto's star-woven cloak 
 Enfolds the world, and tired mortals sleep, 
 Her Flower-Pixies zone the earth, and sweep, 
 And gardens dight from Indus to the poles; 
 And fright away the cankers, slugs, and moles; 
 While Flower-Elves brush hoar-rime from each rose, 
 And 'gainst the frost the rash corollas close; 
 And when the blue-bells swing full airily, — 
 Though thou couldst not detect their harmony 
 Exquisite, when they tell the midnight hour, — 
 The spirits troop from every lovely Flower 
 Being asleep, and wander hill and dell 
 Delectable of earth, to briefly dwell 
 With their terrestrial brethren; and then, 
 In Flora's kingdom death seems in the ken 
 Of all; the soul-less Flowers droop their heads; 
 The blenched hue of dissolution spreads 
 Over their rosy petals; and their perfume 
 Wanes on the air, until, with faint illume, 
 Aurora, blushing paly as she rises 
 From false amours of Cephalus, surprises 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 17 
 
 The slumbering world: then, all the shadowy throng 
 To their coronas hie themselves headlong, 
 Ere day's proclaimed. 
 
 "And for that thou hast lost 
 Thy lady fair, — who dear the starry host 
 Of earth cherished, so that they thrilled in bloom 
 Unparagoned, and from her teeming womb 
 Burst forth in winged splendor unsurpassed, — 
 As guerdon of her true-love tears, thou wast 
 Vouchsafed by Flora, Goddess Argentine. 
 The keys unto her City Palatine, — 
 A gift to mortals never yet accorded: 
 There shalt thou find in foison thee afforded, 
 Surcease of every sorrow and despite; 
 And sipping Hybla's honey of delight, 
 Live, learn and love anew." Thus spake the youth; 
 And as I gazed, the silvery veil, insooth, 
 Of spangly moonbeams, which bright Cynthia trails 
 Over the rippling waters, swathes our sails; 
 And one by one the lamps of heaven are trimmed, 
 That carols by the seraphs may be hymned 
 To daisied Night in adoration: — 
 And as we near our destination, 
 Nereids from out the pearly waters rise, 
 
18 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Languidly swaying in liquid lullabies 
 Upon the listless undulating sea; 
 Haply, they come to greet us, for I see 
 Some bearing odorous garlands, others ropes 
 Of blossoms, corals, magic heliotropes, 
 By the Hours weaved; these to our vessel's side 
 They gaily fasten; faster on we glide, 
 Midst merry laughing songs of such as roam 
 No more afar — soon warmly welcomed home. 
 Now in the phosphor-gleaming waves disport 
 The playful dolphins; and all Neptune's court 
 In amorous retinue charms us in to port; 
 Cygnets and snow-white swans, beloved by 
 The Paphian goddess-queen, glide gracefully 
 Along the sacred shore, as we draw nigh; 
 Whilst Triton's winding horn with melody 
 Floodeth the night. And now, at last, we plough 
 Our latest furrow, and on our curved prow 
 Light Cupid's doves, by his fond mother sent, 
 To augur our safe harborage and advent. 
 
 Now on the bark the wild'st confusion reigns, 
 As there loom up before our eyes, the fanes 
 Enchanting, towers of gracefulness supreme, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 19 
 
 And golden gates, of what to me doth seem, 
 
 Some fabled Island of Atlantis blest; 
 
 Or an Elysium by Pindar tressed 
 
 In tender lays of lyric tunefulness, — 
 
 So ravishing its faery loveliness ! 
 
 Its multitudinous temples, mosques; its domes, 
 
 Pale rose and hyacinthine glowing, poems 
 
 In Parian marbles, — which in sacred fire 
 
 Apollo might have conjured up with 's lyre, 
 
 As he did Troy, — are maze-like even to tire 
 
 Imagination, and had fancy wronged. 
 
 Its quays, paved with Carrara's snows, are thronged; 
 
 To the water's edge the populace hath strayed, 
 
 In all its silks and damasks fine arrayed; 
 
 While dancing nymphs, and maids, and Coryphees, 
 
 With dulcet voices sing melodious lays, 
 
 To dreamy music of the lulling lute-string, 
 
 And sway my soul to ecstasy! They ring 
 
 Sweet silver bells, and with resounding cheers, 
 
 Regreet us newly, till my wildered ears, 
 
 Wondrously thrilled with sounds of kissing cymbals, 
 
 With beating of the throbbing drums and timbrels — 
 
 Make me to close mine eyes in dreamful flight 
 
 Of dying midst such languorous delight ! 
 
20 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Whilst my rapt soul in heaven seems to wake, 
 To me the Hermes of my voyage spake: 
 "Thou 'rt tenfold honored, mortal, for, behold, 
 Without the city gates of beaten gold, 
 Flora, the Goddess Opaline, appears 
 In stately palanquin enthroned; and peers, 
 Princesses, nobles, all her august court 
 Contains of beauty, wealth, as her escort, 
 To meet thee by the water-side. Her lord, 
 The gentle Zephyr, by whom the queen 's adored, — 
 Though now abroad he haply seeks to assuage 
 The boisterous Aeolus's spluttering rage, — 
 Yet wafted was our vessel to Flora's feet, 
 By 's plaintive sighing for his mistress sweet." 
 And, verily, the scene with splendor shone! 
 Too swift the dizzy flight to Helicon 
 For my poor muse's moth-like wings ! Too well, 
 This pomp and pageantry processional, 
 Which pours upon the ways and lines the strand, 
 For glittering miles it seems where I must land, 
 I fear may prove some bright mirage, some vision, 
 Inveigling my wild fancy past volition! 
 Not in dream-fabrics, fairy-born, or gnome; 
 Not in the golden days of Greece or Rome, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 21 
 
 Was half this glory seen — ay, ne'er before! 
 I trembling gaze upon that heavenly shore, 
 While mists of happy tears, bright from the fount 
 Pierian of pure joy, do silverly mount, 
 Suffusing all mine eyes; and cheeks bepaint 
 With briny runlets. With emotions faint, 
 Succumbs my spirit in its ardent flame: 
 I hear the wondrous multitude acclaim 
 Their queen, and marvel at the royal visit 
 I am vouchsafed. 
 
 With snugness exquisite, 
 Our flower-bark within her island berth 
 Lays up her fragrant beauty; and, to earth 
 Safely consigned, we leave her friendly deck. 
 I 'm led away, with steps that scarcely reck 
 Their path, by Flora's proud ambassadors, 
 Appointed to my care: each one adores 
 Some Lady-Flower fair, and slyly mourned 
 Attendance on her; each one is adorned 
 In glittering livery of his Queen, — unstinted 
 Their poppy-scarlet, thymy-purple, tinted 
 Pansy-hues, and warmest sylvan greens; 
 Accompanying them in cowslip-yellow sheens, 
 
22 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 With rubies flecked, are tiny elves. We pass 
 O'er three-piled blossoms and sweet smelling grass, 
 Softer than rugs of Persian looms; apace 
 With us, fair virgins clothed in Hebe's grace, 
 Lute-voiced, strew rosy chaplets in our way. 
 Forthwith to Flora I my homage pay: 
 Four giant Nubians — ebon columns — stay 
 Her litter downy-light, which, at a sign 
 Of her fair lily-hand, they slow recline 
 Upon the enriched earth. The Goddess lifts 
 The jealous veil her beauty hides, as rifts 
 Disparting in the clouds disclose fair heaven: 
 
 Deity divine! bliss! and leaven 
 Ambrosial of life's melancholiness ! 
 High majesty! Empyreal loveliness! 
 And yet, withal, what woman's tenderness 
 Exhaleth from those eyes of starry shine! 
 Half -blinded, kneel I down as 'fore a shrine; 
 
 1 kiss her rosy finger-tips; she smiles; 
 The rays of April's daisies, in their wiles 
 Bedazzling, are not whiter than those pearls 
 Bejewelling her bud-pink mouth; two worlds 
 Of blue her eyes; two dewy violets 
 
 The lids; the lashes' fringed-curtain lets 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 23 
 
 Out languid lights; her damask cheeks aglow, 
 Are rosy-petals fallen on the snow; 
 Her red lips laugh to scorn the poppy blow; 
 And fields of golden daffodils in spring, 
 Shifting their hues as in the breeze they swing, 
 Flaunt not such glorious tones as can compare, 
 With the abounding sunshine of her wavy hair; 
 The fragrant curls in tangled masses 'scape 
 Entrancingly adown the neck's white nape, 
 Disdaining their confining crown, which Mars 
 Had envied — set with jewels like the stars. 
 
 I stood bewildered in her awesome presence; 
 But having made my deep obeisance, 
 The Goddess bids me rise; with gentle wave, 
 Motions her page, a clove-pink little knave, — 
 Who on a pearl-embossed cushion holds 
 The fairy key of vines and leaved scrolls, 
 Which opes the doors of her enchanting isle. 
 This sweetly she presents to me — the while 
 Blushing, I stammer, "0 your Majesty, 
 This honor, — " but, full feat and graciously, 
 Dismisses she my proffered gratitude, 
 Pointing to where four stalwart slaves, bronze-hued, 
 
24 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 With skins of pard slung 'cross their shoulders nude, 
 
 Awaited me, beside a sedan-chair 
 
 Of sandal-wood, and ivory carvings rare, 
 
 Inlaid with precious Indian pearls. Her sweet 
 
 Behest obey I, and accept the seat 
 
 Tendered to me; straightway, I 'm borne aloft 
 
 Amid huzzas; reclining on the soft 
 
 Beflowered satin, I nod the admiring throng: 
 
 It is a signal for a burst of song, 
 
 And Lydian music, and the glittering train 
 
 In martial pomp moves on. Full soon, we gain 
 
 The city gate 'fore which I gape amazed! 
 
 'Tis intertwined wistaria, gold-emblazed; 
 
 Hand-forged the blossoms in enamelled hues, 
 
 So living beautiful, one cannot choose 
 
 But tempt to pluck them; 'mid the entwining vines 
 
 Innumerous exotic birds, whose color blinds, 
 
 Seem on the wing, as in an aviary fair 
 
 Of trelised gold, and weave the screen with rare 
 
 Refulgence. 'T is the wonder-work, weird, vast, 
 
 Of gnomic artisans. A sennet's blast, 
 
 Silverly prolonged, enthrills the silence; lo, 
 
 The gate with sudden instinct opens slow, 
 
 And with a magic musical, upon 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 25 
 
 Its hinges; then anew we hasten on. 
 
 Triumphantly we enter Flora's walls, 
 
 Whose garden-esplanade at once enthrals 
 
 The eye, — where flowers, which should their vigils keep 
 
 Seem now to hang their heavy heads in sleep; 
 
 But as we pass, they lift their tired petals, 
 
 And sigh so, that a shower of perfume falls 
 
 Upon 's, and I, well-nigh of sweetest pain 
 
 Expire. 
 
 Now, once within the flowery domain, — 
 Ah, then the o'erwhelming beauty of the scene 
 With planetary force compounds to wean 
 The mind from sense. I see, as in a dream, 
 What oft I dreamed to see, but dared not deem 
 My fortunate stars would lift these mortal clods: 
 In sooth, a faery-city of the gods; 
 With fanes to Ceres raised, where orisons 
 Besiege fond Nature's ear; with Pantheons, 
 Where Flower-Heroes live immortalized; 
 With noble aqueducts ambrosialized 
 By crystal streams from Arethusa bright; 
 With isles enflowered, and sunken gardens dight; 
 With palaces of ivory and gold, 
 
26 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Outrivalling the Acropolis tenfold, 
 
 Or temples famed, which o'er Tarpeia sheer, 
 
 By Tiber's banks, eternal heads uprear. 
 
 Softly o'er all the opal moonlight stole; 
 
 And chastely as the bridal gloriole 
 
 It glowed, which Gaea, the tender virgin, wore, 
 
 When she to Heaven was wed: and rising o'er 
 
 The luminous mists that wreathe the encircling hills, 
 
 The glistering columns, domes, and towers, guilds, 
 
 And mansionries of carved Pentelic 'pear 
 
 Kissing the clouds, or melting in the clear 
 
 Star-galaxies above, so that one wondered, 
 
 Where heaven 'gan or earth; or, if dissundered, 
 
 Then 't was a faery-city, part celestial ; 
 
 Some Master-builder's dream imperishable; 
 
 Where stone on stone, in strange harmonious desire, 
 
 Had reared themselves in beauty, whilst on 's lyre 
 
 Amphion sang in ecstasied delight. 
 
 We wander on as in the meads of light, — 
 As in Elysium, where live the blest; 
 And all is hushed and in devotional rest, 
 As though the sanctity of beauty moves 
 The soul to inward worship, and to loves 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 27 
 
 Too sempiternal for ephemeral hours; 
 
 Save that from nodding fields of ghostly flowers, 
 
 There faintly falls upon the ear the drone 
 
 Of insects, as they chant in monotone 
 
 Their vesper-songs; and, ever and anon, 
 
 Blithe Philomel, to her pomegranate gone, 
 
 Seeking her love, but finds her flown, — too late, — 
 
 In liquid golden notes calls to her mate, 
 
 Thrilling the veil of night with melody! 
 
 Thou carolling spirit of love! Call'st thou to me? 
 
 bliss, fore'er to linger 'mong the flowers, 
 
 One's only friends, nor feel the pain that lowers 
 
 The brow into each dark and wrinkled line! 
 
 Here perfect truth, and love, and duty shine; 
 
 In sun-blazed raiment of Hyperion, 
 
 Frightening the soul with loveliness, or spun 
 
 In mazeful kirtles, and in starry shoon, — 
 
 Or simple silvery livery of the moon; 
 
 Here beauty never dies — 't is spring alway; 
 
 Death is unknown, or blight, or winter's fray, 
 
 Aeolian blast, or autumn's sere decay; 
 
 Here all 's sweet life, soft ease, rich fruitfulness. 
 
 here, then, would I stay, and dream, — no less 
 
 Than an eternity would be too short, — 
 
28 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 And love some lady fair of Flora's court, 
 Whose sweetness heavy-lades the air entire, 
 As with the incense of her heart's desire. 
 
 We entered now an avenue of trees, 
 Of poplars tall; their boughs, — with broideries, 
 Flickering pale like frighted maidens' cheeks, — 
 Uplifted heavenward ; 't is quiet ; no one speaks ; 
 I look for my good Virgil — he is gone; 
 I 'm with the Goddess and her train alone — 
 Ready no doubt for heavenlier guidance grown. 
 Into more shadowy deeps of arching leaves, 
 My swart-skinned Ethiops press; where 'neath the eaves 
 Of the arborous dusk Titania glorifies 
 Her day, by massing starry fireflies, 
 Her minions, into molten globules, hung 
 At intervals along the way; and strung, 
 Like fairy lanterns for a royal fete, 
 Shine iridescent glowworms, who dilate 
 Bravely their luminous bodies, till these bowers, 
 Gnomed by the owlet night, glister with showers 
 Of radiance, so like day, that in amaze 
 The song-birds wake to greet us with their lays. 
 All 's redolent with scents to me for years 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 29 
 
 Forgot — whose memories to mine eyes bring tears; 
 
 Thwart which, I see the "Scarlet Runners'" ears 
 
 Aflame, pricked up to catch at better angles 
 
 Our progress; and the "Ragged Locks," their tangles 
 
 Superbly tossed, like schoolgirls from a lark. — 
 
 At length, emerging from the verdurous dark, — 
 
 As Orpheus from the Shades, beheld at last 
 
 The glad Avernian vales, — I stand aghast, 
 
 Bedazzled, to see a palace heavenward rise, 
 
 Unutterably beautiful; its size 
 
 Unrivalled by those splendors, which for miles 
 
 Pavilion Phoebus in his Western Isles. 
 
 It is the Goddess' divine demesne! 
 
 'T is all of gold, bedight with gems that e'en 
 
 Their flames scintillant dart to the flooding moon; 
 
 Rubies, and sapphires, pearls, carbuncles, strewn 
 
 With largesse inconceivable by man; 
 
 With chrysolites ablaze, and domes that span 
 
 Its ocean vastness, arched in rainbow-wise, — 
 
 And steps that seem to lead to Paradise. 
 
 The Apollonian blackamoors now lower 
 Their precious burden, their sweet Queen. Not slower 
 Am I to hasten from my littered chair, 
 
30 RHQDANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 To assist her to alight. She gems the air 
 
 With loveliness, and her adoring train 
 
 In widening cirque retire; their voices wane 
 
 Melodiously fainter in the enclosing night; 
 
 Lute-sighs grow softer, and the lyre's might 
 
 Impassioned trembles to wan minstrelsy; 
 
 The cymbal-players' notes float off to die, 
 
 Where Echo sits and mourns; the seraphims, 
 
 And dancing-girls, compose their rhythmic limbs, 
 
 'Neath veils that limn their perfect loveliness; 
 
 Whilst on their bosoms, soft and blemishless 
 
 As Horeb's snows, and rising with the thrill 
 
 Exultant of the dance, they try to still 
 
 Their trembling tambourines. — The general will 
 
 To deferently homage pay their Sovereign, 
 
 Now prompts the ladies and the liegemen in 
 
 Her train to reverently remain aloof, 
 
 Save those few favorites who, by time's strong proof, 
 
 Love warrants that they stay, full dotingly 
 
 To wait upon her trivial wants, — and me, 
 
 Prince Fortunatus: — all the rest withdraw. 
 
 I now approach her august presence with awe; 
 
 I sink upon one knee, vailed in eclipse 
 
 Mine eyes. There breaks forth from her rosy lips 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 31 
 
 A gracious smile, like to the iris light, 
 Herald of early dawn. luckiest wight ! 
 Feel'st not those flower-fingers touch thy hand, 
 Quivering the depths of all thy being, and 
 O'erpowering speech? Now mine eyes unveil, 
 To slake my thirst at nature's nonpareil 
 Of majesty, — and love broods in my heart. — 
 With movement light as when the lithe young hart 
 Springs forth from covert toward the mountain rills, 
 Or moon-beams gliding o'er the lush-green hills, 
 Her fairy-footsteps scorn the mossy earth, 
 Spread richly o'er with cloth-of-gold. No dearth 
 Lacks here of sovereignty, though eased its law. 
 Full soon, she stands, enpanoplied in awe 
 Majestical, where but a Goddess dares, 
 Upon her sacred temple's steps; and wears 
 The magic mystery of the heavenly night 
 About her; and, as in a dream's dazed sight, 
 I watch her wave her willing maids away: 
 The royal train may come as best they may; 
 Then, turning toward me with the imperious toss 
 Of sovran graciousness, which I 'm at loss 
 To fathom, bids me on. I go with glee, 
 Yet shrouded in exceeding mystery; 
 
32 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 My heart aflame with strangely sweet emotions ; 
 But for the fair love laughs at pathless oceans! 
 
 We scarcely seem the golden steps to graze, 
 But wafted are in cloud-like amber haze, 
 As on the wings of golden butterflies. 
 Our path is blazed by star-lit phantasies; 
 We speed o'er flights of terraced walks, and sail 
 Past flowering meads, and murmuring fountains pale 
 With dripping moonlight; gardens, trembling fair, 
 Shedding rare incense in the pendulous air; 
 Past broidered knots, and past long vistas green, 
 With royal palms that plume their honor e'en 
 As high as heaven; here a bright lagoon, 
 Mirrors the sward, with Phidian marbles strewn. — 
 While all enraptured to the skies we mount, 
 Mine eyes must needs drink deep at beauty's fount; 
 Such beauty-draughts as would a god make whole, 
 If one could weave such beauty in the soul, 
 As from the sea the sun's seductive rays 
 Unwreathe the sapphire clouds. As my fixed gaze 
 The Deity feels upon her vermeil cheek, 
 She turns to me, and gently 'gins to speak, 
 In balm-sweet words, that bud 'mid witching smiles, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 33 
 
 And thrill my heart as April's sunny wiles, 
 Revivify the floweret's drooping brow. 
 
 "0 Mortal, favored of thy fellows, thou! 
 For from thy gross unpurged sphere of earth, 
 No froward denizen of doomful birth, 
 Hath dared imprint a clayey foot in this 
 Our flowery realm; wherefore, 't is not amiss 
 Thou learn'st, that in degree above thy kind, 
 Shalt thou, vouchsafed by the gods, here find 
 A pilgrim's stay in a forbidden land; 
 And with the spirits of my immortal band 
 Untramelled converse hold; and thou mayst hope, 
 And presently, unprecedented scope 
 Of our fair temple's inmost sanctuary: 
 And for thou ever didst the paths of beauty 
 Tread and retread within thy nether world, 
 Thou 'It even the daughters of our house, impearled 
 Within our temple's holy shrine, glimpse o'er 
 A fleeting space, to worship and adore, — 
 Learning the pure delight man may attain 
 In beauty paradisial; thy pain, 
 Remembering that thou 'rt mortal, tarrying here 
 An instant's breath, with spirits of a sphere, 
 
34 RHQDANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Freer, eternal, and to rarer ways 
 
 Attuned than thou, whose cloven-hoof bewrays 
 
 What race claims thee. We flourished ere the first 
 
 Parental sin cast thee, for aye accurst, 
 
 Thine extinct orb terrestrial to trod 
 
 In role of darkly groping demi-god. 
 
 And since it is the fiat fixed by Fate, 
 
 That mortal and immortal cannot mate, — 
 
 No more than metal can assimilate 
 
 With air, — therefore forget it to thy woe! 
 
 Dare not the blind boy Eros with his bow, 
 
 A golden shaft to thunder at thy breast; 
 
 Nor sigh the bud of love to burgeon, lest 
 
 Thou weary ages ere it flower, — its root 
 
 Sicklied to ashes like the Dead-Sea fruit; 
 
 While thou more fond than pale Narcissus gloat 
 
 Upon a gleaming shadow to the dote 
 
 Of madness driven and a fell despair." 
 
 She paused, and sighed, — a tribute unaware 
 Perchance to Zephyrus, — and seemed, forsooth, 
 To pity me. I, blushing at the truth 
 Clamant, replied as one whom love o'erpowers: 
 "Beloved Mistress of these fairy bowers, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 35 
 
 Thou bidd'st the heart, more liberal than the wind, 
 
 Freer than airy birds home-nests to find 
 
 In skiey eerie or in cavern's mouth; 
 
 When clouds are sneaping cold to woo the south; 
 
 More unconfined than the unchained deep; 
 
 Less fettered than the silvery lives that creep 
 
 In her unbottomed vast abyss, — I say, 
 
 Thou bidd'st it to a task it will not weigh! 
 
 Impossible from sovereignty thou move 
 
 The heart to slavery in its realms of love! 
 
 In those illimitable regions where 
 
 It will be happiest, — for full soon 't is there 
 
 'Twill gravitate; if there 's no reason to it — 
 
 Still is it sweetest even when time to rue it. 
 
 For Love's the master-spirit of the world, 
 
 Of heaven and earth ! Man, maid, beast, bird, all hurled 
 
 Before his golden trumpet blast, to throng, 
 
 Mortal and immortal, toward his song, — 
 
 Which sweetly in Olympus weaves its spell, 
 
 As in the flowered meads of Asphodel; 
 
 Or in the plains Elysian: I do fear, 
 
 Lady, it turns the axis of thy sphere; 
 
 And, mortal though I be, Queen, Hyaline, 
 
 My soul doth for a love immortal pine, — 
 
36 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Ay, panteth ever. Know, my earth-born love 
 Is dead, — nay, Was it love? or not above 
 Platonic? Am I false? 0, is it wrong, 
 That fain am I to list love's siren-song? 
 No ! Where the sovran-queen of beauty 's throned 
 Must Cupid worship; and, in sooth, though zoned 
 With curtains were the windows of my soul, 
 Naught 't would avail ; armed gods cannot control 
 What beauty's eyes compel!" I stopped; aloof 
 I stood, as with pursed lips in sweet reproof, 
 The Goddess spake: 
 
 "We shall not toy with truth: 
 Alas, I see thine eyes are glazed, fond youth; 
 Ay, filmed o'er like all thy temporal race; 
 Thou canst not see beyond the fortelace 
 Of beauty's brave domain. What thou call'st love, 
 Is but the fluttering of the mourning-dove 
 Within thy heart's soft cote; or senses sick; 
 Such love, but beauty-born, fleeteth quick, 
 As snow-wreaths melt in brawling mountain-brooks, 
 When blackbirds chirrup from their leafy nooks, 
 Warm summer-time is nigh. True love 's begot 
 In Hymen's treasure-trove; the golden-knot 
 There forged for pairing souls from birth of Dawn; 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 37 
 
 And from the dreamful planets are they drawn; 
 
 And from the stars they issue, seeking one 
 
 The other, in strange mystic mazes dun; 
 
 In wandering circles, like pale spirits lost, 
 
 Crying aloud, where wildernesses crossed, 
 
 For one they love, to meet, and to assuage 
 
 The eternal yearning and their torment's rage: 
 
 And, when they meet, they into love's white star 
 
 Melt all anew, while pain and anguish are 
 
 Appeased forever and sweet solace 't is, 
 
 In everlasting and a day-long bliss. 
 
 So, in thy days, fond youth, remember this: 
 
 The soul doth shine continual as the sun, 
 
 Behind the clouds that thou dost gaze upon; 
 
 Wherefore gape not o'erwrought in ecstasy, 
 
 On every vermeil cheek where roves the eye; 
 
 First seek the soul beyond the azure lid; 
 
 'T will like the sun illumine all though hid; 
 
 And mark — the timorous violet, which sighs 
 
 Her sweets unseen in simple modesties, 
 
 May prove more constant that that Empress stately, 
 
 The Crown Imperial, in full gorgeous livery. 
 
 Beauty is oft a rose-lipped empty shell, 
 
 Which echoes but the roaring ocean's swell, 
 
38 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Recording not the love the heart could tell." 
 
 Thus charged the Goddess, and she turned from sight 
 
 Her glorious orbs, which left the widowed Night 
 
 To keep me woful company; and forthright 
 
 We sped; and, in my heart, as in a shrine, 
 
 I sought her hidden meaning to divine. 
 
 Now in the moonlight pale as chrysoprase, 
 At last alight we at her gates ablaze 
 With rubies rare and jewels of the Ind, — 
 Which, like the golden grain before the wind, 
 At Flora's soft behest retire themselves 
 On golden lyre-sweet hinges, as if elves 
 Informed them; and we pass within; and then, 
 Through mazes of enchanting chambers, when 
 We reached a richly vaulted banquet-hall, — 
 The genius of Ictinus in its thrall, — 
 Flung open to the azure cool of night; 
 So that the o'erarching heavens at this height, 
 Meseemed its cerule, starry-studded dome. 
 Pale perfumed tapers through the violet gloam, 
 Cast soft caressing shadows; objects, faint 
 As though one darkly on a picture quaint 
 Stood gazing, dimly ranged themselves about; 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 39 
 
 All scarce discerned, till by the light's slow rout, 
 
 The eye more friendly with the darkness grew, 
 
 Disclosing lothly to the enravished view, 
 
 The loveliest group of maidens fair, reclining, 
 
 In Roman fashion, on soft couches, shining 
 
 With broideries rare of jewels and of gold; 
 
 Like unto Graces seven, — and more high-souled 
 
 Than were the Three, — divinely clustered round 
 
 Low tables pearl inlaid and flower-crowned: 
 
 The walls were hung with rich-wrought tapestries 
 
 From ancient Persia, telling wondrous stories 
 
 In colors rivalling the rainbow's hues — 
 
 How Ariadne from the labyrinth's mews, 
 
 Led forth her captive lord, — alas, her woes! — 
 
 And faithless lover: from jewelled censers rose 
 
 Curled silver clouds of frankincense deft-mingled 
 
 With myrrh, so pungent, that the senses tingled; 
 
 And from the loft o'erhead, as from a near 
 
 Olympus, falls upon the enraptured ear 
 
 The music of celestial quires, faint, 
 
 Methinks, as that first morn, when love's constraint, 
 
 Bursting its bonds, the spheres began their song 
 
 In joyous jubilation 'fore the throng 
 
 Seraphic of the gods, to tent their forces 
 
40 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 In new-created and eternal courses: 
 
 On richly ladened boards, in clustering piles, 
 
 Fruits mellowed 'neath Pomona's rubious smiles, 
 
 Lay heaped, and there had spilled high, good Ceres, 
 
 Her plenteous horn ; and there were cornel-berries, 
 
 Coral-red, — with sun-kissed olives, wise 
 
 Minerva's gift, — beside food of the skies, 
 
 Ambrosia, fragrant for ensainted lives, — 
 
 And honey from far Hybla's sacred hives: 
 
 In bay-wreathed flagons wine of Bacchus flared, 
 
 Like bedded rubies that had Sol ensnared; 
 
 And golden nectar glowed in golden cups, 
 
 Entwined with lotus-buds — for him who sups 
 
 To taste of dreamy Lotus-land, and press 
 
 The quivering lips in sweet forgetfulness 
 
 Of teen and tears, when teasing Memory nods; — 
 
 Ah, sooth, here was a feast fit for the gods! 
 
 And when fair Flora, Berylline, appears 
 Upon this scene Saturnian, dulcet cheers 
 Thrill forth her beauteous daughters, and they rise 
 Heart-glad to greet her. But it is nowise 
 The same, when mortal I stand 'mid these maids: 
 It is as when a sparrow-hawk invades 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 41 
 
 The peaceful cooing dove-cote ; now 't would seem 
 
 The Prince of Consternation reigns supreme 
 
 In 's sway, till, taking each one to her breast, 
 
 The Queen assures her fledgling birds the nest 
 
 Is safe, and then, she mothers each young miss 
 
 Caressingly, as one doth fondly kiss 
 
 A tender flower; for they, in sooth, are flowers — 
 
 The blessed Flower-Princesses, whose dowers 
 
 Are an eternal loveliness; whose course 
 
 On earth well-run, did mark the joyous source 
 
 Whence they were crowned immortal; for they never 
 
 Were wanton with their sweetness, but did ever 
 
 Unto the water-lily, Nymphia, who 
 
 Guardeth the gate of Paradise, give true 
 
 Account of odors rare, and deep desire 
 
 To keep the beauty of their soul's attire. 
 
 To me each one her spirit's charm, her grace, 
 Her virtues are extolled, as one might trace 
 In flower-hues a glorious garden's lure. 
 There is Viola, modest and demure; 
 She was Ianthus, whom Apollo loved, 
 And as a floweret, in the vales removed 
 From searching gazes of the god, she laid 
 
42 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Her sweet self shyly in the empurpled shade, 
 
 And sighed pale kisses to the enamoured air. 
 
 Then Lilith, slender, stately, tall, and fair, 
 
 With cheeks of virgin snow and heart of gold; 
 
 In that first garden of the world the mould 
 
 Of airy grace; ay, there she reigned in glory, 
 
 Ere any woman known in rhyme or story; 
 
 A woman crowned with honey-colored hair, 
 
 Enhaloed, chaste as Dian's brow, — more fair. 
 
 Beside her, robed as in a crimson cloud, 
 
 That shames the deep pomegranate red, the proud, 
 
 Imperious Amaryllis sits enthroned; 
 
 Disdainful one! thy conquests are unmoaned, 
 
 Brief-lived, like fiery blossoms that exhale 
 
 Their spirits even as they bloom death-pale. 
 
 And gazing through the casement languorously, — 
 
 Which opens toward the starry eastern sky, — 
 
 I see Clytia, with the dreamful eyes, 
 
 Pale sister of Leucothoe, whose ties 
 
 Of blood played false. Love-lorn! Look'st for thy star? 
 
 Alas, then, pineth still for him, whose car 
 
 Of flaming jasper lingers at the gate 
 
 Of roseate morn, unmindful of thy fate? — 
 
 Then, there 's the messenger, to Jove heart-dear, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 43 
 
 Ethereal Iris, bearer of good cheer 
 
 To mourning mortals; she, who came to grim, 
 
 And aged, broken Priam, urging him 
 
 To ransom home the godlike Hector's corse; 
 
 Resplendent in all hues, she holds discourse 
 
 With Asphodel, the frail, of amber hair, 
 
 The friend of sad Persephone, — the pair 
 
 Seeming to mingle fondest memories — 
 
 The one of fields of light, the other's eyes 
 
 With weeping wan, long for the Shades, whose cries 
 
 Floated about her in the vales beyond, 
 
 Where runs the darkling river Acheron. 
 
 There, too, is Dryope, in parti-colors; 
 
 Pale Primrose, where the scarlet Poppy hovers, 
 
 As if to win her from her evening lovers. 
 
 All these and more delight the enravished eye; 
 
 A simple glance reveals each one to me; 
 
 For I behold, as in a dreamful bower, 
 
 A Maiden fair where there 's a fairy Flower, — 
 
 A Flower, rosy-bosomed, wheresoe'er 
 
 There is a Maiden : 't is a garden, where 
 
 Each Flower-maid grows fairer as I gaze; 
 
 I think myself within some mirrored maze, 
 
 Where Beauty's self reflecteth Beauty's mate ; 
 
44 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Where Paris had a task Herculean great, 
 To weigh at once such deal of loveliness. 
 
 But there is one whose beauty's high noblesse, 
 Outshines her mates as matchless Hesper shames 
 His sister-stars. From first she solely claims 
 The Goddess of the Flower's passion, — whiles 
 'Tis all from her she kindleth her bright smiles: 
 It is Rhodanthe, the flower-miracle, 
 The Rose, superb, tall, lithe, ethereal, 
 Who from sheer beauty droops in pink alarms, 
 For from all roses hath she filched the charms! 
 hundred-leaved, richest, rarest blown, 
 Ever in magic Persian garden known; 
 Whose splendor pranked the proud'st Circassian brow, — 
 Never didst thou that pearled seraphic glow 
 E'er match, which like the auroral dawn on peak 
 Of snow, mantles this maiden's milk-white cheek! 
 When to the stricken Adonais flew 
 The beauteous Cypris through the meadow-rue, 
 'Tis said she trod upon a pale white rose; 
 By chance a jealous thorn, quick to oppose 
 His tender charge, stole from the paragon 
 Of womankind some ruby drops, upon 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 45 
 
 The moment's spur, with which to peerless deck 
 
 His pallid paramour — and from this fleck 
 
 Incarnadine was born the roseal hue, 
 
 Which tints Rhodanthe's soft velvet cheek: — and true 
 
 Alike, 't is told, the Antheian, as she mourned 
 
 The wounded son of Myrrha, love adorned 
 
 His corse with beauty on its lush green bier; 
 
 Each blood-drop bloomed a rose, each Paphian tear 
 
 Sprung heavenward a frail Anemone; 
 
 And as the goddess gazed and tried to stay 
 
 His spherey smile, he melted from her view, 
 
 While from his body's golden blood there grew 
 
 Myriads of purple flowers. — But 't is of you, 
 
 Rhodanthe, sweet rose, that I would tune my lays! 
 
 bird Maeonian, teach me sing the praise 
 
 Of her, the maid amid that flowery maze ! 
 
 temples whiter far than Tabor's snows! 
 
 Like living Parian thy virgin-bosom rose 
 
 And fell; like jewelled crown of topaz bright 
 
 Glister thy golden tresses in the night; 
 
 And in the azure-light of thy dear eyes, 
 
 Shineth the glory of the noon-day skies; 
 
 And in thy ravishing smile, the onlooker blinds, 
 
 As from the lightning of a soul, which finds 
 
46 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 The excess celestial 'scape life's earthly mask — 
 frail Moeonian bird, thou fail'st thy task — 
 Alas, it was too much of thee to ask! 
 
 In fixed madness lost, my bold intrusion, 
 So thoughtless, covers her with sweet confusion, 
 As though a placid soul, 'fore love's affright, 
 Is bathed all o'er in rosy crystal light; 
 And I, — who, but a fleeting space, o'erborne 
 On passion's pinions to the empyreal bourne 
 Of Flora, by the love-god's blandishments, — 
 Now in the toils of other ravishments 
 Beheld myself, — and in the kingdom stood, 
 Of all that breathes of beautiful and good, 
 By love dreamed, fadeless fair as amaranth, 
 Enthroned in bright-aureoled Rhodanthe! 
 And, like a pent-up storm, which night enshrouds, 
 With groaning rages in the laboring clouds, 
 Forecasted by the fitful lightning's flashes, 
 At last, unleashed, in fury fiercely crashes 
 Thorough the flood-gates of the skies afire, 
 And mercilessly beats with scourges dire 
 The unhappy face of nature, — my spirit lorn, — 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 47 
 
 Which ever seemed to nurse a love unborn, — 
 
 Dreaming of dreams, ethereal and eternal, 
 
 But never seemingly attainable, 
 
 Through all the lashing tempest-time of youth, — 
 
 Now swift the current feels of love's sweet truth 
 
 Impulsive sweep all barriers away, 
 
 And pour o'er pied and lilied runnels gay, 
 
 In frenzied and ungovernable bliss, 
 
 Enamelling the world with daedal artifice, 
 
 In fairy likeness of Hesperian Fields! 
 
 Now thrilled with all the emotions young love yields; 
 
 Now iced with the fear of scorn; now wild 
 
 To woo this being frighted as a child, 
 
 At heavenly-winged love; now all afire 
 
 To face for her fell Ate's perils dire; 
 
 Or for her sake, with Phaeton's bribery, 
 
 To scale the heights of heaven's empery; 
 
 It matters not, — naught is impossible — 
 
 Her magic soul casts o'er me such a spell! 
 
 I have no eyes for any other maid; 
 
 My heart like reaper's flail against the blade 
 
 Beats loudly. Love ! an thou wouldst but distil 
 
 Thyself in honey-dew, this heart to still 
 
 From hunger, and from such a thirst divine! — 
 
48 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 I move toward her — but she makes no sign; 
 
 I seek to take her tender hand in mine, 
 
 As might a gallant kiss it — but, in fine, 
 
 She quick recoils, as doth the sweetly proud 
 
 Mimosa, when a wisp of fleecy cloud 
 
 Veils o'er the sun; and I am nigh to tears; 
 
 But now fair Flora, Berylline, appears 
 
 Near us, nor sheds forbearing pity upon 
 
 My woe; softly, "Fie, fickle Corydon," 
 
 She saith, "thou find'st thy dainty Phyllis smile 
 
 In every passing eye, — two to the mile! 
 
 A Bella-donna first with orbs of blue, 
 
 What Black-eyed Susan next art thou to woo?" 
 
 She thus the amorous oeillades remembers 
 
 With which I plied her — ay, the merest embers 
 
 Of what ne'er waxed in flames. Nay, my poor heart 
 
 Wots well it never loved till now; the smart 
 
 Prodigious sweet proclaims Love's power; and while 
 
 Proud Flora rules as Goddess of the Isle, 
 
 Rhodanthe o'er all the flowers reigneth Queen ! 
 
 And if my wilding fancy's flight had e'en, 
 
 Like dizzy moth, round Circe's flame in rings 
 
 Careened, it had not singed its star-dust wings, 
 
 But breathless panteth at Rhodanthe's small feet. 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 49 
 
 The Goddess 'midst her darlings takes her seat, 
 Bidding me feast with them, and I comply, 
 My pulses all a-tremhle. Though I try, 
 I can't but feel my bodily tenement, 
 Gracelessly flounders in a rarer element 
 Than is its wont — and with lack-lustre wars 
 Against a brilliant galaxy of stars. 
 I taste of wine—of sparkle there 's no trace, 
 For gazing on Rhodanthe's entrancing face, 
 I long to sip the nectar of her lips — 
 No Feast-King nigh my soul's bright thirst to eclipse! 
 A crook-kneed Ethiop, in solemn state, 
 Of heavenly ambrosia on a golden plate 
 Presents me — but this far-famed food of gods 
 Tastes vapid, stale; and, faith, with all the odds 
 Against me, liefer had I backed my soul 
 To feed on the air, that musk-sweet aureole, 
 Which from her being is exhaled; or free, 
 To lose itself for an eternity 
 Amid the scented tangles of her hair! — 
 What feast, when in your heart a desert bare 
 Looms up; and when an arid waste enclips 
 Poor nomad Cupid, and his dust-dry lips 
 Athirst, would slake them at love's bubbling springs ! 
 
50 RHQDANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 When lo ! with throbbing of his heart's bright wings, 
 
 He dreams he sees there in the oasis above, 
 
 The cool, sweet, crystal plashing fountain of love 
 
 At last! — to find it all a phantom fade 
 
 Away before his eyes. will this maid 
 
 So glorious, this Rhodanthe, prove to my fall 
 
 A false mirage? No, no! She smiles, and all 
 
 The sandy desert blooms! My sunless years, — 
 
 My starless nights, — my silent bitter tears — 
 
 Were not in vain! nay, they were happy years, 
 
 And starry nights, and laughing, gladsome tears; 
 
 For they at last my pilgrim steps have led, 
 
 Through briary paths, through blinding mists, storm-fed, 
 
 To her bright throne, the lady of my dreams! 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 51 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 The feast is o'er. We rise, we two, the extremes 
 Of light and life, Rhodanthe and I — yet seems 
 One bond our souls in unison to stir. 
 Oblivious to all the world, I wander with her 
 Into the casement window's snug embrasure; 
 The dulcet music of the aerial choir 
 Lends wings to love; my lips alone lack fire. 
 Amphion, grant one heart-sigh of thy lyre 
 Divine, that I may wake the slumbering Cupid 
 Becharmed, in this roseate bosom hid! 
 I 'gin to sing; the strain despairing dies 
 As doth a Lydian song: — my lady's eyes, 
 Seeming their wistful loveliness to span 
 Even unto the bright Aldebaran, 
 Shineth amid the stars. Thus I began: 
 
 "Beauteous Rhodanthe, list to me! 
 
 Ere thou adorned the garden of the world, 
 
52 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 I loved thee, — ay, from all eternity! 
 
 As in the shell the ocean is impearled, — 
 As mountains long to kiss the shining cloud, 
 
 As rivers love the sea, 
 And florets to the sun bare bosoms proud — 
 
 So I was drawn to thee — 
 My love-wings in thy heart forever to enshroud. 
 
 "A dreaming, wondering, worshipping boy, 
 
 I wandered sadly o'er the gorse-starred downs, — 
 As Io tortured — in a search for joy — 
 
 For thee. Thy name 'mong castellated towns 
 I called — 'mid plains, and every pelting hill-top; 
 
 And with the sighing pine, 
 And with the waterfall's endiamond drop, 
 
 And wind in Apennine, 
 I cried for thee, nor dared my soul in fear to stop. 
 
 "But with the throe of sobbing rain, 
 
 I mingled my pale symphonies of song, 
 Till in the night 'mid rhapsodies of pain, 
 
 The tender birds in pity quired along; 
 And Nature's listening heart throbbed silently, 
 Her own soft music stilling, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 53 
 
 To hear celestial anthems praising thee, 
 
 Like hymns of dew distilling 
 From heaven upon her from sweet bowers of ecstasy. 
 
 "Beloved, come o'er the hills away, 
 
 Where we can love in dells of liberty; 
 Untramelled aye, forever and a day, 
 
 By tilt and artifice of man — soul-free! — 
 Into the laughing valleys, flower-starred, 
 
 Where blithe Aurora trips 
 In roseal sandals o'er the daisied sward, 
 
 Bedabbled eyes and lips 
 With wistful dew to greet the day's advancing guard. 
 
 "Beyond the sun-kissed hills of light, 
 
 Cloud-capped, into the smile-wreathed valleys, where, 
 With iridescent flowering jewels bedight, 
 
 Enthroned, thou 'It queen it o'er all beauties rare: 
 And Spring at sight of thee shall bloom alway; 
 
 And Love shall know no rue; 
 And Time shall pass us by upon the way; 
 
 And in thy voice I '11 woo 
 The airs of Helicon and sing the live-long day. 
 
54 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 "Come let 's away! Yon is the goal! 
 
 Far from walled towns and battlemented towers, 
 That straitly cabin the heaven-aspiring soul; 
 And with the intrepid lark's aerial powers, 
 Through pathless skies we'll wing our blithesome flight; 
 
 O'er crags and billowy main, 
 And eerie cliffs, around whose dizzy height 
 
 The sea-mews cry in pain, 
 And tortured Ocean moans throughout her sleepless night. 
 
 "0 leave the gilded halls of ease, 
 
 Where Sloth, envisaged in her hollow mask; 
 Where Vanity and Pleasures, reeked with lees, 
 
 In stuffed cothurnus strut athwart their task, — 
 Across their brief and narrow earthly stage; 
 
 Still thinking with their base, 
 Sepulchral voice to tease the flippant age 
 
 Into a happier race, 
 And shame old theories with their barbed persiflage. 
 
 "Ah, no! the Dorian ring of joy 
 
 They cannot simulate, — nor thrill the being 
 To heights of high resolve, — with false alloy: 
 
 They mock at Time and Truth's full, sweet congreeing ! 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 55 
 
 So let 's away, Beloved, let 's away, — 
 
 We two and Love alone, 
 Beyond the ken of man and his dull day, 
 
 Beyond his little zone, 
 Beyond his pigmy dreams of the old Utopia. 
 
 "The feast forego, Love, for a pot 
 
 Of greeny, tender herbs; the wine for water 
 From Ida's cooling streams; and it thy lot, 
 
 These flowering robes of Flora's regal daughter, 
 To exchange for simple weaves thine own fair hand 
 
 Shall fashion from the flax; 
 Then shall our myrtle tree of love expand, 
 
 Even to heaven, and wax, 
 Till in its starry blossoms the turtle shall bless the land. 
 
 "Till in its blossoms, that star the night, 
 
 The turtle's cooing notes shall breathe of peace, 
 Forever and a day. take thy flight 
 
 With me, Beloved, to win fore'er surcease 
 Of sorrow from life's glittering eye-bite dross; 
 
 From clinking compliment, 
 So empty, of the Janus-faced, whose cross 
 
 Triples man's discontent, 
 And dooms communing hearts to their eternal loss! 
 
56 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE L\ THE 
 
 "Fly to the free, illimitable air! 
 
 Where Jove's blue dome shall canopy our heads; 
 His emeralds 'neath our feet; for matin-prayer 
 
 The choiring throstles, that watch our flowered beds; 
 While nightingales our wandering footsteps charm, 
 
 Whither the pomegranate-tree 
 O'erspreads her blossoms to keep us from all harm, 
 
 Blossoms of purity, 
 Like thine — thy soul, thy temples, and white dazzling arm. 
 
 "0 Love, we '11 glory on the way 
 
 Of Life, which leads unto the way Eternal; 
 And feed our souls against the immortal day, 
 
 With rare ambrosia of sweet dreams supernal: 
 We '11 feast whene'er the woodbine nods her bells ; 
 
 And slake our mortal thirst 
 From sweet Hymettian bees' most luscious cells, 
 
 O'erbrirnming nigh to burst, 
 In tawny cowslip cups plucked in fair fair)- dells. 
 
 "Then, when the Vesper hour fades 
 
 Into the glowing twilight deeps of even; 
 
 And Cynthia in her car, o'er cloud-worn grades, 
 
 Wheels through the golden patined road of heaven, — 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 
 
 We Tl seek our bower, and live to all unknown, 
 
 Save to the ecstasy 
 Of twin-souls melting in night's purple zone, — 
 
 To love eternally." 
 
 Thus sang I to Rhodanthe, free, unafraid; 
 Thus, rapt in adoration of this maid, — 
 Whose beauty, like a glimpse of Paradise, 
 Enravished all my senses, stole mine eyes, 
 O'erthrew all nice reserve of manliness, 
 Save uncontrolled desire to possess 
 Such charms, ne'er poet dreamed or painter limned,- 
 I poured my whole soul out to her: then, dimmed 
 And faint, as though by Cupid slain, I smart; 
 The ruby drops gush from my wounded heart; 
 I cease all speech; and like a slave, in gloom, 
 Condemned, slow counting his impending doom, 
 I wait with 'bated breath my life's eclipse; 
 I wait the faintest tremor of those lips, 
 Which curved into a rose-bud wet with dew, 
 Seem prone to blossom in a smile, or two; 
 Or, gods forbid! to fade into a frown. 
 She looks at me, then at the stars — then down; 
 
58 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Then all but veined lids are veiled from me — 
 Then silence yokes us with eternity. 
 
 Again her light cerulean on me steals — 
 I drink like one whose brain already reels, 
 The intoxicating glances of those eyes, 
 Whose curtained lids had caused the agonies 
 Untold of Stygian night on me to fall, — 
 Now oped, prove heralds of the morn's sweet thrall. 
 I watch her as a muezzin from the tower, 
 Who, in his lonely vigil's keep, the hour 
 Perceives at hand, when Dawn, with banners bright, 
 Proclaims the coming pageantry of light, — 
 Then calls his dreaming populace to prayer. 
 now for me is rived the tenebrous air; 
 The erstwhile lurid world in blossomings 
 Of orient pearls and roses blithely sings! 
 For lo! Rhodanthe, even with the gentlest sigh, 
 Riseth — each movement music to the eye, — 
 And looking full at me, so that I feel 
 Immersed in clouds of blue, so deep the appeal, 
 So tender shone the gaze of those soft sweet 
 Sapphiric orbs, — that ne'er in man's conceit 
 The like was ever seen, — she held toward me 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 59 
 
 Her tapering little hand: I still can see 
 
 Its glow of sea-shell pink, its mould — 'twould tease 
 
 To infinite despair Praxiteles, 
 
 So exquisite it is! — and then, methought, 
 
 She smiled a wistful wish, ay, even besought 
 
 That I should follow her, — then moved away — 
 
 So slightly — then, as sudden as a ray 
 
 Of moonlight, which a cloud will all engloom — 
 
 She melted like a vision from the room. 
 
 While I, half-dazed, bewitched, all wonderingly, — 
 
 Paying, indeed, the scantest courtesy 
 
 To Goddess Flora, and her daughters fair 
 
 Abruptly left behind, — I, in despair, 
 
 Fly like a hart that panteth for the clear, 
 
 Cool fountains, in a feverish quest and fear, 
 
 To find my dear Rhodanthe, now flown I know 
 
 Not whither. 
 
 I, from room to room, tiptoe 
 With wings of haste — then list, — then, in the lull, 
 Awake the dormant echoes in the dull, 
 Dark arras folds with sounds of her sweet name. 
 Again, again, I call, my heart aflame 
 With fearfulness, lest I my lady's sight 
 
60 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Have lost fore'er — ; half -guided by a bright, 
 
 Celestial aura in her path diffused, 
 
 Whilst goaded on by perfumed airs confused, 
 
 That amorously linger in her wake. 
 
 I reach a noble flight of stairs; I take 
 
 Its lead ; 't is all of marbles carved rare ; 
 
 'T is ominous — but still I take its dare! 
 
 Down it I speed — grim terror lending wings 
 
 To love. I come with awed imaginings 
 
 Upon a curious cloistered passage, and, 
 
 Alas, my forward way now ends: I stand 
 
 Confronted by a frowning iron gate. 
 
 Diana to my aid, I note its grate 
 
 Of metal scrolled and tortured into shapes, 
 
 So deft fantastic, as if demon apes 
 
 Had dreamed its dread design in deadly pain: 
 
 Its mastercraftsmanship of Tubal Cain, 
 
 No less, — and fashioned in the stithy-fane 
 
 Of fiery Vulcan, 'neath Mount Aetna's maw, 
 
 What time he would Aglaia's favor draw 
 
 To him. The forged ore contorted is 
 
 In forms of leaves and flowers; not fair as Dis 
 
 Frighted from Proserpine in Enna's vale, 
 
 But what rank foison reeks within the pale 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 61 
 
 Plutonian; — brambles, with their wan white rose, — 
 
 Bog-myrtles lush, and cockles, barbed foes 
 
 Of plenty, — cypress curst, and sorrowing yew, 
 
 And prickly gorse without its golden hue, — 
 
 Dull mandragora, and marsh-marigold, 
 
 Enwoven with dark tufts of nettles bold; 
 
 Then, strange, a bush of hawthorn, bleak and bare, 
 
 Enwreathed with acanthus; here and there, 
 
 Crushed myrtle sprigs nigh-clogged with briary thorn : 
 
 Thus serpent-wise to me within seems borne 
 
 This cryptic message in the foliage hid — 
 
 That in a world of doubt and darkness, 'mid 
 
 Unnumbered woes, ambition vaulting o'er 
 
 Innumerable obstacles — a little spore 
 
 Of love would soon be choked in fell despair 
 
 And death. — Instinctively, I, shuddering, dare 
 
 Advance no farther. 
 
 Nay, I, faltering, turn; 
 My spirit's depths in direst forebodings churn 
 At this ill omen, — but, at the memory 
 Of her, so ravishing, which beckons me — 
 And holds my utmost being in its thrall — 
 Half in a wild despair and bitter gall, 
 Thus balked; half to despite the gate, I call: 
 
62 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 "Rhodanthe!" When lo, this talisman charms all 
 
 The air with an enchanting magic ! 'fore 
 
 My dazed eyes the black dead iron door, 
 
 With intergnarled shapes of vines and flowers, 
 
 Begins to stir apace with sudden powers, 
 
 Instinct of life, assuming tendrils warm 
 
 And soft and paly green, all nature's charm 
 
 Of vernal tints; her tender buds blink eyes 
 
 From winter's sleep; and where the tyrannies 
 
 Appeared before of tortured, twisted metal, 
 
 Now through the brackish mists that 'gin to settle, 
 
 Dissolving brightly as a springtide rain, 
 
 A tall enchanting hedgerow now has ta'en 
 
 Its place, all starred and pied in blossoms rare, 
 
 E'en like a gate of Paradise; and ere 
 
 The jealous thorns that scorn my zeal can tear 
 
 My flesh, I thrust the interlacing screen 
 
 Aside, and with a leap, I am within 
 
 The most bewildering garden-spot love's eyne 
 
 E'er pictured in its dreams of bliss divine! 
 
 "0 'tis the Garden of Adonis!" I 
 Exclaim, as if such rare transcendent beauty 
 Beggared aught else: "Adon, thy bowers pied! 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 63 
 
 Where, in thy resurrection glorified, 
 
 The gods have made the Spring to bloom alway; 
 
 Where breathing odors from her isles of May, 
 
 Fair Cytherea comes smile-wreathed to stay, — 
 
 To gather rose-buds where thy life-blood sped, 
 
 And windflowers where thy dewy tears were shed!" 
 
 'Tis so, for everywhere with anadems 
 
 Encrowned of precious flowers, earth's starry gems, 
 
 Eternal Spring, in parti-colored court, 
 
 Keeps her high carnival; ay, here, in short, 
 
 Lie her arch-revellers 'tired in every hue, 
 
 From flaming poppy and the hare-bell blue, 
 
 To snow-white of those sisters frail but true, 
 
 The lilies of the vale — each little hood 
 
 Asleep and bathed in shimmering moonlight flood. 
 
 Wondering, I take my way, all rainbow-stoled, 
 
 Midst daffodillies, — buttercups, pure gold, — 
 
 Inconstant tulips, whose ensanguined stain, 
 
 Flushed golden blood of Persian lovers slain; 
 
 Past stocks and gilliflowers, — my soul soars free 
 
 With fragrant memories of Araby! — 
 
 Here Cupid's favorite, Love-in-idleness, 
 
 Doth chaste-cheeked Dian's bud in gentilesse 
 
 Caress: and, then, my varied way entwines 
 
64 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 "Twixt pink and purple motleyed columbines, 
 
 Dreaming in drooping cap and tongueless bell, 
 
 Perchance of summer's follies: — in their cell, 
 
 A cowled community of monkshood tell 
 
 Their midnight rosaries, a-listening to 
 
 The blue-bells swinging in the close of yew 
 
 Hard-by; they think it is their monastery call 
 
 To vesper-prayers: — and gold-eyed daisies, all 
 
 In robes diaphanous of the silvery Moon, 
 
 Lie 'long my broidered path. — But I shall swoon 
 
 From heart-ache find I not, and that full soon, 
 
 The jewel of this setting fair, the Rose, 
 
 My wonder-eyed Rhodanthe ! Will none disclose 
 
 Her hiding-place? "0 Love-lies-bleeding, wilt, 
 
 I prithee, tell me where my Lady 's built 
 
 Her bower invisible? I would keep tryst 
 
 With her!" — No answer — sad, I stooped and kissed 
 
 The starry 7 petals of an eglantine, 
 
 Stopping an instant with her to repine 
 
 The loss of those who sang her praise, and grieve 
 
 She favors not all bards alike! I leave 
 
 To greet a wistful wan anemone, 
 
 Sighing where Zephyr wooed her cruelly; 
 
 Her glittering tinsel-veil all torn to shreds, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 65 
 
 Lies where the Looking-glass of Venus spreads 
 
 Her mirrored maze; where rests her future path, 
 
 Cast forth from court by Flora's envious wrath. 
 
 But farther winds my walk. I now essay 
 
 What look like star-fields of the Milky- Way, 
 
 Where bloom primroses, white-faced, argent-locked. 
 
 In clouds ethereal vast, so that they mocked 
 
 My search; so on I press, Rhodanthe, for thee! 
 
 Flitting like night-moth toward thy flame-flowered tree: — 
 
 Lo, 'neath the shadowy boughs of claustral yews, 
 
 Which like the ominous pale of fate enmews 
 
 This vale of beauty, I espy weird gnomes, 
 
 And elfish creatures, gathering fadeless blooms — 
 
 Ah, these in their Egyptian darkness, do, 
 
 Conjointly with the Enchanter's Night-shade, brew, 
 
 With hemlock stalks, dread potions for false lovers! 
 
 Ah, not for me! 
 
 Thy face seraphic hovers 
 In the air, Rhodanthe, beloved, where'er, it seems, 
 I go! It lures me on — it mocks — it gleams, 
 Within each flowering maze; now here, now there, 
 It smiles me to come on, — 0, wild despair! — 
 'Tis but the pink and white in fairy guise 
 
66 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Of clustering buds that plague my foolish eyes! 
 
 I call aloud her name,-^'t is all in vain! — 
 
 But now a pleached pergola I gain, 
 
 O'er which the amorous woodbine interwove 
 
 A perfumed way to build a bower of love; 
 
 Beneath, young Adon's lovely statue 's niched; 
 
 While nearby sings a plashing fount, bewitched 
 
 To pour its lucent soul upon the enriched 
 
 Proud earth, in liquid diamonds: lo, upon 
 
 Its water-lilied marge — unhappy one! — 
 
 Behold Narcissus pale recumbent, he, 
 
 Who dared to shun the nymphs; his head, so lovely, 
 
 Droopeth upon his troubled breast; poor dream! 
 
 His smiling image taunts him in the stream, 
 
 Augmented by his tears. Alas, for thee! 
 
 'Tis thrice thy woe to read felicity 
 
 In water writ, — but what 's my fate now due, 
 
 Who sweet Rhodanthe's elusive love would woo? 
 
 And Echo, in what woody vale of sighs, 
 
 Wordless, bemoaneth thou with streaming eyes, 
 
 The shade of thy beloved? Shall I arise, 
 
 And go to thee, to weep eternal hours, 
 
 The loves that we have lost among the flowers? 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 67 
 
 Nay, not among Narcissi stays my love, 
 Of self enamoured; so, as Jason strove, 
 In golden search, the consecrated grove 
 To find, where blazed the fleece, I will pursue 
 Unplainingly my vexed but golden clue. 
 But, oh ! what if some ogling water-god 
 Have seized thine image and with magic rod 
 Impressed thee, my Rhodanthe, to illume his grot, 
 His crystal mine with thy bright eyes, begot 
 In heaven's effulgent blue! Ah, now, my woe, 
 My fears, 'fore every lovely flower grow, 
 If fountains smile at 's petal-broidered gown ! — 
 Now trail I Smilax sad, where Crocus, crown 
 Bespangled, rears his pride, disdaining her, — 
 The sin which sealed their ruin; alas, it were 
 In vain: I here the world's assembled fair 
 Survey, save she I seek in fell despair, 
 The fairest in the world ! Ah, an 't might be 
 She breathes a prisoner in these bowers of beauty! 
 To wander here, I 'm grateful evermore, 
 In the fluttering hope, which springs from dreaming o'er 
 That goal of pure delight, 'neath love's blithe spell, 
 Here in this earthly paradise to dwell 
 With her in an eternal bliss, alone; 
 
68 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 And though unseen, yet not unheard, unknown: 
 
 I '11 feel her presence in the moonlight stroll ; 
 
 And in the perfumes sense her tremulous soul! 
 
 But an she love me not and would, despite 
 
 My life, forsake the roses and the light, 
 
 As there the scented Jessamine, upon 
 
 Yon cloister-wall, is clambering to be gone 
 
 Into the cold and cruel world without? 
 
 Ah, then, blind Fate, snatch me from hellish doubt! 
 
 Myself to subtle Hellebore translate, 
 
 That I may kill the flowers that I hate, 
 
 When my Rhodanthe lives here with them no more! 
 
 Or, let me, dying 'mid my dreams, heart-sore, — 
 
 Like yonder purple flower, which sprung, full-bloomed, 
 
 From out the blood of Hyacinth, addoomed 
 
 To death by Phoebus, who so loved the life 
 
 He hapless took, — a lesson teach full rife 
 
 Of transitory bliss and triumph frail, 
 
 To all who harken my unhappy tale. 
 
 And now, with bootless searching spent, at last, 
 As is the ship-wrecked mariner, who cast 
 Alone upon some unknown tropic shore, 
 Finds rare exotic blooms in glittering store 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 69 
 
 Plutonian, but no sign of human life, 
 His hungry heart desires in pulsing strife 
 To see, — I am about to vent my agony 
 Of infinite despair, when, suddenly, 
 
 bliss! a thrill of golden music starts 
 The air in tremulous tuneful waves; it darts 
 Into the empyrean — I listen rapt — 
 
 The strain soars ever higher, as it had snapped 
 
 The very ears of sound, — up, up ascends, — 
 
 Till Philomel's full-throated sweetness rends 
 
 The veil of night with melody divine! 
 
 As 't were a signal of the tuneful Nine, 
 
 There bursts a flood of light in dazzling folds 
 
 Of brilliancy ineffable, which holds 
 
 My spirit spell-bound in a wonder-vise. 
 
 Constrained to think these signs some strange device, 
 
 Some joyous portent of the sentient world, 
 
 Which watches over my Rhodanthe, I hurled 
 
 Myself with frantic onward rush and glee, 
 
 Directed by the bird's shrill threnody, 
 
 Now driven to the ecstasy of pain. 
 
 There is a vista here, a fairy lane, 
 
 1 had not seen, where tall, white lilies keep, 
 
70 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Like sainted sentinels, in legions deep, 
 
 A path which leads unto a rosy bower. 
 
 Along this hallowed way I haste — the shower, 
 
 Most mellow musical of Philomel, 
 
 Falling like summer's purple heather-bell, 
 
 By loving zephyrs scattered on the lea, — 
 
 And come to where a crimson nebulae, 
 
 Eye-dazzling vast, of roses, 'tired in hues, 
 
 Tenderly dewy as the stars diffuse, 
 
 Confronts me. 0, in faith, it seemed earth's proud'st, 
 
 Supremest effort crowned, she had with loud'st 
 
 Acclaim ta'en up her fancy's brush to paint 
 
 This, Nature's page, in rioting unrestraint, 
 
 With thoughts of transcendental loveliness! 
 
 Then, pantingly, I stop in spirit to bless, 
 
 What 'peared a vision, strange, celestial, — 
 
 That might a dream prove, wild, fantastical, — 
 
 For in the midst of this enchanting throng 
 
 Of roses, all in adoration long 
 
 Prostrated, 'fore a dais raised among 
 
 The worshippers, — within a bower, where 
 
 The sweetest birds unnumbered filled the air 
 
 With dulcet minstrelsy, — and where the scent, 
 
 Dreamy with incense-breathing flowers bent 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 71 
 
 The willing winds with fraughtage, — ay, and where 
 
 The arrowy moonbeams shot their shafts most rare, 
 
 Illumining this wondrous sight beyond compare — 
 
 Lo, smiling at me sate Rhodanthe, the fair, 
 
 The incomparable She of heaven's perfect dower! 
 
 'Twas scarcely clear if she were maid or flower, 
 
 Until her beatific countenance, 
 
 Irradiating its seraphic glance, 
 
 Revealed the rare resplendence of her face. 
 
 Ah, then, — as spirits of angelic grace, 
 
 From consort with the Infinite Good, ensainted, 
 
 Cast on us mortal creatures, sin-attainted, 
 
 Benign regard, and with a moiety 
 
 Of their sweet love for us, uplift us, lowly, 
 
 Unto empyreal heights, — so she, with one 
 
 Bewilderingly tender flash of the sun 
 
 Of all the beauty in her fierce control, 
 
 Stirred tremulous emotions in my soul, 
 
 Which like a wave recoiling shore on shore, 
 
 It feels that trembling impulse evermore! 
 
 Now throned in cloud-drifts of new-born delight; 
 Now dread-appalled lest from a Lotus-night 
 Of dreams I wake to find this is some wild, 
 
72 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Some archful Gnomide, incorporeal, or child, 
 Born of the soul's concentered fixed desire — 
 I, strangely awed, stared dazed, 'twixt frost and fire; 
 For if it stay a vision beautiful — 
 
 let me then to dream continual! — 
 
 But, hark! unto mine ear floats music heavenly: 
 
 "What dost thou fear if that thou lovest me?" 
 
 Ye gods! Is 't she who speaks? What poesy, 
 
 Ecstatically sweet! What roses fell 
 
 From honied lips? 0, like a golden bell, 
 
 My being vibrates with crescending swell 
 
 Of joy responsive! 0, her words to me! 
 
 Leaving her nectared lips reluctantly, 
 
 As bees their hive of honied sweets: "Come, love, 
 
 Come sit with me, 't is I, Rhodanthe." "Great Jove!" 
 
 1 cry, "Rhodanthe!" in boundless ecstasy; 
 And to her in the entangling flowers I fly, 
 To flounder in soft drifts of crimson snow. 
 gods, that I should tremble when I know 
 
 She calls, whom I adore! "Rhodanthe!" I heard; 
 My pulses flutter like a timorous bird; 
 "Rhodanthe!" 0, how her name even startles all 
 The world with rare new fragrance in its thrall: 
 "Rhodanthe! For thee, beloved, I 've suffered much; 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 73 
 
 Ay, sought for thee a thousand years!" I touch 
 Her tender hand, so flower-soft and warm; 
 It trembles as the aspen 'fore the storm: 
 "For thee, I've waited, love, alway," she saith. 
 0, if it thrills the expanding bud, the wraith 
 Of the morning sun to feel in twinkling kisses 
 Upon her blushing cheek; if countless blisses 
 The murky forest's brooding heart encharms, 
 When in the night Diana's soft white arms 
 Encircle it, — then may it be conceived, 
 In measure, what wild ecstasies were weaved 
 And intertissued in my tranced soul, 
 When 'thwart its deep-set and nocturnal stole, 
 There flooded was the light of one it loved 
 From all eternity! — Our beings moved 
 Together, and her eyes of constant blue, 
 Throe bluer, as our souls commingle too; 
 And like the harmonies of quiet woods, 
 They rested there at last in melting moods 
 Of one great symphony of love, sans end, 
 Whose tender note-trills would forever blend. 
 
 Forever, ay, for as I clasp her, clad 
 In all the matchless beauty of the glad 
 
74 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Melodic heavens, I seem to hold the stars 
 
 To my transported breast, — while Night unbars 
 
 New worlds of golden song, — and Life beteems 
 
 Completest consummation of love's dreams! 
 
 Dreamer of dreams! Thy cup Lethean dull, 
 
 Crescented is to its beatic full! 
 
 Thou soughtest Beauty, earth's celestial song, 
 
 O'er which the Rhapsodist for aeons long 
 
 Hath twanged his Lesbian lyre deliriously! 
 
 The Sage writ rivulets of ink — like thee! 
 
 The Sophist's summum bonum and dear phrensy! 
 
 Beauty! ambrosial as Aurora's breath, 
 
 When blithely o'er the morning hills she fareth! 
 
 Beauty! elusive, which Briarean charms 
 
 Might not encompass, — now in thy poor arms 
 
 She liest trembling, palpitating, — see, 
 
 As Cupid over the immortality 
 
 Of Psyche! the bliss unparagoned 
 
 To mortal! this, proud Nature's darling, zoned; 
 
 Her peerless image ! favorite daughterling ! 
 
 The prize-work of the omnific Sculptor-King! 
 
 For whom was forged the central vital light, 
 
 And starry lamps swung in the vast of night, 
 
 That Time might gape at her in wondrous awe! 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 75 
 
 Alas, will not my poor heart crack its flaw? 
 His joyous inundation over-verse? 
 
 thou supernal peace o' the universe, 
 Over my being spread thy deathless wing ! 
 Shield me as doth the firmament enring 
 The earth; while my transported spirit, like 
 
 The spark, once famished, flickering, gleeful strike 
 The illimitable oceans of the aerial deep, 
 And by aeolian magic fed, upleap, 
 And kiss the stars! 
 
 let immortal love 
 Be mine, that on this beauteous vision, whereof 
 
 1 am vouchsafed, feed ! Rhodanthe ! pure dove, 
 Sweet maid! from thine was lit the Peri's smile, 
 Illumining heaven's gate! in Cyprian isle, 
 Herald of rosy-bosomed morn ! lulled 
 
 In fairy dreams that scorn life's leaden, dulled, 
 Black-stoled cares, on dais smothered deep 
 With vermeil dewy roses, fresh from sleep 
 In perfumed dells, — let us attune ourselves 
 To love's sweet interlude; while spirit-elves, 
 With spangled cloth of silvery moonbeam-mist, 
 Curtain our halcyon spring- tide bower; and, hist! 
 Ye myriad vassals, vail your flowery heads, 
 
76 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 In homage of your queen, — then, to your beds, 
 
 Flower-tucked, and hide your golden Argus-eyes; — 
 
 We '11 give ourselves to lovers' ecstasies ; 
 
 We '11 tell twice o'er, a kiss on every page, 
 
 The story of our hearts' dear pilgrimage; 
 
 Now laughing at the dark uncertain waves, 
 
 That buffeted our bark of other days; 
 
 Now drifting far from ocean's boisterous caves; 
 
 Now riding anchor in her smiling ways. 
 
 In accents sweet and low, — at my dear suit, — 
 As tinkling music of a minstrel's lute, 
 Heard on the evening waters rise, Rhodanthe 
 Relates, as guerdon of my pleadings warmth, 
 The tenderest tale that ever touched a soul; 
 I was as though, in magical control, 
 A seraph's harp, whose thousand golden strings 
 Were labyrinths of melody — deep springs 
 Harmonious, — o'er which there trembling played 
 Celestial hands invisible — so swayed 
 My passion's depths, so stirred its dulcet wings, 
 At her recital of the simplest things. 
 With starry eyes that shone through dewy mist, 
 As when the rain is by the moonlight kissed, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOLUS DELIGHT 77 
 
 She wistfully unfolded her young life 
 
 To me, even from its earliest baby-strife 
 
 In Syria, rich in roses, her dear nurse 
 
 And cradle; how even in its bud a curse 
 
 Had burgeoned; and, she sighingly discloses, 
 
 How, though the crowned Queen of all the Roses, 
 
 She had been exiled by the envious crew 
 
 Of some pale-cheeked pretender. With sad adieu, 
 
 She then had to the Isle of Flowers come, 
 
 To sway in sweet dominion this new home 
 
 Of faithful subjects who had followed her; 
 
 And here with other sovrans holding sceptre, 
 
 She ruled o'er several realms of all the Flowers, 
 
 Each in its vantage coign of bee-sweet bowers; 
 
 Each in its balmy clime and favorite haunt; 
 
 Some by the water-side; some 'neath the gaunt 
 
 Uptowering mountains; some on sunny slopes; 
 
 All even as in man's estates, their hopes, 
 
 Their aspirations, and their loves and lives, 
 
 Happy or melancholy, as contrives 
 
 To color all their days, that atmosphere, 
 
 Wherein their souls breathe and are breathed; and here, 
 
 While each to Flora, Goddess Palatine, 
 
 Paid homage due to sovereignty divine, 
 
78 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 As Suzerain of the adoring Roses, she, 
 
 Rhodanthe, most joyed to shower on each, heart-free, 
 
 A wealth of love alike — that preened their beauty 
 
 Within her kingdom's pale. But, oh! — and here 
 
 She sighed with such sweet breath, that in their sheer 
 
 Idolatry of her, methoughten all 
 
 The roses had exhaled their souls, — withal, 
 
 She vowed, 'twas difficult to please each one; 
 
 Flowers were frail as other creatures, prone 
 
 To petulance, to reinless pride; amain 
 
 To jealousies that scathe; and then, again, 
 
 Although their ancestry from Venus traced 
 
 Its blossoming family-tree, 't was oft disgraced ; 
 
 And strange internal schisms raged, as when 
 
 Some pedant faction dared the common ken 
 
 With this false tenet gloze — that in all lands 
 
 'T was held red roses sprang from fire-brands, 
 
 Burning about a Jewish fair pucelle, 
 
 Who, martyred foully, the sacring-bell 
 
 Had tolled this miracle: the stake unburned 
 
 Blossomed in roses crystal-white, and turned 
 
 To crimson roses the dying crimson flames. 
 
 'Twas pretty — which most justified its claims. 
 
 Then once, she said, all loth to mention names, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 79 
 
 A most unhappy war had waged between 
 
 The adherents of the Red Rose and their Queen, 
 
 On one side; on the other the White had been: — 
 
 And eke to internecine strife, alas, 
 
 Rose social wrongs that did the state harass; 
 
 As petty bickerings of a privileged class, 
 
 Claiming descent from Nature's highest emprise, 
 
 The thornless rose which bloomed in Paradise: — 
 
 Then, individual foibles, vanities; 
 
 Dissensions loosening family-ties, — the list 
 
 Was long: and fools and profligates she wist, 
 
 Who wantoned, wasteful of their inward worth, 
 
 With every languorous South or blatant North, 
 
 Which blew their way, the favors, naught but death 
 
 Should ever claim, their sweetest odor's breath; 
 
 As fickle maids will pelt their kisses light 
 
 As froth at every cavalier in sight; 
 
 While others, misers, in idolatry 
 
 Locked fast their perfumed love, their light, and beauty: — 
 
 Then those, who, pranked in costliest filigree, 
 
 Lorded themselves o'er all of low degree, 
 
 Yet bore beneath the hollow cheek's false paint, 
 
 The taunting secret of the canker's taint, — 
 
 Even as in the nether world of man: — 
 
80 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 And those, who humbly in their humble clan, 
 
 Lived by the way-side, loving there to be, 
 
 The jewel of their chaste simplicity 
 
 Close-guarded from the gairish day's caress, 
 
 Lest it should lose one ray of loveliness; 
 
 Ah, sooth, these made the world with pride to glow, 
 
 More than the tinsel pomp and glistering show 
 
 Of multitudes, who on their palace spent 
 
 A world of empty spoil and ornament; 
 
 "Which strange phenomenon," quoth archly-sweet 
 
 Rhodanthe, "displays a type, whose pattering feet 
 
 Wear smooth the stones of many a city street. 
 
 In troth, similitudes like these, one can 
 
 Trace in the world of Flowers and world of Man, 
 
 Ad infinitum." Here she heaved a sigh; 
 
 Then stooping kissed a sister-rose close-by, 
 
 Divinely whispering me: "What miracle! 
 
 That out of common clay, this flower, ethereal 
 
 As cloud-wreaths melting in the skies, can mould 
 
 A glorious crown of crimson and of gold; 
 
 Its exhalations spicing the world for thee 
 
 With aromatic airs of Araby; 
 
 Till hoary Tellus swells his doting heart, 
 
 Each time he contemplates his magian art!" 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 81 
 
 "Good sooth," I cry, inspired by her eyes, 
 "Tis even thus our spherey mortals rise! 
 I mind me one, who, clad in 's peasant gear, 
 Scion of humble folk, with lusty cheer, 
 Tended his father's goats 'mong craggy peaks; 
 Yet idling not away the days and weeks, 
 Time's golden sands, till death had barbed her dart, 
 He listened deep entranced, to the heart 
 Of Nature beating, while the shadows slept 
 Athwart the grassy slopes, or, waking, crept 
 Along, with lengthening of their phantom limbs; 
 And thus he watched them, till the day-star dims, 
 Steal softly in the caverns of the night. 
 Oft-times, he noted with a strange delight, 
 The lovely Naiads, wreathed with lily-crown, 
 Lure in their mirrored palace fathoms down 
 A crystal-pool, the beauteous cloud-gods, fair 
 As Adon, who, in sweetest dalliance there, 
 In those enchanting grots, would linger long, 
 Till Phoebus, blazing-eyed, the amorous throng 
 Compelled back to the heavens to upswarm, 
 Transforming them in monsters of the storm: 
 And when the wrath of high Olympus hurled 
 The blinding thunderbolts about his curled 
 
82 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 And boyish head; and, at each breath he took, 
 
 The forked lightnings' fitful cracklings shook 
 
 The pillared base of all creation; 
 
 And winds afire rushed with swift elation; 
 
 And in their lairs crouched savage beasts of prey 
 
 Afeard, — he loved the tempest's splendid play, 
 
 And tamed the maddened winds with tender hand; 
 
 Until the moon, beneficent and bland, 
 
 Unrolling radiance from the vaporous rack, 
 
 Lulled all the fiery elementals back 
 
 To peace again from their dynamic wars; 
 
 Then, sleeping 'neath the canopy of stars, 
 
 Upon the bosom of his Mother Earth, 
 
 The youth dreamed o'er these beauties and their birth; 
 
 And in the day he sang them in his songs, 
 
 Till all the people, chafing o'er their wrongs 
 
 And sufferings, flocked to his hills to hear him tell 
 
 Of Earth's delight, divinity, and spell, 
 
 In wondrous chords of colors and of sounds; 
 
 The things they saw, but which the mortal bounds — 
 
 But which his spirit-eyes led them to see, 
 
 And which his voice made them to sing as he, 
 
 Whose spirit loved the spirits of the hills, 
 
 The whispering trees, the vales, and murmuring rills: 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 83 
 
 And thus the peasant formed of common mould, 
 Became a prophet with a heart of gold, 
 And soul revered, a seer 'cross life's span, 
 And man's divine interpreter of man." 
 
 Thus ardent o'er my theme I spoke; I stole 
 No glance aside, my gaze upon the goal, 
 Like strained-neck courser fixed; — my tale was told; 
 And I 'd not noticed pearly tears had rolled 
 Their star-lit worlds of love and pity o'er 
 Rhodanthe's long trembling lashes; precious store! 
 That smiled like sunlight streaming through the mist 
 Of morn. Ah, would I had been bold! — had kissed 
 Away those rueful cloudlets, as the sun 
 Dispersed them; but a holy fear, anon, 
 Possessed me 'fore this flower beyond my reach: 
 So, while my love spurs on, she prays more speech, 
 And lured on by the lovelight brimming over 
 Blue-tender eyes, I am like any lover 
 Constrained to tell my heart's storm-stressed story, 
 With all its aches for all its little glory; 
 A mortal's unillumined wanderings, 
 'Mid lashing tempests, and the taunts and stings, 
 Through which a troubled and apprentice-soul 
 
84 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Must pass, ere it can reach the elusive goal, 
 
 The ever-widening beaconed mountain-heights 
 
 Of mastercraf tsmanship ; those cresset-lights, 
 
 Firing the watch-hills of the starless nights, 
 
 And fed fast by the torch of the Beloved; 
 
 Such dreads and doubts and miserable woe, as moved 
 
 The brave Ulysses 'mid the shrieking fiends 
 
 Of hell's black hole; or him, whose memory weans 
 
 Me toward the world beyond the mystic bourne — 
 
 The blind old minstrel, weak, and phantom-worn, 
 
 Who, begging, seven ungrateful cities trod, 
 
 Oblivious to the covert nudge and nod, — 
 
 The while his tortured ears hear from their tomb, 
 
 The tragic thunderings of the Trojan doom: 
 
 How 'twas my lot to wander and to weep; 
 
 With lost Electra in the aerial deep; 
 
 With such as goaded Io to be driven; 
 
 With such as Hercules long to have striven; 
 
 A thousand hounding Furies at my heels; 
 
 And all for that my restless spirit feels 
 
 Unsatisfied, and seeks the goal unknown, 
 
 Unfathomed, undefined, but somewhere, lone, 
 
 And looming still in awe and loveliness; 
 
 That Lethe-stream of lucent happiness, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOLUS DELIGHT 85 
 
 Where I might steep my soul and free its weight 
 Of clinging mire, malice, and of hate ! 
 And suffering long, as Aeson's son, I strove, 
 Sans let, to gain my golden treasure-trove. 
 
 "And first I hied me — at their merry call, — 
 To the joyous Court of the Pleasure Gods: — 
 I heard their ribald lauds; 
 I heard the rabble in the Wassail-Hall; 
 I asked if Happiness was there — and all 
 Cried out: 'Yea, yea! she queens our festival!' — 
 But, 0! I saw the death-wine as it purls! 
 
 Beneath men's feet the buds of virtue torn! 
 And trampled on love's flaxen baby-curls! 
 And hearts of mothers seared with molten rods! 
 I wept; I called on Happiness! The scorn 
 Alone I list of the jeering Pleasure Gods! — 
 She was not there! — I prayed Jove give them mercy, 
 To escape the enchantments doomed of Circe, — 
 And fled!— 
 
 "I faltered on, and came 
 Where smiled a Woman 'tired in scarlet shame: 
 
86 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 The leering paint scarce masked grim Vice's waste; 
 My lips of ashes taste: 
 Corruption sows the Night with piteous prey! 
 A Star of Heaven on the dunghill lay! 
 This Star might have been loved of men alway, 
 Had hearts glowed bright with ideal purity! 
 Now in the dust she glistered mockingly; 
 A tear some gave her — but she jeered and fled; 
 Some took the dust and cast it on their head — 
 
 I knelt me down adread; 
 My heart dejected, and my fearful soul half-dead. — 
 But why these woful tragedies 
 Rehearse, Rhodanthe, dear maid? 
 These horrent murders of the sweetest ties, 
 That garland souls unto the eternal skies? 
 What steps from thy celestial gaze for long had strayed? — 
 I bade farewell the charred, choked path of life, 
 Where I had found but sin and desolation rife. 
 
 "Now shifts the scene: — Hail, Croesus and thy curse! — 
 Behold me, in the abysm deep immerse 
 
 Myself, where all the crying souls of men, 
 
 From Chaos to the present ken, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 87 
 
 Have sought the golden Ganges bath of bliss. 
 list, Rhodanthe; love, I will tell thee this! 
 Then, Priestess sweet, thou shalt forthwith to me 
 A Flower-sermon preach, 
 Fragrant with thy divinity, 
 To chasten me, and teach 
 A higher soaring; 
 Till airs aeolian melodize, and play, 
 
 Divinely pouring 
 Thorough the labyrinths of my soul! — Love, pray, 
 Follow me sadly to the Market-place: — - 
 See with what unctuous grace, 
 Men drachmas trade for souls, and lose; 
 Lapping Life's golden ooze; 
 Grubbing old Mother Earth with bleeding nails; 
 Snatching the jewelled ears from 'neath her veils; 
 Uplifting itching palms 
 To Plutus god; their qualms 
 And heart-aches vast, Tartarean, beg him hold 
 Abeyant, with his amulets of gold ! 
 Like royal Midas blest 
 By Bacchus, is their dear request 
 Rewarded; and then, magically turned 
 To yellow, glistering gold is all they yearned, 
 
88 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Or touched; all, all is golden-sweet; 
 Ay, all the very bread they eat 
 Grows hard, metallic, tasteless — merely gold! 
 And all they drink is burning molten gold! 
 And all they love seems hard and glittering cold! 
 They would exchange the sow's ear for the purse! — 
 Distraught, love, I implore, that from the curse 
 Of gold, the gods may surcease bring; 
 And like the niggard Phrygian king, 
 I bathe me in the Pactolonian stream; 
 Then hie me to the fields of Pan to dream, 
 In Nature's arms, and hide my Midas ears! 
 For I had learned that from the weirs 
 Of this wise world of old, 
 That none with nets of gold, 
 Or corded golden jess, 
 Can snare the winged-wraith of endless Happiness! 
 
 "Again the curtain's rise, sweet Flower-queen: 
 Behold the Scholar-Mystic seeking now 
 
 Deep-rooted Past to plough 
 For Present-fruit, — to glean 
 
 But furrows on his brow! 
 On, on the ploughshare cuts! wildly keen, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 89 
 
 Life's secret from the runic lore of Time, 
 
 And spirit-parleys from the battlement 
 Of Heaven, at last to wrest ! 
 
 I, in my earth-reared tent, 
 All battened down with slime; 
 
 With visage pale and spent, 
 As ancient palimpsest, 
 Deep delve and dig 'mid pandects wormed and smutched ; 
 My cell four dank bare walls; my food untouched; 
 
 I tent to find the balm my heart is yearning: 
 
 Locked is the rebus, life is slowly burning! 
 
 "0 ivy! the reward of learned brows, 
 
 For thee I pray, and fast; 
 
 bring me peace at last! 
 Deep, deeper thy poor mortal ploughs; 
 Till like Melampus, versed in hidden lore 
 
 Of birds and creeping things, by virtue sheer 
 Of young spared serpents, who, in time of yore, 
 Had liefly touched to his dull dreamless ear 
 
 Their forked tongues, — I dream 
 
 Adrift on Lethe-stream; — 
 To fit Life's chain with all her missing links; 
 To unravel all the riddles of the Sphinx; 
 
90 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 To lure the fairies in the forest wind; 
 Refine the crude philosophies of Ind; 
 New-search the genesis of gods and men; 
 Explore the Milky- Way with diamonds paven; 
 
 In measures tune Polymnia's lyre; 
 
 Relume Promethean fire; 
 Climb up the craggy mountains of the Moon, 
 To learn how much she loved Endymion; 
 Converse with Ixion and his loving Cloud; 
 O'erscan the Sun's nigrescent shroud; 
 Ay, count the jewels in Orion's belt; 
 Depict where meet, where melt 
 The Rainbow's countless nice-consorting hues; 
 Then, far on crimson cloud-boats sail, to fuse 
 At last into the heavenward ether, where, 
 Mingling in the Olympian thoroughfare, 
 I '11 fetch from far across the Stygian shore, 
 All secrets mortals yearn! Smile not; far more, 
 Ay, infinitely more than thou canst guess, 
 Fair one, with calm assurance of success, 
 I planned, that I might plant on dizzy peaks, 
 Piled Pelion-high, o'erreaching Romans, Greeks, 
 And Babylonian scholars, the banner bright 
 Of my immortal fame! — Alas, poor wight! 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOLUS DELIGHT 91 
 
 My blind black mole soon burrowed into sight 
 Of gairish day — but never found the light! 
 
 "Now giddy with the heat of day, 
 
 At last despairing by the way, 
 Full wearily I sank upon the sands, 
 
 Upon the bank of River Time. 
 
 Poor pilgrim, from the Heights Sublime! 
 I watch the woful spectacle, the bands 
 
 Huddled of marching men, 
 
 The vision Mirza's ken 
 Could never fathom; and mine fails like his. 
 'life is a dream! let me wake where bliss 
 Unlocked by Death abides, in the happy vale, 
 In the land of the Hyperboreans!' This my wail: 
 
 And lo, the messenger of the gods, 
 
 With bell, and book, and pregnant nods, 
 Conducts my soul 'mid strains of flutes and viols, 
 Unto Mount Helicon, where after trials 
 
 Probationary, wise Urania, 
 
 Bade me from her high nebulae, 
 Bedazzling, an I still would steep my soul 
 Into the seas of Happiness — and scroll 
 
92 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 My name forever on Fame's brazen portals, 
 
 I must with those immortals 
 Conjoin, with those bright essences, the throng, 
 Which wings with fledgling pinions flights of song 
 
 Empyreal. 'In worlds of dreams,' 
 
 Quoth she, 'fed by the phosphor moonbeams, 
 Offshuffle thou the shackles of thy clay, 
 And songs of joy wreathe in thy dirgeful day; 
 Quaff thou this cup of murmurous Hippocrene.' 
 Deep was the blushful draught the poesy-queen 
 Regaled me; from the star-ypaven floor 
 Straight off on pennoned Pegasus I soar, 
 Unto the crystalline of heaven's gate, 
 
 To meet my new-invited fate; 
 Teasing the circumambient aether-seas, 
 
 With songs that shame the crystal-throated lark. 
 Alas, poor harpist, on the evening breeze 
 
 Dyeth thy swan-song's antiphon, and hark! 
 Adown the Aleain plain thou fall'st to death 
 Of all thy iris-hopes; — but still thy breath 
 
 Fails not that made thee fair! — 
 
 I tempt again the upper air, 
 Chasing the singing Pleiads through the skies, 
 To catch some secret of their melodies; 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 93 
 
 But bright Aurora pierced them one by one, 
 
 And I fell heavily 'mong the falling meteors prone. 
 
 "Once more Amphion lending aid, 
 
 My phrensied songs to man and maid, 
 Reverberated 'mong the attentive hills: 
 And, lo! methought the rooks, and rocks, and rills, 
 Like steeds swift-startled by strange sounds, 
 Dash in alarums to the grounds, 
 
 Where I am throned, to hear. 
 
 What ecstasy to win the general ear! 
 Full audibly my wonder-work hath wooed 
 The eternal plaudits of the multitude; 
 
 My winged ambition overvaults 
 
 The vasty regioned universe; nor halts, 
 Until it clangeth at the fretted gates of heaven ! 
 
 It is my rightful meed; 
 My future loometh big; 
 
 Up Pegasus, good steed, 
 
 Nor for the star-dust care a fig! 
 I see my gorgeous monument, which even 
 Now adorns, flanked by the admiring throng, 
 The Pantheon of the golden age of song. — 
 
94 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Thus do I dream! — and in the cold gray dawn, 
 I knew 'twas Somnus and his hybrid spawn; 
 The Night deceived, and Hope, when morn had fired 
 The East, and Earth rang glad with song, expired." 
 
 "But," fair Rhodanthe to me, her azure orbs, — 
 Whose changing wonders all my soul absorbs, — 
 Opening like blessed islands of the blue, 
 Through Cirri suddenly seen, "is it not true, 
 The lyric poet, and bird of silvery night 
 In boscage niched, exhale from sheer delight 
 Their panting souls? unburthening the flood 
 Divine, oppressive, to the heart of the wood, 
 Nor reck for aught save for the song itself? 
 Which, startling atomies of sound, from pelf 
 Into bright being, they soar and blithely dance 
 About the jocund spinning globe; to glance 
 Off lustily to the farthest bounds of space, 
 Engladdening every creature, every race, 
 That listeneth in the Void immeasurable. 
 Is that not joy enow? not crown of laurel? 
 Not plaudits? Then, sing on! nor thyself wrong, 
 To stop and list for echo of the throng." 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 95 
 
 "Rhodanthe, beloved, divine despair is Death; 
 But Love is Life, and Beauty is its breath! 
 
 'Tis why I sought; 
 
 Desire's vultures fought 
 Me fell, insatiable, and 'gainst the bars 
 Of heavenly gold, all bruised, to clench the stars, 
 
 I fling myself, but swoon; I try afresh; 
 
 I cannot still the tumult of the flesh: 
 
 '0, that I might put off mortality, 
 
 Who live lulled in the joys of life!' I cry: 
 But like the unfledged, sightless eyas hawk, 
 Waiting for 's mother, whom the cunning stalk 
 Of gleeful hunters long has lured and slain, 
 In my lorn lofty home of hope in vain 
 
 I hunger, unconsoled, and nurse life's wound. 
 Love, there's no mortal to be found, 
 
 Who chafes not 'neath his dearth, 
 
 His weak achievement's worth! 
 Whoso seeks Truth but ends not ever thus: 
 Nearing its sun, to feel like Icarus, 
 His waxed wings melting and his soaring done? 
 Still we do Nature cope that Art be won; 
 
 Still boldly tempt, frail Artisan, 
 The marvels of the inimitable gods 
 
96 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 To mock; and pigmies, with pale golden rods, 
 Do battle 'gainst the giant Infinity 
 Of Nature, instinct with Divinity! 
 We ape the bee to build a Parthenon; 
 We boast of looms Arachne's web would scorn; 
 We strain our souls to match the linnet's lay: 
 Ye dainty daisies' airy shadow-play! 
 What Art e'er stole your subtile grace away? 
 Who vie thee, Nature, when thou paint'st the rose? 
 What Polycletan catch thy daedal pose? 
 Or Alchemist dare dream to mimic fire 
 Of upturned ruby on thine earthly pyre? 
 bitterest gall, that we ourselves 
 Must wait, while Art, with eyes, 
 Leaded like falcon, vainly delves 
 Thy devious ways and sorceries! 
 '0 Paradise of Fools!' exclaims the Sage, 
 
 In chasmed, endless, melancholiness ; 
 'Life thou hast passed me by; and Art, thine image 
 
 Ever renews its virgin loveliness; 
 Its tantalizing sempiternal lure, 
 That shall forever and a day endure!' 
 This was the rift, love, in the lute; 
 This was the rind of labor's fruit, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 97 
 
 Whose acrid disappointment killed the savor 
 Of inward sweetness, and all life's endeavor. 
 
 I thought myself as withered grass, 
 
 Meet fodder for the oven. Alas, 
 My shining expectation of glad youth, 
 A star deep-buried in the dust; and, sooth, 
 Forlorn, neglected, by the way-side thrown, 
 I watched Life's high-road wind away alone. 
 
 "Cimmerian Night now hearsed me utterly; 
 She seemed to take me in her sable arms, 
 Nursing my woe; beneath whose weighted pillory 
 
 Insuperable, I sank in aguish 'larums, 
 Calling on Death, of Night's dark brood, to ease 
 My stricken soul's world-sorrow: 
 '0 save me from the morrow 
 Despiteous!' I plead: instead, lulled charms, 
 As of a Lotus-ladened air doth tease 
 My senses till I weep; 
 Death's gentle brother Sleep 
 Appears, who, dropping juice of poppy-buds 
 Upon mine eyes, now languor-blest, 
 By Western Seas wafts me on 's breast, 
 Far to the Land of Dreams and Fairy woods. 
 
98 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 "And while I slept 
 
 There gently crept, 
 A tender voice upon mine ear; 
 
 It sweetly fell, 
 
 As vesper bell, 
 Or manna from the skies, or tear 
 Love sheds upon an infant's bier: 
 
 It said: 'An thou 
 
 Wilt find thy vow 
 Enguerdoned, Happiness, thy goal, 
 
 Thy golden gate, 
 
 Lure of thy soul, 
 
 At last — then, straight, 
 Hesperia, the lode-star follow, 
 Who '11 lead thee to the embosomed hollow, 
 
 Flower-broidered, where 
 
 A garden fair 
 The engladdened vision treasureth; 
 
 Where thou shalt see 
 
 Unearthly Beauty, 
 Envisaged in a maid fame clepeth 
 Rhodanthe, who all earth's fair exceedeth: 
 
 She like a flower, 
 
 In rosy-bower 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 99 
 
 Of Flora's garden unveiled shall be; 
 
 Take thou the river, 
 
 Which like a mirror, 
 Goes glinting toward the emerald sea.' 
 
 "She ceased; meseemed 
 I saw, or dreamed, 
 Rhodanthe, that I, in sooth, beheld thee; 
 Quick-startled woke I to felicity; 
 Ecstatic beat my heart's wild melody: 
 'T was Spring ! Earth frolicked in her blosmy frock, 
 
 Of crimson raiments, mystic hue of love, 
 With ospreys rare, clasped with a golden lock; 
 
 Apollo's shield blazed high in the heavens above; 
 The lark sang blithely in her skyward flight, 
 
 A message thrilled with hope reborn; 
 And all the greens with goldilocks were pight; 
 
 And milk-white blossoms waved me from the thorn: 
 'Up and away! 
 
 For thee, Rhodanthe, doth stay.' 
 I heard the honey-bees and insects chant, 
 
 Mellifluously from lush-sweet amber fields; 
 While love-illumined crystal rills aslant 
 
 The daisied meadows peeped like silver eels; 
 
100 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 And in their gladness free from monotones, 
 The fountains warbled o'er the enamelled stones. 
 
 "It was a day idyllic as in groves 
 Idalian, when blithe birds and woodland doves, 
 In murmuring sanctities made earth thrice-blest. 
 Love breathed mysterious longings in my breast, 
 And whispered rapturous dream-trysts to my heart; — 
 So girding up my loins, all lief I start 
 To journey toward the East, Rhodanthe, to thee. 
 And now, thou kenn'st in troth, where, fixedly, 
 Thy poor Chaldean 's set his meteor bright, 
 And peerless constellation of his night, 
 Fretted with countless stars! In thee, ensphered, 
 Shines Happiness, at last! Sweet Rose, revered; 
 Thou gift of all the gods; thou visioned Beauty, 
 Incomparable! In contemplating thee, 
 My ravished soul, forever, dreamily, 
 Shall float on amethystine seas of bliss, 
 Unending and immeasurable: and this, 
 My heaven ! ever by thy side to be, 
 Rhodanthe; as ripples kiss the water-lily; 
 As Ocean's bosom nests Ionian isles; 
 Dear love, I '11 bask me in thy noon-day smiles; 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 101 
 
 I '11 read thy rare and ever-changing beauties; 
 I '11 stroll with thee by day 'mid symphonies, 
 Museful of flowers, and, through thine azure eyes, 
 I '11 watch the starry hosts of heaven uprise 
 At even; and when thou veil'st them, sleepily, 
 I '11 kiss the veined lids, — ah, this will be 
 The aeon-sought haven of my soul's content; 
 And mine the peace that hath the waters lent 
 The unruffled skies, and which, like dreams that fire 
 The Lotus-eaters, passeth all desire!" 
 
 As in this boundless transport I, thus madly, 
 Quick-ended my discourse, Rhodanthe smiled sadly; 
 A smile, so like the faint-smile of the sun, 
 When through the crudded-rack it peers, anon, 
 Ere it is swallowed in the night; ay, wan, 
 As that which flickers o'er the mother's lips, 
 When later year-dreams conjure up, like ships, 
 Black-masted, riding into port, trist memories 
 Of the babe, of crowing, crooning sovereignties, 
 Which crossed the darkling river all too soon; 
 So like the shadow of a heart in tune 
 With melancholy, that I, fearfully, 
 Drew back. "Rhodanthe!" I saw how, suddenly, 
 
102 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 The radiant flush of joy had run affrighted 
 
 From her rose-pallid cheek; and, ghostly lighted, 
 
 The effulgent beauty of her countenance, 
 
 Shone 'neath the moon's bright shifting shadow-dance, 
 
 Like smoothest silvery mother-o-pearl; and, lo, 
 
 Her lovely head drooped heavily, as though 
 
 Its haloed crown of spun-gold tresses weighed 
 
 It down; or, as a glorious rose, arrayed 
 
 With thousand petals, bends in freighted sweetness. 
 
 I felt afeard, and spoke with troubled fleetness; 
 
 She answered not: there rose an ominous stillness 
 
 On the air; the moonlight 'gan to quiver fast, 
 
 Convulsively, as though 't would not long last; 
 
 The flowers trembling, seemed to be afeard; 
 
 The Tawny Lily and the yellow Goatsbeard, 
 
 Both of fair Flora's Horologe, marked past 
 
 The midnight hour; the Roses stood aghast: 
 
 "Rhodanthe!" I cried, awe-struck; even as her frail 
 
 Young form swayed like a poplar in a gale, 
 
 And lightly fell unconscious in my arms. 
 
 now, I fold the heavenliest of charms, 
 
 The epitome of beauty to my breast! 
 
 The silken tendrils of her hair untressed, — 
 
 Sweeter than summer sighing o'er the meads, — 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 103 
 
 Fan my hot cheek; I tremble like the reeds; 
 
 I quiver like a vessel in a storm. 
 
 "Rhodanthe! Beloved, look at me!" Her warm 
 
 And palpitating beauty faintly sighs; 
 
 I strive in vain to gaze into her eyes, 
 
 But cannot find their azure deeps; two pearls, 
 
 Orbed with pity roll from 'neath the curls 
 
 Dark violet of her long lashes. "Love! 
 
 Rhodanthe!" Alas, vain pleadings: "Thou sweet dove!" 
 
 I feel her in my hands resistless he: 
 
 Ye gods! what! Can then such Beauty die? 
 
 No, no ! 't is mine ! for it I 've immolated 
 
 A life, — a spirit worn, — and I have waited 
 
 Interminable nights and days, — and thou, 
 
 gorgon Death dar'st not to cheat me now! 
 
 "Rhodanthe! The pink rose in perpetual Spring, 
 
 Like this, knows nought of spirits withering; 
 
 Nought beautiful can die, or death eclipse; 
 
 Still, still do echo the Memnonian lips, 
 
 When, crimsoning with love, the sunset-heart 
 
 Sends kisses to them! Then, love, none can part 
 
 Thee and thy beauty, and thy beauteous self 
 
 From me; I worshipped thee 'fore all the pelf 
 
 Intreasured of the world! let the star-shine 
 
104 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Of those loved orbs relume this heart of mine! 
 
 dost still breathe? Let then the ambrosial wine 
 
 Cordial my heart! Tempestuous love divine! 
 
 The world's supremest happiness now is mine 
 
 At last ! The consummation I have dreamed 
 
 Is mine at last, and 't is to me beteemed, 
 
 To cull the rip'st perfection of life's love!" 
 
 Closer the flower-form I crushed, and strove 
 
 To quell my leaping heart of calm bereaven; 
 
 The enchanting face upturned glows like the heaven 
 
 Of heavens; the dewy lips, the hue of pale 
 
 Pomegranate, pouted, fearfully assail 
 
 My soul-enflamed desire, on them to press 
 
 A heavenly kiss. I quail — for such caress 
 
 Might desecrate such awful loveliness! 
 
 Yet what is Beauty, if 't is not enjoyed? 
 
 Those rubious lips would tempt a god! "Avoid!" 
 
 The panting zephyrs in the air — the bees — 
 
 The flowers — ay, all Nature's voice in trees 
 
 And fountains seeming warn me verily 
 
 Of some impending strange catastrophe — 
 
 But I will kiss those lips which I adore! — 
 
 Impassionedly I drained their virgin store 
 
 Of honied sweets — 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 105 
 
 And then I knew no more! 
 Straightway a film of Stygian night upsealed 
 Mine eyes; the earth upon her axis reeled; 
 Portentous thunder shudderingly rocked 
 The amazed sphere, and all the spirits locked 
 In fire and water, seemed to have possessed 
 My heart, and roused dread bodings in my breast: 
 Benumbed I grew; and through my veins a flood 
 Of icy liquor flows instead of blood; 
 I feel a derelict in slime and mud: 
 "Rhodanthe!" I strive to call, but o'er the word 
 My lips form, — 0, but not a sound is heard: 
 My tongue — that once had weaved that word in song — 
 Claps inarticulate its roof. 
 
106 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 How long 
 I thus remained insensible I lost 
 All count; benighted consciousness long tossed 
 Uneasily; but soon confused sounds, 
 Dull, indistinguishable as the rounds 
 Of ghostly visits in a haunted grange, 
 Disturbed my lethargy: and then the strange 
 Faint swish of waters on a shingly shore, 
 Came gurgling to mine ears; then rumbling roar 
 Of chasmed torrents ; then, the long, forlorn, 
 Weird chant of chaste Minerva's bird of morn, 
 Shattered my cryptic shard; — still but a rift: — 
 My heart beats fast with clammy fears; I lift 
 My lids and frighted look about; cold streaks 
 Of gray disclose the dawn like turgid peaks, 
 Jutting in waters of a polar sea. 
 Where am I? Where Rhodanthe? What irony 
 Of fate? The faery-garden gone! ay, gone 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 107 
 
 The roses and my lady's flowery throne; 
 The silvery veil of Phoebus hallowing all — 
 All gone ! Alas ! instead I stand in thrall 
 Of thick and gloomy curtained woods, astir 
 With strange, uncanny life, weird with the whirr 
 Of ominous sounds; with shrilly birds of night, 
 Flying the spectral day; and, gaunt in might, 
 Cavernous beasts; uncouth reptilia, 
 Coiling, uncoiling, 'mid the leprous fauna, 
 As though to slough their horned and spotted skin. 
 Here might the foul Medusa murdered been! 
 lurid spot! for murders fit and sin 
 Shunning the light — for deeds demonic, fell. 
 desolation indescribable! 
 And where last even in coral-blushes stood 
 Rhodanthe's rose-bower, now 's a gnarled wood, 
 Of blackened, leafless boughs weaved all in woe, 
 Their forked claws cleaved cruelly in their foe, 
 Like vengeful Furies locked in Death's embrace; 
 Our dais now a slime-green rock, whose face 
 Crawls thick with pholases and lichens slippery ; 
 Beside me yawns a dizzy chasm's mystery, 
 Where torrents leap as if to Tartarus! 
 In horror I recoil, well-nigh delirious, — 
 
108 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 When, as I ope my hand, stove in the mud, 
 
 Lo ! like a glittering shower of golden blood, 
 
 A mass of crushed rose-petals fluttering fall 
 
 Into the ooze. Is this the end of all 
 
 My roseate dreams, Rhodanthe? — a memory? — 
 
 I pick the soft pink shells — the flowery 
 
 Memento mori — they are scentless, dead! 
 
 Ay, 'tis the all-ending all — the shimmered 
 
 Dream-fabric wherein Beauty dwelt — all fled! 
 
 'T was too unearthly beautiful to last — 
 
 'T was all too much in love with the ethereal past: — 
 
 Thus ends the pageantry of Happiness 
 
 In Beauty's death, — a kiss — and hopelessness! 
 
 Now, with the loss of all — what joy to live? 
 Were it not best, unloved, what 's left to give — 
 The little breath that fans this mortal flame, — 
 And from some rock Leucadian leap, to claim 
 Rhodanthe, perchance, in realms, where leaden day 
 Veils gardens dread and Proserpine holds sway? 
 Where Love is dead, and flowers fade in sorrow? 
 Where in the collied night is snuffed the morrow? 
 No! Better far in the present urn the past: 
 Sweet Memory shall these petals, while they last, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 109 
 
 Kiss into likeness of her haunting shape 
 
 Of loveliness! — Ah, Beauty cannot 'scape 
 
 The heaven of the mind, not even be 
 
 The heart forlorn as hell's vastidity! 
 
 No ! I '11 forever wait, Rhodanthe, for thee ! — 
 
 how the North moans Nature's obsequies, 
 Thorough the naked branches of the trees! 
 Sad troops of spirits flying from the wrath 
 Of thunder-glooming Jove: — along their path 
 
 Flies too Rhodanthe ? Cries, too ? Beloved ! bright-hued, 
 
 Seest me, despairing in the desolate wood, 
 
 Alone? 
 
 The eager air bites to the bone; 
 
 1 shall incorp the ooze — I must begone! 
 
 But whither? Toward the East? Ah, love, 'twas there 
 I found thee — Ay, 't is augural ! Despair, 
 Avaunt! I '11 travel on — till life's dark close! — 
 Sadly the remnants of my lovely rose 
 I gather up, and, heart-sore, start to seek 
 The open of the wood. My tendons creak 
 'Neath trepidant limbs; low angry mutterings 
 Of subterranean tremors twist my heart-strings; 
 The ground I tread doth shudderingly quake; 
 
110 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 The murky air glints like a brimstone lake; 
 Whilst buried alive high in the vault above me, 
 The fitful lightning, crackling in great glee, 
 Blazes the ebon wood, and seemingly, 
 Points fiery fingers deep into the doom 
 Of the glade, impenetrably thick with gloom, 
 Where I must go. Misshapen monsters, fierce, 
 Lynx-eyed, bar up my forward way, and pierce 
 The air and belch on me their venomous fumes; 
 Whilst dark malodorous wings of bats like brooms 
 Innumerous flying past me brush my face, 
 Until my heart nigh paralyzed, my pace 
 I quicken — then, for fear, begin to run; 
 Torrential rains forthwith break loose upon 
 Me from the opened sluice-gates of the skies; 
 And whipped by maddened winds, like scorpion-flies, 
 They lash my face. 
 
 Onward I speed. An oak, 
 Whose hoary head and massive trunk bespoke 
 Its Titan age, reared high in proud revolt 
 Deep in the lowering welkin, by a bolt 
 Of sulphurous fire is rived right to the root, 
 Crashing its measured length even at my foot, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 111 
 
 With roar like demon's laughter; its huge bulk 
 
 Blockades my forthright way: — my soul in sulk, 
 
 I am half-daunted, — but enforced to 'scape, 
 
 I wend around his despicable shape, 
 
 Only to sink waist-deep in treacherous bogs. 
 
 To escape a living burial I clutch at logs 
 
 Evasive, and o'erhanging spiked boughs, 
 
 Which spare me while they lacerate my brows, 
 
 And scotch my hands. Amidst the deafening din 
 
 And carnage of the storm, I hear the thin, 
 
 Ear-piercing screech of gnome-owl, and the qualm 
 
 Ill-boding of the raven, that Hell's psalm, 
 
 Which freezes all my blood till I scarce breathe 
 
 For fright. While ever and anon I seethe 
 
 With gushing joy, — false dawns of hope: — meseems, 
 
 I hear weird voices from the trees and streams 
 
 And current air, hallooing me, yet none 
 
 I see. They call, they pray, they curse, they crone, 
 
 They mimic, chant in an unearthly tone; 
 
 Sometimes right at mine ear, then 'fore me on, 
 
 As if they jeered me to confusion: 
 
 Sometimes they mind me of sweet childhood's hour, 
 
 Or frolics in the heyday of youth's power; 
 
 Or darker days, begun and ended by 
 
112 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 One long, low, sad and unconsolable cry; 
 Sometimes, methinks, voices of lovers cross, 
 So lilting sweet to me their ariose 
 Resemblance seems; as though, alas, in death 
 As life, no stay their trysting tempereth, 
 But their dread punishment is ever thus — 
 To meet and then to part. 
 
 At last, with ponderous 
 Slow dragging of my leaden feet, through brake 
 And brere, and rank dense undergrowths ; through lake 
 And mere, through bruising cacti, milwort fields 
 And furze, I stumble, while my breath nigh yields, 
 To jagged, clodded, frozen ground, which leads 
 Unto a bald and lonely crag; sparse weeds 
 Alone had striven to hide its naked shame. 
 Here intermittent sheets of blinding flame, 
 Disclose to my abhorrent gaze, the rage 
 Of goaded nature in her wild'st death-wage 
 Against herself, to reap the aftermath, — 
 As once outfumed the vials of her wrath, 
 What time ruled Chaos ere the stars were born, 
 And ere her elemental passions' scorn 
 Was humbled by a Spirit Voice, whose grace, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 113 
 
 Full sweet, yet shook the walls of farthest space! 
 
 I shut my eyes, and turn away my face — 
 
 When, 'bove the enraged whirlwind's spleen; the shocks 
 
 Of shattered earth; the dismal cries of flocks 
 
 Of frightened birds; the roars of savage beasts, 
 
 Roused from their flooded lairs, and carnal feasts, — 
 
 There rises to my ear the measured boom 
 
 Of Ocean maddened by the tempest's doom. 
 
 I can descry her in the eastern light; 
 
 Her vast, black, undulating herd, in sight 
 
 Heaves up, like dragons huge with foaming mouths, 
 
 The shore, — then, raging impotently, drowse, 
 
 And roll back fuming slowly, fretfully, 
 
 Into the seething cauldron of the sea. 
 
 A gulf impassable! Must I give place? 
 
 Lay down to die? Or my weak steps retrace 
 
 Athwart that witches' hell of hail and flame? 
 
 Scarce orbed to full these thoughts, when I became 
 Unconsciously aware, toward my right, 
 Deep-down the rock-ribbed shore, a star-fixed light 
 Burned steadily; into my vision dart 
 Its arrowy rays, enkindling in my heart 
 Delirious hope. A habitation in 
 
114 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 This wilderness? Some human wretch of sin, 
 Even like myself, marooned to northermost, 
 Upon this lurid and tempestuous coast, 
 Lone tilting-ground of Titans, Cyclopes, 
 And bloody brood-belched aborigines 
 Of wounded Uranus? With feverish gait, 
 The jagged hillock slope, — blind to my fate — 
 Blacker than Tartar's night, I stumble down; 
 Mine eyes stuck fast unto that beacon-crown, 
 That glistering guide, that terrene star, that lure, 
 Which racks of flying rain and cloud obscure. 
 As closer to it I approach, more wan 
 It flickers, dyingly, for spectral dawn, 
 Gaining upon the daemons of the night, 
 Now haggard ushers in the sullen light 
 Of day, illumining the torn askew, 
 And bleeding face of earth with livid hue. 
 Nearer, I note, dim where the cloud-rack gapes, 
 Shadows fantastic taking on strange shapes, 
 Of what at last looms through the blur, a rude, 
 Patched hovel blown by the elemental feud 
 And hazard of the storm, with saving grace, 
 In semblance of a human dwelling-place. 
 Pilfered it was from shattered temple, fane, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 115 
 
 Whose pillared greatness humbled strewed the plain 
 
 Of sea-blown sand, and seemed the epitome 
 
 Of cities dead, dogged by the unsated sea 
 
 For centuries. Vilely had the mongrel thatch 
 
 Its vagrant self upheaved, as 't were a match 
 
 Against the huge volcanic rock beside it; 
 
 The hail, the rain, the whistling winds deride it; 
 
 Its yawning sides dark inns for gusts from West 
 
 And East to wander in as welcome guest. 
 
 Within, I see a rough-hewn resinous pine 
 
 Blaze sootily, a twofold meed in fine 
 
 Bestowing, heat and light; whilst fast, from out 
 
 The chimney-hole stove in the roof, a rout 
 
 And smudge of black and wind-tossed smoke sails forth, 
 
 As might fell sorcerer's imps from bowels of earth, 
 
 Upon some ghoulish mission bent. 
 
 As yet 
 No sign of life my anxious sight had met 
 To cheer it, and I marvelled much, in sooth, 
 Not with unmixed awe, if eld or youth, 
 What mannered man, — or beast, if such might be, — 
 Might call this cave his home: when, presently, 
 The unleashed winds with fiendish hissing sound, 
 
116 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 In the wake of mighty cracks of the quaking ground, 
 
 And detonations of the bursting wall 
 
 Of heaven above, rend wildly the umbrous pall 
 
 Within the den, disclosing, calmly seated, 
 
 Amidst the din the viewless gods created, 
 
 A venerable old man; his hoary locks, 
 
 Dishevelled by the gale, which sorely mocks 
 
 At age; his long, white, flowing beard low gently 
 
 Sweeping his breast like snow-drifts on Soracte: 
 
 A very Cronos of eternal night! 
 
 His eyes, beneath his beetling brows gleam bright 
 
 As baited lynx; and wound about his gaunt 
 
 And bony frame in wind-blown folds that haunt 
 
 His angularity, a cloak he wore; 
 
 Its yoke was studded round with thunder-stones; 
 
 The clasp was carven out of whale's bones; 
 
 Cerulean 't was of hue, old, faded, o'er 
 
 The which deft fingers, — haply Pallas of 
 
 The azure eye — had broidered for mere love 
 
 Daedalian, weird designs of the immortal great: 
 
 The Olympian dwellings of the gods; the gate 
 
 Of roseate cloud, kept by the winged Hours; 
 
 The gods and goddesses themselves — thrones — powers — 
 
 Eye-dazzling mortals; Hebe nectar pouring, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 117 
 
 What time the Delphian, divinely soaring, 
 
 His golden lyre twanged; in melodies 
 
 The Muses rapt before Apollo's eyes: 
 
 It seemed a mockery 'neath these sodden skies! 
 
 Under the old man's aged feet soft lies 
 
 A pelt of spotted gray wolf's dam; upon 
 
 The reechy walls a time-worn sickle gone 
 
 To rust; a broken spar, some galley oars, 
 
 Some tattered fishers' nets, whose snaring chores 
 
 Being done, they did but gape through broken strands; 
 
 The old man held in 's gnarled and trembling hands 
 
 A necromancer's glass, with silver bands, 
 
 Slowly from which a stream of amber sands 
 
 Was falling to the ground. 
 
 Albeit I stood 
 Within the purlieus of his glance, his brood 
 Saturnine startled not, — he still pursued, 
 All heedlessly his cryptic task. Whereat, 
 I, troubled, spoke, belying fear, begat 
 By 's 'havior, — like a torrent iced o'er 
 Rages beneath: — "I pray thee, sire, — " the roar, 
 Most demoniacal of the elements, 
 Half-drown my piping words of sound and sense, — 
 
118 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 "Creature akin in race of Aryan womb, 
 
 tell me where I am, and why this doom 
 Maleficent, outhorroring in rage 
 
 The hundred-headed Typhon's hellish wage 
 
 'Gainst heaven — to which we twain appear the lone 
 
 And hapless witnesses? this thunder-sown, 
 
 Dread spectacle, than which the galled fiends blown 
 
 From Tartarus, let loose to decimate 
 
 Themselves in gory battle's blind-driven fate, 
 
 Were not one tithe as numbing in its hate? 
 
 And sire, say, if prophet, seer in might, 
 
 Where stays the beauteous maid Rhodanthe? Last night 
 
 1 knelt in Beauty's bower imparadised; 
 To-day, plunged in the maelstrom, demonized, 
 Of damned souls! why with rack amerced? 
 What Hecate broods o'er this haunt accursed? 
 And who are they that call me from the trees? 
 
 The tawny trickling rill of sandy lees 
 Slowly outran its course, ere that at me 
 This Nestor of the storm upglanced. He 
 O'ergazed me grimly with his glaucous eyes; 
 Then in their depths the feeble lustre dies; 
 Then, down the corners of his bloodless lips, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 119 
 
 Which curl with leer sardonic, lewdly drips, 
 Meseems, envenomed hate. He drew his cloak; 
 Then toneless words as from the tomb he spoke: 
 
 "For thee, fond youth, I here am waiting long: 
 'Last night,' thou say'st? I heard thine even-song 
 Aeons agone ! I 've reckoned cycles since 
 Thou fell'st asleep, insensate Fairy Prince, 
 Who kindled Beauty's ruin with a kiss 
 Of clay — to forge thy sempiternal bliss! 
 These grains of sand in periodicity 
 Do symbol centuries ! Time's knell for thee, 
 Hath struck in full its whirligig. 'Last night,'" 
 He jeered, "the last Greek Calends soared their flight! 
 The quavering course of mortals and immortals 
 Is run! Thou art the last to pass the portals 
 Into oblivion. The dynasty 
 Of famed Olympus fallen, the deity 
 Dethroned, deserted, in cold darkness dying! 
 King Pan 's stone dead ! Ay, e'en the Sibyl's sighing, 
 Which lone endured of her nigh deathless life, 
 Hath breathed upon the winds its last. The strife 
 Vainglorious of the mad young planet, whence 
 Thou hail'st, fierce general wars with violence 
 Did fearfully destroy; it wound its story, 
 
120 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Leaving no vestige of its wanton glory. 
 Rhodanthe?" he flouted. "Ha! That hell morose, 
 Where thou awok'st, held once her garden-close; 
 Her wood, through which thou hither cam'st, was late 
 The hades of the Hamadryads' fate, 
 Sylvani damned, of Fauns, and Satyrs dire, 
 Whose heinous crimes deep roused to vengeful ire 
 The omnific gods; and here ingloriously 
 Imprisoned, to expiate eternally 
 Their faults, were they addoomed, had godly gyves 
 Immortal proved. On their defiant lives, 
 So rathely plucked, the curse fell heavily; 
 Forthwith, they felt the rough bark balefully 
 Dam up their expiatory moans and cries; 
 Seeling the tear-drops in their piteous eyes; 
 Their feet in rock-clefts rooted midst alarms; 
 A-sudden branches warped their lifted arms, 
 Hardened to skyward in a mute appeal: 
 And thus mewed up in trees, with forced zeal, 
 They ordered were to fill the forest glades, 
 In death continual, that but the end evades, 
 Sharing a fate Promethean; for in their night 
 Of doom, — which naught save demon-fires light, 
 The while they loathly gloat on their distress, — 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 121 
 
 They never knew the feel of that caress, 
 
 That cool, hushed murmur of the zephyrs, fan 
 
 Their withering tops; or sap, that swiftly ran 
 
 Throughout their limbs ; or heard sweet whispering leaves, 
 
 Or sensed the sway of their huge trunk as 't cleaves 
 
 With lealty deep-bosomed mother-earth, — 
 
 Although the darling of the winds since birth; 
 
 Or plumed their budding foliage in the sun: 
 
 But vainly yearned for Spring Saturnian, 
 
 Which never bloomed again in their old life. 
 
 For all 'twixt them and nature now was strife, 
 
 And bitterest combat of the elements; 
 
 The wanton West-winds, the Favonian, tense, 
 
 From jaded resting in the Aeolian Isles, 
 
 Came revelling through their woe-begotten wilds, 
 
 Shrieking infernal glee; they sweep the bare 
 
 And piteous spirit-trees to earth, and tear 
 
 The poor and bleeding roots, that strive to hold 
 
 Their fresh-knit tendons in the cracking mould; 
 
 Exultingly the extended arms are wrenched 
 
 From groaning sockets scarcely healed; and drenched 
 
 With pelting floods of hail-stones till aghast, 
 
 The limbs are lacerated to the last 
 
 Few quivering leaves; then, with despairing cries, 
 
122 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 They see afar hurled from the black-wombed skies, 
 The blood-red thunderbolts, time and again, 
 Come crashing in their hearts; and, rent in twain, 
 They totter, yield, then tumbling headlong, rolled 
 Like tortured giants in agonies untold." 
 
 He ceased, and said, as he the shadows kenned: 
 "But now the World is winding to its end! 
 Nature, the Beautiful, which thou hast worshipped 
 As Idol, with her dazzling countenance, dipped 
 In sparkling liquid emeralds and pearls, 
 Blackens and dies; her meadow brooklet purls 
 No more of 's spirit-god; her waterfall 
 Hangs lifeless in her death-bed silvery pall, 
 Athwart the buried rocks : all that 's divine, 
 Informing with ethereal grace her shrine 
 Ephemeral, fadeth like the myths of Man, 
 Who peopled the elusive heights Elysian. 
 And Man, who yearned so for gods, his role 
 Is played; he, who did yoke the soul 
 Of man and maid with tree and plant and flower, 
 To endue all Nature with a subtle power 
 And being of celestial beauty — strove 
 To forge them irrefrangibly in love — 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 123 
 
 Learns that her day of dissolution dawns; 
 Her erstwhile flowery, fulgent face, Death yawns 
 To Nothingness! The roses of her earth 
 Lie wilted, and her forests of ancient birth, 
 Belch from their bowels forth the genii 
 That in them lived, with longing but to die. 
 The mortal canker mocks the immortal gods!" 
 This trenchantly; then on his discourse plods: 
 
 "Recall'st that shattered oak, which prostrate lay, 
 And lopped thy path with tremulous limbs? How gay 
 It tossed its leafy mane superbly high 
 In callow days ! Know, that in 's wormed, wry, 
 And blackened shell immured, there lived one time 
 In penal woe, that outworn ghost of crime, 
 Japetus named, the Titan born, who laughed 
 To scorn the mighty Zeus, 'rayed 'gainst the craft 
 Of Cronos and his kin. Thus Nature shunned 
 His most unnatural lapse. Ah, thou art stunned 
 At this recital — wait!" he, smiling, said: 
 "In yon wild olive tree there languished, 
 The relic of that tender shepherd lad, 
 The Apulian youth, who impiously had 
 Defamed the dancing nymphs loved by the gods; 
 
124 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 His bitter tongue tastes in the acrid pods, 
 
 Crumbling to ashes in the Avernian breeze! — 
 
 The calls thou heard'st came from the poplar trees; 
 
 Yea, from the imprisoned daughters of the Sun, 
 
 Who still for Phaeton mourn. I saw, my son, 
 
 Thy heart, which ever melts at woman's tears, 
 
 To list the suppliance of these woodland dears, 
 
 Was sorely tempted. Ha!" he taunting sneers, — 
 
 And then resumeth: "Buried 'neath the dun 
 
 Nocturnal cypress, thou didst fast o'er-run 
 
 The Sun-god's favorite, Cyparissus, he, 
 
 Once lovely Cea's pride, who, wofully, 
 
 Long-time bemoaned his soft and milk-white forehead. — 
 
 Look you, here 't was fair Dryope was led, 
 
 Most beautiful of all the Occhalian maids, 
 
 With her sweet boy Amphissus, to the shades 
 
 Purpureal of Lotus blossoms, which, 
 
 Daring to pluck, her lovely hands grew rich 
 
 Encarnadined with blood of the bleeding flower; 
 
 'T was Lotis, and her fate was doomed that hour; — 
 
 She felt the nymph's dread curse : she pleads ; she grieves ; 
 
 She strives to tear her hair — her hands with leaves 
 
 Are filled; she lifts her little son to her; 
 
 He cries, — he feels his mother's breast, — where myrrh 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 125 
 
 And honey of his childhood dreams had flowed, — 
 Grow hard, rough-rinded as the waited toad; 
 Over the soft white neck the bark creeps frore, 
 Then seals the lips — her kisses are no more! 
 She long repented in the Lotus hearsed. — 
 Here Myrrha, in sylvestral cloister 'mersed, 
 Bewailed her most unhappy love; her tree 
 Its amber tear drops shed unceasingly. — 
 There, 'mong dead blossoms of the Almond bare, 
 Which fringed thy way, thou heard'st upon the air 
 Faintly, the plaintive murmurings of Phyllis; 
 The loss of her Demophoon, ah, still is 
 That woe her wail — that he returned to see, 
 Alas, her charms merged in the Almond tree: 
 lover false! how for him she yearned! — 
 But 't is enough ! Innumerous they, interned, — 
 Whose well-remembered names, like April rains, 
 Smelt sweet on earth, — long did in pines, and planes, 
 And lindens, silvery poplars, beeches, rage, — 
 Peopling this forest, which in the Golden Age 
 Emblazoned Tempe; — clapped in Jove-made tombs, 
 Of the Underworld deep down as in earth's wombs, 
 Still-born and cursed. Some, who, like Phoebus, sighing 
 For Daphnes, in the eternal laurel dying; 
 
126 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 And many wood-nymphs, love-shaked, their sad lot 
 
 To long some Rhoecus, who his tryst forgot. 
 
 Thus helpless, hopeless, these, with ululations, 
 
 Befouled for aeons long the air — while nations 
 
 Of men inurned their memories in love, 
 
 And thought them sphered in the stars above; 
 
 Their fate, unknown, to curse their former life, 
 
 Whose fields they sowed with cockle-faults full rife: — 
 
 Thus trespasses against the deity, 
 
 'Gainst Nature's works and wonders was to die; 
 
 As now she 's doomed, and all her genii ! 
 
 So art thou answered and the reason why." 
 
 He paused, and watched the inky clouds distend; 
 Then cried: "But life's grim woes wind to their end; 
 For mortal matter mocks the immortal god, 
 And Fate relentless flays us 'neath her rod!" 
 
 His dark, mysterious prophecying's grist, 
 My restless patience dares o'erleap its list: 
 "Enough! Enough!" I groaned; "thou seem'st to boast 
 For I am gallowed on this spectral coast; 
 How have I sinned that I should be so crossed? 
 And why to me incontinently lost, 
 Is all the heaven of the Flowery Isle?" 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 127 
 
 The cat-like eyes glint with a steely smile, 
 Beneath their shaggy beetling brows of night: 
 "Thou dar'st to ask!" he thundered, like the might 
 Of Neptune's deep chafed into bellowings, 
 Until my heart throbbed fast as sea-mews wings, 
 Breasting the ruthless blast of wind and ocean: 
 "Dar'st ask? thou intemperate Boeotian! 
 Thou overweening pilgrim from the base 
 And unregenerate globe! son of the race, 
 Which sand-blind sought'st the bubble Happiness, 
 As though it topped the peaks of all Success! 
 Didst thou not make the Heaven of Earthly Beauty 
 Thine all-absorbing quest, and destiny 
 Supercelestial ? Beauty, and her minion 
 Of Love, ascendant in thy heart's dominion, 
 Over the gifts of all the gods, or goal, 
 Which might have cradled thine immortal soul 
 In bowers of eternal bliss hereafter? 
 Ay; and like fools that force Homeric laughter, — 
 Ay, like all men, — like even the deities 
 Olympian, who their sacrosanctities 
 In this same arrogance forgot, — to teem 
 All history with this madness o'er a dream, 
 This bootless chase for Beauty's Will-o-wisp! 
 
128 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 And yet, since first thou learnedst Art's golden lisp, 
 
 Thou wast soft coddled with a nice precision, 
 
 Until vouchsafed Life's beatific vision, 
 
 And leave to love fair Beauty's full-blown flower, 
 
 Rhodanthe, the nonpareil, of rarest dower, 
 
 That doting Nature e'er devised for those, 
 
 Who solve her secret underneath the rose: 
 
 This maid, who for earth's richest prize beseems; 
 
 Whose loveliness divine no mortal dreams 
 
 Surpassed! — And thou, blind 'fore her deathless flame, 
 
 Both won and lost her to the eternal shame! 
 
 Thou sigh'st; alas! to sigh it is too late." 
 
 "Ah, dear Rhodanthe!" I moaned, crushed by my fate 
 Tellurian, "who can measure my despair? 
 Thou prize, far richer than Atlanta rare, 
 Or Dian, to the illimitable love 
 Of gods! or those divinities, above 
 The common race of man in the world's decree, 
 Who dazzled the Idalian groves with beauty! 
 woe is me, remembering in my distress, 
 Thy countenance of ecstatic loveliness; 
 Glowing celestial — rosy as Aurora, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 129 
 
 When forth she blithely sails to greet the day, 
 Dight in her ruddy gloryings! — Ah me!" — 
 
 "And thou mightst still, entranced utterly, — 
 Imparadised in contemplation of 
 Thy goddess, — basked thee ever in her love!" 
 Baited my tempter of the Aetnean snows, — 
 "But that bright heaven of the exquisite Rose 
 Of Beauty, which, to worship with a passion 
 Repured, in lowly, loving adoration, 
 Had ransomed thee, thou turnedst to thy hell! 
 Oh, it had shrived thee better than book and bell! 
 Perchance, redeemed thee, and all men from doom 
 Irrevocable now; ay, and thy gloom 
 Despicable of death had not been added, 
 Within the very dell, whilere engladded, 
 Hadst thou not shown the cloven of thy clay!" 
 
 He stopped. — "But I did worship her, I say! 
 Ay, dreamed to set her highest in the heaven! 
 Higher," I cried, "than any the immortal Seven! 
 In hymns diurnal, Beauty had I crowned 
 With diadem of stars; made her renowned 
 In song and story from the Antarctic snows 
 
130 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 To Nilus!" — But he sneered, with seeming gloze: 
 
 "For that thou strovest in thy small, smug way, 
 
 In thy cramped sphere, thy tiny ball of clay, 
 
 Thine earth, to build in beauty emulous 
 
 Of heaven, — but, 0, with aim so covetous ! 
 
 And, 0, with what infinity of fault! — 
 
 So wast thou blest: and when, in brave assault, 
 
 Thou erst essayed to scale the battlements 
 
 Of high endeavor, keeping, like perfumed incense, 
 
 A holy love intreasured within 
 
 Thy fretful heart, thou wast that gift akin 
 
 To gods accorded, — ay, that fatal glimpse 
 
 Into the Flower)- Isle of the Flower-nymphs, 
 
 Celestial bourne of dreams terrestrial; 
 
 Fair Flora's everlasting festival: 
 
 With peerless draughts at Beauty's crystal fount; 
 
 With musked taste of love-wine, tantamount 
 
 To that, which turned the head of Adon, when 
 
 He zoned the cestus of the Paphian: 
 
 An eye-wink in the sacred mysteries, 
 
 Behind those intertangled tapestries 
 
 Of myrtles and of roses; — and withal, 
 
 A something of that light of love eternal, 
 
 To which, foolish mortal, thou mightst aspire, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOIL'S DELIGHT 131 
 
 Hadst thou not 'fore that idol, built of mire, 
 All basely grovelled, as 't were heavenly dew, 
 The earth -jade, Comeliness!" 
 
 "T is false!" 
 
 "'Tis true! 
 
 Thou didst like any perked-up moonstruck churl, 
 
 Grossly pollute, as though some peasant girl, 
 
 In bold embrace of love impassionate, 
 
 The ethereal bright Rhodanthe! didst desecrate, 
 
 With lips irreverent, that rose-bud fair, 
 
 And virgin-honeyed mouth, no human dare 
 
 Defile and live! Wherefore, thou meet'st with Death, 
 
 Whose terminus here marks thy latest breath." 
 
 "Was then not Beauty, heaven-born, for love — 
 Instilled within us by the Power above? 
 
 "Ay, love that heavenward soared! — but man did pale 
 With ignomy before her Holy Grail : 
 Either with envy, hate, hypocrisy, 
 Or sin more rank, he soiled her sanctity; 
 And killed the flower, — as thou didst this, — 
 Beauty, the Spirit, with an earthy kiss! 
 
132 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Man should have Beauty, heaven-born, with eyes 
 Revering, adorations, ardors, sighs 
 Soul-shaking, hallowedly, devoutly yearned; 
 In rapturous contemplation inward burned 
 His heart's desire, with such majesty 
 To pinnacle, in 's throned empery! — 
 But man, the Canker — thou — didst mine the fair 
 Chaste bud; so Death, avengeant, to her lair 
 Hath tracked thee!" 
 
 "Cannot Love absolve me there?" 
 
 "Thy soul, from its crass sin, may not be purged! 
 Conversion is there not, as Sophists urged, 
 Passing from Shades Plutonian up to Heaven; 
 Here dost thou find the meal without the leaven — 
 Destruction absolute — and Life's sealed door. — 
 For thee, now, Beauty reigneth never more! 
 The Paphian curve outblotted by thy frailty! 
 Empyreal Beauty blasted by thy folly! 
 Its fountain in thy heart mere mould upheaves. 
 Rhodanthe is dead! Love's flower, like the leaves 
 Of the Rose now faded on thy heart of care, 
 Hath spent its fragrance on the ingrate air. 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 133 
 
 Ah, woe the world! Again hath barbed Beauty, 
 To gods and men brought down calamity! 
 Again Cassiopea's dazzling awe; 
 Again Pandora, eke Andromeda, 
 Destroy, as Helen did, who set afire 
 The twanging strings of Homer's Delphic lyre, 
 Reverberating through enchanting ages! 
 Beauty is dead! and Nature's rout presages 
 Annihilation. Time, that was to be, 
 Endures not more that fell catastrophe! 
 Together must we mount the rolling tide 
 Into eternal Nothingness, and bide 
 The end of Life's worm-gnawed book," my guide 
 Dilated, adding quick; "Come, follow me!" 
 And saying which, descended toward the sea, 
 With ponderous gait, and bent upon his staff. 
 His blazing eyes, his mocking ribald laugh, 
 His old-world mien, his flying snake-like locks, 
 Struck terror; and as 'mid the jagged rocks, 
 Piled round him by the play of centuries, 
 Laboriously he treads, with scornful ease 
 Tossing aside the blasts and torrent streams, 
 That smite his nakedness, he strangely seems 
 Some long-forgotten giant of genesis, 
 
134 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Begat in embryonic Time's abyss, 
 
 When first the gods called forth the unalloyed 
 
 Congealing matter from the mists of Void. 
 
 And as I dragged my leaden feet in 's track, 
 New and unspeakable Fear's procrustean-rack, 
 Tortured my soul — for o'er me loomed the wraith 
 Portentous, ominous of my unfaith — 
 The fate inexorable I could not shun 
 Of my impending dissolution. 
 Dully, like ox wreathed for the slaughter's rite, 
 Weirdly impelled, I went; cold beads of fright 
 Bedanked my brow; whilst like twin aspens trembling 
 My knees upbore me scarcely: but, dissembling, — 
 Having no stomach for adventures more, 
 And marvelling the goal toward which he bore, — 
 I called to inquire if from these imperilments, 
 This damned upheaval of the elements, 
 I truly would not to my "cramped sphere," 
 My "tiny ball of earth" return — which, dear 
 To me before, now beckoned smilingly, 
 With outstretched arms, as if, indeed, to me 
 It never had doled out but halcyon peace 
 And happiness undefiled. 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 135 
 
 With no surcease 
 Of step, he turned his fiend-like face and form, 
 Shrieking with voice of sea-gull in a storm: 
 "We 're on our way to the engulphing end! 
 The gods were myths, and on the tide we tend, 
 Which shall blot out the earth and moon and sun, 
 Ay, heaven and hell. Hereafter is there none! 
 No more shall mortal pasture with the hind; 
 No more the lazy Triton shall unwind 
 His wreathed conch, where moon-kist water laves 
 The shore; or sea-nymphs quire to the waves, 
 The while they comb their lucent hair; no more 
 Shall sirens lure to star-ypaven floor 
 Of Neptune's empery; — but continents, 
 Puissant before, shall sink in impotence; 
 Our grave the ocean bed — and worms shall feast 
 Upon 's, till ooze and worm, and thou, the least 
 Consistent parasite, — and I, blown hence, 
 Dissolve into the pregnant waters whence 
 We sprung, and all from thy irreverence!" 
 He laughed a raucous laugh, which froze my blood. 
 
 "False prophet, thou!" I cried, "to tempt yon flood 
 I '11 follow thee no more ! But tell, I pray, 
 
136 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 If lives no higher Power, who guides thy way?" 
 
 But if the wind-imps clipped my weak-winged words, 
 
 Or they were drowned by the cries of birds, 
 
 Or that my grisly mentor them ignored 
 
 Through supercilious scorn, my query soared 
 
 Away unanswered yet; — and on his heels 
 
 I trudged in silence, fearful, as one feels, 
 
 When super-nature awes the puerile speech, — 
 
 Until at last an inlet dark we reach. 
 
 It jutted 'long a towering cliff from shore, 
 
 On whose huge bouldered base the waters hoar, 
 
 With catapultic force, had battered in 
 
 A deep cavernous antre; black within 
 
 As Erebus it shone below the ledge 
 
 O'erhanging. Here low stooping on the edge 
 
 Of its rapacious maw, laboriously 
 
 And slow, the gaunt old Titan tugged, till he 
 
 Dragged forth a ponderous jangling iron chain, 
 
 Which seemed from time primordial there to have lain; 
 
 And presently in view did weirdly float, 
 
 A weather-beaten, water- logged, black boat ; 
 
 Its curved prow nosed high in the embrowned air, 
 
 As if it sniffed some curious business there. 
 
 All-startled at the phantom-gloomy hulk, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 137 
 
 So like a fateful monster, back I skulk, 
 
 My heart so numb that I my Charon charge: 
 
 "Is 't possible, that with this rotten barge, 
 
 Thou 'It tempt the treachery of yon furious main?" 
 
 He minded not — and as it heaved again, 
 
 Belching full out its dark and ancient crib, 
 
 Its antique carcass and each calcined rib, 
 
 To me all of its sad decay displayed. 
 
 He hobbled in unsteadily, and laid 
 
 Adown his staff and took the rough-hewn oar; 
 
 Then signalled me jump in and push from shore — 
 
 "Ye gods!" I groan, "'t is madness sheer! he raves, 
 
 Who dares yon black and welkin-kissing waves! 
 
 Go an thou wilt — I to the wood of fire, 
 
 Rather than risk the unbridled tempest's ire!" 
 
 "Then to the wood!" he gibed, "Amphibian!" 
 Impulsively I turned to look upon 
 The land from which I came — but I no more 
 Than tops of charred and leafless trees a score 
 Could see — for by the cloud-breaks deluged o'er, 
 A flood on land now rolls to join the sea! 
 "'Tis cormorant!" he mocked with savage glee; 
 "Best tempt the main; see, mortal, how for thee 
 
138 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 The spooming ocean chafes unfettered; thou 
 The bowels of her wrath can halcyon now: 
 Cruel her rage since Day deigns not to dawn; 
 No more upon her bosom doth Vesper fawn; 
 No more love-spangled Moonlight pranks her gold, 
 Or soothes her deep-pulsating heart of old: 
 Soon shall her massing flood engulph the world, 
 Nor shall the Mountain of the Muse uphurled, 
 Cradle a new Deucalion!" 
 
 What choice? 
 Half-dazed, I find the seat: he doth rejoice 
 Lewdly, methinks, and forthright toward the ocean, 
 We 're with the sculler's sharp propelling motion, 
 Shot swiftly 'long the broad cliff's leeward bank. 
 At every impulse — every crunching clank, 
 The churned waters wilder wax; to me 
 They frenzied seem to mingle with the sea. 
 My rising fears in fresh alarms accresce, 
 As fast the promontory's bulk grows less; 
 As our frail bark a-tremble scents her fate, — 
 The batteries of waves infuriate, 
 Helpless to breast, as with their mightier pinions, 
 They on our gunwales fasten their dominions. 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 139 
 
 And, stroke by stroke, we make the open flood! 
 On every side of us, the quivering brood 
 Of lapping waves onrush with deadlihood; 
 Roaring like demons, down the cliff's base gone, 
 As though their goal were straight to Phlegethon; 
 Before, behind us, swirling eddies strive 
 To englut our helpless craft, and suck alive 
 Its human freight down caves, where winnoeth 
 The restless tide the trophies of grim Death. 
 And shriller, shriller, whistle the exultant winds, 
 As oft-times through lone melancholy pines, 
 I 've heard their haunting funeral dirges gray; 
 Whilst gulls and sea-mews, phantomed in the spray 
 O'erhead, like vengeful spectres, ruthless wind 
 Fate's ghastly shroud about me, grovelling blind 
 Within her power; and, above their cries, 
 Resounds the thunderous boom, and fell reprise 
 To come of Ocean's rage, her every fume, 
 Roused from her deep unfathomable womb, 
 Wrought up in passion inexhaustible. 
 
 potent hand of Fate inexorable! 
 Now like a cockle spewed into the deep, 
 We in the black tumultuous ocean leap; 
 
140 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Around us billows roar and writhe in fray, 
 Gloating to greet their groaning helpless prey. 
 They hurdle us with glee o'er ridge and crest; 
 They hurtle us about north, east, and west; 
 Now yawning craters gape leagues down beneath 
 Our quivering keel; now, holding in my breath, 
 I wait, while dizzy toppling walls of waves, 
 Like liquid avalanches ope our graves — 
 And sepulchred below the engulphing masses, 
 I smother; — but we right-up in crevasses, 
 Until again tossed high, a perilous speck, 
 Topping a watery crag — a pitiful wreck! — 
 Half-hidden in the murk of pitch-black clouds, 
 From whose distended bellies pours in shrouds 
 The doomful rain in merciless derision. 
 I clutch in fearful desperation, 
 The crackling gunwales of our craft; I gasp — 
 My breath whelmed by the buffeting wind; I clasp 
 My poor heart, panting frighted 'gainst its side 
 In dire panic: no more in Springtide, 
 Warm, awakening, will it pulse at hide-and-seek, 
 At Cupid's bashful, tender, rosy cheek! 
 No more soft music beat as bird's sweet breath, 
 Dreamless of carking hate of storm and death ! 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 141 
 
 Out, out upon the vasty surge we 're blown ! 
 Wave-swept, but still as Maenad carved in stone, 
 Rooted by magic on the barge's poop, 
 With darkened mien, and imperturbable stoop, 
 My pilot stands unmoved as on a heath, 
 Or country-side; while on, into the teeth 
 Of tortured Ocean's fierce convulsive throes, 
 We steadily steer — nor at the craven's woes, 
 Crouched at his feet, deigns he a look of ruth, — 
 Nay, not an empty word. 
 
 At last, forsooth, 
 The lengthening vales 'twixt ocean's mountain-chain, 
 Seemed some surcease of danger on the main 
 To lend our wretched bark; and I, the feel 
 Of 0, a flickering hope deep-sensed of weal, — 
 When lo! I saw my aged steersman raise 
 Himself to preternatural heighth ; the blaze 
 Of glowing coals in his sunk orbits flared, 
 As in the veil of mist and spray he stared 
 Expectant. Suddenly, with wildering shout 
 Like maniacal glee of loonish lout, 
 His stretched forefinger darts he in the gloom: 
 "Look! Look! It comes!" he cried, "the doom! the doom! 
 
142 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Now will that teach thee prayer!" He laughed. "At last! 
 
 It is the grand climacteric!" Aghast, 
 
 I gazed ahead — while 's mocking laughter clanked, 
 
 Clogging my blood-streams, and my brow bedanked 
 
 With cold congealing sweat. — sight to quake 
 
 The stoutest heart ! throes of hell's black lake ! 
 
 There, on the dark horizon rolling low, 
 
 Toward us, surely, ponderously slow, 
 
 A mighty moving mountain-wave in bulk; 
 
 Rolling toward us like a giant in sulk; 
 
 Rolling in stature higher as it flows; 
 
 Rolling toward us with its pack of woes, 
 
 A Nemesis — outspreading its advance, 
 
 Along the breadth of ocean's wide expanse, 
 
 As if the tides of all Eternity, 
 
 In one uprolled, had demonized the sea, — 
 
 By cataclysmic, vast, upheaving lust, 
 
 Upbulging high the quaked earth's stubborn crust, — 
 
 And tracked us, outcasts, on the tempest tossed. 
 
 "Ye gods!" I wailed. "What shall we do? We're lost!" 
 
 Down at his feet I knelt, imploring — prayed — 
 
 He answered not; nay, rather seemed he paid 
 
 A silent tribute to wild nature's spleen, 
 
 And awful grandeur of that ocean scene, 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 143 
 
 That ghoulish triumph of destruction, 
 
 As it approached. A weird and strange seduction 
 
 Softened his features — as he watched the gray 
 
 And terrorizing front, by hghtning's play 
 
 Ghastly illumined on its lumbering way: 
 
 Now lurid, phosphorescent, livid-green; 
 
 Now lost in Stygian night; now, in its sheen, 
 
 Dim spectres dance in hellish ecstasy, 
 
 And flit across its dread immensity; 
 
 Now fearfully in air its sides upleap, — 
 
 As thunderbolts in volleys rock the deep, 
 
 And shake it centre to circumference: 
 
 Now sinks it down as worn to impotence, 
 
 While low cloud-racks, which rumble on like drums, 
 
 Lend it their haggard company — On it comes! 
 
 Crouched in the barge's bilgy bottom lay 
 I drenched, and dripping with the cold salt spray; 
 Each tendon strained, each nerve wracked taut to stay 
 The oncoming adamantine shock. With awe 
 Half-dazed, half-dead, mine eyes bulge out; my jaw 
 Convulsive chatters, and all will ignores; 
 My dammed-up terror breaks forth from my pores 
 In multitudinous beads of clammy sweat; 
 
144 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 My eyes burn blind with lashing brine beset, — 
 
 And on it conies! Already on its swells 
 
 We ominously heave and fall — the feel that spells 
 
 The final dissolution. Louder wail 
 
 The winds their dirge funereal! and the hail 
 
 And rain, and ocean shriek with bursting lungs; 
 
 And wild waves lick us with their lickerish tongues, 
 
 Like lolling ravening beasts a-tliirst to seize 
 
 Their nigh death-clutched prey with treacheries 
 
 Immitigate. Alas, a little prayer 
 
 To lisp — What end? since all things whatsoe'er 
 
 Supernal now succumb even as we do! 
 
 ghastly thought! — Ye gods, who did imbrue 
 
 This mind with majesty, so that far through 
 
 The Elysian fields of thought, "mid lightning gleams, 
 
 It winged a gorgeous flight! golden dreams 
 
 Of courts and castle-towns that heavenward rise ! 
 
 Ye lovely visions of a Paradise 
 
 To come, — that like an incense-perfumed fire, 
 
 Quick from a heart with rapturous desire 
 
 Aflame, lit bright our destiny divine, 
 
 With rainbow-hues all rose and sapphirine, 
 
 To lure us on! — ye in the mists dissolve! 
 
 Ye die crushed "neath the water-wheels revolve 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOLUS DELIGHT 145 
 
 Of Ocean's Juggernaut, in direful might, 
 Never to wake from Sleep's eternal night! 
 
 earthly hody, prized, with love bedight; 
 By nature mothered, by her music lulled, — 
 Soon soulless, eyeless, cold, to senses dulled, 
 A clod, thouTt glut the dark insatiable maw 
 Of Ocean's Scavenger! — Thus stricken with awe 
 
 1 mused all hopeless — when, with impact dead, 
 Titanic, irresistible, and dread, 
 
 The mountain-billow whirled us in the air 
 
 Like chaff. I clutched the boat's sides in despair, 
 
 Balanced upon the lofty foaming crest 
 
 Of the enchafed flood; its quivering breast 
 
 Wavered a moment's flash, then back we 're hurled 
 
 Ten fathoms deep into a nether world, 
 
 With oceanic force — ejecting me 
 
 Into the seething furnace of the sea. 
 
 The rotten boat is kindling "round me strown: 
 
 Half-stunned, half-choked, distraught, — half-dead, — I groan 
 
 With woe-o'erwhelming — searching through the brine 
 
 Engulphing, for the Avenger — for some sign, 
 
 Some last companionable glance, — for crass, 
 
 Shag-eared, uncouth, he was a man, alas, 
 
 And creature like myself! — but he is gone, 
 
146 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 And in the embattling flood I am alone: 
 
 But o'er the booming surge, like tolling bell 
 
 At sea that mournful sounds life's last farewell, 
 
 I hear his winged words float on the air: — 
 
 "Fear not — it is thy fate — fond youth and fair: 
 
 Thy dizzy moth down-tumbled from the stars! 
 
 Thine endless seeking, through life's jousts and jars, 
 
 Did win the incomparable Rhodanthe for thee, — 
 
 The embodiment of all the World of Beauty, — 
 
 But compassed not thy soul-yearned happiness. 
 
 She was a phantom of ephemeralness ! 
 
 And for thy bootless pains and fond delusion, 
 
 To drink the hemlock cup of dissolution 
 
 Consegues; and now is Death's heredity 
 
 Thine undistributable patrimony. 
 
 Now 'FINIS' in thy Book of Life impress: 
 
 Learn like thy forbears in their heart's distress, 
 
 In Beauty only lies not Happiness! 
 
 Thy gods were myths! Hereafter is there none! — 
 
 Thou diest forever — and my work is done!" — 
 
 It ceased, that awful voice of doom; and all 
 Waxed still, save, in the night's enveloping pall, 
 The swish and whirr battailous of the wind 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 147 
 
 And wave, which lash and buffet me sore-blind. 
 In fierce dynamic strife about the sea 
 I fight for life, — sweeter now to me, 
 Were't but to save Rhodanthe's bright memory 
 From dying with the death of me! I leap 
 Up mountained billow-ridges — and in the deep 
 Of icy blackness sink, where I 'm assailed 
 By multitudinous sea-monsters, mailed, 
 That ravening bait at me; and lichens, weeds, 
 With cold and clammy fingers, — foul breeds 
 And parasitics of the ocean, — bruise 
 Me as they drag me to their beds of ooze, 
 A thousand furlongs down. 
 
 By dour defence, 
 I free me from their rank entanglements; 
 And weary, woe-worn, to the surface rise. 
 Lo! everywhere for leagues, to my surprise, 
 The angry waters lie all tranquil bright, 
 All bathed in an ambrosial rosy light; 
 And, o'er my head, through chasms blue for miles, 
 A heavenly vision vistaed, — golden aisles 
 Of Gothic distances, as far as eye 
 Can reach; while sentinel lilies glorify 
 
148 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 The flower-paven alleys of the sky, 
 
 And lead unto a bower. There I beheld, 
 
 On dais raised, with damask roses stelled, 
 
 The peerless maid, Rhodanthe; she tristly smiles, — 
 
 wilding heart that beats with hope's fond wiles! — 
 
 A moment breathes the enchanted effluence 
 
 Its heavenly ardors on my awed sense, 
 
 Then melts the vision swiftly as a breath 
 
 Melteth into air — dream of Death! 
 
 Alas, was't a mirage to illume the way? 
 
 A wistful hope of eke a happier day? 
 
 bitterest woe! — Heart gloomed, for my last sleep, 
 Back to the yearning waters of the deep, 
 
 1 give my self — while all the welkin rings 
 With fiendish laughter, roars, and bellowings 
 Unintermitted, as though imps of hell 
 Victoriously exulted in my fell 
 Destruction; and again, weird voices moan 
 Upon the waters: "Tis the end! Atone, 
 Fond youth, for all thy wanton self-esteem; 
 'Tis pity thou didst labor so to dream; 
 
 The mystic Sophists stuffed thy Deities, 
 
 And built Hereafter for Man's tyrannies: 
 
 The World is dead and Beauty 's dead — thy muse 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 149 
 
 Will find her gold hair in the muddy ooze — 
 Where in Oblivion lie thou evermore!" — 
 
 Loud roared the Deep's doxology, as o'er 
 My disappearing head the seething yeast 
 Of churned waters jubilantly feast 
 In victory. As though my heart from 's breast 
 Pent-up must burst, I gasp, — then, sleepily rest, 
 By black engulphing depths fore'er obsessed. 
 
150 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 BOOK IV 
 L'ENVOI 
 
 "Perche la faccia mia si t'innamora . . . ?" 
 Cosi Beatrice. 
 
 Dante: Par. xxiii, 70-76. 
 
 Why doth my face enamour thee? 
 The light of all eternity, 
 Resplendent blazons yonder, see — 
 The Gardens of the Rosary! 
 
 It blossoms 'neath Christ's loving rays, 
 Bowered with chants of seraph's lays: 
 wander through its flowered ways, 
 These paradisal Easter days. 
 
 Here is the Rose, wherein the Word 
 
 Divine incarnate was preferred 
 
 Of womankind, — her petals stirred — 
 
 Her perfumed prayers in Heaven are heard. 
 
 And here the sentinel Lilies stand, 
 Whose odors bare the Holy Band, 
 And guide into the Promised Land — 
 Then give Our Lady Love thy hand. 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOLUS DELIGHT 151 
 
 A cry of terror 'scapes my lips; hard-pressed, 
 I wake: my teeth are chattering with affright, 
 Fell and unspeakable, from loathsome sight 
 Of vile misshapen monsters of the wave; 
 From carking cold of my deep ocean grave, 
 Whose muddied cerements gyve me still her slave. 
 I shiver — I am dank from horrors wild — 
 And yet, methinks, a song even now beguiled 
 Me into waking. Was't "The Rose Celestial," 
 Once Beatrice sang? — or dream terrestrial? 
 I rub my unbelieving eyes — I find — 
 Certes, I 'm safe from storm and wave and wind, 
 Within the old familiar frescoed walls 
 Of Rosamund's garden-close, where softly falls 
 The April sunlight — and which trails its glory 
 On Florence's Lung' Arno, wreathed in story. 
 There rise the red-tiled roofs, the cypress hills, 
 The poplars by the river, and the light that fills 
 With orient turquoise of the Tuscan skies 
 The crystal air. Can I believe mine eyes? 
 "0 bella cilta dei fiori!" cries, 
 Florence, to thee, my heart in ecstasies. 
 Then, all my woes innumerable, the theme 
 And figment of a wild fantastic dream, 
 Forsooth, must be! Ay, for athwart a row 
 
152 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 Of sentinel lilies, white as Luni's snow, 
 
 I see beneath a bower of vermeil roses 
 
 My Rosamund stands, and of my dream disposes 
 
 The last illusion, — save those lucent hours, 
 
 When blissfully bewildered 'mong the flowers, 
 
 I could not tell my loved one from the showers 
 
 Elusive pink and white. 'Twas she! a-glowing 
 
 Even as now — her dimpled arms o'erflowing 
 
 With freshly-gathered florets of every hue, 
 
 Dripping with diamonds of nectareous dew, — 
 
 Daedalian nature's picturesque mosaics, — 
 
 That glad me, gloom-sick from the slimed agarics 
 
 Of ocean's sunless caves. — roseate smiles! 
 
 was it strange I sought in flowering isles 
 
 The garden so enflowered in her face? 
 
 The rose reflected with ineffable grace 
 
 In her soft damask cheek? — the gentian blue 
 
 Trembling in her seraphic eyes so true? 
 
 Her temples white as snow-drops — 'gainst which presses 
 
 Like curling king-cups, her bright golden tresses? 
 
 Oh, how methought, at first — with woe-distraught — 
 
 The winter's icy fangs my Rose had raught, 
 
 And killed her love and beauty, — till the thought 
 
 Phantasm 'fore the light of truth succumbs. — 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 153 
 
 I call her. All in smilets wreathed she comes: 
 I touch her hands — ah, they are tender, warm; 
 I laugh with leaping joy — my circling arm 
 Stealeth about her with the olden charm: 
 0, with exuberant glee, I fain would yell — 
 Like one who well hath 'scaped the pangs of hell! 
 
 "Thy brief siesta's robbed the clock of hours," 
 She laughs. "'Tis noon! See, all the heavenly flowers 
 Our garden grows in its terrestrial sphere: 
 This chaplet's for the Lady Chapel, dear, — 
 St. Mary of the Flowers. Look!" she cries, 
 Thrusting into my face earth's jewelled prize, 
 The dancing lovelight brimming o'er blue eyes. 
 I gasp: "Thank heaven, a dream!" 
 
 "I pray, what dream?" 
 
 "A dream within a dream; for it did seem, 
 I wandered in thy garden, sore-bereaved, 
 For I had lost thee, love, — and as I grieved, 
 By the Archimage of Sleep I was thence lulled 
 Proteanly to Flora's Garden, culled 
 With rarest blooms that none could it compare: 
 
154 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 And in a maid, Rhodanthe, I worshipped there 
 
 The embodiment of Earthly Beauty. Ah, 
 
 Forgetting, in my heavened Utopia, 
 
 Her pure immortal spirit: for which offense 
 
 Into a loathsome Hades plunged thence, 
 
 I, plangent, wandered, till into the sea 
 
 They cast me of a black obliquity. 
 
 horrent dream! — That gods were myths, I heard; 
 
 Hereafter, there was none, — and, sepulchred 
 
 Forever, I could never be with thee, 
 
 My love again — cruel destiny! — 
 
 But all's translated now to joy enthralling! 
 
 Aroused from an Inferno of ills appalling, 
 
 To find the angelic guards, Serenity, Peace, 
 
 Encompassing my soul; to find surcease 
 
 Of misery and pain my smiling firmament; 
 
 And riches, beauty, love, and sweet content 
 
 Unmeasured rain, my Rosamund, for me, — 
 
 Sweet Bride o' the Canticles, pure, good, and comely: 
 
 Come kiss me — and with thy pure spirit bless, 
 
 Rose of my dream, my world of happiness!" 
 
 "Alas," she smiles, "thou dost imparadise 
 Thine earthly Rosamund, and her love o'erprize! 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOLUS DELIGHT 155 
 
 I warned thee, whilst I read to thee — 't was wrong; — 
 
 And, as thou wov'st into a little song, 
 
 The gentle words that Beatrice spake 
 
 Unto her Florentine, — his love to slake — 
 
 To turn him to the Garden blossoming 
 
 Beneath the rays of Christ, — thy dream took wing; — 
 
 Thy 'Dante' closed — in sleep went rapturing! — 
 
 With mundane Love, too much, thou 'st diademmed 
 
 Thy jewelled-crown of Happiness ; and gemmed 
 
 A little world with maiden's pink-white cheek — 
 
 Forgetting still the higher goal to seek: 
 
 That terrene Beauty hath this task supreme, 
 
 To mount the Jacob's Ladder in her dream 
 
 Celestial, teaching Love, her handmaid, rise 
 
 On golden treaders to God's galleries, 
 
 Where she shall live forever in the skies. 
 
 Thou dreamedst, thou say'st, thou couldst not be with me- 
 
 dream, love, of the all-eternity, 
 
 When we together in God's house shall be! 
 
 And in that dream find joy's serenest gem. 
 
 For Beauty, and her Love, but merely hem 
 
 The singing-robe of Happiness: with them 
 
 Weave Faith; and with this flowered anadem, 
 
 Of dew-sweet buds, we'll reach from Bethlehem 
 
156 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 To where bright Throne? and Dominations soar. 
 And "mid dove-hushed trancpiillities adore: 
 There shall we live and love for evermore — 
 In God's fair City. — 
 
 And that now we may. 
 Set love in order tins bright Easter day. 
 Love, let us fare through yon sweet trellised way. 
 Lnto our Lady's Chapel in the close. 
 In the Garden, winch "neath rays celestial grows: 
 
 Where Lilies, gold and silver-white. 
 
 Perfume the air with tremulous light. 
 And lead unto the Sweet and Mystical Rose 
 0" the World: — that through the devious ways of life, 
 Divinely nurtured, we may niggard strife. 
 Come, let us go. and pass a poet"s hour, 
 Invoking Love and Beauty" in that Flower. 
 Which in the Heaven Crystalline its bower 
 Of sweets delectable enshrineth high, 
 Set in the fairest garden of the sky: 
 That She with intercessionary power. 
 May lead our steps, where never more to sever, 
 Our sun of happiness shall shine for ever. — 
 But listen, love." she saith: 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 157 
 
 Now, suddenly, 
 Sweet strains of childish trebles, with melody 
 Entune the morning air. Together fly 
 We to the lattice, Rosamund and I: 
 Below, the Arno warbles on his way; 
 Upon our right the Ponte Vecchia, 
 His gaunt shape battered by the centuries, 
 Outstretches; on the street our wondering eyes 
 Behold a stream of singing maids in pairs, 
 Their eyes demure, and heads cast down, with airs 
 Devotional; while fairy-gossamer veils, 
 Like virgin spray that waves in fluttering gales, 
 Each sweet and girlish form of grace enfolds; 
 Each tiny hand a lighted taper holds; 
 Each little voice lifts up clear notes to Heaven: 
 "Regina coeli laetare! He is risen! 
 Queen, rejoice! Sing Alleluia all! — " 
 And so in saintly slow processional, 
 Singing they pass into the chantry by. 
 
 Even then with tongues that hammer at the sky, 
 The Easter bells begin to blithely peal, 
 In golden harmonies, that woo our leal, 
 Commemoration of the risen Lord; 
 
158 RHODANTHE OR THE ROSE IN THE 
 
 As though, in the Empyrean, with one accord, 
 Bright angels, in adoring companies, 
 Shake down celestial showers of melodies, 
 Like dew upon the hardened hearts of men; 
 Who tempered thus, and all attuned then, 
 Their joyful spirits breathe in hallowed sighs, 
 The concord felt that day in Paradise, — 
 Where the Infinite pours ceaselessly His love 
 In measureless abundance. A part thereof 
 Falleth on us in golden glorioles; 
 The iris Easter light o'erflows our souls; 
 The sun of joy upriseth in our hearts; 
 The spirit of Love, which hovers o'er us, parts, 
 In raptures mounting to the Gate of Heaven, 
 Where harps and viols to his ear are given, 
 To guide his trembling footsteps as he climbs. 
 
 now my spirit ringeth with the chimes — 
 There is a Resurrection and a Life, 
 Beyond this sojourn of the soul's dear strife! 
 I know that Beauty, Love, and Happiness, 
 We shall together reap in endlessness! 
 Great Love ! beauteous World ! Thou 'rt here to be 
 Our soul's sweet school to immortality! 
 
GARDEN OF THE SOUL'S DELIGHT 159 
 
 Death, thou 'st lost thy sting! joy to feel, 
 
 My Rosamund, that come or woe or weal, 
 
 Thy beauty rare shall rise again in all 
 
 Its lure of loveliness corporeal; 
 
 Enshrining in the resurrection of 
 
 The spirit — ethereal and undying love! — 
 
 Rhodanthe, thy vision was not all a dream! 
 For featly, thou and my fair Rosamund, seem 
 Its rainbow colors intertangled in; 
 
 As ye had been 
 Twin-exhalations of a heavenly love, 
 As beauteous Aphrodite foam-born of 
 The iris-smiling sea, — 
 
 As wondrous weaved as ye could be: 
 indissolubly ! 
 
 As sighs engendered in the heart — 
 
 As beauty breathed into art; 
 
 As notes entwined into harmonies; 
 
 As honey-gold in hives of bees; 
 
 As iris sheen on neck of dove; 
 
 As light from shining eyes of love; 
 
 As moonlight quivering in the wave, 
 
 Or darkness panting in a cave: 
 
160 RHODANTHE 
 
 And both of ye to serve I strove,— 
 But one remains eternally — 
 Thou, Rosamund — thou spirit of fadeless beauty! 
 
 inextinguishable bliss! at last to know, 
 Where'er the tide of Time will flow, 
 Our love lives on for aye; 
 And once the narrow way 
 We pass into the City's Upper Gate, — 
 
 Where early and late, 
 The Angel waiteth with his golden keys, — 
 Ah, far beyond the amethystine seas, 
 Beyond the Blessed Isles, 
 myriad intermittent miles, — 
 Our day-long work well done, we shall behold 
 The Light of Dawn that guards the good Sheep-fold; 
 The Star of Heaven, 'mid glorious pageantries, 
 Rising at Eastertide, 
 O'er all the opal domes oped wide, 
 Of Heaven's celestial mansionries; 
 And thou, Rhodanthe, — my Rosamund; with Thee, 
 The Rose that perfumes all Eternity; 
 And Him that sitteth at the Right, — 
 In the Garden of the Soul's Delight! 
 
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