第40章 MRS. RADCLIFFE'S NOVELS(8)

"And I shall wed thee, Agathe! although Ours be no God-blest bridal--even so!"And from the sand he took a silver shell, That had been wasted by the fall and swell Of many a moon-borne tide into a ring -A rude, rude ring; it was a snow-white thing, Where a lone hermit limpet slept and died In ages far away. 'Thou art a bride, Sweet Agathe! Wake up; we must not linger!'

He press'd the ring upon her chilly finger, And to the sea-bird on its sunny stone Shouted, 'Pale priest that liest all alone Upon thy ocean altar, rise, away To our glad bridal!' and its wings of gray All lazily it spread, and hover'd by With a wild shriek--a melancholy cry!

Then, swooping slowly o'er the heaving breast Of the blue ocean, vanished in the west."Julio sang a mad song of a mad priest to a dead maid:-. . .

"A rosary of stars, love! a prayer as we glide, And a whisper on the wind, and a murmur on the tide, And we'll say a fair adieu to the flowers that are seen, With shells of silver sown in radiancy between.

"A rosary of stars, love! the purest they shall be, Like spirits of pale pearls in the bosom of the sea;Now help thee, Virgin Mother, with a blessing as we go, Upon the laughing waters that are wandering below."One can readily believe that Poe admired this musical sad song, if, indeed, he ever saw the poem.

One may give too many extracts, and there is scant room for the extraordinary witchery of the midnight sea and sky, where the dead and the distraught drift wandering, "And the great ocean, like the holy hall, Where slept a Seraph host maritimal, Was gorgeous with wings of diamond" -it was a sea "Of radiant and moon-breasted emerald."There follows another song -

"'Tis light to love thee living, girl, when hope is full and fair, In the springtide of thy beauty, when there is no sorrow there No sorrow on thy brow, and no shadow on thy heart, When, like a floating sea-bird, bright and beautiful thou art . . .

"But when the brow is blighted, like a star at morning tide And faded is the crimson blush upon the cheek beside, It is to love as seldom love the brightest and the best, When our love lies like a dew upon the one that is at rest."We ought to distrust our own admiration of what is rare, odd, novel to us, found by us in a sense, and especially one must distrust one's liking for the verses of a Tweedside angler, of a poet whose forebears lie in the green kirkyard of Yarrow. But, allowing for all this, I cannot but think these very musical, accomplished, and, in their place, appropriate verses, to have been written by a boy of twenty. Nor is it a common imagination, though busy in this vulgar field of horrors, that lifts the pallid bride to look upon the mirror of the sea -"And bids her gaze into the startled sea, And says, 'Thine image, from eternity, Hath come to meet thee, ladye!' and anon He bade the cold corse kiss the shadowy one That shook amid the waters."The picture of the madness of thirst, allied to the disease of the brain, is extremely powerful, the delirious monk tells the salt sea waves "That ye have power, and passion, and a sound As of the flying of an angel round The mighty world; that ye are one with time!"Here, I can't but think, is imagination.

Mr. Aytoun, however, noted none of those passages, nor that where, in tempest and thunder, a shipwrecked sailor swims to the strange boat, sees the Living Love and the Dead, and falls back into the trough of the wave. But even the friendly pencil of Bon Gaultier approves the passage where an isle rises above the sea, and the boat is lightly stranded on the shore of pure and silver shells.