Mazelli, and Other Poems - George W. Sands (great novels TXT) 📗

stolen glances, sends
The language Love best, comprehends.
The noontide hour goes by, and yet
The bridegroom tarries--why? and where?
Sure he could not his vows forget,
When she who loves him is so fair!
And then his honour, faith, and pride,
Had bound him to a meaner bride,
If once his promise had been given;
But she, so pure, so far above
The common forms of earthly mould,
So like the incarnate shapes of love,
Conceived, and born, and nursed in heaven,
His love for her could ne'er grow cold!
And yet he comes not. Half way now,
From where, at his meridian height,
He pours his fullest, warmest light,
To where, at eve, in his decline,
The day-god sinks into the brine,
When his diurnal task is done,
Descends his ever burning throne,
And still the bridegroom is not, there--
Say, why yet tarries he, and where?

IV.

Within an arbour, rudely reared,
But to the maiden's heart endeared
By every tie that binds the heart,
By hope's, and love's, and memory's art,--
For it was here he first poured out
In words, the love she could not doubt,--
Mazelli silent sits apart.
Did ever dreaming devotee,
Whose restless fancy, fond and warm,
Shapes out the bright ideal form
To which he meekly bends the knee,
Conceive of aught so fair as she?
The holiest seraph of the sphere
Most holy, if by chance led here,
Might drink such light from those soft eyes,
That he would hold them far more dear
Than all the treasures of the skies.
Yet o'er her bright and beauteous brow
Shade after shade is passing now,
Like clouds across the pale moon glancing,
As thought on rapid thought advancing,
Thrills through the maiden's trembling breast,
Not doubting, and yet not at rest.
Not doubting! Man may turn away
And scoff at shrines, where yesterday
He knelt, in earnest faith, to pray,
And wealth may lose its charm for him,
And fame's alluring star grow dim,
Devotion, avarice, glory, all
The pageantries of earth may pall;
But love is of a higher birth
Than these, the earth-born things of earth,--
A spark from the eternal flame,
Like it, eternally the same,
It is not subject to the breath
Of chance or change, of life or death.
And so doubt has no power to blight
Its bloom, or quench its deathless light,--
A deathless light, a peerless bloom,
That beams and glows beyond the tomb!
Go tell the trusting devotee,
His worship is idolatry;
Say to the searcher after gold,
The prize he seeks is dull and cold;
Assure the toiler after fame,
That, won, 'tis but a worthless name,
A mocking shade, a phantasy,--
And they, perchance, may list to thee;
But say not to the trusting maid,
Her love is scorned, her faith betrayed,--
As soon thy words may lull the gale,
As gain her credence to the tale!
And still the bridegroom is not there--
Oh! why yet tarries he, and where?

V.

It was the holy vesper hour,
The time for rest, and peace, and prayer,
When falls the dew, and folds the flower
Its petals, delicate and fair,
Against the chilly evening air;
And yet the bridegroom was not there.
The guests, who lingered through the day,
Had glided, one by one, away,
And then, with pale and pensive ray,
The moon began to climb the sky,
As from the forest, dim and green,
A small and silent band was seen
Emerging slow and solemnly;
With cautious step, and measured tread,
They moved as those who bear the dead;
And by no lip a word was spoke,
Nor other sound the silence broke,
Save when, low, musical, and clear,
The voice of waters passing near,
Was softly wafted to the ear,
And the cool, fanning twilight breeze,
That lightly shook the forest trees,
And crept from leaf to trembling leaf,
Sighed, like to one oppressed with grief.
Why move they with such cautious care?
What precious burden do they bear?
Hush, questioner! the dead are there;--
The victim of revenge and hate,
Of fierce Ottali's fiery pride,
With that stern minister of fate,
As cold and lifeless by his side.

VI.

Still onward, solemnly and slow,
And speaking not a word, they go,
Till pausing in their way before
Mazelli's quiet cottage door,
They gently lay their burden down.
Whence comes that shriek of wild despair
That rises wildly on the air?
Whose is the arm so fondly thrown
Around the cold, unconscious clay,
That cannot its caress repay?
Such wordless wo was in that cry,
Such pain, such hopeless agony,
No soul, excluded from the sky,
Whom unrelenting justice hath
Condemned to bear the second death,
E'er breathed upon the troubled gale
A wilder or a sadder wail;--
It rose, all other sounds above,
The dirge of peace, and hope, and love!

VII.

And day on weary day went by,
And like the drooping autumn leaf,
She faded slow and silently,
In her deep, uncomplaining grief;
For, sick of life's vacuity,
She neither sought nor wished relief.
And daily from her cheek, the glow
Departed, and her virgin brow
Was curtained with a mournful gloom,--
A shade prophetic, of the tomb;
And her clear eyes, so blue and bright,
Shot forth a keen, unearthly light,
As if the soul that in them lay,
Were weary of its garb of clay,
And prayed to pass from earth away;
Nor was that prayer vain, for ere
The frozen monarch of the year,
Had blighted, with his icy breath,
A single bud in summer's wreath,
They shrouded her, and made her grave,
And laid her down at Lodolph's side;
And by the wide Potomac's wave,
Repose the bridegroom and the bride.

'Tis said, that, oft at summer midnight, there,
When all is hushed and voiceless, and the air,
Sweet, soothing minstrel of the viewless hand,
Swells rippling through the aged trees, that stand
With their broad boughs above the wave depending,
With the low gurgle of the waters blending
The rustle of their foliage, a light boat,
Bearing two shadowy forms, is seen to float
Adown the stream, without or oar or sail,
To break the wave, or catch the driving gale;
Smoothly and steadily its course is steered,
Until the shadow of yon cliff is neared,
And then, as if some barrier, hid below
The river's breast, had caught its gliding prow,
Awhile, uncertain, o'er its watery bed,
It hangs, then vanishes, and in its stead,
A wan, pale light burns dimly o'er the, wave
That rolls and ripples by Mazelli's grave.


Notes To Mazelli

Note 1.

"And how its long and rocky chain
Was parted suddenly in twain,
Where through a chasm, wide and deep,
Potomac's rapid waters sweep,
While rocks that press the mountain's brow
Nod O'er his waves far, far below."

"The passage of the Potomac, through the Blue Ridge, is perhaps,
one of the most stupendous scenes in nature. You stand on a very
high point of land. On your right comes up the Shenandoah, having
ranged along the foot of the mountain a hundred miles to seek a
vent. On your left approaches the Potomac, seeking a vent also.
In the moment of their junction, they rush together against the
mountain, rend it asunder, and pass off to the sea.

"The first glance at this scene hurries our senses into the opinion
that this earth has been created in time; that the mountains were
formed first; that the rivers began to flow afterwards; that, in
this place particularly, they have been dammed up by the Blue Ridge
Mountains, and have formed an ocean which filled the whole valley;
that, continuing to rise, they have at length broken over at this
spot, and have torn the mountain down from its summit to its base.

"The piles of reckon each hand, but particularly on the Shenandoah,
the evident marks of their disrupture and avulsion from their beds
by the most powerful agents of nature, corroborate the impression.
But the distant finishing which nature has given to this picture,
is of a very different character. It is a true contrast to the
foreground. It is as Placid and delightful as that is wild and
tremendous.

"For, the mountain being cloven asunder, she presents to the eye,
through the cleft, a small catch of smooth blue horizon, at an
infinite distance in the plain country, inviting you, as it were,
from the riot and tumult roaring around, to pass through the breach,
and participate of the calm below."--Jefferson's Notes on Virginia.

Note 2.

"Save the plaintive song of the whip-poor-will."

That the Indian mind and language are not devoid of poetry,
the names they have given to this bird (the whip-poor-will)
sufficiently evidence. Some call it the "Muckawis," others
the "Wish-ton-wish," signifying "the voice of a sigh," and
"the plaint for the lost." Those, who in its native glens at
twilight, have listened to its indescribably melancholy song,
will know how beautifully appropriate these names are.

Note 3.

"They, the foul slaves' of lust and gold,
Say that our blood and hearts are cold."

It has been advanced by some writers, that the almost miraculous
fortitude often displayed by Indians, under the most intense
suffering, is to be accounted for by their insensibility to pain,
resulting, they allege, from a defective nervous organization. From
the absence of a display of gallantry and tenderness between the
sexes, they argue also, in them, the nonexistence of love, and
its kindred passions. This we think unjust, as it robs them of
the honours of a system of education, which is life-long, and whose
sole object is to attain the mastery of all feeling, physical or
mental. The view taken of this subject by Robertson, in his History
of America, to us, seems most accordant with truth. He says: "The
amazing steadiness with which the Americans endure the most exquisite
torments, has induced some authors to suppose that, from the peculiar
feebleness of their frame, their sensibility is not so acute as
that of other people; as women, and persons of a relaxed habit, are
observed to be robust men, whose nerves are more firmly braced. But
the constitution of the Americans is not so different in its texture,
from that of the rest of the human species, as to account for this
diversity in their behaviour. It flows from a principle of honour,
instilled early and cultivated with such care, as to inspire him
in his rudest state with a heroic magnanimity, to which philosophy
hath endeavoured in vain to form him, when more highly improved and
polished. This invincible constancy he has been taught to consider
as the chief distinction of a man, and the highest attainment of
a warrior. The ideas which influence his conduct, and the passions
which take possession of his heart, are few. They operate of course
with more decisive effect, than when the mind is crowded with a
multiplicity of objects, or distracted by the variety of its
pursuits; and when every motive that acts with any force in forming
the sentiments of a savage, prompts him to suffer with dignity, he
will bear what might seem impossible for human patience to sustain.
But whenever the fortitude of the Americans is not roused to exertion
by their ideas of honour, their feelings of pain are the same with
those of the rest of mankind."