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

/> Note 4.

"Bathed in the poisonous manchenille."

The slightest wound from an arrow dipped in the juice of the
Manchenille, causes certain and speedy death. "If they only pierce
the skin, the blood fixes and congeals in a moment, and the strongest
animal falls motionless to the ground."--Robertson's America.


S. L. Sawtelle.

Dear Sir:

To you, who have given me friendship in adversity, counsel in
perplexity, and hope in despondency, permit me, as an expression
of my deep and lasting gratitude, to inscribe the "Misanthrope."

With sentiments of the highest respect,

Your obt. servt.,

George W. Sands.

Frederick City, September 1849.


Dramatis Personae.
Werner--Misanthrope.
Manuel--a cottager.
Albert--his son.
Rebecca--wife to Manuel.
Rose--his daughter.
Spirits.
An aerial chorus.


THE MISANTHRAPE RECLAIMED
A Dramatic Poem

ACT I.

A fountain near the summit of a mountain, from which, through a
deep glen, a stream descends to the valley below. A city seen in
the distance. Time, midnight. Werner standing near the fountain.

Werner (solus).

Eternal rocks and hills!
Mighty and vast; and you, ye giant oaks,
Whose massy branches have for centuries
Played with the breeze and battled with the storm,
He, who so oft has trod your rugged paths,
And laid him down beneath your shades to rest,
Returns to be your dweller once again.
I sooner far would make your wilds my home,
With nought but your rude eaves to shield me from
The winter's cold or summer's heat, than be
One of the hundred thousand human flies
That swarm within yon filthy city's walls.
Here, I at least may live in solitude,
Free from a forced communion with a race,
Whose presence makes me feel that I am bound,
By nature, to the thing I loathe the most,
Earth's stateliest, proudest, meanest reptile, man!
The beauty of a god adorns his form,
The foulness of a fiend is in his heart;
The viper's, or the scorpion's filthy nest
Nurses a far less deadly, poisonous brood
Than are the hellish lusts, the avarice,--
The pride--the hate--the double-faced deceits--
That make his breast their dwelling.
If he be not beneath hell's wish to damn,
Too lost for even fiends to meddle with,
How must they laugh to hear him, in his pride,
Baptize his vices, virtues; making use
Of holy names to designate his crimes;
Giving his lust the sacred name of love;
Calling his avarice a goodly sin,
Care for his household; naming his deceit
Praiseworthy caution; boasting of his hate,
When be no more can cloak it, as a proof
Of strength of mind and honesty of heart.
For all of goodness that remains on earth,
The name of virtue might be banished from it.
Fathers, who waste in shameful riotings
The bread for which their children cry at home;
Mothers, who put aside th' unconscious babe
That they may wrong its father; children, who
Grow old in crime ere they have spent their youth;
These are its habitants.
I cannot brook the thought, that I belong
To their vile race. My sufferings have been great,
And keen enough to prove my immortality;
For dust could not have borne what I have suffered.
My mind has pierced far, far beyond the length
Of mortal vision, and discovered things
Of which men scarcely dream, and paid in pain,
The price of what it learned and bought with pangs
By which a thousand ages were compressed
Into one hour of agony: a power
Which is a terror to possess, and yet
This one thought only irks me.
Methinks the peaceful earth will scarcely give
My dust a resting-place within its bosom,
But cast it forth as if too vile, to mingle
With clay that ne'er has been the slave of sin.
What! other watchers here at this lone hour?

[An evil spirit enters, singing.
The world is half hidden,
By midnight's dark shadow;
The filly, witch-ridden,
Skims over the meadow;
The house-dog is barking,
The night-owl is hooting,
The glow-worm is sparkling,
The meteor is shooting;
And forms, which lie
So stiff and still,
In their shrouds so chill,
Through the live-long day,
Now burst their clay,
And flit through the sky,
On their dusky pinions:
Hell's dominions
Keep holiday.
Sisters, sisters, wherever your watches
Are kept, fleet hither to me,
Fleet hither, fleet hither, and leave earth's wretches
Alone to their misery.

[A chorus of evil spirits answer as they enter from different
parts of the mountain.
We come!
Vice needs no assistance,
She meets no resistance,
Virtue's existence
Is only in name;
Drinking and eating,
Intriguing and cheating,
Carousing, completing
Their ruin and shame;
Old age unrepenting,
Manhood unrelenting,
Youth sighing and winning,
Deceiving and sinning,
Deserting, repining,
All men are the same.
Ho! ho!
Earth quakes with the weight of the anguish she bears,
Her plains and her valleys are deluged with tears,
And her sighs, if united, were deeper by far,
Than the thunderbolt's peal, when the clouds are at war.
There is, not a bosom, that bears not within
Its chambers, the blot and the burden of sin;
Not a mind, but in many an hour bath felt
The curse of its nature, the pangs of its guilt.

These earth-worms! whose sire would have had us to bow
To his dust-moulded Godship! what--what are they now?
In the scale of true goodness, they sink far below
The poor, patient ox, that they yoke to the plough.
Let them revel awhile, in the false glaring light
Of deception, that blindness but seems to make bright;
Let them gather awhile of time's perishing flowers;
The revenge of eternity! This shall be ours!
Ho! ho!

[They settle near the fountain. The first Spirit addresses them.

The night is advancing,
Come, let us, dancing
In dewy circles deftly tread;
And while we dance round,
New schemes shall be found,
To ruin the living, and trouble the dead.

[They form a circle on the margin of the stream, and dance round
singing.

I.

Life is but a fleeting day,
Half of which man dreams away;
Night! we follow in thy train--
Sleep! supreme o'er thee we reign;
Ours the dreams that come when thou
Sit'st upon the unconscious brow;
Reason then deserts her throne,
We then reign, and we alone.

II.

Then seek we, for the maiden's pillow,
Far beyond the Atlantic's billow,
Love's apple, and when we have found it,
Draw the magic circle round it;(1)
Fearless pluck it, then no charm
That it bears may do us harm;
Place it near the sleeper's head,
It will bring love's visions nigh,
And when the pleasing, dreams are fled,
The waking, pensive maid will sigh,
Till her bosom has possessed,
The form that made her dreams so blest.
And when a maiden finds a lover,
Her happy days are nearly over:
Nature hath unchaste desires,
Love awakes her slumbering fires,
And the bosom that is true in
Love is ever near its ruin;
Passion's pleading melts the frost
Of chilliest hearts, and all is lost:
For, once vice blots a maiden's name,
She soon forgets her maiden shame.

III.

Haunt the debauchee with dreams,
Of the victim of his schemes;
Paint her with dishevelled hair,
Streaming eyes, and bosom bare,
And with aspect pale and sad,
As a spectre's from the dead,
Weeping o'er her new-born, child,
Her name reproached, her fame despoiled:
Let her groanings reach his ear,
Pierce his heart, and rouse his fear
Of the retribution given,
To such deeds as his, by Heaven.

IV.

Around the drunkard's tattered couch,
Let pale-faced want and misery crouch,
His children shivering o'er the hearth,
Cheered by no sound of social mirth,
Upbraiding, with their timid glances,
The author of their sad mischances;
And she to whom the holy vow
Of the altar bound him, now
With sunken eye, and beauty faded,
Tresses silvered, brow o'ershaded,
Clinging to him fondly still,
With a love that mocks each ill,
Which would vainly strive to tear
Her soul from one who once was dear.
Now haste we, each our task to do,
Ere the starry hours wane through!

[They fly off, singing as they disappear.

Ere the Morning's rosy wing,
Has brushed the damp night-shades away,
Ere the birds their matins sing,
Choiring to the new-born day,
Though its bright birth-hour be near,
Many a sigh, and many a tear,
Shall attest the mystic might,
Of those who walk the world by night.

Werner (solus).

The ruin of the living! if that be
Your only task, you have a poor employ.
Give man his three score years, and he will make
A wreck, the skill of hell might show forth as
A sample of its handiwork, and then,
Exult at the completeness of its ruin.
The troubling of the dead!--if memory lives
In that far world, to which the spirit hastens,
When she casts off the clay that clogs her wings,
E'en there ye are forestalled, for man will need
No curse, to make his second life a hell,
If be retains the memory of his first.
Had the clear waters of this gurgling brook,
The pow'r to wash time's blots from th' mind's page,
And all earth's mountains were compact of gold,
Her rivers nectar, and her oceans wine,
Her hills all fruitful, and her valleys fresh,
And full of loveliness as Eden was,
Ere sin's sad blight fell on its living bow'rs,
And all were mine, I'd give them but to lay
My weary limbs along this streamlet's bed,
And sleep in full forgetfulness awhile.
But, I forget my task--now let me to it!

[He takes a vial from his bosom, and flings its contents into the
air, chanting,

Spirit
Wherever be thy home,
In earth or air,
My message hear,
And fear it.
By the power which I have earned,
To which thy knee has knelt,
By the spell which I have learned,
A spell which thou, hast felt,
I bid thee hither come !

[A white cloud appears in the distance, floating up the glen, and
a voice is heard, singing as it approaches,

I.

I saw from port a vessel steer,
The skies were clear, the winds were fair,
More swiftly than the hunted deer,
Upon her snowy wings of air,
She flew along the silv'ry water,
As fearlessly as if some sprite,
Familiar with the deep, had taught her,
A spell by which to rule the might
Of winds and waves, when met to try
Their strength, up midway in the sky.

II.

Along her trackless watery way,
With unabated speed she flew,
Still