  THE VIRGIN WITH THE BELLS.Much strange is true. And yet so much Dan Time thereto of doubtful lays He blurs them both beneath his touch:— In this our tale his part he plays. At Florence, so the legend tells, There stood a church that men would praise (Even where Art the most excels) For works of price; but chief for one They called the "Virgin with the Bells." Gracious she was, and featly done, With crown of gold about the hair, And robe of blue with stars thereon, And sceptre in her hand did bear; And o'er her, in an almond tree, Three little golden bells there were, Writ with Faith, Hope, and Charity. None knew from whence she came of old, Nor whose the sculptor's name should be Of great or small. But this they told:— That once from out the blaze of square, And bickering folk that bought and sold, More moved no doubt of heat than prayer, Came to the church an Umbrian, Lord of much gold and champaign fair, But, for all this, a hard, haught man. To whom the priests, in humbleness, At once to beg for alms began, Praying him grant of his excess Such as for poor men's bread might pay, Or give their saint a gala-dress. Thereat with scorn he answered—"Nay, Most Reverend! Far too well ye know, By guile and wile, the fox's way "To swell the Church's overflow. But ere from me the least carline Ye win, this summer's sky shall snow; "Or, likelier still, your doll's-eyed queen Shall ring her bells ... but not of craft. By Bacchus! ye are none too lean "For fasting folk!" With that he laughed, And so, across the porphyry floor, His hand upon his dagger-haft, Strode, and of these was seen no more. Nor, of a truth, much marvelled they At those his words, since gear and store Oft dower shrunk souls. But, on a day, While yet again throughout the square, The buyers in their noisy way, Chaffered around the basket ware, It chanced (I but the tale reveal, Nor true nor false therein declare)— It chanced that when the priest would kneel Before the taper's flickering flame, Sudden a little tremulous peal From out the Virgin's altar came. And they that heard must fain recall The Umbrian, and the words of shame Spoke in his pride, and therewithal Came news how, at that very date And hour of time was fixed his fall, And all his goods, and lands as well, To Holy Church were confiscate. Such is the tale the Frati tell. A TALE OF POLYPHEME."There's nothing new"—Not that I go so far As he who also said "There's nothing true," Since, on the contrary, I hold there are Surviving still a verity or two; But, as to novelty, in my conviction, There's nothing new,—especially in fiction. Hence, at the outset, I make no apology, If this my story is as old as Time, Being, indeed, that idyll of mythology,— The Cyclops' love,—which, somewhat varied, I'm To tell once more, the adverse Muse permitting, In easy rhyme, and phrases neatly fitting. "Once on a time"—there's nothing new, I said— It may be fifty years ago or more, Beside a lonely posting-road that led Seaward from Town, there used to stand of yore, An ancient Inn, the "Dragon and the Lady." Say that by chance, wayfaring Reader mine, You cast a shoe, and at this dusty Dragon, Where beast and man were equal on the sign, Inquired at once for Blacksmith and for flagon: The landlord showed you, while you drank your hops, A road-side break beyond the straggling shops. And so directed, thereupon you led Your halting roadster to a kind of pass, This you descended with a crumbling tread, And found the sea beneath you like a glass; And soon, beside a building partly walled— Half hut, half cave—you raised your voice and called. Then a dog growled; and straightway there began Tumult within—for, bleating with affright, A goat burst out, escaping from the can; And, following close, rose slowly into sight— Blind of one eye, and black with toil and tan— An uncouth, limping, heavy-shouldered man. Part smith, part seaman, and part shepherd too: You scarce knew which, as, pausing with the pail Half filled with goat's milk, silently he drew An anvil forth, and reaching shoe and nail, Bared a red forearm, bringing into view Anchors and hearts in shadowy tattoo. And then he lit his fire.... But I dispense Henceforth with you, my Reader, and your horse, As being but a colorable pretence To bring an awkward hero in perforce; Since this our smith, for reasons never known, To most society preferred his own. Women declared that he'd an "Evil Eye,"— This in a sense was true—he had but one; Men, on the other hand, alleged him shy: We sometimes say so of the friends we shun; But, wrong or right, suffices to affirm it— The Cyclops lived a veritable hermit,— Dwelling below the cliff, beside the sea, Caved like an ancient British Troglodyte, Milking his goat at eve, and it may be, Spearing the fish along the flats at night, Came to the Inn a Lady and a Child. The Lady was a nullity; the Child One of those bright bewitching little creatures, Who, if she once but shyly looked and smiled, Would soften out the ruggedest of features; Fragile and slight,—a very fay for size,— With pale town-cheeks, and "clear germander eyes." Nurses, no doubt, might name her "somewhat wild;" And pedants, possibly, pronounce her "slow;" Or corset-makers add, that for a child, She needed "cultivation;"—all I know Is that whene'er she spoke, or laughed, or romped, you Felt in each act the beauty of impromptu. The Lady was a nullity—a pale, Nerveless and pulseless quasi-invalid, Who, lest the ozone should in aught avail, Remained religiously indoors to read; So that, in wandering at her will, the Child Did, in reality, run "somewhat wild." At first but peering at the sanded floor And great shark jaw-bone in the cosy bar; Then watching idly from the dusky door, The noisy advent of a coach or car; Then stealing out to wonder at the fate Of blistered Ajax by the garden gate,— Some old ship's figure-head—until at last, Straying with each excursion more and more, She reached the limits of the road, and passed, Plucking the pansies, downward to the shore, And so, as you, respected Reader, showed, Came to the smith's "desirable abode." There by the cave the occupant she found, Weaving a crate; and, with a gladsome cry, The dog frisked out, although the Cyclops frowned With all the terrors of his single eye; Then from a mound came running, too, the goat, Uttering her plaintive, desultory note. The Child stood wondering at the silent man, Doubtful to go or stay, when presently She felt a plucking, for the goat began To crop the trail of twining briony She held behind her; so that, laughing, she Turned her light steps, retreating, to the sea. But the goat followed her on eager feet, And therewithal an air so grave and mild, Coupled with such a deprecatory bleat Of injured confidence, that soon the Child Filled the lone shore with louder merriment, And e'en the Cyclops' heavy brow unbent. Thus grew acquaintanceship between the pair, The girl and goat;—for thenceforth, day by day, The Child would bring her four-foot friend such fare As might be gathered on the downward way:— Foxglove, or broom, and "yellow cytisus," Dear to all goats since Greek Theocritus. But, for the Cyclops, that misogynist Having, by stress of circumstances, smiled, Felt it at least incumbent to resist Further encroachment, and as one beguiled By adverse fortune, with the half-door shut, Dwelt in the dim seclusion of his hut. And yet not less from thence he still must see That daily coming, and must hear the goat Bleating her welcome; then, towards the sea, The happy voices of the playmates float; He took his wonted station by the door. Here was, of course, a pitiful surrender; For soon the Child, on whom the Evil Eye Seemed to exert an influence but slender, Would run to question him, till, by and by, His moody humor like a cloud dispersing, He found himself uneasily conversing. That was a sow's-ear, that an egg of skate, And this an agate rounded by the wave. Then came inquiries still more intimate About himself, the anvil, and the cave; And then, at last, the Child, without alarm Would even spell the letters on his arm. "G—a—l—Galatea." So there grew On his part, like some half-remembered tale, The new-found memory of an ice-bound crew, And vague garrulities of spouting whale,— Of sea-cow basking upon berg and floe. And Polar light, and stunted Eskimo. Till, in his heart, which hitherto had been Locked as those frozen barriers of the North, There came once more the season of the green,— The tender bud-time and the putting forth, Felt for the child a kind of adoration;— Rising by night, to search for shell and flower, To lay in places where she found them first; Hoarding his cherished goat's milk for the hour When those young lips might feel the summer's thirst; Holding himself for all devotion paid By that clear laughter of the little maid. Dwelling, alas! in that fond Paradise Where no to-morrow quivers in suspense,— Where scarce the changes of the sky suffice To break the soft forgetfulness of sense,— Where dreams become realities; and where I willingly would leave him—did I dare. Yet for a little space it still endured, Until, upon a day when least of all The softened Cyclops, by his hopes assured, Dreamed the inevitable blow could fall, Came the stern moment that should all destroy, Bringing a pert young cockerel of a Boy. Middy, I think,—he'd "Acis" on his box:— A black-eyed, sun-burnt, mischief-making imp, Who straightway travestied the Cyclops' limp, And marveled how his cousin so could care For such a "one-eyed, melancholy Bear." Thus there was war at once; not overt yet, For still the Child, unwilling, would not break The new acquaintanceship, nor quite forget The pleasant past; while, for his treasure's sake, The boding smith with clumsy efforts tried To win the laughing scorner to his side. There are some sights pathetic; none I know More sad than this: to watch a slow-wrought mind Humbling itself, for love, to come and go Before some petty tyrant of its kind; Saddest, ah!—saddest far,—when it can do Naught to advance the end it has in view. This was at least the Cyclops' case, until, Whether the boy beguiled the Child away, Or whether that limp Matron on the Hill Woke from her novel-reading trance, one day He waited long and wearily in vain,— But, from that hour, they never came again. Yet still he waited, hoping—wondering if They still might come, or dreaming that he heard The sound of far-off voices on the cliff, Or starting strangely when the she-goat stirred; But nothing broke the silence of the shore, And, from that hour, the Child returned no more. Therefore our Cyclops sorrowed,—not as one Who can command the gamut of despair; But as a man who feels his days are done, So dead they seem,—so desolately bare; For, though he'd lived a hermit, 'twas but only Now he discovered that his life was lonely. The very sea seemed altered, and the shore; The very voices of the air were dumb; Time was an emptiness that o'er and o'er Ticked with the dull pulsation "Will she come?" So that he sat "consuming in a dream," Much like his old forerunner, Polypheme. Until there came the question, "Is she gone?" With such sad sick persistence that at last, Urged by the hungry thought which drove him on, Along the steep declivity he passed, Just as the horn was sounding on the hill. Then, in a dream, beside the "Dragon" door, The smith saw travellers standing in the sun; Then came the horn again, and three or four Looked idly at him from the roof, but One,— A Child within,—suffused with sudden shame, Thrust forth a hand, and called to him by name. Thus the coach vanished from his sight, but he Limped back with bitter pleasure in his pain; He was not all forgotten—could it be? And yet the knowledge made the memory vain; And then—he felt a pressure in his throat, So, for that night, forgot to milk his goat. What then might come of silent misery, What new resolvings then might intervene, I know not. Only, with the morning sky, The goat stood tethered on the "Dragon" green, And those who, wondering, questioned thereupon, Found the hut empty,—for the man was gone. A STORY FROM A DICTIONARY."Sic visum Veneri: cui placet impares Formas atque animos sub juga aËnea Saevo mittere cum joco." —Hor. i. 33. "Love mocks us all"—as Horace said of old: From sheer perversity, that arch-offender Still yokes unequally the hot and cold, The short and tall, the hardened and the tender; He bids a Socrates espouse a scold, And makes a Hercules forget his gender:— Sic visum Veneri! Lest samples fail, I add a fresh one from the page of Bayle. It was in Athens that the thing occurred, In the last days of Alexander's rule, While yet in Grove or Portico was heard The studious murmur of its learned school;— Nay, 'tis one favoured of Minerva's bird Who plays therein the hero (or the fool) With a Megarian, who must then have been A maid, and beautiful, and just eighteen. I shan't describe her. Beauty is the same In Anno Domini as erst B.C.; The type is still that witching One who came, Between the furrows, from the bitter sea; 'Tis but to shift accessories and frame, And this our heroine in a trice would be, Save that she wore a peplum and a chiton, Like any modern on the beach at Brighton. Stay, I forget! Of course the sequel shows She had some qualities of disposition, To which, in general, her sex are foes,— As strange proclivities to erudition, And lore unfeminine, reserved for those Who now-a-days descant on "Woman's Mission," Or tread instead that "primrose path" to knowledge, That milder Academe—the Girton College. The truth is, she admired ... a learned man. There were no curates in that sunny Greece, For whom the mind emotional could plan Fine-art habiliments in gold and fleece; (This was ere chasuble or cope began To shake the centres of domestic peace;) Turned to the ranks of Zeno and of Plato. The "object" here was mildly prepossessing, At least, regarded in a woman's sense; His forte, it seems, lay chiefly in expressing Disputed fact in Attic eloquence; His ways were primitive; and as to dressing, His toilet was a negative pretence; He kept, besides, the rÉgime of the Stoic;— In short, was not, by any means, "heroic." Sic visum Veneri!—The thing is clear. Her friends were furious, her lovers nettled; 'Twas much as though the Lady Vere de Vere On some hedge-schoolmaster her heart had settled. Unheard! Intolerable!—a lumbering steer To plod the upland with a mare high-mettled!— They would, no doubt, with far more pleasure hand her To curled Euphorion or Anaximander. And so they used due discipline, of course, To lead to reason this most erring daughter, Proceeding even to extremes of force,— Confinement (solitary), and bread and water; Finding that this to no submission brought her, At last, (unwisely That he might combat her by argument. Being, they fancied, but a bloodless thing; Or else too well forewarned of that commotion Which poets feign inseparable from Spring To suffer danger from a school-girl notion; Also they hoped that she might find her king, On close inspection, clumsy and Boeotian:— This was acute enough, and yet, between us, I think they thought too little about Venus. Something, I know, of this sort is related In Garrick's life. However, the man came, And taking first his mission's end as stated, Began at once her sentiments to tame, Working discreetly to the point debated By steps rhetorical I spare to name; In other words,—he broke the matter gently. Meanwhile, the lady looked at him intently, Wistfully, sadly,—and it put him out, Although he went on steadily, but faster. Which seemed, at first, most difficult to master; They looked intractable at times, no doubt, But all they needed was a little plaster; This was a thing physicians long had pondered, Considered, weighed ... and then ... and then he wandered. ('Tis so embarrassing to have before you A silent auditor, with candid eyes; With lips that speak no sentence to restore you, And aspect, generally, of pained surprise; Then, if we add that all these things adore you, 'Tis really difficult to syllogise:— Of course it mattered not to him a feather, But still he wished ... they'd not been left together.) "Of one," he said, continuing, "of these The young especially should be suspicious; Seeing no ailment in Hippocrates Could be at once so tedious and capricious; No seeming apple of Hesperides More fatal, deadlier, and more delicious— Perni cious,—he should say,—for all its seeming...." It seemed to him he simply was blaspheming. If she had only turned askance, or uttered Word in reply, or trifled with her brooch, Or sighed, or cried, grown petulant, or fluttered, He might (in metaphor) have "called his coach"; Yet still, while patiently he hemmed and stuttered, She wore her look of wondering reproach; (And those who read the "Shakespeare of Romances" Know of what stuff a girl's "dynamic glance" is.) "But there was still a cure, the wise insisted, In Love,—or rather, in Philosophy. Philosophy—no, Love—at best existed But as an ill for that to remedy: There was no knot so intricately twisted, There was no riddle but at last should be By Love—he meant Philosophy—resolved...." The truth is, he was getting quite involved. O sovran Love! how far thy power surpasses Aught that is taught of Logic or the Schools! Here was a man, "far seen" in all the classes, Strengthened of precept, fortified of rules, Mute as the least articulate of asses; Nay, at an age when every passion cools, Stronger by far than any force of learning! Therefore he changed his tone, flung down his wallet, Described his lot, how pitiable and poor; The hut of mud,—the miserable pallet,— The alms solicited from door to door; The scanty fare of bitter bread and sallet,— Could she this shame,—this poverty endure? I scarcely think he knew what he was doing, But that last line had quite a touch of wooing. And so she answered him,—those early Greeks Took little care to keep concealment preying At any length upon their damask cheeks,— She answered him by very simply saying, She could and would:—and said it as one speaks Who takes no course without much careful weighing.... Was this, perchance, the answer that he hoped? It might, or might not be. But they eloped. Sought the free pine-wood and the larger air,— The leafy sanctuaries, remote and inner, Where the great heart of nature, beating bare, Receives benignantly both saint and sinner; And shake its head, like Burleigh, after dinner, From pure incompetence to mar or mend them: They fled and wed;—though, mind, I don't defend them. I don't defend them. 'Twas a serious act, No doubt too much determined by the senses; (Alas! when these affinities attract, We lose the future in the present tenses!) Besides, the least establishment's a fact Involving nice adjustment of expenses; Moreover, too, reflection should reveal That not remote contingent—la famille. Yet these, maybe, were happy in their lot. Milton has said (and surely Milton knows) That after all, philosophy is "not,— Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose;" And some, no doubt, for Love's sake have forgot Much that is needful in this world of prose:— Perchance 'twas so with these. But who shall say? Time has long since swept them and theirs away. "Unwisely," surely. But 'tis well to mention That this particular is not invention. THE WATER-CURE.A TALE: IN THE MANNER OF PRIOR. |
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