Part 1

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE. Vol. XVIII. June, 1841. No. 6.

Contents

Fiction, Literature and Articles

The Island of the Fay The Reefer of ’76 (continued) The Lost Heir The Syrian Letters The Clothing of the Ancients The Life Guardsman Ugolino, a Tale of Florence The Thunder Storm Poetry: The Uncertainty of Its Appreciation Sports and Pastimes Review of New Books

Poetry, Music and Fashion

The Voice of the Wind Time’s Changes Sighs for the Unattainable The Lay of the Affections To Lord Byron Sonnet Written in April The Joys of Former Years Have Fled Let Me Rest in the Land of My Birth Fashions for June 1841

Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.

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GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XVIII. June, 1841. No. 6.

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THE ISLAND OF THE FAY.

BY EDGAR A. POE.

Science, true daughter of old Time thou art, Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes! Why prey’st thou thus upon the poet’s heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? How should he love thee, or how deem thee wise Who wouldst not leave him, in his wandering, To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? Hast thou not dragged Diana, from her car? And driven the Hamadryad from the wood? Hast thou not spoilt a story in each star? Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood? The elfin from the grass?—the dainty _fay_, The witch, the sprite, the goblin—where are they? _Anon._

“La musique,” says Marmontel, with the same odd confusion of thought and language which leads him to give his very equivocal narratives the title of “_Contes Moraux_”—“la musique est le seul des talens qui jouissent de lui même; tous les autres veulent des temoins.” He here confounds the pleasure derivable from sweet sounds with the capacity for creating them. No more than any other _talent_, is that for music susceptible of complete enjoyment, where there is no second party to appreciate its exercise. And it is only in common with other talents that it produces _effects_ which may be fully enjoyed in solitude. The idea which the _raconteur_ has either failed to entertain clearly, or has sacrificed, in its expression, to his national love of _point_, is, doubtless, the very tenable one that the higher order of music is the most thoroughly estimated when we are the most exclusively alone. The proposition, in this form, will be admitted at once by those who love the lyre for its own sake, and for its spiritual uses. But there is one pleasure still within the reach of fallen mortality—and perhaps only one—which owes even more than does music to the accessory sentiment of seclusion. I mean the happiness experienced in the contemplation of natural scenery. In truth, the man who would behold aright the glory of God upon earth must in solitude behold that glory. To me, at least, the presence—not of human life only—but of life in any other form than that of the green things which grow upon the soil and are voiceless—is a stain upon the landscape—is at war with the genius of the scene. I love, indeed, to regard the dark valleys, and the grey rocks, and the waters that silently smile, and the forests that sigh in uneasy slumbers, and the proud watchful mountains that look down upon all—I love to regard these as themselves but the colossal members of one vast animate and sentient whole—a whole whose form (that of the sphere) is the most perfect and the most inclusive of all; whose path is among associate planets; whose meek handmaiden is the moon; whose mediate sovereign is the sun; whose life is eternity; whose intelligence is that of a God; whose enjoyment is knowledge; whose destinies are lost in immensity; whose cognizance of ourselves is akin with our own cognizance of the animalculæ in crystal, or of those which infest the brain—a being which we, in consequence, regard as purely inanimate and material, much in the same manner as these animalculæ must thus regard us.

Our telescopes, and our mathematical investigations assure us on every hand—notwithstanding the cant of the more ignorant of the priesthood—that space, and therefore that bulk, is an important consideration in the eyes of the Almighty. The cycles in which the stars move are those best adapted for the evolution, without collision, of the greatest possible number of bodies. The forms of these bodies are accurately such as, within a given surface, to include the greatest possible amount of matter;—while the surfaces themselves are so disposed as to accommodate a denser population than could be accommodated on the same surfaces otherwise arranged. Nor is it any argument against bulk being an object with God, that space itself is infinite; for there may be an infinity of matter to fill it. And since we see clearly that the endowment of matter with vitality is a principle—indeed as far as our judgments extend, the _leading_ principle—in the operations of Deity—it is scarcely logical to imagine that it is confined to the regions of the minute, where we daily trace it, and that it does not extend to those of the august. As we find cycle within cycle without end—yet all revolving around one far-distant centre which is the God-head, may we not analogically suppose, in the same manner, life within life, the less within the greater, and all within the Spirit Divine? In short, we are madly erring, through self-esteem, in believing man, in either his temporal or future destinies, to be of more moment in the universe than that vast “clod of the valley” which he tills and contemns, and to which he denies a soul for no more profound reason than that he does not behold its operation.

These fancies, and such as these, have always given to my meditations among the mountains, and the forests, by the rivers and the ocean, a tinge of what the every-day world would not fail to term the fantastic. My wanderings amid such scenes have been many, and far-searching, and often solitary; and the interest with which I have strayed through many a dim deep valley, or gazed into the reflected Heaven of many a bright lake, has been an interest greatly deepened by the thought that I have strayed and gazed _alone_. What flippant Frenchman was it who said, in allusion to the well-known work of Zimmerman, that “_la solitude est une belle chose; mais il faut quelqu ’un pour vous dire que la solitude est une belle chose_?” The epigram cannot be gainsayed; but the necessity is a thing that does not exist.

It was during one of my lonely journeyings, amid a far-distant region of mountain locked within mountain, and sad rivers and melancholy tarns writhing or sleeping within all—that I chanced upon the rivulet and the island which are the subject of our engraving. I came upon them suddenly in the leafy June, and threw myself upon the turf, beneath the branches of an unknown odorous shrub, that I might doze as I contemplated the scene. I felt that thus only should I look upon it, such was the character of phantasm which it wore.

On all sides—save to the west, where the sun was about sinking—arose the verdant walls of the forest. The little river, which turned sharply in its course, and was thus immediately lost to sight, seemed to have no exit from its prison, but to be absorbed by the deep green foliage of the trees to the east—while in the opposite quarter (so it appeared to me as I lay at length and glanced upward) there poured down noiselessly and continuously into the valley, a rich, golden and crimson waterfall from the sun-set fountains of the sky.

About midway in the short vista which my dreamy vision took in, one small circular island, fantastically verdured, reposed upon the bosom of the stream.

So blended bank and shadow there, That each seemed pendulous in air—

so mirror-like was the glassy water, that it was scarcely possible to say at what point upon the slope of the emerald turf its crystal dominion began.

My position enabled me to include in a single view both the eastern and western extremities of the islet; and I observed a singularly-marked difference in their aspects. The latter was all one radiant harem of garden beauties. It glowed and blushed beneath the eye of the slant sunlight, and fairly laughed with flowers. The grass was short, springy, sweet-scented, and Asphodel-interspersed. The trees were lithe, mirthful, erect—bright, slender and graceful—of eastern figure and foliage, with bark smooth, glossy, and particolored. There seemed a deep sense of life and of joy about all; and although no airs blew from out the Heavens, yet every thing had motion through the gentle sweepings to and fro of innumerable butterflies, that might have been mistaken for tulips with wings.[1]

The other, or eastern end of the isle was whelmed in the blackest shade. A sombre, yet beautiful and peaceful gloom here pervaded all things. The trees were dark in color and mournful in form and attitude—wreathing themselves into sad, solemn, and spectral shapes, that conveyed ideas of mortal sorrow and untimely death. The grass wore the deep tint of the cypress, and the heads of its blades hung droopingly, and, hither and thither among it, were many small unsightly hillocks, low, and narrow, and not very long, that had the aspect of graves, but were not, although over and all about them the rue and the rosemary clambered. The shade of the trees fell heavily upon the water, and seemed to bury itself therein, impregnating the depths of the element with darkness. I fancied that each shadow, as the sun descended lower and lower, separated itself sullenly from the trunk that gave it birth, and thus became absorbed by the stream; while other shadows issued momently from the trees, taking the place of their predecessors entombed.

This idea, having once seized upon my fancy, greatly excited it, and I lost myself forthwith in reverie. “If ever island were enchanted,”—said I to myself,—“this is it. This is the haunt of the few gentle Fays who remain from the wreck of the race. Are these green tombs theirs?—or do they yield up at all their sweet lives as mankind yield up their own? In dying, do they not rather waste away mournfully; rendering unto God their existence little by little, as these trees render up shadow after shadow, exhausting their substances unto dissolution? What the wasting tree is to the water that imbibes its shade, growing thus blacker by what it preys upon, may not the life of the Fay be to the Death which engulfs it?—but what fairy-like form is this which glides so solemnly along the water?”

As I thus mused, with half-shut eyes, while the sun rapidly sank to rest, and eddying currents careered round and round the island, bearing upon their bosom large, dazzling white flakes of the bark of the sycamore—flakes which, in their multiform positions upon the water, a quick imagination might have converted into anything it pleased—while I thus mused, it appeared to me that the form of one of those very Fays about whom I had been pondering, made its way slowly into the darkness from out the light at the western end of the island. She stood erect in a singularly fragile canoe, and urged it with the mere phantom of an oar. While within the influence of the lingering sunbeams, her attitude seemed indicative of joy—but sorrow deformed it as she passed within the shade. Slowly she glided along, and at length rounded the islet and re-entered the region of light. “The revolution which has just been made by the Fay,”—continued I musingly—“is the cycle of the brief year of her life. She has floated through her winter and through her summer. She is a year nearer to Death; for I did not fail to see that as she came into the shade, her shadow fell from her, and was swallowed up in the dark water, making its blackness more black.”

And again the boat appeared, and the Fay;—but about the attitude of the latter there was more of care and uncertainty, and less of elastic joy. She floated again from out the light, and into the gloom, (which deepened momently) and again her shadow fell from her into the ebony water, and became absorbed into its blackness. And again and again she made the circuit of the island, (while the sun rushed down to his slumbers;) and at each issuing forth into the light, there was more sorrow about her person, while it grew feebler, and far fainter, and more indistinct; and at each passage into the gloom, there fell from her a darker shade, which became whelmed in a shadow more black. But at length, when the sun had utterly departed, the Fay, now the mere ghost of her former self, went disconsolately with her boat into the region of the ebony flood—and that she issued thence at all I cannot say,—for darkness fell over all things, and I beheld her magical figure no more.

[1] Florem putares nare per liquidum æthera.—_P. Commire._

Philadelphia, May, 1841.

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THE VOICE OF THE WIND.

“Whence comest thou, wind, in thy rapid flight, Or the balmy play of the zephyrs light? Hast thou breathed o’er the freshness of myrtle bowers, And laden thy wings from the orange flowers? Or pierced the darkness of distant caves, Whose depths resound with the ocean’s waves? Yet bring me no shadows of grief or woe, ’Tis only earth’s beauties I fain would know.” “I come in mirth,” said the gentle breeze, “To bring the murmurs of distant seas; I passed o’er the regions of fairest bloom, Till my pinions were laden with soft perfume; Where the dulcet tones of the wild bird’s note, In the boundless regions of ether float. I have come from the land of Olympus’ pride, Where the Spartan fought, and the Persian died. But prostrate palace, and fallen fane, Of its grandeur and beauty alone remain. I waved the boughs of the clustering vines, As their shadows fell o’er the mouldering lines, Which mark the spot of the warrior’s tomb, In that home of glory and land of bloom. And I kissed the brow of the dark-eyed girl, As I stirred with my pinions each raven curl. Nay, ask not a tale of unmingled joy, For earth has no pleasure without alloy; The widow’s moan, and the orphan’s wail, Are often borne on the sighing gale. When the clarion’s voice, and the cannon’s roar, Bear terror and ruin from shore to shore. I come in wrath, and the storm-clouds fly, In blackening folds through the darksome sky; And the mariner wakes from his joyful dream, Midst the tempest’s roar, and the lightning’s gleam; In the fathomless vaults of the ocean’s caves, He must rest mid the tumult of angry waves. I am fearless of sky, or of earth or sea, But soar over all with pinions free; I sport with the curls of the laughing child, With the bandit play, or the maiden mild; From the fragile flower to the lofty tree All bend in submission and yield to me.” Emma.

Yonker’s Female Seminary, 1841.

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THE REEFER OF ’76.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “CRUISING IN THE LAST WAR.”

THE SHIP’S BOY.

“Hillo!” said Westbrook, “who’s skulking here?” and he pushed his foot against a dark heap, huddled up under the shade of one of the guns. As he did so, a slight, pale-faced, sickly-looking boy started up. “Ah! it’s you, Dick, is it?—why I never before thought you’d skulk—there, go—but you mustn’t do it again, my lad.”

The boy was a favorite with all on board. He had embarked at Newport, and was, therefore, a new hand, but his quiet demeanor, as well as a certain melancholy expression of face he always wore, had won him a way to our hearts. Little was known of his history, except that he was an orphan. Punctual in the discharge of his duties, yet holding himself aloof from the rest of the boys, he seemed to be one, who although he had determined to endure his present fate, was yet conscious of having seen better days. I was the more confirmed in my belief that he had been born to a higher station from the choice of his words in conversation, especially with his superiors. His manner, too, was not that of one brought up to buffett roughly against fortune. That one so young should be thrust, unaided, out into the world, was a sure passport for him to my heart, for his want of parents was a link of sympathy uniting us together; and we had, therefore, always been as much friends as the relative difference of our situations, on board a man-of-war would allow. Yet even I, so great was his reserve, knew little more of his history than the rest of my shipmates. Once, indeed, when I had rendered him some little kindness, such as an officer always has it in his power without much trouble to himself, to bestow upon an inferior, his heart had opened, and he had told me, more by hints though than in direct words, that he had lost his father and mother and a little sister, within a few weeks of each other, and that, houseless, penniless and friendless, he had been forced to sea by his only remaining relatives, in order that he might shift for himself. I suspected that he did not pass under his real name. But whatever had been his former lot, or however great were his sufferings, he never repined. He went through his duty silently, but sadly, as if—poor child!—he carried within him a breaking heart.

“Please, sir,” said he, in reply to Westbrook’s address, “it’s but a minute any how I’ve been here.”

“Well, well, Dick, I believe you,” said the warm-hearted midshipman. “But there go eight bells, and as your watch is up, you may go below. What! crying—fie, fie, my lad, how girl-hearted you have grown.”

“I am not girl-hearted always,” sobbed the little fellow, looking up into his superior’s face, “but I couldn’t help crying when I thought that to-night a year ago my mother died, and I crept under the gun so that no one might see and laugh at me, as they do at every one here. It was just at this hour she died,” he continued, chokingly, bursting into a fit of uncontrollable weeping, “and she was the only friend I had on earth.”

“Poor boy! God bless you!” said Westbrook, mentally, as the lad, finishing his passionate exclamation, turned hastily away.

It was my watch, and as Westbrook met me coming on deck, he paused a moment, and said,

“Do you know any thing about that poor little fellow, I mean Dick Rasey? God help me I’ve been rating him for skulking, when the lad only wanted to hide his grief for his mother from the jests of the crew. I wouldn’t have done it for any thing.”

“No—he has always maintained the greatest reserve respecting himself. Has he gone below?”

“Yes! who can he be? It’s strange I feel such an interest in him.”

“Poor child!—he has seen better days, and this hard life is killing him. I wish he could distinguish himself some how—the skipper might then take a fancy to him and put him on the quarter-deck.”

“What a dear little middy he would make,” said Westbrook, his gay humor flashing out through his sadness, “why we havn’t got a cocked-hat aboard that wouldn’t bury him up like an extinguisher, or a dirk to spare which isn’t longer than his whole body.”

“Shame, Jack—its not a matter for jest—the lad is dying by inches.”

“Ah! you’re right, Parker; I wish to heaven the boy had a berth aft here. But now I must go below, for I’m confoundedly sleepy. You’ll have a lighter watch of it than I had. The moon will be up directly—and there, by Jove! she comes—look how gloriously her disc slides up behind that wave. But this is no time for poetry, for I’m as drowsy as if I was about to sleep, like the old fellow in the Arabian story, for a matter of a hundred years or more, or even like the seven sleepers of Christendom, who fell into a doze some centuries back, and will come to life again the Lord knows when,” and with a long yawn, my mercurial messmate gave a parting glance at the rising luminary, and went below.

The spectacle to which Westbrook had called my attention was indeed a glorious one. The night had been somewhat misty, so that the stars were obscured, or but faintly visible here and there; while the light breeze that scarcely ruffled the sea, or sighed above a whisper in the rigging, had given an air of profound repose to the scene. When I first stept on deck the whole horizon was buried in this partial obscurity, and the view around, excepting in the vicinity of the Fire-Fly, was lost in misty indistinctness. A few moments, however, had changed the aspect of the whole scene. When I relieved the watch the eastern horizon was shrouded in a veil of dark, thick vapors—for the mists had collected there in denser masses than any where else—while a single star, through a rent in the midst of that weird-like canopy, shone calmly upon the scene: but now the fog had lifted up like a curtain from the seaboard in that quarter, and a long greenish streak of light, stretching along for several points, and against which the dark waves undulated in bold relief, betokened the approach of the moon. Even as Westbrook spoke, the upper edge of her disc slid up above the watery horizon, disappearing and appearing again as the surges rose and fell against it, until gradually the huge globe lifted its whole vast volume above the seaboard, and while the edge of the dark canopy above shone as if lined with pearl, a flood of glorious light, flickering and dancing upon the billows, was poured in a long line of molten silver across the sea toward us, bathing hull, and spars, and sails in liquid radiance, and seeming to transpose us in a moment into a fairy land. Such a scene of unrivalled beauty I had never beheld. The contrast betwixt the dark vapors hanging over the moon, and the dazzling brilliancy of her wake below was indeed magnificent. I looked in mute delight. The few stars above were at once obscured by the brighter glories of the moon. Suddenly, however, as I gazed, a dark speck appeared upon the surface of the moon, and in another instant the tall masts and exquisite tracery of a ship could be seen, in bold relief against her disc, the fine dark lines of the hamper seeming like the thinnest cobwebs crossing a burnished shield of silver. So plainly was the vessel seen that her minutest spars were perceptible as she rose and fell gallantly on the long heavy swell.

“Ah! my fine fellow,” I exclaimed, “we have you there. Had it not been for yonder pretty mistress of the night you would have passed us unseen. Make all sail at once—and bear up a few points more so as to get the weather gauge of the stranger.”

“Ay, ay, sir.”

“How gallantly the old schooner eats into the wind,” I said, gazing with admiration on our light little craft. I turned to the chase. “Has the stranger altered her course?” I asked, looking for her in the old position, but finding she was no more visible.

“No, sir, I saw her but an instant ago: oh! there she is—that fog bank settling down on the seaboard hid her from sight. You can see her now just to leeward of the moon, sir.”