Chapter 44

but smiling Country. Chorus of Peasants singing before the Gates_.

_Chorus_.

I.

The wars are over, The spring is come; The bride and her lover Have sought their home: They are happy, we rejoice; Let their hearts have an echo in every voice!

II.

The spring is come; the violet's gone, The first-born child of the early sun:[dt] With us she is but a winter's flower, The snow on the hills cannot blast her bower, 10 And she lifts up her dewy eye of blue To the youngest sky of the self-same hue.

III.

And when the spring comes with her host Of flowers, that flower beloved the most Shrinks from the crowd that may confuse Her heavenly odour and virgin hues.

IV.

Pluck the others, but still remember Their herald out of dim December-- The morning star of all the flowers, The pledge of daylight's lengthened hours; 20 Nor, midst the roses, e'er forget The virgin--virgin Violet.

_Enter_ CÆSAR.

_Cæs._ (_singing_). The wars are all over, Our swords are all idle, The steed bites the bridle, The casque's on the wall. There's rest for the rover; But his armour is rusty, And the veteran grows crusty, As he yawns in the hall. 30 He drinks--but what's drinking? A mere pause from thinking! No bugle awakes him with life-and-death call.

_Chorus_.

But the hound bayeth loudly, The boar's in the wood, And the falcon longs proudly To spring from her hood: On the wrist of the noble She sits like a crest, And the air is in trouble 40 With birds from their nest.

_Cæs._ Oh! shadow of Glory! Dim image of War! But the chase hath no story, Her hero no star, Since Nimrod, the founder Of empire and chase, Who made the woods wonder And quake for their race. When the lion was young, 50 In the pride of his might, Then 'twas sport for the strong To embrace him in fight; To go forth, with a pine For a spear, 'gainst the mammoth, Or strike through the ravine[du] At the foaming behemoth; While man was in stature As towers in our time, The first born of Nature, 60 And, like her, sublime!

_Chorus_.

But the wars are over, The spring is come; The bride and her lover Have sought their home: They are happy, and we rejoice; Let their hearts have an echo from every voice! [_Exeunt the Peasantry, singing_.

FRAGMENT OF THE THIRD PART OF _THE DEFORMED TRANSFORMED_.

_Chorus_.

When the merry bells are ringing, And the peasant girls are singing, And the early flowers are flinging Their odours in the air; And the honey bee is clinging To the buds; and birds are winging Their way, pair by pair: Then the earth looks free from trouble With the brightness of a bubble: Though I did not make it, 10 I could breathe on and break it; But too much I scorn it, Or else I would mourn it, To see despots and slaves Playing o'er their own graves.

_Enter_ COUNT ARNOLD.

{_Mem._ Jealous--Arnold of Cæsar. {Olympia at first not liking Cæsar {--then?--Arnold jealous of himself {under his former figure, owing to {the power of intellect, etc., etc., etc.

_Arnold_. You are merry, Sir--what? singing too?

_Cæsar_. It is The land of Song--and Canticles you know Were once my avocation.

_Arn._ Nothing moves you; You scoff even at your own calamity-- And such calamity! how wert thou fallen 20 Son of the Morning! and yet Lucifer Can smile.

_Cæs._ His shape can--would you have me weep, In the fair form I wear, to please you?

_Arn._ Ah!

_Cæs._ You are grave--what have you on your spirit!

_Arn._ Nothing.

_Cæs._ How mortals lie by instinct! If you ask A disappointed courtier--What's the matter? "Nothing"--an outshone Beauty what has made Her smooth brow crisp--"Oh, Nothing!"--a young heir When his Sire has recovered from the Gout, What ails him? "Nothing!" or a Monarch who 30 Has heard the truth, and looks imperial on it-- What clouds his royal aspect? "Nothing," "Nothing!" Nothing--eternal nothing--of these nothings All are a lie--for all to them are much! And they themselves alone the real "Nothings." Your present Nothing, too, is something to you-- What is it?

_Arn._ Know you not?

_Cæs._ I only know What I desire to know! and will not waste Omniscience upon phantoms. Out with it! If you seek aid from me--or else be silent. 40 And eat your thoughts--till they breed snakes within you.

_Arn._ Olimpia!

_Cæs._ I thought as much--go on.

_Arn._ I thought she had loved me.

_Cæs._ Blessings on your Creed! What a good Christian you were found to be! But what cold Sceptic hath appalled your faith And transubstantiated to crumbs again The _body_ of your Credence?

_Arn._ No one--but-- Each day--each hour--each minute shows me more And more she loves me not--

_Cæs._ Doth she rebel?

_Arn._ No, she is calm, and meek, and silent with me, 50 And coldly dutiful, and proudly patient-- Endures my Love--not meets it.

_Cæs._ That seems strange. You are beautiful and brave! the first is much For passion--and the rest for Vanity.

_Arn._ I saved her life, too; and her Father's life, And Father's house from ashes.

_Cæs._ These are nothing. You seek for Gratitude--the Philosopher's stone.

_Arn._ And find it not.

_Cæs._ You cannot find what is not. But _found_ would it content you? would you owe To thankfulness what you desire from Passion? 60 No! No! you would be _loved_--what you call loved-- _Self-loved_--loved for _yourself_--for neither health, Nor wealth, nor youth, nor power, nor rank, nor beauty-- For these you may be stript of--but _beloved_ As an abstraction--for--you know not what! These are the wishes of a moderate lover-- And _so_ you love.

_Arn._ Ah! could I be beloved, Would I ask wherefore?

_Cæs._ Yes! and not believe The answer--You are jealous.

_Arn._ And of whom?

_Cæs._ It may be of yourself,[252] for Jealousy 70 Is as a shadow of the Sun. The Orb Is mighty--as you mortals deem--and to Your little Universe seems universal; But, great as He appears, and is to you, The smallest cloud--the slightest vapour of Your humid earth enables you to look Upon a Sky which you revile as dull; Though your eyes dare not gaze on it when cloudless. Nothing can blind a mortal like to light. Now Love in you is as the Sun--a thing 80 Beyond you--and your Jealousy's of Earth-- A cloud of your own raising.

_Arn._ Not so always! There is a cause at times.

_Cæs._ Oh, yes! when atoms jostle, The System is in peril. But I speak Of things you know not. Well, to earth again! This precious thing of dust--this bright Olimpia-- This marvellous Virgin, is a marble maid-- An Idol, but a cold one to your heat Promethean, and unkindled by your torch.

_Arn._ Slave!

_Cæs._ In the victor's Chariot, when Rome triumphed, 90 There was a Slave of yore to tell him truth! You are a Conqueror--command your Slave.

_Arn._ Teach me the way to win the woman's love.

_Cæs._ Leave her.

_Arn._ Where that the path--I'd not pursue it.

_Cæs._ No doubt! for if you did, the remedy Would be for a disease already cured.

_Arn._ All wretched as I am, I would not quit My unrequited love, for all that's happy.

_Cæs._ You have possessed the woman--still possess. What need you more?

_Arn._ To be myself possessed-- 100 To be her heart as she is mine.

FOOTNOTES:

[201] {473}[_The Three Brothers_, by Joshua Pickersgill, junior, was published in 1803. There is no copy of _The Three Brothers_ in the British Museum. The following extracts are taken from a copy in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (vol. 4, cap. xi. pp. 229-350):--

"Arnaud, the natural son of the Marquis de Souvricour, was a child 'extraordinary in Beauty and Intellect.' When travelling with his parents to Languedoc, Arnaud being 8 years old, he was shot at by banditti, and forsaken by his parents. The Captain of the band nursed him. 'But those perfections to which Arnaud owed his existence, ceased to adorn it. The ball had gored his shoulder, and the fall had dislocated it; by the latter misadventure his spine likewise was so fatally injured as to be irrecoverable to its pristine uprightness. Injuries so compound confounded the Captain, who sorrowed to see a creature so charming, at once deformed by a crooked back and an excrescent shoulder.' Arnaud was found and taken back to his parents. 'The bitterest consciousness of his deformity was derived from their indelicate, though, perhaps, insensible alteration of conduct.... Of his person he continued to speak as of an abhorrent enemy.... "Were a blessing submitted to my choice, I would say, [said Arnaud] be it my immediate dissolution." "I think," said his mother, ... "that you could wish better." "Yes," adjoined Arnaud, "for that wish should be that I ever had remained unborn."' He polishes the broken blade of a sword, and views himself therein; the sight so horrifies him that he determines to throw himself over a precipice, but draws back at the last moment. He goes to a cavern, and conjures up the prince of hell. "Arnaud knew himself to be interrogated. What he required.... What was that answer the effects explain.... There passed in liveliest portraiture the various men distinguished for that beauty and grace which Arnaud so much desired, that he was ambitious to purchase them with his soul. He felt that it was his part to chuse whom he would resemble, yet he remained unresolved, though the spectator of an hundred shades of renown, among which glided by Alexander, Alcibiades, and Hephestion: at length appeared the supernatural effigy of a man, whose perfections human artist never could depict or insculp--Demetrius, the son of Antigonus. Arnaud's heart heaved quick with preference, and strait he found within his hand the resemblance of a poniard, its point inverted towards his breast. A mere automaton in the hands of the Demon, he thrust the point through his heart, and underwent a painless death. During his trance, his spirit metempsychosed from the body of his detestation to that of his admiration ... Arnaud awoke a Julian!'"]

[202] {474}[For a _résumé_ of M. G. Lewis's _Wood Demon_ (afterwards re-cast as _One O'clock; or, The Knight and the Wood-Demon_, 1811), see "First Visit to the Theatre in London," _Poems_, by Hartley Coleridge, 1851, i., Appendix C, pp. cxcix.-cciii. The _Wood Demon_ in its original form was never published.]

[203] [Mrs. Shelley inscribed the following note on the fly-leaf of her copy of _The Deformed Transformed_:--

"This had long been a favourite subject with Lord Byron. I think that he mentioned it also in Switzerland. I copied it--he sending a portion of it at a time, as it was finished, to me. At this time he had a great horror of its being said that he plagiarised, or that he studied for ideas, and wrote with difficulty. Thus he gave Shelley Aikins' edition of the British poets, that it might not be found in his house by some English lounger, and reported home; thus, too, he always dated when he began and when he ended a poem, to prove hereafter how quickly it was done. I do not think that he altered a line in this drama after he had once written it down. He composed and corrected in his mind. I do not know how he meant to finish it; but he said himself that the whole conduct of the story was already conceived. It was at this time that a brutal paragraph[*] alluding to his lameness appeared, which he repeated to me lest I should hear it from some one else. No action of Lord Byron's life--scarce a line he has written--but was influenced by his personal defect."

[*] It is possible that Mrs. Shelley alludes to a sentence in the _Memoirs, etc., of Lord Byron_. (by Dr. John Watkin), 1822, p. 46: "A malformation of one of his feet, and other indications of a rickety constitution, served as a plea for suffering him to range the hills and to wander about at his pleasure on the seashore, that his frame might be invigorated by air and exercise."]

[cv] {477} _The Deformed--a drama.--B. Pisa, 1822_.

[204] [Moore (_Life_, p. 13) quotes these lines in connection with a passage in Byron's "Memoranda," where, in speaking of his own sensitiveness on the subject of his deformed foot, he described the feeling of horror and humiliation that came over him, when his mother, in one of her fits of passion, called him "_a lame brat!_"... "It may be questioned," he adds, "whether that whole drama [_The Deformed Transformed_] was not indebted for its origin to that single recollection."

Byron's early letters (_e.g._ November 2, 11, 17, 1804, _Letters_, 1898,