Ardath by Marie Corelli (reading in the dark .txt) đ
- Author: Marie Corelli
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ââNo moreâ is a long time, my friend!â interposed Heliobas gently.
âYou are too despondent,âperchance too diffident, concerning your own ability.â
âAbility!â and he laughed wearily. âI have none,âI am as weak and inapt as an untaught childâthe music of my heart is silenced! Yet there is nothing I would not do to regain the ravishment of the pastâwhen the sight of the sunset across the hills, or the moonâs silver transfiguration of the sea filled me with deep and indescribable ecstasyâwhen the thought of Love, like a full chord struck from a magic harp, set my pulses throbbing with delirious delightâfancies thick as leaves in summer crowded my brainâEarth was a round charm hung on the breast of a smiling Divinityâmen were godsâwomen were angelsââthe world seemed but a wide scroll for the signatures of poets, and mine, I swore, should be clearly written!â
He paused, as though ashamed of his own fervor. and glanced at Heliobas, who, leaning a little forward in his chair was regaling him with friendly, attentive interest; then he continued more calmly:
âEnough! I think I had something in me then,âsomething that was new and wild and, though it may seem self praise to say so, full of that witching glamour we name Inspiration; but whatever that something was, call it genius, a trick of song, what you will,âit was soon crushed out of me. The world is fond of slaying its singing buds and devouring them for daily fareâone rough pressure of finger and thumb on the little melodious throats, and they are mute forever. So I found, when at last in mingled pride, hope, and fear I published my poems, seeking for them no other recompense save fair hearing and justice. They obtained neitherâthey were tossed carelessly by a few critics from hand to hand, jeered at for a while, and finally flung back to me as liesâlies all! The finely spun web of any fancy,âthe delicate interwoven intricacies of thought,âthese were torn to shreds with as little compunction as idle children feel when destroying for their own cruel sport the velvety wonder of a mothâs wing, or the radiant rose and emerald pinions of a dragon-fly. I was a foolâso I was told with many a languid sneer and stale jestâto talk of hidden mysteries in the whisper of the wind and the dash of the wavesâsuch sounds were but common cause and effect. The stars were merely conglomerated masses of heated vapor condensed by the work of ages into meteorites and from meteorites into worldsâand these went on rolling in their appointed orbits, for what reason nobody knew, but then nobody cared! And Loveâthe key-note of the theme to which I had set my mistaken life in tuneâLove was only a graceful word used to politely define the low but very general sentiment of coarse animal attractionâin short, poetry such as mine was altogether absurd and out of date when confronted with the facts of everyday existenceâfacts which plainly taught us that manâs chief business here below was simply to live, breed, and dieâthe life of a silk-worm or caterpillar on a slightly higher platform of ability; beyond thisânothing!â
âNothing?â murmured Heliobas, in a tone of suggestive inquiryâ
âreally nothing?â
âNothing!â repeated Alwyn, with an air of resigned hopelessness; âfor I learned that, according to the results arrived at by the most advanced thinkers of the day, there was no God, no Soul, no Hereafterâthe loftiest efforts of the highest heavenâaspiring minds were doomed to end in non-fruition, failure, and annihilation. Among all the desperately hard truths that came rattling down upon me like a shower of stones, I think this was the crowning one that killed whatever genius I had. I use the word âgeniusâ foolishlyâthough, after all, genius itself is nothing to boast of, since it is only a morbid and unhealthy condition of the intellectual faculties, or at least was demonstrated to me as such by a scientific friend of my own who, seeing I was miserable, took great pains to make me more so if possible. He proved,âto his own satisfaction if not altogether to mine,âthat the abnormal position of certain molecules in the brain produced an eccentricity or peculiar bias in one direction which, practically viewed, might be described as an intelligent form of monomania, but which most people chose to term âgenius,â and that from a purely scientific standpoint it was evident that the poets, painters, musicians, sculptors, and all the widely renowned âgreat onesâ of the earth should be classified as so many brains more or less affected by abnormal molecular formation, which strictly speaking amounted to brain-deformity. He assured me, that to the properly balanced, healthily organized brain of the human animal, genius was an impossibilityâit was a malady as unnatural as rare.
âAnd it is singular, very singular,â he added with a complacent smile, âthat the world should owe all its finest art and literature merely to a few varieties of molecular disease!â I thought it singular enough, too,âhowever, I did not care to argue with him; I only felt that if the illness of genius had at any time affected ME, it was pretty well certain I should now suffer no more from its delicious pangs and honey-sweet fever. I was cured! The probing-knife of the worldâs cynicism had found its way to the musically throbbing centre of divine disquietude in my brain, and had there cut down the growth of fair imaginations for ever. I thrust aside the bright illusions that had once been my gladness; I forced myself to look with unflinching eyes at the wide waste of universal Nothingness revealed to me by the rigid positivists and iconoclasts of the century; but my heart died within me; my whole being froze as it were into an icy apathy,âI wrote no more; I doubt whether I shall ever write again. Of a truth, there is nothing to write about. All has been said. The days of the Troubadours are past,âone cannot string canticles of love for men and women whose ruling passion is the greed of gold.
Yet I have sometimes thought life would be drearier even than it is, were the voices of poets altogether silent; and I wishâyes! I wish I had it in my power to brand my sign-manual on the brazen face of this coldly callous age-brand it deep in those letters of living lire called Fame!â
A look of baffled longing and un gratified ambition came into his musing eyes,-his strong, shapely white hand clenched nervously, as though it grasped some unseen yet perfectly tangible substance.
Just then the storm without, which had partially lulled during the last few minutes, began its wrath anew: a glare of lightning blazed against the uncurtained window, and a heavy clap of thunder burst overhead with the sudden crash of an exploding bomb.
âYou care for Fame?â asked Ileliobas abruptly, as soon as the terrific uproar had subsided into a distant, dull rumbling mingled with the pattering dash of hail.
âI care for itâyes!â replied Alwyn, and his voice was very low and dreamy. âFor though the world is a graveyard, as I have said, full of unmarked tombs, still here and there we find graves, such as Shelleyâs or Byronâs, whereon pale flowers, like sweet suggestions of eversilenced music, break into continuous bloom.
And shall I not win my own death-garland of asphodel?â
There was an indescribable, almost heart-rending pathos in his manner of uttering these last wordsâa hopelessness of effort and a despairing sense of failure which he himself seemed conscious of, for, meeting the fixed and earnest gaze of Ileliobas, he quickly relapsed into his usual tone of indolent indifference.
âYou see,â he said, with a forced smile, âmy story is not very interesting! No hairbreadth escapes, no thrilling adventures, no love intriguesânothing but mental misery, for which few people have any sympathy. A child with a cut finger gets more universal commiseration than a man with a tortured brain and breaking heart, yet there can be no quotion as to which is the most intense duel long enduring anguish of the two. However, such as my troubles are I have told you all I have laid bare my âwound of livingââa wound that throbs and burns, and aches, more intolerably with every pissing hour and dayâit is not unnatural, I think, that I should seek for a little cessation of suffering; a brief dreaming space in which to rest for a while, and escape from the deathful TruthâTruth, that like the flaming sword placed east of the fabled garden of Eden, turns ruthlessly every way, keeping us out of the forfeited paradise of imaginative aspiration, which made the men of old time great because they deemed themselves immortal.
It was a glorious faith! that strong consciousness, that in the change and upheaval of whole universes the soul of man should forever over-ride disaster! But now that we know ourselves to be of no more importance, relatively speaking, than the animalculae in a drop of stagnant water, what great works can be done, what noble deeds accomplished, in the face of the declared and proved futility of everything? Still, if you can, as you say, liberate me from this fleshly prison, and give me new sensations and different experiences, why then let me depart with all possible speed, for I am certain I shall find in the storm-swept areas of space nothing worse than life as lived in this present world. Remember, I am quite incredulous as to your professed powerââ he paused and glanced at the white-robed, priestly figure opposite, then added, lightly, âbut I am curious to test it all the same. Are you ready to being your spells?âand shall I say the Nunc Dimittis?â
CHAPTER III.
DEPARTURE.
Heliobas was silentâhe seemed engaged in deep and anxious thought,âand he kept his steadfast eyes fixed on Alwynâs countenance, as though he sought there the clew to some difficult problem.
âWhat do you know of the Nunc Dimittis?â he asked at last, with a half-smile. âYou might as well say PATER NOSTER,âboth canticle and prayer would be equally unmeaning to you! For poet as you are,âor let me say as you WERE,âinasmuch as no atheist was ever a poet at the same timeââ
âYou are wrong,â interrupted Alwyn quickly. âShelley was an atheist.â
âShelley, my good friend, was NOT an atheist [Footnote: See the last two verses of Adonais]. He strove
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