Mazelli, and Other Poems by George W. Sands (e book free reading txt) 📖

ah! where, abide they now?
Go search, and see if thou canst find,
One trace which they have left behind,
A single mound, or mossy grave,
That holds the ashes of the brave;
A single lettered stone to say
That they have lived, and passed away.
Men soon will cease to name their name,
Oblivion soon will quench their fame,
And the wild story of their fate,
Will yet be subject of debate,
'Twixt antiquarians sage and able,
Who doubt if it be truth or fable.

VIII.

I said I minded well the time,
When first beside yon stream I stood;
Then one interminable wood,
In its unbounded breadth sublime,
And in its loneliness profound,
Spread like a leafy sea around.
To one of foreign land and birth,
Nursed 'mid the loveliest scenes of earth,
But now from home and friends exiled,
Such wilderness were doubly wild;--
I thought it so, and scarce could I
My tears repress, when standing by
The river's brink, I thought of mine
Own native stream, the glorious Rhine!
For, near to it, with loving eye,
My mother watched my infancy;
Along its banks my childhood strayed,
With its strong waves my boyhood played.
And I could see, in memory, still
My father's cottage on the hill,
With green vines trailing round and o'er
Wall, roof and casement, porch and door:
Yet soon I learned yon stream to bless,
And love the wooded wilderness.
I could not then have told thee how
The change came o'er my heart, but now
I know full well the charm that wrought,
Into my soul, the spell of thought--
Of tender, pensive thought, which made
Me love the forest's deepest shade,
And listen, with delighted ear,
To the low voice of waters near,
As gliding, gushing, gurgling by,
They utter their sweet minstrelsy.
I scarce need give that charm a name;
Thy heart, I know, hath felt the same,--
Ah! where is mind, or heart, or soul,
That has not bowed to its control?

IX.

See, where yon towering, rocky ledge,
Hangs jutting o'er the river's edge,
There channelled dark, and dull, and deep,
The lazy, lagging waters sleep;
Thence follow, with thine eagle sight,
A double stone's cast to the right,
Mark where a white-walled cottage stands,
Devised and reared by cunning hands,
A stately pile, and fair to see!
The chisel's touch, and pencil's trace,
Have blent for it a goodly grace;
And yet, it much less pleaseth me,
Than did the simple rustic cot,
Which occupied of yore that spot.
For, 'neath its humble shelter, grew
The fairest flower that e'er drank dew;
A lone exotic of the wood,
The fairy of the solitude,
Who dwelt amid its loneliness
To brighten, beautify, and bless.
The summer sky's serenest blue,
Would best portray her eye's soft hue;
From her white brow were backward rolled
Long curls of mingled light and gold;
The flush upon her cheek of snow,
Had shamed the rose's harsher glow;
And haughty love had, haughtier grown,
To own her breast his fairest throne.
The eye that once behold her, ne'er
Could lose her image;--firm and bright,
All-beautiful, and pure, and clear,
'Twas stamped upon th' enamoured sight;
Unchangeable, for ever fair,
Above decay, it lingered there!
As it has lingered on mine own,
These many years, till it has grown,
In its mysterious strength, to be
A portion of my soul and me.

X.

Not in the peopled solitude
Of cities, does true love belong;
For it is of A thoughtful mood,
And thought abides not with the throng.
Nor is it won by glittering wealth,
By cunning, nor device of art,
Unheralded, by silent stealth,
It wins its way into the heart.
And once the soul has known its dream,
Thenceforth its empire is supreme,
For heart, and brain, and soul, and will,
Are bowed by its subduing thrill.
My love, alas! not born to bless,
Had birth in nature's loneliness;
And held, at first, as a sweet spell,
It grew in strength, till it became
A spirit, which I could not quell,--
A quenchless--a volcanic flame,
Which, without pause, or time of rest,
Must burn for ever in my breast.
Yet how ecstatically sweet,
Was its first soft tumultuous beat!
I little thought that beat could be
The harbinger of misery;
And daily, when the morning beam
Dawned earliest on wood and stream,
When, from each brake and bush were heard,
The hum of bee, and chirp of bird,
From these, earth's matin songs, my ear
Would turn, a sweeter voice to hear--
A voice, whose tones the very air
Seemed trembling with delight to bear;
From leafy wood, and misty stream,
From bush, and brake, and morning beam,
Would turn away my wandering eye,
A dearer object to descry,
Till voice so sweet, and form so bright,
Grew part of hearing and of sight.

X1.

Yet my fond love I never told,
But kept it, as the miser keeps,
In his rude hut, his hoarded heaps
Of gleaming gems, and glittering gold:
Gloating in secret o'er the prize,
He fears to show to other eyes;
And so passed many months away,
Till once I heard a comrade say:--
"To-morrow brings her bridal day;
Mazelli leaves the greenwood bower,
Where she has grown its fairest flower,
To bless, with her bright, sunny smile,
A stranger from a distant isle,
Whom love has lured across the sea,
O'er hill and glen, through wood and wild,
Far from his lordly home, to be
Lord of the forest's fairest child."
It was as when a thunder peal
Bursts, crashing from a cloudless sky,
It caused my brain and heart to reel
And throb, with speechless agony:
Yet, when wild Passion's trance was o'er,
And Thought resumed her sway once more,
I breathed a prayer that she might be
Saved from the pangs that tortured me;
That her young heart might never prove
The sting of unrequited love.
My task I then again began,
But ah! how much an altered man,--
A single hour, a few hot tears,
Had done the wasting work of years.

XII.

Nor was it I alone, to whom
Those words had been as words of doom,
By some malicious fiend rehearsed:
Another one was standing by,
With princely port, and piercing eye,
Of dusky cheek, and brow, and plume;
I thought his heaving heart would burst,
His labouring bosom's heave and swell,
So strongly, quickly, rose and fell!
A long, bright blade hung at his side,
Its keen and glittering edge he tried;
He bore a bow, and this he drew,
To see if still its spring were true;
But other sign could none be caught,
Of what he suffered, felt, or thought.
And then with firm and haughty stride,
He turned away, and left my side;
I watched him, as with rapid tread,
Along the river's marge he sped,
Till the still twilight's gathering gloom
Hid haughty form, and waving plume.


Canto II.

I.

He stood where the mountain moss outspread
Its smoothness beneath his dusky foot;
The chestnut boughs above his head,
Hung motionless and mute.
There came not a voice from the wooded hill,
Nor a sound from the shadowy glen,
Save the plaintive song of the whip-poor-will,(2)
And the waterfall's dash, and now and then,
The night-bird's mournful cry.
Deep silence hung round him; the misty light
Of the young moon silvered the brow of Night,
Whose quiet spirit had flung her spell
O'er the valley's depth, and the mountain's height,
And breathed on the air, till its gentle swell
Arose on the ear like some loved one's call;
And the wide blue sky spread over all
Its starry canopy.
And he seemed as the spirit of some chief,
Whose grave could not give him rest;
So deep was the settled hue of grief,
On his manly front impressed:
Yet his lips were compressed with a proud disdain,
And his port was erect and high,
Like the lips of a martyr who mocks at pain,
As the port of a hero who scorns to fly,
When his men have failed in fight;
Who rather a thousand deaths would die,
Than his fame should suffer blight.

II.

And who by kith, and who by name,
Is he, that lone, yet haughty one?
By his high brow, and eye of flame,
I guess him old Ottalli's son.
Ottalli! whose proud name was here
In other times, a sound of fear!
The fleet of foot, and strong of hand,
Chief of his tribe, lord of the land,
The forest child, of mind and soul
Too wild and free to brook control!
In chase was none so swift as he,
In battle none so brave and strong;
To friends, all love and constancy,--
But we to those who wrought him wrong!
His arm would wage avenging strife,
With bow, and spear, and bloody knife,
Till he had taught his foes to feel,
How true his aim, how keen his steel.
Now others hold the sway he held,--
His day and power have passed away;
His goodly forests all are felled,
And songs of mirth rise, clear and gay,
Chaunted by youthful voices, where
His battle-hymn once filled the air--
Where blazed the lurid council fire,
The village church erects its spire;
And where the mystic war-dance rang,
With its confused, discordant clang,
While stern, fierce lips, with many a cry
For blood and vengeance, filled the sky,
Mild Mercy, gentle as the dove,
Proclaims her rule of peace and love.
And of his true and faithful clan,
Of child and matron, maid and man,
Of all he loved, survives but one--
His earliest, and his only son!
That son's sole heritage his fame,
His strength, his likeness, and his name.

III.

And thus from varying year to year,
The youthful chief has lingered here;
Chief!--why is he so nobly named?
How many warriors at his call,
By Arcouski's breath inflamed,
Would with him fight, and for him fall?
Of all his father's warrior throng,
Remains not one whose lip could now
Rehearse with him the battle song,
Whose hand could bend the hostile bow.
And yet, no weak, complaining word,
From his stern lip is ever heard;
And his bright eye, so black and clear,
Is never moistened by a tear;
Of quiet mien, and mournful mood,
He lives, a stoic of the wood;
Gliding about from place to place,
With noiseless step, and steady pace,
Haunting each fountain, glen, and grot,
Like the lone Genius of the spot.

IV.

And this was he who, standing there,
Seemed as an image of Despair,
Which agony's convulsive strife,
Had quickened into breathing life.
The writhing lip, the brow all wet
With Pain's cold, clammy, deathlike sweat;
The hand, that with unconscious clasp,
Strained his keen dagger in its grasp;
The eye, that lightened with the blaze
Of frenzied Passion's maniac gaze;
The nervous, shuddering thrill, which came
At intervals along his frame;
The tremulously heaving breast,--
These signs the inward storm confessed:
Yet, through those signs of wo, there broke
Flashes of fearless thought, which spoke
A soul within, whose haughty will
Would wrestle with immortal ill,
And only quit the strife, when fate
Its being should annihilate.
Silent he stood, until the