From an Unrolled Manuscript of Apollonius Curius

Who hath ever been lured and bound by a spellTo wander, fore-doomed, in that circle of hellWhere Witchery works with her will like a god,Works more than the wonders of time at a nod,--At a word,--at a touch,--at a flash of the eye,But each form is a cheat, and each sound is a lie,Things born of a wish--to endure for a thought,Or last for long ages--to vanish to nought,Or put on new semblance? O Jove, I had givenThe throne of a kingdom to know if that heaven,And the earth and its streams were of Circe, or whetherThey kept the world's birthday and brighten'd together!For I loved them in terror, and constantly dreadedThat the earth where I trod, and the cave where I bedded,The face I might dote on, should live out the leaseOf the charm that created, and suddenly cease:And I gave me to slumber, as if from one dreamTo another--each horrid,--and drank of the streamLike a first taste of blood, lest as water I quaff'dSwift poison, and never should breathe from the draught,--Such drink as her own monarch husband drain'd upWhen he pledged her, and Fate closed his eyes in the cup.And I pluck'd of the fruit with held breath, and a fearThat the branch would start back and scream out in my ear;For once, at my suppering, I plucked in the duskAn apple, juice-gushing and fragrant of musk;But by daylight my fingers were crimson'd with gore,And the half-eaten fragment was flesh at the core;And once--only once--for the love of its blush,I broke a bloom bough, but there came such a gushOn my hand, that it fainted away in weak fright,While the leaf-hidden woodpecker shriek'd at the sight;And oh! such an agony thrill'd in that note,That my soul, startling up, beat its wings in my throat,As it long'd to be free of a body whose handWas doom'd to work torments a Fury had plann'd!

There I stood without stir, yet how willing to flee,As if rooted and horror-turn'd into a tree,--Oh! for innocent death,--and to suddenly win it,I drank of the stream, but no poison was in it;I plunged in its waters, but ere I could sink,Some invisible fate pull'd me back to the brink;I sprang from the rock, from its pinnacle height,But fell on the grass with a grasshopper's flight;I ran at my fears--they were fears and no more,For the bear would not mangle my limbs, nor the boar,But moan'd--all their brutalized flesh could not smotherThe horrible truth,--we were kin to each other!

They were mournfully gentle, and group'd for relief,All foes in their skin, but all friends in their grief:The leopard was there,--baby-mild in its feature;And the tiger, black-barr'd, with the gaze of a creatureThat knew gentle pity; the bristle-back'd boar,His innocent tusks stain'd with mulberry gore;And the laughing hyena--but laughing no more;And the snake, not with magical orbs to deviseStrange death, but with woman's attraction of eyes;The tall ugly ape, that still bore a dim shineThrough his hairy eclipse of a manhood divine;And the elephant stately, with more than its reason,How thoughtful in sadness! but this is no seasonTo reckon them up from the lag-bellied toadTo the mammoth, whose sobs shook his ponderous load.There were woes of all shapes, wretched forms, when I came,That hung down their heads with a human-like shame;The elephant hid in the boughs, and the bearShed over his eyes the dark veil of his hair;And the womanly soul turning sick with disgust,Tried to vomit herself from her serpentine crust;While all groan'd their groans into one at their lot,As I brought them the image of what they were not.

Then rose a wild sound of the human voice chokingThrough vile brutal organs--low tremulous croaking:Cries swallow'd abruptly--deep animal tonesAttuned to strange passion, and full-utter'd groans;All shuddering weaken, till hush'd in a pauseOf tongues in mute motion and wide-yawning jaws;And I guessed that those horrors were meant to tell o'erThe tale of their woes; but the silence told more,That writhed on their tongues; and I knelt on the sod,And pray'd with my voice to the cloud-stirring god,For the sad congregation of supplicants there,That upturn'd to his heaven brute faces of prayer;And I ceased, and they utter'd a moaning so deep,That I wept for my heart-ease,--but they could not weep,And gazed with red eyeballs, all wistfully dry,At the comfort of tears in a stag's human eye.Then I motion'd them round, and, to soothe their distress,I caress'd, and they bent them to meet my caress,Their necks to my arm, and their heads to my palm,And with poor grateful eyes suffer'd meekly and calmThose tokens of kindness, withheld by hard fateFrom returns that might chill the warm pity to hate;So they passively bow'd--save the serpent, that leaptTo my breast like a sister, and pressingly creptIn embrace of my neck, and with close kisses blister'dMy lips in rash love,--then drew backward, and glister'dHer eyes in my face, and loud hissing affright,Dropt down, but swift started away from my sight!

This sorrow was theirs, but thrice wretched my lot,Turn'd brute in my soul, though my body was not,When I fled from the sorrow of womanly faces,That shrouded their woe in the shade of lone places,And dash'd off bright tears, till their fingers were wet,And then wiped their lids with long tresses of jet:But I fled--though they stretch'd out their hands, all entangledWith hair, and blood-stain'd of the breasts they had mangled,--Though they call'd--and perchance but to ask, had I seenTheir loves, or to tell the vile wrongs that had been:But I stayed not to hear, lest the story should holdSome hell-form of words, some enchantment, once told,Might translate me in flesh to a brute; and I dreadedTo gaze on their charms, lest my faith should be weddedWith some pity,--and love in that pity perchance--To a thing not all lovely; for once at glance,Methought, where one sat, I descried a bright wonderThat flow'd like a long silver rivulet underThe long fenny grass,--with so lovely a breast,Could it be a snake-tail made the charm of the rest?

So I roamed in that circle of horrors, and FearWalk'd with me, by hills, and in valleys, and nearCluster'd trees for their gloom--not to shelter from heat--But lest a brute-shadow should grow at my feet;And besides that full oft in the sunshiny placeDark shadows would gather like clouds on its face,In the horrible likeness of demons (that noneCould see, like invisible flames in the sun);But grew to one monster that seized on the light,Like the dragon that strangles the moon in the night;Fierce sphinxes, long serpents, and asps of the south;Wild birds of huge beak, and all horrors that drouthEngenders of slime in the land of the pest,Vile shapes without shape, and foul bats of the West,Bringing Night on their wings; and the bodies whereinGreat Brahma imprisons the spirits of sin,Many-handed, that blent in one phantom of fightLike a Titan, and threatfully warr'd with the light;I have heard the wild shriek that gave signal to close,When they rushed on that shadowy Python of foes,That met with sharp beaks and wide gaping of jaws,With flappings of wings, and fierce grasping of claws,And whirls of long tails:--I have seen the quick flutterOf fragments dissevered,--and necks stretch'd to utterLong screamings of pain,--the swift motion of blows,And wrestling of arms--to the flight at the close,When the dust of the earth startled upward in rings,And flew on the whirlwind that follow'd their wings.

Thus they fled--not forgotten--but often to growLike fears in my eyes, when I walk'd to and froIn the shadows, and felt from some beings unseenThe warm touch of kisses, but clean or uncleanI knew not, nor whether the love I had wonWas of heaven or hell--till one day in the sun,In its very noon-blaze, I could fancy a thingOf beauty, but faint as the cloud-mirrors flingOn the gaze of the shepherd that watches the sky,Half-seen and half-dream'd in the soul of his eye.And when in my musings I gazed on the stream,In motionless trances of thought, there would seemA face like that face, looking upward through mine:With his eyes full of love, and the dim-drownd shineOf limbs and fair garments, like clouds in that blueSerene:--there I stood for long hours but to viewThose fond earnest eyes that were ever upliftedTowards me, and wink'd as the water-weed driftedBetween; but the fish knew that presence, and pliedTheir long curvy tails, and swift darted aside.

There I gazed for lost time, and forgot all the thingsThat once had been wonders--the fishes with wings,And the glimmer of magnified eyes that look'd upFrom the glooms of the bottom like pearls in a cup,And the huge endless serpent of silvery gleam,Slow winding along like a tide in the stream.Some maid of the waters, some Naiad, methoughtHeld me dear in the pearl of her eye--and I broughtMy wish to that fancy; and often I dash'dMy limbs in the water, and suddenly splash'dThe cool drops around me, yet clung to the brink,Chill'd by watery fears, how that beauty might sinkWith my life in her arms to her garden, and bind meWith its long tangled grasses, or cruelly wind meIn some eddy to hum out my life in her ear,Like a spider-caught bee,--and in aid of that fearCame the tardy remembrance--Oh falsest of men!Why was not that beauty remember'd till then?My love, my safe love, whose glad life would have runInto mine--like a drop--that our fate might be one,That now, even now,--may-be,--clasp'd in a dream,That form which I gave to some jilt of the stream,And gazed with fond eyes that her tears tried to smotherOn a mock of those eyes that I gave to another!

Then I rose from the stream, but the eyes of my mind,Still full of the tempter, kept gazing behindOn her crystalline face, while I painfully leaptTo the bank, and shook off the curst waters, and weptWith my brow in the reeds; and the reeds to my earBow'd, bent by no wind, and in whispers of fear,Growing small with large secrets, foretold me of oneThat loved me,--but oh to fly from her, and shunHer love like a pest--though her love was as trueTo mine as her stream to the heavenly blue;For why should I love her with love that would bringAll misfortune, like hate, on so joyous a thing?Because of her rival,--even Her whose witch-faceI had slighted, and therefore was doom'd in that placeTo roam, and had roam'd, where all horrors grew rank,Nine days ere I wept with my brow on that bank;Her name be not named, but her spite would not failTo our love like a blight; and they told me the taleOf Scylla,--and Picus, imprison'd to speakHis shrill-screaming woe through a woodpecker's beak.

Then they ceased--I had heard as the voice of my starThat told me the truth of my fortunes--thus farI had read of my sorrow, and lay in the hushOf deep meditation,--when lo! a light crushOf the reeds, and I turn'd and look'd round in the nightOf new sunshine, and saw, as I sipp'd of the lightNarrow-winking, the realized nymph of the stream,Rising up from the wave with the bend and the gleamOf a fountain, and o'er her white arms she kept throwingBright torrents of hair, that went flowing and flowingIn falls to her feet, and the blue waters roll'dDown her limbs like a garment, in many a fold,Sun-spangled, gold-broider'd, and fled far behind,Like an infinite train. So she came and reclinedIn the reeds, and I hunger'd to see her unsealThe buds of her eyes that would ope and revealThe blue that was in them;--they oped and she raisedTwo orbs of pure crystal, and timidly gazedWith her eyes on my eyes; but their color and shineWas of that which they look'd on, and mostly of mine--For she loved me,--except when she blush'd, and they sank,Shame-humbled, to number the stones on the bank,Or her play-idle fingers, while lisping she told meHow she put on her veil, and in love to behold meWould wing through the sun till she fainted awayLike a mist, and then flew to her waters and layIn love-patience long hours, and sore dazzled her eyesIn watching for mine 'gainst the midsummer skies.But now they were heal'd,--O my heart, it still dancesWhen I think of the charm of her changeable glances,And my image how small when it sank in the deepOf her eyes where her soul was,--Alas! now they weep,And none knoweth where. In what stream do her eyesShed invisible tears? Who beholds where her sighsFlow in eddies, or sees the ascent of the leafShe has pluck'd with her tresses? Who listens her griefLike a far fall of waters, or hears where her feetGrow emphatic among the loose pebbles, and beatThem together? Ah! surely her flowers float adownTo the sea unaccepted, and little ones drownFor need of her mercy,--even he whose twin-brotherWill miss him forever; and the sorrowful motherImploreth in vain for his body to kissAnd cling to, all dripping and cold as it is,Because that soft pity is lost in hard painWe loved,--how we loved!--for I thought not againOf the woes that were whisper'd like fears in that placeIf I gave me to beauty. Her face was the face,Far away, and her eyes were the eyes that were drown'dFor my absence,--her arms were the arms that sought roundAnd claspt me to nought; for I gazed and becameOnly true to my falsehood, and had but one nameFor two loves, and call'd ever on AEgle, sweet maidOf the sky-loving waters,--and was not afraidOf the sight of her skin;--for it never could be;Her beauty and love were misfortunes to me!

Thus our bliss had endured for a time-shorten'd space,Like a day made of three, and the smile of her faceHad been with me for joy,--when she told me indeedHer love was self-task'd with a work that would needSome short hours, for in truth 'twas the veriest pityOur love should not last, and then sang me a ditty,Of one with warm lips that should love her, and love herWhen suns were burnt dim and long ages past over.So she fled with her voice, and I patiently nestedMy limbs in the reeds, in still quiet, and restedTill my thoughts grew extinct, and I sank in a sleepOf dreams,--but their meaning was hidden too deepTo be read what their woe was;--but still it was woeThat was writ on all faces that swam to and froIn that river of night;--and the gaze of their eyesWas sad,--and the bend of their brows,--and their criesWere seen, but I heard not. The warm touch of tearsTravell'd down my cold cheeks, and I shook till my fearsAwaked me, and lo! I was couch'd in a bower,The growth of long summers rear'd up in an hour!Then I said, in the fear of my dream, I will flyFrom this magic, but could not, because that my eyeGrew love-idle among the rich blooms; and the earthHeld me down with its coolness of touch, and the mirthOf some bird was above me,--who, even in fear,Would startle the thrush? and methought there drew nearA form as of AEgle,--but it was not the faceHope made, and I knew the witch-Queen of that place,Even Circe the Cruel, that came like a Death,Which I fear'd, and yet fled not, for want of my breath.There was thought in her face, and her eyes were not raisedFrom the grass at her foot, but I saw, as I gazed,Her spite--and her countenance changed with her mindAs she plann'd how to thrall me with beauty, and bindMy soul to her charms,--and her long tresses play'dFrom shade into shine and from shine into shade,Like a day in mid-autumn,--first fair, O how fair!With long snaky locks of the adder-black hairThat clung round her neck,--those dark locks that I prize,For the sake of a maid that once loved me with eyesOf that fathomless hue,--but they changed as they roll'd,And brighten'd, and suddenly blazed into goldThat she comb'd into flames, and the locks that fell downTurn'd dark as they fell, but I slighted their brown,Nor loved, till I saw the light ringlets shed wild,That innocence wears when she is but a child;And her eyes,--Oh I ne'er had been witched with their shine,Had they been any other, my AEgle, than thine!

Then I gave me to magic, and gazed till I madden'dIn the full of their light,--but I sadden'd and sadden'dThe deeper I look'd,--till I sank on the snowOf her bosom, a thing made of terror and woe,And answer'd its throb with the shudder of fears,And hid my cold eyes from her eyes with my tears,And strain'd her white arms with the still languid weightOf a fainting distress. There she sat like the FateThat is nurse unto Death, and bent over in shameTo hide me from her the true AEgle--that cameWith the words on her lips the false witch had fore-givenTo make me immortal--for now I was evenAt the portals of Death, who but waited the hushOf world-sounds in my ears to cry welcome, and rushWith my soul to the banks of his black-flowing river.Oh, would it had flown from my body forever,Ere I listen'd those words, when I felt with a start,The life-blood rush back in one throb to my heart,And saw the pale lips where the rest of that spellHad perished in horror--and heard the farewellOf that voice that was drown'd in the dash of the stream!How fain had I follow'd, and plunged with that screamInto death, but my being indignantly lagg'dThrough the brutalized flesh that I painfully dragg'dBehind me:--O Circe! O mother of spite!Speak the last of that curse! and imprison me quiteIn the husk of a brute,--that no pity may nameThe man that I was,--that no kindred may claim--"The monster I am! Let me utterly beBrute-buried, and Nature's dishonor with meUninscribed!"--But she listen'd my prayer, that was praiseTo her malice, with smiles, and advised me to gazeOn the river for love,--and perchance she would makeIn pity a maid without eyes for my sake,And she left me like Scorn. Then I ask'd of the wave,What monster I was, and it trembled and gaveThe true shape of my grief, and I turn'd with my faceFrom all waters forever, and fled through that place,Till with horror more strong than all magic I pass'dIts bounds, and the world was before me at last.

There I wander'd in sorrow, and shunned the abodesOf men, that stood up in the likeness of Gods,But I saw from afar the warm shine of the sunOn the cities, where man was a million, not one;And I saw the white smoke of their altars ascending,That show'd where the hearts of many were blending,And the wind in my face brought shrill voices that cameFrom the trumpets that gather'd whole bands in one fameAs a chorus of man,--and they stream'd from the gatesLike a dusky libation poured out to the Fates.But at times there were gentler processions of peaceThat I watch'd with my soul in my eyes till their cease,There were women! there men! but to me a third sexI saw them all dots--yet I loved them as specks:And oft to assuage a sad yearning of eyesI stole near the city, but stole covert-wiseLike a wild beast of love, and perchance to be smittenBy some hand that I rather had wept on than bitten!Oh, I once had a haunt near a cot where a motherDaily sat in the shade with her child, and would smotherIts eyelids in kisses, and then in its sleepSang dreams in its ear of its manhood, while deepIn a thicket of willows I gazed o'er the brooksThat murmur'd between us and kiss'd them with looks;But the willows unbosom'd their secret, and neverI return'd to a spot I had startled forever,Though I oft long'd to know, but could ask it of none,Was the mother still fair, and how big was her son?

For the haunters of fields they all shunn'd me by flight;The men in their horror, the women in fright;None ever remain'd save a child once that sportedAmong the wild bluebells, and playfully courtedThe breeze; and beside him a speckled snake layTight strangled, because it had hiss'd him awayFrom the flower at his finger; he rose and drew nearLike a Son of Immortals, one born to no fear,But with strength of black locks and with eyes azure brightTo grow to large manhood of merciful might.He came, with his face of bold wonder, to feel,The hair of my side, and to lift up my heel,And question'd my face with wide eyes; but when underMy lids he saw tears,--for I wept at his wonder,He stroked me, and utter'd such kindliness then,That the once love of women, the friendship of menIn past sorrow, no kindness e'er came like a kissOn my heart in its desolate day such as this!And I yearn'd at his cheeks in my love, and down bent,And lifted him up in my arms with intentTo kiss him,--but he cruel-kindly, alas!Held out to my lips a pluck'd handful of grass!Then I dropt him in horror, but felt as I fledThe stone he indignantly hurl'd at my head,That dissever'd my ear,--but I felt not, whose fateWas to meet more distress in his love that his hate!

Thus I wander'd, companion'd of grief and forlornTill I wish'd for that land where my being was bornBut what was that land with its love, where my homeWas self-shut against me; for why should I comeLike an after-distress to my gray-bearded father,With a blight to the last of his sight?--let him ratherLament for me dead, and shed tears in the urnWhere I was not, and still in fond memory turnTo his son even such as he left him. Oh, howCould I walk with the youth once my fellows, but nowLike Gods to my humbled estate?--or how bearThe steeds once the pride of my eyes and the careOf my hands? Then I turn'd me self-banish'd, and cameInto Thessaly here, where I met with the sameAs myself. I have heard how they met by a streamIn games, and were suddenly changed by a screamThat made wretches of many, as she roll'd her wild eyesAgainst heaven, and so vanish'd.--The gentle and wiseLose their thoughts in deep studies, and others their illIn the mirth of mankind where they mingle them still.