The Magic House and Other Poems 11

The Magic House and Other Poems 11

O love, alas! ’twas ever so to be,

When streams set out to reach the bitter sea.

It was a time within the early spring,

Before the orchards had done blossoming,

Before the kinglet on his northern search,

Had ceased his timorous piping in the birch,

When streams were bright before the coming leaves

And gurgled like the swallows in the eaves,

She wandered led by fancy to this place,

And looked upon the water’s crystal face;

She saw--what thing of beauty or of awe

I know not, no one knoweth what she saw.

But ever after she was constant here,

As silent as her shadow in the mere,

Sitting upon a stone which many feet

Had grooved and trodden for the water sweet,

And leaning gravely on her slanted arm,

Her fingers buried in the gravel warm,

She gazed and gazed and did not speak or sigh,

As if this gazing was her destiny.

They led her nightly from the magic pool,

Before the shadows grew too deep and cool;

They thought to win her from the liquid spell,

And tried to tease the elfin maid to tell,

What was the charm that led her to the spring;

But all their words availed not anything.

Then gazed they on the surface of the pool

To read the reason of such subtle rule;

Their eyes were overclouded, they could see

(Who had drawn water there perpetually)

Nothing but water in a depth serene,

With a few moony stones of palish green.

They thought perchance it was her face she saw

And answered, beauty unto beauty’s law,

But when they showed her image in a glass,

She was not cured and nothing came to pass;

So then they left her to her own strange will,

And here she stayed when the fair pool was still.

But when the wind would hurl the heavy rain,

She peered out sadly from her window-pane;

And when the night set wildly close and deep,

She took her trouble down the dale of sleep:

But when the night was warm and no dew fell,

She waked and dreamed beside the starlit well.

 

Then came a change, each day some offering

She laid beside the clear soft flowing spring;

And there she found them at the break of morn,

And everything would take away forlorn;

Until beside the unconscious spring was laid

Each treasure held most precious by a maid.

After, she offered flowers and often set

A bowlful of the pleasant mignonette,

And starred the stones with the narcissus white,

And pansies left athinking all the night,

Then ruffled dewy dahlias, and at last,

When sundown told the summer-time had passed,

The stainéd asters; but from day to day,

Sadly she took the untouched flowers away.

With autumn and the sounding harvest flute,

She brought her timid god the heavy fruit;

But found it still and cool at early dawn,

Beaded with dew upon the crispy lawn.

At last one eve she placed an apple here,

Smooth as a topaz and as golden clear,

Scented like almonds, with a flesh like dew

And luscious-sweet as honey through and through.

She left it sadly on the sleepy lawn,

But when she came again her apple gold was gone.

 

Day after day for days she mutely strove,

Not to be separate from her placid love;

Perchance she thought that, breaking through the spell,

Her shadow-god, deep in the tranquil well,

Had taken her last gift;--no man may know;

Her fancies merged with all mute things that go

The poppied path, dreams and desires foredone,

The unplucked roses of oblivion.

But now she searched for words that would express

Something of all her spirit’s loneliness;

And formed a liquid jargon, full of falls

As weird and wild as ariel madrigals;

Our human tongue was far too harsh for this,

Or her slight spirit bore too great a bliss;

But always grew she very faint and pale,

Day after day her beauty grew more frail,

More mute, more eerie, more ethereal;

Her soul burned whitely in its waning shell.

 

Then came the winter with his frosty breath

And made the world an image of white death,

And like to death he found the charméd child;

Yet could not kill her with his bluster wild.

Only in his first days she went about,

And sadly hearkened to his hearty shout;

From windows where the wizard frost had traced

Moth-wings of rime with silver ferns inlaced,

She saw her pool set coldly in the drift,

Where in the autumn she had left her gift,

Capped with a cloud of silver steam or smoke,

That hovered there whether she dreamed or woke;

And often stealing from her early sleep,

She watched the light cloud in the midnight deep,

Waver and blow beneath the moon’s white globe,

Shivering and whispering in her chilly robe.

At last she would not look or speak at all,

And turned her large eyes to the shaded wall.

Now she is dead, they thought; but never so,

She died not when the winter winds did blow;

She was a spirit of the summer air,

She would not vanish at the year’s despair.

 

At length the merry sun grew warm and high,

And changed the wildwood with his alchemy;

The violet reared her bell of drooping gold,

And over her the robin chimed and trolled.

When the first slender moon of May had come,

That finds the blithe bird busy at his home,

They missed the spirit maiden from the room,

That now was sweet with light and spring perfume,

And called her all the echoing afternoon;

She answered not, but when the growing moon

Went down the west with the last bird awing,

They found her dead beside her darling spring.

 

This is her tale, her murmurous monument

Flows softly where her fragile life was spent,

Not grooved in brass nor trenched in pallid stone,

But told by water to the reeds alone.

 

She cometh here sometimes on summer eves,

Her quiet spirit lingers in the leaves,

And while this spring flows on, and while the wands

Sway in the moonlight, while in drifting bands,

The thistledown blows gleaming in the air,

And dappled thrushes haunt the precinct fair;

She will return, she will return and lean

Above the crystal in the covert green,

And dream of beauty on the shadow flung

Of irised distance when the world was young.

 

Let us be gone; this is no place for tears,

Let us go slowly with the guardian years;

Let us be brave, the day is almost done,

Another setting of the pleasant sun.

 

 

Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty,

at the Edinburgh University Press.

 

* * * * *

 

LIST OF BOOKS

 

MAY 1893.

 

MESSRS. METHUEN’S

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS

 

 

=Gladstone.= THE SPEECHES AND PUBLIC ADDRESSES OF THE RT. HON. W. E.

GLADSTONE, M.P. With Notes. Edited by A. W. HUTTON, M.A. (Librarian