II.

So Ranolt sauntered down the hill,
And now had reached the trickling rill.
There, all save its low plash was still;
Only a movement caught his eye
Scarce visible, as he drew nigh
The thicket dense that grew thereby;
Only a bough's-top in the brake
Did for a single moment shake.
He pushed straight towards it through the broom;
page 208 But finding nothing in the gloom,
Came out upon the open Lake.

Still all was lonely—silent—bright;
Only himself and living light!—
He followed where the pathway wound
Beneath the cliffs, with many a turn
Round buttressed steep, projecting mound,
And waterscarped low spur tree-crowned,
Or rocky—bare of bush or fern.

One of these last he just had passed:—
Beyond it lay in deepest shade
A dense ravine's mouth, which had made
With clustered shrubs a safe retreat
For foeman of pursuit afraid.
He paused:—could mark no trace of feet,
No sign of life—before—around;
Saw nothing move—heard not a sound—
But keenly gazed into the gloom profound.

No sound, indeed, no motion. All in tune
With speaking Silence. Even the Moon
Lulled in the lap of Heaven serene
Lay back—albeit with watchful mien.
Transfigured by her flooding rays
To airy cloud, the Mountains blue
Up to their floating goddess threw
A rapt and meditative gaze.

Upon the moonlit fractured rock beside him,
With not a rustle that the ear would strike,
A rapid-wriggling Lizard lightning-like
page 209 Leapt into stoniest stillness. In the dark,
Only a steady diamond spark
Told where it watching stood and sidelong eyed him.

"How well," he thought, "these creatures suit,
How well uphold their ill-repute;
By all these natives held in dread,
Because informed by Spirits of the dead."

In the full stream of light,
Close to his cheek, projecting on his right,
His glance was resting on a bright green sprig
Of broom-like myrtle.—-As he looked, it grew
To something that was watching too.
A span-long Phasmid then he knew,
Stretching its forelimbs like a branching twig
In air, and motionless as death—
Save that it swayed its frail form to and fro
Gently, as in a soft wind's dying breath,
And then subsided slow
To rigid stillness. There,
Its forelimbs still outstretched in air,
With startling faith in its weird wondrous trick
Of aping lower life, the animated Stick
In watchful mood Close to his cheek unmoving stood.

Suspense how fixed and strange
Dumb witchery of magic change!
Swift spritelike life to seeming death—and seeming
Inanimate life to deathlike animation—
The real and seeming seemed to waver, reel, and mingle!
One of those flashes for a moment gleaming,
page 210 When o'er the Soul the thought will pass,
'Is it illusion then, this whole Creation,
This outward Universe, a breath on glass?'—
One of those pauses in the rush
Of Life's phantasmagoric dreaming,
When in the hush,
The Spiritual speaks in vivid hints that tingle
Through our material framework, listening vigilant;
And as the deep-sea plummet, Consciousness,
Strikes soundings on the eternal adamant
Beneath the visionary Ocean
Whereon our frail barks ever forward press,
And rock and nod
With such unquiet motion—
Lo! the revealing veil of God
Called Nature—as transpierced by darkling light
Divine—imprisoned splendour—on the fret
To escape for all her cunning might,
Emits keen sparkles in her own despite;
And seems one moment almost to forget
Her tantalising trust, her mystic high vocation;
Seems for a thrilling moment, just about
To turn transparent wholly, and to let
Her awful Secret out.

The conscious Silence seemed to win
Its way across the fleshly bar,
To some responsive sense akin
As in the shadowy river pool
Below the rapids, still and full,
Two floating globules nearing run
Together into one.
page 211 And now a little breath of air,
That had, it seemed, been lurking there.
Itself the moonlit calm enjoying,
Along the white bright-shadowy cliffs behind him,
Stealing, as if glad to find him,
Came creeping through his hair and with its clusters toying:
Then passed—and left the lonely shore,
Hushed and breathless as before.

Again the haunting shy mistrust
Of Nature's simplest doings thrust
Its coy suggestive self between
The sensuous impress on his brain.
And the conclusion, else so plain,
Of what it was, might be or mean.
Almost he could have held it true,
That fancy of the land he knew,
The creeping breeze must be a spirit too.
He dallied with the whim awhile—
Then with a musing smile,
His idle quest renounced as vain,
Turned his cottage to regain.