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Ranolf and Amohia

Canto the Twenty-fourth

page 437

Canto the Twenty-fourth.

I.

So all that day, as by a dream possessed—
On—on—by one idea absorbed, opprest—
For many a mile, as if herself she fled,
Shunning all human sight the Wanderer sped:
'To save him!' the one hope, one lure to guide
Her course—all goading sharp despair beside.

But when exhausted nature would have rest,
And, reckless where, she sank upon the ground,
She was upon the very spot, she found,
Where Ranolf and herself, by rain delayed,
On that first blessed journey once had stayed.
And at a little distance she espied
The cave itself where they had made their nest,—
Laughing, their happy nest!—a yellow cave
Of clayey sandstone scooped out smooth and round
By some long-vanished immemorial wave;
One of a row that undermined the base
Of the steep hill-side green with tangled fern—
Only a few feet high and deep—a place
Just large enough for those two lovers fond,
And over-draped with drooping bough and frond.
page 438 There lay the flattened fern-couch—brown and dry;
The impress of two forms she could descry,
Still undisturbed by winds or passers-by.
Then did the conquering tenderness return;
And she resolved (for, but a little space,
The circuit her arrival would delay
At her sad journey's end) she would repair
Once more to those dear Lakes; the district fair
Where all the bliss of her life's little day
Lay like a vanished treasure; stored up there—
Quite lost to her—gone—lost and laid away!

II.

Dim skies and heavy rain!—
And by Mahana's Lake she roams again;
Nursing her agony with insensate care,
And pampering her despair:
Has sought out every scene
Where she and Ranolf had together been:
On every sight
Of wonder once and such delight
Again has dwelt:
And in their presence felt—
Delight? Ah no! increased distress—
No wonder—worse than weariness.

The clouds were dark and low;
Rain falling, soft and slow;
Day closing on her woe;
As, little heeding where she went,
With trouble more than travel spent,
She wandered reckless near the weird ravine
That leads up to the Lake of waters green,
page 439 Through spectral shapes forlorn
Of rocks all torn and weather-worn;
More gaunt, distorted, grim,
Thus shadowy seen through vapours dim.
Then at the entrance of that dismal vale,
Where dense broom-thickets hide
Mud-pools that boil on every side,
And pit the crust, that anywhere might fail
The footstep, with foul cauldrons deep and wide;—
There, she—with hands upon her knees that hid
Her face, unmoving sat.
And though the rain had soaked her flaxen mat,
And slowly down the silken tresses slid,
That fell neglected on the ground;
Though in the silence as they slipped,
The unkindly drops of dew
Audibly dripped and dripped—
She felt it not, nor knew.
The only sight or sound
She saw or heard around,
Was that lost voice, that vanished face
That once had glorified the place;
And now, in such a torturing maze
Of tender recollections, wound
Her burning brain, her breaking heart;
The past to life appeared to start
In vivid hues too beautiful to bear!
Her vanished Bliss seemed over her to glare,
A deadly-terrible Angel lovely-bright,
With outspread wings ablaze
Above her hung;—till blasted by its light
Down—down—she cowered—she sank—in misery's blackest night.
page 440 How the gleam iridescent and shapeless—that lies
Like the Wreck of a Rainbow flung crushed on the skies
In the rack of the tempest, low down where it flies,
With its hues dimly blurred;—to the mariner drear,
How forlornly it bids the fair vision appear
Of the Arch all resplendent! the luminous Bow
In the glory of orange and purple aglow;
On the thick, of the violet shadow behind
In rounded perfection so sharply defined;
So airily tender—transparently mild,
Yet so firmly enthroned o'er the elements wild;
So softly aspiring, so gracefully grand,
On the air, like a rock, it has taken its stand,
And lords it serenely o'er ocean and land!—
Even so—as she lay overwhelmed by despair
Wan, weary and haggard—crushed, cowering there,
Even so—and so sadly! her woe-begone mien
Might have roused the remembrance of what she had been
When the Maid in the maddening days that had flown
In the bloom and the pride of her happiness shone!

III.

A hand upon her shoulder laid,
With sudden startling pressure stayed
Her anguish in its mid career;
Though not the slightest sound betrayed
A human being's presence near.
"Twas Kangapo! who silent crept
Upon her, thinking that she slept;
Till as he neared the weeping maid,
Her heart-wrung moans the truth conveyed.
page 441 To aid Ihe northern Chiefs designs, and make
The conquest sure which his revenge would slake;
To spy into the schemes the people planned
To meet the invaders of their threatened land;
But most, with well-feigned tale and crafty lie
To lull them into false security;
The wily Priest had ventured back once more—
Safe in the sorcerer's dread repute he bore—
To prowl about the country, gather news,
And disaffection, where he could, diffuse;
Hiding the while, and less from need than taste,
In many a well-known haunt of wood and waste.

When Amo raised in wild surprise
Her tear-bedabbled face and eyes,
And saw whose form above her hung;
Whose spiteful, cool, triumphant leer
Into her grief would pry and peer,
Indignant to her feet she sprung:
"You, Kangapo! and wherefore here? "
"Nay, rather—" was the answering sneer,
"Say what has brought to such disgrace,
Such evil plight, so lone a place,
The Stranger's Love—the white man's bride!
Has he, whose pale and girlish face
Could win, despite her birth and race,
Her tribe's renown—her father's pride,
The Maori maiden to his side—
Has he turned false, or fled—or died?"

"Ask nought of him; no mate of thine;
Thy course pursue—leave me to mine! "
page 442 "Nay—listen, Amo! let me tell—"

"Away! I know thy wiles too well!"—

No longer now his darkening brow
And coldly-glittering eye instilled
The terror that, whene'er he willed
Had once the Maiden's bosom chilled.
The might of one supreme despair
Would let no lesser passion share
That bosom; one absorbing care
Had left no room for terror there.
She sought not to upbraid, reply;
Too sad for scorn, she turned to fly.
He saw his words their purpose missed,
Yet would not from his aim desist;
"Not listen! so resolved to go!—
Think not you shall escape me so;—
Think not I've no assistance nigh!—"
With sudden grasp he seized her wrist
And shouted. Then once more her eye
Shot forth its proud indignant light;
Her form expanded to full height;
She looked almost as when she stood
A captive bound beside the wood
When first she dazzled Ranolf's sight;—
Yet now so haggard, wan and worn,
By grief of so much beauty shorn,
Not much more like that Vision bright
Of anger-flashing loveliness,
Than some too early perished Tree,
A silver skeleton pourtrayed
Against the mountains violet shade.
page 443 Like its own former self would be,
In luxury clad of leafy dress:—
In sunlit symmetry of frame,
And every sinuous branch the same;
But all the wealth wherewith it shone
Of blossom gay and verdure—gone!—
The wrist he held—she wrenched it free,
And flung him off with all her might:
He reeled—he stumbled—staggered back;
Nor had he seen how near he stood,
To that fierce cauldron, sputtering black
And baleful—ever-boiling mud—
Beneath the phantom-shapes of rock
That seemed to gibber, jeer and mock:
The treacherous bank began to crack—
Gave way—and with a sullen plash
He plumped into the viscous mash;
The sable filth upspurted high—
Foul steam in thicker volumes gushed;
Then back the burning batter rushed
And closed o'er that despairing face
Upturned in blue-lined agony,
Those writhing limbs—that stifled cry!
Then heavily swelled into a cone,
Sunk down; and ring on ring a space
In sluggish undulations rolled;
And thicklier rising crowds alone
Of bubbles, of that horror told;
Though just as lazily they burst,
And not more poisonous than at first
Their old sulphureous stench dispersed
page 444 Shocked, horrified, at sight so dread
Swift through the thicket Amo sped:
So rapidly had all occurred,
Well might what she had seen and heard—
That Sorcerer's apparition—then
And there—in that secluded glen,
And his swift disappearance, seem
Illusions of a hideous dream.

IV

Again her journey she pursues.
Her thoughts come back to their accustomed train:
"Only to save him—only make him know,
Although her joy—her life—her love she lose—
No other Maid could love him so!"—
Still fell the sad, slow, melancholy rain;
And though the white mist hid sky, mountain, plain,
Yet somehow seemed it, on her weary brain
The sunshine of that awful morn
When Ranolf last she saw and left—
Still lay—a solemn sombre light forlorn;—
Ever she seemed to wander woebegone
Through endless mazes of a forest lone
All stripped and bare, of every leaf bereft;
While far above her, through the treetops high
That, leafless, yet shut out the sky,
A loud monotonous wind for ever roared,
And those strange, dreary, sombre sunbeams poured;
While in the foreground only could be seen
The lover and the love-joy that had been!
And every actual outward sight and sound,
Men, women, places, voices all around,
page 445 Came faintly breaking through this muffling screen,
This sad bright curtain that would intervene;
And only for a moment, face or speech
Importunate of others, could emerge
Through that drear desolate light and murmur loud,
As through an ever-circling shroud—
And her preoccupied perception reach
And on her absent mind their presence urge.

On—on! for days as by a dream oppressed—
Still on—by one idea absorbed—possessed!—
Directly in her way
A broad and swollen river lay:
Her road led through the shallows by its bank,
Where yellow waters eddying swirled
Through flax-tufts waving green and tall and rank;
But in the midst the raging torrent hurled
Its waters swift, direct, and deep,
Where often some uprooted tree would sweep—
A great black trunk unwieldy—hastening down
The flood surcharged with clayey silt;
And dip and heave and plunge and tilt
Half buried in the wavelets brown.
She paused—but something in her breast
Still urged her on:—she could not rest:
And then those friends whom Kangapo addrest—
Might they not still her course arrest?
What if they still should be upon her track—
Would they not meet her if she ventured back?—
She tore her mantle off in haste,
And rolled it up, and tightly tied
With flax, and slung it round her waist;
page 446 Then wading, struggled through the high sword-grass
And streambowed tortured blades—a tangled mass,
And struck into the torrent fierce and wide!

Alas! no strength of limb or will,
No stoutest heart, no swimmer's skill
Could long withstand the headlong weight and force
Of that wild tide in its tumultuous course!—
Soon was she swept away—whirled o'er and o'er—
And hurried out of conscious life
Almost without a sense of pain or strife.

V.

And if that self-forgetting Life was passed,
To peace, it seemed, it had been lulled at last.
For one who by the river's side
Far lower down, that day by chance descried
A floating form he could not aid,
Glide swiftly by, soon after said
The Maiden lay, as past she hied,
Upon her back as on a quiet bed.
Her eyes were closed—the lashes long and sleek,
Reposing on the placid cheek;
Along the yellow waters wild
Her jet-black tresses softly streamed;
And though careworn, just then it seemed,
Her face was so serene and mild,
So mournful, yet with meek content so deep,—
She looked an innocent Child,
Laid on its couch asleep.
page 447 And that informant told them how they found,
Cast on the gravel by the riverside,
The body of the Maiden drowned.

Alas, for Ranolf! in his passionate pain
That image ever was before his brain
In terrible distinctness night and day!
With pertinacious torture self-applied
How would he conjure up to his despair,
And paint with accurate anguish-seeking care
Its harrowing details o'er and o'er again!
How, while the river ran its calm career,
From the spent freshet's fury once more clear;
All heartless Nature, bright, alive and gay
With its accustomed, gentle, joyous stir—
How then they found—O say not her!
She could not be the form that lay
So stilly—half above and half beneath
The shallow, bright, transparent stream,
Upon the clean smooth gravel bank
From which it slowly shrank:
Such mournful meek content upon the face
That you could think it for a little space
Lit by some sadly-pleasing dream;
But then so marble-like and motionless—
Persistent in Intensest quietness—
Too soon the moulded lineaments you know
Fixed in the dread serenity of death.
One quiet arm the peaceful head below—
While ever in its flow
The eddying current would come up and play
With the long tresses—as to coax away
page 448 And lure the floating tangles to and fro;
While others, in the sunshine dried,
The idle breeze at times would lift aside
Gently—then leave at rest,
Where curling they caressed
The cold unheaving breast;
Or revelled in the gloss and gleam of life,
As if in mockery spread
Along the form that lay as still and dead
As any of the lags of driftwood rife,
By the decreasing tide
Left near it as it fled.
But piteous—O how piteous! there to see
The wavelets in their sunny chase
In that deserted place—
Upon the bank exposed and lone,
With such an inward-happy sound,
Familiarly and carelessly
Gurgling against and rippling round
The sad and sacred human face,
As if it were a stone.

And had he any comfort in the thought,
The sight his fancy clung to might have brought
To one who could mare calmly think?—
"That sad—sad face! as there it lay
Beside the river's brink,
So calm, neglected—helpless—meek—
Would not its silence seem to speak—
In mournful whispers seem to say,
For such a heart, for such a soul,
This cannot be the end—the whole!—
page 449 "But O! great God of heaven!
If in the poor dead face of one
Slight savage girl who thus has given
Her life's light for another's good in vain—
All her high hopes and generous aims undone!
If in its stony stillness and fixed woe,
All the more harrowing for the mournful show
Of sad resigned repose on mouth and brow—
If from that face, in very deed,
Such obstacle and protest and disdain
Arise against the desolating creed
Of soul-annihilation in the disarray
And dissolution of our worthless clay—
O what a vast Himmálayan pinnacle-chain
Of insurmountable obstruction Thou
Hast thrown in the pale spectral Conqueror's way;
And what a boundless protest has been wrung—
(Although to absolute Love's all-pitying eyes
The humblest instance would the whole comprise)
A protest myriad-voiced as Ocean's roar,
Compelled to just Omnipotence to soar,—
In all the baffled lives and labours flung
Ungrudgingly thy great White Throne before—
The death-requited sacrifices through all time
Made in thy cause by hero-hearts sublime!

"Yet what a thought it is, O God! that we
But by the incredible cruelty of Fate
Ordained by Thee,
Are by a strong revulsion forced to flee
To Reason's refuge in her grief,
The astounding beautiful belief
page 450 In Death reviving to some glorious state
Which all that cruelty shall compensate!.—
Say, that it is so, and must ever be,
By Nature's strong necessity;—
As air plunged deep in water still must rise,
So, plunged in Life, the Soul to the Eternal flies!—
And if it be denied
That Nature—which is Thou!
Does that necessity provide,
Even Doubt must still avow
It should be so provided—must and should—
If Thou art what Thyself hast made us to call good.
Or if at last Doubt will remain
What more? but it is plain,
Faith has to be created—self-resigning
Trust In Thee—the all-generous and just;
And Trust like that, for aught we know,
Can but in the absence of Assurance grow;
Can bill be strengthened to the due degree
By actual plunging in the furnace-glow
And wavering flames of forced Uncertainty:
The Soul can but be fashioned so
Into the shape of Beauty, and substance clear
Of crystal Confidence sincere—
The form and fineness its high fates require;
As the glass-worker whirls and moulds
Into a graceful vase, the glass he holds
Molten in jets intense of fierce white fire."

VI.

Ah no! but no such speculation now
Could smooth the agony on Ranolf's brow.
page 451 And so he may depart,
And bind up as he can his bleeding heart;
And moan his lovely wild-flower reft away,
With unresigning anguish night and day;
And gnash his teeth and tear his hair,
Untaught to bear!
And for a time his faith in joy forswear;
And feel how vain
Is poor Philosophy to stifle pain;
How impotent against the ready sting
Of every trivial and inanimate thing,
That seems to start up eloquent everywhere,
More poignant memories of the Lost to bring—
All leagued with Love to drive him to despair!
Not only the brief words she left to tell
The motive and the purpose of her flight,
Scratched upon shining flax-blades with a shell,
And laid to meet—but not too soon—his sight;—
Ah! how it tore his heart—that simple scrawl—
Pothooks and hangers painfully produced—
Disjointed—childlike! yet a wonder all,
In one to symbolled language so unused,
And with such marvellous aptitude acquired;
The tenfold talent by the heart inspired;
Docility no school but one e'er knew—
Whose teacher Love, has Love for learner too!
Not these alone—but every object round
Had silent power and pungency to wound:
The withered wreaths of flowers hung up with care
Which for his pleasure she so loved to wear;
The span-board mirror on the reeded wall
That oft had imaged such a happy smile,
And so much beauty, on its surface small;
page 452 The broidry-staves her tedium to beguile—
Rude with still-dangling vary-coloured strands;—
Half-charred mid ashes white, the very brands
Left lying where her loving busy hands
Had laid them on that latest fire extinct—
Ah, with what torturing memories were they linked!
Ah, those dumb things—how deeply did he feel
The maddening pathos of their mute appeal!

Yes! let him wrestle with distress;
And feel how grief grown languid, though not less,
In the exhaustion of mere weariness,
Renews itself from its excess;—
Learn how the heart bereft of one beloved,
Will, self-upbraiding self-reproved,
In bitterest grief feel bitter grief,
Because its grief seems all too slight and brief;
Because it cannot grieve enough—nor feed
The ravenous appetite for woe the sense
Of its immeasurable loss will breed—
Thirsting for grief more crushing—more intense;
Recoiling from the hateful thought, that e'er
The time should come when it may bear
To think upon such loss, and not despair!

VII.

Yet should he long endure
Such pangs and pains, be sure
He must escape them—being left alive;
For the old joyous temper must revive.
The clouds of Anguish o'er the blue would drive
And hide—but not annihilate the Sun:
Grief has a work to do—which must be done.
page 453 Though o'er his Soul the waves of Sorrow surge,
That buoyant joyous Nature must emerge
By animal force into a realm more bright;
And that reflective tendency would urge
His Soul—long after—into peaceful light.
And the would first experience—and then know,
How great a purger of the Soul is Woe;
A fine manipulator skilled to drain
The Spirit of the grosser atmosphere
Which can alone give life to and sustain
Prides—lusts—ambitions—passions fierce and vain;
Until the heart is a receiver clear,
Exhausted of the elements they need,
And wanting which, they droop and disappear.

Aye! he would prove, by God's great scheme the seed
Of Soul best in the soil of Sorrow grows;
And that such pangs and tortures are indeed
Sharp chisel-strokes and heavy mallet-blows
Wherewith the grand Soul-Sculptor cleaves and chips
His native marble into nobler shapes:
And as the mallet swings and chisel trips,—
Out from the sluggish cold chaotic heap
Wherein as possibilities they sleep,
Out come, emerging from their long eclipse
Into vitality that, kindling, glows
Ever more clear, significant and deep—
Heroic white Existences, serene
And lovely, which the divine Artist drapes
With qualities his great Idea must mean
Should make his glorious marbles fit to be
Shrined in high temples of Eternity.
page 454 And he would learn, when calmly could be viewed
What sad results from simple love ensued,
How foresight—prudence—cold considerate powers
We need for guidance of this life of ours:
To follow instincts—doing ill to none—
Nay—loving everything beneath the sun—
This will not do—it seems!
Alas!—for such the World with misery teems.
But this—all this would be for Time to teach;
A goal his fortitude not yet may reach.
All he has now to do is to depart
And bind up as he may his bleeding heart.