Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Ranolf and Amohia

III

III

So Amoma stood—nor longer sported;
Quite serious now, perhaps a little trembling;
Yet, though her bosom's quickened rise
And fall betrayed the anxious breathing,
By clear unconscious innocence supported,
And that sweet might of Nature when it knows
Few laws conventional that teach dissembling;
page 220 So that true Love in loving act o'erflows
As truly, artlessly, in loveliest guise,
As from the bud's moss-browned and tender sheathing,
When Spring has swollen its crumpled tissues
And filled them with its genial influence, issues
That crimson apparition—the young rose.

"Stranger—from far realms that lie
Beyond the steep slope of the sky,
Hapless Amohia, see,
Chieftain's daughter though she be,
Gives her love, her life to thee.
Amohia throws aside
Rank and chieftainship and pride;
For the lonely Stranger's sake
Every tie has dared to break;
Dared desert, with him to roam,
Father, Mother, friends and home;
All the Atuas' wrath to brave,
But to be the Stranger's slave.
Take her—teach her—till she be
Worthy thy great race and thee!"

"Dearest—loveliest—bravest Maid,
Your true love shall be well repaid!
But whence, and how, my grand Wildflower,
Came you—and thus—at such an hour?"

"I swam the Lake—was almost gone—
Reached land and hither stole alone."

Surprise a moment held him dumb—
And why set down the words he spoke—
page 221 Disjoined and crowded as the sum
Of mingled feelings that within him woke?—
What speech has Passion's mastering moods? what speech
Is possible to any Ecstasy?
Can finite words an infinite feeling reach,
Or the mere bounded Intellect express
The Soul's emotions in their boundlessness?
No! as the sky-drawn moisture that distils
Down from the sky-aspiring hills,
A sea-side valley slowly fills—
But, if some milder earthquake's pant
Have slightly changed its downward slant,
Suddenly bursts the marsh below
And seaward rushes in mad overflow,
Bearing before it to the mighty Main
The wrecked and flowery richness of the plain,
Till all the calm eternal blue,
About the outlet of the river new,
Is strewn with floating fragments—little isles
Where still the clinging flax-flower smiles,
Minute azolla-stains of ruddiest hue.
And many a water-loving bloom that grew
Luxuriant while the swamp its moisture could sustain:—
So Speech and all the forms of Thought,
Yea, every medium Intellect supplies,
Are shattered and distraught,
Whene'er the o'er-informing Soul doth rise
And swell and sweep in native might
On to its kindred Infinite—
And broken words and images essay
In vain the abounding current to convey,
In vain to express the inexpressible;
page 222 While blissful moans and happy murmurs tell,—
And only they,
How the Eternal that within us sleeps,
Stirred to its inmost mystic deeps,
Is welling forth its own imperial way—
Bursting the crust where Custom's weeds are growing,
And its material marge triumphantly o'erflowing!