VII.

So each as in a floating nest,
Moored side by side the lovers rest,
And catch veiled glimpses as they lie
Of splendour-flooded azure sky.
The birds that sung those matins sweet
Are silent now in slumberous heat.
In dreamy-lighted luxury
Lies Ranolf musing—marking well
Each charm of water, rock and tree
About that shadowy glimmering cell;
The low grey cliffs with stains imbued
Of lichens white and saffron-hued,
Flat crumpled—or blue hairy moss;
All doubled in the shimmering gloss:
Sometimes a loose-furred hawkmoth, see!
At those rich blossoms restlessly
page 314 Fumbles to suck their anthers sweet:
Sometimes, invading that retreat
Great black white-banded dragon-flies—
With green and gold-shot globuled eyes
On either side projecting wide
Like swift coach-lamps—on quivering wings
Of glittering gauze dart all about;
With tinier ones of richer dyes,
That hover-—dodge aside—and fix
Themselves with those bent-elbowed legs,
And heads so loose, endlong to sticks
And twigs, and hold as straight as pegs
Their blue or scarlet bodies out,
Just as a tumbler, mid his tricks
Seizes an upright pole and fling
His particoloured legs in air,
And holds them horizontal there—
So proud to ape a finger-post.
"They were revolting, hideous things,"
Thought Ranolf, "but at least could boast
A faith that made them leave in time—
Come shouldering up through mud and slime
With horny eyes and dull surprize,
Out of the clogging element
Where their first grovelling life they spent! "—
—Meanwhile unseen cicadas fill
The air with obstinate rapture shrill—
A wide-fermenting restless hiss
Proclaiming their persistent bliss;
As if the very sunshine found
A joyous voice—and all around,
While woods and rocks and valleys rung,
In brilliant exultation sung.
page 315 And Ranolf loved—could not but prize
That tiny classic Cymbalist,
So graced with old Greek memories;
The rapture-brimmed, rich-burnished one—
His bright green corselet streaked with jet,
His brow with ruby brilliants set—
That, undisturbed, would ne'er desist
From clicking, clattering in the sun
His strident plates—at every trill
Jerking with stiffly quivering thrill
His glassy-roofing wings; as gay
As when two thousand years ago—
Where—through thin morning vapour gray,
With snowy marble gleams between
Blue-shadowy clefts of fragrant gloom,
Melodious ever and alive
With immemorial bees that hive
In honied thickets, lilac-green
With sage and thyme in deathless bloom—
Bare old Hymettus looked serene
O'er silvery glimpses far below
Of pure Ilyssus in swift flow
Through plains—one revel of renown;—
The hyacinth-curled bronzed Attic boy,—
As fond of sunshine, full of joy,
In some hot mead where violets hid
Blue round the well's white time-worn trunk
Of hollow marble slightly sunk
In grass about the spring that slid
Slow-steeping crystal all the year—
Would pause beneath the olive shade
In loitering chat with one so dear,
page 316 That slim slip of a Greek-limbed Maid,
Who looks so sweetly grave upon
Sad news about their neighbour's son
Killed—since they met, at Marathon!—
—Pause, in the act of sucking down
The fig she brings him—bursting-ripe.
Plump, melting-skinned, and purple-brown,
To mark their little gay compeer,
As hand in hand they draw too near,
Abruptly stilling his sweet shrilling,
And edging round his olive branch,
Backing and sidling out of sight
Of eager eyes, that gleam gray-bright,
As one fond wish the Boy expresses,
That chirper were but turned to gold
To stick in Myrrhin's golden tresses!
While not his wildest dream had told
The lad, how many an age to come,
In what far regions all unknown,
His race's merry earthborn type
Would still be singing blithe and stanch,
After its own grand Muse was dumb,
Its noisy greeds and glories gone!

So Ranolf's musing fancy strung
Together olden scenes and new;
Or on more dubious ventures flew,
If e'er as to some bough it clung
The songster's pupa-case was seen,
Whence from his base life subterrene
He made escape in winged shape—
The bright transparent brittle sheath
Wherein he slept his life-in-death.
page 317 A suit of perfect armour, where
He left it Ranolf notes it still;
An open crack across the back,
And lobster-claws thrown by because
Superfluous found, his labour crowned;
The forelegs raised—' not as in prayer.'
Thinks he—" but work; for he too, mark!
Was forced to dig with strength and skill
His stout way from his dungeon dark
Up to his heaven of sunshine! Thus
From clogged and cramped existence fleeing,
He tries a second state of being
In the sphere that holds but one for us:
But both his lives to us seem one
Who see the changes undergone:
So this life and another too,
Nay, lives on lives, perhaps, of ours,
May seem but one to wider view
And keenlier-gifted loftier powers;
The subtle links we lose pursued,
The metamorphose understood.
But with what pitying smile must they
Look on, when with such sad array
The human insects hide away
Some care-worn soul-case out of sight—
And weep because they cannot stay
The fresh winged Soul's unfettered flight
To wider spheres and new delight!—

"That was the way those types to read—
A fine old cheery way indeed.
Will Science say remorseless?—' Nay,
You must not read them so to-day.
page 318 The actual metamorphoses
Foreshadowed by-—akin to these,
Gone through already. One surmise
From lingering traces undesigned
Of transformations some low grade
Of life sustained, ere birth displayed
In nascent undeveloped Man,
Might be by strictest reasoning made:
That if organic Being rise
Elsewhere upon the selfsame plan—
Continue so ascending—there
Some glorious creature might be found
Of frame more complex, powers more rare,
In whom Man's perfect mould would be
But one in its imperfect round
Of embryoric stages. Try
What help, what hope therein may lie! "—
Well, then, methinks, that surging sea
Of resonant shrill melody
Whence one may frame a thoughtful plea:
'O human Insect!. sad Truth-seeker—
Which of us two is wiser—weaker?
Your senses—-those deep reasoning powers
You will within their bounds compress,
May take a wider range than ours,
How vastly wider! none the less
They both are dwarfed, unspeakably
Fall short of, and are distanced by
The infinite Reality:
And all beyond their feeble reach
Will doubtless seem and be for each
page 319 A blank—a void—mere nothingness!
Think you the mighty gains you boast,
The ever deepening, widening host
Of wonders Science as she presses
Into the Mystery's first recesses,
Works out, worms into, proves or guesses:—
—Creation, like a firework splendid
Ever exploding, unexpended;
As endlessly it whirls and flies
Still breaking into brilliancies
Of stranger gleam and lovelier guise:—
—Organic Nature, in its flow
By inorganic guided, so
Divinely from its hidden fount;
Germs, gemmules, cells, life-struggles dense—
And Circumstance turned God at least,
Combining, with intelligence
So matchless, to evolve and mould
Life's plastic structures manifold
To perfect tree, man, insect, beast;
With agents—climate, fire and frost,
Food, famine—skilled to crush, uphold,
Choose what bad best survive or perish—
The lower to check, the higher to cherish—
Make progress sure at any cost:—
—Then all those correlated forces,
All Motion's masquerading courses;
And passing far all puny count
Of million million 'powers of horses,'
Dynamic energies immense,
At work, asleep, alike intense;
Evasive, latent—never lost—
That utterly from sight and sense
page 320 Can vanish, imperceptible
As any disembodied Soul,
Yet all the while about you dwell;
Until, a hundred ages hence,
Their cycle—seeming proved so well—
Of dark annihilation finished,
They reappear, alive and whole
With force and fervour undiminished!—
Think you all this, so far beyond
Our powers perceptive, would not seem
To us a blank your fancy fond
Filled with a visionary dream
As vain and baseless as you deem
All in the blank beyond your own?—
O human Insect! wiser—weaker—
O suicidal secret-seeker,
What if you left your 'types' alone
And joined our reckless rapturous Pasan
Of clear confiding trustfulness,
That once so charmed the jovial Teian,
Whose loves and lyre and brimming beaker
Were all o'erthrown by one grape-stone
That choked his life out, just as you
Your life of life by laying stress
On. doubts perhaps as trivial too—
Wresting despair with so much pain
Out of a scheme not your poor brain
Nor ours can compass or contain,
Exhaust, unravel, or explain!'"—