第81章

Yes, I think I may dare affirm that whatever there is to know about a fiddle I know, and I can give my affidavit that it is no fiddle that takes you up on its broad wings, outstripping the "wondrous horse of brass," which required "the space of a day natural, This is to sayn, four and twenty houres, Wher so you list, in drought or elles showres, To beren your body into every place To which your herte willeth for to pace, Withouten wemme of you, thurgh foule or faire,"since it bears you, "withouten" even so much as your "herte's"will, in a moment's time, over the and above the stars.

A fiddle, is it? Do not for one moment believe it.--A poet walked through Southern woods, and the Dryads opened their hearts to him. They unfolded the secrets that dwell in the depths of forests. They sang to him under the starlight the songs of their green, rustling land. They whispered the loves of the trees sentient to poets:--"The sayling pine; the cedar, proud and tall;The vine-propt elme; the poplar, never dry;

The builder oake, sole king of forrests all;

The aspine, good for staves; the cypresse funerall;The lawrell, meed of mightie conquerours And poets sage; the firre, that weepeth stille;The willow, worne of forlorne paramours;

The eugh, obedient to the benders will The birch, for shaftes; the sallow, for the mill;The mirrhe, sweete-bleeding in the bitter wounde;The warlike beech; the ash, for nothing ill;

The fruitful olive; and the platane round;

The carver holme; the maple, seldom inward sound."They sang to him with their lutes. They danced before him with sunny, subtile grace, wreathing with strange loveliness. They brought him honey and wine in the white cups of lilies, till his brain was drunk with delight; and they kept watch by his moss pillow, while he slept.

In the dew of the morning, he arose and felled the kindly tree that had sheltered him, not knowing it was the home of Arborine, fairest of the wood-nymphs. But he did it not for cruelty, but tenderness, to carve a memorial of his most memorable night, and so pulled down no thunders on his head.

For Arborine loved him, and, like her, sister Undine in the North, found her soul in loving him. Unseen, the beautiful nymph guided his hand as he fashioned the sounding viol, not knowing he was fashioning a palace for a soul new-born. He wrought skilfully strung the intense chords, and smote them with the sympathetic bow. What burst of music flooded the still air! What new song trembled among the mermaiden tresses of the oaks! What new presence quivered in every listening harebell and every fearful windflower? The forest felt a change, for tricksy nymph had proved a mortal love, and put off her fairy phantasms for the deep consciousness of humanity.

The wood heard, bewildered. A shudder as of sorrow thrilled through it. A breeze that was almost sad swept down the shady aisles as the Poet passed out into the sunshine and the world.

But Nature knows no pain, though Arborines appear never more.

A balm springs up in every wound. Over the hills, and far away beyond their utmost purple rim, and deep into the dying days the happy love-born one followed her love, happy to exchange her sylvan immortality for the spasm of mortal life,--happy, in her human self-abnegation, to lie close on his heart and whisper close in his ear, though he knew only the loving voice and never the loving lips. Through the world they passed, the Poet and his mystic viol. It gathered to itself the melodies that fluttered over sea and land,--songs of the mountains, and songs of the valleys,--murmurs of love, and the trumpet-tones of war,--bugle-blast of huntsman on the track of the chamois, and mother's lullaby to the baby at her breast. All that earth had of sweetness the nymph drew into her viol-home, and poured it forth anew in strains of more than mortal harmony. The fire and fervor of human hearts, the quiet ripple of inland waters, the anthem of the stormy sea, the voices of the flowers and the birds, their melody to the song of her who knew them all.

The Poet died. Died, too, sweet Arborine, swooning away in the fierce grasp of this stranger Sorrow, to enter by the black gate of death into the full presence and recognition of him by loving whom she had learned to be.

The viol passed into strange hands, and wandered down the centuries, but its olden echoes linger still. Fragrance of Southern woods, coolness of shaded waters, inspiration of mountain-breezes, all the secret forces of Nature that the wood-nymph knew, and the joy, the passion, and the pain that throb only in a woman's heart, lie still, silent under the silent strings, but wakening into life at the touch of a royal hand.

Do you not believe my story? But I have seen the viol and the royal hand!