They were mournfully gentle, and group'd for relief,
All foes in their skin, but all friends in their grief :
The leopard was there,-baby-mild in its feature;
And the tiger, black barr'd, with the gaze of a creature
That knew gentle pity; the bristle-back'd boar,
His innocent tusks stain'd with mulberry gore;
And the laughing hyena-but laughing no more;
And the snake, not with magical orbs to devise
Strange death, but with woman's attraction of eyes;
The tall ugly ape, that still bore a dim shine
Through his hairy eclipse of a manhood divine;
And the elephant stately, with more than its reason,
How thoughtful in sadness! but this is no season
To reckon them up from the lag-bellied toad
To the mammoth, whose sobs shook his ponderous load. There were woes of all shapes, wretched forms, when I
That bung down their heads with a human-like shame;
The elephant hid in the boughs, and the bear
Shed over his eyes the dark veil of his hair;
And the womanly soul turning sick with disgust,
Tried to vomit herself from her serpentine crust;
While all groan'd their groans into one at their lot,
As I brought them the image of what they were not.
Then rose a wild sound of the human voice choking
Through vile brutal organs-low tremulous croaking;
Cries swallow'd abruptly-deep animal tones
Attuned to strange passion, and full utter'd groans;
All shuddering weaker, till hush'd in a pause
Of tongues in mute motion and wide-yearning jaws;
And I guess'd that those horrors were meant to tell o'er
The tale of their woes; but the silence told more
That writhed on their tongues; and I knelt on the sod,
And pray'd with my voice to the cloud-stirring God,
For the sad congregation of supplicants there,
That upturn'd to his heaven brute faces of prayer;
And I ceased, and they utter'd a moaning so deep,
That I wept for my heart-ease,—but they could not weep,
And gazed with red eye-balls, all wistfully dry,
At the comfort of tears in a stag's human eye.
Then I motion'd them round, and, to soothe their distress,
I caress'd, and they bent them to meet my caress,
Their necks to my arm, and their heads to my palm,
And with poor grateful eyes suffer'd meekly and calm
Those tokens of kindness, withheld by hard fate
From returns that might chill the warm pity to hate;
So they passively bow'd-save the serpent, that leapt
Το
my breast like a sister, and pressingly crept
In embrace of my neck, and with close kisses blister'd
My lips in rash love,-then drew backward and glister'd
Her eyes in my face, and loud hissing affright,
Dropt down, and swift started away from my sight!
This sorrow was theirs, but thrice wretched my lot,
Turn'd brute in my soul, though my body was not
When I fled from the sorrow of womanly faces,
That shrouded their woe in the shade of lone places,
And dash'd off bright tears, till their fingers were wet,
And then wiped their lids with long tresses of jet:
But I fled--though they stretch'd out their hands, all entan
With hair, and blood-stain'd of the breasts they had man
Though they call'd-and perchance but to ask, had I seen
Their loves, or to tell the vile wrongs that had been:
But I stay'd not to hear, lest the story should hold
Some hell-form of words, some enchantment once told,
Might translate me in flesh to a brute; and I dreaded
To gaze on their charms, lest my faith should be wedded
With some pity,-and love in that pity perchance-
To a thing not all lovely; for once at a glance
Methought, where one sat, I descried a bright wonder
That flow'd like a long silver rivulet under
The long fenny grass, with so lovely a breast,
Could it be a snake-tail made the charm of the rest?
So I roam'd in that circle of horrors, and Fear
Walk'd with me, by hills, and in valleys, and near
Cluster'd trees for their gloom-not to shelter from heat-
But lest a brute-shadow should grow at my feet;
And besides that full oft in the sunshiny place,
Dark shadows would gather like clouds on its face,
In the horrible likeness of demons, (that none
Could see, like invisible flames in the sun;)
But grew to one monster that seized on the light,
Like the dragon that strangles the moon in the night;
Fierce sphinxes, long serpents, and asps of the South;
Wild birds of huge beak, and all horrors that drouth
Engenders of slime in the land of the pest,
Vile shapes without shape, and foul bats of the West,
Bringing Night on their wings; and the bodies wherein
Great Brahma imprisons the spirits of sin,
Many-handed, that blent in one phantom of fight
Like a Titan, and dreadfully warr'd with the light;
I have heard the wild shriek that gave signal to close,
When they rush'd on that shadowy Python of foes,
That met with sharp beaks and wide gaping of jaws,
With flappings of wings, and fierce grasping of claws,
And whirls of long tails:-I have seen the quick flutter
Of fragments dissever'd,—and necks stretch'd to utter
Long screamings of pain,-the swift motion of blows,
And wrestling of arms-to the flight at the close,
When the dust of the earth startled upwards in rings,
And flew on the whirlwind that follow'd their wings.
Thus they fled-not forgotten-but often to grow Like fears in my eyes, when I walk'd to and fro In the shadows, and felt from some beings unseen The warm touch of kisses, but clean or unclean I knew not, nor whether the love I had won Was of heaven or hell-till one day in the sun, In its very noon-blaze, I could fancy a thing Of beauty, but faint as the cloud-mirrors fling On the gaze of the shepherd that watches the sky, Half-seen and half-dream'd in the soul of his eye. And when in my musings I gaz'd on the stream, In motionless trances of thought, there would seem A face like that face, looking upward through mine; With its eyes full of love, and the dim-drowned shine Of limbs and fair garments, like clouds in that blue Serene: there I stood for long hours but to view Those fond earnest eyes that were ever uplifted Towards me, and wink'd as the water-weed drifted Between; but the fish knew that presence, and plied Their long curvy tails, and swift darted aside.
There I gazed for lost time, and forgot all the things That once had been wonders-the fishes with wings, And the glimmer of magnified eyes that look'd up From the glooms of the bottom like pearls in a cup, And the huge endless serpent of silvery gleam, Slow winding along like a tide in the stream.
Some maid of the waters, some Naiad, methought Held me dear in the pearl of her eye-and I brought My wish to that fancy; and often I dash'd
My limbs in the water, and suddenly splash'd
The cool drops around me, yet clung to the brink,
Chill'd by watery fears, how that Beauty might sink
With my life in her arms to her garden, and bind me
With its long tangled grasses, or cruelly wind me
In some eddy to hum out my life in her ear,
Like a spider-caught bee,-and in aid of that fear
Came the tardy remembrance-O falsest of men!
Why was not that beauty remember'd till then?
My love, my safe love, whose glad life would have run
Into mine-like a drop-that our fate might be one,
That now, even now,-may-be,-clasp'd in a dream,
That form which I gave to some jilt of the stream,
And gaz'd with fond eyes that her tears tried to smother
On a mock of those eyes that I gave to another!
Then I rose from the stream, but the eyes of my mind, Still full of the tempter, kept gazing behind On her crystalline face, while I painfully leapt To the bank, and shook off the curst waters, and wept With my brow in the reeds; and the reeds to my ear Bow'd, bent by no wind, and in whispers of fear, Growing small with large secrets, foretold me of one That lov'd me,-but oh to fly from her, and shun Her love like a pest-though her love was as true To mine as her stream to the heavenly blue; For why should I love her with love that would bring All misfortune, like Hate, on so joyous a thing? Because of her rival,-cven Her whose witch-face I had slighted, and therefore was doom'd in that place
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