by Owen Meredith.
Originally published in St. James's Magazine (W. Kent) vol.1 #1 (Apr 1861).
["This is the legend of that Helias, as given by our popular traditions:—In the year 711, lived Beatrix, the only daughter of the Duke of Cleves. Her father was dead, and she was Lady of Cleves, and many other territories. One day the young Chatelaine was seated in the castle of Nimvegen; it was a fine day, the weather was clear, and she looked upon the Rhine. There she saw a strange thing. A white swan descended the river, and he had about his neck a golden chain. To the chain was attached a little vessel which the swan drew after him; in the vessel was a young man, who held in his hand a golden glaive; a hunting-horn was slung at his side, and en his finger was a precious ring. This young man stept ashore, and had much talk with the demosel. He told her that he would protect her domains and chase away all her enemies. The young man pleased her so well, that, having made herself to be loved by him, she took him for her husband. But he said to her: 'Ask me never about my race nor my origin; for the day on which you should ask me about these things, I shall be separated from you, and you will never see me more,' And he also said to her that his name was Helias. He was of tall stature, and giant frame. They afterwards had many children, But one night, after many years were over, when this Helias was in bed by the side of his wife, the Princess said to him, forgetting his injunctions, 'Lord, will you not tell your children whence you are?' At these words Helias left the lady, leapt into his swan-ship, and was never more seen. The wife took it to heart, and died of remorse the same year. He seems, however, to have left to his three children his three treasures—the glaive, the bugle, and the ring. His descendants still exist; and in the castle of Cleves there rises a tall tower, on the top of which there turns a swan. They call it the Tower of the Swan, in memory of this event."—H. Heine: De l'Allemagne: Vol. 2.)
The swallow goes and comes; the nightingale
Returns when spring the dewy whitethorn decks
With starry crowns: the woods put off and on
Their green life, lightly: and May-flowers soothe up
March-scars upon the winter-wounded hills.
What recks great Nature of the ravage wrought
By sea-breach, landslip, or the icy north
Splitting her chapt and blemisht pine-tree barks,
Or thunder cleaving oaks? So lightly she,
From her immense resources, may amend
A first mistake, retrieve a failure, staunch
Those surface wounds that cannot ever reach
To her deep heart, and laugh at seeming loss!
But I? whose single stem is snapt in twain!
Whose whole life leans against a breaking hope!
What comfort with the renovated year
May creep across these solitary days
From which I wither slowly to the grave?
Ah cruel! wherefore didst thou seek me forth,
A careless child, mid water-lily-leaves
Crusht in their white sleep by thy careless prow?
And wherefore didst thou come among my days,
My quiet days, which were as white, and slept
As soft as sleeping water-lily-leaves,
To trouble these as thou didst trouble those?
I would thou hadst as lightly left me then,
Who couldst, too late, so lightly leave me now!
I would that I had never heard thy voice,
Or, hearing, had not listen'd to it! I would
That I had never lookt upon thy face,
Or, looking, had not lookt on it with love!
For thou hast had no pity, I no power
To keep thee, nor recall my peace of mind,
Which, following thee, flows from me day by day.
Why didst thou to a woman—one that loved—
Impose conditions hateful to a heart
That loves, and hateful to a woman's most?
Why dost thou frown upon a single fault
For ever? Why avenge with such strong scorn
An hour of weakness in a life of love?
Of weakness which is common to our sex;
So common, that it scarce should rufle thine;
So common, that the world but half condemns.
Lived not our love thro' all those happy years,
Whose cancell'd sweetness will return no more,
In faith unintercepted by a doubt?
Did not I take thy secret to my heart,
And keep it, as a girl her amulet,
Holding it something sacred, knowing not
The meaning of it, nor from whence it comes?
But when my children,—which were mine and thine,—
Smiled in my face, what time they learn'd to lisp
That little helpless language that first clings
About familiar names which comfort life
And make it trusted, being yet untried,
I asked thee . . . "Shall thy children never learn
To name the kindred of their mighty sire,
Nor know the mystic stem that flowers in these
Last innocent buds?" And from that hour I saw,
And shall see till the grave hath shut it out,
Nothing before me but the stern rebuke,
And sorrowing scorn, in thy receding eyes.
Thy form is fleeted from my arms, thy face
Is faded from my sight, but this remains
To haunt the hollow life where thou art not,
Thy last unutterably grieved regard!
Return, O Helias, from whatever sphere
Thy mystic footstep circles; or of air,
Or water, or the elemental fire
Beneath the monstrous hills! From all thy race,
Whate'er they be, I challenge any heart,
To love thee better or to miss thee more
Than this that in my bosom breaks for thee.
I am not perfect; yet my perfect grief
Might plead for perfect pardon. Ah, dear love,
Bend o'er my night of woe thy lovely eyes,
Which should be kind as those pure eyes of Heaven,
Whose light makes fair things fairer, yet refrains
To harshly pierce that blessèd blessèd veil
The comprehensive piety of night
O'er this imperfect planet pitying flings.
Dear love, bend o'er my night thy lovely eyes!
O might I dream, tho' but a dream it were,
That time, reverting, brought that hour again,
When, leaning o'er this leafy balcony,
I, for the first time, saw the wild white swan,
Black-eyed, black-bill'd, and crown'd with mystic gold,
Slide down the gleaming stream!
With sumptuous wings,
Poised to a perfect pinnacle of light,
Like sloping flames of white fire lightly blown
Backward above the tender curving neck,
Muffled in milky flakes; and, all its soft
And folded sleeps of snowy whitenesses
Reposed in one unruffled self-caress,
The radiant creature o'er the blue beneath
Slumbrously moved, as o'er the blue above
Some rare cherubic cloudlet moves in May.
Then thro' the lolling lilies softly pusht
The little boat, with all his dipping silks
And blazing fringes in the ripple bathed,
Above the golden sands, and at the stern
Those starry brows, my blessing and my bale!
Tingling, up all the airy terraces
And green walls of the galleried vineyards, moved
A gradual mounting music; till the grape
Felt the red wine grow jocund in his heart,
And every little blade of thin grey grass
Danced on the ruin'd tower and rosy crag
Against the far green light and amber flame
That moved not in the wide and windless west.
Fled is that music, and that glory gone!
Down the grey cliffs the moaning wave descends.
The skies are sullen. And I see thee not.
I see thee not! or but in fancy fixt
For evermore a moody moveless ghost
That looks upon me with unloving eyes.
Ah me! if days made desolate by deep
Enduring sorrow, if repentant tears
Unnumber'd, and a vast regret, may mend
The momentary madness of a wish
Unwisely utter'd,—not for my sole sake,
But for the sake of these poor helpless mouths,
That cling about a breast thy pillow once;—
If these, and more than these, and more than all
That ever woman suffer'd, may attain
Forgiveness, come thou back, unkind but dear!
Back to these widow'd arms! . . . relent, return,
And close mine eyes upon a happy death!
Death! for I feel the grave about me grow.
And all my silent days are but as stairs
That lead me down to darkness. Hope withdraws
Her sanction from existence. What avails
From these grey walls to watch in wintry skies
The rolling of irrevocable clouds,
And freight with sighs the desultory wind?
Thou comest no more. I know my life forlorn,
And know grief's utmost vain. Thou comest no more.
And couldst thou come, ah dear, thy coming now
Could only soothe to some more blessèd close
A life not even thy pardon might prolong,
Making less sad, but not less swift, the end.
And yet, and yet . . . ah come thou back, beloved!
Come back! . . . tho' late, late, late! yet not too late
To soothe my sad soul down the slope of Death;
And let me die like a dejected moon,
That, dying, sees the dawn, but is too weak
And weary with her passage thro' the night
To live a half-hour longer; and so sinks.
Come back! come back, and bring back all that's gone!
Not only thee, not thee alone I miss,
But all in me, once thine no longer mine,
And all that's thine, once mine when thou wert mine,
And all on earth that, without thee, is not;
The scents that hung about the careless hours,
The colour of the common things of life!
As, thro' the tender northern twilight, streams
And trembles over depths of deepening dark,
The lingering light of some long sunken sun;
Since thou art gone, my love, since thou art gone!
This life, which is not of the cheerful day,
Nor blest with perfect night, by grey degrees
Grows darker round me, in a mournful mist,
Reflecting o'er a heaven without a hope
The radiant restless wraithe of all that's lost.
The wind is wailing in the weary vane:
The wave is sobbing in the chilly creeks;
The flying cloud across the fretful sky
The wrath of Heaven pursues, until it breaks
A burthen'd heart, and all in tears dissolves,
Weeping its way into an earthy grave.
Sleep, sleep my little ones! The wind is wild,
The world is cold. Sleep, little rosy mouths!
Your father is a spirit far away:
Your mother will to-morrow be a corpse.
Sleep, sleep my little ones, a happy sleep!
And, if you dream, poor silly things, dream on!
For I was waked out of my dream, and die.
But, if you wake, and if you find me not,
Perchance he will return, and pity you.
Sleep, sleep my little ones, a happy sleep!
Sleep, little rosy mouths! while, leaf by leaf,
The o'erblown blossom falls before the flaw,
And strews its life about a thorny stem,
The little buds lie safe, and dream of spring.
Sleep, sleep my little ones, a happy sleep!
Call me, O friends, the craftsman and the bard!
Build me a tomb beneath the beetling crag:
Lay me within it: carve my name without:
O craftsman, carve the stoney scroll: O bard,
Let all men there the mournful history read
Of Beatrix, the Lady of Nimvegen.
O three white maidens, keepers of the Tower!
O three white maidens, wardens of the watch!
O swan white sisterhood, whose chaste necks gleam
With our great order of the silver swan,
I charge you that ye fail not from your trust!
Guard well the three great gifts he left behind;
The golden glaive; the burnisht bugle-horn;
The mighty diamond of the mystic ring;
Three holy heirlooms in the line of Cleves!