entrance?'
'I have played on my lyre to Arbaces,' answered the Thessalian, with
embarrassment.
'And thou hast escaped the contagion from which thou hast saved Ione?'
returned the Neapolitan, in a voice too low for the ear of Glaucus.
'Noble Ione, I have neither beauty nor station; I am a child, and a
slave, and blind. The despicable are ever safe.'
It was with a pained, and proud, and indignant tone that Nydia made this
humble reply; and Ione felt that she only wounded Nydia by pursuing the
subject. She remained silent, and the bark now floated into the sea.
'Confess that I was right, Ione,' said Glaucus, 'in prevailing on thee
not to waste this beautiful noon in thy chamber--confess that I was
right.'
'Thou wert right, Glaucus,' said Nydia, abruptly.
'The dear child speaks for thee,' returned the Athenian. 'But permit me
to move opposite to thee, or our light boat will be over-balanced.'
So saying, he took his seat exactly opposite to Ione, and leaning
forward, he fancied that it was her breath, and not the winds of summer,
that flung fragrance over the sea.
'Thou wert to tell me,' said Glaucus, 'why for so many days thy door was
closed to me?'
'Oh, think of it no more!' answered Ione, quickly; 'I gave my ear to
what I now know was the malice of slander.'
'And my slanderer was the Egyptian?'
Ione's silence assented to the question.
'His motives are sufficiently obvious.'
'Talk not of him,' said Ione, covering her face with her hands, as if to
shut out his very thought.
'Perhaps he may be already by the banks of the slow Styx,' resumed
Glaucus; 'yet in that case we should probably have heard of his death.
Thy brother, methinks, hath felt the dark influence of his gloomy soul.
When we arrived last night at thy house he left me abruptly. Will he
ever vouchsafe to be my friend?'
'He is consumed with some secret care,' answered Ione, tearfully.
'Would that we could lure him from himself! Let us join in that tender
office.'
'He shall be my brother,' returned the Greek.
'How calmly,' said Ione, rousing herself from the gloom into which her
thoughts of Apaecides had plunged her--'how calmly the clouds seem to
repose in heaven; and yet you tell me, for I knew it not myself, that
the earth shook beneath us last night.'
'It did, and more violently, they say, than it has done since the great
convulsion sixteen years ago: the land we live in yet nurses mysterious
terror; and the reign of Pluto, which spreads beneath our burning
fields, seems rent with unseen commotion. Didst thou not feel the earth
quake, Nydia, where thou wert seated last night? and was it not the
fear that it occasioned thee that made thee weep?'
'I felt the soil creep and heave beneath me, like some monstrous
serpent,' answered Nydia; 'but as I saw nothing, I did not fear: I
imagined the convulsion to be a spell of the Egyptian's. They say he
has power over the elements.'
'Thou art a Thessalian, my Nydia,' replied Glaucus, 'and hast a national
right to believe in magic.
'Magic!--who doubts it?' answered Nydia, simply: 'dost thou?'
'Until last night (when a necromantic prodigy did indeed appal me),
methinks I was not credulous in any other magic save that of love!' said
Glaucus, in a tremulous voice, and fixing his eyes on Ione.
'Ah!' said Nydia, with a sort of shiver, and she awoke mechanically a
few pleasing notes from her lyre; the sound suited well the tranquility
of the waters, and the sunny stillness of the noon.
'Play to us, dear Nydia, said Glaucus--'play and give us one of thine
old Thessalian songs: whether it be of magic or not, as thou wilt--let
it, at least, be of love!'
'Of love!' repeated Nydia, raising her large, wandering eyes, that ever
thrilled those who saw them with a mingled fear and pity; you could
never familiarize yourself to their aspect: so strange did it seem that
those dark wild orbs were ignorant of the day, and either so fixed was
their deep mysterious gaze, or so restless and perturbed their glance,
that you felt, when you encountered them, that same vague, and chilling,
and half-preternatural impression, which comes over you in the presence
of the insane--of those who, having a life outwardly like your own, have
a life within life--dissimilar--unsearchable--unguessed!
'Will you that I should sing of love?' said she, fixing those eyes upon
Glaucus.
'Yes,' replied he, looking down.
She moved a little way from the arm of Ione, still cast round her, as if
that soft embrace embarrassed; and placing her light and graceful
instrument on her knee, after a short prelude, she sang the following
strain:
NYDIA'S LOVE-SONG
I
The Wind and the Beam loved the Rose,
And the Rose loved one;
For who recks the wind where it blows?
Or loves not the sun?
II
None knew whence the humble Wind stole,
Poor sport of the skies--
None dreamt that the Wind had a soul,
In its mournful sighs!
III
Oh, happy Beam! how canst thou prove
That bright love of thine?
In thy light is the proof of thy love.
Thou hast but--to shine!
IV
How its love can the Wind reveal?
Unwelcome its sigh;
Mute--mute to its Rose let it steal--
Its proof is--to die!
'Thou singest but sadly, sweet girl,' said Glaucus; 'thy youth only
feels as yet the dark shadow of Love; far other inspiration doth he
wake, when he himself bursts and brightens upon us.
'I sing as I was taught,' replied Nydia, sighing.
'Thy master was love-crossed, then--try thy hand at a gayer air. Nay,
girl, give the instrument to me.' As Nydia obeyed, her hand touched his,
and, with that slight touch, her breast heaved--her cheek flushed. Ione
and Glaucus, occupied with each other, perceived not those signs of
strange and premature emotions, which preyed upon a heart that,
nourished by imagination, dispensed with hope.
And now, broad, blue, bright, before them, spread that halcyon sea, fair
as at this moment, seventeen centuries from that date, I behold it
rippling on the same divinest shores. Clime that yet enervates with a
soft and Circean spell--that moulds us insensibly, mysteriously, into
harmony with thyself, banishing the thought of austerer labor, the
voices of wild ambition, the contests and the roar of life; filling us
with gentle and subduing dreams, making necessary to our nature that
which is its least earthly portion, so that the very air inspires us
with the yearning and thirst of love. Whoever visits thee seems to leave
earth and its harsh cares behind--to enter by the Ivory gate into the
Land of Dreams. The young and laughing Hours of the PRESENT--the Hours,
those children of Saturn, which he hungers ever to devour, seem snatched
from his grasp. The past--the future--are forgotten; we enjoy but the
breathing time. Flower of the world's garden--Fountain of Delight--Italy
of Italy--beautiful, benign Campania!--vain were, indeed, the Titans, if
on this spot they yet struggled for another heaven! Here, if God meant
this working-day life for a perpetual holiday, who would not sigh to
dwell for ever--asking nothing, hoping nothing, fearing nothing, while
thy skies shine over him--while thy seas sparkle at his feet--while
thine air brought him sweet messages from the violet and the orange--and
while the heart, resigned to--beating with--but one emotion, could find
the lips and the eyes, which flatter it (vanity of vanities!) that love
can defy custom, and be eternal?
It was then in this clime--on those seas, that the Athenian gazed upon a
face that might have suited the nymph, the spirit of the place: feeding
his eyes on the changeful roses of that softest cheek, happy beyond the
happiness of common life, loving, and knowing himself beloved.
In the tale of human passion, in past ages, there is something of
interest even in the remoteness of the time. We love to feel within us
the bond which unites the most distant era--men, nations, customs
perish; THE AFFECTIONS ARE IMMORTAL!--they are the sympathies which
unite the ceaseless generations. The past lives again, when we look
upon its emotions--it lives in our own! That which was, ever is! The
magician's gift, that revives the dead--that animates the dust of
forgotten graves, is not in the author's skill--it is in the heart of
the reader!
Still vainly seeking the eyes of Ione, as, half downcast, half averted,
they shunned his own, the Athenian, in a low and soft voice, thus
expressed the feelings inspired by happier thoughts than those which had
colored the song of Nydia.
THE SONG OF GLAUCUS
I
As the bark floateth on o'er the summer-lit sea,
Floats my heart o'er the deeps of its passion for thee;
All lost in the space, without terror it glides,
For bright with thy soul is the face of the tides.
Now heaving, now hush'd, is that passionate ocean,
As it catches thy smile or thy sighs;
And the twin-stars that shine on the wanderer's devotion
Its guide and its god--are thine eyes!
II
The bark may go down, should the cloud sweep above,
For its being is bound to the light of thy love.
As thy faith and thy smile are its life and its joy,
So thy frown or thy change are the storms that destroy.
Ah! sweeter to sink while the sky is serene,
If time hath a change for thy heart!
If to live be to weep over what thou hast been,
Let me die while I know what thou art!
As the last words of the song trembled over the sea, Ione raised her
looks--they met those of her lover. Happy Nydia!--happy in thy
affliction, that thou couldst not see that fascinated and charmed gaze,
that said so much--that made the eye the voice of the soul--that
promised the impossibility of change!
But, though the Thessalian could not detect that gaze, she divined its
meaning by their silence--by their sighs. She pressed her hands lightly
across her breast, as if to keep down its bitter and jealous thoughts;
and then she hastened to speak--for that silence was intolerable to her.
'After all, O Glaucus!' said she, 'there is nothing very mirthful in
your strain!'
'Yet I meant it to be so, when I took up thy lyre, pretty one. Perhaps
happiness will not permit us to be mirthful.'
'How strange is it,' said Ione, changing a conversation which oppressed
her while it charmed--'that for the last several days yonder cloud has
hung motionless over Vesuvius! Yet not indeed motionless, for sometimes
it changes its form; and now methinks it looks like some vast giant,
with an arm outstretched over the city. Dost thou see the likeness--or
is it only to my fancy?'
'Fair Ione! I see it also. It is astonishingly distinct. The giant
seems seated on the brow of the mountain, the different shades of the
cloud appear to form a white robe that sweeps over its vast breast and
limbs; it seems to gaze with a steady face upon the city below, to point
with one hand, as thou sayest, over its glittering streets, and to raise
the other (dost thou note it?) towards the higher heaven. It is like the
ghost of some huge Titan brooding over the beautiful world he lost;
sorrowful for the past--yet with something of menace for the future.'
'Could that mountain have any connection with the last night's
earthquake? They say that, ages ago, almost in the earliest era of
tradition, it gave forth fires as AEtna still. Perhaps the flames yet
lurk and dart beneath.'
'It is possible,' said Glaucus, musingly.
'Thou sayest thou art slow to believe in magic,' said Nydia, suddenly.
'I have heard that a potent witch dwells amongst the scorched caverns of
the mountain, and yon cloud may be the dim shadow of the demon she
confers with.'
'Thou art full of the romance of thy native Thessaly,' said Glaucus;
'and a strange mixture of sense and all conflicting superstitions.'
'We are ever superstitious in the dark,' replied Nydia. 'Tell me,' she
added, after a slight pause, 'tell me, O Glaucus! do all that are
beautiful resemble each other? They say you are beautiful, and Ione
also. Are your faces then the same? I fancy not, yet it ought to be
so.'
'Fancy no such grievous wrong to Ione,' answered Glaucus, laughing.
'But we do not, alas! resemble each other, as the homely and the
beautiful sometimes do. Ione's hair is dark, mine light; Ione's eyes
are--what color, Ione? I cannot see, turn them to me. Oh, are they
black? no, they are too soft. Are they blue? no, they are too deep: they
change with every ray of the sun--I know not their color: but mine,
sweet Nydia, are grey, and bright only when Ione shines on them! Ione's
cheek is...'
'I do not understand one word of thy description,' interrupted Nydia,
peevishly. 'I comprehend only that you do not resemble each other, and
I am glad of it.'
'Why, Nydia?' said Ione.
Nydia colored slightly. 'Because,' she replied, coldly, 'I have always
imagined you under different forms, and one likes to know one is right.'
'And what hast thou imagined Glaucus to resemble?' asked Ione, softly.
'Music!' replied Nydia, looking down.
'Thou art right,' thought Ione.
'And what likeness hast thou ascribed to Ione?'
'I cannot tell yet,' answered the blind girl; 'I have not yet known her
