The Isle of Demons

TOGETHER o'er the mystic Isle
We wandered many a sinuous mile.
'Twas midway in the month of June,
And rivulets with lisping rune,
And bowering trees of tender green,
And flowering shrubs their trunks between,
Enticed our steps till gloaming grey,
Upon the pathless forest lay.
Think not I journeyed void of fear ;
Sir Roberval's hot malediction,
Like hurtling thunder, sounded near ;
Our steps the envious demons haunted,
And peeped, or seemed to peep and leer,
From rocky clefts and caverns drear.
But still, defiantly, undaunted,
Eugene averred it had been held
By wise philosophers of eld,
That all such sights and sounds are mere
Fantastic tricks of eye and ear,
And only meet for tales of fiction.
" Heed not," he said, " the vicious threat,
'Twas but a ruffian's empty talk,
The which I pray thou may'st forget
And half his evil purpose baulk/'
A silent doubt and grateful kiss
Was all I could oppose to this.
But firmer grew my steps. The air
Was laden with delicious balm ;
Rich exhalations everywhere,
From pine and spruce and cedar grove,
And over all a dreamy calm,
An affluence of brooding love,
A palpable, beneficent
Sufficiency of blest content.

Amid the hours, in restful pause
We loitered on the moss-clad rocks,
And listened to the sober caws
Of lonely rooks, and watched thick flocks
Of pigeons passing overhead ;
Or where the scarlet grosbeak sped,
A winged fire, through clumps of pine
Sent chasing looks of joy and wonder.

Blue violets and celandine,
And modest ferns that glanced from under
Gray-hooded boulders, seemed to say,
" O, tarry, gentle folk; O, stay,
For we are lonely in this wood,
And sigh for human sympathy
To cheer our days of solitude."

The great rude world was far away,
And like a troubled vision lay
Outside our thoughts ; its cold deceits,
The babble of its noisy streets,
And all the selfish rivalry
That courts and castles propagate,
Were alien to our new estate.

A fragment of propitious sky,
Whereon a puff of cloud might lie,
Through verdured boughs o'er-arching seen,
And glimpses of the sea between
Far stretches of majestic trees,
Such peaceful sanctities as these
Were our abiding joyance now.

Cheerily, and with lifted brow,
Eugene led on, where tamaracs grew,
And where tall elms their shadows threw
Athwart a little glen, wherein
A virgin brook seemed glad to win
The pressure of our thirsty lips.

Pleasant it was to linger there
And cool our fevered finger-tips
In that pellucid stream, and share
The solace of the ocean breeze.

For summer heats were now aglow;
The fox sat down and took his ease,
The hare moved purposeless and slow ;
But louder rang the bluejay's scream,
The woodpeck tapped the naked tree,
Nor ceased the simple chicadee
To twitter in the noonday beam.
My lover, wheresoe'er we strayed,
Made search in every charmed nook,
And angled in the winding brook
For all sweet flowers that love the shade,
To twine for me a bridal braid.

Pale yellow lilies, nursed by rocks
Rifted and scarred by lightning shocks,
Or earthquake ; river buds and pinks,
And modest snow-drops, pearly white,
And lilies of the vale, unite
Their beauty in close-loving links
Around a scented woodbine fair
To coronate my dark brown hair.
The fragile fern and clover sweet
On that enchanted circlet meet ;
Young roses lent their blushing hues :
Nor could the cedar leaf refuse
With helmet flowers to intertwine
Its glossy amplitude divine.
Emerging from that solemn wood,
High on a rocky cliff we stood
At set of sun ; far, far away
The splendours of departing day
Upon the barren ocean lay.
There, on that lone sea-beaten height,
Investured in a golden light,
Eugene, with looks half sad, whole sweet,
Upon my brow the garland set,
At once a chaplet and aigrette,
And said, " Be crowned, my Marguerite ! "
Was it sick fancy, sore misled,
That to my shuddering spirit said ?

" Those sounds that shake the midnight air,
Are threats of Shapes that will not spare
Your trespass on their fief accurst."

" Hush, hush, my love," Eugene would say,
" That cry which o'er our cabin burst
Came from the owls, perched royally
Among the pine-tops ; you but heard
The language of some beast or bird ;
The mooing of a mother bear
An hungered in her frozen lair ;
The laugh and mooing of the loon
That welcometh the rising moon ;
The howling of the wolves you hear,
In chase of some unhappy deer,
Impeded in its desperate flight
By deep and thickly crusted snows,
O'er which its lighter-footed foes
Pursue like shadows of the night
That lengthened groan, that fearful shriek,
Was but the grinding stress and creak
Of aged trees ; they seem to feel
The wrench of storms, and make appeal
For mercy ; in their ducts and cells
The sap, which is their life-blood, swells
When frosts prevail, and bursts asunder
With sharp report its prison walls."

The double darkness walled us in,
The blackness of the storm and night,
And still he came not ! O, what sin,
What blasphemy against the light
Of Heaven had my soul committed ?

Never before had eventide
Once found him absent from my side.
Eugene came not ! deceived, outwitted,
Sore tempest-tossed and lured astray
By demons, when the night-owl flitted
Across his face at close of day,
Groping for home, exhausted, faint,
No angel near, no pitying saint
To aid his steps and point the way !

From ebb of day till noon of night,
And onward till return of light,
The signal horn, Nanette and I,
Alternate blew ; but for reply
The wind's unprecedented roar,
And ocean thundering round the shore
Our labour mocked ; and other sounds,
Nor of the land, nor sea, nor sky,
Our ears profaned ; the unleashed hounds
Of spleenful hell were all abroad,
And round our snow-bound cabin trod,
And stormed on clashing wings aloof,
And stamped upon the yielding roof,
And all our lamentation jeered.

Down the wide chimney-gorge they peered
With great green eye-balls fringed with flame ;-
The holy cross I kissed and reared,
And in sweet Mary's blessed name,
Who erst had buoyed my sinking heart,
Conjured the foul-faced fiends depart
Their shriekings made a storm more loud
Than that before whose fury bowed
The hundred-ringed oaken trees.;
More fearful, more appalling these
Than thunder from the thunder-cloud.