A Festival of Life

" The One remains, the many change and pass ;
Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly ;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments. . . ."
SHELLEY'S Adonais.
THE wind, in long gusts roaring,
Over the sea-waste hurled with passionate might
The torrent-rush of ponderous rain down-pouring
Through that unbounded darkness of wild night. . .
I gazed into the tumult ; seeing naught ;
But mastered by it into solemn thought,
Such as can seldom brood in garish day, —
Whose myriad sounds and forms and hues
Their sparkling sensual wine infuse,
Till the soul drowses in its drunken clay.
Night scorns to pamper fleshly ears and eyes
With earth's poor store of fleeting luxuries,
Appealing to the Soul alone
In its stupendous Monotone,
Austerely murmuring spells of timeless mysteries.
Long sightlessly outgazing
I stood, when through the cloven dark, behold,
A dome of purest crystal lifted, blazing
With living splendours — purple, jasper, gold,
And crowning all, serenely arched on high,
A solemn depth of sapphire like a sky.
Far-piercing tremulous lines of watery light
And sheeted lustres wild and riven,
Like sunset glories tempest-driven,
It pours against the streaming gloom of night.
Sustaining this aerial canopy
White marble columns gleam unsteadfastly ;
Yet by its hovering poise in air,
It seems self-borne to revel there,
Surmounting furious blasts over the lurid sea.

I stand by it envaulted. . . .
The palace thrills throughout from dome to floor
In swells of jubilant harmony, exalted
By the storm's intermittent clash and roar :
How the full volumes of orchestral sound
Outsurge continuously and sweep around !
As clouds by winds, see, swayed by their sweet measure,
All floating, gliding, sinking, heaving,
The countless Masquers interweaving
An Iris-coloured maze of dizzy pleasure
About the sea-like floor of marble green,
All waved with multitudinous waves, whose sheen
And restless shades the vision cheats ;
They seem to flow beneath the feet
Which thrid that graceful dance of festive life serene.

Around the shorelike border,
Opening to arched recess and far aisle dim,
The feast-spread tables range in stately order.
What golden bowls, a-tremble to the brim,
Beneath the lamps in constellations shine
With jewels and the jewel-gleams of wine !
WThat fruits are clustered into glorious piles
Throughout the feast's magnificence,
On whose uncumbered affluence
Flowers shed the grace of their ethereal smiles !
Round the broad tables sumptuous couches flow,
Soft as June clouds, suffused with many a glow,
Of crimson, amber, violet dark :
Deep-dyed from each recesses' arc
The massy curtains fall, down-sweeping full and low.

And children sport there tameless. . . .
O happy, happy children ! happier far,
Possessed by unsought joyance free and aimless,
Than those tall masks with laboured pleasures are.
Through feast and dance they flit with shining faces,
Wreathing, unwreathing, in capricious chases,
With ringing laughters at their own swift wiles.
And yet a few, of strange grave mood,
Pace in shadowy solitude
Those many-columned labyrinthine aisles,
Which, opening through the oriels, link to zone
The gem-bright feast with dark grey caverned stone :
Though scarcely man or woman dares
That dusk instinct with lightning-glares,
Down whose far desert vistas waves and tempest moan.

The dome's broad-soaring lustres
Are poised upon one massive coil of gold ;
A ruby-crested serpent, starred with clusters
Of flashing gems ; its mighty bulk outrolled
In cyclic rest for ever ; while, consumed,
The End in the Beginning lies entombed :
Gorgeous the symbol of Eternity !
The grand pilastered sweep of wall
Lives and glows around the hall,
Divinely pictured ; earth and sea and sky
Have yielded the best grandeurs and delights
Of all their rolling seasons, days and nights,
To make these fields of space expand
Into an infinite Wonder-land
By their infinitude of dream-surpassing sights.

Sculptures serenely gracious
From out the flowing draperies' regal dyes,
Around the banquet-circle cool and spacious,
Gleam half-revealed to my enchanted eyes.
How can the festival flow undelayed .
Amidst the heavenly visions here displayed ?
How is it not rapt still, in breathless trance ? —
What scenes of rock, field, sky and sea,
Flung round in infinite harmony ! —
That wood where uncouth creatures sport and dance
In the weird dimness streaked with silvern rays :
That Eden quivering in the noontide blaze,
Nymphs languid in its fountain-bowers :
That sea-built City's domes and towers
Consuming in the Sunset's slow-breathed fiery haze !

" Evohe ! our high Palace !
We dance, we dance, with dance- exulting feet !
We grow immortal, draining bowl and chalice
Of this life-burning wine-blood nectar-sweet,
And banqueting on this ambrosial food !
While ever and anon, in rapturous mood
Outstealing from the revel, pair by pair
Hide far within some dim recess,
And, faint with fervid eagerness,
Unlock the wildering wealth of love they share !
What though black Night inspheres us, — storm and rain
Assaulting this fair Heaven with fury vain ?
Our music-storm poured strong and fast
Can balance well the outer blast,
And yon resplendent dome for evermore sustain ! "

With clash of wine-cups ringing,
So rose from flower-crowned feasters swaying there
The fervent Paean, swelled with choral singing
By many a gallant Knight and lady fair.
What strength of wisdom and sure self-reliance
Could make these bold to fling such gay defiance
To all the dreadful Powers of ancient Night ? —
These — pigmies swarming in the deep
Beneath their own dome's burning sweep ;
These — motes invisible beneath Heaven's height !
But ere was ended the impetuous song,
A tremor ran electric through the throng :
With pallid cheek and restless eye,
With urgent voices loud and high,
Fear made them more and more the vauntful strains prolong.
" Ha ! what a burst of thunder !
How the swift lightnings blanched our splendours pale !
Reweave the links .of dance, too long asunder !
Let loose again the music's lifeful gale ! . . .
But who are these, this never-bidden Pair,
Unnoticed while our joy-song dimmed the air ?
Who are these masked in such mysterious wise ?
What twain of all our company
Are missing from the revelry ? — .
They have assumed this melancholy guise
To shed fantastic wildness on our sport.
All here ! — then who are Ye, not of our court ?
Whence come ye ? wherefore thus invade
Our blissful brightness with the shade
Of sombre masks and robes, and joy-contemning port ? "

Silent and dark and solemn, —
While the mixed tumult of amazement died
In deep hushed awe, — firm-planted as the column
Of dusky-splendid porphyry at their side,
The Strangers stood, absorbing all the scene
With slow calm eyes and wonder-baffling mien ;
Two awful Spirits of the outer Night !
For age-like moments that ensued
The Saturnalian multitude
Was frozen into marble undelight ;
Continued numb with terror, — lost and drowned
In that weird breathless agony profound,
Like a Nightmare's stifling pain
Crushing, maddening heart and brain,
When utter, monstrous Silence yawns like death around.

Till life, resurgent, tingled
In burning blood through every shrunken vein ;
And one deep panting from all breasts commingled
To mark remission of that deadly strain
And over tension of the subtle strings
Whose music is the life of living things. . . .
Again with joy and power from secret caves
The full dance-harmonies outstreaming
Woke the Masquers from their dreaming,
Again they floated on the buoyant waves.
And all, it seemed, with fiercer yearning thirst,
Triumphant o'er the pallid swoon now burst,
Seized the fiery cup of bliss
Mantling high to greet their kiss ;
And in delirious draughts awe doubt and fear immerst.

The dim voluptuous languor
Of clouds surcharged with perfumes, slow and dense
Uprolled from precious burnings, veiled the clangour,
The harmonized confusion grown intense,
Reckless, and surging with a wild desire
Most keenly hungered when most fed, like fire ;
— Veiled the vast revel, even from their seeing,
Whose Bacchic frenzy broken loose
Was now the element profuse
That breathed it into such portentous being.
And few of all involved in this rich screen
Saw now the Strangers of mysterious mien ;
Whose dark intolerable eyes
Burned through the tumult and disguise,
Commanding like Omniscience all the wildered scene.

But power to me was given
To see, to pierce the gloomy robes austere,
Which (as our world's gross night hides Hell and
Heaven,
From mortals sick with longing, wild with fear)
Concealed these Two in undistinguished shade.
I saw the Vision of a Queen, arrayed
In midnight purple laced with snowy cloud,
Which as her bosom heaved shone far
Grand Queen ; dread Pythoness : her tall form bowed :
Transcendent beauty lost in desolate grace :
Her long dark hair thrown down about a face
So pale with awful mysteries
Of perfect love and woe and bliss,
That my own heart grew wild panting for her embrace.

But, Heaven be our protection
Against the Demon standing at Her side ! —
By what dread lunacies of blind affection,
Or monstrous Destiny to Her allied !
Infernal Horror ! — His rent forehead crowned
With hideous snakes writhing and interwound,
A many crested coil distinguishes ;
While through black cloud with red fire seared
His vast and fleshless frame appeared
Momently shuddering into Nothingness.
On His disfeatured face was stamped a grin
Of unimagined foulness, hate and sin,
Anguish, greed,' and rage and scorn,
And fiendish triumph most forlorn. . . .
Thus stood They side by side amidst the festal din.

Wilder and ever wilder
The revel surged beneath its glowing dome ;
And still the outside rage grew ever wilder,
As if all powers that have in Night their home,
Lightning and thunder, rain and stormy blast,
Held their wild revel in its sightless vast. . . .
Then those Two Shapes were moved from stony rest ;
And, keeping still their sable shroud,
Moved forward mingling with the crowd ;
Each with a strange keen eagerness represt.
He seized an aged yet carousing Knight ;
She kissed a young girl's forehead drooping white ;
These dancing linked in languid grace,
Those hurrying forth with swerveless pace,
Soon through a curtained portal passed from out our sight.

There rose shrill lamentation
From revellers fixed awaiting their return ;
Inexplicable grief and consternation
Possessed them, — dread yet keen desire to learn
The fate of those led forth so suddenly ;
And tremulous murmurings spread. . . . Then all might see
Those Shapes mysterious coming back alone. . . .
The Silence gave one reckless shout,
" The Knight was old and wearied out,
The Maid was sick and faint some hours agone :
These have but ushered them to rest and peace,
In sooth full kindly — But why therefore cease
The banquet and the dance ? Away !
Every moment of delay
Is squandered from our joy's brief unreturning lease."

The rude spell fearless-hearted
Swayed back the riant feast-joy's ebbing flood :
But one — the Lover of the girl departed —
Approached the Woman desperately, and sued
With passion such as will not be denied
For reunition with his promised bride.
She led him forth in Her divine embrace ;
And then returned without the boy,
Inspired by some exalted joy,
Which shone with holy splendour in Her face,
And bounded in Her port and heaved Her breast. . . .
But of the remnant every one represt
In silence of uneasy thought
The wonder that within him wrought :
The mystery had power to awe down open quest.

Thenceforth a voice of wailing,
Of grief that spurned all comfort, still increast,
For dear ones lost for ever, countervailing
The shouted songs and laughters of the feast ;
Whose wine ran like a mountain rill, which grows
In strong and swift abundance as it flows.
For the dread Strangers thinned the joyous rout ;
With stern and Fateful ministry
Removing almost momently
Man, woman, child, youth, maid, — selected out
By some inscrutable and lawless law.
Many to Her went willingly, I saw ;
And fascinated by the bliss
Of Her tender, holy kiss,
Welcomed with solemn joy their doom's mysterious awe.

But it was shameful, fearful,
To mark of those He gestured to His side
How many shrank, with ravings wildly tearful
Of idiot pleas ; while stalwart feastmen cried
" Grant us but one more hour of wine-fired glee !
Others may fail ; but we, lacchus ! we
Could mount high revels with the mounting sun."
. A few with high-wrought calmness grand
Took His stretched imperious hand,
And seemed, though then all powerless and undone,
To cope with His Omnipotence of Fate,
Yielding at once with undissembled hate.
But trembling wretches clustered near,
Already summoned forth by Fear
To time-destroying pangs no doom could aggravate.

O infinite tempest raging !
O awful Visitants from Heaven and Hell !
These mortals scorn and mock your dark presaging,
And wreak high feast-strains on their own deep knell.
See, through the clouds of incense wildly glancing,
What Moanads with wild cries are wildly dancing !
All masks off-torn, their white limbs flash and shine,

Dishevelled tresses, wanton curls,
A-flame with flowers and dripping crimson wine,
Brush naked bosoms with their fiery trace, —
White, perfect breasts, full-swelled to the embrace
Which those wild eyes of humid light
Fiercely passionate now invite : —
The Palace, through their whirlwind, seems- to reel in space.

Alas, how sad and dreary
Waned the whole scene there as the Night grew late !
When many of the Masquers, sick and weary,
Lay longing that those Ministers of Fate
Would choose them for removal : when of all
Whom They had taken from the festival
No one returned ; though mourners fiercely craved
The never answering Shapes of Black
To bring them, but a moment, back,
And on the threshold of the Night-storm waved
Their feeble torches, quenched as soon as lit,
Seeking lost darlings through the Infinite :
And when at times some dreadful ghost,
Imaging the loved and lost,
Would through the startled feast with bodeful gestures

The lamps were quickly failing ;
The pictures were weird shadows on the wall ;
In the grey stone-cold dawn-gleams unprevailing
The draperies seemed a vast funereal pall
Flapping about the corpselike sculptures wan :
The floor, the cupola which glimmering shone,
The rain-dark marbles, in the tempest thrilled :
Where late the noble feast was spread
Lay scattered flower-blooms dim and dead,
'Mid stains of sullen-oozing wine outspilled
From urns and goblets shattered and o'erthrown,
And fragments in a sick confusion strown ;
And lost in all the ghastly waste,
On couches tottering and displaced,
Flushed victims of the orgy, helpless, senseless, prone.

Yet evermore those Strangers
Went gathering in their harvest ; and no less,
As men who face to face with deadly dangers
Inebriate their terror and distress,
A few kept up the revel with a madness
Of reeling, shrieking glee which was not gladness.
Till — portents of the near approaching Doom —
Wailings, laughters, wild and fierce,
Through the storm-swung darkness pierce,
And spectres people the dull flickering gloom. . . .
A deep foreboding hush pervades the place :
To that dis-covered Twain in one wild race
All reel along the quaking floor :
There grows a mighty booming roar,
As I am rapt away into the outer space.

With storm and fire and thunder
These rearward billows of Night's Ocean dash
Against the Palace : it is rent asunder,
Rent, shattered, with an instantaneous crash.
On, undelayed, exultingly they sweep,
Whirling its fragments through their wild waste deep :
Precipitant in their stupendous sway
The glowing fragments crystalline,
Gold, jewels, precious marbles, shine
Like showering meteors ; high and far away,
Portentous, the Snake's blazing wheel is borne,
In dalliance with the lightnings whose fierce scorn
Smites into view wan wailing shades . . .
The whole Night-Chaos hurrying fades
Over the livid sea, before the dismal morn.

" O utter desolation !
O blighted beauty, splendour, triumph, bliss !
Alas, the gay and thoughtless congregation
Flung out unsheltered to the dark Abyss !
Bright Vision faded ! never more can shine
A joy-insphering Palace so divine."
Lamenting thus, I sank in sleep or swoon. . . .
I wake — The isle and ocean spread
Level and bare : but overhead
The solemn Heaven of sapphire-burning noon
Has bent its dome's immeasurable height ;
. A few calm clouds o'erfraught with living light
Melt in the quivering crystalline ;
Beneath the Eternal Sun divine,
Insphering half the world in glory and delight.

This is the Vision solely,
Trancing all aspiration with content !
Beauty all-perfect, blessedness all-holy,
Are veiled beyond that crystal firmament.
The breathless concave yearneth to the Hymn
Of all the Hosts of Stars and Seraphim;
The Hallelujah's raptured Monotone,
To whose vast swell the world-strewn Sea
Of Ether throbs eternally,
Circling the footstool of that nameless Throne
Whose veil's far shadow floods this noon with light.
— O self-sequestered Earth ! O gross, weak sight !
For which beneath such heavenly day
Yawneth fathomless for aye
A spectre-haunted gulf of Sphere-completing Night.