ARIEL IN THE CLOVEN PINE.

———

BY BAYARD TAYLOR.

———

Now the frosty stars are gone:

I have watched them, one by one,

Fainting on the shores of Dawn.

Round and full the glorious sun

Walks with level step the spray,

Through his vestibule of Day,

While the wolves that howled anon

Slink to dens and coverts foul,

Guarded by the demon owl,

Who, last night, with mocking croon

Wheeled athwart the chilly moon,

And with eyes that blankly glared

On my direful torment stared.

The lark is flickering in the light;

Still the nightingale doth sing—

All the isle, alive with Spring,

Lies, a jewel of delight

On the blue sea’s heaving breast:

Not a breath from out the West,

But some balmy smell doth bring

From the sprouting myrtle buds,

Or from meadows wide, that lie

Each a green and dazzling sky,

Paved with yellow cowslip-stars,

Cloud-like, crossed by roseate bars

Of the bloomy almond woods,

And lit, like heaven, with fairest sheen

Of the sun that hangs between.

All is life that I can spy,

To the farthest sea and sky,

And my own the only pain

Within this ring of Tyrrhene main.

In the gnarled and cloven Pine

Where that hell-born hag did chain me,

All this orb of cloudless shine,

All this youth in Earth’s old veins

Tingling with the Spring’s sweet wine,

With a sharper torment pain me.

Pansies, in soft April rains

And April’s sun, from Thea’s lap

Fill their stalks with honeyed sap,

But the sluggish blood she brings

To the tough Pine’s hundred rings,

Closer locks their cruel hold,

Closer draws the scaly bark

Round my prison, lightning-riven;

So when Winter, wild and dark,

Vexes wave and writhing wold

And with murk vapor swathes the heaven,

I must feel the vile bat creep

In my narrow cleft, to sleep.

By this coarse and alien state

Is my dainty essence wronged;

The fine sense that erst belonged

To my nature, chafes at Fate,

Till the happier elves I hate,

Who in moonlight dances turn

Underneath the palmy fern,

Or in light and twinkling bands

Follow on with linked hands

To the Ocean’s yellow sands.

The primrose-bells each morning ope

In their cool, deep beds of grass;

Violets make the airs that pass

Tell-tales of their fragrant slope.

I can see them where they spring

Never brushed by fairy wing.

All those corners I can spy

In the island’s solitude,

Where the dew is never dry,

Nor the miser bees intrude.

Cups of rarest hue are there,

Full of perfumed wine undrained—

Mushroom banquets, ne’er profaned,

Canopied by maiden-hair.

Pearls I see upon the sands,

Never touched by other hands,

And the rainbow bubbles shine

On the ridged and frothy brine,

Tenantless of voyager

Till they burst in vacant air.

O the songs that sung might be

And the mazy dances woven,

Had that witch ne’er crossed the sea

And the Pine been never cloven!

Many years my direst pain

Has made the wave-rocked isle complain.

Winds, that from the Cyclades

Came, to ruffle with foul riot

Round its shore’s enchanted quiet,

Bore my waitings on the seas;

Sorrowing birds in Autumn went

Through the world with my lament.

Still the bitter fate is mine,

All delight unshared to see,

Smarting in the cloven Pine,

While I wait the tardy axe

Which, perchance, shall set me free

From the damned witch, Sycorax.