They strove to pay their willing duty 23. Ah, Wanton!" cried the Glendoveer, 66 No power Choose thou some idler breast; For these are proof, by nobler thoughts possessed. Go, to thy plains of Matra go, And string again thy broken bow!" 24. Rightly Ereenia spake; and ill had thoughts Of earthly love beseemed the sanctuary Where Kailyal had been wafted, that the Soul Of her dead Mother there might strengthen her, Feeding her with the milk of heavenly lore, And influxes of Heaven imbue her heart With hope and faith and holy fortitude Against the evil day. Here rest awhile In peace, O Father! marked for misery Above all sons of men; O Daughter! doomed For sufferings and for trials above all Of women; - yet both favored, both beloved By all good Powers, rest here awhile in peace. XI. THE ENCHANTRESS. 1. WIEN from the sword, by arm angelic driven, Foul Arvalan fled howling, wild in pain, His thin, essential spirit, rent and riven With wounds, united soon and healed again; Backward the accursed turned his eye in flight, Remindful of revengeful thoughts even then, And saw where, gliding through the evening light, The Ship of Heaven sailed upward through the sky, Then, like a meteor, vanished from his sight. Where should he follow? Vainly might he try To trace through trackless air its rapid course; Nor dared he that angelic arm defy, Still sore and writhing from its dreaded force. 2. Should he the lust of vengeance lay aside? Too long had Arvalan in ill been trained; Nursed up in power and tyranny and pride, His soul the ignominious thought disdained. Or to his mighty Father should he go, Complaining of defeature twice sustained, And ask new powers to meet the immortal foe? Repulse he feared not; but he feared rebuke, And shamed to tell him of his overthrow. There dwelt a dread Enchantress in a nook Obscure; old helpmate she to him had been, Lending her aid in many a secret sin; And there, for counsel, now his way he took. 3. She was a woman whose unlovely youth, Even like a cankered rose which none will cull, Had withered on the stalk; her heart was full Of passions which had found no natural scope, – Feelings which there had grown, but ripened not, Desires unsatisfied, abortive hope, Repinings which provoked vindictive thought: These restless elements for ever wrought, Fermenting in her with perpetual stir; And thus, her spirit to all evil moved, She hated men because they loved not her, And hated women because they were loved. And thus, in wrath and hatred and despair, She tempted Hell to tempt her, and resigned Her body to the Demons of the Air, Wicked and wanton fiends, who where they will Wander abroad, still seeking to do ill, And take whatever vacant form they find, Carcass of man or beast that life hath left, Foul instrument for them of fouler mind. To these the Witch her wretched body gave, So they would wreak her vengeance on mankind, She thus at once their mistress and their slave; And they, to do such service nothing loath, Obeyed her bidding, slaves and masters both. 4. So from this cursed intercourse she caught Contagious power of mischief, and was taught Such secrets as are damnable to guess. Is there a child whose little lovely ways Might win all hearts, on whom his parents gaze Till they shed tears of joy and tenderness? Oh, hide him from that Witch's withering sight! Oh, hide him from the eye of Lorrinite! Her look hath crippling in it, and her curse All plagues which on mortality can light: Death is his doom if she behold; or, worse, Diseases loathsome and incurable, And inward sufferings that no tongue can tell. 5. Woe was to him on whom that eye of hate Was bent; for, certain as the stroke of Fate, It did its mortal work; nor human arts Could save the unhappy wretch, her chosen prey: For, gazing, she consumed his vital parts, Eating his very core of life away. The wine which from yon wounded palm on high Fills yonder gourd, as slowly it distils, Grows sour at once if Lorrinite pass by. The deadliest worm, from which all creatures fly, Fled from the deadlier venom of her eye; The babe unborn, within its mother's womb, Started and trembled when the Witch came nigh; And, in the silent chambers of the tomb, Death shuddered her unholy tread to hear; And from the dry and mouldering bones did fear Force a cold sweat, when Lorrinite was near. 6. Power made her haughty: by ambition fired, Ere long to mightier mischiefs she aspired. The Calis, who o'er cities rule unseen, Each in her own domain a Demon Queen, And there adored with blood and human life, They knew her; and, in their accurst employ, She stirred up neighboring States to mortal strife. Sani, the dreadful God, who rides abroad Upon the King of the Ravens, to destroy The offending sons of men, when his four hands Were weary with their toil, would let her do His work of vengeance upon guilty lands; And Lorrinite, at his commandment, knew When the ripe earthquake should be loosed, and where To point its course. And, in the baleful air, The pregnant seeds of death he bade her strew, All deadly plagues and pestilence to brew. The Locusts were her army; and their bands, Where'er she turned her skinny finger, flew. The floods in ruin rolled at her commands; And when, in time of drought, the husbandman Beheld the gathered rain about to fall, Her breath would drive it to the desert sands, While in the marshes' parched and gaping soil |