Glion?——Ah, twenty years, it cuts[27]
All meaning from a name!
White houses prank where once were huts.
Glion, but not the same!
And yet I know not! All unchanged
The turf, the pines, the sky!
The hills in their old order ranged;
The lake, with Chillon by!
And, 'neath those chestnut-trees, where stiff
And stony mounts the way,
The crackling husk-heaps burn, as if
I left them yesterday!
Across the valley, on that slope,
The huts of Avant shine!
Its pines, under their branches, ope
Ways for the pasturing kine.
Full-foaming milk-pails, Alpine fare,
Sweet heaps of fresh-cut grass,
Invite to rest the traveller there
Before he climb the pass—
The gentian-flower'd pass, its crown
With yellow spires aflame;[28]
Whence drops the path to Allière down,
And walls where Byron came,[29]
By their green river, who doth change
His birth-name just below;
Orchard, and croft, and full-stored grange
Nursed by his pastoral flow.
But stop!—to fetch back thoughts that stray
Beyond this gracious bound,
The cone of Jaman, pale and grey,
See, in the blue profound!
Ah, Jaman! delicately tall
Above his sun-warm'd firs—
What thoughts to me his rocks recall,
What memories he stirs!
And who but thou must be, in truth,
Obermann! with me here?
Thou master of my wandering youth,
But left this many a year!
Yes, I forget the world's work wrought,
Its warfare waged with pain;
An eremite with thee, in thought
Once more I slip my chain,
And to thy mountain-chalet come,
And lie beside its door,
And hear the wild bee's Alpine hum,
And thy sad, tranquil lore!
Again I feel the words inspire
Their mournful calm; serene,
Yet tinged with infinite desire
For all that might have been—
The harmony from which man swerved
Made his life's rule once more!
The universal order served,
Earth happier than before!
—While thus I mused, night gently ran
Down over hill and wood.
Then, still and sudden, Obermann
On the grass near me stood.
Those pensive features well I knew,
On my mind, years before,
Imaged so oft! imaged so true!
—A shepherd's garb he wore,
A mountain-flower was in his hand,
A book was in his breast.
Bent on my face, with gaze which scann'd
My soul, his eyes did rest.
"And is it thou," he cried, "so long
Held by the world which we
Loved not, who turnest from the throng
Back to thy youth and me?
"And from thy world, with heart opprest,
Choosest thou now to turn?—
Ah me! we anchorites read things best,
Clearest their course discern!
"Thou fledst me when the ungenial earth,
Man's work-place, lay in gloom.
Return'st thou in her hour of birth,
Of hopes and hearts in bloom?
"Perceiv'st thou not the change of day?
Ah! Carry back thy ken,
What, some two thousand years! Survey
The world as it was then!
"Like ours it look'd in outward air.
Its head was clear and true,
Sumptuous its clothing, rich its fare,
No pause its action knew;
"Stout was its arm, each thew and bone
Seem'd puissant and alive—
But, ah! its heart, its heart was stone,
And so it could not thrive!
"On that hard Pagan world disgust
And secret loathing fell.
Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell.
"In his cool hall, with haggard eyes,
The Roman noble lay;
He drove abroad, in furious guise,
Along the Appian way.
"He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,
And crown'd his hair with flowers—
No easier nor no quicker pass'd
The impracticable hours.
"The brooding East with awe beheld
Her impious younger world.
The Roman tempest swell'd and swell'd,
And on her head was hurl'd.
"The East bow'd low before the blast
In patient, deep disdain;
She let the legions thunder past,
And plunged in thought again.
"So well she mused, a morning broke
Across her spirit grey;
A conquering, new-born joy awoke,
And fill'd her life with day.
"'Poor world,' she cried, 'so deep accurst,
That runn'st from pole to pole
To seek a draught to slake thy thirst—
Go, seek it in thy soul!
"She heard it, the victorious West,
In crown and sword array'd!
She felt the void which mined her breast,
She shiver'd and obey'd.
"She veil'd her eagles, snapp'd her sword,
And laid her sceptre down;
Her stately purple she abhorr'd,
And her imperial crown.
"She broke her flutes, she stopp'd her sports,
Her artists could not please;
She tore her books, she shut her courts,
She fled her palaces;
"Lust of the eye and pride of life
She left it all behind,
And hurried, torn with inward strife,
The wilderness to find.
"Tears wash'd the trouble from her face!
She changed into a child!
'Mid weeds and wrecks she stood—a place
Of ruin—but she smiled!
"Oh, had I lived in that great day,
How had its glory new
Fill'd earth and heaven, and caught away
My ravish'd spirit too!
"No thoughts that to the world belong
Had stood against the wave
Of love which set so deep and strong
From Christ's then open grave.
"No cloister-floor of humid stone
Had been too cold for me.
For me no Eastern desert lone
Had been too far to flee.
"No lonely life had pass'd too slow,
When I could hourly scan
Upon his Cross, with head sunk low,
That nail'd, thorn-crowned Man!
"Could see the Mother with her Child
Whose tender winning arts
Have to his little arms beguiled
So many wounded hearts!
"And centuries came and ran their course,
And unspent all that time
Still, still went forth that Child's dear force,
And still was at its prime.
"Ay, ages long endured his span
Of life—'tis true received—
That gracious Child, that thorn-crown'd Man!
—He lived while we believed.
"While we believed, on earth he went,
And open stood his grave.
Men call'd from chamber, church, and tent;
And Christ was by to save.
"Now he is dead! Far hence he lies
In the lorn Syrian town;
And on his grave, with shining eyes,
The Syrian stars look down.
"In vain men still, with hoping new,
Regard his death-place dumb,
And say the stone is not yet to,
And wait for words to come.
"Ah, o'er that silent sacred land,
Of sun, and arid stone,
And crumbling wall, and sultry sand,
Sounds now one word alone!
"Unduped of fancy, henceforth man
Must labour!—must resign
His all too human creeds, and scan
Simply the way divine!
"But slow that tide of common thought,
Which bathed our life, retired;
Slow, slow the old world wore to nought,
And pulse by pulse expired.
"Its frame yet stood without a breach
When blood and warmth were fled;
And still it spake its wonted speech—
But every word was dead.
"And oh, we cried, that on this corse
Might fall a freshening storm!
Rive its dry bones, and with new force
A new-sprung world inform!
"—Down came the storm! O'er France it pass'd
In sheets of scathing fire;
All Europe felt that fiery blast,
And shook as it rush'd by her.
"Down came the storm! In ruins fell
The worn-out world we knew.
It pass'd, that elemental swell!
Again appear'd the blue;
"The sun shone in the new-wash'd sky,
And what from heaven saw he?
Blocks of the past, like icebergs high,
Float on a rolling sea!
"Upon them plies the race of man
All it before endeavour'd;
'Ye live,' I cried, 'ye work and plan,
And know not ye are sever'd!
"'Poor fragments of a broken world
Whereon men pitch their tent!
Why were ye too to death not hurl'd
When your world's day was spent?
"'That glow of central fire is done
Which with its fusing flame
Knit all your parts, and kept you one—
But ye, ye are the same!
"'The past, its mask of union on,
Had ceased to live and thrive.
The past, its mask of union gone,
Say, is it more alive?
"'Your creeds are dead, your rites are dead,
Your social order too!
Where tarries he, the Power who said:
See, I make all things new?
"'The millions suffer still, and grieve,
And what can helpers heal
With old-world cures men half believe
For woes they wholly feel?
"'And yet men have such need of joy!
But joy whose grounds are true;
And joy that should all hearts employ
As when the past was new.
"'Ah, not the emotion of that past,
Its common hope, were vain!
Some new such hope must dawn at last,
Or man must toss in pain.
"'But now the old is out of date,
The new is not yet born,
And who can be alone elate,
While the world lies forlorn?'
"Then to the wilderness I fled.—
There among Alpine snows
And pastoral huts I hid my head,
And sought and found repose.
"It was not yet the appointed hour.
Sad, patient, and resign'd,
I watch'd the crocus fade and flower,
I felt the sun and wind.
"The day I lived in was not mine,
Man gets no second day.
In dreams I saw the future shine—
But ah! I could not stay!
"Action I had not, followers, fame;
I pass'd obscure, alone.
The after-world forgets my name,
Nor do I wish it known.
"Composed to bear, I lived and died,
And knew my life was vain,
With fate I murmur not, nor chide,
At Sèvres by the Seine
"(If Paris that brief flight allow)
My humble tomb explore!
It bears: Eternity, be thou
My refuge! and no more.
"But thou, whom fellowship of mood
Did make from haunts of strife
Come to my mountain-solitude,
And learn my frustrate life;
"O thou, who, ere thy flying span
Was past of cheerful youth,
Didst find the solitary man
And love his cheerless truth—
"Despair not thou as I despair'd,
Nor be cold gloom thy prison!
Forward the gracious hours have fared,
And see! the sun is risen!
"He breaks the winter of the past;
A green, new earth appears.
Millions, whose life in ice lay fast,
Have thoughts, and smiles, and tears.
"What though there still need effort, strife?
Though much be still unwon?
Yet warm it mounts, the hour of life!
Death's frozen hour is done!
"The world's great order dawns in sheen,
After long darkness rude,
Divinelier imaged, clearer seen,
With happier zeal pursued.
"With hope extinct and brow composed
I mark'd the present die;
Its term of life was nearly closed,
Yet it had more than I.
"But thou, though to the world's new hour
Thou come with aspect marr'd,
Shorn of the joy, the bloom, the power
Which best befits its bard—
"Though more than half thy years be past,
And spent thy youthful prime;
Though, round thy firmer manhood cast,
Hang weeds of our sad time
"Whereof thy youth felt all the spell,
And traversed all the shade—
Though late, though dimm'd, though weak, yet tell
Hope to a world new-made!
"Help it to fill that deep desire,
The want which rack'd our brain,
Consumed our heart with thirst like fire,
Immedicable pain;
"Which to the wilderness drove out
Our life, to Alpine snow,
And palsied all our word with doubt,
And all our work with woe—
"What still of strength is left, employ
That end to help attain:
One common wave of thought and joy
Lifting mankind again!"
—The vision ended. I awoke
As out of sleep, and no
Voice moved;—only the torrent broke
The silence, far below.
Soft darkness on the turf did lie.
Solemn, o'er hut and wood,
In the yet star-sown nightly sky,
The peak of Jaman stood.
Still in my soul the voice I heard
Of Obermann!—--away
I turned; by some vague impulse stirr'd,
Along the rocks of Naye
Past Sonchaud's piny flanks I gaze
And the blanch'd summit bare
Of Malatrait, to where in haze
The Valais opens fair,
And the domed Velan, with his snows,
Behind the upcrowding hills,
Doth all the heavenly opening close
Which the Rhone's murmur fills;—
And glorious there, without a sound,
Across the glimmering lake,
High in the Valais-depth profound,
I saw the morning break.
The events on which the action of the drama turns belong to the period
of transition from the heroic and fabulous to the human and historic age of
Greece. The doings of the hero Hercules, the ancestor of the Messenian
Æpytus, belong to fable; but the invasion of Peloponnesus by the Dorians
under chiefs claiming to be descended from Hercules, and their settlement
in Argos, Lacedæmon, and Messenia, belong to history. Æpytus is
descended on the father's side from Hercules, Perseus, and the kings of
Argos; on the mother's side from Pelasgus, and the aboriginal kings of
Arcadia. Callisto, the daughter of the wicked Lycaon, and the mother,
by Zeus, of Arcas, from whom the Arcadians took their name, was the
granddaughter of Pelasgus. The birth of Arcas brought upon Callisto the
anger of the virgin-goddess Artemis, whose service she followed: she was
changed into a she-bear, and in this form was chased by her own son,
grown to manhood. Zeus interposed, and the mother and son were
removed from the earth, and placed among the stars. Callisto became
the famous constellation of the Great Bear; her son became Arcturus,
Arctophylax, or Boötes. From this son of Callisto were descended Cypselus,
the maternal grandfather of Æpytus, and the children of Cypselus, Laias
and Merope.
The story of the life of Hercules, the paternal ancestor of Æpytus, is so
well known that there is no need to record it. The reader will remember
that, although entitled to the throne of Argos by right of descent from
Perseus and Danaus, and to the thrones of Sparta and Messenia by right
of conquest, Hercules yet passed his life in labours and wanderings, subjected
by the decree of fate to the commands of his kinsman, the feeble
and malignant Eurystheus. At his death he bequeathed to his offspring,
the Heracleidæ, his own claims to the kingdoms of Peloponnesus, and to
the persecution of Eurystheus. They at first sought shelter with Ceyx,
king of Trachis; he was too weak to protect them, and they then took
refuge at Athens. The Athenians refused to deliver them up at the
demand of Eurystheus; he invaded Attica, and a battle was fought near
Marathon, in which, after Macaria, a daughter of Hercules, had devoted
herself for the preservation of her house, Eurystheus fell, and the Heracleidæ
and their Athenian protectors were victorious. The memory of Macaria's
self-sacrifices was perpetuated by the name of a spring of water on the
plain of Marathon, the spring Macaria. The Heracleidæ then endeavoured
to effect their return to Peloponnesus. Hyllus, the eldest of them,
inquired of the oracle at Delphi respecting their return; he was told to
return by the narrow passage and in the third harvest. Accordingly, in
the third year from that time Hyllus led an army to the Isthmus of Corinth;
but there he was encountered by an army of Achaians and Arcadians, and
fell in single combat with Echemus, king of Tegea. Upon this defeat the
Heracleidæ retired to northern Greece; there, after much wandering, they
finally took refuge with Ægimius, king of the Dorians, who appears to have
been the fastest friend of their house, and whose Dorian warriors formed the
army which at last achieved their return. But, for a hundred years from
the date of their first attempt, the Heracleidæ were defeated in their successive
invasions of Peloponnesus. Cleolaus and Aristomachus, the son and
grandson of Hyllus, fell in unsuccessful expeditions. At length the sons
of Aristomachus, Temenus, Cresphontes, and Aristodemus, when grown up,
repaired to Delphi and taxed the oracle with the non-fulfilment of the
promise made to their ancestor Hyllus. But Apollo replied that his oracle
had been misunderstood; for that by the third harvest he had meant the
third generation, and by the narrow passage he had meant the straits of the
Corinthian Gulf. After this explanation the sons of Aristomachus built a
fleet at Naupactus; and finally, in the hundredth year from the death of
Hyllus and the eightieth from the fall of Troy, the invasion was again
attempted and was this time successful. The son of Orestes, Tisamenus,
who ruled both Argos and Lacedæmon, fell in battle; many of his vanquished
subjects left their homes and took refuge in Achaia.
The spoil was now to be divided among the conquerors. Aristodemus,
the youngest of the sons of Aristomachus, did not survive to enjoy his share.
He was slain at Delphi by the sons of Pylades and Electra, the kinsman,
through their mother, of the house of Agamemnon, that house which the
Heracleidæ with their Dorian army had dispossessed. The claims of
Aristodemus descended to his two sons, Procles and Eurysthenes, children
under the guardianship of their maternal uncle, Theras. Temenus, the
eldest of the sons of Aristomachus, took the kingdom of Argos. For the
two remaining kingdoms, that of Sparta and that of Messenia, his two
nephews, who were to rule jointly, and their uncle Cresphontes, had to
cast lots. Cresphontes wished to have the fertile Messenia, and induced
his brother to acquiesce in a trick which secured it to him. The lot of
Cresphontes and that of his two nephews were to be placed in a water-jar,
and thrown out. Messenia was to belong to him whose lot came out first.
With the connivance of Temenus, Cresphontes marked as his own lot a
pellet composed of baked clay, as the lot of his nephews, a pellet of
unbaked clay; the unbaked pellet was of course dissolved in the water,
while the brick pellet fell out alone. Messenia, therefore, was assigned to
Cresphontes.
Messenia was at this time ruled by Melanthus, a descendant of Neleus.
This ancestor, a prince of the great house of Æolus, had come from
Thessaly and succeeded to the Messenian throne on the failure of the
previous dynasty. Melanthus and his race were thus foreigners in Messenia
and were unpopular. His subjects offered little or no opposition to the
invading Dorians; Melanthus abandoned his kingdom to Cresphontes, and
retired to Athens.
Cresphontes married Merope, whose native country, Arcadia, was not
affected by the Dorian invasion. This marriage, the issue of which was
three sons, connected him with the native population of Peloponnesus. He
built a new capital of Messenia, Stenyclaros, and transferred thither, from
Pylos, the seat of government; he proposed, moreover, says Pausanias, to
divide Messenia into five states, and to confer on the native Messenians
equal privileges with their Dorian conquerors. The Dorians complained
that his administration unduly favoured the vanquished people; his chief
magnates, headed by Polyphontes, himself a descendant of Hercules,
formed a cabal against him, and he was slain with his two eldest sons.
The youngest son of Cresphontes, Æpytus, then an infant, was saved by his
mother, who sent him to her father, Cypselus, the king of Arcadia, under
whose protection he was brought up.
The drama begins at the moment when Æpytus, grown to manhood,
returns secretly to Messenia to take vengeance on his father's murderers.
At this period Temenus was no longer reigning at Argos; he had been
murdered by his sons, jealous of their brother-in-law, Deiphontes. The
sons of Aristodemus, Procles and Eurysthenes, at variance with their uncle
and ex-guardian, Theras, were reigning at Sparta.