Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 001.djvu/293
Where the eye cannot follow thee; but thine
Yet pierces downward, onward, or above,
With a pervading vision.Beautiful!
How beautiful is all this visible world!
How glorious in its action and itself!
But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we,
Half dust, half deity, alike unfit
To sink or soar, with our mixed essence make
A conflict of its elements, and breathe
The breath of degradation and of pride,
Contending with low wants and lofty will,
Till our mortality predominates,
And men are—what they name not to themselves,
And trust not to each other. Hark! the note,
[The shepherd's pipe in the distance is heard.
The natural music of the mountain reed—
For here the patriarchal days are not
A pastoral fable—pipes in the liberal air.
Mixed with the sweet bells of the sauntering herd;
My soul would drink those echoes.—Oh, that I were
The viewless spirit of a lovely sound,
A living voice, a breathing harmony,
A bodiless enjoyment—born and dying
With the blest tone which made me!"
He is then, when standing on the toppling cliff, seized with an irresistible desire to fling himself over, but a chamois-hunter very opportunely comes in, and by force prevents him from effecting his purpose. This intervention is, we think, altogether absurd. They descend from the cliff quietly together; and so the scene, very dully and unnaturally, comes to a conclusion. It has been remarked of suicides, that if they are hindered from committing the crime in the very mode which they have determined upon, the strong desire of death may continue upon them, and yet the miserable beings have no power to adopt a different scheme of destruction. If, therefore, Manfred had been suddenly forced away from cliff and precipice, we can suppose that he might, in another scene, have forborne his suicidal intentions; but it seems most unnatural, that he shall continue to descend cautiously the very rocks over which he had a moment before determined to fling himself, accept of assistance from the chamois-hunter, and exhibit every symptom of a person afraid of losing his footing, and tumbling down the crags. Besides, Manfred was not an ordinary character; and this extreme irresolution, after he had worked himself up to frenzy, is wholly inconsistent with his nature.
The first scene of the second act is in the chamois-hunter's cottage, and with the exception of the few lines formerly quoted, and some others, it is very unlike Lord Byron, for it is incredibly dull and spiritless; and the chamois-hunter, contrary to truth, nature, and reason, is a heavy, stupid, elderly man, without any conversational talents. The following lines, however, may redeem even a worse scene than this. Manfred speaks.
"Think'st thou existence doth depend on time?
It doth: but actions are our epochs. Mine
Have made my days and nights imperishable,
Endless, and all alike, as sands on the shore,
Innumerable atoms; and one desert,
Barren and cold, on which the wild waves break,
But nothing rests, save carcases and wrecks,
Rocks, and the salt-surf weeds of bitterness."
Scene second gives us Manfred's first interview with the Witch of the Alps, and he pours out his soul to her in a strain of very wild and empassioned poetry. Her appearance is described in a style different from the rest of the poem, and nothing can be more beautiful.
"Man. Beautiful Spirit! with thy hair of light
And dazzling eyes of glory, in whose form
The charms of Earth's least-mortal daughters grow
To an unearthly stature, in an essence
Of purer elements; while the hues of youth,—
Carnation'd like a sleeping infant's cheek,
Rock'd by the beating of her mother's heart,
Or the rose-tints which summer's twilight leaves
Upon the lofty glacier's virgin snow,
The blush of earth embracing with her heaven,—
Tinge thy celestial aspect, and make tame
The beauties of the sunbow which bends o'er thee.
Beautiful Spirit! in thy calm clear brow,
Wherein is glass'd serenity of soul,
Which of itself shows immortality,
I read that thou wilt pardon to a son
Of Earth, whom the abstruser powers permit
At times to commune with them if that he
Avail him of his spells to call thee thus,
And gaze on thee a moment."</poem?
The Witch, however, cannot do any thing for him, and is commanded to vanish, and the scene ends with a soliloquy. In this he says
<poem>"'I have one resource
Still in my science I can call the dead,
And ask them what it is we dread to be;
The sternest answer can but be the grave,
And that is nothing—if they answer not.'"