Mardi And a Voyage Thither II
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MARDI: AND A VOYAGE THITHER
“I mistrusted it,” sighed Yoomy; “an imprisoned island! full of uncomplaining woes: like many others we must have glided by, unheedingly. Yet of them have I heard. This isle many pass, marking its outward brightness, but dreaming not of the sad secrets here embowered. Haunt of the hopeless! In those inland woods brood Mardians who have tasted Mardi, and found it bitter – the draught so sweet to others! – maidens whose unimparted bloom has cankered in the bud; and children, with eyes averted from life’s dawn – like those new-oped morning blossoms which, foreseeing storms, turn and close.”
“Yoomy’s rendering of the truth,” said Mohi.
“Why land, then?” said Media. “No merry man of sense – no demi-god like me, will do it. Let’s away; let’s see all that’s pleasant, or that seems so, in our circuit, and, if possible, shun the sad.”
“Then we have circled not the round reef wholly,” said Babbalanja, “but made of it a segment. For this is far from being the first sad land, my lord, that we have slighted at your instance.”
“No more. I will have no gloom. A chorus! there, ye paddlers! spread all your sails; ply paddles; breeze up, merry winds!”
And so, in the saffron sunset, we neared another shore.
A gloomy-looking land! black, beetling crags, rent by volcanic clefts; ploughed up with water-courses, and dusky with charred woods. The beach was strewn with scoria and cinders; in dolorous soughs, a chill wind blew; wails issued from the caves; and yellow, spooming surges, lashed the moaning strand.
“Shall we land?” said Babbalanja.
“Not here,” cried Yoomy; “no Yillah here.”
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“No,” said Media. “This is another of those lands far better to avoid.”
“Know ye not,” said Mohi, “that here are the mines of King Klanko, whose scourged slaves, toiling in their pits, so nigh approach the volcano’s bowels, they hear its rumblings? ‘Yet they must work on,’ cries Klanko, ‘the mines still yield!’ And daily his slaves’ bones are brought above ground, mixed with the metal masses.”
“Set all sail there, men! away!”
“My lord,” said Babbalanja; “still must we shim the unmitigated evil; and only view the good; or evil so mixed therewith, the mixture’s both?”
Half vailed in misty clouds, the harvest-moon now rose; and in that pale and haggard light, all sat silent; each man in his own secret mood: best knowing his own thoughts.
CHAPTER LXXIX
BABBALANJA AT THE FULL
OF THE MOON
“Ho, mortals! Go we to a funeral, that our paddles seem thus muffled? Up heart, Taji! or does that witch Hautia haunt thee? Be a demi-god once more, and laugh. Her flowers are not barbs; and the avengers’ arrows are too blunt to slay. Babbalanja! Mohi! Yoomy! up heart! up heart! – By Oro! I will debark the whole company on the next land we meet. No tears for me. Ha, ha! let us laugh. Ho, Vee–Vee! awake; quick, boy – some wine! and let us make glad, beneath the glad moon. Look! it is stealing forth from its clouds. Perdition to Hautia! Long lives, and merry ones to ourselves! Taji, my charming fellow, here’s to you: – May your heart be a stone! Ha, ha! – will nobody join me? My laugh is lonely as his who laughed in his tomb. Come, laugh; will no one quaff wine, I say? See! the round moon is abroad.”
“Say you so, my lord? then for one, I am with you;” cried Babbalanja. “Fill me a brimmer. Ah! but this wine leaps through me like a panther. Ay, let us laugh: let us roar: let us yell! What, if I was sad but just now? Life is an April day, that both laughs and weeps in a breath. But whoso is wise, laughs when he can. Men fly from a groan; but run to a laugh. Vee– Vee! your gourd. My lord, let me help you. Ah, how it sparkles! Cups, cups, Vee–Vee, more cups! Here, Taji, take that: Mohi,
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take that: Yoomy, take that. And now let us drown away grief. Ha! ha! the house of mourning, is deserted, though of old good cheer kept the funeral guests; and so keep I mine; here I sit by my dead, and replenish your wine cups. Old Mohi, your cup: Yoomy, yours: ha! ha! let us laugh, let us scream! Weeds are put off at a fair; no heart bursts but in secret; it is good to laugh, though the laugh be hollow; and wise to make merry, now and for aye. Laugh, and make friends: weep, and they go. Women sob, and are rid of their grief: men laugh, and retain it. There is laughter in heaven, and laughter in hell. And a deep thought whose language is laughter. Though wisdom be wedded to woe, though the way thereto is by tears, yet all ends in a shout. But wisdom wears no weeds; woe is more merry than mirth; ’tis a shallow grief that is sad. Ha! ha! how demoniacs shout; how all skeletons grin; we all die with a rattle. Laugh! laugh! Are the cherubim grave? Humor, thy laugh is divine; whence, mirthmaking idiots have been revered; and therefore may I. Ho! let us be gay, if it be only for an hour, and Death hand us the goblet. Vee–Vee! bring on your gourds! Let us pledge each other in bumpers! – let us laugh, laugh, laugh it out to the last. All sages have laughed – let us; Bardianna laughed, let us; DemorkritI laughed – let us: Amoree laughed – let us; Rabeelee roared – let us; the hyenas grin, the jackals yell – let us. – But you don’t laugh, my lord? laugh away!”
“No, thank you, Azzageddi, not after that infernal fashion; better weep.”
“He makes me crawl all over, as if I were an ant-hill,” said Mohi.
“He’s mad, mad, mad!” cried Yoomy.
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“Ay, mad, mad, mad! – mad as the mad fiend that rides me! – But come, sweet minstrel, wilt list to a song? – We madmen are all poets, you know: – Ha! ha! –
Stars laugh in the sky: Oh fugle-fI I
The waves dimple below: Oh fugle-fo!
“The wind strikes her dulcimers; the groves give a shout; the hurricane is only an hysterical laugh; and the lightning that blasts, blasts only in play. We must laugh or we die; to laugh is to live. Not to laugh is to have the tetanus. Will you weep? then laugh while you weep. For mirth and sorrow are kin; are published by identical nerves. Go, Yoomy: go study anatomy: there is much to be learned from the dead, more than you may learn from the living and I am dead though I live; and as soon dissect myself as another; I curiously look into my secrets: and grope under my ribs. I have found that the heart is not whole, but divided; that it seeks a soft cushion whereon to repose; that it vitalizes the blood; which else were weaker than water: I have found that we can not live without hearts; though the heartless live longest. Yet hug your hearts, ye handful that have them; ’tis a blessed inheritance! Thus, thus, my lord, I run on; from one pole to the other; from this thing to that. But so the great world goes round, and in one Somerset, shows the sun twenty-five thousand miles of a landscape!”
At that instant, down went the fiery full-moon, and the Dog–Star; and far down into Media, a TivolI of wine.
CHAPTER LXXX
MORNING
Life or death, weal or woe, the sun stays not his course. On: over battle-field and bower; over tower, and town, he speeds – peers in at births, and death-beds; lights up cathedral, mosque, and pagan shrine; – laughing over all; – a very Democritus in the sky; and in one brief day sees more than any pilgrim in a century’s round.
So, the sun; nearer heaven than we: – with what mind, then, may blessed Oro downward look.
It was a purple, red, and yellow East; – streaked, and crossed. And down from breezy mountains, robust and ruddy Morning came – a plaided Highlander, waving his plumed bonnet to the isles.
Over the neighboring groves the larks soared high; and soaring, sang in jubilees; while across our bows, between two isles, a mighty moose swam stately as a seventy-four; and backward tossed his antlered wilderness in air.
Just bounding from fresh morning groves, with the brine he mixed the dew of leaves – his antlers dripping on the swell, that rippled before his brown and bow-like chest.
“Five hundred thousand centuries since,” said Babbalanja, “this same sight was seen. With Oro, the sun is coeternal; and the same life that moves that moose, animates alike the
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sun and Oro. All are parts of One. In me, in me, flit thoughts participated by the beings peopling all the stars. Saturn, and Mercury, and Mardi, are brothers, one and all; and across their orbits, to each other talk, like souls. Of these things what chapters might be writ! Oh! that flesh can not keep pace with spirit. Oh! that these myriad germ-dramas in me, should so perish hourly, for lack of power mechanic. – Worlds pass worlds in space, as men, men – in thoroughfares; and after periods of thousand years, cry: – “Well met, my friend, again!” – To me to me, they talk in mystic music; I hear them think through all their zones. – Hail, furthest worlds! and all the beauteous beings in ye! Fan me, sweet Zenora! with thy twilight wings! – Ho! let’s voyage to Aldebaran. – Ha! indeed, a ruddy world! What a buoyant air! Not like to Mardi, this. Ruby columns: minarets of amethyst: diamond domes! Who is this? – a god? What a lake-like brow! transparent as the morning air. I see his thoughts like worlds revolving – and in his eyes – like unto heavens – soft falling stars are shooting. – How these thousand passing wings winnow away my breath: – I faint: – back, back to some small asteroid. – Sweet being! if, by Mardian word I may address thee – speak! – ‘I bear a soul in germ within me; I feel the first, faint trembling, like to a harp-string, vibrate in my inmost being. Kill me, and generations die.’ – So, of old, the unbegotten lived within the virgin; who then loved her God, as new-made mothers their babes ere born. Oh, Alma, Alma, Alma! – Fangs off, fiend! – will that name ever lash thee into foam? – Smite not my face so, forked flames!”
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“Babbalanja! Babbalanja! rouse, man! rouse! Art in hell and damned, that thy sinews so snake-like coil and twist all over thee? Thy brow is black as Ops! Turn, turn! see yonder moose!” “Hail! mighty brute! – thou feelest not these things: never canst thou be damned. Moose! would thy soul were mine; for if that scorched thing, mine, be immortal – so thine; and thy life hath not the consciousness of death. I read profound placidity – deep – million – violet fathoms down, in that soft, pathetic, woman eye! What is man’s shrunk form to thine, thou woodland majesty? – Moose, moose! – my soul is shot again –
Oh, Oro! Oro!”
“He falls!” cried Media.
“Mark the agony in his waning eye,” said Yoomy; – “alas, poor Babbalanja! Is this thing of madness conscious to thyself? If ever thou art sane again, wilt thou have reminiscences? Take my robe: – here, I strip me to cover thee and all thy woes. Oro! by this, thy being’s side, I kneel: – grant death or happiness to Babbalanja!”
CHAPTER LXXXI
L’ULTIMA SERA
Thus far, through myriad islands, had we searched: of all, no one pen may write: least, mine; – and still no trace of Yillah.
But though my hopes revived not from their ashes; yet, so much of MardI had we searched, it seemed as if the long pursuit must, ere many moons, be ended; whether for weal or woe, my frenzy sometimes reeked not.
After its first fair morning flushings, all that day was overcast. We sailed upon an angry sea, beneath an angry sky. Deep scowled on deep; and in dun vapors, the blinded sun went down, unseen; though full toward the West our three prows were pointed; steadfast as three printed points upon the com- pass-card.
“When we set sail from Odo, ’twas a glorious morn in spring,” said Yoomy; “toward the rising sun we steered. But now, beneath autumnal night-clouds, we hasten to its setting.”
“How now?” cried Media; “why is the minstrel mournful? – He whose place it is to chase away despondency: not be its minister.”
“Ah, my lord, so thou thinkest. But better can my verses soothe the sad, than make them light of heart. Nor are we min-
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strels so gay of soul as MardI deems us. The brook that sings the sweetest, murmurs through the loneliest woods:
The isles hold thee not, thou departed! From thy bower, now issues no lay: – In vain we recall perished warblings:
Spring birds, to far climes, wing their way!”
As Yoomy thus sang; unmindful of the lay, with paddle plying, in low, pleasant tones, thus hummed to himself our bowsman, a gamesome wight: –
Ho! merrily ho! we paddlers sail! Ho! over sea-dingle, and dale! – Our pulses fly,
Our hearts beat high, Ho! merrily, merrily, ho!
But a sudden splash, and a shrill, gurgling sound, like that of a fountain subsiding, now broke upon the air. Then all was still, save the rush of the waves by our keels.
“Save him! Put back!”
From his elevated seat, the merry bowsman, too gleefully reaching forward, had fallen into the lagoon.
With all haste, our speeding canoes were reversed; but not till we had darted in upon another darkness than that in which the bowsman fell.
As, blindly, we groped back, deep Night dived deeper down in the sea.
“Drop paddles all, and list.”
Holding their breath, over the six gunwales all now leaned; but the only moans were the wind’s.
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