Chapter Chapter 12 · Chapter XII

. Chapter XII

“Chained is the Spring. The night-wind bold

Blows over the hard earth;

Time is not more confused and cold,

Nor keeps more wintry mirth.

“Yet blow, and roll the world about;

Blow, Time—blow, winter’s Wind!

Through chinks of Time, heaven peepeth out,

And Spring the frost behind.”

G. E. M.

They who believe in the influences of the stars over the fates of men,

are, in feeling at least, nearer the truth than they who regard the

heavenly bodies as related to them merely by a common obedience to an

external law. All that man sees has to do with man. Worlds cannot be

without an intermundane relationship. The community of the centre of

all creation suggests an interradiating connection and dependence of

the parts. Else a grander idea is conceivable than that which is

already imbodied. The blank, which is only a forgotten life, lying

behind the consciousness, and the misty splendour, which is an

undeveloped life, lying before it, may be full of mysterious

revelations of other connexions with the worlds around us, than those

of science and poetry. No shining belt or gleaming moon, no red and

green glory in a self-encircling twin-star, but has a relation with the

hidden things of a man’s soul, and, it may be, with the secret history

of his body as well. They are portions of the living house wherein he

abides.

Through the realms of the monarch Sun

Creeps a world, whose course had begun,

On a weary path with a weary pace,

Before the Earth sprang forth on her race:

But many a time the Earth had sped

Around the path she still must tread,

Ere the elder planet, on leaden wing,

Once circled the court of the planet’s king.

There, in that lonely and distant star,

The seasons are not as our seasons are;

But many a year hath Autumn to dress

The trees in their matron loveliness;

As long hath old Winter in triumph to go

O’er beauties dead in his vaults below;

And many a year the Spring doth wear

Combing the icicles from her hair;

And Summer, dear Summer, hath years of June,

With large white clouds, and cool showers at noon:

And a beauty that grows to a weight like grief,

Till a burst of tears is the heart’s relief.

Children, born when Winter is king,

May never rejoice in the hoping Spring;

Though their own heart-buds are bursting with joy,

And the child hath grown to the girl or boy;

But may die with cold and icy hours

Watching them ever in place of flowers.

And some who awake from their primal sleep,

When the sighs of Summer through forests creep,

Live, and love, and are loved again;

Seek for pleasure, and find its pain;

Sink to their last, their forsaken sleeping,

With the same sweet odours around them creeping.

Now the children, there, are not born as the children are born in

worlds nearer to the sun. For they arrive no one knows how. A maiden,

walking alone, hears a cry: for even there a cry is the first

utterance; and searching about, she findeth, under an overhanging rock,

or within a clump of bushes, or, it may be, betwixt gray stones on the

side of a hill, or in any other sheltered and unexpected spot, a little

child. This she taketh tenderly, and beareth home with joy, calling

out, “Mother, mother”—if so be that her mother lives—“I have got a

baby—I have found a child!” All the household gathers round to

see;—“_Where is it? What is it like? Where did you find it?_” and

such-like questions, abounding. And thereupon she relates the whole

story of the discovery; for by the circumstances, such as season of the

year, time of the day, condition of the air, and such like, and,

especially, the peculiar and never-repeated aspect of the heavens and

earth at the time, and the nature of the place of shelter wherein it is

found, is determined, or at least indicated, the nature of the child

thus discovered. Therefore, at certain seasons, and in certain states

of the weather, according, in part, to their own fancy, the young women

go out to look for children. They generally avoid seeking them, though

they cannot help sometimes finding them, in places and with

circumstances uncongenial to their peculiar likings. But no sooner is a

child found, than its claim for protection and nurture obliterates all

feeling of choice in the matter. Chiefly, however, in the season of

summer, which lasts so long, coming as it does after such long

intervals; and mostly in the warm evenings, about the middle of

twilight; and principally in the woods and along the river banks, do

the maidens go looking for children just as children look for flowers.

And ever as the child grows, yea, more and more as he advances in

years, will his face indicate to those who understand the spirit of

Nature, and her utterances in the face of the world, the nature of the

place of his birth, and the other circumstances thereof; whether a

clear morning sun guided his mother to the nook whence issued the boy’s

low cry; or at eve the lonely maiden (for the same woman never finds a

second, at least while the first lives) discovers the girl by the

glimmer of her white skin, lying in a nest like that of the lark, amid

long encircling grasses, and the upward-gazing eyes of the lowly

daisies; whether the storm bowed the forest trees around, or the still

frost fixed in silence the else flowing and babbling stream.

After they grow up, the men and women are but little together. There is

this peculiar difference between them, which likewise distinguishes the

women from those of the earth. The men alone have arms; the women have

only wings. Resplendent wings are they, wherein they can shroud

themselves from head to foot in a panoply of glistering glory. By these

wings alone, it may frequently be judged in what seasons, and under

what aspects, they were born. From those that came in winter, go great

white wings, white as snow; the edge of every feather shining like the

sheen of silver, so that they flash and glitter like frost in the sun.

But underneath, they are tinged with a faint pink or rose-colour. Those

born in spring have wings of a brilliant green, green as grass; and

towards the edges the feathers are enamelled like the surface of the

grass-blades. These again are white within. Those that are born in

summer have wings of a deep rose-colour, lined with pale gold. And

those born in autumn have purple wings, with a rich brown on the

inside. But these colours are modified and altered in all varieties,

corresponding to the mood of the day and hour, as well as the season of

the year; and sometimes I found the various colours so intermingled,

that I could not determine even the season, though doubtless the

hieroglyphic could be deciphered by more experienced eyes. One

splendour, in particular, I remember—wings of deep carmine, with an

inner down of warm gray, around a form of brilliant whiteness.

She had been found as the sun went down through a low sea-fog, casting

crimson along a broad sea-path into a little cave on the shore, where a

bathing maiden saw her lying.

But though I speak of sun and fog, and sea and shore, the world there

is in some respects very different from the earth whereon men live. For

instance, the waters reflect no forms. To the unaccustomed eye they

appear, if undisturbed, like the surface of a dark metal, only that the

latter would reflect indistinctly, whereas they reflect not at all,

except light which falls immediately upon them. This has a great effect

in causing the landscapes to differ from those on the earth. On the

stillest evening, no tall ship on the sea sends a long wavering

reflection almost to the feet of him on shore; the face of no maiden

brightens at its own beauty in a still forest-well. The sun and moon

alone make a glitter on the surface. The sea is like a sea of death,

ready to ingulf and never to reveal: a visible shadow of oblivion. Yet

the women sport in its waters like gorgeous sea-birds. The men more

rarely enter them. But, on the contrary, the sky reflects everything

beneath it, as if it were built of water like ours. Of course, from its

concavity there is some distortion of the reflected objects; yet

wondrous combinations of form are often to be seen in the overhanging

depth. And then it is not shaped so much like a round dome as the sky

of the earth, but, more of an egg-shape, rises to a great towering

height in the middle, appearing far more lofty than the other. When the

stars come out at night, it shows a mighty cupola, “fretted with golden

fires,” wherein there is room for all tempests to rush and rave.

One evening in early summer, I stood with a group of men and women on a

steep rock that overhung the sea. They were all questioning me about my

world and the ways thereof. In making reply to one of their questions,

I was compelled to say that children are not born in the Earth as with

them. Upon this I was assailed with a whole battery of inquiries, which

at first I tried to avoid; but, at last, I was compelled, in the

vaguest manner I could invent, to make some approach to the subject in

question. Immediately a dim notion of what I meant, seemed to dawn in

the minds of most of the women. Some of them folded their great wings

all around them, as they generally do when in the least offended, and

stood erect and motionless. One spread out her rosy pinions, and

flashed from the promontory into the gulf at its foot. A great light

shone in the eyes of one maiden, who turned and walked slowly away,

with her purple and white wings half dispread behind her. She was

found, the next morning, dead beneath a withered tree on a bare

hill-side, some miles inland. They buried her where she lay, as is

their custom; for, before they die, they instinctively search for a

spot like the place of their birth, and having found one that satisfies

them, they lie down, fold their wings around them, if they be women, or

cross their arms over their breasts, if they are men, just as if they

were going to sleep; and so sleep indeed. The sign or cause of coming

death is an indescribable longing for something, they know not what,

which seizes them, and drives them into solitude, consuming them

within, till the body fails. When a youth and a maiden look too deep

into each other’s eyes, this longing seizes and possesses them; but

instead of drawing nearer to each other, they wander away, each alone,

into solitary places, and die of their desire. But it seems to me, that

thereafter they are born babes upon our earth: where, if, when grown,

they find each other, it goes well with them; if not, it will seem to

go ill. But of this I know nothing. When I told them that the women on

the Earth had not wings like them, but arms, they stared, and said how

bold and masculine they must look; not knowing that their wings,

glorious as they are, are but undeveloped arms.

But see the power of this book, that, while recounting what I can

recall of its contents, I write as if myself had visited the far-off

planet, learned its ways and appearances, and conversed with its men

and women. And so, while writing, it seemed to me that I had.

The book goes on with the story of a maiden, who, born at the close of

autumn, and living in a long, to her endless winter, set out at last to

find the regions of spring; for, as in our earth, the seasons are

divided over the globe. It begins something like this:

She watched them dying for many a day,

Dropping from off the old trees away,

One by one; or else in a shower

Crowding over the withered flower

For as if they had done some grievous wrong,

The sun, that had nursed them and loved them so long,

Grew weary of loving, and, turning back,

Hastened away on his southern track;

And helplessly hung each shrivelled leaf,

Faded away with an idle grief.

And the gusts of wind, sad Autumn’s sighs,

Mournfully swept through their families;

Casting away with a helpless moan

All that he yet might call his own,

As the child, when his bird is gone for ever,

Flingeth the cage on the wandering river.

And the giant trees, as bare as Death,

Slowly bowed to the great Wind’s breath;

And groaned with trying to keep from groaning

Amidst the young trees bending and moaning.

And the ancient planet’s mighty sea

Was heaving and falling most restlessly,

And the tops of the waves were broken and white,

Tossing about to ease their might;

And the river was striving to reach the main,

And the ripple was hurrying back again.

Nature lived in sadness now;

Sadness lived on the maiden’s brow,

As she watched, with a fixed, half-conscious eye,

One lonely leaf that trembled on high,

Till it dropped at last from the desolate bough—

Sorrow, oh, sorrow! ‘tis winter now.

And her tears gushed forth, though it was but a leaf,

For little will loose the swollen fountain of grief:

When up to the lip the water goes,

It needs but a drop, and it overflows.

Oh! many and many a dreary year

Must pass away ere the buds appear:

Many a night of darksome sorrow

Yield to the light of a joyless morrow,

Ere birds again, on the clothed trees,

Shall fill the branches with melodies.

She will dream of meadows with wakeful streams;

Of wavy grass in the sunny beams;

Of hidden wells that soundless spring,

Hoarding their joy as a holy thing;

Of founts that tell it all day long

To the listening woods, with exultant song;

She will dream of evenings that die into nights,

Where each sense is filled with its own delights,

And the soul is still as the vaulted sky,

Lulled with an inner harmony;

And the flowers give out to the dewy night,

Changed into perfume, the gathered light;

And the darkness sinks upon all their host,

Till the sun sail up on the eastern coast—

She will wake and see the branches bare,

Weaving a net in the frozen air.

The story goes on to tell how, at last, weary with wintriness, she

travelled towards the southern regions of her globe, to meet the spring

on its slow way northwards; and how, after many sad adventures, many

disappointed hopes, and many tears, bitter and fruitless, she found at

last, one stormy afternoon, in a leafless forest, a single snowdrop

growing betwixt the borders of the winter and spring. She lay down

beside it and died. I almost believe that a child, pale and peaceful as

a snowdrop, was born in the Earth within a fixed season from that

stormy afternoon.