The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1859-03-17
JASPE A ROMAN
BY EDWARD SPENCER.
XIV.
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XIV.
Hov Jasper Nursed the Phantoms.
IT'S st dream; else such stuff as madmen
Tongue and brain not; either both, or nothing;
Or senseIess speaking, or speaking such
As sense cannot unite. Be ,chat is,
The action Of my life is like IT, which Pll keep,
Ii but for sympathy" CyMBEIINE
And thus the fever-spawned phantasms ar
ranged themselves in Jaspers brain;
Beginning with vaguest sense of unrest o.
anxiety, of rushings to and fro, of panied hurry
ings and partings; the many-toned murma - o.
a multitude, pressing upon him like a storm
dashed ocean against some barrier reef; vague
wild desire to get away from haunting forms
and ohattering imps, and blaek-faced iends
that pressed their leering, sweaty visages close
to him, and would embrace him, and clasp him
in their labby, fevered arms.
And he was q little child that had taken his
little breakfast of brown bread and goats -milk
from the hand of his prim-hoddiced mother, in
the wee Chalet of the Vale, aneath the snowy
mountains, and now he rambled out to play upon
the pleasant green sward. Soon there lowered
daintily over his head butterfly that had lost
its way from the far off sunny plains, gorgeous
butterfly, with steel-blue tentaces, and rich
black velvet wings, sprinkled with golden spots,
as if it had robbed some waving flower of its
sweets, ere the dew was eff its pollen. And
away he scampered after the pretty insect that
still lowered over him just at his hand, away,
away, up the pass, over the brown rocks splotch-
ed with gray moss, over the crags, on, on, until
he came to the glacier, following on after the
butterfly that still lured him, quivering in ad
vance, as the air quivers over meadow when
the noontide sun is hot; away over the glister-
ing ice-felds, plunging into snow waist-deep,
! leaping over crevasse, sliding along frozen
banks, till, suddenly-dees the gay butterfly
mount aloft, or does he fall Faye, he falls 81
d 9S%ana 9gH9 With the zwipsss Of tbs Under she
cliff, With its stone heaped roof and its grassy
swasd, where the mother stands in the door
way, wringing her hands rs he rushes by, and
calling out,
Jasper Jasper!"
And her voice is the voice of his Lady Mother,
not the prim- boddiced Switzer dame, but his
proud Zenobia mother, who has banished him
down he falls, down, ever. But the cold wind beats
not in our faces after this fashion when we fall
does he not rise, and mount, and fly? is it not
that he is child no longer; can child, o little
butterfly chaser have such cruel, crushing,
eternal woe at his heart, such long white hair,
such aching eyebals, drear with long use, such
and lorn, flying on the breath of the death
angel, which is life to him, Voeful, blasted, &C;
cursed life-aying On, ever, INCREASINGLY
! J.k fhafo Ia rom
ID .lh run III fear and dread,
And, having once turned Iound, runs on,
And turns no II ore his head
Because he knows a frishiful fend
DOH clio e behind HIM tread
Or is it that he the doomed and damned Atha-
nat, who hath ever to wander on through the
Eons, unresting, unhoping, unseeing, unhear-
ing, feeling onlv! On through the Spaces
coursed he, winged and wounded, like an eagle,
whom some baAel shaft Of dusky warrior hath
the cliff, and now, with scream and pain, be
the glacier, or his perch in the dead mountain
| pine
! On through the Spaces and the Ages, the
dreaml thought carried him, with eternal unrest
and eternal woful iteration of flight; now he
was seeking to hide himself in Ganges' mighty
| food and hoated downward from the sacred
source, from Himmehlayan Hills. past all the
holy cities by benares, through the Delta,
while The fishes shunned him, and the Croco
dies FLASHED tremblingly away from him, until
the Indignant waves spurned him forth into the
sunbarnt Ocean; now seeking that he cannot
purchase, death, by entering into the wild-boar's
frame, and fleeing, all foam ielked ana bloody,
before fierce hounds and shouting spear-men
in IrRnsylvanian forests now scars he with
the spirits wing through Gods eternal space,
mounting and circhng in his madd'ning course
past Moon and Sun, and where the Vain climbs
lumberingly up the sky and, plucking some
wild Comet by its beard, is hurled into the
nights night, where, transfused into glisten
ing mass to our dim eyes, the worlds roll on
ward an appointed course, nor heed the marrow
orbits of our Spheres then, - - 80
| Through The staT-gates ct L high luminous land
he hurlted back, and mingled with his fellows !;
ran the aid gage Of passion, fled the frntless
flight of shame, that scousges itself in fleeing,
and, mounted on the shining fre-breathing
black steeds of the sneering Mephistophies,
rode in dark torture past all the grim Raden-
stems and gallows-hills of life; still on, now
| in a midnight race over the dark southern sea,
breathsa urGn by the Storm-King's Champion,
| and curst with crew Of yellow Malays, horrible
| in their funereal robes and white turpans while
for steersman sat there the haunting form of old
Time, the red gore still dripping down the broad,
knife-pierced breast.
| Then there was pause in the wild rush of
feyesra tI0EsaI-=a paAss, While he SIT all mo-
tionless in the palm-tree's shade, by the stag
nant lake, where the mailed Saurian snored out
his noon-tide siesta sat there, feeding languid-
ly upon the lotos, and browning his weary brow
with its white and coral blossoms until thought,
and hope, and fear, and fond desire, and bliss
full consciousness, all melted mistily away for
ages, for he was all aweary, and aweary, and
his brain vas poEet.ess to compass OF thought,
or hope or fear, or fond desire, or blissful con-
sciousness-aweary, all aweary. Fora ages let
the Saurian slumber on let the lake lie stag
nant, let the dripping blossoms hang languid
DER the dreamy brow, so weary, weary, weary.
Let the ages melt away, while he is sitting there
by the stagnaat Jake, for
| "what need Of lhougm foT a resting mind,
| What nes of hope so f,rget ft
| What need tostr, wh'n be e we find
| All thai is waniei for our blind,
A nd argiid souls, SO weary set fr '-N
On .yesly wi