Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (651 page)

Half meaning welcome, half astonishment.

“ Lady Fedalma ! — will she dance for us?”

But she, sole swayed by impulse passionate,

Feeling all life was music and all eyes

The warming quickening light that music makes,

Moved as, in dance religious, Miriam,

When on the Red Sea shore she raised her voice,

And led the chorus of the people’s joy ;

Or as the Trojan maids that reverent sang

Watching the sorrow-crowned Hecuba :

Moved in slow curves voluminous, gradual,

Feeling and action flowing into one,

In Eden’s natural taintless marriage-bond ;

Ardently modest, sensuously pure,

With young delight that wonders at itself

And throbs as innocent as opening flowers,

Knowing not comment, — soilless, beautiful.

The spirit in her gravely glowing face

With sweet community informs her limbs,

Filling their fine gradation with the breath

Of virgin majesty ; as full vowelled words

Are new impregnate with the master’s thought.

Even the chance-strayed delicate tendrils black,

That backward ‘scape from out her wreathing hair, —

Even the pliant folds that cling transverse

When with obliquely soaring bend altern

She seems a goddess quitting earth again —

Gather expression — a soft undertone

And resonance exquisite from the grand chord

Of her harmoniously bodied soul.

At first a reverential silence guards

The eager senses of the gazing crowd :

They hold their breath, and live by seeing her.

But soon the admiring tension finds relief, —

Sighs of delight, applausive murmurs low,

And stirrings gentle as of eared corn

Or seed-bent grasses, when the ocean’s breath

Spreads landward. Even Juan is impelled

By the swift-travelling movement : fear and doubt

Give way before the hurrying energy ;

He takes his lute and strikes in fellowship,

Filling more full the rill of melody

Raised ever and anon to clearest flood

By Pablo’s voice, that dies away too soon,

Like the sweet blackbird’s fragmentary chant,

Yet wakes again, with varying rise and fall,

In songs that seem emergent memories

Prompting brief utterance, — little cancions

And villancicos, Andalusia-born.

PABLO (sings).

It was in the prime

Of the sweet Spring-time.

In the linnet’s throat

Trembled the love-note,

And the love-stirred air

Thrilled the blossoms there.

Little shadows danced

Each a tiny elf,

Happy in large light

And the thinnest self.

It was but a minute

In a far-off Spring,

But each gentle thing,

Sweetly-wooing linnet,

Soft-thrilled hawthorn tree,

Happy shadowy elf

With the thinnest self,

Lice still on in me,

O the sweet, sweet prime

Of the past Spring-time !

And still the light is changing : high above

Float soft pink clouds ; others with deeper flush

Stretch like flamingoes bending toward the south.

Cornea a more solemn brilliance o’er the sky,

A meaning more intense upon the air, —

The inspiration of the dying day.

And Juan now, when Pablo’s notes subside,

Soothes the regretful ear, and breaks the pause

With masculine voice in deep antiphony.

JUAN (sings).

Day is dying ! Float, O song,

Down the westward river

Requiem chanting to the Day, —

Day, the mighty Giver.

Pierced by shafts of Time he bleed,

Melted rubies sending

Through the river and the sky,

Earth and heaven blending ;

All the long-drawn earthy banks

Up to cloud-land lifting :

Slow between them drifts the swan,

‘Twixt two heavens drifting.

Wings half open like a flow’r

Inly deeper flushing,

Neck and breast as virgin’s pure, —

Virgin proudly blushing.

Day is dying ! Float, O swan,

Down the ruby river ;

Follow, song, in requiem

To the mighty Giver.

The exquisite hour, the ardor of the crowd,

The strains more plenteous, and the gathering might

Of action passionate where no effort is,

But self’s poor gates open to rushing power

That blends the inward ebb and outward vast, —

All gathering influences culminate

And urge Fedalma. Earth and heaven seem one,

Life a glad trembling on the outer edge

Of unknown rapture. Swifter now she moves,

Filling the measure with a double beat

And widening circle ; now she seems to glow

With more declared presence, glorified.

Circling, she lightly bends and lifts on high

The multitudinous-sounding tambourine;

And makes it ring and boom, then lifts it higher

Stretching her left arm beauteous ; now the crowd

Exultant shouts, forgetting poverty

In the rich moment of possessing her.

But sudden, at one point, the exultant throng

Is pushed and hustled, and then thrust apart :

Something approaches, — something cuts the ring

Of jubilant idlers, — startling as a streak

From alien wounds across the blooming flesh

Of careless sporting childhood, ‘T is the band

Of Gypsy prisoners. Soldiers lead the van

And make sparse flanking guard, aloof surveyed

By gallant Lopez, stringent in command.

The Gypsies chained in couples, all save one,

Walk in dark file with grand bare legs and arms

And savage melancholy in their eyes

That star-like gleam from out black clouds of hair ;

Now they are full in sight, now stretch

Right to the centre of the open space.

Fedalma now, with gentle wheeling sweep

Returning, like the loveliest of the Hours

Strayed from her sisters, truant lingering,

Faces again the centre, swings again

The uplifted tambourine ....

When lo ! with sound

Stupendous throbbing, solemn as a voice

Sent by the invisible choir of all the dead,

Tolls the great passing bell that calls to prayer

For souls departed : at the mighty beat

It seems the light sinks awe-struck, — ‘t is the note

Of the sun’s burial ; speech and action pause ;

Religious silence and the holy sign

Of everlasting memories (the sign

Of death that turned to more diffusive life)

Pass o’er the Pla9a. Little children gaze

With lips apart, and feel the unknown god ;

And the most men and women pray’. Not all.

The soldiers pray ; the Gypsies stand unmoved

As pagan statues with proud level gaze.

But he who wears a solitary chain

Heading the file, has turned to face Fedalma.

She motionless, with arm uplifted, guards

The tambourine aloft (lest, sudden-lowered,

Its trivial jingle mar the duteous pause),

Reveres the general prayer, but prays not, stands

With level glance meeting that Gypsy’s eyes,

That seem to her the sadness of the world

Rebuking her, the great bell’s hidden thought

Now first unveiled, — the sorrows unredeemed

Of races outcast, scorned, and wandering.

Why does he look at her ? why she at him ?

As if the meeting light between their eyes

Made permanent union ? Hist deep-knit brow,

Inflated nostril, scornful lip compressed,

Seem a dark hieroglyph of coming fate

Written before her. Father Isidor

Had terrible eyes and was her enemy ;