第36章 CHAPTER XII(3)

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.