Two years ago,
An old blind beggar came and craved an alms,
Thereby destroying a tremendous thought
Just bursting on my mind—a glorious bud
Of poesy, but blasted ere its bloom!
I bade the old fool take the leftward path,
Which leads to a deep quarry, where he fell—
At least I deem so, for I heard a splash—
But I was gazing on the gibbous moon,
And durst not lower my celestial flight
To care for such an insect-worm as he.
And now the wills-o'-the-wisp make "the seeing man walk in the path of the blind"—mooting impertinent inquiries the while after the fate of one of his recent victims:
Chorus of Ignes Fatur.
Firmilian! Firmilian!
What have you done to Lilian?
There's a cry from the grotto, a sob by the stream,
A woman's loud wailing, a little babe's scream!
How fared it with Lilian,
In the pavilion,
Firmilian, Firmilian?
So much for the Balder tragedy. Then again what admirer of Walter and Life-Drama-tics but will recognise the source of inspiration of such verses as these:
Let the red lightning shoot athwart the sky,
Entangling comets by their spooming hair.
Piercing the Zodiac belt, and carrying dread
To old Orion, and his whimpering hound; &c.
or these:
I knew a poet once; and he was young,
And intermingled with such fierce desires
As made pale Eros veil his face with grief,
And caused his lustier brother to rejoice.
He was as amorous as a crocodile
In the spring season, when the Memphian bank,
Receiving substance from the glaring sun,
Resolves itself from mud into a shore.
And—as the scaly creature wallowing there,
In its hot fits of passion, belches forth
The steam from out its nostrils, half in love,
And half in grim defiance of its kind;
Trusting that either from the reedy fen,
Some reptile-virgin coyly may appear,
Or that the hoary Sultan of the Nile
May make tremendous challenge with his jaws,
And, like Mark Antony, assert his right
To all the Cleopatras of the ooze—
So fared it with the poet that I knew.
Or, once more, a passionate love-passage in the following strain:
Firmilian.My Mariana;
