66

ON RHODODAPHNE,

OR

THE THESSALIAN SPELL,"

A POEM BY THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.

RHODODAPHNE is a poem of the most remarkable character, and the nature of the subject no less than the spirit in which it is written forbid us to range it under any of the classes of modern literature.' It is a Greek and Pagan poem. In sentiment and scenery it is essentially antique. There is a strong religio loci throughout which almost compels us to believe that the author wrote from the dictation of a voice heard from some Pythian cavern in the solitudes where Delphi stood. We are transported to the banks of the Peneus and linger under the crags of Tempe, and see the water lilies floating on

1 Shelley is not the only poet who has thought well of Rhododaphne. Edgar Allan Poe in his Marginalia (Mr. J. H. Ingram's edition, Edinburgh, 1874-5, Vol. III, p. 443) has this laconic criticism :

Rhododaphne' (who wrote it?) is brimful of music:-e.g.

PROSE.-VOL. III.

By living streams, in sylvan shades,
Where wind and wave symphonious make
Rich melody, the youths and maids
No more with choral music wake
Lone echo from her tangled brake."
In these lines, the opening of Canto
III, the right reading is winds and
waves in line 2, and Sweet for Rich
in line 3.

C

the stream.

We sit with Plato by old Ilissus under the sacred Plane tree among the sweet scent of flowering sallows; and above there is the nightingale of Sophocles in the ivy of the pine, who is watching the sunset so that it may dare to sing; it is the radiant evening of a burning day, and the smooth hollow whirlpools of the river are overflowing with the aërial gold of the level sunlight. We stand in the marble temples of the Gods, and see their sculptured forms gazing and almost breathing around. We are led forth from the frequent pomp of sacrifice into the solitude of mountains and forests where Pan," the life, the intellectual soul of grove and stream," yet lives and yet is worshipped. We visit the solitudes of Thessalian magic, and tremble with new wonder to hear statues speak and move and to see the shaggy changelings minister to their witch queen with the shape of beasts and the reason of men, and move among the animated statues who people her inchanted palaces and gardens. That wonderful overflowing of fancy the Syria Dea of Lucian, and the impassioned and elegant pantomime of Apuleius, have contributed to this portion of the poem. There is here, as in the songs of ⚫ ancient times, music and dancing and the luxury of voluptuous delight. The Bacchanalians toss on high their leaf-inwoven hair, and the tumult and fervour of the chase is depicted; we hear its clamour gathering among the woods, and she who impels it is so graceful and so fearless that we are charmed-and it needs no feeble spell to see nothing of the agony and blood of that royal sport.

These words are quoted, not quite accurately, from Canto III of Rhododaphne, pp. 48-9:

The streams no sedge-crowned Genii roll
From bounteous urn: great Pan is dead
The life, the intellectual soul

Of vale, and grove, and stream, has fled
For ever with the creed sublime
That nursed the Muse of earlier time.

2 Cancelled MS. reading, forms for

statues.

This it is to be a scholar; this it is to have read Homer and Sophocles and Plato.

Such is the scenery and the spirit of the tale. The story itself presents a more modern aspect, being made up of combinations of human passion which seem to have been developed since the Pagan system has been outThe poem opens in a strain of elegant but less powerful versification than that which follows. It is descriptive of the annual festival of Love' at his temple. in Thespia. Anthemion is among the crowd of votaries; a youth from the banks of Arcadian Ladon:

worn.

The flower of all Arcadia's youth

Was he such form and face, in truth,
As thoughts of gentlest maidens seek
In their day-dreams: soft glossy hair
Shadowed his forehead, snowy-fair,
With many a hyacinthine cluster:
Lips, that in silence seemed to speak,
Were his, and eyes of mild blue lustre:
And even the paleness of his cheek,
The passing trace of tender care,

Still shewed how beautiful it were

If its own natural bloom were there.-CANTO I, p. 11.

As

He comes to offer his vows at the shrine for the recovery of his mistress Calliroë, who is suffering under some strange, and as we are led to infer, magical disease. he presents his wreath of flowers at the altar they are suddenly withered up. He looks and there is standing near him a woman of exquisite beauty who gives him. another wreath which he places on the altar and it does not wither. She turns to him and bids him wear a

1 The word Uranian before Love stands cancelled in the MS.

flower which she presents, saying, with other sweet words

Some meet for once and part for aye,
Like thee and me, and scarce a day
Shall each by each remembered be:
But take the flower I give to thee,

And till it fades remember me.-CANTO I, p. 22.

As Anthemion passes from the temple among the sports and dances of the festival" with vacant eye"

the trains

Of youthful dancers round him float,

As the musing bard from his sylvan seat
Looks on the dance of the noontide heat,

Or the play of the watery flowers, that quiver

In the eddies of a lowland river.-CANTO II, p. 29. He there meets an old man who tells him that the flower he wears is the profane laurel-rose which grows in Larissa's unholy gardens, that it is impious to wear it in the temple of Love, and that he, who has suffered evils which he dares not tell from Thessalian inchantments, knows that the gift of this flower is a spell only to be dissolved by invoking his natal genius and casting the flower into some stream with the caution of not looking upon it after he has thrown it away. Anthemion obeys

his direction, but so soon as he has . . . .

A portion of the MS. is here wanting. Probably it contained little more than an abstract of the movement of the third and fourth Cantos, illustrated by extracts, as the next fragment begins with a quotation from the fifth Canto. It will be useful to supply here the thread of the story. As soon as Anthemion has thrown the flower into the water he hears a sudden cry, Calliroë's voice:

He turned to plunge into the tide,
But all again was still:

The sun upon the surface bright
Poured his last line of crimson light,
Half-sunk behind the hill:

round his neck

Are closely twined the silken rings

Of Rhododaphne's glittering hair,

And round him her bright arms she flings,

And cinctured thus in loveliest bands

The charmed waves in safety bear

The youth and the enchantress fair
And leave them on the golden sands.—

CANTO V, pp. 110-11.

They now find themselves on a lonely moor on which stands a solitary cottage-ruined and waste; this scene is transformed by Thessalian magic to a palace surrounded by magnificent gardens. Anthemion enters the hall of the palace where, surrounded by sculptures of divine workmanship, he sees the earthly image of Uranian Love.

Rhododaphne, and receives her declarations of love. She utters the words

These lips are mine; the spells have won
them,

Which round and round thy soul I twine;
And be the kiss I print upon them
Poison to all lips but mine!-

CANTO III, pp. 66-7.

Stung by the thought of Calliroë,
he escapes this time from the en-
circling arms of Rhododaphne.
The fourth Canto sets forth that
"magic and mystery" have been
chased away by Reason; but the
poet adds

Yet deem not so. The Power of Spells
Still lingers on the earth, but dwells
In deeper folds of close disguise,
That baffle Reason's searching eyes:
Nor shall that mystic Power resign
To Truth's cold sway his webs of guile,
Till woman's eyes have ceased to shine,
And woman's lips have ceased to smile,
And woman's voice has ceased to be
The earthly soul of melody.-

CANTO IV pp. 72-3.

This is introductory to the working of the spell. Seeking Calliroë, he finds her recovered, rejoices with her one evening, kisses her, and sees her fade and at once become as one dead. Fleeing along the shore, he is seized by pirates (Canto V), on board whose ship he is set beside

a maiden similarly snatched away,
who turns out to be Rhododaphne.
By her incantations she raises a
storm; the boat is wrecked, and
Anthemion is borne to shore by
the magic of Rhododaphne. Such
is the portion of the poem that the
missing leaves of the MS. doubtless
epitomize. Shelley would scarcely
have failed to quote the following
description of Rhododaphne pre-
paring for the storm:

She rose, and loosed her radiant hair,
And raised her golden lyre in air.
The lyre, beneath the breeze's wings,
As if a spirit swept the strings,
Breathed airy music, sweet and strange,
In many a wild phantastic change.
Most like a daughter of the Sun
She stood: her eyes all radiant shone
With beams unutterably bright;
And her long tresses, loose and light,
As on the playful breeze they rolled,
Flamed with rays of burning gold.

CANTO V, p. 105.

The extract with which the next leaf of the MS. opens is the conclusion of Canto V; and the paragraph beginning with They now find themselves epitomizes Canto VI. At the opening of the paragraph there is a cancelled reading, The scene in which they now find themselves is then described.