The New Medusa

Grown strangely pale? Grown silent and morose

In my three years of travel? Brother John,

Oh, once for all, why watch me thus so close?

When since my childhood was my cheek not wan,

My soul not moody, and my speech not short?

As Nature made me, let me then live on.

Spare me thy questions; seek such noisy sport

As suits thy stronger frame and happier mood,

And cease thy preaching of this irksome sort.

It suits my whim to hold aloof and brood;

Go, meddler, go! Forgive me, I recall

The word; it was too harsh, for thou art good.

O cruel Heaven, shall I tell him all?

God knows I need a hand to cling to tight,

For on my path all Horror's shadows fall.

I am like one who's dogged, and who, as night

Is closing in, must cross a lonely spot,

And needs some staunch companion in his flight.

My enemy is Madness: I have got

His stealthy step behind me, ever near,

And he will clutch me if thou help me not.

Oh, I have sailed across a sea of fear,

And met new lands to add to Horror's realms,

And shores of Guilt whence none may scatheless steer.

A very world of jarring thoughts o'erwhelms

My cowering soul when I would tell what's been

Since last I saw this Hall, these English elms.

Yet must the tale be told, and every scene

Gone o'er again. I fear some monstrous thing

From my own self, and on thy strength must lean.

So listen. I had spent the early spring

In Venice, till Ascension Feast—the day

On which the Doge casts in his bridal ring;

And had embarked, with pleasant winds of May

And gentle seas, on a Venetian ship

Bound for Palermo, where I meant to stay.

All gave us promise of a prosperous trip;

Yet, by the second day, mishap began,

And 'tween two Turkish sail we had to slip.

From dawn to dusk before the-Turk we ran,

Till, safe and breathless off Illyria's coast,

We each thanked God to be a chainless man.

'Twas but the respite of an hour at most;

The weather changed with dread rapidity.

As in rebuke of Safety's hasty boast,

God laid His mighty hand upon the sea,

Moulding at once a million liquid peaks

That ever round us tossed more furiously.

For three whole days the tempest blanched the cheeks

Of men whom years of storm had ill enriched,

And long familiar with the petrel's shrieks.

It was as if the maddened ocean itched

Beneath the ship; so desperately it tried

To shake it off, and bounded, roared, and pitched,

And, like a lion in whose quivering hide

An insect burrows, wasted strength and wrath,

In rush on rush, by littleness defied.

At last, like one who no more hoping hath,

It ceased the strife; and we, at dawn of day,

Had set the helm to seek our long-lost path,

When in the offing, on the lurid grey,

Where tossed black waves, as if of ire still full,

We saw a something looming far away.

It proved to be a small dismasted hull,

To all appearance empty, which remained

Upon one spot, just like a sea-rocked gull.

On closer search we found that it contained

A woman, lashed to remnants of a mast,

Who seemed a corpse, but, slowly, life regained.

Her black, wet, rope-like locks she backward cast,

And in her troubled memory seemed to seek;

Then strangely, doggedly, concealed the past.

Her garb, her features, said she was a Greek,

But Tuscan she spoke well; and 'tis that tongue

Which she and I in aftertimes did speak.

And as she stood amid the wondering throng,

And no account of home or kindred gave,

A murmur 'mong the sailors ran along.

"Keep her,— they cried; "we'll sell her as a slave;

She owns no kin that she should be exempt;

She's common prize tossed up by wind and wave.—

She caught the words, but made no vain attempt

To melt their hearts by prayer and sobs and sighs,

And looked around her with a queen's contempt.

And then it was that suddenly her eyes,

Singling me out, were fastened upon mine

So searchingly, that all felt huge surprise;

And that, like one who by some secret sign

Knows that a strange command will be obeyed,

She cried, "Lord, buy me;— and I paid her fine.

So she my slave, and I her slave was made,

She taking eager bondage from that hour,

And binding me in chains that never weighed.

She seemed contented with a latent power,

Keeping slave garb, and took small gifts alone,

As might an empress from some love below her.

She bade me name her, and I named her Joan,

Feeling no wish to pry within her breast,

Or learn what name her former life might own.

With all the strong lithe beauty, she possessed

The noiseless tread of a tame leopardess,

Docile, majestic, holding strength-repressed.

With wondrous insight soon she learned to guess

My gloomy temper's ever-shifting mood,

And, fierce in love, was chary of caress.

Now wisely silent, she would let me brood

Until the fit was over; now she cheered

With such fantastic tales as tribes still rude

Delight to hear, the night till dawn appeared;

Now sang unto the lute some old Greek air,

Like gusts of moaning tempest wild and weird.

And other gifts she had, and arts more rare;

For when at Syracuse I once fell ill

Of a malignant fever, and her care

Preserved my life, she showed a leech's skill

In mingling drugs, and knew how to extract

From long-sought herbs a juice for ague's cure.

Oh she was strangely dowered, and she lacked

Nought that can rivet man to woman's side,

Nought that can win, or on the senses act.

But there were moments when a fear would glide

Across my heart, I knew not well of what,

And on the secret which her life might hide

My mind would work; and yet she daily got

A firmer tenure of the love she'd won,

And felt each day my kisses grow more hot,

Even as those of the Sicilian sun,

Which made of winter spring, with fiery love,

Long ere the thaw had in our clime begun.

She loved, like me, from place to place to move,

And seldom we long lingered where mere chance

Had made us stop, but sought some lovelier grove,

Where, from deep shade, we saw the sunshine dance

On the blue sea which lapped the tideless coast,

And watched the sails which specked the blue expanse.

But when that happened which I dread to reach,

We were abiding where the owlet made

The night oft sleepless with his lonesome screech.

It was a sea-girt castle much decayed,

Belonging to an old Sicilian prince

With whom, when at Palermo, I had stayed.

He loathed the place, would go to no expense

To keep it up; but, loving town resorts,

Had left it in his youth, nor seen it since.

It suited well my mood. The weird reports,

The legends which the peasants loved to tell

About its empty halls and grass-grown courts;

Its garden paths where unpicked flowers fell;

Its silent rooms where many echoes woke

And fancies came—all made me love it well.

Its furniture of carved and blackened oak

Looked ghostly in the twilight; while the walls

Were hung with shields and swords of mighty stroke.

Of mighty stroke? Ay, ay, my tongue forestalls

My hesitating thoughts as I relate,

And every item that I name appals,

As I retread in mind where monstrous Fate

Changed love to horror; every look I cast

Makes me all love, all horror, re-create.

One night—O John, I come to it at last—

One night I had a nightmare in my sleep

For vividness and terror unsurpassed.

Methought I felt a snake's cold body creep

About my hand and throat, entwine them tight.

And o'er my breast a hideous mastery keep.

Awhile I lay all helpless, in despite

Of agony, and felt the pressed veins swell,

Then forced a smothered cry into the night.

My cry awoke me, waking Joan as well,

When, panting still with nightmare fear, I found

That the black locks that on her bosom fell

Had crept about my throat and girt it round

So tightly as awhile to stop the breath,

While other locks about my arms had wound.

We laughed away my ugly dream of death,

And in the silence of the night that waned

We heaped up kisses, burying fear beneath.

I gave the thing no thought; but Hell ordained

That this same dream, before a week was out,

Should be repeated, and its horror strained.

Once more the snakes encompassed me about,

Once more I woke her with my strangled cry,

Once more I found her locks around my throat.

Then I began to brood; and by and by

Strange things of God's strong chastisement of crime

Recurred all vaguely to my memory.

I seemed to recollect from olden rhymes

Some tale about the hair of those who take

A many lives through poison; how at times,

When guilt haunts sleep, each lock becomes a snake,

While they remain unconscious of the change;

And turns again to hair so soon they wake.

Smile not, or I will throttle thee. The range

Of Nature is so vast that it hath room

For things more strange than what we call most strange.

I am not mad. I thought with growing gloom

How we had met her, tossed alone at sea,

And how the Turks who rule those coasts oft doom

Their women to strange punishments. Might she,

For some great crime, not have been made to brave

The winds and waves by some such strange decree?

And then I thought what proof she often gave

Of skill in medicine and botanic lore;

And how that serves to kill that serves to save.

I struggled with these thought—I struggled sore:

With shame and self-contempt I cast them out,

And, looking on her beauty, loved her more.

But listen, John. A month or thereabout

Went by unmarked, and then there came a night

Which seemed to put an end to every doubt.

I was awake; there was no sound, no light.

Yes, there was sound: her breathing met my ear,

The breath of dreamless sleep—low, smooth, and slight.

But suddenly it quickened, as in fear,

And broken words whose sense I could not tell

Escaped her lips; my name I seemed to hear.

Now listen, John. Methought she lay not well,

I stretched my hand to slightly raise her head;

But what my hand encountered was, O hell!

No locks of silky hair: it met instead

A something cold which whipt around my wrist

Unholdable, and through my fingers fled.

I groped again and felt two others twist

About my arm;—a score of vipers twined

Beneath my hand, and, as I touched them, hissed.

There is a horror which leaves free the mind

But glues the tongue. Without a word I slipt

From out the bed, and struck a light behind

Its ample curtain; then, unheard, I crept

Close up and let the light's faint radiance hover

Over the Gorgon's features as she slept.

The snakes were gone. But long I bent me over

Her placid face with searching, sickened glance,

Like one who in deep waters would discover

A corpse, and can see nothing save, perchance,

The landscape's fair reflected shapes, which keep

Balking the vision with their endless dance.

It seemed to me that in that placid sleep,

Beneath that splendid surface lay concealed

Unutterable horror sunken deep.

And, seeking not to have the whole revealed,

I fled that fatal room without a sound,

And sought the breeze of night with brain that reeled.

How long I wandered 'mid the rocks around,

Like some priced outlaw—whether one, or two,

Or three whole days I know not—fever bound

A veil across my brain, and I've no clue

To guide my memory through those days accurst,

Or show me what my misery found to do.

I recollect intolerable thirst,

And nothing more; until the night again

Enwrapped the earth, and with it brought the worst.

A mighty wish, with which I fought in vain,

Came o'er my soul to see once more her face,

And dragged me back, as by an unseen chain.

Where love and horror struggle, there is place

For countless fierce and contradict'ry tides

Of Will and Sense within one short day's space.

With every hour the gale has shifted sides;

The needle of Thought's compass will have leapt

From pole to pole, and chance at last decides.

So I returned, and like a thief I crept

Into the house, where every light was out,

And sought the silent chamber where she slept.

O brother, brother! I'm in awful doubt.

If what I saw, and what shall now be told,

Was a mere figment of the brain throughout,

Then will the sickened Heaven ne'er behold

A deed more monstrous than the deed I've done,

Though this old earth should grow again as old.

But if the thing was real, if 'twas one

Of hell's corroborations of great guilt,

My hand was an avenger's hand alone.

So wonder not, if, with the blood I've spilt

Still on my hand, I fain would have thee think

That the great wall, which God Himself hath built

Between this world and hell, may have a chink

Through which some horror, yet unknown to earth,

And over great for us, may sometimes slink.

May not such strays from Hell have given birth

To poets fancies which the wise deride,

And olden saws of which we now make mirth.

Oh who shall have the courage to decide

Between the things that are and those that seem,

And tell the spirit that the eyes have lied?

Watch thy own face reflected in the stream;

Is that a figment? Who shall dare to call

That unsubstantial form a madman's dream?

Or watch the shadow on the sunlit wall,

If thou could'st clutch it great would be thy skill;

Thou'lt feel a chilly spot—and that is all.

So may the spectres which, more subtle still,

Elude the feeble intellect of man,

And leave us empty-handed with a chill,

Be just as much reality. We spend

Life 'mid familiar spectres, while the soul

In fear denies the rest. But hear the end.

The moon was at the full; but o'er the whole

Vast vault of heaven was stretched a fleecy tent,

Through which her baffled light but dimly stole,

Save where the breezes of the night had rent

On some few points that subtle woof o'erhead,

That men might catch her glances as she went.

And as once more I trod with stealthy tread

Each silent, vast, and solitary room,

Where, through the tiny panes, encased in lead,

Of Gothic windows, moonlight broke the gloom

So dimly that I scarce could thread my way,

I seemed a ghost returning from its tomb.

I neared the fatal bed in which she lay;

Its sculptured columns had a ghostly look;

Its heavy daïs, of faded silk by day,

Looked stony in its tintlessness, and took

The semblance of the marble canopy

Above some Templar's tomb. Yea, every nook

Of this strange room bred awe, I know not why,

While dim mysterious gleamings seemed to thrill

From swords and shields that decked the walls on high.

With soundless step, approaching nearer still,

I touched the sculptured oak, while love and fear

Contesting in my breast suspended will.

I saw her shape but vaguely, but could hear

Her placid breath attesting, if aught could,

A dreamless sleep and conscience wholly clear.

Love in my breast was winning, as I stood

And watched her thus some moments in her sleep;

Her tranquil breathing seemed to do me good.

But suddenly it quickened with a leap,

Becoming like the fierce and panting breath

Of one in flight, who climbs a rocky steep.

The soul seemed struggling with the fear of death,

While broken utterings in a tongue unknown

Escaped at moments through her tightened teeth.

I was about to wake her, when the moon

Lit up the bed, and let me see a sight

Which for a while changed flesh and blood to stone.

All round the face, convulsed in sleep and white,

Innumerable snakes—some large and slow,

Some lithe and small—writhed bluish in the light,

Each striving with a sort of ceaseless flow

To quit the head, and groping as in doubt;

Then, fast retained, returning to the brow.

They glided on her pillow; all about

The moonlit sheet in endless turn and coil,

And all about her bosom, in and out;

While round her temples, pale as leaden foil,

And fast closed lids, live curls of vipers twined,

Whose endless writhe had made all hell recoil.

Long I stood petrified; both limbs and mind

Refusing in the presence of that face

The customary work to each assigned.

But, all at once, I felt a fire replace

My frozen blood, and unseen spirits seemed

To call for an Avenger, and to brace

My arm for one great blow. Above me gleamed

A double-handed sword upon the wall,

Whose weight, till then, beyond my strength I deemed.

I seized it, swung it high, and let it fall

Like thunder on the sleeping Gorgon's neck

Before her eye could see or tongue could call.

And, O my God! as if herself a snake

Which, stricken of a sudden in its sleep,

Coils up and writhes all round the injuring stake,

She coiled about the weapon in a heap,

But gave no sound, while all the sheet soaked red,

Except a sort of gurgle hoarse and deep,

Which made me strike again, until the head,

Whose beauty death's convulsion seemed to spare,

Rolled like a heavy ball from off the bed.

I held the dripping trophy by the hair,

Which now no more was snakes, but long black locks,

And scanned the features with a haggard stare.

And, like to one around whose spirit flocks

Too great a crowd of thoughts for thought to act,

I fled once more along the moonlit rocks.

Then Doubt, with his tormentors, came and racked.