Henry Craik, ed. English Prose. 1916.
Vol. I. Fourteenth to Sixteenth Century
Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864)
Petrarca.Allegory, which you named with sonnets and canzonets, had few attractions for me, believing it to be the delight in general of idle, frivolous, inexcursive minds, in whose mansions there is neither hall nor portal to receive the loftier of the passions. A stranger to the affections, she holds a low station among the handmaidens of poetry, being fit for little but an apparition in a mask. I had reflected for some time on this subject, when, wearied with the length of my walk over the mountains, and finding a soft old molehill, covered with gray grass, by the wayside, I laid my head upon it, and slept. I cannot tell how long it was before a species of dream or vision came over me.
Two beautiful youths appeared beside me; each was winged; but the wings were hanging down, and seemed ill adapted to flight. One of them, whose voice was the softest I ever heard, looking at me frequently, said to the other,
“He is under my guardianship for the present, do not awaken him with that feather.”
Methought, hearing the whisper, I saw something like the feather on an arrow; and then the arrow itself; the whole of it, even to the point; although he carried it in such a manner that it was difficult at first to discover more than a palm’s length of it; the rest of the shaft and the whole of the barb, was behind his ankles.
“This feather never awakens anyone,” replied he, rather petulantly; “but it brings more of confident security and more of cherished dreams, than you without me are capable of imparting.”
“Be it so!” answered the gentler … “none is less inclined to quarrel or dispute than I am. Many whom you have wounded grievously, call upon me for succour. But so little am I disposed to thwart you, it is seldom I venture to do more for them than to whisper a few words of comfort in passing. How many reproaches on these occasions have been cast upon me for indifference and infidelity! Nearly as many, and nearly in the same terms, as upon you!”
“Odd enough that we, O Sleep! should be thought so alike!” said Love, contemptuously. “Yonder is he who bears a nearer resemblance to you: the dullest have observed it.” I fancied I turned my eyes to where he was pointing, and saw at a distance the figure he designated. Meanwhile the contention went on uninterruptedly. Sleep was slow in asserting his power or his benefits. Love recapitulated them; but only that he might assert his own above them. Suddenly he called on me to decide, and choose my patron. Under the influence, first of the one, then of the other, I sprang from repose to rapture, I alighted from rapture on repose … and knew not which was sweetest. Love was very angry with me, and declared he would cross me throughout the whole of my existence. Whatever I might on other occasions have thought of his veracity, I now felt too surely the conviction that he would keep his word. At last before the close of the altercation, the third genius had advanced, and stood near us. I cannot tell how I knew him, but I knew him to be the genius of Death. Breathless as I was at beholding him, I soon became familiar with his features. First they seemed only calm; presently they grew contemplative; and lastly beautiful: those of the graces themselves are less regular, less harmonious, less composed. Love glanced at him unsteadily, with a countenance in which there was somewhat of anxiety, somewhat of disdain; and cried, “Go away! go away! nothing that thou touchest, lives.”
“Say rather, child!” replied the advancing form, and advancing grew loftier and statelier. “Say rather that nothing of beautiful or of glorious lives its own true life until my wing hath passed over it.”
Love pouted and rumpled and bent down with his forefinger the stiff short feathers on his arrow head; but replied not. Although he frowned worse than ever, and at me, I dreaded him less and less, and scarcely looked toward him. The milder and calmer genius, the third, in proportion as I took courage to contemplate him, regarded me with more and more complacency. He held neither flower nor arrow, as the others did; but, throwing back the clusters of dark curls that overshadowed his countenance, he presented to me his hand, openly and benignly. I shrank on looking at him so near, and yet I sighed to love him. He smiled, not without an expression of pity at perceiving my diffidence, my timidity: for I remembered how soft was the hand of Sleep, how warm and entrancing was Love’s. By degrees, I became ashamed of my ingratitude; and turning my face away, I held out my arms, and felt my neck within his. Composure strewed and allayed all the throbbings of my bosom; the coolness of freshest morning breathed around; the heavens seemed to open above me; while the beautiful cheek of my deliverer rested on my head. I would now have looked for those others; but knowing my intention by my gesture, he said, consolatorily:
“Sleep is on his way to the earth, where many are calling him; but it is not to these he hastens; for every call only makes him fly farther off. Sedately and gravely as he looks, he is nearly as capricious and volatile as the more arrogant and ferocious one.”
“And Love!” said I, “whither is he departed? If not too late, I would propitiate and appease him.”
“He who cannot follow me, he who cannot overtake and pass me,” said the genius, “is unworthy of the name, the most glorious in earth or heaven. Look up! Love is yonder, and ready to receive thee.”
I looked: the earth was under me: I saw only the clear blue sky, and something brighter above it.