The Three Brontes Part 17

And there is Fernando, who stole his love from Zamorna. He is a sort of shadowy forerunner of Edgar Linton.

There is the yeoman Percy, the father of Mary whom Zamorna loved. And there is Zamorna.

A large group of poems in the legend refer, obviously, I think, to the same person. Zamorna is the supreme hero, the Achilles of this northern Iliad. He is the man of sin, the "son of war and love", the child "unblessed of heaven", abandoned by its mother, cradled in the heather and rocked by the winter storm, the doomed child, grown to its doom, like Heathcliff. His story is obscure and broken, but when all the Zamorna poems are sorted from the rest, you make out that, like Heathcliff, he ravished from her home the daughter of his mortal enemy (with the difference that Zamorna loves Mary); and that like Heathcliff he was robbed of the woman that he loved. The pa.s.sions of Zamorna are the pa.s.sions of Heathcliff. He dominates a world of savage loves and mortal enmities like the world of _Wuthering Heights_. There are pa.s.sages in this saga that reveal the very aspect of the soul of Heathcliff. Here are some of them.

Zamorna, in prison, cries out to his "false friend and treacherous guide":

"If I have sinned; long, long ago That sin was purified by woe.

I have suffered on through night and day, I've trod a dark and frightful way."

It is what Heathcliff says to Catherine Earnshaw: "I've fought through a bitter life since I last heard your voice."

And again:

If grief for grief can touch thee, If answering woe for woe, If any ruth can melt thee, Come to me now.

It is the very voice of Heathcliff calling to Cathy.

Again, he is calling to "Percy", the father of Mary, his bride, the rose that he plucked from its parent stem, that died from the plucking.

Bitterly, deeply I've drunk of thy woe; When thy stream was troubled, did mine calmly flow?

And yet I repent not; I'd crush thee again If our vessels sailed adverse on life's stormy main.

But listen! The earth is our campaign of war,

Is there not havoc and carnage for thee Unless thou couchest thy lance at me?

He proposes to unite their arms.

Then might thy Mary bloom blissfully still This hand should ne'er work her sorrow or ill.

What! shall Zamorna go down to the dead With blood on his hands that he wept to have shed?

The alliance is refused. Percy is crushed. Mary is dying, the rose is withering.

Its faded buds already lie To deck my coffin when I die.

Bring them here--'twill not be long, 'Tis the last word of the woeful song; And the final and dying words are sung To the discord of lute strings all unstrung.

Have I crushed you, Percy? I'd raise once more The beacon-light on the rocky sh.o.r.e.

Percy, my love is so true and deep, That though kingdoms should wail and worlds should weep, I'd fling the brand in the hissing sea, The brand that must burn unquenchably.

Your rose is mine; when the sweet leaves fade, They must be the chaplet to wreathe my head The blossoms to deck my home with the dead.

Zamorna is tenderer than Heathcliff. He laments for his rose.

On its bending stalk a bonny flower In a yeoman's home close grew; It had gathered beauty from suns.h.i.+ne and shower, From moonlight and silent dew.

Keenly his flower the yeoman guarded, He watched it grow both day and night; From the frost, from the wind, from the storm he warded That flush of roseate light.

And ever it glistened bonnilie Under the shade of the old yew-tree.

The rose is blasted, withered, blighted Its root has felt a worm, And like a heart beloved and slighted, Failed, faded, shrunk its form.

Bud of beauty, bonny flower, I stole thee from thy natal bower.

I was the worm that withered thee....

And he sings of Mary, on her death-bed in her delirium. He will not believe that she is dying.

Oh! say not that her vivid dreams Are but the shattered gla.s.s Which but because more broken, gleams More brightly in the gra.s.s.

Her spirit is the unfathomed lake Whose face the sudden tempests break To one tormented roar; But as the wild winds sink in peace All those disturbed waves decrease Till each far-down reflection is As life-like as before.

Her death is not the worst.

I cannot weep as once I wept Over my western beauty's grave.

I am speaking of a later stroke, A death the dream of yesterday, Still thinking of my latest shock, A n.o.ble friends.h.i.+p torn away.

I feel and say that I am cast From hope, and peace, and power, and pride

Without a voice to speak to you Save that deep gong which tolled my doom, And made my dread iniquity Look darker than my deepest gloom.

But the crucial pa.s.sage (for the sources) is the scene in the yeoman's hall where Zamorna comes to Percy. He comes stealthily.

That step he might have used before When stealing on to lady's bower, Forth at the same still twilight hour, For the moon now bending mild above Showed him a son of war and love.

His eye was full of that sinful fire Which oft unhallowed pa.s.sions light.

It spoke of quickly kindled ire, Of love too warm, and wild, and bright.

Bright, but yet sullied, love that could never Bring good in rising, leave peace in decline, Woe to the gifted, crime to the giver....

Now from his curled and s.h.i.+ning hair, Circling the brow of marble fair, His dark, keen eyes on Percy gaze With stern and yet repenting rays.

He loves Percy whose rose was his, and he hates him, as Heathcliff might have loved and hated, but with less brutality.

Young savage! how he bends above The object of his wrath and love, How tenderly his fingers press The hand that shrinks from their caress.

The yeoman turns on "the man of sin".