Mardi: and A Voyage Thither Volume II Part 52

Now, thus, for the nonce, with good cheer, we close. And after many fine dinners and banquets--through light and through shade; through mirth, sorrow, and all--drawing nigh to the evening end of these wanderings wild--meet is it that all should be regaled with a supper.

CHAPTER LXXVIII They Embark

Next morning, King Abrazza sent frigid word to Media that the day was very fine for yachting; but he much regretted that indisposition would prevent his making one of the party, who that morning doubtless would depart his isle.

"My compliments to your king," said Media to the chamberlains, "and say the royal notice to quit was duly received."

"Take Azzageddi's also," said Babbalanja; "and say, I hope his Highness will not fail in his appointment with me:--the first midnight after he dies; at the grave-yard corner;--there I'll be, and grin again!"

Sailing on, the next land we saw was thickly wooded: hedged round about by mangrove trees; which growing in the water, yet lifted high their boughs. Here and there were shady nooks, half verdure and half water. Fishes rippled, and canaries sung.

"Let us break through, my lord," said Yoomy, "and seek the sh.o.r.e. Its solitudes must prove reviving." "Solitudes they are," cried Mohi.

"Peopled but not enlivened," said Babbalanja. "Hard landing here, minstrel! see you not the isle is hedged?"

"Why, break through, then," said Media. "Yillah is not here."

"I mistrusted it," sighed Yoomy; "an imprisoned island! full of uncomplaining woes: like many others we must have glided by, unheedingly. Yet of them have I heard. This isle many pa.s.s, marking its outward brightness, but dreaming not of the sad secrets here embowered. Haunt of the hopeless! In those inland woods brood Mardians who have tasted Mardi, and found it bitter--the draught so sweet to others!--maidens whose unimparted bloom has cankered in the bud; and children, with eyes averted from life's dawn--like those new- oped morning blossoms which, foreseeing storms, turn and close."

"Yoomy's rendering of the truth," said Mohi.

"Why land, then?" said Media. "No merry man of sense--no demi-G.o.d like me, will do it. Let's away; let's see all that's pleasant, or that seems so, in our circuit, and, if possible, shun the sad."

"Then we have circled not the round reef wholly," said Babbalanja, "but made of it a segment. For this is far from being the first sad land, my lord, that we have slighted at your instance."

"No more. I will have no gloom. A chorus! there, ye paddlers! spread all your sails; ply paddles; breeze up, merry winds!"

And so, in the saffron sunset, we neared another sh.o.r.e.

A gloomy-looking land! black, beetling crags, rent by volcanic clefts; ploughed up with water-courses, and dusky with charred woods. The beach was strewn with scoria and cinders; in dolorous soughs, a chill wind blew; wails issued from the caves; and yellow, spooming surges, lashed the moaning strand.

"Shall we land?" said Babbalanja.

"Not here," cried Yoomy; "no Yillah here."

"No," said Media. "This is another of those lands far better to avoid."

"Know ye not," said Mohi, "that here are the mines of King Klanko, whose scourged slaves, toiling in their pits, so nigh approach the volcano's bowels, they hear its rumblings? 'Yet they must work on,'

cries Klanko, 'the mines still yield!' And daily his slaves' bones are brought above ground, mixed with the metal ma.s.ses."

"Set all sail there, men! away!"

"My lord," said Babbalanja; "still must we s.h.i.+m the unmitigated evil; and only view the good; or evil so mixed therewith, the mixture's both?"

Half vailed in misty clouds, the harvest-moon now rose; and in that pale and haggard light, all sat silent; each man in his own secret mood: best knowing his own thoughts.

CHAPTER LXXIX Babbalanja At The Full Of The Moon

"Ho, mortals! Go we to a funeral, that our paddles seem thus m.u.f.fled?

Up heart, Taji! or does that witch Hautia haunt thee? Be a demi-G.o.d once more, and laugh. Her flowers are not barbs; and the avengers'

arrows are too blunt to slay. Babbalanja! Mohi! Yoomy! up heart! up heart!--By Oro! I will debark the whole company on the next land we meet. No tears for me. Ha, ha! let us laugh. Ho, Vee-Vee! awake; quick, boy,--some wine! and let us make glad, beneath the glad moon.

Look! it is stealing forth from its clouds. Perdition to Hautia! Long lives, and merry ones to ourselves! Taji, my charming fellow, here's to you:--May your heart be a stone! Ha, ha!--will n.o.body join me? My laugh is lonely as his who laughed in his tomb. Come, laugh; will no one quaff wine, I say? See! the round moon is abroad."

"Say you so, my lord? then for one, I am with you;" cried Babbalanja.

"Fill me a brimmer. Ah! but this wine leaps through me like a panther.

Ay, let us laugh: let us roar: let us yell! What, if I was sad but just now? Life is an April day, that both laughs and weeps in a breath. But whoso is wise, laughs when he can. Men fly from a groan; but run to a laugh. Vee-Vee! your gourd. My lord, let me help you. Ah, how it sparkles! Cups, cups, Vee-Vee, more cups! Here, Taji, take that: Mohi, take that: Yoomy, take that. And now let us drown away grief. Ha! ha! the house of mourning, is deserted, though of old good cheer kept the funeral guests; and so keep I mine; here I sit by my dead, and replenish your wine cups. Old Mohi, your cup: Yoomy, yours: ha! ha! let us laugh, let us scream! Weeds are put off at a fair; no heart bursts but in secret; it is good to laugh, though the laugh be hollow; and wise to make merry, now and for aye. Laugh, and make friends: weep, and they go. Women sob, and are rid of their grief: men laugh, and retain it. There is laughter in heaven, and laughter in h.e.l.l. And a deep thought whose language is laughter.

Though wisdom be wedded to woe, though the way thereto is by tears, yet all ends in a shout. But wisdom wears no weeds; woe is more merry than mirth; 'tis a shallow grief that is sad. Ha! ha! how demoniacs shout; how all skeletons grin; we all die with a rattle. Laugh! laugh!

Are the cherubim grave? Humor, thy laugh is divine; whence, mirth- making idiots have been revered; and therefore may I. Ho! let us be gay, if it be only for an hour, and Death hand us the goblet. Vee-Vee!

bring on your gourds! Let us pledge each other in b.u.mpers!--let us laugh, laugh, laugh it out to the last. All sages have laughed,--let us; Bardianna laughed, let us; Demorkriti laughed,--let us: Amoree laughed,--let us; Rabeelee roared,--let us; the hyenas grin, the jackals yell,--let us.--But you don't laugh, my lord? laugh away!"

"No, thank you, Azzageddi, not after that infernal fas.h.i.+on; better weep."

"He makes me crawl all over, as if I were an ant-hill," said Mohi.

"He's mad, mad, mad!" cried Yoomy.

"Ay, mad, mad, mad!--mad as the mad fiend that rides me!--But come, sweet minstrel, wilt list to a song?--We madmen are all poets, you know:--Ha! ha!--

Stars laugh in the sky: Oh fugle-fi I The waves dimple below: Oh fugle-fo!

"The wind strikes her dulcimers; the groves give a shout; the hurricane is only an hysterical laugh; and the lightning that blasts, blasts only in play. We must laugh or we die; to laugh is to live. Not to laugh is to have the teta.n.u.s. Will you weep? then laugh while you weep. For mirth and sorrow are kin; are published by identical nerves.

Go, Yoomy: go study anatomy: there is much to be learned from the dead, more than you may learn from the living and I am dead though I live; and as soon dissect myself as another; I curiously look into my secrets: and grope under my ribs. I have found that the heart is not whole, but divided; that it seeks a soft cus.h.i.+on whereon to repose; that it vitalizes the blood; which else were weaker than water: I have found that we can not live without hearts; though the heartless live longest. Yet hug your hearts, ye handful that have them; 'tis a blessed inheritance! Thus, thus, my lord, I run on; from one pole to the other; from this thing to that. But so the great world goes round, and in one Somerset, shows the sun twenty-five thousand miles of a landscape!"

At that instant, down went the fiery full-moon, and the Dog-Star; and far down into Media, a Tivoli of wine.

CHAPTER Lx.x.x Morning

Life or death, weal or woe, the sun stays not his course. On: over battle-field and bower; over tower, and town, he speeds,--peers in at births, and death-beds; lights up cathedral, mosque, and pagan shrine;--laughing over all;--a very Democritus in the sky; and in one brief day sees more than any pilgrim in a century's round.

So, the sun; nearer heaven than we:--with what mind, then, may blessed Oro downward look.

It was a purple, red, and yellow East;--streaked, and crossed. And down from breezy mountains, robust and ruddy Morning came,--a plaided Highlander, waving his plumed bonnet to the isles.

Over the neighboring groves the larks soared high; and soaring, sang in jubilees; while across our bows, between two isles, a mighty moose swam stately as a seventy-four; and backward tossed his antlered wilderness in air.

Just bounding from fresh morning groves, with the brine he mixed the dew of leaves,--his antlers dripping on the swell, that rippled before his brown and bow-like chest.

"Five hundred thousand centuries since," said Babbalanja, "this same sight was seen. With Oro, the sun is co-eternal; and the same life that moves that moose, animates alike the sun and Oro. All are parts of One. In me, in _me_, flit thoughts partic.i.p.ated by the beings peopling all the stars. Saturn, and Mercury, and Mardi, are brothers, one and all; and across their orbits, to each other talk, like souls.

Of these things what chapters might be writ! Oh! that flesh can not keep pace with spirit. Oh! that these myriad germ-dramas in me, should so perish hourly, for lack of power mechanic.--Worlds pa.s.s worlds in s.p.a.ce, as men, men,--in thoroughfares; and after periods of thousand years, cry:--"Well met, my friend, again!"--To me to _me_, they talk in mystic music; I hear them think through all their zones.