The Essential George Meredith Collection. George Meredith
joy, and were desolate in absence, as the poet says:
When we must part, love, Such is my smart, love, Sweetness is savourless, Fairness is favourless! But when in sight, love, We two unite, love, Earth has no sour to me; Life is a flower to me!
And with the increase of every day their passion increased, and the revealing light in their eyes brightened and was humid, as is sung by him that luted to the rage of hearts:
Evens star yonder Comes like a crown on us, Larger and fonder Grows its orb down on us; So, love, my love for thee Blossoms increasingly; So sinks it in the sea, Waxing unceasingly.
On a night, when the singing-girls had left them, the youth could contain himself no more, and caught the two hands of Bhanavar in his, saying, 'This that is in my soul for thee thou knowest, O Bhanavar! and 'tis spoken when I move and when I breathe, O my loved one! Tell me then the cause of thy shunning me whenever I would speak of it, and be plain with thee.'
For a moment Bhanavar sought to release herself from his hold, but the love in his eyes entangled her soul as in a net, and she sank forward to him, and sighed under his chin, ''Twas indeed my very love of thee that made me.'
The twain embraced and kissed a long kiss, and leaned sideways together, and Bhanavar said, 'Hear me, what I am.'
Then she related the story of the Serpent and the Jewel, and of the death of her betrothed. When it was ended, Almeryl cried, 'And was this all?--this that severed us?' And he said, 'Hear what I am.'
So he told Bhanavar how Rukrooth, the mother of Ruark, had sent messengers to the Prince his father, warning him of the passage of Ruark through the mountains with one a Queen of Serpents, a sorceress, that had bewitched him and enthralled him in a mighty love for her, to the ruin of Ruark; and how the Chief was on his way with her to demand her in marriage at the hands of her parents; and the words of Rukrooth were, 'By the service that was between thee and my husband, and by the death he died, O Prince, rescue the Chief my son from this damsel, and entrap her from him, and have her sent even to the city of the inland sea, for no less a distance than that keepeth Ruark from her.'
And Almeryl continued, 'I questioned the messengers myself, and they told me the marvel of thy loveliness and the peril to him that looked on it, so I swore there was no power should keep me from a sight of thee, O my loved one! my prize! my life! my sleek antelope of the hills! Surely when my father appointed the warriors to lie in wait for thy coming, I slipped among them, so that they thought it ordered by him I should head them. The rest is known to thee, O my fountain of blissfulness! but the treachery to Ruark was the treachery of Ebn Asrac, not of such warriors as we; and I would have fallen on Ebn Asrac, had not Ruark so routed that man without faith. 'Twas all as I have said, blessed be Allah and his decrees!'
Bhanavar gazed on her beloved, and the bridal dew overflowed her underlids, and she loosed her hair to let it flow, part over her shoulders, part over his, and in sighs that were the measure of music she sang:
I thought not to love again! But now I love as I loved not before; I love not; I adore! O my beloved, kiss, kiss me! waste thy kisses like a rain. Are not thy red lips fain? Oh, and so softly they greet! Am I not sweet? Sweet must I be for thee, or sweet in vain: Sweet to thee only, my dear love! The lamps and censers sink, but cannot cheat These eyes of thine that shoot above Trembling lustres of the dove! A darkness drowns all lustres: still I see Thee, my love, thee! Thee, my glory of gold, from head to feet! Oh, how the lids of the world close quite when our lips meet!
Almeryl strained her to him, and responded:
My life was midnight on the mountain side; Cold stars were on the heights: There, in my darkness, I had lived and died, Content with nameless lights. Sudden I saw the heavens flush with a beam, And I ascended soon, And evermore over mankind supreme, Stood silver in the moon.
And he fell playfully into a new metre, singing:
Who will paint my beloved In musical word or colour? Earth with an envy is moved: Sea-shells and roses she brings, Gems from the green ocean-springs, Fruits with the fairy bloom-dews, Feathers of Paradise hues, Waters with jewel-bright falls, Ore from the Genii-halls: All in their splendour approved; All; but, match'd with my beloved, Darker, and denser, and duller.
Then she kissed him for that song, and sang:
Once to be beautiful was my pride, And I blush'd in love with my own bright brow: Once, when a wooer was by my side, I worshipp'd the object that had his vow: Different, different, different now, Different now is my beauty to me: Different, different, different now! For I prize it alone because prized by thee.
Almeryl stretched his arm to the lattice, and drew it open, letting in the soft night wind, and the sound of the fountain and the bulbul and the beam of the stars, and versed to her in the languor of deep love:
Whether we die or we live, Matters it now no more: Life has nought further to give: Love is its crown and its core. Come to us either, we're rife,-- Death or life!
Death can take not away, Darkness and light are the same: We are beyond the pale ray, Wrapt in a rosier flame: Welcome which will to our breath; Life or death!
So did these two lovers lute and sing in the stillness of the night, pouring into each other's ears melodies from the new sea of fancy and feeling that flowed through them.
Ere they ceased their sweet interchange of tenderness, which was but one speech from one soul, a glow of light ran up the sky, and the edge of a cloud was fired; and in the blooming of dawn Almeryl hung over Bhanavar, and his heart ached to see the freshness of her wondrous loveliness; and he sang, looking on her:
The rose is living in her cheeks, The lily in her rounded chin; She speaks but when her whole soul speaks, And then the two flow out and in, And mix their red and white to make The hue for which I'd Paradise forsake.
Her brow from her black falling hair Ascends like morn: her nose is clear As morning hills, and finely fair With pearly nostrils curving near The red bow of her upper lip; Her bosom's the white wave beneath the ship.
The fair full earth, the enraptured skies, She images in constant play: Night and the stars are in her eyes, But her sweet face is beaming day, A bounteous interblush of flowers: A dewy brilliance in a dale of bowers.
Then he said, 'And this morning shall our contract of marriage be written and witnessed?'
She answered, 'As my lord willeth; I am his.'
Said he, 'And it is thy desire?'
She nestled to him and dinted his bare arm with the pearls of her mouth for a reply.
So that morning their contract of marriage was written, and witnessed by the legal number of witnesses in the presence of the Cadi, with his license on it endorsed; and Bhanavar was the bride of Almeryl, he her husband. Never was youth blessed in a bride like that youth!
Now, the twain lived together the circle of a full year of delightful marriage, and love lessened not in them, but was as the love of the first day. Little cared they, having each other, for the loneliness of their dwelling in that city, where they knew none save the porter Ukleet, who went about their commissions. Sometimes to amuse themselves with his drolleries, they sent for him, and were bountiful with him, and made him drink with them on the lawn of their garden leaning to an inlet of the sea; and then he would entertain them with all the scandal and gossip of the city, and its little folk and great. When he was outrageously extravagant in these stories of his, Bhanavar exclaimed, 'Are such things, now? can it be true?'
And he nodded in his conceit, and replied loftily, ''Tis certain, O my Prince and Princess! ye be from the mountains, unused to the follies and dissipations of men where they herd; and ye know them not, men!'
The lamps being lit in the garden to the edges of the water, where they lay one evening, Ukleet, who had been in his briskest mood, became grave, and put his forefinger to the side of his nose