Narraganset

“ The horrified and disgusted anger of Rowland Robinson and the scene that ensued [Pg 13] within doors can well be imagined; little peace or happiness was there for Hannah after her father’s discovery. Updike, in his “History of the Narragansett Church,” says of her life at this time: “If she walked, her movements were watched; if she rode, a servant was ordered to be in constant attendance; if a visit was contemplated, her father immediately suspected it was only a pretext for an arranged interview ”

“ The Thames is flowing in the midst of an unbroken forest, its bosom rippled only by the zephyr, the waterfowl, or the bark canoe. Here and there above the tree tops curls of blue smoke arise from the wigwams of the savages, and a savory smell of venison and fish comes up from the Groton shore. Around us spreads the broad fair land known as the Pequot country, extending from the Nahantic, on the west, to the dominion of the Narragansets—the Rhode Island line—on the east, and northward it interlocks with that of the Mohegans, where Uncas, the rebel sachem, afterward bore rule. ”

“ Others, with the Narragansets, march through the wilderness to the Connecticut River, and then, in happy reunion, warriors, soldiers, ministers, and magistrates join in a festival of triumph! **
Stately and sullen sits Sassacus in his wigwam on yonder hill, as the remnant of his warriors gather around him and relate the sad fortunes of the day. They charge the whole terrible event to his haughtiness and misconduct, and tearing their hair, and stamping on the ground, menace him and his with destruction. ”

“ Roger Williams, in the year 1654. After observing that many hundreds of the English were witnesses to the friendly disposition of the Narragansets, he says, “their late famous long-lived Canonicus so lived and died, and in the same most honourable manner and solemnity, (in their way,) as you laid to sleep your prudent peace-maker, Mr. Winthrop, did they honour this their prudent and peaceable prince; yea, through all their towns and countries how frequently do many, and oft times our Englishmen, travel alone with safety and loving kindness?” ”

“ Battle for the cause of virtue, perish in a deadly war,
Then to seek their upper mansions in the radiant realms afar!
“Narayana, World's Preserver, sent immortal gods on earth,
He himself in race of Yadu hath assumed his mortal birth,
Like the moon among the planets born in Vrishni's noble clan,—
He whom bright gods render worship,—Narayana, Son of Man,
Primal Cause and Self-created! when is done his purpose high,
Narayana leads Immortals to their dwelling in the sky.”
Such bright glimpses of the Secret flashed upon his inner sight,
As in lofty contemplation Narad gazed upon the rite. ”

“ We cannot yet conceive but that he is willing to have peace with us, for they have seen our people sometimes alone two or three in the woods at work and fowling, when as they offered them no harm as they might easily have done, and especially because he hath a potent adversary the Narragansets, that are at war with him, against whom he thinks we may be some strength to him, for our pieces are terrible unto them. ”

“ Naraini, meanwhile, behind her veil, gurgled with soft laughter, pleased at being able to test the value of her beauty on the man she meant to rule by it. So they stood--she in the shadow at one end of the alley, he in the shadow at the other; between them the scented path bordered by the runnels of water slipping by to bring a deluge to some portion of that little world. Some might have called it a pretty scene, instinct with the joy of youth; others might have turned their heads away, praying to be delivered from the world, the flesh, and the devil. ”

“ Narcissus has seen the curve of his drooping lips,
And, like mirrored miniature heavens, his shining eyes.
And a flush like a dew-dipped rose has dyed the pool,
He has laid his cheek to the ripples cool;
Brow touches brow, lips lips, and his eyes of violet roam
Down through the crystal depths. In the darkening dome
The stars shine forth from their faint, far ways,
Trimming their lamps ”

“ Meantime the Narcissus, with square yards, ran out of the fair monsoon. She drifted slowly, swinging round and round the compass, through a few days of baffling light airs. Under the patter of short warm showers, grumbling men whirled the heavy yards from side to side ”

“ Narcissus, the beautiful son of a nymph and a river god, was hunting in a lonely forest one day when Echo saw him pass. To her he seemed more fair than god or man, and once she had seen him she knew that she must gain his love or die. ”

“ The story of Narcissus has no warning for you, and, content with gazing only at the outward envelope of the body, you consider not that the eyes of the mind tell you how vile and plain it is within. Moreover, if you had no other warning, the stormy course of life itself, which every day robs you of something, ought to show you how transient and perishing that flower of beauty is. ”

“ The ‘Darkness’ of which I speak is the darkness of a decadent Paganism; the ‘Dawn’ is the dawn of Christianity. Although the story is continuous, I have called it ‘Scenes in the Days of Nero,’ because the outline is determined by the actual events of Pagan and Christian history, more than by the fortunes of the characters who are here introduced. In other words, the fiction is throughout controlled and dominated by historic facts. ”

“ But if the spirit appears once it is an omen that it will appear again; and in order that it may do so the man will have to die so that the spirit may be set free from the body in order to appear. The special reason for not looking into a mirror at night would thus be because the night is the usual time for the appearance of spirits. The fable of Narcissus, who fell in love with his own image reflected in the water and was drowned, probably arose from the superstition against seeing one’s image reflected in water. ”

“ Men whose eyes were wild with fear shrieked aloud of the sight within the king’s banquet-hall, where through the windows were seen no longer the forms of Nargis-Hei and his nobles and slaves, but a horde of indescribable green voiceless things with bulging eyes, pouting, flabby lips, and curious ears ”

“ Dare I throw my eyes on thine as I would throw myself on thee?' And then, at last, came the inevitable moment when the eyes of each seem to cry 'O yes!' to the other, and the gates fly back; all the hidden light springs forth, the woods swim round, and the lips meet with a strange shock, while the eyes of the spirit close in a lapping dream of great peace.
If you are not ready to play the man, beware of a kiss such as the lips of little Hesper, that never knew to kiss before, pressed upon the mouth of Narcissus. ”

“ Nothing strikes one more, unless, perhaps, the obverse, when we see some trifling pebble-cast ripple into eternity, some fateful second prolific as the fly aphis. And so I find it all again exampled in these old accounts. The books that mean most for Narcissus to-day could be carried in the hand without a strap, and could probably be bought for a sovereign. The rest have survived as a quaint cadence in his style, have left clinging about his thought a delicate incense of mysticism, or are bound up in the retrospective tenderness of boyish loves long since gone to dream. ”

“ The Narcissus is celebrated by many of our old Poets, to whom the story of the beautiful youth growing enamoured of his own reflected form as he gazed into a fountain, and pining in hopeless love till transformed into the Flower bearing his name, was a most tempting subject for their quaint and fanciful muses. ”

“ The seeming spiritual significance of such forlorn wastes of no-man's land had, I know, a specially strong appeal for Narcissus, and, in some moods, the challenge which they seem to call from some 'dark tower' of spiritual adventure would have led him wandering there till star-light; but a day of rambling alone, in a strange country, among unknown faces, brings a social hunger by evening, and a craving for some one to speak to and a voice in return becomes almost a fear. ”

“ Echo and the other nymphs were avenged, yet when they looked on the beautiful dead Narcissus, they were [Pg 180] filled with sorrow, and when they filled the air with their lamentations, most piteously did the voice of Echo repeat each mournful cry. Even the gods were pitiful, and when the nymphs would have burned the body on a funeral pyre which their own fair hands had built for him, they sought it in vain. For the Olympians had turned Narcissus into a white flower, the flower that still bears his name and keeps his memory sweet. ”

“ Me thine, Narcissa!—What though short thy date?
Virtue, not rolling suns, the mind matures.
That life is long, which answers life’s great end.
The time that bears no fruit, deserves no name;
The man of wisdom is the man of years.
In hoary youth Methusalems may die;
O how misdated on their flattering tombs!
Narcissa’s youth has lectured me thus far.
And can her gaiety give counsel too?
That, like the Jews’ famed oracle of gems, [24] 780
Sparkles instruction; such as throws new light,
And opens more the character of Death;
Ill known to thee, Lorenzo! ”

“ In full measure had the avenging goddess meted out to Narcissus the restless longing of unsatisfied love. By day and by night he haunted the forest pool, and ere long the face that looked back at his was pale as a lily in the dawn. When the moonbeams came straying down through the branches and all the night was still, they found him kneeling by the pool, and the white face that the water mirrored had the eyes of one of the things of the woods to which a huntsman has given a mortal wound. ”

“ The Narcissus, a spring flower, is an elegant emblem of this temper, which at first flourishes, and is talked of, but, when ripe, frustrates the expectation conceived of it.
And that this flower should be sacred to the infernal powers, carries out the allusion still further; because men of this humor are perfectly useless in all respects: for whatever yields no fruit, but passes, and is no more, like the way of a ship in the sea, was by the ancients consecrated to the infernal shades and powers. ”

“ A mighty phantom has answered my spell: an awful shape clouds the magic mirror! Reader, before me I behold the earthly tabernacle of Northangerland’s unsounded soul! There he stands: what a vessel to be moulded from the coarse clay of mortality! What a plant to spring from the rank soil of human existence! ”

“ But speaks not one wise woord throughout the yeere.
But, to define a gull in tearms precise,
A gull is hee that seemes, and is not, wise."
That the play now under consideration is the work of some member or members of the college of S. John's there can be no doubt. It is, as the Prologue affirms, "Ovid's owne Narcissus," i.e., the story of Narcissus as told in the third book of the Metamorphoses, which forms the basis of the plot; and the resemblance to the Latin is in parts so close as necessarily to imply a knowledge of that language on the part of the writer. ”

“ Vast numbers of, but not all, the Spiritualists concern themselves mainly about raps, tips, quarreling, scandal, mutual vituperation, backbiting, libel, misrepresentation, "Social Freedom"—things of earth; while we occupy ourselves in actual research and inquiry into what happens to man after his flight over the river of death to that mystic state alluded to; to Narwana and Nihility; or to the upper spaces of the blue Empyrean. At and across the borders of death-land, we strike hands with all the Spiritualists, and there part company with some of them, because we seek to know more ”

“ Do they not love—do they not fight as of old? I see no souls of haughty warriors entering my heaven. Is it all peace? Where are my fighting-men?”
So Narada made reply: “O Cloudy God, all is peace upon the earth, and there is no thought but of beauty: the King of Vidarbha makes the choosing for his daughter and the kings and princes dream of naught else; for she is the very Lotus of the World and the Pearl of Women. And the kings flock as one man to Vidarbha.” ”

“ Oh, the Self-Create will himself take away (from the earth) this vast concourse of Kshatriyas endued with so much strength. Such was the vision of Narada the omniscient who knew Hari or Narayana to be that Supreme Lord whom everybody worshipped with sacrifice. And Narada, gifted with great intelligence and the foremost of all persons and conversant with morality, thinking of all this, sat at that sacrifice of the wise king Yudhisthira the just with feelings of awe. ”

“ In striking contrast before her stretched out a vision of the hated sect, the followers of the despised Nazarene, the little band of outcasts, who for fear of the people worshipped their God in the silent watches of the night, when the city was asleep—worshipped Him without gorgeous ritual or templed home, and standing ready, well knowing that as each day dawned the setting sun might cast its rays upon their lifeless bodies lying uncared for in the Ephesian arena. ”

“ With starry grief, and men unborn shall sing
The mournful measure of the Ancient King!
50I’ll write an ode! (He stands for a moment, glorified with the thought.)
Great heart of Nero, strung
Harplike, endure till this last song be sung,
Then break—then break— (Turns and mounts the steps.)
Oh Fate, to be a bard!
The way is hard, the way is very hard! (A dim outburst of laughter from the revellers in the distance.) ”

“ All that this great poem of 'springtide passion with its fire and flowers' meant to Narcissus and his 'Thirteenth Maid' in the morning of their love, those that have loved too will hardly need telling, while those who have not could never understand, though I spake with the tongue of the poet himself. ”