of this entranced young mourner—one whose "fancies from afar were brought"—one of an intellect an intellect so intricstely strong of a temperament so sensitively moulded, of a nature "so exquisitely wild," that as we watch his childish vigil, in tremulous foreboding do
We think of him with many fears
For what may be his lot in future years.
We think of times when Pain shall be his guest,
Lord of his house and hospitality;
And Grief, uneasy lover! never rest
but within touch of his harassed, distraught spirit. Him tus prematurely, the eldest Sister of Our Ladies of Sorro, Madonna, Mater Lachrymarum, consecrated to herself—she that night and day rares and moans calling for vanished faces—she that by the power of her keys glides a ghostly intruder into the chambers of sleepless men, sleepless women, sleepless children, from Granges to the Nile, from the Nile to Mississippi. And in after days, she, the eldest of three Semnai Theai—the Eumenenides, "or Gracious Ladies" (so called by antiquity in shuddering propitiation), of his Oxford dreams —was beheld by him in mystic conference with her younger sisters, Mater Suspiriorum (who, unlike the first-born, weeps not, nor groans, nor clamours and defies; but is hopelessly meek, abjectly humble—whose sighs are inaudible, so deep are they—who if she murmur, 'tis in her sleep; if she whisper, 'tis to herself in the twilight) and Mater Tenebrarum (or Our Lady of Darkness—to be named, if at all, with 'bated breath—for she is the defier of God, the mother of lunacies, the suggestress of suicides—and she "can approach only those in whom a profound nature has been upheaved by central convulsions; in whom the heart trembles and the brain rocks under conspiracies of tempest from without and tempest from within"). Whither tended the conference of the Three Sisters, as overheard by their awed, long-ago initiated catechumen? How interprets he the language of gesture?—for otherwise there is no speech or language—otherwise their voice is not heard. The Elder, Madonna, in dumb show touched the head of the Oxford dreamer, and beckoned to the Second Sister, Our Lady of Sighs, "and what she spoke, translated out of the signs which (except in dreams) no man reads," was this:
"Lo! here is he, whom in childhood I dedicated to my altars. This is he that once I made my darling. Him I led astray, him I beguiled, and from heaven I stole away his young heart to mine. Through me did he become idolatrous; and through me it was, by languishing desires, that he worshipped the worm, and prayed to the wormy grave.[1]
- ↑ Elsewhere the autobiographer had shown how his sister Elizabeth's death had the perilous effect of fastening his regards on "the sublime attractions of the grave"—how closely environed was his young heart with the dangers of brooding solitude, of descending into a "depth from which there is no re-ascent; into a disease which seems no disease; into a languishing which, from its very sweetness, perplexes the mind and is fancied to be very health. Witchcraft has seized upon you, nympholepsy has struck you. Now you rave no more. You acquiesce; nay, you are passionately delighted in your condition. Sweet becomes the grave, because yon also hope immediately to travel thither."—Suspiria de Profundis, 1845. (Blackwood, vol lvii., p. 491.)
