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Title: The Castle Of Remembrance
Author: Theophile Gautier [
More Titles by Gautier]
Before my hearth with head low-bowed
I dream, and strive to reach again,
Across the misty past's gray cloud,
Unto Remembrance's domain,
Where tree and house and upland way
Are blurred and blue like passing ghosts,
And the eye, ponder though it may,
Consults in vain the guiding-posts.
Now gropingly to gain a sight
Of all the buried world, I press
Through mystic marge of shade and light
And limbo of forgetfulness.
But white, diaphanous Memory stands,
Where many roadways meet and spread,
Like Ariadne, in my hands
Thrusting her little ball of thread.
Henceforth the way is all secure.
The shrouded sun hath reappeared,
And o'er the trees with vision sure
I see the castle tower upreared.
Beneath the boughs where day grows dark
With shower on shower of leaves down-poured
The dear old path through moss and bark
Still lengthens far its narrow cord.
But creeping-plant and bramble-spray
Have wrought a net to daunt me now.
The stubborn branch I force away
Swings fiercely back to lash my brow.
I come upon the house at last.
No window lit with lamp or face,
No breath of smoke from gables vast,
To touch with life the mouldering place!
Bridges are crumbling. Moats are still,
And slimed with rank, green refuse-flowers,
And tortuous waves of ivy fill
The crevices and choke the towers.
The portico in moonlight wanes.
Time sculptures it to suit his whim.
And with the wash of many rains
My coloured coat of arms is dim.
The door I open eagerly.
The ancient hinges creak and halt.
A breath of dampness wafts to me
The musty odour of the vault.
The hairy nettle sharp of sting,
The coarse and broad-leafed burdock weed
In court-yard nooks are prospering,
By spreading hemlocks canopied.
Upon two marble monsters near,
That guard the mossy steps of stone,
The shadow of a tree falls clear,
That in my absence has upgrown.
Sudden the lion sentinels raise
Their paws, aggressive and malign,
And challenge me with their white gaze;
But soft I breathe the countersign.
I pass. The old dog menaceth,
But falls back hushed, the shades amid.
My resonant footstep wakeneth
Crouched echoes in their corners hid.
Through yellow panes of glass a ray
Of dubious light creeps down the hall
Where ancient tapestries display
Apollo's fortunes from the wall.
Fair tree-bound Daphne still with grace
Stretches her tufted fingers green.
But in the amorous god's embrace
She fades, a formless phantom seen.
I watch divine Apollo stand,
Herdsman to acarus-riddled sheep,
The Muses Nine, a haggard band,
Upon a faded Pindus weep;
While Solitude in scanty gown
Traces "Desertion" in the dust
That through the air she sifteth down
Upon a marble stand august.
And now, among forgotten things,
I find, like sleepers manifold,
Pastels bedimmed, dark picturings,
Young beauties, and the friends of old.
My faltering fingers lift a crape,--
And lo, my love with look and lure!
With puffing skirts and prisoned shape!
Cidalise a la Pompadour!
A tender, blossoming rose she feels
Against her ribboned bodice pressed,
Whose lace half hides and half reveals
A snowy, azure-veined breast.
Within her eyes gleam sparkles lush,
As on the rime-kissed, deadened leaves.
Upon her cheek a purple flush--
Death's own cosmetic hue!--deceives.
She startles as I come before,
And fixeth soft on me her eyes,
Reproachfully forevermore,
Yet with a charm and witching wise.
Life bore me from thee at its will,
Yet on my heart thy name is laid,
Thou dead delight, that lingereth still,
Bedizened for the masquerade!
Envious of Art, fair Nature wrought
To overpass Murillo's fame,--
From Andalusia here she brought
The face that lights the second frame.
By some poetical caprice,
Our atmosphere of mist and cloud,
With rare exotic charm's increase
This other Petra Camara dowed.
Warm orange tones are gilding yet
Her lovely skin of roseate hue.
Her eyelids fair have lashes jet
That beams of sunshine filter through.
There shimmers fine a pearly gleam
Between her scarlet lips elate;
Her beauty flashes forth supreme--
A bright south summer pomegranate.
Long to the sound of Spain's guitar,
I told her praise 'mid song and glass.
She came alone one evenstar,
And all my room Alhambra was.
Farther I see a robust Fair,
With strong and gem-beladen arms.
In pearls of price and velvet rare
Are set her ivory bosom's charms.
Her ennui is a weary queen's,
An adulating court amid.
Superb, aloof, her hand she leans
Upon a casket's jewelled lid.
Her sensuous lips their crimes confess,
As crimson with the blood of hearts.
With brutal, mad voluptuousness
Her conquering eye a challenge darts.
Here dwells, in lieu of tender grace,
Vertiginous allure, whereof
A cruel Venus ruled a race,
Presiding o'er malignant love.
Unnatural mother to her child,
This Venus all imperative!
O thou, my bitter joy and wild,--
Farewell forever! I forgive!
Within its frame in shadow fine,
The misty glass that still endures
Reveals another face than mine,--
The earliest of my portraitures.
A retrospective ghost, with face
Of vanished type, steps from the vast
Dim mirror of his biding-place
In tenebrous, forgotten past.
Gay in his doublet satin-rose,
Coloured in bold and vivid way,
He seems as if about to pose
For Deveria or Boulanger.
Terror of glabrous commoner,
His flowing locks in royal guise,
Like mane of lion, or sinister
King's hair, fall heavy to his thighs.
Romanticist of bold conceit,
Knight of an art which strives anew,
He hurled himself at Drama's feet,
When erst Hernani's trumpet blew.
Night falls. The corners are astir
With many shapes and shadows tall.
The Unknown--grim stage-carpenter--
Sets up its darksome frights o'er all.
A sudden burst of candles, weird
With aureoles, like lamps of death!
The room is populous, and bleared
With folk brought hither by a breath!
Down step the portraits from the wall,--
A ruddy-litten company!
Circling the fireplace in the hall,
Where the wood blazes suddenly.
The figures wrested from the tombs
Have lost their rigid, frozen mien,
The gradual glow of life illumes
The Past with flush incarnadine.
A colour lights the faces pale,
As in the days of old delight.
Friends whom my thought shall never fail,
I thank ye, that ye came to-night!
Now eighteen-thirty shows to me
Its great and valiant-hearted men.
(Ah, like Otranto's pirates, we
Who were an hundred, are but ten!)
And one his reddish beard spreads out,
Like Barbarossa in his cave.
Another his mustachio stout
Curls at the ends in fashion suave.
Under the ample fold that cloaks
An ever unrevealed ill,
Petrus a cigarette now smokes,
Naming it "papelito" still.
Another cometh, fain to tell
His visions and his hopes supreme.
Like Icarus on the sands he fell,
Where lie all broken shafts of dream.
And one a drama hath begot,
Planned after some new model's freak,
Which, merging all things in its plot,
Makes Calderon with Moliere speak.
Tom, late forsaken by his Dear,
Love's Labour's Lost must low recite;
And Fritz to Cidalise makes clear
Faust's vision of Walpurgis Night.
But dawn comes through the window free.
Diaphanous the phantoms grow.
The objects of reality
Strike through their shapes that merge and go.
The candles are consumed away.
The ember-lights no longer gleam
Upon the hearth. No thing shall stay.
Farewell, O castle of my dream!
December gray shall turn once more
The glass of Time, for all we fret!
The present enters at my door,
And vainly bids me to forget.
[The end]
Theophile Gautier's poem: Castle Of Remembrance
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