Ch. 26 - Poetry's California - Page 2

He saw the
living visions; breathed the flowers' fragrance; crushed the grapes,
and drank the sacred juice. But he himself knew not yet that he was a
poet--the bearer of-light for times and generations yet to come.

It was in the fresh, fragrant forest, in the last hour of
leave-taking. Love's kiss, as the farewell, was the initiatory baptism
for the future poetic life; and the fresh fragrance of the forest
became sweeter, the chirping of the birds more melodious: there came
sunlight and cooling breezes. Nature becomes doubly delightful where a
poet walks.

And as there were two roads before Hercules, so there were before him
two roads, shown by two figures, in order to serve him; the one an old
crone, the other a youth, beautiful as the angel that led the young
Tobias.

The old crone had on a mantle, on which were wrought flowers, animals,
and human beings, entwined in an arabesque manner. She had large
spectacles on, and beside her lantern she held a bag filled with old
gilt cards--apparatus for witchcraft, and all the amulets of
superstition: leaning on her crutch, wrinkled and shivering, she was,
however, soaring, like the mist over the meadow.

"Come with me, and you shall see the world, so that a poet can have
benefit from it," said she. "I will light my lantern; it is better
than that which Diogenes bore; I shall lighten your path."

And the light shone; the old crone lifted her head, and stood there
strong and tall, a powerful female figure. She was Superstition.

"I am the strongest in the region of romance," said she,--and she
herself believed it.

And the lantern's light gave the lustre of the full moon over the
whole earth; yes, the earth itself became transparent, as the still
waters of the deep sea, or the glass mountains, in the fairy tale.

"My kingdom is thine! sing what thou see'st; sing as if no bard before
thee had sung thereof."

And it was as if the scene continually changed. Splendid Gothic
churches, with painted images in the panes, glided past, and the
midnight-bell struck, and the dead arose from the graves. There, under
the bending elder tree, sat the mother, and swathed her newly-born
child; old, sunken knights' castles rose again from the marshy ground;
the drawbridge fell, and they saw into the empty halls, adorned with
images, where, under the gloomy stairs of the gallery, the
death-proclaiming white woman came with a rattling bunch of keys. The
basilisk brooded in the deep cellar; the monster bred from a cock's
egg, invulnerable by every weapon, but not from the sight of its own
horrible form: at the sight of its own image, it bursts like the steel
that one breaks with the blow of a