He walks with the surest foot in the
darkling realm of dread Persephone, beneath the poplars on the
solemn last beach of Ocean. He has heard the Siren's music, and the
song of Circe, chanting as she walks to and fro, casting the golden
shuttle through the loom of gold. He enters the cave of the Man
Eater; he knows the unsunned land of the Cimmerians; in the summer
of the North he has looked, from the fiord of the Laestrygons, on
the Midnight Sun. He has dwelt on the floating isle of AEolus, with
its wall of bronze unbroken, and has sailed on those Phaeacian barks
that need no help of helm or oar, that fear no stress either of wind
or tide, that come and go and return obedient to a thought and
silent as a dream. He has seen the four maidens of Circe, daughters
of wells and woods, and of sacred streams. He is the second-sighted
man, and beholds the shroud that wraps the living who are doomed,
and the mystic dripping from the walls of blood yet unshed. He has
walked in the garden closes of Phaeacia, and looked on the face of
gods who fare thither, and watch the weaving of the dance. He has
eaten the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus, and from the hand of Helen
he brings us that Egyptian nepenthe which puts all sorrow out of
mind. His real world is as real as that in Henry V., his enchanted
isles are charmed with the magic of the Tempest. His young wooers
are as insolent as Claudio, as flushed with youth; his beggar-men
are brethren of Edie Ochiltree; his Nausicaa is sister to Rosalind,
with a different charm of stately purity in love.
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