Читать книгу The Epicurean: A Tale - Thomas Moore - Страница 6

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The festival was over;—the sounds of the song and dance had ceased, and I was now left in those luxurious gardens, alone. Though so ardent and active a votary of pleasure, I had, by nature, a disposition full of melancholy;—an imagination that presented sad thoughts, even in the midst of mirth and happiness, and threw the shadow of the future over the gayest illusions of the present. Melancholy was, indeed, twin-born in my soul with Passion; and, not even in the fullest fervour of the latter, were they separated. From the first moment that I was conscious of thought and feeling, the same dark thread had run across the web; and images of death and annihilation mingled themselves with the most smiling scenes through which my career of enjoyment led me. My very passion for pleasure but deepened these gloomy [pg 12]fancies. For, shut out, as I was by my creed, from a future life, and having no hope beyond the narrow horizon of this, every minute of delight assumed a mournful preciousness in my eyes, and pleasure, like the flower of the cemetery, grew but more luxuriant from the neighbourhood of death.

This very night my triumph, my happiness had seemed complete. I had been the presiding genius of that voluptuous scene. Both my ambition and my love of pleasure had drunk deep of the cup for which they thirsted. Looked up to by the learned, and loved by the beautiful and the young, I had seen, in every eye that met mine, either the acknowledgment of triumphs already won, or the promise of others, still brighter, that awaited me. Yet, even in the midst of all this, the same dark thoughts had presented themselves;—the perishableness of myself and all around me every instant recurred to my mind. Those hands I had prest—those eyes, in [pg 13]which I had seen sparkling, a spirit of light and life that should never die—those voices, that had talked of eternal love—all, all, I felt, were but a mockery of the moment, and would leave nothing eternal but the silence of their dust!

Oh, were it not for this sad voice,

Stealing amid our mirth to say,

That all, in which we most rejoice,

Ere night may be the earth-worm’s prey;—

But for this bitter—only this—

Full as the world is brimm’d with bliss,

And capable as feels my soul

Of draining to its depth the whole,

I should turn earth to heaven, and be,

If bliss made gods, a deity!

Such was the description I gave of my own feelings, in one of those wild, passionate songs, to which this ferment of my spirits, between mirth and melancholy, gave birth.

Seldom had my heart more fully abandoned itself to such vague sadness than at the present moment, when, as I paced [pg 14]thoughtfully among the fading lights and flowers of the banquet, the echo of my own step was all that sounded, where so many gay forms had lately been revelling. The moon was still up, the morning had not yet glimmered, and the calm glories of night still rested on all around. Unconscious whither my pathway led, I wandered along, till I, at length, found myself before that fair statue of Venus, with which the chisel of Alcamenes had embellished our Garden;—that image of deified woman, the only idol to which I had ever bent the knee. Leaning against the pedestal, I raised my eyes to heaven, and fixing them sadly and intently on the ever-burning stars, as if I sought to read the mournful secret in their light, asked, wherefore was it that Man alone must perish, while they, less wonderful, less glorious than he, lived on in light unchangeable and for ever!—“Oh, that there were some spell, some talisman,” I exclaimed, “to make the spirit within us [pg 15]deathless as those stars, and open to its desires a career like theirs, burning and boundless throughout all time!”

While I gave myself up to this train of thought, that lassitude which earthly pleasure, however sweet, leaves behind,—as if to show how earthly it is,—came drowsily over me, and I sunk at the base of the statue to sleep.

Even in sleep, however, my fancy was still busy; and a dream, so vivid as to leave behind it the impression of reality, thus passed through my mind. I thought myself transported to a wide desert plain, where nothing seemed to breathe, or move, or live. The very sky above it looked pale and extinct, giving the idea, not of darkness, but of light that had died; and, had that region been the remains of some older world, left broken up and sunless, it could not have looked more dead and desolate. The only thing that bespoke life, in this melancholy waste, was a small moving spark, that at first glimmered in the dis[pg 16]tance, but, at length, slowly approached the spot where I stood. As it drew nearer, I could perceive that its feeble gleam was from a taper in the hand of a pale venerable man, who now stood, like a messenger from the grave, before me. After a few moments of awful silence, during which he looked at me with a sadness that thrilled my very soul, he said,—“Thou, who seekest eternal life, go unto the shores of the dark Nile—go unto the shores of the dark Nile, and thou wilt find the eternal life thou seekest!”

No sooner had he said these words than the death-like hue of his cheek brightened into a smile of more than human promise. The small torch that he held sent forth a radiance, by which suddenly the whole surface of the desert was illuminated, even to the far horizon’s edge, along whose line were now seen gardens, palaces, and spires, all bright and golden, like the architecture of the clouds at sunset. Sweet music, too, was heard every where, floating [pg 17]around, and, from all sides, such varieties of splendour poured, that, with the excess both of harmony and of light, I woke.

That infidels should be superstitious is an anomaly neither unusual nor strange. A belief in superhuman agency seems natural and necessary to the mind; and, if not suffered to flow in the obvious channels, it will find a vent in some other. Hence, many who have doubted the existence of a God, have yet implicitly placed themselves under the patronage of Fate or the stars. Much the same inconsistency I was conscious of in my own feelings. Though rejecting all belief in a Divine Providence, I had yet a faith in dreams, that all my philosophy could not conquer. Nor was experience wanting to confirm me in my delusion; for, by some of those accidental coincidences, which make the fortune of soothsayers and prophets, dreams, more than once, had been to me

Oracles, truer far than oak,

Or dove, or tripod, ever spoke.

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It was not wonderful, therefore, that the vision of that night, touching, as it did, a chord so ready to vibrate, should have affected me with more than ordinary power, and sunk deeper into my memory with every effort I made to forget it. In vain did I mock at my own weakness;—such self-derision is seldom sincere. In vain did I pursue my accustomed pleasures. Their zest was, as usual, for ever new; but still came the saddening consciousness of mortality, and, with it, the recollection of this visionary promise, to which my fancy, in defiance of my reason, still clung.

Sometimes indulging in reveries, that were little else than a continuation of my dream, I even contemplated the possible existence of some secret, by which youth might be, if not perpetuated, at least prolonged, and that dreadful vicinity of death, within whose circle love pines and pleasure sickens, might be for a while averted. “Who knows,” I would ask, “but that in Egypt, that land of wonders, where Mystery [pg 19]hath yet unfolded but half her treasures,—where so many dark secrets of the antediluvian world still remain, undeciphered, upon the pillars of Seth—who knows but some charm, some amulet, may lie hid, whose discovery, as this phantom hath promised, but waits my coming—some compound of the same pure atoms, that scintillate in the eternal stars, and whose infusion into the frame of man might make him, too, fadeless and immortal!”

Thus did I fondly speculate, in those rambling moods, when the life of excitement which I led, acting upon a warm heart and vivid fancy, produced an intoxication of spirit, during which I was not wholly myself. This bewilderment, too, was not a little increased by the constant struggle between my own natural feelings, and the cold, mortal creed of my sect, in endeavouring to escape from whose deadening bondage I but broke loose into the realms of romance and fantasy.

Even, however, in my calmest and soberest moments, that strange vision per[pg 20]petually haunted me. In vain were all my efforts to chase it from my mind; and the deliberate conclusion to which I came at last, was, that without, at least, a visit to Egypt, I could not rest, nor, till convinced of my folly by disappointment, be reasonable. I, therefore, announced without delay to my associates of the Garden, the intention which I had formed to pay a visit to the land of Pyramids. To none of them did I dare to confess the vague, visionary impulse that actuated me. Knowledge was the object that I alleged, while Pleasure was that for which they gave me credit. The interests of the School, it was apprehended, would suffer by my absence; and there were some tenderer ties, which had still more to fear from separation. But for the former inconvenience a temporary remedy was provided; while the latter a skilful distribution of vows and sighs alleviated. Being furnished with recommendatory letters to all parts of Egypt, in the summer of the year 257, A.D. I set sail for Alexandria.

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